23 20 5655 https://s3.us-east-1.amazonaws.com/sjcdigitalarchives/original/ac2f882eef7a07c42b5b5fc6bc838719.pdf 5ba73bb36fea2d9347c83561852ceb30 PDF Text Text �Editor's Note FROM OUR READERS ' With this issue the St. John's Review begins to charge new subscribers. Old subscribers, St. John's alumni and friends, students and their families will continue to receive the magazine without charge. My desire to turn the St. John's Review into an unambiguously public magazine and to win an additional audience prompts this decision. From now on the St. John's Review will appear three times a year1 in the fall, winter, and summer-L.R. Editor: Leo Raditsa Managing Editor: Thomas Patran, Jr. Editorial Assistant: Janet Durholz Consulting Editors: David Bolotin, Eva Brann, Curtis A. Wilson. Unsolicited articles, stories, and poems are welcome, but should be accompanied by a stamped, self-addressed envelope in each instance. Reasoned comments are also welcome. THESTJOHNSREVIEW (formerly The College) is published by the Office of the Dean, St. John's College, Annapolis, Maryland 21404. Edwin J. Delattre, President, Edward G. Sparrow, Dean. Published thrice yearly, in the fall, winter, and summer. For those not on the distribution list, subscriptions: $12.00 yearly, $24.00 for two years, or $36.00 for three years, payable in advance. Address all correspondence to The St. John's Review, St. John's College, Annapolis, Maryland 21404. Volume XXXIII WINTER 1982 Number2 ©1982, St. John's College. All rights reserved. Reproduction in whole or in part without permission is prohibited. ISSN 0277-4720 Cover: Thick-billed Murre by J. J. Audubon; photograph courtesy of the New-York Historical Society, New York City. Composition: Britton Composition Co. Printing: The John D. Lucas Printing Co. ON" 'SEXISM' IS MEANINGLESS" To the Editor of the St. John's Review: Mr. Levin (" 'Sexism' is Meaningless") seems not to be able to distinguish between what is in fact the case and his personal prejudices, which he calls "factual beliefs" -a strange term since if they were factual, they would presumably be knowledge, not belief. Mr. Levin is, for example, concerned about the degradation of language as exemplified by the use of the word "sexiSm" which, according to him, either has no reasonable meaning or "simply encapsulates and obscures" the confusion which feminists have about their subject. To illustrate his notion of rhetorical abuse of language he chooses the word "exploit" which he says means "to uSe another without his consent." From this definition it is then easy to argue that to use "exploitation" to describe contractual wage labor is to employ a rhetorical trap to denounce wage labor itself. It was, however, not my impression that consent, itself a rather tricky concept to analyze, had much to do with exploitation. So I checked the dictionaries I have around the house, the Webster's New Collegiate Dictionary, the American College Dictionary, the American Heritage Dictionary, and the Oxford English Dictionary, and, curiously enough, none of them used or implied the word "consent" as part of its definition. To quote just one of the four, the New Collegiate Dictionary, "exploit la: to turn to economic account (a mine); b: to t.ake advantage of; 2: to make use of meanly or unjustly for one's own advantage." I quote this not to be pedantic or to score cheap points, but to indicate hQw Mr. Levin confuses his private view of the world and language with that shared by most of the rest of the English-speaking world. "Exploit" and "exploitation" are perfectly legitimate terms to use to describe contractual wage labor if one believes either that surplus value is at the root of capitalist profit, or, to be less doctrinaire, if one simply believes that employers have, on the whole, more power than employees and can use that power to arrive at less than equitable contracts -not, I believe, a very radical position. But we should turn to more substantive matters. When Mr. Levin asserts in his title that "sexism is meaningless", this seems to me to have two possible interpretations: l, that the term is without clearly definable meaning; and 2, that there is no phenomenon corresponding to the term, whatever it might mean in some loose, confusing way. I believe Mr. Levin to be wrong on both counts. As to the meaning of "sexism", Mr. Levin says the following: " 'Sexism', then, is typically used to describe either the view that there are general, innate psychological differences between the sexes, or that gender is in and of itself important." He further as~ serts that "the first view is simply a factual belief supported by a vast body of evidence, and the second view, however objectionable, is held by almost no-one." "Neither view," he asserts, "is worth attacking." But, as I understand them, both are worth attacking, because the first is, I think, though clearly a belief, not factual, and the second is, I believe, held by virtually everyone, not no-one. (continued on page 2) �1 HESTJOHNSREVIEWWINTER82 • 1 I 3 George Dennison Shawno (narrative) 24 Nietzsche and the Classic William Mullen 33 The Trivialization of the Holocaust as an Aspect of Modern Idolatry Robert Loewenberg 44 Proof and Pascal Brother Robert Smith 52 Five Translations 57 The Federal Republic of Germany: Finlandization or Germanization? Charles G.Bell Anne-Marie Le Gloannec 63 Io (poem) Laurence Josephs 64 Kekkonen, the "Finlandizer" 65 Hephaestus (poem) Laurence Josephs 66 Mozart's Cherubino Wye jamison Allanbrook 75 The Fury of Aeneas joe Sachs Indro Montanelli REVIEW ESSAYS 83 Objectivity and Philosophical Conversation: Philosophy and the Mi?Tor of Nature, by Richard Rorty review essay by Arthur Collins 90 Afghanistan Fights: The Struggle for Afghanistan, by Nancy Peabody Newell and Richard S. Newell review essay by Leo Raditsa AT HOME AND ABROAD 98 Letter from Vietnam jean Dulich FIRST READINGS 102 Laos; Marie-Noele and Didier Sicard, Au nom de Ma?X et de Bouddha, Revolution au Laos: un peuple, une culture disparaissent, review by Leo Raditsa 106 A Dead Man's Knowledge; Varlam Shalamov, Graphite, review by Lev Navrozov Inside front cover-FROM OUR READERS Michael Levin's "'Sexism' is Meaningless" and Harry V. Jaffa's "Inventing the Past" 1 �(continued from inside front cover) To defend the view that there are innate psychological gender differences, Mr. Levin says that he doubts that his daughter will become a quarterback, not because of her size, weight, and strength, but because of psychology. I agree with him that it is unlikely that his daughter will become a quarterback, but I also believe that it is almost equally unlikely that his son will become one. It is a well-attested "factual belief' that very few quarterbacks are the sons of philosophy professors, not because of genetic psychological deficiencies but because they are raised in homes where athletics is valued less than other things. I think it is also very likely that if Mr. Levin raises his daughter praising her for docility, obedience, and gentleness and raises his son praising his drive, aggressiveness, and assertiveness that his son will turn out more aggressive than his daughter. And, in fact, it is clear that that is, on the whole, how sons and daughters have been raised. I hope it is not necessary to rehearse the whole dreary range of environmental differences that boys and girls are subjected to, ranging from dressing daughters in dresses and sons in pants (my wife as recently as the early 1960's taught in a Connecticut school system where girls were allowed to wear pants only under blizzard conditions), to spending years with school books where the boys are doctors and the girls are nurses looking admiringly at their superiors, or where the boys are active while the gids can only passively marvel at their multi-talented male counterparts. Certainly Mr. Levin's expectations for his daughter will have consequences, but it is less than clear that genetic differences are the root cause of how she will turn out psychologically. The "vast body of evidence" which he mentions is, at best, controversial, and to assume that the case is proven as he does is to commit that marvelous trick one can sometimes get away with in geometry, namely to put what you're trying to prove in the given. As to the second view, "that gender is in and of itself important," that seems so clearly true that he must mean something other than what the words seem to say when he denies it. Clearly the difference in the reproductive systems is crucially important, as are differences in average size, though what the psychological consequences 2 of those differences are is open to dispute, Now, in the extremes, this is clearly true. and what the social and political conse- However, the amount of overlap between quences should be are really the central is- women and men in even this test is so great that it is not clear to me that any important sue of Mr. Levin's article. consequences follow. For example, in the First, however, I would like to address two other relatively minor linguistic mat- !980 Olympic Games, the winning javelin ters because they are revealing of the way throw by a woman was 224 ft., 5 in., a disMr. Levin argues. The first is his assertion tance about 4 ft. less than that of the male that he suspects that "feminists avoid the winner in !948. Even granted that 1980 word 'misogyny' because it carries no con- was a good year for women javelin thrownotations of system." The real reason they ers and 1948 a bad year for men, if I were do not use it ("avoid" is, in itself, a rhetori- looking for a large group of spear-throwers, cal gambit to suggest some devious game I would certainly open the competition to they are playing) is because it fails to de- both men and women, because it seem eviscribe the phenomena they are concerned dent that some women are going to be with. On the whole, men are not misogy- much better at it than most men. That is, nists, though the amount of violence di- the statistical superiority of men even in rected at women is appalling, the incidence this rather uninteresting and loaded inof rape being the most obvious example, stance is not such as to conclude that an though by no means the only one. On the army of projectile throwers should autocontrary, men like women, when they stay matically be all male. We can note that in their place. When the recently retired Plato, not a notorious egalitarian or femihead of the Baltimore Police Department, nist (women, after all, are dismissed before Donald Pomerlau, was under attack for his serious conversation begins), makes a simitreatment of women on the force, he de- lar point in The Republic (456b): "Then we nied vehemently that he had any preju- have come around full circle to where we dices against women. He really was fond of were before and agree that it's not against what he described as "little balls of fluff." nature to assign music and gymnastic to Now misogyny is clearly not the word to the women guardians." "That's entirely describe such an attitude, but I think "sex- certain." "Then we weren't giving laws that are impossible or like prayers, since ism" is. Second, let us look at another little ploy the law we set down is according to nature. of Mr. Levin's. He calls attention to the ug- Rather, the way things are nowadays liness of "sexism" and comments on its proves to be, as it seems, against nature." Mr. Levin then moves from this example "grating sound," suggesting that that very rather casually to the less obvious "factual ugliness was the motive for coining it. Perhaps we don't all share Mr. Levin's delicate hypotheses" that women are inferior in ear, but it should be noted that in the !8th "abstract reasoning" and superior in century, a "sexism" was a "sequence of six "child-rearing." Here again the evidence is cards" (OED) and I doubt that its "ugli- anything but clear. It is not clear what a ness" disturbed anyone. And words like test of abstract reasoning would be; noth''saxophone," "hexadecimal," ''textile," ing that has yet been developed can lay any and so on seem equally good candidates for claim to validity in judging that ability; and rejection on grounds of ugliness, though I would certainly not trust Mr. Levin's Mr. Levin is, I trust, not bothered by them. anecdotal evidence, given his prejudices. But let us turn to the main issues. I fully That women, on the whole, do less well agree with Mr. Levin that "better" means than men on the mathematical part of the nothing without more specification of con- SAT's is true, but the reasons for that are tent or context. " 'Better'," as he says, not obvious. A few of the many possible ex"must mean better at this or that particular planations are that male students are much task." The issue then becomes, "Are men more likely to be directed into mathematics generically better than women at signifi~ classes than female students (anecdotal evicant tasks?" He finds that "men are so ob- dence for this is everywhere), that the imviously better at some things than women" portance of mathematics is emphasized to that it scarcely bears discussing. His first male students more than to female, or it example is that men can obviously hurl may be that men are generally better a.t (continued on page 107) projectiles much farther than women. WINTER 1982 �Shawno George Dennison A marathon. Euphoria. Sights and sounds in the corridor of dogs. Finches and morning. We could hear our children's voices in the darkness on the sweet-smelling hill by my friend's house, and could hear the barking of Angus, his dog. At nine o'clock Patricia put our three into the car and went home. My friend's wife and son said goodnight shortly afterwards. By then he and I had gone back to the roomy, decrepit, smoke-discolored, homey, extremely pleasant farmhouse kitchen and were finishing the wine we had had at .dinner. It was late August. Our northern New England nights were drawing on noticeably toward fall, but the cool of the night was enjoyable. He opened a bottle of mezcal he had brought from Mexico, and we talked of the writings of friends, and of the friends themselves, and of our youthful days in New York. He had written a paper on Mahler. We listened to the Eighth and Ninth symphonies, and the unfinished Tenth, which moved him deeply. We talked again. When we parted, the stars, still yellow and numerous in most of the sky, had paled and grown fewer in the east. I set out to walk the four miles home. I was euphoric, as happens at times even without mezcal. For a short distance, since there was no one to disturb (the town road is a dead-end road and I was at the end of it) I shouted and sang. And truly, for those brief moments, everything did seem right and good, or rather, wonderful and strange. But the echoes of my voice sobered me and I stopped singing. A dog was barking. The night air was moist and cool. I became aware that something was calling for my attention, calling insistently, and then I realized that it was the stream, and so I listened for a while to its George Dennison has published The Lives of Children (1969) and Oilers and Sweepers (1979). His story, "Family Pages, Little Facts: October," appeared in the St. John's Review (Winter 1981). THE ST. JOHNS REVIEW noisy bubbling. The lower stars were blocked by densely wooded hills. A dozen or fifteen old houses lay ahead of me still darkened for sleep. Angus came with me. He is a pointy-nosed, black and white mongrel in which Border collie predominates, and therefore he is bright-eyed and quick-footed, and is amazingly interested in human affairs. He pattered along beside me, turning his head every few seconds to look at me, and it was as if he were keeping up continually a companionable cheerful jabbering. I spoke to him at one point and he barked lightly and jumped toward my face, hoping to kiss me. Abruptly he sat down. We had come to the edge of what he imagined to be his territory, though in fact we had crossed his line several paces back. He sat there and cocked his head and watched me as I walked away. I had taken only twenty steps when on my right, with jarring suddenness, came the explosive deep barking of the German shepherd tethered to the one new house in the valley. Angus sprang up, bracing his legs, and hurled his own challenge, that was high-pitched and somewhat frantic. He was answered by a barking that seemed limitless. I could hear it speeding away, the same challenge repeated in voice after voice, and growing faint. Surely it passed beyond our village, very likely beyond our state. I was in a corridor of barking dogs. A soft projectile of some sort spurted from the shadows to my right and came to rest not far from my feet, where it turned out to be a chubby little pug. It was shaking with excitement and was giving vent through its open mouth to a continuous siren of indignation. The cluttered porch it had been guarding suddenly flared with yellow light. Two elderly spinsters lived here. They rose with the sun, or before it, as did many of the older folk. The clapboards of their house had been a mustard color, the trim of the windows white, but that had been thirty years ago. The 3 �barn beside the house had fallen down, the apple trees had decayed, the mound of sheep manure was grassed over. Across the road, in a smaller house, lived a childless couple related to the spinsters, and they, too, owned a pug. While the one barked in the road ahead of me, the other barked silently inside the house, its front paws braced against the window and its rear paws stamping the back of a sofa. These dogs I praised for their attention to duty. They did not alter my mood. Brave as they were, they were hopelessly affectionate, and I knew it, and passed on confidently. But now came a barking that I feared and loathed, more savage by far than that of the German shepherd. He was chained to a dying apple tree before a collapsing gray house, the hard-packed yard of which was crowded with wheelless cars. The dog was a Doberman. His barking was frenzied. He leaped at me again and again and was jerked back by the chain, as by a violent master. Were he free and approaching me I should certainly try to kill him. Overlapping these disturbing tones were the melodious deep tones of the long-legged black hound tied before his own little house in the strange compound farther on: a mobile home, half of a barn, some small sheds, a corral, all huddled before the large trees that bordered the stream. Nothing was finished. There was an air of disconsolate ambition everywhere, failure, and disconsolate endurance. The hound himself seemed disconsolate. He was not tugging at his chain. He did not even brace his feet. He followed me with his eyes, barking his bark that was almost a baying and was actually beautiful. He cocked his head and seemed to be listening to the other dogs. What a racket! What a strange, almost musical hullabaloo! I myself was the cause of it, but it wouldn't cease when I passed. The sun would be up, the dogs would keep barking, every bird awake w<;>uld raise its voice, and that wave of noise would follow the sun right across the land. More lights came on. The sun had not yet risen, but the night was gone. It was the morning dusk, fresh and cool. Birds had been calling right along, but now there were more. At intervals I could hear roosters. There were only three. The valley had been noisy once with crowing, and the asphalt road had been an earthen road, packed by wagon wheels and shaded by many elms. The elms were garious good cheer and selfish, robust curiosity. He left me to consort with a fluffy collie, who was not chained but would not leave the shed it crouched beside. Now I passed a small house set back from the road by a small yard. A huge maple overspread the yard. Beneath the rna· ple there stood a blue tractor, and near the tractor an orange skidder, a pick-up truck, two cars, a rowboat, a child's wagon, several bikes. A large, lugubrious Saint Bernard, who all summer had suffered from the heat, was chained to the tree, and she barked at me perfunctorily in a voice not unlike the hound's, almost a baying, but not a challenge bark at all, or much of one. She wanted to be petted, she wanted to lie down and be scratched, she wanted anything but to hurl a challenge ... nevertheless, she barked. I came to a boxer, tied; a pure-bred Border collie, tied; a rabbit hound, tied; several mongrels, not tied, but clustered and apparently waiting for their breakfasts. One, a black, squat hound, had one lame foot and one blind eye, mementos of a terrible mid-winter fight with a fox in defense of newborn pups, who froze to death anyway. She barked vociferously, but then ambled out to apologize and be petted. How fabulous our hands must seem to these fingerless creatures! What pleased surprises we elicit from their brows, their throats and backs and bellies, touching as no dog can touch another dog ... At almost every house there was a dog. At absolutely every house with a garden there was a dog. One must have one to raise food, or the woodchucks take it all. A second car passed me. My euphoria was abating to good cheer and I was aware that I was hungry. . I was approaching the turn to my own road. In the crook of the turn there was a trailer, a so-called mobile home, covered with a second roof of wood. There were three small sheds around it, and a large garden out back, handsome now with the dark greens of potato plants and the lighter greens of bush beans. Near the garden were stakes and boxes for horseshoe pitching. A few steps away, at the edge of the stream, there were chairs, benches, and a picnic table. Two battered cars and a battered truck crowded the dooryard, in which there was also a tripod, taller than the trailer, made of strong young maples from the nearby woods. From its apex dangled a block and chain. Bantam stumps now, huge ones. Even so, it was beautiful. There were maples and pines beside the road, a few cows were still milked, a few fields were still hayed, a few eggs were still gathered from hens, a few pigs transformed to pork, a few sheep to mutton. Swallows were darting about. They perched in long against which three paddles and four inexpensive fishing rods were leaning. Swimming suits and orange life vests hung from a clothesline. The house was silent. All had watched TV until late at night and all were still asleep, among them my seven-year-old daughter's new-found friend. The uproar of dogs was considerable here. Six rows on the electric wires. were in residence, more or less. The young German shep- A car passed me from behind, the first. And Brandy, the Kimber's gray and ginger mutt, trotted up from the stream and joined me. His hair was bristly, his legs short. He was muscular, energetic, stunted, bearded and mustachioed, like some old campaigner out of the hills of Spain. He went beside me a little way, cheerfully, but without affection. There was no affection in him, but gre- herd was chained. The handsome boxer was free; in fact all the others were free, and with one exception ran to upbraid me and greet me. The exception, the incredibly pretty, positively magnetizing exception was Princess, the malamute, who did not bark or move. She lay at her royal ease atop a grassy mound that once had been an elm, her handsome wolf-like head erect and one paw crossed de- 4 hens were scratching the dirt near an aluminum canoe, WINTER 1982 �murely and arrogantly over the other. Her sharply slanted, almond-shaped eyes were placed close tpgether and gave her an almost human, oriental-slavic air. It was as if she knew she were being admired, and disdained response, but followed me impassively with those provocative eyes. How stran!lf she was! She knew me well. Were I to ap· proach her she'd suddenly melt. She'd sit up and lift one paw tremblingly as high as her head in a gesture of adulation and entreaty. She'd lay her head adoringly to one side and let it fall closer and closer to her shoulder in a surrender irresistible in its abject charm-"! am yours, yours utterly" -as if pulling the weight of a lover down on top of her. She ends on her back at such times, belly exposed, hind legs opened wide, lips pulled back voluptuously and front paws tucked under in the air. Especially in the winter, when all six dogs are crowded with the eleven humans into the lamplight of the little home, she indulges in such tricks. What a press there is then of dog flesh and child flesh in the overheated room! There are times when everyone seems glassy with contentment, and times when bad humor, apparently passing over into bad character, seems hopeless and destructive. Then there are quarrels as fierce and brief as the fights of cats, and peace comes again, usually in the person of Betsy, the mother, who is mild and benign. She has lost her front teeth and can't afford dentures, yet never hesitates to smile. The children drink soda pop and watch TV, while Verne, who is deepvoiced and patriarchal, with the broad back and muscular huge belly of a Sumo wrestler, sits at the kitchen table sipping beer from a can, measuring gunpowder on a little balance scale, loading and crimping shotgun shells, and glancing at the program on the tube. He is opinionated, vain, and egotistical, to the point of foolish pomposity, but he is good-natured and earnest and is easily carried away into animation, and then the posturing vanishes. He issues an order, directs a booming word to one of the kids or dogs, but especially to Princess, who draws effusions one would not think were in him. "Well, Princess!" he roars, "Ain't you the charmer! Ain't you my baby! Ain't you now! Oh, you want your belly scratched? Well, we all do, Princess! We all do! But you're the one that gits it, ain't you! Oh, yes you are! Oh, yes!" This morning I didn't stop to caress the malamute. At the turn in the road I heard a far-off barking that made me smile and want to be home. I crossed the cement bridge and turned into a small dirt road. There wouldn't be a house now for a mile, and then there would be ours and the road would end. Day had begun. There was color in the sky. The moisture in the air was thinning. The land was flat and the road paralleled the stream, which was to my right now. Here and there along its banks, in May, after the flood has gone down and the soil has warmed, we gather the just-emerging coils of the ferns called ficjdleheads. Occasionally I have fished here, not really hopefully (the trout are few), but because the stream is so exciting. Once, however, while I knelt on the THE ST. JOHNS REVIEW bank baiting my hook, I glanced into the water, deep at that point, and saw gliding heavily downstream a fish I scarcely could believe to be a trout. What a passion of helplessness seized mel I would have leaped on it bodily if that might have succeeded. I learned later that ice had broken the dam to a private fishpond in the hills and this prize and many others had· fled down tributaries to the main stream and the river. To my left, beyond a miniature bog of alders and swale lay a handsome small pond. Its outlet joined the stream fifty yards on, flowing under a bridge of stout pine stringers and heavy planks. The game warden had been here several times with dynamite, but the beavers had rebuilt their dam across the outlet, and once again the pond was eighteen inches higher than the stream. It was not unusual to see them. They had cut their half-tunnels under all these banks, creating concave, sharply overhanging edges. I had stood here with the children one night, downstream from the bridge, at the water's edge, looking for beavers, and two had passed under our feet. It was a windless, mellow night of full moon. I saw the glint of moonlight on the beaver's fur as he emerged from his channel under the bank, and then I saw his head quietly break the water. The dark shape of a second beaver, following him, glided like a phantom among the wavering images of the moon and trees. I could no longer hear the barking on the hill. I was very hungry now, and intermittently felt sleepy, but here between the pond and stream the morning air was endlessly refreshing and I entered that pleasant state of being wholly relaxed, utterly drained of muscular energy, yet suffused by awareness, interest, and approval ... the mild, benign energies of momentary happiness. Five or six bright yellow streamers-so they seemed to be-approached me and sped by, dipping and rising. They were finches. The pattern of their flight was of long smooth waves, in the troughs of which they would flutter their wings to ascend the coming slope, but fold them before the top and soar curvingly over the crest. Sleek as torpedoes or little fish, they would glide downward again into the next trough and there extend their wings and flutter them. Beyond the bridge, the road began to climb. On both sides vigorous ferns, green but no longer the vivid green of summer, crowded the sunny space before the trees. There was a coolness of night in the woods and it poured mildly into the road, mingling with the warmer air. Abruptly I heard and saw him, and though no creature is more familiar to me, more likely to be taken for granted, I was thrilled to see him, and gladdened, more than gladdened, filled for a moment with the complex happiness of our relationship that is both less than human and utterly human. Certainly I was made happy by his show of love for me. But my admiration of him is undiminished, and I felt it again, as always. He is the handsomest of dogs, muscular and large, with tufted, golden fur. The sound of his feet was audible on the hard-packed, pebble-strewn road. I 5 �leaned forward and called to him and clapped my hands, and he accelerated, arching his throat and running with more gusto. He ran with a powerful driving stride that was almost that of a greyhound, and as he neared me he drew back his lips, arched his throat still more and let out a volley of ecstatic little yips. This sound was so puppyish, and his ensuing behavior so utterly without dignity, so close to fawning slavishness that one might have contemned him for it, except that it was extreme, so extreme that there was no hint of fawning, and certainly not of cringing, but the very opposite: great confidence and security, into which there welled an ecstasy he could not contain and could not express rapidly enough to diminish, so that for a while he seemed actually to be in pain. I had to assist him, had to let him lick my face protractedly and press his paws into my shoulders. And as sometimes happens ~'l' my euphorias and early morning solitudes, there came over me a sense of the finitude of our world, and of my own brute fraternity with the other creatures who will soon be dead, and I almost spoke aloud to my dog the thoughts that I was thinking: how much it matters to be alive together! how marvelous and brief our lives are! and how good, dear one that you are, to have the wonderful strange passion of your spirit in my life! As he wound around me and pressed his body against mine, I remembered another greeting when I had seen blood on his teeth and feet. He was three then, in his prime. I had been away for several weeks-our first parting-and he had been baffled. When I came back I had reached this very place in the road, in my car, also in summer, when I saw him hurtling toward me. His first sounds were pathetic, a mixed barking, whimpering, and gulping for breath. I had to get out of the car to prevent him from injuring himself. I had to kneel in the road and let him kiss me and wind around me. He was weeping; I had to console him. And then he was laughing, and dancing on his hind legs, and I laughed too, except that it was then that I noticed the blood. He had been in the house, Patricia told me later, and had heard the car. He had torn open the screen door with his teeth and claws, had chewed away some protective slats and had driven his body through the opening. He danced around me now on his hind legs, licking my face. I knew I could terminate this ecstasy by throwing a stone for him, which I did, hard and low, so that he would not overtake it and break his teeth. A few moments later he laid it at my feet and looked into.my face excitedly. Patricia and the children were still sleeping. I ate breakfast alone, or rather, with Shawno, who waited by my chair. I had hoped to spend the morning writing, and I went upstairs and sat at my table. It was ludicrous. The mere process of holding still caused my eyes to close and head to fall. Yet I didn't want to sleep, didn't want to abandon that mood-too rare to be taken lightly-of happiness and peace; and so I went into the garden and pulled up the bush beans that had already borne and died, and carried tall spikes of bolted lettuce to the compost pile. There is a 6 rough rail fence around the garden to keep the ponies out. Shawno lay beneath it and watched me. I cleared a few weeds and from time to time got rid of stones by flinging them absently into the woods. I pulled out the brittle pea vines from their chicken wire trellis, rolled up the wire and took it to the barn. After two hours of this I went to bed. Shawno had gone in akeady and was enjoying a second breakfast with the children. I had forgotten about him, but as I left the garden I saw by the fence, where the grass had been flattened by his body, a little heap of stones. He had pursued every one I had tried to get rid of. His parents. Ida's delight. His leaping. Children in the park. An elderly scholar. When Patricia was pregnant with Ida we were living on Riverside Drive in New York. One bright October day we saw a crowd of people at the low stone wall of the park. Many were murmuring in admiration and we could hear exclamations of delight. Down below, on the grassy flat, two dogs were racing. The first belonged to an acquaintance in our building. She was tawny and short-haired with the lines of a greyhound, but larger and of more massive head and shoulders. She was in heat and was leading the other in fantastic, playful sprints, throwing her haunches against him gaily and changing direction at great speed. The male, a Belgian shepherd with golden fur, was young and in a state of transport. He ran stifflegged, arching his neck over her body with an eagerness that seemed ruthless, except that his ears were laid back shyly. The dogs' speed was dazzling; both were beauties, and the exclamations continued as long as they remained in sight. Shawno was the largest of the issue of those memorable nuptials. He arrived in our apartment when Ida was twelve weeks old. She looked down from her perch on Patricia's bosom and saw him wobbling this way and that, and with a chortle that was almost a scream reached for him with both arms. Soon she was bawling the astonished, gasping wails of extreme alarm (his needle-point bites), and he was yelping piteously in the monkey-like grip with which she had seized his ear and was holding him at arm's length, out of mind, while she turned her tearful face to her mother. These new beginnings, and especially my marriage with Patricia, overtaking me late in my maturity, ended a period of unhappiness so extreme as to have amounted to grief. And I found that loving the child, cradling and dandling her, watching her sleep, and above all watching her nurse at Patricia's bosom, awakened images of my childhood I would not have guessed were still intact. Something similar happened with the dog. I began a regimen of early morning running, as if he were an athlete and I his trainer, and I had trotted behind him through the weathers of several months before I realized that my happiness WINTER 1982 �at these times was composed in part of recovered memories of the daybreak runnings of my youth, that had been so hopeful and so satisfied as to seem to me, now, paradisal. The dog developed precociously. He was not a year and a half old when, in pursuit of sticks or balls that I threw for him, he was leaping seven foot walls. He was a delight to watch, combining power and beauty with indolent confidence, though this last, no doubt, was an illusion of his style, for instead of hitching up his hind legs as he cleared the obstacle at the height of his leap, he'd swing them lazily to one side, as if such feats were no more difficult than sprawling on the floor. He became a personage in the park and soon acquired a band of children, who left their games to follow him, or who, more correctly, played new games to include him. It was not only his prowess and beauty that attracted them, but the extraordinary love he bestowed on them. He was simply smitten with our race. I was crossing upper Broadway with him once; he was leashed; the crossing was crowded. There came toward us an old gentleman holding a four-year-old boy by the hand. The boy's face and the dog's were on a level, and as they passed the two faces turned to each other in mutual delight, and Shawno bestowed a kiss that began at one ear, went all the way across and ended at the other. I glanced back. The boy, too, was glancing back, grinning widely. In fact, the boy and Shawno were looking back at each other. This incident is paired for all time with another that I witnessed in New Yark and that perhaps could not have occurred in any other city. It was in the subway at rush hour. The corridors were booming with the hammering, grinding roar of the trains and the pounding of thousands of almost running feet. Three corridors came together in a Y and two of them were streaming with people packed far tighter than soldiers in military formation. The columns were approaching each other rapidly. There was room to pass, but just barely. Alas, the columns collided. That is, their inside corners did, and these corners were occupied by apparently irrascible men. Each hurled one, exactly one, furious roundhouse blow at the other, and both were swept away in their columns-a memorable fight. I would never have known certain people in New Yark except for the loving spirit of the dog; worse, it would never have occurred to me that knowing them was desirable, or possible, where in fact it was delightful. The people I mean were children. What could I have done with them were it not for the dog? As it was, I changed my hours in order to meet them, and they-a group of eight or so-waited for us devotedly after school. Most were Puerto Rican. The youngest was only seven, the eldest eleven. They would spread themselves in a large circle with the dog in the center and throw a ball back and forth, shouting as he leaped and tried to snatch it from the air. When he succeeded, which was often, there ensued the merriest and most musical of chases, the boys arranged behind the dog according to their speed of foot, the dog holding the ball high, displaying it provocatively, looking back over his shoulder and trotting stiff-legged just fast TilE ST. JOHNS REVIEW enough to elude the foremost boy, winding that laughing, shouting, almost singing line .of children this way and that through the park. I discovered that many of the by-standers I used to see at this time came on purpose to watch the children and the dog. One elderly, white-haired man I have never forgotten. He was jewish and spoke with a German accent, wore a felt hat and expensive coats. He came to our playground regularly and stood with his hands behind his back, his head dropped forward, nodding and chuckling, and smiling unweariedly. His face was wonderful. It was intelligent and kindly, was still strong, still handsome, and it possessed a quality I have come to associate with genius, an apparent unity of feeling, an alacrity and wholeness of response. Whatever he was feeling suffused his face; he did not have attitudes and counter-attitudes toward his feelings. One sensed great confidence in this, and great trust in himself. The dog delighted him. It was the dog he came to see. He deferred to the headlong, boisterous children, who, when Shawno would appear, would shout happily and in unison, and Shawno would go to them, bounding exuberantly, but it would not be long before the old gentleman >'vould call him, and Shawno would leave the children, not bounding now but sweeping his tail in such extreme motions that his hind legs performed a little dance from side to side independently of his front ones. The old gentleman would lean over him, speak to him and pet him, and the dog would press against his legs and look into his face. We usually chatted for a few minutes before I went home. When I asked him about his work and life he waved away the questions with gestures that were humorous and pleading yet were impressive in their authority. One day I recognized his face in a photograph in the Times, alas, on the obituary page. He was an eminent refugee scholar, a sociologist. I discovered, reading the description of his career, that I had studied briefly with his son at Columbia. By this time we had moved to the remote farmhouse in the country and our second child had been born. Past lives. Streams. An incident in the woods. Ferocity and family concern. Our house had been occupied by Finns, as had many others near us. The hill, actually a ridge, sloped away on two sides, one forested and the other, to the south, open pasture with the remnants of an orchard. At the bottom of these fields was a stream, and in an arm of the stream, a sauna. It was here that the old Finn who had built the house had bathed his invalid wife, carrying her back and forth every day until her final illness. From this same small pool he had carried water in buckets to the garden a few strides away. The sauna was damaged beyond repair, but we let it stand; and we brought back the garden, which now was one of three. For the few years that the romance of country living endured, it was this garden that I tended with greatest satisfaction, carrying water in buckets, as 7 �had the old man. Just beyond the sauna a wooded slope rose steeply. Racoons and deer erttered our field here, and it was here that the ponies and dog all came to drink. There were other relics of those vanished lives: handmade apple boxes with leather hinges cut from old boots; door handles in all the sheds made of sapling crotches; an apple picking ladder that was a tall young spruce (the bark was still on it) cut lengthwise down the middle and fitted with rungs of sugar maple saplings; ten-foot Finnish skis bent at the tips with steam from a kettle. There were hills wherever one looked, and there had been farms on all the hills. Some of the Finns had skied to market. They had cruised their woodlots on skis. Some of their children had skied to school. The hills and ridges are so numerous that in the spring, while the snow is melting, the sound of water can be heard everywhere. It pours and tumbles; there is a continual roaring; and when the thaw is well advanced the large stream in the valley makes the frightening sounds of flood, hurling chunks of ice ahead of it, crowding violently into the curves, and hurtling over falls so deep in spume that the rocks cannot be seen. Later, in the hot weather, one hears the braided sounds and folded sounds of quiet water. The orange gashes and abrasions on the trunks of trees are darkening. More trees are dead. The banks of the streams, however beautiful, and however teeming with new life, are strewn with debris in endless stages of decay. The streams have become presences in my life. For a while they were passions. There are few that I haven't fished and walked to their source. These have been solitary excursions, except for the single time that I took the dog. His innocent trotting at the water's edge disturbed the trout. Still worse was his drinking and wading in the stream. I called him out. He stood on the bank and braced his legs and shook himself. Rather, he was seized by a violent shak· ing, a shaking so swift and powerful as to seem like a vibration. It shook his head from side to side, then letting his head come to rest seized his shoulders and shook them, then his ribs, and in a swift, continuous wave passed violently to his haunches, which it shook with especial vigor, and then entered his tail and shook the entire length of it, and at last, from the very tip, sprang free, leaving behind, at the center of the now-subsided aura of sparkling waterdrops, an invigorated and happy dog. It was at this moment of perfected well-being that one of those darting slim shadows caught his eye. He was electrified. He hurled himself into the stream head first, thrusting his snout to the very bottom, where he rooted this way and that. He lifted his head from the shallow water, legs braced, and looked in amazement from side to side. The trout had vanished so utterly that he had no notion even of the direction of its flight. He thrust down his head again and turned over stones, then came up, his streaming fur clinging to his body, and stood there, smooth and muscular, peering down, poised in the electric stillness of the hunter that seems to be a waiting but is actually a fascination. Years later, after my own passion for trout had cooled, I would 8 see him poised like that in the shallows of the swimming hole, ignoring the splashing, clamoring children, looking down, still mesmerized, still ready-so he thought-to pounce. During most of the thaw there is little point in going into the woods. Long after the fields have cleared and their brown is touched with green, there'll be pools and streaks of granular snow, not only in the low-lying places in the woods, but on shadowed slopes and behind rocks. For a whiie the topmost foot of soil is too watery to be called mud. The road to our house becomes impassable, and for days, or one week, or two, or three, we walk home from the store wearing rubber boots and carrying the groceries and perhaps the youngest children in knapsacks and our arms. This was once a corduroy road, and it never fails that some of the logs have risen again to the surface. Spring in the north is almost violent. After the period of desolation, when the snow has gone and everything that once was growing seems to have been bleached and crushed, and the soil itself seems to have been killed by winter, there comes, accompanied by the roaring of the streams, a prickling of the tree buds that had formed in the cold, and a prickling of little stems on the forest floor, and a tentative, small stirring of bird life. This vitalizing process, once be· gun, becomes bolder, more lavish, and larger, and soon there is green everywhere, and the open fretwork of branches and trunks, beyond which, all winter, we had seen sky, hills, and snow, becomes an eye-stopping mass of green. The roaring of the streams diminishes, but the spreading of the green increases until the interlocking leaves cannot claim another inch of sunlight except by slow adjustment and the killing off of rival growth. Now the animal presence is spread widely through the woods, and Shawno runs this way and that, nose to the ground, so provoked by scents that he cannot concentrate and remains excited and distracted by overlapping trails. It was in this season of early summer that we came here. The woods were new to me. I was prepared for wonders. And there occurred a small but strange encounter that did indeed prove haunting. We had been walking a woods road, Shawno and I, or the ghost of a road, and came to a little dell, dense with ferns and the huge leaves of young striped maples. Shawno drew close to me and seemed perturbed. He stood still for a moment sniffing the air instead of the ground; and then the fur rose on his neck and he began to growl. At that moment there emerged from the semi-dark of a dense leaf bank perhaps thirty steps away, two dogs, who stopped silently and came no further. The smaller dog was a beagle, the larger a German shepherd, black and gigantic. His jowls on both sides and his snout in front bristled with white-shafted porcupine quills. He did not seem to be in pain, but seemed helpless and pathetic, a creature without fingers or tools, and therefore doomed. The uncanny thing about the dogs was their stillness. That intelligence that seems almost human and that in their case was amplified in the logic of their companionship, was refusWINTER 1982 �ing contact of any sort not only with me but with the dog at my side. Shawno continued to growl' and to stamp his feet uncertainly. Just as silently as they h~d appeared, the beagle and the shepherd turned into the undergrowth and vanished. I was to see these two dogs again. In the meantime, I learned that it was not rare for dogs to run wild, or to lead double lives; and that such pairings of scent and sight were common. The beagle could follow a trail. The shepherd had sharp eyes, was strong and could kill. In the city cars had been the chief threat of Shawno's life. Here it was hunters. He was large and tawny, and though he was lighter in color than a deer, he resembled a deer far more closely than had the cows, sheep, and horses which in the memory of my neighbors had been shot for deer-certainly more closely than had the goat that had been gutted in the field and brought to the village on the hood of the hunter's car. With such anecdotes in mind. I discovered one day, toward the end of hunting season, that Shawno had escaped from the house. At least eight hunters had gone up our road into the woods. I know now that his life was not at quite the risk that I imagined, but at that time I was disturbed. I ran into the woods calling to him and whistling, praying for his survival and wondering how I should find him if, already, he had been shot. Several hours later, his courting finished (probably it had been that) he emerged into our field loping and pant· ing, and came into the house, and with a clatter of elbows and a thump of his torso dropped into his nook by the woodstove. He held his head erect and looked at me. The corners of his lips were lifted. His mouth was open to the full, and his extended tongue, red with exertion, vibrated with his panting in a long, highly arched curve that turned up again at its tip. He blinked as the warmth took hold of him, and with a grunt that was partly a sigh stretched his neck forward and dropped his chin on his paws. In February of that winter I saw the beagle and German shepherd again. We were sharing a load of hay with a dis· tant neighbor, an elderly man whose bachelor brother had died and who was living alone among the bleached and crumbling pieces of what had once been a considerable farm. He still raised a few horses and trained them for har· ness, though there wasn't a living in it. I had backed the truck into the barn and was handing down bales to him when a car drew up and a uniformed man got out. I recog· nized the game warden, though I had never met him. He was strikingly different from the police of the county seat ten miles away, who walked with waddling gaits and could be found at all hours consuming ice cream at the restaurant on the highway south. The warden was large but trim, was actually an imposing figure, as he needed to be-two at· tempts had been made on his life, one a rifle shot through the window, the other a gasoline bomb that had brought down the house in flames, at night, in winter. He and his wife and adolescent son had escaped. He was spoken of as a fanatic, but hunters praised his skill as a hunter. A man who had paid a fine for poaching said to me, "If he's after THE ST. JOHNS REVIEW you in the woods he'll git you. No man can run through the woods like him." His large round eyes were a pale blue. Their gaze was unblinking, open, disturbingly strange. He addressed the elderly man by his last name. The warden, too, was a scion of an old family here. "We'd all be better off," he said, "if you'd kept him chained.'' His voice was emphatic but not angry. He spoke with the unconscious energy and loudness that one hears in many of the rural voices. "He's been runnin' deer, and you know it. I caught him at the carcass. It was still kickin' ." The warden handed him the piece of paper he had been carrying, which was obviously a summons. "I've done away with him," he said. We had come out of the barn. The warden opened the trunk of his car and brought out the small stiff body of the beagle. Its eyes and mouth were open, its tongue pro· truded between its teeth on one side, and its chest was matted with blood. The warden laid the body on the snow bank by the barn and said, "Come back to the car a min· ute." The black German shepherd lay on a burlap sack, taking up the whole of the trunk. uyou know who owns that?" The elderly man shook his head. No emotion had ap· peared on his face since the warden had arrived. The war· den turned his blue, strangely un·aggressive eyes on me and repeated the question. I, too, shook my head. The shepherd had been home since I had seen him in the woods: someone had pulled out the quills. Shawno was barking from the cab of the truck. I had left the window open to give him air, and the smell of the dead dogs must have reached him. After the warden left, my neighbor went into the house and came back with money for the hay. "Obliged to you for haulin it," he said, and that was all. That night, on the phone, I told a friend, a hunter, about the dogs. "The warden was right," he said. "Dogs like that can kill a deer a day, even more. Jake Wesley's dogs cornered a doe in my back field last year. She was pregnant with twins. They didn't bother killing her, they don't know how, they were eating her while she stood there. She was ripped to shreds. I shot them both." There was a crust on the snow just then. Dogs could run on it, but the sharp hooves of the deer would break through and the ice cut their legs. They spent such winters herded in evergreen groves, or "yards/' and if the bark and buds gave out many would starve. Occasionally the wardens took them hay, but this introduced another problem, for if the dogs found the snowmobile trails and followed them to the yards, the slaughter could be severe. And what of Shawno? I realized that I regarded him habitually with the egocentricity of a doting master, as if he were a creature chiefly of his human relations, though certainly I knew better. I thought of the many cats his fe· rocious mother had killed. And I remembered how, the 9 �previous fall, while our children were playing with a neighbor's children in front of our house, Shawno had come into their midst with a freshly-killed woodchuck. He held his head high and trotted proudly among us, displaying his kill. It was a beautiful chestnut color and it dangled flexibly full-length from his teeth, jouncing limply as he trotted. He placed it on the ground under the large maple, where he often lay, and stretched out regally above it, lionlike, the corpse between his paws. I was tying a shoelace for one of the children. I heard a rushing growl of savagery and out of the corner of my eye saw Shawno spring forward. I shouted and jumped in front of him. One of the visiting boys had come too close. I doubt that Shawno would have bitten him. Nevertheless, in that frightening moment I had seen and heard the animal nervous system that is not like ours, that is capable of an explosive savagery we never approximate, even in our most violent rages. He was with me in the pick-up one day when I went for milk to a neighbor's dairy. There were usually dogs in front of the barn and Shawno was on friendly terms with them. This time, however, before I had shut the motor, he leaped across me in the cab, growling and glaring, his snout wrinkled and his front teeth bared to the full. His body was tense, and instantaneously had been charged with an extraordinary energy. Down below, also growling, was a large black hound with yellow eyes. The window was open. Before I could close it or admonish him, Shawno put his head and shoulders through it, and with a push of his hind feet that gouged the seat cover, propelled himself outward and down on the hound. There were no preliminaries. They crashed together with gnashing teeth and a savage, high-pitched screaming. The fight was over in a moment. Shawno seized him by the neck, his upper teeth near the ear, his lower on the throat, and driving forward with his powerful hind legs twisted him violently to the ground. The hound tried to right himself. Shawno responded with siren-like growls of rage and a munching and tightening of teeth that must have been excruciating. The hound's yellow eyes flashed. He ceased struggling. Shawno growled again, and this time shook his head from side to side in the worrying motion with which small animals are killed by large ones. The hound lay still. Shawno let him up. The hound turned its head away. Shawno pressed against him, at right angles, extending his chin and entire neck over the hound's shoulder. The hound turned its head as far as it could in the other direction. The fight was over. There was no battle for survival, as in the Jack London stories that had thrilled me in my youth. Survival lay precisely not in tooth and claw, but in the social signalling that tempered their savagery, as it tempered that of wolves. It was this that accounted for the fact that one never came upon the carcasses of belligerent dogs who had misconceived their powers, as had the hound. The victory was exhilarating. What right had I, who had 10 ' done nothing but watch, to feel exultation and pride? Yet I did feel these things. Shawno felt them too, I am sure. He sat erect beside me going home, and there was still a charge of energy, an aura about his body. He held his head proudly, or so I thought. His mouth was open, his tongue lolled forward and he was panting lightly. From time to time he glanced aside at me out of narrowed eyes. As for me, I could not forbear looking at him again and again. I was smiling and could not stop. I reached across and stroked his head and spoke to him, and again he glanced at me. He was like the roughneck athlete heros of my youth, who after great feats in the sandlot or high school football games, begrimed, bruised, wet-haired, and dishevelled, would walk to the dressing room or the cars, heads high, helmets dangling from their fingertips or held in the crooks of their arms, riding sweet tides of exhaustion and praise. And I remembered a few glorious occasions, after I too had come of an age to compete, when my brief inspirations on the field had been rewarded by teammates' arms around my shoulders. But more than this, I felt augmented by his animal power, as if my very existence, both spirit and body, had been multiplied, as a horseman is animally augmented guiding the great power of the creature. And I felt protected. It was as if somewhere within me there were still a little boy, a child, and this guardian with thick fur and fearsome teeth, who could leap nonchalantly over the truck we now rode in, had devoted his powers utterly to my wellbeing. How little of this, how nothing at all of this, came into my account when I said at home, "Shawno got into a fight!" Ida and Patricia came close to me, asking, "What happened? What happened?" Ida had never witnessed the animal temper I have just described. What she wanted to know was, had he been bitten? If anyone had said to Shawno what the little boy says in Ida's Mother Goose-"Bow wow wow, whose dog art thou?" he could not have answered except by linking Ida's name with my own. He often sat by her chair when she ate. Three of the five things he knew to search for and fetch belonged to Ida: her shoes, her boots, her doll. When I read to her in the evening she leaned against me on the sofa and Shawno lay on the other side with his head in her lap. Often she fell asleep while I read, and we would leave her there until we ourselves were ready for bed. When we came for her Shawno would be asleep beside her. On the nights when I carried her, still awake, to her bed, she would insist that both Shawno and Patricia come kiss her goodnight, and both would. Usually he would leap into the bed, curl up beside her and spend part of the night. When she was five or six we bought two shaggy ponies from a neighbor, and having fenced the garden, let them roam as they would. The larger pony had been gelded, but was still inclined to nip and sport. Late one afternoon I WINTER 1982 �Down to Searles. shoe pits by the road and games before supper and at night under the single light at the corner of the store. Three roads converged here. One was steep and on winter Sundays and occasional evenings had been used for sledding. That was when the roads had been packed, not plowed, and the only traffic had been teams and sleds. Searles's father-the second of the three generations of C. W. Searles-though he was known as a hard and somewhat grasping man, would open the store and perhaps bring up cider for the sledders. There would be a bonfire in the road, and as many as a hundred people in motion around it. Searles was sixty years old when we arrived. His store was wonderfully well organized and good to look at, crowded but neat and logical, filled with implements of the local trades and pastimes. Searles had worked indoors for his father as a boy. Later as a youth, he had gone with a cart and horse to the outlying farms, taking meat, hardware, clothing, and tools and bringing back not cash but eggs, butter, apples, pears, chickens, shingles. Now when he bought the pate called cretan, he knew it would be consumed by the Dulacs, Dubords, and Pelletiers. The five sets of rubber children's boots were for the Sawyers and were in the proper sizes. He displayed them temptingly, brought down the price, and finally said, "Why don't you take the lot, Charlie, and make me an offer?" He knew who hunted and who fished, and what state their boots, pants, and coats were in. A death in the town affected his business. He saw the price of bullets going skyhigh, put in several shell and bullet-making kits, and said, "Verne, what do you figure you spend a year on shells and bullets?" The owners of bitches, when their dogs were in heat, were often obliged to call the owners of males and request that they be taken home and chained. Shawno was gone for four days. At last the call came. He had travelled sev· era] miles. When I went for him he wouldn't obey me, was glassy-eyed and frantic. The only way to get him home was to put the bitch in the car and lure him. It was pa· thetic. He hadn't slept, was thin, had been fighting with other males, and had had no enjoyment at all: the bitch was a feisty little dachshund. For two days he lay chained on the porch lost utterly in gloom. He didn't respond to anyone, not even to Ida, but kept his chin flat between his paws and averted his eyes. He had gone to bitches before, but I had been able to fetch him. He had suffered frustra· tion before, but had recovered quickly. What was differ· ent this time? I never knew. Apart from these vigils of instinct, his absences were on account of human loves, the first and most protracted of which was not a single person but a place and situation ir· resistible to his nature. This was the general store.· The one-story white clapboard building was near the same broad stream that ran through the whole of the valley. The banks were steep here and the stream curved sharply, passing under a bridge and frothing noisily over a double ledge of rounded rocks. There had used to be horse- come to ... " In the summer there were rakes, hoes, spades, cultivators, coils of garden hose, sections of low white fencing to put around flower beds, and perhaps a wheelbarrow ar· rayed on the loading apron in front of the store. In winter there were snowshovels, and the large, flat-bottomed snow scoops that one pushed with both hands, and wood stoves in crates, and sections of black stove pipe, while in the window, set up in lines, were insulated rubber boots with thick felt liners, and two styles of snowshoes, glistening with varnish. At all times there were axes and axe handles, bucksaws, wooden wedges and iron wedges, birch hooks, a peavey or two, many chainsaw files and cans of oil. For years he kept a huge skillet that finally replaced, as he knew it would, the warped implement at the boys' camp. He carried kitchenware and electrical and plumbing sup· plies, and tools for carpentry, as well as drugstore items, including a great deal of Maalox. All this was in addition to the food, the candy rack, the newspapers, the greeting cards, and the school supplies. People stopped to talk. Those he liked-some of whom had sat beside him in the little red schoolhouse up the road, long unused now-would stand near the counter for half an hour exchanging news or pleasantries. One day I heard Franklin Mason, who was five years older than glanced from an upstairs window and saw Ida leading Liza and Jacob across the yard, all three holding hands. Jacob had just learned to walk and they were going slowly. The ponies came behind them silently. Starbright, the gelding, drew close to Jacob and seemed about to nudge him, which he had done several times in recent weeks, knocking him over. Shawno was watching from across the yard. He sprang forward and came running in a crouch, close to the ground. I called Patricia to the window. His style was wonderful to see, so calm and masterly. There had been a time when he had harried the ponies gleefully, chasing them up and down the road without respite, nipping at their heels, leaping at their shoulders, and eluding their kicks with what, to them, must have been taunting ease. I had had to chastize him several times before he would give it up. Now silently and crouching menacingly he interposed himself between the children and their stalkers. Star· bright knew that he would leap but did not know when, and began to lift his feet apprehensively. Shawno waited ... and it seemed that the pony concluded that he would not leap, and abruptly he leapt, darting like a snake at Star· bright's feet. The pony pulled back and wheeled, obliging the smaller pony to wheel too. Shawno let them come along then, but followed the children himself, glancing back to see that the ponies kept their distance. The children hadn't seen a bit of this. "What a darling!" said Patricia. "What a dear dog!" THE ST. JOHNS REVIEW uoh 1 it's horrible. I don't practice no more, that's what's 11 �Searles, say testily, ((I seen 'em, 1seen 'em." He was refer· 1 ring to the shingling brackets that had been propped up prominently at the end of the co[lnter. Searles had known for two years that Mason wanted to replace his roofing; he had JUSt learned that Mason had decided on asphalt shingles. "I might borrow Mark's brackets," said Mason, but he added, in a different tone, scratching his face, "these are nice, though ... " People didn't say "Searles's place" but "down to Searles." "Oh, they'll have it down to Se;rles." "I stopped in down to Searles." "Let me just call down to Searles." He was C. W. the third, but had been called Bob all his life. Of the men in the village he was certainly the least rural. He had grown up on a farm, loved to hunt and fish, play poker, drink whisky, and swap yarns. But he had gone away to college, and then to business school, and had worked in Boston for three years. He was not just clever or smart but was extremely intelligent, with a meticulous, lively, retentive mind. He had come home not because he couldn't make a go of things in the city, but because he loved the village and the countryside and sorely missed the people. He subscribed to the Wall Street Journal and the New York Times, read many periodicals, was interested in politics and controversy and changing customs. When I met him, his three children were away at college. We disagreed irreconcilably on politics. I was aware of his forebearance and was grateful for it. And I was impressed by his wit and his kindliness, as when, without reproach or impatience, he allowed certain desperately impoverished children to come back repeatedly and exchange their penny candies; and as when he built a ramp for the wheelchair of a neighbor who could no longer walk but was still alert and lively. He was not a happy man. He drank too much to be healthy, and his powers of mind by and large went unused. Yet one could sense in him a bedrock of contentment, and a correct choice of place and work. He was tall and bony, carried far too large a stomach, and was lame in one leg. In damp weather he used a cane and moved with some difficulty about the store. I came to see that most of his friends were old friends and were devoted to him. I learned, too, that he had forgiven many debts and had signed over choice lots of land to the town, one for a ball field, another for picnics. His gregarious cocker spaniel, who possessed no territorial sense at all lounged in the aisles and corners, and on sunny days ca'u!d be found on the loading apron under the awning. And it was here, in front of the store, beside the caramel colored spaniel that one sunny day I encountered my own dog who had vanished from the house. ' He leaped up gaily, showing no guilt at all and came beside me when I entered the store. ' Searles, on the high stool, was leaning over the Wall Street Journal that was spread across the counter. The moment he raised his head, Shawno looked at him alertly. Searles smiled at me. "I've got a new friend" he said· . 12 ' ' and to the dog, "Haven't I, Shawno? What'll you have, Shawno? Do you want a biscuit? Do you?" Shawno reared, put his front paws on the counter and barked. "Oh, you do?" said Searles. "Well, I happen to have one. " He put his hand under the counter, where he kept the dog biscuits that had fattened the spaniel. "Will you pay for it now?" he said. "Will you? Will you, Shawno?" Shawno, whose paws were still on the counter, barked in a deep, almost indignant way. Searles was holding the biscuit, not offering it. . "Oh, you want it on credit?" he said. He held up the b1scmt, and at the sight of it the dog barked in lighter, more eager tones. ((What?" said Searles, uyou want it free? Free?" Again Shawno barked, the eagerness mixed now with impatience and demand. "All right," said Searles, "Here 'tis. On the house." He held it out and Shawno took it with a deft thrust of his head. I watched all this with a long-lasting, rather complicated smile. I said that I hoped the dog wasn't a nuisance. ((Oh, no," said Searles, uhe's a good dog. He's a fine dog." And I looked at Shawno, who was looking at Searles and thought, "you wretch, you unfaithful wretch. Ho~ easily you can be charmed and bought!" Yet I let him go back there again and again. He'd trot away in the morning as if he were going off to work, and then at supperbme would appear on the brow of the hill muddied and wet, having jumped into the stream to drink: I didn't have the heart to chain him. And I couldn't blame him. What better place for a gregarious dog than this one surviving social fragment of the bygone town? There were other dogs to sport with, there was the store itself with its pleasant odors, there was Searles, my rival, with his biscuits, there were children to make much of him, and grown-ups by the score. Moreover, there were cars, trucks, and delivery vans, and all had been marked by the dogs of far-flung places. We would arrive for groceries or mail and find him stretched on the apron in front of the store, or gamboling in the road with other dogs, or standing in a cluster of kids with bikes, or stationed by the counter inside, looking up inquiringly at customers who were chatting with Searles. My jealousy grew. I was seriously perturbed. Somewhere within me an abandoned lover was saying "Don't you love me anymore? Have you forgotten how I raised you and trained you? Have you forgotten those mornings in the park when I threw sticks for you and taught you to leap, or our walks here in the woods, and the thousand discoveries we've made together?" Most serious of all was his absence while I worked. I had built a little cabin half a mile from the house. He had been a presence, almost a tutelary spirit, in the very building of it, and then he had walked beside me every day to and from it, and had lain near my feet while I wrote or read. WINTER 1982 �Often when I turned to him he would' already have seen the movement and I would find his eyes waiting for mine. Those inactive hours were a poor substitute for the attractions of the store, and I knew it, in spite of our companionable lunches and afternoon walks. But what of me? One day, several weeks after his first visit to the store, I jumped into the car and went down there rather speedily, ordered him rather firmly into the back seat, and took him home. The procedure was repeated the following day. The day after that I chained him, and the day after that chained him again ... Life returned to normal. I took away the chain. He was grateful and stopped moping. I saw that he had renounced his friends at the store, and I was glad, forgetting that I had forced him to do it. Anyway, those diversions had never cancelled his love for me-so I reminded myself, and began to see fidelity where I had established dependence. But that didn't matter. The undiminished, familiar love wiped out everything-at least for me. Eddie Dubord. Sawyer's Labrador. Quills. Just below us in the woods the stream was speeded by a short channel of granite blocks, though the millwheel was gone that once had turned continuously during thaw, reducing small hills of cedar drums to stacks of shingles. There had been trout for a while in the abandoned millrace, but chubs, that eat the eggs of trout, had supplanted them. Upstream of this ghost of a mill, just beyond the second of two handsome waterfalls, one stringer of a rotted bridge still joined the banks. Snowmobilers had dropped a tree beside it and had nailed enough crossboards to make a narrow path. I had crossed it often on snowshoes, and then on skis, and the dog had trotted behind, but there came a day in spring, after the mud had dried, that Shawno drew back and stood there on the bank stamping his feet, moving from side to side, and barking. He had seen the frothing water between the boards of the bridge. I picked him up and carried him across, and could not help laughing, he was so big, such a complicated bundle in my arms who once had nestled there snugly. Beyond the bridge a grassy road curved away into the trees. In somewhat more than a mile it would join the tarred road, but halfway there, on the inside of its curve, it was met by a wagon trail, now partly closed by saplings, and it was here at the corner of this spur that my neighbor, Eddie Dubord, built a small cabin similar to my own. It was summer. The dog had gone with the children to the swimming hole and I was walking alone carrying a small rod and a tin of worms. I saw two columns of smoke ahead of me, thinning and mingling in the breeze, and then I could see a parked car and a man working at something. The smoke was blowing toward him and came from two small fires spaced twelve feet apart. The man was THE ST. JOHNS REVIEW blocky and short. He wore a visored cap of bright orange and a chore jacket of dark blue denim. His movements were stiff and slow, yet there was something impressive and attractive about the way he worked. Every motion achieved something and led to the next without waste or repetition. He went to one of the fires carrying an axe, which he used only to lift some pine boughs from a pile. He threw several on each of the fires. I walked closer, but stopped again and watched him. We had never met, but I knew that it was Dubord. He was seventy-four years old. He had driven the corner stakes to mark the floor of a cabin, had tied a cord on one of them and had carried it around the others. Apparently he had already levelled the cord. I watched him as he picked up a five foot iron bar and went away dragging a stoneboat that was simply the hood of an ancient car turned upside down and fitted with a yoke and rope. He stopped at a pile of stones, and with his bar levered a large flat stone onto the car hood, which he dragged back to one of the corner stakes. With short, efficient strokes he levered the stone onto the ground. When finally I walked by he was on his hands and knees firming the stone and didn't see me. Several days later I went that way again, and without fully knowing why, stopped to watch him. He had finished the floor and had built a low platform the length of it, and had equipped the platform with steps. He would be able to work on the rafters and roof without resorting to a ladder. He had assembled several units of studs, rafters, and cross braces, and now as I watched he pushed one erect with a stick, and lodged it in the fork of a long pole that held it while he adjusted it for plumb. He nailed bracing boards at the sides, and drove in permanent nails at the base. His concentration was remarkable. It was as total and self-forgetful as a child's. Later, after I had come to know him well, I marvelled more, not less, at this quality. I had seen him at work on almost every gadget the economy afforded: radios and TVs, pop-up toasters, lawnmowers of several kinds, snow-blowers, rota-tillers, outboard motors, locks, shotguns, clocks. On several occasions I had come close to him and had stood beside him wondering how to announce my presence ... but it never mattered how: he invariably looked up with a start of panic, and then blushed. It was not merely as if his concentration had been disturbed, but as if some deep, continuous melody had been shattered. Then he would smile shyly and greet me in his unassuming, yet gracious, almost courtly way. He had already roofed the cabin and was boarding the sides-on the diagonal, as the old farmhouses were boarded-when we finally met. And as has often happened, it was the dog who introduced us, ignoring utterly the foolish shyness on both sides. The smudge fires were going again to drive away the bugs. A small stack of rough-cut boards lay on a pallet of logs. Dubord had just hung the saw on a prong of the sawhorse and was carrying a board to the wall when Shawno trotted up to him and barked. He was startled and backed 13 �away defensively, ready to use the board as a weapon. But Shawno was wagging his tail in, the extreme sweeps of great enthusiasm, and he did something he had almost abandoned since our coming to the country: he reared up, put his paws on Dubord's broad chest and tried to lick his weathered, leathery face with its smoke-haze of white stubble beard. By the time I reached them Shawno had conquered him utterly. Dubord was patting the dog, bending over him, and talking to him in that slurred, attractive baritone voice that seemed to have burrs and knurls in it, a grain and dark hue as of polished walnut, and that he seemed to savor in his throat and on his tongue, just as he savored tobacco, black coffee, and whisky. And of course he- knew the dog's name, as he knew my name, and as I knew his. It was the simplest thing in the world to shake hands and be friends. To hold Dubord's hand was like holding a leather sack filled with chunks of wood. His fingers were three times the size of ordinary fingers. He scarcely gripped my hand, but politely allowed me to hold his. Gravely he said, "Pleased to meet you," and then his small blue eyes grew lively behind the round, steel-framed spectacles. "I'd ask you in," he said, "but there ain't much difference yet between out and in. You got time for a drink?" I said I did, and he opened the toolbox and handed me a pint of Four Roses. His skull was shaped like a cannonball. His jaw was broad and gristly. Everything about him suggested strength and endurance, yet his dominant trait, I soon came to see, was thoughtfulness. He listened, noticed, reflected, though it was apparent, even now, that these qualities must often have been overwhelmed in his youth by passions of one kind or another. He had come from Quebec at the age of twenty, and for almost two decades had worked in lumber camps as a woodcutter and cook. He had farmed here in this valley, both as a hired hand and on his own-had dug wells, built houses, barns, and sheds, had installed his own electric lines and his own plumbing, had raised animals and crops of all kinds. In middle age he had married a diminutive, high-tempered, rotund, cross-eyed, childishly silly, childishly gracious woman. They had never had children. They had never even established a lasting peace. Her crippled mother lived with them in the small house he had built, knitting in an armchair before the TV while her daughter dusted the china knickknacks and photographs of relatives, straightened the paper flowers in their vases, and flattened the paper doilies they had placed under everything. Dubord liked all this, or rather, approved it, but felt ill at ease with his heavy boots and oilstained pants, and spent his days in a shed beside the house. There, surrounded by his hundreds of small tools, he tinkered at the workbench, listened to French Canadian fiddle music on cassettes, and occasionally put aside the tools to play his own fiddle. The camp in the woods served the same purposes as the shed, but promised longer interludes of peace. I got to know him that summer and fall, but it was not 14 until winter-our family's third in the little town-that Dubord and I realized that we were friends. The deep snow of our first winter had made me giddy with excitement. The silence in the woods, the hilly terrain with its many streams, most of them frozen and white, but :; few audible with a muted, far-off gurgling under their covering of ice and snow, occasional sightings of the large white snowshoe hares, animal tracks-all this had been a kind of enchantment and had recalled boyhood enjoyments that once had been dear to me. I went about on snowshoes, and Shawno came behind. The following year I discovered the lightweight, highly-arched, cross-country skis, my speed in the woods was doubled, and our outings became strenuous affairs for the dog. Often he sank to his shoulders and was obliged to bound like a porpoise. Except in the driest, coldest snow, he stopped frequently, and pulling back his lips in a silent snarl would bite away the impacted snow from between his toes. His tawny, snow-cleaned, winter-thickened fur looked handsome against the whiteness. When we came to downhill stretches I would speed ahead, and he would rally and follow at a run. We had taken a turn like this through the woods in our third year, on a sunny, blue-skied day in March, and stopped at the camp to visit Dubord. I could smell the smoke of his tin chimney before I could see it. Then the cabin came in view. His intricately webbed, gracefully curved snowshoes leaned against the depleted stack of firewood that early in the winter had filled the overhang of the entranceway. I could hear music. It was the almost martial, furiously rhythmic music of the old country dances ... but there seemed to be two fiddles. Shawno barked and raced ahead ... and Dubord's pet squirrel bounded up the woodpile. When I reached the camp Shawno was dancing on his hind legs barking angrily and complainingly, and the handsome red squirrel was crouching in a phoebe's nest in the peak of the roof, looking down with bright eyes and maddening calm. The music stopped, the door opened, and Dubord greeted us cheerfully-actually with a merry look on his face. "You won't get that old squirrel, Shawno," he said. "He's too fast for you. You'll never get 'im. Might's well bark ... " "Come in," he said. ui just made coffee. Haven't seen those for a while, Where'd you get 'em?" He meant the skis. He had never seen a manufactured pair, though he had seen many of the eight and nine foot handmade skis the Finns had used. He didn't know why (so he said later) only the Finns had used them. Everyone else had stayed with snowshoes, which were an Indian invention. "Nilo Ansden used to take his eggs down to Searles on skis," he said. The Searles he meant was Bob Searles's father. "He took a short cut one day down that hill 'cross from your place. We had a two-foot storm all night and the day before. He got halfway down and remembered WINTER 1982 �Esther Barden's chicken coop was in the way, but he thought there's enough snow to get up on the roof. .. and there was. Once he was up there there was nothin' to do but jump, so he jumped. Had a packbasket of eggs on's back. Didn't break a one." In the whole of any winter there are never more than a few such sunny days, gloriously sunny and blue. One be· comes starved for the sun. He left the door open and we turned our chairs to face the snow and blue sky and the vast expanse of evergreen and hardwood forest. He stirred the coals in the woodstove, opened the draft and threw in some split chunks of rock maple. There was a delicious swirling all around us of hot, dry currents from the stove and cool, fragrant currents from the snow and woods. Occasionally a tang of wood smoke came in with the cold air. As for the fiddle music-"Oh, I was scratchin' away," he said. "I have a lot of fiddle music on the cassettes. I put it on and play along." His cassette recorder stood on the broad work table by the window. The violin lay beside it amidst a clutter of tools and TV parts. "If I hear somebody's got somethin' special or new, I go over an' put it on the recorder. Take a good while to play the ones I got now. You like that fiddle music, Shawno?" -and to me: "That was a schottische you heard comin' in." He was fond of the dog. He looked at him again and again, and there began a friendship between them that pleased me and that I never cared to interrupt. Shawno lay on the floor twisting his head this way and that and snapping at a large glossy fly that buzzed around him. He caught it, cracked it with his teeth, and ejected it with a wrinkling of the nose. Eddie laughed and said, "That's right, Shawno, you catch that old bastard fly." The dog got up and went to him and Eddie gave him a piece of the "rat cheese" we had been eating with our cof· fee. For a long time Shawno sat beside him, resting his head on Eddie's knee. We laced our coffee with Four Roses whisky and had second cups. The squirrel looked in at the window, crouching eagerly, its hands lifted and tucked in at the wrists, and its feathery long tail poised forward like a canopy over its head. "I built that platform to feed the birds, but he took over, so I let him have it. That's where the birds eat now." He pointed to a wooden contraption hanging by a wire from a tree out front. Several chicadees fluttered around it angrily. It was rocking from the weight of the bluejay perched on its edge, a brilliant, unbelievable blue in the sunlight. Eddie had hinged a tiny window in one of the panels of the side window. He opened it now and laid his hand on the feeding platform, a few peanuts and sunflower seeds on the palm. The squirrel leaped away, but came back immediately and proceeded to eat from his hand, picking up one seed at a time. Shawno went over and barked, and the THE ST. JOHNS REVIEW squirrel seized one last morsel and fled. Dubord closed the window and turned to the dog, chuckling. Again the dog sat with him, this time laying his chin over one wide rubber boot. I saw his packbasket in the corner. He used it daily to bring in water and whisky and a few tools. The handle of his axe protruded from the basket. The basket was of ash strips, such as the Indians make. I had bought several two towns away. Dubord had made this one himself. "The Indians can take brown ash wherever they find it," he said. "Did you know that? They used to camp every summer on the Folsom place. Diamond National owns it now. There's brown ash down there, downhill goin' toward the pond. I used to trap beaver with one o' the men, and he showed me." The basket was thirty years old. He sipped his coffee. "Have you met Mister Mouse?" he said. "Who?" "Don't know if he'll come while Shawno's here." Smiling like a little boy, he said, "Keep your eyes open, but don't move. Don't even blink. He can see it." He put a peanut on the two-by-four at the upper edge of the far wall, stepped back from it and stood there making a strange little whimpering sound. Shawno perked up his ears and was suddenly excited, but I whispered to him, no, no ... stay. Again Dubord made the squeaking sound, sucking air through his lips. Presently, quite soundlessly, a roundeared gray mouse appeared on the ledge, sniffing. It crept forward a few inches and stopped, sniffing alertly and angling the delicate long antennae of its whiskers this way and that. It nibbled the peanut rapidly, listening while it ate, its bulging black eyes glinting with light from the windows and the open door. Shawno got to his feet ... and that huge movement and the sound of his claws on the floor put an end to the performance. We stayed for two hours. He talked of his early days in the States, and his years in the woods. I could hear the French Canadian and the Yankee accents contending in his speech, the one wanting to stress the final syllables, the other to drawl them. Shawno sat close to him, sometimes upright with his chin on his knee, sometimes lying flat with his nose near the broad booted foot. Until now all his friendships had been friendships of play. This was a friendship of peace. It was one of those rare occasions on which, perhaps only momentarily, a little family of the spirit is formed. It was good sapping weather. The days were sunny, the snow melting, the nights cold. When we saw Dubord several days later he was gathering sap from the huge maples near his camp. A rapidly moving cloud of light gray smoke rolled over and over in the lower branches of the trees. I skied closer and saw that it was not coming from the cabin, as I had 15 �feared, nor was it smoke, but steam from a bubbling large tray of maple sap. He had shovelled away some snow and had built a fire· place of fieldstones he had gathered in the fall. The sides were lined with scraps of metal. The back had been cut from a sheetmetal stove and was equipped with a metal chimney five feet high. A shallow tray, two feet by four, formed the top of this fireplace/stove. It was from the tray that the clouds of steam were rising. While I was examining all this Dubord appeared, plod· ding blockily on snowshoes, pulling a toboggan that I rec· ognized, since I had helped in the making of it, splitting out boards from a squared-off log of ash, steaming the tips, nailing them around a log to cool and set. On the to· boggan were two five-gallon white plastic jugs, each halffilled with sap. A tin funnel bounced against one of them, secured by a wire to its handle. Eddie threw me a furious glance that was scarcely a greeting. His teeth were clamped and his mouth was pulled down. I knew without asking that he had been quarrelling with Nellie, his wife. How long he would have maintained this furious silence I don't know, but it was more than he could do to hold out against the dog. A dark, deep blush suffused his weathered round face. He dropped the toboggan rope, and smiling helplessly at the corners of his mouth, bowed his head to the uprearing dog, petting him with both hands and allowing his face to be licked. He took off the snowshoes and put more wood on the fire. The four foot strips of white birch-edgings from the turning mill-had been stacked in the fall and covered. Papery white bark still clung to them. The wood was well dried and burned hot-the "biscuit wood" of the old farmhouse kitchens. The tray was slanted toward one of its forward corners, and there, with his brazing torch, Dubord had attached a little spigot. He drained some syrup into a large spoon, blew on it, tested it with his finger. It was too thin to drain off. I helped him pour some of the new sap into the noisily bubbling syrup. The steam was sweet and had a pleasant odor. Several galvanized buckets stood by the fire and we poured the rest of the sap into them. I noticed that just as he had not filled the plastic jugs he did not fill the buckets -an old man's foresight, avoiding loads that might injure him. I went with him back to the maple trees, and at last he broke his silence. "Was a damn good farm here fifty years ago," he said. "! wanted to buy it but I couldn't meet the price." The huge maples lined the road. There were smaller trees around them, some in the road itself, but the maples were leafy and well exposed to the sun, and their sap was far richer than that of forest maples. The boiling ratio would be forty to one, or better. Buckets, four to a tree, clung to the stout, coarse-barked 16 trunks waist high, as if suspended from a single belt. They hung from short spouts of galvanized metal, and were cov· ered with metal lids that were creased slightly in the middle and looked like roofs. Since I was helping, we filled the jugs, and soon had sledded sixty gallons to the fire. Nellie's canary, whom they had called Buddy, had been killed that morning. The quarrel had followed its death. She had been cleaning its cage and had let it out to stretch its wings. "She could've put it in the other cage," Dubord said. He was stirring the boiling sap with a stick of wood, and in his anger he splashed it again and again. "It was right there under the bed," he said. "Damn thing shittin' all over the place! If I come in with one speck o' mud on my boots she raises hell! I wanted to go out. 'Don't open the door!' 'Well put 'im in the cage!'" He thumped the tray as if he meant to drive holes through it. "Freddie Latham was outside fillin' the oil tank," he said. "Nellie's mother'd knitted some mittens for the new baby, so Nellie says to me, 'Cit Buddy,' and she comes right past me and opens the door. 'Yoo hoo, Freddie."' He ground his teeth a while. "Cit the bird!" he muttered explosively. "What'd she expect me t'do, fly up an' catch it? Damn thing flew out the door right behind her and she didn't even notice. Then she opened the porch door and it flew out that one too. Damn! If I been holdin' a stick o' wood I'd heaved it at 'er! You could o' heard her down t'village. 'Save Buddy!' 'Here, Buddy!' 'Cit Buddy!"' Dubord never glanced at me. His eyes were re-seeing the whole event. "He perched on the roof o' the shed," he said, "And I got the ladder and started U:p with some birdseed, and Freddie went in and got my smeltin' net. Soon as the bird saw me gittin 1 close, he flew over an' perched on the ridge· pole o' the house. Then he flew up to the antenna, and Nellie's whistlin' to him an' suckin' her lips. 'Eddie, git that canary record, maybe if we play it Buddy'll come down.'" Dubord glanced at me fiercely and demanded: "If he could hear it up there what'd he want t'come down for?" "By the time I come down off the ladder the bird' d flew up to the electric wire. He was just gittin' settled ... wham! Some damn ol' red-tail hawk been watchin' the whole thing. I never seen 'im. Where he come from I don't know. Couple o' yella feathers come down like snowflakes. I thought, here's your canary, Nellie. An' I thought, enjoy your dinner, mister hawk. You just saved me two hund'd dolluhs." Dubord glared at me again and said, "Yessuh! That's what I said! Two hund'd dolluhs! That's what I spent for birdseed! I'm tellin' the truth, I ain't makin' it up! And I ain't sayin' Buddy et that much, I'm sayin' we BOUGHT that much! You saw him do that Christly trick! You and WINTER 1982 �the Missus saw that trick the first time you come down. Sure you did! Yau had the girl with you ... " The trick he was referring to was something Nellie had taught the bird, or had discovered, namely, that when she put his cage up to the feeding platform at the window, he would pick up a seed from the floor and hold it between the bars, and the chickadees would jostle one another until one had plucked the seed from his beak, and then Buddy would get another. Nellie had loved to show this off. Eddie was still glaring at me. "WHERE DID YOU THINK THEM BIRDS COME FROM?" he shouted. "We had t'have them birds ON HAND! We was feedin' a whole damn flock right through the year so Buddy could do his Christly trick two or three times a month! In bad weather he couldn't do it 't all, but we still had t'feed the chickadees." He paced back and forth by the evaporating tray grinding his teeth and glaring. "I guess I warn't upset 'nough t'suit 'er," he said "God tamn! Hasn't she got a tongue!" One last wave of anger smote him and he howled louder than before, but there was a plaintive note in his voice and he almost addressed it to the sky. "IT WAS NELLIE HER OWN GODDAM RATTLE BRAIN SELF OPENED THE DOOR!" he cried. And then he calmed down. That is to say, he walked around the steaming tray panting and lurching and thumping the sides and bottom with the little stick. He had brought some blankets in his packbasket and was planning to spend the night. He drained off some thick syrup into a small creamery pail and set it aside to cool. He drained a little more into an old enamel frying pan and with a grunt bent down and thrust it under the evaporator tray right among the flames and coals. After it had bubbled and frothed a while, he knelt again and patted the snow to make it firm, and scattered the hot syrup over it. When Shawno and I went home I had a jar of syrup for Patricia and a bag of maple taffy for the kids. At around two o'clock the next afternoon I answered the phone and heard the voice of Nellie Dubord, whose salutation, calling or receiving, it always Yeh-isss, as if she were emphatically agreeing with some previous remark. Eddie had not come home. She knew that he had taken blankets to the camp, but she was worried. "!just don't feel right," she said. "]can't see any smoke up there. I should be able to see the chimney smoke, though maybe not. Ain't he boilin' sap? I should see that smoke too. Can you see it up there? Take a look. I guess I'm bein' foolish, but I don't know ... I just don't feel right." I went upstairs and looked from the west windows. There wasn't any smoke. I skied across. There was no activity at the cabin, no smoke or shimmering of heated air at the chimney, no fire out front. Shawno sniffed at the threshold. He chuffed and snorted, sniffed again, then drew back and barked. He went forward again and lowered his head and sniffed. The door was locked. I went around to the window. DuTHE ST. JOHNS REVIEW bard lay on the floor on his back beside the little platform bed. He was dressed except for his boots. The blankets had come away from the bed, as if he had clutched them at the moment of falling. I battered the door with a piece of stovewood and went to him. He was breathing faintly, but his weathered face was as bloodless as putty. He was astonishingly heavy. I got him onto the bed, covered him with the blankets and our two coats, and skied to the road. I saw his car there and cursed myself for not having searched him for the key. The nearest house was three quarters of a mile away. I telephoned there for an ambulance, and made two other calls, then went back and put him on the toboggan and set out pulling him over the packed but melting trail, dreadfully slowly. I hadn't gone twenty paces before the men I had called appeared. The two elder were carpenters, the young man was their helper. They were running towards us vigorously, and I felt a surge of hope. But it was more than hope that I felt at that moment. Something priceless was visible in their faces, and I have been moved by the recollection of it again and again. It was the purified, electric look of wholehearted response. The men came running towards us vigorously, lifting their knees in the snow and swinging their arms, and that unforgettable look was on their faces. Ten days later Patricia, the children, and I went with Nellie to the hospital. The children weren't admitted, and Nellie sat with them in the lobby. Dubord was propped up by pillows and was wearing a hospital smock that left his arms bare. I was used to the leathery skin of his hands and face; the skin of his upper arms, that were still brawny, was soft and white, one would say shockingly white. "Sicker cats than this have got well and et another meal," he said. And then, gravely, "Nellie told me you went in for me. I'm much obliged to you." "Did the girls like their candy?" he asked ... and it took me a moment to realize that he was referring to the maple taffy, the last thing he had made before the heart attack. A few moments later he said, 11 How's my dog?" meaning Shawno, and I told him how the dog had known at once that something was wrong, and that rapt, shy look came over his face. A neighbor came in while I was there, Earl Sawyer, who after chatting briefly, said to him, "Well, you won't be seein' Blackie no more." Dubord asked him what had happened. "I did away with him," said Sawyer. "I had to. He went after porcupines three times in the last two weeks. Three times I took him to the vet, eighteen dollars each time. I can't be doin' that. Then he went and did it again, so I took him out and shot 'im, quills and all." Sawyer was upset. "If he can't learn," he said. " ... I can't be doin' that. Damn near sixty dollars in two weeks, and there's a leak in the goddam cellar. He was a nice dog, though. He was a good dog otherwise." 17 �Sawyer was thirty-three or four, but his face was worn and tense. He worked ten hours a day as a mechanic, belonged to the fire department, and was serving his second term as road commissioner. He had built his own house and was raising two children. "I don't blame you," said Dubord. "You'd be after 'im every day." "He went out an' did it again," said Sawyer. There was silence for a while. "I can't see chainin' a dog," Sawyer said. ''I'd rather not have one." "A chained dog ain't worth much," Eddie said. Months went by before Eddie recovered his spirits. But in truth he never did entirely recover them. I could see a sadness in him that hadn't been there before, and a tendency to sigh where once he had raged. The change in his life was severe. He sold the new cabin he had liked so much, and spent more time in the little shed beside the house. I drove down to see him frequently, but it wasn't the same as stopping by on skis or walking through the woods. Nor was he allowed to drink whisky. Nor did I always remember to bring the dog. Most of the snow was gone by the end of that ApriL One night Shawno failed to appear for supper, and there was no response when I called into the dusk from the porch. I called again an hour later, and this time I saw movement in the shadows just beyond the cars. Why was he not bounding toward me? I ran out, calling to him. He crept forward a few paces on his belly, silently, and then lay still. When I stood over him, he turned his head away from me. His jowls and nose were packed with quills. He could not close his mouth. There were quills in his tongue and hanging down from his palate. The porcupine had been a small one, the worst kind for a dog. He seemd to be suffering more from shame than from the pain of the quills. He would not meet my eyes; and the once or twice that he did, he lowered his head and looked up woefully, so that the whites showed beneath the irises. I had never seen him so stricken. I was afraid that he might run off, and so I picked him up and carried him into the house. This, too, was mortifying. His eyes skittered from side to side. What an abject entrance for this golden creature, who was used to bounding in proudly! The black tips of the quills are barbed with multiple, hair-fine points. The quills are shaped like torpedoes and are hollow-shafted, so that the pressure of the flesh around them draws them deeper into the victim's body. They are capable of migrating then to heart, eyes, liver ... He wanted to obey me. He lay flat under the floor lamp. But every time I touched a quill with the pliers, a tic of survival jerked away his head. Ida was shocked. He was the very image of The Wounded, The Victimized. It was as if some malevolent tiny troll had shot him with arrows. She knelt beside him 18 and threw her arms around his neck, and in her high, passionate voice of child goodness repeated the words both Patricia and I had already said: "Don't worry, Shawno, we'll get them out for you!" -but with this difference: that he drew back the corners of his open mouth, panted slightly, glanced at her, and thumped his taiL I took him to the vet the next day, and brought him back unconscious in the car. I thought of Sawyer and his Black Labrador, and saw from still another aspect the luxury of our lives. I did not go to bed exhausted every night, was not worried about a job, a mortgage, a repair bill, a doctor's bill, unpaid loans at the bank. And here was another of the homely luxuries our modest security brought us: he lay on the back seat with his eyes closed, his mouth open, his tongue out, panting unconsciously. Great quantities of saliva came from his mouth, so much of it that the seat was wet when finally we moved him. A walk with Ida. Waldo. Persistence of the city. Kerosene light and an aphorism. The rock above the town. Wandering dogs. Spring comes slowly and in many stages. The fields go through their piebald phase again and again, in which the browns and blacks of grass and wet earth are mingled with streaks of white-and then everything is covered again with the moist, characteristically dimpled snow of spring. But soon the sun comes back, a warm wind blows, and in half a day the paths in the woods and the ruts in our long dirt road are streaming with water. Black wasps made their appearance on a warm day in March, then vanished. This was the day that a neighbor left his shovel upright in the snow in the morning and in the evening found it on bare ground. It was the day that a man in his seventies with whom I had stopped to talk while he picked up twigs and shreds of bark from his south-facing yard, turned away from me abruptly and pointed with his finger, saying, "Look! Is that a bee? Yes, by gurry! It's a bee! The first one!" But there was more rain and more snow, and then, alas, came the flooding we had hoped to be spared, as the stream overflowed our lower road, this time to a depth of two feet. For several days we came home through the woods with our groceries in rucksacks, but again the snow shrivelled and sank into the ground, and high winds dried the mud. I saw a crowd of black starlings foraging in a brown field, and heard the first cawing of crows. The leaves of the gray birches uncurled. There were snow flurries, sun again, and the ponies followed the sun all day, lolling on the dormant grass or in the mud. Shawno, too, basked in the sun like a tourist on a cruise ship. He lay blinking on a snowbank with his tongue extended, baking above and cooling below. I pulled last year's leaves out of several culverts, and opened channels in the dooryard WlNTER 1982 �mud so that the standing water could reach the ditch. Early one morning six Canada Geese flew over my head, due north, silently, flying low; and then.at dusk the same day I heard a partridge drumming in the woods. Several days after Easter, when the garden was clear of snow and the chives were three inches high, Ida came striding into my room, striking her feet noisily on the floor and grinning. "Wake up, dad!" she called. "It's forty-forty!" She was seven. I had told her the night before how when she was four years old and could not count or tell time she had invented that urgent hour, forty-forty, and had awakened me one morning proclaiming it. When she saw that I was awake, she said eagerly, "Look out the window, daddy! Look!" I did, and saw a world of astonishing whiteness. Clinging, heavy snow had come down copiously in the night and had ceased before dawn. There was no wind at all. Our white garden was bounded by a white rail fence, every post of which was capped by a mound of white. The pines and firs at the wood's edge were almost entirely white, and the heavy snow had straightened their upwardsweeping branches, giving the trees a sharp triangular outline and a wonderfully festive look. The whiteness was everywhere. Even the sky was white, and the just-risen sun was not visible as a disc at all but as a lovely haze of orange between whitenesses I knew to be hills. An hour later Ida, Shawno, and I were walking through the silent, utterly motionless woods. We took the old county road, that for decades now has been a mere trail, rocky and overgrown. It goes directly up the wooded high ridge of Folsom hill and then emerges into broad, shaggy fields that every year become smaller as the trees move in. We gather blueberries here in the summer, and in the fall apples and grapes, but for almost two years now we have come to the old farm for more sociable reasons. After breakfast Ida had wanted to hear stories of her earlier childhood, and now as we walked through the woods she requested them again, taking my bare hand with her small, gloved one, and saying, "Daddy, tell me about when I was a kid." "You mean like the time you disappeared in the snow?" This was an incident I had described to her before, and of which she delighted to hear. "Yes!" she said. "Well ... that was it-you disappeared. You were two years old. You were sitting on my lap on the toboggan and we went down the hill beside the house. We were going really fast, and the toboggan turned over and you flew into a snowbank and disappeared." She laughed and said, "You couldn't even see me?" "Nope. The snow was light and fluffy and very deep." "Not even my head?" "Not even the tassel on your hat." "How did you find me?" THE ST. JOHNS REVIEW "I just reached down and there you were, and I pulled you out." She laughed triumphantly and said, "Tell me some more." While we talked in this fashion the dog trotted to and fro among the snow-burdened close-set trees, knocking white cascades from bushes and small pines. Often he would range out of sight, leaping over deadfalls and crouching under gray birches that had been pressed almost flat by the heavy snows of previous years, and then he would come closer, sniffing at the six inch layer of wet snow, and chuffing and snorting to clear his nose. Occasionally, snorting still more vigorously, he would thrust his snout deep into the snow and then step back and busily pull away snow and matted leaves with his front paws. Watching all this, I understood once again that the world of his experience was unimaginably different from the world of mine. What were the actual sensations of his sense of smell? How could I possibly know them? And how were those olfactory shapes and meanings structured in his memory? Snout, eyes, tongue, ears, belly-all were close to the ground; his entire life was close to it, and mine was not. I knew that in recent weeks complex odors had sprung up in the woods, stirring him and drawing him excitedly this way and that. And I could see that last night's snowfall had suppressed the odors and was thwarting him, and that was all, really, that I could know. After three-quarters of a mile the trail grew steep, and the trees more numerous. We could not walk side by side; I let Ida go in front, and our conversation now consisted of the smiles we exchanged when she looked back at me over her shoulder. I watched her graceful, well-formed little body in its quilted red jacket and blue snow pants, and felt a peace and happiness until now rare in my life. Milky sky appeared between the snowy tops of the trees. A few moments later there was nothing behind the trees but the unmarked white of a broad field-at which moment there occurred one of those surprises of country life that are dazzling in much the way that works of art are dazzling, but that occur on a scale no artwork can imitate. I called to Ida, and she, too, cried aloud. The dog turned to us and came closer, lifting his head eagerly. The sight that so astonished us was this: several hundred birds, perhaps as many as five hundred, plump and black, were scattered throughout the branches of one of the maples at the wood's edge. The branches themselves were spectacular enough, amplified by snow and traced elegantly underneath by thin black lines of wet bark, but the surprising abundance of the birds and their glossy blackness against the white of the field were breathtaking. I threw a stick at them. I couldn't resist. The entire tree seemed to shimmer and crumble, then it burst, and black sparks fluttered upward almost in the shape of a plume of smoke. The plume thinned and tilted, then massed together again with a wheeling motion, from which a fluttering ribbon emerged, and the entire flock streamed away in good order down the field to another tree. 19 �Shawno, who had remained baffled and excluded, resumed his foraging. He stopped and raised his head alertly, then leaped forward in a bounding, enthusiastic gallop, and in a moment was out of sight. When Ida and I came to the spot he had just left, she, too, quickened excitedly, and with no more ceremony than had been shown me by the dog let go of my hand and ran. And if I had been a child, I would have followed, since it was here, precisely here, that due to the lie of the land, that is, the acoustics of the field, the playful, headlong gaiety of two voices could be heard quite clearly, a girl's voice shouting "I did, Leo! I did!" and the voice of her brother, who was eight, replying, "Ha, ha, hal" and then both shouting, "Shawno! Shawno!" I stood there and watched Ida's diminutive figure running alone across the snowy field in the direction of the house that was still to come in sight. I looked back for a moment down the long slope of the field, towards the woods, the way we had come. I had intended to look for the birds, but our three sets of footprints caught my eye, and I could not help but smile at the tale they told. They were like diagrams of our three different ways of being in the world. Mine, alas, denoted logic and responsible decision: they plodded straight ahead, straight ahead. Ida's footprints, in contrast to mine, went out to the sides here and there, performed a few curlicues and turns, and were even supplanted at one place by a star-shaped body-print where she had thrown herself laughing onto the snow. But the footprints of the dog! ... this was a trail that was wonderful to see! One might take it as erratic wandering, or as continual inspiration, or as continua] attraction, which may come to the same thing. It consisted of meandering huge loops, doublings, zig-zags, festoons ... The whole was travelling as a system in the direction I had chosen, yet it remained a system and was entirely his own. The voices of the children grew louder. I saw the dark gray flank of the made-over barn that was now their home, and then saw the children themselves, running with the dog among the whitened trees of the orchard. These two, Gretl and Leo Carpenter, together with Ida and myself and Eddie Dubord, complete the quintet of Shawno's five great loves. Gretl is Ida's age, Leo a year older. They are the children of Waldo and Aldana Carpenter, whom Patricia and I have .known for years. But I have known Waldo since the end of World War II, when we both arrived in New York from small towns to the west. Aldana was evidently waiting for me. She was standing in the doorway, and when she saw me she beckoned. I had not planned to stop, except to leave Ida and the dog, since in all likelihood Waldo would be working, but Aldana had no sooner waved to me than the broad window right above her swung open and Waldo, too, beckoned to me, cupping his hands and shouting. Aldana stepped out and looked up at him, and they smiled at one another, though his expression was not happy. 20 Aldana was fifteen years younger than Waldo. By the time I came into the kitchen she was standing at the stove turning thick strips of bacon with a fork. She looked rested and fresh-it was one of the days, in fact, that her entirely handsome and appealing person seemed actually to be beautiful. She wore a dark blue skirt, a light sweaterblouse of gray wool, and loose-fitting boots from L. L. Bean. Her long brown hair, that was remarkably thick and glossy, was covered with a kerchief of deep blue. "Waldo was up all night," she said to me, having already urged me to eat with them. The large round table was set for three. She said, in a lower voice, ''We are going back." She meant back to New York. I had known that they wanted to. Waldo's excitement, coming here, had had nothing to do with country life. He had been fleeing New York and an art world that had become meaningless to him. His own painting, moreover, af ter two periods of great success, was in a crisis of spirit, and he had begun to mistrust the virtuosity (so he had told me) that allowed him to cover this fact with achievements of technique. But the isolation of country life had not had the rejuvenating effect he had hoped for, and he had been saying to me for a couple of months, "We won't be staying forever . .. " I was not surprised, then, to hear Aldana say that they were leaving. Nevertheless, it was saddening, and I knew that the loss, for Ida, would be severe. I said as much to Aldana. "We'll certainly miss you," she said. "All of you. All of us. But we'll be back every summer." "When are you going?" "Soon. I don't know." "How do the children feel about it?" "We haven't told them yet," she said. "They've been happy here ... but they do miss New York ... there's so much to do ... " I could hear Waldo walking on the floor above our heads, and moving something. I asked him, shouting, if he needed a hand. "I'll be right down," he called back. Aldana looked into the oven, closing it quickly, and I caught the aroma of yeast rolls. The handsome kitchen had been the stables of the old barn. The ceiling was low and was heavily beamed. Narrow horizontal windows ran the entire length of two sides and gave fine views of our mountains, though today nothing could be seen in them but snowy woods and a misty white sky. Many leafy plants, suspended in pots, were silhouetted in the white light. At the far end of the kitchen a flight of open stairs led to Waldo's studio, and there also, at that end, was Aldana's nook: a pine work table near the window, on which there were several jars of small brushes, a broad window-seat with cushions and many pillows, a stool, more hanging plants, shelves with books and kerosene lamps. She was fluent in Lithuanian, and for two years, at a leisurely pace, had been translating a cycle of folktales for a children's book. She had done a great many WINTER 1982 �gouache illustrations as well, and I knew that the project ' was nearly finished. I heard Waldo on the stairs. He stopped part way down, and leaning forward called across to me, "Do you want to see something?" After the whites and blacks and evergreen greens of the woods it was dazzling to see the colors of his work. He was noted for these colors. Color was event, meaning, and form. Small abstract paintings on paper were pinned to the white work wall, as were clippings from magazines and some color wheels he had recently made. Larger paintings on canvas, still in progress, leaned here and there, and two were positioned on the wall. A stack of finished paintings, all of which I had seen, leaned against the wall in the corner. Waldo had placed the new painting on the seat of a chair, and we stood side by side studying it. The paint was still wet and gave off a pleasant odor of oil and turpentine. Waldo's manner was that of an engineer. Physically he was imposing, tall and strong, with a stern, black-browed, grave face that was actually a forbidding face, or would have been were it not that his underlying good humor was never entirely out of sight. When he was alight with that humor, which after all was fairly often, one saw an aston· ishing sweetness and charm. Aldana, at such times, would rest her hand on his shoulder, or stroke the back of his head; and the children, if they were near, would come closer, and perhaps climb into his lap. The studio windows were sheeted with a plastic that gave the effect of frosted glass, shutting off the outside and filling the space with a shadowless white light. Beyond one of those milky oblongs we heard a sudden shouting and loud barking. Ida and Grell were shouting together, "Help, Shawno! Help!" in tones that were al· most but not quite urgent, and the dog was barking notes of indignation, disapproval, and complaint, a medley that occurred nowhere else but in this game, for I knew with· out seeing it that Leo was pretending to beat the girls with his fist, and was looking back at the dog, who in a moment would spring forward and carefully yet quite excitedly seize Leo's wrist with his teeth. "It's a total dud," Waldo said dispassionately, "but it's interesting, isn't it? Kerosene light does such weird things to the colors. It's like working under a filter. Look how sour and acidic it is. It's over-controlled, too, and at the same time there are accidents everywhere. That's what gives it that moronic look. I should have known betterI've done it before. When you rob the eye you rob the mind." Abruptly he turned to me and lowered his voice. "We're going back to the city," he said. ''I'm going down in a couple of days and see what has to be done ... " I knew that he had not sublet his studio, which he didn't rent, but owned-a floor-through in a large loft building. "We haven't told the kids yet," he said, "but I think they want to go back. There's so much to do there ... " THE ST. JOHNS REVIEW Aldana's voice came up from below. We cut short our conversation and went down into the warm kitchen, that was fragrant now with the odors of bacon, rolls, just· brewed coffee, and fried eggs. The rosy, bright-faced children stormed in just as we sat down. Leo and Grell clamored for juice, while Ida looked at them joyfully. Shawno came with them. He trotted to Aldana, and to Waldo, and to me, greeting us eagerly but without arresting his motion or taking his eyes from the children. "Hi, Hi," they said to me. "Hi, daddy," said Ida. All three tilted their heads, took on fuel, and with the dog bounding among them rushed out again as noisily as they had entered. The sky was beginning to clear when I left half an hour later, and it was blue now, but a pale, wintry blue. A light, raw breeze was blowing. I crossed the dooryard without calling to the children. They were throwing snowballs at Shawno, except for Ida, who was tagging along. They ran among the budded but leafless apple trees, while the dog, who did not under· stand that he was their target, kept leaping and twisting, biting the snowballs with swift snaps that reduced them to fragments. I went alone down the snowy road to the right, toward the river. Little clumps of snow were falling wetly from the roadside trees. I had been cheerful coming through the woods with Ida and the dog, but now a familiar sadness began to creep through me. There was an objective cause in the fact that our friends were leaving, but I knew that this was not the cause, the cause was old, and in truth I didn't know what it was. It was as if this sadness, which at times was touched by homelessness, were a zone between the animation I felt in the presence of others and the firmness I felt in the solitude to which finally, after many years of loneliness, I had been able to attain. And I was obliged to pass through this zone, though I had passed through it thousands of times already. My solitary footprints were the only markings on the short spur from Waldo's house to the back road, but as soon as I made the turn I found myself walking between the muddy tracks of a car. In ten minutes I stood on the high ledge that overlooked the river and that invariably I came to when I walked this way. The river was broad in this stretch, and was still heavy with spring flood. The water was dark. Huge pieces of ice were strewn in a continuous line on the steep bank across from me. The ice had been dirty with debris a week ago, but now temporarily was white. Two miles downriver lay the town, on which all such villages as ours were dependent. There were its hundreds of houses, its red roofs and black roofs, its white clapboard sidings, its large, bare-limbed shade trees, all following the slopes of the hills. I could see the gleaming belltowers and white spires of the four churches, the plump wooden cupola of the town hall, also white, and several red-brick business buildings. It was a lovely sight from this angle, 21 �but it no longer stirred me. Just the opposite. The town was spiritless and dull, without a public life of any kind, or any character of its own, but the usual brand names in the stores and the usual cars on the streets. Just this side of the town, the elegant timbered latticework of a railroad trestle crossed the river high in the air, emerging from evergreens on one bank and plunging into evergreens on the other. Halfway to the trestle, where the hills, for a short distance, gave way to lowland, the broad pasture of a dairy lay in a sweeping bend of the river. Its tall blue silo and unpainted sheet metal barn stood close to the highway, uphill from the fields. Black and white cows, a herd of Holsteins which I knew numbered a hundred and fifty, progressed across their snowy pasture toward the river, as if without moving. There came a loud metallic scraping and banging from the gravel pit below me. A bucket-loader was scooping up gravel. It swivelled and showered the stones heavily into a waiting truck, that quivered under the impact. Another truck, as I watched, drove down the long incline to the riverbank. I went home by the same route, thinking chiefly of my work, that had become a kind of monastery, I had had to empty it of so many things. Shawno and the children were still playing, but they were no longer running. Ida and Gretl were holding the two sides of a flattened cardboard box, quite large, and Leo, wielding a hammer, was nailing it to the rails of a broken hay wain by the house, apparently to be the roof of a hut. The dog sat near them, more or less watching. I didn't call or wave, but Shawno saw me. He responded with a start ... and then he did something I had seen him do before and had found so touching I could not resent: he pretended that he hadn't seen me. He turned his head and yawned, stood up and stretched, dropped abruptly to the ground with his chin on his paws, and then just as abruptly stood up again and moved out of sight around the house. What a display of doggy craftiness! It makes me smile to remember it-even though I must now say that this was the last that I saw him in the fullness of his life. I did see him again, but by our bedtime that night he was dead. I went back alone through the woods, walking on the footprints we had made that morning. In a scant three hours the snow had become both wetter and shrivelled. It was no deeper than three inches now, and was falling noisily from the trees, leaving the branches wet and glistening. At the bottom of the first hill, where I had to jump across a little stream, and where that morning I had lifted Ida, I noticed the footprints of two deer. The deer had gone somewhere along the stream and then had come back, running. I hadn't noticed the tracks that morning ... but I wasn't sure. Instead of going home, I turned into the little field at the far end of which my cabin/studio was situated. Every- 22 thing was quiet, the fresh snow untouched. I was halfway across the field when I caught a movement in the sky. High up, drawing a broad white line behind it, a military jet drifted soundlessly. A moment later the thunderclap of the sonic boom startled me ... and as if it had brought them into being, two dogs stepped out of the woods behind my cabin. Or rather, one stepped out, a brown and white collie, and came toward me. The other, a solemnlooking rabbit hound, stood motionless among the trees. I thought I recognized the collie and called to it. It came a few steps, and then a few steps more. It stood still when it heard my voice, then it turned and went back to the other dog, and both vanished into the woods. I built a fire in the cabin, in the cast-iron stove, and spent the rest of the day at my work. Before the house at night. As was my custom, whether I had done the cooking or not, I mixed some scraps and pan rinsings with dry food and went to the door to call Shawno, who ate when we did and in the same room. Ida had come home that afternoon with Patricia, but Shawno had not. Half an hour later, after we had finished eating, and while the water was heating for coffee, I went outside again and called him, but this time I went across the road and stood before the barn. The lie of the land was such that in this position, and with the help of that huge sounding-board, my voice would carry to Waldo's fields, at least to the sharp ears of the dog. I shouted repeatedly. As I went back to the house I thought I saw movement on the woods road we had travelled that morning. I was expecting to see him come bounding toward me, but nothing happened and I went into the house. We finished our coffee and dessert. Liza was staying overnight with the twins she played with. Patricia sat on the sofa with Jacob and Ida and read first a picture book and then a story of Ernest Thompson Seton's, that enchanted Ida and put Jacob to sleep. I telephoned Aldana. She said that the dog had left them shortly after Patricia had come in the car for Ida. He had stayed like that often with Leo and Gretl and had come home through the woods at suppertime. I put the porch light on and went across to the barn again. I was preparing to shout when I saw him in the shadows of the woods road, at the same place in which I had thought I had seen movement before. A turbulence of alarm, a controlled panic raced through me, and I ran to him calling. He lay on his belly. His head was erect, but just barely, and was not far above the ground. He pulled himself forward with his front paws, or tried to, but no motion resulted. His hind legs were spread limply behind him. His backbone seemed inert. I knelt beside him and took his head on my knees. He WINTER 1982 �was breathing so faintly that I doubted if any air was reaching his lungs. I heard my own voice saying in the high-pitched, grievously astonished tones of a child, "Oh, dog, dog ... " I ran my hand down his body. Near his lower ribcage, even in the shadows, I could see a dark mass that here and there glistened dully. It was smooth and soft, and there jutted out of it numerous fine points sharper than a saw. I .was touching the exit wound of a large-calibre bullet, in· testines and shattered bone. I put my face close to his and stroked his cheek. He was looking straight ahead with a serious, soft, dim gaze. He gave a breath that sounded like a sigh because it was not followed by another breath, and instantaneously was heavy to the touch. I stayed there a long while with his head on my knees, from time to time crying like a child. I heard the front door open and heard Patricia calling me. A moment later she was kneeling in the mud beside Tiffi ST. JOHNS REVJEW me saying, "Oh, oh, oh . .. " in a voice of compassion and surpnse. We conferred briefly, and I went indoors. Ida sat on the sofa, in the light of the floor lamp, looking at the pictures in the Seton book. Jacob lay asleep at the other end of the sofa. I said to her, "Ida, something has happened ... " and knelt in front of her. She saw that I had been crying, and her face whitened. I said, "Shawno has been hurt very very badly ... " I did not want to say to her that he was dead. "He's out front," I said. "Come." She said, "Okay" quickly, never taking her eyes from mine. She gave me her hand and we went outside, into the road, where Patricia still knelt beside him just beyond the light from the porch. She was bowed above him and was stroking him. She looked up as we approached, and held out one hand for Ida, but with the other kept stroking his head, neck, and shoulders. 23 �Nietzsche and the Classic William Mullen Quod si tam Graecis novitas invisa fuisset quam Horace nobis, quid nunc esset vetus? If you set out deliberately to make a masterpiece, Balanchine how will you ever get it finished? T O ASK WHAT CONSTITUTES A CLASSIC is to ask what kind of civilization we inhabit. Imagine, for the sake of contrast, a purely archaic civilization in which the paradigms for thought and action are so definitively expounded in the foundation myths that innovation is excluded altogether_ Then imagine, as its opposite, a purely scientific civilization in which the piecemeal progress towards greater knowledge and control relentlessly renders every aspect of the past an object for amusement and contempt If we like to think we have put the first kind of civilization behind us forever (assuming it ever existed) and yet have still not entirely succumbed to the second (assuming it could ever entirely win out), our conviction is somehow due to the presence of classic works in our midst, holding at bay both the tyranny of the past and the tyranny of the future by continuing to inspire new works in the present. The usual lament of the classicist, of course, is directed against the tyranny of the future, and the more threatened he becomes by the ascendancy of science, the more Egyptological he becomes in his techniques-mummification of the classics at all costs. But I am more interested in considering here the opposite threat, the tyranny of the past itWilliam Mullen is a Tutor at St. John's College, Annapolis. His book, Choreia: Pindar and Dance, will appear in the summer of 1982 (Princeton University Press). 24 self, and its only true check, the continuous creation of new work fine enough to take a place beside the old. The reason we secure the presence of classic works among us is not that they are so fine that we can never equal them but, on the contrary, that they are so fine that they will always challenge us to equal them. In his earliest writings on the Greeks, Nietzsche pointed out that it is no accident that the people from whom our finest instances of the classic are taken was one that pushed the principle of competition to its limits, in the spheres of poetry and art no less than athletics and politics. 1 But the power of competition to incite the artists of our civilization to do their best is inadequately shown by its place in the culture of a single people, for competition between peoples as well as within them has long been a governing principle for us. The complex civilization of the West assumed its essential form when the Romans worked out a truce with Greek culture whereby classic status was granted to Roman imitations that could join their Greek models in rank without replacing them. This notion of a highest rank that remains open to expansion is one to which the word itself points, the Latin classicus originally designating someone who belonged to the highest of the five classes into which Roman citizens were divided when the roll of the army was called. Classics, of course, can only be so designated by later generations. "Le classique," as Valery put it, "c'est ce qui WINTER 1982 �vient apnes." As a new work comes into the light it may well seem to rival the classics of the past for brilliance but it is impossible to say at the time whether it will also rival them for durability. And the question of durability becomes particularly problematic when one considers that while some classic works exist as objects-paintings, statues, buildings-others exist as performing events-music, dance, theater. In the case of the art object the materials of which the work is made give a preliminary guarantee of durability and it is only a question whether the work will continue to be valued enough to be maintained in a position of honor. In the case of the performance event, however, durability can be achieved only by revivals, where all is at hazard because there is no guarantee that the revival will house the original informing spirit. And the difficulty becomes acute when one considers that the original Greek classics in the medium we call "poetry" were actually of a dual nature, being performance events when they first appeared and turning into classics only after being stripped of their musical and orchestic accompaniment in order to become durable as texts. The work done by the classic masters of Greek music and dance has completely van· ished, both the work done to accompany poetry and whatever autonomous masterpieces may have been executed in these media. In what sense, then, do we really possess the classics of Greek poetry at all, and what is it we are doing when we set about to "equal" them? If the question of durability is made difficult by the fact of the variety of artistic media, then we must ask what is the ground of this variety in the first place. In order to come into its proper flowering, a work of art must be pres- ent to the senses as well as the mind, and the fact that we possess five different senses is in itself enough to necessitate a variety of media that can appeal to them either severally or in combination. The variety of media is in effect one of the conditions apart from which we would be unable to experience art at all, for it flows from our bodily existence in time as well as space. And works of the performing arts, which require fixed periods of time to be unfolded before us, by that very fact also require that we accept the element of transience in their conditions of presentation. It should be clear, then, that this is a quint· essentially Nietzschean subject I have in hand, since it has ultimately to do with the status of the bodily and the tern poral. The desire for the old works of art that are kept present to be rivalled by new ones turns out to be grounded in the disposition·of a healthy civilization to set high value on the presence in its midst of works by which the human senses are exalted. It is in new work, before the mind has set about to gain distance by reflection and categorization, that the element of sensuous presence is most obviously compelling; and by juxtaposing new work with old we remind ourselves of the importance of remaining open to the same intensity of sensuous presence in the classics themselves as well as their recent rivals, even when, as in the Gase of the performing arts, this means exposing ourselves to transient revivals in the absence of the original THE ST. JOHNS REVIEW production. Nietzsche himself had a zest for theorizing about the differences among the various artistic media, and I should like, therefore, to try to extend some of his leading ideas in the course of exploring the nature of the classic as it is incarnated in different kinds of works of art and different conditions of presentation. B EFORE DOING SO, however, it is best to acknowledge at the outset how quickly these ideas come to grief when transferred from the realm of art to the realm of politics. Throughout his writing there runs a notion which, color it how one will, remains irreducibly offensive, namely, that a statesman aiming at greatness should consider himself an artist and other human beings his medium. Curiously enough, this monster first rears its head in an early essay on "The Greek State" in which Nietzsche praises Plato precisely for his cool willingness, in the Republic, to treat all other citizens as mere tools and means for the production of "the Genius." 2 That Plato's ideal Genius was meant to be a philosopher and a scientist rather than an artist, Nietzsche proposed, is only a regrettable consequence of his appropriation of Socrates' negative judgment on art, and should not distract us from the essential point that on the matter of treating citizens as a Mittel-the German word for both "means" and "medium" -Plato had got things right. I suggest that the very oddity of this way of reading the Republic has the advantage of forcing us to face one of the gravest questions raised by the speakers of that dialogue as they devise a city in speech rather than in deed. It was Hannah Arendt, using an Aristotelian distinction, who suggested that the reason the program of the Republic would lead to such oppressive political consequences if actually implemented is that it is based on a mistaken substitution of the category of fabrication for that of action. This is so because the craftsman (and the Greek language did not explicitly distinguish between artificers and artists) must first contemplate in solitude the mental model of what he wishes to make-its idea, shape, or form, whence the Platonic "idea" -and must then use violence on the medium at hand in order to realize that model as best he can. (Compare, for instance, Republic SOla and 54la.) In raising her objections to the analogy between craftsman and statesman, Arendt's immediate concern was to show how the violence implicit in it was actualized when Marxism declared the "making" of a classless society an end which justified any "means" and hence any treatment of one's "medium." 3 But she might equally well have given an account of the justification of violence by Nazism through reference to its esthetic goals, for it is well-known how many esthetes flocked to the early Nazi movement and how belief in the supremacy of German art served as a stimulus to the task of creating racial purity. In order to transform the rough block of the citizenry into the fair statue of the state one must be prepared to hack off the 25 �racially or physiologically sick and not to flinch if this human marble happens to make cries of pain as it is hewn. To see the notion of men as both "medium" and "means" in its most virulent form one needs to turn to Nietzsche's late notebook jottings collected posthumously under the title The Will to Power. "To keep objective, hard, firm in executing a design-this is something artists are best at. But when one needs men for that purpose (as do teachers, statesmen, etc.) then the calmness and coldness and hardness quickly disappear. In natures like Caesar and Napoleon one can get a sense for jdisinterested' work on their marble, whatever may have to be sacrificed by way of men." 4 In the face of passages like this the convenient notion of Nazis as coarse literalizers of Nietzsche's refined metaphors breaks down. Here a proto-Nazi esthete would find just the sort of encouragement he needed to emerge from his esthetic cocoon into totalitarian practice. 5 It is no exculpation of Nietzsche to argue that he expressed contempt for the particular analysis that was later to come to power, namely, that he preferred racial mixture as a better breeding technique than racial purity. He is as explicit in theory as the Nazis were in practice in his contempt for the ethical principle at issue, whose classical formulation is Kant's imperative always to treat human beings as ends and never solely as means. T to Nietzsche's complexity, however, we must take seriously the parenthesis in the jotting just quoted, in which he mentions as instances of those who must use men as their medium not only statesmen but also teachers. Insofar as the contents and methods of an educational system are not entirely pre-legislated and supervised, there is a temptation to see something of the artist's prerogative over his material in the way the teacher exercises authority over his students, and in fact metaphors of "molding minds" and "shaping characters" are seldom absent in discussions of the way educators transform the young. We do not feel uneasy with these metaphors because in a society of specialists we like to think that the various things that need to be taught are in various hands and that accordingly some kind of benign separation of powers holds sway. The good is taught by the parents inculcating morality at home, the true by the teachers transmitting knowledge at school, and the beautiful by the artists passing on skills in their studios. The nature of the authority of the molders of the young becomes more provocative, however, when we turn from the problematic pluralism of the present to a highly integrated society like that of archaic Greece. I am referring now not to the theoretical programs of Plato's Republic or Laws but to the realities of the city in the time of Pindar and Aeschylus. In these archaic cities the choral poets who train young dancers to perform sacred odes in public spaces are granted authority simultaneously to teach them singing, dancing, 26 O DO )USTICE morality, and the tales of the tribe. In Athenian tragedy the authority the playwright exercises over his performers is complicated by the fact that as part of a dramatic fiction the chorus members assume personalities other than their own and doff them when the play is over, so that even though they are allowed to participate in the ritual only if they are able-bodied and free-born male citizens of Athens, it is not these aspects of their identity which their role in the play is exhibiting to their fellow-citizens. In a Pindaric ode, however, the free-born young men or young women of the city perform in propria persona and are expected by their elders to believe in the words they recite as they dance. The elders would have dismissed a poet for training the youth in odes that exhibited bad morals no less than bad dancing, false tales no less than false notes. Not that we need sentimentalize the matter by assuming that every single member of a Pindaric chorus was a good Boy Scout and did in fact acquire the morals Pindar had to teach him. Enough that through participation in many choral events a young person would be trained in the public quality of morality and learn by instinct how he was expected to act. (Hypocrisy is the tribute vice pays to virtue.) Moreover, by making these young dancers the mouthpieces for what his civilization most valued, the poet was in effect arranging a spectacle in which truth and goodness were fused with beauty, and unabashedly so. In all this the dancers are unquestionably the medium of the poet, but far from being denied their human dignity by such treatment they are in fact led by it, educatively, from the confusion of adolescence to the bracing norms of adulthood. EADERS OF The Birth of Tragedy will notice quite a difference between my very Apollonian account of these Pindaric dancers and Nietzsche's very Dionysian one of the tragic chorus. His dancers are empowered by their song and dance to doff their identities and merge with the primordial unity, while those I have preferred to fix my gaze on are rather bringing their identities into perfect focus, declaring by song and dance the essence of what it is to be a free-born and able-bodied young man or woman in a particular city 6 Moreover, the dithyrambic improvisations in which Nietzsche wishes to see both the origin and the essence of the tragic chorus would seem to have dispensed with pre-arranged choreography altogether and to require at most a leader who impersonates the hallucinated god, whereas the odes of Pindar require the poet's presence in the city not only as leader of the dance during performance but also as choreographer and chorus-trainer beforehand.' The choreographer's engagement with the dancers as the medium in which he executes a. meaningful design is in effect an aspect of dance which Nietzsche ignores in preference to some more mys~ tical situation in which the dancers improvise through direct contact with the powers of nature. Consider his R WINTER 1982 �characterization of the tragic dancers in the last sentences of the very opening section of the book. "Man is no longer artist, he has become the work of art: the artistic power of all nature, to the highest delight of the primordial unity, makes itself manifest in the thrill of intoxication [Rausch]. The noblest clay, the most costly marble, Man, is here kneaded and hewn, and to the chisel strokes of the Diony· sian world-artist sounds out the Eleusinian mystery-cry: 'Do you bow down, Millions? Do you divine your Creator, World?' " 8 Both the metaphor from sculpture and the mystical HDionysian world~artist" here betray Nietzsche's unwillingness to consider the choreographer's art on its own terms. Indeed, throughout his writings he takes infinite delight in dance as an activity and a metaphor, but never once considers it as an artistic medium and never mentions a single choreographer or ballet. In The Birth of Tragedy, Nietzsche was positing the chorus as the essence of the Dionysian in order to work out an Hegelian scheme according to which the actors represented the essence of the Apollonian and tragedy as a whole constituted some higher synthesis in the history of Greek genres. In order to fill in this scheme, he had to posit Homer as the earlier type of the Apollonian, and then lay Archilochus and Pin dar on the bed of Procrustes as successive types of the Dionysian. Soon thereafter he abandoned the whole Hegelian construct and began to call in question the superiority of Athenian culture itself, so that in the notes for We Philologists he is to be seen playing with such tantalizing propositions as the following: "Athenian tragedy is not the supreme form we might think it is. Its heroes are too much lacking in the Pindaric quality."' I am, therefore, not interested in lingering to discuss his earlier distortions, but wish rather to see what his later use of the Apollonian/Dionysian distinction has to say about the effects of various artistic media on those who experience them, as artists, as participants, and as spectators. The essential text lies in two consecutive "Skirmishes of an Untimely Man" in Twilight of the Idols. 10 Here he restates his earlier association of the Apollonian experience with the painter, the sculptor, and the epic poet, and the Dionysian with the actor, the dancer, the musician, and the lyric poet; but now he shows greater sophistication in suggesting both the physiological bases of the distinction and the historical development which both categories of media have undergone. In Apollonian art, he theorizes, it is the artist's eye which is engaged, with the result that the existence of the work as an object separate from him is brought to the fore; while in Dionysian art, the whole muscular and nervous system is engaged, with the result that the artist'·becomes a mimic of whatever inspires him and hence a participant in the event which the work of art becomes. The media of modern man are the result of a process of specialization. The poet, the musician, and the choreographer, who used to be united in a single performing artist who led the dance, are now three separate specialists who do not necessarily form part of a performance at all. THE ST. JOHNS REVIEW A S HEIDEGGER HAS SUGGESTED, Nietzsche's usual interest in his characterization of art seems to be in the state of the artist as he creates rather than in the independent quality of the resultant work of art or the particular modes in which the work is experienced by others11 This is the state Nietzsche calls Rausch- rapture, intoxication, frenzy, the feeling that "rushes" over the artist and carries him beyond himself into creation-and it is significant that in the sections just referred to in Twilight of the Idols, the Apollonian artist is said to experience Rausch no less than the Dionysian, only through the eye, rather than the nerves and muscles of the rest of the body. But in these sections the term Rausch is actually being used by way of prelude to another, the famous "will to power" itself. And, surprisingly, Nietzsche here assigns the will to power a medium of its own, architecture. "The architect represents neither a Dionysian nor an Apollonian condition: here it is ... the intoxication [Rausch] of the great will that demands art. Architects have always been inspired by the most powerful men; the architect has always been under the 'suggestion' of power. In architecture ... the will to power means to make itself visible ... The highest feeling of power and sureness comes to expression in the great style." Since elsewhere Nietzsche goes so far as to say that everything in the world is simply one form or another of the will to power, one is at first perplexed. 12 Surely the will to power will also be at play in the various states (Rausch whether of the eye or the whole body) in which artists turn to other media, and surely the resultant works of art will also bear witness to it. Moreover, insofar as all art brings things into full presence to the senses-into visibility, audibility, surface-why is it in architecture especially that "the will to power means to make itself visible"? Nietzsche is no longer interested now in setting up any medium as a synthesis of Apollonian and Dionysian conditions, but rather in designating architecture as a medium that stands apart from them both and brings the will to power into appearance in a special way. A clue to his thinking here lies in the fact that this is one of the rare occasions on which he mentions not only the creators and participants in works of art but also their patrons. To speak of these "powerful men" at whose b!'hest the architect creates a building is to raise the question of its purpose. In order to bring a great building into being, an architect must employ more durable materials than any other kind of artist, must claim more space, mobilize more resources, and give more commands. Above all, he must consult more closely with the desires of his patron, whether individual, institution, church, or state, and if the patron has commissioned a great building, then these desires will reach beyond mere functionality. Whatever the intended function of the building might be, its coming into appearance as a work of art shows that the power of its patron is possessed of the will and the means to stability and endurance. The patron will understand this as well as the architect, and the cooperation of the 27 �two will always ultimately be with a view to the final effect of the building on other people. Churchill's saying, that we shape our buildings and our buildings then shape us, needs to be more precise. It is architect and patron who shape the building, and it is us they are aiming to shape by it. I suspect, then, that Nietzsche sets such value on architecture precisely because it fuses the categories of art and politics. And the suspicion is increased by the striking fact that his favorite way of praising the Roman Empire is in architectural metaphors. The most manic expression of this association comes in The Antichrist: "Is it still not un· derstood yet? The imperium Romanum . .. this most admirable work of art in the great style, was a beginning, its construction was calculated to give proof of itself over millenia-to this day no one has ever again built in such a way, has even dreamed of building in the same measure sub specie aetemi! This organization was stable enough to support bad emperors: the accident of individuals ought to be insignificant in such matters-first principle of all great architecture." 13 The praise continues into the next section, which describes the Romans' act of consolidating the classical heritage as "the will to the future of man, the great Yes to all things made visible as the imperium Romanum, visible for all the senses, the great style no longer merely art but rather become reality, truth, life . .. " 14 Underneath the dithyrambic phrasing it is not hard to grasp the essential characteristics of architecture that make it easy for Nietzsche to identify it with the will to power. Any ambitiously constructed building is meant to last longer than the lifespans of its builders and to be used by future generations. These generations will be molded by both the functional and the esthetic aspects of the building. Architect and patron cooperate to cast the spell of their power over the future both in art and in life, and we may accept the legitimacy of this ambition without being forced to debate the morality of political ambitions for the expansion of an imperial system in space. Roman ar~ chitecture remains our great symbol of the ambition to make cultural institutions endure through time. of art in its own right but also both a functional means and a compelling symbol for the process by which a civilization honors its classical works. And as part of this process it also helps to create a space in which the new work can be juxtaposed to the old, an act no less essential to a healthy civilization than the preservation of the classics themselves. To see a work of modern art exhibited in a museum built in the neoclassical style is an experience which, common as it may be, has some meaning if we consider the tension between old and new which these conditions of presentation intend to symbolize. ITH ROMAN ARCHITECTURE as a paradigm, then, I wish to bring this meditation on artistic media to its proper culmination by offering a few examples of the ways in which some of the best works of art our civilization has to offer have themselves symbolically acknowledged, as part of their own conditions of coming into being, the crucial tension between the old and the new, between that which is preserved in presence and that which comes into presence for the first time. Buildings are not the only works of art capable of making such acknowledgements, nor were the Romans the only people to be conscious of their importance. I shall therefore include examples from poetry and dance as well as architecture, and take them from the earliest as well as the most recent phases of the West. What I am looking for are cases in which it is clear that an artist is not merely presenting a new work of art by itself without any reference to its conditions of appearance, but on the contrary is going out of his way to insure that the new work have old ones in its background, and that the transience of the conditions of its first appearance be assured of being transformed into the durability of the conditions of preservation that will attend it if its bid for classic status is successful. My example from the earliest phase will be an ode of W Pindar, whose poetry is in many ways more archaic even than that of Homer. The Fifth Nemean, one of his most Mozartean compositions, is a victory ode, or epinician, for a boy pancratiast from the island of Aegina, famous in antiquity both for its athletic statuary and its temple archi- I PROPOSED AT THE OUTSET that our civilization in its essential form came into being only when the brief but glorious artistic achievement of Greece was preserved by the Romans in such a way that their own artistic efforts might be juxtaposed to it. This is a process which it is one of the most important tasks of architecture to make possible. It does so in one sphere by sheltering and setting in relief those other works of art which endure as objects, and in another by shaping a space for the performing arts in which they can take on scale and project themselves to a particular audience. If one includes churches and temples as well as museums and concert-halls, the comprehensiveness of architecture's roles becomes clearer, for one is then speaking of sacred art and ritual performance. A work of architecture is thus not only an enduring work 28 tecture. To compliment his hosts, Pindar begins by having himself and his chorus of Aeginetan boys claim, as they strike up the dance, that "I am no statue-maker, to fashion sculptures at holiday as they stand on their own pedestals," an opening sally which may well have been underscored by choreography imitating sculptural positions for a split second before whirling merrily on. In standard epinician form, the ode goes on to praise the boy victor, and then to make its way back, by a series of allusions and partly told stories, to the foundational age of the earlier Aeginetan heroes, including the founding father Aeacus himself, who had once saved all Greece from a drought by supplicating his own father Zeus for rain. Finally, in its last line and a half, the ode returns to the present and WINTER 1982 �praises the athletic victories of the boy's grandfather in the following language: "At the portals of Aeacus bring him crowns luxuriant with flowers, in the company of the blond Graces." The "portals of Aeacus" here are the fore· court of a shrine to that hero at the center of the city, fronting the agora, where victory dances were normally performed. This shrine was decorated with friezes depict· ing the same event alluded to in the ode, the moment at which Zeus showed favor to Aeacus by showering on the parched land; such moments of favor typically form the climax both of the odes' mythical language and of their choreography. Since the forecourt of hero-shrines was a traditional place for erecting statues of victorious athletes, the dancers may have been referring to a ritual custom according to which victors might have their crowns placed on the statues of ancestors who had themselves been victorious in earlier games. Whether or not this is the case here, it is clear that some kind of offering of flowers is being made before the shrine as the ode comes to its end, an act carried out in stylized motion which is to be thought of as a continuation of the ode's ritual choreography. All we have left of this lovely event is the concluding phrase quoted earlier about the portals of Aeacus and the blond Graces: 7r/Jo8Vpoww llAtcxKofJ &ve~wv trouhvTlx 4>EPe an</Jom;,,ara avv ~av8afs X&pwmv. Fully conscious that his language is destined to endure as a memorial text, Pindar seems to be playing here, as often at the conclusion of his odes, with the implication that as the never-to-be repeated victory dance draws to its close the language which it has sustained is begining to move into its own immortality as a text. He is seeking a symbol of the ode's dual nature, as transient dance and as enduring text, and he finds it in the contrast between the luxuriant flowers out of which the young victor's crown has been woven and the magnificently sculpted stone of the statues and friezes at the front of the ancestral shrine. Nor is Pindar satisfied to allude to this contrast by the language alone; he seems also to have arranged to draw it into the circle of the ode's choreography, by having the flowers placed in the forecourt of the shrine at the very moment when the language falls still and the motion of the dancers continues in silence. To this ritual motion the vivid archaic smiles on the faces of the ancestral athletic statues and the heroic friezes are witness, in that acclamation between living and dead which can be fully mutual only if it is made in silence. And somehow present in all this, through the invocation of the final phrase, is the consort of the Graces themselves, goddesses of the transient comeliness of dancing and flowers, who as immortals can themselves never fade. Through the fostering by these divine presences, as well as by Father Zeus and Father Aeacus, the new work of the poet has blossomed into public performance and is now about to reach the moment at which it will cease to be a ritual dance and begin to be a durable text. It is taking its place among the immortal stone masterpieces by which the center of the city is adorned, and by the act of naming THE ST. JOHNS REVIEW these masterpieces and declaring its place among them, it becomes a monument to its own occasion. The old and the new are thus made in the most essential way to belong to each other, and the same is true of the transient and the durable; it is a belonging registered by the combination of the several media at the occasion of the performance. The old and the durable are present as sculpture, the new and the transient are present as dance, and sover- eign over all is the language of the ode which both declares these dualities and transcends them. SHALL NOT TRY to claim that such a blaze of civic splendor has been equalled by any poetic event of recent times. If there is an absence at the center of our civilization it may lie just here: in our inability to agree on any objects of reverence deeply enough to summon forth our best poets and have them arrange spectacles at the centers of our cities in which the young both embody and share our agreement in the course of their performance. Efforts to mount such spectacles in the Twentieth Century have usually been totalitarian parodies, and it takes only one look at films of the Nuremberg rallies to make most people flee back to pluralism with a sigh of relief. Acknowledging this difficult absence, then, I nevertheless have no desire to end with yet another eloquent grouse against the age. As Nietzsche puts it in one of his aphorisms on the classic, "Both classically and romantically minded spirits ... are preoccupied by a vision of the future, but the former out of the strength of their time, the latter out of its weakness." 15 The more classically minded tack here, the one which refuses to lapse into complaining out of weakness, would be simply to let one's eye rove in a fine frenzy until it lights on the best work now being done and then to ask whether anything like the same interplay of the old and the new, and of the durable and the transient, is to be traced in the conditions in which it comes into public appearance. The artists I wish to honor by this kind of inquiry work in media which lie at the two extremes of the spectrum I have proposed in speaking of the combination Pindar arranges. They are George Balanchine, whose repertory of dances currently being offered at the New York City Ballet is acknowledged to be one of the greatest choreographic achievements in the century, and I. M. Pei, whose career seemed to reach its peak recently with the opening of the East Building of the National Gallery in Washington. And, as it happens, next to both artists stand patrons worthy of them, respectively Lincoln Kirstein and Paul Mellon, whose roles and intentions also deserve to be honored by reflection. I T HE LEVEL OF EXCELLENCE at which the New York City Ballet is performing right now is rather terrifying. One risks nothing in calling it currently the finest dance company in the world; the knowledgeable go further and prophesy that what we have been seeing for 29 �Figure I: The architect's concept sketch, showing the existing network of streets and the relationship between the National Gallery (West Building, left) and the new East Building. The altitude of the larger of the two triangles which comprise the new building prolongs the long axis of the old building. The numbers in the upper part of the sketch refer to square feet of space in the two buildings. (Figures 1 and 2 courtesy I. M. Pei & Associates.) the last few decades will someday be as legendary as Diaghilev's Ballet Russe. Balanchine has been choreographing new works for this company uninterruptedly since 1935, and his presence has set the finest dancers in the world knocking at its doors. Since the company lacks a "star system," the number of dancers of the highest rank it can admit is, like my definition of the classic, theoretically susceptible of indefinite expansion. These resources of talent have in turn enabled it to maintain a prodigious repertory from season to season, so that in the winter and spring seasons of 1980-81, some forty Balanchine ballets were performed in addition to those of the company's other choreographers. The sense of superabundance is heightened yet further by the variety of musical scores represented. Of the musicians who have written expressly for ballet, Balanchine prefers to choreograph to scores of his fellow Russians Tchaikovsky and Stravinsky, but he has also choreographed a series of masterpieces in homage to Bach, Gluck, Mozart, Brahms, Bizet, and others. Coming away from an evening with a strong program, one feels that by some miracle time has been collapsed and the highest graces of the Eighteenth, Nineteenth, and Twentieth Centuries have been made present together in the same theater, not as objects but as living bodies performing at the limits of skill under the direction of a master fully capable of rising to the scores he has selected. Modern technology is of course hard at work trying to pin down these wonders, the choreography by dance notation and the performances by videotape, and Balanchine himself has lived to contemplate the production of his works by many other companies around the world whose stagings he has neither supervised nor seen. Some speculate that his preponderance will only be augmented after his death and might have something of the same 30 daunting effect as Beethoven did on later writers of symphonies, but all talk of monumental permanence is pleasantly mocked by the man himself. "I want to make new ballets .... If you made a borscht, you'd use fresh ingredients. If you were asked to write a book twice, you'd use new words. People say, what about posterity? What do you preserve, I ask? A tape? What counts is now. Nobody will ever be the same again. And I don't care about people who aren't born yet." 16 If one wants to seek the frame of permanence in which all this new work is held, it is to be looked for not in recording techniques but in the concept of repertory which Lincoln Kirstein has so well articulated. "Increasingly, however, what pleases our audiences is rep~ ertory-illuminated, to be sure, by .well-trained dancers .... Stars are replaceable by emergent students; choreography, in repetition, persists." 17 In any given season's of~ ferings of the New York City Ballet, there will be two or three new works by Balanchine and two or three of his own versions of the Nineteenth Century classics, and both categories will be set in relief by thirty-odd of his pieces choreographed since 1935 and deemed worthy of repeating. Some of these are already granted classic status by the audience, and in the rapidly changing world of dance, anything preserved for as long as fifty years is shown to be a classic by that very fact; others, more recent, are still making their bids and may eventually be dropped and never revived again. The point to be stressed is that the whole is greater than the sum of its parts. The consort of new and old works which this repertory maintains in performance is as healthy an image as our time has to offer of that imperturbable ceremony, refusing to be retarded or accelerated, by which the ranks of the classic are augmented. T O MOVE FROM THE STATE THEATER OF NEW YORK to the East Building of the National Gallery in Washington is to feel these equations change their terms and yet remain the same. The original gallery was completed by Andrew Mellon in 1941 as a gift to the nation, and the new free-standing extension was completed in 1978 by his son Paul, with the superbly understated designation "East Building." The very Roman piety of the son to the father is registered by the fact that both buildings are of marble from the same quarry in Tennessee, and though the new building looks lighter in color now, its stone will deepen to the same hue as that of the old in a matter of decades. In his uncompromising demand for the highest quality of execution, Paul Mellon sustained a tripling of costs during construction, and the building's prime location at the end of the Mall closest to the national Capitol only accentuates the contrast between the level of quality to be achieved by private versus public wealth. The old main gallery (now called the West Building) is itself the most harmoniously executed of all the neo-classical buildings on the Mall, and it is to the glory of the East Building that it harmonizes with the old WINTER 1982 �one in proportions and quality of design while speaking its own assured modern idiom. By his choice of axes and shapes I. M. Pei has in fact accommodated the new building not only to the old one but also to the original design for the streets of the city which dates back to 1791. L'Enfant's whole system of traffic circles, with radial avenues leading out from them and cutting diagonally across the grid of the other streets, is generated by the two major axes he projected from the Capitol building, one leading along the Mall to the Washington Monument and the other along Pennsylvania Avenue to the White House. The East Building is situated just at the point where the angle between these two axes from the Capitol begins to create trapezoidal city blocks, and the building is itself a trapezoid bisected into two triangles whose angles observe those of the avenues outside. Moreover, Pei has used these angles as his governing principle not only in the shapes of the building's two halves but also at many other levels of detail, from the space-frame over the vast and airy central court down to the very shape of the blocks in the floors. Thus should one's eye ever drop to one's feet it would encounter, there too, in the very cut of the marble, an homage to the design commissioned by our own founding father for the city to be named after him. In all these details of execution, then, there is manifested on the part of patron and architect alike a desire that the new should take its place beside the old in a tension whose vibrancy only enhances the harmony that underlies it. This desire reaches its most dramatic realization in the contrast between the actual way the two galleries are intended to be used. The function of the reposeful West Building is, now as always, to house the permanent collection of the National Gallery, while one of the principal functions of the energetic East Building is to provide space for temporary exhibitions, the new genre of internationally organized blockbusters that has emerged in the last few decades. The central court of the East Building gives a view of all levels of the building in the manner of an opera-house, and the ('performances" for which this Figure 2: An elaboration of the two·triangle plan of the East Building. The larger triangle {divided by the arrow) contains public spaces-the central court and the galleries, for example. The smaller (lower part of the sketch) is devoted to secondary uses such as the study center. (The small figure in the upper right shows a preliminary sketch of a triangular building on the existing trapezoidal plot of ground.) of course, the name of Nietzsche has vanished altogether. I should ·like to think, however, that far from implying his irrelevance I have been paying him the right kind of tribute. It may be that his greatness is less that of a philosopher, if by that word we mean one who offers us an account of the world and a guide to life through examination of universals, and more that of a critic, if by that word we mean one who leads us to make exacting perceptions and valuations of the particular. By his sustained refusal to slander the body, the senses, and the moment in all its transience, Nietzsche gave us a fresh sense of what is at stake when we submit ourselves to the power of a work of art in the plenitude of its presence. But to consider what is necessary for that plenitude means to consider the nature of the immortal, the monumental, the classic. And it F ROM MY ACCOUNT OF RECENT WORK, means, finally, to be strong enough to sustain an irresolu- court provides ''intermissions" are in fact going on around ble paradoxical desire-the desire to be witness to a "new the building's sides in the various galleries and towers, where space has been left open by the architect, so that it can be shaped anew by the curators through use of temporary walls designed for each specific exhibit. The East Building is, in other words, a place for festivals, whose brilliance is inseparable from their transience 18 Patron and architect have incorporated into the function of the new building an element of festival brilliance which will stand in perpetual tension with the marmoreal achievement of its fundamental design. I should, therefore, like to offer the two buildings together, with their complementary styles and complementary functions, as my final image of the interplay between the new and the old, and the durable and the transient, which a healthy civilization has the sense and the will to sustain. Here too, as with dance repertory, the ceremony of the classical is, in Pindar's phrase, classic" as it comes into being. at perpetual ((holiday on its own pedestal." THE ST. JOHNS REVIEW l. See "Homers Wettkampf' in Friedrich Nietzsche, Werke, ed. Karl Schlechta, Munich 1966, III, 291-299. Hereafter all references will give the title and section number of the work and then the volume and page number in Schlechta. Unless otherwise stated all translations are my own. 2. "Der Griechische Staat," Werke, III, 285-286. 3. The essential text in Arendt is The Human Condition (Anchor Books Edition 1959), Chap. 31, "The Traditional Substitution of Making for Acting," 197-206. 4. Der Wille zur Macht, no. 975, Werke, III, 850. Though Schlechta abandons the section numbers of earlier editions of Nietzsche's Nachlass collected under the title Der Wille zur Macht, he provides in his fifth volume (609ff.) a concordance by which a given section can be found in his own edition. 5. Nor will it do to maintain that these notebook jottings remained unpublished by Nietzsche because he could not bring himself to recommend in public the adoption of such a stance of hardness. Consider the quotation from Zarathustra with which he concludes Gotzen-Dam- 31 �merung: "All creators are hard. And you' must think it blessedness to press your hand on millenia as on wax,-/-Blessedness, to write on the will of millenia as on bronze,-harder than bronze, nobler than bronze. Only the noblest are completely hard." (Werke, II, 1033) Compare this with the laudatory remarks on Caesar and Napoleon in the same book, "Streifzuge eines Unzeitgemassen" nos. 38, 44, 45, 49, Werke, II, 1015, 1019-1022, 1025. To be fair, however, it must be added that the connection between the artist's hardness on his material and the statesman/ general's hardness on human beings is not made explicit anywhere in Gotzen-Dammerung but rather left as a hint, a not-too-esoteric doctrine. 6. Nietzsche shows himself quite conscious of the distinction: "The young women who march solemnly to the temple of Apollo, laurel in hand, and sing as they go a processional song, remain who they are and maintain the names they possess as citizens; the dithyrambic chorus is a chorus of transformed beings for whom their past as citizens and their social position has become oblivious." Die Geburt der TragOdie no. 8, Werke, I, 52. The second half of his characterization, however, is incomplete, for in all the tragedies we possess (as opposed to hypothetical original dithyrambs), the dancers who have doffed their own identities have donned others which are equally precise: those of old men, women, slaves, foreigners, sailors, etc. 7. Nietzsche's assumption is based on the much-disputed statement of Artistotle (Poetics l449a9) that tragedy arose &1rO rCJv to'~apxOvrwv rOv tneUpap,{3ov, "from those who led off the dithyramb." For a very nonDionysian critical discussion of this passage and of Nietzsche's use of it, see Gerald F. Else, The Origin and Early Form of Greek Tragedy, New York 1965, 9-15. 8. Die Geburt der TragOdie no. l, Werke, I, 25. 9. "Notes for 'We Philologists,'" trans. William Arrowsmith, ARION N.S. l/2, 1973-1974, 361. 10. Nos. 10 & II, Werke, II, 996-997. 11. Martin Heidegger, Nietzsche, Pfullingen 1961, Vol. I, "Der Wille zur Macht als Kunst," particularly the chapter entitled "Der Rausch als asthetischer Zustand," 109-126. 12. Der Wille zur Macht no. 1067, Werke, III, 917. 13. Der Antichrist no. 58, Werke, II, 1229. 14. Der Antichrist no. 59, Werke, II, 1231. Cf. GOtzen-Dammerung, "Streifzuge" no. 39, Werke, II, 1016. Nietzsche was also fond of alluding to Horace's claim that in his three books of odes he had erected a monument more durable than bronze: exegi monumentum aere perennius (Odes III, 30.1). Earlier in Antichrist no. 58 he uses the phrase aere perennius to characterize the whole Roman Empire, and in the last section of Gotzen-Diimmerung, "Was lch den Alten Verdanke" no. l, he names 32 Figure 3: View of the East Building from the vicinity of the east entrance of the original National Gallery, looking in approximately the same direction as the arrow points in Figure 2. (Photo by Tom Farran.) Horace and Sallust as his two great stylistic models and says that "Even in my Zarathustra one can recognize a very serious ambition for Roman style, for the 'aere perennius' in style." (Werke, II, 1027). See also MorgenrOte no. 71, Werke, I, 1059. In Zur Genealogie der Moral, '"Gut und BOse,' 'Gut und Schlecht"' no. 16, he praises the nobility of Roman inscriptions, a category which combines architecture and writing (Werke, II, 796). 15. Menschliches, Allzumenschliches, "Der Wanderer und sein Schatten," no. 217, Werke, I, 965. 16. New York Times, "Arts and Leisure Section,'' Sunday, AprilS, 1979, D 17. 17. Lincoln KirStein, Movement and Metaphor, New York 1970, 10. 18. Compare Lincoln Kirsteip's remarks on the lobby of the State Theater of New York: "Philip Johnson built a festival ambiance in lobby and promenade. Performances commence when audiences first enter the houses which frame them; large theaters are more than shelter. Intermissions which link units of repertory are happy times for appreciation, disagreement, sharings of what has just been seen and heard." New York City Ballet Souvenir Book, 1975. WINTER 1982 �The Trivialization of the Holocaust as an Aspect of Modern Idolatry Robert Loewenberg 1 The Holocaust, the murdering of the Jews on Hitler's principle that a "thorough eradication of even the last representative and destruction of the last tradition" should be realized, is the most mysterious event of modern times, and perhaps the most characteristic. 1 Mysterious and characteristic as well is the subsequent trivialization of the Holocaust in Western discourse by those, especially Jews, who profess detestation of Hitler and Nazism. The trivialization of the Holocaust, and not its denial, for ex· ample, by the Right, is the most significant post-Holocaust phenomenon at our disposal for the purpose of understanding the Holocaust. The charge of trivialization supposes certainly a justification of the view that the Holocaust is not trivial. One must establish that Hitler's choice to eradicate the Jews and Judaism instead of Armenians or Biafrans is what makes for the Holocaust's particularity. The mystery of the Holocaust, in other words, is not the murdering of innocents, or the number and manner of their killing. The description of Hitler's murdering of the Jews as a holocaust constitutes a claim, a narrowly tribal one in some minds, that the gassing of Jews was not solely a murdering of innocents demonstrating man's inhumanity to man. Rather the Holocaust was a murdering of another kind that demonstrates profound truths. This claim is explored in this essay in connection with the suggestion of Emil Fackenheim that the Holocaust was the result of idol worship.' Associate Professor of History at Arizona State University, Robert Lo~wenberg has written Equality on the Oregon Frontier (University of Washington Press, 1976) and articles on the history of the American Northwest and on values in writing history. THE ST. JOHNS REVIEW The purpose of this essay is to locate the sources of trivialization and not to detail it-the latter a task that has been undertaken by others 3 The best evidences of trivialization are found in the most likely places, in common speech and in academic discourse. In both instances the quite prominent involvement of the Jews in the trivializa· tion of the Holocaust underscores the several points to be developed in this study. At the first level, that of common speech, trivialization of the Holocaust is especially visible in the rights movements. Here the language of the Holocaust and of European Jewry is readily affixed to circumstances of victimization. Civil rights proponents are inclined to refer to a Negro ghetto as an "Auschwitz" or to the denial of a lunch program as "genocide." The denial of civil rights is fascist while support of civil rights is in some ultimate sense Jewish. This perception of the rights movement and of Judaism is commonplace among liberal Jews today. Judaism, 1 once self-understood as chosenness or ' particularism," is now to be conceived as universalist. Judaism's universalism has suggested to some advanced or Reform rabbis that traditional or orthodox Judaism may itself be Nazi. Accordingly, there has been a growing tendency in pro· gressive circles to disavow the holiday of Chanukah, which marks the defeat of Hellenists by a band of religious zealots, as fascism. Developments of this type at the popular level are informed by academic conventions regarding what is thought to be praiseworthy about Judaism. At the aca· demic level the trivialization of the Holocaust is, in fact, a function or product of the insistence that Judaism is es· sentially antireligious, actually a forerunner of secular and atheistic humanism. The real Jew is the non-Jewish Jew. This view, deriving from the distinction between universalism and particularism, is part of a larger vision of his- 33 �tory and human affairs in which the Holocaust is, above all, an attack upon mankind. In this view of things, Nazism and Hitler are perceived as reactionary, the enemies of progress, secularism, and democracy. Thus Hitler was among those "demonic enemies," as two Jewish writers have recently and typically said, "of modernity."' As for Mein Kampf, it is considered "deeply barbarous," a book "to end books. "5 The Third Reich demonstrated once and for all the evil of nationalism or particularism, of hierarchy and authority. Nazism vindicated an opposite set of prin· ciples: egalitarianism, universalism, internationalism, and tolerance. Scholars in fields other than German history, especially if they are Jewish, are not hesitant to use the Holocaust as in some respects a model and metaphor. A famous exam· pie is Stanley Elkins' astonishing comparison of death camp inmates with American slaves. Interestingly, the comparison was offensive to some historians on the ground that slaves did not behave as the Jews were alleged to have done by Elkins. In other words, the comparison as between murder and enslavement was not faulted, only the suggestion that slaves behaved like death camp inmates. Uses of this type explain in part the popularity of so-called Holocaust studies, a new academic subfield. It is the burden of this essay to suggest that trivialization of the Holocaust partakes of the same philosophical sources that informed the actual Holocaust itself. The hatred of Judaism (not equivalent to hatred of Jewish people), whether in destroying Jews or in trivializing their destruction, reflects neither prejudice nor fascist militarism, but a disordering of the terms of being, a disordering of the relationship of the One and the many. This disordering and its consequences we call idolatry. Perhaps no Jewish writer has done more to explore this question than Emil Fackenheim. Fackenheim's study of the Holocaust is notable for its daring. He dismisses certain sanctified cliches of Holocaust literature, and ignores the taboos of normal political theory. For example, Fackenheim does not suppose that religion is an end equal to all others, but, on the contrary, that it is "the most serious question facing a serious man."6 In this, Fackenheim offends behaviorists and secular humanists at once. But having done so, Fackenheim is free to disregard as unhistorical and reductionist those accounts of the Holocaust which limit our apprehension of Hitler or of Mein Kampf either to the influences upon them or to behavioral inferences from them. Similarly, he does not engage in a certain type of theologizing which, by proposing that the Holocaust demonstrates the non-existence and irrelevance of God, suggests rather the nonexistence and irrelevance of any serious Jewish theology. Fackenheim takes Nazism at its word and considers its deeds in light of its word. In this he adopts the commonsense approach of Werner Maser, the outstanding historian of Mein Kampf. "To explain Hitler and to understand the period of history over which he exerted so decisive an 34 influence," Maser has written, "nothing can be so impor~ tant or informative as Mein Kampf . ... Hitler clung faithfully to the ghastly doctrine set out in Mein Kampf."' But the ghastly aspects of Mein Kampf are not always the obvious ones. Hitler was an idealist, or one who is devoted to what modern liberal scholarship considers the highest goal, freedom. Fackenheim takes note of Hitler's idealism. The idealistic element in Mein Kampf is not outwardly ghastly. For example, Hitler writes of his wish to replace one "spiritual" doctrine with another. He does not idolize force in this matter. "Every attempt at fighting a view of life by means of force will finally fail," he observed, "unless the fight against it represents the form of an attack for the sake of a new spiritual direction." 8 This new spiritual direction is what necessitates the "thorough eradication" of Jews. Hitler seeks a "new . .. view of 1ife." 9 Hitler's ghastly doctrine aside, he was a moralist. Conversions and mere persecutions ofjews he regarded as destructive of idealism and immoral in other respects. 10 As for persecutions, "every [one] ... that takes place without being based on a spiritual presupposition does not seem justified from the moral point of view." 11 Traditional Judeophobia failed to express "the character of an inner and higher consecration, and thus it appeared to many, and not the worst, as immoral and objectionable. The conviction was lacking that this was a question of vital importance to the whole of mankind and that on its solution the fate of all non-Jewish people depended." 12 The eradication of Jews and of all Jewish things Fackenheim rightly considers to derive from a worshipping of false gods or idolatry. Nazism sought to make the trinity of Yolk, Reich, and Fuehrer into one. Hitler's purpose was to replace the people, who are representative of the principle that God is One, with "eternal Germanity" as one. In order to establish the significance of idolatry, Fackenheim has recourse to Jewish sources. Idolatry is "false 'freedom,'" in particular, idolatry is the "literal and hence total identification of finiteness with infinitude." 13 What relation exists between ancient idolatry and modern idolators? The ancients were preoccupied with the problems of false worship and false gods. Moderns are secular and do not believe in gods. Fackenheim does not forfeit his fundamental discovery that Nazism is idolatrous by suggesting the Nazis were antimodern pagans. He does not dilute or caricature the rabbinic teaching on idolatry, but insists that Nazism is the "most horrendous idolatry of modern, perhaps of all time." 14 In making this his starting point, Fackenheim assures us that he intends to show that Nazism and its objectives were not trivial. Of course idolatry is not trivial in Jewish terms where it serves as a counter to Judaism itself. But idolatry is also not trivial in absolute terms. Rather it reflects a disordering of the relationship of man to nature and to the "divine Infinity."IS Fackenheim points out that the ancient rabbis regarded "one who repudiates idolatry is as though he were faithful to the whole Torah. By this standard," says Fackenheim, WINTER 1982 �"any modern Jew would be wholly faithful." 16 But it goes without saying that modern Jews are not wholly fmthful even though they do repudiate the w'orship of idols or images. Does this not indicate the irrelevance of the rab· binic teaching, and by implication the irrelevance of Juda· ism? Fackenheim refers to the following talmudic passage, a characteristic utterance regarding idolatry, to suggest why such questions are not well-founded. When someone in his anger tears his clothes, breaks utensils, throws away money, this should be viewed as though he worshipped idols. For this is the cunning of the evil inclination: today it says 'do this,' tomorrow, 'do that,' until it finall~ says 'go and worship idols' and he goes and does it. ... What 1s the alien god that dwells in a man's body? The evil inclinationP The danger of idol worship is not the "ludicrous anti· climax" moderns suppose it to be. 18 Instead moderns who suspect they are not subject to idol worship because they are indifferent to the gods have fallen prey to idolatry without even knowing it was a temptation. In the case of Nazism, Fackenheim explains, idol worship is based in the same feelings of ancient idol worship, that is, in "infinite fear, hope, pleasure or pain." But the object of worship in Nazism, namely the unity of Hitler, Yolk, and Reich, is not recognized as an ido].I 9 On the contrary this object is understood to bring about the liberation from "idolatrous thralldom." In other words, modern idolatry understands itself to be liberation or "demythologization." As Facken· heim puts it, "the truth in this new false 'freedom' is that, negating all worship, it negates all idolatry in the form of worship. This new idolator takes himself for an enlight· ened modern."20 Moreover, because the modern idolator is enlightened, he scorns idols as mere sticks and stones at the same time that he condemns all worship as superflu· ous. But the idolatrous essence, the identification of finiteness and infinitude, survives like the duck inside the wolf in the tale of Peter. "Because [the infinite feeling of the modern idolator] is infinite, it does not vanish ... It thus acquires the power of generating what may be called internalized idolatry."21 Fackenheim recognizes two forms of modern "internalized" idolatry and distinguishes "internalized religion" from both. Hitler's idolatry Fackenheim calls "idealistic." It identifies finiteness with infinitude in making the finite infinite. Nazism is "absolute whim ... the extreme in fini· tude." 22 Naturalistic or empiricist idolatry is marked by positivist and relativistic "anti-absolutism." It identifies fi. niteness with infinitude in making the infinite finite; the "degradation of the infinite aspect of selfhood to a false fi. nitude."2' The so-called value-free perverters of Dewey and Freud, but not Dewey or Freud themselves, are naturalist idolators according to Fackenheim because they deny all goals, including even those of Dewey and Freud that "man should make himself into the natural being he is." 24 Internalized religion is carefully distinguished from idola· THE ST, JOHNS REVIEW try, whether of the idealistic or naturalistic sort. It would be "a fatal error to confuse" internalized religion and inter~ nalized idolatry, says Fackenheim. 25 The knowing denial of the divine Infinity, that is, the "raising [of an individual or a collective self] to infinity in ... [the] very act of demal," is "internalized religion," not "internalized idolatry," when this denial "issues, not in an atheistic rejection of the Divine but rather in its internalization. " 26 This situation, al~ tho~gh it "raises the specter of a modern, internalized idolatry," is kept from becoming idolatry in the "modern ... philosophies ... [of] Fichte, Schelling, Hegel," because "finiteness and infinitude are ... kept firmly apart." And, what is true of these "idealist" philosophers is also true of the "humanistic atheists ... Feuerbach, Marx and Nietzsche." The identification of finiteness and infinitude is here "as firmly (if not as obviously) rejected ... by the fact that Divinity vanishes in the process of internalization, to be replaced by a humanity potentially infinite in its modern 'freedom' ... The potentiality never seems to become quite actual." In sum, internalized religion is an ~~authen­ tic challenge" to the divine Infinity which should be respected by Jewish and Christian thinkers. Internalized idolatry, on the other hand, is "demonic perversion."27 Above all this distinction is rooted in the "honest rationality" of' the philosophers. Unlike idolatrous parodies of thought which are "the product, not of reason, but of passion," the philosophers are not idolatrous.28 Naz1sm, mternalized idolatry, is a denial of the divine Infinity. At the same time it is a literal and hence total identification of finiteness with infinitude. Although Hitler was "no emperor-god ... and the Yolk, no worshipping community," yet the "will of a Fuehrer" and the will of the Yolk was the sole reality. The object of idol worship is the will, internalized in Yolk and Fuehrer who are one. Nazism is a "bastard-child of ... the Enlightenment." 29 Fackenheim has undoubtedly pointed us in the direction of uncovering the source of the Holocaust's mystery. The ground of idolatry or the identification of finitude and infinity is false freedom. But Fackenheim's further distinction between internalized idolatry and internalized religion is not sound. . The philosopher's impulse, which does not deny the divine Infinity but which seeks only to bring the divine, "as it were ... in[to] the same inner space as the human self," is surely an idolatrous aspiration 30 More important, .this impulse participates in the same aspiration which informs such demonic perversions as Nazism. The remainder of this essay is devoted to exploring this suggestion and its implications for the question of the trivialization of the Holocaust. 2 Fackenheim's distinction between internalized religion and internalized idolatry is outwardly commonsensical in that thought is always different from action. But this dif. 35 �ference is especially inappropriate' as a distinction in the case of the great philosophies, all of which sought to identify thought and act at some level. Commonsensical as wen is the unmistakable difference between any of the great philosophies and the comparatively low level theorizing of Hitler. But differences of this type have no philosophical relevance. Moreover, Fackenheim is himself compelled to recognize the, to him, quite troubling compatibility of Heidegger and Nazism. Heidegger's was "one of the profoundest philosophies of this century," Fackenheim observes, and surely he was an exponent of internalized religion. As late as 1946, however, Heidegger failed to recognize "radical evil" in the Holocaust. Fackenheim considers this failure a "philosophical" one, not a challenge to the distinction between internalized religion and internalized idolatry. 31 But Fackenheim does not explain how Heidegger's "philosophical failure" differs from idolatry. One wonders if perhaps there is no distinction between this philosophical failure and idolatry or, put another way, if there really is a distinction between internalized idolatry and internalized religion. Let it be noted here, before we consider this possibility, that historically at least, there is no reason to suppose any such distinction ever existed. Karl Liiwith has observed that "nihilism as the disavowal of existing civilization," and not internalized religion, "was the only belief of all truly educated people at the beginning of the twentieth century." 32 Whether Heidegger is a nihilist or if nihilism is idolatry are matters outside the present concern. But that Hitler explicitly disavowed existing civilization and identified it with judaism will not be doubted. Certainly it is this disavowal that Heidegger found "great" in Nazism. As for Heidegger' s own statements against anti-Semitism, they cannot be given much weight as evidence of a philosophic intention as against an idolatrous one. The tradition of modern philosophy is, of course, marked by hostility to Judaism1 as Fackenheim's study, among others, shows, even as this hostility is almost always hedged about with the liberal's disdain for all "prejudice," especially for anti-Semitism. A final observation about the great philosophies considered from the standpoint of Fackenheim's defense of the distinction between internalized idolatry and internalized religion is the supposed "authenticity" of the great philosophies. Consider that Fackenheim exempts Hegel from an idolatrous identification of finitude and infinity, saying he "reaches the Fichtean goal [of a divinized moral self], but does so in the realm of thought only." Marx too is no idolator, according to Fackenheim. Insofar as the theorist of world communism realized that "society [is] as yet far from classless," he did not identify the finite and the infinite.33 But one may question if these are plausible distinctions or authentic ones. Can Hegel or Marx, of all thinkers, be defended on the ground that the idolatrous tendency of an identification of finitude and infinity was not idolatrous because it was limited to the realm of thought? Precisely 36 the identification of thought and act was their objective. Hegel did not doubt the realm of thought would succeed to action, in particular to the Prussian state. Certainly Marx did not scorn the prospect of a classless society. The distinction Fackenheim insists upon is here again not a theoretical but a circumstantial and historical one. One must look rather far to find a more pertinent example of internalized idolatry, a knowing identification of the divine Infinity dwelling in a man, than Hegel's Wissenschaft der Logik: [The] logic is to be understood as the system of pure reason, as the realm of pure thought. This realm is the truth as it is without veil and [for itself]. It can be said, therefore, that this is the exposition of God as he is in his eternal essence, before the creation of nature and a finite mind. 34 We may not say of Hegel that he has taken "care [that] ... the possibility of idolatry is ... recognized and avoided." 35 But the distinction Fackenheim would have us credit between the great philosophies and demonic perversions of them rests on what is itself a fatal error. Honest rationality, said to separate products of reason from those of passion, in fact confoupd~ reason and passion. Concerning the distinction between reason and passion, it must at least be noted that the tide of modern political philosophy, in which Leo Strauss noted three waves, is dominated by philosophies of passion. 36 Beginning with Machiavelli, who substituted glory for virtue, and Hobbes, who replaced glory with power, the great philosophies have been notable for their rejections of reason, whether in hallowing folk minds as expressions of a general will or in the sanctification of history as an expression of nature or idea. In the third and present wave of modernity inaugurated by Nietzsche, the West has been inclined to think "that all human life and human thought ultimately rests on horizon-forming creations which are not susceptible of rationa1legitimization."37 This historical consideration regarding passion and reason is not irrelevant to the distinction Fackenheim would have us accept between the philosophies and Hitler. We live at a time when it is the nearly universal presumption of political thinkers that man is not a political being but is instead an amorphous or "free" being, to be shaped by history, by labor or by change. This presumption, a reversal of the understanding of Aristotle, is related to another Aristotelian principle which modern political thinkers have also reversed. This principle is that "the mind is moved by the mover." 38 Reason, in other words, the an~ cients regarded as "revelation," not as a thing man-made. 39 These two related reversals of classical thought by moderns bear directly on our subject. They are the bases for modern idolatry and for the too easy supposition that idolatry is not a modern possibility, or that honest rationality is a hedge against such a possibility. The identification of finitude and infinity in Nietzsche, one of Fackenheim's great philosophers, is complete because the identification of making and thinking is complete. WINTER 1982 �In Nietzsche, thought is action, in particular it is vitalisrq. When Nietzsche internalizes the divine infinity (or the One), his idolatry is not simply in the realm of thought. It is palpable idolatry because thought is act in Nietzsche: The greatest events-they are not our loudest but our stillest hours. Not around the inventors of new noise, but around the inventors of new values, does the world revolve; it revolves inaudibly40 And Zarathustra counsels: 'Will to truth' .... A will to the thinkability of all beings; this I call your will. You want to make all being thinkable.4 1 Nietzsche's method is rational insofar as it is autonomous and free, but it is openly passionate as well. What is art in Nietzsche is system in Max Weber. Weber is the formulator of the principle of honest rationality as the basis for the distinction between morality or idealism and immorality, the distinction informing Fackenheim's defense of the great philosophies. Weber's distinction between idealism and immorality derives in part, as will be clear shortly, from his conviction that facts and values are heterogeneous. It is not irrelevant to add that Weber's teaching that only facts are knowable while all judgments regarding values are relative continues to inform both a naturalistic social science in which "value judgments" are impermissible, and neo-Kantian secular humanism in which the facts are said to be value-laden. Academic social studies, in other words, must also be affected by the critique of honest rationality. The context of Fackenheim's invocation of honest rationality is Weberian. But in a critique of Weber of the profoundest kind, Strauss has shown the falsity of the distinction between products of reason and of passion fashioned by honest rationality.42 Honest rationality, or the principle of freedom according to which one is free in the degree that he is "guided by rational consideration of means and ends," is said to be nihilistic.43 Strauss's critique of Weber bears directly and with great force upon the subject of this essay and upon the question of idolatry. According to Weber, reason, particularly in the determining of moral imperatives which appeal to intellect (unlike merely cultural or personal values and wants to which our feelings are subject), is the glory and dignity of man. Not choosing and not valuing is the equivalent of appetitiveness and passion. "Man's dignity, his being exalted far above all brutes, consists in his setting up autonomously his ultimate values, in making these values his constant ends, and in rationally choosing the means to these ends. The dignity of man consists in his ... freely choosing his own values or his own ideals."44 Commitment to a value which appeals to our reason Weber counted idealism. But Strauss reminds us that the justification for this view of idealism is a scientific understanding of values, that is, an understanding that facts are possessed of transhistorical or universal character while values are relative THE ST. JOHNS REVJEW and discrete. Because the truth about values is said to be inaccessible, a scientific and rational, as well as an honest approach to values must be neutrality toward values. And yet indifference to all values is precisely what Weber counts as baseness. Freedom and rationality suggest a rational hostility toward theory. But this suggests an espousal of unfreedom or passion. It is no accident that this hostility to values and to theory is embodied in naturalistic social science (behaviorism), and in the value-laden humanism which frequently opposes it, that is, in those two forms of academic social studies that grew out of Weber's distinction between facts and values. Thus, the positivist regards theory as unempirical. He makes indifference to all causes or Hopenness" a cause. At the opposite extreme stands the humanist who dignifies all causes in the name of freedom and dignity regardless of whether a cause appeals to our mind or to our passion. HA cause that appeals no further than 'the sphere of one's own individuality,' " the vitalism of Nietzsche, counts as a cause.45 The first position is formalistic and self-canceling, and the second is simply a doctrine of power. Weber, in sum, having undertaken the defense of idealism as freedom and commitment to a value, ultimately dignifies mere personal preferences and willing as idealistic. The distinction between idealism and appetitiveness fades into freedom as such, as the distinction between values and facts, ought and is, collapses into an identity of ought and is. The final formulation of Weber's ethical principle would then be " 'Thou shalt have preferences'an Ought whose fulfillment is fully guaranteed by the Is."46 Honest rationality, the choosing of values as called for by intellect as against acceptance of values which appeal to our feelings, is obviously arbitrary. Why be honest or rational? Reason and passion, idealism and appetitiveness are morally equal on the principle of honest rationality, or rather there is no such principle. Fackenheim's distinction between the great philosophies and Hitler is subject to the same nihilistic consequence attaching to the distinction between idealism and immorality in Weber. This would suggest that the distinction between internalized religion and internalized idolatry is also inadequate. In fact, Fackenheim has not done full justice to the rabbinic teaching, perhaps because he has done more than full justice to the great philosophies. Fackenheim's critique of the rabbinic teaching does not do full justice to judaism. Certainly the rabbis would not have supposed that the false freedom of the great philosophers in bringing the divine Infinity into the same space with a human being was an "authentic challenge" to be taken seriously as religious and not idolatrous. The rabbis were not liberals for whom challenges to the divine Infinity counted as authentic. One cannot maintain that Nazism is idolatrous while consenting to an Hellenic gloss on the rabbinic teaching. That "the Hellenic spirit of free inquiry ... is not rooted in judaism," as Husik has correctly observed, is a fact that moderns find difficult to accept.47 37 �Concerning the subject of idolatry, one might even say that this spirit of free inquiry is the essence of the yetzer hara, the evil inclination. The divine Infinity which occupies the same inner space with the philosopher cannot be God. Such an occupant, the rabbis say, is precisely "the alien god." This is the god that says, "do anything," i.e., be free. Freedom, or the evil inclination, is the alien god. In a word, freedom, understood as "false freedom," is idol~ atry, even though we know it is today "a mark of intelligence and progress ... [to praise] serious consideration of alien gods."48 Evidently the matter of "internalization" has been the rabbinic interpretation from the start. 3 The Jewish teaching on false freedom is not ambiguous. False freedom is false Exodus from Egypt. It is the making of the golden calf while Moses is at Sinai preparing to deliver the Torah, or true freedom, to Israel. The remainder of this essay is devoted to modern idolatry in two embodiments. First is the idolatry associated with the consideration of man as an animal lacking reason and a soul. Here man exits from or escapes his condition as a being of more than animal elements. Let us call this form of idolatry the Mehan exodus, following Eric Voegelin, who locates the contraction of man's being into a "power-self" as the means of "concupiscental exodus" in the Melian dialogue detailed by Thucydides.49 There is, in addition to the Mehan exodus, a second embodiment of idolatry, or gnostic exodus. In gnosticism, men renounce the trappings of their mortality, including history and culture, as if to bring about, at God's expense, the conditions of perfection symbolized in the garden of Eden. At the level of popular and of academic discourse, these embodiments of idolatry are understood in the language of political jargon as Left and Right. This language does not intend religious meanings. Nonetheless, the present purpose is to suggest that conventional political discourse misunderstands the difference of Right and Left, which it considers only political. The division, and opposition, of Right and Left, rather than the content of either Right (Melian) or Left (gnostic), is idolatry in its modern form. It goes without saying that a judgment that Right and Left touch religious aspects is offensive to much political science. 50 But not all scholars are content that religious questions should be divorced from political theory. Allan Bloom has observed that "what is perhaps the most serious question facing a serious man-the religious question -is almost a matter of indifference-" to political writers in our time. This indifference is found in John Rawls, for example, whose study of equality is considered by many to be a significant contribution. But Rawls considers religion "just another one of the many ends that can be pursued in a liberal society."'! Again it is Bloom who has pointed out that modern political writing which evades the serious questions also 38 evades the easy historical ones, inviting sloppiness and errors of fact. One may say, however, that what is most consistently mistaken by modern writers such as Rawls is the involvement of political writing in idolatry. Rawls's equation of all ends is precisely idolatry of the gnostic type. Knowledge that all ends or values are equal is not a human possibility, but a divine one. Must not metaphysics and religion, dealing with questions about ends, be more serious than other pursuits in a liberal society or in any society? If Nazism is idolatry, a political science such as evinced in the work of Rawls is precluded from studying it. One cannot undertake a study of Nazism as idolatry in the context of modern political science because this science is implicated in idolatry. The following survey of Nazism as idolatrous suggests the nature of this implication. The idolatry in Nazism is found in connection with the Biblical teaching on freedom. The story of the Exodus is an explication of true and false freedom. True freedom is the recognition of God, and the recognition that follows from the recognition of God, that man is radically distinct from animals as well as from God. Man is neither raw desire nor spirit, man is in~between or in the metaxy, to use the pertinent Platonic term. False freedom, in contrast, is the freedom or exodus from the metaxy, symbolized in the making of the golden calf, by which men simultaneously attempt to be gods themselves and to sanctify raw desire. The Exodus of the Jewish people is plainly not one from Egypt but to Israel. Exodus from Egypt is marked above all by wandering and by a desert. Moreover, the Exodus from Egypt and the opening of the Red Sea are not effected by the Jews but by God. The Exodus is no war of national liberation. Most important, to consider the Exodus as though it were a mere war of liberation from Egyptian bondage is idolatry. Thus, when the Israelites make the golden calf they proclaim: "These are your Gods, 0 Israel, which brought you up out of the land of Egypt." 52 But this is a lie; the golden calf was newly made by the Jews. But then who split the Red Sea if not God or the golden calf? Naturally, it must have been the Jews: God is a projection or superstition; freedom is man's work and man is the maker. Exodus is then freedom or the exercise of human will: absolute whim. It is the liberation to do as one lists, to wander. Exodus is the freedom not to wait for Moses: to go to Israel or not. But of course the Bible teaches that this is all false. The calf makers are idol worshippers; they are slain. They have forfeited reason by equating their whim or freedom with rationality. They made the same error that Strauss detected in Weberian idealism or honest rationality. And, as in the Weberian instance, the mistaking of whim for rationality is equivalent to animality or mere desiring. The calf makers are considered as animals. In one of the most famous expositions of idolatry in the Bible, Nebuchadnezzar is punished with the loss of his reason and sent to forage in the manner of oxen for his failure, WJNTER 1982 �demonstrated in his making of a gold,en idol, to recognize that "the most High rules in the Kingdom of man." 53 Only reason, by which I mean the revelation that God and not man is the maker of all things, can distinguish be· tween exodus as false and as true freedom. A calf is a thing. All things perish. Things come into being and go out of being. The bush that burns but is not consumed is a sign of divinity because it does not perish. Being remains, namely, the process of coming into being and going out of being remains. This process is known only to man who alone among things possesses reason or soul. This permits him to see the sign of the burning bush and to understand it. This recognition indicates that aspect of man's being, spirit or soul, which is not a thing. We call this aspect of perception immortality. Freedom is false when men pretend they are animals or gods. The literal and hence total identification of finiteness and infinitude is a form of idolatry because such identification is a willful disordering of reality. Idolatry is the knowing denial of the doctrine which founds Judaism, or monotheism: "Hear, 0 Israel, the Lord is your God, the Lord is One." The Biblical exposition of this principle, set in the Exodus or Passover story, specifies idolatry as false freedom or exodus from the metaxy. There are two modes of exodus or false freedom. Men may escape the metaxy or the conditions of human being in the direction Fackenheim calls naturalism by identifying as finite those aspects of being which are infinite. 54 The insistence that man is an animal who invents God for the sake of satisfying behavioral imperatives is idolatrous in this sense. The value-free principle is a doctrine of raw power, as are its derivatives, for example, the "open society," and certain versions of equality and free speech. Justice, which regards all value claims as equal, is achievable only by enforcement of absolute toleration and permissiveness or by enforcement of sameness and intolerance in the name of humanity. 55 Force is inevitable in either case to insure absolute permissiveness or absolute conformity, since it cannot be the case that values will not clash, or that self-control will be considered a value superior to others. In fact, the sole means of avoiding the arbitrary dilemma of tolerance is to undertake a transformation of the self, that is, to undertake the elimination of the self or amour propre. In other words, this doctrine of freedom entails a reordering of the relationship of the One and the many whether in the reformation of selves into a general will or into Ein Volk, Ein Reich, Ein Fuehrer. As we shall see in Hitler's case, work makes free because it destroys egotism. In particular, freedom as work eliminates rewards based upon skill. The individual is thus merged into the collective self. Freedom from values as the meaning of freedom is simply power or will. We have already called this freedom from values the Melian exodus, after Thucydides: "Men . .. rule wherever they can."56 Hitler's conception of right was certainly Melian. Alan Bullock, who has called this aspect of Hitler's thought THE ST. JOHNS REVIEW <(crude Darwinism," notes that "no word occurs more fre- quently in Hitler's speeches than 'struggle.' "57 "The whole work of Nature," according to Hitler, is "a mighty struggle.'' Again: "The first fundamental of any rational Weltanschauung is the fact that on earth and in the universe, force alone is decisive."58 Voegelin explains that the "fictitious identity of conquest with reality can be achieved by identifying reality with a humanity contracted to its libidinous self."" The modern forms of this aspect of false freedom, according to which values, and thus judgments concerning them, are historical and ultimately identical to personal desire, is embodied in historicisms of mind or spirit. In other words, Melian exodus denies to philosophy all but historical and pragmatic aptitudes. The difference between the ancient and modern expressions of this exodus is the hint of tragic fatality in the ancient and the absence of this hint in its modern forms. The Athenian conquerors retain, "in the background ... the tragic consciousness of the process." They too will be massacred in time. Modern movements, on the other hand, sink "to the untragic vileness of the ideologist who cannot commit the murder he wants to commit in order to gain an 'identity' in place of the self he has lost, without moralistically appealing to a dogma of ultimate truth." 60 The dogma to which Hitler appealed was the Thousandyear Reich, eternal Germanity. This vision he conceived as freedom and the elimination of Judaism. Freedom and the replacement of Judaism with Germanity would prepare the way for a reconciliation of mankind. These objectives were exactly dogmas of ultimate truth for the sake of committing murders. Moreover, these dogmas were the instruments for the formation of selves. We need not doubt Hitler used the word "struggle" many times or that he identified morality with power. But his object was not solely power. His murderous intention was not arbitrary or irrational. Hitler's doctrine of the blood is the key to the other side of Nazism and simultaneously to the idolatrous aspect of the great philosophies. Hitler's notorious sacrifice of military goals so as to destroy the million Jews of Hungary reflects his commitment to the doctrine of the blood. The doctrine of the blood is an inversion of the doctrine of the soul. 61 Speaking often of uour people" and "eternal Germanity," Hitler's purpose was to effect the "reconciliation of mankind/' or "all non-Jewish peoples.''62 Nazism emerges as a counterJudaism at this point. The "purity of the blood ... [will] enable our people to mature for the fulfillment of the mission which the Creator of the universe has allotted also to them.''6l This, the "higher motive of national policy and never narrow particularism" explains why the "State has nothing whatsoever to do with a definite conception of economics or development of economics."64 Nazism was a moral doctrine of freedom for which race was the form. As persecution of the Jews was immoral in Hitler's thinking, so the purity of German blood was not a medical or 39 �an anthropological doctrine, even though it had import at such levels. One suspects we hear neither the hypocrite nor the psychopath say, as Hitler did in 1932, "Let them call us unhuman. If we save Germany, we shall have done the greatest deed in the world .... Let them say that we are without morality. If our people is saved, we shall have paved the way for morality."65 The doctrine of the blood introduces the gnostic aspect of Nazism. Hitler's identification of right with power included the second mode of exodus from the metaxy, or gnosticism.66 But the liberation of the spirit from the body in modern gnosticism is not for rare men or for the elite as among an- cient gnostics. The modern way of liberation is release from the ego and egotism. The spirit, in other words, is no private vision, it is a shared thing, for example, blood. Modern gnosticism is distinguished from its ancient forms in the same way that modern power politics differs from Melian exodus of the ancients. For the ancient gnostic who strove to separate the soul from things, the instrument of liberation was the individuaL The soul with its source in the divine was not thus denied. Liberation of the souls of modern gnostics is altogether a thing of groups which replaces the divine as the soul's source. Accordingly modern gnosticism calls for the losing of the self as spirit. The soul of modern man is liberated from the prison of spirit, as well as the prison of the body, in becoming a thing that does not perish, i.e., in submerging the ego in an immortalizing thing such as blood, sex, or excrement. Consider Hitler's doctrine in connection with the tradition regarding the self extending from Rousseau. Since Rousseau's description. of the self as formed by society, in particular by the division of labor and the advent of property, there has evolved the idea that one's authentic self is beneath the roles imposed by social life. Liberation is then a release from property and its social and other derivatives. Because this conception takes its rise in the doctrine of the state of nature, or the doctrine that man has no nature or telos, true personality or selfhood is freedom as such, or becoming. At the same time, this vision of freedom imposes a conception of the self as selfless. Selflessness or true selfhood is tantamount to compassion, and this is how Rousseau defined it. The good self is not selfish in a literal and a moral sense. The true self is not an I, but we. This reversal of the classical and Jewish concept of the self is part of everyday speech in which a self is virtuous if it is selfless. The tradition of this mode of thinking is long and considered honorable. It stretches, for example in American letters, from john Humphrey Noyes who hoped to "extinguish the pronoun I," and replace it with "the we spirit," to Norman 0. Brown." Brown suggests that the "boundary line between self and the external world bears no relation to reality." Liberation for Brown is release from self by means of return to the pre-socialized conditions of polymorphous perversity. The Hhuman consciousness can be liberated from the parental (Oedipal) complex only by be- 40 ing liberated from its cultural derivatives, the paternalistic state and the patriarchal God."68 This conception of self, including the role of man as maker of God, is the one we have detected in Nazism. The liberation from God, thus the liberation of the self, establishes the idea of freedom, of exodus from the metaxy. The power to free the soul from the body is brought about by freeing the self from an L The I perishes. What remains is a thing possessed of the characteristics of God, that is, of oneness. Those basic and selfless elements which outlast the individual have become the instruments of immortality. What perishes excessively-excrement, sexuality, blood-are now the bases for oneness and everlasting life. Donatien de Sade uncovered these principles two centures before Hitler put them into practice. "What we call the end of the living," said de Sa de (in praise of the motto that "the freest of people are they who are most friendly to murder''), "is no longer a true finis, but a simple trans- formation ... of matter ... [D]eath is hence no more than a change of form, an imperceptible passage from one existence into another."69 Here in palpable form is the identification of finitude with the infinite exposed by Fackenheim. But Hitler is not a "parody" of the great philosophers. In assuming a material and communal replacement of the divine as the source of man's freedom, Hitler's attack upon Judaism substitutes German blood for the souL Hitler would, in this way, immortalize or make infinite a finite thing. Hitler insists that judaism is the negation of German blood-judaism is a race, not a religion-exactly as Marx insists that judaism is the negation of communism-the god of judaism, he says, is money. But if we consider, in Hitler's case, the actual doctrine of blood in judaism where it serves as a symbol of the soul, Hitler's gnostic intention stands out boldly. The Nazi's blood was his souL As a Jewish symbol that had become an object of worship, the Nazi doctrine of the blood is in truth "an absolute falsehood." 70 The blood as a substitute for the soul of man is false. In judaism the blood is typically considered to be in the soul only when the body is alive. "The flesh whose blood is still in its soul, shall ye not eat. ... Blood ... belongs to your souls." 71 This is plainly because the soul is not a thing. Preservation of the blood of generations, what Hitler believed to be the jews' purpose, and what he hoped to make the German purpose, was to create oneness and immortality, as it were, the salvation of souls. Jewish pollution of the racial stock of others, imperiling the survival of non-jewish humanity, robbed souls by interruption of the transmission of blood. In Nazism the soul is in the blood. The soul is preserved after the ego dies, and because it is, the race is preserved. The doctrine of blood is false because it is wholly a distortion of the order of being. The source of human freedom is not the absence of the divine and its replace. men! by a Nazi or a communist community. It is hardly a coincidence that both Hitler and Marx considered the elimination of jews and judaism to be a condition for the WINTER 1982 �establishment of their projects. 72 In both cases the extinguishment of the divine in the name of a man-made creation of freedom and of human being is critical. As for the racist aspect of Nazism (and for the scientific and class aspects of communism), they are perhaps best described as opiates for the proletariat and the intelligentsia respectively. The blood is then the soul made matter, an absurd idea. The characteristic of the soul is immortality. What can it mean to proclaim that the soul is not spiritual or that some thing, perishable by definition, is immortal? What aspect of a person does not perish? The answer, embodied in the doctrine of the blood is: that aspect of a person which is neither an ego nor a soul. Of course there is no such thing. But what did Hitler think this thing was? Of course he supposed it was freedom. The masses shall enter into the service of freedom once they understand that the Jew intends the "enslavement, and with it the destruc· tion, of all non-Jewish peoples."73 Blood is the oneness of soul of the German people. Oneness will come about by the destruction of vanity or egotism, the opposite of oneness. Egotism must be destroyed. But how is this possible? By destroying the people of egotism. This is the people that hides behind a false, unenlightened doctrine of elec· tion and the divine as One. This people, the representa· tive of the false God of spirit, and therefore the enemy of oneness or the German people, is the Jews. "The Jew is the mortal enemy of our people," said Hitler, because "the Jew is ... nothing but pure egoism."74 And thus this destruction of Jews is part of the means for liberation, namely work. The people become one as they give over their egos to the community. The doctrine that man is one is egalitarianism. "Egalitarianism," said Erich Fromm, uis not sameness but oneness."75 Hitler's doctrine is egalitarian in the deep- est and purest modern sense. As such, Nazism is the purest distillation of modernity. When Hitler proclaims that "the Jew forms the strongest contrast to the Aryan" because only the Aryan is willing to give his "life for the exis· tence of the community," he intends to be taken at his word. 76 Giving up one's life for the community calls for the relinquishment of ego. The means of doing so is of course not prayer. Everyone knows, Hitler said, "a nation cannot be freed by prayer." 77 Rather the way to freedom is work. Work creates oneness in the process of effacing egos. Work "establish[es] the equality of all in the moment when every individual endeavors to do the best in his field .... It is on this that the evaluation of man must rest, and not on the reward." 78 Work makes free. Hitler promises freedom from the ego, that is, from death, from anxiety, by promising immortality in this world. This is the mean· ing of Hitler's doctrine of the blood. It is the foundation of the "everlasting [German] people." 79 It is correct to say, with Fackenheim, that Hitler is no emperor-god; nor are the Yolk a worshipping community. THE ST. JOHNS REVIEW It is Germanity in its immortalizing sacrifice of egos that is God or one. This is the everlasting German people in whose name Hitler professed to speak. The Jews, who are said to live on behalf of an everlasting God, the God who is one because man and all things are many, are the obvi· ous spiritual power to be destroyed. Hitler's idolatry is unmistakable. It reflects a disordering of the relationship of the One and the many. Man is en· joined, in the name of salvation, to leave his place in the metaxy that he may assume full freedom. In the language of political science Hitler's Melian exodus is fascist or right-wing. Here, only power counts because all values are equal, making law the rule of the stronger. Man is an animal. To this, Hitler's obvious or familiar side, is added the other more subtle and as it were saintlier side. This is the idolatry of gnosticism whereby men singly or together take God into themselves or into their ideals. Hitler's case suggests that modern idolatry cannot fail to be both Melian and gnostic. We do not often, however, credit Hitler's gnosticism or realize the Melian aspects of gnostic or liberal idealism when it is expressed in the seductive language of opposition to Melian realism. The position of Judaism is obviously not the only representative of the principles idolatry must oppose. It has long, however, been symbolic of all the enemies of idolatry. The hatred of Judaism is an aspect of modern if not all Western idolatry, that is, of the impulse arising from the horror of existence and the desire to leave the condition of the metaxy. Consider the case of Jean Sartre, whose philosophy is the most recent great philosophy considered by Fackenheim. Sartre is the outstanding figure of left-wing humanistic atheism. His insensitivity for Judaism, together with his well-known sympathy for persecuted Jews, troubles Fack· enheim. It may well be the case, Fackenheim thinks, that Sartre's position is the product of his view that "an individual's freedom is ... destroyed by a divine Other," i.e., by God.BD But Fackenheim does not sufficiently consider the effect the doctrine of freedom works upon Judaism. Sartre' s view of freedom is idolatrous. It depends on the replacement of the One with freedom. But this freedom, gnostic in form, is not theoretically stagnant. It leads somewhere. It leads to Melian exodus, that is, it permits Sartre to say that he does not know if anti-Semitism is "wrong or right" in socialist countries. 81 But Sartre would know if racism is wrong or right. Is this another "philosophical failure" as in Heidegger's case? The process we find in Hitler-from self-conscious Melian exodus to an unintended gnostic exodus imposed upon him by the core of his project or the replacement of the divine with the human-we also find in Sartre. In Sartre, however, the order of exodus is reversed. Sartre's replacement of God with freedom is ultimately an assault upon theory or reason; it is the idolatry we have discovered in Hitler which does not distinguish reality from history or the struggle for power. Accordingly Sartre must ultimately 41 �look to history, as had Hegel and Marx, as the source of human reason. The individual's freedom then becomes a matter of struggle against history in the manner of neo· Kantians or Emersonians who look to the vanishing of swine and madhouses brought about by an impulse of spirit or will. But this is the same gnostic denouement into which a crude reasoner such as Hitler evidently stumbled. Hitler is not a bastard-child of the Enlightenment, only a relatively childish enlightener. His erstwhile opponents, those who have trivialized his deeds, are less childish but not less idolatrous. Trivialization of the Holocaust is the failure to consider Nazism idolatrous. This failure is due to the implication of the trivialization of the Holocaust in the sources of idolatry. Trivialization of the Holocaust accords what Fackenheim suggests is a posthumous victory to Nazism. 82 The Holocaust, according to two Jewish students of the subject, is an example, unique in its excess, of how men mistakenly put obedience above other, better traits. Seeking a model or prototype of this human failing in Western civilization the authors hit upon the Akedah, the binding of Isaac by Abraham, his father. Their reasoning is as follows: [In] the Judea-Christian tradition ... wrongdoing is utterly clear . .. [It] is unauthorized pleasure. It is also very clear that hardly anywhere in this tradition is there any story or statement to the effect that 'Thou shalt not obey legal orders from superiors if they seem [sic?] atrocious to you.' Abraham, who was prepared to obey the directive to murder his son Isaac as a demonstration of his faith in the superior being Jaweh, is not condemned for his blind obedience, but rather held up as exemplary. 83 It is Abraham, the first Jew and the man who defied all other men on earth in proclaiming God as the measure of all things, who is here said to be the cause of the Holocaust. In other words, the cause of the Holocaust is Judaism. Here, to be sure, is a literal trivialization of the Holocaust. Obedience to Hitler by German Nazis is counted the equivalent of obedience to God by Abraham (and Isaac). It is clear the authors, Kren and Rappoport, consider obedience to God or to Hitler the same because honest rationality calls upon social scientists to regard all objects of valuation as equal. The authors, as we say, do not believe in God. But we have already suggested the source of this atheism is not a theological investigation. It is an opinion regarding theory, or rather the supposed necessary limit upon theory imposed by the effort to insure man's freedom. Harry Neumann has called social science of this type modern Epicureanism because it seeks tranquility of mind on the principle that Hfreedom from pain is man's summum bonum." If all ends are equal, if "no favoritism would be shown to any particular claim," any suggestion of superiority or of divine election constitutes an impertinence, a threat to science and peace. The equation of obedience to God and to Hitler presupposes the equality of ends. But is 42 not knowledge of the "superhuman vantage point" reserved to God? This is the vantage point assumed by modern Epicureans who insist that "philosophy's quest to the answer of the question of the good life is over." The good life is freedom from pain and the good is pleasure. For this reason modern Epicureans consider religion evil and threatening. Religion cannot promise freedom from pain as the equivalent of the good. Religion does not claim that all ends are equal. In this religion and philosophy are together the enemies of "modern Epicureanism's final solution. " 84 In saying that Abraham was a model of "blind obedience" that should be despised, Kren and Rappoport wish plainly to indict Judea-Christian civilization as the source of the Holocaust. Above all, Judaism is the source of the Holocaust. The case of Abraham, the first Jew and the father of Judaism, is undoubtedly pertinent to the subjects of obedience and idolatry. Abraham was the son of Terach, an idol maker. Obedient to God, he cast his father's idols into the fire. But Abraham was not a rebellious or whimsical son. Hitler and Rimmler were obedient only to whim, to themselves, and they cast people into furnaces. In other words, the Nazis proceeded on the principle that Kren and Rappoport believe to be the great truth after the Holocaust, that "there is no morality per se, because there is no immutable religious or legal standard for human behavior."85 Precisely the Nazis confounded pleasure, authorized or not, with the good. Abraham understood the good to be distinct from pleasure, from his whim, because he did not suppose he possessed divine knowledge to regard all claims as equal. In recognizing reason he recognized its source. For this reason he rejected his father's unreason or idolatry. Abraham's obedience to God was disobedience to the atrocious rule of men. More important, Abraham defied Nimrod, the first "mighty man upon the earth ... a crafty hero before God."86 The significance of Abraham's defiance of Nimrod could not be greater for an understanding of idolatry. Nimrod is the founder of political idolatry, the first to suppress men lefneh hashem, in God's name. Nimrod claimed the superhuman vantage point as his own. Terach brought the idol-hating Abraham to Nimrod, but Abraham did not recant. Nimrod, indulging an impulse evidently natural to political idolators-it was of course to become Hitler's trademark-cast Abraham into the fiery furnace. But Abraham survived. Abraham is the founding symbol, also in fire, that God and not man is the measure of all things. Like the burning bush, Abraham becomes a sign of the One that does not perish. But Abraham's brother, Haran, supposing Abraham's survival demonstrated Abraham was now the new king, followed him into the fire and, of course, he died. Naturally, Judaism survived the burning of Jews by Hitler. Hitler, like Nimrod, was mistaken in thinking the soul is a thing. Hitler was also mistaken in thinking man is a god who can defy the order of being and assume the suWINTER 1982 �perhuman vantage point. As for the, trivialization of the Holocaust, its source is the incapacity to distinguish the blind obedience of Haran from Abraham's obedience. Haran, unlike Abraham, obeyed any authority indiscrim· inately, because he held that there is no morality per se. l. Adolf Hi tie<, Mein Kampf, New York, Houghton Mifflin [1925, 1927], 1939, 221. 2. Emil Fackenheim, Encounters Between Judaism and Modern Philosophy: A Preface to Future Jewish Thought, New York 1973. 3. See, for example, Edward Alexander, "Stealing the Holocaust," Midstream, November, 1980, 46-50. 4. Paul R. Mendes-Flohr and Yehuda Reinharz, eds., The Jew in the Modern World: A Documentary History, New York 1980, vii. 5. Dorothy Thompson, "A Review of Mein Kampf' in Hitler, Mein Kampf, ii. 6. Allan Bloom, "The Study of Texts," in Melvin Richter, ed., Political Theory and Political Education, Princeton 1980, 122. 7. Werner Maser, Hitler's Mein Kampf: an Analysis, London 1970, 11. 8. Mein Kampf, 223. 9. Mein Kampf, 221. 10. Mein Kampf, 155. 11. Mein Kampf, 221. 12. Mein Kampf, 155-56. 13. Fackenheim, Encounters, 189. 14. Fackenheim, Encounters, 175. 15. Fackenheim, Encounters, 190. 16. Fackenheim, Encounters, 173. 17. Quoted in Fackenheim, Encounters, 178. 18. Fackenheim, Encounters, 179. 19. Fackenheim, Encounters, 217. 20. Fackenheim, Encounters, 187. 21. Fackenheim, Encounters, 187. 22. Fackenheim, Encounters, 194. 23. Fackenheim, Encounters, 196. 24. Fackenheirn, Encounters, 196. 25. Fackenheim, Encounters, 190. 26. Fackenheim, Encounters, 190-91. 27. Fackenheim, Encounters, 190. 28. Fackenheim, Encounters, 192. 29. Fackenheim, Encounters, 197, 187. 30. Fackenheim, Encounters, 191, 194. 31. Fackenheim, Encounters, 217, 223. 32. Karl LOwith, Nature, History, and Existentialism, Evanston, Illinois 1966, 10. 33. Fackenheim, Encounters, 191. 34. G.W.F. Hegel, Science of Logic, New York 1969, 50. 35. Fackenheim, Encounters, 190. 36. Leo Strauss, "What is Political Philosophy?" in What is Political Philosophy and Other Studies, Glencoe, Illinois 1959,9-55. 37. Strauss, Political Philosophy, 54. 38. Aristotle, Metd.physics l072a30. 39. Eric Voegelin, The Ecumenic Age, Baton Rouge 1974, 188-190. 40. Friedrich Nietzsche, Thus Spoke Zarathustra in Walter Kaufman, ed., The Portable Nietzsche New York 1960, 243. 41. Kaufman, Nietzsche, 225. 42. Leo Strauss, Natural Right and History, Chicago 1953, 35-80. 43. Strauss, Natural Right, 44. 44. Strauss, Natural Right, 44. 45. Strauss, Natural Right, 46. 46. Strauss, Natural Right, 46. 47. I. Husik, "Hellenism and Judaism," Philosophical Essays, Oxford 1952, 13. THE ST. JOHNS REVIEW 48. Harry Neumann, "Torah or Philosophy? Jewish Alternatives to Modern Epicureanism," The Journal of Value Inquiry, 1977, 23. 49. Voegelin, The Ecumenic Age, 182, 181. 50. Eugene Miller, ''Positivism, Historicism, and Political Inquiry," The American Political Science Review, 66 1972, 796-817. 51. Bloom, "The Study of Texts," 122. 52. Exodus, 32:4. 53. Daniel, 4:25. 54. Fackenheim, Encounters, 196. 55. Neumann, "Torah or Philosophy?" 23. 56. Quoted in Voegelin, The Ecumenic Age, 182. "Of the gods we be· lieve, and of men we know, that by a necessity of nature they rule wher· ever they can. We neither made this law nor were the first to act on it; we found it to exist before us _and we shall leave it to exist forever after us; we only make use of it, knowing that you and everybody else, if you were as strong as we are, would act as we do." 57. Alan Bullock, "The Political Ideas of Adolf Hitler," in Howard Fertig ed., The Third Reich, New York 1975, 352. 58. Adolf Hitler, Speech, 13 April 1923; Adolf Hitler, Speech, 2 April 1928, quoted in Bullock, "The Political Ideas of Adolf Hitler," 352. 59. Voegelin, The Ecumenic Age, 182. 60. Voegelin, The Ecumenic Age, 182. 61. Mein Kampf, 221. 62. Mein Kampf, 442, 217. 63. Mein Kampf, 288-89. 64. Mein Kampf, 841, 195. 65. Adolf Hitler, Speech 1932, cited in Mein Kampf, 402n6. 66. Eric Voegelin, The New Science of Politics, Chicago 1952, 107ff. 67. John Humphrey Noyes, History of American Socialisms, Philadelphia 1870. Reprint edition titled, Strange Cults and Utopias of Nineteenth Century America, New York 1966, vii, 626. 68. Norman 0. Brown, Life Against Death, New York 1961, 155. 69. Donatien A. F. de Sade, Philosophy in the Bedroom, Paris 1795, in Richard Seaver and Austryn Wainhouse, eds., The Marquis de Sade, the Complete Justine Philosophy in the Bedroom and Other Writings, New York 1965, 330-1, 333. 70. Fackenheim, Encounters, 188. 71. Genesis, 9:4, 5. 72. "[T]he emancipation of society from Judaism" is equivalent to the emancipation of man from exchange, "the bill of exchange [being] ... the real god of the Jew." Because "Judaism attains its apogee [and its "universal dominance"] with the perfection of civil society," the destruction of Judaism is equivalent to and necessary for the realm of free· dam or the abolition of civil society. Karl Marx, "On the Jewish Ques· tion" in T. B. Bottomore, ed., Karl Marx Early Writings, New York 1964, 40, 37, 38. Note the remarks of Erich Fromm on this topic in the forward to this volume, iv-v. 73. Mein Kampf, 442. 74. Mein Kampf, 416, 487. 75. Erich Fromm, The Art of Loving, New York 1956, 15. 76. Mein Kampf, 410,412. 77. Mein Kampf, 988. 78. Mein Kampf, 647. 79. AdOlf Hitler, Speech 26 March 1936 in N. H. Baynes, ed., The Speeches of Adolf Hitler, April, 1922-August, 1939, 2 vo1s. New York 1969, II, 1317. 80. Fackenhdm, Encounters, 209. 81. Fackenheim, Encounters, 211. 82. Fackenheim, Encounters, 207. 83. George M. K:ren and Leon Rappoport, The Holocaust and the Crisis of Human Behavior, New York 1980, 141. 84. Neumann, "Toiah or Philosophy?" 17, 20. 85. Kren and Rappoport, The Holocaust, 142. 86. Genesis, 10:8-9. 43 �·Proof and Pascal Brother Robert Smith To F. H. and to my friends just off Bambury Road In his lecture, "Power and Grace," Douglas Allanbrook said of Pascal: One final question: what does Pascal's attitude toward proof have to do with him personally, with Pascal as a man? For both Thrasymachus and Pascal, however, the voices of power and persuasion are the only thinkable ways of talking about politics. Reasoning about politics with any purity of discourse is foolishness. In reading over this pensee [103], most of you have probably been struck by the lack of anything that could be called . .. dialectic . .. the complete absence of premises . .. Pascal seldom argues: he states persuasively what is to him the case. 1 Allanbrook may have been flattering us. When we hear Pascal speak we may often be so dazzled by his epigrams, his examples, and his similes that we do not think to ask whether he is talking reasonably. It might not occur to us that one example does not necessarily prove a general statement or that his lack of dialectic is consciously antiphilosophical. . . In his lecture, Allanbrook made good hts charges agamst Pascal: that Pascal says we have no power to discover justice that according to Pascal we cannot know the differenc~ between a just and an unjust action, and that justice has no power in this world. These are shocking charges. They ought to make us ask questions about Pascal himself. Did he reject argument on all matters? Not only about politics, but about all that is important in our lives? Why? What substitute for reasoning, for dialectical inquiry and proof dtd he propose? How does Pascal proceed in a typical section of the Pensees? Does he argue? What is his attitude toward dialectics, toward philosophical inquiry in the tradition of Plato and Aristotle, or theology, as practiced by St. Augustine and St. Thomas? Does Pascal argue about philosophy and theology or does he "state persuasively what is to him the case" and. no more? A second consideration. Aside from his practice in the Pensees, what does Pascal think of proof itself? Does he think it impossible? If it is possible, when is it so? A tutor at St. John's College, Annapolis, Brother Robert Smith professed membership in the Order of Christian Brothers in 1939. A lecture read at Annapolis on October 30, 1981. 44 1 Happiness How can Pascal set out to defend the Christian religion without resort to argument? He says he intends to show that religion is not contrary to reason, to make it attractive, to make good men wish it were true, and, fmally, to show that it is true. Wh at d o " sh ow, " " rnake, " an d "' " ts mean to him? First a few remarks on the order, or lack of it, in Pascal's text. Until forty years ago, when the work of a man named Lafuma appeared, editors had arranged Pascal's thoughts at their discretion. Lafuma showed that Pascal had tentatively chosen some thoughts for a work, an Apology for the Christian Religion, for which the Pensees are only the working notes. Pascal decided on twenty-seven numbered headings like Order, Beginning, Conclusion. Not quite chapters, they appear to be divisions of a whole work. With his thoughts written out helter-skelter on large foho sheets, he selected those that related to his division headings, strung them together with needle and thread, and placed them in packets, each packet with a headmg. Lafuma was the first to realize the significance of these arrangements, especially the titles and needlework. Oth~r arguments have since been advanced to conflfm Lafum~ s view that Pascal selected about one th!rd of the matenal included in what we know as the Pensees for his projected work. I have chosen to examine Section Ten of those thoughts selected from the Pensees. It is called The Soverign Good. I have picked it because it provides a good ~xample of Pascal's last, provisional arrangement, and gives a clear picture of his procedure: The sovereign good. Debate about the sovereign good. That you may be content with yourself and the good things innate in you. There is some contradiction, because they [the Stoics) finally advise suicide. Oh, how happy is a life we throw off like the plague! (147) WINTIR 1982 �Second part. Man without faith can know neither true good nor justice. ' All men seek happiness. There are no exceptions. However different the means they may employ, they all strive towards this goal. The reason why some go to war and some do not is the same desire in both, but interpreted in two different ways. The will never takes the least step except to that end. This is the motive of every act of every man, including those who go and hang themselves. Yet for very many years no one without faith has ever reached the goal at which everyone is continually aiming. All men complain: princes, subjects, nobles, commoners, old, young, strong, weak, learned, ignorant, healthy, sick, in every country, at every time, of all ages, and all conditions. A test which has gone on so long, without pause or change, really ought to convince us that we are incapable of attaining the good by our own efforts. But example teaches us very little. No two examples are so exactly alike that there is not some subtle difference, and that is what makes us expect that our expectations will not be disappointed this time as they were last time. So, while the present never satisfies us, experience deceives us, and leads us on from one misfortune to another until death comes as the ultimate and eternal climax. dence Pascal would have preferred this order. Number 148 should perhaps precede 147 because 148 begins with a general statement of Pascal's point in this section: "Man without faith can know neither true good nor justice." This expression, "without faith," reminds us of the place of Section Ten in the Apology. In saying, "Man without faith," so absolutely, so uncompromisingly, without any nuance or admission, Pascal runs head-long against a philosophical and theological tradition that he knows and refuses to follow. He does not turn to Aristotle, who was known to the men around him, or to St. Thomas, whom he had read selectively, or even to St. Augustine, who says that the philosophical writings of the ancients, especially those of Cicero, helped him on the way to his conversion in the garden. (St. Augustine, for example, thanks Cicero's lost work, Hortensius, for his turn to the search for wisdom instead of the pursuit of political and financial success.) Unlike Aristotle, who had a great deal to say about happi· ness in the Ethics, and even defined it, Pascal does not refer to human experience for his understanding of happiness. Instead, he says, "Man without faith can know neither true good nor justice." Pascal expects his reader first to despair of finding guidance by his reason. He hopes then he will be receptive to the religious alternative. The first sentence in the development of Section Ten What else does this craving, and this helplessness, proclaim but that there was once in man a true happiness, of which all that now remains is the empty print and trace? This he tries in vain to fill with everything around him, seeking in things that are not there the help he cannot find in those that are, though none can help, since this infinite abyss can be filled only with an infinite and immutable object; in other words, by God himself. reads: God alone is man's true good, and since man abandoned him it is a strange fact that nothing in nature has been found to take his place: stars, sky, earth, elements, plants, cabbages, leeks, animals, insects, calves, serpents, fever, plague, war, famine, vice, adultery, incest. Since losing his true good, man is capable of seeing it in anything, even his own destruction, although it is so contrary at once to God, to reason, and to nature. How do we react when we hear this sentence? Pascal expects us to agree. Very likely he is not mistaken, for the contrary is too unlikely. Pascal, however, does not even offer the weak argument that the contrary is too unlikely. He expects us to agree without question, and he is willing to proceed with that unexamined assent. Some seek their good in authority, some in intellectual inquiry and knowledge, some in pleasure. has not been discussed. We think we know well enough Others again, who have indeed come closer to it, have found it impossible that this universal good, desired by all men, should lie in any of the particular objects which can only be possessed by one individual and which, once shared, cause their possessors more grief over the part they lack than satisfaction over the part they enjoy as their own. They have realized that the true good must be such that it may be possessed by all men at once without diminution or envy, and that no one should be able to lose it against his will. Their reason is that this desire is natural to man, since all men inevitably feel it, and man cannot be without it, and they therefore conclude ... (148f A word on the numbering of the thoughts within the sections. In Section Ten, Lafuma, relying only on his judgement, put pensee 147 before 148. There is no eviTHE ST. JOHNS REVIEW All men seek happiness. We are not aware that the crucial term, "happiness," what the sentence, "All men seek happiness," means, and that is all Pascal needs. In contrast, Aristotle, who began his discussion of happiness in the Ethics with just such an unexamined use of the word, devotes the whole of Ethics I and most of X to clarifying what the word means. Section Ten continues: All men seek happiness. There are no exceptions. However different the means they may employ, they all strive towards this goal. The reason some go to war and some do not is the same desire in both, but interpreted in two different ways. The will never takes the least step except to that end. This is the motive of every act of every man, including those who go and hang themselves. Something extraordinary is happening in these sentences. Pascal has got us to agree that "happiness" applies indiscriminately to anything that man seeks. We have 45 �agreed that, to use his example, there is no difference between leading a charge and leading a peace march. Had we realized how Pascal was using the term, most of us would have questioned whether happiness in that vague sense is the goal of all man's efforts. Most of us think "happiness" is a term with many complex meanings. We think that what we are doing now is better or worse, more or less conducive to happiness, than what we were doing, say, two years ago. We think there are kinds and degrees of happiness. Pascal has made us accept uncritically an apparently obvious statement containing a term whose meaning seems equally obvious. With the acceptance of that statement, we have been led to agree that all the things we strive for are the same. Am I characterizing Pascal fairly? Already wary of the consequences of our uncritical acceptance of the obvious, we will be even more suspicious of what follows: Yet, for very many years no one without faith has ever reached the goal at which everyone is continually aiming. Once more, we have a general statement. This statement is not, however, offered without discussion. We are asked to accept it because there are indications in our experience that it is true: All men complain: princes, subjects, nobles, commoners, old, young, strong, weak, learned, ignorant, healthy, sick, in every country, at every time, of all ages, and all conditions. The opening sentence seems plausible because we know that we all complain, and so we cannot imagine anyone else not complaining. In that case, he would be, well, odd. No, everyone complains. A parade of characters passes through our imagination-all complaining as we imagine them. So we agree. Without protest, we are accepting a new definition of happiness. Happiness now means "something that satisfies us completely." Only when happiness means complete satisfaction does our complaining show that no one has reached happiness without faith. Because all men, including ourselves, complain, they cannot be. completely satisfied, i.e. happy. Everything comes out so clearly and with such assurance that we agree. No one, including ourselves, is happy. But, you will agree, Pascal's procedure does not amount to an argument. Tacitly and guardedly, Pascal admits that his conclusion is open to question: A test which has gone on so long, without pause or change, really ought to convince us that we are incapable of attaining the good by our own efforts. By saying, "really ought to convince us," Pascal protests too much. He raises the possibility that we have not been convinced that we are incapable of attaining the good by our own efforts. Why do we all keep scurrying about so 46 much when we really ought to know that all our efforts are doomed to failure? But example teaches us very little. No two examples are so exactly alike that there is not some subtle difference, and that is what makes us expect that our expectations will not be disappointed this time as they were last time. Pascal says we keep scurrying about because we think that the future will be different. We think that we will be happy next time because then, everything will turn our way, to our complete satisfaction. We think this because we want to, not because we are convinced by proof. Pascal's argument that mere reason leads to despair would be conclusive if our failure to be completely satisfied was the same thing as complete misery. Then we would not get out of bed in the morning. In fact, though, we do get some satisfaction out of writing our essays, such as they are, and hope to write better ones. There is more than a "subtle difference" between failing to be completely satisfied and suffering complete misery. We are not fools to keep on hoping to improve our situation. A more modest definition of happiness might make us accept some complaint. Even the chance to complain may occasion a certain happiness. I know this may sound unfair to Pascal. I am not without question granting him his definition, and so I lead you to doubt his word. Pascal would not be at all surprised by what we have done, nor would he think us guilty of bad manners. I am pointing out that Pascal has, without saying so, substituted a definition of happiness derived from faith for one derived from ordinary experience. A definition from faith, which restricts happiness to the complete and unqualified happiness that comes from seeing God face to face, supports his argument and will find acceptance among his readers if they are believing, though nonpracticing, Christians. The Apology was, in fact, addressed to such Christians. So, while the present never satisfies us, experience deceives us, and leads us on from one misfortune to another until death comes as the ultimate and eternal climax. A man without a conventional religious upbringing would be unprepared for Pascal's assertions that "the present never satisifies us" and "experience deceives us" or Hleads us on from one misfortune to another." He would be even more unprepared for the assertion that death is the "ultimate and eternal climax." This is the language of sermons heard in childhood. It is useful for evoking sentiments felt then. Someone who has these sentiments to recall will follow the whole resounding periodic sentence in the way Pascal intends. Someone who has not been exposed to religious oratory is not so likely to follow it unhesitatingly. I am saying that this enthusiastic tone will seem sincere and justified to a reader who can bring to the text religious WINTER 1982 �associations from childhood. Those qf us who have a deep religious background, strengthened by childhood memories, will be carried along by Pascal's prose to his conclu- do the things we did when we believed, the responses will follow, revived by the automatism of habit: sion: the present never satisfies us, experience deceives us For we must make no mistake about ourselves: we are as much automaton as mind . .. habit provides the strongest proofs and those that are most believed. It inclines the autom- with its endless variety and promise of something better, we are led from failure to failure until lastly, our life ends in a crash-the last resounding crash-death. The text we have been studying is a powerful piece of rhetoric, worthy of a sermon in the grand tradition, be· cause, like all successful oratory, it ties the speaker's mes· sage to sympathies dormant in the hearer's memory. Like a speech in a dramatic production that makes a character come to life, Pascar s prose succeeds in evoking our own experience. Racine realized this when, smarting under Pascal's boutade that a good playwright was as bad as a public poisoner, he told the authorities at Port-Royal that their darling Pascal was himself a dramatist in the Provin· cia! Letters. Pascal, in fact, has been practicing oratorical art. He be· gan with something that any reader could accept without reflection. He went on to talk about our futile search for happiness. Those readers whose experience confirms what they read, believe him because they find the truth of his words in themselves, just as Pascal claimed to find the truth of Montaigne' s words in his own, not Montaigne' s, experience. Pascal's discourse is, then, limited to those who have had a conventional religious upbringing in childhood. His discourse is like a discussion among a closed circle of friends who agree on what is desirable but differ as to how to achieve it. To get his hearers to turn towards God, Pascal relies on reviving deeply ingrained beliefs dormant in their memo· ries. When he began the Pensees, he must have thought of making the Apology a series of letters like the Provincial Letters: A letter of exhortation to a friend, to induce him to seek. He will reply: 'But what good will it do me? Nothing comes of it.' ... The answer to that is 'the Machine.' (5) After the letter urging men to seek God, write the letter about removing obstacles, that is the argument about the Machine ... (11) What does he mean by the "Machine?" It is the response that arises in us when we see something that once moved us deeply, in a new context: The fact that kings are habitually seen in the company of guards, drums, officers, and all the things which prompt automatic responses of respect and fear has the result that, when they are sometimes alone . .. their features are enough to strike respect and fear into their subjects ... (25) The "Machine" also helps to recall dormant religious sentiments. We who once actively believed can again experience the responses we made when we believed. If we TilE ST. JOHNS REVIEW aton which leads the mind unconsciously along with it. (821) In addressing this audience of those who once strongly believed, Pascal defines happiness as the result of a direct vision of a personal God, whom we know even as we are known: What else does this craving for happiness . .. proclaim but that there was once in man a true happiness . .. an infinite abyss which can be filled only ... by God himself. (148) Does Pascal believe this reliance on faith is our only hope for knowing anything about happiness? Cannot we, with our reason, our good sense, explore experience and discover something worthwhile? Does Pascal go so far as to reject the possibility that man can acquire for himself a high .and noble happiness? He does. Debate about the sovereign good. That you may be content with yourself and the good things innate in you. (147)3 The quotation is from Seneca and it is given so that Pascal can immediately reject it: There is some contradiction, because they [the Stoics] finally advise suicide. Oh, how happy is a life we throw off like the plague! With this sarcastic comment, Pascal dismisses Seneca and all others who find in man's nature a genuine good capable of being the basis for a moral life. Man, in his fallen nature, cannot find any of the good things that Seneca attributes to him. God alone is man's true good, and since man abandoned him it is a strange fact that nothing in nature has been found to take his place: stars, sky, earth, elements, plants, cabbages, leeks, animals, insects, calves, serpents, fever, plague, war, famine, vice, adultery, incest. Since losing his true good, man is capable of seeing it in anything . .. Pascal does not think that we can ever come to know what is best by reasoning about our own nature or the things around us. We have not succeeded in rising to that knowledge and we never will. 2 Proof From Section Ten, a single, though typical, section of the Pensees, we have gotten some idea of the Pascal's conception of the limitations of philosophical inquiry. We will be more confident we know his mind if we look at another 47 �work where he discusses proof and qur ability to produce it. In a short essay called, On the Geometrical Art, he says: To show how to make unbeatable proofs . .. all we have to do is to explain the method that geometry uses, for geometry teaches it perfectly by example.4 [Attempts to clarify these truths] confuse everything, and de- A few lines further he says: What goes beyond geometry, is beyond ness because such knowledge cannot come to the level of speech. Geometry falls short of the highest method of proof. . We should not try to clarify these first truths, known from the heart. Attempts to clarify these truths bring obscurity and disagreement. We are better off without them: us.5 stroying all order and light, destroy themselves and get lost in inextricable difficulty.8 We know the truth not only through our reason but also [Geometry] does not define any of these things: space, time, movement, number, equality, nor large numbers of similar thirigs, because these terms naturally designate the things which they signify for anyone who knows the language . .. and any clarification which one might wish to bring to them will bring more obscurity than instruction.9 through our heart. It is through the latter that we know first principles ... like space, time, motion, number .. it is on such knowledge, coming from the heart and instinct, that reason The passage immediately following shows the limits of philosophical discourse, in Pascal's conception: Reason cannot go beyond geometry, the model of perfect reasoning. How does geometry serve as a model for reasoning? In the Pensees we read: has to depend and base all its argument The heart feels that there are three spatial dimensions and that there is an infinite series of numbers, and reason goes on to demonstrate that there are no two square numbers of which one is double the other. Principles are felt, propositions proved, and both with For there is nothing weaker than the discourse of those who wish to define these primitive words. What necessity is there for explaining the word "man?" What advantage did Plato think he was offering us in saying that man is a featherless certainty though by different means. (110) biped? As if the idea which I have naturally and which I can- Pascal speaks of knowledge we have through the heart as sentiment (751), from sentir, "to feel," "to sense." The connection is more than verbal. Through the heart we have knowledge that is certain and cannot be doubted but, like our knowledge of "green" or "soft," cannot be expressed. Geometrical reasoning is perfect because it begins in the knowledge of the heart: Geometry only sustains things that are clear and unchanging through natural reason. That is why geometry is perfectly true, since nature supports it where reasoning fails. This order, the most perfect on the human level, consists not in defining everything or demonstrating nothing, but in remaining on the middle ground of not defining things that are clear and understood by all men, and of not defining all others, of not proving what is known by all men, of demonstrating all others. Like Pascal's favorite theologian, St. Augustine, we know what time is as long as we do not try to say what it is. We know what time is because our heart tells us what it is. When we try to clarify what is already clear in its own way, we only add confusion. Nothing that we know is clearer to us than time or number. Time and number are examples of first known truths, which cannot be clarified: Geometry, when it has arrived at the first known truths, stops there and asks that they be granted, since it has nothing more clear from which to prove them.? The first known truths are geometry's strength and its weakness. They are its strength because they give geometry a universally agreed starting point. They are its weak- 48 not express were not more exact and more sure than the one he has given me in his useless and even ridiculous example, since a man does not lose his humanity by losing his two legs and a capon does not gain humanity by having its feathers removed. 10 In a moment of euphoria, Pascal said that to be a geometer is the most beautiful profession in the world. Geometry, however, cannot define its starting points. Pascal exalts geometry at the same time that he casts doubt on other inquiries that attempt to define their starting points. Geometry is the best thing man can do on his own. In contrast, Plato believed that philosophy should begin with the study of "primitive words" such as space, time, and equality. He urged apprentice philosophers to start by inquiring into the greatness, the smallness, and the equality of their fingers. Just as when he held that the true good could only be found in faith, Pascal by refusing to inquire into the nature of space, time, and equality rejects much of the work of philosophers before and after him. But there is a more serious obstacle to achieving a full grasp of the world through geometry. In its three branches ~movement, number, and space-geometry lies between the infinitely great and the infinitely small: Consequently . .. [the three branches] are all contained between nothingness and the infinitely great . .. and they are infinitely removed from either of these extremes. 11 Man is not to conceive of these two infinities but to admire them. Their contemplation will keep man from making any rash statements about the whole of the universe or the combination of its parts. The world is a sphere whose center is everywhere and whose circumference is WINTER 1982 �nowhere. Our discourse can start with the inexpressible data of the heart, but these do not correspond to any starting point in the universe. Worrying ab,aut whether Copernicus is right makes no sense. We will never have a sense of the whole, we can have no hope of reaching an end, a limit. We must remain in an unpretentious middleness. At no stage of our intellectual journey are we any further along than when we started. Descartes is right in thinking that things are put together out of matter and motion, but when he hopes to construct in thought a world so like the one God made that one cannot tell the difference between the two, the two infinites will mock him. Descartes useless and uncertain. (887) Because they failed to contemplate these two infinities, men have rashly undertaken to probe into nature as if there were some proportion between themselves and her. (199) We have no starting point, no fulcrum for the lever that is supposed to move the world: the infinities " ... meet in God and in God alone." Geometry, the best of the sciences, cannot help us say where we are. Even if it could: ... we do not think the whole of . .. [geometry} is worth one hour of trouble. (84) Remember, though, that geometry, despite these limitations, " ... alone observes the true method, while all other discourses are by natural necessity in some sort of confusion. 12 3 Morality and Politics What does Pascal think about other forms of discourse, discourse which, because it is beyond geometry, is also beyond us? Pascal thinks there are only two domains in which men aspire to excellence: science, on the one hand, and moral~ ity and politics on the other. He thinks we cannot succeed in either domain because each demands that we obtain the unattainable, namely, a comprehensive grasp of the world. We have, in a preliminary way, seen how little Pascal thinks of our ability to see what is good. Because of this inability, we cannot establish moral order in our lives. Without faith, we have no reason to say that incest is inferior to anything else that attracts men. Without grace, selfishness is our ultimate guide. In Allanbrook's lecture, we meditated on our inability to discover what justice is and our consequent inability to establish any political order. We are living in an insane asylum, Pascal says. How could Plato or Aristotle, in the Laws or the Politics, pretend to show us just ways of living in society? They had no such intention. They were not serious when they wrote those books. They knew enough of THE ST. JOHNS REVIEW the world to see that laughing with friends is our only serious occupation: ... When [Plato and Aristotle] amused themselves by composing their Laws and Politics, they did it for fun. It was the least philosophical and least serious part of their lives: the most philosophical part was living simply and without fuss. If they wrote about politics it was as if to lay down rules for a madhouse. (533) Since we live in an insane asylum, it might be useful to ask our fellow inmates to treat one another less cruelly: One cannot ask the insane to discover justice. If we leave the matter there, you may wish to dismiss Pascal as a misanthrope. It is fairer to try once more to see things as he sees them before we bid him farewell. Let us look at a passage where he describes the real difficulties of any talk about human authority. A present-day writer on Pascal says that the following passage is a paradigm of the insuperable difficulties that Pascal thought stand in the way of not only political, but of all discourseY ... Ordinary people honor those who are highly born, the half-clever ones despise them, saying that birth is a matter of chance, not personal merit. Really clever men honor them, not for the same reason as ordinary people, but for deeper motives. Pious folk with more zeal than knowledge despise them regardless of the reason which makes clever men honor them, because they judge men in the new light of piety, but perfect Christians honor them because they are guided by a still higher light. So opinions swing back and forth, from pro to con, according to one's lights. (90) Pascal's statement here is anti-Cartesian. Descartes held that if we could not persuade others of our meaning, we did not know what we were talking about. Pascal says we cannot persuade others unless they share our starting point in discourse. Not normally transmitted by one speaker to another, the starting point is given from nature, as in geometry, or by custom, or by private experi~ ence, or by faith. Anybody who does not see the wider bearing of the passage we are about to study, might dismiss it as a piece of baroque rhetoric, an example of Jansenist obsession with the Fall of Man. But Pascal means what he says, in this instance, to apply to all human discourse. For Pascal, the pattern of all knowledge about matters moral or religious is illumination from above, and no dis~ course can be successful without it. With illumination from above, lesser truths are made valid. Without it, they are misleading. Pascal has listed five successive opinions: l. Ordinary people honor those who are highly born. In an earlier pensee, he tells us the dark grounds for this honor: 49 �I am supposed not to honor a man dressed in brocade and at- tended by seven or eight lackeys. Why! He will have me thrashed if I do not bow to him. (89) Our ordinary man thinks as he does because he fears the strong arms and stout sticks of the lackeys who follow their expensively dressed master. Don Giovanni frightens Leporello into submission by reminding him that stout thugs ready to use their whips will punish his failure to obey. 2.... the half-clever ones despise them [the highly born], say· ing that birth is a matter of chance, not personal merit. Pascal himself takes this view when he asks whether sailors would allow someone to direct a ship at sea merely because he was the first-born son of some nobleman. Birth is not enough to determine the command of a ship. Why should it be accepted for the rule of a country? 3. Really clever people honor them, not for the same reason as ordinary people, but for deeper motives. Pascal tells us their motives. Reason cannot discover any universally accepted sign of legitimacy apart from custom or bring forth any laws that all men will think are just. As soon as people begin to dispute about who should rule them or whether the commands of the rulers are just, there will be the greatest political evil-civil war. A really clever man will know that we can never be sure about right or wrong and that convention only determines who rules us, president, king, parliament. The clever man will say we should leave well enough alone because things will only get worse through civil war. Protest against injustice arouses passion-and passion may lead to rioting in the streets, repression, or anarchy. 4. Pious folk with more zeal than knowledge despise them [the highly born] regardless of the reason which makes clever men honor them, because they judge men in the new light of piety. Here Pascal seems to be thinking of people who, in the enthusiasm of new converts to religion, think that one need not care about political matters or even fear civil disorder. They may be well-advised to place their hopes in heaven, but they are short-sighted in not realizing what a great evil civil war is in this life, a life that they and others must share. We should pause here to note how "opinions swing Dack and forth, from pro to con" among the four groups. Two groups say we should honor those highly born, two say we should not. The two groups who say we should honor them do not say we should do so for the same reasons. Neither do the two groups who say we should despite the high-born. Most important in all this is the extreme, perhaps insurmountable difficulty that those who hold one set of opin- 50 ions have in persuading those who hold other opinions. In abject fear of the whip, an ordinary man like Leporello does not need to be convinced to obey because of the evils of civil war. He probably will never be detached enough to think about the matter. Leporello does think for a moment how unjust it is that he should remain outside as a sentinel while his master disports indoors, but the mention of the whip makes him forget that thought. Those who fear civil war will probably riot want -fo give their reasons for enduring present evils to men like Leporello. They will also find it discouraging to argue with halfclever men who hope in the future and do not fear civil war because they have not experienced it. The new converts, who believe they have nothing to learn from others, are similarly isolated and unlikely to be able to talk to any of the others. What of the fifth opinion? 5.... but perfect Christians honor them [the high-born] because they [the perfect Christians] are guided by a still higher light. Perfect Christians share Pascal's belief that we should submit to those who hold power over us because we are thereby submitting to God. God has ordained that the unjust power of rulers should weigh upon us in punishment for original sin. The first four explanations are all consistent with the last one. If it is true, they all can be partially true as well, even if they do contradict one another. Rulers do have the power to frighten and punish us. We are in this slavish state because an angry God has left us prey to the passions of the strong because we rebelled against him. Fear belongs to a fallen nature. So does the cruelty of the powerful toward the weak. The doctrine of the Fall accounts for Leporello's fear of Don Giovanni. The doctrine of the Fall also accounts for the second explanation, which holds the highly born in contempt. Men are all equal in the state of innocence. None are by nature superior. All are subject only to God and because of him are well-disposed toward one another. Because of the Fall, however, the restraints on human behavior have been removed and the strong unfairly try to dominate the weak. Their domination is unjust in itself, but that injustice is our reward for having rebelled against the only naturally superior ruler. The second explanation is both true and incomplete. The fifth explanation confirms and completes its truth. The third explanation, that of the really clever, who fear civil war and on that account respect authority, is based on experience. It is consistent with the fifth reason, that of the perfect Christians. The fourth explanation, that of the zealous convert, though religious, is insufficient because it does not consider the crucial religious truth-that only the redeemer can redress the Fall. WINTER 1982 �The Fall and Redemption are the ~ey that resolves the conflicting opinions about authority. That key opens the understanding to whatever truth is contained in any hu· man opinions. Pascal is calling all valid discourse about moral matters-matters other than geometry-"ciphered language." The doctrine of the Fall and Redemption breaks that code. Supplied by faith, it illumines our searching just as our instinctive knowledge of number illumines our geometrical quest. This key is given by God. Those to whom he does not give it wander in the incompleteness of one of the first four partial truths. Only with the fifth explanation, that of the perfect Christians, can we preserve what validity lies in each of those explanations while avoiding their limitations, their semi-falsity. Pascal would consider this account of the incompleteness of our knowledge of a prime political matter a paradigm of our knowledge in general. All knowledge of what is important, of what is true for man and for the world, is fragmentary. _ Like the two infinities, all knowledge meets and is comprehended in and by God. Only those who see him face to face will see clearly the general truths. Goodness, justice, and happiness are revealed only dimly and in faith to those who have the key of the Fall and Redemption. Pascal uses the language of seduction when he wants to make us feel as he does about these matters. God overcomes our resistance, he says, by an overpowering delight, not by argument or proof. Pascal thinks God gives us the ability to accept enlightenment, the will to surrender, because of Christ's death for us. Not only does he not think we should look for arguments, he believes that to hope to achieve enlightenment by them is blasphemous. To obtain moral knowledge by human means would make the Cross useless. (808). To know what Pascal thinks is true, we would have to see within ourselves what he sees. By his own principles, he can only hope to point us in a direction that leads us on. He can remind us of the advantages of accepting Christian doctrine. But Pascal also thinks that God must move us to accept in order for us to yield. Short of that experience and lacking an interpretation of it that would be identical with Pascal's own, all that we can do is look at Pascal himself. Before we leave him, let me read one passage where he tells us how alone he felt in the world. Let us hear Pascal describe what must have been his state of mind before the religious experience on the night of Monday, November 23, 1654, that made him turn to God. When . .. I survey the whole universe in its dumbness and man left to himself with no light, as though lost in a corner of the universe . .. incapable of knowing anything, I am moved to terror, like a man transported in his sleep to some terrifying desert island, who wakes up quite lost and with no means of escape. Then I marvel that so wretched a state does not drive people to despair. I see other people around me . .. I ask them if they are better informed than I, and they say they are not. THE ST. JOHNS REVIEW Then these lost and wretched creatures look around and find some attractive objects to which they become addicted and attached. For my part, I have never been able to form such attachments ... (198) How consistent his language is with what must have been his feelings! Never having been able to form any attachment to people or things around him, Pascal speaks of those who have as "wretched and lost." We can see how much religious reassurance and enlightenment must have meant to him. It need not be true that Pascal always felt the way he did in this passage. "Never" may be a hyperbole justified by the depth of his revulsion for things or people he no longer admired. "Never" shows how unimportant they were to him when he wrote those words. Another sign of this solitariness is the harshness with which he speaks about love, the passion of love: A man goes to the window to see the people passing by; if I pass by, can I say that he went there to see me? No, for he is not thinking of me in particular. But what about a person who loves someone for the sake of her beauty; does he love her? No, for smallpox, which will destroy beauty without destroying the person, will put an end to his love for her. And if someone loves me for my judgement or my memory, do they love me? me, myself? Where then is this self, if it is neither in the body nor the soul? . .. we never love anyone ex- cept for borrowed qualities. (688) How much must it have meant to such a man to have felt that he knew that God cared for him, and that Christ had died for his sake. We who remain outside this experience will remain unaffected by his account. Some of us may even want to say that he is describing a delusion. There is no need to argue about the matter. Nothing could have been more important for Pascal than a revelation which, in his own words, brought him "certainty, cer- tainty, peace." From the high point of that experience he henceforth judged all else. It will be no surprise to us that he could not prove what he said, or, indeed, successfully point to it. 1. Douglas Allanbrook, ''Power and Grace," The College, January 1977. 2. All quotations from the Pensies are from the translation of A. J. Krailsheimer, New York 1966. 3. Seneca, Ep. 20.8. 4. Blaise Pascal, Oeuvres Completes, Louis Lafuma, ed., Paris 1963,348. Translations by Brother Robert Smith. 5. Pascal, Oeuvres, 349. 6. Pascal, Oeuvres, 350. 7. Pascal, Oeuvres, 351. 8. Pascal, Oeuvres, 351. 9. Pascal, Oeuvres, 350. 10. Pascal, Oeuvres, 350. 11. Pascal, Oeuvres, 352. 12. Pascal, Oeuvres, 349. 13. Louis Marin, La critique du discours, Paris 1975, 372~374. 51 �Five Translations Charles G. Bell By Victor Hugo, past eighty years old Ave, Dea: Moriturus te salutatA judith Gautier La mort et Ia beaute sont deux choses profondes Qui contiennent tant d'ombres et d'azur qu'on dirait Deux soeurs egalement terribles et fecondes Ayant Ia meme enigme et le meme secret. 0 femmes, voix, regards, cheveux noirs, tresses blondes, Brillez, je meurs! Ayez !'eclat, !'amour, l'attrait, 0 perles que Ia mer mele a ses grandes ondes, 0 lumineux oiseaux de Ia sombre foret! Judith, nos deux destins sont plus pres l'un de !'autre Qu'on ne croirait, a voir mon visage et le votre; Tout le divin ab!me appara!t dans vos yeux, Et moi, je sens le gouffre etoile dans mon arne; Nous sommes tousles deux voisins du ciel, madame, Puisque vous etes belle et puisque je suis vieux. Death and beauty are two somber loves, As deep in blue and shade as if to say: Two sisters, alike fecund and destructive, Bearing the burden of one mystery. Loves, voices, looks, tresses dark and fair, Be radiant; for I die. Hold light, warmth, solaceyou pearls the sea rolls in waves up the shore, You birds that nestle, luminous, in the forest. Judith, our destinies are nearer kin Than one might think to see your face and mine. The abyss of all opens in your eyesThe same starred gulf I harbor in my soul. We are neighbors of the sky, and for this cause, That you are beautiful and I am old. Charles Bell is a tutor at St.John's College, Santa Fe. These translations are a sequence from a forthcoming collection of poems, The Five-Chambered Heart. 52 WINTER 1982 �. Goethe: Se/ige Sehnsucht (1814) Sagt es niemand, nur den Weisen, Wei! die Menge gleich verhonet: Das Lebendige will ich preisen, Das nach Flammentod sich sehnet. In der Liebesnachte Kiihlung, Die dich zeugte, wo du zeugtest, Dberfallt dich fremde Fiihlung, Wenn die stille Kerze leuchtet. Nicht mehr bleibest du umfangen In der Finsternis Beschattung, Und dich reisset neu Verlangen Auf zu hoherer Begattung. Keine Ferne macht dich schwierig, Kommst geflogen und gebannt, Und zuletzt, des Lichts begierig, Bist du, Schmetterling, verbrannt. Und solang du das nicht hast, Dieses: Stirb und werde! Bist do nur ein triiber Gast Auf der dunklen Erde. Sacred Lust Tell the wise; the many lour, And make ignorance their shame; Say I praise the living power That hungers for a death of flame. Love-nights breed us as we breed: In the candlelighted cool, Feel the gates of dark go wide For the moulting of the soul. From its woven bed of shadows Mere enclosure falls away: Love spreads new wings to the meadows Of another mating play. Tireless, upward; spaces dwindle; Nothing hems declared desire; God is light and light will kindle, And the moth wings leap in fire. Know, until you learn to weave Each flame-dying into breath, Everywhere you haunt the grave Of the shadowed earth. THE ST. JOHNS REVIEW 53 �Petrarch (1304-74): Sonnet XI, After Laura's Death Se lamentar augelli, o verdi fronde mover soavemente a !'aura estiva, o roco mormorar di lucide onde s'ode d'una fiorita e fresca riva, Ia 'v' io seggia d' amor pensoso e scriva; lei che '1 ciel ne mostro, terra n'asconde, veggio et odo et intendo, ch' ancor viva di sl lontano a' sospir miei risponde: "Deh perche innanzi '1 tempo ti consume?" mi dice con pietate: "a che pur versi degli occhi tristi un doloroso fiume? Di me non pianger tu, che' miei dl fersi morendo eterni, e nell' eterno lume, quando mostrai di chiuder, gli occhi apersi." If birds' lament, green leaves' or tendrils' stir To the soft sighing of the air of summer, Or through the wave-wash at the petalled shore Of a clear stream, crystal's liquid murmur Sound, where I sit bowed to the forest floorHer, whom heaven showed and earth now covers, I see and hear and know, as if the power Of her live voice responded from afar: "Why do you spend yourself before your years?" She asks in pity. "Or wherefore and for whom Pour the wasting river of your tears? You must not weep for me. My life became, Dying, eternal; and to eternal light, The dark, that seemed its closure, cleared my sight." 54 WINTER 1982 �Catullus, 55-54 BC: Attack on Caesar for his favorite Mamurra (#29) Quis hoc potest uidere, quis potest pati, Nisi impudicus et uorax et aleo, Mamurram habere quod comata Gallia Habebat ante et ultima Britannia? Cinaede Romule, haec uidebis et feres? Et ille nunc superbus et superfluens Perambulabit omnium cubilia Vt albulus columbus aut Adoneus? Cinaede Romule, haec uidebis et feres? Es impudicus et uorax et aleo. Eone nomine, imperator unice, Fuisti in ultima occidentis insula, Vt ista uestra diffututa mentula Ducenties comesset aut trecenties? Quid est alid sinistra liberalitas? Parum expatrauit an parum elluatus est? Paterna prima lancinata sunt bona; Secunda praeda Pontica; inde tertia Hibera, quam scit amnis aurifer Tagus. Nunc Galliae timetur et Britanniae. Quid hunc malum fouetis? aut quid hie potest Nisi uncta deuorare patrimonia? Eone nomine urbis opulentissime Socer generque, perdidistis omnia? The man who can face this, the man who can take it, Is whored himself, a drunk, a swindler. Mamurra Laps the fat of crested Gaul and farthest Britain. Pansied Romulus, you see this thing, you take it? How he struts his way through everybody's bedroom, Like a white dove, a white-skinned soft AdonisPansied little Roman, you take it in, you bear it? You are like him then, as drunk, as whored a swindler. And was it for this, Rome's only great general, You conquered the remotest island of the West, To feed this screwed-out tool of yours, Mamurra? See him spend, twenty or thirty million? First were His own estates, then the loot of Pontus, then of SpainHear Tagus, the gold-bearing river. They say the Gauls And Britains fear him? And you love the mongrel? Both Of you, Caesar, Pompey? While he swills oil of patrimony? For this, like in-laws, father and son, You have sluiced wealth and all of the world-city. THE ST. JOHNS REVIEW 55 �SanJuan de la Cruz (1549-1591) Cancion de Ia subida del Monte CarmelaThe Ascent of Mount Carmel En una noche oscura, con ansias en amores inflamada, oh dichosa ventura! sali sin ser notada, estando ya mi casa sosegada. In the dark of night With love inflamed By luck, by chance I rose unseen From the house hushed in sleep. A escuras y segura por Ia secreta escala, disfrazada, o dichosa ventura! a escuras, en celada estando ja mi casa sosegada. Safe in the dark By a secret stair My luck, my chance And night for a veil I stole from the house of sleep. En Ia noche dichosa, en secreto, que nadie me veia, ni yo miraba cosa, sin otra luz ni gu1a, sino Ia que en el corazon ard1a. By chance of night By secret ways Unseeing and unseen No light, no guide But the flames that my heart gave- Aquesta me guiaba mas cierto que Ia luz de mediod1a, adonde me esperaba quien yo bien me sab1a, en parte donde nadie pareda. Led by those rays Surer than day I came where one waits Who is known to me In a place where none seemed to be. Oh noche, que guiaste, oh noche amable mas que el alborada, oh noche, que juntaste Amado con amada, amada en el Amado trasformada! Night that guides Purer than dawn Night that joins Lover and loved And the loved into Lover changed. En mi pecho florido, que entero para el solo se guardaba, all! qued6 dormido, yo le regalaba, y el ventalle de cedros aire daba. In my flowered heart That is only his He lay in sleep Lulled by the breeze The fanning of my cedars gave. El aire del almena, cuando ya sus cabellos esparda, en mi cuello her1a y todos mis sendidos suspend1a. Down turrets that air With hand serene As it stirred in his hair Gave my throat a wound That took all sense away. Quedeme y olvideme, el rostro recline sobre el Amado, ces6 todo, y dejeme, dejando mi cuidado entre las azucenas olvidado. I ceased, I was gone My face to his own All passed away Care and all thrown down There among the lillies where I lay. con su mano serena, 56 WINTER 1982 �The Federal Republic of Germany: Finlandization and Germanization? Anne-Marie Le Gloannec Is the Federal Republic of Germany headed for "finlandization"? Since Zbigniew Brzezinski detected neutralist leanings in West Germany nearly three years ago, the charge has often been made. On both sides of the Atlantic, analysts and politicians and West German opposition parties have followed the former National Security Adviser in asking themselves about the Federal Republic's eastward slip. The most polemical have pointed to supposed neutralization plans (the famous "Bahr Plan") and Bonn's deplorable "Atlantic coolness" as something unusual, even shocking, in a government that had supported American policy with few reservations, even in the seventies. Others, more prudent and at first loath to adopt conclusions they regarded as hasty, have nevertheless discerned the first signs of "finlandization" in the policies followed since the winter of 1979. Rather, of "self-finlandization" or "voluntary finlandization." For we are dealing in this instance not so much with neutrality imposed by the Soviet Union as with a policy deliberately chosen by Bonn to soothe an unduly touchy neighbor. Richard Lowenthal, who is thought to have conceived confuse the views of what the Christian Democratic-Socialist opposition calls the "Moscow wing" of the Social Democratic Party with those of the governing Social Democratic-Free Democratic coalition. For instance, despite his moral authority, Herbert Wehner did not speak for the SPD majority-and even less so for the governing coalition -when he called the Warsaw Pact's arms build-up defensible in the winter of 1979-80, and when even more recently he did what he could to take the Soviet intervention in Afghanistan for the reaction of a power on its guard. Wehner's controversial remarks in any case provoked opposition that reached the center of his party. Moreover, the inclinations of Helmut Schmidt's character, the makeup of the coalition, and the differences natural between party leaders and men-in-office see to it that not even the SPD itself inspires government policy. Even though the opinions of Social Democrats, snipers or not, cannot be attributed to the government wholesale, the government itself is not beyond suspicion. There is plenty of evidence in relations between Moscow, Bonn, and Washington: the West Germans' irritation with Ameri- the term ufinlandization," calls "self-finlandization" ab- can ((human rights" policy; their initial evasion of, then surd. And in any case the Berlin political scientist holds that neither term does justice to West German political reality. The Federal Republic of Germany itself denies that it wants to steer "a course between the blocs." In the spring of 1980, it should not be forgotten, Chancellor Schmidt did not succeed in hiding his annoyance at some analyses (in the Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung) that at- hesitant and limited support for, President Carter's counter reprisals after the Soviet intervention in Afghanistan; their cautiousness at plans for the neutron bomb, and later in regard to deployment of medium-range nuclear missiles; their lack of enthusiasm for the consolidation and expansion of the Atlantic alliance. Until recently, all signs seemed to indicate that in loosening its Atlantic ties, Bonn sought to forestall Soviet suspicions and objections, and tacked the readiness "to appease" and the inconsistencies of the government 1 In the past few years West German politics undeniably betrays a number of ambiguities. One must not, however, Anne-Marie Le Gloannec is on the staff of the Centre d'Etudes et de Relations internationales de la Fondation nationale des Sciences Politiques in France. This article first appeared in Commentaire 14, Summer 1981. THE ST. JOHNS REVIEW that in its wish to please Moscow, it reserved its criticisms for its American ally. The new administration in the United States does not appear about to win over Bonn completely to its views on East-West policy. We must not forget that German-American tensions have a specifically Western dimension that comes of profound differences over economic policy and the export of nuclear technology. In these two areas, pressures from 57 �Washington have caused bitterness, even exasperation, on the other side of the Atlantic. Also, German-American relations have always been susceptible to the conflicts that exist in any alliance. In our examination of present tensions and "slipping," we should avoid yielding to the il· lusion of an over-idyllic past. In the fifties and sixties the two partners entertained suspicions of each other. When Washington sought agreement with Moscow, West Ger· many feared Washington would drop it. And the American administration feared Bonn's too-close understanding with its Soviet neighbor. Are the present transatlantic misunderstandings the same as in the past-or have they changed with the change in the relative strengths of the United States and West Germany? In any event, are they great enough to justify Bonn's apparent weakmindedness towards Moscow? Does the loosening of transatlantic ties necessarily tempt West Germany to "appease" the USSR? In other words, are German-American relations and German-Soviet relations a zero-sum game? Finally, is it really a question of pusillan· imity and appeasement? Perhaps Bonn desires to play an independent role, neither too pro-American nor too antiSoviet? As Raymond Aron asked: Do the Europeans shrink from American leadership because they have come to have confidence in themselves or because the power of the Soviet Union frightens them? Or is there a third reason that subsumes the other two: the decline of America?2 Beyond Electoral Turmoil With detente in danger, the disagreements between the United States and West Germany have never appeared deeper. What might have passed a few years ago as simple disagreements over particular policies-over human rights, or the arms build-up-have now spread over the whole range of economic, military, and political relations between East and West, and after the Soviet intervention in Afghanistan have come to bear on fundamental questions: the nature of East-West relations, and more specifically the assessment of Soviet ambitions and the development of a suitable Western policy. Does the Soviet Union seek to take advantage of local instability when the occasion arises? Or does it pursue a policy of systematic expansion? Should the West pursue detente, or return to containment? Despite various shades of opinion, the Carter administration was pretty much united in its perception of a will to expand in Soviet intervention in Afghanistan. In West Germany, however, the various party leaders expressed widely differing opinions that ranged from one extreme to the other. The opposition leaders, Hans Kohl and FranzJosef Strauss, as well as the CDU's military affairs specialist Manfred Woerner, reached conclusions similar to Washington's. Herbert Wehner, as already mentioned, saw the move as a defensive measure; Willy Brandt minimized the importance of the intervention. These reactions were hardly surprising, for they came from the opposite sides of 58 the political chess board. The same cannot be said of the attitude of Chancellor Schmidt, who did not see fit to interrupt his vacation, and who in his New Year's address showed little of his usual vigor in his condemnation of the Soviet operation. A few days before had he not declared that Soviet leaders, far from being adventurers, desired peace? The nature of the Soviet intervention-surgical operation or act in a drama of expansion-raised the question: what would become of Europe? Those who adopted the hypothesis of expansion could not escape the fear that sooner rather than later Berlin, Hamburg, or Paris would suffer the fate of Kabul. A groundless fear, according to Schmidt and his minister of foreign affairs-who considered the intervention "reversible" and thereby reduced it to an anomalous case, limited in time and place. From there it needed just a step to invoke the "divisibility" of detente-a step some took, even though the FrenchGerman communique of February 1980 condemned the concept. There should be no exaggeration of the differences in understanding between Chancellor Schmidt and Strauss. Strauss denounced the Soviets' global ambitions, but nonetheless still agreed with his political rival that Moscow did not want to unleash a Third World War. Schmidt wanted detente to be divisible, but still claimed the dangers of the new balance of power in Asia or the Persian Gulf region, and, consequently, for Europe. In the chancellor's perspective, the divisibility of detente did not excuse West Germany or Europe from all action. He considered it of importance, however, not to react too harshly, especially in the resort to sanctions. The Afghan crisis, Schmidt would say in the course of 1980, did not recall Europe in 1938-39 and Hitler's expansion-but 1914 and the incapacity to master international difficulties. Such is the explanation of Germany's silence in regard to American sanctions-a policy Germany judged inappropriate and even dangerous. It was actually as if almost in regret that Chancellor Schmidt declared himself in favor of the Olympic boycott that President Carter demanded, and he contented himself with an embargo on strategic products and with symbolic declarations at the same time that he refused sanctions against the Soviet Union for its military intervention. This was a compromise between the political necessity of supporting the American protector and the fear that America would unleash the crisis. It was also a compromise between the Social Democratic Party that followed Willy Brandt in his opposition to retaliatory measures and Foreign Minister Genscher, who favored a demonstration of Atlantic solidarity. Ever ready to demonstrate its proAmericanism and to demand usacrifices," the opposition had a field day denouncing the governing coalition's recantations and ((neutralist" leanings. If one may trust certain public opinion polls, however, ~~neutralism" may respond to the wishes of a significant minority, and in some cases, a majority, of the West GerWINTER 1982 �man population. Asked whether they wished for "greater independence of the Federal Republic of Germany from the United States" or "unconditional support of American foreign policy," 49 percent of those polled answered "yes" to the first question (with 29 percent "no"), and 52 percent said "no" to the second (with 26 percent "yes"). Forty-five percent of the respondents believed that the military neutrality of both Germanies "would make a fit contribution to the maintenance of peace. " 3 The significance of these results should not be overestimated, quite apart from the debate over the reliability of the methods used by different West German polling organizations. Since the beginning of the Federal Republic, West Germans have favored a policy of neutrality. Sometimes a minority, sometimes, notably in the second half of the fifties and during the seventies, a majority. When questioned, however, not simply about the policy they would like to see Bonn follow, but about the military position they prefer for the Federal Republic, only a few declare themselves for neutrality. The most that can be said is that Social Democratic sympathizers, people under twenty, and people with advanced education, are more likely to favour neutral status than the rest of the population. 4 In the majority, West German public opinion remains as much attached to NATO as to the American military "umbrella" that it expects will protect it in the event of a Soviet threat.' To be sure, in 1980 public opinion continued to believe in the possibility of war (58%). Most Germans, however, did not believe that Moscow's resort to force in Afghanistan called into question the detente it damaged. And in 1981, most Germans favored a policy of conciliation.' All in all, the coalition's attitude seems to answer public expectations better than the opposition's. The legitimate distinction between the Social Democratic-Liberal line and the Christian Socialist opposition does not mean that lines are clearly drawn and policies consistent. Despite their disagreements over the nature of the crisis and the immediate measures to take, the government and the opposition were closer than they would have liked people to think. In contrast to Washington, no German political party, much less German public opinion, was eager to question detente. The pace of official East· West contacts slowed down in the early spring of 1980, but it soon picked up again. Strauss was not the last politician to make his appearance in Communist capitals. (Unlike the government, however, the opposition says it is ready to risk detente the better to preserve it.) Moreover, in favor, in various degrees, of resumption or pursuit of disarmament negotiations, both the governing coalition and the opposition recognize the need for strengthening NATO to restore the East-West military balance,' and for providing economic, political, and military aid to countries close to the Soviet Union (Pakistan, Turkey, and Greece; the cultivation of ties with the Islamic countries). Lastly, except for those Social Democrats who, like Willy Brandt, seem to give European solidarity first priority, both sides emphasize the importance of the GermanTHE ST. JOHNS REVIEW American alliance (even though the opposition appears to consider it more important than the government). The old divisions between the left and right wings of the Social Democratic Party have reappeared with greater force than ever in the last few months, really in the last two years, to shake the Social Democratic consensus on issues of external security. This was especially evident when Karsten Voigt, among others, appeared to question the delicate compromise that emerged from the party conference on December 1979 (the Doppelbeschluss, or double resolution). Voigt, the Social Democratic spokesman for the parliamentary commission on foreign affairs, judged early in 1980 that the lack of progress or results in the arms limitations talks mortgaged the deployment of American missiles in Europe. Social Democratic deputies also undermined the foundations of Bonn's policy towards the Atlantic alliance by opposing arms sales to Saudi Arabia and by proposing reductions in military spending. The joining of this leftist opposition with groups as diverse as the German Peace Union (DFU), close to the Communists, the churches, and the ecologists; the coordination of pacifist movements, opponents of nuclear power, and the extra-parliamentary opposition (APO) around the same issue, a sometimes violent coordination whose capacity to make a sensation does not necessarily mean it enioys a wide following-all this disturbs the balance at the heart of the SPD, without, incidentally, sparing the Liberals, (FDP), and forces the governing coalition into a weak or rigid position. Witness Helmut Schmidt's recent remarks on Soviet policy, or on the pacifism of young Germans. Much of the leadership and of public opinion, undeniably, would like, in one way or another, to see Europe as an island of peace precisely because it wishes it were one. There would then be no more worry about sanctions or rearmament; more costly decisions could be avoided. To calm oneself with the attribution of reassuring intentions to the Soviets-is that not already "finlandization" of a sort? 8 The Ostpolitik and its Fragile Gains People have outdone themselves in repeating that detente brought tangible benefits to the Germans-and until recently one could believe that the Ostpolitik bore fruit in every area. The status of West Berlin, guaranteed by the four powers in September 1971, assured that city some military and political security and, in theory, reduced the risks of a sudden Soviet seizure. With the fundamental treaty signed in October 1972, the two Germanies resumed relations pretty much broken off since the beginning of the sixties. During the seventies, several million West Germans visited East Germany each year, and several hundred thousand East Germans went to West Germany. Over fifty thousand East Germans have settled permanently in the Federal Republic. Thanks to a significant audience for West German television and the development of trade, West Germany makes its presence felt be- 59 �yond the Elbe. In negotiating the, treaty of 1972, the Social Democratic-Liberal coalition meant to maintain and strengthen the ties between the .two Germanies and thereby keep alive the idea of German nationhood. If we, however, may believe West German public opinion, that holds that the two states are growing further and further apart, and if we believe certain analysts who report the development of two distinct national consciousnesses, we are led to ask whether the coalition has really reached its goal. These measures have, in any case, improved the lot of a good many people and permitted a relative "normalization" of relations between the two Germanies. Bonn also normalized relations with other Socialist capitals. In recent years, over half a million Soviet, Rumanian, and Polish citizens of German origin have been allowed to settle in the Federal Republic; the volume of West German trade with these countries has quintupled since 1970. Chancellor Schmidt figured along with Valery Giscard d'Estaing among the preferred partners of Edward Gierek. This relative ((normalization" of relations with Eastern Europe, rather than any immediate gains, give the Ostpolitik its historical significance. By abandoning its revisionist claims and by no longer making German unity a prerequisite for detente, West Germany ceased troubling its Eastern neighbors and importuning its Western all-ies: it made itself ordinary, and thereby undid the mortgage that up to then had weighed on its foreign policy. With this added maneuvering room and with a measure of prestige won for it by its skill in negotiation-not to mention its considerable economic strength-the West German government could now make its voice heard in international councils. German participation in the Guadeloupe summit in January 1979 surprised some observers. But her presence represented the logical outcome of previous diplomatic activity. This growth in West Germany's power could not, however, obscure the fact that the gains of the Ostpolitik depended, at least in part, on the goodwill of the Soviets and their East German allies. The border incidents, the harrassment, the pin-pricks in West Berlin, during the sixties, were there to remind everybody. In spite of everything, West Germany was not a state like any other. Even without considering the 17 million East German "hostages" of the Soviet Union, the Federal Republic remains extremely vulnerable: on the front line of battle, it would be devastated in both a conventional and a nuclear war-but with all that it remains powerless to assure its own security by itself. This special characteristic and its liabilities give the Soviets a political bargaining advantage that they have not failed to exploit, when international tensions or the internal weaknesses of the Socialist camp have provoked a more rigid attitude in the Kremlin, or when Moscow hoped to divide NATO by isolating West Germany. NATO's decision of December 1979 to strengthen its theater nuclear forces in Europe, the deterioration of East-West relations after Afghanistan, and the threat of destabilization in Po- 60 land, have revivified Soviet and East German pressures and threats. The Soviets reminded the West Germans in the summer of 1980 that their territory would be the first and worst casualty in a nuclear exchange-and that American protection was not certain. Following that, the East German authorities decided to restrict severely all travel between the two countries. They also let it be known that West Berlin could suffer the consequences if Bonn changed the conditions of inter-German trade (in the event of Soviet intervention in Poland). It is hardly surprising then, that the West German leaders attempt to keep detente alive, to continue to enjoy its benefits, that they wish to slow further worsening of the international climate, since they would be among the first to suffer, or even that they censor their words or actions in anticipation of Soviet objections. Bonn, for instance, refused to respond with reprisals to East Berlin's affront after the elections. It has since, it is true, contemplated not renewing the "swing" accords-credits without interest granted to East Germany-if East Germany did not rescind its decision. Such a display of deliberate firmness was successful in 1973, when East Berlin also had decided to increase the amount of obligatory currency exchange for travellers entering East Germany. But circumstances are now different. There are grounds for fearing that, unwilling to risk detente, Bonn finds herself without recourse. In such an event, powerlessness would succeed to deliberate firmness. Everything, including the vulnerability of her economy, glaringly evident for a year now, has contributed to make West Germany either directly or indirectly susceptible to international tensions and pressures. Extremely dependent on world trade for her raw materials and energy, and for the export of her finished goods, West Germany seeks to diversify her raw material sources and her new markets. Her trade with Eastern Europe and the USSR represents a little less than 6 percent of her total foreign trade, but certain sectors and industries export a larger proportion of their production to the East: the exports of Mannesmann, and Hoescht made up almost 9 percent of their output in 1979. By 1985, 30 percent of West German imports of natural gas will come from the Soviet Union. Is there not a danger that in allowing this dependence West Germany is granting the Soviets the means to exercise pressure and influence over her? Without entering into the broader debate on the advantages of East-West trade (structural advantages for the East, sectorial advantages for the West), we should note the disagreement among experts on the threshold of independence. At the Soviet Union's and West Germany's announcement of an agreement on natural gas (whose conception had been made public at the moment Chancellor Schmidt in Moscow condemned the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan), the Americans warned West Germany against dependence on more than 30 percent of any product from any one country. In contrast, German experts set the critical threshold at 40 percent. The political dimensions of this labyrinWINTER 1982 �thine quarrel need to be remembe,ed: American objections and West German defiance. In my opinion, the danger, if there is one, lies else· where. The fear is not of Soviet pressures or threats of an embargo. Nor is it deplorable that Bonn is reluctant to enact strict economic sanctions that the business community would not hear of, and which the Christian-Democrats might not have applied with any greater vigour had they been in power. Sanctions, it turns out in retrospect, are of~ ten evaded. What is questionable is "Arms-of-Peace" thinking itself, the kind of thinking that impelled Egan Bahr' s remark that it is "necessary to institutionalize the interest in the maintenance of peace through large-scale economic projects beneficial to both parties."' Chancellor Schmidt apparently shares the same perspective, for he favors the establishment of long-term contractual economic relations between West Germany and the Soviet Union. In 1977 he even tried (in vain) to have the Bundestag solemnly ratify the Soviet-German twenty-five year commer· cia! accord. The desire to bind the Soviet Union with a network of contracts is like trying to tie Gulliver down. This is the policy of the West German government, specifically, of the Social Democratic-Liberal coalition. Instead of resorting to sanctions it prefers to take advantage of the commercial and financial ebb and flow to buy concessions and guarantees. But mutual economic ties do not necessarily guarantee the partners' political goodwill, especially the goodwill of a centralized and authoritarian regime -when Bonn risks excessive conciliatoriness because of its anxiety to protect investments or because of its respect for treaties (its rationale in the question of sanctions). West German government and business circles showed the political and economic powerlessness of this attitude during the Polish crisis. Poland's creditors felt obliged to lend her more money to save her from bankruptcy. At the same time Bonn, haunted by the memory of 1968, refrained from gestures or statements that might give the Soviets an excuse to intervene. For these two reasons Bonn found itself even less desirous and able to attach political conditions to its loans to Warsaw. 10 As in the early sixties, West Germany's Eastern policy shows no innovation. In the sixties, however, she had nothing to lose. Now, any revision might endanger the Ostpolitik's accomplishments, both the more immediate (increased human contact) and the less tangible (security and relative independence). To preserve these benefits, Bonn no longer gives priority in her dealings to peoples in· stead of governments, to "change" instead of "reconciliation." It is undoubtedly time in West Germany for a fresh debate on the ultimate goals and means of the Ostpolitik, a debate the coalition in power has up to now appeared to wish to avoid. An Actor in Search of a Role The Soviet leadership that in 1980 raised some doubts about the effectiveness of America's military umbrella, THE ST. JOHNS REVIEW knowingly touched a raw nerve in Bonn. More than once in the past Europeans have questioned American ability and willingness to deter or repel a Soviet attack-doubts more than ever justified by the progressive change in the Soviet-American military balance since the beginning of the seventies. The mutual "neutralization," to use Helmut Schmidt's word, 11 of Soviet and American strategic forces, along with Soviet conventional and nuclear superi· ority in Europe, separates the United States from Euro· pean territory more than ever before, for it is not certain that the U.S. would be willing to engage its strategic forces in the case of a limited Soviet attack on the old world. Western Europe and especially the Federal Republic of Germany, a "state on the front line" without her own nuclear capacity-and subject not only to Soviet pressures but also to Washington's goodwill-finds herself singularly exposed as long as war remains a textbook hypothesis. The decision of the NATO Council in December 1979 to deploy medium-range missiles in Europe starting in 1983 and at the same time to begin negotiations with the Soviet Union on the reduction of theater nuclear forces, will make up for Europe's military inferiority without, however, undoing her political powerlessness: the mere presence of Pershing and cruise missiles under American control will not reassure further the Europeans against the risk of American indifference; and the propaganda campaign the Soviets unleashed from the fall of 1979 to the summer of 1980 shows that they will hardly forgo the crudest sorts of intimidation. The uncertainties of the American commitment, and Washington's demonstrated relative indifference to the military balance in Europe, have led Bonn to its own initiatives to protect its interests: the call for the strengthening of European middle-range nuclear capacity, and, at the same time, for negotiations for the reduction and re· balancing of Soviet and NATO theater nuclear forces. Bonn counts on both reinforcement and negotiation, the United States tends to stress reinforcement. Is the coali· tion yielding to pacifist tendencies that hold sway inside the Social-Democratic Party? Certainly. But realistic considerations also guide it: the stationing of middle-range nuclear arms on her territory that spares West Germany neither political pressures nor destruction in the event of nuclear war, will serve as a bargaining chip for the West in the negotiations-negotiations that, thanks to Helmut Schmidt's diplomacy in Moscow in June 1980, will open without preconditions. Both the relative success of the chancellor's mission to Moscow and President Carter's suspicion beforehand that the chancellor might trade his commitments for the proposal or acceptance of a moratorium 12 served only to reinforce a sense of isolation in West Germany, a sense that it could hardly count on its American ally (not to mention the disturbing effect of the failure of the raid in April1980 to save the hostages in Tehran). Even more serious, the West Germany that doubted the authority and efficacy of American leadership, also 61 �was losing faith in American values~at least in its conception of American values. The United States no longer held a fascination for West German elites. 13 With the United States itself in the throes of self-doubt how was it to escape such disillusion? Such circumstances make it easier to understand the government's and public opinion's tardy and lukewarm show of solidarity with Washington during the winter of 1979-1980. In their criticisms of American policy and sometimes of the bases of Atlantic solidarity, the West Germans seem unobtrusively to give way to indifference to the Atlantic Alliance and to retreat upon themselves 14 Those under twenty, significantly, tend more to neutralism than their seniors. This indifference and withdrawal is no easier to reverse because concealed. Even if the new U.S. administration succeeds in the restoration of America's political and moral authority, and, at the same time, in respecting the wishes of her allies, West Germany will no longer be the model ally, Washington's right arm. As we have seen, the Ostpolitik and the changes in the international system in the seventies have combined to fashion a stronger, more independent, and more self-confident Federal Republic of Germany. Until very recently, Bonn still refused a role consonant with her power. In May 1978, Helmut Schmidt declared at the U.N., "I speak in the name of a country that is neither able nor desires to assume the role of a Great Power." Under a constant barrage of criticism for almost thirty years, called too Atlanticist or not enough, too revanchist or too accommodating toward the East, Bonn steered a middle course without making waves. Barely two years ago, however, the chancellor took to different words: he demanded heavier responsibilities and a greater role for his country. Even public opinion in West Germany conceives a powerful Federal Republic, more readily than in the past-20 percent for enormous, 47 percent for great, influence on the international scene15 All this has not kept the government, nor in all likelihood public opinion, from recognition of the limits of this influence, particularly in its relations with Eastern Europe, and of the political and moral constraints that still weigh upon its actions -limitations that Bonn and the people sometimes find irritating. In contrast to the fifties and sixties, West German leaders dare assert themselves among their allies at the same time that they exercise the greatest discretion in t!Jeir dealings with the countries of Socialist Europe-all in all a curious reversal. The contrast between confidence toward the West and timidity toward the East, the distortions that come of the combination of economic might and military weakness, the ambiguities of the Federal Republic's international role, drive the Germans to question themselves. Once the first enthusiasms faded-the enthusiasm for reconstruction under the auspices of the pax americana and the enthusiasm for a certain conception of Europe-the erosion of the myth of economic invulnerability and a certain disenchantment with Social Democracy opened the way to 62 the uncertainty and insecurity that, according to Richard Lowenthal, springs of cultural and political rootlessness. 16 The search for identity, with certain intellectuals as selfappointed scouts, compounds in Germany the malaise general in Western democracies. My analysis, if correct, should hardly occasion retrospective surprise-at least insofar as in the last ten years the Ostpolitik has encouraged inter-German contacts and rekindled the concern of West Germans for the Germans in the East. That the East German United Socialist Party's (SED) policy of ideological demarcation-Abgrenzung-with its transplantation of undesirable East German intellectuals to West Germany has revived the awareness of German identity and the search for it-that would be an irony of history. The search for identity does not, however, necessarily amount to the desire for national unity-as the declarations of Guenther Gaus, former permanent representative to East Berlin, and the public debate that followed tend to show. Strong but vulnerable, faced with equally unsatisfactory alternatives when it comes to political and military security, still afflicted with a "deficit in legitimacy" and with a loss of cultural identity, West Germany is in some sense an actor in search of a role. There is no certainty that she will find this role either in a political union of Europe that Walter Scheel and Hans-Dietrich Genscher recently did what they could to revive or in the Franco-German dimension. Based on real but limited complementarities, the Franco-German marriage rests on a double misunderstanding. West Germany, without doubt, relies more than France on the Atlantic Alliance and on the continuation of American protection. The defense of her national interests, however, which lie in Central Europe, will drive her to greater Gaullism than France. It is a paradox that a greater consciousness of her own interests and of her distinctive particularity could very well lead the Federal Republic to a certain kind of "finlandization." 17 Translated by Lisa Simeone, Philip Holt and Preston Niblack 1. See especially Fritz Ullrich Fack, "Der Nebellichtet sich," Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung, March 23, 1980, and "1st das Friedenspolitik?" FAZ, May 23, 1980. 2. Raymond Aron, "L'hegemonism sovietique: An I," Commentaire 11, Autumn 1980, 358. (translation in The St. John's Review, Summer 1981, 20). 3. Poll said to have been made in March 1980 at the request of the Chancellor. Cited with no further reference by the weekly Der Spiegel, 18, 1980, "Mit den Amerikanern nicht in den Tod." 4. I rely here on polls conducted by Emnid (especially those reported in Informationen, Emnid-Institut, 5, 1980) and by the lnstitut fur Demoskopie Allensbach (files). 5. See especially Werner Kaltefleiter, "Germans, Friendlier but Apprehensive," Public Opinion, March-May 1979, 10-12. See also Gebhard Schweigler, "Spannung und Entspannung: Reaktionen im Westen," in the excellent collection of Josef Fullenbach and Eberhard Schulz (eds.\ Entspannung am Ende (Munich 1980). Schweigler gives the following characterization of German pUblic opinion: "Because of the complexity of West German security policy, public opinion in the Federal Republic appears to hide its head in the sand in blind reliance on NATO's deterence." WINTER 1982 �6. See the Emnid poll in Der Spiegel, March 2, 1981, and the poll in Le Point 442, March 9, 1981; The International Herald Tribune, April14, 1980. 7. Even if the government, despite earlier commitments, is not prepared to devote 3 percent of its gross national p[oduct to military spending. 8. Pierre Hassner, "Western European Perceptions of the USSR," Daeddlus, Winter 1979, 114. 9. The first assessment of the Ostpolitik in Die Zeit, December 14, 1973. 10. In the winter of 1980-81 the government-more particularly, the Minister of Foreign Affairs-showed some firmness (at the heart of the common market) in dissuading the Soviet Union from intervening. 11. Cf. the lecture Helmut Schmidt gave on October 28, 1977, at the Institute of Strategic Studies in London. 12. President Carter suspected that Chancellor Schmidt, who declared himself in favor of a three-year moratorium, actually wanted to put an indefinite freeze on the deployment of tactical forces in Europe. 13. See Gunter Gillessen, "Defiziten im deutsch-amerikanischen Verhalltnis," FAZ, July 31, 1979, as well as Martin Hillenbrand, former U.S. ambassador to West Germany; "The United States and Germany" in West Gennan Foreign Policy, 1949-1979, Wolfram Hanreider ed., Boulder, Colorado, 73. See also the recent article by the Vice-President of the Bundestag, Annemarie Renger, "Das Buendnis an einer Wegmarke," FAZ, April4, 1981. 14. See the words of Guenter Grass, Sarah Kirsch, Thomas Brasch, and Peter Schneider to the Social-Democrats of Schleswig-Holstein: "Don't let the American government that since the war in Vietnam, has lost the right to launch moralizing appeals, draw you into (a policy that could lead to the destruction of all life on this planet)." Quoted in "mit den Amerikanern nicht in den Tod," Der Spiegel, 18, April 28, 1980. 15. R. Wildenmann poll, cited by Martin and Silvia Greiffenhagen, Ein schwieriges Vaterland: Zur politschen Kultur Deutschlands, Munich 1979, 315. See also Dieter Bossmann, Schueler ueber die Einheit der Nation, Frankfurt-am-Main 1978, 249. 16. Richard Lowenthal, "Incertitudes allemandes," Commentaire, 6, 979. 17. As Fritz Stern has aptly observed, "Germany in a Semi-Gaullist Europe," Foreign Affairs, Spring 1980. For a plea to anchor West Germany in the Franco-German community within a united Europe and in the Atlantic Alliance, Joseph Rovan, "De !'Ostpolitik a l'auto-neutralisation?," Politique Internationale, 10, Winter 1980-81, 85-100. Io Under a cloud, milky she stood, Garlanded, surprised by her cow Voice after love, and by his wife In a fine rage planning revenge, Skillful as Maupassant. The gadFly stung her beauty lumbering Inside bovine embarrassment To lurch through a sea she hardly Noticed, though it was named for her. A long time galloping, her flowers Withered as an old joke, she came To seed on Egypt, so arid. That good girl, transformed by the careLessly human god-his quick loveLay in the hot desert, panting Slow birth on monumental sand Where every grain seemed in the heat An eye watching her terrible And unprivate delivering. lAURENCE JOSEPHS THE ST. JOHNS REVIEW 63 �Kekkonen, the "Finlandizer" Indro Montanelli One of the few voices that rose in protest on March 12, 1940, when the government in Helsinki announced that Finland, bled dry after four months of heroic resistance, had sued Russia for armistice, was the voice of a deputy of the agrarian party. Urho Kekkonen said that Finland's sur· render turned the blood split up to then into a "useless sacrifice.'' I was not surprised. I knew him. A man of the people, son of a game warden, Kekkonen had fought as a boy un· der the flag of Mannerheim in the war of liberation from Russia in 1919. His nationalism even drove him to a bit of sympathy for fascism. He wanted war to the death, "heroic suicide." I thought that such ideas would not get him very far in the politics of a country that, abandoned by the West and overwhelmed, had to resign itself to the role of satellite of the U.S.S.R. I was much surprised, therefore, at the news in 1956 that he had succeeded Paasikivi to the presidency of the Re· public. With some worry-for I am a great friend and admirer of Finland-I asked myself how the Russians would take it. As it turned out the Russians took it so well that for twenty-five years they not only put up with the presidency of Kekkonen but urged his reelection-and now are doing all they can to delay his retirement. I do not know how Kekkonen, with his political past, won their confidence. But I cannot conceive he resorted to duplicity, because he did not have it in his character. For he had not only the shrewdness, but also the abrupt straightforwardness of a peasant. And perhaps it was just this abrupt straightforwardness that won him the respect of the arrogant victor. In 1950 Paasikivi, who knew men, entrusted him with negotiations on which the survival of Finland depended-negotiations that had failed two years before. The story goes that Stalin took to him among other reasons because of his capacity to hold his liquor, which even the Finns considered phenomenal. In any case, for the agreement he brought home, Kekkonen received the reward of the office of prime minister. From that moment Paasikivi of his own accord arranged to leave him his own office, the presidency of the Republic. Kekkonen assumed the presidency in 1956 at an espe· cially dramatic moment. The government of Finland had One of the great journalists of Europe, Indro Montanelli is editor and founder, nine years ago, of the important newspaper, Il Giornale Nuovo. This article first appeared in II Giornale Nuovo on October 16, 1981. 64 refused to allow the Soviet government to station troops in Finland, and Moscow had broken diplomatic relations with Helsinki, a move taken for a prologue to invasion. At the Kremlin Kekkonen succeeded in fixing things up. But four years later the crisis broke out again. Kekkonen showed up alone in Novosibirsk for a stormy, nine~hour exchange with Khrushchev. In Moscow there were ru· mours that they had also let loose with slaps. Questioned, Kekkonen replied only: "I was not slapped." Even if the story is not true, the fact that it was told tells quite a bit about Kekkonen's diplomacy in the face of the Russians. In the last twenty-five years Kekkonen has done his best to "finlandize" Finland. He had no other choice-and he succeeded. Finland is the only satellite of the Soviet Union where fundamental democratic liberties are respected and whose door is open to the West.* I do not think that this miracle is all Kekkonen's doing. Above all it is Finland's doing and the doing of what even Kekkonen in his youth· ful nationalistic extremism had called "the useless sacrifice." In fact nothing was more useful than that sacrifice. Because of it Finland was not erased from the political map of Europe like the three other Baltic countries, Esto· nia, Latvia, and Lithuania. In those four months of hellish winter war on the isthmus of Karelia, the Russians learned at their own expense of what stuff the Finns were made and that they could not take their subjection for granted. Just this always escapes the promoters of the "finlandiza· tion" of Europe. They forget that to finlandize themselves the Finns in twenty-five years have dared look Russian might three times in the face-in 1919, in 1939, and in 1941; that they have inflicted unforgettable defeats and losses on those unspeakable battlefields; that they sacri· ficed the best of the best of two generations. And defeated, they did not bow their heads. The victors demanded trials 11 of War criminals." Instead of suffering a Nuremberg trial, the marshall who led them against the Russians three times became president of the Republic. The Finns found only one "war criminal," Tanner, a former Social Democratic minister whom they sentenced to ten years. Upon his re· lease they reelected him deputy and president of the party. *On February 5, 1982, in the General Assembly at the United Nations, Finland along with all the free nations of Europe (except for Austria, Spain, and Turkey, who abstained, and Greece, who voted in favour) and the United States, Canada, Israel, Japan, Australia, New Zealand, and Fiji-twenty-one in all-voted against a resolution punishing Israel for the extension of jurisdiction to the Golan Heights.-LR WINTER 1982 �As for the Communists, they were and remain a minorityand outside the government. Even' the Russians trust Kekkonen more than the Communists. There is no finlandization without Finns. In other hands-for love of my country I shall not name names-it does not take much to imagine what would become of "finlandization": the rush to servileness, zeal outdoing zeal, bulgarization. According to news from Helsinki coming through Stockholm, Kekkonen, eighty years old and suffering from a stroke, is now providing-with deliberation-for his succession. I do not think there is much to worry about. For even if the finlandizer goes, Finland remains. Translated by Leo Raditsa HEPHAESTUS Thrown away, damaged, thrown down, falling Broken, limited except the hands, eyes; Only the will intact, the need braced against Those wrong legs, ugly and mechanically bad. Still godlike, inventive craftsman holding Metals in the indestructible brazier, that flame Tempering what could be tempered-not his legsBut unchangeable beauty; and seeing it, Praising it in the armor of the beautiful doomed! Of Achilles who wept for love in the pursuit of glory. Hephaestus the gifted dwarf, the talented lover Of the garb of beauty, striking gold shell To curve with his skill, grown warm Over the breast of the more fortunate hero In whose fame, in whose sulking annointment The sound of the hammer rang like bells in a dream. LAURENCE JOSEPHS THE ST. JOHNS REVIEW 65 �Mozart's Cherubino Wye Jamison Allanbrook Cherubino makes his first entrance in Le nozze di Figaro midway through the first act, as Susanna is angrily reflecting on the pretensions of her old enemy Marcellina, the Countess's blue-stocking governess, after an angry encounter with her: Va' Ia, vecchia pedante, Dottoressa arrogante! Perche hai /etta due libri, E seccato Madama in gioventu .. . ' Cherubino brings with him a literary aura of a gentler sort: while Marcellina clings to pedantry as the emblem of her superiority, lovestruck Cherubino is not learned, but a natural poet. He hands Susanna a love song which he has written, either to one woman or to all (when she asks him what to do with it, he gives her leave, "with transports of joy" as the stage directions have it, to read it to every woman in the palace 2). When she chides him for his impetuousness,3 he answers her in song. Unlike ''Voi che sapete" -Cherubino's rendition, in Act II, of his own composition, accompanied by Susanna on the Countess's guitar-the lovely "Non so pili" is not intended as a real performance. Yet it has much in common with the later aria-staged-as-love-song. Obvious similarities are their closely related key signatures C'Non so pill" in Eb major, ''Voi che sapete" in Bb), their duple meters, and the prominence in them both of winds and horns. But, more significantly, in an opera whose arias are dominated by dance rhythms both pieces are clearly meant to be apprehended as sung poems, "Non so pill" as well as HVoi che sapete," even though in the first case the plot does not suggest an actual performance. Not measured gestures, but measured words seem to be the native element of Cherubino's song. This article comes from a book, The Motion of Character: Rhythmic Gesture in "Le noz:ze di Figaro" and "Don Giovanni," that the University of Chicago Press will publish in the fall of 1983. 66 Cherubino's nature unfolds gradually in the course of the first two acts. A page in Almaviva's castle and probably the Countess's godchild,' at first he seems just a minor character, a member of a detachable subplot. Yet he ultimately acquires transcendent importance as a touchstone for all the other characters in the opera. The three principle occasions one has for observing him in the first two acts are these two solo arias and, strangely enough, a scene in which he himself is entirely mute-his romp with Figaro at the end of Act I, "Non pili andrai," where Figaro playfully initiates the boy into the joys of war. When Cherubino's "second nature" is made explicit, it becomes clear that this brilliant march aria is actually a hymn to the young page, to his figure and to his powers. But it is necessary first to examine Cherubino's literary idiom: to establish that it is indeed literary, in HNon so pill" especially, and to discover what its precise resonances are. "Non so pili" is divided into two sections. The text of the first half of the aria consists of two stanzas each containing three ten-syllable lines, and a fourth with nine syllables: Non so piu cosa son, cosa faccio . . . Or di fuoco, ora sono di ghiaccio . . . Ogni donna cangiar di colore, Ogni donna mi fa palpitar. Solo ai nomi d'amor, di diletto Mi si turba, mi s'altera if petto, E a par/are mi sforza d'amore Un desio ch 'io non posso spiegar/5 In rhyme scheme the two stanzas are united by end rhyme-aabc, ddbc. The first three lines of each stanza have f~minine rhymes, but the c rhyme (palpitar, spiegar) is masculine. Mozart sets the poem in a quick alia breve (2/2) with a single bass note "plucked" on every beat while the other strings 11 Strum" an accompaniment-the WINTER 1982 �orchestra is a stand-in for the performer's guitar. Traditionally in popular musical settings pf Italian poetry the metrical foot (anapests here) established the basic rhythm of each member, while the number of syllables dictated the primary and secondary stresses and the cadence;6 the same principle seems to be in operation here. A rhythmic germ with an anapestic shape is repeated three times in each line, with a secondary stress on the third syllable and a primary stress and cadence on the ninth. Each of the first three lines closes with a feminine ending JJ/JDJOjJJ but the anapest is preserved in the fourth for a masculine ending and thus a full stop. In order to direct attention to its integrity as a unit line of a poem, each line is carefully set off from the next by a quarter note rest: 7 / '~:p f f Example l Furthermore, all repetitions are of)"hole lines, and not of single words or phrases abstracted from their lines, as would frequently occur in most arias. All these elements work together toward the apprehension of the regular poetic rhythms of the aria. But there is a musical problem with a series of lines or a series of stanzas: "one thing after another" militates against the dramatic curve of a piece which gives it conviction of a beginning, middle, and end. In a poem read aloud, meaning, and to a lesser extent rhythmic variations, provide a sense of crisis and resolution where it is wanted (as it is not always in a lyric poem). But in an operatic aria, particularly in Classic music where climax always has to do with the dramatization of a departure from and return to a certain harmonic place, a series of lines does not make a period, nor a series of stanzas a fully shaped whole.; Mpzart always has to alter the line and verse forms slightly to provide the contractions in .the material, the critical imbalance which creates the demand for balance-regularity- to return. To shape the first stanza into a period, Mozart works an augmentation, with syncopation, on the anapes_tic line: original phrase: in augmentation: with syncopation: n IJ n J Jl IJ J J IJ J J ]J J J IJ J J ]JJ J fJ J..l']J This transmutation of the regular anapests permits a sense of closure at stanza's end while still carrying a suggestion of the poetic meter of the verse. The second stanza raises the problem of the shaping of the larger-scale formal elements of the aria. The usual THE ST. JOHNS REVIEW plan of an aria in Classic music begins with a statement of the home key and then modulates to the key a fifth above it, the dominant (this corresponds to the conventional term ((exposition" of a "sonata form"). It then moves back to the home key, or tonic, either directly or after a motion through a few other keys in order to diffuse the power of the dominant. This motion through foreign keys (the "development" of a sonata form) I call the X-section.8 Mozart decides to locate the rhythmic crisis of "Non so piu" early, in the move to the dominant, and creates it by first exaggerating regularity, then breaching it. He sets the first two lines of the new stanza carefully as lines of poetry, but in a somewhat different manner than before: the short syllables of the head anapest are lengthened to occupy an entire measure, a metrical adjustment which doubles the breathing space between unit lines (two beats instead of one), and results in leisurely-musically uncompellingphrases of 3 + 3: IJ. Jli n J n !J J 3 ~IJ.JIJ JJJ OIJJ 3>1 These relaxed phrases, however, create a launching pad for the motion to the second key area, a motion which is paralleled by a transformation of the poetic diction which is charming and dramatically apt. His words about the movements of his own passion move Cherubino out of the measured artifice of his verse to sing in a more direct and passionate style. The three-measure phrases quicken to urgent and breathless two-measure units,9 the harmony, also quickening, darkens to a diminished seventh chord on the word desio ("desire"), 10 and desio is itself repeated a fourth higher as the Eli slips down to an Eb and the beginning of a strong Bb cadential formula: '" ]f, r' x• Example 2 The repetition of the word desio is governed by an exclusively musical necessity: for the first time in the aria a single word is repeated, lifted from its unit length of poetry, and it weakens the illusion that the singer is performing a canzona. But it brings a passionate intensity to this important cadence which would be lacking if the strumming metrical regularity were retained. Thus in retrospect the introduction of the leisurely three-measure line length at the beginning of this period serves to intensify the effect of the contractions of desire at its final cadence. The great wit in this manipulation lies in Mozart's realization that after the lulling regularity of the poetic lines phrases measured purely musically-"aria-style" -would appear as the accents of true passion, rendering the final cadence on the dominant "heartfelt" and thus structurally strong. II 67 �"Non so pill" has no formal X~section, moving immedi~ ately back to Eb and a repetition of the opening period. (A detail in the bass line of that repetition is further confirmation that Mozart intended the aria to be apprehended as sung verse, as opposed to dance or declamation. At the opening the bass played only roots of chords, as if to stress the affinity of the orchestra with a "giant guitar" playing a simple chordal accompaniment. Since by the return of the tonic the poetic form is firmly established, the bass can be put to a different use; compare the following measures with the bass line of example number 1: 1'1· 51 W.'bt• 1 "I p ra II $J ~lh p jt' J sIr '- Example 3 In the return the bass has been freed from its mimetic role to add some contrapuntal interest, implying that it was under some constraint before.) The fifty-one measures ending with the repetition of the opening material represent the main body of the aria, a strophic song adapted by clever modifications to the exigencies of the key area process. The forty-nine measures which remain, an extended coda, introduce Cherubino the poet's special subject matter-the pastorale. Its text moves Jove out into the country: Par!o d'amor veg!iando, Parlo d'amor sognando: A!l'acque, a!l'ombre, ai manti, Ai /ion; al!'erbe, ai fonti, A!l'eco, a!l'arta, ai venti Che if suon de' vani accenti Portano via con se." The second time through, the text is set to a musette with tonic pedal point, Cherubino and the violins taking the skirl (ms. 72-80): Example 4 The pastoral affect, which comes to dominate the opera in its last two acts, makes a modest entrance here. Cherubino, the young court page, would surely have read or heard some pastoral poetry. Here he mimics his models, naively imitating Tasso, perhaps, or another Italian poet of the pastoral mode. Yet the literary reference, and its support in Mozart's canzona-like setting of the text, are not merely for the sake of a convincing characterization of the youthful poet. In "Voi che sapete" the literary frame broadens to include Dante, and Cherubino's donne, by then no longer the vague generality "Women" but clearly 68 Susanna and the Countess, will receive from him homage of a more profound sort. In "Non so piu" the tremulous youth who, if no one else will listen, tells his love to himself," becomes a creature in his own pastoral landscape; the poet is rightly not quite at home within the narrow bounds of Almaviva's castle. Cherubino sings the canzona of his own composition early in Act II, at the behest of Susanna, who is anxious to comfort the Countess after some tactless words of Figaro's have left her sad and distracted. Furious at the Count, Figaro speaks with cruel banter to the Countess about the Count's attempts to seduce Susanna. He exits after having enjoined the two women to help him in a plot to humiliate the Count which may involve new dangers and humiliations for the Countess, for to set it in motion the Count will receive an anonymous note about an assignation which the Countess has supposedly made with a lover. To draw her mistress's attention away from her troubles, Susanna suggests that Cherubino perform his composition; the diversion is a welcome one, for Cheru~ bino wants to pay court to the Countess and the Countess to put her unfaithful husband from her mind. Susanna indulges them both in a moment of loveplay, her indulgence in itself an act of Jove. The loveplay must, however, be merely an innocent tableau. It is crucial to da Ponte's and Mozart's conception of their story that the relationship between Cherubino and the Countess be treated less suggestively than it was in Beaumarchais's original. They took pains to eliminate certain passages from Le mariage de Figaro which suggested more than a delicate flirtation between the two. Whereas in Le mariage the Countess often seems to be hesitating between two lovers, in the opera Cherubino is a pet, and never a real source of temptation. In Act II, scene iii, of the play the Countess excitedly prepares herself for Cherubino's arrival as one would for a lover. Da Ponte in the corresponding scene (the recitative before this aria) has her instead sadly lament the improprietous conversations Cherubino overheard when he hid in the chair in Act I. He omits a scene from the Beaumarchais (IV, viii) between the Countess and the Count in which the Countess expresses surprising anguish over the departure of Cherubino from the castle. The text of "Voi che sapete" is another of da Ponte's interpolations. In Le mariage Cherubino sings, to the tune "Malbroug s' en va't'en guerre," a ballad-like poem about a particular lad's intense devotion to his godmother. Da Ponte's text, on the other hand, is conventional and impersonal, addressed not to one donna, but to the collective donne: Voi che sapete Che cosa e amor, Donne, vedete S'io l'ho ne! cor. 14 WINTER 1982 �The change is a material one: it is important to Mozart's conception of Cherubino's role in the opera that he be more "in love with love" than with any particular object of his desires. Again, as in "Non so pili/' the text is plainly a poem, consisting of seven four-line stanzas with abab rhyme schemes: 2. Quello ch'io provo f::i ridiro; E per me nuovo, Capir no! so. 5. Ricerco un bene 3. Sento un affetto 6. Sospiro e gemo Pien di desir Ch'ora e diletto, Ch'ora e martir. Senza vo!er, Palpito e tremo Senza saper, 4. Ge!o, e poi sen to L'alma avvampar, E in un momenta Torno a gelar. Fuori dime, Non so chi'/ tiene, Non so cos'e. 7. Non trovo pace nario had a characteristic stress on the fourth syllable, and was often set as a galliard: IJ J J IJ J I .16 Mozart's musical line reflects the same stress, although not the galliard's triple rhythms: These two measures constitute a unit length, corresponding to one line of poetry, which will be deployed in various multiples as the aria progresses. The first verbal stanza-and first period-consists of four of these lengths (eight measures), brought to closure by a four-measure cadential phrase (ms. 17-20). The first two measures of this phrase are poetically anomalous, smoothing over the quinario rhythms to provide a rhythmic and melodic climax which drives home the cadence, and its second two measures are a rhythmic rhyme with the second of the unit lengths: Notte ne di: Ma pur mi piace Languir cos/. 15 Its sentiments are pure Cherubino. Again, as in "Non so pili/' Mozart must set the poem as a convincing song, unw derlining its literary origin. Furthermore, since in "Voi che sapete" opera's great artifice and the reality are oneCherubino is actually meant to be singing-the stanzaic nature of the piece must be more than just a suggestion. Yet a straight strophic construction with the same music repeated seven times will be monotonous, while the usual key-area plan is too dramatic, obscuring by its spirited curve the necessary poetic element of formal repetition. Mozart solves the problem in much the same way as he did in "Non so piil," combining the key-area plan with outlines of stanzas asserted by attention to the configurations of Italian metrics. In "Voi che sapete," however, the solution is even more of a triumph. Neither element is submerged at the appearance of the other, and Mozart's attention to the detail of the text is exquisite. In 2/4 meter, Andante, "Voi che sapete" opens with a gesture which could in theory be a slow contredanse: But the stately harmonic rhythm of the opening, underlined by the plucking of Susanna's guitar (pizzicati in all the strings), militates against the usual rhythmic excitement and compression of a key-area dance form. Cheru· bino's music is ingenuous and leisurely, lacking the urgency of dance. Clearly at the outset the principles of syllable count and of the integrity of a unit line of poetry set the limits. "Voi che sapete" uses the five-syllable line or quinario (the second and fourth lines of each stanza are quinarios with the fifth syllable verbally but not musically mute-it is sounded in the orchestral introduction). QuiTHE ST. JOHNS REVIEW In the truncated orchestral introduction this cadential phrase serves as a neat consequent member for two unit lengths: I~'" ~~:;- ,~~~ &1 1Ipr1IrIJI11 r 'I Q' f3 •Iiii' iJrl r jj1i It rt zj , anl.u.At..f J t c.tnJ'<!flt"'"f- I Example 5 Once one knows the aria, however, the consequent sounds tacked on: it is clear that the introduction is a compression and that the proper mode of the aria is the expansive spinning-out of poetic stanzas rather than the antecedent-consequent symmetries of dance. After the first period the consequent will be withheld until the two crucial moments of closure which remain-the end of the "exposition" and the final cadence of the aria. All the other stanzas will be left open-ended, "poetically," rather than "musically" conceived. The second poetic stanza (ms. 21-28) moves to the dominant of the dominant, F major, preserving the rhythm of the preceding stanza's first eight measures except for a few small variations. The modulation introduces the first dark harmony of the piece, a d-minor triad, aptly on the word nuovo ("new") for a nice poetic touch. The third poetic stanza opens in F major, the proper key of the sec· ond key area. Once the dominant has been achieved, all that is lacking is the characteristic confirmation of the new harmonic place. This stanza, like the second consisting of eight measures modelled on measures 9-16, only postpones confirmation. Each four-measure member ends on the dominant of F major, and the interest of the 69 �stanza is in a madrigalistic touch-a pretty painting of the contrast between diletto and martir ("pleasure" and "torment"): diletto receives an ornamental division, while Cherubino's warblings turn dark ori the word martn (an f-minor chord and an augmented sixth), as the pretty youth sings prettily of the pangs of love: ~ ~ "' Cl.'o#I'JI. ~ .11- kf·fto ..1_1_ 'F ;r' :I- !-Jl ~ ~ j•, J,l·-~-~ J .L ""t- *· \r Example 6 The conventional pathos of the turn is delicately comic. The next stanza constitutes one of the critical moments in the juggling of musical and poetic priorities, the problem being how to bring the second key area to an emphatic close while preserving a sense of the repetition natural to a strophic song. At this moment in "Non so piu" Mozart breached poetic regularities, having first rather exaggerated them. Here he takes the opposite tack, violating a firmly established principle of the key-area plan by closing the exposition in an alien key. At the outset of the new stanza (m. 37) the bottom of the C-major triad (V of F) drops out: The X-section begins with a harmonic move toG minor and a new stanza-the fifth one-in rhythm essentially resembling the second and third: In ''\nnlJ. \ • Jfl ffflh nn !D Jn ' J n n J, J n !H J lffl .fff'lll J ; J n Jm J J n J J n J ; J n n J~ J> ms. 21-28 ms. 29-36 ms. 45-52 Again the text is apt for the harmonic motion, speaking of Cherubino's search for a good outside of himself, the nature and whereabouts of which he does not know. G minor is conventionally "outside" the place just abandoned, and the modulation to it is open-ended,_ "searching" (passing through G as V of C ~nd then backmg up to a G tonic through an augmented stxth to D). But the ftrm harmonic cadence at the end of the stanza (stanzas 2 and 3 both ended on a dominant, not a tonic) gives the lie to the charmingly melodramatic words of Cherubino's quest, settling gently back in a harmonic place and reasserting by its sing-song rhythmic rhyme the frame of the poem. In "Non so piu" Mozart disturbed the regular poetic rhythm during the move to the dominant, balancing that gesture against the return and expansive pastoral coda. The balance is different in "Voi che sapete:" the rhythmic crisis helps to weight the eighteen measures of thereturn against the forty-four measures of "exposition." Now for the first time the repetitive trochees IJnJJJI - "I_., Example 7 The entire stanza is set in Ab major, a key with a remote and cool relation to the tonality of the aria. The strange modulation is suited to the text-Cherubino's description of the fire and ice of infatuation-and rationalized by the repetition of the four-measure consequent which closed the first period: it makes here a solid rhythmic rhyme back to that cadence in order to counterbalance the harmonic aberration. Thus by a brilliant manipulation of the elements which he set up as "musical" and "poetic" premises at the beginning of the aria, Mozart has managed a convincing close to the second key area without at all abandoning metrics. The strange key (a side-slipping modulation instead of the usual drama of the move up to the dominant) and the eight-measure rhythmic rhyme-yet another stanza-are unconventionally undramatic. (Literal end rhyme between the first and second key areas is unusual, since the dramatic point of the new key area is the movement to the new harmonic place.) Yet the fourmeasure consequent-marked as having a umusical" function because it diverges just enough from the regular strophic rhythms to act as a closing gesture-can still signal forcefully the end of a major formal section. Thus the second key area of the canzona is dramatic in asserting an essentially undramatic gesture-the rhythmic repetitions of verse. 70 and the constant four-measure units lose their hold. Urgent and breathless sixteenth notes with an iambic stress~ffliR J' 'ffllh• fflifl J' nfl'ljl' ... - I .. -1"' - I "'-/ begin a long-arched nine-measure phrase which culminates on the dominant (m. 61). Five of these iambic phrases ornament a chromatic scale in the bass which overshoots the dominant by one note. A four-measure trochaic unit length emerges from the iambs and the phrase backs down to F, the dominant of Bb, ending in a harmonic and rhythmic rhyme with stanzas 2 and 3. The text is appropriately breathless; for the first time two stanzas constitute one sentence, and the antitheses pile up to a climax; "I sigh and moan without wanting to, I quiver and tremble without knowing it, I find no peace night or day, and yet it pleases me to languish this way." These two stanzas of text are crammed into the nine measures of music. The rhyme, which provides a mimetic pause on languir (vii' of V, m. 60) restrains their breathy passion; / .. ..... ~ /1""*""~ .. : "' r· e* ,..f-k ~ J,: Jo.'f p«r ,.; .. .. " .,. ,,,_ .,-k (1- " ~ Example 8 WINTER 1982 �Cherubino seems for a moment to step outside his formal song, overwhelmed with emotion. Yet his outburst does not violate the studied dramatic effects of a charming !tal· ian song, since the end rhyme once again asserts the frame of the poem. The piece plays itself out in a return to the tonic and to the first stanza of text -a final rhyme both of key area and of canzona. The four·measure conse· quent makes its third and fourth appearances to provide the rhetoric of cadence. Cherubino is indeed a strange invention; some specta· tors find him repellent, others merely silly. Certainly da Ponte and Mozart went out of their way to underline his mixed nature. A young and blushing girl, dressed as a boy, tremulously singing the cliches of passion with a cool and vibrato.free voice-the creature before us must be very special. One expects him to dance-the established rhyth· mic idiom of the opera-and his dance turns to song. His conventionally melodramatic gestures-the chromatic turn on the word martir for example-suggest a moonstruck adolescent, yet suddenly his song turns to a cool and sub· tie Ab major, a strange and otherworldly place, laid out but never explored. Early adolescence is a peculiarly amor· phous time of life, when youth is androgynous and uncle· limited-unsure of what it is or what to expect from the people around it. Cherubino knows of himself only that he does not know himself, and he is strikingly undiscrimi· nating in his relationships. "I no longer know what I am, what I do," he confesses; "every woman makes me blush, makes me tremble." The decision to compose the role for a young woman did more than simply ensure a convincing portrait of adolescence, however. It kept Cherubino from being particularized and "embodied," located in a real place and time like the other characters in the opera. He is the only character who is "placeless," not generated and defined by the manners of a particular social world (which is one reason for his failure, when left to himself, to dance, for affecting a particular social dance gesture must mark him as a member of a particular class). More precisely, he off triumphantly, accompanied by an entire military band which Figaro has summoned up from nowhere. "Non pili andrai" is an exuberant romp for the trio (Susanna is on stage, although she does not sing), and a coming·of·age for a dreamy adolescent engineered by his affectionate but realistic "older brother," Figaro. The aria is cast in rondo form. In its main section and first episode Figaro describes Cherubino as he is now and in the other sections as he will be on the field of battle, both in a comically exaggerated style. Of Cherubino now Figaro says: Non piu andrai, farfallone amoroso, Notte e giomo d'intomo girando, Delle belle turbando il riposo, Narcisetto, Adoncino d'amor. Non piu avrai questi bei pennacchini, Que/ cappello leggero e galante, Quella chioma, quell'aria brillante, Que/ vermiglio, donnesco color." The music to which the first stanza is set is a C·major march in 4/4 time with a dotted upbeat. Its opening mo· tive consists almost exclusively of C·major triads, with a rousing military fanfare to the words "disturbing the beauties' beauty·sleep," a musical mixed metaphor which becomes a substantive trope both in the aria and in the opera. Here the mixture is one of amorous language and military music, whereas in the first episode of the rondo (ms. l5ff.) two musical styles mingle: amorous music in· sinuates itself into the martial ambiance. Describing Cherubino's appearance in a gently mocking idiom, Fig· aro alternates a gavotte rhythm with the orchestra's march: Viol,.,. II /1'-.. is "out of place/' for he is not in his proper home and his genealogy is left unclear. There is, however, one sympa· thetic portrait of Cherubino in Le nozze di Figaro which may help to make sense of his changeling natureFigaro's description of the boy in his aria at the end of the i>•'.ta.· .,. ...;1\Wii bo: }"'........~- R,..,JJ ltJJ p t~ d.;. ,.,.·, I I T Example 9 first act, his "battle song," "Non pill andrai." Following the Count's announcement that Cherubino must leave the castle, Figaro, fond of the page and amused at-some would say jealous of-his adolescent love pangs, wants to sweeten the bitterness of his banishment from his amorous playground. He sings for Cherubino an aria containing consolation, paternal advice, and encourage- ment, interlarded with affectionate jibes at the boy's youth and cynical comment on the nature of that glorious endeavor, war. Since Figaro is always actor and illusionist, Cherubino can't simply walk off to war; he must march THE ST. JOHNS REVIEW A little Adonis on his way to battle deserves a mixture of erotic and military gestures; the march and the coy gavotte with its pastoral and amorous connotations are a wholly appropriate conjunction here, and Figaro revels in them. The brief gavotte dissolves into a dominant pedal, which calls back the original march theme (m. 31). Figaro's fancy is afire: after repeating the march he launches an enor· mously expanded episode (ms. 43ff.)-the description of Cherubino at the front-returning to the same dominant pedal and bedroom march (m. 78) and adding a coda. Orig· 71 �inally the march gesture, found p~incipally in the strings, was merely the orchestral accompaniment; now it becomes a presence on stage, brought to life as a real military march. Mozart calls on the full colors of the orchestra: strings alternate with winds and brass, including trumpets, and the tympani sound for the first time. Figaro, no longer singing a human vocal line, imitates a trumpet voicing battle calls: Example lO In measure 61 the strings drop out entirely and a full military band plays a new march, suitable for the field and not at all singable. In the coda this field march returns, and the stage directions read "Partono tutti alia militare;" 18 in this playful aria about playing the imaginative has drawn playfully near to the real, with the help of the "realistic" rhythms and colors of music. Figaro's description of Cherubino goes a long way toward explaining some of the paradoxes which surround him. There is much about the "little Cherub" which evokes another moonstruck child, an antique deity-the figure of Eros-Cupid. The imagery of the libretto of Le nozze di Figaro, thoroughly pastoral, is also frequently classical. Much of this language centers around Cherubino himself; even Basilio calls him "Cherubino, Cherubin d'amore," hinting at the connection with Eros, and to Figaro in this aria he is a "little Narcisetto, little Adonis of love." The classical and the pastoral were for the eighteenth century two genres inextricably mixed. The shepherd-lovers of late eighteenth-century pastoral pieces are inevitably given classical-sounding names, often drawn directly from the pastoral poetry of Theocritus and Virgil; they are distant descendants of that tradition. At the end of the opera Figaro is moved to draw the connection himself: just after Susanna sings her beautiful pastorale, "Deh, vieni," musings on the theme of the correspondence between the twilight night and the state of a lover's soul (and meant to tease Figaro for the absurdity of his distrust of her), he is drawn, coming to interrupt her purported rendezvous, ironically to style himself as Vulcan, and Susanna and the unknown lover as Venus and Mars. The pastoral diction and musette of "Non so pili" place Cherubino squarely in the Arcadian tradition; as Eros he presides over the couples in the opera-the indigenous deity of pastoral love. The pastoral Eros of Le nozze di Figaro is very different from whatever Eros presides, for example, in Don Giovanni. There Eros wounds, and often disastrously; he strikes Donna Elvira just as Virgil's Cupid cunningly pierced the breast of Dido with a fatal love for Aeneas. In Figaro, on the other hand, Eros is love through his very vulnerability. In his openness to all love and love for all, he 72 touches Susanna, Figaro, and the Countess, and makes the Count suspicious and edgy, although Almaviva is plainly never quite sure why he should distrust the young page. The Count ought to worry less about the possibility of Cherubino seducing the Countess and more about the efficacy of Cherubino's selfless brand of love, which Almaviva is incapable of comprehending. In the dogma of Cherubino's eros, being moved by someone is equally as important as one's own su<;cess in moving the other toward oneself. Cherubino celebrates passion in the strict sense of the word-the joys and pains of suffering the object of one's affections to move one. When in the finale of the second act the Count gasps out "Rosina" (II, 15, 229230), he is beginning to learn about this "being affected." Cherubino's relationships with Susanna, the Countess, and Figaro reveal the many facets of his special "affection." One erotic thread runs through them all: an aliveness to the physical qualities of the beloved-his walk, his gestures, the sound of his voice-so that merely glancing at the beloved gives one an involuntary start. Cherubino presides over many relationships not explicitly erotic. He is fond of Susanna, and calls her sorella ("sister"), she dresses him up like a doll, and they banter and plot like brother and sister. When in Act II they are caught in danger together they behave like two frightened children. Yet Susanna affectionately appreciates Cherubino's beauty; his physical presence moves her. "Che vezzo, che figura!/ Mirate il bricconcello,/Mirate quanta e bello!" 19 she cries. Cherubino's affection for the Countess is more explicitly erotic; he steals her ribbon for a magic talisman, and she is obviously fluttered by his presence. When Susanna admires him the Countess turns away abruptly, snapping "Quante buffonerie!"20 as though to remind herself to keep her distance from the charming boy. Rosina is not a middleaged matron, but a young girl recently married and suffering from the inattention of a philandering husband. But, as I have already pointed out, Mozart and da Ponte treat the erotic side of their affection more delicately than did Beaumarchais, combining it with Cherubino's hero-worship of his handsome and benevolent godmother; if anything, Cherubino's stammering when he speaks to the Countess makes her seem more matronly than she actually is. Despite his awkwardness and naivete, his constant facility for annoying, all the characters in the opera find themselves moved in some way by this absurd child. The Count's exasperation at Cherubino's ubiquity goes deeper than he realizes. When he cries "E mi fara il destino/Ritrovar questa paggio in ogni loco!"21 he is only admitting to the boy's disturbing influence on all the loves and friendships in the opera. The affection between Susanna and the Countess also patterns itself on Cherubino's eros: awakened by each other's admirable qualities, they move toward each other and toward friendship. The opera is in fact about the friendship between the two women and its possibility-how trust and affection can exist between two people who share nobility of character, but not of rank. Now it can be seen more clearly why it is fitting that WINTER 1982 �Cherubino be a poet. The androgynous Eros-Cupid, neither young nor old, male nor female, .human nor divine, sings a song which celebrates the passions which Susanna experiences gladly, the Countess perforce sadly, which the Countess is too dignified, Susanna too matter-of-fact, to express outright. The utterly conventional poetry of "Voi che sapete" from its first line suggests another, less conventional poet and a more serious intent: "Donne ch'avete intelletto d'amore"22 is the first line of Dante's sonnet sequence about the fine discipline of love, and the abstract quality of its language is a reflection of the tradition in which erotic love sets the soul on the path to higher things. Cherubino the poet is celebrating the two women themselves; the opening words of his song sweep them into his court. He identifies them as "donne che sanno che cosa e amor, che hanna intelletto d'amore."2 3 He dubs them secular Beatrices, mediums for the workings of Eros. A special aura surrounds them; comprehend- ing "che cosa e amor," they are gifted with a surpassing vision of the way things are. (The Countess, it should be pointed out, returns the compliment, in "Porgi, amor," her aria at the opening of Act II, addressing her petition there to the god of love, Cherubino-Eros.) Furthermore, by addressing the two women indiscriminately as donne, Cherubino reveals the special bond between servant and mistress; initiates, at least, can address them on equal terms. This relation fittingly comes to light reflected in the eyes of its catalyst, Cherubino d'a more. We return in a roundabout way to Figaro and "Non pili andrai." There exist various interpretations of what Figaro is up to in the aria. It may be perhaps just what it seems~Figaro's attempt to divert Cherubino from the sorrows of parting~or, as some have suggested, actually an attack on Cherubino, teasing banter meant to rub salt in the wounds, stemming from Figaro's jealousy of the boy's appeal for the ladies or from a plebeian's resentment of the aristocratic page 24 In the latter case an aside which Figaro makes to Cherubino just before the aria~"Io vo' parlati/Pria che tu parta"' 5 ~is taken as a bullying invitation to a later showdown, whispered so that Susanna can't hear. That aside, however, has a further audience~the Count and Basilio. Although many editions have them leave the stage just before the aside, in the 1786 libretto (and in the corresponding scene from Le mariage de Figaro) they do not leave, and indeed witness the whole of Figaro's performance; the scene is rarely played this way, and loses most of its significance as a result. A scrap of dialogue from the beginning of Act II, just before Cherubino sings "Voi che sa pete," clarifies the intent of the aside immediately. Figaro is expounding to the Countess the plan for the Count's humiliation, which involves dressing Cherubino as Susanna and sending him to the rendezvous with the Count. Then Figaro says to the Countess, "Il picciol Cherubino,/Per mio consiglio non ancor partito . .. " 26 He plainly wants words with the boy here in Act I not in THE ST. JOHNS REVIEW order to vent his jealousy or class resentment, but to keep Cherubino from leaving the castle, so that they can lay plans about the plot he mentions in Act II. Thus all through "Non pili andrai" Figaro is foresworn to keep Cherubino back from battle; he has no intention ofletting the Count disturb the ornamental life of the "amorous butterfly, flitting around night and day." In the course of the plot the lad will have to be disguised as a maiden, but the task takes almost no effort; already his checks have "that blushing, womanly color." By celebrating the imminent departure as if in rueful assent to it, Figaro's affectionate romp with Cherubino is meant to keep the watching Count off the scent. Yet the artful dodge has deeper overtones. If Cherubino is the presiding genius of the opera, offering a paradigm of the right way to love, the moment of romping joy must be more than a sugar-coated pill for a charming young rascal and a dodge to deceive the Count. "Non pili andrai" establishes an important relationship between Figaro and Cherubino. Least of all is Figaro teaching Cherubino; he is describing Cherubino, celebrating CheruCherubino, and enlisting Cherubino. In the first case, Cherubino's comportment on the stage will not in itself spell out his "second nature." We need the comments of another observer who will single out details which consolidate the scattered impressions generated by "Non so pili." We hear Cherubino called a "little Narcissus, little Adonis of love," have our attention drawn to his "little feathers," his "sparkling air," his "blushing, womanly color," and our impressions are confirmed; it was right that the youth reminded us of that other love child, the pagan cherub Eros. Secondly, Figaro celebrates Cherubino. Susanna and the Countess need not be embarrassed about being moved by Cherubino, even in his guise as a page; for women to amuse themselves decorously with the castle mascot is perfectly proper. Figaro must also be touched by the power of the strange youth, but to show it is for him a more delicate matter. Both Figaro and Cherubino are male, and while they are near the same age, Figaro has attained his manhood. On the other hand, Figaro may be a little jealous of Cherubino's luscious youth. Circumstances prevent their sharing the innocent playmate-friendship of Susanna and Cherubino. Later, at the end of the opera, Figaro turns away momentarily from the graces of the two women, giving in to the darker passions of jealousy and distrust. It is important that he show here that his primary attachment is to the court of Cherubino, and not to the selfish brotherhood of the Count and his satellites. Figaro will rarely reveal how Cherubino moves him; a fraternal romp in which all three join is one of the few occasions where it is possible. Figaro shows his affection for Cherubino by exercising for the boy his imaginative talents; "Non piu andrai" is a moment of uloveplay" between Cherubino and Figaro. Finally, Figaro enlists Cherubino. Figaro in his tribute to the page admits the power of Cherubino's kind of pas- 73 �sian. Only this eros will unite all the conspirators, later on even moving an unlikely ally like Marcellina over to their side (when she sees Figaro as if for the first time, and is genuinely moved by the person of her son). To arm Eros· Cupid with arrows and shield was an ancient conceit. Here in "Non pill andrai" Figaro is arming Cherubino, girding him for the struggle to come. In fact the figure of the "bedroom soldier," usually the matter of vulgar jokes, becomes in Figaro an emblem for the righteous of the opera and for the right kind of passion; the gentle Count· ess moves to a mixture of lyric and military modes in "Porgi, amor," and in the finale to Act III a ragged band of militants for Eros executes a stirring march, the uniformed Cherubino at their head, before they outmaneuver the Count once again. The gesture of the military march, taking off from Cherubino's imminent field commission, becomes a testimony to trust in the powers of human af. fection when matched against the assailing brutishness of men. "Amor vincit omnia": the lyrics of Cherubino the poet celebrate this maxim in all its delicate compulsion. l. "Go on, you old pedant, you stuck-up lady scholar; just because you once read two books, and annoyed Madame in her youth ... " (I, v, 75- 78). 2. "Leggila alia padrona,/Leggila tu medesma,/Leggila a Barbarina, a Marcellina,/Leggila ad ogni donna del palazzo!" ("Read it to my mistress, you read it to yourself, read it to Barbarina, to Marcellina, read it to every woman in the palace"). 3. "Povero Cherubin, siete voi pazzo?" ("Poor Cherubin, are you mad?"). 4. In the original of Le nozze di Figaro, Beaumarchais's Le mariage de Figaro, the Countess explains that Cherubino is related to her family and is her godchild (1, x). Da Ponte omitted the scene in which these lines occur, but the Countess is referred to as Cherubino's comare or godmother (by Susanna-!, v, 86). It was customary to take nobJe.born boys into noble households as pages. 5. "I don't know what I am, what I'm doing .... Sometimes I'm on fire, sometimes I'm all ice .... Every woman makes me blush, makes me tremble. At the mere names of love, of pleasure, I grow agitated, my heart skips a beat, and a desire which I cannot explain forces me to speak of love!" 6. See Putnam Aldrich, Rhythm in Seventeenth-Century Italian Monody New York 1966. 7. Lines three and four of the first stanza might seem to be an anomaly in an anapestic scheme because of the string of six eighth-notes with which they begin: Q-.~.,; do11·n4.. CM·11'.fr- ,1; e~-/D-r~ n1nn J JJ/JJ But the first eighth-note on the syllable don- is an appOggiatura varying the line by embellishing the all-important word donna; it does not distract from the underlying rhythm. 8. For a more detailed discussion of the reasons for substituting these terms for the more conventional ones, see Leonard G. Ratner, "Harmonic Aspects of Classic Form," Journal of the American Musicological Society 2, 1949, 159-68. 9. Measure 22, using for the first two lines the syncopation from the earlier cadence. 10. Measure 27-vii7 ofF, the new dominant. Or the Db could be regarded as a chromatic appoggiatura to a V~ of V; the effect is the same. ll. Ordinarily to register "truest" passion in the middle of an operatic aria the character moves from strictly measured music to the freer 74 rhythms of recitative. For example, in the finale to the second act of Figaro, in the midst of a spirited 4/4 interchange between the Count and the Countess, he calls her suddenly by her Christian name and she, deeply stung, answers him in a phrase of recitative which brings the rhythmic action to an abrupt halt (II, 15, 230-233). In "Non so pill" the strictly "poetic" setting is apprehended as the artifice, and the singer need not resort to declamation to register his natural voice. 12. "I speak of love when I'm awake, I speak of love when I'm dreaming: to the water, to the shadows, to the mountains, to the flowers, to the grass, to the fountains, to the echo, to the air, to the winds, which bear away with themselves the sound ofthe empty syllables" (ms. 54-91). 13. "E, se non ho chi m'oda,/Parlo d'amor con me"-the last two lines of the text of "Non so pill." 14. "Ladies, you who know what love is, see if I have it in my heart." 15. "I shall tell you again what I'm feeling; it's new for me, and I don't know how to understand it. I have a feeling full of desire; sometimes it's pleasure, sometimes torment. I'm cold, and then I feel my soul all ablaze, and in a moment I'm cold again. I'm looking for a good which is outside of me; I don't know who has it, or what it is. I sigh and moan without wanting to, I quiver and tremble without knowing it, I find no peace night or day, and yet it pleases me to languish this way." 16. Alddch, 103-133. 17. "No more, amorous butterfly, will you go flitting around night and day disturbing the beauties' beauty-sleep, you little Narcissus, little Adonis of love. No more will you have these fine little feathers, that light and rakish cap, that sparkling air, that blushing, womanly color." 18. "All exit in military style." 19. "What a bearing, what a face! Look at the little colt, see how beautiful he is!" (II, 12, 89-92). 20. "What foolishness!" (II, 12, 119). 21. "And will destiny make me find this page everywhere!" (II, viii, 8385). 22. "Ye women who comprehend love ... " 23. "Women who know what love is, who comprehend love ... " My sentence is a conflation of the opening line of the aria and the opening line of Dante's poem. 24. This suggestion is made by Siegmund Levarie (Mozart's Le nozze di Figaro: A Critical Analysis, Chicago 1952, 72), and by Frits Noske ("Social Tensions in Le nozze di Figaro," Music and Letters, January 1969, 52). Because it is important ammunition for those who see the opera as a revolutionary comedy in the tradition of its original, and not as a pastoral romance about the nature of true attachment, as it seems to me to have become, this suggestion needs refutation. It depends partly on the assumption that Figaro, while he defers to Cherubino in public, addressing him in the second person plural at the beginning of this scene ("E voi non applaudite?"), is in private insolent (he addresses Cherubino thereafter exclusively as tu). But since all Figaro's remarks except for one aside are overheard by the Count and Basilio (see above), there is actually no distinction made here between public and private. According to the original libretto, Figaro's final words to Cherubino before the aria ("Farewell, little Cherubino. How your [tuo]fate changes in a moment!") are said with feigned joy (finta gioia)-the public prevails. Furthermore, although Cherubino is probably of gentle birth, he is nevertheless a child, not in his proper home, and in a position of service; ordinary protocol will probably not apply. The issue of Cherubino's aristocracy never seems to be a live one in his relationships with Susanna and Figaro, and so tu is no more necessarily insolent than voi defers. Susanna calls Cherubino voi perhaps for the same reasons as the Countess does-to keep the attractive and amorous boy at arm's length. And Figaro's tu to Cherubino is probably affectionate, his one public voi a perfunctory attempt, before he warms to his role as fond older brother, to conceal from the Count and Basilio their relationship as friends and-as I shall show in a moment-future conspirators. 25. "I want to speak to you before you leave." 26. "Little Cherubino, who on my advice has not yet left ... " (italics mine). WINTER 1982 �The Fury of Aeneas Joe The story Homer tells in the Iliad begins with the eruption of the anger of Achilles. As the twenty-fourth book of the poem opens, that anger has reached its greatest intensity. Achilles "let fall the swelling tears, lying sometimes along his side, sometimes on his back, and now again prone on his face; then he would stand upright, and pace turning in distraction along the beach of the sea ... (At dawn,) when he had yoked running horses under the chariot he would fasten Hektor behind the chariot, so as to drag him, and draw him three times around the tomb of Menoitios' fallen son, then rest again in his shelter, and throw down the dead man and leave him to lie sprawled on his face in the dust ... So Achilleus in his fury outraged great Hektor." (24. 9-22) The wrath which has withstood the events of twenty-three books has swollen into a rage which denies Achilles sleep, food, or the cessation of his tears, a rage which breaks forth in monotonous acts of revenge which do not relieve but frustrate and provoke. Achilles now walks the circular path at the center of anger in which it is quenchless, infinite. But the Iliad is not finally the story of the victory of anger over Achilles, because Zeus has one last scheme. He arranges for Priam to visit Achilles, to stand before him risking his wrath, to ask in person for pity. Priam kills the anger of Achilles by displacing it with the grief of Achilles, which can meet and merge with the grief of Priam and come to rest in mutual comforting. Here is Homer's de~ scription of that last and least-expected turning point in the Iliad: as Priam ends his words to Achilles, saying, " 'I put my lips to the hands of the man who has killed my children,' " Homer continues, 10 So he spoke, and stirred in the other a passion of grieving for his own father. He took the old man's hand and pushed him gently away, and the A tutor at St. John's College in Annapolis, Joe Sachs delivered this lecture in Santa Fe on September 18, 1981, and in Annapolis on October 2, 1981. THE ST. JOHNS REVIEW Sachs two remembered, as Priam sat huddled at the feet of Achilleus and wept close for manslaughtering Hektor and Achilleus wept now for his own father, now again for Patroklos. The sound of their mourning moved in the house. Then when great Achilleus had taken full satisfaction in sorrow and the passion for it had gone from his mind and body, thereafter he rose from his chair, and took the old man by the hand, and set him on his feet again, in pity for the grey head and the grey beard, and spoke to him and addressed him in winged words." (24. 506-17) Book twenty-four ends with one last Homeric dawn, in which the doomed people of Troy celebrate the burial of their beloved Hector with fitting ceremonies and a glorious feast. Such was the burial of Hector, breaker of horses, only because, between his wrath and his own imminent death, Achilles rejoined the human community. The climax of the Iliad, then, is the moment when Achilles remembers his father. That moment, which pierces his heart and lets the anger drain from it, will not add a day to his life or to the survival of Troy, but it does make supportable the enormous weight of grief which has built in Achilles, in Priam, in the Trojans, and in the hearer or reader of the poem. Virgil's Aeneid is, above all else, a reply to the Iliad and Odyssey and a rejection of the kind of comfort Homer offers. I have set before you at length the moment into which Homer puts a power which counterbalances all the horror and pain of the Iliad because Virgil frames the Aeneid with two echoes of that moment. Twice in the Aeneid, in scenes of battle, the image of Aeneas' father comes into his mind. On the first occasion, Aeneas is looking at Priam, and the memory of his father stirs him to action. The scene is in Book two, but it is a flashback to the beginning of Aeneas' story, and the memory of his father marks the beginning of his undertaking of the deeds to which he has been called. On the second occasion, Aeneas has just watched a young man die whom he killed, and 75 �whose father he is about to confront. The two characters, Lausus and Mezentius, evoke memories of Hector and Priam for the reader, and in Aeneas a memory of his father which occasions a moment of understanding. This scene is in Book ten, but it is a direct preparation for the understanding of the concluding lines and action of the Aeneid. Thus the climactic moment of the Iliad is present in the first and last events in Virgil's story, and in both cases it is put in a perspective in which its power is acknowledged but its weight is lessened. In Book two of the Aeneid we watch alongside a helpless Aeneas while Achilles' one deed of comfort and kindness is desecrated by Achilles' son. Listen as this third generation speaks to the first: " 'Carry off these tidings; go and bring this message to my father, son of Peleus; and remember, let him know my sorry doings, how degenerate is Neoptolemus. Now die.' This said, he dragged him to the very altar stone, with Priam shuddering and slipping in the blood that streamed from his own son. And Pyrrhus with his left hand clutched tight the hair of Priam; his right hand drew his glistening blade, and then he buried it hilt-high in the king's side. This was the end of Priam's destinies ... Now he lies along the shore, a giant trunk, his head torn from his shoulders, as a corpse without a name." (2. 547-58) As Neoptolemus sinks back into the horror from which his father had emerged, the words "This was the end of Priam" overtake and destroy the calm of the words "Such was the burial of Hector." Aeneas can do nothing for Priam, since he watches trapped on a roof-beam of the wrecked and burning palace. But as he watches Priam die, he remembers his own father, and all his helpless loved ones whom he has left at home while he fights a useless battle to vent his rage at the conquering Greeks. It seems that the memory of his father will recall Aeneas to the deeds the ghost of Hector has asked of him: to let Troy fall, and carry himself and Troy's holy things across the sea. Like Achilles, Aeneas has been wasting himself in the effort to exact the satisfaction of revenge from his enemies, and like Achilles he is restored to himself in remembering his father. But just as we begin to expect Aeneas to return to save his father, wife, and son, and leave revenge behind, his eye lights on Helen. In that sight his father's need of him is forgotten, and a blind fury to destroy the cause of so much evil overwhelms even his capacity to keep that evil from reaching those dearest to him. As Aeneas' sword is about to fall on Helen, his goddess-mother grabs his arm. Venus sends him to save his family, after showing him that not Helen but the gods are responsible for the destruction of Troy. But the violent arresting of Aeneas' arm when it has been set in motion by the strongest longing in his heart leaves behind a feeling of frustration which is not released until the last lines of the poem. That is the beginning of the story of Aeneas' journey. Let us try to understand how it speaks to Homer. The healing of Achilles' anger is the last event in his story, and nearly the last in his life. It is enshrined forever 76 by the structure of Homer's story, which makes it the resolution of twenty-three books of tension. Achilles' story moves out of anger, through pity, to a peace in the midst of war. But does Homer's framing of that story reveal or distort? Does his emphasis convey the true weights of things? Virgil carries Homer's story beyond Homer's ending, to submerge Achilles' humanity in the brutality of his son and Hector's glorious funeral in the hideous, headless, nameless corpse of his father. But more important, Virgil appropriates the climactic moment of the Iliad to make it a fleeting mood which has no lasting effect, none in the world and none in the heart of Aeneas. The Iliad ends with a frozen picture of a pendulum at the top of its swing: the picture is beautiful but that of which it is a picture is unstable. If only the dualities in our lives could be laid to rest by our embracing of their wholesome sides, if only the death of anger could be an overcoming, once and for all, of its power over us, then the world might be a turbulent but finally a simple good place, and evil our own fault. But dead anger rises again; the self-destructive passions can be seen for what they are and still reassert their power over us. The poet Homer can show us things that make us glad, but is that seeing what we need? The anger of Aeneas recurs throughout the Aeneid, and both its ebb and its flow are destructive. One of the principal teachings of the Aeneid is that rage is ineradicable from the human heart, because its cure is worse than the disease. Let us watch as Aeneas' eyes are opened to this ugliest of truths, in Virgil's second echo of the climax of the Iliad. The worst man in the Aeneid is undoubtedly Mezentius, a tyrant who tortured his subjects for sport until they rebelled and he escaped. Thousands of those subjects unite with Aeneas in his Italian war, solely for the chance to kill Mezentius. Without any good reason, as Virgil puts it, another thousand remain loyal to Mezentius, among them his son Lausus, called breaker of horses. When Aeneas wounds Mezentius with a spearcast, Lausus, his valor awakened by his love for his father, prevents Aeneas' sword from falling, giving his companions the chance to save Mezentius and drive back Aeneas. Fury rises in Aeneas as he is once again thwarted on the point of killing a thing of evil, but as he waits in shelter for all his enemies' javelins to be thrown he calms down, and shouts at La usus to be sensible and withdraw. When Lausus insists on fighting him, a greater anger surges in Aeneas, and in that rage he kills Lausus. At whom is Aeneas angry? Can it be at Lausus, whom he has no desire to fight and for whom he has nothing but admiration? As Aeneas looks at La usus' dying face he sees the image of his own love for his own father, and gives the dead Lausus to his companions for honorable burial. It is at this moment that the transformation in the heart of Achilles resonates most strongly in the Aeneid, but Aeneas felt his pity before Lausus was dead, and would have spared him had he not been driven to a resurgence of his dead anger. To understand the killing of Lausus is, I think, to be halfway to understanding the killing of Turnus, WINTER 1982 �which would be equivalent to understanding the whole Aeneid. Let us keep trying. ' Lausus loves a father whom no one could respect. His motive is therefore pure, irrational love, with no other support. By painting Mezentius as unrelievedly, monstrously evil, Virgil makes the central choice of Lausus' life be between love and everything that makes sense. Even further, the circumstances of the battle force Lausus to measure the strength of that love, since after he has saved his father's life he could retreat honorably, and must decide whether to do so or to throw away his life. Unrestrained love and loyalty are, for Lausus, consistent only with what is wild and reckless: to attack Aeneas and die. Both Lausus and Aeneas have a long time to think about this before it happens. There is an irrational and inescapable logic at work in the scene: the better a man Lausus is the more is it necessary that he die in a bad cause, and the more fully Aeneas recognizes his goodness the more necessary is it that he kill him, and not do him the insult of refusing his self-sacrifice. The rage which supplies the motive power for the killing Aeneas has no heart to commit is a rage brought about by his recognition of the way in which both Lausus and he are trapped. Achilles and Priam, suffering the worst private grief, could draw together in mutual recognition and give each other what each needed most. Priam gave Achilles deliverance from his anger, and Achilles gave Priam the means and the time to unite with his city and his dead son in one last civic festival. In the corresponding Virgilian recognition scene, it seems that Lausus can give Aeneas nothing, and Aeneas can give Lausus only death. With the image of his own father in mind, Aeneas asks the dead Lausus, "Miserable boy, what can I give you now? What honor is worthy of your character?" (10. 825-6) He gives to the corpse the weapons in which it found its only happiness, and gives the corpse itelf back to its own people, to be mingled with the ashes and shades of its ancestors, wondering aloud if that will matter to anyone. Finally, he dedicates to La usus the only gift in his power which can solace such a miserably unhappy death: the resolve to make his own greatness such that there will be no shame in having fallen beneath it. Thus La usus has given something to Aeneas-the burden of another obligation to the dead. The Homeric comfort of the sharing in human community is not available either to Lausus or to Aeneas. Lausus, whom Virgil introduces in Book seven as a young man worthy to be happy, had the wrong father, and he cannot but be the son of his father. Aeneas likewise cannot escape being the man on whom Trojans, Italians, and gods depend to stand divided in war from Lausus, and be his killer. The Homeric world, whatever divisions may be within it, makes a whole; the Virgilian world is too full of purposes too deeply crossed to be composed, ever. Am I going too far in reading in an intensely painful but small tragic event a vision of a tragic world? Is not Virgil's theme the bringing of law to the world? Are not the tragedies of Lausus and Turnus and Camilla and Nisus and 1 THE ST. JOHNS REVIEW Euryalus and Pallas and Evander and Amata and Dido and Palinurus the events which Virgil shapes into the transformation of the world into a place in which such things will no longer happen? It is true that the bringing of the world to peace under law is the theme of the Aeneid, but we must not let anyone but Virgil tell us what Virgil thinks about that subject. We hear of it first, early in Book one, from Jupiter. He tells Venus that Aeneas' Roman descendents will be the lords of all things, without limits in time or place, that one of them, meaning Augustus, will carry his empire to the Ocean and his fame to the stars, and in doing so allow the rough ages of the world to become gentle under law. And here are Jupiter's last words: "The gruesome gates of war, with tightly welded iron plates, shall be shut fast. Within, unholy Rage shall sit on his ferocious weapons, bound behind his back by a hundred knots of brass; he shall groan horribly with bloody lips." (293-6) Forty lines devoted to triumph and glory seem to dissolve in four lines of ugliness. One's gaze is turned not outward, to a world finally free of the source of war, but to the struggling caged being confined within. The last words of this first picture of Rome are not of victory or victors but of a victim, Furor, and of the sights and sounds of his pain. Why is rage presented as a person? Why is a reader who is incapable of enjoying a description of torture made to sympathize with the cause of war? Three lines after this ghastly and troubling portrait we hear for the first time in the poem the name of Dido. One third of the poem of the founding of Rome is the story of Dido, and more than a third of its impact is carried by Virgil's presentation of her. One famous commentator has said that Virgil was "no master of the epic art" because he allowed such things as the sufferings of Dido to overwhelm his efforts to glorify Rome. Another has said that the Aeneid is the first wholly successful epic ever written, because it is the first to have the unity attained previously only in dramas, a unity evident primarily in the complete merging of the Dido story into that of the triumph of Rome. Each commentator is half-right. The Aeneid is unified, but not around the figure of Augustus; Dido is the most powerful figure in Virgil's composition, but not by accident. The theme of Rome's bringing of a new age of law to the world enters the poem, modulates to a strange sadness, and passes over into the story of Dido. Dido's story is deeper than Rome's, and illuminates it. Dido is, to begin with, in the same situation as Aeneas, and she has handled that situation so well that everything about her gives hope to Aeneas at a time when he has none. She too has been driven out of her own country and been responsible for the lives of a band of fellow-refugees. She too has had to find a new life in the strange and unknown lands of the West. She has won a place for her people by winning the respect of neighboring rulers, and under her leadership, her subjects are building the conditions of a healthy communal life: fortifications, houses, a harbor, a theater, a senate. Already built, in the center of the city, is 77 �a temple to Juno, filled with scenes of the Trojan War. The work under way is to Aeneas a vision of happiness, and the completed work feeds his soul. One of the other Trojans sees in Carthage a city with the power to impose justice on the proud and a ruler with the goodness to spare the defeated. We will hear almost the same words spoken in Book six as an exhortation to Rome. The story of Dido, smaller only in geographical scale, begins where the story of Rome aims. Dido's Phoenician Carthage, where Aeneas tells the tale of his long wanderings, is, like the Phaiakian Scheria of Alkinous and Arete, a city ruled by virtue and strong intellect. Dido herself, like Penelope, is a woman with the dignity to keep arrogant suitors at a distance. And the hospitality, the capacity to permit another to be at home in a place that is not his own, that is so beautifully depicted in the Odyssey, is enjoyed by Aeneas nowhere but in the home of Dido. In Virgil's re-casting of Homer's story of Odysseus, almost all its places and people are condensed into the story of Dido. Like the Iliad, Homer's Odyssey is a story of the recovery of human community. Its culmination is the restoration of political order to Ithaca. But Dido's story reverses the Odyssean motion from anarchy to order, from savagery to serenity. In the midst of his journey Odysseus is cursed by a one-eyed monster, a nonhuman being who lives outside all law. At the end of his stay in Carthage, Aeneas too is cursed by a being who is outside all law and community, and that monster is Dido herself. Why was Dido so successful as a ruler? I think Virgil's briefest answer can be found near the end of Book one: because her soul was in repose, because in turn her heart was out of use {resides animas desuetaque corda, I. 722). Since the death of her first husband, she tells her sister, Aeneas alone has caused her judgment to bend and her soul to totter. (4. 20-3) The empty pathways which the flame of love once burned through her have not closed or healed. The ancient flame is still within Dido, just as a living rage is still behind the gates of war which Augustus closes with force and with law. In Latin, the name of Augustus' victim and that of Dido's conqueror are the same, furor. Virgil's one brief portrait of a happy city is of Carthage under the rule of Dido for only so long as the furious love within her is out of use. In the Odyssey, political community is displayed as the natural and the only life which realizes what it is to be a human being. In the Aeneid, political life is presented as depending upon the inhuman constraint that Dido practices upon herself and Augustus exerts on the world. Carthage thrives on Didp' s serene control, and collapses into disarray when she falls in love. Many readers have seen in the fate of Dido a dangerous example which Aeneas must see and learn to avoid. Such readers see the foundations of the political life in Aeneas' rejection of her. Like an oak tree in the Alps shaken by the North wind, Aeneas suffers from love and care for Dido, but he withstands their fury. Reason holds firm against passion and duty vanquishes desire. One pities Dido, but 78 rejoices that Aeneas does not let his own pity become a morass in which the hopes of his son and of the world would be lost. But Aeneas is bound to Dido not just by his love for her, which is his to control if he can, but by the fact that he has allowed her to love him. That is not passion but choice, and to reverse it is not duty but betrayal. In the simile of the oak tree, it is Aeneas' mind which overcomes the care in his breast, but that is merely the overcoming of the last obstacle to a choice he has already made. The widespread interpretation according to which Aeneas' rejection of Dido is a victory of the rational and political over the passionate and personal does not stand up to a moment's scrutiny. He has already told Dido that he loves her less than he loves the remnants of Troy which he had been bidden to carry to Italy. (4. 340-7) His choice is personal through-and-through. And in setting out for the city he will build in Italy, Aeneas knows that he is leaving Carthage in wreckage. (4. 86-9) His choice is political through-and-through as well. Aeneas cannot choose otherwise than he does. He has gotten himself into a fix from which there is only one way out. But he cannot pretend that what he does is not a betrayal. Aeneas does not understand his destruction of Dido as he will later understand his destruction of Lausus, but we need not be fooled. But if Aeneas' abandonment of Dido cannot be praised as an act of Stoic virtue, must it not be given its due as an act of piety? Twice Aeneas tells Dido that his leaving her for a bride and kingdom in Italy is not by his own will but in accordance with what is fated, and we have known from the second line of the poem that Virgil is writing of a man whose deeds are compelled by fate. But what is the nature of that compulsion? What does Virgil understand fate to be? He tells us that Dido's death was not only undeserved but unfated (4. 696), and, narrating a battle in Book nine, he tells us that if Turnus had hesitated a moment to break the bolts on one gate, Rome would never have come to be (9. 757-9). In order to understand what Virgil has written, we must conceive a fate that is both limited and fallible. The Latin fatum contains all the meanings of our word fate, but in it they are derivative meanings. Never absent from the Latin word is its primary sense of a thing spoken or uttered. And Virgil does not present the speech which is fate as an irrevocable decree, but uses the word with verbs meaning to call or to ask. The source of fate is a mystery in the Aeneid, but the nature of its action is evident. Fated outcomes are known to some among the gods and the shades of the dead, but are brought about only by human beings who must be lured, persuaded, or tricked. Every device of rhetoric must be used, because fate in the Aeneid remains always and altogether subordinate to human choice. The fall of Troy in Book two, for example, is a fated event. The destruction of the city is completed by Neptune, who shakes the walls and uproots the foundations from the earth, but neither he nor any other god acts so directly until the conquest of the Trojans by the Greeks is an accomplished fact. First, an indecisive war has been WINTER 1982 �carried on for ten years. Second, the Greeks have concealed their best fighters in a counterfeit religious offering left on the beach of Troy. Third, a lying story told by a Greek has aroused the pity of the Trojans and inclined them to bring the fatal horse into their city. But beyond all the strength, cleverness, and rhetorical skill of the Greeks, one more element was necessary, without which, Aeneas says years later, Troy would still be standing: the minds of the Trojans had to be made left-handed (2. 54-6); they had to be brought confidently to trust that the divine purpose was opposite to what it truly was. One respected Trojan leader, Laocoon, priest of Neptune, would have held Troy against all the resources of Greeks and gods, had he not been made to seem to be profaning a sacred offering. Laocoon pierced the horse with a spear, before Sinon told the Trojans that their prosperity would depend on treating the horse with reverence. At that moment a pair of gigantic snakes came across the sea and the land, making straight for the small sons of Laocoon, and killing them and him. That horrible supernatural spectacle was the call of fate which the Trojans answered to their own rmn. That which is fated must be recognized, interpreted, assented to, and carried out by human beings, who may be mistaken or may have been deliberately deceived. Aeneas is responsible not only for his choice to answer his fate, but also for the judgment that what fate calls him to is good. The half-understood future that could be brought about by Aeneas' deeds does make a powerful claim upon him, but so does the life of Dido, which he has allowed to become dependent upon him. No one but he can make the final decision that the former claim is more worthy of respect than the latter. That Aeneas is not comfortable with his choice is obvious when he begs Dido's ghost for understanding and absolution. Her stony refusal and undying hatred make it forever impossible for anyone to say that his choice was right. And the unforgettable example of Laocoon makes it equally impossible to take any comfort in the reflection that Aeneas' choice was fated. There is a powerful presence in the Aeneid of the inescapable, but it is not the same as nor even entirely compatible with the fated. The divine call which pulls one toward the future may be refused or defeated, but the human entanglements which grasp one from out of the past cannot be escaped. Aeneas can abandon Dido, but he can never be free of the pain of the knowledge that he has betrayed the love and trust he had once accepted from her. The true fatalism of the Aeneid is not a sense of the inevitable triumph of what is to be, of a healing and elevating future, but a sense of the sad burden of all that has been, of past choices and rejections that one has not gotten beyond. Readers are sometimes puzzled by a character in the Aeneid who is mentioned repeatedly but to whom Virgil seems deliberately to have given no human features or qualities. He is the closest companion of Aeneas, but we never hear either speak to the other. He is the true or THE ST. JOHNS REVIEW trusty Achates, whose name has become an idiomatic label for a devoted friend, but he seems to be nothing more than a label; we do not know who Aeneas' friend is or what he is like. But Virgil often gives his characters names which are descriptive in Greek. A Greek soldier whom Aeneas encounters on Sicily and whose story he trusts is called Achaemenides, "still a Greek." An aging boxer who rouses himself to win one last fight is called Entellus, "mature" or Hat an end." A monster who seems to delight in evil itself is called Cacus, "the evil one." As a Greek word, Achates would name ''one who grieves," one whose spe· cia! or characteristic business is to grieve. Never absent from the side of Aeneas in anything he does is the true or trusty grieving one; never, in the Aeneid, does hope overcome grief. The burden of grief which one feels through the last two-thirds of the poem is thus explicitly figured in the person of Achates as Aeneas' second self. The inescapability of the past is also figured by Virgil in one of the great central images of the poem, that of the labyrinth. We hear of it first in Book five, in connection with an intricate display of horsemanship by the Trojan children, but the words are too strong for their immediate occasion. The sons of Troy are said to be entangled in "an undiscovered and irretraceable wandering" (5. 591) as in the dark and ambiguous Labyrinth of ancient Crete. Aeneas soon sees a carved image of that Labyrinth on the walls of the Sibyl's cave, when he begins his journey in Book six to the land of the dead. The Sibyl tells him that it will be easy to enter that land, but to retrace his way to the upper air, "this," she says, "is work; this is labor." (6. 126-9) We are made to think of the Trojans' journey to Italy as labyrinthine, and to expect Aeneas' return from Hell to be especially so. We are startled, then, at the end of Book six, when Aeneas' return to the upper world is no trouble at all. Notoriously, that return is through the gate of false dreams. Great ingenuity has been expended by many interpreters to remove the taint of falsity from Aeneas' mission, but it cannot be done. Aeneas returns to earth with his soul burning with the love of coming fame, and that is a false exit from the land of the dead, the place of Dido. The Labyrinth image is still with us, the sense of betrayal of Dido's love has not been left behind, and the Sibyl is right: what lies before Aeneas is the true labor. He has not left the place of the dead; he will carry it with him wherever he goes. The war in Italy which occupies the last third of the Aeneid has a labyrinthine structure. When Turnus enters the Trojan camp in Book nine, he is pressed back to the walls and carried back to his comrades by the Tiber before there is any decisive outcome. In Book ten, when Turnus has killed Pallas, he and Aeneas fight toward each other, but juno lures Turnus away from the battlefield with a phantom-Aeneas made of wind. In Book eleven, when there is a truce, Aeneas and Turnus are both eager to submit to single combat when a double misunderstanding makes the war resume; the two men finally catch sight of each other across a plain, just as night falls. In the last 79 �book, Turnus' goddess-sister, disguised as his charioteer, keeps carrying him away when Aeneas catches sight of him. It is only in the last lines of the poem that Aeneas reaches the center of the maze. The monster he finds there is not Turnus, now humble, resigned to death, and gracious in defeat. What is the meaning of Aeneas' last furious act of violence? What does the maze of war and frustration that stands between Aeneas and his final confrontation with Turnus have to do with the false exit from the land of the dead by which Aeneas seems to have entered his labyrinth? The strange and abrupt ending of the Aeneid collects into itself all that has gone before it. It is a vivid culmination of the theme of the labyrinth, but that image in turn takes its meaning from a chain of connected images of which it is part. The first of these images is Aeolia, the vast cave of the winds in which, we are told, angry tempests rage in indignation at the mountain which confines them (l. 53-6). Unrestrained, those winds would destroy the seas, the lands, and heaven itself. Therefore jupiter, here called the omnipotent father, confined them and gave them a king skilled to know when to loosen, when to draw in, their reins. Can the word omnipotens be intended seriously in this context? It seems that it cannot mean more than "stronger than anything else," so that even the winds can be brought under the control of the strongest one. If jupiter were truly able to do anything, he could change the nature of the winds, or destroy them and replace them with others just as useful and not as dangerous. Could it be that one with the power to choose otherwise would judge it good to design a world in which hurricanes must sometimes be unleashed? The single word omnipotens leaves that question hanging over the poem. The second image in the poem which picks up the theme of caged fury is one we examined earlier: Furor, rage itself, removed from the world and imprisoned behind the iron gates of war. What we found strange in that picture was the presentation of rage personified as an object of pity. We saw then that the image of Furor led directly into the story of Dido and that her story was of the unleashing of furor within her. It is in the story of Dido that the two earlier images begin to make sense. Dido is ruined because she is capable of loving without restraint. The years of her self-denial make possible the existence of Carthage, because the chiefs of the surrounding countries respect her fidelity to her dead husband, and because it gives her reign a dignity and stability under which her subjects thrive. But her sister, who loves her, does not want Dido to continue that life. Royalty does not fulfill the longings caged within Dido. When Venus wants to bind Dido to Aeneas by means of lust, she begins by arousing in Dido tenderness for a small child. Once Dido falls in love with Aeneas, her ruin is assured, but she only becomes vulnerable to falling in love by first feeling a loving response to a child. Would Dido have been better off if a child sitting in her lap could 80 arouse no irrational longing in her childless heart?-if intimate contact with a child left her feeling no more than the general benevolence she had for all her subjects? If not, if a cold, loveless life is never choiceworthy, then the omnipotent father was right to leave the furious and destructive things in the world, and Virgil was right to grieve over the imposition of law on the earth. For even a mother's love is potentially furious, as we see it in the mothers of Euryalus and Lavinia. And the loving, irrational desire to have a child of one's own is inseparable from all the raging loves and hates within us. It is not the political life which fulfills us, if Virgil is right, but the loving attachments to particular other people, which also make us vulnerable to frenzy, madness, and war. Virgil uses the cave of the winds and the gates of war as images of the human soul, which always encloses irrational longings and loyalties capable of furious emergence into the world. Madness, as of Lausus, anger, as of Aeneas, rage of battle, as of Turnus, passionate love, as of Dido, prophetic frenzy, as of the Sybil, and poetic inspiration, as of Virgil himself: these are the meanings my small Latin dictionary gives for the word furor, the name Virgil gives to the being at the center. And what is the labyrinth which surrounds the center? It is, I think, Virgil's picture of any life which ignores or denies the furious things at the center. Aeneas leaves the land of the dead glorying in his vision of the Roman future, only to find in Italy the same intractable opposition he has left behind in Dido, and finally to yield to it in himself. And Augustus subdues the proud of all the world, only to become a monster of pride himself. In Book eight a fourth image joins the winds, the gates and the labyrinth. In the land of King Evander Aeneas sees the rock on which the Senate of Rome will one day stand, and learns that it once enclosed the home of a murderous, fire-breathing, half-human monster named Cacus. From the "proud doorposts" of this senseless killer there had always hung rotting, severed heads of his human victims. (8. 195-7) Evander tells how Hercules killed the monster and exposed his dark cavern to the light of the sun. Commentators routinely take the triumphant Hercules as a '~symbol" for Aeneas, who overcomes the monsters of unreason, Dido and Turnus, and for Augustus, who will overcome war itself. One who reads Evander's account not as a symbol but as a story, though, must feel some unease as Hercules, before he can kill Cacus, must become a thing of fury and frenzy himself. Hercules' triumph is not an example with which one can be quite comfortable. Book eight ends with a hundred lines describing the future glories of Rome depicted on Aeneas' shield, culminating with Augustus sitting in triumph over conquered peoples from all the nations of the earth. In a characteristic stroke, Virgil says that Aeneas rejoiced in the images, ignorant of the things, so that once again a portrait of Rome just fails to come into focus as a sight at which one could be glad. The attentive reader will have seen that Augustus on the shield hangs the spoils of all the world on his WINTER 1982 �"proud doorposts," a phrase used qnly of him and of Cacus. The same spot is still the home of a monster, but the new one ravages the whole world-' There are two kinds of motion in a labyrinth. The outward motion is an illusion of progress away from something. It is the more pitiable, because the more ignorant, of the two kinds. It characterizes the march of imperial Rome outward over the world. It is seen in what Virgil calls in Book six the "proud soul of Brutus the punisher," expeller of the Tarquins, the first to rule as consul, who, "for the sake of beautiful freedom" put love of country and praise ahead of everything else and killed his own sons. Virgil calls him "unhappy father, no matter what posterity may say of his deed." (6. 817-23) And Augustus cannot escape the same human vulnerability that Brutus tried to deny. A few lines later in Book six, the entire spectacle of the shades of the heroes of Rome is immersed in grief over Marcellus, the young man Augustus adopted and named as his heir, but who died when he was twenty. No political order holds any answer for or relief from human troubles. It is after Aeneas hears the infinity of grief over Marcellus in his father's voice, that he looks back over the souls of his triumphant offspring, recovers his own love of fame, and returns to the world through the gate of false dreams. But Aeneas is no Augustus. He is too aware of the losses and pains of others for his own proud illusions ever to last for long. Aeneas for the most part moves in the other direction, inward in the labyrinth. This is the direction of "if only." If only Helen were dead; if only Dido could be made to understand; if only Lausus would see reason; if only Turnus would surrender. Aeneas never uses his quest for political glory as an excuse to turn his back on a human being in distress, but he cannot relinquish that quest, on which so many others depend, and he can never quite find his way to the center of the source of distress to remove its cause. At the beginning of Book eight, the last in a long succession of divine apparitions comes to Aeneas. The old god of the Tiber tells him that his troubles are near an end, and that home and rest await him. He must fight and win a war with the Latins, but for once help will be available. Inland along the Tiber live Arcadian Greeks ruled by King Evander. They will happily join Aeneas in his fight and he can put an end once and for all to the troubles he has carried with him for so long and in which he has involved so many others. Aeneas does find welcome and help in Evander's city, Pallanteum. As in Carthage, he finds too much welcome and too much help. It turns out that Evander once met Aeneas' father, and adored him with youthful love. The gifts Anchises gave him seem to be the only signs of wealth Evander has allowed to remain in his city. (8. 15569) History repeats itself in Pallanteum, in a double sense. As with their fathers, Pallas is fired with a loving admiration for Aeneas. As he joins with him, we see in one brief, lovely scene, a greater closeness between the two than we ever see between Aeneas and his own son. (10. 159-62) THE ST. JOHNS REVIEW But Aeneas' recent Carthaginian history repeats itself at the same time: from Evander and from Pallas, Aeneas has again accepted the loving gift of a human life, entrusted to his care. Pallas seems to think Aeneas can answer the deepest questions of his life, but the two men know each other only for a day. When Pallas arrives in Latium he begins to fight, and two hundred lines later he is dead. Like every young man in the Aeneid, excepting only Iulus, who is deliberately kept out of the fighting, Pallas dies at the moment of his greatest valor. That is the theme of Book nine, in which, in Aeneas' absence, only young men are fighting. It is embodied in the figure of Euryalus, whose longing for glory leads him to put on the shining helmet of one of his victims, immediately to become a victim because that shining makes him an easy target. (9. 35966, 373-4) It is embodied, too, in the similes of Book nine, which liken the young warriors to beasts of prey which, if they are daring and successful predators, become a danger to men and an easy prey. Pallas cannot escape the Virgilian logic of glory and death. The saddest words of this saddest of poems are spoken by Aeneas to the corpse of Pallas: "The same horrible fate of war calls me from here to other tears; hail from me eternally, dearest Pallas, and eternally farewell." (11. 96-8) In the last lines of the poem, Aeneas recognizes that there is no such thing as an eternal farewell. The dead live as sources of obligation, and neither death nor any ceremony can cancel such debts. If Dido can be assimilated to a larger purpose, then she did not live. If Lausus' decision to throw away his life were not acknowledged as binding his adversary, then Lausus would not be recognized as the source of his own choices. And if Pallas can be forgotten for the sake of the living, and the greater number, then Pallas himself is accorded no worth at all. Human worth does not fit in any scales. Its claims are unconditional. We admire Aeneas in the war books of the last third of the poem because he always seeks the sanest and most sensible solutions for his enemies as well as for his own people. We rage along with him when trivial, irrational causes produce and prolong the slaughter. Aeneas longs for peace and for harmony with all the tribes in Italy. And what does Turnus fight for? For wholly selfish reasons and for the joy of fighting. Must he not be cut down like the irrational thing he is, so decent citizens might get on with the business of living in co-operation? To see that this is not how Virgil regards Turnus, listen to this simile with which Turnus goes out to fight: "He is delirious with courage, his hope already tears the enemy: just as a stallion when he snaps his tether and flies off from the stables, free at last to lord the open plains, will either make for meadows and the herds of mares or else leap from the stream where he is used to bathing and, wanton, happy, neigh, his head raised high, while his mane sweeps across his neck and shoulders." (11. 491-7) Turnus is young, strong, brave, and handsome. He is not made for submission to a foreigner who arrives saying he is destined to marry his fiancee and be his king. In the line following the 81 �simile of the stallion, Virgil brings 'Camilla into the poem, to fight beside Turnus. She is in .instant and complete communion with Turnus. The freedom and the lordship of Italy is theirs by birth and by nature. Each of them is crushed by what Aeneas has brought to Italy, but each dies with the sentiment that something unworthy has happened. At the end, when Turnus lies wounded at Aeneas' feet, we begin to hear again the familiar echoes of the end of the Iliad, but this time they are like a deceptive cadence in a piece of music. Turnus asks Aeneas to remember his own father and to return him, alive or dead as he prefers, to his father. But as Aeneas begins to relax, and we expect the gesture of reconciliation that Aeneas has tried so hard and so often to make to come finally as a healing ending to the poem, Aeneas instead remembers Pallas, and kills Turnus in fury. Why? It is his seeing the belt of Pallas, which Turnus is wearing as spoil, that precipitates the deed. What does Aeneas see when he looks at the belt? I think it is not too much to say that he sees in it everything that has happened to him through the eight years and twelve books that have gone before. The belt is carved with a legendary scene of fifty bride- 82 grooms killed on their wedding night. It recalls the spectacle Aeneas watched from the roof of Priam's ruined palace, with its fifty bridal chambers for his sons. (2. 503-4; I 0. 497 -9) It must, too, re-open the wound of the memory of the bridal chamber he himself shared so briefly with Dido. And as showing men cut down in their youth, it must remind him of much that has happened around him in the war just fought. But more than anything else, it brings back to him Pallas, to whom he could not succeed in saying good-bye. As he kills Turnus, Aeneas calls Pallas "my own." His acceptance of the call of fate prevented Aeneas from dying alongside his own people in his own city of Troy. It prevented him from remaining loyal to his own lover, Dido. But the gods have now left Aeneas alone. The last act of the poem is the first one that is unequivocally Aeneas' own, and on his own, though inclined toward a characteristic and politically sound act of kindness, Aeneas commits a furious and painful murder out of love. Turnus dies rightly feeling that his death is unworthy of him. But Aeneas, finally at the center of the labyrinth of his own life, could not let Turnus live and be worthy of the gift of Pallas' life and death. In the inevitable conflict of unconditional claims, one can only cling to one's own. WINTER 1982 �REvmw EssAY Objectivity and Philosophical Conversation Richard Rorty's Pht!osophy and the Mirror of Nature ARTHUR COlliNS Men have confident beliefs which they take to be knowledge, and then it sometimes turns out that what was confidently believed is discarded and replaced by contrary beliefs, perhaps just as confident. Such convictions can be important beliefs at the heart of a whole way of looking at the world. Naturally philoso· phers have concerned themselves with this instability in our beliefs, and they have tried to find permanent foundations for our claims to know anything. With foundations our knowledge is reliable and objective; without foundations our pretensions to know collapse into the beliefs we happen to have. Discourse with no foundations seems to reduce to a flux of opinions, for we have no way of determining which opinions are really grounded and which are not. But where shall we find foundations for knowledge, and how shall our claims to know such foundations themselves be insulated from the possibility of error and replacement? Discussions of the objectivity of knowledge were already sophisticated in Greek philosophy. Protagoras held that no objec· tive foundation of a belief can get beyond the fact that it seems to be true to the man who holds it. All beliefs, then, are true for those who hold them, and grounding is an illusion. So Protagoras proposed to substitute the contrast: healthy versus unhealthy belief for the unavailable contrast: objectively grounded belief versus mere opinion. If this report of Protagoras' doctrine from Plato's Theaetetus is reliable, Protagoras was the first pragmatist. Socrates opposed this relativism and Plato's theory of Forms is an effort to articulate foundations of knowledge solid enough to enable a philosopher to rule against one man's conviction and in favor of another's on objective grounds. The preponderance of philosophers since Plato have defended the idea of objective knoWledge and pursued its foundations. A minority including Nietzsche and the American pragmatists have more or less sided with Protagoras. This conflict is the theme of Richard Rorty's Philosophy and the Mirror of Nature.* The thesis of the book can be summarized in two general claims: The first is that modern philosophy has been dominated by an essentially Cartesian and mistaken idea of inner representations as the foundation of knowledge of all outer realities. The second claim is the assertion of a sweeping historical and pragmatic relativism about human knowledge. In rejecting Cartesian inner mental representations, Rorty contends that the dominant modern program that sought to furnish foundations for knowledge is a complete failure. In his general relativist view, Rorty asserts, with Protagoras, that the objectivity philosophers have looked for cannot be found at all and knowledge can have no foundations. The conception of inner representations as the necessary starting point for all knowledge is what Rorty calls "the Mirror of Nature." The mind is this mirror. Descartes and most thinkers after him place the source of objectivity in the knower's mind rather than in any specially apprehended outer reality such as Plato's Forms. Epistemology has been promoted since the Renaissance as a kind of bogus science that ·confirms its hypotheses in terms of the ultimate evidence we find reflected in the mirror of the mind. Rorty says that the rejection of this spurious epistemology will bring with it huge changes in philosophical practice. This first claim is powerfully argued and richly illustrated, and Rorty's many-sided discussion of it repays study. According to his second general claim, Rorty' s Protagorean relativism, philosophers are deceived in thinking that there can be objective reasons for preferring one view of things to another. In the course of exposition of this relativist view, Rorty denies that science can be understood to attain a progressively better approximation to the truth. He finds that we cannot successfully segregate meanings and facts. We cannot distinguish features of a conceptual scheme and truths that are asserted within and *Princeton University Press, 1979 Review. THE ST. JOHNS REVIEW Professor of Philosophy at the City University of New York, Arthur Collins has published articles in many philosophical journals. He has previously contributed "Kant's Empiricism" (July 1979) and "The Scientific Background of Descartes' Dualism" (Winter 1981) to the St. John's 83 �with the help of that scheme. So we qmnot suppose that earlier scientists were talking about the same reality that we speak of, but saying different things about it. Thus there is no way in which we can see ourselves as the proprietors of a better understanding of the same world. Our distinctions between conceptual truths and factual truths, and between mathematical propositions and empirical facts, are not absolute. Such distinctions are always dependent upon our own contingent decisions and relatively transient objectives of our discourse. There are no privileged truths, no absolutely secure modes of reference, no irrefragible assertions about meanings, and no incorrigible data of sense. All these candidates for an Archimedean fixed point in epistemology turn out to be moveable. Our intellectual undertakings, systems, and theories are endlessly adjustable in many ways and subtle ways, but nothing is permanent and there is no given point of contact with the real, no unchanging frontier between our thought and what we think about. Unlike his rejections of the Mirror of Nature, which is limited to a particular conception of objectivity (the Cartesian conception), Rorty's general relativism does not leave room for a contrast between the situations of philosophy and science. In rejecting traditional Cartesian epistemology, Rorty says that philosophers have mistakenly tried to copy what scientists legitimately do. But when he advances from this critique to a relativistic rejection of the very idea of objectivity, Rorty asserts that philosophers and scientists are alike in their susceptibility to the mistaken idea that rational investigation can lead, and has led, to a better and better understanding of things. There are no thought-independent truths to be sought by philosophers or scientists and no objective methods to be adopted by either. Rorty is right to reject what he calls the Mirror of Nature. He is also right to say that it has exerted an enormous and mostly bad influence on modern thought. But he seems to think that if we don't have Cartesian foundations for our knowledge we must become relativists. If the Mirror of Nature is no good, there is nothing else. That means that Rorty himself is still under the spell of Cartesian thinking about the mind and knowledge. He is agreeing that if there is to be objective knowledge at all, there will have to be Cartesian foundations for it. If this is Rorty's assumption, it would account for the fact that he moves so easily from a penetrating critique of the Mirror of Nature to the general repudiation of objectivity. On the whole Rorty treats these two very different views as if they were one and the same reaction to the history of modern philosophy. This is a mistake. 1 The goal of Philosophy and the Mirror of Nature is an assessment of the claims and prospects of contemporary philosophy, especially the broad current of thought finding expression primarily in English, called "analytic philosophy." Rorty identifies the most important historical roots of the modern outlook in the pervasive influence of Descartes' philosophy of mind and in Kant's two-sided philosophical project: the identification of objective knowledge and the demonstration of the inescapable though disappointing limits of such knowledge. The Mirror of 84 Nature is really Descartes' invention. Descartes imposed on subsequent philosophers, and prominently on the British empiricists, the job of trying to get from a perfect acquaintance with inner mental representations (which are taken to exhaust our ultimate evidence) to knowledge of extra-mental reality. This project, which is hardly represented in classical thought, determines the characteristic schedule of solipsistic problems which are the first business of all modern epistemology. Endless variations within this Cartesian epistemological framework have been articulated since the seventeenth century. As recently as 1949, in the Concept of Mind, Gilbert Ryle aptly called Cartesianism "the official doctrine." Russell, Moore, Santayana, Carnap, Ayer, Chisholm, and Sellars are some of the best known twentieth century philosophers whose projects are decisively influenced by this tradition. This is so even though some of these thinkers have expressly rejected Cartesianism and tried to break its hold on philosophy. Rorty's repudiation ofthe Mirror of Nature is the repudiation of this tenacious idea. The Kantian contribution to the modern outlook is, Rorty says, the idea of a universal system for judging and comparing the credentials of all intellectual undertakings. In Rorty's terminology this is the "transcendental turn" which projects a scheme for the universal "commensurability" of all doctrines, theories, and beliefs. The rejection of this idea is Rorty's relativism. It is an error, he says, to suppose that all our thinking belongS to the same intellectual space within which views can always be tested against one another and choices forced by a fixed rational procedure. Accepting the idea of such a universal scheme, philosophers have thought of knowledge as a matter of gradual convergence on the truth. Rorty, however, allows no concept of truth external to the particular pragmatically judged intellectual constructions that men make in grappling with the world. In their pretense to occupy a viewpoint outside all viewpoints, Kantian foundationalists are dogmatic and self-deceptive. Their claims to permanent judgments and fixed tests conceal the creative and constructive play of human intelligence under the guise of ever-closer conformity to truth. For Rorty, what we take as known can have no foundations apart from acceptance in the unending interplay of human discourse. Accepted truths, systems, and sciences have the value that they do have because they confer an understanding on things that enables us better to negotiate our existence, not because they approach more closely to the final truth about things. In this view, Rorty substitutes the idea of the utility of belief for the discarded idea of objective truth, much as Protagoras substituted healthy belief for objectively grounded belief. There can be no epistemological foundations and Rorty thinks pursuit of them should stop and is going to stop some time soon. Foundationalism has so contaminated the structure of philosophical thought and so determined the content of modern philosophy that its rejection will mean the end of most of what we know as philosophy. When current practices have been abandoned, science will still be science, and scientists will continue to generate and discard their own standards of admissibility. But, if Rorty is right, epistemology will no longer be credited as a kind of preliminary science. The philosophy of mind has been develWINTER 1982 �oped almost entirely in the service of Mirrqr-of-Nature projects, so it too is finished. The same is true of the bulk of the philosophy of science. Language has become, for analytic philosophers, the refuge of foundationalist pretensioD.s which are denied appeal to the mind by contemporary hostility to dualism. As a consequence, philosophy of language is mostly "impure," Rorty says. It has been fatally infected by the epidemic passion to find objective foundations somewhere. Most of the aspirations of philosophical logic and ontology, including the resurgent essentialism encouraged by Kripke, are also to be cancelled in the coming purge. Even the value-oriented branches of thought have been hopelessly compromised by foundationalist schemes that try to identify the cognitive part of discourse involving values and to relegate the rest, in the positivist manner, to emotion, arbitrary preference, and taste. Rorty thinks that some kind of philosophy will survive the coming demise of foundationalism and objective pretensions. He admits that he is vague about the contents and purposes of this philosophy of the future: Our present notions of what it is to be a philosopher are so tied up with the Kantian attempt to render all knowledge claims commensurable that it is difficult to imagine what philosophy without epistemology could be. (357) The predictions that Rorty does make are the least convincing and the least appealing part of his book. He sees the tendency of things to come in -the continental hermeneutics movement (H. G. Gada mer, in particular) and in philosophical "deconstruction" (Derrida). He endorses a considerable list of European existentialists, structuralists, and phenomenologists whose writings are as longwinded as they are difficult to grasp clearly. Rorty says that the new philosophy will be "conversational" without being exclusive and competitive. Philosophy will be "edifying" which contrasts with misguided efforts to be "systematic." Philosophical discourse will be "abnormal" in the sense of Thomas Kuhn's "abnormal science"; that is, it will take place without the benefit of an inherited framework of standards and methods shared by a consensus of those participating. 1 Philosophy will be open, pluralistic, even "playful." It will abandon its agressive assertiveness. The work of philosophers will become more like activities in art, politics, and religion. Rorty does not succeed in saying (in fact, he does not try) what will be the subject matter or the goals of the conversations to which philosophers will contribute when they have given up the hopeless search for objective foundations. Nor does he say why it is that anything such a philosopher could say might strike us as edifying. It often seems as if he is only dreaming of something nice that otherwise unemployed philosophers can apply their talents to when most of the things they now do have been abolished. 2 Like most radical relativists, Rorty is not entirely consistent. His examination of analytic philosophy finds that this whole enterprise is mired in the Cartesian-Kantian "problematic." Analytic philosophers are prominently guilty of presuming that they THE ST. JOHNS REVIEW have at least our concepts or conceptual schemes at their disposal. The accessibility of his own concepts is alleged by an analytic philosopher to be the source of the necessity and objectivity of his conceptual analyses. Rorty rejects this allegation and the philosophy it tries to legitimize. But his own arguments are full of points which are indistinguishable in their standing from the views he rejects as lacking any credentials at all. For example, he finds that Locke's confusion of explanation and justification is one of the great influential errors of modern thought. Maybe he is right. But, in what sense can Rorty allow himself access to what is really "explanation" and what "justification" while denying that analytic philosophers have access to concepts and thus a basis for their analyses? He praises Wilfred Sellars for not offering "a theory of how the mind works" or a theory "of the 'nature of concepts'." He describes a claim Sellars makes as "a remark about the difference between facts and rules" (187). The use of the informal word "remark" for the praised opinion of Sellars and the weighty word "theory" for the bad views Sellars avoids sounds like an effort to deflect the question. If the foundation of this "remark" about facts and rules is not a kind of conceptual analysis, then what is it? Again, Rorty says in the context of the possibility of foundations for knowledge: The question is not whether human knowledge in fact has "foundations," but whether it makes sense to suggest that it does-whether the idea of epistemic or mo.ral authority having a "ground" in nature is a coherent one. (178) This kind of claim about what makes sense and what does not, and what is and is not coherent, is just the sort of thing that analytic philosophers propose all the time. If their pretenses to know what makes sense and what does not are empty, then what gives substance to Rorty's identical pretenses? These inconsistencies are predictable. As Socrates said of Protagoras, a relativist is always in trouble when he tries to assert anything. He naturally thinks his relativism is objectively correct and he thinks the foundationalist thinkers he opposes are objectively wrong. It is hard to see how a relativist can say less than this and still have an intelligible position. Rorty's general relativism sometimes appears to undermine his own best insights. He is attracted by John Dewey's thinking be~ cause Dewey emphasized the social character of knowledge as opposed to the solipsistic stance of Descartes. Similarly, in psychology Rorty thinks that a healthy materialism that is not a reductive mind-brain identity theory will supercede the confusions of Cartesian philosophy of mind. Perhaps these are very sound convictions to have. They fit ill with relativism. If we are to appreciate the validity of physiological psychology do we not have to suppose that idealism is objectively wrong? It is not just another alternative conversational stance for philosophy. Rorty thinks a materialist philosophy will survive the prevalent philosophical errors. Why? Surely he thinks we will be left with the body and its relation to all our intellectual functions after the illusions of the Mirror of Nature have been dispelled. If so, this material subject matter must be objectively available to us. In the same way, if we are to base our understandings, like Dewey, on the irreducible social context of discourse and knowledge, we must 85 �take that context as something that the world objectively contains. There really are other people with whom we speak and interact. How can we praise Dewey's vieW if we say that even these convictions about social reality are just "optional descriptions"? Even Rorty's customarily sensitive historical judgments are sometimes distorted by his application of a set of standards to the views he rejects which he cannot apply to his own views and those he endorses. For example, he simultaneously praises Jerry Fodor and condemns Kant in this passage: The crucial point is that there is no way to raise the sceptical question "How well do the subject's internal representations represent reality?" about Fodor's "language of thought." In particular there is no way to ask whether, or how well, the products of spontaneity's theories represent the sources of receptivity's evidence, and thus no way to be sceptical about the relation between appearance and reality. (246-7) This passage actually describes Fodor's view in terms which do not distinguish it at all from Kant's. Rorty knows that Kant's theory of the mind and empirical reality also rules out scepticism "about the relation of appearance and reality" and, therefore, deserves whatever praise Fodor deserves on that count. But Rorty's rhetorical usage of the Kantian terminoloy (''spontaneity" and "receptivity") seem to imply that Kant held the opposite and that Fodor's stand is an improvement and a correction. 3 Rorty is entirely right to say that epistemological illusions are · responsible for the spurious format of scientific theory-building that many modern philosophies have adopted. Mirror-of-Nature thinking leads directly to this format. If our knowledge has to start from acquaintance restricted to inner representations, such as seventeenth-century ideas or twentieth-century sense-data, then the mere assertion that there is an extra-mental world stands in need of defense. In the absence of a successful defense, we have no reason at all for thinking that there is any subject matter for sciences like physics or biology to investigate. So a preliminary philosophical theory is needed to vouch for the existence of a subject matter for all other sciences. Empiricists have constructed a great many such "theories" which introduce material objects only in hypotheses that are supposed to be accepted because they explain the patterns we encounter in our mental experiences. Here the philosopher imitates scientific theories that posit unobserved atoms in hypotheses that explain observed combining weights of elements, or that posit unobserved heavenly bodies in hypotheses that explain observed orbital perturbations. When philosophers argue in this way they are making epistemology into a hypothetico-deductive science. Philosophers then posit unobserved chairs and tables to explain observed perceptual experiences! It is a virtue of Rorty's critique to release us from this misapplied model of scientific thinking. When we have fully rejected the Mirror of Nature, a lot of this "scientific" philosophy will automatically be eliminated. This is very much to be hoped for, but it gives us no reason at all for thinking, with Rorty, that these misguided epistemological thea- 86 ries will be replaced by the incommensurable badinage that he sees coming. In fact, a significant scientific influence in philosophy is unaffected by Rorty's critique. For philosophers of the empiricist, rationalist, and analytic traditions, quite apart from theory-construction, scientific influence in philosophy has meant a tough-minded independence, it has meant adherence to the ideals of self-criticism and clarity, and it has meant the open ac~ ceptance of tests of one's ideas in competitive intellectual confrontations. Rorty's general relativism and his predictions for the future appear to depend on rejecting these wholesome influences along with the inapplicable pattern of hypothetico-deductive theory construction. The elimination of Cartesianism and its aftermath, however, does not show that there is anything wrong with these ideals, nor with their adoption in philosophy. Rorty claims that once the epistemological bias is eliminated there will be a general change in direction in philosophy which will not be limited to those disciplines directly engendered by the Mirror of Nature. It is in this spirit that he says that language tends to replace the Mirror in the continuing but spurious foun~ dationalist projects of anti-dualist analytic philosophers. This is a sensitive insight. Perhaps it is generally true in philosophy today that real advance in understanding is only attained with the recognition that all theorizing is out of place. Our intellectual needs are mischaracterized and our confusions made permanent insofar as we think that what is required is something like a theory. This may be the clearest and most enduring part of Wittgen~ stein's elusive teaching. Here is Saul Kripke's appreciation of the same thought in the context of theories about reference and names: It really is a nice theory. The only defect I think it has is probably common to all philosophical theories. It's wrong. You may suspect me of proposing another theory in its place, but I hope not, because I'm sure it's wrong too, if it's a theory.2 If this attitude is right we have inherited a conception of philosophical thought which deforms our actual problems by forcing them into the mold of scientific theory. The harmful conception goes beyond the influence of the Mirror of Nature. To say that we should stop this deforming and forcing is good, but that in it~ self does not show anything about what philosophers should do instead, and it bodes nothing for relativism. The understandings that survive misguided foundationalism ought to be, per se, more objective, not less objective, than the illusory pursuit of philosophical theories where such theories can accomplish nothing. 4 Under the influence of Kant, most philosophers, according to Rorty, have accepted the idea of the universal commensurability of all opinions. Like the idea of theory-building in philosophy, the idea of commensurability is modelled on scientific practice. Scientists intentionally try to sharpen opposed views in order to force a showdown which only one view will survive. The process of sharpening differences and forcing choices is only feasible if the holders of different opinions share a general framework within which their views are commensurable. Rorty thinks that WINTER 1982 �there is such a general framework which permits commensuration withiri particular sciences, or maybe wit,hin the whole scientific enterprise at a particular time. But there is no permanent commensurating framework for science through all lime, and no framework that embraces scientific,. moral, artistic, and philosophical activities all at once. There may be some great truth in this view about commensurability. If so, Rorty's exposition of that truth is inadequate. His discussions of incommensurable discourse never get beyond the unresolved tension between insightful critique and disastrous relativism. Can there be such a thing as discourse that does not presuppose a shared commensurating framework of meanings? How can speakers get as far as conversation without commensurability? The framework of shared meaning may not suffice for formulation of a means for resolving differences, but this does not establish incommensurability. Inability to resolve differences is notorious, for example, in economics, but no one will conclude that views on the effects of monetary policy are, therefore, incommensurable. We would, I_think, say that the views expressed in two different poems are often incommensurable. To the extent that we would say that, we would also say that poems do not make assertions in any ordinary sense. If two speakers do make genuine assertions for one another's benefit, that is, if they produce sentences that they mean to be true and mean to be taken as such, then. they must also hold out the hope, at least, that they can find some way of telling whether their assertions are compatible OF ihcompatible, that is, they must presuppose commensurability. They cannot be indifferent about this and simply go on with the conversation. So commensurability seems to be indispensable for participation in a conversation in which assertions are made. It may be that this is too rigid a conception of commensurability for exhibition of the point that Rorty wants to bring to our attention about the multiple enterprises of the human intelligence. He offers us no guidance on a less rigid conception. These abstract difficulties find concrete illustration when we turn to Rorty's examples of incommensurable discourse. He calls Marx and Freud edifying philosophers whose discourses are incommensurable. He criticizes those who try to draw the thought of these figures into the "mainstream," and that means those who want to make the doctrines of Freud and Marx commensurable with other opinions and theories about psychology, physiology, economics, history, and morals. Rorty's relativism is out of hand here. We may all agree that the insights and theories of Freud and Marx are hard to connect with less revolutionary patterns of thought about man. These two are similar in that they both construct self-contained schemes of things with relatively clear internal rules for investigation and interpretation (though this is a problem for these systems). Furthermore, for their initiation such systems may depend on an exceptional willingness to ignore prevailing rules and concepts and entrenched opinions. Rorty is sensitive to all this insulation of these radical theories from the rest of the universe of thought. But this insulation is necessarily only partial. Thinking, no matter how radical, must preserve substantial contact with preexisting thought. This is the THE ST. JOHNS REVIEW minimum price of intelligibility. Marx and Freud, in particular, certainly do respond to earlier views and they both expect their work to be preferred to other doctrines on rational grounds, even on "scientific" grounds. Freud connects his work in straightforward ways to the international psychiatric thinking of his time. He incorporates in his thinking some large ideas from earlier German philosophy, and he openly commits himself to the ultimate commensurability, even the. reducibility, of his psychological theory to the workaday conceptual scheme o£ physical medicine and physiology. Similar points apply to the doctrines of Marx. These thinkers regarded their own views as commensurable with the "mainstream" and only in the setting of that commensurability were they able to think of their own views as important. The question of commensurability arises for Rorty only when he thinks about two beliefs that seem to be opposed. Freud's opinions seem to be incommensurable just because he says such things as, "Slips of the tongue and lapses of memory are intended." Assertions like this seem to be in flat contradiction to our ordinary opinion that slips and forgetting are unintended. Furthermore, there is something especially troublesome about the seeming opposition of Freud's claim to the ordinary view about slips and lapses of memory. The ordinary view is not merely a widely held empirical belief. It belongs, rather, to a framework of shared meanings. We all think, though we don't articulate such thoughts much, that a verbal performance is not a slip, by definition, if it fulfills the speaker's intentions. This comes, in some sense, from the meanings of "a slip'' and "intentional." Similarly, it is not just that we have found that people do not intentionally forget things. They cannot intentionally forget because doing anything intentionally entails knowing what you are doing. If you knew what you were forgetting, that wouldn't be forgotten. Within the context of this limited illustration, I think it is this special character of Freud's opposition to ordinary thinking that leads Rorty to the contention that his doctrines are incommensurable and his philosophy edifying. Freud's view cannot be commensurated with the mainstream because it conflicts with the framework of meanings within which assertions about intentions and slips and forgetting can be logically related to one another. There is something in this. Freud expresses views which are not only new opinions in psychology but which also deform the accepted system of meanings within which psychological assertions are customarily formulated and compared. Freud does not discuss these deformations himself. He seems to be far from fully aware of them. But he is certainly not simply making false statements with the old concepts. He is trying to make true statements with altered concepts. No one seems to know just where Freud violates the traditional system of interrelated concepts and beliefs and where he relies on a common fund of meanings in order to communicate anything at all. Now we have to ask, Where does incommensurability fit in here? Can we say that Freud is not really opposing established views but merely "sending the conversation in new directions," as Rorty thinks the new non-foundationalist philosophers will? Can we agree that Freud's opinions may become the prevailing belief by simply replacing without ever confronting earlier opinion? 87 �I think that we must try to reconcile, or to choose between, Freud's doctrines and the ordinary beliefs with which they seem to conflict. For example, we can attempt reconciliations that stress the unconscious status of the intentions Freud finds. We can try reformulations of Freud's views that capture the spirit without the conceptual deformations, for example, ascribing intentions to a subagent for behavior that is unintended by the whole man. And we can try to soften the apparent rigidity of the ordinary system of meanings by calling attention to non-psychoanalytic contexts, such as brain bisections, where the contrasts "intended/unintended" and "forgotten/not forgotten" come under remarkable pressure. These are suggestions for "continuing the conversation," and it may be that Rorty has in mind just this development of conversational philosophy. But these efforts at understanding Freud are also nothing short of efforts at making his thinking commensurable with the thinking of others. If we are not trying to make Freud's ideas commensurable in such ways, then we are just not trying to understand him. It will not do to call this failure to understand edification or respect for a kind of creativity. Quite a bit of just this not-trying-to-understand is presently done in the intellectual world. It generates the familiar self-enclosed cultish point of view in which unexamined and deformed terminology become an insider's rhetoric. When this happens, the failure of commensurability will not promote a democratic conversational mentality. The very fact that there are still such things as Freudianism and Marxism is in part a measure of the extent to which incommensurability seals off thinking from the give and take of ideas which Rorty values. 5 Rorty's thinking is very well-informed and he always tries to use the views of other philosophers as guideposts even in cases where he does not want to follow them. Throughout his book he says that Dewey, Wittgenstein, and Heidegger have been his greatest guides, showing him the path out Of epistemological foundationalism. These three thinkers all reject the schemes that have grown out of Cartesianism, and they all attack the Cartesian root and not just the modern branches. But Rorty actually has little to say about the views of any of these three. In the fourth chapter, which he calls the "central chapter of the book," he examines instead, and in quite a bit of detail, much more recent analytic philosophy and, in particular, the views of Sellars and Quine._ It is as though these tough-minded analysts, who do not reach the relativism he adopts and whom Rorty himself calls "systematic philosophers," help him to see the virtues of the much vaguer and more relativistic doctrines of Dewey, Wittgenstein, and Heidegger. According to Rorty's exposition, Sellars clearly grasps the hopeless defects of "the Myth of the Given," and all the foundationalist programs that have been based upon it. His appreciation of "the logical space of reasons" marks Sellars's perception of the indispensable contrast between causal explanation and justification. But Rorty finds that Sellars remains committed to the illusion of "analysis," which is the idea that our concepts are, in any case, accessible to us, so that we can 88 make entirely secure judgments as to what is and what is not true of these concepts. Just here Quine's thinking is most important. Quine's rejection of the analytic-synthetic distinction is aimed at precisely this presumption of the availability of our own concepts as unshakeable support for analytic judgments. Rorty sees the two ideas: (i) the incorrigible data of sense, and (ii) incorrigible access to our own concepts as the twin supports of contemporary epistemological foundationalism. Therefore, a combination of Sellars's critical rejection of the first view and Quine's rejection of the second, a combination that neither Sellars nor Quine fully attains, is just what Rorty wants in order to disenfranchise foundationalism. Throughout Rorty's work there is erudition, sensitivity, and much truth. At the end there remains a large gap in his argument. The failure of Cartesian foundationalism does not establish relativism. Rorty seems uncbaracteristically insensitive to the problems of internal coherence bf relativism, problems that have been known since Socrates criticized Protagoras. Even Rorty's appeal to the painstaking work of analytic philosophers seems odd, since they are, in his own characterization, systematic philosophers whose work would have to appear to be a waste of time dominated by baseless illusions from the vantage point of edifying conversational philosophy. Sellars and Quine are both philosophers whose thinking is pervaded by the idea of science. Given Rorty's meticulous presentation of their doctrines, and given his appreciation of the clarity (Quine's anyway), the penetration, and rigor of this, the best philosophical thinking of the analytic school, his final position that seems to applaud all the voluminous obscurantism now produced in Europe is disappointing. There is another kind of inconsistency in Rorty' s thought which is understandable, maybe even attractive, if not altogether acceptable. At several points in his discussion, Rorty seems to draw back from his own radical conclusions as though in recognition of the fact that they are in themselves so profoundly unsatisfying. In this mood, Rorty describes the anti-systematic conversational philosophy he endorses as essentially reactive and critical. Such philosophy demands a correlative systematic and objective philosophy. Without systematic philosophy to react to, edifying philosophy is nothing at all. In consequence, Rorty seems to envision a cyclical alternation between systematic and critical philosophy, each of which has its purposes and legitimacy: Great systematic philosophers are constructive and offer arguments. Great edifying philosophers are reactive and offer satires, parodies, aphorisms. They know their work loses its point when the period they were reacting against is over. They are intentionally peripheral. Great systematic philosophers like great scientists build for eternity. Great edifying philosophers destroy for the sake of their own generation. (369} Here Rorty seems to agree with my judgment that his conversational philosophers, left to themselves, do not have anything to talk about. The only real views ever at issue are those of philosophers who look for objective truths. These truths try to be universally commensurable in that they are to be tested against all comers. If this is Rorty's view, he may be right to oppose a partieWINTER 1982 �ular conception of foundations, but it hardly makes sense to oppose the very idea of objective knowledge daims. It seems that Rorty might envision something like this: Some day, through the reactive efforts of thinkers such as himself and the great figures he admires (Dewey, Heidegger, and Wittgenstein), the program of the Cartesian Mirror of Nature will be set aside and it will no longer have any appreciable hold on the philosophical imaginations of men. When that day arrives, a philosopher considering objectivity, rational methods, and truth will not be planning to relate his beliefs to any supposed inner magazine of perfectly apprehended representations. Of course, under these circumstances edifying philosophers will have nothing to say. Their conversations will have dried up as a consequence of their own success. Their work will have "lost its point," as Rorty puts it. Now, at this stage, we could imagine that there would be no further philosophy produced at all out of a recognition that any new objective theory is bound to have the same deficiencies as its predecessors, or we could imagine a new systematic project that is not obviously susceptible to the criticisms raised in earlier reactive phases. When he says that edifying philosophy is essentially reactive, Rorty seems to me to envision the latter development, and in some passages I think he expressly foresees a future return to thought with objective foundations. However Rorty's speculations on this point come down, neither of these outcomes is compatible with the general relativism that he presents in most of the book. For if there is no further systematic project in the offing, then conversational, creative, and edifying philosophy is not a true successor to the philosophy we have known but merely a final winding down of philosophy. And if further sys· tematic projects are to be expected when conversationalism has lost its point, then Rorty must concede the inadequacy of his own arguments for relativism. If objective philosophy has a real future, then we are not entitled to rule it out generally in favor of pragmatic relativism. THE ST. JOHNS REVIEW In this dilemma we can see that Rorty has become ensnared in the very traps he detected in foundationalist schemes. A relativist allows that, within the context of relevant human activities and needs, one assertion may be warranted and another assertion not. But the effort to elevate the concept of warranted assertibility to that of objective truth allegedly fails because it presupposes that we can abstract from any particular context of activities and needs, or it presupposes that there is one all-embracing context. This is the viewpoint beyond all viewpoints that Rorty repudiates. But his own efforts at characterizing the plural projects of human intelligence have engendered just the same presupposition. Rorty thinks that he can assess objective projects from a perspective in which they are a mere phase inevitably overcome in the next phase of reactive criticism. The reactive phase, in turn, is ultimately sterile and needs replacement by further objective efforts. Thus we are to see the intellectual life of man as a permanent vacillation between the illusion of theory and the impotence of criticism. Perhaps this view can seem to be acceptable and not simply a form of despair, because possession of it seems to embody a higher objectivity and understanding. But really there is no such point of view and no occasion for despair. It is impossible to accept a permanent role for systematic philosophy and at the very same time to repudiate the idea of such philosophy. Rorty's picture of alternating objective and reactive phases of philosophy does invite us to regard his relativism as a higher objectivity, but this is not so much a virtue of his account as it is a contradiction in it. I See Kuhn, T., The Structure of Scientific Revolutions, Chicago 1962. 2 Kripke, S., "Naming and Necessity," in Davidson, D., and Harman, G., editors, Semantics of Natural Language, Dordrecht.Holland 1971. Quoted from the slightly revised reissue, Naming and Necessity. Cambridge 1980. 89 �R:Evmw EssAY Afghanistan Fights The Struggle for Afghanistan by Nancy Peabody Newell and Richard S. Newell* LEo RADITSA Le regime des Seleucides ne constituaitcependantnullement un regime colonial dans le sens oil nous 1' en tendons aujourd'hui. Comme ils n'avaient aucun zele missionaire, et ne cherchaient a ameliorer ni la religion ni les egouts d~ leurs sujets, mais laissaient les indigenes aussi crasseux et aussi heureux qu'ils l'avaient ete auparavant, la dynastie ne donna jamais lieu a aucune insurrection de leur part. E. J. Bickerman On December 8, 1978, just after signature of treaty between Afghanistan and the Soviet Union, like the Soviet treaties with Vietnam, Angola, and Ethiopia, the New York Times said, "Instead of being a strategic highway to India, as the Victorians feared, Afghanistan looks more like a footpath to nowhere."! But catastrophe teaches provincials geography. In the last three years Kabul has become almost a household word. And people have slowly come to grasp that places few had heard of before 1979, Kandahar, Jalalabad, Mazar-i-Sharif, are not about to become family estates of the Bonaparte family. The Afghans are fighting to almost everybody's amazement in the West-and the rest of the world. This ignorance does not come from scarcity of books or lack of involvement with Afghanistan. We have been more involved with Afghanistan since 1945 than the British in the nineteenth century.2 This.ignorance comes from lack of judgement. In contrast to nineteenth-century accounts, largely written by British officers in India, and to the diplomatic correspondence the British government published at the time of the Afghan crises of 1836-42 and 1873-79, the writings in this century, especially those after 1945, betray little grasp of Afghan history. They obscure fundamentals that nineteenth-century writings stressed: *Cornell University Press, Ithaca and London 1981, 236 pages. 90 The difficulties of access that Afghanistan opposes on all sides to an invading army, surrounded as it is by the vast tracts of mountain and desert, the former only to be traversed by surmounting steep ridges and threading narrow defiles where a few hundreds of well-armed and resolute men could effectually oppose the passage of as many thousands, entitle it to be considered in a military sense, as one of the strongest countries in the whole world, whilst the manly independence of its hardy inhabitants, their sturdy valour, and their skill in the use of weapons of war, to which they are trained from early boyhood, combine to render them far from despicable oppo· nents, especially on their own ground, for even the disciplined warriors of Europe ... Afghanistan is the great breakwater established by nature against an inundation of northern forces in these times. [Emphases minep In the nineteenth century the British knew Afghanistan less but saw it more clearly and respected it more. They knew less but what they knew counted for more. And wear~ busy relearning some of it-but it is already very late. In its contrast with Richard Newell's earlier book, The Politics of Afghanistan (Cornell University Press, 1972), The Struggle for Afghanistan betrays this relearning, for unlike the earlier work it concentrates on events. And events are teaching us what we should have known: that Afghanistan is not a typical country of the so-called "Third World" -a term that serves largely to undo nations, and to excite them to undo themselves, by blurring the distinctions between Leo Raditsa writes frequently on events in the world for Midstream (most recently, "The Source of World Terrorism," December 1981). He recently published a monograph on the marriage legislation of Augustus, "Augustus' Legislation concerning Marriage, Procreation, Love Affairs and Adultery" (in Aufstieg und Niedergang der Roemischen Welt, Berlin !981, II, 13). WINTER 1982 �them-because it never experienced direct colonial rule and until1973 had a monarchy (not, of course, in ,the European sense) that had lasted for more than two hundred years; because in its many isolated valleys traditions of self-rule and assembly prevail that are hundreds of years older than the monarchy. And that just these traditions of self rule and their unwritten constitution -and not the 1964 written constitution which in retrospect turns out to have hastened the destruction of the monarchy -give Afghanistan the strength of resistance: in May 1980 a traditional assembly-a jirgah-brought 916 representatives of groups fighting in all parts of Afghanistan to Peshawar. Based on the recognition of the fastness of the territory, (greater than France) and of the courage of its peoples, British policy in the nineteenth century supported Afghan independence-which meant independence from Russia and Russia's manipulation of Persia-at the same time that it did not interfere with Afghan internal politics and its way of life except for commerce. In the nineteenth century, the amirs of Afghanistan carried on prolonged subtle and difficult negotiations with the British government of India and much less frequently with missions of the Tsar-negotiations that betrayed a remarkable grasp of relations between European nations and Afghanistan's place in them, and a recognition that their capacity to cope with their place in the world did not mean they had to become like the nations they dealt with. 4 The crises of 1836-42 and 1873-79 came about when Britain forsook its own policy of support for the independence of Afghanistan, and interfered directly and unnecessarily in Afghan affairs. The crisis that came to a head in 1878 and that, incidentally, precipitated "The Second Afghan War," started in Europe in 1873, and especially in 1875, with the revolt of the Christian provinces of the Turkish Empire, Herzegovina and Bosnia. Austria, Russia, and Germany, with Italy and France, in early 1876 demanded reforms of the Sublime Porte-demands that Britain supported only after the Sultan's request. In May Bulgaria rebelled, in late June and early July, Serbia and Montenegro-in the expectation of support from Russia. In September 1876, Turkey's brutal suppression of rebellion in Bulgaria reported in the Daily Mail aroused public opinion and sent Gladstone out of retirement to denounce in Parliament a government that countenanced such atrocities-a furor that hindered the British government's support of Turkey. With the failure of another attempt, in this instance sponsored by Britain, at negotiations with the Porte, Russia declared war on Turkey on April 27, 1877. Her troops approached Constantinople in December. In response to the threat to Constantinople, Disraeli summoned Parliament two weeks early and announced that the prolongation of fighting between Russia and Turkey might require precautionary measures. In February 1878, the British fleet sailed through the Dardanelles to Constantinople; British troops, some from India, arrived in Malta, and, with Turkish consent, in Cyprus. War between Britain and Russia appeared possible. In response to Britain's resort to troops from India, Russia mobilized an army of fifteen thousand men (whose size was exaggerated to thirty and eighty thousand men in the reports that reached India) in Russian Turkestan along the borders of Afghanistan and sent a mission into Afghanistan. At first in response to inTHE ST. JOHNS REVIEW structions from London and then on his own, the viceroy of India treated with the amir in Kabul for the establishment of a British presence in Afghanistan, especially in Herat. Aware that the pressure on Afghanistan came from the crisis in Europe and despite the insistence of his friends and associates that he sacrifice the independence of Afghanistan in the choice between Russia and Britain, the amir prolonged negotiations in pursuit of the inherited policy of preserving Afghanistan's independence by neither yielding to Britain and the British government of India or Russia. The expectations of his delay were fulfilled when the powerful nations of Europe came to an agreement with Turkey, which deprived it of much of its territory in Europe, in July 1878 in Berlin, just at the moment of the arrival of the Russian mission in Kabul In part out of ambitious obstinacy-he apparently dreamed of pushing the frontier of British India beyond the Hindu Kush-and in part because of the slowness of communications, the viceroy of India, Lord Lytton, entered Afghanistan with ill-prepared and badly equipped troops from the army of India, and started "The Second Afghan War" -after the resolution of the crisis in Europe. It had been the same in the crisis of 1838-42, "The First Afghan War." Britain had become embroiled in a war of succession in Afghanistan on the side of the "legitimate" king after it had foiled a Russian-manipulated attempt of Persia to seize Herat from Afghanistan before it occurred. In 1838, in a letter meant for Lord Palmerston, that accepted, without acknowledging it, Britain's understanding of recent events, the Russian diplomat, Count Nesselrode, reaffirmed. with admirable clarity and nuance the traditional policy toward Afghanistan, now generally identified with the catchword, "the buffer state": La Grande Bretagne, comme la Russie, doit avoir a coeur le meme interet, celui de maintenir la Paix au centre de l' Asie, et d'eviter qu'il ne survienne dans cette vaste partie du globe, une conflagration generale. Or, pour empecher ce grand malheur, il faut conserver soigneusement le repos des pays intermediaires qui separent les possessions de la Russie de celles de la Grande Bretagne. Consolider la tranquillite de ces contrees, ne point les exciter les unes contre les autres en nourrissant leurs haines mutuelles, se horner a rivaliser d'industrie, mais non pas s'engager dans une lutte d'influence politique; enfin, plus que tout le reste, respecter l'independance des pays intermediaires qui nous separent; tel est, a notre avis, le systeme que les 2 Cabinets ant un commun interet a suivre invariablement, afin d'empl!:cher la possibilite d'un conflit entre 2 gran des Puissances qui, pour rester amies, ant besoin de ne passe toucher et de ne passe heurter au centre de l'Asie. 5 The intelligence of British policy towards Afghanistan in the nineteenth century was in part Afghanistan's doing. The Afghans inflicted spectacular defeats on the British in the two instances, in 1838-42 and 1878, in which they blundered into violating their policy, defeats which brought the British Parliament enough to its senses to have the government of India withdraw its forces without being driven out. In the story of these events there is nothing more instructive than this capacity of the British government and public to learn from errors-and Afghan courage. This capacity to acknowledge error made the British blunders in Afghanistan different in kind 91 �from the present Soviet attempted conquest. In contrast to the British, the Soviets, because they do not recognize opposition and, as a result, have no parliament that can publicly acknowledge error, will not leave Afghanistan unless driven out. What officer in the Soviet army could say the words Lieutenant Vincent Eyre published in London in 1844 and 1879! We English went on slumbering contentedly, as though the Afghans, whose country we had so coolly occupied, were our very best friends in the world, and quite content to be our obedient servants to boot, until one cold morning in November we woke up to the unpleasant sounds of bullets in the air, and an infuriated people's voices in revolt, like the great ocean's distant, angry roar, in a rising tempest.6 The unwelcome truth was soon forced upon us, that in the whole Afghan nation we could not reckon on a single friend.? Even a generation after the Second Afghan War the disasters and the blunders of each war were vividly remembered and discussed clearly. But Afghanistan was not to keep European ways out forever. In the twentieth century the monarchs of Afghanistan, in varying degree, began to suffer the attractions of Europe they had resisted in the times of her greatest confidence. At the same time the political experience they inherited allowed them to appreciate the full seriousness of the self-destructive convulsions that overwhelmed Europe. "The Europeans demonstrated to the Afghans and other non-Western peoples that Western culture was capable of self-destruction. Afghan modernists were confronted with the realization that Europe did not have all the answers to the needs of modern society," Newell sensitively observed of the effects of the First V\'orld War on Afghanistan in his first book. Fearful as they were, those convulsions intensified, rather than weakened, Afghanistan's entanglement with Europe, because they made it clear that Britain and Europe, with Russia turned inside out in 1917, and refugees from Soviet Turkestan in Afghanistan in the early twenties to prove it, no longer had the control that the exercise of the traditional policy toward Afghanistan required. Untill945, the monarchs remained capable of controlling the European influence they encouraged: only their misjudgement occasioned the excesses that occurred. But after 1945, they lost control over the pace of "modernization" in part because of the breakdown and reversal in the traditional policy toward Afghanistan that occurred, more or less unacknowledged, after the British left India in 1947. At the end of 1948, with Europe still in ruins and Britain out of India, the Afghan minister of national economy asked the United States, without stating it in those terms, to take up the traditional Western policy toward Afghanistan. At the same time that he acknowledged the central government's need for arms for domestic control, he foresaw that Afghanistan would fight for the West in the war now actually going on: ._..it [Afg~an~sta~] wants U.S. arms in order to make a positive contnbubon m the event there is war with the Soviets. Properly armed, and convinced of U.S. backing, Afghanistan could manage a delaying action in the passes of the Hindu 92 Kush which would be a contribution to the success of the armed forces of the West and might enable them to utilize bases which Pakistan and India might provide. Ab?ul Majid referred repeatedly to the "war", indicating his behef that a war between the U.S. and the U.S.S.R. is inevitable, and said that when war came Afghanistan would of course be overrun and occupied. But the Russians would be unable to pacify the country. Afghanistan could and would pursue guerrilla tactics for an indefinite period. a Several years later, in the early nineteen-fifties, the United States decided as a matter of policy to refuse military aid to Afghanistan for fear of offending the Soviets, and because they judged that no amount of military aid could defend Afghanistan from a determined Soviet conquest-an expectation Afghanistan's previous history and the events of the last three years belie. After the American refus;l, Prince Daoud, prime minister from 1953 to 1963, turned to the Soviet Union for military and economic aid. After Bulganin's and Khrushchev's visit to Kabul in 1955, the Czechs in 1956 supplied the first arms to the Afghan army, and Afghan officers, eventually as many as 200 a year, went to school in the Soviet Union. At first Soviet aid projects meant to attract attention with quick results: in 1954 a highly visible, twenty-thousand ton grain elevator in Kabul whose grain, although mostly supplied by the United States, was often mistaken for Soviet; the paving of the streets of Kabul, a project rejected as unimportant by the United States. But soon the Soviets concentrated on projects that would count when it came to force: besides equipping and training the army, exploration for natural gas and oil and minerals, jet airports, communications, and spectacular all-weather roadsroads that with their reenforced bridges now bear Soviet armor and gas _decontamination equipment into Afghanistan. In 1956, the Soviets offered credits for a road through the Hindu Kush with a tunnel at the Salang pass which would cut one hundred and fifty miles and two days from the distance between northern Afghanistan and Kabul A few years later, work started on another road from the Soviet border to Herat and Kandahar. Despite the warnings of writers in the West alarmed by the ominous possible uses of the roads, the governments of the West, first the United States but then, as Europe recovered economically from the war, France, Italy, and Germany chose to compete with the Soviets exclusively in economic terms. They helped agriculture, improved the southern roads, organized an airline, built airports and hydroelectric projects, improved local education on all levels, sent Afghans abroad to study-"education" to turn out fateful for the country. In contrast to Soviet money which was lent against barter arrangements for agricultural produce and for raw materials, like natural gas, whose terms have never become public, gifts made up eighty percent of American aid to Afghanistan until 1967. The United States' decision to compete on unequal terms, in economic but not military aid-which represented itself as a continuation of the old policy under a new name, "non-alignment," instead of "buffer state" -actually amounted to an unacknowlWINTER 1982 �edged reversal of the old policy, for it substituted engagement in Afghanistan's domestic affairs for support of its independence. The West's unwillingness to recognize the new policy's reversal of the old blinded it to its greater risks-risks that plainly acknowledged would have made undeniable the recklessness of fostering change within Afghanistan without supporting its independence. Did Afghanistan need an army, which the United States allowed the Soviets to control, for anything except standing up to the Soviets? We pursued the inherently more dangerous policy, because we feared the bluntness and explicitness of the old. The old policy faced the risk of war-and appreciated Afghan courage and Afghanistan's formidible natural defenses-the new policy ignored the possibility of war (and true to its evasiveness, acts as if nothing is happening, now that war has occurred!) in the protestation of good intentions and the condescension of the assumption that the Afghans could not resist a determined Soviet attempt at conquest. In retrospect, in pursuit of this policy of changing Afghanistan's domestic life without supporting its independence, the West appears unwittingly to have cooperated with the Soviets in undermining the central government of Afghanistan (which both it and the Soviets mistook for the country). The new policy with its almost exclusive preoccupation with Afghanistan's domestic affairs had another fateful consequence besides the forgetting of Afghanistan's past. It forgot where Afghanistan was. It forgot how the world was put together. It forgot that the independence of Afghanistan meant the safety of Pakistan and India, and to a degree of Persia, the Persian Gulf, the Sea of Arabia. Because of this readiness to forget that Afghanistan was an actual country in a specific place that came of not facing the possibility that Afghanistan might have enemies, Afghanistan despite our greater involvement in it appears to us much further away than in the nineteenth century. Admittedly, the British in some sense had it easier, because they did not have to defend India without being there-and being there, and riding and walking everywhere they went, they knew how the world was put together. But there are deeper causes for this incapacity to see that countries are in specific places and to remember their past. So-called ideological competition serves to blind people to the past and to what is actually going on before their eyes. Besides the diplomats of the West, much of the youth in Kabul and many in the government fell for this ideological brooding which does not distinguish between one country and another: forgetful of their monarchy's political experience and their country's independence and self-rule they took themselves for any country in the "Third World" -an expression which, Irving Kristol has profoundly pointed out, exists only because of the UN's capacity to spread its illusions. After ten years, in 1963, the king dismissed Prince Daoud as prime minister. In his concentration on winning money from abroad for economic development, Daoud had suppressed all political activity except for the distraction of agitation for the "autonomy" of the Pushtun peoples in Pakistan-agitation meant to foster the illusion of "national" unity and coherence. The foreign money for improving Afghanistan's "infrastructure" and for education had produced the beginnings of a middle class (about one hundred thousand by 1973) but not the increase in producTHE ST. JOHNS REVIEW tion for the trade the new roads meant to facilitate. Largely dependent on the Kabul government, the new middle class spent its money for imported goods instead of investing in light industry and agriculture. In an attempt to make up for Daoud's neglect of politics, the King in 1963 appointed a committee to draft a new constitution. Approved by a traditional countrywide tribal and ethnic assembly-a national jirgah-the new written constitution betrayed the divided mind of the monarch-and his hesitations. At the same time that it granted parliament legislative powers and excluded the entire royal family, except the king, from political office, it granted the king control of foreign and military affairs, the appointment of the cabinet, veto of legislation, and the dissolution of parliament. At the same time that it sought the consent of the people, it attempted to preserve the absolute powers of the king: "The King is not accountable and shall be respected by all." (Article 15) Of the 209 members of the 1965 Parliament, the first elected with universal suffrage, 146 were tribal and ethnic leaders, 25 religious leaders. There were only four deputies from Kabul, four women, four from the newly founded People's Democratic Party of Afghanistan (PDPA), among them Babrak Karma] and Hafizullah Amin. Traditional authority, status, wealth, not political issues, decided most of the electoral contests, especially in the country.9 The king attempted to mediate between this parliament (largely from the country) and the Westernized Afghans in the government in Kabul. At the same time as he called himself the "founder of the progressive movement in Afghanistan," the king attempted to explain his reforms in Islamic terms. The king's ambivalence betrayed itself in his vacillations in regard to the independent press he alternately tolerated and suppressed, and in his refusal to approve a law parliament passed for the establishment of parties that might have in the course of time, a generation-but as it turned out there was to be nowhere near that amount of time, brought the country into the politics of the city. Unwilling to risk the organization of the popular will of the country through parties, the king unwittingly encouraged clandestine groups in Kabul and the other cities of Afghanistan- where less than ten percent of Afghanistan's estimated fifteen million people live. In all its ambiguity the new constitution brought an explosion of political action, outside parliament, at the University and on the streets of Kabul. For the first time, less than two years after the dismissal of Daoud, in 1965, organized Marxist-Leninist groups, especially the People's Democratic Party of Afghanistan, appeared in Kabul During the debate for confidence for the first cabinet under the new constitution in October 1965, the police and the army killed at least three high school and university students in demonstrations in the streets. In October 1968, students prevented the enforcement of a law on education they did not like. In May 1969, an unimportant matter precipitated a general strike that closed the University until November. In November 1971, new exam requirements provoked another general strike that rapidly assumed political character, and again closed the University for five months. In the absence of other political organizations, Babrak Karmal and other representatives from the tightly-organized People's 93 �Democratic Party of Afghanistan often dominated debate in parliament at the same time that their coffirades manipulated crowds at the university and in the streets. But the students did not need much encouragement. Western and Soviet money during the ten years of Daoud's prime-ministership had increased the numbers of students, but not the quality of education. In primary and secondary schools throughout the country, the teachers, often with only a few years more study than their students, persisted in rote instruction that allowed students little discussion or initiative. In Kabul language difficulties plagued the University: in the sixties about one hundred professors from abroad lectured in six languages, with the result that the one European language Afghan students chose to learn determined the· education they got. There were not enough books: of the hundred thousand books in the library, the bare minimum for a university, eighty percent were in English. Also, students wanted to study "letters," fashionable and customary. But the country needed technicians. By the end of the sixties, Afghans in Afghanistan who had returned from graduate study abroad numbered five hundred-and in Afghanistan, in contrast to many "Third-World" countries, most had returned. Out of this chaos came many students more ambitious than qualified-and in addition unemployable-good prospects for the political agitation and the clandestine organizations bent on undoing the world in the name of bettering it. In some ways a grotesque magnification, and to some extent a reflection of the battling that undid many western universities in the same years, this chaos had more brutal-or, at least more obvious-consequences in Afghanistan. At its founding in january 1965, PDPA openly declared its allegiance to Soviet foreign policy and the Soviet model. Like many organizations that cannot cope with opposition, it succumbed almost immediately to the hatred of faction. Each faction had a newspaper that bore its name: Khalq (Masses), was closed down by the government in 1966 after five issues, because of vilification of Western influences and of the royal family, and Parcham (The Banner) lasted until 1969. By 1971, Pareham began to organize Marxist-Leninist cells in the army, especially among junior officers-and perhaps to establish contact with Prince Daoud in forced political retirement, who was to destroy the monarchy in 1973 with its help. At the same time that it kept up open and close relations with the government and the army, the Soviet Union secretly financed and manipulated the organizations meant to undermine them, Parcham and, to a lesser extent, Khalq. In this situation in which the street counted for more than a parliament that could not muster the will to legislate, the king unnecessarily contributed to the heady disorienting atmosphere in Kabul by siding with the Arabs-and the Soviet Unionagainst Israel in the international propaganda war that sought to undo victory on the battlefield in 1967. In retrospect it is clear that the present war for Afghanistan started with Daoud's destruction of the Monarchy in 1973-an event whose significance was hardly appreciated at the time by commentators not used to valuing inherited institutionsiO_and that was hardly remembered in the catastrophe of 1978. Up to 1973 there had been abdications and struggles for succession, but no direct attack on the monarchy. The only institution of the cen- 94 tral government that had survived more than a generation, the two-hundred year old monarchy, enjoyed real respect among educated and uneducated Afghans alike, who called it the "Shadow of God." Such an enormity required a prince like Daoud, who was also cousin and brother-in-law of the king, but a prince with a mind confused by "progressive" ideas-and with an army ready to obey him in part because of Parcham's infiltration. With the exception of some tribesmen, the countryside did not react to Daoud's destruction of the monarchy, probably because they did not realize that Daoud intended to do away with the monarchy, rather than substitute himself for the king, and because they were used to defending themselves from the monarchy rather than defending it. With the monarchy gone, restraint gradually disappeared in Kabul. In his proclamation of a republic after his seizure of power, Daoud called the king a "despot." Despite his promises to turn the king's "pseudodemocracy" into real democracy, he adopted the Marxist program and pro-Soviet foreign policy of Parcham. He emphasized the bloodlessness of his coup at the same time that he admitted eight murders. 11 The Soviet Union offered much military and technical aid to the new regime that it, India, Czechoslovakia and West Germany quickly recognized. For the authority of the king which rested on the consent of the tribes, Daoud tried to substitute the fascination of his personality-and the distractions of his Marxist program, meant for the students and intellectuals of Kabul whom he mistook for the people of Afghanistan. A little more than a year after his seizure of power, Daoud began to undo the Communist infiltration of his regime. In 1975 he expelled the Parcham leaders. In 1977 he dismissed forty Sovie~ trained officers and began to send officers for training to Egypt instead of the Soviet Union. Despite his success in undoing Communist infiltration in at least the top positions in his regime-but not in the army-Daoud still did not, or could not, conceive a program other than Communist: democracy, in his 1977 constitution, turned out to mean a one-party state that recognized no opposition. After its expulsion, Parcham, probably upon Soviet instigation, came in 1976 to an understanding with Khalq, that had from the beginning considered Daoud too "reactionary" to support. At the same time, in order to lessen dependence on the Soviet Union, Daoud conciliated Pakistan and turned for aid to Saudi Arabia, Kuwait, Iraq and, more importantly, Egypt and Persia. Aware of Soviet and Marxist infiltration in Kabul, the Shah had already in 1974 offered two billion dollars in credits, mostly for the construction of a nine-hundred mile railway to connect Kabul, Kandahar, and Herat with Persia and the world outside. Several hundred thousand Afghans had gone to work in Persia and the states along the Gulf. In early 1978 a few months before his murder and the destruction of his regime, Daoud visited Sadat, who had recently won the attention of the world with his visit to Jerusalem. But it was too late. Unable to defend the status-quo because of his destruction of the monarchy, Daoud could neither go backward nor forward. That he got into most trouble over women's rights tells something of the disorientation in Kabul that abWINTER 1982 �sorbed Daoud to the point that he forgot the countryside. 12 He had become a European in spite of himself. In the end those who did not hate him would not support him. Unlike the seizure of power of 1973, the coup of 1978 brought much murder: guesses ranged from two to len thousand dead. Carefully planned (according to Khalq, as early as 1975) and carried out by some of the same officers who had seized power in 1973, the coup of 1978 was precipitated by the unexplained murder of Mir Akbar Khyber, an important leader of the Parcham faction-one of seven political murders in the last months of Daoud. Frightened by Khalq-Parcham demonstrations of mourning and defiance that numbered, perhaps, ten thousand, the first demonstrations against him, Daoud ordered the arrest of the most important Communist leaders. Either inefficient or infiltrated, Daoud's police allowed one of these leaders, Hafizullah Amin, after his arrest, to write detailed instructions to army and air officers to begin the seizure of power the next morning, April 27. With air battles, spectacular in their precision, and intense street battles, the coup took a relatively long time, something like thirty-six hours, time enough for decisive mediation by Western ambassadors who understood the significance of eventsY The April 1978 coup brought a mounting fury of intrigue between one faction after another in Kabul and an attack on the countryside that by early 1979 had provoked violent resistance throughout Afghanistan. Open in its hatred of the destroyed monarchy and the murdered Daoud, the regime at first sought to win confidence at home and abroad with its denial of Marxism and Communism. Its first proclamation acknowledged God. In an interview with Die Zeit, Taraki, a leader ofKhalq and the new President of the Democratic Republic of Afghanistan, denied disingenuously that the violence of the seizure of power aimed at anything other than democracy. 14 A leading expert on Afghanistan scolded the New York Times for calling the coup Communist.15 But soon the fancies that justified their violence overwhelmed the new leaders' capacity to distinguish their seizure of power from an uprising of all Afghanistan, a "revolution." "But he [Taraki] insisted on calling himself the leader of a revolution, not a coup. The conviction that the masses were behind them would lead Taraki and the clannish Marxist leadership to disaster." Unwilling to know themselves in the distasteful role of despots, which in any case was beyond their justification, the new leaders, within a few months of their seizure of power, took the measures that Montesquieu taught provoked the ruin of despotism: with totalitarian arrogance which, unlike the open cruelty of despotism, knows no limits, they attacked Afghan customs and religion in the name of freedom In October 1978 they unfurled a new flag for Afghanistan, modeled after the flags of the Soviet Socialist Republics, which by substituting red for Islamic green undermined their Islamic pretences before the whole country. In November they announced reforms that interfered with customs: compulsory education; limitation of marriage price; required licensing of all marriages and prohibition of marriage before the age of eighteen; prohibition of usury in customary credit arrangements between the poor in the country and their money lenders; redistribution of three million acres of the best landmeasures all ·taken without adequate study of the conditions they ostensibly meant to correct. THE ST. JOHNS REVIEW Used to heady "progressive" pronouncements of reform from Kabul, the Afghans did not react until the arrival in the countryside of bands of fanatic Marxist university and high-school students as government officials, backed by the well-paid and radicalized police, showed them that the new regime, in contrast to Daoud, meant what it said. Tribal and religious leaders who resisted were arrested and executed. The attempt to enroll by force all school-age children (up to then families had voluntarily enrolled about fifty percent of their boys but only ten percent of their girls) in schools of Marxist indoctrination in which Russian substituted for English amounted to an attack by the privileged young of Kabul on the authority of the parents in the countryside. Based on the crude brutality of the expectation that the expropriation, and destruction, of the top two percent of the population would free the rest from "oppression" and, even more cynically, win their allegiance to complicity in murder, and robbery, the land reform program ignored many of the realities of land tenure in an old and poor country only incipiently sensitive to economic differences. Despite the recent appearance of something approaching a rural proletariat of no longer independent nomads, a "majority of farmers and herders appear not to be hopelessly poor" (by Afghan standards) and own their own land. The uncertainty that came with the expropriation showed itself in a one-third drop in the spring wheat harvest in 1979. In the Newells' judgement the abruptness of the marriage reform shows that it aimed, not at the "emancipation of women," but, like the compulsory Marxist education program, at undermining families in order to expose individuals to "social engineering." The resort to force in all these measures provoked explosions of resistance throughout Afghanistan-resistance that coalesced after Kabul showed its readiness to depend on Soviet force, with its treaty with the Soviet Union on December 8, 1978. With the countryside in resistance throughout Afghanistan by the beginning of 1979, uprisings took hold of the cities: in March 1979, in Hera~ the Afghan city closest to Persia, perhaps five thousand people, in a city numbering eighty-five thousand, including all known Soviet advisers and Khalq members, were murdered, often with savage atrocity-an event that wants a Livy to find its proper place in Western history; in April in Jalalabad Afghan soldiers, ordered to attack resistance groups outside the city, killed their Soviet advisors in mutiny and fled to the resistance, after suffering defeat from loyal government and, according to some reports, Soviet troops. There was violence also in Kandahar, Pul-i.Khumri, and Mazar·i-Sharif. The first purges took place just two months after the KhalqParcham seized Kabul: in July, Hafizullah Amin expelled Babrak Karmal and five other Parcham leaders to the exile of ambassadorships in eastern Europe and jailed hundreds of Parcham members. Reckless, arrogantly confident that the Soviets needed him more than he them, in some sense an amateur, with illusions of independence, for unlike Soviet trained Parcham members, he had learned his Marxism on American campuses, Hafizullah Amin defied the Soviets in his fanatic impatience, only to become more dependent on them. For instance, Soviet advisors, whose numbers increased from fifteen hundred at the time of the coup to at least five thousand by the early summer of 1979 to ten thousand at the time of the invasion, often took the 95 �places in the ministries and elsewhere, of the Parcham members Amin purged. By driving events beyoll,d anybody's control, Amin probably more than anyone precipitated the Soviet attempt at conquest that began with his murder. Even as he jailed Parcham members and prepared the measures that by provoking rebellion in the countryside would make him more dependent on the Soviets, Amin convinced visiting American "experts" in the summer and fall of 1978, and apparently, the American ambassador, who saw him frequently, that he could turn Afghanistan into a Communist country without succumbing to Soviet domination. This fanciful expectation came of the illusion, which led to the support ofTito in 1948 and in the last ten years to the support of Communist China, that the enemy is just another nation, Russia, and not Communism that seeks domination by destroying governments of every sort. Even the murder of the American ambassador in early February 1979 in a Soviet-directed attempt, supposedly, to rescue him from unidentified terrorists, did not awaken the West to the seriousness of the situation not only in Kabul but throughout Afghanistan-and to the increase in Soviet penetration. After all, what free nation makes a fuss about the murder of an ambassador? The United States which had up to then ignored Amin's treaty with the Soviet Union meekly withdrew even further from Afghanistan after uttering its first disapproval of the Communist regime. Perhaps nothing more shows the participation of Western diplomats and journalists in Amin's illusions than the sensation caused by Amin's foreign minister's outburst against Soviet "unreliability and treachery," less than three months before the invasion-in the fall of 1979. At the same time Amin began to plot against his closest associate Taraki who may have been in touch with Babrak Karmal and other Parcham members during his enthusiastic reception in Moscow in September 1979. Speculation about Soviet motives for invading Afghanistan on December 25 with eighty-five thousand troops (soon to number one hundred thousand) serves largely to continue the evasion that kept Western journalists and governments from anticipating the danger of attempted conquest throughout the preceding six years, and taking action against it before it occurred-even after intelligence reports of Soviet troop movements along the northern bank of the Oxus River early in December 1979. According to the Newells, Amin's defiance of the Soviets and his successive purges of their favorites, Parcham and then Taraki, drew the Soviets to attempt the conquest of Afghanistan. But the struggle between factions that turned murderous in the end was at most a precipitating cause. The reason for the attempted conquest is that the Soviets can not face the uprising of almost a whole nation, of almost all the Afghans, not for their "world revolution" but against it. "The most self-defeating aspect of Khalq's program was its failure to give those elements of the population it championed anything they could recognize other than trouble. As a consequence, Khalq ignited one of the most truly popular revolts of the twentieth century." (Emphasis mine.) In appearance abrupt, the attempted Soviet invasion of Afghanistan actually brought to a head a generation of active infiltration in Afghanistan. Already in 1950, the year Spanish, incredibly, attained equal priority with English-and four years before the ap- 96 pearance of a ten-thoUsand copy edition of a Russian-Vietnamese, Vietnamese-Russian dictionary-students at Soviet language schools studied Pushtu. To the surprise of both the Soviet Union and the United States, it turned out, however, that without an open fight Afghanistan was not for the stealing. Suddenly, the courage of the Afghans rediscovered the buffer state, under all the obfuscations about "non-alignment," and the wisdom of nineteenth century diplomacy. But the courage that was too much for the Soviets was also too much for the West. The United States too could not cope with the courage of men ready to fight, almost with their bare hands and without waiting for support, against the soldiers of a regime that terrifies it and the other leading nations of the world. The Soviets tried to destroy the men of this courage; the United States cynically took their destruction for granted. "The primary inadequacy of American policy lay in the fact that it immediately conceded Afghanistan. Carter conveyed that concession even in his strongest denunciations of the invasion." The unreality of the West's response showed itself in the ludicrousness of Western statesmen's remarks and proposals for Afghanistan. Without blushing, the government of Germany remarked on the divisibility of detente, a remark which, if it meant anything at all, meant that Germany expected Europe to be conquered last or next to last-and without fighting. Fresh from handing Rhodesia to Mugabe with the acclamation of the whole world, Lord Carrington proposed "non-alignment" for Afghanistan, just at the moment when the Soviets were lost in the attempt, and denying it, to destroy the buffer state, for which "non-alignment" had been for a generation a kind of codeword that obscured the realities of its survival both to the West and the Soviets: the courage of the Afghans and nature's gift of fastness. The United States' admission that it would fight for the Gulf of Persia but not by implication help the men and women resisting aggression in Afghanistan, showed for perhaps the first time since 1945 that it was reduced to defending natural resourcesnot freedom. Against this shameless-and unintelligent, for it forgets Afghanistan's strategic position (but mountains and courage do not appear in the defense budget)-admission of a policy of expediency, nobody said a word. Least of all those who, with the mindlessness of the "educated," had been quick to assume that the lust for profits had driven us to fight for Indochina. The consequences of preferring expediency to the defense of freedom-as if aid to those ready to fight for freedom in Afghanistan were not expedient!-shows itself in the United States' readiness to cater to the whims of Saudi Arabia and to forget that the importance of Israel comes not because of its ties with American Jews, but because it has the reliable daring strength that can only come of democracy-the only democracy in the Middle East ex· cept for Turkey whose moderate temporary military dictator· ship, terrorism's bitter fruit, now begins to awaken the contempt of those who can only recognize freedom in its absence. It also shows itself in the prevarications of our relationship to China, itself occasioned by our abandonment of Indochina, especially in the refusal to recognize that China, which has not said a word for Poland (but totalitarian countries fear nothing more than a meaningful word), is more ruthless than the Soviet Union, and in WINTER 1982 �the readiness to make embarassing compromises of dubious legality in the support of Taiwan. But the truth is that the struggle that counts, and the only one we can win, r~ally win-and without major war, but at the risk of small wars in which individuals but not whole populations die-is for freedoffi. We were in Indochina because of freedom. United States and Western evasiveness shows itself most in its incapacity to face up to the Soviet use of gas in Afghanistan, reported already in May 1980 by Newsweek-and in Laos since 1976, and in Cambodia-and to supply the Afghans openly with elementary weapons and simple medicines. The Soviet resort to gas in violation of two international treaties is an international issue, that is, an issue that affects all countries if there ever was one. It occurs at a moment when the government of the United States, against its desires and probably unnecessarily, has yielded to the importunity of some of Europe for arms control negotiations for both middle and long-range nuclear strategic weapons. To enter into such negotiations in the knowledge that the Soviet Union is violating two international treaties against the use of gas, amounts to saying we will negotiate with you no matter what you do. That is not to negotiate, but to yield without acknowledging, and even knowing, it-just what totalitarian countries mean by "negotiate." The only newspaper I know of that has shown courage in facing up to Soviet use of gas, the Wall Street Journal, is right in its judgement that the enormity of the outrage is too much for the government. Because the Afghans dare fight the Soviets we are afraid to help them, not fight along with them, but simply to help. There have been reports in the American press that the government has seen to weapons for the Afghans from the beginning. But then why the secrecy? And why President Reagan's casual remark in the first months of his presidency that he would aid the Afghans if they but asked? 16 Do we really live in a world in which Sadat dared say that he sent old weapons from East Europe, apparently paid for by the United States, to people fighting for their homeland against brutal aggression with more or less their bare hands in cold and heat we can barely imagine-but the United States does not? Whatever the truth of these rumors of covert aid to the Afghans from the United States, every report I have read from men who have dared enter Afghanistan and every report the Newells cite tells of the absence of modern weapons, especially of ground to air missiles, and of simple medical supplies. 17 We may send some weapons, but they do not get through. The underlying reasons for Western refusal to help the Afghans are not pretty. Fear, first of all And then condescension. We are quite used to pitying the weak whom the Soviets, in much of the world, know how to turn into unwilling victims of their own hate and resentment, but not to respecting the brave. Who are these unlettered rustics with their World War I rifles to teach us courage? Who are they to fight for their country and us, unasked? The sixty to two hundred resistance groups, often acting on their own and, thereby, baffling Soviet planning, draw their cohesion and authority not from European parliamentary institutions and "political" ideas, which served largely to destroy the Monarchy and bring the European civil war to Afghanistan, but THE ST. JOHNS REVIEW from age·old tribal assemblies that make binding majority deci· sions, assemblies where speakers with age, wisdom, courage and brilliance in speaking, and lineage exercise the most influence. That we take it for granted that these are ineffective and primitive tells a good deal more about us and our distance from the past that made us than it does about the Afghans. For these institutions resemble those of Homer, who lived only a hundred generations ago. The British in the nineteenth century were much closer to that past. In 1841 Vincent Eyre knew who had marched in Afghanistan before him-"a country hitherto untraversed by an European Army since the classic days of Alexander the Great." As a result Afghanistan was closer to them than Europe to Af~ ghanistan. In contrast, the Afghans now know the intimacy of our minds and what Afghanistan means to us better than we who can barely catch sight of their country in the distance. Several months ago, the leader of the National Liberation Front of Afghanistan, Sayed Ahmed Gailani, explained the strategic and moral significance of the war for Afghanistan to an Italian journalist with a clarity beyond most officeholders in the West: The Pakistanis have done their Islamic duty by us, not only because of solidarity, but also because they realize that in the eventuality of the consolidation of their grip on Afghanistan, the Russians already plan a blitz through Pakistani Baluchistan that would bring them to the Sea of Arabia-in the ful· fillment of a dream of centuries. The Sea of Arabia means oil and the strangulation of Europe. The Europeans either do not grasp this sequence of events-or pretend they do not. In answer to the reporter's question: "What would the Afghans like from Europe?" Gailani said: A bit of solidarity, if not for humanitarian reasons, for the vulgar reasons of expediency. Would you dedicate to us a few of those peace marches that occur everywhere often in favour of our invaders. You walked for Vietnam where the two great powers collided. You might walk for us, a country where nobody collided with anybody, which has been invaded in the coarsest colonial fashion, the fashion we escaped in the time of the British and which now comes to us from Moscow. We ask ourselves over and over again: How can Europe, hypersensitive Europe, who rises to her feet for Chile and Cambodia, find the strength to close her eyes to our instance, the most shameful of all? Our fight can have three great consequences: the liberation of Afghanistan from an invading army, the rescue of Pakistan from probability of a similar fate, the frustration of the plan to encircle Europe. Unless it is just this that you want-to be encircled. 18 Tucked away in the pages of the New York Times several weeks ago, the U.S. Army chief of staff remarked almost as a matter of course that the Third World War had started in Af. ghanistan. 19 It may also be won there. But there is not much time. 1. "Keeping Cool about Kabul," New York Times, December 8, 1978. 2. In his proposal on March 12, 1948 to President Truman to raise the American Diplomatic Mission in Afghanistan from Legation to Em- 97 �bassy, George C. Marshall observed" ... that the American Community in Afghanistan is now larger than that oLany other foreign state." Foreign Relations of the United States, Part 1, V {1948), 490-494. 3. Vincent Eyre, The Kabul Insurrection of 1841.42, London 1879, 1-2, 63. Published on the occasion of "The Second Afghan War," this second edition of Eyre's The Military Operations at Cabul, which ended in the Retreat and Destruction of the British Army (London 1843) contains a long introduction, not included in the first edition. 4. For an account, extraordinary in its intelligent subtlety, of the nego· tiations that broke down in the crisis of 1879, see H. B. Hanna, The Second Afghan War, 1878-79-80, London 1899, 2 vols., especially I, 1-285. 5. Correspondence Relating to Persia and Afghanistan, London 1839, 261. 6. Eyre, Kabul 2, London 1879, 53-54. 7. Eyre, Cabul1, London, 1843,29. 8. FRUS, Part I,V (1948), 490-494. 9. Christine F. Ridout, "Authority Patterns and Afghan Coup of 1973," Middle East Jouma/29, 2, 1975, 165-78. 10. Without distinguishing between the king and the monarchy, the New York Times called the King "conservative" the day after the coup, July 18,1973. The next day, in perhaps a typographical error, it reported that "Afghanistan had been ruled by the monarchy for 43 years." Two days later, on July 21, 1973, C. C. Sulzberger assured everyone that there was no significant difference between the King and Daoud: "Af· ghanistan was no democracy under King Zahir nor will it be under President Daoud." The former American Ambassador to Afghanistan (1966-73) Robert G. Neumann ("Afghanistan Under the Red Flag," The Impact of the Iranian Events upon Persian Gulf and United States Security, Washington, D.C. 1979, 128-148 also barely notices the disappearance of the monarchyprobably because the intensity of intrigue and gossip in Kabul robbed him of perspective. 11. According to the New York Times ofJuly 26, 1973, Daoud stated: "I can safely say that this was in every sense a bloodless coup. It not only enjoyed the complete cooperation of all branches of the army but also the support of all people, particularly the intellectuals and youth." (Emphasis mine.) 12. Robert G. Weinland, "An Explanation of the Soviet Invasion of Afghanistan," Center for Naval Analyses, Alexandria, Virginia 1981,7. For an example of the disproportionate interest in the position of women in a country with more tractable and pressing problems like a high infant mortality rate, see the ideological but interesting study of Erika Knabe, Frauenemanzipation in Afghanistan, Germany 1977. 13. See the interesting article by Hannah Negaran {pseudonym for an Afghan), "The Afghan Coup of April 1978: Revolution and International Security," Orbis 23, 1, Spring 1979, 93-113. The reluctance of Afghans even abroad to speak of events in Afghanistan openly betrays the nearness of the violence that appears so far away. 14. Die Zeit, june 9, 1978. 15. Louis Dupree, New York Times May 20, 1978: " ... an enlightened press should avoid the loose use of the term 'Communist.' All should examine the words of the new leaders carefully for governments, like persons, should be considered innocent until proven guilty." 16. New York Times, March 10, 1981. For the indications, all from unidentified sources, that the United States sends arms to the Afghans, Carl Bernstein, "Arms for Afghanistan," The New Republic, July 18, 1981, 8-10. 17. I cite only the most recent reports: II Giornale Nuovo, December 2, 1981; Neue Zuercher Zeitung, December 20-21, 1981; Foreign Report, January 7, 1982. 18. Il Giomale Nuovo, October 29, 1981. 19. New York Times, January 3, 1982. See also the important article by Pierre and Micheline Centlivres, "Village en Afghanistan," Commentaire 16, Winter 1981-82, 516-525. AT HOME AND ABROAD LETTER FROM VIETNAM Hanoi, ecological city Four A.M. at my hotel, right in the middle of Hano~ near the Grand Theatre. The crowing of roosters from the yards nearby awakens me. Not-to-be-believed! Thirty years ago, at the age of thirteen, I had last seen this colonial city that looked more like a French provincial town-with, however, every feature of an urban center-than a capitol. In thirty years the regime has managed to rusticate Hanoi at the same time that its population (not counting the new suburbs) has quadrupled to 800,000. 98 In that early morning's walk and in the following days, I saw other sides of the city's "ecological" transformation. With the exception of a few public buildings, no new housing had gone up within the city limits. Banana trees, vegetables, chicken cages, pig pens take up every square foot of the gardens of the villas of the past. Fertilized by the excrement of fowls and little pigs that are raised like dogs, a vegetable green spills from the terraces of even small apartment houses. The inhabitants are even encour- aged to take up part of the sidewalk to plant fruit trees-or vegetables that the urine of passing children waters. Interior spaces are laid out with the same ecological concern. Each individual takes up an average of one and a half square yards. He eats, sleeps, studies, works, and entertains on a bed made of one large wooden board. Thin panel-partitions and balconies under the ceilings quadruple the available space. Four to five households now live in the space once taken up by WINTER 1982 �one. This crowding makes for the mutual surveillance the State desires. In the course of time, however, it may make for loyalties, and even connivance against the state's hostility. The housing crisis Unventilated and usually dark, these low houses in the center of town are still preferable to the recently and poorly constructed dormitory houses of the suburbs that break down into slums within four to five years. They are preferable because the life of the streets makes footage in front of these houses worth a mint in rent or in sale price. With their stands set up there, small craftsmen and peddlers earn ten times more than state employees, even despite heavy taxes and the necessity of restocking in the open market. In the suburbs humidity and mould crumble the walls; doors and windows don't shut; the stairwells stink; running water reaches only to the second floor; the waste drainage system is inadequate or nonexistent. Coming home from factory or office, men and women have to carry pails of water to the third, fourth, or fifth floor, and, for fear of theft, in addition, their bicycles. These houses in the suburbs are not available to anyone who wants them. Heroes of labour and high-level state and party offi· cials have preference; others may leave their names on a waiting list that may drag on four or five years. But money can always buy the right to rent from those who enjoy preference. The state also builds housing for those who can pay lavishly for associative ownership-four to eight thousand dong down, the rest in monthly installments, with salaries in the range from 50 to 200 dong a month. And yet because of the crises in housing the waiting lists for co-ownership of these apartments are long: illegitimate favors and illegal transactions are the rule. The discrepancy between the earnings of employees and bureaucrats and what they spend always bewilders foreigners. A family of four with two working adults spends an average of 500 to 600 dong for essentials: food, clothing, medicine, travelbut the two salaries together hardly add up to 200 dong. How do people make up the difference? This is one mystery in the everyday life of a citizen of Socialist Vietnam. Small in size, the apartments hold a bewildering amount of stuff. Refrigerators and TVs take center stage; then sewing machines, radio-cassettes, thermos bottles, THE ST. JOHNS REVIEW dishes, kitchen utensils, clothes, canned and dry foods, table, chairs, bed; even a mo-ped or a bicycle kept away from thieves ,-all crammed into a poor lodging of twelve to twenty square yards. No paintings, no vases with flowers. Even in the homes of intellectuals, there is no room for aesthetics. Only one picture hangs on the wall, high above the many shelves filled with useful objects-the portrait of Uncle Ho, outward sign of loyalty to theregime, and protective talisman against the indiscreetness of the cultural police. Meant for lawns and children's play, the space between houses was turned two years ago into vegetable gardens with plots for each apartment. Every family gets two square yards of land for vegetables and its pig or chickens. Dogs-traditional guardians of the Vietnamese house, children's playmates, and a special holiday delicacyare nowhere to be seen. Utility and survival are the only things that count. The inhabitants of sprawling suburban projects in Hanoi should count themselves lucky in comparison to the half of Hanoi dwellers who swarm in areas that have no sewage system. On rainy days, it takes acrobatics to keep your knees dry crossing the muddy lanes in these slums infested with flies, mosquitoes, and rats. Thirty to fifty people share a common toilet, a sink, a tiny kitchen. Despite the single-story houses, the population density makes the pollution from the garbage and excrement left uncollected in the humidity among swarming rats far worse than in the areas overwhelmed by the exhaust of cars in Western cities. The institute of health of Hanoi reports the highest incidence of respiratory and intestinal maladies in just these areas that the tropical heat makes ideal for the prolif· eration of bacteria. And yet it is these streets which house the favorites of the regime, the proletarians of the workshops and factories-except when these rural-born workers still keep a house in the surrounding countryside, fifteen or twenty kilometers outside the city. Urban life In Hanoi people travel mostly by foot or on bicycle, which should please the world· wide ecological movement-except for the anarchy of traffic. Fatal accidents occur daily in the wild swarm of cyclists that thread daringly between trucks driven by young "bodoi" drivers still used to jungle paths. No one pays any attention to the traffic lights that hardly ever work because of power blackouts. Without looking ahead or behind drivers turn right or left. The young policemen who casually direct traffic are completely overwhelmed. A cigarette will do if you are stopped for a violation. After dark, the undiminished traffic of motor· bikes in the unlighted streets and boulevards of Hanoi causes serious collisions between cyclists-and fatal crashes between trucks and motorbikes. The use of electricity is severely restricted. With its frequent and prolonged power cuts, Hanoi becomes a little village after nightfall. Except for the embassy area and the houses of the top men, darkness covers the city. Ostensibly, the energy is saved for the sake of factories and country agricultural machines. But such darkness, in a city of a million people, increases crime -thefts, break-ins, rapes, prostitution in the parks, juvenile delinquency. By depriving the urban proletariat of its one relaxation, TV sets and radios, it also invites a noticeable rise in a birth rate already rising at an alarming thirty percent a year. One saying in Hanoi goes: "I bury my joy deep in the belly of my wife, and from year to year my family grows." Socialist "work" Like space, time, especially work-time, is used ecologically. The factories, workshops, and offices have realized the dream of all Western ecologists, the two-hour day. A worker, who barely lives five days on his monthly salary, gives the Party-State its due: two hours. The other six he keeps for the pursuit of his private interests. In factory Number X in Hanoi, the team of mechanics makes spare parts for a series of underground bicycle, kitchen-, and household-ware workshops. They draw upon the state's raw materials, which rarely arrive at the same time. This excess of some materials and absence of others equally necessary, excuses non-fulfillment of quotas and leaves workers with nothing to do. But since it is the rule, the socialist rule, that machines must run unceasingly, workers more often than not turn the machines to practical advantage-instead of letting them run on emptily. With the surplus materials or with scraps that have a way of piling up, they make themselves objects not forseen in the plan. Garment workers have a way of cutting large scraps from the textiles the fac· tory provides-scraps that they turn into pretty blouses at home for their own use or, more often, for sale on the open market in competition with factory goods. When 99 �occasionally the local marketing of factory "surplus" materials, or of items made out of them, arouses the suspicions of the economic police, truck-drivers cart the illegal merchandise away to sell along the roads in the country~much to the delight of the peasants, who usually have to do without manufactured goods. With such a duplication of effort, socialist enterprises have no chance of reaching the goals they negotiate with the stateunless they indulge in the common practice of altering the books. The failure to meet production goals, however, compels managers to multiply expensive overtimea move that in turn encourages the workers to increase the amount of overtime by further reducing their productivity during the regular day. For twenty years the Party-State has thundered against the waste and theft of the public property and means of production of the nation. But the workers and employees feel even more robbed and exploited by a state that pays them wages too low for their biological reproduction. Who is the thief here? That is the question. Short of shutting down its own enterprises -a move which it will never bring itself to make-the state can always hold its managers "responsible" to more easily dismiss them. But the system survives the removal and replacement of advisors, unchanged. Workers in distribution and service are not to be outdone by factory colleagues. According to the Party's daily paper, the People, the Peoples' control committees from a sample of 500 state stores exposed the following covert practices: the employees of state stores keep the best of the merchandise, sometimes all of it, for themselves; in food stores, employees sell customers flour and other grains after buying up all the rice for themselves; in the bicycle store M. K., the employees together buy up all bicycles and tires for their own use and especially to resell at large profit to relatives and neighbours; at a state "supermarket," Bach Hoa in Hanoi, the shopper who asks for a piece of fabric, a thermos bottle, a ballpoint pen, a notebook, or a bar of soap, can expect the automatic response of the saleslady, "All out" -but he knows for a fact that a buyerspeculator ready to share his profit with the saleslady could take home a good supply. Even for rationed items for which you have coupons you often have to buy your place in the long lines made up oflittle professionals between the ages of eight and fifteen. This mafia of buyers-speculators in connivance with the salespersons, whose wages rarely exceed twenty-five dollars a month, infests almost all the state stores in 100 Hanoi and in the other cities of Vietnam. In this racket, the buyer and saleslady never deal alone but in concert with every one of their colleagues-and with the omnipresent agents of the police. Widespread corruption The transportation business is just as riddled with corruption. It often takes weeks to get the authorization necessary to move from one city to another, and, especially, from north to south-and just as long again to get a train or bus ticket. The train ticket from Hanoi to Haiphong, three dong at the official state price, is available only on the black market for ten times the price. State officials take an unlimited number of "business" trips, often with their families. Employees of the railroad and bus lines sell at least a third of their tickets to "relatives" and friends who then renegotiate them on the black market. The price of airplane tickets is prohibitive. And yet the Vietnamese travel constantly, both to visit friends and family and, more often, to speculate on the significant differences in the price of merchandise in different regions. At least once a week the party papers accuse a bus or shipping line of misappropriating hundreds of tons of rice or wheat flour. But the denounced crimes go unpunished. Prompt enough in handing down harsh verdicts against their political enemies, public tribunals are slow and indulgent towards economic delinquents whose hands are no dirtier than anyone else's. The gangrene of corruption does not spare the most "sacred" sectors of socialist society, health and education. The managers and staff of hospitals and clinics skim off substantial amounts of the medicine and food intended for the sick. Managers report an inflated number of beds or patients. If the state maintains it cannot meet such inflationist demands, the patients have somehow or other to pay for the supposedly free services and medications. In this condition of severe scarcity and blatant inequalities, it seems only natural that hospital workers attend to their own wellbeing before treating the rest of the people. In the socialist system there are at least three types of hospitals: those for the people, those for the middle-level bureaucrats, and those for the higher officials of the Party-State. Within each type treatment varies according to wage or salary scales. Everyone in Hanoi knows that the large hospital, "Viet-XO" (Russian-Vietnamese) admits only high-level officials, who are assigned to wards according to salary. Before explaining his symptoms, a sick man who ar- rives at a hospital must show his party card or his certificate of salary. The hard times of 1980 showed the weakness of the Vietnamese academic system. At the start of the 1980 school year, the regime took pride in an enrollment of 13 million, from nursery school to secondary school, and a teaching staff of 300,000. At the material level, the academic system is totally inadequate. The buildings (including those made of wood and corrugated iron or mud) barely suffice for a third of the students. Classes are organized in shifts: morning classes from seven to eleven or afternoon ones from one to five are for youths following a normal course of studies; evening classes, from six to ten, are for adults. Children are left to themselves a good half of the day. The youth organizations cannot cope with their numbers. They often loiter in gangs in the parks or in the streets of the suburbs. In the present hard times, children help their families in their unofficial workshops or do their own small-time peddling in front of state stores, train stations, movies, and theatres. Some of them prove to be excellent pickpockets. A walk after dark in certain areas of Hanoi and Saigon is ill-advised. In 1980, the students or their parents had to buy textbooks and notebooks, often at high open-market prices. In many schools, students have neither paper nor pencils to copy down the lessons of teachers, who cannot keep up standards. After school, students and teachers run into each other in the pursuit of small deals on the sidewalks. The teachers I interviewed said they had never known their profession so debased and humiliated. Their poverty wages allow them no time for advanced study, for research, or self-instruction. Secondary-school teachers with classes preparing for degrees or for college entrance are a bit better off. They reserve their best teaching for those students whose parents can pay extra for special lessons. To pass the entrance and graduation exams of universities and technical schools, you had better be the child of high-ranking officials in the regime, or be able to afford large payoffs-or be a genius. The certainty that their students, unless they are ready to go till the soil in the New Economic Zones, will be unemployed after graduation from high school or university, discourages many honourable teachers. In the south, the lot of students and their teachers seems even more desperate. There, in addition to the material deprivation common to all Vietnamese, the newly "liberated" suffer the psychological torment that comes of not being able to absorb socialist education based on Leninist indoctrination. WINTER 1982 �Indoctrination Instruction in "revolutionary vigilance," even and above all towards one's parents and relatives, replaces the teaching of mo· rality. The outcome of an individual's exams depends in large part on his political history and on the political history of his parents and grandparents. As they say in the South, "Hoc tai thi ly lich": "Study with your brains, compete with your political past." (Students in the South are divided into four categories: A. Militant, or belonging to the family of a party militant; B. Worker, or child of a worker-family which did not work for the old regime; C. Child of a petty official or non-ranking military man of the old regime. Petty bourgeois origin; D. Men who worked for the old regime, or child of parents who held high positions in the old regime.) University professors and researchers must keep strictly to "the eight valuable hours of socialist work." A professor of medicine from the faculty of the University of Paris, fifteen minutes late for his lecture, often puts up with the reproaches of his doorman-comrade. The regime appoints officials, recruited from the illiterate peasantry, to watch over the activities of Southern intellectuals barred from all teaching. Former professors of literature and law hang on in untenured positions at the Institute of Research in the Social Sciences. Others who are in shape pedal bicycle-taxis. All of them dream of leaving their country~now become a foreign land-even though not many years ago most took part in the struggle against the American presence. The Southern intelligentsia is most pitiable. The regime distrusts the quarrelsome habits it took on in the long struggle against the American war. To make matters worse, the Stalinist conception of a proletarian science and technology radically different from, and far superior to, bourgeois science, still holds sway over Vietnamese Communist bureaucrats. During a national congress of the Writer's Union, in Hanoi in May 1980, in celebration of thirty-five years of literary production under the regime, Nguyen dinh Thi, famous writer and ex-president of the union, conceded: "Over thirty-five years of independence and socialist construction, we have seen a host of writers and poets emerge, but not a single literary work." This outrageous admission earned THE ST. JOHNS REVIEW him the total suppression of his play, "Nhuyen Trai a DOng Quan," commissioned by the Party's Central Committee : to celebrate the 600th anniversary of the national hero, general, chief of state, and poet. Party censors accused him of playing down the great man's victorious resistance to the Chinese army of occupation in his overemphasis of his hero's time of disgrace -and of implicitly slandering the present socialist regime in his critique of the despotic monarchy of that time. The fate of this party writer, producer of some twenty novels extolling the anti-colonialist and anti-imperialist struggles and the construction of socialism, sheds a harsh light on the predicament of not-so-conformist writers and artists. Painters and musicians are encouraged to take up subjects that will build socialism, and socialist love of country and of work. Eastern or Western Impressionism, abstract painting, and painting of nude figures are on the index. A squad from the cultural police descended upon the studio of painter B one day to seize his paintings of too-delicate young girls, and to teach him to draw "a hand with all five fingers." The censors classify music into three fundamental groups: red, yellow, and blue. The radio broadcasts red or revolutionary music, martial in its rhythms and lyrics, all day long. Yell ow music, romantic and softening like the former music of the South or agitated like the Western "disco" music, is passionately condemned. Finally, blue music, like classical music and the light music of the West, is to be listened to in moderation. Repression is so severe that many intellectuals confess that they do not dare to write their thoughts and real feelings, even privately. They do not dare pursue unorthodox ideas for fear these might slip out in conversation with an unreliable colleague or in the course of police questioning. The motto of Buddhist and Christian monks, "Banish impure thoughts," has become a party order to the subjects of the Socialist Republic of Vietnam. In twenty-five years of socialism, at least sixty famous writers and artists have known banishment, expulsion from the Party, reeducation through work in camps. Professor Tran Due Thao, once a student and professor at the :Ecole Normale Superieure of Paris, is the most notorious case. For requesting more freedom in university teaching and in literary and artistic expression, and particularly for daring to criticize the anti·intellectual Stalinist practices of the Party, he was arrested in 1958, subjected to self-criticism and sent to tend cows in a reeducation camp in the High Regions. Upon his return to Hanoi in early 1960, he was barred from teaching and publishing. In exchange for a food allowance, he translates works of Marx and Lenin. Denied hospital privileges, he must depend on the help of friends in case of illness. Since 1971, at the request of some intellectuals of the French Communist Party, the Vietnamese Communist Party authorized Tran Due Thao to publish some articles on the philosophy of language in the French journal La Pensee. Country life Compared to country life, the cities with all their poverty seem to the Vietnamese peasants like little heavens-for they still have medicines, white rice, sugar, cigarettes, and all sorts of amenities. Despite Party propaganda, the young people (students or graduates) sent to the country see that the peasants are even more exploited than the urban proletariat. Unable to bear the harsh conditions of country life, the ostracism of local officials, the ignorance the Party fosters in the peasantry, most of these young people sneak back to the cities. Organized into cooperatives that have collectivized all the means of production, land, and equipment, the peasants take their work in the collective rice paddies in resignation for a corvee for the Party. They control neither the production plan nor the distribution that allots them the bare minimum of food: forty-four pounds of paddy per person per month in a good harvest, about thirty percent of total production. The rest must be sold to the state at ridiculously low prices. The manure, agricultural equipment, and other items of everyday use supposedly supplied by the state at low prices are available in far from sufficient quality or quantity. With the exception of Party schools for the children of the political bureaucracy, the schools, which are free, offer no prospect of advancement. Because in 1980 the medical clinics had no medicines, the peasants had to seek their medicines in the cities at black market prices. To survive they must, in addition to the eight hours of socialist work on the rice paddies of the cooperative, put in as much or more time on their family plots. The productivity of these individual plots, that taken together make up five to seven percent of the communal lands, surpasses the collective rice paddies six or seven times. Thanks to a tropical climate that knows no harsh winters, the peasant may, with 101 �deft rotation, manage four or five harvests a year: one of rice, one of potatoes or corn, two or three of kidney beans, soy beans, tomatoes, squash, tobacco, etc. He takes his tools and fertilizer from the cooperative's stocks. Convinced the state exploits him, the peasant flaunts a high rate of absenteeism. In his five to six hours on collective land, the peasant prepares his strength for the pursuit of much more lucrative work at home: truck farming, pig and poultry raising, handicrafts or peddling. In consequence of these arrangements, young researchers from Hanoi, engaged in a survey of rural life, were astonished to find thirty-hour day schedules for peasants: eight hours of work on the cooperative farm, eight more of work at home, eight hours for sleep, four hours of domestic activities (kitchen work, housework, childcare ... ) and one hour for relaxation or political meetings. The family economy resorts to all available labor, from six-year-old children tore- tired grandparents. The children are given the least burdensome tasks, such as babysitting or watching the pigs and poultry. But the children's work in the family interferes with their schooling: most Vietnamese peasant children quit school after the elementary grades. The yield of the family plots not directly consumed at home fetches prices on the open market in the cities from eight to ten times higher than in state stores. Only this parallel economy, which the State tolerates in suspicion, allows the peasant to add enough to the meager collective-farm food rations to satisfy his basic needs for clothing, housing, health, transportation, social, and cultural life. More spacious than city homes, half the houses in the country in the North are now solidly built, with brick walls and red tile roofs. Not the productivity of the cooperatives, as the regime would have it, but twenty years of desperate work on plots of individual land have built these houses. This article appeared in 1981 in the autumn issue of Commentaire. Eight years ago the writers, a physician and a professor of education at the top of French professional life-Paris-and about to join the Socialist Party, accepted an invitation from the French Ministry of Foreign Affairs to spend five years in Laos. With their three infant daughters they arrived in Vientiane, for an at first sight "mad adventure" that reflection had told them actually amounted to an "extraordinary opportunity," on September 14, 1974-little more than six months before the Communist conquest of South Vietnam that they enthusiastically took for the "liberation" of Indochina. Despite their expectations, their eyes were alive enough to see what went on before them-and their souls strong enough to stand the pain of their sight. Every Communist victory in Vietnam brought the Communist Pathet Lao nearer to power. A little more than six months after the signature of the Paris accords to end the Vietnam War January 23, 1973, a Provi· sional Government of National Union was formed in Laos in which Communist ministers matched right wing minist~rs in pairs. Even the police was reduced to powerlessness by the resort to pairs: a Communist accompanied each American-uniformed regular policeman. The conquest of Saigon in April 1975 made possible-in addition to the Khmer Rouge conquest of Phnom Penh -the "Liberation" of Vientiane and the seizure of power in Laos by the revolutionary committees supported by the Pathet Lao on August 23, followed by abdication of the king on November 29 and the decla· ration of the Peoples Democratic Republic of Laos on December 2. The more the Communists in Vientiane The state may complain that the oblig· atory deliveries of produce from the cooperatives leave much to be desired-and sometimes do not occur at all. At fault, however, are not the collective-farm members, who receive only thirty percent of the harvest-but the middle-men who each skim something off the surplus: officials of the cooperative, of the commune, of the district, and of the province; managerial, administrative, military, and political officials. In the endless "bureaucracy" in Vietnamese rural society, there is an official for each four or five workers. Hdnoi, November 1980 JEAN DULICH Translated by Colette Hughes Jean Dulich is a pseudonym for a Vietnamese. FIRST READINGS LAOS Au nom de Marx et de Bouddha, Revolution au Laos: un people, une culture disparaissent, by Marie-Noele and Didier Sicard InterEditions, Paris 1981, 207 pages. Laos has long since returned to the strategic insignificance for which, one judges, nature intended it and for which its inhabitants unquestionably yearn. J. K. Galbraith New York Times January l, 1982 This is a real book, a book that had to be written. Like most such books it is also a story of self-education. It has an awkwardness, not to be confused with ineptness, that tells in its dreadful simplicity indelibly of experience. 102 WINTER 1982 �tighten their grip on Laos, the more they unity, and equality between the various fall into dependence on the Communists peoples of Laos. Who could object? People of Vietnam. For instance, the arrest in responded to the regime's call with undeniMarch 1977 of the king, whose legitimacy , able eagerness: after thirty years of guerrilla the Communists had made a great show of warfare they yearned for reconciliation. respecting in their years of infiltrating the Since all were to take part, reconciliation royal government, came a few months be- meant meetings which people in the beginfore the signature of the treaty of "friend- ning attended with enthusiasm. ship and cooperation" (july 18, 1977) with This readiness to trust the regime's offer Vietnam that spelled out the "special rela- of reconciliation and attend its meetings tions" that obtain between the two coun- was, in the Sicards' retrospective judgetries in national defense, the arts, radio, ment, a mistake that could not be undone, press, education-and secretly traced a new for the regime had no intention of keeping frontier between the two countries. its promise of reconciliation. "Caution! If To some extent the Communist seizure you trust in good faith, if you honestly deof power in Laos amounts to a disguised sire an understanding, know that under North Vietnamese conquest. But the North their apparent frankness and good will your Vietnamese ascendance, like almost every enemies of thirty years' standing intend to other fact in Laos, has to be denied. Since remain that way." "The function of the pothe "friendship" treaty, expression of anti- litical meetings is to invite people to tie Vietnamese sentiments brings eight years their own hands of their own free will." in the camps. Haircuts, accents, and the At these meetings, that took place in the availability in butcher shops of dogmeat, a beginning two or three times a week, on Vietnamese delicacy Laotians despise, be- short notice, at any time of the day or night, tray the Vietnamese, who disguise them- individuals had to demonstrate their adherselves in the uniform of the Pathet Lao. ence to propositions that changed with beOnly the Thai kids, for the moment safe wildering rapidity. There was no question beyond the wide Mekong, dare refer openly of objecting or expressing one's thoughts. to the North Vietnamese domination of The ever-changing line had to be repeated Laos: they call the Laotian children on the as if one meant it. The primary experience other side, "dog-eaters." of these meetings was that one can be made Because they were less obviously brutal to assent to anything: the writers agreed at and murderous than the Communists in one of these sessions that foreign reporters Cambodia and Vietnam, the Communists should be kept out of Laos, because their in Laos thought they could undo Laos with- news might hurt the "revolution." At least out anybody, either Laotian or foreigner, made to appear to assent to anything. " 'I noticing. At a time of exclusion of foreign- am sure that ninety percent of us make beers not from the socialist countries from lieve we agree. But do we have any other Vietnam and Cambodia, they allowed men choice .... '" "To give up speaking, means and women like the Sicards the freedom of dying to yourself and thereby to others." the country. This confidence of the ComAnd the self-betrayal requires actions as munists in Laos that they could get away well as words. Often, the betrayal of friends. with anything that was not unmistakable Or symbolic "political" action: on a night -and with their, in appearance, frank and in December 1977 the whole population open manner they won the Sicards at first- suddenly turns to digging trenches to defend makes the Sicards fear that "the 'normal' the "revolution" from imminent attack beworld of tomorrow will perhaps be closer to cause the line holds that Thai "imperialism" the world of Communist Laos than our threatens the nation. own." In addition to frequent political meetings, In the beginning, immediately after the there are weekly sessions of self-criticism at seizure of power, the new regime offered work and, especially at the university, reconciliation. In contrast to the old gov- monthly rehearsal of political thoughts in ernment it promised to explain all its ac- writing-"autobiographies" that allow no tions: people would no longer be ruled from fact or feeling to escape the great simplistic the outside without explanation, but would divide "before and after the revolution." At themselves take part in decisions. All were self-criticism sessions a person criticizes to help realize progress, reconciliation, himself before suffering the criticism of THE ST. JOHNS REVIEW everybody else. In grand self-criticism sessions, an individual, for instance, a young woman, pregnant by a professor who has fled across the Mekong, faces a thousand people on her feet for six hours. These criticism sessions serve to isolate individuals -and at the same time to make them feel responsible for their isolation. "'The most painful thing is not to be able to speak openly to anyone. Out of fear, we use ambiguous language. But the torture is unbearable.'" They reinforce each person's sense of his own powerlessness and of the force of the state without limits-which cannot be distinguished from everybody else and from oneself-that does what it pleases with impunity. The forced writing of "autobiographies" makes individuals feel that Party cadres can see through them-as one student put it. But again they are the ones making themselves transparent. In 1979, four years after the seizure of power, Party cadres addressing these meetings openly confessed the deceptiveness of their initial offers of reconciliation: Now that you have advanced in your study of our politics, you can realize that we never had the slightest intention of carrying out the program announced in 1975. The announcement of the program was simply a step necessary to reassure the people, to win their acceptance of us- in order to reach the only and glorious goal of socialism. Reconciliation that looked like an offer to negotiate meant only to disarm the people and turn them to their own oppression. "Between brotherly countries there are never negotiations-there is only one reality: the correlations of forces." Negotiation, even the demand for an openly acknowledged surrender instead of the offer of reconciliation, would have meant the Party recognized limitations, acknowledged another will than its own, another world than the mind of Lenin. The seizure of power, therefore, does not bring the end of fighting but continuation of fighting by other means: fewer are murdered but almost all made to lead themselves to a living death. "To reduce the forces of the enemy to powerlessness without fighting them, that is the greatest victory." But such a victory has no end, it needs triumph after unacknowledged triumph, for an acknowledged triumph would mean 103 �recognition of limitation. After the -.seizure of power, the life in a person which•might lead him to say or think something unexpected and obvious, to say "no," bec'omes the enemy. In order to survive physically the individual must never cease denying that life-the reason for the frequency and unexpectedness of meetings, self-criticism sessions and the rest. "This process of education/reeducation really means learning to cover up your individuality and turning yourself into a skeleton or body of marblethe only stuff fitted to this society."" ... biological existence becomes the only point of reference that does not arouse suspicion .... " You cannot read the Sicards' account of the Pathet Lao's exploitation of the yearning for pe"!ce and reconciliation to continue war without combat-but not without murder-without wondering what it tells about big international "negotiations" with the Soviet Union and China. Ever since 1944, the back and forth between the yearning for peace and the failure of negotiations, for instance, the failure _to conclude a peace in Europe, has served to keep many people from realizing that the Second World War continues in a succession of wars-small only in the sense they are not total-which served to ideologize and polarize the perceptions, especially of "elites," throughout the world in unprecedented fashion. (And polarization of perception means paralysis of the capacity to see what is going on and to make common sense judgements: in terms of the struggle to destroy men's minds, all wars since 1944 have been waged throughout the whole world.) The terror at nuclear extermination, and the negotiations to soothe it, are major weapons right now in the struggle to destroy the remnants of Europe's freedom. The pursuit of settlement through negotiation played a role in the destruction of South Vietnam. Those who should most study this book, diplomats, will probably be the last to read it. Besides political meetings, forced-voluntary labor also continues the war after the seizure of power without guerrilla combat. It acts out the theses of political meetings. Everywhere at all times individuals must look active. In the morning before work in front of the ministries they water vegetable gardens to foster the self-sufficiency of Laos-gardens whose produce is not gath- 104 ered, for the point is to sow, not necessarily to reap. After work there are calisthenics and sports. At the university the grounds show continuous regimented activity-in contrast to the easy-going leisure before the ''revolution." The point of this labour is not to accomplish anything but "to realize a concept for a moment": to show that the people together can do anything-and the individual alone nothing. Like the "discussions" at meetings it is largely gesture, but gesture with the purpose of turning people to their own oppression-with the excuse that it will earn them entrance into the "socialist fraternity." Sometimes the forced-voluntary labour accomplished the opposite of its intention. For instance, because of the failure to consult the "reactionary" experts of the past, ditches dug from the Mekong to irrigate the rice paddies drained them. "The display of energy in labour has only one purpose: to express vengeance, the vengeance of the fighters of the Pathet Lao on those who collaborated or waited, upon those who thought the nation could come to independence without turning Communist. And those who suffer this vengeance must not only undergo it-they must desire it." Like the political meetings, the forcedvoluntary labour turns people into accomplices in their own oppression. That everybody suffers makes the suffering easier to bear. The satisfaction people feel at the sight of others, once their betters or their elders, suffering like themselves, blinds them almost against their will to the system that crushes them. But they want somebody to blame for their self-inflicted misery. "I will bear oppression, the absence of liberty, hunger, the hardness of life on condition that I can let my aggression loose on somebody whom I can hold responsible for my misery. To survive and overcome my misery, I am ready to turn in my neighbour-even at the cost of my moral consciousness." And the readiness to turn in neighbours also means the nations nearby still outside the "socialist fraternity." In this book that describes a society turning into a camp, there is little about the camps that are nevertheless a distinct unmentioned presence. At the center of the life left in Laos, the Sicards were about as far away from awareness of the camps as anybody could be within Laos. Behind the still dead waters of a dam about sixty kilometers from Vientiane, there are islands with a series of camps of increasing severity. On the first of these islands, one for women, one for men, open to the world in the boast of the regime, weaving, basketry, gardening, songs, and dancing "mildly reeducate parasites-drug addicts, the young unemployed, juvenile deliquents, criminals, lepers, and prostitutes. The Sicards were turned away upon their arrival to visit these islands. In other camps there are something like fifty to sixty thousand officers, soldiers and civil se~vants of the royal governmenT -about 2 percent of the population of Laos. Upon the seizure of power, the officers and soldiers of the royal army went willingly to political meetings that, in their instance, turned immediately, brutally into a concentration camp. Everybody exists with the unexpressed fear that they too might disappear into these camps. "The talk is of freedom, but in reality there is fear and spying." The students of the Sicards disappeared, it turned out never to return, often on the excuse of fortyday political meetings or of study abroad in eastern Europe. "Seven of my students disappeared in October 1975. Arrested because they insisted on thinking for themselves and because they could not conceive that their classmates would use their lives to dress themselves in progressivism's rags." A student, a cadre in the Party, obscure and incapable before the "revolution," now full of that feverish energy whose characteristic is that it cannot focus enough to accomplish anything, who has the power to decide which students can go home or abroad, who makes a show of not going to his home village for his mother's funeral (for the Party has become his parents), goes to a splendid dinner at the house of a young woman, a classmate. In self-criticism session the next day at the University, he denounces her for keeping "bourgeois" ways. The anger of the Sicards leads them to the despairing realization that normality has come to mean such betrayal: people make believe they take it for granted. A society that turns into a camp means paralysis-literally the freezing of movement, not only in private and traditional life-that is, feeling and thought-but of actual physical movement, simply getting around. At night patrols, meant to protect WINTER 1982 �that sometimes arrest arbitrarily, discour- body else but themselves-as capable of age circulation. In Vientiane, people are re- anything-and with impunity. duced to walking because of the scarcity of ' The attack on tradition and the rigidifipublic transportation, and because other cation shows itself perhaps most in the noise means meet with disapproval: cars show that replaces traditional music and even privilege, tricycle taxis "exploit" drivers- traditional sounds like the calls of farmers who as a result without customers must to their water buffaloes. From five-thirty in work in the fields in the country_ The "rev- the morning, martial music in alternation olutionary" salute, the clenched fist, like with political announcements blares from the Hitler salute in Germany, replaces the loudspeakers at almost every comer in Vientraditional, now "reactionary," greeting, tiane. At the hospital and elsewhere there hands together with a slight bow of the is singing of "revolutionary" songs and head 1 The young walk apart from each music-which makes the traditional and other and no longer hold hands. Dress ancient music look somehow out-of-place changes from the elegance and fresh care and ridiculous. "For the first time in Laos I that once distinguished one individual from saw that people no longer lived music with another, to the disguise of monotony: hair their hands and bodies ... they listened rigid can no longer be worn long, nails painted; in silence." "We can do nothing about it. It Ho Chi Minh sandals made of tires replace is the people's will," officials told Sicard in traditional footwear; above all, no jeans; no answer to his complaint that the earsplitting American cigarettes except in secret; the noise at the hospital disturbed the-seriously uniform jackets of the liberation army for sick. Like the meetings and the forced volstudents. untary labour, the noise aims to destroy the The attack on the spontaneous centers capacity to think-or, at least, to hear your on the goodwill that informs private and tra- thoughts. At one point Sicard, to his astonditional life: it desires to violate and devour ished bewilderment, comes upon a tradiit. More than ten people cannot meet with- tional Laotian orchestra at the hospital out permission. Marriages also require per- playing "revolutionary" martial music. Sudmission-and occasion political speeches. denly, the players stop playing but the music Upon requesting permission for a tradi- continues: the orchestra had made believe tional Laotian party, a baci, for a newborn it played the music that came from recchild, a couple is asked whether it has for- ords. "Laotian easygoingness makes it imgotten that the "revolution," too, is an in- possible to keep up subterfuge for a long fant. Not ready to attack Buddhist priests time." directly, the Party drives them to violate In the name of return to traditional Laotheir vocation in its exercise. For instance, tian medicine-that had at first stirred Si~ they are told to preach hatred of "Ameri- card-lepers, later accused of "spying for can imperialism" or to work to avoid arrest the Americans for pay," no longer receive for "parasitism" -both violations of their antibiotics. The paralysis of life also shows tenets. Individuals must give the traditional itself in hunger and the incapacity to protest alms to monks in secret for fear of accusa- against it. The significance of the recurtion for "abetting parasitism." As a result rence of food in her students' grammatical of this interference individuals and families examples finally comes to Mrs. Sicard: they now do secretly the things they did openly have nothing to eat between five-thirty in "before the revolution" -and suffer guilt the afternoon and eleven-thirty the next and conflict, for they must risk their lives morning-but they had been ashamed to to live in their accustomed manner. They tell her until questioned! Time rigidifies experience the state-that is, almost every- also into universal Socialist time: the dates of Stalingrad, the "October Revolution," obliterate the Buddhist festivals of custom that bore no fixed dates. "The only reality is 1. For an essay showing exact parallels in Nathe undeniable existence of a society that tional-Socialist Germany, and stressing, like the Sicards, the acquiescence and cooperation of inmakes its power to crush felt at every modividuals in their own oppression in order to ment." survive, see Bruno Bettelheim, "Remarks on Escape is the only resistance. Since 1975, the Psychological Appeal of Totalitarianism," three hundred thousand have fled-around (originally published in 1952) in Surviving, New Ymk 1979, 317-322. !0 percent of the population. Of the about THE ST. JOHNS REVIEW three hundred thousand Hmong tribeSmen who fought with great bravery alongside the Americans and the South Vietnamese, seventy-five thousand have fled, fifty thousand have been murdered-many by Vietnamese and Soviet gas attacks since 1975 or 1976, largely ignored by a press that has too long taken self~hatred for indignation. To flee one's native land forever always leaves scars that last for generations. But for Laotians, more timid and with less ex~ perience of the world than Westerners, flight from their native land means the end of everything. They flee because of their children, they remain because of their parents. They flee because they feel "nailed" to a past they will never be able to live down: not to have fought for the Communists means to have made the wrong choice for all time. In the beginning, scornful and uncomprehending of those who fled, the Sicards ended up helping anybody they could to flee. They tell a story emblematic of Western callousness and the incapacity to grasp the significance of events at the moment of their occurrence. At about four in the afternoon at the luxurious swimming pool of the Australian embassy along the Mekong river, a woman, tipsy or unconscionable, rose as if at a football match to cheer a swimmer she had just noticed making his way toward the shore of Thailand. The head went down under the surface at the sound of a shot from an until-then-inattentive Pathet Lao guard. With its disappearance, she collapased when, and perhaps because, it was too late. Except for the daring of these flights, the Laotians do not protest or resist. Brought up never to show their emotions, they pre~ tend not to notice what is going on. They are helpless before this seizure of power and conquest called "a revolution" that exploits every weakness of their character, es~ pecially their incapacity to yield to their rational anger and to defend themselves. They are helpless before the onslaught that above all-and in this it differs from the clas~ical despotisms of the past described by Montesquieu-makes them complicit in their own oppression. Unlike many observers the Sicards do not feel this helplessness differs in kind from the helplessness of the West. "We fear that this change we lived through in Laos, in the heart of Indochina, has a universal meaning. For what is at stake is not simply 105 �a political phenomenon, not simply some abstract correlation of forces, not simply the replacement of one culture with another. This is the death of man, and riddle of riddles, with his own consent.'' The last most terrible pages of this book tell of the Sicards' own helplessness. Didier Sicard demanded antibiotics, available in a nearby ward reserved for Party cadres, for an adolescent dying of meningitis. He was told to mind his medicine and stay out of politics. He demanded vitamins to treat the alarming increase in cases of beriberi. A commission of Soviet doctors replied they knew of no beriberi in Laos. The Sicards are overwhelmed by the realization that they did not get through to the men responsible for the outrages all around them. They take their helplessness for the helplessness of the Laotians. Perhaps, like the Laotians, they proved incapable of undoing their good manners. At the end of their account they bravely print the criticisms of a friend, an anthropologist who left Laos with them after ten years: "Do not fool yourselves, you were quite popular in spite of everything. They never did you the honor of hating you. We were all class enemiesbut hardly dangerous. You began to try their patience only at the end with your criticisms and unceasing talk. Then you really became a nuisance with your readiness to help people escape across the Mekong and your visits to the refugee camps in Thailand. But on the whole you were tolerated. They took you for too idealistic to be taken seriously." They observe profoundly that the Communists feed on merely verbal opposition because they know how to outbid and turn it to ridicule. (An observation reinforced by the recent revelation that one of the most outspoken energetic anti-communists in Saigon government circles was actually a Communist agent-the Wall Street Journal, February 10, 1982.) "To argue with them means you have already surrendered. Pay attention to what they do-not to what they say." They observe with fear that "this flight into an imaginary world (really the world of another, of Lenin?) paralyzes the capacity to oppose, to say no." They ask themselves; "Who can be against the declaration that history is progress? What can you say against Hate excited in the name of Solidarity? Against the extirpation of a culture in the name of Progress? The words are Peace, Independence, Neutrality, Democracy, Prosperity-what can you say in their faces? Are we to say they are not true? That the truth is that instead of Peace there is war, instead of Independence, dependence on Vietnam, instead of Neutrality, alignment with the Soviet Union, instead of Democracy, totalitarianism, instead of Prosperity, poverty? But in the name of what? In the name of whom? What are we defending?" Events in Laos are much nearer to us than we dare imagine, just because we take them to be so far away. For in the name of freeing itself from Europe, from which it had achieved formal independence in 1954 at the time of the Geneva accords on Vietnam, Laos has been abandoned by the West and itself to the European civil war, the war that did not stop after victory in 1945. LEO RADITSA A DEAD MAN'S KNOWLEDGE Graphite, by Varlam Shalamov, translated by John Glad, 287 pp., Norton, 1981,$14.95. One day in 1929, a gifted, decent, indeed noble young man of 22, Varlam Shalamov, disappeared. The Western expression "arrested" does not describe the situation. After a brief, ghost-like reappearance in 1934, he disappeared again, presumably forever. Yet, miraculously, in 1950 he came back from the other world. He entered the other world a tall, powerfully built, handsome youth, and emerged an invalid, an old, sick man. The other world had a very prosaic geographic location: Kolyma, some fifty miles from American territory, beyond the Arctic Circle. 106 This is Shalamov's second book published in the West. What is it? Short stories? No. Apparitions from Kolyma are beyond literature or scholarship or essays. Shalamov tells what Dante would call "strange narratives." Right on the cover of the book and in the reviews of his previous book, Kolyma Tales, Shalamov has been compared with and to Solzhenitsyn. Why? Both are Russians who were in "Soviet prison camps." Jack London tells a story of a French policeman not able to distinguish between two natives until one of them explained that he was small and stout, the other tall and thin. Shalamov says about an Andreyev, an old prisoner (who is himself), gazing at the newer Kolyma prisoners: These were living people, and Andreyev was a representative of the dead. His knowledge, a dead man's knowledge, was of no use to them, the living. According to Victor Nekrasov, a Russian writer in exile, Shalamov lives in Russia in poverty and obscurity, completely forsaken and forgotten by his relatives and whatever friends he had, except for one devoted person who comes to see him.* F arne, literature, politics, Russia, greatness, Tolstoy~all that Solzhenitzen, immensely ambitious and immensely successful, wanted in his youth and wants nowburned out in Shalamov. Hark to a dead *Shalamov died on January 17, 1982. WINTER 1982 �man's knowledge. Andreyev's neighbor was crying. Andreyev, however, stared at him without sympathy. He had seen too many men cry for too many reasons. These reasons are then described by someone who no longer belongs to the humanity that weeps-by God or by angels or by the dead. The only touch of literature Shalamov affords is an occasional final punch linethe last sentence of the narrative. In "Dominoes," a prison doctor (a prisoner himself) whose privileges (such as a separate room) made him a semi-god in the eyes of ordinary prisoners, has a fancy (gods and semi-gods do have fancies) to play a game of dominoes, and his favorite ordinary prisoner is escorted to the doctor's room by another prisoner. In the divine privacy of the room, a di, vine orgy unfolds: the semi-god treats the mortal to some porridge and bread, and they drink tea with sugor(certainly the food of semi-gods). Hours fly by in this heavenly bliss, and after a game of dominoes, apotheosis follows: the mortal is treated to a cigarette which he smokes almost in delirium. Ecstatic, he says goodbye to the semi~ divine doctor and walks out of the room into the dark corridor. The punch line: the other prisoner had waited for him by the door all these hours (in the vain hope to get a crust of bread or a cigarette butt). Some reviewers invoked Dostoyevsky's "Notes from the House of the Dead." Shal· amov says, with his terse, lustreless, dead man's scorn: "There was no Kolyma in the House of the Dead." Or: "Dostoyevsky never knew anyone from the true criminal world." Even criminals in the Russia of Nicholas I and serfdom (the first, ferocious half of the nineteenth century) were not real criminals compared with criminals in post-1917 Russia. Kolyma. What's the moral of Shalamov's life? Of anyone's Kolyma life? There is none. Every minute of Kolyma life is a "poisoned minute." There is much there that a man should not know, should not see, and if he does see it, it is better for him to die. Shalamov saw. The tragic mask he speaks through is his death mask. LEV NAVROZOV FROM OUR READERS (continued from page 2) mathematics than women. On the verbal part of the SAT's, scores are about equal. Perhaps women, in their passive way, read more and hence become better readers and so overcome their intellectual deficiencies and test as equals to men, or perhaps they are equal. Both the math and verbal parts of the examination demand reasoning ability, and so no conclusion can be drawn from these results. In the absence of solid evidence, it seems to me incumbent on us to treat men and women as equals rather than assuming inequalitieS and thus injuring those who, though equal (or often, be it noted, superior), are treated as..inferiors. As for child-rearing, it is my impression that as men spend more time with their children, many of them become quite proficient at rearing them (sometimes even better than their wives). Again this may be a case where habit and prejudice are seen as laws of nature. Mr. Levin claims that child rearing is highly valued by all but feminists. What is the measure of that valuation? In a society in which the value of one's work is measured either in terms of money or public honor (usually the former), child-rearing seems among the least esteemed jobs. Nursery school teachers, kindergarten teachers, and day-care workers, not to THE ST. JOHNS REVIEW mention mothers, get about as little money or public recognition as it is possible to get. It is true that those who prefer to have women at home rather than in the workplace have tried to puff motherhood and family publicly, but they draw the line at considering raising children sufficiently important work to make mothering a qualification for, say, social security. Rather, it seems to me that the respect paid to rearing children is the kind one typically gives to those who relieve us of difficult and, on the whole, unappealing tasks to keep up their morale. Though I think it is certainly the case that managing a household well requires a variety of skills, managerial, financial, social, and political, it is equally certainly the case that women trying to return to the work-place after years of raising children and managing households are treated as if they had been idly passing their time and had no useful skills, unlike their male counterparts, who, whatever paid employment they have had, are treated as eminently employable. If Mr. Levin really does value child-rearing, not in some abstract "Yes, the future of our nation depends on h6w our children are raised" way, but by actually valuing the people who do it, I commend him; but I think he is part of a small minority of men. I do not wish to belabor the issue, but we should consider at somewhat greater length the issue of what "sexism" means in terms of treatment of women in the work-place. Mr. Levin introduces "a complaint of dubious relevance" at this juncture: namely, that "judging people on the basis of what is usually true is unfair to the unusual." His response to that "dubious objection" is that "expectations must be based on what is generally, even if not universally, true." But this response is inadequate for at least two reasons. First, "what is generally true" is sometimes true because of historical circumstances. When Dr. Johnson, a man not full of the prejudices of his time, met and was so impressed by the intellect of Fanny Burney that he offered to teach her Greek and Latin, he was not permitted to by her family, most strongly by her brother, be· cause it was inappropriate for English ladies to learn Greek and Latin. It was indeed "generally true" that English ladies were not classicists, but it by no means followed from that historical fact that they could not or should not be. What we are accustomed to seeing is often the result of a history of discrimination, and we should not be misled into thinking that what is "generally the case" is generally the case for good reason. Custom sometimes misleads us into 107 �finding invalid reasons for those appearances, as, for example, the notion of' women's genetic incapacities. The notio~ that women are genetically lacking either'. certain abilities or psychological traits t:[anslates into their not being considered on their own merits. Employers have not always employed the "brightest" or the most skilled, despite Mr. Levin's claim, because prejudices have prevented them from seeing the talents in front of their eyes or because they prefer to hire those with whom they are psychologically more comfortable (see, for example, the study of hiring practices of monopoly and non-monopoly companies of Harvard Business School graduates by Alchian and Kessel in H. G. Lewis's Aspects of Labor Economics). Since Mr. Levin, for example, is convinced of the inferiority of women in "abstract reasoning" as distinguished from "twenty questions", I would assume that women in his philosophy classes would be looked at somewhat differently than men, and his judgements of students might reflect his "factual beliefs". The Supreme Court, after all, knew in much the same way as Mr. Levin does, that it was perfectly appropriate for women not to be permitted to practice law (in an 1872 decision the court ruled that 111inois was within its rights to deny women admission to the bar). Mr. Justice Bradley's opinion is strikingly like Mr. Levin's. He, too, claims that "the natural and proper timidity and delicacy which belongs to the female sex evidently unfits it for many of the occupations of civil life." He, too, is not a misogynist. He is in sympathy with the "humane movements" which have for their object "the multiplication of avenues for women's advancement." But this should not be construed to mean that they should have free admission to those professions which require "that decision and firmness which are presumed to predominate in the sterner sex." We can now laugh at such closed-mindedness, but common sense must have made this home truth seem obvious to those justices and, in fact, they had, not surprisingly, never seen successful women attorneys. Women trying to enter medical schools faced much the same kind of prejudice, though different rationalizations for the prejudice were found. And, even when women have been able to get the jobs for which their abilities fitted them, they have traditionally been 108 paid less than men. For example, in a lawsuit brought against the U. of Maryland, it was determined that women were paid, at the same ranks, in the same departments, and with the same qualifications, several thousand dollars less per year than their male colleagues. And the U. of Maryland is by no means unusual in this respect. The most recent figures comparing the salaries of male and female academics (The Chronicle of Higher Education, November 25, 1981) showed that women on full-time, nine-month appointments earned, on the average, approximately 15% less than their male colleagues. And this difference does not result from the fact that women tend to teach in the less highly paid departments such as the Arts and Humanities. The salaries of women teaching in the Arts were only 74% of the men's salaries while in the Humanities the women earned 86% of what the men ·earned. The only area in which women's salaries came close to men's was, curiously, Physical Education, where women were only 6% behind. And if it should be objected that women are paid less because they have earned their doctorates only recently and hence are concentrated in the lower academic ranks, or that women change jobs less frequently because of family ties, or that they are more likely to interrupt their careers for childrearing, a study by the National ResearcP Council (see the Chronicle of Higher Education, Dec. 2, 1981) shows that "Objective factors alone cannot account adequately for the career differences which exist between male and female Ph.D.'s." And this discrimination continues despite "affirmative action" programs which, according to the study, have not produced "reverse discrimination." I would suggest that sexism on the part of those doing the hiring and promoting is the cause of these disparities. The relatively new issue of equal pay for comparable work is the old story in new guise. The jobs open to women simply paid less than men's jobs, and the differences had nothing to do with skill, arduousness, responsibility, or any of the other distinctions one might draw. The only significant distinction was whether men or women were doing the work. For example, when almost all elementary school teachers were women, elementary school teachers were paid significantly less than secondaryschool teachers, many of whom were male. As men began to move into elementary school teaching, the salaries began to equalize, and today, in most school districts, all public school teachers are paid on the same scale. The work didn't change, only the workers. Second, we have a long-standing and rightly respected tradition in this country, one not always followed but one worth preserving, that people are to be judged on their individual merits or lack thereof, not by their belonging to some particular group, religious, ethnic, or sexual. To act counter to this deliberately is to invite a system in which we are judged, not by what we can do, but by some general notion of what the group we belong to is capable of. This seems to me to be a pernicious doctrine and one to be opposed strongly. We should note, in closing, that similar prejudices in the guise of natural laws have been operative for centuries. The notion of a decadent "Jewish physics" could only make sense because it was obvious that Jews were greedy, treacherous, and dishonest, though clever. Without such prejudices based on what was obvious to most, the idea would have been still-born. The presumed obvious inferiority of blacks was necessary to make slavery a reality and a morally justifiable institution. Just as "racism" and "anti-semitism" are genuine words describing genuine facts about the world, so is "sexism," and to fail to see the evidence of it around one seems to me to be a case of willful blindness. GEORGE DOSKOW St. John's College Annapolis, Md. To the Editor of the St. John's Review ... Sexism, according to Professor Levin, is meaningless, for what it purports to describe is really the honest recognition of reality. Facts are facts: there are innate differences between men and women it is only sensible to recognize .... But consider this: the illiteracy of the poor in former days was "confirmed by experience countless times"; would it therefore now be correct to assume innate differences between rich and poor individuals? And would it be fair to deny a job to a poor person on the assumption of his personal illiteracy? Most of us would agree not, yet this is precisely what we do to women in our society. We deny them opWINTER 1982 �portunities based on historical experiences which have little to do with their innate abilities or present circumstances, and much to do with past conditions. As a female scientist "comfortable in milieus demanding aggression," I can easily define sexism (haVing personally experienced it) as the assumption that a generalization true of some persons of a given gender is necessarily applicable to anyone of that gender, and the consequent denial of an opportunity which would otherwise be granted. ... And what of the exceptional woman ... ? Prof. Levin would accuse me of being "perniciously utopian" to expect exceptional talents to be recognized, but does not the advancement of society depend upon the recognition, and utilization, of exceptional talent? .... Prof. Levin is co.rrect that no one promised me at birth that I would enter the field most suited to my talents, but having one way or another managed to do precisely that, do I not now have the right to be judged on the basis of my achievements and experience, without regard to my gender, as I would expect to be judged without regard to my race or religion? And yet in spite of my proven ability to work in dominantly male environments, I am invariably asked in job interviews how I will "manage," as if I were a deaf-mute or paraplegic, as if my experience proved nothing. This is the meaning of sexism. That Prof. Levin fails to understand the meaning of this word in no way disproves that the word has meaning. But what of the innate differences between men and women? I would not deny that men and women "differ significantly"; few feminists do. I do maintain, however, that with the exception of tasks requiring great physical strength, these differences (which Prof. Levin noticeably fails to enumerate) do not necessarily, or even generally, make men any more competent at holding jobs, solving problems, or wielding authority than women. Different, yes; better no .... ... apart from the gross biological features, we just don't know what the innate differences between men and women are, because we don't know how to distinguish the. effects of social conditioning from genetic determinism. But to deny that social attitudes have any impact on human behavior is clearly absurd .... ... in attempting to justify the sexist attitudes which women encounter as the natural result of historical experience, Prof. Levin actually demonstrates the need for a "women's movement." He cites the examTHE ST. JOHNS REVIEW ple of a professor who, used to encountering 1'inferior philosophy examinations" from female students, comes to expect pre1 cisely that. (Should we ask who this profesl)Or might be?) His expectation is in fact fulfilled by his own prejudiced perception. This expectation is changed only by a "run of good female tests," i.e., the woman must first prove herself where a man need not. She must, in fact, initially perform better than that man in order to get the same grade, in order to compensate for her professor's bias. Hence for women to obtain equal recognition of their talents they must change society's expectations; i.e., they need a public umovement," a public declaration of intent. Finally, albeit reluctantly, I must take issue with Prof. Levin's implication that to be a feminist is to hate men, tacitly or overtly, and that a woman who engages in traditionally male activities is ~·m at ease with her essential identity." As such an accusation can neither be proved nor disproved, Prof. Levin rna y further suggest with impunity that such a woman "cannot very well admit this to herself: no ego can support such self-hate, such ·loss of meaning." Well, Prof. Levin, you may refuse to believe this, but I do not hate men. Indeed I am close to both my father and my two brothers and am romantically involved with a wonderful man whom I hope, in time, to marry. I also have every intention of having children (by my lawful wedded husband, I might add), although it may take some time to work out the logistics of doing so. How is it possible that I love men, children, and science? .... NAOMI 0RESKES Unley South Australia To the Editor of the St. John's Review I enjoyed the Autumn 1981 issue of the Review, especially Harry Jaffa's remarkable article, "Inventing the Past," which taught me much about my adopted country. One article, in my opinion, failed to reach the high standards of this issue. Michael Levin's" 'Sexism' is Meaningless" does less than justice to either editor or author, whose tastes, thinking, and attitudes are, I know, sympathetic to women, their goals, aspirations, and difficulties. Some of the article's arguments are clever, but they have nothing to do with tbe subject at hand. In fact it is hard to say what the subject at hand is, since Mr. Levin sets up as a straw man the extreme rhetoric of the "feminist,'' and then proceeds to ridicule it at the same shrill level. Much of the discussion about feminism is certainly embarrassing and, as Mr. Levin says, confusing. Instead of helping to clear away the confusion, the author adds to it by trivializing the argument. It is silly to say that "sexism" is meaningless. It obviously means something important to a great many people, or he would not be writing an irritated article against it. His opening words point out the emotion the subject calls forth. Should this emotion not have alerted him to the fact that there must be more to it than mere silliness? According to his own argument, the obvioUs is often true, and people should trust their own commonsense perceptions, feelings, and beliefs. Are the perceptions of those against whom he is arguing not bound to have some validity? It seems perverse to deny that there was a need for changes in law and attitudes. Ten years ago I would never have received a sizeable raise to put me on the level of the men in my department had it not been for pressure to comply with the new government rulings. Today Time-Life has women writers, the Naval Academy has women midshipmen, and it works out fine-or at least as imperfectly as usual. Some "obvious" things are true, others are not, and it is part of growing up to learn to distinguish between them. Most surprising to me is the fact that an article on "sexism" fails to mention the only real difference between men and women, the only difference which is not merely statistical and therefore endlessly arguable in individual cases. (It need not maher to a woman mathematician that there are few other women mathematicians. A creative person will always be different.) In not mentioning that women are the only ones who can and do bear children, Mr. Levin agrees with 11 feminists" who strangely also ignore this fact. Lysistrata, and Medea, said they would rather face the enemy three times than bear one child. Today, though science has eliminated the dangers of childbirth and-they say-fear of pregnancy, women have not changed in this respect. They are still usually responsible for raising the children they bear; and raising children is probably more difficult, not less, than it was in the past. The subject is highly charged, it seems to me, because it is the area where public and private can least easily be disentangled. Reason and emotion, individual and family converge. How does a legal system deal with this situation, ensure justice, and allow freedom? How do men and women 109 �react, and children cope? Abortion legislation and ethics, open adoption r~Fords, child welfare, ERA, pornography-all these are highly emotional issues. And the discussion is so often embarrassing beCause it touches us personally, on the level of our intimate feelings and fears. The irrational, secret fears men and women have towards each other are surely part of life; where there is magic, as between a man and a woman, or a mother and child, there is fear as well. Mr. Levin deals only with surface irritations. Does he mean-though he does not say it-that many problems being discussed are part of life, private, and can never be solved by political means publicly, but only worked out privately, with as much good will and understanding as possible? His occasionally clever and amusing, irritated and irritating article has not helped us to understand. And even today, we need philosophers who will do that. LARISSA BONFANTE Professor of Classics New York University To the Editor of the St. John's Review: Mr. Levin has a point in his article "'Sexism' is Meaningless" (St. John's Review, Autumn 1981). Many women are angry with men and for no apparent reason. He concludes that a feminist is angry because she has "lost the sense of the values peculiar to her sex." This conclusion is possible only if the word "sexism" is meaningless. I suggest that Mr. Levin has simplified the argument and in so doing has missed the case where "sexism" does have meaning. Anger is a result of facing something that you want to change but cannot. What can't be changed does not have to be a law of nature. An individual may become angry if he or she is treated in a way he or she does not like. If this treatment stems from applying characteristics true, in general, of either sex to an individual of that sex, it is "sexism." Mr. Levin denies that anyone holds the belief that gender is intrinsically important. It is true that men and women are different and that some characteristics are generally true of men and some of women. Because I can generalize this way, I can know a lot about someone immediately. If I meet a man, I know that chances are he is more aggressive, better at math and stronger than I am. He may later prove to be none of these, but they are fair assumptions. This is not "sexism." All I am saying is that most men are like this and 110 chances are that this individual will fit into the generalization. I accept that gender is intrinsically significant. I can be called "sexist" only ifl am unable to see this man in any other way than that which fits my preconception. When a woman is angry at all men, that too is "sexism." Sexism is the attitude which holds that the differences which exist between men and women in general can be applied, without qualifications, to individual men or to individual women. It is exactly the belief that gender is intrinsically important in evaluating individuals. If this is not accepted as the definition of "sexism," then "sexism" is indeed a meaningless word. By this definition of "sexism," the word seems to be susceptible to exactly the same problems in application as Mr. Levin points out with the use of "exploitation." There is a stable central case, that between individuals, and vaguely peripheral ones, the judgment of men and women in gen~ eral. Mr. Levin, then, is ignoring the ''stable central case" which gives this word meaning and focussing on those "vaguely peripheral ones" to which it is not applica~ ble. "Sexism" has no meaning when ap~ plied to groups. It is entirely a question of the treatment of individuals. If "sexism" is not,_ in fact, meaningless, the question arises whether "anti-discrimination" legislation is an appropriate solution. Can an individual ever be considered not by the general rule but as an individual through the law? The law is impersonal but it is made personal by the judicial system. You are judged in a trial, in which you are faced by individuals. You and your situ· ation are judged as a particular one. The sole purpose of the judicial system is to interpret the law and to apply it to particular cases. Women should have the right of recourse under law if they feel they are being treated unfairly. This, however, is a negative solution. The other side is the question of affirmative action. Should quotas be legislated? People should have the right to hire whomever they wish, yet will people recognize that women can do a good job if they do not see many women working in responsible positions? The generality of the law makes it impossible to solve this dilemma theoretically. The real issue is not one of the meaningfulness of "sexism," or of the ability of the law to address it, but of the extent to which legislation can be justified in doing so. KATHARINE HEED Annapolis, Md. To the Editor of the St. John's Review: Mr. Levin uses the word "feminist" with the same thoughtlessness and vehemence with which he claims feminists use "sexism." The author characterizes a feminist as a woman who believes there is absolutely no difference between the sexes and, therefore, objects to the, in her opinion, prevalent view that men are superior to women. He also asserts that. feminists secretly know there is a difference between men and women although they profess otherwise. As a result they are filled with self-loathing and, in classical Freudian behavior, transfer their loathing onto men, the world, and nature. Mr. Levin's very general argument does not document this serious accusation. Why does the request that people be looked upon each as an individual meet such rage? It seems reasonable that girls, like boys, should perfect their talents in sports, mathematics, physics, biology, literature, or language. Why shouldn't women expect to have a career after they leave school, and to receive the same pay as a man for the same work? Most women will have to work when they leave school. Mr. Levin implies that the only permanent jobs which have evolved naturally for women are those of telephone operator and mother. Where has Mr. Levin been if he has not noticed that society has changed drastically, not only over the past twenty years, but since the Industrial Revolution put women in factories? How can a woman's right to continue at these jobs but also at others requiring physical or intellectual ability be denied? Levin thinks it can be beqmse women lack the necessary aggression. When Mr. Levin writes ''The discomfort of women in milieus demanding aggression has been confirmed by experience countless times," I must question whose experience. To survive, women must be aggressive. More than half the households in the United States require two incomes for sup· port. Thousands of women work to support families by themselves. Because women pay taxes they deserve protection from the government against discrimination. Aggressive behavior is not limited to the office. Perhaps Mr. Levin has never experienced shopping, especially in a bargain basement or in a department store during a big sale. Five minutes in Loehman's would change even Mr. Levin's mind about ag· gression. Perhaps Mr. Levin never has had to return an unsatisfactory article of clothing or of food, or to argue about being overcharged for a service. No one can deny that driving children to school or oneself to work WINTER 1982 �requires aggression. Many women perform at least one of these tasks daily. Mr. Levin's expression "people think" makes his argument less cogent. The people I know don't think the way Mr. Levin's people do. My experience, both at St. John's and in my job, shows me that a woman is expected to perform tasks, both academic and secular, as well as she can, i.e., as well as a man. On such a serious question which involves the lives of over half the population of the United States, why does Mr. Levin think he can dismiss legitimate demands with the generalization "people think" or, even worse, "ordinary people think"? How can he attack with such vehemence "feminists" whose work and political beliefs he does not clarify? Isn't his article merely pOlitical cant? ELOISE PEEKE COLLINGwOOD Annapolis, Md. To the Editor of the St. John's Review: ... What is one to make of a philosopher who identifies "essential identity" and "significance" with gender and who lets a simple comma serve as the only argumentative transition in the statement that "Women differ physically from men, and act differently"? Our bodies are ponderous and absorbing fates, each one different, but we are capable of directing them in moral actions and of giving them meaning with our discourse. We do not increase our chances of finding meaning when stereotyping is deemed reasonable and factual. Prof. Levin worries about tiny firefighters when he might have been watching the Olym· pies, but the variety of biological "fact" is acknowledged even by him, despite his confusion of instances and hypothetical classes, instinct and behavior, and biology and politics (for the last of which we have another useful neologism, "racism," to give suffici~nt historical warning). The implication that troubles me more is the denial of the brilliance and achievement of St. John's women and, manifested right here, their unequal share in recognition. And the damage to both the taught and the teacher if anyone should seriously think that "if a professor has found over many years that females write inferior philosophy examinations, it is reasonable for him to anticipate that the next female philosophy examination will be inferior." A nice ambiguity toward the end there: who, after all, in the philosophical life is the marker? In a society more severely maledominated and oligarchical than our own, THE ST. JOHNS REVIEW and no less stultified, Dante submitted himself under correction to "donne 'ch'avete intelletto d'amore." Such intelletto might get us all a better grasp of public understanding and the cardinal virtues and help us distinguish the vicious circle of self-congratulating conventions from the deep imperative of mutual liberation. E. C. RONQUIST Concordia University Montreal, Canada continue to enjoy the right to select national leaders, who routinely involve all of us in crises that could destroy civilization as we know it and, indeed, could destroy the world and its ecosystems. If the United States must remain militarily strong, women can help us do so. As a feminist, I even dare hope they may help a little to humanize the military. LEON V. DRISKELL Professor of English University of Louisville Louisville, Ky. To the Editor of the St. John's Review: Professor Michael Levin's article "'Sexism' is meaningless" (St. John's Review, Autumn 1981) so frequently violated stan· dards of argumentation that I found it hard to take seriously. Nevertheless, I suspect it may do considerable harm, chiefly because it appears in your publication-the standards of which have seemed to me generally high. I cannot undertake here to point out all of the essay's faults, but I have selected one which seems to me particularly flagrant. Because it suits his purposes, or because he is not paying attention to what he writes, Professor Levin equates conscription with battle readiness. The issue of conscripting women, particularly in times of peace, must be separated from such issues as degrees of aggressiveness and tolerance of the stress of combat. When Professor Levin writes that the "pivotal objection to conscripting women has nothing to do with any inherent 'inferiority' of femaleness, everything to do with the ability of women to fight," he is guilty of grievous equivocation. Many a Norman has been conscripted to do clerical work, administrative work, or strategic work. Many a Norma has done similar work in the private sector (with relatively higher pay, enormously greater freedom of choice), and some of those Normans have been maladroitly thrust into combat though no more aggressive or tolerant of "the stress of combat" than their female counterparts. Conscription means yielding one's free~ dam of choice, but it does not automatically mean going into battle. Neither does abandoning sex discrimination mean that all of us-men and women-must give up our differences or share bathrooms. Re~ turning from Korea some years ago, I found that many of my male friends and all of my women friends had been going ahead with their lives while I submitted to military regimentation. Meantime, all of us To the Editor of the St. John's Review: I will not address Mr. Levin's callous misrepresentations of the positions of those of us whose active vocabulary includes the word "sexism," although anyone interested in reasoning as opposed to sophistry could not but take offense at the many misrepresentations in his article. I will, however, as a social scientist in training, challenge Mr. Levin, or anyone else, to present me with clear evidence that " ... there are general, innate, psychological differences between the sexes." Mr. Levin claims that this is " ... simply a factual belief, supported by a vast body of evidence." I know of no such "evidence" that can be drawn from the social science disciplines and that would withstand close scrutiny. If Mr. Levin's evidence is drawn from disciplines or traditions other than the social sciences, I would certainly not object to seeing that as well. I ask him to produce the evidence, and all can debate it, and we will debate the larger question of upon what basis is one able to make reasonable statements about human nature and behavior, and what should be the method of verification for such statements. These are issues that members of the St. John's community can get their teeth into, but in order to do so we must move away from the unsupported statements made by Mr. Levin. Furthermore, I ask Mr. Levin to produce this evidence because I believe that the ultimate truth and validity of his argument depend upon it. I would like to make one further statement. (This should be allowed an irate alumnus.) I was deeply disturbed by the decision to print that article. It was so clearly biased, so badly reasoned and argued, in places simply so silly, that it does not represent St. John's College well. Mr. Raditsa is using The St. John's Review to propagate his own political philosophy. I will not debate here whether it is a good philosophy, or a correct one, I would only raise the question of 111 �whether it is the purpose of The Review to propagate it. I think not. I also think that his doing this is only made more unbearable by the fact that he is in the process presenting us with articles which insult our illtelligence. I wonder if Mr. Raditsa does not care more about propagating his political philosophy than he does about serving St. John's. He must certainly see that the two goals are not identical, and that he was made editor of the St.john's Review to do the latter and not to do the former at the latter's expense. DAVID E. WOOLWINE Princeton, New Jersey To the Editor of the St. John's Review: As an alumnus of St. John's College, I was morally and intellectually affronted by your decision to print the article, " 'Sexism' is Meaningless," by Michael Levin, in the recent issue of The St. John's Review. Has The St. John's Review become such a mouthpiece for right-wing views that it will print anything which supports them-even an article of such patently poor scholarship and moral insensitivity as Michael Levin's piece? The factual and logical errancies of the article are manifest, and scarcely need refutation. The flagrant moral callousness of the article is more serious, flying as it does in the face of obvious injustice, first by belittling and denying the history and continuing reality of that injustice, then by supporting and sanctioning it. If the article had been titled not " 'Sexism' is Meaningless" but rather " 'Racism' is Meaningless" or even "'Anti-Semitism' is Meaningless," would you have printed it? Let the Editorial Staff examine its memory and it will discover how the arguments put forward by Mr. Levin, and similar unsupported claims of "scientific" evidence, have previously been used to "prove" the genetic, moral, and intellectual "difference" of blacks and Jews, supporting institutionalized bigotry, the denial of civil liberties, and unequal opportunities in housing, education, and employment. STEPHANIE SLOWINSKI Princeton, New Jersey 112 Professor Levin replies: Those of us who persist in noting that men and women differ are so regularly accused of being "for discrimination" that my wife dubs this "The Ritual Missing of the Point." The point, of course, is that the typical man does differ in certain systematic ways from the typical woman. It is no one's fault, and people are within their rights to use this patent fact in making judgments. Within their legal rights?, some correspondents ask. Certainly. Anyone who thinks that individuals should be treated as individuals will repudiate the quota mentality that has settled on our public officials like a disease. Quotas should be repealed and abandoned immediately. I also believe that laws against discrimination are unsupportable. They conflict with liberty of association. If I choose not to hire you because of your looks (or sex, or color, or religion) I withhold from you my consent to enter into an agreement. I am not thereby thwarting your will or interfering with your liberty, since you do not have any prior right to my consent. Unless you regard me as your slave. Some confusion has arisen about the Norma-Norman example. I was simply repeating the sort of thing feminists cite. In fact, this so-called "Pygmalion effect" has not been scientifically replicated, and what is more, educators are now generally agreed that the ordinary methods of classroom instruction are somewhat biased in favor of girls, who are temperamentally more inclined to sit still for lessons. As for my Freudian analysis: in addition to the evidence cited in the references to Ed Levine, there is also some suggestive work by S. Deon Henderson on the rising female crime rate and its possible relation to anomie. Unfortunately, as Miss Henderson herself reports, investigation into the adverse effects of feminism is an absolutely taboo topic in sociology. No one will touch it. That is probably why we have no psycho· social profile of the typical feminist, even though social scientists will normally rush to study just about anything. So, even though I lack medical credentials, someone has to begin suggesting hypotheses. I should note as well Frances Lear's concession (The Nation, 12/12/81) that "lesbians make up a large portion of the volunteer work force" in feminist political organizations, which I take as some further confirmation. I agree with Miss Heed that anger is often prima face evidence of a wrong; often, but not always. Sometimes it is a symptom of dysfunction. I stress again that I approve as much as anyone does "treating each individual as an individual." With little faith that repeti· tion will convince my more splenetic correspondents of my good faith, I turn to some more specific points. l) Neurologists like Restak and Pribram, endocrinologists like Money, and even selfdescribed "feminist" psychologists like Mac· coby and Jacklin have found that by four months male and female newborns respond differently to such variables as speech tone and exhibit neurological differences. Benbow and Stanley found that 10-12 year old girls who both tested as well as the ablest boys on math aptitude tests and reported finding math as much a girl's as a boy's subject, did less well than the same boys on more difficult math aptitude tests. At the upper levels of ability, innate differences appear most clearly. Some people still tell each other that all this is "social conditioning" (whatever that might mean). Some people also still believe the Earth is flat. 2) A woman should indeed be free to do what she wants. Who denies that? But even sanguine feminists have lately admitted to "logistic problems" in pursuing a career and raising a family. Even the EEOC has lately admitted that the famous wage dis· crepancies between men and women are entirely due to voluntary decisions women make-e.g., having babies during their prime career advancement years. The feminist "solution" tends, unhealthily, to be advocacy of government intervention. 3) That there are bad arguments for jew· ish covetousness does not rule out good arguments for gender differences. Since no one is planning concentration camps for women, the implied analogy is even more absurd. In fact, all questions about racial and ethnic differences are empirical, in many cases still open, and worth investigating. Given the number of Japanese Nobel Laureates in physics, I would be neither surprised nor displeased to learn that Japanese are smarter than the rest of us. WINTER 1982 �Editor's Note On Harry V. Jaffa's "Inventing the Past" The policy of the St. John's Review is ' to publish writing addressed to important questions. Some of these questions are To the Editor of the St. John's Review: disturbing as the response to Professor Levin's article shows. Such open invesHarry V. Jaffa's article, '~Inventing the tigation and discussion is in the tradi- Past," (Autumn 1981) was interesting and tions of St. John's College. The views valuable, but I was bothered by his slightexpressed by the writers in the St. John's ing reference to the protests and demonstrations against the war in Vietnam. He Review do not necessarily reflect the speaks of the people involved as seeking a opinions of the editor. minority veto upon majority action, as trying, ' 4 in behalf of their Thoreauvian consciences," to "arrest the process of constitutional government." I question whether the events of the sixties and early seventies actually fit the categories of "majority action" and "constitutional government." To mention some of them: in the election of 1964 the majority elected Johnson as President after he denounced Goldwater's proposal for extensive bombing of North Vietnam-and after the election, he did just what he had denounced. The Vietnam war was waged, of course, not after a declaration of war by Congress as provided by the Constitution, but on the basis of the Tonkin Gulf Resolution, which itself was passed by Congress after it heard misleading testimony by the Administration. Coming to 1968, the majority elected Nixon, who had a plan to end the war-and then waged it for four more years and included a secret bombing of Cambodia. I submit that these events certainly do not fit the categories of majority action and constitutional process, and to talk as if they do is to talk about a dream world. THOMAS RALEIGH Cocheton, New Yark Professor Jaffa replies: Mr. Thomas Raleigh questions my assertion that the demonstrators against the Vietnam war, or some of them, were attempting to "arrest the process of constitutional government." He does so on the ground that the actions of the United States, in prosecuting the war, were themselves unconstitutional THE ST. JOHNS REVIEW The principal ground of his objections is that the war was not waged "after a declaration of war as provided by the Constitution, but on the basis of the Tonkin Gulf Resolution, which itself was passed by Congress after it heard misleading testimony by the Administration." The war in Vietnam was a limited war, and the United States has prosecuted many such wars without a formal declaration by the Congress. Among these have been the naval war with France, during the presidency of john Adams, Woodrow Wilson's war with Mexico, many Indian wars, and, above all, the Civil War. The last, our greatest war, was from the point of view of the Lincoln government a "rebellion." To have asked for a declaration of war against "rebels" would have been to confer upon them a political status that it was the whole point of the war to deny. This points up the paradox that there are circumstances in which a declaration of war may defeat the policy for which the war is waged. Such was the case in Vietnam. Rightly or wrongly, the Johnson administration (and later that of Nixon) thought that North Vietnam itself should not be invaded, and that this "privileged sanctuary" could not be maintained once a formal declaration of war had been made. It was feared that if North Vietnam was invaded that China would intervene, as it did in North Korea in 1950. The Tonkin Gulf Resolution was not the sole basis for the prosecution of the war. Not a man or gun was sent to Vietnam except upon the basis of appropriations made by the Congress. And not a dollar was appropriated, except upon the basis of extensive-sometimes exhaustive-hearings by committees of both houses, and after debates and votes in both houses. The Congress authorized every step that the administration took, and the American people participated in such authorizations through their elected representatives. The opposition to the prosecution of the war was extremely intense, and extremely vocal, but no one can rightly say that their rights were ignored or suppressed. To say that the American government acted unconstitutionally in Vietnam is to say that a free government cannot act in such circumstances except upon something like unanimous consent. This is absurd. 113 �The St. John's Review St. John's College Annapolis, Maryland 21404 Non-profit Org. U.S. Postage PAID Permit No. 66 Lutherville, Md. � Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource <em>The St. John's Review</em> Description An account of the resource <em>The St. John's Review</em><span> is published by the Office of the Dean, St. John's College.  All manuscripts are subject to blind review. Address correspondence to </span><em>The St. John's Review</em><span>, St. John's College, 60 College Avenue, Annapolis, MD 21401 or via e-mail at </span><a class="obfuscated_link" href="mailto:review@sjc.edu"><span class="obfuscated_link_text">review@sjc.edu</span></a><span>.</span><br /><br /><em>The St. John's Review</em> exemplifies, encourages, and enhances the disciplined reflection that is nurtured by the St. John's Program. It does so both through the character most in common among its contributors — their familiarity with the Program and their respect for it — and through the style and content of their contributions. 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Creator An entity primarily responsible for making the resource Office of the Dean Publisher An entity responsible for making the resource available St. John's College Identifier An unambiguous reference to the resource within a given context ISSN 0277-4720 thestjohnsreview Contributor An entity responsible for making contributions to the resource St. John's College Greenfield Library Text A resource consisting primarily of words for reading. Examples include books, letters, dissertations, poems, newspapers, articles, archives of mailing lists. Note that facsimiles or images of texts are still of the genre Text. Page numeration Number of pages in the original item. 113 pages Original Format The type of object, such as painting, sculpture, paper, photo, and additional data paper Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Creator An entity primarily responsible for making the resource Office of the Dean Title A name given to the resource The St. John's Review (formerly The College), Winter 1982 Date A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource 1982-01 Contributor An entity responsible for making contributions to the resource Radista, Leo Parran, Jr., Thomas Durholz, Janet Bolotin, David Wilson, Curtis A. Sachs, Joe Allanbrook, Wye Jamison Brann, Eva T. H. Dennison, George Mullen, William Loewenberg, Robert Smith, Brother Robert Bell, Charles G. Le Gloannecc, Anne-Marie Josephs, Laurence Montanelli, Indro Collins, Arthur Dulich, Jean Navrozov, Lev Description An account of the resource Volume XXXIII, Number 2 of The St. John's Review, formerly The College. Published in Winter 1982. Identifier An unambiguous reference to the resource within a given context ISSN 0277-4720 The_St_Johns_Review_Vol_33_No_2_1982 Coverage The spatial or temporal topic of the resource, the spatial applicability of the resource, or the jurisdiction under which the resource is relevant Annapolis, MD Publisher An entity responsible for making the resource available St. John's College Language A language of the resource English Type The nature or genre of the resource text Rights Information about rights held in and over the resource St. John's College owns the rights to this publication. Format The file format, physical medium, or dimensions of the resource pdf St. John's Review https://s3.us-east-1.amazonaws.com/sjcdigitalarchives/original/ba76a93042d876ca41a3395a9207d116.pdf 3e9277ba2513602e2df7fa1c4e276b13 PDF Text Text Stringfellow Barr and Scott Buchanan _ I _,; rY . . . have m the past three years set up at Annapolis the only liberal arts •,..c~l~ e m the United States. This book describes what they have done; it ts a tribute to what t ey a ' ~ Barr Mr. St. M R.summerand 1937 Buchanan came totheir John's Col~ e to put into effect answer to ~~e of major problems in liberal education today-the problem o o o f many people can go to college for four years, become b chel arts, and still be uneducated. Their answer is the now amous St. Johns Program, which consists principally in the Cu~d discussion of the works of about one hundred and sevente~ut~rs in the Western tradition. ~ From the beginning one of Mr. Barr's chief ·function sident of the college has been to explain the St. John's P to assorted the general public. He has made innumerable speeches Rotary clubs, chambers of commerce, groups of educl'toiT," l_d domestic clubs; has written magazine articles, has started a~d on a series of radio programs describing activities at t~e, and in general has played the role of public spokesm or t e college-a role to which his congenial and somewhat ular o pefsonality is well fitted. Just as important has been h. keep the college from falling off the financial brink it as been teetering on for the past several years. Yet even though very busy performing as college politician and master ~y M fieT k\>t "'~"' in the New Program<lm< '" "'""""History 26 M,. ''"<Oil fu.rl, ·' ll•cl< seminar and to teach popular course in the Old Program. Perhaps his most characteristic from the student point of view is the fa knows most of them well enough to address them by t st g e st ~ names. Mr. Buchanan as Dean of the college has necessaril ad to · n concern himself with the internal affairs of the college. task has been to arrange the actual working structure o = i culum, to determine the subject matter and schedule of cia es, o o~ provide the order and locus in which the various parts gram function-in short to guide and co~ordinate the wo actua 1y done on the great books. Besides his work on the curreue serves as a reference point for disciplinary matters, and, n con£ r~ ence with members of the administration, faculty, and stu y, determines the great policies on which St. John's operat~ from his administrative duties Mr. Buchanan acts as the~eader o"\ the Junior seminar. t:.__.. Even though separately they have different functions~~ad inistrative men, both Mr. Barr and Mr. Buchanan are ss ta y a · g teachers, are working for the same end, and as a team ar St. John's a liberal arts college which, oddly enough, tef'!y a"Jd practices the liberal arts. ~ 6 :c ~ �Editor's Note FROM OUR READERS With the Winter 1982 issue the St. John's Review began to charge new subscribers. Old subscribers, St. John's alumni and friends, students and their families will con· tinue to receive the magazine without charge. My desire to turn the St. John's Review into an unambiguously pub· lie magazine and to win an additional audience prompted this decision. The St. John's Review will appear three times a year, in the fall, winter, and summer-L.R. ON " 'SEXISM' IS MEANINGLESS" Editor: Leo Raditsa Managing Editor: Thomas Parran, Jr. Editorial Assistants: David Carnes Janet Durholz Consulting Editors: David Bolotin, Eva Brann, Curtis A. Wilson. Unsolicited articles, stories, and poems are welcome, but should be accompanied by a stamped, self-addressed envelope in each instance. Reasoned comments are also welcome. THEST)OHNSREVIEW (formerly The College) is published by the Office of the Dean, St. John's College, Annapolis, Maryland 21404. Edwin J. Delattre, President, Samuel S. Kutler, Dean. Published thrice yearly, in the fall, winter, and summer. For those not on the distribution list, subscriptions: $12.00 yearly, $24.00 for two years, or $36.00 for three years, payable in advance. Address all correspondence to The St. John's Review, St. John's College, Annapolis, Maryland 21404. Volume XXXIII SUMMERI982 Number 3 ©1982, St. John's College. All rights reserved. Reproduction in whole or in part without permission is prohibited. ISSN 0277-4 720 Cover: Page 6 of the nineteen forty St. John's College Yearbook. ComPosition: Britton Composition Co. Printing: The John D. Lucas Printing Co. To the Editor of the St. John's Review: After reading Mr. Doskow's letter answering Michael Levin ("'Sexism' is Meaningless" St. John's Review Autumn 1981), I decided to abandon temporarily my subjugation as housewife and respond to Mr. Doskow's myopic view of human nature. In his letter Mr. Doskow accuses Mr. Levin of various "prejudices" concerning women. In so doing he examines the condition of women, past and present, under two false assumptions. The first false assumption is that women have been forced by men to stay at home and rear children. The second is that women are still being forced by men to stay at home and rear children. Underlying both assumptions and embedded in the fabric of his letter (though nowhere stated explicitly) is the further assumption that the habit of centuries has no connection with and is a violation of the laws of nature. (It is, however, open to question whether or not Mr. Doskow accepts the existence of permanent standards which dictate certain modes of human behavior.) In answer to Mr. Doskow' s first assumption, I must cite a book by George Gilder called Sexual Suicide in which Gilder claims that men never forced women to stay at home and rear children. In fact, women, because of the nature of female sexuality (which includes the processes of pregnancy and childbirth) have traditionally required men to marry them and provide for the upkeep of the resulting children. Male sexuality, according to Gilder, is characterized by indiscriminate and temporary liasons, and only the necessity of fathering a woman's children causes men to embrace monogamy. If Mr. Doskow would pause in his ruminations on the plight of women and read the first sentence of Pride and Prejudice, he would see there a clear demonstration ofthe necessity, imposed by women upon men, that men marry in order to establish themselves in civilized society. The second assumption is false because women are now encouraged to play more roles in society than we ever have in human history. The present education of women encourages masculine, not feminine qualities. Mr. Doskow assumes that the "environmental differences boys and girls are subjected to" are responsible for different forms of behavior in boys and girls and hence the "subjugation" of the latter. (I would like to know what the term "environmental differences" signifies-barometric pressure, or humidity???) I can't disagree with the claim that girls have usually been educated with their feminine characteristics in mind-receptivity, for example-until now. Mr Deskew does not bother to address himself to the question of whether or not it is proper to prepare girls for motherhood, and I tend to think that he considers motherhood such a casual affair that education regarding it is unnecessary. The modern liberal has placed himself in the uneasy position of asserting the primacy of early childhood development in the correct functioning of society, while maintaining all along that anyone-mother, father, daycare worker, psychologist, teacher(continued on page 2) �.HESTJOHNSREVIEWSUMMER1982 3 St. John's under Barr and Buchanan: the Fight with the Navy and the Departure of the Founders ]. Winfree Smith 20 Schiller's Drama- Fulfillment of History and Philosophy in Poetry Gisela Berns 31 Some Chinese Poems 39 That Graver Fire Bell: A Reconsideration of the Debate over Slavery from the Standpoint of Lincoln Robert]. Loewenberg 51 Sophocles' Ajax and the Ajax Myth Philip Holt 62 Toward Reading Thomas Aquinas translated by julie Landau Thomas]. Slakey REvmw EssAY 68 Updike and Roth: Are They Writers? John Updike's Rabbit Is Rich, and Philip Roth's Zuckerman Unbound review essay by Lev Navrozov �can assist in said developlnent equipped with nothing more than a brief course of training. Motherhood involves much more than a course in applied social sciences, however. For one thing, only a mother can do it: that is, a woman who has given birth to or accepted as her own through adoption an utterly dependent human person. The commitment made is physical, emotional, and instinctive. It is the most powerful bond between two people in nature. The idea that "mothering" can be accomplished by anyone but a mother is analogous to the suggestion that the function of husband or wife could be performed by someone hired for the purpose: the essential personal involvement which constitutes a marriage would be absent. Motherhood, then, is a role which demands a participation which is intrinsically connected with the very soul of the mother; a participation which never ceases to exist and never ceases to demand the selfless cooperation of the mother in a natural process which entails the separation of the beloved (the child) from the lover (the mother) with the cooperation and encouragement of the lover. In this way the natural order provides for the existence of society. It is only the personal element in motherhood-"my child" vs. "the child" which ensures the possibility of moral education; moral actions are, fundamentally, not performed out of self-interest. If I die for my country it is not because in doing so I consider myself to be performing a rational act, but because it is my country and I love it. If this personal element, that is, the task of "mothering" as performed by a mother, is absent in child-rearing, then the soundest basis for moral actions is removed from society. Given, then, the importance of the position of a mother to a society, one must surely admit the necessity of preparing potential mothers for such a role. Mr. Doskow seems to believe that nature makes no significant distinction between men and women. He also claims, implicitly, that habit must necessarily be a perversion of political and social truth. That nature and convention, or habit, are distinct is not to say that they are apposed, and it is here that Mr. Doskow makes his mistake. That education is purposive (which it necessarily is) does not mean that it is a violation of nature, and Mr. Doskow assumes that 2 throughout his letter without bothering to substantiate his claim. In this he seems to fall prey to a vice common to those who assume that human nature is malleable or nonexistent: he neglects the problem of necessity. Although political society is an institution, that is, it is made by men, it must do more than provide us with the opportunity for happiness. It must be able to withstand the vicissitudes of fortune; it must last. Although my tutors at St. John's succeeded in giving me a phobia of secondary sources, I must cite a story I have had occasion to read many times since I graduated. It is about three pigs and their varying abilities to survive in the "wide world" after they leave home. The smart pig, of course, worked hard at building ·a brick house while the other pigs played. The practical pig survived and protected his brothers because he was able to provide for protection against the gluttonous wolf. Mr. Doskow's sentiments about the "rights" of women reflect the finer sensibilities of the less sensible pigs-it would be nice if society were constructed in such a way that everyone could do what he wanted. Yesterday my son brought home a social studies newsletter his kindergarten class reads. This particular issue featured the story of a female coalminer. In fact, every newsletter he brings home features a woman doing a job ather than rearing children and keeping house. I have not yet seen an elementary school textbook describe child-rearing as a job particularly suited to women (so much for evidence in favor of the "subjugation of women" theory). What these newsletters (and I think Mr. Doskow) forget to take into consideration is .the fact that someone has to raise the children and women usually do a better job of it than men. But like every other job one must be trained to perform it, and habit serves to reinforce aspects of motherhood which would otherwise be difficult to endure. Men perfect themselves in political society. That perfection rests on the qualities of each man and is accomplished by means of his nature and not by its subjugation. Education is the means by which common and permanent standards are communicated to individuals in such a way that each man participates, often unknowingly, in the propagation of aims which are intellectually accessible to only a few men. It is this unthinking participation in the preservation of the moral health of society by means of the family (which is the first and most effective school) which Mr. Doskow calls "prejudice". We must consider men and women not as interchangeable parts in a machine, units possessing "rights", but as members of mankind, working in cooperation for the greatest good possible. Men are such that the greatness of one man shines on all of us, just as the infamy committed by one man calls the rest of us into question. When Father Brown, of the Chesterton stories, explained the method he used to discover the identity of a murderer he said that he "became" the murderer and hence could imagine the circumstances of the crime and identify the culprit. Father Brown understood that what connects us to each other is not a superficial similarity of abilities or sympathies but a common late. This unity shows itself, strangely, in our ability to perform the various and separate functions necessary to the well-being of a political society. In a stable society these accomplishments-the different kinds of work done by its members-will benefit both the fathers and mothers who perform their work and the society as a whole. Just as a mother raises her child knowing that he will, if all goes well, cease his dependence on her and become a father or mother in his own right, our satisfaction at being citizens rests to some extent on our capacity for selflessness. The success of work depends on its being performed in a political framework, and upon this political nature of work depends the stability of society. Those who complain of "prejudice," when differences between men and women are recognized by a society in the education of its children are apparently unable to make the essential connection between human nature as expressed in habit and the higher aims of society, which utilizes habit to further its own aims and protect itself from decay. To disregard the primacy of motherhood both in a woman's life and in the larger context of society is to disregard the fundamental basis for moral education and the place nature holds in our society. If Mr. Doskow's objections to "prejudice" lie in a fundamental difference between his opinions and the aims of this regime, then he should {continued on inside back cover) SUMMER 1982 �St. John's College under Barr and Buchanan: the Fight with the Navy and the Departure of the Founders J. Winfree Smith Public Interest and Internal Changes under Barr and Buchanan The St. John's curriculum, differing so radically from the curriculums of most American colleges, evoked wide· spread interest as soon as it was inaugurated. In Decem~ ber 1938 Walter Lippmann wrote a column that appeared in many newspapers in which he praised the St. John's way. He praised it primarily because it promised a recov· ery of an understanding of the principles on which the American Republic was founded, the understanding that the founding fathers had because of their own study of the classics. HI do know," he wrote, ''that in this country and abroad there are men who see that the onset of barbarism must be met not only by programs of rearmament, but by another revival of learning. It is the fact, moreover, that after tentative beginnings in several of the American universities, Columbia, Virginia, and Chicago, a revival is actually begun-is not merely desired, talked about, and projected, but is in operation with teachers and students and a carefully planned course of study." He concluded with the prophecy: "I venture to believe that ... in the fu- These pages are taken from Chapters IV, V, and VI of J. Winfree Smith's history of St. John's College from 1937 to 1958, which the St. John's College Press will publish in 1983. The work draws on many un· published sources in the St. John's College Archives, in the Buchanan Files at Houghton Library, Harvard, and elsewhere. J. Winfree Smith has been a tutor at St. John's College since 1941. THE ST. JOHNS REVIEW ture men will point to St. John's College and say that there was the seed-bed of the American Renaissance." 1 There were many who wanted to know about the revival as it was in operation. A series of articles in the Baltimore Sun in January 1939 gave vignettes of what was going on in the tutorials-' The freshmen in their mathematics tutorial were wrestling with some of the most fundamental questions in mathematics raised by their investigation of Book 5 of Euclid in the context of the discovery of incommensurable magnitudes. The same freshmen in their Jan· guage tutorial were making careful analyses of Greek sentences and were translating Plato's Meno, using the Greek they were learning to try to find out what was happening in that dialogue, why Socrates said what he said, or asked what he asked, and what Meno's answers might mean in the development of the dialogue. The sophomores were enthusiastically engaged with Apollonius' Conics, being in a position to contemplate the beautiful logical and analogical structure of the first book of that work, which they had recently finished reading. In their language tutorial they were translating from a chapter of Augustine's Confessions, and producing the following: "They [Augustine's friends who wanted him to write the book] are desirous to hear me confess what I am within; whither neither eye, nor ear, nor understanding is able to dive; they desire it as ready to believe me; but will they know me?" This led to a lively discussion of Augustine's effort at self-knowledge and of whether one can know oneself thoroughly. About a year later Life magazine sent to the college Gerard Pie!, who later became the founder and publisher of Scientific American 3 Pie! brought with him an excel- 3 �lent photographer and together they produced with words and pictures a quite accurate and attractive account of St. John's with the new program in operation. There was a pic· ture of Buchanan leading a seminar, of a student, Francis Mason, in rapt contemplation of one of Euclid's regular solids, of a group of students in the snow using an instru· mentwith which Aristarchus (third century B.C.) made measurements from which to calculate the sizes and distances of the sun and moon. A two-page spread showed a shelf of the great books with those translated by St. John's faculty clearly marked. These pictures and the accompanying story, both concise and complete, gave a great boost to the enrollment. In the fall of 1940 ninety-three freshmen enrolled as contrasted with forty in 1938 and fifty-four in 1939. People sometimes referred to the class of 1944 as the "L"~e cIass ." ... t1 Criticism from Outside and Inside and Effect of World War II Hutchins, Adler, and Barr were not simply advocates of a different kind of college education from what was to be found in American colleges and universities generally. They were constantly attacking college education in insti· tutions other than St. John's. Barr in a public address would say such things as: "Modern college education is being conducted in a new tower of Babel staffed by pro· fessors often proud of their own ignorance, its corridors crammed with bewildered students learning a hodgepodge of useless skills and becoming increasingly unintelligible to one another and to the world they face." Hutchins and Barr were devastatingly witty, and this made their attacks all the more effective and provocative. Hutchins and Alder tended to blame John Dewey and his followers for much that they considered wrong with American college education. It was understandable, then, that there were various counterattacks and especially from the followers of Dewey. Dewey himself in August 1944 published an article in For· tune called "A Challenge to Liberal Thought." The article did not refer by name to any of the challengers except Robert Hutchins. It did mention Hutchins's "theological fellow travelers." It did not mention St. John's, but it was generally taken to be directed at St. John's because of such sentences as: "The idea that an adequate education can be obtained by means of a miscellaneous assortment of a hundred books, more or less, is laughable when viewed practically."1 Dewey concluded from Hutchins's claim that human nature is everywhere and always the same that Hutchins must also think that the principles governing human conduct are unchangeable, that they are to be found not by experimental inquiry or direct observation, but in books. He saw this partly as a reversion to antiquity but even more as a reversion to what he considered to be 4 the anti-scientific dogmatism of the Middle Ages. Dewey himself was, of course, particularly concerned that education should follow the way of experiment and observation as much in the study of man and society as in the study of non-human things. He saw this way as closely linked with freedom of inquiry made possible by democracy and with the technological control of nature. Hutchins and his friends were, in his opinion, anti-scientific, anti-democratic dogmatists, mindful only of the past and oblivious to the present. In the issue of Fortune for January 1945 Alexander Meiklejohn had "A Reply to John Dewey." Meiklejohn quite naturally supposed that Dewey was attacking the St. John's curriculum, and his reply was largely a defense of that curriculum. Against the charge that the St. John's way of studying the past led to dogmatism, to the acceptance of some set of beliefs held by somebody in the past, he pointed out that in reading and discussing the great books a St. John's student meets not just one set of beliefs, but many con· flicting sets; that he "will find Protagoras at war with Plato, Kant at war with Hume, Rousseau at war with Locke, Veblen at war with Adam Smith, and he must try to understand both sides of these controversies."' To the charge that reading a miscellaneous collection of great books in the four college years is laughable as a way of education, when viewed practically, he replied that, for all the startling audacity of having college students read many such very difficult books, the studying of these books was not irresponsibly done, being subject through careful discussion to guidance, correction, and criticism. Against the charge that St. John's ignores the way of experimental in· quiry and observation, he pointed out that every student at St. John's was required to devote half of his course of study to the learning of science and of mathematics as the 'language' upon which scientific achievement depends. In regard to this disagreement between Dewey and Meiklejohn, it should be noted that they both assumed that the St. John's kind of education involved an interest in the past as such. That was, and still is, incorrect. Teachers and students have no interest in studying the past as past. They have an interest in reading certain books that were written in the past because those books raise impor· tant perennial questions, questions which are always live and present questions if we let our thought get hold of them. Moreover, St. John's was and is perhaps more radi· cal than either Dewey or Meiklejohn was. For Dewey, while acknowledging that a study of the past is necessary for understanding the present, was quite sure that modern thought represents a tremendous gain over ancient and medieval thought. Meiklejohn, though quite clear about such thinkers as Hume and Kant, nonetheless thought and supposed it to be a basic postulate of St. John's that "from the time of the Greeks until the present the knowledge and wisdom of men have been growing." Actually, at St. John's it would be a question whether there has been SUMMER 1982 �such growth, a question not so easily answered if by wisdom is meant the wisdom about the whole of things. While one could hardly deny that there has been a tremendous growth of 'knowledge' in the modern natural sciences, of which St. John's tries to take sufficient cognizance, it is not easy to decide whether Plato or Hegel were closer to the knowledge of the whole of things. · Dewey's response to Meiklejohn was a letter to Fortune in which he said that he had not been referring to St. John's at all in his "A Challenge to Liberal Thought." The philosophy I criticized [he wrote] is so current and so much more influential than is the work of St. John's, there are only a few sentences in my article even indirectly referring to St. John's. Rightly or wrongly, I had not supposed that the program and work of St. John's was of such importance as to justify my use of the pages of Fortune in extended criticism of it, especially as a number of effective criticisms of it had already been made. 3 The criticisms to which he was referring were principally those of Sidney Hook, which had appeared in the New Leader of May 26, 1944, and June 3, 1944, and were later included in a book entitled Education for Modern Man under the title "A Critical Appraisal of the St. John's College Curriculum." Some of Hook's criticisms were the same that Dewey had made of Hutchins and Hutchins's "fellow travelers." He claimed that the people at St. John's thought that man has an essential unchangeable nature and that the unchangeable truth about man's nature and about all things can be learned because it is written down in ancient and medieval books, that to possess these truths all one has to do is to read those books. He mentioned that it was the hidden assumption in the philosophy underlying St. John's that "the true answers to our problems can be found by assaying the heritage of antiquity and the Middle Ages."4 He recognized that in studying books written in ancient Greece the St. John's people were not seeking to know Greek man but to know about human nature, but he seemed to think that what one learns directly from a Greek book is only something about Greek man. He raised the question others have raised through the years, of why there are no Chinese or Hindu books in the St. John's list, why, granted that the reading of ancient literature develops the imagination, the reading of ancient oriental literature might not produce an imaginative sympathy with the problems and experience of those Eastern people with whom we have to deal and will have to deal. He attacked what he considered to be the St. John's doctrine that there is "transfer of learning." Presumably he was referring, for example, to the assumption that in studying the grammar of one language one can learn certain things that appear universally in language, the knowledge of which will be profitable in learning any language and in learning how language may be a means of inquiry or may convey truth about things. He also attacked the view that a good way to learn mathematics and science is through THE ST. JOHNS REVIEW the reading of classical works in those areas, and he invoked the formidable names of Richard Courant, Bertrand Russell, and Albert Einstein in support of his attack, all of whom in letters from which he quoted supposed that what was in question was a study of the historical development of mathematics and science rather than an understanding of what is fundamental in them through sharing and exploring the thought of the original discoverers. Those responsible for the St. John's curJiculum never supposed that it would always be the case that the original discoverer of a science or a scientific theory would make a more intelligible presentation of it than someone else. That it is usually the case is not something known a priori, but is a matter of the long experience of both ways of presentation. Some of Sidney Hook's criticisms were justified. Barr's harsh judgments of other colleges went too far. Barr had no doubt made exaggerated claims when he said that the St. John's students were going to read every one of the books on the list in its entirety. It was certainly debatable whether the whole St. John's curriculum were suitable, as Barr maintained, for all students of college age. It was certainly conceivable that a college student might learn as much from analyzing a bad book such as Hitler's Mein Kampf as from reading a good or a great book. All of these were points that Hook made. But on the whole his "critical appraisal" was based on misconceptions. One reason that he had so many misconceptions was that he assumed that anything Hutchins or Adler said St. John's would endorse. This illusion on his part was understandable in view of Hutchins's lose connection with the college, first as a member, and then as chairman, of the board, and also in view of Adler's position as lecturer at the college and his constant support of it in public utterances. Hook referred to Adler both as Hutchins's mentor and as the "mentor of the St. John's educators." 5 Hook should nonetheless have known better, since before writing his articles for the New Leader he had had several letters from Buchanan that attempted to limit and define their differences. These letters indeed affirmed "the rational scientific nature" of metaphysics, politics, and religion. Buchanan could hardly expect Hook to agree that metaphysics and religion were scientific. At the same time, he explicitly refused to deny "the rational scientific nature" of social studies, which he knew Hook would strongly affirm. He vigorously resisted the charge of indoctrination, insisting that he would "defend the freedom of the intellect and the will in considering them [the studies mentioned, especially metaphysics and theology] in such a way as to show that indoctrination in them is impossible."' Later on he wrote urging Hook to come to the college and lecture; he mentioned several possible topics: "Karl Marx," "The St. John's Brand of 'Indoctrination'" (as Hook saw it), "The Scientific Method, Intelligence and Society."7 He suggested that such a lecture would be of great aid in the lively controversies that had been going on within the college now that there were faculty and stu- 5 �dents who had read the whole list of books, were caught up in the quarrel between the ancients and the moderns, and had engaged in considerable debate about Marx. It was not possible for Hook to visit St. John's at that time, and by the time he published the New Leader articles the character of the exchange of correspondence that he had with Buchanan made the visit increasingly unlikely. It became clearer and clearer that his principal target was Adler, but Hook could never come to terms with Buchanan as long as Buchanan failed to repudiate publicly those statements or positions of Adler with which Buchanan disagreed. On January 26, 1943, Hook wrote to Buchanan: I am glad to learn that you haven't joined the neo-Thomist "gang." I don't recall Using the word, but now that you have used it I think it quite apt. A "gang" is a group of people who are unalterably committed to a vested interest or doctrine, even if truth, honor, and justice be elsewhere . .. . A large number of people, however, believe, apparently on insufficient evidence, that doctrinally you are approaching the neo-Thomists more closely than one would. expect on the basis of your personal outlook and better knowledge of your earlier philosophical position. As the leading spirit of an important educational enterprise I think you should be concerned about the generality of this impression. I am taking the liberty of suggesting that it would be helpful if you found an opportunity to state publicly what you thought about the doctrine of neo-Thomism from its sacred theology to its educational philosophy.8 In spite of disagreements with Adler, Buchanan could not repudiate him ip any way that would be satisfactory to Hook. With his view that metaphysics and theology, even if not wholly identical with any metaphysics and theology of the past, were the sciences that would give unity to all knowledge, Buchanan could not well repudiate the neoThomists in a way that would be satisfactory to Hook. After the New Leader articles severely critical of Barr as well as of Adler, the exchange between Hook and Buchanan became more and more acrimonious. Buchanan kept inviting Hook to come to St. John's, spend a while, and see for himself. Hook refused to come on the ground that, if he came and found that things were just as he expected, Buchanan would discover one reason after another to explain why he had not been able to put his ideas into execution. Buchanan did not in any of his letters to Hook reply to the question about oriental classics. His position on the subject was, however, made clear in a reply that he wrote in the spring of 1940 to a letter that made a plea for the inclusion of such classics in the list of great books: Four yecirs [he wrote] is a short time for reading the books we already have on the list. If I did not think people would go on gradually studying the books these lead to I should think we were a complete fake. We are doing the first reading of the few books which will initiate us to the study of all the things 6 we should know, including other books. I think the great books of the Orient .are included in that perspective? Clearly, Chinese and Hindu books were not in principle excluded from the St. John's curriculum. The students at St. John's have, on the whole, not been critical of the conception and plan of the curriculum. Perhaps in many cases their decision to attend St. John's rather than some other college has meant an acceptance of that conception and that plan. Most of the students' criticism has been to the effect that the college, while be· ing right and quite articulate about its aims, did not in per· formance live up to its aims. Not much of this criticism was expressed until the program had been in operation for a few years. Many of the first new programmers within a very short time began to look back on their student days as a "golden age." The golden age probably never existed. There was indeed a certain excitement among the first new program· mers which arose not simply because significant learning is exciting but also because of their belonging to a group who were engaged not in an experiment, but in something new in relation to the conventionalities of other colleges. One record of student commentary and criticism was the college yearbook, the student editors of w):Jich, during the Barr-Buchanan era, were exceptionally intelligent and perceptive. The nineteen forty Yearbook mentions what are called "difficulties" .encountered in the first year of the program, difficulties that were said to have been overcome or to be in process of being overcome. The difficulties seem to have been caused by the demands on the stu· dents' time that went beyond those of the officially announced curriculum. There were lectures for all students twice a week, each of which lasted from two to two and one-half hours. There were, in addition, supplementary lectures on Platonic dialogues. There was a special tuto· rial for practice in writing in addition to the language tu· torial. To discuss the dialogues of Plato in seminar fashion was no doubt a more Socratic way of getting into them than by listening to lectures. In any case, the supplementary lectures were soon eliminated, practice in writing was assigned to the language tutorial, and the number of lee· tures reduced to one a week with an hour and a half as the time limit. "The greatest difficulty this class [the first new program class] has met so far in connection with the cur, riculum," the nineteen forty Yearbook reported, "has been the laboratory. After the class had roamed aimlessly for a year or so in its lab work a method of instruction has been developed that runs much more smoothly and is better correlated with the rest of the Program." 10 The entry of the United States into World War II brought many changes in the college. In October 1939 the St. John's Collegian took a poll among the students to get their opinion about United States policy in relation to the war which had clearly begun in Europe. Eighty-one students responded to the five questions that were asked. The questions and the results of the poll were as follows: 11 SUMMER 1982 �l. Should the United States give immediate armed sup- port to the European democracies? Yes No Noopinion 8 72 1 2. Should this country assist England and France by filling, as far as possible, their demands for munitions and commodities such as food, raw materials, and manufactured goods? Yes No 34 42 No opinion 5 3. Should America pursue a policy of strict isolationism concerning European affairs? Yes 38 No 41 No opinion 2 4. Do you think Britain and France should attempt to make peace with Germany at this stage of the war? Yes No Noopinion 21 55 5 5. In case of this country's engaging in the present war in Europe, would you volunteer before a draft were effected? Yes No No opinion 27 55 4 In over a hundred colleges throughout the country similar polls were taken and with similar results. At that time American college students were strongly opposed to sending American troops to support England and France but a larger percentage (42 per cent) than was the case at St. John's were willing to volunteer if England and France were in danger of defeat. Student opinion at St. John's seems to have changed by the time of the attack on Pearl Harbor in December 1941. When the news of Pearl Harbor came, there was, according to the nineteen forty-two Yearbook, much talk among the students about enlistment. A college meeting was called the day after and the students expected Barr and Buchanan to plead with them to stay at least until June 1942. Barr did not plead with them to stay. Having made the point that only a few ever take part in what the young might consider the romantic adventures of war, he suggested a definite choice either to enlist or to stay and work at studies. He even suggested that it might be their duty to stay; he believed that it was of the utmost importance that gopd thinking about war and peace should go on while the country was at war, and that colleges, especially St. John's College, should not close, but stay open and think about war and peace. Buchanan at the same college meeting spoke of the problems that would arise in the relation of the college to the townspeople who, as the country became more and more involved in the war, would judge and condemn those young men who were studying God THE ST. JOHNS REVIEW knows what when they ought to be fighting in defense of their country. The editor of the Yearbook, John Louis Hedeman, ended his account of this meeting with the report that "for the most part, students, thinking things over, found that a year or even two or three in the army did not appeal to them and went back to their seminars to discuss the same problems in the light of ages past." 12 The college administration took various steps to prepare the students in what they thought might be useful in the war. There was a three-hour course once a week in radio. There was a course in navigation. Franz Plunder, a sculptor and boat-builder, who also possessed many other skills, taught a group of about sixty persons the intricacies of the gasoline engine, for, as the nineteen forty-two Yearbook put it, "no one knew which St. Johnnie might be stranded in a tank somewhere on the battlefront, where there would be no hardware store and mechanics for him to turn to."ll The press poked a certain amount of fun at the "great books" college for this course in the gasoline engine. Actually the course was in line with Buchanan's view that there is a training of the .intellect that happens in the learning and practice of the manual arts as well as the liberal arts. Also, Buchanan knew that one learns quite a bit of physics if one acquires a full understanding of all the transformations of energy that take place in the internal combustion engine. Whether these courses were in fact useful to many of the students when later they were in military service is doubtful. But at the time they helped them to feel that they were not just engaged in talk about the war but were doing something. In spite of the talk that went on in meetings to discuss the war, and in spite of the activities just mentioned, the war did not have a great impact upon the college during the session of 1941-42. Many students, through joining the reserves, were able to finish the year. All students, not just the reservists, were required to take part in military drill, which all accepted, though some found it irksome. It was in the following session that the war really began to have a big effect. At the beginning of that session there were 173 students enrolled. By the end of the year there were fewer than a hundred. When the next session began, there were only forty-two in the three upper classes. Only seven of the ninety-three in the "Life class" remained to receive degrees in 1944. Not only were students leaving in droves for military service, but faculty were leaving too, among them some who had contributed most to get the program established and to make it go: George Comenetz, Catesby Taliaferro, John Neustadt, and Raymond Wilburn. There were also very promising newcomers on the faculty who had hardly been at the college a year before having to leave for military service or for some employment related to the war effort. The president and the dean thought that it would be fitting to mark with a ceremony the departure of students for the war. During the 1942-43 session there were twp occasions when a solemn ceremony was held in the college's Great Hall, and all those leaving for the war took the 7 �Ephebic oath administered by Barr. This oath was once taken by Athenian youth as they were going off to war: outstanding faculty was considered a serious injury to successful study within the program. Said Campbell, I will not disgrace the name of my country and I will not desert my comrades in the ranks. By myself and with my fellows I will defend what is sacred, whether private or public. I will hand on my country not lessened but greater and nobler than it was handed down to me. I will hearken diligently to those The advent of the war, although unable to affect the Program, certainly introduced deficiencies into the teaching of it. A good faculty is absolutely essential to good participation in duly charged with judging, and I will obey the established laws and whatever others the people with common consent establish. And if anyone attempts to overthrow the laws, or not obey them, I will not stand idly by but by myself and with all my comrades I will defend the law. And I will honor the religion of my fathers. The gods be witness of these things.l4 There were some who wondered how American youth could honor the religion of their fathers and at the same time call upon the Greek gods to witness their oath. But everyone felt the seriousness of the occasion. Some of the young men who took the oath were to give their lives in combat. Many were to follow Barr's admonition, given on that occasion, not to forget in the midst of all the irrationality of war that there is still such a thing as human reason. Many, too, would return when the war was over. Obviously, the college had to take some drastic steps if it were not to close its doors. It was decided to admit as freshmen at the beginning of every term fifteen-year-olds who had not finished high schooJ,I 5 and also to add a summer term to the three terms already current. In this way a fifteen-year-old could complete his college course in three years and do so before being subject to the draft. With the admission of freshmen in June and September 1943 the total enrollment went up to 138, and it never again fell as low as it did in the spring of 1943. In the fall of 1946, when the accelerated schedule had already been abandoned, the return of veterans shot the enrollment up to 253. The yearbooks for 1944 and for 1945-46, edited by Robert Campbell and Eugene Thaw, reflect a considerable amount of self-criticism on the part of students and also criticism of the college. The loss of such a large portion of the students in 1942-43 was very depressing for those who remained, who, if they were not wondering when they themselves might have to leave, were agonizingly asking themselves whether staying in college and studying were the best thing to be doing when their friends were engaged in a war, the outcome of which was so important for human life on this planet. "We neglected our studies," Campbell wrote in the· nineteen forty-four Yearbook, "and sought diversion .... We became adept and ingenious at excusing our own vices and our facility in this respect usually manifested itself in criticism, not of the Program itself (for we knew too well its necessity, goodness, and consequences) but of the way in which it was being applied." 16 The students do not seem to have shared Buchanan's opinion that the books are the teachers and that the faculty are decidedly of minor importance. The loss not only of some of the best students, but also of 8 the program by the student body. It may be argued that the books are, after all, the teachers, and that the student learns from them rather than from the faculty, the latter being only the means leading the students to the end, but from this it would be difficult to conclude that the quality of the means is unimportant. 17 He found the faculty who had come to replace those who had left definitely inferior. Also the great number of young freshmen and the small number of upperclassmen, so Campbell thought, destroyed the learning community as a community, even if individually some students were doing better work than they had done before. The juniors and seniors, instead of communicating to the freshmen customs and habits conducive to the kind of study most suitable for success within the program, retired into small groups and left the freshmen to produce, or not to produce, their own traditions. "The Iron Age" was the title given to the next yearbook, edited by Eugene Thaw, which was a two-year book since the drafting of two editors into military service had prevented the production of a yearbook in 1945. The title indicated that the two years covered were being thought of as a period of decline from an earlier 'golden age', but also along with the dedication to Virgil it indicated a hope for a golden age to come. The yearbook spoke of a "trend of decline" in all sections of the program except the formal lectures. It complained of student lethargy and of inadequate preparation for tutorials with the result that much routine work which should have been done outside of class had to be done in class. The claim was made that the seminars had suffered as a consequence. The tutorials were called the "mainstay of the program" as the place for the acquisition of skills to be exhibited and tested in the seminar. (<The seminar," it was said, His the finished product of the program, accomplished and consummate, however, only to the degree of success in tutoria1." 18 In the fall of 1945 there was a change in schedule from five one-hour tutorial classes a week to three classes with normal length of an hour·and-a-half. This was thought to have produced improvement in the quality of the tutorials. But it was set down as a disadvantage that the new scheduling had made it impossible for a student to attend alanguage or mathematics tutorial other than the one to which he had been assigned. The mere fact that a student might want to attend another such class with the expectation of getting a better understanding than he had got in his assigned class pointed to the strong student opinion that it mattered very much that the tutors were unequal in teaching ability and in their grasp of what they were teaching. As Campbell had done in the nineteen forty-four YearSUMMER 1982 �book, Thaw made a plea for a place for the fine arts within the curriculum. Music as a fine art has, since the time of Barr and Buchanan, had some place in the curriculum. Concerts have been given on certain Friday evenings in· stead of lectures. Herbert Swartz in 1938, Elliott Carter in 1940, and Nicholas Nabokov in 1941 were all added to the faculty in large part because of their musical knowledge which, it was expected, would enable them to suggest how music as a fine art might fit into the curriculum and also to sponsor and supervise music as an extracurricular activ- ity. None of them remained very long and little came of their efforts. When Carter and Nabokov were at the college there were seminars on musical compositions 1 but the musicians were at odds with Buchanan, who thought that one should study the scores without listening to and without ever having listened to the sounds represented by the staves with their whole notes, half notes and quarternotes, etc., and without even knowing that those marks might refer to sounds. In August 1937 Buchanan had written on the subject of the college and the fine arts to an inquirer: In our study of liberal college education, we have been forced to consider the bookish classics as the basic medium of our teaching. There is a sense in which great books are works of fine art; on the other hand, we realize very vividly that we are ignoring, or seeming to ignore, the classics in the fine arts proper. When we have consolidated our program, we shall turn very definitely to the problem of teaching the fine arts as well as the liberal arts. In the meantime we shall proceed tentatively with extracurricular activities in the fine arts. 19 Buchanan had a theory about the fine arts, namely that at the Renaissance they had become substitutes for the sacraments. He no doubt would have liked to have St. John's discover the right way of combining divine arts, liberal arts, fine arts, and manual arts. During the BarrBuchanan era, however, little was done to encourage the study of works of fine art besides musical works. Edgar Wind of the Warburg Institute gave some excellent lectures on the School of Athens, the frescoes of the Sistine ceiling, and Hogarth, but that was about all. When later Jacob Klein became dean, he even called in question the meaningfulness of the term "fine arts" as applied in common to music and the visual arts. Herbert Swartz, in a radio talk in 1939, explaining the place of music in a liberal arts college program, argued that what music, painting, and sculpture have in common is that they are end arts rather than useful arts, arts the products of which are to be understood and enjoyedfor their own sake rather than arts the products of which are to be used. In any case, whether works of music, painting, and sculpture are all of the same kind or not, Eugene Thaw in the nineteen forty-five-forty-six Yearbook wrote convincingly, "It seems not too much to ask an undergraduate college concerned with producing well-educated men to take notice of Michelangelo and Pheidias." 20 THE ST. JOHNS REVIEW The Fight with the Navy in War Time and the Departure of Barr and Buchanan This is a strange, and perhaps incomprehensible, story. The struggle over the possible acquisition by the Navy of the St. John's campus had three distinct episodes. Its outcome was favorable to St. John's in the judgement of nearly everyone except Barr and Buchanan, whose departure shortly thereafter astonished nearly everyone. The first of these episodes began in 1940. It was announced to the faculty in September of that year that there was a rumor that the United States Naval Academy, whose grounds are separated from the St. John's campus only by a street, 1 wished to acquire the campus. Admiral Wilson Brown, then Superintendent of the Naval Academy, and Stringfellow Barr, who had very amicable relations with each other, went together to Washington on October first to appear before the Senate Appropriations Committee who were considering the question of the acquisition of the campus by the Navy for the expansion of the Academy. An exchange of correspondence between Barr and Brown occurred shortly after that. Barr wrote, "It seems to me desirable that I should repeat to you in writing what I then stated to the Committee. You will recall that I was asked by Senator Byrnes [)ames Byrnes, later Secretary of State] what would be my attitude as President of St. John's College towards a proposal by the Navy Department to purchase the College in order to expand the present facilities of the Naval Academy. You will also doubtless recall my reply that as President of the College I would urgently recommend to the trustees that they reject such a proposal unless it could be clearly demonstrated that the exigencies of the national defense program required the Naval Academy to secure our property rather than other available land."' Shortly after that the Secretary of the Navy, Frank Knox, stated that the Navy would make no attempt to take the St. John's campus provided that St. John's agree to two conditions laid down by President Franklin Roosevelt: (1) that the college not dispose of her property without first notifying the Navy and giving the Navy a chance to purchase it; (2) that the land not be used for any other purpose than that of the college and that no other than college buildings be erected upon it. Agreement on the second condition put an end to an attempt by the Annapolis Housing Authority to take by condemnation one and a third acres of the campus as a site for low cost housing for white people of moderate income. Barr was only too glad to assent to these conditions-and by january 31, 1941, he was able to report to the St. John's board that "the question of the Naval Academy's acquiring the property of the College was now definitely settled." 3 The second episode was very brief. It occurred in july 1942 when the United States was already at war, and the Navy was faced with the necessity of expanding its facili- 9 �ties for the training of officers. On July 15, Barr wrote to Knox reminding him of positions taken by St. John's and the Navy when Wilson Brown had been Superintendent of the Academy, and reporting that an aide to the then superintendent had appeared on the campus to look it over to see whether it could be used as an indoctrination school for Naval Reserve officers. He went on to say, "It is most doubtful whether the College could survive transplanting," but continued, "I am certain you will not construe this letter as an objection to the Navy's defense [presumably of the country]." The secretary replied that such surveys as the aide was making were being made at institutions in many places and that there was no specific proposal about the St. John's campus 4 The third episode, the dramatic culmination, began early in 1945. On February 28 of that year, Barr reported to the board as follows: Because of persistent and increasing rumors that the Navy Department is about to seize St. John's College or that the I told him [Roosevelt] of Senator Tydings' inquiry regarding St. John's College. He said he thought it was desirable to acquire the St. John's grounds and buildings but would like to see the buildings preserved. I told him I shared his feeling and reported Admiral King's suggestion that we grasp the nettle firmly and go across the river to acquire land for expansion of the Academy. The general conclusion was: a) Acquire St. John's b) Keep the buildings and grounds intact c) Proceed with acquisition of land across the river for further additions to the Academy. This entry in Forrestal's diary supports Admiral King's statement to Mrs. Howard that the rumor had "substantial basis in fact.'' No one connected with St. John's knew of this meeting with Roosevelt, but, because the persistent rumor did appear to have a basis in fact, the Board, no doubt with the approval, if not under the prompting of Barr and Buchanan, on April21, 1945, formulated the following statement of policy to be sent to Secretary Forrestal: State of Maryland might 'acquire' the College (possibly in order later to 'decide' to hand it over to the Navy Department) I ought to report to you what facts I possess. On February 13, 1945, Delegate Bertram L. Boone (D. 5th, Baltimore) introduced a bill in the Maryland House of Delegates calling for appointment of a commission to examine the possibility of the State's taking over St. John's. In presenting the bill, Mr. Boone announced, 'The thing is going to pot.' The next day I stated in the press that 'St. John's College is not for sale,' and a 'spokesman' for the Navy Department said, 'The Navy has no present plans for the acquisition of St. John's College.' Meanwhile, Mrs. Douglas Howard, widow of Captain Howard, once Dean of St. John's College, had written Admiral Ernest King, who is an intimate friend of hers, urging that the Navy Department disassociate itself from the Navy-Realtor clique, a clique that has now resorted to defamation of the College in order to squeeze it out of town. Mrs. Howard showed me Ernie's reply which was to the effect that the rumor has substantial basis in fact, that the Academy was to be approximately double its size and that the most available land for this expansion was our campus and the three blocks of residence property between the Academy and King George St. Admiral King stated that the matter would be decided by the President at the end of this month. I have since learned that Admiral Wilson Brown, formerly Superintendent of the Academy and most friendly to the College, now once more Naval Aide to the President, has several times blocked seizure. I am personally disinclined to pull wires to prevent seizure. The Navy, it should be reported, feels more threatened than we do-by the California delegation in Congress, which is working to get a part of their establishment here moved to the Coast. This fact is known to the business element of Annapolis, who therefore feel the College is standing between them and their bread and butter. The College's relations with the town have, therefore, never been more painful during my administration.5 On March 9, James V. Forrestal, Secretary of the Navy, and Admiral Chester Nimitz had lunch with President Roosevelt and, as F orrestal reports in his Diary:6 10 (1) The present uncertainty, aggravated by irresponsible rumors of imminent condemnation of the College's property, is harmful to the morale of the College, to its relations with the Annapolis community, and to the College Administration's ability to exercise its function wisely or to plan intelligently for future building now in prospect. An immediate understanding with the Navy Department is accordingly imperative. (2) This Board is entrusted with and proposes to fulfill the continuing responsibility of carrying on vigorously the function of the College, and cannot deal with its property as mere real estate and buildings. The Board believes that this function could be carried on elsewhere, in spite of obvious problems and difficulties, if an adequate site and the means of acquiring it could be made available. The Board, however, feels that it cannot properly or intelligently consider removing the College from its historic site in Annapolis unless the Navy Department formally represents to the Board that acquisition of the College property is required in the national interest. The Board, obviously, could not undertake to pass judgment on the decision of the Navy Department. Nor does the Board propose to interpose any objection to such acquisition, provided that the arrangements permit the Board, in its judgment, to continue to carry on the work of the College, and to discharge its legal and moral obligations to its college community, including faculty, students, alumni, the benefactors, creditors, and the State of Maryland. (3) The Board respectfully records its conviction that the Navy Department has a genuine responsibility in the premises to dispose of the present damaging impasse by plainly advising the Board at this time whether or not it now requires the College property for the national welfare; and furthermore, whether or not present plans for the future will require it. [Statement of Policy, Buchanan Files, Houghton Library, Harvard University.] This statement of policy was the crucial document in the whole affair. Whereas Barr's letter to Knox four years earlier had said, "It's doubtful whether the College could SUMMER 1982 �survive transplanting" this statement says "The Board believes this function [the function of educating] could be carried on elsewhere in spite of obvious problems and difficulties, if an adequate site and the means of acquiring it could be made available." Also, whereas in 1940 Barr had said that he would recommend that the trustees reject the proposal for acquisition unless it could be clearly demonstrated that the exigencies of the national defense program required the Naval Academy to secure the College property, etc., this statement makes no mention of clear demonstration but asks that the Navy Department formally represent to the board that "acquisition of the College property is required in the national interest." It goes on to say that the board "could not undertake to pass judgment on the decision of the Navy Department," that the board does not "propose to interpose any objection to such acquisition whether by formal condemnation or negotiation, provided that the arrangements permit the Board, in its judgment, to continue to carry on the work of the College," etc. The admirals and the Secretary of the Navy little knew what this statement of policy was going to get them into. They understood it as tantamount to an offer. That this was the Navy's interpretation is clear from the subsequent testimony of Admiral Moreell, Chief of the Bureau of Yards and Docks, before the Senate Naval Affairs Committee. Admiral Moreell stated, "The acquisition of the adjoining property [the St. John's campus] has been under consideration for a number of years, but the Department has not advanced this project due to the reluctance of the board of governors and visitors of the college to dispose of this property. The college authorities, however, have recently expressed a willingness to dispose of the property to the Navy Department in the event that it is needed in connection with the Naval Academy." 7 It certainly appeared to the admirals that St. John's was ready to let the Navy have the campus provided the Navy did no more than declare the acquisition necessary in the national interest and provided that the college receive sufficient compensation to enable it to continue elsewhere as the distinguished liberal arts college it had become. The board's action, interpreted as it was by the Navy, precipitated the Navy's final and most serious attempt to acquire the St. John's campus. On April 27, 1945, Secretary Forrestal wrote to Thomas Parran, chairman of the St. John's board and at that time Surgeon General of the United States: "It now appears that the expansion of the Naval Academy will require the acquisition of the present property belonging to St. John's College." But he had not declared that the acquisition was necessary in the national interest. On May 5 Dr. Parran, in a letter to Secretary Forrestal, inquired when the Navy would acquire the campus since plans for the removal of the college would require more definite knowledge. A month later Forrestal replied that negotiations would begin immediately.' The Naval Affairs committees of the Senate and the House still had to approve the acquisition, but the Secretary of the Navy THE ST. JOHNS REVIEW seems to have had little doubt that they would. On May 7 Buchanan wrote to Robert Hutchins: Perhaps you ought to know my opinion of certain events here. You will have seen our communication with James Forrestal. You may not have heard the reply. It is that the expansion of the Naval Academy will require the acquisition of the St. John's campus. Action waits on Congressional appropriation. What had appeared in prospect as a desirable event is, because of numerous circumstances, becoming a crisis. Where do we go and how? Do we go or not?9 Hutchins replied, "You really say something when you say the Naval Academy requires the campus and is merely waiting for an appropriation. This sounds to me like an Opportunity." 10 What was the event desirable in prospect? Was it the acquisition of the campus by the Navy? And was the "Opportunity" that of moving the St. John's program from a place where, as Buchanan thought, the Navy was always making it difficult to pursue the program? A letter of about the same time from Buchanan to Senator Wayne Morse claimed that the Naval Academy dominated Annapolis commercially, was pandered to by the city and county governments, and that the state government paid more attention to the Navy than to the public welfare_Il He clearly thought that the mere presence of the Navy was damaging not only to the college, but to the town and to the state and to the citizens of the town and of the state. As early as June 1944 he had written in a letter to his son Douglas, Winkie and I have today been wondering again how to extricate the program from this place. It is now quite clear that the academy is what has kept this poor little college sick for almost a century. We can't see how we move alive but we can see that we ought to have done so a year ago last January when we had to decide whether we would suspend operations or take youngsters. We should have suspended; a great deal of damage to the idea itself has. resulted from our noble decision to carry on. A year later he wrote, "The Navy has turned the town into a little Fascist community governed by greed and fear." What caused the event desirable in prospect to become a crisis? For one thing, alumni tend not to think of the college they have attended as an invisible chartered entity which might exist on other land and in other buildings than those in which they used to eat, sleep, study, and learn. So it was with St. John's alumni. The president of the Alumni Association, William Lentz, a Baltimore lawyer, wrote Senator Radcliffe on behalf of the association, protesting the annexation of the campus by the Academy. He stated that the alumni "feel that it is detrimental to the national interest to emasculate a college of liberal arts unless the most pressing and urgent national necessity requires it," and expressed the opinion of the alumni that 11 �"it should not be left solely to the Navy to determine whether that existed,"i2 The public generally seemed to view what was happening as a fight between the Navy with the power of the big federal government behind it and little St. John's. Almost immediately the people of Annapolis and people all over the country took sides. The Washington Post and the Baltimore Sun in editorials opposed the Navy's taking the campusY The Post proposed in a front page editorial that, because of the importance for national security of the naval and air bases in the Pacific, there should be established a second naval academy on the Pacific coast. Several senators from western states were in support of that proposal. Josephus Daniels, who had been Secretary of the Navy under Woodrow Wilson, in a letter to the Post supported a Pacific coast Academy as opposed to expanding the Academy in Annapolis. The businessmen of Annapolis became alarmed. They wanted the business that would necessarily result from doubling the brigade of midshipmen and hence greatly increasing the payroll of the Academy. They were fearful that Annapolis might lose the Naval Academy, and their fear was strengthened by a statement from Lansdale Sasscer, the Congressman for the Congressional district in which Annapolis lies, to the effect that, if a second academy were established on the west coast, "The education of midshipmen will be rapidly transferred to the West Coast Academy and Annapolis will become only a specialist or post graduate school. ... we have got to either press for the expansion program at the Naval Academy which includes the taking of St. John's ... or else lose the Academy." The mayor of Annapolis, William U. McCready, reminded his fellow Annapolitans that the Naval Academy brought to the community $17.5 million in annual payroll. In the meantime Buchanan had discovered the Dartmouth College case. Dartmouth College was incorporated by royal charter in 1769. After the American Revolution and in the course of a controversy between the Republicans and the Federalists of that time, the New Hampshire legislature changed the college charter in such a way as to replace the self-perpetuating body of trustees with a stateappointed body of trustees and a board of overseers. This would have transformed what had been a private college into a public one directly under the control of the state government. The state court of New Hampshire upheld the act of the legislature, but the Supreme Court of the United States reversed the decision. Chief Justice John Marshall, delivering the opinion of the Court, argued that the acts of the legislature were unconstitutional because they were in violation of Article I, Section 10 of the Constitution which declares that "no State shall ... pass any bill ... impairing the obligation of contracts." The royal charter was regarded as a contract establishing a corporation and therefore not subject to change by the legislature. There is perhaps a superficial resemblance between the New Hampshire government's attempt to change the institutional character of Dartmouth and the attempt by 12 the Navy in 1945 to acquire the St. John's campus. In each case there was an action on the part of government against a liberal arts college. But the federal government in 1945, unlike the New Hampshire government in 1816, was not attempting to alter the terms of the charter with which the state legislature had incorporated St. John's in 1784 and hence was not "impairing the obligation of a contract." Moreover, the Naval Affairs Committees were concerned that St. John's receive adequate compensation for the campus and buildings so that the College could continue as the same incorporated entity on another site. Buchanan, however, saw St. John's as leading a fight on behalf of all liberal arts colleges as the old trustees of Dartmouth had fought and won a fight that had implications for all liberal arts colleges in America. It was his ambition to get the United States government to abjure the exercise against liberal arts colleges of the power of eminent domain. As he wrote to his son Douglas on July 9, 1945, "The big question is whether the right of eminent domain could be challenged under the Dartmouth case. I think it could be if one wanted to build a case." Recalling that it was St. John's that in Aprill945 had first suggested negotiations with the Navy, he said in a statement to the Board on July 31, 1946, We were important members, albeit revolutionary members, of the great liberal arts college family. We were ready to take on the responsibilities of leaders in that family, and to fight our own battle without their help if necessary or to fight their battle for them if it could be seen that way. 14 It is a recognized principle that the federal government may exercise the power of eminent domain and acquire property whenever it is "necessary and proper" for it to do so in order to carry out any of the powers conferred on it by the Constitution,!' and it may do that by condemnation proceedings if no other way is open. It would seem that no exception could be made in the case of liberal arts colleges. The question, however, of the necessity and propriety of the Navy's takihg the St. John's campus remained. No one voiced any desire to destroy St. John's as an invisible chartered entity or as such an entity embodied in persons and buildings. For many Annapolitans it was just a question of money. If the Academy were expanded in Annapolis, that would mean more money for the town. If the federal government compensated StJohn's financially in a way that would make it possible for it to continue with its liberal arts program elsewhere, why should reasonable persons object? The editor of the Annapolis Evening Capital did go so far as to say, In cold logical fact, Annapolis has been given the choice between allowing the expansion of a great national institution, the only one of its kind in the United States and one which guards the safety of the people and a college which is but one of many similar educational institutions.l 6 On June 27, 1945, a five-man House Naval Affairs subcommittee, of which Congressman Sasscer was a member, SUMMER 1982 �visited Annapolis to inspect possible sites for the expansion of the Academy. They also interviewed two Annap· olis real estate men to inquire about possible sites for the relocation of St. John's. The realtors suggested two sites near Annapolis. One was at Holly Beach farm, the Labrot estate at Sandy Point, nine miles away. The other was at Hillsmere on the South River, five miles away. A Baltimore architect, James R. Edmunds, who was then president of the American Institute of Architects, after studying the situation, indicated several other possibilities for the expansion of the Academy than the purchase of the St. John's campus. 17 The St. John's board, including Barr and Buchanan, were indeed concerned, as the statement of policy of April 21, 1945, shows, with having the wherewithal to continue the function of the college on another s1te m the event that the Navy were to take the campus. But they meant what they said when they made removal of the college conditional upon the Navy's representing to the Board that acquisition of the college property was necessary m the national interest. They may have come to mean a little more than they said, since Buchanan was soon to talk about requiring the Navy not simply to "declare" but to "find" national interest. Neither the House committee nor the Senate committee on naval affairs had up to this point made any formal declaration. Nor had the Secretary of the Navy. There were hearings before the committees during June 1945. Richard Cleveland, then secretary of the board, appearing before the Senate Committee on June 20, attempted to make sure that the committee understood what importance the board attached to the declaration of necessity: First, the Board makes clear that it will cheerfully accede to genuine national necessity if such necessity, as distinguished from convenience, is formally declared by the Navy. We now assume that the function of making such a determination and declaration of national necessity has been transferred from the Navy Department to the Congress [i.e. the Congressional committees]. The Board waives the privilege of arguing national necessity, but waives this privilege on condition that the terms of acquisition permit the Board, in its judgment, to continue to do its duty to the college community. While waiving conditionally the right for itself to argue the issue of necessity, the Board would be disappointed if the Congress did not exhaustively explore that issue. We respectfully suggest that in the distinction between necessity and convenience there is an issue much more significant in America's future than the continued life of this little college . ... If this Committee should determine that acquisition of the College property is not in the national interest, we respectfully urge that the basis of that determination be made so explitit and so decisive that no rational persons can ever again raise the issue. We would first prefer to stay in Annapolis under conditions which would guarantee our future security. If that security is compromised, we would prefer to move to a site where no overshadowing neighbor holds the power of eminent domain . ... If the air is once cleared, we have no fear of our ability to live near the Naval Academy in harmony and mutual respect. THE ST. JOHNS REVIEW Perhaps this is no Dartmouth College case. But it is being watched all over this nation by citizens who hope that this war has not been fought in vain. 18 It seems that the committees and the Navy Department still did not grasp what St. John's was after in asking for a declaration of national necessity. 19 At a meeting in Secretary Forrestal's office on July 20, 1945, at which Senator Walsh, Chairman of the Senate Committee and Congressman Vinson, Chairman of the House Committee and various naval officers were present, and after they had agreed on the project of expanding the Academy by acquiring the St. John's campus, "the Secretary suggested (and it was adopted as the course of action to be pursued) that Admiral Jacobs prepare a letter for the signature of the Secretary to the Trustees of the College outlining the results of this meeting-i.e., that because of the needs of the post-war Navy the Academy must be expanded, that the Navy intends to acquire the property by negotiation if possible, or by condemnation if necessary."20 I think it unlikely that the Board had received or knew of this letter when they met the following day. 21 Buchanan was obviously disappointed with what had, or had not, happened at the board meeting. For the day after in a lengthy statement to the board, after referring to "eight years of startling success of the St. John's program," he berated the members for not pressing hard enough for a declaration about national interest. He said, The Statement of Policy of April 21st recognizes and embraces our highest duty as trustees in the present situation, namely to 'find' national interest. It does this by refusing to give or sell the campus or discuss damages until national interest is 'found' by due process of law . .. finding na~ional interest allows of two courses, negotiation and condemnation. The Navy has chosen the former. On a pfevious occasion [probably in 1942] we chose condemnation and the Navy withdrew. He went on to say, "This campus is essential to this College and its defence is therefore a part of the essential obligation of its trustees." He tried to frighten the board by saying that they could possibly be indicted for not fulfilling their function as trustees, and threatened to resign from the board as a vote of lack of confidence in them 22 Whether there was some communication with the Navy Department or the committees during the following week is not clear. On July 27, probably as a consequence of the July 20 meeting in Forrestal's office, Senator Walsh (D. Mass.), the chairman of the Senate committee, was writing a letter to Talbot Speer, president and publisher of the Evening Capital. He wrote that the Senate committee had taken no action except to authorize the Navy Department to enter into negotiations with the authorities at St. John's to see if an agreement on price could be reached." He affirmed his understanding that the college would remain in possession of the campus for the next academic session. A postscript shows that, no sooner had he dictated the letter, than it was brought to his attention that this would not 13 �satisfy th~ St. John's board. He was given the impression that what the board wanted was simply action by the two congressional committees to authorize the Navy Department to acquire the campus as distinguished from negotiation with a view to agreeing on a price. This authorization he proceeded to obtain from House Committee and a majority of the Senate Committee by the next day. On August 4 a special committee of the St. John's board meeting in Baltimore decided on the basis of published reports that the congressional committees had not met the first of the board's conditions. They agreed that they should not at this point compromise their position by entering into any negotiation; and they requested Cleveland to seek a personal talk with Senator Walsh. Cleveland met with Walsh on August 15 at the senator's office and, while he was trying once more to make the college's position clear, Vinson walked in. So he got to talk with the chairmen of both committees. Apparently, almost up to this point they had believed, perhaps because of the Statement of Policy of April 21, that St. John's wanted to sell the campus without any fuss. They had now begun to understand that this was not the case. According to Cleveland, Senator Walsh seemed to get the point about the declaration of national necessity, though Congressman Vinson did not. Vinson "stated emphatically that he thought his committee would find national interest if that was what we wanted."24 Both chairmen declared that the action of their committees up to that time had not authorized condemnation but only negotiation and agreed that nothing would be done until the Congress reconvened on September 5, after which hearings would be held. At a hearing in the fall on October 2, the Board stated flatly that they "would not willingly sell the historic campus at any price."25 About this time Buchanan used the Collegian, the student newspaper, to report to the college as follows: "With the help of Mr. Edmunds the College was resting its whole case on the architectural problem and alternative solutions [for the expansion of the Academy] instead of the campus. It should be noted that the full force of the attack [St. John's attack on the Navy) was actually Socratic irony, tending to make the Navy produce its wind egg .... "October 24th has been set as the day for the formal decision by the House Committee. Will the College celebrate with hemlock or a feast in the Mess Hall in Bancroft? We shall discuss immortality26 while the ship returns from Aegina. "Proposed toast in case it is drunk in hemlock: Here stood St. John's College The first liberal arts college To be condemned by The United States Government 1784-1946 They knew not what they did." 27 14 October 24 came and went and there was no announcement from Washington. In a new formal statement of policy dated November 21, 1945, the board reviewed the events since April and asserted that it was unfortunate that the project had proceeded so far before the record could be set straight on this simple but vital point. They expressed their belief that the Navy had not proved that the acquisition of the St. John's campus was necessary in the national interest. "It is now clear," they said, "that the extensive testimony before the Committees fell far short of establishing national necessity for this unprecedented use of the power of eminent domain; that failure of the Committees to act after their long and exhaustive inquiry is in itself evidence that no such necessity exists. In the light of these developments in the long interval since the Board's statement of policy, made on April21, 1945, that statement is no longer a realistic or relevant statement of the Board's duty as trustees, and is hereby withdrawn. The Board therefore regard the unfortunate episode as concluded, and trust that the Naval Academy and St. John's are now free to proceed in mutual respect and harmony, as neighbors, to get on with their respective functions." They urged the congressi0nal committees to declare the acquisition not necessary in the national interest and urged the Secretary of the Navy to withdraw the project, stating their belief that the government should make a public declaration that "the Government does not intend to acquire in any manner, the campus of St. John's College." 28 Nothing conclusive was heard from the Naval Affairs Committees or the Navy Department until well into the next year. In the meantime Paul Mellon, who had been a student at St. John's in 1940-41 and who had, by generous contributions over the years, kept the college going on a year-to-year basis, wrote to Stringfellow Barr, Ever since last June I have been interested in setting up an initial endowment for the St. John's Program. I have been deterred from action by doubts as to whether St. John's College could keep its campus. I have felt that if it could not, it might be more in the interest of American education to find a stronger institutional vehicle to develop the education program which you initiated at St. John's. I am therefore placing at the disposal of the Old Dominion Foundation securities currently producing an income of $125,000 per annum, which may be used for the purpose of developing the type of education now carried on at St. John's College and for other similar purposes. I am instructing the Trustees of the Foundation that they may rely on your personal judgment as to whether St. John's can be expected to preserve the campus or whether some other college you may designate will better carry out my intention and thereby become the beneficiary of these funds. 29 When later Mellon agreed to contribute a total endowment of $4.5 million, it looked as if St. John's College might for the first time in its history become financially secure. But the question whether it would or not depended on the outcome of the Navy affair. At the same SUMMER 1982 �faculty meeting at which Barr announced Mellon's intention to endow the program, whether at St. John's or elsewhere, he also announced that "the Chairman and the Secretary of the Board were requested to visit the Senate and House Committees on Naval Affairs in an attempt to clarify the relation of the College with the Navy." Evidently the committees had still not formally declared that the only possible way for the Navy to expand its facilities for training officers (it being assumed that such expansion was necessary for the security of the United States) was by acquiring the land and buildings of the college. On june 8, 1946, Thomas Farran, the chairman of the St. John's Board, received a letter from Secretary Forrestal which read as follows: I have recently been informed by the Chairman of the House Naval Affairs Committee that his Committee on May 22, 1946, adopted the following resolution regarding the utilization of St. John's College Property for expansion of the Naval Academy: 'Whereas, a proposal has been made that the expanding program of the United States Naval Academy at Annapolis, Maryland, requires the acquisition of the adjoining site of St. John's College, 'Whereas the Naval Affairs Committee of the House of Representatives has held long and exhaustive hearings thereon, and 'Whereas upon careful consideration it is the sense of this committee that the National Emergency neither justifies nor warrants the proposed acquisition of St. John's campus. Now, therefore, be it resolved 'That said proposed acquisition officially known as Project No. 460C of the Real Estate Division, Bureau of Yards and Docks, Navy Department, is hereby disapproved.' I am happy to advise you that the Navy Department acquiesces in this action of the House Naval Affairs Committee. The Department was most reluctant to undertake the acquisition of the college property for the required expansion of the Naval Academy in Annapolis since the Department recognizes that only considerations of extreme national necessity would justify the taking of the campus of a liberal arts college . ... It is believed that the present considerations of the House Naval Affairs Committee and the Department . .. coupled with the fact that the Department has other plans for the expansion of the Academy in Annapolis, makes it possible for the college to pursue its plans with assurance that it will be secure on its historic site for the foreseeable future . ... A few days after Forrestal's letter the Senate Naval Affairs Committee followed the example of the House Committee. Dr. Farran observed that this action consequent upon the House Committee resolution and the secretary's letter, drove "the third nail in the coffin" of the project to take the campus. Cleveland, who knew that Barr and Buchanan wanted from the Congressional committees a strong statement that it was not the policy of the United States government to use the power of eminent domain against liberal arts colleges, had been engaged in some activity behind the THE ST. JOHNS REVIEW scenes to get from the House committee a statement that would satisfy them and keep them with the program at St. John's in Annapolis. He even persuaded Carl Vinson, chairman of the House Committee, who had already written a letter saying that the committee's resolution wrote "Finis" to the project, to write a second stronger letter. But in spite of the death and burial of the project, and in spite of this stronger letter, and in spite of Forrestal's declaration that only extreme national necessity would warrant the government's taking the property of a liberal arts college, and in spite of the assurance given about the foreseeable future, Barr, after consulting with Buchanan, decided that the securities promised by Mellon should not come to St. John's. He suggested to the board that the St. John's campus be turned over to the State of Maryland to provide educational facilities for the state since the state would be better able to protect the campus and that the board should seek a safe place for the college. In the event that the board did not accept his suggestion he would resign and "seek another college for the program." Buchanan had said the year before that the campus was essential to the college, and Barr had said that it was doubtful whether the college could "survive transplanting." Now they were saying something else. Barr has always maintained that he was not satisfied that the Navy had given any substantial assurance that there would not be another attempt to take the campus. 30 But that was not his only reason, and probably not his principal reason, for taking the money elsewhere. He thought that he could not dispense with the help of Buchanan in continuing the program on another site under the charter of St. John's or in establishing the program at another college. 31 Buchanan would probably have left St. John's even if the fray with the Navy had not occurred. In early january 1945 he was already beginning to withdraw from the full exercise of the office of dean. At the first faculty meeting of that year he reported that new adult education duties he had taken on in the District of Columbia would necessitate the reduction of his decanal duties. On January 18, 1945, Barr sent a memorandum to the treasurer instructing him that the dean's salary had, at the dean's request, been reduced by the board from $5,500 a year to $3,000 a year in view of other salaried employment undertaken in Washington. He would continue as "the officer of instruction," i.e., as chairman of the Instruction Committee, and as adviser to students in relation to their studies. Buchanan himself in a letter to Cleveland about two years later wrote: "If things had gone as usual, I would have resigned during this year [1945-46] to go into adult education or something else. I never was made for an administrator." On june 1, 1946, he announced that he would take a year's leave of absence. It seemed clear to everyone that the unique role he had played for the eight years that he had portrayed as "eight years of startling success" was coming to an end. In addition to that, as Barr describes it, while he himself was exhausted from the fight with the Navy, Buchanan was both tired and sick.32 15 �The board had, since 1937, been guided in practically everything by Batr and Buchanan. They failed, however, to concur in the opinion that there was just as much danger as ever that the Navy would soon again seek possession of the St. John's campus. They were unwilling to abandon the campus and move the college and the program, and they were also unwilling to resign as trustees of St. John's and become trustees of some other college yet to be char· tered in Maryland or some other state. They had been convinced by Barr and Buchanan of the worth of the program, and they were resolved to continue it at St. John's and in Annapolis. They tried, but failed, to persuade Barr and Buchanan to reconsider. Buchanan professed surprise at the board's decision. In fact, in a memorandum of July 31, 1946, addressed to them he declared that it was "surprising to all" that the board had decided to continue the St. John's program in Annap· olis "even when it was clear that the original pilots could not honestly take the risk as they saw it and weighed it." 33 He, nevertheless, spoke of the ready respect commanded by the board's insight and courage, but also asserted that the board's action did not "convince the ex-pilots that their return would be safe or wise." He already had plans for a larger enterprise which would grow from the cooper· ation of St. John's and the new college. The aim was the eventual establishment of a university which would be composed of (1) a graduate school for research in the "liberal arts and philosophy," (2) an adult school with many communities, and (3) several undergraduate colleges. For the immediate future the new college somewhere other than at Annapolis would, with the Mellon gift as endow· ment, be a "small model of the whole." In addition to a small undergraduate school, it would include a committee on the liberal arts to become a nucleus of the graduate school, "and it would be situated in a place suitable for "cooperation with a lively industrial community in adult education." He even suggested that for a certain period of transition there be one board and one president for St. John's and the new institution. Looking back over the nine years, he commented on the successes and failures of the program. While denying once more that the program was an experiment designed to prove or disprove an hypothesis, he affirmed that there had been a common search for a true liberal arts college and that the search was based on guiding principles and a common comprehensive sphere for exploration. There had been found a pattern of the liberal arts as embodied in the great books and it had proved to be "workable, versatile, instructive, fruitful, and heuristic." He spoke of the "high level of teaching and learning we had already achieved be· fore the war" as well as of serious sickness caused by the war. The case for the endowment could now be based, he mailltained on achievement rather than "mere paper 1 promises.'' The Navy affair itself he cited as evidence of the college's growth and strength. He assigned as a reason for the college's suggesting negotiations with the Navy in the 16 statement of April 21, 1945, the desire to "discover and clarify the foundations of our own existence." He meant more than the particular and local factors affecting the existence of St. John's. He meant, as he had said earlier, that St. John's had been leading a fight on behalf of all liberal arts colleges insofar as their existence depends upon the policies of the federal government. A few days after this memorandum of Buchanan's the board made public the following announcement: The Board wishes to record publicly its deep satisfaction at the favorable termination ofthe Navy Department's proposal to acquire the campus of St. John's College and joins heartily in the gratification expressed by Secretary Forrestal that this solution will make it possible for the College and Naval Acad· emy to continue their long history as friendly neighbors . ... The Board believes that this solution . .. places the College in a stronger position than it has been in its long history to press forward with plans for the future . ... The firm foundation now achieved in Annapolis also makes it possible sometime in the near future, to further the estab· lishment elsewhere of an additional college to carry on the program developed and now secure in Annapolis. Fortunately a generous gift for this purpose makes it practicable . ... In furtherance of this project the Board has agreed to re· lease Mr. Barr from the presidency of St. John's College as of July l, 1947, or such other date as may be determined, in or· der that he may take over the leadership of the proposed new college. 34 Buchanan in a letter to Adler gave his own very different account of what had happened: The Board, primarily Dick Cleveland, had not earlier imag· ined, say nothing of believed, that Winkie was actually thinking of weighing old St. John's and making an objective decision on his findings. They therefore had thought only of their and his efforts to set things straight in Annapolis and were them· selves ready to settle for anything that the Navy and the Con· gressional Committees would do; no one in his right mind will refuse four and a half million dollars because of an uncertain future.3 5 He proceeded to describe a meeting in Paul Mellon's office in Washington at which he and Barr were present together with Mellon, Adolph Schmidt, and Thomas Parran. Parran spoke for the Board. Buchanan's version of what he said is as follows: First the Board was determined to continue the St. John's Program in Annapolis; I am sure this implied that the pro· gram, like the library for instance, was the property of the Board, copyrighted and patented in the name of the College. We would be stealing if we took it elsewhere and taught it, and they would tell the public so. Second, Winkie was tired and probably sick like me, and he ought to take a leave of ab· sence this year to recover his right mind and allow the decision to be postponed. Third, if Winkie insisted on accepting the endowment to go elsewhere, he should give it to some institution with which he would have no personal connection. Farran delivered these threats in the presence of Mellon and SUMMER 1982 �Schmidt. They behaved admirably ... Mellon and Schmidt were very clear about their original intention and their full confidence in Winkie. At the November faculty meeting in 1946, Barr announced the formation of a foundation to be known as Liberal Arts Incorporated to be a formal instrument for acquiring property for the new college. 36 He further stated that Liberal Arts Incorporated might eventually become a "higher governing board for both colleges." At the December meeting he informed the faculty that the site of the new college would be the Hanna estate in the Stockbridge Bowl in western Massachusetts, that his resignation would take effect on December 31, 1946, and that john S. Kieffer had been appointed acting president by the board. By this time Buchanan had left and was living in Richmond, Massachusetts, not far from Stockbridge. In a letter to Richard Cleveland in late November he made as a tentative proposal that Liberal Arts Incorporated take over the financial and educational direction of St. John's from the trustees "exactly as Winkie and I had taken it in 1937 except that this time we would recommend other personnel to do the job on the spot." 37 He added, "I wish with all my heart that the Board had had confidence in Winkie and me and had wished to come with us- .. -The new enterprise has lost immeasurably by the Board's refusal to come with us. We have some money but we have lost a college. I saw that this was so and that it was intended to be so when you read your announcement to us. Winkie and I have lost nine years of work unless you and the Board relent and give us some help. I am not regretting our decision but I am suggesting that you are making the cost maximum." The board of St. John's made no re· sponse to the proposal that Liberal Arts Incorporated be given responsibilities that were not properly theirs. Shortly thereafter, in a letter to Hutchins, Buchanan recorded his reflections about what had happened at St. john's 38 He claimed that a controlled search for a liberal college had been started, that some liberal arts had been set into motion within a framework of great books, that there was enough initial success to justify that kind of practice and that certain things had to be added, such as the graduate school to sharpen the focus on subject matter, and full commitment to adult education. "It is also clear," he went on, "that the next thirty or forty years offer a desperately receptive world for us to bring light to. As I have said in print, this is the day of the liberal college which has been waiting for twenty-four hundred years to be born." In the same letter he says "we don't know what we have been studying and teaching, and we ought to find out." The inconsistencies in Buchanan's statements make it difficult to know what he was thinking. On the one hand, he had reported to the board that the first eight years of the program were "eight years of startling success." On the other hand, he says that he and Barr will have "lost THE ST. JOHNS REVIEW nine years of work" if the board don't follow in his footsteps. On the one hand he says he doesn't know what he's been studying and teaching. But on the other, he thinks that he and his associates will bring light not just to a few who might be interested in "the liberal college," but to the world. Presumably he means more than a little light, since it is something that the world has been waiting for since the time of Plato and Aristotle. Buchanan tried to get his old friends, Adler and McKeon, to join him and Barr in Massachusetts. He also tried to get Hutchins, Van Doren, and Meiklejohn to leave what they were doing and join the new enterprise. All refused. A few of the St. John's faculty were invited; they too refused, believing that the outcome of the contest with the Navy was decisive and that there was much more uncertainty about the new college than about the future of St. John's in Annapolis. Liberal Arts Incorporated, as Acting President Kieffer announced to the faculty on january 11, 1947, would contribute $150,000 to meet the operating deficit that year at St. John's. It was understood that this would fulfill the intention of Liberal Arts Incorporated to cause as few difficulties as possible for St. John's, and that by the summer of 1948 the two colleges would be independent but free to enter into any form of cooperation that might at the time seem wise. It became clear early in 1947, less than a month after Barr's departure from St. John's, that he was running into difficulties in founding the new college. On january 25 he wrote to Paul Mellon, "The size of the endowment was measured to fit an entirely different problem from the new one we now face. It would have run St. John's well. But St. John's already had a campus, a plant in good order, and equipment." Around the middle of the year he requested Mellon to release the entire benefits of the endowment fund to Liberal Arts Incorporated for other use than the establishment of an undergraduate college. Mellon refused to do so on the ground that it had been his intention only to endow a "college for undergraduates similar in size and curriculum to St. John's." He noted in a letter to Barr of june 24, 1947, "Through circumstances beyond your control that project now appears unfeasible, if not impossible, within any reasonable amount of time, chiefly due to lack of qualified teachers and adequate building funds." 39 Barr, however, has claimed that the whole effort was sabotaged by Donald Shepard, who, as vice-president of Mellon's Old Dominion Foundation, had a good deal to do with the terms of the disposal of the funds. 40 It was announced to the St. John's faculty at the first fall meeting in 1947 that on August 1 Liberal Arts Incorporated had met in Stockbridge and decided to abandon the project of a new college. "U npropitiousness of building," it was said, "and difficulties of cooperating with the Old Dominion Foundation were the chief reasons for the decision. "41 The endowment fund reverted to the Old Dominion Foundation. Thus ended the last attempt of Barr and Buch;man to form an institution which would be a beacon for colleges 17 �and universities to follow. They did not in the succeeding years keep in close touch with St. John's College and knew very little about what was happening at St. John's. There were a few times when they returned, upon invita· tion, to lecture or to speak at Class Day or Commencement. One such occasion was Class Day in 1948 when both Barr and Buchanan spoke. Buchanan in his speech urged that the liberal arts should have a subject matter and that the core of the St. John's curriculum should be, not metaphysical (which had earlier been his constant theme), but political. A few days later, when he had returned to Massachusetts, he wrote President Kieffer a letter in which he told him that the decision that Kieffer and the board thermore that he never knew to what extent he had laid the foundations for a building that through many vicissitudes, was to increase in worth. Barr, reflecting upon these events many years later, could say of his decision to leave St. John's and to use the Mellon money to start another college, "I don't claim for a second I made a ·wise choice."43 Unless othenvise indicated, all records of meetings of the faculty and of the Board of Visitors and Governors are located in the archives of St. John's College in Annapolis. 11 made to continue the program in Annapolis was Stupid and blind and therefore highly irresponsible to the vision, highly misleading to the community, and disloyal to whatever leadership Winkie and I provided."42 He claimed that the original program was "a revolutionary blueprint, an attempt to subvert and rebuild education," that it was a bull-dozer "inside a Trojan horse which was to be let loose once the walls of the sacred city were passed and left behind." He said, "I fought the Navy fight, with the few who cared, out of piety to the sacred city" .... There were no reinforcements, and there was no outside recognition of the sacred city, only a faint sentimental wish to live in the ruins." He maintained, presumably referring to the agree- ment that St. John's should have the income from the Mellon endowment until July I, 1948, that he and Barr had a fit of personal generosity which did not blind them but blurred their vision, and that out of their clear vision of what was the only hope for the program together with their blurred vision produced by the board's bad decision had come "the ordeal of Stockbridge which could only commit suicide because of its high courage and generosity to St. John's." He said that "the program should be laid on the shelf and forgotten," that it was "not even a pattern to be laid up in heaven and beheld, but a poison corrupting a household at St. John's" and that because of its being at St. John's it "would become a poison wherever it was tried." He asserted that he and Barr had in 1937 made "a mistaken historical judgment and a bad educational prediction" and that they should be counted out of any plans that Kieffer and the people at St. John's might make. Scott Buchanan had over a period of twenty years invested an enormous amount of love and work in formulating, planning, and trying to bring into being, whether at St. John's or elsewhere, what had come to be called the St. John's program. At this point it seemed to him that it had all come to nothing. The tragedy, if it is to be dignified by that name, is not that he had failed, or that the program had failed, or that others had failed him, but rather that he could not question the wisdom of actions that by denying the college the endowment it otherwise would have had, jeopardized the existence of the only college where had been established, however precariously, the program for which he more than anyone was responsible, and fur- 18 Chapter IV 1. Walter Lippman, "Today and Tomorrow," New Tribune, December 27, 1938. 2. Baltimore Evening Sun, January 23, 24, 25, 1939. 3. Life magazine, February 5, 1940. Yorl~ Herald Chapter V 1. John Dewey, "Challenge to Liberal Thought," Fortune, August 1944. 2. Alexander Meiklejohn, "A Reply to John Dewey," Fortune, January 1945. 3. John Dewey, Letter to the Editors, Fortune, March 1945. 4. Sidney Hook, Education for Modern Man, New York 1946, 209. 5. Hook, 2!, 213. 6. Buchanan to Hook, November 10, 1938, St. John's College Archives. 7. Buchanan to Hook, December 15, 1942, St. John's College Archives. 8. Hook to Buchanan, January 26, 1943, St. John's College Archives. 9. Buchanan to Emily S. Hamblen, April27, 1940, St. John's College Archives. 10. Nineteen Forty Yearbook, 15. 11. St. John's Collegian, October 27, 1939, 1. 12. Nineteen Forty-two Yearbook, 14. 13. Nineteen Forty-two Yearbook, 25. 14. Nineteen Forty-three Yearbook, 20. 15. Robert Hutchins thought this a good idea anyway, believing that the last two years of high school were usually wasted. 16. Nineteen Forty-four Yearbook, 7. 17. Nineteen Forty-four Yearbook, 8. 18. Nineteen Forty-five-Forty-six Yearbook, 11. 19. Buchanan to H. G. Cayley, August 25, 1937, St. John's College Archives. 20. Nineteen Forty-five-Forty-six Yearbook, 13. Chapter VI 1. In 1868 the Naval Academy had purchased from St. John's a triangular piece of land of which a part of King George Street is one side. 2. St. John's Faculty Minutes, September 1940. 3. St. John's Board Minutes, January 13, 1941. 4. Buchanan Files, Houghton Library, Harvard University. 5. St. John's Board Minutes, February 25, 1945. 6. Diary of James V. Forrestal, Copy in the Navy Operational Archives, Naval History Center, Washington, D.C. 7. Record of the hearing before the Committee on Naval Affairs of the U.S. Senate (June 20, 1945). Navy Library, Washington, D.C. Cf. the testimony of Captain T. R. Wirth, representing the Superintendent of the Academy, at the same hearing. 8. Copies of letters in Buchanan Files, Houghton Library. 9. Buchanan to Hutchins, May 7, 1945, Buchanan Files, Houghton Library. 10. Hutchins to Buchanan, May 9, 1945, Buchanan Files, Houghton Library. SUMMER 1982 �11 .Buchanan to Senator Wayne Morse, undated, Buchanan Files, Houghton Library, 12. Baltimore Sun, April.1945. 13. Baltimore Sun, July 3, 1945; Washington Post, July 30, 1945. 14. Dean's Nine Year Report (1946), St. John's College Archives. 15. Cf. the Supreme Court decision in Kohl v. United States (1875). 16. Evening Capital, October 22, 1945. 17. Testimony before the House Naval Affairs Committee, October 9, 1945. 18. Statement of Richard Cleveland before the Senate Naval Affairs Committee, June 20, 1945. 19. Captain T. R. Wirth indeed stated at the Senate Committee hearing of June 20, "Acquisition of the St. John's property is urgently required in the national interest to provide the area determined to be essential to the continuance of the Naval Academy mission: the fundamental education and training of the number of young men required for the commissioned personnel of the United States Navy." This, of course, was not an official declaration of policy by the Navy Department or the Committees. 20. Diary of James V. Forrestal, copy in the Operational Archives, Naval History Center, Washington, D.C., 403-4. 21. Minutes of the Board for 1944-47 are missing. 22. Buchanan Files, Houghton Library. 23. Evening Capital, August 1, 1945. 24. Memorandum by Richard Cleveland to the St. John's College Board, St. John's College Archives. 25. Statement of Policy by the Board of Visitors and Governors of St. John's College, with reference on Navy Department proposal to acquire the St. John's campus (November 21, 1945), St. John's College Archives. THE ST. JOHNS REVIEW 26. the 27. 28. 29. Buchanan had discovered from studying the Dartmouth case that charter of a college confers upon it immortality. Dean's Report, St. John's Collegian, October 19, 1945. Statement of Policy, November 21, 1945. Mellon to Barr, appended to the St. John's Faculty Minutes for April 27, 1946. 30. Transcript of a recorded conversation with Allan Hoffman, July 27, 1975: "I thought, why not put an end to it by putting the College where the huge beast couldn't suddenly attack again? And it was clear that a lot of people in the Navy were damned determined to attack again." Since 1946 there has been no attempt by the Navy to take the campus. St. John's College Archives, 31. Hoffman conversation. 32. Hoffman conversation, 33. Memorandum to the Board of Visitors and Governors, July 31, 1946, St. John's College Archives. 34. Announcement by the Board of St. John's College, August 3, 1946, Buchanan Files, Houghton Library. 35. Buchanan to Adler, August 14, 1946, Adler Files, Institute for Philosophical Research, Chicago. 36. St. John's Faculty Minutes, November 2, 1946, 37: Buchanan to Cleveland, November 20, 1946, Buchanan Files, Houghton Library. 38. Buchanan to Hutchins, December 5, 1946, Buchanan Files, Houghton Library. 39. Buchanan Files, Houghton Library. 40. Hoffman conversation. 41. St. John's Faculty Minutes, September 15, 1947. 42. Buchanan to Kieffer, June 8, 1948, St. John's College Archives. 43, Hoffman conversation. 19 �Schiller's Drama-Fulfillment of History and Philosophy in Poetry Gisela Berns Friedrich Schiller, the great German dramatist at the end of. the eighteenth century, was not only a great poet, but also a great historical and philosophical thinker. A contemporary of the Founding Fathers of this country and akin to them in thoughts and feelings about the political issues of the time, Schiller was inspired by the ideas of the ancients in their striving for human excellence, but committed to the ideals of a modern world in its fight for the rule of law, based on the recognition of human free· dom. At a time of social and political revolutions, Schiller believed that art, and only art, through its mediation between the senses and reason, might be able to prepare man for the difficult task of governing himself. Schiller's drama-from The Robbers (started at the time of the Declaration of Independence) to William Tell (finished at the time of jefferson's first presidency)-deals with one theme: the problematic relationship between freedom and rule. Focusing on great revolutionary ideas like the conflict between nature and convention, explored in The Robbers and in Intrigue and Love, or on great revolutionary figures of history like Fiesco, Don Carlos, Wallenstein, Mary Stuart, The Maid of Orleans, and William Tell, all of Gisela Berns, a Tutor at St. John's College in Annapolis, delivered the original version of this essay as a lecture in Annapolis on February 26, 1982. Its main theme is the subject of her forthcoming book, Schiller's Wallenstein~Fulfillment of History and Philosophy in Poetry. 20 Schiller's plays, even The Bride of Messina, modeled on the Oedipus story, wrestle with the problem of freedom. In recognition of this historical role, Schiller was awarded honorary citizenship of the French Revolution (that the document, issued in 1793, did not reach him till 1798, long after the revolution vanquished its signer, Danton, Schiller always considered an ironic reminder of the problematic nature of freedom). An account of Schiller's life1 and work,2 culminating in a discussion of Wallenstein, his highest artistic achievement, shall show in what sense he understood poetry to be a fulfillment of history and philosophy. Schiller's life, from 1759 to 1805, was, except for his early childhood and the beginning years of his marriage, a never ending struggle. First against a tyrannical ruler, later against poverty and prejudice, finally against a fatal illness which racked the last fifteen years of his short life. A struggle it was, this life of Schiller's, but what a glorious struggle! A testimony to man's ability to overcome or, in Wallenstein's proud words, to the conviction that "it is the mind which builds itself the body." 3 Schiller's father, by his own report, offered a prayer at Schiller's birth: And you, Being of all beings! You I begged, after the birth of my only son, that you would add to his strength of mind what I, for want of education, could not reach.4 Schiller's early plans of studying theology were rudely shattered by the interference of the Duke of WurttemSUMMER 1982 �berg in whose newly established military academy the promising sons of the country were educated towards various professions. Separated from his family, Schiller spent his young years, from age thirteen to twenty-one, in an atmosphere of oppressive regimentation. After a year of broad general education in sciences and humanities, with strong emphasis on philosophy, Schiller, at first, studied law, later, because "bolder" and "more akin to poetry," medicine. A cross between medicine and philosophy, his dissertation On the Connection between Man's Animal and Spiritual Nature for the first time explores a theme to surface again and again in Schiller's poetry. The great breakthrough of his passion for poetry came after Schiller, at sixteen, had been introduced to Shakespeare. Emboldened by his love for Shakespeare, he was obsessed with the idea of writing a play that would expose all the evils of conventional society. Full of admiration for the ancient heroes of Plutarch and the modern sentiments of Rousseau, Schiller, for years, feverishly and passionately worked on his Robbers. Forbidden to read or write poetry, he risked life and liberty in the production of this first play of his. With the performance of The Robbers, in 1782, at the famous theater of Mannheim, Schiller gained immortal fame and lost his homeland. Hailed by one reviewer as the coming "German Shakespeare,'' 5 he was ordered by the Duke, under penalty of arrest, to stop writing anything but medical works. With the help of a young musician, Schiller, in disguise, fled to Mannheim where he hoped to find support for his life as a poet. Even there he had to spend months in hiding, at work on his Fiesco and Intrigue and Love, before the authorities accepted him. In a letter of 1783, possibly meant to hide his whereabouts from the Duke, Schiller toyed with the idea of emigrating to America. Undecided among medicine, philosophy, or politics, he envisioned a life in the New World that, above all, would allow him to be a poet: But tragedies, for that matter, I shall never cease to writeyou know my whole being hangs on it.6 A contemporary of the Founding Fathers of this country, inspired by the ideal of human freedom, and set on writing tragedies (no matter what profession he would have taken up in this New World), Schiller might have given us that sorely missing drama on the American Revolution. Such a drama (as Harold Jantz, in his article William Tell and the American Revolution, suggests7) could have been written either from the British point of view (something like Aeschylus' Persians) or from the American point of view (something like Schiller's William Tell). In the spirit of revolution, Intrigue and Love, a "Bourgeois Tragedy," scourges the nobility's injustices against the lower classes, most poignantly in the heartrending account of the forced recruitment of German troops to be sold to the British for the Revolutionary War in America.8 With The Conspiracy of Fiesco at Genoa, a "Republican Tragedy," Schiller, for the first time, strikes a theme THE ST. JOHNS REVIEW found, in one form or another, in all his subsequent plays: the tragedy of the great political hero who, for the sake of his vision of a more perfect world, destroys the existing world, including himself. After the "Storm and Stress" of The Robbers, Fiesco, and Intrigue and Love, Schiller, in 1787, reached a first classical height with Don Carlos-not only because of his change from rhythmic prose to verse, but even more because of his sovereign treatment of the theme, the conflict between revolutionary idealism and imperialistic realism. The stark contrast between good and evil of Schiller's earlier plays turns to a dark and haunting complexity in Don Carlos. The tragic beauty of Don Carlos has moved more than one great writer after Schiller to integrate parts of it into their own work: Dostoyevsky, the theme and setting of the "Grand Inquisitor" story in The Brothers Karamazov; Thomas Mann, the burning admiration of Tanio Kroger for the breathtaking scene in Don Carlos, where the king, the absolute ruler of the catholic world, is said to have wept-a scene to which Mann, in his late Essay on Schiller, confesses to have "early given his homage."' Apart from its literary influence, Schiller's Don Carlos always had a political voice and was felt to be a threat to tyrants. During Hitler's Third Reich, both William Tell and Don Carlos disappeared from the German theater. As Oscar Seidlin, in his article Schiller: Poet of Politics, reports: A quarter of a century ago, when darkness descended upon Schiller's native country, a darkness that was to engulf all of mankind in the shortest possible time, a theater in Hamburg produced one of Schi11er's great dramatic works, Don Carlos. It is the play which culminates in the stirring climax of its third act, the confrontation scene between King Philip of Spain and the Marquis Posa, the powerful verbal and intellec~ tual battle between the rigid and autocratic monarch, con~ temptuous of mankind and gloomily convinced that only harsh and tyrannical suppression can preserve peace and order in his vast empire, and the young, enthusiastic advocate of revolutionary principles, who demands for his fellow citi~ zens the untrammeled right to happiness, the possibility of unhampered self~development and self~ realization of every in~ dividual. The scene rises to its pitch with Marquis Posa's brave challenge flung into the king's face: "Geben Sie Gedankenfreiheit!-Do give freedom of thought!" When this line, one of the most famous in all German dramatic literature, resounded from the Hamburg stage in the early years of Hitler's terror, the audience under the friendly protection of darkness burst out, night after night, into tumultuous applause. So dangerous and embarrassing to the new rulers proved a single verse of the greatest German playwright, who by then had been dead for fully a hundred and thirty years, that the management of the theater was forced to cut out the scandalous line. But the audience, knowing their classic well enough even if it was fed to them in an emasculated version, reacted quickwittedly: from that evening on they interrupted the per~ formance by thunderous applause at the moment when Mar~ quis Posa should have uttered his famous plea on the stage_,. and did not. After these incidents the play was withdrawn from tlie repertoire altogether. 10 21 �In prepar,ation for Don Carlos, Schiller had occupied himself more and more with historical studies and, finally, published a History of the Revolt of the United Netherlands from the Spanish Rule. This comprehensive, dramatically written work, in 1789, won him a professorship at the University of Jena. Besides lecturing on Universal History and Aesthetics, Schiller devoted himself to his second major historical work, the History of the Thirty Years War, later to become the basis for his monumental trilogy on Wallenstein, the imperial general of the Thirty Years War. The summer before settling in )ena, Schiller had met Charlotte v. Lengefeld, his future wife, in whose circle of family and friends the young poet, every evening, read from Homer and the Greek tragedians. Filled with a kind of Grecomania, Schiller threw himself into translating Euripides' Iphigeneia in Aulis, an activity he hoped would give him classical purity and simplicity. In a letter to the sisters v. Lengefeld Schiller writes: My Euripides still gives me much pleasure, and a great deal of it also stems from its antiquity. To find man so eternally remaining the same, the same passions, the same collisions of passions, the same language of passions. With this infinite multiplicity always though this unity of the same human form. 11 In the spirit of those days, Schiller composed a long melancholy poem, The Gods of Greece, that laments the disappearance of beauty and nobility from the modern world: "Als die Cotter menschlicher noch waren, Waren Menschen gbttlicher. When the gods still were more human, Men were more godlike. This immersion in Greek antiquity-and the study of Kant that followed-became crucial for Schiller's aesthetic writings. A terrible illness of Schiller's, in 1791, stirred rumors of his death. At the discovery that Schiller was still alive, months later, a circle of admirers in Denmark prevailed upon the Duke of Schleswig-Holstein-Augustenburg to ease the burden of the poet's daily existence and, for a few years, bestow a pension on him. Schiller accepted, full of joy over the unexpected freedom to devote himself to the "formation of his ideas": Serenely I look to the future-and if the expectations of myself should prove to have been nothing but sweet illusions with which my oppressed pride took revenge on fate, I for one shall not lack the determination to justify the hopes two excellent citizens of our century have placed in me. Since my lot does not allow me to act as benefactor in their way, I shall, nevertheless, attempt it in the only way that is given to meand may the seed they have spread unfold in me into a beautiful blossom for mankind. 12 22 With the same mail, Schiller ordered Kant's Critique of Pure Reason. Earlier that year, in the throes of his illness, reading the Critique of Judgement had convinced him that nothing short of a thorough understanding of Kant's philosophical system would satisfy him. For three years, a long time in so short a life as Schiller's, he studied Kant and wrote his own philosophical essays: On Tragic Art, On Grace and Dignity, On the Sublime, On the Aesthetic Education of Man, and On Naive and Sentimental Poetry. On the Aesthetic Education of Man he wrote, as a gesture of gratitude, in the form of letters to the Duke of Schleswig· Holstein-Augustenburg. Schiller's On the Aesthetic Education of Man sketches out a history of mankind from a state of nature to a state of civilization, where the progress of the species towards a fulfillment of human nature depends on the fragmentation of nature in the individual. Schiller complements this view of history, reminiscent in part of Rousseau's Second Discourse, with the hope that a higher art might restore the totality of nature, destroyed by art in the process of civilization. Far from romantic longing for a "Golden Age" of nature, Schiller exclaims: I would not like to live in a different century and have worked for a different one. One is as much a citizen of one's time as one is a citizen of one's country.B At the beginning of his poem The Artists, a panoramic history of mankind, written in 1789, Schiller speaks of man as "the ripest son of time, free through reason, strong through laws," standing "at the close of the century" in "noble, proud manliness": Wie schOn, o Mensch, mit deinem Palmenzweige Stehst du an des Jahrhunderts Neige, In edler stolzer Mannlichkeit, Mit aufgeschlossnem Sinn, mit Geistesflille, Voll milden Ernsts, in tatenreicher Stille, Der reifste Sohn der Zeit, Frei durch Vernunft, stark durch Gesetze, Durch Sanftmut gross, und reich durch Schatze, Die lange Zeit dein Busen dir verschwieg, Herr der Natur, die deine Fesseln liebet, Die deine Kraft in tausend Kampfen tibet Und prangend unter dir aus der Verwildrung stieg! Like Hamilton, in Federalist One, and Madison, in Federalist Fourteen, Schiller calls his contemporaries to the task of deciding the fate of mankind: Der Menschheit Wtirde ist in eure Hand gegeben, Bewahret siel Sie sinkt mit euch! Mit euch wird sie sich heben! The dignity of mankind is in your hands, Preserve it! It sinks with you! With you uplifts itself! 14 Both Hamilton and Madison speak of the people as the ones to decide the case: SUMMER 1982 �Is it not the glory of the people of America, that, whilst they have paid a decent regard to the opinions of former times and other nations, they have not suffered a blind veneration for antiquity, for custom, or for names, to overrule the suggestions of their own good sense, the knowledge of their own situation, and the lessons of their own experience? To this manly spirit, posterity will be indebted for the possession, and the world for the example, of the numerous innovations displayed on the American theater, in favor of private rights and public happiness. Schiller, however, as in the Prologue to Wallenstein, judges the artists to be responsible for the legacy of mankind: Und jetzt an des Jahrhunderts ernstem Ende, Wo selbst die Wirklichkeit zur Dichtung wird, Wo wir den Kampf gewaltiger Naturen Und ein bedeutend Ziel vor Augen sehn, Und urn der Menschheit grosse Gegenstande, Urn Herrschaft und urn Knechtschaft wird gerungen, Jetzt darf die Kunst auf ihrer SchattenbD.hne Auch hohern Flug versuchen, ja sie muss, So1l nicht des Lebens Bohne sie beschamen. Now at this century's impressive close, As actuality itself is turned To art, as we see mighty natures locked In struggle for a goal of lofty import, As conflict rages for the great objectives Of ffian, for masterdorn, for freedom, now Art is allowed assay of higher flight Upon its shadow stage; indeed it must be, Lest it be put to shame by life's own stageY consciousness of the Moderns. Anticipating much of Hegel's philosophy of history, both in perspective and in formulation, Schiller portrays man's historical development as progress from a naturally to a rationally given form of humanity 18 In homage to this kinship of thought, Hegel chooses two lines from Schiller's early poem Friendship as Finale of his Phenomenology of the Spirit. The slight change he makes in speaking of "Geisterreich" ("realm of spirits") rather than "Seelenreich" ("realm of the soul") points, I think, to a crucial difference between Hegel and Schiller. The fragmentation of human nature in the individual for the sake of greater differentation in the species moves the tragic poet more than the philosopher: But can it be that man should be fated to neglect himself for any end? Should nature, through her ends, be able to rob us of a perfection which reason, through hers, prescribes for us? It, therefore, must be false that the development of the single faculties necessitates the sacrifice of their totality; or even if the law of nature tended there ever so much, it must be up to us to restore, by a higher art, this totality of our nature which art has destroyed. 19 Aiming at a balance between reason and the senses, Schiller (who, in 1793, was rereading both Kant's Critique of Judgement and Homer's Iliad) uses a Homeric simile: Reason herself will not battle directly with this savage force that resists her weapons and, as little as the son of Saturn in the Iliad, descend, acting herself, to the gloomy theater. But from the midst of the fighters she chooses the most worthy, attires him, as Zeus did his grandson, with divine weapons and, through his victorious power, effects the great decision. 20 Anticipating an objection to his concern about aesthetic education in a time of social and political revolutions, Schiller claims that the "path to freedom" leads through "the land of beauty." 16 The contemplation of beauty, because of its mediation between the senses and reason, might be able to prepare man for the challenge of freedom. Looking back to the beginnings of civilization, Schiller states: This use of Achilles as symbol of noble, and sometimes tragic, beauty is only one of many in Schiller's work. In his poem The Gifts of Fortune, Schiller extols the honor the gods bestow on Achilles, in his poem Nenia, their lament over him at his death. The idea, symbolized by Achilles, of truth manifesting itself in beauty, and therefore speaking to us through the senses as well as reason, implies a new appreciation of the senses: Nature does not make a better start with man than with the rest of her works: she acts for him, where he cannot yet act himself as free intelligence. But it is just this which makes him human that he does not stop at what mere nature made him to be, but possesses the power through reason to retrace the steps which she anticipated with him, to transform the work of compulsion into a work of free choice and to elevate the physical necessity to a moral one. The path to divinity, if one can call a path what never leads to its destination, is opened up for man in his senses. 21 Deeply conscious of the challenge, that the physical society, in time, may not cease for a moment, while the moral one, in the idea, forms itself, that for the sake of man's dignity his existence may not be endangered,l7 Schiller strives for a model of humanity that combines the natural beauty of the Greeks with the historical selfTHE ST. JOHNS REVIEW Clearly in answer to Plato's Republic, Schiller considers "the priority of the sensuous drive" in man's experience "the clue to the whole history of human freedom."" In a highly dialectical sequence of steps, Schiller presents first the synthesis of the senses and reason in man's contemplation of beauty, then the synthesis of the material and the formal drive in man's play drive, and finally the synthesis of the physical and the moral necessity in man's aesthetic freedom. Aware that aesthetic freedom, as a state of being, is only an ideal, but that, as momentary balance between the senses and reason, it is part of our human experience, Schiller proclaims one of the most provocative sentences of his work: 23 �Man plays only where, in the full sense of the word, he is man; and he is fUlly man only where he plays.B The freedom of the aesthetic state that results from a balance between the necessity of the moral as well as the physical state Schiller considers the "highest of all legacies, the legacy of humanity": It, therefore, is not only poetically permitted, but philosophically right, if one calls beauty our second creator. For although she only makes our humanity possible and, for the rest, leaves it up to our free will how far we want to actualize it, she shares this trait with our original creator, nature, who likewise provided us with only the capacity for humanity, but left the use of it -to our own determination of will. 24 Like Plato and Hegel, before and after him, Schiller understands man's development from a natural to a moral being in terms of an analogy between the individual and the species. But where Plato and Hegel insist on the sovereignty of reason over the senses, Schiller claims that "the path to the head has to be opened through the heart," for the species as well as for the individual: 25 The dynamic state can only make society possible by overcoming nature through nature; the ethical state can only make society (morally) necessary by subjecting the single to the general will; the aesthetic state alone can make society actual because it consummates the will of the whole through the nature of the individuaF6 In explanation, Schiller maintains that "beauty alone we enjoy, at the same time, as individuals and as species, that is, as representatives of the species." Interpreters of Schiller's aesthetic theories have always wondered whether, for Schiller, the aesthetic or the moral state is finally the highest form of humanity. Like Meno' s opening question about virtue, this dilemma has no direct answer. In terms of actual achievement, the moral state presents the height of human perfection, the aesthetic state an ideal comparable only to the life of the Olympian gods: But does such a state of beautiful semblance exist, and where is it to be found? As need, it exists in every finely tuned soul, as reality, one might find it, like the pure church and the pure republic, only in a few select circles, where not mindless imitation of the ways of others, but inherent beautiful nature guides human behavi(_)r, where man goes through the most complex situations with bold simplicity and calm innocence, and neither finds it necessary to offend another's freedom in order to assert his own, nor to throw away his dignity in order to exhibit grace. 27 This combination of Grace (Anmut) and Dignity (Wiirde), an ideal realized among the Greeks but lost in modern times, Schiller sees preserved in Greek works of art: 24 Mankind has lost its dig11ity, but art has saved and preserved it in significant stones; truth (Wahrheit) lives on in semblance (Tiiuschung), and from the copy (Nachbild) the original (Urbild) shall be reconstituted." This perspective, for Schiller, defines the artist's relationship to his time: The artist certainly is the son of his time, but woe to him if, at the same time, he is its pupil or even its favorite. Let a beneficent deity snatch the suckling betimes from his mother's breast, nourish him with the milk of a better age and allow him to reach maturity under a far-off Grecian sky. Then, when he has become a man, let him return, a s_tranger, to his own century; yet, not in order to please it with his appearance, but terrible as Agamemnon's son, in order to purify it. The material he certainly will take from the present, but the form from a nobler time, yes, from beyond all time, borrowed from the absolute unchangeable unity of his being. 29 This comprehensive task of the artist, to span the whole history of human civilization in an attempt to give mankind its fullest possible expression, Schiller discusses more specifically in On Naive and Sentimental Poetry. Understanding the poets as "preservers and avengers of nature," he distinguishes between two types, the Naive poet as ''being nature,'' the Sentimental poet as ''seeking nature.'' Expressive of two states of mankind, Naive poetry of a union, Sentimental poetry of a separation between man and nature, both forms of poetry, in different ways, show a perfection of art: Naive poetry, as "imitation of reality," by fulfilling a finite goal, Sentimental poetry, as "presentation of the ideal," by striving for an infinite goal. Schiller's terms Naive and Sentimental might sound confusing at first. They certainly do not mean what they mean today. The Naive poet, like a god behind his work, lets the world speak for itself. In this sense, Schiller considers not only Homer, but also Shakespeare and Goethe,30 Naive poets. The Sentimental poet, on the other hand, an intellectual presence in his work, reflects on the world he portrays. In this sense, Schiller considers most modern poets, including himself, Sentimental poets. Striving for an ideal of poetry, Schiller wonders whether and how far a work of art might combine classical individuality and modern ideality. To "individualize the ideal" and "idealize the individual," in Schiller's eyes, would not only constitute "the highest peak of all art," but also serve as that "higher art," expected to restore the totality of human nature which art had destroyed in the process of civilization. Understanding On Naive and Sentimental Poetry "so to speak" as ua bridge to poetic production" 31 Schiller, again, begins to write poetry-first philosophical poems, later ballads and historical dramas: I have, at the same time, the intention, in this way to reconcile myselfwith the poetic :Muse whom, through my falling away SUMMER 1982 �to the historic Muse (a fall indeed) I have grossly offended. If I should succeed in regaining the favor of the god of poetry, I hope tO hang up in his temple the spoils which I have labored to obtain in the realm of philosophy and history, and to dedi~ cate myself to his service forever. 12 In 1795, Schiller writes to Countess v. Schimmelmann: You wish, in your letter, that I continue in the poetic path which I have entered. Why should I not, if you find it worth your while to encourage me in it. Also by heeding your advice I only follow the inclination of my heart. From the beginning, poetry was the highest concern of my soul, and I only left it for a time in order to return to it richer and worthier. 33 Encouraged by his friendship with Goethe, Schiller lived the last ten years of his life for poetry. A constant source of inspiration for both of them, this friendship had started with a famous conversation in july of 1794. On the way home from a meeting of the Society for Natural Science in )ena, Goethe had outlined his Metamorphosis of Plants to Schiller who, still a Kantian, had retorted: "This is no experience! This is an idea!" To which Goethe, with courteous irony, had replied: "I certainly should be glad to have ideas without my knowing and even to see them with my eyes." In a letter following this conversation, Schiller sums up the difference between them: Your spirit, to an extraordinary degree, works intuitively, and all your thinking powers seem to have compromised on the imagination, so to speak, as their common representative. ... My mind works really more in a symbolizing way, and thus I am suspended, as a kind of hybrid, between concept and imagination, between rule and feeling, between technical head and genius. This, especially in former years, has given me a rather awk~ard appearance, in the field of speculation as well as in the art of poetry; for, usually, the poet overtook me where I was supposed to philosophize, and the philosophical spirit where I wanted to write poetry. Even now, it happens to me often enough that imagination disturbs my abstractions and cold reason my poetry. If I can master these two forces to the point that, through my freedom, I can assign each one its limits, a beautiful fate shall still await me .... 34 Another friendship, with Wilhelm von Humboldt, the great scholar in classical languages and literatures, was crucial for Schiller's understanding of his relation to the Ancients. In a Jetter of 1795, Humboldt writes: I believe I can justify this seemingly paradoxical sentence that you, on the one hand, are the direct opposite of the Greeks, since your products exhibit the very character of autonomy; and that, at the same time, you, among the moderns, again are closest to them, since your products, after Greek ones, express necessity of form; only that you draw it from yourself, while the Greeks take it from the aspect of external nature, which is likewise necessary in its form. Wherefore also, Greek form resembles more the object of the senses, yours more the object of reason, even though the former, finally, also rests on a necessity of reason, and yours, of course, also speaks to the senses. 35 THE ST. JOHNS REVIEW After the completion of his Bride of Messina, in 1803, Schiller reminds Humboldt of this earlier exchange of theirs: My first attempt at a tragedy in strict form will give you pleasure; you will be able to judge from it, whether as contemporary of Sophocles I might have been able to carry off a prize. I have not forgotten that you called me the most modern of all newer poets and, therefore, thought me in opposition to everything that could be called ancient.36 In an introduction to the publication of their correspondence, twenty-five years after Schiller's death, Humboldt reminisces: What every observer had to notice in Schiller, as characteristically defining, was that, in a higher and more pregnant sense than perhaps ever in anyone else, thought was the element of his life. Continual authentic intellectual activity almost never left him, and only yielded to the more violent attacks of his bodily illness. It seemed to him relaxation, not strain. This showed itself especially in conversation for which Schiller seemed most truly born. He never sought for a significant topic of discourse, he left it more to chance to bring up the subject matter, but from each he led the conversation to a more general perspective, and after a few exchanges one found oneself in the middle of a mind-provoking discussion. He always treated the thought as a result to be reached together, always seemed to need the interlocutor, even if one remained conscious of receiving the idea merely from him .... Moving above his subject matter with perfect freedom, he used every sideline which offered itself, and so his conversation was rich in words that carry the feature of happy creations of the moment. The freedom, however, did not curtail the investigation. Schiller always held on to the thread which had to lead to its end. 37 ~chiller's gift for friendship which, throughout his life, moved him, whether face to face or in letters, to engage in conversation, found its early expression in a letter of April 1783: In this wonderful breath of the morning, I think of you, friend-and of my Carlos ... I imagine---Every poetic work is nothing but an enthusiastic friendship or Platonic love for a creation of our head .... If we can ardently feel the state of a friend, we will also be able to glow for our poetic heroes. Not that the capacity for friendship and Platonic love would simply entail the capacity for great poetry-for I might be very able to feel a great character without being able to create it. But it should be clear that a great poet has to have, at least, the capacity for the highest friendship, even if he has notalways expressed it. 38 Schiller's return to poetry, and to dramatic poetry in particular, begins with a work which stands out in many ways. In the center between his four earlier and four later plays, Schiller's Wallenstein, his only trilogy, surpasses the 25 �others both in subject matter and in poetic form. Like the Republic among Plato's Dialogues, Wallenstein, among Schiller's plays, in one dramatic poem of epic dimensions, encompasses all the earlier and later themes. Alternating between a stricter and looser dramatic form, Schiller, in the last five years of his life, completed Mary Stuart, a "Tragedy" about the Scottish queen and Elizabeth I; The Maid of Orleans, a "Romantic Tragedy" about Joan of Arc and her mysterious fight for France; The Bride of Messina, a "Tragedy with Choruses," modeled on the Oedipus story; and finally William Tell, a "Drama" about the Swiss fight for independent unity. Of these later four plays only William Tell, Schiller's last finished play (1805), is not a tragedy. Different from Schiller's other heroes, Tell avoids the abyss of tragedy because he does not presume any power beyond the limits of republican government. The translations of such diametrically opposed works as Shakespeare's Macbeth (1801) and Racine's Phi!dre, (1805) reveal the range of Schiller's dramatic sensibility as much as his own poetic work. The summit of that work, both in content and form, is Schiller's Wallenstein, a modern historical drama about the imperial general of the Thirty Years War. An account of the last few days of his life that ends with his treason and his assassination, Wallenstein confronts us with the issue of war and peace as an expression of the tragic situa~ tion of man. Disregarding religious and political interests, Wallenstein, a new Caesar, claims to be the only one able to unify Europe. This ideal, though noble in itself, turns into a treacherous weapon in the hands of lesser men and thus, indirectly, is responsible for Wallenstein's tragic fall. As Lincoln, later, formulated it in his Perpetuation speech: Many great and good men sufficiently qualified for any task they should undertake, may ever be found, whose ambition would aspire to nothing beyond a seat in Congress, a guber- natorial or a presidential chair; but such belong not to the family of the lion, or the tribe of the eagle. What! think you these places would satisfy an Alexander, a Caesar, or a Napoleon?-Neverl Towering genius disdains a beaten path. It seeks regions hitherto unexplored.- It sees no distinction in adding story to story, upon the monuments of fame, erected to the memory of others. It denies that it is glory enough to serve under any chief. It scorns to tread in the footsteps of any predecessor, however illustrious. It thirsts and burns for distinction; and, if possible, it will have it, whether at the expense of emancipating slaves, or enslaving freemen.3 9 Like the Divided Line in Plato's Republic, Schiller's Wallenstein, divided into the poet's Prologue and three plays, leads from the realm of the visible to the realm of the intelligible, from the realm of imagination and opinion to the realm of understanding and thought. Preceded by a Prologue about the intricate relationship of life and history to art and nature, the Wallenstein trilogy confronts us first with Wallenstein's "shadow image," emerging from the opinions of his soldiers, then with his "public 26 self,"' surrounded by his family and his generals, and finally with his "private self," suspended between the freedom of his heavenbound reflections and the necessity of his earthbound actions. The first dramatic poem after many years of historical and philosophical studies, Wallenstein presents a fulfillment of Schiller's poetic ideal. As Hebbel's Schiller in his Aesthetic Writings claims: Unter den Richtern der Form bist du der erste, der einz'ge, Der das Gesetz, das er gibt, gleich schon im Geben erfullt. Among the judges of form, you are the first one, the only Who, in the giving, fulfills already the law that he gives. Schiller's "law" of aesthetic form, more than anything else, implies a union between the natural grace and dignity of the Ancients and the historical self-consciousness of the Moderns. Even in Schiller's historical narrative of the confrontation between the Emperor, defending Catholicism, and Gustav Adolf of Sweden, fighting for Protestantism, the rise and fall of Wallenstein in the service of the Emperor strangely suggests the story of Achilles. The historical figures and events of the Thirty Years War seem to fit the poetic panorama of Homer's Iliad, where the natural enmity between Agamemnon, the ruler, and Achilles, the hero, almost outweighs their national enmity against Hector, whose humanity encompasses both their natures. At the end of his account of Wallenstein's role in the Thirty Years War, Schiller writes: Thus Wallenstein, at the age of fifty, ended his action-filled and extraordinary life; raised by love of honor, felled by lust for honor, with all his failings still great and admirable, unsurpassable if he had kept within bounds. The virtues of the ruler and hero, prudence, justice, firmness and courage, tower in his character colossally; but he lacked the gentler virtues of the man, which grace the hero and gain love for the ruler.40 In answer to this Epilogue of the historian, the Prologue of the poet promises: Von der Parteien Gunst und Hass verwirrt Schwankt sein Charakterbild in der Geschichte, Doch euren Augen soli ihn jetzt die Kunst, Auch eurem Herzen, menschlich naherbringen. Denn jedes Ausserste fiihrt sie, die alles Begrenzt und bindet, zur Natur zun1ck. Blurred by the favor and the hate of parties His image wavers within history. But art shall now bring him more humanly And closer to your eyes and to your heart. For art, which binds and limits everything, Brings all extremes back to the sphere of nature. 41 In the Preface to his Bride of Messina, Schiller speaks of the relationship of historical truth to poetic truth or, as he calls it in On Tragic Art, to the truth of nature: SUMMER 1982 �Nature itself is only a spiritual idea, which never falls into the senses. Under the cover of the appearances it lies, but it itself never rises to·appearance. Only the art of the ideal is favored, or rather shouldered with the task to grasp this spirit of the whole and to bind it into bodily form. Though never before the senses, this [type of art}, because of its creative power, can bring it (the spirit of the whole} before the imagination and thus be more true than all actuality and more real than all experience. From this it follows by itself that the artist cannot use a single element from actuality as he finds it, that his work must be ideal in all its parts, if it is supposed to have reality as a whole and agree with nature. Striving for a form of art that would be true both to historical reality and to nature, Schiller, in his Wallenstein, surrounds the modern world of the Thirty Years War with a mythical horizon of Homeric overtones- In a letter of 1794, in which he tells Korner of "writing his treatise on the Naive and, at the same time, thinking about the plan for Wallenstein," Schiller confesses: In the true sense of the word, I enter a path wholly unknown to me, a path certainly untried, for in poetic matters, dating back three, four years, I have put on a completely new man.4Z Reaching for the truth of nature by combining Naive and Sentimental poetry, Schiller integrates Homer's "imitation of nature" into his own "presentation of the ideal." In his advice to Goethe who, at the time of Schiller's work on Wallenstein, was engaged in his Achilleis, an epic poem about the death of Achilles, Schiller suggests: Since it is certainly right that no Iliad is possible after the Iliad, even if there were again a Homer and again a Greece, I believe I can wish you nothing better than that you compare your Achilleis, as it exists now in your imagination, only with itself, and in Homer only seek the mood, without rea1ly comparing your task with his . ... For it is as impossible as thankless for the poet, if he should leave his homeground altogether and actually oppose himself to his time. It is your beautiful vocation to be a contemporary and citizen of both poetic worlds, and exactly because of this higher advantage you will belong to neither exclusively_43 Like catalysts in the process of establishing an ideal mode of poetic expression, the echoes of Homer's Iliad in Schiller's Wallenstein accentuate its modernity. In a major change from the History of the Thirty Years War, Schiller's Wallenstein, like Homer's Iliad, begins in the middle of the war. But where Homer, in the first seven lines of the Iliad, describes the wrath of Achilles, and the fateful clash between Achilles and Agamemnon, Schiller, in the Prologue to Wallenstein, discusses the role of art, and art's relationship to history and nature. Befitting the ancient epic poem, Homer's description centers on Zeus and the fulfillment of his will; befitting the modern dramatic poem, Schiller's discussion centers on the phenomenon of the great historical personality. THE ST. JOHNS REVIEW Both Homer's Iliad and Schiller's Wallenstein, with the Catalogue of Ships and the first play of the trilogy, exhibit the army and its various elements in a set picture. But where the Catalogue of Ships, preceded by an invocation to the Muse, merely lists the leaders of the Trojan war, Wallenstein's Camp (the model for Brecht's Mother Courage), depicts the dissolution of life in the state of war which, as a state of nature in the midst of the state of society, perverts all human values. Both Homer's Iliad, in the center of its first half, and Schiller's Wallenstein, in the center of its central play, The Piccolomini, show the most tender human relationship exposed to the harsh reality of war. But where Homer, in the parting of Hector from wife and child on the wall of Troy, focuses on the conflict between family and society, Schiller, in the love scenes between Max and Thekla, focuses on the conflict between individuals and society. A poetic expression of Kant's Moral Law, founded on nothing but their hearts, love creates an island of freedom in the sea of historical necessity. Both Homer and Schiller, with the Shield of Achilles and the chalice of the banquet at Pilsen, use the detailed description of an artifact to highlight the world view implicit in each poem. But where the scenes on the shield depict human life within the timeless order of nature and, therefore, are self-explanatory, the scenes on the chalice require an explanation not only for their reference to a specific moment in human history, but also for their use of allegory in portraying that moment. Where Homer, in the First Book of the Iliad, tells of Achilles' meeting with Thetis, and of her visit to Zeus on Olympus, Schiller, in the opening scene of Wallenstein's Death, the last play of the trilogy, shows Wallenstein concentrating on the long expected moment of the conjunction between the planets Venus and Jupiter. The change of perspective, from trusting in divine powers that are moved by will and fate to relying on heavenly bodies that move in accordance with universal laws, does not affect the hopes and the despair that either of them occasion. Both Homer and Schiller, with dramatic suspense, portray their heroes in thoughtful solitude. But where Homer paints the rich scene of Achilles sitting before his tent, in the company of Patroclos, and singing about the glory of men to the sound of his lyre, Schiller presents Wallenstein absorbed in a monologue, reflecting on the relationship of freedom and necessity in human nature. Unlike Achilles' song which, in the creative process, unites freedom and necessity, Wallenstein's reflection, in the form of a syllogism with invalid premises, denies such a union and is left with the fragments of abstract thought. Achilles' restful repose conveys the harmony of his song as much as Wallenstein's restless stopping and starting the disharmony of his reflection. In striking change from the History of the Thirty Years War Schiller models the friendship between Wallenstein and Max, the only non-historical character in the play, on 27 �the friendship between Achilles and Patroclos in Homer's Iliad. Both Homer and Schiller, in the poetic constellation of their characters and plots, make friendship, a middle ground between a natural and a conventional bond, the turning point for tragedy. Like the death of Patroclos for Achilles, the death of Max brings Wallenstein closer to realizing the tragic connection between freedom and ne· cessity, borne out in the problematic relationship of nature and convention. The modern complexity of Schiller's Wallenstein, over and against the relative simplicity of Homer's Iliad, shows itself in content as well as in form. Expressive of the frag· mentation of human nature in the course of history, Schiller's abstract language lends itself to portraying characters that are torn between action and reflection. Striving for a new totality of human nature, some of Schiller's characters parallel more than one of Homer's characters: Max, both Patroclos and Hector; Thekla, both Briseis and Andromache. This double role of the modern characters is the more significant, as it obliterates the enmity between Greeks and Trojans and thus points to an individuality which, viable or not, transcends the political nature of man. Complementary to the parallels of characters, parallels of plots create a maze of poetic affinities· between the ancient epic and the modern tragic poem. Discontinuous and staggered, the parallels of plots seem to point not only to the fragmentation of human nature in modern times, but also to a new totality made possible through history. Intent on exploring the way in which time and timelessness complement each other in the work of art, Schiller and Goethe, in their letters during the years of Schiller's work on Wallenstein, discuss the relationship of tragic to epic poetry. Perceiving them as complementary art forms, the one under the category of causality, the other under the category of substantiality, Schiller defines tragedy as the capture of ~'singular extraordinary moments," and epic poetry as the depiction of "the permanent, persistent whole of mankind."44 In agreement with Aristotle's no· tion of tragedy as the more comprehensive art form of the two,45 Schiller changes his early plans for an epic poem about the Thirty Years War, centering on Gustav Adolf, to his final ones for a dramatic poem, centering on Wallenstein. Immersed in his task of translating Euripides, in Schiller's eyes a poet on the way from Naive to Sentimental poetry, Schiller, in 1789, had written to Korner: Let me add further that in getting better acquainted with Greek plays I, in the end, abstract from them what is true, beautiful and effective and, by leaving out what is defective, I therefrom shape a certairi ideal through which my present way shall be corrected and wholly founded.46 In a letter to Goethe, in which he speaks of "sketching out a detailed scenario for Wallenstein," Schiller remarks: I find the more I think about my own task and about the way the Greeks dealt with tragedy that everything hinges on the art of inventing a poetic fable. 47 28 Schiller's Wallenstein and Euripides' Iphigeneia in Aulis, which Schiller had translated in 1788, apparently follow the same poetic fable. In both dramas, the leader of the army orders members of his family to join him at his camp. In both, the political reasons for this move are disguised as personal reasons. In both, the heroic action of a youth close to the leader interferes with his plans and finally causes tragedy and death. In the comparison with Homer's Iliad, the main parallels were drawn between the Emperor and Agamemnon, Wallenstein and Achilles, and Max and Patroclos. In the comparison with Euripides' Iphigeneia in Aulis, however, the main parallels would have to be drawn between Wallenstein and Agamemnon, Max and Achilles, and Thekla and Iphigeneia. The fundamental theme of Schiller's Wallenstein, the necessary connection between nature and convention, emerges in the "living shape"48 of Wallenstein, presenting, in one modern historical figure, Achilles, the archetype of the natural hero, and Agamemnon, the archetype of the conventional ruler. In the 26th letter On the Aesthetic Education of Man, Schiller comments on the sovereign power of the artist: With unlimited freedom he can fit together what nature separated, as long as he can somehow think it together, and separate what nature connected, as long as he can only detach it in his mind. Here nothing ought to be sacred to him but his own law, as long as he only watches the marking which divides his province from the existence of things or realm of nature. True to the reality of history, Schiller presents Wallenstein in a modern historical drama, set in the world of the Thirty Years War. Separating what nature connected, Schiller omits those features of the historical Wallenstein that would disqualify him for being a tragic hero. True to the reality of poetry, where the historical characters, as poetic figures, become symbolic beings, Schiller presents Wallenstein in a dramatic poem, surrounded by a mythical horizon. Fitting together what nature separated, Schiller strikes parallels, respectively, between one historical and more than one mythical character, and between one historical and more than one mythical plot. The fact that the poetic figure of Wallenstein reflects the archetypes from Homer and Euripides in a cross between naturally opposed, but artistically complementary, characters demonstrates both the fragmentation and the striving for a new totality of human nature in the course of history. By reflecting the Iliad as well as the pregnant moment before the Iliad, Schiller's Wallenstein, a living example of the unity of time and timelessness, opens up a perspective from history to epic as well as tragic poetry. With his integration of Greek "imitation of nature" into his own "presentation of the ideal," Schiller seems to point to the fulfillment of an ideal in which art and nature would meet again. SUMMER 1982 �To a letter in which Korner had suggested a few changes in the plot of Wallenstein, Schiller replies with unusual sharpness: A product of art, insofar as it has been designed with artistic sense, is a living work, where everything hangs together with everything, where nothing can be moved without moving everything from its place.49 Correlation of everything with everything can be detected in more than one element of Schiller's dramatic poem: the polarity of characters sustains the symmetry of plots which, in concentric circles of scenes and acts, form the whole of the trilogy. Corresponding to the three parts of the Prologue, the three plays of Wallenstein explore the relationship between nature and art, portrayed in the life of individuals, representative of the life of mankind. Schil· ler's integration of characters and plots from Greek epic and tragic poetry into his modern historical drama con· tributes to the symbolic nature of his poetic figures and poses the question of the relationship between Ancients and Moderns, fully discussed in his philosophical writings. The correspondence between dramatic characters and aesthetic principles ties together life and art by interpret· ing them in terms of history, understood in the light of nature. The evidence of such complex relationships between the various elements of Schiller's Wallenstein certainly proves it to be a Hproduct of art/' but does it prove it to be a "living work?" In a long, painstaking letter about Wallenstein, Humboldt writes to his friend: We often talked with each other about this poem, when it was scarcely more than sketched out. Yau considered it the touchstone with which to test your poetic capacity. With admiration, but also with apprehension, I saw how much you bound up in this task .... Such masses no one ever has set in motion; such a comprehensive subject matter no one ever has chosen; an action, the motivating springs and consequences of which, like the roots and branches of a tremendous treetrunk, lie so far spread out and dispersed in such diverse forms, no one ever has presented in one tragedy. 50 In a letter to Korner, Schiller confesses: None of my old plays has as much purpose and form as my Wallenstein already has; but, by now, I know too well what I want and what I have to do that I could make the task so easy for myself. 51 In the light of his notion of the poets as "preservers" and "avengers" of nature, Schiller, in the letters On ihe Aesthetic Education of Man, compares the artist to Agamemnon's son who returns to the house of his fathers in order to avenge the past on the present. Understanding him as a contemporary and citizen of more than one world, Schiller advises the artist to take the material for his work from the present, but the form from "a nobler time, yes, from beyond all time, borrowed from the absolute, unchangeTHE ST. JOHNS REVIEW able unity of his being." In compliance with his own advice, Schiller takes the material for his Wallenstein from modern history, but the form from a blend of Naive and Sentimental poetry, explicated in the aesthetic theories of his philosophical writings. Fully aware of the artificial nature of such a process, Schiller, nevertheless, expects to achieve an ideal of poetry in which history and philosophy would contribute to the vindication of nature. The fact that no one, for now almost two hundred years, has seen that Schiller's Wallenstein, in appearance the most modern of his dramas, in substance is also the one where Naive and Sentimental poetry blend most completely, should be enough of an indication that history and philosophy, though indispensable for Schiller's work, are only means towards a higher goal: their fulfillment in poetry. To end with Schiller's own words: All paths of the human spirit end in poetry, and the worse for it if it lacks the courage to lead them there. The highest philosophy ends in a poetic idea, so the highest morality, the highest politics. It is the poetic spirit that, for all three of them, delineates their ideal which to approximate is their highest perfection.sz l. The main sources for my account of Schiller's life are: F. Burschell, F. Schiller, In Selbstzeugnissen und Bilddokumenten, Hamburg-1958; G.v Wilpert, Schiller-Chronik, Sein Leben und Schaffen, Stuttgart 1958. With a few exceptions, references to secondary literature have been kept out of the account. 2. Translations of dramatic works, C.E. Passage, Wallenstein, 1958; Don Carlos, 1959; Mary Stuart, The Maid of Orleans, 1961; The Bride of Messina, William Tell, Demetrius, 1962; Intrigue and Love, 1971, New York; F.J. Lamport, The Robbers and Wallenstein, London 1979. Translations of philosophical works, On the Aesthetic Education of Man, R. Snell, New York 1954; E.M. Wilkinson and L.A. Willoughby, dual language edition with extensive introduction and commentary, Oxford 1967; On Naive and Sentimental Poetry and On the Sublime, J.A. Elias, New York 1966. 3. Wallenstein's Death, III, 13, 1813. 4. F. Burschell, F. Schiller, 7. 5. G.v. Wilpert, Schiller-Chronik, 41. 6. To Lempp (1), Jun. 19, 1783. 7. In A Schiller Symposium, ed. L. Willson, Austin, Texas 1960, 65-81. 8. See. T. Sowell, Ethnic America, A History, New York 1981,54: "The British brought nearly 30,000 German mercenary soldiers to the col· onies to try to put down the American rebellion. These were not individual volunteers but soldiers sold or rented to the British by the rulers of various German principalities." 9. Th. Mann, Versuch ilber Schiller, Frankfurt a.M. 1955, 35 (Last Essays: translation R. and C. Winston, New York 1966, 29, but without this personal reference). 10. In A Schiller Symposium, Austin 1960, 31-48. 11. Dec. 4, 1788. 12. To Baggesen, Dec. 16, 1791. 13. On the Aesthetic Education of Man, Letter 2. 14. The Artists, 443-445. 15. Wallenstein, Prol. 61-69 (translation C.E. Passage; "great objectives," my correction). 16. Aesthetic Education, Letter 2. 17. Aesthetic Education, Letter 3. 18. Aesthetic Education, Letter 6. 29 �19. Aesthetic Education, Letter 6. 20. Aesthetic EduCation, Letter 8. 21. Aesthetic Education, Letter 11. 22. Aesthetic Education, Letter 20. 23. Aesthetic Education, Letter 15. 24. Aesthetic Education, Letter 21. 25. Aesthetic Education, Letter 8. 26. Aesthetic Education, Letter 27. 27. Aesthetic Education, Letter 27. 28. Aesthetic Education, Letter 9. 29. Aesthetic Education, Letter 9. 30. Note that Schiller's judgment (1794/95) dates from long before even the First Part of Goethe's Faust {1806). 31. To Korner, Sep. 12, 1794. 32. To E.v. Schimmelmann, Jul. 13, 1793. 33. To C.v. Schimmelmann, Nov. 4, 1795. 34. To Goethe, Aug. 31, 1794. 35. To Schiller, Nov. 6, 1795. 36. To Humboldt, Feb. 17, 1803. 37. Ober Schiller und den Gang seiner Geistesentwicklung, 1830, in Werke, II, ed. A. Flitner/K. Giel, Darmstadt 1969, 361-362. 38. To Reinwald, Apr. 14, 1783, quoted in F. Burschell, F. Schiller, 47-48. 39. A. Lincoln, "The Perpetuation of our Political Institutions," Address Before the Young Men's Lyceum of Springfield, Illinois, Jan. 27, 1838. 40. History of the Thirty Years War, End of IV. 30 41. Wallenstein, Pro!. 102-107 (translation C.E. Passage; "within", "heart", my corrections). 42. To Komer, Sep. 4, 1794. 43. To Coethe, May 18, 1798; in his earlier work Hermann and Dorothea Goethe closely imitates Homer. Under the names of the nine Muses, starting with Calliope, the Muse of epic poetry, and ending with Urania, the Muse of philosophical poetry, the nine Cantos of Hermann and Dorothea present the whole realm of poetic expression. Set against the historical background of the French Revolution, the story of Hermann and Dorothea, together with the different modes of poetry evolving from each other, seems to be a modern version of Homer's Shield of Achilles. The Muse of epic poetry, however, not only governs the First Canto, but her spirit prevades the poem as a whole: Homeric meter, Homeric diction, Homeric epHhets and episodes, though softened from heroic to idyllic tone, echo Iliad as well as Odyssey in every line of Goethe's poem. As Goethe, in his elegy "Hermann and Dorothea," states it: "Doch Home ride zu sein, auch nur als letzter, ist schon" ("Yet, to be a Homeride, even if only the last one, is beautiful"). 44. To Goethe, Apr. 25, 1797; Aug. 24, 1798. 45. To Goethe, May 5, 1797. 46. Mar. 9, 1789. 47. Apr. 4, 1797. 48. Aesthetic Education, Letter 15. 49. Mar. 24, 1800. 50. To Schiller, Sep. 1800. 51. Nov. 28, 1796. 52. To. C.v. Schimmelmann, Nov. 4, 1795. SUMMER 1982 �Some Chinese Poems Translated by Julie Landau Six Dynasties Period (317-588) Anonymous Tzu- YEH SoNGS Three Selections I When first I knew him, I thought two hearts could be as one My thread hung on a broken loom, How could it make good cloth? II Through the long night, I can not sleep, How dazzling the moon! I think I hear someone callingAnd sigh 'yes' to the emptiness III I am as the morning star, Fixed for a thousand years. Your fickle heart goes with the sun, Rising in the east, while it sets in the west! Julie Landau has studied Chinese at Columbia University and for a year (1967-1968) in Hong Kong. Her translations of Chinese poems have appeared in Denver Quarterly, Renditions {Hong Kong), and in the anthology, Song without Music: Chinese Tzu Poetry, edited by Stephen C. Soong, (University of Washington Press, 1980). THE ST. JOHNS REVIEW 31 �T'ao Ch'ien (365-427) RETURNING TO 1HE FARM TO liVE I I never had a taste for men's affairs Mountains and hills are what I love Stupidly, I was drawn in Once snared, thirty years went by The fettered bird longs for the forest The fish in the pool thinks of tbe lake To clear some land in the wilderness The foolishness I held to, and came back to farm. Ten acres and a place to live A thatched hut, a few rooms Elm and willow shade the back Peach and plum grace the front A village in the distance Sends up light smoke Far down the lane, a dog barks A cock crows atop the mulberryMy door is far from the world's muddle I've room enough and time Caged for so long At last I am myself again II The wilderness is out of reach of men's intrigues An alley leading nowhere attracts few wheels and reins All day the bramble gate stays closed In bare rooms, where are worldly thoughts to settle From time to time, winding through rough country Others too part the grass to come and go We meet-no time for idle talkMulberry and hemp is all we think about Mulberry and hemp are bigger day by day And day by day I open up more land We live in fear that frost and hail Will kill the crop and scatter it like straw These are from a series of five poems on the same theme. 32 SUMMER 1982 �IMITATION OF OLD POEM A riot of orchids under the window Dense, dense the willow by the hallWhen first we parted You did not say it would be long Once out the door, you went ten thousand miles And on the way met others. Hearts drunk before we spoke What need then for wine? But orchids fade, willows wither Promises are broken. Go, tell the young To love and not be true Rashly destroys a lifeFor parted, what is left? T'ang Dynasty (618-907) Tu Fu (712-770) A LONGING LOOK IN SPRING The country's in pieces, the river flows on The capital, trees and grass, in full springAfflicted by the times, flowers cry Birds grow restive in the air of partings Warning beacons have burned three months Letters from home are worth ten thousand in gold White hair grows so thin It can not bear a pin THE ST. JOHNS REVIEW 33 �MOONLIGHT NIGHT REMEMBERING MY YOUNGER BROTHER The drums of battle interrupt my journey The front in autumn, lonely as the wild goose cry Dew from tonight: white The moon, bright as at home My brother and I, now parted Without a home to send us word, who lives, who died Our letters, forever on the way, And war, and war, and war THE GUEST ARRIVES North of the cottage and south, spring floods, Day in day out, my only guests are gulls. The path has not been swept of petals When I make wide the bramble gate for you. Only a simple supper- the market is so far, Even the wine is roughIf you'd care to drink with my old neighbor, I'll call across the bamboo fence that we've a cup for him. CLIMBING Impatient wind, high sky, baboons shrilly lamenting, Shoal in clear water, white sand, birds slowly circling Space without bounds, the whisper of falling leaves, River without end, rushing and tumbling. Ten thousand miles I travelled in autumn, Full of years, sick and alone, I climb. Hardship, suffering, regret, frost my temples. New misfortunes keep me even from my muddy wine 34 SUMMER 1982 �Li Po (701-762) BRING WINE! Don't you see the waters of the Yellow River come from the sky Flow out to sea and never return? Don't you see in bright mirrors of high rooms, white hair lamented Black silk in the morning, by evening pure snow? Of life and happiness, drain the cup, Don't leave the gold bottle in the moonlight in vain, Use the talent heaven bestowed, Squander a thousand in gold, it can come back, Roast a lamb, slaughter a cow, enjoy life, In company you must drink three hundred cups! Honored Ts'en, Tan-ch'iu, good sir, Bring wine! Give the cup no rest I'll sing you a song ... Lend an ear ... The bell, the drum and all life's luxuries are not enough Stay drunk, and never come to History is full of saints and sages, lonely and forgotten Only the drinkers leave their mark Prince Chen, in his day, feasted at Ping Le Spent thousands on a measure of wine, the price of laughter When buying, don't say you can't afford it Just buy and drink and pour The dappled horse, The fine fur coat, Let's trade them for a splendid wine Dissolve ten thousand ancient sorrows Ts'en and Tan-ch'iu are names. Ts'en is thought to be the poet, Ts'en Ts'an. THE ST. JOHNS REVIEW 35 �Kao Shih (702?-765) SONG OF YEN (written to music) In the twenty-sixth year of K'ai Yuan, an officer who returned from having served at the border showed me "The Song of Yen." Affected by thoughts of the campaign, I wrote this to the same rhyme. Lured northeast by the smoke of Han victories Generals leave home to wipe out straggling opposition A man by nature likes to use his power And the emperor is pleased. Brass and drums echo along Yii Pass, Banners serpentine through rock Battle orders fly over the desert The fires of the khails light up Lang Shan Mountain and river: bleak and chill Wind and rain: allies to the Tartar horsemen. Up front, half our troops are dead In camp, girls still sing and dance. Deep in the desert, autumn withers grass and trees Few men are left to see the sunset at the lonely fort. The privileged were intrepid Strength spent, the pass still under siege, Those in armor diligently endure, cut off. Jade tears are shed at home Young girls, south of the wall, despair Soldiers, north of the front, look back in vain They're out of reach In that forsaken place what is there But the stench of death, all day, rising in clouds? Chill battle sounds fill the night And everywhere white steel and blood, Valor and death without reward. Can't you see the misery of it all That even now, it's only victory that counts? The twenty-sixth year of K'ai YUan is A.D. 738. Yen is a state in north China. "Song of Yen" belongs to a genre of ballad called ylieh-fu, folk ballads collected in the Han Dynasty and their later imitations. The imitations, of which this is one, usually follow the original theme, and retain the tide, but describe current ills or events. "White Snow Song" and "Bring Wine" are also yiieh-fu. 36 SUMMER 1982 �Ts'en Ts'an (715-770) WHITE SNOW SONG Sending Field Clerk Mou Back to the Capital A north wind snaps the frosted grass Under the Tartar sky, snow in August Everything suddenly transformed as by the first spring breeze That in one night Opens ten thousand pear blossoms Snow sprinkles bead curtains, wets silk screens, Fox furs aren't warm enough, silk quilts seem thin The general can not arch his horn tipped bow, Frontier guards' coats of mail, frozen, but still worn. On tangled, jagged desert, a sea of ice, Sad clouds, frozen, stiff, gloomy, extend ten thousand leagues The garrison commander toasts the the departing guest, Tartar instruments-lute, mandolin and reed pipe, play ... Flake upon flake, the evening snow piles up against the gate; Vainly, the wind rips the red banner, stiff with cold Lun T' ai East Gate, I see you off You go by the snow filled T'ien Shan pass The road curves, you're out of sight, You leave nothing here but the marks of your horse on the snow Lun T'ai is a place on the northern border, outside the Great Wall. THE ST. JOHNS REVIEW 37 �Liu Tsung-yiian (773-819) OLD MAN FISHING An old fisherman passes the night beside the western cliff At dawn, scoops clear water from the Hsiang, kindles bamboo The mist clears, the sun comes out-not a soul in sight The long oar whispers in the water; green hills, green water Turn back and see the river flow from heaven Above the cliff, clouds idly play tag. The Hsiang is a river. Afternote These selections represent two disparate periods of Chinese history: one of disunity, political instability, and confusion; one of empire. After the Han Dynasty disintegrated in the third century, attempts to reunify China faz/ed. The north fell to barbarians and was ruled successively by a variety of foreign dynasties; the south, by a succession of weak, regional, native dynasties. Among the intelligentsia- China's traditional bureaucracy- many retreated from political life rather than take the risks of aligning themselves with the wrong usurping famzly. Confucianism, which had adapted itself to the exigencies of an orderly, unified empire, declined in importance. The more mystical ideas of Buddhism and Taoism were in the ascendant. Many poets sought nature, wine, and seclusion. One of the greatest of the recluse poets of the Six Dynasties period was T'ao Ch'ien. Folk poetry, especially love poetry, constrained by the Confucian morality of the Han, re-emerged in this period of dis- 38 unity-free, suggestive, and amoral. Tzu-yeh (Midnight) is thought to have been a singing girl of the fourth century. Tzu-yeh songs, some of which she may have written 1 are un- inhibited love songs whose simplicity and frankness are their charm. China, north and south, was reunited by the Sui Dynasty (581-618). During the T'ang Dynasty (618-907} China was, once more, strong and expansionist. Confucian values again prevailed. Most poets chose to serve the state in China's vast bureaucracy. Rarely in favor at court for long, many passed much of their lives as minor offiCials in remote, often disease- ridden, outposts of empire. Kao Shih and Ts'en Ts'an wrote of life and war at the frontier in the far west and northwest. Liu Tsung-yiian wrote from exz/e in the south. Tu Fu's war poems descn'be the chaos around the capital at the time ofthe An Lu-shan rebellion (755), an uprising which the dynasty survived, but from which it never really recovered-J. L. SUMMER 1982 �That Graver Fire Bell: A Reconsideration of the Debate over Slavery from the Standpoint of Lincoln Robert Loewenberg It was George Fitzhugh, the nation's most profound defender of slavery and the man who proposed to enslave whites as well as blacks, who was the first to make the point that the proslavery position and abolitionism do not represent two opposite extremes but two sides of a single extreme. Considering his own position in support of slavery a form of socialism, a view not disputed by Marxist or radical historians now, Fitzhugh insisted that abolitionism was akin to slavery in principle and in ultimate tendency.' He contended that abolitionism was a malevolent brand of socialism, however, while the slavery he defended was benevolent. But if the ideas at the root of both proslavery and abolition were alike, are we to suppose that the Civil War was a gigantic hoax, each side fighting benightedly for the same bad cause? Or is it more likely that the people of those times had some reasonably clear understanding of what issues were at stake, while it is we who have been misled by extremists? In fact, our present view of the period and all that is connected to it is influenced by the assumption, virtually universal and unquestioned, that the proslavery and abolitionist extremes were opposed in theory because they were opposed regarding the Southern slave. But contemporary Americans were not confronted with a choice between abolitionism as pure freedom on one side, and Associate Professor of History at Arizona State University, Robert Loewen berg has previously contributed "The Trivialization of the Holocaust as an Aspect of Modern Idolatry" (Winter 1982) to the St. John's Review. He has published Equality on the Oregon Frontier (University of Washington Press, 1976) and articles on the history of the American Northwest and on values in writing history. THE ST. JOHNS REVIEW some brand of slavery on the other. The real extremes were these: slavery and freedom, not proslavery and abolition. It would seem that no opposition could be clearer than slavery and freedom. The difference is commonsensical; any slave or free man could tell the difference. But we are accustomed to uses of language which convey more confusion than common sense regarding freedom or regarding most political terms. For example, are men free when they are equal before the law, an ancient ideal which Lincoln cherished; or does freedom require an equality that rejects law as a disguise for power, a bourgeois convention, as the abolitionists and their defenders claimed? The antebellum debate over slavery was a struggle for control of the terms of public debate. The struggle regarding words has, in the main, been won by abolitionism. Today we see the Civil War, and much else, in abolitionist terms. How ironic then that George Fitzhugh, slavery's great advocate, should now provide us with the means to develop a more correct and historically accurate understanding of freedom. Fitzhugh demythologized abolition. But, inadvertently, he did more than this. In identifying abolition with his own proslavery position, Fitzhugh did not explain its opposite, or freedom. Fitzhugh's demonstration-and it was devastatingthat the abolitionists were the ones, even more than he, who called for an end to free society as the source of all enslavements, including wage slavery, child abuse, intern~ perance, and female political disabilities, amounted to this: freedom as such did not exist except in a negative sense as an absence of slavery. In other words, Fitzhugh, agreeing that abolition was pure freedom while also insisting that abolitionism was reducible to slavery, seemed to imply 39 �there could be no such thjng as freedom at all. Unless common sense and philosophy both fail us, however, there must be an opposite to slavery. Freedom is the opposite of slavery. In his critique of abolition, Fitzhugh unwittingly showed that Lincoln was the real champion of the principle of freedom in those times. Lincoln was, if anything, even more alive to the character of abolition than Fitzhugh. Not in the middle between the opposites of abolition and proslavery, Lincoln, in fact, spoke for freedom as the opposite of slavery. Lincoln, not William Lloyd Garrison, Elijah P. Lovejoy, Horace Greeley, or Thaddeus Stevens, is properly contrasted with Fitzhugh, the South's most complete defender of slavery. And, if this is a proper pair· ing, we might anticipate a certain congruence between the analyses of Lincoln and Fitzhugh. As a matter of fact, they made the same discoveries from opposite sides of the debate about slavery and freedom. Fitzhugh detected sameness where a difference had been supposed to reside. Lincoln discovered that two things that seemed the same, freedom and abolition of slavery, were really different. Fitzhugh exposed the kinship of slavery and abolitionist doctrines; Lincoln showed that his own defense of free· dom, based upon the principle of consent of the governed, was different from, actually antithetical to, Stephen A. Douglas's supposed defense of freedom, which was also based upon the principle of consent of the governed. Lincoln called Douglas's doctrine of popular sover· eignty, according to which voters living in the territories would decid.e the question of slavery prior to statehood, a "covert . .. zeal for . .. slavery." 2 Douglas said that a major- ity had the right to do whatever it wished, that is, to be free, even to vote others into slavery and to deprive them of the consent of the governed. Douglas opposed slavery, but would not, he said, intolerantly impose his personal view on others. He did not care whether slavery were voted up or down so long as people voted and the majority governed. The good and bad of slavery for Douglas was a matter of votes and personal conviction, "conscience" as it was sometimes called. Lincoln argued that Douglas's version of consent of the governed subverted freedom in the moment it professed to uphold it. The themes of reversal and betrayal are cen· tral ones in Lincoln's thought during the years 1838 to 1865. Popular sovereignty twisted the principles of Ameri· can government and made the Declaration of Indepen· dence the foundation for slavery, just as the Dred Scott Decision of 1857 misinterpreted the Constitution, making it an instrument for slavery and force instead of an instru· men! of law and right.3 Lincoln saw at the root of Douglas's idea the reversal of the principle of consent of the gov· erned as found· in the Declaration and the betrayal of law and the Constitution. Fitzhugh also contemplated a rever· sal of law and right, but from the opposite perspective. Slavery, he said, is the "inalienable right" of everyone' He dismissed as irrelevant the then common defenses of slav· 40 ery based upon biblical and racial grounds and proclaimed that slavery was suitable and just. Slavery was the higher law. The higher law doctrine was, of course, not Fitzhugh's slogan but William Seward's. Seward proclaimed it in 1850 during the debates that preceded the famous Com· promise of 1850 which men hoped would extinguish all debate about the slavery question. This was more than ten years before Seward became Lincoln's Secretary of State. Actually, Fitzhugh loathed every kind of law and politics~like the abolitionists. In fact, the debate over slavery and freedom focussed on just the point the aboli· tionists and Fitzhugh wished away: It was a debate about law. From the standpoint of the abolitionist identification of abolition and freedom, the measure of Lincoln and the nation turns upon the correct relation of law to the higher law. From this point of view Lincoln is seen to have sacri· ficed the Declaration to the Constitution, principle to expedience. In particular, Lincoln failed to make emanci· pation the aim of the Civil War rather than simply the res· !oration of the Union. Those who take this view also think that Lincoln preferred property rights and states' rights to human rights. This group, which contains most writers, includes those whom C. Vann Woodward has called "lib· era] and radical historians who identify with abolition." 5 These historians are divided between those who despise Lincoln as morally obtuse and others who credit him with prudence. But the important point is granted by all, namely that the abolitionist rhetoric, with its conflicts between the Declaration and the Constitution, the Union and emancipation, human rights and property rights, is true. Lincoln denied this. The abolitionist context and the sev· era] sets of opposites that are part of it is exactly what Lin· coln did not grant as properly framing the issues or dividing the people in the years before or during the Civil War. Above all, Lincoln did not regard law or the Constitution as inferior to any "higher law," whether in the consciences of abolitionists and transcendentalists such as Henry David Thoreau and Ralph Waldo Emerson, or in Douglas's law of the majority. It is taken for granted that Lincoln, however great a man, was a "moderate," in the sense of one who stands against pure good in favor of expedience. Not Lincoln's version of freedom but Emerson's or Thoreau's is the one that post-Civil War Americans have been taught in schools, in colleges, and from the pulpit, where Lincoln called for freedom to be taught. Moreover, freedom emphasizing, in Thoreau's words, that "it is not desirable to cultivate are· spec! for the law, so much as for the right," is contrary to Lincoln's teaching.' Lincoln denied the conflict of right and law, as Thoreau posed it, because he denied the eleva· lion of what Thoreau and the abolitionists called "con· science" to a level transcending law and government. Abolitionist ideals which were articulated best by Emer· son and Thoreau, who were not active abolitionists, are SUMMER 1982 �part of a tradition that is hostile to Lincoln as are those related versions of American history we know as liberal and radical. The "radical vein which the conservative and reactionary of Christendom had for centuries endeavored to keep submerged," and that Perry Miller finds in Jonathan Edwards, is the vein that also nourished nineteenth century abolition.7 What Miller calls reactionary and conservative, however, Christendom called heretical-in particular, gnosticism. Abolitionism proper had its beginnings in the sixteenth century among the followers of Thomas Miinzter. Although historian David B. Davis calls the MUnzterites the 11 first abolitionists" in order to praise them, he is not wrong as to fact 8 But Miinzter's and Jonathan Edwards's vision of freedom is the one Lincoln instructed Americans to reject. In the decade of the 1850s, when George Fitzhugh was at the peak of his powers, producing in his two books the most important defense of slavery ever made by an American up to that time, Lincoln was embarking on the early stages of a second career in national politics. The corner· stone of this effort, like the first, was his conviction that slavery was wrong and freedom was right. As Lincoln said in a speech at Peoria, Illinois, in October 1854, "I say this is the leading principle-the sheet anchor of American republicanism ... this [is] our ancient faith .... Now the relation of masters and slaves is~ pro tanto, a total violation of this principle."' As a practical matter, Lincoln's position committed him to opposing the extension of slavery into territories acquired from Mexico in 1848. One could, as Lincoln often said, compromise about the existence of slavery as a fact only if one did not compromise with the fact of slavery as evil. The great point of difference between Lincoln and some contemporaries (as well as later critics) is that they compromised in the other direction. They would not give ground on the existence of slavery, but they compromised, unknowingly, with freedom itself. This was Lincoln's quarrel with abolition as well as with Douglas. Freedom and slavery for Lincoln were absolutely opposed: the house divided. By freedom Lincoln meant nothing outwardly complex or unfamiliar to the men of his day. Those who heard his speeches, beginning with his first major address in 1838, the Lyceum Address, or who listened to his debates with Douglas two decades later, understood that when Lincoln said "freedom" he had something clearly in mind. By freedom Lincoln meant this: law. By law Lincoln did not mean what is sometimes called positive or public law, or any other historical or relativistic idea. Rather, Lincoln understood by law transcendence, which is the opposite of relativism. The law is lawful because it transcends times and places as well as majorities and the higher law of individual consciences. Lincoln saw that law is the "sheet anchor" of American republicanism; in his words, "No man is good enough to govern another man without that other's consent." 10 To this proposition Lincoln opposed popular sovereignty. The fight against Douglas occupied Lincoln THE ST. JOHNS REVIEW untill860. After that time he defended his position against the Radicals in Congress who said with Thoreau that "my only obligation ... is to do at any time what I think right [or] ... conscience."]\ But both periods and both fights show the same understanding of the law and freedom. Law and freedom, as they are found in the Constitution and the Declaration, are alike a unity or a whole in Lincoln's thought. These two documents were related, he said in January 1861, as an apple of gold to a frame of silver: "The picture was made, not to conceal or destroy the apple; but to adorn, and preserve it." 12 The physical Union that Lincoln wanted to save, embodying the union of the Declaration and the Constitution, included other unions. Among these is the union of the politic and the ethical. Lincoln did not suppose this an impossible union as later Max Weber, the founder of modern social science, would do. Lincoln was certainly an idealist. By idealism Lincoln understood the ongoing struggle of men, of talented men especially, to meet the challenges to virtuous and civil dealings posed by an opposite idealism which holds that men should compel reality to fit their ideals of it. This second kind of idealism, the source of modern fanaticism, has its roots in a view of politics and of words that Lincoln instinctively deplored. At the root of Lincoln's union was a relationship ofChristianity · and law, properly understood. He called this union "political religion." Political religion was Lincoln's answer to the question which he himself raised in 1838 in the Lyceum Address about how best to secure that ~~government . .. conducing more essentially to the ends of civil and religious liberty than any of which the history of former times tells us," i.e., American republicanism. He says: The answer is simple. Let every American, every lover of liberty, every well-wisher to his posterity swear by the blood of the Revolution never to violate in the least particular the laws of the country; and never to tolerate their violation by others. As the patriots of seventy-six did to the support of the Declaration . .. so to the support of the Constitution and Laws, let every American pledge his life, his property, and his sacred honor. ... Let reverence for the laws be breathed by every American mother to the lisping babe ... let it be taught in schools, in seminaries, and in colleges ... let it be preached from the pulpit . .. in short, let it become the political religion of the nation. 13 This unity of Christianity and law, this political religion, is what prompted Lincoln to call American republicanism the second greatest institution in the world after Christianity. Let it be clear what political religion was not. Lincoln did not regard Christianity as a thing merely useful to order. He also did not understand by political religion any substitution of religion for politics. This substitution, especially in its insidious modern form, was the fanaticism that threatened America. By political religion Lincoln understood a certain connection of the human to the divine, 41 �the connection that had long sustained Western political thought about freedom. Lincoln understood, as Aristotle before him, that all political life has as its condition the principle that "the mind is moved by the mover." 14 In other words, man is free because he is related to the divine; he is, as Plato put it in a pertinent observation on suicide, the possession of the godsY It is not coincidental that the present expression of the abolitionist position as elaborated by Alexandre Kojeve (whose doctrines influence such important studies of American slavery as David B. Davis's) is opposite to this. "Death and freedom," Kojeve has written, "are but two ... aspects of one and the same thing." Kojeve's understanding of freedom stands on suicide which, in its turn, reflects and requires atheism. "If Man lived eternally and could not die, he could not render himself immune to god's omnipotence either. But if he can kill himself ... ," then he is free. That is to say, freedom rests upon "a complete atheistic philosophy." 16 Naturally, these two extremes regarding freedom partake of related extremes in politics. The practical aspect of Lincolnian freedom is that human government is not a meaningless and irrational undertaking, rather, government is essential to humans. If this is so, then questions of good and evil regarding governments cannot be reduced merely to the pleasurable. The good and the pleasurable are not the same. Then freedom cannot be identified simply with desire, but must instead be identified with something outside a selfish will. Reason and not passion, the good and not pleasure, constitute human freedom. All of this together Lincoln signified by the word "law." It signifies transcendence. The substance of this view is the one expressed by Aristotle that "men should not think it slavery to live according to the rule of the constitution; for it is their salvation." 17 The implication of this doctrine is that self-government demands self-control, not "popular sovereignty" or "conscience." But we know that abolition- ists looked at law and salvation, as well as constitutions, in a different light. Abolitionists considered constitutions and laws to be enslavements. Garrison's famous public burning of the Constitution in 1854 is the essential symbol of the abolitionist movement. The Emancipation Proclamation of 1863 symbolizes Lincoln's answer to it. Against the Promethean symbolism of Garrison, Lincoln emphasized Christian symbols. Lincoln's use of religious symbols, as they apply to law and freedom, is part of the rhetoric of his political religion. Lincoln's understanding of the American republic and his assessment of its destiny turn upon his view that freedom provides for man's political "salvation." Constitutions, in other words, are not the means of enslavement but of freedom. Lincoln's meaning is that law is man's salvation, his assurance of a humane, civilized life in this world. American republicanism was to man's political salva- 42 lion what Christianity was to the salvation of man's soul. The two salvations for Lincoln were connected. As Jesus made the family a sacramental union so as to provide a metaphorical basis for knowledge of God (called Father and bridegroom), so Lincoln, immersed in these same meanings and their purposes, sought to make the Union sacramental by posing the Declaration and the Constitution as a metaphorical basis for knowledge of the self (called ruler and ruled). Moreover, because the divine or transcendence is necessarily connected to or unified with the human by means of reason or the soul, the relationship between the political and the religious realms is not simply a metaphorical one. Christianity is marked by universality; it promises salvation to all men. The law of the republic is both a replica of this universality as well as an effect of all transcendence. Governments, that is, are natural to man, or, as the ancients put it, governments are "divine." For good and evil to be possible, there must be transcendence. Man is not just another kind of animal for whom speech, as among bees, is solely a behavioral instrument. Hence time and place cannot be the determinants of good and evil. But the truth about the political sphere, though it hinges on the truth of the religious sphere, is always different and in some sense opposed. Lincoln did not call for religious politics but for political religion. Accordingly, Lincoln contrasted Europe, or the old world as Americans of that day called it, with the new, passion with reason, and otherworldly with worldly aspirations. As Christianity rests upon the crucifixion of a savior, the republic rests upon resistance to what Lincoln calls "suicide" in the Lyceum Address. Political salvation is not the work of one man for all others, but the work of each man through self-control. Political salvation is the Constitution and the Union because the sovereignty of majorities(what Douglas advocated) or the sovereignty of conscience (what abolition advocated) are alike against the Union and unconstitutional in a moral and human sense as well as in a legal one. What do Lincoln's life and writings teach of political religion? The outward form of Lincoln's political life, like his own outward form, is simple and inelegant. It was bound at both ends, from 1838 to 1865, by the principles already noted and by his consistent opposition in practice to the extension of slavery. In 1847, during his sole term in Congress, Lincoln voted for the Wilmot Proviso, stipulating that any territories acquired from Mexico must be closed to slavery, "at least forty times" by his count. 18 Years later in 1861 Lincoln made the principle of nonextension of slavery the basis for his opposition to the Crittenden Compromise, which would have extended the superseded Missouri Compromise of 1820 to the Pacific. The event that brought his life and thought into focus, and from which comes our own understanding of political religion as he practiced it, was the Kansas-Nebraska Act of 1854. It was the passage of this bill for the settlement of Kansas and Nebraska on the principle of popular sovereignty SUMMER 1982 �that brought Lincoln to the center of public controversy. Douglas's bill repealed the Missouri Compromise of 1820. That famous piece of legislation stilled, at least for a time, what Thomas Jefferson had called a fire bell in the night, the slavery question. Jefferson's anxieties in 1820 about slavery in the lands of Kansas, lands he purchased from France in 1803 with anxieties touching the constitutionality of his right to make the purchase, took on a new urgency during Lincoln's day. This is because the politicians of the 1820s led by Martin Van Buren had thought to use the conflict over slavery, the fire bell in the night, as the means to build a new party coalition that would keep the slavery issue out of national politics. Lincoln's election in 1860, by shattering that coalition of Northern farmers and Southern yeomen, undid Van Buren's political work, forcing men once more to consider Jefferson's warning. Van Buren's idea had been to keep the country half slave and half free in fact. The result of his effort turned out to be that the country became half slave and half free in principle. It was this dreadful consequence that Lincoln spelled out to Alexander Stephens in December 1860, two days after South Carolina seceded. You think slavery is right and ought to be extended; while we think it is wrong and ought to be restricted. That I suppose is the rub. It certainly is the only substantial difference between us. 19 Stephens, who was to become the vice president of the Confederacy, had asked Lincoln, who was already president-elect of the Union, "to save our common country" and to recognize that he and the Southerners were not Lincoln's personal enemies. But Lincoln had always recognized this. The distinction between right and wrong, liberty and slavery, was superior to all things because things perish. This was the rub. Liberty was above the "c.ommon country" and above Lincoln and Stephens. The physical union, an object of emotion, was destined to perish. But the union sustained by political religion would, as Lincoln said in 1838, "live through all time."20 The wishes and desires of men, even men who wished for emancipation, would have to yield to the law. Lincoln made this point to Horace Greeley on August 22, 1862, in response to his Prayer of Twenty Millions, written to Lincoln three days before. Lincoln explained that his policy would be to free slaves or not to free them "if it would save the Union" quite regardless of his "oftexpressed personal wish that all men, everywhere, could be free." 21 The prudence suggested in this observation by Lincoln is not mainly expressive of expedience or trimming. Lincoln's prudence relates instead to self-control and to forbearance indicative of constitutional rigor in the personal and legal realms. The Constitution did not permit Lincoln to make emancipation the purpose of the war as Greeley demanded. Lincoln's personal wish to emancipate the THE ST. JOHNS REVIEW slaves did not overcome an inner law of reason and an outer law, the Constitution, that salvation of all reason and law, viz., no man has the right to rule another without that other's consent. Lincoln understood he could not fulfill the law by breaking the law as some messianic abolitionist would do. To proceed in that way Lincoln considered tyrannical and un-Christian. A grant of freedom to the slaves, at that point, however desirable or possible, would have been an even graver fire bell in the night than the one Jefferson warned about in 1820. It would have signaled that a new enslavement was about to begin. What was this new enslavement, how and why was it new? That Lincoln knew the answers to these questions emerges from his struggle with the Radicals. With the secession of South Carolina in midwinter of 1860, the focus but not the substance of Lincoln's quarrel with the ideals of popular sovereignty shifted from Douglas to the Radicals. This new struggle began when Lincoln took office. The main question was how to deal with the eight slave states remaining in the Union after February 1861. Although both Garrison on the abolitionist Left and Greeley on the abolitionist Right hailed the Southern departures, they would soon be calling upon Lincoln to give no quarter to the South once the war started. Most people, however, looked for some way to save the situation. Congress considered a host of plans and ideas for restoring the Union. The end result was a cruel caricature of "compromise." The eight wavering states split their loyalty, four to the North, four to the South. And, as if to mimic those trying times, fifty-five counties in western Virginia seceded from the state of Virginia in May 1861. Adopting a new constitution for itself, with slavery, West Virginia joined the Union to the delight, not only of Lincoln, but of Thaddeus Stevens, who was the Robespierre of Radicals. What this meant was obvious to Lincoln: the war to come would not be about slavery as a practical matter, however much slavery had been its cause. Even so, the question of the war's aim became the subject of contention between Lincoln and the Radicals. For Lincoln the seceded states were not a nation, and consequently constitutional provisions applicable to them remained intact. The Radicals, for their part, were openly contemptuous of the Constitution. They were also much less agitated than Lincoln about the practical consequences to the Union where the five Union slave states were concerned. For Lincoln the triumph of the Union, that is, the defeat of the eleven slave states, required the support of the five Union slave states. And the triumph of the Union would also be the resolution of the intolerable condition of the house divided; it would be the triumph of freedom. Lincoln's position was that the aim of the war should be the perpetuation of the Union, so that the result of the war would be the "ultimate extinction" of slavery. This result, as Lincoln had always insisted, at no time more importunately than during the secession crisis of 1860, could be accomplished without war and without the violation of 43 �either the Constitution or the rights of the Southern states. Essential to this result was obedience to the law and the recognition of "our. ancient faith" that slavery was the soul of lawlessness. The South well understood, rather better than some Radicals, that an end to the fact and the principle of slavery extension meant the ultimate extinc· tion of slavery. This is why the South seceded. It is why Lincoln refused to give his support to the Crittenden Compromise in 1861. The Republican leaders in Congress took a different view of things. Falling under the skillful and often ruthless leadership of men who called themselves Radicals, in par· ticular Senators Zachariah Chandler, Benjamin Wade, Charles Sumner, and in the House, Thaddeus Stevens, James Ashley, George Julian, and H. Winter Davis, Con· gress relished a power unknOwn to American institutions to that time. The Radicals' outward objective, resisted by Lincoln 1 was to make emancipation the aim of the war. The struggle, as Lincoln saw it, however, was between po· litical religion and its opposite, religious politics. On its practical side this contest centered in the Radical Committee on the Conduct of the War chaired by Ben Wade. The Committee's main goal, whether in investigat· ing generals or in cashiering them, was to make Lincoln revise the purpose of the war. And the Radicals also pro· mated the fortunes of their favorite generals, especially General John C. Fremont. He had proclaimed martial law in Missouri, declaring that all slaves were confiscated property, thus free. Although Lincoln had countermanded his order, other Radical generals imitated Fremont. Con· gressional Radicals also tried to force the President's hand by legislative means. They passed confiscation acts in the summers of 1861 and 1862. The differences between Lin· coln and the Radicals are clearest, however, in the contest over the Emancipation Proclamation. This episode, one of the most famous in American history, was also the great "passion play" of political religion. Much has been said about the Emancipation Proclama· tion. There is now a strong tendency to think that only the naive could credit the "stereotyped picture of the emanci· pator suddenly striking the shackles from millions of slaves by one stroke of the presidential pen."22 Moreover, the doc· ument is considered deficient in grandeur. It resembles a "bill oflading" in the view of historian Richard Hofstadter.23 It is also widely believed that the famous Proclamation came about as a result of the President being forced onto higher moral ground by the importuning Radicals. But this view of events, like the wider abolitionist context it sustains and reflects, does not square with the facts. That Lincoln was forced to issue the Emancipation Proclama· tion, in the sense that he was also forced to conciliate the South before the war or to hang Union deserters during the war, is likely true enough. But the complaints of the Radicals, who called the Proclamation "futile" and "ridic· ulous," as well as the comments of historians in later 44 times, would indicate that Lincoln did not do what he was supposedly pressured into doing. Lincoln was a master of the politician's art. What he did in this case, as he so frequently did in others, was to make the best of difficult circumstances. He served his own pur· pose, which was to salvage the Union as a physical and constitutional entity, and he tied even tighter the princi· ples of emancipation and constitutionality. The Proclamation distinctly subordinated emancipation to the overriding purpose of the war, reunion. Lincoln beat back the demand for emancipation on Radical terms, which demanded the unconditional liberation of the slaves regardless of any constitutional or military considerations. Regarding such terms as the instruments of tyranny, Lincoln understood what most of his contemporaries only glimpsed, as when Henry Wilson, himself a Radical, discovered with shock that radical emancipator Ben Wade, chairman of the Committee on the Conduct of the War, had all the ear· marks of the slaveholder. "] thought the old slave-masters had come back again," said Wilson, speaking of Wade's behavior in Congress in 1865.24 The Radicals lost the fight with Lincoln over the Eman· cipation Proclamation and most of them knew it. Those who were satisfied that the Proclamation had raised Lin· coln to their level failed to see that Lincoln had raised them to his. They conceded what Lincoln wanted from the start, that only lawful emancipation was true emanci· pation. They conceded, in other words, the necessity for a constitutional amendment, the 13th. Later no one worked harder for it than Lincoln. The Proclamation did not strike off the slaves' chains because only a constitutional amend· ment could do that. As a military measure that made the continuation of rebellion the justification for freeing slaves, the Proclamation only applied in the rebellious states, and there, as the Radicals loudly complained, it could not free a single slave because Union authority had been usurped by the rebels. The Proclamation was, as it says, a war measure. It was written as a war measure and not as a grander measure might have been. Yet in the subtlety of its ultimate pur· poses, both its political purpose toward the Radicals and its moral purpose toward the slaves and the aim of the war, the Emancipation Proclamation must surely qualify as one of the more remarkable bills of lading ever written. Perhaps Hofstadter was more apt than he knew. Lin· coln's political religion charged him with the delivery of the Constitution to a recipient, the slaves. Lincoln at least con· sidered his agency essential to the wholeness of the nation and to the warrantability of the product, freedom. Com· pare the Proclamation as a symbol of Lincoln the man and the principle of self-government with Garrison's Prome· thean gesture, his burning of the Constitution in 1854. The contrast becomes sharper still as the elements of Lincoln's political religion unfold. Lincoln's goal of self-government for the republic was also his personal goal. SUMMER 1982 �My paramount object [Lincoln said in 1862] .. . is to save the Union, and is not either to save or destroy Slavery . ... [W]hat I do about Slavery and the colored race, I do because I believe it helps to save the Union; and what I forbear, I forbear be· cause I do not believe it would help to save the Union.ZS Forbearance is in truth the soul of what Lincoln called "political religion." In this connection, and in other star· tling ways, the contrast between Lincoln and abolition shows most clearly. At the level of personalities, the contrast between Lincoln and William Lloyd Garrison is especially obvious. Garrison was the nation's high priest of religious politics. He was no doubt America's nineteenth century Munzter. He regarded "politicians and philosophers [who] ... sometimes foolishly speculate ... about the best forms of government" as idle men. 26 When men were "perfect," that is, beyond good and evil, they would have true government, which is to say no government. Thus Garrison said, as did Lincoln, that America would be "immortal," but their meanings were perfectly opposite. Lincoln un· derstood America's immortality in the sense supplied by political religion. Garrison, on the other hand, meant that America was to become a heaven on earth, a New Jeru· salem. Garrison, like Munzter and the first abolitionists before him, understood human life and history to be in the grip of immanent eschatological purposes: history had meaning and America was history. Counting all men as potential Christs, Garrison regarded religious salvation as measured by one's willingness to sacrifice and martyr himself for the heavenly realm of freedom in this world. Slavery was for Garrison the sum of all villainies because the freedom he craved was literally not of this world. This seemingly absurd vision is the apocalyptic one that Munzter also held when he directed all European princes to submit to him as the risen Christ. Looking upon this world as the field of man's salvation, the reformer proposes to escape the con· ditions of human reality by insisting that these conditions are actually impediments to true humanity, hence the work of some devil, for example, class, race, sex. Once the devil is exorcised, man will be free in the radical sense once reserved to religion, i.e., man will be liberated from the con· ditions of human being. Thus was America immortal in Garrison's mind. There are several other instances in which antebellum reformers considered this release from the conditions of being human to include actual immortality. The case of John Humphrey Noyes, the famous founder of the Oneida commune in 1840, where free love, eugenics, and birth control methods were used to create what Noyes called the We spirit that would liberate men from all possessions, is the best Known. But Lincoln understood that abolition offered in truth a kind of religion. Garrison's "idealism," which left "every man to decide, according to the dictates of his conscience," promised as a matter of political doctrine that good and bad were only names." This vision of THE ST. JOHNS REVIEW man, which is loosely called relativism and egalitarianism today, was a promise of immortality and certainty in this world for those who had rejected Christianity's promise of immortality in the next world. Garrison's cry for men to become free by being "crucified with Christ" comprised the betrayal of Christianity, as well as the reversal of Lincoln's political religion." Men who seek to be crucified with Christ in order to bring about political salvation in reality commit suicide. They subvert political religion by turning politics into religion and religion into lawlessness. Lincoln said the conflict with the abolitionists was a struggle to maintain freedom by means of political religion, a struggle against any form of religious politics. The contest was made more dangerous since both sides used the language of freedom and the language of religion. Although there was not a group in America that more often sought to connect Christian and political symbols than the abolitionists, there were others who did it better and who knew better what they were doing. America's poet of freedom delighted most in braiding political and religious meanings. The contrast of Lincoln with Emerson, who compared John Brown to Christ, best reveals differences between political religion and the ideals of abolition." Where Lincoln's free man is marked by restraint and forbearance, Emerson's free man or Man Thinking is the model of unrestraint. Man Thinking is radically free. In 1836, two years before Lincoln made the Lyceum Address, Emerson marked himself out as one of America's outstanding spokesmen for freedom. Like Lincoln, Emerson spoke of freedom as a sacred thing. It was, however, the will of man and not the law that Emerson considered sacred. "Nothing," wrote Emerson in 1841, "is at last sacred but the integrity of your own mind." If so, is the law profane? Emerson supposed it was. "No law," he insisted, "can be sacred to me but that of my nature."30 What then of morality or transcendence as the foundation of law? For Lincoln the sanctity of the Constitution was its transcendence of individual minds and natures, singly or as majorities. This transcendence, relying upon reason in individuals as the means to discern law, demonstrates that good and evil are truths beyond time and place, beyond the consciences of individuals. Supporting law is the divine. As Lincoln suggested, Christianity is the greatest institution. Emerson was a transcendentalist of quite an opposite kind. Precisely, it was law that free men were to transcend; they were to transcend transcendence. Emerson said ''good and ·bad are but names ... the only right is what is after my constitution; the only wrong what is against it."31 Here was a very different constitution than the one Lincoln had in mind. If Emerson was right, then Garrison was justified in burning the Constitution and in calling it "a covenant with death and a league with hell." 32 Whereas Lincoln's prescription of political religion evoked Aristotle's praise of constitutions as the source of freedom and therein sal- 45 �vation, Emerson's doctrine encouraged men to burn constitutions as the means of salvation. Freedom is the release from covenants. But covenants of one type or another are the web of a man's life. How would ordinary people know to burn covenants? Emerson, aware of the question, as was Lincoln, had the answer. The gift of freedom must be the work of great men. Great men, not covenants, shall be the liberators. And the means to greatness is no other than the destruction of all covenants, or freedom. Thus will the great man "have no covenant but proximities," no covenants that outlast whim, thus the renunciation of all covenants. Emerson anticipates here the disclosure of his most shocking teaching that true liberation is the release from an egoistic self, to be replaced by a godlike unity that is not an "I" but a "We." This was his ideal "ever new and sublime, that here is One Man."33 Emerson really meant all covenants, even a man's relation to himself. This is why he counted the human memory a hindrance to freedom. Lincoln noticed this version of freedom and emphasized antidotes to it. He especially nurtured memory, because it would help to preserve covenants. Lincoln urged men to consider the Declaration a covenant ('undecayed by the lapse of time," a means to knit together all customary and personal covenants which depended on memory. 34 We need not look far for the opposition of Lincoln and Emerson on the subject of the sacredness of freedom. Emerson rests freedom in the sacred recesses of man's passion, in "unhandselled savage nature." 35 It is sacred because it is screened, as Emerson put it, from natural law, from society, and from books and the past. But Lincoln believed that only reason could sustain law. Moreover, reason must overcome passion if good and evil are to be more than names. For the ancients, and for Lincoln, slavery was the spontaneous submission to the will without the mediation of reason, but this is what Emerson called freedom. The source of this difference lies in what each side considered reason to be. For Emerson, reason is an instrument, at once the product and the producer of nature. Lincoln understood reason as the ancients understood it. He considered it, along with those whom Perry Miller called the conservative and reactionary of Christendom, the sensorium of transcendence. The ultimate imperative of Emersonian freedom says, "do not choose." 36 In other words, let your will subdue all choices and all anxiety regarding them. Simply do. This understanding of freedom and the will is the one that Miller found so affecting in Jonathan Edwards. Moreover, where Edwards named this necessitous or enslaving will God, Emerson identified it as "Man Thinking." Freedom is oneness with "God," or nature; the creation of human constitutions is mere whim. A man is liberated in this way from every interference. He is a new Adam, a veritable Christ. This is the "reason and faith" that Emerson sought in the woods where ('all mean egotism vanishes." 37 But how perfectly does this Emersonian ideal of free- 46 dom recall the worldly freedom of slavemasters. Emerson's freedom, which does not wittingly or outwardly envision slaves and masters, was this: complete liberation requires the liberation of passion from the internal conflict of desires within one's self. This is the basis of that affirmation of uman' s freedom" celebrated now by writers on the subject of freedom such as David Brion Davis. Davis, perhaps the most highly regarded student of American abolition, counts the Munzterites and their like as the West's "first abolitionists" as we have already seen. If sin "was not a reality," says Davis, characterizing the first abolitionists, "but only a name that could be made meaningless by an act of will [Emerson's position], there could be no justification for inequalities of sex and property which violated the law of spontaneous love." Above all, the law of spontaneous love would overcome that most unconscionable property and possession, the self, or what Emerson called "mean egotism." Freedom from the ego is the red heart of abolitionism that Fitzhugh, too, discovered. It supplies as well those veins of radical, actually heretical, Christianity that historian Miller found beating as a "mighty engine of revolution" in Jonathan Edwards. 38 Lincoln linked memory of the Revolution to the Bible. His purpose was to show that truth or transcendence partakes of the sources of all transcendence, hence of its sanctity. Indeed, Lincoln goes far beyond Washington, whose own linking of religion and the political is not without a pragmatic aspect. The parallel that Lincoln proposes between American republicanism and Christianity is, for him, the source of all salvation in this world. Lincoln invests religious and Christian principles and their symbols with political ends. He counts the reverse, the investing of politics with religious ends, as of the essence of reversal and betrayal; the reversal of the two realms, religion and politics, and the betrayal of the separate purposes of each. Abolitionism is religious politics. American republicanism, compared by Lincoln to "that only greater institution," Christianity, is, like Christianity, a "rock against which the gates of hell shall not prevail." 39 Lincoln did not invoke the words of the Christian savior Jesus to his chief apostle Peter without purpose. Let us explore this comparison of Christianity with republicanism. It contains within it the essential elements of Lincoln's teaching on abolition. What is it, we must ask of Matthew 16:18, the Christian source Lincoln drew from for use in the Lyceum Address, that does prevail against Christianity? The answer is "suicide": the danger to republicanism, like the danger to Christianity according to Scripture, comes from within. The rock against which the gates of hell shall not prevail is the Church, actually Peter himself. In Matthew the gates of hell shall not prevail against Christianity or against the salvation provided to men by Jesus. But the -danger to Christianity is that Peter as a man and the Church as a body will behave falsely, suicidally. As the Church must keep the teaching of Jesus, so Peter must be loyal to Jesus. SUMMER 1982 �If these loyalties are kept, Matthew teaches, spiritual salvation is assured. These relations found in Matthew regarding man's spiritual salvation and the only institution greater than republicanism are duplicated in the Lyceum Address in which republicanism itself and political salvation are at issue. The relationships of Peter to Jesus and of the Church to the teachings of jesus compel us to consider the parallel that Lincoln makes between the first and second greatest institutions. In the Lyceum Address abolitionism (the real subject of the address) stands in relation to freedom as Peter stands in relation to jesus. Abolition as a movement favoring freedom for the slave is an "apostle" of the savior, freedom. If abolitionism is a faithful apostle the republic will be saved. If it is false-as Peter was at one crucial point-then Has a nation of free men we must . .. die by suicide." The relationship of the Constitution to the Declaration also expresses the relationship of the church to the teaching of jesus. Specifically, the survival of freedom calls for each American "to .. _support the Constitution and Laws [with] ... his life, his property and his sacred honor," just as the "patriots of seventy-six [supported] ... the Declaration of Independence."40 But just as the Southern slaveholders hoped to see the Constitution upheld at the expense of the Declaration, so the abolitionists and the advocates of popular sovereignty thought they could bypass the Constitution, the one by majority rule, the other by individual conscience, in favor of the Declaration. All three groups would deprive political life of content, none more so than abolitionism. Abolitionists were explicit in regarding all political things with contempt To the abolitionist, the occupation of political man, called upon to rank goods and evils in light of the vast complexities of civil life, was an evil enterprise. Where freedom of conscience is the highest good, either all men think alike, in which case no government is necessary, or each man thinks and acts differently, in which case no government is possible and certainly none is legitimate. Politics, in this view, is a game at best At worst it is the sign of man's degradation. This is how abolitionists most often saw government and political life. Accordingly, the abolitionist John Humphrey Noyes said to Garrison in the year of Elijah P. Lovejoy's murder, that he would "nominate jesus Christ for the Presidency" as the best means to "overthrow ... the nations."41 Thus abolitionist relativism disguised a dogmatic absolutism. In the history of American abolitionism there is no more perfect example of the fanaticism bred of such dogmatism -than the affair of john Brown. Brown, like Lovejoy, who courted martyrdom, confused the emancipation of slaves with the emancipation of souls. He confused his martyrdom with crucifixion and made his death nearly a suicide. Although john Brown was too pathetic and absurd to become more than a terrorist-Lincoln compared him to the frustrated assassin of Napoleon III-the acclaim Brown THE ST. JOHNS REVIEW won from Emerson and Thoreau, who compared him to Christ, is more important as an indication of the caesarism that Lincoln sensed in abolition than Brown's acts.42 Brown's comments in 1859 demonstrate the nature of the caesarism involved in the transformation of religion into politics. Brown's religious politics were the same as Noyes's, who abjured all political life, and also like Garrison's, who renounced (until about 1859) all violence. "Christ," said Brown, is "the great Captain of liberty; as well as salvation." This expression of religious politics was uttered by Brown after Harper's Ferry when he had begun to compare himself to religious heroes of old, including Peter. In a remarkably revealing comment, meant to justify religious politics, Brown misstates the role of Peter and thereby renders a Lincolnian judgment against himself. Writing a month before he was hanged, Brown said, "Christ once armed Peter. So also in my case I think he put a sword into my hand."43 But jesus disarmed Peter. When jesus was arrested, Peter was disarmed by his Master to show that the Kingdom of God, Jesus' presidency, was not of this, but of another world. It showed that jesus was not the captain of liberty as well as salvation. But while abolitionists condemned Lincoln as a moderate, and Douglas deplored what he called Lincoln's moral absolutism, that is, Lincoln's insistence that slavery was evil-in fact popular sovereignty and abolitionism were alike "absolutistic" in the sense disapproved by these foes of Lincoln who said they favored freedom. This is simply demonstrated: absolute freedom, whether for majorities or individual consciences, rests upon the self~canceling proposition that all truth is relative. The political or practical consequences of popular sovereignty and abolitionism as political remedies are more important. Lincoln under- stood that governments founded on the principle of popular sovereignty would destroy freedom by vote since that principle made it possible to enslave individuals if a majority decided that it was good to do so. Lincoln also realized that abolitionism would, for its part, make government and all social life impossible. Lincoln, supporting both majority rule and freedom, as well as the Constitution, which Southern slaveholders raised in their defense, sought to unify all three of these fundamental principles of American republicanism-majority rule, freedom, constitutionalism-as a means to prevent their destruction at the hands of any one of them. The method Lincoln employed for this purpose and called political religion may be called moderation. By moderation Lincoln did not mean the taking up of a position halfway between two extremes. This is what Fitzhugh meant by moderation or what modern liberals mean by it In this view the center is a creature of extremes. By moderation Lincoln understood a position above the extremes which, though partaking of principles found in each, majority rule in popular sovereignty and emancipa- 47 �tionism in abolition~ transforms and unites the extremities by means of a higher principle. The higher principle Lin· coin had in view was political religion in its mechanical and its essential aspects. Lincoln considered that political religion involved the substitution of persuasion for force as the essence of polit· ical religion. Moreover~ his political religion as a mechanical or procedural principle, by seeking common intellectual ground among members of the political community, ap· peals to the interests and passions of reasonable men, so that passion or force shall yield to reason, or to constitu· tions. The aim, then, of moderation is the replacement of force and passion with reason in each member of the political community. Political religion is the teaching of self-control. Lincoln's life shows three examples of this self-control. Two of these concern Lincoln's efforts toward others in the first years of his political life. The third example concerns Lincoln near the end of his life. Whether such consistency as Lincoln's was "foolish ... [,] the hobgoblin of [a] little mind ... ", as Emerson would have been bound to regard it, is a matter the reader must decide for himself.44 The first example of political religion is Lincoln's first public statement as a politician on the subject of slavery, his now famous protest in the lllinois legislature, made March 3, 1837, when he was twenty-eight years old. In principle and in method this early affair set a pattern from which he did not deviate. Although this protest is famous because of its opposition to slavery founded on "injustice and bad pGlicy," it is difficult to see why Lincoln should have received much credit for it.45 And, while Albert Beveridge, many years ago, could find little difference be· tween the majority resolutions and the protest of Lincoln and his fellow representative from Sangamon County, Dan Stone, except the "moral" difference between slavery and freedom, even this difference is not obvious.46 The majority resolutions of the Illinois legislature do not say that slavery is moral. Rather the resolutions are a high-flown defense of slavery as constitutional. The rna· jority contend that "the right of property in slaves, is sacred to the slaveholding states by the Federal Constitu· tion." 47 Stone and Lincoln do not deny this or even dispute another point of the majority, that the federal gov· ernment could not abolish slavery in the District of Columbia. What then is the difference between the rna· jority resolutions and Lincoln's protest? Is there indeed any basis for praise of Lincoln in the drafting of the pro· test at all? Lincoln not only agreed with the majority that the Constitution protected slavery, he also roundly con· demned the "promulgation of abolition doctrines [as tend· ing] ... rather to increase than to abate the evils of slavery."48 Finally, when one considers that Lincoln, eleven months later in the Lyceum Address, called upon every American never to violate the Constitution and laws in the "least particular," the difficulty in seeing any special point in the protest becomes even greater and more paradoxical.49 48 But of course it was Lincoln's agreement with the major· ity that makes the protest significant. The Illinois legisla· lure, responding to petitions from Southern legislatures seeking support and assurance that Northerners respected the constitutionality of slavery and deplored the anti· constitutional implications of abolitionism, had no oppo· nent in Lincoln. But just as Lincoln would not later, in the Lyceum Address, praise the mob that killed the abolitionist Lovejoy, so he could not join the majority in the Illinois legislature in giving unconditional support to the constitu· tional right to slavery without protesting that slavery was wrong. It is not the genius of Lincoln's rhetoric, however, but the intent of his politics that should be emphasized. Lincoln's intention in the protest was to call attention to his disagreement with the majority by means of his agreement with it. The "moral" difference was the only difference as it was later between Lincoln and Alexander Stephens. Here, as later, that difference was the rub. Freedom is what the Constitution supported, not slav· ery. Just as the framers had won support of the Constitu· tion by appealing to the monetary interests and passions of slaveholders, so Lincoln in his protest hoped to secure the support of men whose interests in the constitutional· ity of slavery had less to do with the Constitution than with such commercial interests as trading in Southern ports downriver from St. Louis or Alton. The second example of Lincoln's teaching of political religion is found in the Lyceum Address considered as a politician's instrument. Lincoln's strategy in Springfield, speaking to an audience caught up in the excitement of Lovejoy's recent murder, was the same as it had been in the Illinois legislature. Once again Lincoln's purpose was to teach self-control by demonstrating it. As we have already seen, Lincoln's objective in the Lyceum Address was to use Christian symbols to distinguish political religion from religious politics. In the Lyceum Address Lincoln identified abolitionism as a species of an· tinomianism. Abolitionism makes a political principle, freedom~ into a religious principle, salvation. Moreover, its open despising of politics is as dangerous to freedom as it is to religion. Abolitionism is the enemy of political religion because it is the enemy of freedom as well as law. But Lincoln was careful not to make this point in the manner of an abolitionist. He was moderate and did not say all he meant. In the Lyceum Address Lincoln set himself the task of showing that abolitionism is mob law, hence wrong. But Lincoln did not wish to appear to applaud Lovejoy's lynch· ers. Lincoln also wished to demonstrate that freedom is right without appearing to take Lovejoy's side against the mob (and against his audience which had no more affec· lion for Lovejoy than had the Illinois legislature). Lincoln's moderation is visible in the rhetorical struc· lure of the speech. He did not mention Lovejoy, the first and recent martyr to abolitionism, and also carefully sepa· rated his discussion of Lovejoy from his discussion of other SUMMER 1982 �victims of mob rule such as gamblers and murderers. In this way the reader or listener senses a difference between wrong behavior wrongly punished and abolitionism, also wrongly punished. The impression is that abolition is a churchly doctrine carried to the point of destroying both Church or Constitution, and doctrine or freedom. Free· dom liberated from its home in the law is a betrayal of freedom. Allied with mob law and with slavery in its con· tempt for law, abolition itself brings about lynchings. In· deed, Lincoln suggested that freedom and lynch lawslavery, in a word-may become one. This, incidentally, was Fitzhugh's point about abolitionism. Lincoln taught in the speech before the Illinois legisla· ture and in the Lyceum Address that self-control is the chief instrument and end of political religion. The "suicides" of Lovejoy and Brown should be called reversals of selfcontrol and betrayals of freedom, as the Lyceum address suggests. The identification of a man's will with the law is what men have always called absolutism. In fact it is the danger of absolutism in the name of emancipation or liberation that is the great center and focus of everything Lincoln taught and learned about freedom. Lincoln, a man whom his best friends knew to be exces· sively ambitious, possessed considerable personal knowl· edge about the freedom for which Emerson had only wished. It is perhaps as important to us that Lincoln had an opportunity to act on his knowledge. Thus Lincoln rea· lized as early as 18 38, and proclaimed publicly, that a "towering genius" and a passionate man who was unwill- ing simply to do his part, with lesser men, in preserving the gains to freedom brought by the Revolution, "would as willingly, perhaps more so, acquire [distinction] ... by doing good as harm."50 In particular, the great man who was not content to abide the constraints of law, who wished to tear down the "sepulchres of the fathers" 51 with Emer· son, rather than add "story to story upon the monument of fame erected to the memory of others," would as will· ingly serve his passion for distinction "at the expense of emancipating slaves" as by enslaving free men. Lincoln had this chance himself in the middle of the Civil War.52 Lincoln had an opportunity to emancipate slaves in a way satisfying to both his ambition for freedom as a prin· ciple and to his personal ambition. Shortly after the Emancipation Proclamation was issued, Lincoln was bid· den by Salmon P. Chase, his Secretary of the Treasury, to apply the Proclamation in areas specifically excepted by it, for example, parts of Louisiana, Tennessee, and Virginia that were under Union control. Such an application as Chase asker! Lincoln to make would subvert the letter and spirit of the Proclamation as a war measure. Lincoln resisted. Perhaps this was a hard decision-he was a man of genius after all. It was certainly a "religious" decision at all events. His explanation of his course of action to Chase is pertinent. If I take the step [you recommend] must I not do so, without the argument of military necessity, and so, without any arguTHE ST. JOHNS REVIEW ment, except the one that I think the measure politically expedient, and morally right? Would I not thus give up all footing upon constitution or law? Would I not thus be in the boundless field of absolutism?53 Liberation was the graver fire bell. Unlike the bell that frightened Jefferson, this bell rang at high noon when men do not fear fire but are inclined instead to regard it as a source of illumination and warmth. And Fitzhugh heard this graver bell, too. Unlike Lincoln he was delighted by its noise and especially by the abolitionists who rang it. Did they not alert all men, ifmen would only see-and Fitzhugh certainly thought the light was bright enoughthat the new freedom was none other than the old slavery? But here Fitzhugh may have been too sanguine. There was, as Lincoln strongly hinted, something new and far more dangerous in the new freedom. It was the brightness that troubled Lincoln. He may have guessed that someone would say, as Perry Miller did, that "one has to look into the blinding sun" in order to be free at all. 54 Yet who but a man with "a transparent eye· ball" can look into the blinding sun? .Only such a man as Emerson's Man Thinking or one who counts the tran· scending of self, the extinguishment of the human I as freedom; he says, in liberation: "I am nothing." 55 The issue was the abolition of man, a consequence Fitzhugh could not have imagined. The author is pleased to acknowledge the assistance of the Earhart Foundation in the preparation of this essay. 1. Fitzhugh was regarded as among the most important of slavery's defenders in his day, a judgement largely affirmed by later historians, including those who credit Fitzhugh with a Marxist-like critique of capital [Eugene Genovese, The World the Slaveholders Made: Two Essays in Interpretation, New York 1969}, and others who consider his defense of slavery unusual or sui generis [C. Vann Woodward, "George Fitzhugh, Sui Generis," in George Fitzhugh, Cannibals All/ or Slaves Without Masters, Cambridge 1960, vii-xxxix; Drew Gilpin Faust, A Sacred Circle: The Dilemma of the Intellectual in the Old South 1840-1860, Baltimore 1977.1 A recent collection of essays on Fitzhugh will be found in The Conservative Historians' Forum, 6, Spring 1982. 2. The Collected Works of Abraham Lincoln, ed., Roy P. Basler, 10 vols., New Brunswick, New Jersey 1953, II, 255. 3. See Lincoln's "Fragment on the Dred Scott Case," Works, II, 387-388. Lincoln makes the argument here that the Supreme Court must itself overthrow the Constitution, creating a kind of popular sovereignty among the three federal branches, if it can decide "all constitutional questions." 4. Fitzhugh, Cannibals All/ 69. 5. C. Vann Woodward, American Cotp;terpoint, Slavery and Racism in the North-South Dialogue, Boston 1971, 38. 6. H. D. Thoreau, Walden, New York 1960, 223. 7. Perry Miller, Jonathan Edwards, Westport, Connecticut 1949, 319. 8. David Brion Davis, The Problem of Slavery in Western Culture, Ithaca, New York 1966, 297. 9. Lincoln, Works, II, 266. 10. Lincoln, Works, II, 266. 11. Thoreau, Walden, 223. 12. Lincoln, Works, IV, 169. (Cf. Proverbs 25:11) 13. Lincoln, Works, I, 112. 49 �14. Metaphysics, 1072a30. 15. Phaedo, 62b4. 16. Alexandre Kojeve, Introduction to the Reading of Hegel, Ithaca, New Yock 1969, 247, 259, note 41. 17. Politics, l310a34-36. 18. Lincoln, Works, II, 252. 19. Lincoln, Works, IV, 160, 161. 20. Lincoln, Works, I, 109. 21. Frank Moore, ed., The Rebellion Record, New York 1862-1868, Supplement, I, Part II, 483. 22. J. G. Randall and David Donald, The Civil War and Reconstruction, rev. 2d ed., Lexington, Massachusetts 1973, 380. One of the better recent studies is La Wanda Cox, Lincoln and Black Freedom; A Study in Presidential Leadership, Columbia, S.C. 1981. 23. Richard Hofstadter, The American Poli~ical Tradition, New York 1955, 132. 24. Congressional Globe, 38 Congress, 2 sess, 497. 25. Moore, ed., The Rebellion Record, Supplement I, Part II, 482-483. 26. William Lloyd Garrison, Liberator, VII, June 23, 1837: 103. 27. Garrison, Liberator, VII, 103. 28. Garrison, Liberator, VII, 103. 29. See the present author's "Emerson's Platonism: and 'the terrific Jewish idea'," Mosaic: A Journal for the Interdisciplinary Study of Literature XV, 1982. 30. Robert Spiller and Alfred Ferguson, The Complete Works of Ralph Waldo Emerson, Cambridge 1971, 1979, II, 30. 31. Spiller and Ferguson, Complete Works. 32. Garrison, Liberator, XXIV, July 7, 1854: 106. 50 33. 34. 35. 36. 37. 38. ent Emerson, Works, II, 42; I, 53. Lincoln, Works, I, 108. Emerson, Works, I, 61. Emerson, Works, I, 82. Emerson, Works, I, 10. Davis, The Problem of Slavery, 299, 298; also on Davis see the presauthor's "The Idea of Freedom in American Historical Writing," The Center Joumal1, Fall, 1982; Miller, Jonathan Edwards, 319-20. 39. Lincoln, Works, I, ll5. 40. Lincoln, Works, I, ll2. 41. Noyes to Garrison in William Lloyd Garrison, the Story of his Life Told by his Children, 4 vols., Boston 1894, II, 147. 42. Lincoln, Works, III, 541. 43. John Brown to E. B. in Louis Ruchames, A John Brown Reader, London !959, 135, !29. 44. Emerson, Works, II, 33. 45. Lincoln, Works, I, 75. 46. Albert J. Beveridge, Abraham Lincoln, 4 vols., Boston 1928, I, 195. 47. Quoted in Lincoln, Works, I, 75. 48. Quoted in Lincoln, Works, I, 75. 49. Lincoln, Works, I, 112. 50. Lincoln, Works, I, ll4. 51. Emerson, Works, I, 7. 52. Lincoln, Works, I, ll4. 53. Lincoln, Works, VI, 429. 54. Miller, Jonathan Edwards, 195. 55. Emerson, Works, I, lO. SUMMER 1982 �Sophocles' Ajax and the Ajax Myth Philip Holt The Greek tragic poet worked with myths, with stories shaped by tradition and known (at least in outline) to his audience. 1 He was not wholly in control of his material. The poet interpreted the myth; he did not invent it. Myth required that Troy fall to the Greeks, that Agamemnon be murdered upon returning home, that Oedipus discover the truth about his birth and marriage. Yet myths were flexible within limits-sometimes, broad limits. The playwright could usually choose among different versions of his myth, and he could even make innovations of his own -not simply in drawing characters and writing speeches to flesh out the myth, but in constructing the plot. Aristotle (Poetics ch. 9, 145lb) took notice of this freedom: One must not aim at a rigid adherence to the traditional stories on which tragedies are based. It would be absurd, in fact, to do so, as even the known stories are only known to a few, though they are a delight none the less to all. In view of this flexibility within tradition, we can approach a Greek play by contrasting it with earlier treatments of the same story. What did its author emphasize that his predecessors had played down, or add which they had omitted, or delete which they had included? With these questions answered, we can go on to interpret the play itself: precisely what did the playwright create by presenting his version of the story rather than some other? 1. The Myth The story of Ajax' death, as Sophocles tells it, is complicated. After Achilles died, Ajax and Odysseus laid claim to his armor. The Greeks awarded it to Odysseus. Enraged at this slight to his honor, Ajax set out by night to kill the THE ST. JOHNS REVIEW Greek leaders, but Athena clouded his mind so that he mistook the army's cattle for its men, and he killed and tortured the cattle instead. When he recovered his sanity and saw what he had done, shame and fear of reprisals drove him to fall on his sword. The Greek commanders sought to punish him after death by leaving his body unburied, but Odysseus persuaded them to allow his funeral. Sophocles' authority and the excellence of his play made this version prominent in later antiquity and standard for modern times. But this was not the version Sophocles inherited, probably in the 440s B.C., when he wrote the Ajax. The evidence on earlier treatments of the myth is often spotty, but it gives us good reason to believe that Sophocles' predecessors knew a simpler story with some highly un-Sophoclean meanings-' We first find the Ajax story in Odyssey 11.543-551, where Odysseus tells of his journey to the underworld and its ghosts: Only the soul of Telamonian Aias stood off at a distance from me, angry still over that decision I won against him, when beside the ships we disputed our cases for the arms of Achilleus. His queenly mother set them as prize, and the sons of the Trojans, with Pallas Athene, judged; and I wish I had never won in a contest like this, so high a head has gone under the ground for the sake of that armor, Aias, who for beauty and achievement surpassed all the Danaans next to the stately son of Peleus. Philip Holt wrote his doctoral dissertation on Sophocles' Trachiniae (Stanford 1976). He has published several articles on Vergil and Sophocles. 51 �Figure 2. Etruscan bronze statuette, 460s B.c.; sui· cide of Ajax; Kappeli collection, photo courtesy of Antikenmuseum und Skulpturhalle, Basel. Figure 1. Corinthian cup by the cavalcade painter, sixth century B.C.; Greek leaders discover Ajax' suicide; private collection, photo courtesy of Antikenmuseum und Skulpturhalle, Basel. Odysseus goes on to tell how he tried to speak to Ajax, but Ajax walked off without saying a word. Beyond the bare facts that Ajax lost the judgment of arms and died, Homer tells us only that "the sons of the Trojans" decided the dispute. He probably means (as one scholiast tells us) that the Greeks summoned a group of Trojan prisoners and asked them "by which of the two heroes they had been more greatly harmed." There is nothing about Ajax' madness or the slaughter of the cattle. Pindar tells the story with considerable sympathy for the fallen hero in three passages written from 479 to 459 B.C.: The greater mass of men have blind hearts. If it were possible for them to know the truth, then mighty Ajax would not have become enraged over the arms and thrust a smooth sword through his breast. [Nemean 7.23-27] Envy devoured even the son ofTelamon, rolling him upon his sword. Oblivion overcomes in grim strife the man who has no tongue but is mighty in heart; the greatest honor goes to the elaborate lie. For with secret votes the Danaans showed Odysseus favor. Ajax, deprived of the golden arms, wrestled with death. [Nemean 8.23-27] The art of inferior men has seized and overthrown a stronger man. Consider mighty Ajax, who slaughtered himself late at night and won blame from aU the sons of the Greeks who went to Troy. [Isthmian 4.36-40] Where Homer committed the judgment of arms to "the sons of the Trojans with Pallas Athene," Pindar has it decided by the "secret votes" of the Greeks. He also regards the judgment of arms as unjust. Ajax deserved to win, but he lost because "the greater mass of men" were "blind" to his true worth, or because of the Greeks' envy and desire to curry favor with Odysseus, or because the hero "who has no tongue, but is mighty in heart" is vul- 52 nerable to "the art of inferior men." Pindar's view of Ajax as a victim of injustice and corruption carried weight in later decades. The Socrates of Plato's Apology (41 b) muses that if he must die, It would be marvelous to pass time in Hades and meet Palamedes and Ajax the son of Telamon and ariy other of the men of old who died because of an unjust verdict, and to compare my sufferings with -theirs. This hero is not, however, the Ajax of the Odyssey, where Odysseus mourns Ajax' death without admitting that Ajax was cheated. Nor is it the Ajax of Sophocles. Both Homer and Pindar move immediately from the judgment of arms to Ajax' death. They put nothing in between-no plot to murder the Greeks, no delusion sent by Athena, no slaughter of the cattle. They might have known of these things and chosen to leave them out, for the picture of Ajax as a murderous, cattle-killing madman would mar Homer's sorrow over the passing of a great warrior and Pindar's indignation at heroic virtue misunderstood and unrewarded. Or they might not have known them. Their version of the story is quite intelligible, without any gaps to be filled with madness or attempted murder from Sophocles' plot. Homer and Pindar may present the original version of the myth, for time and retelling are more likely to complicate a myth than to simplify it. The short version kept its appeal in later times. Ovid gives us the shortest version of all, with Ajax killing himself on the spot the minute the verdict goes against him (Metamorphoses 13.1-398). The Odyssey and Pin dar's Odes contain the only surviving accounts of Ajax' death in poetry before Sophocles. More complicated versions (if any) must be sought among the fragments (often meager) of lost epics and dramas, and in works of art. Our story appeared twice in the "cycle" of epics composed not long after Homer to round out the story of the SUMMER 1982 �Figure 3. Etruscan carnelian scarab, early fourth century B.C.; suicide of Ajax; photo courtesy of Fitzwilliam Museum, Cambridge. Trojan War and its aftermath. The Aethiopis closed with it, with the essential events of the short version. Proclus, the author of a plot summary from the fifth century A.D., tells us that the Aethiopis included the judgment of arms. After Achilles' death, he says, "the Greeks made a grave· mound and held a contest, and a dispute arose between Odysseus and Ajax over Achilles' arms." The suicide is at· tested by a scholiast on the Isthmian 4 passage quoted earlier: "The author of the Aethiopis says that Ajax killed himself towards dawn." The judgment of arms may well have been settled by a jury of Trojan prisoners. A scholiast on the Odyssey ll passage quoted earlier says the Trojan jury is described in "the cyclic poets," and we shall see that it does not come from our only other possibility, the Little Iliad. There is no literary evidence that the Aethiopis included Ajax' plot to murder the Greeks, his madness, or the attack on the cattle. The Aethiopis may have been content with the short version of our story-Ajax killing himself "towards dawn" after a night of brooding over his disgrace. This ending would preserve the Aethiopis' focus on Achilles' exploits after the death of Hector. The death of Ajax-best of the Greeks after Achilles (Iliad 2.768 f., Odyssey 11.550 f.) and Achilles' companion and (in one tradition) his cousinwould fit into the Aethiopis as a somber coda to the death of Achilles himself. It would fit better in a short version than in a long one. This may not be the whole story. Scenes from the epic cycle appear on a large relief sculpture from the early Roman .empire, the Tabula Iliaca Capitolina, and the section devoted to the Aethiopis includes a brooding figure captioned "Ajax mad." The nature of his madness-delusion, rage, melancholy-is not clear. In any event, the Tabula Iliaca Capitolina is too late, and too far slanted towards Roman versions of the myths, to tell us much about the Aethiopis. THE ST. JOHNS REVIEW Figure 4. Athenian black-figure amphora by Exekias, 530s B.C.; Ajax prepares to commit suicide; photo by H. and B. Devos, courtesy of Musee des Beaux-Arts et d'Archeologie, Boulogne-sur-Mer. Another work in the epic cycle, the Little Iliad, opened with the judgment of arms in a different version from the Aethiopis. To settle the dispute between Odysseus and Ajax, the Greeks sent spies up to the walls of Troy to learn the Trojans' opinion of the two heroes. Conveniently enough, the spies overheard two women debating that very question. One praised Ajax for carrying Achilles' corpse out of the thick of battle, but the other replied ("through the providence of Athena") that Odysseus was braver because of his work in fighting-presumably in fighting off the Trojans while Ajax made away with the body. This tradition of a decision on narrow grounds in the judgment of arms (best service in rescuing Achilles' corpse, not greatest overall prowess) was disregarded by Pindar and Sophocles, but it was fairly widespread in epic. It even left traces in the third or fourth century A.D., in the Posthomerica of Quintus of Smyrna (5.125, 158-160). More important, our sources on the Little Iliad tell us that after the judgment of arms, "Ajax went mad, slaughtered the cattle of the Achaeans, and killed himself," and that because of this deed "he was not cremated in the usual way, but was buried in a mound because of the anger of the king." Scholars tend to assume this means Ajax set out to kill the Greeks but was blinded by Athena and killed the cattle instead. They use Sophocles' plot to fill out the gaps in our evidence for the Little Iliad, and then they turn around and conclude that the Little Iliad gave Sophocles his plot. Sophocles certainly took the slaughter of the cattle from the Little Iliad, and the "irregular" burial there probably inspired the debate over Ajax' burial in the last part of his play. The madness in the Little Iliad, however, invites another explanation once we stop using Sophocles' Ajax to piece out the story. If we read that "Ajax went mad, slaughtered the cattle of the Achaeans, and killed himself," the natural inference is that Ajax went berserk 53 �Figure 6. Athenian red-figure cup by Douris, c. 490 B.C.; quarrel of Ajax and Odysseus over Achilles' armor; photo courtesy of Kunsthistorisches Museum, Vienna. Figure 5. Athenian red-figure lekythos, 460s B.C.; Ajax prepares to commit suicide (sword planted in ground to right); private collection, photo courtesy of Antikenmuseum und Skulpturhalle, Basel. Figure 8. Detail of Figure 7. Odysseus; Kunsthistorisches Museum. Figure 7. Other side of the cup by Douris; vote on the judgment of arms; Kunsthistorisches Museum. Figure 9. Detail of Figure 7. Ajax; Kunsthistorisches Museum. 54 SUMMER 1982 �and vented his wrath on the nearest available object, the cattle. This madness is a frenzy, not a delusion. Agamemnon's anger can be explained by the attack on the cattle (army property) without reference to a plot to murder the Greeks.3 The epic cycle gives other evidence of an enraged (not a deluded) Ajax. A fragment of the Sack of Ilium praises the diagnostic skills of the physician Podalirius, "who first recognized the flashing eyes and burdened mind of the wrathful Ajax." These symptoms may have boded an attack on the cattle or a simple suicide; they hardly suggest the onset of a hallucination. The elaborate and melodramatic story found in the Little Iliad, with its spy mission, madness, and rampage among the cattle, stands in contrast to the more somber and straightforward version which seems to have appeared in the Aethiopis. Intrigue and adventure are characteristic of the Little Iliad. It is an episodic work, fond of complicated and varied incidents. Aristotle complained that it was too episodic: one could find eight or ten tragic plots in it, where a properly focused epic like the Iliad offered only one of two (Poetics ch. 23, 1459b). Amid all its romance and adventure, and no doubt because of these things, the Little Iliad maintains a special interest in Odysseus, whose wiles and exploits occupy a large part of its action. The Little Iliad glorifies its favorite hero by making his opponent's conduct as outrageous as possible. By contrast, the Aethiopis seems to have been relatively sympathetic to Ajax, who is much like its own favorite hero, Achilles. Aeschylus wrote a play called The Judgment of Arms and presented Ajax' suicide in The Thracian Women. These plays included some interesting details not found in other pre-Sophoclean versions of the myth. Aeschylus seems to have used Nereids, not Greeks or Trojans, to decide the judgment of arms (fr. 285). His Ajax was endowed with a magical invulnerability (fr. 292b): According to the story, Ajax was invulnerable on the rest of his body, but he could be wounded in the armpit, because when Heracles wrapped him in his lion-skin he left that part uncovered because of the quiver which he wore. Aeschylus says of him that the sword bent "like a man stretching a bow" when his skin did not give way to the blow, until (he says) a goddess came and showed him in what part of the body he needed to stab himself. There is nothing in the fragments (admittedly scanty) about madness or cattle. Aeschylus' two Ajax plays may have presented the two essential events of the short version of our myth-the judgment of arms and the suicide -with little in between. In art, Ajax' death furnished material for vase-painters, metal-workers, and gem-engravers throughout antiquity.' Representations of the suicide reach back as far as the seventh century B.C. They show Ajax bending over or lying face down as a great sword, planted hilt down in the earth, pierces his body. On the manner of Ajax' suicide, THE ST. JOHNS REVIEW Sophocles was following an old and well-established tradition. Figure I shows an early example from Corinth, with the Greek chieftains gathered around to look at the body. Later artists, more adept at showing the human figure in action, sometimes varied the poses. Etruscan artists of the fifth and fourth centuries B.C. (with whom the scene was rather popular) show Ajax in wild, contorted attitudes, leaping on his sword almost like an acrobat (Figure 2 and 3). Athenian representations of the suicide are fewer, but more impressive, than those from Corinth and Etruria. A well-known vase by the black-figure master Exekias from the 530s B.C. shows a naked, intent Ajax planting his sword in the ground (Figure 4). His armor sits opposite him, a reminder of the warrior's life he is leaving and of the warrior's honor that drives him to his death. In the 460s, an Athenian artist working in the later red-figure technique .showed a similar scene (Figure 5).5 This Ajax, less grim and more plaintive, kneels before his upturned sword, arms raised in prayer, in a scene recalling his dying speech in Sophocles. Both these scenes, though painted well before Sophocles wrote, would make excellent illustrations for his play. The other main event of our story, the judgment of arms, is fairly popular with Athenian artists. The debate between Odysseus and Ajax appears on vases before 500 B.C., and scenes of the Greeks voting on their claims enjoy a vogue between 500 and 480. In one example (Figure 6), the two heroes quarrel violently over Achilles' armor. They rush at each other, one drawing his sword, the other with his sword already drawn. Their friends try to hold them back. Agamemnon, with the armor at his feet, stands between them to keep them apart. The other side of the cup (Figure 7) shows a more orderly scene: the Greeks vote (with pebbles, like Athenian jurors) between the two heroes. Athena presides-'-perhaps to bless democratic procedure, perhaps to ensure Odysseus' victory. Since the Greeks pile their pebbles up in the open rather than follow the Athenian practice of putting them in urns, we can see how the voting is going. The pile on the left is clearly bigger, and at the far left of the scene Odysseus shows his surprise and delight (Figure 8). At the far right, Ajax turns away to lean on his staff and hide his head in his mantle (Figure 9). Another cup from about the same time gives us different versions of the same scenes. In the quarrel (Figure I 0), we see the Greeks restraining the heroes again as a regal, but agitated, Agamemnon steps between them and shouts for order. The other side of the cup shows the scene immediately after the voting (Figure II). A close look shows fifteen pebbles on the left and fourteen on the right: the vote has been close, but Odysseus wins. To the far right, Ajax claps his hand to his head in dismay. To the left, the cup is badly broken, but we can make out the second figure from the left as Athena, for the tassels of her aegis project from her back. The figure to her right is 55 �Figure 10. Athenian red·figure cup by the Brygos painter, c. 490 B.C.; quarrel of Ajax and Achilles; collection of Walter Bareiss, photo courtesy of The Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York; all rights reserved, The Metropolitan Museum of Art. probably Odysseus, for he is holding a shield, whose lower rim can be seen below the broken edge of the cup. He has just taken possession of Achilles' armor. · The painter of this cup carries the story a step further (Figure 12). On the inside of the cup (for its strongstomached owner to see as he drained the last of his wine), he shows Ajax pierced by his sword and lying dead as Tecmessa comes up to drape a robe over his body. Ajax lies on a nubbly surface, probably a beach. The setting at the seashore and Tecmessa covering the body appear here forty years before Sophocles showed them on the stage. In these details as in the manner of Ajax' suicide, Sophocles was following an older tradition. The artists, like the poets, appear interested primarily in the two main events of our myth, the judgment of arms and Ajax' suicide. They paid little attention to what happened in between. The slaughter of the cattle appears only once in vase-painting before Sophocles (Figure 13). Only fragments of the vase survive, but we can make out the hindquarters of a bull, lying supine with legs upturned, on one fragment and the hindquarters of a sheep in a similar position on another. The human figures must be curious or horrified Greeks on the morning after Ajax' rampage. After this vase, the cattle drop from sight (except for one appearance in Hellenistic timesf until the first century B.C. and after in Rome. The Romans more than made up for Greek neglect of the slaughtered cattle, but only with repeated reproductions of one scene. Ajax sits on a rock~ resting his head on one hand and holding a sword. Carcasses of slaughtered animals are before him. We have over thirty copies of this scene, mostly on engraved gems (Figure 14), based on a 56 Figure 11. Other side of the cup by the Brygos painter; vote oh the judgment of arms; collection of Walter Bareiss; all rights reserved, The Metropolitan Museum of Art. work of art which somehow became popular in Rome in the first century B.C. That work of art was more likely an illustration of Sophocles' play than an inspiration for it. Finding Ajax' madness in ancient art is almost as hard as finding slaughtered cattle. The wild, contorted poses in some scenes of Ajax' suicide suggest Ajax killing himself in a frenzy, but the madness of Sophocles' play is different. There are no scenes of Ajax' attempt on the Greeks in ancient art. Athena's intervention to cloud his wits might appear difficult to show in a painting, but it is not impossible; Greek art is no stranger to mad scenes. No Greek artist~ however~ undertook this one. 2. The Play Sophocles did not inherit a canonical version of the Ajax myth. His predecessors in treating the story left him a simple outline (judgment of arms, suicide of Ajax) and ample room for choice in filling it out. Our study of the myth shows what choices Sophocles made and how they affected the meaning of the play. By examining the poet's sources~ we discover something often undervalued in a Greek writer: his originality. Like other fifth-century writers, but unlike some of the epic poets, Sophocles universalized the judgment of arms by having it decided on the broadest possible groundsSUMMER 1982 �between the assertive and cooperative virtues. Ajax is above all an individualistic hero, bold and self-assertive, proud and independent. His prowess in battle makes him a valued member of the community, needed by the Greek army, needed even more by his own followers, Tecmessa and the Chorus. His prowess also sets him apart-stationed at a post of honor at the extreme end of the Greek camp (4), open to the envy and resentment of others (154157), repeatedly called ((alone," Single," "solitary" in the language of the play. He does little to fit in with the community, to accommodate his rugged nature to its demands. His treatment of Tecmessa and the Chorus shows how deaf he is to advice and entreaties from others; his attempt to murder the Greeks shows how little he cares for the rights of others when his own are at stake. Where his abilities and temper set him apart, he insists on being set apart in honor too-in winning extraordinary prizes to match his extraordinary merits. Like his cousin Achilles, he meets the great crisis of his life when the loss of a prize breaks down the correlation between his achievements and the community's recognition. From then on, his individualism isolates him further. He becomes the would-be murderer of his comrades in arms, an object of universal hatred (457-459), a weak support for a Chorus which cannot understand him and for a devoted woman he does not care to understand, and finally a solitary suicide left to address his last words to the landscape. Only his burial gives him a place in the human community again 7 His character and fate show both the attractions and the problems of the heroic imperative to excel, to stand out from the rest of the community. In contrast to Ajax, Odysseus is very much the man of the community, endowed with the cooperative spirit, reasonableness, and readiness to try persuasion that Ajax lacks -all qualities necessary for the smooth functioning of society. Odysseus shows these qualities most clearly at the end of the play, when he breaks into a deadlocked debate between Teucer and the Atreidae to secure Ajax' right to burial. This debate is almost surely Sophocles' invention, although Ajax' "irregular" funeral in the Little Iliad probably inspired it. By including the debate, Sophocles displays Odysseus' conciliatory spirit to good adva_ntage against the vituperation, intransigence, and petty pnde of the others. More impressive than Odysseus' persuasive skills in breaking the deadlock are the humility and moderation that bring his success. More than anyone else in the play, he knows the limits set upon mortal life. He hated Ajax "while. it was right to hate" (1347), but justice and respect for Ajax' merits tell him not to pursue that enmity past death (1344 f.): 11 Figure 12, Inside of the cup by the Brygos painter; suicide of Ajax; Tecmessa covers the body; collection of Walter Bareiss; all rights reserved, The Metropolitan Museum of Art. on who was the best of the Greeks generally, not on who did the most to rescue Achilles' body. He further universalized the conflict by following a tradition that emerged around 500 B.C.: the whole Greek community settled the dispute by a democratic vote. Classical authors universalized the conflict in different ways. For Pindar, the conflict between Ajax and Odysseus pits true worth against low cunning. Odysseus represe_nts the art of inferior men," and he wins a popular electiOn because "the greater mass of men have blind hearts." Something similar appears in Ajax' and Teucer's complaints that the judgment of arms was rigged (445 f., 1135, 1137), but this is mere propaganda, unsupported by the facts of the play. Sophocles may be raising Pindar's idea of a corrupt election only to reject it. Other classical authors (mostly after Sophocles) see the judgment of arms as the victory of intelligence and wit over mere strength and courage. In the fourth century B.C., Antisthenes wrote two speeches for Ajax and Odysseus that stress the conflict of intelligence and courage, and the conflict looms large in the later debate-scenes of Ovid and Quintus of Smyrna. Ajax becomes the hero of brawn defeated by the hero of brain-though he is still far from the "beef-witted lord" of Shakespeare's Troilus and Cressida. Again, Sophocles raises the idea, for we hear of Ajax' size and strength as his main qualities (1077 f., 1250-1254; cf. 758). Again, he rejects it: the words come from Ajax' enemies, and the !).jax we see in the play is an intelligent man. His speeches are forceful, well thought out, and eloquent. On the battlefield, too, he is thoughtful. "Who was found more prudent than this man, or better at doing what the occasion demanded?" Athena asks rhetorically (119 f.). Few other authors praise Ajax for prudence or sagacity. For Sophocles, the judgment of arms shows the conflict 11 THE ST. JOHNS REVIEW It is not just to harm a noble man once he is dead, not even if you happen to hate him. Since he knows human limits, he accepts human changes: "Many who are now friends become enemies again" (1359). 57 �Figure 13. Fragments of an Athenian red-figure cup by Onesimus, 490s {?); photo by M. Chuzeville, courtesy of the Louvre, Paris. B.C.; the Greeks discover the slaughter of the cattle Ajax made the same observation earlier, but in a tone of bitter, cynical disillusionment (678-683): I now learn that we are to hate our enemy only so much, as one who will be our friend again, and I shall want to help my friend only so much, as one who will not always remain my friend; for with most mortals the harbor of companionship is untrustworthy. In contrast, Odysseus accepts changes pragmatically and finds in them a call for tolerance and magnanimity. Odysseus thinks as he does because he knows we are all weak and mortal. The fallen enemy is no different from the rest of us; Ajax' fate can happen to anyone (1364 f.): Agamemnon: So you bid me to let this corpse be buried? Odysseus: I do, for I myself shall come to this. Odysseus' words here recall his pity for Ajax in the prologue (121-126): I pity the wretch, even if he is my enemy, because he is yoked to an awful ruin, anO I think no more of his case than of my own. For I see that we who live are nothing but phantoms or a light shadow. His enmity with Ajax matters less than their common humanity. This is the wisdom of Priam and Achilles in the last book of the Iliad, but Odysseus uses this wisdom dif· ferently. Priam and Achilles weep together, then part to go to their separate dooms. Odysseus turns towards life, formulates sound principles for guiding life in community, and applies those principles with telling force in the final debate. In the words of Sophocles' famous praise of human achievement, "he has taught himself the temperament that governs towns" (Antigone 354-356). Sophocles sees Odysseus' famous versatility not as low trickery (as Pindar did) or as cynical pragmatism (as Sophocles was to 58 Figure 14. Roman gem; Ajax amid the slaughtered cattle; one carcass visible to the left; photo courtesy of the British Museum, London. do later in the Philoctetes), but as the humble flexibility that we need to live with others. Odysseus' victory over Ajax in a democratic election is the result of his sociable wisdom. Sophocles could have had him win through the favor of Athena or the caprice of Trojan prisoners. Victory through the community's choice shows the community's preference for humility and concern for the common good over boundless self-assertion and love of distinction. Odysseus makes a better neighbor (if not a better story-book hero) because he is good for the community. If Sophocles made Odysseus nobler than the tradition did, he made Ajax more selfish, violent, and irrational. Ajax is a fascinating and sympathetic figure in Sophocles' hands, but one of the most significant conclusions that emerges from comparing the play with the myth is that our sympathy for him comes very hard indeed. Sophocles included everything the myth offered-and possibly much that it did not-that might discredit the hero. Unlike Homer and Pindar, he makes Ajax slaughter the cattlean act both horrifying and absurd. Unlike the author of the Little Iliad (probably), he makes the slaughter of the cattle a diversion from something worse-the slaughter of the Greeks. He adds other touches that might, if treated differently, serve admirably to blacken Ajax' character: his callous disregard for the loving Tecmessa and for the family ties that she invokes; his proud and foolish rejection of divine aid, told to us by the Messenger in another apparent Sophoclean invention (762-775); his boast in the prologue over the torture he thinks he is inflicting on Odysseus. If Sophocles had set out to make a villain of Ajax, or to debunk his brand of heroism after the manner of Euripides, it is hard to see what more he could have done to the story. SUMMER 1982 �Yet the play does not debunk, and it is not the story of a bad man's downfall-the sort of story Aristotle warned tragedians to avoid (Poetics ch. 13, 1453a). For all his faults, Ajax still merits Tecmessa' s love and the Chorus' devotion. He is a greater, perhaps even a better, man than most who survive him. Agamemnon and Menelaus are full of petty spite, eager to abuse in death a man they could never surpass in life. Teucer, though more sympathetic, is a small-scale Ajax, a man of mere pugnacity, not of grand wrath. Even the wise Odysseus is a small-scale figure, a good and humble man rather than a great one. Display of their smallness, and of Ajax' greatness by contrast, is one reason for the debate over the hero's burial at the end of the play. (It is also one reason why some critics find the debate dull and undramatic.) Ajax' greatness is not simply shown in his foils. It is shown in the man himself. His courage and prowess are beyond serious question, and Odysseus admits (agreeing with the epic tradition) that Ajax was the best of the Greeks after Achilles (13 39-1341 ). His faults are fascinating, not repugnant, because they are the faults of a great man, not of a small one. His towering (and largely justified) self-confidence, his anger and self-assertiveness, his refusal to accept the army's judgment or Tecmessa' s advice, all stem from the same nature that made him the bulwark of the Achaeans. His heroic merits and heroic vices are inextricably linked: we cannot have the merits without the vices. The same can be said of Sophocles' other heroes. The qualities that make Philoctetes a worthy possessor of Heracles' bow and an indispensable member of the Greek army at Troy also give him a self-destructive grudge that confines him more tightly than his exile and nearly keeps him from going to the war. The same quick wit, keen pride, and decisiveness that make Oedipus king of Thebes and drive him to search for the truth also arouse his groundless suspicions of Creon. Some years earlier, they led him to kill his father at the crossroads. Sophocles' work shows an enduring preoccupation with the problems and appeal of a rugged, proud sort of human excellence, unquestionably great but not entirely good, needed by society but not amenable to society's desires or demands. The paradoxes in Sophocles' heroes also show themselves in the hero-cults of Greek religion. A hidi5s, in Greek terms, is a person who has died but who continues to exercise unusual power over human life and who demands worship at his (or sometimes her) grave.8 Heroes are not honored because they are good; they are appeased and conciliated because they are powerful and dangerous. Their power is often linked to a sinister force of character that shows itself in pride, swiftness to anger, hunger for honor. Heroes arouse in their worshipers a fascinated awe or dread that is quite independent of moral judgment. Sophocles was a devotee of hero-cults. He helped introduce the worship of Asclepius to Athens, and he founded a shrine to Heracles. (These figures were not pure heroes, THE ST. JOHNS REVIEW but their worship combined heroic and divine elements.) He was the priest of another hero-cult and was honored as a hero himself after his death. Every recorded example of his famous piety is connected with a hero-cult. His interest in hero-cults carried over from his life into his art. Oedipus at Colonus tells, among other things, the story behind a hero-cult in Sophocles' district of Athens. The benefit that Oedipus can confer on the place of his death, and over which Thebans and Athenians fight, is the benefit that a city receives from the burial and worship of a hero in its territory. Like the Oedipus at Colonus, the Ajax involves the foundation-story of a local hero-cult. Ajax was a popular hero in Athens, the patron of one of the ten tribes of Athenian citizens. He and his family were invoked to defend their home island, Salamis, at the battle in 480 B.C. (Herodotus 8.64, 121). The debate on his burial at the end of the play is important partly because a proper funeral and a recognizable tomb are generally prerequisites for a hero-cult. Interest in Ajax' cult seems to have influenced Sophocles' treatment of Ajax' character. He draws out the tensions and sharpens the paradoxes latent in the worship of heroes. He probes the fascination which heroes inspire. In developing our own contemporary response to the play, we should keep in mind that fascination with heroes of this sort is not confined to ancient Greece. Something like it lives on in popular culture. We find it in the romantic fascination with the temperamental artist or performer, who can treat family and friends abominably, be moody, egotistical, and possibly mad, and still write great poems or symphonies or deliver great performances on the stage. On another level, there is something like it in a type of athletic hero who has become popular (at least in the United States) in the last fifteen years or so-the braggart, bully, or playboy who wins games.' It would be misleading to say that these people succeed in spite of their irresponsibility, selfishness, and lack of restraint. In a sense, they succeed because of them; the Hheroic" vices stem from the same forces of character that produce gripping music, impassioned acting, and last-second touchdowns. Even in an age far more inclined than ancient Greece to demand humility of its heroes, and far more ready to spread moral standards into every department of life, the archaic cult-hero has a place. Fans of Richard Wagner and Maria Callas (not to mention joe Namath and Muhammed Ali) know something of its power. Sophocles' appreciation of Ajax' heroism is great, but extraordinarily balanced and clear-eyed. He shows us a hero worthy of admiration, but he does not ignore the claims of the community or the dangers of the heroic temper. Sophocles knows the cost of having men like Ajax in the world, and he produces a profound appreciation of the moral ambiguities of the Greek heroic type. His appreciation of Ajax would not be so subtle and deep without Ajax' plot to murder the Greeks, or his slaughter of the cattle, or his rejection of divine aid, or the other in- 59 �criminating details left out of most other treatments of the myth. Sophocles' most important departure from tradition concerns the nature of Ajax' madness. In earlier versions of the story (certainly in the Sack of Ilium, possibly in the Little Iliad), the madness is a rage or a frenzy-if it appears at all. In Sophocles, it is the delusion that cattle were Greek soldiers. 10 This is made quite clear in the prologue, where Athena describes Ajax' adventures with the care and detail we would expect in an original (or at least, an unfamiliar) version of the story. By her account, Ajax was sane when he set out to kill the Greeks. She did not intervene, "casting hard-to-bear imaginings upon his mind" (51 f.), until he was at the entrance of the Atreidae's tent. Ajax in the prologue is mad .because he is still deluded. His recovery (described by Tecmessa) lies in regaining his wits and recognizing what he has really done. Nobody in the play blames madness for Ajax' attack on the Greeks, or for his suicide, or for anything else except the delusion and the accompanying slaughter of the cattle. Identifying the limits of Ajax' madness does not reduce its importance in the play. Rather, it helps us understand its meaning and dramatic function better by focusing our attention on the important theme of correct perception. Perception gets little attention, as far as we can tell, in earlier treatments of the Ajax story. Perception is, however, a theme dear to Sophocles' heart, especially in his earlier plays. Discoveries and revelations are important in the Antigone, the Trachiniae, and the Oedipus Tyrannus. Both the Ajax and the Oedipus draw symbolic links between physical sight and deeper knowledge. In the Oedipus, sight and knowledge are opposed: the blind "seer" Teiresias has knowledge that the sighted Oedipus lacks, and Oedipus blinds himself when he gains knowledge. In the Ajax, sight and knowledge are equated. Ajax' delusion about cattle and men symbolizes ignorance about more important matters. In some ways, the ramifications of the hero's ignorance are more complex and varied in the Ajax than in the Oedipus. Ajax' delusion expresses (and aggravates) his heroic isolation. He is so cut off from his fellows that he cannot even see them plainly, and so full of contempt for them that he sees no difference between them and beasts. More important, the delusion reflects a basic confusion that was already in his mind about telling his friends from his enemies. 11 The Greeks, supposedly his friends, turned out to be his enemies (as he sees it) by depriving him of Achilles' arms. Tecmessa, once his enemy, has become a loving and devoted friend (487-495). Odysseus, the friend turned enemy, does a friend's service by securing Ajax' right to burial. Friends and enemies keep changing places. Ajax' bitter reflections on that fact (678-683, quoted earlier) are drawn directly from his experience. Odysseus, as we have seen, accepts that mutability and acts with the appropriate moderation. Ajax is confused by it, and particularly 60 confused by the supposed treachery of the Greeks against him. The confusion about cattle and men is a natural result. Even Ajax' confusion about friends and enemies is but one aspect of something more general: confusion about the nature of the world. The steadfast Ajax believes in a world that runs according to fixed and definite rules. He had every reason to think he would get Achilles' arms because of his lineage and deeds (434-440). There seemed to be no way he could fail to kill the Atreidae (447-456). He thought he could reject divine aid in battle because his own strength would be equal to any challenge (762-775). What these things have in common is Ajax' firm confidence that the qualities of things and men are fixed, not to be altered by time and chance. His confidence is misplaced. The world of this play is full of unexpected and irrational change. "A day brings down and brings back up again all things human," says Athena (131 f.). Ajax' experience is excellent proof of her words. The Ajax is a story of discovery. The hero wrestles with disillusionment, comes to see the way things really are, and faces the problem of living in a world of change. This intellectual enterprise has a symbolic model in Ajax' delusion about the cattle and his recovery from that delusion. Sophocles first tells the story of the little delusion about cattle, then goes on to develop the larger story of Ajax' discovery of the nature of the world. We can now follow that larger story through the play. Early in the play, especially in his first monologue (430480), Ajax confronts the shock that his loss of Achilles' arms and his failure to kill the Greeks has dealt his preconceptions. He resents these failures not simply as personal setbacks, but as violations of the proper order of things. "If one of the gods interferes, even a weakling can escape someone mightier," he says (455 f.). His rejection of divine aid earlier in the war rested on a similar principle: "With the gods, even a nobody can attain prowess, but I am confident that I shall win glory without them" (767-769). He wants to succeed by his own merits, not by divine in~ tervention. The first monologue shows his bitter, disillusioned protests at his discovery that a man's fortunes do not depend simply on his merits. In tone and in spirit, the speech corresponds to Ajax' first cries of anguish upon discovering that his attempt to kill the Greeks has failed. Ajax faces his situation squarely, examines the different courses of action open to him, and resolves to kill himself. Tecmessa pleads with him to go on living-eloquently, but to no avail. Ajax says his farewell to their son and goes into his tent. The Chorus sings about his impending death, and we have every reason to expect a messenger to enter and announce the worst. Instead, Ajax re-enters, still alive and holding a sword. He delivers an eloquent and enigmatic speech on time and change (646-692). Time, he says in words that recall Athena's at 131 f., makes obscure things to grow and hides away things that were manifest. Nothing is beyond expecSUMMER 1982 �tation. Even he has been softened by Tecmessa's words so that he pities her. He goes on to say that he will go to the shore to purify himself and to bury the sword which Hector once gave him. Then he will "be sensible" (sophronein) and submit to the gods and the Atreidae. After all, harsh things in nature yield: winter gives way to summer, day to night, storm to calm weather, sleep to waking. He realizes now (he says in words quoted earlier) that friends turn to enemies and enemies to friends. With some final instructions to Tecmessa and the Chorus, he leaves the stage. The Chorus sings a joyous ode to celebrate his supposed change of mind. In fact, Ajax is going to his death. Discussion of the speech tends to center on the question whether Ajax' apparent change of mind is sincere. I shall avoid that issue to point out that on one important matter, he is telling the truth. He is describing, with con· siderable force and eloquence, the way the world (as presented in this play) really is. Athena enforces the law of change and Odysseus shows us how to obey it, but it is left to Ajax, the staunchest opponent of that law, to give it its fullest and most poetic expression. He has now worked past his early grief and disillusionment to see clearly and soberly how the world really operates and where he was wrong in his earlier conceptions and demands of life. In a way, the Chorus is right when it sings that Ajax has recovered from his sickness. The great delusion has passed, much like the smaller one about men and cattle. This discovery does not alter his decision to kill himself. The old reasons for suicide-his shame over killing the cattle, the army's hatred of him, his hatred of the armyhave not gone away. Rather, the speech on time shows that Ajax has found new and more profound reasons for dying. He cannot live in a world of change. When he speaks of "doing reverence to the Atreidae" instead of simply honoring them, and of "the untrustworthy harbor of friendship," his language shows a bitterness and a vehe· mence that mark him as the old Ajax still. He can see that yielding is natural and necessary; he cannot imagine himself doing it, and he rejects the idea even while speaking of it. Seeing the world clearly means seeing clearly the reasons why he must leave it. 12 Yet paradoxically, Ajax' leaving the world is a form of yielding to it. 13 The law of nature is that "fearful and mighty things give way" (669 f.), and Ajax' examples of change in nature (winter giving way to summer, storm yielding to calm) all involve something grim and mighty passing out of existence to make room for something mild and gentle. Ajax will follow this law himself by passing out of existence and leaving the world to the humanity and tact' of Odysseus. Death takes him into a state where things are most surely and permanently settled, but it is also the ultimate change. There is more to Ajax' death than defiance of the world. In an ironic way, and at great cost to himself, he reaches a certain rapprochement with it. Sophocles' most important contribution to the Ajax THE ST. JOHNS REVIEW myth was to see the story of a great man's spiritual journey within the traditional tale of warrior pride. l. An earlier version of this paper was read before the Fourth Comparative Drama Conference at the University of Florida on April 18, 1980. My thanks to Frank Romer and the library staff of Johns Hopkins University for access to some excellent research materials and to Mark I. Davies for advice on art and for reading a draft of the paper. 2. Sources for the myth (mostly literary) are collected and discussed in the Ajax commentaries ofR. C. Jebb, Cambridge 1896, J. C. Kamerbeek, Leiden 1953, and W. B. Stanford, London 1963. Jebb offers the fullest collection of material, Kamerbeek the most incisive discussion, and Stanford some good remarks about Ajax in Homer and at Athens. Also, Carl Robert, Die griechische Heldensage 11.3.2., Berlin 1923, 1198-1207. For the epic cycle, T. W. Allen (ed.), Homeri Opera 5, Oxford 1912, and Hugh G. Evelyn-White, Hesiod, the Homeric Hymns, and Homerica, Loeb Classical Library, London/New York 1964. For Aeschylus, Hans Joachim Mette, Die Fragmente der TragOdien des Aischylos, Berlin 1959. 3. Apollodorus, Epitome 5.6-7, in the first century A.D., describes Ajax' plot to murder the Greeks, his delusion, and the slaughter of the cattle much as we find them in Sophocles, then adds the "irregular" burial as it appeared in the Little Iliad. Did Apollodorus follow the Little Iliad throughout-in which case Sophocles followed the Little Iliad closely indeed? Or did he conflate Sophocles' version with that of the Little Iliad? 4. For the myth of Ajax in art, see Frank Brommer, Vasenlisten zur griechischen Heldensage, 3rd ed., Marburg 1973, 380 f., 418, and Denkmiiler· listen zur griechischen Heldensage 3, Marburg 1976, 14-19; Mark I. Davies, "The Suicide of Ajax: A Bronze Etruscan Statuette from the Kappeli Collection," Antike Kunst 14, 1971, 148-157, and "Ajax and Tekrnessa: A Cup by the Brygos Painter in the Bareiss Collection," An· tike Kunst 16, 1973, 60-70; Mary B. Moore, "Exekias and Telamonian Ajax," American Journal of Archeology 84, 1980, 417-434; B. B. Shefton, "Agamemnon or Ajax?" Revue Archeologique 1973, 203-218; and Dyfri Williams, "Ajax, Odysseus, and the Arms of Achilles," Antike Kunst 23, 1980, 137-145. 5. Discussed in Karl Schefold, "Sophokles' Aias auf einer Lekythos," Antike Kunst 19, 1976, 71-78. 6. Some fragments in relief from a molded bowl of the second century B.C. appear to show Ajax among the cattle: see Fernand Camby, Les vases grecs d reliefs, Paris 1922, 287 no. 10. 7. On Ajax' "heroic isolation," see Bernard M. W. Knox, "The Ajax of Sophocles," Harvard Studies in Classical Philology 65, 1961, 1-37, reprinted in Thomas Woodard (editor), Sophocles: A Collection of Critical Essays, Englewood Cliffs, N.J. 1966, 29-61 (whose page numbers I cite hereafter) and Knox, Word and Action: Essays on the Ancient Theater, Baltimore 1979, 125-160. Knox has examined the heroic isolation of Sophoclean heroes generally in The Heroic Temper, Berkeley/Los Angeles 1966. Also useful is the chapter on the Ajax in Charles Segal, Tragedy and Civilization: An Interpretation of Sophocles, Cambridge, Mass. 1981. 8. For a good outline of Greek hero-cults and their connection with the heroes of Sophoclean drama, see Knox, The Heroic Temper, 53-58. 9. There is a good account of the type in George Plimpton, Paper Lion, New York 1966, 72-75 on Bobby Layne. 10. This is widely, though not universally, accepted by critics of the play and stated with particular force by Knox, "Ajax," 34. I have argued it and presented my interpretation of the play's madness theme in greater detail in "Ajax' Ailment," Ramus 9, 1980, 22-33. Also useful are Penelope Biggs, "The Disease Theme in Sophocles' Ajax, Philoctetes, and Trachiniae," Classical Philology 61, 1966, 223-235; and Michael Simpson, "Sophocles' Ajax: His Madness and Transformation," Arethusa 2, 1969, 88-103. 11. For discussions of this aspect of the play, see especially Knox, "Ajax"; Simpson; and David Bolotin, "On Sophocles' Ajax," The St. John's Review 32.1, 1980,49-57. 12. See Knox, "Ajax," 45-48. 13. For this important aspect of the play, see Simpson. 61 �Toward Reading Thomas Aquinas Thomas ] . Slakey that Thomas' particular endeavor was to reconcile Aristotle with the Bible. While this is true, it is only part of a much larger truth .. In late antiquity the process of weaving together Platonic, Aristotelian, and Stoic materials was already well under way among those in the Eastern Mediterranean who spoke Greek. In addition, Cicero and others undertook the task of transmitting Greek wisdom to the Latin West. The early Christians merely expanded this process, and in fact the first instance is recorded in the New Testament itself, in the Acts of the Apostles, where St. Paul is speaking in Athens. Paul uses pagan worship of an unknown god and quotations from pagan poets as starting points toward the Christian gospel (Acts 17: 22-34; see also Romans I: 19-20; II, 14-15). Many of the early Christians were educated in pagan schools and some even saw Greek philosophy, especially in Plato, as the means by which God, in His divine providence, had prepared the Gentile world for Christian revelation. Augustine emphasizes the importance of Platonic specula· tion to his own conversion, though it should be noted that he knew Plato chiefly through Cicero and Plotinus. Augustine in turn was one of the chief vehicles of Platonic, or rather neo'Platonic, thought to the medieval world. 1 Thus Thomas did not begin the process of combining and adapting pagan and Christian materials. Rather he was heir to a very long and wide-spread tradition. Nevertheless, by his time the process had taken on a particular character through the rise of the medieval university, which began about 1200, shortly before Thomas was born. There were two chief methods of instruction in the medieval university, the lectio and the disputatio. The I T IS SOMETIMES SAID A tutor at St. John's College, Thomas J. Slakey gave this lecture at St. John's College, Annapolis, on February 19, 1982. 62 lectio seems to have meant literally the reading aloud of a text,in class, together with commentary. The commentary could range from a brief exposition of words and phrases to a detailed explanation and discussion of the positions taken in the text. Thomas himself taught in this manner throughout his career and we can get close to his Classroom because many of the commentaries survive, some based on lecture notes taken by students or secretaries and some refined and reworked for publication. There are twelve commentaries on separate books of the Bible and five on other theological works. In addition there are twelve on separate works by Aristotle, but these seem to have been written by Thomas directly for the use of students rather than for his own classroom teaching, since Thomas himself was in the Faculty of Theology rather than the F acuity of Arts, where Aristotle was studied-' Nevertheless, the commentaries on Aristotle grew out of the tradition of the lectio and they illustrate Thomas' way of reading a book. He rarely permits himself the moves so dear to modern scholars when they meet difficulties and apparent contradictions: maybe the author changed his mind, maybe the text is corrupt; maybe this passage was inserted by some later editor; maybe this whole way of talking merely reflects a distant and primitive past. Rather Thomas tries to understand the author as saying something intelligible or maybe even true, a tactic sometimes called benigna interpretatio, benign or kindly interpretation. Benigna interpretatio does have a real danger: we can rest too comfortably in our own opinions and assume too easily that our own paltry ideas deserve the majestic clothing bequeathed by some great author. If we are, however, able to face our real differences of opinion with the author when they do finally emerge, this way of reading seems to me the best way to learn from books, especially old books, In fact, in its respect for texts, the lectio resembles our SUMMER 1982 �seminars, although we substitute a joint reading by twenty or so people for a lecture by a single teacher. T HE SECOND METHOD of instruction in the medieval university was the disputatio (Weisheipl, 124-26). This was an interruption in the daily routine of lectiones for an extended public discussion or debate of a particular issue, called a quaestio disputata. The question for the day would be set by one of the masters. Numerous proposed solutions would be offered by the bachelors, or junior teachers in the university, usually based on quotations from the authors in the curriculum, the auctores, a word which can also be translated "authorities." There would also be replies and counter arguments. Some time after the public disputation was concluded, the master who had proposed the discussion would publish his understanding of the question in writing. He would gather the proposed solutions into some kind of order, offer his own detailed resolution or "reply" to the question asked, and then briefly comment on each of the alternative proposed solutions. Several volumes of Thomas' quaestiones also survive, and they extend throughout the whole period of his teaching life. Moreover, it is clearly the method of the quaestio which is used in the Summa Theologiae, Thomas' longest and most ambitious work, begun at about age forty and left unfinished at his death at about age fifty. It attempts to speak to all the major questions of theology in a way suitable to beginners (See Prologue to Part I). The topics are organized into questions and subdivided into "articles," or "joints," each phrased as a question. (On the word "article" see Ila Ilae, Q.l, a.6.) Each begins with a series of brief arguments, usually based on quotations from received au- thors, or "authorities." These arguments should not be understood as "objections," as they are sometimes described in English translations, because this word suggests that a position has already been arrived at. They are rather proposals toward a solution, and they generally set the terms in which the discussion will proceed. There follows a sed contra, or "on the contrary/' again usually based on a quotation, and usually counter to the general sense of the first set of arguments. There then follows the "reply" in which Thomas sets out his own position, followed by brief comments on each of the initial arguments and sometimes on the sed contra as well. Throughout, Thomas' strategy is to save and use what he can from each of the arguments put forward, to show that the truth as he sees it is suggested by, or at least not opposed by, the quoted authority. His typical move is the distinction: taken in one sense an argument is misleading, but in another sense it is true. Dante brings this out nicely when he presents Thomas as a speaker in the Paradiso. In Canto X, Thomas says of Solomon, quoting Scripture, that he was "given wisdom so deep that, if the truth be true, there never arose a second of such vision" (X, 112-114, Sinclair translation). But THE ST. JOHNS REVIEW then what about Christ Himself, and also Adam? Three cantos later the qualification comes: Dante has Thomas explain that Solomon was wisest in the wisdom proper to kings. Thomas concludes: " ... let this always be lead on thy feet to make thee slow, like a weary man, in moving either to the yea or the nay where thou dost not see clearly; for he ranks very low among the fools, in the one case as in the other, who affirms or denies without distinguishing, since it often happens that a hasty opinion inclines to the wrong side and then the feelings bind the intellect" (XIII, 94-120). The overwhelming characteristic of Thomas' writing is its impersonality. It's as if the commentaries, the quaestiones, and the Summas could have been written by any· one who brought various authors together and carefully sifted and worked back and forth in a constant search for the truth. In notable contrast to present day philosophical and theological writing, Thomas almost never says anyone is simply mistaken and he never, never claims originality for his own positions.' Even his Christian belief is not thrust to the fore. Though he sometimes singles out questions where only divine revelation can be a guide, and where Scripture must be taken as decisive, Thomas more commonly weaves together in a single article suggestions from the Bible, from Aristotle, from Cicero, from Augustine, or from whoever else he finds speaking some part of the truth. Finally, and again in marked contrast to present day scholarly writing, Thomas almost never mentions his contemporaries by name. The most burning issues of the day appear in the Summa only in their assigned places. The impersonality has its weak side. Thomas is not good at arousing our interest, at leading us into a topic, at making us care about the outcome. Feelings shouldn't bind the intellect, but some kind of feeling helps to get the intellect started. Also, the inexorable march of arguments can give the impression that Thomas always thinks definitive solutions have been reached. The Summa appeals to some who want simple knockdown answers to complex questions. The strength of Thomas' writing, however, is that if one is involved in a topic through a study of the authors he quotes, the Bible, Augustine, Aristotle, and others, then one can appreciate both the subtlety of his distinctions and the testing, tentative character of his work. I have used metaphors of sifting and weaving to describe it. I think he took for granted, without laboring the point, that the sifting and the weaving would be continued by others. H OW DOES THOMAS conceive of man's relation to God? Let us begin with his discussion of religion -not Christianity, but simply religion, what would now be called "comparative religion." Thomas, however, considers religion not as an aspect of human psychology or sociology but, following Cicero's lead, under the heading of justice. 4 Man owes a kind of debt to 63 �God. It cannot be a debt in the strict sense, for man in the strict sense can bring nothing to the God who made him and the whole universe out of nothing, and man can therefore make no return to God. The reverence and honor we show to God are not for His sake, but for ours. To the extent that we revere and honor God, our minds are subjected to Him, and in this the perfection of our minds consists. For each thing reaches its just perfection by being placed under its superior, just as body is perfected when it is made alive by soul and air when it is lighted by the sun (Ila Ilae, Q.81, a.7c). As Plato argues that justice is reached only when each part of a man's soul is in right relation to the whole man, and only when each man is in right relation to the whole city, so Thomas argues that justice is reached only when man is in right relation to God. Religion is not an adjunct or department of human life. It is central to human life properly lived. Moreover, in joining ourselves to God, we need to ex· press ourselves in physical ways (Ila, Ilae, Q.81, a.7c), by voice, by gestures such as bowing and kneeling, even by sacred buildings (Q.83, a.l2; 84, a.3). Acts of reverence are not peculiar to religion. Many are shown to other men,. to parents, to kings and presidents, to country. The word pietas or piety, as used in Latin and still to some extent in English, ranges from reverence towards gods to reverence towards family and fatherland. But one act of reverence Thomas considers proper to God alone, namely the act of offering sacrifice. Sacrifice is a sacred act in which something is offered to God and generally destroyed in the pro· cess, as in the-killing of animals or in burnt offerings (Q.85, a.3, ad 3). Thomas sees sacrifice as common to peoples throughout the world (Q.85, a. I, on the contrary). He says that "natural reason tells man that he is placed under something higher, because of the lack which he feels in himself so that he needs help and direction from something higher. And whatever that is, it is what among all men is called God" (85, a.lc). The external act of sacrifice expresses "an internal spiritual sacrifice, in which the soul offers itself to God ... as the source of its creation and the completion of its happiness." Only God is our creator and only God is the completion of our happiness. Therefore to God alone should we offer ourselves and to God alone should we make those external offerings in sacrifice which express the offering of ourselves (85, a.2c). to consider Thomas' study of humility. He classifies humility under the heading of temperence, or moderation. The Latin word humilitas derives from the notion of "low" or "close to the ground" and tends to have a pejorative sense in classical Latin writers. Greek has a word with a similar meaning and precisely the same etymology, tapeinotes. Humility is a rather striking omission from Aristotle's list of virtues in the Ethics, especially when one considers the emphasis Soph· N 64 EXT, I WISH odes and other Greek writers give to the dangers of exces· sive pride. Thomas' own comment on Aristotle's omission is that in his study of the virtues Aristotle was concerned only with man's civil life, whereas humility especially concerns man's relation to God (IIa Ilae, Q.l61, a. I, ad 5). According to Thomas we should see ourselves as assigned by God to a certain level (secundum gradum quem est a Deo sortitus, a.2, ad 3), and we should recognize that whatever is good in ourselves comes from God. Even the exercise of our abilities comes from God, who acts in us and through us (a.4c). This profoundly difficult doctrine gives rise to questions about how God can act in us without destroying otir free wills, and also questions as to why God did not make the world better than He has, with less sin and suffering, the questions which so tormented Job. It is a doctrine, however, which has its roots deep in the Bible, for example, in the claim that God uses whole nations and armies as his instruments for the punishment and restoration of Israel: first the Assyrians, then the Babylonians, and finally the Persians under Cyrus (see, for instance, Amos 3:11, Isaiah 7:18-20. Also Psalm 139). Isaiah says of Cyrus, who delivered Israel from captivity in Babylon, "Who stirred up one from the east whom victory meets at every step? He gives up nations before him, so that he tramples kings under foot ... Who has performed and done this, calling the generations from the beginning? I, the Lord, the tirst and with the last; I am He" (Isaiah 41:2-4). It is Cyrus who acts, but it is also God who acts through Cyrus. The doctrine also has its roots in the concept of crea· tion out of nothing. If we are made by God out of noth· ing, all we are and all we do comes from God. And yet God has not made us like rocks, and stones, and trees, or even like the beasts of the field. He has given us the capacity to think and choose, and when He acts in us it is as beings which think and choose. (See Ia, Q.22, a.4). Finally, this doctrine of God's action in us has its roots in the life of prayer. We pray to God for help. Do we think that God who is Lord of heaven and earth can only affect such things as weather and disease and not affect ourselves? Rather we pray, "Create in us a clean heart, 0 God, and put a new and right spirit within us ... Take not thy Holy Spirit from us" (Psalm 51:10-11 ). To acknowledge the fact that God acts in us and through us, to pray by it and live by it, is to see ourselves as we really are, creatures wholy dependent on God for everything we are and do and this is what is meant by humility. We become, in the phrase from Matthew's gospel, "poor in spirit" (5:3), and we feel that "fear of the Lord" which the Bible so often calls "the beginning of wisdom" (e.g. Psalm 111:10, Proverbs 9:10; see Thomas Ila Ilae, Q.l61, a.2, ad 3). Thomas sees no conflict between humility so under· stood and the virtues which the pagan philosophers saw as leading to achievement in public life, in particular with the virtue which Aristotle calls megalopsychia, magnanimity or greatness of soul. 5 Megalopsychia strengthens our resolve to attempt great things when we really are capable SUMMER 1982 �of them. It requires an accurate judgment of our abilities and a courageous use of them (Q.l61, a.lc; also Q.129, a.3, ad 4). The vice Thomas opposes to humility is superbia, or Hpride." The word is derived from super, meaning "over" or "above," and it has a double sense in classical Latin writers: it can mean loftiness of spirit but also arrogance or haughtiness. Thomas takes it in the latter sense as a vice. Pride is not, properly speaking, the desire for honor and recognition. Thomas calls the desire for honor and recognition vain glory (inanis gloria, IIa IIae, Q.l62, a.S, ad 2), empty glory. The name suggests a trifling or even silly vice. Pride in contrast is a vice of strength. It seeks not the recognition of excellence but excellence itself. The proud man seeks not so much to be recognized as first as to be first. Pride becomes a vice when it seeks excellence beyond our capacity (Q.l62, a.lc). Thomas does not claim that pride is the source of all sins. He recognizes that we sin sometimes from ignorance and sometimes from weakness (a.2c). But when sin involves a conscious and deliberate turning away from God, a refusal to seek God as the final goal of our lives, it is at least an expression of pride if not a result of pride, a desire to put ourselves in the place of God and to govern our own lives (a.7; see also Ia I!ae, Q.84, a.2, and Q.88, a. I, on "mortal" sin.) In this sense pride is the first sin. It was the sin of Adam and Eve in the garden. The temptation of the serpent was that they might "be like God, knowing good and evil." They determined for themselves what was good and what was evil instead of accepting that determination from God (IIa Ilae, Q.163, a. I, a.2.). Pride is also the source of many other sins, such as what Thomas calls a "distaste" for the truth (excellentiam veritatis fastidiunt). The proud delight in their own excellence to such an extent that they cannot experience "the sweetness" of certain facts. They might know how the facts are, but not "how they taste."6 bodily but not composed of matter and form at all. It follows, he argues, that each angel is a distinct form (a.2), and therefore, as it were, like a distinct species of animal. One angel is as different from the next as, say, a horse is from a camel. Thomas holds that the angels' powers of understanding, varied as they are among themselves, exceed our own not only in degree but in kind. (See Ia, QQ's 54-58, especially Q.58, a's 2-3). All our knowledge begins from our five separate bodily senses. Through colors, sounds, textures, and so on, we slowly and painstakingly put together concepts of things. We then make sentences about them, sentences which are combinations of subjects and predicates, sentences like "lead is heavy." What we call "speech" or "thinking" is expressed, in both the Greek logos and the Latin ratio, by the same word as a mathematical "ratio," that is, a relation between a pair of magnitudes. And this is what is meant by saying that we are rational animals: we connect things. Moreover, we make further connections called inferences. We "reason," and thus we reach conclusions. The angels, on the other hand, are intellectual creatures, which means that they apprehend by a kind of immediate insight or "reading into" things (intus Iegere). Thomas describes their insight only in general terms, but we can get some clue as to what it might be like by considering mathematical examples. After having gone through a proof we can often see in the figure that a conclusion must follow without having to recall all the intermediate steps. For example, having learned why the angles of a triangle equal two right angles we can see this immediately in the nature of a triangle, in the fact that it is composed of three sides. Even better would be to see this immediately without ever having gone through the proof-presumably the way Euclid first saw it. Such would be the insight of a rather low ranking angel. An angel of more powerful mind might see the whole of Apollonius in the first sketch of the conic sections. And a still more powerful angel would have an intuitive grasp of vast amounts of information which we cannot even conceive except in our T ROMAS" STUDY OF ANGELS (Ia, Q.50 ff.) also helps clarify man's relation to God. It is frequently said that ancient and medieval cosmology, with the earth at the center of the physical universe and the sun, planets, and stars rotating around it, gave man an extremely exalted position. The Copernican revolution, placing the sun at the center, is said to lower man. This seems to me almost a total misunderstanding. In the medieval universe, man does have a definite place but it is not the highest place. The highest place is filled by God, and in fact so high is it above our comprehension that we cannot speak of it as place. Moreover, there also exist above us vast multitudes of angels, greater in number than human beings and animals, in Thomas' opinion (Q.50, a.3). Angels are nonbodily, and, according to Thomas' Aristotelian analysis of the Biblical and neo-Platonic materials, not only nonTHE ST. JOHNS REVIEW piecemeal and haphazard fashion. Although we do have some share in intellect, we are the lowest of intellectual creatures. We have bodies and our knowledge begins from our bodily senses. Our position at the center of the physical universe is of little importance compared to our position at the very edge of the intellectual and moral universes. Moreover, as Dante shows most powerfully, the center of the physical universe can be conceived of as the locus of all that is heavy, slow, and evil. We begin to emerge from sin only as we come out of the earth and ascend the Mount of Purgatory. We still have to move beyond the shadow which the earth casts on to the first three planets (Paradiso, IX, 118), before we approach regions of greater speed and perfect light, which can more nearly image divine perfection. It is the outer boundaries of the solar system and the heavens which are their true center. Man, far 65 �from being at the center, is at the edge. We are, as C. S. Lewis puts it, 44 Creatures of the Margin."7 A LTHOUGH ALL OUR KNOWLEDGE begins from the senses, and although we are therefore on the very edge of the intellectual world, we are on that edge. We do have the capacity to know not merely sensible particulars, a cat, a horse, but to grasp universals, cat, horse. As is clearest of all in geometry, we can understand certain properties as following not merely by physical observation and measurement of particular triangles, but from the definition of triangle. To repeat the earlier example, it is because a triangle is bounded by three straight lines that its angles equal two right angles. Moreover, in the case of certain properties like "justice," we know that no physical manifestation in a just individual matches our conception of what justice is. Socrates may occasionally fail and fall short, and even if he does not, our conception of what justice is does not depend on Socrates' being perfectly just. It points beyond Socrates to something which Socrates can only aim at. To use Platonic language, Socrates has only a "share" or a !(participation" in justice. He does not reach justice itself. Similarly with our conception of being. Socrates will die, and any of the things we experience through our senses will also degenerate and pass away. All physical things have only a shared existence. They are not being itself. But even the angels, though they will not die, have only a shared existence. It is not part of their nature to exist. Rather their existence is derived, like ours, from a creator who made them out of nothing. We can strive to move beyond such beings to the conception of a being who simply is, not by sharing or participation but by His own nature. He is the source of all the lesser things we know and of all that is good and just and wise in them. He Himself is goodness and justice and wisdom. As Thomas puts it, even though we develop words like "good" from our experience of physical things, such words point beyond themselves and ultimately to God. Their full meaning is realized only in God. (See Ia, Q.l3, a.6.) WO IMPORTANT ARGUMENTS follow from this conception of man as knowing universals. The first is that man's life is not limited to the world of particular physical things. Even though man obviously dies, it is his body which dies, not his mind or soul. The mind which can grasp non-bodily things like goodness, justice, and being, must itself be non-bodily. This argument is of course found in the Phaedo (64-69, 74-75, 78-79) and Thomas also finds it, I think rightly, in Aristotle's De Anima, whatever Aristotle's final opinion on this question may be. (See Ia, Q.75, a.6; De Anima III, 4,429a 18-b 22.) The other argument is that man's happiness can be found only in union with God. This argument is found at T 66 the beginning of Part Two of the Summa Theologiae and is reflected in the structure of the work as a whole. Part One of the Summa starts from God as creator, and goes on to treat of the angels and men and all the physical universe as coming forth from God. Part Two reverses the motion. It begins from man and sees everything in human life as leading man back to God. For instance, the discussion of law, which comes from the second part of the Summa, deals with law as an instrument of man's service to God and return to God. (See Ia Ilae, QQ's 90-108.) We seek many things in life: wealth, sensual pleasure, power, and knowledge. Each of these has, or at least can have, some share in goodness and can therefore give us some share in happiness. But only goodness itself can fully satisfy our desire, our constant movement from one par~ tial and temporary satisfaction to another. And goodness itself is God Himself (Ia Ilae, Q.2, a.8). Whether we realize it or not, all our confused and haphazard search in life is really for God. The search Augustine describes in the Confessions is the true search of every man. As Augustine puts it, "Thou hast made us for Thyself, 0 Lord, and our hearts are ever restless until they rest in Thee" (Confessions, I, l ). There is a fundamental paradox in human existence. In one sense man is firmly in place in an elaborate hierarchy, a sacred order. He is a creature of God, he owes reverence to God. He must humble his pride and bow his head before God. He is located in a range of creatures, neither lowest nor highest, between animals and angels. In a different sense, his position is most unstable. He is a creature of the margin. He shares something of the nature of animals and something of the nature of angels. His desire for happiness leads him beyond anything he can find in the world about him. His reason leads him beyond what he can fully understand. I 'VE EXPLORED THREE EXAMPLES, from the Summa Theologiae, Thomas' study of religion, his study of pride, and his study of the angels. Nothing I've said so far is specifically Christian-' For Thomas, if I understand him rightly, the world I've described so far is knowable, at least in principle, by natural reason. I do not mean to say that in developing his conception of the universe that comes from God and returns to God, Thomas makes no use of the Bible. He constantly draws on the Bible and on other Christian writers. But following a passage from St. Paul that he is fond of quoting (for instance, Ia, Q.2 a.2, on lhe contrary), Thomas holds that "the invisible nature" of God, "His eternal power and deity" can be "seen by the mind in things made" (Romans, I, 20; see also, Romans II, 14-15). Thomas' understanding of religious faith is very different from that most commonly expressed today when we speak of "faith in God." For Thomas the existence of God is not a matter of faith. Rather faith presupposes the exisSUMMER 1982 �tence of God. Speaking strictly, to have faith means to believe that something is true because we believe that it has been revealed by God (Ila Ilae, Q.l, a.lc). In the Bible itself there is never any question of God's existence. Faith is demanded only when God enters our world and speaks in something like a human voice: when He speaks to Abraham and promises him a son in his old age, or to Moses from the burning bush and promises that He will lead the children of Israel out of Egypt, or through the prophets, or finally through His Word made flesh in the man jesus Christ. Then those who have ears to hear must believe that it is God who speaks and they must trust in His word. This is where faith enters. The good news of the gospels is that God has not abandoned us to our sins and to our own feeble efforts at finding him. God has revealed Himself as Father, Son, and Holy Spirit, and especially in the Son made flesh in jesus Christ. Christ has died on the cross for our sins and risen from the dead. Through him we can begin to rise from our sins in this life and later we can rise from death to live with God. In that life we will find what we have been seeking all along. It is our true home, our fatherland, our patria. On this earth we are only viatores, travelers, pilgrims. (For the use of these terms, see for example Ila Ilae, Q.18, a.2, a.3.) HEN THOMAS APPROACHES the mysteries of revelation in study and prayer, his faith is serene. He expresses neither the anxiety nor the bluster of so many modern Christians. His world is open to the voice of God. Like Samuel he can say, "Speak, Lord, your servant is listening" (I Samuel 3:10). To what extent is our own world open to the voice of God? I do not know the answer to this question, but I do think there is something about the typical modern process of inquiry, especially as it begins in Descartes, which makes it difficult for us to hear God's voice when He does speak. Descartes imagines true knowledge as a city of perfectly straight streets built by one skillful engineer in an empty plain (Discourse on Method, Part II). Nothing could be further from Thomas' manner of inquiry, which is truly like the medieval city Descartes despises, making use of all the twisting alleys and old houses, always building on foundations laid by others, adjusting, modifying, combining. Secondly, Descartes wishes that he could have been born with the full use of his reason and that he had never had to rely on any teacher or parent for anything he thought. This suggests that he wished to think without even the hindrance of any human language, in a new language of perfect clarity and precision. Again, nothing could be farther from Thomas' manner of inquiry. Like Plato and Aristotle, Thomas began from what was said by others. He ransacked old books, pagan, Moslem, jewish, and Christian, for whatever help he could find. Finally, Descartes establishes as a criterion of truth whatever is completely clear and certain to himself. The W THE ST. JOHNS REVIEW first question of modern philosophy becomes, what can I know for certain? The principal endeavor of modern philosophy from Descartes through Kant and to a large extent to our own day, is to set limits to knowledge, to exclude from inquiry those matters which do not sufficiently meet the standards of certainty which are somehow prescribed at the beginning, and the standards of certainty generally come from mathematics and physical science. Even the most evident truths of morality become suspect, since they do not possess the kind of clarity that mathematics and the physical sciences seem to have. Obviously any purported truths of religion are even more suspect. Again, Thomas turns this criterion of certainty upside down. He invokes a metaphor of Aristotle's in which the most certain and evident truths are precisely those hardest for us to grasp. The obscurity does not lie in those truths but in our feeble knowing powers. Aristotle says, " ... as the eyes of bats are to the blaze of day, so is the reason in our soul to the things which are by nature most evident of all" (Metaphysics II, 1, 993b 10, quoted Ia, Q.l, a.5, ad 1 and frequently elsewhere). It is not the truth of God's existence and nature, or even the truths of revelation, which are obscure. God Himself is truth and the source of all truth. The obscurity and the weakness lie with us. We ridicule medieval man for placing himself at the center of the physical universe. Perhaps we have made a more important mistake: placing ourselves at the center of the universe of knowledge and truth. l. Let me mention in passing that Plato's own writings were largely unknown in the Latin West until the fifteenth century. No Platonic text was ever the direct subject of instruction in any medieval school. See Rashdall's Medieval Universities, ed. Powicke and Emden, Oxford 1936, 1, 38. 2. See James A. Weisheipl, O.P., Friar Thomas D'Aquino, New York, 1974, 281-82. 3. A notable exception is Ia, Q.3, a.S, where he mentions three "errors" and describes one David de Dinando as having spoken "really stupidly" (stultissime) when he identified God with prime matter. 4. See Cicero, De Invent Rhetor., Book II, chapter 53. See Sum. Theol., Ila llae, Q.80, A.un., obj. 1. I'm using the Marietti edition, Rome 1948. All translations are my own. 5. David Ross's widely used translation of the Ethics unfortunately renders megalopsychia as "pride.'' 6. Ila Ilae, Q.l62, a3, ad l. The metaphor of tasting the truth comes from St Gregory's Moralia. 7. C. S. Lewis, The Discarded Image, Cambridge 1964, 58. 8. See Lewis, The Discarded Image, 18-19. 67 �REVIEW EsSAY Updike and Roth: Are They Writers? John Updike's Rabbit Is Rich and Philip Roth's Zuckerman Unbound lEV NAVROZOV When manuals entitled "How to Become a Writer" began to appear in Russia in the 20s, they used the term zavyazka, which is the opposite of denouement. The latter means the "untying," "release," "resolution" of the novel, while zavyazka means its "tying-up"-its "conceptual beginning." After reading the first eighty-eight pages of Mr. Updike's novel, we finally reach its "tying-up." Nelson, son of the car dealer Rabbit, residing in Brewer, Pennsylvania, leaves his college at Kent State, Ohio, and visits his :Parents with a girl named Melanie. First of all, Rabbit discovers that he is "not turned on" by Melanie. In that pansexual phoneyland that Mr. Updike and his colleagues describe as America, everyone at any age is or must be "turned on" by everyone else. Indeed, Rabbit "feels even sexier toward fat old Bessie," his seventy- or eighty-year-old mother-inlaw, than to the college girl his son came with. To make this cultist pansexualism plausible, Mr. Updike goes into the lavatory experiences of fat old Bessie, as witnessed by Rabbit. Besides the incredible fact that his son's girl, Melanie, does not turn Rabbit on, said Rabbit concludes that she does not turn on his son either. Since everyone has to be sexually attracted to everyone else, Rabbit's old sick subordinate named Charlie feels he must have Rabbit Is Rich, by John Updike. Alfred A. Knopf, New York 1981. 467 pages. $13.95. Zuckerman Unbound, by Philip Roth. Farrar, Straus & Giroux, New York 1981. 225 pages. $10.95. Lev Navrozov has contributed "One Day in the Life of the New York Times and Pravda in the World: Which is More Informative?" (Autumn 1981) and "A Pead Man's Knowledge" (Winter 1982) to the St. John's Review. Author of The Education of Lev Navrozov (Harper & Row 1975) and of the forthcoming What the New York Times Knows About the World, he has written many articles for Commentary, Midstream, The Yale Literary Magazine, and other magazines. 68 an affair with Melanie. Why should a pretty college girl of 20 or so have an affair with an old, sick, boring, vulgar, and uneducated man who works as a car salesman's subordinate in a small Pennsylvania town? Because Mr. Updike's phoneyland has even less to do with America or any real society than the Soviet novels of the Stalin era had to do with Russia. Sex in thi!'l phoneyland is not a reality observed in any real society, but a figment of cultist imagination. Like many other Westerners mistaken today for novelists, Mr. Updike is sure that realism in literature is the utmost absence of all good manners, utmost obscenity, utmost vulgarity. Describe all the lavatory experiences you can, and your amateur puppet show will come wonderfully to life, and your cardboard figures will begin to live. The sex Mr. Updike describes is no less detailed than in a medical reference book or locker room conversation. But as soon as Mr. Updike departs from medicine or locker room lore into human relations, this sex becomes as false, fantastic, and far-fetched as everything he writes about. Apart from this, the-more-vulgar-the-more-realistic approach, Mr. Updike uses two no less naive amateur techniques to give realism to his puppet show. First, he believes that the more detailed his description of everything is, the more lifelike his cardboard will be. Rabbit jogs, and Mr. Updike proceeds to describe (I) the color of his running shoes, (2) where they were bought, (3) what sort of shoes they are, (4) what soles they have at toe and heel, and (5) how the soles behave, owing to "resilient circlets like flattened cleats." Also, all puppets must be fashionable: "Melanie was mystical, she ate no meat and felt no fear, the tangled weedy gods of Asia spelled a harmony to her." After this fantastic puppet show "nouement," we learn that the fashionably mystical Melanie is not the girl of Rabbit's son, Nelson. Quite the contrary. His girl's name is Prudence: this is how she has been nicknamed for her insufficient promiscuity in SUMMER 1982 �1\!Ir. Updike's sex utopia. For some reasons as implausible as everything else in the novel, Prudence is so far into her pregnancy that Nelson must marry her. So Nelson has left the unwed expectant mother Prudence at college and come to his father to get a job at his car sales shop, with Prudence's friend Melanie to chaperone him on this mission. "You (arc) such a goddam watchdog," Nelson complains to Melanie, "I can't even go into town for a beer." The idea that a college girl will go from Kent to Pennsylvania to chaperone her friend's fiance in his father's home and will live there as if she were the fiance's aunt or mother is again good only for an amateur puppet theater. But Ivlr. Updike adds more hastily invented nonsense to this silly invention of his. We find that in the middle of a grand Hollywood-movie affair with Rabbit's old, sick, poor, uneducated, and vulgar assistant named Charlie, the beautiful chaperone Melanie sleeps also with her charge, Nelson. Like those philistines who are, in any company, interested in nothing except obscene jokes and are dead, bored, and monosyllabic until someone begins to tell them, Mr. Updike comes to the same kind of phosphorescent animation only when he is at his locker room jokes. Mr. Updike invented IYielanie and dragged her all the way from college to chaperone her friend's fiance in order to have a pretext for more locker room entertainment. What is the attitude of Prudence toward the chaperon's cohabitation with her fiance? Explains Janice, the wife of Rabbit: "They don't have this jealousy thing the way we do, if you can believe them." No, they don't have jealousy. Nor any other feelings. They are Mr. Updike's sexual-gastric puppets which IYir. Updike puts through various sexual-gastric acts of his imagination so narrow that the impression finally is that the sexual-gastric automaton is Mr. Updike himself. After a series of locker room jokes strung out over the 467 pages, comes the denouement: Nelson marries Prudence and even goes back to college. This is what Rabbit wanted: to get rid of Nelson. Father and son hate each other. Mr. Updike, an exemplary Freudian cultist, thought it necessary to invent this as well. I\llr. Updike seems to have a lower ability to observe human relations than an average person-a layman who has never dreamed of becoming a writer. About sixty pages before the end of Rabbit Is Rich, Mr. Updike decided again to compose Couples, a novel about wife-swapping written about a decade earlier, and "plug" it in somewhere at the end of whatever he had written under the title Rabbit Is Rich. Why not? As it was, Rabbit Is Rich was a string of desultory anecdotes. Why not plug in at the end some wife-swapping anecdote as well? No sooner said than done. Instead of getting someone's wife named Cindy, as he wanted, Rabbit got, according to the first night's arrangement, sorneone's wife named Thelma. Nevertheless, there follows the novel's biggest in-bed scene. Since the time of Couples, Mr. Updike has learned a perversion about which any boy of any country may read in any standard textbook of general psychiatry. Mr. Updike displays his discovery over a dozen or so pages. The wife-swapping vacation is interrupted by the news of the disappearance of Nelson. On their way back, Rabbit's wife, JanTHE ST. JOHNS REVIEW ice, begins to sob aboard the plane. Rabbit assumes that the disappearance of their son Nelson causes the tears. Finally Janice explains to Rabbit: "I felt so sorry for you, having Thelma when you wanted Cindy so much." With that there is no stopping her crying. The mother of a son who has disappeared cries over her husband's getting the wrong wife during a wife-swapping session. Chekhov says about a character of his that he could multiply big figures in his mind but he could not understand why people cry or laugh. Can Ivlr. Updike multiply big figures in his mind? He certainly cannot understand why people cry or laugh. The New York Times celebrated the appearance of this 467-page volume of emetic pulp: the upper half of the front page of the New York Times Book Review showed Mr. Updike against a panorama of books, presumably his own. From an article below, "Updike on Updike," we learn from Mr. Updike that his "20-odd books" have been translated into "20-odd languages, including Finnish, Serbo-Croatian, Hebrew and Korean." 1 I recall how we read that the worst novels of the Stalin era had been translated into many languages. The psychology of selfevaluation is the same: "Look how many books I have written, how many pages each of them contains, how many copies of each of them sold, and how many prizes they have won." Mr. Updike, speaking of "what the aim of my [Mr. Updike's] fiction is," says: "let literature concern itself, as the Gospels do, with the inner life of hidden men." A writer is a "secreter of images," l\!Ir. Updike explains, "some of which he prays will have the immortal resonance of Don Quixote's windmills, of Proust's madeleine, of Huck Finn's raft._" Mr. Updike's ambition does not stop at the immortal resonance of Cervantes, Proust, and Twain. "I want to write books ... " 1\!lr. Updike declares to l\!Ir. Updike. Yes, what books? "Something like E=mc2 , only in words, one after the other." No Soviet literary charlatan under Stalin had Ivlr. Updike's insolence: it is truly cosmic. Now listen to l\!Ir. John Leonard's riddles or pomposities in his Books of the Times review. They are vague, confusing or obscure enough to pass for wisdom intended for the select few: He [Rabbit] wastes himself while the dead aren't looking [are they looking elsewhere?] and God is short of meanings [or of literary critics?]. Or: After the death of God-after the chilling discovery that every time we make a move toward "the invisible," somebody gets killed-we require a myth of community, sm;nething as Felix put it in "Coup," that fits the facts, as it were, backwards." A hard lesson and, after three "Rabbit" books, a splendid achievement. Let Felix also have the last word: "I perceived that a man, in America, is a failed boy" [period, end of reviewJ.Z 69 �What does all this highfalutin rigmarole mean? The "death of God" is Nietzsche's phrase which had been worn threadbare (in Russia, for example) before Nietzsche died in 1900. Mr. Leonard must think it terrifically new, for he repeats it several times. But what does it have to do with someone getting killed? Who gets killed? What is a "hard lesson?" That God is dead? That someone gets killed? That we require a myth of community, as Felix of Mr. Updike's Coup discovered? What has all this to do with a man in America being allegedly a failed boy, or a boy being a failed man? The less comprehensible the better. An understandable text will expose Mr. Leonard: everyone will see that he has no more to say as a critic than l\llr. Updike as a writer. But what was Mr. Leonard's evaluation of Rabbit Is Rich? It consists of nine words. The book is the "usual Updike xylophone" (three words), and "I like his mus_ic very much" (six words). Whereupon Mr. Leonard pounces on the critics who fail to like Mr. Updike's xylophone (not saxophone?) music: Let the critics, like Nelson, "suck the foam out of one more can," their "surly puzzled" faces "drinking and eating up the world, and out of spite at that." How can Nelson and the critics suck the foam out of one more can if they drink and eat up the world? Is the world the foam? Or they do not drink and eat up the world, but only their faces do? Anyway, these outpourings are to show that the critics, their faces surly and puzzled, are against Mr. Updike, and only Mr. Leonard is heroically out to appreciate and defend singlehandedly the "usual Updike xylophone." It is amazing how conformist salaried officials of a corporation, like Mr. Leonard, praising John Updike only because "everybody does it," are fond of imagining themselves to be lone fierce intellectual heroes, fighting against the overwhelming establishment. The review in the New York Times Book Review presents a different style: the courtier describing the Emperor's nonexistent clothes. This particular courtier is Professor Roger Sale of the University of Washington. Dr. Sale ends his review quite resolutely: For me "Rabbit is Rich" is the first book in which Updike has fulfilled the fabulous promise he offered with "Rabbit Run" 20 years ago. 3 How did Dr. Sale arrive at this (fabulous) conclusion? Thereview is either vague or vaguely pompous in this respect: Harry Angstrom [Rabbit] can never be described as largeminded, but that does not prevent Updike from imagining him largely [or large-mindedly?]. But at one point Dr. Sale decided to be specific. Rabbit's and Janice's "lovemaking while talking about moving out of his motherin-law's house and worrying about their son Nelson is the best moment in the book, maybe in all Updike." Prepare yourself for the best moment: 70 "Could we afford it," Janice asks,"with the mortgage rates up around thirteen percent now?" He shifts his hand down the silvery slick undulations of her belly .... [the dots are in the magazine]. "It seems hard on Mother," Janice says in that weak voice she gets, lovemaking. "She'll be leaving us this place some day and I know she expects we'd stay in it with her till then." The quotation goes on in the same spirit for another twenty-four lines but I grudge the space. Mr. Updike describes common Americans who turn out, under his pen, to be fantastic, obnoxious, stupid, and asocial animals, driven by fantastic sexual-gastric urges of Mr. Updike's invention. Mr. Roth describes Americans like himself who turn out, under his pen, to be like the phoney dukes and duchesses of old pulp novels. The first twentieth century Western pulp novel I read had been published in England in the 1920s and was entitled The Undesirable Governess. There was a difference between The Undesirable Governess and nineteenth century European dime fiction. The latter usually displayed dukes and duchesses, and all the "appurtenances of luxury." "Tears streaming down her pale face, the duchess was running to the pond." The pond was a ducal "appurtenance of luxury." The Undesirable Governess displayed "people of culture" as the modern equivalent of dukes and duchesses. Instead of running to the ducal pond, the heroine read the Upanishads, the most cultured pastime for the English middle class of the 20s. The Upanishads had replaced the ducal pond. Just as the 19th-century dime novel readers were to gasp at the luxury of dukes and duchesses, the new pulp novel readers were to marvel at the culture of "people of culture." In Philip Roth's Zuckerman Unbound, Zuckerman is a writer whose book makes a million dollars. "But what writer?" any more or less intelligent American is bound to ask. "A hack like Gay Talese, who has made millions of dollars, or a Chekhov, who would be unable to live off his genius in New York today?" Philip Roth is not that complicated. His Zuckerman is a great writer-like Tolstoy, John Updike, Cervantes, Proust, Mark Twain, Philip Roth. Naturally, his book makes a million, not millions. Millions of dollars would make readers suspicious: What if this great writer were just another Harold Robbins? A million dollars is enough for Mr. Roth to show "how the rich live" -the subject of his pulp novel-and at the same time remove any suspicion as to the greatness of his Zuckerman. There is a writer's love affair, of course. With a Hollywood star, of course. How do writers have affairs, in contrast to Mr. Updike's car dealers or college students? We have to recall again nineteenth century pulp literature in which the readers who never had seen a real duke or duchess at close quarters were shown how phoney dukes and duchesses lived. In Zuckerman Unbound, the phoney Duke and Duchess have been replaced by the phoney Writer and the phoney Movie Actress. When Writer Zuckerman came to Movie Actress Caesara O'Shea's hotel suite, what did he do-go to bed with her as Mr. SUMMER 1982 �Updike's Rabbit, a car dealer? Little do you know about the life of Writers. Writer Zuckerman read S(,iren Kierkegaard aloud to her. Do not expect that Writer Zuckerman or Movie Actress Caesara or Philip Roth himself would say anything original about "Syiren Kierkegaard" (or about anyone and anything else on earth). "Sy{ren Kierkegaard" plays here the same role as the Duke's carriage played in the nineteenth century pulp. Now, the Movie Actress begins to fidget. After all, she is a Movie Actress, not a Theatre Actress or Authoress. A Movie Actress corresponds to the illegitimate daughter of a duke and a kitchen maid in old dime novels. Is Writer Zuckerman going to read all of Sy{ren Kierkegaard at a go? Zuckerman laughed. "And what will you do?" "What I always do when I invite a man to my room and he sits down and starts reading. I'll throw myself from the window." Writer Zuckerman has to descend to this half-duchess-halfkitchen-maid and explain to her that he is a Duke of literature, not a Harold Robbins: "Your problem is this taste of yours, Caesara. If you just had Harold Robbins around, like the other actresses, it would be easier to pay attention to you." Writer Zuckerman is not like Harold Robbins who would go to bed with the Movie Actre_ss instead of reading S0'ren Kierkegaard to her. Just as in old dime novels there would be the villain who was born and bred low, but who impersonated a duke, so, too, Harold Robbins, in contrast to Writer Zuckerman (or Writer Philip Roth), has no more refinement than Mr. Updike's car dealer. Having proven, by dropping the name of S¢ren Kierkegaard, that Zuckerman is a Writer, not a Harold Robbins, Mr. Roth shows him and his life in a way no different from the way People magazine portrays Harold Robbins and his high-society life. Indeed, we are treated to a clipp-ing frorri such a magazine: I know, I know, actually you only want to know who's doing what to whom. Well, NATHAN ZUCKERMAN and CAESARA O'SHEA are still Manhattan's most delectable twosome. They were very together at the little dinner that agent ANDRE SCHEVITZ and wife MARY gave where KAY GRA.HAM talked to WILLIAM STYRON and TONY RANDALL talked to LEONARD BERNSTEIN and LAUREN BACALL talked to GORE VIDAL and Nathan and Caesara talked to one another. The actual descriptions of this kind in People and other such magazines at least refer to real people like real Harold Robbins. What Mr. Roth describes is phoneyness about phoneyness, society chitchat twice removed from life, a fictitious People magazine column about a fictitious Zuckerman. If Philip Roth were to describe an "unsuccessful" writer as, say, Chekhov would be in New York today, all readers, including those who read People magazine and other such, would find his book unreadable, for Mr. Roth would have nothing to say on the THE ST. JOHNS REVIEW subject. As it is, Mr. Roth sets up Zuckerman as a Kierkegaardreading Writer high above People magazine, and then proceeds to write People magazine stuff "about how the rich live," to be entertaining at least to some People magazine readers, or to those who do not read People magazine out of college-educated snobbery and read Mr. Roth for the same kind of "high-society" pulp. About two pages are devoted to Writer Zuckerman's ordering of twelve suits at the most fashionable tailor. I am sure that Mr. Roth is factual1y accurate describing the particular fashions of 1981 in New York since he has been a millionaire Writer himself. But as soon as Mr. Roth departs from his consumer's report of fashionable goods and services, phoneyness sets in: One night a pretty rock singer whom he'd never seen before told johnny Carson about her one and "Thank God" only date with Nathan Zuckerman. She brought the house down describing the "gear" Zuckerman advised her to wear to dinner if she wanted to "turn him on." Silly and cheap as Johnny Carson and his show are, it is improbable that a rock singer on his show would brag of a date with a writer (like Philip Roth) she had never seen, and would "bring the house down" by inventing the "gear" he allegedly advised her to wear. Mr. Roth sounds like a foreigner describing the Johnny Carson show to a foreign pulp magazine. Mr. Roth must have felt that the story about how a Writer made a million dollars and proceeded to live like a Harold Robbins, except for reading Kierkegaard to Movie Actresses, as a Writer should, is too little for a novel. The new fashion seems to be to avoid in-bed scenes, and in this respect Mr. Roth has become more fashionable than Mr. Updike. Without such scenes, however, he has not much to say. So Mr. Roth invented a substory, combining again amateur triteness and amateur implausibility to the same amazing degree Mr. Updike does. A former television quiz winner named Alvin Pepler from Newark, Zuckerman's home town, comes to New York and meets, on page 11 of the book, the celebrated Zuckerman. This trite meeting of the trite admirer with the trite celebrity, worn threadbare in humorous sketches and vaudevilles a century ago, lasts to page 41, about one-fifth of the slender book. Alvin Pepler turns out to be somewhat insane and threatens, in the farfetched ways of Mr. Roth's invention, to kill the celebrated Zuckerman. Finally, Alvin Pepler reappears on page 13 3-he is writing areview of Zuckerman's celebrated book for the New York Times and wants his opinion of the review, because Alvin Pepler does not 'want Sulzberger to read it if it stinks." Everything in the "novel" is so farfetched, contrived, and amateurish that it is not clear whether this is a humorless spoof or if Mr. Roth really believes that the New York Times accepts reviews from former Newark television quiz winners-and Arthur Ochs Sulzberger reads them personally. Why has not this highbrow best-seller been reviewed before if it has already made a million dollars? Is this Mr. Roth's idea of being funny? Or Pepler's? Who is silliest-l\!Ir. Roth or Pepler or Zuckerman? 71 �This review-for-the-New-York-Times filler goes on for twentythree pages, about one-tenth of the book. Finally, Zuckerman opines that Pepler's thoughts in the review are not original (are Zuckerman's or Mr. Roth's?), but "Sulzberger could be crazy about it." Pepler flairs up, like the professor from Ionesco's wellknown old play The Lesson, which Mr. Roth evidently decided to imitate to fill in some pages, and besides, possibly to show how well-read he is. Still, Mr. Roth felt himself duly bound to fill in another dozen or so pages. So Zuckerman's father dies, and the ensuing description, as trite and implausible as the rest of the book, does the trick of bringing the "novel" to a decent minimum size. Anatole Broyard entitled his Books of the Times review of Zuckerman Unbound "The Voyeur Vu," for only the French can -convey the subtlety of Mr. Broyard's perception of Mr. Roth's novel. "Voyeur" is in French "peeper," "Peeping Tom," meaning a writer in this particular case, and when the latter becomes a celebrity he becomes a "peeper peeped at." Now, when he walks down the street, everyone he meets is a literary critic. He is the voyeur vu. 4 How could one express this in plain English, instead of the language of Proust? And what an achievement of Philip Roth, too! A celebrity is peeped or peeked at. Voyeur vu. Perhaps Mr. Roth should write his books straight in French? As is usual, about two-thirds of Mr. Broyard's review is devoted to the "retelling of the plot." Then Mr: Broyard notes that "Mr. Roth's voice is convincing and emotionally charged." He refers to Mr. Rpth's "wit and grace." Not that the book is impeccably free from weaknesses: "Pepler is too monolithic, too quickly comprehended." Mr. Roth's voice "seems to be pitched just a little too high up in the sinuses, too ready with ironic incredulity." Mr. Roth suffers from too much irony (and also from too much wit, grace, talent, intelligence, and beauty?). The new book is reasonably funny, reasonably sad, reasonably interesting, and occasionally just plain reasonable. The review in the New York Times Book Review is a bravura. It reproaches Philip Roth only for his new avoidance of pornography, in contrast with his former pornographic self. The reviewer (George Stade) is one of those middle-class males who imagine themselves big-hearted, open-minded, and oceanically gifted hemen because they are noisy, pushy, and ill-mannered. Often they also eat and drink a lot, do not pass a single woman without a lewd observation-and this seems to prove their oceanic talent. Listen to Mr. Stade's bojsterous masculine harangue: Mr. Stade assumes that Fenny Cooper, Nate Hawthorne, Hermie Melville, and Sammy Clemens (as well as Em Dickinson and Tommy Eliot, no doubt) larded their works with American middle-class locker room anecdotes, told in the most masculine locker room manner of the most masculine he-man, as Philip Roth did in his earlier works. This is why these writers are still read in many countries. American middle-class locker room anecdotes have been cherished all over the world. No country has ever had such obscene language, or such noisy, pushy, ill~mannered males. And look what Philip Roth has done-he has stopped pouring out obscenities because of the retrograde and feminizing custodians of our high literary culture. I had thought that our "high literary culture" and its "custodians" were steeped in pornography. Pulp culture thrives on pornography. How can "high literary culture" abstain, if it is mostly just an amateur version of pulp culture? What else would Mr. Roth or Mr. Updike sell? But no. The custodians of our high literary culture are as they were over a hundred years ago. Mr. Stade, the lone heroic heman, possibly the last male on earth, is fighting single~handedly, just like Mr. Leonard, against the feminizing establishment, led by the New York Times (and Playboy?), for the preservation of that almost destroyed national treasure of treasures: middle-class vulgarity. And IIOW Philip Roth has left the-cause. Alone, all alone, Mr. Stade is, pitted against hordes of feminizing retrogrades. Yes, only the feminized retrograde absence of modern robust male pornography mars Philip Roth's book, which is masterful, sure of every touch, clear and economical ofline as a crystal vase, but there is something diminished about it as about its immediate predecessors. The usual heartbreak and hilarity are there, but they no longer amplify each other; now both are muted. If only there were a generous splash of pornography on every page, as in the good old days-the 60s and 70s, when the fashion was full on. How Mr. Roth's crystal vase of a book would sparkle, and how the heartbreak and hilarity amplify each other, no longer muted. Good old days. When Normie Mailer was mistaken for Billy Shakespeare. Remember? Will they ever come back? l. 2. 3. 4. 5. New York Times Book Review, September 27, 1981, 1. Books of the Times, September 22, 1981. New York Times Book Review, September 27, 1981, I. New York Times, May 9, 1981, 13. New York Times Book Review, May 24, 1981, l. The custodians of our high literary culture are as retrograde and feminizing as they were over a hundred years ago. The ghosts of Mr. Roth's Landsmanner, Fenny Cooper, Nate Hawthorne, Hermie Melville, and Sammy Clemens are nodding approval. Who cares what the Momma's boys think?5 72 SUMMER 1982 �FROM OUR READERS (continued from page 2) probably say so. In that case, his reactions to arguments against feminism would be more consistent than they now appear. TINA BELL Nyack, N.Y. Mr. Doskow replies: Ms. Bell misses the point of my quarrel with Mr. Levin. The issue is not one of women being forced to stay home by their husbands (though this has been known to happen), nor is it a question of the importance of raising children, certainly a most important task {I would only add that Fatherhood deserves equal billing with Motherhood). Rather the issue is whether women should be judged on their individual abilities or considered congenitally incapable of doing certain kinds of work, and whether when they do the same work as men they should be paid equally, something which has not been and is not now the case. There may well be significant distinctions between men and women. But, as I thought I made overabundantly clear, what seemed to be natural differences not very long ago (women's innate incapacity to be attor- neys, e.g.) turn out to be merely prejudices. To cite just one more example (from Stephen Gould, The Mismeasure of Man, p. 118): G. Stanley Hall, "America's premier psychologist," attributed the higher suicide rate of women to "A profound psychic difference between the sexes. Wornen's body and soul is phyletically older and more primitive, while man is more modern, variable, and less conservative .... Women prefer passive methods; to give themselves up to the power of elemental forces, as gravity, when they throw themselves from heights ... " Incidentally, if Pride and Prejudice is to be Ms. Bell's text, it is a pity that she misses the profound irony of the first sentence which remarks, among other things, that it is not all men but only those "in possession of a good fortune" who must be "in want of a wife." Arc the others not to "establish themselves in civilized society"? I might also remark that in a more enlightened age Charlotte Lucas might find something more interesting and useful to do with her life than to marry Mr. Collins and spend it as a toady to Lady Catherine. GEORGE DOSKOW �The St. John's Review St. John's College Annapolis, Maryland 21404 Non-profit Org . . U.S. Postage PAID Permit No. 66 Lutherville, Md. � Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource <em>The St. John's Review</em> Description An account of the resource <em>The St. John's Review</em><span> is published by the Office of the Dean, St. John's College.  All manuscripts are subject to blind review. Address correspondence to </span><em>The St. John's Review</em><span>, St. John's College, 60 College Avenue, Annapolis, MD 21401 or via e-mail at </span><a class="obfuscated_link" href="mailto:review@sjc.edu"><span class="obfuscated_link_text">review@sjc.edu</span></a><span>.</span><br /><br /><em>The St. John's Review</em> exemplifies, encourages, and enhances the disciplined reflection that is nurtured by the St. John's Program. It does so both through the character most in common among its contributors — their familiarity with the Program and their respect for it — and through the style and content of their contributions. 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Creator An entity primarily responsible for making the resource Office of the Dean Publisher An entity responsible for making the resource available St. John's College Identifier An unambiguous reference to the resource within a given context ISSN 0277-4720 thestjohnsreview Contributor An entity responsible for making contributions to the resource St. John's College Greenfield Library Text A resource consisting primarily of words for reading. Examples include books, letters, dissertations, poems, newspapers, articles, archives of mailing lists. Note that facsimiles or images of texts are still of the genre Text. Page numeration Number of pages in the original item. 72 pages Original Format The type of object, such as painting, sculpture, paper, photo, and additional data paper Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Creator An entity primarily responsible for making the resource Office of the Dean Title A name given to the resource The St. John's Review (formerly The College), Summer 1982 Date A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource 1982-07 Contributor An entity responsible for making contributions to the resource Radista, Leo Parran, Jr., Thomas Carnes, David Durholz, Janet Bolotin, David Wilson, Curtis A. Sachs, Joe Brann, Eva T. H. Smith, J. Winfree Berns, Gisela Landau, Julie Loewenberg, Robert Holt, Philip Slakey, Thomas J. Navrozov, Lev Description An account of the resource Volume XXXIII, Number 3 of The St. John's Review, formerly The College. Published in Summer 1982. Identifier An unambiguous reference to the resource within a given context ISSN 0277-4720 The_St_Johns_Review_Vol_33_No_3_1982 Coverage The spatial or temporal topic of the resource, the spatial applicability of the resource, or the jurisdiction under which the resource is relevant Annapolis, MD Publisher An entity responsible for making the resource available St. John's College Language A language of the resource English Type The nature or genre of the resource text Rights Information about rights held in and over the resource St. John's College owns the rights to this publication. Format The file format, physical medium, or dimensions of the resource pdf St. John's Review https://s3.us-east-1.amazonaws.com/sjcdigitalarchives/original/6d66f4e9b03c3d40ac2c638ecf38bcd1.pdf 337cdaf9976adce51d18547afd36da4b PDF Text Text THESTJOHNSREVIEWAUTU: NWINTER198283THESTJOHl SREVIEWAUTUMNWINTERl 8283THESTJOHNSREVIEWAl TUMNWINTER 198283 THEST OHNSREVIEWAUTUMNWI!' TER198283THESTJOHNSREV • �Editor: FROM OUR READERS Leo Raditsa THE EMPEROR'S NEW CLOTHES Managing Editor: Thomas Parran, Jr. Editorial Assistant: David Carnes Consulting Editors: David Bolotin Eva Brann Curtis A. Wilson To the Editor of the St. John's Review: Why, I wonder, would you or your editor deliberately choose to send me an issue of your magazine calling my attention to a review (of Updike) [Lev Navrozov, "Updike and Roth: Are They Writers?", St. John's Review, Summer 1982] that is so gratuitously, exaggeratedly, insulting? Is this meant to be provocative behavior? Cute behavior? Am I supposed to have a passionate intellectual curiosity about what the St. John's Review thinks of our books? I don't bother to reply out of anger or resentment; only to express my astonishment at what people with some pretension to professionalism think is appropriate; I won't bother opening another issue. ROBERT GOTTLIEB Unsolicited articles, stories, and poems are welcome, but should be accompanied by a stamped, self-addressed envelope in each instance. Reasoned comments are also welcome. THESTJOHNSREVIEW (formerly The College) is published by the Office of the Dean, St. John's College, Annapolis, Maryland 21404. Edwin J. Delattre, President, SamuelS. Kutler, Dean. Pub· lished thrice yearly, in the autumn~winter, winter-spring, and summer. For those not on the distribution list, subscriptions: $12.00 yearly, $24.00 for two years, or $36.00 for three years, payable in advance. Address all correspondence to The St. John's Review, St. John's College, Annapolis, Maryland 21404. Volume XXXIV AUTUMN/WINTER 1982-83 Number I ©1983, St. John's College. All rights reserved. Reproduction in whole or in part without permission is prohibited. ISSN 0277-4720 Cover: Arch of Titus. The triumphal parade in Rome of the spoils from the Temple of Jerusalem. Built in 80-85 A.D., almost half a generation after the end of the Jewish War (70 A.D.), the Arch of Titus rises on the Via Sacra in the Roman Forum-part of the triumphal route. William James, by Alice Boughton, 1907. Gottfried Wilhelm Liebniz, by Andreas Scheits, 1704, Florence, Uffizi. Composition: Britton Composition Co. Printing: The John D. Lucas Printing Co. The writer is president and editor-in-chief of Alfred A. Knopf, publisher of John Updike. Lev Navrozov replies: I have received over 500 responses like Mr. Robert Gottlieb's letter to my reviews of "great works of literature" and of their reviews in the New York Times and the New York Review of Books. So I can establish a certain general pattern. A respondee wants to show that he despises my review so deeply that no response is appropriate except icy silence, so that his response should not really be regarded as any response at all. This approach saves the respondee from any dangerous attempt to discuss my review, to argue, or to present his view. The respondee also says or ifDp]ies that his response is provoked not by insecurity, or any Other such ignoble feelings, but by the loftx emotions of a gentleman and an artist, duty bound to express his civic or artistic scorn. Whereupon a respondee lets it be known that any other response is beneath his dignity and makes what seems to him an epistolary door-banging exit. Let me now note that a Russian emigre monthly, Literary Courier, has translated the review in question into the Russian and published it in the magazine's latest issue. According to its editor in his letter to me, it "has caused great interest, much praise, and this we owe to you." So evidently the issue is not between just Mr. Gottlieb and me. The issue is rather between his milieu and mine. What Mr. Gottlieb's milieu regards as "great novels," or "outstanding poetry," my milieu does not view as literature. I come from a family of a writer and lived since childhood in the literary milieu of the poet Pasternak and the novelist Platonov (I give these two names as known in the West). I also grew up on Western, and in particular American, literature. Even if I had read Mr. Updike's novel at the age of 16, I (and my milieu) would have said that this is not literature. (continued on page 2) �HESTJOHNSREVIEWAUTUMNWINTER198283 3 William James, Moralist jacques Barzun 13 Treasure Hunt (narrative) Meyer Liben 22 Don Alfonso (poem) Elliott Zuckerman 23 The Unity of Leibniz's Thought on Contingency, Possibility, and Freedom Arthur Collins 46 Letter from a Polish Prison Adam Michnik 51 Not Just Another Communist Party: The Polish Communist Party Branko Lazitch 54 A Nighttime Story (narrative) Linda Collins 57 Marx's Sadism Robert]. Loewenberg 68 Meetings, Recognitions (narrative) Meyer Liben 72 Two Poems 73 The Lost Continent, the Conundrum of Christian Origins joel Carmichael 84 New Year's Eve (narrative) Meyer Liben 85 Ernst and Falk: Conversations for Freemasons Gotthold Lessing translation and notes by Chaninah Maschler 97 The Rainfall in the Pine Grove, after Gabriele D'Annunzio, "La pioggia nel pineto," and two poems Sidney Alexander Laurence Josephs REVIEW ESSAY 100 Defeat in Vietnam, Norman Podhoretz's Why We Were in Vietnam review essay by joseph A. Bosco AT HOME AND ABROAD 103 Letter from the Homefront: On Marrying Kari]enson 105 The Holocaust Mission, July 29 to August 12, 1979 Raul Hilberg Inside front cover: FROM OUR READERS: The Emperor's New Clothes Robert Gottlieb Editorial Policy Nancy de Grummond, Charles Kluth, Kurt Schuler �I realize that to say that the naked Emperor wears no clothes may seem "gratuitously, exaggeratedly, insulting" to those tailors who spun the fictitious clothes and the courtiers who support their pretense. But what am I supposed to do? To pretend that Mr. Updike wears luxurious literary vestments? Ironically, the parents or grandparents of many of those who belong to Mr. Gottlieb's milieu came from Russia too. Yet by the time we came they had created a selfcontained cultural monopoly which keeps out all critics, whether riative Americans or late-comers like myself. Only in a culturally self-contained mutual admiration society which has insulated itself against all outside literary criticism, amateur monstrosities like Rabbit is Rich may be proudly published and showered with rave reviews and prizes. Members of this monopoly can well ignore its critics who can only publish in offmonopoly periodicals which can be easily passed over in silence. Yet for all their power they cannot afford any dialogue or debate with their critics. EDITORIAL POLICY To the Editor of the St. John's Review: Please enter my subscription to the St. John's Review in accordance with your policy about new subscribers. I have had occasion to see the magazine from time to time over the past two years when it was passed on to me by a friend and was first of all attracted by articles in my own field of art history and archaeology written by eminent scholars like Philipp Fehl and Homer Thompson. It was refreshing to find their ideas and opinions presented in a much broader context than is possible in the standard specialist journals. The magazine is to be praised especially for not suppressing feeling in its contributors, who are allowed to bring up issues relating to strong, basic emotions about fear and love and living and dying. Lev Navrozov is permitted to say true things he could not have said in the Soviet Union, and Michael Levin may publish his own very personal, highly debatable views on the sexes. In the case of the latter, even the outrageous title of his 2 article, "'Sexism' is Meaningless," (St. John's Review Autumn 1981) allowed for expression and reaction. The resulting section of Letters to the Editor was lively and splendid. Congratulations to the Editor, whom I respect immensely for publishing writings that help to create dialogue and bring into focus significant thought and feeling. males; it is no more worthy as ·an end in itself than is machismo. CHARLES KLUTH '52 Baltimore, MD To the Editor of the St. John's Review: An Open Letter To The Instruction Committee NANCY T. de GRUMMOND Associate Professor Department of Classics Florida State University To the Editor of the St. John's Review: As an alumnus of St. John's, I think you are to be commended for printing the article "'Sexism' is Meaningless" (St. John's Review Autumn 1981), especially because you must have known that to do so was to invite a great deal of criticism. But I was distressed to find that some graduates of St. John's appear to have adopted the jesuitical doctrine that "error has no rights" and complain not merely of the opinions expressed in the article but even of your having printed it and Your motives in so doing; it would appear that there is free speech only for those who hold "correct" opinions. It is my opinion that the most recent work in anthropology and the physiology of the brain, as well the practical experience of the Army and the Marine Corps, indicate strongly that the traditional understanding of men and women as equal but complementary remains true. The obvious difficulty with this formulation has been that it has too often been used to exclude women from fields of endeavor to which they were perfectly well suited, not to mention other abuses; hence the knee-jerk reaction of the feminist to any comparison which goes beyond the "gross biological features" (to quote one of your correspondents). But the application of so gross a standard has led us to such obvious absurdities as quotas for 1OOlb. beat patrolmen. It will not be easy, as it never is, to be both fair and reasonable but, if there is to be a restoration of common sense, we had better start trying. In the meantime, we needn't, and shouldn't, equate feminism with anything beyond the concerns of fe- I am disturbed by the statement of editorial policy you recently adopted for the St. John's Review . .. The statement emphasizes that contributors to the Review should be familiar with the St. John's program (first paragraph), will probably be tutors, alumni, or visiting lecturers, and will write mainly about books and issues within the program (fourth paragraph). I presume that you find such a statement necessary because you are dissastisfied with the editorial practices the Review has been following for the last several issues, and I infer from the paragraphs I cited that you don't think the Review has been sufficiently concerned with the program. Apparently, you want to narrow drastically the range of topics the Review covers. That is a bad mistake. The Review is the only tangible intellectual contact that many alumni and many outsiders have with the college. Consequently, I think that the Review should make a strong effort to appeal to them, by including articles about subjects that are of immediate interest to them. One must remember that the world of learning is wider than the St. John's program; one must also remember that most of the general public (and, after a few years away from St. John's, most alumni) have intellectual interests different from those of students and tutors at St. John's. If the Review wishes to address that public, it cannot stick its head in the sand and pretend it does not see that more people want to read about the informativeness of the New York Times versus that of Pravda than about spirituality in the philosophy of Plotinus, for example. Let me relate to you my own experience with the Review. The articles in it that I always read first are those not explicitly connected with the program. My friends, whether alumni of St. John's or of other (continued on page 112) AUTUMN/WINTER 1982-83 �William James, Moralist Jacques Barzun James's long discussions in youth with Wendell Holmes and the great essay-review of Spencer's Psychology in 1878 were his first attempts to vindicate the character of the moral life. It had to be done because the phrase "in an age of science" was already taking on the implication that everything in human life had changed and must be reexamined before its license to exist could be renewed. For James as a naturalist, the double question was: how to establish the reality of moral choice as part of nature; and how to show that this choice was a free individual act, not a resultant of extraneous "forces." The evidence James begins with is the root phenomenon of the reflex arc: a sensory stimulus affects the brain, and its result is some form of action. All action is reaction upon the outer world. 'The current of life which runs in at our eyes and ears is meant to run out at our hands, feet, or lips. The only use of the thoughts which it occasions while inside is to determine its direction to whichever of these shall, under the circumstances actually present, act in the way most propitious to our welfare.' What James saw and said a hundred years ago is that reflex action is not like stepping on one end of a see-saw and getting hit in the face by the other. Between stimulus and action comes response and which response it is to be is by no means always automatic. Whatever may be the link between brain and mind, we experience the stimulus. Except in the simple cases of touching a hot stove or a sharp blade, response varies widely. The mind interposes at the midpoint of the arc its peculiar and complex individual characteristics. This interlude of response may seem a slender support A leading man of letters, Jacques Barzun has recently published Critical Questions, Selected Essays 1940-1980 (University of Chicago Press, 1982). The above essay comes from A Stroll with William James, a book meant to mark a life-long debt, to be published early in 1983 {Harper and . Row). Quotations from James are in single quotes. TilE ST. JOHNS REVIEW for the moral world, but it is the same support that holds up and indeed constitutes the whole of our conscious life, with which moral judgment and choice are intertwined. The important point is to recognize preference as a given element and one that is inescapably individual. It is that · "taking" (or unique perception and perspective) which is central to the Jamesian conception of reality. In one of his most charming essays, "On a Certain Blindness in Human Beings," James relates a picturesque incident of his driving with a North Carolina farmer through a remote valley recently opened to cultivation. James was appalled at the devastation-beautiful trees felled, then charred stumps bearing witness to the struggle for level ground; great gashes in the greenery and patches of corn and other plantings irregularly scattered, like the pigs and chickens, among the miserable log cabins, across what mus't have been an enchanted vale. 'The forest had been destroyed; and what had "improved" it out of existence was hideous, a sort of ulcer without a single element of artificial grace to make up for the loss of Nature's beauty.' James put a tactful question to his driver, whose reply changed the whole scene: "Why, we ain't happy here, unless we're getting one of these coves under cultivation." 'I instantly felt,' James goes on, 'that I had been losing the whole inward significance of the situation. Because.to me the clearings spoke of naught but denudation, I thought they could tell no other story. But when they looked on the hideous stumps, what they thought of was personal victory, of honest sweat, persistent toil, and final reward. The cabin was a warrant of safety for self and wife and babes. The clearing was a symbol redolent with moral memories of duty, struggle, and success.' Preferences, then, the ends that we pursue, 'do not exist at all in the world of impressions we receive by way of our senses, but are set by our emotional and practical subjectivity altogether. Destroy the volitional nature, the definite subjective purposes, preferences, fondnesses for certain effects, forms, orders, and not the slightest motive would 3 �remain for the brute order of our experience to be remodelled at all.' It is our desires, our "fondnesses" as James calls them, that underlie the state of mind in which we say "this is good, this is bad; that is better and this worse." Or we imply these judgments by a taking or a rejecting, instinctive or deliberate. Desires are of course not limited to bodily need. Man has developed a want for the superfluous, which is infinite and includes those satisfactions termed moral satisfactions. The moral order, in other words, turns out to be the meaning attached to experience by every being who thinks while he feels. But this conclusion is only the threshold of the higher moral questions. Thoughtful people wonder about the status of ethical ideas strictly so called, the meaning of the terms right and wrong, duty and conscience, and the standards that they comply with. In ordinary speech, <~ethics" means not cheating or stealing, "morals" means sexual propriety; and the "decline of moral standards" so frequently discussed turns on how much there is of the one and how little of the other. "Wider moral issues" occupy writers and preachers and even politicians: what is a just society? Is equality of opportunity enough to ensure it? Is the .criminal reared in poverty responsible for his acts? Does the right to life begin in the embryo? And in comparing groups or individuals, the question is asked, What "values" has she, he, they got? Tell us your "priorities." "Lifestyles" themselves, voguish and vaguish as the term is, embody the kind of judgment called moral, and the same estimating of worth comes into play in every realm of thought and action: art, science, philosophy, and religion are equally exposed to moral judgment; they form part of the moral life of man. Its difficulty is that because it relies on estimates, because it arises from our different perspectives, certainty and agreement are not to be had, even with the aid of a particular religious revelation. And supposing that revelation brought about unity, the multiplicity of creeds at variance on moral questions would still leave the philosopher having to choose among revelations. He wants a prescrip~ tion to. fit all mankind if he can discover it. What can he turn to? In answering the challenge, James gives in passing some credit to the Utilitarians, who ascribe good and bad to associations with pleasure and pain. Association does train us morally, but only up to a point. As James's Psychology makes clear, there are tendencies of the human mind that are "born in the house" and not developed by utility. 'Take the love of drunkenness; take bashfulness, the terror of high places, the susceptibility to musical sounds; take the emotion of the comical, the passion for poetry, for mathematics, or for metaphysics-no one of these things can be wholly explained by either association or utility. A vast number of our moral perceptions deal with directly felt fitnesses between things and fly in the teeth of all the prepossessions of habit and presumptions of uti!- 4 ity. The moment you get beyond the coarser moral maxims, the Decalogues and Poor Richard's Almanacs, you fall into schemes and positions which to the eye of common sense seem fantastic and overstrained. The sense for abstract justice, which some persons have, is as eccentric a variation as is the passion for music. The feeling of the inward dignity of certain spiritual attitudes, as peace, serenity, simplicity, veracity; and of the essential vulgarity of others, as querulousness, anxiety, egoistic fussiness are quite inexplicable except by an innate preference of the moral ideal attitude.' Since these attitudes are individual facts and unevenly distributed among mankind, it follows that 'there is no such thing possible as an ethical philosophy dogmatically made up in advance. We all help to determine the content of ethical philosophy so far as we contribute to the race's moral life. In other words, there can be no final truth in ethics any more than in physics, until the last man has had his experience and said his say.' This is what we should expect in a universe that is inherently pluralistic and unfinished. Are there then no such things as moral principles? Is it meaningless to speak of principled action, of a man, a woman of principle? For if all these are empty words, how can moral behavior be taught and misbehavior reproved? The demand for a common standard is as strong a feeling as that of wanting justice in our special case. We ask incessantly, What is the law? the entrance requirements? the speed limit? We need yardsticks to set our minds at rest and bring others to book-the phrase is literal: the book is the record of accepted measures for ordinary thought and action. Bence the similar call for principles in the cloudier sphere of moral judgment. But the word principle, with its aura of personal merit and firmness in a shaky world, is ambiguous. To the absolutist a principle is a teaching fixed for all time and good on all occasions, a dogma. One should not be afraid of the word, "dogma/' for it conveys the advantage that princi~ pies have when proclaimed with authority as "indelible moral truths, not mere opinion." In that guise principle seems to possess an inherent compelling force-no need of the police behind it. At the same time, dogma has acquired its unwelcome ~ound because it claims universal sway, while modern liberal constitutions require the peaceful coexistence of several conflicting dogmas. So the very general demand for principles and men of principle comes down to asking that everyone have "some principle or other.'' And diversity is back to plague us as before. A further difficulty with principles is that they clash among themselves, even within the same system of morality. Albert Schweitzer, for instance, preached "Reverence for Life" and got the reputation of a saint. But what pragmatic contents does the formula cover? If it means no vivisection, more hun1ane slaughter~houses, forbidding AUTUMN/WINTER 1982-83 �blood-sports-even if it means vegetarianism, Schweitzer's injunction can at least be debated. But as a universal rule it is mere concept-worship. Schweitzer must have daily flouted his own law. If his hospital at Lambarene was even moderately aseptic, many living crawling creatures had to be denied reverence. The tape worm and tse-tse fly could bear witness to his unprincipled behavior, and he was ruthless to cancer cells, which are also a form of life. "Oh, but that's not what he meant!" What then did he mean? An absolute rule is literal or it is nothing. Here the nothing is a pompous echo of a general tendency already wellrooted in our mores. Schweitzer was too intelligent a man not to see the objection and he made some verbal gestures to gloss it over: good sense should govern the application of principle. That saving clause, expressed or not, seems to go with every ideal when one begins to analyze it It enables the absolutist to pass for a moral champion and sensible as well: proclaim the principle inviolable, denounce as unprincipled-as pragmatists-those who question the heroics of absolutes, then reserve the right to do quietly what the "unprincipled" say has to be done.* In the last half-century the game has been played with this same "sanctity oflife" to bring about the widespread abolition of capital punishment; it now goes on about legalized abortion. "The state should not commit-or abetmurder." The noble rhetoric blankets the varieties of experience and flouts the proper use of words: a judicial execution or a legal operation is not murder. And other considerations than the life of the criminal or the fetus have relevance. To name but two, the sanctity of life is hardly honored by incarceration for years in the prisons we have. Nor is it reasonable to prohibit abortion and permit all persons and powers in society, whether through high literature or low advertising, to solicit the eye and the imagination with ubiquitous incitements to sexual activity. In a word, principles are at best short-hand summaries of what civilized life requires in general, in ordinary relations, in open-and-shut situations: do not lie, steal, or kill. But the pure imperative gives no guidance whatever in difficult cases. Universal lying would be dreadful, but you do not tell the truth to the madman armed with a knife who asks which way his intended victim went And even routinely, you lie to spare the feelings of the hostess who apologizes for her spoiled dinner or dull company. The police shoot in hot pursuit and sometimes kill the innocent bystander, just as they would, and do, to quell a riot The very right of self-defense works for and against the sanctity of life. And whether or not the unborn have a "right to life" from the moment of conception, it would be morally monstrous to force the victim of incest or rape *The love of abstraction and hatred of usefulness go so far in certain moralists as to make them affirm that it would be better for morality if honesty were not the best policy. In other words, the right is what people ought to do with no reason given, except that they ought to because it is right. Imperatives satisfy, even vicariously, the imperial emotions. THE ST. JOHNS REVIEW (especially if accompanied by venereal disease) to bear her child. The child itself might come to wish it had never been born and curse the blinkered moralist Every human situation being a tangle of facts and meanings and possible consequences, moral judgment consists in deciding how much evil may be averted and the good sustained or extracted. Sometimes the complication is tragic, as in the case that E.M. Forster discussed at the outbreak of the Second World War: "Should I betray my country or my friend?" The dilemma may have seemed improbable at the time; it no longer looks it after the revelations of high-minded spying and treason. And the moralist is no nearer a solution than Antigone was two thousand years ago when she had to choose whether to obey the law of the gods commanding her to bury her brother or the law of the state forbidding her to do it because he was a rebel. If these various degrees of uncertainty and horror do characterize the life of man precisely because he is a moral being, what help can thinking about it abstractly provide? James has but two generalities to offer, but they are comprehensive. The first is that 'there is but one unconditional commandment, which is that we should seek incessantly, with fear and trembling, so to act as to bring about the very largest total universe of good that we can see. Abstract rules indeed can help; but they help less in proportion as our intuitions are more piercing and our vo- cation the stronger for the moral life. For every dilemma is in literal strictness a unique situation; and the exact com- bination of ideals realized and ideals disappointed which each decision creates is always a universe without precedent and for which no adequate previous rule exists. The philosopher, then, qua philosopher, is no better able to determine the best universe in the concrete emergency than other men. He sees, indeed, somewhat better than most men what the question always is-not a question of this good or that good simply taken, but of the two universes with which these goods respectively belong.' "Not this good, or that good" -it is the whole tangle that must be resolved, just as it is from the new emergencies that moral habits grow more delicate. If we no longer make fun of the insane, abuse the crippled, or beat the abc's into little children, it is because individuals with "piercing intuitions" have persuaded society that their sensibility to others' pain implied a moral duty to stop inflicting it But short of such great reforms, what moral contribution can the morally alive person make? Start, as James always tells us to do, with the idea of a tangible result 'If one ideal judgment be objectively better than another, that betterness must be made flesh by being lodged concretely in someone' s actual perception. It cannot float in the atmosphere, for it is not a sort of meteorological phenomenon like the aurora borealis.' · The second general principle as to the question what ought to be done, what one's duty is in the circumstances, what the ground of our obligation is, brings us to the pas- 5 �sibly surprising conclusion 'thatwithout a claim actually made by some concrete person there can be no obligation, and that there is some obligation wherever there is a claim. Our ordinary attitude of regarding ourselves as subject to an overarching system of moral relations true "in themselves" is therefore either an out-and-out supersti· tion, or else it must be treated as a merely provisional ab· straction from that real Thinker in whose actual demand obligation must be ultimately based.' James, being a natu· ralist, does not posit such a Thinker; he is only showing those who do that their traditional religious morality im· plies a claimant. It follows that in a world which acknowledges no God-or not everywhere the same one-the claim must come from the beings whose existence we do acknowledge. James knows the strangeness of thinking that every claim imposes a duty. With our habit of always wanting a backing to reality, we look for some sign of "validity" behind the claim to turn it into an obligation, something beyond, which 'rains down upon the claim from some sublime di· mension of being which the moral law inhabits. But how can such an inorganic abstract character of imperative~ ness, additional to the imperativeness which is the con· crete claim itself, exist? Take any demand, however slight, which any creature, however weak, may make. Ought it not, for its own sole sake, to be satisfied? If not, prove why not. The only possible kind of proof would be the exhibition of another creature who should make a demand that ran the other way.' So here we are, each of us, at the center of the conflict· ing claims that assail us. They may come from animals or infants or strangers: the range of claims we are subjected to depends on the degree of our awareness; the extent of our moral effect on the world depends on our ability to sort and fulfill them. I confess that when I first read James on "The Moral Philosopher and the Moral Life," I was struck by a sense of helplessness about carrying out his injunction. But af· ter reflection, when I had grasped his extraordinary idea, I felt the sudden release from interminable shilly-shallying: X has asked me to do this for him. Perhaps I should. But I don't really like X, so why should I? But it's absurd to decide on mere dislike. Why not do what he asks if I can without too much trouble? Yes, but he probably won't return the favor. Surely, that's no reason for not doing it-and so on. The amount of inner wear and tear saved by the Jamesian redefinition of duty can be very great. Our modern cant phrases-to sort out one's priorities, to stick to one's values-hardly help in comparison with James's simple idea that the burden of proof in our moral relations is always on the negative: given a claim con· cretely presented, why should I not satisfy it? The search for a "why should I" is futile see-sawing or a grudging sur· render to the "superstitious abstraction." The result of honoring as many claims as possible is to raise the amount of satisfaction in the world, increase the 6 sum of good, and thereby umoralize" the universe more than it is already. For if reducing cruelty to animals makes for a universe better than it Was before, so does giving our claimants more of what they assert to be their good. Su· perficially, the judgment may look like the Utilitarian's "greatest good of the greatest number"; actually, it differs in having nothing to do with legislating the good of society at large or with the wishes of a majority. It is a con· crete relation between persons. That relation may even be what is meant by the uto· pian commandment that we should love one another. At the same time, the requirement of an existing, live claim prevents intrusive do-goodism under the cloak of love. But what if the claimants misjudge and call good what is bad-ask for drugs or the means of harming others? In such cases there is obviously a counterclaim which nullifies theirs, the claim of their kindred or of the rest of society. Besides, claims of this sort fall within the circle of mores and laws about which the moral person has long since settled his doubts. One is not bound to be perplexed and imagine a dilemma every time a choice has to be made. A great deal of the present century's feelings of guilt are the result not so much of moral conscience as of the self-conscious ego. Its feelings are not insincere, but they are more about the status of the self in its own eyes than about the object of its concern. Thus Mrs. J ellyby in Dickens, who neglected her children in her zeal for the natives of Borrioboola-Gha. To respond to all possible claims, one must begin look· ing for them in one's own immediate sphere of knowledge. One must recognize the limits of one's power, but with a resolve to act. Indignation about this bad world is cheaply come by and morally worthless. As Robert Frost once recounted, he gave up reading Lincoln Steffens on the plight of cities, because as a poet he knew he could not go and help. Self-acceptance strengthens the moral judgment in an essential way, for in deciding which claims to fulfill there are times when the claims of the self must be counted. The traditional self-sacrifice of a grown child to an aged parent, for example, must be weighed against its possibly immoral results-domestic tyranny and emo· tiona! blackmail, on one side, gradually creating embit· tered hostility toward the whole world, on the other. As always, it is easier to dispose of such questions from the distance of the writer's desk or the philosopher's lectern. The great merit of James's view of obligation is that its concreteness and perception of the unique warn us against the errors of casuistry. The word has acquired the sense of deviousness only because in the sixteenth or seventeenth centuries the religious casuists tried to foresee and rule on all conceivable predicaments in advance, in a "case book." On paper their solutions sounded contempt· ible. Moral dilemmas, like experience itself, exceed all imag· inings, as is shown by our innumerable books of casuistry -our novels. They lead us to admire or despise the same AUTUMN/WINTER 1982-83 �acts, doubtless because these only look the same, or because disparate moral truths are invoked.* Imbued with the tragic view of life, James was certain that moral action often demands the sacrifice of self; duty is hard; it entails pain and sometimes death. For evil is real and must be fought, repeatedly, endlessly, at great risk. Not only is there no guaranty that one's moral decision is right; there is not even any assurance that the fulfilled claim will not turn from a good to an evil. James's knowledge of history brought enough instances to his mind to leave no doubt.** To speak of moral decisions implies that human beings faced with a moral choice are free to do one thing or another. This privilege is denied by thinkers who believe in determinism. They may belong to either camp of James's opponents; they may be idealists or materialists. Both accept the fact of volition: you can raise your arm if so minded or refuse to if you choose. But that choice is not really yours nor is it decided on at the moment; everything in the past has been interlinked in a chain of causes and effects, of which your present act is but the latest link to the next. We see here the block universe of the Absolute or of blind matter, either of which locks all things in a tight network for all eternity. The battle over free will is ancient and neither side can win, because satisfactory evidence on the subject can never be found. The definition of "free" is itself a source of disagreement. Those who say that man acts for a reason and not from a cause are told that reasons too are foregone. The thorny notion of cause and effect divides even scientists, though most prefer determinism as more con~ venient to work with. This state of affairs leaves belief in free will as itself something to choose or reject. James was brought to see this option by the French philosopher Renouvier and like him he chose free will, on moral grounds. He pointed out at the same time that the determinists also choose-the opposite. Let them have their way, says James, it then follows that 'you and I have been foredoomed to the error of continuing to believe in liberty. It is fortunate for the winding up of controversy that in every discussion with determinism this argumentum ad hominem can be its adversary's last word.' But this debonair taunt and argument are not enough. In "The Dilemma of Determinism" James shows what follows his choosing and what he means by its moral grounds. Take any deplorable event (his example is a bru*For a vivid contrast, take our modern scorn for the medieval trial by combat or by ordeal to determine guilt. In an age of belief in a divine providence that governs every event, it was a most moral and logical procedure, and our method of trusting in the doubtful word of mortal witnesses would have seemed reckless and absurd. **A striking one has emerged since his death: the benevolent, liberal, highly moral treaty that Great Britain made after the Boer War saddled South Africa with a regime based on the continuance of race oppression. THE ST. JOHNS REVIEW tal murder, then recent) and see the difficulties that arise if a determinist regrets its occurrence. 'Are we to say, though it couldn't be, yet it would have been a better universe with something different from this Brockton murder in it? Calling a thing bad means that the thing ought not to be, that something else ought to be in its place. Determinism [thus] virtually defines the universe as a place in which what ought to be is impossible.' And 'what about the judgments of regret themselves? If they are wrong, other judgments, of approval presumably, ought to be in their place. But as they are necessitated, nothing else can be in their place; and the universe is what it was before-a place where what ought to be appears impossible. We have got one foot out of the pessimistic bog, but the other sinks all the deeper. We have rescued our actions from the bonds of evil, but our judgments are now held fast. When murders and treacheries cease to be sins, regrets are theoretic absurdities and errors.' In other words, under determinism there can be no clear and consistent meaning in the terms moral life, moral judgment, moral action. Freedom thus regained does not mean "deuces wild"everybody free every instant to will what he or she pleases. There are networks of compulsion-instinct, habit, bodily makeup-and it is as clear to indeterminists as to others that one can predict fairly well what someone else will do when one knows the doer's character and the constraints he works under. Determinists seem to fear that the cosmos will fall apart if free will is permitted to exist. 'It is as likely (according to McTaggart) that a majority of Londoners will burn themselves tomorrow as that they will partake of food; as likely that I shall be hanged for brushing my hair as for committing murder, and so forth.' Clearly, the dispute itself is very free; it suffers no constraints from common sense. But in James's universe things are not totally loose and disjointed. All kinds of unities and relations among things and among ideas coerce. The one permanent avenue of freedom, however narrow, is that 'in an activity situation, what happens is not pure repetition; novelty is perpetually entering the world.'* One might have expected that James's large definition of duty and his solid reasoning in favor of free will would satisfy the moralist "in an age of science." But they do not, because James's maxim requires that an action for good shall be related to the entire present situation, which he says is new and cannot be judged by previous rule. But morality is the right and James's precept looks like the expedient, the changeful. A moralist may admit the changing character of truth, because he has accomodated himself to "progress" in science, but this concession probably *The full technical argument is given in Chapter VI of Essays in Radical Empiricism, "The Experience of Activity;" and again at greater length in the last five chapters of Some Problems of Philosophy. 7 �makes him all the more unbending about the "right." He is sure that the pragmatic imagination playing upon context and consequence can only make for uncertainty in human relations, set people adrift and helpless amid temptations, in short replace Right absolute by Relativism. This argument is so familiar that it is often accepted by those against whom it is directed, as if they lived indeed by a lower grade of ethics but could do no better. Nor is it noticed that the attack brings together two different sets of facts. One is the diversity of existing moralities, each of them absolute to some tribe or nation; the other, the diversity of individuals within tribe or nation. When Europe discovered the new world in early modern times it was seen that peoples lived by different rules. Montaigne pointed out that cannibals were not immoral at home though they were abominable murderers in Europe. By the next century Pascal notes that even in Europe moral truth is one thing on this side of the Pyrenees and another on the other side. This being the state of affairs from time immemorial, it seems rather egotistical to proclaim any one set of commandments the sole morality, and somewhat fanciful to speak of "indelible moral truths implanted in the human heart." Is it moral or immoral for the Mohammedan to have four wives? Or the African chief to have forty, each worth so many head of cattle? A worldly Pope recently declared that to look with lust upon one's wife was tantamount to adultery. If this is morality for Catholic believers, is it incumbent upon their neighbors on the same street? In many parts of the world, a gift of value for doing business, giving justice, or performing a helpful official act is only courtesy; in the West it is bribery, immoral and criminal. Murder in early medieval England was paid for by a fine-that is the original meaning of the word murder; later it was paid for by one's life; now, in this country, the penalty is a life sentence, and the meaning of that is seven years in jail. (If life is sacred, by the way, the Eskimos' law is the most moral: the murderer is told to go away and join another tribe.) Like it or not, humanity is radically diverse. It is only by successive abstractions that we come to conceive of a single "human nature." If you take away one by one heredity, education, the social forces of the time and the place, you can arrive at the essential human being, the forked radish with four limbs, needing food and shelter, and who will surely die. But having defined him-or it, rather-no specimen of the kind can be found; like an average prescription for eyeglasses, the definition doesn't fit anybody. It is at this point that the second and different target of the foe of Relativism comes into view. Actual life is lived by a collection of somebodies and they are no more alike among themselves than are the groups to which they belong. Ascetics and Lotharios, extroverts and introverts, the pensive and the gregarious, the poet and the athlete, and many other varieties and subvarieties breathe and move under the same customs and costume. If the moral- 8 ist perforce tolerates different national and tribal ethics, why the indignation at internal diversity?-unless it is such as to disturb the peace, which is a political, not a moral reason. In advanced civilizations the idea occurs to very moral persons that different types of character are entitled to different treatment.* Since 1914, for example, we recognize the conscientious objector. As Shaw pointed out even earlier, to do unto others as we would have them do unto us may be unjust: they are not us and their tastes may differ. It is precisely the social behaviorist's mistake to suppose that the same lure and the same whip will work on all alike. It is also the error of the speculative reformer; Utopias are invariably made for one type. The anti-relativist of today, with his high ideal of inflexibility, needs to see that without the acceptance of different ethical norms we should never have got away from those of the cave man. The refinement of feeling and conduct that moralists pride themselves on comes from change, not fixity. The law of an eye for an eye, a tooth for a tooth gets outgrown, but at first it necessarily appears as a violation of principle. The fear that if one rule is altered, then "anything goes" is the fallacy of all or none. "Things" could hardly "go" farther than we see them doing at present, yet our age is extremely moralistic, if not moral; it lacks "morals" in the vulgar sense but it is full of moral scruples and it labors under innumerable codes aimed at giving equal treatment and protecting the helpless. We have come so far as to cherish even "endangered species" -small, unknown, speechless claimants such as the snail darter, which now arouse widespread moral passions.** Indeed, our moralism is one cause of the perpetual anger at society: why isn't it perfect? Since )ames's moral philosophy follows the pragmatic pattern of considering outcome as well as antecedents, it is clear that his relativism, far from being footloose, is held fast by as many demands and duties as the moral agent can think of. His relativism relates, and widely. It would be better named Relationism. In thus relating one's decision or conduct to several needs and ideals, one gives the observer as many chances to criticize, whereas the absolutist relates his act to only one thing: the fine abstraction that *Contrary to common opinion, it is in governing and administering that rules should be rigid. If well drawn, they save time and preclude indecision. In the life of institutions good fixed rules are the prime producers of efficiency and fairness. To be sure, such grooves for sensible action must be redrawn as often as necessary. The complicated work of civilization today is chaotic because of antiquated procedures. Everybody "makes policy" and leaves action to chance or precedent. But this failure due to scarcity of administrative genius is aggravated by false notions of "flexibility," "compassion,'' and other forms of muddling inequity. In the struggle with the bureaucracies of business and government and education, what makes the public hate "the system" is that it is not a system. **UNESCO has adopted a Declaration of the Universal Rights of Animals, but it has not helped the goats of San Clemente Island, which were liquidated for endangering several species of plants and the habitats of other, less common creatures. Ah, principle! (New York Times, August 19, 1979). AU1UMNIW1NTER 1982-83 �his God or his grandfather once uttered emphatically. In other words, James insists as usual that theory be given concrete, namable contents. Those are the "objective val· ues" that moralists preach, though what they rant about is but a formula, a form of words.* The Jamesian obligation to connect the moral judgment not to 'this good or that good simply taken but to the uni· verse with which they belong' also clears up the common confusion about morals in politics and foreign affairs. Lin· coin's struggle with his followers' narrow absolutes may serve to illustrate. In 1863, when summoned to change leaders in troubled Missouri, he gave a reply that should be read as a textbook case in political morality: "We are in Civil War. In such cases, there is always the main ques· tion; but in this case that question is a perplexing com· pound-Union and Slavery. It thus becomes a question not of two sides merely, but of at least four sides even among those who are for the Union .... Thus, those who are for the Union with, but not without slavery-those for it with or without, but prefer it with-and those for it with or without, but prefer it without. Among these again, is a subdivision of those who are for immediate, but not grad· ual extinction of slavery." To each party, each of the six choices was the only moral goal, as Lincoln knew: "all 11 these shades of opinion and even more" are entertained by honest and truthful men .... Yet all being for the Union, by reason of these differences each will prefer a different way of sustaining the Union. At once sincerity is questioned·, and motives are assailed. Actual war coming, blood grows hot, and blood is spilled. Thought is forced from old channels into confusion. Deception breeds and thrives. Confidence dies, and universal suspicion reigns. Each man feels an impulse to kill his neighbor, lest he be first killed by him. Revenge and retaliation follow. And all this, as before said, may be among honest men only." It is as Dorothy Sayers told us: the first thing a principle does is to kill somebody. The statesman thus appears as something greater and wiser and more tragic than the image of "the man of principle," who follows the rule by rote and lets the heavens fall. He is actually one who says: "Gentlemen, I beg you to rise above principle" and who persuades the everwarring factions of his party and his nation to give up their abso· lutes and be guided by his superior pragmatism. In the murderous battle of principles, he keeps in view the aim and end of moral action. The end is the test, justifying him when the story is over. But even before, along the way, the end is the standard for judging which principle is to be followed and which must be waived. Hear Lincoln before his presidency, dur· ing the debates with Douglas: "Much as I hate slavery, I would consent to the extension of it rather than see the Union dissolved, just as I would consent to any great evil, to avoid a greater one. But when I go to Union saving, I must believe, at least, that the means I employ has some adaptation to the end. To my mind Nebraska has no such adaptation." Here with the word means Lincoln introduces the last component of moral conduct: besides the variety of claims and ends to be weighed and combined, there is the mode of action to be chosen. No man was more dedicated to freedom than Lincoln, but as Chief Executive he restricted freedom of speech, suspended habeas corpus, and used the army to enforce the draft against rioters-with regret, no doubt, but without compunction. Does this not mean that the end justifies the means? Yes. Horrors! No formula arouses greater indignation in moralists; it is the mark of the Evil One; it is the reason given for regarding avowed pragmatists as suspect. Any· body who subscribes to the wicked notion in so many words has to explain himself, offer some excuse. Well, for a start, everyone without exception acts on it in ordinary life. For instance: a man takes a sharp knife and slashes a child. He is a brute, a monster. But just a minute! The man is Dr. X, about to remove the inflamed appendix. Immediately the cut in the abdomen becomes desirable, praiseworthy, highly paid. The end-and nothing elsehas changed the moral standing of the violent act. The end justifies the means. Again, we take that same child, we take all children, and, at an age when they are bundles of energy bent only on running and playing and shouting we coop them up for four hours, six hours a day, and compel them without due process of law to struggle over tasks they do not care for and see no point in. It is called Education. We piously plead: the end justifies the means. Similarly, the ends jus· tify monogamous marriage, imprisonment by law, monastic retreat from the world, and its seeming opposite: society itself. For as Rousseau and Freud pointed out, to live in society is a harsh, unnatural discipline justifiable only by the ends of relative safety for continuous toil. The modern state particularly is built on the ends-andmeans formula so hastily condemned. From compulsory vaccination and seizing land for public use to the control of a thousand normal acts-eating and drinking, teaching and learning, traveling and importing-our laws and administrative rules interfere hourly with harmless human purposes. We tell ourselves that the end-the common welfarejustifies. The same maxim is also blessed by one ancient church that guides the conduct of millions. It teaches, on the basis of scriptures even older than itself, that procrea· tion in wedlock is the sole justification of sexual intercourse. The end apparently justifies the otherwise reprehensible means. On occasions less intimate and recurrent anybody would behave in the same spirit: we would not hesitate to knock down man, woman, or child to save any of them, on *Looking at the sum of moral ends achieved permits moralities and cultures-whatever anthropologists may say-to be adjudged better or worse. THE ST. JOHNS REVIEW the instant, from being run over or burned to death by clothing on fire. 9 �The bugbear phrase is evidently a misnomer for something else; and cleansing it of odium is not a merely verbal matter, for its present use is to distort the actual relation of ends to means and discredit pragmatic moral judgments. What needs to be embodied in a formula is a distinct situation, that in which the means corrupt the end-or destroy it, as would happen, for example, if one should drug a child to stop it from crying. Weak minds are often tempted to use such means, which in effect covertly substitute one end for another; the true one is a child at peace and not crying; the false is a child merely silenced by a dose of pmson. Besides, this reductivism works both ways. 'If William's religious melancholy is due to bad digestion, scientific theories are organically conditioned just as much as religious emotions are.' James called such interpretation "medical materialism" and saw in it sheer intellectual arrogance. He resented the trick that transformed useful discoveries (his own included) about the dependence of mental upon bodily states into a gratuitous identification of the two. It is a permanent temptation, as the poet and scholar Joy Gresham, who became Mrs. C. S. Lewis, confessed about her youthful views: "Men," I said, "are only apes. Love, art, altruism are only sex. The universe is only matter. Matter is only energy. I forget what I said energy was only." To speak of moral intuition and believe in free will on moral grounds, as we have seen James doing, argues the valuing of belief itself as a human activity. To accept equality or any other "moral truth" for its good consequences is an act of faith and therefore a risk. But as early as the 1870s and '80s, when James was discussing these questions, faith had become a privative concept which meant: unscientific, illusory, antiquated nonsense, prob- ably of religious origin. Those who took this attitude generally called themselves Positivists, after the name given by Auguste Comte to his philosophy of knowledge. In effect it admitted as knowledge only what science had certified-positive(ly) knowledge. Toward everything else these minds were skeptical; toward religion specifically, or anything called spiritual, they declared themselves "agnostic"-Huxley's bad coinage for one who says: HI don't know." The purpose embodied in this then-new word is important; it was to teach the lesson of withholding belief. The agnostic does not deny divinity like the atheist; he waits for evidence one way or the other. Such a position sounds worthy beyond cavil, but its balancing act between Yea and Nay rarely proves stable. Most positivists were assertive materialists, and James found himself obliged to rr\eet their hidden metaphysics head on. 'Science, these positivists say, has proved that personality, so far from being an elementary force in nature, is but a passive resultant of the really elementary forces, physical, chemical, physiological, and psycho-physical, which are all impersonal and general in character. Nothing individual accomplishes anything in the universe save insofar as it obeys and exemplifies some universal law.' Thus-and this was the analogy that Taine made famous in the preface to his History of English Literature (1864)-"Vice and virtue are products like vitriol and sugar." James shows that the argument rests on the genetic fallacy. Treating moral facts like so many chemicals is 'as if the same breath which should succeed in explaining their origin would simultaneously explain away their significance.' And he adds that he feels 'impatience at the somewhat ridiculous swagger of the program, in view of what the authors are actually able to perform.' 10 By the time one does get to energy, amid the elementary particles of physics, which exist for us only as traces on film and which are identical within their kinds, it is evident that something must be added to them before they can become even the ape that we say we are. Yet when one makes this simple reflection one is suspected of "smuggling in" something illicit into the universe. The word ''mysticism" is murmured and one is accused of being "against Science," or just too stupid to see how, for the enlightened, science has become "a Way of life." Science can be no such thing, since it begins by excluding what it cannot measure or classify. No scientist has ever chosen a wife or bought a house by scientific methods, nor does he laugh, or applaud a musical work, on scientific grounds. Two-thirds of his life is totally remote from science. Therefore to speak of belief, free will, or faith of any kind as "smuggled in" would mean that natural science offered a complete account of experience. What it offerstoo readily-is the claim to do so in the future, coupled with the command to sit and wait. Huxley, again, gave the fGrmula: "To rest in comfortable illusion when scientific truth is conceivably within reach is to desecrate oneself and the universe." Some writers of our time, though eager to vindicate the moral life, have accepted the premise that science legitimately occupies all the land, but hope that it might be induced to lease some untilled portion for non-scientific use. When James met the claim of total ownership he took a different and intellectually sounder line. The opportunity was given him by a statement in which the English mathematician W. K. Clifford, who was also Jame's friend and fellow psychologist, summed up the new orthodoxy: believe nothing without sUfficient evidence-it is a sin: '"Whoso would deserve well of his fellows in this matter will guard the purity of his belief with a very fanaticism of jealous care .... If a belief has been accepted on insufficient evidence (even though the belief be true, as Clifford on the same page explains) the pleasure is a stolen one. It is sinful because it is stolen in defiance of our duty to mankind .... It is wrong, always, everywhere, and for everyone to believe anything upon insufficient evidence." ' On this text James wrote a closely reasoned essay which AUTUMN/WINTER 1982-83 �he called "The Will to Believe." The title has passed into common usage with (as usual) the erroneous meaning of "believe what you please." Seeing this, James regretted the phrase and thought he should have said "the right to believe." In fact, the demonstration is about the right and the will to believe, each restricted to precisely stated conditions. Clifford's preachment 'with somewhat too much ro· bustious pathos in the voice' is self-refuting on the face of it. Clifford, like everybody else, believed thousands of things on no evidence at all-for example, whatever he knew, or thought he knew about his family and friends; and he acted on faith whenever he said with no quiver of doubt: "I'll see you next Monday." It is such facts of belief and their source in experience that James begins by examining. 'We find ourselves believing, we hardly know how or why. We all of us believe in molecules and the conservation of energy, in democ~ racy and necessary progress, in Protestant Christianity and the duty of fighting for "the doctrine of the immortal Monroe" -all for no reasons worthy of the name. We see into these matters with no more inner clearness, and prob~ ably with much less, than any disbeliever in them might possess. His unconventionality would probably have some grounds to show for its conclusions; but for us, not insight, but the prestige of the opinions, is what makes the spark shoot from them that lights up our sleeping magazines of faith. Our faith is faith in someone else's faith, and in the greatest matters this is most the case. Our belief in truth itself is that· there is a truth and that our minds and it are made for each other.' Our thoughts are energized by feelings of all kinds, and it is the varied origins, character, and intensity of feeling that pose the problem of which ideas to trust. 'Our next duty, having recognized this mixed-up state of affairs, is to ask whether it be simply reprehensible and pathological, or whether, on the contrary, we must treat it as a normal element in making up our minds.' To help settle the question James defines a few terms. Call hypothesis anything proposed to our belief and see if it seems to us live or dead. A live hypothesis is one that the individual finds believable, credible. To an atheist, the reincarnation of souls is not a live hypothesis, but "medical materialism" might be. He could in the end reject it, but it was not "unthinkable" like the other. If one thinks one might take action there is some degree of "liveness" in the hypothesis: 'there is some believing tendency wherever there is willingness to act at all.' ("Act" here would include re~arranging one's other opinions and altering one's vocabulary). The choice between hypotheses James calls an option and he classifies options as living or dead, forced or avoidable, momentous or trivial. What he goes on to state applies only to an option that is forced, living, and momentous. It is only within these narrow limits and only when no empirical evidence is to be had, that James finds the right THE ST. JOHNS REVIEW and the will to believe legitimate. Belief under these conditions is no frolic when teacher's back is turned; it has a reason to exist, which is: that not deciding is a form of decision. Thus for most people free will is a tenable idea-it is live, which makes the option living, and it is certainly not trivial; it is forced, because there is no third possibility. So in the absence of evidence one has the right to believe in free will, for not deciding would be to decide against it. These safeguards against credulity have been so regularly overlooked in discussions of James's essay that they bear restating in his own words: *'Our passional nature not only may, but must, decide an option between propositions, whenever it is a genuine option that cannot by its nature be decided on intellectual grounds; for to say under such circumstances, "Do not decide but leave the question open," is itself a passional decision and is attended with the same risk of losing the truth.' , So much for the right to believe. The will to do so is a related subject, but its limiting conditions are different. First, willing is not mere wishing or "velleity," as it is ca11ed. "I wish I were a millionaire" and "Everybody falls in love with me" are not forms of the will to believe; they are commonplace fantasies. Not the superficial wish but the deep-seated will is a strenuous expression of the self. When Walter Scott, caught as partner in the bankruptcy of his publishing firm, decided for his honor to pay all its debts by writing novels, essays, biographies indefatigably, he noted in his journal: "] must not doubt. To doubt is to lose." That resolve was his will to believe-in his own powers, in his eventual success. But belief is a far from simple thing. One often hears the strong beliefs of others explained away: "He thinks so because he wants to so much." But try, yourself, to believe that you are younger, or a better dancer, than you actually are; the probability is that you cannot, no matter how much you want to. Peter the apostle wanted to walk on the waters of the stormy lake; his life depended on it, but he could not will it. The test of willing, as usual, is action. Every great artist starts out unknown, uncalled for, but possessed of a belief in himself and of the will to make it true. His periods of discouragement show that it is will which is at work in periods of production. These facts define the situation in which the will to believe is legitimate and, what is more, "creative": 'There are cases where a fact cannot come at all unless a preliminary faith exists in its coming. And where faith in a fact can help create the fact, that would be an insane logic which would say that faith running ahead of scientific evidence is "the lowest kind of immorality." Yet such is the logic by which our scientific absolutists pretend to regu*One exception must be noted: Edwin L. Clarke, in a modest textbook entitled The Art of Straight Thinking (New York 1929), devotes half a page to explaining that James carefully limits the domain in which belief without evidence has its rights. Professor Clarke-may have been annoyed by the ubiquitous will to misunderstand on the part of other scholars. 11 �late our lives!' James then gives a physical example to make vivid a type of predicament that orie meets more often in social or emotional life: 'Suppose that you are climbing a mountain, and have worked yourself into a position from which the only escape is a terrible leap. Have faith that you can successfully make it, and your feet are nerved to its accomplishment. But mistrust yourself, and think of all the sweet things you have heard scientists say of maybes, and you will hesitate so long that, at last, all unstrung and trembling, and launching yourself in a moment of despair, you roll into the abyss.' Life being full of "maybes," it forces every conscious being to act a thousand times on the strength of the will to believe. The will functions without our knowing it as such, or appreciating the philosophic and psychological reasons for its reality, as against the unlifelike view of the Cliffords and the Huxleys. But any initial doubt or faith has the interesting aspect that everyone can prove himself right: 'Refuse to believe, and you shall indeed be right, for you shall irretrievably perish. But believe, and again you shall be right, for you shall save yourself. You make one or the other of two possible universes true by your trust or mistrust-both universes having been only maybes in this particular, before you contributed your act.'* One very ordinary situation in which belief contributes to making itself true is that in which trust, candor, courtesy, or love produces the same pleasant attitudes in return. And so with their opposites; the grouchy and suspicious generally find their worst expectations come true. In bodily matters, the placebo effect, long used by physicians, is of the same kind: give a sugar pill to a patient with the will to cure himself and he may do as well as the truly drugged one. This peculiarity of the body and the mind, though not uniform in its action, is so noticeable that it has inspired more than one cult of self-help: to double your energy and succeed in all things, repeat three cheerful slogans before breakfast. That is a caricature of the will to believe, but caricature implies a real original. 'Our willing nature,' as James calls it, is normally re· strained; it needs favoring conditions before it can act to our benefit. The common belief of those around us is one enabling cause. A vivid imagination is another, but it must summon emotional force behind its image and keep it at the forefront of consciousness. The will to believe is the will to attend; that is why we say of genius that it is ob· sessed. As Hemingway puts it somewhere: "It was not just something he believed. It was his belief." The distinction points to a generally neglected factthe gradations of belief, the various shades of our several beliefs. Think of them in this light and the shadings ap· pear indeed infinite. We believe the broadcast report of a catastrophe; we believe more strongly when the details *Thanks to the currency of the phrase "self-fulfilling prophecy," the the public is now familiar with workings of the negative will: predict that your wedding will not take place and make it so by not showing up for it. 12 are told in the next day's paper; we believe to the full when not merely a witness but a friend saw it happen. There is even a step beyond, which is faith, or belief un· conscious of itself. One senses the difference between believing that something exists and believing in the thing itself. People are chock-full of beliefs, but life is lived on faith-a buried assumption on which one acts; for exam· pie, that the shopkeeper will give you change for your ten· dollar bill and not say it was a five, as he could safely do if he were in bad faith. When any deep trust has to be put into words we discover that belief-its statement-is the interruption of faith. One used to have unthinking faith in the safety of the streets; now one at best believes that the stranger coming along will not assault one. Common speech records the shifting emphasis when it uses "I be· lieve so" to mean "I am not sure." If in order to leap the mountain chasm it was necessary to overcome "The fear that kills," it is.no less important to remember the poet's next line: "And hope unwilling to be fed." For despite the derivation of the word, it is a mistake to suppose that everybody wants to believe what is agree· able.** Many prefer the worst; to them news or ideas feel true because they are gloomy. When Freud said that science was the conquest of will over the pleasure princi· pie, he evidently felt that the truths of science robbed him of pleasure, and he rejoiced. But it is just as reasonable to say that scientific work is the expression of man's free will invading the realm of necessity, in which case science is one form of the pursuit of happiness. These opposed views are doubtless never to be reconciled, but they illustrate a main contradiction of our century. The age cries out for all the freedoms-the free will of individual self-determination, the free choice of social and cultural pluralism, the right to free beliefs and utterance, the free access to good things that equality affords. But it also believes in the material, medical, subpsychical determinism of all acts and thoughts, and it turns its back upon risk, which is the necessary companion of free will as well as of the right and will to believe. So while half our energy goes to freeing, the other half is spent on trying to make safe, to control, to predetermine by means akin to the behaviorist's conditioning or the poll-taker's way of freezing the future. Our worship of science springs from the same passion for certainty (plus the hold it gives on other's opinions) rather than from intellectual pleasure and admiration. Similarly, because they are risky and disturbing, heroism and ambition are thought wrong and ridiculous; tests, statistics, diets, charts tell everybody "This is what you ought to be-indeed, whether you know it or not, this is what you are.'' And with that denial of freedom and risk, anxious guilt replaces the sense of accomplishment. **"Belief' seems to have a two-pronged etymology: be-lief means be-glad, as in "I'd just as lief," lief being related to love; belief is also connected with leave in the sense of allow. Our belief is thus what we should be glad to think when it is allowable to do so: exactly James's position. AUTUMN/WINTER 1982-83 �Treasure Hunt Meyer Liben It was one of those lovely New England days late in August which our great authors of the early and middle nineteenth century have described for us so easily, so extensively. When a region has achieved a given importance -political, cultural, whatsoever-the climate and terrain take on an added significance. How much more so if the beauty is there to begin with! I am poor at natural description, I find it difficult to portray what is, whatever exists, in distinction, I mean, to what is happening (I add that as a kind of self-pleading, to hide a deficiency). I am plainly insensitive to natural beauty (a great deal is happening there) having a poor sense for color, space, and relationship. Lake, mountain, and cloud blended. The predominant colors were green, blue, and brown, the dusty brown of road. A few clouds wandered aimlessly in a sky otherwise absolutely clear. I mention the aimlessness of the clouds because that contrasts so strongly with the decisive, the volitional nature of the event now ready to begin, I mean the Treasure Hunt in the annual Blue and Gold color competition in the summer camp set in a terrain which has been so closely and charmingly, so easily and extensively described by our great authors of the early and middle nineteenth century. A word in passing about this Color War, a phenomenon requiring explanation for those unfamiliar with the customs of the summer camps of the late 1920s and the early 1930s. The competitive element was strong, mirroring that of the Great Society. There was no particular effort made to disguise or soften the competitive instincts. Everyone in camp, counsellor and camper alike-with exceptions to be mentioned-was on the Blue or the Gold team engaging in every variety of sport, in dramatics, and in any other kind of activity which lent itself to competition. Our Blue and Gold lasted for only five days. There were some camps at the time which were divided on the very first day, even on the bus or train carrying them all out of the city, and the struggle for points, for victory, went on all during the summer! That was obviously exaggerating, rather than mirroring, the world round about, and then there were camps coming into existence which discouraged, even forbade this type of competition, trying THE ST. JOHNS REVIEW to create an atmosphere different from that of the society. The competition in these camps was of a low-pressure sort; in some cases the element of cooperation was definitely encouraged. But our camp stood in the middle between those which were competition-crazy and those which were competitionshy-we had our five days of Blue and Gold rivalry (deeper thinkers amongst us referred to it as an attenuated hangover of the War Between the States) and we were now on our fourth day of that rivalry, with the issue in doubt, and an important 25 points to be awarded to the team (this was a Senior Division event) winning the Treasure Hunt. There were three on a team. On the Blue team were Larry Altman, Dick Gordon, and Dave Crown. On the Gold team were Marv Woolman, Jackie Lesser, and Ben Semmel. This game-finding a written clue on the basis of a written clue, and so to the final treasure, usually a prize, in this case the 25 points-requires intelligence and speed. There is hardly a game that doesn't. Now Larry and Marv were very intelligent (both, as it happened, from Townsend Harris Hall), while Dick and Jackie were very fast, ran neck and neck in the sprints, and both murder at laying down a bunt and beating it to first. That left Dave and Ben to represent sagacity, the guiding hand, even what we in our camp called "character,n a quality for which medals were awarded at the reunion held in midwinter. "Character" meant a certain stability; often times the awards were made to those who seemed most reserved and didn't particularly shine in one sport or another. The stability didn't seem to jibe altogether with the sagacity, but that was part of the confusion of this particular area of choice. The contestants were gathered around the flagpole, situated on the parade grounds which overlooked the lake. The Grand Isle seemed very close, the brilliant clarity of that August day acting as a kind of telescope. Down at the waterfront the sophomores were starting their swimming meet, and the points to be won here, tho not crucial, were bound to be important. Above the cries and splashes of the sophs one of the judges, head of the Senior Division, laid down the rules. A word about these judges. The Head Counsellor and the 13 �camp Doctor were kind of ex-officio judges-they might be used if a shortage or an emerge'ncy developed. The active judges were usually counsellors chosen for their noncombative natures. They came most from the intellectuals, those (often, of course mistakenly) thought to be the least interested in victory and therefore, by a curious twist in logic, the most judicious. If a counsellor went to an Ivy League school, or planned to do medical research, he was pretty sure to be chosen for a judge. So do the men of the world underrate the fierce rivalry of mind and spirit. "The boundaries," said the head of the Senior Division, "are the backstop of the baseball field (not into the woods), the beginning of the girls' camp (not into the girls' camp), the parents' Social Hall, and the lake (not into the lake). And remember, no conversation with anyone not on your team." This last warning was given because (as this judge had heard) there had been a scandal a number of years back, years after the Black Sox scandal, in which spies were used to report the discoveries of the opposing team. These spies would follow the enemy, see where the clue was replaced, and report accordingly. That episode almost disrupted the Color War, but then it came back stronger than ever. I'd like to sketch in a little of the background of this Head Senior Counsellor, while he is laying down the law in his rather pedantic manner, tho shot through with flashes of wit which were swiftly reabsorbed into the pedantry, only to reappear again, for he was bright and nimble, really assumed a pedantic style to cover an extreme restlessness, a power of imagination. His name is jules Kurtin, he has just finished his senior year (on scholarship) at Yale, and will enter Law School in the falL He is a kind of solitary, friendly with both the eggheads and the athletes, tho belonging to neither group, and naturally incurring the suspicion of both. Since he had no girl friend, there were rumors that he was a homosexual, but that was wrong, it was just that he had no girl friend. Rumors of sexual deviations and difficulties were not uncommon-it was an easy way of getting back at someone who seemed superior or odd. He had no camp experience before this year, and had no particular interest in going to the camp. His sister, however, had a boy and a girl of camp age, and she insisted that her brother be included in the kind of package deal which was usual then, and probably still is, in the summer camps. So, since he had nothing better to do for the summer, he found himself at camp. Then he was made head of the Senior Division because the man who had been hired for that job gave it up at the last minute for a better-paying job in the Poconos. Thereluctance of the other Senior counsellors (who had been to the camp before and wished to continue for themselves the benefits of its traditio!"! as a "Counsellor's Paradise") propelled Jules into this position, in which, after an unshaky start, he managed quite adequately. In view of his college, his temperament, and consequent reputation in the camp community, it was only natural that he should have been chosen as one of the judges. No one could 14 imagine jules taking sides in this war. No one thought that he would fight over a close decision at home or threaten to leave the camp unless the broad jumper on the other team was disqualified for a foot fault. It was the felt absence of this combative edge which disqualified jules from being chosen for the Blue and Gold. So jules, in spite of his comparative unfamiliarity with the ins and outs of the camp (for many of the counsellors had been there, beginning as campers, for as long as ten years) had been given the task of working out the route and writing the clues for the Treasure Hunt. He at first approached this as a rather pedestrian task, but as he began to work on it, one night at a writing table in the parents' lodge, his interest was aroused. The game took on the profound meaning which all games, sufficiently examined, will bring to light, every game being a deposit, so to say, of man's history and ·forgotten behavior. jules began to see this game as a kind of allegory of life's pursuits, of all the goods (and evils) which we are forever seeking. He saw the Treasure not only as money-he thought of the Holy Grail, the Golden Fleece, of the brawling and curiously honest madness of California in 1848. Then he jotted down, as they came to mind, some of man's pursuits: Fame, Love, Money, P.ower, God, Happi· ness, Truth, justice, Security, Failure, Status, Understanding the Origins of the Universe. These were some of the pursuits from which he decided to make his choice for the game. And because he realized that so many people do not know what it is they are pursuing, indeed are seeking something to pursue, he added Ideals to his list. And what about the randomness and mystification in life? He grinned at the thought of his favorite line from Ring Lardner. Lost, at the wheel of a car, close to home, our author asks a policeman for instructions. Advised to take the Boston Post, Ring replies: "I have already subscribed to one out-of-town paper". So, out of the joy of play and amateur mystification, he included this last sentence as one of the clues. Does this sound as tho it would be too esoteric an allusion for the hunters? Not at alL For, as it happened, there was a counsellor from Boston, who received, every day, precisely the Boston newspaper in question, which he spread out, weather permitting, on the parade grounds, during free time, rest hour, or whatever other time he could snatch from duties not very arduous to begin with. But now the clues are finished, and the hunt has started. Each side is given the first clue. They study it anxiously, eagerly, wanting to get the head start. It was the famous quotation from Socrates about the worthlessness of the unexamined life. Now in these summer camps, in these close social con- glomerations, there is a high level of interpersonal knowledge, there is endless joking and jibing about oddities of behavior, an intricate and ever-changing web of friend and AUTUMN/WINTER 1982-83 �enemy, there is a great deal of sadistic gossip (as well as friendly gossip, boasts of the merits and achievements of those on your side), there is a great deal of the hostile interest of the young, part of the pattern of what we today call "putting one down". The point of these clues in the Treasure Hunt is that a given word, or phrase, will, through free·associational routes, rational analysis, or luck, yield up the material leading the hunters to a given person, or a given place. So these paragraphs, these lines, sentences, and clauses are studied with the care and intensity that the New Critics give to a line of verse. Obviously the key word in this first clue was the word "unexamined". Now there was a youth in the camp, whose name was Jordan Kustler, who refused to be examined by the camp nurse. On the occasions when these examina- tions were necessary (the nurse sometimes doubling for the doctor, or assisting him in these mass prophylaphtic orgies) Jordan would disappear-into the woods surrounding the camp, down to the lake and under a war canoe, anywheres where he thought he'd be safe from the examination (mostly throat) of our attractive nurse. This clue, therefore, was not the most difficult of clues. Larry and Marv (the smart ones, you recall) hit on the answer at about the same time, and the teams, with Dick and Jackie in the lead (the fast ones, you recall) sped towards the bunk and the bed ofJordan Kustler, twelve years old, a Junior. The two speedsters arrived in a dead heat (the distance from pole to bunk being very short) but Jackie found the slip, which was under Jordan's pillow, and, according to the rules, his team, assembled, had one minute to read and analyze the clue before handing it over to the foe, or, in the absence of the foe, to replace it exactly where found. To enforce these rules, the judges were spread out at the different discovery spots, moving ahead with the progress of the game. This, of course, was to prevent the discoverer of the slip from hiding it in a place absolutely unrelated to the sense of the previous clue. It is an example of the imperfectibility of man. So the Gold team examined the new clue, and then, at the word of the judge, handed it to the Blue team, and tore off in the direction of home plate. Look homeward, angel, Milton's line, Wolfe's title, was the second clue. When writing down this clue, Jules was thinking of man's role in the world, that he must seek to prove himself in the great outside, and then return to the ease and safety of home (the way Shakespeare did), tho, as with Ulysses, the trials on the way home were not the least hazardous. To the Blues and the Golds the line meant only one thing: Home Plate on the baseball field. The Blues reached the plate just as the Golds were streaking off. On the ball field, the Juniors were in the midst of a game worth 50 points, and these could prove to be important, if not absolutely crucial in the final tally. THE ST. JOHNS REVIEW "What's the idea?" asked the catcher on the Gold team as Dick went for the home plate. "How are you supposed to play a ball game with an army tearing around home plate?" But he had not objected when the Gold team had looked for and found the clue buried und<;r the plate. "Don't hold him back," said the judge, "let him look." And then Dick triumphantly came up with the slip of paper, and discussed it with Larry and Dave, who had by now appeared on the scene. That third clue was not an easy one, it certainly puzzled the Blues, who stood discussing and analyzing it, at the edge of the field, not far off from the Gold team, which was similarly stymied. This clue read: Luck is a fool's name for fate, and it was an expression of the sort that sometimes gains currency in this kind of social organization, makes the rounds, is on everyone's tongue and then is swiftly forgotten. Both teams now tried to remember who it was that had coined the phrase, or introduced the phrase, or made the phrase popular, thereby associating himself indissolubly with that phrase. Marv Woolman was sure that the expression had originated with Boris Melkin, a somewhat bizarre Junior Counsellor (that is, a younger fellow, a J.C. not a counsellor in the Junior Division) who put on Hamletish manners, roaming the camp grounds, quoting tag-ends of verse and wisdom. 'Tm pretty sure" said Marv, "that he started that saying" and off went the Gold team towards the bunk and bed of Boris Melnick. But Larry Altman had another thought, it was a kind of free-wheeling inspirational thought, one of those flashes into the outer darkness that lights up precisely the object lost or hidden. "Let's go" he said, "to the horseshoe that's hanging on the Social Hall door." So, without question-one can run as fast puzzled as clear-headed-off sped the Blues, with Dick in the lead, and reaching that spot, he sure enough found the fourth clue tied onto that horseshoe. They read it swiftly and dashed away from the Social Hall, trying, unsuccessfully, not to be seen by the Gold team. Frustrated in their search in Boris Melkin's bed and bunk (to say nothing of his trunk and personal belongings) that bunk, as it happened, being at the end of the line and so having a view of the Social Hall, the Gold team (it was actually Ben Semmel, to give credit where credit is due) noted the surreptitious departure of the Blues-they left like scouts at dusk-and began a swift examination of the Social Hall. Finally, they hit on the horseshoe, without any association coming to mind, but by that time the Blues had a lead of about five minutes, by no means commanding at this stage of the game, but fairly significant, and were far away from the Social Hall, while the Golds stood around and puzzled over the fourth clue. That fourth clue was the line from Shelley: Fa me is love disguised, 15 �and this one, too, proved somewhat of a puzzler for the contending teams. These clues (the analysis of whose structure is long overdue, quite perfect for a doctoral the· sis straddling sociology and literature) often depend on as· sociations of an eccentric sort or on puns of a sometimes ghastly sort. In this fourth clue, for example, both teams spent time on the word 'is', for it seemed at first glance to offer the most likely possibilities, considered that one of the counsellors was called Iz, and so both teams went into a swift breakdown of his life, loves, and habits, but couldn't somehow come up with enough to go on, enough to make them move in a given direction, so they looked further into the mystery hidden in this short line. What follows is surely too gross a generalization, but it sometimes happens when those of roughly similar backgrounds are engaged in the same problem, that they will sometimes see the answer at about the same time. This of course is running down the importance of individual difference. Nevertheless, the two sides suddenly remembered the play (written by the dra· matics counsellor) in which the actor, wearing a mask of wordly power, suddenly throws off that mask, reveals a face desperately alone, and pronounces the name buried in his heart. It was a memorable moment, both teams remembered it, and the Golds rushed back into the Social Hall, followed soon after by the Blues, who had not gone too far off for their deliberations. The six of them milled around on the stage, seeking the· clue which had to be there. It was there, worked into the folds of the curtain, and fell when the curtain was shaken in a moment of random despair. Dick and Ben touched the paper at the same time (so said the judges, after a disputation) and both teams looked together at the fifth clue, the one already mentioned: I have all ready subscribed to one out of town paper, and that turned out to be a pretty easy clue. The contenders lit out for the Bostonian's bunk, but there was no clue there, no object left untouched, no possible hiding place passed over, and then they all went, as the Irish say, after himself. He was officiating as one of the judges at the Sophomore swimming meet. In no time at all he was surrounded by the six youths, and paid them as little mind as he could, considering the circumstances, the sixth clue folded and protruding from the coin pocket of his swimming trunks. Dave Crown of the Blues spotted the piece of paper and grabbed it. That gave his team the minute's edge to analyze that clue and reflect on it. The sixth clue was the statement from Laotse, which had impressed Jules, as an amateur cosmogonist (who is not an amateur cosmogonist?): All of a sudden, nothing came into being. Larry, Dick, and Dave looked incredulously at this sentence, and then incredulously at one another. So did the 16 Gold team (at sentence and one another) when the paper came into their hands. "This is a reallulu. "What is this supposed to mean?'' "That Jules is off his rocker, bats in his belfry." "What does nothing come from?" ''What does it mean?'' These were some of the comments made and some of the questions raised by members of both teams. They were on the shore, a little ways off from the dock, and were pretty close to one another. It looked almost as tho the difficulty of the clue had brought them together. But then they moved apart and began a closer examination of the text. There was a freshman in the camp by the name of Lee Soden. "SuddenLee, suddenly, Lee Soden" said Marv excitedly, and off went the Golds on a wild goose-chase. It was a genuine wrong number. The Blues recalled that one of the counsellors, Bob Kamin, was very fond of the expression: "Nothing to it". He used it on every conceivable occasion, preferably when it sounded quite senseless. Apparently he liked the sound of it, or preferred to stop conversations. Or it might just have been a kind of habit, the way some couldn't help spitting, or winking an eye. So off dashed the Blues on as wild a goose chase as the enemy. Both possibilities, of course, were genuine, they deserved exploration. They were only wrong, and after the teams had proved to themselves, by the most exhaustive search, that this was the case, they continued to study the sentence written by the Chinese philosopher, desperately seeking the word, the sound, that would send them off in the right direction. After a while someohe (Ben Semmel, as it happened) saw the word being (which should have been existence, but Jules remembered it as being) as beeing, and that led the Gold team to the place where the bee-hive had recently been discovered and soon destroyed-after a series of swift, high-level discussions, the final one on the spot. Here, sure enough, the Golds found the seventh clue, and so went back into their early lead. And this turned out to be a fairly substantial lead, for it was a good ten minutes before the Blues, after excluding one possibility and another, picked up the right word play. Now it somewhat threw Jules that these sentiments, which he had chosen with a certain amount of care, with some thought, should have to be read as semantic puzzles, interpreted on the basis of these puns, these sophomoric plays on words. But that was the tradition in which the game had come to be played, and to change the tradition in the middle of the game, he thought, is a way of spoiling the game. So was the content overlooked, the allegory grounded. But the sentiments had to be read nevertheless, and the kids might feel some sense of the over-all ... Jules's thoughts were checked, as he approached the scene of the seventh clue, by the sight of Georgie Lessing, 11 AUTIJMN /WINTER 1982-83 �a senior. Jules grinned at the sight of the boy sitting on the steps of his bunk. He was the only kio in the camp who had stayed out of the Blue and Gold competition. He did it as a matter of principle. "If you want me to compete," he said, "I'll go home." And that, of course, would have opened up the problem of a return on the camp fee, if indeed that fee had been paid in full, to say nothing of his two cousins in the girls' camp. All manners of pressure were brought on the boy, but he was adamant. "It's all madness," he said, "creating a phony rivalry, fighting where there are no real issues." So he sulked in his cabin, or, as now, sat on the steps of his bunk, reading "War and Peace" or one of the "Baseball Joe" series, for that was the style of his eclecticism. "Where are they looking now?" asked Georgie. "At the bottom of the lake?" "If you only knew," said Jules. He hesitated and then decided it wouldn't be cricket to tell Georgie about this next clue, which was a really corny one. The thought of it always made him a bit hysterical, being so obviously ridiculous, so outlandish, so idiotic. In order to make use of this clue, he had had to get the permission of a counsellor called Wilfred Thar. The clue, of course, was: There's gold in them thar hills. Thar had a mouthful of gold fillings. Between two of the teeth so filled there was a slit, formed, no doubt, by the slow drift of the lower teeth, and after a fairly lengthy discussion (Thar being a rather finicky chap) Jules convinced him that this slit formed by the drifting of the teeth would be the perfect place to hide a clue, which had to be written, of course, in very small script on a very small piece of paper. "Now don't swallow it," Jules had said, and they both laughed, Jules giddily, Wilfred in a rather pained manner. Well, it didn't need Intelligence, Character, or Speed to figure out where that clue was. Thar made no effort to hide-he sat on the steps of his bunk, watching the runners as they streaked by in the early stages of the game, waiting for the moment he did not exactly relish, tho having made his promise, he was determined to stay with it. Now and then he felt with his tongue to feel whether the slip of paper was in its proper place. Well, the reader can well imagine the jollification, the addlement which then surrounded the person and place of Wilfred Thar. The Gold team, with its ten minute edge, was down at the bunk in a flash and were rather thrown by Thar' s manner, which seemed a little more hostile than the occasion warranted. They even felt for a moment that they were on the wrong track. There was a confused huddle, during which the three team mates reassured one another, and then they started on the search. They did a thorough dismantling job on the bunk, on the suspect's bed, and when it became clear that there was no clue inside, they approached the counsellor. He sat in a species THE ST. JOHNS REVIEW of horrified resignation; the fact is that he was very sanitation-minded, suffered on occasion from fears of contagious diseases, and looked forward with some apprehension at the prospect of six youths poking around in his mouth in search of a small piece of paper. In the summer his fear of contagion was related to tropical diseases, such as typhoid and yellow fever, diseases quite unknown in New England at the time. He had an opportunity, while waiting, to think of the medical backgrounds of the six boys, and was disturbed at the remembered knowledge that Dick Gordon's brother had been in a New York hospital for a reason which Wilfred had never thought to ask about. Thar was wearing a T shirt, a pair of bathing trunks, and sandals. "Wauld you mind taking off your T shirt and sandals?" asked Ben Semmel. The Golds had decided that it would be best if Ben, as a Character winner, should approach Wilfred along these lines. Without a word, the counsellor removed his shirt and sandals. Both were carefully examined and returned. "Do you mind," asked Ben, "if we looked in the pockets· of your trunks?" "Not at all," said Thar, ~~help yourself." So they searched and again found nothing. "This sounds stupid" said Ben. "but we'd like to take a quick look into your mouth." Wilfred opened his mouth without much interest and smiled without much joy when Ben pulled the paper out. The Golds quickly jotted down the eighth clue and Ben started to replace the piece of paper. "Never mind," said Wilfred, "I'll handle that," and he carefully replaced the clue just as the Blue team hove into sight. Now the Blues did not bother with bed and bunk. One of them had heard from a kid in Thar's bunk about the unusual amount of gold in his counsellor's mouth, and with hardly a word of apology they went straight for that area. The counsellor winced when Dick pulled out the paper. The Blues had picked up five minutes on the Golds, with five clues to go. The eighth clue, before being approved by the camp authorities, required a certain amount of discussion, some dispute. A quotation relating to Noah, and reinforced by mention of a youth nicknamed Arky, clearly led to the Ark in which, of course, was enclosed the Torah, used in the Social Hall on the rainy Sabbaths, for when the sky was clear, the Services were held outdoors, on the parade grounds over the lake. In this high-level discussion about the use of the Ark, there was, at first, a general demurrer at the notion of using it in any way in this game. The word "sacrilegious" was used. But Jules explained the way in which he had planned the Treasure Hunt and his arguments, with their educational cast, softened the opposition. "This relates to the search for God," explained Jules. 17 �"How can we possibly exclude this search from the game? Is it less important than the search' for money and power, than the search for love and justice?" Presented this way, the argument was irresistible. But jules's desire to put the clue inside the Ark was turned down decisively, nor would the judges accept the idea of pinning the clue on the curtain covering the Ark. They finally decided to put the clue on a bench in front of the Ark, and that was fairly easy for both sides, so the Gold team maintained its five minute lead. In composing the ninth clue, Jules used the expression the Pursuit of Failure. That in fact was the clue. He had heard it used by one friend about another friend. jules remembered the phrase tho he himself was very little preoccupied with failure, being young, healthy, ambitious, and hopeful. But he was aware of the Freudian implications of the statement. Some seek their own destruction, feel they deserve their own destruction because the early murderous impulses had never been properly abreacted (a word he sometimes thought of, but never used), because the impulses were stronger than the usual, or the provocations greater, or the character structure weaker. No doubt there are other possibilities-it is even conceivable that one has done something for which he feels he deserves punishment. And a kind of punishment is apparently the pursuit of failure-the fact that this behavior can be pleasurable only adds to the punishment when the pursuer comes to un· derstand that the pleasure is a trick, a device to keep him on this pursuit of failure, for what is the point of pursuing failure if there is nothing in it at all? This clue, too, was based on an outrageous pun. There was a counsellor (one of the counsellors for the freshmen, kids about six or seven years old) who, early in the summer, had fallen desperately in love with a girl counsellor called-yes, yes, this is her name, unbelievable as it sounds-Phalia. Her name was Phalia. She was most attractive, flashing eyes and all, and it was not surprising that Fred Angst (the freshman counsellor) should have fallen in love with her. She was apparently a living example of his type, and who, all things being equal, will not fall in love with a living example of his type? The fact that she did not respond in kind was part of the over-all situation in which Fred found himself. He was a serious chap who liked to win as much as the next one, and found that he was not sleeping as well as one would expect in this cold, bracing, New England night air. He was almost always up an hour or two before reveille, t.hinking of what he had said, or should have said, of what she had said, of what he wished she would say, thinking of how she looked, imagining moments of a deeper intimacy than they had so far enjoyed. The fact is that Phalia did not respond in kind, she being entranced in another direction. It was happening all over 18 the place, but Fred was more insistent in his pursuit than most of the others, he did not drift easily to other faces, other bodies. His difficulties became known the way difficulties become known when people are looking to see the triumphs and difficulties of others. Furthermore, in the words of George Herbert, "Love and a cough cannot be hid." Fred's situation, known to the counsellors, became known to the campers (who is not interested in abiding, unrequited love?) and Fred Angst was known as the one who carried the brightest of all torches. But it was a rough clue, the pun was beyond limits, and both teams puzzled over the four words, saying them over and over again, saying them backwards, forwards, and sideways, turning the phrase round and round. Really it shouldn't have been that hard because the New York way of pronouncing "failure" is precisely Phalia and finally, Larry Altman hit on the connection. "Down to the freshman bunk" he cried, and as they ran, he quickly explained his thought. Dick Gordon sped ahead, easily outdistancing his team mates, for the frosh bunk was at the other side of the camp, and Dick had the tenth clue by the time Larry and Dave arrived. It was pasted on Fred Angst's trunk, more or less disguised as a Railway Express ticket. About five minutes later (for love and a cough cannot be hid), the Gold team arrived, and decided to check first the person of Fred. (Spur of the moment luck had taken Dick into the bunk). Fred allowed the search, tho it was disconcerting, for the freshman were involved in their own aspect of the color war-they were in the midst of a potato race, which Fred was umpiring, or overseeing, or whatever it is one does with seven year old kids involved in a game which they have just learned, involving a set of rules and swift movement. The competitive excitement of the Blue and Gold had pene'trated the somewhat isolated life of these youngsters (for they were off from the main camp, going to bed earlier) and the ten points picked up by the winner of the Potato race might easily prove of crucial importance. There was indeed a case, known to the old rememberers, of a color competition decided by the five points given for greater silence at the dinner table. Finding nothing on Fred's person, the Golds went into the bunk, and of course they found the clue, but by that time they were about ten minutes behind, and streaked off with the tenth clue in mind. That clue was probably the easiest of all the clues, being the statement from Isaiah (2.8) that Everyone worshippeth the work of his own hands, and that could lead only to one place, which must be the Arts & Crafts hut. We leave our contestants for the moment to record a conversation between one of the judges, stationed near this hut (to be in front of it might be a give-away) and the AUTUMN/WINTER 1982-83 �camp chef. The kitchen staff was not involved in the Blue and Gold. The waiters were not invdlved, but being old campers or would-be counsellors, they generally took sides, while the kitchen workers, older, and often without camp experience (coming from the city employment agencies) found it difficult to understand what was going on. They were amazed, for example, by the silence at table. The chef was baffled by the fierceness of this rivalry, did not understand that he was witnessing a pure, or abstract, struggle for victory, on the basis of an artificial division, and that the winner wins precisely nothing but the victory, and the right to assume a superior stance as against the losers. "Why," said the judge, to the incredulous chef, "there was a case, a few years ago, not in this camp, where the color war started at the bus terminal, the teams traveling on separate buses-to learn songs and cheers, plan strategy, etc. Well, the bus drivers were carried away by the spirit of the event, by the excitement of the songs and cheers, and decided to make a race of reaching the camp, tho there were no points awarded (so they say, but who knows?). Well, one of the buses got into an accident, luckily no one was hurt, just a few kids shaken up, and that's how that camp season started." "What is it again they win?" asked the chef. "Only the satisfaction of winning," said the judge, who, with more knowledge, was less astounded than disturbed by this abstract lust for victory. But then the conversation was interrupted by the appearance of Dick Gordon, headed for the Arts and Crafts hut, on a hint from Isaiah. Now Jules would have the boys understand the prophet's meaning, that it was wrong to worship the work of one's hands, that this leads to idolatry, the worship of made objects, and can lead even to self-idolatry. "See this wondrous object I have made. Therefore am I superior, more noble, etc." The painter says to himself: "What a wondrous thing I have created," but such a work merely goes into the world and takes its place amongst the other created objects. Nor is it to be implied (Jules would like the boys to think of this too) that the work of other hands ought to be worshipped, but only the living invisible God, who inspires creation, this foray into the thinly-domesticated mystery, this salvage out of chaos. But mostly the work of his own hands and that work will be worshipped by the maker only if it is not in use. Man worships what he makes and hides, the way a miser worships gold (late at night, when there are no distractions) but once he sends that object into the world, why it is no longer his. He will not worship what is being used day by day, even being used up (for no such created THE ST. JOHNS REVIEW object lasts forever). There is no secrecy, no idolatry or shame, it is only what man has made with his own hands (sometimes amazing, but never to be worshipped) to take its rightful place in the circulation of created things, rivalling the objects that came into the world, nor must these objects be worshipped, being merely signs of the inexplicable Creation, the mystery of the making of worlds. Ideally speaking, Jules would have liked the boys to think of these matters, as they schemed for their points in the Blue and Gold. But he knew how fierce competition will sometimes destroy thought, knew the chasm that lay between victory and ideality. "But something will rub off" he thought, as he watched the other Blues enter the Arts & Crafts hut. In that hut were objects in various stages of completion. There were more objects of utility than objects of art, in line with the predilection of the counsellor in charge and a certain sense-mostlY unconscious-of the injunction against the making of graven images. There were wooden boxes, of various shapes, meant f6r various uses, and in one of these boxes was the eleventh clue. That made the discovery pretty routine, for what boys, seeking a hidden slip of paper in a room full of empty boxes, would not open those boxes, first off? So the Blues found this clue, and, ten minutes later, the Golds found the clue, and off they were, on the next to the last lap. This eleventh clue was more difficult than others: I have always known That at last I would Take this road, but yesterday I did not know that it would be today. Narihira (translated by Kenneth Rexroth) When the Golds found this clue, the Blues were still puzzling over it. They did not know in which direction to move, trying desperately to decipher the lines before the Golds picked up the clue, for they feared the keen mind of Marv Woolman, remembering (all of a sudden) that he had won a high school poetry prize. So the Blues studied the document, the way one studies the missing word in the crossword puzzle-time and the unconscious sometimes succeed, activated by the reason, and activating in turn that reason, and in the interplay the missing word appears, the puzzle is solved. And then the Golds were in the same boat. Both teams studied the text. What road was meant? What kind of yesterday, what kind of today? And yet the answer was not so terribly difficult-one only had to hit on the fitting event, and then all fell into place. What event was this? Now there had been a boy in Jules's bunk, a boy of twelve, called Sandy, a very engaging and ingenious child, very spirited, very poignant, a child who could easily win one's heart, the way he won Jules's heart. Towards the end of July, Jules received a rush 19 �summons from the camp director. It was in the late after· noon, in the pleasant interlude between the end of the afternoon swim and dinner time. All moved at their ease (I say all, but there are always some so dispirited that even this pleasant interlude had no effect), discussed the high spots of the day, hungry after much activity and sure that food would be forthcoming. The head counsellor and the doctor were seated with the director, who handed Jules a telegram. This telegram announced the death of Sandy's father. Jules looked at the message blankly. The dead stranger slowly disappeared, and the problem remained of breaking the news to the child. We may worship the dead, but we must take care of the living. "We thought," said the director, "that it would be best if you told the boy, you're pretty close to him." Jules nodded. He thought of a book by Mrs. Ward (was that her name? what was her first name again?) in which a character is faced with the problem of breaking such news. It is a universal situation, but each event has its unique approach. "You'll understand how to break it to him," said the di· rector, "gradually." ~~Yes/' said Jules. He was rather proud that he had been chosen for so delicate and difficult a task. Why not the director, the head counsellor, the head of the Junior Division? He wondered why the doctor was at this meeting? Why a doctor at the news of the death of a distant stranger? A kind of rever· sian, he thought, to the ancient medicine man, the witch doctor, the man of magic summoned at the moment of awe and loss. Then, of course, before one dies, he most gener· ally is sick, and so the doctor is summoned when he dies. There was so little left for any of them to say at this conference, it all seemed quite unreal, except for the reality of telling the child. If the child didn't have to be told (but those were not the instructions) why then the matter would slowly have disappeared amongst all this social happiness, the way a wisp of cloud will disappear in a joyful sky of blue. There would have been no high-level conference. But the man was dead, and the child had to be told, he had to be sent home, to be at his dead father's side, and walking down to the camp (the meeting was in the parents' lodge) during the interlude, the free play, Jules thought of what it was he had to do. He had to be serious with the child, until the child realized that his counsellor was serious, and then the child would begin to expect an explanation of this seriousness, for this seriousness had to be maintained beyond the usual range. That was all that had to be done-a certain seriousness had to create a certain expectancy, and that expectancy had to create a given anxiety, and then the anxiety had to be met. So Jules was serious in the bunk, serious to all the kids in the bunk, but particularly to Sandy. And the child grew serious, expectant, and anxious, for this was an unex~ pected style of behavior on the counsellor's part. But Jules 20 decided that he would not break the news till the next morning. Should I trouble his sleep even more? thought Jules, and he decided that the best time to break bad news is in the morning, when one is least tired, but would the anxiety interfere with the child's sleep? That night, after dinner, the Juniors had camp fire, they sat around, sang, listened to stories, roasted marshmallows, put out the fire in the immemorial way of boys. The songs floated in the air, the stories flooded the stillness, the voids of expectancy, the fire died in the solemn hiss. \Then, when the kids turned in for the night, Jules sat on Sandy's bed, spoke to him about the city, about his life at home, enquired about his mother, about his father, about his sister, and then again about his father, created an air of seriousness, of anxiety. And the child was confused, troubled, fell asleep after an active day in which he had played his part. Hadn't he doubled in the ninth, and then come home with the winning run? The next day, after breakfast, Jules took the child for a walk, down to the lake. That was an unusual act. "But what about inspection?" asked Sandy, for after breakfast the bunks were inspected, for poorly-made beds, spider-webs on the ceiling, dirt in the corners, and each week a banner was awarded to the cleanest bunk in the division. "We'll be back in time" said Jules, and they walked slowly along the shore. The lake was absolutely calm, the sky clear, the visibility perfect. Jules asked about the boy's school life, about his street life, about his grandfather, about his father, about his teachers, about his friends, about his father. The child was uneasy, worried, wondered about this walk, about this conversation, began to expect what he did not want to hear, and then heard it, slowly and conclusively. The lad was silent, he threw a rock into the lake, and both watched the widening ripples. Jules put his arm around the boy's shoulder. They walked together along the lake-shore. "Your mother wants you to go home today," said Jules. "It didn't have to happen," asked Sandy, "did it?" He looked up trustingly at his counsellor. "It happened," said Jules, "that's how it is. Now you must go back, out of respect to your father, to remember him, and to help your mother." He felt a bit foolish mouthing these platitudes, but was not sorry that he said them. What else is there to say? he thought. Is silence better? Sandy seemed, on the surface, to be wondering more than suffering, wondering why this had happened, won· dering why it happened to him. There was an indication of anger, that this had happened to him, an indication of resentment, that this had happened to him, and not to the others, rather than to the others. He listened to the camp cries, to the early-morning hum. Then his jaw hardened, he stoically accepted the inevitable, the mystery and the disappearance. He acted the man who silently sorrows, buriesgrief and suffering, and continues his day's work, AUTUMN/WINTER 1982-83 �his life's work. Then the boy's lips trembled, and he burst into tears, with the awful sense of absolute loss. So it was only a matter of time before one player or another, one team or another, would stumble on the meaning of the lines of the Japanese poet, would come to think of one who amongst all having to leave, left earlier than expected, on the road he would have had to take. The Gold team picked up the clue first. Far from Marv Woolman, it was Jackie Lesser, the speedster, who hit on it. His nimbleness was apparently displaced upwards, and a certain sympathy, a feelingful note, triumphed over cleverness and character. "It's Sandy," cried Jackie. "He left before the season ended, he took the road home before he was supposed to take the road home." Marv and Ben looked at him with an amazement compounded with surprise, even anger, for how come that Jackie, picked for speed, should have come up with an answer that made immediate sense? But their feelings quickly disappeared into the competitive crucible, and the three minds worked as one in trying to figure out just where they were supposed to look. Would it be in Sandy's old bunk? But there was clearly a road involved. What road? The road home, of course. That road started at the top of the hill, it was the beginning of the country road which led to the town road, which led to the main road, which led to the railroad station. So up they-sped to the beginning of that country road, where stood a great oak tree and thru the branches of that oak peeped a sheet of paper. It was the clue, tied around a twig. They read and copied the clue, looking around all the time to see whether the Blues had picked up the trail. There was no one in sight. Then one of the judges appeared from his hiding place, and tied the paper back on the same twig. Off went the Gold team, not down the path they had come up on, where they might be observed by their rivals, but singly the back way, behind the bunks, to meet near the Nature hut where they read, again, the lines of Keats which made up the final clue: Young men and maidens at each other gazed With hands held back, and motionless, amazed To see the brightness in each other's eyes As they were examining these lines, leading to a place, the Blue team was desperately reading over and over again the lines of the Japanese poet until they too, by a process of elimination and association~ came to remember Sandy and his sudden departure home, and that led them to the oak tree and the final clue. That clue, those lines from Keats, were swiftly fathomed by Larry Altman, and he and his teammates rushed down to the parade grounds for this was where the boys and girls came together for the Sabbath services and on all other ceremonial occasions. (It was quite amazing that the Gold team had so much THE ST. JOHNS REVIEW trouble with these lines, they were so accurate a description of the meetings between brother and sister camps. The three teammates, standing in front of the Nature hut-a random meetingplace, away from the oak-were in full view of the parade grounds, but looked past those grounds in a kind of panic which sometimes occurs when the victory is in sight. How else is it possible to explain their overlooking these meetings, climax of the week, the girls dressed in their whites [to welcome the Queen of the Sabbath], the boys scrubbed and combed, in their sailor ducks and sport shirts, waiting~ in the dusk-for this or that familiar face, for the figure actively sought out, or flirtatiously avoided, for the figure warm or indifferent?) A little down the way from the flagpole, Jules waited with the other judges. He looked out at the lake, on whose quiet surface, way out in the distance, the boats of strangers were faintly seen. He felt, for a moment,. a curious sense of power, as one who created movement in others, even choosing the direction in which they moved. But he did not like that feeling, and it faded. He wondered whether he had left out any important pursuits. Of course he hadthere was the search for identity, later to become a rather fashionable problem, namely, Who am I? or Who am I really? But he had excluded that pursuit on purpose-he believed that one found himself (is everybody lost?) not by looking for one's self, but by struggle in the outside world, the world of struggle, the world of ideas (a kind of struggle), of love (a kind of struggle) and so on. Then the Blues appeared at the parade grounds (with Dick Gordon, or course, in the lead) and quickly sized up the situation. There was only the flagpole, and Dave Crown was the first to look up (character pays) and there, three-quarters of the way up the pole, the tell-tale piece of paper was taped. "There it is" shouted Dave, and then Dick-who was nimble as well as fast-started to shinny up the pole. This brought the Gold team out, wondering what connection the lines of the poet had with the flag, which was swaying in the slight breeze. Then Ben Semmel understood the sense of the lines, saw the parade grounds filled with boys and girls .. . amazed to see the brightness in each other's eyes, saw the paper on the flag pole, but by that time Dick was up there, pulled off the tape, and swiftly brought to the ground the paper which read: TREASURE HUNT WINNER! and that was certified by the judges who appeared from their vantage point and made official the victory of the Blues. 21 �Don Alfonso In this harmonious villa Where oboes serenade And lovesick tenors croon Of constancy among the sycamores I think of two old men who closed their eyes And recollected what they owed. The one considered wise As ice crept up his thighs Settled a rooster on the demigod Who cured him of becoming. The other fellow, fat but not a fool Also perplexed his school With chatter of a debt to Justice ShallowSuddenly chilled When to be king his Prince banished the world. This morning in the coffee house I heard The fresh Ferrando trill of Phoenixes. His friend, a baritone but still a boy Joined him in sixths to idolize Some lily of allegiance. I hate a warm duet. Too arrogant for owing, I'll enjoy A bet. Adept at recollecting, I'll Collect, moved not by eros but Experience. No instant chill Nor gradual welcome gelidness But icy from the ages, I'm compelled By one goad only: to instruct Exasperating innocence. Leaving the losers to their wry quartet I'll shape my cadence to the sages' tune, A philanthropic glee Contrived for three: Midwife to wind·eggs and the source of wit And I, who knew Giovanni. ELLIOTT ZUCKERMAN Elliott Zuckerman is a tutor at St. John's College, Annapolis. 22 AUTUMN/WINI'ER 1982-83 �The Unity of Leibniz's Thought on Contingency, Possibility, and Freedom Arthur Collins 1 The Defects of Cartesian Physics That it fails to accommodate force is Leibniz's fundamental criticism of Descartes' physics. Descartes tried to reduce physics to geometry. A conceptual scheme restricted to geometrical concepts lacks resources adequate for the representation of physical forces. In the context that is best known and most often discussed by Leibniz, he attacks Descartes' conception of the conservation of the "quantity of motion," and he substitutes the idea of the conservation of vis viva, or active power, which is what we would call the conservation of energy_I When we try to state the issues here in up-to-date terms, at least in the terms of modern classical physics, it can appear that Leibniz is insisting on the conservation of the product of mass and velocity-squared, while Descartes calls for the conservation of the product of mass and velocity. Since mv2 (kinetic energy) and mv (momentum) are both conserved, some commentators say that Descartes and Leibniz are both right and that debate is out of place.' This conciliation is not satisfactory. Nothing like the modern concept of mass is actually employed by Descartes. Were we to try to introduce umassn where he speaks of "quantity of matter," we would have to make amendments in his thinking along the very lines which Leibniz requires. Mass eludes any merely geometrical description and the shortfall is only made up by appeal, in one way or another, to something like force. Furthermore, Descartes actually thinks in terms of what we might call "speed", that is, motion along any path, straight or curved, while Professor of philosophy at the City University of New York, Arthur Collins has published articles in many philosophical journals. He last contributed "Objectivity and Philosophical Conversation, Richard Rorty's Philosophy and the Mirror of Nature" to the St. John's Review (Winter 1982). THE ST. JOHNS REVIEW the conservation laws only hold for rectilinear speed. This distinction becomes significant in Descartes' metaphysics when he tries to reconcile mind-body interaction with the thoroughgoing mechanical determinism that he supposes to rule the material world. Descartes' idea of conservation and his laws of impact express this determinism. The problematic mind-body interaction takes place, Descartes hopes, when purely mental influences manage to "deflect" the subtlest material particles of the animal spirits in the pineal gland. Such deflection is supposed to change the direction but not the quantity of motion of particles affected.' In the parlance of classical physics, this solution fails because it violates the principle of the conservation of energy. The deflection of a particle would constitute a change of velocity (though not necessarily of speed) and, therefore, a change of energy. This addition or subtraction of energy would not be charged to any account in the material world. Leibniz makes this point.4 These faults in Descartes' ideas are not just details on which he remains at an unsatisfactory and preliminary level, relative to later science. On the contrary, the difficulties spring from views which are among Descartes' most important and best insights. The claim, "My physics is nothing but geometry," 5 is widely recognized as the expression of his deepest inspiration in science, but this view is also, as Leibniz thought, responsible for the most obvious defects in Descartes' physics. Why are we supposed to agree that physics is just geometry? In part, this is supposed to follow from the fact that nothing sensuous is allowed to characterize (touter," spatial, material reality by Descartes' epistemological analysis. All sensuous characteristics like color, sound, and heat, that is, all the socalled secondary qualities,6 are not really out there. They exist only in the play of mental states and perceptions in our minds. Contact with outer things is causally responsible for the generation of ideas with sensuous features, but material things do not have such features themselves.' On 23 �reflection, it appears that nothing is left with which we can rightly describe the nonmental 'space-filling world except nonsensuous concepts like figure, magnitude, and motion. When sensuous distinctions are no longer thought to distinguish different regions of space, we are reduced to a defoliated universe of moving particles having geometrical features only. To Descartes this seems a great intellectual advantage and a trustworthy sign of the correctness of his epistemology. In fact, it would be better to say that his epistemology is motivated in major part by his scientific objectives. He intends to filter away the sensuous so that a mathematically suitable subject matter will be left for scientific theory. His epistemology provides just the interpretation of reality needed by Descartes and others who were convinced that scientific understanding becomes possible only when we manage to delete the unmanageable, subjective, sensuous aspect of things and to characterize the subject matter of science exclusively in the vocabulary of abstract mathematics. In the argument of Descartes' Meditations and in the Principles of Philosophy, the proof for the existence of an external world of material things is simply a proof that the abstract mathematical and geometrical truths, which we are able to appreciate in pure thought, do have a subject matter outside of our thought which they fit and describe. This subject matter is res extensa, that is, space, as an existing manifold or entity. Descartes does not confine his purification of our conception of the material world to the purge of sensuous characteristics. The prevailing scholastic-Aristotelian tradition was dominated by biological and psychological paradigms for the explanation of change. Within this tradition, as Descartes read it, the understanding of physical phenomena involved projecting into the physical realm various soul-like agencies and, in particular, the substantial forms of the scholastics. Descartes' reduction of physics to geometry means the elimination of this psychologism and teleological thinking from the scientific explanation of the motions of bodies. The material universe which survives the elimination of both the sensuous surface and the inner determinants of motion is Descartes' plenum of indefinitely subdivisible particles, all of whose motions are determined by collisions that conserve an initial sum of motion given to the system at the beginning of things by God.8 Matter itself contains no principle of action nor disposition to move or not to move. All concepts of determinants of motions residing in material things are e1iminated in Descartes' rejection of the animism of the scholasticAristotelian tradition.' At a level near common sense we can represent the shortcomings of the Cartesian identification of space and matter and the resulting purely geometrical physics as follows. A theory in physical science has to provide concepts with the help of which we are able to see what happens as the instantiation of clear regularities. Motions observed in ordinary experience are usually too complicated for analysis, 24 but, at least for the scientific explanation of motion, rules should be formulable that cover very simple artificial or imaginary ideal cases. Descartes himself thinks of the obligation of scientific theory in this way and he formulates seven laws of which ideal cases of impacts of particles are supposed to be the instances. 10 If such laws are satisfactory they will enable us to predict what will happen when situations fitting the conditions specified (here the specification of simple collisions) are realized. This elementary reflection is usually summed up by saying that a scientific theory generates predictions when initial conditions are satisfied. Now Leibniz's critique of Descartes' physics can be stated as the thought that no such predictive validity is accessible to a physics framed with Descartes' attentuated concepts. Using a priori arguments, Leibniz is able to show that the specific laws Descartes presents are incoherent and could not possibly be empirically adequate.n But the larger point is that no laws based on Descartes' concepts can succeed. Leibniz sees this permanent inadequacy in the fact that Descartes has no conceptual means for distinguishing between instantaneous motion and instantaneous rest. 12 Suppose we are going to predict the future position of bodies in the solar system. In order to do this we need rules expressing the patterns of mofion which they instantiate and we need initial conditions in the form of specifications of the positions, velocities, and accelerations of the various heavenly bodies at some particular time. But geometrical concepts only yield determinations of position at a particular time, that is, at an instant. Descartes' purification of the concept of matter has left him nothing with which to express the difference between a moving body and a stationary body at one moment and he has no reason for thinking that there is any intrinsic difference. The obstacle to predictive success within Descartes' conceptual scheme can now be put very simply. Initial conditions that characterize material things at one moment of time accessible to Cartesian physics will give the positions of particles only. But the future development of a system of bodies depends upon velocity and acceleration, and not merely on position. So the Cartesian scientist will inevitably find different developments arising out of what he sees as identical conditions. If the conditions are identical, however, the very idea of scientific regularity requires identical predictions. So predictive success cannot be forthcoming. Ad hoc efforts to generate predictions conformable to experience must result in laws which are arbitrary and incoherent, as Leibniz finds that the Cartesian laws of impact are in fact. The characterizations that successfully distinguish motion and rest at an instant are just those that are accessible to the infinite mathematical methods of the calculus which Leibniz himself developed. Leibniz thinks of Descartes' "matter" as incomplete. It is a mistake to think that merely space-filling stuff could constitute a substance.B In this there is the influence of Aristotelian conceptions of matter and form which Leibniz does not repudiate. NeiAUTUMN/WINTER 1982-83 �ther matter nor form, by itself, can constitute an existing thing. But Leibniz' s view is also determined by his under· standing of the irreducible status of force in physics. In his thinking, momentary material existence is an abstraction from the reality of temporally extended things. Substances are not constituted of densely laminated temporal slices which are their constituent realities as the cards are the constituents of the deck. Substances, rather, correspond to functions with values extended in time. Thus, the monad contains all its temporal states as the values of a function are contained in the law which is the function itself. The fundamental metaphysical description of the world must be in terms of such functions. Such a description can never be reached by aggregating consecutive momentary distributions of merely space-filling stuff. In contrast, time does not enter into Descartes' characterization of res extensa at alJ.l 4 So, in Cartesian physics, moving bodies have to be constructed out of momentary stationary bodies. Descartes did attempt to present a theory of motion in his laws of impact. Furthermore, his scientific writings present an enormous number of explanations of various phenomena most of which are now merely picturesque relics. Some of his explanations are reasonable and correct. On the whole, however, it seems to me that Descartes was never entirely clear about the appropriate expecta· tions for scientific explanation, once the field had been cleared by his elimination of both sensuous qualities and occult inner determinants of change. No one emphasized the role of mathematics in science more than Descartes. Yet he seems to have had very little confidence in the possibility of really detailed mathematical explanations of real events, and he did not foresee anything like the kind of success mathematical physics was to attain, so soon after his lifetime, in the work of Newton. Sometimes Descartes writes as though the chief intellectual job of science is completed when substantial forms and teleological explanations have been dropped so that the material world can be understood to be a matter of moving and colliding particles. The explanations that Descartes actually gives of particular phenomena are usually very much like ad hoc scholastic explanations in their ambitions and their explanatory horizons, however unlike scholastic explanations they are in content. Like the scholastics, Descartes offers imaginative stories that are plainly without predictive force or intent. They are broad ways of seeing the phenomenon in question within the framework of a geometrical particle universe. In a remarkable passage, Descartes says that, since he came to appreciate the real character of physical reality, that is, that it is a spatial manifold of particles, and since he came to appreciate the nature of physical events, that is, that they are collisions of particles, he has found that he can solve any problem of science that is proposed or that occurs to him in a very short time. 15 This is not so much an outrageous boast as it is an illuminating indication of what THE ST. JOHNS REVIEW Descartes expects from explanation in physics. The solutions to problems which he can produce so promptly are obviously merely broad hypotheses providing, with the help of humble empirical analogies, a way of seeing this or that event as a particular form of particle motion. So the phenomenon of planetary motion is explained when we see that an ocean of particles might carry suns and planets in vortices, as a whirling eddy of water carries a leaf in a closed path. Magnetic phenomena are explained by the imaginative hypothesis, again based on the observable world of everyday objects, that there are screw-shaped pores in bodies, which impede but do not prevent the passage of screwshaped particles, just as the threaded nut impedes but does not prevent the passage of the threaded bolt. Combustion is explained to the same limited degree as the progressive destabilization of the structure of a burning object by a storm of fast moving particles. And the refraction of light is supposed to be intelligible on the model of tennis balls deflected from their path when they encounter the light resistance of a thin veil. In sum, explanation does not go beyond the provision of a hypothesis that makes it reasonable that the phenomenon in question is observed even though the world is just a plenum of moving particles. Particular explanations rely on a rough empirical analogy to show how such particle collisions could constitute the phenomenon in question. It is only such hypotheses, dependent upon empirical analogy, that Descartes was able to think of in a short time, and that is what he means by "solving" the problems that come to his attention. Given this conception of explanation it is quite understandable that Cartesian physics should tolerate divergent developments from initial conditions that are identical when described in the terms that Cartesian science permits. Near the end of the Principles of Philosophy, Descartes quite explicitly expresses his conception of the irreducibly conjectural character of theoretical explanations. He recognizes that accounts in terms of particle motions involve positing events (the particular particle motions and collisions) which are not accessible to the senses. Then, in Principle CCIV of Part IV, Descartes tells us That touching the things which our senses do not perceive, it is sufficient to explain what the possibilities are about the nature of their existence, though perhaps they are not what we describe them to be and this is all that Aristotle has tried to do. 16 In the following passages, Descartes says that we would not find his individual explanations compelling if we considered them independently of one another. The real support for his system is that so many explanations are generated from so few ideas (namely, those that go into the scheme of a plenum of particles), yielding a simple coherent picture of the worldY If we look at Leibniz's critique in the context of Descartes' repudiation of teleology and his reduction of nature to a wholly mechanical system of particles in motion, we 25 �find that Leibniz urges the rehabilitation of teleology and is prepared to reinstate the Aristotelian biological paradigm for all substances complete with the entelechies and substantial forms that were so deliberately expunged from the physical world in Descartes' ·thought. This must appear to us as a considerable step backward. A number of Leibniz's prominent excesses such as his panpsychism, his denial of the reality of death, his theoretical assimilation of all causes of change to a more-or-less mental "appetition", and his ubiquitous teleology are all of them regressions in comparison with the conceptual restraint achieved by Descartes. Leibniz only manages to preserve any plausible and recognizably scientific perspective at all by segregating teleological and mechanical explanations and holding that everything that happens in the physical world can be explained mechanically, without invoking the agency of any entelechy or deploying any teleological pattern of explanation.18 Teleological thinking is conveniently allocated to a higher metaphysical level. Teleological understanding, in the form, for example, of least action principles, guides our discovery of mechanical laws without introducing a teleological aspect into those laws themselves. Leibniz says, for example, that the thought that light always takes the shortest path operates essentially in the understanding that led to the discovery of Snell's law .I' I do not want to give the impression that Leibniz's defense of teleology is entirely inappropriate. Leibniz did not simply slump back into already discredited styles of thought. On the contrary, his insistence that reason-giving explanation must be reconciled with a mechanical universe and his idea that the two patterns of explanation operate at different levels embody important truths. 2 Nature Itself Attempting to delete spurious psychologism and teleology, Descartes eliminates all activity from the material world and paves the way for an Occasionalist philosophy in which God is directly responsible for each thing th.at happens. The ultimate passivity of material substance is expressed in Descartes' thought that matter does not even contain any principle sufficient for its own continued existence into the next instant of time. All temporal continuity of existence depends on God's continual recreation of things. 20 How could a particle, unable to struggle though a second of continued existence without help from God, have any continued and independent effect on things other than itself? Furthermore, the Cartesian exclusion of every means for distinguishing one region of space (which is matter) from another undercuts the very idea of occurrences in the material world. At each moment, every region of space or matter exactly resembles every other region. It follows that at every moment the structure of the whole of space or matter is exactly what it is at every other moment. The universe is at every moment a plenum of indefinitely 26 divisible particles. Then anything that happens will leave things exactly as they were: a plenum of indefinitely divisible particles,'~ If, somehow, we could attach meaning to motion in this universe, we would still be unable to make sense of Descartes' idea that God has caused an initial motion of particles and ordained the subsequent conservation of that motion. For Descartes' conceptual parsimony leaves us no way to grasp how it is that motion might continue without the continued action of God. At first impression, we are apt to think that Descartes can reasonably propose that God has created an essentially inert, wholly passive, and motionless universe, which he then sets in motion at the beginning of time. We will have in mind analogies like the initial winding of a motionless clock which creates a motion that endures in the clock without our continual intervention. Leibniz sees that this understanding of motion in nature cannot survive close inspection, if we are thinking in terms of Descartes' physical concepts. Clocks can be wound so that they will run continuously precisely because of the nongeometrical features of bodily existence on which Leibniz insists. The compression of the mainspring of the clock represents a force, an inner determinant of future motion. This intrinsic potential cannot be represented as a particular arrangement of particles. Within Descartes' framework of ideas, the compression of the spting would bode nothing for future motion. A mere arrangement of space-filling particles will not induce any further changes. A further rearrangement will need an external cause. Ultimately, God will have to move the hands of the clock himself. This is the prospect for "the new philosophy which maintains the inertness and deadness of things." 22 Leibniz mounts such criticisms in his 1698 essay, "On Nature Itself."23 If we are to imagine that God has arranged things to conserve the initial motion that he has caused in matter, we must suppose that he has imparted to material a foundation for continued motion that is intrinsic to that reality. For since this command [calling for conservation of motion after the initial motion was imparted] . .. no longer exists at present, it can accomplish nothing unless it has left some subsistent effect behind which has lasted and operated until now, and whoever thinks otherwise renounces any distinct explanation of things, if I am any judge, for if that which is remote in time and space can operate here and now without any intermediary, anything can be said to follow from anything else with equal right.24 and ... if things have been so formed by the command that they are made capable of fulfilling the will of him who commanded them, then it must be granted that there is certain efficacy residing in things, a form or force such as we usually designate by the name of nature, from which the series of phenomena follows according to the prescription of the first command.25 AUTUMN/WINTER 1982-83 �In other words, no matter what role we assign to God, we must impute active powers to nature if we are to formulate intelligible explanations. "On Nature Itself' is Leibniz's contribution to a German debate occasioned by Robert Boyle's contention that appeals to "Nature" should be deleted from science. 26 For Boyle, the repudiation of Nature meant the rejection of scholasticism and scholastic forms. In this, Boyle is following Descartes. For the specious concept (<Nature", Boyle wants to substitute "mechanism" as the foundation of all explanations in the material world. The German Cartesian point of view supported Boyle's claim and reasserted the essential passivity of material substance. 27 Leibniz does not argue against Boyle's mechanism, nor does he claim here that mechanical explanations ought to be supplemented by teleological explanations, though this is certainly his view. In this context, it is the Cartesian concept of mechanical explanation that Leibniz finds defective as a consequence of the limitations of Descartes' concept of material substance." Descartes tries to exclude ad hoc psychologism and teleology." But the resulting conceptual platform is so feeble that no explanations at all can be mounted on it. Then God's ad hoc intervention is required at every point. If that is so, then it turns out that the only explanatory pattern that finds any application in Descartes' material world will be the teleological pattern of intended purposeful behavior. God causes each and every thing that happens for his good reasons. Then all explanations are psychologistic, the very thing Descartes sought to eliminate completely. Although Leibniz is rightly known as the defender of teleology, his insistence here that activity be ascribed to nature itself is founded on the claim that, failing an active nature, each and every mechanical event in the universe would have to be understood as an intended action on the part of God. Perhaps the most interesting idea of "On Nature Itself' is Leibniz's thought that we should bring under a single philosophical perspective both the mechanical events studied and explained by physicists and the free actions of men. Leibniz sees that the independence of the human will and the independence of mechanical forces from God's actions are parallel requirements if we are to understand human responsibility and the motions of bodies respectively. The passivity of created substance finds expression in the Cartesian doctrine "that things do not act but that God acts in the presence of things and according to the fitness of things." Natural application of this to the mental realm of thinking and willing would mean reassignment of the cause of the sequence of our thoughts and desires and resolutions from us to God. The Occasionalists such as Malebranche who seem to espouse such a view have not really established it and do not appreciate its destructive implications. We must believe in our own spontaneity. To doubt this would be to deny human freedom and to thrust the cause of evil back into God, but also to contradict the tes- THE ST. JOHNS REVIEW timony of our internal experience and consciousness by which we feel that what these opponents have transferred to God without even the appearance of reason belongs to ourselves.30 Furthermore, the very idea of an independent substance is wrapped up with action so that, were actions all assigned to God, God would be the_ nature and substance of all things-a doctrine of most evil repute, which a writer who was subtle indeed but irreligious, in recent years imposed upon the world, or at least revived. 31 Equally appropriate to mechanical causality and free action, these ideas show us what is best in Leibniz's thought about teleology without the encumbering metaphysics and theology with which his insights are ordinarily accompanied. What is at stake in the dispute over active powers as far as mechanical explanation is concerned? Consider a simple example. The wind blows dead leaves from the branches of trees in the autumn. Leibniz's intuition is that our science must offer a mechanical understanding that really succeeds in attributing the detachment of the leaves to the force of the wind. Of course, Leibniz thinks that God has arranged the laws of nature and that these laws are as contingent as the particular events that obey them. 32 But to say that is not to say that God really removes each leaf, that God twirls it in the air for a while, and that God then deposits it on the ground. On the contrary, things are so ordered that the wind removes the leaves and no action of God's is present or required. To assume that God knows just how each leaf will move is to assert the infinity of his understanding but not the ubiquity of his will. To think otherwise is to destroy the idea of "laws of nature" and to replace them with mere generalizations the truth of which is only a consequence of the consistency of God's actions. Therefore, our mechanical conceptions must be rich enough to capture causal action in relationships that obtain between natural events. Descartes has produced a physics that is too weak for this job. Turning to voluntary human behavior, Leibniz finds the same pattern in a setting of very different philosophical issues. When we raise the question which preoccupied Leibniz throughout his career, that is, the question of God's responsibility for the failings and evils of human conduct, we are asking whether or not human beings are truly active in the world. Of course, Leibniz thinks that men are created by God and that, in his creation, God fully appreciates the powers, limitations, and liabilities of his creatures. Moreover, being omniscient, he knows exactly what circumstances they will face and how they will act. This much is parallel to the fact that God makes the things of the material world and the laws of nature and he knows in advance just what will happen. But to say that men have any powers at all implies that, when those powers are exercised, it is men who act and not God. When I vote it is 27 �not God who casts a ballot, any more than it is God that tears the leaf from the wind-whipped branch. No doubt we would not hold a man responsible for his actions if he were a mechanism like a clock or if his "acts 11 were caused by the wind. So there is more to responsibility and free agency than independence of God. In "On Nature Itself", however, Leibniz sees the common ground of mechanism and volition. In understanding we have to make fundamental explanatory appeal to the human agent. In understanding mechanical events we must make fundamental appeal to physical determinants of change. The creativity of God no more constrains physical forces than it does human actions. This line of thought also clarifies Leibniz's oftenexpressed view that there is a mechanical explanation for everything that happens in the world while, at the same time, teleological explanations have their own validity within the same world of events.33 The physical world is not a continuous sequence of miracles, as it would be if active powers were excluded from nature. The physical world is ordered by the intentions and creativity of God. But to say that is to say that he has created a mechanically functioning system wherein what happens is explained by physical causes for motions and not by the will of God. The wisdom of this conception is partially concealed from us by the theological trappings of Leibniz' s customary discussions. It becomes correspondingly clearer when we translate the conceptual relationships envisioned by Leibniz back to the level of human purposeful action in a mechical world. What is required for the simplest selfconsciously purposive action by a human agent? Suppose, for example, a man drives a nail into a wall in order to hang a picture. The format that Leibniz proposes urges us not to confuse the aptness of the teleological explanation, "He put the nail into the wall in order to hang the picture," with a mechanical explanation of the motion of the nail: "The force imparted by collisions with the hammerhead caused the relatively rigid nail to penetrate the relatively fixed waiL" We should not think that the mechanical explanation competes with or rules out accounts that cite purposes and reasons. Thus, Leibniz says that there is a mechanical explanation for all motions. The mechanical explanation is not merely compatible with a reason-giving explanation. Leibniz is asserting that a mechanical explanation is required if the reason-giving explanation is to be intelligible. We could not act as we do, when we want pictures hung, were it not for the fact that nails are mechanically caused to move by collisions with hammerheads. Leibniz appeals to a notion of levels of explanation saying that there are mechanical explanations for everything which are not teleological, and that there are also teleological explanations applicable to the same reality which are correct explanations. Leibniz thus stands against all reductive programs that would try to convert teleological explanations into mechanical explanations. Such a reduction is the common aspira- 28 tion of Hobbes's conception of the material embodiment of deliberation and wilL of Descartes' theory of deflections of particles in the pineal gland, and of contemporary mind-brain materialism applied to action and motivation.34 In Leibniz' s view mechanical causes are organized as they are as a consequence of God's intentions. But it is physical forces that explain what happens mechanically, and God's intentions are not physical forces. The same pattern of relationships holds for human purpose-fulfilling actions. Human intentions have a secure explanatory role. But this never removes the need for a mechanical explanation for the motions of things. Human intentions are not mechanical causes any more than divine intentions are mechani~ cal causes. In his theological presentations we can all understand with Leibniz, although perhaps few of us will agree with him, the thought that the laws -of nature are instituted by God in the course of bringing into existence the kind of world he wants. But in understanding just this much, Leibniz shows that we must be envisioning two kinds of explanation which are correlative and not in conflict with one another. We are supposing that God sets up the world and its laws with a purpose and to fulfill his plans and intentions. This is a reason-giving explanation belonging to the general teleological pattern. But this idea would not be intelligible at all, and explanations would collapse into the assertion of sequences of miracles, if we did not also suppose that the arrangements God makes give scope to another very different kind of explanation, namely, the mechanical explanations of the motions of things that appeal to physical powers and forces in nature rather than God. In the absence of an explanatory role for natural forces, appeals to God's ordinances reduce to the Occasionalist's attribution of each and every event to the direct intervention of God's will. Following the same pattern, while deleting the theological context, we can understand a purpose-oriented explanation of human behavior, but we would not be able to understand it, for it would mean nothing if it were supposed to rule out or to compete with mechanical explanation of what happens. If it were supposed to rule out a mechanical account, a reason-giving explanation would have to assert that the will moves objects directly. But we neither understand nor have any use for this efficacy of the will. We do understand that someone has arranged matters to realize his objective just insofar as we also understand that there are mechanical causal relations which he has foreseen and wittingly exploited in his action. If we thought that teleology eliminates mechanism, we would convert every purposeful act into a manmade miracle. The idea of purposive action in a mechanical world has seemed to many philosophers to require a gap in the mechanical order of things through which the will can find expression in what happens. Leibniz' s insight here shows us that the envisioned gap could serve no useful purpose. A motion that is not mechanically explicable would not be AUTUMN/WINTER 1982-83 �graspable as a purposeful act but, instead, this uncaused motion would belong to the realm of the miraculous, as though our every action involved a kind of levitation. We tend to credit the question, "How can my reasons have anything to do with what happens if there are mechanical causes for all motions?" This natural-sounding complaint implies that my reasons could be relevant if only some events were not determined by any mechanical cause. Then those things at least might be determined by "my reasons." But this line of thought is hopeless. If my reasons could produce some motion in things, this will be either an unintelligible miracle and, thus, no explanation, or, "my reasons" will just be an expression for some fur· ther mechanical cause, as both seventeenth century and twentieth century reductions will have it. But if appeal to reasons is actually only appeal to mechanical causes, then purposes, objectives, that is, true reasons, drop out alto· gether and explanation operates merely by appeal to sufficient prior determinants of motion. Without the cloud of dust that philosophical reflection about causality and freedom inevitably raises, I do not think we would find an apparent inconsistency or any other problem in the fact that the force of hammer blows moves a nail, and that I, at the same time, claim to have a reason for its being in the wall. Only a philosopher would ever think that the correctness of the reason-giving ac· count implies that I must have moved something "with my will" so that either my will is also a physical cause, or the mind can mysteriously intervene in the physical order and violate conservation laws in the process. In Leibniz's thinking the choice between these unpromising options is not forced upon us. Teleology is not mechanism and it does not presuppose a gap in the mechanical order. Quite the reverse is the case. Leibniz shows that if the relevant motions are not explicable mechanically, the teleological explanations will not get any explaining done. This is the most profound message of the understanding of activity and explanation presented in "On Nature Itself." Our thinking about action is often beset by another speculative temptation. We are willing to allow that the mechanical force of hammer blows surely accounts for the motion of the nail head. But then we simply want to look further back in the physical and physiological chain of events for the point at which appeal to reasons and purposes finds its real footing. Of course, I did not simply will the hammer to move any more than Jj.;imply willed the nail into the wall. I picked up the haii}I'fler and that means, inter alia, that forces applied to the hammer by my hand explain its motion. Could it be that the will only produces its own nonmechanical effects when applied to parts of my own body? This would enable me to orchestrate the mechanical relationships of things in the world beyond my body so as to achieve desired objectives. This attractive thought comes to a dead end with the appreciation that the motions of bodily parts are not in any relevant way different from the motions of external objects. Conservation TI!E ST. JOHNS REVIEW laws alone mean that there must be mechanical explanations for motions of protoplasm as well as for motions of rocks. There are known physiological-mechanical (speaking loosely) explanations for the motions of my hand, of my muscles, and, no doubt, there are as yet undiscovered explanations for all the subtle electro-chemical goings-on within the muscles, the nerves, and the brain. Should we not suppose that my control of my body, to the extent that I have such control, presupposes and exploits just these mechanical relationships? To think otherwise will be merely to project the miracle of willed motions into some physiological recess where our scientific understanding is presently incomplete and does not as yet, therefore, make such willing as unintelligible as the idea of willing a hammer to move. Willing things to change and move is really a concept with no more application within the body than without. And voluntarily moving things that we can move does not imply that no mechanical account of their motion is correct.35 Leibniz's view that purpose explanations do not replace or conflict with mechanical explanations appears to be the only defensible understanding. This conclusion does not mean that Leibniz provides any philosophical analysis that removes the feeling of incompatibility that surrounds the issue of freedom and causality. The understanding of teleological explanation and its relation to efficient causality or mechanism remains to be achieved.36 Leibniz's view of the distinctness and the interdependence of these explanatory patterns is both subtler and more promising than many approaches that are still defended. This Leibnizean view, as I have1ried to show, is independent of theological commitments and of Leibniz' s too-bold opinion that there is a teleological explanation for everything that happens. 3 Analyticity All the events and actions that are explained either mechanically or teleologically are contingent according to Leibniz. True propositions asserting such occurrences are contingent truths. By a contingent truth Leibniz means a truth of which the denial expresses something possible and is not inconceivable or contradictory. I want to emphasize Leibniz's assertion of the contingency of all of these subject matters because there is an intefpretation of his thought, and it is the dominant interpretation now, according to which he does not really think that any of these matters are contingent. On this, the dominant understanding of Leibniz, he takes all truths to be analytic truths, and, as everyone agrees, no analytic truth can be contingent. It is an obvious and essential feature of analytic truths that their denials are contradictory. So in saying that Leibniz thinks that all truths are analytic, supporters of this interpretation assert that he cannot really distinguish between the class of truths whose denials are contradictions and any other class of truths whatsoever. So 29 �his real opinion is supposed to be th~t there are no contingent truths at all and that everything true is necessarily true. In considering this contention we have, first, to note that there is a sense in which all these contingent truths are also necessary. They are "hypothetically necessary" in Leibniz's customary terminology. 37 By this he means that there is a coercive reason why this event or action occurs rather than some alternative to it. Thus, given the laws of nature and the relevant circumstances preceding a mechanically caused event, that event must follow. This is entailed by the presumed universality of natural laws. Leibniz recognizes that the conditional statement that expresses hypothetical necessity is itself logically necessary or, as he expresses it, metaphysically necessary and absolutely necessary. It is a feature of any absolutely or logically necessary truth that its denial is a contradictory statement. Therefore, in saying that an event is hypothetically necessary, Leibniz is associating that event with a conditional statement that is absolutely necessary. This is not an extreme view of Leibniz's, nor one that we should think of as expressing a characteristically rationalist perspective. An ideally simple schema can bring out the points in a way that makes them noncontroversial, or nearly so. Suppose that the only law relevant to the occurrence of the event E is the simply conditional: "If circumstance C obtains then event E follows." E is shown to be hypothetically necessary by adverting to this law together with the fact that the circumstance C did obtain in the actual context of the occurrence of E. This can be summed up in the logically necessary conditional: If it is the case that the law: if circumstance C then event E, holds; and if circumstance C does obtain, then event E follows. All those philosophers of science who envision a deductive relationship between scientific laws, initial conditions and statements asserting the occurrence of explained events are committed to this Leibnizean viewpoint. Most empiricists adopt this view. That the relationship of the explanans to the explanandum is deductive is just another way of saying that propositions with the above form, and those with much more complicated laws and instantiating conditions, are logically true. Leibniz once asserted, "As for eternal truths, we must observe that at bottom they are all conditional, and say, in fact, such a thing posited, such another thing is."38 The necessity of conditional statements connecting laws and conditions with explained events is all that Leibniz means by "hypothetical necessity" in the sphere of mechanical explanation. Such hypothetical necessity leaves open the possibility that some other event might have occurred, rather than the actual event, had the laws and initial conditions been different. For factual circumstances, and the laws of nature, are themselves contingent according to Leibniz. 39 Thus~ the denial of the occurrence of a hypothetically necessary event is not contradictory. 30 Parallel points are to be made in understanding Leibniz's conception of the contingency of free actions. Leibniz consistently rejects what he calls "the freedom of indifference." By this he means to exclude choices which are entirely arbitrary and motivated by nothing but the disposition to choose. Freedom, for Leibniz, never eliminates the need for a reason for what is done which distinguishes it in some intelligible way from all alternative actions and makes clear why it was chosen over alternatives. To suppose that a man could actually make a random or arbitrary choice between alternatives would be to allow an element of unintelligibility into our idea of reality. A single inexplicable node in the causal network of things would infect the whole scheme of an explicable world. The vulnerability of this conception is revealed in exchanges with Samuel Clarke, who points out, among other things, that Leibniz must rule against the very possibility that God, or a man, could ever be faced with equally desirable means to some desired end.40 In the manner of the problem of Buridan's ass, the value-equivalence of the means would prevent selecting either of them, on Leibniz' s principles, no matter how urgently desired the end. In spite of such penetrating criticisms, we should bear in mind that the idea that everything that happens is explicable is not merely a rationalist dogma. It seems to be a presumption of all investigations of things and one that is extremely difficult to set aside. For better or worse, Leibniz's view is that an agent must always have a definite reason for choosing the action he does perform from the alternative courses available to him. The reason is coercive in the sense that, once an agent determines what course he prefers, which Leibniz expresses as "what course appears best to him," he will inevitably adopt that course. He likes to compare deliberation with weighing things in a balance. The very idea that a man could act in the absence of a determining reason is, for Leibniz, like the idea that a balance might incline to one side although there is no greater weight in that side than in the other.41 The principle: men always choose the course that appears best to them, is the analog of a scientific law, and the particular assessment preceding an action will be the ana· log of prior circumstances. Again, conditionals of the following type can be formed: If a man is choosing for the best, and if A appears better than any other option that he recognizes, then he will do A. This pattern fits the actions of God as well as of finite agents with the difference that God's infinite power enforces his choice and to God's infinite wisdom what appears best is best.42 In both the divine and the human case, the absolute necessity of conditional statements of this form never means that other actions could not possibly have been performed. On the contrary, it is an ineliminable part of the idea of action that all of the alternative actions AUTIJMN/WINTER 1982-83 �could be performed by the agent. This is the minimum meaning of calling them alternative courses of action. The question of choice only arises on the. irreducible assump· tion that an agent could do more than one thing. Only then does the question of preference, the best, the appar· ent best, and assessment become relevant. Therefore, ac· tions themselves, although hypothetically necessary, are never absolutely necessary. Other preferences and princi· pies of action might have issued in other actions. The denial that a particular action was done is never a contradiction. The contingency of mechanically explicable motions and the contingency of motivated actions is essentialto Leibniz's thinking about these matters. If it were abso· lutely impossible for a particular motion not to occur, if its nonoccurrence were inconceivable and contradictory, and the assertion of its occurrence, thus, metaphysically nee· essary, then talk about mechanical causes would be as in· appropriate in physics as it is in geometry. If a man's behavior were absolutely necessary, the desirability of an action would be as irrelevant as the desirability ofa theo· rem in pure mathematics. Then, as Leibniz says, it would be as easy to be a prophet as to be a geometer.43 Like geo· metrical proofs, scientific explanations and explanations of actions can be expressed in deductive arguments. The crucial difference is that the premises of mathematical de· ductions are themselves necessary truths while the prem· ises from which actions and events can be deduced are contingent. Apart from God, the existence of all material things and all human agents is contingent. Thus all statements that describe finite existences and say what happens to them and what they do are contingent truths, if they are true statements.44 Plainly all statements about mechanically caused events involving bodies and all statements about the free actions of human agents will fall into the class of contingent statements. The popular idea that Leibniz makes all truths analytic45 is certainly wrong. It flies in the face of his frequent and careful statements on these issues. It makes nonsense of his most important views and of his philosophy as a whole. It imputes logical inconsistencies to a great logician that are so obvious that no beginning student could miss them. There is just no question of testing this proposed under· standing of Leibniz against his writings in order to see whether it may be an adequate or an unavoidable expres· sion of his real opinion. The only interesting question is how it can have happened that this reading has managed to gain, not merely currency, but ascendancy in the views of so many who study Leibniz's philosophy. First, we need a rough review of the concept of analytic truth that is used in this bad interpretation of Leibniz. The roughness of our treatment here intentionally avoids twentieth century controversies over analyticity46 and avoids all of the niceties concerning logical form that would require attention in a scrupulous discussion of ana· lyticity per se. In particular, we shall largely ignore the fact THE ST. JOHNS REVIEW that all propositions are not of subject-predicate form, as Leibniz himself largely ignores it. None of these matters have any relevance to the claim that Leibniz thought that truths are all of them analytic. An exposition of analyticity that fits in with Leibniz' s expressed views about truth and that makes sense in the context of examples of truths like Leibniz's examples will suffice' for our purposes. Propositions are analytic whose truth depends upon and only upon the meaning of the terms they contain. Gener· ally the meanings of terms are complex. In order to make meanings fully explicit reformulation of sentences is gen· erally required. Such reformulations substitute something like definitions for terms that have complex meanings. In the case of analytic propositions, this analysis via articulation of meanings ultimately makes the truth evident, dis· playing it, for example, as resting on an identity the denial of which would be patently contradictory. In an illustration that has become standard in modern discussions, the articulated meaning or definition: "things that are both men and unmarried" replaces the complex term "bachelors" in analyzing the proposition, (I) All bachelors are unmarried, yielding, (2) All things that are both men and unmarried are un· married, which rests on the identity, (3) What is unmarried is unmarried, in the sense that to say that (2) is false is to assert that something is both unmarried and not unmarried, which denies (3) and is, therefore, contradictory." Leibniz never uses the word ''analytic 11 in this sense. As everyone knows, the word ''analytic" was first given the sense just sketched by Kant. At the same time, Leibniz certainly does say that there are truths which reduce to or rest on identities. He also often points out that this foun· dation of such truths is not always evident and that it re· quires analysis of the terms of a proposition to display the underlying identity.48 Perhaps his thinking in such pas· sages is so close to our concept of analyticity that we can properly say that he is talking about the analyticity of propositions in our sense, although he does not use the word as we do. But just this much, far from showing that Leibniz takes all truths to be analytic, seems to establish the opposite. For Leibniz always very clearly distinguishes between truths that rely on the law of contradiction from other truths which need a further foundation and whose denials are possible and not at all contradictory. The con· sistency of Leibniz's distinction on this point is one of the reasons for which it is odd that many readers are satisfied to say that he makes all truths analytic.49 The following is a particularly clear statement of Leibniz' s. It is one of a number of statements with similar force: 31 �Omnes Existentiae excepta solius Dei Existentia sunt con tingentes. Causa au tern cur res aliqua corltingens [prae alia] existat, non petitur ex [sola] eius definitiOne ..... Cum enim infinita sint possibilia, quae tamen non existunt, ideo cur haec potius quam ilia existant, ratio peti debet non ex definitione alioqui non existere implicaret contradictionem, et alia non essent possibilia .... All existences excepting only the existence of God are contingent. The reason why something contingent exists [rather than another thing] is not to be sought in its definition [alone] . ... Since there are infinite possibilities which, nonetheless, do not exist, the reason why this rather than that does exist ought not to be sought from definitions, otherwise not existing would impl~ a contradiction, and other things would not be possible. . . . 0 It is worth noting that, in Kant's initiating discussions and in all philosophical usage since Kant, "analytic" is essentially a contrastive concept and the point of calling a proposition analytic is not fully intelligible without the correlative concept of "synthetic" propositions. Neither Kant nor any post-Kantian philosopher who uses the concepts, analytic and synthetic, has said that all truths are analytic. The contrast is always the basis for a dichotomous classification of truths. There are philosophical controversies concerning the viability of the analytic-synthetic distinction altogether, though philosophers do, for the most part, accept the distinction." There are none who accept the distinction and then find that all true propositions fall into just one of the two available classes. It is this extravagant opinion, that no philosopher would dream of holding himself, that is so commonly assigned to Leibniz. This reading of Leibniz requires, then, that we retrospectively apply to his thought an essentially contrastive concept that was introduced long after his death by Kant and, at the same time, it requires us to suppose that Leibniz uses this contrastive concept noncontrastively and that he puts all truths on one side, though no other philosopher would do that. Once this interpretation is introduced, it turns out to be incompatible with almost everything that Leibniz said. This circumstance, instead of leading to the prompt rejection of the interpretation, or even to suspicions about it, has spawned various ingenious efforts to deal with the Leibniz' s inconsistencies, namely those that the interpretation itself creates. The most outrageous plan for resolving these created difficulties is surely Russell's. Russell supposes that though Leibniz says that there are contingent truths he does not believe that there are any, since Leibniz really thinks that all truths are analytic and therefore, necessary. Russell finds that Leibniz was a fellow of poor character, lacking "moral elevation" 52 so he basely concealed his true views after discovering that they did not please Antoine Arnauld in 1686.53 If Russell were right, we should have to think that Leibniz went on, after 1686, to write huge books and endless letters and articles, and thousands of fragments that no one saw but himself, in all of which he insincerely asserted that there 32 are contingent truths only because he thought that this opinion would more appealing to his royal patrons and religious authorities than his real belief that everything is necessary. Other critics have not followed Russell in these accusations, but neither have they rejected the idea that, for Leibniz, all truths are analytic. Why not? One obvious reason hinges on the word "contains." Leibniz states in many places that if any proposition is true then the predicate is contained in the subject of that proposition, or the subject contains the predicate. Furthermore, it is quite possible that Kant had in mind just this Leibnizean use of "contains" when he introduced the distinction between analytic and synthetic truths by saying that the predicate is contained in the subject of analytic truths, while it is not contained in the subject of synthetic truths which add something, as Kant puts it, that is not already thought in the subject concept. So we have two suggestive facts: First, Leibniz said that in all truths the predicate is contained in the subject, and, second, Kant said that, if the predicate is contained in the subject, you have an analytic truth. Combining these we can get: Leibniz finds that all truths are analytic. But this requires the additional premise that Leibniz and Kant mean the same thing when they speak of the predicate being contained in the subject of a proposition. How can that possibly be when Leibniz makes it clear, again and again, that his "containment of the predicate in the subject" is compatible with the contingent status of a proposition? In the essay "On Necessary and Contingent Truths," Leibniz says Verum est affirmatum, cuius praedicatum inest subjecto, itaque in omni Propositione vera affirmativa, necessaria vel contingente, universa1i vel singulari, notio praedicati aliquo modo continetur in notione subjecti; . ... Assertions are true of which the predicate is in the subject, so that in all true affirmative propositions, whether necessary or contingent, universal or singular, the notion of the predicate is contained in some way in the notion of the subject; . ... 54 Again, this citation is selected from a number of discussions which have the same force. I have added the emphasis, "aliquo modo continetur," that is, ''contained in some way." What are the different ways in which the predicate might be contained? Leibniz clearly envisions two possibilities. In the case of necessary truths, containment of the predicate in the subject is a matter of meaning, that is, containment is shown "ex definitione" of "per analysin terminorum." Only in these cases is the reason for the containment a "necessitating reason." 55 In the case of contingent propositions Leibniz says that there is no necessitating reason but only an "inclining reason" for the presence of the predicate in the notion of the subject.56 Again, Leibniz distinguishes between predicates that are part of the essence of the subject and predicates that AUTIJMN/WINTER 1982-83 �are in the subject but not part of the essence of the subject. Only propositions that ascribe essential predicates are necessary. It seems to me beyond dispute that, were Leibniz informed of Kant's conception of analytic and synthetic propositions, he would not say that he finds all truths analytic. His stated distinctions prepare for a much more plausible response. Analytic truths are those for which there is a necessitating reason for the inclusion of the predicate in the subject. These are propositions true by definition. They ascribe essential predicates. The denials of these are contradictory. There are other propositions which are synthetic. They are contingent propositions where the reason for the subject's containment of the predicate is not a necessitating reason. They are not shown true by appeal to the meanings of terms. They do not involve essential predicates of their subjects. And their denials are not contradictory. That Kant's analytic statements are all necessary is a logical point at the most elementary level. Leibniz, who was, after all, a great logician, could not fail to notice that where the subject contains the predicate in Kant's sense, a proposition will be necessary and its denial a contradiction. But in all the passages wherein he asserts his containment thesis, Leibniz also asserts that there are contingent as well as necessary propositions, and these differ "toto genere."57 In one passage Leibniz actually seems to antici· pate and reject the idea that his conception of contingent truths might, somehow, make them necessary along with ordinary necessities: Si omnes propositiones etiam contingentes resolvuntur in propositiones identicas, an non omnes necessariae sunt? Respondeo, non sane. If all propositions, even contingencies, are to be resolved into identical propositions, can we not conclude that they are all necessary? I answer, Not soundly. Leibniz then explains that propositions of fact are all about existing things. What exists, a consequence of God's creation, is always an alternative to other possible existences. So there is a reason for what exists, but that something exists is not necessary. And he concludes: ... dicendumque est in contingentibus non quidem demonstrari praedicatum ex notione subjecti; sed tantum eius rationem reddi, quae non necessitet sed inclinet. It must be said that in contingencies the predicate is by no means to be demonstrated from the notion of the subject; but rather a reason for it is given which does not necessitate but inclines. 58 Furthermore, in many presentations of the contain~ ment thesis about all truths it is plain that Leibniz does not think he is asserting something controversial or even original in the least way. He intends this claim, rather, as an expression of a conception of truth shared by most THE ST. JOHNS REVIEW philosophers." He thinks it is Aristotle's conception of truth, as well as that of ail the leading scholastics he can think of. But Leibniz does not propose that Aristotle and most scholastics held that ail truths are necessary and that they can all be established from the analysis of meanings. Leibniz would recognize that as an extreme and unfamiliar view, while his containment thesis is presumably familiar and innocuous. In one passage, Leibniz says, "[In a true proposition, the predicate is contained in the subject] or I do not know what truth is."60 This is just hyperbolic rhet· oric for expressing the noncontroversial status of the containment thesis as Leibniz understands it. It is not hard to state just what the containment thesis does mean as Leibniz intends it. It asserts only what might be expressed as follows: If'S is P' is true, then, of course, P must actually qualify the subject S. That is, P must be a feature of that subject, for that is just what the sentence states. In other words, a list of all of the features of the subject S would contain the predicate P, for if P were not on that list, it could hardly be true to say'S is P.' Leibniz's thinking is also influenced by a conception which is now known as the "timelessness of truth." If an individual has some feature at some time, then the statement, 'S is P' which expresses that fact, is timelessly true. The statement does not become true when the individual comes to have the feature. This is not a mysterious doc· trine if we think of the temporal qualification as tacitly included in the predicate. Then we get propositions such as "Reagan is elected in 1980" which is always true, and not just in 1980. But consider "Reagan is re-elected in 1984." If this is true, it is now and at all times true, although we do not now know that it is true. If it is true, then Leibniz will say that Reagan (now and always) has the feature of being elected in 1984 although we are not smart enough to know that in advance. Further, reelection in '84, like election in '80, is not an essential feature of Reagan, if it is a feature. That means that, if he is going to be reelected, that is not a necessary truth, though it is, now, a truth. Understood in this way, the containment thesis is as uncontroversial as Leibniz expects it to be. The containment thesis actually provides no support whatever for the idea that Leibniz takes all truths to be analytic truths. In addition to his views about containment of predicates in subjects, there are four Leibnizean doctrines that seem to press readers to the interpretation we are considering. These are (I) that for every truth an a priori proof is available in principle; (2) That God is able, because his mental powers are infinite, to reduce contingent propositions to identities and thus appreciate their truth, while, for mentally weaker men, a posteriori experience is the only source of knowledge of contingencies; (3) There is a complete concept for every individual so that one who knows the concept would know everything that was, is, or will be true of that individual; and (4) An individual is a species infima, that is, a minimal species. (1) In many passages and in various contexts Leibniz 33 �says that there is an a priori proof for all true propositions, although we are often unable to produce that a priori proof. Now, most philosophers of the twentieth century think that the feasibility of a priori proof is equivalent to, or is certainly a reliable mark of, necessary status. To prove some proposition a priori means, for us, to prove it without any appeal to the facts of the world, which are only discoverable a posteriori, or by experience. Again, we are now inclined to think that if a proof does not need any appeal to the facts it must rely wholly on analysis of concepts and meanings. That means, for us, that a proposition provable a priori will be an analytic truth and, therefore, necessary. In considering Leibniz's ideas, however, this line of thought must be wholly set aside. It is simply an error to project into Leibniz's thought any restriction of a priori status to propositions that are necessary or defensible by appeal to meanings alone. God's policy of action: selection of the best, and man's policy: selection of the apparent best, are premises that Leibniz plainly admits in a priori proofs, but he regards these as contingent premises and their contingency will be inherited by whatever is proved with their help. In fact, the contingency of all created existence alone guarantees the contingency of all matters of fact even though a sufficient intelligence would be able to predict them, using God's selection of the best as a premise. Leibniz says, Principium primum circa existentia est propositio haec: Deus vult eligere perfectissimum. Haec propositio demonstrari non potest; est omnium propositionum facti prima, seu origo omnis existentiae contingentiae. The first principle concerning existence is this proposition: God wants to choose the best. This proposition cannot be demonstrated; it is first of all propositions of fact; or the source of all contingent existence.61 The confinement of a priori to analytic truth is plainly wrong even for thinking about Kant, as his fundamental concept, synthetic a priori truth, testifies. (2) Obviously we do not and cannot produce apy of the a priori proofs for contingent facts that Leibniz says are possibile in principle. The reason he gives for our failure is that the world is infinitely complicated and each thing in it is related to everything else. An a priori proof of anything will have, as a consequence, to be an a priori proof of everything. It will have to take an infinity of factors into consideration. Our minds are clearly not up to such proofs. But an infinite mind, the mind of God, and only such a mind, could actually frame and grasp such proofs. This strand of speculation occurs frequently in Leibniz's writings and it has contributed to the idea that Leibniz thinks that all truths are analytic although we finite minds cannot appreciate the analyticity of what we discover through experience. Therefore we call these "contingent truths". Only God can understand these truths as analytic truths, but such they surely are.62 34 Leibniz frequently alludes to infinite analysis in mathematics. He likes to say that he appreciated the true character of contingencies when he placed them in the context of infinite mathematic~] analysis. Infinite analysis is the "radix contingentiae": the root of contingency. Again, he says that it takes a little flair for mathematics to grasp the nature of contingent truths which are only resolvable, in some sense, at infinity, as curves meet their asymptotes at infinity, and an infinite-sided polygon becomes a circle. Contingent truths are often said to be like incommensurable ratios whose exact value is the sum of an infinite series of factors. And Leibniz actually seems insecure in this analogy because we finite minds are capable of summing such infinite series.63 Many of those who say that Leibniz makes all truth analytic are most encouraged by this appeal to infinite analysis. My guess is that such readers think that Leibniz means that we treat propositions as contingent because we cannot understand their necessity. These readers rightly note something that Leibniz surely does mean, namely, that what is only a posteriori to a finite mind may be a priori to an infinite one. They go on to the plausible but faulty extension: What is contingent to a finite mind may be necessary to an infinite one, and what is synthetic for us may be analytic for God. These extensions would only be legitimate if we could say that the infinite understanding that God is capable of is an understanding of meanings and definitions. Why should we think that? Of course, Leibniz does mean that an infinite analysis would be required to find all the predicates contained in a given substancesubject. But we have seen that the reasons for containment do not all give rise to necessary truths or analytic propositions. There is nothing in the idea of an infinity of predicates that tends to make them all essential predicates. Leibniz sometimes says explicitly that infinite analysis of which only God is capable is needed to reduce contingent truths to identities. Can't we say that all identities are necessary? Identities come into the picture only via the notion of containment. If P is contained in S then the identity underlying'S is P' is expressible as'S (which hasP in it) is P', the identical part of which is 'What is Pis P.' Let us agree that this is a necessary truth if anything is. What follows? If P is a contingent feature of S, then the identity is also statable as 'What is contingently P is contingently P.' But to point out that this identity, like all identities, is necessary does not in any way undercut the contingency of 'S is P'. At times, Leibniz did worry lest his view that all truths rest on identities make them all necessary. In a passage already quoted he asks, "If true propositions all reduce to identities are they not all necessary?" He then tries to dispel the appearance of necessity in a manner much like that I have just proposed. To say that there is an underlying identity only means that the predicate is contained in the subject. But the truth in question is necessary only if the containment is essential"ex notione subjecti" and not AUTUMN/WINTER 1982-83 �if there is a merely inclining reason for the containment, a reason "quae non necessitet."64 The Same understandable worry sometimes leads Leibniz to d~ny that contingent propositions really reduce to identities at all: ... ita in contingentibus datur connexio [relatioque] termi~ norum sive veritas, etsi ea ad principium contradictionis sive necessitatis per analysin in identicas reduci nequeat. -. .. accordingly, in the case of contingencies, a connection [and relation] of terms is given, though it cannot be reduced to the principle of contradiction or necessity through analysis into identitiesP But in this very passage Leibniz reasserts his idea that God's infinite analysis gives him a view of contingencies that we cannot share. It is, then, only a priori knowledge and not necessity or analyticity that infinite analysis yields. It is likely that the same reflections underly Leibniz's misgivings about necessity in this passage: ... non intelligentem quomodo praedicatum subjecto inesse posset, nee tamen fieret necessaria. ... I did not understand in what way the predicate can be contained in the subject1 and yet not make the proposition necessary.66 Leibniz did not forget his distinction between necessitat· ing and inclining reasons here. It is just because the containment thesis will always generate an identity that it so strongly suggests the necessity of the analyzed proposi· tion to Leibniz and his readers. But, as we have seen, Leibniz would rather abandon the claim that an identity underlies every contingent truth than regard such truths as necessary. The best support for the idea that Leibniz makes even contingent truths analytic may come from passages like this one: Verum est vel necessarium vel contingens. Verum necessarium sciri potest per finitam seriem substitutionum seu per coincidentia commensurabilia1 verum contingens per infinitam1 seu per coincidentia incommensurabilia. Verum necessaria est cujus veritas est explicabilis; contingens cujus veritas est inexplicabilis. Probatio a priori seu [demonstratio] Apodixis est explicatio veritas. Truth is either necessary or contingent. Necessary truth can be known through a finite series of substitutions or through a commensurable coincidence [resolution to identity] 1 contingent truth by infinite analysis 1 or through incommensurable coincidence. Necessary truth is that of which the truth is explicable; contingent1 that of which the truth is inexplicable. A priori or apodictic demonstration is explication of truth.67 Leibniz never makes it entirely clear in just what way appeal to infinity is supposed to help us to understand contingency. In spite of the large number of passages in which he makes use of the analogy of incommensurability, he THE ST. JOHNS REVIEW never makes it clear just how this analogy is to be under· stood either. Furthermore, his appeal to "substitutions" in passages like the one just cited sounds menacingly necessitarian. Be this as it may, we can be sure that Leibniz did not think that these analogies go to show that contin· gent propositions are really analytic. He surely does mean that we cannot complete son;te kind of analysis which God can complete, and this because the analysis in question is infinite. But to make a proposition analytic, Leibniz would have to say not only that its full analysis requires an infi· nite mind, but also that that analysis is wholly conceptual and that the substitutions employed in the analysis are all of them definitional substitutions. Mere assertion that analyses are infinite does not imply that they are confined to conceptual matters. On the contrary, what God discovers through his infinite analysis is what we have to learn through experience. This prominently includes knowledge of causes of events and of free decisions, that is, of contingencies. In countless passages, including those we discussed in the first two parts of this essay, Leibniz makes it clear that God's foreknowledge is foreknowledge of contingent facts, of mechanically caused events, and of freely chosen actions. The a prioricity of God's foreknowledge is always distinguished from the necessity of what he knows. God cannot reduce actions and causes to definitions because they are not matters of definition. Leibniz usually, perhaps invariably, combines his idea that God can make infinite analyses with the thought that God can know contingent truths a priori. The above passage ends saying that contingent truths are inexplicable by men and that by explicability is meant demonstrability a priori. This is the mystery about contingent truths that infinite analysis is to make intelligible. God's powers enable him to prove contingent propositions a priori, but that does not convert contingent truths into necessary or analytic propositions. Here is what Leibniz really has in mind in his discussion of infinite analysis that makes possible a priori knowledge of facts. We men have enough understanding of the world to predict a few things like eclipses and next month's tides. The more knowledgeable and brilliant we are the more we. can predict. Some of our predictions depend on our knowledge of our own future actions. We can predict that we will not run out of gas on a long trip because we know that we will stop and refuel when we run low. In these ways, God is like us but infinitely wiser and more powerful. He has been able to predict everything from the beginning. "Everything" includes an infinite complexity of mechanically caused events and freely undertaken actions and these are all contingent.68 God knows all the contingent effects of mechanical causes and all the free decisions that agents will ever take. Everything is connected with every· thing else, so that the infinite truth of the world appears, from a particular point of view, in the complete truth about any individual. But this enormous truth contains a great deal that is irreducibly contingent. 35 �God's knowledge is wholly a priori ,since he knows everything before he creates the world of which he has knowledge. He knows that this is the way things will turn out, if he creates just such individuals subject to just such natural laws, and also creates such free men acting on such principles. That all this is knowledge of the actual world is a consequence of God's decision to create this "series of things." Here again we have a contingency. He creates as he does in light of a mental comparison with other possibilities each of which is also infinitely complex. ·God might have created another world, or none. That would not be contradictory. But his creative action is contingent and a great many of the things that happen in the world he created happen contingently. Perhaps we can say that for Leibniz anything that could be said to "happen" is contingent. For he describes necessary and essential truths about the world as conditional." (3) Leibniz regularly says that every individual has a "complete concept" and that all the truths, past, present and future, about an individual could be read off from the complete concept. This gives rise to the thought that truths about individuals are conceptual truths, for does he not say expressly that they can be got out of concepts? Beyond this, Leibniz is a metaphysical individualist. The universe consists wholly of a multiplicity of entities that Leibniz calls substances. These are basic individuals whose existence manifests a true unity and independence. All truths about the created universe are truths about these substances. Again, this is an expression of Leibniz's nomi· nalism. At his most theoretical, Leibniz says that all substances are what he calls monads. His theory of monads is notoriously difficult to relate to discourse at the less abstract levels of physical science, psychology, and ethics. I think it is certain that Leibniz himself never connected his Monadology with other universes of discourse in any definite way.70 Nonetheless, Leibniz also allows discourse in which far less theoretical individuals such as persons and physical bodies are the subjects about which truths may be asserted. At both the most theoretical and the more practical levels of discourse .he defends the idea that every individual has a complete concept and he freely uses persons and blocks of marble as illustrations of individual things with complete concepts.71 When Leibniz wrote to Arnauld saying that the entire history of the individual is contained in its complete concept, down to the minutest detail and once and for all, Arnauld found in this doctrine "a necessity more than fatal." 72 Thus, Arnauld may be the first of those who found in this opinion of Leibniz a philosophy that excludes all contingency. Readers who now say that Leibniz makes all truths analytic in connection with the complete-concept thesis are reasserting Arnauld's initial reaction. The analyticity interpretation gets support here because we so naturally suppose that to speak about what is in a concept is to speak about meanings. If all truths about in- 36 dividual substances can be generated by knowledge of concepts, then they all come from meanings and are, therefore, analytic. This understanding is inadequate for reasons much like those we have already stated in the context of a priori proof and infinite analysis. Leibniz is using the term "concept" of a substance so that all features of a substance, and not merely essential, definitional, or necessary features, will appear in the concept. He uses the word "concept" to contrast with talk about the substance itself as an existant thing. The concept is the representation of the thing. The features of the concept follow the features of the thing and include contingent elements, if the thing has contingent features. Of course, the concept of the individual is accessible to God before creation, so God is not merely forming a representation of an existant. This a priori accessibility of the concept is, again, an important part of the doctrine that encourages the analyticity thesis about Leibniz. Since the concept pre-exists the thing of which it is the concept, truths derived just from the concept must be conceptual truths. But, again, this is wrong. We finite minds can have concepts of things before they exist, and whether or not they later exist. We may have a complete concept (relatively speaking, of course) of a certain engine, and then we may build the engine that just fits that concept, or we may build another, or none, if other ideas suit us better. This is the way we should think of Leibniz' s God, allowing the appropriate superiority of his power and wisdom. When we think in advance that the bearings we have designed for our engine will not last for more than one year of constant use, we envision a contingent feature of our engine. If we build the engine and are entirely right about the bearings, the fact that they wear out in less than a year does not become a kind of necessary truth. It is a contingent truth that we were able to foresee, so that it was part of our concept of this engine before the engine existed. To call it "a truth about an engine" presupposes that the engine is built. If we do not go on to build the engine, then all we have is a conditional truth. "If we build such an engine, and if the laws of nature are as we assert them to be, then the bearings of that engine will wear out in less than a year." This is a necessary truth, but, as Leibniz himself says, its content is only of the form, "Such a thing posited, such another thing is."73 We conclude, that for God and for man, the existence of concepts of things prior to the existence of the things of which they are concepts does not in any way imply that truths about the things, legible from the concepts, are necessary or analytic. In the absence of the existence of the thing, such truths are not truths about individuals at all. With the existence, even the subsequent existence, nothing prevents them from being contingent truths. (4) Leibniz sometimes says that an individual is a species infima.74 That is, each substance is a least species, a species having only one member, namely, that individual substance itself. Now truths about the relation of species and AUTUMN/WINTER 1982-83 �subspecies are ordinarily truths based wholly on meanings within some scheme of classification. Let us assume in any case, that such is the status of assertions like, "Cats are mammals." Let us assume that this and other truths like it are necessary and analytic truths. In the example, we can see that being a member of the smaller class, cats, has as an essential requirement being in the larger class, mammals. If sentences about individuals could be assimi· lated to this pattern they too would be necessary and analytic. It is as though the more defining qualifications one introduces in speaking of a species, the fewer will be the individuals that instantiate that species-concept. Then Leibniz may seem to be saying that the most articulate species-concept, the ultimate definition of a subspecies, is always a concept so full that there is but one individual that can satisfy that species concept. Such a concept will specify everything about the single individual that is, under this understanding, the member of a species infima. This idea is plainly close to the complete-concept theory that we have just considered. The remarks we made about that theory apply equally to the notion of a species infima. Leibniz got the idea of a species infima containing one individual out of scholastic thought. The scholastics arrived at the concept in connection with the problem of individuation. What is it that really makes one thing, one man, for example, a different individual from another? According to a powerful and plausible Aristotelian view, the body is the ultimate and decisive foundation for the individuality of things. But for scholastics some things, such as angels, differ from men in that angels do not have bodies. The idea that each angel is a species infima is a scholastic solution to this problem. It tries to accept the Aristotelian concept of individuation by ruling that there can be only one bodiless entity of each conceptually distinct sort.75 Leibniz extends the idea of species infima to all individuals whether or not they have bodies. He has in mind that no two individuals, such as two men, will have just the same bodily features, nor just the same physical histories, etc. Therefore, classifications based on subtle enough differences will yield classes containing only one individual. But, as we saw, this will include classification with respect to empirical and contingent features, and not merely with respect to essential features. In fact, Leibniz' s special objective here is not complete concepts or a priori proofs but rather a vehicle for expression of his well-known view that no two individuals are exactly alike, or that individuals never differ in number only.76 I have devoted a lot of detail to this point, that is, the idea that all truths are analytic according to Leibniz, because it is an error that is widespread and an error that, once made, leaves Leibniz' s overall thought in hopeless confusion and inconsistency. I think it can be said that this misinterpretation is just based on inappropriate modernizations of Leibniz's use of word.s such as "a priori", "concept", "containment" and 11 teduction to an identity." Confining ourselves to Leibniz's senses of such expres- Tiffi ST. JOHNS REVIEW sions, none of his doctrines lend any support to the popular misinterpretation. 4 Possibility and Possible Worlds Leibniz often expresses his commitment to contingent truth by saying that not everything that is possible actu· ally exists.77 Spinoza and Hobbes are generally bracketed in his discussions as thinkers who erroneously eliminate contingency and equate what is possible and what is real.78 If there were no unactualized possibilities, Leibniz says, it would be inappropriate to praise God for his creation,79 and men could not be free and responsible for their actions.80 To speak of human freedom presupposes that more than one possibility must be open to a man. To praise God presupposes that other worlds might have been created. This is the setting of the famous concept of possible worlds. The thought of other possible worlds emphasizes a side of our reflections on contingency that easily generates puzzles and paradoxes. The recent great revival of discussions of possible worlds has not neglected to revive these paradoxes and puzzles.81 The paradoxes turn on the idea of the existence of possible worlds. Suppose we agree that Leibniz is right about Spinoza. Then Leibniz asserts and Spinoza denies that there are possibilities beyond those that are actualities. But what can this mean? Both men know that what exists, exists, and what does not, does not. Leibniz says that there are further possibilities, and Spinoza that it is not the case that there are further possibilities. These perhaps inevitable expressions suggest that the difference is in some way a difference about what there is. To say that there are unrealized possibilities seems to be the same as to say that unrealized possibilities exist somehow. Of course, they do not exist in the way in which realized possibilities exist. But if Leibniz were to admit that these possibilities do not exist at all, that they do not exist in any sense, then what would be the difference between his view and Spinoza's? Generally, this kind of thinking has led many, and sometimes Leibniz among them, to think of a possible world as a kind of existent thing. Because it gives unrealized possible worlds some kind of ontological weight, I call this the ontological inter· pretation of possible worlds. The temptations and advantages of the ontological interpretation can be illustrated in connection with Leibniz's discussions of the "problem of evil." Among the creatures of God are some, some men, for example, whose acts are vicious, whose characters are corrupt, and whose very constitution is deficient. How can an all-powerful and allgood God have produced such creatures? One view of Leibniz's solution to this problem is that, in Leibniz's system, God's creation does not include the fashioning of such deficient individuals at all because all individuals, as possibilities, exist eternally and, therefore, pre-exist all creative acts of God. A recent exposition states: 37 �siderable ontological standing. God is not responsible for these individuals because they exist as possibilities quite independently of him. The ontological interpretation of possible worlds is especially clear in a passage at the end of the Theodicee where Leibniz adds a sequel to the dialogue of Lorenzo Valla that he has retold. The high priest Theodore is sent by Jupiter to be instructed by Pallas Athena so that he will understand how misery and corruption of some men is compatible with the greatness and goodness of God. The goddess meets Theodore on the steps of an immehse palace of inconceivable brilliance. After first making him capable of receiving divine enlightenment, Athena tells him: system wherein competing organisms fully exploit every possibility and exist in every ecological niche. Both Russell and Arthur Lovejoy point out that, if Leibniz's theory of competing possibilities is taken literally, there appears to be no role at all for God in determining what exists.85 This is precisely because the theory gives possibilities not only a kind of existence but also a certain activity that is independent of and precedes actuality. Leibniz seems to have thought of the "urge to exist" of possibilities as at best a convenient metaphor. He usually speaks of unrealized possibilities as existing only as thoughts in the mind of God. In the Theodicee he says that the idea of a struggle for actual existence must really be understood as a conflict of "reasons in the perfect understanding of God," and at least once he expressly asserted that possible things, since they do not exist, can have no power to bring themselves into existence.86 These views of possibility are deflationary in comparison with the ontological interpretation that makes possibilities into things that are. When Leibniz follows this ontologically restrained line of thought and speaks of possibilities that God considers before crea· tion as "ideas", he means that something that is just an idea contrasts with things that exist in any sense at all. The fact that God recognizes that many different actualities might arise, depending upc,m what he freely decides to create, does not mean that anything already exists, as though ready for his "examination" in its fully formed state, merely leaving God to determine whether or not to license the full-blooded actuality of an already subsisting entity." Leibniz's writings and life-long interest in the theory of combinations shed light on his thinking about possibility. In the Ars Combinatoria Leibniz relates his abstract development of a theory of combinations to truth by way of the reflection that a proposition is composed of a subject and a predicate and is, therefore, an instance of binary combi- You see here the palace of destinies, of which I am the keeper. There are representations here, not only of everything that happens, but also of all that is possible; and Jupiter; having reviewed these representations before the beginning of the existing world, examined the possibilities for worlds, and made It is, then, the business of inventive [combinatory] logic (as far as it concerns propositions) to solve this problem: (i) given a subject to find its predicates. (ii) given a predicate to find its subjects.88 Each substance has "always" subsistfd, or, strictly speaking, has had a conceptual mode of being that lies outside of time altogether~sub ratio possibilitatis. Its total nature was determined, for its adequate and complete notion (including all its predicates save existence) was fiXed. For this God is in no way responsible; it is an object of his understanding and no creature of his will.82 According to this line of thought, possibilities are completed essences which God knows about but does not make. Creation consists in admitting into actuality certain of these individuals who, actuality apart, are completely formed. In his policy for conferring actual existence on these individuals God sees to it that the best possible world becomes the actual world. This best possible world has some defective individuals in it but it is, on balance, better than any possible alternative. God did not construct these deficient individuals, nor their betters. He merely allowed them, so to speak, through the portals of actuality. I am not particularly concerned here with the success of this well-known formula for the absolution of God. I do want to stress that, insofar as it does absolve him from the responsibility for having created deficient individuals, it gives those individuals, as mere possibilities, a certain con- the choice of the best of all. ... Thereupon, the goddess led Theodore into one of the apartments: when he was there, it was no longer an apartment, it was a world.83 In this forceful, entertaining and figurative exploitation of the concept of possible worlds, unrealized possibilities are construed on the pattern of other worlds that one might visit or observe.84 The high-water mark of this realistic interpretation of possibility in Leibniz is probably his theory of exigentia. According to this view, all possibilities contain a certain urge to exist. The actual world is the net effect of the strivings of individuals many of which are incompatible with one another. The result is a world of maximal existence which we might think of on analogy with an ecological 38 nation. From the point of view of combinations, Leibniz is think· ing of possible truths and not actual truths. That is, combinatory analysis will never enable us to see that the ascription of one predicate to a subject makes a true proposition and the ascription of another makes a false proposition. But if our language were adequate and complete enough, a merely combinatory procedure would generate all the statements about every subject that could possibly be true. The idea of an adequate and complete language is itself problematic. Leibniz always supposes that adequacy will be enhanced by analysis and definitions that reduce complex predicates to their simpler, .and ultimately, to their primitive constituents. The completeness of a language AUTUMN/WINTER 1982-83 �would require that the miscellany of subject terms of ordinary speech be replaced by terms representing the simple constituents of reality. This kind of project faces a large number of philosophical and technical difficulties. It is certainly a familiar project in twentieth-century philosophy. Ideas very much like those of Leibniz on the subject of possibility, ideal language, and combinatory analysis lie behind the modern development of truth-functional analysis, Russell's Hlogical atomism", the metaphysics and "picture-theory" of Wittgenstein's Tractatus, Rudolph Carnap's many versions of the theory of "state-descriptions", and the extensional semantics of quantification theory. Like Leibniz's schemes, a few of these recent projects for ideal languages have got beyond the programmatic stage. The scheme itself, however, enables us to grasp and evaluate Leibniz's thinking about possible worlds. A drastically simplified model for the world will be helpful. Suppose that the universe could only have two constituent substances in it, apart from God. Suppose these substances are two dice and that names for each of them are the simple subject terms of our language. Suppose, further, that the only truth to be told about a die is what number of dots it shows. Then the simple predicates of the language will all be expressions like "shows a three" and "shows a six." Let us imagine that the whole history of the universe is just the outcome of one roll of the dice. The roll itself is not even a part of reality. Then all the truth there is about the universe would consist in saying what number of dots between one and six each of the dice shows. We can write this as a pair of numbers: for example, let the truth be that (5, 6), which is to be read, "The first die shows a five and the second a six." In this representation the subject terms are indicated just by position in the pair. Leibniz' s problem of the Ars Combinatoria would be this: Find all the predicates of the first die. And the solution would be the set of all simple predicates {shows a one, shows a two, ... , shows a six}. All subjects of a given predicate, for instance, the predicate "shows a two," would be the set of all the subjects or {the first die, the second die}. Though creation will be a trifling matter with this attenuated universe, God still has the job of determining which possible world shall come into existence. That means that God will determine which of the several outcomes for a roll of two dice shall be the actual universe. Being wise, God understands that the possible worlds are exhausted in the array of combinations: (I ,I) (2,1) (3,1) (4,1) (5,1) (6,1) (1,2) (2,2) (3,2) (4,2) (5,2) (6,2) THE ST. JOHNS REVIEW (1,3) (2,3) (3,3) (4,3) (5,3) (6,3) (1,4) (2,4) (3,4) (4,4) (5,4) (6,4) (1,5) (2,5) (3,5) (4,5) (5,5) (6,5) (1,6) (2,6) (3,6) (4,6) (5,6) (6,6). Now we need something to distinguish the different possible worlds represented in this array in terms of value so as to make it thinkable in the framework of the analogy that God might judge one possible world better than another. Leibniz says that God combines things so as to produce a maximum of ordered variety. Let us say that the numerical total of dots on both dice measures the quantity of existence and that variety is represented only by evenness and oddness of the number of dots on each die. Under this stipulation, the possible world (6,6) maximizes quantity but not variety, while (4,5) maximizes variety but not quantity. (5,6) offers a maximum of quantity with variety, so this may be our model for the best possible world.89 Were the universe as simple as this dice-world, a mentality no more powerful than ours could survey possible worlds in advance as well as any divinity. We could know, as God would, that there are eleven possible totals of dots, ranging from two to twelve. There are fifteen worlds with sums less than seven and fifteen with sums more than seven. On the array, these sets of fifteen possible worlds are displayed above and below, respectively, the diagonal going from the lower left to the upper right. The diagonal itself contains the six ways of getting a total of seven, which is more ways than there are for getting any other total. We could extend this set of analytical truths about the set of possible outcomes indefinitely. These truths about possible outcomes are all accessible to us prior to rolling the dice. Leibniz thinks of such intelligible considerations about possible worlds as themselves necessary truths, as indeed these are when considered as statements of possible arithmetical combinations. Should we point out to Leibniz that, when these mathematical reflections are transferred to actual physical objects, they cease to be necessary truths? Real dice might be so constructed (for instance, they might be loaded) so that certain combinations will never come up. We might then say, for example, that it is not possible to roll a seven with a certain pair of dice. Still this would be a matter of hypothetical necessity according to Leibniz, depending on physical laws and conditions. The outcome (3,4) would not be contradictory, even for loaded dice. After all, God will decide the physical laws too, so He can make uninhibited use of combinatorially analyzed possibilities in connection with possible physical objects. Thinking in terms of this simple model of the world and alternative possibilities, and in terms of our own real abilities to understand possibilities in advance, reduces our impulse to construe possible worlds as having any kind of existence at all apart from the one possible world which is the world. Our own thought and survey of possible outcomes of a roll of dice does not depend on thinking that those possibilities somehow exist with fully articulated status in advance of any rolling. No outcomes of railings preexist the actual rolling in any sense whatever, and speech about possible outcomes only refers to what may happen after rolling. When Leibniz says that God considers a world or worlds in which Adam does not sin as well as worlds 39 �in which he does, he need mean by this nothing more than a vastly more complicated case logically quite like our reflection that, in some rolls, the first die comes up a one, and in others it does not. That these outcomes are open to intelligent survey does not mean that they must already exist in any sense at all. In contemporary discussions of modal concepts in logic, the ontologically weighty interpretation of possible worlds is currently defended by David Lewis. In his theory, the ontological standing of all possible worlds is so consider· able that "real" or "actual" cease to be ways of making fundamental distinctions between one possible world and all the others.90 Lewis thinks that "actual" and "real" are indexical expressions like <~here" and "now."91 Any place at all is "here" for a person speaking from that place. One time is not fundamentally distinguished from others by being now. In a similar way, there is an internal and an external use of "actual" in characterizing worlds. Of course, speaking within this possible world, we say that all the others are merely possible while this one is actual. But the inhabitants of other possible worlds will inevitably make the same claim for the actuality of their world, and with the same justice. To say that other possible worlds are not actual does not diminish them in point of ontological standing anymore than it diminishes the existence of places to say that they are not liere. This ingenious, perhaps intuitively unconvincing proposal is egalitarian about the existence of all possible worlds. Metaphysically speaking, they are all equally constituents of reality. Possible worlds are all of them representations like the items in the array that represents thirty-six possible outcomes of one roll of a pair of dice. The real world is not a representation. It is the world. So, too, by our hypothesis, there is but one roll of the dice. The real world cannot be identified with one of the items on the array, not even with the item that represents the world as it actually is. Lewis's theory about possible worlds succumbs, first, to the tempting thought that there are thirty-five items of one kind and one item of a different kind, thirty-five shadowy worlds and one full-blooded reality. On this basis, Lewis is able to propose that full-bloodness or actuality is perspectival. We have to judge, so Lewis thinks, from within one of these thirty-six worlds. Naturally, the one we judge from will be called "actual" and the others "merely possible." But we do not judge from within one of these worlds, for none of them is the world. We have, in the dice-world, thirty-six descriptions and one world. Nobody lives in descriptions and must judge from such vantage points. The thirty-six possibilities all deserve the old scholastic label: "entia rationis." Leibniz makes use of this thought when he points out that we have to think even of the actual world as a possible world and as contemplated by God. 92 We will be safe from ontological largesse as long as we make all possible worlds alike, and do not think of them as all shadowy except one. 40 The most decisive argument against any ontological interpretation of possible worlds in the context of Leibniz's thinking is that it undercuts the view of possibility that he defends. Leibniz himself presents this argument. If possibilities were any kind of subsisting things, intelligible, because they are somehow, there like Athena's palace of destinies, to be inspected by God or man, then they would have to be objects of a kind of experience, rather than products of reason and understanding. Inspection of possible worlds, were they to exist in any way, would amount to a further source of a posteriori knowledge. Theodore actually observes other worlds and explicitly gains knowledge of them and of the comparision with his own world by experience. And that is just what Jupiter has done in contemplating the possibilities prior to creation. But this figure gives us no reason to think that Leibniz actually inclines to the ontological interpretation of possibilities in the Theodicee. Athena, herself, calls the contents of the palace "representations" and though Theodore experiences other possible events, this is not described as another reality but Comme dans une representation de theatre."93 In other words, the items from which we learn about possibility are not other worlds with a less robust kind of being, nor are they other worlds with the same being as ours, when viewed from within, as David Lewis proposes. They are not worlds at all but only representations. When thinking about possibilities we are comparing representations of worlds with each other. The fact that we make an actual object like the array of thirty-six possible dice worlds, or the palace of destinies of Athena, is an accidental feature of representation. Our representations could be all of them in imagination only. But, whether the representations are real objects or only thoughts, the important point is that we do not have alternative worlds to compare, but only alternative representations, one of which, by hypothesis, represents the world as it is. Leibniz makes the point that, if possibilities were to exist as inspectible things, then knowledge of them would be a_posteriori, in discussing the idea of a "scientia media." Such a middle science was proposed by Luis Molina, among others, as a device for resolving the tensions between the concepts of human freedom and predestination. The middle knowledge was supposed to be a kind of visionary appreciation of things accessible to God and constituting a third option between the absolute necessity of definitional and mathematical truth and the mere con· tingency of matters of fact which we learn in experience. Leibniz points out that, if the notion of vision actually car· ries any weight in the concept of "scientia media", the knowledge deemed accessible to God will be a posteriori knowledge: 11 Non ergo in quadam Visione consistit DEI scientia, quae imperfecta est et a posteriori; sed in cognitione causae et, a priori. AUfUMN/WINfER 1982-83 �Thus the knowledge of God is not made up of a kind of vision1 which is imperfect and a posteriori; but in understanding of causes, and a priori. 94 This theme becomes immediately relevant to the thought of existing and inspectible possible worlds when Leibniz rejects the Molinist claim that God might see the future infallibly reflected in a great mirror. Secundum au tares scientiae mediae non possetDEUS rationem reddere sui pronuntiati, nee mihi explicare. Hoc unum dicere poterit quaerenti cur ita futurum esse pronuntiet, quod ita videat actum hunc representari in magna illo specula, intra se posito, in quo omnia praesentia, futura, absoluta vel condi- tionata exhibentur. Quae scientia pure empirica est, nee DEO ipsi satisfaceret, quia rationum cur hoc potius quam illud in specula repraesentetur, non intelligeret. According to the advocates of the scientia media, God could not give a reason for his assertions, nor explain them to me. To someone who asks why he says that things will be thus, he would be able to say just that it is because he sees this event represented thus in that great mirror, posited among them, in which everything present, future, absolute or conditioned is exhibited. Such knowledge is wholly empirical, and it would not satisfy God himself because he would not know the reason for which this rather than that is represented in the mirror.95 A vision in a glass, no matter how accurate and trustworthy, is only another experience which cannot replace rational understanding. In the spirit of this conclusion we have to suppose that God's representations of other possible worlds have the features that they do because God understands how things would be related in those worlds. The same holds for the simpler human mind contemplating the simpler dice-world. The array of thirty-six outcomes has the constituents that it does because we understand just what would be possible and we make the representations accordingly. Possible worlds are dependent upon our understanding, and not the other way around. And if other possible worlds did exist, somehow, and God could examine them, that would not give him reasoned knowledge but only a kind of empirical knowledge that is not available to us. 5 Freedom Leibniz's understanding of freedom is dependent in many ways on his doctrines concerning contingency and possibility. Mechanism perennially challenges the claims of freedom. In the second part of this study, we have seen Leibniz's proposals for the reconciliation of freedom and a ubiquitous mechanical causality covering all motions. The view that all truths are analytic which we have criticized in the third part would also contradict the view that men are free, and the rejection of that interpretation elim- THE ST. JOHNS REVIEW inates a general threat to Leibniz's doctrines. The theme of possible worlds, just considered in the fourth part, can also be interpreted in a way that creates a fundamental obstacle to freedom. The thought that a man could have done something other than what he did do plainly requires that some other action was possible. Insofar as possible worlds are to offer a way of expressing our thoughts about possibility, we can say that, where there is freedom, one action is done in the actual world and other actions in other possible worlds. But can we say that one and the same man exists in more than one possible world? Or is an individual confined to just one world so that other possible worlds could at best contain similar individuals faced with similar choices? If one and the same man cannot exist in more than one world, the prospect for freedom is dark. We shall apparently be forced to construe the idea of the freedom of one individual as equivalent to the idea of the behavior of more than one individual. This is the problem of transworld identity of individuals. It arises in a clear form in Leibniz's exchanges with Arnauld and it is much discussed in recent literature on identity and modal concepts.96 Leibniz sometimes seems to imply that a true individual can exist in one possible world only. The thesis that there can be no transworld identity is defended at present, again by David Lewis, among others. It is closely connected with the ontological interpretation of possible worlds just examined. If possible worlds exist in any sense at all, they seem to be, to that extent, like other places that one might visit, or at least places of which one might obtain news. Under any such conception, each world will have its own population. At best, one possible world may have an individual in it who more or less perfectly resembles, in history and features, an individual in another possible world. Even if such a similarity were perfect, an individual in one possible world cannot be the very individual that is in another world any more than a man born in New York can be the very same individual as an exactly similar man born in New Jersey. We have repudiated the ontological interpretation of possible worlds and we have argued that, in his best thought, Leibniz repudiates it too. If the prohibition on identity across possible worlds comes entirely from the ontological interpretation we can expect that it will be removed when that interpretation is set aside. If alternative possible worlds are only representations of different systems and not existing systems of different entities, then it seems that possible worlds will contain different representations of one and the same individual. Freedom would, then, not be threatened. When he received a sketch of the Discourse of Metaphysics from Leibniz in 1686, Arnauld found that the complete concept of the individual enunciated in Article Thirteen destroys the foundations of freedom and responsibiity.97 The ensuing exchange on this point brought the problem 41 �of transworld identity to the surface. In that correspondence, Leibniz uses the concept of possible worlds in arguments intended to overcome Arnauld's initially negative judgment. God knows all the things that Adam and all his descendants have freely done and all that they ever will do. He also knows all the things they might have done had they chosen to act differently, or were they going to choose differently in the future. This is part of God's knowledge of other possible worlds which he could have created. In other worlds Adam does different things. How does Leibniz think it possible to fit freedom for Adam and his progeny into this picture of God's knowledge and creation? There are two thoughts pertinent to this question and the second of them hinges on transworld identity. In the first place, God can know in advance what a man will freely choose, so free agents do not present an obstacle to God's complete knowledge of the "series of things." It is this thought that is responsible for the rapid shift in point of view in the Discourse from the issue of determinism to the issue of foreknowledge." God contemplates all possible worlds. Some of them have free agents in them and some do not. Worlds with free creatures in them are better than worlds without freedom, so God will surely create one of them. This one is best of all, a judgment that requires knowledge of the actual series of things and of all possible series. But God does not produce the events of the actual world himself. They are produced by the causes that we rightly mention in explaining those events. Actions are really done for the reasons the agent has. Here we find again the point of "On Nature Itself." Explanations have their footing in the world and not merely in its creator. By analogy, the pistons drive the crankshaft of an engine and we cannot skip over or drop explanatory reference to the pistons and explain the motions of the crankshaft by appealing to the intentions or actions of the builder of the engine. So in the inanimate world it is forces that causes motions and not God. When a man acts freely, he, and not God, determines what he will do. This is the platform for Leibniz's defense of freedom and reconciliation of freedom with the complete concept of the individual and with God's knowledge. Though everything that I do belongs to my complete concept, many things belong contingently, and some because of what I freely choose to do. no more impairs my freedom than does another man's knowledge of how I will vote impair my freedom to vote as I see fit. Leibniz's second line of thought about the freedom of the individual in the correspondence with Arnauld is a good deal less secure than the first line of thought. In the passage concerning a possible journey that we have just quoted, Leibniz touches on the question of the identity of individuals across possible worlds. In introducing the possible journey as an illustration, Arnauld had sought to distinguish those facts about an individual without which he could not be the individual that he is from another range of facts which can vary without affecting identity. Arnauld thinks that this distinction must be pressed in opposition to Liebniz's claim that all the facts about an individual are equally contained in the complete concept of that individ· ual which God is able to consult before creation. Thus, Arnauld says, with echos of the Cartesian cogito: I am certain that, since I think, I, myself, exist. For I cannot think that I am not, nor that I am not myself. But I can think that I will make a certain voyage or not, while remaining en- tirely sure that neither the one nor the other will require that I am not myself. 100 If we put this in the terminology of possible worlds, Arnauld is asserting that the very same individual can exist in more than one possible world. In one possible world Arnauld makes a journey and in another world the identical Arnauld does not make the journey. As we have seen, this claim rules out the ontological interpretation of possible worlds. In responding to this contention Leibniz comes very close to denying the possibility that the same man may be a constituent of more than one possible world. In his earlier letters Leibniz had fallen into use of the expression "possible Adams" and in response to the statement of Arnauld that we have just cited, he says that the notion of multiple Adams has to be taken figuratively. When we think about Adam from the point of view of a few salient characteristics: "that he was the first man, put into the garden of enjoyment, and that from his side God took a And there is nothing in me of all that can be conceived sub ratione generalitatis . .. from which it can be deduced that I will make it necessarily _9 9 woman," 101 we speak as though these few characteristics determine the individual so thaf he will remain one and the same substance whether he has or lacks other features. Different completions will be the various possible Adams, yet, we speak as though they will all be the same individual, differently completed. This is what Leibniz says must be understood as a loose and metaphorical way of speaking. Rigorously speaking, a few salient characteris· tics do not determine an individual, God's knowledge of what I will do is not the explanation for my free action. God knows my motives and he knows how I will assess my Circumstances and this is the basis of his knowledge of what I will freely do. God's knowledge ... for there may be an infinity of Adams, that is to say, of possible persons [sharing these salient characteristicsJ who would nonetheless differ among themselves . ... the nature of an individual should be complete a,nd determined. 102 The connection of events, although it is certain, is not necessary, and . .. I am at liberty either to make the journey or not make the journey, for, although it is involved in my concept that I will make it, it is also involved that I will make it freely. 42 AUTUMN/WINTER 1982-83 �If a man were to differ in any way at all from the actual Adam, in his features, in his history·, or in his relations to the rest of the universe, then that man could not be Adam but, at most, another possible man similar to Adam. It seems to me that, if he were to rely on this second line of thought, Leibniz's reconciliation of freedom and the complete concept of an individual would surely fail. It is as though Leibniz is here reducing the idea of two alter· native courses of action available to a free agent to the quite different idea of two very similar possible individuals, one of whom necessarily pursues one course, while the other necessarily pursues the other course. If this re- sult is allowed to stand it must be a severe disappointment to those who hoped to analyze contingency in terms of possible worlds. We start by thinking that I could take the journey, or I could not. It is up to me. Possible world analysis then restates this as the fact that one possible world has me taking the journey and another has me not taking it. But now the ontological interpretation exerts its undesirable influence. It cannot be true of one and the same individual that he takes a trip and does not take that trip. So if these possible worlds are like existing things, even with a shadowy existence, it will turn out that it cannot be me that does not take the trip in another possible world but, instead, a man much like me. This is disappointing because the idea of freedom surely requires that one and the same individual may either perform or not perform a certain act. Freedom is rejected if we substitute a conception of two different individuals one of whom performs the act while the other does not. What another does can never be part of the essence of my freedom. Leibniz does not seem to appreciate fully the dangers implicit in the denial of transworld identity. Yet even in these passages he does not foreclose an understanding that will save both the complete concept notion and freedom. Thus, in the same context, Leibniz considers the life of an individual up to a certain point in time, and the life of the same individual after that point. The crucial time is labelled B. B is the time at which the individual does in fact perform some free action such as setting out on a journey103 The line ABC then represents the life history of the individual and the issue of identity and possibility focusses on the conditions for saying that the individual in the interval AB is the same as the individual in the interval BC. Since there is a reason for everything, and no free action is a manifestation of arbitrariness or indifference, there was a reason prior to B which explains why the journey is taken at B. Since the event at B is a free action, the existence of a reason means that there is something about the agent's constitution, thought, perceptions, and assessment of his circumstances prior to B which would make it possible to predict with complete certainty that he would make the journey. It is in this sense that everything that he does is contained in the complete concept of the individual. But as we have stressed in Part Ill, the coercive reason for a free decision does not necessitate behavior. TilE ST. JOHNS REVIEW The very idea of a course of action entails that other courses were possible. The individual whose choice could be predicted by a sufficiently well-informed observer is, nonetheless, really choosing. This too must be counted part of the complete concept of the individual. The complete concept gives the impression of conflict with the concept of free deci>ion. But Leibniz means to include the fact that he makes free decisions in the complete concept of an individual. That he will make the free decision to take a journey is as much part of the concept of a man as is the fact that he will take the journey. We feel a conflict here that is reinforced by Leibniz' s assertion that an individual who does not make the trip cannot be the same individual. By the same token an individual who decides not to make the trip cannot be the same individual. Then how can the decision be free? If we set aside the ontological interpretation of possible worlds, there is a way of putting together all of these ideas that reconciles them all. This requires as the focal element the thought that a man deciding what to do is, in the jargon of possible worlds, deciding which of two possible worlds to bring about. Strictly speaking, there are an infinite number of possible worlds in which I make the journey and an infinite nu.mber of worlds in which I do not. The set of all possible worlds is the union of these two sets. In a free action, I determine that the actual world will fall into one or the other of these two exhaustive sets of possibilities. In this respect Leibniz' s conception of human freedom is modelled in the creativity of God. God's work consists in determining which possible world will be real. He chooses a world which contains free agents. But that means that he does not fully determine which world will be real, for that is partly a consequence of all of the free decisions of all free agents. Every free act makes a difference as to what possible world is actual. We have seen that God knows just which world will be real, but that knowledge depends upon knowing how men will freely choose. This means no less than the thought that God's knowledge of the complete actual world depends upon his knowledge of our world-choosing actions as well as his own. At the point of choice an individual can really do either of two things. If he does one, he makes himself and the world different from what it would have been had he done the other. In this sense, insofar as he is free, it is up to a man to determine which possible individual he is. The result of this decision, like all other features of an individual, contingent as well as necessary features, belongs to the complete concept of that individual. So we can say that, though a man has a real choice, he will not be the same individual he would have been had he chosen differently. This does not at all require that there is, in some kind of existence or subsistence, another individual who does choose differently. The existence of such another would not help us to understand freedom. I determine what individual I will become not in the sense that there is a collection of individuals and I can become identical to just one 43 �of them. Rather, I can represent my future in different ways and my action will determine which of these repre· sentations is a representation of the real world. Insofar as he means that, when a man acts freely, he forecloses pas· sibilities that would have made him a different man had they been realized, Leibniz is certainly right. . This ultimate reconciliation depends upon accepting the thought that Leibniz understands every free action as eliminating worlds from the roster of all possibilities. This interpretation would have men sharing in just the kind of creativity that Leibniz assigns to God. Men's power and knowledge remain insignificant in comparison with divine power and knowledge, but the essence of human action is otherwise quite a lot like divine action. In many passages in his writings this seems to be just the conception of human action that Leibniz does adopt. Thus: [The rational spirit] is an image of divinity. The spirit not only has a perception of the works of God but is even capable of producing something which resembles them ... our soul is ar· chitectonic in its voluntary actions .... In its realm and in the small world in which it is allowed to act, the soul imitates what God performs in the great world. 104 The following abbreviations are used in these notes: G: I-VII: Gerhardt, C. J., Die Philosophische Schriften von G. W. Leibniz, seven volumes, Berlin, 1885. Grua I-II: Grua, Gaston, G. W. Leibniz: Textes Inedits, two volumes, Paris, 1948. OF: Couturat, Louis, G. W. Leibniz: Opuscules et Fragments Inedits, Paris, 1903. L: Loemker, Leroy, Leibniz: Philosophical Papers and Letters, Second edition, Dordrecht, 1969. M: Mason, H. T., The Leibniz-Arnauld Correspondence, Manchester, 1967. F: Frankfurt, H. G., Editor, Leibniz: Critical Essays, Garden City, 1972. I have translated the Latin citations from Couturat and Grua, of which there are no English translations, and the French from Theodicee, G VI. Other quotations in English translation only are from the works cited in the relevant notes. L See "A Brief Demonstration of a Notable Error of Descartes," L: 297-302; also "Critical Thoughts on the General Part of the Principles of Descartes," especially Leibniz's comments on Part 11, art. 4 and 36, L: 392, and 393-5. Leibniz restates, summarizes, and refers to this issue in many of his articles and letters. 2. See Mach, E., The Science of Mechanics, McCormack, T. J., tr., La Salle, 1960, 360-5, and Papineau, D., "The Vis Viva Controversy," Studies in the History and Philosophy of Science, val. 8, 1977, 111-42. 3. The Passions of the Soul, Haldane and Ross, editors, Descartes: Philosophical Works, Cambridge, 1931, art. xxxv-vi, val. I, 347-8. 4. See "On Nature Itself," L, 503. 5. Principles of Philosophy, art. 1xiv, in Haldane and Ross, val. I, 269. 6. The distinction between primary qualities (as those susceptible of mathematical characterization and thus objective) and secondary qualities (taken to include all sensuous qualities and to be subjective only) was first drawn by Galileo. The terminology, "primary" and "secondary," was first used by Robert Boyle. The distinction plays a fundamental part in the philosophies of Descartes and Locke and has been retained by many thinkers up to the preSent. See, for example, Jackson, F., Perception, London, 1977,ch. 7. 44 7. See Meditations, "Replies to Objections," Haldane and Ross, val. II, 253-4; and Meditations, VI, val. I, 191. 8. Principles of Philosophy, Part II, art. xxxvi. 9. E. g., Letter to Mersenne, Adam and Tannery, Oeuvres de Descartes, Paris, val. III, 648-9. 10. Principles of Philosophy, Part II, Art. xliv-lii, Adam and Tannery, vol. VIII-I, 68-70. 11. "Critical Thoughts," L:398-402; and the note to Leibniz's comment on Part II, Art. 53, G: IV, 382-4. 12. "On Nature," L: 505. 13. "On Nature," L: 505; and Letter to DeVolder, L: 516; see also, Naert, E., Memoire et conscience de soi selon Leibniz, Paris, 1961, 15-20. 14. Cassirer, E., Leibniz's System in Seinen Wissenschaftlichen Grundlagen, Mar burg, 1902, Einleitung, art. 7, 90-102. 15. Discourse on Method, Anscombe and Geach, editors, Descartes' Philosophical Writings, London, 1954, 47. 16. Principles of Philosophy, Part IV, art. cciv, Haldane and Ross, vol. I, 300. 17. "But they who observe how many things regarding the magnet, fire, and the fabric of the whole world, are here deduced from a very small number of principles, although they consider that I had taken up these principles at random and without good· grounds, they will yet acknowledge that it could hardly happen that so much could be coherent if they were false," Principles of Philosophy, 301. Here Descartes approximates the so-called hypothetico-deductive conception of theory formation and confirmation. The degree to which this kind of thinking appears in Descartes' ideas about scientific knowledge has been generally overlooked. 18. Discourse on Metaphysics, art. 10, L: 308-9. 19. Discourse, art, 22, L: 317-8. 20. Meditations, reply to objections, Haldane and Ross, 219. 21. "On Nature," L: 505. 22. "On Nature," 501. 23. L: 498-508. 24. "On Nature," 500. 25. "On Nature," 501. 26. Boyle, R., "Free Inquiry etc.," 1692; See Loemker's account, L: 498. 27. "On Nature," L: 502. 28. "On Nature," 504-5. 29. See my "The Scientific Background of Descartes' Dualism," this journal, Winter 1981. 30. "On Nature," L: 502. 31. "On Nature," 503. The writer is Spinoza. 32. " ... [I]f this world were only possible, the individual concept of a body in this world, containing certain movements as possibilities, would also contain our laws of motion (which are free decrees of God) but also as mere possibilities," from Leibniz's remarks on a letter of Arnauld, M:43. 33. Discourse on Metaphysics, art 10, L: 308-9. 34. See Hobbes' Leviathan, Part I, ch. l-3, and De corpore, Part IV, ch. 25. For contemporary materialist conceptions of the mind see Rosenthal, D., editor, Materialism and the Mind-Body Problem, En· glewood Cliffs, 1971. 35. See O'Shaugnessy, "Observation and the Will," J. Phil., vol. LX, 1963. 36. See my "Teleological Reasoning," J. Phil., LXXV, 1978. 37. For example, Grua, 270-l. The distinction is also discussed in several letters of the Correspondence with Arnauld. 38. Nouveaux Essais, G: V, 429. 39. M: 43. See note (32), above. 40. See Clarke's fifth letter, addressed to art. 1-20 of Leibniz's previous letter, Alexander, H. G., editor, The Liebniz-Clarke Correspondence, Manchester, 1956, especially 98. 41. Leibniz's second letter to Clarke, art 1, Leibniz-Clarke Correspondence, 16. 42. Discourse on Metaphysics, art. 5, L: 305. 43. Montgomery, G., Leibniz: Basic Writings, LaSalle, 1902, 127. 44. See Russel4 B., The Philosophy of Leibniz, London, 1902, ch. II~ 25-30. AU1UMN/WINTER 1982-83 �45. Louis Couturat played an especially important role in promoting this interpretation. See La Logique de Leibniz, Paris, 1901, ch. VI, sect. 5-18, 184-213. Summing up his detailed inVestigation, Couturat says, "En resume, toutes verite est formellement ou virtuellement identique ou comme dira Kant, analytique, et par consequent doit pouvoir se demontrer a priori au moyen des definitions et du principe d'identite," 210. Couturat's book influenced Russell to change his interpretation from his 1902 exposition, according to which Leibniz makes existential propositions contingent, to the 1903 view that Leibniz did not really believe in contingency at all since he held that all truths are analytic. The prestige of Russell and Couturat has been an enduring support for this interpretation. Among more recent writers, the analyticity of all truth is ascribed to Leibniz by Fried, D., "Necessity and Contingency in Leibniz," Phil. R., val. 87, 1978, 576; Wilson, M., "On Leibniz's Explication of Necessary Truth," in F: 402; Lovejoy, A, "Plenitude and Sufficient Reason," The Great Chain of Being, Cambridge, Mass., 1936, as reprinted in F; 295, 316, and 321; Hacking, I, "Individual Substance," F: 138; Rescher, N., Leibniz: An Introduction to his Philosophy, Totowa, N. ]., 1979, 23; and Nason, J. W., "Leibniz and the Logical Argument for Individual Substances," Mind, vol. LI, 1942, 201-2. Prominent dissidents are Broad, C. D., Leibniz, Cambridge, 1975, who recognizes the compatibility of the containment thesis and the complete concept with contingency; and I Ishiguro, H., Leibniz's Philosophy of Logic and Language, Ithaca, N.Y., 1972, 15 and 120. 46. Quine, W. V., "Two Dogmas of Empiricism," in From a Logical Point of View, Cambridge, Mass., 1953, 20---46. 47. The limitation of this example to the subject-predicate propositional structure has no theoretical implications. Equally compelling illustrations could be constructed to fit any propositional form. 48. Grua, 387. 49. OF: 16-7 and 405; Grua, 273. 50. Grua, 288. 51. See Strawson, P., and Grice, H., "In Defense of a Dogma," Phil. R. 52. "Recent Work in the Philosophy of Leibniz," Mind, 1902, as reprinted in F: 365. 53. "Recent Work." 54. OF: 16. 55. Grua, 303; OF: 405. 56. Discourse on Metaphysics, art. 13, L: 310. 57. OF: 18. 58. OF: 405. 59. "First Truths," L: 267. 60. Letter to Arnauld, M: 63. 61. "Reflections sur Bellarmin," Grua, 301. 62. See especially, Rescher, N., The Philosophy of Leibniz, Englewood, 1967, ch. II and III; and the same author's Leibniz: An Introduction, Totowa, N.j., 1979, ch. III and IV. 63. Parkinson, G. H. R., Leibniz: Logical Papers, Oxford, 1966, 77-8; OF: 388 and 18. 64. OF: 405. 65. Grua, 304; see also, OF: 388, ffl34. 66. OF: 18. 67. OF: 408. 68. Letter to Arnauld, M: 58. 69. Nouveaux Essais, G: V, 428. 70. See, for example, the Correspondence with Des Bosses, L: 596-616. Here Leibniz shows great flexibility, or ambiguity, on the connection between monads and the status of animals as unified beings. The muchdiscussed vinculum substantiale marks his insecurity concerning the adequacy of the theory that all true substances are monads. THE ST. JOHNS REVIEW 71. M: 42. 72. M: 9. 73. Nouveaux Essais, G: V, 428. 74. Discourse on Metaphysics, art. 9, L: 308. 75. Discourse, art. 9, L: 308. 76. This claim appears throughout Leibniz's writings. It makes up one of his arguments against atomism; it is a foundation for his relational theory of space and time; and it is a prominent dictum of the Discourse on Metaphysics and of the Monadology. 77. Grua, 263. 78. Leibniz thinks that Spinoza and Hobbes held this erroneous view and that Descartes risks falling into it. See L; 273 and Theodicee, G: VI, 139. 79. Theodicee, G: VI, 145. 80. Grua, 270; and Theodicee, G: VI, 122. 81. This revival has been stimulated in major part by the work of Saul Kripke who made use of the concept of possible worlds in constructing a semantics for modal logic. For the revival of the paradoxes see the discussion of David Lewis's theory of possible worlds below. 82. Rescher, N., Leibniz: An Introduction, Totowa, N. ]., 1979, 72. 83. Go VI, 363. 84. Compare, "I argued against those misuses of the. concept that regard possible worlds as something like distant planets, like our own surroundings but somehow existing in a different dimension, or that lead to spurious problems of 'transworld identification' "; Kripke, S., Naming and Necessity, Cambridge, Mass., 1980, 15. 85. For Lovejoy's view see F: 327; for Russell's, F: 378. 86. Grua, 286; and Theodicee, G VI: 236. 87. This deflationary, non-ontological conception of possible worlds also seems to rule out the solution of the problem of evil that is imputed to Leibniz by Rescher and others. Nothing evil exists prior to the creation of the world. God's understanding that something evil might exist cannot be made to yield the idea that something evil does exist whether He does any creating or not. 88. Parkinson, G. H. R., Leibniz: Logical Papers, Oxford, 1966, 1-12; and Couturat, L., La Logique de Leibniz, Paris, 1901, ch. II, "La Combinatoire." 89. It is a defect of the simple dice-world as a model for Leibniz's thinking that the best world can be achieved in either of two ways: (5, 6) or (6, 5). Strictly speaking Leibniz is absolutely committed to the view that there must be just one uniquely best possible world if God is to create anything. 90. Lewis, D., Counterfactuals, Cambridge, Mass., 1973, 84-91; and "Counterpart Theory and Quantified Modal Logic," J. Phil., vol. LXV, 1968, 113-26. 91. Counterfactuals, 85-6. 92. Grua, 270. 93. G: VI, 363. 94. OF: 26. 95. OF: 26. 96. See the works of Kripke and Lewis cited above and Chisholm, R., "Identity through Possible Worlds: Some Questions," and other essays in Loux, M., The Actual and the Possible, Ithaca, 1979. 97. Letter of Arnauld to Leibniz, M: 9. 98. Articles 13-17, L: 310-5. 99. M: 58. 100. G. II: 101. M: 45: 102. M: 45, and see also 60-1. 103. M: 46. 104. Principles of Nature and Grace, art. 14, L: 640. 45 �Letter from a Polish Prison Adam Michnik Bialoleka Prison Aprill982 Dear Friend, General )aruzelski has announced that political prisoners who promise to give up all "illegal" activity will be freed. Liberty is within reach. All you have to do is pick up a pen and sign a loyalty oath ... You don't have to do much to get rid of the barbed wires and bars between you and "freedom." The steel doors of Bialoleka Prison will open. No more prison walks: you will see the city streets. You will see streets endlessly patrolled by armored cars and sentries. You will see pedestrians and automobiles stopped for identity checks,. You will see the informer surveying the crowd for people suspected of having broken "emergency security restrictions." You will hear words you know only from having read them in history books: police round-ups, volksliste, words suddenly stripped of the patina of time and revived in all their horror by the present moment. You will hear the latest news: summary sentences, the fate of friends arrested, hunted, hidden. On Loyalty Oaths But if you make a simple little calculation, the simplest possible-supposing you are able-you will know at once why signing a loyalty oath is of no interest to you: quite simply, because it is not worth the trouble. Here, in prison, no one is going to arrest you ''until the situation is clarified." Here, you don't have anything to be afraid of. One of the most courageous and dear-headed of the young Polish political thinkers and leaders, Ada'm Michnik wrote an important essay on tolerance that has been translated into French, L'€glise et la gauche (Paris, Seuil 1979). This article first appeared in Commentaire, Summer 1982. 46 It's paradoxical, I know. Here, w,hen there's a knock on the door at daybreak, it's not strangers in uniform. It's your flunky bringing you coffee: under his sharp eye you know you are safe from spies. Bialoleka Prison is a moral luxury and an oasis of freedom. It is also testimony to your resistance and your importance. !f the government has put you in prison it shows that they have been forced to take you seriously. Sometimes they try to frighten you. A friend of mine, a factory worker from Warsaw, was threatened with fifteen years in prison; another prisoner they tried to intimidate by threatening to implicate him in a case of espionage. One man has had to put up with being interrogated in Russian, another was dragged from his cell to be trans· ferred to the farthest reaches of Russia. He came to a little while later at the dentist. But these blows are bearable. I think it is easier to resist here than out there on the other side of the barbed wire, where the situation is more com· plicated, morally as well as politically. ("It may be easier to be in prison than to be free," a friend writes to me. "The waters have all burst and in their whirlpools the slime has risen to the surface.") The Primate of Poland has called it an outrage that loy· alty oaths are exacted under duress. The Pope has called this violation of conscience criminal. It is hard to think otherwise. We condemn with all our heart those who are guilty of extorting these loyalty oaths and brutally destroying another man's dignity. A young woman, the wife of a Solidarity activist, was arrested and her sick child taken away from her. They told her the child would be put in an orphanage. She signed. One of my \riends was arrested, and had to leave his mother who was riddled with cancer. "There won't be a lame dog who will dare give her some· AUTUMN/WINTER 1982-83 �thing to drink," they said to him. He signed. Useless to give more examples: the brutality df some, the weakness of others, sordid blackmailings, tragic slander, we know all that well, and we also know well that subjected to such pressures people don't all act the same way. The Primate has left it open to each one to make his own choice. Teachers particularly have to choose between two equally important imperatives: to retain their self-respect and to maintain their contact with the young. The decision rests upon the· individual; it makes appeal to his intelligence and to his conscience. No one can judge anyone else. To resort to ostracism would only correspond to the desires of the government: isn't it their idea to set us against one an· other and thereby break down our resistance and our solidarity? But such a tolerant attitude, born of understanding, ought not to lead us to conclude that to sign a loyalty oath is a morally neutral act. No. To sign a loyalty oath is wrong, whatever the circumstances are; it is only that circumstances can make it more or less wrong. A man who signs a loyalty oath always deserves pity, sometimes understanding; praise, never. There are many reasons for this, first among them the imperative of self-respect. On Self-Respect To be powerless before armed violence is to be deeply humiliated. Set upon by six thugs, you are powerless. But just because of this powerlessness, if you have the least shred of self-respect, you will not find this the moment to sign agreements and make promises. They force the door, they bash the furniture, they take you to headquarters with handcuffs on your wrists, they knock you down, they squirt teargas in your eyes, and then they request you to sign an oath. Your basic instinct for self-preservation and simple human dignity force you to say "No." For even if these people were fighting fbr an altogether honorable cause, they would defile it by such behavior. At that moment your mind is no longer clear. It's only after traveling several hours, when you find yourself at Bialoleka Prison, shaking with cold (later they'll talk about "humane conditions"), and you can listen to the radio, that you learn that war has been declared against your people. This war has been declared against them by the very men to whom they gave their mandate to govern, to formulate policy, and sign international treaties. These men offer us a helping hand in public and talk about rec· onciliation at the same time that they order the secret police to arrest us in the middle of the night ... It is immediately clear to you that you are not going to give these people the gift of your loyalty oath; loyalty is something they are not capable of. You don't as yet know what this war will bring. You don't know as yet how the factories and steelworks will be stormed, or the shipyards or the mines. You know nothing as yet about "Black Wednesday" in the Wujek mine. But you do know that if you sign a loyalty oath you will be TilE ST. JOHNS REVIEW haunted by the sense that you have denied yourself and the meaning of your life, by the sense that you have be· trayed people who placed their trust in you. It would mean betraying friends who are in prison and friends in hiding, betraying those who are trying to defend you by printing pamphlets in Gdansk'Or in Krakow, by organizing meetings in Paris or New York. You see before your eyes the face of Zbigniew, in hiding, of Edward, convicted, of Seweryn, waiting in Paris. Nothing is decided, many paths are open, choices are not yet sealed, but you already know, you feel it, that your self-respect is not the currency with which to buy your liberty. At this point, another argument not to sign a loyalty oath emerges: good sense. It is irrational to sign a contract with people for whom even the term Hcontract" has no fixed meaning, who blandly renege on their commitments and for whom lying is an everyday matter. Have you ever met a security agent who hasn't lied to you? These people, whose eyes are blank but never at rest, whose minds are dull but keen at the art of torture, debased and greedy for advancement, see you only as an object to be worked over. These people have a particular view of human nature. For them every man can be "convinced": by that they mean corrupted or terrified. The only question is the price to be paid or the blows to be delivered. They go methodically about their business-but your least slip, your least weakness, gives meaning to their lives. To them your capitulation means more than simple professional success: it proves their raison d'etre. The Meaning of the Confrontation You are engaged in a philosophic confrontation with them. At stake in this confrontation is the meaning of your life and of every human being's life-and the loss of meaning in theirs. It is the confrontation of Giordano Bruno with the inquisitor, of the Decembrist with the police, of Lukasinski with the Tsar's destroying angel, of Ossetsky with the blond fellow in the Gestapo uniform, of Mandelstam with the Bolshevik in the uniform of the NKVD. It is a confrontation which has never ended and whose stake, as Elzenberg said, isn't measured by your chance of emerging victorious, but by the intrinsic worth of the idea. In other words, it is not in overcoming the forces against you that you carry off the victory, but by remaining true to yourself. Reason also tells you that in signing a loyalty oath you give the officials the weapon they'll make use of to make you sign the next declaration: that of collaboration. In signing .the loyalty oath, know that you sign a pact with the devil. Be wary of giving these uniformed inquisitors so much as your little finger: they'll soon grab your whole hand. How many men do you know who have destroyed their lives in a moment of weakness? Today they are pursued by phone calls at home and at work, subjected to blackmail every time they go abroad. They pay for a min· 47 �ute of thoughtlessness with years of.humiliation and fear. , If you don't want to be afraid, if you want to respect yourself, an inner voice tells you, don't .make compromises with the government police. The police official inspires in you less hatred than pity. You know he suffers psychologi· cal complaints, he is often ashamed in front of his children; you know he will disappear, buried in collective forgetful· ness. (Who remembers the informers and executioners of the past?) And this brings us to the third reason for not signing: memory. Memory You think about your country's history; to sign a loyalty oath in prison has always been a disgrace; to remain faithful to yourself and your country has always been a virtue. You think of people who have been tortured and who spent many years in prison but who never signed. And you know that you will not sign either because you will not renounce their memory. Especially will you not sign when you remember what happened to those who did give up in prison. You remember Andrzej M., the distinguished literary critic, your friend, who, in prison, wrote a clever pamphlet cooperating with the authorities, evidence of his spiritual death; Henryk Sz., an intelligent and ambitious young man, who rose to the rank of chief Informer on his comrades; you remember Zygmunt D., that charming and witty companion who, once he gave in, con~ tinued to inform on his friends for years afterwards. You remember with horror this human flotsam, these creatures destroyed by the police; and you wonder what will become of you. Of course, the choice is yours alone, but memory reminds you that you, too, could find yourself in their ranks: no one is born a spy. You and you alone daily forge your lot, sometimes at the risk of your life. You haven't heard as yet the loyalty oaths on the radio, the disgusting interviews, you don't know that Marian K., that intelligent and courageous activist from Nowa Huta, who in his loyalty oath wanted to render unto God that which belongs to God and to Caesar what is Caesar's, ended by rendering everything to the police for want of understanding that in certain situations ambiguity loses its shades of meaning and the half truth becomes a total lie. You haven't heard the interview with Stanislas Z. a workeractivist also from Nowa Huta, cunning, resourceful, whose voice was never clear until it joined the government propagandists; you haven't yet read the statement of Marek B., spokesman for the National Committee, protege of Leszek, the doctor of Gdansk, who dragged the name of Solidarity in the mud; neither have you read the statement of Zygmunt L., from Szczecin, Marian j.'s adviser; it was he who, at that time, whispered him absurdities about the "jews in government," and "gallows for profiteers"; today he denounces the "extremists." In short, you don't yet know that this time, as always, there will be people who will allow themselves to be manipula- 48 ted into telling lies Oike Zdzislaw R. from Poznan with whom you spoke at the time of the dedication of the monument), influenced by threats. This time, as always, the rats will leave the sinking ship first. But you know that this situation is not new and that you are not going to agree to talk to the official no matter how much he waves your release papers before your eyes. You are not going to explain to him that he is the slave here, and that no order is going to come to free you. You are not going to explain to him that these activist workers, these teachers, writers, students, and artists, these friends and strangers who crowd the smokey corridors of police headquarters, embody the freedom of the country-and that just for that reason war has been declared upon them. You are not going to explain to this official, after he has slugged you with the force of the sadism pent up these last fifteen months, the meaning of Rosanov' s essay i.n which he asks the fundamental question for European culture that arises when the man who holds the whip is face to face with the man who is whipped. You are not going to explain to him that meeting him in this place is nothing but a new version of that old confrontation. No, you will explain nothing; you won't even speak to him. You will give him an ironic smile, you will refuse to sign whatever there is to sign (including the internment order), you will say how sorry you are and ... you will leave the room. On Jailers as Slaves You will be transfered to the Bialoleka Prison in the company of men who are a credit to the best of Polish society; a famous philosopher, a brilliant historian, a stage director, a professor of economics, members of Solidarity from Ursus and from the University, students and workers. You won't be beaten in prison. On the contrary. They need you as a proof of their liberalism and their humanism. Won't you be shown to the Red Cross delegation? to the deputies of the Diet? even to the Primate of Poland himself? They will be fairly polite, fairly obliging, fairly pleasant. Only occasionally will they make you run the gauntlet of helmets, truncheons, and imported japanese shields. But the only effect of this masquerade will be to make it even more evident that the regime is like a bad dog who would very much like to bite but cannot because his rotten teeth make him powerless. The day of Pawka Kortchaguine is past. Today it is enough to raise your voice to kindle a gleam of fear in the eyes of the official. Fear and uncertainty are betrayed despite the helmet, the uniform, and the shield. And you will understand at once that this fear on the part of the official is a source of hope for you. Hope is essential. It is perhaps the most important thing there is ... Hope is precisely what's at stake in the present struggle. The officials want to force us to to renounce our hope. They understand that the man who declares his loyalty to a regime of violence and lies abandons all hope of seeing AUTUMN/WINTER 1982-83 �Poland free from lies and violence. The loyalty oath aims to transform us into servile beasts who will no longer raise our heads to defend liberty and dignity. In refusing all en· ticement to talk with the official, in refusing him your CO· operation, in rejecting the role of informer and spy, in choosing the human condition of political prisoner, you preserve your hope. A hope not only in yourself and for yourself, but one which is also in others, for others. Your declaration of hope is like a bottle you cast from your prison to be carried by the sea across the world to go among men. If you succeed in reaching even one single person, you have won. I know what you will say: he is spouting commonplaces, he is playing the hero, his head is in the clouds. That's not exactly true. True, I do assert commonplaces. Ordinary truths, how· ever, have to be repeated frequently in order to endure, particularly today when it takes courage to assert ordinary truths. In contrast, relativism, otherwise so useful in intel· lectual activity, may confound moral criteria and call into question moral principles. . . Is this attitude synonymous with the cult of heroism? I don't think so. You know you are not a hero and you never wanted to be one. You didn't want to die for your people, nor for freedom, or for any· thing else ... You did not envy Ordon or Winkelride their fate ... You wanted to live a normal life, to be able to con· tinue to respect yourself and your friends. You loved the moral ease that allowed you to feel free inside yourself, to love beautiful women, to enjoy good drink. This war caught you with a beautiful woman, not on the point of attacking the offices of the Central Committee. But since this war has been declared on you, along with more than thirty thousand of your fellow citizens, normal life is out of the question. A normal life, in which self· respect is joined to material security, cannot be found in the midst of police raids, summary sentences, outrageous radio broadcasts, and underground Solidarity publications. You must choose between moral and material luxury. You know that your "ordinary" life today would have the bitter taste of defeat. It is precisely because you want to enjoy life that you won't give in to the seductive propositions of the government bureaucrat. He promises you freedom, he gives you glimpses of ordinary human happiness, but he brings you only slavery, suffering, and damnation. No, this is not heroism. It is a rational choice. Brecht said; "Woe to the people who need heroes." He was right. Heroism implies an exceptional situation, while the Poles mili~ tary and police power. I do not want to be misunderstood. I do not propose ro· mantic intransigeance, but social resistance. It is not, therefore, appropriate to bring up in this context, as Daniel P. did in his article in Polityka, the two opposed TilE ST. JOHNS REVIEW Romantic Revolt and Organic Struggle While he acknowledges the validity of both these posi· tions, the writer defends those who espouse "organic struggle" on the staff of Polityka, the journalists who con· tinued to ply their trade. At the risk of finding themselves questioned by their own children, "What did you do when guns took the place of reason?", they decided to assume the responsibility of staying at their posts instead of quietly withdrawing. "There's no point in pursuing lost virtue," The Value of Morality today need a "normal" and "general" resistance to positions which have become classic in our history: the one of romantic revolution and the other of "organic, struggle. Let us see why. writes Daniel P. "There's no point in mouthing grand principles and forgetting the practical. There are no spurs on bedroom slippers." (This apropos of the rebellious journalists of Polityka.) It is his view that "it is not in the interest of society that the press disappear in Poland or that it should see 'its di· versity even more restricted. We must work to send the soldiers back to their barracks. Who will do it if we take on easy jobs as spokesmen for exile organizations abroad, as editors for nonpolitical newspapers?" Daniel P. uses here arguments you know well beginning with the controversy about the Essay on Grubs by Piotr Wierzbicki. He doesn't beat around the bush, he doesn't ramble, he uses serious arguments and states clearly the dilemmas that weigh upon every Pole today. To argue these points one must apply two standards, one for particular issues and another one for general ques· tions. It may be true, as Daniel P. says, that the people who believe in defiance are as essential as the people who be· lieve in organic struggle, but I should like to add, however, that it is important to be "organic" in form and "defiant" in content. We need men who don't befoul themselves in the lies of public life, who enjoy the good opinion of soci· ety, who refuse to compromise with the sort of system imposed on our country, but who do not endorse irrespon· sible actions such as terrorism or guerilla attacks. In other words, the dilemma isn't expressed simply in the terms "organic struggle" versus "defiance" but in the terms ganic struggle" versus ''collaboration." "or~ Compromise is an indispensable element of a healthy public life, on the condition, however, that society per· ceives it as compromise. As soon as public opinion perceives it as a device or a betrayal, compromise loses its validity. It becomes a mistake or a lie. To come out on the side of WRONA* today amounts, as we both know well, to coming out against the country. The loyalty oath the officials demand of you, like the one, couched in slightly different terms, demanded of the journalists of Polityka, *WRON: The Military Council for National Defense; wrona means "crow." 49 �has nothing to do with compromise: it is a certificate of collaboration and so conceived. In signing it, those who wanted to save the "renewal" (I don't like this official ex· pression, I prefer "democratic form") put the seal on their final condemnation. [An illegible phrase.] Daniel P. pre· tends to believe that Polityka can once more become an oasis of half-truths and of halfway honesty. I cannot agree with him; the day is gone for this way of thinking. It was gone well before December 13, 1981, even before the first of September 1980. Which brings us back almost to the middle of the time of Gierek when Polityka gave up its role as liberal and moderate critic of the government to become its glib apologist. Beginning in June 1976, with the uprisings of U rsus and Radom, Polityka lost its credibility. It wasn't even interesting any more; it was an anachronism. The political rise of the editor-in-chief coincided with the political death of the newspaper. Today Polityka exists only as a caricature of its former self. Its history is the history of many Polish intellectuals who cherished the illusion that the system could be reformed from above, by finding one's way into the corridors of power, by knocking at the door of the Central Committee, by joining forces with the minister in power. This idea has had its day. Nothing can bring it back. The battlefield of social conflict, and therefore of the social compromise to come, is today the factory and the university, no longer the halls of the Central Committee or of the Diet. Despite the past complexity and the distortion of the relations between Communist power and Polish society, the Party only lost its mandate with its declaration of this last "war." It's easy to replace the policeman's helmet with the traditional chapka of the Polish army. But that alone won't change anything. Resistance to the Government If we, as an organized society, want to exert the least influence upon the future of Poland, we have to forge that influence by a constant pressure on the machinery of power. To count upon the good will of the military leadership is to rely on miracles. To count on their weakness, on the other hand, has nothing irrational about it. It is not irrational to think that the machinery of power could be obliged to compromise. The obvious ideological and practical vacuum of the Party are proof. The government 50 defends its power and its privilege, not ideas or values. The fact that it has had to resort to the definitive argument of force proves it. To paraphrase Hegel: "Minerva's crow flies at night." There you are, overwhelmed by the piercing sense of your loneliness and weakness in the face of a military machine which went into motion that December night. You don't know what developed after that. You don't know that people will gradually recover from the shock, that underground newspapers are going to appear, that Zbignew B. is going to direct the struggle from his hiding place, that Wladyslaw E. from Wroclaw is going to escape from the police, that events at Gdansk, Swidnik, and Poznan are going to make Poland tremble again, and that the structure of the outlawed union will reappear. You don't yet know that the generals direct a machine that jams and sputters, and that the wave of repression and slander has no effect. Alone, facing police officers who wave their guns at you, handcuffed, with teargas in your eyes, you can see clearly despite the starless night, and you repeat the words of your favorite poet: "A stone can change the course of the avalanche in its path." And you want to be that stone that changes the course of events, even if it is to be flung at the ramparts. Translated from a French translation of the Polish by Linda Collins Afternote: The military regime in Poland has recently accused Michnik along with other leaders of KOR (the Committee for Social Self-Defense)-Jacek Kuron, Jan Litynski, Jan Jozef Lipski, Henryk Wujec-of treason and conspiracy, which carry the maximum penalty of death. The official press treat them as guilty before "trial." In the judgement of the Hungarian writer, George Konrad, in a letter of November 1 (see The New York Review of Books, December l, 1982), they may be shot before the West, or anybody else outside of Poland, notices their danger. L.R. AUTUMN/WJNTER 1982-83 �Not Just Another Communist Party: The Polish Communist Party Branko Lazitch Communists parties the world over are much the same in their doctrine: Marxism-Leninism; in their structure: democratic centralism; in their history with its identical periods: Lenin, Bolshevization, Stalinization, destalinization~ etc. As anyone can see at the present time, however, the Polish Communist Party is a special case-a party unlike the other "brother parties." No other Communist party in the world has entrusted its fate to the army; taken a career officer for its First Secretary; declared a state of war against its own citizens. This is not the first time the Party has been at war with the people of Poland. They have been at war for more than sixty years. Summer 1920 The story starts in the summer of 1920: the Soviet Polish War, the first revolutionary war of the Bolsheviks after their victory in Russia. A war in Lenin's conception on two essential fronts. First: the collapse of the home front through revolutionary propaganda (Agit-Prop). The call to the people, and especially the soldiers, to rise up. A pamphlet in circulation in June 1920 reads: Soldiers of the Polish Army! Work for the Victory of the Revolution in Poland. No longer obey your leaders, who are betraying you. Instead of fighting against your brothers, the workers and the peasants of Russia and the Ukraine, turn your arms on your officers, on the bourgeois and the landlords. Whoever fights against Soviet Russia fights against the working class in the whole world and joins the enemies of the people. Second front of the revolutionary war: under the protection of the tanks and cannons of the Red Army, the organization of a provisional "national" power meant to bring Socialist Poland into immediate existence. In Bialystok a revolutionBranko Lazitch writes for L'express. His most recent books are Le Rapport Kroutchev et son histoire (Paris, Seuil1976) and L'€chec permanent, l' alliance communiste-socialiste (Paris, Laffont 1978). This article first appeared in Commentaire, Spring 1982. THE ST. JOHNS REVIEW ary committee (a provisional government) was organized under the presidency of the most well-known Polish revolutionary, Julian Marchlevski (Karski), with several other Polish Communists who already held high positions in Soviet Russia and in the Communist International. From the start Lenin counted on the success of this revolutionary war. At his reception of the French Delegation to the Second Congress of the Co min tern on July 28 in the Kremlin, Lenin overflowed in optimism: "The world revolution will have taken a decisive step if Poland gives herself to Communism. Yes, the Soviets in Warsaw means Germany shortly afterwards, the reconquest of Hungary, the revolt of the Balkans against capitalism, Italy shaken-bourgeois Europe cracking on all sides in a fearful hurricane." The two Polish Communists in his immediate circle did not share Lenin's euphoria. Of the first of these, Julian Marchlevski himself, Trotsky was later to say: "There was an unknown: what attitude would the Polish workers and peasants have? Some of our Polish comrades, for instance Julian Marchlevski, friend and companion of Rosa Luxemburg, entertained considerable scepticism." Later Lenin revealed the doubts of the second ranking Polish Communist, Karel Radek, secretary of the International: "Radek foresaw how it would turn out. He warned us. I was furious. I accused him of 'defeatism.' But he was essentially right." A military set-back outside of Warsaw followed this political setback throughout Poland. On August 18 the Red Army began its retreat. It would not return for twenty years, and then in the wake, not of revolutionary war, but of the Hitler-Stalin pact in September 1939. Pro-Trotsky After this first conflict with the Polish people, the Polish Communist Party was compelled to set itself against Moscow within the International. In the months that immediately preceded Lenin's death (January 21, 1924), the struggle for the succession already raged. The Bolshevik 51 �old guard had banded together to remove the candidate with the greatest prestige-who, however, had not always been a Bolshevik-Leon Trotsky. The top of the International, the controlling troika of G. Zinoviev, the President, and Kamenev and Stalin, were involved in this manuever. Only two voices rose at the highest level of the Comintern to denounce the plot against Trotsky in almost the same words: the leadership of the Polish Communist Party and Boris Souvarine, the representative of the French Communist Party at the Comintern. Made up of the three W's: Walecki, Warski, and Wera Kostrzewa, the Polish leadership declared: "For our Party, for the whole Comintern, and for the world revolutionary proletariat the name of Comrade Trotsky is irrevocably linked to the victorious October Revolution, to the Red Army and Communism." Six months after Lenin's death, in the summer of 1924, at the fifth Congress of the Comintem, this attitude of the Polish Communist Party came under examination. A Polish Commission was formed, presided over by a Bolshevik who had never spoken during the congresses of the Comintem, and who, unlike the other Bolsheviks involved in the business of the organization, did not know a single foreign language: Stalin. At the time his name meant absolutely nothing to almost all the foreign delegates at the Congress. But the Poles knew him well-and he them. Unlike the other Committees that, since the birth of the Comintern in 1919, had used German, the Polish Committee under Stalin carried on its work in Russian. The discussion moved immediately from the realm of ideas to the realities of power. Stalin circulated in the cor-· ridors of the Congress to assert that the "bones of the obstinate must be broken." "Not those whose bones can be broken for the same reasons as ours but those who have no bones at all are dangerous to you," Wera Kostrzewa replied, not in the corridors, but on the floor of the Congress. Her words pointed to the increasing political, moral, and material corruption within the Comintern. At another time she also objected to the excessive dependence of the foreign branches on the Russian Communist Party, the dominant force in the Comintern: "The most important branches of the Co mintern ought to enjoy greater independence in the making of policy within their party and greater responsibility in all international questions." But in the following years in the Comintern things turned out exactly the opposite. The Russians had already mastered the technique of manipulating meetings both in committees and in plenary sessions at this fifth Congress, the Congress of Bolshevization. The immediate consequence was the removal of the leadership of the Polish Communist Party with a resolution that: "The Central Committee of the Polish Communist Party, under the political direction of the group Warski, Kostrzewa, and Walecki, despite its revolutionary words, has shown itself incapable of applying the line of the Communist InternationaL" This was only a prelude. It took ten years for Stalin to 52 show the Poles his true stuff: to make blood flow. He made blood flow not only in the Russian Communist Party but throughout the Comintern. In the Comintern he began, fittingly, with the Polish Communist Party. 1933: Second Purge The time came in 1933, the victim was Jerzy Sochacki: member of the Central Committee of the Polish Communist Party since 1921; Communist deputy to the Sejm; member of the Politbureau; permanent representative of the Polish Communist Party to the headquarters of the Comintern since 1930; member of the two supreme bodies of the Comintern, the Praesidium and the Secretariat. On the fifteenth of August 1933, the Soviet police arrested Sochacki, and accused him of spying from the time he joined the Communist Party in 1921. A complete dossier was drawn up to cover his twelve years {(work" as a spy. A secret trial was staged. "I die proud and happy for my leader Pilsudski," were quoted as Sochacki's "last words" before execution. Stalin's justice had moved swiftly between Sochacki's arrest on the fifteenth of August and his execution on September 4, 1933, Sochacki's postumous rehabilitation, in contrast, had to wait for the destalinization that followed the Twentieth Congress of the Soviet Communist Party in February 1956, and Gomulka's return to power in Warsaw. A Pole thus became the first foreign Communist to lose his life in Moscow. Shortly afterward, in 1936 and 1938, the Polish Communist party knew slaughter. The Polish Party suffered more victims than any other foreign branch of the Comintern. The Hungarian, German, and Jugoslav Communists suffered Stalin's extermination but in fewer numbers than the Poles. The nature of factscommon revolutionary past, linguistic facility, and geographical proximity-made for more Polish Communist political exiles in Russia than from any other country in Europe. The men and women from the rest of Europe depended on the protection-relative-of their respective Communist Parties, members in good standing of the Comintern. The only branch of the Comintern that Stalin had dissolved, the Polish Communist Party, had no such resort. 193 8: Dissolution by Stalin In January 1938 the official organ of the Comintern, The International Communist, published an article called "Provocateurs at Work" that held that agents of Pilsudski had long ago infiltrated the Polish Communist Party up to, and including, its top leadership. After this article, Communist publications ceased to mention the Polish Communist Party. There was no public notice of the decision in Moscow in April1938 to dissolve it. The party simply no longer existed physically or politically. Alone, Stalin could only undo the Polish CP. The next year, 1939, Hit- AUTUMN/WINTER 1982-83 �ler's alliance made it possible for Stalin to abolish the Polish State as well. 1942: Resurrection After his pact with Hitler, Stalin had no need of either the Polish Communist Party or the Polish state. Hitler's attack on Russia on June 22, 1941, however, overturned the situation. Stalin recognized Poland in 1941. In 1942 he authorized the resurrection of the Polish Communist Party. The beginning of 1942 was a critical moment for the Soviet Union: Hitler's military superiority was beyond doubt; the alliance with the democracies was only at its first steps. Two reasons for Stalin to muffle the emphasis on Communism on its doctrine, practice, and even on the word itself. Stalinist vocabulary saw the disappearance of the adjective "communist." The new Communist parties organized during the war avoided it: in Switzerland, the Labour Party; in Iran, The Party of the Masses (Tudeh); in Cyprus, The Progressive Party of the Working People; in Poland, The Worker's Party. This new label did not make the Polish CP anymore successful. By the summer of 1944, on the eve of Soviet troops' entry into Poland, the Party numbered about 20,000, a ridiculous total. The Communists who had survived Hitler's occupation or Stalin's Gulags could count on only one power, the Red Army. In the summer of 1944, at Lublin, a Committee was formed, a carbon copy of the 1920 Committee of Bialystok-except for the inferior quality of its members. The Lublin Committee became the nucleus of the future regime, because the Red Army occupied the country. 1 1944-1945: Satellization Between 1944 and 1945 Poland, like all the other countries under the Soviet jackboot, underwent satellization. The usalami tactic" was the same as in Hungary and else- where: first, the gradual elimination of adversaries; then of allies; the compulsory fusion of Communist and Socialist Parties. Soviet colonization offered Poland the prize of a Marshal of the Red Army, Rokossovsky, to head the Polish "National" Ministry of Defense. There was more: the persecution of the Catholic Church: the arrest of Cardinal Wysznski; purges of Party leadership: the pushing aside and the arrest of Gomulka who, however, was neither hailed before a People's Tribunal nor shot. 1956: Rehabilitation Starting in 1956, the year of the Twentieth Congress of the Soviet Communist Party and of destalinization in Soviet Russia and elsewhere, the story of the Polish Communist Party again takes its distance from the "brother parties." The Polish Party took the lead. The Twentieth Congress opened on the fourteenth of September without at first 1HE ST. JOHNS REVIEW arousing excitement in Moscow. Warsaw, in contrast, felt its effects immediately. Large-scale photographs of the three founders of the Polish Communist Party, Warski, Walecki, and Wera Kostrzewa-all three victims of Stalinappeared on the front page of the Communist daily Tribuna Ludu on the nineteenth of February. The same front page also carried a declaration of the five "brother parties" that for the first time revealed what had happened eighteen years before: "In 1938 the Executive Committee of the Communist International adopted a resolution to dissolve the Polish CP on the grounds of an accusation of widespread penetration of the ranks of the Party by enemy agents. It has now been established that this accusation was based on documents forged by a gang of saboteurs and provacateurs whose true role was not brought to light until the unmasking of Beria". No mention of Stalin. It was as if he had played no role in the history of the Polish CP. In the aftermath of the Twentieth Congress another exploit distinguished the Polish CP. Khrushchev's Secret Report in circulation among the "brother parties" in the East found its way westward through Warsaw. The most explosive document ever to come from leading Communist circles came in this way to have its world-wide effect. The Gomulka Experiment In June 1956 Poland also saw another historical event, the first of its kind after the initiation of uncertainty: the revolt of the people in Poznan. The same year in October there was another unprecedented event: Khruschev came to Warsaw at the head of a Soviet delegation determined to impose its will on Warsaw and the Polish CP. The attempt ended abruptly. Gomulka came back to power. This Polish "October Spring" began a new experiment-a reexamination of Communism and a reform from within. The result was negative. Instead of democratizing the Communist system, the Polish CP only weakened itself. Movements of the workers and people brought about three changes in the top leadership of the CP. In 1956, 1970, and in 1980 three first secretaries fell under pressure from the masses, facts unprecedented in the history of "real" socialism. Once again the Polish CP knew a lot different from the other "brother parties". Its acceptance of powers parallel to its own made its lot unique in addition: the spiritual power of the Church starting in the mid-fifties; the power of the Solidarity Union after 1980. The military coup on December 13, 1981, brought this exceptional situation to an end at the price of a no less exceptional situation: it reversed the roles of Army and Party. The Party now transmits the orders of the Army. Such a situation cannot last. There will be new sudden changes and reversals in the chequered history of this Party-and in the tragic story of Poland. Translated by Brother Robert Smith and Leo Raditsa 53 �A Nighttime Story Linda Collins On the day the president of Egypt was assassinated, Charles Pettit's little boy had stayed home from school with a temperature. In the middle of the morning, his mother found him sitting on the floor of the living room looking at television. "Let me tie your bathrobe," she said. "It's too chilly to be sitting there with your bathrobe open." He didn't look around. When she glanced at the screen to see what he was watching, she knew by the chaotic way the camera was moving that again something bad had happened. A while later Charles telephoned from his office in Greenfield. He had heard the news on the car radio, but he hadn't called her right away, he said, because he hoped it wasn't true. "It's true," she said. "I know if s true," said Charles. She said she thought Robert might not have understood what he had seen. He could have thought he was looking at a movie, she said. "Perhaps," said Charles. In the evening, the children made brownies with their mother while Charles watched the news, turning from channel to channel. Then he went outside and breathed the cold night air. The next day Robert was well, and the following day he went back to school. On Friday, Charles drove the five miles home from work as the sun set and the sky flamed. Yellow stacks of freshly split wood sat beside each house, and in the openings of sheds and outbuildings he could see the same raw color. An occasional meadow was still bright green, and here and there a dark horse raised its head as he drove by. Remembering they were to use the car later, he left it half way out of the shed, where his own firewood was stacked. Linda Collins has previously contributed "Going to See the Leaves" (Autumn 1981) to the St. Johh's Review. Her stories have appeared in Mademoiselle, the Hudson Review, and other magazines. 54 His wife was in the kitchen straightening up after the children's supp.er. He kissed her on the cheek. She put down the sponge and turned to him for another kiss. "Make your drink," she said. ''I have a few more things to do." The children were waiting for him in the living room. Robert was in his dinosaur pajamas, and the younger child, Lizzie, wore a thick one-piece suit with padded feet. An outsized zipper ran up to her chin. Charles put his drink down on the coffee table and took off his glasses to receive their embraces. When they were all sitting on the rug near the fire he put his glasses back on. Lizzie moved into his lap. "Daddy," she said and pressed his cheek with her hand. She stroked his sleeve, touched the buttons of his jacket, patted his face. She was rosy from her bath and her fingers smelled of soap. He took her wandering hand and held it still. "Daddy!" she said. Releasing her hand, he ran his finger over her fine pale hair. She looked up at him with a fierce expression. "Tell us a story," she said. "Tell." Robert, who was six, sat with his legs straight out in front of him. He rotated his feet in their new bedroom slippers and watched the elastic stretch and retract. His eyes were brown and his hair was smooth and brown. Where his sister was fat and flushed, he was thin. He was sitting slightly apart from his father and sister, and although he kept his eyes on his slippers, having noticed that the firelight lent them a shine which could be made to slide from the toe to the heel by twisting his foot, every now and then he directed a quick look at his father. He busied himself with slippers, dinosaurs, and whatever diversions the fire could offer: sparks, gleams, the collapse of a burnt-out log, but when he looked up his glance measured the distance between his father and his sister. He waited. "All right, kitty cats," said Charles. "What shall it be?" "Ticky tats," said the little girl. AUTUMN/WINTER 1982-83 �"Kitty cats," said Robert. "Kitty cats." He was mocking his father who would not have said "kitty cats" had he been directing his attention only at him. His father could make him laugh when he didn't want to, and often did, by saying things like "kitty cats," and worse. Suddenly he felt tired of keeping this stiff watch and unbending guard. He sighed, acknowledging a kind of de· feat, and he moved in closer to Daddy and Lizzie. "All right/' said Charles. "Ready?" "Ready," said the children. Lizzie put her thumb in her mouth and then took it out and looked at it. It was wet. "Ready," she said. Charles began the story: "Once there was a little girl and her name was Frimble. She was a very good little girl. She always did whatever her mother asked her to do, and she always did what her father asked her to do. In nursery school she was good, and she was good in the supermarket. She stayed on her side in the car and she never forgot to brush her hair. She smiled at the good and frowned at the bad-" "And sometimes she was very sad," said Robert, rapidly and in a slightly confused tone as though surprised to find himself saying anything at all. "No," said his father. "She wasn't actually ever sad. She was quite happy. Reasonably happy." Both children looked at him. The little boy moved closer and the father reached toward him and grasped with two fingers of one hand the slender column of the back of his neck. The child put his head to one side to relish the feeling and to bear the happiness that had begun to mount inside him. He let his eyes close. The little girl shifted her weight on Charles's thigh, and he, feeling a sudden strain in his back, said, "Why are we sitting on the floor? Let's go sit on the couch." They stood up. The move meant they had to pick up and start again. From the couch the fire looked far away and formal. "Daddy!" said the little girl imperiously. He put an arm around each of them and started again: "But one fine day-" "Charles, not too long." His wife had stopped in the doorway to look at them. Her arms were full of bathtowels. Later, when the children were in bed, they would have a quick supper, and then, as they sometimes did on Friday evening, as soon as the neighbor's daughter came, they would drive down to Greenfield and go to the movies. "And then?" said Robert. Lizzie was standing up on Charles's leg. He could feel her toes inside her rubberized pajama soles as she tried to balance on his thigh. Gently, by pressing his hand against the small of her back, he persuaded her to sit down. "But one day, one fine and cloudless day, when Frimble had gone with her nursery school class to buy fish food for the class goldfish, she got separated from the other children and the teacher, and she found herself all alone in the THE ST. JOHNS REVIEW middle of the shopping center. She looked down the ar· cade on her right and saw no one. Then she looked to the left and saw no one there. She was all alone." The story went on, almost by itself. He knew he wasn't doing his best. Sometimes his stories amazed him. Some stories poured through him as though they came from some· where else; they bemused even the teller, and he could imagine that years from now, when the children were grown up, they would remember the best ones, like The Boy Who Had X-ray Vision, or the one about the children who lived in the woods on the far side of the dump. He went on, speaking in a soft voice, and told them how Frimble was at last rescued from the locked and echoing supermarket by a certain first-grade boy whose intelligence in deducing her location was equalled only by his agility in squeezing into narrow places. "And so the boy, having found his way into the warehouse, edged past boxes and cartons and crates. How dark it was! He knew, however, that he must not let himself be frightened. If he panicked, he would not be able to tell which cartons held paper towels and paper diapers and toilet paper-the large light ones that rocked if you gave them a little push-and which, heavier and pungent, held soap powder and soap flakes. For then he'd never find Frimble whose voice he had heard over the intercom before the power failed, telling him she was between the dogfood and the place where the candy was. 'Courage,' he said to himself, and so, listening and feeling and sniffing, he made his way." Charles glanced from his son to his daughter and saw by their grave, wide-opened eyes and their parted lips that their hearts lay with the lost girl and the brave frightened boy. His own heart went out to them and he decided, while he was speaking, to edit one or two effects he had had in mind and hasten the denouement. The fire made a popping noise. The children were sitting close to their father. Robert was holding one of his father's hands in his hands. As he finished the story, Charles could hear the children breathing. "And then she went home?'' asked his daughter. "And then she went home," he said. The movie took place in California. The camera slid around a house in such a way as to induce apprehension in the viewer. In the house lived one of the main characters, a fifty-year-old woman, played by an actress who was making a movie for the first time in many years. Charles was reminded of his youth by the sight of her face. He had liked her in college and even in high school. There was a lot of driving in the movie, particularly by women, who got in and out of their cars in a way characteristic of women in movies and on television. The way they slammed car doors and drove away said: This is California, this is modern life, this is dangerous and exciting. The woman lived 55 �alone in the house, and in the evening, after her housekeeper and gardener went home, it \VaS clear she was in danger. She had lovers. Someone was going to kill her. One of her lovers was going to kill her. Her death was prolonged. Charles knew at some point his wife would turn her head away. When she did, he smiled and gave her a little pat. «Tell me when it's over," she said. "It's only ketchup," he said. "I don't think so," she whispered back. During the time the several police officers were weighing the probable involvement of the known suspects, the minor characters were portrayed in places familiar to nonCalifornians from other movies: at a Pacific beach house, at an orange ranch, and at a dusty gas station and general store at a crossroads in the desert. The killer did turn out to be one of her lovers, but not the obvious one. The shoot-out took place at the tiny motel where the housekeeper's aged mother lived. "How did you like it?" asked Charles in the lobby, feeling for the car keys. 44 Horrible," said his wife. "They said he was an Ameri- can Lelouch. I'm sorry I brought you." 44 You didn't make me come," he said. "Anyway, I liked it." They drove home through the quiet countryside. From time to time their headlights picked out of the darkness a tree whose leaves had turned yellow or flashed on the black window panes of a farmhouse where everyone had gone to bed. "I think we could use some heat," said Charles, and turned the knob for the heater ·and the one for the fan. After a minute they felt the warm air. It was soothing to drive through the pale autumn fields. Neither spoke. Just before the road started its rise toward their village it passed through a marshy place where mist was thick on either side and they were plunged into milky obscurity. Charles reached with his right hand under his wife's skirt and felt for the elasticized edge of her undergarment. At home, she paid the baby sitter and watched at the window while the girl ran across the road to her own house where the outside light was on. When the light went off, she let the curtain drop and went upstairs. She pushed the children's door open over the stiff new carpet 56 and Charles stood in the doorway while she touched both children and adjusted the window and the shade. Then they went together into their own room. Much later in the night, Charles woke up. The television was still on. Dread had seized him in his sleep. He had dreamed they were all in a train, his wife and both children, and the outside of the train was being pounded by bullets. There was a terrible racket of metal against metal and it was not at all clear he was going to be able to continue to protect them. Awake, he was as afraid as he had been asleep. He lay still and waited for his arms and legs to stop trembling. After a while he felt calmer. He turned on his side, toward the television. It was a movie, in black and white, set in Prague during World War II, about three Czech exiles who parachut~d into Czechoslovakia on a mission to kill the Reichskommissar; one of the three, it seemed, had betrayed the others. Intrigued now, and wide awake, he reached for his wife's extra pillow, which was lying between them, and stuck it under his head. His heart was still beating heavily. The room was silvery. He stretched his legs and began to relax. The wife, or the girlfriend, of one of the exiles came and went, bringing messages. There was a lot of running. It must have been the sound of gunfire from the television he had heard in his dream. In the dream he had tried to lie on top of the children to protect them from bullets. He had tried to lie on top of them without hurting them. In the crypt of St. Vitus, the two loyal Czechs met their heroic end while gunfire sounded from the street. When the movie was over, he turned to the news channel and watched a summary of the events of the week. The film had been edited. He was never able to find what his wife said Robert had seen: the arm, the clothing, the expression on the injured man's face. He saw the sky above Cairo and the plumes of colored smoke expanding as the formation of Mirages flew by the reviewing stand. Within the reviewing stand the chairs were all turned over. It looked as though no one was there, but then, like anemones on the sea floor, the chairs started to move and wave about, and one by one the men appeared from beneath the chairs, their hands first, as they reached from below for leverage to help them rise. AU1UMN/WINTER 1982-83 �Marx's Sadism Robert J. Loewen berg "The death of mankind is ... the goal of socialism." Igor Shafarevich, The Socialist Phenomenon It is a notorious fact, or for some an ironic and scandal· ous one, that Karl Marx's hatred of the bourgeois intellec· tuals, of liberals, has not prevented them from becoming the heirs and custodians of his ideals. Except for the liberal intellectuals who today dominate the universities and al· lied institutions, principally the media, there is no respect· able Marxism. That is, unless one counts as respectable the wrinkled pedagogues of dialectical materialism and their dozing charges in Russia or the freakish ideological concoctions of Oriental tyrants. Moreover, insofar as the bourgeois intellectuals have inherited the mantle of Marx in a culture that cheerfully submits its offspring to instruc· tion in today's liberal ideals, ideals that in part descend from the abolitionists, the very civilization of America can be called Marxist. In fact it has been called this by the world's most outstanding Marxist scholar, Alexander Kojeve in delight, over twenty years ago.' ' That Kojeve's observation was not entirely wishful thinking by a frustrated communist is suggested by the comments of another more recent Russian emigre, not a Communist, who only months ago confirmed Kojeve's judgment. Lev Navrozov was shocked to find that America is "a Left-biased" culture, that is, one in which all political opinions agree upon a vocabulary that is largely Marxist. Navrozov called this discovery, in sadness, "the most eye· opening experience I have had since my arrival. .. from Associate professor of history at Arizona State University, Robert Loewenberg has previously contributed "The Trivialization of the Holocaust as an Aspect of Modern Idolatry" (Winter 1982) and "That Graver Fire Bell: A Reconsideration of the Debate over Slavery from the Standpoint of Lincoln" (Summer 1982) to the St. fohn's Review. He is at work on studies of Emerson and of the abolitionists. TilE ST. JOHNS REVIEW Russia in 1972."2 Important here is not the sadness or the delight of Russian observers but their agreement about what is, after all, a commonplace: America is a Left-biased culture. History, it almost appears, has turned the master dialectician, Marx, on his head. Having reduced Marx to his antithesis, bourgeois communism, history now evidently prepares to sweep even him into its ample dustbin. Ko· jeve, a Marxist who transcended Marx, believed he had a more properly Marxist explanation. "The United States," Kojeve said, "has already attained the final stage of Marxist 'communism,' seeing that, prac· tically, all the members of a 'classless society' can from now on appropriate ... everything that seems good to them ... " The classless society, Kojeve continues, is "the end of His· tory [that is, it is the eternal present when] men ... con· struct their edifices and works of art as birds build their nests and spiders spin their webs, ... perform musical con· certs after the fashion of frogs and cicadas ... and ... in· dulge in love like adult beasts .... But there is more ... the definitive disappearance of human Discourse ... [that is, human] 'language' ... would be like what is supposed to be the 'language' of bees." 3 What Kojeve tells us then is that the liberal intellectuals, the same liberals that he as well as Marx despised, are not so much Marxists as the products of Marxism. They are witnesses to Marx's truth. America is the realm of free· dom. How else, Kojeve suggests, shall we understand the conceptual egalitarianism of our culture or relativism? Has it not transformed words into gestures and made a kind of language of bees the law of the land? And do we not ap· proach the free love ideal of Kojeve, to say nothing of the character of our edifices and our popular concerts? But im· pressions can be misleading, at least as justifications for sweeping generalizations such as Kojeve's. There is no doubt something wrong or even self-serving about his idea, because his experience of America did not lead Kojeve to question his Marxism. 57 �If we are to accept that America has already achieved the final stage of Marxist communism, the realm of freedom, certain serious problems and questions arise. In the first place such an achievement can hardly be supposed to satisfy Marxists. For them the violent revolutionary over· throw, at least, of bourgeois capitalism is an article of faith. There has been no such event in America as there has been no abolition of property. Nor can today's liberal intellec· tuals be remotely likened to a revolutionary cadre. As· suredly they are not the descendants of one. But there is another set of questions that arises in connection with Ko· jeve's observation. If it is at all correct to say that America has attained the final stage of Marxist communism, what are we to identify as the sources, both historical and philo· sophie, of American culture and of the notorious fact that our liberal intellectuals are heir to Marx's ideals? How has American culture arrived at the final stage of Marxist communism without Marx and without a vindication of Marxist historical processes? Perhaps the obvious answer is the right one: Marx was not radical enough. American culture is not Marxist com· munism but some other "ism" that looks like Marxism. We may reasonably suppose that our present-day American ideal and practice of freedom has its sources in indigenous traditions and institutions. In fact the historical beginning of what Kojeve describes as the attainment in the United States of the final stage of Marxist communism is found in the abolitionist movement, in particular in the thinking of its radical figures. In addition to William Lloyd Garrison and other famous abolitionists, these include two of the more daring, and as they were called, ultraist reformers of that day, Stephen Pearl Andrews and John Humphrey Noyes. And, although Emerson and Thoreau were not ac· tive abolitionists, their contributions to the movement in the form of conceptual elaboration of the ideal of freedom were great. Finally, we are guided by the abolitionists' vi· sion, actually by the movement's most acid and brilliant contemporary critic, George Fitzhugh, who was a socialist and the nation's top defender of slavery, to the philosophic source, that is, to the source of the institutions that have grown up from abolitionist seed to become the "final stage of Marxist 'communism'." Fitzhugh's judgment (and it is important to know that he was a proto-Marxist of the kind to attract favorable in· teres! from communist historians in our day) was this: the abolitionist ideal of freedom did not really differ from his own ideal of slavery.4 The difference between slavery and abolitionism was, he said, that abolitionists would cure the problems of free society, above all the problems stemming from inequalities created by profit, by giving men yet more freedom rather than less. Fitzhugh, however, said the abolitionists' ideal of freedom would lead them to free love and this, he concluded, would lead them to despotism. The discovery of Fitzhugh that abolition must lead either to Southern slavery or to free love, which would lead to despotism, was an insight of genius. He made this dis· 58 covery after reading the abolitionist and communist writer Stephen Pearl Andrews who later beca!Tie the Pontiff of Free Lovism in America, and the first American to print the Manifesto. What Fitzhugh did not see was that free love was a radicalization of the socialist labor theory of value, or the principle of Marx that man is "nothing but the creation of ... labour.''' This discovery, in particular the uncovering of an infallible linkage between the timeless and universal fact of human sexuality and the founding doctrine of modern political theory, the state of nature, according to which man has no telos, was made by another man more radical than Marx. Historians should now begin to recognize that the lines of liberationist reasoning reaching into our time from the abolitionist and reform movements of the nineteenth century have their philosophic source much less in Marx or even in Hegel than in a certain Frenchman. Donatien Alphonse Francois de Sade (17401814), a self-described "libertine" (his American editors remind us that this word is drawn "from the Latin liber: 'free' -an exceptional man of exceptional penchants, passions and ideas") is an author whose real thought, as these same editors rightly say, ''remains . .. unknown.'' 6 Unlike Friedrich Engels, the Marquis de Sade did not find it "curious ... that in every large revolutionary movement the question of 'free love' comes to the foreground.''' Sade understood that free love is the revolution. Neither have the liberal epigones of Engels as yet uncovered their intimate connection with the man who is defined by the "Latin liber: 'free'." This is striking considering that these same thinkers have not' been slow to count men such as Engels among the great leaders of the international antislavery movement.' Even more important, today's liberals regard themselves as the descendants of the abolitionists who, like them, "dream of extending the intimate love of the private family to a wider circle of social relationships .. '[and] debate ... the justifications for monogamous mar· riage, the proper role of woman, and the best methods of child-rearing."' In sum, the oversight regarding Sade's proper and central place in the history of modern freedom is a grave one. Except for a few daring poets, for the Surre· alists, and more recently a handful of avant garde literary critics all of whom consider him a heroic figure, Sa de is in truth "unknown."lO First and foremost a political writer and theorist, Dona· tien de Sade is, however, known only as a pornographer. Certainly he was a pornographer. But it seems unlikely to· day that anyone except the most hopelessly prurient or naive student could doubt that pornography is intrinsically political even if it is more subtly, and more effectively, PO· litical than utopian or science fiction. Pornography stands in automatic rebellion against civility and against the so· cia! as such. Indeed, as we shall see, it stands in opposition to the human condition. Unlike theft or prostitution which cannot easily thrive without honesty and chastity respectively, pornography, especially in Sade's expert hands (and especially in its written form) is the enemy, rather like mur· AUTUMN /WINTER 1982-83 �der, a crime Sade prized, of everything civil. Sade sought to found a critique that would justify the destruction, as Marx put it, of "everything existing." 11 His aspirations, also like Marx, were cosmic. To men living in the last third of the twentieth century when pornography of the sort Sade wrote secretly in jail can be bought in supermarkets, and when the ideals he promoted are legal or social commonplaces or soon to become so (for example, homosexuality, incest, abortion, murder, cannibalism), it seems fair to say that Sade had a better understanding of the role of "the abolition ... of the family" than his more famous revolutionary successor who regarded it as a mere "practical measure."" Sade had a profound understanding of why "the attack on the family ... could not be shirked," as a student of the socialist idea and of Robert Owen, its most famous popularizer prior to Marx, has said. This attack is in truth "central to the whole communitarian position." 13 The failure of our historians to grasp Sa de's great importance in the history of the communitarian movement cannot be explained by any secret writing in Sade or by any lack of historical interest in an approach such as Sade' s that emphasizes material factors. We cannot read very far in Sade, in Marx, or in the history of American radical reform movements before we come upon an intersection that relates property and freedom. Property, they all concur, has its roots in the self, in amour propre or vanity. This of course is Rousseau's idea, the foundation of his critique of civilization. Moreover, it was Marx's solution to the problem of civilization considered as exchange deriving from the division of labor, his solution, that is, of the problem of the labor theory of value, that made him famous. A critique of human enslavement based upon unequal exchange, Marx's idea was that man's freedom lay in the principle that all labor is equal. Men shall be freed by work. Sade (and the American abolitionists as well) agreed that the inequality arising from the division of labor was man's slavery. But Sade's solution to this problem was more radical than Marx's. As for the solutions of Fitzhugh or the abolitionists, they were more Sadean than we have guessed until now. Sade's idea was that men shall be freed not by work but by pleasure. Marx, we know, shared the assumption of his time that labor is the basis of all value. It was, however, Marx's revision of this idea, his "trenchant distinction," as a recent Marxist writer and admirer of Fitzhugh has put it, that the ground of exchange was not use-value (for example hats and corn are not commensurable in use.)l' Rather the basis of exchange is labor as such or labor measured by duration. Where the means of producing hats and corn are privately owned, and where labor itself is therefore an item in exchange (labor power), and also privately owned in its right (by the laborer), it follows, said Marx, that profit, hence also alienation and unfreedom, is precisely a consequence of exchange. Exchange serves capital, not needs. Marx then radicalized the labor theory of value by applying it to labor itself. He counted profit as the sale or exchange of THE ST. JOHNS REVIEW labor-value. According to this view, labor as work is credited or paid its value at the same time that the product of the labor is paid its value. The "surplus value," or profit, is then a legitimate theft from labor. The abolition of the division of labor and exchange, thereby of civil society and all that goes with it, is tantamount to the appearance of man as absolutely free. Freedom, in other words, is no other than the abolition of amour propre, of vanity. Vanity in the sense of selfish is understood by Rousseau, as by Marx, to be the product of meum et teum; all relationships are founded in property and are property. This commutative proposition makes relationship as such, or dependence, property. But the substance of this freedom in Marx and in Rousseau as well is problematical. What is this nonselfish, or as we say in common speech, unselfish being? What is freedom? Marx did not explain the realm of freedom perhaps for the same reason that he was at pains to insist, at the other or starting end of his thought, that the inevitable question regarding the origins of man and nature is impermissiblean "abstraction," as he says. 15 Instead, Marx explains the source of freedom. Sade, however, admits of no such restraints. He merely drew out to its fullest extent the idea that all labor is equal, that what Fitzhugh called skill and wit and what Andrews called natural wealth is nature's gift.I6 Like water from a spring this natural wealth is free to all men. If one's natural wealth, actually one's possession of those endowments of nature which make for inequality, is as free to everyone as air and water, then it follows that all exclusive relationships, especially marriage, are radically unfree. It was Andrews who had said, in explaining natural wealth, that "when man deals with Nature, he is dealing with an abject servant or slave ... man is a Sovereign and Nature his minister. He extorts from her rightfully, whatever she can be made to yield. The legitimate business of man is the conquest and subjugation of Nature." 17 This was Sade' s opinion, too. Man's overcoming of the involuntary or natural distinction between the sexes, the distinction at the root of all division oflabor (thus the source of all property and pain), is the final, actually the first freedom; it is the highest pleasure. Pleasure, not labor, sex, nor reproduction explains man's origin and his purposes. Where Marx had said that "the whole of what is called world history is nothing but the creation of man by human labour, and the emergence of nature for man ... has the evident and irrefutable proof of his self-creation, of his own origins," Sa de proclaimed that man's origin is in pleasure.IB In fact he does not distinguish pleasure or creation from masturbation or pornography. Human freedom places the endowments given by Nature to oneself and to others, like air and water, at the disposal of all. Sade' s idea of freedom looks forward to the replacement of selfhood and the unmooring of all selves for use by others. This is free love. And Sade realized, as would Kojeve, that this objective involved the "definitive annihilation of Man 59 �properly so-called" along with the destruction of language and philosophy." Sade realized the need for an attack as a kind of self-rape on all creative powers, human and divine, by the liberating and death-defying pornographer. This is a political and philosophic undertaking, and because it flies with greatest daring in the face of all human history and fact, it begins with seizure of the world. It will be obvious to the reader that Sa de's ideals, whatever else may be said of them, do not entail revolution. He regarded the abolition of private property, following the politicization of all human affairs that attends the liberation of the sexes~ as a mere "practical measure". Any vestiges of "this barbarous inequality" might legitimately be cured by so traditional a means as theft: "Is theft, whose effect is to distribute wealth more evenly, to be branded as a wrong in our day, under our government which aims at equality?" The state must indeed stimulate this useful if simple equalizer in view of the admirable way that it "furthers equality and ... renders more difficult the conservation of property."20 Sade had no need of dialectical materialism. A pragmatist in economic matters as in others, he would have dismissed Marx's contemptuous labeling of his ideas as bourgeois radicalism while attacking Marx as an absolutist. If man is made by pleasure and not by labor he requires only pornography and a certain education in the "sublimities of Nature."21 Sade's elaboration of these ideas is found in an ingenious essay entitled "Yet another Effort, Frenchmen, if you Would become Republicans." The positioning of this essay is part of its meaning. Sade embeds it in the middle of his pornographic novel-play entitled Philosophy in the Bedroom in which sexual acrobatics is the main theme. In addition to the amorous relationship between a brother and sister with which the story begins, the plot turns upon the efforts of the protagonist, a homosexual named Dolmance, a paramour of the brother, to instruct a fifteen-year-old virgin, Eugenie, paramour of the sister and the daughter of "one of the wealthiest commercial figures in the capital" (thus the story's predictable anticapitalist element), in libertinism and debauchery." Dolmance' s success, of which there was never any doubt, is illustrated at the book's theoretical center, the womb of the book, when Eugenie delightedly leads the revelers in the near murdering of the story's sole antagonist, her mother. The crime of this woman, easily guessed for all of its implausible oddity, is that of being a mother. She confused the act of sex with its consequence, or children. The woman is also guilty of failing to recognize that she has no rights as a mother except that of instructing a child in sexual matters. Fittingly, then, the daughter administers just punishment for her mother's crime. Eugenie's sewing together of her mother's womb "so that you'll give me no more little brothers and sisters" is the occasion for a carnival flow of blood and semen. Like the mingled screams of pain and pleasure, they flow as one. Dolmance, overwhelmed by the scene's perfection, is immediately aroused." Eugenie has been educated. She has seen with her own eyes that life is being unto death by means of sex. This is 60 freedom. Eugenie has witnessed, actually participated in, the fact of man's equality with all other men, indeed with all other beings. Sade has demonstrated that in making love like an adult beast man severs the connection between sex and reproduction. But this is death. Freedom is death. In Kojeve's words for which Marx is his source, "Death and Freedom are but two ... aspects of one and the same thing .... j'To say 'mortal' is to say 'free'.24 And what of future generations, of reproduction simply? Where freedom is death and reproduction is separated from sex, the danger and the hope of the future is transferred from God to man. The future is no longer a providential matter. Sade intended, as did Noyes, as we shall see in a moment, that the control of reproduction by means of abortion, infanticide, and promiscuity would take the power of childmaking and childrearing from the private sphere and from God and place these powers in the hands of mankind, that is, of the state. It is Dolmance who reads the essay, "Yet another Effort, Frenchmen," to his partners. As the group's leader and an advertised "cynic," his action on the occasion of Eugenie' s triumph over her mother is the essay's meaning. Dolmance is the apparent author of the essay just as Sade is the apparent model for Dolmance. But Dolmance, although he admits that his thinking "does correspond with some part of these reflections," is not the real author. 25 Here, brilliantly, Sade insinuates the theme of his work into his characterization: the theme is creation by each self of new selves. Each self, generated by sex not by reproduction, is interchangeable with other selves. Of course a homosexual imitator of Sa de shall be Sa de's hero and persona. The essay that Dolmance reads but has not written is said to have been picked up at a Paris newsstand. That Dolmance does not take credit for "Yet another Effort, Frenchmen," or that he is not named Sade, is a joke at the expense of philosophy and truth: philosophy is an undertaking appropriate only in the bedroom; more exactly philosophy is action, sexual action particularly, of which the ideal is "philosophy" raped or pornography. The ideal of philosophy so conceived is ''realized" in a scene such as the one just described. Philosophy is action which expresses the self in context of the most liberated sexuality. This activity puts all false philosophy, and all reality which is less than pornographic sexual activity, out-of-bounds. Philosophy in the bedroom is the highest action. This is idealism or theory conceived as the goal for action to achieve. It is the restriction oflanguage to sense objects, but sense objects created by a pornographer. Reality, here susceptible of definition, is also achievable or nearly so. The action of the mind in creating the standard for action is the highest activity because it defines action and precedes it. Sa de's creativity places reality at the service of mind. Sade imagines libertinism, therefore he exists. Consider the extent of Sade's onanism. For him the wasting of seed is creation. He is performing an act of ereAUTUMN/WINTER 1982-83 �ation by his own standards more obscene and blasphemous than anything even he can describe. Yet because it is not a sexual act but a properly philosophic one he cannot explain it without seeming to undermine his point that philosophy in the bedroom is the sole philosophy. Sade is simulating an act of would-be creation, in particular the creation of non-reproducing or death-seeking beings who, like him, seek new reality, that is philosophic pleasure, by means of a theoretical or hypothetical auto-eroticism modeled upon real auto-eroticism, masturbation, as an ideal. Sade's aspiration here causes us to reconsider the judgment, made by one of the rare philosophic intelligences of our time, that Marx's Theses on Feuerbach is "the best world fetish ever constructed by a man [Marx] who wanted to be God."26 It is appropriate to note here that it was not Marx's ideas or his influence that affected the thinking of the American communist John Humphrey Noyes, the results of whose ideals Kojeve and Navrozov have described as Marxist communism. Noyes, often considered the most revolutionary of modern times, was the founder in Oneida (New York) of a free love commune in the 1840s. But Noyes goes beyond Marx: his ideas are Sadean; for instance, his remarkable system for human reproduction. Only couples chosen by Noyes could mate for the purpose of conception. In this way Noyes intended to efface the real mother and father and make himself, almost literally, the creator of the offspring of others. Insisting, like Sade, upon the sinfulness of egos, of what he called "selfish love", Noyes assured the absolute equality of the sexes by implementing a thoroughgoing promiscuity without the possibility of offspring." (Celibacy would achieve the same result and has been adopted at times, for example by the Shakers in America, to serve the same egalitarian goals Sade or Noyes had in mind.) Noyes's object, the object of sexual equality, was the disconnection of sex and reproduction. The resulting offspring, products of Noyes's command, were touched in only the slightest degree by human intervention. Sa de's pornography or Noyes's system with its denial of reality on principle raises the question how other, lesser men will be induced to follow and to waive common sense. Self-evidently Sade's answer, like that of America's "Leftbiased" culture, is that common sense can be seduced; it can be sexually bewitched by pornography. Not the envious desire for equal porridge as Marx supposed but a lust for nirvana, for "mind-blowing", is what Sa de supposed as the basis for politics. But because real men differ from creatures such as Sade's Minski, the fantastic and bestial hero of The Story ofluliette, who is no more than a fleshed phallic symbol housed in a metaphorical body, something more is n~eded. Education is needed. In pinning his hopes for Frenchmen upon education, Sade showed himself a typical bourgeois radical of the type so much hated by Marxists. Sade seeks to educate his fellows in the doctrine of political hedonism, to substitute the pleasurable for the good. A cosmic thinker, Sade promises immortality to his followers. It can be won, he explains, if THE ST. JOHNS REVIEW man will cast off his foolish and cowardly reliance upon the gods. Sade's atheism, like that of Marx, is fundamental to his project. It is in fact the project's purpose. Sade establishes the foundation of education exactly as Marx does. Sade prohibits questions about man's origin and his end. He prohibits the subject of cosmology. "Let a simple philosopher introduce ... [youth] to the inscrutable but wonderful sublimities of Nature," Sade says. As for anyone who might ask about man's origins, about God, free will, and good and evil, let such a simpleton be told "that things always having been what now they are, never had a beginning, are never going to have an end." Such questions, Sade indicates, are pointless. They are faintly immoral as well. "It. .. becomes as useless as impossible for man to be able to trace things back to an imaginary origin which would explain nothing and not do· a jot of good."28 Only egotistical people or those with too much time on their hands seek answers to such questions. Compare Marx's treatment of a questioner of this type: "Are you such an egotist/' Marx asks, "that you conceive every- thing as non-existent and yet want to exist yourself?"" So as not to lose the sharpness of Sa de's thought it is important to realize that he possessed the firmest possible grip upon the problem posed by the rejection of classical philosophy and Christianity. He understood what is meant by Kojeve's principle that where "there is eternal life and hence God, there is no place for human freedom." 30 Sade boldly rejected "the grubby Nazarene fraud [and] ... His foul, nay repellent mother, the shameless Mary," replacing them with "atheism ... the one doctrine of all those prone to reason .... Religion," he said, "is incompatible with the libertarian system." 31 Sade hated the divine with a consuming hate of one who wishes himself to be creator. He was quite clear about the necessity for atheism, actually of nirvana or Nothing which is something more than atheism, to the purposes of creation. Sade is a radical and does not condescend to argue. Instead, he delights to sneer, challenging his reader to doubt, once all the veils are drawn, if cannibalism, rape, murder, sodomy, and incest are other than the most natural impulses to which objections are at best hypocrisy. Indulging these so-called crimes, Sade insists, is noble and also revolutionary, since the performance of, say murder, is liberation and freedom. Such indul· gences, Sade believes, and his admirers agree, reflect only the "singularity of. .. tastes." 32 Like a bourgeois radical, Sade demands absolute toleration and openness as his due. He knows that his tolerant liberal reader, who dares not go so far as he, will grant him the right to indulge his tastes. He knows, in other words, that he will subdue his liberal reader. Yet Sade has only contempt for toleration and for liberal readers. He cruelly invokes toleration as an argument on his behalf. Finally, he does not permit the tolerant reader to evade the consequences of his tolerance. It is self-evident that Sade is not a liberal or one who discourses on the need for revolution while fully clothed and within reach of a policeman. Sade is radical and insists 61 �upon raping, indeed sodomizing, one's mother and murdering her if necessary for the orgasm of everyone. In this way Sade creates followers whose position, like that of today's liberals in face of their communist colleagues, is to oppose his goal as inappropriate even as they insist that this goal or absolute freedom is the essence of all morality." Sade's appeal to the argument of radical toleration-"We wonder that savagery could ever reach the point where you condemn to death an unhappy person [sodomist, murderer, rapist] all of whose crime amounts to not sharing your tastes" -serves the double purpose of embarrassing liberals while condemning the principle of toleration as evidence of liberal fears and egotism." In other words, Sade demonstrates that the dreadful outcome of liberal egotism and toleration is intolerance (his position), and the destruction of egos (also his position). Toleration permits what liberals call "victimless crimes" which, however, destroy egos (e.g., sadism) and are therefore intolerant. Sade had a perfect understanding that the meaning of radical toleration, the essence of which is a hatred of the philosophic or an embrace of the proposition that all truth claims are equal, is freedom: it is the destruction oflanguage or its mutation into the language of bees. "Debate" on the subjects of"extending the love of the private family" and the rest, Sade knew to be cowardice, for the principle that admits debate concedes the legitimacy of the possibility. The purpose of freedom (of speech and of actions) in the modern context, he well knew, was to liberate men from reality so that good and evil would possess whatever meanings he assigned to them. Certainly if man is to be free he must be free above all from a standard of good and bad beyond himself. This was especially clear to those American abolitionists and femi- • nists who considered the conscience the primary site of freedom. That many abolitionists could, however, say as much without acting on what they said reflected a failure on their part to realize Sa de's point: that sexuality and the overcoming of any distance between men and women was the true test of all liberation. In this respect it will be necessary to revise the historians' estimate of the abolitionists in light of a more comprehensive and more historical context. They were rather less radical or liberated than previously supposed. As one recent student has put it in a study aptly entitled The Slavery of Sex, many of the radical female abolitionists were "limited by their elitism ... [for example] women who were socially and sexually deviant were not accepted .... These women were prudish in sexual matters, and many were willing ... to impose their moral standards on others."35 Like Andrews, these ~omen were not quite ready, with Sade, to embrace deviation-what is today routinely called "deviationn-as virtuous, an expression of individuality, or freedom, let alone to tolerate it. Their "elitism, ... the denial of radical equality to all, brought them up short of the goal of abolishing slavery to sex as a social and a political principle.H36 It is sufficient to mention only Garrison, widely consid- 62 ered to have been the most radical of abolitionists active in the cause and undoubtedly a feminist. His speech or rather the conceptions he propounded were radical enough. He looked for the dissolution of the Union, of government as such, and considered there was at once nothing more contemptible "than the exclusive spirit toward women," or nothing higher than the "right of every soul to decide ... what is true ... [so that] no man can be an infidel, except he be false to his own standard." 37 But he could not bring himself to endorse, much less to engage in, free love. Even the petty anarchism of his sometime pupil, Nathaniel Rogers, caused him to act the tyrant. In identifying Garrison as the head of the "extreme wing of the Socialist, Infidel, Women's-Right" party, Fitzhugh was only partly correct. 38 What the abolitionists broached and what their historians today praise as true freedom Sade had conceived in 1795, the year of "Yet another Effort, Frenchman." Sade contemplated ·a revision of personhood or what is today recommended to us as the "twilight of subjectivity.'' 39 It is doubtful if even now men fully understand what Sade understood so well, namely that this ideal must encourage, not prevent, victimization. Only the most advanced twentieth century thinkers in the abolitionist tradition seem to have grasped this point. For example, joel Feinberg argues for the necessity to "withhold noncontingent rights from infants ... [basing] the case for prohibiting infanticide on reasons other than ... rights." 40 Sade attempted to resolve the conflict between liberty and equality as posed by the premises of modern political theory. He sought to resolve the claims of individuality versus the community, of liberty versus equality, by transforming rights into needs and needs into pleasure. The problem of liberty versus equality has proven insoluble in all modern systems except the Marxist theory of value and its promise of the realm of freedom, a faith rooted in historical processes. But Marx's solution, as we have said, has no respectable believers but liberals. It is in fact Sade's solution, for which Marxists such as Koji:ve have taken credit without making clear that it goes beyond Marx, that leads observers to confuse America with the final stage of Marxist communism. Sa de simply radicalized freedom: freedom must be free. The enslavement of others that must follow this doctrine Sade greeted amiably as the means of yet greater liberation, that is, the liberation from vanity or natural wealth. Here in fact is the key to his thought. He begins with the primacy of sex or, rather, he substitutes sexuality for reproduction as the basis of human existence. The core of life is the moment of lust. "There is no moment in the life of man," Sa de writes, "when liberty in its whole amplitude is so important to him." But while "no passion has a greater need of the widest horizon of liberty than this one, none, doubtless, is as despotic.''41 Sade's resolution of this apparent dilemma, a form of the essential dilemma of the political conceived as a contest between the individual and the community, i.e., as a form of the theory of unequal exchanges or the labor theory of value, is ingenious. ''Never," says Sade, ''may AlYTIJMN/WINTER 1982-83 �an act of possession be exercised upon a free being."42 Such an exercise is the acme of tyranny. He supports this asser· tion with a predictable and telling comparison. The "ex· elusive possession of a woman," he says, "is ~o less unjust than the possession of slaves."43 No one will doubt that Sade was an abolitionist. He was more of one than Engels and a better one than Andrews. Sade's doctrine here, com· mon to abolitionists in America, implies a revision of the idea that labor forms selfhood. Sade, who was impatient with what he considered, rightly in this case, derivative matters, was not interested in the labor question but rather in its source. Unlike Charles Fourier, for whom work could be transformed into play, or Marx, for whom work or pro· duction is constitutive of man in the realm of freedom-or like other modern thinkers and leaders who also conceived work as an instrument ofliberation-Sade had his own novel and seductive formulation. If exclusive possession is prohibited for men, must it not work a correlative freedom for women? Sade insisted upon it: "All men are born free, all have equal rights." Ac· cording to this principle, one of which we should "never ... lose sight," it is also true that "never may there be granted to one sex the legitimate right to lay monopolizing hands upon the other, and never may one of these sexes, or classes, arbitrarily possess the other."44 But then what of liberty's need for the widest possible horizon? Has Sa de, too, run aground in the narrow passage between Commu- nism or equality and Individualism or freedom? Sa de's response to this challenge shows his position. "No man," he says, "may be excluded from the having of a woman ... [because] she ... belongs to all men. The act of possession can only be exercised upon a chattel or an animal, never upon an individual who resembles us."45 Consider, Sade says, that in permitting all men access to all women, females are freed from possession by a single male. Does the principle of freedom, Sade asks, not give the appearance of the enslavement of women? This is an appearance only. Of course, freedom must include rape, murder, and cannibalism, but Sade does not suppose for a moment that a woman's freedom is affected adversely by this fact. Actually a woman is freed marvelously precisely in the act of rape. The freedom expressed in rape is "a question of enjoyment [i.e., of pleasure] only, not of property."46 And to this distinction between ownership and pleasure, which is no less trenchant than Marx's regarding the theory of labor, S'l\le adds an example especially instructive because it occurred later to Andrews. "I have no right of possession upon that fountain I find by the road," Sade explains, "but I have certain rights to its use."" Andrews's example also demonstrates the principle of ownership and pleasure with a reference to the use of water. "So soon as I have dipped up a pitcher of water from the spring or stream," Andrews expounds, '~it is no longer ... natural wealth; it is a product of my labor."48 But his example, in contrast to Sade's, tells us why American abolitionists moved, as Andrews himself complained, festina lente in sexual matters. If natural wealth becomes 1BE ST. JOHNS REVIEW property through the intervention of labor, all hope of resolving the dilemma of freedom and equality, of Individualism and Communism, vanishes. Again Sade had the better answer. The radicalization of the labor theory of value is Sa de's solution to freedom's conflict with possession or ownership. The taking of natural wealth, water from a stream, on the principle of pleasure-not labor-insures that the object taken does not become a possession. As Marx turned the labor theory of value back upon itself to show how capital was a theft from labor, Sade radicalized the labor theory of value by making all possession, the product of labor, an encroachment upon pleasure and upon natural wealth. The effect of Sa de's reasoning in practical, or at least in "philosophical," life (i.e., in pornography) is surprisingly, we may say dialectically, a boon to women. Women are liberated by submitting to men. But because pleasure, not possession, is the basis of ownership and at the same time destroys ownership, pleasure liberates men from self-possession or egotism in the act of possessing women. That every man has of right equal access to all women is simply justified: women are no different from other natural objects such as water and air. Moreover, women do not choose to be beautiful to men or indeed they do not choose to be women. Rape is then liberation in a fundamental sense of overcoming womanhood or the outward self, the unfree or involuntary eleinent of a "woman's" being. Of course no woman can be said to possess womanhood or to choose it. What women do not possess and what costs them nothing is free, like water, to all who wish it for the sake of pleasure. Regardless of any egotistical or possessive and selfish objection women may have, men have the right "to compel their submission."49 Sade proclaims in the name of freedom that "I have the right to force from her this enjoyment, if she refuses me it for whatever the cause."so But because pleasure, the purpose of rape, is not labor, the raped woman is not a possession of the rapist. It follows finally that men can have no rights to pleasure itself as a possession as this would be a contradiction in terms. The apparent enslavement of women, or rape, which liberates women from the slavery of womanhood, hence from unfreedom, thus pain, is also the means for women to liberate men. If it is allowed to all men that women, and "all sexes ... [and] creatures," shall yield to lust, it cannot be doubted that men must equally yield to women. 11 Is not the basis of right found in pleasure the most complete freedom? But what is pleasurable is by definition not a possession. What is pleasurable is free. Natural wealth is free to everyone on the same principle that women are free to everyone. The pleasure of men, guaranteed by their freedom of access to all women, is itself a natural product like air and water. Certainly it would be unnatural and irrational for an individual male to deny himself pleasure, i.e., to deny himself freedom. Such a denial, moreover, would constitute 63 �exclusivity and egotism, a hoarding, of natural wealth, his own or others. This would be precisely that elitism deplored by antebellum abolitionists and by neoabolitionists. It would be to suppose that one's own special pleasure, like one's own special skill or wit, was his when in fact it is everyone's. In other words, individuals may not discriminate or distinguish egos or persons where pleasure is concerned without contradicting the principle of pleasure itself, thereby committing an act of self-enslavement. Certainly pleasures may be various-in fact, must be so. But pleasure as such, whatever its variations, is common to all. It must be free to all if it is to be free to any. Pleasure or freedom, the opposite of labor or slavery, having no costs, works the same effacement of ego and selfhood in men that male access to women works upon women. This is why love, ego, and self-interest are evils for Sade as they were for John Humphrey Noyes. Again Sade, however, is far ahead of most contemporary neoabolitionists. It is only in recent times that the possibilities of "sex without love" have begun to expose themselves to radical scholarship.52 Sade realized that "love ... is no more a title [to a man or a woman], ... and cannot serve the happiness of others, and it is for the sake of ... happiness ... that women have been given to us."53 Sade was not affected by elitism. He was its constant enemy. Moreover, as pleasure is the instrument to cure men of egotism, it is especially effective in the hands of women who are, in Sade's view, capable of greater pleasure, hence of greater freedom and selflessness than men. "Women [have] been endowed with considerably more violent penchants for carnal pleasure then we," Sade contends.54 For this reason he considers it necessary to say, al want laws [sic?] permitting them to give themselves to as many men as they see fit. .. [U]nder the special clause prescribing their surrender to all who desire them, there must be subjoined another guaranteeing them a similar freedom to enjoy all they deem worthy to satisfy them."55 Laws, it appears, are instruments of permission. But why laws at all in the reign of freedom and pleasure? Sade has a special conception of laws in mind. Sade yokes the seeming extremes of absolute liberty and abject tyranny in a perfect mutuality. Of course this is possible only in the realm of the pleasure-made man who has donated his selfish ego for a better human future. The drift of Sade' s thinking leads one to suspect that he is about to counsel the effacement of man as such and the merging of the human with the natural in a kind of species cannibalism. Perhaps the refusal to go beyond a hint of this possibility is the only concession Sade makes to his reader in Philosophy in the Bedroom. Describing the sexual, and the transsexual, meshing and entwining of bodies and beings, of "all parts of the body" among "all sexes, all ages, all creatures possible," Sade calls finally for an annihilation of every possible distinction among hurrians. 56 Here is equality. It is a doctrine of salvation. Sade calls for an engorging of the human by 64 the rest of nature. Celebrating the immortalizing effects of a kind of enmaggoting of the human, Sade makes no distinction between humanity and plants and animals. Sade announces his ontological contribution in a formula characteristic of the modern liberator as suffering servant. "The philosopher," he says, "does not flatter small human vanities ... [but in the] ever ... burning pursuit of truth," he utters huge veriti~s regardless of the consequences and the squeals of conformists. 57 Because the truth is philosophic, that is, because it is an action idealized, or philosophy in the bedroom, a disquisition can do no better than ask, and with a rhetorical sneer, how anyone dares to suppose that man is different from a rat or a manure pile. "What is man?" Sade inquires, jjand what difference is there between him ... and all other animals of the world?"" In fact man is reducible to his physical being. But this is no bad thing. Far from it. Man's natural condition is the source of the greatest liberation of all. Because man is part of nature and does nature's bidding, he is freed from the greatest enslavement. What is more repugnant and more completely contrary to all desire and freedom than death? And what, if not the fear of death, enslaves men to religion, that is, to superstition? Sade proclaimed immortality or liberation from death because he could also proclaim man is liberated from the divine. Above all, immortality is the fitting reward of those who bravely reject the "absurd dogmas, the appalling mysteries, the impossible morality of. .. [Christianity], this disgusting religion." 59 Christianity promises immortality in order to control and limit nature. But just as pleasure is liberation because it is sensual, atheism is knowledge of the highest things because it too is sensual. Atheism is a true judgment because, like "every [true] judgment [it is] the outcome of experience, and experience is only acquired by the . .. senses."60 It is also perfectly obvious that, as man has no beginning except in sex, there· can be "no ... annihilation; what we call the end of the living animal is no longer a true finis, but a simple transformation, a transmutation of matter . ... According to these irrefutable principles, death is hence no more than a change of form, an imperceptible passage from one existence into another ... what Pythagoras called metempyschosis."61 Sex and all allied pleasure insure everlasting life, but it is the orgasmic, not the reproductive aspects of sexuality, which do so. Self-sovereignty, absolute liberty and pleasure having made necessary the elimination of egos, requires as well the abolition of man. But the cost is only pleasure and the reward, or immortality, is the highest pleasure of all. Sade's inversion of Christianity includes necessarily a vision of the good regime since his kingdom is emphatically of this world. The philosopher in the bedroom speaks not only to Frenchmen, whom he urges to make "yet another effort if they would be republicans"; he speaks as well to the "legislator" whom he also openly addresses in the course of his essay as you. 62 He speaks to us. AtnlJNUN/~UNlllR 1982-83 �.i The republican regime of liberty is unquestionably a regime of laws. It is already clear that the freedom of women is to be assured by laws. But radical individualism and self-sovereignty are manifestly incompatible with laws in the accepted sense. How could one possibly "devise as many laws as there are men," asks Sade. He answers by promising that laws shall "be lenient, and so few in num· her, that all men, of whatever character, can easily observe them."63 Laws must suit the variations of people, their tastes es· pecially. Laws must be particular, not general; they must be value-free. But of course there is a universality in this version of law, namely every case is special. The man above the law or the philosopher is here everyman. And unlike the classic philosopher, the lawgiver, everyman, conceived by Sa de denies nothing to himself in the way of pleasures. Indeed, law is solely for the sake of pleasure. The purpose of law so conceived is to incite passions and indulgences, not to control them. This is all there is of virtue and law in Sade. He explains why the law, in the accepted view, is unfair, that is, unjust to human nature·. His rationale proceeds in light of a dialectic of sorts to the effect that man has a nature, but in a special sense. Man has no fixed nature. "It has been pointed out that there are certain virtues whose practice is impossible for certain men ... ," Sa de begins. Since this is so, he continues, "would it not be to carry your injustice beyond all limits were you to send the law to strike the man incapable of bowing to the law?"64 What kind oflaws should the republican regime devise? What meaning might law have at all? Sa de's answer is a model of the bourgeois radical's vision of the liberation of individuals. "The legislator ... must never be concerned with the effect of that crime which strikes only the individual."65 In other words the republican regime, which sets about to liberate the individual and to fashion laws for him particularly, is now to be unconcerned about individuals and care only for itself, the state. Sade describes here what Kojeve commends as the universal and homogeneous state, the state that has the appearance of having attained Marxist communism. 66 This is the realm in which we are to witness what Rousseau called a "change ... [of] human nature ... transforming each individual, who by himself is a perfect and solitary whole, into a part of a much greater whole."67 The objective of law in such a state is the enlargement of the public sphere and the destruction of the private sphere in the name of and for the sake of the individual's liberty. But this object is no other than the widest horizon of pleasure or liberty, namely the elimination of all distinctions and exclusivities. The object of law is equality. This object, Sade realized (much before Tocque· ville and with less evidence for his inferences), demands the destruction of what sociologists call mediate institutions. This destruction is to be done by the omnicompetent state in the name of liberty, a procedure that must enhance the power of the state and its reputation as the source of benevolence. "Equality," said Tocqueville at the THE ST. JOHNS REVIEW conclusion of his famous study of 1835, "prompts men to think of one sole uniform and strong government. ... In the dawning centuries of democracy, individual indepen· dence and local liberties will always be the products of art. Centralized government will be the natural thing."68 Historians, who have of course paid great attention to Tocqueville, have wondered if Tocqueville considered this tendency benign or malevolent. Sa de is not ambiguous on this point. He considered this tendency Sadean. It remains only to address the vestiges of exclusivity and inequality, of elitism, in the residual superstructure oflife. Sade turns to this subject with relish. Because ego and selfishness are melted in the furnace of pleasure and all sexual or natural distinctions turn to ashes, the state must do its part to extinguish all derived distinctions. Sade encourages with vigor the work of man's compulsory education. Surely life is the absolute possession of the state, first of all. A human being who does not possess a self cannot be said to possess life either. Rather he "possesses," as aspects of his (more properly "its") immortality as matter, those feelings and functions which he shares with all other humans and indeed with all nature. The urge of self-preservation, for example, does not convey a right to self-preservation in the individual. This right is the state's. In fact Sa de's position that "the freest of people are they who are most friendly to murder" further underlines his ideal of liberation of the self from egotism.69 The instinct for self preservation is in Sa de's view outmoded. Moreover, it is man's finitude or death that justifies Sa de's reasoning on all forms of murder. Murder, infanticide, and abortion result from the principle that severs the relation of sex and reproduction. All of these murderings sever man from the divine or eternity. Sade writes: "If all individuals were possessed of eternal life, would it not become impossible for Nature to create any new ones? If Nature denies eternity to beings, it follows that their destruction is one of her laws." 70 The logic of these sentences, in addition to licensing all murder that will cut the connections of sex and reproduction, is that the state may murder at will just as it may create at will. "Every individual born lacking the qualities to become useful. .. has no right to live, and the best thing ... is to deprive him of life the moment he receives it." Likewise the state may "prevent the arrival. .. of a being."71 Undoubtedly the independence, the freedom and equality of each being, warrants such measures. These measures will appear harsh only in the eyes of those individuals who persist in selfish and egotistical ways. The source of selfpossession is vanity, after all. Rousseau was not the only one to see that the absence of freedom, that is, dependence, means vanity and egotism. Sade simply decreed dependence a crime against freedom, its contradiction. The extinction of what the American communist John Humphrey Noyes called the "I spirit" can mean only that the I who acts and speaks must be We. Elimination of egos or creation of the we spirit is critical to the interdepen· 65 �dence of the community and to the freedom of all to do what they desire to do. A weeding' out of those who are dependent because they cannot participate in their own liberation and that of others, while superficially an act of cruelty, is in the larger view an act of magnanimity. Sade does not flatter small vanities. The truth is that the elimination of useless individuals is a function of free· dam. "It is not unjust," Sade proclaims, that "the human species ... be purged from the cradle; what you foresee as useless to society is what must be stricken out of it."72 Of course uselessness is defined only by whatever suits the ruler's pleasure. First of all men and women must be made to give way to others without qualifications of any sort, and as all must yield their egos to pleasure, so government must enforce these activities and promote them. In addition to providing free and certainly compulsory state education (Sade understood the necessity of compulsory and free education in a regime founded in equality and freedom), the legislator must encourage every effort in the direction of freedom and equality .73 The government must promote the most complete independence of every individual, the freedom of each person. As we have already seen, the state shall encourage theft as an instrument of equalization. Much more important, the state must prohibit those activities with a tendency to establish vanity. Offenses tending to inhibit sexual indulgences must be rooted out and punished with utmost severity. The government for its part will establish "various stations, cheerful [and] sanitary" for the satisfaction of every possible lust. "The laws ... will oblige [women] ... to prostitute themselves ... [This] is ... the most equitable of laws ... all egotistical sentiments quite aside."74 What other law could be more useful to freedom? But the fundamental purpose of the state's provisions for individual freedom is "absolutely destroying all marital bonds."75 Because sexual activity is not for the sake of reproduction but serves the opposite purpose, suicide, murder, annihilation, and nothingness are as much to be encouraged as other pleasures. Incest, for example, is a new virtue: "It loosens family ties .... [It] ought to be every government's law."76 Sade means it must not simply be permitted. It must be forced. Whereas certain ancient gnostics, seeking to free men from the body, urged activities designed to extinguish human life, Sade put sex in the service of these goals. Offspring are not only an annoyance rightfully to be disposed of, they are an affront to pleasureseeking liberators. Only the state is the creator of beings. Sade turned the business of reproduction over to the state, to "you", the legislator, much as Noyes took this task upon himself at Oneida. In other words, the creation of human beings is taken from men and women in the name of their liberation. This reverses the way of civilization as well as the first commandment gi'(en to men in the book of Genesis to multiply and replenish the earth. Opposite principles are set in their place. These are the substitution of man's power for God's power, finitude and mortality for infinitude and immortality; above all death for life. 66 Sade invites a new view of children, thus of being. HThere are no longer born, as fruits of the woman's plea- sure, anything but children to whom knowledge of their father is absolutely forbidden." Children, instead of "belonging to only one family ... must be ... purely les enfants de Ia patrie."77 The formation of a family of man, deriving from the "annihilation" of the traditional family, is the special duty of republics. Every individual must have no other dam than the nation . .. from her alone all must be expected. Do not suppose you are fashioning good republicans so long as children, who ought to belong solely to the republic, remain immured in their families. By extending to the family, to a restricted number of persons, the portion of affection they ought to distribute amongst their brothers, they inevitably adopt those persons' sometimes very harmful prejudices; such children's opinions, their thoughts, are particularized, malformed, and the virtues of a Man of the State become completely inaccessible to them . .. [Those who], love ... their children less but their country more [are most free ].78 Sade's reference here to "particularism" summarizes his thinking. As a quintessential bourgeois radical for whom particularism means tribalism, egotism, and selfishness, Sade proposes instead the family of m,an. But we have just seen in Sa de's essay that the core of the family of man lies with the reduction of philosophy to action, in particular to sexual action. Sade's purpose reverses the meaning of philosophy in two ways. Philosophy distinguishes act and contemplation; Sade combines them by reducing thought to act. He is pragmatic. Philosophy regards thought as universal and action as particular; Sade insists upon the opposite. But acts cannot be universal. They are particular. Sade's inversion of philosophy, his reduction of it to action is profitably compared to the betterknown efforts of Marx and Hegel, the materialist and the idealist, who also attempted to transpose the realm of philosophy to action, to history. Marx and Hegel, as we know, invested history with meaning, that is, with philosophy or universality. Kojeve has described this as making the concept equal to time.79 Sade also made this equation but with a difference. This difference is the institutional substance of that reality Kojeve thought he found in America as the attainment of Marxist communism. Sade equates the concept (philosophy) with time as pleasure. In other words he equates the concept with temporality, with every moment of time. The meaning of such an equation in practice would be the eternal present or the realm of freedom. Philosophy in the bedroom is then a universal language or the language of bees. The author is pleased to acknowledge the assistance of the Earhart Foundation in the preparation of this essay. l. Alexandre Kojeve, Introduction to the Reading of Hegel, Lectures on the Phenomenology of the Spirit, Ithaca 1969, 159-61. Note to the Sec· ond Edition. AUTUMN/WINTER 1982-83 �2. Lev Navrozov, Letter to the Editor, Commentary 73 June 1982, 16. 3. Kojeve, Introduction, 161. Note to the Second Edition, 159-60. 4. Fitzhugh's chief work is Cannibals All! or Slaves Without Masters, ed., and with an introduction by C. Vann Woodward, Boston, 1960 (1856). For a brief survey of his ideas see the present writer's "The Proslavery Roots of Socialist Thought," The Conservative Historians' Forum 6 1982, 14-21. 5. Karl Marx, "Private Property and Communism," in T. B. Bottomore, Karl Marx Early Writings, New York 1964, 166. 6. Richard Seaver and Austryn Wainhouse, eds., The Marquis de Sade, The Complete Justine, Philosophy in the Bedroom and Other Writings, New York 1965, viii, v. 7. Friedrich Engels. "The Book of Revelations," in Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels, Works [in Russian] Moscow-Leningrad 1928-48, xvi, pt. 1, 160. I am indebted to Joseph Dwyer, deputy curator, Hoover Institution, for this citation. 8. For example, David Brion Davis, who is the leading as well as quintessential abolitionist historian. See his The Problem of Slavery in the Age of Revolution 1770-1823, Ithaca 1975,468. 9. David Brion Davis, "Ante-Bellum Reform," in Frank Otto Gatell and Allen Weinstein, American Themes, &says in Historiography, New York 1968, 153. 10. A recent work in literary criticism is Jane Gallop, Intersections. A Reading of Sade with Bataille, Blanchot, and Klossowski, Lincoln, Neb 1981. 11. Karl Marx to R. Kreuznach in Robert C. Tucker, ed., The MarxEngels Reader, New York 1972, 8. 12. Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels, Manifesto of the Communist Party, in Tucker ed., The Marx·Engels Reader 360. 13. J. F. C. Harrison, Quest for the New Moral World, New York 1969, 59. 14. Eugene D. Genovese, The World the Slaveholders Made, Two Essays in Interpretation, New York, 1969, 176. 15. Marx, "Private Prop~rty and Communism," 166. 16. Fitzhugh, Cannibals All!, 21 and following. Stephen Pearl Andrews, The Science of Society, New York 1851,76. 17. Andrews, The Science of Society, 81. 18. Karl Marx, "Private Property and Communism," 166. 19. Kojeve, Introduction, 159, note 6. 20. Sade, Philosophy in the Bedroom, 313-14. 21. Sade, Bedroom, 304. 22. Bedroom, 192. 23. Bedroom, 363, 365. 24. Kojeve, Introduction, 247. 25. Sade, Bedroom, 339. 26. Eric Voegelin, From Enlightenment to Revolution, Durham, N.C. 1975, 299. 27. Charles Nordhoff, The Communistic Societies of the United States, New York 1875, 292. 28. Sade, Bedroom, 304. 29. Marx, "Private Property and Communism," 166. 30. Kojeve, Introduction, 258. 31. Sade, Bedroom, 299, 300, 301. 32. Seaver and Wainhouse, The Marquis de Sade, viii. THE ST. JOHNS REVIEW 33. Based on Irving Kristol, "Taxes, Poverty, and Equality," Public In· terest 37, 1974, 25. 34. Sade, Bedroom, 325. 35. Blanche Glassman Hersh, The Slavery of Sex, Urbana 1978, 225. 36. Hersh, Slavery, 225. 37. Walter M. Merill, ed., The Letters of William Lloyd Garrison 6 vo1s., Boston 1971-1981, III 148, lV 387. 38. Fitzhugh, Cannibals Alll, 95. 39. Fred Dallmayr, Twilight of Subjectivity: Contributions to a PostIndividualist Theory of Politics, Amherst,-Mass. 1981. 40. Joel Feinberg, Rights, Justice, and the Bounds of Liberty: Essays on Social Philosophy, Princeton 1980, xii. 41. Sade, Bedroom, 317. 42. Bedroom, 318. 43. Bedroom, 318. 44. Bedroom, 318 45. Bedroom, 319. 46. Bedroom, 319, note 15. 47. Bedroom, 319, note 15 48. Andrews, The Science-of Society, 77. 49. Sade, Bedroom, 319. 50. Bedroom, 319, note 15. 51. Bedroom, 316. 52. Russell Vannoy, Sex Without Love: A Philosophical Exploration, New York 1980. 53. Sade, Bedroom, 319. 54. Bedroom, 321. 55. Bedroom, 321. 56. Bedroom, 321, 316. 57. Bedroom, 329. 58. Bedroom, 329. 59. Bedroom, 298. 60. Bedroom, 304. 61. Bedroom, 330-l. 62. Bedroom, 316, 317, 325. 63. Bedroom, 310. 64. Bedroom, 310. 65. Bedroom, 312. 66. Kojeve, Introduction, 139 and elsewhere. 67. Jean-Jacques Rousseau, The Social Contract, ed., Charles Frankel, New York 1947, 36. 68. Alexis de Tocqueville, Democracy in American, ed., J.P. Mayer and Max Lerner, New York 1966, 649. 69. Sade, Bedroom, 333. 70. Bedroom, 3 30. 71. Bedroom, 335 note 20, 336. 72. Bedroom, 336. 73. Bedroom, 321-2. 74. Bedroom, 316, 319-20. 75. Bedroom, 322. 76. Bedroom, 324. 77. Bedroom, 322. 78. Bedroom, 335, 321-2. 79. Kojeve, Introduction, 100-149. 67 �Meetings, Recognitions Meyer Liben 1 - - - How do you know him? - - - Oh, we met about a month ago at a party, at a friend's house, he didn't know anybody there, he had just moved into the city-he's from out West somewheres-and came with a girl who was a friend of the hostess, really of the host's wife, that was more the effect, met the girl through a fellow he used to go to college with, I think they roomed together for a year and then he (I mean the one you're asking about) switched to another school, didn't like the place or maybe it was his marks, anyway he's in some phase of T.V., or maybe he just watches it a lot, I don't know him very well, we just met him at this party, and hardly spoke to him at all. 2 - - - I didn't know that you knew him. - - - Oh yes, we met about seven years ago, one of those relationships where, if you pass in the street, you nod without talking, never quite sure whether she remem· bers who you are or not (or sometimes imagining that she thinks about you quite often, covering the interest with a nod) and then when someone mentions her name you say: Oh I know her slightly, or, after a while: I've met her but don't really know her, I think we actually met at the beach, she was with mutual friends, people I'm still friends with, tho I've never seen her with them again, you know how it is at the beach, everything stands in the way of real contact, the ocean's vastness, solar somnolence, we're all half·naked and insignificant, the meetings are unreal, so you nod, faintly, when you pass in the street, or say: We've met, but I don't really know her. 3 - - - I didn't know you knew them. - - - Are you kidding? We've known them for years, we don't see them as much as we used to, they used to live across the street from us on 84th Street, that was before Meyer Liben's (1911-1975) collection of short stories, Street Games and Other Stories will appear in 1983 (Schocken Books). Justice Hunger and Nine Stories appeared in 1967 (Dial Press). His stories have often appeared in the St. John's Review Ouly 1980, Summer 1981, Winter 1981). 68 the West Side was making its comeback, the kids used to play together, and we used to visit back and forth, naturally see each other in the park. Then they moved, and we moved. For a while (especially when we were still on the old block) we'd see each other, but now I don't know, maybe they moved into another bracket or something, not that they're highhat or anything, anyway we kind of drifted apart once we were in neighborhoods to which the other was strange, we know them at least sixteen years, lived on the same block for let's see, nine years, our kids practically grew up together. 4 - - - How did you meet? - - - It was a foggy day, I was standing on the beach, looking out into the mist, and she suddenly appeared from the water, pretty weird, because I'd been there for about an hour, and hadn't seen anyone, but we didn't talk, and I actually met her a week later at a friend's house, we recog· nized one another right off, but we never have said any· thing about that first meeting, I'm pretty sure it was the same girl, I mean how can you forget, under the circum· stances? 5 I don't really remember how we met, I mean I don't remember the exact occasion, it's funny how the exact moment of meeting tends to be forgotten, we can place it by years, or season, or place, but things seem to conspire against the exact moment, maybe it's because we rarely meet a person for the first time, but have seen him, at a distance, on a number of occasions, or have heard about him, so the first meeting is blurred by those views from a distance, or by the previous mention, and it becomes quite impossible to pin down. 6 I can tell you the exact moment that I met her, I came down to the dock with a friend, and she was sitting there with a group of youngsters, reading, that was absolutely the first time that I laid eyes on her, never saw her in a back· ground of other figures, had never heard her name men· AU1UMN/WINTER 1982-83 �boned, that was absolutely the first contact, when I came down to the dock, a meeting of str~ngers, loveliest and purest of all meetings. 7 The first time we met we didn't seem to have very much interest in one another, but then we met for the second time and fell very much in love, and as the years went by, remembered that as the first meeting, but it wasn't it was really the second meeting, and we've put the first meeting out of mind, as tho we're ashamed not to have fallen ih love then, but that was really the important meeting, for had we not met then, the second meeting would have meant nothing at all, we're both sure of that, and yet we keep forgetting that first meeting and think only of the second meeting, when we fell in love, but not as strangers. 8 He claims that he knows me, tells me exactly where we met, at whose house, the company present, what was said, even the actual date, but I don't remember him at all, know that I never saw him in my life, and the more pre· cise he is in his details, the surer I am that I never saw him, tho I have been at the house where he claims we met, been at parties there, and if indeed he was there on an occasion when I was there, then all I can say is that our meet· ing created absolutely no impression, so that it's as tho I never met him, but is it really possible to meet a person and have absolutely not the slightest remembrance, is it possible that his recollection is accurate (but I know that I've never seen him) that things happen to people, and then it's as tho they never happened? 9 We've met, we know one another, we used to see one another as parts of a group (I don't mean as individuals who also happened to be part of a group), and we occa· sionally meet now, for we work in the same area, but it doesn't mean a thing, in the sense that we have no inter· est in one another, no concern; if one of us died, the other would shrug condolingly, part of the news of the day; there's an edge of hostility, but not enough to create real interest, and all in all it would have been much better had we never met at all, for our connection is a kind of waste of human energy, we have nothing to say to one another, and have learned nothing from one another (such things happen) except the knowledge that we ought never to have met, call it, if you will, one of Fate's discards. 10 I had actually met him in the park, we were intro· duced by a random acquaintance, but then we met a few weeks later in the company of my husband and his wife (I mean to say that I was with my husband and he was with his wife), we were introduced and acted as tho this was the first time we had ever met, but I don't quite understand why we acted that way, because our first meeting had been casual, and, how shall we say: innocent? THE ST. JOHNS REVIEW 11 You know how it is when you meet a person you haven't seen for maybe 40 years, since you were in the same elementary school class, you recognize him immediately, but make no sign because you are not sure that he has recognized you, tho it is entirely possible that he has recognized you and passes you by because he thinks you have not recognized him, at any rate you pass one another by, maybe both of you knowing that you have recognized one another and both chary of picking up the ancient strand. 12 - - - I thought that you were old friends. - - - Oh, we used to be old friends. 13 How we met? A blind date-you know, one of those dates where I'm wearing a grey suit, red tie, and you're wearing a yellow dress and what color necklace would go with yellow, and then we stand in the lobby and look around wonderingly or anxiously, and then we recognize the color combines, but that is not the true recognition, the way it is after a long, grim, separation, or the way it is when eyes meet for the first time, and bring old dreams to life. 14 We met just once and I've never seen her since, and you can carry an impression like that for a long time, for it will not be sullied by experience, but buried warm and secretive, lives its own life. 15 We met just once, and I can tell you exactly where and when. It was four years ago, on New Year's Eve, at the home of a person, who, it turned out, neither one of us knew. We got into a bitter argument, over immortality, he held that it is morally indefensible even to discuss the question, being an escape from reality and from the demands of terrestrial life. That was the only time I ever saw him, I'm sorry to hear of his death. I usually remember people by what we talk about, but in this case it was not only the topic of conversation, it was also the time, the occasion, I don't think I've ever forgotten any person I've ever met on New Year's Eve. 16 We neither one of us recognized the other, but as we spoke, it turned out that we came from the same neighborhood, and then we discovered that we had gone to the same school, and then it turned out that we were in the same class for a year, there was no question about it, we double-checked graduation dates, etc., we recalled (he admiringly, I with reverse emotion) our teacher, a number of the kids in the class-there was no one not remembered by both of us-various episodes in which we had both apparently participated, but we did not remember one another at all, looked at each other blankly as we recalled the childhood scenes we had lived through together. 17 It's kind of a joke between us, we argue about it, she claims that we met, briefly, at a friend's house about two weeks before my recollection of the time we met, at a 69 �cocktail party which she too recalls very well, but I don't remember the first occasion at all: and every now and then (jokingly) she reminds me of that earlier occasion, saying that she apparently didn't make much of a first impression on me, but I frankly don't remember seeing her, I stayed at the party for only a few moments, she was probably in a corner, out of sight, we joke about it, I say she was probably absorbed in an interesting conversation with some handsome gent, cornered off, but she says she definitely saw me, even remembers the suit I wore (blue serge), we joke about it, she brings it up at argumentative moments, and as the years go by, fills in more and more details of that party, that party seems to be more important to her than any social event of her life, she is constantly adding figures to it, coming up with new scraps of conver- stantial than you might think, more than air, but we could be in the same room and not recognize one another (much harder if we were in different rooms), in fact, after all these years-we've done an awful lot of business together-I'm kind of scared to meet him, the voice has become disembodied, spectral almost, I really don't want to meet him, I hope the occasion never arises, I don't want to bring that familiar voice and that strange body together, I just hope that our relationship remains telephonic, friendly, faintly personal. become celebrities, I was there for just a couple of minutes, being late for a dinner date, but I know I didn't see her there, sometimes I wonder if I actually was at the party, if only I could prove that I wasn't. 22 What bothers him, you see, is that I met his wife before he did, I met her almost a year before he did, I don't know why that should annoy him as much as it does, but it doe~ annoy him, it upsets him in fact, it isn't as tho I went out with her seriously (but even if I had, why should that upset him?), we were friendly, and apparently he keeps throwing it up to her, he seems to blame her for my knowing her before he did, I can't understand his attitude, of course I met her first, it was at least a year before he met her, it might have been more than a year, but what of it, 18 You have to be of a certain age before you meet people, otherwise you see them or are exposed to them, the way it is with children and parents, no formal introduc- lance, absolutely no other kind of priority is involved, why does he make such a big deal of the fact that I knew his wife before he did, met her perhaps two years before he did? sation, new interpersonal connections, nuances of the be· havior of strangers, comments on people who have since it's just a matter of chronology, it's of no intrinsic impor· tions necessary. 19 I'm very pleased to meet you, it was very nice to have met you, haven't we met before, don't I know you from somewhere, it was very interesting to have made your acquaintance, I trust we'll see each other again soon, I didn't quite catch your name, I hope this will have proved to be the beginning of a long and fruitful relationship, I've looked forward to this for years, it's a great thrill to shake the hand of the man who, h'ya, how do you do, sir, I trust this will have proved to be, an unexpected pleasure, I didn't quite catch the name. 20 He says that he doesn't know her, in the sense that he doesn't know her name, or anything at all about her, but that their eyes met across the room, and he feels in that sense (not the Biblical) he knows her, in fact he says that when he meets anyone (particularly an attractive girl) he prefers not to know anything about her, in that way, he contends, he is not distracted from the essential, the real presence, and he knows this girl, he says, by the mixing of the glances. 21 One of those telephonic connections-we've had occasion to speak to one another for some twenty years now, business-wise, his voice is as familiar to me as that of my closest friends, hut I've never seen him, we're very friendly on the phone, not quite personal, of course I've built up some notion of what he looks like, building a body from a voice, of course the sound of a voice is more sub- 70 23 How do I know her? In the ancient meaning of the word. As a youth, in a great midwestern university (name disclosed on request), we went off, on a Saturday night, for a little fun in town, .rounded the bars, and then wound up in a house of prostitution, poorly reputed, the address of which one of us had unbelievably remembered from a conversation he had overheard between two seniors two weeks back, and that woman was my bed-mate, I imagine that's her husband next to her, she's put on weight, but I recognized her immediately, I doubt if she remembers me, do you think she would, after all these years, I don't think we even spoke at the time. 24 He has a very odd habit when he meets ehildren of bowing in a very grave and courtly manner, shaking the hand of the boy, kissing the hand of the girl; the children tend to be very impressed, they feel the importance of a first meeting, they like something to be made of it, for these are strange figures, coming from a distance. 25 Having met for the first time, and now taking our departure, we say: nice to have met you, or: very pleased to make your acquaintance, or: it was a pleasure meeting you, or: very nice meeting you. 26 When he meets you, it is not like one meeting you for the first time, and either glad or sorry for the opportunity, but rather he is sizing you up for some reason which you cannot comprehend-as a prospective buyer (or a proAUTUMN /WINTER 1982-83 �spective friend), as a subsidiary character in a novel he is working on (or the main character in an unwritten novel), as a most·wanted criminal, as a sexual rival, he looks care· fully at the cut of your clothes, tries to figure out your income, the state of your health, your weaknesses and strong points, not at all interested in making your acquaintance. 27 I'm sorry, you're making a mistake, I don't know you at all, you're mistaking me for someone else, absolutely a case of mistaken identity, no, I've never seen you in my life before, you're confusing me with another person, it's possible that the resemblance is there, no I don't have a twin sister, I've never been in Detroit, I never went to George Washington High School, I never spent a summer in a camp near Berlin, New Hampshire, I never worked in Kresges, I never went to summer school at the University of Washington, never been on a cruise to Haiti, I've hardly been anywheres, and you definitely don't know me, this is positively the first time that you've ever seen me. 28--- It was very embarrassing, she said, I went up to him, thinking that he was my old teacher, my old favorite teacher, then as soon as I said hello and introduced myself, I saw that I had made a mistake, that at close range he didn't resemble my teacher at all, tho he seemed to from a distance, I guess I must have been thinking about him, anyway this fellow was pretty fresh, I guess he thought I was introducing myself because I was attracted to him, or something, anyway he was very nasty and suggestive, and I walked off fast, there couldn't be any two people more unlike than this man and my old teacher. 29 Have you ever noticed how two children act when they meet for the first time? But of course you have, what man yields to what other man when it comes to closeness of observation, we all of us note the most delicate nuances, the slightest tremors of change or novelty, seismographers all, so you've certainly noticed how two children, small ones, act when they meet for the first time, and I am talking here of the relief they experience in meeting a person of the same height, they look straight ahead, they do not have to look up (that looking up is the primary cause of all future neck troubles, orthopedists' bonanza) the strain is taken out of their world view, and then too there is that joyful recognition of the contemporary (for only contemporary peers understand one another), no talking down, no struggling to make yourself understood (seeking neither the disciple nor the sage) and that accounts for the way they move apart from the first movement (the way it is when things are too good to be true) and then they joyfully turn to one another and begin-joyfully-to wreck Paradise. THE ST. JOHNS REVIEW 30 Their hands clasped, one was dry, one was clammy, their eyes met, one pair frank, open, the other conniving, sly, they spoke, one straightforwardly, to the point, the other circuitously, avoiding the issue, but do not think that (in this introductory meeting) the dry hand, the frank eyes and the straightforward speaking style belonged to one of the men, because there was a division (obviously unequal). 31 Last night, for the first time, I met Death, in the naturalist, the Lucretian manner. Exhausted, I fell asleep after dinner, but as is my habit, I heard and was aware of all the significant events in my household-the phone ringing, the sibling quarrel, the peal of laughter-! heard the bell ring and knew that my daughter's escort had arrived, I heard another child leave for her party, I heard the familiar introduction to the T.V. program, telling me the time, but asleep nevertheless, and then I fell deeper asleep, and in that sleep heard nothing, not the voice of my wife reading our youngest to sleep, not the 11 o'clock voice of Ron Cochran, I did not hear the one child return and did not hear the other return, did not hear the front door open and close, or the Frigidaire open and close (formerly known as raiding the pantry), did not hear the silence of the house asleep, the milkman's approach and departure, awoke to greet (without ceremonial) the dawn of a glorious summer day, realizing, the way it is when you meet Death in the Lucretian manner, that life goes on, and you not aware (maybe not even aware that you were not aware). 32 It was pretty funny-we passed each other in the middle of the block, looked at one another, with that air of vague familiarity just short of recognition, went on, both looked back, the recognition on the tip of the unconscious, and when we reached our respective corners, we turned around and rushed back, meeting again in the middle of the block, crying out each other's names, in an orgy of delayed recognition. 33 I've seen the oddest things in the way of introductions-a man forgetting the name of his oldest friend, his mind an absolute blank, until his friend (luckily remembering his own name) announces it; a woman introducing 24 people-half of whom she had met for the first time, skipping 14 people mutually known-in drumfire order to the most recent arrival at a party; a man introducing himself by a wrong name, or introducing an arrival by the introducer's name; a woman introducing her husband by her lover's name, a man introducing his third wife to her first husband; a man who introduces people by names and occupation; and other oddities at the moment of bringing strangers together. 71 �Achilles In Memoriam: John Downes His heel, just a palm-full when She held him there, now is gone As far as body can; arch-ended, Is walked under stone. Annapolis (1909-1926) Myth will recall what bone Forgets: so heroes burn In their own flame desired beyond all, 0 beyond beauty, beyond love. All changed now, all he looked At, even what he never truly saw: Monuments, ribs of old ships Stuck through sand; ribs of cattle. And culled across an open mouthed sky Birds chirp at breakfast. Their acid Droppings scald the outraged marble, toppled Capitals of such and such a style, Rubbed to ether, to cinders of A pureness so intense the hands melt Touching them. Silence like a blade's Unfelt acuity parts flesh from blood. Never under the sun did a friend Warrant more violence for daring To die first, or lover less faithful Require more deaths for slaking Than such a thirst loosened by dusty War into the shape of sobbing: That lovely throat now dust Itself in no known place, and nowhere known. Above the bay he lies, bone-dead to dreams Protected from desires by flowers and grass, Young Jack asleep whose parents on their way To bed admired an instant by the light of lamps. Deep deep in loam, his grief is uncompared By birds that rise to argent dawn and cloud; This sleeping sailor, narrowed to his name, No legends make him prince, no crown his doom. For in his youth the merry dancers stopped Behind his eyes prepared to scan the sea. The dolphins bright as love removed his life From wave to wave to final silent beach Where enemies and friends alike are good. Not lost at sea but on the land betrayed, To sickness logging down his youth he fell, Landlocked by tides before he shot the sun. His lovers, now already less than strangers, Like stars, like drifting wood, like tides, Curve through the night-course of his memory Remembering him who cannot say their names. 0 may his death be brief, appear no more Than banks of cloud between whose clearing poles The hill he lies in, with its flags and stones, Moves slowly out upon the unsafest wave. LAURENCE JOSEPHS Laurence Josephs teaches English at Skidmore College. His poems have appeared in the St. John's Review (Autumn '81, Winter '82). AUTUMN /WINTER 1982-83 �The Lost Continent The Conundrum of Christian Origins Joel Carmichael The countless thousands of books devoted to Christian origins, including hundreds and thousands of lives of Jesus and Paul, while deploying a vast amount of scholarship in a variety of fields, are all obliged to concentrate, finally, on a very small number of documents: the New Testament (essentially the Four Gospels and Paul's Letters) and the works of F1avius Josephus, especially The Jewish War. Aside from these, the number of references to Jesus and to early Christianity fill no more than a handful of lines. The .critical analysis of Christian origins began only two centuries ago: until very recently it was hampered in its criticism by preconceptions that even conscientious schol· ars were unaware of. In the case of Jesus and Paul it has been difficult to escape from the bondage of tradition, which is itself the product of the documentation under examination. It took many generations of scholarship before it was possible to discuss seriously what was really obvious at first glance: if Jesus had been executed by the Romans for sedition, might he not, in fact, have been a rebel against Rome? The reluctance to ask this simple question is all the more surprising since Hermann Reimarus, the first critical student of the historic Jesus, flatly laid it down in the eighteenth century th"t the Kingdom of God agitation carried Among his many books, Joel Carmichael has written important studies of Trotsky and Stalin, Trotsky (New York, St. Martin's Press 1975) and Stalin's Masterpiece (New York, St. Martin's Press 1976). He translated the memoirs of N. N. Sukhanov (The Russian Revolution 1917, Oxford 1952), the only full-length eyewitness account of the February and October events in Russia in 1917. First published in 1963, his Death of Jesus appeared in a new edition in 1982 (New York, Horizon Press). In 1980 his study of Paul, Steh auf und rufe Seinen Namen, Paulus, Erwecker der Christen und Prophet der Heiden, appeared in German (Munich, C. Bertelsmann). Since 1975 he has been editor of Midstream. The above essay summarizes the conclusions of a new study, The Unrid- dling of Christian Origins. TilE ST. JOHNS REVIEW on by Jesus had a political aim. After Reimarus, however, the question was not to be raised again until our own day, and then only in a few scholarly and semi-scholarly books that have not affected most people. Our sources, taken together, do not create a unified picture: the facts they include must be disentangled from tendency, apologetics, and obscurities, both intentional and unintentional, to allow a real-life picture to emerge. In the case of the Four Gospels, especially, the warp is embedded deep in their very conception and purpose-in the very reason they came into being. There are two factors in the genesis of the First Three Gospels (the historical and chronological basis for our knowledge of Jesus): On the one hand there was a global transformation of perspective between the events of Jesus' own lifetime and the germination of a new belief founded shortly after the crucifixion on Simon the Rock's Vision of Jesus resurrected. On the other hand this shift in perspective was paralleled by a socio-political upheaval-the destruction of the Temple in Jerusalem in 70, the consequent emancipation of the new belief from its institutional restraints, and the concomitant fact that for generations after the destruction of the Temple the new sect of believers in Jesus was opposed by the Jewish elite-the rabbis who had inherited the Pharisee tradition. Thus the writers and editors of the Gospels after the destruction of the Temple, whose belief in the Vision of the Risen Jesus necessarily distorted their view of events beforehand, found it natural to transpose their own contemporary disputes with the rabbis to the lifetime of Jesus, especially since by then the Jews were no longer regarded as targets for conversion and the leaders of the new sect were directing their propaganda at all mankind. Paul's Letters are, of course, by far the oldest source for the history of the earliest phase in the formation of the new sect. But Paul, though a slightly younger contempo- 73 �rary of Jesus, tells us almost nothing of the flesh-and-blood Jesus: he was preoccupied with working out his own ideas concerning the significance of the resurrection of Jesus. The historical material that can be extracted from his Letters is, however, invaluable. The Gospels, too, contain nuggets of historical information, though they were written under the pressure of a specific situation and are biased in a characteristic way. They have, in addition, an ait of timelessness, of motion- lessness, in which Jesus expresses various ideas without the reader being able to see their meaning against an historical background: it is hard to see, from the text alone, just what there was about the Kingdom of God, or about his ideas in general, that could have led to his crucifixion. When we consider, further, that his whole career as outlined in the first three Gospels could scarcely have lasted more than a few weeks, and that the Kingdom of God he proclaims at the outset of all three accounts seems peculiarly abstract and anodyne, we are bound to be baffled. It might be thought that the works of Flavius Josephus, which cover a lengthy period before the Roman-Jewish War, would fill in all this background. And for anyone studying the first century of the Roman Empire they are, indeed, indispensable. Josephus was an aristocratic priest, and a commander in the war against Rome. After defecting to the Romans during the war he became an outstanding propagandist of the Flavian dynasty that came out of it victorious. The Church Fathers took over the texts of Josephus's works very early on-he died at the end of the first century-because it was the only account covering this densely packed epoch and because it served as a vehicle for a very early forgery designed to make Josephus a "witness" to the supernatural status of Jesus, a forgery whose blatancy, while obvious in any dispassionate examination, was not exposed until the sixteenth century. Josephus has become a special subject: specialists concentrate on fine points called for by each one's specialty. By segregating Josephus's chronicles within a special area of biased, though recondite, scholarship, and by projecting its own version of events as exclusively authoritative, Church tradition insulated the whole era against empirical enquiries. Josephus's account is packed with action and personalities: it conveys unmistakably the throb of life in Palestine for the generations preceding the outbreak of the RomanJewish War. It is steeped in blood: murders, revolts, cruelty, rapacity, cataclysms of all kinds are intertwined. Grinding oppression on the part of the Romans, desperate uprisings on the part of the Jewish Kingdom of God activists, against a background of well-nigh total corruption, ferocity, and deceit, are routine. His descriptions provide a blanket contrast with the eerie calm of the Gospels. The Gospels and the Church tradition founded on them indicate no friction at all between Romans and Jews in Palestine. Everything that happens to Jesus takes place in a Jewish milieu; even his trial before the Roman procu- 74 rator is explained as a Jewish plot. The stateliness of the seemingly simple anecdotes, shot through with camouflaged theological motifs, casts an atmosphere of motionless pageantry over what we know was a most turbulent era. And in our own day the countless books describing the life of Jesus from a traditional point of view make life in Palestine at the time sound well-nigh idyllic. The Gospels suppress any criticism of the Romans. The word itself, indeed, occurs only once (J n ll :48), and the Romans are assigned a role only twice-Pilate himself and the Roman centurion who on seeing Jesus on the cross calls him "Son of God" (Mk 15:39). The Romans, who crucified countless thousands of Jews, so that the cross became the conventional symbol of Jewish resistance to Roman power, go completely unnoticed by the writers and editors of the Gospels. Contrariwise, the Pharisees who were equated with the rabbis, the chief opponents of the nascent sect by the time the Gospels were composed, after the destruction of the Temple, are more or less constantly reviled (though here too numerous indications of the opposite peep through the web of apologetics). It was the global transformation of outlook inherent in the germination of a new belief inspired by Simon the Rock's Vision of the Risen Jesus, reinforced by the reaction of the new sect to the Jewish debacle of 70, that distorted the Gospels systematically: all the basic ideas that had a living context in the life of Jewry beforehandKingdom of God, the Messiah, Son of David, salvationwere wrenched out. of their true context: national insurrection. In Jesus' lifetime not a single day could have passed without some inflammatory incident; the mere presence of the Romans constituted a constant provocation. All of this is glossed over in the Gospels. Nevertheless, the mere fact that Jesus was announcing the Kingdom of God-i.e., a total transformation of the universe in which the pagan powers, pre-eminently Rome, were to be destroyed-together with his execution by the Romans for sedition, irresistibly brings to mind the Kingdom of God agitation that had dominated life in Palestine from the installation of direct Roman administration in 6 A.D. until it brought about the Roman Jewish War in 66, and even later flared up in the abortive Bar Kochba revolt in 132-35. It is evident, in short, that any discussion of Jesus' career, even if it is limited to the Gospels alone, will bring us face to face to face with the Zealots, Kingdom of God activists par excellence. If these diehards were capable of swinging the bulk of the Jewish population of Palestine into the. desperate rebellion against Rome, their mood must have been incubating for a long tiine~losephus' account, dense with real-life detail and vivid characterizations that articulate a long-drawn-out process of alienation leading to a last-ditch insurrection, fills in the background of the Zealot agitation. He has, to be sure, a bias of his own: he comprehen- s AUTUMN/WINTER 1982-83 �sively vilifies the Zealot movement in all its variations, partly in the conviction, no doubt sincere, that the Kingdom of God activists were destroying Jewry and that God himself had favored the Romans by giving them victory, and partly, of course, because he was making propaganda on behalf of his Roman patrons. Nevertheless, the texture of his chronicles is so closeknit that the broad outlines of the Zealot movement, beginning with Judah the Galilean's agitation in 6 A.D., are unmistakable. It is easy to allow, so to speak, for Josephus's bias: when he describes people he calls "thieves" and "brigands" as being tortured to death for refusing to call Caesar "Lord," we are bound to conclude that they could not, after all, have been mere thieves and brigands. Josephus, however, says nothing whatever about Jesus (aside from the forged paragraph mentioned above); he does mention John the Baptist, innocuously, and also Upright Jacob, in a brief and equally innocuous passage. But for the fleshing out of the realities of life in Palestine around this time he is our only source. He is also priceless for the study of the earliest phase of the new belief in Jesus. His chronicle creates an infinitely broader, deeper, and more ramified framework for judging the historical material in Paul's Letters, the Gospels, and the Acts of the Apostles. If we compare Josephus's treatment of the Zealot movement with the treatment given by the Gospels, especially Mark, to the complex of ideas, personalities, and events involved in the Kingdom of God movement, we see a striking parallel. Both, for substantially the same reasons, ignore the true content of the whole movement: Josephus describes the Kingdom of God activists in such a way as to downgrade their ideological, idealistic concerns; the Gospels wholly disregard their political aims, too. Most illustrative of this negative attitude of the Gospels is Jesus' complete silence about the Zealots. The Gospelwriters, intent on whitewashing the Romans and dissociating the nascent sect from any connection with the Kingdom of God activists who, after harassing the Romans for so many decades, had brought about the ferocious war of 66-70, would surely have found it very convenient to set down Jesus' denunciation of the architects of the catastrophe, if he had ever made any. In Rome, especially (where Mark was written during or shortly after the war), some negative remarks attributed to Jesus would have eased the embarrassment of his followers. But since the author, or authors, of Mark could not actually forge anything, they were obliged to disregard the subject altogether; this disregard is all the more striking since they did find, in the reminiscences they had at hand, echoes of Jesus' opinions about real people (Pharisees, HHerodians", even occa~ sionally, Sadduccees). Taken together, however, both Josephus and the Gospels enable us to divine the presence of a remarkably energetic, grandiose movement capacious enough to bring the Jewry of Palestine to destruction during the Roman-Jewish War in 66-70. Both accounts, accordingly, radically TilE ST. JOHNS REVIEW contrasting with each other in all respects, confirm, through this same negative attitude, the existence of a vanished movement that in the desert of our documentation can be pieced together only through analysis. Paul's Letters, taken together with the Gospels and Acts of the Apostles, disclose a 4affling enigma~the dense obscurity overhanging the two decades, roughly 60-80 A.D., between the Letters written by Paul, a real individual, and the anonymous compilations in the Gospels that came into being one by one after the destruction of the Jewish State and Temple in 70. Consciousness of this obscurity allows one to sense a profound, inexplicable, and of course camouflaged contrast between the official version of Christian origins in the Gospels and the realistic glimpses tantalizingly suggested both by Paul's urgent, passionate, real-life struggle, and by the random nuggets of historic actuality embedded in the Gospels themselves. From this point of view the indifference of both church historians and academic scholarship to the fate of the Jesist coterie in Jerusalem, headed by Jesus' brother, is bewildering. If the "Mother Church," in distinction to the Jesist coterie, actually existed before the destruction of the Temple, the total silence of scholarship is incomprehensible: if its leaders had ever had anything self-aware to say it would have been easy and natural for whatever it was to circulate throughout the far-flung Jewish Diaspora. It is obvious that the very concept, "Mother Church," as well as the phrase itself, is a retrojective fiction. Around the middle of the Fifties, that is, the time of the riot occasioned by Paul on the Temple premises, it is possible to infer a crisis in the history of the Jewish state and hence within the coterie of the Jerusalem Jesists. From then on all remains blank; we are thrown back on the evolution of the Zealot crisis that erupted in the Roman War of 66-70, and then, as the earliest documents of the new sect began to be assembled afterwards, beginning with Mark, we can once again see the beginning of a continuity, in which, however, the first phase in the evolution of the new faith~ the lives of Jesus, John the Baptist, Upright Jacob, and Paul himself~is twisted about to conform with the later tradition embodied in Mark, Matthew, Luke, Acts, and John. I have mentioned the omission, suppression, and distortion in the Gospels, and also referred to the nuggets of information embedded in them: there was no question of forging, but of selecting and stressing and, conversely, neglecting. If the Gospels had been fabricated, after all, there would be no way of knowing anything whatever about the career of Jesus the man. If we recall the sweeping powers assumed by the Church when Christianity became a state institution under Constantine the Great in the first quarter of the fourth century, and the severity of the censorship he authorized, which from the fifth century on was applied with energy, the survival of the few scraps of information we have is remarkable. We owe such scraps es- 75 �sentially to an indifference to mundane history and to the reverence for traditional texts that piety forbade tampering with. Some principle for distinguishing between grades of evidence is indispensable; it seems sensible to me to take as a starting-point the global transformation of perspective, i.e., the germination and spread of the belief in the special status of Jesus entailed by his Resurrection and Glorification, which intervened between the events of Jesus' life and their chroniclers. In my Death o{Jesus I established a "cardinal criterion": Anything that conflicts with that global transformation of perspective is likely to be true. If a document records something countering the prevailing tendency in the Gospels to exalt Jesus, to preach his universality, and to emphasize his originality, it should be regarded, other things being equal, as being ipso facto likely. Very soon after the execution of Jesus and until the Roman-Jewish War the predominant attitude among the believers in the Vision was that of the jerusalem coterie. At the same time, a contrary tendency-against the Torah and toward the escalation of Jesus as Lord.of the Universehad already made itself felt even in Jerusalem, when the socalled "Hellenists" epitomized by the name of Stephen were expelled and took their characteristic views to Antioch and no doubt to many other centers in the Jewish Diaspora. Paul himself, after attacking the new sect, as he himself says, was then converted and began to express a point of view he shared with some unknown predecessors. Indeed, Paul's own initial hostility toward the Jesists was doubtless a reaction against the anti-Torah views of such "Hellenists," since before his conversion Paul had applied his passion, as it seems, to the defence of the Torah, and only afterwards went to the opposite extreme. At the same time it is evident that Paul's views were not predominant among the Jesists in general. When they were made known in Jerusalem they put him in a predicament that undid him. It is evident, moreover, not only that he ran afoul of the Jesists in Jerusalem led by Jesus' brother Upright Jacob, but that throughout his own lifetime he had no serious influence. A moment's reflection on the background of conflict-totally divergent from the sugary, harmonious version of Paul's relations with the Jesists in Jerusalem as recorded in Acts-shows Paul's unimportance during his lifetime: While the Temple was at the peak of its majesty-the most celebrated edifice of antiquity, a citadel and magnet for all Jewry-Paul was necessarily overshadowed. It is plain from Paul's Letters themselves that he must have written far more than have come down to us. He was intensely active, apparently, for some two decades-from about 35 to about 55.lt is hard to believe that all he wrote is summed up by the small number of letters that now form the backbone of the New Testament. 76 The condition of the Letters themselves indicates as much: they are plainly random selections, often fragmentary to boot. One of the major ones-2 Corinthians-is practically incomprehensible; it is best understood as a mosaic of scraps of other, left-over letters gathered together after the phenomenon of"Paulinism"made its appearance. Moreover, it is evident from the content of the Letters we have that a dominant theme in all his major Lettersthe theme that often makes them sound hysterically demanding-is his rivalry with others; he is plainly describing a situation in which he is promoting his own ideas against rivals. And the rivals are, equally plainly, precisely the leaders of the community of Jesists in Jerusalem. It is obvious, in short, that during Paul's lifetime his Letters were disregarded. It was only later, with the destruction of the Jewish State and Temple in 70 and the consequent· disappearance of any institutional brake on the spread of the new faith among the Jews, that Paul's ideas, originally conceived as an explanation of what was for Paul a current historical crisis, became, through a systematic misunderstanding of the key phrase, the Kingdom of God, the foundation of something he could never have dreamed of-a timeless theology. The Jewishness of the first Jesist coteries, under the leadership of Jerusalem, can scarcely be exaggerated. This also applies to the coteries Paul himself was connected with, for despite the development of his own views it is plain that in developing those very views Paul takes for granted the overwhelming authority of the Scriptures as, quite simply, unchallengeable: not only does he use Scriptural texts in a rabbinical manner (which might of course have been a mere personal mannerism taken from his training), but he expects his readers to realize that the Messiah had come, died, and been raised again "according to the Scriptures" (Rom 1:2, I Cor 15:3); he takes it for granted that they will get the point of the examples he gives of Abraham and Isaac _(Rom 4:2,3; Gal 4:28), Sarah and Hagar (Gal4:21-31), and, even more striking, Moses' Tablets of Stone (2 Cor 3:2, 3), the Covenant (2 Cor 3:6), Adam's Sin (Rom 5:14), and the Stumbling-Block (Rom 9: 32,33). He makes flat statements assuming the unquestionable acceptance among his readers of the Hebrew Scriptures: "Through the comfort of the Scriptures we might have hope" (Rom 15:4). Whatever might have been the background of the pagans whose lives had become linked to the Synagogue, once they had become involved either as God-fearers or something similar their locus of authority automatically had become the Hebrew Scriptures. This in and of itself entailed the giving of respect to the Jewish authorities in Jerusalem, in this case, of course, the Jesists. The original centrality of the Jerusalem Jesists is, in short, evident from all the earliest documents on: even Acts, which takes pains to harmonize the disputes that separated its hero Paul from the Jerusalem Jesists, concurs with Paul in accepting the centrality of the Jesists in Jerusalem. AUTUMN /WINTER 1982-83 �In their own way the Gospels disclose a profoundly Jewish substratum: it peeps unmistakably' out of texts that include additions or changes designed to camouflage that substratum or focus it differently. The Gospels were written and compiled to serve an apologetic purpose, but the many elements they contain, if detached from the tendency of the editors, can point to some historical realities. The idea of the Chosen People was taken for granted by Jesus' immediate followers with unquestioning matterof-factness: it is graphically illustrated in the story of Jesus and the pagan woman: it surely goes back to the first community: here Jesus rejects the pagan woman's appeal for help by saying: "Let the children first be fed, for it is not right to take the children's bread and throw it to the dogs." Whether this was said by Jesus himself may not be certain, but its preservation must surely imply its being embedded in documents too revered to be disregarded: it means, plainly and simply, that the Jews come first: i.e., that the pagans-"dogs" -are outside the Torah. Jesus relents in the story, but only after the woman modestly asks no more for herself and her daughter than a few crumbs of the "children's food" (Mk 7:24-30). This theme of the Chosen People is repeated a number of times in the Gospels-as where Jesus is seen sending out his twelve "apostles" to go through Palestine, but to "go nowhere among the pagans and enter no town of the Samaritans, but go rather to the lost sheep of the House of Israel" (Mt 10: 5-6). There are countless other remarks-recalled, no doubt, from Jesus' actual life-that indicate the same Jewish substratum. Jesus is asked a fundamental question: "Which commandment is first of all?" He answers: The first is, Hear Oh Israel, the Lord our God is one: and you shall love the Lord thy God with all your heart, with all your soul, and with all your mind, and with all your might. The sec- ond is this: You shall love your neighbor as yourself. [Mt 22: 36-39] The first statement is the key affirmation of Judaism; the second sums up its ethics. Think not that I have come to abolish the Torah and the Prophets; I have come not to abolish them but to fulfill them. [Mt 5:17] And day by day, attending the Temple together ... they partook of food ... praising God and having favor with all the people. [Acts 2:46] Now many wonders were done by the . .. apostles . .. all to- gether in Solomon's portico. [Acts 5:12] God exalted (jesus) ... to give repentance to Israel [Acts 5:31] [The pilgrims en route to Emmaus] We had hoped that (Jesus) was the one to redeem Israel. [Lk 24:21] For that matter it seems likely, in accordance with our Cardinal Criterion, that Jesus, despite his constant arguments with the Pharisees, was in fact a Pharisee himself: he says only Pharisees can interpret the Torah (Mt 23:1-3). THE ST. JOHNS REVIEW These nuggets of history, however, have been tucked into a framework contrived to accommodate a much later situation. Essentially, Mark plucks Jesus out of his place in time and space and transcendentalizes him beyond his own politics. And the historical rationale for this is obvious: On the face of it it must have been a source of acute embarrassment for believers living in Rome during the years just preceding the Zealot war against Rome that their own leader, Jesus of Nazareth, had himself been executed only a few decades earlier for just the same reasonsedition. It was vital for them to dissociate themselves somehow from the opprobrium naturally clinging to followers of an enemy of Rome at a time when Rome was engaged in a ferocious struggle against Kingdom of God activists. It was just this crisis in the Roman Jesist community, indeed, that led to the composition of our first Gospel, Mark. Since there was, however, no way of twisting the basic facts out of shape-i.e., the indictment and execution of Jesus as "King of the Jews" by a Roman procurator-it was necessary to create a narrative structure that, while accommodating the irrefragable facts of Jesus's execution, plausibly explained them away. This was by no means due to hypocrisy: In the Jewish Diaspora Jesus the Messiah had been escalated into Lord of the Universe, Son of God, and Savior of Mankind. Psychologically, indeed, the same impulse that divorced the real-life Jesus from his historical background after the destruction of the Temple, was a parallel to the original impulse in the psyches of Diaspora Jews like Paul that made them, too, transcendentalize all traditional Jewish national ideas while remaining convinced, like Paul, that that itself represented a realization of a Jewish concept. In any case, the problem confronting the author of the ground-plan of Mark was simple: he had to obliterate the possibility that Jesus would be linked to the Zealots the Romans were fighting. He had to exculpate him from the charge of being an activist in general, and an enemy of Rome in particular. To do this he had to denature the Kingdom of God-to depoliticize it by twisting its undeniable association with Jesus out of its socio-political background and by giving it an elusive other-worldly meaning. The corollary of this was to slide past the attack on the Temple and the resulting trial of Jesus for sedition. The convergence of two concerns led to the apologetic distortion of the historical account in Mark (and subsequently in Matthew, Luke, and Acts, which all accepted the ground-plan of Mark). One concern was to stress the transcendentalization of Jesus that had been going on in the Jewish Diaspora sideby-side with the Jewish tradition of Jesus the Messiah and his Glorious Return as Bringer of the Kingdom of God; the other concern, desperately urgent because of the bitterness surrounding a war, was to free the Jesist congregations in the Roman Empire from the stigma of the Zealots. Whoever wrote Mark solved the problem more than adequately: he created a model, in fact, that still enthralls 77 �the hundreds of millions of people indoctrinated by the Gospels and by the vast cultural heritage they underlie. Though by and large details are missing in all Gospel ac· counts of Jesus' attack on the Temple, it is impossible to escape the implications of the enterprise, whatever its specific shape. It is indissolubly linked to the primary fact of the tradition-the most solid, unchallengeable fact of all: that Jesus was executed by the Romans as King of the Jews. If we start from this fact, and consider the skimpy de· tails embedded in the Gospels, to the effect that Jesus events preceding his arrest there was a real-life, stark event -an abortive insurrection. If we recall that the Temple had been standing in Mark's own lifetime, that the insurrection he was camouflaging had taken place only the generation before, and that the reminiscences he himself was making pious use of must have referred to some of the events, we can see that Mark had to contrive an overarching aesthetic framework to achieve plausibility. Some oversights, perhaps inevitable, were to survive. The echo of the Zealots, for instance, is arresting: Simon the Rock (Peter) is called "Baryon," as though it meant Bar Yonah," or son of Yonah, but "Baryon" <I meant a "rebel, outlaw," a political or social outcast living "on the outside," i.e., away from the settled areas controlled by the state. Judas "Iscariot" must surely refer to sicarius, or Daggerman, an extremist Zealot group; the two sons of Zavdai (John and Jacob) are called "sons of rage," echoing the violence associated with the Kingdom of God activists. Also, two Kingdom of God activists, called "bandits" and Hthieves," were crucified alongside Jesus: these were simply pejorative expressions for such rebels used by Flavius Josephus as well as by the Romans, for tendentious reasons: Barabbas, too, "arrested in the insurrection" (Mk On this and opposite page: 67 A.D. Silver Shekel, Obverse (above), legend: "Shekel of IsraeL" Chalice. These coins were issued for five years, from 66 to 70 A.D. (Roughly twice actual size.) "preached" in the Temple for three days, "overturned the tables of the money-changers" and "drove them out with a whip of cords," we see that the whole incident, presented in the Gospels as though it were symbolical, or in any case non-violent, becomes portentous: Jesus held the Temple. Now, how could he seize the Temple, and hold it for any length of time? The Temple was a vast edifice, guarded by a Roman cohort of 5-600 as well as by a Tern-. pie police force of 20,000. How could Jesus have scattered the money-changers and overturned their tables in the face of the armed police units? (To say nothing of the money-changers themselves,) The group led by Jesus must have been armed themselves. This simple fact makes understandable the many references to arms lurking in the present text: One (of the party) drew his sword, and struck at the High Priests' servant, cutting off his ear. [Mk 14:47] Look, Lord, we have two swords here. [Mt 22:49] (and parallels) Lord, shall we use our swords? [Mt 22:38] Jesus could seize the Temple only by armed force; his execution by the Romans as "King of the Jews" was directly linked to his seizure of the Temple. Behind the skimpy, distorted, and obscure Gospel references to the 78 15:7), was likewise a Kingdom of God activist. Simon the "Kananean" (in the list of the Twelve appointed by Jesus [Mk 3:18]), is revealing: "Kananean," a word incomprehensible in the Greek text, is evidently a transliteration of a Hebrew-Aramaic work (Qanna'i) for "Zealot". Now, it was Mark's habit to explain such words: just before this, the epithet "Boanerges" ("sons of rage") for the sons of Zavdai, has been explained by the narrator. Mark's avoidance of an explanation in this instance makes it obvious that a real translation of the meaningless uKananean" would have been embarrassing in the atmosphere of Rome at the time. Later, to be sure, it lost its odium: A half-generation or more after the destruction of the Jewish State it was possible for Luke to translate it, for a different readership, quite straightforwardly as "Zealot" by using the Greek word "Zealot" instead of a transliteration of the Hebrew-Aramaic (Mt 10:4). In the Palestine of Jesus' day the statement "Pay Ceasar what is due to Caesar, and God what is due to God" (Mk 12:13-17), would be taken by any Kingdom of God agitator in a real-life situation as self-evidently insurrectionist. To such an agitator it went without saying that the Holy Land was God's alone and no pagans could profit from it, and in particular that the taxation imposed in 6 A.D. was an outrage. But Mark places it in a context in which it sounds unmistakably as though Jesus were endorsing the tribute to Rome: he uses the phrase as Jesus' response to a trap set for him by the "Pharisees and the Herodians." It was natural for the Romans to expect a subject people to pay tribute, just as it was natural for a Kingdom of God agitator to refuse to pay tribute; by transposing the context of the question, accordingly, the AUTIJMN /WINTER 1982-83 �architect of the Markan theme extract.ed its political taint, as it were, and soothed his readers among the Jesists in Rome as the Zealot war erupted. In general, Mark depicts the Jewish authorities as hostile to Jesus from the outset: "Pharisees" plot with "Herodians" (the pro-Roman Jews headed by sons of Herod the Great and ruling Galilee at the time) against Jesus (even though it is the High Priests who finally engineer the crucifixion [Mk 15: 10-11]). By the time of the spread of the Gospels the High Priests had vanished with the Temple cult, while the Pharisee tradition was sustained by the rabbis, now the chief opposition to the new sect: for the Gospel-writers, the word "Pharisees" stood for the Jewish authorities in a comprehensive, absolute sense. Jesus in turn vilifies all Jewish authorities as cultically, legally, and spiritually sterile, even evil. The hostility to the Jewish authorities is extended to the Jewish people as a whole, who fail to perceive that even someone they are familiar with since childhood is meritorious: hence Jesus' comment that "a prophet is without honor in his own country, and among his own people, and in his own house" (6:1-6); the Jewish people as such is condemned for ritualism (7: 6-8); to cap the process the Jewish mob actually calls for his death and derides him (15: 1lff., 29-30). Moreover, Jesus is described as cutting himself off from his kinship not only with his people, but with his own family: And his mother and his brothers came; and standing outside they sent to him. Jesus replies: "Who are my mother and my brothers?" and goes on: "Whoever does the will of God is my brother, and my sister, and my mother." [3:31-5] Mark tells us, in short, that mere biology is meaningless: the Roman Jesists can be as close to Jesus as his own family. If we recall the importance of the dynastic factor in the emergence of Upright Jacob in the Jerusalem coterie before the Roman-Jewish War, we discern a polemical thrust at Jesus's family that must have entered the story at the time the Gospel was set down after the destruction of the Temple. When the pre-eminence of Jesus's family in the Jerusalem coterie was made obsolete by its extinction together with the Temple, it was possible to defy the vanished authority and virtuously separate the Roman Jesists from it. Thus, the family of Jesus is presented as having thought him out of his mind, to begin with, and as explicitly repudiated by Jesus. This is complemented by the contemptuous description of Jesus' Jewish companions, called the "Apostles," who of course also constituted, together with Upright Jacob, the core of the Jesist coterie in Jerusalem. They are constantly described as bickering over precedence and rewards (9:34, 10:34-45) and as devoid of Jesus' own remarkable powers (9:6, 10, 18) One betrays him (14:10, 11, 20, 21, TilE ST. JOHNS REVIEW 43-5); on his arrest they all abandon him and flee (14:50). For that matter the leading apostle, Simon the Rock, though acknowledged as the first to see in Jesus theMessiah, is said to '1 rebuke" Jesus for speaking of his resurrec- tion and because of that, indeed, is called by Jesus "Satan". On top of that there is an account of Simon the Rock's unappetizing denial of any acquaintance with Jesus: not only is it excessively long in such a short document, but it is negative through and through. That Simon the Rock recognized Jesus as Messiah but denied the salvational function of the resurrection shows Reverse, legend: "Jerusalem the Holy." Stem with three pomegranates. that the Jerusalem group headed by Upright Jacob did not believe in Jesus except as the Jewish Messiah-that his role as Lord of the Universe, of Divine Savior of Mankind, meant nothing to them. In short, the viewpoint of Paul is put forth in Mark in such a way as to take advantage of the Jewish defeat in war. The ground-plan of Mark goes far beyond details: it has a profound apologetic aim. While bound to accept the historic fact that the Roman indictment was followed by a Roman execution, Mark tells us that Pilate was forced by the Jews to do what they wanted. In the narration this has already been built up"planted," in literary parlance-by clear-cut suggestions of a Jewish conspiracy to destroy Jesus. The assignment of an executive role to the Jewish authorities in explaining away the Roman indictment and execution of Jesus in and for itself expresses the anti-Jewish tendency of Mark's ground-plan. It is more than likely, of course, that the Kingdom of God agitation engaged in by Jesus would have set him against the Jewish aristocracy as well as the Romans, but there was no need at all for them to be involved in an actual trial: in view of the public nature of the agitation, indeed, it is hard to see why the Romans had any need for a trial either: a perfunctory hearing would seem to have been sufficient. In any case, any number of Kingdom of God agitators, 79 �would-be Messiahs and pretenders of all kinds were routinely exterminated by the Romahs. There was no need for the Jewish authorities to intervene at all. Moreover, since the tendency in:Mark is in any case to highlight the evil intentions of the Jews, had there been, in fact, any Jewish intervention to undo Jesus it would have been both natural and easy to build up that theme and omit the Roman role altogether. The fact that the original writer of the ground-plan for Mark was obliged, despite his reluctance, to record an important role for the Romans, confirms the matter-of-fact historicity of the Roman charge on the cross itself-"King of the Jews" -and demonstrates the tendentious artificiality of Mark's emphasis on the role of the Jews. The theme was vital for Mark: to amplify it he enlarges on how Jesus, though of course a Jew, was not appreciated by Jews and how he expressly denied the importance of any kinship. Since the Jews in the Roman Empire were suspect at the time because of the Kingdom of God agitation, which had even penetrated the Diaspora, and because of their success in proselytization (cf. Tacitus's sneer at Christianity for its Jewish roots), Mark has set himself the task of splitting Jesus away from his original background. From the very outset, the reader is informed that Jesus did not follow the tradition represented by the "scribes": he, in contrast, "has authority" (Mk I :22). Jesus, by absolving the sins of a paralytic he has just healed, forces the scribes to charge him with blasphemy (2:6-7); then he attacks the "scribes of the Pharisees" for their objections to his eating with "tax-collectors and sinners"; and in explaining that his disciples do not fast like "John [the Baptist's] disciples and the disciples of the Pharisees," uses a metaphor-the futility of using new cloth to repair an old garment or of putting new wine into old wine-skins-evidently intended to drive home the point of Judaism's obsolescence. This metaphor would have had compelling force precisely in the wake of the destruction of the Temple, and not before: it gives lapidary expression to what has now become an historic fact-that the Roman Jesists, with a large admixture of converts and semi-converts, have found the solution to a problem that, as we know from the evolution of Paul's ideas, must have begun to weigh on them beforehand-i.e., the reinterpretation of the Torah and of Jewish traditions in general in the light of Simon the Rock's Vision. The theme of Mark can be tersely summed up: the Jews, both leaders and masses, are responsible for Jesus' death; his immediate family thought him crazy; his "Apostles", having misunderstood him, also abandon him. Jesus himself provides the counterpoint to this series of negatives: he rejects those who reject him, emphasizes the importance of worshipping God through him in contrast to loyalty to blood-relationships, and denounces the chauvinistic limitations of Simon the Rock, his pre-eminent follower. 7 80 In short, Mark, while depicting Jesus in a Jewish environment, has extracted him from it and placed him beyond it. This point is driven home explicitly in what is, thematically, the climax of the Gospel: after demonstrating how the Jews had failed to apprehend the divine nature of Jesus, the narrator puts a key phrase-"verily, this man was the Son of God" -into the mouth of the Roman centurion directing the Crucifixion. Perceived beforehand in Mark only by demons (responsible in antiquity for the supernatural knowledge ascribed to madmen), this basic idea is expressed by a normal human being, that is, a pagan, like, perhaps, the bulk of the Jesists in Rome. (The fact that Mark uses a Latin word, when Matthew and Luke use a Greek, reinforces the impression that Mark was indeed composed in Rome.) The preliminary stage for the deification of Jesus has reached its climax: Jesus has been crucified, the Gentiles have seen the Light, Judaism has been definitively superseded. The original author of Mark has solved the problem set for him by the historical circumstances of Jesus' arrest, indictment, and execution by the Roman authorities. He has demonstrated that it was a machination of the Jews, who had either misunderstood or opposed him, that Jesus had not been executed as a freedom-fighter in a nationalist movement against the Romans at all, but was, in fact, a divine figure whose fate was part of a cosmic plan. By elevating the drama to this supra-terrestrial terrain Mark has wrenched Jesus out of his historical framework. He gives the remark about paying tribute to Caesar, which in a historical context would have been understood as an insurrectionist slogan, a seemingly natural background in which its meaning is reversed, and Jesus, in his only comment on politics, seems to be endorsing tribute to Caesar, and blandly slides past the Zealots in Jesus's entourage by misrepresenting Simon the Zealot through an unintelligible transliteration. Mark's extracting of Jesus from his folk heritage bridges the main chasm between Judaism and the world outside by making it entirely unnecessary for pagans to become Jews for any reason whatever, and facilitates their conversion by showing that belief has nothing whatever to do with communal or biological bonds. Although Mark did not specifically strip the traditional Messiah of a martial function, by transcendentalizing Jesus out of his political background he promoted a conception of Christ that also transcended the provincial background of politics in Palestine and thus laid the underpinnings for a cosmic role to be played by an eternal, divine Christ. There is no reason to assume that Paul's writings, which were not paid much attention to in his lifetime, necessarily served as matrix for this idea. An anti-Torah, transcendent view of Jesus was adumbrated, if not elaborated, only a few years after the crucifixion; there is no reason it shouldn't have been represented in Rome as well as in Antioch, or indeed in any Jesist coterie anywhere at all. AUTUMN I WINTER 1982-83 �It surfaced very naturally, just as Paul's ideas in general were recovered, after the destruction bf the Temple, and came to embody the official view of an evolving religious · fellowship. Once a sharp contrast was drawn between Jesus the Jewish Messiah and Jesus Lord of the Universe, the contrast itself became the pivot on which all subsequent speculation turned, and once the contrast was grasped by the believer, and internalized, it became in and for itself a natural matrix for still further speculation. Mark solved the primary problem involved in the transformation of a cluster of Jewish beliefs into a universal, transcendent religion expanded far beyond the horizons of Judaism: his solution, by explaining away the real cause of Jesus' execution and shifting it to a theological plane involving a radical and unbridgeable difference with Jewry, served simultaneously as the model for the dehistorizing and theologization of the new religion. Just as Paul's ideas were to create a universe of ideas for the new sect, so the ground-plan of Mark created an original historic basis for it. By camouflaging a simple fact -that Jesus was executed not as a reformer of Judaism but as a rebel against Rome-Mark provided an historical foundation from which Paul's ideas could soar aloft. But before that something else had to happen: the idea that the World's End was imminent had to be given up. The Gospels recorded a number of postponements of the advent of the Kingdom of God-from the "at hand" of the very first fervor, to the few weeks implied by the disciples going through the towns of Israel, to the end of the lives of the listeners to one of Jesus' speeches. It may well be that even by the time the first draft of Mark was written the writer was no longer so sure of the imminence of the World's End; by the time John was composed, around the turn of the second century, the notion of the World's End has been totally dislocated from the author's cosmology: for him there is to be no Glorious Return at all-the Lord has already come. On the other hand, some scraps in the New Testament-such as I and II Peter and Revelations, as well as small fragments of the Gospel John itself-seem to return to the perspective of an imminent Final Judgement (Jn 5:27-29; 6:39ff). Though it took varying lengths of time before the World's End idea was wholly extinct, it is plain that by the time Luke was written, some decades after the destruction of the Temple, the idea had become at least quiescent. It was no longer held seriously. Thus the general feeling had moved definitively away from Paul's state of mind: he wrote because he felt the World's End was imminent despite delay. By the time this had evolved into the conviction that the delay was no longer a delay but a condition of nature, it was possible, indeed indispensable, for something to be put down on paper. Thus, some decades after Mark, Luke and Acts were drafted (parts of both of which were, as it seems, the work of the same hand). Acts is, indeed, our sole source for the earliest period of THE ST. JOHNS REVIEW the new sect after the destruction of the Temple: it carries the process of socio-political accommodation begun by Mark still further. The sources embodied in Acts are so fragmentary that no coherent account is possible; still less does it say anything about any individual except Paul himself. There is almost literally no information about anyone mentioned. The individuals are given names, to be sure, and an occa~ sional sentence or two purports to flesh out an inchoate narrative, but there is no way of apprehending motive, character, or activity. The writings set down in this very early period had the function of defining, that is, establishing the leadership of the new sect: they were a major attempt at organization. And to do so, decades after the destruction of the Temple and two generations after the death of Jesus, it was vital for the leaders to claim a living link between Jesus and themselves. Accordingly, the newly evolving Church was "defined" by the Twelve Apostles, or rather, more accurately, by apostles in the plural. This claim, wedded to the claim, implicit and explicit, that the founding Apostles' authority was binding, became the theological principle underpinning the Church. This principle of the binding authority of the Apostles in and for itself was never to be challenged by the great divisions of the later Church (Catholics, both Roman and Greek Orthodox, and Protestants); the only dispute was to be the manner in which the authority attributed to the Apostles was, in fact, binding (the Protestants, of course, accepted the Scriptures alone as binding; the Catholics considered the "Church tradition" equally binding.) But in fact the "Apostles" were simply part of a theory. In the very beginning there was no such institution as "The Twelve": the figure itself, reflecting the World's End expectations of the Kingdom of God activists, merely stood for the Twelve Tribes of Israel. "The Twelve" never played a role of any kind, even in the sources that mention them: after their first mention (in late sources) they are never, except for Simon the Rock, mentioned again as "Apostles." A major associate of Jesus, Jacob ben-Zavdai, lived for a decade after Jesus' crucifixion and must have been both eminent and active, since he was executed in 43 by Agrippa I. But after the first mention he is not called an "Apostle." Most striking of all, in discussing his trips to Jerusalem Paul makes no mention of "The Twelve" whatever-he talks only of the three "pillars," the only ones he confers with: they are obviously the leaders of the Jerusalem coterie. That is, even if there was such a group as "The Twelve/' it was no longer in existence in the middle or perhaps end of the Forties (44 or 48). Later on only Upright Jacob, Jesus' brother, is mentioned as leader of the Jerusalem coterie (Acts 32: 15ff). It is obvious that the statement that there were apostles is part of the early Church tradition itself: it is the way the tradition substantiates itself. 81 �Though the church "theory" is very old, it goes back, accordingly, only to the time when there was already a huge break with the real-life background of the historic jesus, and an awareness of that break-that is, to about 100, when the jewish Temple had been extinct for a whole generation and when the jesists themselves were swiftly being transformed into the first stage of what could now be called "Christians," or perhaps only "protoChristians." Although Paul was now accepted and the foundations of the religion accordingly laid, the organization of the Church itself was still rudimentary and uncertain, and a dogma that was to be indispensable-the Trinity-had not yet been thought of, let alone worked out. But the generation of 100, aware that they were different as it were in essence from the historic jesus, Simon the Rock, Upright Jacob, and Jacob and John ben-Zavdai, and aware of the gap between them, conceived of themselves as being not the second link in the chain of generations-the break made that impossible-but the third; i.e., they had to create a link between themselves and the first generation. The concept of the Apostles fixed and ·amplified this link: it became the "Apostolic tradition," as though it were a tradition about an historical situation. The traditional definition of the "Apostolic age" as ending with the deaths of Simon the Rock (Peter), Paul, and probably Upright jacob rests on the claim that until a few years before 66 reminiscences directly derived from jesus were still alive. This "living tradition" about jesus itself consists, however, of assertions made about it by the tradition. Hence the Gospels and Acts, while containing nuggets of historical fact or probability, as I have indicated, no longer reflect the circumstances of jesus's real life, but the pseudo-tradition about them embodied in revered documents. The handful of what might have been historic reminiscences committed to writing as the real-life first generation began to die off, survive merely as fragments embedded in theologically tinctured and slanted texts that began to be assembled as a "canon" around the middle of the second century. It is plain that the earliest current of belief in jesus had already been expressed in two different styles. One had to do with the homely tradition of jesus the Jewish Messiah who had lived in Palestine, been executed by the Romans, and been seen resurrected at the Right Hand of God; the second was the visionary jesus stripped completely of all earthly attributes and embodying a simple principle, to wit, that he had died and been raised again. But basically the two traditions were to become one, since the tradition about the earthly jesus, though it underlies. what seem to be the facts in the Gospels-sayings, miracles, snippets of statements etc.-in fact has been twisted around as a form of adaption to the disembodied, spiritual, abstract, principled framework of the confessional formula inherited by Paul from his own predecessors very early on. The significance of the seemingly historical framework of the 82 Gospels is in fact found only within the capsule of the confessional formula of the Death and Resurrection of jesus Christ. The seemingly factual framework of the Gospels was itself an adaptation of historical or semi-historical fragments about jesus's life on earth only from the point of view of fleshing out the formula of the confession. This fusion of two beliefs about Jesus had little to do with a lapse of time-it was a transformation of view that took place very rapidly: it was already given a sort of schematic representation by Paul: whereas before his resurrection Jesus was the son of David-i.e., the jewish Messiah-afterwards he was the Son of God, Lord of the Universe (Rom 1:3-4). Thus the process of transforming historical into theological materials that took place after the destruction of the Temple was the same, writ large, as the transformation already seen at work in Paul's Letters, written before 55. For Paul, too, a communal repast had already become sacramental. It can be summed up in a single sentence: When we bless "the cup of blessing", is it not a means of shar~ ing in the blood of Christ? When we break the bread, is it not a means of sharing in the body of Christ? [I Cor 10:16]. The transition from the tim~ in which the early )esists interpreted the Lord's Supper as a Passover meal-a seder-to the time, much later, when Christ was himself called a Passover lamb, is evident. Though the factual information in Paul's Letters is peripheral as well as scanty-he was arguing a case, exhorting his audience; justifying his position-it is, to be sure, illuminating: it gives us an insight, for instance, into the authoritative position of Upright Jacob and his possible role in Temple politics just before the Roman-jewish War; negatively, too, his Letters tell us something: before the Destruction of the Temple Paul was overshadowed by the jerusalem jesists. We can also estimate the speed of expansion in the very earliest tradition: when Paul mentions the appearance of the Risen jesus to more than "500 brethern" (I Cor 15:6) he is already employing a formulaic expression typical of an already fixed tradition to events that occurred fairly soon after Simon the Rock's Vision. The jerusalem coterie did not interfere with the new speculations that under Hellenistic influence began in the jewish Diaspora after the Vision: no doubt they were shapeless and unsystematic. Perhaps such speculations came to the surface in only a few centers-such as Antioch-that were to become important after the extinction of the jerusalem coterie in the debacle of 70. And it was just this fact of their later importance that was concealed after the debacle by the instinctive creation of a legendary, mythological fabric to manifest the continuity claimed by all institutions. The conventional view of theologians today would have it that the anti-Torah, transcendental conception of Jesus held by Paul and Stephen had already struck deep roots AUTIJMN /WINTER 1982-83 �throughout the "Christian" community long before the destruction of the Temple in 70. From that point of view, accordingly, the elimination of the "Mother Church" -the Jesist Coterie-and all the more so of the Temple and the Jewish State meant nothing-a mere clearing away of the debris long since left behind by the evolving faith. This conventional view, is also, of course, the grand theme of Acts-indeed, its purpose. Yet it can hardly be correct: Paul's Letters, written many decades before the destruction of the Temple and long before the evolution of any theological "views" at all, show his second-class status. They show his irritation with the contending "Gospels" he kept colliding with, the hostile attitude of the Jerusalem "pillars," the atmosphere of contention and self. justification. The impression left by these striking motifs in Paul's Letters is reinforced negatively by their random and fragmentary survival. From an historical point of view it is plain that Paul was dead long before the triumph of his ideas: the destruction of the Temple cleared the way for the tendentious slant· ing of the Gospels, beginning with Mark, away from the real-life career of Jesus, executed by the Romans for sedition, into the Pacific Christ, Lord of the Universe, and Savior of Mankind, whose salvational powers were to be mediated to believers via the magical apparatus of the Church. In one respect proto-Christianity carried on the tradition of Judaism: it was grounded in mundane history as well as in reflections on its meaning. Yet the contrast with Judaism, in which the Creator of the Universe stands apart from his own handiwork, was fundamental: Incarnation, propped up on two great events, the Crucifixion (and its meaning) and the Vision of the Risen Jesus (and its meaning) was the very core of the new faith. For Judaism, the Incarnation was inconceivable. The surviving Letters of Paul provided a theological framework for the pseudo-historical Gospels and Acts of the Apostles. The combination of these writings into a canon made necessary the obfuscation of the facts they contain. It seems fair to say that until very recently the sum total of all scholarship dealing with Christian origins has been confined to tendentious documents. Since it reaches conclusions implied in its premises, it constitutes no more than a vast circular argument-a begging of the question. The apologetics, both theological and practical, that generated the Gospels and Acts of the Apostles cannot, without incisive analysis, solve historical puzzles. The warping of perspective inherent in our sources can scarcely be exaggerated. Because of the very fact that Christian tradition was itself fabricated by writings, the conventional view today accepts without question a tranTHE ST. JOHNS REVIEW scendental interpretation of those origins, an interpretation that, overshadowed at first by the historical expectations of the first Jesist coterie, later, after the Jewish debacle in 70, swept the field and was amplified, magnified, ramified, and consolidated precisely as the institutional expression of the triumphant tendency. If the rationale of the Church is summed up in the phrase ascribed to the Risen Jesus-"I am with you always, until the World's End" -and if its institutional continuity is guaranteed by the passage aimed at Doubting Thomas-"Blessed are those who have not seen (the Risen Jesus's) wounds and yet believe" (Jn 20:29)-we see how essential it was for Christian theology from the very beginning to wrench both Jesus and the Kingdom of God out of their historical matrix. It was thus the course of history itself that created Christian theology-conditioned, to be sure, by the long· ings of multitudes. Yet historicized theology is imaginary history: the web of myth has suffocated the history of real people. What is, perhaps, astonishing is the durability of that imaginary history. Christianity is the only major religion whose essence is substantiated by supernatural claims made on behalf of an historic individual-claims, moreover, expressed in actual documents. One might have thought, once the documents were closely scrutinized, that the real-life background of the supernatural claims would eventually edge aside or at least modify the claims themselves. Yet to this day the tradition has survived all the assaults of commonsense; it has withstood the counterweight of probability, of rank impossibility, of pervasive discrepancies, of manifest contradictions, of outright nonsensicality. The hundreds of millions of Protestants-recently joined by Catholics, now also allowed to read the Bible freely -who even in childhood read and study the New Testa· ment, which despite its ethereal cast constantly hints at factual situations, look-and see nothing. Huge motion pictures have been made depicting, in a naturalistic setting, the supposed events of Jesus' life in Roman Palestine. These motion pictures, conscientiously made with the guidance of sincere experts, are so foolish when held up against their real-life background in the vividness called for by naturalism that one might well think the insulating walls of traditional perception would surely be pierced. They seem to elicit no reflection. Audiences are so con· ditioned by the theological interpretation of the historic setting that the setting itself is apprehended dimly or not at all; the mythology is potent enough to plaster over all the fissures between itself and real-life plausibility. Accounts of Christian origins that diverge from the tradition are often called "hypothetical," even by skeptics, as though the tradition itself were true to life. This attitude on the part of believers and non-believers alike seems to me due to a sort of shyness, a reluctance to accept conclusions arising out of the logic of analysis. 83 �Some find it difficult to accept the contradictions in the sources, as when, for instance, the ~.~pacific" passages attrib- uted to Jesus contradict the martial passages, the references to arms and so on. Others, accepting one part of a Gospel but not another, will doubt the likelihood of the Romans' having allowed Jesus to survive as long as he did, instead of arresting him, say, on the spot. At bottom many are put off by the notion that the historic Jesus could possibly have been so utterly different from the Jesus conceived of by Paul; they require a palpable demonstration, however tenuous, of a link between the two irreconcilable portraits. The "Higher Critics", after almost two centuries of analysis, have not been helpful in filling the empirical void left by the destruction of the tradition. No doubt this, too, is due to a reluctance to venture into conjecture and surmise, away from the buttressing of documentation. For instance, even though the connections between Judah the Galilean, John the Baptist, Jesus, and the Zealot leaders of the war against Rome are unmistakable, they are not, after all, fleshed out in sufficiently copious detail to make a dense chronicle possible. Still, three facts remain: Jesus preached the "Kingdom of God;" he was executed as "King of the Jews"; everything expressly attributed to him was taken from one aspect or another of Judaism. These three facts, which after all are also embedded in our sources, entail two conclusions: The first is that for the evolution of the later religion we are thrown back, in sum, not to Jesus, but to what was said about him-to the theology that after Jesus' death was layered around the concept of Lord of the Universe and Savior of Mankind. The second is that we can, very reasonably, extrapolate from the nuggets of history I have mentioned a true though, to be sure, scanty account. These three facts, then, when propped up on the fac- 84 tual matter scattered about even in the Gospels and Acts and downright abundant in Josephus's writings, constitute a tripod sturdy enough to warrant a "new" account of Christian origins. It is possible to extract from the sources a coherent chronicle of the Kingdom of God agitation against Rome during the first century of the Empire that will locate Jesus in time and space and explain how normal history was later transformed-again, in time and space-into the theology of a great Church. Inevitably, that chronicle will be skimpy; while the factual structure, so to speak, is there, the details are bound to be absent precisely because of the process we have been discussing. The Kingdom of God agitation against Rome-in other words, the Jewish independence movement-is a sort of Lost Continent: the historiography that covered the two centuries between the successful Maccabee insurrection and the abortive Bar Kochba insurrection is, except for Josephus, simply missing. And even Josephus, whose histories stop in any case with 70, is warped, despite his copious detail, by his hostility to the independence movement and in particular by his omission of the background to Christianity (it is, of course, conceivable that self-serving parties might have eliminated references to Jesus in Josephus's early manuscripts). What remains of the Lost Continent are skeletal vestiges and some glimpses-a few peaks, a spur or two, a panoramic vista. Still, bare bones are better than nothing. The philosophical implications of such a reconstruction surely demand a re-assessment of our own history. For if this reconstruction of Christian origins is accepted, it will be evident that it was not the career or Jesus, after all, that was the seminal event of the modern age, but the Jewish debacle of 70. AUTUMN/WINTER 1982-83 �New Year's Eve Meyer Liben It was twenty minutes to twelve, but there was nothing to indicate that it was twenty minutes before the New Year. I was sitting next to a man who had introduced himself as Hudson, and I immediately commented that Thomas Hudson was the name of the hero in Ernest Hemingway's posthumously published novel, Islands In The Stream, which I had recently read. "What's it about?" asked Hudson. "It's about difficult work, desperate love, and death." "How come you didn't put an adjective before 'death'?" asked Hudson. "That word can get along without an adjective," I replied. We were looking north through a window at the familiar nightscape of the city. I do not know what Hudson felt, but I felt the comfort of shelter on a bitter cold night, and that New Year's Eve sense of desolation and futurity. There were a couple of dozen people in the room, broken up into small groups in accord with inclination, accident, and the arrangement of the furniture. "You know," said Hudson, "it feels like the end of an Old Year more than the beginning of a New Year." "Past experience bears more on some than does the ex~ pectancy of the unknown," I replied in the sententious manner which many find annoying, including myself. A nearby couple were having a serious low-keyed discussion about a family matter, and across the room an ex· uberant drunk was telling a small group a long anecdote which was being listened to with varying degrees of interest. "When Hemingway died," said Hudson, ''a number of critics commented that his stories would outlast his novels." "Some race," I said. The sound of a police siren faintly entered the steamheated room. "How come he knocked himself off?" asked Hudson. "What's your feeling about it?" "Well," I said, "if you figure Hudson to be pretty much autobiographical, and that's how it sounds, then he tells you in the novel. He says that work keeps him alive, that if he couldn't get that daily work done, he'd be lost, his day would lose all its meaning. By work he means his painting, which we translate into Hemingway's writing. Indeed, in an earlier book, he wrote: ' ... I felt the death loneliness that comes at the end of every day that is wasted in your life.' In this last book he talks about the matter in a strong, single-minded way. Without work accomplishment, the actuality or strong potentiality of it, he felt he was nothing. THE ST. JOHNS REVIEW The work was a talisman, a defense, a protection against the inroads of mortality. There must have come a time when he felt that the work, actual or potential, was not under his control (Carlos Baker, in his biography, indicates that). That bulwark gone, he did away with himself." "There's plenty of other kinds of work in the world besides writing," said Hudson. "He could have worked as a fisherman ... " "Come on, Hudson/' I said, "at this stage it was not a question of livelihood with him. He was a very competitive man, kept comparing himself to the greatest writers, and I suppose that when he was continually creating, he felt that he was struggling with God, with the original Creation. When that ceased to be the case, he left the world. All his pride, duty, defiance, sense of being, and meaning in the world, was tied up with that creative making." "How about his children?" asked Hudson, "their need for him?" "The way he saw it, children need a courageous father. Baker quotes him to the effect that the worst luck for a kid is to have a coward for a father. And he maybe equated lack of creative juices with cowardice.'' "Well/' said Hudson, <~courage is a most urgent quality, but there may be other qualities just as important. Charity, for example. He could have spent time, in his own way, helping others, or working with them to transform lives and institutions. The sense of justice." "I guess for him there was no substitute for the courage of creation." Just then I heard the first ring of the telephone in a room down the hall. As the second ring began, I was at the phone, having excused myself abruptly to Hudson and skilfully weaved through the scattered groups. My son had promised to call me at midnight, and that young, hopeful voice was indeed there. "Hi dad. Happy New Year." "Happy New Year to you. How's the party?" "Great, really great. All the kids are here, music and everything." "Marvelous. Stay with it. I'm always with you." "I know it, dad. I know it all the time." And then I moved back into the party room, knowing that the sense of the New Year was beginning to stirin the hearts of all those here, and everywhere, all the ones loved and unloved, neglected, forgotten, in the hearts of all the undefeated. 85 �Gotthold Lessing Ernst and Falk: Conversations for Freemasons Translation and notes by Chaninah Maschler At Ephesus towards his life's end, when his disciples could barely carry him to church and his voice could not put together sev~ eral words, St.John the Evangelist used to say nothing at each meeting except this: "My sons, love one another." Bored at always hearing the same words, his disciples and the brothers who were present asked: "Teacher, why do you always repeat the same thing?" John's answer was worthy of him: "Because it is the Lord's command. And if it only be done, it shall suffice." Beatus Ioannes Evangelista, cum Ephesi moraretur usque ad ultimam senectutem, et vix inter discipulorum manus ad Essiesiam deferretur, nee posset in plura vocem verba contexere, nihil aliud per singulas solebat proferre collectas, nisi hoc: Filioli diligite alterutrum. Tandem discipuli et fratres qui aderant, taedio affecti, quod eadem semper audirent, dixerunt: Magister, quare semper hoc loqueris? Qui respondit dignam Ionne sententiam: Quia praeceptum Domini est, et si solitm fiat, sufficit. (Lessing concludes his short dialogue, the Testament of John [1777], with this passage from St. jerome's Commentary on the Epistle to the Galatians [6]). Prefatory Note Lessing died in 1781, the year in which Kant's Critique of Pure Reason was published. Eleven years earlier he had accepted a call from the Duke of Brunswick-Wolfenbi.ittel to settle in Wolfenbi.ittel, there to superintend the Ducal Library. His original reasons for accepting the Duke's invitation were financial, but he soon came to use his somewhat protected position as librarian to advance the cause of Spinoza, Leibniz, and Locke~ the great cause of religious toleration. 1 Only a few days after settling in at Wolfenbi.ittel he had discovered a manuscript on the sacrament of the eucha· rist by Berengarius of Tours (died 1088), which gave sup· A tutor at St. John's College, Annapolis, Md., Chaninah Maschler has recently published an essay on Eva Brann's Paradoxes of Education in a Republic in Interpretation (10,1, January 1982). 86 port to a Lutheran interpretation of the Lord's Supper. He published it under the rubric Contributions to History and Literature: From the Treasures of the Ducal Library at Wolfenbuttel. At intervals he would, under the same head· ing, publish carefully annotated editions of other manuscripts found in the Woffenbi.ittel Library. Thus, in 1774, he announces in print, under the by now established heading, that he has unearthed "fragments" of a mysteriously untitled and anonymous work that was hidden among the more recently acquired Ducal manuscripts. How the pages got into the library and whether they originally constituted·one whole he has been unable to establish, though he notes that all the fragments have one and the same objective~to examine revealed religion and test the trustworthiness of Biblical history. The first fragment is sent into the world under the title On Tolerating Deists. It doesn't cause a stir. Three years later he publishes five more "anonymous fragments": On Decrying Reason AUTUMN/WINTER 1982-83 �from the Pulpit, Impossibility of a Revelation which All Men can Believe on Rational Grounds, The Israelites' Crossing of the Red Sea, That the Books of the Old Testament were not Written to Reveal a Religion, On the Resurrection Narrative. To protect the laity and needle the professional theologians he appends some "counter propositions by the Editor," the tenor of which can be gathered from the following passage: ... Much might be said in reply . .. But even supposing there could be no rebuttal, what follows? The learned theologian would, perhaps, in the end, be embarrassed, but need the Christian be? Surely not! At most, the theologian would be perplexed to see the supports with which he wanted to uphold religion thus shaken, to find the buttresses cast down by which he, God willing, had kept it safe and sound. But what does the Christian care about that man's hypotheses and explanations and demonstrations? For him it is a fact, something that exists, this Christianity which he feels to be true and in which he feels blessed. When the paralytic experiences the beneficial shocks of the electric spark, does he care whether Nollet or Franklin or neither of the two is right? This time Lessing succeeds in provoking a reaction: The orthodox, led by the Chief Pastor of Hamburg, J ohann Melchior Goeze (1717-1786), proceed to the defense of their territory, though they call it a fight for truth and in behalf of the hearts and minds of the faithfuL Given the manifest mystery-mongering of Lessing's original account of his finding of the Wolfenbiittel Fragments, most readers, unless otherwise instructed by a scholarly note, will think of them as composed by Lessing himself. They will be all the more disposed to take them as expressing Lessing's own beliefs when they read the very long final "fragment," On the Aims of Jesus and his Disciples. Yet the facts are otherwise: Before settling in Wolfenbiittel in 1770 Lessing had been given the manuscript for a book entitled Apology or Defense of Rational Worshippers of God. Its author, Hermann Samuel Reimarus, Professor of Oriental languages at the Gymnasium in Hamburg, had allowed it to circulate privately but expressly advised against publication "until more enlightened days." After Reimarus's death his daughter showed the manuscript to Lessing and, either at her initiative or at Lessing's, the two of them plotted to have the book published, thereby to hasten the coming of enlightenment. Berlin publishers refused to take on the job, for fear of the censor. But as Librarian to the Duke of Brunswick-Wolfenbiittel, paid to glorify the Ducal House by exhibiting its scholarly treasures to the world, Lessing was protected against the censors! Hence the scheme to publish Reimarus' s detailed critique of Revealed Religion in "fragments" ostensibly found in the Ducal Library. Reimarus's argument would complete Spinoza's (in the Theologico-Political Treatise) that faith and philosophy are fundamentally distinct, that THE ST. JOHNS REVIEW the certainty of faith is not mathematical but moral, and that freedom of conscience not only can be granted without imperiling public peace but must be granted in the interest of public peace. But the power of the orthodox is too great for Lessing: In 1778 he is deprived of his freed"m from censorship and must turn in the manuscript of Reimarus's Apology. That same year he publishes, anonymously, the Dialogues for Freemasons translated below, the year thereafter Nathan the Wise, and finally, in 1780 (again anonymously), the essay in which he shows more explicitly in what respects he differs from Reimarus and Spinoza, On the Education of Mankind. The difference lies in Lessing's different attitude toward human history: The hope for, the faith in the gradual though always partial and Perspectival enlightenment of all mankind and some uncertainty about the location and permanence of the boundaries separating "the few" from Hthe many" is what sets him apart from Spinoza and Reimarus. At their first appearance, the Conversations for Freemasons were dedicated to Duke Ferdinand of Brunswick- Wolfenbiittel, not the reigning Duke, Charles, but his brother. The dedication is appropriate because the House of Brunswick-Wolfenbiittel seems to have had a tradition of supporting enlightment: For example, Duke Anton Ulrich, two generations or so earlier, had invited Leibniz, who then (about 1706) occupied the same position as librarian later held by Lessing under Duke Charles, to design plans for a building that would house the already magnificent Ducal Library, and the plan offered by Leibniz, and executed, was for a kind of "library temple." Again, the persecuted author of the first translation into German of Matthew Tindal's Christianity as Old as the Creation as well as of Spinoza' s Ethics, J- Lorenz Schmidt (1702-49), spent his last years under an assumed name in Wolfenbiittel: The Duke of Brunswick had given him asylum. Moreover, Duke Ferdinand and Duke Charles both were Masons, but according to Heinrich Schneider ("Lessing und die Freimaurer," 169, Zwolf Biographische Studien), Duke Ferdinand carried more weight in local Masonic affairs. Given the fact that not only the immediate addressee of the Conversations for Freemasons, Duke Ferdinand, but Lessing himself as well, were Freemasons, sworn to secrecy, the elusiveness of certain passages in the Conversations should not be surprising. Given the further fact that many, to this day, seem to be attracted to the Brotherhood because they love to believe that there are secrets which, if they live long enough, they may gradually learn, while others, uninitiated, have no hope of learning them, the occasionally irritating evasive allusions in the dialogues can, I believe, sometimes be taken ironically, as a joke on insiders. The presence of odd-sounding words and phrases such as HBrother Speaker" or "accept" is due to Lessing's desire to give the dialogues Masonic coloring. How, otherwise, could he convert his brethren? 87 �Translation ' Ernst: Admittedly. But give me a straight answer, are you a Freemason? Dedication: To His Serene Highness, Duke Ferdinand: I too stood by the well of truth and drew from it. How deeply, only he can judge from whom I await permission to draw more deeply still. The people have long been Ian· guishing. They are dying of thirst. Falk: I believe myself to be one. Ernst: That's the answer of one who doesn't feel quite sure of himself. Falk: But I am. Ernst: Then you must know whether, when, where, and His Highness' most obedient servant. Falk: I know those things. But they don't mean all that much. Ernst: How is that? Falk: Who doesn't "accept." And who isn't "accepted"! Ernst: What do you mean? Falk: I believe that I am a Freemason, not because older Masons have accepted me into an official lodge, but be· cause I understand and appreciate what and why Freema· sonry is, when and where it has existed, what fosters or hinders it. Ernst: And nevertheless you speak in such tones of doubt -"I believe myself to be one"? Falk: I've grown accustomed to that tone, not because of lack of conviction, but because I would not stand in any· through whom you were ((accepted." Introduction by a Third Party: If the following pages do not contain the true ontology of Freemasonry, I desire to be told which of the innumer· able writings occasioned by Freemasonry gives a more exact idea of its true nature (Lessing's italics). But if all Freema· sons, no matter of what stamp, willingly allow that the point of view indicated here is the only one from which sound eyes can see something genuine (rather than a phantom rearing up before the nearly blind), why has it been so long till someone spokeplainly? Many and diverse things might be said in reply. But it would be hard to come up with a question more nearly like the one just uttered than this: Why were systematically laid-out handbooks of Christianity produced so late? Why have there been so many good Christians for so long who neither could nor would give a rational account of their faith? Indeed, such handbooks of Christianity as we now have might still be said to have been produced prematurely (since faith itself probably gained little from them), were it not that [certain] Christians had conceived the notion of explaining the faith in a totally nonsensical way. The application of these remarks can be left to the reader. First Conversation: Ernst: What are you thinking about, friend? Falk: Nothing. Ernst: But you're so quiet. Falk: Precisely! Who thinks when he is enjoying himself? And I'm enjoying the lovely morning. Ernst: You are quite right. So, why not ask me what I'm thinking about? Falk: If I were thinking about something I'd be talking: No pleasure compares with that of thinking out loud with a friend. Ernst: I agree. Falk: Perhaps you've had your fill of quietly taking in the fine morning. Why don't you talk if something occurs to you. Ernst: I've been meaning to ask you something for a long time. Falk: Ask away! Ernst: Is it true, friend, that you are a Freemason? Falk: That's the question of one who is not a Mason. 88 one's way. Ernst: You answer me as though I were a stranger. Falk: Stranger or friend! Ernst: You were accepted, you know everything .... ? Falk: Others, too, have been accepted and believe they know. Ernst: But could you have been accepted without know· ing what you know? Falk: Yes, unfortunately. Ernst: How? Falk: Because many who "accept" others do not them· selves know it2 while the few who do cannot say it (Lessing's italics). Ernst: But could you know what you know without having been accepted? Falk: Why not? Freemasonry isn't an arbitrary thing, a luxury, but a necessity, grounded in the nature of man and of civil society. So to come upon it as a result of one's own reflection rather than under the guidance of others must be possible. Ernst: Freemasonry isn't anything arbitrary? Doesn't it involve words and signs and customs every one of which might have been different, and so must be arbitrary? Falk: Sure. But these words, these signs, these customs do not constitute Freemasonry. Ernst: Freemasonry a necessity? How did people manage before Freemasonry? Falk: Freemasonry has always existed. Ernst: Come off it! What is this necessary, this indispensable Freemasonry? Falk: As I indicated earlier, something of which even those who know it cannot speak. Ernst: A nonentity, then? Falk: Don't be hasty. Ernst: What I understand I can put into words. AUTUMN /WINTER 1982-83 �Falk: Not always, and often not in such a way that the words convey to others the idea I have exactly. Ernst: Approximately, if not exactly. ' Falk: Approximately the same idea would be useless or even dangerous here: Useless, if it conveys less than the idea; dangerous if it holds the least little bit more. Ernst: Odd! If even the Freemasons who know the secret of their order cannot impart it verbally, how, then, do they spread their order? Falk: Through deeds. They allow good men and youths whom they deem worthy of more intimate association to surmise, guess at, see their deeds (as much of them as is visible). Their new intimates find such deeds to their liking and do the same. Ernst: Deeds? Deeds done by Freemasons? I only know their speeches and songs-more often prettily printed than thought or recited. Falk: (interrupting his friend)-as are lots of other songs and speeches. Ernst: Or am I supposed to take the things they boast of in these songs as their deeds? Falk: Do you think they are just boasting? Ernst: And what are they boasting about, anyway? Noth· ing except what is expected of every good human being and decent citizen-that they're so friendly, so charitable, so obedient, so patriotic. F alk: Are those virtues nothing? Ernst: Nothing that would set the Freemasons apart from the rest of mankind. Who isn't supposed to be friendly, charitable, and the rest? Falk: Supposed to be! Ernst: Aren't there plenty of incentives and opportunities for these virtues apart from Freemasonry? Falk: Yes, but the Masonic fellowship gives men an additional incentive. Ernst: What's the good of multiplying incentives to vir· tue? Better to strengthen one motive to the utmost. A multitude of motives is like a multitude of gears in a machine: the more gears, the more slips. Falk: I can't deny it. Ernst: Besides, what sort of "additional incentive is this that belittles all others, casts doubt on them, gives itself out as strongest and best? Falk: Friend, be fair! Don't judge by the exaggerations or petty vindictiveness of idle songs and speeches. They're the work of apprentices, callow disciples. Ernst: You mean, Brother Speaker was talking nonsense? Falk: I mean, the things that Brother Speaker was praising the Freemasons for are obviously not their deeds, since (whatever else you may say of him) he doesn't talk out of school,' and deeds speak for themselves. Ernst: I'm beginning to see what you are driving at. Why didn't they occur to me before, those deeds, those telling, I'd almost call them shouting, deeds: Freemasons don't just support one another, and powerfully so, like members of any association. They work for the public good of any state of which they are members. 11 TilE ST. JOHNS REVIEW Falk: For instance? I want to be sure you're on the right track. Ernst: For instance, the Freemasons of Stockholm, didn't they establish a foundling hospital? Falk: I hope that the Freemasons of Stockholm showed their mettle at other occasions. Ernst: What other occasions?" Falk: Just others. Ernst: And the Freemasons of Dresden, who employ poor young girls as lace makers and embroiderers, to reduce the· size of the foundling hospital! Falk: Erl)st, need I remind you of your name? Be serious! Ernst: Well, seriously, consider the Freemasons of Brunswick, who give talented poor boys drawing lessons. Falk: What's wrong with that? Ernst: Or the Freemasons of Berlin, who support Basedow's Philanthropin.4 Falk: The Masons support Basedow's institute. Who told you that fable? Ernst: It was all over the newspaper. Falk: You read it in the newspaper? I won't believe lt till I see Basedow's handwritten receipt. And I'd want to be sure that it was made out to the Freemasons, not just to some Freemasons in Berlin. Ernst: Why? Don't you approve of Basedow's institute. Falk:: Me? I approve wholeheartedly. Ernst: Then you won't begrudge him such financial assistance? Falk: Begrudge? Quite the contrary. Who is a stronger well-wisher of Basedow than I? Ernst: Well, then .... You're becoming incomprehensible. Falk: I suppose so. Anyway, I was unfair: Even Freemasons may undertake something not as Freemasons. Ernst: Does that hold for all their other good deeds as well? Falk: Perhaps. Perhaps the several good deeds you enumerated just now are, to use scholastic jargon for brevity's sake, their dee~ad extra. Ernst: How do y u mean that? Falk: Perhaps the e are the eye-catching things they do only to draw the multitude's attention, and which they do only on that account. Ernst: To win respect and toleration from the multitude? Falk: Could be. Ernst: What about their real deeds then? You keep silent? F alk: Perhaps I have already answered you? Their real deeds are their secret. Ernst: Ha Hal Yet another one of those things that cannot be put into words? Falk: Not very well. But I can and am permitted to tell you this much: The Freemasons' real deeds are so great and so far from realization that centuries may pass before someone can say, "This is what they achieved." Yet they have done everything good in the world, note well, in the world. And they continue to work for all the good that is to be in the world, note well, in the world. Ernst: Come now, you are pulling my leg. 89 �Falk: Indeed not. But look-there goes a butterfly that I must have. It's a woepmilchraupe~a milkweed caterpillar. I want to be off. The true deeds of the Freemasons aim at making most of the deeds commonly called good super· fluous. Ernst: But are these themselves good deeds? Falk: None better. Think about that for a bit. I'll be right back. Ernst: Good deeds whose object is to make good deeds superfluous? That's a riddle. 5 I refuse to guess at riddles. I'd rather stretch out beneath this tree and watch the ants. Second Conversation Ernst: What's been keeping you? You didn't catch your butterfly after all? Falk: It lured me from bush to bush, down to the brook. Suddenly, it was on the other side. Ernst: There are such seducers! Falk: Have you thought it over? Ernst: What? Your riddle? I won't catch my butterfly either. But I am not going to worry about mine from now on. I tried once to talk to you about Freemasonry. That's enough. You are just like the rest of them-obviously. Falk: The rest of them? But they don't say the things I say. Ernst: They don't? So there are heretics among the Ma· sons, too? And you are one of them? But heretics always have something in common with the orthodox. And that's what I meant. Falk: What did you mean? Ernst: Orthodox or heretical-Freemasons all play with words, provoke questions and then answer without really answering. Falk: Is that so? Well, then, let's talk about something else, since you tore me away from my pleasant condition of mute contemplation. Ernst: Nothing is easier than getting you back into that condition. just lie down beside me and look. Falk: At what? Ernst: At the life and activity in and around and on top of this ant heap. Such busyness-and such order! Every one of them fetches and carries and pushes, and yet none is in the other's way. Look, they even help each other! Falk: Ants live in society just like bees. Ernst: And theirs is a society more wonderful than the bees', because there is none in their midst to bind them together or to rule over them. Falk: Order can exist even without government? Ernst: If every individual knows how to rule himself, why not?6 · Falk: I wonder whether human beings will ever reach that stage. Ernst: Hardly. Falk: What a shame. Ernst: Indeed. Falk: Get up. Let's go: They're going to crawl all over you, 90 I mean the ants. I want to ask you something. I don't know your opinion on this at all. Ernst: On what? · Falk: Civil society, for human beings in general. How do you size it up? Ernst: As a great good thing. Falk: No doubt. But do you consider it a means or an end? Ernst: I don't follow. Falk: Do you think that men were made for the state or rather states for men? Ernst: Some, it seems, want to maintain the former, but the latter is probably truer. Falk: I think so too. States unite human beings in order that-through and in these associations-every individual human being may better and more securely enjoy his share of happiness. The totality of the shares of happiness of the members is the happiness of the state. Apart from this there is no happiness. Every other so-called happiness of the state, for the sake of which some of the members, no matter how few, are said to have to suffer, is only a cover-up for tyranny. Ernst: I would rather not say that so loud. Falk: Why? Ernst: A truth which each construes according to his own situation is easily abused. Falk: Do you realize, friend, that you're already a demiFreemason? Ernst: Who? Me? Falk: Yes, since you admit there are truths better not spoken. Ernst: Yes, but they could be spoken. Falk: The sage is unable to say things better left unsaid. Ernst: As you wish. Let's not get back to the Freemasons. I don't want to know about them anyway. Falk: I beg your pardon. But at least you see that I'm willing to tell you more about them. Ernst: You are making fun of me. All right, civil society and Political organization of whatever sort are mere means to human happiness. What follows? Falk: Means only! And means of human devising, though I won't deny that nature has arranged things in such a way that men would have had to invent political organization sooner or later.? Ernst: Which is why some have held that civil society is a natural end: Because everything-our passions and our needs-leads there, they believed that civil society and the state are ultimate ends of nature. As though natural teleology didn't bear on the production of means! As though nature were more interested in the happiness of abstractions like STATE, FATHERLAND, than in the happiness of flesh and blood individuals! Falk: Fine! You're meeting me half-way. The next thing I want to ask you is this: Admitting that political constitutions are means, and means of human invention, would you say that they alone are exempt from the vicissitudes of human means? AUTIJMN/WINTER 1982-83 �Ernst: What do you mean by "the vicissitudes of human means"? Falk: What makes them different from divine, infallible means. Ernst: What? Falk: That they are not infallible: Worse than being unreliable, they often produce results contrary to their design. Ernst: Give me an example, if you can think of one. Falk: Ships and navigation are means toward distant lands but they are also to blame for many a man's never arriving there. Ernst: Those who suffer shipwreck and drown? I see what you are driving at. But the reasons for a constitution's failure, why it cheats so many individuals of their happiness, can be learned. There are many types of constitution, one better than the next; some very inadequate, blatantly at odds with their purpose; the best may yet be undiscovered. F alk: Forget about that. Suppose the very best constitution imaginable were invented. Suppose everybody the world over accepted it. Don't you think that even then, under this best constitution, things that are extremely disadvantageous to human happiness would necessarily occur, things of which men in the state of nature would have been utterly ignorant? Ernst: If such things occur under the supposedly best constitution, I infer it isn't the best after all. F alk: Assuming that a better one is possible? Well, take that better one as best and repeat the question. Ernst: You seem to me to be disguising with spurious subtlety that you assume all along that every instrument of human invention 1 including political constitutions, must be flawed. Falk: I'm not just assuming it. Ernst: Show me. Falk: You want examples of the harm that comes necessarily of even the best constitution? I could mention ten at least! Ernst: One will do for a start. Falk: We are supposing that the best constitution has been invented and that all mankind lives under it. Does that imply that all human beings in the world make up one single state? Ernst: Hardly. Such an immense state would be ungovernable. So it would have to be divided into many smaller states, all governed with the same laws. Falk: People would still be Germans and Frenchmen, Dutchmen and Spaniards, Russians and Swedes, or whatever they happen to be called? Ernst: Certainly. Falk: Wouldn't each of these states have its own interests, and the members of each state have the interests of whatever state happens to be theirs? Ernst: Obviously. Falk: These state-interests would often clash, wouldn't they, just as they do now? So wouldn't the citizens of two different states be just as unable to encounter one another THE ST. JOHNS REVIEW without the burden of prejudice and suspicion if they lived under the best imaginable constitution as a German and a Frenchman, or a Frenchman and an Englishman today? Ernst: Very probably. Falk: When a German meets a Frenchman or a Frenchman an Englishman, he does not meet him simply as a human being, as a fellow man to whom' he is drawn because of their shared nature. They meet as German and French, French and English; aware of their nations' competing interests, they are from the start cold, distant, suspicious toward one another. Ernst: You're right, unfortunately. Falk: Doesn't that prove that the means for uniting human beings, for assuring their happiness through association, also divide them? Ernst: I suppose so. Falk: One step further; these several states, many of them, will have climates that are very different;_ consequently they will have quite different needs and satisfactions; consequently they will have different moral codes; consequently different religions. Don't you think? Ernst: That's an enormous step! Falk: Wouldn't people still be Jews and Christians and Moslems and such? Ernst: I don't dare deny it. Falk: In that case, Christians, Jews, and Moslems alike will continue to deal with each other as before, not as one human being with another, but as a Christian with a Jew, a Jew with a Moslem: Each will claim that men of his type are spiritually superior to men of other type, and they will thus lay the foundation for rights that natural man could not possibly claim to be possessed o£.8 Ernst: It's very sad. But what you say is probably quite true. Falk: Only "probably true"? Ernst: I would think that, just as you supposed that all the world's states would have the same political constitution, so one ought to suppose that they would be of one religion. I can't imagine how they could be the same politically without religious uniformity. Falk: Me neither! Anyway, I proposed the hypothesis of the one best political constitution only to prevent your evading the issue [of the possibility or impossibility of a perfect constitution.]' Political and religious uniformity the world over are equally impossible. [The steps of our argument were:] One state, several states. Several states, several political constitutions. Several political constitutions, several religions. Ernst: Yes, that's how things look. Falk: That's how they are! Consider next the second misfortune which civil society, quite at odds with its end, gives rise to. Civil society cannot unite men without dividing them, nor divide them without erecting walls or digging ditches to keep them apart. Ernst: Those chasms are so· dreadful, those walls often so impossible to climb! Falk: I must add a third: Civil society doesn't just divide 91 �human beings along national an(! religious lines. Without divisions and separations, that form subordinate wholes, there would be no whole whatever. But civil society di· vides on and on within each such partial whole. 10 Ernst: Explain. Falk: Do you believe a state without differentiation of social classes is conceivable? Let it be a good or a bad state, closer or further from perfection, it is impossible for all its citizens to share the same conditions. Even if they all participate in legislative activity, they cannot all have an equal share in it; at least, not an equal direct share. So there are going to be upper and lower classes. And supposing that originally each citizen got an equal share in the state's wealth, this distribution cannot be expected to last beyond a mere two generations: One man will know better than another how to increase his property; or the poorly administered estate must, nevertheless, be shared among more heirs than the well-administered one. Soon there are bound to be rich and poor. Ernst: Evidently. Falk: Consider now, are there many evils that are not due to such social differentiation? Ernst: As though I could contradict you! But why would I want to, anyway? To unite human beings one must divide them, and keep them divided. Granted. That's how it is. It can't be otherwise. Falk: Precisely! Ernst: But what's the point of dwelling on this conclusion? Are you trying to make civil society hateful to me? Do you want me to regret that people ever conceived the idea of uniting into states? Falk: Do you know me so little? If the only good gained from civil society were that human reason can be cultivated there, and there alone, I would bless it even if the evils it produced were greater by far than the ones mentioned. Ernst: If you want to enjoy the fire you must expect to put up with the smoke-as the saying goes. Falk: Quite. But granting that fire makes smoke unavoidable, should one therefore prohibit the invention of chimneys? Is the fellow who invented them to be called an enemy of fire? You see, that's what I was after. Ernst: What? I don't follow you. Falk: And yet the image was most suitable.ll If human beings cannot be united into states apart from such divisions as we spoke of, does that make the divisions good? Ernst: Why, no. Falk: Does it make them sacred? Ernst: How do you mean that usacred"? Falk: I mean, so that touching them ought to be prohibited. Ernst: Touching with what end in view? Falk: This, of not letting them gain more ground than is absolutely necessary, of canceling their ill effects as much as possible. Ernst: Why should that be prohibited? Falk: But it can't very well be enjoined either, at least not by the civil law, since the civil law holds only within the boundaries of the state, and what is wanted is precisely 7 92 something that crosses these. So it can only be an opus supererogatum ["a work of supererogation"; see note 5]: That the wisest and best of every state freely undertake this task beyond the call of duty can onlv be wished for. Ernst: However ardent, it must remain merely a wish. Falk: I believe so. May there be men in every state who are beyond popular prejudices and who know when patriotism ceases to be virtuous. Ernst: I join you in your wish. Falk: May every state contain men who are not the creatures of the prejudices of the religion they were raised in, who do not believe that everything which they regard as good and true must be good and true. Ernst: May it be so. Falk: May every state contain men who are not dazzled by high position and not put off by low, men in whose company the nobleman gladly stoops and the lowly confidently nses. Ernst: May it be so. Falk: What if this wish of ours were fulfilled? Ernst: Fulfilled? To be sure, here and there a man like that might turn up. Falk: I don't mean just here and there and now and then. Ernst: In certain epochs and certain regions there might even be several such men. Falk: What would you say if I told you that men like this exist everywhere today; that from now on there are always going to be such men? Ernst: Please God! Falk: What if I told you, further, that they do not live ineffectually dispersed, like the Church Invisible? Ernst: Happy dream! Falk: I'll get right to the point-these men that we are speaking of are the Freemasons. Ernst: What's that you're saying? Falk: What if the Freemasons were the ones who count it one of their jobs to bridge those gaps and cross those boundaries that estrange men from one another? Ernst: The Freemasons? Falk: Yes, I'm saying they count it as part of their business. Ernst: The Masons? Falk: I beg your pardon. I forgot that you don't want to hear about them. Look-we're being called to breakfast. Let's go. Ernst: Wait a minute, you say the Freemasons ... ? Falk: Our conversation brought me back to them against my will. I do apologize. We're bound to find more deserving matter for conversation once we join the breakfast crowd. Come! Third Conversation: Ernst: All day long you have been avoiding me in the crowd. But I've tracked you down to your bedroom. Falk: Do you have something important to say to me? I'm too tired for a mere chat. AUfUMN /WINTER 1982-83 �Ernst: You're ridiculing my curiosity. Falk: Curiosity? , Ernst: Yes, which you so artfully piqued this morning. Falk: What were we talking about this morning? Ernst: The Freemasons. Falk: Well, what about them? I hope I didn't give the secret away when I was high on the rhinewine. Ernst: The secret which, you say, no one can give away? Falk: All right. That restores my peace of mind. Ernst: You said something about the Freemasons that came unexpected, struck me, made me think. Falk: What was that? Ernst: Come on, stop teasing me. I'm sure you remember. Falk: Now that you mention it, it does come back to me. That's why you were so absentminded with your men and women friends all day? Ernst: Right. I won't be able to get to sleep until you've answered at least one question of mine. Falk: The question.? Ernst: How can you prove, or at least support, your claim that the Freemasons have these great and worthy aims? Falk: Did I speak to you of their aims? I was not aware of it. You were quite at a loss when I asked what might be the Masons' true deeds. I wanted to draw your attention to something that deserves to be worked at, something that doesn't figure in the dreams of our clever political theorists (staatskluge Leute). Perhaps the Masons are working on it. Perhaps they're working in that area. I merely wanted to cure you of the prejudice that every spot fit for building has been identified and occupied and that all construction work has duly been meted out.!' Ernst: Wiggle as you please: From your speeches I con· elude that the Freemasons are people who have freely chosen the responsibility to work against the unavoidable evils of the state. Falk: Such a conception of their undertaking will at least not dishonor them. Hold on to it. But understand it right. Don't include things that don't belong. We're talking about the unavoidable evils of the state, of any state, not about the evils that go with this or that particular state of a given constitution. The healing and alleviating of evils native to a particular state the Freemason leaves to its citizens, who must venture and risk themselves according to their citizen insight and courage. Evils of a quite different, higher kind are the object of the Mason's efforts. Though inasmuch as he is also a citizen, he may take part in making civic ills milder. Ernst: I understand. Without the evils that concern the Mason there could be no happy citizens. They are not the evils that cause citizens unhappiness. Falk: Right, the Freemasons mean to-how did you put it?-work against the unavoidable evils. Ernst: Yes. Falk: "Work against" may be too strong a word, if it is taken to mean "undo them." These evils cannot be undone. It would destroy the state. They should not even be made apparent now to those who do not yet perceive TilE ST. JOHNS REVIEW them as evils. At most they can be mitigated, by distantly stirring up this perception in people, by allowing it to germinate and send out shoots, by clearing away weeds and thinning out the new plants. Now do you understand why I said that, whether or not Freemasons have always been at work, centuries may pass before one could say "This is what they wrought"? Ernst: Yes, and I now also understand the second part of the riddle-"good deeds that are to make good deeds superfluous." 13 Falk: Fine! Go, then, and study these evils. Get to know them all. Weigh their mutual influences. This study will reveal things to you which, in days of dejection, will seem irrefutable arguments against providence and virtue. But this discovery, this illumination, will give you peace and make you happy without being called a Freemason. Ernst: You say the word "being called" with so much emphasis. Falk: Because one may be something without being called it. . Ernst: All right. I understand. But to return to my question, which I need only rephrase: Since I now know the evils Freemasonry combats ... Falk: You know them? Ernst: Didn't you yourself enumerate them for me? Falk: I merely named a few of them, by way of test, just those which are obvious even to the most nearsighted, just a few of the most uncontested and most comprehensive. But there are many less obvious and more debatable, but just as sure and inevitable. Ernst: I limit my question to the evils you have yourself named. Prove to me the Freemasons have these in mind. You are silent. Are you thinking? Falk: Not about how to answer your question. But why do you want to know? Ernst: Will you answer my question if I answer yours? Falk: Yes. I promise. Ernst: I asked for evidence that the Freemasons think as you say they do because I know and fear your ingenuity. Falk: My ingenuity? Ernst: Yes. I am afraid you're selling me your own speculations for fact. Falk: Thanks a lot! Ernst: Did I insult you? Falk: I suppose I ought to be grateful that you call "ingenuity" what might have been given quite a different name. Ernst: No, no. Only, I know how easily a clever person deceives himself, how readily he attributes plans and intentions which they never thought of to others. Falk: But how do we infer that people have certain plans and intentions? Don't we reason from their several deeds? Ernst: How else? Which brings me back to my question-from what individual, uncontested deeds done by Freemasons can it be inferred that in and by their fellowship they mean to overcome the divisions among men of which you spoke? The unavoidable divisions 93 �within the state and among states. Show me that this is even one of their objectives. , Falk: And that they mean to do this without threatening the individual state or the continued existence of a plurality of states. Ernst: I'm glad to hear it. Look, I am not necessarily asking you to tell me of deeds. Oddities, idiosyncracies that spring from or lead to union among men would serve. You must have based your speculations about Freemasonry on some such signs as I am asking for if your "system" is a hypothesis. Falk: You continue suspicious of me? But perhaps you will doubt me less if I cite a constitutional principle of Freemasonry for you. 14 Ernst: Which? Falk: A principle they have never made a secret and in accord with which they have always conducted themselves before the world's eyes. Ernst: To wit? Falk: To accept into their ranks any worthy man of fit character, without distinction of fatherland, religion, or civil condition. Ernst: Really? Falk: Admittedly, such a constitutional principle seems to presuppose men who already make light of national, religious, and social distinctions. The constitutional principle itself does not raise up such men. But mustn't there be Nitrogen in the air for saltpeter [KN0 3 or NaN0 3] to accumulate upon the walls? Ernst: Yes. Falk: And may the Freemasons not have been resorting to a perfectly familiar ruse, that of openly practicing some of their secret objectives, so as to mislead such men as are always on the look-out for something different from what stares them in the face because they are driven by suspicion? Ernst: Perhaps. Falk: Why shouldn't the artisan who can make silver deal in silver scrap, so as to allay the suspicion that he knows how to make it? Ernst: Why not? Falk: Ernst, are you listening? You sound as though you are half asleep. Ernst: No, friend. But I have had enough, enough for tonight. Tomorrow very early I'm going back to town. Falk: Already? Why so soon? Ernst: You know me and ask? How long will it be before you conclude your [mineral water] cure? Falk: I only started it day before yesterday. Ernst: Then I shall be seeing you before you have finished yours. Good night. Farewell. Notice to the Reader: The spark took. Ernst went and became a Freemason. What he thus learned, at first, is the matter of a fourth and a fifth conversation, in which there is a parting of ways. 94 Of the three conversations here translated, Lessing wrote Duke Ferdinand on 19 October, 1778: Since I make so bold as to deem the first three of the conversations in question the weightiest, most laudable, and truest things that may ever have been written about Freemasonry, I could no longer resist the temptation to have them printed. (Da ich mire schmeicheln darf, class von den bewussten Gesprachen die drey erstern, das Ernsthafteste, Riihmlichste, Wahrste sind, was vielleicht jemals tiber die Freimaurerei geschrieben worden: so habe ich der Versuchung, sie driicken zu lassen nicht Ianger widerstehen kOnnen.) [Schneider, Stri- dien, Bern, 1951, 14] Two years later a fourth and a fifth conversation between Ernst and Falk were published (some say contrary to Lessing's wishes). Their dramatic date is long after the conclusion of Falk's "cure." Ernst is disgusted with his friend for having sweet-talked him into joining a society of fools and charlatans. None of the hopes and expectations that Falk had stirred up in him were met by the flesh and blood Masons he encountered: That equality which you gave out as a constitutional principle of the order, that equality which filled my soul with such surprising hope . .. does it still exist? Did it ever? Let an educated Jew ask for admission. "A Jew? Well, the candidate must be a Christian, though we don't ca;e what manner of Christian." "Without distinction of religion" means "without discriminating among the three officially tolerated religions in the Holy Roman Empire." Is that your interpretation too, Falk? ... Let a cobbler come ... even if he be a Jacob Boehme or a Hans Sachs, they'll s~y: "A cobbler? Why, obviously, a cobbler ... " The fifth conversation takes place after a dinner party also attended by a Mason of whom both friends disapprove, a man who means to defend the American cause in Europe and who believes, mistakenly in the friends' opinion, that the American Congress is a Masonic Lodge and that the Masons are, in America, establishing their realm by force of arms.~' In this conversation Falk explains what he conceives to be the true history of Freemasonry: Anderson's history, according to which "speculative" Masons joined already existing lodges of "operative" Freemasons, is rejected. The word "masonry" is linked to "masons" only by an erroneous folk etymology according to Falk. Its true etymology is "Masonei," says he, meaning, roughly, eating club. One of these eating clubs was, in Sir Christopher Wren's day, close by St. Paul's, in London. During the thirty years of St. Paul's reconstruction, Sir Christopher Wren would frequent this eating club, of which he was a member. All London wanted to get progress reports on the construction of the great church. Hearing that the architect frequented a masony, Londoners mistook the word for a masonry, a fellowship of builders. Sir Christopher, according to F alk, simply used the popular confusion for ends of his own: He had helped conceive the plan-for a society that would make speculative truths more directly efficacious in establishing the AUTUMN/WINTER 1982-83 �public good and in making civic life mor:e e0mmodious. Then it occmrred to him that a society that Fo-~e- £Fom the activities of daily life to spectllation would be· a- fitting counterpart to it. "There," he thought, "men would investigate what in the realm of truth is useful; here what that iS useful is true." be far better known in America tl\an they now are. His every piece of writing is refreshing and instructive. Even brief association with him, merely through his books, makes it easy to credit Moses Mendelssohn's words of condolence to Lessing's younger brother Thus far Lessing's Falk. His etymology sounds so wildly unlikely to me, and the history attached to the supposedly Germanic origin of the word-root so much like pseudo-history, that it is hard for me to read them as anything but a spoof-of the eighteenth century literary industry of fabricating Masonic pseudohistories, and perhaps of other kinds of make-believe history as well. Readers of the foregoing translation may wonder why I thought Lessing's dialogues worth translating and why it seemed right that they be made known to members of the St. John's College community. My reasons aren't all in yet, but among them are these: Charlotte Fletcher has argued in detail in the Maryland Historical Magazine (val. 74, no. 2, June 1979; pp 133-151), that St. John's College was not named after the Cambridge University College of the same name; rather~ . .. I thank Providence for i"ts benevolence in allowing me, so early in life, in the flower of youth, to know a man who shaped my very soul, a man whom I would conjure up as friend and judge whenever I was deliberating about something to be done or written, a man of whom I shall at all times continue to think as my friend and judge whenever I have to take a step of some importance. ... the Maryland legislators named the Western Shore college for the day when [Washington's Potomac bill] was enacted, the Feast Day of the Evangelist. ... Not only was it a day which they had enjoyed in the company of their former Commander-in-Chief, it was a day which would have had special significance· for Washington, the Freemason [December 27, the Feast Day of the Evangelist, is singled out by many British and American Masonic handbooks as a day for important transactions and special celebration] .... Records show ... that a remarkable legislative performance ... [took] place on the Feast Day of St. John the Evangelist, December 27, 1784, when on behalf of their good friend, George Washington. Maryland legislators enacted the first piece of cooperative legislation among the various states in the Confederation following the definitive "Treaty of Peace" (my italics). Moreover, she showed that it is worthwhile to ask whether there is a more intimate, even curricular, connection between the college and the fellowship which, as has plausibly been argued in a number of Masonic histories, preserved ancient astronomical, geometric, and architectural lore (in effect, the quadrivium) after the disintegration of Rome in the West. 16 Second, it is hard for me to believe that there is no "real" connection between the founding of these United States of America and Masonic doctrines such as the one in the "first charge" of Anderson's Constitution (see footnote 14). The Masonic insignia on our dollar bills, which got there from the verso of the Great Seal of the United States (designed in the eighteenth century), should not, I think, be written off as boys-will-be-boys-even-when-grown mumbo jumbo. They were put there to say something, to Americans and to the world at large, and to those who decided to put them there1 17 Finally, Lessing's name and Lessing's work deserve to TilE ST. JOHNS REVIEW ( ... Ich danke der VOrsehung fiir die Wohltat, class sie mich so frUh, in der Bluthe meiner Jugend, hat einen Mann kennen lassen, der meine Sehle gebildet hat, den ich bey jeder Handlung, die ich vorhatte, bey joder Zeile die ich hinschreiben sollte, mir als Freund und Richter vorstellte, und den ich mir zu allen Zeiten noch als Freund und Richter vor-stellen werde, so oft ich einen Schritt von Wichtigkeit zu thun babe.) Quoted in Karl Lessing, Gotthold Ephraim Lessings Leben, Berlin 1795, 450. l. Locke's first (anonymously) published work is the Epistola de Raymond Klibansky writes: "It cannot be doubted that Locke systematically collected all_ books on toleration which he could find. , .. Even in one of his earliest notebooks, that of 1674, Locke, having read Spinoza's treatise on Descartes' Principia Philosophiae, expressed his intention of finding out what other works there were by this author. When in 1674-6 he was Lord Shaftesbury's confidential agent, he certainly had the opportunity of perusing some of Spinoza's works, for Shaftesbury reimbursed him for a sum spent on acquiring these books for him. Later, Locke mentioned in his 'Catalogue de livres differends et qu'on trouve avec peine' the Tractatus Theologico politicus ... . In a catalogue of his [Locke's] books drawn up ... in 1693 the Tractatus [is mentioned]. Perusal of the letter has convinced me that there is also internal evidence for Locke's having read and profited from Spinoza's Theological-Political Treatise. For Leibniz on the subject of toleration, see New Essays 416f. I accept the thesis of H. R. Trevor Roper that this tradition of devoting one's life to the cause of toleration. goes back to Erasmus (see The European Witchcraze of the Sixteenth and Seventeenth Centuries and Other Essays, Harper Torchbook 1968). But its true begettor may well have been the Dean of St. Paul's, Erasmus's friend and mentor, John Colet.'' (Oxford ed. by Raymond Klibansky and J. W. Gough of the Letter of Toleration, xxxi, ii.) 2. The enigmatic "it" wants to be impenetrable and cannot be eliminated from the translation. As Lessing wrote Duke Ferdinand on Tolera~ia. Octobe, 26, 1778, I did not desecrate any secret knOwledge. I only tried to convince the world that truly great secrets continue to lie hidden there, where the world had at last become tired of looking for them. (Ich babe keine geheime Kenntnisse enheiliget: ich habe bloss die Welt zu ilberzeugen gesucht, class da noch wirklich grosse geheime Kenntnisse verborgen liegen, wo sie derleichen zu suchen endlich mOde ward.) Quoted in Heinrich Schneider, ZwOlf Biographische Studies, Bern 1951, 15. 3. Lessing'·s word here is "plaudern," familiar from Mozart's Magic Flute: "Ich plauderte, und das war schlechr,;• says Papageno toward the end of Act ii. 4. Johann Bernhard Basedow (1723;_11790); was a German educational reformer who established a teacher training institute in Dessau, where his educational principles, much affected· by Rosseau's Emile, were taught. This teacher training· institute· he called the Philanthropin. A 95 �student of theology earlier in his life, he,had come under the influence of Reimarus. 1 5. I haven't cracked the riddle but suspect that in speaking of "Cute Taten, welche darauf zielen, gute Taten entbehrlich zu machen," Lessing's Falk refers covertly and ambiguouslY to human charitable works, Church sacraments, and the supreme, Divine work of charity, the sacrifice of Christ. My guess depends on hearing the word opus-which figures so prominently in Luther's doctrine of "salvation by faith, not works," in the Catholic Church's rationale of the Sacraments, and in the Bacon passage froiD the New Organon which Kant quotes as fronti· piece to the second edition of the Critique of Pure Reason-underneath the German Tat. Lessing himself introduces the Latin word in the second conversation, which is why I retained his expression opus supererogatum. It is, unmistakeably, a technical locution-"works of supererogation," beyond the call of duty, figure in Catholic teaching as works by which the faithful gain extra merit. 6. Compare Adeimantus in Republic ii, 367 " . , . we would not now be guard~ng ag~~nst one another's injustice, but each would be his own best guardtan ... 7. Compare Aristotle's Politics i, 1253a30: phusei men oun he horme en pasin epi ten toiauten koinOnian. ho de prOtos sustases megistOn agathon aitios. 8. "Nimmermehr" in "Rechte ... die dem nati'lrlichen Menschen nimmermehr einfallen kOnnten," is ambiguous: it is not clear whether the "natural man" of whom Falk speaks belongs to the past, the future, or neither. This sounds very like Rousseau to me. 9. Compare Leibniz on oUrs being the best of all possible worlds: He did not mean that it is perfect, as Voltaire foolishly thought. He meant that the Very conceptiori of a perfect world is self-contradictory, so that ours is the best of worlds that are possible. Lessing was a great admiror of Leibniz. 10. Lessing is borrowing Aristotle's word "whole." Compare note 7. Students of Leo Strauss will recognize the degree to which the argu· ments, the attitude, the very vocabulary of Ernst and Falk, are saved by Strauss. Strauss refers to the work in a footnote on p. 28 of Persecution and the Art of Writing, Glencoe, Illinois 1952. 11. Compare Republic vii. Much like Leibniz also in this respect, Lessing carried his very great erudition lightly. ThorOughly "modern," he was intimate with the works of the AnCients, die Alten, as in "Wie die Alten den Tad gebildet." 12. The use of architectural images is, unsurprisingly, prominent in Masonic writings. I do not think that the extraordinary proliferation of talk about "foundations", "architects", "clearing away the underbrush", "corner stones", "city planning" in the books of Machiavelli, Bacon, Descartes, Hobbes, Locke, Leibniz in some measure, and certainly Kant has been sufficiently noted. 13. See note 5, whence perhaps also "good works that are to make good works superfluous." 14. Lessing is referring to the Constitution of the Grand Lodge of London, drawn up by James Anderson at the instance of the then Master of the Lodge, John, Duke of Montague. A copy of Anderson's The Consti· tution of the Freemasons (though in a later edition than the one pub· lished in London in 1723) was in the Ducal Library in WolfenbUttel. The "First Charge" of Anderson's Constitution runs as follows: Concerning GOD and RELIGION. A Mason is obliged by his Ten· ure, to obey the moral Law: and if he rightly understands the Art, he will never be a stupid Atheist, nor an irreligious Libertine. But though in ancient Times Masons were charg'd in every Country to be of the Religion of that country or Nation, whatever it was, yet it's now thought more expedient only to oblige them to that religion in which all Men agree, leaving their particular opinions to themselves. That is, to be good Men and true, or Men of Honour and Honesty, by whatever Denominations or Persuasions they may be distinguished; whereby Masonry becomes the Center of Unition, and the 96 Means of conciliating true Friendship among Persons that must have remain'd at a perpetual Distance. I was unable to obtain a copy of Anderson's book and rely on Jacob Katz's citation in his Jews and Freemasons in Europe, 1723-1939, 13 Cambridge, 1970. Katz's book is a remarkable piece of sociological history. There is hardly a page in it that doesn't throw light on issues far greater than the seemingly recondite one of the title. About the quoted First Charge he writes: ... There is no reason to assume that the authors of the English constitution intended, in their universal tolerance, to provide for Jewish candidates in the flesh. Yet, when such candidates did apply for admission, the principle was followed in practice [in England, but not in Germany] .... At least some of these Jews sought to retain their own religious principles within the frame work of the lodges. In 1756 an anthology of Masonic prayers appeared in print, among them one to be recited "at the opening of the lodge meeting and the like, for the use of Jewish Freemasons." While the other prayers were addressed to the Father, the Son, and the Holy Ghost, the Jewish prayers contained nothing at variance with the Jewish tradition. [pp. l5ff] Katz does not comment on the fact that the drawing up of a written constitution, which itself records what the proper procedures for amending it are, was a Masonic practice, and one which may well have influenced the American Founding Fathers, since a written constitution for a state or nation was, in those days, ~ rarity. 15. There are a number of books on the theme of possible connections between the American Revolution and Freemasonry. The author of one of these, Bernard Fay, a Frenchman, maintains that the French Revolution too was "made" by Masons. It is extraordinarily difficult to sort out whether-to speak in the voice of their critics-Masonic Lodges were hotbeds of sedition or rather the reverse, whether illdeed Freemasonry stood for anything in particular in the political realm. My interim hypothesis is that it is probably pointless to speak of Masonic politics without specifying the period and the countr'Y and perhaps even the particular Lodge. I do not believe that this means that the expression "Masonic teachings" is simply empty: One of my contentions is that what we usually identify as the distinctively modern linking of knowledge and power, or knowing what and knowing how, or artes liberales and artes serviles is Masonic doctrine. 16. See for example George F. Fort, The Early History and Antiquities of Freemasonry as connected with Ancient Norse Guilds and the Oriental and Medieval Building Fraternities, Philadelphia 1875, and Tons Brunes, The Secrets of Ancient Geometry and its Use, Copenhagen 1967. 17. Our coins too bear a motto-"In God we Trust-that can be linked to the Masons: It was the motto of the London "operative" Masons in the fifteenth and seventeenth century, except that their motto added the little word "alone" between "God" and "we" (Georg Kloss, Geschichte der Freimaurerei in England, Irland und Schotland, 1848, 325. But according to a little pamphlet of the United States Mint, the motto appeared on our coins only in the nineteenth century: Toward the end of 1861 the Secretary of the TreasUry received a letter from a certain Mr. Watkinson, Minister of the Gospel, who urged that the lack of some reference to God on our coins might lead "the antiquaries of succeeding centuries" to believe that we were "a heathen nation." In response to this letter, the Secretary of the Treasury wrote the Director of the Mint: "You will cause a device to be prepared without unnecessary delay with a motto expressing in the fewest and tersest words possible this national recognition [of the trust of our people in God]." But it turned out that, because of an earlier Act of Congress, the Director of the Mint could not "cause" the preparation of such a device. Legislative action was needed. Is there another modem nation where such an exchange of letters might have occurred? AUTIJMN /WINTER 1982-83 �The Rainfall in the Pine Grove Mter Gabriele D' Annunzio, "La pioggia nel pineto." Be still. On the leaf-strewn sill of the forest I hear no human words spoken, but newer words sung by the drops' tinkling tongue and the broken murmuration of distant leaves. Listen! It is raining from tattered clouds driven, raining down from heaven on the tamarisks burnt, on the brackish tamarisks. Raining on the tangled hairy kirtles of the pine, on the myrtles divine; on the thick -clustered broom, on the juniper's loom; Upon our sylvan faces, upon our naked hands, our vestments and our poses, on each fresh -quickened thought that the soul newly discloses; on the fable richly-wrought that yesterday deluded thee, and today deludes me, 0 Hermione! THE ST. JOHNS REVIEW Do you hear? The rain is slanting on the lawn's lonely green with a tinkling silver sheen, with a rustling and a canting that varies in the air as the foliage is there more rare, less rare; Listen! the cricket's chatter replies to all this weeping: What does it matter? This flood of austral tears provokes not his fears, nor does heaven's windy whine. And the pine has one sound and the myrtle yet another, and the juniper another: a pure liquescent round of instruments diverse: played and plucked upon by the rain's fluent fingers and choir of the leaves, 0 green-mouthed singers! So verse follows verse until we are immersed in the spirit of the wood, of this life arboreal and your face immemorial is washed in the rain soft as a leaf; and your hair 97 �falls fair as the juniper's caresses; as the rain's glistening grief is the streaming of your tresses. 0 terrestrial creature by name and by featureHermione. Hear! 0 hear! the harmonious hammer of the cricket's shrill trill fades still and more still, muffled by the rain's crescendoing roar. Yet low below from depths unquenched, from humid shadow a melody mingles, is drowned, expunged ... only one note trembles yet, plucked from the fret; resurgent, remote,surges ... shivers ... spills awaySeems, but is not, the voice of the sea. And now you hear on every frond the shattering sound of the argent rain: the downrushing Whence that varies as the verdure grows dense, or less dense. Listen. The daughter of the aria is mute, but the unseen daughter of the green-veiled water, child of the distant bog,the frog,chants in denser shadow: Who knows where? Who knows where? And it is raining on your eyes, And it is raining on your hair, 0 Hermione! 98 It is raining on your eyes ... And as the downpour dashes upon your black lashes, tiny diamonds hang and you seem to be weepingBut for joy! but for joy! No longer wan you emerge from the bark: Vigorous, reborn and freshly we turn each to each, And the heart in the breast is an intact peach, And the eyes in their lids are springs in the grass, And like almonds peeled is the honeycomb of teeth. So, slowly we pass from hedge to hedge, now together, now apart (As rude-fingered weeds ensnare our ankles, entwine our knees) Who knows where? Who knows where? For the curtain of the air Is a rustle of laces As it rains as it rains Upon our sylvan faces, Upon our naked hands, Our vestments and our poses, on each fresh-quickened thought that the soul newly discloses, on the fable richly-wrought that yesterday eluded me, and today eludes thee, 0 Hermione! AUTIJMN /WINTER 1982-83 �The Donkey Rides the Man . .. The donkey rides the man Swallows shoot the hunter Sun rises in the West Daisies bloom in winter Constellations sunder All singleness is lost Adam's rod has wilted Breasts are hard as frost Contrarities now rule Two perpendiculars Fall to a single line Peace plus peace make wars 0 Alice underground Rise and take command Scepter us with laughter Orb with tickling hand This topsy-turvy world Spin it with your wand All boys must be girled All girls must be manned Come Alice come from under Nibble us high and low Pacify with thunder the apocalyptic show The Mannequins Flowing down Fifth Avegue The shoppers in a churning stream Flash dazzling semaphors of dew Between the banks of deed and dream. Where mermaids-sleeker for their sinsMay view in underseas of glass Themselves beside the mannequins: Shipwrecked, headless now. Alas! Alas for the perfect thigh and breast! Alas for the perfect lacquered smile! Alas for the perfect all-the-rest That lies beside her in a pile! For he's entered there on sheepsoft feet: That Devil-0 that panderer! Stripped her on a public street, With shameless hands he sullied her. Yes, in the electric glare of noon (Narcissus, transfixed, saw him do it) Divested her of dress and shoon And her lovely head, he did unscrew it. Take heed, then, Beauties. Blemished be. For perfect She is lifeless She. Where reins of Yes and No Ride us to no conclusion In a dazzling merry-go-round Of rectified confusion SIDNEY ALEXANDER Sidney Alexander has translated Francesco Guicciardini's The History of Italy (New York 1969). The last volume, Nicodenz.us, t~e_Roman Ye~rs of Michalangelo, 1534-1564, of his three-volume retmagmm? of ~e hfe of Michelangelo is planned for publication in 1983 (Ohio Umvers1ty Press). For the last twenty-seven years he has lived in Florence. THE ST. JOHNS REVIEW 99 �REviEw EssAY·., Defeat in Vietnam Norman Podhoretz's Why We Were in Vietnam* JOSEPH A. For anyone over the age of twenty, Why We Were in Vietnam is an unwanted attempt to face a painful past. Norman Podhoretz wants to reopen the Vietnam debate because he thinks we have learned the wrong "lessons" from the disaster. The failure of American policy in Vietnam not only brought defeat without peace. It cancelled out the single most important lesson that the Second World War, the "unnecessary war" in Churchill's phrase, taught those who managed to live through it, the lesson of Munich, that yielding in the face of aggression encourages more aggression. For the lessons of Munich Vietnam's failure substituted "new lessons": that the limitations on American power no longer allowed the arrogance of policing the world; that an ''ideologically-based anti-Communist foreign policy" must inevitably fail; and worst of all, that America's actions in Vietnam made her equal to Hitler's Germany in "criminality" and showed that now "the U.S., not the Soviet Union and certainly not Communism, represented the greatest threat to the security and wellbeing of the peoples of the world." With evidence available during the war, Podhoretz faces the charges of "genocide" and "atrocity" against American "policies" -the "McCarthyism of the left." The Geneva Convention sanctions the U.S. "war crime" of clearing an area of civilians to spare them before bombing enemy forces. In Vietnam civilians numbered forty percent of the dead, the same percentage as in the Second World War, in contrast to the seventy percent of the War in Korea. He compares the war's suffering to Indochina under Communism: forced mass expulsions with millions dead; total suppression of political, religious, and press freedoms (South Vietnam at war had twenty-seven daily newspapers, three televi- * New York, Simon and Schuster 1982. 240 pages. $13.50. A lawyer in Washington, D.C., Joseph A. Bosco practices corporate and administrative law arid represents European companies in the United States. 100 Bosco sian stations, more than twenty radio stations). "'Among the boat people who survived, including those who were raped by pirates and those who suffered in the refugee camps, nobody regrets his escape from the present regime.'" Almost alone of contemporary writers, Podhoretz concludes Americans need feel no shame. "That the U.S. involvement in Vietnam should be described as a moral disgrace is itself a moral disgrace." Reagan's description of the war as a "noble cause" that made headlines during the 1980 campaign, again won a place in the Washington Post's recent front-page story on the President's "gaffes". Podhoretz calls to account the hypocrisy of those who proclaimed their desire for "peace" in Vietnam but who actually supported the Communist victory; the malice of the "Amerika" haters who likened the United States to Nazi Germany. (The in· vective against America was palpable at teach-ins I attended in Boston and Cambridge as early as 1964 .) These ''inveterate apologists for the Vietnamese Communists" still do not acknowledge the suffering in Indochina today nor their complicity in it. He criticizes the "anti-anti-Communists," the teachers and media people who considered anti-Communism unsatisfying, who said they opposed Communism but were against every antiCommunist government from Diem to Thieu, who fancied a neutralist compromise or" coalition or "progressive ... 'third force'". "[They] should now be ashamed of their naivete and the contributions they made to the victory of forces they had a moral duty to oppose .... In practice, and in its political effect, aritianti-Communism was often hard to tell apart from pro-Communism.'' Podhoretz concludes that the defenders of American policy were right about its morality, but that the critics correctly saw its futility. But this moral calling to account is incomplete. Podhoretz ignores those Americans (many of my friends) who knew which side was right and who certainly preferred our side, but who nevertheless joined the anti-war movement, especially after the Tet offensive in 1968, because, like Podhoretz, they thought vic- AUfUMN /WINTER 1982-83 �tory impossible. To succeed, the anti-war movement, as Hanoi realized, had to reach out beyond the MarxiS~-Leninists, the radical students, the anti-anti-Communists, to the ordinary, patriotic, mainstream American citizens. Despite the: finest of motives, these citizens strengthened the Communists. Why and how this happened has to be understood. The prolongation of the war and the absence of a strategy for victory that grew evident with its prolongation had a lot to do with the disillusionment of many ordinary Americans. With the concern for human life and public opinion that distinguishes democracies from their totalitarian adversaries, how could Washington's "war of attrition," that took the place of a strategy for victory, not have failed eventually? Recent Communist statements show that Hanoi, with the experience of the French in Indochina and the Americans in Korea before its eyes, knew the importance of prolonging the war for the spread of the anti-war moverrient in the United States and throughout the world. From the beginning Hanoi planned to out-last us, whether or not it out-fought us. Podhoretz argues that the unwillingness (or inability) of the elite in government to make the "moral, political, and strategic" case for the war left a "moral vacuum" for the anti-war extremists. I find that charge curious and unfair. "Why, then, were we in Vietnam?" asks Podhoretz. "To say it once again: because we were trying to save the Southern half of that country from the evils of Communism." The answer is hardly novel; Presidents Kennedy and johnson gave it from 1961 through 1968. Most Americans, "passive and unenthusiastic," in Podhoretz's description, understood that explanation: they remembered the world wars, Eastern Europe, Korea, and they recognized the evils of totalitarianism. But the anti-war elites rejected those justifications. In April 1965, Secretary of State Dean Rusk raised a professorial firestorm when he remarked on "the gullibility of the academic community and their shibborn disregard of the plain facts." A teaching fellow at law school, I attended an "emergency" meeting of the Greater Boston Faculty Committee on Vietnam, which included several prestigious academic names, convened to draft an angry full-page advertisement for the New York Times to answer Rusk. No one of the hundreds present defended U.S. policy. The chairman, a professor of divinity, told me I could express my disagreement by "keeping my seat and remaining silent." (Later, the protests of a few won me a minute or two.) Even Henry Kissinger, at Harvard in 1965, objected to the government's defense of the war on "moral grounds," because "in a civil war it is not clear who the aggressor is; it is not like one sovereign nation attacking another." Later Kissinger modified his view which confused a civil war with protracted war of aggression and which refused to see that a protracted, masked aggression did not differ in kind from open war as in Korea. By that time, however, the "civil war'' argument had become favorite anti-war mythology. Podhoretz states that even though the anti-war positions clearly represented a small, minority viewpoint, our government made "the mistake" of believing "this meant that the American people supported the war." He argues that until 1973 the public simply "went along," more or less willing, to give their leaders the "benefit TilE ST. JOHNS REVIEW of the doubt." At the same time that he criticizes the elites who had gotten us into the war and· conceived and carried out our failed policies, Podhoretz does not shrink from blaming the American people themselves for the 1975 congressional action that stopped further military aid to South Vietnam despite the continuing danger from Hanoi. "At least a measure of responsibility" for this abandonment of an ally "belongs to the people ... whose wishes their representatives believed themselves to be carrying out." The original intervention by the elites, he argues, had been "an attempt born of noble ideals and impulses," but uthe same cannot be said of what the American people did in 1975." The American public demonstrated its own ultimate lack of umoral capacity" to save South Vietnam-by contrast, they earlier had been "willing to shoulder the burden of Korea." Podhoretz is wrong to call the American people morally inadequate at the same time that he refuses to recognize their earlier steadfastness. "Going along" and giving the· government "the benefit of the doubt" meant seeing sons and brothers die in another faraway place for other men's freedom-without succumbing to hysteria or a new wave of McCarthyism despite provocations from the "wild men of the Left" with their Vietcong flags and anti-American obscenities. In contrast, after only two years of the Korean War the "stalemate" contributed to the rise of McCarthyism and made Eisenhower pledge in the campaign of 1952 to "go to Korea" with the implicit promise to end the fighting one way or the other. Nor were Americans really ever as "passive and acquiescent" as Podhoretz describes them, until the very end. In election after election they voted for candidates who supported U.S. policy in Vietnam, they supported the deployment of forces and the military budgets to pay for it, and they expressed their belief in the justness of the cause in numerous patriotic and "pro-war" demonstrations over the years-though never in as well-organized or violent a manner as the anti-war activists. In his mischaracterization of the people in both the Korean and the Vietnam war, Podhoretz seems almost oblivious to the working of the Communist strategy of protracted war and pro· traded negotiations. Three years passed between the first commitment of American forces in Korea (never to number more than roughly half the American forces, and the dead, in Vietnam) and the signing of the truce agreement at Panmunjom-an agreement still enforced by our troops. In Vietnam it took twelve years to get from Kennedy's first introduction of troops to the signing of the hollow, non-enforceable agreement between Henry Kissinger and Le Due Tho. Despite this, Podhoretz writes: " ... Looking back on Korea from a perspective shaped by the experience of Vietnam, what seems most remarkable is the absence of any serious opposition to what Truman decided to do." What seems more remarkable, looking at Vietnam in the light of Korea, is that Americans held on for as long as they did! American patience and mahirity through this long national ordeal seem nothing less than magnificent. Where is the "nobility" of the Vietnam cause Podhoretz celebrates, if not here? The turning point in public support for the war was the 1968 Tet offensive, an overwhelming Communist defeat: the Communists suffered heavy losses and could not hold the scores of 101 �populated areas and military facilities they attacked; instead of joining the liberating invaders, the 1 South Vietnamese fled in every instance to areas with mor:e fighting but fewer Communists. But the media devastated suppbrt for the war in America by portraying Tet as a Communist triumph. Why? In his important study, Big Story (new edition, Yale University Press 1982), Peter Braestrup argues that not media "ideology" but "the limited ability of the press corps to cover so complicated and strange a war" caused the "distortions ;md misrepresentations." To Podhoretz instead, "Tet provided the occasion for a growing disenchantment with the war to express itself." Both may be right. But Tet shocked me because it should never have happened at all: it showed greater enemy strength and determination (suicidal determination), and weaker allied intelligence, preparedness, and security than should have existed at that point in the war. Tel showed the futility of the "war of attrition" with its gradual and "rational" bombing and troop escalation-with its official guarantees of North Vietnam's territorial integrity and its assurances for the survival of the regime in Hanoi. In response, Hanoi simply threw still more men south to be chewed up by superior American military might-but not without taking their toll of American lives and will. Most Americans were disturbed not by the reasons for our involvement in Vietnam, but, especially after Tet, by doubts about whether our policy was working. Beneath this disappointment in the American people, nagging at Podhoretz (and at many other Americans) is guilt, not for having defended Vietnam at all that the anti-war critics would have us bear, but guilt at deserting an ally, furtively in 1973, openly in 1975. That this, our longest war, was the first in which the Yanks came back before it was "over, over there," cannot help but bother us. Most troubling about Podhoretz' s moral analysis is his failure to reconcile it with his own pragmatic judgement that we should never have gone into Vietnam in the first place: "The only way the U.S. could have avoided defeat in Vietnam was by staying out altogether ... saving Vietnam from Communism was beyond its reasonable military, political. . . intellectual. .. and moral capabilities." The moral and practical questions are intertwined. For if failure was unavoidable, the people of South Vietnam were cursed with the worst of all worlds-the war and Communism. Wasn't it deeply wrong-unconscionable-to impose such an unnecessary price on them and us? Bad enough to "destroy the country in order to save it", but to put it through a war with no realistic prospect of saving it? This seems less morally defensible than the "arrogance" Podhoretz finds in the Kennedy and Johnson people who at least believed their policies would succeed, or than the "naivete" of the moderate anti-war movement which could conceive of no worse fate for Vietnam than the war itself. If it is true that American victory was not inevitable, as many hawks wrongly believed, does it necessarily follow, as Podhoretz maintains, that American failure was? Given the stakes, his fatalism is intuitively and historically unsatisfying. What was tried did not work, but would an)lthing else have? Podhoretz criticizes successive administrations for conducting the war militarily, politically, and strategically "on the cheap." Wouldn't avoiding or 102 correcting their "failures of leadership" have brought a different result? Was America defeated militarily in Vietnam or politically and strategically at home? The United States in Vietnam forgot the lessons of conventional war in Korea and of counterinsurgency in Malaya, Greece, and the Phi1lipines. In Korea, a conventional war of open and unambiguous aggression, the first limited war of modern times, the UN/US forces did not bring North Korea to negotiation until they drove them from the South, invaded the North-and threatened its existence with a non-Communist reunification of Korea. Until this invasion, numerous troop losses had not moved the North Koreans to abandon their aggression. (Korea also, incidentally, showed that the Soviet Union and China would not intervene directly to defend the homeland of their ally-but only to defend their own homeland, in that instance, China.) In Greece, Malaya, and the Phillipines, the West prevailed by providing material support without large troop commitments, because the local Communis.t guerrillas were cut off from supplies and reinforcements from abroad. A hybrid of conventional and counterinsurgency warfare, our Vietnam strategy ignored the crucial lessons of each: it did not invade the enemy's homeland and it did not cut off the local guerrillas from supplies and reinforcements from abroad. In contrast to the United States, the Communist world applied the lessons of Korea in Vietnam. With Southeast Asia's largest army, second in Asia only to China's, Hanoi openly proclaimed its goal of Communist reunification; but it did not attack the South directly and in force in 1955, because it feared the response North Korea's open and unambiguous attack had provoked in 1950. Instead it supplied the local guerrillas and infiltrated its own troops, masquerading as guerrillas, into the South. All-out attack by regular mechanized divisions came twenty years later, after protracted disguised aggression had led the United States to abandon Saigon in fact in 1973 and by law in 1975. Vietnam ended the way Korea had started, with brutal open conquest, but at a time and under circumstances that prevented the response the lesson of Munich required. On leaving office, Eisenhower, who had refused to commit U.S. soldiers to stop North Vietnamese advances in Laos and Vietnam, had no qualms about recommending to the new president that he might have to intervene there, especially in the increasingly desperate situation in Laos. In early 1961-an incident Podhoretz curiously ignores-Kennedy did in fact dramatically and publicly commit the U.S. to the defense of Laotian "inde· pendence." When a few months later, however, it became clear that the defense of Laos required American troops, Kennedyin contrast to Eisenhower, who had supported a coalition that favored the West-settled for a coalition government with Communists that conceded the Communist guerrillas two-thirds of Laos with its access routes to Vietnam. (In 1965 Kissinger characterized Kennedy's decision as "backing down" and "abandoning an ally," a pattern he saw repeated in the Kennedy administration's, at least passive, involvement in the overthrow of Diem in 1963.) After his failure in Laos (and the Bay of Pigs and Khruschev's "traumatizing" summit bullying) Kennedy decided to take a stand AUTUMN /WINTER 1982-83 �in Vietnam. Because of fear of a big~power confrontation, however, his intervention was "timid and hesitant. .. half-hearted and gradual." He decided on counterinsurgency without, however, sealing-off Vietnam's borders. By dealing with a protracted and disguised invasion as if it were a guerri11a'war-and not tak~ ing the measures necessary for victory in such a war-Kennedy allowed the myth of a "civil war and local insurgency" to take hold of the world. We cannot know whether, had Kennedy lived, his Irish would have prevailed over his Harvard and he might have decided on a more Truman-like response, or whether (as JFK apologists have argued) he would have followed the cut-and-run model of Laos. Either policy would have had better consequences. But even if, as Podhoretz contends, he would have done more or less what johnson did, the results probably would have been different. Why? Because Kennedy doing it would have made all the differ~ ence: unlike LBJ, he had the "style" and "charisma" to mobilize public opinion, and a network of media and academic allies. Kennedy's closet doves would have remained there rather than reacting to fate's cruel blow in Dallas by attacking the besieged sitting president, hinting at a Robert Kennedy "dump Johnson" challenge in 1964, and actually launching one in 1968. (Would we have heard chants of"Hey, hey, JFK, how many kids did you kill today"?) And without its trump card-a combined anti-war and "get Johnson" movement gradually draining America's will-Hanoi would have had the incentive to make peace not war. But that was not to be. Kennedy's death three weeks after Diem's sealed the fate of Vietnam-and of America in Vietnam. Just as Diem's murder unhinged events in South Vietnam, the assassination of Kennedy permanently altered the course at. home. Vietnam almost instantly became "Johnson's war'' and then "Nixon's war." But the rules of the game had largely been set, by Kennedy and even by Eisenhower before him: aggression would be resisted, but on the enemy's terms, and not on his home ground. Neither Johnson or Nixon would fundamentally change these terms-Johnson because of the domestic turmoil, and Nixon and Kissinger for the same fear but also because they nurtured bigger "geopolitical" ambitions on the international stage: detente with the Soviet Union and rapprochement with China. At Home and Abroad LETTER FROM THE HoMEFRONT: ON MARRYING This is an Apology. The deed for which I must atone, or provide justification, is mar· riage. My particular faults-youth and gender (I am 23 and a woman in the 1980's) -are incidental. But they have helped to magnify-by making my own situation more extreme-the central issue of mar~ riage. So much for the overall "efficient cause" of this essay. The more immediate catalyst was my observation of various long-term "relationships" (my use of the term excludes marriage) and their eventual dissolution. What struck me in each case was the couples' surprise at the fading of love and the resigna· tion with which they accepted their parting. I saw a remarkable mixture of innocence and cynicism. The surprise that accompa· nied the couples' loss of passion showed shallow understanding of the way men and women work together. The easy resigna· tion suggested weary sophistication. But perhaps the combination, innocence and cynicism, ought not surprise. In our time the kind of experience likely to promote such cynicism is readily available, but seri· THE ST. JOHNS REVIEW ous and thorough thought about the malefemale relationship is rare. We are jaded by our past, and as pure of any real insight as if we'd led the cloistered lives of our ances· tors. Experience rather than understanding has become the god to whom we appeal The old rules that governed such matters have been overthrown, but the subsequent void is yet unfilled. No new constitution was born of this revolution but only pur~ poseless freedom. Experience is now avail~ able in plenty, to what end no one knows. If wisdom is not the aim, and since we've es· tablished no rights and wrongs it cannot be, experience itself must be the end. We are left with a society that uses up mates as it does cars, with equanimity. We have learned to cloak the absence of thought with the jargon of "relationships." For most of my generation, marriage has been, at best, an irrelevancy. We have slept together-if not carelessly, then certainly without mutual promise or obligation. When we grew somewhat more attached we have moved in together rather than marry. We were "not ready" for marriage although what we were waiting for was never quite clear. We wanted to "test" each other first to ensure that our marriage would never end in divorce. We did not see the point of "a piece of paper," because if we loved each other that was enough, and if love ceased it was only reasonable that the union should also dissolve. Lest we bind ourselves to anything that might become difficult, we chose the temporary over the permanent, the safe and casual over the risky and demanding. Now, months or years later, we find that "something has happened," that we do not in fact feel about each other as we once did. What a good thing we didn't marry! The situation is unpleasant, and it seems a pity to part after so much shared past, but at least no divorce is necessary. Yet if we are not quite satisfied with the knowledge that our caution was justified, if we are perhaps uneasy about relationships with "planned obsolescence," then we may well Wonder what "happened," what went wrong. It is not a very difficult puzzle. The arrangement was from the beginning inten· 103 �tionally temporary. Is it surprising that the love also should be temporary? No, promises were made, no future anticipated. Is it surprising that there should in fact be no future? When two people have shared (another word, like urelationships" which has been grossly overused but seems hard to avoid) everything that can presently be shared but have made no promises about future sharing, it is not surprising that they should eventually weary of each other. Indeed, that very refusal to promise future love must immediately lessen present love. When lover says to beloved, "I love you now, but can't guarantee the future," he has already damaged their present. Pea· ple who love may, of course, themselves be sensible and cautious, but only insofar as they are and do something other than love. For love, itself, is by nature immoderate and demanding. It is content with nothing less than total commitment: love is itself the food of love. Promise of love-guaranteed future love-enables present love. When we deny our mutual future, we remove the endless supply of love and so begin to starve our present love. It seems a simple truth, that love which is not fed will die; but it is one which is extraordinarily difficult both to remember and to act upon. Love must grow or decline. Unless the couple is willing to promise a shared future, their love cannot grow,,indeed, must fade. The couple have avoided the promise, and as they watch their love weaken, they agree, not surprisingly, to part. The self-defeating effects of intentioned temporariness seem evident; but we have yet to address explicitly the initially mentioned objection to marriage. The second, that the couple must "test" one another, must live together for awhile to see if things work out, seems obviously mistaken. ''Testing" assumes a possible end of love, when it is precisely the opposite which must be assumed if the love is to be fed and so prosper. More interesting is the first objection, the notion of "being ready." At the root of this phrase and of many difficulties with marriage-whether of the initial decision to marry or the later and sadder one of divorce-lies one particular problem: that of identity (we seem hounded by these once worthy, now sadly jargonized words for which we can find no alternative). It is the problem which Tolstoy addresses so mar· velously in Anna Karenina where he treats 104 marriage as an identity-giver, and which has become especially important with the rise of "Women's Liberation." The refusal to commit oneself to another in the name of finding or perhaps preserving one's identity has today become commonplace. We wonder at those men and women who are not interested in a career, in contributing to the GNP-and who prefer to stay at home with a family. We assume they are less complete, more reliant upon others for their identity, less selfpossessed. An unattached woman with a promising career is respected because she is "free," dependent on no one and able to "be herself." A married woman with a child (although we are taught to pay lip service to the "homemaker") is considered a mere adjunct of her family who is unable to "realize her full potential." If talk of "finding oneself" is passe now, it is only because such ideas have found almost universal ac· ceptance. We act as if this "self" were out there somewhere, ready made and awaiting discovery; or if we have already "found" our· selves," we suppose we must guard our findings assiduously to preserve our own sacred "individuality.'' The obvious mistake in all this is the un· ders~anding of the self as something apart from what defines it. We are always defined by others. We do not and cannot define ourselves. An internal search for identity is doomed to failure, because our sense of reality is so entirely bound up with others that we cannot be sure of anything on our own. Alone, we are capable of endless selfdoubt. The inner dialogue arrives at no conclusion and will trap us in circles if unaided by an external presence. We are in fact known and know ourselves by the company we keep. The fear of losing oneself in marriage, of denying one's identity by joining it with an· other's, is groundless. If we are inescapably defined by others, the question is not whether we wish rather to identify ourselves by our mate than to maintain independence and individuality, but whether we choose one alliance over another. The choice against spouse is not a victory for self, but only the decision to be defined by other and inevitably larger groups: proponents of the ERA, Moral Majority mem· bers, Soho loft-dwellers, Visa-Card carriers. We are all constantly defining and redefining ourselves by membership in various or· ganizations. But insofar as our definition of self is acquired solely from such groups, we have forfeited any claim to some special unique identity. Commitment to a single other gives one a specificity, an individuality not achiev· able by participation in a variety of groups. The statement, "She is the one who married A_ B_" is manifestly more specific than "She is 3 lawyer." There are, to be sure, thousands of lawyers. There is only one wife of A._ B_. Equally, the single most specific statement A_ B_ could make about himself is "I am the one who married C_ D_." Neither of them there· by become mere adjuncts of the other. Rather, they have defined themselves with utter specificity and so possess their selves most securely. The fear of commitment in the name of self is mere self-deception be· cause we are bound to "find ourselves" in others in any case, and because if we are really concerned about individuality and differentiation from others, we will always be most individual when we ally ourselves with one other. Let us return to the phrase, "being ready." One must grant its occasional legitimacy. Until we begin to make sense of the many larger identifying groups and claim membership in some rather than in others, it might well be folly to attempt the conclusively defining decision: the choice of a spouse. But to procrastinate indefinitely is, quite literally, self-defeating. It is frighten· ing to marry, consciously to choose and de· clare one's ultimate definition. And it is easy to understand why so many have happily taken advantage of society's relaxed at· titude toward living together. If we can avoid decisions, by all means let us do so, but let us admit that we do so out of laziness and fear, not out of a lofty sense of self-fulfillment. It is a radical step to risk defining oneself by a single other, but it offers wilder possibilities than any other alliance. To marry is not to surrender one's own individuality but to join it with another's to create some· thing radically new and unpredictable. Much has been made of the security of marriage. I have never desired that sort of se· curity; it is precisely the larger insecurity, the increase of possibilities and the risk of creation, that entices me. Finally, we must address the third of those initial objections. Why bother with AUTIJMN/WINTER 1982-83 �the "piece of paper" which is the evidence of a public promise? If we have promised faithfulness to each other, what does it matter that society know? After all, is it not a private affair? In fact, the promise of marriage is anything but private. As marriage is the most profound commitment between two persons, so its public declaration is the most profound action we can perform in the world of men. The public promise to love is the remarkable merging of the private with the public, of the individual with the universal, of the world of thought with the world of action. For in the public sphere, action rules, in the private, thought. To assume that One can promise love in private is seriously to misunderstand the nature of promise. Promise is action and therefore an essentially public undertaking. It is through promise that a lasting love-a love "till death us do part"-is made possible, piecisely because we are thereby transferred from the private, unsure, and always vulnerable world of thought to the public, strong, and definite world of action. Public promise frees us. from dependence on our "feelings," which are dark and easily swayed. We are set free in the clarity of action. Faithfulness to one person and its public avowal are essentially one and the same. If it is through promise that faithful love is made possible and promise is a public event, then to promise faithfulness is to declare it publicly. Moreover, the problem we have with the "piece of paper" is precisely the same problem we have with commitment. Both stem from a fundamental misunderstanding of identity. I have already discussed the fear of losing oneself in marriage. Unwillingness to make public avowal is the same fear taken one step further. It is again the attempted separation of self (although this time "self" includes the loved one) from the external world. It is to forget that we are always defined by others and so are inescapably public. When I marry, my definition is radically altered and must necessarily affect my relationship to my other "definers" -the Public. Denial of "the piece of paper" can only be futile evasion. Prevailing contemporary opinion maintains that the private is somehow more "real" than the public. Again, this implies a misunderstanding of "public." The publicprivate dichotomy is that of action and thought, and it is, after all, action which 1HE ST. JOHNS REVIEW shapes thought, which gives it final definition. We are all of us a strange mixture of public and private, but to assume that the one is more profound, more "real" than the other, is to misunderstand the distinction. Serious participation in public affairs is increasingly rare. Indeed, we assume those who do pursue public life to be either crazy or crooked. More_ and more we desire only to be left alone, free to pursue private happiness. It seems no coincidence that this is the same time in which the fear of, or perhaps studied disinterest in, marriage is also so prevalent. Confusion about identity is at the root of both. Only when we fully understand that the self is not a separate entity, that we can never be wholly private, will we risk commitment to the other-whether an individual or a group. Perhaps the most remarkable thing about the public-private division is our ability to transcend it. We do so daily but nowhere more completely than in marriage. In marriage, the profoundly private-love-becomes public. The indefinable is defined and so ensured. We receive our ultimate identity by the choice of spouse even as our love is identified through unconditional promise. For in marriage conditions are surrendered. We promise a love "'till death us do part," a promise made possible precisely in the making, because it is the knowledge that love must last which allows it freedom and the chance to grow, and because promise as action allows love to transcend the problems inherent in its own realm of the private. That we are at once so entirely divided and yet able to transcend such division is most miraculous. The possibility of promise is, after all, something we share with no other creature. Let us not surrender the distinction. KARl JENSON An actress, Kari Jenson lives and works in New York. THE HOLOCAUST MISSION: July 29 to August 12, 1979 At the end of 1978 President Carter establishe_d a Commission on the Holocaust. It was charged with the task of proposing an appropriate memorial to the Jewish victims of the Nazi regime. There was an element of retroactivity in the presidenes decision, a reaching out for the five million dead whose very identity as Jews was not readily recognized by the United States at a time when they were being subjected to a sys· tematic process of destruction. Now they were to have a monument under official U.S. auspices to recall the days when they died alone. The drafting of such a recommendation is quite an undertaking and the work was to be carried out by (I) a small staff consisting of a part-time director, full-time deputy director and full-time assistant, (2) the "President's Commission" itself-a large body of twenty~four members chosen from the public, plus five from the Senate and five from the House of Representatives, and (3) an advisory board almost as big as the commission. To finance the half year or so of deliberations and planning, a . modest budget was allocated to the commission by the Department of the Interior. Commissioners and advisory board members accepted no fees and their official travel outside the United States was to be billed to them personally. Most members of the commission as well as the board were Jews, a number of them survivors. The most conspicuous profession in the group was the clergy (Jewish, Protestant, and Catholic), albeit one that was drawn mainly from academic life. There was an obvious tilt to the northeast, although several members had come from Georgia. A number of commissioners could be described as prominent in public or cultural life. Few, very few, were young. I had little inkling or knowledge of the consultations which led to the creation of the commission and the selection of its me~bership. No doubt I was approached because I had devoted about three decades of research and writing to the Holocaust, but I have long been accustomed to working in solitude. No wonder that in one of the 105 �first telephone calls informing me of the commission's existence I was admonished not to turn down an appointment ifl should be requested to serve. I would be needed because the memorial was to be more than mute stone; it was to contain records, books, films, and it was to be a depository of such materials in order that one might progress beyond remembering the imperfectly known to know what was imperfectly remembered. This was the offer I could not refuse. To my surprise, virtually all of the commissioners espoused the idea of a "living" memorial, a building in which one could meet, learn, and think. More than that, there was to be an endowment to aid researchers with fellowships and grants. Of course, most of the funds for this program would have to be private. We would not only have to recOmmend a broad framework, but we would also have to think about the means. During an early meeting, mention was made by the director of a journey abroad, to visit some of the principal sites in Poland and the USSR where the jews had been killed and to survey hitherto unavailable documentary holdings in the archives of these countries. This mission preoccupied me from that very moment; it filled my mind long after it was over. I had never been in Poland or the USSR; I had never visited Auschwitz, Treblinka, or Babi Yar. Something-not only lack of money-had kept me from traveling to these places. I had "seen" them, of course, in German documents. It is in those files, thousands and tens of thousands of them, that I had wandered and it is there that I had encountered "planet Auschwitz" and the "concentration camp universe." Eventually I had become familiar with these phenomena, their terrain, logistics, and operational characteristics. Yet in essence they remained mysterious to me and inexplicable. "No one who has not been there can imagine what it was like." How often had I heard this phrase from survivors. Its implications could hardly be overlooked: those who had not lived through the experience would not be able to recreate it, even if they studied the original records or examined the old barbed wires. There is no way one can be in Auschwitz anymore; it is not a concentration camp today, but a museum. Nor can one be in Treblinka, it is a 106 sculpture. One cannot be in Babi Yar either, it is a monument in a park. What then could one recapture in those surroundings? What could we do there now? The survivors on the commission were to be our guides. The Holocaust mission was in the first instance their journey. At the opening meeting of the commission in Washington, a procedural point had been raised by a Christian member. He said that survivors should always speak first. He was gently overruled by the survivors themselves who preferred to follow a proper American alphabetical order, but here, on the grounds where they had been the outcasts of mankind, orphaned or widowed in a single night, they were to be at the head of the procession. · The undisputed spiritual leader was Elie Wiesel, once an inmate of Auschwitz, now the chairman of the commission, ''prophetlike," mesmerizing, saying at every occasion not merely that which must be said to a host, but also those things that for most of us would have been unutterable, and saying them in the morning, the afternoon, or the night. Fluent in French, English, Hebrew, Yiddish (not to mention Hungarian), this gaunt figure moved among us, sleeping little and eating almost nothing. We almost did not go. The Soviet Union issued visas to us on the Saturday prior to our scheduled Sunday departure, and it denied entry to the part-time director of the commission as well as to a member of the advisory board. (Both had visited the USSR before and had apparently been in contact with dissidents.) The detailed itinerary was a series of last-minute arrangements that must have been put together with the assistance of extraordinarily diligent officials of the Department of State and embassies abroad. The group was large. Though it included fewer than half of the commissioners and advisory board members (none at all from the legislative branch), there were wives, reporters, and invited guests, some of them financial supporters of remembrance projects. At the many ceremonies at graves and monuments, the cameras would sweep across this crowd which numbered between fifty and sixty. Only after we had left the United States did I understand the multiple purposes of the mission. We would not only have to absorb much that we would encounter dur- ing our hurried visits and meetings; we would also have to impart information to others. Our foreign hosts in Eastern Europe would ask us what we meant when we said the word "Holocaust" and we would devote more time than we had anticipated to answering that one question above all. Poland Today Poland is a homogeneous society. Unlike the Polish state of 1939, the present republic has no substantial minorities. The territories inhabited by Ukrainians and Lithuanians were yielded to the USSR, and from the western provinces, acquired after the war, the Germans were expelled. The Jewish community, once 3,300,000 dispersed in the large cities and smaller towns, now numbers 6,000. Ninety percent of the prewar Jewish population were kiHed in the Holocaust; most of the remainder survived as soldiers, 'refugees, or forced laborers outside or inside the destructive arena, and these people have since moved to other countries, mainly to Israel and the United States. The three million Polish Jews who succumbed to German destruction represent nearly three-fifths of all the jewish dead. Moreover, Poland (as defined by the boundaries of 1939) is the graveyard not only of those three million, but also of a million more transported there in special trains from several countries of Germandominated Europe. Before their final destruction, the Jews of Poland were incarcerated in hundreds of ghettos, large and small. Near some of these ghettos the death camps appeared. From these ghettos the Jews were moved out to the gas chambers where they were killed along with the other jewish deportees from the northern, western, and southern portions of the continent. Few are the traces of Jewry in the physical panorama of contemporary Warsaw. As we stood in front of the monument-cast in heroic proportions-of the Warsaw ghetto fighters, I glanced at the ordinary apartment buildings erected by the Polish government on the former ghetto site. They were already showing signs of wear. I knew AUTUMN /WINTER 1982-83 �that the old quarter was no more. For sev- every unmarked grave, every prison bar." I eral years I had been one of the editors of took down these words and almost memothe diary kept by the man who was Chair- ' rized them; they rang in my ears longer man of the Jewish Council of the Warsaw than any others expressed in these official Ghetto, Adam Czerniakow. Again and meetings. again, I had consulted a map of the TYet I knew that during our century, Jews shaped walled ghetto, some ten full blocks had endured misery in Polish society. It is at its widest and twenty blocks long, which hardly an unknown story and in the Amerihoused well over 400,000 people in three can Jewish community it has shaped sentior four story buildings. After the deporta- ments much less mellow than my own. I tions, and the battle ignited by the armed could imagine a reaction in America to resistance of the last ghetto inhabitants, what we were hearing in Warsaw that day. the SS razed the jewish quarter lest War- It would be said in our country that Poland saw regain its prewar population size. Now is embracing its Jews, now that they are that there are Polish houses where the gone, as much as it was rejecting them ghetto stood, it is difficult to visualize its when they were still alive. In the extreme former boundary even at the Umschlag- form of this view, Poland has been the antiplatz through which the official ghetto ex- semitic nation par excellence, discriminatports and imports passed and from which ing against the Jewish population before more than 300,000 Jews were taken to Tre- the war, welcoming German actions against blinka. jewry during the_conflict, and all but exOn the first day we visited also a Polish pelling the remnant thereafter. I myself monument commemorating the Polish have always attempted to assess evidence struggle against the Germans. At that cere- of Polish hostility toward the jews in the mony picked Polish troops stood by and broadest possible context. Long before the the American ambassador was present as Holocaust, there was little tranquility for we placed flowers at the foot of the memo- Jewry in several countries of Europe. After rial. The Polish People's Republic does not the German invasion of Poland, the ghetdeny the Holocaust, it does not obscure toization process instituted by the occupathe fact that jews died as jews, but it will tion authorities resulted in a reallocation of remind the world of the Poles who died as Jewish housing and Jewish trading to the Poles, and it will present the two fates in a Polish sector. The Poles profited, if that is formula suggesting parity. Repeatedly we the word, from a Jewish misfortune. The heard a statistic indicating that three mil- Germans set up also their death camps on lion Polish Jews and three million non- Polish soil, not, however, to take advantage Jewish Poles had died as a consequence of of any Polish hospitality, but to reduce the German occupation. The Polish toll- costs, particularly of transportation. There casualties in battle, deaths in camps, and was no central Polish authority under Gerfatalities in epidemics-was calculated a man rule and it is not Poland that destroyed long time ago and may well be reexamined the Jews-this deed was performed by Nazi by experts, but when Polish Justice Minis- Germany. ter Jerzy Bafia referred to this "Golgotha" Still, I could not ignore the circumstance as a trauma that after thirty-five years was that for the remaining handful of Jews, life still being felt in every walk oflife, I believed in Poland had become difficult and even oppressive. Only a few days after our stay him without need for any substantiation. For Czeslaw Pilichowski, Director of the in Eastern Europe, I was to meet a middleMain Commission for Investigation of Nazi aged Jew in Denmark who had emigrated Crimes in Poland, the double disaster in- from Poland nearly a decade ago. I asked flicted on Jews and Poles by the same im- him what his profession had been before placable foe was more than a matter of his emigration. He was a major in the Poljuxtaposition. He cited a poem, "To the ish army. Had he retired? No, he had been Polish Jews," by Wladislaw Broniewski, dismissed abruptly in 1967, one week after which contains the verse "Our common the outbreak of the Six-Day War between home has been wrecked and the blood shed Israel and the Arab states. No doubt, the makes us brothers, we have been united by reasons for the action against him were execution walls, by Dachau, Auschwitz, by linked to foreign policy issues, but I could THE ST. JOHNS REVIEW not help being troubled by his experience and the similar dilemma faced by other Jews in the Soviet Union. The problem is the age-old lesson so ingrained in the mind of the Eastern Enropean Jew that eventually he will suffer, not for a religion he does not practice or a Zionist cause he does not espouse, but for the fact that in the eyes of all those around him he remains unalterably a jew. Our hosts placed stress on the Polish agony during the war, and they implied that since those trying days Jews and Poles have had much in common. They also reminded us of the help that ordinary Poles had given to endangered Jews in the course of the German occupation. This chapter in the history of Polish-Jewish relations was emphasized in speeches, books, and exhibits. I had occasion to look at some of the evidence-it was documentary. In German parlance, Poles who had extended shelter or sustenance to Jews were guilty of Judenbeherbergung, a crime for which the penalty was a swift death. The Germans had the habit of posting the names of Polish men and women who lost their lives for such activities. We had a great many meetings. Addresses were given, points made, themes stressed. At the end of a long day, I would walk alone in Warsaw. Once, before midnight, I saw a Polish family placing flowers on a plaque at the entrance of a park. We have moved from cemetery to cemetery, said Elie Wiesel later in Jerusalem, and everywhere we went we found a strange beauty. This observation about localities in which masses of people were killed expressed in quintessence a thought I had during our visit to-Treblinka. We had traveled to the site of the death camp in the stifling heat of a Hungarian bus. On the way, a survivor pointed out to us the small Jewish towns that had once existed nearby. We passed old wooden houses, rode over a narrow bridge, and saw old freight cars at a railway siding-a deportation train preserved there by the Polish government. I wish we could have approached the camp by rail, as the deportees of 1942 had come, but we were arriving on a very' warm day at the end of July, at a time of year when the first of the Warsaw 107 �ghetto transports were being hauled into this killing center. Though the distance is not long, the Jewish victims had been moved much more slowly than we, and they must have jumped out of the cars with forebod· ings and parUy in shock, but also with some sense of physical relief. Did they notice the sky and the trees? It took but two hours for the deportees to be deprived of all their personal belongings and to be walked the incredibly short distance to the chambers where they were gassed. A small German guard force, augmented by Ukrainian auxiliaries, killed three quarters of a million Jews in Treblinka on a vir· tual assembly line. Several hundred Jewish inmates employed in maintenance and facing certain death rebelled in August 1943. Few were the survivors of the break, but those Jews who did not escape from T reblinka did not outlive the camp. In the end, the bodies in the mass graves were exhumed. All the installations were razed, and a Ukrainian farm was established on the site to restore its pastoral appearance. Only a cobblestone path, built by prison· ers, was left where Treblinka had existed. After the war, the Polish government laid down concrete ties, arranged as a symbolic railway track, and set up hundreds of jagged stones, each representing a Jewish community, around the stone meffiorial. For this construction, the entire terrain was used on a scale of 1: l, in the place where it had all happened. A guide pointed out that af· ter every heavy rain, tiny bone fragments are disgorged by the earth and mix with pebbles on the ground. Involuntarily, one or two visitors bent down to pick up what might have been such relics, only to drop them quickly. I was still gazing at the woods and I thought I heard the whine of heavy trucks in the distance. Where is the highway, I asked? Where are the trucks go· ing? There is no highway and there are no trucks, I was told. I was hearing the famous Treblinka wind moving through the trees. Much farther from Warsaw, to the south· west, was Auschwitz, the most lethal place in Nazi Europe. One million Jews died there, as well as several hundred thousand Poles, Russians, Frenchmen-all the nationalities in the orbit of the German army and the German Security Police. Auschwitz was a complex of three camps: the main one, or Auschwitz I, which housed the ad- 108 ministration as well as a large number of inmates; the killing center of Birkenau, designated Auschwitz II; and the industrial camp, Monowitz, or Auschwitz Ill. The entire cluster was photographed repeatedly by allied reconnaissance aircraft in 1944. Auschwitz I is still intact. Its barracks stand where they were, a reconstructed gas chamber may be viewed, and the crematory is in working order. The death camp ofBirk· enau is almost bare; the tall smoke stacks of the crematories are gone, but near the rail· way track one may climb over the ruins of the largest gas chambers ever built. Adjacent to Auschwitz I is the city of Auschwitz with its large railway yard. Houses now filled with children are ranged along the edge of the former camp. Every day the inhabitants of these buildings may look out of their windows and see the roofs of barracks. We stepped in, wearing our tags with the emblem of the United States and the leg· end "President's Commission on the Holocaust.'' The main entrance crowned with iron grill work still proclaims the slogan Arbeit macht frei (work makes free) and a smaller sign at the side says HALT Ausweise vorzeigen (Halt-show identification). The walkways and buildings were those of a permanent military fort, but that appearance was deceptive. On iron bars still flank· ing the street on which we were walking, men had been hanged. Individual buildings, which the Germans called blocks, were put to unique concentration camp uses: in one, surgical experiments were performed, in another prisoners were pushed into a cage and starved to death. Between two of the barracks there was an alley used for shoot· ings. The windows of the building to the left had been filled so that prisoners housed there could not see the executions. To the right, however, no such precautions had been taken, since the only inmates kept there were the condemned, waiting their turn. Each of the buildings is part of the Ausch· witz museum. I went to see the exhibits of old shoes, eyeglasses, prosthetic devices, utensils, and luggage left behind by the Germans because of their unsuitability for shipment to the Reich. I saw a hallway filled with photographs of Polish prisoners, young men and women, who were brought here in 1942 and 1943. Each of them looked healthy, for their pictures were taken on the day of arrival. For each the SS had noted also the date of birth, and the date of death. Most had lived only a few months in Auschwitz. I peered at these photographs, one or the other adorned with fresh flowers left by Polish friends or family. I wanted to find some young man who had been as old as I was at that time. The search did not take long. My contemporary, born a few days before me, was dead as a teenager in Auschwitz even before my schooling in New York was interrupted by the war. In Birkenau, standing on earth, sand, and what may have been ashes, I attached myself to a Polish young lady of noble beauty and refined features who explained the history of the camp. She was obviously a professional historian and I admired her grasp of complex information. She was preparing an album of German SS photographs of Auschwitz and I promised her aerial photographs from our own archives. Our group was about to be divided, some to visit an old synagogue in nearby Krakow, the others to stay in Auschwitz. just at that moment I began to feel an unmistakable pain, a cramp brought on by a kidney stone which I must have formed. I am prone to this malady when there is too much heat and not enough water to drink. The pain always worsens and then I need morphine for relief. Obviously, I should have left im· mediately to see a physician in Krakow, but instead I raised my hand to join those who chose to remain in the camp. I returned to the barracks, the old shoes, to the photo· graphs of the dead Poles, to the alley, to the cells. I wanted to stand where the present pontiff had knelt in prayer. My pain subsided, my muscles relaxed, and at the end of the day, I knew that I would have no need of drugs. There was to be one more visit to a cemetery in Poland, a real one in Warsaw. By now, I had run out of time-time to look at documents in the Jewish historical insti· tute, and time to survey the land behind the tombstones where 80,000 jews, dead of emaciation and disease, had been buried during the ghetto days. I wanted to see only one grave, a regular large slab half hidden in the growing thicket of weeds. It is the resting place of Adam Czerniakow, the chairman of the Warsaw Jewish Council, who took his life upon the outbreak of de- AUTUMN/WINTER 1982-83 �portations after he had failed to save his people. The Soviet Union I was startled when Elie Wiesel, the chairman of our commission, called a meeting of the group in the open environment of a dining room of our Warsaw hotel to discuss the advisability of proceeding to the Soviet Union in the light of the refusal of visas to the director of the commission and to a member of the advisory board. So far as I was concerned, that issue had been settled before we left our homes in the United States-we would go. Much to Wiesel's dismay, several of us spoke up to reiterate the earlier decision. Exhausted by a full day, we reassured him in a sluggish manner that at some appropriate time in the future we would express our outrage to protest the Soviet action. Only one member of our group, Bayard Rustin, understood immediately that Wiesel was attempting to elicit our outrage on the spot in order that he might use it for yet another attempt to obtain the visas. I was too concerned with the possibility that he migh't actually abandon our original plans to be of help to him. For me, the visit to the Soviet Union was essential, if only because we had been admitted as members of an official Holocaust commission. Already my head was filled with burning curiosity. How would we be received? What would be said to us? The director of the commission, Irving Greenberg, was not in Europe. Perhaps he had expected an immediate statement of solidarity from the membership. The advisory board member whose visa was also denied, had come with us as far as Warsaw. He had in fact been instrumental in arranging the entire journey. It was his miserable travel bureau we all had to use. Now he conceded defeat: he wanted us to continue without him. He only asked that we would say one prayer for him at Babi Yar and another in the Moscow synagogue. His voice breaking, he sat down, but then rose again to apologize for having displayed his feelings so openly. Now he wanted to give us a reason for leaving him behind. He had been a member of a partisan unit in Eastern Europe during the war. There was an iron rule in the unit that a wounded man would be shot by his comrades lest their THE ST. JOHNS REVIEW mission be jeopardized. I liked Miles Lerman. This former partisan and current oil distributor personifies the character traits I , have come to associate with survivors. They are men and women with fast reactions, high intelligence, great endurance, and an extraordinary capacity for regenerating their lives from the impact of shattering experiences. When I saw Lerman again in Copenhagen, barely a week after our meeting in the Warsaw hotel, he was talking to all of us, full of inquiries and plans. I was not prepared for the Soviet Union. As a political scientist, I should not have been surprised by anything, not the standard of living as exemplified by the merchandise in a department store, nor the restrictions so evident in the mere absence of foreign non-communist newspapers in the lobbies of our hotels. I knew of the So· viet belief that distant goals require constant sacrifices: for capital formation and industrialization, many consumers goods are not produced; for the stability of theregime, intellectual and physical mobility is curtailed; and for the sake of unity in the Soviet Union, the separate memories of constituent nationalities, including the Holocaust that befell the Soviet Jews, must be submerged. What I had not quite expected was backwardness in so much art, architecture, and historiography, that stale conforming manner in which Soviet designers and writers are casting the aesthetic qualities of life. Hence I was taken aback also by the counterpart of this stylistic retardation in the formula ridden answers of bureaucrats to central questions about the Second World War and the Holocaust which had transpired in its course. The approach of Soviet officialdom to the meaning of history is fixed and rigid; the encounter of these men with us could be no different. In Poland, we had not only been warmly received; we were given assurances that the Polish archives would be open to American researchers interested in the German occupation. Poland holds a large quantity of German documents, particularly records portraying the destructive scene at a local leveL Much that occurred in the final hours of Polish Jewry and of other Jews deported to Poland is reflected in these files. The USSR also possesses documents of Ger- man occupation authorities, not to speak of contemporaneous Soviet correspondence dealing directly with the German onslaught and its effects on the civilian populatidn. I was interested in these materials, though I realized that access to them would be a major problem. Not only would a segmentation of occupation history into Jewish and other subject matter be unwelcome in principle, but such sorting requires an examination of all the German records in detail. We know enough about these documents to expect any report, whether by German SS offices, civilian overseers, military government, railroad directorates, or economic agencies, to contain information about a variety of events-the production of wooden carts and the shooting of Jews might be described on a single page. Moreover, the researcher might be particularly interested in comparisons and contexts; he might wish to investigate the German "racial ladder" and the placement of various groups in this scheme, or the role of native auxiliaries in German service, or the psychological repercussions of shootings on White Russian or Ukrainian communities. It would be inherently impossible for So· viet authorities to permit foreigners the pursuit of information about any aspect of the Jewish catastrophe without allowing them some insight into the entire fabric of Soviet society at a time when it was undergoing its greatest stress. Tactically, there was yet another problem, one which affects all attempts to effect exchanges of knowledge with the Soviet Union. The United States is an open society, our libraries and archives are accessible to all visitors without any stipulation of reciprocity. What Soviet or East German researchers want to know is given to them without restrictions; for what we attempt to find out, we have no more to give. In Kiev, on our first night, walking with Bayard Rustin, I voiced the thought that one argument-the only argument-might be the point that it would be in the interest of the USSR to open its shelves to us, that in the United States there was little appreciation of the Soviet agony or the Soviet contribution in the Second World War, that findings made by American researchers in the Soviet Union would carry more weight in our country than the selection and presentation of topics by Soviet historians and 109 �journalists. Rustin was without question the most astute and experienced member of our mission, and what he said to me that evening in Kiev was somewhat as follows: "I hope you do not mind, my friend, my telling you that you are naive." a Kiev has the appearance of new city. Before the war, its population was 900,000; now the number is 2,150,000. From Sep· !ember 19, 1941, to November 6, 1943, Kiev was in German hands. As soon as the city had been captured, a unit of the SS and Police, Einsatzkommando 4a, ordered the Jewish inhabitants by means of wall posters to assemble for "resettlement." They were taken to a ravine at the city boundary wh.ere the Kommando, a small company-size unit augmented by detach· ments of German Order Police, massacred them in a three-day shooting operation. The count was 33,771 jewish dead. When, in the spring of 194 2, the commander of Kommando 4a, Paul Blobel, received a visi· tor from Berlin (Albert Hartl), he pointed to the mass grave, explaining that the Jews were buried there. Now, more than three and a half decades later, the Chairman of the Executive Committee of the Kiev City Soviet of Peoples' Deputies welcomed the Holocaust commission to the city, and Soviet guides showed the recently built memorial to the American visitors. I do not know what route the bus was following from our hotel, but the ride seemed very short and when we arrived at the ravine called Babi Yar I immediately asked how far we were from the center of the city. Barely two miles was the answer. I could not help wondering then how many people, including the victims themselves, must have heard the rifle shots and rna· chine-gun fire. Babi Yar is a moon shaped depression in the earth, covered with grass and surrounded by trees. Raised on a ridge that is jutting into the center of the dish is a Janus-like monument. Facing the street are heroic figures, while on the far side one may see the tormented faces and contorted bodies of Soviet citizens, including women and children. I talked to the designer of the memorial who explained, that the Germans had shot captured partisans here and help· less civilians there; the sculptor had kept that geography in mind when he shaped 110 the monument. I knew that, unlike Blobel, the Soviet planners of the memorial made no mention of Jews. Our commission had brought a wreath of flowers with streamers commemorating Babi Yar as a Jewish tragedy and laid it down at the foot of the ped· estal on which stood the partisans of stone. The cantor sang, and I disengaged myself from the coil of people around him, stepped back twenty feet and looked up at the crown of the monument. Two Soviet photographers rushed towards me and took pictures of me at close range. We were leaving Kiev for Moscow on a Friday afternoon and I did not think that we would have meetings until Monday. No sooner, however, had we arrived when several of us were asked to go to the headquarters of the Moscow Writers Union, a building which in furnishings and atmo· sphere reminded me of a typical student center at an American university. It was old and nondescript; on several of its floors people were sitting, reading, eating. Our delegation was headed by Wiesel and in· eluded the theologian Robert McAfee Brown, as well as Time magazine book review editor Stefan Kanfer, not in his capacity as a correspondent covering our mission, but as a novelist pressed into service at the spur of the moment to match the formidable array of literary talent assembled on the Soviet side. To our surprise, the Soviet chairman introduced the members of his group by citing their military records. Two had evidently received high decorations and' another had risen from private to major. "When you introduce us," I whispered to Wiesel, "you may say that I was a soldier." "An officer perhaps?" Wiesel asked quickly. "No, just a soldier." Kanfer did not stir. He is a veteran of the Korean conflict. Wrong war. The Soviet delegation consisted of eight people; half of them were Jews. Were so many Jews assembled as a courtesy to us? The idea was unsettling. As if to read my mind, one of the Soviet writers referred to himself as a member of a minority~he was a Russian. Later, the Soviet chairman showed us two large tablets listing the names of Moscow writers killed in action. Half were Jewish names, he explained. We were eating a full meal, the best I was to be served in the Soviet Union, and we were assured that we could have every course without concern-the food was completely kosher. While we were dining, each of us spoke, not as one would in an official meeting with formal agenda, but to say something personal. One of the Soviet writers (the one who had risen from private to major) was Anatoli Rybakov. This is what he told us. He had grown up, of Jewish parents, wholly assimilated into Russian culture. He did not attend religious services and he knew no Yiddish or Hebrew. His eighteen novels had no Jewish content. One day, however, he wanted to write a short story in which the two protagonists, a man and a woman, were Jews. He wanted his story to be about love, not merely the romantic love of young people who had just met, but also the mature love of a husband and wife after they had lived with each other for many years. He decided that his young man should have migrated to Russia from Switzerland in 1910, that he should have met a young woman, married her, and stayed on through the First World War and the Revolution. To show them growing older, he had to continue the story to 1941 and the German assault. He had spent three years in research to construct a locality in which his couple might have lived. By then his story was becoming a novel. He had to place them into a ghetto and inevitably he had to_ construct the ultimate scene of a German shooting operation. It troubled him greatly that the Jews went to their deaths with apparent docility, but he was convinced that they had nO recourse and that they died with dignity. After the publication of his novel he had received hun· dreds of letters assuring him that he had been right in his portrayal. Wiesel spoke of his concern about Babi Yar. Having been there only that morning, still agitated by the experience, he had to point out that it was painful to see the monument without an inscription identifying the victims as Jews. There are monuments and there are monuments, the Russian chairman replied. When,. for example, his -friend, Yevgenij Yevtushenko, wrote a poem "Babi Yar" explicitly dwelling on the jewish fate, that verse was a monument. Who could tell which of the two monuments, the one of rock or the other-on paper, would last the longer? AUTUMN /WINTER 1982-83 �The Saturday morning was devoted to Soviet archival administration. I had familan appearance by the commission and its iarized myself as well as I could with the guests at the Moscow synagogue. I declined organization and holdings of the Soviet arto join the group. Religious observances chives by reading the standard work on that make me uncomfortable and the political . subject by the American Sovietologist Paovertones of that particular visit disturbed tricia Grimsted. In her substantial volume, me. We had come to the Soviet Union as a there is no mention of captured German commission of the president and our man- documents. I would have to inquire about date was the Holocaust. For me there was their location and availability in the course no other purpose, but I realized that many of our discussions in Moscow. of my colleagues did not share my singleThe chief of the Soviet team of archivists mindedness. Our very presence in Moscow was the deputy director of the Main Archion a weekend was no accident; the Satur- val Administration, Vaganov. I pressed the day in the synagogue had been planned to attack for the American group, supported at show support for Soviet Jewry. Later I was every turn by my friends who were eager to to learn that Elie Wiesel had asked for a widen any opening and exploit any breach. private moment after a meeting with Proc- The Main Archival Administration, said urator General Roman Rudenko to present Vaganov, had no German documents. It a list of four incarcerated dissidents to the had no documents at all dated after 1940. Soviet official. Wiesel is a deeply sensitive Furthermore, there was no "fond" or colman and he could not bring himself to re- lection identified as German documents as member the dead by forgetting the living. I such. Where were they then? I asked. Did myself was thinking about unknown, Rus- the Defense Ministry retain possession of sified, and atheistic people whose lives in them? Documents dated after 1940, said the. Soviet Union are increasingly filled Vaganov, were being kept by whatever with questions and quandaries. ministry was the appropriate custodian in On Red Square, of all places, I was to accordance with their subject matter. In have an unexpected encounter with one that case, I asked, when would documents nameless individual. It was evening and dated 1941 or 1942 be transferred by minisfour of us, still wearing our tags, were stand- tries currently keeping them to the Main ing there. He came up to us and in halting Archival Administration? There was a key, but intelligible English said that he knew said Vaganov, according to which transfers about our arrival from broadcasts on the were being made; the schedules varied on Voice of America. His age was about twenty- the basis of different criteria. The Main Arnine and he was born in a small town far chival Administration did not know whe~ from Moscow of a Jewish father, long dead, documents would be handed over by the and a Russian mother, still living. Some time Ministry of Defense. Was he saying, I asked, ago he had moved to the Soviet capital that he had no German documents? The with his Russian wife. By profession he was Soviet Archival Administration, said Vagaan engineer and he was working in his field, nov, may have documents needed for inbut lately he was contemplating emigra- vestigation of war crimes. One or another tion. "Why?" I1 asked. "Because I want free- document may be found in the files of an dom." Did he have access to military secrets Archive in Byelorussia or the Ukraine. We in his job? Yes, he said, and that is why he should consUlt the volumes of the Soviet hiswas seeking employment in a position not tory of the Second World War for sources. requiring knowledge of such information. We should avail ourselves of the existing Once he had made the change he would system of cooperation between the Acadstay for a period of three years. Two of my emy of Sciences of the USSR and US acacompanions immediately handed him their demic bodies if we wished to utilize a Soviet cards, but he would not give us his name. Archive. Who was he? Why did he approach us? Even before our queries to the archivists Was I becoming paranoid for asking what were over, a larger group of our commishis purpose may have been? sion had begun a meeting with Soviet hisBefore the commission had left the torians. We joined our colleagues to talk United States, I had insisted on an oppor- with members of the World War II Section tunity to meet with a representative of the of the Institute of the History of the USSR THE ST. JOHNS REVIEW in the Soviet Academy of Sciences. The Soviet chairman was V. A. Kumanyov, but the most active discussant at the Russian end of the table was the military historian of World War II Alexander Samsonov. It is Samsonov who challenged our mission and everything we stood for. In pursuing a study of the Jewish disaster, he said, with World War II as a background, we were reversing reality and standing history on its head. As a Marxist he had to conclude that the Fascist assault on the USSR was an attempt to conquer the world. In the wake of this aggression, Jews were killed, Russians were killed, Ukrainians were killed. The Fascist plan was to wipe out entire peoples, including all of the Slavic nations. He himself was a Bylorussian and more than thirty years ago he had seen with his own eyes the devastation visited upon the area that was his home. Several of us replied to this argument. We said that the jews had been the victims of German actions from 1933 to 1945. The ghettos were established on Polish soil in 1940 and when German armies suddenly struck at the Soviet Union on june 22, 1941, the Jews were facing mass death. We were not unmindful of the fact that in German plans the Slavic populations of Eastern Europe were destined for rapid enslavement and ultimate extinction. Yet as Soviet forces turned the tide of war in the titanic battle of Stalingrad, the invader's vision of the obliteration of the Slavs was dissipated in the retreat. The Jews, however, were being killed until the end; their annihil<ition became reality, and European Jewry, as we once knew it, is no more. Kumanyov now joined the debate. There were differences of opinion, he said, particularly about Nazi policy vis-a-vis the Jews in the total constellation of German planning. To Kumanyov the destruction of the Jews was just an experiment which was to lead to the annihilation of others. Thus he agreed in part with Samsonov, in part with us, but he had to add that if we were to look at the Holocaust in an isolated manner, we would weaken our common struggle against Fascism. We left the Soviet Union that afternoon. The first of our two last stops was in Copenhagen, where we paid tribute to the Danish people for their singular rescue effort of October 1943 which resulted in the 111 �clandestine transport in small boats of almost the entire Jewish population of Denmark to safety in Sweden. Our j~urney ended with a depleted group in jerusalem where our Israeli friends were worried that the Holocaust Commission would not succeed in isolating itself from the urgings of nationalities with martyrological claims of their own. At Yad Vashem, Israel's Remembrance Authority, a display had been prepared of original documents. One was the last notebook of Adam Czerniakow (the chairman of the Warsaw Jewish Council) opened to the last entry. My colleague, S. ). Staron, and I had worked with type· written transcriptions and a facsimile edition of the diary; only now did I notice that at the moment of Czerniakow's suicide, hours after his final entry, the notebook was just about full. On September 27, 1979, the commission assembled in the Rose Garden of the White House for a presentation of its report to the president. Elie Wiesel spoke in front of the microphone, as President Carter stood at his side, erect and motionless, looking off into the distance. Was he listening to the words7'Was he thinking about one of the many crises with which he had to deal? Wiesel, still thinking of Babi Yar, remarked that this massacre had occurred just thirty-eight years before. The world had looked on then and in the following years, as the Holocaust swept across the European Jewish communities. The president responded, commending us for our work and the journey that in itself was an act of memorialization. Then he recalled the omissions of the time when the world had looked the other way. It was in the middle of the afternoon, and for the president, not yet the middle of his working day. He is like a prisoner, I thought, always under guard, pressured by every summons. That day he had given us an hour. Could it be that he had already devoted more time and thought to the Holocaust than his predecessor during the war, Franklin Roosevelt, had managed while the Jews were dying? It is natural, I said to myself as I was walking in the streets of Washington that night, for me to feel slightly depressed. Not because of those who would deny the Holocaust, or those who would dilute it, or the others who would forget it-1 understand them all. If I did not feel all that well, I was merely experiencing the reaction I always had after some concluding ceremony. What I had to do now was to plan my research. There were documents I had to read, particularly the records in the Polish archives, and I would have to travel again soon. Next year, in Auschwitz. RAUL HILBERG Professor of political science at the University of Vermont, Raul Hilberg wrote The Destruction of the European Jews, (Chicago 1961), which will appear in a revised expanded edition in 1983 (Holmes and Meier). With Stanislaw Staron and Josef Kermisz he edited The Warsaw Diary of Adam Czerniakow, (Stein and Day 1979). "The President's Commission on the Holocaust," after its final report, was replaced by "The United States Memorial Council." FROM OUR READERS (Continued.from page 2) colleges, do likewise. Several of them who had never heard, of St. John's asked me abOut it after reading the Review, and you can bet that they read the article about the New York Times versus Pravda, not the one about Plotinus. I am not berating the article about Plotinus or any other such article; I enjoy reading them, too. But I think that the new editorial_y-clicy you have in mind will upset the admirable balance (between the two types of articles I gave examples of) that the Review has maintained over the last several issues. The general public, and most alumni, will have no incentive to read it because nothing will grab their attention. Offer them something that they suspect will interest them, though, and they might read the rest of the issue as well. There is a case of such a publication as you seem to want the Review to become; in fact, it is none other than the Review itself in the days when it wa,s called The College. As I recall, I seldom read it, and none of my non-St. John's friends I showed it to ever 112 did. It had the same tone as the professional journals that tutors and alumni who have gone on to become college professors write in: a cut above the competition, but nonetheless plodding and addressed to a much too narrow audience. Of course, articles that lack pizzazz, like great books that lack pizzazz, often have important things to say. However, a whole magazine full of them makes for a whole magazine unread. You tutors, who develop great patience for texts as a part of your job, tend to forget this. "The disciplined reflection which is nurtured by the St. John's Program" (I quote the statement of editorial policy) is also nurtured elsewhere besides St. John's, and on other matters besides those investigated in the program. Let the St. John's Review continue to reflect the best efforts of the whole republic of letters, not just those of the small citadel that is our college; that is the best way to communicate the intellectual liveliness of St. John's to those outside its campuses. If you do not, the Review will become another one of those magazines read only by those who write for it. KURT SCHULER '81 The following is the Instruction Committee's statement of editorial policy which the writer cites: Editorial Policy For The St.John's Review The St. John's Review exemplifies, encourages, and enhances the disciplined reflection which is nurtured by the St. John's Program. It does so both through the character most in common among its contributors-their familiarity with that Program and their respect for it-and through the style and content of their contributions. Contributors are, for the most part, members of the greater college community-tutors, alumni, and visiting lecturers (continued inside back cover) AUTUMN /WINTER 1982-83 �-and others who are friends and critics of the Program. Appropriate submissions by those less familiar with the Program are welcome. For the most part, contributions do not observe the usual limits of research scholarship, nor do they use its apparatus. On the other hand, however, they do not display the easy generalization and simplification of popular journalism. Rather, under the discipline of the liberal arts, they aim at the immediacy and directness characteristic of intelligent fundamental inquiry. Contributions aim to provide their readers with a representation in print of the continuing study and free discussion which is fostered by the Program and by which the tutors, alumni, and students of the College live and work: the interpretation of texts of worth and power and the consideration of deep and troubling issues. Although the perennial character of the concerns nourished by .tf,Ie Program often lends contributions a ce~tain distance from current practical affairs, a thoughtful investigation of a present political problem is not inappropriate. From time to time, original works of the imagination are presented. As it represents the St. John's Program, the St. John's Review espouses no philosophical, religious, or political doctrine beyond a dedication to liberal learning, and its readers may accordingly expect to find diversity of thought represented in its pages. Error: This picture in Philip Holt's article (page 58, Summer 1982) appeared upside down; �The St. John's Review St. John's College Annapolis, Maryland 21404 Non-profit Org. U.S. Postage PAID Permit No. 66 Lutherville, Md. � Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource <em>The St. John's Review</em> Description An account of the resource <em>The St. John's Review</em><span> is published by the Office of the Dean, St. John's College.  All manuscripts are subject to blind review. 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Creator An entity primarily responsible for making the resource Office of the Dean Publisher An entity responsible for making the resource available St. John's College Identifier An unambiguous reference to the resource within a given context ISSN 0277-4720 thestjohnsreview Contributor An entity responsible for making contributions to the resource St. John's College Greenfield Library Text A resource consisting primarily of words for reading. Examples include books, letters, dissertations, poems, newspapers, articles, archives of mailing lists. Note that facsimiles or images of texts are still of the genre Text. Page numeration Number of pages in the original item. 112 pages Original Format The type of object, such as painting, sculpture, paper, photo, and additional data paper Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Creator An entity primarily responsible for making the resource Office of the Dean Title A name given to the resource The St. John's Review (formerly The College), Autumn/Winter 1982-83 Date A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource 1982-10 1983-01 Contributor An entity responsible for making contributions to the resource Radista, Leo Parran, Jr., Thomas Carnes, David Bolotin, David Wilson, Curtis A. Sachs, Joe Alexander, Sidney Brann, Eva T. H. Description An account of the resource Volume XXXIV, Number 1 of The St. John's Review, formerly The College. Published in Autumn/Winter 1982-1983. Identifier An unambiguous reference to the resource within a given context ISSN 0277-4720 The_St_Johns_Review_Vol_34_No_1_1982-1983 Coverage The spatial or temporal topic of the resource, the spatial applicability of the resource, or the jurisdiction under which the resource is relevant Annapolis, MD Publisher An entity responsible for making the resource available St. John's College Language A language of the resource English Type The nature or genre of the resource text Rights Information about rights held in and over the resource St. John's College owns the rights to this publication. Format The file format, physical medium, or dimensions of the resource pdf St. John's Review https://s3.us-east-1.amazonaws.com/sjcdigitalarchives/original/a0267766e95d1b5ad744fc7f69b354d7.pdf 94d21074ce70dd9ef851ebd21b7381f5 PDF Text Text �Editor: Leo Raditsa FROM OUR READERS ON MARRYING Managing Editor: To the Editor the St. John's Review: Thomas Parran, Jr. Editorial Assistant: Susan Lord Consulting Editors: David Bolotin Eva Brann Curtis A. Wilson Unsolicited articles, stories, and poems are welcome, but should be accompanied by a stamped, self-addressed envelope in each instance. Reasoned comments are also welcome. THESTjOHNSREVIEW (formerly The College) is published by the Office of the Dean, St. John's College, Annapolis, Maryland 21404. Edwin J. Delattre, President, Samuel S. Kutler, Dean. Published thrice yearly, in the autumn-winter, winter-spring, and summer. For those not on the distribution list, subscriptions: $12.00 yearly, $24.00 for two years, or $36.00 for three years, payable in advance. Address all correspondence to The St. John's Review, St. John's College, Annapolis, Maryland 21404. Volume XXXIV WINTER/SPRING 1983 Number 2 © 1983, St. John's College; "Adam Smith: Political Economy as Moral Philosophy," © 1983, Gertrude Himmelfarb; "The Media-Shield of the Utopians," © 1983, Rae! jean Isaac and Erich Isaac; "Benjamin Constant on Ancient and Modern Liberty," © 1983 Stephen Holmes. All rights reserved. Reproduction in whole or in part without permission is prohibited. ISSN 0277-4720 Cover: Left: Americans advancing for attack on Hindenburg Line, 1918, superimposed on American flag girl, Cambridge, Mass., 1977, by Dimitri Fotos (with homage to Delacroix). Right, upper: Joseph Dzhugashvili, police photographs, 1908; Right, lower: Benjamin Con· stant, silhouette, 1792. Composition: Action Camp Co., Inc. Printing: The John D. Lucas Printing Co. I find two things fuildamenta11y wrong with Ms. Jenson's essay "On Marrying" (Autumn/Winter 1982-83). One is what she has chosen to ignore. While she deplores the ease and rapidity with which unmarried relationships dissolve, she has ignored completely the very high divorce rate. Currently, for every lOO people who marry, 50 are divorced. To acknowl· edge this fact is to take away the basis for her argument that marriage makes love permanent. In fact, few things last very long in this age. As a society, we take for granted the ability to move around at great speeds; we expect to change careers at least once in our lives; we hold jobs, on the average, for just two years; and we fully expect the various cars, computers, telephones, and other machines we use every day to be outmoded in less than a decade. It shouldn't be surprising to note that our love relationships~ whether married or unmarried-partake of the same speed and impermanence that in· forms everything else we do. So there is something very much beside the point about Ms. Jenson's focus on marriage as the salvation of love and permanence in human relations. I might argue for people to plan never to marry if they would like to stay together, but it would seem a little irrelevant. When there are structural problems in the house, it's foolish to argue over what wallpaper to buy. The second point is somewhat smaller, but still disturbing. Ms. Jenson does not acknowledge the desire for long-term relation· ships between homosexuals. Many gay men and women would like to be married to their partners, but few religious authorities will perform such a ceremony, and no legal authorities recognize it. Does this mean all gay love relationships are doomed to impermanence? I don't believe Ms. Jenson cares less about this significant minority than she does about heterosexuals, but she fails to mention them or the unique problem they face as people who might wish to marry, but cannot. If she really believes that marriage is what makes love last, it is strange that she doesn't advocate the availability of marriage for gay men and women. Successful long-term love relationships I'm familiar with are the result of the individuals' emotional maturity and strength, and having nothing to do with whether or not the parties involved have cleared their union with the authorities. jOAN KOCSIS '78 Jamaica Plain, MA Kari Jenson replies: I wrote, precisely, to address Ms. Koscis's "structural prob· lems." I cannot share the seeming equanimity with which she lumps "love relationships" together with cars and computers. It is one thing to expect my telephone to be outdated in five years, quite another to expect the same of my lover. When we use peo- �'HESTJOHNSREVIEWWINTERSPRING 1983 3 Adam Smith: Political Economy as Moral Philosophy Gertrude Himme!farb 15 Ambiguities in Kant's Treatment of Space Arthur Collins 34 Black and White (poem) Elliott Zuckerman 35 The Media-Shield of the Utopians Rae/ jean Isaac and Erich Isaac 50 Arrival (poem) 51 Benjamin Constant on Ancient and Modern Liberty Stephen Holmes 64 65 Sixteen Eighteen (poem) Elliott Zuckerman Elliott Zuckerman The Holdup at Tiflis on June 26, 1907: the "Exes" Mark Aldanov 77 Poems 81 Letters on Legitimacy 87 Guglielmo Ferrero and Legitimacy 93 My Memoir of Our Revolution Rachel Hadas Guglielmo Ferrero-Gaetano Mosca Carlo Mongardini Daniel Ardrey 110 With Orjan at the GreatJapan Exhibition (poem) Elliott Zuckerman 111 The Division of the West-and Perception Leo F. Raditsa REVIEW ESSAY 140 On Jonathan Schell's The Fate of the Earth review essay by Gregory S. jones Inside front cover: FROM OUR READERS On Marrying joan Kocsis �ple in the same way that we use machines, when we regard others as means towards our gratificatio,il, rather than as ends in themselves, we are indeed in trouble. I intended to sort out a few of the problems we have with commitment to another human being, and to learn both what prevents us from forming such a commitment and, in part, what breaks the tie once formed. Our high divorce rate is part of the general problem. For the same reasons that we are so reluctant to marry in the first place, marriage itself is no longer seen as irrevocable. (Now when we marry we make financial plans in case of divorce. Even more laughably, many of us conveniently change the marriage vows to specify faithfulness "until love ends," rather than "until death parts us.") When marriage is not understood as a binding institution, as a promise which means something, it must lose much of its effect. Only a fool would claim that marriage automatically makes love permanent. But marriage provides those conditions essential to love's growth, and without which love will almost surely die. That the couple who has decided to make their love permanent must work constantly, and like crazy, goes without saying. Even if I divorced my husband tomorrow, it would say little about the truth of my argument, only that I had failed in practice. I suspect homosexual relationships are in fact more difficult to sustain for many reasons-among them, the absence oflegal recognition. Homosexual and heterosexual relationships, however, strike me as essentially different. 2 WINTER/SPRING 1983 �Adam Smith: Political Economy as Moral Philosophy Gertrude Himmelfarb If there was a "chasm" in the history of social thought, as R. H. Tawney held-a chasm between a moral society and an immoral one, between one organized on the principle of the common good and another one on the principle of self-interest-it must surely, one would think, be attributed to Adam Smith. John Ruskin called Smith that "halfbred and half-witted Scotchman," who deliberately perpetrated the blasphemy, "Thou shalt hate the Lord thy God, damn His laws, and covet thy neighbour's goods." 1 It cannot have been an accident that the publication of Smith's heretical work coincided with two major revolutions: the American Revolution which professed to speak in the name of a new Hscience of politics," and the ulndustrial Revolution" which created the material conditions for both the new political science and the new political economy. This theory invites the obvious demurral, that the Wealth of Nations was not all that revolutionary, either in its ideas or in its effects. Even the distinctive terms associated with it antedated it by many years. "Political economy" made its appearance as early as 1615 in Antoyne de Montchretien's Traictii de l'oeconomie politique. The term was introduced into England by William Petty later that century, and received wide currency with the publication, almost a decade before the Wealth of Nations, of James Steuart's Inquiry into the Principles of Political Economy. Another French import was ulaissez faire," which goes back at least to the time of Louis XIV, when a merchant is reported to have pleaded with the king's minister, Colbert, Distinguished Professor at the Graduate School of the City University of New York, Gertrude Himmelfarb has written On Liberty and Liberalism: The Case oflohn Stuart Mill (1974), Victorian Minds (1968), Darwin and the Darwinian Revolution (1959) and Lord Acton: A Study in Conscience and Politics (1952). The above essay comes from a forthcoming book, The Idea of Poverty: England in the Early-Industrial Age (Knopf, falll983). THE ST. JOHNS REVIEW "Laissez nous faire." The phrase was later popularized by the French Physiocrats in their struggle against the highly regulated economy of the old regime. Petty preferred the Latin version, Vadere sicut vult. 2 Smith himself used nei-· ther the French nor the Latin phrase in the Wealth of Nations. Nor, more surprisingly, did Malthus or Ricardo, although the phrase had come into general usage by their time. It is ironic that this doctrine, which is thought of as distinctively English, should have retained its French form and that to this day there should be no satisfactory English equivalent. (Neither free trade" nor jjindividualism" expresses quite the same idea.) The "division of labor," which Smith did use frequently-which was, in fact, the keystone of his workwas adopted, complete with the famous pin-factory illustration (and with the same eighteen operations), from the Encyclopiidie, the latter probably inspired by the account of the same manufacturing process (this time in twentyfive operations) in Chambers' Cyclopaedia, published almost three decades before the Encyclopiidie and almost five before the Wealth of Nations. One historian, claiming Plato as the source of the idea, pointed out that Smith's library contained three complete sets of the Dialogues. 3 But Smith could as well have come upon the concept in Thucydides or Aristotle, or in the work of his own friend Adam Ferguson, whose Essay on the History of Civil Society appeared in 1767. Every manufacturer, Ferguson casually remarked, knew that "the more he can subdivide the tasks of his workmen, and the more hands he can employ on separate articles, the more are his expenses diminished, and his profits increased."4 The question of originality had been anticipated by Smith himself. In 1755, before the publication of the Theory of Moral Sentiments and long before the Wealth of Nations, he wrote a paper claiming priority for some of the leading ideas of both works, including the principle (al11 3 �though not the phrase) of laissez faire. This and other of his ideas, he pointed out, had been. the subject of his lectures in 1750, his last year at the University of Edinburgh, and in the dozen years (1752-64) during which he occupied the chair of Moral Philosophy at the University of Glasgow. The lectures had been written out by his clerk in Edinburgh, and he could "adduce innumerable witnesses, both from that place and from this, who will ascertain them sufficiently to be mine."5 If Smith's claim was unduly proprietary (and uncharacteristically immodest), it had objective merit. While specific ideas in the Wealth of Nations were not entirely novel, the implications of the work as a whole were. Walter Bagehot put the matter well when he said that the doctrine of free trade was indeed "in the air," but it was not accepted or established; "on the contrary, it was a tenet against which a respectable parent would probably caution his son; still it was known as a tempting heresy and one against which a warning was needed." 6 What Smith did-and this was his historic achievement-was to convert a minor heresy into a new and powerful orthodoxy.* Another kind of priority raises more serious questions. Was it the intellectual revolution wrought by the Wealth of Nations (assuming there was such a revolution) that was decisive, or the industrial revolution presumably reflected in that work? What in fact was the relation between the two? It is interesting that after several decades during which the expression "industrial revolution" fell into disrepute, it has recently been revived and is now used less apologetically. The timing has been somewhat changed, the preferred date today being 1780 rather than 1760, which was the date assigned it by Arnold Toynbee when he popularized the term a century ago.B The chronology points to the problem. According to Smith himself the basic thesis of the Wealth of Nations had been conceived as early as 1750, which suggests that it anticipated the industrial revolution, at least as that revolution is commonly defined (not, to be sure, the division of labor or factories, both of which existed at the time). Most economic historians, acutely aware of the chronology of technological and economic developments, tend to minimize the connection *Joseph Schumpeter was far harsher in his judgment. The Wealth of Nations, he said, contained not a "single analytic idea, principle, or method that was entirely new in 1776," nothing that would entitle it to rank with Newton's Principia or Darwin's Origin as an "intellectual achievement." Conceding that it was nonetheless a "great performance" deserving of its success, he then went on to explain that this success was due to Smith's limitations. Had he been more brilliant, he would not have been taken so seriously. Had he dug more deeply, had he unearthed more recondite truth, had he used difficult and ingenious methods, he would not have been understood. But he had no such ambitions; in fact he disliked whatever went beyond plain common sense. He never moved above the heads of even the dullest readers . ... And it was Adam Smith's good fortune that he was thoroughly in sympathy with the humors of his time. l-Ie advocated the things that were in the offing, and he made his analysis serve them.7 4 between the industrial revolution and the new political economy. Intellectual historians, on the other hand, seeking to ground ideas in sOcial and economic history, use such words as <~insight" and <~foresight" to signify some kind of connection, however tenuous.9 Whatever the resolution of this debate-whether it was from <~ideas" or "reality" that Smith drew his inspiration, whether the Wealth of Nations was primarily prescriptive or descriptive-the effect of Smith's work was to give technology and industry a new and decisive role, not only in the ·economy but in society. The division of labor (if only the relatively primitive kind found in a pin factory) became the harbinger of a social revolution as momentous as anything dreamed of by political reformers and revolutionaries. It is in this sense that the book was genuinely revolutionary, in creating a political economy that made the wealth and welfare of the people dependent on a highly developed, expanding, industrial economy and on a self-regulating "system of natural liberty." Perhaps it was because this revolutionary thesis emerged so naturally in the course of the book, starting with the homely illustration of the pin factory, that it was accepted so readily. Some of Smith's friends were afraid that the book was too formidable to have any immediate impact. David Hume consoled Smith that while it required too close a reading to become quickly popular, eventually, by its "depth and solidity and acuteness" as well as its "curious facts," it would "at last take the public attention." 10 In fact, in spite of its forbidding appearance (two large volumes, a total of eleven hundred pages), the work achieved a considerable measure of popularity, and sooner than Hume had anticipated. Within a month of its publication, the publisher reported that sales were better than might have been expected of a book requiring so much thought and reflection, qualities, he regrett~d, that <~do not abound among modern readers." 11 The first edition sold out in six months, a second appeared early in 1778, and three others followed in the dozen years before Smith's death. It was translated into French, German, Italian, Danish, and Spanish, and received the ultimate mark of success in the form of a lengthy abridgement. Smith's first biographer, writing three years after his death, was pleased to report that Smith had had the satisfaction of seeing his principles widely accepted during his lifetime and witnessing their application to the commercial policy of England. There were some critics, to be sure: the economist and agriculturist Arthur Young, who thought the book full of ((poisonous errors," and the Whig leader Charles James Fox, who said that he had never read it (although he cited it in a debate in parliament) and claimed not to understand the subject but was certain that he heartily despised it. 12 But even the radicals offered little serious objection to it, some (Thomas Paine and Richard Price, for example) actually declaring themselves admirers of Smith. For a short time after his death, when anti-French feelings ran high, WINTER/SPRING 1983 �the charge was heard that his teachings were hostile to government and therefore subversive. Apart from that brief period, the prevailing attitude was overwhelmingly favorable, with some of the most prominent men of the time-Hume, Burke, Gibbon, Pitt, Lansdowne, Northproudly proclaiming themselves his disciples. The ultimate accolade, the comparison of Smith with Newton, 13 recalls the reception given to that other latterday Newton, Charles Darwin. Indeed, the Wealth of Nations and the Origin of Species had much in common: Both were classics in their own time, and for some of the same reasons. Each had been amply prepared for by the reputation of its author, by the importance he himself attached to it and the many years he devoted to it, and by tantalizing previews in the form of conversations, letters, and lec- tures. And each announced itself, by the boldness of its thesis, its comprehensiveness, and its imposing title, as a major intellectual event. Whatever questions might be raised about its originality or validity, its importance and influence are hardly in dispute. For good or ill, An Inquiry into the Nature and Causes of the Wealth of Nations heralded the beginning of "political economy" as that term was generally understood at the time-"classical economics" as a later generation was to know it. The basic themes of the Wealth of Nations are too familiar to need elaboration: the division oflabor making for increased productivity and thus the increased "opulence" of all of society; the fundamental facts of human natureself-interest (or "self-love") and the "propensity to truck, barter, and exchange" -which were the generating force of the economic process; the "invisible hand" (a metaphor used only once but implied throughout) which made the individual's interest an instrument for the general good; and the "system of natural liberty" which was the only certain means to achieve both the wealth of nations and the welfare of individuals.l 4 The argument was worked out in great detail under such headings as money, trade, value, labor, capital, rent. One subject that did not appear in the chapter titles or sub-heads was poverty. Yet this was as much a theme of the book as wealth itself. Indeed, it may be argued that if the Wealth of Nations was less than novel in its theories of money, trade, or value, it was genuinely revolutionary in its view of poverty and its attitude toward the poor. It was not, however, revolutionary in the sense which is often supposed: the demoralization of the economy resulting from the doctrine oflaissez faire, the demoralization of man implied in the image of "economic man," and the de- moralization of the poor who found themselves at the mercy of forces over which they had no control-over which, according to the new political economy, no one had any cpntroJ.15 This is a common reading of the Wealth of Nations, but not a just one. For it supposes that Smith's idea of a market economy was devoid of moral purpose, TilE ST. JOHNS REVIEW that his concept of human nature was mechanistic andreductivist, and that his attitude towards the poor was indifferent or callous. Above all it fails to take account of the fact that Smith was a moral philosopher, by conviction as well as profession. As the Professor of Moral Philosophy at the University of Glasgow and the celebrated author of The Theory of Moral Sentiments, he could hardly have thought it his mission to preside over the dissolution of moral philosophy. Published in 1759, The Theory of Moral Sentiments went through four editions before the Wealth of Nations appeared, and another edition a few years later. Its three French translations made Smith almost as well known among the philosophes as Hume was. Today Smith's fame rests so completely upon the Wealth of Nations one might be tempted to dismiss the earlier work as just that, an early work that was overshadowed and superseded by his later, major work. In his own time, however, his reputation de- rived at least as much from the earlier book, and this even after the publication of the Wealth of Nations. (In the Memoir of Smith written three years after his death, Dugald Steward devoted twenty-six pages, one-third of the whole, to Moral Sentiments and only seventeen pages to the Wealth of Nations.) Smith had always planned to revise Moral Sentiments, and the last year of his life was devoted entirely to that task. The new edition expanded upon, but did not substantively alter, the thesis of the original. The most important change was the addition of a chapter, the title of which testifies to his abiding concern: "Of the Corruption of Our Moral Sentiments, Which is Occasioned by this Disposition to Admire the Rich and the Great, and to Despise or Neglect Persons of Poor and Mean Condition." 16 A major theme of controversy among Smith scholars has been Das Adam Smith-Problem, as a German commentator portentously labelled it-the question of the congruence of Moral Sentiments with the Wealth of Nations.l7 About the doctrine of Moral Sentiments itself there is little dispute. The operative word in that book was "sympathy." Sympathy was presumed to be as much a principle of human nature as self-interest; indeed it informed selfinterest since it was one of the pleasures experienced by the individual when he contemplated or contributed to the good of another. "To feel much for others and little for ourselves, ... to restrain our selfish, and to indulge our benevolent affections, constitutes the perfection of human nature; and can alone produce among mankind that harmony of sentiments and passions in which consists their whole grace and propriety." Smith distinguished his idea of sympathy from Hutcheson's "moral sense," which was so radically at variance with self-interest that it supposed virtue to reside in the denial of one's interest and the defiance of one's nature. But Hutcheson's doctrine, Smith ar- gued, at least had the merit of maintaining a distinction between virtue and vice, in contrast to the "wholly pernicious," "licentious system" of Mandeville, which made no such distinction and recognized no motive, no principle of 5 �conduct, other than self-interest.l 8* Unlike Mandeville or Bentham, Smith was able to credit such sentiments and to use unapologetically such words as sympathy, beneficence, virtue, humanity, love of others. There were occasions, he insisted, when the interests of the individual had to make way for the interests of others, and this regardless of any calculations of utility. One individual must never prefer himself so much even to any other individual, as to hurt or injure that other, in order to in the charges of "impertinent jealousy/' "mean rapacity," umean and malignant expedients," "sneaking arts," "interesting sophistry," "interested falsehood."24 One of Smith's main criticisms of the mercantile system was that it encouraged merchants and manufacturers to be selfish and duplicitous. Our merchants and master-manufacturers complain much of the bad effects of high wages in raising the price, and thereby lessening the sale of their goods both at home and abroad. They benefit himself, though the benefit to the one should be say nothing concerning the bad effects of high profits. They are much greater than the hurt or injury to the other.20 silent with regard to the pernicious effects of their own gains. The wise and virtuous man is at all times willing that his own private interest should be sacrificed to the public interest of his own particular order or society. He is at all times willing, too, that the interest of this order or society should be sacrificed to the greater interest of the state or sovereignty, of which it is only a subordinate part. He should, therefore, be equa1ly willing that all those inferior interests should be sacrificed to the greater interest of the universe.21 The argument of Moral Sentiments is subtle, complicated, and not without difficulties, but even the barest statement of it is enough to demonstrate that Smith was hardly the ruthless individualist or amoralist he is sometimes made out to be. Whatever difficulties there may be in the reconciliation of Moral Sentiments with the Wealth of Nations, it is clear enough that Smith intended both as part of his grand "design", that he had the Wealth of Nations in mind even before he wrote Moral Sentiments, and that he remained committed to Moral Sentiments, reissuing and revising it long after the Wealth of Nations was published.22 A close reading of the Wealth of Nations itself suggests that political economy as Smith understood it was part of a larger moral philosophy, a new kind of moral economy. Schumpeter complained that Smith was so steeped in the tradition of moral philosophy derived from scholasticism and natural law that he could not conceive of economics per se, an economics divorced from ethics and politics.2l The point is well taken, although not necessarily in criticism. The bias and the rhetoric of the moral philosopher crop up again and again in the Wealth of Nations: in the condemnation of the "vile maxim," "All for themselves and nothing for other people"; in the proposition that the trade of the nation should be conducted on the same principles that govern private affairs; in the denunciations of manufacturers and merchants who were all too willing to sacrifice the public interest for their private interests and were prepared to use any strategem to achieve their ends; 7 *By the same token Smith would have rejected the kind of utilitarianism espoused by Jeremy Bentham, who said that he could not conceive of a human being "in whose instance any public interest he can have had, will not, insofar as it depends upon himself, have been sacrificed to his own personal interest." In fact, Bentham did conceive of one such human being-himself, whom he once described as "the most philanthropic of the philanthropic: philanthropy the end and instrument of his ambition." !9 6 They complain only of those of other people. The clamour and sophistry of merchants and manufacturers easily persuade them that the private interest of a part, and of a subordinate part of the society, is the general interest of the whole. People of the same trade seldom meet together, even for merriment and diversion, but the conversation ends in a conspiracy against the public, or in some contrivance to raise prices. The proposal of any new law or regulation of commerce which comes from this order, ought always to be listened to with great precaution, and ought never to be adopted till after having been long and carefully examined, not only with the most scrupulous, but with the most suspicious attention. It comes from an order of men, whose interest is never exactly the same with that of the public, who have generally an interest to deceive and even to oppress the public, and who accordingly have, upon many occasions, both deceived and oppressed it. It is the industry which is carried on for the benefit of the rich and powerful, that is principally encouraged by our mercantile system. That which is carried on for the benefit of the poor and the indigent, is too often, either neglected, or oppressed.25 These attacks on "private interests" that were in conflict with the "public interest," especially with the interests of the "poor and indigent," may seem difficult to reconcile with the famous dictum: "It is not from the benevolence of the butcher, the brewer, or the baker, that we expect our dinner, but from their regard to their own interest." 26 But this principle of self-interest was predicated on certain conditions: that the butcher, brewer, and baker not take unfair advantage of others, that they abide by the rules of the free market, that they not "conspire," "deceive," and "oppress." Under these conditions self-interest was itself a moral principle-not as lofty as altruism, but, in the mundane affairs of life (the provision of "dinner"), more reliable and effective. Hovering over these individual interests, ensuring that they work together for the greater good of the whole, the Hpublic interest," was the benevolent, ubiquitous uinvisible hand." 27 The "invisible hand" has been much criticized. If only, it has been said, Smith had not introduced that unfortunate metaphor with its teleological overtones, if only he had confined himself to the austere language of mechanics and nature, he would have avoided much misWINTER/SPRING 1983 �understanding. There is some justice in this complaint. The invisible hand was indeed invisible; the genius of the system of 11 naturalliberty" was that it required no 11 hand," no intervention, direction, or regulatiori to bring about the general good. But the metaphor served the important purpose of keeping the reader mindful of the purpose of that system. It was by means of the invisible hand that the individual was led "to promote an end which was no part of his intention"; "by pursuing his own interest he frequently promotes that of society more effectually than when he really intends to promote it." zs Without that metaphor the weight of the argument might have rested with the individual's interests. The invisible hand shifted the emphasis to the public interest. If the metaphor was unfortunate, it was not for the reason that it was teleological; on the contrary, its utility and justification lay in the fact that it clearly expressed the teleological cast of the argument. The general interest that emerged from Smith's system was '1general" in the Rousseauan or Hegelian sense of a general interest more elevated than the sum of individual interests-Hegelian perhaps more than Rousseauan, the "invisible hand" resembling Hegel's "cunning of reason" which contrived to make the interests and passions of individuals serve a larger purpose of which the individuals themselves were unaware.* It was also ~~general" in the pe- destrian, utilitarian sense of the totality of interests of all the members of society. This second sense pointed to the importance of the "people" and the "poor" in Smith's theory. The "wealth of nations" of the title referred not to the nation in the mercantilist sense-the nation-state whose wealth was a measure of the power it could exercise vis-avis other states-but to the people comprising the nation. And "people" not in the political sense of those having a voice and active part in the political process, but in the social and economic sense, those working and living in so- ciety, of whom the largest part were the "lower ranks" or "poor." The concern with the people emerged early in the book in the discussion of the division of labor, when it appeared that the great advantage of that mode of production was the "universal opulence which extends itself to the lowest ranks of the people ... , a general plenty [which] diffuses itself through all the different ranks of the society." 29 Addressing the ucommon complaint" that since luxuries had become available to the poor they were no longer content with the humble food, clothing, and lodging that had once been their lot, Smith put the question: "Is this improve*There is no suggestion that the "cunning of reason," as it appeared in Hegel's Philosophy of History, was inspired by Smith's "invisible hand." But Hegel had read Smith (as well as other political economists, including Say and Ricardo), and there are distinct echoes of Smith's "market place" in the Philosophy of Right, especially in the concept of "civil society," the realm intermediate between the individual and the state in which individuals pursue their private interests. TilE ST. JOHNS REVIEW ment in the circumstances of the lower ranks of the people to be regarded as an advantage or as an inconveniency to the society?" His answer was unequivocal. Servants, labourers and workmen of different kinds, make up the far greater part of every great political society. But what improves the circumstances of the greater part can never be regarded as an inconveniency to the whole. No society can surely be flourishing and happy, of which the far greater part of the members are poor and miserable. It is but equity, besides, that they who feed, clothe and lodge the whole body of the people, should have such a share of the produce of their own labour as to be themselves tolerably well fed, clothed and lodged30 The condition of the poor was decisive, Smith reasoned, partly by sheer force of numbers; being the largest part of society, their condition necessarily determined the condition of society as a whole. In part it was a matter of "equity"; as producers of the goods enjoyed by the rest of society, they were entitled to a fair share of those goods. They also had a special claim to Smith's attention because they were one of the two orders of society-laborers and landlords-whose interests were "connected with the general interest of society," in contrast to the third, merchants and manufacturers, whose interests were often at variance with it.3I Yet the laborers were at the greatest disadvantage: as consumers they were ill-served by a mercantilist system that promoted high prices and discouraged imports; and as producers by a system that permitted their employers, by fair means or foul, to keep wages low and prices high. The poor, in short, were the chief victims of the existing system-and would be the chief beneficiaries of the "natural" system proposed by Smith. Smith's critique of mercantilism is generally read as an attack on government regulation and a plea for laissez faire. But it was much more than that, as contemporaries were aware. Among other things it WRS a criticism of the prevailing theory of wages. While Smith was not the first to question the expediency or desirability of low wages, he was the first to offer a systematic, comprehensive rationale for high wages. The consensus at the time was that low wages were both natural and economically necessary: natural because the poor would not work except out of dire need, and necessary if the nation were to enjoy a favorable balance of trade. This was the view of Hume, who explained that in years of scarcity when wages were low, "the poor labour more, and really live better, than in years of great plenty, when they indulge themselves in idleness and riot."3Z Arthur Young put it more succinctly: "Every one but an idiot knows, that the lower classes must be kept poor, or they will never be industrious."33 Both admitted that excessively low wages would provide no incentive to work. "Two shillings and sixpence a day." Young remarked, "will undoubtedly tempt some to work, who would not touch a tool for one shilling." 34 But this was an argument for subsistence wages, not for high wages. 7 �It remained for Smith to defend high wages, the "liberal reward of labour.'' The liberal reward of labour, as it encourages the propagation so it increases the industry of the common people. The wages of labour are the encouragement of industry, which, like every other human quality, improves in proportion to the encouragement it receives. A plentiful subsistence increases the bodily strength of the labourer, and the comfortable hope of bettering his condition, and of ending his days perhaps in ease and plenty, animates him to exert that strength to the utmost. Where wages are high, accordingly, we shall always find the workmen more active, diligent, and expeditious, than where they are low: in England, for example, than in Scotland; in the neighbourhood of great towns, than in remote country places.35 Smith granted that some workers, if they earned enough in four days to keep them for a week, would be tdle the other days; but these were a minority. Most workers, he was convinced, were given to the opposite failing: if they were well paid by the piece they would so overwork them· selves as to impair their health. It may have been with Hume in mind (and out of courtesy to his friend that he did not quote him to this effect) that Smith disputed the conventional view. "That men in general should work bet· ter when they are ill fed than when they are well fed, when they are disheartened than when they are in good spirits, when they are frequently sick than when they are gener· ally in good health, seems not very probable." 36 The doctrine of high wages was a corollary of Smith's conception of a uprogressive" economy. Since high wages were the result of increasing wealth and at the same time the cause of increasing population, only in an expanding economy, where the demand for labor kept abreast of the supply, could real wages remain high. "It is in the progres· sive state, while the society is advancing to the further ac· quisition, rather than when it has acquired its full complement of riches, that the condition of the labouring poor, of the great body of the people, seems to be the happiest and the most comfortable." In a "stationary" state, on the other hand, the condition of the poor was "dull" and "hard," and in a a declining" state it was "miserable" and "melancholy."l7 The division of labor was crucial for the same reason, because it made for greater productivity and thus for an expanding, progressive economy where in~ creased wealth could extend to the "lowest ranks of the people." 38 The idea of a progressive economy places Smith in the ranks of the "optimists." It may also be his chief claim to originality. Unlike previous economists for whom one good could be purchased only at the expense of anotherthe national interest at the expense of individual interests, agriculture at the expense of industry, the power of the nation at the expense of the liberty of its citizens, the pro· 8 ductivity of labor at the expense of the happiness of the laborer-Smith envisioned an economy in which most goods and interests were compatible and complementary. Free trade would enhance both freedom and wealth; htgh wages would ensure productivity and well-being; the self· interest of the individual would promote, however unw1t· tingly, the public interest. It was a prescription for a liber· ating, expanding, prospering, progressive economy m which all the legitimate values and interests of society sup· ported and reenforced each other: liberty and prosperity, the individual and society, industry and agnculture, capi· tal and labor, wealth and well-being. This optimistic view of the economy presupposed an optimistic view of human nature. It is the French philo· sophes who are usually credited with such a view. But theu optimism, based upon the potentiality ~nd potency of rea· son, was not a conspicuously democratic doctnne, at least not at a time when the mass of the people were unedu· cated and illiterate. Because reason was so precious, and because the ordinary people were presumed to be not yet capable of exercising the degree of reason required for a truly rational order, most of the philosophes looked to en· lightened rulers, "benevolent despots," to do for society what the people could not do for themselves.. . To Smith (and the Scottish Enlightenment m general) It was not reason that defined human nature so much as m~ terests, passions, sentiments, sympathies. These were qualities shared by all people, not in some remote future but in the present. No enlightened despot was reqmred to activate those interests, no Benthamite legislator to bring about a harmony of interests. All that was necessary was to free people-all people, in all ranks and callings-:--so that they could act on their interests. From these md1~1dually motivated freely inspired achons, the general mterest would ern'erge without any intervention, regulation, or coercion. In a sense Smith's was a more modest-"lower," one might say-view of human nature, and by that token a more democratic one. If people differed, as they patently did it was not because of any innate differences but be· ca~se the qualities common to all had been developed in them in different degrees. On the nature-nurture tssue, as we now know it, Smith was unequivocally on the nurture side. The difference of natural talents in different men is, in reality, much less than we are aware of; and the. very different genius which appears to disting~ish !llen of different professions when grown up to matunty, IS not upon many occasions' so much the cause, as the effect of the division of labour. The difference between the most dissimilar characters, between a philosopher and a common street porter, for exa~­ ple, seems to ~rise not so much from natu:e, as fro~ hab~t, custom, and education . ... By nature a philosopher IS not m genius and disposition half so different from a street porter, as a mastiff is from a greyhound. 39 WINTER/ SPRING 1983 �The idea that differences were less the "cause" than the "effect" of the division of labor radically differentiates Smith from other philosophers-Plato, most notablywho had used the concept of the division of labor. While some of Smith's illustrations and "stages of historyn were reminiscent of Plato, the heart of his thesis could not have been more dissimilar. Indeed, given Smith's respect for classical philosophy, and for Plato especially, one may take his spirited denial of any difference in "nature" between the philosopher and the street porter as an implicit rebuke to Plato. To Plato natural differences were precisely the "cause" rather than the "effect" of the division of labor: the division of labor reflected the innate differences among people, and permitted people of essentially different natures to cooperate for the common good. The only innate quality mentioned by Smith, and the only one necessary to his system, was the jjpropensity to truck, barter, and exchange." 40 This propensity was shared by porter and philosopher alike; it was the common denominator that made it possible for everyone to participate in the division of labor and for everyone to profit from that division. It was also the common denominator that united the highest and lowest ranks in a single human species, a species in which the varieties were not half so different as mastiff and greyhound. Just as the differences among individuals were functional rather than organic, so the differences among the orders of society were functional rather than hierarchic. Those three orders were defined by the nature of their income-rent, wages, and profits-not by their position in a hierarchy-upper, middle, and lower. In fact wage-earners, or laborers, constituted the "second order." 41 Else~ where Smith did use the terms current at the time, "lower ranks" or "lower classes," to describe the laborers. What was important about them, however, was not that they were of the lower classes but that they received their income in the form of wages rather than rent or profit. In this respect the laborer was a partner in the economic enterprise, the most important partner, Smith sometimes gave the impression, since it was his labor that was the source of value. And labor, like rent and profit, was a "patrimony," a form of property entitled to the same consideration as any other kind of property. The patrimony which every man has in his own labour, as it is the original foundation of all other property, so it is the most sacred and inviolable. The patrimony of a poor man lies in the strength and dexterity of his hands; and to hinder him from employing this strength and dexterity in what manner he thinks proper without injury to his neighbour is a plain violation of this most sacred property.42 There was, however, one point at which this optimistic vision failed Smith, failed him so seriously, in the opinion of some recent commentators, as to make him a prophet of THE ST. JOHNS REVIEW doom, a critic of capitalism on the order of Marx-indeed a precursor of Marx in exposing that fatal flaw of capitalism, the "alienation" of the working class.43 If Smith did anticipate something like Marx's theory of alienation, as Marx himself intimated, it must also be said that he avoided the ambiguity that appeared in Marx's own discussion of that subject as well as in recent Marxist thought.44 For Smith clearly located the source of alienation (if it may be called that) not in capitalism as such but in industrialism, and more specifically in the division oflabor that was the peculiar character and the special strength of modern industry. The poignancy of Smith's argument comes from the paradox that the division oflabor, which provided the momentum for the progressive economy that was the only hope for the laboring classes, was also the probable cause of the mental, spiritual, even physical deterioration of those classes. In the progress of the division oflabour, the employment of the far greater part of those who live by labour, that is of the great body of the people, comes to be confined to a few very simple operations, frequently to one or two. But the understandings of the greater part of men are necessarily formed by their ordinary employments. The man whose whole life is spent in performing a few simple operations, of which the ef- fects too are, perhaps, always the same, or very nearly the same, has no occasion to exert his understanding, or to exercise his invention in finding out expedients for removing difficulties which never occur. He naturally loses, therefore, the habit of such exertions, and generally becomes as stupid and ignorant as it is possible for a human creature to become. The torpor of his mind renders him, not only incapable of relishing or bearing a part in any rational conversation, but of conceiving any general, noble, or tender sentiments, and consequently of forming any just judgment concerning many even of the ordinary duties of private life. Of the great and extensive interests of his country he is altogether incapable of judging; and unless very particular pains have been taken to render him otherwise, he is equally incapable of defending his country in war. The uniformity of his stationary life naturally corrupts the courage of his mind, and makes him regard with abhorrence the irregular, uncertain, and adventurous life of a soldier. It corrupts even the activity of his body, and renders him incapable of exerting his strength with vigour and perseverance, in any other employment than that to which he has been bred. His dexterity at his own particular trade seems, in this manner, to be acquired at the expence of his intellectual, social, and martial virtues. But in every improved and civilized society this is the state into which the labouring poor, that is, the great body of the people, must necessarily fall, unless government takes some pains to prevent it. 45 This passage is sufficiently powerful in itself, and sufficiently problematic in the context of Smith's work, to stand on its own without being assimilated to the Marxist idea of alienation and without taking on all the difficulties associated with that idea. There were, one might argue, two different Marxist ideas: that of the "early Marx," where alienation arose in the earliest stages of society as a 9 �result of the separation from physical nature and the division of labor in the family; and that of the "mature Marx," where it was attributed to the worker's divorce from the ownership of the means of production and from the products of his own labour. Neither of these ideas corresponds to Smith's. For Smith the question of ownership was as irrelevant as the question of nature or the family. His only concern was the debilitating effect of the division of labor in the industrial process. In this respect the factory worker in a socialist regime~ or in any other form of cooperative or public enterprise, would suffer just as grievously as the factory worker under capitalism. That Smith held industrialism rather than capitalism at fault is apparent from the only other passage in the Wealth ofNations bearing upon this subject. Here Smith compared the industrial worker with the agricultural laborer, to the disadvantage of the former. Husbandry, he argued, required a greater degree of knowledge and experience, judgment and discretion than most industrial trades. The ordi. nary ploughman might be deficient in the arts of "social intercourse," his voice and language uncouth by the standards of the townsman, but his "understanding," sharpened by the variety of tasks which he had to perform, was superior to the mechanic occupied with one or two simple operations. "How much," Smith concluded, 14 the lower ranks of people in the country are really superior to those of the town, is well known to every man whom either business or curiosity has led to converse much with both."46 If the problem was not alienation in the Marxist sense, it was in its own terms serious enough, serious not only for Smith himself, who wrote of it with great passion, but for the reader who may find it a grave flaw in the argument of the Wealth of Nations. How can one reconcile this dismal portrait of the industrial worker reduced to a state of tor- These discordant images are not reconcilable. What can be said, however, is that the dominant image, that which informs by far the largest part of the book and which bears the largest weight of the argument, is the "optimistic" one: the image of an active, intelligent, industrious worker, receiving good wages, constantly bettering himself, and sharing in the ~~universal opulence" created by the division of labor and the expansion of industry. It was this scenario that impressed itself on Smith's readers in his own time and for generations afterwards. Although Marx, in Capital, quoted the passage describing the worker stupefied by the division oflabor, it was not until the "early Marx" and the idea of alienation came into fashion after World War II that this passage became the subject of serious attention and that the vision of ~~another" Smith, a "pessimistic" Smith began to emerge.* It is also important to recall the context in which Smith praised the farm laborer at the expense of the industrial worker. The first passage appeared in the midst of his denunciation of the scheming merchants and manufacturers who "seldom meet together, even for merriment and diversion, but the conversation ends in a conspiracy against the public." It was then that Smith put in a good word for the agricultural classes-laborers as well as farmers-who were not in the habit of conspiring together and who deserved to be defended against those "very contemptible authors" who spoke of them so contemptuously.5 2 The second passage appeared towards the end of the work in a discussion of the functions of government. Of all these functions-defense, justice, public works, the support of the sovereign-the subject to which Smith devoted far the most space was education. After a lengthy account of the por, stupidity, and ignorance, lacking in judgment, initiative, courage, or any "intellectual, social, and martial vir- tues" -all this because of the division oflabor-with the earlier image of the "hearty," "cheerful" worker who, as a result of the same division of labor, received a "plentiful subsistence," enjoyed "bodily strength," was "active, dili- gent, and expeditious," and looked forward to the "comfortable hope of bettering his condition" and ending his days in ease and plenty"?47 How can one reconcile the favorable view of the agricultural laborer, who acquired "judgment and discretion" because he had to deal with so many different tasks, with an earlier image of the same laborer who, precisely because he went from one activity to another, developed the habit of "sauntering," became "in11 dolent," "careless," "slouthful and lazy," incapable of any vigorous application even on the most pressing occasions"? In that earlier passage Smith contrasted the dilatory farm laborer to the factory boy whose task was the opening and shutting of a valve, and who was inspired, by boredom itself, to invent a labor-saving device which was "one of the greatest improvements" made on the steamengine.48 10 *The two Smiths appear most dramatically in the work of Robert Heilbroner. His influential history of economic thought, The Worldly Philosophers (1953), presented the conventional optimistic Smith. His recent work introduces a "deeply pessimistic" Smith, this based not only on the so-called "alienation" passage, which Heilbroner now emphasizes to the point where it seems to dominate the Wealth of Nations, but on a reinterpretation of Smith's economic theory. So far from positing a "progressive," expanding economy, Smith is seen as predicting decline and decay: "material decline awaiting at the terminus of the economic journey, moral decay suffered by society in the course of its journeying."49 This argument depends on ascribing to Smith something like a Malthusian theory, in which higher wages lead to an increase of population, an eventual decline of wages, and thus a stagnant and "stationary" economy. But Smith had anticipated this argument and had refuted it, at least for the foreseeable future. So long, he reasoned, as the division of labor continued (the division of labor serving as a metaphor for the process of mechanization and invention), the economy would be able to absorb the higher wages and remain in a progressive, expanding state.50 When John Stuart Mill, almost three-quarters of a century later, argued for the desirability as well as the inevitability of a "stationary state," it was under the influence of Malthus and Ricardo rather than Smith, and on moral and esthetic as well as economic grounds. Finding competitiveness and material acquisitiveness disagreeable, he preferred a society in which, "while no one is poor, no one desires to be richer."51 WINTER/SPRING 1983 �history of educational institutions, he posed the question of the state's role in education. Should, the "public" -the Hstate, 11 in the marginal notes-pay attention to the "edu~ cation of the people," and if so, how should this be done for the "different orders of the people"? It was at this point that Smith inserted the dramatic warning about the dire effects of the division of labor. And it was to forestall those effects, to prevent the "corruption and degeneracy" of the laboring people, that he then went on to develop an elaborate scheme of public education.53 The proposal was simple and bold. The "common peo· pie," including those "bred to the lowest occupation," were to be required to master the essential ingredients of education-reading, writing, and arithmetic. To this end the state was to establish a school in every district, charg· ing a fee so modest that even the common laborer could afford it, the major cost being borne by the government. Although the schools themselves would not be compul· sory, some form of schooling would be. To enforce this provision, Smith suggested that an examination in the "three R' s" be required before anyone could enter a guild or set up in a trade. 54 In one sense the proposal was not remarkable. Smith was simply drawing upon the experience of Scotland where the parish schools had taught, as he said, "almost the whole common people" to read and a great proportion of them to write and reckon.55 In another sense, however, it was extraordinary, not only because he proposed to ex· tend to England a state system of education that had never existed there and that was bound to incur (as it did even a century later) a great deal of hostility, but because it went against the grain of his own doctrine. Having spent the bet· ter part of two volumes arguing against government regula· tion, he now advanced a scheme requiring a greater mea~ sure of government involvement than anything that had ever existed before. In the same chapter in which he made this proposal he criticized the principle of en· dowments for schools and colleges on the ground that they gave the institutions an assured income and relieved them from the necessity of proving their merit; for the same reason he opposed salaries for university teachers, preferring fees paid by individual students to individual in· structors. Yet here, for the "common people," he urged the establishment of a state-administered, state-supported, state-enforced system of education with only token fees to be paid by the parents-enough to give them a stake in the education of their children but not enough to cover the cost of education. Perhaps it was to justify this large depar· ture from his general principle that he painted so dramatic a picture of the industrial worker whose degeneracy could only be arrested by a compulsory system of education. Having made out so strong a case for public education, Smith went on to extol the virtues of education as such. "A man without the proper use of the intellectual faculties of a man, is, if possible, more contemptible than even a coward, and seems to be mutilated and deformed in a still THE ST. JOHNS REVIEW more essential part of the character of human nature." Even if the state were to derive no practical benefit from the education of the lower orders, that education would still warrant its active concern. In fact the state would ben· efit from it indirectly: a better instructed people were less inclined to the disorders that came from "delusions of en· thusiasm and superstition"; they were more likely to be "decent and orderly"; feeling "respectable" themselves, they would be respected by others and be respectful of others; they would not be easily taken in by "faction and sedition"; and in a free country, where it was important that the government have the "favourable judgment" of the people, it was also important that the people should not judge the government "rashly or capriciously."56 One commentator has described this view of education as an "unformulated theory of 'social contro\."'57 If this is so, any idea of education which is more than purely vocational, which attributes to it any effect on character, sensibility, intelligence, and behavior, falls under the same re· proach. Moreover, any alternative would be similarly suspect. What kind of education could Smith have pro· posed which would not have been an instrument of social control? Had he taken the obvious laissez faire position of denying to the state any role in education (as his contemporary Frederick Eden, for example, did) would this not have exposed him to the charge of being unconcerned with the plight of the lower classes, unwilling to exert himself (and the state) in an effort to improve their condition, perhaps deliberately keeping them in a state of ignorance so that they would remain docile and subservient? Or if he had recommended the kind of education Hannah More favored, reading, but not writing or arithmetic, on the assumption that reading alone was necessary to inculcate the precepts of religion and the "habits of industry and virtue," was this, too, not an obvious exercise of social con· troJ?58 And all the voluntary schools of the time-charity schools, Sunday schools, night schools, industry schools, schools connected with workhouses and poorhouseswhich provided the rudiments of literacy for large numbers of people who would otherwise have been totally illit· erate, were these reprehensible for the same reason, or were they in any way preferable to Smith's plan? It might be said that it is not Smith's proposal for a comprehensive, state-supported system of education that is suspect, but the specific moral purpose he attached to it, this being all the more ominous in view of the role of the state. Or perhaps the objection is not so much to the exercise of "social control" as to the violation of the "indigenous" culture of the poor, the imposition upon them of alien "middle-class values." Again, this is to ignore the contemporary context. Smith was not arguing against latter· day romantics who idealize illiteracy as part of a natural, superior, folk culture. He was arguing, at least implicitly, against those of his contemporaries who denied to the poor the capacity and opportunity to achieve those "middle-class values," who thought that no amount of educa- 11 �tion could civilize, socialize, and moralize them, or who worried that an educated populace would be restless, demanding, discontent. When Smith urged that the poor be educated so that they would become better citizens, better workers, and better human beings, he was not demeaning the poor but crediting them with the virtues ("values," in modern parlance) he himself held in such high esteem. In a brilliant commentary on Smith, Joseph Cropsey has argued that the dual purpose of his political economy was to make freedom possible and to make of freedom a form of virtue. 59 This was also, one might say, the purpose of his system of education. Just as the laborer, by dint of his labor, was to be a free and full participant in the economy, so by dint of his education, he was to be a free and full participant in society. For Smith freedom was itself a virtue and the precondition of all other virtues. It was this cardinal virtue that he wanted to make available to the "common people," even to those "bred to the lowest occupation." If Smith's political economy was not the amoral, asocial doctrine it has sometimes been made out to be, neither was it as dogmatically, rigorously laissez faire as had been thought. 60 His plan of education was only one of several instances in which he departed from the strict construction of laissez faire, and not unwittingly but deliberately. He did so when he proposed a law to limit the freedom of bankers to issue notes, and when he advocated retaining the law against usury. He also did so when he implicitly sanctioned the poor laws. Smith's position on the poor laws has been generally ignored or misunderstood. Because he was so forthright in criticizing the Act of Settlement of 1662, it is sometimes assumed that he was also opposed to the poor laws.61 It is significant, however, that while he did attack the Settlement Act (and the Statute of Apprentices as well), he did not attack the poor laws. Moreover, his criticism of the Settlement Act had nothing to do with the giving of relief but only with limiting the mobility of labor and violating the liberty of the poor. To remove a man who has committed no misdemeanour from the parish where he chooses to reside, is an evident violation of natural liberty and justice . ... There is scarce a poor man in England of forty years of age, I will venture to say, who has not in some part of his life felt himself most cruelly oppressed by this i1l-contrived law of settlements.62 This passage was much quoted (and disputed) at the time, and Smith was credited with helping bring about the reform of the laws of settlement in 1795. What Smith conspicuously did not do was to challenge the poor law itself, the obligation to provide relief for those who could not provide for themselves. Nor was he one of those who, in the years following the publication of the Wealth of Nations, expressed anxiety about the mounting costs of relief. He died before the movement to restrict relief reached its 12 peak, but not before Joseph Townsend and others had raised the alarm and urged the drastic reform, if not the abolition, of the poor laws. On the subject of taxation Smith exhibited the same pragmatic, humane temper and the same concern for the poor. His first principle was that taxes be levied "in proportion" to the ability to pay; and the corollary was that they be levied only on "luxuries" rather than "necessaries." He went on to define ~~necessaries" as "not only the commodi- ties which are indispensably necessary for the support of life, but whatever the custom of the country renders it indecent for creditable people, even of the lowest order, to be without" -linen shirts and leather shoes, for example. In the same spirit he recommended that highway tolls on "carriages of luxury" (coaches, postchaises) should be higher than on "carriages of necessary use" (carts, wagons), so that "the indolence and vanity of the rich is made to contribute in a very easy manner to the relief of the poor."63 Today, when it is taken for granted that necessity and luxury are relative terms, Smith's ideas on the subject may seem unremarkable. In his own time, when many of his contemporaries were bitterly complaining about the "luxuries of the poor," and when the low-wage theorists were using the evidence of such luxuries-and precisely linen shirts and leather shoes-as an argument against higher wages, Smith's views were notably progressive. So, too, were his views on mercantilisin. Among his other objections to mercantilist regulations was the fact that they were generally in the interests of the merchants and manufacturers and against the interests of the workers. Indeed on the few occasions when they were otherwise, he favored retaining them, even at the expense of the principle of free trade. Whenever the legislature attempts to regulate the differences between masters and their workmen, its counsellors are always the masters. When the regulation, therefore, is in favour of the workmen, it is always just and equitable; but it is sometimes otherwise when it is in favour of the masters.64 Thus he disapproved of the regulation of wages-which established not a minimum but a maximum rate of wages-and supported the law requiring employers to pay their workers in money rather than in goods. "This law (payment in money] is in favour of the workmen; but the 8th of George [the fixing of wages] is in favour of the masters." For the same reasons he protested against the injustice of permitting masters to combine while forbidding workers to do so. 65 More important than the effect of this or that policy on the poor was the image of the poor implicit in these policies. These were the "creditable people, even of the lowest order" who deserved more than the bare necessities of life, the '(sober and industrious poor" who were the proper beneficiaries of a proportionate system of taxation, the "lowest ranks of the people" who would become more, not less, industrious as a result of high wages and who would WINTER/SPRING 1983 �benefit, morally and materially, from a progressive economy. That Smith, like most of his countrymen, thought it just to devise policies that would favor the "sober and industrious poor" rather than the "dissolute and disorderly" is not surprising. What is more interesting is his confident assumption that the overwhelming number of the poor were sober and industrious. It was this assumption that permitted him to "connect" the interests of the "labouring poor" with the "general interest" of society. And not only their interests but their natures. It was because the poor were presumed to have the same virtues and passions as everyone else, because there were no innate differences separating them from the other classes, that they were capable of working within the "system of natural liberty" and profiting from it as much as everyone else. These "creditable" poor were capable and desirous of bettering themselves, capable and desirous of exercising the virtues inherent in human nature, capable and desirous of the liberty that was their right as responsible individuals.66 This is not the doctrine cynically described by Anatole France: "The law is equal for all; rich and poor alike are free to sleep under a bridge." Smith did not pretend that the "formal" equality of the law, even the "natural" equality of the laws of political economy, could be applied to all indiscriminately. This is why he devised a state system of education specifically intended for the poor, why he proposed the kinds of taxes he did, why he did not object to poor relief, why he supported regulations favoring workers, why he based his system on a policy of high wages and an expanding economy. He did not shrink from the facts of inequality or deny the need for correctives and palliatives. But neither did he retreat from his basic assumption: that the poor, as much as the rich, were free, responsible, moral agents. Later, this ideal of moral responsibility was to be turned against the poor, used to justify the denial of poor relief and the opposition to such protective ("paternalistic," as was said pejoratively) measures as factory acts. To Smith the idea of moral responsibility had quite the opposite function: to establish the claim of the poor to higher wages, a higher standard of living, a higher rank in life-to whatever goods might accrue to them as a result of a free, expanding economy. Between the old "moral economy" and Smith's political economy there was a gulf-a chasm, some would say. The former depended, at least in principle, on a system of regulations derived from equity, tradition, and law, a system prescribing fair prices, just wages, customary rights, corporative rules, paternalistic obligations, hierarchical relationships-all of which were intended to produce a structured, harmonious, stable, secure, organic order. By contrast, the "system of natural liberty" prided itself on being open, mobile, changeable, individualistic, with all the risks but also all the opportunities associated with freedom. The contrast is to a certain extent artificial, the old moral economy having been much attenuated in the century before Smith, and the new political economy having its own TilE ST. JOHNS REVIEW moral imperatives and constraints. For Smith political economy was not an end in itself but a means to an end, that end being the wealth and well-being, moral and material, of the "people," of whom the "laboring poor" were the largest part. And the poor themselves had a moral status in that economy-not the special moral status they enjoyed in a fixed, hierarchic order, but that which adhered to them as individuals in a free society sharing a common human, which is to say, moral, nature. 1. John Ruskin, Fors Clavigera: Letters to the Workmen and Labourers of Great Britain (1876), in Works, ed. E. T. Cook and Alexander Wedderburn, London 1907, XXVIII, 516,764. 2. On the early history of the expression "laissez faire," see Dugald Stewart, Biogrdbhical Memoir of Adam Smith, New York 1966 (1st ed., 1793), 93, n.1; August Oncken, Die Maxime Laissez-faire et laissez-passer, Bern 1886; Edward R. Kittrell," 'Laissez Faire' in English Classical Economics," Journal of the History of Ideas, 1966, 610-20; Guy Routh, The Origin of Economic Ideas, New York 1977,44-45. . 3. Vernard Foley, "The Division of Labor in Plato and Smith," History of Political Economy, 1974,242. In his edition of the Wealth of Nations London 1904, Edwin Cannan cited Mandeville as the source of the expression (3). But the passage quoted does not contain that phrase, and the illustration was watch-making rather than pin-making. In this general sense dozens of other writers might be credited with it. 4. Adam Ferguson, Essay on the History of Civil Society, ed. Duncan Forbes, Edinbmgh 1966 (1st ed., 1767), 181. 5. Stewart, 68. In Smith's first year at Glasgow, 1751-52, he was Professor of Logic. His lectures on moral philosophy started in 1752 when he was transferred to that chair. 6. Walter Bagehot, "Adam Smith as a Person" (1876), Collected Works, Camb., Mass. 1968, III, 93. 7, Schumpeter, History of Economic Analysis, ed. Elizabeth Boody Schumpeter, New York 1974 (Is! ed., 1954),184-86. 8. Arnold Toynbee, Lectures on the Industrial Revolution in England, London 1884 (delivered as lectures in 1881). G. N. Clark traces the association of "industrial" and "revolution" to the early 1800s in France and the phrase itself to the French economist Jer6me-Adolphe Blanqui (not to be confused with the revolutionist Louis-August Blanqu~ in 1838, Friedrich Engels in 1845 (Condition of the Working Class in England), and John Stuart Mill in 1848 (Principles of Political Economy). But it was Toynbee's work that popularized both the term and the idea. (Clark, The Idea of the Industrial Revolution, Glasgow 1953). 9. The best summary of this debate is C. P. Kindleberger, "The Historical Background: Adam Smith and the Industrial Revolution," in The Market and the State: Essays in Honor of Adam Smith, ed. Thomas Wilson and AndrewS. Skinner, Oxf. 1976, 1-25. See the comments on this paper by Asa Briggs (25-33) and R. M. Hartwell (33-41). 10. Stewart, 52. II. John Rae, Life of Adam Smith, London 1895, 286. 12. Jacob H. Hollander, "The Founder of a School," in Adam Smith, 1776-1926: Lectures to Commemorate the Sesquicentennial of the Publication of"The Wealth ofNations", New York 1966 (1st ed., 1928), 25; Rae, Life, 288-90. 13. John Millar in 1786, quoted by Asa Briggs in The Market and the State, 28. 14. Adam Smith, An Inquiry into the Nature and Causes of the Wealth of Nations, ed. Edwin Cannan, New York 1937, 11-14, 423, 651. The "invisible hand" metaphor also appears in a different context in the Theory of Moral Sentiments, 7th ed., London 1792 (lst ed., 1759), I, 464. 15. One of the most effective statements of this view is Karl Polanyi, The Great Transformation, Boston 1957 (lst ed., 1944). A more sophisticated version has been advanced by E. P. Thompson, who describes the Wealth of Nations as an "anti-model" rather than a new model, the negation of the older paternalist model. The new political economy, he argues, was 13 �"disinfested of intrusive moral imperatives" not because Smith and his colleagues were immoral or unconcerned with the public good, but objectively, regardless of their moral intentions. ("The Moral Economy of the English Crowd in the Eighteenth Century," Past and Present, 1971, 89-90.) 16. Moral Sentiments, I, 146 ff. 17. August Oncken, "Das Adam Smith-Problem," Zeitschrift- fUr So- zialwissenschaft, 1898. For recent statements and reevaluations of this problem, see Ralph Anspach, "The Implications of the Theory of Moral Sentiments for Adam Smith's Economic Thought," History of Political Economy, 1972; Joseph Cropsey, "Adam Smith and Political Philosophy," in Essays on Adam Smith, ed. Andrew S. Skinner and Thomas Wilson, Oxf. 1975; D. D. Raphael, "The Impartial Spectator," ibid.; Thomas Wilson, "Sympathy and Self·Interest," in The Market and the State; Joseph Cropsey, "The Invisible Hand: Moral and Political Considerations," in Adam Smith and Modem Political Economy, ed. Gerald P. O'Driscoll, Jr., Ames, Iowa 1979; Richard Teichgraeber III, "Rethinking Das Adam Smith Problem," Journal of British Studies, 1981. 18. Moral Sentiments. l, 47; ll, 300, 305. 19. Jeremy Bentham, The Handbook of Political Fallacies, ed. Harold A. Larrabee, New York 1962 (1sted.,l824), p. 230; Works, ed. John Bowring, London 1838-43, XI, 72. 20. Moral Sentiments, I, 339. 21. Sentiments, II, 115. 22. The "design," as Smith described it in the seventh edition of Moral Sentiments, included his moral philosophy, political economy, and theory of jurisprudence. (I, vi-vii.) 23. Schumpeter. !41, 182, 185. 24. Wealth of Nations. 388-89. 424, 460, 463, 577. 25. Wealth, 98, 128, 250, 609. 26. Wealth, 14. 27. Wealth, 423. 28. Wealth, 423. 29. Wealth, !!. 30. Wealth, 78-79. 3!. Wealth, 248. 32. A. W. Coats, "Changing Attitudes to Labour in the Mid-Eighteenth Century," Economic History Review, 1958, 39 (quoting Hume's Political Discourses of 1752). 33. Arthur Young, The Farmer's Tour through the East of England, Lon· don l77l,IV, 36!. 34. Young, A Six Month's Tour through the North of England, London !770, I, 196. 35. Wealth, 8!. 36. Wealth, 82-83. 37. Wealth, 8!. 38. Wealth, ll. 39. Wealth, 15-16. 40. Wealth, !3. 4!. Wealth, 248-49. 42. Wealth, !2!-22. 43. For differing views of this subject, see Nathan Rosenberg, "Adam Smith on the Division of Labor: Two Views or One?" Economica, 1965; E. G. West, "The Political Economy of Alienation: Karl Marx and Adam Smith," OxfordEcon~mic Papers, 1969; Robert L. Heilbroner, "The Paradox of Progress: Decline a'nd Decay in the Wealth of Nations," Journal of the History ofldeas,1973 (i:eprinted in Essays on Adam Smith, ed. Andrew S. Skinner and Thomas Wilson, Oxf. 1975); Robert Lamb, "Adam Smith's Concept of Alienation," Oxford Economic Papers, 1973; E. G. 14 West, "Adam Smith and Alienation: A Rejoinder," ibid., 1975. 44. Karl Marx, Capital: A Critique of Political Economy, ed. Frederick Engels, rev. Ernest Untermann, New York 1936, 397-98. 45. Wealth, 734. 46. Wealth, 126-27 47. Wealth, 8!. 48. Wealth, 8-9. 49. Heilbroner, "The Paradox of Progress," Journal of the History of Ideas, 1973, 243. 50. Donald Winch, Adam Smith's Politics: An Essay in Historiographic Revision, Camb.1978, 143-44. 51. Mill, Principles of Political Economy, ed.J. M. Robson, Toronto 1965, II, 754. 52. Wealth, 53. Wealth, 54. Wealth. 55. Wealth. 56. Wealth, 126-28. 734. 736-38. 737. 740. 57. Mark Blaug, "The Economics of Education in English Classical Po· litical Economy: A Re-Examination," in Essays on Adam Smith, 572. Blaug does not, however, attach to "social control" the usual invidious implications. 58. M. G. Jones, The Charity School Movement: A Study of Eighteenth Century Puritanism in Action, Camb. 1938, 159. 59. Joseph Cropsey, Polity and Economy: An Interpretation of the Princi· pies of Adam Smith, The Hague 1957; Cropsey, "Adam Smith," in His· tory of Political Philosophy, ed. Leo Strauss and Joseph Cropsey, Chicago 1963. See also essays cited in footnote 17. 60. The modification of the laissez-faire stereotype goes back at least to Jacob Viner, "Adam Smith and Laissez-Faire," Journal of Political Economy, 1927. Among the more notable contributions to this revisionist interpretation are: Lionel Robbins, The Theory of Economic Policy in English Classical Political Economy, London 1952; L. R. Sorenson, "Some Classical Economists, Laissez Faire, and the Factory Acts," Journal of Economic History, 1952; S. G. Checkland, "The Prescriptions of the Classical Economists," Economica, 1953; A. W. Coats, "Economic Thought and Poor Law Policy in the Eighteenth Century," Economic History Review; Coats, "The Classical Economists and the Labourer," in Land, Labour and Population, ed. E. L. Jones and G. E. Mingay, London 1967; Coats (ed.), The Classical Economists and Economic Policy, London 1971; Thomas Sowell, Classical Economists Reconsidered, Princeton 1974; Nathan Rosenberg, "Adam Smith and Laissez-Faire Revisited," in Adam Smith and Modern Political Economy. 61. E.g., Mark Blaug, Economic Theory in Retrospect, Homewood, Ill. 1968 (1st ed., 1962), p. 51. Blaug's claim that Smith condemned the "Poor Laws in general'' may rest on Smith's criticisms of trade corporations and assemblies, in the course of which he also criticized those regulations which made such assemblies necessary-the regulation, for example, "which enables those of the same trade to tax themselves in order to pro· vide for their poor, their sick, their widows and orphans, [which] by giv· ing them a common interest to manage, renders such assemblies nee· essary." (Wealth of Nations, 129). But the poor rates were levied by the parish rather than by trades, and therefore did not come under Smith's stricture. 62. Wealth, !4!. 63. Wealth, 777. 821. 683. 64. Wealth, !42. 65. Wealth. !42. 66-67. 66. Wealth. 823, 248, 740. WINTER/SPRING 1983 �A.mbiguities in Kant's Treatment of Space Arthur Collins One of the sources of persistent obscurity in the philosophy of Kant is the fact that he introduces a double standard for dealing with questions about what there is. In the Critique of Pure Reason, this appears first in the culminating assertion of the Transcendental Aesthetic: the assertion ofthe "empirical reality and transcendental ideality of space and time." To say that space and time are empiri~ cally real means that the things that figure in our experience are spatia-temporal things. These are the things found in the common-sense world of perception and the things that make up the subject matter of all scientific investigation. All of these empirical realities exist in space and time. But, to say that space and time are transcendentally ideal means that they do not characterize things as they are in themselves, as opposed to things as they appear in our experience. Things apart from our experience and independent of our mental activities are not spatia-temporal things. Vis-a-vis things as they are in themselves, space and time are not anything real at all. They are merely ideas. In the realm of things as they are nothing corresponds to our ideas of space and time and these realities do not exist in space and time. "It is solely from the human standpoint that we can speak of space, of extended things, etc." (A 26, B 42). Time, " ... in itself, apart from the subject, is nothing" (A 35, B 51). One may suspect atl:he outset that the device that Kant introduces here for treating questions about what there is may be too powerful for any legitimate use. It looks as though Kant avails himself of a means for having it both A frequent contributor on the history of philosophy, Arthur Collins teaches philosophy at the City University of New York. His last discussion of Kant, "Kant's Empiricism," appeared in the July 1979 issue of the St. John's Review. Quotations from the Critique of Pure Reason are from the translation of Norman Kemp Smith; those from Kant's "Inaugural Dissertation" are from the translation of G. B. Kerferd. THE ST. JOHNS REVIEW ways at crucial junctures. Faced with the destructive claims of sceptics and idealists, Kant is a staunch realist. The objects of perception are real things. They constitute a causally connected, spatia-temporal system of material objects which Kant calls "nature" and our knowledge of these objects is objective knowledge. When he is pursuing this realism, Kant likes to label entities envisioned by others that fall outside the sphere of possible experience mere ''Hirngespinsf' and uGedankendingen." But when Kant's thoughts of human morality and freedom seem to be threatened by this all-too-causal empirical reality, he is prepared to downgrade it, to emphasize that these empirical 0bjects" are only appearances, to reprimand "stubborn insistence" on their reality (A 537, B 565), and to rest his conception of man and the human situation on a further reality that underlies and is more fundamental than appearance. As a parallel for "the empirical world" of things we can perceive and study scientifically, Kant uses the expression "the intelligible world" for the realm of things in themselves. But in the Critique and all later works Kant consistently asserts that we cannot know anything whatever about the intelligible world-an odd sort of intelligibility! Before the Critique, in his Inaugural Dissertation, for example, Kant accepted a traditional concept of an intelligible world as opposed to a world of perception and he believed, in the spirit of Plato and the rationalists, that we could have knowledge of nonsensible reality. In his mature writing Kant repudiated the claim to know the nonsensible while retaining the designation "intelligible," although it is only fitting in the context of the earlier view. The single surviving theme from his earlier position is Kant's occasional speculative suggestion that a creature whose intuition (mode of receptivity) is nonsensible might actually know things in themselves and that God may know things in themselves without anything like sense experience. 11 15 �Two kinds of reality: empirical and transcendental, risk generating two systems of truths, one for each reality. Our complete and permanent ignorance of things in them· selves, in Kant's thinking, conveniently avoids the possibil· ity of conflict between these two systems of truths. The unknowability of transcendental reality "makes room for faith" in Kant's own words. But in this connection, too, the duality of the empirical and the transcendental, or knowable and unknowable reality, seems too convenient to be legitimate. An unfriendly critic can read Kant's doc· trine as an admission that the faith that defends "God, Freedom, and Immortality," operates only by relegating them to a region where nothing can tend against them since nothing can be known at all. At the same time, the seeming robustness of empirical realism also relies on the utter unknowability of things in themselves in the sense that, if we could know anything at all about things in them· selves, we would immediately recognize their ontological primacy and the derivative and figmentary status of appearances. The veil of appearances seems to be more than that in Kant's system, one might argue, only because it is all that we can know. Should we reject the dual standard of reality, the merely empirical reality of objects of experience, and the unknowability of things as they are apart from how they appear to us? Or is there some fundamental truth in Kant's realism which is not hopelessly undercut by his transcendental idealism? These questions go to the heart of Kant's system. In trying to answer them, we will find that the concept of space plays a particularly prominent role. 1 Outer Sense and Idealism Kant's efforts to distinguish his views from the ideas of earlier thinkers such as Descartes or Hume bring his conception of outer sense to the fore. Kant often relies entirely on the fact that he endorses both inner and outer receptivity, while the "problematic and dogmatic idealists," as he classifies them, accept inner receptivity but not outer. In the beginning of the Aesthetic, he defines outer intuition or outer sense as a capacity "to represent to our~ selves objects as outside us and all without exception in space" (A 22, B 37). In contrast, in inner intuition, the mind "intuits itself or its inner state" (A 23, B 37). Here Kant quite plainly thinks that "outside us," where we locate what is available to outer sense, means outside the mind, where located things will not be mental things. Inner sense, just as plainly, has only mental things like thoughts and ideas for its objects. Kant thinks that the Cartesian ordering of these matters, inherited by the empiricists, involves a reduction of receptivity to inner sense alone. They have no expectaton of being able to prove apodeictically the absolute reality of space; for they are confronted by 16 idealism, which teaches that the reality of outer objects does not allow of strict proof. On the other hand, the reality of the object of our inner sense (the reality of myself and my state) is, [they argue,] immediately evident through consciousness. [A 38, B 55] Kant goes on to say that the Cartesian-empiricist fails to note that the object of outer sense in space is just as accessible to us as the object of inner sense. In his interpretation of the tradition preceding him, Kant is surely right. For Descartes, spatial reality, the realm of extended substance, contrasts at the most fundamental level possible with the realm of mental things. Extension does not think and the mind is not extended. To this distinction Descartes very definitely adds the view that spatial reality is never given. It is not, as Kant would put it, intuited. In Descartes' system, space is identical with matter. The existence of a spatial realm is the existence of extended substance. This existence is viewed by Descartes as something that must be argued for. Descartes never contemplates arguing for the existence of our own conscious states, thoughts, and ideas. The point of the cogito in this context is precisely to show the impossibility of thinking of my own mental states as something for which I could stand in need of an argument. Stated in terms of "intuition", for Descartes the mental and inner is intuited, while the nonmental, outer, and spatial is not intuited, but is a matter of a relatively tenuous hypothesis. For Hume, too, "impressions and ideas," both of which are mental things, are the only things "really present with the mind" (Treatise, I, ii, 6), while the existence of extended bodily things is only recognized with the help of naturally implanted though rationally unsupported beliefs. In the case of Berkeley, the given does not include anything outside the mind for, indeed, there are no extra-mental realities at all. Thus, the Cartesian-empiricist's conception of consciousness is pretty much what Kant calls just inner sense. Kant gives us a whole mental faculty, namely, outer sense, beyond any cognitive equipment assigned us by the idealist tradition. The outer in Kant's system is given in intuition just as the inner is given in intuition. And the outer is not the mental. _ It is -not surprising that Kant thinks that his acceptance of outer sense sufficiently distinguishes his view from any form of idealism. His theory of outer intuition also explains why he is so unconcerned about egocentric and sceptical problems which inevitably make up the first order of business from the Cartesian viewpoint. These problems will not arise if we find nonmental objects in space among what is immediately given. In the Cartesian-empiricist tradition, we can say that the problem of outer reality is the problem of the existence of spatial things to correspond to our ideas of spatial things, ideas which are not themselves spatial things. "The problem of the external world" means the world of spatially locatable things all of which are, unlike any idea, external to the mind. In Kant's scheme spatial things are given. They are given to outer WINTER/SPRING 1983 �sense so that the problem of the exte,nal world cannot be put in the usual way at all. Kant's empirical realism is the assertion that objects in space are given. Sometimes Kant calls the opposed vi'ew "empirical idealism." Just as transcendental idealism means that spatial things are only ideas and nothing real in the sphere of things as they are in themselves, empirical idealism means that contents of our conscious experience of spatial things consist merely in ideas of spatial things and offer nothing at all in the way of actually existing spatial objects. The idealist view that objects of experience are nothing real in space is "problematic" in Hume, in that Hume thinks that there may be outer objects as well as ideas, and dogmatic in Berkeley, who thinks that there cannot possibly be outer objects as well as ideas. In Kant's thinking, we are not limited to a foundation of ideas of spatial things any more than we are limited to a foundation of ideas of mental things. Both are present to us as immediately as anything can be. Naturally, Kant found it hard to accept early criticisms that bracketed his theory with Berkeley's. Berkeley denies more explicitly than anyone else the immediacy of spatial things outside the mind, and then he goes on to deny the existence of spatial things outside the mind. Upon the least examination, however, Kant's empirical realism turns out to be a fragile thing. Although outer sense represents things "as outside us and all without exception in space," Kant says, again and again, throughout the Critique, that space exists only "in us," that, like time, space would be nothing apart from the human cognitive constitution. Spatial appearances exist only "in the faculty of representations," (A 104) and "all objects with which we can occupy ourselves, are one and all in me ... " (A 129). The mind absorbs spatial objects in this prominent Kantian claim. The innerness and mind-dependence of all objects seems to set at nothing the thought that Kant has distinguished his position from that of the Cartesianempiricist. When we have come a good way into the Critique, to the Paralogisms wherein Kant explains the illusions to which rationalist philosophy of mind is susceptible, he says The expression "outside us" is unavoidably ambiguous in meaning, sometimes signifying what as a thing in itself exists apart from us, and sometimes what belongs solely to outer ex- perience. [A 373] The view so clearly put here contradicts the claim that the theory of outer sense separates Kant's philosophy from all the forms of idealism that Descartes' account of mind and perception generates. Kant tells us here that outer appearances do not exist uapart from us." What can this mean if not that they do not exist outside our minds and thoughts? The relevant problem that the Cartesian tradition seemed to face might be put in the question, "Are there spatial things which exist apart from us, that is, apart from our thoughts and representations of spatial things?" Of course, Descartes, Berkeley, and Hume all know that, TilE ST. JOHNS REVIEW within our thought, we find ideas of spatial things and that these ideas differ from ideas of things which are not spatial. In mounting a proof of the existence of extended reality Descartes is responding to the fact that ideas of spatial things do not exist apart from us, while spatial things, if any there be, do exist apart from us. The whole Kantian theory asserting the necessary existence (if experience is to be possible) of causally connected and enduring empirical objects, the theory secured with such energy and subtlety in the Analytic half of the Critique, seems to be thrown away here when Kant says that none of these realities are anything at all outside our own thinking. This collapse of the pretensions of outer sense reminds us that Kant sometimes confines his opposition to idealism to a very different line of thought. This alternative opposition merely stresses that Kant accepts, while idealists deny or doubt, the existence of things as they are in themselves in addition to appearances or objects of experience. Arguing in this vein, Kant places no weight at all on outer sense, as though he realizes that, in his system, outer sense is simply not outer enough to reach any nonmental realities that may exist apart from us. In the section of the Critique entitled, "The Ground of the Distinction of All Objects in General into Phenomena and Noumena," that is, into appearances and things as they are in themselves, Kant goes so far as to reduce the concept of a reality beyond that of appearances to the status of a "merely negative concept" (A 254, B 309). By this he means that the idea of noumena is simply the idea of realities that are not known in experience. Since objects of experience are all the objects of which we can have any knowledge, noumena, if there are any, are just objects of which we have no knowledge. Kant goes on to call the very concept of such further, wholly unknown, realities a "problematic concept" and a "limiting concept" (A 255, B 3ll) and he seems to imply that we cannot get quite as far as the unqualified assertion that there are any such noumena. The concept of a further kind of being beyond appearances only clearly marks the end of the realm of objects of whose existence we are sure, namely, the minddependent objects constituting the empirical world. Kant is saying that we think of mind-dependent realities as appearances of real entities other than themselves but that, perhaps, there is no other reality, in which case appearances are not really appearances but, instead, they are the only kinds of things that there are apart from the minds which intuit these things. Is this not exactly Berkeley's view? The idea that, for the things immediately present to the mind, esse is percipi is the idea that we have no right to think of these things as appearances. Berkeley's ontology is limited to the ideas present to minds and the minds to which those ideas are present. If we are forced to interpret Kant as surrendering the true outerness of appearances in favor of a counterfeit outerness of space which exists only in our minds, then his whole metaphysics must appear an enormous disappointment and all of the famous and diffi- 17 �cult arguments of the first half of the Critique must seem a waste of effort. 2 Transcendental Aesthetic In the hope of salvaging as much as possible from this threatening disappointment let us examine in more detail the main doctrines of the Transcendental Aesthetic which I identify as follows: (a) the metaphysical expositions of space and time, (b) the transcendental expositions, (c) the view that space and time are forms of outer and inner sense respectively, and (d) their asserted transcendental ideality. The opening section of the Aesthetic is concerned with the definition of "intuition" (Anschauung) and related concepts that underlie Kant's controlling distinction between receptivity and spontaneity, that is, between the functions of intuition and those of understanding and reason. There follow immediately separate and parallel discussions of space and time. In each case a four~point meta~ physical exposition of the concept is supposed to be followed by a transcendental exposition, but the passages are marred by Kant's curious failure to adhere to the distinction between these two points of view, even though the distinction seems to have been invented by him precisely for the purpose of facilitating this very discussion. The four metaphysical points are that space, or time, is (1) not an empirical concept, (2) an a priori and necessary concept, (3) a singular rather than a discursive concept, and (4) a concept of something infinite. The expository confusion in both discussions consists in Kant's inserting the transcendental considerations between the second and third metaphysical points and then only partially correcting the disorder in passages that follow and in changes in the second edition. The actual reason for this, I believe, is that Kant wants to make the transcendental points in the context of the premises relevant to them. These premises are the first two metaphysical points and only those two. In a later passage Kant himself explains the arrangement saying that he wanted to save space. But the confused ordering does not save any space unless Kant means that, with any other organization, he would have had to restate the needed metaphysical views in order to connect them with the transcendental exposition which would be separated from them. In the instances of both space and time, the four metaphysical points are assertions for which no arguments are given. Perhaps by a metaphysical exposition Kant means an account that ought to be accessible to any highly intelligent and philosophically mature common sense. He seems to expect that the statement of the claims will suffice for their acceptance. This is not entirely unreasonable in that there is much to be said for the four points. The first point, considering only space for the moment, is that space is not an empirical concept. Kant says that the 18 concept of space is presupposed for rather than derived from experience. To see what Kant has in mind it is useful to refer to another similar point that Kant often makes later in the Critique. Unlike ordinary empirical objects, space is not itself perceived. So space is not a concept like the concept ocean or box. These are empirical concepts which we possess because we encounter such things as oceans and boxes in our perceptual experience. Of course, space might be an empirical concept, although not an object of perception, if it figured in hypotheses belonging to an explanatory theory, in the way in which the concept of a gravitational field figures in theories that explain the perceived motion of objects. Kant's second metaphysical point rules out this kind of theoretical status for the concept of space. Space is necessary for any outer experience at all, while theoretical objects are doubly contingent and never necessary. Theoretical objects are contingent, first, because the facts which they are introduced to explain are contingent facts. But theoretical objects have a second kind of contingency beyond the contingency of the facts they explain. For theoretical objects may always be repudiated in favor of other theoretical commitments that explain the same facts even better. The status of space is nothing like this because, according to Kant, there could not be any facts of outer intuition without space. Kant expresses the necessity of space saying that we can think space empty but we cannot think it away. The inhibition on thinking space away is related to the fact that space is not something we detect by perceiving it or experiencing it. Things that we do detect by perceiving them, things like oceans and boxes, we can think of as empty (oceans empty of fish, and boxes empty of apples, respectively) and we can also think such things away, that is, think a universe without oceans or boxes among its constituents. Now thinking space empty is simply thinking away all of the constituents of the outer universe. 'Since space is not one of these, we have nothing to bring under the heading of thinking away space itself. There is nothing else that might disappear from the outer beyond the things that appear in it, and space is not one of these things. Kant reads the fact that we perceive things in space and that space is not threatened by disappearance as the necessity of space. The two other metaphysical points are of less importance to our present interests. That space is not a discur~ sive concept, as the concepts ocean and box are, means that it is the idea of an individual. There is just one space in which all outer things are located. The plural "spaces" indicates only parts of space and not instances of space, while oceans and boxes are instances, not parts. This is a very important assertion since it is the foundation of the unity and uniqueness of the spatia-temporal universe and, thus, of the connectability in principle of all objects of possible experience. The final claim, the infinity of space, we can pass over without comment here. The metaphysical expositions are reflections on the concepts of space and time which do not depend on any WINTER/SPRING 1983 �special commitments, nor on any ch')racteristically Kantian critical or transcendental argume.nts. The transcendental expositions, which are loosely derived from the metaphysical, plunge us at once into specifically Kantian doctrine as well as into considerable obscurity. From the nonempirical yet necessary status of space and time, the transcendental expositions purport to explain how it is that we possess knowledge in geometry (in the case of space) and knowledge of a much more vaguely indicated body of more or less mathematical doctrine (in the case of time.) The explanation is more implied than stated, and it makes minimal sense only in the context of views about necessary truth, mathematics, and experience which are not themselves discussed in the Aesthetic, although they have been sketched in the Introduction to the Critique. The root idea is that no necessary truth can be justified on a foundation of empirical evidence. Kant takes this to have been established definitively by Hume. If we learned about space empirically, as we learn about boxes and oceans, no knowledge of space could amount to necessary truth. But knowledge of space is geometry and geometry is a body of necessary truth. The discussion here in the Aesthetic makes no effort to explain how truths about space are actually reached but rests content with the general thought that, since our idea of space is not derived empirically, propositions about the structure of space can also be expected to be nonempirical. Kant always takes it for granted that we do possess knowledge in mathematics and that the mathematical propositions we know are synthetic (rather than analytic), and necessary (which requires that they be a priori.) The tenor of Kant's thought is illuminated by a comment he makes on Hume's view that belief in strictly universal and necessary propositions is not rationally justifiable: "[Hume] ... would never have been guilty of this statement so destructive of pure philosophy, for he would have recognized that according to his arguments pure mathematics would also not be possible; and from such an assertion his good sense would have saved him" (B 20). Here Kant shows his conviction that we must find some explanation for necessity in mathematical knowledge since we do possess such knowledge, and he also reveals his rather sketchy knowledge of Hume's opinions. For, concerning geometry, Hume did extend his scepticism to mathematics in the Treatise of Human Nature, and he said that theorems of geometry are only approximations: "As the ultimate standard of these figures is derived from nothing but the senses and imagination, 'tis absurd to speak of any perfection beyond what these faculties can judge of; since the true perfection of anything consists in its conformity to its standard" (I, ii, 4). The transcendental expositions of space and time constitute an answer early in the Critique to one form of the great motivating question, ((How is synthetic a priori knowledge possible?" The answer that explains how synthetic a priori mathematical knowledge is possible is, however, only a sketch or a promise of an answer the full verTHE ST. JOHNS REVIEW sion of which depends not only on the thought that space and time are necessary and a priori concepts but also on the claim that there are what Kant calls "a priori manifolds" of space and time and "a priori syntheses" of these manifolds in the course of which the objects of mathematical truths are "constructed," in Kant's terminology. It is only because space and time are recognizable as forms of outer and inner sense that Kant is able to assert their transcendental ideality. For this ideality means that things as they are in themselves are not spatia-temporal things. On the surface of it, such a claim contradicts the general impossibility of knowledge of things as they are in themselves. In the absence of the identification of space and time as forms, Kant could at best assert that we do not know whether or not things as they are in themselves are characterizable in spatial or temporal terms. The relevance of the formal status of space can be illustrated in analogies. Imagine an illiterate who learns to read only telegrams. At one stage he has come to understand that the words printed on the telegram make up a verbal message received somehow from a distant person. But at this stage he interprets every word on the form as part of the message, including, for example, the words "Western Union." He will have to learn that these words are imposed by the form and are not part of the content. It would be absurd for this reader to wonder, after learning the status of "Western Union," whether there might be another "Western Union" which is part of the content of every message as it is in itself Of course, we might think that anything might be part of the hidden content of a message. But no part of the content can have just the role and meaning that the words "Western Union" have on the telegram blank because that meaning and role contrast with content by definition. Such an analogy is imperfect in that "Western Union" is part of the telegram form on which the matter is organized, but it is not a necessary part, while, according to Kant, space and time are necessary forms for the organiza- tion of the matter that we receive in intuition. The essential contrast of form and content is preserved in the analogy. Once we have identified space and time as forms, it is absurd to suppose that these concepts might also characterize the unknown source of intuitive inputs. Therefore, this identification of space and time relieves the appearance of contradiction in the assertion that unknowable things in themselves are not in space and time. All of this depends on understanding in what sense we might think of space and time as forms. The word "form", which is the same in Kant's German discussion, appeals to the contrast between matter and form that goes back to Greek thought. Kant says that space is "nothing other than simply the form of all appearances of outer sense." The traditional contrast is filled out when Kant identifies sensation as the matter of such appearances. According to the traditional distinction, an individual existing thing has to have both form and matter. Matter cannot exist without 19 �form, that is, without being anything in particular, and form cannot exist, Platonism apar'\, without being the form of some matter. Kant's conception of an appearance conforms, at least superficially, to this pattern. As far as outer sense is concerned, the matter of an appearance con~ sists of sensible qualities such as color and texture, which fill formal elements such as surfaces and volumes and so constitute perceivable objects of some magnitude. We saw that the pretension of Kant's empirical realism seems to collapse with the absorbtion of space by the mind. This absorption, in turn, is clearly traceable to the claims of the Aesthetic. Space is identified as the form of outer sense and, furthermore, as a form imposed by us. This identification "internalizes" space and it is necessary for the transcendental exposition. This understanding of space is required for Kant's explanation of our possession of synthetic a priori knowledge in geometry. Therefore, space, the imposed form of outer things, cannot be used to secure the distinction between Kant's views and the ideal· ists'. We shall now consider the possibility that the matter of outer sense might play this role. - 3 The Construction of Spatial Objects In expressing his opposition to idealism, Kant's appeal to the accessibility of objects of outer sense is so clear and emphatic that it is hard to think of it as simply a mistake. No doubt the force of the Cartesian contrast between the spatial, extended, and material world and the conscious unextended mind inclines him to express his thought about the nonmental outer in terms of spatiality. There is certainly something wrong with this mode of expression. Kant, however, did not simply fail to notice that the mind· imposed status of space is incompatible with the employment of space as the mark of the nonmental existence of things apart from us. Is it possible that he rests his rejection of idealism, not on the form of objects of outer sense, but on their matter; not on space, but on sensation? The matter of outer appearance is its sensuous aspect. This is what Kant calls sensation (Empfindung). Sensation makes up the stuff of which spatial organization is the required form. This statement has to be replaced by a much more theoretical understanding of sensations and their relationship to perceivable objects. Our receptive faculty gives sensations a spatial location. But we cannot think of this receptivity as literally operating on received sensible qualities. We cannot suppose, for example, that it is a feature of our receptivity to assign a color sensation to a place because Kant states very clearly that, prior to any synthesizing activity, individual sensations do not have any ex~ tension at all. Sensible qualities such as color are the sorts of things of which we can be conscious as the perceivable features of an object, as the color of a surface, for example. As such, sensible features themselves are the product of synthesis, in this case, of a kind of aggregating activity op· 20 erating on unextended sensations which have been located in the same region. Only the resulting aggregate deserves to be described in color language. The unextended content of a single sensation is located but is not perceivable. This is the claim of the Axioms of Intuition according to which all objects of experience are extended magnitudes and, therefore, aggregates, the least constituents of which are not perceivable. We are treating a major side of Kant's thinking which has come to be an embarrassment to modern admirers of Kant. The machinery of the mind, the transcendental psychology, in which Kant tries to depict the actual procedures whereby raw materials are transformed into a world of experience is a "wholly fictional subject matter," as P. F. Strawson described it. If anything is acceptable in this Kantian enterprise it will certainly have to be drastically redescribed in some way that gets away from the idiom of quasimechanical speculation. At the same time, however little is retained of this account of the mind making nature, no understanding of what is best in Kant's thought is possible if these speculations are simply ignored. Neglect encourages, in particular, a mistaken interpretation of the terms of Kant's theories which tends to place them in a spuriously direct relationship to common sense concepts. According to Kant, unknown things as they are in themselves affect us and unextended sensations are engendered as a consequence. In the process our receptive constitu~ tion deploys these sensations in space. The various combinatory powers that Kant ascribes to the human mind under the title of powers of synthesis survey these located sensations and assemble objects from them. These are perceivable objects and they, rather than their theoretical constituent sensations, are the first items accessible to consciousness. There are no objects of consciousness more primitive than perceivable objects. Many of the important claims of the Analytic come from the idea that any conscious experience at all, and any self-consciousness, is conditioned by the completion of this mental construction of objects of perception. The ultimate constituents for the construction of objects with perceivable features are sensations, but they do not have perceivable features. The term "sensation" in eighteenth century philosophical parlance is ordinarily used for qualities apprehended, such as heat and color. Kant's constituents are called sensations only in virtue of the extended perceivable things which have sensible qualities and which are supposed to be made out of sensations. This style of thought, prominent throughout the Critique, becomes easier to understand when we see it in the context of the thought of Leibniz, who exerted a decisive influence on Kant in just these theories of mental construction. The whole format for the construction of a scientific world of phenomena out of elements of which we are not conscious is taken over from Leibniz's account of apperception. Conscious experience results, for Leibniz, WIN1ER/SPRING 1983 �from the aggregation of innumerable unconscious petites perceptions. The motion of the sea is perceived as a roar only because the mind must aggregate the infinite events which make up the motion of the water, each one of which is itself silent, and the mind perceives only the aggregate (confusedly, without distinguishing the constituent events) as sound. For Leibniz the spatia-temporal character of things is phenomenal, that is, it reflects not the reality of the things experienced but the conditions the mind imposes in the process of experiencing anything at all. So underlying realities are unextended but, to be perceived, they are represented in aggregates that produce the perspectival spatia-temporal subject matter of human experience and knowledge. So for Leibniz, phenomenal reality is not a valueless illusion. Phenomena be_ne fundata offer a kind of surrogate for metaphysical reality and truth. As in Kant, phenomena are the locus of all scientific thought. The elements wfiich ai-erelated in our best thought do correspond globally to reality although there is no one-to-one correspondence of appearance and reality. The ambiguous evaluation of phenomenal reality in Kant's system and the theory of transcendental ideality have their roots in Leibniz' s thinking. We have sketched Kant's idea of the construction of empirical objects out of sensations. We are now in a position to address Kant's idea of the constructions the mind makes in the pure or a priori manifolds of space and time. Kant says that "transcendental logic" differs from ordinary or general logic, in that it has its own subject matter, an a priori subject matter, to which the basic combinatory forms of general logic are applied. The a priori manifolds of space and time make up this self-contained field of application for transcendental logic (A 55, B 79). The concept of these a priori manifolds can be understood in terms of what we have said about sensation. Kant says that our receptivity includes a location-assigning procedure which places sensations in space where they are ready for synthesis into perceivable spatial objects. Pure space, or the a priori manifold of outer sense, is just the idea of the system of locations by themselves, without any sensations assigned to them. Perhaps there is a big difference between a location-assigning system, and a system of locations to which things can·be assigned. In virtue of the former Kant speaks of space as the form of outer intuition, while only in virtue of the latter can he speak of space itself as an intuition, and an a priori intuition at that. Kant plainly believes that he is entitled to the transition from the former to the latter, but there is little or no mention of this issue in the Critique. Here we should see the Kantian position as an attempt at a compromise between the conceptions of space defended by Leibniz and by Newton. Newton insisted on an absolute container space which would exist whether or not there were any spatial things to be found anywhere in space. In the Correspondence with Clarke, Leibniz repudiated this on roughly verificationist grounds and he asTHE ST. JOHNS REVIEW serted that space is a system of relations between coexistent entities. There would be no space were there to be no things spatially related. Kant was attracted by the Leibnizean account but he remained convinced that something like absolute space is conceptually indispensable because of a curious argument about incongruent counterparts. Congruent objects are those that have the same shape and the same dimensions. Two such figures can occupy the same space. When superimposed they fit each other exactly. Two gloves of a pair are close to congruence but they cannot occupy the same space because of the left-hand orientation of the one and the right-hand orientation of the other. Since the internal spatial relations of the parts of each glove are the same, it appears that, were Leibniz right about space, there would be no difference at all between a universe consisting only of a left-hand glove and a universe consisting of a right-hand glove of the same dimensions. All relations between coexisting things would be the same in each universe. Kant is intuitively convinced that Leibniz's theory of space makes it impossible to represent a difference that would be real here. The problem is solved by the existence of absolute space, since the two gloves would have different relations to absolute space and would necessarily fill different regions of it. In Kant's system, the whole discussion of the status of space is brought within the domain of appearances. Things located in space are, first, sensations, and second, material objects. Is there space in the absence of spatial things? There is not in the sense that space is transcendentally ideal and does not exist apart from the outer sense which is a component of our cognitive constitution. But space does exist apart from spatial things in the sense in which outer sense offers a system of places which is independent of the fact that sensations are arranged in that system. This means that the impossibility of thinking space away carries an implication for the thing-like character of space itself which goes beyond the metaphysical exposition, which is compatible with Leibniz's theory. Newton thought that we need an absolute container space in order to distinguish absolute and relative motion. Analogously, Kant thinks that we require such a space in order to solve the problem of incongruent counterparts. Therefore, although he makes space phenomenal as Leibniz did, Kant's a priori space with neither sensations nor objects in it functions as absolute space, within Kant's thinking, just as absolute space outside the mind functions in Newton's. This commitment to absolute space allows Kant to think of the location-assigning aspect of outer sense as an a priori system of locations. "[S]pace and time are represented a priori not merely as forms of sensible intuition, but as themselves intuitions which contain a manifold ... " (B 160). We can think of pure space as something like an armature on which sensations are organized. The chief doctrines of the transcendental logic and, prominently, the Principles, result from the consideration of the powers of combination that men possess applied to these empty 21 �but a priori manifolds. The Axioms, Anticipations, Analo· gies, and Postulates are said to be a'priori laws of nature. They are supposed to hold for the empirical realm because empirical objects are the result of applying the very same constructive powers to the same manifolds of space and time, but when these manifolds are filled with sensation. The structural laws which result from the application of combinatory creativity to empty space are true of the empty proto-objects constructed of empty locations. Therefore, they are also automatically true when these locations are assigned sensations with the combining procedures unchanged. In the simplest case, that is, the Axioms of Intuition, we are to understand that the laws of extended magnitude are generated along with the extended objects of which they are true. This is achieved when the pure manifold of nonempirical space is synthesized so that empty points are assembled into empty regions, surfaces, and volumes. Since the empirical manifold results simply from filling the same locations with sensation, the same geometrical laws will hold for empirical and pure space. Geometrically describable objects arise from the aggregation oflocations. This is the detailed story that lies behind the transcendental exposition of space in the Aesthetic. Whether the constructed objects are empirically full or empty makes no difference to their geometrical properties. 4 Sensation and the Objectivity of Outer Sense We saw that space, as ithe region of outer things, collapsed back into the mind because space is only a mindimposed form and spatiality does not characterize things as they are in themselves or even sensations, apart from the location-assigning propensities of our own minds. Since the outerness of space is all in the mind, Kant's system seems to be no improvement on the perennial idealistic weaknesses of the Cartesian-empiricist outlook. But we have raised the question whether Kant intended spatiality to be the aspect of outer appearances that carried the crucial burden of realism. We have examined Kant's conception of sensation, space, and objects with a view to determining whether or not sensation, the matter of outer objects, might be the needed support for Kant's anti-idealist assertions. Kant never says that sensation is imposed by us, or that the mind makes sensations. If he meant sensation to carry the burden of realism, it would be understandable that Kant should frequently assert, as he does, both that outer sense refutes idealism and that space exists only in us, and that he should assert both in the same context of discussion. There is much in favor of this interpretation although, as we shall see, it cannot be the whole of his thought about the connection of outer sense and mindindependent reality. In a revealing passage just prior to the Transcendental Deduction of the Categories Kant says 1 22 There are only two possible ways in which synthetic representations and their objects can establish connection, obtain necessary relation to one another, and, as it were, meet one another. Either the object alone must make the representation possible, or the representation alone must make the object possible. In the former case, the relation is only empirical, and the representation is never possible a priori. This is true of appearances, as regards that element in them which belongs to sensation. In the latter case 1 representation itself does not produce its object in so far as existence is concerned 1 for we are not speaking here of its causality by means of the will. Nonetheless the representation is a priori determinant of the object, if it be the case that only through the representation is 1 it possible to know anything as an object. [A 92] This passage has implications for the meaning of Kant's entire transcendental philosophy. According to the Cartesian-empiricist way of thinking, our knowledge of external things, if we have any, is based on the fact that those external things cause our representations. Kant would say that, within that framework of metaphysical thought, these philosophers have supposed that spatially extended objects are mind-independent entities that "make possible" our representations. The revolutionary character of his thought is that Kant will say that sometimes the dependence runs the other way so that our representation makes possible the object. At its most idealistic, this amounts to a reductive phenomenalism in the manner of Berkeley. The idea of empirical objects of perception is simply the idea of groups and patterns among transient subjective experiences. But in the passage just quoted Kant expresses a far less idealistic view and expressly denies the reduction of objects to representations. Within the passage there are two themes that we will consider separately. First Kant says that the empirical part of representation that is sensation is "made possible'' by the object. In other words, with respect to sensation, Kant's view resembles the Cartesian-empiricist line of thought. Something outside the mind is responsible for the sensation. The object in question is certainly the thing in itself. This is the mind-independent reality that affects us and engenders sensations. The sensation is a representation and as such, it is called a "modification of our receptive faculty" and it is, in consequence, also something in us and in the mind. But these original representations are not the product of our own creative faculties. They are received. They would not exist at all were it not for things as they are in themselves. We will treat this relation between sensations and reality immediately in assessing the appeal to sensation as the chief support of realism. The second theme of the quoted passage will become important at the end of our discussion. This is Kant's statement that even in those contexts where it is right to say that the representation makes possible its object, we should not think that this means that representatioBs •produce objects in point of existence (dem Dasein nach), but only that the representation makes it possible for us to know realities as objects. In other words, Kant repudiates 1 1 1 1 WINTER/SPRING 1983 �any scheme which would try to reduce objects of representations to representations themselves, a~ radical phenomenalism, for example, reduces material objects to sense data. We are never to say that an object of knowledge is nothing more than our representations and the patterns detectable among them. Kant's phenomenalism does not account for the existence of objects known but only for their objecthood in our knowledge. In other words, we are constitutionally disposed to represent realities independent of our minds as objects of perception. All of the characteristics of objects of perception have an irreducible mind-dependence. But it is still independent reality that has become an object for us. The scheme of representation does not create the object that it represents. In the last analysis, it is things as they are in themselves that are represented in experience of spatial objects. In experience, independent reality is represented as a system of stable objects of perception in causal interconnection with one another. There are a great many passages in which Kant expresses a phenomenalism far more radical than this. For the present let us return to the more limited claim about the character of sensation. How should we understand the question, "Does the object make the representation possible, or does the representation make the object possible?" Let us call this the priority question. In itself it seems to presuppose a distinction between representations and objects, while this presupposition is one of the things at issue in the confrontation of realism and idealism. Kant's term "Vorstellung" is broader than anything the English word "representation" naturally suggests. It is meant to cover not only perceptual contents but also all intuitions, pure and empirical. Elementary sensations which are not conscious contents are nonetheless representations. Furthermore, all concepts, pure and empirical, are representations. Even concepts which are defective precisely in failing to represent anything, such as the Ideas of Reason, are representations. It is important to appreciate the abstractness of Kant's usage here because it reveals his willingness to speak of representations whether or not they represent anything and whether or not they are conscious items that represent something to anyone. In the context of the priority question, Kant is thinking of representations as contents of perceptual experience like the ideas of Locke, Berkeley, and Hume, but he is also including elementary unextended sensations which are not conscious and have no role at all in the empiricist tradition. These, as we said, come into Kant's picture from Leibniz's concept of petites perceptions. Kant means us to think that it is idealists like Berkeley who hold that representations make possible objects. Berkeley says that an object like a cherry is a bundle of ideas of sense, including some red ideas, some round ideas, and some sweet ideas. There are cherries only in that we have such ideas in such bundles. When Kant addresses the priority question himself, his thinking focuses on elemenTHE ST. JOHNS REVIEW tary sensations and their origin because even red ideas are a product of synthetic activity. Elementary sensations are the ones which objects plainly make possible. What objects? Here Kant must mean the things in themselves that engender sensations by affecting us. So it is, indeed, Kant's doctrine of sensation and not his theory of spatiality that opposes idealism. The obscurity that darkens this opinion comes from the fact that Kant thinks that these very same sensations do make possible objects, namely, empirical objects. The procedures of combinatory synthesis which we have sketched operate by assembling perceivable objects out of elementary sensations. So sensations both make possible objects and are made possible by objects and, in different contexts, Kant gives both answers to the priority question. We confront here one of the confusions in Kant's thought that comes from his dual standard for questions about reality. There are empirical objects and transcendental things in themselves. Sensations are made possible by things in themselves, and sensations make possible empirical objects. At times, Kant encourages us to think of things in space as the locus of nonmental being, and he defines inner sense as access to mental things. This is Descartes' opinion but, if it is also Kant's, then his theory seems to coincide with idealism. The allegedly nonmental spatial world is a construct from representations (sensations.) When he asserts his realism, Kant forgets or repudiates the suggestion that spatial things are nonmental and he counts objects in space as representations along with sensations. They are all mind-dependent realities and Kant asks of this whole class of things, Do they make possible mind-independent objects? He decides for realism in answering this question. Of course, sensations make objects of perception in space possible, but then they are just appearances. As appearances, they represent realities which are not just appearances. In our spatial representations, realities which are not representations or appearances become objects for us. "Through the representation it is possible to know anything as an object." The underlying difficulty of the dual realities is compounded by ambiguities in the concept of representation. Consider again Berkeley's understanding of the nature of a cherry. We should not really describe Berkeley's bundle theory of perceived objects as the view that representations make possible (or make) objects. The term "representation" is out of place in this description. An element in a bundle does not represent the bundle anymore than a brick represents a wall of which it is an element. The idealist theory really amounts to a renunciation of urepresenta~ tion" as a concept suitable for ideas of sense. The point of idealism is that there is nothing nonmental for mental items to represent. An analogous but restricted point holds for Kant's phenomenalism. The construction of perceivable objects out of spatially deployed sensations by our faculties does not generate an account of objects of perception within which we can say that sensations represent 23 �perceived objects in space. But KaJ!t does like to say that "we represent objects as outside us ')nd all without exception in space." Using such phrases he allows himself to think of representations as items having spatial objects which they represent. But Kant constructs spatial objects out of elements found in the manifold of outer sense. So it is quite misleading for him to suggest that those elements represent spatial objects. In the history of reductive phenomenalism, this illicit use of "representation" frequently lends plausibility to otherwise unpalatable accounts. As long as the concept of representation is illicitly retained, the harshness of the reduction is softened. For the concept implies that there is still a difference between representations and objects of just the sort that the reduction intends to deny. We have sa!d~ihat representations make possible empirical objects and are made possible by transcendental ob· jects. If we delete the implication, which Kant frequently allows himself, that inner elements represent constructed objects in space, on the ground that this is an illicit use of "represenf', a univocal and relatively clear anti-idealist line of thought emerges and it is, I believe, a major part of what Kant did want to say on this topic. What the Cartesian-empiricist tradition calls objects in space are simply complex representations according to Kant. The processes envisioned in the Analytic try to describe how we form such representations. If we ask how it is that spatial things have the status of representations of anything, we must say, in Kant's thought, that they inherit this status from their constituent sensations. So the representational charac· ter of perceptual experience is traceable to sensation. Sensa· tion is the proper foundation for realism. This way of reading Kant's treatment of the priority question may seem to fall short of his expressed views in two ways. First, Kant habitually speaks of perceived ob· jects in space as obiects and seldom as representations, and much of the Analytic itself is dominated by a usage of "ob· ject" in which it is obviously spatial things that are objects and not things in themselves. Second, the priority question, we said, presupposes a distinction between represen- tations and objects. If we interpret the objects of which the priority question inquires as transcendental objects, Kant's ignorabimus will imply that we have no means at all for making good this distinction. If spatial objects are just representations we have no further objects to play the role of things represented. Concerning the first of these reservations, Kant is cer- tainly entitled to speak of objects of perception, and em· pirical objects and objects in space. We could not plausibly propose that he should only speak of empirical, perceptual, and spatial representations. But all these things are objects only because we think about them, and make judgments about them, and investigate them scientifically. Conscious contents involve objects and not merely representations because these contents figure as the subject matter of thought. 24 Objects are given to us by means of sensibility; they are thought through the understanding. . . . But all thought must, directly or indirectly, by way of certain characters, relate ultimately to intuitions, and therefore, with us, to sensibility [sensible representations], because in no other way can an object be given to us. [A 19, B 33) In other words, mind-independent reality becomes an ob· ject for us by engendering sensations and thence empirical representations. Then these representations also become objects of thought and thought about them is thought about reality precisely because it is traceable to these sensations. Reflection on the second reservation bears out this un· derstanding. Since Kant holds that we can know nothing about things in themselves (and sometimes goes so far as to put in doubt the thought that there are any), we are tempted to think, and Kant is also tempted to think, that he means that empirical realities are the only ones that can figure at all in our philosophical account of things. There is no question, for Kant, of getting beyond the empirical object. This "going beyond appearance" is the issue for the old Cartesian-empiricist outlook. Mathematical characterizations, for example, manage to penetrate to things as they are apart from our experience. Mathematical thinking, it seems, enables us to get at, and not merely to represent, reality. But this is no part of Kant's scheme. For Kant, getting at reality is representing it. We cannot make a comparison of represented and unrepresented reality. In consequence, we should not interpret the priority question as presupposing that we can make such a comparison. Unrepresented reality cannot be compared with anything because being represented is the condition for figuring in any comparison we can make. In his relationship to the idealist problems generated by the Cartesian philosophy of mind, Kant is actually the champion of the concept of representation. The idealist renounces representation by denying reality to anything but the mental content itself. There is nothing to be represented. The nonidealist within the Cartesian tradition also rejects the idea of representation in his aspiration to get beyond appearances so as to compare unrepresented reality with our ideas of it. The great Cartesian question of the "resemblance" of ideas and their objects expresses this aspiration. This dream survives in Kant's conviction that God knows reality without representing it, without being affected by it, and without experiencing it. In the case of men, Kant grasps, at least most of the time, the thought that representation is the vehicle of knowledge of the represented, not a barrier which once interposed makes possible only knowledge of the representation itself. Kant wants to allow space to be absorbed by the mind and, at the same time, to single out outer sense as the un~ compromised connection with things that exist apart from us. Inner sense involves an element of sensation too, but there is no mind-independent entity represented here, because inner sense is the mind's receptivity to itself. If we WINTER/SPRING 1983 �construe inner sense as the mind, as thing in itself, affecting itself and giving rise to appearances of itself and its state, we remain in the realm of the mental. Outer sense starts outside the mental, not because ifs representations are spatial, but because sensations of outer sense have their origin in nonmental independent reality. That sensation is the essential link to the extra-mental explains Kant's statement in the Schematism: "Reality, in the pure concept of understanding is that which corresponds to sensation in general ... " (A 143, B 182). And in the Paralogisms, Kant can say, in the context of the asser- atory benefit of the post-renaissance view. The aspect of our representations that accept mathematical representa· tion become transcendentally ideal for Kant. Spatial characteristics: figure, magnitude, and motion, are no longer attributes of mind-independent reality for Kant. They exist only from our point of view. The sensuous component, ception exhibits the reality of something in space, and in in contrast, downgraded by the tradition, is the indispensable link to things that affect us in Kant's account. Each component of this reversal of the evaluation of the sensible and the mathematical has to be qualified. Kant offers a new security for extension-dependent qualities which remain the locus of mathematical description for him. But the new security is an a priori foundation depen- the absence of perception no power of imagination can in- dent on our cognitive constitution. Numerical and vent and produce that something. It is sensation, therefore, that indicates a reality in space or time, according as it is related to the one or to the other mode of sensible intuition" (A 373-4). And a few lines later, "Space is the metrical representation ceases to be thought of as intellectual penetration that gets beyond appearance. Since things in themselves are not spatio-temporal, mathematical propositions do not fit them. On the side of the sensible, Kant continues to think of sensation as an effect in us and does not assert any resemblance between inner and outer in terms of sensible features. But sensations are the foundation of objectivity in the sense that they are the matter of all objects for us, and they would not exist but for the influence of things outside us. No such claim is made for the mathematical aspect of representations. So Kant is able to say that space represents only "possible coexistence" while perception does represent reality be- tion that sensation is the sole input for perception, 11 Per- representation of a mere possibility of coexistence, per- ception is the representation of a reality" (A 374). 5 Primary and Secondary Qualities Kant's distinction between the formal and material ingredients of empirical intuition is his inventive reworking of the traditional distinction between primary and secondary qualities. One of the reasons for which it is hard to appreciate Kant's reliance on sensation rather than space for the basic connection of thinking to the nonmental is that Kant reverses the traditional evaluation of primary and secondary. Primary qualities, for the tradition initiated by Galileo and perfected in the articulation of Locke's Essay, are those which accept mathematical and prominently geometrical or spatial characterization. It is in respect of primary qualities that our ideas resemble things and correctly represent a mind-independent reality. Our ideas of secondary qualities involve sensible characteristics like color and heat. These are literally features of our ideas, that is, of mental things, but they have no footing at all in nonmental outer reality. The distinction between primary and secondary qualities is at the core of post-renaissance philosophy because it explains the success of mathematical science and the failure of the earlier scholastic-Aristotelian program which relied upon a relatively naive interpretation of perceptual experience. The demotion of the sensuous to the status of wholly subjective appearance fitted the growing understanding of the physics and physiology of perception. The objectivity assigned to the mathematically representable side of experience fitted the notion that mathematics is the "language of the book of nature," with the help of which we penetrate the veil of misleading sensuous representation to a true conception of outer reality. When Kant trades this distinction between qualities for a distinction between form and matter, he discards much of the explanTilE ST. JOHNS REVIEW geo~ cause perception contains empirical intuition or sensation (A 374). We can say, then, that the synthesized, nonempirical, proto-objects, the geometrical objects of the Axioms of Intuition, are not representations of anything. But empirical appearances are representations that must have their object. They derive this status from sensation. One can recognize patterns of thought from both Descartes and Leibniz subjected to imaginative permutations by Kant in this context. According to Descartes' conception of "confused" as opposed to ~~distinct" ideas, we are disposed to mistake the sensuous mental effect for the extended outer cause. Thus we project sensuous content, which is immediately intuited but not extended, onto space, which is extended but not intuited. Descartes thinks this projection is an understandable human error. He explains-our disposition to this error saying that we use the sensuous qualities as clues to the harmfulness and utility of things in the spatial environment. This disposition contributes to self-preservation and its effect is enhanced by the fact that we think of the clues as features of, and not merely effects of, the objects. In this, Descartes supposes, as Kant does, that essentially unextended things (Descartes' sensuous ideas and Kant's sensations) are projected into space by us, and then thought by us to characterize regions and surfaces. The great difference lies not in the concept of the projection of the unextended into space but only in the legitimacy of the projection. Descartes and any other subjectivist on secondary qualities must say that color characterizes nothing that is actually 25 �extended, since the locus of color is, the mind where there is nothing extended. For Kant, the same projection is not an error but an aspect of cognitive functioning which is· sues in a constructed perceivable object. Like Kant, Leibniz, too, has it that an essentially non· spatial reality is represented spatially by the human mind. Reality is itself not spatial in two senses for Leibniz. First, space is only a system of relations and never anything like a container for things, and, second, this system of relations belongs only to representations or phenomena and not to things independently of the fact that they are mentally represented. Leibniz was never attracted at all by the Cartesian method of doubt and the solipsistic starting point that it fosters. He refuses to enter upon the epistemological enterprise on which Descartes wagers everything. Instead Leibniz offers an overall metaphysical account which is to be accepted if it does justice to all of our experience and thought. He does not try to show how this account might be reached by any reflective man in the face of the most extreme scepticism. Within Leibniz' s account, the ultimate explanation for the fittingness of our thought to reality is pre-established harmony. Everyone finds this unsatisfying and Kant expresses his dissatisfaction, saying that Leibniz "intellectualized the senses." Perception is just confused thought for Leibniz, and all thought is a self-contained activity of the mind. There is no original input traceable to our being affected by things, because in the last analysis we are not affected by anything, according to Leibniz, but only programmed in advance to have the mental contents that we do have. No doubt Kant inherits from Leibniz a starting point alien from the Cartesian-empiricist egocentrism and solipsism. It is no part of Kant's plan to doubt whether representations are really representations and then to overcome this doubt. Kant's acceptance of the Cartesian view that we are affected by the things that we represent is a repudiation of Leibniz's reliance on harmony as the ultimate foundation of knowledge. Like Leibniz, Kant understands the spatial images of conscious perception as the aggregation by the mind of items which are not themselves extended. But like Descartes, Kant thinks that these items are effects of outer realities. Against Descartes, with whom he shares the notion of perceptual images as effects of outer realities, Kant thinks that our idea of color requires that extended things be colored things. Mere ideas will never make color intelligible without receptivity. Only because spatial things can actually have sensible features is it the case that "Perception exhibits the reality of something in space, and, in the absence of perception, no power of imagination can invent or produce that something." This is related to the view that Hume expressed saying that all ideas are copies of impressions. Though it is found in spatial things, color is subjective, in Kant's view, as it is for the standard theory of secondary qualities. In this setting of the views of predecessors Kant's rear- 26 dering emerges naturally. There is some objective influence on our faculty or receptivity that is responsible for the existence and representational character of outer intuitions. In order to think of outer reality consciously we make spatial pictures by assembling essentially unextended sensations which have been assigned places in the mind-imposed system of locations. These pictures, in virtue of their empirical content (sensation), represent reality outside the mind as objects in space. Spatial pictures as assembled objects really have surfaces and their surfaces are really colored. Color is an emergent feature which arises in the synthesis of a multitude of sensations which have been assigned to locations near one another. Thus, color stands for, and represents, the outer thing without resembling it, while the spatial features neither stand for nor resemble any reality. In some ways this concept of space is like the psychological concept of a visual field. Geometrical features of things come from the features of mind-imposed space and play no part in the relation of objects of perception to things outside the mind. This fits nicely Kant's claim that geometry is necessary and a priori, and yet geometrical truths are true of empirical objects. Space is the region of all possible objects ("possible coexistence") and when space is filled with sensation, synthesis generates apprehendable structures (empirical objects) out of deployed sensations. That these representations represent the nonmental is due entirely to the contained sensations. The mathematical knowledge we have of such objects is, as Kant says, only a question of getting out what we have put in ourselves. It is secondary qualities that are responsible for the fact that experience reaches beyond merely mental realities, while primary qualities betoken nothing mind-independent. 6 The Spatial and the Temporal Were sensation all there is to connection with things outside the mind, space would be just as mental as time is. Spatial things would be mental representations of nonmental realities, and temporal things would be mental representations of mental realities. This pleasant symmetry is not tenable. It is contradicted by the fact that Kant clearly requires that spatial representations be subjected to time in order to become participants in the activities of the mind. Some of the essential doctrines of the Critique depend, first, on the thought that spatiality per se makes representations unfit for mental status, and, second, it is precisely the spatiality of spatial representations that renders them fit vehicles for securing the concept of anything enduring at all, even of minds as enduring conscious subjects. Kant segregates the spatial and the temporal with startling rigor. All readers follow him easily when he confines inner mental objects to a temporal order and allows spatial distinctions no footing in the mind. This satisfies a widely shared intuitive conviction that thoughts are not located WINTER/SPRJNG 1983 �(B) (A) (C) (D) / anywhere and that ideas do not displace any spatial occupant Kant's confinement of the mental to time is part of the common ground of his inner sense and Cartesian consciousness. But Kant's exclusion of time from the objects of outer sense, which are subjected to space and space alone, is not attuned to any widely shared philosophical presumption. As a result, readers of Kant sometimes suppose that he does not mean to exclude temporality from the outer. It is often said that Kant means to say that all inner things are subject to time and all outer things to space and time. And this seems a needed reading lest Kant be thought to leave no conceptual room for change in the outer world at aiL Such an understanding, however, conflicts with very simple and clear statements in the Critique such as this one: "Time cannot be outwardly intuited anymore than space can be intuited as something in us" (A 23, B 37). Can one hope that even such direct assertions are open to interpretation or overridden by other considerations? We certainly must say that Kant's ultimate view is that material objects both fill space and endure in time. In his thinking, then, the spatial and the temporal are wedded. The point, however, is that they need to be wedded. No object of outer intuition, considered in itself, is something that exists in time. As a first approximation for the understanding of this perplexing view, we can point out that time is not essential in the realm of the extended, whether or not time, as a matter of fact, applies to things in that realm. The fact is that as conscious subjects we confront an outer world in which there is change. Since this is so, we have to deploy temporal concepts in describing that world. But this is an empirical fact It is conceivable that we might have found an outer reality in which there is no change whatever. Under such circumstances, change would be confined to the domain of our conscious survey of this wholly static reality. It would not be necessary to ascribe time to both the inner and the outer. Our first thought, then, is that time is not absolutely necessary for the very idea of the outer, as space is absolutely necessary. The thought of a changeless spatial world leads to a further speculation, and one that is a lot closer to Kant's actual view of space and time. It seems theoretically possible to deny that there is any change in the actual world and to assert that the spatial world we do experience is a static world. All the apparent temporal distinctions in the outer world will have to be recast as temporal distinctions that TilE ST. JOHNS REVIEW apply only in the mental world of experiences. For example, we may think of the sequence of images A-D, in the figure 1 as the content of consecutive visual experiences of a subject The natural interpretation of such a sequence assigns change, and therefore time, to both the outer and the inner. The subject's inner experience changes as the outer car passes the tree. But we are not forced to interpret A-D as consecutive viewings of the same outer re~ gion, namely, one in which changes are taking place. We could think of it instead as consecutive viewings of four different regions of a wholly static space. If we think of the images A-D as consecutive frames of a motion picture film, then the viewing of the film realizes the possibility of the second interpretation, that is, consecutive experiences of four different static arrays. This analogy ignores the real motion involved in the manipulation of the film. When we view a film we create the illusion of change in the object by arranging to witness related but unchanging objects in a special temporal order. In principle, we could think of our ordinary experience of the world as conforming to this pattern. Therefore, the ascription of time to the outer is an expendable convenience. We made informal use here of the distinction between the thing seen and the visual experience of that thing. Kant, too, recognizes such a distinction. He frequently says that apprehension of the manifold of intuition is always successive, whether or not the manifold itself is successive (inner) or simultaneous (outer). The perception of a line, however short, (an example Kant likes) involves a synthesis which is necessarily successive. The allusion to synthesis in this opinion reminds us that outer sense does not reveal a world in which the question, "Are there really changes here, or not?" naturally arises. Due to outer sense we have a range of intuitions. These are a multiplicity of individual representations of outer things. For the description of these representations spatial terms are needed and temporal terms are not Nothing happens in one representation. The ordinary world is not something simply given to outer sense. The world is constructed by our synthetic powers (the understanding) operating on material provided by receptivity. In Kant's terms the restriction of temporality to the inner means that all the temporal distinctions used in thinking of the ordinary world are traceable to synthesis and none to outer receptivity. Kant often speaks of the products of the synthetic powers of the mind as objects of outer sense. For example, 27 �a line is an object of outer intuition. This seems unproblematic because a line is a static thing. Its synthesis, how· ever, is successive and involves time. Strictly speaking, nothing complex is merely intuited. Even the least com· plexity is ascribed to synthesis. Combinatory activity-as· sembling, integrating, collating, comparing, retaining, re· trieving, reproducing, and, in general, synthesizing-is all mental activity. Kant often says that we are not conscious of these operations and some are even "concealed in the depths of the soul," but this merely emphasizes that he does think of them as mental processes. No one thinks oth· erwise. It is inevitable, in Kant's system, that these activi· ties be temporal activities and any materials involved in these activities must be in time in order to be accessible for synthesis. It is for this reason that Kant confines the Schematism to consideration of the temporality of intuition. The job of the schematism is to bridge the gulf between the Catego· ries as pure concepts of understanding and the empirical sensibility that offers human beings matter for experience. The Categories are developed from the forms of judgment identified in formal logic. Although the transcendental deduction of the Categories is supposed to guarantee that any reality we are able to experience will conform to these pure concepts, the deduction does not reduce the merely formal and logical significance of the Categories. Any ra· tiona! creature will have experience in conformity with just these twelve Categories, in Kant's view, but this might have a wholly different meaning for creatures whose re· ceptivity is not spatial and temporal as our receptivity is. So the Schematism interprets the Categories for beings with sensible and spatio-temporal intuitions. But Kant seems to ignore the spatial altogether so that, in the Sche· matism, as he describes it, the Categories are subjected to a temporal condition. Some readers have supposed that he might have offered a spatial as well as a temporal Sche· matism for the Categories. This is not correct. The Gate· gories are the pure forms that are available for the combination of materials provided by receptivity. Combination is not intelligible without time. As Kant says, synthesis is always successive, whether or not the manifold is succes· sive or simultaneous. Thus Kant calls time the form of all appearances whether inner or outer. In this view, Kant dis· tinguishes appearances, which presuppose synthesis, from intuitions, which do not. Outer intuitions have to be re~represented as mental experiences in order to enter into any combinatory activity. For example, the apprehension of a cube offers an object of outer sense that has spatial features such as being cube-shaped and no temporal fea· tures. It is the visual experience of the cube and not the cube itself that enters into mental activities. When spatial things are re-represented they trade in their spatial charac· ter for a new mental character. The visual experience of a cube is not a cube-shaped experience. It is a datable event related in time to all other events in the mind. If outer sense is not directly available for synthesis, this 28 is just another way of saying that we cannot have any im· mediate or non-inferential knowledge of outer things. The raw materials of knowledge all have to be representations in inner sense. But if this is so then in what sense are there any data of outer sense at all? It seems that Kant's outer sense has become something like the outer world for the Cartesian-empiricist. It is a hypothetical source of some of the data we really do have, namely, the things present to the mind and available for synthesis. How else can we in· terpret the fact that in Kant's scheme items that actually possess spatial features cannot enter into mental processes or consciousness. They have to be subjected to time. Kant has internalized the problem of the external world. In or· der to figure in mental activities, representations must be temporal representations. When it comes to the supposed data of outer sense, so often touted as immediate, it turns out that subjection to time amounts to re-representation. As Kemp-Smith put it, appearances in space are not really representations at all, "They are objects of representation, not representation itself" (Commentary, 295). No spatial thing can exist as a subjective state. At most a representation of a spatial thing, a representation which does not itself have spatial features, can truly exist in the mind. But the great problem with this is that the spatial is now cut off from both the inner and mental and from the metaphysically outer. From the perspective of the inner, spatial representations are objects that have to be re-repre· sented in time in order to belong to thought and to the empirical world the mind constructs. From the perspective of things as they are in themselves, spatial representations are mere appearances. Spatial reality threatens to be· come empirically ideal as well as being transcendentally ideal. This instability in the status of the spatial sheds light on some difficulties in interpreting Kant. Faced with the demand for a distinction between the subjective and the ob· jective, Kant repeatedly formulates distinctions that seem to fall entirely on the subjective side. For example, his con· trast between judgments of perception and judgments of experience, drawn in the Prolegomena, operates in a realm that is all appearance. In the Analogies, he purports to dis· tinguish the temporal order of our experience and the temporal order in the object. But the only object under consideration is outer appearance and not mind~indepen~ dent reality. Such passages result from the fact that Kant treats outer intuition as a source of input for inner intui~ tion. Then, relative to inner representations, the outer be- comes a system of represented objects. Thus he is able to treat outer appearances as if they offered independent objects about which a world of facts could be ascertained. When he is thinking this way, Kant's conception of the mind retreats to inner sense, to the traditional Cartesian consciousness which has to develop knowledge of spatial things through immediate contact with inner representa· tions (ideas) of spatial objects. This thought contradicts the claim on which much depends, in the Paralogisms, for example, that inner and outer sense are symmetrical, and WINTER/SPRING 1983 �both are immediate, and objects are given to both. In a footnote which strengthens the newly composed "Refuta· tion of Idealism," the Preface to the second edition of the Critique explicitly asserts that the "permanent" which must be found in perception "Cannot be an intuition in me" (B xxxix) for intuitions in me have only the status of ephemeral representations. Here Kant seems to promote the object of outer sense, the object of perception, to mind·independent reality, and simultaneously to reduce our knowledge of it from the direct intuition claimed ear· lier to something mediated and inferential. We will miss what is important for Kant's thought here if we treat these passages as mere slips into the Cartesian point of view. The thought that what is permanent "can· not be an intuition in me" points to an entirely different significance for the inaccessibility of representations of outer sense to both consciousness and synthesis. Why is it that the permanent cannot be identified with any intui· tion? Plainly, the answer is that anything truly mental, any subjective state, is essentially transient. The fact that time is the form of the mental guarantees that everything purely mental has, as Hume expressed it, "a perishing exis- tence." Nothing mental could possibly be permanent be· cause impermanence is the form of mental things. Mere temporal existence is impermanence. We have now discovered the deeper Kantian motivation for the sharp segregation of the temporal and the spa· tial. Kant's thought of the outer has to satisfy two de· mands that seem to conflict with one another. On the one hand, he would like the outer to be intuited and thus im· mediately accessible like any other intuition. And this is required for the transcendental ideality of space. On the other hand, he wants the outer as merely spatial, to be ex· empted from the ever·vanishing essence of inner things and mental things, even though the price of this exemp· tion is separation from mental activities and consciousness. The inaccessibility of the spatial and its tendency to become something independent of the mind is a conse· quence of a powerful demand of Kant's theory and is no mere slip. The defect of the Cartesian·empiricist perspec· tive is that it envisions a starting point for philosophical reflection consisting of a conscious mind confronted by data all of which are perishing mental contents. Some· thing outside the destructive scope of temporality must be provided in order to account for the idea of the subject himself. No concept of consciousness is intelligible which starts from a framework limited to mental things. The demand for something not subject to the ravages of time, and therefore not mental, is the point of Kant's cen· tral argument concerning apperception and personal iden· tity. Any conception of mental activity presupposes that the materials involved be accessible to one subject of con· sciousness. The possibility of learning, discriminating, recognizing, remembering, and forming concepts requires that the data be subject to one subject. But inner sense does not reveal any such "abiding self." THE ST. JOHNS REVIEW Berkeley earlier noted that we have no idea of the sub· ject of experience, and he provided the "notion" of a spirit to make up for the missing idea. Hume, too, recognized that we have no experience of the self. Refusing to intra· duce an ad hoc surrogate like Berkeley's spirit, Hume tried to reduce the subject of experience to the content of expe· rience in his bundle theory of the subject. This amounted to an extension to mental substances of Berkeley's bundle theory of spatial substances. This is the gist of the history of the problem of the unity of apperception up to Kant. Kant takes the bundle theory of personal identity to be the reductio ad absurdum of the Cartesian·empiricist program which tries to derive everything from the purely mental, purely inner, and purely temporal. Kant insists on a substantial foundation for the unity of the subject of experience outside the various experiences of that subject. The great Kantian contribution here is the recognition that the subject could not possibly be given in experience. Hume said that when he looked within in or· der to find himself he found instead only another percep· tion (perishing mental content). Kant understands that this is inevitable. Suppose we found a common element in all our conscious experience and we inclined to think of this ubiquitous element as our own abiding self. This would have to be an error. Kant sees that no such element in experience could be the foundation of the connected· ness of experiences that makes them all contents for one subject. On the contrary, experiences stand in just the same need of connectedness to one another and presence to a common subject whether or not they have a common element of any kind. The very idea that I could note a common element in my experiences presupposes that I, as a single subject, have all those different experiences, so that I might note a common element among them. The common element, if there were one, could not be the rea· son for the fact that all the experiences containing the com· man element are mine. We have to look outside the realm of conscious contents to find a foundation for the unity of consciousness. The nontemporal spatial object of outer sense offers a foundation for permanence because it is not an essentially perishing object. Of course, the spatial object is not the sought.for subject of experience. But the nontemporal outer object provides the minimal conceptual framework for the idea of the endurance of the subject. Enduring things in space introduce the "determinate time" within which the endurance of the subject can be thought. For in what we entitle "soul" everything is in continual flux and there is nothing abiding except (if we must so express ourselves) the "I", which is simple solely because its representation has no content .... [A 381] So long, therefore, as we do not go beyond mere thinking we are without the necessary condition for applying the concept of substance, that is, of a self-subsistent subject, to the self as a thinking being. [B 413] 29 �Now consciousness [of my existence] in time is necessarily bound up with consciousness of the '[condition of the] possibility of this time determination; and it is therefore necessarily bound up with the existence of things outside me, as the condition of the time determination. [B 276] Endurance does not contradict the essential character of things that are outside thought. This is the positive benefit of the Kantian treatment of space as inaccessible to immediate consciousness. The subject cannot be intuited, nor can it be constructed out of the flux of intuited contents. It has a stability borrowed from the endurance of outer things. A natural objection to Kant's circuitous reasoning about the subject of experience might run as follows: Consciousness, he says, reveals no enduring substantial subject. It also reveals no enduring substantial object. The given, construed as the totality of materials that the mind does have to work with, entirely consists of perishing contents. When Kant claims that the outer enduring object is required for the possibility of an inner enduring subject, it seems that he merely assumes the possibility of the one in order to provide a conceptual foundation for the other. Why does he not just assume the existence of the substantial subject and confess that his procedure is really no more realistic than that of Berkeley? The essential difference between the inner and the outer is supposed to furnish the Kantian response to this objection. For no assumption that Kant could make within an ontology limited to inner objects could possibly be efficacious just because it is the essence of the inner to be perishing and insubstantial. Nothing mental endures because time is the form of the mental. So there can be no question of assuming the endurance of something mental. Furthermore, this opinion is not an arbitrary dogma. That the contents of consciousness are essentially transient is indisputable phenomenology. The temporal is the realm of all contents of consciousness, so it looks as if we have to posit something nontemporal in order to introduce the least stability in our thought of ourselves and the world. But Kant would like to say that we do not have to posit anything because perception acquaints us with the spatial and with things that have permanent existence in space. The first Analogy of Experience asserts that our experience is necessarily of en- during substances. To the extent that the discussion is not entirely phenomenalistic and reductive, Kant seems to identify the enduring component of what is perceived with matter and to assimilate the assertion of the Analogy to the conservation of matter. This is explicitly Kant's view in the parallel discussion of the Metaphysische Anfangsgriinde. But there is another side of the idea of permanence that is less theoretical and sweeping and, perhaps, more attractive. Permanence requires, at a minimum, that the temporal parameters of the object perceived be extended beyond those of the perception of the object. Thus, the idea of 30 permanence is the idea of the existence of objects unperceived. It is this conception of permanence that furthers Kant's realism. Commitment to permanence in perception is the idea that our perceptions are of relatively stable objects which endure through gaps in our episodic experiences. Permanence expresses categorical opposition to the thesis that esse is percipi. We have seen that the very advantage of nontemporality carries with it the disadvantage of separation from consciousness and the need for re-representation. If we forget about this problem for the moment, as Kant seems to, the prospects for his theory are good. Time comes into the picture of spatial reality only via experience. As a re-representation, an experience of a spatial thing has a date, that is a place in the sequence of all mental contents of a subject. Nothing merely conceptual obstructs the possibility that an identical outer thing could be experienced at two different times. This is just what cannot happen with inner objects. I can experience again today the object that I experienced yesterday, but I cannot have the experience I had yesterday again today. At best, I can have a qualitatively identical experience, never the numerically identical experience. For objects of inner sense, the date, that is, place in temporal sequence, is part of the principle of individuation. Therefore, if experiences have different dates, they are, ipso facto, different experiences. The enduring existence of things in space does not contradict the very essence of spatial existence, while to speak of the enduring existence of things that exist only in time does contradict the essence of such temporal things. Once concepts of spatial enduring objects are given footing, we are able to speak, as Kant says, of''determinate time." The outer object exists when we perceive it. It endures between our perceptions of it. A clock is a reperceivable object with the help of which the time between perceptual experiences is measured. The whole spatial world is a generalized clock. It makes time determinate in the sense that it makes it possible to say at just what time our inner experiences occur. The endurance of the self that must accompany all experiences is registered in the objective temporal order of outer things. The dates of objects, clock time, place the whole inner sequence of experiences of objects in an objective context. This is Kant's completion of his argument on apperception. Outer things are essential for the temporal continuity of the subject of experience. This argument appears in various relatively obscure formulations in the Transcendental Deduction, in the Paralogisms, and in the Refutation of Idealism. I have rehearsed it here in order to emphasize the strategic importance for Kant of the inaccessibility of the spatial from immediate consciousness. Immediately accessible contents are essen- tially transient. In Kant's most theoretical thinking, transience, like permanence, is pressed to the limit. Permanence means conservation of matter forever, and transience means that mental things are all new at each instant. WINTER/SPRING 1983 �The least endurance that goes beyond the instantaneous depends upon the powers of synthesis' ,and entails a mode of existence that is not possible within the mind itself. Perhaps these extremes of permanence and transience are not necessary for Kant's objectives. They seem to come from a Leibnizean style of thinking about parts and wholes and infinites that is familiar in the "Inaugural Dissertation" and in the Antinomies. In any case, the general line of thought is crucial to Kant's philosophy as a whole. To say this is not to say that he offers a consistent account of the inner and the outer, the spatial and the mental, so that his main contentions can be contemplated within the equilibrium of a coherent and plausible system of concepts. There are inconsistencies which cannot be removed while remaining faithful to Kant's overall thought because they lie too deep and Kant's awareness of them is too slight. Nonetheless, the basis of a generally Kantian reconstruction of most of what he says does seem to be possible. 7 A Sketch for the Consistent Kantian We saw at the beginning of this essay that spatiality seems to be equivalent to the locus of extra-mental existence in Kant's initial definition of outer sense in the Aesthetic. This interpretation gave way to an inner and mental status for space in light of the asserted transcendental ideality of space and the idealist tendency of the claim that space is only in us. The complete collapse of Kantian realism then seemed to be avoidable only if we could understand outer sensation rather than spatiality as the irreducible connection with mind-independent things. Whether or not sensation supplies an adequate foundation for Kant's realism, however, it is clear that the main argu~ ments of the Critique of Pure Reason require that spatiality carry with it an immunity from the transience of all things of which time is the form. This brings to the fore once again the identification of space with the region of nonmental existence. Failure to resolve strains here leaves Kant seeming to assert that space is neither the metaphysically outer, since it is only appearance, nor mental, since it is not subject to the form of time. A satisfactory reconstruction must start from the fact that this pressure for an intermediate status that will bridge the gulf between the mind and the world arises quite naturally. Some such bridge is, indeed, just what is needed to overcome the solipsistic viewpoint and attendant scepticism and idealism. At the same time we obviously cannot leave space in an entirely unprovided-for limbo between appearance and reality. The concept of representation must do most of the gapclosing work. Although he is the champion of representation against the challenge of idealist reductions, Kant frequently yields to the idealist thought that representations amount to a sort of impregnable epistemological shield that perfectly protects an ever-virginal reality from the as· THE ST. JOHNS REVIEW saults of enquirers. Every passionate investigation is re- pelled coldly and all aspiring lovers of truth only get to know their own fantasies. There is something wrong here. Representations are involved in all efforts to know anything. But this does not mean that representations block knowledge from the outset by substituting a surrogate object. The idealist line about representation can be combated, in part, by shifting to use of the verb instead of the noun. We represent reality as a stable system of relatively stable material objects. It is reality that we thus represent. We do not represent our own representations as such a sys· tern. And, in any case, our representations certainly do not compose such a system. Our representation of the world is, itself, a thing of the mind and it has concepts and propositions and images for constituents, not relatively stable material objects in space. If we resolve to defend Kant's philosophy and we are asked, "Is reality spatia-temporal?" we should not answer, as Kant himself often answers, "Empirical reality is spatia-temporal, but mind-independent reality is not." That reply goes with the idea that our representations are spatia-temporal and all we know about are our representations. The right answer should be, "We represent reality as a spatia-temporal system." This answer does not change the subject and insist on speaking only about representations. It is a guarded answer, but not a negative answer about mind-independent reality. For the question, "Is reality spatia-temporal?" the answer, "So we represent it," is a form of affirmative answer. Its force is very close to that of, "We certainly think so." If we accept this reading of the relationship between representation and reality, what are we to make of Kant's claims that space is only an imposed form, and that space is transcendentally ideal? The idea that space is a form comes from Leibniz's analysis rejecting thinghood for space. Formal status makes space a principle for the organization of simultaneous existants and denies that space would be anything were there no such existants to be organized. This much does not impair the objectivity of space. If space is a system of relationships among simultaneously existing outer things then spatial representation is representation of the outer. Spatial things will be outer things though space itself is not one of them. This seemed to be Kant's view in the Metaphysical Exposition of space. It is only because Kant also thinks of space as a form imposed by us that the spatial tends to become subjective and ideal. Why does Kant think that space is imposed by us and is not a system of relations in which things would stand even if we did not represent them at all? There are two reasons for this. First, this conception enables him to explain some synthetic a priori knowledge, as we saw in discussion of the Transcendental Exposition. I will simply pass over this presumed benefit of the ideality of space and will not consider here whether anything of that benefit could be retained if space were not regarded as an imposed system of relations. However this is decided, we cannot suppose that 31 �Kant flatly asserts that space is imposed simply because that will enable him to explain our knowledge of geometry and its application to the world. He must have reasons for thinking that this status is independently plausible. I want to call attention to a set of convictions that operate in the background of Kant's thinking, and sometimes in the fore· ground. For example, Those who take space and time for some real and absolutely necessary fastening as it were of all possible substances and states do not think that anything else is required in order to conceive how to a number of existing things there applies a certain original relation as the primitive condition of possible influxes and the principle of the essential form of the universe. [Even if we grant it as much reality and necessity as we can, space] . .. only represents the intuitively given possibility of universal coordination. [The question remains] ... what is the principle upon which this relation of all substances rests, a relation which when seen intuitively is called space. (Inaug. Diss., 16] Here Kant is saying that we cannot simply accept space as the order in which simultaneous existents stand. That ex· istents stand in any order, that they are related to one an· other in any way, requires an explanation beyond their mere existence. "Simply because of their subsistence they are not necessarily related to anything else ... " (Ibid., 17). Things must already form a whole or a universe in order to stand in any relations, even spatial relations. The imposed character of space comes out of these thoughts without reference to the explanatory fruitfulness of the idea of mind imposed space vis-a-vis geometrical knowledge. To give as much definition as possible to these elusive thoughts, let us consider reality without worrying at all about representation or knowledge for the moment. We can conveniently take God's point of view, remembering that it is one with which Leibniz and Kant sometimes seem to have a certain familiarity. Suppose God creates a planet. It will have all the contents and characteristics that he has put into it. There will already be spatial relation· ships between the parts of the planet, but the planet itself will not be anywhere in space, for there is nothing with which it is coordinated. Now let God create another planet. He need not first create more space so that there will be room for another planet. The fact that it does not need creating is a reflection of the nonthing-like status of space, and of its necessary availability. Let us imagine that God makes the second planet larger and warmer than the first. As soon as there is more than one thing, in addition to the properties that each thing has, there will also be a multiplicity of relations between things. All the relations seem to have a secondary significance from the point of view of ontology and creation. They do not place any de· mands on the creative powers of God at all. A planet will not have the features it does have unless God actively puts those features into it in his creation of it. But the relations do not require anything beyond the creation of the indi- 32 viduals with their features. In creating the second planet, God does exactly what he would have done had he created it first. And then it is, automatically, so to speak, some· where with respect to the first planet, larger than the first, and warmer than the first. The thought that relations obtain without being created is part of the Leibnizean claim that relations are not real. In order to connect this with our reconstruction of Kant's thinking, we have to add the thought that relations, and the ones constituting space in particular, have their existence only in representation. To illustrate this we can pursue our story of creation. In what sense is one planet larger than the other, or located somewhere with respect to the other? Each planet is itself. It has all its properties. It exists exactly as it would if the other planet did not exist at all, ignoring some physics. From the point of view of the planet in itself, if we could speak of such a thing, "larger than" or "located ... with respect to" do not enter into its existence at all. Of course, God will know that one planet has a certain size and the other a certain size. God will know that one of these is greater than the other. This is because the planets are assembled into a universe in God's thought. That they manage to stand as constituents of anything is mediated by thought. · The idea that relations are imposed is the idea that they only obtain in the context of a surveying intellect or con· sciousness which provides a connection between things that would otherwise simply not stand in any relations at all, even though the several things were to exist. This pat· tern of thought is clearly visible in Kant's transcendental psychology. In the absence of a mind whose survey relates them planets would stand in unrelated isolation much like the isolation and wholesale disconnectedness that Kant as· cribes to elements of the unsynthesized manifolds of intui· tion. Kant's demand for synthesis is not a matter of sup· posing that the mind will not appreciate the relationships between spatial things (that they form a triangle, for exam· pie) without synthesis. On the contrary, they do not form a triangle or anything else until they are synthesized, al· though receptivity alone assigns them location. Unsynthe· sized elements of intuition are simply not related to one another at all, apart from the fact that synthesis can relate them. The perceivable features that they have as geomet· rica! configurations have being as a consequence of syn· sis. In this context, in the transcendental psychology, Kant is thinking of both elementary intuitions that need to be related and of complex intuitions that represent related things as mental items and not outer realities. But this thought clearly instantiates the pattern that relativizes re· lations to a surveying mind. Quite apart from the issue of the mental status of spatial things that Kant asserts in his theory of the mental con· struction of spatial objects out of located but unextended sensations, his claim that the several constituents of a spa· tial thing only stand in spatial relations as a consequence of synthesis is not valid within the terms of Kant's own WINTER/SPRING 1983 �discussion. The fact that things are in space at all is as· cribed to receptivity which gives a locati.on to the original intuitions of outer sense. Kant says that all magnitude comes from synthesis. But the mere concept of location cannot be divorced from that of spatial relations in the way in which Kant requires. We may think with Kant that no ultimate original sensation is colored or otherwise sensu· ous, and that the perceivability of the sensuous element in perception comes from a mental aggregation of many unperceived constituents. We cannot, however, altogether abandon the idea that the locations to which sensations are assigned in receptivity are near and remote from one another prior to synthesis. To withdraw this idea is to drain the meaning from "location" altogether. Plainly a certain manifold can be synthesized and perceived as a yellow surface only because many sensations with locations near one another have similar representational character, even though we are not conscious of that character on a sensation-by-sensation basis. The whole doctrine that traces geometry to receptivity would be lost if we could not say that the results of a synthesis were significantly determined in advance by the relations between the locations to which the several synthesized sensations are assigned. There is, then, a plain sense in which synthesis does not create objects with geometrical features out of mere collections of unrelated sensations. At most, synthesis discovers the geometrical features of pre-existing systems of sensations. Borrowing Kant's own phrase, we should say that the spatial object is not produced by the synthesis in so far as its existence is concerned ("dem Dasein nach," A 92) but that the function of synthesis is only to make it possible for us to know spatial things as objects. Once we give up the idea that space is imposed by us we can restate the main themes of Kant while allowing that spatial things are independent of the mind. The mind contains only representations of spatial things. This is not a disaster now that we have got clear of the thought that knowledge by means of representations must be just knowledge of those representations. Our representations embrace our thought of the universe as a system of spatia- THE ST. JOHNS REVIEW temporal, causally interconnected, material objects whose existence does not depend on our thought. Kant surely wants to make available the anti-idealist result of this externalization of the spatial. In the Paralogisms, for example, Kant says that each subject has his own private time and that private times are only commensurable with one another through the public time of spatial existence. Were space mental, it would be as private as time and would offer no exit from egocentrism. The crucial arguments of the Critique that we have outlined will be rescued by this understanding, since those arguments require that space be nonmental while our spatial representations have their place in the sequence of subjective states. Whether this reconstruction involves the retraction of the familiar Kantian claim that things in themselves are unknown is still not clear, but perhaps it now seems far less important. Our perceptual knowledge is all conditioned by complex relationships that obtain between ourselves and the things we perceive. As empiricists we believe that all our knowledge is based on perceptual knowledge. If we mean by knowledge of things in themselves, knowledge that does not depend on any relations in which we stand to what we know, then we have no knowledge of things in themselves. Is there something from which we are, therefore, barred? What are atomic theory, molecular biology, and radio astronomy telling us, if not about how things are in themselves, as opposed to how things appear? If this sort of thing is not knowledge of things in themselves, then the demand for such knowledge seems like the demand to know what things would look like if there were no creatures with eyes. There may survive enough of a feeling that there could be some kind of divine, wholly nonrelational grasp of reality to support the idea that there is something that we cannot know in principle, because our knowledge depends on relations. But I prefer Kant's thought that the concept of a noumenon is only a negative and limiting concept and not the concept of an unknowable reality at all. 33 �BLACK AND WHITE The right hand of Rachmaninoff, in plaster, Poses on the piano, exemplifying Perpetual grasp of the imaginary Orange. Above, the photograph of Chopin Wearing his overcoat indoors, the face Framed in protective jet, the nose connecting, Like a phrase, the puzzled eyes and lips. Hands are relaxed in power, but cuff conceals That all of art's controlled by how you hold The wrist. Witness another picture, where With wrists exposed, white beauty and two Jews, Subalterns on the strings, imparadise Queen Carmen Sylva of Roumania. They cut Tchaikovsky's coda, for the dirge Was deemed indecorous at court. Her reign Is now, the chaste survivor of the trio, Retained to touch me weekly with her touch. Aristocratic still at the piano, Her fingers knotted, but her thumbs are spades Or sugar spoons pressing upon my back To plant the tones that only ghosts require Of music eaten brown by Brazilian beetles. I memorize the pulse. Repeated octaves Refuse admission to the Fourth Ballade, While in the kitchen, waiting as reward, Kulitch that must be deftly sawn, not sliced, And tea from the electric samovar. ELLIOTT ZUCKERMAN Elliott Zuckerman is a tutor at St. John's College, Annapolis. 34 WINTER/SPRING 1983 �The Media-Shield of the Utopians RaelJean Isaac and Erich Isaac Why are the media so susceptible to the views of groups, whose assumption, often unstated, is that a perfect society can be created? These are groups out of sympathy with one or more of the traditional values of American society, who, however, couch their appeals in terms of values that Americans share and purposes they desire, to their credit, to achieve: social justice, peace, a pollution-free and safe environment, equality between races and sexes, the reduction of risk, greater control of the individual over the decisions that affect his life. We call these groups utopians. Let it be said immediately, they are not a cabal of conspirators parcelling out areas of action to different groups in a coordinated onslaught on American institutions. They come from diverse backgrounds and traditions. Who are these utopians? They are the leadership and professional staff of the mainline Protestant denominations and their related organizations, including the National Council of Churches, the umbrella body representing thirty-two Protestant and Eastern Orthodox churches. They include the leaders of almost all the peace groups, including the pacifist ones, like the War Resisters League and the American Friends Service Committee and those that, while not opposing all forms of violence in principle, seek to reduce the risks of war, like SANE, Clergy and Laity Concerned, Physicians for Social Responsibility, etc. They are the intellectuals in Rael Tean Isaac has written Israel Divided, Ideological Politics in the Jewish State (Johns Hopkins University Press 1976) and Party Politics in Israel (Longman 1981). She recently published an article, "Do You Know Where Your Church Offerings Go?" in the Reader's Digest (January 1983). Erich Isaac teaches geography at the City College of the City University of New York. The above article is adapted from a book, The Coercive Utopians, that Regnery Gateway will publish in the fall. THE ST. JOHNS REVIEW a number of institutes and think tanks that have flourished in the soil of so-called "revisionist history" which places the blame for world tensions after World War II primarily on the United States. They are found in a series of community action organizations like ACORN and National Peoples Action. They are in government bureaucracies, and have been especially attracted to agencies like the Department of Education, ACTION (in the Carter years) and the now defunct Community Services Administration, most of whose personnel have been transferred to other agencies. They are prominent in the legally independent but wholly government-funded Legal Services Corporation and in the similarly constituted Corporation for Public Broadcasting. They are found in the environmental movement, especially in newer national organizations like Friends of the Earth and Environmental Action, and in the host of local environmental groups which, spurred by the issue of nuclear energy, have burgeoned around the country. They are found in the consumer organizations established by Ralph Nader. They are found in the colleges, and are particularly prominent in the law and social science faculties of elite universities. These movements-if not the specific organizationsare familiar to the reader, for they are the daily fare of press and television. Yet much of what they say in their own publications would be surprising, even shocking to the general reader. But the media have acted as a filter, screening out most of the information that could damage the utopians in the public view. There are a number of factors that explain why the media, instead of providing the public with some perspective on the utopians, have made themselves a sounding board for them, absorbing and transmitting their perspective on crucial issues as objective "truth." The most important is that journalists have a broadly similar perspective on the major issues the utopians address. Journalist Robert Novak 35 �(of the Evans and Novak column) has called the media the setting where journalists, regardless of background, are welded into one homogeneous ideological mold.l Thomas Shepard, the publisher of Look Magazine until it folded in 1971, noted that with only a handful of exceptions the men and women who produced Look "detested big business" and "worshipped the ecological and consumerism reformers. " 2 While these observations are impressionistic, they are confirmed by surveys of the media elite. Two political scientists, S. Robert Lichter and Stanley Rothman, in 1979 and 1980 interviewed 240 journalists and broadcasters of the most influential media outlets. The survey found the media elite were markedly to the left of the American electorate as a whole. For example, over a sixteen-year period less than twenty percent of the media elite had supported any Republican Presidential candidate. Their views on issues were in striking agreement with utopian articles of faith. For example, fifty-six percent of the media elite agreed that the U.S. exploits the Third World and is the cause of its poverty.l The media also have an ambition to hold sway over society in common with the utopians. In response to questions from Lichter and Rothman, both the media elite and a comparative sample of the business elite had a very similar perception of the actual power of different groups in society, seeing the media, business, and unions as those with the greatest influence. But asked how they would prefer to see power distributed, the media elite put themselves at the top, followed by consumer groups, intellectuals, and blacks. 4 In part the media elite sympathize with the utopians because they define their role in much the same way. Walter Cronkite is said to have asserted that journalists identify with humanity rather than with institutions or with authority.s Similarly Julius Duscha, a reporter who became director of the Washington Journalism Center, said "Reporters are frustrated reformers ... they look upon themselves almost with reverence, like they are protecting the world against the forces of eviJ."6 For all their cynicism concerning tile motives of busi~ nessmen and politicians, the media elite readily succumb to hero worship. Ralph Nader was the journalist's image of his highest self: his own man, in the pay of no institution, he acted without reference to financial self-interest. Nader was the true outsider, an almost monastic figure, with his spare single room lodgings, his bachelorhood and abstemious way oflife. No single figure has captured the imagination of journalists in quite the same way, but the utopians as a whole benefit from being viewed by journalists as people like themselves, representatives of all the people. In the case of some of the media elite more than sympathy is involved. Some are utopians, sharing fully their perspective on events. Larry Stern, in a key position as national news editor of the country's second most influential paper, the Washington Post, shared their attitudes. This 36 emerged, surprisingly, at his funeral, following his sudden death in 1980 at the age of fifty of a heart attack. He was eulogized by left-wing journalist I. F. Stone, who praised Stern as a friend of Palestine and Nicaragua (i.e. the PLO and the Sandinistas) and for hating "those huge mindless institutions that devour our substance and corrupt our fundamental ideals, like the Pentagon and the CIA."7 (More remarkably, Stern was also eulogized by Teofilo Acosta, head of the Cuban interests section in Washington, identified by intelligence expert Robert Moss as station chief of the DGI, the Cuban intelligence service. Stern was apparently a friend of Castro's Cuba as well.) Journalist Les Whitten, who worked with Jack Anderson on the popular column, seems to have derived his political philosophy directly from Ralph Nader. He warned a high school graduating class in Maryland of the "great piratelike corporations that swallow up the blood of the people" and informed the class that if you lined up the presidents of thirty big banks and thirty bank robbers you would have fifty-eight criminals and the only difference was that one kind did it with a gun quickly while the bank presidents did it "at eighteen percent a year without a gun." 8 Many in the media-including some of the elite-actually learned their craft in utopian training-grounds. A huge ((underground," later called ualternative" press, bur· geoned in the late 1960s, its theme that America (often spelled with a "k" wrapped in a swastika) was a fascist country. A number of jounalists from these papers subsequently moved into the straight press. The best-selling novel The Spike described the odyssey of a reporter for Barricades (an obvious takeoff on the "alternative" journal Ramparts), whose sensational scoop exposing the CIA earns him a place on the New York World (clearly the New York Times). The Spike's hero Robert Hackney was pre· sumably modelled on New York Times star reporter Seymour Hersh, who wrote for Ramparts before coming to the New York Times and made his name exposing the CIA. To be sure, only the first part of Hersh's career paralleled that of the fictional Hackney, for while Hackney woke up to the role he was playing on behalf of Soviet disinformation efforts, there is no evidence that Hersh's utopian perspective has changed. Even journalists who do not start out as utopians may be drawn to them because their concerns make good copy. Utopians are endless sources of the kind of stories that sell papers. Our tuna is poisoned; the nuclear plant near our city is in danger of meltdown; nuclear bombs will destroy all life from ground zero, which is in our backyard. In addition to the inherent drama of scare stories, these stories have, as the utopians present them, an appealing clarity. There are good guys and bad guys, victimizers and victims. This is much more dramatic stuff than cost benefit analyses, probability studies, and theories of deterrence necessary to refute these stories. Moreover, the utopians have solutions: shut down nuclear power plants, eliminate all pesticides, rely on the sun, endorse a nuclear freeze. WINTER/SPRING 1983 �If stories told according to utopian formula make good copy for the press, they are even bett~r suited for documentaries, television's method of exploring issues indepth. Why this is so can be seen from .a candid look into the documentary producer's world offered in 1978 by Martin Carr, a veteran in producing documentaries for all three networks. Carr noted that the producer's first step was to "arrive at a point of view." His goal was to make the viewer feel as he felt: "If you walk away feeling differently, I failed somehow." Carr noted the obligation to provide "balance," but explained that this had to be done carefully, so as not to disturb the documentary's emotional impact. He described a documentary he had made on migrant workers in which, for balance, he had interviewed the biggest grower in F1orida. But he was a charming man who could have tipped the emotional balance of the documentary in favor of his position. So he found another grower whose point of view was the same, but whose personality would alienate the viewer and put him on instead. As a result Carr reports: "One could only feel a particular way at the end of the film ... the way I felt about it." 9 The utopian point of view on most stories shapes visually striking, emotionally compelling documentaries: the good farmworker against the bad grower; the victims of disease versus the large corporation; the peasant guerilla against government-backed exploiters, etc. On major topics such as the environment, defense, intelligence, and foreign policy, the media serve as a vast sounding board for the utopians, while at the same time suppressing sounds the utopians prefer not to hear. Suppression is especially important, for while there is dispute on how effective the media are in making the public think the way journalists do (after all, the public does not vote like the media elite), there is little dispute that the media determine what it is that the public thinks about. An article in The Journalism Quarterly points out: "If newsmen share a pattern of preference as to what is newsworthy, and that pattern does not represent reality, they will present a distorted image of the world which may contribute to inappropriate decisions and policies."lO Nowhere are distortions in coverage more evident than in coverage of environmental issues, particularly nuclear energy, the issue on which the utopians have expended their greatest efforts. The impact of the utopian campaign against nuclear energy on the media is apparent from two systematic studies, one by the Battelle Center and one by the Media Center. The Battelle Center study covered four national periodicals, including the New York Times, from 1972 to 1976 and found that while in 1972 there were more positive than negative statements on nuclear energy, by 1976 negative outnumbered positive statements by two to one.ll (This, it must be remembered, was three years prior to Three Mile Island.) The Media Institute study focussed on ten years of television evening news coverage, from Au- gust 4, 1968 to March 27, 1979 (Just prior to Three Mile Island). Its most telling finding concerned the "experts" ,TilE ST. JOHNS REVIEW used by the networks on nuclear energy. Of the top ten sources used over the years, seven were opposed to nuclear power. The source most frequently used was the antinuclear Union of Concerned Scientists, the second Ralph Nader. 12 After Three Mile Island earlier tendencies became even more marked. Psychiatrist Robert DuPont examined 13 hours of videotapes of news coverage on nuclear energy and found that fear was the leitmotif of the stories. Reporters continually examined what DuPont called jjwhat if, worst case" scenarios. He found almost no mention of the risks posed by other energy sources or of the need to balance risks.ll · By 1982 the pattern of media coverage had produced serious misconceptions in the American public concerning the balance of opinion among scientists on nuclear energy. A Roper poll found that almost one in four Americans believed that a majority of scientists "who are energy experts" opposed the further development of nuclear energy. One in three members of the public believed that solar energy could make a large contribution to meeting energy needs within the next twenty years.l 4 An actual survey of energy experts, however, showed that only five percent wanted to halt further development of nuclear energy (among those with specific expertise in the nuclear area none wanted to halt further development). No more than two percent of energy experts saw any form of solar energy making a substantial contribution to energy needs in the next twenty years.l5 The distortions in perception can be explained by the views of science jounalists, who are far more sceptical of nuclear energy than scientists. A survey by Lichter and Rothman of science journalists at major national media outlets found there was a fascinating, though scarcely surprising, connection between attitudes toward nuclear energy and political ideology. The more liberal the journalist, the more likely he was to oppose nuclear energy. Indeed Rothman and Lichter found they could define the issue more precisely. "We asked them a large number of social and political questions. The best predictor of opposition to nuclear energy is the belief that American society is unjust."l6 Moreover, Lichter and Rothman found that television reporters and producers were even more hostile to nuclear energy than print journalists. The extensive use, especially by television, of the Union of Concerned Scientists was presumably a major factor in explaining the discrepancy between what scientists think and what the public thinks they think. The public, because of its name, perceived this as an organization of sci- entists. But as Samuel McCracken points out in The War Against the Atom, its membership is obtained through direct mail solicitation of the public and the only qualification for belonging is a contribution of $15. Its executive directors in recent years have not been scientists_17 How many members of the Union of Concerned Scientists are in fact scientists? The organization keeps silent, but a random sample of 7,741 scientists turned up only one who 37 �was affiliated with the Union of Concerned Scientists. On that basis Lichter and Rothman estimate that fewer than 200 scientists among the 130,000 listed in American Men and Women of Science are affiliated with the Union of Concerned Scientists. IS Little wonder that the organization refused Lichter and Rothman information needed to poll its membership! McCracken observes that anyone would see the fraud if a general membership organization composed almost entirely of laymen and concerned principally with supporting bans on prayer in the schools were to call itself the Union of Concerned Clergymen_l9 Yet the media persist in using this organization of utopians, which misuses data as it misuses the title of "scientist," as its chief authority on nuclear energy. The media rarely call upon Scientists and Engineers for Secure Energy, although this is an organization whose members are genuine experts on nuclear en· ergy and includes seven nobel laureates in physics. Presumably this is because it does not spread the utopian's message, endorsed by so many in the media, that nuclear power is immensely dangerous and the authorities are deceiving the public. Another interesting insight into the weight of sentiment against nuclear power in the media comes from a Public Broadcasting Company spokesman who was castigated for the uniform imbalance of the PBC's programs. He explained that it would be difficult even to find a producer prepared to do a pro-nuclear film. zo On questions of defense, the media elite have also supported utopian assumptions. Walter Cronkite summed up the media perspective in the 1970s in 1974: "There arealways groups in Washington expressing views of alarm over the state of our defenses. We don't carry those stories. The story is that there are those who want to cut defense spending." 21 The American Security Council, which during the 1970s issued reports and ran a series of conferences and seminars featuring defense experts who warned of the disrepair of the American military and the massive Soviet military buildup then going on, became convinced that there was some unwritten rule in the media not to cover their activities. But for the media, as a group advocating increased defense expenditures the American Security Council was simply not unews.n Survey results indicate how pervasively media coverage reflected utopian attitudes. Ernest Lefever, before starting his own Ethics and Public Policy Center, led a study team for the Institute for American Strategy which examined CBS News coverage of national defense for 1972 and 1973. The study showed that during that two-year period the viewer saw only one minute on the "CBS Evening News" dealing with the comparative military strength of the U.S. and U.S.S.R. 22 The study found that 1,400 presentations on the subject of national defense tended to support the view that threats to our security were less serious than the government thought while only seventy-nine contradicted that position. 38 With Reagan's victory, the views of those who argued for more defense spending could no longer be ignored, for those views represented administration policy. In response, CBS entered the debate with a massive documentary designed to counter the administration position in June 1981. Described by its anchorman, Dan Rather, as "the most important documentary project of the decade," the five-hour series, "The Defense of the United States," was hailed by the Washington Post as the "first documentary epic in TV history." Its theme was that "the United States is not threatened by any external enemy, but rather by the tragic propensity of the two superpowers each to see in the other a mirror reflection of its own fears and hostilities." Joshua Muravchik and John E. Haynes noted that in the five hours devoted to examining plans for a U.S. military build-up, "there was not mention-none-of the Soviet build-up which precipitated it."2l Although the public had no way of knowing it, the program's arguments, experts, even its vocabulary were de· rived from the utopian organizations. To testify that current defense spending was already excessive the program used "experts" Jack Geiger and Kosta Tsipis. Tsipis is a member of the board of directors of SANE and Geiger is a leader of both Physicians for Social Responsibility and International Physicians for the Prevention of Nuclear War (in which Soviet physicians join with American physicians to emphasize the need for the U.S. to disarm). Geiger was identified only as professor of medicine at the City University of New York and Tsipis as professor of physics at MIT. 24 The viewer was not informed that they were peace movement activists. To show that Soviet influence was already on the decline (and increased defense expenditures, presumably, superfluous), CBS drew on the Center for Defense Information that had issued a report in 1980 purporting to show that Soviet influence in the world had reached an all-time low. After Defense Secretary Weinberger spoke of the need for a strong defense, Walter Cronkite undercut his statement: "Since 1960, the Soviet influence around the world actually has declined. Their so-called gains like Afghanistan and Angola take on a different perspective, particularly when measured against losses, like Egypt and China." CBS then offered a closeup of two lists of twelve nations, one showing Soviet gains and the other Soviet losses since 1960. The lists were erroneous but repeated the errors in the lists published by the Center for Defense Information.25 The voice of the Center for Defense Information had been transformed into the voice of CBS. The very vocabulary of the program was derived from the utopians. The process of arms procurement was referred to as "The Iron Triangle," after the title of a book recently released by the utopian Council on Economic Priorities. Its author, Gordon Adams, was president of the Corporate Data Exchange, a new-left research organization started by the Institute for Policy Studies. The book had been financed, among others, by the IPS mainstay, WINTER/SPRING 1983 �the Samuel Rubin Foundation. The importance of a term like "The Iron Triangle" is that it not only conveys a meaning but an emotional impact. "The Iron Triangle" is bad. It links the government, the armed forces, and industries that produce military equipment in a closed bond of steel and. mutual interest against the rest of us. The utopian campaign•against the intelligence agencies depended heavily on the media for its success. 11he ·campaign began in the .Jate 1960s, when a series of'books and articles began to appear, many of them financed 'by the FuNd for Investigative journalism. The Fund was established by Philip M. Stern, whose 'Stern Fund is a major furrder of utOpian:projects.' But it scored its first major success when:the NewWork Times• ran a series of articles by Seymour' Hersh in December 1974 exposing CIA involve.ment in illegal tlornestic surveillance of the anti-war movement. Thisrprecipitated a series of investigations by the '5\J<fcially appointed Rockefeller Commission and the Sen~te,•·which resulted in "reforms" that went far beyond correction of abuses. The CIA's ability to function in crucial areas was imperiled. At one point eight committees of Congress, the armed services, foreign relations, appr<Jpiiations and intelligence committees of both houses, had 'to be informed of every major CIA operation, which, given the all-but-certainty ofleaks by staff, meant there could be no such operations. The U.S. intelligence agencies were a legitimate subject of media interest. The problem, however, was that in true utopian fashion the media were interested only in stories that revealed intelligence activities as illegal or immoral. Reports that the intelligence services were failing to perform their task of protecting U.S. citizens were not news. The major media ignored a conference called "Our Domestic Intelligence Crisis," held by the Coalition for Peace through Strength in March 1979. There were revelations at this conference that the public might have thought dramatic. For instance, the Secret Service only received one fourth of the intelligence it received before the media-assisted llreforms" of intelligence agencies discouraged in· formants who feared Freed om of Information requests would expose their identities. It thus had to recommend that the President not visit certain cities in the United States. The conference also disclosed that the Federal Employment Security program had been undone: members of the Communist Party or even of the Weather Underground were no longer barred from federal employment, even in sensitive positions.Z6 The media showed no interest in informing the public about the necessary services intelligence agencies provide or about the consequences of dismantling security protections. With all the popularity of documentaries about the malfeasances of the CIA and FBI, the networks produced nothing comparable on the KGB. This was not because the topic could not be handled. A Canadian team did an absorbing documentary called "The KGB Connections" based largely on the testimony of KGB defectors. A great THE ST. JOHNS REVIEW critical success in Canada and Europe, it was turned down by all three networks, including ABC which had invested in its production. Challenged for its failure to show the documentary, ABC countered that it would shortly be showing its own documentary on the KGB but at this writ;ing, a year later, ABC has not done so. The failure to exam'ine KGB activities by both TV and print media meant, as James Tyson points out in Target America, that the CIA seemed to shadow-box against a non-existent enemy. The utopian contention that covert intelligence activities were the product of deviant psychologic~] needs of those who manned corrupt American institutions was reinforced. Foreign policy, particularly as it touches •0TI human rights, is yet another area in which the media .alm0st uniformly presents the utopian perspective. Thereason'is not simply that journalists share that perspective, although doubtless many do. Covering human rights violations in totalitarian "socialist" aollntries :is <lifticult, if not impossible, for journalists. S1i1dh·cotnitriies, •when they do not bar jounmalists :alt0gether, <Control their movements. This -meams •that information has to come from people outside 'the·coutitry. Information was available on the Cambodian genocide very early from people who had escaped over the border. By 1977 Reader's Digest editors John Barron and Anthony Paul had produced a book Murder of a Gentle Land which, based on the eye-witness accounts of hundreds of escapees, estimated that between April 17, 1975 and the end of 1976, at least 1.2 million people had died as a result of the policies of the Cambodian government. Yet press coverage of events unprecedented in horror since the Nazi destruction of six million Jews was minimal. In 1976, the year in which Barron and Paul conducted their interviews, television network evening news programs mentioned events in Cambodia only three times. NBC never mentioned them at all. The country's two most influential papers, the Times and the Washington Post, together mentioned the subject a total of 13 times.27 In 1977, when what was happening was even clearer, the three networks had a combined total of two stories. That contrasted with !59 human rights-related stories on the networks on South Africa. 28 While the New York Times did better in 1977, referring to the Cambodian genocide 34 times, this still contrasted sharply with 291 stories of human rights violations in South Africa. The Washington Post ran ten items on Cambodia. It had thirty items just on the death of Steve Biko, the black leader who died under suspicious circumstances in a South African jail. 29 In 1978 the American Security Council made things convenient for the press corps by arranging a press conference in Washington D.C., addressed by Pin Yathay, a civil engineer who had escaped after 26 months in Communist Cambodia. Yathay reported losing 18 members of his family and provided an eye-witness account of desperation and cruelty: And there were many macabre incidents ... the starving peo- ple who ate the flesh of dead bodies during this acute famine. 39 �I will now tell you a story that I lived myself ... a teacher who ate the flesh of her own sister. She was later caught, she was beaten from morning to night until she died, under the rain, in front of the whole village as an example, and her child was crying beside her, and the mother died at the evening. 30 A dramatic story. But not one of the networks sent a representative. The Washington Post sent a reporter, but the paper never carried a story. Hedrick Smith, a one-time Moscow correspondent of the New York Times and then chief correspondent of the Washington Bureau, has cast light on why the coverage was so poor. He noted that the Times-the "bible" of the other media, in the words of a news executive, was not in~ dined to do stories on foreign countries written outside them.ll Soviet dissidents in the Soviet Union were the sub· ject of many stories. Once the same people had found ref· uge in the United States, they found the press uninterested in their accounts of human rights violations. When leading figures in the Soviet human rights movement like Vladimir Bukovsky and Alexander Ginzburg participated in two days of International Sakharov Hearings in 1979 that brought sixty witnesses to Washington to testify, their efforts were virtually ignored by the press. The Washington Post ran a story in the "Style" section called "Remembering Russia." That was scarcely the point of the hearings. Similarly, when testimony on conditions in Vietnam was given before a House subcommittee in June 1977, including eyewitness reports of a Vietnamese imprisoned in a series of "reeducation camps," the major newspapers carried nothing.l2 The end result is gross distortion in coverage of human rights problems. In 1977 the New York Times carried fortyeight items on human rights violations in South Korea and none on North Korea.ll More than that, as Reed Irvine, head of the media watchdog group, Accuracy in Media, has pointed out, a kind of collaboration emerges between the U.S. media and the countries that most systematically violate human rights.l4. There may have been an additional reason for the reluctance of the media to report more fully on Cambodia and Southeast Asia. In the last years of the Vietnam War the press was an adversary of the war and they were at first unwilling to believe, later to acknowledge, that the American departure did not lead to an improved life for the people of that area. For example, New York Times columnist Anthony Lewis, urging a cutoff of American aid on March 17, 1975, wrote: "Whatfuture possibility could be more terrible than the reality of what is happening to Cambodia now?" The possibilities were beyond anything of which Anthony Lewis dreamed. New York Times columnist Tom Wicker in the immediate aftermath of the Vietnam War was glad to give the press credit for forcing the U.S. out of the region. Once, however, there were boat people and millions of murdered victims in Cambodia, the press did not want to be reminded of its role. The violent reaction of CBS newsman 40 Morley Safer to an article by Robert Elegant in Encounter in August 1981 is revealing. Once himself a journalist in Vietnam, Elegant laid bare the shabbiness of the reporting, not exempting himself from the criticism. Safer devoted a radio segment to denouncing Elegant, whose article almost none of his listeners could have seen, as worthy of the mantle of Joseph Goebbels.l5 The entire subject obviously irritated media nerves. Coverage of human rights thus adhered to the utopian perspective according to which the world's worst human rights violator was the Union of South Africa, followed by third world countries friendly to the United States, espe· dally those in Latin America. As countries came under at· tack from internal subversion backed directly or indirectly by the Soviet Union, media focus, in true utopian fashion, was on the injustices that lead people to revolt rather than the predictable consequences of these "wars of liberation" in inaugurating much more repressive regimes. Karen de Young, now foreign editor of the Washington Post, who from Nicaragua provided warm coverage of the Sandinistas in Somoza's last period, admitted: "Most journalists now, most Western journalists at least, are very eager to seek out guerrilla groups, leftist groups, because you assume they must be the good guys. 36 Walter Cronkite, speaking in Portland, said the U.S. should help countries such as El Salvador "achieve their goals even if it means interim steps of social~ ism and communism."l7 (As Reed Irvine pointed out, communism has yet to serve as an "interim step.") With rare exceptions-NBC in the fall of 1982 produced a film "What Ever Happened to El Salvador" that accompanied a Salvadoran army unit on patrol rather than the guerrillas-network documentaries have been hostile to the government of El Salvador. In September 1982, a CBS documentary focussed on the inevitability of revolution in Guatemala as a response to tyranny backed by the United States on behalf of our exploitative business interests. Television journalists, however, bend over backwards in their efforts to understand the difficulties of the Nicaraguan government. A segment on ABC's "20/20" aired in June 1980 had David Marash make the patently false declaration: uNicaragua's revolutionary justice system has been given near unanimous international praise." The utopian influence on public television is even greater than on the networks. On public television they often write and produce the documentaries. For example, Philip Agee was part owner of an anti-CIA three-hour docu· mentary "On Company Business" broadcast in May 1980. The fund-raising prospectus sent out by the producers prior to the actual filming promised that the documentary would "show the broken lives, hatred, cruelty, cynicism, and despair which result from U.S.-CIA policy" and that it would record "the story of 30 years of CIA subversion, murder, bribery, and torture as told by an insider and documented with newsreel film of actual events."l8 The "insider" who served as the documentary's central figure and moral hero was Agee, identified for the viewer WINTER/SPRING 1983 �only as someone who had worked for the CIA between 1959 and 1969. There was no mention of Agee's role in exposing the identities of U.S. agents worldwide or of his expulsion from the Netherlands, France, and England. Intelligence expert Robert Moss has revealed Agee was found to have met with the Cuban intelligence station chief in London at least 30 times before he was expelled from England. If the viewer had known of Agee's record, he might have discounted everything Agee said. The documentary's solution was to keep silence. Despite this, Public Broadcasting's director of current affairs programming Barry Chase de· scribed the program in a memo to all public broadcasting stations as "a highly responsible overview of the CIA's his· tory." 39 (Chase clearly did not feel inhibited by the law es· tablishing the Corporation for Public Broadcasting that stipulates programs funded by it must be objective and bal· anced if they deal with controversial issues.) The Institute for Policy Studies' Saul Landau has written films for public television of a similar calibre. "Paul Jacobs and the Nuclear Gang" (with part of its seed money from the Samuel Rubin Foundation and Obie Benz, one of the wealthy young creators of the Robin Hood was Right spe· cies of foundations 40 ) was a polemic against nuclear energy and nuclear weapons, relying primarily on emotionally charged interviews with cancer victims who believed their disease had been caused by radiation and with the members of their families. Landau also wrote "From the Ashes ... Nicaragua," directed by Helena Solberg Ladd, who had been a lecturer at IPS. William Bennett, Head of the National Endowment for the Humanities which had chan· neled funds for the film's production under its previous head, on seeing the film remarked that he was "shocked, appalled, disgusted" by such an example of "unabashed socialist-realism propaganda." 41 Author Midge Deeter, ex· ecutive director of the Committee for a Free World, found this description too mild: "We almost no longer have a working vocabulary to cover phenomena like Ms. Ladd's film."42 Many of the documentaries that appear on public television endorse utopian themes far more overtly than would be possible on the networks. Public Broadcasting presented a film on North Korea that could have received the imprimatur of its dictator Kim 11 Sung; a hymn to Cuba called "Cuba: Sports and Revolution;" two films on China, "The Children of China" good enough propaganda to win the praise of the Chinese Central Broadcasting Administration for helping American People "understand the New China," and "China Memoir" produced by Shirley MacLaine, which even Ralph Rogers, then chairman of the Public Broadcasting Corporation, admitted was "pure propaganda."4l Boston Public Television's WGBH funded a film called "Blacks' Britannica" on British racism, which won the prize at the Leipzig Film Festival in East Germany. This was too much even for the producer at WGBH who complained of the film's "endorsement of a Marxist point of view."44 When he sought to edit out some of the most THE ST. JOHNS REVIEW blatant segments, the maker of the film brought suit and the U.S. Communist Party front, the National Alliance Against Racist and Political Repression, petitioned to join the suit.45 In the end four minutes of the film were removed, but its Marxist message remained unmistakable. Another utopian theme-hostility against corporations-is also reflected in the media. A Louis Harris poll in the fall of 1982 found that an "overwhelming seventy-six percent" of high level executives believed business and financial coverage on TV news was prejudiced against business.46 The hostility is most pervasive in a surprising areaentertainment programming. A Media Institute study "Crooks, Conmen and Clowns" found that the image of businessmen on TV series was overwhelmingly negative, with two out of three businessmen on two hundred prime time episodes shown as foolish, greedy, or criminal. While on occasion a small businessman was shown in a favorable light, those running big businesses were for the most part depicted as actual criminals.47 While it might be argued that the businessman simply offers a convenient "heavy" in plot development, Ben Stein, in The View from Sunset Boulevard, shows that there is an excellent fit between the opinions of TV writers and producers and the shows they create. Stein interviewed forty writers and producers of the major adventure shows and situation-comedies and found that even those worth millions of dollars considered themselves workers opposed to an "exploiting class." A typical flippant-serious comment was made by Bob Schiller, who wrote for Lucille Ball for 13 years and produced "Maud." He said of businessmen, "I don't judge. I think there are good lepers and bad lepers."48 Producer Stanley Kramer told Stein: Everything that has to do with our lives is contaminated. The air, the streams, the food-everything is ruined." 49 That big business was responsible was self-evident to most TV writers. To the media the utopians are inherently more believable than those who oppose them. Cynical about human motives, journalists seem unable to conceive that "public interest" spokesmen act from anything but selfless devotion to the public good. Abbie Hoffman could enlighten them: "There is absolutely no greater high than challenging the power structure as a nobody, giving it your all, and winning."50 Peter Metzger has pointed out another motivation that also has to do with heightening the individual's sense of power and self-worth. With only a few exceptions the experts cited by the utopians never made genuine scientific contributions and thus were denied the reward of recognition by their peers.5 1 They have achieved the fame and status their scientific work could not gain for them through serving the utopians' need for men with credentials. Mesmerized by the utopians' simple-minded reading of human nature, journalists are quick to denigrate critics of utopian orthodoxies. For example, CBS produced a documentary attacking cereal-makers for the high sugar con- 41 �tent of many of their products. (Dan Rather asked a General Foods vice-president if he could sleep at night, given the damage he was doing to the children of America.) In pursuit of the requisite "balance" the program interviewed a leading professor of nutrition at Harvard, who denied the cereals did the harm alleged in the rest of the program. The camera simply zoomed in on a plaque on a Harvard building which indicated that it had been built through a donation by General Foods.5 2 However effective the visual in undercutting the professor's statement, a faulty understanding of the reward system in science was revealed. For scientists, the most important factor in determining career opportunities is the judgment of their peers, not the approval of company executives who make charitable contributions to universities. Journalists are ready to believe the most improbable charges against institutions they distrust. In January 1982 the New York Times featured a lengthy story by Raymond Bonner concerning events~ alleged to have taken place a year earlier: American military advisers in El Salvador had observed a torture training session for the El Salvadoran military in which a seventeen-year-old boy and a thirteenyear-old girl had their bones broken prior to being killed. Bonner's sole source for the story was a deserter from the Salvadoran army. The narrative that in its original form claimed that the American advisers were teaching the torture session, had appeared in a leftist Mexican paper but was such obvious Communist atrocity propaganda that it took eight months after the original publication before a taker was found among American journalists, Mr. Bonner, who offered a ((sanitized" version in the Times. 53 Such credulity leaves the media open to being taken in by the grossest "disinformation" forgeries. F1ora Lewis, at the top of her profession as a columnist for the New York Times, accepted uncritically a supposed State Department "dissent document," distributed to newsmen by the Council on Hemispheric Affairs, one of the utopian think tanks devoted to Latin America, and co-founded by Orlando Letelier, probably "an agent of influence" for the Cuban government. While the State Department does indeed have a "dissent channel" permitting members in disagreement with policy to have their objections heard at the highest level of the department, the document F1ora Lewis accepted as authentic bore the name of a non-existent State Department task force. Lewis devoted her column of March 6, 1981, to the document that attacked U.S. government policy in El Salvador. Asserting it had been "drawn up by people from the National Security Council, the State and Defense Departments, and the CIA," she praised the report's "solid facts and cool analysis" and closed by telling the Reagan administration that it would "do well to listen to the paper's authors before the chance for talks is lost." At this point the State Department came out with a detailed report on the forgery that the Times carried as a news story and F1ora Lewis, her face plentifully covered 42 with egg, wrote an apology in her March 9 column. Similarly, journalist Claudia Wright published an article in November 1982 charging that UN Ambassador Jeane J. KirkpatEiclt had received a "birthday gift" from the Union of South Afriea. The basis was a letter from the information counselor at the South African embassy, a crude forgery replete with errors in spelling. 54 (Since Miss Wright is herself a utopian journalist, the question as to whether she was herself taken in must remain open.) Media elite instantly distrust government assertions that contradict utopian views with which they identify. A storm broke over the Washington Post and the Wall Street Journal when it became know that the journalists of both had relied upon Philip Agee as a source for articles they wrote attacking a February 1981 U.S. White Paper "Communist Interference in El Salvador." The White Paper summarized findings from captured documents of the El Salvador guerrillas, showing the extent of clandestine military support given by the Soviet Union and Cuba to the guerrillas beginning in 1979. As a result of the furor, even how the articles came to be written became public knowledge. The Wall Street Journal's Jonathan Kwitny told his editor of his immediate "skepticism over news accounts of the white paper."55 The Washington Post's Robert Kaiser said that he had immediately been eager to explore possible deficiencies in the White Paper and so was pleased when the Post's national editor, Peter Osnos, asked him to look into the matter. And Peter Osnos revealed that he had assigned Kaiser after a call from free-lance writer Jeffrey Stein who said: "Look, I can't understand how you all have let that White Paper hang out there without a look. 56 (Stein was a former fellow of the Institute for Policy Studies, suggesting that the utopian grape vine operates quickly to encourage attacks on anything the utopians consider damaging to them.) For the utopians it was crucial to discredit the White Paper, since if the American public recognized the Soviet-Cuban role in El Salvador, the carefully fostered image of the guerrillas as indigenous liberal reformers might be undermined. Philip Agee, according to Arnaud de Borchgrave helped by his "Cuban friends," provided a forty-six page attack on the White Paper which was distributed in April by the Covert Action Information Bulletin. This publication was started after an internal factional split at CounterSpy, the magazine that named U.S. agents abroad, with Agee becoming associated with the new magazine. Both the Post's Kaiser and the Journal's Kwitny obtained copies. Kaiser subsequently claimed that in an early draft of his article he had mentioned Agee as a source, but that his editor at the Post suggested dropping the reference as "unnecessary."57 Confronted with his failure to credit Agee's paper as a source in this Wall Street Journal story Kwitny was taken aback: "I was totally unaware that it had any distribution, except to a few of his friends here." 58 He insisted that while he had read Agee's paper: "There was nothing I was drawing from him or anyone else ... I can't really rememWINTER/SPRING 1983 �ber what was in the Agee piece." In a line by line comparison, Human Events reporter Cliff Kincaid showed, however, that not only did Kwitny's criticisms closely parallel those of Agee, but that Kwitny even repeated a specific Agee error: he referred to "labor unions" (Agee said "trade unions") when the document being analyzed was talking about the Communist Party. 59 Perhaps the most interesting revelations showed the wide use by journalists of the Agee apparatus and the igno· rance of those in executive positions on major papers of the web of utopian organizations. Frederick Taylor, executive editor of the Wall Street Journal, came to the defense of his reporter in a long article on the editorial page entitled "TheEl Salvador 'White Paper."' The Wall Street Journal had been accused "at the least of being the dupe of Soviet disinformation, and at the worst of taking the work of a discredited left-winger and passing it off as its own." "It isn't so." As proof, Taylor repeated Kwitny's own words: The article originated in my own skepticism over news ac~ counts ofthe white paper in February. It sprouted because of two events in April. First, having been asked to sort the files of my recently deceased Journal colleague, Jerry Landauer, I called someone who had been a longstanding source of Jerry's on intelligence matters . ... This source, John Kelly, edits a magazine, Counterspy, which also printed a critique of the white paper. Kelly supplied me with some leads and documents. 50 To defend the Journal from charges of being a dupe of disinformation and of passing off the charges of a discredited left-winger as its own by transferring responsibility from Agee to CounterSpy and to inform the Wall Street Journal's readers thatthey had all along been kept informed on intelligence matters by CounterSpy, was, to say the least, a remarkable editorial defense. Apparently there was a similar gap between editors and reporters at the Washington Post. When a Washington Post editorial condemned CounterSpy's clone, the Covert Action Information Bulletin, as "contemptible" and suggested its editors were less than honorable journalists, they lashed back: Your diatribe only highlights the gap betwen the editorial offices and the reporters, for your people are among the large number of working journalists from virtually all the major printed and electronic media in the country who call upon us daily for help, research, and of all things, names of intelligence operatives in connection with articles they are writing.6I The difficulty journalists have in believing anything the government says that interferes with their prejudices, no matter how overwhelming the evidence, has become obvious to government officials. Admiral Bobby Inman, on retiring as deputy director of the CIA, spoke of his frustration at trying to convince the public of the peril of the Soviet military build-up when the press would not even believe THE ST. JOHNS REVIEW U.S. intelligence reports that included spy satellite pictures. Inman described an intelligence briefing for the press on the Soviet and Cuban-backed military build-up in Nicaragua in which reporters were shown photos of Soviet-type military garrison arrangements, deployed Soviet T-55 tanks, etc. Newspaper accounts the following day used the word "alleged" to describe the intelligence findings, suggesting that the reporters did not believe them. 62 . The media do more than believe the utopians. They protect them. News that could prove embarrassing to the utopians is often simply not reported. Reed Irvine has christened this "the Pinsky Principle" after North Carolina journalist Walter Pinsky, who described his approach in the Columbia Journalism Review in 1976. "If my research and journalistic instincts tell me one thing, my political instincts another ... I won't fudge it, I won't bend it, but I won't write it "63 Pinsky gave as an example what he called the great untold story ofthe trial of)oan Little in his home state. Joan Little was an imprisoned black woman who had killed her guard and defended herself on the grounds that he had tried to assault her sexually. Her story was widely reported nationally. Pinsky explained that he meant that reporters never reported the role of the Communist Party, working through its front, the National Alliance Against Racist and Political Repression, in controlling the entire political movement surrounding the case. Pinsky says that journalists kept silent "out of concern that the information might be used in red-baiting anyone associated with the case who did not belong to the (Communist) party."64 ABC newsman Geraldo Rivera in an interview with Playboy confessed to practicing the Pinsky Principle in his reporting from Panama. When the Panamanian National Guard was guilty of violence at the time of the Senate vote on the Canal Treaties, "We downplayed the whole incident That was the day I decided that I had to be very careful about what was said, because I could defeat the very thing (passage of the Treaty) that I wanted to achieve."65 An interesting example of the Pinsky Principle was the failure of CBS in its two-part docudrama, "Guyana Tragedy: The Story of Jim Jones," to say a word concerning Jones as a Communist Jones had broken with the U.S. Communist Party, according to his own account, because it had turned against Stalin and "I loved Stalin." Nonetheless, his feelings toward the party had clearly mellowed, for his will provided that in the absence of immediate surviving family, his estate should go to the U.S. Communist Party. Jones had also ordered that $7 million belonging to the People's Temple be transferred to the Soviet Union. When the script's author Ernest Tidyman was asked about the omission he said he did not believe Jones was a Communist. Asked what Jones's political views were, Tidyman replied: "None, particularly. He was very liberal, very progressive, very community conscious." 66 Presumably, for Tidyman, giving the facts abcrutJones's Communism would interfere with the image he wanted to convey of) ones as an idealistic community-builder gone awry. 43 �More recently the Pinsky Principle has been at work in the refusal of the media to examine the utopian roots of the peace movement and its links to the international Soviet front, the World Peace Council. With rare exceptions, nota· blythe Wall Street Journal and the Reader's Digest, the mass media have portrayed the freeze as a spontaneous out· growth of grass roots Middle America. Even when the orga· nizations that created and promoted the freeze are credited as in a Newsweek article of April26, 1982, the identifications are superficial, giving no hint of the agenda of these organi· zations. For example, although Clergy and Laity Con· cerned is described as "a powerful force in the disarmament movement," it is identified only as a group "begun in 1965 to mobilize the religious community against the Vietnam War." There is an element oflaziness in this: it is easier to ask a group about itself over the phone than to acquire its literature which would explain that CALC sees its task to be joining together those who "hate the corporate power which the United States presently represents .... " But more importantly there is unwillingness to transmit facts that might put the utopians in an unfavorable light. Eileen Shanahan, assistant managing editor of the Pitts· burgh Post-Gazette, observed: "I saw it at the Washington Star and I'm seeing it here. The present 28-35 news room set is antiwar to a significant degree and also antinuke."67 When President Regan or members of Congress made any reference to the credentials of the groups behind the freeze, the prestige media lashed out. A New York Times editorial on October 6, 1982, labelled all reference to such matters an "indecent debate." A Washington Post editorial on the same date said that to bring up such topics was a Smear." Probably the most widespread application of the Pinsky Principle is the failure to identify utopian sources. Identifi· cation is a crucial service the media offer the viewer or reader, for without it he has no way of evaluating the infor· mation offered to him. For example, the New York Times reported that a National Lawyers Guild delegation to the Middle East "came away convinced that the Israeli govern· ment implements a policy of torture for the annexation of the occupied areas." Since the National Lawyers Guild, the major organization of radical lawyers, was identified only as "a group of American lawyers," the reader was not helped to be properly sceptical of this information.68 Similarly, the New York Times, which between 1979 and 1981 carried essays by Fellows of the Institute for Policy Studies on its Op-Ed page with more than twice the frequency of any other think tank, including much bigger and better known ones, identified the Institute in each case only as "an independent research organization in Washington, D.C." The suggestion was that the reader was being exposed to "independent" thought, not the radical left perspective invariably provided by Institute Fellows. A particularly dramatic example of misrepresentation through failure of identification is the media's treatment of Wilfred Burchett. Burchett is an Australian journalist. As 41 44 far back as 1967 The Reporter, a liberal magazine of the period, published an article by fellow Australian Denis Warner which summed up Burchett's history up to that point: Stripped of his Australian passport by Canberra in 1955 and denied Australian citizenship for his three children by a sec· ond marriage-one born in Hanoi, one in Peking, and one in Moscow-Burchett is regarded by those responsible for Australian security as a communist and a traitor who ought to stand trial for his role in the Korean war . ... 69 Burchett was accused by American POWs returning from Korea of involvement in obtaining phony confessions from them about America's alleged use of germ warfare. Burchett showed up again during the Vietnam war. Senator Jeremiah Denton described being interviewed by Burchett while he was a prisoner in North Vietnam. In his book When Hell Was in Session he says that Burchett lost his cool "when I implied that he was a cheap traitor who knew in his heart that he was prostituting his talents for money in a cause that he knew was false." 70 In these years Burchett's articles occasionally appeared in U.S. papers, but he was properly identified. For example, the Chicago Tribune carried an essay on June 5, 1966, with the following description of Burchett: "An Australian Communist writer, Wilfred Burchett has travelled frequently to North Vietnam. He wrote this article after returning to his Cambodian home from his latest trip. It gives a communist view ofthe war and its effects and it should be read as such." But starting in the late 1970s Burchett's essays began to be printed without any identification that could alert the reader. The New York Times published his essays on the Op-Ed page, identifying him only as "a left-wing journalist living in Paris." After Reed Irvine complained to Times publisher Arthur Sulzberger that this was an inadequate identification-and Sulzberger agreed-the Times Op-Ed page, in the following year, identified him as "a journalist living in Paris." Harper's published a review by Burchett of a book attacking the CIA, identifying him only as "a left-wing journalist" and "a personal friend of Ho Chi Minh." The same Chicago Tribune that had fully identified Burchett in 1966 introduced him to its readers quite differently on August 6, 1982: "A man whose business is informing the world is an Australian expatriate journalist, Wilfred Burchett, now living in Paris." Burchett's autobiography was published in 1981 by the New York Times Book Company with an introduction by long-time Times correspondent Harrison Salisbury, who concluded that Burchett was radical "because he believes in the underdog whatever the continent, whatever the color, whatever the creed." 71 Laudatory reviews in the prestige press evaded or glossed over the subject of Burchett's service to Communist regimes. The New York Times reviewer wrote: "His (Burchett's) uncommon honesty-he is honest most of the time, if not quite all of the time-give his WINTER/ SPRING 1983 �memoirs a degree of intellectual tensioi). •>72 (The reviewer is not clear as to why he thinks being honest "most of the time" is uncommon honesty. Is "common honesty" to be dishonest most of the time?) According to the Washington Post's reviewer, Burchett's story is that of a man "who early in his life identified what he saw as the forces of decency and justice and determined to march with them ... if ... he has on occasion been forced into self-censorship and compromises, they have been compromises of a nature known, whatever they may say, to journalists of all political colors." 73 The most remarkable review of all was by former New York Times obituary editor Alden Whitman in the Boston Globe. Whitman described Burchett as one of those rare journalists "who are distinguished for their primary allegiance to their readers and to the cause of human betterment . ... He seems to wear no one's collar but his own." As for Burchett's Communism: "Because Burchett so often reported uncomfortable truths and because so much of his work was done in China, North Vietnam, and Kampuchea, word was put out that he was a communist."74 What is involved here is more than "failure to identify." Implicit is a rewriting of political history. This is a major utopian target which the media abet. Communists are transformed into "liberals." For example, Joseph Barnes, foreign editor of the former New York Herald Tribune, who was exposed as a Communist by a series of his former colleagues who broke with the party, started to be referred to in the press as a "liberal" in the late 1970s. The Rosenberg case has been transmogrified. In 1978, on the twenty-fifth anniversary of the execution of the Rosen bergs for treason, Public Television served up a four-year-old documentary with a new introduction and epilogue, "The RosenbergSobell Case Revisited." Atom spies Julius and Ethel Rosenberg were portrayed as individuals singled out for their political beliefs by a malignant government. When Accuracy in Media wrote to the President of the Public Broadcasting System to complain about the film's gross distortion of history, the reply came from the program's producer. Ignoring the long list of factual criticisms AIM had submitted, he announced loftily that the suggestion the program embodied Communist propaganda reflected discredit on AJM75. In 1982 Telefrance USA, which says that its programs reach 10 million U.S. homes, broadcast a four-part Frenchmade documentary on the Rosenberg case with the emotional title, "The Rosenbergs Must Not Die." They were portrayed as innocents railroaded by a corrupt government. Dorothy Rabinowitz in a Wall Street Journal essay noted that "no more malevolent band of fascists, scoundrels, cynics and thugs" had ever appeared on a screen than the "assortment of characters supposedly representing an American Supreme Court, an American judge and prosecutor and members of the FBJ."76 The New York Times reviewer at least dismissed the program. Cablevision Magazine, however, allowed that there was the "recurring paradox of how a foreigner-an outsider-may have a fuller perspective on TifE ST. JOHNS REVIEW a situation, political or otherwise, than someone more directly involved."77 Misidentification and the rewriting of political history produce reporting that inhibits, rather than helps, public understanding of political developments. For example, press coverage of Kathy Boudin, the Weather Underground leader captured during the Brink's robbery in Nyack, depicted her-to quote from a typical account in the Boston Globe-as a "child of privilege," "a brainy, popular tomboy who graduated with honors from the 'right' schools, the type of girl that people once described as allAmerican." But Kathy Boudin was a red-diaper baby, the child of radical lawyer, Leonard Boudin. The circle of her father's friends was largely made up of Communists and those sympathetic to Communism. (The Globe story itself bore this out by listing some of the individuals she would have encountered at her parents' dining table, but did not identify them either). Kathy Boudin's political development would have become considerably less mysterious if the media had not concealed relevant information. Journalistic practices like the Pinsky Principle have grown common as journalists have changed their view of their proper role. "Advocacy," "participatory," and "activist" journalism have created new models. To some extent the ((new journalism," as it is sometimes called, has developed because its literary techniques produce more dramatic copy at a time of intense competition from television, with its strong visual imagery. A "composite" prostitute (and why confuse the reader by identifying her as such) can offer a more interesting biography than any single individual. Similarly, a report that suggests the writer is directly privy to the thoughts and beliefs of his subject has more impact than an article with tiresome inserts like "A neighbor said that" or "The defendant's lawyer claims that. ... " The new journalism is also a reflection of the changing aspirations of journalists. Journalists are now in a position to set the policies of papers. They were not in an earlier era, when conservative owners set their stamp upon their property. With many more years of education than they used to have, with higher status in society, journalists are dissatisfied with a role that limits them simply to chronicling what happens. As lawyer Max Kampelman noted in a 1978 essay in Policy Review: It is understandable that a significant segment of the media has become impatient with its limited information dissemination role. It is not easy and frequently not exciting for an intelligent person simply to report events. The tendency, therefore, has been for imaginative and socially dedicated journalists to go beyond normal reporting in order to seek fuller expression of their talents or social values. 78 Joseph Kraft notes: "Not only have we traded objectivity for bias, but we have also abandoned a place on the sidelines for a piece of the action."79 Jim Bormann, a pio- 45 �neer in broadcast news, described. listening to journalist Alex Kendrick telling a CBS news affiliate session that a good reporter should not be afraid, while covering a riot, to throw a few bricks himself. Kendrick urged the contemporary newsman to get involved and then report what he felt "inside."8 Kraft and Borman are critical of what hapP<;ned. Most influential journalists, however, are pleased w1th the new role they have assumed. David Broder of the Washington Post has praised television's Bill Moyers as a politician "of the most serious sort'' who "is consciously engaged in the struggle to reshape the future of public policy."81 John Oakes of the New York Times reports the comment of an approving Swiss journalist who told him the mass media in the United States were "the only real opposition in the country."82 "Facts" are seen in a fresh light by the new journalism. As writer Naomi Munson pointed out in Commentary, while reporters had seen their job as sniffing out facts " more and more these days they have come to regard' themselves, instead, in a grander light, as bloodhounds of the 'truth."' 83 The problem with this is that facts then become at best a tool for revealing the truth. At worst facts become an impediment to the "truth" which must be sloughed off, ignored, buried, so as not to interfere with the public's ability to perceive what in a "higher sense" is true. Gay Talese, a writer who was godfather to the new journalism, said its techniques allowed the presentation of "a larger truth than is possible through rigid adherence" to normal newspaper standards.84 One result of the new journalism was to create a scandal like the one that erupted over Janet Cooke and the nonexistent eight-year-old heroin addict "Jimmy." After the Washington Post was forced to return the Pulitzer Prize which the story had won, it tried to pass off what had happened as the victimization of a newspaper by one of its reporters. According to the Post's published account, no editor anywhere was safe from the machinations of a determined liar. It was not so simple. Newspapers, the Post among them, had developed a pattern of shutting their eyes to the fictional aspects of the new journalism. When the Daily News accepted the resignation of its prize-winning journalist Michael Daley a month after the Cooke scandal-he was accused of manufacturing material for an article on British Army brutality in Northern Ireland-Daley remarked that he had used pseudonyms and reconstructions on many of his 300 columns and "no one has ever said anything."85 In the case of Janet Cooke, Vivian AplinBrownlee, Cooke's editor on the District Weekly, to which she had been assigned in her first year at the Post, claimed that she did not believe the story from the beginning and said so to the city editor." ° I knew her so well and the depth of her. In her eagerness to make a name she would write farther than the truth would allow. When challenged on facts in other stories, Janet would 46 reverse herself, but without any dismay or consternation with herself86 What this meant was that Janet Cooke was repeatedly caught in misstatements of fact while she worked for the Post, but the editors, instead of firing her, had promoted her. Despite what the Post's ombudsman Bill Green later admitted were "rumblings" in the newsroom, the Post made no attempt to check the story or even to ask to see Jane Cooke's tapes or notes. A few days after the story was published, Post reporter Courtland Milloy drove Janet Cooke through the neighborhood where she claimed Jimmy lived and he could see she did not know the area. He reported his doubts to the city editor, but the editor, as he later confessed, thought Milloy was motivated by jealousy.87 The mayor and police officials asked the Post to disclose the identity of the child so he could be helped. Presumably the life of an eight-year-old boy hung in the balance, but the Post merely launched into high-flown rhetoric on confidentiality, leaving the police to launch an intensive, expensive, and naturally vain search. The Post's ombudsman, Green, whose task it is to monitor the paper's performance, wrote a column replete with utopian cliches, without himself bothering to make any investigation into the story: Jimmy probably doesn't know many of the promises that have been made to him. There was the Great Society and the war on poverty. There are police who promise to uphold the law. There are schools that promise that everybody will be given a fair start, a chance to make it. There are the agencies that promise if you get into trouble, you can get help. Beyond this, there is the country's glittering promise that things will be bet. ter if you work. 88 Green promised ringingly that Jimmy could be assured that at least the Post's promise to him of anonymity would be kept. Since the police search was finally abandoned, Janet Cooke would have been safe had she not lied about her academic credentials. The Post released biographical data on their prizewinning reporter. Cooke's claim to a Vassar B.A. she did not have led to the unravelling of the whole fabric of invention. The media's reaction to charges of bias is one of genuine outrage. Irving Kristol has pointed out that "the television networks and national newspapers are sincerely convinced that a liberal bias is proof of journalistic integrity."89 CBS News President Richard Salant retorted indignantly to suggestions of bias: :"Our reporters do not cover stories from their point of view. They are representing them from nobody's point of view."90 An interviewer asked Washington Post editor Benjamin Bradlee: Are you suggesting that it is untrue ... that you have a cadre of highly motivated, intelligent, skillful, young liberal reporters WINTER/SPRING 1983 �who tend to slant their stories toward D~mocrats, liberals, as they write for the news pages?" He replied: I am very definitely denying that."9l At the very time Bradlee was saying this, in the spring of 1972, a ucounter~convention" of American journalists, sponsored by the journalism review More, was being attended by over 2,000 journalists, including such media "stars" as Dan Rather, Tom Wicker, David Halberstam, and Murray Kempton. In an article describing the purpose of the meeting, More explained: "A growing number of people who put out the nation's newspapers and magazines and splice together the nightly news are no longer going to accept the old ways of doing things." The "new" journalists, said More, were ((sensitive" people who turned "their attention to the kind of journalism that might help improve the quality of life rather than objectively recording its decline.''92 How do journalists manage to believe they maintain the professional journalistic creed of objectivity at the same time that they transmit, as we have seen, the utopian world view? Many journalists seem to mistake a sense of superiority for objectivity. In the fifth and final segment of CBS's series on defense, President Reagan and Chairman Brezhnev were shown making speeches denouncing each other. Cronkite then appeared, like the patient parent of quarreling children, to lament that from both the Kremlin and the White House came "angry words." Presenting the United States and the Soviet Union as mirror-image societies seems to constitute self-evident proof of objectivity to Cronkite and the media elite. Journalists from the prestige media in England revealed a similar concept of objectivity as "a plague on both your houses" during the Falkland war. They used the term "the British" rather than "we," outraging much of the public. Convinced of their own objectivity, the media are arrogant and dismissive when criticized. Reed Irvine notes that when he and a group of friends who belonged to the McDowell luncheon group decided in 1969 to start Accu· racy in Media, they were convinced that if they did research on cases of media inaccuracy, those responsible would have no choice but to admit they were wrong, issue corrections, and be more careful in the future. Irvine laughs ruefully as he recalls: "We soon found out it really did not work that way."93 The arrogance is sometimes breathtaking, as the media unhesitatingly ignore in their own case the demands they make of others. For example, CBS has been the most aggressive of the networks in claiming for television cameras the right to cover imy event open to the print media. Yet when CBS held its annual meeting in Aprill980, the press was admitted, but television cameras were barred. William Paley, long-time chairman of CBS, declared they would be disruptive to the audience. Reed Irvine asked whether he would recommend that Congress adopt the same policy. The following colloquy ensued: TilE ST. JOHNS REVIEW Paley: I would not. Irvine: Just CBS. Paley: We have adopted the policy, for the time being anyway, which has been clearly enunciated today. That's all I can say about it.94 One journalist remarked that it was like distillers holding a meeting and barring booze. After CBS aired a documentary in January 1982 that charged General William Westmoreland with leading a conspiracy to deceive President Johnson as to the strength of enemy forces in Vietnam, revelations in a TV Guide article "Anatomy of a Smear" of what the authors called "inaccuracies, distortions, and violations of journalistic stan- dards" by CBS led the network to commission its own study. But CBS then kept the report secret, presumably because it was damaging to the network. It is not hard to imagine the reaction of CBS if a branch of government had kept a report secret in comparable circumstances. (Eventually CBS was forced by the courts to release the report.) The reaction to criticism is sometimes vituperative. Responding to an issue of AIM Report that clearly touched a nerve, the Post's editor Benjamin Bradlee wrote to Irvine: "You have revealed yourself as a miserable, carping, retromingent vigilante, and I for one am sick of wasting my time in communicating with you." 95 After looking up "retromingent/' which means "urinating backward," Irvine framed the letter and hung it in the office. All the sins of advocacy journalism, the fictions supporting a "higher truth," the selective coverage, the attacks on what are perceived as "the bad buys" and whitewashing of the "good guys" came together in a media crusade against Israel during its war against the PLO in Lebanon in 1982. In a major study for Policy Review, Joshua Muravchik has provided the fullest account of media distortion on a single topic since Peter Braestrup's two-volume analysis of the media's coverage of the Tet offensive in Vietnam. Muravchik found variations in culpability: the Washington Post was much worse than the New York Times; NBC was worse than ABC which was worse than CBS; Time and Newsweek, on the other hand, turned in equally abysmal performances. But all the media were involved in tendentious and inaccurate reporting with one target-to make Israel look bad.96 Muravchik piles high the examples of media misstatement of fact. For example, wildly exaggerated casualty reports, falsely attributed to the internationally respected Red Cross (in fact they came from the nonrelated Red Crescent, an arm of the PLO run by Arafat's brother), continued to be cited repeatedly after the Red Cross had formally repudiated them. These were soon accompanied by equally inflated portraits of destruction from supposed eye-witness journalists in Beirut. While all the media were guilty of this, the prize may well have belonged to ABC which, in June, before the Israelis had launched any serious bombing of the city, described Beirut as a result of Israeli shelling, as resembling a some ancient ruin." 47 �Symptomatic of the pervasive dishonesty was a photo distributed by United Press International with a caption which said it showed a seven-month-old baby who had lost both arms in an Israeli raid. Secretary of State George Shultz, in a statement meant to be critical of Israel, said "the symbol of this war is a baby with its arms shot off." It was a symbol not of the war, but of the media's coverage of it. Subsequent investigation showed that the baby had not been badly hurt -both its arms were intact. And while civilians, including children, were obviously hit by Israeli bombs, it so happened that in this case the time, place, and direction of bombing made it clear that the baby had been hit by PLO shelling, which the media rarely mentioned, but which was also a feature of the war. Verbal attacks on Israel were the staple fare of journalists. CBS' Bill Moyers accused her of waging "total war;" NBC's John Chancellor talked of an "imperial Israel" and oflsrael as "a warrior state;" ABC's Threlkeld said she was "the neighborhood bully." Time and Newsweek referred to Israel's leaders as "stubborn," "outrageous," and utrouble~ some." Even Israel's release of captured PLO documents, revealing the extent of Soviet involvement in training of the international terrorist network, surely of interest to the West, was dismissed as part of Israel's ((propaganda war.n Muravchik notes that ABC's Steve Mallory developed a regular routine of arriving at an area after it was hit by Israeli bombs or shells and announcing, usually wrongly, that there was no military target there. The stories the media failed to tell were equally important. Except for the Times, the media had almost nothing to say of the welcome the Israelis received in Southern Lebanon by Christians and Moslems delighted to be rid of thePLO. But perhaps the media bias was best revealed by the television networks' attacks on Israel for censorship. (The PLO's censorship, exercised by guns directed against unwelcome TV cameras, was never mentioned.) When ABC broke Israel's censorship by broadcasting an interview with Arafat that had been disallowed by the censor, Israel punished the network by temporarily refusing it access to Israeli television facilities. ABC accused Israel on the air of "an intolerable act of political censorship." Israel explained that while it exercised only military censorship on reports from Israel's side of the battle line, its extension of its facilities for reports from the enemy's side was a favor to journalists that it would not allow to be used for the PLO's political advantage. ABC had agreed to the rules and then broken them. As Israel saw it, it was as if Britain had been held responsible for "intolerable censorship" for failing to channel propaganda speeches by Goebbels from Germany during World War II if German transmission facilities were not working. But as Muravchik notes, while Israel's position was one with which the public might or might not have sympathized, they never heard Israel's side of the story because the networks would not report it. They were thus as guilty of "censorship" of information 48 possibly detrimental to them as Israel was. The other networks repeatedly showed black screens on which were superimposed statements like "22 Seconds Deleted by Israeli Censors" or "Pictures Censored." NBC set a rec~ ord of sorts when in a single news story on June 5 the network managed to refer four separate times to Israeli censorship. Yet IsraeYs censorship-in wartime-was far less restrictive than that of most other countries at any time and compared very favorably with the censorship of other Middle Eastern countries. Moreover, while dispatches from other Middle Eastern countries were censored, the networks only flashed on the screen references to Israeli censorship. Eventually NBC began to flash on the screen "Cleared by Syrian censors," and CBS several weeks later followed suit. But by the end of August ABC, although it often broadcast from Syria, still made no reference to Syrian censorship while routinely using "Cleared by Israeli censors." (Ironically if Israel had kept out all foreign journalists, she would presumably have fared much better at their hands. This is what the British did during their war with Argentina over the Falklands that was going on simultaneously, and the media kept silent about "censorship.") Why should Israel specifically have become a target of the accumulated vices of advocacy journalism? Robert Elegant, in the 1981 Encounter essay on media performance in Vietnam that Morley Safer found so offensive, went to the heart of the problem. Elegant in effect prophesied the media's behavior in arguing that the adversary stance of the press during Vietnam was prototypical of what the reaction of the Western press was likely to be to any war: the press, he wrote, serves as multiplier of the prejudices of the western intelligentsia whose tender conscience moves it to condemn actions by its own side while condoning those of its enemies.97 Commentary editor Norman Podhoretz noted an additional factor: Israel refuted all the lessons of Vietnam, showing that military force could be necessary, even beneficial, and that a Soviet client could be defeated by an American ally. Podhoretz saw the attacks on Israel as a cover for the loss of American nerve, acquiescence in terrorism, and appeasement of to- talitarianism.98 In Muravchik's view the most important single factor in the anti-Israel bias was that the war violated the precept that "violence never solves anything." This was the media's adaptation of the utopian perspective which could more accurately be summed up as "Violence from the left is the only violence that solves anything." Muravchik notes that it is ironic that the belief that violence solves nothing should have become ascendant in the media under the impact of the war in Vietnam, for at the end of that war "violence solved everything-to the satisfaction of the communists." Given the extraordinary depths to which the media sank in the reporting on Lebanon, the analysis of the Columbia Journalism Review on media reporting of the war is interesting. It concluded that American journalism WINTER/SPRING 1983 �reported what it saw for the most par~ fairly and accurately and sometimes brilliantly, provided balanced comment, and provoked and absorbed controversy. For performance under fire, readers and viewers could have ask~d for little more. 99 Except for the remark that the coverage "provoked and absorbed controversy," which was certainly true, this could scarcely have been further from the mark. But it does underscore the extent to which the major journalism reviews, of which Columbia's is probably the most influen· tial, have themselves become exponents of advocacy journalism. If the press is going to change its ways, it will not be because of monitoring by the major journalism reviews. Media needs and attitudes and utopian goals dovetail nicely. From the point of view of the utopians, stories that the media may like because of their inherent drama break down faith in authority. When ABC launched "20/20" to compete with CBS's highly successful "60 Minutes," the program was known around the studio as the "cancer scare of the week." While ABC may have pursued ratings, for the utopians the programs reveal the wickedness or incapacity of government and corporations, which deny thereality of the dangers or fail to meet them. The media rarely report human rights violations in totalitarian societies because they cannot gain access to them. For the utopians these are stories that should be ignored, for they might interfere with their effort to mobilize public opinion against non-Communist countries threatened by those whose aim is to establish regimes of the sort that already exist in Cuba and North Vietnam. While in theory the fondness for scare stories could make reports on the Soviet military build-up and Soviet intelligence agencies appealing, here pervasive liberal orthodoxy among journalists comes into play. It leads them to downgrade the notion that there is such a thing as a genuine Soviet threat. It also leads them to automatic sympathy with proposals that come from disarmament groups, which they become extremely reluctant to report on fully for fear the effect would be to "unmask" them. This prevents the public from developing scepticism about the programs of these groups. The media's portrait enforces the utopian view of the world and makes the calls of the utopians for "de·industrialization," "decentralization of industry," solar roof collectors instead of central power stations, seem safer to try than they otherwise would. The utopian agenda becomes more plausible and attractive as our familiar world is seen to be threatened only by the callousness and rapacity of our own institutions. 1. Quoted in TV and National Defense: An Analysis of CBS News 19721973, Ernest W. Lefever ed., Institute for American Strategy Press, Boston, Va.l974, 14. 2. Melvin G. Grayson and Thomas R Shepard, The Disaster Lobby, Chicago: Follett Publishing Co., 1973, 266. THE ST. JOHNS REVIEW 3. S. Robert Lichter and Stanley Rothman "Media and Business Elites," Public Opinion, Oct./Nov. 1981, 42-44. 4. Lichter and Rothman, Public Opinion, Oct./Nov. 1981, 59-60. 5. Robert J. Lowenberg, "Journalism and 'Free Speech' as' Political Power," Scholastic, Dec. 1982, 12. 6. Quoted by Joseph Kraft, "The Imperial Media," Commentary, May 1981. 7. AIM Report, (I) September l, 1979. 8. AIM Report, (I) june 1977. 9. AIM Report, (I) Oct. 1979. 10. Sophia Peterson, "Foreign News Gatekeepers and Criteria of Newsworthiness," Journalism Quarterly, Spring 1979, 116. 11. Stanley Rothman and S. Robert Lichter, "The Nuclear Energy Debate: Scientists, the Media and the Public," Public Opinion, Aug./Sept. 1982, 51. 12. Rothman and Lichter, Public Opinion, Aug./Sept. 1982, 52. 13. Robert DuPont, Nuclear Phobia, The Media Institute. 14. Rothman and Lichter, Public Opinion, Aug./Sept. 1982,47. 15. Rothman and Lichter, Public Opinion, Aug./Sept.1982, 49. 16. Rothman and Lichter, Public Opinion, Aug./Sept. 1982, 51 17. Samuel McCracken, The War Against the Atom, New York: Basic Books, 1982, 108. 18. Rothman and Lichter, Public Opinion, Aug./Sept. 1982, 52. 19. Samuel McCracken, War, New York 1982, 108. 20. AIM Report, (II) March 1979. 21. Interview with Walter Cronkite, Utica (N.Y.) Press, November 13, 1974. quoted in TV and National Defense, Boston, Va., 1974 Frontispiece. 22. TV and National Defense, Boston, Va. 1974, 37. 23. Joshua Muravchik and John E. Haynes, "CBS vs. Defense," Commentary September 1981,46. 24. Muravchik and Haynes, Commentary, September 1981, 45. 25. Muravchik and Haynes, Commentary, September 1981, 48-49. 26. AIM Report, (I) Aprill979. 27. AIM Report, (II) May 1978. 28. AIM Report, (I) February 1979. 29. AIM Report, (I) February 1979. 30. AIM Report, (II) March 1978. 31. AIM Report, (II) Oct. 1979. 32. AIM Report, (I) july 1977. 33. AIM Report, (I) Feb. 1979. 34. AIM Report, (II) Oct. 1979. 35. Contentions, newsletter of the Committee for the Free World, December 1981. 36. AIM Report, (II) May 1980. 37. AIM Report, (I) june 1982. 38. AIM Report, (II) june 1980. 39. AIM Report, (II) june 1980. 40. AIM Report, (I) March 1979. 41. Human Events, Apri124,1982: New York Times April9, 1982. 42. Contentions, Committee for the Free World, April-May 1982. 43. AIM Report, (I) Sept. 1977. 44. Guild Notes, publication of the National Lawyers Guild, April, 1980. 45. Guild Notes, April, 1980. 46. Business Week, October 18, 1982. 47. Crooks, Conmen and Clowns, Media Institute, Washington D.C. 1981, ix-x. 48. Ben Stein, The View from Sunset Boulevard, New York: Basic Books 1979, 20. 49. Sunset, New York 1979, 33. 50. AIM Report, (II) Sept. 1980. 51. Interview with Peter Metzger, January 29, 1982. 52. AIM Report, May, 1978. 53. AIM Report, (II) july 1982. 54. New York Times, November 12, 1982. 55. Wall Street Journal, August 21, 1981. 56. Human Events, july 11, 1981. 57. Human Ev.ents, July 11, 1981. 49 �58. Human Events, July II, 1981. 59. Human Events, July II, 1981. 60. Wall Street Journal, August 21, 1981. 61. Human Events, Sept. 26, 1981. 62. Daily News, May 12, 1982. 63. AIM Report, (I) Aprill978. 64. AIM Report, (I) April1978. 65. AIM Report, (I) July 1979. 66. AIM Report, (I) May 1980. 67. Bob Schulman, The Bulletin, American Society of Newspaper Editors, October 1982. 68. New York Times, August 2, 1977. 69. Quoted in Review of the News, September 8, 1982, 37. 70. Jeremiah A. Denton Jr., When Hell Was in Session, So. Carolina: Robert E. Hopper & Assoc., 1982, Chapter 11. 71. Wilfred Burchett, At the Barricades, New York: Times Books, 1981, viii. 72. Quoted in AIM Report, (II) September 1981. 73. AIM Report, (II) September 1981. 74. AIM Report, (II) September 1981. 75. AIM Report, (I) September 1978. 76. Wall Street Journal, November 16, 1982. 77. Cablevision Magazine, October 25, 1982. 78. Max Kampehnan, "The Power of the Press," Policy Review, Fall, 1978, 18. 79. Joseph Kraft, "The Imperial Media," Commentary, May,l981. 80. Jim Bormann, "Honesty, Fairness and Real Objectivity-Keys to Journalistic Credibility," Keynote address to Radio and Film News Directors Association, September 29, 1971. 81. AIM Report, (II) June 1982; Human Events September 4, 1982. 82. AIM Report, (II) May 1982. 83. Naomi Munson, "The Case of Janet Cooke," Commentary, August 1981,49. 84. New York Times, May 25, 1981. 85. New York Times, May 25, 1981. 86. AIM Report, (I) May 1981. 87. AIM Report, (I) May 1981. 88. AIM Report, (I) May 198 I. 89. Wall Street Journal, October 14, 1982. 90. TV and National Defense, Boston, Va., 11. 91. Grayson and Shepard, Lobby, Chicago 1973, 255. 92. Lobby, Chicago, 255-56 93. Interview with Reed Irvine, October 24, 1982. 94. AIM Report, (I) May 1980. 95. AIM Report, (II) June 1978. 96, Joshua Muravchik, "Misreporting Lebanon," Policy Review, Winter 1983. 97. Robert Elegant, "How to Lose a War," Encounter August 1981, p. 88. 98. Norman Podhoretz, 'TAccuse," Commentary, September 1982, pp. 30-31. 99. Roger Morris, "Beirut-and the Press-Under Siege," Columbia Journalism Review Nov./Dec. 1982, 33. ARRIVAL The orchid waited eons for the ape. With seasonal reserve, the old magnolia Seduced the dragonfly. Unpressed, The olive and the grape Lingered in indigo or green, Too pointedly perceived when not By simian lens. The field, busy with discharge, Was barren of delight. Let ape appear: then fruit and fern, weary Of insect assiduity, will wink For recognition, oil and wine Seek flask and cruet. As we, No longer naked, know, not to be seen Too close shows sensibility. ELLIOTT ZUCKERMAN 50 WINTER/SPRING 1983 �Benjamin Constant on Ancient and Modern Liberty Stephen Holmes Progressives ritually deplore not only the low level of popular participation in politics, but also its characteristic lack of intensity. Conservatives reply that the feverish involvement of ordinarily apathetic citizens can destabilize and even topple a democratic regime. Benjamin Constant attempted to combine these two one-sided ideas, ideas that are conventionally kept at an aseptic distance from one another. In modern societies, he asserted, political tyranny may be closely associated with attempts to reglorify the public realm. But tyranny can also be encouraged and sustained by excessive privatization. Too much and too little civic spirit are equally dangerous. This double claim forms the theoretical core of Constant's l819lecture on "Ancient and Modern Liberty." 1 Precursors The "quarrel between the ancients and the moderns" which flourished in France toward the end of the seventeenth century was not merely a dispute about poetry. It reflected a cultural cleavage between religious conservatives who viewed history as a process of degeneration and advanced thinkers who exalted the refinements of modern politesse over the crudities of the barbaric polis. 2 Defenders of "the moderns" hoped that a liberation of literature from unsurpassable classical models would accompany the gradual emancipation of science from the authority of ArisStephen Holmes teaches political philosophy at Harvard University. The above essay comes from a book, Boundaries of the Political: the Sceptical Liberalism of Benjamin Constant, that Yale University Press will publish in 1984. THE ST. JOHNS REVIEW totelianism. Constant's vindication of liberal democracy against the would-be imitators of classical democracy was certainly influenced by these literary and scientific contests. Constant1 however, drew more heavily on a narrower tradition of political theory.l The proximate and primary source for Constant's dichotomy between two kinds of liberty was Montesquieu. Among its other achievements, De !'esprit des lois drew universal attention to the astonishing differences between modern England and ancient Sparta. 4 Although he never used the phrase "modern liberty," Montesquieu had a clear enough conception of it. In modern societies such as England, he argued, the essence ofliberty was security. 5 In Europe, security was notably threatened when nobles were excessively independent and engaged in anarchic self-help (as in Poland) and also when monarchs (as in Richelieu's France) gathered too much power into their own hands. 6 In either case men feared one another and the calculability of life was drastically reduced. "In order for men to have this [modern] liberty, the government must be such that a citizen cannot fear another citizen. 11 7 Constitutionalism, including the separation of powers, was meant to arrest the seesaw of anarchy and despotism, to introduce a salutary predictability into civic life. Protection from both baronial reprisals and lettres de cachet was the essence of English liberty. Men knew that if they did not break the law neither the police nor marauding private armies would harass them. Security made it possible to plan one's life and to enter into long-term cooperative ventures with one's neighbors. A state based on this modern conception ofliberty enables its citizens to engage in a promiscuous variety of actions and lives. All citizens may contribute to a common pattern, but only as "dissonances in music agree in the concord of the whole." 8 51 �The compatibility of the moderl)c constitutional state with unregimented human diversity is one key to Montesquieu's contrast between modern England and ancient Sparta. He called Sparta free (that is, free from foreign domination), but he quickly added that "the only advantage of its liberty was glory."9 It was a small "society of athletes and combatants," 10 where money was proscribed,11 where men were made cruel by harsh disciplinel2 and always ready to immolate their private lives for the sake of their patrie. Sparta represented the apogee of politics based on virtue.ll Motivated exclusively by virtue, Spartans subordinated themselves unflinchingly to a single overriding purpose: to live and die for the glory of their state.l 4 They participated in public life, but only in the sense that they played their parts; they certainly did not influence" the course of deliberation in personal, idiosyncratic ways. In this 'warrior's guild," 15 in fact, collective deliberation was less important than gymnastics. Montesquieu could compare Sparta to a monastery that, paradoxically enough, secured the undivided loyalty of its inmates by starving them of all human possibilities except those associated with the official functions of the group. 16 A modern state could never expect such extraordinary devotion from its citizens precisely because it is too munificent: it lavishes so many extrapolitical possibilities on the individual that he feels "he can be happy without his patrie." 17 Intense politics based on virtue is thus out of place in the modern state. Personal honor or avarice may motivate modern citizens; but self-abnegating patriotism cannot. That the English revolutionary attempt to resurrect a polity based on virtue in the seventeenth century would collapse in ridiculous hypocrisy was perfectly predictable. IS Montesquieu's striking counterposition of England and Sparta had a decisive impact on numerous writers besides Rousseau.l9 Jean-louis de Lolme was typical. Writing in the 1780s, he reformulated Montesquieu's contrast as a distinction between private independence and political influence: 44 4 To concur by one's suffrage in enacting laws is to enjoy a share, whatever it may be, of power; to live in a state where the laws are equal for all and sure to be executed (whatever may be the means by which these advantages are attained), is to be free. 20 Passages registering an analogous distinction between sharing in legislative power and protection from the arbitrary acts of political officials can be found in the eighteenth-century works of Joseph Priestly, Adam Ferguson, Jean-Charles Sismondi, and others.21 All these writers had a clear awareness of what Constant would later describe as the difference between ancient and modern liberty. Nevertheless, the claims to originality advanced at the beginning of "De Ia liberte des anciens comparee d celle des modernes" were not entirely unjustified. 22 The abstract dichotomy between ancient and modern liberty was not unprecedented, but Constant used it in ways that were new. 52 Two Concepts of Liberty Ancient liberty, Constant wrote, was "active and continuous participation in the exercise of collective power." 23 Modern liberty, by contrast, is "the peaceful enjoyment of individual or private independence." 24 A hedonistic slide from "exercise" to "enjoy" signaled the humanly debilitating consequences of modernization. Indeed, Constant's distinction between ancient and modern liberty cannot be studied apart from the notion, also inherited from Montesquieu, that European history is a curious blend of progress and decay. He made remarkable assumptions about the human consequences of modernization: The liberty of ancient times was whatever assured citizens the largest share in exercising social power. The liberty of modern times is whatever guarantees the independence of citizens from their government. As a result of their character,_the ancients had an overriding need for action; and the need for action is easily reconciled with a vast increase in social authority. The moderns need peace and enjoyment. Peace can be found only in a limited number of laws that prevent citizens from being harassed. Enjoyments are secured by a wide margin of individual liberty_ Any legislation requiring the sacrifice of these enjoyments is incompatible with the present condition of mankind. 25 Because of the common but erroneous belief that negation implies deprivation, "negative freedom" 26 is a misleading translation of Ia liberte chez les modernes. Modern liberty, as Constant conceived it, is as much a capacity for positive action as ancient liberty had been.27 The difference only lies in the character of the action and the field in which it unfolds. Moreover, Constant distinguished between two types of freedom in order to investigate the various relations between them, the ways in which they are not only combinable but even mutually enhancing. Not merely conceptual, Constant's distinction was initially historical. Each type of liberty, he urged, was originally bound to the institutions and life of a specific society. Ancient liberty, in its unalloyed form, was only possible in a sparsely populated, territorially compact, religiously homogeneous and slave-holding warrior's republic. 28 Modern liberty is the innovation of large-scale, caste-free, internationally open, religiously pluralistic, and intensively commercial societies.29 Although intrigued by the contrast between public participation and private security, Constant did not allow it to obscure the radically progressive content of modern liberty. In antiquity, "freedom" was a privileged status from which men could be excluded by the chance of birth. Essential to modern liberalism, by contrast, is the demand that freedom be distributed to all individuals regardless of family origin. The relative importance which Constant ascribed to public and private spheres within modern liberty was a direct function of the modern demand of citizenship for all. WINTER/SPRJNG 1983 �Constant's emphasis on a linkage between political ideals and social contexts was not merely a subsidiary feature of his theory. In explicit contrast to the natural law and contractarian traditions, he did not attempt to justify his commitment to the liberal state by adducing ahistorical traits of human nature. Once again following Montesquieu and other eighteenth-century (particularly Scottish) examples, he deliberately supplanted the contract myth with a theory of social change. 30 The liberal state is desirable not because it mirrors human nature or respects eternal human rights, but because it is the political arrangement most adequate to solving the problems of European society in its current state of economic, scientific, and moral development. Constant's conception of social change was also vital to another striking thesis of the 1819 lecture, an idea elaborated at greater length in De !'esprit de conquete et de !'usurpation dans leurs rapports avec Ia civilisation europeenne of 1814: the modern appeal to classical republican ideals is an anachronism that can serve only as a rhetorical justification and partial concealment of political fanaticism and terror. 31 A similar thesis had been propounded by C.F. de Volney in 1794. Volney too lamented that "we have fallen into a superstitious adoration of the Greeks and Romans." 32 Cults of antiquity which sprang up during the Revolution and glorified selfless, Brutus-like tyrannicide suggested this insight to many observers.ll The myth of ancient republics, Constant agreed, lent a deceptive aura oflegitimacy to the abusive acts of the Committee of Public Safety: "it is in the name of liberty that we have been given prisons, scaffolds and countless harassments." 34 The enormous power of government over society was justified by an ideology that, invoking ancient community, denied the modern distinction between state and society. During the Revolution, in other words, the ideal of ancient liberty was a pretext for oppression.l5 Constant conceded that many of the wouldbe "imitators of ancient republics" were propelled by generous motives.J6 They meant to abolish arbitrary government, seigneurial privileges, and the abuses of the Church. Their tragic mistake was to have chosen the classical city as an image unifying their diverse complaints against the ancien regime. The French Revolution was not the first occasion on which anticlerical and anti-aristocratic activists appealed to classical republican ideals: Since the renaissance of letters, most of those who attempted to rescue man from the degradation into which he had been plunged by the double curse of superstition and conquest [Roman Catholicism and aristocracy], believed it necessary to borrow institutions and customs favorable to liberty from the ancients. 37 Though the image of classical republican freedom may have been a useful rebuke to the old regime, it was not an adequate guide to the future. The myth of the ancient city could serve as a weapon in the assault on Catholicism and THE ST. JOHNS REVIEW the inequality of ranks, but it could furnish no clue about how to replace them.JS Necessarily, attempts to resurrect anachronistic forms of liberty were political hoaxes on a grand scale. The Problem In modern times, Constant wrote, citizens can no longer experience political participation as an intrinsically rewarding form of action.l9 But he also said that his contemporaries must learn to couple political participation, which he described as a path to self-perfection, with individual privacy and independence.40 Which statement are we to believe? Was Constant simply being incoherent? Our perplexity is justified. But it can be dispelled if we examine how the distinction between ancient and modern liberty was used during two separate phases of Constant's career. The 1819lecture contains long sections authored twenty years earlier in response to exceptional political events. By 1819, the political scene had radically changed. Constant's former left-wing enemies had vanished, only to be replaced by equally intractable right-wing foes. In response to this altered landscape, Constant reelaborated his distinction in a new direction. No longer threatened by pseudo-democratic fraud, he turned sharply against the civic passivity that served the interests of the ultras.41 But he left the passages written years earlier untouched. No wonder present-day readers feel off balance! Despite these findings, we cannot dismiss the 1819lecture as a jumble of conflicting insights. Constant was right to cling tenaciously to both sides of his polemic: the atrophy of political life can be just as perilous as a total repoliticization of society. Constant was struggling to understand the complexities of politics after the Revolution. The Original Formulation of the Distinction A good deal has been written about the two concepts of freedom and the corresponding democratic traditions.42 What has perhaps been neglected is the history of the distinction itself, especially the context in which it was originally elaborated and the problems to which it was initially meant as a practical response. The original version of the "Ancient and Modern Liberty" lecture can be found in Chapter Three of Mme de Stael's Circonstances actuelles qui peuvent terminer Ia revolution, a manuscript which was heavily influenced and perhaps co-authored by Constant around 1798. Constant and Mme de Stael wanted to convince the Directory that, instead of merely playing off the Right against the Left, it should appeal directly to a constituency of its own. In times of political uproar, civic privatism can prevent 53 �individuals from assuming uncompromising postures associated with !'esprit de parti. The Directory never totally succeeded in its attempt to arrest the. civil war. Thus, from 1793 until 1799, active participation in French politics meant being drawn pell-mell into the fratricidal battle: Even the slightest objection inspires hatred in the exalted par- ties. This hatred compels every man to ally himself with a number of his fellows and, just as men travel only in caravans in places infested with brigands, so in countries where hatreds are unleashed, they align themselves with a party in order to have defenders.43 Constant's vindication of political absenteeism was intended as a reply to Rousseau's glorification of political participation. He lauded citizen withdrawal and indifference in situations of civil war when participation was largely a vehicle for partisan hatred and revenge. Civil war had demonstrated the value of apolitical behavior in a country "where two opposed parties combat each other with furor." 44 Constant and Mme de Stael urged the Directory to draw electoral support from just those individuals who had remained aloof from the fighting in the years before. The "inert" and '''{immobile" masses of the nation had views that were admirably moderate because deeply apathetic_45 They were indifferent to royalty, but not enthusiastic enough about the Republic to want it to disrupt the nation's tranquillity.46 They were unconcerned about the fate of the ci-devant privileged caste, but they did not detest the old nobles intensely enough to wish to see them persecuted_47 They knew that the persecution of even a few embroils everyone, not merely the persecutors and the persecuted.48 This majority "wants nothing but its own well-being."49 The desire for peace and prosperity may have signaled a descent from the heights of antique virtue. But it had politically beneficial side-effects. Moreover, a commitment to peace was exactly what one would have expected from most Frenchmen. Party spirit alm0st -1ilever exists except among individuals thrown outside lthe.Cirde of domestic life. And two-thirds of the population df France and of.all,the countries of Europe are composed of men·.Who.-are·occupied solely with their pecuniary fortune. 50 In order to win the loyalty of these survival-minded masses, the Directoire should respect their indifference to politics. It must "never count, in such a nation, on the sort of patriotism that propelled the ancient republics." 51 Instead of trying to win electoral support by stirring up enthusiasm, by asking citizens for heroic sacrifices of their particular interests to the general good, the Directory must acquiesce in individual contrariness. "Liberty today is everything that guarantees the independence of citizens from the power of the government." 52 To syphon away 54 votes from royalists and Jacobins, the Directory must offer private security to its citizens. De Stael's and Constant's aim in 1798 was to convince the Directory that the stability of the Republic required an abandonment of all the enthusiasm-promoting techniques employed earlier by the clubs, the militant sectionnaires, and the Convention: Among the ancients ... in order to capture public opinion, it was necessary to rouse the soul, to excite patriotism by conquest, by triumphs, by factions, even by troubles that nourished every passion. National spirit must no doubt be cultivated as much as possible within France. But we must not lose sight of the fact that public opinion is based on a love of peace, on the desire to acquire wealth and the need to conserve it and that we will always be more interested in administrative ideas than in political questions, because these touch our private lives more directly_ 53 The majority of the French can have a moderating influence because they are largely indifferent to citizenship and distracted from public affairs. Justly wary of the intoxicating effect of patriotism, the Directors should heed the following maxim: "The sphere of each individual must always be respected." 54 To politicize modern individuals in a total manner is next to impossible, and would be a mistake in any case. In 1798, distinguishing between ancient and modern liberty meant praising apoliticism and urging the government to hon<>r the primacy of private life. The Lecture of 1819 Twenty years later, in 1819, Constant delivered his lecture at the Paris Atheneum. With the shift in the political situation, the argumentative thrust of his distinction between ancient and modern liberty also changed. In the France of 1819, there was no cult of.Sparta which Constant might have felt compelled to discredit. 55 There was simply no threat of a resurgent Jacobinism by this time. Constant's distinction between ancient and modern liberty has often been distorted by being mislocated exclusively in the context of 1793-1794. The Terror-which Constant had not witnessed first-hand, for he only returned to France in 1795-provided an important motive for his rethinking of eighteenth-century liberalism. But the Directory, the Empire and the ultra-dominated Restoration all influenced his thought in decisive ways. The Directory taught him the insufficiency of "limited" gov.ennment, while Napoleon and the Bourbons helped revi¥eh's underlyil)g rr~pul:ilicariism, temporarily suspended in the convulsions of civil strife between 1793 and 1799. By 1819, Constant had long broken with Guizot and other moderates, and he sat on the far left of the Chamber. Needless to say, his ultraroyalist enemies never celebrated Rousseau as a prophet of unlimited popular sovereignty; and as WINTER/SPRING 1983 �Catholics, they liad·only the faintests)>mpatl!ty, £mr. pagan antiquity. • Constant began his lecture with a "demonstration," following Montesquieu and Rousseau, that the representative system was discovery of the moderns." 56 He used the contrast with the direct self-government of the classical city to highlight the uniqueness of representative government. But he did not reduce the modern rupture with the past to this contrast. At the opening of the lecture, in a section that did not appear before 1819, he opposed representation to oligarchic usurpation, not to democratic participation. The representative system was a discovery of the moderns: it was a technique invented by the Third Estate for putting limits on that "oligarchy whiclr is the same throughout the centuries."57 At the time, Constant's assertion that representative government is the "only system" that allows modern men to attain freedom and social peace was immediately understood as an argument against the ultra program to reverse the relatively liberal Electoral Law of 1817. Reminiscent of the regime of the ancient Gauls, the system the ultras wished to impose on modern France also resembled the constitution of ancient Sparta. A small elite, the Ephors of Sparta, possessed religious as well as political functions. They had powers to check and limit the kings. But they also enjoyed executive authority. They could easily become threats instead of restraints. They were, in fact, not democratic representatives at all, "not ... men invested with a mission comparable to that which election today confers on the defenders of our freedoms." 58 The feudal aristocracy of priests and warriors idealized by the ultras resembled the Ephors in many respects. Under the ancien regime, "the nobility possessed privileges that were both insolent and oppressive. And the people were without rights or guarantees." 59 Shrewdly structured, this argument was calculated simultaneously to entice and to befuddle the antidemocratic sentiments of the French Right. Every royalist had to applaud the concession that modern France could never be governed by direct popular self.rule. But the reason why the government established by the Charte 60 was unlike that of the turbulent classical republics was also the reason why it was distinct from the Catholic, monarchical, and aristocratic system of the old regime. Constant shrewdly replaced Montesquieu's contrast between modern monarchies and ancient republics by a new contrast, discomfiting to the ultras, between representative and nonrepresentative regimes. Such a contrast had the embarrassing effect of aligning the Catholic Bonald with the most radical proponents of pagan democracy. Taunting the Right, Constant juxtaposed absolute democracy with absolute monarchy. The parallel drawn between the organization of the ancient city and the social program of the ultras was not merely negative. More was involved than a shared denial of the modern principle of representation. In both cases, "a THE ST. JOHNS REVIEW Constant discerned a bias against voluntariness, against entrusting social choices to unsupervised individuals. With one eye fixed on the Catholic ultraroyalists, Constant mentioned the power of ancient Roman authorities to meddle in matters of divorce and marriage. Reflecting on the ultra education program,, he also remarked that modern theocrats agreed with ancient republicans: a government should "take possessi<m of the generations being born" and shape them to. its• own pleasure.6l When he said (also about Rome) that "les lois reglent les moeurs," 62 his real target was the ultra-not merely Jacobin-idea that the state should assume the duty of policing private morality. In mounting his attack on the French Right, Constant also focused on religious toleration. There were obvious differences between ancient civic religions and the modern alliance between throne and altar. Both could, however, be contrasted with a liberal decision to make religion a private matter: "the ability to choose one's own cult, an ability that we regard as one of our most precious rights, would have seemed a crime and a sacrilege to the ancients."63 Distant from antiquity and inhospitable to the vision of the Social Contract, modern Frenchmen cannot reconcile themselves to the regimental designs of the theocratic Right. It is not altogether surprising that "the gallant defenders of doctrinal unity cite the laws of the ancients against foreign gods and support the rights. of the Catholic Church with the example of the Atheuians."M These and other parallels between the ancieNts and' the lilltras were innovations of 1819. They did not appear in Constant's earlier discussions of the distinction between ancient and modern liberty. They betray the immediate;;political objectives of his lecture. In their interpretations of the Revoluti<m,.Jacobins and royalists agreed that the Terror had been'necessary to the demolition of the old regime. Ever since his early pam· phlet, Effets de Ia terreur (1798),65 Constant had rejected this shared premise of the Left and Right. He had sought to disconnect liberty from an incriminating association with bureaucratic murder. An obvious way to disjoin freedom from the Terror was to split "freedom" in two. One form (call it ancient liberty) could be found guilty, while the other (call it modern) would come out innocent. Con· stant had this strategy in mind in the Circonstances actuelles of 1798 where, together with Mme de Stael, he initially worked out the distinction between ancient and modern liberty. Throughout the Restoration, moreover, Constant's need to outmaneuver the ultras led him to stress the politically harmless aspects of modern freedom. · He often wrote of "Ia liberte legale," "Ia liberte constitutionnelle," and "Ia liberte reguliere."66 He tended to discuss freedom in minimalist terms: by liberty he meant the strict execution of the Charte. 67 But, although Constant no longer felt threatened by the Jacobins in 1819, he was becoming increasingly exasperated wittin the: ultras. His desire to appease their fears was 55 �evaporating quickly. This turn of events helps explain his new insistence that freedom from pditics, even if it never functioned as a pretext for revoluticmary tyranny, was by no means harmless. By 1819, in fact, the distinction between ancient and modern liberty had become Constant's way of exposing the dangers inherent in his own commitment to civic pri· vatism. His initial intention may have been to describe modern liberty as innocent: it had had no role in inspiring the Terror. But, at the end of his 1819lecture, his theoretical instincts and a changing political scene drew him toward criticizing modern liberty precisely because of its en· couragement of apathy. Thus, the concluding thesis of the 1819 lecture was this: "Because we are more distracted from political liberty than [the ancients] were able to be, and in our ordinary condition less passionate about it, it can happen that we sometimes neglect too much, and al· ways mistakenly, the guarantees that it ensures us."68 Constant's Cautious Renewal of the Appeal to Antiquity The final section of "Ancient and Modern Liberty" comes as a surprise. After having devoted twenty dense pages to his claim that modern peoples are exclusively at· tuned to private independence and freedom from politics, after having said that "nous ne pouvons plus jouir de Ia liberte des anciens," 69 and that "the liberty suitable to the moderns is different from that which was suitable to the ancients," 70 after all this, Constant abruptly changed his emphasis: "So, Gentlemen, far from renouncing either of the two types of freedom about which I have been speaking to you, we must, as I have demonstrated, learn to com· bine the one with the other." 71 In the body of the lecture, composed in previous years and geared to different situations, Constant made clear that "the perpetual exercise of political rights" and "the daily discussion of the affairs of state" offer "only trouble and fatigue" to modern nations.72 But in the conclusion, written in or around 1819, he wrote: Political liberty, granted to all citizens without exception, al· lows them to examine and study their most sacred interests, enlarges their spirits, ennobles their thoughts and establishes between them a sort of intellectual equality that makes up the glory and power of a people. 73 The citizenship being praised in the concluding section of the lecture is only a part-time affair. Nevertheless, we can· not escape the impression that we are witnessing a dra· matic alteration in Constanfs tone as well as a reversal in his theoretical stance. Here, his endorsement of civic in· volvement is unmistakable. That Constant, at the end of his lecture, did not denigrate or repudiate political partici· pation is obviously pertinent to the question of how anti- 56 democratic was his liberalism. But it is not easy to integrate these final pages with the earlier part of his argument. On closer inspection, it turns out that two distinct para· doxes preside over the jolting conclusion of "Ancient and Modern Liberty." First, there is an inconsistency between Constant's pessimistic and his optimistic assessments of popular influence on the government in a modern state. Modern citizens are said to have no influence on their gov· ernments. But their active participation is also described as decisive. Second, there is a flat contradiction between Constant's claims that: (i) in modern societies, political lib· erty is a means, while civil liberty is the end, that is, participation is valuable only as a guarantee to ensure private security from government harassment (this distinguishes modern from ancient participation); and (ii) active civic in· volvement is valuable in itself; it is an opportunity for soar· ing above petty individual concerns and furthering self. perfection. Viewed separately, both paradoxes seem quite baffling. Taken together, however, each not only illuminates the other but also helps explain the structure of the lecture's conclusion. Consider the contrast between the pessimistic and the optimistic assessments of popular influence on modern governments. Constant's pessimism here echoes Rous· seau's remark74 that the English are free only once every several years and solely during the few minutes it takes to vote; otherwise they are slaves: Among the moderns ... even in the states which are most free, the individual, although independent in private life, is not sovereign except in appearance. His sovereignty is restrained, almost always suspended; and if he exercises this sovereignty at fixed but infrequent intervals, during which time he is still surrounded by precautions and obstacles, it is only to abdicate it75 Constant accepted Rousseau's claim that democratic selfgovernment is impossible in a large country. But he refused to imitate Rousseau's wholesale rejection of repre· sentative government on the British model. Constant decided to adapt himself, without undue ag· ony, to the new political and extrapolitical possibilities available in a society incapable of direct democracy. From a realistic point of view, the marginal contribution of the average modern individual to any political outcome is close to zero: "the individual's influence ... is lost in a multitude of influences." 76 Hence, we should expect most men to turn their backs on citizenship and devote them· selves to more rewarding, creative and enjoyable forms of conflict or cooperation. From Constant's perspective in 1819, however, there was a serious flaw in a way of think· ing that encouraged men to channel all their energies into private life. French history had by that time unambigu· ously demonstrated that civic absenteeism can serve the cause of tyrants and oppressors. What had been thrown WINTER/SPRING 1983 �into question was the standard liberal argument that commercial life provides an effective counterweight to excessive political authority. "The progress of industry ... creates for each individual a sphere within which are concentrated all his interests; and, if the individual looks outside this sphere, it is only by accident." 77 But when modern citizens become too absorbed in their private financial business and fail to keep watch over the political scene, the ambitious few will amass uncontrollable quantities of power.78 Once this has happened, private wealth will itself be insecure. Constant believed that economic independence was a precondition for political influence. Political liberty presupposed civil liberty. He also affirmed the inverse claim: without effective political influence, economic independence and decentralization cannot be guaranteed. This second proposition cannot be called a political argument against capitalism, but it is an insight into the troublesome political consequences of business-mindedness and the spirit of commerce. The historical experiences behind this liberal distrust of apoliticism were manifold. Just as important to Constant as the ultra program to limit the franchise was the atrophy of political life under the Empire. Napoleon had encouraged a withering away of active citizenship in order to consolidate his power.79 He had initially gained popular support for his coup d'etat because many citizens were weary of the pseudo-republican antics of the Directory. 80 Thus, the post-revolutionary urge to escape from politics and to delimit the political sphere had nourished an invasive dictatorship. Constant experienced the pang of enforced depoliticization in his own person when he was ejected from the Tribunat in 1802. It is inconceivable that, having suffered this humiliation, he would have afterwards viewed privatization as simply and exclusively a public good. Constant's argument here might be interpreted as a democratic rethinking of a dilemma faced earlier by French aristocrats. In the eighteenth century, the "resurgent nobility" realized they had made a poor bargain when they sacrificed their political power to Richelieu and Louis XIV for the sake of cozy privileges and immunities. Without power, their new rights were insecure. 81 Private independence can only be guaranteed by political responsibility. Constant echoed this point, with one major difference. He wished political rights distributed "to all citizens without exception." 82 To provide his argument with a form more arresting to modern readers, Constant resorted to a financial comparison. 83 A rich man may, in order to gain time for other activities hire a manager to handle his fiscal affairs. In any such' arrangement there comes a point when asaving time" will be carried too far. A manager left completely unsupervised may defraud the owner. In the long run, delegating one's power is not necessarily an efficient way to save time. Like businessmen, citizens must keep themselves carefully informed in order to judge whether their THE ST. JOHNS REVIEW delegated business is being handled honestly and intelligently: The peoples who recur to the representative system in order to enjoy the liberty that is suitable to them must exercise a constant and active surveillance over their representatives. They must reserve to periods which are not separated by long intervals the right to dismiss these representatives if they have betrayed their vows and to revoke any powers they have abused. 84 Not so enjoyable as the first-hand despoiling, exiling, imprisoning, and executing available to the ancient citizen, this dismissing and revoking preserved some of the responsibilities of ancient citizens within modern constitutional government. From an individual's viewpoint, the importance of his own civic participation seems negligible and almost imaginary. In the aggregate, however, a participating and well informed citizen body can certainly prevent the return of a Napoleon or, more likely in 1819, the gradual confiscation of all political power by the ultras. There may be no contradiction in Constant's argument. But there is a problem. The liberal dilemma was how to motivate individuals to participate, how to galvanize them into civic activism, given the scant rewards each individual might expect from time expended on political affairs: "the danger of modern liberty is that, absorbed in the enjoyment of our private independence and in the pursuit of our particular interests, we will renounce too easily our right to share in political power." 85 Civic privatism is a danger because individuals will be more impressed by the shorter-term gains than by the longer-term dangers of apoliticism. Rational calculation leads citizens to see that they can personally have no "real influence" on political events,86 and thus may inadvertently encourage them to expose their polity to dictatorship. Constant understood that his instrumental argument for civic involvement (that private rights can only be guaranteed by popular power, that independence will only be ensured by participation) was not sufficient to rouse men from the civic sedation administered first by Napoleon and more recently by the ultra party. Partly because of his recognition of the insufficiency of the instrumental argument for civic involvement, Constant overturned the previously worked-out logic of his lecture (a logic reflecting his radically different concerns of 1798) and introduced an Aristotelian and almost romantic justification of participation. Even apart from its terrible consequences, Constant concluded, privatism cannot satisfy individuals, even if it might make them happy. Men could reach bonheur simply by abandoning their strenuous ideals and sinking into passivity. But happiness was not enough: No, Gentlemen, I call to witness this better part of our nature, the noble restlessness that pursues and torments us, this ardor to extend our understanding and develop our faculties. 57 �Our destiny does not call us to!ha)lplness<,:\Jt:>n€,chlill' to'silfperfecbon; and political liberty• isi t!Te< trtosttpoWefhll anti<the most energetic means of self-J:l'effecHon :'granted us ;.by heaven. 87 ; Except for "torment" and ainquietude," this passage carefully echoes classical arguments according to which man is a fundamentally political animal. In radical contrast to the body of the lecture, it implies that the more time modern citizens spend on public affairs, the more free they will feel. In 1798, when the distinction between ancient and modern liberty was first elaborated, Constant was still haunted by the experience of the Revolution and ,espeCially by the idea that political participatimrumeamhnvolvement in plots for Tevenge. He thus viewed patriotic fer· mentation with a nervous eye. In 1819, by contrast, the ultra threat caused Constant and his liberal allies to re· verse their earlier position and speak warmly of "pure, pro· found, and sincere patriotism," a sentiment capable of en· nobling the spirits of "tous les citoyens, sans exception." 88 Not merely a means to civil liberty, political liberty was also seen as an mtegral part of civil liberty. Constant con· eluded by suggesting that "the greatest possible number of citizens" must be given influence over public affairs and admitted to important political functions. Inclusion in such tasks will give citizens "both the desire and the capac· ity to perform them." 89 This is the sort of thinking which ~ve!'tually led to the acceptance of universal suffrage as an mdispensable baSlS for representative government. The strikingly democratic conclusion to "Ancient and Modern Liberty" remains puzzling until we understand how the underlying logic of the argument of 1798 was adapted to meet the demands of Restoration politics. The lecture is a palimpsest. It is so complex because it was composed twice, the second version superimposed on the first after an interval of twenty years. By 1819, Constant's origi· nal fear of convulsive patriotism had had to make room for his hope that enhanced civic participation might advance hberal causes or at least keep the ultras in check. Civic Privatism and its Problems The foregoing analysis of the two layers of "Ancient and Modern Liberty" fails to do justice to the theoretical con· tent of the lecture. After all, it was Constant's conscious decision to weave his new and old concerns into a single pattern of thought. "Ancient and Modern Liberty" gains its importance from his crucial insight that both the loss of civic spirit and the revival of civic spirit contain a potential for tyranny. The right to be distracted from politics is pre· ClOUS, b!-'t it iS not harmless. 0verprivatization and overpohbCiZahon are symmetncal dangers. The pluralistic and voluntary pattern oflife to which modern citizens have become accustomed makes us intolerant of societies in 58 which• there are no sharply-etched limits to the political. Butc·every time we draw such boundaries;-we' seal off im<poltanliiiteasofsotiallife from respiill!iible pi'.blic surveillance and coilttol.-:NaP<?-[eon- craftily used civic privatism to escape accountability:9° 'The' liberal boundaries of the political are simultaneously indispensable and fraught with risk. This idea is not a palinode or sign of Constant's irresolute _vacillation. It is an insight into the complexity of polihcs m France after the Revolubon. Ultimately, Constant's success at keeping such ostensibly conflicting ideas simultaneously alive is what makes his thought about •this period so fascinating. Unusable and even dangerous as a •constructive principle, ancient liberty is helpful as a reminder oflthe central peril of modern liberty. His sense of this periiJmlly well• be why Constant was so careful to label participation in-sovereignty a form ofliberty in the first place. Morlll'!squieu'l'iatl warned against confounding the sovereign 'tptl\iver'\ 6fc•a people with its '1iberty," and de Lolme adopted thiN·:nne distinction between freedom and power.9l Cons_tant's decision to deviate from those who defined liberty by contrasting it with the exercise of sovereignty was not casual. He insisted from the start that the influence of citizens on legislation was a form of freedom. He did not allow active political rights to stand on the sidelines as a mere alternative to freedom. This refusal to set popular power aside may also illuminate the ending of the 1819 lecture, the apparent contradiction between the notion that political liberty is exclusively a guarantee and the idea that it is also a vehicle for self-perfection. By calling popular power a form of freedom, Constant prepared the way for his conclusion: freedom from politics is not coextensive with liberty. True liberty is an "optimal mix" of public and private, participation and nonparticipation, citizenship and mdependence, activism and distraction, cooperation and eccentricity. 92 Those who accept Isaiah Berlin's portrait of a privacyaddicted Constant cannot explain why he devoted the last fifteen years of his life to public service. To be sure the politics to which he gave himself unstintingly was ~ot a town-meeting sort of communalism. It was a radical reformist activism. If it was politics with the aim of limlting politics, it was politics nonetheless. The price of modern liberty is eternal vigilance. Anti-utopian but reformminded participation was crucial for Constant. In the Commentaire sur l'ouvrage de Filangieri of 1822, he was unrelenting about the importance of political citizenship. In explaining why England was a powerful nation despite its absurd commercial law, he wrote: The political institutions, the parliamentary discussions, the liberty of the press which [England] has enjoyed without interruption for one hundred and twenty-six years have counteracted the vices of its laws and its governments. Its inhabitants maintain their energy of character because they have not been disinherited of their participation in the administration WINTER/SPRING i983 �of public affairs. This participation, while it is almost imaginary, gives the citizens a feeling of their importance that fosters their activity.93 Spain, by contrast, reveals the dismal fate of a country where individuals lose interest in themselves because they are deprived of any chance to influence their own fate: Spain's "decadence dates from the destruction of its political liberty and the suppression of the cortes."94 Participation in politics, as advocated by the later Constant, was not limited to the periodic surveillance and controle of the legislators by the electors. It cannot be reduced to a means by which private citizens could defend their security, goods and jouissances. 95 Constant argued that concern for the public good was also creative of energetic characters and even national identity. For him, poli- · tics was an engrossing passion. He merely wanted to make sure that it was voluntary, not obligatory. A voluntary politics of reform (based on ideals of civilized humanity) is certainly one of the central possibilities made available by modern liberty. We should not, however, allow Constant to give a more glamorous portrait of the ancient component in modern liberty than he gave of ancient liberty itself. Constant admitted that he was sometimes bored with public service, and he never gave flattering accounts of his reasons for persisting in office. In a revealing letter written in 1800, when he was first appointed to the Tribunal, he distinguished sharply between happiness and self-perfection, just as he was to do at the conclusion of "Ancient and Modern Liberty." He had pursued a political career, he said: not as a pleasure-is there any such thing in life?-but as a task, as an opportunity to fulfill a duty, which is the only thing able to lift the burden of doubt, of memory, of unrest-the eternal lot of our transitory nature. Those for whom pleasure has charms, for whom novelty still exists, and who have preserved the happy faculty of enjoyment, do not need a vocation; but those who have lost their physical and moral youth must have a distinct mission to do good in order not to sink into discouragement and apathy. 96 Constant was only thirty-three when he wrote this letter. Decrepitude was his society's, not his personal, plight. Victimized by an excess of civilization, modern men are incapable of bonheur. The best they can hope for is to quell their nagging inquietude. Living in a disillusioned age, Constant decided to call such escapism by the name of "self-perfection." Idealizing politics was politically useful in his battle against the ultras. Modern Imitators of Ancient Republics Taine, heir to the counterrevolutionary tradition, argued that the Terror was a logical consequence of Enlightenment thought.97 This conservative thesis has been so THE ST. JOHNS REVIEW widely influential that its implausible character is often lost from sight: if eighteenth-century liberalism leads necessarily to revolutionary dictatorship and murder, then only the illiberalism of the old regime can sustain social freedom. Constant had a different view. The Terror, he thought, did not result from an excess of freedom. On the contrary, "the evils of the Revolution stemmed precisely from the Revolution's having suspended allliberty."98 The liberty suspended during the Terror had little or no resemblance to the old aristocratic freedoms which had been sharply curtailed during the consolidation of French absolutism. The liberty violated by the Terror was a constitutionally regulated liberty. It included civil rights, religious tolerance, legal equality, and the political influence of the Third Estate. Unlike Taine, in other words, Constant saw no difficulty in criticizing the Terror with categories inherited from the Enlightenment. The 1793-1794 phase of the Revolution was marked by intolerant fanaticism, secular priest-craft, and a conflation of the social and the political. The Jacobins claimed to be establishing a new republic based on virtue; but they actually recreated a despotism based, as Montesquieu said all despotisms were, on fear. Constant never accused the Terrorists of an overexuberant commitment to reason and equality. Rather than pointing an accusing finger at the Enlightenment, he focused on the revolutionary appeal to classical republican ideals,99 an appeal that served as a pretext for oppression, misleading the public and to some extent deluding the oppressors. In so doing he relied explicitly on an Enlightenment mistrust of political recidivism. I00 Robespierre and Saint-Just, who in the crisis of 1793 had resurrected the Roman institution of emergency dictatorship, were the most notorious modern imitators of ancient republics. They were not squeamish about using violence against their real or imagined enemies: These men thought they could exercise political power as it had been exercised in the free states of antiquity. They believed that even today everything must yield to the collective authority and that private morality must fall silent before the public interest. 101 Robespierre's addiction to Plutarch and Rousseau should not be overestimated. But his admiration for the ancients certainly contributed to his self-image as a great moral legislator and founder of a new order.IOZ The classical tradition of civic virtue provided a language in which he could misdescribe the Revolution and stress the paramount need for self-sacrifice on the part of all citizens. One of his favorite exhortations was: "evelons nos ames it Ia hauteur des vertus republicaines et des examples antiques." 103 "Sparta," he rapturously remarked, "shines like a lightning flash in the immense darkness." 104 "! speak of public virtue," he added in yet another speech, "which worked such wonders in Greece and Rome and must produce even more astonishing good in republican France."IOS 59 �Characteristic of the ancient city, according to Constant, was the absence of inalienable rights.l 06 Rights were not absolute but contingent upon service to the community. They could be legally revoked by the assembled populace.107 In search of justifications for the flagrant violations of judicial procedure involved in revolutionary justice, the Jacobins were understandably attracted to this ancient model for the morally impeccable revocation of rights. Fot similar reasons, "the Spartans of the Convention"108 followed Rousseau in praising the absence of partial associations within the ancient city. Loyalty to family or Church should never interfere with allegiante to the patrie. Robespierre could encourage the denunciation of family members for uncivic attitudes and chide wives whose husbands had been guillotined for harboring unpatriotic feelings. 109 Frenchmen should be exclusively political animals, at least so long as revolutionary government was in effect. The Law of Suspects defined "treason" so vaguely as to include boredom and indifference as crimes against the state.llO Likewise, attendance at local assemblies and the assumption of public office was obligatory, not voluntary. If you married a foreigner, said "monsieur" instead of "citoyen/' or went to Church, some zealot might accuse you of having harmed the public good.lll This fervid assimilation of the social to the political and the private to the public was justified by appeals to the ancient city in which no line had been drawn between state and society. Citizenship, for Robespierre, had to be total: "love of the patrie ... presupposes a preference for the public interest over all private interests." 112 But Robespierre did not merely denounce conflicting interests. He refused to admit the legitimacy of conflicting opinions about the common good. He remarked that there are only two parties in the Convention, the pure and the corrupt.l13 A crude dichotomy between base self-interest and noble virtue dominated the Robespierrist vision of political life. Patriots, he notoriously suggested, should be concerned with virtue, not with material well-being.l 14 The same simplistic dualism supported his near-hysterical attacks on the single vast conspiracy of the egoistical and demon-driven aligned against the Revolution.II5 It also underlay his project for the reeducation of Frenchmen deformed by centuries of superstition and oppression.l 16 Like a good Plutarchan legislator, ll7 Robespierre was less concerned about granting a share of legislative authority to the people than with restoring their moral health: "the Legislator's first duty is to form and preserve public morality."IIB His central aim was to instill purity of soul into citizens by means of the Revolution: "We want an order in which all low and cruel passion shall be repressed and in which laws shall awaken all the benevolent and generous passions."ll 9 Men can be inwardly refashioned by governmental edict. Vice can be legislated out of existence. For Constant, Robespierre had an absurdly exaggerated idea of the capacity oflaw to make men morally pure. Con- 60 stant admired the American revolutionaries who were satisfied with a system in which ambition counteracted ambition. Robespierre, by contrast, aspired to create an order "in which the only ambition is to deserve fame and serve the country." 120 Instead of rechanneling private vice for public benefit, he wished to eradicate vice and enthrone virtue in its stead. According to Constant, it was this unbelievable attempt to "improve" men against their will and to resurrect a vir~ tue-based polity on the ancient model that produced the most gruesome atrocities of the Terror: "The partisans of ancient liberty became furious when modern individuals did not wish to be free according to their method. They redoubled the torments, the people redoubled its resistance, and crimes followed upon errors." 121 The gravest error of the Jacobins was not to have adapted themselves to the general spirit 122 of the age: When punishments that reason reserves for great crimes are applied to actions that some members of society consider a duty, and that the most honest of the contrary party regard as indifferent or excusable, the legislator is obliged, in order to sustain his first iniquity, to multiply indefinitely secondary wrongs. In order to have a single tyrannical law executed, he must compile an entire code of proscriptions and blood.123 Robespierre was simply out of touch with the realities of modern France. By the end of the eighteenth century, the most common complaint against the old regime was that it was a holdover from a bygone age. At mid-century, the word "revolution" had already begun to change its meaning from going back to going forward. 124 As the Revolution got underway, the attack on the old regime was conducted less in the name of an ancient constitution and more in the name of a desirable future. In this context, it was a skillful coup de theatre to stamp the most progressive party with the epithet "anachronism." Indeed, Constant's diagnosis of the Revolution was part of his strategy of tarring the two extremes of French politics with the same brush, and thus of staking out a broad middle position for himself and his allies. It also allowed him to attack the Terror without abandoning the liberalism of the philosophes. The Psychology of Revolution Constant's most penetrating insight into the leaders of the French Revolution was that their Rousseauism went deeper than it first seemed. Rousseau admired Sparta but was pessimistic about the chances for reviving ancient frugality and virtue in a corrupt modern world. Robespierre is sometimes depicted as an optimist who tried to do what Rousseau had declared impossible. But in fact Rousseauist pessimism permeated the speeches of Robespierre from 1792 until his execution in 1794. 125 His last speech conWlNTER/SPRJNG 1983 �eluded with a typical suggestion that the Republic of Virtue is too good for this world: "The time has not yet come when men of good will can serve their country unmolested."126 This half-admission that his own goals were impossible to achieve is the most Rousseauist element in Robespierre's writings. Such a half-consciously perceived discrepancy between extravagant goals and modest historical possibilities is what Constant had in mind in this sardonic commentary: Nothing is stranger to observe than the speeches of the French demagogues. Saint~Just 1 the cleverest among them, composed all his speeches in short, compact sentences, meant to jolt awake worn~out minds. Thus, while he appeared to believe the nation capable of making the most agonizing sacrifices, he recognized by his very style that it was incapable even of paying attention.l27 In diagnosing the Revolution, Constant regularly returned to this dedoublement revolutionnaire. Saint-Just's audience was not asleep; it was frazzled and distracted. It suffered from l'arriere pensee and other signs of excessive civilization which Constant later explored in his novel, Adolphe (1816). Recall this warning of Adolphe: "woe to the man who in the arms of the mistress he has just possessed, conserves a fatal prescience and foresees that he can abandon her."l28 Adolphe's torment stemmed partly from his inability to throw himself into any action with complete abandon. His painful lack of illusions was startlingly mirrored in a psychological portrait Constant painted of the revolutionary crowd. Although modern individuals can become enthused about certain abstract ideas, they are unfitted for feeling enthusiasm toward particular men. Adolphe and the French people share "une deplorable prevoyance'': The French Revolution was most remarkable in this respect. Whatever has been said about the inconstancy of the people in ancient republics, nothing equals the mobility we have wit- nessed. If, during the outbreak of even the best-prepared upheaval, you watch carefully the obscure ranks of the blind and subjugated populace, you will see that the people (even as it follows its leaders) casts its glance ahead to the moment when these leaders will fall. And you will discern within its artificial exaltation, a strange combination of analysis and mockery. The people will seem to mistrust their own convictions. They will try to delude themselves by their own acclamations and to reinvigorate themselves by jaunty raillery. They foresee! so to speak, the moment when the glamor of it all will pass. 29 Constant attributed the savagery and violence of the Revolution to just this lack of conviction, to just this mobility: "Insurrections among the ancients were much more sin- cere than among ourselves."ll0 Bloodshed was a tactic used by eviscerated men to compensate for a deficit of powerful passions: An artificial and contrived insurrection requires, apart from the violence of the insurrection itself, the extra violence TilE ST. JOHNS REVJEW needed to set it in motion . ... During the Revolution, I saw men organizing sham insurrections who proposed massacres in order-as they put it-to give events a popular and national air.l 31 Void of conviction, but unable to tolerate a rudderless state of mind, modern men become "pretendus republicains,"ll2 pseudo-zealots more odious and frenzied than authentic zealots. Their hypocrisy was repellent: Great sacrifices, acts of devotion, victories won by patriotism over natural affections in Greece and Rome served among us as pretexts for the most unbridled outbursts of individual passions. Noble examples were parodied in a miserable fashion. Because, in earlier times, inexorable but just fathers had condemned their criminal children, modern imitators put their own quite innocent enemies to death.133 Constant's general understanding of modern European societies influenced and was influenced by his analysis of the Revolution. Although he considered the Revolution an episode in the moral advance toward legal equality, he never neglected its chilling cruelty. And while he focused intently on modern misuses of communitarian rhetoric, he never denied the genuinely progressive outcome of the Revolution. He thought that the disaster of the Jacobin experiment at legislating public morality revealed the utter futility of trying to reverse. the course of social change. The morals and manners of a skeptical, secular, and commercial society leave much to be desired. Legislative command cannot, however, recreate otiose forms of civic vir- tue and communal belonging. Because Constant wished to counter Rousseau's pernicious influence on the revolutionary generation and to deromanticize the classical city, he often emphasized the brutal features of ancient liberty. Despite this tendency, he was careful to say that the Greeks and the Romans provided the most stunning examples in human history of political freedom. Ancient republicanism, while harsh, was not despotic. It is only in modern society that ancient freedom becomes a ploy for justifying oppression.l 34 Because there were no significant boundaries of the political in the ancient city, total citizenship was not experienced as a violation of the individual or as a restriction on his chances in life. During the Revolution, by contrast, the ludicrous demand for certificats de civisme revealed how threatened authorities felt by the lukewarm commitment of citizens to civic life.m Political absenteeism was perceived as treason, as an illicit evasion of the molding-power of a self. appointed Legislative elite. The pluralism of modern society, including the "line" between state and society, first made the ideal of ancient liberty into a possible pretext for political tyranny. 1. "De la liberte des anciens comparee a celle des modemes," delivered at the Paris Atheneum in 1819 and reprinted in Cours de politique consti· tutionelle ou collection des ouvrages publies sur le gouvernement represen- 61 �tatif, edited by Eduoard Laboulaye, Paris 1872, val. 2, 539-560. Besides this lecture, the basic texts in which Constant discusses the distinction between ancient and modem liberty are Chilpters 6 through 8 of De !'usurpation of 1814, reprinted in Cours de politique, val. 2, 204-217, and, most important of all, Book 16 of the recently published manuscript, originally composed between 1802 and 1804, Les "Principes de politique" de Benjamin Constant, edited by Etienne Hofmann, Geneva 1980, 419-45 5. This early sketch of Constant's argument is itself a rewritten and expanded version of Chapter 3 of Mme de Stael's Des circonsfunces actuelles qui peuvent terminer la revolution, Geneva 1979, 106-112, a work written around 1798, but left unpublished until the twentieth century. We know that Constant actively collaborated on this manuscript. He was certainly involved with the initial conception of the chapter in question and can probably be considered its co-author. The actual degree of Constant's collaboration on Circonstances actuelles, however, will always remain a matter of dispute. Since Constant took whole sentences from the book and simply transplanted them unrevised into his own published works, we can assume he felt a proprietary attitude toward the manuscript of 1798. The relevant chapter also has a kind of Constantian ring discordant with de Stael's ordinary tone. But there is room for legitimate disagreement on this question. The answer to it is also of limited impor· tance. 2. J. B. Bury, The Idea of Progress, New Yark 1932, 78-97; Antoine Adam, Grandeur and Illusion. French Literature and Society 1600-1715, New York 1972, 142-164. 3. See Thomas Hobbes's dismissal of ancient liberty, Leviathan, Part Two, ch. 21, Oxford 1965, 165; and David Hume, "Of the Populousness of Ancient Nations," Essays. Moral, Political and Literary, Oxford 1963, 381-451. Cf. also Alexander Hamilton: "The industrious habits of the people of the present day, absorbed in the pursuits of gain and devoted to the improvements of agriculture and commerce, are incompatible with the condition of a nation of soldiers, which was the true condition of the people of those [ancient] republics." The Federalist Papers, New York 1961,69. 4. Compare the virtue-based ancient republic (discussed in Books IIVIII of De l'esprit des lois) with the English mixed regime (discussed chiefly in Books XI and XII). 5. Montesquieu, De l'esprit des lois, in Oeuvres completes, Paris 1951, val. 2, 431 (Xll, 2). 6. Montesquieu, Esprit, 396 (XI, 5) and 354 (Vlll, 6). 7. Montesquieu, Esprit, 397 (XI, 6). 8. Montesquieu, Causes de la Grandeur des Romains, in Oeuvres completes, 119. 9. Montesquieu, Esprit, 363 (Vlll, 16). 10. Montesquieu, Esprit, 272 (1V, 8). 11. Montesquieu, Esprit, 269 (IV, 6). 12. Montesquieu, Esprit, 273 (1V, 8). 13. Montesquieu, Esprit, 252 (III, 3): "Les politiques grecs, qui vivoient dans le gouvernement populaire, ne reconnoissient d'autre force qui pUt les soutenir que celle de la vertu." 14. Montesquieu, Esprit, 303 (V, 19). 15. Max Weber, The City, New York 1958,220. 16. Montesquieu, Esprit, 274 (V, 2). 17. Montesquieu, Esprit, 362 (VIll, 16). 18. Montesquieu, Esprit, 252 (III, 3). 19. Montesquieu's definition of freedom as personal security (with no reference to self-government or the satisfactions afforded participants in a common endeavor) was echoed in Jaucourt's article on political liberty in the Encyclopedie: "La liberte politique du citoyen est cette tranquillite d'esprit que procede de I' opinion que chacun a de sa sfirete, & pour qu'on ait cette sfirete, il faut que le gouvernement soit tel, qu'un citoyen ne puisse pas craindre un citoyen." Encyclopedie, ou Dictionnaire raisonne des sciences, des arts et des metiers, val. 9, Neufchastel1765, 472. 20. Jean-Louis de Lolme, The Constitution of England, London 1807, 246. 21. Joseph Priestly, An Essay on the First Principles of Government and of the Nature of Political, Civil and Religious Liberty, London 1768, 12-13, 62 54; Adam Ferguson, An Essay on the History of Civil Society, London 1767, 92; Jean-Charles-Leonard Sismondi, Histoire des republiques italiennes du moyen-age, Paris 1809, val. 4, 369-370. These texts are all cited in Guy Dodge, Benjamin Constant's Philosophy of Liberalism, Chapel Hill1980, 43-44. 22. Cours de Politique, vol. 2, 539. 23. Cours de politique, vol. 2, 547. 24. Cours de politique, vol. 2, 547. 25. Les "Principes de politique" de Benjamin Constant, 432. 26. Isaiah Berlin, "Two Concepts of Liberty," in Four Essays on Liberty, Oxford 1969, 118-172. 27. Some radically ascetic "noes" may not entail any "yeses," but this is not the case with modem liberty. 28. "Principes de politique," 421-424. 29. Cours de Politique, val. 2, 556-557. 30. For this point I am indebted to Larry Siedentop, "Two Liberal Traditions" (in The Idea of Freedom, edited by Alan Ryan, Oxford 1979, 153174), though his contrast between French and British liberalism is uncon· vincing because it requires the expulsion of Adam Smith from the British tradition. 31. Cours de politique, val. 2, 213-217. 32. Constantin Franyois de Volney, Lecons d'histoire, in Oeuvres com· pletes, Paris 1846, 592. 33. Robert L. Herbert, David, Brutus, Voltaire and the French Revolution, New York 1972. 34. Cours de politique, vol. 2, 217. 35. Constant's analysis of the masks worn by "modem imitators of ancient republics" was echoed thirty-five years later in Karl Marx's discussion of the role played by Roman costumes and Roman phrases in the great French Revolution. (Karl Marx, ''Der achtzehnte Brumaire de Louis Bonaparte," Marx-Engels Werke, Berlin 1978, val. 8, 116.) Curiously enough, in the very same passage where Marx tacitly repeated Constant, he explicitly said that Constant was another bourgeois propagandist unaware that "ghosts from the days of Rome'' had watched over the demoli· tion of feudalism in France. Marx's principal point, in any case, was that history had instructed the French Revolutionaries to create bourgeois society, and that they had to drug themselves to the banality of their task. They mouthed public-spirited slogans and struck patriotic poses borrowed from ancient citizens. Marx went on to predict that the proletarian revolution would be quite different. It would be truly heroic, neither re· quiring nor admitting any form of self-deception. Unlike Marx, Constant did not believe the emergence of revolutionary cults of antiquity could be traced to the cunning of reason. He thought that the Jacobin fixation on classical virtue was a contingent fact: it was caused by the classical education of middle class French elites and especially by the paucity of alternative languages available for attacking royalism and religious orthodoxy. 36. Cours de politique, vol. 2, 548-549. 37. "Principes de politique," 420. 38. Cf. Judith Shklar, Men and Citizens. A Study of Rousseau's Social Theory, Cambridge 1969. 39. Cours de politique, vol. 2, 555. 40. Cours de politique, vol. 2, 559-560. 41. The ultraroyalists or extreme reactionary party already began to make fierce recriminations against Louis XVIII for his concessions to constitutional government in 1814. They were Constant's principal adversaries for the last fifteen years of his life. 42. Cf. George Sabine, "Two Democratic Traditions," Philosophical Re· view, 61, October 1952,451-474. 43. Mme de Stael, Circonstances actuelles, 106. 44. Mme de Stael, Circonstances, 106. 45. Mme de Stael, Circonstances, 106. 46. Mme de Stael, Circonstances, l 07. 47. Mme de Stael, Circonstances, 107. 48. Mme de Stael, Circonstances, 107. 49. Mme de Stael, Circonstances, 108. 50. Mme de Stael, Circonstances. 109. WINTER/SPRING 1983 �51. 52. 53. 54. 55. Mme de Stael, Circonstances, 110. Mme de Stael, Circonstances, 111. Mme de Stael. Circonstances, 111. Mme de Stael, Circonstances, 111. John Plamenatz, The Revolutionary Movement in France 1815-71, London 1952, 21-22. 56. Cours de politique, val. 57. Cours de politique, val. 58. Cours de politique, val. 59. Cours de politique, val. 2, 540. 2, 540. 2, 540. 2, 540. 60. The new constitution of 1814, regally "granted" to the nation by Louis XVIII, retained the Civil Code, and recognized legal equality, religious toleration, and the right of purchasers of "national lands" to keep their property. To understand the liberal-ultra battles of the Restoration, it is important to note that the Charter was a blatantly ambiguous document which, for instance, did not make clear how power was to be apportioned between the king and the Chambers. Guillaume de Bertier de Sauvigny, The Bourbon Restoration, Philadelphia 1966,65-72. 61. Cours de politique, val. 2, 554. 62. Cours de politique, val. 2, 542. 63. Cours de politique, val. 2, 542. 64. 65. 66. 67. 68. 69. 70. 71. 72. 73. 74. Cours de politique, vol. 2, 553. Reprinted in Cours de politique, val. 2, 53-69. Cours de politique, vol. I, 17, 180. Cours de politique, val. l, 173. Cours de politique, val. 2, 556. Cours de politique, vol. 2, 547. Cours de politique, vol. 2, 556; see also 557. Cours de politique, val. 2, 560. Cours de politique, vol. 2, 545-546. Cours de politique, vol. 2, 559. Rousseau, Oeuvres completes, edited by Bernard Gagne bin et Marcel Raymond, Paris 1964, vol. 3, 430. 75. Cours de politique, vol. 2, 542. 76. Cours de politique, val. 2, 553. 77. Benjamin Constant, Commentaire sur l'ouvrage cfe Fi[angieri, Paris 1824, vol. 2, 182-183. 78. Albert Hirschman, The Passions and the Interests. Political Argu, ments for Capitalism before its Triumph, Princeton 1977, 123-124. 79. Louis Bergeron, France under Napoleon, Princeton 1981,87. 80. Cours de politique, vol. 2, 552. 81. Franklin Ford, Robe and Sword. The Regrouping of the French Aristocracy after Louis XN, New York 1965, 19. 82. Cours de politique, val. 2, 559. 83. Cours de politique, val. 2, 558. 84. Cours de politique, val. 2, 558. 85. Cours de politique, val. 2, 558. 86. Cours de politique, val. 2, 547. 87. Cours de politique, val. 2, 559. 88. Cours de politique, val. 2, 559. 89. Cours de politique, val. 2, 560. 90. In the manuscripts of 1802-1804, written under the shadow of Napoleon, we find: "lorsqu'il n'y a dans un pays libre ni liberte de la presse, ni droits politiques,le peuple se detache entierement des affaires publiques. Toute communication est rompue entre les gouvernants et le gouvernes. L'autorite, pendant quelque temps, et les partisans de l'autorite peuvent regarder cela comme un avantage. Le gouvernement ne rencontre point des obstacles. Rien ne le contrarie. II agit librement mais c'est que lui seul est vivant et que la nation est morte." Les "Principes de politique" de Ben· jamin Constant, 137. The liberal constitutionalism Constant advocated was obviously not intended to detach citizens entirely from public affairs. 91. Jean-Louis de Lolme, The Constitution of England, London 1807, 245. Referring specifically to the French revolutionaries and their followers, Edmund Burke employed a similar distinction: he wrote that "the right of the people is almost always confounded with their power." Reflections on the Revolution in France, London 1969, 153. 92. Albert Hirschman, Exit, Voice and Loyalty, Cambridge, Mass. 1970, THE ST. JOHNS REVIEW 30-43. Constant, however, was thinking of "interdependence" rather than a mere "mixture." 93. Commentaire, Paris 1822, vol. 1, 73. 94. Commentaire, vol. 1, 72. 95. According to Isaiah Berlin, Constant defended democratic selfgovernment "only for the reason ... that without it negative liberty may be too easily crushed." Four Essays on Liberty, Oxford 1969, xlvii. 96. Letter to Mme de Nassau, 20 January 1800, cited and translated by Elizabeth Schermerhorn, Benjamin Constant, New York 1970, 183. 97. Hippolyte Taine, The Ancient Regime, New York 1876. 98. Melanges de litterature et de politique, Brussels 1829, vol. 1, 68. 99. As Gay and others have stressed, the appeal to antiquity was only one aspect of the Enlightenment tradition; and it was counterbalanced by a belief that, in many domains, the moderns had outstripped the ancients. 100. In his essay "Of Refinement in the Arts," Hume wrote: "To declaim against present times, and magnify the virtue of remote ancestors, is a propensity almost inherent in the human mind." Essays, Oxford 1963, 285. 101. "Principes de politique," 438. 102. "During a conversation in which [Robespierre] attacked the representative system, it is reported that, asked what he would put in its place, he replied, 'Celui de Lycurge.' " Alfred Cobban, "The_ Political Ideas of Robespierre during the Convention," Aspects of the French Revolution, New York 1968, 186; consider also R. R. Palmer, The Age of the Demo· cratic Revolution, Princeton 1964, val. 2, 124. 103. Oeuvres de Maximilien Robespierre, edited by Laponneraye, New York 1970, vol. 3, 518. 104. Robespierre, Oeuvres, vol. 3, 608; but also see vol. 3, 194, where Ro· bespierre notes of Sparta that "this nation of austere republicans has nothing in common with a nation of 25 million men." Robespierre was flexible enough that, in order to attack the sectionnaires and the Commune, he often reversed himself and denounced urban self-government on the ancient model. 105. Robespierre, Oeuvres, 3, 544. 106. This thesis has found a subtle defender in Michel Villey, Leqons d'histoire de Ia philosophie du droit, Paris 1962, 221-250. 107. According to Moses Finley, "Classical Greeks and Republican Romans possessed a considerable measure of freedom, in speech, in political debate, in their business activities, even in religion. However, they lacked, and would have been appalled by, inalienable rights. There were no theoretical limits to the power of the state, no activity, no sphere of human behavior in which the state could not legitimately intervene provided the decision was properly taken for any reason that was held to be valid by a legitimate authority." The Ancient Economy, London 1973, 154-155. 108. Melanges de litterature et de politique, vol. 1, 68. 109. Norman Hampson, The Social History of the French Revolution, To· ronto 1965, 223. 110. "Suspicion was directed not only towards probable authors of acts already committed, on grounds of definite circumstances susceptible of discussion and of proof, but also towards the possible perpetrators of eventual crimes, who were believed capable of them because of their opinions or even their real or simulated indifference." George Lefebvre, The French Revolution, London 1968, vol. 2, 118. 111. Fran~ois Furet and Denis Richet, The French Revolution, New York 1970, 188-189. 112. Robespierre, Oeuvres, vol. 3, 514. 113. Robespierre, Oeuvres, vol. 3, 698 and 612. 114. Norman Hampson, The Life and Opinions of Maximilien Robespierre, London 1974, 139 and 173. 115. Robespierre, Oeuvres, vol. 3, 551. 116. On the execution of Louis XVI as an attempt to furnish a republican re-education for the miseducated French nation, see Michael Walzer, Regicide and Revolution, Cambridge 1974, 1-89. 117. According to Plutarch, Lycurgus "bred up his citizens in such a way that they neither would nor could live by themselves; they were to make themselves one with the public good, and, clustering like bees around 63 �their commander, be by their zeal and public spirit carried all but out of themselves, and devoted wholly to their country." The Lives of the Noble Grecians and Romans, New York n.d., 69. · 118. Robespierre, Oeuvres, voL 1, 156. 119. Robespierre, Oeuvres, vol. 3, 541. 120. Robespierre, Oeuvres, vol. 3, 541. 121. Cours de politique, vol. 2, 213. 122. For Montesquieu's idea of the "general spirit" of a country or age, see De l'esprit des lois, Book XIX, chapters four and five. 123. Des Suites de Ia contre-revolution de 1660 en Angleterre, 56-57. 124. Consider the two uses of the word "revolution" at the beginning of Turgot's "A Philosophical Review of the Successive Advances of the Human Mind," On Progress, Sociology and Economics, edited by R. L. Meek, Cambridge 1973,41-42. See also Felix Gilbert, "Revolution," Dictionary of the History of Ideas, New York 1973, vol. 4, 152-163. 125. 126. 127. 128. 129. 130. 131. 132. Hampson, The Life and Opinions of Maximilien Robespierre, 13 3-134. Robespierre, Oeuvres, vol. 3, 736. Les "Principes de politique" de Benjamin Constant, 432. Adolphe in Oeuvres, edited by Alfred Roulin, Paris, 1964, 32. "Principes de politique," 434. "Principes de politique," 620. "Principes de politique," 620. "Principes de politique," 86. 133. "Principes de politique," 438. 134. This caveat distinguishes Constant's position from the views ad· vanced by Karl Popper, The Open Society and its Enemies, 2 vols., Princeton 1966. 135. M. J. Sydenham, The French Revolution, New York 1966, p. 178; Hampson, The Life and Opinions of Maximilien Robespierre, 198. SIXTEEN EIGHTEEN 'Why do these gentlemen wish to throw me out Of the window?' asked an obscure Bohemian secretary Before he was unexpectedly exfenestrated and miraculously saved By a pile of castleyard rubbish or an angel of God. Thus he was flung into History, and with his fall Introduced three decades of winter, delusion and warThe occasional Adam, perplexed and resurrected, to remind us That the innocent often are incidentally in castles. ELLIOTT ZUCKERMAN 64 WIN1ER/SPRING 1983 �Mark Aldanov The Holdup at Tiflis on June 26, 1907: the ''Exes '' from The Suicides translated by Joel Carmichael The following section comes from Mark Aldanov's last novel, The Suicides, that appeared in Russian in Western Europe in 1958 after his death in 1957-but has never been published in English. Bom in 1886 in Kiev, Mark Alexandrovich Landau (Aldanov was his pen name) won prizes in secondary school for his accomplish~ ments in Greek and Latin. By 1910 he had earned degrees in law and natural sciences from the University of Kiev and published a monograph in organic chemistry. Untill917 he lived in St. Petersburg. In some sense the Bolshevik seizure of power in October made him into an artist and a Russian: he began to write journalism and then novels after he left Russia forever in March 1919. He wrote first of all in the Russian language press abroad for the more than two million Russians in exile by 1922. But his novels and essays also won a wide audience in Europe except the Soviet Union and the United States. Throughout much of his life he continued his scientific work. In exile he lived mostly in France but also in Berlin for a few years and during the Second World War in New York. He was, he used to say, the only Russian writer abroad who managed to live from his pen-with difficulty. The following novels of Aldanov have appeared in English: The Ninth Thermidor (1923); The Devil's Bridge (1925); Saint Helena, Little Island; The Escape (1932); For Thee the Best (1940); Before the Deluge (1950); To Live as We Wish (1952); Nightmare and Dawn (1957), For Aldanov see C. Nicholas Lee, The Novels of Mark Alexandrovich Aldanov, The Hague, Mouton 1968; "Mark Aldanov: Russia, Jewry, and the World," Midstream, March 1981, 41-46. The Suicides begins with the Social Democratic Congress in Joel Carmichael translated the memoirs ofN. N. Sukhanov (The Russian Revolution 1917, Oxford 1952), the only full-length eyewitness account of the February and October events in Russia in 1917. His essay, "The Lost Continent, the Conundrum of Christian Origins," appeared in the Autumn-Winter 1982-83 issue of the St. John's Review. THE ST. JOHNS REVIEW Brussels in 1903 and ends in 1923. In the manner of Tolstoy (on whom Aldanov had published a critical work in 1915), itportrays historical personages as well as private individuals. There are accurate, carefully researched portraits of Mussolini, Wilhelm II, Franz Joseph, Witte, Lenin, Stalin. The most brilliant is perhaps of Witte. The portrait of Lenin is superior to its only rival, Solzhenitsyn's in Lenin in Zurich-in part because Aldanov unlike Solzhenitsyn knew many men who had known Lenin. Here is one of many characterizations of Lenin: His favourites of not long before, Zinoviev and Kamenev, were holding things up. They did not want an uprising. Lenin began to hate them ferociously. Not, to be sure, for long. In complete contrast to Stalin he was never rancorous, and was always ready to come to a friendly accord with any of the people whom he referred to and considered "scoundrels" and "sons-of-bitches," as long as they submitted to him completely. Robespierre could not talk for two minutes without saying something about ''vertu." Lenin would never even have pronounced the word, not only because the world had undergone a c lumge in literary sty I.e. He simply did not understand just that "virtue" was, and what its point was if it existed. Surely, it was impossible to make a revolution without scoundrels? A meditation, born of decades of recollection, study and reflection, on the Europe that was to destroy itself in the First World War, The Suicides contains many stunning historical judgements-iudgements of simplicity and depth rarely found in academic historians. Aldanov understood the interrelation of events throughout Europe because he had an uncanny sense-that betrayed itself in the resiliency of his narrative-of the relation of public events to private lives, especially to private bafflement, incapacity and self-ignorance. 65 �Here is one of many remarks on the outbreak of the First World War: According to all profound sociological :theories the assassination of Archduke Franz-Ferdinand was only the occasion of the World War. The real causes were quite different: "Anglo-German economic rivalry," "struggle for markets," "internal contradictions of the capitalist order," etc. But the reading of the simple-minded correspondence of the contemporary statesmen thrusts another conclusion forward: The assassination in Sarajevo was not an occasion, it was just this that launched the catastrophe. They never wrote or spoke about "the struggle for markets" or about "the internal contradictions of the capitalist order" and they had never heard about them. It may well be they were not even acquainted with the words. The following section tells the story of perhaps the most famous Bolshevik holdup. It also represents a turning point in the life of one of the main characters in the novel, Jambul, who after the robbery leaves the terrorists forever to return to the land and the religion of his fathers in Turkey. Dzhugashvili is the name Stalin bore at his birth, Koba his nickname. Krupskaya was Lenin's wife. L. R The Tillis terrorists usually assembled in the same restaurant, the Tilipuchuri. This had nothing to do with conspiracy; they knew that the local police were very inefficient, and would not be too zealous in arresting them. At that time a policeman's trade, especially in the Caucasus, was just as daD.gerous as a terrorist's. The Caucasian Deputy Police Commissioner, Count Vorontsov-Dashkov, was a man of liberal views. He was fond of the Caucasians, as all Russians have been, with a slight touch of benevolent disdain for the Caucasian accent. In his youth he himself had fought against the mountaineers for three years, and recalled that there was never the slightest hostility to them in the army at the time and that in Russian literature, from Pushkin and Lermontov to Tolstoy, there was scarcely a single unsympathetic Caucasian. The war had long since been over, but in a confused and almost unconscious way the Commissioner re- garded the terrorists of the Twentieth Century as a somewhat inferior repetition of Shamil's mountaineers.* He did not, of course, consort with the terrorists, but he attempted to maintain human relations somehow with the leaders of moderate Socialism. They sometimes made private pacts which, however, instantly became public. For instance, when the Armenians and the Tatars fell out, he handed the Social-Democratic Party five hundred rifles in order to arm the working-class guards who were maintaining order, on the word of honor of the Menshevik, Ramishvili, that the rifles would be returned to the author- *For Shamil's mountaineers see Leo Tolstoy's short story, A Prisoner in the Caucasus (1872). L.R. 66 ities as soon as the emergency was over. Before the expected arrival of the Tsar in the Caucasus, he secured the revolutionaries' word of honor that no attempts at assassination would be made. He did not think such an agreement completely assured the Tsar's safety, but in the Caucasus, in his opinion, it was a better guarantee than any police measures. Vorontzov-Dashkov was opposed to execution; he thought that no matter what you did you couldn't frighten a Chechen or Ingush with the gallows. In addition he had almost become a fatalist after the assassination of Alexander II-you can't escape fate. He had been a favorite of three Tsars. Hence the Government disliked him intensely. The Count's ancient name, however, his enormous wealth, his independence as a man who needed no one, even his seignorial appearance and his manner of talking to everyone in the same way, and most of all his personal intimacy with the Tsar made the Government wary. It interfered as little as possible with his administrative methods in the Caucasus. The Commissioner's views may have been reflected a little even in the activities of the police. But even out of simple caution police agents tried to avoid looking into places like the Tilipuchuri restaurant unless it was absolutely unavoidable. Everyone in the Caucasus carried cold steel, a great many were revolutionists, and there were more than a few primitive bombs being made. "Absolutely every child is capable of taking a sardine-tin and some drugstore articles and making a shell that's fit to blow up his nursemaid-," wrote a contemporary. It is likely that even at that time the Police Department knew that the "expropriations" were being conducted from afar by Lenin himself. It may also have known that for this purpose the Central Committee of the Party had formed a small, still more central committee, which was so secret that for a long time the most eminent Social-Democrats never even knew of its existence. There were only two men on this committee besides Lenin: Krasin, alias Nikitich, alias Winter, alias-for some reason-the Horse, and Bogdanov, who had half a dozen pseudonyms: Maximov, Verner, Rakhmetov, Sysoika, Reinert, Ryadovey. The members of the Police Department were not particularly interested in the spiritual qualities of the revolutionaries: "They're all swine!" (Some might have added "including ourselves"). But it was just these two Bolsheviks whom it was difficult to suspect of terrorism: one was busy either with philosophy, science, or heaven knows what; the other was a prominent engineer who had amassed some money in business and was by no means a "horse" but an extremely able and skilful activist. But the people they had assigned as deputies in immediate charge of terroristic activities in the Caucasus were known to the police-Koba or Dzhugashvili, and Kamo. There were fables and anecdotes about Kamo in the Caucasus. But not even the revolutionists knew much about Dzhugashvili. They spoke about him even less. Incomprehensibly this man, who was passionately in love WINTER/SPRING 1983 �with self-advertisement, which he later devoted himself to with a success unheard of in history, in his youth told almost nothing about himself even to his close comrades: doubtless he suspected them all of being provocateurs. For still far more incomprehensible reasons he almost never spoke about his doings in the Caucasus even later on, when he could have without the slightest danger. It was already dusk when )ambul hurried to the restaurant. He glanced into the open window. No guards were there. Where can they be today? he wondered. He knew that no one should stay home alone that night-unless Koba, perhaps-he has no nerves at all, thought )ambul. He walked on further. After convincing himself that there were no suspicious-looking people about, he turned back. Time to eat, he thought, I haven't had a thing since morning. Early that morning, after taking the best horse out of the stable, he had ridden far out of the city and had practiced with his revolver in a secluded spot in the woods. Even years earlier he had been able to hit a hull's eye at fifteen paces. He had stuck a sheet of paper about three times as large as a playing card on to a tree and missed it twice in a row. This annoyed him very much, though not much accuracy was needed for the business on the following day. Lack of sleep, of course! he thought angrily. But what about it, I don't think it's the first time I've gone into a dangerous business. Before I used to sleep perfectly well. He took himself in hand and began shooting better. Before his last shot he made a bet with himself; if I miss it means we'll have a fiasco. He had made bets with himself at home too, with both cards and coins: he got different results, but even without the cards one thing was clear: whatever happened it was already impossible to withdraw. It would have meant dishonoring oneself. Sometimes it seemed to him that he should actually make bets about something else too: was the whole thing necessary? He had had doubts for a long time, and they had recently been growing stronger and stronger. Occasionally he even asked himself whether they weren't to be explained by his fear of death. His friends said he was absolutely fearless-he simply didn't understand what fear was. Such remarks got back to him and pleased him. Nevertheless, he thought them exaggerated: people who had never been afraid didn't exist. Sokolov and Kamo are braver than anyone I've ever seen, but they must have been afraid, too. At last he hit the sheet of paper, actually right in the center, and he stopped practicing. He had taken along only one reserve box of bullets, and it was bad luck to take thirteen shots before an action. Seven hits out of twelve, he thought, not bad, but before I would have done better. Before, whenever he came to the Caucasus, even from Paris, he always became lively and merry. Now it was difTHE ST. JOHNS REVIEW ferent. His usual gaiety had almost left him. He was serious-minded, somewhat solemn. Yes, it's quite possible I'll be killed. Well, so I'll be killed, there'll just be one )ambul less, that's all ... I thought the time had gone by when I would draw up a balance-sheet of my life before a dangerous action; it seems it hasn't quite, he said to himself. He thought about his aging father: how would this make him feel? He thought about Lyuda too, sometimes. He had pleasant memories of her. He didn't know just what she was doing. At their parting in Petersburg she hadn't asked him to write (she had simply forgotten). This hurt him. Nevertheless, he sent her a letter from Tiflis. To avoid causing her any trouble he sent it without a signature, in an assumed handwriting, and without any indication of a return address. There could be no reply. But she probably wouldn't have answered anyhow, out of pride, he thought. He didn't write again. It must have been for the first time since he was fourteen years old that a woman was on his mind. In general he thought about women very seldom. The restaurant was empty and stifling, with a smell of fried onions and freshly ground coffee, each a smell he liked. Kamo sat at the end of the room. He had evidently just arrived. There was nothing to eat or drink on the little table in front of him. He's got himself all dressed up, the jackass! thought )ambul. The cutthroat was wearing a dark-red Circassian tunic, a white silk Caucasian coat, and Moroccan soft-soled boots; the scabbards of the sabre and the dagger were thickly adorned with turquoise, silver, and ivory. A white Caucasian fur-cap was laying on the chair. Thank God he hasn't put on a felt cloak and hood, in June! )ambul thought. Can he have the bombs on him, too? No, for the time being Koba's taken the bombs away from them. Koba may be anything you like, he's not a fool! After glancing around once more quickly, almost imperceptibly, he greeted Kamo, and sat down opposite him at the little table. "Look here, don't sit that way with your back to the wall. How will you fight if the cops jump in?" asked Kamo. His Russian sounded almost like a caricature of the Caucasian accent used for jokes. There was no other language they had in common. Both spoke Tatar badly. "Why should we sit side by side at such a small table? If the cops come in please inform me." "When should I inform you? A cop runs quickly. Lose half a second, you're through. Impossible to lose half a second," said Kama, who never understood jokes. "All right then, I'll know soon enough. There's a backentrance behind you. A cop likes to run through backentrances, too. Hadn't you guessed?" HNo/' admitted Kama, astonished. Jambullooked at him, as always, with tender curiosity. It was only with him that he spoke jocularly now. He knew of his exploits, which usually succeeded, and he couldn't understand why or how they had succeeded. He doesn't even understand what a conspiracy is! Jambul thought. He obvi- 67 �ously only has instincts instead of a mind, like a wolf or 1 tiger. Jambul knew a great many terrorists. He considered So· kolov the most remarkable of them', and was a little sorry the executed man hadn't been a Caucasian. The affair in Tiflis was going to be the work of Caucasians only. All of them reckless and foolhardy. All of them much cleverer than Kamo, thought Jambul. Nevertheless he's going to have the chief role, maybe that's right after all. "Have you had any vodka?" uNo." "Will you have some with me? It may be the last one we'll have." "Are both of them watching out for the cashier?" "Both of them are watching out for the cashier." "Who's going to be carrying the money?" "Two will carry money. The cashier and the accountant." "Are they young? Family men?" "I don't know." ~~what are their names?" "The cashier is Kurdyumov. The accountant is Golov· nya." 11 ls there lots of money?" "Annette Sulakhvelidze says-a million. Patsiya Galdava says three hundred thousand." "Old wives' tales! Are they going in a carriage?" "Maybe," said Kamo indifferently. "I'll drink one glass, no more, before tomorrow morning. I'll drink milk. I won't drink wine." "Why not? Did Koba give you orders? Lenin himself drinks a little. They say he likes Italian wines." "He doesn't. I brought wine once to Kuokal. A whole wineskin from the Caucasus I brought. At that time I was an aide·de.camp. I rode in first class. He thanked me. Lenin doesn't like wine. But Bogdanov likes wine. He was so happy! And Lenin gave me bombs, Krasin made them. I also made them. He knows chemistry. I helped. Good "They are going in a phaeton." "What's the guard?" "Another phaeton." "But it's not the phaeton itself that's going to do the guarding. Who's going to be in it?" "Five men with guns. Caldava says-always five men with guns." Don't tell me there isn't going to be a Cossack convoy?" "There will be a Cossack convoy. It will be behind. It bombs." "Many Cossacks. I don't know how many." "Oh, we'll do away with quite a few people if we're not finished off first. They have wives, children ... Does that mean the women couldn't find out anything else?" uStolypins?" "Stolypins," Kamo nodded. This was the name for a new type of bomb, which had been tried out first on Ap· tekar Island. "So . . . D'you want something to eat? D'you like shashlyk?" "I like shashlyk. I like almond pastry. Are you paying with your own mon'ey? Not Party money-if it's Party money I'll have cheese." "My own, my own. I've never had any Party money and never will. Tomorrow, too, if it comes off, I won't take any· thing for myself." "Will I? You are a fool!" "But maybe others will, eh?" "Listen, you want me to kill?" "No. Of course our own people won't. I know, they're almost all good fellows, but the others have stolen. What will you eat with the vodka? I'll pay, I get some from my father, today there's no sense worrying about money. What zakuski d'you like?" "I like everything. Just a little bit. Some cheese ... " Jambul called over the owner and after some reflection ordered a lavish dinner (perhaps the last we'll ever have, he thought); smoked sturgeon, caviar, cheese, shashlyk, almond pastry, a carafe of vodka, a bottle of the best Kakhetin wine. "Now tell me, just don't shout," he said in a low voice, after the owner had gone away. "Have you seen Patsiya?" Tve seen Patsiya/' answered Kama, who whenever it was possible preferred to give answers in the wording of the question. "I've seen Annette, too." 1 68 11 will be in front, too." "Many Cossacks?, "The women couldn't, and you and I couldn't." "Are there any changes in the plans?" "Why changes? It's a good plan." "What does your Koba think?" "Koba gives the orders, and what he thinks, who knows?" 11 That's so. He's always lying." uDon't dare say Koba lies!" "But in his whole life he never said a word of truth: he's simply incapable of it." "Listen. D'you want me to kill you!" said Kamo, and his face began to flush scarlet. "Lenin-here!" And he raised his hand high above his head. "Then comes Nikitich." He lowered his hand. "Then Koba." His hand went down an· other little bit. "And then you, me, everyone." He placed his hand on the table. "Thank you. But your Koba, after all, used to be a Men· shevik, though he hides it carefully." "No more Bolshevik, Menshevik. In Stockholm Lenin got united." uHe 1ll soon be disunited. 11 "He will not be disunited. But Koba was never a Men· shevik. Always Bolshevik." "He was a Menshevik, he was. In the Caucasus we all were," protested Jambul, who liked to tease him. "You lie! I kill!". "No, please, don't kill me. Kill someone else instead. By the way, do you always carry your Mauser on you?" WINTER/SPRING 1983 �"Always. Never without." "Well, another fool," said Jambul, though he was never separated from his revolver either. "What else did you talk about with Lenin?" "Provocateurs we talked about. Lenin thinks provoca· teurs. Krasin also thinks so. I suggested a plan. I go to all the comrades. I take three men, good ones, I take along a stake. A big one. I ask: 'Are you a provocateur?' If he's a provocateur, we stick him on stake right away. If he gets scared, it means he's also a provocateur. A good Bolshevik never gets scared. Lenin didn't want it. Krasin didn't either. He cursed. Cursed a lot. He said, 'You are a savage and an idiot.' Lenin laughed. It means it's true. I know I have no culture . . . Do I talk Russian well?" l'Magnificently.'' "I don't know grammar. I don't know anything. I can't write. In Georgian and Armenian I can. Badly. I can't do arithmetic at all," said Kamo with a sigh. "No culture. A savage. My grandfather was a scholar. A priest." "Really? A priest?" "A good man, a scholar. I myself was a believer, oh, what a believer I was! I prayed a lot. Then I stopped, the comrades taught me. Koba taught me. He taught me every· thing. Grateful. But I learned badly. My father was a drunkard. He's alive, but he kicked me out a long time ago. Because of him I have no culture ... Well, let's talk business." "Well, tell me everything." They went over what was to be done the next day. There really were no changes in the plan. " ... We start off at Sumbatov's house." "But who is finally going to throw the first bomb from the roof? That's the only thing that still hasn't been decided." "None of your business, who throws it. Koba knows who throws it. Not you." "He'll tell me today, no later. It's just as much 'my business' as his," said Jambul angrily. HI'm risking more than he is." "Not more than he. You're not necessary, either. Koba is necessary." "I have a different opinion ... But tell me, is it true they once hanged you?" "They hanged me. The swine hanged everyone they caught right off. I stuck my chin into the rope. They didn't notice. They were drunk. It was disgusting. The swine went away. I untied myself. Ran away. They didn't hang me. My chin was sore a month." "Have you got a pure-blooded horse ready for tomor· row?" "Don't say pure-blooded. Say thoroughbred. A Russian officer told me that. A dragoon. Stationed here. You say pure-blooded, they see immediately you're not a Russian officer," explained Kamo with satisfaction. "So they'll see it immediately, will they? And of course you're a typical Moscow hussar ... Well anyhow, try not to get in the way of the bomb on your thoroughbred. It would THE ST. JOHNS REVIEW be a pity about the horse. Does it mean you're going to be in uniform tomorrow, too?" "In uniform." "More fool you. I'm afraid you're going to mess things up. It would be better if you gave me your part." 1 won't give it to you. You're the fool now." "And where did you get that medal you've stuck on? Did you buy it in the Armenian Bazaar?" "I bought it in the Armenian Bazaar." "You should have bought a St. Andrew First Class," ad. vised Jambul, but caught himself up, thinking, he'll do it too! "Not St. Andrew First Class. Koba said: 'Stanislas Third Class with crossed swords and a ribbon!' If anyone was in two battles in the Japanese war then it's a Stanislas Third Class with crossed swords and a ribbon. You don't know. Koba knows." "Koba knows everything. And what is he going to do to. morrow himself? Is he also going to shoot from the Square?" "He's not going to shoot from the Square. If he's killed, who'll be left?" "Of course, of course. Is he excited?" "He's not excited." "Is it true he's as evil as the devil?" "Evil," agreed Kamo, after thinking. "But not like the devil. His wife died." "I know. Is it true that she was a believer and couldn't endure Socialists? Did he love her?" 41 "He loved her so much, so much." "And I never believed he could love anyone. Iremashvili told me he was at the cemetery. He himself and Soso-he calls Koba 'Soso' for old times' sake. They were friends. Anyhow Dzhugashvili told him, putting his hand over his heart: 'Only she could soften my heart of stone. Now, I hate everyone! It's so empty, so unspeakably empty!' I questioned him over and over. He swore it was exactly that way! So Koba can't shoot from the Square? Are you worried about him." "I'm not worried about you. I'm not worried about my· self. I'm worried about Koba." "Right," said Jambul. It's really impossible even to get angry with him, he thought, looking squarely at Kamo. Ka· rna's eyes were in some incomprehensible way kind, soft, sad. "Well, fine, but when you grab the sack in the Square whom will you give it to?" "I'll give it to Koba. I'll give it to Lenin. I'll give it to Krasin." "They're all right. It's true that Dzhugashvili doesn't care about money. But where can it be held for the time being? It's not so easy after all to get it across the border." "None of your business." "Koba had a good idea. He told me about it. He wants to hide it in the Tiflis Observatory. He worked there once, I think, didn't he? He knows every nook and cranny there. He wants to put it in the Director's sofa. Clever! Clever!" 69 �~~Ask Koba." "It's clever," repeated Jambul. He' liked the idea primarily because of its originality: the Obs\'rvatory! He thought with a smile that Koba wouldn't entrust the money to one man alone. Either he'd take it himself or send a few people, so that it'll be more difficult to steal it. "I would still like to see him before the action. Will you come with me?" "I won't come. And I won't give you the address." "I know the address without you anyhow," said Jambul. He said good-bye to Kama and went out of the restaurant, once again looking around in all directions. He did not feel like going home. It was really too late to see Koba, and actually there was no point to it. He wouldn't have to spend the night at home, he thought. For that matter, fate's fate. Anyhow, I won't surrender alive. . . What's Lenin going to spend the money on? The little periodicals?lf so what a fine thing to go into an action like this for! Tomorrow I may very well be dead-would it be worth it? Suddenly he recalled the explosion on Aptekar Island. He had read the newspaper accounts with even more eagerness than Lyuda, or anyone else; from the very first moment he understood whose handiwork it had been, and knew all the participants. Now, and not for the first time, he imagined these unknown, speechless young people, almost just as devoted to Cain as the Klimova girl, going in a landau to Aptekarsky Street from the Morskaya, how methodically they noted the turns-two more? no, threehow they studied the names of the streets, the house numbers, how they counted the minutes of life left to them. How for the last time, in front of the villa, they looked at the earth, the sky, the people, the cab-driver, who had also been condemned to death by them. No, I couldn't have done that! thought Jambul with a shudder. There's a great difference between a death that's possible and one that's certain, without the slightest, the most infinitesimal hope of rescue! He thought about the arrest and execution of Cain. How could he have failed to commit suicide at the last moment? He couldn't do it in time, that Hercules! And what if I don't either? ... Nevertheless there's some hope, and there's some sense in this, too. We'll lay our hands on a million, there'll be an uprising and the Caucasus will free itself. That's the one thing that distinguishes our operation from an ordinary armed hold-up, but that one thing is enough ... Yet, if I'm killed life will go on exactly as it always has, it's just that I won't know anything about it. And people won't remember, I'll never go down in history. Will anyone ever recall anything about Sokolov? Who, with all his recklessness and heartlessness, was a super-hero, a match for all the Lenins and Plekhanovs? At this late hour Erivan Square was deserted. He looked at the house from the roof of which some man he didn't know was supposed to throw the first bomb the next day. Three princesses, well-known in Tiflis society, lived on the top floor; good-natured anecdotes used to circulate about them. Could he be up there already? That would be more 70 reasonable than lifting himself up there in the morning light. He guessed that the man would mount from the courtyard by the staircase or the pipes. He walked up to the gates and tried them. They were unlocked. Jambullooked around and peered into the feebly lit courtyard. Two men were standing with their backs to him looking at the roof. One was in a Russian shirt and sandals. He looked to Jambullike Koba. Really, how can I possibly work together with such a man! he thought. It was as though the sight of Koba brought to a head in a flash all those doubts that had been brewing in him for days and months. Tiflis was under martial law. Cossacks rode constantly about the streets of the city. The policemen stationed at the Police Commissioner's palace were armed with rifles. Patrols were stationed at every intersection. Dozens of people were participating in the preparation and execution of the expropriation. As usually happens in such circumstances, confused rumors about the forthcoming action had reached the authorities. Later the Tiflis prosecutor was to accuse the police chief of lightmindedness. The police chief, to justify himself, would make some unflattering references to the ideas of the prosecutor. The "theoreticians" of the expropriations preferred to call them "engagements in the civil war." They were fond of military vocabulary. Some of them may have recalled, from War and Peace, or from the countless newspaper quotations such as "Die erste Kolonne marschiert," the "dispositions" taken by Weihrother before Austerlitz. But it is possible that in spite of Tolstoy they thought that battles actually did take place as a result of just such "dispositions." In any case they had carefully worked out a detailed plan of action at Erivan Square: Chiabrishvili, Ekbakidze, Shishmanov, Kalaniadze, Chichiashvili and Ebralidze were going to attack the phaetons carrying the money that was surrounded by the convoy, Dalakishvili and Kakriashvili the police detachment near the Town Council, Lominadze and Lemidze the patrol at the Velyaminovskaya, and so on. But expropriations are really not like battles. They do not last for a whole day, or even for several hours, but barely three or four minutes, and in any case there is certainly no science about them in existence. The Correla~ tion of forces" could not be known to the expropriators, since at any given moment a patrol of five or ten or even twenty Cossacks might turn up on the Square. Erivan Square itself was actually the least appropriate place in Tiflis for an expropriation. It was crowded, central, and close to the Police Commissioner's palace. Cossack pa· trois, heavily reinforced, kept riding across it during those days almost uninterruptedly. Army and police posts were permanently stationed near the district headquarters, the 44 WINTER/SPRING 1983 �banks, and at the corners of every one. of the streets giving into the Square. The leaders of the enterprise, whose regard for the lives of others, or for that matter their own, :was not excessive, had decided to take measures this time to cut down the number of victims: from early morning on Kama, in an army uniform, and with a wild look, had been walking around the Square and in a low voice, interlarding his pe· culiar Russian with "adroit mysterious remarks," had advised passers-by to get out as fast as possible. This device was rather senseless: one passer-by was constantly being replaced by another. In the nature of things, this strange officer ought to have instantly aroused the strongest suspicions of even the stupidest policeman. He aroused no suspicions at all. He left safely before the start of the action and took his place in a drozhky harnessed to the thoroughbred. He himself drove standing up (also hardly ever done by officers). Some post office official had informed the terrorists that on june 13th, at 10 o'clock, the cashier of the Tiflis branch of the State Bank, Kurdyumov, and the accountant, Golovnya, would be receiving a large sum of money at the Postal Telegraph Office and would then take it to the bank, in Baronsky Street, past Pushkin Square, across Erivan Square and on along Sololaksky Street. The official could hardly have been bribed or frightened by the terrorists, who didn't do things that way. They never promised anyone money, and unlike many other expropriators did not even take any money for themselves. They gave everything to the Party. Probably the official also sympathized with the Party, or else hated the Government like much of the population of Russia. Kurdyumov and Golovnya went to the post office on foot. This was a routine affair for them: money from the capital arrived in Tiflis often. It would have been impossible to reproach the heads of the bank with lightmindedness: the cashier and accountant had been assigned a guard, Zhilyaev, and a fairly large detachment of soldiers and Cossacks. Probably for reasons of economy, the phaetons were hired only at the post office. Kurdyumov and Golovnya received the money without counting it. That would have been dangerous, and for that matter needless: it was sealed in two huge packages, of 170 thousand and 80 thousand. In addition the cashier was given another 465 rubles that weren't sealed. Kurdyumov counted these and put them in a side-pocket of his jacket. He hid the packages in a sack, drew a leather band tightly around the neck and carefully carried it out to the phaetons, accompanied by the accountant, the guard, and some soldiers. The Cossacks were waiting in the street. Kurdyumov and Golovnya got into the first phaeton, putting the sack on the rug at their feet. Zhilyaev and two soldiers were in the second phaeton. 1HE ST. JOHNS REVIEW There were another five soldiers in the third. The Cossacks divided up; some of them galloped on ahead of the phaetons, some of them behind; there was one Cossack alongside the first phaeton, near one of the little doors. Probably one of the expropriators had been keeping the cashier under observation at the post office, too. In any case observers were waiting for them in various places along the road. At Pushkin Place Patsiya Galdava signaled Stepka lntsirkveli the approach of the Cossacks; he passed it on to Annette Sulakhvelidze, who was promenading about in front of the staff building; she made a sign to Bachua Kuprashvili, who was running along the square with an unfolded newspaper (which was the last general signal). In a moment he joined the expropriators who were running towards the phaetons. The first bomb was thrown from the roof of the house at the corner of the Square and Sololaksky Street. It was followed by others thrown from various angles, and then instantly by a desperate burst of revolver shot. Chaos supervened. There was no question of "disposition." Because of the smoke almost nothing was visible. People scattered to all sides as best they could. Kama's drozhky whirled into the Square from Ganovsky Street. The reins in his left hand he stood on the footboard shooting his revolver off in all directions and yelling out fearful curses. According to the "dispositions" he was supposed to seize the sack with the money in the first phaeton. But it wasn't easy even to find the phaeton that strangely enough had remained undamaged. The cashier and accountant had been thrown into the street by the force of the explosion, and a Cossack killed. Kama had almost never lost control of himself in his life and was actually incapable of losing his head whenever he was carrying out some definite order. He had never felt the slightest doubts either before the explosion or after it: Lenin ordered, Nikitich assisted, Koba organized-so what was there to brood about? Thinking wasn't his business. Now in the Square he acted almost exclusively by instinct. He may have been the only one who was completely calm, in spite of the din of the bombs, the shooting, and the savage outcries. He was yelling and cursing desperately not because of anger or excitement, but simply because yelling and cursing were part of the technique of such actions, as in the old days the cavalry sprang to the attack with howls and roars. Bachua Kuprashvili jumped out of a cloud of smoke at the right and ran off down Sololaksky Street. For a second a phaeton appeared to be outlined in the cloud, but just then another bomb crashed and smoke swallowed up the phaeton again. Bachua's fallen! thought Kama. He's killed! But the sack, where's the sack! And in that same second he saw Chiabrashvili, holding the sack in his hand, running towards Velyaminovsky Street, where there was less smoke, with extraordinary, unnatural, super~human speed. This was definitely an out-and-out disregard of orders. Kama swiftly wheeled his drozhky around and hur- 71 �tied after him. The thought flashed through his mind that Bachua might have only been wounded, but it was impossible to return in the drozhky-let the others get him! It took him a moment to snatch the sack from Chiabrashvili and to rush off again to the conspirators' apartment. A number of the other expropriators were already there. He took them in with a glance, flung the sack on the floor and shouted violently: 'Where's Bachua?" uKilled! ... " "He'll be here soon! ... " "Wounded! ... " 44 0on't know! ... "answered voices panting. The disposi~ tions" hadn't reviewed the question: which was more im· 11 portant-the sack or a comrade? But it was clear enough that the sack was far more important. But Kama's face flushed scarlet; he heaped frenzied curses on his comrades. Suddenly the door opened and Bachua, a bloodstained hand to his head, appeared on the threshold. Kamo, against all rules of conspiracy, yelled something in a wild voice and flung himself suddenly into a dance. Bachua, barely able to control his panting, explained that he had lost consciousness on the street only for half a minute, then jumped up and run on there. No one listened much. They all talked at once of what they had just done and lived through. At the top of their lungs they shouted that they had to speak in low voices: people on the street might overhear them. Kamo yelled out something, and went on dancing. Someone picked up the sack, put it on the table and started loosening the collar. In a flash Kamo bounded over to the table like a cat. He trusted comrades, and knew there was not a single thief among them, but Koba had ordered the packages to be brought sealed: Dzhugashvili trusted the comrades less. However, the figures were written on the covers: "170,000" and "80,000." Not letting the packages out of his hands, Kamo read them off. He tried to add them in his head, others helping him: "250,000." The enthusiasm was general, though a few of them had expected it to be a million. Kamo started dancing about again, holding a package in each hand over his head. ~'It's done!" "The revolu· tion! ... " "Now we'll be free! ... " they said. One of the expropriators said everything had gone offlike clockwork. That was how they all spoke in Tiflis that day, some with delight, others with rage. A day later every newspaper in Russia wrote the same. Jambul couldn't remember all the details of the action in Erivan Square, the most terrifying of his life. These lapses in memory happened to him occasionally when he had drunk two or three bottles of wine after dinner. In practical matters they had never happened to him before. The plan had been for him to shoot a policeman standing at the door of the Commercial Bank; he had chosen this himself; he didn't want to shoot the cashier or the accountant, though he didn't tell his comrades. And just as soon as he saw Kuprashvili running along with the opened newspaper he took his revolver out of his pocket and went over without haste to the bank. The policeman, a beard- 72 Jess young blond, obviously a Russian from the north, was standing half-turned toward him, gazing curiously at the approaching convoy. Jambul remembered shooting immediately after the first bomb exploded, even before smoke hid the carriage-and he didn't understand what had happened. He was incapable, simply incapable, of not hitting a man six or seven paces from him. He recalled aiming at his head: a Mauser bullet was supposed to kill outright. The policeman, completely unharmed, shouted desperately, turned around and snatched at his own revolver. It was just at this second that the chaos in the square began. And without being able to remember how, Jambul found himself some thirty paces from the bank doors, behind the newspaper kiosk. He recalled shooting twice more into the pall around the phaeton, also probably without killing anyone. He remembered later that he didn't want to be killed either. He remembered that for a few seconds he stared brainlessly at the newspapers hanging on the wall: the Voice of the Caucasus, the Tiflis Gazette . .. Suddenly he saw a Cossack on a big bay galloping at him whirling his lash. In a flash Jam· bul's self-possession came back to him. He bounded a few paces forward and fired. The horse reared up, hit by a bullet in its throat. He stopped. Just then a second bomb burst and deafened him. Someone ran past him, clutching his side and yelling something, with a contorted face. The Cossack wasn't getting up. The phaeton is supposed to go back along the Sololaksky, Jambul remembered, and ran off that way. No, the phaeton's smashed now, of course. What should I do now? For a moment he stood there motionless, still half stunned. Then he rushed off, over to the kiosk. The Cossack was gone. The big bay horse, expiring, was writhing convulsively on its side in a pool of blood. His whole life he would remember its brown eyes with their distended whites. Then there was a gap in his memory. He tried and failed to recall how much longer he stayed in the Square and just what he was doing there. He came to himself in a broad side-street. People were running in the street screaming in fear and shoving each other. He didn't think it proper to run, and walked along on the pavement at an ordinary, scarcely hurried pace. He thought he would have to turn off to the right further on, and that the conspiratorial apartment was very close. I didn't want to kill it. Why did it have to rear up? I killed it for the sake of Lenin's little periodicals ... Dozens of people must have been killed ... But not by me ... How could I have missed that policeman? Suddenly everyone leapt off the street on to the sidewalks and into the entry-ways: a squadron of dragoons was hurtling towards them on their way to the Square. Oh, what horses! thought Jambul ... Why did it have to rear up? ... No more shots could be heard, but from the direction of the square a confused roaring could be heard. The street was almost empty. Jambul turned off to the right and came to the conspiratorial apartment. Though the windows were closed he could hear shouts, clamor, laughter. What's WINTER/SPRING 1983 �the matter with them, he thought, have they gone out of their senses? At some other time he might have liked the Caucasian boldness and contempt for danger, but now he listened for a moment and passed on. · A little further on he came across a wretched-looking bistro. In the doorway the proprietor, pale and excited, was evidently about to shut down. He glanced suspiciously at Jambul, and almost refused to let him in, but he did. He said something quickly and evasively. Fifty? thought Jambul: impossible! There couldn't have been fifty casualties! Unwilling to talk, Jambul asked for more vodka, and tossed off a few glasses one after another at the counter. In a languid way he thought this might arouse suspicion: in the morning no one gulps down vodka that way ... "Is there any cognac?" he asked, and on being told there was only Russian Shustovsky, but that it was good, he ordered some, not in a mug but in a tea-glass. He tossed it off at one gulp. The owner looked at him in alarm. Jambul paid and, shaking even more than before, went out. Yes, yes ... Not very pretty ... Not a cavalry charge in goldembroidered uniforms. . . All for Lenin's little periodicals ... Not pure blood, but mixed with dirt. .. Much more than in war. .. Perhaps all oflife is a mistake ... Perhaps, yes, it may very well be ... he muttered to himself in the street. For the first few days after the expropriation Jambul didn't see any of the terrorists. He read the newspapers and drank a great deal, though he had already calmed down. He had noticed no traces he had left behind and thought with even more conviction than before that the Russian police were very bad and in addition were frightened to death, especially in the Caucasus. Money and another letter arrived from his father in Turkey, at his temporary agreed-on address. The old man asked his son more insistently than usual to come home; he also complained about his health more than usual, said that he wanted to see him once more without fail, and mentioned the necessity of putting his inheritance in order. Jambul had received such invitations before, too, and had always declined them. He likes to complain, like all old people, he thought. Perhaps he's heard something, and is worried. They seldom corresponded. The old man could hardly have known with certainty just what his son was doing. Jambul had said vaguely that he was taking part in the struggle for Caucasian independence. His father was able to understand this and even ought to sympathize. He dined in the restaurants in the center of the city, and each time made a point of going to Erivan Square. He could not get the blood-bespattered bay horse, and its eyes with their distended whites, out of his head. After going home he read on into the late night. He had gone out to the Golovin Prospekt and bought some books at random: a thick Petersburg review, Shakespeare in Russian, To!THE ST. JOHNS REVIEW stoy' s Resurrection. He felt he absolutely had to leave for a visit to his father. It was possible to leave legally, his passport was perfectly trustworthy. He loved his father but had always told himself that he was incapable of watching anyone "grow old." But nevertheless he never used to write about himself so alarmingly. Surely he's not going to die! I'll be left alone in the world like a splinter ... That evening he went to bed early and set out on the wide bed the three books he had bought. At first he did not read. He thought of his father. He thought of the action in Erivan Square. He thought of Lenin. He's going to be overjoyed, manna from heaven ... he said to himself, and frowned still more severely: the words 'from heaven' seemed far from apt. He couldn't fall asleep, in spite of the huge amount of wine he had drunk. He never took sleeping pills, for some reason he was afraid of them. He opened Shakespeare's plays at random, at the boring play Cymbeline. He picked up the review. He noticed with irritation that the news-vendor had slipped him an old shopworn issue. In the news-column he learned that 73 3 people had been killed that year in Russia, 215 hanged, 341 shot by order of a court martial, and in only a month and a half 221 had been executed by the new emergency court martial. Perhaps there'll soon be not 215, but 216 hanged, he thought, and again said to himself: one Jambul more or less, isn't it all the same? He often spoke to himself that way, but knew he was speaking insincerely: this particular ''one" had a certain importance for him. In the news story some more figures were given of those called "representa· lives of the authorities" who had been killed-the number was just as large. Three days ago I didn't make a single addition to this statistic, thank God! He also read in the review something long and boring about a "Party of Democratic Reforms," about a Professor Maxim Kovalevsky, and about a lawyer called Spasovich who had recently died. "Public morals are becoming more and more savage," Vladimir Danilovich had recently written from Warsaw: "Bomb explosionS1 shootings, looting, and assassination take place every blessed day even in the street." Words like this would once have evoked in Jambul nothing but a sneer: he disliked liberals. They've had a good time of it all their lives, he would have thought, they've never once risked their precious existence. Now he thought nothing of the kind. He put the paper aside and opened Resurrection. He read it until far into the night. He liked Tolstoy as an artist, but had an even more scornful attitude towards his ideas than he had towards those of the liberals: Just the feeble-mindedness of old age, he thought. He found the scene of the church service in the prison extremely annoying. No, really, it's just blasphemy after all. He didn't have the right to make fun of other people's faith and he himself doesn't have any: a believer could never have written that way about church ceremonies. But what oppressive, terrifying language! he thought as he fell asleep. 73 �And at once the various figures which had been passing through his mind during the past fe~ days and hours were all jumbled together, spinning about and springing up into the most senseless life. Lenin had written a little article on blood-stained assignations. His father, with a sick, emaciated face, was lying in bed waiting for a doctor who never came. A blood-bespattered bay horse galloped into his uncle's orchard, drenched in sunlight, and explained hoarsely that it could no longer serve since it had been killed by a bullet in the throat from )ambul. Dimitri Nekhlyudov explained to it that there must have been some juridical error: )ambul never killed horses and never would. In the Tiflis Gazette Spasovich proposed to defend Kate Maslov for a thousand rubles: "There are only ten Kates in all," he said, "while a great deal more was taken from Kurdyumov." Lenin tore himself away from his little articles and said mockingly that he wouldn't give a single ruble, not a penny for any uprising, everything was needed for the little periodicals, and a fig to all the comrades ... He was awakened by a knock at the door. It took him a moment to come to himself. A young chambermaid came into his room, smiled at him, and respectfully reported that he was being asked for on the 'phone by His Most Serene Highness Prince Dadiani. )ambul, tearing himself away from the warm pillow, looked at her for a moment agog. Then he remembered that this was the name Kama wasliving under in Tiflis. "Please te!Ihim I'll be right down," he said. The chambermaid smiled at him sweetly and went out. He put on a splendid silken dressing gown he had bought in Paris at the Place Vendome, and thought of Lyuda, who had been particularly fond of it. Is it all right to go downstairs in a dressing gown? He thought, it doesn't matter, it's early, there'll be no one there. Actually, it was not even eight. The fool might have rung later, he thought. HGood morning, your Highness," he said. HWhat's hap~ pened? A very early call." Kama replied that someone wanted to see him at ten o'clock. Koba, of course, )ambul guessed. "At his place," said Kama and hung up without waiting for an answer, just as though there couldn't be the slightest doubt of )ambul's agreeing. )ambul shrugged his shoulders. I'll come late just for spite! But it wasn't right to be late in their work, and he arrived on the stroke of ten, leaving the carriage driver far from the house Dzhugashvili was living in. The boss, quite calm, met him with his usual sneer. How I hate the sight of him! thought )ambul. He had known this man for a long time. He could not endure him. Whenever they met he would have an obscure feeling as though he were in the company of a real evildoer. He never mentioned this about Koba to anyone and even reproached himself for a baseless and consequently unfair judgment: he knew a good deal about Dzhugashvili, but still not the sort of thing that would have justified considering him a malefactor, or "the worst 74 of good-for-nothings." It sometimes seemed to him that others who knew Koba well had the same feeling about him and said nothing about it either: something in his very looks made people wary. Well, in any case I'm not afraid of him! thought )ambul. His irritation and spite were heightened immediately. In the room there were Kama, in the same uniform with the same dark-red embroidered decoration, and a woman in a cheap, dirty white dress. )anbul remembered that her name was Mara Bocharidze and that in the band she worked at the role of a Tiflis house-wife. He greeted her politely. Koba looked at him with a sneer and carelessly extended his hand. "Hello, bicho," he said. This word, which meant "old boy" or something like it, and was a special little sneer of Koba's, irritated )ambul still more: It meant, "You're all just a lot of runts, and I'm a great big fellow." And all the while, with all his wiliness and boldness, he was a very grey, coarse fellow, rather shabby looking, with both an innate and played-up coarseness. He thinks that has an effect on everyone, thought )ambul: it doesn't on me, but he won't be coarse with me, he knows it wouldn't be safe. "Very glad to see you too, bicho," )ambul replied. Koba turned away from him at once and started talking to Kama, who was looking at him enraptured. Mara also looked into his eyes, more in fear than in rapture. Koba spoke Russian considerably better than Kama, considerably worse than )ambul. <(That's a matter of course and you do it," he ordered. )ambul's suggestion was confirmed: Dzhugashvili was assigning them both to take the money over to the Observatory: it was sewn into a large new mattress that was lying on the floor in Koba's room. "Yau go with Mara in one carriage, and he'll follow you in another. Why did you have to be so stupid as to dress up like an officer! Carrying a mattress! Change your clothes immediately!" Timidly deferential, Kama explained, partly in Russian, partly in Georgian, that he hadn't known about the forthcoming transfer of the mattress. He also expressed the opinion that it would be better to transfer it in the evening, after dusk. ''I'm not asking you for an opinion! Do as I say!" cried Koba. Kama nodded instantly. Mara also nodded her head in fright. Jambul interrupted: "Any street hawker could move the mattress," he said mildly, as though addressing no one in particular. "An outsider wouldn't be in any danger. In case of arrest he could explain that he had been hired, and could prove his alibi. But if they catch Kama they'll hang him. It's true that a street hawker might give away the address of the apartment he'd gotten the mattress from," he added, as though naively. A gleam of spite flashed through Koba's eyes. He stored up )ambul's words in his memory, but he restrained himself and sketching out on his face an extremely improbable looking goodnatured smile, said: "I shall ask you to follow them in anWINTER/SPRING 1983 �other carriage. Have you got a revolver on you?" "I have, bicho. Very well, I'll follow them. Very closely, of course, else they might be able to drag out the money and scuttle off," said Jambul imperturbably. Kamo' s face suddenly turned bestial. "Listen!" he snarled. Koba interrupted him instantly and started laughing, just as good-naturedly. "He is, of course, joking. Now look, these orders of mine are easy to understand. You and she will take the mattress to the director. Then you'll go down into the big hall. At eleven o'clock some astronomer is going to show the yokels all sorts of nonsense. Listen to it; go together with the crowd, and also go out when the crowd does. You won't be noticed. If on the way to the Observatory the police attack, start shooting, to the last cartridge, naturally. And run to the apartment on Mikhailovsky Street. With the mattress, naturally!" he said impressively. "And on the way back, Maro, you little ninny, you come back on foot alone. You have no revolver, you'll get off without going to gaol. And you two can do as you please, shoot or don't as you please. You, Kamo, no matter what happens, you can't escape hanging. For old sins. But as for you," he said, turning to Jambul, "there's no evidence of anything against you. For carrying a revolver it'll be a lot if they send you off to hard labor. Never mind, daddy will wait for you in Turkey," said Koba, and a little sneer appeared on his face once again. Jambul flared up. He knows about father too! he thought: he keeps a check on the comrades! "And how d'you know whom there's evidence against and whom there's not?" "A little magpie had it on its tail, as Lenin said in Tammerfors," said Dzhugashvili. He was very proud of having spoken to Lenin, and of having, as it seemed to him, made a strong impression on him. "For the Erivan affair there can't be evidence of anything against anybody, so there won't be any against you, either." 'I'll go to the Observatory, but I won't take the money to Finland." "And I'm not ordering you to," said Koba. He had long since decided that Kamo would take it there alone; he trusted him. liNor can you order me to do anything!" Without answering Koba turned to Kamo again. He repeated his orders tersely and clearly; he knew Kamo didn't understand the first time. Yes, he knows his business, it's true. But in all my life I've never seen anyone so repugnant to me, thought Jambul, listening attentively. After finishing his explanation Koba stood up. The audience is over! thought Jambul. Kamo and Maro stood up at once, too. The astronomer, a graybeard in a silken jacket, was showing the Observatory to a small group of visitors and wearily making the usual explanations: THE ST. JOHNS REVJEW "The man whose portrait you see hanging on this wall was the great astronomer Nicholas Copernicus. He was born in 1473 and died in 1543. For a long time he was thought to be a German, but that was incorrect. Copernicus was a Pole. He discovered that it was not the sun that rotated around the earth, but the earth that rotated around the sun. He worked with the aid of a parallactic instrument consisting of three little pieces of wood with three degrees. Later on these little stumps of wood passed into the possession of another famous astronomer, Tycho Brahe, who treasured them as a sacrosanct relic of the history of science, and wrote verses about them. In these he said that the earth produced a man like that once in a thousand years: he stopped the sun and started the earth moving. For a long time Copernicus couldn't make up his mind to publish his discovery: he was afraid of being persecuted by the Catholic Church and even more afraid of being laughed at by everyone. It was not until shortly before his death that he published his immortal work. He dedicated it to Pope Paulus Ill, but it was included by the Congregation in the notorious Index as heresy. Though this great man was a believer, it may well be that only a miracle saved him from the stake," said the astronomer, who evidently disliked the Catholic Church. "His work of genius is entitled De revolutionibus orbium caelestium. There is a monument to Copernicus in Warsaw, the work of Thorwaldsen ... " The word "revolutionibus" caught Jambul's attention. So there's some kind of a revolution there, too, he thought, though not the same one. He glanced at the gaunt, harassed face with the tufts of hair falling on both sides of the head. Yes, that's not like Koba's face ... Who knows what sort of a man he was and what he thought about life? ... So he was a believer? But could he have believed in everything? Did he believe in an afterlife? But surely he was more intelligent than I, with Kamo and Koba, even with Lenin thrown in!. If I had any real faith in me I wouldn't choose such a life for myself. But then what would I do? The little stumps of wood with degrees are not for me. I have no gifts at all. But when, why, and what for, did I ever choose such an inhuman existence? Caucasian independence? But it's only various Kobas that are probably going to run it after all, and what's the use of hiding from myself that they're a hundred times worse than the Voronov-Dashkovs. And people like Tsintsadze or Ramishvili are basically the same liberals as the Spasoviches and Kovalevskys, they can hardly be told apart. They'll hardly be the ones to come to power, if there's a revolution, any more than the Kovalevskys will come to power in Russia. And that's just the reason they won't, because they're civilized, and not wild beasts! he thought, astonished himself at the swiftness with which his attitude towards the revolution had changed. Nevertheless, he thought, it's not just because of that bay horse! The astronomer announced that the tour was over. The visitors started out. At the exit Jambullooked around again 75 �and went into Erivan Square still at the same artificially unhurried pace with which he now walked around the city. His body was alert and tensed in case of an unexpected onslaught. Since the expropriation he had not been separated from his revolver, though this had no point; there really was no evidence against him, and if arrested he would in all likelihood not be hanged. A few people were standing in the street at the same spot where the first bomb had fallen. One of them was explaining something, pointing at the jumbled stones. Jam· bullistened in. Yes, that's probably a blood-stain. Here is where that Cossack fell who was leaping around the phaeton. But I didn't kill him. Except for the horse, I didn't kill anyone. He walked on to the newspaper kiosk, stopped where he had stood then, and again saw the Tiflis Gazette. He took a few more steps, looked at the place-and suddenly felt sick. In the Annona restaurant, where there were always a great many people and there was no chance of arrest, he sat down for a breathing-spell. He could hardly eat, but he drank some wine, and listened to the string orchestra. At the little tables around him people were discussing their affairs. "We'll have to think all that through and through," one of them said. Yes, and I'll have to think things through and through. Perhaps I've thought about life, about the most important things, very little. Now it's too late. Though why is it too late? There's no one to talk about it with. Koba's a beast. Kamo's a hero. Everyone claims he's kindhearted, and here he was getting ready to impale people on a stake! How strange he used to be religious! Now of course he makes fun of faith: Koba taught him that. .. Yes, I'm get· ting old and didn't notice ... I'll have to go see father as quickly as possible. Thoughts flashed incoherently through his mind. On the way home he went in to see the men whose address he used for letters. There was only a telegram from 76 Turkey. He hastily tore it open, ripping the end off the envelope. It was from an old friend telling that his father has passed away that night in his sleep, painlessly. It was evident that the director of the Observatory sym· pathized with the expropriators. It was, however, possible, though unlikely, that he didn't know what there was in the new mattress on his divan. In a short while Dzhugashvili had drawn everything out of the mattress, and Kamo had carried it to Lenin in Kuakalla. This time he no longer traveled first-class but second, and was not a Wing Adjutant, but a mere junior officer. Krupskaya and Bogdanova sewed the money in the quilted waistcoat of their comrade, Lyadov. "It sat on me very skilfully," wrote Lyadov, "and the money was carried across the border illegally without any trouble." At the State Bank, however, the numbers of the stolen five-hundred-ruble notes had been recorded, and they were wired instantly to every police department in Europe. The five-hundred-ruble notes were exchanged in batches in various West European banks. In trying to convert them Litvinov, Semashko, Ravich, and a few other Bolsheviks were arrested. In this way the smaller Central Committee, that is, Lenin, Krasin, and Bogianov, lost a small part of the money. Aside from this there was some unpleasantness with the Mensheviks, who launched an "agitation," that it was im· proper having anything in common with "rogues." They abused Lenin and Kamo in the most horrifying language. But Lenin was not too vexed by the unpleasantness. At his dictation Krupskaya added the following to a personal let· ter of his about this affair: "The Mensheviks have already started the vilest brawl. They're doing such vile things it's hard to believe ... What sons-of-bitches! ... " WINTER/SPRING 1983 �SUMMER The thrushes' voices, liquid every evening. Whole hours pass Soundless but for the rustling Of maple trees whose leaves, Flake upon flake of dusky turquoise, Encrust some liquid inner richness. Summer. Summer! Unnumbered days pace through a desert Empty of landmarks, colored scratchy gold. But the whole mirage Dappled with havens for birds to perch in Will have vanished by October No matter how passionately put together. Country created root and branch, Whose every pod and blossom, Hayfield, hilltop, cloud Have come to tingle with mythology ... A tall white horse bridled in green Passes and repasses on a carousel That whisks repeatedly out of reach. Under the pine trees trails make soft Chiasmuses. This has all Been marked long since on his chart by the master Of subterranean bonds. Inside the house A room at the top of the stairs Smells of old puppets, contains a twangy piano Kin to the sea-clogged one that you remember. Outdoors as well are portents to be noted. The way the light falls; One particular maple, lightning-lopped, Motionless and imposing As a statue in the meadow; A dead elm's gesture Past boggy grass to where the woods begin; TilE ST. JOHNS REVIEW 77 �Caw of a crow, hawk hovering Over the line that separates sun from shadow. What will you do with your life? Long interlude. The elm and maple wait. Slats of light Lean down on you pacing Through gawky trees that strain for their share of sky, Teabrown swampjuice slurping underfoot. The years till now: This rusty leafchoked bucket once held sap. Into the trackless competitive hardwood Dip till the dimness sends you back uphill, Daylight returning at the top of the rise. House in a hollow, Smoke dissolving into early evening, Somebody playing that piano, Face or phantom at the attic window: Benevolent and tiny, it all Happened repeatedly but long ago. To an accumulated depth of water Plummets the pebble thrown, and ripples spread. The whole of summer will have been one long day. MAGNOLIAS IN PRINCETON in memory of Sidonie M. Clauss Puppies run around the pool outside the Woodrow Wilson School. On a bench I try to read, magnolias dropping overhead, lavish lacy opening in the clinging sheath of spring. Petals milky·pinky pale slather whiteness like a veil over the grey branches' bone, over smudges of light green. On a sunny afternoon gorgeous garlands bloom and preen. 78 WINTER/SPRING 1983 �Yet a single wintry breath dooms this Rubens world to death. Half an hour of cold's enough to wrinkle creamy rose to rough russet, parch the baby cheek and shrink it to a shrivelled scrape rustling along the stones, silken skin to rattling bones. Cold can cut the flowering short. So can changes in the light. Take that radiant bridal air fresh magnolia blossoms wear: one dark cloud blots out the sun, all the joyful glow is gone. Quenched and drawn, they shrink to white, livid, glaring, harshly bright. Where then can I look for stable radiance: perhaps the marble neoclassically flashing columns of the Wilson School, or the snowy puppies dashing round the azure of the pool, or the court's blond travertine, or the trees' faint new green? None of these. It's going to rain. Plum-dark clouds come like a stain. Damp wind ruffles pages, hair, piled dry petals, and the air. To avoid the looming cloud, I prepare to join the crowd moving up the temple stair. Petals twitch and stir and fall as slowly up the scholars file; the magnolia bank springs leaks through which distant thunder speaks. Wait. A tiny ruffling tap. Here's a petal in my lap, newly fallen from a branch as I got up from the bench, longer than my finger, fresh, plump, and fragrant, bruised like flesh. THE ST. JOHNS REVIEW 79 �Slowly I shut my book on this bookmark, this touch of perfect color blown undramatically down, its pink and white already edged with dark. THE SERVICE FOR SIDONIE May 3 1980 The rain it raineth every day. Not this one. Our fumbling gestures sketching out your loss preserved as if in amber by May sun. The dreadful hole no sooner dug than spring gently conspired to fill it. The two babies' babbling purled, a rhythmic little brook, under and through the ceremony's broken flow (the hushed voices, bubbles burst in weeping). Inflamed, turned inward, all our eyes were dazzled at the chapel door by a great blaze of noon and when we left the porch and stood in the sun birds embroidered the quiet with brilliant stitches of incessant song. Ironic, tender-natural renewal, brimming with green abundance, speaks of cycle. But for us mourning you no rhythm softens today's shared truth. This thing the grace of season so gently twines its tendrils round remains a terrible cessation-opening blossom, richly unfolding, ruthlessly cut off. RACHEL HADAS Rachel Hadas published her first book of poems, Starting from Troy, in 1975 (Godine). Her second, Slow Transparency, will appear in September 1983 (Wesleyan University Press). She teaches English at Rutgers University in Newark. 80 WINTER/SPRING 1983 �Letters on Legitimacy Guglielmo Ferrero-Gaetano Mosca A Note on Guglielmo Ferrero-and his Friendship with Gaetano Mosca From 1896 to the end of their lives, a few months apart, at the end of 1941 and in the middle of 1942, Gaetano Mosca (18581941) and Guglielmo Ferrero (1871-1942) carried on frequent correspondence. Two hundred and twenty-five Letters survive, probably less than a third of the total. In 1896 Ferrero was twenty-five years old and at work on his first book to win wide recognition, L' Europa giovane (1897)-the fruit of three years of study and travel throughout Europe. Thirty-eight years old, Mosca had iust won the chair of constitutional law at Turin and published the first edition of Elementi di Scienza Politica-a work that achieved something of the status of a classic. (A later edition was translated into English with the title The Ruling Class, New York 1939). Mosca appreciated the importance of Ferrero's work almost from the beginning with an essay II fenomeno Ferrero (1897), published long before Ferrero won international status. Their correspondence is an extension of their work. Often on almost a day-to-day basis, it discusses the major events of twentieth century history, the reasons for decadence in Europe, and especially in Italy, before the First World War, the First World War and the crisis that came of it, the coming of Fascism in 1922, and Ferrero's and Mosca's struggle against it within Italy until1925 when open opposition became impossible, and finally, the dark years that made the Second World War inescapable. Throughout these letters the ideas that are to play an important part in their thinking take shape and modify. Both Mosca and Ferrero took direct part in political life, Mosca as a deputy in Parliament from 1908 to 1919 and Senator after 1919, Ferrero as a frequent political commentator. This involvement in actual political life lent their work a straightforward and practical cast that, in their instances, made for a deeper grasp, rather than an These four letters come from a collection of the surviving FerreroMosca correspondence edited by C. Mongardini, Gaetano Mosca- Guglielmo Ferrero. Carteggio (1896-1934), Milan 1980. TilE ST. JOHNS REVIEW evasion, of the underlying problems. Both men knew, and in many instances were intimate with, the leading men of their times. They had the best information at their disposal, and had read enough of the right kind of old books to know its limitations. In some sense the clarity of their view of the public affairs of Italy and Europe, and of their grasp of the crisis of the twentieth century, testifies to the depth of their friendship. For them the understanding of public events, especially the events of crisis, were not an evasion of private life, but an understanding of the place of their lives in their country and time, and finally in the whole history of the West. Each of them was happy enough to be able to grasp the symptoms of the catastrophe, long before it occurred, that threatened to sweep away all they loved. Besides Elementi di Scienza Politica, the only other major work of Mosca's translated into English is Storia delle dottrine pelitiche (Bari 1937), A Short History of Political Philosophy (New York 1972). Most of Ferrero's work is translated into English and the other major languages of Europe. In his early and middle thirties in 1902-1906, Ferrero published an account of the self-destruction of the Roman republic and the settlement of Augustus in five volumes, The Greatness and Decline of Rome. Written in simple narrative style the work is overwhelming in its capacity to evoke and to understand, in its appetite for life and intelligence. It won Ferrero a world-wide audience, an audience that made it possible for Ferrero's voice to be heard throughout the West, even after Fascist censorship prevented publication of his words within Italy after 1925. The work caused an uproar in the academic world of Italy. Throughout his life Ferrero wrote weekly columns and monthly articles that appeared in the major newspapers and magazines of the world. Some of these articles were collected into books and published every few years: Militarism (London 1902); Europe's Fateful Hour (New York 1911, 1918); Between the Old World and the New (New York 1914); Ancient Rome and Modern America (New York 1914); Four Years of Fascism (London 1924); Words to the Deaf (London 1926); The Unity of the World (London 1931). In the twenties Ferrero dedicated himself to a cycle of novelsunder the general title La Terza Roma: Le due verita (Milan 81 �1926); La rivolta del figlio (Milan 1927); Gli ultimi barbari, sud ore e sangue (Milan 1930); Liberazione (Lugano 1936)-that told the story of Italy since its unification, a subject whose evasion up to then, in Ferrero's judgement, contributed importantly to the collapse of the Italian government after the First World War. Of all Ferrero's works, his novels were least read. Under constant police surveillance after 1926, Ferrero left Italy, it turned out forever, in 1930-with the help of Mosca who inter· vened with the Minister of Foreign Affairs to get him a passport. The University of Geneva and the Institut Universitaire des Hautes Etudes Intemationales had offered him a chair in modem history-his first university position. At about sixty he entered into one of the most courageous and creative periods of historical study in his life. At the university for more than ten years he gave a weekly lecture on the history of the French Revolution and Napo· leon and the consequences of misunderstanding these events in the nineteenth century-a lecture that was an event in the town as well as at the university. At the institute Ferrero dedicated himself to the study of the differences between war in the eighteenth century and the unlimited total war of Napoleon-a study that led him to the rediscovery ofVattel, the author of the eighteenth century clas· sic of international law, Le droit des gens, ou principe de la loi naturelle, appliquee a la conduite et aux affaires des nations et des souverains (Leyden 1758). One of the most important of Ferrero's little books, Peace and War (London 1933) came out of this study of war. He argued that part of the catastrophe of 1914-1917 came because statesmen and generals were ignorant of the character of the war they were fighting and above all had misunderstood the meaning of Napoleon. His lectures at the university led to four volumes on the French Revolution and the crisis it brought Europe and the world: The Two French Revolutions 1789-1796 (posthumously published, New York 1968); The Gamble, Bonaparte in Italy, 1796-1797 (London 1939); The Reconstruction of Europe, Talleyrand and the Congress of Vienna, (New York 1941); The Principles of Power (New York 1942). In all his historical work Ferrero studied the past in order to discover the present-the opposite of studying the past because one thinks one understands the present, which often leads to a politicization of the past in the service of present prejudices. Ferrero had no favourite ages. His grasp of human character and the common sense that comes of it was too strong for such infatuation. He did not idealize any times-which meant he did not flinch before tragedy and outrage but still kept a remarkable love of life. He suffered much, but his work never betrays resignation and depression. For Mosca, see James H. Meisel, The Myth of the Ruling Class (Ann Arbor 1958). The Istituto de Studi Storico-Politici of the Uni· versity of Rome is bringing out his complete works. For a preliminary bibliography of Ferrero's writings, see Guglielmo Ferrero, histoire et politique au vingtif:me siecle, Geneva 1966. For an account of the surveillance of Ferrero under Fascism, based on police archives, see Helmut Goetz "Guglielmo Ferrero, Ein Exampel totalitaerer Verfolgung," Quellen und Forschungen aus Italienischen Archiven und Bibliotheken, 61, Tuebingen 1981, 248-304, which should be compared to Leo Ferrero, Diario di un privilegiato sotto il fascismo, Turin 1946. L.R. 82 1920 Mosca to Ferrero Turin, January 28, 1920 Corso Umberto 45 Dear Ferrero, I received with the usual delay your card of the 18th, which avoided the postal strike only to fall into the railway· men's strike. I had previously received the Memorie e con· fessioni di un sovrano deposto, * which I have already read and am turning over in my mind. In the first part it seems to me that, among the many original ideas, two stand out. The first concerns the great French Revolution which, while purporting to bring liberty, equality, etc., gave the people instead military con· scription (timidly already begun by absolute governments here and there) and a world of taxes and constraints. The second concerns the Holy Alliance, which you say was more equitable than the victors in the recent war, and would have been more able to develop Wilson's idea of a League of Nations and which, as you rightly observe, even if it did not give us perpetual peace, at least assured peace for the span of a generation. In regard to this second idea, I think that you are indis· putably right. The principle of legitimacy that guided the Allies of 1815 produced less injustices and exercised less coercion on the will of peoples than the victors of the present day, attempting to organize Europe on the princi· pie of nationality and the so-called self-determination of nations. The sovereigns of 1815 were more generous and moderate toward the defeated. They had more sense of measure than the leaders of the democracies of today. They were more consistent in applying the principle they said inspired them. Now, instead, the principle of self· determination has been applied in such a way that the peace treaties prevent the German provinces of Austria from joining Germany. An enormous-and shamefulinconsistency. As for the first idea, I still hesitate to say that you are entirely right. Yes, the revolution did much harm, but it also did much good. Perhaps almost all the good could have been achieved without almost all the harm or, at least, without a great part of it. But you, who are a real historian, know how difficult it is to reconstruct history on the basis of an hypothesis, how difficult it is to know what would have happened if, at a given moment, events had *Memorie e confessioni di un sovrano deposto (Memoirs and Confessions of a Deposed Sovereign), Milan 1920. Ferrero called this book "a summary of the history of the nineteenth century" inspired by the memoirs ofTalleyrand and his principle of legitimacy. Cf. B. Raditsa, Colloqui con Guglielmo Ferrero, Lugano 1939,73-74. WINTER/SPRING 1983 �developed in a different way from how they did develop. I remember that Louis XVIII, to whose /TIOderation and political views you rightly pay tribute, used to say that we couldn't speak ill of the Revolution because it had done so much good and we couldn't speak well of it because it had done so much harm. I very nearly agree with him. And let us go on to the second part where there seem to be two basic ideas: (!) that Germany should have won the war and instead she lost it, or, at least, that she lost where she deserved to win; and (2) that Germany was, in a way, forced to make war by the atmosphere that took hold of Europe in the ten or twenty years before the war. Never mind about whether Germany deserved to win. I admit that, if the sacrifices Germany made and the terrible sufferings she inflicted on herself and on her adversaries entitled her to win, then she deserved it. But . . . after America entered the war, she was the weaker. She could hope only in some striking bit of good luck, which did not occur, or in the cowardice of her enemies, who were not free to be cowards. The governments of the Entente could not present themselves as defeated before peoples of whom they had asked such great sacrifices. Besides, the abyss of revolution was behind them if they stepped backwards. Perhaps one of them will fall into it anyhow-but victory was the only hope of salvation. And Germany, as the weaker, behaved like a gambler who has little money. She took the greatest risks. Once they failed, she was done for. As for the causes of the war and the responsibilities for its unleashing, I agree with you that certainly not all the fault is Germany's and the Kaiser's. For ten years and more the European bourgeoisies had been more or less afflicted with imperialism, perhaps unconsciously, perhaps in order to take people's minds off socialism. This created the atmosphere in which the appalling war could break out. Part of the responsibiiity lies also with the diplomatic encirclement which England practiced against Germany. Germany, however, was responsible for provoking the incident which provoked the explosion. As a result that good part of the world that doesn't see beyond its nose believed and believes that the entire fault was hers. And now that Satan, as you say, has finished the job, what is this poor tortured and suffering world to do? If you are right, salvation could come from a restoration of the principle of authority, from rulers with enough moral prestige not to have to rely exclusively on brute force. But is this possible in a democratic regime, where the best way to rise is to humiliate oneself before the crowd, to flatter it indecently? Neither of us knows whether or not the world will overcome the present crisis and if present institutions can endure. If they don't, we shall, for sure, fall under demagogic tyranny, or under bureaucratic and military tyranny or, worse still, under both together. And Italy, closest to the looming danger, is not yet aware of it! I'll come to see you in the spring and we'll talk. I hope to THE ST. JOHNS REVIEW publish a review of your book. Its main points will be those I have just made. My family is well. My respects to Mrs. Ferrero. Greetings to Leo. I am most affectionately, G. Mosca. P.S. Please send me the exact address of your brother, the doctor, who is in Ancona. I should perhaps write to him. Ferrero to Mosca (F1orence), January 31, 1920 Dear Gaetano, Thanks for your letter. My brother's address is: Dr. Giuseppe Ferrero, Via Montirozzo 59, Ancona. To understand the book you have to proceed a bit by deduction, since the writer's real ideas are hidden behind the ideas-thesis and antithesis-attributed to the supposed author, to keep him in character. What you say about the Holy Alliance is exactly what I think; it stands out more in the second than in the first part since in the first part the sovereign accuses the Holy Alliance of having been too pacifist, traditionalist, classical, and Catholic, in spirit if not in religion. · It is not the same thing with the French Revolution. I didn't try to decide whether the Revolution was a good thing or a bad, whether it did more good than harm, whether it could have done the good that it did without doing so much harm. These are insoluble problems, because there is no way of measuring exactly the good and the harm that it did and to make a comparison between them. My idea-which I meant to have come out of the thesis and antithesis-is this. In the French Revolution there is a contradiction among the formulas, the programs, the doctrines, and the results. This contradiction, disguised during the whole nineteenth century and up to the World War with a host of devices and compromises, has now broken quite out of control. The doctrines promised men liberty, equality, and brotherhood, but events have yielded a discipline far more demanding, heavy, and oppressive than that exercised by former governments. They brought up governments harsher and more violent because they are at the same time stronger and less authoritative, governments that now are all turning into tyrannies based on money and brute force. And all this happened because the French Revolution undermined all the principles of authority, with their religious basis, of the old regimes and put in their place a new principle, the will or sovereignty of the people, which doesn't work because it is based only on a function and can give rise only to electoral machines. On this point I have come to embrace totally 83 �your ideas, over which I was for a long time hesitant. For many years I thought that the sovereignty of the people was a serious principle of authority and could serve as the basis of a juster, less oppressive, milder, and more human political and social order than the one that went before. Deeper study of the nineteenth century, a hard look at reality and longer reflection have persuaded me that you were right. Hence I don't doubt that the present order of things is fated to crumble more or less everywhere and to be replaced by a militaristic and demagogic tyranny, as arbitrary, capricious, oppressive and cruel as the worst despo· tisms of the past. What is said on pages 289* and 311 represents my thinking.** I am so persuaded of these things that already I am preparing myself for this unsparing, bestial despotism by, among other things, cutting down my needs, luxuries, and expenses, because I am sure it will leave me only my eyes to weep. Never mind, as long as it leaves me a pen to write! As for the rebirth of the principle of authority, to which there is reference on page 311, I believe it is inevitable but in the distant future. We shan't live to see it. Probably this new principle of authority will take shape around the persons, institutions, and doctrines which will defend men against this horrid tyranny. In short, I think that the movement that began in the eighteenth century for the liberation of man has come to a dreadful tyranny and a reign of force: a formidable contradiction from which there must come a political, moral, and intellectual crisis of vast proportions of the sort that occurred at the end of the Middle Ages, when the Church became the negation in practice of every principle of the Gospel. We are in a situation which, in certain regards, recalls the one that gave rise to the explosion of the Reformation and the wars of religion. As for the pages in which the deposed sovereign says that Germany should have won the war, it seems to me that you attribute to them a conclusive value whereas, to me, they are of only passing importance. The second part of the book was conceived as a medley of fragments written in accordance with tormenting changes of thought and feeling under the impact of a blow of misfortune. Hence there are contradictions, successive stages, jumps. *The passage referred to runs: "Men have deposed God and overturned all the idols they had tried to build on his profaned altars: Science, Liberty, Democracy, Progress, Civilization. All authorities have collapsed. Therefore, force alone rules the world. Force alone and naked, or barely covered with a red rag or a tatter of a national flag. It rules the world as it can, with excesses and stops and starts, without discernment, and tears it apart, for force is so weak when alone and naked. 0 men, do not harbour illusions: in Europe the only authority that remains is gold and iron." **"Slowly and cautiously throughout all of Western civilization, the Revolution has done its work, the work it botched brutally in an hour in France. Undoing the sacred legitimacy of all authorities, it has left men no other government than force. From one end of Europe to the other, force and need are the only authorities-both fake-men still obey." 84 The sovereign says, in his first notes, that Germany should have won the war but, further on, he realizes that Germany was destroyed by its own strength, that it was defeated because it was too strong and had wanted to be too strong. My real opinion on this point is expressed on pages 216-217: "Germany had to lose, because it was the stronger ... n ~~we wanted to be too strong ... " This second part of the fifth chapter on confessionspages 212-223-is extremely important, because it contains the development of one of the book's most important ideas. The first part of the chapter has a purely artistic reason for being, expressing thoughts which, in the second part, are confuted. At bottom it serves to recall, in fitting summary manner, the history of the war and Germany's formidable effort. It is a warning to the states and statesmen of the Entente, who delude themselves that they defeated Germany with the power of the spirit when they did it with the power of matter. In short, the three ideas that I wanted to stress with the thesis and antithesis and that are like Ariadne's thread through the labyrinth are the following: a) The French Revolution began a struggle between the old principles of authority and its own principles. For the reasons I have explained above, this struggle ended in the ruin of all principles, old and new. As a result, Europe after hoping for freedom for a century, has fallen under brute force-anarchy or tyranny. b) The world war is not the usual war won by the best army or the army used the best. It is the bizarre, incoherent, chaotic catastrophe of a political and military system. In this catastrophe all states exceeded the measure of force granted human organizations. Institutions absurd in their principles and dangerous in their exaggeration, above all conscription armies as they developed after 1870, were the means of this excess. c) The responsibilities of Germany, enormous as they are, are only partial, because from 1789 on all of Europe is responsible. The World War is the final outcome of the entire history of the nineteenth century-with the exception of the period from 1815 to 1848. The whole history of Europe flowed toward this outlet. The whole history of Europe has been an uninterrupted preparation of this catastrophe-except for the attempt of the old dynasties between 1815 and 1848 to move against the stream. That period from 1815 to 1848 strikes me as the only period when Europe was governed with real political wisdom. Despite its faults it would deserve rehabilitation. If you want to write a review, these elucidations may be useful to you. My wife holds it against me that I have written a book that is something of a riddle. I must help my friends unravel it. Warmest greetings, yours Guglielmo WINTER/SPRING 1983 �1923 Ferrero to Mosca F1orence, May 6, 1923, 7, Viale Machiavelli Dear Gaetano, I have read the Elementi.* I am happy, above all, at the freshness of your thirty-year old book. Except for a few unimportant points it could have been written today. The outlook on the world, the spirit of the research have not aged at all, so that reading it, one has no impression of go· ing back a whole generation. This means that your book has deep, vital roots. When a book stands up against the passage of thirty years it has passed the hardest test, and may endure for three hundred, because it is endowed with eternal elements. The new part completes, or rather, develops the old, by introducing into the synthetic vision the new events and phenomena of the last thirty years, and your further expe· riences. You have made two books written with thirty years between them into one book, without changing or rewriting the first. This is a rare, perhaps unique, occurrence, and worthy of note. What I like best in the book is what I might call its ancient spirit, that psychological realism whose origin lies in a deep, because long thought-out, knowledge of the human soul, a knowledge that is the necessary basis of politics, since politics is only psychology in action. I say that your book is soaked in the spirit of the ancients, because they had in high degree the same deep-seated realism. You referred in the preface to Aristotle's Politics, and rightly, because your book has an honorable place in the same family. How different from the nebulous ideological fantasies in which so many political writers are lost today! This is the most serious, thoughtful, mature, profound book on politics to appear in Europe in recent years. It comes at a time at which it is most needed to lead bewildered minds back to the eternal reality of human affairs, in which alone lies the secret of the good fortune and pros. perity of nations. Let's hope that it is read and meditated upon to the extent it deserves. For my part I'll do my best. I must voice two objections or reservations of a general character. It seems to me that you don't give sufficient importance to what you call the political formula and I call the principle of legitimacy of governments. You seem still to consider it a sort of pia fraus or conventional lie, useful for justifying governmental power above all in the eyes of the ignorant masses. I am increasingly persuaded that it is *Elementi di Scienza Politica, Turin 1896; second edition (here referred to), Turin 1923. English translation, The Ruling Class, New York and London 1939. TilE ST. JOHNS REVIEW the essential part of government and that force is only a subordinate element, which has no true effectiveness unless it is based on the first. A government is not the real thing unless it has persuaded all those who obey it that it has a right to command. This is the test of all governments, not the collecting of policemen and soldiers for the purpose of beating up recalcitrants, a police operation in which even a Lenin, a Mussolini, and similar revolutionary bunglers can succeed. And periods in which the right of the government to command is uncertain and insecure are always troubled, even if the government has great force at its disposal. The other reservation is this. I don't think you have gauged the true importance of the upheaval that took place in European civilization in the nineteenth century. You seem to consider it a normal development of civilization, along familiar lines. But I don't see it that way. There was a break, an overturning, a violent interruption of the line, an attempt to overthrow some of the principles on which all civilizations rested until the eighteenth century. To me this is a point of capital importance. Almost all the objections which I should make to points of detail stem from this different way of looking at the nineteenth century. I find, here and there, a few unimportant errors. StoJy. pin** was not killed with bombs but with a revolver shot at him by a student when he was sitting in a theater. Augustus did not frequently renew the Senate because the nationalistic reaction which, after Actium, brought him to the presidency and kept him there all his life, did not allow him or his successors to introduce many new senators. The first to conduct an operation of this kind was Vespasian, who did not take the new families from Italy, as you say, but from the western provinces-Cisalpine Gau~ Gaul, above all Spain, and from North Africa. Under Vespasian the Senate, which was what we might call centralItalian, became Euro-Africanl To my knowledge, under Vespasian and in the second century, there were not many oriental members. The East was always unwilling to accept Roman political ideas-aristocratic and republican up to the end of the third century-that instead spread widely among the Romanized and civilized barbarians of the West. The East remained faithful to absolute monarchy. This explains why the West and not the East replenished the Roman Senate, up to the collapse of the system in the third century. I'm getting ready to write about your book. Greetings to your family. Yours Guglielmo Ferrero **Peter Arcadievich Stolypin {1862-1911), Russian statesman. Prime minister in 1906, he fought revolutionary ferment with reforms, among them agrarian reform that dissolved the mir and allowed the peasants to own property. 85 �1934 Ferrero to Mosca Geneva, February 17, 1934 Dear Gaetano, I've read the book of your lessons.* It's rich, substantial, clear, full of ideas and briskly written, apt for pleasant and quick reading. I hope it finds many readers. Italy would need to read books like yours. The exposition of the doctrines of yours I know seems precise and exact. And so I extend the same judgment to those that are new to me. If I have any reservations, it's about the overly intellectualizing tendency of the book. It seems to me that you lend too much importance to ideas as inspiring events. Ideas, in my opinion, are often the horse-flies of history. Rousseau, for in-stance. 1 believe that Rousseau's influence on the French Revolution has been enormously exaggerated. In the course on the Revolution that I gave here three years ago, I maintained that Rousseau didn't make the Revolution but that the Revolution created Rousseau.** Rousseau's books had made a certain dent but only on a small number of people who, later, for the most part, were against the Revolution. But when the Convention found itself isolated and without other support than assemblage of forces amid a France in ruins, it needed, at least, a theory to justify its power. It latched onto The Social Contract, glorifying it and making it into a sort of Bible of democracy. As for what you say about socialism, I think it isn't at all exact to say that political equality makes for economic equality. This is an argument conservatives have abused for the last hundred years but which seems to me unfounded. The old regime was founded on political and economic inequality; the rich had all the power. I don't believe it's possible to return to this state of affairs, which collapsed because it was excessive. Equality, economic and political together, is impossible unless we crystallize labor into absurd forms. I believe, therefore, that, after many convulsions and oscillations, the world will adapt to a state of political equality and economic inequality, such as a number of countries have already reached. Political equality will compensate for economic inequality, to the advantage of the poor. Socialism has, in fact, been more successful in countries where the government had an oligarchic and aristocratic character and there was still considerable political inequality-Russia, Germany, Austria, Italy-than in countries where economic inequalities are great but political equality is ensured by democratic institutions-such as the United States and England before 1914. The theory of the political formula seems to me also to need reenforcement. I should substitute this somewhat neutral phrase with another, more vigorous: principle of legitimacy. Among African blacks or barbarians facts and rights may coincide: whoever possesses the material instruments of power is thought to have the right to command. Little by little, as a country becomes more civilized, the fact of possessing the instruments of power no longer suffices. These instruments must have been acquired with the observance of certain rules and principles which confer the right, recognized by all, to govern. Outside these principles there is no longer a legitimate government; there is usurpation. Whereas you seem to consider the political formula as a sort of plaything or game, which serves, at best, to moderate the rulers, it seems to me that the principle of legitimacy is a matter of the utmost seriousness, solemnity, and necessity. It is the very essence of civilization. A civilized people that falls from a legitimate government to a government of usurpation becomes infantile again. Today, alas, two-thirds of the world's governments are illegitimate usurpations. During the last twenty years the world has precipitated into barbarism, just because a large number of old legitimate governments have fallen and made way for usurpations. For how long?! That's the great question. But we would need to talk all this over face to face. Cordial greetings and good wishesG. F. Translated by Frances Frenaye *Mosca's Lezioni di storia delle dottrine e delle instituzioni politiche, Rome 1932. **The last version of this course, given at the University of Geneva in 1940-1942 was published almost ten years after Ferrero's death in 1942: Les deux revolutions francaises, 1789-1796, Neuchatel 1951. English translation, G. Ferrero, The Two French Revolutions 1789-1796, New York 1968. 86 WINTER/SPRING 1983 �Guglielmo Ferrero and Legitimacy Carlo Mongardini Guglielmo Ferrero understood that in our century the fundamental question for politicians and statesmen was no longer the exercise of power by an organized minority, but how to build legitimacy from below. Gaetano Mosca and Vilfredo Pareto also knew this was the problem. Mosca opened the academic year of 1902-03 at the University of Turin with a lecture, "The Aristocratic and Democratic Principle in the Past and Future." 1 In 1920 Pareto wrote a series of articles in the Rivista di Milano on the transformation of democracy. 2 But neither Mosca nor Pareto were up to dealing with this in part new subject because each conceived the structure of power to hinge on elites and the substitution of one elite for another (Mosca's "circulation of elites"). Ferrero, instead, made legiti~ macy the central question in interpreting contemporary history and saw it as the key to understanding the crisis of the modern world. Ferrero did not think of himself as a professional historian.3 He turned to history in the spirit of Taine,4 one of his models, uin order to recover, in the comparison of past and present, the today almost completely lost awareness of certain rules of life that cannot be transgressed without running into the reason of things." 5 His avowed desire to "divide the study of history not into epochs ... but by types of phenomena";6 his conception of the study of history not as an "effort to recall the past," but as "an exercise in recognizing the differences and similarities between past and present," show his concentration on understand· ing the changes taking place in the society of his day. This meant-as in the instance of Taine-a new kind of history, not political history, but the history of civil society or rather of the changes in civil society. The orientation on Carlo Mongardini is professor of political science at the polytechnic in Milan. He recently edited the surviving correspondence of Gaetano Mosca and Guglielmo Ferrero, Gaetano Mosca-Guglielmo Ferrero. Car- teggio (1896-1934), Milan 1980. The above article was read at a congress on Ferrero, "Guglielmo Ferrero, tra societa e politica," at the University of Genova on October 4-5, 1982. THE ST. JOHNS REVIEW society allows the application of the categories employed in studying and interpreting the present to the past (in the case of Ferrero to ancient Rome) .. In another sense, Ferrero simply pursues the comparison of present and past, Hthe differences and similarities." Ferrero was, above all, a student of society, or, as he put it, a student of "some problems of individual and collective life."7 We should not be surprised that such study turned out largely political. By nature and almost by historical necessity, the study of society in Italy is political. 8 Like Mosca's theory of the political class, Ferrero's concern with legitimacy had clearly contemporary relevance. In 1923 Ferrero wrote Mosca of the significance of the principle of legitimacy: A government is not the real thing unless it has persuaded all those who obey it that it has the right to command. This is the test of all governments. Not the recruitment of a few policemen and soldiers to beat up recalcitrants-a police operation in which even a Lenin, a Mussolini and other such Revolutionary bunglers can succeed. And times in which the right of the government to command is uncertain and insecure are always troubled, even if the government has great forces at its disposal 9 To understand Ferrero's total concentration on the principles of legitimacy, we have to recall his experience under Fascism-clearly revealed in his correspondence, especially in his letters to Mosca. Mosca's theory of the political class had been an argument against the corruption of parliamentary democracy; Ferrero's concept of legitimacy was an intellectual weapon against Fascism's violence. In search of a principle oflegitimacy to give stability to the rule and structures' of representative government, old Europe flounders between varieties of dictatorship or "caesarism" and the. threa~ of revolutions that, for their part, offer no solutions,.capable of substantially modifying the course of history. The subject of legitimacy marks our century, especially after the First World War. Foretold.in the works of SaintSimon, the theory of political class and elites is essentially 87 �an inheritance from the nineteenth century. New subjects for political thought introduce the 'new century: the new feudalism, representation, legitimacy, consent. To give these subjects-whose pertinency is now unmistakabletheir full weight was one of Ferrero's great intuitions. LEGITIMACY AND ITS IMPLICATIONS The inspiration of these themes by the struggle with events tends to confirm that Ferrero did not, as has been written, come upon the idea of legitimacy in Geneva in 1930 while preparing a course on the French Revolution and Napoleon, lO but more than ten years earlier, as he says himself. In Principles of Power, he tells how in 1918 a few pages ofTalleyrand gave him the key to the understanding of the history of Europe since the French Revolution: It took ... a universal catastrophe and a few pages from an old forgotten book before I became aware of the existence of the mysterious Genii that were helping and persecuting me without my knowledge .... The World War was just coming to an end, and the thrones of Europe were falling one on top of the other with a deafening clatter. To while away the hours, I started reading some ancient and forgotten tomes which were somewhat in the spirit of the times. One day, while reading Talleyrand's Memoirs, I came across seven pages in the second volume that revealed to me the principles oflegitimacy. The revelation was momentous. From then on I began to see clearly in the history of mankind and in my own destiny. 11 Legitimacy completed a theory of power that Ferrero first began to elaborate in the early years of the century. To undo fear, that primordial condition of human nature, and to create artificial conditions of stability and security, man fashions power in the same way he organizes social life and makes civilization. But power performs its task of dispelling insecurity only to the extent that it draws upon an objective idea that legitimates it and lends legality to its actions. "Power can attain its proper perfection, legitimacy, only through a sort of unwritten contract." This contract grounds power in the reciprocal promise of the ruled to obey and the rulers to observe certain rules and pursue certain ends. In every society legitimacy sanctions the exercise of power. "As soon as the two parties no longer respect this contract, the principle of legitimacy loses its strength. Fear returns." 12 Primordial fear returns-but within society. The ruled fear the force avail· able to the rulers, the rulers' rebellion, and the frailty of consent on which they can rely. Power can guarantee "the rules of the game" of living together only to the extent that it serves the principles that give a society its direction. Once the ties of the principles of legitimacy loosen, mistrust invades rulers and ruled: insecurity and fear slowly 88 overcome the human soul. An instrument made to combat fear, power can incite it, both active and passive, when uit violates the principle of legitimacy that has up to then jus· tified it."ll The primordial condition of man, Hobbes's state of nature, is overcome by the institution and religion of legitimacy, power. 14 But this religion cannot do without a rational creed, without rulers with authority and without the consent of the governed. The principle of legitimacy ties everything together. It is the actual living constitution of its group. Power, however, cannot rest on an unequivo- cal relation between rulers and governed. Like any other institution, it has to come to terms with the basic contradiction "between human liberty and the social necessity for reactions that can be foreseen." 15 At the basis of power there is ambivalence, the same ambivalence that Freud found in the same years at the foundations of civiliza. tion, !6 and that the Berlin sociologist, Georg Simmel, thinks accompanies all subordinationP The principles of legitimacy attenuate this ambiva· lence. Because they objectify the idea that endows the organization of society from below and above with meaning, they serve to preserve subordination from abuse. Govern· ment and the governed both submit to the idea that underlies the institution. From this idea all members of the group draw the assurance of the obiectivity of the exercise of power, which is intimately connected to the idea of legitimacy. Ferrero spoke of "the invisible genii of the city." Again we are surprised by an analogy with Georg Simmel, who speaks of the "characteristic and deeply rooted capac· ity of both individuals and groups to draw new strength from things whose energy stems from them." The ancient Greeks, says Simmel, created gods "by sublimating their own qualities" and then expected the gods to give them a morality and the strength to practice it.lB Ferrero's principles of legitimacy are modern gods that men fashion then to draw from them the rules of political conduct. These gods must remain inviolate in their sanctuaries, because, "every true authority is divine, and no material force can violate it." 19 uMen will never acknowl- edge other men's right to command them unless by a feeling of mystical origin which the intellect cannot explain .... A secular state is an impossible contradiction, and the authority of the state, like that of a father or mother, is either by nature hieratic, even when stripped of rites, or apocryphaJ."20 Men's readiness to hold the principles of legitimacy sacred accounts for the religious dimension in politics. The religious dimension comes not only because politics was born in temples. It inheres in the nature of political things. 21 Because of this religious dimension, the principles of legitimacy make up the actual living constitution in its organization of a group of men from above and below. They justify power, the power to command and to rule. "Of all the inequalities among men none has such telling conse· quences and, therefore, such a need for justification as the inequality that comes of power. With rare exceptions one WINTER/SPRING 1983 �man is as good as another. Why should, one have the right to command and the rest the duty to obey? The answer lies in the principles of legitimacy!' 22 They make possible "tacit agreement between rulers and ruled about the specific laws and rules that determine the conferment and limits of power." This implicit understanding frees government "from the fear of revolt ever present in the enforced obedience of its subjects." And the subjects no longer "fear and distrust power." 23 Legitimacy becomes a complex mechanism which includes a choice of purposes that must win the assent of all; means of achieving them, clearly identifiable in institutions; a set of capable men, a political class, with an effective, and not only formal, mandate to represent the people. This complex picture of political realities shows the great intuitive understanding and relevance of Ferrero's contribution to political thought. Power amounts no longer to the power of the elitists, to a simple matter of fact that an organized minority conquers and wields. The problem of power is intimately tied to legitimacy. Power must be understood as a circular process. Through consent,24 identification, and representation, 25}egitimacy rises from below, while power comes down from above in the actions of the political class that exercises it.26 A more complex conception has overcome the one-sided vision of the elitists. The principles of legitimacy work as the invisible "genii of the city." Through the principles of legitimacy the prevailing needs of society find realization in an idea that underlies the formation and guides the actions of a group. This idea makes up, to speak in juridical terms, the actual constitution of every organization 27 It balances the force available to the government, which achieves its objectivity through this idea, and the consent that rises from below. With the disappearance of this idea consent breaks up and the force power exercises grows more pronounced and subjective in its exercise. Mistrust and fear increase. jjNo government can endure if it is not upheld by a certain force. But woe to the government that wants to do and command too much! Some force is necessary, too much is harmful. A government needs authority, prestige, respect. A government can never have too much authority. The state is authority, not force." 28 "The principles oflegitimacy have the task of freeing rulers and ruled from their mutual fears. They increasingly substitute consent for coercion in their relation. They are, therefore, the pillars of civilization. For men's effort to free themselves from the fears that torment them is civilization." 29 The elitists had, however, taught Ferrero that political conflict cannot be reduced to a conflict of principles: No principle of legitimacy can thrust itself upon a nation solely by its own power; in the beginning every principle is imposed by an organized minority that attempts to overcome the repugnance and incomprehension of those who are bound to obey 30 THE ST, JOHNS REVIEW The time described in these lines is the time of the rise of a new principle, the phase of prelegitimacy. For principles oflegitimacy "are born, grow, age and die. Sometimes they differ and collide. Their life cycles and their struggles make up the invisible web of history."l 1 Prelegitimacy involves the minority that assumes the role of introducing the new principles. Legitimacy, in contrast, implies all the forces at work in the political sphere, above all majority and opposition. The opposition cannot be suppressed without damage. "Whatever the nature of the suffrage by which sovereign people express themselves ... , it is obvious that its will cannot be identified with either the will of the majority or with the will of the minority, that each is a different section of the unique sovereign will and that the latter is to be found in the juxtaposition of the two willsmajority and minority. It is therefore impossible to suppress the will of either one without mutilating the sovereign will and drying up the source of legitimacy." 32 In a system of solid political liberties the opposition must be free to perform its task. "For the minority to be able to offer a serious and fruitful opposition it requires a firmly established system ... so that the will of the people may not be falsified by coercion, intimidation, or corruption. But a false majority, which would only be a disguised minority, would always be too frightened of the opposition to allow it to make loyal use of the political freedom it needs, or to respect the freedom of suffrage sincerely." 33 Such conditions of "false majority" foreshadow a crisis oflegitimacy, the outbreak of force and fear on the political stage. Anarchy spreads. And power threatened threatens in return even to the point of a recourse to a "policy of assassination," a policy that begins in the modern world with the rise of Napoleon.l4 The break-up of legitimacy means a return to the original condition of insecurity and precariousness. The mechanisms of defense and aggression that men had thought laid aside forever come to life again, now magnified by power. A power that feels threatened and attacks nascent rebellion, and, thereby, excites new and fiercer violence. That political struggle cannot be understood entirely in terms of principles of legitimacy does not mean that Ferrero considers principles oflegitimacy instruments of justification in the hands of the minority that holds power. This refusal to reduce principles of legitimacy to mere instruments of justification, distinguishes Ferrero's princi~ pies of legitimacy from the political formula of Gaetano Mosca, at least in its early elaborations.* The principle of legitimacy also includes the political formula but is not equivalent to it. The two expressions, legitimacy and polit*In the last chapter of Storia delle dottrine politiche, Bari 1933, Mosca describes the political formula (the entire chapter is translated in J. H. Meisel, The Myth of the Ruling Class, Ann Arbor, Mich. 1958, 382-391): One of the first results of the new method was the notion of what, since 1883, has been known as the political formula, meaning that in all societies, be their level ever so mediocre, the ruling class will justify its 89 �ical formula are, in fact, only in appearance similar.l5 Like power, the political formula comes' from above. The prin· ciple of legitimacy, however, involyes all participants in the political process, for it provides the basis for the tacit contract that institutes rule. The difference between legitimacy and the political formula may be subtle. In my judgment, 'however, it shows the difference in perspective from which Mosca and Ferrero viewed the role of legitimacy in the dynamics of politics. Upon the reading of the just published second edition of Elementi di scienza Politica in 1923, Ferrero wrote Mosca in a letter already quoted in part: It seems to me that you still don't give sufficient impor- tance to what you call the political formula and I call the principle of legitimacy of governments. You seem still to consider it a sort of pia fraus or conventional lie, useful for justifying governmental power, above all in the eyes of the ignorant masses. I am increasingly persuaded that it is the essential part of government and that force is only a subordinate element, which has no true efficacy unless it is based on the first. A government is not the real thing unless it has persuaded all those who obey it that it has a right to command.36 As I remarked at the beginning, legitimacy had contemporary relevance for Ferrero. Ferrero wanted to understand the political crisis of his own times. He concluded that absence or insufficiency of a principle of legitimacy had allowed the history of modern Europe continually to oscillate between varieties of dictatorships or Caesarism that surreptitiously seek to restore the old principles of legitimacy and revolutions that vainly try to impose with force new principles of legitimacy that have no place in a quantitative civilization. The democratic principle based on universal suffrage is too frail to sustain rule. It comes down to number simply, to an electoral machine. It has lost all metaphysical and moral significance.J7 It has corrupted representation. For the most part, it came from above: "Universal suffrage was everywhere thrust upon the masses by a minority recruited from the upper class and supported by a few popular groups. It came from above exactly like monarchic power. And it descended from above because the government, after admitting that the will of the people was alone or in part the source of legitimate authority, was unable to stop in midstride for power by appealing to some sentiment or credence generally accepted in that period and by that society, such as the presumed Popular or Divine Will, the notion of a distinct nationality or Chosen People, traditional loyalty toward a dynasty, or confidence in a man of exceptional qualities. Of course, every political formula must reflect the specific intellectual and moral maturity of the people and the epoch in which it is adopted. It must closely correspond to the particular conception of the world prevailing at that time in that particular society, in order to cement the moral unity of all the individuals who compose it. Any indication that a political formula has become "dated," that the faith in its principles has become shaky, that the ardent sentiments which once inspired it have begun to cool down is a sign that serious transformations of the ruling class are imminent. 90 very long at arbitrary distinctions that restricted sovereign rights to a part of the nation. The people means everyone. A simple irresistible solution." 38 Universal suffrage also failed to endow the collectivity with the mystery of value. The consequences were profound: "the collapse of all authority": The ruin of all principles of authority in which Western civilisation believed is the greatest destruction caused by the war. . . . All authority has collapsed. Sheer force rules the world, force alone, stark naked, or covered up with red rags or the torn shred of a national flag. Force governs as best it can, with excesses and sudden starts, without discernment. It tears the world apart. For force is so weak when it is naked and alone. 39 With the collapse of all authority after the First World War, Europe on the one hand entrusted itself to the myth of "regenerative violence" that has not and never will prevail and which has only spawned various madness: The Revolution has not won and could not win because it did not give birth to a new principle of authority. Universal suffrage is not a principle of authority, but an electoral machine for collecting votes and putting together assemblies, large and small. When has the world ever been governed by a machine? A government is eyes, arms, brains, thought, and will. A machine is a piece of blind inanimate matter, moved by external force. 40 On the other hand, everyone in Europe called loudly for a "strong government". But governments of that time were a strange mixture of strength and weakness, "immense force bolstered by tottering authority."41 All this resulted in a series of dictatorships that could not justify their power and sought to revive as much as possible the old monarchial power42 Dictatorships and revolutions appealed to each other and justified each other in a vicious cycle that kept out the crucial problem: the not merely formal, but the actual legitimacy of power. After 1930, Ferrero wrote, "The confusion becomes general. We must go to the bottom of the problem; distinguish between legitimate and illegitimate governments by means of definitions that go to the root of the problem; study intermediate forms and drive out the mental chaos of our wandering by the effort to understand it."43 What did Ferrero think would become of the principle of legitimacy? Its future depended on overcoming this period of transition in which men believed they could build a civilization solely on quantity. "The world," Ferrero said to Bogdan Raditsa in 1939, will not recover order, peace, and freedom to live and think until the day it rediscovers the eternal ~rinciples of any civilisation: quality, limits, and legitimacy. 4 Mankind, or at any rate its elite, now faces a decisive turning point: it has become too well informed, too sure of itself, too skeptical to believe in a principle of legitimacy as a religious WINTER/SPRJNG 1983 �absolute without wanting to know why. It wants to reason everything out, even principles of legitimacy. Therefore it must not remain content to reason only to the point where every principle of legitimacy appears a'!:>surd or unjust. It must go beyond that to the very bottom of the problem. It must discover the nature and the task of principles of legitimacy, so that from them it may deduce rules for a rational ethics of authority that will transform the former mystical veneration of government into a widespread knowledge and sentiment of respective duties: those of the government toward its subjects and those of the subjects toward the government. There is no other solution. The problem of government today looms before the West like an enormous and precipitous mountain, full of crevasses, glaciers, and ava- lanches, that bars the path to all mankind.45 An Augustus who could restore the state "beginning at the beginning with the legitimacy of the government" is called for-not a Caesar. "We shall sink deeper and deeper into disorder until we constitute a government whose credentials are in order, whose legitimacy, or right to govern, is unarguable before the conscience of the nation". 46 INTUITION AND LIMITATIONS IN FERRERO'S THINKING Ferrero's identification of several crucial elements in the crisis in the relation of individual to society brings his work close to us. In the context of individual and society, the problem of legitimacy is not only a political but also a social problem. Social life is founded on dimensions at the same time objective and subjective. The principles of legitimacy, in Ferrero's meaning, make sense just because they at the same time embody the objective dimension of collective life and the subjective assent to it through identification with the institutions that carry out the principles of legitimacy. Principles of!egitimacy can only rise from a balance between the objective and subjective dimensions of life. But Ferrero deals with the sames problems that Simmel treated in his analysis of the money economy, that Max Weber saw in terms of formal rationality, that Freud described as civilization's discontent. 48 But Ferrero concentrates his attention chiefly on the political consequences of the crisis in legitimacy-and on the succession and alternation of varieties of anarchy and totalitarianism that justify and reinforce each other. The end result of doctrines that promised men liberty, equality, and fraternity, Ferrero wrote to Mosca in 1920, has been the coming of governments "harder and more violent, because stronger but less authoritative ... that today are all turning into tyrannies based on money and force .... As for the rebirth of the principle of authority, I believe that it is inevitable but that it will come about slowly, in a distant future. We shall not live to see it. Probably the new principle of authority will take shape around persons, institutions, and doctrines that will defend men against this dreadful tyranny."49 Ferrero did not mean to write political theory. From the point of view of theory, there are, in fact, many things to criticize: his too formalistic and sometimes too abstract exposition of legitimacy that is more bound to principles and, therefore, to the images of legitimacy, than to the mechanisms of consent and of identification that bring legitimacy; the consequent impression of neglect of daily realities, of the relations and interaction of social life that produce power and legitimation; and finally his recourse to language that too often resorts to emotion rather than proof. Ferrero has, however, at least two great merits. He went beyond the power theory of the elitists. And with the theory of legitimacy he made a notable advance on the theory of ideology and upon Mosca's political formula. Many of Ferrero's books and many of his views show the marks of time. I believe, however, that these two themes could provide the beginning of a new chapter in political analysis. In Italy, Ferrero wrote, at least, the introductory paragraph of that chapter. Translated by Frances Frenaye modern culture, in Ferrero's view, founded on quantity, on the increase of numbers, on progress defined in terms of production, on a money economy, has provoked a crisis in the subjective dimension of social life. Faced with the increase of complexity and at the same time with the fragmentation of social life, with role conflicts and manifold expectations that sweep him up, the individual, as Simmel observed, defends himself with indifference and gives up identifications that might disturb the unity of his mental life. 47 The impossibility of striking a balance between the objective and subjective dimensions of life is the crisis in legitimacy. It was in its capacity to balance between subjective and objective life that Ferrero found the "religious" implication of the principles of legitimacy. THE ST. JOHNS REVIEW l. Later reprinted in Gaetano Mosca, Partiti e sinddcati nella crisi del regime parlamentare, Bari 1949. 2. Vilfredo Pareto, Trasformazione della democrazia, Milano 1921. 3. Bogdan Raditsa, Colloqui con Guglielmo Ferrero, Lugano 1939, 63. 4. Ferrero came to Taine through Cesare Lombroso, who also considered him one of his teachers. His way of conceiving and approaching history is certainly very similar to Taine's. Both men had the idea of studying the past in order to understand the reasons for a contemporary crisis, whether in France after 1870 or in Italy at the turn of the century. It may well be that Ferrero's sensitivity to the problem of the legitimacy of power came also from Taine. For the relationship of Taine, Lombroso, and Ferrero, see M. Simonetti, "Georges Sorel e Guglielmo Ferrero fra "cesarismo" borghese e socialismo" (with 27 unpublished letters from Sorel to Ferrero 1896~1921), Il Pensiero Politico, 5, l. On Taine, C. Mongardini, Storia e sociologia nell'operra di H. Taine, Milan 1965. 91 �5. Guglielmo Ferrero, Lavecchia Europa e_ Ia nuova. Saggi e discorsi, Mi· lan 1918, 36. • 6. Guglielmo Ferrero, Storia e filosofia della storia, Nuova Antologia, November 1, 1910. Reprinted in B. Raditsa, Colloqui, Lugano 1939, 100. 7. B. Raditsa, Colloqui, Lugano 1939, 63-64~ 8. Cf. C. Mongardini, Profili della sociologia italianc1, Rome 1982. 9. C. Mongardini ed., Gaetano Mosca-Guglielmo Ferrero. Carteggio (1896-1934), Milan 1980, 331. A translation of the entire letter of May 5, 1923, appears in "Letters on Legitimacy" in this issue of the St. John's Review. 10. Cf. N. Bobbio, "II potere e il diritto," Nuovo Antologia, Aprill982. The exact date is important. Because if we date the idea from the course given in Geneva in 1930, we must recall that Max Weber's Wirtschaft und Gesellschaft, posthumously published in 1921, contains a famous characterization of the forms oflegitimate power. Actually, Ferrero had amply developed his idea of legitimacy in Memorie e confessioni di un sovrano <kposto, Milan 1920. 11. G. Ferrero, Principles of Power, New York 1942, 18-19. This book first appeared in an edition (published by Brentano's) in French, the Ian· guage of its writing, in New York in 1942. 12. G. Ferrero, Power, New York 1942, 42. 13. G. Ferrero, Power, New York 1942, 42. 14. There are, however, important "differences between Ferrero and Hobbes, Cf. D. Settembrini, "Riscopriamo Guglielmo Ferrero," Tempo Presente, June 1982. 15. G. Ferrero, The Reconstruction of Europe, New York 1941, 32. 16. Sigmund Freud, Civilization and its Discontents, first published in German at the end of 1929. 17. Georg Simmel, "Ober und Unterordnung" in Soziologie, Untersu· chungen iiber die Formen der Vergesellschaftung, Berlin 1908. Translation in The Sociology of Georg Simmel, edited and translated by Kurt H. Wolff, New York 1950, 181-306, 193: Man has an intimate dual relation to the principle of subordination. On the one hand, he wants to be dominated. The majority of men not only cannot exist without leadership; they also feel that they cannot; they seek the higher power which relieves them of responsibility; they seek a restrictive, regulatory rigor which protects them not only against the outside world but also against themselves. But no less do they need opposition to the leading power, which only through this opposition, through move and countermove, as it were, attains the right place in the life pattern of those who obey it. 18. Cf. G. Simmel, "Comment les formes sociales se maintiennent," L'annee sociologique, 1897. Also, in a later, longer draft, "Die Selbsterhaltung der sozialen Gruppe" in Soziologie, Untersuchungen tiber die Formen der Vergesellschaftung, 3 Leipzig 1923, 375-459. English translation of the earlier draft, "The Persistence of Social Groups," American Journal of Sociology 5, March 1898, 662-698; 6, May 1898, 829-836; 4, july 1898, 35-50. 19. G. Ferrero, Memorie e confessioni di un sovrano deposto, Milan 1920. On the nature of principles of legitimacy, cf. also, L. Pellicani, "Rivoluzione e totalitarismo," Controcorrente, October-December 1974. 20. G. Ferrero, Memorie, Milan 1920, 280. Because of their sacred char· acter all principles of legitimacy, even originally partly rational, "can be· come absurd in their application." The rational element in principles of legitimacy "is accidental, external and unsubstantial" (G. Ferrero, Power, New York 1942, 25). Moreoever, the rationality of a principle of legiti· macy remains internal to the principle itself (117). 21. Cf. Georges Burdeau, La politique au pays des merveilles, Paris 1979, 6 ff. 92 22. G. Ferrero, Power, New York 1942,22-23. 23. G. Ferrero, Power, New York 1942,281. 24. Ferrero showed unusual foresight in distinguishing between types of consent, especially between active and passive content. For instance, Power, New York 1942,40-41,278,293. On types of consent, C. Mongar· dini, Le condizioni del consenso, Rome 1980. 25. Political representation is, in Ferrero, the "supporting structure of the democratic system" but it does not imply a close relationship between representatives and represented. The relationship passes through the principles of legitimacy just as every action of the government passes through them. Cf. Pier Paolo Portinaro, "Democrazia e dittatura in Guglielmo Ferrero," Comunitd, 33, 181, October 1979. 26. Power, New York 1942, 171. · 27. Ferrero's recall in Power (132) of Hans Kelsen, "one of the greatest exponents of constitutional and international law of our time," is not ac· cidental. A little further on (143-144), he seems to subtly argue with him: Efficacy has a role in the eternal drama of legitimacy, but a different role from that assigned to it by contemporary thought. Though attached to it, legitimacy never depends directly on the efficacy of gov· emment, which may increase or diminish over a long period of time without affecting legitimacy. 28. G. Ferrero, Memorie, Milan 1920, 292-293. 29. G. Ferrero, Power, New York 1942, 48. 30. Power, 169. 31. Power, 49. 32. Power, 173-174. 33. Power, 175. 34. Power, 201-203. 35. N. Bobbio ("II potere e il diritto," Nuova Antologia, April 1982) seems, instead, to lend them the same meaning. 36. See the discussions between Mosca and Ferrero on "political for· mula" and "principles oflegitimacy" in Gaetano Mosca-Guglielmo Fer· rero. Carteggio (1896-1934), Milan 1980, 330-332 and 453-55. Transla· tions of both these letters (May 6, 1923 and February 17, 1934) appear in "Letters on Legitimacy" in this issue of the St. John's Review. 37. G. Ferrero, Power, 53. 38. Power, 182-183. 39. G. Ferrero, Memorie, Milan 1920, 289 and 295. 40. G. Ferrero, Memorie, Milan 1920, 285-286. 41. G. Ferrero, Words to the Deaf, New York 1925, 71. 42. G. Ferrero, "Reflexions sur une agonie," L'illustration, April 21, 1928. 43. G. Ferrero, Power, 130. 44. B. Raditsa, Colloqui, Lugano 1939, 83. 45. Power, 283-284. 46. G. Ferrero, La democrazia in Italia. Studi e precisioni, Milan 1925, 107. 47. G. Simmel, "Die Grossstadte und das Geistesleben" in Die Grasstadt, Dresden 1903, 185-206. English translation, "The Metropolis and Mental Life," in The Sociology of Georg Simmel, New York 1950, 409424. 48. Ferrero uses the concept of identification in much the same way as Freud, and gives it much the same importance in the interpretation of modem society. Cf. G. Ferrero, Power, 35-36,48. For Freud, Civilization and its Discontents (1929). 49. Mosca-Ferrero. Carteggio, Milan 1980, 295-297. A translation of this letter of January 31, 1920 appears in "Letters on Legitimacy" in this issue of the St. John's Review. WINTER/SPRING 1983 �My Memoir of Our Revolution from City of Ends Daniel Ardrey That morning his picture appeared on the wall-and on all the walls all over the city. I saw from my window a small crowd looking up at it-! went down to look myself. We studied it in silence. He was a handsome man-no doubt about it-and fair with his blond hair combed back en brosse. Though the picture was a grainy black and white snapshot you could see his eyes were blue-either that or pale brown. Written beneath it were simple wordsBROTHERS AND SISTERS UNITE FOR VICTORY AND THE REvOLUTION! They sent a shiver through us like a small shock-it was the first time he was to speak to us and we weren't used to it yet. Nor were we used to reading: our lips moved as we read and our heads jerked on from word to word. As we stood there looking up we all knew that this was our expec· tation and our fulfillment. I looked around and saw tears in some of the women's eyes-Marissa was there and snif· fling into a much worn hankerchief. My reaction was one of enormous relief as though a huge burden had been lifted from my shoulders. My back straightened involun- Daniel Ardrey lives in Boston. The above selection comes from an unpublished novel, City of Ends. THE ST. JOHNS REVIEW tarily and I raised my chin. Marissa came over to me-her eyes were reddened. Isn't it too wonderful? she asked. Yes, it is I answered-it was trueIt's what we all hoped for. I patted her on the shoulder-! wanted to console her though there was nothing to be sad about. His picture alone had given us new meaning. The rest of the day I saw small groups of people clustered in front of it speculating. What's he like? Will we ever see him? Where' s he from? Look at those eyes. And the chin. And the hair. What'll he do? And so on. The kinds of questions people asked to flesh out their initial excitement. Because above all we wanted to think of him as a man. There was something about his face-perhaps the jutting of his chin, perhaps his piercing eyes-that inspired confidence and respect. And, of course, we saw him as the personification of our Revolution. From now on it was going to cease to be amorphous and confusing. We were like those wakened from a deep and troubled sleep-to see in his face that which we'd dreamt and forgotten, or never known. I went about my business as usual-though nothing was as usual then. It was before and after, light and dark-a total change and so clearly defined. If our Revolution was to have a human face, his, it was also going to take on a personality, also his. That would make it so much easier to understand, I thought-no longer were we going to be perplexed and baffled and because of it always afraid. No, this was itand the act of reading his words gave me a feeling of intimate relation to him. Although he was addressing us as brothers and sisters we couldn't be that-we would have to be children and led. Not that we'd mind-it was only 93 �logical. The Revolution had made us all children anyway. Though some of us were older than others, the Revolution had led us into a world that was fresh and clean and beautiful-like a child's. There was also the unknown-so much of it I couldn't say-that's where he came in. Like a father he'd tell us what was and what wasn't. That is to say, define our beliefs and behavior. We all had a sense of this-in some way or another-and if we were discussing the color of his eyes or hair we were also thinking of these other things. I went about my business humming, arranging things on my shelves. The shutter to my shop was half up and while my back was turned Roderigo came in. I heard his voice behind me and knew who it was. Well, what do you think? What? Is he for real? Or is it a plot? Somebody out to get us. I was so startled I dropped what I had in my hand. I had to bend down to pick it up before I turned to him. I saw he was serious. How can you think that? I said. It wouldn't make sense. Maybe not. Or maybe not now, maybe later. Roderigo shrugged with his face, his shoulders didn't move, and sat down on an orange crate. He took a toothpick from his coat pocket and began to pick at his teeth. We'd be fools to fall for it if it weren't for real, wouldn't we? he went on. I suppose so, I said. I sat down on something and scratched the side of my forehead-it was to give me time to think. He was studying me with great care. You know, he beganWe all think we're so clever. I mean that we know how to get by. And we do. Look at us. He moved his hand palm upward in a half circle. But what else do we know? Pause. He answered his own question. Not much, maybe nothing. We don't have the faintest idea what we're getting into, do we? Maybe not, I said thinking how best to phrase itBut everyone was thinking the same thing at the same time. It was like we all knew what was going to happen and didn't know what it was. My turn to pause. That means something, you can't deny it. I don't. He took the toothpick and balanced it on his forefinger. He studied it for a momentIt's his face that frightens me. Maybe any face would, but this one more than most. 94 I don't feel it, I said- Nobody else did, you'll get used to it. Maybe you'll even trust him. Maybe. He wiped the toothpick on his sleeve and put it back in his pocket. It was going to be one of those conversations without an end. He got up, looked over my shelves and shrugged-this time with his shoulders and not his face. Then he went out without a word. Roderigo was one of those people who made you feel like you'd made another mistake-and that you'd go on making them. Usually he did it with a laugh-this time he didn't. I didn't care. It was his problem, not mine. I never like to convince someone of anything-my convictions were for myself. I didn't even think much about them. I thought that I was born with them. And that we all were. I believed that the Revolution was a victory for all of us-whether or not we believed in it. It was the kind of day I kept trying to remember something I wasn't trying to forget. All day it was there. Like a little particle of sand irritating the tissue around it. By the time I lay down and fell asleep I'd been exhilarated so long I was exhausted. It was then I realized-almost dreaming it -that it was in fact the Anniversary of our Revolution. How amazing he should've appeared then! His name was Kamal. It was one of many things we were soon to find out about him. After the first wall poster there were many others-each one with his picture at the top like an emblem. Or like his signature-in this case its position reversed-as if he'd signed his statement at the beginning to ensure its authenticity. That way we were to know what followed was genuine and to be believed in. Each morning I looked down at the wall from my window-the shutters now left open day and night-and saw there was another poster up. I threw on my clothes and raced downstairs. Others on the street did likewise-some of us stood still buttoning our shirts or still combing our hair. We soon got better at reading-our lips moved less-though there was still a murmuring as we read. It was communal: we did it together and enjoyed it. We didn't even notice that for the first time we were together and that it was through and because of him. He told us a great deal about himself-his life history as it were-but always in passing. His main subject was-as it had to be-the Revolution. But we knew about that-or thought we did-so it was him we were curious about. He seemed to realize this. At the end of a short textWINTER/SPRING 1983 �THE REVOLUTION MUST GO ON, DO NOT BETRAY IT, YOU ARE THE BYES AND EARS, BEUEVE IN THE REVOLUTION AND IT WILL BEUEVE IN YOU and so on-were a few lines about himself. It was these we read and reread until each of us knew his life history by heart. His poor parents and their harassment by the tax collectors of the Old Regime. How his brother had died as a child from starvation. How his mother had wept and carried the body for days even though it was lifeless. How his father had worked twelve and fourteen and sixteen hours a day for a pittance. How he-Kamal-had had to work as hard as a child-and how he'd begun to read. His reading fascinated us-we did little of it ourselves and thought that a man of action would do likewise. No, in his youth he was almost scholarly. He'd gone to a seminary, then to a university on scholarship, and then on to do post graduate work abroad-all this while he worked nights as a sole support of his family. His father had become a cripple-victimized by a work accident that twisted his back and for which there was no compensation. His mother had great difficulty breathing-from the noxious fumes she'd had to inhale at her factory. It was almost a blessing when she'd died-for her last years were spent gasping for breath like a fish out of water. We read in awe of someone who could transform himself from such a background to a life of scholarship-and then out of nowhere to become the embodiment of the Revolution. The wall posters became a vital part of our lives. You saw parents taking children down to read them-then children saying them to themselves as they walked home. The wall posters were not easy to read-they were pasted one on top of the next and the wall itself was often pitted and cracked to begin with. So reading one wall poster was a reminder-admittedly subconscious-of all the others you had read that were under it. In this way, the Revolution that often seemed to have little or no history began to take on a collective past for us. There was another problem with them-their printing. We had little experience of it and whoever was doing it was learning his craft as he went. There were differently shaped letters in the same word, smeared ink that ran in the rain, and lines of printing that went up to edge of the poster and off it -so between that and the line below was a gap of meaning our reading had to leap over. We learned to interpret these signs as we learned to read-they made the text all the more intriguing. At the bottom of each poster was an imprimatur in tiny letters-Errico studio, it said. We wondered where that was-we never knew. What an honor to be the first among us to read his thoughts-like walking up to him and shaking his hand. At this point there were those who had doubts. About him. About the course of the Revolution itself. As days went by and summer began I heard more and more people THE ST. JOHNS REVIEW whispering. I thought of Roderigo. I hadn't seen him since he'd confided in me. I was sure I had doubts myself-to have seen Kamal in person would've dispelled them for me. And for most of us. But he didn't appear. We weren't dealing with an ordinary man. He knew of our doubts as I was sure he knew of everything in our minds. I always got the feeling he could read them-the same way we read his through the wall posters. Before long we read there would be a sign-one that would show each of us that he was real and the real extent of his powers. THERE IS GOOD AND THERE IS EVIL IN THE WORLD. THE REVOLUTION IS GOOD. ALL ELSE IS EVIL. It was simple-we understood. THERE IS ONE TRUTH AND THAT IS THE TRUTH OF THE REVOLUTION. IT IS UKE LIGHT. WITH IT YOU CAN SEE AND WITHOUT IT YOU ARE LOST IN THE DARK. BROTHERS AND SISTERS, BELIEVE! We wondered what that sign was going to be. There was all sorts of speculation. People spoke of a trembling of the ground or other kinds of apparently natural phenomena. Perhaps we got a little too metaphysical in our enthusiasm. When his sign came it was as striking as it was appropriate and all the more convincing for us. It was late one evening and I was in my room sitting by myself in the dark. I heard a scratching at the door. It was Oggi-who else? He was among the sceptical but I sensed in him someone waiting to believe. I let him in and he dropped his weapons in the corner with a clunk. I made some coffee and we sat sipping it. The windows were open and there was a pleasant breeze blowing the curtains back and forth. They brushed against my arm from time to time-for a moment I thought I'd been touched by some hands. It sent a sensation through me I wasn't sure of. It was as we sat there-the two of us not talking-that we began to see it happening. The city was lighting up. Bit by bit. The area by the marina went on. Then that near the National Museum. Then near the foot hills. Oggi and I put down our mugs as one and stood up to lean out. We still didn't speak but our shoulders rested against each other. Then my own room lit up and it became as bright as day. Brighter. It was blinding. We turned from the window to try and look. I shielded my eyes. There were flashes that seemed to go off in my head. I blinked a few times and began to see. There was a single light bulb hanging from the ceiling by a cord-l'd long ago forgotten about it. And there it was on again. I laughed. Spasmodic. Nervousness mostly. And the expression in Oggi's face was miraculous. A cross between anger and being hurt. Then amazement. 95 �He went up to the bulb and touched it with his finger. He jerked it back and brought it to his ,mouth. It was already too hot. He was shaking his head back and forth. Of course he knew what it was-we all did-but electricity was so strange for us. To have been without it for so long and then to have it again-that was ridiculous. There was a switch on the wall that'd been there all the time-! went over to it and moved it down. The bulb went out. I moved it up and the bulb went on again. Oggi laughed and put out his finger to touch it-then stopped. He smiled at me and shook his head. Then he went to the switch and flicked it back and forth several times. The light went on and off again. Each time we laughed and louder. And harder. Soon we were laughing so hard Oggi got the hiccups. I slapped him on the back and he stood hiccuping and shaking his head. Unbelievable! he gaspedUnbelievable! I couldn't have agreed more though the strange thing was that we did believe. And we knew we owed it all to Kamal. That summer was so mild. The breezes came off the sea and kept the city cool and temperate. It was so pleasurable. We felt a new and assured sense of security. It was a time for hard work and no play-Kamal told us so and we believed. THE REVOLUTION WANTS YOUR SPIRIT AND YOUR HANDS we read-and all of us wanted to join in. Oggi came bythis time his hands were empty and he carried no weapons. I buried them, he answered my inquiring lookI'm not going to be needing them. And he was gone-in search of a trowel or some digging implement. Such was our confidence! In ourselves. In Kamal. I walked wherever I pleased and in the middle of the street. All over I saw groups of children and young adults-they were picking up bricks, one by one, and setting them in piles. For so long the city had been a place caught in mid-movement-it was the Revolution that had stopped it like that. I passed a bank where the construction looked like it was still going on. The hoists were in place, mortar had hardened on the trowels, the ladders still led up from floor to floor. It was these things we thought we could get going again. Everywhere there were people 96 clearing and scraping and washing off. When I walked past they looked up and waved-then went back to their work. There was a sense of camaraderie-to be out and working together felt so good. Because it was for us-and for him. I had my problems-that is, my business. There were so many things I'd saved up that were all of a sudden of no use-most obviously, candles. I was loathe to throw them away so I simply stuck them in the back of my shop. You could never tell, I told myself-how often I'd predicted one thing only to have another happen. My motto was to keep it -whatever it was-even if at the time it made no sense. I had to find new things-and fast-so I was out looking around the city for one thing in particular. Light bulbs. I'd had to wade through piles of junk to get my hands on one of seventy-five or a hundred watts. For me it was a new technology-to survive I had to adapt to it. Wherever I found one I unscrewed it from the socket and wrapped it in tissue paper. Light bulbs were so fragile unlike most of what I carried-candles were a lot easier to take care of but then no one was going to want them. I spent my days walking all over the city looking for light bulbs-and I found them. Where I expected-where they'd been left-in apartments and offices long since abandoned. To me they were small and precious and delicate. And it wouldn't be long before everyone else thought so too. We were so excited by the electricity that we left our lights burning day and night. You'd see people switching them on and off for the sheer fun of it-like Oggi and me. When it was dark and I was walking around I could look in and see the bulbs burning. People were gathered under them and looking up. No one drew their shades or closed their shutters-at night we had no sense of our own exposure. It was still so new to us. But I knew that sooner or later the bulbs we had were going to go out-and others would be in demand. I was trying to get my hands on every last bulb I could find-to be ready for that time. I had always to be one step ahead-if not I'd never make it. The Revolution was carrying me and everyone else along with it-that is, we never knew what was going to come next. Everything-whether living or not-was part of it-light bulbs as much as the rest. So meaning was everywhere. If I had one ability above all it was my apprehension of this. It was easy to see that people were part of the Revolution-even a child knew that-but many of us never knew that things were also a part of it. Perhaps what gave me so much confidence in Kamal was my sense that he understood this too. THE REVOLUTION IS IN YOUR HANDS. WASH THEM! THEY MUST BE CLEAN! EACH THING YOU TOUCH IS THE REVOLUTION. IT IS THERE BEFORE YOU. IT IS THERE AFTER YOU. REMEMBER YOU ARE NEVER ALONE! WINTER/SPRJNG 1983 �The most evident thing about his writings was his fondness for exclamation marks. I'd forgotten at first what they were for-someone reading a wall poster next to me had told me. Then I'd understood. How mcire than anything else they conveyed his sense of urgency and emotion. It was strange for us to think of him as emotional-the Revolution as we'd understood it had no room for that. It was Kamal who showed us how mistaken we were. He made it come to life for us. THE REVOLUTION IS YOU. IT LIVES IN YOUR HEART. IT BREATHES AS YOU BREATHE. BELIEVE IN IT AND YOU WILL UVE FOREVER! Perhaps that's why we were no longer afraid of it-to be in fear of yourself wasn't the same thing as to be in fear of the unknown. Kamal made the Revolution familiar to us all. He made us see it was something to feel for and even to love. Love wasn't too strong a word. We had no word that meant the same thing all the time-or even for very long. Love came closest to that. It wasn't a word I'd have used for someone else-not for Oggi, much as I cared for him. Nor for my mother, though you were supposed to love your mother. She had made that relationship one that couldn't be expressed by a word. The Revolution was different-it was in direct contact with each of us. It was Kamal who showed us what that meant. LOVE THE REVOLUTION AND IT WILL LOVE YOU BACK! To us it was true and like so many things he showed us we saw it as if for the first time. I always thought he could read our minds but was more than that, he knew what we were going to think before we thought it. In that sense all time was present to him at all times-while we kept living our day to day lives. When we read THE REVOLUTION MAKES YOU JOYOUS TODAY. YOU WILL BE SADDENED TOMORROW. it was so. The next day our mood changed. We were subdued-some of us cried. I was ashamed of myself. Marissa came by. I gave her what she wanted and asked for nothing in return. She was part of us and understood. Her eyes were wet and she reached up and touched me on the cheek. Then shook her head. I don't know she said! don't know. I feel sort of sick like something's THE ST. JOHNS REVIEW gone out of me. I've lost something and I don't know what. I felt that way. I didn't say it. I helped her out of my shop and down the street. I felt saddened by the rocking of her limp against me. That mood didn't last. THE REVOLUTION IS PEACE. PEACE BEYOND WORDS. As THE REVOLUTION IS BEYOND WORDS. PEACE BE WITH YOU! We felt better. There was Kamal again-penetrating into each of our hearts and minds. Holding us. Gentle. Reassuring. For Oggi-for me-for everyone-he was more than a father. He was fatherhood, too. Imagine-then-what it was like to hear his voice for the first time! It was late summer-hot, not unbearable. I sat in my room wondering what to do next. I'd sold all my light bulbs. They'd gone in a flash when their true value became apparent. Once the old light bulbs had all gone out. There were no more to be had. I'd gone through more piles of junk looking for them-no luck, they weren't there. Much to my amazement I'd begun to start selling candles again. That's what I meant about my business being unpredictable. Now the problem was what I was going to live on next. That's what I was thinking about when I heard it. A rumbling. Like distant thunder. I brushed the curtains aside-there were no clouds. I listened some more. It was continuous. I went down into the street. Everyone else was there-including Roderigo and Old Jubal. I hadn't seen either in a long time. Roderigo winked at me. Old Jubal adjusted his canes and waved with one handthe same gesture as if he'd opened a door. The rumbling was there and getting louder. All of us were looking up at it. There was a small black box-some form of loud speaker, I supposed-affixed high up on a building. The rumbling was coming from it-not continuous as I'd first thought. Spaced. In a monotone. OmOmOm Pause OmOmOm Pause again. Om Om Om I felt like I was looking into something-there was movement and getting closer. My head began to ache some. Then a crackle. High pitched. So piercing our first reflex was to clap our hands over our ears-the crackle came through them-through flesh as through stone. So when 97 �the voice began there was relief and a collective sigh. For a few moments our ears kept ringing. I wasn't sure what I heard. The words seemed to have echoes to them. It was a man's voice-curiously shrill and feminine and sounding none too cheerful. It took us a while to figure out whose it was-though there was no one else's it could've been. I was standing behind Old Jubal and saw him stroking the grey stubble on his chin. Then his hand came out to mehis canes moved and he came closer. It's him he whispered. I didn't hear him. I was straining to hear the voice from the black box. It's him! Kamal! This time I heard. There was a rustling among usRoderigo was nodding his head beside me. I realized it too-how strange! We hadn't thought of him having a voice-much less a voice like this one. It was so unpleas· ant-like a querulous school teacher we'd long ago forgotten. Then there it was again. We were face to face with it-and with him. Kamal. A real person, voice and all, when we'd gotten used to him as a manifesto on a wall. He knew this. He was still reading our minds: Some of you may not like my voice, I don't like it either. In fact, I don't think of it as my voice. It's too harsh. It's not how I think of myself. It hap· pened to me under torture. It was the torturers of the Old Regime, they did it to me. You don't know what it is, torture. I hope you never find out. It destroys your body and your mind, one through the other. The people who do this to other people are no longer people. Pause. There was some static. Kamal went on. I lived through it somehow. You can if you believe each day is your last, if you're willing to give it up, all of it. I was. I didn't know what this meant. You can't know while it happens to you, no one can. Afterwards my voice was never the same. Another pause. None of us moved. We stood with our eyes fixed on the black box. It took me a long time to get used to it. I'd stand in front of a mirror and practice saying words. None of them sounded right to me. I hated them. I hated those who'd done this to me. Then one day I realized something. I don't know how we find out such things, they come to us from elsewhere, as though there is another presence in us at that time. What had happened was that my voice was no longer mine alone. It was mine and that of the Revolution. The Revolution was going to speak through me. It was the pain and screaming that took my own voice from me. It was the Revolution that gave it back to me with a meaning. That is why I wanted you to hear me. Some of you will be disappointed. Then you will hear me again and again. You won't notice it any more. It'll be the most natural thing in the world. Like your own 98 voices that you hear every day. Because it is not me you are listening but yourselves. There is one voice for all of us. I listen. I look. I can even look · into you. I know what it is you need, I know you as I know myself. We are all children of the Revolution. That is why we are brothers and sisters. It is the Revolution that gives life, life and meaning. It is as close to truth as we can get. Without it we are lost. So I say to you, believe in the Revolution, believe in its truth. If anyone tells you otherwise, they lie. There was the crackle again. Then OmOmOm and silence. It hung in the air around us. We were stunned and didn't move. I wanted to cry like a little boy. I felt Old Jubal reach out and touch me. I looked down at him. His whole face was shades of grey, his skin, his stubble, his hair. It was his eyes that were so striking-they too were grey and flecked with something that sometimes shone. Like now. Well, my friend, we've heard him he whispered Let's go home. I didn't know where his was or if he had one-I assumed he meant mine. He got his canes moving and we moved off-! was behind him. I didn't want to go-I felt I was tearing myself away. There was something about the place where I'd stood as I listened. There was something about his voice. It was hard to get used to and hard to forget. It was from then that we truly began to believe in Kamal. I supposed it was because his voice was so unexpected. It was the unexpected in the Revolution that always convinced us because it had no precedent. What do you think of him? I meant Kamal. This time I saw his head shift and even in the dark I saw a kind of sparkle in his grey eyes. We need him Old Jubal saidWe need him as much as he needs us. Without us he's nothing. And he knows it. That was his answer-all of it. I waited for more-there wasn't any. Old Jubal was that way-cryptic-enigmaticsometimes illusive. Questions weren't much help-he talked about what he wanted to talk about. Often his dreamsThey are as life he saidOnly more so. WINTER/SPRING 1983 �I didn't know much about dreams-I 4sually couldn't tell if I had any. Old Jubal said he remembered each one. I had five last night he went on. Let me tell you some, my friend. In one I was a little boy again with my feet. I was playing football. Dribbling. I must've been a center forward. I was dribbling back and forth from one goal to the other. No one could catch me. The players on both teams tried to catch me. They couldn't. They couldn't get near the ball. I kept it. It danced from my feet as through on a string. Then they got me cornered. All of them. Like dogs. I began bouncing it on my head. They were jumping up and down around me trying to get it. They wanted to reach out and grab it with their hands. They couldn't, they couldn't touch it. He paused. My friend, I am always afraid. You should be too. I shrugged. I wasn't-for the time being. Not now I said. You should be, you must be. He answered. The Revolution needs people. It feeds on them. I go all over. I see things other people don't see. There are so many parts of the city, large parts, with no one there. I ask myself where they are. Can you tell me where they are, my friend? I didn't know-! didn't say. I'll tell you. They've been eaten! What? Eaten? Ridiculous! How? Why? He was thinking. I was too. What did he mean? I couldn't say it was nonsense-Old Jubal wasn't like that-! had to figure out what he meant. It was dark now. The candle flickered and went out. There was a faint glow from the city's lights-whitish. The stars again looked brighter now that the lights were less. It's simple. You won't like it, my friend. The Revo· lution is hungry all the time, starving. It doesn't like dogs and cats. If it did there aren't enough of them anyway. And they're scrawny. So what's it going to live off? The answer's obvious. Pause. Us! Look how nice and plump we are. Even when we don't eat much. Not you so much. Not me. The others. I'm old and I stink. After my good meal of beans and hot sauce I might taste good. I doubt it. But think of all the boys and girls out there. And they're so young and tender. All that meat! Do you think the Revolution can resist? You don't really believe this? I exclaimedIt isn't possible. It is, my friend, it is. What I mean is this. The Revolution is living off us, it has nothing else to live on. THE ST. JOHNS REVIEW And when we are gone it will go too. I heard the clatter as he bent and picked up his canes. It was so dark I couldn't see his face-there was some light on the table beween us. I'm old he said And I don't taste good. It doesn't matter much to me. It's all the others I'm afraid for. And that means you. Think about it. Pause. Now it's time to sleep and dream. We did. That night I dreamt for the first time I could remember. We got up and set off down the street. It was then that we heard the Om Om Om and the crackle that followed it. There wasn't anyone else under the black box above us so we stopped by ourselves. Brothers and sisters it began-it was Kamal, of course-by now we knew his voice by heart. I must be honest with you. I have bad news. The Revolution is in danger. What I can't say at this time. Believe me it is. I will reveal it in due course. It is a danger to all of us. It comes from within and without. We must be vigilant. He paused and there was a coughing. The first time I'd heard him cough-strange to hear. Oggi looked over at me-l shrugged. Kamal went on-the first few words halt· ing as if to catch his breath. The Revolution is a living thing. We must never forget that. Like any thing that lives it can be threatened. A threat to it is a threat to all of us. And a threat doesn't always look like what it is. We must learn to look for it. Look for anything that doesn't fit in. Anything strange, anything unknown. You know the Revolution. It is yours. Look for things you don't know. He paused again. I thought I heard music in the background like a band on parade. He coughed some and muffled it with his hand over his mouth. Much as we thought of him as the embodiment of the Revolution, I didn't think we thought of him as a man like other men. Even his shrill voice made him distinct. His coughing had the opposite effect. It sounded all too human. We waited and he went on. To conclude. There is a clear and present danger. There are always others who would take my place. 99 �You will not know them. They will not know you as I do. They haven't my face 'or my voice. Beware of them. I will be among you .. There was the crackle and the Om sound and Oggi and I stood looking up at the black box expecting more. I felt he was talking to each of us-as if he were present in the box and looking down at us. Kamal was so enigmatic-we could never be sure what he meant. There was danger, yes, but what kind? how to look for it? and how for him to be among us? The idea of his walking around shaking hands seemed preposterous. That clearly wasn't what he meant. But we were learning-always-to wait and watch. The Revolu· lion had so much to teach us. I felt a little like a child who had still to learn not to touch what was hot because it burned. the morning at the same time I opened my shutter-then someone would come along and raise it. Like Marissa or Roderigo. They'd sayThese are really worth twice as much once they bought it After they left I doubled the price. By midday I might've gone up two or three times-particu· larly if it was something people really wanted-like ice on a hot day in summer. Or in late spring as it then was. Ice was a marvelous commodity because it melted and was so per· ishable. I kept it buried in sawdust in the basement and brought little chunks of it up-gradually at first, then to· ward the end of the summer all at once. My timing had to be so precise. If I waited one day too long by then it was worthless. That's what had happened to Kamal's coins. They shrank in value day by day. What was more amazing they shrank in size too. They got lighter. His image on them got blurred. And the metal itself changed color. It got redder, then turned bluish and finally went green. I asked for more and more of them in exchange for less. A pack of cigarettes, for example-especially good American ones like Viceroys or L and Ms. These went from a handful of coins to a bagful in the space of a few days. As always Marissa caught on fast-she started buying cigarettes when I'd thought she didn't smoke. It wasn't the cigarettes she was after-it was the coins she wanted to avoid. How to read the Revolution: that was the trick. It wasn't simply a question of reading the wall posters-by now these appeared with monotonous regularity and were read and as soon forgotten. Nor did we pay that much attention to his voice-it still came on at all times of the day or night and we listened while doing something else. Having heard his story the first time the retelling of it held no great inter· est for us. His voice we got used to also-the shrillness of it we came to think of as artifact of the broadcast itself. When he told us to be on the alert we paid attention-for a timethen our attention lagged. Perhaps we already recognized that the Revolution would go its own way-not that he, Kamal, would lead it. He never appeared to us in personwe began again to doubt his existence-in spite of the elec· tricity and the coins. We might have thought differently had we to approach him on bended knee or grovelling on our stomachs. Then we would've thought of him as a God-but we didn't. I didn't know how it happened: how we came to think of him as simply another image-as de· based in time as the coinage on which his face appeared. That was of more interest to us. The reading of it for a while was a great skill like divination. Particularly to me in my business-the coins even without any denomination were as tricky as the Revolution itself. I'd learned to accept them-take them as money-when I no longer cared much about money. I took them in lieu of things. I'd fix a price in 100 The Revolution played such games with us. We were children to it-the city and all of it our playground. We got used to this or thought we did-it was all a game, we thought. Perhaps that's why the real children were so good at it. They caught on fast. They didn't have a sense of time to hold them back. And that's why we thought so little of the past, if at all. It was an impediment to us, a dangerous one. To get rid of it-to forget-was to be ready for what came next. I wasn't. I was waiting for her to come back. This time I hadn't forgotten. Old Jubal paused and ran his right forefinger along his lips. I knew the sign-it meant a story. When I was a student, he began, I wasn't very good, as a student. I'm always forget· WINTER/SPRING 1983 �ting things-simple things. Like how to multiply and how to spell and each subject we get to I think, "This is the hardest subject. I'll be so glad to get through it." But, no, my friend, it wasn't. There were harder subjects. And harder teachers to go with them. I had to learn algebra and trigonometry from an Egyptian. And chemistry and physics from a Greek. Pause. I never get over it. When I think it's going to get easier it doesn't. So I leave. I quit school. I never go back. Maybe I join the army-maybe I drive a taxi. It doesn't matter. I don't remember. I forget it with all the things I studied. All I learned is this-to give thanks for the present. So simple, eh? He raised an eyebrow. You know what I mean? I nodded. Old Jubal sometimes took a long time to get to the point. He jabbed his finger at me. No, you don't. If you did you wouldn't be here. I looked down at my feet. I didn't want to say anything to offend him. I let him go on for a while-I wasn't paying much attention. I thought of Lelia for a bit-then of what I had to get done that day. Suddenly his canes were moving and he propelled himself over and against where I sat. My friend, suppose I tell you that in days all of this will be gone. Poof. Like that. He made a gesture with his left hand as he said it -the fingers shot out from his closed fist and then closed again. Gone. Like you're in a desert and dying of thirstyour lips are swollen and black. You stink like I stink. I raised my hand to say no-to say I didn't mind. He brushed it aside and went on. Eh? what does it matter? You see palm trees, some silver water below them. So you run. You can't breathe but you run. You get there. And what do you find? Eh? Surprise. No surprise. More sand. Nothing but sand. He paused. It's like that, you know. To me this Revolution is a living thing. It needs to eat and drink. Nobody sees this now. They will. It's going to get thirsty. It's going to suck up everything in sight. And all the things you can't see. You and me with it. Nothing is ever going to be the same-except worse. He was sweating-he wiped the sweat from his forehead with the back of his hand. I don't know what I'd expected him to say. I believed him-why not? It was always that I didn't know what it meant. I got up to get him another cigarette-the air was thick with smoke-! smelt it all over myself. He didn't want it-he waved me to sit down. His eyes fixed me. You still don't know what I mean. THE ST. JOHNS REVIEW It wasn't a question. I don't know myself. What it means for all of us. If I did I wouldn't be here. We sat. I thought of Lelia. She didn't belong in our company-the city wasn't a place for her. It was better for those like Old Jubal and me-those who didn't expect much-those who didn't care much when they didn't get it. That was the Revolution again-doing things to timegetting rid of the past and the future. To leave us with a present that had so few references to it. I should've left then-! should've listened-! should've known. I didn't. I had a sense of fear.· That should've been enough. I should've taken her and gotten out. It wasn't going to be like that though. Somehow we'll manage. I always seem to get by, I said and I left it at that. He scowled at me and opened his mouth. I saw the gold filling flash. What about her? he asked and got up and got his canes moving. He brushed past me and was gone. It was then it struck me-l didn't know whom he'd meant. I hadn't told him about Lelial'd never mentioned my mother. With Old Jubal that didn't matter-he knew there was someone else. It was Oggi who told me-although I could've found out from anyone. He came early-I heard his scratching at the door and let him in. It was drizzling and his face and matted hair glistened with it. He was bursting to tell me-but wouldn't until I'd asked him over and over. Then it came out-there were rumors throughout the city that Kamal was gone. See! he smirked! told you so! Didn't I tell you? I knew it. And then-spitting out his contemptWhat else could you expect from someone like that? I didn't answer-there wasn't one. We knew something had happened-it took us time to find out what. There was a great surge of happiness, almost elation. And there was also a sense ofloss. No one knew what to do next. Now everything seemed possible. Oggi and I headed out into the street to see what was going on. All sorts of rumors were on everyone's lips. There was a rustle among people like dried leaves-on each face, expectancy. As the day went on we got more and more excited-by the sense of ourselves and the Revolution. The drizzle stopped. The clouds broke up and moved west. The sun shone brightly on streets that were slick and wet. Oggi and I walked aim- 101 �lessly. I wished Lelia were with us-that would've made the day perfect. I intended to go and get her. I didn't. Per· haps because I didn't like to think of her as part of the Revolution. To me she was something secret and private-and all the more precious for being so. Oggi got more impetuous. He dragged me along behind him when I wanted to stop and chat. There were rumors flying all over-that Kamal had fled by boat or by land or that he'd been picked up by plane. That he'd taken hundreds of suitcases with him containing the sum total of our wealth. That he was limping and coughing as he went and hadn't long to live. Strangely we didn't care why. We pushed and jostled each other in the streets-we slapped each other on the back and clasped hands. There was a great feeling of togetherness and moment like swallows out at sunset and circling. We all felt part of the great undertaking that was our Revolution. No longer was it personified by a man. It was greater than any of us, no matter how great he might seem. With Oggi that afternoon I felt a great sense of clarity and companionship. The high purpose of the Revolution was raising us above ourselves. It was such a great feeling-it was all over so soon. Amazingly, we never knew we were a city under siege until it was over. We went back to our rooms and slept that night and dreamt of the Revolution in myriad forms-and while we did so it ended. Like that. Or so it seemed. The following morning we found out what had taken place without our knowledge. Oggi and I were hanging out the window. The air was crisp and the sun bright. He was humming to h1mself.l was scratching my head-! always had this itch there when I woke. Then both of us stopped what we were doing. What's that? he said. I looked out and saw it too. For there it was-a small dark figure at the far end of the street-looking like anyone else walking down it. Except it wasn't. We knew at once it wasn't. It got closer-it turned out to be a boyabout Oggi's age or a little older. He was walking nonchalantly down the middle of the street-as if he knew it well or didn't care. He wasn't one of us-that was for sure. He was dressed in black and wore a soft hat. His chest was crisscrossed with bandoliers and there were weapons over his shoulders and in each hand. It was most of all his face that was different. More angular than one of ours and much darker. As he got closer we saw it was leathery as if endlessly burned by the sun. We saw him look up and see us-sort of. There was no reaction beyond the flicker of his eyes. He went on and many others like him followed. We saw them filling the end of the street. They made it black with their bodies. They moved down it until there was nothing but blackness in it. They weren't all the same. Some were older. Many were younger and no more than children. Some had armbands that showed authority. They were all 102 heavily armed-like walking arsenals, I thought. And their faces all looked hard and leathery, no matter how young they looked. By now the windows all along the street were filled with us looking down. You could sense the questions on everyone's lips. Who were they? Where did they come from? What was happening? I looked over at Oggi-his lips were moving as if he meant to speak and didn't know what to say. The presense of obviously superior beings filled us with fear and trembling. A little later we heard the first sounds of the cars and trucks-the grating of gears and the revving of engines. The air began to fill with the smell of gasoline. Smoke and fumes hung in a grey brown cloud over the city in that direction and drifted to cover the rest of it. And the cars and trucks were coming out from under the cloud and roaring down the street. And all the streets all over the city. The cars and trucks were of all sizes and shapes and descriptions. Each was jammed full of heavily armed men also dressed in black. They were in jallopies and in the backs of roadsters, on dump trucks and pickup trucks, in jeeps and station wagons. It was awesome. The air was thick with smoke and fumes. We were soon coughing and wheezing and gasping for breath. We weren't used to the smell of gasoline nor to the exhaust-it made us dizzy. The noise of the engines was deafening-we covered our ears with our hands. It was no use-the sound went through walls as easily as through flesh. We were overwhelmed by it. I felt too tired to move, even to hold up my hands. They fell to my sides. There was a great fatigue over all of us. Our euphoria of the day before was dead and gone. None of us had the faintest idea what was going on. We waited to be told. The cars and trucks came to a stop all over the city with their engines still running. The fumes rose from them and made our eyes water. It was as if we were crying and many of us were. Men with megaphones soon appeared in the streets. Their voices boomed off the buildings and echoed in our rooms. There was nowhere they couldn't be heard. Citizens, they saidDon't be afraid. We have come to help you, to liberate you from your oppressors, to give you back your freedom. You have only to follow instructions and no harm will come to you. Stay inside and don't come out. So we did-for days. To pass the time Oggi and I played games. All kinds of games-tic-tac-toe, blind man's bluff, jacks, charades, pin the tail on the donkey-anything to try and take our minds off what was happening. Or had happened. Soon we began to get used to it-as did all of us-and we saw that, no, this wasn't the end of the Revolution. It wasn't over. What had happened to it we didn't know. There was no way to tell. Each of us was alone with our fears and doubts. The Revolution remained. It was the one thing we had that was permanent. More so than buildings or streets, certainly WINTER/SPRING 1983 �more so than ourselves. The Revolution was like nature to us-if everything else were taken away '\t remained. So we sat in our rooms~ each of us alone, no matter how accompanied. For us the Revolution was our greatest consolation. It never ceased to dumbfound me that when change took place it was either so slow it never occurred to us or it was so fast it was over before we had any awareness of it. Instead we had to get used to it-as if it was a state of things that'd always been-when the youngest of us could've remembered a time when it wasn't. To have done so would've meant great peril-this above all was an ac· cepted fact. That's why remembrance for us was so much a process of selectively forgetting. To start over each day with new relationships-between people and between things-and to accept them as givens. It was a criterion of life for us-the one that mattered if all others didn't. And so often they were in doubt-how could they not be? It was hard, if not impossible, to know what was constant in ourselves when we had so little to measure it against. For me that was what made Lelia so remarkable-though she herself didn't think so. In that sense I supposed I was like every romantic who had ever been. I thought of her as a North Star or a Southern Cross-to navigate by across endless dark wastes. Not surprisingly, then, as soon as we could go out, I did-to her. She was sitting mending while her old aunt snoozed. She let me in, gave me a kiss on the cheek and went back to her mending. That was her livelihood. People brought her shirts that were torn, dresses that'd been ripped, socks with gaping holes in them-for we had always to make do with what we had. I sat across from her and watched-she was wearing a denim skirt and a white cotton blouse with her hair in a pony tail. To me she looked like a little girleven though she was almost as old as I. That didn't matter-however she looked I worshipped her. And I worried. How she was? Was she afraid? Hungry? Lonely? She was all of these-and quite happy too. I never got over that either: how anyone could be happy and mean it. But she was and she did. Her happiness was infectious. I got it by being near her. I'd smile-to myself at first-then outwardly. I'd get up and go look in the mirror-she used it for fittings-and see the smile on my face, to make sure it was there. It was. I saw it. Then I'd go sit next to her and hold her hand. We'd sit there quietly-her hands still-she wasn't doing anything-and I thought of us as sharing her happiness-which was becoming mine too. Extraordinary! That I was so happy-when all around-the whole city in fact-was in such a state of turmoil and doubt. It was simTHE ST. JOHNS REVIEW ply that she seemed more real than anything else. I'd watch her fingers making the intricate patterns of stitch or weave and I could've sat there all day as though I were watching bees building a honeycomb-driven to it by the geometry in their minds. If I wanted to hold her hand she'd let me for a while-she knew what it meant to me and she liked it. Then she'd slide her fingers out of mine and say I have to go back to work. It was all she had-I couldn't say no. It was still more than anyone else had that I knew of. Reassured she was all right, I soon left. Something was bothering me-that is, everything. I wanted to walk and have my own sense of what was happening. Because the Revolution had taught me to use my eyes and all of my senses-and to try and believe them. So as I walked I saw the city getting used to its occupation. The cars and trucks that so awed us were everywhere-as were the men in black who were so heavily armed. They were ominous. But they did nothing. They stood chatting in groups or sat in their trucks oiling their weapons. They nodded as I passed yet made no movement to stop and search me. I saw Marissa limping along a street-she saw me at the same time and her face lit up. She had some shopping bags with her and asked when I was going to open. I told her the truth. That I had nothing to sell. I promised to let her know when I did. Many of us were out in the streets trying to figure out what was going to happen next. There were as many rumors as people and most of them were about them. Our guardians, our protectors-whatever they called themselves. We weren't sure. None of us talked to them and they made no effort to talk to us. That was how we referred to them-not knowing otherwise how to call them. At that point they seemed quite peaceful-in spite of their appearance. The smell of the gasoline was the most striking sign of the occupation. It pervaded the city with its sweetish odor, actually quite pleasant at times. But there were also the fumes of the cars and trucks when they were running. These made us short of breath and our eyes watery. We saw everything through their grey brown haze. The colors of the city were made dull and flat, from what they were. In that sense the occupation didn't feel threatening to us-it was more like a change in the weather. And the weather was strange. It drizzled off and on for days. A warm drizzle, it was still late summer. There was a greenish mildew on things and their surfaces stayed moist and slippery. All this time we thought we were getting used to it. Kamal and what he represented was long gone and forgotten. Then there was the most surprising reminderlike a voice from the dead-in the form of a wall posterobviously his last. BROTHERS AND SISTERS, it read- 103 �I BESEECH YOU TO LISTEN TO ME ONE LAST TIME. I WILL NEVER BE WUH YOU AGAIN AND I MUST ASK YOUR PARDON FOR MY ERRORS. FOR ME THE REVOLUTION WILL ALWAYS BE THE GREATEST THING IN MY LIFE-AS YOU ARE BECAUSE WE ARE ALL PART OF IT. I AM GOING NOW-MY EYES WILL CLOSE AND I WILL CROSS MY ARMS ACROSS MY CHEST. YOU WILL BE WITH ME ALWAYS. I WILL NOT DIE ALONE. I WILL THINK OF EACH OF YOU. I WILL ASK PARDON OF EACH OF YOU. I KNOW YOU BETTER THAN YOU CAN KNOW. FOR ME THE FUTURE IS A BLESSING BECAUSE THE REVOLUTION ALWAYS HAS A FUTURE. I THINK OF EACH OF YOU FACING IT AND I SAY BE BRAVE! COURAGE! IT IS WHAT KEEPS US TOGETHER. WE WILL ALWAYS HAVE IT AS LONG AS WE LOVE THE REVOLUTION ABOVE ALL. FAREWELL, AND BLESS YOU, MY BROTHERS AND SISTERS! He was gone. We knew that..Not how. Not why. Kamal never meant so much to us before. We realized that he had seen what we hadn't. Now we were truly alone. We would try to forget him because we had to. We knew that much. But in forgetting him there would be a void where he had been. Fortunately Oggi was fascinated by spare parts and all things automotive. He wasn't doing anything else so I had him go out and scavenge the city looking for them. He'd come back with the distributor caps and the oil filtersand all sorts of others I'd never heard of. He was getting older and more responsible-I told him to keep them and see what he could do with them. He was mesmerized by the New Regime-or rather by its most obvious signs-the cars and trucks roaring up and down the esplanades and the avenues. To him they were a source of incredible power-almost magical-yet I also knew how he hated the New Regime. Most of us did-perhaps all of us-and for no particularly good reason-beyond that it had so little to 104 do with our lives. And that it was different. Whatever the reason our hatred of it was always unstated. No one gave a sign of it-not as such-it was there in the flicker of an eyebrow or the running of a finger across the bridge of the nose. You had to know it was there to see it-once you saw it there was hatred everywhere. It was directed most of all toward a single enigmatic figure-or rather his name. 7Carlos7. The two things for us were the same. For us he was a protean figure-a chimera of sortsthat we knew and didn't-all the more horrible for our ig· norance of him. His image-of which there was nonewas the heart and soul of the Occupation. He came with them-apparently he was their leader. So it was natural to compare him with Kamal and the comparison was striking. Because we never saw him-actually we never saw either of them-but we never even saw a picture of7Carlos7 nor heard his voice. He was there all the more so in his name. To many of us it was the most horrible thing-some wouldn't say it-if they did they spat it out. They weren't supposed to, though. There was a way to pronounce itmeasured and without intonation. And we had to make our peace with it. His name was an ominipresent sign of the Occupation. Of course the Occupation wasn't what they called it-to them it was still the Revolution. We got used to their terms-we had to-and those who didn't trembled as they spoke. As always your own language was the fastest way to betray yourself. To whom? Not to usalthough us was less and less definable. They made their presence merge with ours. Some of us became them. As time went by what we might've once said to anyone we would soon say only to ourselves or to loved ones. By then they could be anyone. They made friends easily-a pack of cigarettes or a stick of gum would do the trick. Before long you were saying things you shouldn't. Or maybe you in· tended to. This whispering went on all the time all over the city-like a gentle breeze in early summer. In fact, it was that time of year. The city had never been so beautiful. The trees had rich green growth on them. Flowers were blooming in all the gardens. Or where gardens had once been, in piles of rubble in the streets or out of the cracks of walls. The city took on a festive air. There were gay colors everywhere-bright blues and pinks, the reds of roses and poppies, the oranges and yellows oflillies. When Lelia and I went walking-we did so each evening arm in arm-she loved to gather them and make a bouquet. She set one in my room and one in hers-so even when she wasn't with me I smelt the rich perfume of her flowers that she was smelling, too. I'd gotten somewhat used to hershe more so to me-though at times I still moved too abruptly and startled her. One of the joys of being with her was the chance I got to forget myself. I seemed a part of her-as did everything else. To me even the Revolution paled beside her-she was gentle, yes, she was also more vivid. I loved to watch her do things-as much as I was coming to love her at rest. To watch her make a pot of tea. It was such fun. Who W!NfER/SPRING 1983 �would've believed it? Of course the pot was a can and the strainer was a linen bag and the tea was a fine black substance like dark sand that the strainer never kept out. There I was picking the tea from between my teeth with the tip of a toothpick-the tip of my penknife. Still, I loved to watch her making it-for me a ritual of great beauty and meaning. Perhaps that's why I loved her. She illumined everything she touched. I couldn't fail to be aware of the incongruities of our relationship-there were so many. I to her. She to me. Both of us to each other. Both of us to the Revolution. And to the city. And to the Occupation. And to 7Carlos7. Whoever and whatever he was. We didn't discuss it. It was so obvious because we lived there. Each of us wanted to find something beyond what we had-and we had. We cherished it-yet we were afraid. That in spite of ali-or the little-we could do something would happen to destroy it. Which was why we never mentioned to each other any of these things. Because any of them could. There was between us a conspiracy of silence and blindness-not to acknowledge what was there at every hand. At every word. Whether they were there or not. The Revolution was in language and thought-as was the occupation. As was 7Carlos7. He wasn't something you could shut out. He was there as we spoke between ourselves. He was there to me as I thought. I thought of him as a mastermind that got into each of our heads and spread like a bacillus. Yet to all intents and purposes there were no signs of it. Or him. Except in the oblique ways we learned to recognize. I always thought two tenses belonged particularly to him-the pas- Because no matter how many times you'd said it, as long as you hated him-and by inference them-there was the distinct possibility you would gag on it. As though swallowing gasoline. To mumble, to stutter, to pause in your enunciation-incredible-these were all life threatening acts. Acts of insurrection they were called. No wonder we practiced his name so much. And the more we practiced the more we got used to it. Our hatred submerged into ourselves. And we might just as well have hated ourselves. Maybe we did. Hatred was such a mutable thing for us. We didn't feel it. Then we were called upon to say his name. And we did. No emotion-then a flicker of it-his name spoken evoked it in us. It was then we were truly in danger. Perhaps we got away with it that time. Perhaps we didn't. It was so hard to tell. All we knew was that some of us disappeared-as though bodily sucked out of our lives. To our friends and our relations there was no trace. We were gone as if we'd evaporated. We knew speech had something to do with it. We knew the Occupation and 7Carlos7 obviously did. But the disappearances were as enigmatic as his name. They happened. To some of us-to many. There was no explanation. It was no wonder, then, that we felt as if we were living on the edge of something at all times. One false step and we'd be over the edge and gone. To Lelia and me in love each day was an end in itself. sive and the imperative. As in That should be done, and Do it! Incredible that so much power should be concealed in such little phrases. And not just power-hatred-on our part. As we recognized the source of that power. It was insidious-we were made aware of it at all times-even the most private. Because there was no privacy-as a concept it was dead and gone. There was a sense of concealment, of something to be hidden, not of something that belonged to us. 7Carlos7 was the manifestation of this awareness. I never knew for sure if he was a man or not. I assumed so-it wouldn't have been the first time I was wrong. He was definitely a presence.-One that spoke to us in the passive and the imperative. A voice, without a face, without a voice, nonetheless, a voice. Lelia didn't like to say his name even to me. It made her uneasy, at times, nauseous. I couldn't blame her-but we had to learn how to say it as naturally as saying our own. I made her practice-! practiced myself. To say a name that was the object of hatred without intonation was the hardest thing for us-for anyone. That's why it was so revealing-that's why they made us do it. We had to. It came up all the time. Every time you said it there was the threat of revelation. THE ST. JOHNS REVIEW I couldn't see the point of anything. The Occupation had been going on for so long we thought it'd always been there. It settled on us like the clouds of dark exhaust and haze. We coughed all the time and spat blood and mucous. The sun moved across the sky like a greyish orange ball. Seen through the grey haze. The sunsets were fantastic colors of purple and red. It was hot and muggy that summer. Moving my body and all the spare parts took all my strength and some I didn't have. And there were times when Oggi wouldn't do anything-he'd curl up on a pile of spare parts, pick one up and oil and grease it for hours. He was blacker than I was, pitch black. His eyes stood out white in contrast. And he'd lie there for hours rubbing the part back and forth whistling. The whistling got on my nerves. When I asked him to stop he shrugged. And stopped. A little later he started again. It wasn't the two of us-it was everything. The heat. The air-or what was now air. The furtiveness that had come over us. 7Carlos7. And fear. There was so much of it-all different kinds. There were more fears than we ever had words for, all of them would have made our language nothing but synonyms for fear. Myriad ones. Because it was everywhere and in every- 105 �thing. Most of all it was the fear of disappearance-that we'd wake one morning and be gone. So many had. Fear abstract and fear particulate. In contrast the spare parts business had become a tired joke to me. I'd gotten into it! didn't want to think about it anymore. I wanted-if want was the word-to sit in my room and be alone with my fear. To be with someone else was to see fear in them. With Oggi the fear took the form of whistling and rubbing. With someone else it was a cough or running a hand back and forth over the walls or floor. It was a fear of themthey like everything else were now signs of the Occupa· tion. Fear of cars and trucks. Fear of them as people. Fear of the little man who came to my shop. Fear of myself. Fear of giving myself away. Fear of speech. A name-his name. So many specific fears-fear of each object we came in contact with-each fear a little different from the others. To anyone not living as we were such fears would've seemed unbelievable. Fantastic. Like a chi!· dren's story of ogres and giants and princesses carried away from them by princes on the wind. To us it was the most natural thing in the world. Fear had always been part of the Revolution-now it was more so-taking a new form with new objects. Whatever was part of the New Re· gime was part of fear. Those of us who weren't-that meant all of us-had it in our blood. Like water we drank it in and it came out like urine. It passed through us-we were where it was for a time-then on-through us over and over-the process repeating itself-endless. There it was again-the face-or part of it. I saw it for an instant-then my food came through and the panel closed. That was it-my contact with the outside worldthat and my bit of blue sky-or whatever color it was. I'd thought I could get used to anything-the Revolution made us that way-adaptable or not at all. As always there was something else-something we didn't expect because we'd never thought of it. In one sense I'd disappeared. To everyone I'd known I was gone-ceasing to exist. Yet to myself-the one person that really mattered-! was very much there-all the more so because so much else was gone. The face was the only thing human around-it peered through the panel in the door-if I didn't move it studied me. The eyes staring-the ears and chin cut off by 106 the door-that made the face disembodied. In spite of that it was companionship of sorts. I called to it-it never an· swered. Or its answer was my food-on the floor~ I didn't get there in time to catch it. Splot. I had to scoop it up with the side of my hand and lick it off. It tasted of the floor and the fungus that grew there. A grey green fungus that flour· ished because the floor was moist and cold. That was my vegetation-my flora. And my fauna was a small bug about the size of my thumbnail that crawled over the walls. I got used to it-it was the first thing I looked for each daythough I no longer thought of them as days. There was light-there was dark-there was a sense of alternation back and forth between them. That was what my calendar had been reduced to. Each day I got up and washed my face at the pipe in the corner-! then squatted over the hole..:.. I balanced myself with my hands against the wall. That was perhaps the pleasantest experience of the daymy bowel movement. I looked forward to it. Afterwards I felt relief. Almost composed. My body felt in a state of equilibrium-I'd gotten rid of what I'd eaten and my waste. I felt a need to be only myself-and no more. I felt no suffering as such-~he only thing that bothered me was the bed springs. They squeaked and rattled when I moved on them. I never got used to the sound. It woke me at night-over and over-which is why I had no nightmares. I woke before they could form. Which is why I was always so tired. Exhausted. There was no way to get relief from the things in my mind. They kept piling up-all the things I didn't think of. And kept forgetting. They were there and had weight-getting heavier and heavier the more I couldn't sleep. I tried to sleep on the floor. The cold and moisture and slime of the fungus were worse than the bed springs-they made my skin creep. So I went back to sleeping on the bed-bad as it was it wasn't the worst. Nothing seemed so bad to me that in time wasn't ordi· nary. I looked for the bug and saw where he was-! waited for the face to appear and thought of it as my face. The eyes staring at me through the panel were the only reflec· tion of myself I had. I wondered about all the things that didn't happen. They would've been explanations of what I was in for. There weren't any and I never knew. Not at that point. There was no questioning and no duress. At times I thought I heard cries in the distance. No one ever came for me. Maybe they weren't cries but doors closing. I had nothing to go by. Beyond the face, or the part of the face, which in itself told me nothing. Except that it was part of something human-that I too was part of. But the humanity of it was less than I was used to. And I wasn't used to much. I had nothing to do and nothing to think of. I lay on the bed and tried not to move. That became a skill in itself. To alter my weight so the bedsprings wouldn't squeak. Because it was all I had I became more and more aware of my body. Preoccupied with it, in fact. I studied my hands and the way they moved. I spent hours bringing my thumb across to touch my little finger-or closing my fingers into my palm to make a fist. Each motion that WINTER/SPRING 1983 �seemed simple enough in itself got increasingly complex when looked at in detail. I tried to move my fingers so slowly I couldn't see them move. As if I were a creature that was going to live forever and had all the time in the world to do whatever it wanted. Before I did anything I thought about it to decide if it was worthwhile. That is, if it had a purpose. Most things didn't. So I eliminated them-in the same way I got rid of waste with my bowel movement every day. I wanted to get by on less and less. To be like the bug on the wall that took all day to get from one point to another. He too had all the time in the world to go back. There was a lot to learn from him. Somehow I'd decided he was a he. And I studied his movements with the same intensity that the face studied me. Eyes staring, lids unblinking. The bug made me care· ful of where I stepped and how I moved. The last thing I wanted to do was to crush the bug inadvertently. I was concerned for him. When he didn't move for an unusual length of time I got up, ever so slowly so the bedsprings rustled but didn't squeak, and went over to take a look. Perhaps I saw his antennae quiver or one of his wings was raised-his wings weren't much-stumps more like. What· ever it was adequate-my companionship remained as~ sured. I went back to bed as slowly as I'd moved from it. One thing above all never ceased to amaze me each time I lay down-its length. Because it was mine. My feet touched one end and my head the other-the bed itself didn't seem accidental. That is, it seemed part of a greater plan, one that in time might be revealed to me. Not that I was unhappy with where I was. I felt more secure than I might've felt elsewhere. But that peace of mind was an ar· tifact, as was my bodily composure. I had only to think of her, any part of her, an ear, a little finger, a lower lip-and my body began to shake as from a fever. The bedsprings squeaked. The walls appeared to vibrate in time. My heart pounded and my skin prickled. It was the obverse oflovefear. The thought of her-any thought of her-triggered it-and cast my whole being into doubt. I shuddered. The bedsprings rattled. I didn't know what was happening to me. I held onto the bedframe for dear life. And this didn't happen once-it was over and over. I couldn't stop myself. She was so dear to me that all else was at risk. I tried to steady my mind-to look for the bug-to count the days. It helped a bit. Afterwards I lay gasping for breath. Each move I made was tentative. One of those days was the Anniversary of the Revolu· tion-I didn't know which. I didn't mean to get angry-it happened like that-like a light had gone off in my head-or I saw a flash and that THE ST. JOHNS REVIEW was the stimulus for it. Whatever the cause the transition was so fast I wasn't aware of it. There I was not angrythere I was very much so. Pounding the door. Kicking it. Not feeling the pain in my feet. No sensation, in fact. The anger had taken me over as if it were another life form. I was screaming-or shouting-whatever it was it was loud. I heard my own voice so much magnified it wasn't mine. My hands and feet seemed to be on their own too. It didn't last very long. I hadn't the strength for it. It was there in a short burst of tremendous energy. It was as soon spent. Gone. I went back to nonanger, my muscles flaccid, my skin sensitive again. It amazed me that I'd even been able to get angry. There was nothing to get angry at. The face wasn't there. The bug was high up and out of sight, the blue sky was still blue sky. My anger-or any other emo. tion I might've had-was incongruous. It had no purpose. It didn't belong there. Without it I lapsed back onto the bed. In time the face appeared in the door, my food came through and the bug showed up on the wall not far over my head. I felt ashamed of myself. In relation to everything else my anger was such a pettiness. I went and scooped up my food. I ate. I was so used to the fungus I didn't taste it. If the food smelled to me it was simply the smell of it. Not bad. Not good. A characteristic of existence without crite. rion. I began to identify with the bug. I thought of myself looking down at myself on the bed. Larger and whiter than necessary. And curious too. Why all the moving about? And the noise? And the huffing and puffing? Imagine! There was no sense of real economy about it. Truly the whole thing was an enormous waste. It was so much better to be so much smaller again I had the sense of going into myself and looking out. In my head, I'd become as small as the bug-the rest of my body was an enormous encum· brance. I stopped eating. The food piled up in front of the door in a little mound. It began to stink-not its own smell anymore. Worse. Much worse. A smell with color-a greenish orange. I became aware of the face looking in at me more and more. I looked back as if from beyond. I no longer thought it could see me. I saw a finger appear and scratch the side of the nose on the face. And the expres· sion-or that part of it I was exposed too-didn't stare as much. I saw the face turn sideways. There was an ear and hair. I heard a voice from very far off, like an echo. Or the echo of an echo. Like a scraping. There was an intonation to it so I took it to be a voice. It amazed me how much better I began to feel. Lighter. Buoyant. The carcass I'd been carrying around all these years was finally getting manageable. I lay on the bed and had no need to think of the springs and not moving. They squeaked, if at all, very faintly. It was at this point I thought of my disappearance as taking place. Not their disappearance of me. That had already happened. This was mine of myself-as if bit by bit I were withdrawing from my own existence. It was a feeling most pleasant-not unlike that at the end of my bowel movement. After much pushing and squeezing I 107 �was left with a sense of self and a relief from waste. I felt an obvious lightness-not giddy-I remained clear-eyed and stable. Things seemed far away and distant and had no · hold on me. It was in this state I saw the door open and a man come in. He had a stool under his arm and he set it on the floor and sat on it. He looked very small-no larger than my hand-the stool was small too. The size a child might have for its dolls. He said nothing. He watched me and I watched back. Then with alarm I realized he was getting larger-or my sense of him was. I tried to hold myself back, to keep away; I couldn't. I kept coming closer, as he did, getting larger. I felt myself getting heavier and weighed down, dense. It was his being there that'd done it to me. I knew that much. And as he got larger his appearance took on more detail. He was dressed as an officer of some sort. There were epaulettes on his shoulders and gold braid hung down from them. His uniform was a dark green and creased so sharply there were angles to it. At some point I was aware again I was my normal size. I saw his forefinger tapping on his knee. What he thought of me I couldn't know. His face-it wasn't the face in the door-was without emotion, though not without interest. I propped my· self up in bed. The springs squeaked. I saw how close he was, the dark color of his uniform filled my field of vision. His hand reached into his pocket, took out a cigarette and reached across and put it between my lips. The smell of the tobacco, rank and acrid, and the dryness of its taste against the tip of my tongue was a shock to me. The sec· ond shock was when he lit it. The flame from his lighter flared in my face and I jerked my head back. Then there was the smoke from the cigarette itself. I puffed. It filled my head and made me dizzy. I gagged on it. I coughed. I felt the cigarette slipping from my lips. It did, onto my chest, I watched it burn a small hole in me. I meant to reach forward and grab it, but I couldn't move my arms or my hands. My body twitched. There was the pain of the burning, intense, pointing into me. Then his hand came over and took it off and put it back in my mouth and held it there. I puffed again. The smoke made me giddy. It filled the room. It clouded over his face. It made my eyes water. They closed. There was the burning pain in my chest, though the cigarette was between my lips. I had to finish. I knew that. I puffed and puffed. My head felt full of the smoke. It also began to feel composed. Relaxed. My hands didn't move but my fingers opened out from my palms. I looked up at him, he must've seen it in my eyes. I was grateful. He smiled, a narrow smile, no creasing of his cheeks. Nonetheless a smile. I tried to smile back. I thought I did. He took the end of the cigarette from be· tween my lips and threw it in the corner. That's better? No? he said. Mundt's the name. Pleased to meet you. Pause. How are you feeling today? 108 I meant to answer. I tried to. I opened my lips in an 0 to speak. I thought of what I was going to say. Something in· nocuous like fine or OK. Instead I said nothing. I mouthed my answer. I knew I was saying nothing. I didn't know why. He must've understood-this Mundt. He nodded and his hand came forward and patted mine. It was then I saw how huge his was. How hairy at the knuckles. How large the knuckles were in relation to the rest of the finger. There was something strange about them too. There was an extra joint and the tips of the nails buried themselves in the flesh at the tip of the fingei. I was more impressed with his hands than with his uniform. I watched them as he spoke. Even if we don't expect you to be happy here, it's not that bad is it? Pause. Food every day. Drink. Time to think things over, no? His forefinger pressed against his thumb-they flattened out and the forefinger of the other hand came over to stroke them. Not at all what you expected, eh? A bit of a surprise? I looked up-there was a twinkle in his eye. He settled back on the stool. You know we don't want anything from you. I mean we're not going to torture you or anything like that. I bet you've heard stories about interro· gations. Electrodes to the genitals. All night beat· ings on the soles of the feet. Maybe someone told you about being hung upside down from a bar? He sighed. His lips were large like his fingers. I nodded and kept nodding. He seemed to expect it. I thought so. It doesn't happen here. I don't know where people get such ideas. They make them up and then they believe them. There's nothing to be afraid of. It's only natural to be like that, people are. So what? It means nothing. I looked down and saw the tips of his fingers come to· gether to form a point. He looked down at it -then ·at me. You can't help what you are, we know that. Nor can anybody else. I mean if you're a petty bourgois that's what you are, no? I nodded. So we don't care about your little tricks. They don't make any difference to us. His voice was guttural and flat -as if he were resigned and had said it many times before. A strange fellow this Mundt-nice enough. I nodded as much as I could with· out overdoing it. I wanted him to see I agreed with every· thing he said. If you hoard or steal or fabricate we don't care. People don't believe it but we don't. If you call yourself an entrepreneur that's your business. He paused. His hand came up to the side of his face and he ran his forefinger along his nose. My eyes moved up WINTER/SPRING 1983 �with it and I found myself looking into his. I didn't mean to. It happened without my awareness of it. They were dark grey-the color of slate. I looked down as fast as I could. I didn't want him to get upset. He licked his lips and continued. You know this place isn't so bad. There are lots of people like you here. Well meaning. They don't think they've done anything. I mean you don't think you've done anything, do you? I didn't nod. I shook my head. I'd almost nodded. I caught myself in time. My mouth opened to speak, to say something, to explain. I didn't. I couldn't. Everyone's the same. He sighed. That's why interrogations are useless. So we get you to confess, then what? The next day you don't remember any of it. If we want you to remember we have to keep telling you. Day after day. It's useless for everyone. Besides, there's nothing you know that we need to. The whole thing is a waste. He looked down at his feet. His fingers were twisting together so I couldn't tell his hands apart. I'd stopped nodding-! didn't know what to agree to. He shrugged and looked up. I looked down. I'd been watching him with my head down with the upper part of my eyes. You didn't expect me to come, did you? I shook my head. I nodded. I wasn't sure which I meant. No one does. You know people think we don't know. He looked sad as he said it. That your life here, or out there for that matterhe waved his hand toward the bit of blue skyGoes on and nobody sees what you're doing. It's not so. We know. Because you don't know don't think we don't. Maybe we miss something once in a while, a little thing here or there, not much. But we know enough to know. Pause. He looked toward the window, some light from it lit his face and made it lighter. You know there are a lot of things in life people don't figure out. They get older and they die and they never know. I think we're all that way somehow, no? He said it softly, as if to himself. I nodded, not so much to him: I felt that way too. Well, I'll tell you one thinghe turned and looked down at me. The light was gone from his face. You're better off here than anywhere else. His thumbs came out of his belt and he pointed a forefinger at my head. Right here. Now. Pause. You know what I mean? I thought I did. Yes. I nodded. He turned away slightly; he started to say something and stopped, as if to rephrase it. TilE ST. JOHNS REVIEW Let me put it this way, he went on. You live here. You grow up. You get old. All the time you get by. Maybe better. Maybe worse. You think you've got it all figured out. In your business maybe your're putting something aside for your old age? He turned back as he said it. Abruptly he sat down on the bed. The springs didn't squeak then. They went baing, boing, baing. The room reverberated with the sound of his sitting. I felt his immensity loom over me. There was no defense. I was helpless like a newborn baby. All the while I felt frail and ancient. He spat out his next words as if he were mad and I tried to shrink back into the bed. Don't bother. There isn't anything to figure out anymore. You'll never see it again whatever it was. His forefinger came down stiff in the middle of my forehead. You've had it. You know it. I know it. Life isn't what it used to be. Don't forget that. Pause. You can't go back to your little village and grow corn. If you had such a village. There aren't any more. His forefinger lifted off and hung over my head-suspended. There's a lesson in all of this, no? So what if you learn itshrugit won't do any good. He put his hands on his thighs-about to get up. He licked his lips. They were moist and glistening. Maybe we should have many lives? To come back and next time try what didn't work out this time. Amusing. People in villages think like that. Except they're all dead and they don't come back. He got up. I followed him with my eyes to his full height. I say good-by now. You enjoyed my visit? Interesting, eh? I nodded for the last time. It makes for a change, I know. We all need a little change now and then. Make the best of it, I tell you. It1l turn out all right. He was looking straight at me, his forehead furrowed. There were beads of sweat on it. If you have nothing and you want nothing, what's to lose? Eh, nothing. That was it. He didn't say anything else. He looked down at me for a bit, pensive, abstracted. Then he turned and left. The door shut behind him with a thank. The face appeared in it, looked at me and left. I was alone again-except now I had the vivid impression of this Mundt's presence. He loomed in the air around me even after he'd gone. I didn't think why he'd come or what he'd meant. I knew what I'd understood-what I knew. I agreed with it all. I really thought I had nothing left to lose. 109 �WITH 0RJAN AT THE GREAT JAPAN EXHIBITION Someone in Stockholm counted out the skins And told you how many golden buckToothed beavers had been killed to make The coat. And yet it's not the coat that draws Astonished glances from these Portuguese With their ungainly noses. They recognize in cheek and forehead, frozen To silence by the snow, then quick As evergreens released to freshness,In lips configuring a phrase Of sleek imbalance, molded by chosen Vowels lifted to sadness in a lilt And overheard as music-in these They feel what I, when thunderstruck, had felt: That the same fancy etched your look As prompted the master of the brush To practise for a lifetime his bamboo And then exhaust it in a single stroke. Only the tiger is unsurprised, Alone in the cold salon. His liquid stripes are yours, his curvings yours, And with a bounding your seraphic shadow Impresses strangeness onto silk, Enshrines a celebration in a screen. ELLIOTT ZUCKERMAN 110 WINTER/SPRING 1983 �The Division of the West-and Perception Leo Raditsa Introduction We live in a divided world. This is a common phrase that statesmen repeat, and their audiences ignore and forget. And that nobody much understands: it is too obvious. This division is not only a "political" fact-Churchill's "Iron Curtain" -but the most fundamental fact of our lives. It reaches every aspect of our living our art, our thinking, and our perception. It involves most of the nations of the world and all areas of life. Its main characteristic is a capacity to spread and to touch everything. Because it is at once so close and so remote, it is at the same time obvious and incomprehensible. We call this division "total 1 war" -and that name haunts our imagination. This division has in fact replaced the devil, who-many thought-had been done away with. But with the withering of religion, or at least of the readiness to cope with neither its presence nor its absence, the devil has not been known as such. Somewhere the free nations sense they face evil, but are embarrassed to know it. Knowing it unflinchingly stinks somehow of a relapse into superstition. There is no devil. But we believe men can be angels. The greatest murder in this century has come in the name of the greatest aspirations; aspirations that many dare not deny, lest they lose the good opinions of their neighbors; aspira- Leo Raditsa has recently published Some Sense about Wilhelm Reich (New York 1978), "Augustus' Legislation Concerning Marriage, Procre- ation, Love Affairs and Adultery" (in Aufstieg und Niedergang der Roemischen Welt, Berlin 1980, 13,2), "Iranians in Asia Minor" (in The Cambridge History of Iran, Cambridge 1983, 3,1), ''The Source of World Terrorism," (Midstream, December 1981) and "Why Were We in Vietnam?" (Midstream, June-July 1982). The above essay comes from an unpublished book, Rationality and the Perception of Depth, and the Division of the West in the Twentieth Century. THE ST. JOHNS REVIEW tions that paralyze those incapable of living them and which, therefore, can be exploited to excite guilt. The totalitarian regimes parrot our ideals of "self-determination of nations, or of "peace" back to us. Such divisions are not common. But they have occurred before. During the Peloponnesian War, during the Reformation, and in the Wars after the French Revolution, which began the crises we continue to live. 1 The characteristic of such wars is that they spread, that they increase on what they feed, that they are always world wars. They touch everybody and everything. And they cannot be stopped except by men who understand them, because they are about things men do not understand. Hitler said men will only die for things they cannot comprehend 2 The division of the West first occurred in 1914. It has continuously intensified and spread not only on battlefields, but in the minds and hearts of men. In the aftermath of the Second World War, especially in 1947-48, it grew deep and unmistakable. Until the sixties and the Indochina War few could deny it-although many, in order to find the strength for the next step, chose at times to ignore it. Like the violence after the First World War, the renewal and intensification of the division after 1945 surprised many and disappointed all who had endured the carnage in the promise that it would bring about a new world, with a living peace and tangible concord. But these disappointments are the very stuff of the war that has brought about the division of the West, for it continually excites expectations in order to disappoint them. The First World War was a conventional war that surprised a world that took itself to be deeply at peace, and baffled it, for it had no idea what the war was about. In the inebriation of the expectation of a new world that overtook the world in 1917, the war destroyed many major govern- 111 �ments and constitutions, above all in Russia and Germany, Austria, and a few years later in Ihlly. This destruction of governments and the exultation at their destruction, which found expression in the myth of "revolution", in the myth that a spontaneous upheaval of the people swept away the governments, became the most telling characteristic of this continuous war that has brought about the division of the West, and that continues to deepen it. This division spreads through polarization. Polarization divides the world into two attitudes (ideologies) that over· come a world made of states of various size. In its final effects polarization takes place in people's minds. It func· tions on the assumption that before you can destroy people and the governments that protect them, you must destroy their capacity to reason, to perceive the difference between freedom and slavery, between the constructive and the destructive. The ultimate model of this polarization for international relations is civil war or sedition. This is now called, with the ignorance of the educated, "revolution" and "class war." The characteristic of civil war 1 ac· cording to both Thucydides and Hobbes, is precisely that it spreads, that it is unstoppable, and that it reaches men's minds themselves, their perception. That it alters their perception. The struggle centers on perception, the very perception that has been the battleground of Western phi· losophy since at least the seventeenth century. But now ceaseless war for more than two generations has turned the questioning of philosophers into a matter of life and death for everyone. For those who cannot see will neither live nor survive. On its deepest level this division and polarization of the world functions to prevent contact, that is, perception in depth-the world seems flat to our eyes-and its equiva· lent in the mind and heart, the experience of rationality and the self-evident. It tends to divide and to polarize qualities such as freedom and authority, and distort them into shadows or dim reflections of themselves. In the instance of freedom, into license; in the instance of authority, into authoritarianism and totalitarianism. Once so distorted, these qualities tend to define each other in their hatred and in their destruction of each other, rather than in an aggressive dialogue. Such a dialogue would be the true Aristotelian mean, the mean in depth, not the mean of compromise. Because it cripples rationality and the strength, confidence, and courage that come with it, polar- destruction of forms in the name of freedom, there is a yearning for their restoration that has something of the straightforwardness of the eighteenth century about it; but more assurance, resilience, and sobriety-and more in· nocence and wisdom, the innocence and wisdom that comes after suffering. 3 Constitution and form generally provide the test of content, of the readiness to act on what one says. They allow us to tell the difference between acts and propaganda, between feeling and impulse. In contrast to this is the attitude, typically communist, that the end justifies the means, that content-good intentions and promises of a radiant future-authorizes the destruction of forms, of law, and constitutions. Finally, this polarization tends to make us perceive ourselves as indistinguishable from our enemies, in the illusion that not telling our differences might make for our survival It makes us feel as destructive and self-destructive as those who want to destroy us. The Soviet attempt to dominate the world feeds on this self-hatred. This polarization spreads largely because of unacknowledged fear of the actual military dangers that threaten us. Who looks at a map? I have been writing as if the division between the free countries and totalitarianism were fundamental But the real division occurred before there was any totalitarianism. Totalitarianism is a consequence of the division and the incapacity to cope with it, not its cause. The division in its starkest, unadulterated form took shape during, and especially after, the First World War. That war that nobody really understood started out between different peoples, not between freedom and slavery. In 1914, at the start of the war, one could still speak of freedom without equating it with democracy. The world was bigger than democracy, and politics was much less important, and life more easily distinguished from it. The division of the West, and the disturbances in perception I have mentioned, betray themselves most strikingly in art. Nobody can see the world whole; except-and this is crucial~the words that are written in Russia but published in the West. Western painting has tended more and more toward a form with content, without a recognizable world, while painting in the totalitarian world pretended to see a world it could not perceive. ization fashions an immobilizing situation. Force, rather than strength, appears to be decisive. And is often in fact. The division of the West also shows itself in a separation of form and content, especially in politics. In the free West we are impatient with the safeguards and the indirectness, the due process of representative and parliamentary democracy. We do not understand representation. We want to seize on problems directly, and, therefore, take political demonstrations, which intimidate thought, words and action, for granted. In the East of Europe and in China, where people have known the murder that comes of the 112 1 The Division since 1945-and Stagnation since 1917 The division of the West shows itself most obviously in the division of Germany, a subject so obvious that nobody pays much attention to it, and also in the division of Korea, and China-with Taiwan-and, of course, until 1975, of Vietnam. The division of Germany also means the diviWINTER/SPRING 1983 �sion of Europe. Without the division ,of Germany there would be no division of Europe, or of the rest of the world. The division of Germany never intended by the free West exists because there is no peace 'treaty. The nonexistence of a peace treaty is not some unimportant formality for just the same reason that marriage is not merely a piece of paper. The lack of a peace treaty means we did not know how to settle the Second World War despite victory and the apparent cessation of the fighting in Europe. It meant the war had not ended, or that it had ended in a mere truce.4 A formal treaty would have required the removal of all Soviet troops not only from Germany but from all of what has come to be called Eastern Europe since the War. The absence of a peace treaty meant the war continued, no matter how fervently we wished to deny it. Our incapacity to restore full sovereignty to Germany and to force the withdrawal of Soviet troops from Europe may mean that we did not have the confidence to risk full sovereignty in Europe again, even if we had know how to restore it. That we preferred to bring totalitarianism and the Soviets into the middle of Europe rather than to face a full-fledged restoration, or attempt at restoration-and restoration in all cases meant creation of legitimate governments, a process that receives its first real test with the passage of a generation. Somewhere in the first volume of his memoirs, Kissinger says as much. He admits that the spread of totalitarianism, and the consequent division of much of the world between free countries and totalitarian, has given the world a kind of stability it did not have before. I think this dreadfully wrong. I think that the war has gone on more intensely, first of all with the Soviet seizure of half of Europe without having to fight us or the rest of Europe for it. Only it has gone on without direct fighting, in Europe, between the free countries and the Soviets. But whether it is wrong or not, dreadful or not, is not the real question. There is no way of settling a war one does not understand. And unless you can settle it you are probably condemned to eventual undoing in war-in battle or not-for the incapacity to bring victories into settlements turns them into mere incidents in a war that cannot be stopped. Nineteen forty-five complicated the situation for free countries whose constitutions, especially if they are inherited, presuppose a capacity to distinguish between war and peace. It forced nations to carry on wars, and pretend they were at peace-a situation that tied the tongues ofleaders in free countries, and forced them into something like totalitarian hypocrisy, for they could act but could not explain why they acted, which meant that eventually they could not act at all and lost the confidence of their electors. Because the division of Germany and Europe and the consequent antagonism between the Soviet Union and the United States means that the war is not over, the United States and the free countries must go along with the Soviet Union in its passionate profession of hatred of TilE ST. JOHNS REVIEW nazism and fascism, a hatred that seems to increase with the passage of time. Until recently this going along meant "no enemies on the left"; for the left was portrayed as the only sure antidote to fascism and nazism. Stalin at Yalta had infuriated Churchill by calling any government that was anti-fascist, democratic.5 In his footsteps, the Soviet Union continues to equate a democracy" with antifascism and antinazism, and to call any country it desires to undo "fascist." Since 1967, at least, it has used the word to smear Israel, whose capacity to defend itself stirs Soviet hatred and keeps it from seizing the Middle East. 6 In much of the West, perhaps most obviously in Italy, until a few years ago, when it became apparent to many that the most organized and deadly terrorism came from left, it was enough to call anything "fascist" to discredit it without further discussion. The power of this little word "fascism" must come from somewhere. It cannot come from the fearful memory of the past, especially in a time that shows itself most in its forgetfulness. Its power comes from the past's persistence in the present, from the continuation of the war in the present, and the refusal to see it. But at the same time this little word masks the way the war continues in the present, for it pretends the danger from nazi Germany persists. In fact the same danger does persist but it does not come from the same regime. The Soviet Union and China continue nazi Germany's War. This exploitation of the memory of a fear, which is in some way comfortable because safe, to distract from actual terror and murder going on daily before our eyes, is only possible because of the incapacity to end the war which shows itself in the division of Germany. The division of Germany, and the division of the West that comes from it, continue the war and at the same time make it impossible to face our past and resolve Germany's future. This evasion of the past means that we must keep its memory alive artificially, especially the memory of past hatreds, the main drive of Soviet propaganda. It makes it impossible to acknowledge that the defeated were not entirely wrong, the victors not entirely right. A peace treaty, a real peace treaty, would have meant acknowledging that nobody was entirely right. To know that neither side was entirely right, is to know our tragedy for what it is, to recognize that something was destroyed in those wars that was valuable and that it is not going to be easy to recreate, restore or refashion. To know the tragedy of our times for what they are, would mean facing present danger instead of seeking relief from it in the horror of a past whose horror people did not recognize at the time. The insistence that the Allies, who included the Soviet Union, were entirely right, and the Axis entirely wrong made it impossible to tell the Soviet Union to withdraw its troops from Eastern Europe immediately after the war, for those who are entirely right can do no wrong. The concentration on the myth of the past is a way of avoiding the present, especially the continuance of the past in the 113 �present. Acknowledging we were not entirely right or wrong would make the world whole again. It would make a tougher, more straightforward, more painful-and much less dangerous place. Until we understand that peace is much harder than war, the war that calls itself peace will continue-which means it will spread. The politicization of all areas of life, which is the first sign of its advance, will also spread. This insistence of being wholly right has made our cen· tury incapable of distinguishing real greatness, whose de· fects are obvious, from the parody of it by little weak men who might have been great. No time since the time of the Trojan war has been so niggardly in the recognition of greatness, and, therefore, such a patsy to thugs and mur· derers. Like Hitler and Stalin, whom it adores when they are alive, hates after their death. This hatred after adora· tion amounts to disowning your own life after living it. And it goes on. You only have to read the unbridled-and never convincing-hymns of praise to Chou En·Lai and Mao Tse·Tung and North Vietnamese party men in Kis· singer's memoirs to see it. This fascination with these little men who seem all powerful but whose apparent omnipo· tence is only made of weakness is a fascination with mur· der. At the end of the Second World War, before the distor· tions that pass for memory-like the myth that only the Communists resisted Hitler-that prolong the Second World War took hold, men like James Forrestal and Walter Lippmann knew the importance of the future of Ger· many, not only for Germany, but for all of Europe and, therefore, for the whole world.? And they did not hesitate to speak of it openly, in a way that appears unabashed now. The sacrifice of Poland, and the public denial of it in the final communique at Yalta, made it impossible for the British and the United States to do much more than weakly insist on German unity at Potsdam. The loss of Po· land, which had been the subject of torturous negotiations throughout 1944 that Churchill had stated repeatedly would decide the peace, made it impossible to settle Ger· many. It set the terms of the struggle we have lived with ever since without, for the most part, understanding it in any terms that allow a mastery of it. Instead, with the doc· trine of containment we accepted the Soviet terms of the struggle without realizing that the readiness to go along without a settlement meant continuing the war. This evasiveness about Germany, and the obsession with the Second World War that has come with it, has had its consequences. It was Germany, in an effort to deal with its future on its own, not the United States, that initiated the policy of "detente" in 1967-as Kissinger admits in his memoirs. The United States acquiesced to German "Ost· politik" because it did not dare oppose it. This policy has drawn Europe away from the United States without strengthening it. In the years after the war men foresaw these consequences of going along with the actual division of Germany, and insisted on its unity more clearly than 114 they do now that the consequences are here for all to see: "Certainly we cannot default Europe to Russia" -to do so would be to invite attack "within the next two decades" by a totalitarian land colossus armed with all the sea and air power which the whole of Europe could, under authoritarian management, produce. . .. "As you know, I hold that world stability will not be re· stored until the vacuum created by the destruction of German power and the weakening of the power of Western Europe has been filled-in other words, until a balance of power has been restored in Europe." Such a balance of power would include military strength, but "I believe that economic stabil- ity, political stability and military stability must develop in about that order.''s In an important book in 1968, The Discipline of Power, George Ball tried to recall the importance of Germany. But his words even then sounded quaint and old fash· ioned: For the future of Gerrriany after two wars is a riddle we must solve with care. It lies at the heart of the relations between East and West. It is in many ways the most intractable and quite likely the most important problem we face. 9 The absence of a peace treaty meant in the most spe· cific terms that the fighting on the European fronts had come to a halt but that the war had not ended, because there were no coherent terms for ending it. There is no way of ending a war you do not understand. The U.N., which had served as a distraction from the discussions for the future of Poland at Yalta, substituted the aspiration for peace in the future for actual negotiations for a peace treaty that made some sense of the world in the present. It served also to blind people to the startling fact that the United States and Britain had thought little in concrete terms about settling the war, that they did not know what to do with victory in a war that had been forced upon them-and that they had brought upon themselves. 25 Aprill947 ... At the conclusion I said it was manifest that American diplomatic planning of the peace was far below the quality of the planning that went into the conduct of the war. We regarded the war, broadly speaking, as a ball game which we had to finish as quickly as possible, but in doing so there was comparatively little thought as to the relationships between nations which would exist after Germany and Japan were destroyed. The United Nations was oversold; sound in concept and certainly the only hope for improvement in the world order, it was built up over-extravagantly as the solution to international frictions that had existed for centuries. Now there is a danger of its being cast aside by the American public in a mood of frustration and disappointment. 10 A few months later, on July 26, Robert Lovett, the Un· der Secretary of State, deepened Forrestal's analysis: WINTER/SPRING 1983 �... He spoke of the lack of planning fqr peace in the State Department and the casual and off~the-cuff decisions of the late President, and referred to Churchill's remark that at Yalta he had been dealing with the "shell of a man" and not the man himself. Lovett added that the great political error in the postwar period was the failure to insist upon the writing of peace treaties while our troops and military power were still evident in Europe. Nothing, he said, could have stopped the American forces which were at that time deployed in Germany. II Probably nothing betrays more the confusion and the desperation of statesmen after the war than the occurrence of meetings like Yalta and Potsdam, the first of many summit meetings that have never brought agree· ment. They were born of a desperate notion that a few "great" men could make peace on the strength of their "personal" friendship. And that is part of the reason why "friendship" has become a word we blush to use. They substituted talk for negotiation. At Yalta Churchill spoke often as if he were in Parliament-but there was no one to listen. Roosevelt was exhausted unto death-and Stalin had no use for words except as traps for those who spoke them. And by pretending to hear them in private, he kept Churchill from speaking them in public where they might have really counted. In some sense Yalta and Potsdamand not the U.N.-were the first to substitute the aspira· tion for peace in the future for the actual negotiation of peace in the present. And the substitution of aspiration for the action of actual agreement was just what Stalin wanted, for he knew the cultivation of aspiration you had no intention of fulfilling weakened and, eventually, undid men. The policy of unconditional surrender made the conclusion of a peace treaty difficult, for it destroyed German sovereignty and no peace treaty could be concluded with· out Germany's consent. Conclusion of a peace treaty re- quired the restoration of, or at very least the agreement to restore, German sovereignty. And the restoration of sover- eignty or its creation-for it amounts to the same thingas the whole history since the First World War shows, is extremely difficult, and in any case requires much more than a generation. Rousseau thought it impossible. Cer· tainly, it is impossible unless the victors realize its difficulty. Neither to restore it entirely or to destroy it entirely-the situation of Germany since 1945-means threatening the sovereignty of the victors and all their al· lies whose assurance of sovereignty depends on them, especially when there are regimes like the Soviet that feed on the destruction of sovereignty, for whom war called "revolution" and "peace" means the destruction of sover- eignty. And without the recognition of sovereignty, there can be no experience of reality, of the difference between life and death, war and peace. Without it all nations invite questioning not only with words, but with acts that aim to destroy any people or nation not strong enough to resist. THE ST. JOHNS REVIEW The most obvious consequence of the absence of a peace treaty, the division of Germany, is an extreme exam- ple of the communist technique which threatens many nations called independent but actually struggling for sovereignty and legitimacy. This technique splits countries against themselves under the cover of a supposedly spontaneous civil war that is actually aggression from the outside. In the extreme instance of Germany, the defense of West Germany might mean the destruction of all of Germany in the actual outbreak of war. To defend itself Ger. many must risk its destruction. This contradiction that defense would bring destruction is at the center of the peace movement, which started in the Federal Republic in response to the decision of Italy, Germany, and Britain to accept the Pershing II and cruise missiles at the end of 1979. The division of the West that dwarfs the relations between nations also reproduces itself within the free nations through polarization in thinking to the point that in· dividuals of the "Left" and the "Right" experience different meanings for same words. Thucydides gave this incapacity to experience the same meaning for the same words classic expression in his description of the civil war in Corcyra-a description that is at the heart of Hobbes's thinking, and, therefore, of our political understanding of domestic political life. The received value of names imposed for signification of things, was changed into arbitrary. For inconsiderate boldness, was counted true-hearted manliness: provident deliberation, a handsome fear: modesty, the cloak of cowardice: to be wise in every thing, to be lazy in every thing. A furious suddenness was reputed a point of valour. To re-advise for the better security, was held for a fair pretext of tergiversation. He that was fierce, was always trusty; and he that contraried such a one, was suspected. He that did insidiate, if it took, was a wise man; but he that could smell out a trap laid, a more dangerous man than he. But he that had been so provident as not to need to do the one or the other, was said to be a dissolver of society, and one that stood in fear of his adversary. In brief, he that could outstrip another in the doing of an evil act, or that could persuade another thereto that never meant it, was commended. Hobbes, however, was little concerned with war from abroad, and especially with war from abroad that calls itself sedition. He saw the threat to civil life as coming mainly from within, and not from the exploitation of domestic discord as a cover for aggressive war. War from abroad that wins an unwilling consent by calling itself sedition is something the twentieth century's incapacity to perceive events has brought upon a world too unsure of itself to distinguish the new from the merely self-destructive. In contrast to the Peloponnesian War and Corcyra, however, the polarization today in free countries comes not primarily from actual violence within the country but occurs in men's minds in response to war masking as civil 115 �violence elsewhere in the world, often in places no one ever thought of much, before the ohset of fighting. The division and polarization shOjVS itself not only be· tween individuals but within them-' individuals who feel torn between, in appearance, mutually exclusive interpre~ tations of all events. One man's hero is another's murderer. Because we fear the responsibility of choosing, such a division and polarization brings paralysis. And paralysis is often a prelude to violence-or to helplessness in the face of violence. Aristotle meant something like paralysis when he used the word stasis for events which until recently many called "revolution" in the illusion that their violence brings movement and change instead of springing from the incapacity for change. This polarization in thinking would not work its way into men's reasoning without the fear of the Soviet Union and Communist China, mostly unacknowledged, behind it. Lately, too, the Soviet Union has openly excited fear with its threats of nuclear war, and, before that, with its sponsorship of supposedly indigenous terrorists throughout the world-a sponsorship that governments even now, with the exception of Italy and Israel, do not take seriously because their awareness of it influences neither their words nor their actions. 12 This open resort to terror is in fact an attempt to bring the fear that reigns in totalitarian count!ies to the whole world. Propaganda always feeds on suppressed anger and fear. Once people face the facts that inspire this unacknowledged fear, for instance the extermination in Afghanistan and the use of gas in Afghanistan, Laos, and Cambodia, the propaganda loses its grip-and men return to their senses. Individuals and newspapers like the Wall Street Journal, L'express, II Giornale Nuovo have driven governments to at least acknowledge Soviet sponsorship of terrorism, manipulation of the peace movements, use of gas in Afghanistan, Laos, and Cambodia. In the face of sceptical hostile journalists' questions about terrorism, the then Secretary of State, Alexander M. Haig, referred to the work of one private journalist, Claire Sterling. But especially in foreign affairs, governments are supposed to bring men to their senses-not men their governments. We are already in a situation that calls upon individuals to say things their governments dare not acknowledge-the situation of individuals in totalitarian countries. The last presidential election somewhat undid this tendency to polarization in thinking in the United Statesand also in free Europe-because it showed the capacity of millions of individuals to come to their own conclusions, to think with their own heads, despite the pounding and manipulation of almost all major media. It made facts self- · evident that men had hardly dared mention in public a few years before. There was, however, an immediate attempt to reintroduce ideological stereotypes, like a drug that some men, and especially some men who have come to speak for the Democratic Party, could not get along with- 116 out. In somewhat veiled terms, Arthur Schlesinger, Jr. recently pleaded openly for this kind of polarization, even as he scornfully admitted that Reagan's election has reasserted common sense perception and the meaning of words enough to weaken the ideological rigidity that had intensified polarization during the long years of South Vietnam's and the United States' fight to save Indochina. In the attempt to reintroduce this polarization, exploitation of the yearning for peace and the terror before nuclear death plays an important role, a role similar to the "anti-war" movements more than ten years ago: In foreign policy the administration has presided over the re- militarization of the Cold War. [Soviet propaganda characterizes any Western attempt to defend itself as a reintroduction of the Cold War.] It has conveyed the distinct impression that it regards nuclear weapons as usable and nuclear war as winnable. Far from regarding the nuclear arms race as a threat to the future of humanity, the administration appears to regard it as the great means for doing the Soviets in.13 The government appears tongue-tied before this attempt to rewaken ideological thinking. It avoids straightforward facts and telling details and resorts to platitudes that are barely distinguishable from ideology, and betrays something approaching inverted agreement with those who wish to undo it. This evasiveness bespeaks fear and stirs the suspicion it would dispell. For instance, President Reagan in his address on March 8, 1983, and on other occasions, exaggerated the effective exercise of American strength in the years immediately after the Second World War-the years that, unwittingly, made for the continuation of the war they meant to end, and thereby, increased the chances for the collapse of the West that has to some extent occurred. The absence of a coherent peace, and the consequent unacknowledged continuation of the war, meant we knew what we were against but not what we were for. It meant containment-the resignation to the perpetuation of the division in the hope that it would end. The truth of the matter is probably that nobody at the end of the War really expected peace. For otherwise they would have thought seriously about it. Because they did not expect it, they asked only to be allowed to aspire to it. The paralysis that first betrayed itself in this resignation shows itself not only within countries but in the general stagnation in international relations which some take for "stability" -which, in turn, fosters stagnation in attitudes that prevent the perception of facts, and their significance, at the moment of their occurrence. Soviet propaganda speaks as if the truce in Europe and the far East in 1945 had just occurred. And in some sense, that is true-in the psychological sense. In the free countries the same old arguments are repeated from generation to generation, but always as if they were new, the same illusions reappear and must be dispelled. This repetition of the same arguments responds unawares to the rigidity of WINTER/SPRING 1983 �Communist propaganda-and sometimes is actually occasioned and manipulated by Communist disinformation.l4 At the time of the Soviet attack on Afghanistan in December 1979, George Kennan explained Soviet aggression in much the same terms that Forrestal in 1944 said hampered American perception of Soviet aggression: After a Socialist woman's attempt on Lenin's life on August 28, 1918, Radek, the Bolshevists' star writer, quoted Lenin's ''winged words'' in Izvestia: Even if ninety percent of the people perish, what matter if the other ten percent live to see the revolution become universal?18 I find that whenever any American suggests that we act in accordance with the needs of our own security he is apt to be called a god-damned fascist or imperialist, while if Uncle Joe suggests that he needs the Baltic Provinces, half of Poland, all of Bessarabia and access to the Mediterranean, all hands agree that he is a fine, frank, candid and generally delightful fellow who is very easy to deal with because he is so explicit in what he wants.l5 In a world that thinks of itself as constantly on the move, little changes-in perception and understanding. Again, Forrestal in 1947 could be describing the situation today: A few pages later in a somewhat different context Melgounov comments: Not for nothing do the three capital letters which stand for the title of the All-Russian Extraordinary Commission, of the Che-Ka, stand also for the three Russian words which denote "Death to every man." 19 In Afghanistan a few years ago, to the ignorance of almost all Western newspapers, an Afghan Communist in charge of a prison echoed the Soviet words of 1918: It looks to me as if the world were going to try to turn conservative but the difficulty is that between Hitler, your friends to the east, and the intellectual muddlers who have had the throttle for the last ten years, the practical people are going to have a hell of a time getting the world out of receivership, and when the miracles are not produced the crackpots may demand another chance in which to really finish the job. At that time it will be of greatest importance that the Democratic Party speaks for the liberals, but not for the revolutionaries. 16 But stagnation does not mean "stability"-it means drift towards totalitarianism, drift for the most part unperceived. And the stagnation does not go back to 1945 only. It reaches back to 1917. Soviet actions to the world have not changed since 1917 and early 1918. They are only an extension of the terror that began in 1917 and 1918 in Russia to as much of the world as will not resist the methodical resort to terror, sometimes not even disguised with hon- eyed overtures of peace in the name of a spontaneous uprising for freedom. lri 1923 Guglielmo Ferrero said that Russia had in four years suffered the distintegration that had taken the ancient world four centuriesY In 1925 the Russian historian, educated and trained in the world of Nicholas II, Sergey Petrovich Melgounov, published The Red Terror in Russia, in the major languages of Europe, that described the atrocities of the Bolsheviks without uttering the word Marxist. But all that has been forgotten. And because it has been forgotten we recall anything that happens with difficulty. The man who will read Melgounov will see the stagnation that surrounds him. He will see that the generations have come and gone and that little has changed in Bolshevik practice since 1917, the practice that instructed Hitler and showed him the world would ignore, and forget what it did not ignore. The practice of getting others to do the murdering for them, and still others to justify and exult in it. The practice of blaming others for the murder they did themselves: uThe Terror was forced upon us." THE ST. JOHNS REVIEW Their commander-in-chief was one Sayyed Abdollah. With my own ears I heard him say: "A million Afghans only must remain alive: we only need a million Communists: the others, we don't need them, we will liquidate them.'' 20 Nothing has changed. The children shot today in Afghanistan are the descendants of the children shot in Russia in 1917-1918.21 The murder that went after almost every person of noticeable energy and independence in the countryside in South Vietnam by 1965-information available in a book published in the United States in the same year-went on in Russia beginning in 1917.22 There was nothing spontaneous even then: it was cold and methodical. And why is it that murder, as long as it is spontaneous, seems alright to forget? The terror that wracked Germany in the last years, and-almost unnoticed by the rest of the world-wracks Italy now, that threatens the life of every judge who dares condemn a terrorist, of every courageous journalist, of the wives and children of prison guards and wardens who do not cooperate-all that started in 1917 in Russia with the seizure of wives and children as hostages for shooting. And yet we, and our newspapers, treat murder in Vietnam, Afghanistan, Cambodia, or Italy, when it is noticed at all, as if it had not happened before. Neither are peace overtures at the moment of murder anything new. For instance, the present Soviet peace overtures to Europe-together with threats of nuclear annihilation-meant to stop the American defense of Europe with Pershing II and cruise missiles at the moment that men and women drown in excrement and are buried alive in Afghanistan.2l In 1917 and 1918 in Russia the shootings never stopped on the nights before amnesties, the most dreaded nights. And the greatest murder in Russia in 1917 and 1918 came with the aboliton of the death penalty. When I think how few of these occurrences that ought to be the currency of our thinking about the war called peace figure in our memories, and contrast it with the hor- 117 �ror that grows with the years at thepmrder of five million Jews and unumbered millions of others, I conclude that only the destruction of fascism and nazism in war allows us to experience its horrors after (and almost because) we can do nothing about them. But we ignore the present murder, and the murder that preceded it, because we can do something about it-if only not ignore it. The resentment and hatred in much of the world at Israel's courage-that makes others perceive their cowardice-bespeaks a certain disingenousness in this horror at past murders we can no longer do anything about. A disingenousness that serves to distract from present murder and present cowardice and that shows itself nakedly in the current Soviet and Arab propaganda that compares Israel to the Nazis. Israel is one of the few nations in the world that stands up to murderers, and takes words seriously, that has learned the lessons of World War 11-the war that does not cease. But although the Communists have not changed since 1917, they have renewed themselves. They have returned to their source as Machiavelli (Discourses 1, 3) said all republics and sects must. (But a regime that finds itself in undermining the governments of the world, let alone its endurance and renewal, was more than Machiavelli could imagine.) First with the seizure of half of Europe and China after the Second World War, and then with the theft of Cuba-while the world wondered whether Castro was really a "Communist"-and most lately with the undoing of many helpless and unwilling countries after the fall of Saigon in April 1975: Cambodia, Laos, South Yemen (in 1968), Ethiopia, Angola, Mozambique, Nicaragua. And Grenada in 1979. I almost forgot little Grenada which lies on the oil routes through the Caribbean and whose youths now go to Cuba six months every year for indoctrination. The Communists helped precipitate the destruction of the government of Lebanon in 1975 and of the government of Persia in 1978. They are now fighting to seize El Salvador and Afghanistan. And with each successive conquest there is less information and more lies. And the world watches as if in a dream. It has been a rough "short course" in the geography not learned in our renowned universities. Each new conquest means a return to 1917-1918, and reconfirms its lessons. To talk of the weakening of ideology in these circumstances is nonsense. Each conquest strengthens it. Violence undoes the illusions and the beliefs of victims-but spreads the fear that makes for illusion and the lip-service to ideology in the rest of the world. We are not getting farther away from 1917 as the years pass on: it is approaching us. That is what I mean by stagnation-and what the Communists mean with their talk of the inevitability of history. Nineteen seventeen is nearer, because we cannot re~ member it, because we have less conception of what happened than men did in the early twenties. I do not mean only the atrocities, but the simple facts. We still mindlessly 118 call October a Hrevolution", as if it were some popular up~ rising, instead of a few organized armed men's seizure of a state. There is little understanding that the war, and the collapse of the army in the face of peace propaganda, were the decisive events-propaganda for peace, intenser and more dangerous, but otherwise not unlike the outcry in the United States and Europe during the Vietnam War.24 All the endless talk for more than two generations about Hclass warfare," "the masses," "alienation," usocialism," the division of many intellectuals outside Russia into "Stalinists" and "Trotskyists", all this talk, this supposedly "passionate" talk, that takes itself for philosophy, but is actually only verbiage, serves to obliterate the perception and remembrance of these few fearful facts. And this incapacity to know the facts of the twentieth century reflects itself also in a general incapacity to tell the story of our times, to write simple narrative history in which living statesmen count, and there is a reality to cope with. 25 And this incapacity to remember and see the facts leads us to speak and even act as if we had adversaries worthy of respect, as if they were partly right. We let communist regimes get away with murder. We do not even remind them of it, and do not distinguish between these regimes and their peoples. And the more they get away with murder, the more they return to 1917, the more they can ignore the nagging emptiness within. The force of this emptiness, and its fragility, shows itself in their denial of rejection, especially of the rejection of their agents and party men: My career in the KGB was developing successfully, and it promised to be even better in the future. But my KGB and party superiors did not know that for many years I was devel- oping dissatisfaction with and finally total resentment of the Soviet socialist system. When I was a university student I had the chance to learn about the night~marish cruelty and atrocities of the Stalin regime which slaughtered up to 20 million Soviet citizens. After graduating from the university and being transferred from one Central Committee, Communist Party, Soviet Union affiliated organization to another, I wit· nessed firsthand the fact that the Soviet socialist system was not working for the good of its citizens. I came to the understanding that it is a totally corrupt dictatorship-type regime with rotten moral standards. Most of the slogans put forward by the Kremlin leaders I came to understand are aimed at de- ceiving peoples of the U.S.S.R. and of the world. And I clearly understand that Marxism-Leninism is actually a perverted type of religion imposed on millions of people. Over the past 3 years the Soviet authorities are progressively using all ruthless and, even by Soviet law, illegal means to force and blackmail my family to cooperate with them. The main reason for the indescribable torture of my family by the Soviet authorities is that the KGB is obviously under pressure to present the Soviet Politburo with "proof' that the reasons for my defection to the United States were not political. They cannot admit that a major in Soviet intelligence could possibly be a hidden dissident. WINTER/SPRING 1983 �Speaking about the Soviet Union, they have a problem, because my file in the KGB does not lead them to find anything bad about me because there is nothing-it is impossible for them. It is against the Soviet Communist rzature to admit that a KGB major defected for political reasons. It just cannot happen by their ideas-they know that it can, but they cannot tell that to the Politburo or the Russian people. (My emphasis)26 Tolstoy describes this emptiness in Napoleon, and the dependence of its persistence on the approval of much of the world. At Borodino for once the suffering of battle breaks through to him. But he cannot yield to his feelings, because of the praise of half the world. He orders the continuation of fire that he does not desire against Russians who will not give way, because he thinks the world expects it of him: This day the horrible appearance of the battlefield overcame that strength of mind which he thought constituted his merit and his greatness . ... With painful dejection he awaited the end of this action, in which he regarded himself as a participant and which he was unable to arrest. A personal, human feeling for a brief moment got the better of the artificial phantasm of life he had served so long. He felt in his own person the sufferings and death he had witnessed on the battlefield. The heaviness of his head and chest reminded him of the possibil- ity of suffering and death for himself. ... Even before he gave that order the thing he did not desire, and for which he gave the order only because he thought it was expected of him, was being done. And he fell back in that artificial realm of imaginary greatness, and again-as a horse walking a treadmill thinks it is doing something for itself-he submissively fulfilled the cruel, sad, gloomy, and inhuman role predestined for him. And not for the day and hour alone were the mind and conscience darkened of this man on whom the responsibility for what was happening lay more than on all the others who took part in it. Never to the end of his life could he understand goodness and truth, too remote from everything human, for him ever to be able to grasp their meaning. He could not disavow his actions, belauded as they were by half the world, and so he had to repudiate truth, goodness, and all humanity. (Emphasis mine)27 But the victory over Napoleon brought Europe a hundred years of stability because Talleyrand understood that only the removal of Napoleon could dispel! the "artificial phantasm" that was destroying the life of Europe in the name of improving it, and persuaded Alexander I of it28 In contrast, the First World War precipitated totalitarianism in much of Europe, and the Second World War, dedicated to its destruction, ended with its greatest advance. In contrast to the French revolution, which brought war to all of Europe in the name of freedom, the First World War brought totalitarianism in its aftermath. There is in recent history a specific date for the renewal of this emptiness' attack on the truth that began in 1917, and for the West's collaboration with it, a date that showed THE ST. JOHNS REVIEW that the capacity to tell the truth-without which no free country could survive-was at the center of the struggle. On April 16, 1943, the government of Poland in London announced the discovery of bodies of "many thousands" of Polish officers they suspected the Soviets had murdered near Smolensk in the forest of Katyn. 29 Instead of supporting the Polish government which was eventually to have ten divisions fighting in the West, the British and American governments tried to silence it. Stalin broke diplomatic relations with the government of Poland and started the long diplomatic struggle for Poland that went on throughout 1944 and which Churchill knew would decide the fate of Germany and Europe, and, therefore, of the peace. A Hungarian Stalinist until he joined the uprising in 1956 that brought him his death, Miklos Gimlas described this process of throttling the capacity to say, and understand, the obvious that has threatened many of the governments and newspapers of the world since 1917, and that made a decisive advance in the long years of the war for Indochina. Because they succumbed to, and even in some instances encouraged, the frenzy in the United States and Europe that took itself for passion that undid that war, their words now ring hollow-the so-called "credibility gap": Slowly we had come to believe ... that there are two kinds of truth ... that truth of the Party and the people can be different and can be more important than the objective truth and that truth and political expediency are in fact identical . ... And so we arrived at the outlook ... which poisoned our whole public life, penetrated the remotest corners of our thinking, obscured our vision, paralysed our critical faculties and finally rendered many of us incapable of simply sensing or apprehending truth. This is how it was, it is no use denying it.30 In just those years of the Indochina war the first authentic voices since 1917 from within Russia broke upon the world, and showed its startled eyes that the capacity to tell the truth, which had made Russian art one of the centers of Europe in the nineteenth century, had survived the socalled Russian revolution, that Russia still lived, that things were at the same time worse than we had known, and better than we had imagined in that abandoned country. At the same time that the West succumbed to an onslaught of lies, voices in the east dismissed them with a sureness that made us blush at the obvious we desired to deny-and did deny. Loudly, because we knew it to be undeniable. But the Indochina war ended with the first major Soviet advances throughout the world since the seizure of eastern Europe in 1945. These voices embarrass much of the West because they remind it of its evasiveness and willing blindness. Almost a generation ago, Michael Polanyi described this incapacity to face simple facts, and draw their consequences, in words that tell even more today: 119 �Many academic experts will refuse'· to recognize today that mere thirst for truth and justice has 1 caused the revolts now transforming the Soviet Countries. They are not Marxists, but their views are akin to Marxism in Claiming that the scien· tific explanation of history must be based on more tangible forces than the fact that people change their minds3l This incapacity to cope with the truth, and tell it, makes it difficult for free governments to explain their policies and even sometimes to enjoy the confidence of their actions. There is no way to act effectively in free countries without straightforward explanation of actions. For action needs the test of public explanation to win natural assurance. During the war in Vietnam, the United States did much of what was necessary, but did not dare justify it or say it openly, did not dare know what it was doing. The government was simply not able to find the words to ex· plain its actions. This incapacity to explain its actions amounted almost to acting publicly in secret. This evasiveness not only bred suspicion, but undid confidence both in the government and finally in the people, who for many years lent the government a confidence it turned out not to have. It also kept the government from realizing that it did not have a strategy for winning. That even today the word Winning" sounds uncomfortable is a measure of our past evasiveness. The government lost the war with words, not on the battlefield, because it did not understand its actions enough to explain them. A Soviet commentator, in contrast, understood its actions very well, precisely because he did not have to suffer the test of public explanation: 11 I really tore the stupid Americans to shreds this morning ... I held them up to shame for escalating the War in Vietnam. What idiots they are in Washington! Rotten humanists in white gloves! They want to hold Communism back, the fools. But it doesn't have to be stopped; it needs to be squashed. But they don't understand, not a damned thing! The only fellow they ever had who understood what a cowardly bunch of jackals all these Stalins and Khrushchevs and Maos and Hos are was John Foster Dulles, may his soul rest in peace. He knew you can talk with Communists pleasantly and politely, just as long as you hold a gun to their heads. Then they are quiet and peaceful, as smooth as can be. But any other approach is useless ... I read all these people like Alsop, Lippmann, and Pearson, and not one of these pundits is smart enough to say straight out: Tell the Russians to go to hell and get on with the job in Vietnam. The Russians won't dare to raise a finger against you. They're scared to death. And the Chinese won't touch you either. But they'll make a terrible lot of noise. All you have to do is snap back at them properly and quietly, as Dulles did, and they'll shut up. They'll be begging for peace themselves. How stupid life is. We can't write what we think but they can't do what we think either. They are afraid of their own left-wingers. I've been there, I know. (My emphasis)32 This incapacity to explain action publicly, and, therefore, more often than not, to understand it privately with 120 any confidence, leads to an incapacity to understand the significance of action. To understand the importance of acts, especially in a situation where the threat of total war is constant and, therefore, unreal, and "little" wars continue regardless-and where the fighting is far away and engages only the Soviets or their proxies directly-you have to go to the books about the camps. They are the only books of manners, of diplomacy, we have-our Odyssey. The first rule of the camps is, pay attention to actions, not words-one's own actions and the actions of others: Only dimly at first, but with ever greater clarity, did I also come to see that soon how a man acts can alter what he is. Those who stood up well in the camps became better men, those who acted badly soon became bad men; and this, or at least so it seemed, independent of their past life history and their former personality make-up or at least those aspects of personality that seemed significant in psychoanalytic thinking. 33 Diplomats should now go to the books on the camps to learn what they are up against in dealing with totalitarian regimes. For our world no longer has any strangers, or, at least, no longer knows how to recognize and greet a stranger. And in the camps there are no strangers-and everybody knows it unmistakably. In their concentration camps totalitarian regimes betray the desperation that possesses them, and that informs their actions among the nations: in their readiness to allow criminals to victimize the innocent captives, in their resort to terror, including threats to relatives and friends still outside, to make men do anything to survive, above all in their effort to prove there is no such thing as courage, that life is merely existence, to destroy men without directly killing them, to make them scared of the breath they breathe. And all this not swiftly but in a long drawn-out cunning cat-and-mouse game that raises expectations and crushes them, that exploits the yearning to survive (at the price of betraying all one is), and the illusion that one might just be different from the dead and dying, to turn a man into an apparently willing victim, because his will-and his lifehave shrunk almost beyond his experience. Melgounov was already clear in 1925 about this slowness: Besides, the policy of the Soviet Government is a policy capa· ble always of postponing its wreakings of revenge, so that persons may "disappear", may be sent into exile, or thrown in gaol, long after they have been granted official guarantees of immunity. 34 Melgounov mentions no countries-in addition to individ- uals-because he did not imagine that the violence consuming Russia might spread to the world. All this slowness, especially the exploitation of the wish to survive at almost any cost, has betrayed itself in the fear of war that has obsessed the West since 1917. More than twenty years passed before the Communists finally struck South Vietnam openly. WINTER/SPRING 1983 �Terror and destruction appear to wprk. Few can cope with them without wreaking equal destruction-Indochina was an important exception-in return, destruction that usually works to the advantage of tfuose who want to destroy. The camps teach that there is no "negotiation" without hard-headed courage, and the strength that comes of it, that does not lead to irremediable surrender in which the victim, individual or country, is made to consent to his own destruction, which wants to change man, to reach his core, but which destroys many, and discovers unexpected strength in some. Who knows whether it is not in man's lack of an internal core that the mysterious success of the New Faith and its charm for the intellectual lie? By subjecting man to pressure, the New Faith creates this core, or in any case the feeling that it exists. Fear of freedom is nothing more than fear of the void. "There is nothing in man," said a friend of mine, a dialecti~ cian. "He will never extract anything out of himself, because there is nothing there. You can't leave the people and write in a wilderness. Remember that man is a function of social forces. Whoever wants to be alone will perish." This is proba- bly true, but I doubt if it can be called anything more than the law for our times. Feeling that there was nothing in him, Dante could not have written his Divine Comedy or Montaigne his Essays, nor could Chardin have painted a single still-life. Today man believes there is nothing in him, so he accepts anything, even if he knows it to be bad, in order to find himself at one with others, in order not to be alone. As long as he believes this, there is little one can reproach in his behaviour. 35 The emptiness Milosz means is Baudelaire's ennui. It means not being able to taste life, not feeling alive, not being alive. "Whoever wants to be alone will perish." But whoever does not stand alone will not live. People who cannot feel life, whose words have no meaning, feel that there is a wall between them and life, that there is no core. The incapacity to experience life, to feel alive, makes people feel as miserable as poverty-and, ashamed. They wince in envy at individuals who can feel these things. In free countries envy tortures all the more, because it is clear that nothing keeps one from life except oneself: there is nobody to blame. Totalitarian ideology promises to dispel such emptiness, but totalitarian states simply crush anything that is not empty. They murder and persecute individuals not possessed by it. It is the insistence on this emptiness, on proving that there is nothing else, nothing that can stand up to it, that drives totalitarian regimes to expand. For free countries excite murderous envy, because they remind totalitarian regimes that everyone might not be empty, that there might be men who can say "no," who might love life enough not to do anything to survive. But baffled by their freedom that mercilessly drives them to experience their incapacity to live, the free countries, for the most part, cannot conceive that anybody could envy them: THE ST. JOHNS REVIEW ... very many people: living in totalitarian countries, having survived terror and been brainwashed by propaganda, are not only genuinely content with their position, but virtually consider themselves to be the happiest people on earth. This, however, engenders an inferiority complex vis-3.-vis the democracies, so that the inhabitants of totalitarian countries often turn into implacable enemies of freedom, ready and willing to destroy everything that reminds them of the free will they have lost. This also applies in many respects to the intellectuals of those countries, who often display a pathological fear of freedom. A man who has been accustomed to breathing fresh air all his life does not notice it, and never realizes what a blessing it is. He thinks of it only occasionally when entering a stuffy room, but knows that he need only open the window for the air to become fresh again. A man who has grown up in a democratic society and who takes the basic freedoms as much for granted as the air he breathes is in much the same position. People who have grown up under democracy do not value it highly enough. Yet there are weighty reasons for their dissatisfaction with this society .... 36 This reluctance to take their own measure that makes it difficult for the free countries to realize that the totalitarian regimes are murderously envious of their freedom-in some sense experience it more deeply than the free countries because they have deprived themselves of it-makes it difficult for them to experience communist hypocrisy and duplicity. At the end of the war some experienced the West's incapacity to perceive Communist duplicity more vividly than now: The sheer duplicity of the Soviets during these negotiations is beyond the experience of the experts in the State Department, with the result that any future promise made by the Soviets is to be evaluated with great caution. It appears that they do not mind lying or even our knowing that they lie, as long as it is for the benefit of the state_37 Perception of totalitarian duplicity would lead to awareness that the Communist regimes speak in a different dimension, that the same words mean different things to them, in the precise sense that the same words meant different things at Corcyra. This double vision in which the relation to world and self, and of language to truth, is at stake, is precisely the disturbance in perception that I mentioned in the introduction which betrays itself in the division of the West and feeds upon it-and makes it difficult for us to distinguish between our friends and enemies: 30 Aprill947 Jimmy Byrnes came in this morning and in talking about the Russians he said they are "stubborn, obstinate and they don't scare." I reminded him of our conversation about two years ago when he chided me for being too extreme in my views about the Russians when I told him that [when] he harbored the illusion that he could talk in the same fashion with the Russians that he could with the Republican opposition in the Senate he was very much mistaken. At that time I told him that when he spoke so to speak, using language 121 �in a third dimension, the Russians spoke in a fourth, and there 1 was no stairway. 38 The dissociation of words from facts, which makes it impossible to grasp the meaning of events until afterwards, when nothing can be done about them, results from not perceiving totalitarian duplicity, and the incommensurability of vision that comes with it. Such dissociation and double vision makes people helpless before aggression. Brezhnev in 1973 meant just this dissociation when he called for "cooperation" between the two sides despite their incapacity to talk to each other-as if they were interchangeable, and the truth did not separate them: For years we have been piling up arms without interruption. Until now we can destroy each other many times over, not simply once. Why not persuade our people to work together, even if we hold ideological positions, we will perhaps never be able to reconciliate?39 One of the New York Times correspondents in Indochina, Sydney Schanberg, experienced this double vision in his own flesh when he could not recognize the revolution of his dreams in the murder before his eyes, patients left to die on the operating table and the rest, in Cambodia in the spring of 1975 after the fall of Saigon: ... In almost every situation we encountered during the more than two weeks we were under Communist control, there was a sense of split vision~ whether to look at events through Western eyes or through what we thought might be Cambodian revolutionary eyes. Brutality or Necessity? Was this just cold brutality, a cruel and sadistic imposition of the law of the jungle, in which only the fittest will survive? Or is it possible that, seen through the eyes of the peasant soldiers and revolutionaries, the forced evacuation of the cities is a harsh necessity? Perhaps they are convinced that there is no way to build a new society for the benefit of the ordinary man, hitherto exploited, without literally starting from the beginning; in such an unbending view people who represent the old ways and those considered weak or unfit would be ex- pendable and would be weeded out. Or was the policy both cruel and ideological? (My emphasis)40 Because totalitarian leaders see the freedom of the West with more clarity than much of the West, they desire to undermine and destroy it with the free West's involuntary cooperation and consent-to exploit the West's fear of its own self-destructiveness, that showed itself in the First World War and in the decade before the Second World War, to turn it against itself. To win this unwilling cooperation they exploit the West's unacknowledge guilt at going along with the cat-and-mouse game of murderers ever since 1917. The United States now goes along with this cat-andmouse game in El Salvador. Intelligent and honest journalists, who do not know much history, observe rightly that 122 the United States contributes to the polarization it might have prevented with the swiftness of confidence-which they do not, however, call for: It was certainly possible to describe some members of the armed opposition, as Deane Hinton had, as "out-and-out Marxists/' but it was equally possible to describe other members of the opposition, as the embassy had at the inception of the Revolutionary Democratic Front (FOR) in April of 1980, as "a broad-based coalition of moderate and center left groups." The right in El Salvador never made this distinction: to the right, anyone in the opposition was a communist, along with most of the American press, the Catholic church, and, as time went by, all Salvadoran citizens not of the right. In other words there remained a certain ambiguity about political terms as they were understood in the United States and in El Salvador, where "left" may mean, in the beginning, only a resistance to seeing one's family killed or disappeared. That it comes eventually to mean something else may be, to the extent that the United States has supported the increasing polarization in El Salvador, the procustean bed we made ourselves.41 Violence, in appearance random, in which, in contrast to outright war, you never really know who you are fighting, makes for the "ambiguity of political terms" that Joan Didion talks of. Because the United States will neither pull out entirely or move decisively, the violence goes on and on, and the propaganda war spreads throughout the world in the doubts of men. To prolong means to lose, because it means to prolong uncertainty and to increase the "mixed signals" from the United States the El Salvadorans complain of, rightly. The continuation of violence means that men, especially men outside the country ofviolence, will want most of all an end to it. It means victory for the few, weaker and more violent, who will destroy freedom in El Salvador. The focus on El Salvador that comes of going along with this cat-and-mouse game also keeps the United States from lifting its eyes to the real threat and instigator, Cuba, and to the danger to Mexico-from seeing the whole situation in the Caribbean, and in the world. The cat-and-mouse game feeds off dread of the "Right," of fascism and nazism. But it may actually in the slow unceasing course of defeat provoke the brutality it dreadsas a young writer observed in profound criticism of the President of Yale's recent outburst against the "Moral Majority": Neither your Address, nor any other manifestations of liberal Democrat culture take notice of the real dangers to the United States, such as the latest measures of Soviet militarization, like the abolition of military draft deferment for college students or the creation of military bases in Afghanistan for advancing further into the Middle East. But these real dangers exist, they will really grow, they will produce real fear, and on this fear real fascists or Nazis will capitalize. 42 And this may be just what Soviet policy wants-in spite of itself. WJNTER/SPRING 1983 �2 The Roots of the Division in the Past I have described how the division betrays itself in politics since 1945, in the division of the world, in the division of Germany and of countries like Korea, and in the polarization of thinking, and the excitation of irreconcilable factions within free countries, and within individuals within those countries, and of the workings of this division, of how it turns countries against themselves and individuals against themselves, of how it increases the forces within an individual that paralyze him in the name of freeing him from them. But this division that shows itself most startlingly in politics since 1945, goes much deeper than politics. It tends to politicize all life. Even in Italian elementary schools and high schools factionalism that calls itself "Left" and "Right" holds sway-a telling indication of the adults' incapacity to speak to each other. 43 The politicization shows itself most tellingly in the politicization of freedom, in its equation with democracy, in the incapacity to conceive of democratic constitutions springing from freedom, rather than freedom springing from democratic constitutions. The astonishing, fairly current, assertion that the greatest achievements in art, philosophy, and the writing of history have occurred in democracies shows this parochialism in its nakedness. In the paradox of contradiction, the war now abroad means to destroy constitutions in the name of directly realizing this freedom that politicization devours. For it hates democratic constitutions for their modesty, for their readiness to build on this freedom, and yet measure their distance from it. For these constitutions with their checks and balances, their respect for opposition, their due process, their dedication to law and justice above all expediency, express both our yearning for freedom and our inca- pacity for realizing it, directly. In its genius the American constitution bases its confidence in men on a distrust of their natures, and, therefore, distinguishes what men do from what they think, say, and desire. It, therefore, makes men experience their disatisfaction with themselves-the difference between their good opinion of themselves and their actual self. Art and philosophy and the writing of history, when they are not propaganda masquerading as art, have always been greater than politics and free constitutions, have always shown their foundation in nature and in living man, in the freedom that is greater than constitutions and underlies them. In this sense art and philosophy and history are silent. They do not incite to action, but allow one to experience the springs of action, life itself, in another dimension of make believe and recall. The shrinking of freedom within political bounds that corresponds to its containment within the frontiers of a few countries, shows itself in unmistakable terms in the emptiness of much of what passes for art, philosophy, and THE ST. JOHNS REVIEW history-and in its unacknowledged politicization, and in the public's fascination with it and incapacity to distinguish it from actual art. Substitute the word "communism" for "sex" in many novels written today, and they will betray the yearning to incite to action, with the most powerful stimulants, characteristic of propaganda, the ideological drive to obliterate the obvious, the self-evident, the lovely plainness of the day-as Lev Navrozov has observed. In contrast our great art-and we have some-is above all unassuming, unassuming enough to undo pretension and masks, and make you blush. The plainness of our humdrum existences which leaves little space for anything but life, whether lived or not, escapes and baffles like a new Circe everything but this unassumingness which bears no pretence and makes no show, and seems, and in some sense is, effortless-which does not mean it comes without struggle. Above all it knows that the most important things come unasked. I am thinking, for example, of Montale, Morandi, the Grass of Onkel, Onkel, Godard, and Truffaut. In Sinyavsky's A Voice from the Chorus it moves even in the camps, for the book is made up of the author's letters from the camps-in a world that, at least in the West, writes few letters for other than official purposes. In some sense no real story can now be told on the unmistakable level of art without this unassumingness that recalls the simplicity of nature, and is the only strength we have that is undeniable. Nadezhda Mandelstarn in Hope against Hope showed Stalin's unmistakable smell for this unassumingness, and his refusal to give up the scent until he destroyed it. Besides showing itself in art, philosophy, and the writing of history, the mirrors of the soul, this freedom greater than democracy lives in individuals, in the lives they lead, in the language they speak, which bears all history in it, which is always greater than the meanings it shows, which always shows life rediscovering its meanings, and, therefore, always surprises-all living that in happy times goes on untouched by politics. Because this freedom lives in individuals, and in some sense begins with them, the war now going on aims at destroying all individuals capable of experiencing freedom and, therefore, nature to some extent. Igor Shafarevich meant this destruction when he wrote " ... socialist ideals must (bring) . . . the withering away of all mankind, and its death.": ... the economic and social demands of socialism are the means for the attainment of its basic aim, the destruction of individuality. ... Such a revolution would amount to the destruction of Man, at least in the sense that has hitherto been contained in this concept. And not just an abstract destruction of the concept, but a real one toa.44 To the extent that the world-wide war to destroy freedom has made freedom smaller than democracy, which 123 �can only spring from it and realize it within limitations, and allow individuals to realize it, but which cannot create it, for it already lives, and we know its presence even in its partial absence, totalitarianism has already succeeded. Because individuals realize the attack is against them, and that their governments are in some sense complicit with it, just as they themselves are complicit with it, they tend to be distrustful rather than critical of their democratic governments and of themselves-a distrust that like the shrinking of freedom shows the success of totalitarianism has no geographical frontiers, because it has no sovereignty, because it subdues all life within its own frontiers and, therefore, must feed on life without. But this struggle against totalitarianism that has subordinated freedom to politics, and threatens the individual, is in a sense simply a byproduct of the First World War and of the incapacity to understand and end it. Unlike the wars of Napoleon whose armies attempted to bring the French Revolution to all of Europe, the First World War did not begin as a total revolutionary war. It began as a conventional war which surprised everybody.lt turned into a total war because nobody understood it. And its very uncontrollability, which came of this incapacity to understand it, and which betrayed itself in enormous casualties, turned it into a revolutionary war in 1917, for the betterment of humanity, to justify those casualties. In 1917 to keep its soldiers in the trenches, the Italian government promised them a new world. 45 1917 also brought the Fourteen Points, and the veneration of Wilson's picture almost like an icon in much of Europe. The First World War was not born of the revolution. It unleashed it. The men who defeated Napoleon did not only know what they were against. They knew what they were for. They knew concretely enough what they were for, for Talleyrand to explain to Alexander I that there could be no peace without the removal of Napoleon from power, and restoration of monarchy in France. In contrast, the men of 1914 so little understood what they were about that they allowed a war they had not understood to turn into a total war against all governments-that is, into a war against themselves. Because revolution, the war against governments that sets individuals against each other and against themselves, came after and as a result of the First World War, became the content of the First World War after the fighting on the fronts ceased, because the war produced revolutions, and not the revolutions the war, the division of the West precedes the struggle against totalitarianism, and underlies it, and is deeper than it. In 1918 in a remarkable work, Betrachtungen eines Unpolitischen, Thomas Mann clearly grasped the underlying meaning of the struggle that had rent Europe, and sensed that the incapacity to grasp it, that betrayed itself in 1918 in the flight into principles that masked disrespect for the defeated in their desire to change them, would also make it impossible to experience the tragedy that gripped Eu- 124 rope, both victors and defeated, and, therefore, to end the war in peace: ... Berufen sein, sei es zu einem Wissen oder einer Tat, zu der man nicht geboren ist, das schien mir immer der Sinn der Tragischen-und wo Tragik ist, darf Liebe sein. 46 The First World War represented a renewal of Rome's struggle against the world in antiquity and in the sixteenth century which Germany had resisted: Der lmperialismus der Zivilisation ist die letzte Form des roemischen Vereinigungsgedankens, gegen den Deutschland protestiert . .. 47 For Thomas Mann in 1918 it was clear that the accidental war had been about something real and almost palpable, his own living and all the world he had known-and that because it had been about something real, neither the defeated not the victors could be entirely right. Mann saw the First World War as a struggle between France and Germany, between France that embodied the principles of the French Revolution, and Germany and the German-speaking world, and probably also Russia (which an accident of diplomacy had put on the side of the Allies). He understood that total war had distorted France as much as Germany, for total war tends to obliterate the differences between victors and defeated. Germany stood for art as opposed to "literature"-the novels that led Madame Bovary to destruction-for work in distinction to employment, for culture as opposed to civilization, for authority as opposed to liberty, which he distinguished from freedom, for feeling as opposed to principle, for philosophy, for freedom as opposed to democracy, which tended to spread politics everywhere, and after the French Revolution, had brought war to all of Europe. By art as opposed to "literature," he meant an art that was greater than politics, and which taught its readers the limits of politics. He dared even to write that he had hoped Germany would win the war. But the greatness of Betrachtungen eines Unpolitischen comes in the awareness that breathes throughout it that this world is gone forever, and that its disappearance will have consequences. It is a book full of the sense of loss, and, therefore, full of sorrow and depth, a warm depth whose profoundity does not frighten. Betrachtungen eines Unpolitischen is as much a farewell to Germany as Buddenbrooks was a farewell to his parents and his family, and Lubeck and the world of the Hanseatic cites. From now on he would be on his own without a past in a world that was on its own. The time of wandering in which all were homeless had begun-the time in which men no longer knew how to greet a stranger, and, therefore tell the difference between a stranger and friend, in which men no longer wrote letters, in which all knew the devastating loneliness of losing oneself in a crowd, in which a great deal of cash no longer WINTER/SPRING 1983 �meant wealth, in which great cities assured anonymity, and the elites of the world lived as if in villages, in which the country of the homeless would inherit the defense of what was left of a Europe that could not defend itself, in which love would be called sex, and blushes feared, in which egalitarianism was taken for the simplicity of nature, in which any difference smote the heart with something like the pangs of unrequited love, in which envy would be taken for enthusiasm, in which few could conceive less was more 1 in which you wrote books because you feared to speak your mind to your neighbour, in which plain good sense would be taken for untutored naivete, in which gradually artists disappeared and all men became "artists," in which everything had to be learned in school, in which men thought they were the first in history to make love, in which men protested against death, in which shame's place in nature was beyond imagination. 1918 was probably the last year Mann could have written such a book Later he praised democracy, because it was all that was left, and never with anything like the depth of his farewell to the world of his youth. For after 1918 you could no longer address individuals without exciting crowds, without inspiring the passions that made things worse in the name of making them better, without provoking the politics that seduced individuals to their death by promising to do for them what they could not do for themselves. You had to get along with what was left-that is what Mann's farewell meant. But getting along with what was left meant knowing the consequences of destruction. It meant that in the future Europe would live only in individuals wandering and alone throughout the world in a silence that told of embarrassment at great works and at greatness itself, and that took any inadvertent sign of lifefrom which all art springs-as something untoward: ... Ich sprach von europaeischer Verhunzung: Und wirklich, unserer Zeit gelang es, so vieles zu verhunzen: Das Nationale, den Sozialismus-den Mythos, die Lebensphilsophie, das Irrationale, den Glauben, die Jugend, die Revolution und was nicht noch alles. Nun denn, sie brachte uns auch die Verhunzung des grossen Mannes. Wir muessen uns mit dem historischen Lose abfinden, das Genie auf dieser Stufe seiner Offenbarungs-moeglichkeit zu erleben_48 About twenty years after Mann's Betrachtungen, Kafka understood clearly that the separation of feelings from understanding that the principles of the victors had helped bring about-and against which Thomas Mann had said Germany had always protested-had brought about the demonization of feelings that might destroy the very things they would have preserved when not divorced from understanding. By feelings Kafka meant, I think, the wild, and quite passionless, indignation that drove political propaganda, and threatened to undermine the little authority that remained in government and individuals. TilE ST. JOHNS REVIEW ... One ought not to provoke people. We live in an age which is so possessed by demons, that soon we shall only be able to do goodness and justice in the deepest secrecy, as if it were a crime. War and revolution haven't ceased to rage. On the contrary. The freeing of our feelings stokes their fires.49 Mann knew that something real had been destroyed. And because something real had been destroyed, and because men did not realize it had been destroyed, the destruction, the war, would continue, even as the protests of desperation against it increased. This destruction pretended to free the core of man, that showed itself in the capacity to say "yes" or uno," but actually it sought to de~ stray this core, to paralyze the capacity to say "yes" or "no," to destroy the living, the capacity to live. It did this by turning life itself into politics, into propaganda that drove people into ecstasy with its promises to change human nature. When Mann realized that there could be no peace after 1917 because neither defeated nor victors could admit they had been both right and wrong in the traditions of eighteenth century law, he meant the disappearance of doubt in international relations, the doubt that finds remarkable description in the late Richard Hofstadter's sketch of the qualities that make for art and philosophy: It is, in fact, the ability to comprehend and express not only different but opposing points of view, to identify imaginatively with or even to embrace within oneself contrary feelings and ideas that gives rise to first~rate work in all areas of humanistic expression and in many fields of inquiry.50 The democracies recognized this doubt, that is ultimately the doubt, and the questioning that comes of it, of Socrates, in their recognition of opposition and criticism in their domestic life. But after 1917 it no longer held any sway in international life where victors and defeated could no longer admit they were both right and wrong. Instead they wanted a rigidity they took for assurance-a rigidity which robbed them of confidence and made them fear themselves, and which made them weak in peace and harsh in war, and which finally obliterated the distinction between peace and war. But this rigidity in international relations which brings with it the destruction of traditional international law (ius gentium)-the Germans were not even invited to the peace negotiations after the First World War-cannot but slowly paralyze the doubt within the domestic life of free countries. It shows its stiffening effect in the spread of ideologies, and the polarization they bring, within free countries. For this doubt to live within countries, it must also show itself outside of them in the recognition of the uncertainty of relations between nations, which allows the continuation of present friendships, because it recognizes that the friends of today might be the enemies of tomorrowand the enemies of today, the friends of tomorrow. 51 This recognition of uncertainty means the recognition of the 125 �differences between nations, which, in turn, brings the recognition that freedom is bigger than constitutions, and, therefore, does not require similar constitutions everywhere, that some peoples can live' in freedom without spelling their freedom out in written documents, that freedom is old, slavery new. In his characteristically sententious remark at Yalta that the wars of the twentieth century unlike other wars allowed the victors to impose their political systems on the defeated, Stalin meant the opposite of living with this uncertainty. 52 But this uncertainty inspired the traditional law of nations (ius gentium), which is older than almost all nations now living, and which knew it lived precisely because it sought its assurance, not in the written guarantee of treaties, but in the threat of war for violation of traditional practice-for instance, the seizure of ambassadors, something the Persians did at their peril in the nineteenth century. The incapacity to settle the war with a real peace, which brought the defeated as well as the victors to the peace table, blurred the distinction between victors and defeated, precisely because a real peace would have meant recognizing their differences, and the differences in their political traditions. It would have meant not destroying the institution of the Kaiser, or at least realizing the serious consequences of its destruction. It would have meant understanding the risks involved in undoing the empires. It took more than a generation and much disaster to make the world understand that the destruction of governments prolongs a war instead of ending it, because legitimate governments do not grow up overnight: July 29, 1945 ... He (Ernest Bevin, Foreign Minister of Great Britain) then made a rather surprising statement-for a liberal and a labor leader: "It might have been far bett~r for all of us not to have destroyed the institution of the Kaise.~after the last war; we might not have had this one if we hadn't 'done so. It might have been far better to have guided the Germans to a constitutional monarchy rather than leaving them without a symbol and therefore opening the psychological doors to a man like Hitler . .. " 53 The blurring of the distinction between victors and defeated showed itself in the collapse of governments among both the defeated and victorious. For Italy, which Mussolini seized by bluff in 1922, and Russia, at least until Kerensky, had been victors in the war with Germany. And the collapse of France in 1941, in face of the might that came of the collapse of the democracy that defeat had imposed on Germany, should also probably be included in this list. This collapse of governments among both defeated and victors shows the war had overwhelmed both. In a sense the story of the two decades between the wars is the story of how victors and defeated undid each other in unwilling cooperation. Defeat is a serious business. It should teach the victors modesty of aims. The extent that the war had overcome both defeated and victors showed itself also in the victors' blindness to the significance of the 126 failure of democracy in Italy, and then in Germany. Nations who had persuaded themselves they had fought the war for democracy ought to have been profoundly alarmed at the collapse of these governments-not to speak of the collapse of the Tsar, and a few months later, of the justborn democracy in Russia in 1917. Blindness to the significance of the failure of democracy in Italy, and later in Germany, led to complicity with the regimes that replaced them. And this sense of complicity paralyzed the democracies in the face of their aggressions. In some sense nazism and fascism and communism were the creatures of the victors who had not known the responsibilities of victory: If the realists had wanted to train up a generation of Englishmen and Englishwomen expressly as the potential dupes of every adventurer in morals or politics, commerce or religion, who would appeal to their emotions and promise them private gains which he neither could procure them nor even meant to procure them, no better way of doing it could have been discovered. ... The British government, behind all its disguises, had dedared itself a partisan of Fascist dictatorship. ... I am writing a description of the way in which those events (the English government's unstated policy of undermining the government of the Republic of Spain and the governments of Abyssinia and Czechoslovakia) impinged upon myself and broke up my pose of detached professional thinker. I know now that the minute philosophers of my youth, for all their profession of a purely scientific detachment from practical affairs, were the propagandists of a coming Fascism. I know that Fascism means the end of dear thinking and the triumph of irrationalism. I know that all my life I have been engaged unawares in a political struggle, fighting against these things in the dark. Henceforth I shall fight in the daylight. 54 Those are famous words of Collingwood's in 1939. But governments had started teaching this confusion to their citizens long before. In a letter on February 15, 1918, Robert Lansing, Secretary of State, argued strongly against giving money to the Bolsheviks in an assessment that even to today sounds raw and outspoken because of its accuracy: .. . Mr. Walling had a keen appreciation of the forces which are menacing the present social order in nearly every European country and which may have to be reckoned with even in this country. It is really a remarkable analysis of the dangerous elements which are coming to the surface and which are in many ways more to be dreaded than autocracy; the latter is despotism but an intelligent despotism, while the former is a despotism of ignorance. One at least has the virtue of order, while the other is productive of disorder and anarchy. It is a condition which cannot but arouse the deepest concern. 55 Despite this advice, a few days later on March 11, 1918, Woodrow Wilson, unwilling or unable to distinguish the WINTER/SPRING 1983 �violence in Russia from his own promises of democracy to the world-promises made in 1917 to give the fighting meaning-wrote encouraging words to the Soviet Congress: ... The whole heart of the people of the United States is with the people of Russia in the attempt to free themselves forever from autocratic government and become the masters of their own life. 56 Wilson's measureless aspirations wished to dispell the memory of the hatreds shown the world in allied wartime propaganda. But they matched this hatred in fierceness. Their measurelessness also made them difficult to distinguish from the measureless aspirations of those out to destroy all government that continued the hatred of the war in the ostensible repudiation of it. Both the builders and destroyers of governments meant to repudiate the past, including the immediate past of the Great War. There were to be new times-times the world had never seen before. They repudiated the past because the past embarassed them. But this embarassment measured only their shame for the present. They shrunk from the past, because they would not know they were ashamed of the present. Underneath this measurelessness that came of shame for a present that was beyond coping, and that was so difficult to distinguish from "revolutionary" fervour, and was in some sense its complement, there was always fear of war, and the suspicion of governments that comes of the fear of war-enough combined to weaken any government. It was almost as if the world no longer knew how to mourn the dead only to forget them. It did not realize that continuing the war in the measurelessness of aspirations meant not mourning, not feeling sorrow. And that not sorrowing meant forever the leaden guilt at so much massacre whose incomprehensibility had undermined the confidence of statesmen everywhere, made them incapable of concluding an effective peace, and undone the word courage-a guilt that no amount of freneticizing about the future would dispel. There has been perhaps no time with greater cause for sorrow that sorrowed less. The past stopped in 1917. But the appeal to measureless aspiration to give meaning to the slaughter did not only bring the past to a stop. It nourished the suspicion that violence brought progress, made the world better, that it might be the only way to change things. For the measureless aspiration for peace and a new world meant man had changed, and the only change that men knew had come of violence, now called "revolution" instead of war, because the word "revolu- tion" excited hope, war dread. And it tells something a bout these measureless aspirations that almost every country that totalitarianism seized first went through democracy. The belief that violence brought progress made the suspicion that men had done intolerable damage to themselves intolerable. It banished prudence, common-sense, THE ST. JOHNS REVIEW sobriety, and most of all pessimism, all words hardly anyone dared show in public, whose meaning men no longer knew-or dared conceive-except darkly, and in the silence of their own minds, a silence that the deafening roar of aspiration in all public places made men fearful of trusting. Everything, but above all disaster, became the occasion for exuberance that men mistook for hope-just as they took their sentimentality, especially the sentimental whining for peace, for goodwill. But unlike hope and sorrow and goodwill, this exuberance and sentimentality despite its illusion of energy made men helpless in the face of those who used the same exuberence and sentimentality to undo them. Because of its measurelessness it made it hard to grasp obstacles that would have shown their aspirations their limitations and, therefore, increased the responsibilities of the victors by facing them with the choice between what they might do-and what they could not. But the very measurelessness of the aspirations that increased because they did not face these obstacles made for the assumption hardly anyone dared question in public, that men had actually changed, rather than simply destroyed ages of inheritance. In this unwillingness even to ask whether destruction might not have made things worse, our time contrasts with Rome in her civil wars. Open almost any page of Cicero, of Sallust and even some of Caesar, and you will see there a confidence we cannot conceive that their words will live forever because they tell of men who had destroyed themselves and their freedom, and had little illusion that it would not be forever, and that nothing would come of it, except sorrow for the loss they could not help. And so it, in fact, turned out, only much more slowly than now, because they recognized the loss-preferred sight to the exuberance of willing blindness, and did not deny the dullness that had overcome them. The readiness to justify events after their occurrence in order to find a meaning for a war that nobody understood-except the totalitarians, who confused their confidence that destruction ignored had irremediable consequences with understanding-which showed itself in the resort to aspirations for a new world in 1917, put free governments behind events. Between the wars, the complicity that came of not grasping the significance of the collapses of democracy in various countries increased their slowness in grasping events and responding. It made them helpless in the face of the continuation of the war until it was too late. And in the Second World War, the depth of their unacknowledged sense of responsibility for the disaster made them merciless in their self-justification, and incapable of respecting their enemies, and blind to the consequences of an alliance, born of necessity, with a totalitarian regime worse than nazism and fascism, that had to some extent inspired them. Towards the end, Hitler remarked that he was the amateur, Stalin, the pro. The situation of the free countries behind events has persisted until the present-with the exception of the 127 �swift confidence of the beginning of the Korean War. But even the Korean war ended not in a settlement, but in a battle truce between commanders that reinstituted the division of the country that precipitated the war. The United States remained in the situation of response-not mastery. To remain behind events weakens confidence in governments, for it shows them not enough on top of events to understand them. And understanding, in our situation of neither war nor peace, where many states are illegitimate and others lack the confidence of legitimacy, is crucial. In a normal situation of balance of power, such as prevailed in the nineteenth century or in the eighteenth, not haunted by the fear of war, and where subversion is not prevalent, response may be enough-not in ours. The situation after the First World War allowed little room for error. It called for more honesty, more straightforward practicality, for more courage than war itself. But the war had consumed courage. Even the world that had yielded so much death embarassed people. It was too serious to bear mention. The destruction of the First World War meant human nature was on its own everywhere. People felt the demands of truth, and knew they had to be met, unflinchingly. All the art between the two wars tells that, and shows that bravery-and, for the most part, it moves as if there were no longer any history, or govern· ments worthy of notice-as if the world lived only in private life and private sensation. But it was not easy to face human nature. The whole period between the wars is driven by the conflict between the necessity of facing human nature, and the unreadiness to face it. F1ight into aspiration relieved the conflict-but it did not restore confidence. It devoured it. More than governments, people realized they were on their own, in something like the state of nature, not of choice as the excitation of aspiration pretended, but of necessity-of the necessity of past events, of destruction and of the incapacity of settlement -a necessity that totalitarians called "the inevitibility of history," because they counted on individuals' incapacity to cope with it. The yearning for total freedom that took flight into aspiration, and that in the unrecognized desolation appeared like necessity itself, did not amount to a capacity for it. Precisely because the war had subordinated freedom to politics-and made freedom the stuff of international relations-and in order to subordinate it to politics, dismembered it, politics tended to devour everything before it in the search for a freedom greater than itself that would show it its limits. These limits live in individuals' capacity enough to distinguish between "yes" and "no."57 Hitler came to office legally, and Mussolini also. The combination of a yearning, and incapacity, for measureless free~ dom that was taken to allow everything exposed men to the most ruthless among them, to men like criminals, in their incapacity to yield to natural law, to use Hobbes's words that mean the words nature speaks to those who listen to it, in their thwarted genius. The incapacity to distinguish actual genius and nature from its distortions and parodies led to fascination and admiration for criminality-a fascination that has again betrayed itself in the last twenty years, and which paralyzes. And the tragedy is that in its attack on nature, and its attempt to destroy it, totalitarianism also uncovered nature, but only in war for it knows only war, which it cannot distinguish from revenge or defense, and unmistakably reminded of its presence. In the midst of the "insane gran· deur" of the Second World War, Milovan Djilas realized that the fighting, after bringing his hardness out, also softened him, for a moment that disappeared until words recalled it to him a generation later: Then, unobtrusively yet insistently, various thoughts came to my mind concerning the Germans, the Partisans, and ideology. Why were doctors from Berlin and professors from Heidelberg killing off Balkan peasants and students in these ra- vines? Hatred for Communism was not sufficient. Some other terrible and implacable force was driving them to insane death and shame. And driving us, too, to resist them and pay them back . ... This passion, this endurance which lost sight of suffering and death, this struggle for one's manhood and nationality in the face of one's own death ... this had nothing to do with ideology or with Marx and Lenin. When the sun rose, I suppressed these abysmal thoughts, for I sensed how destructive they were for the ideas and organization to which I had given myself. But I never forgot those thoughts ... 58 Nazism and fascism and communism were a vengeance, and an exploitation, of 1914-1917, a vengeance and exploitation not only of the defeated upon themselves, but also a vengeance and exploitation of the victors upon them· selves-for why else did they tolerate the spread of these destructive movements?-for principles they could not live up to, that made them unrecognizable to themselves, that made them feel like liars when they spoke and defenseless in the face of their enemies, now at home as well as abroad, and more insidious than soldiers on a battlefield. For it turned out that they were not able to act in accordance with what they had said in 1917, most obviously when Hitler seized the Rhineland in March, 1936: to say uno," that is, in nature. And totalitarianism, in the name of freeing this nature, attacked this capacity to say "no" directly in each individual-with the argument that it embodied the truth, and the truth could not be resisted. It attacked nature itself, as if there had never been any governments. And it discovered, to almost everybody's amazement, that many individuals did not have resilience 128 -Maison aurait pu arreter Hitler sans risque de guerre quand il a occupe la Rhenanie en 36? -Sans aucun risque. On le sait. Aucun. Hitler avait donne l'ordre a Ia Bundeswehr d'entrer en Rhenanie, avec une reserve imposee par le haut commandement. Si les troupes franc;aises avanc;aient, les troupes allemandes se retiraient. WINTER/SPRING 1983 �On le sait aujourd'hui. On sait que, en mars 1936, on aurait pu changer le cours de l'histoire. Cela fait partie de rna philosophie de l'histoire. C'est une date, une date fondamentale, oil il suffisait de Iuddite et d'un peu de courage pour changer le cours de l'histoire. Mais, malheureusement, Hitler avait raison. II n'y avait aucune chance de trouver en France un gouvernement pour prendre cette decision. 59 Nazism and fascism reached deep yearnings, yearnings for authority and its reassurance, not only in Italy and Germany but throughout the West-so that the world not unfortunate enough to continue them draws its breath interror at their memory, and shades its eyes from them even as it feels driven to look, and is dull, with few important exceptions, to their continuation in the present, and the widespread sympathy for them, in their denial in communism. Nazism and fascism arose in deeply traditional countries whose traditions war had partly destroyed and repudiated almost entirely-but which individuals could not relinquish even if they would. (For politics is swifter than character, and in the twentieth century risks uncontrollability because it does not acknowledge its conflicts with character. No time's politics has denied obvious things more, feelings, and common sense that comes of feeling. For the political exploitation of aspiration is the greatest underminer of feeling.) Nazism and fascism exploited the yearning for the old values, destroyed in the First World War, mercilessly: self-respect, duty, respect for accomplishment, the yearning for civil order, the compatibility of freedom with obedience, the yearning for deserved deference, for meaningful life, for glory-and above all for courage. But they knew their murderousness, and did not hesitate to display it. Mussolini took responsibility for the murder of a member of parliament, Matteotti, which had aroused the greatest public outcry Italy had ever known, in parliament in 1924. Communism, in contrast, with its promise of a new world with new values without the harshness, cruelty of the old values denies its murderousness, and, therefore, its hypocrisy is more seductive. For Djilas, the murderousness of Communism is only a question: "Killing is a function of war and revolution or could it be the other way around?" The blindness that came of the public exploitation of aspiration to deny private experience tended to make the world unrecognizable to those who lived in it. This blindness to world and self, this incapacity to see the world, which led to the insistence on facts without understanding or on understanding without facts-and, thereby, increased the susceptibility to propaganda-is the disturbance of perception that led after the Second World War to actual political division of the West and the war that progresses by dividing the rest of the world and individuals against themselves. The wars set what we would like to be against what we actually were, in a way that made it difficult to experience what we were, and to distinguish it from what we yearn to be. Most simply, by setting liberty, the liberty of principle, THE ST. JOHNS REVIEW against authority that springs from some contact with nature, the wars rendered difficult the growth of liberty and authority in each other's presence. Without both liberty and authority the experience of freedom in the actual living of individuals, from which the liberty in constitutions springs, cannot live. Instead the separation of both liberty and authority, and the setting of each against the other, tends to provoke the distortion of their extremes, permissiveness, license, and weakness on one side, and cruel and stifling authoritarianism on the other (whether from the "left" or "right" matters little). Liberty and authority are not the only qualities set against each other in this conflict. The World War that has not ceased deepens the division between form (principles) and content, between will and desire. With the result that these qualities are often experienced as antithetical, and distorted in that experience. For instance, will into the cruel rigidity of totalitarian dogma that cannot respond to questioning, and desire into mere wish and arbitrary fancy that cannot stand up to anything, and for instance, imagines it can get peace by demanding it, merely. This division and polarization of qualities that can only flourish in the give-and-take of each other's presence-a give-and-take that is the ground in nature of the dialogue between government and opposition in free democracies-hampers perception of political reality. After 1917, and even more, after 1945 when the rigidity of the situation grew more obvious, and the force of that rigidity began to make itself felt throughout the world, this trouble in perception has hampered fitting, effective negotiation and action. Most simply, it attempts to undermine the capacity of individuals (and also of governments) to distinguish between actual freedom and slavery that masks as greater freedom. The struggle against totalitarianism goes on first of all in the heart's mind. For without clarity of mind among those for the moment spared violence, there can be no resolute action against actual violence that takes place, for the most part, not on battlefields, but at the will of often few well-trained and supplied men who strike at random, and who know that prolonged violence works to their advantage both within the country they desire to seize, and in the world elsewhere. The inability to grasp what goes on before one's eyes, to feel and to understand, instead of feeling in order not to understand, or understanding in order not to feel, the incapacity to see, and to acknowledge that one does not see, is the disturbance of perception that lies at the center of the division of the West, and is increased by it. This dissociation is the driving force behind the division of the West. It shows itself most dramatically in painting that like all art often betrays the deepest capacities for living of an epoch. 129 �Perception ' A little after 1945, first in America and then throughout the Free World, painting that could see neither the world nor man but that, until its collapse into emptiness in the sixties, somehow expressed the anguish of the inability to see, without acknowledging it, won public acceptance. This painting shows perhaps more dramatically than anything else the incapacity to perceive and understand that finds its general expression in the division of the West, and in the drift and stagnation-and violence that involves everybody-that has come of it after 1945. Significantly, this painting also betrays the flattening and affectlessness that comes of polarization: it has no depth, no world to see and touch. For depth comes only within the give-and-take of freedom and authority-and not when they are set against each other and driven into the distortion of their extremes. At most this painting betrays anxiety-the anxiety that comes of the inability to see, and increases it. The process that culminated in painting that saw neither world nor man had started long before 1945, in fact almost immediately after the impressionists, and well before the First World War brought the division that showed, at the same time that it increased, the difficulties of perception and understanding, of apprehending world and self that the West has struggled with since the destruction of antiquity-and which have put the disappearance of antiquity at the center of its awareness and its language, and its thought and art. In the decades just before the First World War, a deepening division first appeared that grew into open opposition between form and content that distorts each and dims the sight of the world and self. In Picasso's work a sharp break occurs several years before the First World War between the paintings of the Blue and the Rose periods, which still strive for feeling and vision-or, at least, openly face the inability to feel in their risk of sentimentalityand the pre-cubist paintings like Les Demoiselles d'Avignon (1907) whose intellectual brilliance blinds one momentarily to their deadness of feeling. In contrast in the German-speaking area there occurs especially in the work of Munch and Kokoschka an over-concentration of feeling, at times frightening, because without the assurance of vision, without a sense that the picture actually shows the living world-that there is a world to distinguish from a rising dream. To put it crudely, painters in the world that was to become the allied sphere tended to formalism without feeling and in the German-speaking sphere to feeling which because unsure in form became difficult to distinguish from nightmare, and, at its weakest, daydream. Much of this work in either sphere does not reflect the world and the experience of beauty but, with differences in intensity, the inability to see it. It often leads one further from the world-and into a self that recognizes itself in its isolation 130 from the world, a self that cannot get out of itself, and, therefore, suffers the temptation to narcissism. In either sphere, painters appear to struggle against something, a transparent mirror that throws their self back at them, against a transparent wall that impedes vision, even as it allows them to catch sight of the world they strive to see and touch, just beyond reach. Already also, depth begins to fade into flatness. This transparent wall that gets in the way of their eyes' reaching and, therefore, turns the world into something recognizable, but at the same time incomprehensible, sometimes into the very opposite of what the mind and common-sense know to be out there, is the source of the division of the West that hardened, and, thereby, provoked the violence that could destroy it in 1917, to spread it after 1945. The iron curtain, too, is a transparent mirror that baffles the eyes with the image of the self it throws back-and, thereby, makes narcissism and spurious intimacy meant to exorcise danger without acknowledging it, and the sense of entrapment that comes of them, the way to self-enslavement and destruction. Since depth and a strong sense of the whole composition appeared in painting in Italy from 1200 to 1600 for the first time since antiquity, this transparent wall made itself felt despite, and because of, the lucidity of vision and depth that came with it. In painting in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries in Spain and the Low-lands, it almost disappeared entirely except for a certain stiffness, for an incapacity to allow movement, for a tendency to freeze movement like a snapshot. (This holding still distinguishes painting since the Renaissance from the ancient art that inspired it, for ancient art moved freely, especially obviously, in Greek vase painting and Etruscan frescoes.) Even when it appears to disappear altogether, this stiffness, the transparent wall, betrays itself in the awareness that the painting is a painting, in the awareness of the eyes of the painter, and of the hindrances that keep them from losing themselves in their seeing. This painting from 1200 to 1600 in Italy, and afterwards throughout Europe, realized the reciprocal relation between sight and understanding, and, ultimately, between seeing and rationality, but always at a certain distance from nature, which lent it the stiffness I have described. It depicted nature as well as men and history but it always subordinated nature, even in the North in the seventeenth century, to man and memory-to the recall of the past. Some of the paintings of Durer and of Rembrandt are perhaps exceptions. In artists like Leonardo or Rembrandt drawing was knowing. They could not see without understanding what actually lay before their eyes. In our words, Leonardo and Machelangelo were researchers. With this one overwhelming difference, they did not fear wholes, that is, important conclusions. (Machiavelli, at the beginning of his Discourses, remarks that artists had been the first to dare to learn from antiquity. And daring to look at antiquity meant looking at your own world, without flinchWINTER/SPRING 1983 �ing, as Machiavelli's own work showed.) And everything about this art bespeaks confidence, and awareness and confidence in the face of tragedy. The whole sense of !tal· ian painting in this time is of overwhelming lucidity, of a world pressing in upon the eyes, of joy and fearlessness in sight. They are wild in their beholding. The same seeing of this many citied world-as many citied as Ancient Greece-showed itself in the individuals who dared look again openly at the sky-and to understand the great works of antiquity, to look history in the face. After Caravaggio, who reaches an unbelievable unity of depth, shape, and movement, seeing and knowing again suffer separation in Italy. In subsequent years there is much ges· turing, there are dramatic, highly brainy compositionsbut there is little sight, sense of the whole, except as design, or depth. This gradual withering of contact becomes apparent soon after the burning of Giordano Bruno in 1600. Such things are not done with impunity. But in the North sight and understanding found a new softness in their relation, and a lucidity more distinguishable from clarity of mind than in Italian painting-and, therefore, less easily capable of giving an account of itself in words, but for all that not less explicit and meaningful. The tradition of painting in the West since 1200 which could see both men and events, could both remember and know, at the expense, however, of a certain remoteness from nature, found breathtaking renewal in the work of Delacroix and Manet, just before the impressionists drew upon it to abandon it, and to yield to nature directly. In the half century or so before the Great War, Turner, the impressionists and post-impressionists saw into the quick of nature, and in that sight knew themselves a part of it-without sentimentality or self-consciousness, and, in contrast, for instance, to the woodenness of Claude Lor· raine, with an easy sweetness still sets the world moving. Even in Cezanne, whom we all too often see with Cubist eyes, there is little separation between form and content, between what is seen and how it is seen. Everywhere, perhaps most startlingly in Seurat and his associates, there is an unassuming confidence that what is seen will gather shape of its own. Many of these painters do not distinguish shape from intensity (energy). They often do not sharply define edges or outlines which arise, instead, of them· selves, unexpectedly, in their work. For a whole world has its parts. They distinguish but do not separate earth and sky. Both throb with movement in their works, which har· bour no empty spaces. They distinguish trees, plants, and earth from the space and air around them. They do not separate them from it. Their space is not empty, but vibrant and full and soft like the trees, plants, and flowers reaching or showering or bursting into it. In Turner light softly pulsates, in Vincent the sky glows and pulsates, sometimes almost harshly: The sacrifice of the sharp outline of objects shows that the vision of the painter is focused not upon the objects but upon THE ST. JOHNS REVIEW the space itself. ... Above all, in the use of the divided touch, the painter conveys to the painting and through the painting to the observer the vibrating, pulsating quality of the atmosphere ... One of the results of this technique is to give to their paintings (the paintings of Monet, Renoir, Pisarro) a depth offield, a sense of profoundness, a three-dimensional quality that other paintings suggest but do not fully achieve. The impressionists accomplish this by making us aware of the space, not simply as the coordinate of objects and events, but as an objective reality itself.60 In the brief moment of the impressionists the transpar· ent wall, the stiffness, did in fact entirely disappear, and movement reappeared unequivocally for the first time since antiquity, but at the cost of seeing human beings: men and women more or less disappeared from the can· vas. To live on, the open embrace of nature of the impres· sionists had somehow to come to see man, to remember and to know, as well as to see nature as if there were no man. Otherwise it would turn to mere evasion in the fa]. lowing generations: Before the impressionist impulse disappeared in the morass of twentieth century political thinking, it found expression in the work of two men (Gauguin and Van Gogh) whose lives dramatized the final struggle.6l In the general streaming, sometimes harsh, especially of Vincent's last pictures, only the men and women suffer an emaciated, almost leaden holding-still, quiet and resigned, but nevertheless forced enough to make you sense the bound writhing in their bodies-the characteristic expres· sian of Christian Europe. They bear the haggard and pinned-down-in-the-chest look of helplessness, the cutting and cynical knowing sensitivity that knows everything but can do little, so full of pity and hate, yet also at the quick of love, which, despite the blurring of postwar prosperity and its convention of goodwill, still makes its presence felt. Vincent wanted to discover the streaming outside man within him also. He betrayed man's unwitting unwilling· ness to yield to it: Beyond the head ... I paint infinity. I make a simple background out of the richest, most intense blue I can contrive, and by the simple conjunction the blonde head is lit up by the rich blue background and acquires a mysterious effect like that of a star on the deep azure.62 The tragedy Gauguin and Van Gogh lived came because they attempted to see nature in man as well outside of him. For the seeing of the impressionists to live on they knew they had somehow to transform and to renew the tradition of Manet and Delacroix that the impressionists had abandoned to yield to nature. Renewing the tradition that had culminated in Manet and Delacroix meant rediscovering the rational. It meant experiencing the reciprocal relation between sight and un· 131 �derstanding, and finally between genitality and rationality. It meant seeing man. Seeing man meant recognizing the irrationality that separated nature outside of him from nature inside him, and kept him from both. It meant keeping up the impressionists' contact with depth despite the superficial hardness of man, and the fragility that rendered many men fearful of depth. It meant rediscovering the rational without abandoning nature, rediscovering it in nature. Otherwise renewal would be mere wooden repetition. In the failure of the successors of the impressionists to see the world whole, the division of the West first showed itself in acute form. In this shorter perspective, the incapacity of painting to see the world and human beings in this century, which led it to turn the transparent wall itself into the subject of painting, at the cost of the whole and depth, and finally, of the obliteration of world and even self, simply represents a breakdown in the capacity to maintain and expand the contact with life of the impressionists, to deal with its contradictions, with the contrast between the impressionists daring in touching nature and their corresponding incapacity to remember men and events, to experience both the public world and the private, and their relation, to combine seeing and knowing. The contact with nature could not go on without resolving this contradiction, without undoing man's self-exile from nature. Until the impressionists, painting coped with this transparent wall by actually seeing it, and, therefore, acknowledging it and keeping it distinct from the painting, at the same time that it made you aware inescapably that the painting was a painting. The impressionists dissolved the transparent wall and its stiffness. Unable to maintain the contact with nature of the Impressionists, and no longer able to work in the service of religion, which in previous centuries, with its mediation between the desire, and the incapacity, to experience nature, had kept art from yielding to despair, contemporary art cannot but serve, often unawares, propagandistic purposes. It weakens those who attend to it. It steals courage away from them. Instead of reflecting nature, it makes mock theological, demagogic-and, therefore, unwittingly political statements. It betrays a world grown flat and, therefore, largely the creature of wish, of wish that takes itself for desire, but dreads will. The breakdown in seeing after the impressionists, and the unacknowledged fixation in it that lends a frantic impatience to much art, in the midst of stagnation, closely parallels the incapacity to grasp the meaning of events and, thereby, to master them, in politics of this century. Here, too, as in painting, man destroys world and self because he cannot maintain real contact with life in himself and outside of himself, because he cannot stand living, its rough disappointments, its joys, its depths and its heights-and yearns for it more desperately, the more he deprives himself of it, and, therefore, succumbs to increasing alternations of violence, in the name of discovering 132 and changing the nature of man, and negotiations to put an end to that violence that turn out simply to tighten and spread its hold on men. Another example of the division and opposition between form and content that shows itself in painting in this century appears in the contrast between the programmatic "internationalism" that blurs the distinction between peoples, and, thereby, puts the past beyond the reach of memory, of the Allies and the frightening discoveries in the German-speaking countries, beginning at the end of the nineteenth century, that man was often not capable of distinguishing between rationality and irrationality, that the rational in appearance often masked the irrational that in crucial moments betrayed itself in undoing it, that freedom was more than many could stand. I mean psychoanalysis. Psychoanalysis took seriously the truth that individuals had to come apart, had to know their helplessness, before they could experience their strength, and discover their wholeness, that "nothing can be sole or whole that has not been rent". Not explicitly a response to the war's destroying that would not cease, it knew how to start at the beginning with individuals-with the existence that yearned for life which had survived the destruction that still threatened it. Like Socrates and his ignorance, it nurtured the confidence that the rational, once freed of the irrational that drained its energy, might spring up of its own strength. Psychoanalysis did not aim directly at the truth, but at the distortions that obstructed the truth. But it made it possible again to experience the unwitting presence of the truth, for it uncovered the quick of life moving at its own sweet will-and the fearfulness that kept individuals from it, a fearfulness that individuals took for fear of destruction, but which numbed them to the rational fear of the destruction that actually threatened them. Because of its simplicity, stubborn enough always to threaten it with reductionisms, and because of its refusal to indulge in assurances-for it knew it could not know what would become of it-it provoked much hatred and resentment. Hatred and resentment that otherwise sought disguise in political exhilaration that was nothing but forgetfulness. But psychoanalysis had its limitations-above all in its incapacity to know its limitations. Others might have shown it its limitations, but unfortunately the strength of its truth drove those that denied it, to deny it entirely, and those that accepted it, to accept it entirely. With such friends it hardly needed enemies. Both friends and enemies in unwitting cooperation perpetrated the divisions psychoanalysis meant to overcome, especially a resignation to, and even an exultation, in the irrational psychoanalysis meant to expose in order to overcome. To some extent the attempt to undo the irrational, in order to free the rational, spread the irrational, and lent it something approaching social acceptance. Social acceptance meant taking the irrational for inevitable-instead of struggling against it to undo it. It meant turning the popular misunWINI'ER/SPRING 1983 �derstanding of psychoanalysis against psychoanalysis in the pretense of accepting it. The weaknesses and limitations of psychoanalysis came of its strengths. Superb in its grasp of'the present, it is weak in its comprehension of the past and its life, except as it continues like a foreign body unassimilated in the present. It is weak, too, in conceiving of the future except in the shape of the irrational distortions of the present. Breathtaking in its comprehension of individuals, and in its resilient affirmation of feeling and nature, psychoanalysis cannot conceive of society as more than a crowd of solitary individuals. It explains institutions too exclusively in terms of the necessity of curbing irrational secondary drives. It does not conceive of rational disagreement and conflict. It cannot explain why people speak except to lie-as Otto Rank put it. It takes the rational in history for nothing more than a cover for the irrational. Despite its destruction history knows creation also. Creation that could not live without institutions and rulers and men, ca· pable of some direct contact with rationality and, there· fore, nature. For only direct contact with rationality can withstand irrationality. Direct contact with rationality means understanding that the irrational arises from a distortion of the rational, that the rational can be discovered in the irrational. Psychoanalysis instead assumes that the rational arises in history only in response to irrational actions and desires which it secretly wishes, but does not dare to imitate-and that therefore, because of this inverted agreement, almost always succumbs to them directly, or to a severity in repressing them that reaches the corresponding extreme of irrationality, as if there were no mean. This pessimism that at its worst turns to resignation comes of not recognizing the limitations of psychoanalysis. It can undo the irrational. But it leaves the affirmation of the rational to itself. This readiness to leave the rational on its own comes in part of the rational realization that rationality, unlike irrationality, is unpredictable, that ra· tionality cannot be foreseen until it arises of itself, that the truths of one generation are the lies of the next. But it also arises from an irrational antagonism to philosophy that it takes not for the thought that comes after the dissolution of the irrational, but for mere rationalization of the irratio· nal. Because it does not acknowledge it has no use for thought, it is unwittingly materialistic, even though it has made possible the rediscovery of the soul-a grotesque phrase that tells something of our plight. Because psycho· analysis does not acknowledge it cannot take responsibility for its discoveries, it tends to forget that the world is bigger and older than its discoveries. This contrast between the desire to apprehend a reality beyond politics and the sensitivity to nature and feeling in the defeated German-speaking empires and the principled world of the Allies with its chiliastic declarations and its yearning for the observance of treaties and covenants it did not have strength of heart to enforce is another exam1HE ST. JOHNS REVJEW pie-similar to the division in painting-of the distinction between form and content turned under the stress of unlimited war into opposition in which each distorts the other, so that content and feeling turn to phantasy and dream, form to propaganda. Ultimately this opposition leads to a world in which the democracies insist on limits without conviction, and the totalitarian regimes pretend to conviction without limits, a world in which individuals and nations say one thing, do another, and neither know what they do, nor believe what they say, and will not distinguish between words and actions. In the twenties and thirties the democracies trusted the honeyed words of tyrants rather than their own eyes witnessing outrage because they could not draw this distinction between words and actions. In the same years Wilhelm Reich discovered that the actions of patients, the way they held their hands and heads, how they sat and so on told more than, and sometimes the opposite, of the words they spoke6l This reluctance in distinguishing between words and actions shows itself now in the unwillingness to declare Poland and other countries in eastern Europe in default on their debts even after their refusal to pay interest on them. This reluctance threatens the international western monetary system, and to some extent domestic currencies, for it shows that in the name of avoiding a debt crisis actually already upon them-and us-Western bankers and their governments will not insist on obligations that make for the trust that gives money much of its value. This tendency to take words for action shows itself even more in the codification of traditional practices of international law (ius gentium) in international treaties that imply an unwillingness to defend these practices except with words. For these treaties wish away the distinction between the enforcement oflaws within nations and the state of nature between them, where only the threat of war guarantees traditional practice. Would the Soviet Union use gas so blatantly in Afghanistan and Laos had it not signed international treaties that assured it that nations with a voice would disapprove but not act to stop them? The struggle of painting with reality, and its awareness of its incapacity to yield to sight, until its collapse into something of blindness in this century, has a close parallel to philosophy's struggle to understand man's relation to the outer world since at least the seventeenth century. The impressions of Hume, and the difficulty of their relation to world, and the appearances of Kant that are entirely within the individual, and yet have some exteriority, for the space, without which their appearance would be impossible, is both within the mind and in some sense outside it, are both attempts to cope with the transparent mirror of the painters. In its sense of the presence of this barrier, and of its incapacity entirely to cope with it, to rid itself of it or to live within it, philosophy since the seventeenth century like painting since the thirteenth distinguishes itself from philosophy in antiquity, which encompassed both nature and man, and nature in man, because 133 �it was ready to suffer tragedy rather than submit to it, unawares. For the ancients the barriers that kept man from nature in himself and outside of him, that changed emotions like love into lust, anger into hatred, courage into ar· rogance, rationality into ideology, aspiration into self destruction, energy into frenzy, and so on, were within man, a stiffness he himself maintained, and, therefore, could dissolve into softness, rather than between man and the world. They appeared like barriers between man and the world only because man did not realize they were within him. Because ancient thinkers realized that the barriers were within man, and not outside of him, they pursued the dissolution of distortions that showed themselves in thinking, rather than accommodating themselves to them. These distortions that keep man from world and self are also always distortions in seeing. The discovery of rationality in antiquity amounted to a rediscovery of nature. The discovery of rationality in nature made it self-evident that evil destroyed life within man as well as outside of him, and that politics, unless it distinguished rational from irrational, would degenerate into the destructiveness of irrationality in the name of the rational, that politics betrayed the self that was really no self at all, but mere distortion, of men who did not dare know themselves, and, therefore, hated nature and themselves. In contrast, much of philosophy since the seventeenth century attempted to accommodate to these distortions, to live within them, and, therefore, has been more or less unable, with the exception of Hobbes with Thucydides as his teacher, to comprehend violence from without that attempts to destroy the barriers that occasion these distortions, but actually only increases them. The uneasiness of this accommodation to distortion shows itself in the extraordinary effort of many of these philosophers who begin with the doubt of world and self to complement their thinking about knowing with political philosophy that, however, begins with the assumption that men cannot perceive the world directly, or know themselves. In some sense they sensed that politics might attempt to undo their accommodation to distortion, which was to lead to an unprecedented mastery of nature but which, however, at the same time that it demanded an experience of nature made it all the more difficult. This effort to find a way for men to rule themselves without knowing themselves, for unlike antiquity that only yielded to the nature it understood, modern thought had mastered some nature before understanding it, has worked to an extraordinary extent, but it is aiso extraordinarily weak in the face of men who think they know no doubt, because they cannot distinguish dogma from truth. The attempt to apply the doubt that in its accommodation to distortion had yielded the assurance to master nature-without understanding it entirely-to politics led inadvertently to a situation that demanded the rediscovery of the doubt of Socrates, which, in contrast to the doubt of philosophy since the seventeenth century, had led to the experience of nature, 134 to the quick of life and, thereby, of rationality, but not to the mastery of nature. I say, inadvertently, because these philosophers had tried to fashion systems in politics that with their emphasis on written and designed constitutions, on what people did rather than what they thought, on procedure rather than content, in some sense asserted there were no answers, and, thereby only questions without answers. The doubt of Socrates, in contrast, suggested that you had to get along without the answers, not that there were none, but that the answers would come of themselves with the dissolution of distortion, that the answers were living itself. This thinking could deal even brilliantly with public domestic life. For in domestic life it was possible to live as if there were no public answers. But international affairs were another matter. For constitutions did not regulate international affairs. In some sense the wisdom of the new philosophers discovered its limitations, and its greatest challenge, at the frontiers. For beyond the frontiers, in the life between nations, you had to get along without the answers in order to discover the truths specific occasions de- manded. In the life among nations you could not live as if there were no answers. Yau had to live without the answers. The struggle that culminated with the impressionists, and collapsed after them, was an attempt to turn the doubt of the new philosophers, which resigned itself to a certain isolation from the world and self in order to master them, into the doubt of Socrates that allowed the world and self to live, and, thereby, to resolve the contradictions and separation, but not the distinction, between domestic public life and life between the nations. For art has no country except in the eyes of the beholder. International affairs demanded more than the assurance that comes of recognizing distortion without dissolving it. There could be no science of international affairs, only the truth discovered in specific circumstances. Only the readiness to live without the answers could lead to the discovery of those truths which did not yield to science. Conclusion I have written of difficulties in perception, and in thinking that distinct from perception cannot, however, win re- silience and lucidity without lucidity in perception which is the perception of life and of life perceiving itself. For there cannot be thought, distinct from brooding and ideology, without perception, without apprehending the world and events upon their occurrence, without the experience of beauty without which confidence in the truth cannot live. For truth is the perception of nature, of beauty moving in individuals at its own sweet will. It is nature perceiving itself, and, therefore, naming itself. But that the lucidity of thought follows upon the lucidity of perception does WINTER/SPRING 1983 �not mean it is the same thing as perception. Quite the contrary. The lucidity of perception makes it possible to distinguish thought from perception, to know thought's independence from perception, to know th~t man is a bit of nature, but a bit of nature that names himself and the world. For it is man that thinks, not nature. But man can think only when the nature within him moves freely enough to perceive nature outside him, for the thoughts he thinks are nature's. This disturbance in perception precedes and underlies the political crisis. At the same time the political crisis increases and deepens it. The incapacity to turn victory into peace, into coherent peace, that marks almost all the wars of this century, which is really an incapacity to foresee the consequences of victory, to master events, indicates that there is something in events that men cannot grasp and, therefore, prevent. Since the events of 1914, governments have been forever behind events. They have not overtaken events; events have overtaken them. Understanding comes after, not. during or before events. With the result that the understanding that comes after events seeks almost always to make up for past defeats and disasters. In its anxiety to make up for the past it often misreads the present, and, is thereby, drawn into repeating the past, just because of the urgency of its wish to avoid its errors. Events fool this belated understanding. The very attempt to anticipate events because of past slowness impedes the perception of events unfolding in the present, which in turn further saps the confidence anticipation meant to restore. The war in Indochina did not so much undo the lessons of Munich as show that they had not been profoundly enough learnt to rediscover them in a war of disguised aggression. The attempt to justify present judgment solely on precedent serves to obscure ambivalence, the ambivalence that impedes the straightforward-and fearful-assessment of present events. This ambivalence showed itself during the war for Indochina in the collapse of much of the establishment in agreement with the protesters without even, for the most part, defending its policies. The protesters were not mistaken in their perception of hollowness in the establishment. In some sense each generation has to rediscover the truths of the past generations on its own. The recall of the past is indispensable just because it teaches that it cannot substitute for present judgment. But too ready recourse to the past for justification rather than instruction betrays evasiveness in the present. The gift that comes of recalling the past is the realization that you are on your own in the present. In the two World Wars, whose destructiveness showed itself in the incapacity to turn victory into peace and, therefore, in simplifications that told themselves they came to terms with fundamentals-as if the uncontrollability of destructiveness showed men their true face, and not the face they drew up against the truth, to deny the truth-something essential was destroyed. I mean the THE ST. JOHNS REVlEW readiness to experience reality, the consequences of action, character, the courage of sight and pleasure except as a matter of principle or propaganda, the plain light of the day that fills up the day and which had moved the brushes of the impressionists. I mean finally the capacity to distinguish one thing and another, and especially rational from irrational. Men would believe anything and nothing. And it did not seem to make much difference, whether they believed something or nothing. In either instance the force of aspiration impeded the experience of actual strength. This incapacity to distinguish the irrational from the rational shows itself in disturbances in sight, in the incapacity to see wholes. Because of this disturbance in perception little is self-evident, for the self-evidence is in some sense a whole. And this in countries whose constitutions depend upon self-evidence, and the experience of good will that comes of it. Amidst the simplifications, the simple became embarassing like blushing,-and complexity became the refuge of bafflement that would not experience itself. The irrationality in the simplifications shows itself in its unwillingness to stand questioning and outright opposition-and in the attempt to suppress it outright, and in the willingness to foster, and often to finance, all sorts of spurious opposition, which is in more or less inverted agreement with what it ostensibly opposes. This fostering of spurious opposition, besides clouding obvious facts-for obvious facts are also wholes-in doubt, fosters a bizarre combination of recklessness of speech-obvious but unnoticed in the "op-ed" pages of newspapers with large circulation-and flattery. Few societies in the past have betrayed such a hunger in their fear of straightforwardness and goodwill for both servility and the intimidation of insult, for the qualities they claim most to despise. The fear of straightforwardness shows itself in the involuntary and overwhelming condescension that meets the words of those like Solzehnitsyn who do speak their minds unflinchingly, a condescension that imbues the truth with the stink of its own rot. Like sight, and because of the difficulties of sight, of recognizing the obvious, feeling too is more difficult-seems about to disappear entirely into emptiness. In this confusion of rational and irrational, artificially provoked by tales of atrocity and the like, and in the consequent attempt to suppress them indiscriminately, which leads to a despairing emptiness, Baudelaire's ennui, a person in genuine an~ ger or in love will feel outrageous-like what he imagines a Nazi to have been. Feeling-and not pornography-feels pornographic and often stirs in those who witness it, envy and hatred. We barely recognize ourselves. The present division of the West serves to blur the memory of this destruction. No time has been so obsessed with its unwilling destructiveness, so fearful of it as to be unable to distinguish it from rational self-defense. But the memory will not go away. It lives on in the suspicion of the incapacity to distinguish irrational and rational that gnaws at our confidence and makes us unceasingly uneasy. This 135 �lack of confidence shows itself in our readiness to ridicule the past and its confidence, and to' exaggerate its failures. There is much contactlessness in the West, and brutally cruel, distorted contact in the East: where the flesh itself turns wooden but where also life stirs in the destruction, after the destruction, where almost the only unmistakable voices we hear find words~ voices that arouse contempt that is only a defense against fear, shame, and embarassment-the embarassment and fear of Adam and Eve after eating the apple. The ambivalence that shows itself in the fear of distinguishing rational and irrational induces paralysis. Paralysis leads to drift. Drift in turn makes for the spread of the irrational-of subversion, sedition, terrorism, above all for the spread of the ideological and propagandistic stereotyping of events, and for the sense of helplessness that comes of not perceiving the significance of events. All these hinder, and prevent swift and effective-the two are almost synonymous-action. The indecision that comes of this paralysis finds it most openly cruel expression in the precarious balance the two "superpowers" hold between life and death-a balance that tests the love of life-and which at the same time that it points to the difficulty of choice, insists on its necessity in the starkest terms. Were people, and especially governments, capable of choice in the less overwhelming matters of their lives, for instance, capable of outspoken support of the Israeli measures to restore sovereignty, and to undo the international terrorist bases in Lebanon, it would not come to such a harrowing choice. But drift and its paralysis often leads governments, and others whose work calls for a rational response to irrational challenges, to connive with this irrationality-because of a perverse unacknowledged admiration for it. If the coming negotiations with the Soviet Union will bring no sensible advantage to the West and no relief to the East European nations-as in view of the current crackdown in Poland and within the Soviet Union appears unlikely-they will turn into creatures of this murderous fascination with the irrational. Successful coherent peace-in contrast to the exploitation of the yearning for peace to undo the readiness of selfdefence-requires choosing freely to face harsh dangerous realities in the absence of the overwhelming necessity of battle. In some sense it requires more courage than battle. It requires unevasive words. For evasive words can be worse than bullets. " 'Bullets kill. Words prolong the death by giving false hope. It is worse to prolong.' "64 At stake in unevasive words is the truth which alone can give the political systems that seek to protect its stirring the strength to act effectively to avoid the large scale wars their dread of war may otherwise bring upon them. For the truth alone is bigger than these constitutions which cannot live, and, therefore, survive without it. It is the air they breathe. The truth means distinguishing between irrational and rational, the only distinction that can bring the willing con- 136 sent without which freedom cannot live. Distinguishing between rational and irrational means distinguishing between authority and authoritarianism, between genitality and secondary desires which often seek refuge in either totalitarian asceticism or license, between love and pornography, between self-defense and murder. It means taking risks-and distinguishing between passivity and apathy and safety. The incapacity to take these risks, and to make these distinctions, shows itself in an indiscriminate dread of all feeling-and in the resort to collective indignation and ideology to still the uneasiness of its absence-the absence of life itself moving at its own sweet will. Without the flow of feeling there can be no experience of rationality, no experience of affirmation and denial, without which the distinctions between self-defense and killing, love and pornography, genitality and secondary desires. In each of these distinctions the difference the perception of which makes the distinction possible is between actual feeling moving of its own sweet will and the yearning for it which makes people susceptible to ideology which often brings the opposite of what it promises, death instead of life. Only the flow of actual feeling-in distinction to the yearning for it that shows itself in sentimentality and cruelty-can distinguish between strength and force, between consent and manipulation, between rational defiance and stubborness and spite, the defiance that preserves rather than the revolt that destroys, and names it freedom. In some sense totalitarianism has done nothing but call our bluff, our incapacity to live up to our ideals, to feel the freedom that is actually ours, that is all about us but which few experience in themselves, that is, the contrast between the knowledge that there is nothing outside stopping us and an inner sense of the constriction which keeps us from moving. I mean the yearning for the simplicity of nature, for its spontaneity, for its strength, for its openess-and also the dread of it and the disgust with it which unlike the nineteenth century we cannot experience with any forthrightness. The nineteenth century could live somehow with the sense that man was not entirely himself. It could perceive still, somehow, its limitations at the same time that it knew these limitations were somehow self-imposed and artificial. At the same time, however, it realized with clarity that all that most inspired it wished those limitations away, and might one day destroy them, although for the most part it enjoyed still enough of the modesty of nature to understand that destroying these limitations would only spread and intensify the paralysis they actually served to limit and define. Until the First World War destroyed the delicate balance between what it wanted and what it saw it was, the nineteenth century was happy, because confident enough to live within these contradictions. And this capacity to live within them without denying them lent it the boldness of clarity so that its words sparkled and did not dread WINTER/SPRING 1983 �warmth and courage in peacetime, and could tell outrage without hesitation. And it could suffer, and, therefore, events did not make it suffer. And it knew the meaning of chance and that there was nothing inevitable in events, that nothing that happened had to happen. It knew that you could not explain what happened if you assumed it had to happen. Because it knew that nothing was inevita· ble, it knew responsibility, it knew it made events-it did not entertain the conceit that events happened to it-that is, it knew how to suffer, how to sorrow, how to feel com· passion instead of murderous pity that betrays itself in a swift look of the eyes that acknowledges everything to deny it. It also knew how to tell outrage without hesitation, that is, it could stand self.criticism and distinguish it from self-hatred. Because it knew real indignation and, thereby, real self-love and courage-and something of the taste of life-it knew how to prevent the exploitation of its guilt for the purposes of nourishing complicity with actual outrage, complicity that shows itself, gives itself away, by its indulgence in worked-up indignation against largely imaginary outrages, for instance, the world~wide "uproar" about American "atrocities" in Vietnam which were exceptions, and of greater rarity than in most wars, and the eerie passivity that meets the murder in Afghanistan, in Cambodia: it took the New York Times two years to pick up the story, and then only after the New York Review of Books reviewed a French book about it. (People in the Soviet Union probably know more details about the murder in Cambodia than Americans.) In some sense more ambitious for the truth than the nineteenth century, that is, less capable of putting up with even the mere appearance of hypocrisy, we end up more oblique than the nineteenth century. Because we will not know this hypocrisy, the plain straightforwardness of the nineteenth century, and its readiness to acknowledge matters it could not cope with, embarrass us. We take our hypocrisy for the truth itself. And so things that were plain as the day a generation ago, are now obscure; for instance, that George Orwell wrote 1984 against Stalinism, not against Hitler and nazism. And we barely notice lying in politics, the lying that took George Orwell's breath away, as Joseph Adelson remarked recently. For instance, the major newspapers take Andropov's calling the President of the United States a liar more or less for granted. This greater obliquity, greater because unacknowledged, and, therefore, not experienced as obliquity, but as a kind of disingenous straightforwardness or naivete, comes from the inability either to stand the truth-or to get along without it. With the result that we are uneasymore uneasy, the more we protest against uneasiness. Much of what we take for boldness amounts merely to unacknowledged timorousness, for instance, the suspicious- ness of all authority, especially government, of the media-which makes for the excitement of the denial of common sense in the hope of, thereby, reaching depth, as if the denial of the obvious amounted to getting at the THE ST. JOHNS REVIEW heart of things, when in fact the simplicity of the obvious overwhelms with its lucidity only with the perception of depth. Otherwise the obvious appears fragile, brittle, ungiving, dead, dull, unpalatable, and boring. Totalitarianism, unlike the despotism that existed before Napoleon, and which Montesquieu described, parodies our ideals and exploits our incapacity to live up to them entirely-an incapacity which shows itself in our readiness to take freedom for granted, and in our unwillingness to conceive that others envy it, and desire to undo it. The division of the West intensifies this division and ambivalence within individuals, and to some extent springs from it. A whole world means whole people, it means people and societies capable of distinguishing between truth and lies, and knowing that the truth lives. It means distinguishing between love oflife and resentment and self.hatred, between freedom and license. Like battle the balance of terror attempts to force this wholeness on individuals at the same time that it threatens to intensify the division that undoes this wholeness by inviting people and nations to yield to this terror instead of facing up to it. Yielding to this terror will not bring peace but only an intensification of war, and the further spread of totalitarianism, which is a kind of continuous war of in- dividuals against each other and against themselves, unceasing and apparently impossible to undo from the inside without support from outside, support that must take risks, including the risk of conflict, to be meaningful. And not to resist means to yield. Even the leaders of many of the peace movements will now upon questioning admit that peace means yielding to totalitarian violence in the name of undoing the much greater daily "violence" in life under "capitalism".65 They are not after peace at all but after intensification of violence which kills without knowing it, their kind of violence, which, like totalitarian violence, does not distinguish between peace and war. Totalitarianism dreads this wholeness more than anything, for only this wholeness can see through it and dispel it. The spread of totalitarianism roots in our own indecisiveness, in our own paralysis, in our own incapacity to see what is going on. And this procrastination prolongs and thereby increases cruelty, and involves almost everybody in it. For short wars are much more merciful than unending wars as Lebanon should have showed Vietnam had taught usbut did not. 1. Cf. Guglielmo Ferrero, The Two French Revolutions, New York 1968. 2. Quoted in Theodore Adorno, The Authoritarian Personality, New York 1950: Man kann nur fuer eine Idee sterben die man nicht versteht. 3. Cf. Vladimir Bukovsky, To Build A Castle-My Life as a Dissenter, New York 1979; Adam Michnik, L'eglise et la gauche, Paris 1979. For China, the writing of Wei Jingsheng, introduced by Simon Ley, "La lutte pour la liberte en Chine," Commentaire 7, Autumn 1979, 353-360. In his most recent book, Cette lanc;inante douleur de la liberte (Paris l98l), Bu. kovsky betrays startling silliness in making sense of his experience of life in the West since he left Russia. 137 �4. Cf. Brian Crozier, Strategy of Survival, London 1978; Leo Raditsa, "The Present Danger," Midstream, February 1979, 59-70. 5. Foreign Relations of the United States (Conference Series), Washington, D.C. 1945, I 850-855 and elsewhere. 6. For the background of this propaganda, Bernard Lewis, "The AntiZionist Resolution," Foreign Affairs, October 1976, 54-64. 7. Walter Lippmann, The Cold War: A Study in U.S. Foreign Policy, New York 1947. Lippmann's remarkable book shows deep mastery oflessons G. Ferrero had drawn from the Congress of Vienna (G. Ferrero, TheReconstruction of Europe, New York 1941; cf. G. Ferrero, La fin des aventures, guerre et paix, Paris 1931). 8. Letter of James Forrestal to Chan Gurney, Chairman of the Senate Armed Services Committee, December 8, 1947. The Forrestal Diaries, edited by Walter Millis, New York 1951,349-350. 9. George Ball, The Discipline of Power, Boston 1968, 151, cf. 149-168. 10. ForrestalDiaries, New York 1951,265-266. 11. Forrestal Diaries, New York 1951,296-297. 12. For Soviet thinking about nuclear war, see Joseph D. Douglass, Jr. and Amoretta Roeber, Soviet Strategy for Nuclear War, Stanford, Ca. 1979. For Soviet involvement in terrorism, Stefan T. Possony and L. Francis Bouchey, International Terrorism-The Communist Connection, Washington, D.C. 1978; Claire Sterling, The Terror Network, The Secret War of International Terrorism, New York 1981. See also, Leo Raditsa, "The Source of World Terrorism," Midstream, December 1981, 42-49. 13. The Wall Street Journal, December 7,1982. 14. For Soviet disinformation, see Soviet Active Measures, Hearings before the Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence, House of Representatives, July 13-14, 1982, Washington, D.C. 1982, especially the testimony of Stanislave Levchenko, 137-169. See also the testimony of Ladislav Bittman in Soviet Covert Action (The Forgery Offensive), Hearings before the Subcommittee on Oversight of the Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence, Senate, February 19, 1980, Washington, D.C. 1980. In 1968, the year of the beginning of detente in Europe, and of increased Soviet involvement in terrorism, the head of the KGB's Disinformation Directorate, described the duplicity of disinformation (testimony of Arnaud de Borchgrave to the Senate Subcommittee on Security and Terrorism, April24, 1981): ... our friends must always be encouraged to write or say precisely the opposite of our real objectives. Conflict between East and West is a permanent premise of Soviet thought-until the final demise of capitalist power in the West. But this must be constantly dismissed and ridiculed as rightist cold-war thinking. Except for scope and boldness, disinformation has changed little since the end of the war. Cf. the testimony of Bogdan Raditsa. May 11, 1949, Communist Activities among Aliens and National Groups. Hearings before the Special Subcommittee to Investigate Immigration and Naturalization of the Committee on the Judiciary, Senate, Washington, D.C., 1949. 15. Letter to Palmer Hoyt, September 2, 1944. Forrestal Diaries, New Ymk 1951, 14. 16. Letter to Stanton Griffis, United States Ambassador to Poland, October 31, 1947. Forrestal Diaries, New York 1951, 335. 17. Quoted by Caetano Mosca, Elementi di Scienza Politica 2, Turin 1923,450. 18. Sergey Petrovich Melgounov, The Red Terror in Russia, London 1925, 33. 19. Melgounov, Red Terror, London 1925, 41. 20. The words are Dr. Abdallah Osman's who was arrested toward the end of 1978 for his western education. Quoted in the important article by Michael Barry, "Afghanistan-Another Cambodia?," Commentary, August 1982, 29-37, 32. See also, Leo Raditsa, "Afghanistan Fights," St. John's Review, Winter 1982, 90-98. 21. For one instance of the shooting of children, The Washington Post, February 7, 1980. 22. For South Vietnam, Douglas Pike, Vietcong, The Organization and Techniques of the National Liberation Front of South Vietnam, Cambddge, Mass. 1966, 249. 138 23. Michael Barry, "Afghanistan-Another Cambodia?," Commentary, August 1982, 29-37. 24. This ignorance showed itself dramatically in the movie Reds that did not even distinguish between the February revolution to establish democracy and the October seizure of power, and barely mentioned the war. In this movie American mindlessness led to distortions that Soviet schoolbooks, which mention that the Bolshevik minority destroyed all democratic institutions, do not dream of. And except for an important essay by Joel Carmichael ("Warren Beatty's Bolsheviks," Midstream, March 1982, 43-48) and a letter of Lev Navrozov (Commentary, June 1982) nobody noticed. In fact one critic called the movie gently "condemnatory"-as if condemning was more important than telling what happened, and letting the condemnation take care of itself. 25. For this tendency, see the brilliant esSay by Jacques Barzun, Clio and the Doctors: History, Psycho-History and Quanta-History, Chicago 1974. 26. Testimony of Stanislav Levchenko, July 14, 1982, in Soviet Active Measures, Washington, D.C., 144, 145, 156. 27. Leo Tolstoy, War and Peace, translated by Louise and Aylmer Maude, New York 1942, 10, 38. 28. Cf. G. Ferrero, The Reconstruction of Europe, New York 1941; also The Gamble, Bonaparte in Iwly, 1796-1797, London 1939. 29. See the statement of Lieutenant General Marian Kukiel, Polish Minister of National Defense, in Stanislaw Mikolajczyk, The Rape of Poland, New York 1948,29-30. The Soviet regime had about 14,500 Polish officers murdered near Smolensk and other places in Western Russia in 1940. In an article showing the Soviet and Polish regime's aggressive persistence in denying responsibility for the massacres, Nicholas Bethell ("Katyn and the Little Conifers, Encounter, May 1977, 86-90) quotes an official diplomatic report of May 24, 1943, from the British Ambassador to the Polish government-in-exile in London, that did not flinch in description of the, in its judgement, necessary evasiveness of Churchill's government: In handling the publicity side of the Katyn affair we have been constrained by the urgent need for cordial relations with the Soviet government to appear to appraise the evidence with more hesitation and lenience than we should do in forming a common sense judgment on events occurring in normal times or in the ordinary course of our private lives; we have been obliged to appear to distort the normal and healthy operation of our intellectual and moral judgments; we have been obliged to give undue prominence to the tactlessness or impulsiveness of Poles, to restrain the Poles from putting their case clearly before the public, to discourage any attempt by the public and the press to probe the ugly story to the bottom. In general we have been obliged to deflect attention from possibilities which in the ordinary affairs of life would cry to high heaven for elucidation, and to withhold the full measure of solicitude which, in other circumstances, would be shown to acquaintances situated as a large number of Poles now are. We have in fact perforce used the good name of England like the murderers used the little conifers to cover up a massacre. 30. Quoted in Michael Polanyi, "Beyond Nihilism" in Knowing and Being, London 1969, 20. 31. Michael Polanyi, "The Message of the Hungarian Revolution" in Knowing and Being, London 1969, 28. 32. Leonid Vladimirov, The Russians, New York 1968, 101-102. 33. Bruno Bettelheim, The Informed Heart, Autonomy in a Mass Age, New York 1971,24. 34. S. P. Melgounov, The Red Terror, London 1925,97. 35. Czeslaw Milosz, The Captive Mind, New York 1953,72. 36. Mikhail Agursky, "Contemporary Socioeconomic Systems and their Future Prospects" in Alexander Solzhenitsyn ed., From Under the Rubble, New Ymk 1976,78,74-75. 37. Forrestal Diaries, New York 1951,482. 38. Forrestal Diaries, New York 1951,262-263. 39. Giuseppe Josca, Carriere della Sera, April27, 1973. 40. New York Times, May 9, 1975. 41. Joan Didion, "El Salvador, the Bad Dream," New York Review of Books, December 2, 1982. WINTER/SPRING 1983 �42. Andrei Navrozov, "Letter to A. Bartlett Giamatti," The Yale Free Press, October 14, 1982. 43. Cf. Vittoria Ronchey, Figlioli Miei, Marxisti IJtmaginari, Milan 1975. 44. Igor Shafarevich, "Socialism in Our Past and Future" in From Under the Rubble, New York 1976, 58-59. · 45. For a fine account of the first appearance of this propaganda in 1917, especially in Italy but with general reference to the whole West, see Ro" berto Vivarelli, 1l dopoguerra in Italia e l'avvento del fascismo (1918-1922), Naples 1967, especially 1-114. 46. Thomas Mann, Betrachtungen eines Unpolitischen, Berlin 1922 (first published 1918), 130. 47. Mann, Betrachtungen, Berlin 1922,47. 48. Thomas Mann, "Bruder Hitler," (1939), Gesammelte Schriften, Ham· bmg 1960, 12, 852. 49. Gustav Janouch, "Conversations with Kafka," Encounter, August 1971, 15-27. 50. Richard Hofstadter, Anti-Intellectualism in American Life, New York 1962, 32. 51. The" .. , and hold them (our British brethren) as we hold the rest of mankind, enemies in war, in peace friends!" of the Declaration of Independence. TilE ST. JOHNS REVIEW 52. Foreign Relations of the United States (Conference Series), Washington, D.C. 1945, I. 53. Forrestal Diaries, New York 1951, 80. 54. R. G. Collingwood, An Autobiography, Oxford 1939,44-52 and 147167. Quotations from 48-49, 163-64, 167. 55. Quoted in George F. Kennan, Russia Leaves the War, Princeton, N.J. 1956, 272-273. 56. Quoted in Kennan, Russia Leaves the War, Princeton, N.J. 1956, 511. 57. For a classic description and analysis, Wilhelm Reich, The Mass Psy· chology of Fascism, New York 1946 (first edition 1933). 58. Milovan Djilas, Wartime, New York 1977, 285. 59. Raymond Aron, Le spectateur engage, entretiens avec Jean-Louis Missika et Dominique Walton, Paris 1981,62. 60. Alexander Lowen, "The Impressionists and Orgone Energy," Orgone Energy Bulletin, 1, 1944, 169-183, 173. 61. Lowen, "The Impressionists," OEB, l, 1944, 178. 62. Vincent Van Gogh in his description of his "Portrait of the Painter Bosch". Quoted in Lowen, "The Impressionists," 181. 63. W. Reich, Character Analysis\ New York 1949. 64. James Webb, Fields of Fire, New York (Bantam edition) 1979, 182. 65. Rael Jean Isaac and Erich Isaac, "The Peacemaking Utopians" in The Coercive Utopians, Chicago 1983, forthcoming. 139 �REvmw EssAY On Jonathan Schell's The Fate of the Earth* GREGORY S. )ONES The editor of The New Yorker magazine, William Shawn, has described Jonathan Schell's The Fate of the Earth as a work that "may someday be looked back upon as a crucial event in the history of human thought." 1 This is extremely unlikely. Schell's main conclusion, that calls for radical changes in the world's political structure, is based on a fallacious quasi-mathematical argument. Apart from this argument, Schell's understanding amounts to a wish for a world where people could live in peace. Schell does not explain how we can construct a more peaceful world. Schell's main argument hinges on the possibility that an all-out nuclear war could lead to human extinction: To say that human extinction is a certainty would, of course, be a misrepresentation-just as it would be a misrepresentation to say that extinction can be ruled out. To begin with, we know that a holocaust may not occur at all. If one does occur, the adversaries may not use all their weapons. If they do use all their weapons, the global effects, in the ozone and elsewhere, may be moderate. And if the effects are not moderate but extreme, the ecosphere may prove resilient enough to withstand them without breaking down catastrophically. These are all substantial reasons for supposing that mankind will not be extinguished in a nuclear holocaust, or even that extinction in a holocaust is unlikely, and they tend to calm our fear and to reduce our sense of urgency. Yet at the same time we are compelled to admit that there may be a holocaust, that the adversaries may use all their weapons, that the global effects, including effects of which we are as yet unaware, may be severe, that the ecosphere may suffer catastrophic breakdown, and that our species may be extinguished. (Emphasis in original.) Schell then puts argument in mathematical form: To employ a mathematical analogy, we can say that although the risk of extinction may be fractional, the stake is, humanly speaking, infinite, and a fraction of infinity is still infinity. In Gregory S. Jones is a senior policy analyst at Pan Heuristics, a Los Angeles research firm. With Albert Wohlstetter he wrote Swords from Plowshares: The Military Potential of Civilian Nuclear Energy (University of Chicago Press 1978). 140 other words, once we learn that a holocaust might lead to extinction we have no right to gamble, because if we lose, the game will be over, and neither we nor anyone else will ever get another chance. Therefore, although, scientifically speaking, there is all the difference in the world between the mere possibility that a holocaust will bring about extinction and the certainty of it, morally they are the same, and we have no choice but to address the issue of nuclear weapons as though we knew for a certainty that their use would put an end to our species. (Emphasis in original.) A small probability of an infinite harm (in this case, human extinction in large-scale nuclear war) has to be treated the same as if the probability of this harm were a certainty. To reduce the probability of nuclear war to zero, Schell argues for complete nuclear and conventional disarmament worldwide. He also wants to change the world's political structure to "create a political means by which the world can arrive at the decisions that sovereign states previously arrived at through war." In the near term he supports a nuclear freeze, talks between the nuclear powers to reduce the probability of accidental nuclear war, and George Kennan's proposal for halving the nuclear arsenals of the superpowers. Schell argues against unnamed (and, to me, unknown) people who might think that the human extinction is not all that bad. If only we would recognize the seriousness of the situation, we would create this new world order. The real problem, however, is Schell's argument that a finite probability of an infinite harm can be treated as if the harm were a certainty-and not that people do not take human extinction seriously. This argument's total indifference to the actual probability of a catastrophic nuclear war is the trouble. For as long as there is a chance of a catastrophic nuclear war, the argument does not change. To halve the current probability of a catastrophic nuclear war does no good; to double the current probability of catastrophic nuclear war does no harm. Any world with some chance of catastrophic nuclear war is equivalent. *Jonathan Schell, The Fate of the Earth, Alfred A. Knopf, New York, 1982. WINTER/SPRING 1983 �The logic of this argument should lead Schell to reject half-measures like a nuclear freeze, etc.,(even if a nuclear freeze lessened the chance of nuclear war). For such measures will not eliminate catastrophic nu.clear war. A nuclear freeze will, in fact, increase the chance of nuclear war since it will prevent improvements in the safety, security, and survivability of our nuclear systems and impede the development of precise forms of nonnuclear attack with the potential to replace nuclear weapons for many missions. Even in a totally disarmed world with a new political order, as Schell admits, the political order could break down, a war could break out, and with nuclear weapons reconstructed, a nuclear catastrophe could occur: In a disarmed world, we would not have eliminated the peril of human extinction from the human scene-it is not in our power to do so-but we would at least have pitted our whole strength against it. The inconsistency of threatening to perpetrate extinction in order to escape extinction would be removed. The nuclei of atoms would still contain vast energy, and we would still know how to extinguish ourselves by releasing that energy in chain reactions, but we would not be lifting a finger to do it. There would be no complicity in mass murder, no billions of dollars spent on the machinery of annihilation, no preparations to snuff out the future generations, no hair-raising lunges toward the abyss. All this is very well. But the logic of the argument yields no reason to prefer Schell's totally disarmed world to our current one. The probability of nuclear war is quite important and it is vital that we keep this probability as low as we can. To reduce the overall risk to ourselves and at the same time improve the quality of our lives it is, however, important to use our resources proportionately to our actual needs and risks. For example, at any second (to use some of Schell's frenzied prose) the earth could be struck by an asteroid large enough to have catastrophic consequences to the earth's biosphere leading to human extinction. There is substantial evidence of such collisions in the past. (Some hold such a collision led to the extinction of the dinosaurs.) Telescopes to scan the skies for such asteroids and stocks of large nuclear armed missiles (the size of our Saturn moon rockets) ready to intercept and blow up these asteroids would reduce the risks of such collisions. We do not man such telescopes and missiles because the risk (once every hundred million years or so) does not warrant the relatively modest expenditure. The risk of nuclear war is greater than the risk of large asteroid collisions. But the price of trying absolutely to avoid nuclear war is also unacceptably high, because it would cost us more than just money. Schell chides us for continuing to cling to our current system of nation states which we use to support what he calls "our transient aims and fallible convictions." These include such trivialities as liberty and justice.Z The logic of Schell's beliefs and of much that is current in the antinuclear movement would THE ST. JOHNS REVIEW lead one to do almost anything to avoid a nuclear holocaust. Surrender to the Soviets would be the easiest way, especially if one is willing to give up liberty and justice. How to be neither red nor dead, however, is our real problem. Schell's argument has so little content that it can be used to support anything or nothing. Pierre Gallois and Raymond Aron used the vacuous argument of a finite chance of an infinite harm that Schell uses to argue for world disarmament and a new world order, to advocate spreading nuclear weapons to a very large number of coun'tries.l They held such distribution would make for a very peaceful earth because nuclear weapons would enable every country to deter an attack. This would be true even for very small countries, since there would always be a slight chance that their nuclear weapons would survive an enemy surprise attack and do the enemy's cities enormous damage. Gallois and Aron argued that even a very small possibility of this enormous harm would deter an enemy. Of the two notions that comprise his solution, total disarmament and a new world political order without war, Schell correctly takes the new world order for the primary requirement, for once achieved it would make disarmament easy. It is striking that Schell has no idea what this new world political order would look like nor how to bring it about. He leaves these tasks to his reader: In this book, I have not sought to define a political solution to the nuclear predicament-either to embark on the full-scale reexamination of the foundations of political thought which must be undertaken if the world's political institutions are to be made consonant with the global reality in which they operate or to work out the practical steps by which mankind, acting for the first time in history as a single entity, can reorganize its political life. I have left to others those awesome, urgent tasks, which, imposed on us by history, constitute the political work of our age. There is nothing new or original in the thought that it would be nice to have a world where people settle their political differences peacefully. There are problems, however, not amenable to easy solution-questions like who should rule the Falkland Islands, where should the Palestinians live, how to bring liberty and justice to people living in totalitarian countries as well as improving the quality of government in our own country. People have worked and will continue to work hard to solve these and the many other political problems in the world today. They do not need Jonathan Schell to tell them how serious and important this work is. But finding solutions has not been and will not be easy and there's nothing in Schell's frantic book that will make this task any easier. 1Quoted in Newsweek, March 14, 1983, 67. Schell complains that the nuclear powers "put a higher value on national sovereignty than they do on human survival." 3 Pierre Gallais, The Balance ofTerror(with Foreword by Raymond Aron), Boston 1961, 129 ix. I am indebted to Albert Wohlstetter for pointing out this connection. 2 Elsewhere 141 �The St. John's Review St. John's College Annapolis, Maryland 21404 Non-profit Org. U.S. Postage PAID Permit No. 66 Lutherville, Md . . � Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource <em>The St. John's Review</em> Description An account of the resource <em>The St. John's Review</em><span> is published by the Office of the Dean, St. John's College.  All manuscripts are subject to blind review. 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Town send Morgan. Composition: Action Camp Co., Inc. Printing: The John D. Lucas Printing Co. �fhe St. John's Review, Summer 1983 3 Homo Loquens from a Biological Standpoint Curtis A. Wilson 18 Solstice on the First Watch (poem) }. H. Beall 19 The Ground of Nature: Shakespeare, Language, and Politics Paul A. Cantor 25 Nominal Autobiography in Shakespeare's Sonnets Margreta de Grazia 32 Blackwater (poem) RobertS. Zelenka 33 Mission over Hanoi (narrative from A Country Such as This) james Webb 41 Truth-Telling and the Iliad Douglas Allanbrook 51 The Supreme Court and School Desegregation: Brown v. Board of Education Reconsidered Murray Dry 63 OCCASIONAL DISCOURSES Class Day Address 1983 Chaninah Maschler 64 The Horizon as the Last Ship Home (poem) }. H. Beall 65 Against Time Eva Brann ��Homo Loquens from a Biological Standpoint Curtis A.Wilson The words homo loquens, in the title I announced for this lecture, mean speaking man, man the speaking one. As a designation for the human species, homo loquens perhaps has an advantage over the official zoological designation, homo sapiens, man the sapient, wise, discerning one, the one who savours the essences of things. The human capacity for loquaciousness is somewhat more obviously verifiable. But what has that capacity to do with things bio· logical? This is a complicated and problematic topic. Forgive me if I first approach it by slow stages, then attempt a gingerly step when the going becomes treacherous. I wish to begin with a small technical matter, an aspect of the physiology of speech-production. Respiratory patterns in different species of air-breathing vertebrates differ in many details. Different species have special regulatory systems, adapted to special behavior patterns. There is the panting of dogs, specially adapted for cooling; birds, during flight, have the unique ability to increase their intake of oxygen a hundredfold; the sperm whale can go without breathing or dive for 90 minutes, the beaver for 15, man for about 2 1/2; and so on. All these differences are species-specific. In a human being, the respiratory patterns during quiet breathing and during speech are remarkably different (see Table I). The volume of air inhaled, as shown in the first item of the table, increases by a factor of 3 or 4 during speech. The time of inspiration, as compared with the A lecture delivered at Annapolis in September 1975. In forthcoming issues the Review intends to publish Mr. Wilson's lectures, The Arcltimedean Point and the Liberal Arts (September 1958) and Groups, Rings and Lattices (September 1959). THE ST. JOHNS REVIEW time for a complete cycle of inspiration plus expiration, decreases by a factor of 3. The number of breaths per minute tends to decrease drastically. Expiration, which is smooth during speechless breathing, is periodically interrupted during speech, with a build-up of pressure under the glottis; it is during expiration that all normal human vocalization occurs. The patterns of electrical activity in expiratory and inspiratory muscles differ radically during quiet breathing and during speech. Both chest and abdominal musculature are utilized in breathing, but during speech the abdominal musculature is less involved, and its contractions are no longer fully synchronized with those of the chest musculature. In quiet breathing, one breathes primarily through the nose; during speech, primarily through the mouth. More than you wanted to know, I'm sure. My point was to show that breathing undergoes marked changes during speech. And remarkably, humans can tolerate these modifications for almost unlimited periods of time without ex· periencing respiratory distress; witness filibusters in the U.S. Senate. Think now of other voluntary departures from normal breathing patterns. If we deliberately decide to breathe at some arbitrary rate, say, faster than ordinary -please do not try it here-we quickly experience the symptoms of hyperventilation: light-headedness, giddiness, and so on. Similar phenomena may occur when one is learning to play a wind instrument or during singing instruction; training in proper breathing is requisite for these undertakings. By contrast, talking a blue streak for hours on end comes naturally to many a three-year-old. The conclusion must be that there are sensitive controlling mechanisms that regulate ventilation in an autono· mons way during speech. More generally, it is evident that 3 �we are endowed with special anatomical and physiological adaptations that enable us to sustain speech for hours, on exhaled air. Do we speak the way we do because we happen to possess these special adaptations, or did these adaptations develop during evolution in response to the pressures of natural selection or the charms of sexual selection? I think there is no way of answering these questions; it is difficult enough when one can refer to skeletons, which fossilize; behavioral traits do not. But whatever the answer, there is still this further question, whether the genetic programming for speech extends beyond the mere provision of vocal apparatus? Might it not, in addition, determine the make-up and structure of language in a more detailed and intimate fashion? Such a question runs counter to views that are widely held. Is not language, after you have the voice to pronounce it with, fundamentally a psychological and cultural fact, to which biological explanations would be largely irrelevant? Do not languages consist of arbitrary conventions, made up in the way we make up the rules of games? Wittgenstein speaks of language as a word-game, thereby likening it to tennis or poker. Is it not apparent that the conventions of any particular language, like the rules of tennis or poker, are transmitted from generation to generation by means of imitation, training, teaching, and learn~ ing? Are not these the important facts about language, the facts that reveal to us its nature? Until recently, students of linguistics and psychology have tended uniformly to answer these questions in the affirmative. To many, the extraordinary diversity of human tongues has seemed argumerit enough against any assumption of linguistic universals, that is, characteristics of language imagined to be rooted in human nature. The reductio ad absurdum often mentioned is the attempt of the Egyptian king Psammetichos to determine the original human language. As reported by Herodotus, Psammetichos caused two children to be raised in such a way that they would neither hear nor overhear human speech, the attendants being instructed meanwhile to listen out for their first word. The report was, that it was Persian. The experiment is said to have been repeated in the 13th century by Frederick II, Holy Roman Emperor, and again around 1500 by James IV of Scotland, who was hoping that the children would speak Hebrew, and thereby establish a biblical lineage for Scotland. No result was reported. Stress on the arbitrariness of language has been enhanced by a coalition between linguistics and behaviorist psychology. Behaviorist psychology is led, by its premisses, to the view that language is merely an arbitrary use to which the human constitution, anatomical and physiological, can be put, just as a tool can be put to many arbitrary uses by its manipulator. A recent account that views language in this way is the book Verbal Behavior by B. F. Skinner. Along with other behaviorist scientists, Skinner holds that all learning can be explained by a few principles 4 which operate in all vertebrates and many invertebrates. The process is called operant conditioning. Learning the meaning of a word, Skinner holds, is like a rat's learning to press a bar which will cause a buzzer to sound, announcing "food pellets soon to come". Learning grammar, likewise, is supposed to be like learning that event A is followed by event B, which is in turn followed by event C. Many an animal can be trained to acquire associations of this kind. Skinner would hold that there is nothing involved in the acquisition of language that is not involved in learning of this kind. Unquestionably, we would be mistaken to deny the importance or the power of the conditioned reflex, either in language acquisition or in other learning. The experimental psychologists have recently announced that even the visceral organs can be taught to do various things, on given signals, with rewards provided immediately afterward to reinforce the action. We are told that rats, with the reward held out of another shot of electrical juice in a certain center of the brain, have been taught to alter their blood pressures or brain waves, or dilate the blood vessels in one ear more than those in the other. Similar achievements in operant conditioning are held out as a bright future hope for humans. What rich experiences in self-operation are not in store for us? On the other hand, the successes of this technology do not necessarily tell us much about the character of what it is that is being conditioned. The behaviorist treats the organism as a black box; he controls the inputs and records the outputs; what goes on in the box is not, as he claims, an appropriate concern of his. He cites the similar situation in quantum physics. In the case of quantum phenomena, the physicist cannot successfully describe what is there when he is not looking, not using probes that interact with whatever it is. But, between the situation in quantum physics and the situation in the study of animal behavior, there is this difference. Animal behavior goes on, observably so, even when the ani- mals are not being experimented on. May it not be important to try to observe this behavior, before we set out to change it, as we can, so frighteningly, do? Those who study the behavior of animals in their natural habitats nowadays have a special name for their study, Ethology. Long hours of patient observation, much of it during the last 50 years, have demonstrated how intricate, how unexpectedly adaptive, how downright peculiar, are the patterns of behavior specific to particular species of animals. Many of the patterns function as communica- tion: the elaborate courtship rituals of birds, the less elaborate ones of butterflies and certain fish; the way in which two dabbling ducks, on meeting, lower their bills into the water and pretend to drink, as an indication of nonaggressiveness; and so on. Among these behaviors, there is one that has been called truly symbolic. That is the dance of the honeybee, the symbolism of which was first recognized and deciphered by Karl von Frisch in the 1940's. Let me describe it briefly (see Figure l). SUMMER 1983 �The dance that a forager bee performs in the dark hive gives, by a special symbolism, the dista,nce and direction of the food source she has found. If, for the Austrian variety of bee, the food source is less than 80 meters away, she performs a round dance, running rapidly around in a circle, first to the left, then to the right. This in effect says to the hive bees: "Fly out from the hive; close by in the neighborhood is food to be fetched." If, on the other hand, the food source is more than 80 meters away, the forager will use the tail-wagging dance. The rhythm of the dance tells the distance: the closer the source, the more figure-of-eight cycles of the dance per · minute. The tail-wagging part of the dance, shown by the middle wavy line in the diagram, tells the direction, in accordance with a curious rule. On the vertical honeycomb in the hive, the direction up means towards the sun, and the direction down means away from the sun. If the tailwagging run points 60° left of straight up, the food source is 60° to the left of the sun, and so on. Directions with respect to the sun have been transposed into directions with respect to gravity, the directions are reported with errors of less than 3o. This same dance is used in the springtime when half the bees move out of the hive and form a swarm, seeking a new nesting place. Scout bees fly out in all directions, then return and dance to announce the location they have hit on. It is important, of course, that the selected spot be protected from winter, winds, and rough weather, and that there be abundant feeding nearby. The surprising thing is that not just one nesting place is announced, but several at the same time. The dancing and the coming and going can continue for days. By their dances the bees engage in mutual persuasion, inciting one another to inspect this site or that site. The better the site, the longer and more vigorously the returning bee dances. The process continues until all the scout bees are dancing in the same direction and at the same rate. Then the swarm arises and departs for the homesite it has thus decided upon. Mistaken decisions are few. The dance of the honeybee is symbolic in a genetically determined way. That human language is not genetically determined in the same way is easy to show: the language a child learns, whether Swahili, Cantonese, Urdu, or any other, depends solely on the language of those by whom he is brought up. The vocabulary of a human language is not genetically fixed. I do not believe, however, that the discussion of the biological foundations oflanguage can properly end at this point. My reasons for saying this are two. In the first place, there are certain features of human speech which are not facts appear to be most easily accounted for by assuming that there is such a foundation, forcing human speech to be of a certain basic type. Secondly, this same assumption receives support from the study of primary language acquisition in children. It is not that Psammetichos was right, or that children if left to themselves would commence to speak proto-IndoEuropean or any language resembling an adult human language. All genetically determined traits depend for their appearance, to a greater or lesser degree, on features of the environment. The genes or genetic factors do not of themselves determine body parts or physiological or behavioral traits. Rather, they determine developmental processes, which normally succeed one another in a determinate way, but can be profoundly affected by environmental influence. These facts point to the possibility that genetically determined traits might appear only in the course of maturation, and then only in response to specific influences from outside the organism. Ethologists inform us of many instances of species-specific, genetically based behavior that emerge only in this way. An example is imprinting. Thomas More described it in his Utopia. Chicks or ducklings or goslings, a few hours or days after hatching, enter a critical period. Whatever object they first encounter during this period, within certain limits of size, and moving within appropriate limits of speed, they begin to follow, and continue to follow through childhood. The object followed can be, and usually is, the mother; but it can also be an ethologist like Konrad Korenz on his hands and knees, or something stuffed at the end of a stick. Failure to develop imprinted responses during infancy may cause behavioral abnormalities in the adult bird-abnormalities that cannot be corrected by later training. Imprinting is only one of many known species-specific characteristics or behaviors that appear in the course of development, in response to what are sometimes called "releasers", environ- mental stimuli of specified kinds. It will be my contention that important features of human linguistic capacity are of this kind. After discussing these two points, I shall conclude with certain reflections on what they might mean. I begin, then, with three features of human speech that do not appear to be found in the natural communication systems of animals (see Table II): l. Phonematization 2. Concatenation 3. Grammar What is meant by phonematization? The vocalizations heard in the human languages of the world are always within fairly narrow limits of the total range of sounds that humans can produce. We are able to imitate, for instance, found in the natural communication systems of animals, the vocalizations of mammals and birds with considerable but which are found universally in all known human languages, present or past. The existence of these features is, at the very least, consonant with the possibility that there is a genetic foundation underlying human speech. The accuracy, given a little training, but such direct imitations never seem to be incorporated in the vocabularies of hu- THE ST. JOHNS REVIEW man languages. In all human languages, the meaningful units, words, or more strictly speaking, morphemes, are di- 5 �visible into successive, shorter, meaningless sounds called phonemes. Morphemes are the smallest meaningful units into which an utterance can be divided. A morpheme can be a single word such as ' water"; it can be more than one word as in "spick and span"; and it can be less than a single word, as in the "er" in "whiter", which turns the adjective 1 "white" into a comparative. Phonemes are the meaning- less sounds into which morphemes can be divided. A pho· neme is not, strictly speaking, a single sound, but rather a small class of sounds; it can be defined as the smallest distinctive unit functioning within the sound system of alanguage to make a difference. Refinements aside, the central fact I wish to convey is this: in all languages, morphemes are constituted by sequences of phonemes. This is a fact that the inventors of the alphabet were probably about the first to come to understand. The fact could have been different. One can imagine a language in which the symbol for a cat was a sound resembling a miaow; in which size was represented by loudness, color by vowel quality, and hunger by a strident roar. Morphemes in such a language would not be analyzable into phonemes. All human languages are phonematized, but each language uses a somewhat different set of phonemes, in each case a small set. Parrots and mynah birds excel other animals in the imitation of human speech, but it is doubtful that they speak in phonemes. The matter could be put to a test. A parrot that had heard only Portuguese, and had acquired a good repertory of Portuguese words and phrases, could be transferred into an environment where he would hear only English, and have the opportunity of repeating English exclamatory remarks. If these remarks emerged with a Portuguese accent, then it would be clear that the parrot had learned Portuguese phonemes, which he proceeded to use in the vocalization of English words. In the opposite case, we would conclude that the parrot had the capacity to imitate sounds accurately, but had not acquired the habit of using phonemes for the production of speech. In the human child, speech by the same test would turn out to be phonematized. The second general characteristic of human speech I have listed is concatenation. Human utterances seldom consist of single morphemes in isolation; in no human speech-community are utterances restricted to single morphemes; in all languages, morphemes are ordinarily strung together into sequences. To be sure, the peoples of many, perhaps most cultures, are less garrulous than we; they use language only in certain circumstances and only somewhat sparingly, while we talk a good deal of the time. It is nevertheless true that humans in all speech-communities concatenate morphemes. The third property presupposes concatenation; it is the property of grammatical or syntactical structure. By "structure" I am going to mean a set of relations that can be diagrammed. In no language are morphemes strung to- 6 gether in purely random order. Native speakers of a language normally agree in rejecting certain utterances as ungrammatical, and in recognizing certain other utterances as grammatical. According to Noam Chomsky, for instance, the sentence "colorless green ideas sleep furiously" is grammatical, though meaningless or nearly so; the concatenation "furiously sleep ideas green colorless", the same words in reverse order, is ungrammatical. The one concatenation admits of a syntactical diagram, the other does not. It is generally assumed in linguistics that the grammar of a language is completely describable by means of a finite and in fact small set of formal rules. For no natural language has such a description been achieved as yet, otherwise one could program a computer to utter the grammatical sentences in the language. Apparently the mechanism involved in the grammar of a natural language is complex. I shall return to this topic again; the point now is just the universality of grammar-a relatively complex kind of system-as a feature of human languages. All three properties I have described are, so far as the available evidence indicates, without cultural histories. Phonematization, concatenation, grammatical structure, are features of all known human language, past or present. And although languages are always in process of change, it is not the case that these changes follow a general pattern from a stage that can be called primitive to one that can be called advanced. No known classification or analysis of human languages provides any basis for a theory of the development oflanguage from aphonemic, non-grammatical, or simple imitative beginnings. These facts are consonant with the hypothesis that there is a genetic foundation underlying human speech, forcing it to be of a certain basic type, and in particular, to have the features I have just described. In support of this hypothesis, I take up now the development of language in the child. The first sound a child makes is to cry. Immanuel Kant says the birth cry has not the tone of lamentation, but of indignation and of aroused wrath; presumably because [the child} wants to move, and feels his inability to do so as a fetter that deprives him of his freedom. More recently a psychoanalyst has written of the birthcry: It is an expression of the infant's overwhelming sense of inferiority on thus suddenly being confronted by reality, without ever having had to deal with its problems. In view of the anatomical immaturity of the human brain at birth, these adult interpretations are rather surprising. No doubt the infant in being born undergoes a rude shock. But crying is a mechanism with a number of important functions; one of the earliest is clearing fluid out of the SUMMER 1983 �middle ear, so that the child can begil) to hear. The mechanism is ready to operate at birth, and ,the infant puts it to work. The sound made in crying changes slightly during childhood, but otherwise does not mature or change during one's life. Crying is not a first step in the development that leads to articulate speech; it involves no articulation; the infant simply blows his horn without operating the keys. A quite distinct sort of vocalization begins at about the 6th or 8th week after birth: little cooing sounds that appear to be elicited by a specific stimulus, a nodding object resembling a face in the baby's visual field. A clown's face painted on cardboard, laughing or crying, will do for a while. The response is first smiling, then cooing. After about 13 weeks it is necessary that the face be a familiar one to elicit the smiling and cooing. During cooing, some articulatory organs are moving, in particular the tongue. The cooing sounds, although tending to be vowel-like, are not identical with any actual speech sounds. Gradually they become differentiated. At 6 months they include vocalic and consonantal components, like /p/ and /b/. Cooing develops into babbling resembling one-syllable utterances, for instance /rna/, /mu/, Ida/, /di/. However, the babbling sounds are still not those of adult speech. The first strictly linguistic feature to emerge in a child's vocalizations is contour of intonation. Before the sound sequences have determinable meaning or definite phonemic structure, they come out with the recognizable intonation of questions, exclamations, or affirmations. Linguistic de- velopment begins not with the putting together of individual components, but rather with a whole tonal pattern. Later, this whole becomes differentiated into component parts. Differentiation of phonemes is only approximate at first and has to be progressively refined. The child is gradually gaining control of the dozen or so adjustments in the vocal organs that are required for adult speech. By 12 months he is replicating syllables, as in "mamma" and "dada". By 18 months he will normally have a repertory of three to 50 recognizable words. I have described this development as though mothers were not trying to teach, but of course they normally are. It is nevertheless a striking fact that these stages emerge in different cultures in the same sequence and at very nearly the same ages, and in fairly strict correlation with other motor achievements. Detailed studies have been made of speech acquisition among the Zuni of New Mexico, the Dani of Dutch New Guinea, the Bororo in central Brazil, and children in urban U.S.A.; in all cases, intonation patterns become distinct at about the time that grasping between thumb and fingers develops; the first words appear at about the time that walking is accomplished; and by the time the child is able to jump, tiptoe, and walk backward, he is talking a blue streak. Among children born deaf, the development from cooing through spontaneous babbling to well-articulated speech-sounds occurs as with normal children, but of course the development cannot continue THE ST. JOHNS REVIEW onward into the stage at which adult words are learned through hearing. Among the mentally retarded, these developments are chronologically delayed, but take place with the same correlation between various motor achieve- ments. Given the variety of environmental conditions in these several cases, it seems plausible to attribute the emergence of linguistic habits largely to maturational changes within the growing child, rather than to particular training procedures. The specific neurophysiological correlates of speech are little known, but that there are such correlates and that they mature as speech develops is supported by much evidence. The human brain at birth has only 24% of its adult weight; by contrast, the chimpanzee starts life with a brain that already weighs 60% of its adult value. The human brain takes longer to mature, and more happens as it matures, including principally a large increase in the number of neuronal connections. A large part of the discernible anatomical maturation takes place in the first two years; the process appears to be complete by about 14 years of age. By this time the neurophysical basis of linguistic capacity has become localized in one of the two cerebral hemispheres, usually the left. If by this time a first language has not been learned, no language will ever be learned. Speech defects due to injuries to the brain that occur before the finallateralization of the speech-function are usually overcome; but if the injury comes after lateralization, the speech defect will be permanent. Capacity for speech does not correlate uniformly with size of brain. There is a condition known as nanocephalic dwarfism, in which humans appear reduced to fairy-tale size; adult individuals attain a maximum height of between two and three feet (see Table III). Nanocephalic dwarfs differ from other dwarfs in preserving the skeletal and other bodily proportions of normal adults. Brain weight in these dwarfs barely exceeds that of a normal newborn infant. The brain weight of the nanocephalic dwarf, given in the middle row, is only a little over a third of that of a 2 !12 year old boy, but the ratio of body weight to brain weight is equal to that of a 13 !12 year old boy. These dwarfs show some retardation in intellectual growth, and often do not surpass a mental age-level of 5 or 6 years. But all of them acquire the rudiments of language, including speaking and understanding; they speak grammatically, and can manufacture sentences which are not mere repetitions of sentences they have heard. The appropriate conclusion appears to be that the ability to acquire language depends, not on any purely quantitative factor, but on specific modes of organization of human neurophysiology. One further point concerning the neurophysiological basis of language. The main evidence here is provided by aphasias (aphasis = " + </Java<, not + to speak). These are failures in production or comprehension of language, re- sulting from injuries to the brain. And this evidence argues, for one thing, against regarding language ability as 7 �being encoded simply in a spatial layout of some kind, say a network of associations in the cerebral cortex. Subcortical areas are involved, as well as cortex. The aphasias most frequently involve, not disruption of associations, but rather disruption of temporal order, affecting either phonemes in the production of words~ as in spoonerisms, or words and phrases in the production of sentences. The patient is unable to control properly the temporal ordering of these units, and as a consequence they tumble into the production line uninhibited by higher syntactic principles. In general, the symptom is lack of availability of the right thing at the right time. Language is through-and-through an affair of temporal patterns and sequences. The neurophysiological organization required for this cannot be simply that of associations. In the making of speech-sounds, for instance, certain mus- cles have to contract, the efferent nerve fibers innervating these muscles are of different lengths and diameters, and as a consequence the times required for a nerve impulse to tion, in which elements connected with one another are separated temporally in the production line. Let me return now to the description of stages in the primary acquisition of language by a child. At about the end of the first year of life, the child normally utters his first unmistakable word. For a number of months, while the child is building up a repertory of about 50 words, he utters only single-word utterances. He frequently hears sentences like "Here is your milk", "Shall daddy take you by-by?", and so on, but he will neither join together any two words he knows nor can he be induced to do so on request. Does he lack the memory or the vocalizing power to produce a two-word utterance? The evidence is against these suppositions. Then, roughly between 18 and 24 months, he suddenly and spontaneously begins to join words into two-element phrases: "up baby", "baby highchair", "push car", and so on. What explains the shift? An important observation at the one-word stage is that these single words are given the intonations or pitch-con- go from brain to muscle differ for different muscles. Hence the nerve impulses for the production of a single phoneme must be fired off from the brain at different times, and the sequences of impulses for successive phonemes must overlap in complex ways. In the simplest sequential order of events, it thus appears that events are tours of declarative, interrogative, or hortatory sentences. The single-word utterances seem to function in meaning selected, not in response to immediately prior events, but single-word utterances, both "push" and "car" would have primary stresses and terminal- intonation contours. But in the same way as sentences will function later on: "Doggie" might mean, for instance, ~'There is a dog". When the two-word construction ''push car" appears, it is not just two single-word utterances spoken in a certain order. As in accordance with a hierarchic plan that integrates the requirements for periods of time of several seconds' duration. All this patterning in time is thought to depend on a physiological rhythm of about 6 cyles per second, in relation to which other events are timed. Arrangements of this complexity do not come about by learning. The evidence here, as well as the observations I have already described as to the way voice-sounds develop in children, points to the existence of an innate mechanism for the production of phonemes, one which is activated by a specific input, the appearance of the human face, and which matures in stages. Could anything similar be argued for competence in syntax, the ability to understand and produce grammatical sentences? Here you will undoubtedly be more doubtful, for surely the grammars of different languages are different. Please recall that the sets of phonemes used in different languages are also somewhat different. The universality of phonematization is compatible with different languages employing different subsets of the humanly possible phonemes. The claim for universality of grammar must be of similar kind. The grammars of human languages are not of just any imaginable kind of ordered concatenation of morphemes. Rather, they derive from a certain subclass of the gressive differentiation of the parts of utterances on the other. Imitation plays a role in this process, but it is seldom mere parroting. In Table IV I have listed some imitations actually produced by two children, whom I shall call Adam and Eve; both were about two years old. First note that the imitations preserve the word order of the model, even when not preserving all the words. This is not a logical necessity; it is conceivable that the child might reverse or scramble the order; that he does not suggests that he is processing the utterance as a whole. A second fact to notice is that, when the models increase in length, the child's imitation is a reduction, and that the imaginable orders, a subclass involving phrase structure and selection of words is not random. The words retained are what has been called "deep structure". The production of grammatical sentences turns out to pose requirements simi- generally nouns, verbs, and less often adjectives: words sometimes called "contentives", because they have se- lar to those necessary for the temporal ordering of pho- mantic content; their main grammatical function lies in nemes; a serial order in which one clement determines the next is insufficient; there has to be hierarchical organiza- their capacity to refer to things. The forms omitted are what linguists call "functors", their grammatical functions 8 when they are two words programmed as a single utterance, the primary stress and higher pitch come on "car"; and the unity of the whole is indicated by the absence of a terminal pitch contour between the words and the presence of such a contour at the end of the sequence. What appears to be happening is that the child is by stages increasing his span, his ability to plan or program longer utterances. Grammar is already present in embryo. Further development will be a process of successive increases in span or integration, on the one hand, and pro- SUMMER l983 �being more obvious than their semantic content. The omission of the functors leads to a kind of telegraphic language, such as one uses in wiring home: ('Car broken down; wallet stolen; send money American Express Baghdad". In the child's telegraphic utterances, how will the appropriate functors come to be introduced? While the child engages in imitating, with reductions, the utterances of the mother, the mother frequently imitates, with expansion, the utterances of the child (see Table V). The mother's expansions, you will note, preserve the word order of the child's sentences, she acts as if the child meant everything he said, and more, and it is the "more" that her additions articulate. She adds functors. The functors have meaning, but it is meaning that accrues to them in context rather than in isolation. The functors tell the time of the action, whether it is ongoing or completed; they inform us of possession, and of relations such as are indicated by prepositions like in, on, up, down; they distinguish between a particular instance of a class as in "the highchair", and an arbitrary instance of a class, as in "a sandwich"; and so on. How or to what extent these adult expansions of the child's utterances help the child to learn grammatical usage is uncertain. It has been found that immediate imitations by the child of just uttered adult sentences are less frequently well-formed than spontaneously produced utterances. The view that progress toward adult norms arises merely from practice in overt imitation of adult sentences is clearly wrong. The child rather appears to be elaborating his own grammar, making use of adult models, but constantly analogizing to produce new and often mistaken words or forms. Take pluralization (see Table VI). In English there are a few irregular plurals, as of mouse, foot, man. The child normally regularizes these plurals: mouses, foots, mans. Instead of foot vs. foots, some children give feet for the singular, feels for the plural. One does not get an initial fluctuation between foot and feet, such as one would expect if only imitation of adult forms were at work. Most English plurals are regular and follow certain formal rules. Thus we have mat vs. mats, but match vs. matches. Words ending in sibilants, such as match, horse, box, add a vowel before the s of the plural. Children have difficulty with pluralizing these words, and tend at first to use the singular form for both singular and plural. Sometimes a child will analogize in such a way as to remove the sibilant, substituting for instance, for box vs. boxes, the singular-plural pair bok vs. boks. Then at some point the child produces the regular plural of a sibilant word, say, boxes. Frequently when this happens he may abandon temporarily the regular plural for non-sibilant words, so that one gets foot vs. footses. What is happening? Overlaid on the child's systematic analogic forms, there is a gradual accumulation of successful imitations which do not fit the child's system. Eventually these result in a change in the system, often with errors due to over-generalizing. THE ST. JOHNS REVIEW Consider also the past tense inflection, which in English bears considerable similarity to the plural inflection (see Table VI again). There are regular forms like walk-walked, and irregular ones like go-went. Among the regular verbs, the form of the past depends on the final phoneme of the simple verb: so we have pack-packed and pat-patted. In the case of past-tense inflection in contrast with pluralization, however, the most frequently used forms are irregular, and the curious fact is that the child often starts regularizing these forms before having been heard to produce any other past-tense forms. Thus goed, doed, corned appear among the first past-tense forms produced. The analogizing tendency is evidently very strong. The occurrence of certain kinds of errors on the level of word construction thus reveals the child's effort to induce regularities from the speech he is exposed to. When a child says, "I buyed a fire car for a grillion dollars," he is not imitating in any strict sense of the term; he is constructing in accordance with rules, rules which, in adult English, are in part mistaken. At every stage, the child's linguistic competence extends beyond the sum total of the sentences he has heard. He is able to understand and construct sentences which he cannot have heard before, but which are well-formed in terms of general rules that are implicit in the sentences he has heard. Somehow, genius that he is, he induces from the speech to which he is exposed a latent structure of rules. For the rest of his life, he will be spinning out the implications of this latent structure. By way of illustration of this inductive process, and of a further stage in the achievement of grammatical competence, let me indicate some aspects of the development of the noun phrase in children's speech (see Table VII). A noun phrase consists of a noun plus modifiers of some kind, which together can be used in all the syntactic positions in which a single noun can be used: alone to name or request something, or in a sentence as subject, object, or predicate nominative. The table at the top gives a number of noun phrases uttered by Adam or Eve at about two years of age. Each noun phrase consists of one word from a small class of modifiers, M, followed by one word from the large class of nouns, N. The rule for generating these noun phrases is given below in symbols: NP is generated by M plus N. The class M does not correspond to any single syntactic class in adult English; it includes indefinite and definite articles, a possessive pronoun, a demonstrative adjective, a quantifier, a cardinal number, and some descriptive adjec- tives. In adult English these words are of different syntactic classes because they have very different privileges of occurrence in sentences. For the children, the words ap- pear to belong to a single class because of their common privilege of occurrence before nouns; the lack of distinction leads to ungrammatical combinations, which are marked in the table by an asterisk. Thus the indefinite article should be used only with a common count noun in the singular, as in ((a coat"; we do not say ('a celery", "a 9 �Becky", "a hands". The numeral two we use only with count nouns in the plural; hence we do not say "two sock". The word "more" we use before mass nouns in the singu~ lar, as in "more coffee", and before count nouns in the plural, as in "more nuts"; we would not say "more nut". To avoid the errors, it is necessary not only that the privileges of occurrence of words of the class M be differentiated, but also that nouns be subdivided into singular and plural, common and proper, count nouns and mass nouns. Sixteen weeks after Time I, at Time II, Adam and Eve were beginning to make some of these differentiations; articles and demonstrative pronouns were now distinguished from other members of the class M. Articles now always appeared before descriptive or possessive adjectives, and demonstrative pronouns before articles or other modifiers. Twenty-six weeks after Time I, the privileges of occurrence had become much more finely differentiated. Adam was distinguishing descriptive adjectives and possessive pronouns, as well as articles and demonstrative pronouns, from the residual class M; Eve's classification was even more complicated, though she was a bit younger. Also, nouns were being differentiated by both children: proper nouns were clearly distinct from common nouns; for Eve, count nouns were distinct from mass nouns. Simultaneously with these differentiations, further integrations were occurring: the noun phrases were beginning to occur as constituents in longer sentences; the permissible combinations of modifiers and nouns were assuming the combination privileges enjoyed by nouns in isolation. Thus the noun phrase, for Adam and Eve, was coming to have a psychological unity such as it has for adults. This was indicated by instances in which a noun phrase was fitted between parts of a separable verb, as in "put the red hat on". It was also indicated by substitution of pronouns for noun phrases in sentences, often at first with the pronoun being followed by the noun phrase for which it was to substitute, as in ((mommy get it my ladder", or ((I miss it cowboy boot". Whether any theory of learning at present known can account for this sequence of differentiations and integrations is doubtful. The process is more reminiscent of the development of an embryo than it is of the simple acquisition of conditioned reflexes or associations. What is achieved is an open-ended competence to comprehend sentences never before heard, in terms of a hierarchical structure, that embeds structures within structures. To illustrate, let me use, not a child's sentence, but an example that Chomsky excerpts from the Port Royal Grammar of 1660 (see Figure 2). The sentence is: "Invisible God created the visible world". The sentence may be diagrammed as shown in the figure; Chomsky calls these diagrams phrase markers. There is a phrase marker for what he calls surface structure; this has the function of determining the phonetic shape and intonational contour of the sentence. And there is a phrase marker for what he calls deep structure; this shows how prior predications are embedded in the sentence, and determine its meaning. 10 Are formal structures like the one indicated by this diagram really operative when linguistic competence is being exercised? There are a number of indications that this is so. One indication is the extent to which the understanding of language involves resolution of ambiguities, or disambiguation as it is sometimes massively put. Consider the sentence "They are boring students" (see Figure 3). This has two different interpretations, which are represented by the diagrams of Figure 3. In interpretation A, the word ((boring" is linked with the word ((students"; the students are thus characterized as boring. In interpretation B, the word "boring" is linked with the word "are", which thus becomes the auxiliary verb in the present progressive tense of the verb "to bore", it is the students who are being bored, by certain other persons designated by the pronoun "they", but otherwise mercifully unidentified. In an actual conversation, the context of meaning would have led us to apply, as quick as a thought or perhaps more quickly, the correct phrase marker to the interpretation of the sequence of uttered sounds. Other examples show how deep structures are essential to understanding (see Table VIII). Consider the two sentences: John is eager to please. John is easy to please. These sentences have the same surface structure. But a moment's thought shows that the word "john" has two very different roles to play in the two sentences. john in the first sentence is the person who is doing the pleasing; in the second sentence he is the person who is being pleased. John is the underlying subiect in the first case, and the underlying obiect in the second case. Deep structure or grammar is involved in understanding the difference in meaning of the two sentences. An opposite sort of case occurs when the surface grammars of two sentences are different, although the meaning is essentially the same. Consider this sentence in the active mode: "Recently seventeen elephants trampled on my summer home". Now consider the following sentence in the passive mode: "My summer home was trampled on recently by seventeen elephants." A native speaker of English feels that these sentences are related, that they have the same or very similar meanings. Yet their surface structures are very different. Recognition that both sentences are describing the same event presupposes that speaker and hearer refer them both to a single deep structure embodying the single meaning. Something similar happens in recognition of similarity between visual patterns, where there is no point-to-point correspondence between them. Now all of this is unlikely to seem astonishing, for it is very familiar. You and I, like the bourgeois gentilhomme, have been speaking and listening to more or less grammatical prose for a long time now. People living at the seashore are said to grow so accustomed to the murmur of the SUMMER 1983 �waves that they never hear it. Aspects of things that could be important to us may be hidden by their familiarity. The point I have been seeking to make is one that is due to Noam Chomsky, a linguist I have been depending on more than once this evening. The grammaticality of hu· man languages involves properties that are in no sense necessary properties of a system that would fulfill the func· of names automatically. Names, other than proper names, refer to open and flexible classes, which are subject to ex· tension and differentiation in the course of language us· age. Categorization and naming involve relations between categories; nothing ever resides in a single term; a means nothing without b and probably c and d; b means nothing without a and c and d. Children go about assimilating the tions of human communication. A grammar, for instance, relations that are embodied in language, not merely imita~ tively, but in an active, inventive, and critical way. They. in which statements would be generated word-by-word, from left to right, so to speak, so that any given morpheme would determine the possible classes of morphemes that might follow it, is a kind of grammar that might have been used, but was not. Instead, human speech involves dependencies between non-adjacent elements, as in the sentence "Anyone who says that is lying", where there is a dependency between the subject noun "anyone" and the predicate phrase ''is lying". All operations in human languages, transforming, for instance, an active into a passive sentence, or a declarative into an interrogative sentence, operate on and take account of phrase structure. Example: we form the interrogative of the English sentence, "Little Mary lived in Princeton", by introducing an auxiliary to the verb ("Little Mary did live in Princeton"), then inverting the order of the auxiliary and the noun-phrase which is the subject, to get "Did Little Mary live in Princeton?" It would be entirely possible to form interrogatives in a dif. ferent way independently of phrase structure. There is no a priori reason why human languages should make use ex· elusively of structure-dependent operations. It is Chomsky's conclusion that such reliance on structure-dependent operations must be predetermined for the language learner by a restrictive initial schematism of some sort, given genetically, and directing the child's attempts to acquire linguistic competence. Put differently, one does not so much teach a first language, as provide a thread along which linguistic competence develops of its own accord, by processes more like maturation than learning. The Chomskian analysis requires that we take one more step. The fact that deep structures figure in the understanding and use of language shows that grammar and meaning necessarily interpenetrate. The child's grammatical competence matures only along with semantic compe- tence, the organization of what can be talked about in nameable categories and hierarchies of categories. This process, like the development of grammatical compe· tence, involves successive differentiations. Sensory data are first grouped into as yet global classes of gross patterns, and then subsequently differentiated into more specific patterns. The infant who is given a word such as "daddy", and has the task of finding the category labelled by this word, does not start out with the working hypothesis that a specific, concrete object, say his father, uniquely bears this name. Rather, the word initially appears to be used as the label of a general and open category, corresponding to the. adult category of people or men. Infra-human animals are taught with difficulty, if at all, to make the generalizations involved in naming, whereas children fall in with the ways THE ST. JOHNS REVIEW are full of impossible questions: "How did the sky happen? How did the sun happen? Why is the moon so much like a lamp? Who makes bugs?" At first, they are ultra-literal in their reactions to idioms and metaphors. When grandmother said that winter was coming soon, the grandchildren laughed and wanted to know: "Do you mean that winter has legs?" And when a lady said ''I'm dying to hear that concert", the child's sar· castic response was, 11 Then why don't you die?" Some~ times reconciliation of adult requirements requires genius. Chukovsky reports that a four-year-old Muscovite, influenced both by an atheist father and by a grandmother of orthodox faith, was overheard to tell her playmate: "There is a god, but, of course, I do not believe in him." The active analogizing and generalizing of 4- and 5-year olds is dis· cernible in the odd questions they can put: "What is a knife-the fork's husband?" "Isn't it wonderful? I drink milk, water, tea, and cocoa, but out of me pours only tea." "What does blue look like from behind?" For a certain period, there is a special, heightened sensitiv~ ity to the strangeness of words and their meanings; by age 5 or 6 this talent begins to fade, and by 7 or 8 all traces of it have disappeared. The need has passed; the basic princi· pies of the child's native language have been mastered. What is it that has in fact been gained? We say, knowl· edge of a language. But what is a language, my language? Thoughtfully considered, this is a well-nigh impossible question, because a language is not a simple object, existing by itself and capable of being grasped in its totality. It exists in the linguistic competence of its users; it is what Aristotle would call an actuality of the second kind, like the soul, or like knowing how to swim when you are not swimming. Through it I constitute myself a first-person singular subject, by using this short word"!", which every· one uses, and which in each seems to refer to something different, yet the same. And through it I am brought into relation with others-the ubiquitous "you" -and with the public thing that is there for both you and me, a treasury of knowledge and value transmitted through and embedded in language. 11 �We hear language spoken of as "living language", and there is evidence enough to make' it more than a metaphor. Language reproduces itself from generation to generation, remaining relatively constant, yet with small mu- tations, enough in fact to account for its growing and evolving, leaving vestiges and fossils behind, and undergoing speciation as a result of migrations, like Darwin's finches on the Galapagos Islands. A change here provokes an adjustment there, for the whole is a complex of relations, mediating between a world and human organisms that are a part of it. The way a word is used this year is, in biological lingo, its phenotype; the deep and more abiding sense in it is its genotype. It is we, of course, who are accomplishing all this; but we do not know how we accomplish it. It is mostly a collective, autonomic kind of doing, like the building activities of ants and termites, or the decision-making of bees. It takes generation after generation, but we are part of it whenever and however we utter words or follow them in the sentences that we hear or read, whether lazily or intently, whether with habitual acceptance or active inquiry. Always the words are found for us, and fitted with meanings for us, by agents in the brain over which we exercise no direct control. We can either float with the stream, sometimes a muddy tide of slang and jargon and cliche, or strug- virile but, staggeringly, to world, suggesting that man makes himself and his world. The dichotomy, the tension, emerges in the The ban cycle of myths (see Table X). Following a suggestion of LeviStrauss, I am listing elements of it in chronological order from left to right and from the top downward, but in columns, to show the repetition of similar elements. Cadmus is sent off to seek his sister; he kills a dragon, a chthonic monster, that will not permit men to live, and sows the teeth of the dragon in the earth; from the teeth sprout up armed men who kill one another, all except five who become the ancestors of the The bans. In column I are listed events of the myth in which blood relations seem to be given too much importance. In column II are listed murders of brothers by brother, of a father by a son: here blood relations are brutally disregarded. Column I is thus opposed to column II. In column Ill, chthonic monsters that were killing off humans are themselves killed by men; we can interpret this as a denial of the autochthonous origin of man, an assertion that man has now become self- ering what it is that we mean as we proceed. We "articulate"; the word once meant division into small joints, then, by an effortless transition, the speaking of sentences. There are unexpected outcomes. We may find that our ut- sufficient, himself responsible for his continued existence. In column IV are listed the meanings of the names of the Labdacidae, including Oedipus; the etymologies all indicate difficulty in walking or in standing upright. In myths throughout the world, this difficulty in walking or standing is characteristic of the creature that has just emerged out of the earth; the names given in column IV thus constitute an assertion of the autochthonous origin of man. Column IV contradicts column III, just as column I contradicts column II. The myth deals with a difficulty of one sort, not by resolving it, but by juxtaposing it to another, parallel type of opposition. Neither man's rootedness in nature nor terance is ungrammatical or illogical; or we may discover his transcendence of nature is unproblematic. that the connection of ideas leads in directions we had not The study of language and its acquisition by children indicates that our language has genetic foundations or roots. These, however, have their fruition only under appropriate conditions, only through culture. Man is by nature a cultural animal. He does not fabricate his linguistic culture out of whole cloth. On the one hand, it becomes conceivable that a universal grammar and semantics might be formulated, describing the species-specific features and presuppositions that characterize human linguistic behavior universally. On the other hand, nature's gift of language brings with it an apparent freedom from deterministic necessity not previ- gle cross stream or upstream. Sometimes we can, sensing the possible presence of a meaning, attempt a raid on the inarticulate; we can launch ourselves into speech, discov- previously considered. In any case, phonetic, syntactical, and semantic structures are being actualized in time, with- out our quite knowing how. Yet we can strive after that lucidity and precision which, when achieved, make language seem transparent to what there is. I have already been carried beyond the two propositions I set out to defend, and in doing so, I have moved into a region of ambiguity. The question as to what is determined by nature, independently of us, and what is manmade, is an ancient and disturbing question, embedded in old etymologies and myths. (See Table IX). In more than one language, the word ''man" is derived from ''earth". So it is in Hebrew: Adam, Hman", comes from the word for "ground". As shown in the upper diagram, the IndoEuropean root for "earth" gives us ''man" and "human" as well as "humus". The notion here is that of the autochthonous origin of humans, their origination from the earth itself; it is a notion found in early cultures all over the world. An implication would seem to be that man is like a plant in his naturalness. On the other hand, as shown in the lower diagram, the IndoEuropean root "wiros", "man" or "the strong one", leads not only to 12 ously present. Most of our sentences are quite new; it is uncommon for one sentence to come out the same as an- other, though the thoughts be the same. Our utterances are free of the control of detectable stimuli. The number of patterns underlying the normal use of language, according to Chomsky, is orders of magnitude greater than the seconds in a lifetime, and so cannot have been acquired simply ··by conditioning. While the laws of generation of sentences remain fixed and invariant, the specific manner in which they are applied remains unspecified, open to choice. The application can be appropriate. Articulate, SUMMER 1983 �structurally organized signals can be raised to an expression of thought. Achievement here is subject to change and old laws, and it depends on a sensitivity to old meanings as well as new ' possibilities. It requires both strength and submission. ./" /'" /1 Tidal volume Time of inspiration Time of inspiration + expiration 500-600cm 3 about 0.4 During Speech !500-2400cm 3 about 0.13 Breaths per minute 18-20 4-20 Expiration Continuous & unimpeded Periodically interrupted, with increase in subglottal pressure Electrical activity in expiratory muscles Nil or very low Chest & abdom- Mainly chest; slight desynina!, closely syn- chronization between chest chronized and abdominal muscles Airways Primarily nasal -.. --. \ 'J I \ ( ' I "\ / '-J/ ?- I f I \ \ ' I I ) I \ ' " ..... ./ Active in inspira- Active in inspiration & in extion & nil during piration till expiratory muscles expiration become active Musculatures in· valved -- J', "\""- I I / -~- Nil or very low at start of phonation; then increases rapidly and continues active to end of expiration Electrical activity in inspiratory muscles / ) I Breathing /' "\ I I ( Respiratory Adaptation in Speech Quietly "'- ,. - TABLE I - Primarily oral TAIL-WAGGING DANCE TABLE II Species-specific Features of Human Speech 1. Phonematization ''Morphemes": the smallest meaningful units into which an utterance can be divided. Examples: water spick and span "er" in "whiter", "taller", etc. ''Phoneme": the smallest distinctive unit of sound functioning within the sound system of a language to make a difference. Examples: /pi vs. /b/ /t/ vs. /d/ FIGURE 1 I / Phonematization: all morphemes in all natural human languages are divisible into phonemes. 2. Concatenation: \ single morphemes are strung together into sequences, rather than being used in isolation. 3. Grammar or in no human language are morphemes strung together in purely random order. Examples (Chomsky): Grammatical: "colorless green ideas sleep furiously" Ungrammatical: "furiously sleep ideas green colorless" Syntactical Structure: ROUND DANCE THE ST. JOHNS REVIEW 13 �TABLE III TABLEV Comparative Weights of Brain and Body in Humans, Including Nanocephalic Dwarf, Chimpanzees, and Monkeys Adult Expansions of Child Pronouncements Age BodyWt. Brain Wt. (kg) (kg) Human (male) Human (male) Human (male) Nanocephalic dwarf 2·112 IJ.)/2 18 12 J3.1/2 45 64 13·112 3 adult 12-l/2 47 3-l/2 12.3 34 47 34 yes yes yes yes 34 no no no 1.100 1.350 1.350 0.400 Chimp (male) Chimp (female) Rhesus monkey Speech Acquisition 0.400 0.450 0.090 adult 104 40 Mother's Expansions (Additions circled) Baby highchair Ratio (Body: Brain) Utterances of Child Baby(is in thCihighchair Mommy eggnog Mommy~eggnog Eve lunch Eve )is havingjlunch Mommy sandwich Mommy\'ll have :1\sandwich ~satlun thdwall Sat wall Throw Daddy Throwlit toiDaddy Pick glove Pick~glove@ji] TABLE IV TABLE VI Imitations by Adam and Eve, Two Years of Age Plural Inflection Model Utterance (Parent) Child's Imitation Tank car Wait a minute Tank car Wait a minute Daddy's brief case Fraser will be unhappy He's going out That's an old-time train It's not the same dog as Pepper No, you can't write on Mr. Cromer's shoe Daddy brief case Fraser unhappy He go out Old-time train Dog Pepper Singular mouse foot vs. Plural mouses foots or: feet man feets mans Write Cromer shoe Contentives Nouns: Daddy, Fraser, Pepper, Cromer; tank car, minute, brief case, train, dog, shoe Verbs: wait, go, write Adjectives: unhappy, old-time Functors: the the the the the the the Regularization of irregular forms: possessive inflection 's modal auxiliary will progressive inflection -ing contraction of the auxiliary verb is preposition on articles the and an modal auxi1iary can Words ending in sibilants First Stage: Possible Second Stage: Third Stage: box (as well as horse, match, judge, etc.) treated as both singular and plural bok vs. boks, in analogy with normal "s" pluralization, replaces box vs. boxes after box vs. boxes is produced, then we also get foot vs.footses, hand vs. handses Past Tense Inflection -------------corned ----------gocd go come----------------------went came ----------doed do........______ ........______did 14 ---------- buyed buy ------------bought SUMMER 1983 �TABLE VII TIME I: FIGURE 2 Noun Phrases with Generative Rule A coat *A celery That Adam That knee More coffee *More nut *Two sock Two shoes *Two tinker toy *A Becky *A hands The top My Mommy My stool Chomskian Phrase Markers Big boot Poor man SURFACE STRUCTURE Little top Dirty knee Sentence (S) ~ 1\ Subject Predicate (NAse) M a, big, dirty, little, more, my, poor, that, the, two Adjective Noun j j Invisible N Adam, Becky, boot, coat, coffee, knee, man, Mommy, nut, sock, God stool, tinker toy, top, etc. TIME II: Subdivision of Modifier class with Generative Rules A. Privileges peculiar to articles Obtained A blue flower *A my pencil Rule: NP-+Art +M +N (Not: NP~M Obtained Not Obtained *That a horse *That a blue flower *Ungrammatical in adult English +N the visible world Sentence (S) ~ Predicate Subject ~ God ~ S Verb Subject Object I~ I Created j j j God is the world invisible S ~ Copula Pred. Adj. Subject j the world Pred. Adj. Copula *A that horse *A that blue flower *Blue a that flower Rule: NP- Dem +Art+ M j created +art+ N) B. Privileges peculiar to demonstrative pronouns Object DEEP STRUCTURE Not obtained *Blue a flower *Nice a nap *Your a car *My a pencil A nice cap *A your car Verb / j is j visible FIGURE 3 "They are boring Students": Two Interpretations INTERPRETATION A Sentence ~ Predicate Subject I V~~tive Pronoun j They Copula j are Adjective j boring Noun j students INTERPRETATION B Sentence ~ Subject I Predicate ~ect~ Pronoun Aux I I They THE ST. JOHNS REVIEW are Progressive I boring Noun \ students 15 �TABLE VIII TABLE IX Evidence for "Deep" Structure Some Etymologies guman deep structure different: Surface structures different, deep structures the same: {Germanic) John is eager to please. Surface structures the same, [ John is easy to please. Recently seventeen elephants trampled on my summer house. dhghem -------~~--- gumen (IndoEuropean) (Old English) = "earth" ] ="man" homo, humanitas-- human (Latin) (English) My summer home was recently [ trampled on by seventeen elephants. · humus humus (Latin) (English) = "mould", "ground" Visual patterns recognized as similar, although no point-to-point correspondence exists between them. chth6n -----chthonic----autochthonous (Greek) (English) = "from the earth = ''earth" = "of the earth" itself" v i r - - - - - - - - virile (Latin) (English) . ~="man" WITOS~ (IndoEuropean) "man" ~ ~;rmanic, Old ~!n?.~~~", ~ "the strong one" alt,old~ weorold world (AngloSaxon) (English) = "age of man", "world" (AngloSaxon) = "age" 16 SUMMER 1983 �TABLE X II BIBLIOGRAPHY III Blood rela- Blood rela- Chthonic tions overemphasized tions underemphasized monsters that would not permit men to live are slain by men IV Difficulties in walking straight and standing up- right Cadmus seeks his sister Europa, rav- ished by Zeus Cadmus kills the dragon The Sparti (the sown dragon's teeth) kill one another Labdacus (Laius' father) ="lame" Oedipus kills his Laius (Oedipus' father) ~ "left- father, Laius sided" Oedipus kills the Sphinx Oedipus = "swollen-foot" Oedipus marries his mother, Jocasta Eteocles and Polyneices, brothers, kill one another Antigone buries (In the preparation of this lecture I made use of the following books: the book by E. H. Lenneberg, as well as the book edited by him, was particularly useful.) Emile Benveniste, Problems in General Linguistics, Coral Gables, Fla.: University of Miami Press, 1971. Noam Chomsky, Aspects of the Theory of Syntax, Cambridge, Mass.: M.LT. Press, 1965. ___, Cartesian Linguistics, New York: Harper & Row, 1966. ___ ,Language and Mind, New York: Harcourt, Brace, and World, 1968. David Crystal, Linguistics, Penguin, 1971. Karl von Frisch, The Dance Language and Orientation of Bees, Cambridge, Mass.: Belknap Press of Harvard, 1967. Kurt Goldstein, Language and Language Disturbances, New York, 1948. E. H. Lenneberg, The Biological Foundations for Language, New York: John Wiley & Sons, 1967. E. H. Lenneberg (ed.), New Directions in the Study of Language, Cambridge, Mass.: M.LT. Press, 1966. Martin Lindauer, Communication Among Social Bees, New Yark: Atheneum, 1967. john Lyons, Noam Chomsky, New Yark: Viking Press, 1970. Ferdinand de Saussure, Course in General Linguistics, ed. Bally & Sechehaye; tr. Baskin; New York, 1959. B. F. Skinner, Verbal Behavior, New York: AppletonCentury-Crofts, 1957. her brother, Polyneices, de- spite prohibition Column I : Column II : : Column IV : Column III THE ST. JOHNS REVIEW 17 �SOLSTICE ON THE FIRST WATCH There is no magic. What we perceive as lightning wending its electric way along the surface of the skin is only the silent, whispered dance of chemicals and electric fields that move like ocean waves through us in our private sea. Then those lights in the sky, translucent curtains of fire ice-green and red, resolve themselves when we focus as abstractions of the abstract impulse of nerve on nerve in mindless dark. Yet these movements sometimes overwhelm our doubts with a heat, shimmering in the way that light walks on the surface of water like the original solstice did, When the doubting soldiers saw something move with the dim hours of the first watch along the edge of the sea, then out on it, a figure of a singular man walking, the image Of water touching the feet. Rumours floated lightly on the tongue and words took root that something happened. What they held as true was true, But the nets of words cast along some shore of meaning circumscribed, And the road from there leading into the endless stars and the mountains cast us into a land not quite our own. J. H. BEALL James H. Beall is a tutor at St. John's College, Annapolis, Md. 18 SUMMER 1983 �The Ground of Nature: Shakespeare, Language, and Politics Paul A. Cantor I In recent years, several critics, myself included, have been 'trying to call attention to the importance of politics as a subject in Shakespeare's plays. 1 This attempt to expand the scope of Shakespeare criticism has met with considerable resistance, Sceptics have argued that Shakespeare was not at all interested in politics, he was interested only in character or psychology, or in presenting certain religious beliefs, or in developing a tragic worldview, and so on, Generally the counterarguments have taken the form: "Shakespeare was not interested in politics, he was interested in X," where X is some subject thought of as excluding political concerns. But most recently a new challenge to a political approach to Shakespeare has begun to loom on the horizon. Instead of offering an alternative subject as the focus of Shakespeare's interest, this approach denies that his plays are about anything at all, that is, about anything other than themselves. Remaking Shakespeare on the model of twentieth-century literature, this approach views his works as fundamentally self-reflexive, not attempting to represent anything in the real world but instead calling attention to their own fictiveness as works of art. According to this view, any attempt to study politics as a subject in Shakespeare would be hopelessly naive, based as it is on an antiquated and outmoded mimetic theory of art. I am referring of course to the most fashionable of current schools of literary criticism, deconstruction. OrigiPaul Cantor is a member of the English faculty at the University of Virginia. His new book, Creature and Creator: Myth-making and English Romanticism, will be published by Cambridge University Press in March 1984. THE ST. JOHNS REVIEW nally applied primarily to nineteenth- and twentiethcentury literature, this form of analysis is gradually being extended to the interpretation of all historical periods, including the Renaissance, According to this view, Shakespeare's plays are written in language, and language is a self-contained system, an endless play of signifiers, Hence if Shakespeare's plays are about anything, they are about language itself. As J- Hillis Miller writes of literature in general: If meaning in language rises not from the reference of signs to something outside words but from differential relations among words themselves, ... then the notion of a literary text which is validated by its one-to-one correspondence to some social, historical, or psychological reality can no longer be taken for granted. No language is purely mimetic or referential, not even the most utilitarian speech. The specifically literary form oflanguage, however, may be defined as a structure of words which in one way or another calls attention to this fact, while at the same time allowing for its own inevitable misreading as a "mirroring of reality." 2 From the point of view of deconstruction, then, a political reading of Shakespeare can only be a misreading. The plays have no political meaning; indeed they have no determinate meaning at alL All the details that might cause us to wonder-inconsistencies, contradictions, seeming errors that call out for analysis to uncover some deeper significance-all these puzzling aspects of the plays merely work to keep us from coming up with a coherent and univocal interpretation and thereby to preserve the work's indeterminacy of meaning. Miller, for example, has written an elaborate analysis of what most scholars have been content to dismiss as a printer's error in Shakespeare's Troilus and Cressida: the 19 �appearance of the name Ariachne in one of Troilus' speeches, which seems to be a conflation of two names from Greek mythology, Ariadne and Arachne. The intrusive i provokes Miller into a frenzied fantasia of epistemological speculation: Slip of the tongue or of the pen? Ignorance on Shakespeare's part? Error of the scribe or of the typesetter who has put in one letter too many? The extra i ... produce[s} a gap in the meaning and call[s] attention to the material base of signs, marks on the page which the eye interprets . ... The little i in "Ariachnes" has the effect of a bit of sand in a salad or of a random sound in a symphony, the flautist dropping his flute, the snap of a breaking violin string. . . . The conflation in "Ariachnes" of two myths which are and are not congruent is precisely in agreement with what happens in Troilus' speech, namely, an anguished confrontation with the subversive possibility of dialogue, reason divided hopelessly against itself . ... The principle of identity is the basic assumption of monological metaphysics . ... The "whole shebang" of Occidental metaphysics is, the reader can see, brought into question in Troilus' experience and in his speech. 3 By the time Miller has finished deconstructing, the unity of Shakespeare himself has disintegrated: One ofthe certainties which dissolves with the undecidability of context ... is the concept of authorizing authorship, or indeed of selfhood generally in the sense of an ultimate generative source for any act of language. There is not any "Shakespeare himself." "Shakespeare" is an effect of the text, which depersonalizes, disunifies . ... The works of Shakespeare are so comprehensive and so profound an exploration of the possibilities inherent in the English language as it inherits the concepts, figures, and stories of Occidental culture, that it seems they must have been written by a committee of geniuses.4 Faced with the dissolution of Shakespeare himself, we can hardly find time to mourn the loss of the mere meaning of his plays. One hopes that Miller is being playful in this particular essay, turning in a virtuoso performance as he makes an epistemological mountain out of a textual molehill. But however playful the deconstructive approach to Shakespeare may be, it will have serious and lasting consequences if it succeeds in diverting us from the genuinely challenging task of thinking through the authentic problems in Shakespeare's texts. We have not yet been flooded with articles and books deconstructing Shakespeare, but one senses that it is only a matter of time. To try to ward off the damage that might be done we might consider whether Shakespeare himself offers any thoughts on the nature of language, thoughts which might well prove to be a better guide to his plays than those of contemporary critics. Unfortunately, we have no theoretical writings of Shakespeare to which we might refer to establish his own view oflanguage or ofliterary meaning. When one turns to the plays for a clue, one finds statements of precisely the 20 mimetic theory of art which contemporary critics despise. Consider, for example, Hamlet's famous advice to the players: Suit the action to the word, the word to the action, with this special observance, that you o'erstep not the modesty of na· ture: for any thing so o'erdone is from the purpose of playing, whose end, both at the first and now, was and is, to hold as 'twere the mirror up to nature: to show virtue her feature, scorn her own image, and the very age and body of the time his form and pressure. 5 Hamlet's invocation of nature as a standard, his naive faith that theatre has a purpose, his conventional use of the mirror metaphor for art, above all his idea that art must serve a moral function, all of these attitudes would suggest to con· temporary critics that Hamlet should have dropped out of school at Wittenberg and headed off immediately with Laertes to study in Paris. But we can never simply identify Shakespeare with any of his characters, and thus even if Hamlet may be an unreconstructed realist, we can say nothing about the epistemology of his author. Does language itself ever become thematic in Shakespeare? Normally his language seems transparent: we look through the characters' words to what they are talking about. But is there any place in which Shakespeare's language calls attention to itself, not as all great poetic language does through its beauty, but simply as language as such? For language itself to become an object of our attention, it must get in our way, we must stumble over it on our way to the things it normally represents. I will argue that the most self-conscious use of language in Shakespeare is to be found in one of his most political plays, Henry V. What I have in mind is Act Ill, scene iv, of this play, the central scene of its central act, a conversation between the French princess Katherine and an old gentlewoman named Alice. In one of the most peculiar scenes in all of Shakespeare, we suddenly bump into the brute fact oflanguage. The scene is almost entirely in French. As such, it violates one of the most basic linguistic conventions of drama. When portraying foreigners on stage, dramatists take the liberty of having them speak, not their native language, but the language of the play's audience. There are, of course, variations of this convention. Sometimes more or less awkward devices are used to supply translations. But basically, even in today's science fiction films, Americans can timewarp to distant galaxies and still find twoheaded green insects speaking fluent twentieth-century English. Even within Henry V, Shakespeare normally follows this convention of having aliens speak our language. Act Ill, scene vii, takes place entirely among Frenchmen and yet the conversation is conducted solely in flawless English. We are in fact so accustomed to this dramatic convention that we are hardly aware of its oddness. If there is any scene in all of Shakespeare which calls attention to the artificiality of dramatic representation, it is, then, Act Ill, scene iv, of Henry V. By violating one of SUMMER 1983 �the basic conventions of drama, it reminds us of how conventional drama is. Suddenly shopked by hearing the French people we see on stage actually speakmg French, we ought to reflect on how all our lives we have unthinkingly accepted foreigners speaking English in the theatre. If that is not enough to qualify as a self-conscious use of language, this scene is itself a little language lesson. Katherine is trying to learn English from Alice, who has been in England and can instruct the French princess in a vocabulary she may soon need to know. In fact, this is the only reason Shakespeare can get away with presenting an entire scene in French. Katherine keeps pointing to vari~ ous parts of her body and asking Alice what they are called in English. It should take an audience only a few moments to catch on to what is transpiring, and indeed this scene plays quite well in the theatre_ The basic trick is fairly obvious and the fact that Alice does manage to get out the names for the various body parts in her broken English ensures that even the densest audience will not get lost. Still, it is worth noting that in the one scene in which Shakespeare most clearly calls attention to language as such, he specifically calls attention to its referential aspect. Act III, scene iv, works only because language is not a selfcontained system, but makes reference to an external world. The naively mimetic act of pointing is at the center of this scene. Shakespeare even seems to dwell on the one quality of language most disputed by contemporary theorists: its translatibility. His characters make an easy transition from French to English because both languages refer to the same world of nature. The entire language lesson revolves around something quite ordinary and natural: the parts of the human body. The point seems to be that the body provides a natural common ground for human understanding. All human beings have basically the same bodies: thus on the level of the body they can discourse with one another smoothly, even moving from one set of conventional names to another without misunderstandmg. But Katherine's English lesson does not come off completely without a hitch. When she goes to learn the English word chin, she mispronounces it sin, and when she hears Alice say the English words foot and gown, she mistakes them for two indecent words in French, in fact the French equivalents of the two prime four-letter words in English. Shakespeare evidently has no illusions about the complete translatability of one language into another. When one moves beyond the basic level of the body to moral significances, things very quickly become more complicated. Chin becomes sin: what is perfectly ordinary and natural in one language can become distorted into something objectionable in another. One language's propriety can become another language's profanity, as happens with Katherine's misunderstanding of the word gown. Here what does the covering in English becomes in French what is supposed to be covered up. The seen becomes the obscene. THE ST. JOHNS REVIEW II If my reading is correct, one may still wonder: what is a scene about language doing in the middle of one of Shakespeare's history plays? Henry Vis a play about a great English monarch who tried to conquer France- With Act III, scene iv, Shakespeare subtly suggests that the problem of conquering France is ultimately a problem of language. Henry wishes to unite the English and the French nations, but considering the fact that they do not speak the same language, that is not going to be an easy task_ On a very low level-the level of the body-English and French do translate easily into each other. That suggests that the English and the French could be united only on the basis of the material concerns which all human beings share, the concerns they all have by virtue of having the same bodies. In Act III, scene iv, Katherine terminates her language lesson by saying (in French): "That's enough for one time; let's go to dinner" (III.iv-61-62)- She turns quickly from the strain of her intellectual pursuits to an activity which can satisfy her body's needs rather than her mind's. As we see, when Katherine tries to learn another language, her enquiries center around the body and its basic needs: food, clothing, sex. Languages translate easily into one another only when they remain on the level of the lowest common denominator of human needs. When Katherine moves beyond purely material concerns, and touches upon issues like the profanity of language, blunders start to creep into her translations. Human beings evidently are not as easily united in their spiritual concerns as they are in their material. Thus Act III, scene iv, portrays comically a very serious problem facing Henry V_ In many respects, all men do categorize the world the same way, and the different names they attach to things do not lead to misunderstandings_ But when men divide the world into categories which embody evaluations, such as the decent and the indecent or the sacred and the profane, they often differ fundamentally as to where they draw the line. When Ancient Pistol has a French soldier at his mercy, the frightened man calls upon his deity: "0 Seigneur Dieu!" But Pistol thinks that his opponent has merely introduced himself: "0 Signieur Dew should be a gentleman" (IV_iv.6-7)_ Pistol unintentionally secularizes the French Dieu into the English Dew_ Once again, this seems to be merely a comic error, but it does point to a deeper problem: the French and English worship different gods. To be sure, on the surface they share a common Christianity, but Shakespeare has gone out of his way to differentiate the two regimes, even in terms of their beliefs. The god of Henry V turns out to be a "God of battles" (IV.i.289), providing him with the basis for leading his citizen army into war. Judging by Act III, scene vii, what the French worship is their horses and their mistresses, and in precisely that order (IILvii.39-44). The French in Henry V put their faith in chivalry, which helps to explain why they are defeated by the more practi- 21 �cal and down-to-earth English. The misunderstandings which occur when the French and English try to speak to each other in Henry V are not merely the result of ignorance of each others' languages, for their languages embody basic disagreements in their values and beliefs. These disagreements may well be what makes one people distinct from another, what gives them their national character, and as such they are political disagreements. To unite the French and the English, Henry V would thus have to disregard everything that makes the French French and the English English, in short everything that makes either nation interesting as a people. When Shakespeare finally shows Henry trying to unite the two kingdoms in Act V, he presents the task concretely as a problem of language. Henry must woo Katherine to be his queen, and that requires learning her language: "It is as easy for me, Kate, to conquer the kingdom as to speak so much more French. I shall never move thee in French, unless it be to laugh at me" (V.ii.l84-87). The dialogue between the English king and the French princess does take many comic turns because of the potential for misunderstanding as they grope for a linguistic common ground: K. Hen. Fair Katherine, and most fair, Will you vouchsafe to teach a soldier terms, Such as will enter at a lady's ear, And plead his love-suit to her gentle heart? Kath. Your Majesty shall mock at me, I cannot speak your England. K. Hen. 0 fair Katherine, if you will love me soundly with your French heart, I will be glad to hear you confess it brokenly with your English tongue. Do you like me, Kate? Kath. Pardonnez-moi, I cannot tell wat is "like me." K. Hen. An angel is like you, Kate, and you are like an angel. [V.ii.98-ll0] The result of this effort to span the two nations is a kind of pidgin English and a pidgin French. Two of the richest and most complex of languages must be radically reduced and simplified for communication to take place between Henry and Katherine. It is certainly unusual for Shakespeare to present a romantic dialogue between a king and a future queen entirely in prose. And yet Shakespeare evidently realized that it is precisely the poetry of love that would not survive the effort to move between two languages. Henry is a very prosaic suitor: Henry is obviously no Romeo, and in wooing his Juliet his linguistic resources seem meager indeed. And his love suit ultimately elicits a kind of bastardized blend of English and French: K. Hen. Come, your answer in broken music; for thy voice is music and thy English is broken; therefore, queen of all, Katherine, break thy mind to me in broken English-wilt thou have me? Kath. Dat is as it shall please de roi mon pere. [V.ii.243-47] We see here in linguistic terms the futility of Henry's effort to bring France and England together. Henry is overreaching himself. He hopes for some kind of grand synthesis of England and France that will enable his dynasty to conquer the world: Shall not thou and I, between Saint Denis and Saint George, compound a boy, half French, half English, that shall go to Constantinople and take the Turk by the beard? [V.ii.206-209] But the practical result of Henry's efforts would be a bland mixture of French and English characteristics, reduced to the lowest common denominator and hence losing sight of all the higher ideals of either nation. Even if Henry's early death had not destroyed his hopes, Shakespeare suggests that there was a basic flaw in Henry's plan for producing a superkingdom out of two linguistically distinct nations. Henry's experience in his own country should have taught him the difficulties of spanning a linguistic gulf. One measure of Henry's legitimate achievement is that Shakespeare presents him as the king, not just of England, but of Great Britain. One of the keys to his military success is that he is able to lead not just Englishmen against the French, but Irish, Welsh, and Scottish troops as well, soldiers from remote corners of his realm who seem to have an almost pagan fierceness that gives the British army its strength in battle. But the mixture of men Henry leads is not wholly harmonious. They do not always speak the same language, or at least they do not always speak it with the same accent. This often leads to tension among the troops. In Henry IV, Part One, Shakespeare suggests the potential for disharmony among the nationalities that go to make up Great Britain, and presents the problem in terms of language. The rebel conspiracy almost falls apart as the Englishman Hotspur and theW elshman Glen dower question each other's linguistic competence: I' faith, Kate, my wooing is fit for thy understanding. I am glad thou canst speak no better English, for if thou couldst, thou wouldst find me such a plain king that thou wouldst think I had sold my farm to buy my crown. I know no ways to mince it in love, but directly to say "I love you" . ... Marry, if you would put me to verses ... Kate, why you undid me . ... I speak to thee plain soldier. If thou canst love me for this, take me! if not, to say to thee that I shall die, is true; but for thy love, by the Lord, no; yet I love thee too. [V.ii.l22-27, 132-33, 149-52] 22 Hot. Let me understand you then, Speak it in Welsh. Glend. I can speak English, lord, as well as you, For I was train'd up in the English court, Where being but young I framed to the harp Many an English ditty lovely well, And gave the tongue a helpful ornament, A virtue that was never seen in you. [Ill.i.ll7-l24] SUMMER 1983 �As Glendower shows, the non-English members of the British nation are very sensitive to the charge that they do not know the English language, and feel constrained to point out that they can in fact use it better than a native speaker. The same issue comes up in Henry V, in a scene in which an Irishman, a Welshman, and a Scotsman quarrel over the conduct of the wars in France. The Irishman will not abide any ethnic slurs from a Welshman: Fluellen. Captain Macmorris, I think, look you, under your correction, there is not many of your nationMacmorris. Of my nation? What ish my nation? Ish a villain, and a basterd, and a knave, and a rascal. What ish my nation? Who talks of my nation? [III.ii.l20-24] One of the political lessons of Henry V is that all the nationalities that go to make up Great Britain must learn to put aside their linguistic differences and to recognize their common interest. This is certainly the point of the humiliation of the Englishman, Ancient Pistol, at the hands of the Welshman, Fluellen: You thoUght, because he could not speak English in the native garb, he could not therefore handle an English cudgel. You find it otherwise, and henceforth let a Welsh correction teach you a good English condition. [V.i.75-79] Henry encourages this kind of linguistic peace among his subjects. One aspect of his genius as a monarch is the way he generally understands the connection between language and politics. He has made sure that he can speak the language of all his people, and this ability stands him in good stead when he needs to lead them in wartime. He can deal with his troops on a man-to-man basis: For forth he goes, and visits all his host, Bids them good morrow with a modest smile, And calls them brothers, friends, and countrymen. [IY.Cho.32-34] Even as Prince Hal, Henry understood the importance of language to a king. One of the reasons he offers for his truancy from court is his desire to get out among his people and learn how they speak: I have sounded the very base-string of humility. Sirrah, I am sworn brother to a leash of drawers, and can call them all by their christen names, as Tom, Dick, and Francis . ... They call drinking deep, dyeing scarlet, and when you breathe in your watering, they cry "hem!" and bid you play it off. To conclude, I am so good a proficient in one quarter of an hour, that I can drink with any tinker in his own language during my life. [II.iv.5-8, 15-20] It may seem strange to hear a future king priding himself on his knowledge of London slang. But Hal puts this THE ST. JOHNS REVIEW knowledge to good use once he becomes Henry V. He might not have overestimated his ability to absorb France into his kingdom if he had realized the implications of the fact that he lacks such familiarity with the slang of the Paris underworld. Henry has a difficult enough time making one nation out of people who speak the same language with different accents. But to create one nation out of men who do not even speak the same language is beyond even Henry's political skill. III At first sight, Henry V seems to deal exclusively with political and military subject matter. But as we have seen, language as a theme is surprisingly pervasive in the play. The reason of course is that language itself turns out to be a political theme. As Shakespeare shows in Act III, scene iv, though language provides a natural common ground for human beings, it also tends to reflect the conventional differences which separate them, differences rooted in the different regimes under which they Jive and hence political differences. Language thus becomes a political problem, and any effective leader like Henry V must learn to use language as a political tool. Falstaff's great contribution to Henry's education is to teach him the art of rhetoric, how to bend language to achieve a desired effect. Henry V opens with the English court using all their linguistic skill to fabricate a pretext for invading France. By an artful interpretation of the French Salic law, the English establish Henry's claim to the French throne. Still, language is not totally pliant, even in the hands of a master rhetorician such as Henry V. Thus ultimately language sets limits to politics, or at least one may say that a political man can ignore linguistic problems only at the peril of his political achievement. If one asks why of all Shakespeare's plays, Henry V displays the greatest self-consciousness about language, the answer seems to be that only in an environment of competing languages does one begin to notice the importance oflanguage as such. With the clash of English and French, or even the rivalry of various dialects of English within the British nation, one starts to grasp the distinction between nature and convention in language. As Act III, scene iv, suggests, there could be no communication among human beings if language were not somehow rooted in the world of nature. Reference to the substratum of nature is what makes possible translation from one language to another. But free and perfect translation is not always possible, because language is not simply natural to man, the way animal cries are innate and species-specific. Men have to create their languages for themselves, and in the process end up introducing conventional distinctions into their language systems. Unlike other beings we know, humans use their languages to dispute; their languages convey not just information and emotion, but opinion. Shakespeare seems to set up Act Ill, scene iv, to move between the natural 23 �and conventional poles. of language. We travel from the simplest act of naming things in nature to the complex cultural reaction of shame and indignation. As we see, m a given language, the name for a perfectly natural bodily function or organ can in fact become an obscenity. Perhaps more than any other, the category of the obscene reveals what is distinctive about human language, because it shows the link between language and social mores. Good language can become a matter of good manners. Princess Katherine's reaction tu what she hears as the prime curse words of her language shows her to be a proper and well-bred child of her culture: "0 Lord, those are bad words,, wicked, coarse, and immodest, and not proper for ladies of honor to use. I wouldn't utter those words before French gentlemen for all the world" (IJJ.iv.52-56). For Katherine, the words are unacceptable in French society, but English society is evidently another matter and she goes on to repeat them as she reviews her whole lesson. She derives her sense of linguistic propriety from her own regime, and., strangely enough, her modesty seems to cease at its borders. In general, human language is bound up with human sociability. Men would not create languages if they were not social beings and they constitute themselves as societies in part through !helf languages, embodying whatever is distinctive in the way they view their world in the way they carve it up into linguistic categories. That is why language is ultimately a political phenomenon, and even something over which men might go to war. 6 We obviously cannot expect to have exhausted the relation of politics and language in Shakespeare by examining one scene or even one play. Still, I hope I have done enough to suggest that in his view of language, Shakespeare is closer to Aristotle than to jacques Derrida. In fact, the connection I have been trying to make between language and politics is adumbrated by Aristotle in his Politics, when he establishes that political life is natural to man l>y pointing to the fact of human speech: Now, that man is more of a political animal than bees or any other gregarious animals is evident. Nature, as we often say, makes nothing in vain, and man is the only animal whom she has endowed with the gift of speech. And whereas mere voice is but an indication of pleasure or pain, and is therefore found in other animals (for their nature attains to the perception of pleasure and pain and the intimation of them to one another, and no further), the power of speech is intended to set forth 24 the expedient and inexpedient, and therefore likewise the just and the unjust. And it is a characteristic of man that he alone has any sense of good and evil, of just and unjust, and the like, and the association of living beings who have this sense makes a. family and a polisJ Act III, scene iv, of Henry V calls attention to just this political aspect of language, the way it reflects the conventional distinctions which are the heart of a given polis or regime. The fact that Shakespeare sets the one scene of his which is most self-conscious about language in a larger political context suggests that he shares Aristotle's view of the bond between the fact that men are political animals and the fact that tfuey speak the kind of languages they do. Thus if anyone were to question a political approach to Shakespeare by claiming that his plays are not about pohtics but about language, I think we could comfortably answer solely on the basis of Henry V: if Shakespeare's plays are about language, then they are still about politics, because for Shakespeare language itself is political in nature. At the very least, I hope I have shown that no abstract theory of language, least of all one which views language as a self-contained or self-referential system, can serve for understanding Shakespeare's plays. Even when Shakespeare calls attention to language as language, he does so in a living human context, one in which language plays a fundamental role in the complex interaction of man, society, and the world of nature. 1. See, for example, the pioneering work by Allan Bloom and Harry Jaffa, Shahespeare's Politics, New York: Basic Books, 1964. See aJso II_lY Shahespeare's R'ome: Republic and Empire, Ithaca: Cornell Umvers1ty Press, 1976 and the collection of essays edited by John Alvis and Thomas West, Shakespeare as Political Thinker, Durham: Carolina Academic Press, 1981. 2. J. Hillis Miller, Charles Dichens and Georg~ Cru_ihshank, ~os ~ngeles: William Andrews Clark Memorial Library, Umvers1ty of Cahforma, 1971, pp. 1-2. . . 3. J. Hillis Miller, "Ariachne's Broken Woof," Georgw Rev~ew, 31, 1977, pp. 45-47. 4. Miller, "Ariachne's Broken Woof," p. 59. 5. III.ii.17-24. All quotations from Shakespeare are taken from G. Blakemore Evans, ed., The Riverside Shakespeare, Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1974. 6. On the connection between war and language, see All's Well That Ends Well, IV.i, where the enemy is seen as the barbarian, the man who does not speak an intelligible language. . . . 7. Politics, 1253a7-20. Quoted in the translation of BenJamm Jowett m Richard McKeon, ed., The Basic Works of Aristotle, New York: Random House, 1941, p. 1129. SUMMER 1983 �Nominal Autobiography in Shakespeare's Sanne ts Margreta de Grazia Once upon a time, in the last decade 0f the eighteenth century, there lived a reportedly lackluster young man, named William-Henry Ireland, who repeatedly heard his father say that he would' give half his substantial library for the possession of a single signature by Shakespeare_ Eager to please· his father, William-Henry began leafing through 16th century papers and documents but he could not, alas, locate a Shakespeare signature. He consequently did the next best thing: he made one himself He took a facsimile of one of Shakespeare's signatures from a contemporary edition of Shakespeare and set about reproducing it on old parchment with an ink concocted of three fluids which, when held a few seconds before the fire, dried to look a venerable 200 years old_ Thus begins the story of the most famous of Shakespearean forgers, who, incidentally, fired by this initial success, when on to produce, or rather fraudulently reproduce, promissory notes, a profession of faith, love verses to Anne Hathaway, and most impressive of all a manuscript of the complete King Lear-all in Shakespeare's own hand. There is much of interest in this account: the dull youth's pathetic need to impress his overbearing father, the eager gullibility ofsuch eminent men of letters as Tames Boswell, who kissed the forgeries and counted himself blessed to have lived long enough to see them, and the bardolatry that even today makes the William-Henry Ireland forgeries-almost as valuable as the Shakespearean originals would have been-had they existed_ What is of interest to me here, however, is only one particular of this account: the importance conferred upon Shakespeare's signature; the desire Margreta de Grazia· received her doctorate from Princeton University and teaches English at the University of Pennsylvania. Last year she was a Fellow at the National Humanities Center working on her forthcoming book on language, selfhood, and Shakespeare's Sonnets before and after the eighteenth century. THE ST. JOHNS REVIEW to possess Shakespeare's name written out in his own hand. Why should Shakespeare's signature be relevant to a discussion of Shakespeare's autobiography? The answer is quite simple: a signature is a form of self-representation, a way of making oneself present in writing. So too is autobiography. Signatures and autobiographies are each forms of writing in the first person. Curiously enough, the prizing of signatures coincides with the emergence of the term autobiography: both take place in the decades around 1800. (The OED credits Southey with the first use of the term in English in 1809), When the way in which a man writes his name (his signature) changes, so too does the way in which he writes about himself (his autobiography). As I hope to indicate, the way in which a man writes his name changes after the sixteenth century and that change becomes visible by the end of the eighteenth century when Shakespeare's signature becomes a precious collector's item. And the way a man writes about his life changes no less radically after the sixteenth century as I hope to show in my discussion of the only work we have by Shakespeare written in the first person: his Sonnets. Shakespeare would have been utterly baffled by the coveting of his signature, the coveting that drove WilliamHenry into literary fraud. There is no evidence that Elizabethans were interested in signatures except for the practical purpose of identifying oneself as the writer of a message or of contracting oneself to the terms of a legal document Independent of the letter or document on which it appeared, independent of its personal, official, or legal context, a signature had no importance. A signature alone on a blank piece of paper would have been meaningless and worthless, no matter how illustrious the signator. In fact, the name signed was not even necessarily written by the bearer of the name. It was apparently common prac- tice for one man to sign for another without acknowledging the substitution. Secretaries, for example, often signed the 25 �names of their employers on both personal letters and official documents. Walsingham's secretary did, so did Lord Grey's; a secretary signed Essex's name on confidential letters to the Queen. Nor were signatures on legal transactions necessarily authentic. A clerk taking down or copying a deposition might himself sign it with the name of the deponent. A witness to the making of a will might himself sign it. in the name of the testator, without indicating that he had done so. A man's signature then was not exclusively in his own hand in the sixteenth century. In this respect, it was transferrable, like that other mark by which a man of means might identify himself: the signet or seal, the wax impressed with an emblem or device. As Hamlet deftly illustrates when he affixes the royal seal to the orders for the execution of Rosencrantz and Guildenstern, one need not be the owner of a seal to use it; so too, one did not need to be the possessor of a signature in order to sign it. Not only is there little concern about who signs one's signature; there is also little concern about the style in which it is signed. The several sixteenth century writing manuals we possess, like Peter Bales' Writing Schoolmaster, for example, and John Davies of Hereford's The Anatomy ofFair Writing, give no special instructions on the writing of signatures. In the forming and connecting of letters, a writer has the same freedom in signing his name as he does in writing anything. It is this freedom that makes it virtually impossible for experts to attribute a work to an author on the basis of paleographic evidence alone: attesting to the difficulty is the controversy still raging after one hundred years (among paleographers and editors, at least) over the identification of the hands in the manuscript of the Play of Sir Thomas More. A writer may use any of the six or seven hands that writing masters of the period identify (Secretary, Bastard Secretary, Exchequer, set hand of the Chancery, etc.) or a combination of any of them.lt is not unusual for the same writer to switch from one style to another in the same manuscript, sometimes changing hands in midsentence, and then sign his name in still another, or tore- vert to one of the hands he has already employed. The same diversity that characterizes a writer's manuscript then, characterizes his signature. To add to the diversity, the spelling of his name regularly varies, often quite widely. We have only six authenticated signatures by Shakespeare, all taken from the last four years of his life, so we do not know how many of the eighty-three documented variants ture? How would it be recognized if it had no distinct form? Would every variation be considered a signature so that a man would have numerous signatures? What then would constitute a forgery? There may be only one signature that conforms to our assumptions of what a signature is: Queen Elizabeth's. Elizabeth's signature possesses the uniformity of spelling and handwriting that we require. In each of the abundant samples of her signature that we possess, the orthography and calligraphy are stable from the time she ascended the throne as a young woman to her dying day at the age of seventy. In fact, it may be that in this period the word signature could only be properly applied to her signed name or its official surrogates. All the instances I have seen indicate that the word referred exclusively to the Queen's signature or else to that of her notaries whom she authorized to extend her written power. How are we to understand the Queen's possession of an exceptionally stable signature in an age when signatures were commonly unstable? I do not believe we should take this to mean that only Elizabeth had a definite sense of self, that only she was sufficiently conscious of her identity to record and circulate it in a uniform and recognizable signa- ture. I think a consideration of the problem might involve determining in what respect Queen Elizabeth was different from her subjects. Perhaps it was not that she had a more distinct sense of self but that she was a different kind of self altogether. And indeed such a singular self was attributed to her by that very principle she referred to in ascending to the throne, the principle of the "King's Two Bodies": "I am but one body, naturally considered," she declared, "though by [God's] permission a Body Politic also." Accordingly, Elizabeth had two selves, two bodies, one natural and ephemeral like that of any person, the other politic and continuing like that of no other person. Perhaps it is in that unique capacity, as an embodiment of state and church, that Elizabeth possessed a fixed signature. It would have reflected, then, not a distinct and individuated self, but rather a secular and religious corporation. Her signature was not a projection of selfhood, but rather an extension of the power and authority invested in her by her monarchal position, by her crown. When her representatives signed their names on official documents, their signatures took on like stability and uniformity. When acting as Elizabeth's surrogates or delegates, as appendages on his last name he used. The six we possess are written in of her corporation or body politic, as it were, their names six different scripts and in six different spellings, even though three of them appear on the same document, the document that is probably the most important a man signs assumed the fixity of her own. This might explain what in his lifetime: his will. Because the signatures are so varied authenticity of even the authenticated signatures. If a Queen's Privy Council, sign their names uniformly on state papers but on their own personal correspondence vary their signatures considerably. To summarize, signatures in Shakespeare's time were name may be signed an indefinite number of ways, what is with one regal exception and attendant special cases not to be used as the standard of authenticity? If a signature has necessarily written in one's own hand and not orthograph- no consistently recurring form, can it even be called a signa- ically or paleographically consistent. The signator had no in form and because Elizabethans did not necessarily sign their own names, some paleographers have questioned the 26 appears a most curious phenomenon: that such statesmen as Egerton, Cecil, and Walsingham, all members of the SUMMER 1983 �inviolable personal or legal relation to his signature. His signature had no fixed form making,possible its identifica· tion with one particular individual. I think we would have to say that in our sense of the word, 'there were no signa· tures in Renaissance England. Names were written out, sometimes by their bearer and sometimes not, and typi· cally without respect to uniformity. They had a function certainly, as when affixed to the bottom of a letter or on a legal document, but no value apart from that supplied by the context in which they appeared. How then has it come about that a mere scrap of paper with nothing on it except for Shakespeare's signature is worth a fortune? (Even a spurious or doubtful signature was estimated at a million dollars in 1971.) To answer that would involve a consideration of a complex network of eighteenth century developments that would include the standardization of language, the rise of private bank ac· counts, and the institution of laws governing copyrights and power of attorney. More centrally, it would involve a description of a changed notion of the self-of individuality, personality, and character, all three concepts which ac· quire their present emphasis in the late eighteenth century. I will not pursue this matter here; but in passing let me offer one or two observations which I think are illuminating. The eighteenth century began to posit and assume a new relation between the signature and the signator. At the same time that William-Henry Ireland risked simulating a Shakespearean signature, signatures of various men of note started to be prized and collected. It is then that the word autograph is used no longer exclusively to refer to writing in one's own hand (a manuscript) but is used primarily to distinguish the writing of one's own name. And of course, we in this country have no trouble recol1ecting when its revolutionary synonym fohn Hancock became to read them as autobiography. The nineteenth century avoided reading them as such in order to avoid the disheartening conclusion that the greatest poet of the language was, by his own admission, an adulterer, sodomite, and perjuror, that he was, as one Victorian critic chastely put it, "not immaculate." A wide range of nineteenth century approaches to the Sonnets might be seen as moves to clear Shakespeare of such charges. The Sonnets were writ- ten not by Shakespeare but by another; or else only partly written by Shakespeare (the offensive ones assigned to other poets) or if written entirely by Shakespeare then written on behalf of friends or clients, or if written on his own behalf then not as any direct reflection of his own experience but rather as fictions, dramatizations 1 allegories, bearing as remote and complicated a relation to his experience as the plays. The need to impersonalize the Sonnets culminates at the turn of the century with an influential discussion of them as insincere exercises in literary artifice that could not be about Shakespeare-or about anything else for that matter. In this century, moral compunctions have ceased to determine readings of the Sonnets, at least in any obvious way. We are free therefore to read the Sonnets as autobiography. And in recent decades, they have largely been read as Shakespeare's account of himself, whether that account is thought to consist of people, places, and events that constituted his outer life, or of the ideas, feelings, and beliefs that animated him inwardly. Both historical and psychological approaches have their practitioners, though only the most indomitable continue to dig and delve for facts (for the precious little they uncover still needs to be verified from the very outside sources they seek to enlarge). There is a much richer yield to be gotten by probing the Sonnets for Shakespeare's inner workings. No extraneous current in our English. Autographs became of value be- considerations constrain such readings, not even struc- cause they were seen to possess a personal and intimate relation to the individual who wrote them. It is not long tural considerations: since the 1609 ordering is not necessarily Shakespeare's, the Sonnets can be read as two units divided at sonnet 126 where the subject appears to until the science of graphology will emerge, the inference of personal traits on the basis of handwriting, the analysis of characters (in the Elizabethan sense of letters) to deter· mine character (in our sense of personality). Autographs are not the only form of personal writing flourishing in the eighteenth century: collected letters, journals, diaries, and autobiographies enjoy an unprece- dented popularity on which book-sellers are quick to capitalize. Like these forms of writing, an autograph is a type of self-representation that intimates or displays the private and personal. A signature can be seen as an abbreviated or cryptic auto- biography; an autobiography can be seen as an expanded or amplified signature. With an awareness that both forms of first person writing underwent radical changes after the six- teenth century, we finally reach my announced subject: Shakespeare's Sonnets as autobiography. The Sonnets are the only work we have that Shakespeare wrote in the first person, yet it has never been easy THE ST. JOHNS REVIEW change, as a collection of discrete or interconnected groups variously demarcated, as 154 independent poems, or as one integral sequence following either the 1609 order or whatever order a reader prefers. A variable text coupled with critical ingenuity is bound to yield prolifically, perhaps even inexhaustibly-were it not for interference from the outside: from critical theory. In the last decade, critical theory has made it difficult to take any first person enunciation at face value. There is no necessary relation between the historical author and the 'I' of a work any more than there is between him and a char· acter in a play or narrative: the first person thereby becomes simply another third. Post-structuralist theory goes further still, cutting the tie between writing or speech and its ostensible source, first person or otherwise. Its originthe speaking or writing subject-is dismissed as an acci- dent of circumstance. Where the accidental aspect of that accident of circumstance prevails, the 'Sonne,ts form a 27 �shimmering Derridean surface of free-floating signifiers; where the circumstantial aspect dominates, the Sonnets constitute a political, historical, and social artifact. As far as I know, we don't yet have either a full reading of them en abyme or as ~~cultural poetics." What we do have, however, is not far from either in its deposition of the author: Stephen Booth's 800 pages of extravagantly fine criticism on the Sonnets that bring not a single comment to bear on the man who wrote them. In one important respect we are where moral compunctions left us at the turn of the century: dissociating the Sonnets from their author and concentrating on the impersonal features of poetic language. In what is to follow, I would like to make it possible to begin returning to the Sonnets as autobiography; as Shakespeare speaking about himself. But the self that is spoken about is not a lover of acute sensitivity, a thinker of profound imaginative powers, a poet of heightened perception, or a craftsman of exceptional skill. The self of the Sonnets is the self as a name. In speaking about that nominal self, the Sonnets do not represent it in the same way that a self-portrait represents the artist, for that relation assumes a subject with an existence apart from the image that portrays him. In the Sonnets the self cannot be separated from the speaking about the self; he exists as a name coming into contact with other lexical units and occupying various syntactic positions. I would like to look at the Sonnets as what the use of the first person leads us to suspect they are: Shakespeare's speaking about himself. But to do so, requires both a new sense of self and a new sense of speaking, both of which depend on a new sense of the workings of a proper name. It is in the last line of sonnet 136 that Shakespeare announces his proper name: "my name is Will." And it is in this sonnet that the subject most visibly functions as a name whose actions are interactions with other words within his own discourse. Each of the seven times the word 'will' is repeated in the sonnet, 'Will' as the subject's name cannot be distinguished from 'will's' various other designations. The first time it is pronounced in the injunc- tion, "Swear to thy blind soul that I was thy will," [I. 2] the proper name 'Will' confuses our subject with other men: the name might designate another man by that name~his mistress's husband, for example, or another lover, not to mention the several historical candidates scholars have nominated. The proper name then is not proper to him; in fact, it is not even exclusively proper. It is a common name too, a synonym for desire or lust, common because denoting a class or state of being, common also because held in common by all men, more common still in vulgarly referring to the organ (male or female) that is both instrument and object of lust. Not only does 'will' work as both proper and common noun; it works too as verbal auxiliary denoting future resolution, as in line 5: "Will will fulfill the treasure of thy love." (The verbal form extends not only the sound of the noun it follows~"Will will" ~but also its sense, protracting it by projecting it into the future.) Son- 28 net 136 thus conflates personal and generic name, proper and common noun, noun and verb. Will's name, rather than distinguishing him, makes him indistinguishable not only from other men who bear his name (his namesakes), but also from other words that sound identical to it (homonyms). We might say that as a sound~the sound wal~the subject Will remains at leastphonetically distinct from the different sounding words that surround his name. The difference, however, is only Phonetic, for every noun in the sonnet that is not 'will' is a semantic substitute for will in one of its several senses. Nouns work like pronouns, each referring to the same subject rather than introducing a new one. No special case has to be made for "love" in line 4 as, synonym for will as desire, nor for ulove-suit" as ex- pression of that will; and it would take only some thumbing through Booth's commentary to identify the other nouns with will as sexual part, male or female: "soul" [l. I] refers to the sexual counterpart to the spiritual essence; "things of great receipt" [l. 7], "store's account" [l. 10], and "treasure of thy love" [I. 5] designate female sexual capacity, the feminine empty, "nothing" [l. 12] or "none" [l. 8] when not supplied by masculine "number" and "one" [l. 10]. Verbs too relate to will, to acts of will: "come"[!. I] refers to sexual climax, "check"'[!. I] to its deferral; "knows" [l. 3], "proves" [I. 7], "reckoned" [l. 8] to forms of carnal knowing; "fulfill" [I. 4] and "fill" [1. 6] to sexual satisfying, "is admitted" [l. 3] and "hold" [l. II] to female compliance. Adjectives modify sexual traits, "sweet" [l. 4] and "great" [I. 7] are anatomical desirables, "blind" [l. 2] applies to lack of sexual discernment; and adverbs specify degrees of sexual penetration: "so near" [l. l], "thus far" [I. 4], "with ease" [I. 7]. With the exception of conjunctions, prepositions, and articles, every word in the sonnet is either a homonym or synonym for the subject's name, thereby literally verifying his admission in sonnet 76: "every word doth almost tell my name" [I. 7]. A language made up of homonyms and synonyms for his name renders him anonymous. Among so many verbal counterfeits, he can "pass untold" [I. 9] for without difference there can be no identity. Such uniformity of vocabulary renders syntax purely perfunctory or superficial. The word 'will' and its synonyms monopolize all grammatical positions. Phonetic repetitions make this abundantly audible in lines 5 and 6"Will will fulfill the treasure of thy love,/Ay fill it full with wills, and my will one" ~but the same syntactic appropriation occurs in line 3's more varied syllables: "And will thy soul knows is admitted there," which would lose nothing in terms of sense if rendered, "And will thy will wills is willed there"; even "thy" and "there" in this line can be eliminated since the situation the sentence urges would blur genetive distinctions, making his will hers, thereby also doing away with the need for the spatial differentia tor "there." Throughout 136, underlying the phonetic variables is the same semantic formula: "Will is will" or "Will SUMMER 1983 �wills," a pure instance of the circular reasoninKthat Elizabethan logics identify with inordinate willfulness. The couplet's fallacious syllogism follows the same tautology: "Make but my name thy love, and love that still,/And then thou lov'st me for my name is Will." Sonnet 136 then looks like a supreme instance of willful discourse. Will uses language to obtain his will, to prevail rhetorically over his mistress' will so that he might have his corporeal one. In doing so, he appropriates language, infusing its vocabulary, syntax, and logic with his likeness. Or is it the other way around? Has he appropriated and personalized the language or has it appropriated and verbalized him? Has it seized upon him as a name not of his own choosing and locked him within a tight system of verbal interrelations from which he cannot emerge? The very question brings to mind that one sense of will which the sonnet conspicuously excludes from its homonymic ranging but which is central to any scheme even loosely Christian: will as choice, as free will. The sonnet, a petition to his mistress, highly contrived and therefore seemingly controlled, looks like an act of will, more so than other sonnets because of its excessive ingenuity. But if the will to which it gives voice is lust, is Will speaking voluntarily? If desire drives him to speak, he has not chosen to speak but does so involuntarily, as an animal cries. Would this then place him in the viciously inexorable cycle of sonnet !29's "lust in action," caught up in a habitual and therefore involuntary routine of "had, having, and in quest to have," in this sonnet at the stage of "in quest to have" or "Mad in pursuit"? Without any form of self-reference, 129 seems the most impersonal sonnet of the collection; but it becomes singularly personal if we remember that Will makes himself synonymous with lust, with involuntary will, so that the battery of adjectival phrases in 129 ("perjured, mur'drous, bloody, full of blame"} pertains to him as well as to the abstraction he so knowingly and tellingly defines. Even though his name is never spelled out in 129, it could be said of this sonnet too that "every word doth almost tell my name" (sonnet 76), especially when "Will" is heard in the couplet, as phonologists lead us to believe it was in the sixteenth century when 'well' and 'will' were pronounced identically: "All this the world well knows, yet none knows well." In sonnet 129, too,. the subject is present as a name, either stated and. pronounced or implied and understood, entangled in verbal relationships of sound and sense. It is not only in sonnets like !29 and 136 that the subject's proper name surfaces. Through its homonyms and synonyms, it presides over the entire collection. The first verb in the sonnets is a synonym for will ("From fairest creatures we desire increase") and the last two Anacreontic sonnets concern the transformation of "hot desire" into "holy fire of love." The youth's self-will thwarts the opening communal desire and Will's appetitive will frustrates his final solitary desire. The first group of sonnets, the procreation group, evolves around the idea of will as bequest "beauty's legacy" [sonnet 4], that would extend its THE ST: JOHNS REVIEW possessor into the future. The last two Anacreontics describe a therapeutic well that cures "men diseased" with the exception of the subject who retreats back to the chronic and pathological routine that admits of no change of future. At both ends, the Sonnets are bracketed by synonymic and homonymic variants of the subject's proper name. Within those brackets, Will consistently emerges in a state of incompleteness seeking to be made whole, seeking the fulfillment that is happiness. Will exists in a state of perpetual want that is at once lack and desire. The lack, heightened by a consciousness of time and death, takes the form of the multiple privative states that characterize him: debt, poverty, sickness, loneliness, absence, lameness, bareness, pain. It seeks to complete itself through objects that would both contain him and make him content. In the youth, in verse, in the mistress and in various combinations of the three, Wiil would be fulfilled (thereby deferring the "well-contended day" [sonnet 32], the consummation of death, with whose "fell arrest" all men must "be contented" [sonnet 74]. In seeking fulfillment in another, Will repeatedly attaches himself to versions of himself. The youth is his "next self': in relationships personal and grammatical the two are interchangeable. One mirrors the other to such a degree that it is often assumed they share the same name. The mistress too is a projection of himself, of the desire by which he identifies himself, so that her outer darkness figures forth his inner defects, her black eyes reflect his blindness, a relation clenched verbally in the sound "my mistress' eye" [sonnet 153] that designates both her ocular (and sexual} eye and his pronomial I, recapitulating his self-gratifying conflation of her will with his own. In loving either object, he falls into the same pattern from which he tries to break the youth in the first seventeen sonnets: of self-love, "having traffic with thyself alone" [sonnet 4], "self-willed" [sonnet 6]-the state fullblown in the monumentally monolithic sonnets of the !20's that make ungrounded claims to self-sufficiency, as in the supremely, in fact divinely, solipsistic, "I am that I am." The tautology then of 136 is the collection's central configuration: will desires will, the self seeks to complete its wanting self in images of itselflargely of its own making, a narcissistic and incestuous relationship that cannot be separated from the homonymic and synonymic pleonasms all generating from the subject's proper name. In this paper I have been urging that the Sonnets be read autobiographically in relation to their author, but not in a relation to him as a particular individual experiencing temporal and psychological events, but as a name functioning within discourse. We are accustomed to thinking of a proper name as a social, political, and religious marker that positions its bearer within his family, state, and church; but it is crucial to see it also as situating its bearer in language, as any name situates its referrent there. If we resist having a proper name work like any other word, it is because we tend to distinguish sharply between 29 �the names we use to identify people and the ones we use to identify everything else. We set them apart from ordinary vocabulary by capitalizing them, and our dictionaries omit them or relegate them to an appendix of their own. Yet there is indication that our distinction between proper and common was not so hard and fast for Elizabethans. Proper names especially in manuscript were not always capitalized, while common names in the arbitrary orthography of the day sometimes were. Nor was special attention given to their spelling. Shakespeare's last name, as I have mentioned, received as least eighty-three different spellings, spellings ranging from Shaftspere to Shaxbee to Chacsper; it appears as Shagspere on his marriage bond and as Shaxberd on a court record crediting him with Comedy of Errors and Measure for Measure. Just as no conventions of punctuation or spelling singled out proper names, so too no lexicons excluded them from the rest of the language. Though there were no comprehensive monolingual dictionaries in the sixteenth century, there were hard word lists that defined proper names as well as neologisms and technical vocabulary. Bilingual dictionaries too would often include Christian names among their other entries. Of course proper names had the unique function of designating an individual rather than a class, of naming one single man named, for example, Will rather than a collective general group named, for example, man. But the frequent instances in which proper names are used generically in contexts as diverse as proverbs and Biblical glosses, suggests that the distinction was hardly inviolable. Will, as we have seen, referred not just to one man but to all men; so did the name Jack as in the proverbial "Jack shall have Jill" repeated in Love's Labor's Lost; so did Tom and Dick and Harry, though Harry IV wittily exempts himself from those generic catch-alls and substitutes Francis in his stead; so do Peter and John so that New Testament commentaries explain that the name of Peter belongs both to Simon and to all men that are faithful and John Donne explains that not just he alone but all men are Johns, though not all may be true Johns. There is more in the period that invites us to treat proper names as if they were common. The original and derivative forms of both proper and common names were thought to provide access to the truth of what they named. The tradition of Biblical exegesis that originated with the Church Fathers (Origen, Jerome, and Augustine) examined the Hebrew forms of names for both people and things in order to comprehend their true designations. Hebrew names were thought to be God-given and therefore to retain vestiges of the original language that man, before the Fall and Babel, had shared with God. By analyzing Hebrew names, exegetes sought to recover the relation between thing and sign that Adam had intuited when he assigned true names to the animals in Eden. Churchmen, especially Protestants who preferred etymologies to catholicizing allegories, relied heavily on this form of philological investigation in order to move from sign to know!- 30 edge-of-the-thing-signified. In his sermons, John Donne frequently acknowledges his indebtedness to this form of inquiry, as in this injunction: "To know the nature of the thing, look to the derivation, the extraction, the origination of a word." Launcelot Andrews too devotes long passages of his sermons to etymological excursions, sometimes devoting entire sermons to a single word, as he does in one of his Nativity Sermons in which he celebrates the birth of the Incarnational Word by concentrating on one word that names him-lmmanuel. For such writers, no form of human reasoning draws a mind so close to truth as the investigation of the names God in the Old Testament 11 gives to both men and things: His nominals be reals." Etymologizing was not, of course, limited to religious studies or to the Hebrew language. It had precedents in classical and medieval writing: Plato's Cratylus was seen to recommend the same sort of investigation in respect to Greek and Isidore of Seville was consulted for Latin derivations and developments. The dictum of the fifth century grammarian Servius was applied to words in all languages: "names are called names because by them things are known." Elizabethan grammars were traditionally divided into two sections, etymology and syntax, and Elizabethan logics invariably included etymology or notatio as a valid place from which to argue. Typically in this period, the discussion of any subject will begin with a discussion of its name. Thomas Eliot begins his Book of the Covernow with an exploration of the word republic; Thomas Wilson introduces his logic, The Rule of Reason, with an extended discussion of the words logic and reason, and Thomas Morley in his Introduction to Practical Music prefaces his descriptions of various musical terms with their derivation, explaining, for example, why motet derives from motion. In discussing any type of subject matter, a writer commonly begins by interpreting its name and proceeds by following the discursive lines emerging from this interpretation. It is my thesis that when that subject happens to be a man, say William Shakespeare, the same practice is followed. His name, as I hope I succeeded in showing, provides the focus for the writing that is about him. John Donne says of the names in the Bible-those of the children oflsrael for example-that it is not so much that the names are in the history as that the history is in the names. I think Shakespeare's history or story of himself, his autobiography, is also contained in his name-his proper name and its common homonymic and synonymic cognates. Since his name is given to him and not chosen by him, and since the phonetic and semantic interrelations into which it draws him are inscribed in language and not put there by him, his writing can never be entirely his own. If he had been given another given name, his autobiography would look and sound quite different. It might, in fact, resemble one of the at least forty other English sonnet collections that remain from the 1590s and early 1600s. These sonnet collections also tell the story of their writSUMMER 1983 �ers. A quick scanning of the major ones reveals immediately that Shakespeare was not alone in fashioning his sonnets around his name. Edmund Spenser's Amoretti tells the story of Edmund, ed mundo; they'largely turn on his repudiation of the mundane and worldly vanity that he himself narcissistically reflects, as in the exceptional two sonnets [35 and 83] that mirror or echo one another word for word and conclude with the self-referrential: "All this worlds glory seemeth vayne to me." Sir Phillip Sidney's Astrophil and Stella tells the story of Phillip, phil ippos, lover of horses or the ((horse to love" he becomes in his own emblematic allegory in which he is Cupid's horse [49]; though he euphemistically rechristens himself Astrophil, lover of a star, he is not, as Stella well knows, aiming so high. Fulke Greville's Caelica tells the story of Greville, and "grief' and "ill," as he himself insists, "do best decipher'' [83] him in his protracted despair of skies both Caelican and celestial. Henry Constable's Diana tells the story of Constable whose recurring motto "preserver ever," refers to his characterizing constancy which takes the form of stubborn and relentless importunity. William Percy's Coelia tells the story of another Will whose self-centered self-love is doubly suggested by his name: once, by his given name, Will, and again by his self-reflexive family name, Percy, per se, for himself. Barnabe Barnes's Parthenophil and Parthenope tells the story of Barnabe Barnes; the echoing first syllables of his two names unite to form the sound bar bar, the sound Greeks identified with bar-barians, outsider or non-Greeks of unrefined speech and unrefined manner; Barnabe Barnes's sonnets are barbaric in both word and deed: their typically stuttering phrasing expressing desire that is anything but civilized culminates in the final poem-a reiterative sestina describing the orgiastic rape of his mistress. In each of these sonnet sequences, the writer's name functions as a rubric that informs and shapes his self-presentation. His name, as both proper and common noun, provides his entry into language and sets him in relation to those terms that constitute the story that tells of him. In describing it this way, I do not mean to suggest that the name is prophetic or oracular, that it dictates or predicts an inescapable course. Every name that I have mentioned contains an option like that option present in Shakespeare's name. Just as his name, Will, refers to both voluntary choice and involuntary appetite, so too Edmund's name contains two worlds (in alignment with Augustine's two cities); Greville's holds two types of grieving, one amorous pining and the other penitential contrition: Phillip's contains two types of loving horses, the horsemanship that puts man properly in control of his horse or the horsemanship that inversely gives the horse free rein of him. Constable's presents two types of constancy, stiff-necked infatuation and right-hearted devotion. To be sure, the name is THE ST. JOHNS REVIEW given to the bearer, but the sense in which the name is taken is of the bearer's own choosing. It is that choosing between the options contained in the writer's name that makes the sonnets autobiographical, that makes them about one self rather than another. But because the options in each case are those every Christian man must face, this form of sixteenth century autobiography can hardly be said to individuate, to reveal an individual distinct in experience, thought, and feeling from all other men. I began this paper with a discussion of signatures as selfrepresentation and then proceeded to a reading of Shakespeare's Sonnets. as an autobiography centered on his name, and have ended by suggesting that other Elizabethan sonnet sequences are autobiographical in the same respect. Through the course of the paper, I have gradually enlarged my focus: I have moved from signatures to a single Shakespearean sonnet, to Shakespeare's Sonnets in general, and finally expanded to include several Elizabethan sonnet collections. In this final paragraph, I would like to enlarge my scope still further, in fact, I will enlarge it about as far as it can go. My final words concern man and language in the sixteenth century. Although this paper has focused on a rather small body of Elizabethan literature, its ultimate aim is to challenge an assumption so prevalent that it is rarely recognized as an assumption. Like all assumptions, it has a beginning, and in time it will no doubt have an ending too. It begins in 1860 with Jacob Burkhardt's The Civilization of the Renaissance in Italy and perhaps has in 1980 culminated with Stephen Greenblatt's highly applauded book, Renaissance Self-Fashioning. Burkhardt proclaimed that the greatest achievement of the Renaissance was the discovery of the individual; Greenblatt demonstrates through the study of six major Elizabethan figures how the Renaissance individual selfconsciously generated his own identity. Attending such an assumption is the equally pervasive view that in a world of emerging individuality, language is first and foremost selfexpression, a means of articulating, asserting, and projecting selfhood. In my discussion of one of the dominant modes of first-person writing in the Renaissance, the sonnet sequence, I hope I have provoked a serious rethinking of that two-fold assumption. No individual emerges from the Sonnets, no individuated psychological and emotional entity with personalized thoughts and desires. Insofar as a self can be said to emerge, it is a self as a proper name, a name which rather than singling out its bearer draws him into a complicated network of verbal interrelations that form the pattern of his experience. Though the central terms may differ, other sonnet writers find themselves in variations of the same pattern and so must have Shakespeare's original readers, whatever their names. 31 �BLACKWATER The summer ends. The winds -of aurumn rise Chilling the earth at evening. Darkness falls Suddenly and early. In heavy skies From north and west assemble geese, their cails Drifting and tossing in uneasy air. High clouds catch final sunlight, burst aflame, Vanish. Circling above the water, where Rushes and grasses wait, wild mallard home. I have come here for refuge. In the night Shapes of the sleeping birds merge with water; At land's edge softly their muted cries touch And interweave the lapping waves. A white Moon hovers near the branches of a fir; Ten thousand stars burn cold and out of reach. ROBERT S. ZELENKA A former tutor at St. John's College, Annapolis, Md., Robert Zelenka is a teacher, poet, scholar. 32 SUMMER 1983 �Mission over Hanoi From A Country Such as This James Webb A garbage detail was throwing trash off the fantail of the U.S.S. Shiloh. Leftover food, bags upon bags of paper and cans, large wall lockers, unidentifiable boxes, all bounced and rolled in the white wake of the steaming ship, mixing with the foam. Red Lesczynski could see pieces of garbage for miles behind the ship, all the way to the horizon in the late afternoon sun, as if the Shiloh were marking off a trail on the otherwise amorphous reaches of the blue, unending South China Sea. He and a dozen other pilots were shooting their .38-caliber survival pistols, using the trash as targets. Lesczynski practiced often off the fantail, .although he did not know many downed pilots who had either dared or had a useful opportunity to fire the .38 at the North Vietnamese. When you were hoping for rescue, you evaded, as silently as possible. When rescue was hopeless, you didn't commit suicide by firing your weapon at a people who outnumbered you 17 million to I. But it was a way to let off steam, to relieve the boredom of shipboard life. Except for the combat missions, he might have been a monk at a retreat alone in a midocean cloister with the other members of his sect. It was flat, tedious, with a day's highlight being dinner in the wardroom and the movie afterward, or perhaps a game of chess or Go. That in itself heightened the tension of the missions, rather than allowing one to gear up for them. There was so little movement or variation on the ship, and yet three of every four days the Shiloh was "on the line" he was flung off the carrier deck two and sometimes three times a day by a steam catapult, as if his F-4 Phantom were a pebble in 1 ©1983 by James Webb. A Country Such as This is to be published this Fall by Doubleday. James Webb graduated from the United States Naval Academy in 1968. He chose the Marine Corps and served as an infantry officer in Vietnam. Among other decorations he holds the Navy Cross and the Silver Star. Mr. Webb has previously published Fields of Fire and A Sense of Honor. THE ST. JOHNS REVIEW a slingshot, to form an attack group over the sea and then race through ground fire and missiles toward a bombing target where for ninety seconds every fear in the world was real, exploding all around him, calling for the most minute recesses of his concentration. Then it would be over and he would find the boat again, that square little speck in the sea, and set the tail hook of his aircraft on top of a cable on its angled deck, jerking to a violent stop. The whole thing took little more than an hour, and he would again be surrounded by the tedious calm. It was the paradox that taunted him, as if he were a lobster being dangled over a boiling cookpot for a few seconds every -hour, only to be returned to the tank. What would the lobster think, if it could think, when it was again safe in the tank but knew it would soon be once more dangled over the pot? Salt air covered him like a scab; he loved the smell and the taste. The snub-nosed pistol jerked in his hand as he fired again and again at a five-gallon can that had once held cooking oil. He couldn't tell whether he had hit the can.lt bounced in the churning wake like a Ping-Pong ball, and was soon out of range. "Ah, the hell with it." He returned his weapon to the chief petty officer in charge of the "famfire detail," and left the open platform of the fantail, entering the bowels of the aircraft carrier. More men lived on the U.S.S. Shiloh than in Ford City. And ali' of them had jobs. The huge Forrestal-class supercarrier was home to 4,100 men, and 80 aircraft. It weighed 76,000 tons, fully loaded. It was longer than three football fields, and had four acres of flight deck. Its power plant could summon 280,000 horsepower from four geared steam turbines, enough to push the Shiloh through any sea at 35 miles an hour. It carried more than 26 million pounds of fuel in its hull. The Shiloh had deployed from Alameda, California, just after Christmas 1965, and had been operating as the center of a twelve-ship task force on Yankee Station off the coast of Vietnam since mid-January 33 �1966. In its five months of Yankee Station duty, the Shiloh had been to Subic Bay, Philippines; twice, for four days each time, and to Yokosuka once, for three days. Other than that, the Shiloh had been constantly "on the line." Its pilots had flown 17,000 missions, and dropped 22 million pounds of ordnance onto North Vietnamese targets. Lousy targets, mostly. The wrong targets. Lesczynski exited a narrow, honeycombed passageway and began crossing the hangar deck. It was filled with aircraft undergoing maintenance or being rearmed and refueled. A-4 Skyhawk and A-6 Intruder attack craft, EA-6 Prowler electronic war· fare planes, RA-5 Vigilante reconnaissance jets, S-2F antisubmarine planes, and SH-3 Sea King helicopters vari· ously mixed with his own F-4 Phantom fighters across its reaches. The hangar deck was long and wide and dark, its bulkheads and deck a musty gray, like a basement. The flight deck was two levels higher; planes moved up and down on four huge elevators. He was the executive officer of his squadron, and was slated to take command of it within six months. He stopped for a few minutes, chatting with crewmen who were working on the F-4s, checking their efforts and assur· ing them, with simple words, of the importance of their jobs. Then he set out again, heading for the flight wardroom, for dinner. In one corner of the hangar deck a group of sailors was playing a fast game of basketball, shouting and running, shirtless in the tropical heat. Across its middle, a line of men extended from a ladder that went to the deck below, waiting to enter the main galley and eat dinner. A few of them wore the tight, multicolored shirts of flight deck personnel, but most of them were dressed in blue dungarees and baseball caps. Many were reading from ever-present paperback books that fit perfectly inside rear dungaree pockets. Others conversed, clowning around and rau· cously taunting each other. Many wore tattoos on their forearms. Lesczynski grinned blandly as he passed the different groups of sailors, waving to a few of the men he recog· nized. They were young and they all worked hard, twelve hours a day for months on end, enduring cramped quar· ters, long lines, and the lonely isolation of shipboard life. They worked because they believed, or because it was a job, or because it bought them liberty in arguably exotic ports. Some worked because they didn't want to go to the brig. It didn't matter. They kept the ship going twenty· four hours a day, no matter what. The 1-MC blared into every compartment, preceded by a boatswain's eerie whistle. It was Big Brother. "Now hear this. Now hear this. The smoking lamp is out, throughout the ship, while handling ammunition. I say again, the smoking lamp is out, throughout the ship, while handling ammunition . ., Lesczynski walked out the forward end of the hangar deck, and climbed a ladder up to the "02" level, between the hangar deck and the flight deck. The flight wardroom 34 was on the "02" level. It was less formal than the ship's wardroom below, designed cafeteria-style to accommodate the more fluid schedules of the pilots. In contrast to the main wardroom, there were no Filipino stewards to hold a tray of food in front of an officer, as if he were an aristocrat dining downtown. No seating by rank. No careful conversation, designed to teach one the art of gentle avoidance. Lesczynski liked the flight wardroom. Commander Jimmy Maxwell was holding court with two junior officers. Lesczynski's friend since his first days of flight training was now the executive officer of the A-6 attack squadron, and like Lesczynski was on the "fleet up" program, which would give both of them command within a few months. Maxwell had gone spry and gray after fifteen years in the cockpit. Crow's-feet were etched deeply into the corners of his eyes. His tight hawk's face was selfassured, and animated. Maxwell waved to Lesczynski, who joined them. Then he smiled sardonically, without joy, his leathered face emanating a resignation that might have been anger, had he the luxury to question policy. "They bagged another A-4 today." "Over that Dong Khe site?" "Yes, sir, old LBJ sure knows how to treat his boys. You know why he calls us his boys, don't you? Son, I'm from Mississippi, and I know what that means. It means he thinks he owns us. What was it he said? The military can't bomb a shithouse without his approval." Lieutenant Nick Damsgard, new to the squadron and on his first Western Pacific deployment, leaned forward, his heavy brows furrowed earnestly. "If he'd let us go after Dong Khe a month ago, we could have flattened it." Maxwell feigned alarm. "You don't shoot up missile sites before they're ready for you! They're not part of the war until then. What do you want to do, win this god damn thing?" They all laughed, staring into their food, dry chortles that indicated none of them really thought it was funny, not when they were dangling their very lives over the North every day in pursuit of a goal that Lyndon Johnson had never made clear to himself, much less them. Maxwell snorted again. "If Goldwater had won in '64, this war would have been done with in a week, and there wouldn't have been enough of North Vietnam left over to plant rice on. " Frank Salpas, also a new lieutenant, stroked his moustache, staring down into his food. 1'l'm not so sure, Com· mander. This is a different kind of war. Johnson seems pretty serious about doing the right thing. I mean, he's trying. He's putting at least a half-million ground troops in the South." Maxwell snorted again. The constant attrition of the air war was getting to him, Lesczynski could tell. "It's not how many troops he's got on the ground, any more than it's how many goddamn bombs we're dropping. It's what you're doing with them! You tell me what the hell it means to fight a 'limited war,' all right? Do you think North VietSUMMER 1983 �nam is fighting a limited war? Shee-it. Do you feel like you're a little bit at war when you're jinking up there, dodging SAM missiles? Johnson won't let us knock out SAM sites while they're being built. He won't let us take out ships in Haiphong harbor that have SAMs visible on their goddamn decks! He won't mine the harbor. He won't let us go after operational MiG airfields. But we're 'his boys' when we get our asses shot off! He must think this is a god damn golf game or something, and he needs to give the North Vietnamese some kind of handicap!" Damsgard looked up from his tray, smiling ironically. "He's stuck with a war that he doesn't know how to fight. He just wishes it would all go away. This whole 'Rolling Thunder' operation is a joke. Tell me how much we've disrupted the life of the North Vietnamese." Maxwell nodded earnestly, agreeing. "Here we've got a whole fleet of B-52 bombers that could put Hanoi back into the Stone Age, and old LBJ sends them off to make toothpicks out of trees on the Ho Chi Minh trail. And here we've got light attack planes and precision fighters, and the man sends us against the North day in and day out. Not against targets that will hurt the North Vietnamese, but against 'interdiction targets.' I don't know know many pieces of railroad track I've blown away in the last five months. But I can guarantee you that Russia and China and the other communist countries have been replacing them as fast as we've been blowing them away. The North Vietnamese probably love what we're doing. It keeps their people united. It doesn't really hurt them. And it keeps the aid rolling in from the communist bloc." "Can you imagine these sorts of restrictions during World War II?" Lesczynski had listened quietly, eating his food, but could no longer restrain his own frustration. "We couldn't have hurt the Japanese by simply shooting down the aircraft that attacked us. Hell, they'd still be regrouping, putting together fleets and forays! We went to their hearts. We took the war to them. We blew away their planes on the ground, we knocked out their industry. We took out Tokyo." He pointed a fork, growing animated. "Last week. Remember? Knock out the Sai Thon rail yard, they say, but if one bomb hits the steel mill next door you're iri deep shit!" They all three watched him attentively. He did not often talk about the conduct of the war. For the most part, he viewed it as unproductive, a negative morale factor for the men who served under him. But tonight he felt unsettled, provoked. "This isn't going very well at all. Are we going to say that the Japanese were more evil than the North Vietnamese, and that they deserved more of our wrath? Why? The North Vietnamese are clearly trying to take over the South by military force. It's the North Vietnamese who have almost their entire army in the South right now. We have stated to the world that the South should not be subjugated against its will. If that's worth fighting over, then it should be worth a serious, total effort. How long is it going to take Johnson to understand THE ST. JOHNS REVIEW that the North Vietnamese believe they're winning, and that this sort of bombing reinforces that belief?" He had grown his moustache back. His lips curled into a whimsical smile underneath its thick red gash. 'Til tell you the truth. I don't think McNamara has the guts, and I don't think LBJ has the clarity of thought, to fight this war. It's that simple." Lieutenant Salpas grunted once, then nodded, a slow cynical grin growing underneath his moustache. "Did you hear about LBJ's big Silver Star for gallantry in action in World War II? Went out on a reconnaissance flight as an observer from Congress, and the plane got shot at. He sat there in his seat and watched, and then decided that since he didn't shit his pants, he deserved a medal. Take a look at his pictures. He loves to wear the lapel pin." Maxwell grunted back, a combative grin streaking his narrow face. "Uh-huh. Well, if that's what it takes, he can come out here and go on that Alpha Strike with us 'boys' tomorrow, I can make sure he gets the goddamn Medal of Honor." • • • The real question was why they kept doing it, so well and with such precision, day after day, week after week, in the face of a steady trickle of losses that had been deceptive at first, but eventually overwhelming. So many shipmates, so many planes, downed for the honor of interdicting a system that by the very nature of their bombing would grow stronger with greater outside support. Sitting in his stateroom after dinner, Red Lesczynski scanned the classified briefsheets from the past few weeks' activities, one of his prerequisites as squadron executive officer. June 12-19: Interdiction. 100 railroad cars damaged or destroyed, Qui Vinh, Pho Can, and Nam Dinh rail yards damaged extensively. 5 major highway bridges dropped. Junks and barges "lucrative." June 20-26: Interdiction. 40 trucks, 100 junks and barges damaged or destroyed. Me Xa highway bridge, Mai Duong railroad and highway bridge dropped, considered essential to the Hanoi/Haiphong transportation system. Russian SA-2 missile site damaged in conjunction with attack on Mai Duong. Extensive damage to yards and facilities at Qui Vinh, Sai Thon, and Van Coi. June 27-July 2: Interdiction. 200 railroad cars, numerous trucks and bridges damaged or destroyed. Major strikes against Dong Khe SAM missile site, the Dong Can military area, and Bien Son barracks. He tried to measure those frail statistics against the terror that produced them, and the loss: June 14: A-3 lost over North Vietnam. Orange ball seen by observers. Crew MIA. June 15: F-4B hit during attack on PT boat. Pilot, RIO eject over water, rescued by SH-3 helo. June 15: A-4E downed by ground fire, North Vietnam. Pilot ejects, is seen on ground. POW or MIA. 35 �June 17: A-4C hit by ground fire during pullout from dive on Vinh railroad. Pilot ejects, radios from ground that he is about to be captured. POW or MIA. June 19: A-1 F crashes ahead of ship after night catapult launch. Pilot missing. June 20: A-lH crashes ahead of ship after night catapult launch. Pilot not recovered. June 21: RF-8A downed by antiaircraft fire. Good ejection. Enemy defenses prevent helicopter approach. MIA. June 21: F-8 damaged by MiG-17, 4 F-8s respond. l F-8 downed. Good ejection observed. Another F-8 downs MiG with Sidewinder missile. 1 MiG destroyed. 1 pilot MIA. June 25: A-4E hit by antiaircraft fire. Pilot ejects over water, rescued by SH-3 helo. June 25: A-6A lost directional control on bombing run. Pilot and RIO eject. Pilot rescued by SH-3 helo. Chute of RIO seen, but not located. RIO MIA. June 27: A-4E crashed during borrib run on barges. No ejection sighted. Pilot MIA. June 27: A-4E caught fire en route to strike. Pilot ejected, rescued by Air Force HH-43 helo. July 1: A-4E hit by ground fire during withdrawal from strike. Good chute sighted. Pilot not recovered. MIA. Well, let's see. Two years of time and salary, minimum, to get an adequate iet pilot to the fleet. A half a billion dollars, I'd say, to build this carrier, equip it, and put it on the line. Millions of dollars for every plane, and the load it carried. The reputation of our country riding in every cockpit-its military reputation, its sense of political wisdom. And people, count two weeks of them, lost blowing away railroad tracks. Railroad tracks! Pissed down the tube, Lyndon Johnson, pissed down the tube. The feeling had grown over the previous six months until, every time he read such statistics, Red Lesczynski felt as if he were somewhere between a gladiator and a whore, although he would never publicly relate this to his men. There was something almost malevolent in the way Navy further admonitions from Johnson and McNamara to his ."boys," rather than warnings to those supplying the com- and Air Force pilots were being wasted, in the restrictions things; bicycles, even cars. At home, Lesczynski's Satur- forced on them. God forbid that they should go after the enemy's political centers, even though the communists had been killing government officials in the South for a decade. There was something supposedly inhumane about attacking any area where there might be civilians, although no such inhumanity had been seen in any other war, or even in the South in this one. They flew against railroad yards and were not allowed to attack MiG training bases. They could not attack Soviet missile sites until they were operational, and then, of course, it was like walking down the tube of a cannon. They had indeed, as Jimmy Maxwell had lamented over dinner, produced photographs of ships unloading missiles at Haiphong harbor, and were ordered to stay away. In fact, the North Vietnamese had protested before the International Control Commission a few weeks before that U.S. planes had made day afternoons belonged to John and his tools. There would be other times, and he dwelled on that, but he would never be able to see his children through the same lens as before. He read several hours a day. That was the one salvation of shipboard life. He had brought more than thirty books, and would soon be finished with them all. He had made meticulous notes. They were a mixed bag of classics and military oddments. He was trying to understand this war, the Pacific, Japan. Japan was the key, and always had been. He pulled out an old, faded volume written in 1920 by a Russian general, Nikolai N. Golovin, in collaboration with Admiral A. D. Bubnov. The Problem of the Pacific in the Twentieth Century. He had found it in a secondhand bookstore in Washington. Among other things, the book had accurately predicted both the timing and the course of World War II. "provocations" against foreign ships at Haiphong, causing 36 munists. When did a missile become a missile? When did a war become a war? When did a military professional finally cry "foul" to this commander in chief? At times Lesczynski tried to emphathize with Admiral Kuribayashi, who had commanded the Japanese defenses at Iwo Jima during the Second World War, fully knowing that he would lose the battle. Like the Japanese commander, who died in the battle, Red Lesczynski believed not in the specifics of what he was doing, but in what his effort represented. He thought a lot about Jerry Schmidt as he whiled away his hours on the Shiloh, wondering how the intense CIA agent was dealing with the similar botching of the war down South. Johnson and Westmoreland were obsessed with world opinion, on the one hand knowing that it would take a half-million American soldiers to establish a combat presence and the support functions it would need in order to operate halfway around the world, and on the other not wanting to appear to be the "aggressor" in the war. The result was piecemeal escalation, with the North Vietnamese controlling the pace and thus the entire initiative in the war. The units in the field were performing admirably, but the United States was continually reacting, continually behind. It was not a happy time if you were a believer. Sophie wrote him every day. The letters came in bunches, with the resupply. When he had been young, he had believed that a man could get used to being away, could program it into the other cycles in his life. But it had gotten harder each time, .so that now, at thirty-seven, it was as if he had split himself in two. So much of him was left with her, and with the children. J.J. was starting high school. How he longed to watch his son on the football field. Katherine was going through puberty without her father's advice. There were so many questions about dating that she would now throw at J.J. Little John liked to fix SUMMER 1983 �He checked his notes: p. 43: "Japanese imperialism is not a~ invention of a handful of politicians. It is the expression oLthe spirit of modern Japan." p. 81: "The motives that will prompt Japan to engage in the struggle are so deep and so vast that not one but several wars will have to be waged before a solution is reached." p. 38: "When Europeans fight they always endeavor to set their own strength against that of their opponent. The Japanese endeavor to use the opponent's strength against him. By this method you add your opponent's strength to your own and may therefore win in spite of being weaker." He pondered the last paragraph for several minutes before opening up the book. It made him want to show it to Kosaka. It represented a combination of those two favorite Japanese games, jujitsu and Go. It also made him wonder, in an oriental triple-thinking way, whether there was indeed some connection between what he was doing and Japan's growing strength. He didn't feel smart enough to figure that out, at least not yet. He read carefully for an hour, marking the book and taking notes. The last paragraph of Russian wisdom that he added to his thick three-hole binder stayed with him as he left his small desk and climbed into his bed. p. 153: "The realities of the Pacific include the necessity of all international agreements being backed by actual force. We may deplore this fact the more bitterly that mankind has but recently suffered such heavy losses in blood and treasure, but such is the present condition of the world, and the primary principal of positive science in search of the truth." * * * "Now, pilots, man your planes. I say again, pilots, man your planes." In the gray sea dawn a stiff wind pushed into the Shiloh's prow, beating insistently against the faces and chest of pilots and sailors who busied across the long, plane-cluttered flight deck. The aircraft carrier had turned north, into the wind, and geared up to thirty-three knots for launching. The steady wind across the deck would help lift the aircraft by increasing their relative ground speed. In minutes, thirty-two of them would scream off from three different catapults of the Shiloh, each plane taking a small dip in front of the bow as it shifted from the pull of the catapult to its own power, and then disappear. Red Lesczynski left the F-4 ready room with seven other pilots and reached his aircraft. He did a quick but thorough preflight, walking around the sleek, long-nosed jet alongside its blue-shirted plane captain, an act that had his life in its hands, but one that had been done so many thousands of times that it was down to a series of quick looks and jokes with the plane captain. "All set, Christianson?" THE ST. JOHNS REVIEW The plane captain grinned through snaggled teeth. Underneath the tight cap and the Mickey Mouse sound attenuators was a boy hardly older than his son. "It'll get you there, Commander. Big one today, huh, sir?" It was indeed, one of the largest raids of the air war, and one of the closest ever to downtown Hanoi. He checked his payload. A cluster of Mark 82 five-hundred-pound bombs hung close to each wing, above cylindrical pods that would fire Zuni five-inch rockets. Four F-4s, including his own, would go in first, taking out as many of the radarcontrolled antiaircraft guns and missile sites as possible. Twelve A-6 and six A-4 attack planes would follow with heavy bombloads, going after the Bac Giang petroleum storage area outside of Hanoi. Four of his F-4s would hold back as a RESCAP, to come to the aid of aircraft under attack by MiGs or damaged by ground fire. Two A-3 tank· ers would accompany the flight for emergency refueling. Two "Shrikes," especially configured A-4s, would provide immediate counter-battery fire to missile sites that locked onto the group as they went toward the target. An EA-6 "Q" aircraft would fly at the head of the group with the F-4s, in order to provide electronic jamming and surveillance. And finally, an RA-5 would follow up the strike, making a photograph for damage assessment. Once Lesczynski's F-4 flight rolled in, it would only take ninety seconds for the whole strike to be done with. "Now, pilots start your engines. I say again, pilots start your engmes." He checked his survival gear inside the cockpit. The kid in the blue shirt gave him the signal and he fired it up. The A-4s went off the forward catapults, followed by the A-6s. The sun was burning a narrow streak across the sea to their right, the east, where eight thousand miles away his family was then finishing dinner and speaking sorrowfully of his absence. It was the July 4 weekend and they were in Ford City. The flight deck was filled with aircraft roaring down catapults and others taxiing toward them, with thin sailors dressed in colored jerseys, red and blue and white, yellow and purple and green, each jersey indicating without words their jobs. He followed a series of yellow-shirted men who looked like funny insects with their goggles and bulbous sound attentuators, the men pointing forcefully at him, ensuring they had eye contact with him, and then pointing again to the next yellow shirt, who guided him through an intricate maze of equipment and aircraft toward his launching catapult. On the forward left catapult they hooked his Phantom into its bridle. He spoke briefly with Ted Cunningham, his back-seater, a young lieutenant (jg) on his first combat cruise, ensuring all their gear was a "go." His thumb went up and then he saluted, a signal to the NCO outside, and suddenly he was being slung along a ramp toward the ravening, empty sea, all the while gunning his Phantom with everything it had, going from a full stop to 240 miles an hour in the time it took him to whisper "Please, God," and then the jet gave a sighing dip just in front of the bow, 37 �down toward the waiting water, and after that he was free, airborne, making a slow turn to the left, picking up the rendezvous TacAn: 335 degrees, 15 miles, 10,000 feet, circle to your left They gathered quickly, the A-6s below him at 9,000 feet, the A-4s below that at 8,000, the "dogs and cats" below that, all circling with undeniable beauty in the clear blue sky. Each of the flight leaders checked in and he then heard Maxwell, the strike commander, give the word back to the ship. "Combat this is Mad Dog One. All aboard. Departing with thirty-two." They flew in loose formation, the F-4s and the "Q" up front, the others spread laterally behind them in four plane flights. As they approached the coastline Maxwell checked in with the airborne coordinator, a C-130 orbiting in a safe area over Laos, giving him the on and off target times. "Combat Nail this is Mad Dog One with thirty-two, estimated eight oh five with estimated eight oh seven, over." "Roger, Made Dog One, you're clear. New time on target zero eight ten." Lesczynski grinned nervously, imagining Maxwell's curses as they pulled into a wide, five-minute circle. The Air Force was hitting the southern outskirts of Hanoi from bases in Thailand. They'd either been late or had a pilot down. Then it was their turn and they powered in hard and low, just above the green as it slipped suddenly under them. They were "feet dry" now, over hostile ground. They jinked as they flew, moving suddenly left and right to throw off SAM missile radar intercepts. "Okay, let's go." Lesczynski pitched up suddenly, moving almost vertically, as if rising from the green earth itself. The other three F-4s followed close behind. He came down in a straight line, directly toward the target. The attack aircraft would come in afterward at various angles, avoiding a pat- tern that might be picked up by North Vietnamese radar. "Red One, inl" He had seen the gun sites on the photos during the preflight briefing and they were clear now as he roared toward them, their little puffs going off around him. His aircraft unleashed a string of Zunis, their smoky trails impacting again and again, and then he pulled out of the dive, away as the bombs fell behind him. It all happened in a few seconds, and the Phantoms made their turn, heading back toward the new rendezvous over the sea. "Red One, off." The A-4s were next "Blue One, in." He could hear the chatter as they talked to one another, quick instructions. "Heads up!" "Look out, John!" "Go left, now." ((Blue One, off." Here came the first flight of A-6s. "Hawk One, in." 38 It was all so sterile once you'd made it through. "Hawk One, off." It was almost over. "Mad Dog, in." "Break break break, be advised Mad Dog One is down." The mission, his obligations, the world, all changed in five seconds. jimmy Maxwell had been bagged. Lesczynski immediately began to turn his fighter around and return to the site. He had no munitions left, but he could not bear the thought of having to stand before Louise Maxwell and not assure her that he had done everything in his power to help her husband. He heard Maxwell's wingman, speaking with a forced calm. "Okay, we got two good chutes. I've got them in sight" The wingman contacted the airborne coordinator. "Combat Nail, this is Mad Dog, got a bird down just off the target I see him on the ground. I'm over him. We got two other birds out to tank, and they'll be back directly to you." "Roger, Mad Dog, we'll direct." The fire from the petroleum tanks rose twenty thousand feet, red and orange with oily curls of smoke. Lesczynski jinked and zigged and zagged, changing altitude, shaking radar scopes, moving back toward the target They were too far inland for the Search and Rescue helicopters that operated off forward destroyers. The only hope was for a jolly Green Giant to come overland from Thailand. That would take twenty minutes or so. "They're locked onto us, Commander!" Lieutenant (jg) Cunningham was a seatful of terror in back of him. Red lights flashed on the instrument panel, indicating that a SAM radar had indeed locked them into its sights. He jinked several times. A missile flew past them. It looked like a telephone pole as it raced toward the heavens. "That was too close!" Maxwell was talking on his "beeper" survival radio. He was about a mile west of the target. The jolly Green was on its way. Lesczynski could hear Combat Nail instructing it. A group of enemy soldiers was moving across a wide field, sweeping, looking for Maxwell and his bombardier. If the soldiers got too close it was all over. Lesczynski dove at them from the sky, thinking to pin them down, to distract them. They wouldn't know he was out of ammunition. The 85-millimeter battery was in a hidden emplacement, off to his left It puffed once and he saw it for the first time, all six guns firing until his field of vision on that side was loaded with its flashes. A dozen orange balls were coming at him, drifting up into space with a filmic slowness, an unreality, and he knew he was bagged. A shell ripped through his lower canopy as he tried to pull out of the dive and the stick became uncontrollable, the aircraft unresponding, a dead horse on which he was saddled, rolling slowly to the left In the space of a half second, the time it took to let go of the stick and reach for the ejection lever, he realized that both his legs were wounded, his oxygen mask had been torn off by shrapnel, the oxygen bottle near his feet had exploded and set the cockpit aflame, and he SUMMER l98l �was peering at the ground through a hole in the underside of his Phantom, a mere thousand feet below. The ground, Vietnam, death, was coming up to meet him. His Phantom was still going five hundred miles an hour. He pulled the ejection lever and nothing happened. He pulled it again and he was propelled through the closed canopy, the jet now at five hundred feet. His chute opened just enough to break his impact. He hit the ground at a fortyfive-degree angle and bounced into the air again, doing a full, almost graceful loop and then landing on his knees and forehead, a three-point thud. making him fall. Both his legs were bleeding, the blood gathering in the nonregulation, powder-blue socks Sophie had sent him. He felt silly, as much as anything else, in his white boxer undershorts and the funny socks. Under a clump of trees a nurse dressed the cuts on his head, ignoring his arm and legs. It grew quiet. Finally the all-clear siren sounded over the ubiquitous loudspeakers and they walked him to a dirt road, where he was loaded into a green munitions truck. A blue uniformed commissar met the truck in front of a small cluster of buildings. He had a terse, bulbous face. He seemed amazed at Lesczynski's size. The commissar was the first person to speak It was all so loud. That was his first, woozy thought as he staggered to his knees and then tried to stand. In the cockpit it had been sterile, except for the radio chatter. Suddenly the world was swimming with roars and explosions; missiles going off, the 85-millimeter battery pumping out three shells a second at other aircraft overhead, bombs and missiles coming back down from the covering jets, rifles and pistols shooting into the air with futile pops. The petroleum storage area was a towering, crackling backdrop a mile away, whose flames reached forever into the sky, as high as Mount Everest. The soldiers who had been searching for Maxwell were now sweeping toward him instead, spread laterally across the dry rice paddy, the AK-47s pointing at him. They filled his vision as he tried to stand, thirty of them moving in a half jog. He reached back to disconnect his parachute, an automatic, unthinking move, but it wasn't coming off. Then he looked down and noticed that his left arm was hanging useless, unresponding but for little twitches, like a chick trying helplessly to fly. The bone in his upper arm had snapped completely in two, and the part still attached to his shoulder was jiggling, causing the rest of the arm to flail around. He couldn't even surrender. He raised his right arm into the air and they took it for a threat, half of them dropping into firing positions and the other half rushing him. A soldier grabbed the dangling arm and twisted it behind him, in a tight hammerlock that kept on going until his detached wrist was up behind his head. He hit the man unthinkingly, trying to stop the pain. The others charged him, then noticed the arm was loose and merely beat him up instead of shooting him. They acted as if they had never seen zippers before. They cut his flight suit off him, stripping him down to his undershorts, and tied a rope around his neck. In the distance, he saw a Jolly Green Giant helicopter pop in just over the trees where Maxwell had been and then disappear, under heavy air cover. He had seen nothing of Cunningham, his back-seater. They walked him across the dry field. Loudspeakers were everywhere, blaring terse urgencies he did not understand. An old man tried to come at him with a scythe, and the soldiers pushed him away. The soldiers took a delight in suddenly yanking the rope and THE ST. JOHNS REVIEW directly to him. He closely examined Lesczynski's features, then made a judgment. ~<Russki?" "Polski." He didn't know what else the man might have meant. "American." They took him into a large, bare room and made him sit on the floor. People gathered at its open windows and stared at him. Shortly, an officer in green clothes, wearing a pith helmet, entered the room with three armed soldiers. The officer's face was expressionless, but his eyes had the frozen intensity of a professional killer. He stood in front of Lesczynski and spoke in fluent English. "] am going to ask you some questions. If you do not answer you will be severely punished." 44 1 need a doctor." HLater, if you demonstrate a proper understanding. What is your name?" "Stanislaus Lesczynski." "What is your rank?" "Commander, United States Navy." "What ship did you take off from?" "I can't answer that, according to the Geneva Agreements." The officer issued a command in Vietnamese. Someone behind Lesczynski kicked him hard in the head, knocking him over. Two men grabbed him by the arms, dragging him to the center of the room. His bad arm was up around his head again and he screamed in agony. The crowd outside the room responded with a chant, louder and louder. He felt alone, so alone. I'm going to die in the midst of strangers who hate me. They tied his ankles together, and then his wrists and his elbows so that they touched, the ropes so tight that they cut the blood off like tourniquets. It was done with one rope, so that his back was arched and his frame was immobile. They kicked him and beat him and pinched his hands and arms with pliers until the skin was completely numb and the limbs were paralyzed, as if they did not exist. Each time they asked the same question. Finally, awash with guilt at such a small surrender, he relented. "U.S.S. Shiloh." "What squadron?" The same routine. The three guards took turns to see 39 �who could hit his face the hardest. He began to realize that he was in a small sense winning, because he was making them pay for information they already had. Finally, he could stand it no longer. "VF-907." "What kind of plane were you flying?" "You ought to know. You shot it down." "What was your target?" Out of one window, past the hateful enjoying faces, tongues of red flame still licked the noonday sky. "Where all that fire is coming from." The interrogator left the room for a few minutes. He returned with four photographers, who immediately began taking pictures. He walked directly to Lesczynski and shoved his head down to the floor. A soldier pointed an SKS rifle into the back of Lesczynski' s head, and pulled the trigger. In the millisecond it took for the trigger to squeeze and click, Lesczynski came to a sort of unrelenting peace with his captivity. He was in such pain at that moment that he welcomed any relief, even death. His mind went to other things as he stared into the dirt floor. I wonder where they'll bury me. I wonder how long it will take for Sophie to find out. What is it like for a bullet to hit your head? The trigger clicked. The firing pin hit an empty cham· ber. The crowd outside taunted him. And he knew that, for some perverse reason, they needed to use him more than they needed to kill him. They blindfolded him and loaded him into the bed of a truck, and in twenty minutes he was in Hanoi. self with that thought. And far away, in the corner of one eye, he could see the petroleum plant still burning. At the International House they kept him outside, in a flower garden, for ten minutes. When the guard came to guide him inside, he refused to move unless they gave him water. He had asked before, and been denied. He had not drunk anything since breakfast, a lifetime ago on the South China Sea. Finally the guard relented, and gave him two glasses of ice water. He knew he would pay for his obstinance, but it didn't matter. There would be so many things to pay for that they would all blend in, anyway. There were Caucasian reporters in the press room-; as well as Asians. He did his best to march up to the podium, and saluted when he reached it. In the Orient, the man who shows no fear is king, that's what MacArthur had said, but he was not really thinking about MacArthur at that moment. He was remembering Crane Howell, the hobbled, irascible professor at the academy who had grown old before his time, who had survived the work camps and the beatings of the Japanese. If he was lucky, he would live to be old and beaten also. There was no use hoping for more. It was now his fate. The reporters asked him no questions. He was merely meant to be an object on display, like elephant tusks after a safari. Afterward, the trucks drove him back to Hoa Lo prison, better known among American fliers as the Hanoi Hilton, through a different section of town, through same groups of chanting people. And then the fun began. For ten days they beat him. For ten days they did not let him sleep. For ten days they asked him the same questions, over and over, slapping and punching, keeping him * * * "Put these on. You are going to a press conference." The interrogator threw him a pair of oversized flight boots and an Air Force flight suit, freshly washed. They untied his hands. He had been sitting on a small stool in the Hoa Lo prison's interrogation room for five hours, go- ing through the same string of questions and beatings as before. They had to help him into the clothes. One of the guards fashioned a sling for his arm out of thin gauze. They loaded him onto the back of a military truck and made him stand at the front of the truck bed, holding onto a bamboo pole. The truck lumbered through endless Hanoi streets, another truck in front of it with a spotlight on him, another one following, filled with journalists. Crowds gathered on every street at the urgings of the Big Brother loudspeakers, chanting at him and throwing things. Warm urine covered one side of his face. Feces impacted on the bamboo rail near his hand. The crowd periodically surged against the truck, forced back by troops with bayonets. But even Red Lesczynski could tell the whole thing was staged. The demonstrators were somehow flat, mechanicaL They looked sideways, for their controllers, as often as they did at him. Wonderful stuff for pictures. Red Lesczynski on display. Hanoi was actually a beautiful city. He preoccupied him- 40 in leg irons, laughing as he urinated and shit on himself. For ten days they allowed his wounds to fester, until his legs were swollen and the gashes had turned black, the blisters splitting and draining onto the floor, as if he were a frankfurter on a spittle over a hot fire. For ten days they worked the ropes, tightening them and loosening them to regulate his pain, until he developed infected blisters that would make permanent scars, his "varsity stripes" along his wrists and upper arms. For ten days he saw no one but the guards, heard no voices but Vietnamese, found himself locked inside a seven-foot-square repository of darkness and filth that made him wish over and over that he could merely die and see the end of it. And after ten days, he found himself writing with numbed fingers the words that they dictated into his delirious, semideadness: I. I condemn the United States Government for its aggressive war against the Democratic Republic of Vietnam. 2. I have encroached upon the air space of the Democratic Republic of Vietnam. 3. I am a war criminal. 4. I have received humane and lenient treatment from the people and the government of the Democratic Republic of Vietnam. SUMMER 1983 �Truth-Telling and the Iliad Douglas Allanbrook The terrible word truth implies a parity between what we see and what we say. There are two books which most vividly exhibit this quality of truth. These two books are the Iliad and Thucydides' history. I sometimes think that they are the only two that do so consistently. Both books reflect in their words and accounts, speeches and stories, the real that is in front of our eyes and that is so difficult to own up to or to talk about. It would be too much to attempt to talk about both of these incomparable books, and tonight I shall talk only about the Iliad. It would be too much to attempt in an hour to talk with any kind of completeness about the Iliad, and I shall merely try to fix your attention upon the salient features of the poem's words, similes, Gods, and story. The thesis underlying the pointing out is the traditional one that the Iliad is the truest and most famous poem because of its unvarying and harsh vision, its unwavering eye. The singer of the poem never turns aside into the justification of Gods, cities, or individual men. He tells the truth as he see it. His poem is the artifact of things as they are. Everyone who talks about Homer is indebted to the po· et's commentators throughout the ages. A lecture of)acob Klein's focused my attention on the dimensions and passion of the story of Achilles and Zeus. I have also been influenced in what I have to say by two modern writers on the Iliad, Redfield and Whitman, and have used certain of their observations, though disagreeing with certain of their conclusions. The writer who looms hugely on the horizon of any talk about Homer, and who is Homer's most important critic, is Plato. This lecture certainly disagrees with his criticisms, all the more so as it is clear that Plato loved and revered the poem. The beginning of the road through the poem will be to look at words, at nouns which name things; then Homer's similes will be examined; next proper names and lists and Douglas Allanbrook is a composer and tutor at St. John's College, An": napolis, Md. His most recent works arc a "Serenade for Piano and Orchestra" and a set of three "Love and Death Songs" for high voice and chamber ensemble. THE ST. JOHNS REVIEW catalogues; next the names of the Gods and what they illuminate; and finally the story itself as it illuminates the men and gives them to us as models for our own looking in gen· era!. There may be a certain madness in this method of looking at things; generally when we talk about things we argue about them, justify them, or attempt to shove them into the artificial frame of a problem to be solved. Homer is not rhetorical, and language talking about him should not be either, although it is well nigh impossible to talk in any way consonant with his purity and passion. Homer names everything he sees and has lots of time at his disposal. He has a lovely flexible hexameter to fit his words into, and while his grammar is simple, his vocabulary is enormous. Everything to be seen is named specifically. Reading the poem at random one finds words for yoke-rings for oxen, for two-handled goblets, and a word for the tiller of a boat which is always in the plural because the boats he talks about had two tillers. When Odysseus sails back with Chryse in Book I, returning her to her father, all the details of the docking are spelled out: But Odysseus meanwhile drew near to Chryse conveying the sacred hecatomb. These when they were inside the many-hollowed harbor took down and gathered the sails and stowed them in the black ship, let down mast by the forestays, and settled it in the mast crutch easily, and rowed her with oars to the mooring. They threw over the anchor stones and made fast the sterncables. [!, 430-436] When Priam in Book XXIV comes to Achilles' shelter all details of the wagon which will convey Hector's body back to Troy are named: ... and they in terror at the old man's scolding hauled out the easily running wagon for mules, a fine thing new-fabricated, and fastened the carrying basket upon it. 41 �They took away from its peg the mule yoke made of boxwood with its massive knob, well fitted with guiding rings and brought forth the yoke lashing (together with the yoke itself) of nine cubits and snugged it well into place upon the smooth-polished wagon-pole at the foot of the beam, then slipped the ring over the peg, and lashed it with three turns on either side to the knob, and afterwards fastened it all in order and secured it under a hooked guard. carrion dogs see is a mystery. You recall the opening of the poem: [XXIV, 265-74] [1, 1-7] Achilles' shelter where the fateful meeting with Priam takes place is described minutely: It is not clear that birds and dogs see what we see, and for us their sight seems pitiless. Certainly as the opening of the poem sings, they are always present, looking from on high as the vultures do, or circling the edges on ground level like the dogs. Nothing is said about these objects named; they are named as what they are, and not so much written about as presented. What is seen is named specifically as what it is when it reveals itself to sight. It is not that a vase is twohandled, it's a two-handled vase; it is not that a cauldron is unfired, it is an unfired cauldron; it is not that a chest is made of cedar, it is a cedar chest. Even more clearly we never see a sword, we see a bronze sword; we never see red, we see a red fire. Direct perception is always correct, it cannot lie. The stick seen under water does appear crooked, and it would be false in this primary sense we are talking about to say that it was straight. It is crooked to our vision, and something would be wrong with the world if it were not. Sentences that remain true to this firstness or primacy of vision as imaged in a word are always indicative. Nouns in such sentences indicate things. They are placed in their sentences in time as objects are in space. This is language approaching the state of painting, while simultaneously, in this poem, the words are being sung. A painting argues nothing, proves no point. Music although in time, and an aspect of language, argues nothing, proves no points. Paintings and music see and hear for us. Similarly with so many of the words and sentences of the Iliad; they argue nothing, they prove nothing, they say clearly what is seen in a perpetual and vivid present, in moments of firstness and primary sensing, moments that are the opposite of the infinite and the unbounded, that are crystallized facets in the eye of attention focused on each object. There is no reality worth a damn unless it is attended to, and attention must be fixed with a word that is an image. The sentences in the Iliad are almost all indicative. The sun is out, and there are no nebulous futures or contraryto-fact conditions. Nothing is hypothesized, nothing is abstracted, nothing needs to be proved, as there are no problems to be solved and there is no path of discourse which leads from or goes under what is in front of us. Certain special words in the Iliad occur over and over ... a towering shelter the Myrmidons had built for their king, hewing the timbers of pine, and they made a- roof of thatch above it shaggy with grass that they had gathered out of the meadows; and around it made a great courtyard for their king, with hedgepoles set close together; the gate was secured by a single doorpiece of pine, and three Achaians could ram it home in its socket and three could pull back and open the huge door-bar; three other Achaians, that is, but Achilleus all by himself could close it. [XXIV, 448-56] After the death of Hector, when Achilles thinks of "shameful treatment for glorious Hector", everything is named: In both of his feet at the back he made holes by the tendons in the space between ankle and heel, and drew thongs of ox-hide through them, and fastened them to the chariot so as to let the head drag. [XXII, 396-98] As we the listeners to the poem follow the action of the story and listen to the words, it is as if we were looking down on the plain in front ofTroy.lt is as if the names, the nouns, the substantives, were glinting in the sunshine. All the objects in the bright space between the blackhulled boats and the Skaian Gates glitter and shine; they reveal themselves to our eyes as if we were movie cameras or vultures or dogs. The art of Homer is like the movies; there is the camera eye, the selection of objects to be photographed, the quick shifts of scene from the beach to the interior of a house in Troy, the close-ups and the dialogue. Strictly speaking, a camera sees nothing; it records for a director who has a story to tell. What exactly vultures and 42 Sing, goddess, the anger of Peleus' son Achilleus and its devastation, which put pains thousandfold upon the Achaians, hurled in their multitudes to the house of Hades strong souls of heroes, but gave their bodies to be the delicate feasting of dogs, of all birds, and the wil1 of Zeus was accomplished since that time when first there stood in division of conflict Atreus' son the lord of men and brilliant Achilleus. SUMMER 1983 �again. Each occurrence of the word is specific and apt in its naming. But in its manifold occurrences the word casts a web of meaning which links together all of the occurrences. The most notable of such w6rds is the word "fire." In Book I the pyres of the dead Achaians consume the bodies of those stricken of Apollo's plague. In Book V when Diomedes begins his day of glory Pallas Athene "made weariless fire blaze from his shield and helmet" (V, 4). Hector's funeral is conducted with quiet finality, and his body burns accompanied by the proper lamentations of his family and his city. Fire finally reaches the boats of the Achaians and accomplishes the plan of Zeus for Achilles' glory. When Hector is dead on the ground, killed by Achilles and the trickery of Athenc, the Achaians remember that fire: And the other sons of the Achaians came running about him, and gazed upon the stature and on the imposing beauty of Hektor; and none stood beside him who did not stab him; and thus they would speak one to another, each looking at his neighbor: "See now, Hektor is much softer to handle than he was when he set the ships ablaze with the burning firebrand." [XXII, 369-74] Patroklos' body is consumed by fire together with the bodies of the twelve young Trojans slaughtered by Achilles for the greater glory of his friend, and Achilles circles the pyre dragging Hector's body by the heels. In the terrifying climax of the poem Achilles stands on the ditch and bellows, his head encircled with a nimbus of fire. He strikes terror into the hearts of the Trojans, who well sec in it their own destruction. Achilles is like fire, short-lived, destructive, gleaming, and irresistible, a pile of ashes at the end-"consumcd by that which it was nourished by," to speak as our best poet speaks. Achilles also looks like fire. In Book XXII, just before the end of Hector, Achilles closes in on him "like the flare of blazing fire" (XXII, 13 5). The word "fire" becomes more than the sum of its individual instances. It becomes part of the meaning of the whole poem as we see the work of fire and the lives of the heroes, and the heat of the battle, and the burning of corpses, and the sacrifices to the gods, and the certain future fire which will consume Troy and finally cast young Astyanax, Hector's son, to instant death over the walls. The meaning of such a word is what we mean, I suppose, by the word "symbolic." The word is in each specific instance precise, but in its many instances its meaning spreads abroad to encompass a whole network of signification. We grasp the enormity of its meaning without demonstration or argument. It exhibits itself, and shines in our eyes. One word, according to authorities, is dangerous to utter. The first word of the poem, the subject of the poem in THE ST. JOHNS REVIEW the objective case, is a special holy word, a "tabu." The word is, of course, 1'-~""· the wrath of Achiles which will bring manifold destruction, etc. It is a word that is reserved for Achilles and the gods; it names a brooding and potential power. It always presages some terrifying future. It is hardly adventitious that 1'-~"" is the first word in this poem whose story has a tension and a resolution that is as clearly aimed as the loosing of an arrow toward a target. In the network of meaning in the poem it is clear that this sacred "wrath" is like fire. Any ordinary wrath blazes up like a fire, but this wrath is like a holy fire, which is not to be gazed at any more than the head of a Gorgon is. Through it the will of Zeus is accomplished, and many heroes slaughtered. The word occurs very rarely in the poem, while the word fire is ever-present in the fabric of the story. The word is avoided, although one can circle around it by talking of things that are like it or by finding circumlocutions that glance toward its meaning. The meaning of the word is the story itself, as the poet clearly announces in his invocation to the goddess. Vision and the naming of things, or seeing and saying, have yet another aspect which has been hidden and only hinted at in what has been said so far about the Iliad. We see only what we pay attention to, and the poet pays close attention. We see a particular object only by coming to it from something else or by going from it to something else. The specialness of what we see is not only that it is a brazen sword with a golden handle, but that it is different from anything else in its very particularity. It is also different from anything that is next to it, or indeed it could not be seen. It may be like something, but must always remain different. Words used truthfully reflect this, and that is why Homer constantly uses similes and very rarely employs metaphors. It is, after all, a special kind of lie to say that my love is a rose. She is a girl and she is like a rose, or better like a red, red rose. Achilles is not a fire, he is like a fire, and he docs not fight water, but battles with a special river which runs along the edge of the battlefield and which has one name which is employed by the gods, the Xanthos, and another name, the Skamandros, which is used by humans. It is clear that fire and water are antithetical, but it is in the samenesses and differences presented at once in a simile that vision is both clarified and respected for what it is. To be sure, there are a few metaphors in Homer. People sleep "their brazen sleep," "night wraps up their eyes," or someone is called "the scourge of Zeus." Similes, however, are the ever-present figure of speech in Homer, and they range from the simplest ones to comparisons of enormous complexity and irony. Simple similes give flashes of vision as the images dart from like to like while preserving the necessity of seeing things as separate. Ajax carries his shield "like a wall." Athene and Hera walk into battle eager to help the Achaians "like shivering doves." Men attack "like lions"; their armor "glitters like the thunder flash of Zeus." Complicated similes reveal more, and Agamemnon is 43 �never seen more clearly than in the simile near the beginning of Book XI. Let us read it: And as a lion seizes the innocent young of the running deer, and easily crunches and breaks them caught in the strong teeth when he has invaded their lair, and rips out the soft heart from them, and even if the doe be very near, still she has no strength to help, for the ghastly shivers of fear are upon her also and suddenly she dashes away through the glades and the timber sweating in her speed away from the pounce of the strong beast; so there was no one of the Trojans who could save these two from death, but they themselves were running in fear from the Argives. [XI, 113-121] Agamemnon has just killed and stripped Isos and Antiphos, two sons of Priam. Achilles had previously caught them on the slopes of Mt. Ida and released them for ransom. This time Agamemnon struck Isos in the chest above the nipple and hit Antiphos by the ear with the sword, and eagerly stripped off their armor, which armor he had seen before when Achilles had brought them in from Ida. Before this we have heard Agamemnon's fierce words in Book VI when his brother Menelaos was moved to pity a Trojan: "Dear brother, o Menelaos, are you concerned so tenderly with these people? Did you in your house get the best of treatment from the Trojans? No, let not one of them go free of sudden death and our hands; not the young man child that the mother carries still in her body, not even he, but let all of Ilion's people perish, utterly blotted out and unmourned for." [VI, 55-60] This side of Agamemnon was present to the listener before the simile in Book XI, but what the listener to the simile becomes startlingly aware of is a truth about Agamemnon as he is placed in juxtaposition with Achilles. What was begun and seen in Book I when the two men stood apart in their bitter quarrel is now made manifest. Agamemnon may be a bumbling king of kings, an unsure leader of the host, too big for his boots, but for all that he is a killer, like the lion of the simile. Earlier in Book XI you will recall his shield with the face of the Gorgon upon it, the symbol of fear and trembling and horror. We never have physical description of the heroes in the Iliad; we don't know the color of their eyes or of their hair. Only ugly Thersites with his peculiar eggplant-shaped head is described in physical detail. We know Achilles is beautiful, 44 and that Priam is so in another way. We envisage great Ajax, the wall of the Achaians, and noble Diomedes. The great, vacillating, and violent Agamemnon is always present to our eyes after this simile, all the more so as he is remembered by being placed in conjunction with Achilles, who had spared the lives of the two boys that Agamemnon is here shown slaughtering as a beast slaughters. Ten books later Homer portrays Achilles slaughtering yet another boy whom he had previously ransomed. This is the near-monstrous book in which Achilles butchers Trojans beside the river Skamandros and then launches himself against the divine river itself. You recall what he says to the boy before killing him: "So, friend, you die also. Why all this clamour about it? Patroklos also is dead, who was better by far than you are. Do you not see what a man I am, how huge, how splendid and born of a great father, and the mother who bore me immortal? Yet even I have also my death and my strong destiny, and there shall be a dawn or an afternoon or a noontime when some man in the fighting will take the life from me also either with a spearcast or an arrow flown from the bowstring.'' [XXI, 106-lll] If we were to construct a simile ourselves it would not be a bestial one; with all of our later stories in us we might well liken Achilles to an Angel of Death, but we would never liken him to a lion. Let us now examine another simile earlier on in Book XI than the one we just looked at. The two armies are facing each other, drawn up in two lines: And the men, like two lines of reapers who, facing each other, drive their course all down the field of wheat or of barley for a man blessed in substance, and the cut swathes drop showering, so Trojans and Achaians driving in against one another cut men down, nor did either side think of disastrous panic. [XI, 67-71] Here our seeing is wrenched from the world of war to the world of peace. Reaping a harvest is the co-operative work of a group of men, and the grain is a blessing, and bread is life-giving and puts strength into the body, and the man who owns the field is blessed in his substance. Two things that look alike-the lopping-off of stalks of grain and the cutting down of human bodies-are both hard work. The result of one is fruit and nurture, and of the other desolation. We of course use Homer's simile constantly, but as a metaphor. We speak of "death, the grim reaper," or of infantry soldiers being "mowed down" by machine~gun fire, or even push our metaphorical perversity so far as to speak of "body counts" as if we were numbering the stalks of grain that fall or counting our merchandise. Metaphors SUMMER 1983 �conceal the truth often, if they are not downright lying. Men are not lions and bodies are nOt for counting. No man is an anonymous unit to be counted. Agamemnon is like a lion slaughtering a young deer, and foot soldiers killing each other in facing lines are like reapers. The seeing of one thing as like another thing to the eye but also as startlingly different to the intelligence reveals the character of what is seen. In this grim poem of violence, wrath, and war there is never a simile which lulls us into acceptance of war as something ordinary, never a passage which lets us get used to it. It is always seen for what it is, the field of hateful Ares, not the field of peaceful harvest. The difference between the scenes of peace and the scenes of war make the battlefield agonizingly clear. War is not excellent, although heroes gain glory in it. The poem, in its truthfulness, never suggests for a moment that we will ever be without war. The famous simile at the end of Book VIII, so often commented upon throughout the ages, accomplishes a vaster kind of seeing by means of likeness and difference. Book VIII, as you will recall, is where Zeus puts into play his plan for Achilles' glory. The Achaians will be driven back temporarily and Hector will be unleashed. Hector has just boasted of what he has and will accomplish, and has voiced the poignant and overweening wish: "Oh, if I only could be as this in all my days immortal and ageless and be held in honour as Athene and Apollo are honoured as surely as this oncoming day brings evil to the Argives." [VIII, 538-41] The first likeness and difference here is between stars and fires; another likeness and difference arises as one gazes upon the still moon-and-star-lit landscape and the thousand fires burning in the plain between the river and the ships. Quiet and peace envelop both the plain and the landscape. Stars and fires both glitter, and both seem uncountable in their numbers; there are a thousand fires and each has fifty men, and who can count the stars. The beauty and terror and quiet which are behind the truth of the view come all from the awful differences. The landscape is a world of peace inhabited by a shepherd whose heart is gladdened by the clarity of the night. The stars in their purity and eternity, though shining, are the antithesis of the fires, which will be ashes as the day dawns and destruction begins. We, the listeners, grasp the scene like visitors from another realm, from another star-system, knowing the past and the future; yet simultaneously we are not from another realm or from another star-system, but live on the plain, waiting anxiously for another dawn. We are ourselves like a simile of sameness and difference in our attending to the poem, as we are both like and unlike what we see. A whole host of similes introduces the whole host of the Achaians in Book II before the mighty catalogue unfolds in all its specificity. First the gleam from their bronze dazzles the upper air as an obliterating fire lights up a vast forest. Next, pouring from their ships and shelters with the earth resounding under their feet and under the hooves of their horses, they are likened to nations of birds, of geese, of cranes, of swans settling in clashing swarms onto a water meadow. The host takes position, thousands of armed After this he sacrifices to the gods, but they "took no part of it/ ... so hateful to them was sacred Ilion" (VIII, 55051). The simile is as follows: So with hearts made high these sat night-long by the outworks of battle, and their watch fires blazed numerous about them. As when in the sky the stars about the moon's shining are seen in all their glory, when the air has fallen to stillness, and all the high places of the hills are clear, and the shoulders out-jutting, and the deep ravines, as endless bright air spills from the heavens and all the stars are seen, to make glad the heart of the shepherd; such in their numbers blazed the watchfires the Trojans were burning between the waters of Xanthos and the ships, before Ilion. A thousand fires were burning there in the plain, and beside each one sat fifty men in the flare of the blazing firelight. And standing each beside his chariot, champing white barley and oats, the horses waited for the dawn to mount to her high place. [VIII, 553-65] THE ST. JOHNS REVIEW men, as leaves and flowers appear in their season. Next they stand in such numbers, their hearts burning to break the Trojans, as multitudinous nations of swarming insects which, avid for milk, drive hither and thither about the sheepfolds in spring when the milk splashes in the milkpails. Only this last simile switches to the world of men and peaceful human work. The order has been: obliterating forest fire, nations of birds, leaves and flowers in sea- son, nations of insects about the stalls of shepherds. The focus finally narrows down to the leaders of the host, and last of all to the leader of the leaders, Agamemnon: These, as men who are goatherds among the wide goatflocks easily separate them in order as they take to the pasture, thus the leaders separated them this way and that way toward the encounter, and among them powerful Agamemnon, with eyes and head like Zeus who delights in thunder, like Ares for girth, and with the chest of Poseidon; like some ox of the herd pre-eminent among the others, a bull, who stands conspicuous in the huddling cattle. [II, 474-81] This whole great list of similes, with its carefully controlled 45 �order of seeing things, and all of the other similes we have looked at, have one characteristic which is so simple that it almost escapes notice. Everything is compared to something that is always as it is, whether the comparison is to objects or animals, to activities or to landscapes, or to the recurrence of spring: lions, reapers, goatherds at their rounds, nations of birds and insects, forest fires, stars. The great succession of similes just looked at in Book II has as its function the focusing, the funneling of our attention to the great list of proper names and place-names which follows in the Catalogue. Proper names, of course, are all over the Iliad, not merely listed once in the Catalogue. No one in this poem is anonymous, whether he be an Achaian, a Trojan, or an outlander speaking some outlandish speech. No one in this poem dies without being named, and his name is attached to where he came from. In this the poem is true to all of us. We may not all be brothers, but we all have names and parents and were born someplace, and to ignore this is to lie in the blackest manner known to lying. No one is a number, and people are not to be counted, they are to be named. There are many warriors in this poem named at the moment of their death who otherwise play no part in the story: So Iphidamas fell there and went into the brazen slumber, unhappy, who came to help his own people, and left his young wife a bride, and had known no delight from her yet, and given much for her. First he had given a hundred oxen, then promised a thousand head of goats and sheep, which were herded for him in abundance. Now Agamemnon, son of Atreus, stripped him ... [XI, 2 41-46] Or consider poor Gorgythion, named by name and descent, and immortalized by a simile: Gorgythion the blameless, hit in the chest by an arrow; Gorgythion whose mother was lovely Kastianeira, Priam's bride from Aisyme, with the form of a goddess. He bent drooping his head to one side, as a garden poppy bends beneath the weight of its yield and the rains of springtime; so his head bent slack to one side beneath the helm's weight. [VIII, 303-308] If I were to tell the truth about the war that I knew, it would certainly not be an account of the so-called strategy of the vain and posturing commanding general. Rather I would tell of a boy from the tobacco-growing country of the upper Connecticut river in Ivlassachusetts who married a young virgin from his own town a month before sailing, and who met his death quickly, shot from behind by a German patrol. The Catalogue in Book II is the very triumph of specific- 46 ity, a great parade of proper names and places drawn up in the plain for the listener to hear about. The Muses themselves are invoked as being goddesses who know all things, and who remember all those who came beneath Ilion. It is as if I, in telling the terrible story of Gettysburg and Antietam, were to call on some recording angel to help me with the resounding catalogue of names and places from Portland, Maine, to Chattanooga, Tennessee. The catalogue has the endless fascination of an exhaustive list; the listener checks off every place he has ever head of, and learns some new ones. A Canadian humorist once commented that the Catalogue of Ships in Homer had all the dignity and beauty of the New York Telephone Directory. To which one can only reply that the Telephone Book is fascinating in its very specificity; it is better than imagination, or rather it feeds the imagination, and fills the reader with wonder and terror at the thought of all those names, nationalities, streets, and boroughs. So far in this lecture tonight we have examined names of objects, names of animals, names of artifacts. Certain names such as <lfire" and <lwater" assumed a vaster meaning, even though each instance of their use was specific. We talked finally of proper names, proper nouns, people rescued from anonymity as they died and were named. We have yet to see the truth of the named heroes, Achilles and Hector and Ajax, the meaning their names assume for us, although much was revealed about the name Agamemnon by the lion simile. To some sceptics it may seem suspect to talk about the name of Achilles as having meaning. Achilles' mother is a goddess, and most of the other heroes are of divine descent. Is there any real referent for us in such names? Was Achilles ever? He's not Alcibiades, or Caesar, or General Patton. Can the name of a person which is not linked to a real person have any relation to the truth? The names of the gods disturb listeners more than the names of the heroes. This may be more so nowadays that in previous ages, though no one was more upset by the names of the gods than Socrates. What are the names of the gods referring to? Are they merely allegorical names? Dare we even give names to gods? The names of the gods must have been like a thorn in the side of many of your thoughts and discussions about Homer. By a kind of reversal of meaning you may well have been put off by the fact that the gods appear so real; they are married, they have domestic quarrels, brothers and sisters detest each other, they have mansions, they eat together; goodness as such seems to have little to do with them, though they certainly exhibit specific excellences. Another knot to disentangle in the Iliad is that great Zeus is so different from the other gods. He stands apart from the other immortals with a divinity and power which Achilles' appears akin to. Zeus' dire silence throughout the long tension of much of the poem, until Achilles' day arrives and the plan of Zeus unfolds in its double-edged fulfillment, is the very will of the poem, as the poet tells us in the opening lines. Even this great mystery, Zeus, however, is hoodwinked by his wife, SUMMER 1983 �and his threats to her and to the rest of his family are never carried out. Another aspect of the g0ds which may disturb our listening to the story as true may be best stated by remembering that Herodotus says that Homer and Hesiod named and defined the gods. Certain listeners may be used to considering the gods as formless, as Good, as not being something that was written up by a poet; in other words many listeners have been used to the gods as being real by the very fact of their not being like anything we see and by their not being embodied in a fiction. The gods are called the "deathless" ones, the immortals, and it is by examining closely this name that I propose that we get closer to the truth of their names. This real name, the "deathless ones," is a name that speaks of a lack of something. They don't die, and we do. It is not merely that they are bigger, more beautiful, and more powerful than we are; most importantly they are other than mortal. In all of this the gods are like similes, and our vision of ourselves and the world as it is is sharpened by the presence of the gods. I am in no way saying that they are similes, and God knows they are not metaphors. They are like similes in that they sharpen our attention to what lies around us. The fact that they are without death but like us gives their actions at times a kind of frivolity. War is a comedy for them; if Ares and Aphrodite are wounded in the battle before the walls of Ilion it is only a kind of play which will be put right by their parents. Artemis, the killer maiden, is spanked by her mother until the deadly arrows fall out of her pockets. The gods are like and unlike the listeners to the poem in another way. They look down on the plain of Troy, and see what goes on; they know the beginning, the middle, and the end of the story, and enjoy it just as we do; and again like us turn aside from it and go on about their own affairs. They are the guarantors of the fiction. The difference again is of course that they are "deathless," and their enjoyment is completely aesthetic, unsullied by suffering or the approaching evening. The following short poem by Emily Dickinson is not for them, though in some awful way one suspects that they might appreciate it, as mere aesthetes among us do: I like a look of agony, Because I know it's true; Men do not sham convulsion, Nor simulate a throe. The eyes glaze once, and that is death. Impossible to feign The beads upon the forehead By homely anguish strung. The lives of the gods obviously can never be tragic; their dangers and their wounds are only ripples on a surface. Ichor runs in their veins, not blood, and they are nourished with nectar and ambrosia. Their deathless light in the upper air makes the listener see more clearly the plain of Troy and the slaughter and passion and travail which take THE ST. JOHNS REVIEW place there. They resemble the simile of the stars and the campfires. All seeing necessitates something different next to what we see. We see a chair because it stops being a chair when it is in place, and next to something else which is not a chair, even if it be air. The limit of life is death, and we apprehend mortality in the Iliad by watching the deathless ones. We, the listeners, see what we are in the poem by seeing what we are not, and the heroes of the poem itself are always face to face with the deathless ones and with death; they are descended from the deathless ones in half their being, but receive no guarantees from their descent; they have no insurance against the end of life. It is more difficult to pin down what is revealed to us by the character of the gods. Ares may be the easiest one to talk about first, even though he is related to no special hero in the poem. He is sung of as despicable and quarrelsome, and he changes sides from the Achaians to the Trojans. Athene in Book V instructs Diomedes: "Be not afraid of violent Ares, that thing of fury, evil-wrought, that double-faced liar who even now protested to Hera and me, promising that he would fight against the Trojans and stand by the Argives. Now, all promises forgotten, he stands by the Trojans." [V, 830-34] He is accompanied by allegorical figures of Terror, Fear, and Hate when we first meet him in Book IV, just before Diomedes' great day. Zeus, his father, hates him. At the end of Book V he says to his son: "Do not sit beside me and whine, you double-faced liar. To me you are most hateful of all gods who hold Olyrnpos. Forever quarrelling is dear to your heart, wars and battles. [V, 889-91] In this poem where war is the daily doing of the heroes it is a remarkable sign of the clear vision of the poet that the god of war is associated with no single hero, and is shown as a despicable, brazen, and howling youngster who bellows, and is worsted by his sister and hated by his father. It cannot be merely that Ares represents one aspect of war, defeat, and terror, as one noted commentator argues. Ares, the god of war, is simply and clearly a vision of the nature ofthe battlefield. No single hero is illuminated by him as is Achilles by Zeus, or Paris by Aphrodite. This same vision of war is present throughout Thucydides, and seems to guide his hand as we watch the spectacle of barbarism unleashed upon Greece not by barbarians but by war. The same vision enlivens the vivid scenes of the battle of Waterloo in Stendahl and the battle of Borodino in Tolstoy. Ares has no favorites and takes no sides. Apart from Ares, seeing what the gods are like means looking harder at the person each is linked with. Helen is not like Aphrodite when she says to her in Book III, 47 �'"Strange divinity! Why are you still so stubborn to beguile me?"' (III, 399), and, later in the same speech: "I am not going to him. It would be too shameful I will not serve his bed, since the Trojan women hereafter would laugh at me, all, and my heart even now is confused with sorrows" [III, 410-12] Helen is humiliated by her goddess when she is told to repair to her chamber and Paris is scooped out of the battlefield and dumped into her bed. To the old men on the wall she seems like a very goddess in her beauty, but within herself she is divided and at war with herself, and it takes Aphrodite's curses and anger to drive her to Paris' arms. When Athene stays Achilles' hand in Book I at the height of his murderous quarrel with Agamemnon, Achilles is already debating within his chest two courses. Again the goddess is like and unlike him, and is seen by no other man. She does not make him do what he does; she holds him back from one course and points him to the other course he had already been debating within. Zeus and Achilles are alike in their loneliness, in their withdrawal, and in their detachment and lucidity as they view the plain and the battle. When Thetis comes to Olympos she finds Zeus apart from the others "retired at a distance" -a phrase used only of him and Achilles. The neardivine and excessive nature of Achilles' wrath is the blood and heart of Zeus' plan, and Zeus, unlike Achilles, is the mind of it; he is the guarantor of Achilles' glory. Zeus and Achilles hold the tension of withdrawal throughout all the mighty battles of the middle books. Only in furthering Achilles' glory does Zeus stand apart from his family in strife and threaten them, a parallel to Achilles' days in his tent and his standing alone in his wrath even after the embassy of men closest to him. The difference between Zeus and Achilles is the difference between the deathless one and the death-haunted one. However alone Achilles is, and however near to divinity he may be in his ruthlessness and his wrath, he remains mortal. He is fallible at the moment of his greatest glory. The terror hidden behind Zeus' nod of the head when he accedes to Thetis' petition, the double-edged truth of his promise, lies all in Achilles' love for Patroklos. The poet insists by the constant witness of others on the lovable and gentle nature of Achilles' friend. Briseis, the captured woman, bears most touching witness to this in Book XIX. At the end of her lament for him she says, "'Therefore I weep your death without ceasing. You were kind always"' (XIX, 300). Greeks in a later age marvelled that Patroklos was older than Achilles, and yet so beloved. Patroklos weeps for the fate of the other Achaians in front of Achilles, and Achilles' indecision in the face of his friend leads him to give permission, the fatal permission to enter the battle, clad in the mighty armor of Achilles who loves him. This weakness of judgement is the beginning of the train of events which are sung of as the pit 48 of loneliness and detachment and ferocity. The irony of his act is voiced by the poet in the unspeakable prayer of Achilles to Zeus, Apollo, and Athene just before Patroklos' departure: "Father Zeus, Athene and Apollo, if only not one of all the Trojans could escape destruction, not one of the Argives, but you and I could emerge from the slaughter so that we two alone could break Troy's hallowed coronal." [XVI, 97-100] Zeus has not tricked Achilles, he has stood behind and deepened what was already present. Achilles is better and deeper and more terrifying and monstrous than other men just as Zeus is first among the gods. Achilles' wrath and his pride go beyond the human range, but his everlasting memory remains because of Patroklos, because he is, as are other mortals, dependent upon another. The gods, and especially Zeus, may indeed foresee what they foresee, but all there is for them to foresee are men's actions. Zeus foresees Patroklos' death, but Achilles' judgement is responsible for it, and he is the fount of his own suffering. The gods are the unchanging look of the present state of affairs, which is the perpetual state of affairs. The hardest pill of all to swallow in the poet's fiction is the role of the gods in the deaths of Patroklos and Hector. Theirs are the most important deaths to the story, and they are the most touching and lovable of the heroes. Both men are tricked by the gods, and at the end, defenseless, they are slaughtered like pigs. Patroklos, dying, foresees mighty Hector's death, and when that death comes in the story the hero, again defenseless, tricked by Athene after his nightmare run around the walls of Troy, falls. What is the intent of the poet in presenting the deaths of these two heroes in such a manner? The full weight of the meaning has to be faced and grappled with. The poem is peopled with heroes who gain their glory in battle and who exhibit and are praised for their courage in mortal combat. Their courage cannot consist in merely killing-that would be bestial. Their excellence must consist in seeing what death in battle is like and then facing it. The truth, as presented by Homer in these scenes, with all the help of the apparatus of Apollo's and Athcne's intervention, is that the moment of defeat is the end of the story and the story must end in defenselessness: "No, deadly destiny, with the son of Leta, has killed me, and of men it was Euphorbos; you are only my third slayer." [XVI, 849-50] says Patroklos to Hector. Hector, dying, says to Achilles: "Be careful now; for I might be made into the god's curse upon you on that day when Paris and Phoibos Apollo destroy you in the Skaian gates, for all your valor." [XXII, 358-60] SUMMER 1983 �Achilles, the clearest seer of all, answers him: ' "Die: and I will take my own death at whatever time Zeus and the rest of the immortals choose to accomplish it." is robbed by a small weakling, both should lie. Our ordinary daily life and our daily reading are enmeshed in a web of rhetoric: our arguments, our constant justifications, the man or of a cause. Aristotle in his book on rhetoric illus- speeches we listen to, the sermons we attend to, the daily editorial page, the puny talk of personalities that waver in front of our eyes in the penumbra of our TV sets. As probable stories are the bread and butter of our daily existence, Aristotle intends to exhibit a whole side of our being in his rhetorical treatise. When in the Poetics he finds poetry more philosophical than history, he intends to say that poetry is more general; but nearly in the same breath he observes that the poetic story must be probable, must be believable, or no one would be caught by it. We have insisted that the Iliad is not rhetoric, but we must also insist that it share with rhetoric the probability of its stories. Nothing will work unless it appears probable. The enormous difference is that in the Iliad we begin with the story and end up with the man, whereas in rhetoric we begin with the man in the dock and then proceed to a probable story in order to justify or accuse the prisoner. That is why it is possible to talk of an Achilles or an Ajax or of a David the King, while it is so offensive to talk of a Napoleon or a Michelangelo or an Alcibiades. Alcibiades and Napoleon did particular things, and any historian who is not merely a chronicler will argue about their doings after the fact of the Battle of Waterloo or the Syracusan expedition, although he will falsify if he makes his account a necessary and inevitable story. Waterloo could have been avoided, and Alcibiades might well have taken Syracuse if he had not gotten drunk on a certain evening in Athens. The poet is under no such restraint. l-Ie tells stories that could happen, stories that arc truly probable and that unfold inexorably. Such a nexus of inevitability is the heart and soul of fiction; it gives it its generality and its truth. It is like the view of the gods from Olympos as they watch the plain of Troy. It is what the word fate means in the poem. It is what makes Homer's Iliad or true fiction in general applicable to the whole of things, and it is what takes such poems and books out the the realm of rhetoric and away from the dreary round of one thing after another, and away from the endless talk of justifying and accusing, buying and selling, all under the whip of power and self-love. Many have regarded the Iliad as if it were the Gorgon's head~something too fraught with terror, too harsh and grim, to be accepted as true and primary. It is easier to consider it merely as the first book to be met with, and to think that later books will somehow deal with it, employing it as the opening gambit in a long history of dialectical opposites, or to assume that somehow philosophy will have certain consolations which can soften or deal with the greatness and monstrosity of Achilles. I would propose, in concluding this lecture, that we consider it both first and primary among all books which the listener is acquainted with. That Achilles is first and primary in the poem is reflected in the whole sophisticated structure of the work. trates a side of this by noting that when a large, strong man He is first in courage, truthfulness, strength, beauty, ter- [XXII, 365-66] Courage is defined by seeing and facing such moments in the imagination, even before they happen, and understanding that the gods are no help at the end. When one man kills another in battle, the one killed has nowhere to turn; the end is slaughter. The gods at such a moment are merely the bright noonday sun beating down upon the deadly killing place in the space between the city and the ships. It is only at the end of this lecture that the most important and revealing aspects of the Iliad's truth-telling emerge. An entry into this last consideration of the poem will be to say what the poem is, and what the poem is not. It is a story, but it is not rhetoric; no appearances are saved. It is a fiction which exposes things, and its exposition is never an apology or an argument or a hypothesis. Milton, great arguer and lawyer, and also great poet, calls upon his muse in these words: ... what is in me dark Illumine, what is low raise and support; That, to the height of this great argument, I may assert Eternal Providence, And justify the ways of God to men. [Paradise Lost, I, 22-26] Milton intends to be an advocate and to save his client by means of his poem. There is nothing to be saved in the Iliad, only something to be seen. Certainly we listeners may argue for all generations about Achilles, but Homer has done his job when he has told his story, and he is vastly uninterested in dialectic. The truth of the name Achilles is the story of Achilles, and the story is not rhetorical. We don't see the heroes until they act, and they act in a story that is composed, that is a fiction composed by Homer. The story of Achilles is not like a story delivered in court by a lawyer in defense of his client. Achilles is not on trial. The story is not a probable fiction after the existent fact of Achilles sitting in the dock of justice. It is not history either, although that the Trojan war was fought and that Achilles may have been there lends credibility to the fiction. In a trial both the prosecuting and the defense lawyers will try with all their art to tell a probable story about the man in the dock, a story which will support or lend credence to an action already committed. The man on trial is accused of some crime, and a probable story or account of his actions will give an appearance of truth to his guilt or to his innocence. This is the essential use of rhetoric: to tell a probable story in defense of a THE ST. JOHNS REVIEW 49 �ror, and friendship. He demands and receives more glory than any other hero, and loses what· he cherishes most at the moment that he is glorified by the gods. After Patroklos' death he is not present on the scene as other men are. His loneliness and wrath then have a detachment and ferocity beyond all ordinary human bounds. Yau will recall what he says to the boy he slaughters by the river. After Patroklos' death he eats no human food until he sups with Priam in Book XXIV. He is both great and monstrous, a disturbing fact which piety would have be otherwise. He manages the funeral games with perspicuity and tact, seeing all the heroes for what they are, and even awarding Agamemnon a prize while refraining from asking him to compete. When he and Priam look at each other and admire each other, they both see things with a clarity born of suffering and passion, and Priam kisses the man-killing hands of Achilles, the hands that killed his son, and Achilles lifts the body of Hector into the smooth-rolling cart. There is no conversion or turning around of Achilles in Book XXIV; he quietly and simply sees steadily and truly with no illusions. He will fight again and die, and so will Priam, and the world is as it is, and nothing will change. He sees as a god sees, but remains a mortal. At the same time, Achilles' primacy in the poem in no way impugns the other heroes; in particular the civilization of the poem makes Hector and Priam figures that one cherishes, and even loves. Both of them are men one would choose to live with in a city, or in the arena of political life. There is no Goliath or Satan or Turnus in this story. Ajax is a paradigm of strength and courage and fidelity, and his name remains with us as such. Odysseus is better at counsel than Achilles. Diomedes has his incomparable day of glory. Nestor's loquaciousness is the virtue of his age, and there is wisdom in stopping action to listen to the past, though it be tedious at times. The proposition that I proposed submits that the poem 50 itself has the same kind of primacy among all the books you read that Achilles has in the poem. I do not intend this merely historically, although it is perfectly clear that the book has an enormous importance in its chronological firstness. How marvelous it would be to have Alexander the Great's copy of the Iliad as edited by his teacher Aristotle. Rome's greatest poet, Virgil, had to face the Iliad as if it were the Gorgon's head. Plato had to tame Achilles, and face down the truth of the poem and the power of its beauty. Homer is like an ever-present star on the horizon for Dante and Milton. All of the above mentioned facts from the history of literature and philosophy are so, but the primacy of the Iliad lies in its perennial freshness and truth. It is about what impinges most importantly on anyone, if he will but look around. There are other books one might choose if he were running a city, as one might prefer Hector to Achilles in running a city hall or state. There are other books which have the sagacity and lie-telling abilities of Odysseus, and there are many Nestor-like books of prudence, full of memory. The Iliad does not eliminate these books any more than Achilles blots out the greatness of the other heroes. For us in this eccentric little college, it is rightfully the first book. Philosophy must come after. It may have seemed trivial in matters of such importance to have talked so long about nouns, proper names, similes, and story telling, and it is probably not consistent with the spirit and greatness of the Iliad to be arguing in its behalf. Homer has no ax to grind, no thesis to prove, and the thunder of Zeus would strike him dead if he tried to solve any problems. He is like a roving camera eye or an omnipresent eagle, and only Shakespeare can match his impartiality. In his poem the sun is always high noon, and the angle of its light is a right angle. The virtues commensurate with its seeing are courage and truth-telling, and the primacy of the poem shows that these indeed are the true human excellences. SUMMER 1983 �The Supreme Court and School Desegregation: Brown v. Board of Education Reconsidered Murray Dry I "We conclude that in the field of public education the doctrine of 'separate but equal' has no place. Separate educational facilities are inherently unequal." So wrote Mr. Chief Justice Earl Warren, for a unanimous court in Brown v. Board of Education, 1 the school segregation case, which was decided on May 17, 1954. In his definitive history of this case, Richard Kluger explained that "all the Supreme Court had truly and at long last granted to the black man was simple justice." Now the law says that, like them or not, white America may not humiliate colored Americans by setting them apart. Now the law says that black Americans must not be degraded by the state and their degradation used as an excuse to drive them further down. 2 This apparently simple case has been surrounded by notoriety and controversy from the day it was decided. james Reston reacted to the Court's reliance on social science evidence to establish the inherent inequality of segregation with a day-after column in The New York Times entitled, "A Sociological Decision: Court Founded its Segregation Ruling on Hearts and Minds rather than Laws." Reston said of the Court's work that it read "more like an expert paper on sociology than a Supreme Court opinion"; it "rejected history, philosophy, and custom as the major basis Murray Dry teaches political philosophy, American constitutional law, and American political thought at Middlebury College (Vermont), where he is a professor in the Department of Political Science. He has published work on the separation of powers, Congress, and the congressional veto. THE ST. JOHNS REVIEW for its decision and accepted instead justice Benjamin N. Cardoza[sic]'s test of contemporary social justice." 3 Over the years the meaning of the case was extended far beyond its original legal scope. The Times, in its editorial on the tenth anniversary of Brown, described the decision as ''significantly broaden[ing] the role of the judiciary in the defense of human rights." How swiftly will we complete the arsenal of laws required to provide effective safeguards against racial discrimination? And, more fundamentally still, how fully, how peacefully, and how fast will be accomplished the transformation of attitudes necessary to make equality real and in every community North and South?4 The expanding expectation from school desegregation to the elimination of all racial discrimination to a broader transformation of attitudes was repeated in the Times in its extensive reporting on the twentieth anniversary of Brown, but this time with a note of scepticism. The question is whether the momentum generated by the activities of the last twenty years has set in motion an irreversible process which will almost automatically lead to racial justice in this country, as some whites seem to think, or whether, as most blacks hold, the largest and hardest job is yet to be done, and whites have quit the game before the first quarter has even ended. 5 Other twenty-year appraisals of Brown revealed disagreement on its accomplishments. A black dentist from Mississippi was quoted as saying: "We have accomplished things in the past few years that I thought it might take decades to achieve. Some of this is a result of white recog- 51 �nition of black voting power, but a lot of white people here have had a change of heart." Black leaders Bayard Rustin, Robert S. Browne, and Roy Wilkins expressed concern about the gap between educated and uneducated blacks and emphasized the need for more political and economic power. By 1974, if not the most surprising, perhaps the most disturbing result of the school desegregation decisions, and one requiring most serious consideration, was the phe- nomenon of ~(white flight" in Northern metropolitan school districts. Kenneth Clark, the black psychologist whose studies on black children's self perceptions were used by the NAACP in its litigation, and which were cited by the Supreme Court, said: "the whole morality issue of the school desegregation issue disappeared when it moved North,"6 meaning support for the decision eroded as its consequences were felt by Northern whites. Another ex· planation for the condition of Northern metropolitan school systems referred to "the hard facts of demography, ethnicity, and the inexorable flux of human migration." 7 Alexander Bickel, late constitutional law scholar and professor at Yale Law School, who was involved in the original Brown decision as a clerk for justice Frankfurter, supported the latter view in the New Republic in 1970. Distinguishing desegregation, as the dismantling of dual school systems, from actual integration, Bickel explained how the combination of private schools plus racially sepa· "Schools are socializing institutions. They arc the only in· stitutions where all children are required to do so [sic]. If we cannot desegregate education, I don't think we can de· segregate anything." On the other hand, Constance Baker Motley, who represented )ames Meredith in his bid to de· segregate the University of Mississippi and who was a fed· era] judge in 1974, said: It seems today Brown has little practical relevance to central city blacks. Its psychological and legal relevance has already had its effect. Central city blacks seem more concerned now with the political and economic power accruing from the new black concentrations than they do with busing to effect school desegregation. 11 Whichever explanation of "white flight" is preferred and however one views the educational results, the num- bers show more black elementary and secondary school pupils in majority white schools in the South than in the North or the border states in 1974. In the District of Columbia, the school system had become virtually all black and the brightest black students had also left the public schools .I' Meanwhile, as the Supreme Court decided its first met· ropolitan school district implementation cases-Char· lotte-Mecklenburg in North Carolina in 1971 and Denver, Colorado, in 1973 13 -controversy over judicial power in- areas permitted all but poor whites to flee from public schools affected by court-ordered integration schemes. He also noted that government and its intended beneficiaries tensified. In the first case, the Court upheld a district court order for dismantling a dual school system which in· cluded busing pupils to approach a racial balance guideline. Because this decision disregarded the provision of ti· tie IV of the 1964 Civil Rights Act defining desegregation were at cross purposes: while the court and HEW were re- as the assignment of pupils without regard to race, and ex- zoning and pairing Southern schools to integrate them, black leaders in Northern cities were trying to decentralize come racial imbalance, it produced numerous Congressio- rated residential patterns in mainly northern metropolitan plicitly prohibiting the assignment of students to over· school systems to gain community control. 8 nal proposals to restrict the Supreme Court's jurisdiction The U.S. Civil Rights Commission took a very different view of the Brown mandate. In the conclusion to its 1976 Report, the Commission acknowledged no distinction be· tween integration and desegregation, denied that the courts were eliminating anything other than de jure segregation, denied that pupil assignment for racial balance had become the Brown mandate, and simply affirmed the con· stitutional right to equal educational opportunity. The dif· ficulty with this formulation was that while it denied that desegregation had become a mandate for racial balance in the public schools, its only test of the extent of desegrega· over school desegregation cases. In the second case, the tion in the nation's schools was numerical.9 The different views about the Brown mandate in the 1970s reflected different views of education. The Coleman Report on Equal Educational Opportunity 10 ques· tioned the link between integration and educational achievement. The Civil Rights Commission and scholars who rejected the Coleman Report viewed integrated Supreme Court upheld a district court order to institute a district-wide remedy-involving pupil assignment throughout the district for racial balance-on the basis of a finding of segregative intent by the school board in one part of the district, notwithstanding the absence of any history of a dual school system. This case produced the first dissent, that by justice Rchnquist, and every major desegregation case thereafter has produced a divided Court. As we approach the thirtieth anniversary of Brown v. Board of Education, the confusion over its mandate and the extent to which it has been fulfilled, controversy over the actions of the Supreme Court and federal district courts, and concerns over education have not abated. The Supreme Court is still finding racially segregated systems that have not been dismantled, the federal government is still bringing suits for desegregation, and Congress is still schooling as a socializing experience essential for racial trying to restrict the courts' powers to order busing for ra- harmony in the United States. The Supreme Court ex· pressed this view in its Brown opinion, and the Staff Direc· tor of the Civil Rights Commission reaffirmed it in 1974: cial balance. In addition, the gap between the educational 52 achievements of blacks and whites has not been narrowed, and the National Commission on Excellence in Education SUMMER 1983 �has recently issued a report arguing that "the educational foundations of our society arc presently being eroded by a rising tide of mediocrity that threatens our very future as a nation and a people." 14 To mark the upcoming thirtieth anniversary of Brown, I propose a reconsideration of the Supreme Court's opinion in the school desegregation cases. I do this for two related reasons: the importance of the issues in the original cases and the connection between the opinion handed down and the subsequent controversy over the case. I shall argue that Brown was a great but flawed judicial achievement and that the flaws were avoidable and have made a great political task even more difficult. The flaws concern the following topics: (1) the exercise of judicial review, especially in light of problematic constitutional history and precedents which must be overruled; (2) the distinction between de facto and de jure segregation and the importance of the distinction for American government; and (3) the meaning of education in America. My argument will show that the treatment of precedents and principles was weak; that the use of social science data unwittingly led to a confusion about the de facto/de jure distinction; and that the Court accepted a flabby view of education which concealed different and often conflicting educational purposes. My reconsideration will proceed in the following order: the 14th amendment and the precedents, the cases and the opinions, scholars' commentary, and finally a revised opinion. II All persons born or naturalized in the United States and subject to the jurisdiction thereof, are citizens of the United States and of the State wherein they reside. No State shall make or enforce any law which shall abridge the privileges or immunities of citizens of the United States; nor shall any State deprive any person of life, liberty, or property, without due process of law; nor deny to any person within its jurisdic· tion the equal protection of the law. [14th Amendment, section 1] The 14th Amendment and the Precedents The NAACP Legal Defense Fund lawyers who represented the litigants in the segregation cases faced two constitutional challenges: first, nothing in the language of the 14th amendment clearly prohibited school segregation, and study of the Congressional debates surrounding the amendment's ratification revealed lack of clarity at best and no intention to prohibit school segregation at worst; second, in 1896, the Supreme Court, in Plessy v. Ferguson, upheld a Louisiana statute providing "equal but separate" accommodations on intrastate rail cars, on the grounds that the law treated both races equally and the regulation was reasonable in light of the customs of the people. The THE ST. JOHNS REVIEW alternative position was stated by the sole dissenter, Justice John Harlan, Sr., who argued that the intention of the Civil War amendments was to remove the race line from government. The most moving formulation of this position goes: "Our Constitution is color-blind, and neither knows nor tolerates classes among citizens. In respect of civil rights, all citizens are equal before the law."l5 This was an interpretation of the 13th and 14th amendments, since the languages of the 13th was explicit only about slavery or involuntary servitude-and it was stretching the latter term to argue that segregation laws were includedand the 14th amendment made no reference to race. Still, it was generally conceded that the purpose of the 14th amendment was to protect the newly freed race against discrimination in its civil rights. Furthermore, in an earlier case, Strauder v. West Virginia, decided in 1880, the Supreme Court invalidated a law which excluded Negroes from serving on juries in sweeping language which Harlan was able to quote in support of his argument in Plessy. The words of the amendment, it is true, are prohibitory, but they contain a necessary implication of a positive immunity, or right, to exemption from unfriendly legislation against them distinctively as colored-exemption from legal discriminations, implying inferiority in civil society, lessening the se· curity of their enjoyment of the rights which others enjoy, and discriminations which are steps towards reducing them to the condition of a subject race.l6 In the majority opinion in Plessy, Justice Brown narrowed the reach of the Strauder precedent by distinguishing between political and civil rights, which included the right to serve on juries and, presumably, the right to vote and the right to sue to make contracts, and social equality, such as a right to be free from enforced segregation in places of public accommodations. The Plessy majority's position did have something in its favor, even though, as I shall argue later, Justice Harlan's position stated the American standard and the deeper truth of the matter. Justice Brown cited a Massachusetts case upholding segregated schools and an Indiana case upholding laws forbidding intermarriage. While these cases were decided before the 14th amendment, it is doubtful that the framers of that amendment intended their work to invalidate such laws. Even the government's friend of the court brief in Brown, which supported the litigants, acknowledged this: In 1868 public schools had been hardly begun in many states and were still in their infancy. School attendance was, as a general matter, not compulsory. The Negroes had just been released from bondage and were generally illiterate, poor and retarded socially and culturally. To educate them in the same classes and schools as white children may have been regarded as entirely impracticable. 17 Stare decisis refers to the doctrine of following previous decisions where the law is settled, in order to maintain stability and respect for the law. But this is not sufficient, since the 14th amendment did intervene between the ear- 53 �lier state decisions and Plessy and the language did permit the interpretation offered by the Court in Strauder and urged by Harlan in dessent in Plessy. A second defense of the Plessy opinion can be offered. Given the deep-rooted prejudices of the whites, the recollections by the blacks of the injuries sustained, the natural differences which a change of law does not eradicate, the deep apprehension of Southern whites about racial comingling, as well as the actual condition of most of the newly freed negroes, a case can surely be made for the reasonableness, apart from the wisdom, of enforced segregation in public accommodations at that time. We shall return to this topic,l8 The Court faced the following alternatives as it studied the briefs and prepared for oral argument in Brown and the companion cases: (1) to affirm the decisions of the lower courts on the authority of Plessy; (2) to reverse the lower courts without overturning Plessy, on the grounds that the school conditions were not in fact equal and could not be equalized with racial segregation; (3) to reverse the lower courts and strike down segregation, by finding Plessy no longer applicable in the field of education; or (4) toreverse the lower courts, strike down segregation, and repu· diate Plessy as wrong then and wrong now. Counsel for the states with segregated schools took the first position; counsel for the challenging students and parents alternated between the second and the third positions; and the Supreme Court, in its first consideration of the case, alternated between the first and third positions and then, when it decided to overturn school segregation, settled on the third position.l9 Two Supreme Court decisions involving segregation in higher education had eroded the force of Plessy and also permitted the NAACP lawyers and the government, in its amicus brief, to argue that Plessy did not have to be overturned to invalidate school segregation. In Missouri ex rei. Gaines v. Canada, decided in 1938, the Supreme Court invalidated a law which provided for state funding to send qualified Negro law students to law schools in any neighboring state and ordered the petitioner admitted to the law school at the State University of Missouri. By the operation of the laws of Missouri a privilege has been created for white law students which is denied to negroes by reason of their race. The white resident is afforded legal education within the State; the negro resident having the same qualifications is refused it there and must go outside the State to obtain it. That is a denial of the equality oflegal right to the enjoyment of the privilege which the State has set up, and the provision for the payment of tuition fees in another State does not remove the discrimination.20 Oklahoma had a similar law which was challenged by a Negro who had applied to the state's university for a doctorate in education. After the Gaines decision, Oklahoma amended its statute to provide for admission of Negroes to the university, but on a segregated basis. This meant sit- 54 ting at a special desk in a designated area, in classes, in the library and in the cafeteria. In McLaurin v. Oklahoma State Regents, 21 decided in 1950, the Supreme Court found such state-imposed restrictions productive of inequality of educational opportunity and hence a violation of equal protection of the laws. In a third related case, decided the same day as McLaurin, the Supreme Court invalidated Texas's provision for a separate in-state law school for Negroes and ordered petitioner admitted to the University of Texas law school, to which he had applied for admission. In Sweatt v. Painter, the Court took note of the inequality in number of faculty, variety of courses, etc. when comparing the University of Texas law school with Texas State University for Negroes, and then it added: What is more important, the University of Texas law school possesses to a far greater degree those qualities which are incapable of objective measurement but which make for greatness in a law schooL Such qualities, to name but a few, include reputation of the faculty, experience of the administration, position and influence of the alumni, standing in the community, traditions and prestige.22 Hence both the Court's previous cases and its hesitancy to argue that the South had been acting unconstitutionally for nearly sixty years led it to address the constitutional question presented by Brown in terms of the effect of segregation itself on public education. The Cases and the Arguments The Brown cases were five in number and they were divided into the state cases, which came from Kansas, South Carolina, Virginia, and Delaware, and the federal case, from the District of Columbia. The cases were first argued in December 1952 and then, when reargument was called for-ostensibly to hear more about the 14th amendment but also to give justive Frankfurter time to get a unanimous Court decision against segregation 23 -they were reargued in December 1954. Two separate unanimous opinions of the Court were handed down on May 17, 1954: Brown v. Board of Education et al., which included all four state cases, and Bolling v. Sharpe, which covered the District of Columbia. The constitutional issue was the same in all cases and the lower court treatments had all followed Plessy. In the South Carolina (Briggs v. Elliott) and Virginia (Davis v. County School Board) cases, the three-judge district courts found inequality in facilities but sustained the state provisions for segregation and ordered equalization. In Delaware (Gebhard v. Belton), the Delaware Court of Chancery found inequality and ordered the plaintiffs admitted to the previously all-white schools, but indicated that the State could obtain a modification of the order after equalization. In Brown, the Kansas case, the three judge district court denied relief since the facilities were equal, but it did find that "segregation in public education SUMMER 1983 �has a detrimental effect upon Negro children."24 In the District of Columbia (Bolling v. Sharpe), the district court dismissed the complaint. 25 The two opinions, Brown and Bolling, came to the same result in different ways. This may have been due, in part, to the different lawyers arguing the cases for the plain· tiffs 26 and, in part, to the different constitutional provisions. The state cases involved the 14th amendment's equal protection clauses; the federal case came under the 5th amendment, which addresses Congress and has no equal protection clause. Since it was not surprising to have the same result for the District as for the state, it was not surprising for the Court to use the due process clause, which is also in the 14th amendment, to fashion the same result as it did with the equal protection clause. Yet the argument in Bolling was not only different, it was closer to Harlan's Plessy dissent, it did not rely on social science data, and it would not have lent itself to expansion the way the Brown decision did. I shall first examine the major Brown opinion, noting the sources of controversy and confusion; then I shall turn to Bolling v. Sharpe. The order of topics in this brief opinion is: the intention of the framers of the 14th amendment; the relevant prece· dents since Plessy; the importance of education today; the reason why segregation on the basis of race in public schools is necessarily unequal; the conclusion, or holding, that the plaintiffs and others who were similarly situated are denied equal protection of the laws; and, finally, a call for reargument on the implementation question, so that the Court "may have the full assistance of the parties in formulating decrees."27 On the first point, the Court argued that study of the ratification of the 14th amendment yielded inconclusive results for the question of school segregation. It buttressed this contention with the reminder that free public educa· tion was just beginning in 1868. While the school case precedents, discussed above, had not overturned Plessy, they did permit the Court to argue that equal protection of the laws involved more than the tangible factors of education, such as classroom facilities and number of teachers. 28 The Court proceeded to describe education in 1954 as "perhaps the most important function of state and local governments," as ''the very foundation of good citizenship," and as "a principal instrument in awakening the child to cultural values, in preparing him for later professional training, and in helping him to adjust normally to his environment." With that out of the way, the Court asked: "Does segregation of children in public schools solely on the basis of race, even though the physical facili· ties and other 'tangible' factors may be equal, deprive the children of the minority group of equal educational oppor· tunity?" Its immediate answer, and it was only here in the reading of the opinion that Chief Justice Warren tipped his hand and let the participants and spectators know what the Court had decided, was: "We believe that it does."29 THE ST. JOHNS REVIEW The critical argument concerning the effect of segrega· lion on education is first stated by the Court in its own words and then the words of the lower court in the Kansas case. To separate them from others of similar age and qualifications solely because of their race generates a feeling of inferiority as to their status in the community that may affect their hearts and minds in a way unlikely ever to be undone. The effect of this separation on their educational opportunities was well stated by a finding in the Kansas case by a court which nevertheless felt compelled to rule against the Negro plaintiffs: ~<Segregation of white and colored children in public schools has a detrimental effect upon the colored children. The impact is greater when it has the sanction of the law; for the policy of separating the races is usually interpreted as denoting the inferiority of the negro group. A sense of inferiority affects the motivation of a child to learn. Segregation with the sanction of law, therefore, has a tendency to [retard] the educational and mental development of negro children and to deprive them of some of the benefits they would receive in a racialQy] integrated school system."lO The argument is in two steps: first, racial segregation generates a feeling of inferiority; and, second, this will af· feet the hearts and minds of the Negro children in a man· ner that will significantly impair their ability to learn. In the first sentence, the infinitive "to separate" is the subject, and it clearly refers to a separating agent, i.e., the school board on the direction of the state legislature. In the passage quoted from the district court, however, segre· galion is said to have a greater impact when it has the force of law. This implies, however, that it has some impact, and a harmful one, in terms of feelings of self-worth and hence motivation to learn, even without the force of law. This must refer to de facto, or actual, segregation. This is the basis, in the Brown opinion, for the extension of the Brown holding from the prohibition of de iure segregation to the prohibition of de facto segregation. People have disagreed on what Brown required and whether its mandate has been carried out because the core holding, or rule of law, outlawed de iure segregation, but the dicta implicated de facto segregation. The debate over busing is a debate over whether Brown and the subsequent cases stand for the proposition that schools should be de· segregated, that is, made free of positive acts of segregation by public officials, or whether schools should be integrated, regardless of what the cause of the actual segre· galion may be. The Supreme Court supported its argument by asserting that notwithstanding the extent of psychological knowledge at the time of Plessy, its finding was "amply supported by modern authority." Its citationll began with the work of Dr. Kenneth Clark, who had conducted atti· tude tests on Negro children using black and white dolls; he testified at the trial in the South Carolina case. NAACP 55 �lawyer Jack Greenberg was quoted as saying that "the main function of the social science testimony was to help the courts~and especially the Supreme Court~convey the confidence of its common sense perceptions of what the nation knew about right and wrong in this regard."l2 The inclusion of Clark's doll studies reveals that modern social science is not always a sound vehicle for proving the soundness of common sense knowledge. Clark's studies have been subject to extensive criticism, covering the ef feet of the interview situation on the children and the lim· ited number of cases. In addition, the one test which com· pared responses from Northern and Southern negro children, and hence had some direct applicability to school segregation, conflicted with the intended thesis. There were eight questions to the test; one asked the children to pick the doll which resembled them. The Northern Negro children identified themselves with the white doll m greater proportion than the Southern children, 39% to 29%. 33 This hardly proved the psychological harm of school segregation. Even if the dubious Clark tests are omitted, however, it does seem odd that psychological findings should be the basis for striking down a Supreme Court precedent and establishing a new constitutional right, that of equal educational opportunity. Suppose subsequent perception tests revealed, as some did, 34 that Negro children suffered from greater doubts about their own worth in integrated schools? One can well imagine how, under certain circum- stances, this could occur; would that justify segregation? The social scientists were not altogether responsible for the extensiveness of the Court's findings, however. The Supreme Court apparently accepted uncritically the finding of fact of district judge Walter A. Huxman, a finding that changed the emphasis from the original formulation presented by the expert witness in his court. Huxrnan started with the finding that segregation had a detrimental effect on Negro children; then he found that detrimental effect to be greater when it had the sanction of law. The source of this finding was the testimony of Louise Pinkham Holt, an assistant professor in the psychology de- parison to private discrimination and turned it into a major premise. I do not wish to suggest that a more accurate treatment of the expert testimony in the Kansas case would have made all the difference for the development of the Brown mandate and the popular acceptance of the decision, but the extended claim, unsupported by evidence and not nearly so common-sensical as the case against government-enforced segregation, surely lent itself to confusion over the meaning of desegregation and charges of bad faith. Let us return to the second school desegregation opinion, Bolling v. Sharpe. Chief Justice Warren began by noting that equal protection and due process, while not identical, both stem "from our ideal of fairness." Arguing that some discrimination "may be so unjustifiable as to be vio- lative of due process," Warren proceeded to attack ra.cial classifications as "contrary to our traditions" and hence "constitutionally suspect." This put the burden of proof on the government to justify the regulation, as opposed to making the complaining party prove that a constitutional right had been violated. The meaning of "liberty" in the due process clause was defined as extending to "the full range of conduct which the individual is free to pursue," which cannot be restricted without a proper governmental objective. Warren then concluded, again for a unanimous Court, that usegregation in public education is not reason- ably related to any proper governmental objective, and thus it imposed on Negro children of the District of Columbia a burden that constitutes an arbitrary deprivation of their liberty in violation of the Due Process Clause."36 This argument focuses on the government's action and is, therefore, applicable to government-enforced segregation only. The line of argument in Bolling v. Sharpe has been used in subsequent cases involving race classification; a suspect classification, such as race, alienage, or national origin, triggers a strict scrutinizing of the governmental action. While it resembles Harlan's argument that the Constitution is color-blind, it does not rule out the possibility of justifying racial classifications in special circumstances, such partment at Kansas University. In answer to the question, as, for example, affirmative action. It has not been promi- "[D]oes enforced legal separation have any adverse effect upon the personality development of the Negro child?" she replied. nent in subsequent school desegregation cases, however, where the focus has been on the dismantling of dual school systems and the determination of a segregative act on the part of a school board, even where segregation was The fact that it is enforced, that it is legal, I think, has more importance than the mere fact of segregation by itself does because this gives legal and official sanction to a policy which is inevitably interpreted both by white people and by Negroes as denoting the inferiority of the Negro group. Were it not for the sense that one group is inferior to the other, there would be no basis-and I am not granting that this is a rational basis-for such segregation.35 The fact is that the expert witness was focusing on state enforced segregation; the judge picked up a casual com- 56 not required by state law, as it was in the Southern states. Scholars' Commentary Criticism of the Court's opinion focused on the intention of the 14th amendment, the principle of stare decisis, and the dubious character of the social science evidence. In his famous critique, Herbert Wechsler argued that while school segregation was wrong and it was desirable to end it, the constitutional basis for the Supreme Court's SUMMER l983 �taking the initiative in the matter was dubious 37 Wechsler found the social science argument unimpressive and doubted that the Court's judgment truly rested on that basis. He thought the judgment "must have rested on the view that racial segregation is, in principle, a denial of equality to the minority against whom it is directed; that is, the group that is not dominant politically and, therefore, does not make the choice involved." But he found this argument inadequate as the basis for a decision based on "neutral principles/' that is, "based on reasons that in their generality and their neutrality transcend any immediate result that is involved." It seemed to him to "involve an inquiry into the motive of the legislature, which is generally foreclosed to the courts." He thought there was something to the Court's Plessy statement that, since the law spoke of equality, the badge of inferiority was in the eye of the beholder. To Wechsler, the issue in the case was not equal protection, but freedom to associate under the due process clause, and the challenge was to explain why one desire for association should overrule another desire for disassociation. Wechsler was not satisfied with the reason he attributed to the Supreme Court, because he regarded it as "a choice among competing values or desires," which lay in the realm of mere fiat and was, therefore, inappropriate for a judicial argument. The only exceptions to this position were "values that can reasonably be asserted to have constitutional dimension";3 8 what they are Wechsler did not say, and if asked why they do not include prohibition on race classification, he probably would have referred to history. The responses to Wechsler's challenge to justify the constitutional basis for the Brown opinion have tended to reaffirm the inappropriateness of race classifications or to specify what jim Crow legislation meant in fact. Both Louis Pollack and Charles Black cited C. Vann Woodward's The Strange Career of Jim Crow to the effect that such laws "were constantly pushing the Negro further down." On the question whether "separate but equal" can really be equal, Pollack concluded "that the constitutional doubts instantly generated by statutes drawing racial lines have not been allayed."l9 And Black, whose treatment of historical examples is fuller, responded this way: Equality, like all general concepts, has marginal areas where philosophic difficulties are encountered. But if a whole race of people finds itself confined within a system which is set up and continued for the very purpose of keeping it in an inferior station and if the question is then solemnly propounded whether such a race is being treated 'equally,' I think we ought to exercise one of the sovereign premgatives of philosophers-that of laughter40 Both scholars may be right, but neither presents a full argument in support of his position. A further defense of Brown comes from Alexander Bickel, who took issue with Wechsler's claim that courts THE ST. JOHNS REVIEW should not attempt to settle value questions. Drawing on his study of Lincoln, Bickel argued that "the constitutional function of the Court is to define values and proclaim principles," and "it is at the heart of the utility of such a process to proclaim the absolute principle that race is not an allowable criterion for legislative classification." 41 For the source of that principle, we need to consider his discussion of judicial review. In the first chapter of The Least Dangerous Branch, Bickel makes the distinction, which is not explained, between "immediate material needs" and "certain enduring values." Then, he says that "our system ... like all secular systems, calls for the evolution of principle in novel circumstances," and he continues by asserting that the most fundamental principle of American government is the rule of the people 42 It seems that for Bickel the character of our democratic government is very much open to chance, that is, to the changing needs of a persistent majority. If that is the case, it is very hard to understand how the Supreme Court, which possesses only the judicial power, should be permitted to take the lead, as it did, in the matter of school segregation. Bickel's explicit justification for this action reflects his notion of a Constitution whose very principles, and not merely their application, evolve. This notion is worthy of consideration not only for its own merits, but because it forms a part of Bickel's defense of Brown, and this defense is based on a study which assisted the Supreme Court in its deliberations. As one of justice Frankfurter's law clerks during the 1952 term, Bickel was asked to study the history of the 14th amendment in order to determine the lawmakers' intent on the school segregation issue. Frankfurter circulated the memo which resulted from Bickel's year-long study to the other )ustices 43 Bickel later published a revised version of this memo in the Harvard Law Review in 1955. In that article, Bickel concluded that while a general grant of legislative authority would not have passed Congress, and hence one cannot say that the framers intended to outlaw segregation, still: May it not be that the Ivloderates and the Radicals reached a compromise permitting them to go to the country with language which they could, where necessary, defend against damaging alarms raised by the opposition, but which at the same time was sufficiently elastic to permit reasonable future advances? Acknowledging that the framers of the 14th amendment did not compare to the framers of the Constitution, Bickel nonetheless attributed to them "an awareness ... that it was a constitution they were writing, which led to a choice of language capable of growth." 44 We learn from Kluger that Bickel acknowledged in his notes to Frankfurter that such was a "charitable view of the sloppy draftsmen of the Fourteenth Amendment." 45 Bickel's view of constitutional construction was shared by Frankfurter and possibly by other members of the Court. To some extent it follows Chief justice john Mar- 57 �shall's famous account of constitutional construction in McCulloch v. Maryland, but with 'a substantial revision. Faced with the question whether Congress should insti· tute a bank, notwithstanding the absence of any specific authorization in the Constitution's enumeration oflegisla· tive powers, Marshall distinguished constitutions from statutes. Because a legal code is prolix and a constitution, which is to be understood by the public, only marks great outlines, ''we must never forget that it is a constitution we Negro slaves in the Southern states, but it was not incon· sistent with the Declaration of Independence. Second, American government was understood to be re- The place to start is with Harlan's argument that the Constitution is color-blind. While he may have been publican, as distinct from the limited monarchy of Great Britain. The framers' views on qualifications for voting and office-holding reflected support for popular govern· ment. Consequently, we can conclude that any legally· based class structure, while not necessarily inconsistent with natural right, was not consistent with the form of gov· ernment appropriate for America. Therefore, there can only be one class of citizenship recognized by American law. How could America move from a condition of slavery in the land of freedom to equal citizenship for the newly freed race? The task seemed impossible to Tocqueville, when he observed the condition of the races in America in the 1830s49 After the Civil War, however, colonization was out, and the only question was, how to bring the newly freed race up to full citizenship. We are now at the prob· !em of Plessy v. Ferguson. In light of what has been said, the issue in the case may be described as follows: which is the best way to achieve full civil equality for blacks, through stages of development and accommodation, or all at once; and, even if all at once is preferred or regarded as the sounder choice, is a political choice for gradualism so wrong in the narrow legal sense, since neither the original unreasonable as to require constitutional condemnation? Constitution nor the 14th amendment made this principle explicit, he nonetheless stated the higher truth of the American Constitution. Why is that? The explanation needs both to take note of the natural right teaching of the Declaration of Independence, which articulates the most fundamental principles of American government, and then to consider the application of those principles to the American political community. We must answer three questions: (l) What is the teaching of the Declaration of Independence? (2) What application does it have to Amer· ican government in general? (3) What application does it have to the distinctive condition of chattel slavery in the land of freedom, reinforced by racial difference, which is then eliminated, first as a result of military and political necessity, and then through constitutional amendment? First, according to the self-evident truth of the Declaration of Independence, all men are naturally equal in their rights to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness. These rights are universal but pre-political; they apply to all men as men, but they have nothing to do with citizenship in any political community. Because the rights are not secured by To argue that full civil equality is incompatible with Jim Crow legislation does not deny the existence of the social sphere, which the Plessy opinion distinguishes from politi· cal and civil rights. I take issue with the Plessy argument on the relationship between law and the social sphere. To the extent that we can distinguish the social from the po· litical (including the civil), the former refers to the volun· are expounding."46 But Marshall never meant, as Bickel, following Holmes and Brandeis before him, did, that the fundamental principles of the Constitution are themselves open to change over time. 47 Is it possible to provide an interpretation of the issues in the school segregation cases which does justice to Plessy, reaches the same result as Brown, and does not rely on a view of the Constitution and the judicial function according to which the most important principle is the rule of the majority and all else is subject to changing needs? A Revised Brown Opinion nature, men consent to form governments. If government is to be based on consent and limited to the securing of rights, the resulting community would seem to need the support of self-love or interest. No one has a natural right to join any given political community. It was on this basis that Jefferson proposed emancipation and colonization of the slaves in Virginia in 1783 and Lincoln opposed slavery as morally wrong and in opposition to the Declaration, without advocating political equality48 A colonization pol· icy may never have been practical, given the number of 58 tary actions of individuals and private associations; their decisions regarding association and disassociation consti- tute action in the social rather than the political sphere. Then we must distinguish the social sphere, as liable to government regulation, from the purely private sphere, which is not. Congress may be justified in prohibiting cer· tain forms of racial discrimination in the social sphere, on the authority of the commerce clause, as it did in the 1964 Civil Rights Act, but neither Congress nor the state may tell anyone whom to invite to dinner. Furthermore, the civil rights legislation reflects a concrete and healthy con· sent-giving, which distinguishes it from judicial interven· tion in the social sphere. Finally, what distinguishes the legislative action in· Plessy from the legislative action of 1964 is that the former, by legally enforcing a dual citizen· ship, is inconsistent with our republican form of government, as discussed above, while the latter is consistent with it. The distinction between commercial activity and social activity in the narrow sense of socializing is important for understanding the best case ever made for the gradualism approach to full citizenship for Negroes. In his Atlanta Ex· position Address of 1895, one year before Plessy, Booker T. Washington emphasized vocational education for SUMMER 1983 �blacks as a way of their attaining self-sufficiency. He argued from expediency as well as principle for racial coop- derives its importance from our form of government, or, to eration in commercial matters, and he was willing to let social association wait. In a sentence which appears to an- form of government is instituted to secure. Ours is a gov- ticipate Plessy and which puts it in its best light, he said: "In all things that are purely social we can be as separate as the fingers, yet one as the hand in all things essential to mutual progress." According to Washington, "No race that has anything to contribute to the markets of the world is long in any degree ostracized."' 0 This position was vigorously criticized by W. E. B. DuBois, on the grounds that it distorted half-truths about the Negro and his position and that it had the effect of getting both races to accept the Negro's subordinate position as permanent. 51 It is not easy to decide who was right at the time. Surely commercial success and education seem to depend on civil and political rights and higher education; on the other hand, Washington was, as DuBois acknowledged, the most influential black leader of his time among both races and the blacks surely needed the assistance of the white majority. But it is not necessary to settle that debate in order to say that to the extent that Plessy ever was a legitimate decision, it was within the context of a gradualist approach to bringing full civil rights to the newly freed race. If 1896 was arguably too soon after slavery to accomplish this, especially in light of an appraisal of hatreds and fears and the actual condition of the black race, surely by 1954 it was easy to review the history of Jim Crow legislation and pronounce that the South had not proceeded in good faith, that Harlan was right about the consequences of judicially validating Jim Crow legislation, and that the practice was in violation of the Constitution because it implied second class citizenship. Plessy then turns out to be no longer valid, not simply because we wish to change a practice which a current majority of the country abhors, but also because the only defensible grounds for the decision implied a timetable for transformation which had long since expired. III Conclusion This treatment of Brown has intended to show that the Supreme Court's achievement was substantial but flawed, and that the flaws involved (l) the exercise of judicial review, especially as it concerns the overturning of the Plessy precedent, (2) the distinction between de facto and de jure segregation, and (3) the meaning of education in American political life. The first topic has been treated above; it remains to show the connection between the Court's treatment of the other two topics in its Brown opinion and the subsequent problems in connection with the implementation of Brown. The distinction between de facto and de jure segregation THE ST. JOHNS REVIEW be more precise, from the way of life which our republican ernment which is instituted to secure rights but which refuses to take note of their right exercise. It is a government which looks up to an individual's right to pursue happiness without defining the content of that happiness. Ours is therefore necessarily a limited government if we consider the things it can legitimately require of its citizens. Because rights or individual claims take precedence over duties, or obligations of citizens, American political life necessarily knows and respects a private sphere. Our form of government is similar to Plato's account of democracy in that we tend to regard all desires as equal; it differs from that account, and hence from a pure democracy, in its attempt to avoid the excesses of democratic license. Our way of doing that, however, in contrast to that of Plato's account of the best regime, is mainly through institutional checks and balances and a strict scrutiny of governmental powers rather than education as a means of cultivating human excellence, moral or intellectual. Consequently, certain democratic vices, associated with the emancipation of our desires and passions, are tolerated so long as the resulting activity does not harm another in life or limb. Love of one's own is generally more powerful than love of community; in American government, or in any liberal democracy, the political constraints on self-interest, as Tocqueville called them, are minimal. 52 And now we come to race differences and the problem of slavery in the land of freedom.sl The severity of the problem of reconciling individualism with racial harmony was discussed by Tocqueville, Jefferson, Lincoln, and W. E. B. DuBois. The transformation of the former slave race into black Americans presents such difficulties because no government, and certainly no liberal government, can eradicate prejudice, which is a reflex of self- love, and the natural racial difference makes it impossible to eradicate race prejudice. On the other hand, eradication is not only not necessary, it is not appropriate. The limited objectives of liberal government make it possible for government to treat its citizens equally under the law and for individuals to associate in distinctive groupings and even take pride in their differences. This is precisely what W. E. B. DuBois discovered and advocated in 1897. If we carefully consider what race prejudice really is, we find it, historically, to be nothing but the friction between different groups of people; it is the difference in aim, in feelings, in ideals of two different races; if, now, this difference exists touching territory, laws, language, or even religion, it is manifest that these people cannot live in the same territory without fatal collision; but if, on the other hand, there is substantial agreement in laws, language and religion, if there is a satisfactory adjustment of economic life, then there is no reason why, in the same country and on the same street, two or three great national ideals might not thrive and develop, that men of different races might not strive together for their race ideals as well, perhaps even better, than in isolation. 54 59 �More recent expressions of the same thought, if not as comprehensive, can be found in Malcolm X's Black Nationalism and in Black Power. 55 If there is a range of legitimate associations and disassociations, regarding religious and ethnic background and economic status as well as race, then the rules for such as~ sociation should be minimal and, generally, should proceed from a government authority which reflects the consent of the governed. Thirty years after the Brown decision we note that the federal government and especially the federal courts are still involved in the administration of school systems. To a large extent, this is because the implications of the Brown opinion, regarding equal educational opportunity, made it difficult for the courts to recognize the limits of legitimate court intervention. This became clear when the desegregation suits reached metropolitan school districts, starting in North Carolina and then reaching Denver, Detroit, Columbus, and Dayton, which cover the major Supreme Court decisions of the 1970s. The problem is this: once the clear cut cases of dual school systems are eliminated, what is the test to distinguish a school board's disciminatory act of segregation from racially neutral actions and individual choices, including where to live and whether to go to a private school? The Supreme Court has not yet thrown out the distinction between government-enforced and adventitious segregation-for it would be difficult if not impossible to justify such judicial action; but it has not come up with any clear principle or test for distinguishing racial imbalance that results from a segregative act from racial imbalance that is adventitious. The lower federal courts, which have the responsibility for implementing Brown, have tended to view racial imbalance as presumptively illegal, the result of a segregative act; often that act is no more than the failure to draw lines or construct new schools in ways that would have increased the actual racial balance, regardless of neighborhoods. With some exceptions the majority of the Supreme Court has tended to follow the lower courts on this. The decisions in the Charlotte-Mecklenburg and Denver cases 56 approached the position that the Constitution required metropolitan communities to fashion plans to eliminate racial isolation in the public schools, even if it required system-wide transportation of students. In the former case, the Court justified its decision by linking all the racial imbalance to the condition of the dual school system in 1954, a doubtful assumption; in the latter case, a narrow and limited finding of segregative intent reversed the presumption for the entire district and this led to the system-wide judicial remedy. The majority did pull back, in the Detroit case in 1974,57 from upholding a lower court's inter-district metropolitan remedy, on the grounds that there was no evidence of inter-district segregation. The dissent pointed out that very little actual integration was possible within the Detroit school system by itself and the state was responsible for education. But was the politi- 60 cal process required by the Constitution to give racial balance precedence over community control and neighbor- hood schools? Then in two cases decided the same day in 1979,58 the Supreme Court upheld system-wide remedies, following the reasoning of the lower courts (in one case the trial court and in another the court of appeals, which reversed the trial court) that the existing racial imbalance was, in each case, a remnant from 1954, when even though it was not officially sanctioned, there was in fact a dual school system. Of course such arguments have some plausibility, since the very distinction between de facto and de jure is, at the boundary, a fiction. Clearly, public authorities follow private wishes, and there was indirect government in- volvement in housing discrimination in 1954; hence it had an effect, indirectly on the school system. But the connec· lion between that discrimination and school attendance patterns 25 years later is nebulous. The Court seems to be driving the mathematical principle of racial balance to the limits of its logic, with no good results to show for it. In the name of equal educational opportunity, it is sanctioning lower court ordered plans which consider nothing but racial balance. This has produced, or accentuated, "white flight" and it has not improved anyone's education. The most instructive judicial reflections on the Court's dilemma come from Justice Powell, whose cautious attitude toward judicial power resembles Frankfurter's. In his opinion in the Denver case, justice Powell described the Brown mandate as having evolved from neutral desegregation to "an affirmative duty to desegregate." He went on to question the continuing utility of the de facto/ de jure distinction. In imposing on metropolitan southern school districts an af. firrnative duty entailing large scale transportation of pupils, to eliminate segregation in the schools, the Court required these districts to alleviate conditions which in large part did not result from historic, state-imposed de jure segregation. Rather, the familiar root cause of segregated schools in all the biracial metropolitan areas of our country is essentially the same: one of segregated residential and migratory patterns the impact of which on the racial composition of the schools was often perpetuated and rarely ameliorated by action of public school authorities. This is a national, not a southern phenomenon. And it is largely unrelated to whether a particular state had or did not have segregative school laws. 59 Powell proposed that in place of scrutinizing the actions of the school board for "segregative intent," the Court hold the states responsible for operating "integrated school systems" and examine their actions (such as location of new facilities, attendance zones, etc.) with a view toward their general integrative effect. Powell did not discuss the busing question, nor did he indicate whether he thought the Court's role would be reduced as a result of his proposal. He apparently abandoned his argument for abandoning the de facto/ de jure distinction, for in his disSUMMER 1983 �sent in the 1979 Columbus case, he noted that it was impossible to expect school boards to bring about desirable racial balance and that judicial mandates would probably generate further white flight and resegregation. In other words, he came to see that desegregation would not produce an integrated school system, unless the courts were willing to sustain racial balance as a constitutional imperative. Even then, to succeed the courts would have to insist on consolidated school districts and eliminate private schools. We turn, finally, to the Supreme Court's view of education. Justice Warren called it "the very foundation of good citizenship" and "a principal instrument in awakening the child to cultural values."60 This formulation conceals two problems or complications. The first is that education as socialization is problematic, however necessary it may be. Numerous Supreme Court cases indicate that there is a fine line between illegal indoctrination and permissible inculcation of habits of citizenship; quite understandably, the individualistic bent of the first amendment freedoms frequently limits this form of education. The freedom involved here is not only one of association, but it includes conceptions of racial identification. In Brown the Supreme Court accepted the racial amalgamation view of integration as if it were the only valid formulation. It ignored the view of integration which emphasizes a substantial separation within the larger integrated society. This view was prominently stated by Black Power and Black Nationalism advocates in the late 1960s, but it was more fully stated much earlier by DuBois, as we have already noted. Certain kinds of "freedom of choice" are much more likely to succeed than a judicially enforced uniformity. One man's consent may be another man's prejudice, but if community control, in the form of residential schools and local school boards, has any validity, it must apply to communities which are largely white as well as to those which are largely black. Second, the Supreme Court must understand that education involves more than mere socialization. It should not say, as it did in a 1969 case upholding a student's right to wear an armband expressing opposition to the Vietnam War in class: "The principal use to which the schools are dedicated is to accommodate students during prescribed hours for the purpose of certain types of activities. Among the activities is intercommunication among the students."61 Here the Court unwittingly likens secondary school education to the operation of a day care center. And even when it prudently permits race to be taken into account in a complex admissions process for higher educa- tion, as it did in the famous Bakke case, it should not lend its support to a statement which confuses academic achievement and intellectual powers with minimal aca- demic competency. Justice Powell, whose vote and opinion were decisive in Bakke, cited with approval and then appended to his opinion the Harvard College Admissions affirmative action statement; it said that "the number of THE ST. JOHNS REVIEW applicants who are deemed to be 'not qualified' is comparatively small."6 2 If these statements truly reflect the authoritative view of education in America, it's no wonder that we have become "a nation at risk." The great achievement of Brown v. Board of Education was that it struck down the Plessy doctrine of "separate but equal," which eventually, and necessarily, led to the complete elimination of state-enforced racial segregation_63 The single opinion which accompanied the unanimous decision in Brown was an important part of the Court's achievement; it facilitated the dismantling of genuine dual school systems. Neither the unanimity nor the accommodating spirit of the Brown II implementation decision in 1955, which called for desegregation "with all deliberate speed," could prevent substantial Southern resistance for a decade. While I have criticized the Court's opinion and offered a fuller and, in my opinion, sounder argument for the decision, not even a perfect opinion ac- companying the Court's unanimity would have eradicated racial prejudice or actual inequality in American life. I have argued that the eradication of either is beyond the limited powers of a liberal democratic government. I do think that if the Court's opinion had presented a sounder treatment of the ordered liberty that we can reasonably expect from our government, it would have prevented the numerous judicially ordered pupil assignment plans which enforce racial balance in the public schools and do nothing more than drive students desirous of education, white and black, out of the public schools. And, if the Court's opinion had presented a sounder view of education than the amalgamation view of integration, we would have more re- spect for the variety of legitimate views on racial identification and less confusion about education as training and habituation versus education as intellectual development. ]. 347 u.s. 483, 495 (1954). 2. Simple Justice: The History of Brown v. Board of Education and Black America's Struggle for Equality, New York: Alfred A. Knopf; 1976, pp. 710, 747. 3. The New York Times, May 18, 1954, p. 14. 4. Times, May 17, 1964, p. IDe. 5. Roger Wilkins, "The Sound of One Hand Clapping: Twenty years After Brown; Negro Progress and Black Rage," in Times Magazine, May 12, 1974, p. 43. 6. Ji'or the passage quoted from the dentist and statements by Rustin and Wilkins, see U.S. News 6 World Report, May 20, 1974, "After 20 Years: New Turn in Black Revolution," pp. 24ff; for the Browne interview, see Roger Wilkins, op. cit.; for the Clark quote, see Times, May 12, 1974, p. 42. 7. Times, May 12, 1974. 8. "Desegregation: Where Do We Go From Here?" The New Republic, February 7, 1970. 9. Fulfilling the Letter and the Spirit of the Law: Desegregation of the Nation's Public Schools, Report of the United States Commission on Civil Rights, August, 1976; see summary and conclusion, pp. 293-313, including table 4.1, p. 296. 10. James S. Coleman, Equality of Educational Opportunity, Washington: U.S. Government Printing Office; 1966; the Report and its findings were briefly discussed in William Chapman's newspaper article, "Key As- 61 �sumptions of Desegregation Under Challenge," in the Washington Post, May 12, 1974, "Outlook," pp. C.2ff. 11. Both quotations come from the Times story of May 12, 1974, p. 42. 12. See Washington Post, May 12, 1974, "Outlook," p. c.lff. 13. Swann v. Charlotte-Mecklenburg Board of Education, 402 U.S. 1 (1971); Keys v. School District No. 1, Denver, Colorado, 413 U.S. 189 (1973). 14. The basis for the first statement is the gap between the Scholastic Apptitude Test scores of Negroes and whites, which was over 100 points, on the 200 to 800 scale, for both the verbal and math sections in 1981. See The New York Times, January 14, 1983, p. 1la. The test results accompa· nied an article on the NCAA proposal to require college freshmen to have a minimum combined SAT score of 700 (out of 1600) in order to be eligible to compete in interscholastic athletics. The Commission's Re· port, entitled "A Nation at Risk: The Imperative of Educational Re· form," was published in The Chronicle of Higher Education, May 4, 1983. 15. !63 u.s. 537. 16. 100 U.S. 303, 307-08 (1880). This was cited by Harlan in Plessy at 163 u.s. 537, 556. 17. Quoted by Kluger at p. 652. All the briefs and oral arguments in the case can be found in Landmark Briefs and Arguments of the Supreme Court of the United States: Constitutional Law, ed. by Philip B. Kurland and Gerhard Casper, Arlington, Va.; University Publications of America, Inc.; 1975, volumes 49 and 49a. 18. These remarks go beyond the argument of the opinion of the Court. They draw on the reflections of Jefferson, Tocqueville, and Lincoln, which will be discussed below. 19. For as full an account of the Supreme Court's deliberations as is possible, including the distinctive contributions of Justice Frankfurter and the significance of Chief Justice Vinson's death, after the first oral argu· ment, and his replacement by Chief Justice Warren, see Kluger, chapters 22-25. 20. 305 u.s. 337, 349-50. 21. 339 u.s. 637. 22. 339 u.s. 629, 634. 23. See Kluger, pp. 614-616. 24. See 354 U.S. 483, 487, note I. 25. 354 u.s. 397, 398. 26. This may have been due, in part, to the different lawyers. See Klu· ger's account of James Nabritt, who argued the District of Columbia case at p. 521. op. cit. From the very outset of the litigation, in 1951, Nabritt challenged the race classification for public schools. 27. 347 U.S. 483, 495. The original implementation decision, known as Brown II, was decided in 1955. The cases were remanded to the lower courts to enter orders and decrees "as are necessary and proper to admit to public schools on a racially non-discriminatory basis with all deliberate speed the parties to these cases." 394 U.S. 294, 30l. 28. Pp. 491-2. 29. P. 493. 30. P. 494. 31. P. 494, note II. 32. Kluger, p. 439. 33. The study which the Court cited, "Effect of Prejudice and Discrimination on Personality Development," Midcentury White House Conference, 1950, did not involve North-South comparisons. The study which did, "Racial Identification and Preference in Negro Children," was writ· ten by Clark and his wife, Mamie. It compared the responses from chil· dren in Massachusetts with children in Arkansas. The work was originally published in Newcomb and Hartley, eel., Readings in Social Psychology, New York: Holt; 1947; it was included in the third edition, published in 1958, at pp. 602-611. Table 4 makes the North-South comparisons. Kluger gives a full account of Clark and his tests and the varied reactions of the NAACP lawyers and other scholars; see chapter 14, and pp. 353-6, 498, and other references under the index heading, "Clark," "tests." The problem with Clark's tests was first brought to my attention by Hadley Arkes, in his essay, "The Problem of Kenneth Clark," in Commentary, November, 1974. 62 34. See Chapman's discussion of the Coleman Report and later studies, in the Washington Post, note 10 above, and David Armor's "The Evidence of Busing," in The Public Interest, Summer, 1972. 35. Kluger, p. 421. 36. 347 u.s. 497, 499-500. 37. See Kluger, chapter 23, for a discussion of the Justices' deliberations. 38. "Toward Neutral Principles of Constitutional Law," in 73 Harvard Law Review 1, November, 1959, pp. 33, 19, 33, 34, 15, 16. 39. "Racial Discrimination and Judicial Integrity: A Reply to Professor Wechsler," in 108 University of Pennsylvania Law Review 1 (1959); re· printed in Selected Essays in Constitutional Law, 1938-1962, edited by Edward L. Barrett, Jr., et al., St. Paul: West Publishing Co.; 1963, p. 819; the quotation is from p. 839. 40. "The Lawfulness of the Segregation Decisions," in 69 Yale Law Jour· nal421 (1960); reprinted in Selected Essays in Constitutional Law, p. 844; the quotation is from p. 847. 41. The Least Dangerous Branch: The Supreme Court at the Bar of Poli· tics, Indianapolis: Babbs Merrill Company; 1962, p. 69. 42. Ibid, pp. 24 (see also 27), 25, 28. 43. See Kluger, pp. 653-655. 44. "The Original Understanding of the Segregation Decision," 69 Har· vardLaw Review 1, November, 1955, pp. 61, 63. 45. Kluger, p. 655. 46. 4 Wheaton 316, 407(1819). 47. See The Least Dangerous Branch, pp. 106-7, where Bickel mistakenly likens Marshall's to Brandeis' view of the Constitution as a "living organism." 48. For Jefferson, see Notes on Virginia, Query XIII; for Lincoln, see his Peoria Speech, October 16, 1854, as well as the Lincoln-Douglas De· bates. 49. See Democracy in America, Vol. I, Part II, chapter 10, edited by J.P. Mayer, Garden City, New York: Anchor Books; 1969. 50. "Atlanta Exposition Address," in Herbert J. Storing, ed., What Coun· try Have I? Political Writings by Black Americans, New York: St. Martins; 1970, p. 61. Washington gave his address in 1895. Nowhere in his autobiography, Up From Slavery, where he includes the text and discusses the reaction to the speech, does he refer to the Louisiana law of 1890, which was challenged in Plessy v. Ferguson. However, in 1915, he wrote an essay in The New Republic arguing forcefully against segregation laws in terms of both expediency and morality. See "My View of Segregation Laws," in The New Republic, December 4, 1915, pp. ll3-1l4. 51. See "Of Booker T. Washington and Others," in Storing, op. cit., pp. 92-102, especially pp. 97-101. 52. This argument draws on Leo Strauss' discussion of natural right in ancient and modern political philosophy. See Natural Right and History, Chicago: University of Chicago Press; 1953, and the title essay in What is Political Philosophy?, Glencoe, Illinois: Free Press; 1959. 53. For this formulation and the subsequent argument I am indebted to Herbert}. Storing, whose essay "The Founders and Slavery," was given at St. John's College on March 5, 1976, published in the bicentennial is· sue of The College (pp. 17-25), and subsequently reprinted in Robert H. Horwitz, The Moral Foundations of the American Republic, Charlottes· ville, Va.: University of Virginia Press; 1976. 54. In Storing, What Country Have I?, p. 82. 55. See Malcolm X, "The Ballot or the Bullet," and Stokeley Carmichael and Charles Hamilton, "Black Power: Its Need and Substance," in Star· ing, op. cit., pp. 146-163; !65-181. 56. For the citations, see note 13. 57. Milliken v. Bradley, 418 U.S. 717. 58. Columbua Board of Education v. Penick, 443 U.S. 449; Dayton Board of Education v. Brinkman, 443 U.S. 526. 59. 413 u.s. 189,220-222, 222-223 (1973). 60. 347 u.s. 483, 493. 61. Tinker v. Des Moines School District, 393 U.S. 503, 512 (1969). 62. University of California Reb'ents v. Bakke, 438 U.S. 265, 321 (1978). 63. When Virginia's anti-miscegination law was invalidated in 1967 (Loving v. Virginia, 388 U.S. 1) all Jim Crow legislation had been eradicated. SUMMER 1983 �OccASIONAL DiscouRsEs Class Day Address 1983 Chaninah Maschler In the year of the chartering of St. John's College1784-Kant published a little essay whose opening sentences might serve as a statement of the moral aim of a liberal arts education. The essay is called What is Enlightenment? and it begins roughly as follows: Enlightenment is man's exodus from self-incurred minority. To be a minor means, not to be able to use one's reason except as directed by someone else. Such minority is selfincurred when it is not due to lack of rational competence but to lack of resolve and courage. Sapere aude, Dare to know! Have the courage to use your understanding. That is the motto of enlightenment. Laziness and cowardice are to blame for the fact that so large a portion of mankind, after nature has long discharged them from tutelage and promoted them to adult estate, nevertheless gladly stay minors all their life and why it is so easy for others to set themselves up as their guardians. It's much more comfortable not to be of age: If I have a book that understands for me, a pastor, rabbi, priest who serves as my conscience, a physician who prescribes my diet, I need not trouble myself_ Why think if I have the money to pay others to take care of the irksome chore for me? That it takes effort, continual downing of lassitude, to be or become free needs no elaboration. But why does it take courage, more courage, perhaps, today, or courage of a different sort, than in 1784? If courage is called for, there must be something dangerous, or at least frightening in the offing. Many of us~ tutors and students~ precisely if we are or have been happy at this institution of learning, describe our St. John's experience on the model of Anderson's fairy A tutor at St. John's College, Annapolis, Md., Chaninah Maschler previously published a translation of Lessing's Ernst and Falk: Conversations for Free Masons (Autumn/Winter 82-83) St. John's Review. THE ST. JOHNS REVIEW tale of the ugly duckling: You remember, in high school or at Columbia or Yale or Princeton, we didn't fit; we were lonely; doubted ourselves and our competence. Then, upon coming here, and learning to trust and act on continual Kantian invitations to self-reliance, we found ourselves flourishing amongst our own kind. We concluded: We are swans really! Our egg got mislaid with duck parents and duck schools! But I don't see anything frightening in the fact that you turn out to be a swan rather than a duck. Anderson's is a self-indulgent, sentimental, self-congratulating tale, with which we ought to be done. That we should "find ourselves" as noble swans is not the import of Kant's sermon. So I want to tell a different parable, though upon reflection you will recognize a formal likeness between the story I ask you to junk and that which I ask you to live with. Before turning to the story, let's reminisce: Do you remember the innocent days of Euclid proposition I 27? It gave us confidence that the local condition of equality of alternate angles would guarantee that, no matter how far the straight lines making those angles with a transverse be extended, the straight lines would never meet (dfn 23, P- 190 Heath). I can still hear the voice of the student at the board who showed that, supposing the condition of equality of alternate angles met but the attribute of parallelism denied of the lines, one and the same angle AEF would have to be both greater than and equal to the angle EFG_ Reaching the crucial step of the argument, she could not contain herself and shouted: "Oedipus Schmoedipus, he can't marry his mother." What she meant was, of course, that though tragic individuals may find themselves burdened with incompatible roles, mathematical individuals~angles, lines, figureswhile normally playing different roles in the course of a demonstration-else the demonstration would not work, 63 �wouldn't have a "middle term" to link the "extremes" of the enunciation-mathematical individuals, I say, are utterly secure from conflation of incompossible roles. Some of us thought that what Socrates taught in theRepublic is that we should live in admiration of those serene mathematical individuals who are utterly free of faction. (Cf Rep. VI, 500C; IX, 582; X, 606) Should we? Every time I read the fable of the wolf and the lamb and hear the voice of reason weakly bleating ". . . et que par consequent en aucune {aeon je ne puis troubler sa boisson" (" ... from which it follows, by rational necessity, that I cannot have muddied His Majesty's waters") I think on the freshman mathematics tutorial and that Euclidean clincher-atopon, impossible, ridiculous-which, La Fontaine reminds us, proves impotent when reasoning with wolves. That men might, by redesigning and reassigning power, be prevented from becoming wolves to men was the great hope of the philosophers of the enlightenment. We still live in that hope. But we must persevere in it without the prop and sop of grand theories of history's "tending" that way-the way of the sweetly reasonable lamb. And why is that? Because of a story told by those who taught Aesop himself, a story perhaps told again by the poet who sang Songs of Innocence and of Experience; I mean William Blake. Here is the story: Once upon a time there was a tiger cub who was being raised by a herd of goats. He learned their language, adapted his voice to their gentle way of bleating, and though his teeth were pointy and made for tearing, he nibbled grass goat-fashion. One night the herd was attacked by a fierce full-grown tiger. The goats scattered but the cub stayed. He was amazed at the sight of the tiger, but not afraid. He let out a bleat and began to tear up some grass. The great tiger roared at him: "Why do you make that silly sound? And what are you chewing there?" He grabbed the cub, carried him off to his den, and there ordered him to get his teeth into a bloody raw piece of meat left over from a previous foray. The cub shuddered. The old one force-fed him. just as the cub was about to spit out the morsel he began to taste the blood. Overcome, he smacked his lips and licked his jowls, rose up, opened his mouth. Stretching and arching, lashing his tail, there suddenly came from his throat a great roar. His teacher asked: "Now do you know who you are?" (Adapted from Heinrich Zimmer, Philosophies ofindia, New York: Meridian Books, Inc., 1956.) Sri Ramakrishna told the ancient story in answer to Kant's question, "What is enlightenment?" and I pass it on to you to counterpoise the tale of the lamb which, though greatly consoling, and true, is also false: The wolf is not just the other fellow: The i-sounds of Blake's tiger poem and the -am's of the song of the lamb rhyme out I AM. THE HORIZON AS THE LAST SHIP HOME On a diagonal of light, the world hinges. The sea slants blue miles away to the horizon. At that edge, the air is burning like the wreck of the last ship home. J. 64 H. BEALL SUMMER 1983 �Against Time* Eva Brann *Given as two Friday Night Lectures at St. John's College in Annapolis on February 18 and 25, 1983. THE ST. JOHNS REVIEW 65 �Contents I. Approaches to the Inquiry I. 2. 3. 4. 5. 67 Time Language Time Puzzles Time in Science Temporal Sensibility The Philosophers II. Aristotle: Time as the Number of Motion 73 I. Time and its Measures 2. The Now 3. Memory III. Augustine: Time as the "Distention" of the Soul . . . . . . . . . . . . Husser!: The Phenomenology of Time . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 78 80 I. Retention 2. The Diagram of Time IV. Kant: Time as Inner Sense . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . I. 2. 3. 4. 5. 82 Inner Sense Understanding Imagination Time and Space Temporal Thinking V. Heidegger: Temporality as the Meaning of Existence 86 I. Ecstatic Temporality 2. Difficulties VI. Time and Imagination 89 I. The Non·Being of Time 2. Time as Noticed Passage 3. The Phases of Time a. b. c. d. The The The The Present Past Future Past as Paramount Phase Bibliography . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . l 00 I. II. Ill. IV. Main Texts Supplementary Texts, Studies, Commentaries Collections Time in Science Notes l-37 ................................................ 101 �Against Time That time has no being and no power, that the past is most to be cherished by those who have least taste for bygones, that our own temporality is the work of the imagination-these are the reflections that I want to articulate and confirm in the following inquiry, for I believe and hope to show that opinions of this sort are necessary for thinking of ourselves as free and for filling our lives with substance. I. APPROACHES TO THE INQUIRY* Given this purpose, the first question is where to begin an inquiry whose object appears to be both ubiquitous and nowhere. There seem to be so many likely approaches to the topic of time: through attention to our all-pervading talk of time in ordinary life and through the neat enigmas which even the lightest musing upon time generates, through the science of nature which claims to determine its concept, and through the observations of poets, novelists, and psychologists concerning our temporal sensibilities. All these efforts provide necessary grist to the mill of reflection, but Time itself does not seem to be revealed in or through them, and the very profusion of speculation bears witness to its elusiveness. There remains the way through philosophy, where time is treated in conjunction with the question of being-and particularly of human being. Here the nature of time becomes at last a direct theme. I shall, therefore, after a brief review of the other approaches, devote the middle section of this study to an interpretation of the five philosophers who seem to me to have given the most coherent and pregnant answers to the question What is Time?, and conclude with a section of my own thoughts on, or rather against, time. 1. TIME LANGUAGE The first and obvious way to get to the nature of time might seem to be through examining the mentions of time in ordinary language, through attending to what everyday speech says of time, for example: My watch tells the time, and I can give you the time. Do you have the time to give *All references are to books listed in the Bibliography. Eva Brann recently published Paradoxes of Education in a Republic'{Unlversity of Chicago Press, 1979). THE ST. JOHNS REVIEW me some time? I am wasting my time, while having the time of my life. Time is money, and the times are bad. At this point in time he has no comment, but time will tell. Time heals and at the same time, time destroys. The time is coming; the time is now; the time is past. We live in time and through times, are on time, race against time, kill time, donate time, are true to the end of time, and imagine once upon a time. Now the very profusion of usages, although it is an index of the great frequency of our references to time 1, seems to me to preclude the discovery of a central meaning without our falling into the error of decreeing which of these usages is canonically ordinary. Certainly, how time occurs in daily speech is suggestive: Augustine, for instance, begins his inquiry by asking how it is that we can speak of time as long or short (XI 15), and Heidegger refers to the observation that we speak of time as passing away and not as coming into being ( Logik, par. 20). It turns out, however, that both authors, far from being guided by what is said, conclude that ordinary speech obscures the nature of time. It seems, all in all, that from listening to the use of the term time one, but only one, crucial conclusion can be reached: Time is always spoken of metaphorically or figuratively. It may be treated as a spatial dimension with length and points, or as a possession to have and to give, or in a personification, as an agent of multifarious potency. Its power is sometimes benign but far more often hurtful, as in the insistently grim time-figures of the Shakespearean Sonnets: devouring Time, confounding Time, decaying Time, swift-footed Time, sluttish Time, Time's injurious hand, Time's fell hand (19, 55, 63-65). Most time references are well-worn and mean little; they are time-honored phrases, once perhaps heartfelt, for disposing of the mysteries of change. When we talk of time as healing we consign to a hackneyed phrase the miraculous restorative power of nature and the blessed oblivion of which memory is capable. Poets, on the other hand, tend to give time injurious epithets, because, I think, they speak more often and more accurately of the high, intense, and vulnerable configurations of life than we do in ordinary speech. The word "time" is not, of course, remotely all that language says of time. All our sentences require tensed verbs, particularly "is," "was," and "shall be." But can their use tell us their meaning? Or must we not rather know what is meant by present, past, and future, the three phases of time, to understand the use of aspects and tenses? 67 �2. TIME PUZZLES ' A second start might be made from the puzzles about time which can be so copiously and near-spontaneously generated. For example, why does time seem to have a forward arrow and a leading edge? 2 Does it progress in a continuous flux or in atomic jerks? Is it within or outside of us, in the soul or in the world? What is the "now" in which alone things are present and which reason reduces to a point between past and future? And above all, how is it possible that anything be in that past which is no longer, or in the future which is not yet? There are many more such problems, even excluding those concerning temporal con- tinuity, which belong primarily to mathematics. Such conundrums are easily disposed of by the positivist, who obviates them by pointing out that in ordinary life, before the onset of a philosophical seizure, no one is at all inconvenienced by them, so why concoct enigrnas? 3 To be more than idle puzzles they must arise in the context of a well-grounded inquiry into time itself. They are not its beginning but its by-products. acute literature about the philosophical implications of time in nature, or more accurately, in the science of na- ture. (For all references see Sec. IV of the Bibliography.) Three branches of physics seem to be especially amenable to philosophical interpretation: Thermodynamics seems to have implications about the forward motion, the socalled "arrow" of time and its irreversibility. Relativity theory appears to have exploded the common sense notion of universal time or the simultaneity of the present moment throughout space. Quantum theory throws in doubt the continuity of time. But intriguing as such theories are, because they are bent on interpreting with ingenuity and vigour the unignorable discoveries of physics, they help only incidentally and negatively with the question: What is time? For in these theories time is invariably understood as a privileged process or motion, either a macro-motion or an atomic vi- bration; the temporality of these timing-motions is itself left unexplained-as indeed it should be since such an explanation would no longer be amenable to verification by observation. The implication is that time really is an aspect of motion to be got at only in telling time. But time-telling is commonly taken to be a three-cornered affair, involving an observable event, a timing device, and an observer who 3. TIME IN SCIENCE In view of the fact that time is the basic independent variable of all the physics accessible to laymen, it would seem reasonable to turn first to the science of nature, that is, to physics, for help in the search for the nature of time. Reflective physicists and philosophers of physics have, accordingly, propounded powerful theories of time. At the very beginning of the science of dynamics stands the most extreme theory of the reality of time, Newton's self-subsisting, equably flowing, absolute world time-and its equally extreme opponent, Leibniz's relative time, a mere order of phenomenal succession. 4 Newton's theory of an absolute temporal flux may well be integral to the theological purposes of the Principia, but it does not seem to be operational within its physics. It is a philosophical rather than a physical requirement. In contrast, the plain statement by a great physicist of the most minimal notion of time conceivable is fairly recent, namely Einstein's wholly operational or instrumental definition of local time as "the position of the small hand of my watch" (p. 39; an instrumental definition is one in which the term is defined through the instrument and the operation which measures its magnitude). Although it may seem strange at first that after two and a half millenia of arduous exploration of the question "What is time?'' the outcome should be that time is what the clock tells, one soon sees that this definition is the cleanest and clearest reflection on time that a physicist can give. For in physics time must be positive, that is to say, it should be no more than an observable quantity the method of whose measurement is defined. There is then an enormous and intellectually most 68 can distinguish and relate the two and communicate his findings. And though a physical theory may include the observer with respect to his relative motion or his unavoid- able interference with the observation, it is regarded as the part of psychology to deal with the distinguishing and relating itself, that is, with the internal observer. In sum, in physics time itself is the name of a fundamental motion, while the telling of time is not ultimately explicable in physical terms. Furthermore the philosophical interpretation of physical time is by no means univocal, any more than are those of philosophy in the wider sense, with which the philosophy of physics does, after all, eventually merge. Therefore, through this approach a clarification of the concepts of time implicit in various physical theories is the most that can be expected. Let me give very brief versions of three accessible cases in point. I. Eddington introduced the phrase "Time's Arrow" to sum up the observations of thermodynamics. Let there be a partitioned container, isolated from outside influences, and let one part be filled with air, the other empty. Now remove the partition, and the molecules of air in their individual random motions will over time spreed through the whole vessel (while the probability that they will ever again simultaneously collect at one end is so vanishingly small as to make the case practically impossible). The aggregate of molecules as a whole will then have less organization and will be said to show increasing "disorder," by which is meant here a certain kind of homogeneity. Its measure is called "entropy." The large-scale phenomenal effects of this statistical law of nature are quite familiar in life: SUMMER 1983 �Things left to their own devices tend to fall into sprawling disorder. Now Eddington interprets this irreversible process of nature as an intrinsic forward tendency of time itself. If he is right, physics is indeed capable of revealing the nature of time. There are, however, many and much debated difficulties, for example, whether the universe is an isolated system, whether a probable event and a process subject to fluctuations can be imputed to the steady underlying action of time, whether to show that time is "anisotropic," that is, directed, is necessarily to show that it advances, whether the physical law applies as well to life. But the most telling difficulty for present purposes is this: An observer can assert that time is reversible, for example, that if the time coordinate were imagined as reversed the planets would exactly retrace their orbits, only if he also imagines his own time as maintaining its direction so that he can compare the two successive motions. Would notthe same hold for an observer of irreversible processes, so that he would have to say not that physical time itself was advancing, but that "disorder" was irreversibly increasing with time, namely his psychological observer's time the question of whose advance is no longer a matter for physics? There is a counterargument, to be sure, namely that human memory itself, the condition of time-telling, is an entropic process since it has an entropic physical basis. But that leaves us with the question, certainly no longer in the realm of physics, whether the human observer of nature can logically himself be subject to its law (Eddington, Ch. IV; Gruenbaum, Chps. 8, 9; Schlegel, pp. 55 ff.; Whitrow, Ch. IV 3, 4). 2. Einstein begins his 1905 paper, which sets forth the special theory of relativity, by defining what the common place far off it will be said to occur at the same time or simultaneously, with our clock-time for the arrival of its signal. Further, clocks which are synchronized with a third are said to be synchronized with each other. Therefore simultaneity is not universal "nowness" but merely what it is defined to be by the synchronizing process. Next Einstein lays down two fundamental axioms. The first of these is the principle of relativity itself, which says that the laws of physics governing a system are not affected if the whole is put into uniform rectilinear motion. The second is that the speed of light is absolute, namely the same whether the light is emitted from a stationary or a moving source. Within a page Einstein has shown that two clocks which are affixed to the ends of a moving rod and which have been separately synchronized with a clock in the stationary system, and so with each other from the point of view of the stationary observer, will not appear to meet the criteria of synchronicity from the point of view of the moving observers. What the stationary observer sees as simultaneous the moving observers do not. That means that what one observer takes to be the same moment comes apart for another observer into different moments. There is no absolute signification to the concept of simultaneity. The now is not universal. This result is usually interpreted as confuting the common sense notion of a universal contemporaneity, the feeling we have in ordinary circumstances that our now is ev- eryone's now. But I wonder if that follows. The theory means by <(the same time here and there" an operation definable in terms of observations, namely, the relating of clocks by a signal which takes time to travel back and forth. The speed of the signal, namely the speed of light, is the crucial element in the formula which shows that events sense of mankind had so far taken as a natural given, simultaneous in one system will not be so in another rela- namely what it means to say that it is the same time at places very far apart. His need to do so follows immediately from his definition of local time as what the clock tells, and that, in turn, embodies a deep reflection on the nature of physical knowledge. For nothing is to be counted as scientific theory which does not ultimately refer to possible sensory events. So to tell what time it is at a fixed place somewhere far off we must have a clock and an observer there and sensible signalling between him and us. Now even the fastest signal, light, takes time to go there and to be reflected back; we all know that the light from the star we now see is not the light being emitted by the star now. That means that a procedure for synchronizing both clocks must be established so that we here can say what time it is there now. Einstein defines such a procedure. The time for the light signal to come and go is taken to be equal by defini- tively moving one. If that signalling speed were to be increased beyond all bounds, an impossibility in physical theory to be sure, simultaneity would be reinstated.5 But are we in our thinking and imagining bound by the physicist's requirements? Can we not in our thoughtswhich are as swift as the ships of Homer's Phaeacians, namely instantaneous-extend ourselves over all space at once? If our thinking were in principle incapable of coming under the requirements of science we might well imagine any number of friendly extra-terrestrials, moving and stationary, all thinking of us and of each other simultane- tion. We signal our time to the remote observer who sets his clock by it just as he reflects the signal. Upon receiving it we set our clock to a time exactly half way between our sending and receiving the signal. The two clocks are thus said to be synchronized, and when an event occurs at the THE ST. JOHNS REVIEW ously, now. A concord of consciousnesses is not inconceiv- able. I cannot think that the deep-seated human sense of a universal now can be confuted by a definition of time and a canon of knowledge not its own (Einstein, I 1-2; Reichenbach, par. 19; Dingle, pp. 460 ff.). 3. In Plato's Sophist the debate between the proponents of being and becoming is called the Battle of Gods and Giants. This battle rages between interpreters of relativity theory and furnishes my last example of the difficulty of extracting a clear philosophical interpretation from physical theory. The argument arises over the interpretation of 69 �the Minkowski diagram, which is a geometric representation of a world in which the space coordinates are interdependent with the time coordinates. A number of authors claim that the relativization of simultaneity and the involvement or covariance of space and time so spoil the objectivity of the temporal order, that is, the unambiguous and universal separation of past and future, that one can no longer speak of becoming in the world. The world is a four-dimensional continuum of three spatial and one "spa· tializing" time coordinate, spatializing in the sense that in this geometric diagram the motion of any substantial point is represented by a stationary curve. This world is already "written." It is and does not become, though it appears to us successively, like a prepared cartoon strip we read by moving our eyes. Thus the only change is that in the per· ceiving consciousness of the observer, and if there is real time it is only his psychological time. The defenders of becoming argue, on the other hand, that the perturbations of time pointed to by proponents of being do not occur for causally related events, whose succession is preserved in all frames of reference; only the succession of causally unrelated and of simultaneous events is relativized. So nothing, they claim, stands in the way of positing real, that is, causally conditioned, becoming. Aside from self-contradictory use of the term "being" to mean static appearance and the too-narrow use of the term becoming for causally related succession, the difficulty in drawing philosophical conclusions about time and the world, even supposing the physicists came to terms, seems to me to be that the interpretation really concerns only the representation of the theory, that is, a model of its world, not the world itself (Frazer, pp. 415 ff.; Whitrow, pp. 227-228; Gruenbaum, Basic Issues, 195-228). It seems that while the study of physical theory is indispensable to an understanding of process and motion, it can be no more than suggestive with respect to time. But that really implies that time properly speaking must belong not to nature but to the observer. 4. TEMPORAL SENSIBILITY Sometimes it is the matter itself which arouses wonder and perplexity, while sometimes the world's preoccupation with it excites curiosity and concern. In the case of time the two motives for starting a study seem to me to coincide. There is certainly plenty of external evidence for our world's pervasive fascination with time. In the decades close to us there is no getting away from observations to the effect that the rate of change of the human environment has increased stupendously, and this increase is usually expressed as a speeding up of time itself. "Innovation" is the incantatory term which people feel they must utter to keep time from outrunning them. Complementing this 70 general sense of the urgency of our situation there is also a flood of scientific work on time; for example, intriguing biGllogical experiments on the temporal rhythms of animals and jet-setters, psychological studies of time perception and estimation, sociological accounts of time management in different cultures (e.g., Zerubavel). But this overwrought sense of time's power did not arise only after the First World War. It had been in the offing, one might say, for two millenia, but it first broke out acutely almost two centuries ago, in Hegel's writings. It infected common opinion with the notion that the times are informed by a supraindividual force whose laws human science can divine and with whose ends human beings must, on pain of merciless punishment, cooperate. There was the widespread sense that this movement of time was coming to a culmination, either in an earthly paradise or in a man-made apocalypse. There was a passionate elevation of personal time in its vitality over space in its dead externality (Bergson, Note 27, 3). There were discoveries of the interdependence of space and time (Einstein, Alexander, Note 6). And, as was to be expected, an irritated reaction against this "time-mind" soon followed (Lewis, Note 7). But most weightily, there was the claim that the philosophical situation of our time forces us to view the ground of human being itself as temporal (Heidegger, Logik p. 267). Although cataloguing the elements and sources of what everyone is saying is a dry and dubious business, I cannot help speculating, or rather summarizing the speculation of others, on how time, having been dethroned from its mythical majesty by Aristotle, returned as the demon force of modernity. Four root references seem to me discernible, four causes to which the temporal preoccupation oflate modernity is referrable. First and fundamentally this preoccupation is the secular residue of Christianity. Christian time has a beginning, an end, and an internal epoch. These are the Creation, the Final judgment, and the birth of God as man. Our otherwise apostate world retains a secularized sense of impending doom, of a man-made catastrophe (which long antecedes the concrete fear of nuclear annihilation), and, alternately, of coming salvation through progress toward a divinization of mankind or a return to an original creaturely equality in a terrestrial paradise. A second cause is the simple fact that we come late in history, not in the sense in which Greek philosophers posited innumerably repeated cycles of the discovery and loss of art and wisdom (Note 13), but because we have behind us a minutely documented civilization, classical antiquity, uniquely brilliant and irrevocably bygone, to which we have a peculiar relation. For modernity begins with a selfconscious, systematic transformation of the classical categories of thought and conduct. Hence the shape of modern preoccupations is not quite intelligible without reference to their ancient origins. At the same time we SUMMER 1983 �seem to have every reason for forgetting those origins as being superseded. For we have more power over nature and are, in the modern West, better governed than were our intellectual ancestors. Such forgetfulness, however, in· duces a vague feeling of discontinuity and leaves us with the contradiction of a chronic sense that our situation is utterly new. Third is the temporal effect that goes with the sheer massiveness of modernity, its human numbers, informa· tion, organizations, wars, crimes, and instruments of plea- sure. The motion of magnitudes so far beyond human per· spective appears to us to be attributable to an agency less than divine and yet suprahuman; we call it time and con· sider its effects inevitable. Finally, and most to my purpose, is the special modern propensity for a kind of psychological introspection which, in contrast to philosophical self-knowledge, consists of a prolonged pursuit of intimate affective subtleties. It seems to me to stem from two sources coincidentally: from that secularization of the anxious Christian interest in the salvation of one's soul which motivates Augustine's Confessions, and from that sophisticated reaction against the early modern view that human subjectivity is ultimately rational which is called romanticism and whose founding work is Rousseau's Confessions (Note 7). Naturally such introspection-it is really an ingenious kind of musing-is especially rich in observations about the sense of time and ready to luxuriate in the aroma of temporality. Those of us who were born in the first third of this century participate in these affects by birthright. For then a sense of decadence and fin de siecle, climaxed by the First World War which realized all the worst forebodings and indeed closed an era in civilization, had worked the temporal sensibility into an acute state, which was the psychological complement of the new interest in the physical time. Three novelistic masterworks of the early century which, although demandingly voluminous, found avid readers, are at once a sign and a source of this sensibility: The first is Proust's novel, literally entitled Toward a Search for Lost Times. It is an account of the ennuiinfected author's quest for the catalyst of his art, which he finds in the last part of the novel, Time Retrieved; it comes in the form of an instantaneous, time-annihilating recovery of certain paradisical childhood moments. The second is Mann's Magic Mountain. It is a book described by its author as intended to induce in the reader that same "subli- learnedly interweaves mythical, historical, personal time; the book is a recollection of European civilization. • • • Let me describe some of these experiences of temporality-a mere personal sample of temporal affections indicative of our time-under the interlaced rubrics of pacing, routine, and skewing. l. By "pacing" I mean the phenomenon that our internal time seems to undergo drastic shifts in tempo. We moderns are so acutely subject to these, it seems to me, because the rhythms of modern life are not long-breathed natural periods, punctuated by public ritual, but tightly scheduled stretches interrupted by private vacations. The characteristically modern art forms, like the novel and symphonic music, seem to me peculiarly expressive of our habituation to sharp changes in pace. We moderns arealmost congenitally expert in the central temporal experience of the Magic Mountain-the periods of apathy, surfeit, distraction, and boredom which are long to live through but vanishingly brief in retrospect, "wastes" of time, poor in feature and welded in memory; they alternate with times of intense eventfulness, accomplished at breakneck speed, while depositing memories so closepacked and vivid, that today seems aeons from yesterday. A similar experience is that haunting sense of its expanded or contracted availability which makes time seem like money to be prodigally spent in one phase and anxiously hoarded in another, always with a guilty sense that one's lifetime is being mismanaged. Again there is that peculiarly modern drivenness which prevents us from ever "having" time-and its complementary lethargy when the possession of no amount of ''free" time avails: our time devils either ride or bind us. There are, similarly, those occasions of wild anticipation when the present moment, overburdened with the concentrated desire that time should pass, stalls in a bad imitation of the "standing now" of eternity, and will not give way to the next second. Then again, though, time suddenly takes off and shimmies away, as in periods of nervous distraction. Perhaps the latter affections are not peculiar to our time, but here is one that surely is, the strangest and most characteristic of modern time experiences: our watchful subjection to that ubiquitous little face on the wrist which, through all internal tempi, equably shows the time. It is somehow, I suspect, the cause of our loss of temporal equanimity. mation of time," a warping of the sense of time in accor- 2. Next, ''routine": Routine is that organization of our dance with the intensity of life, experienced by its solidly bourgeois yet physically tainted young hero. The book contains several phenomenological expositions of time, including a whole "Digression on the Time Sense." Finally there is joyce's Ulysses, an Irish odyssey, whose hero is a jew, an ordinary man and an outsider, who enacts within one Dublin day the adventurous Mediterranean voyage performed over a decade by his Homeric original. joyce time economy which causes periods of time to be endlessly reflected as in facing mirrors, so that our memory can scarcely discern whether it contains an infinity of times or just one moment. Almost everyone who works in the modern mode, according to a nonseasonal repeating schedule, has some sense of the enigma of the timeconstrained round. How are such calendar days additive? What memorable difference could be powerful enough to THE ST. JOHNS REVIEW 71 �distinguish each of the ten-thousand times of hastening up these particular brownstone stairs at the sound of the bell from every other? The memory is curiously cavalier about the routines of life. It abstracts one event and remembers that schema, modified by the mere knowledge of its multitudinous recurrence, its mere temporal heaping. The duties of each day, when done in the present, at the front of time~ as it were, are vivid and absorbing enough, but when we turn around to face the past an enigma stares back: There has certainly been living but has there been a life, that complete shape which the Greeks call bios, as distinct from mere vital process, zoe? Can a temporally bureau era~ tized life become a whole unless the routine is no more than the thorough-bass of some atemporal melody? Again, the complement of clock-bound business is the vacation, a vacancy of time, l{free" time, and this whole temporal con~ figuration of engaged and disengaged periods is subject to a curious inversion of background and foreground, as in certain optical illusions, such that work time, in which life's energy is, after all, primarily invested, feels like the mere backdrop to the periods of "off' time. No matter how contentedly we are enmeshed in the cocoon of daily absorption, let there be a break in busyness, and the inertia which is strong in the scheduled spirit exerts itself to resist not only all duties but all actions, and the released soul drinks deep draughts of diversion. 3. uSkewing" is my term for the overpowering sense which befalls us moderns especially in historical settings, the sense that space and time can be at cross purposes. I have been in Athens, at a place where my path crossed that of Socrates, not conjecturally but precisely, since archaeology, that quintessentially modern discipline, has fixed the exact location, for instance, of the court where he was tried. Nor was I on the spot in plane coordinates only, for again archaeology, which brings back the past by digging down, had laid bare the level of his time. I was, then, correctly located in all three spatial dimensions. I was in the right place but at the wrong time. That melancholic sense of the irreparable loss of what we have never had which is induced by written histories of bygone splendours-for histories induce memories of the never-experienced~that temporal nostalgia, is many times intensified when no space intervenes to compound the temporal distance, when here and now are directly at odds. It is, after all, to bask in such melancholy that we visit "historic spots." The apprehension of this skewing of space and time invites much rumination. Take, for instance, the common inverse experience of the case above: being contempora- neous, even precisely simultaneous, with another cherished human being, but apart in space. How does the case of spatial distance differ from temporal separation? Apparently by the fact that the latter seems to be remediable; by an investing of available time in transversing space I can come again into the other's presence~incidentally itself the strangest business, this going into and out of another's 72 now! But is being in the same place at the same time so certain a remedy for remoteness? Can it not equally be its cause? Cannot the absent soul be more vividly a presence than the present body? One writer on time illustrates the common claim, that the feature which most distinguishes present from past is vividness, by referring to his colleague X who is, he asserts, more acutely there than Plato. I wonder, or rather I doubt it. On the other hand, there does seem to be a special bond of awareness~ if only of disillusioned awareness~that links not only those who live in neighbourly contiguity but also those who coexist in spatially distant contemporaneity. To extend the speculation from spatial to temporal relocation: If it is sometimes, though perhaps rarely, possible to go back to former places and presences, and to reenter their continuity, why should it be an interdicted purpose-as the common opinion of our age considers it-to go back to former times by internal recovery and an external reconstruction? Such a collective return, or rather re- trieval, such a going back which means a bringing back, has, after all, been attempted, and always these renaissance times are also the newest of times. Similarly, why should not individual retrievals of our private lost times be a possibility? That is, after all, Proust's project~just as the Renaissance revives antiquity in grand vignettes, so Proust relives his childhood in paradisical tableaus. Could it be, indeed, that such retrievals of time, public or private, are the modern replacements for the ancient periodic ritual enactments of mythical moments~these being the respective modes of bringing the then and there into the here and now and of undoing the skewing of time and place? I have only described some time affections which seem to me particularly acute in modern life. But such diverse musings while expressing the mood and providing the material for the inquiry into time have no end and lead to no resolutions. 5. THE PHILOSOPHERS What is left, in the end, for someone anxious to clarify and test certain intimations about time, is the way through the philosophers. It is, after all, their proper and specific business to ask boldly and set out coherently what Time itself is. The five writers I have chosen are those who seem to me to present the most deep-reaching, well-grounded, and mutually responsive thematic treatment of time. Aristotle defines time as the number of motion. His is the first thematic treatment in the West, unsurpassibly comprehensive and therefore the natural reference for all subsequent expositions. Augustine, in his effort to comprehend the temporal creature's relation to his eternal God and Creator, discovers time as the "distension" or worldly dimension of the soul. His ardent and original inquiry first establishes temporality as at the root of human existence. SUMMER 1983 �On this Augustinian discovery Huss.erl bases a phenomenology, namely a description, as presuppositionless as possible, of the internal appearances of time, that is, of time-consciousness. · Kant finds time to be the "inner sense," the sense in which the self becomes an appearance to itself; here time, as the form of human sensibility, is of the soul without belonging to the ultimate subject, the self. Heidegger understands the very ground of human existence as temporality, inverting Kant's relation of the self to time and driving the notion of time to its most extreme distance from Aristotle. There are, of course, other writers on time who are of g<e><t stature. Of these my chief omission is Hegel, whose writings, (except for the paragraphs on time in nature, Note 27, 2) are just not capable of a dissevered thematic treatment of time. For his system is the account of the spirit in its necessary appearances which is Time. 8 Plotinus (20), Leibniz and Newton (4), Locke (24), Nietzsche (13), Bergson (27, 3) and Whitehead (16 and 32) are briefly treated in the Notes indicated. As for the absence of Plato, it is not really an omission because there is no extended treatment of time in the Dialogues except in myths (See Notes 12 and !3) and, significantly, none of these are told by Socrates himself-whose images are reserved for the atemporal. Finally, I should say that it is not so much the gist of the theories here presented that is instructive for my purpose but the exposition of their motives and principles, the tracing of their explicit and implicit consequences, and the formulation of those oppositions and analogies which mark them as belonging to one tradition. Using the texts in that way, I shall in the last section (VI) try to formulate my suspicions against time. II. ARISTOTLE: TIME AS THE NUMBER OF MOTION Time, Ghronos, is endowed among the Greeks with vividly various shapes and widely diverse, even opposite, powers; he is monster, god, and heaven itself, all-seeing, healing, and all-destroying9 Sophocles, for example, says onoe that ".omnipotent time" confounds and destroys all, and then again he calls him "a gentle god" (Oed. Col. 609, Electra 179). Time's attributes are evidently fluid, but he is always a potent being. In the fourth book of the Physics, the first extensive thematic treatment of time, Aristotle suddenly and drastically reduces it to the lowest possible status. This epoch-making triumph of thinking over myth-making has not prevailed. Indeed, the dethroned god has been resurrected as God himself by Aristotle's modern counterpart, Hegel. So much the more, it seems to me, should the overthrow accomplished by Aristotle be recalled. THE ST. JOHNS REVIEW L TIME AND ITS MEASURES* Aristotle begins with the suspicion that time is "either wholly not, or scarcely and obscurely" (217 b 34). For many perplexities arise if being is ascribed to time, chief of which is that some of it is gone and is no longer, some of it is to come and is not yet, while the now is no part of time at all. He resolves the difficulty like this: Time is a mere affection or aspect (pathos, hexis, 223 a 19) of motion: "Time is the number of motion with respect to before and after" (220 a 25). The Loeb translators comment that Aristotle "enters into no profound metaphysical speculation as to its essential nature" (I, 378). But the profundity of his speculation lies precisely in his showing that time has no essential nature; an interpretation of his treatment ought to show what the deep-lying reasons for this determined trivialization of time are. Not only is time a mere aspect of motion for Aristotleit is not even a necessary aspect, since not all motions are temporal. Two kinds of motion at least are prior to time. They are the motions at the two limits of the natural world, so to speak, and they are timeless because they are themselves the source and principle of time. The first is the ultimate, primary rotational motion of the heavens, the second is the motion of the soul apprehending time. I shall say more of these later, but I must mention right now that to identify these motions as pretemporal is by no means to say that they cannot be timed. We can clock the heavens and we can time our cogitations-but we have clocks only because of the regular continuous motions of the heavens, and we can tell time only because of the counting motion of our soul. Time is the measure of motion, and therefore motion can in turn measure time (220 b 24). Up to the last book the Physics is about inner-worldly motions and these alone are the motions affected with time, the number of motion according to before and after. Where there is no physical body, there is no time (On the Heavens 279 a 16). Motion (kinesis) includes every kind of change (metabole) of quantity, quality, place, and the process of becoming (2!8 b 21, though not becoming as simple coming into being, Met. 1067 b 32). How can motion possess number, that is, come in ordered units? Motion has a quantitative aspect; it is a magnitude; we may say that it has extension. Motion derives its sequential extended character of before-and-after from this aspect which is merely a property in the motion although separable in thought (2!9 a 22; see Loeb I p. 384, n.b.). (Strictly speaking, as we shall see, the motion derives its magnitudinal property from the thing moved, the mobile.) In other *The section on Aristotle was worked out during a year of learning with and from Anderson Weekes, then a senior at St. John's College, Annapolis, who during that time developed a coherent and illuminating account of Aristotle's theory of cognition. 73 �words, the category of continuous quantity is predicated which includes them (Met. 1078 a 12); therefore physics is of motion.IO a subordinate science, and not Science simply, as it is with To say that time moves is meaningless; rather motion is temporal, and from motion time derives all its properties and problems. As motion is continuous, so is time, and all the problems continuity offers to reason, time does likewise. First among these is its relation to the now, which is analogous to that of a point to its line. More of that later. A second difficulty is that since motion is continuous, so is us. Locomotion, then, is prior in all ways to the other motions. Of locomotions, rotary motion alone is continuous in all senses: It has no beginning and it does not end through having completed its process, nor does it abruptly double back on itself; it can be regular, smooth, uninterrupted, and eternal (Phys. VIII 8-9). The first heavenly sphere is the uniquely perfect embodiment of such rotary motion. It comes as close to being at rest as a mobile can be, since every point in a circular motion is equally a beginning, middle, and end, so that in a certain sense it has no before-and-after (265 b 1). It is in motion, but not toward an end; its movement is rather a steady state which imitates in its regularity the pure activity of completely fulfilled being, God (Met. XII 7). This is the motion which is the cause of all other inner-worldly motions, and so, indirectly, of time (Phys. VIII 9). 12 Beyond the heavens there is no time (On the Heavens 279 a 15). The continual character of time, its endlessness and its uninterruptedness, is therefore derived from that of the ultimate motion. Because of the heavenly motion, time is one and the same throughout the world (Phys. 218 b 14). The discontinuous motions of the terrestrial world, which come to an end with the reaching of their goal, are all fit- time: Whence, then, come the unit measures, the periods, through which time can become the number of motions? Time, therefore, pertains to motion insofar as motion is a continuous quality or quantity, which always has a before-and-after. The primary before-and-after, according to Aristotle, is that of place (219 a 16), and therefore locomotion is in all ways the primary motion: It is the condition of all other motions, and it is the motion of a completed being, and it is temporally prior to other motions since it initiates them (VIII, 7). But it would be false to conclude that motion is continuous because it is spatial, as if it were the covering of extended space by an indifferent point-mobile. That would be an importation of the modern physical view that a motion is sufficiently understood through its "quantity," which is called momentum and defined as the measure of the mass multiplied by the velocity of the moving body. Aristotle rejects the possibility of a motion indifferent to the nature of the mobile and its proper places.l 1 Indeed, as was said, motion itself is defined in terms of the mobile, as its state. He says clearly that motion is continuous because the thing moved is continuous and not because that in which it is moved is so (Coming to Be 337 a 27). He does not, of course, mean the continuity of the present extent of the thing, for example, its length, but rather that continuity which a mobile has by reason of possessing a matter which remains continuous through change, the substrate or subject of the motion (Met. 1042 a 32, 1044 b 7). The magnitude of motion, and derivatively of time, is an affection of a divisible subject which is not the momentary present movable thing itself but "what was moved" (Met. 1020 a 32), which must mean the mobile in its progressive changes of place. In this continuing-through-its-phases the mobile displays that extension which is reflected in the motion and which, when counted, is called temporal durations. In brief: what is countable in motion is its continuously phased development, its "before-and-after." It should be noted here that, accurately speaking, the magnitudinal affections are so-called "proper affections"; they belong to the mobile not essentially but yet necessarily, just as a human being is not essentially either a male or a female and yet is necessarily one of these. Temporal duration is therefore not of the essence of the mobile. From this fact follows the crucial distinction between Aristotelian and modern physics: To Aristotle the science that leaves out motion and magnitude is closer to essences, more intelligible, and therefore more accurate than that 74 ted into continuous cosmic time. And since everything within the world is mobile and subject to timing, time is in everything (223 a 17). As the heavens are the source of temporal continualness, so they provide the measure of time. The cycle of rotation is the best unit of time, because it is easiest to count (223 b 19)-a continuous quantity must have a unit measure in order to be countable. The unit measures of time in the terrestrial world of becoming are provided by the sun's oblique motion along the ecliptic. just as the movement of the whole heaven is responsible for the continuity of motion and time, so the sun, the "generator," by its approaches and withdrawals causes each life to have its span: "Every life and time is measured by a period, though not the same for all .... For some the measure is a year, for some a greater and for oth- ers a lesser period" (On Coming to Be 336 b 13 ff.). Hence the period or cycle is the natural time unit (Phys. 223 b 28). God has made this somewhat irregular but uninterrupted cycle of becoming perpetual so that it may come as near as possible to eternal being (3 36 b 35); becoming approaches being in a kind of Eternal Return.l 3 To tell continuous time over such annual cycles it would seem necessary that each cycle should differ somewhat from the next, as, because of the accidents of matter, it certainly will be. Time, then, belongs, strictly speaking, only to the sublunar world of change, of becoming and of linearly advancing motion in which before and after are distinguishable. Such motion, defined in Physics III (201 a 11), 14 is to be understood through Aristotle's two fundamental terms, SUMMER 1983 �potentiality or capability for being (dynamis) and actuality, activity, or being-at-work (energeia; also' entelecheia, fulfillment). Motion, then, is the fulfillment of a capability; it is the actual exercise of the potentiality that the mobile has for being what it was meant to be, for achieving its full form (eidos). Each motion is a unity, governed by its own end and ceasing when that end has been fulfilled. Its time is just the measured course of this activity of approaching full being. Since a terrestrial mobile, unlike the heavens (On the Heavens I, 3), has a corruptible material substrate and is subject to accidents, it cannot hold its perfected state. If it is an animal it will instead have generated a new animal, different in number but the same with itself in form. And so as a member of the species it will participate in eternity, in spite of the temporary life of each generation (On the Soul 415 b 4). Such generating is the terrestrial complement to the work of the generating sun: "Man is begotten by man and by the sun" (Phys. 194 b 13). The father as progenitor comes before the child in time, but because he contributes the form toward which the child is moving he is prior not only in time but also in being. That toward which as an end the motion is, the actuality, is prior in dignity (Met. 1050 a). This priority is timeless. When a moving thing has come to the state of beingat-its-own-end or fulfillment it straightaway cuts out of the continuum of time and becomes, with respect to its being, timeless. What is actual, fully in being, is present (hypdrchon, 1048 a 32), in a state imaginable as a kind of motionless vibrancy. One must say of it that it has been and is at once (1048 b 24); it is not temporally determinable or articulable. But just as for pure eternal objects "to be while time is is not the same as to be in time" (Phys. 221 a 19), so worldly things which are composites of form and material can have temporal duration in their actuality. For their having come into their own form does not preclude their informed material from being in time. Thus the men of Troy cannot be said to be either before or after us with respect to their form, and yet the Trojan War in which they served certainly occurred long before our day (Problemata 916 a 18 ff.).IS It is just because every motion is one and terminates in its own end that time is powerless as a cause. For this end is always discontinuous with the motion that leads up to it. Aristotle separates the concluding moment as no longer belonging to the motion but to its completion and fulfillment (Phys. 263 b 15). So while a motion and its time are yet in process, none of the moments of this continuous span is determinate or complete enough to be the sufficient cause of the next moment. When mere time intervenes between a cause and its end, that is, when the mo~ lion is not a completed unity, the end is merely contingent (Post. An. II 12). Thus, while a cause may be in time, it can never act through mere time: That means that there is no mechanical causation, which is a causation where each momentary state fully determines the next. Furthermore, Aristotle notes that the mere lapse of time is never responTHE ST. JOHNS REVIEW sible for a thing being made new or beautiful. If anything, we say that time destroys, but only because motion itself is, from one perspective, "ekstatic" (a word Heidegger will raise to central importance), that is to say, it is a destabilization and a "standing forth" from the status quo (Phys. 221 b 1; 222 b 17). Time is but the number of motion-the objective number, the countable parts themselves (219 b 9). Motion is potentially numerable, but it has an actual number or becomes temporal only when it is actually counted. It is the soul that counts motion. How? By noting change, of course. When we have no awareness of change, as during sleep, we say that no time has passed, for we fit the earlier directly onto the later now (218 b 26). (Because of the continuity of motion the opposite case, that there should be no change to perceive, is apparently impossible.) So time depends on distinguishing nows. 2. THE NOW If time is thought of on the analogy of a continuous directed line whose parts have an intrinsic order (though of position rather than of before-and-after, Cat. 5 a 30), the now corresponds to a Euclidean point, namely a point which is not a constituent element of a line but merely lies upon it (Elements, Def. 4). For the now, Aristotle is at pains to show, is not a part of time but its very Hcontinuity" (220 a 19, 222 a 10), at once the pivotal link of beforeand-after and the possibility of temporal division. This mathematized now reproduces whatever perplexities a mathematical point raises, and so, since time depends on motion and motion on the continuous magnitude of the mobile (219 a 12), time shares all the problems of geometric continuity. For example, the nows are the limits of segments of time without belonging to time and are therefore not attainable by dividing time, just as the point is a partless element which indefinite divisions of a line approach but do not reach. Further, the now is always the same in function but never in "position" (219 b 16), just as any point which produces a cut in the line is indistinguishable from another except by location; similarly, as a point divides a line everywhere potentially, but actually only when a cut is made, so the now does not divide time actually until a temporal cut is made. How is that temporal cut made? As time accompanies motion, so the now hovers, as it were, over the moving thing (219 b 24 ff.) It is by the now alighting on an object that before-and-after in motion are first distinguished, for "the now is most apprehensible." We conclude that the now must be the presentness of the perception 16 of a moving thing, and that the cut in time is made by the act of perceptual attention to a moving object: "Perception is necessarily of a this and a where and a now" (Post. An. 87 b 30). Perception is "an innate distinguishing power" (99 b 36) which is actualized by the external and the particular 75 �(On th~ Soul417 b 21), and the now-cut in time is actualized with it But, on the other hand, how can there be perception of the point-now? If perception itself takes time, then how can it cut time except in time, which means, not at a now. But if, on the other hand, perception as the activity of the faculty of sensation (On the Soul II 5,12) is, like all actuality, essentially not in time (though it can be accompanied by time), then what does it have to do with the now which makes the temporal cut? What Aristotle says of the activity of pleasure exemplifies this problem: "It is a kind of whole in the now" (Nic. Eth. 1174 b 9; a !4)l7 Is this psychic now which is capable of atemporal substantial fulness formally identical with the now of physical time? Similarly for perception: What is perceived in the soul's now is the atemporal actuality of the object-the soul perceives its form through the sensing of its shape. How then can the soul simultaneously perceive the partless point-now of the mobile's temporal extension? Aristotle does not say. He does indeed try to make provision for the perception of lengths of time (see below, 3). But even then it will not be clear how the soul cuts time, and this is a crucial difficulty since "time is what is determined by the now" (Phys. 219 a 30). It is this difficulty which later philosophers solve by taking time into the soul so that the now becomes identical with its noting. When the soul has pronounced "now" twice (however it does so), namely before and after a motion-stretch, we say that a certain time has passed (2!9 a 28). Since time is that by which motion has number, it must be possible to count the stretch between the termini, which requires reference to a standard measure. We have, as was shown, such uni- versal measures given us by the heavenly spheres: days by the revolution of the starry sphere, years and seasons by the sun, months by the moon. With these natural passages and their more minute subdivisions we compare the stretch of time and, counting the bounding nows-for the now corresponds to the unit in number (221 a 16)-we count the substretches which they mark off. There is no time without soul, for time arises where countable motion is actually counted, and only a soul, by means of the perceptive intellect (nous) can count (223 a 23 ff.). What, then, is counting? We must cast loose completely from latter-day Kantian notion that counting is the articulation of an inner stream of consciousness, an internal time-flux. The soul, for Aris- totle, has no original psychic time because it has no one continuous underlying flow or motion; nor does thought run through or touch on a continuum as it counts: "The motion of reason is not a continuum and in an underlying matter, as is that of a moving thing" (On Invisible Lines 969 a 32). When the soul thinks time it does not actually run through the temporal continuum but takes its sections atomically, as it thinks its successive thoughts discretely, like numbers (On the Soul430 b 7, 407 a 9). The soul, locomotive, affective, or rational, cannot well be said to be in physical motion (408 a 34 ff.)lS But in some 76 other manner, never quite defined, it must be spoken of as moving. For example, thinking is motion for "without continuity and time it is impossible for us to think even those things which are not in time" (On Memory 450 a 8). Coming to know is a motion for it requires experience, repeated and remembered perceptions through which the universal is suddenly established (Post. An. !00 a 3 ff.). The attaining of a good condition takes time, for the human intellect, being composite, needs a continuous approach to perfec- tion (Met. 1075 a 9). So there are psychic motions, but they are discontinuous, in fact in two ways: Motion is not al- ways present and each motion proceeds discretely. I think it can be shown that the human soul does have an everpresentness, namely its first actuality, analogous to the unintermittent thought of the pure intellect, but it is not the continuity of an ever-advancing, ever-incomplete homoge- neous flux. The continuity of time is entirely external and physical. Its source is the heavenly local motion with which the intermittent inner motion of the soul has only this in common-that it, too, must be in a strict sense ach- ronic; for how, without infinite regress, will the soul count its own counting? 19 3. MEMORY Without the now, then, there is no time, and no time without a now (2!9 b 34), but as we have seen, the now is not a part of time. Indeed its mode of being is quite different from that of time, which is to say that it comes under a different category. Time belong, to the category of "how great" or quantity; the now belongs to the category of "when" (Cat. 2 a 2, 11 b 12) along with "yesterday" and ~~tomorrow." Except for an isolated chapter on the usage of ''when" words, nothing is said of this latter category in the Physics nor is it elucidated in the Categories. This most significant and strange disjunction of time and the now is implied by Aristotle's problematic theory of the role duration plays in perception and perceptible being: The perceptive intellect comes into contact with the continuously moving physical world always at a here and a now; the here may stay put, but the now passes orr along with the motion, and from that, derivatively, arises the perception of time. But the now has another relation to time besides generating its perception: Each present now forms an im- penetrable limit between all the nows that have passed and all the nows that are to come (234 a 1). Or perhaps since there are, strictly speaking, no past and future nows, one should say that the now separates time before from time after. Therefore there is a past-or rather, we humans have a past (as do certain animals, On Mem. 450 a 15). The inanimate physical world has no past or future, although it has a before-and-after, which simply means that it is in a prior or a posterior phase of its approach to being. Nor has God a past, for having no sensory perception he has no now. How then is it possible for us to have a past, that is to SUMMER 1983 �say, passed nows? Aristotle deals with this most humanly interesting of temporal problems, the triune character of the category "when," in the brilliant little essay On Memory and Recollection. We know even beforehand that we must have a capacity for retaining nows drained of present perception. Without such an ability we could not tell time, since we could not interpret what we had counted up. Nor could we learn, since we could accumulate no experience. For it is many memories which make one experience, and memory is of past perception (Post. An. 100 a 4). About the three "whens" Aristotle says succinctly: "Of what is present, there is perception, of what is to come, expectation, of what has been, memory" (On Mem. 449 b 28). The present (paron, being-at-hand) is the perceptionfilled now. It is immediate: Of the now in the now there can be no memory (449 b 26). Enough has been said of it. Heidegger will subject it to a fundamental critique. It is. the imagination which makes the two non-present phases of time possible. The future arises when the soul, in present deliberation about what is to be, projects images (On the Sou/431 b 8). Aristotle observes that we appear to face into the future since the before of the past is more remote from the now than the after, while the before of the future is closer (Phys. 223 a 9). But beyond that he treats the future mostly from the logical point of view, asking what it might mean to speak now the truth about what will be. For if futural assertions are always either true or false, just like assertions about past and present, then contingency and chance are excluded-the future is determinate. But that cannot be, since both human choice and the vagaries of matter work to make future events contingent. So while it is certainly necessary that tomorrow there must be a seafight or not, it is impossible to say which ofthese is the case (On Interp. 9). Therefore, in order to judge of future propositions, one must know which things will be by necessity (either because they are part of a necessary cycle of becoming, Post. An. 95 b 38 ff., or because they are always or never), and what things are within human choice. Then one can say either "it will be" or "it is expected" (to esti, to mellon, Coming to Be 337 b 3 ff.), knowing that these sentences really refer to two different futures-the foreknown and the merely anticipated. But Aristotle never intimates that there is anything in the future as future, some innovation or fulfillment to be credited to mere futurity. What will be necessarily in the future is what has already always been (Note 13). Even human affairs run in cycles: "It is likely that art and philosophy have often been discovered as far as possible and perished again" (Met. 1074 b II). So the future is of no great interest to him. It will be otherwise with Augustine to whom prophecy, as the foreknowledge of the apparently contingent, is a serious matter, and with Heidegger for whom the future will become the spring of time itself. It is the past which Aristotle treats most significantly. There is a past because there is memory and memory is a mode of the imagination. There is a kind of motion in the THE ST. JOHNS REVIEW soul, resulting from the activity of perception, by which we have images (On the Sou/429 a 3). No human being, as a composite of matter and form, can think without images; for example, one cannot do geometry without at least internal diagrams. For the image is an accommodation of material objects to the thinking soul, a holding of their form and their continuity without their matter; the human intellect needs this form to go to work (On Mem. 450 b 31 ff.). Memory and imagination, then, both belong to the same part of the soul, that "primary organ" of perception which receives deliverances incidental and common to all the senses, namely magnitude, motion, and, consequently, time (450 a 8 ff., On the Sou/425 a 14 ff.). Memory is the affection of this power when time has gone by (On Mem. 449 b 26), a kind of perception perpetuated past its cause. All things imaginable can be remembered (450 a 24); indeed it is hard to think what sense-derived image would not be, strictly speaking, a memory, since all images arise from perception as soon as the actual sensing in the sense organ has ceased. Only what is no longer present can be remembered. But how is that possible? Aristotle never tells haws imagining works, except by analogy. He likens a memory-image to a seal impression, a simile which expresses the crux of his difficulty: Imaging compounds the mystery of perception: how can a material somatic organ receive the physical object extendedly and yet immaterially (On the Soul424 a 18 ff., 427 b 29 ff.)-and then hold it through time ready for recovery? But he does tell what it means to be an image. The memory recovers the perceptual trace or memory-image in the soul. However it is not the image we remember but the thing itself, and therein lies a problem. Aristotle resolves it by pointing out that that is just what it means to be an image: to be all in one an affection present in the soul and a likeness of an object, just as a picture is before us both as a physical object and as a likeness of a person. Aristotle is here prefiguring one of Husserl's central conceptions, that of "intentionality," which is the defining characteristic of consciousness as always consciousness of something. We have a past, then, by virture of memory, and we have memory by virtue of our threefold receptive power. These are its facets: I. perception (aisthesis), which is responsible for the actual present sensory event; 2. imagina- tion (phantasia), which is the capability of being affected by the continuities of place and motion abstracted from their matter; and 3. memory (mneme), which permits retention of images and their revival together with an awareness of the time elapsed since perception (452 b 23). Aristotle supplies a not quite intelligible explanation of how such elapsed times are gauged (452 b 7 ff.): Just as one estimates a great external object not by actually reaching for it but by representing it in a proportionate figure in the field of the imagination, so one does not actually go back a long time to estimate the age of a memory-image, but one represents it proportionately in a speeded-up motion-for ex- 77 �ample, by running through a decade in a second. What is hard to see is how such a scaling of time can given more than a very impressionistic comparative judgement of its length, since temporal extent cannot be panoramically surveyed in the imagination-for it does not appear-so as to give some sense of a scaling factor. As I have said, the chief difficulty in Aristotle's account of time is his insistence that duration itself can be perceived and imaged. Aristotle, nonetheless, summarizes: "Only those animate beings who perceive time remember, and by that part by which they perceive time" (449 b 29). This might seem to be a circular outcome: We have a past, because we have memory and memory because we have a sense of passed time. Yet with all its difficulties it sets the terms for future debate-the past can be only for animate beings who have an imagination with a temporal dimension, that is, memory. What is entirely missing in Aristotle's founding account is any sense that our triple temporality is humanly significant. The reason for this omission is that not time but timeless actuality is life in the full sense. This view is plainly expressed in this passage from the Nichomachean Ethics, which may serve as an epigraph: Pleasant is the activity of the present, the hope of what is to come, the memory of what has been. But what is truly pleasant and lovable in these is their being in the way of actuality. [IX 1168 a 13] * * * The vulnerable places in this magnificently detailed and dovetailed theory of time which can be culled from Aristotle's various works are patent. They occur, I have argued, at its outer and its inner termini: the continuous ce- lestial revolution which is the cause of all motion and the perceptual now, which is the point of tangency of natural motion and the soul. Happily the central thesis, the reduction of time to an affection of motion, is not, I think, exclusively bound into Aristotle's terms. (See Sec. VI 2.) Before going on to Augustine, who fully makes good Aristotle's lack of temporal pathos, let me at least refer to the intervening grand psycho-cosmological theory of the Neoplatonist Plotinus. (It is briefly sketched in No~e 20.). Ill. AUGUSTINE: TIME AS THE ''DISTENTION'' OF THE SOUL Time and the soul's temporality is transfigured in acreated world. Augustine burns with curiosity, expressed in ardent language, to know how the temporal human creature can reach beyond creation to the creator so as to find God's will "before" the world. He begins by throwing out 78 an impetuous barrage of time quandaries and reflections (Confessions, XI 14-19). What is time? How can there be a •past when what is gone is now no longer and what will be is not yet? And yet, did the present not pass, it would be eternity. Again, how can I say that is, whose cause of being is that it shall be? And how can I measure times when those gone are no longer and those to come are not yet available? If! do it, it must be while it is passing. But then what of the Hthree times"-how can I preserve them concurrently? Augustine thus begins, in some faith of getting satisfaction, with just those questions which Aristotle cites as perplexities arising from the error of giving time substantial being. In the course of his passionate inquiry some truths do come clear to Augustine. He thinks he can affirm boldly that if nothing were passing there would be no past time; if nothing were coming, no future; if nothing were, no present. So there must be a motion of the world; God's creation has passage. Further he sees that he always faces time: It does not come up from behind and out of the past, and he cannot, like Aristotle, go along with it, but 1it comes toward him from the future. As Aristotle, in Greek, calls the past "that which has become" (gen6menon), so Augustine calls it what has gone by (praeteritum). For there is a real future, not merely a necessitating cyclical return, but events-to-be, contingent to human apprehension, yet revealed to the prophets through God's omniscience. A real future is the human consequence of God's foreknowledge. However he approaches the perplexity, Augustine is sure of this-and here begin his wonderful resolutionsthat past, present, and future, wherever they are to be found, are only as present (20). There are not, properly speaking, three times (Aristotle's "whens") called past, present, and future. Rather there is Ha present of what is past, a present of what is present, and a present of the future." Such three are indeed in our soul (anima) and elsewhere I do not see them. The present of what has gone by is memory, the present of what is present, eyewitness (contuitus), the present of what is future, expectation. [20] Augustine is not describing an Aristotelian faculty for sensing what is before us, for reviving images with their accrued times and for projecting them in planning. He is speaking of time itself, and he is placing it within the human soul. The problem of measuring this psychic time leads him on (21-22). His mind "is set afire" by it, by the burning perplexity of the dispersal of time into its three phaseshow to lay them together for comparison, in what space, in what dimension to do the measuring. For time is not the measure of a motion but what is itself to be measured: While the sun stood still, time yet went on for Joshua. 'jNew," he exclaims, "is the discovery of these things!" The discovery is this: "In you, my mind (animus), do I measure my times" (27). Times can be measured in the mind SUMMER 1983 �because they are co-present there, and hence comparable. Thus is resolved the great puzzle of primary time measurement: unlike a length of space whose rigid measure can be transported intact and made congruent with another Expectation (Future) length, times and their measures flow away and are incapa~ Eyewitness (<Present) ble of superimposition. (One must keep in mind that clocks measure and compare times only derivatively, through motion.): But in the soul times do coexist. The soul's collection of all times into its present proceeds, I infer, as follows. Worldly motion passes, so to speak, under the attentively apprehending soul. The soul perceives each moment as it goes past and absorbs it into its own temporal dimension, its memory. Thus the now remains fixed in its context but sinks ever further down as <t - - - - - - - ....-------~motion ~o<:- ..,e~"' ~+ Past (memory) new moments of motion are perceived. At the same time that the soul remembers, and at the same juncture of the world's motion and the soul's present, it also expects. The difference between remembering and expecting is only this, that whereas present moments drop into memory, future moments drop, as it were, out of the dimension of expectation into the world. The future, therefore, is not a long time, for it is not, but the long future time is merely a long expectation of the future. Nor is the time past a long time, for it is not; but a long past time is merely a long memory of past time. (28] Augustine has referred to this co-temporaneity of the times as being in the mind. But now he goes further. Time is the dimension of the soul. Here is how Augustine puts it: " ... It seems to me that time is nothing else but a stretching out in length," [distentio is his word] "but of what I know not, and I marvel if it be not of the very mind" (26). Note that here time is not in the mind but it is the mind, or rather the dimension of the mind: The soul is the "space of time," that is to say it is drawn out into a temporal longitude along which memories, perception, and expectations are copresently arrayed. This "distention" can therefore be visualized as a kind World 1 s indeed implicit in Augustine's understanding that the external creation has events but no temporal succession; it is the world as God sees it, all at once. It is the "standing now" (11) which becomes fluid only to the finite creature: Whatever God doth, it shall be forever .... That which hath been is now, and what is to be hath already been, and God requireth what is to be. [Ecclesiastes iii 14-15) Second is the real futurity of the projections and previsions of the expectation segment; prophesies, as Godgiven visions of what is to be, meet their own realizations in the world, when the moment of their juncture with it arrives. Finally, the diagram points to the plenitude of memory for Augustine. He has indeed already devoted a most beautiful book (X) to its power, its "ample and infinite inwardness (penetrale)," its "fields and spacious palaces," whence he can make present to himself by their images things he has seen and learned, including himself as he was, and which he traverses to come to God (8, 9, 17, 25). hori~ Augustine's passionate interest in temporality has its zontal axis represents the world's motion coming from the reason in his faith. He wants to discover the condition under which a temporally dispersed being can approach union with God. Having collected time from what might be called its horizontal extension into the vertical dimension representing the cotemporaneity of the phases of time, he has achieved a human present which is analogous to God's "standing now." But he prays further that his of vertical elongation, an ordinate in a diagram. The future towards the soul's "eyewitness." That moment is the origin, the perceptual present, where the soul's "distention" intersects, or sits astride, the world's motion and turns its sensation~events into memory images. These con- tinually drop down, preserving the order of entry, into the memory segment of the soul's distention, falling deeper with every passing moment. At the same juncture expecta- tion or foreknowledge is drawn down from the upper segment to meet the real moment, to become realized in a perceptual present. The whole ordinate, the expectation and memory segment joined in the point of perception, constitutes the soul's triune present. The diagram expresses three significant elements of Augustine's temporality. First, since time is the soul's vertical dimension, the world's horizontal axis is timeless. It is THE ST. JOHNS REVIEW soul's stretching apart, its "distention"-William Watt's vivid translation of 1631 says "distraction" (Loeb)-should be gathered in, so that he might be not stretched apart in time (distentus) but stretched forth (extentus), not in distraction (secundum distentionem) but in concentration (secundum intentionem) toward the delights of the eternal father "which are neither to come nor to pass away" (29). This "extention" out of and beyond the world is represented by the third dimension in the diagram. 79 �Temporality, then,· is the wordly dimension of the created soul, namely its capacity fm taking in and containing the world, that is, was, and will be. And so time is also the soul's ~~distraction." HUSSERL: THE PHENOMENOLOGY OF TIME Husserl's abstruse, intricate, and subtle description of the sense of time, The Phenomenology of Internal TimeConsciousness, begins with the praise of Augustine as the unsurpassed master of the problem of time. Indeed, Augustine's "distention" furnishes Husserl with his guiding schema, and Husserl may be regarded as Augustine's expositor, with this difference: Husserl's analysis is intended to require no act of faith or philosophical thesis at all since he aims to write a phenomenology, a presuppositionless description of the phenomena of temporality·and of temporal appearances. He therefore requires a rigorous "abstention" from all substantializing assumptions.· He suppresses what might be called ontological greed, not in order to gaze about aesthetically, but to develop a penetrating analytic insight into the deep constituting structures of phenomena seen as phenomena, namely as they appear to consciousness. To put time before oneself strictly as a phenomenon hence requires the exclusion of objective or world time insofar as its existence is posited, and a transfer of attention to the fundamental phenomenon of immanent time, the flow of consciousness from now to now. This flow is the "temporally constitutive flux," the "originary" stream, in which temporal phenomena and, remarkably, the consciousness of time itself are simultaneously constituted (par. 39). In the end, to be sure, this flux is interpreted as consciousness itself, as absolute subjectivity or self (36). But that is a leap beyond simple phenomenology, forced by the irrepressible human need for more than merely descriptive accounts. The early section, entitled "The Analysis of TimeConsciousness," is, however, rigorously phenomenological, and from it I shall sketch some findings: apt new coinages, illuminating discriminations, and, as the centerpiece, a diagrammatic synthesis of the elements found in the analysis. which Aristotle had left unresolved, namely how anything can be perceived in the partless point-now, the so-called "specious present," an unintelligible notion of a finite, en- during now, had been introduced, 21 but Husserl admits no such constructs.) How is an appearance, say of a melody, which develops over time as a unified object, to be understood? The term "intentionality" was mentioned in reference to Aristotle's understanding of the memory-image as an image of a thing. Husserl develops intentionality into an indispensable element in the description of consciousness. Consciousness is always also consciousness of something: it is always intentional. "Truly . . . it pertains to the essence of the intuition of time that in every point of its duration ... it is consciousness of what has iust been and not mere consciousness of the now-point of the objective thing ... " (12). Every now-consciousness is also a yetConsciousness, like a comet's tail of a previous perception. Thus besides the veritable perception, the content present in consciousness in its own right, there is also a consciousness of the time gone by-not a faded perception but something quite different: a past tone present as a past tone. This mode is distinct from ordinary memory, and Husserl calls it retention, or primary memory. It is the consciousness in the present of what has just been, discovered through the analysis of the phenomenal fact that an experience has duration within the immediately superseded now. Every present impressional consciousness ''shades off" into an everfresh retentional consciousness of the temporal object's immediate past. But when the spring of tonal impressions gives out, the melody is over and sinks back to a vanishing point, p;:tssing into ordinary, or secondary, memory. Secondary memory is distinguished from primary, or retentive, memory by these features: Perception has the distinguishing character of ''self-givenness" which means that it stands there, uncalled-for, in its own right. So too is "originary" time-consciousness self-given, for one cannot inhibit time's running-off. What we can do is to re-produce or re-present sections of temporal experience. Husser! em- ploys the term "representification" (Vergegenwaertigung), "making present again" (Appendix II). Retention, then, yields the immediate past which is present; memory yields the remoter past which must be made present again. Husserl makes numerous other acute observations about memory phenomena (See Note 22). Memory is a mode which posits, that is to say, requires, a 1. RETENTION Although each now is a source of fresh perception and the spring of the living present, temporally enduring objects are not perceived in a pointillistic mode, but in longer presences. This is a fact of temporal phenomena seen as phenomena. They have enduring presence, even though the flux of time has an instantaneous leading edge. (To overcome the perplexity associated with this observation, 80 previous perception. The intentional reaching for the past is fulfilled in the presentification of a perception which is no longer self-given. The phenomenon of memory as a whole is precisely that of a present givenness of the past as past -but it is no longer a question for phenomenology how the past can be. Thus the present is characterized by perception, the past by an ''intention" or a reaching for a previous perception, and the future by a ''protention," that is, an expectaSUMMER 1983 �tion of fulfillment in a perception to come. Protention is therefore inverted memory: Perception, succeeds pro ten· tion but precedes memory (24-28). The vertical axis F'EP'O' stands for Augustine's "distention" of the mind, namely present consciousness encompassing perception, memories, and expectation. Into 2. THE DIAGRAM OF TIME Husserl's famous "Diagram of Time" (10) displays the phenomena of these three phases of time in their conjunction with the phenomenon of the "running off" or cours- ing of time in a coordinate schema which had been suggested by William James (Ch. XVII, end). One might say that it accomplishes the junction of Aristotle's two distinct categories of "when" and of ~jhow much," or duration. Husser! is careful to state that the diagram is not a representation of objects as they appear in time, that is, of temporal appearances, but rather of the phenomenon of temporality itself. Here is an elaborated composite version of Husserl's schemata: +r• 1 1\ ' '\ \ '' and 0 as the perception-filled now has advanced to E. The line FF' represents a protention to be fulfilled in a coming perception at F. ' 'E ' r --~~----~~~----- -"r-- - - I I ' it flow the oblique parallel memory and protention lines which fix past events and future expectations into the memory and expectation order of the present. The present therefore contains a continuous and unperturbable time-order; the latter feature is schematically guaranteed by the parallelism of the oblique lines. EP' is the present retentional memory of the temporal event-object which occurred over PE. The triangle PEP' is the whole melodic episode in its "double continuity": the horizontal line represents the continuous flux of ever new perceptual nows, while the broadening triangular surface composed of parallel paths which fall out, as it were, from the flux, stands for the continuous memory lines of past nows feed· ing into the present memory. The horizontal through P marks a variable threshold between retention and secondary memory, below which the melody would have outlasted the retentional span of that consciousness and would cease to be a unified temporal object. When F is now, the melody will have to be deliberately or spontaneously recalled, being by then a secondary memory at P. Husserl's diagram differs from the schema I have drawn for Augustine in that the horizontal axis of the former stands for the internal temporal flux rather than for the external motion of the world. Husser! regards that inner flux as the fundamental temporal phenomenon; an external time-consciousness would be for him a contradiction in terms, because to be conscious of a phenomenon tem- porally is just to constitute the temporal flux in consciousness. Therefore Husserl uses one time coordinate to repre- ' ' sent the simultaneous presence of all the phases of time in consciousness and another to stand for the advancing tem\ poral flux whose front is the now-consciousness. But \ \ I \ I whether this flux is really a primary phenomenon is just the question. (See Sec. VI I.) \;, P" I I I • • • Aristotle's understanding of time as the number of motion counted by the soul follows from his theory of motion The horizontal axis represents the originary flux of now as actualization. Augustine's view of time as the dimen- points in consciousness. E is the now. PE is the span of the temporal flux of one temporally perceived object, for example, a melody, and it is therefore one retentional episode whose beginning was at P. 0 is some now before the initial now of the melody and belongs to the time of an event now past. F is a future now. The oblique lines PP ', 00' represent the "shading off" or "sinking away/} into memory of the consciousness of P sionality of the soul follows from his desire to relate the three phases of human temporality to the eternity of the Creator. Kant's theory of time will serve to ground the THE ST. JOHNS REVIEW new science of dynamics, particularly its causal relations. Insofar as the temporal relations of nature are contributed by a faculty of the soul, its formative sensibility, Kant is Angustine's heir, but it will be more interesting to see his theory in terms of an antithesis to Aristotle. 81 �IV. KANT: TIME AS INNER SENSE 1. INNER SENSE The first and all-determining discovery Kant presents in the Critique of Pure Reason is a truly revolutionary understanding of what it means to sense ("Transcendental Aesthetic"). Recall that Aristotle had said that time is sensed, or better, perceived, in the primary sensory organ, because whatever is sensible also has duration. Now Kant claims that time is not sensed but is the form of sense. That means that the sensibility is not only a receptive but also a formative faculty; and the first form it gives sensation is temporal form. What is behind this claim? The immediate purpose of the Critique is the grounding of the knowledge of nature, above all of the new science of motion, Newtonian physics. "Grounding" means setting out the conditions of possibility of such a science, which guarantee its necessity and its universality-which make it certain. Aristotelian physics was the science of individual motions by which an indeterminate material, which is only potentially, is formed into an independent, fully actual, natural substance. Newtonian science, in stark contrast, studies the motion of a system of bodies homogeneously constituted of massy matter and moving inertially through space unless deflected by interactions with other masses, interactions which are governed by universal mathematical laws of force. For the former, time was the counting of the actualizing motion, for the latter it is the independent variable in the expression of natural laws. Kant assumes that knowledge of this system of nature requires the cooperation of two faculties. One is active, law-giving, spontaneous (which means that it originates with the human subject itself); it is the thinking function, and the faculty is called the understanding. The other is a receptive power which must be affected by something given to it from outside; it is the sensibility. The latter is needed because human thinking is for Kant purely formal, that is to say, it has a merely rule-supplying function. Therefore it is incapable of conceiving its own objects of thought without being supplied with matter; for it to try to do so would be like a hand grasping its own grasp-less than an empty form. Therefore, thinking requires that a material be given to it, and the faculty in which such givens are received as representations-since Kant con~ siders everything before consciousness at all a representation-is precisely the sensibility (B 33). Kant also calls this receptive faculty the intuition, and he applies that same term to the original pure content which he ascribes to it and into which sensory affection is received. Now all physical experience in fact occurs in terms of space and time, and these are understood to be the primary dimensions of physics. Therefore, if it is to be a certain science, there must be neither absolute, independent, 82 external substances in space nor adventitious developments through time. For both of these could be known only after the fact of experience, and that means they could not be known necessarily or universally. The only knowledge which can be certain is that which is conditioned from the beginning through the observer himselfwhich is, in Kant's term, a priori. Therefore, not only the conceptual side of physics but also the invariable components of its sensory aspect, namely space and time, must proceed from the knower. Accordingly Kant assigns to him an original formative receptivity-on the face of it a contradiction in terms, but an unavoidable one. This actively receptive capacity is Janusfaced. One face is turned outward and shapes sense material into spatial configurations; the other looks inward and forms what it receives into temporal sequences. The sensibility, then, is dual; it has an inner and an outer sense. Kant presents the outer sense first, significantly, as it turns out. This sense receives in the mode of outsideness, in two meanings of the word. First it receives those sensations which are alien and adventitious, which come to us as they will from outside ourselves. But then it also receives them in the mode of outsideness, of externality, namely as spatially extensive. The outer sense is therefore the reason why external sensations always assume spatial form. Furthermore, because the spatial form has inherent formative characteristics, namely those of Euclidean geometry, spatial appearances are certain to be amenable to geometric treatment. Hence the outer sense guarantees the applicability of mathematics to science. The inner sense, on the other hand, faces toward the innermost parts, the very subject or referrent of all representations, the Self. The inner sense receives the self as if it too were a given, namely as it presents itself to its own intuition. Within the inner sense the subject itself becomes, by definition, an appearance, for whatever the sensibility receives and forms is called an appearance. The inner sense is called time.Jt is not that time is an inner sense, but that the inner sense, and the self appearing within it, are temporal in character. In so presenting inner sense Kant is therefore not saying what time is but only why it is the inevitable form every appearance takes. Nevertheless, a new understanding of the nature of time will come out of Kant's discovery, one aspect of which has already emerged: Contrary to Aristotle, for whom time is not an affection of motion, Kant will argue that motion itself is possible only under the form of inner sense. Indeed it is only under the form of temporality that motion is even conceivable for Kant, since it is only the succession of time which fluidifies the law of contradiction so that opposite predicates can, at different times, belong to the same object-that being the much reduced post-Aristotelian concept of motion (B 48). But why is the inner sense given the name of time? And what does it mean to say that the self appears within it? The paradoxical fact that the self, the ultimate subject of SUMMER 1983 �representations, is somehow also an appearance to itself is taken as given, and, Kant says, is equally a mystery in all theories (B 68, 152). But to learn how it'happens we go to that part of the Critique which deals with thinking ("Tran· scendental Deduction"). 2. UNDERSTANDING All conceiving is steadfastly accompanied by an "I think," a kind of pervasive prefix to all thinking, which is, however, purely formal in that it adds nothing to what I think. Furthermore, the prefix tells me at most that I am but never what I am (B 157). Kant calls this consciousness "apperception," a term that had previously meant selfconsciousness. He, however, indicates by the term not self-knowing but only the inmost subject or self of a rational being, the ultimate knower. The apperception is "transendental," which in Kantian terminology means that it is a faculty, not an object. So Kant does not mean that the self is self-conscious in the sense of having itself as an object; it is not, like Aristotle's pure intellect, thought thinking itself. Nor is the self my self; indeed its self-hood is not in the ordinary sense personal. The self might as well be an "it" (B 404), for it is simply the hidden subject underlying all thinking functions. (Heidegger will criticize the lack of "my-ownness" in the Kantian self.) Moreover, the transcendental subject cannot be known to itself, because its strictly formal, that is, rule-giving thinking functions cannot, by their very character, become objects of thought to themselves (A 402). Collectively these conceiving functions (the word "function" is taken statically, as in mathematics) are called the understanding, which is therefore the self as it is diversified into certain definite enumerable functions or 11 Categories.H Each of these accomplishes certain syntheses or unifications proper to itself. Besides these operations the categories are nothing and mean nothing. What do they synthesize? Sensible givenness is assumed to be in its very nature manifold, spread out, various. Accordingly, the sensibility must be capable of receiving such a manifold. In the case of the outer sense there must be ready a transcendental space for its reception. This sense therefore contains a Objects represented in the sensibility and unified by the understanding are called phenomena or appearances (A 429 ff.). Kant claims that when the pure content of inner sense is determined by thinking, the resulting appearance is that of the apperceiving subject itself. Kant takes the word appearance seriously-only that which is not itself on the scene can have appearances. So the self, which cannot know itself in itself, appears in the inner sense, and since every appearance is an appearance for the subject, the self appears to itself. The primary example of self-appearance is the act of attention, in which thinking, having determined the inner sense according to laws of connection contained in the categories, appears as a succession of moments (B 155)-our ordinary awareness of the now-succession. The transcendental self, then, the inaccessible rational source of thinking, can determine another part of the soul, and though it cannot know itself, it can at least represent itself to itself as an appearance. Note, however, that the situation is peculiar in that the self can hardly be said to affect the sensibility as sensory material could affect it: it cannot materially fill but only determine or unify the inner sense. The motive for establishing an inner sense is, on the face of it, to ground the temporal or causal dimension of physics, but its deeper role is that of providing for selfappearance. The reason why this sense, or rather its content, is identified with time now emerges. This content is the steady, unceasing, underlying flow which we always come to in self-inspection: "Time does not pass away but in it passes the existence of what is changeable." Time itself is unchangeable and permanent (B 183), for it is the original flux-content of the inner sense itself; it is this fluxcontent which our thinking determines and structures. The thought-determined inner sense is consciousness, but it is emphatically not self-consciousness in the sense of self-knowledge, since the self has not affected the inner self so as to produce the kind of real knowledge Kant calls experience. For experience requires more than that the subject should work on itself: it requires a material object (where "material" refers not to physical matter but to a real sensory content). 3. IMAGINATION {(pure manifold," the pure intuition mentioned above, which is the form-giving content affected by sensationthe pure space of geometry itself. The nature of this pure content of inner sense will be addressed presently. It is this pure content of the sensibility that is unified, or determined, or structured by the understanding in definite ways, as many ways as there are concept·categories. What the understanding determines first is the content closest to it, so to speak, namely that of the inner sense. That is how the thinking functions first obtain their required object, although a pure, not a sensory one. THE ST. JOHNS REVIEW The configurations to which thinking determines the inner sense are the work of that most central power, "an art hidden in the depth of the human soul" (B 181), the imagination. For Aristotle, the activity of the imagination, identical with that of the primary sensorium, is not hidden in the depth at all; it is, in fact, on the interface of soul and nature and has a physical base. Kant rightly considers his discovery of the original contribution of the transcendental imagination quite new (A 120 n.). For him thinking and sensing are too heterogeneous to come together without 83 �some intermediate agency; it is the imagination which is the meeting ground of the two. It performs what Kant calls a "figurative" synthesis (B 154), which produces schemata through which thinking can determine sense and accomplish the mystery of empty, meaningless thought interpenetrating with pure inner flux. The schemata are essentially rules for sensual· izing concepts or, equally, conceptualizing sense content. The imagination makes time thinkable or, as we have seen, conscious. But much more importantly, it does the inverse: it makes thought temporal. Here are just two examples of the schemata which are the work of the imagination. (Oddly, and significantly, this work is always presented as picture or figure-making, al· though it is supposed to be primarily temporal.) 1. The inner flux, the pure intuition of time, is, as was said, assumed to be an even, primary flow. (Recalling that Kant's project is the grounding of Newtonian physics we can recognize in this flux the internalization of Newton's equably flowing absolute world time.) Kant calls it the pure picture of quantity, applicable to all objects in general. The first schema or conceptualization of this continuous forward flow of inner quantity is number. Number is the imaginative scheme of a countable succession of units, that is, of articulated, measured internal duration. In counting, the understanding is continually unifying the undifferentiatedly fluid manifold of pure Time, and generating pure, conscious, temporal succession, or the pure sense of passing: counting is not so different from the pulsing of mere consciousness itself. (The spatial analogue to the difference between Time as flux and conceptdetermined time would be that between Space as a whole and measured space.) 2. Another imaginative configuration brings together pure inner intuition with the concept of necessary connection in the schema of before-and-aftu. Thus is added to conscious advancing time a necessary, unperturbable time-order, the ground, for Kant, of the principle of cause and effect in nature. All the schemata together-there are as many as the understanding has concepts-circumscribe thoughtinformed temporal flux, or speaking more familiarly, temporal thinking. It was, after all, to be expected that when the rational self cast itself into inner sense to become an appearance the result should be thinking in time. What are its features? 4. TIME AND SPACE For Aristotle, the external world with its continuity of places defined by movable substances is clearly prior to being in time, which is merely the countable aspect of motion. Kant, on the other hand, at first, at least, presents time as the sense of senses, the first formal condition of all ap- 84 pearing objects in general, both self and nature. Time receives all representations, everything which is there for consciousness at all; it is the ultimate relating receptacle and the condition of all connectedness. Space, on the other hand, is the condition of outer appearance, namely of nature, only (A 99, B 177). The reason is that time belongs immediately to the soul and is the place of consciousness itself, while space must wait to receive material from the outside. But then, in a crucial section added to the second edition of the Critique, the "Refutation of Idealism" (B 274279), Kant totally inverts his new order in a doctrine surprising in the context but also quite unavoidable. Space is again the condition of temporal experience. In the "Refutation" Kant explicitly aims to prove that mere consciousness of one's own existence-thoughtdetermined inner sense-proves, in being affected by outer sense, the real existence of external objects in space. Implicitly, however, he shows that objects in space are the necessary condition of self-experience. The internal flux of unfocussed attention, he argues, is absolutely featureless, indeterminate, a mere fugitiveness. To determine time and give it steadiness it must he projected on something permanent; it must be represented in terms of perceived permanence in space. Spatial appearances seem to stay put while time has no aspect that stands but its flux itself. Time supports only the alteration of determinations, but no determinate steady object; in the soul "everything is in continual flux" (A 381). Therefore the representation of time is always spatial; if time is to appear at all it must be in a spatial form, most appropriately as a one-dimensional straight line (B 156): Time appears as space reduced by two dimensions. It is now also clear why the self cannot really properly appear in time. The inner intuition admits no material affection except through space. (Indeed, it is only this geometrization of appearing time which makes possible the primary measurement of physical motion, namely velocity. For velocity is conceivable only as a ratio of homogeneous magnitudes, namely space lengths and time lengths. But as I said, that means that time, insofar as it is apprehensible at all, which is to say, insofar as it is representable, is only a dimension abstracted from space: Bergson has a point when he accuses Kant of confusing time with space (Essay, "Conclu. SIOn ") . Yet more follows: There can be no full consciousness without the appearances of three-dimensional externality. For the linear representation of the determinate inner sense, while it may be formally adequate, is also utterly poverty-stricken and unrevealing (Foundations of the Metaphysics of Nature, Preface). To appear to itself, the self must put the inner sense in the way of spatial appearances which then represent to it its own formative powers and that of its sensibility. The system of such revealing thought-informed spatia-temporal appearances Kant calls nature and its science is Newtonian physics. SUMMER 1983 �Inner experience is, then, only mediately possible through space. That is why, I think, space is treated before time in the "Transcendental Aesthetic" and why the imag· ination is fundamentally figurative. Time began as the formal (or better, formative) condition of all appearance what· soever, but space turns out to be the condition of the appearance of time. A self having only an inner sense would have no representations of itself at all. If it were conscious it would be conscious of nothing; it would be at most a forever-idle capability of a possible experience. 5. TEMPORAL THINKING To recapitulate: I. Self-consciousness: Of the self which underlies all thinking and sensing there is no knowledge. There is no immediate representation of it; it cannot become an object to itself beyond the indication given in the universal prefix "I think." There is therefore no selfconsciousness in the sense of reflective self-knowledge. (It is one of the mysteries of the Critique how any of the reflective terms necessary to critical analysis of the self obtain their meaning.) 2. Consciousness: Consciousness, awareness, belongs to the thought-determined inner sense, or better, is identical with it. That time is in the soul and that the soul is in time are converse propositions (A 362). Both claims mean that the self is ready and able to receive an external material. But to be merely aware in this way is no more to know oneself than it is actually to experience an external object. Time, even when determined by thought, yields no formed object but merely the schemata of relations of possible representations within the soul (B 50). It is the mere capacity for thinking objects. 3. Selfexperience: If self-knowledge in the reflective sense is impossible to the self, it can yet experience itself, that is, its own powers, in inner sense~ but only if that sense is spatially represented and determined by real objects. Then the self can appear to itself as a temporally thinking subject and behold its formative faculties constituting nature. Self-experience begins 23 when temporal thinking, namely the time-informed categories, such as number, permanence, and causality, is exercised on spatial material. A great question arises. The explicit motive of the Critique was to find what the human constitution must be if physics is to be a science. From this point of view the temporal sense was established primarily to secure the causal ordering of motion. But is it plausible that Kant's view of the soul should be so altogether a mere consequence of this motive? Indeed, there might well be other ways to ground physical causality than by means of the original flux which, as has been shown, is in itself insufficient to account for self-conscious thought24 A deeper reason, namely Kant's thinking about thought itself, seems to me to be at work. It is best phrased in terms of the consequences following from his very modern rejection of Aristotle. THE ST. JOHNS REVIEW For Aristotle knowing is a motion of the soul, an actualization, which achieves actuality as the intellect achieves its end and becomes the thing thought. That final activity is true life. For Kant, knowing, as the conceiving of material objects, cannot be such a motion, since motion is itself generated by thinking, when it determines space through time (B 155, note). Nor can it be an activity, for thought is not fulfilled in its object: It simply determines or unifies the manifold and, so to speak, fits itself about the object and constitutes it. Truth is no longer the simple luminous identity of the intellect with its intelligible object, but rather the "adequation" of thought with the material object (B 82). 25 Therefore Kant's thinking has neither motion nor life; it has no actuating principle. The pure flux of inner sense can now be seen in the light of a deep though inexplicit need. Time is needed to float thought, as it were. It gives thinking a spurious kind of motion, a pseudo-activity. In themselves the thinking functions are merely empty, static forms; cast on the stream of inner sense they assume fluidity. Time is the animating principle of that kind of thinking which has no end in itself, and the Kantian temporality is the substitute for the lost life of thought. * * * Kant's treatment of time is the focus of Heidegger' s deep, engaged, but also strained reading of the first Critique. Heidegger calls this kind of interpretative reading a "recovery" or "repetition" (Wiederholung). It is meant to bring to light the unspoken, and for the author unspeakable, implications of the text. It attempts to reveal not what the author meant and failed to say-an author worth "repeating" is quite able to express himself-but rather the inexorable ultimate outcome implicit in his thought. This interpretation yields very striking-if not quite persuasive-results especially with respect to an aspect of time markedly missing from Kant's account, namely its three phases. Heidegger reconstructs these from the first, superseded version of the Transcendental Deduction. (See Note 26 for a summary of Kant's text with reference to Heidegger's interpretation.) I have just argued that Kant has deep reasons for making time the primary sense, namely to vivify the inert functions of his concepts, but that his almost inadvertent, yet inescapable tendency is the spatialization of time. However, Heidegger, who sees in Kant his predecessor, views the whole critical enterprise as centered on the unexpressed fundamental temporality of the human being. Heidegger understands that hidden art of the imagination, to which Kant assigns the function of temporalizing thinking (or, equivalently, of thought-determining time) as the "temporalizing," the time-origination which is the being of human existence. Kant drew back, as it were, from an opportunity he was not ready for, the possibility of seeing the imagination not as a third and mediating faculty, the 85 �meeting ground of thought and sense, but as the common root of both. He could not yet abstract from its figurative character to see it as transcendental temporality simply. Kant's failure to explain the "my-ownness" of the self, together with his inability to see the imagination, the meeting ground of self and time, as anything but a mystery are Heidegger's clues to a new understanding of human existence. Heidegger owes debts also to Hegel and Bergson (see Note 27), and most certainly to Augustine (paras. 9, 81 end), who anticipates him in the essential temporality of the human being and in the primacy of the future among the time phases-indeed one might almost call Heidegger a godless Augustine. But he goes beyond all of them, as far as one can go, I think, in the exaltation of time. If for Kant the inner sense is a mysterious mirror for the unknowable self, for Heidegger time will be the very meaning of being human. The answer to the question "What is time?'' will fall out of the analysis of human existence. Care has a threefold constitution: 1. The being that cares, understands. Understanding-sharply distinguished from theoretical knowing-is its ability to project before itself its own possibilities. It is aware of being able to be (not that it has that possibility but that it is that possibility). The being that exists is always "ahead of itself." For what it is, its essence, is just that it exists, that it understands itself as a being that is able to be. 2. This being, Dasein, also has moods, "existential moods," which are the ground of ordinary, familiar moodiness. These moods are testimony to the condition in which it already finds itself (Befindlichkeit). They attest to its "facticity," to the bald fact that it always finds itself already cast or thrown into an alien world. Heidegger calls the existential condition of existing always already in the world, uthrownness." 3. In this world Dasein is always already preoccupied with what it finds there, alongside itself, namely other existences and things. It is its lot to sink into a state of selfforgetfulness or "fallenness" as it busily "takes care" of this world. This state of "inauthenticity," literally: "unone's-ownness," is as genuine a possibility of existence as V. HElD EGGER: TEMPORALITY AS THE MEANING OF EXISTENCE 1. ECSTATIC TEMPORALITY Heidegger's starting point in Being and Time is the old question concerning Being. However, he does not ask: What is Being?, since he considers that question a fateful wrong turn into metaphysics. He rather asks: What is the meaning of being?, What makes a being possible?, What is the being (Sein) of Being (Seiendes)? Assuming that there are different beings, he chooses to pursue the question by analyzing the being most expressive of the inquiry itself, the being that exists. To exist means to position oneself beyond oneself so as to understand one's own being. The being that so exists is also the being that is there, that finds itself involved in the world, not merely present in it. It is, further, that being which is in each case mine, which has "each·his·ownness," in contrast to the unowned Kantian subject. Heidegger names it by the ordinary German term for existence, Dasein, uthere·being." It is the human being. The larger first part of the book is devoted to an "existential analysis," an interpretative description of the phenomena of existence which will reveal its basic structure. These original modes are called "existentials," and the structure so revealed is called "care." The ~~meaning" of care, that is to say, that which makes it possible, will be temporality. In the following abbreviated account of "care," the prodigious originality and ingeniousness of Heidegger's analysis will perforce be blunted. 86 its opposite, authenticity; Heidegger disclaims any invidious connotation in these terms. In sum, then, the being that cares is a being ahead of itself in projecting its own possibilities, which finds itself involved in a world along with other existences and entities, and which can lose itself in being busy about them. Now Heidegger asks what it means for Daesin to be in this way. This question belongs to a deeper, that is, an ontological, level of analysis, for here is discovered the meaning of care, namely the condition of its possibility. The answer is: temporality (Second Part, Chps. 3-6). The existent being is one about whom there is always something yet outstanding, something still to come, namely its death. So also is it an "ecstatic" being. ~~Ecstatic" is a word used by Aristotle in his chapters on time (Phys. 222 b 17) to describe the self-unsettling of motion. Heidegger uses if for the primordial "being out of itself" of Dasein, namely its temporality (par. 65). 28 The word has, of course, the connotation of being transported and rapt away. Dasein is "out of itself" in three ecstatic phases, each of which accounts primarily but not exclusively for one of the aspects of care in either its inauthentic or its authentic version. Hence the ontological analysis covers a large number of combinations, of which I shall sketch only the primary ones, reversing Heidegger's order so as to begin with the ecstasis to which Heidegger assigns the least standing (par. 68). 1. The self-forgetfulness of fallenness is in its nature always inauthentic. It is the mode of-note well-actuality, of fact, of mere presentness and nowness, greedy for satisfactions which hold no further possibilities. The ontological ground of this existential mode is the ectasis of the present. Heidegger understands the present not in the tradiSUMMER 1983 �tiona! way as the phase of perceptual vividness, but as a derivative mode, abstracted from living involvement-the mode of "presentification," the grasping attempt to turn the possibilities of existence into present actualities. The ecstasis which yields the present, the phase which is traditionally the front or fulcrum of time, is the one most dependent on the other phases for its authentic version (68 c). 2. Just as in English there is a periphrastic past perfect "I am gone," so in German one says ul am having been" (Ich bin gewesen). Human existence always is as having been, for it always finds itself already cast into the alien world. It is this fact which makes it moody. An existential mood is a condition in which Dasein finds itself coming back to or brought before the mere fact of its own existence.29 Heidegger gives as a cardinal example the authentic mood which he calls dread or anxiety (Angst; the inauthentic counterpart is ordinary fear). In anxiety Dasein discovers the world into which it has been thrown as uncanny, unhomy, unmeaning, unamenable to being taken care of. Anxiety brings Dasein back to the fact of its own isolated thrownness, and this "being brought back to itself" apprises it that it can return to itself; that it has the possibility of "recovering" or "repeating" itself. What ac- counts for the possibility human existence has of finding itself already in a state of mind or mood and what brings it face to face with its own recoverableness (Wiederholbarkeit; sometimes translated "repeatability") is the ecstasis of the past, in which Dasein goes out of itself to be as having been (68 b). Through this ecstasis human existence comes back to itself as an ever-antecedent fact whose possibilities can always be repeated. Therewith is also revealed the possibility of authentic existence. It demands the introduction of a future element into the repetition of its past. 3. Therefore the primary ecstasis of primordial authentic temporality is the future (65). This future is not an indeterminate "not yet." It is, as the German Zu-kunft suggests to Heidegger, that toward which Dasein goes, but it is also the terminus from which Dasein comes back into the situation in which it finds itself, to face the present resolutely. The future thus comprehends and makes possible the other two ecstases. Futurity accounts for the aspect of care called understanding, since to understand means to project one's own possibilities. Future means anticipation; rather than being propelled by present urgencies that need to be taken care of, futural Dasein cares authentically: It lets its own possibilities for being come toward itself. The future, too, enables the human being to repossess its past properly; it is in facing its possibilities that Dasein is brought back to what it already was. The futural ecstasis of coming toward oneself accounts for authentic existence (69 a). The dominant case of authentic futurity, understood as resolute anticipation, is Dasein's facing of its own death (46-63). The human being is that being which lives as a being which is going to die. Dasein discovers among its exTHE ST. JOHNS REVIEW istential possibilities the ultimate one of not being, and this discovery makes it focus on the wholeness of its existence. Death is what it escapes from in the inauthentic present; death is what it is already inescapably saddled with; death is what it resolutely anticipates. Death therefore has the threefold structure exhibited by care and time, and conversely. The inference follows that our temporality is finite and that primordial existential time comes to an end. What then of ordinary time, the common time human beings have, spend, puzzle about? Heidegger undertakes to show that, strange though it seems, time is temporal, namely that ordinary time falls out of primordial temporality (79-82). Dasein finds itself in the world, and it is in dealing with its "gear" or "equipment" (Zeug), in circumspectly taking care of its affairs, that ordinary time shows itself. Affairs in the world can be dated: uLater, when . .. " or "now, that. .. " or "formerly, when ... "-that is the language of worldly management. This datability of the world is derived from ecstatic temporality because "later, when" can be said only on the condition that there is possibility, "now, that" only if there is presentification, and "formerly, when" only if there is repeatability. So Heidegger has grounded anticipation, presence, and memory-for that is what he is talking about-in the primordial temporality which is human existence. Precise public datability must refer to universal occurrences, originally to the sun's rising and setting. People say, for instance, "now, that" the sun has set it is time to turn in. This public reference enables people to make and set clocks, and thence "vulgar," worldly time comes to be what the clock tells. What the clock shows is a perfectly levelled and indifferent equable succession of jerks called nows, going forward from what is no longer to what is not yet, and spawning many puzzles. Such time passes rather than arises; the very use of clocks is witness to the attempt to hold on to the not-yets and the no-longers by making them all in turn present, as the clock's hands are followed while they tick off the nows. What is worst of all for Heidegger is that this meaningless derivative clock time is theoretically infinite: It is the time of fallen, inauthentic humanity because it masks the radical finitude of mortal human existence. 30 2. DIFFICULTIES Here is the extreme of opposition to Aristotle. Actuality, fulfilled presence, is interpreted as human fallenness. Possibility, a notion even less determinate than potentiality (which is always a specific "potentiality for") is raised to being human existence itself. Time, which was for Aristotle merely the measurable aspect of a being's actualization, is for Heidegger the very meaning of existence. And, 87 �finally, time ends in actuality for Aristotle, but for Heidegger, in death. Being and Time, in its potent and coherent originality (though originality in the pursuit of being may well be a disability) deserves at least the tribute of not being treated like a lending library of terms and notions; one must enter its world or stay out-the latter I think. The reasons are sketched below. I. The first is a mere intimation of a possible argument: That actualizing motion has temporal duration which is measurable by the soul, or that time is a dimension of the created mind, or that the lawful causality of nature has a. ground in the observer's temporality-these theories of Aristotle, Augustine, and Kant respectively can be apprehended and judged directly, although their context illuminates their motive. It is otherwise with Heidegger's understanding of time, which is more inextricably and originally implicated in his approaches: in the problematic formulation of the question concerning the "meaning of being," in the doubtful insistence that the human being is the being of choice for such an inquiry, in the interpretation of human being as existence, in its analysis in terms of care, and in the grounding of care in temporality. The doubts one might have about any of these elements or about their concatenation would make questionable the notion of a primordial ecstatic temporality. 2. The interpretation of human existence as the being which is its possibilities leads to its essential futurity, the ecstasis which accounts for living in possibility. Dasein's ultimate possibility is that of being able not to be: it is death (50), the extreme possibility. In requiring of the human being that it face at every moment this end as its own, Heidegger deprecates-I am disregarding the pretense that these are not terms of judgement-as inauthentic and fallen the perennial wisdom of humankind that the dread of death must not dominate life. The question arises whether the stark and unspecific resolution to face one's own death can at all be the basis of public decency and even inner dignity. I shall argue that the future is of the three phases the most impotent for human action and that our death should be allowed to exert its power only as a remote and indefinite limit of life. 3. The greatest problem and the one with most bearing on the final section of my inquiry has to do with Heidegger's treatment of the past Human existence has a certain self-antecedence which is grounded in the ecstases of "being as having been." The defining characteristic of this mode is that it brings Dasein back to the "repetition" of its own possibilities and to authentic being. This ecstasis naturally plays the chief role in the constitution of "historicality" -although the most fundamental role is still played by the future. For true historicality ultimately arises from a repetition of the past which is motivated by the resolute projection of a life span dominated by "being-unto-death." Dasein can explicitly repeat possibilities of existence that have been handed down. Such repeating "is explicit 88 tradition, that is to say, the going back into a Dasein that has been there." Authentic repetition means that "Dasein chooses for itself its hero" on the basis of an anticipatory resolution. What Dasein thus recovers is a possibility, not a state (74). Dasein takes over such possibilities as its heritage. How? Heidegger begins his analysis of the historical past with a discussion of real antiquities, the objects of archaeology. These are things which were once "to hand," by which Heidegger means functional, in a world that is gone. They are now present in our world. They are not genuinely but only secondarily historical because insofar as they are "equipment" they are not in the past but in this world. As the being of their own world was wholly conditional on that of a past Dasein, so its passing is wholly a matter of human temporality. Now here is the difficulty: If Dasein is to recover its heritage, the possibilities of an existence that has been, it must do so by way of the surviving "equipment" of the past, through ruins, pots and manuscripts. Heidegger suggests no other way (73). But how does it recognize these as testimony of antecedent existence? The ecstasis of the past was formulated in terms of the indivual, unique, and separate being. What can it mean to recognize in the stuff "to hand" in the present world the possibilities of other, past existences, not to speak of making them one's own? The problem points to what seems to me a crucial lacuna in Heidegger's account of the past The ecstasis may be the necessary condition of ordinary temporality but it does not seem to be a sufficient condition. The "ontic" consequences, namely human beings with their past, do not immediately fall out of the "ontological" ground of past being. To lay down that Dasein must have a past because it is in its being temporalizing does not tell how the individual human being comes back to itself, that is, remembers. And yet, the additional element that is needed to complete the account, namely what is ordinarily called memory, may change the whole complexion of the account. Since Heidegger considers existence to be possibility he cannot ascribe a nature or faculties to human beings. Indeed, in his "recovery" of Kant he had suppressed the figurative, primarily spatial, imagination, Kant's faculty for having objects without their presence. But how is the reconstruction or recovery of one's own possibilities, or of the possibilities of the past world of historical remains, to take place without such a faculty for reconstituting remembrance of the past, personal, or historical? One final point: Repetition, the authentic appropriation of past possibilities, seems to be most practicable for written works, records of past thought The mode of resolute purpose, however, in which such a recovery is to be carried on seems to invite a certain wilfulness of interpretation which leads to highly pointed constructive readings. Such repetition may be incomparably more serious than a hisSUMMER 1983 �toricistic approach, but it is also very constricted, since, being grounded in the stark mood of the past ecstasis, it excludes less harsh modes of pastness. In particular, there is no authentic mode of panoramic revery or imaginative contemplation, 31 though these, I shall argue, are of primary importance in human temporality. * * • So I now come to some reflections of my own about time. Naturally, I shall draw on the philosophers just studied for the terms of the inquiry, for insight into the contexts implied in certain answers, and for examples of what seem to me fertile errors. Since I shall argue that time has no being and that to think otherwise has harmful consequences, I should not attempt to present a theory of what time is, but rather an intimation of what it is that induces the illusion of temporal being. And, of course, I should explain why, for all that, I think of the past as the prime phase of time. try to capture its being, though time-terms there are aplenty. For, I claim, time as a distinct object of inquiry, or rather our sense of its being one, comes about when we block our usual mental activity and try to concentrate on time itself: Die Ziet Es gibt ein sehr probates Mittel, die Zeit zu halten am Schlawittel: Man nimmt die Taschenuhr zur Hand und folgt dem Zeiger unverwandt. Sie geht so Iangsam dann, so brav als wie ein wohlgezogen Schaf, setzt Fuss vor Fuss so voll Manier als wie ein Fraulein von Saint-Cyr. Jedoch vertraumst du dich ein Weilchen, so ri.ickt das ziichtigliche Veilchen mit Beinen wie der Vogel Strauss und heimlich wie ein Puma aus. VI. TIME AND THE IMAGINATION Und wieder siehst du auf sie nieder; ha, Elende!-Doch was ist das? !. THE NON-BEING OF TIME The beloved text of writers on time is Augustine, Confessions, XI 14: For what is time? Who is able easily and briefly to explain that? Who is able so much in thought to comprehend it as to bring forth something in words? Although what do we more familiarly and knowingly mention in speaking than time? And we understand surely when we speak of it; we also understand when we hear someone else speaking of it. What then is time? If no one asks it of me, I know; if I want to explain it to the one that is asking, I do not know. At first thought, Augustine's observation seems to be no more true of time than of any other matter: Questioning always makes the familiar strange and precipitates perplexity. Yet there is this difference: Though we sometimes quarrel about the management and the worth of time, we deal with its ubiquitous appearances not only with perfect, practical aplomb but also without anxiety to defend a doctrine concerning its being. I think that is because we have an intimation that our dealing with temporal affairs and our speaking in temporal terms has, as it were, nothing to it, no object of inquiry whose name is time. We sense that the bold question "What is Time?'' itself drives the answer implied in our unimpeded behavior out of sight. But from another aspect, what Augustine says seems not quite right. We really do not know what time is when we are not asked; we only know how to live familiarly with watches and words and our sense of time. And therefore we do not know it less when we ask ourselves about it. On the contrary, there is not even any Time to know until we THE ST. JOHNS REVIEW Unschuldig Iachelnd macht sie wieder die zierlichsten Sekunden-Pas. Christian Morgenstern, Zeitgedichte Time There is a good and proven way To strongarm Time and make it stay. just take your wrist-watch by the band And concentrate upon her hand. Then she goes slow enough to keep The pace, as of a well bred sheepGoes step by step, as mannerly As any high-bred miss could be. But if you daydream for a while The shrinking violet with guile Makes off on legs of ostrich length And with a puma's stealthy strength. Now you look down just as beforecurious chance! With guiless smile she steps once more The very daintiest second-dlmce. a wretched watch! 0 E. B. What we find when we concentrate on the passage of time is the repeatedly frustrated impulse of our intention to perceive time, indeed an iteration of attempts, orchestrated by the beating of our hearts and the coursing of our blood-a kind of internal perception 89 �called by psychologists prioperception, self-perception. As soon as we leave off trying to find in ourselves empty time we see images of spatial passage. Indeed even Kant finally admits that inner sense, to be actually affected, needs spatial appearance. The pure underlying flux seems to me, therefore, a philosophical construction which is the result of ulterior motives, and a phenomenon which is the effect of self-interference. So when Husser! claims such a flux for the first phenomenon of time-consciousness he is observing accuratelyhis own observing. Internal time flux is the first effect of attempting a phenomenology of time-consciousness. What of external time? Newton is alone in positing a genuine external time flux, absolute, equable time antecedent to all motion, physical, yet not apparent~a notion whose motives are as understandable as the concept is confusing. All the others who appear to believe in physical time turn out always to mean either some designated physical process or the "passage of nature" as a whole. 32 It seems to be impossible for them to point to time itself or to refer to it except by spatial metaphors. From the physical point of view, time appears with as many natures as there are motions and ways of studying them: It is a discrete quantity for quantized micro-motions, a covariant of space for remote places, an anisotropic progress for irreversible processes, an independent continuum for the local motions of bodies, and a numerable dimension for motions which are developments. I do not think it is possible to decide which of these conceptions should primarily determine our understanding of motion and thus time. It may just be impossible to give a single account of physical time, and therefore it may be best to say that various kinds of time seem to occur in the world, depending on where our attention is fixed, whether on the statistical conceptions of aggregates, or on signaling to remote clocks, or on watching the formation of completed beings, or on the comprehension of human affairs. This last perspective raises yet another possibility. What if time were worldly but not of the world, not one of its physical dimensions, but rather the very life and moving principle of the world? Such a doctrine makes the appearances coherent, as the monolithic grandeur of Hegel's System shows, but so thoroughly coherent as to put an end to human freedom understood as our possibility of thinking and choosing independently of our situation in time. It seems to me pernicious. The claim is that the appearances of nature as well as of human thought and action are manifestations of the substance of Time. Now the chief property of appearances is usually thought to be that they are a becoming: variable in themselves, perspectival for us, in alterable passage, contingent. If, then, the being behind them and expressed in them is itself a primordial be- 90 coming such as Time must be, the variability of appearances must be governed by that deeper becoming, T1me; appearance is the manifestation of the logic of becoming. But that means that we must give up the thought of a loose connection, of room for play between the world and its grounds, which supports our efforts at independent thought and free action, and submit to our time-determined fate. Human beings and nations must fulfill the historical role assigned by their time or be consigned to parochial impotence. Time is a tyrant, and the philosophy of time is a tool for tyrants: our time has seen the consequences. These, in sum, then, are the charges against Time: As an internal flux it is a philosophical or psychological illusion, as an external elapsing it is no more than the measure of motion, and as the fated logic of becoming it is a coercive myth. Aristotle, who first wrote a sustained exposition of time, also introduced its most radical de-substantialization, more complete even than that of the later great relativist of time, Leibniz, for whom time is at least an idea in the mind of God (Note 4). In that dethronement of time, in the claim that time is only the counted measure of motion, it seems to me that Aristotle was simply right. But why, we must ask ourselves, if there is time neither within nor without, it is so copious a topic of talk, and whence comes our ever-fertile feeling about time? The related words time, tide, and German Zeit, appear not to be specifically temporal in their etymological origin. They are connected with Greek daiomai, "I divide or distribute," which has to do with all sorts of divisions, like that of the people, demos, and the portioned meal, dais. Originally "time" seems to refer quite neutrally to the dividing of certain passages of nature into stretches, just as Aristotle says. The timefigures of poetry and ordinary speech, on the other hand, are usually strongly affective. Let me take as examples two complexes of time figures which seem to me best to reveal why we speak of time with feeling. First, phrases like "the womb of time," "the ripeness of time," "the fullness of time." The Greeks have a word, kair6s, which although sometimes used interchangeably with chr6nos, has the specific meaning of a special, critical, or opportune moment.3 3 There was a famous statue by Lysippus, showing Kairos with a long lock over his brow and the back of his head shaved, as a figure for the fact that foresight is needed to seize opportunity by the forelock and that once gone it cannot be pulled back. In the New Testament the word has assumed great theological gravity; it means both the individual time for turning or doing the appointed deed, and the day of judgement: "The kairos is near," the fulness of time is at hand, John says in the opening of his Revelation (1,3). Leaving aside theological elaborations, what do such phrases betoken? They seem to me a!- SUMMER 1983 �ways to mean at bottom this: We feel that there is something in the world's becoming ,which peculiarly concerns us, that something is in the offing, something to monitor, to watch, to prepare for. The second example is quite opposite in flavor, namely, the image of time as a tread-mill or a conveyorbelt on which we plod or are wafted willy-nilly past scheduled events and holidays to an unscheduled but sure cessation. For terrestrial beings this coursing of time has what biologists call a "circadian" rhythm, the natural twenty-four hour periodicity of the sun's circuit, imaged on the faces of our watches and iterated by the predesigned routines of our business lives. It is the pathos of the daily round-no matter whether it whirrs or grinds-that makes us time-conscious, conscious, that is, of a fleeting stillness in the countable accretion of our accomplished motions, of a flux that stays while it flows, since it ever bears the same event. Were our lives either totally mutable or totally monotonous we would, I imagine, attain neither to a sense of time nor to intimations of timelessness. The tread-mill figure of time, at any rate, expresses the mood in which the passage of life seems at once inexorable and aimless, fugitive and onerous. Time, these figures show, is our word-and this is the meaning elaborated by Heidegger-for the world's passages insofar as we care. We speak of time often, because the world continually concerns us; we speak of it variously, because our mood or concern shifts; and we speak of it always in figures because there is no other way to give shape to our sense of the world. 2. TIME AS NOTICED PASSAGE Time, I say, is noticed passage-besides that it has no being of its own. Perhaps I might have said that time is our noticing of passage, but it seems to me better to locate our sense of time where we feel it, in the changing world itself. But what is this "passage"? When we speak of the passage of time we cannot mean (although we say) that time passes, but rather that something, something primarily spatial, is going on. Indeed, passage is not, to begin with, a temporal word. It means a passing, a going from here to 11 there, as in pacing"; there even seems to be an etymological connection to "space." It has a meaning similar to, but even wider than, Aristotle's "change," kinesis, which is it- self a wider term than locomotion, while preserving its spatial undertone. I am using the term to express my understanding that appearances in their variability, however caused and however regulated, are as appearances spatial. Two views of motion seem to me paramount: Aristotelian motion, which is the actualization of the thing moved, and Newtonian motion, which is characterized by the time rate of change of a body with respect to space. For Aristotle the individual mobile is everything-the substrate 1HE ST. JOHNS REVIEW which undergoes the motion and the substance which is the aim and completion of the motion. For Newton the mobile is qualitatively indifferent to the motion it undergoes, though as a mass it figures at once as the cause of change in other bodies and as the cause of resistence to change in itself. Thus for both motion is dynamic, that is, it is regarded in terms of an indwelling cause: form for Aristotle, force for Newton. But consider that there are, to human discernment, apparently aimless motions which, like motes in sunlight, show some pattern only in the aggregate, and also that it is possible to regard bodies as moving not because of their own inertia or gravity but by reason of their location in a force field. In some of its appearances, motion is neither compellingly Aristotelian or Newtonian. So as a kind of exercise, let me try a wider view of passage and of time, a view less focussed on mobile and cause and more on field and configuration, a spatial view. By space I here mean not the abstracted infinite continuum of geometry but our extended human environment, ground and figures equally. I think of it as just that which is such as to be capable of being passed through and of containing passages. But even before it is the scene of passages, it is the opening, the room for appearances, the place for patency, what Keats calls "the World or Elemental Space." The Greek word for the appearances, phenomena, means what shines out, and the appearances seem to me to have these four connected characteristics: They shine out, they spread out, they vary and they are for us. Patency, extendedness, multifariousness, and perceptibility-that is what makes space. The spatial scene is in its very nature variable, and variable in the nth degree. Its spread-out, variegated conformations themselves vary variably or differentially-and those are the passages of space. Some passages are lawfully developing fulfillments, some negotiations of distance, some random dancesthese are the varieties of the variation of spatial variableness. It is not becoming that causes this display but just its remaining what it is-various; and our discerning and noticing only make it more so. We commonly think of the present configuration of space as being an aggregate result, the outcome of many separate paths of becoming. The world is full of forms which seem explicable by their genesis. Space and its figures, appearing space, seems to be the frontal face of becoming, the advancing surface, so to speak, of the temporal succession. But now let us cut the world in another way, as it were, across the line of advance rather than lengthwise along the lines of its genesis. Then the passage of time no longer appears responsible for the configuration of space nor is its history what makes the world appear, but space with its present and passing appearances lies fully there and openly displayed before us, in all its immediacy, a panorama which is not the result but the scene of time. I mean that the appearances are not apprehended as the current 91 �state of temporal becoming, but the reverse-that the world appears as a space, a room, a theatre of events and happenings. These goings-on may be recurrent or continuous or periodically culminating, fascinatingly lawful or astoundingly unique. But the study of these passages tells us only the route, not the reason for the panorama of appearances and directs us only to its elements and not to its integral sum. Let the contemplation of the world in this mode (which is analogous to the field notions of physics) be, to begin with, an exercise of the imagination in concentrat- ing on the phenomenology of spatial passage. Accordingly I describe motion-passage now more particularly as discerned variation. I do not figure such motion to myself as being borne forward by time. By "being borne forward by time" I mean the sense we allow ourselves to entertain that each and all motions ride on some primary vehicle (describable, to be sure, only by spatial metaphors such as the flow of a river) which, when related to space by a ratio, yields their rate of change or velocity, for example 55 miles per hour. In such a rate we normally take time as the independent variable, precisely because we think of it as the steady ubiquitous reference-spatial location varies in three dimensions and two directions, while time only advances. But to the time-disencumbered eye, motion is not through space in time, but time, no longer equably universal, arises in different places and tempos as this or that passage is noticed: felt in the observer or referred to other motions, for instance to that of our natural clock, the sun. A passage can be noticed by us, in the sense that we care about it, when a distinguishable variation has been discerned within the variegated field of appearance. Such discerned variation, or perhaps better, differential variation, of course always requires that the observer be himself in the picture, 34 an appearance among appearances. Consequently certain kinds of passage arise from the relation of the observer himself to the appearances. For example, he can stay still and concentratedly look into the field, search it by scanning, or himself bodily pass through it to obtain varying perspectives. So, for example, little children sometimes gaze into the world pressed up against their grownup and sometimes run out to circulate and inspect. The world, on its side, also offers to observation various configurations of motion: There are distinct and isolated motions that occur against a still background: runners running along a ridge. There is the scene which vibrates everywhere with localized variation: the town-square on market day. And then is the still center of an indifferently varying field: the cynosure of one's eye in a crowded room. We are moving or still figures in a still or moving landscape of appearance, and all passages can be distinguished in terms of the various combinations between the discerning viewer and the passing scene, and, if we wish, timed by means of some designated accompanying motion. This primarily spatial way seems to me a particularly apt way to come upon the world. To begin with, there is the evidence of a common experience, namely that temporally 92 extended acquaintance dims vision, while sudden, panoramic sights make for poignant perception. Then there is the unfailing testimony of our spatial time-language. A ~~moment" of time is really a ''movement," as of the clock; the "passing" of time is a "pacing"; the ''space of time" is never converted into the "time of space," and the words 11 time," "past," "present," "future," themselves all have spatially interpretable etymologies. Again, we have external organs for sensing all sorts of spatial motion, sights, sounds (which come out of space), and internal organs for sensing our own spatial position, and we have a capability for perceiving perspectival transformations. But we have no discernible organ or power for perceiving the mere elapsing of time. Our estimate of time depends on the spatial passages from light to dark, from fresh to worn, from full to empty, and if we are deprived of their sensory evidence our sense of time becomes totally confused. Moreover, time is somehow more accessible than space. We can "spend time" to gain space. Time serves to pass through space: Now when Joseph had named his underworld name to the Ismaelite, and had indicated to him what he wished to be called in Egyptland, these people trekked on, some days, several and many days, at an indescribably comfortable pace and full of serenity concerning time, which would one day, they knew, manage to overcome space, if one cooperated but a little-and would do this most surely if one didn't fuss but just gave in to its progress, each of whose advances might be of no account but which would, quite incidentally, run up a large sum, if only once carried on and reasonably maintained one's direction. [Thomas Mann, Joseph in Egypt] One may even recover, in some sense, one's former place in space. But it is only in a figurative way that one can regain lost times by going down through space, as in archaeological exposure of earlier levels of life. Then, too, time's effects can be fugitive-a moment of bliss can sometimes obliterate a season of suffering, but a ravaged place cannot be healed without the investment of laborious motion. In brief, spaces and places contain the passages that concern us, that is, they contain time, but not the reverse. I take all that as suggestive, though of course merely circumstantial, evidence that time is not even coordinate with space, as a form of appearances, not to speak of being prior. Proof of such an assertion there cannot be beyond its possibly convincing consequences. But I can, at least, in concluding my brief collection of the evidence against time and for space try to invalidate the chief presumptive mark of their separate and coordinate standing. That is the supposed difference between the here and the now: The here, it is said, is repeatable; the now is not. The claim certainly holds for the mathematical representation of space and time, though merely by definition. In a graphic coordinate system with a time-axis the space coordinates can return as often as you please, while the SUMMER 1983 �able that we might, by a slightly different route, come back to the same moment. For if events had the cyclicality of a circle, as Nietsche claims (Note 13), every now would be antecedent to itself and to all others, and if events moved as in a figure eight, the same now would be on different approaches. Whether we then said that it was the same present floating out of the mists of time gone into the murk of time to come. It seems to me that the world so purged of time is a more patent world. In it shapes pass by us, but also we, at will, pass by them. Sometimes it is in our power to recognize appearances; we are able to turn back, to revisit the scene, to follow its figures as they pass by or to ascend to a higher viewpoint so as to survey the whole panorama simultaneously. Appearances which carry that possibility we call spatial. Some variations, however, we can only remember; they go past us and are beyond perceptual recovery. They back out of our sight, so to speak, by changing not so much their place as themselves, so that we now because its perceptual content was the same, or a dif- can no longer train our sensory vision on them at will. So ferent now because it had different antecedents, would depend on our desire to make the configurations of the world tell time or to make the advance of time distinguish its configurations. In principle and in imagination a pas· sage which is an extended causa sui is not impossible, and therefore neither is the return of a now. I leave out of account here that unmodern "defence against Time" (Eiiade) constituted by the celebration of the timeless, original, and ever-repeatable moments of myth. Similarly, as far as the here is concerned, is it so obvious that we can always come back to it? It seems to me that there are three kinds of here: There is the local mathematical point given by an origin and three coordinates, which is exactly repeatable but is only the abstraction of a here. There is the physical situation determined by reference to a system of moving bodies which can be only relatively recovered as one system moves with respect to its next larger containing system (as does the cluster of people on the boat on the ocean in the solar system, and so ad infinitum). And finally, there is the human place of our lives which probably cannot in effect be regained because, no matter how stable, the world's passing affects its colorations and conformations, as well as the mood of the returning the golden solids oflate afternoon plane out into the dusky silhouettes of early evening, and no one can hold them. Such perceptually irrecoverable passings are usually accompanied for us by a sense of loss or relief or, at least, of watchfulness. These we call temporal. But if we do not care enough about their passing, not even enough to glance at a watch, then, there being no one to feel or tell time, the passages remain untimed. Of course, to attempt to imagine this untimed world is a contradictory undertaking, that of trying to attend while not attending. Nonetheless, we could try to reach untimed passage. It would amount to thinking about appearance in its variability as distinct from being involved in it. It would mean being on the approaches of the mystery of Appearance. Here, it seems to me, would start the real pursuit: What appears? What principles of self-sameness and everotherness can account for the determinate shapes appearance manifests in its endlessly varying variety? Must appearance be perceived to appear? Is it nothing or something in itself? And what is perception? What is space, that field and frame in which, or perhaps, as which, appearance shows itself? What rules, causes, ends govern that distinguishable variation of appearance called motion or passage?-This is the great battle ground to which leads the skirmish against time. time coordinates must increase monotonically. But is it so plain in life that the now never returns? Is it so certain that a deja vue is always a pathological incident? But even if, in publicly corroborable fact, no now is indeed ever repeated because chances are overwhelmingly against the world's passages ever returning to the same state, yet it is imagin- perceiver. Therefore it seems to me that, insofar as they are separable notions at all, the now can be as repeatable as the here and the here as irrecoverable as the now-which is to say that time and space are not distinguishable, at least by that mark. That melancholy of the missed rendevous described above (Sec. I 4), when we come to the right place at the wrong time, is, then, not the unavoidable consequence of the inherent skewness of space and time, but rather a temporal affection, a mood of diminution, the ebb tide of our awareness, when we can take notice of nothing which does not flaunt itself in front of our eyes. For if time is noticed passage, the vitality of our sense of time and of our sense for times past and times future will depend on the scope of our receptivity. The object of the foregoing exercise in suppressing our image of time as bearing onward the shapes of space was to quell our propensity for insinuating time into our speech as an occult nature and into our lives as a flux bear- ing us from oblivion to oblivion on the narrow raft of a THE ST. JOHNS REVIEW The results of a substancial reflection are sometimes a bit bizarre, and their justification lies in their intention. Mine is to give an account of the three phases of time which lend to human life much of its pathos. 3. THE PHASES OF TIME Let me begin by readmitting the absurdly unavoidable thought which I had earlier proscribed: that if things had not come to the present juncture they would not be here. Sequences of appearances commonly seem to have, if no humanly ascertainable drift or even much recollectable continuity, at least a certain longitudinal connectedness. But how do we know of that connection? Space lies open before us in brilliant extendedness. It has no before and after, being, all that there is of it, there. How can it also display the past variety of its passages? How, in short, does 93 �the present world bear witness to those of its states that have passed, to its past? What lets us interpret a fossil as testimony of life's evolution? What compels us to ascribe a tender babyhood even to the most desiccated adult? What makes a place revisited a place almost regained? What reconstitutes the sherd at the bottom of a Greek well into a goblet from a world gone by? The answer is that we do it, we give the world its past because we have the power of memory. For itself the grandest mountain range, which to us expresses in its ma- jestic presence the dignity of having been shaped by the passage of aeons, has no past and no world, and neither does the little loom-weight which once put tension on the warp of Penelope's loom. The depth of space is ours because we have memory. It makes time and its phases possible. Not as the poet says: How the imaginaiion (and thus the memory) might do its work is a question Aristotle tacitly sets aside and Kant answers by saying that it is a mysterious power hidden in the depth of the soul. It seems to me of all philosophical questions the most engaging, but for another occasion. (See Note 35 for a formulation of its aspects.) In the mean· while I will mention one-most crucial-feature of its work: In holding objects without their presence it is always intentional, for the retained form is an image of, or intends, the once present thing, and therein precisely lies its memorial power, its ability to re-present, to present the absent. (There may indeed be moments when remembering passes into reliving, when the memory-image intends its object not as an object that was, but as a present object, but such states are, like hallucinations, extraordinary.) How does the memory-imagination bring about the three temporal phases or present, past, and future? ... only in time can the moment in the rose-garden, The moment in the arbour where the rain beat, The moment in the draughty church at smokefall Be remembered; involved with past and future. Only through time time is conquered. T. S. Eliot, "Burnt Norton" I, from Four Quartets but the opposite: the moments of memory first constitute past and future. What is memory? The past-making memory is of the imagination. (I omit consideration of rote, short-term, motor, and verbal memory, and of those electronically stimulated, hallucination-like replays of the "memory-tape" which attest to the physical basis of the human activity of remembering.) The imagination I understand to be in the first instance the power for absorbing the world's variety into assorted shapes and coherent processes, a discerning receptivity not at that point distinguishable from the power of perception. It is, in this aspect, a faculty universally and subconsciously exercised. (Kant, in his own context, calls it the productive imagination because it first produces those unities of thought and sense which he calls "phenomena.") Secondly and properly speaking, it is a ca· pacity for holding the form of things without their matter, as Aristotle says, or the object without its presence, in Kant's terms; both formulations come to the same thing when one recalls that for Aristotle the material is a required element of the substantial presence of a physical object. Its dematerializing power is indeed what makes its holding capacity plausible. For one psychic space (leaving aside the physical basis of memory) seems able to contain myriads of memories. I am not speaking of psychic space altogether figuratively but describing the interior experience of imagining which seems to be primarily visual, or better, pseudovisual, presumably because sight is the sense most adequate to the extendedness of space (cf. Note 35). And although images are extended, they do not seem necessarily to displace or occlude one another; images are, so to speak, transparent to images. 94 a. The Present The now is also called the present, and nowness is associated with presence. A "presence" (Greek: parousia) means a being that is by us, a confronting being which is immediately there. Let us call it perceived being, leaving out of account here the whole problem of perception itself. In this phase the imagination works as the involuntary power described above, which shapes sensory material into perceived appearances, though some argue that the world itself delivers fully shaped appearances (Gibson). People whose imaginative power is exhausted in this first function accordingly live in the present and prefer adventitious stimulation to memories and projects. It is this nowpresent which Heidegger combats. Being perceptible defines what is in the present, but I think its marks are not those usually stated: vividness, selfgivenness, uniqueness. For the present can be dim and dreary, like a city parking lot on Sunday; and sights of things by no means present can come to us unbidden and adventitiously as do phantasms and hallucinations; and many a present scene is worn out with repetition. What is peculiar to the present, then, is that it is perceived, that it declares itself to us through the conduits of sensation with a normally bland-though sometimes stunningimmediacy. Indeed, it is one of the mysteries of perception that our intermediary senses can leave us with so strong a sense of the immediacy of appearance. Besides being characterized by being right there, before us, perception also promises a certain completeness of perspective and detailing. The present picnic includes those garbage cans behind the bushes and the proverbial ants on the blanket which the past idyll has simply occulted. If the present is defined by the immediate presence of appearances and their passages, we should speak of the now not as an ever-new moment, but rather as the unvary- ing condition of being and having a present. This now is SUMMER 1983 �our ability to be in and with the world. That ever-other, ever-same now of the time-flow which is thought of as be· ing at once the leading edge of time and also the cut be· tween past and future arises when we stop the passages of appearance to take notice of our relation to their passing. The present becomes a flux-now when reflection brings the world up short-the now arises from self-interruption. This is the now which our mathematical reason is com· pelled to whittle down to an unextended point. Percep· tion, on the other hand, insists on its elongation. From this conflict arises the bastard notion of the "specious present": When we consciously represent our timeconsciousness, we do it by means of a line which underlies a set of dimensionless points, while we observe that our actual perceived present is an extended "space" of time, composed of a braid of retentions of just-passed passages. (That the actual present "takes time" accords with common experiences, for example the curious exchanges of present and past at the moment of receiving sudden bad news; the shocked consciousness oscillates for a while between the apprised now of the present and the yet unsuspecting now of the immediate past.) In sum, when left to its own devices, the present is not now but always, or better: It is always the present. This ever-present present acts nonetheless as a pivot between the two other phases of time because through it come the images which stock the memory, although the memory itself integrates and frames the scene. All that we have there by way of distinct forms came first through the senses. (Or perhaps not everything: Augustine regards the memory as a space furnished not only with likenesses of all the world, but also inhabited by imageless memories of intelligible objects. The question really comes to this: which domain is the larger, imagination or memory? All images, it seems to me, are at least in their elements memories, but Augustine must argue that some memories are not image-like, namely those belonging to intellectual learning. It seems to me a question not here soluble whether such learning is essentially memorial and I have therefore left it out of account.) In going on to the past, let me say something concerning the relation of flux-time and phase-time. Flux-time, current time, whose being independent of our attention to passage I am denying, is precisely not, and for just that reason has no power to bear off lapsed passages into nowhere, it flows not into the past but into oblivion. Instead, phasetime supervenes: As soon as passages are beyond percep- tion and out of sight, they come to a standstill, so to speak; they are laid away and accumulate as the permanent stock of the memory-imagination, available for recovery, and the more readily available the more we cared at the time. The hidden work of their consignment to this permanent mode, called ((consolidation," seems to demand the inter- vention of other passages, that is, it seems to take some time, apparently for physiological reasons. Consequently the recent past i~ often inchoate compared to more reTiffi ST. JOHNS REVIEW mote events, especially if it has been a monotony of minute differences. What, then, accounts for the being of past passages, for a passing that has ceased to pass? b. The Past The past is the work of the imagination proper. Had we no such power we would have no past-there would be no past. It is what Kant calls the "reproductive" imagination. It makes a world of re-presentations, of secondary occurrences, which are distinguished from perceptions first of all in this: We move and have our place within the world of perception, but the world of the imagination is felt to take place within us. (Though there are memories which approach the sense of presence of a perception; they are usually triggered by one of the two contact senses, smell and touch, whose deliverances, as it happens, are also hardest to make into memory-images.) Aristotle thinks that we sense time, and therefore that the imagination, which holds memories, also holds their times. The difficulties of this view seem to me insuperable. (See Sec. II 3). For first, it is hard to conceive what such a time storage might mean. Does it mean that to reach a memory we must recount the time back to it, so that to remember a childhood scene we must reproduce the intervening decades? That would make remembering in principle impossible, because while we were working our way back into memory, the present would carry us forward at a clip equal but opposite. Does it mean that we have, as Aristotle claims, an internal time-scaling capacity, a kind of speeding up of the inner temporal flux with an index of its ratio to the actual time? Not only is there, I have argued, no such flux, but pure time (as distinct from its count) is, unlike space, incapable of proportionality because its stretches cannot be compared to each other by congruence. Precisely that mysterious property of the memory-imagination which makes it capable of containing the world, namely that its spaces can, so to speak, continually be rescaled, that very property makes it incapable of containing the world's time, which cannot be scaled. Besides, the phenomena of memory are all against a temporally flowing memory medium. Memory is notoriously discrete. The forgettable, a mere temporal stretching, is forgotten. Memory-images float up or flash on in isolation, and time is remembered, if at all, not by being condensed but by being excerpted. At any rate, although the physiological basis for recalling every instance of our life may exist, it would not only be impossible in principle, as I argued above, to recover the continuum of our lifetime, but it would be in practice a waste of our present to try to recover even parts of our past temporally. Indeed, I think it is plain impossible to remember the passage of time through time. Consequently, the time-keeping performance of memory is, in fact, quite unreliable. Between the first and the 95 �final instance of a daily routine we merge the recurrent events into one schema; it is that summary foreshortening of an orderly life which is the source of so much distress and so much comfort. We lose days from our calendar, but we also multiply moments and think that we did often and long what we did skimpily and briefly-exercises, for instance. The shades of the remembered dead are nearer than the persons of the unregarded living, and in old age our childhood is closer than our middle age. By the public clock our unchecked memories can be relied on neither for the length or the continuity or the unperturbed succession of time. How then do we through memory constitute our past? Primarily the past is, I think, a series of timeless scenes, obtained by eyewitness or borrowed, acquired immediately by our own perception or through material images, for instance, pictures of historical events. These inner, im- material sights, animated perhaps by unheard sounds, are marked as memory-images by our awareness that they are of a once present perceived passage, which has done what passages do-gone by. That is why memories, unless we deliberately mobilize them by passing them before our inner vision, have a certain immobility. What T. S. Eliot says of history holds a fortiori for memory: It is "a pattern of timeless moments." We remember not the coming and go- ing of a motion but a representative frame-it might be called its configura] gist, something like in feeling to pictorial representation of motion by means of flow lines. Memory-images do possess, secondarily, succession, and duration, which are therefore characteristics of the past. Memories have succession because passages leave various, usually discrete, traces, which we retain in their context. Certainly not every memory is well and accurately fixed, and its relations are subject to outside correction by those who have better recorded, more coherent, memories. But by and large memories lead into each other or hang together. It is this context character which makes recollection possible. Aristotle in On Memory and Recollection distinguishes between this methodical recovery of a memory and remembering itself, which is conspicuously capricious, illuminating and occluding scenes uncontrollably. Remembering seems to be dependent on fortuitous associative triggers (once much studied by Humean psychologists); the most famous literary example of such a memory trigger is Proust's taste of a tea cake dipped in a tisane which retrieves for him the bliss of childhood. The second temporal effect of memory is that of duration, which it achieves by means, so to speak, of its thickness, its lamination. This way of marking a long or a short time is, of course, highly deceptive by the clock, sincethis is the time theme of The Magic Mountain-full and eventful but fast passages leave thickly layered images, while passages long drawn out but eventless leave only sparse scenes. Of course, the order and the measure of memory time is subject to correction by correlation with external clock movements and with others' memories. But 96 the pacing of the original past, our past, can be made equable only by extrapolation and abstraction, since it is constituted in the most inhomogeneous of spaces, our imagination. (I want to add that the reason certain animals show very precisely paced behavior seems to be not that they have, any more than we do, an original sense of time but that they are themselves clocks.) The memory-imagination, then, is what is alone respon- sible for the past, for the past as a whole is what is potentially remembered, what the soul has noticed and could recall. The memory-imagination is where the world's passages find permanence and whence the present can learn of its own perpetuity; through the memory, space can testify to time. But even if space were devastated, if the accumated treasury of civilization were annihilated, if the present were a void-as long as human memory survived the past would exist. It should be clear that to say that the past is our doing by no means implies that it is our invention, to be manipulated for pleasant or pernicious ends. What is our doing is that there is a past, not what is past. The above-mentioned intentional character of the memory makes that distinction possible. A memory-image intends that thing or event of which it is the memory. What our memorial capacity contains is in one sense something of our own, namely insofar as it is simply a memory, but in another sense it belongs to the object remembered, namely insofar as it is a memory of the object. This double-sided character of memory is just what makes possible-and therefore obligatory-the effort to remember truthfully, an effort which feels, at least, like trying to pass through the memory to its intended object. Something similar holds for that reconstitution of public memory called history. Historical truthfulness seems to me to consist of scrupulously using the evidence to construct a history-image which is compellingly of something, namely of the way it was. An analogous effort, finally, seems to play a part even in poetry, for memory is said to be the mother of the Muses. Before I conclude by arguing that the past is the most humanly defining and consequential of the three phases of time, let me dispose of the future. c. The Future The future is said to come toward us, and we are supposed to face it. This seems to me to be a misleading figure of speech. Wherever we face, we confront the present, and nothing is coming at us or by us but that. The future, I say, is entirely derivative from the past. Husser] describes it formally as the inverse of memory. The future is that mode of the memory in which the image anticipates a perception, whereas in the past it follows. The future is projected memory. How is that meant? There are, it seems to me, at least four ways to think of the future. The first defines the future as the realm of conSUMMER 1983 �tingency. On the hypothesis that there "are" indetermi· nate events, the future is that part of the world about which it is in principle impossible to make true-or-false statements. This is the future understood in terms of the use, in the present, of the future tense. (If, however, the future is supposed to be predetermined, that is to say, if all passages have an absolutely tight nexus, then future and past are indistinguishable: It is in principle possible to make true statements about either and in fact extremely difficult.) The second way is that the future is an image· But if they are held desirously and vividly enough, they immediately go over into projects: Every real action in the world, no matter how modest, has as its formal and its final cause an image, and those actions are most felicitous whose projected image is at home in a Golden Age. A small but apt example is the making of a garden-every garden is conceived as a corner in the Garden of Eden, though its beginning be with the loan of a pickaxe. (I might add here that it is a blessing for us that every terrestrial less, calculated projection of present trends, a way as nec- into the taunting melancholy of the completely fulfilled imagination.) One more observation about a projected image which seems to be kind of a limit of our living future and which essary as it is fatal to bureaucratic planning; this future is the present elongated according to rules of conjecture. The third is the "futuristic" future. Its imagery bears the marks of a forced attempt to represent the never-yet-seen, the absolutely novel. This future, which comes out of a wilful subversion of the past, is usually antiseptically inhuman and terrifyingly technical. (Note, for example, that re· cent futuristic space movies, like Star Wars and Star Trek, tend to be humanly hollow and visually weird, while space movies in a contemporary setting like Close Encounters, E. T., and the Superman series are suffused with nostalgi· cally homey, lovingly comic, all-American romance.) All these futures are, of course, present thoughts and images marked, as it were, with a future index. I cannot even conceive what it might mean literally to think future things, that is, to be with one's thoughts in the future. There is a fourth future, our lived human future. It is the projected past, and thus also the past as a project. This future is always a possible image-not an image of possibilities, for that is an impossibly indeterminate notion; nor a formulation of possibilities, for that is merely a logical ex· ercise; nor even a prospectus of possible images, for that is conjecture and contingency planning. The actual future with which we live is a settled envisioning of a scene we deem the world capable of harboring. Such a scene always comes from memory, not only because without memory there is no experience with which to judge what visions are capable of realization, but also because memory is the space in which diverse perceptions are first transformed into coherent patterns. For it is from memory-images that we shape our aim-images. Indeed, Bergson claims that memory is primarily action-oriented, though that "to call up the past in the form of an image, we must be able to withdraw ourselves from the action of the moment, we must have the power to value the useless, we must have the will to dream." However, I hope to show that memory has even deeper work than future-dreaming. Such memory-projections may come to nothing and return to memory, closed out and abandoned: Footfalls echo in the memory Down the passage which we did not take Towards the door we never opened Into the rose-garden. T. S. Eliot "Burnt Norton", I THE ST. JOHNS REVIEW paradise requires continual maintenance or we would fall concerns the one event sure of realization, our death. We come on our death, it seems to me, in various ways, for example, as a shapeless terror before an unimaginable termination or as an imagined scene in which we are called on to play a leading role. That ultimate image will be and ought to be the occasional subject of meditation. But why should we, as Heidegger demands, face resolutely, at every moment, the fact of our own death, understood as the possibility of our not-being, in order for our existence to be authentic? That death is the end of our being is a mere surmise, and it is an open question whether the imagina~ lion, which like Dante's journeys in the middle of this life to bring back visions of the next, is, delivering phantasies or memories. Be that as it may, the aspect of the great futural fact of our death which is most effective in life seems to me to be that notorious gift of Prometheus, namely our blindness concerning its exact date, and that is how our end governs our future. For death has us on an elastic tether, with give enough, we may always hope, for the well-paced play necessary to the perfection of any project, and with tautness enough to snap us eventually back from diversion to work. Before proceeding to the past, I want to forestall an objection which might be raised-that in considering the future as projected past I am attributing the order of my awareness to the order of worldly becoming, with the antic result that things receive their futurity from my projection, for instance that an old place to which I now first envision visiting is therefore a place of the future. But it is not the sequence of knowing and being that, as I argue, makes the future, but my present apprehension of a sequence of modes of awareness: I call future what I expect to perceive. This view, to be sure, detracts from the pathos of futurity, from both its inexhorableness and its contingency and implies precisely that there is no future-being. Indeed such being is an unintelligible notion, for what will be is not. By being in the future can be meant no more than this: that the image is posited as coming before the perception, where "before" is not a temporal relation at all, for the "coming before" is now; it is in my present "expectation':. To give the future no being is, however, not to deny that 97 �"shall" and "will" have a strongly effective meaning. To resolve that "it shall be" is now to recover in the imagination an image-appearance, perhaps to modify it, and to will to bring it to perception by the proper action. When the perception becomes actual it is future no longer but present. To prognosticate that "it will be" is now to anticipate an external appearance and to have well-grounded expectation for perceiving it. We are warranted in such anticipations because the passages of the world usually show a certain symmetry about the pivotal present, a symmetry we establish by attending to each memory specifically as a by-gone present. The shape of ordinary passages, we then conclude, is distorted very slowly about the perceived present. In fact, most passages which are important to us are either cyclical or monotonic, and therefore continuously predictable. There are, or course, moments of crisis, catastrophic discontinuities which teach us that every "logic of becoming" so far discovered is unreliable. But it stands to reason that were the variations of appearance either totally monotonous or totally multifarious, we would have no sense of a coherent future at all. What room, one might ask, does this view of the lived future as projected past leave for newness? The present is in a superficial sense always novel, because no matter how accurately it was foreseen or how effectively it was planned, the world's passages will bring out in us and will bring before us the unexpected and the adventitious. The question really concerns a deeper newness: not whether human beings can put into the world what has merely never been before, but whether they can establish a wellfounded new way, a novus ordo seclorum. The vision behind such an epoch cannot help but come from the imagination. (I leave out the element of thought because it is so doubtful that thought is rooted in the phases of time at all.) The imagination finds the materials for such a vision in the storehouse of memory, but its affective shaping seems to come from the power of phantasy. Now both aspects of the imagination, memory and phantasy, are past-oriented. The memory is the very source of the past, while phantasy characteristically works-as a matter of observation-in the mode of Hance upon a time," of primeval, ancient patterns. Therefore genuinely imagined new beginnings, as distinct from those that are light-headedly contrived, usually take the form of a rectification, renewal, rebirth-in sum, of a return to "that time" (illo tempore) which is to be recovered in a new paradise, a new Golden Age, a New Jerusalem. d. The Past as Paramount Phase Memory-image and phantasy-image, the image arising from perception and the image made in the imagination, are distinguished from each other by certain marks. The intentionality of memory is that of being of an original perception of which it is precisely the memory. A phantasy- 98 image lays no claim to being the memory of a once-present scene except in play, in the well-circumscribed space, whose proper phase, I have claimed, is the past, of "once upon a time." (This distinction between the reality claims of phantasy and memory can, of course, be confounded in very fascinating ways.) Consequently memories have a fairly fixed temporal context, while phantasy and fairy tales take place in a floating time frame. But in certain fundamental characteristics, memory and phantasy are the same: Both are representations without the material presence of the world and subject to the same transmutations that such absence sanctions. With that deep bond between the realm of phantasy and of the past in mind, let me now enumerate reasons why the past, constituted in memory, is the humanly preponderant of the three phases of time. First, the past is, of necessity, thicker in texture and longer in extent and therefore weightier for us than our immediate present. For while we have indeed always a present, not everything that we have is always present. Why then should we be willing, having put ourselves to the trouble of living, to lose our life to oblivion? Even more, the past contains not only all our own accomplished passages but is indefinitely extended by the memories we absorb from the common store, from that derivative memory called history. The past can be an ever-widening panorama, so capacious and so vivid that it may sometimes seem as if it were, after all, not within us but as if we wandered in it, as in our own interior space. That is how Augustine speaks of it: I come into the fields and spacious palaces of my memory, where are the treasures of innumerable images drawn from things of whatever sort by the senses .... And yet do not the things themselves enter the memory; only the images perceived by the senses are ready there at hand .. .. For there I have in readiness the heaven, the earth, the sea, and whatever I could perceive in them. [X 8] Whether we think of our memory-past as an increasing freight or a widening space, it must inform our life in action and conversation. The past is present as those select memories which the present has called up to comfort, goad, or illuminate it. From these memories are distilled not only the projects of the future but that experience which enables us to envision the transformation a project will undergo in the course of realization and its unintended consequences: most unsound judgement is, after all, a failure of the latter aspect of the projective imagination. Besides being the source of experience, memory-past has secondly a clarifying and shaping power. It is often said that the present is fact, the future possibility, and the past is necessity. Presence may be called bald fact, though what the fact is, is rarely known in the present. The future may be thought as possibility, but it is lived as a vivid picture. And the past may be in certain gross features unalterable, but the inner sense of passages is revealed as memory proSUMMER 1983 �gressively revives and reviews them; just as in space proximate objects are invisible until we have gained perspective on them through distance. So if the past is the necessary, meaning that of which memory cannot be otherwise (for we cannot say that past things are necessary, since they are not at all, being gone), it is so first of all insofar as it has been laid to rest, as when we say, "let bygones be bygones." Indeed it is yet another power of memory, to forget the best-forgotten, and the price for not exercising it is the paralyzing repetition of a worn-out present. (I do not mean that we can expunge the brute fact but that we can deprive it of its effectiveness. The religious term for that effort when it concerns our own deeds, is ((repentance/' which "seeks to annul an actuality," Kierkegaard, Philosophical Fragments, "Interlude 3, The Past.") And secondly, the past is necessary as far as the grossly designatable events and their calendar dates are concerned: for example I believe it was Clemenceau who observed concerning the shifting interpretations of the Great War, that whatever is said, no one will ever claim that on August 4, 1914, Belgium invaded Germany. With respect to such brute facts, memory merely records. But for most past passages, memory, when it is called upon, shows itself to have been active. It has purified the once-present of its obscuring passions and clarified its patterns. It is this shaped and rectified past which most strongly colors and directs the present. It is what the poet means when he speaks of 1 Time which takes away And taking leaves all things in their right place An image of forever One and whole. Edwin Muir, "I have been taught" It is our frequent experience that we do not realize what is going on before our eyes, that the present is shapeless and imperfect, that appearances must reappear in memory to show what they were meant to be. What is ongoing has presence merely, but what is past shows its essence. Third, the panoramic, projective, and purgative capacities of the memory-imagination make it the great propaedeutic power for philosophy. For example, out of its store are fashioned those cosmic visions which complete the arguments of reason, as do the myths in the Platonic dialogues. Again as the room which holds the world without its material presence, it provides the field of a first encounter with immaterial form. And further, because of its rectifying, schematizing, canonizing tendency, the memory ac· quaints us with ideality, whether in the schemata of geometry or in the types of excellence. Finally, the memory is a training ground for philosophizing, because concentratedly pursued remembering, or recollection, has features analogous to searching thought. Fourth and last, the memory-past has a power of transfiguration, of enchantment. Its force is such that those under its spell may melt with nostalgia even for hell on earth. THE ST. JOHNS REVIEW In this mode memory saturates with feeling what it has purged of passion. Now its scenes float up fragrant with an illumination of inexpressibly familiar mystery and its set· tings are suffused by an enigmatically musical aura. Proust describes these atmospheric colorations as turning the memory-world into a hieroglyphic of happiness whose decipherment is an enthrallingly exigent task. Proust is both the painstaking initiate and the exploiting connoisseur of the magic of memory. His acute temporal sensibility presents him with an absorbing problem: He has discovered that on the one hand, "the true paradises are the paradises we have lost," while on the other, only the immediacy of perception can add the last perfection, that of real existence, to these paradisical memories. He finds that he can succeed in his search for lost time only when a sensory trigger perceived in the present, and iden· tical with some element of the past such as that taste of the teacake, revivifies his memory. Then past and present become one and the past is literally relived. This fusion of temporal phases he calls "pure time." There is something fascinating and something repellent in Proust's self-immured pursuit of the past not as a template for the future but as means to momentary bliss. What he describes is, as it happens, the most magical of temporal experiences-when the past lies upon the present as a luminous transparency, or behind it like a vibrant backdrop, or within it like animating music. In spite of, or better, precisely for the sake of, the magic, it seems to me sounder not to importune the past for golden moments but to let them come as they will, and when they come to let them do their proper work, which is not only to bring delight but also to be the source of ardour for a worldly project. So profiting by Proust's case, we should probably avoid too direct a preoccupation with our paradise-producing power. Otherwise much more might be said, particularly about its close relation to music. For music is the most memorial of arts. It occurs only minimally in the present and the whole burden of its being is on memory, since the apprehension of a musical whole depends on retention, as Husserl has named the quasi-perception of passages just now past, while the recognition of its intention depends on the memory of all the music heard before. But most to my point here, music is the art which best aids and intensifies the significance-producing function of our memoryimagination because, as can no other art, it suffuses space with feeling and vivifies it with intimations of schemata of the body which stand for gestures of the souJ.l6 But of such musings there is no end. * * * To conclude: The soundness and the fulness of our existence seems to me to begin with a right relation to the three phases of time. Of these the present with its passions is loud enough in its own behalf, and when it is dimmed it 99 �is very often because of our improvident preoccupation with the future. Here I have brought forward the past and its images not only because it is the forgotten phase of our time,l7 but because I really think that it has the dignity I have ascribed to it: It is the depth of the present and the shape of the future. The wholeness of life and half of its happiness comesand its coming depends on good fortune and work, and above all, on single-minded desire-when the present world is perceived against a deep, luminous background of memory, which is at once also a prospect into the future and a project. That temporal whole (it cannot rightly be called a present and I have no name for it) will sometimes-not often-submit itself to thought and invite contemplation. That is, I think, the complement of temporal completeness and a consummation of human happiness. Let my witness be, one last time, Aristotle, speaking of that human being-perhaps a little beyond our meanswho will be the best friend and live the happiest life (Nic. Eth. IX, on friendship, 1166 a 14 ff.): He is in harmony with himself and has the same desires throughout his whole soul ... Such a one wants to be in his own company since he makes it pleasant for himself. For he has delightful memories of what he has done and good hopes for what is to come, and finally, his mind abounds in objects of contemplation. Santa Fe, Summer 1982 Immanuel Kant, Critique of Pure Reason (1787) B 46-72: "Transcendental Aesthetic: Of Time"; A 98-110: the three syntheses; B 150-159: "Of the Application of the Categories to the Objects of the Senses in General"; B 176-187: "Of the Schematism of the Pure Concepts of the Understanding"; B 274-279: "Refutation of Idealism"; B 399-432; A 341-405: "Of the Paralogisms of Pure Reason." II. SUPPORTING TEXTS, STUDIES, COMMENTARIES Samuel Alexander, Space, Time, and Deity (1916-1918), London 1920, Bk. I, i-iv. Staffan Bersten, Time and Eternity, A Study in the Structure and Symbolism ofT. S. Eliot's Four Quartets, New Yark 1973, Ill iii. Henri Bergson, Time and Free Will, English version of An Essay on the Immediate Data of Consciousness (1889), F. L. Pogson, trans., New Yark 1960, Ch. II and Conclusion. Otto F. Bollnow, Das Wesen der Stimmungen, Frankfurt a.M. 1968, Chps. IV, XII. Albert Einstein, and others, "On the Electrodynamics of Moving Bodies" (1905), The Principle of Relativity, Dover 1952, par. I BIBLIOGRAPHY Mircea Eliade, Myths, Dreams, and Mysteries (1957), P. Mairet, trans., New York 1975, Ch. I: "The Myths of the Modern World." I. MAIN TEXTS J. N. Findlay, "Time: A Treatment of Some Puzzles," Aristotle, Physics IV 10-14 (time); III 1-3 (motion); VIII (primary motion); On Memory and Recollection I (phases of time); On Coming to Be and Passing Away II 10-ll (cyclical time). Also: Metaphysics IX, XII; On the Soul Ill; Posterior Analytics II 12; On Interpretation 9. (4th cent. B.C.). Augustine, Confessions (c. 400 A.D.) X 8-26 (memory); XI 10-31 (time). Martin Heidegger, Being and Time (1927), John Macquarrie and Edward Robinson, trans., New York 1962, First Part, Second Section, paras. 65, 68-69, 79-82. Edmund Husser!, The Phenomenology of Internal TimeConsciousness (1905), Martin Heidegger, ed., James S. Churchill, trans., Bloomington 1964, Sec. II "The Analysis of Time-Consciousness"; III "The Levels of Constitution of Time and Temporal Objects." 100 Logic and Language, Garden City 1965, pp. 40-59. Michael Gelven, A Commentary on Heidegger's "Being and Time," New York 1970. James J. Gibson, The Senses Considered as Perceptual Systems, Boston 1966. John G. Gunnell, Political Philosophy and Time, Middletown 1968, Conclusion. G. W. F. Hegel, Encyclopedia: Philosophy of Nature (1827) paras. 257-260; Phenomenology of the Spirit (1807), Preface. Martin Heidegger, Kant and the Problem of Metaphysics (1934), James S. Churchill, trans., Bloomington 1962; Logik (1925-26), Gesammtausgabe, Bd. 21, Frankfurt a.M. 1976, Sec. C. SUMMER 1983 �William James, Psychology, Ch. XVII: "The Sense of Time." Phenomenology of Memory, The Third Lexington Conference on Pure and Applied Phenomenology, E. W. Straus and R. M. Griffith, eds., Pittsburgh 1970. G. W. Leibniz, "Reply to Bayle's Reflections on the System of Preestablished Harmony" (1702); Third and Seventh Letter to Clarke (1716). The Problem of Time, Berkeley 1935. Wyndham Lewis, Time and Western Man (1927), Boston 1957. John Locke, An Essay Concerning Human Understanding (1690), Bk. II 14-15. The Study of Time, Proceedings of the First Conference of the International Society for the Study of Time, VoL I, 1969, Springer 1972, and subsequent volumes. Time and its Mysteries, New Yark 1962. The Voices of Time, J. T. Frazer, ed., New York 1966. Thomas Mann, The Magic Mountain (1924, begun 1912), Ch. 4, 2; "Introduction to The Magic Mountain," Princeton Lecture (1939), (Preface to Fisher edition, 1950). IV. TIME IN SCIENCE M. Merleau-Ponty, The Phenomenology of Perception (1945), Colin Smith, trans., London 1962, Part III 2. Sir Arthur Eddington, The Nature of the Physical World (1928), London 1947, Chps. III-IV. Isaac Newton, Mathematical Principles of Natural Philosophy (1687), Scholium to the Definitions. Adolf Gruenbaum, Philosophical Problems of Space and Time, Boston 1973, Chps. 8-9, 12. Plato, Timaeus 37-39. Hans Reichenbach, The Philosophy of Space and Time (1927), New Yark 1958, Chps. II, IlL Plotinus, Ennead III 7 (3rd cent. A.D.): Plotin ueber Ewigkeit and Zeit, Werner Beierwaltes, trans. and ed., Frankfurt a.M. 1967. G. J. Whitrow, The Natural Philosophy of Time, New York 1963. Marcel Proust, Remembrance of Things Past (1913-1926), Time Retrieved Ch. 3. W. D. Ross, Aristotle's Physics, Text, Introduction, Commentary, Oxford 1955. Jean-Paul Sartre, Being and Nothingness (1943), Pt. II 2-3. Most of the collections contain articles on time in science. In particular, Voices of Time: H. Dingle, "Time in Relativity Theory: Measurement or Coordinate?", p. 455 ff.; 0. C. de Beauregard, "Time in Relativity Theory: Arguments for a Philosophy of Being," p. 417 ff.; M. Capek, "Time in Relativity Theory: Arguments for a Philosophy of Becoming," p. 4 34 ff.; R. Schlegel, "Time and Thermodynamics," p. 500 ff. Charles M. Sherover, Heidegger, Kant, and Time, Bloomington 197 L Simplicius, Commentary on Aristotle's Physics, H. Diels, ed., Berlin 1895, pp. 829-832. Alfred North Whitehead, The Concept of Nature (1920), Ann Arbor 1957, Ch. IlL Eviator Zerubavel, Hidden Rhythms, Schedules and Calendars in Social Life, Chicago 1981. IlL COllECTIONS Basic Issues in the Philosophy of Time, E. Freeman and W. Sellars, eds., LaSalle 1971. THE ST. JOHNS REVIEW 1. A supporting curiosity: the Oxford Dictionary of Quotations reveals a 24: l ratio of time to space sayings. (Study of Time I; p. 313). 2. Merleau-Ponty (p. 411) presents an analysis of the puzzle. If time were like a river it would indeed appear, on its own, to flow from the past into the future, namely from the source toward the distant mouth, in the direction a twig floats. But a river unobserved really has no events or temporal direction, for these require an onlooker's perspective: "Time presupposes a view of time." So no unwatched river can represent time. Now introduce an observer, and the "motion" of time is straightaway reversed: The waters flow from the source at the observer and pass him, so that time comes toward him as he expects it and passes out of sight, that is, it flows from future to past. 3. Findlay, p. 41 4. Newton distinguishes "absolute, true, and mathematical time," which is a condition of motion, from relative or apparent time, which is the common time measured by motion. His physical motive for positing absolute time appears to be his belief that rotary motion is absolute, an assumption criticized by Leibniz in De Motu. Leibniz speaks of mathematical time as "ideal." It is nothing in itself 101 �but an idea in the mind of God (Seventh Letter to Clarke), namely that of the order of mutually inconsistent possibilities (as space is the order of possible coexistences); it expresses the order-relations of phenomena which cannot be simultaneous but are connected-note well, the rela· tions of phenomena, not of the substances themselves. His chief reason for objecting to absolute time is the principle that contingent truths, i.e., truths of fact, must have a sufficient reason. Now if time were absolute and instants existed in themselves, one might reasonably ask why God did not create the world a year sooner, and claim that by choosing this particular beginning he acted without reason, arbitrarily. But if time is a mere relation of phenomena, the world made a year sooner is in every respect in discernibly different from the later world, and the question is obviated (Third Letter to Clarke). Augustine partly anticipates this argument: If any giddy brain should ask why God forbore creating the world for innumerable ages, the answer is, God does not in time precede time (XI 13). Time arises simultaneously with the creation, or better, with the creature. Sec Sec. III. 5. Of course, physically speaking, to ignore the finiteness of the speed of light reduces relative to classical kinematics. 6. Alexander's work, Space, Time and Deity, a very large book of lectures given from 1916-1918, has as its beginning thesis the interdependence of space and time: "There is not an instant in time without a position in space and no point of space without an instant of time." (1, p. 48). Although Alexander had read of relativity theory, his treatment, which is purely philosophical, is quite independently conceived. 7. Wyndham Lewis interprets the preoccupation with time in all departments of human activity as a romantic reaction; he understands by romanticism a fluid, indeterminate, sensation-seeking, sophisticated rebellion against distinctly formed reality (Ch. 1). 8. Phenomenology, Preface, par. 45 (Miller, trans.). In the passage Hegel draws attention to the fact that there is no temporal counterpart to geometry. Space is the existence into which the Concept writes its distinctions as into an empty, dead element. Time, on the other hand, is the pure unrest of life, absolute differentiation and negativity. 9. See "Chronos," Pauly-Wissowa, Realencyclopaedie. Cronos, the father of Zeus who devoured and later disgorged his own children, was sometimes identified with Chronos, Time. 10. Simplicius is right when he shows at length that time does not move, but mistaken when he gives that as the reason why Aristotle does not include time among the categories in which motion occurs (on Phys. 225 b 5). Aristotle does in fact include the category of "how much" or quantity, in which time, as it happens, belongs. What he omits is "when," which is the category not of time but of timing-of which more below. ll. Aristotle discusses his analogue to space, i.e., "void" just before motion (213 b ff.). He regards its pure infinite dimensionality as a physical absurdity in which all motion becomes impossible for lack of any natural direction toward a place. For Aristotle things are contained in demarcated places, not spread out over a continuous substrate of infinite extension. 12. When Timaeus-not Socrates-tells how time arose, simultaneously with the heavens, as a moved image of "eternity" (a-ion, the un-going), a "likeness of the ungoing, going according to number," he, is giving the mythological anticedent of Aristotle's treatment of time in terms of the number of motion and of the heavenly motion as providing the measures of time. 13. The logical possibility of Such necessary cycles is given iri. Post. An. (11 12). Those cycles of becoming are non-contingent whose events imply each other. Aristotle's cyclicalit'y is indeed a forerunner of Nietzsche's "Eternal Return:" "That everything returns is the most extreme approach of a world of becoming to a world of being: Summit of the inquiry" (Will to Power, no. 617). In the Eternal Return the impossible is accomplishedto be in the same now twice and so to be causa sui (if causation is temporal). Consequently every moment is, so to speak, a discrete eternity, composed of all the previous identical moments, and the future comes at the now out of the past. The difference from Aristotle's theory is that this cycle is not conceived as an approach to God and has no final cause beyond itself, but is intrinsically necessitated. In the Statesman (269 ff.) Plato lets the Eleatic Stranger tell of a yet 102 more curious cyclical sequence. It is a time· fable playing on the possibilities of time reversal. In the primary age Cronos, i.e., Time (see Note 9), takes the tiller of the world. Human beings spring grey-haired from the earth and grow into childhood, fruit ripens without culture; animals are tame and human beings understand their language; there are no families and no cities. In our present age the god has let go and the world unwinds itself. We are no longer the wards of the god, but are humanly generated, meagre, and exposed. Prometheus and Athena have given us arts and wisdom to make this life bearable. The Stranger declines to decide which age is happier since he does not know what was the disposition of the Cronians with respect to knowledge and philosophy. The fable means that the era of human independence is more diverse and more difficult than the cycle guided by the god and that its temporality is, as it were, fallen and inverted since the phases of imperfection are prior to the states of perfection. Yet the fable also implies that in the Cronian age philosophy may be an unwanted superfluity, while in the human age it is an ineradicable need. A story of immense cycles, repeated through an "infinity" of time, a serial sequence of development and destruction in human affairs is told by the Athenian in Laws (676 ff.) 14. For a fine exposition of Aristotle's definition of motion see Joe Sachs, "Aristotle's Definition of Motion," The College, Jan. 1976, pp. 12-18. 15. Gunnell, p. 232 16. I use the term perception to distinguish the work of the faculty of sensation from that of the sense organs. As Aristotle does implicitly, so Whitehead explicitly distinguishes between the point-now which he calls "moment" and the duration yielded by sense perception. The "moment" is defined in terms of "abstractive sets" of duration. An abstractive set is all the nested durations converging to the same limit, and a moment is defined as the class of all such sets converging to the same limit, each set being a different "route of approximation" to the same moment (pp. 5762). 17. The relation between time and eternity is similarly quasi-contemporaneous; in distinction from the temporality of human thought, divine thought is the same with itself through the "whole" of eternity (Met. 1075 a 11). The scholiast on Nic. Eth. 1174 b 9 wrongly but understandably speaks of the now as an "atom of time," that is, a minimal of time, a moment. This is a notion Aristotle takes pains to reject (Phys. 220 a 27), though he does speak of the limiting point of a period of time as "indivisible" (223 b 34). 18. Aristotle refers to motion "in" the soul in the absence of sensation (Phys. 219 a 6), to imagination and opinion as "a certain kind of motion" (254 a 30), and to "changes" of mind (218 b 21). 19. Interestingly enough, such double consciousness is just what Husser\ observes in that internal time flux which seems to him the basic temporal phenonmenon (par. 39): While we are conscious of the passing of a temporal object like a melody we are also conscious of the time flow itself. 20. Taking his clue from Plato's Timaeus, the Neoplatonic Plotinus elaborates a grand ontological cosmology in which time plays a role quite the opposite from that in Aristotle (Enneads III 7). The two relevant elements from the Timaeus arc these: The cosmos is an image of being and the soul encompasses it. Time, says Plotinus, "fell out of eternity" (11, 7) because of an original flaw in the soul, a kind of grasping busyness which keeps the soul from abiding in self-sufficient quiet and causes it always to look to the next thing, to something beyond the present. for the soul is itself a variable and discursive image of the intellect (Beierwaltes, p. 54). Hence it falls into a sort of motion, a kind of self-displacement. As it accomplishes a stretch of its journey, time is produced as an image of eternity. Speaking less metaphorically, the soul "temporalizes" itself (echr6nesen, 11, 30), making time instead of eternity. Within time it produces the place of variability, namely the sensible world as an image of eternity. Therefore the world, which moves within the soul, is, not altogether metaphorically, in time and serves time. Time, in opposition to Aristotle, is not the number of motion but that in which and by which motion is possible (8; 9, 4). Since time comes from a kind of greed for continual self-exceeding, it is in its very essence futural; the soul looks ahead and draws the future through the now, which by nature always goes out of itself, into the past; SUMMER 1983 �it is continually cancelling the now. This passage defines time: Time is the life (zoe) of the soul in a transitive motion from one life-phase (bios) to another(!!, 44). But as time is only an image of eternity, so temporal life is merely homonymous with the eternal life of the_ intellect (ll, 49). The time of the world soul and world time are the same; and since all souls are one, the same time also appears in each human soul (B, 67). The first question about time must be: Is it of the soul or of the world, is its source consciousness or reality? Plotinus' grand scheme, in making time the life of the soul and making the soul the animating generator of the world, collapses this distinction: It is precisely in being of the soul that time is in the world. 21.. Whitrow, pp. 78 ff. 22. For example: that we can reach a memory, either randomly, by a "glancing ray," or systematically, by a process of attention (a distinction roughly the same as that made by Aristotle between remembering and recollecting, On Memory and Recollection II); that the clarity of a presentified object is distinguishable from the clarity of the presentification; that there are memories of memories, and also memories of objects we have never perceived such as historical scenes; that every memory is fixed in an unalterable temporal environment even as it runs off from the present; that the perception of time and the time of perception correspond; that memory is distinguished from phantasy by a factor of "positing," i.e., by being given a definite temporal position with respect to the present. 23. I have omitted in this account that connecting of concepts called judging, which is required to complete experience (B 187 ff.). 24. Locke, for example, presents a theory of time in which there is succession without an underlying flux. Our mind contains a "train of ideas," a succession of objects of thinking, from which we derive our idea of duration by reflection. Duration is "fleeting extension," the perpetually perishing part of succession (Essay II 14, 1). The theory neatly takes a middle ground between Aristotle's psychic counting of external motion and Kant's original, undifferentiated inner flux. 25. Aristotle distinguishes, under somewhat shifting terminology, between thought or intellection (nOesis) which is the immediate apprehension of form, and discursive thinking (diclnoia, e.g., Met. 1027 b 25). In a comparison with the Kantian faculties, pure intellect (nous) would be contrasted with the transcendental apperception or pure reason, human noesis with conceiving or understanding, and dianoia with judging. 26. In the original Transcendental Deduction (A 98-102) Kant distinguishes three phases of the unifying synthesis performed by the apperception and assigns to each a faculty: I. The synthesis of apfJrehension in intuition, an original taking-up into awareness and temporal ordering of the manifold of sensation. 2. A synthesis of reproduction in the imagination, an original associating or connecting of representations of objects in their absence which makes remembering possible. 3. A synthesis of recognition in a concept, by which what is successively sensed and then remembered is recognized and united in one concept. On the face of it the distinctive temporal phase-if the syntheses are indeed to be temporally interpreted-would seem to be the past: cumulative apprehension, reproduction, re-cognition. Nonetheless Heidegger makes a fascinating case that Kant has implicitly prefigured his own account of the origin of all three phases in the future by showing that the syntheses correspond exactly to his three temporalizing ecstases of human existence: The apprehensive synthesis corresponds to "originary presentification," the reproductive synthesis to "repetition" of what has been, and the synthesis of recognition to the "anticipation" of understanding (Kant and Metaphysics par. 33; Sherover, pp. 186 ff.; for Heidegger's reinterpretation of the imagination as understood in the Critique see Sherover, pp. 142, 150). 27. l. Plotinus anticipates Heideggcr in the central notion of the selftemporalization of the soul, and in regarding the future as the essence of time (See Note 20). 2. Hegel's abstruse dialectical exposition of time in the Philosophy of Nature (paras. 257-260) is meticulously but critically interpreted by Heidegger (Logik, par. 20; Being and Time, par. 82 a). Its gist is as follows. In his dictum that "the truth of space is time," i.e., that space in being thought reveals itself as time, Hegel is opposing the commonsense apprehension of their disjunction. Space, for Hegel, is the indifferent mutual THE ST. JOHNS REVIEW externality of the manifold of points: "Space is punctuality." Each point in this manifold is a negation insofar as it discriminates a difference in space, although the point is not distinguishable from space. That is how space represents itself to us, to begin with. Now when the point-space is subjected to thought, when it is not merely represented but actually conceived, that is to say, when its truth is brought out, the point, or rather each point, is determined. For thinking is determination, i.e., delimitation and distinction. So each point is distinguished from the manifold and set for itself: It is this point, not that point. Hence negativity, space, has in turn been negated. This negated negativity is the "twth" of space, namely the point conceived, and it is time. For in being so determined for itself, the point's indifference with respect to other points is cancelled; it steps out of its own indifferent condition, although it maintains its indifference to its neighbors. Thus it no longer lies in a paralyzed quietus of space but, so to speak, gets a move on, rears itself up, outdoes or succeeds itself: It becomes a now. And the successive determination of this now and that now, the continual negating of spatial negativity, that is time. "In time the point has actuality," namely as now. The complementary positive concept of time is "intuited becoming," by which Hegel means the disappearance of specifically experienced nows. Heidegger is critical of Hegel's understanding of time as the mere nowsequence of which his own work is a critique. (See Sec. V 1). He does note that time as negating negativity is formally identified by Hegel with subjectivity (self-overcoming), but he fails to mention at all in the Logik, what in Being and Time (omitting reference to the later lectures on the Phenomenology,) he discounts as a mere formality, namely that in the Philosophy of Spirit, which goes beyond the physical time of the Philosophy of Nature, this identification raises time to an all-encompassing stature: Time is the existent Spirit itself, the Spirit externalized. Here time is no longer a mere succession of nows; indeed, the notion that time is subjectivity is at least a way station to Heidegger's temporality as the ground of human existence. 3. Bergson gets short shrift (Logik, par. 21), but he too anticipates Heidegger in certain elements: A first such anticipation is Bergson's emphasis on the essential temporality of human life which is in accord with his understanding of time as a vital, non-discrete, non-numerable qualitative and interpenetrative heterogeneity called "duration proper." A second -is in Bergson's understanding of the origin of quantified, countable time as externalization, that is to say as a spatialization of true duration, brought about when consciousness introduces succession into the dead simultaneity of spatial phenomena. (Spatial phenomena, even when so modified have no vitality of their own; they only have an unaccountable property of presenting to consciousness change at successive moments.) But above all, Bergson precedes Heidegger in the notion of an externalized variant of life which is permitted to unfold in space outside rather than in time within, and in which "we speak rather than think, we are enacted rather than ourselves act" (Essay, Conclusion). This externalization of time is surely an anticipation of "inauthenticity." 4. Because of the complex transformation of the meanings I merely mention Kierkegaard's theological terms "repetition" and "the moment." (For Heidegger's acknowledgement of the latter see Being and Time II 4, n. iii.) 28. Plotinus, who has a way with words not unlike Heidegger's, uses the word dicistasis~distance-as a designation precisely of that quantitatively apprehensible succession of time through which its qualitative nature, the unity of its phases, is also displayed as the future continually passes into the present and the present into the past (Beierwaltes, p. 65). In the word ecstasis Heisfegger expresses the denial of this diastatic or sequential unity; for him there is no temporal continuum since past and present both come directly from the future, though of course not through a temporal succession but through an ontological derivation. 29. Bollnow (Ch. IV) criticizes Heidegger's existential interpretation of mood because it posits the "depressed" moods as exemplary and takes no account of the elevated moods. He seems to me to be right, because the understanding of "moodiness' (Stimmung) as a disclosure of "having been" is entirely derived from the interpretation of anxiety as a being brought back to one's thrownness. But why should the other moods be similarly grounded in the ecstasis of the past? 103 �30. Heidegger claims that the concept of this vulgar, infinite now-time which he has established is nothing but the existential-ontological inter· pretation of Aristotle's definition of time (par. 81). This critique gives no weight to the fact that this countable continuum is for Aristotle only an aspect of motion understood as the actualization of being and that its in· finity and its now-present are precisely regarded as expressing the ap· proach of becoming to being, to its eternity and its presentness. 31. The lack of an imaginative mode shows up especially in Heidegger's discussion of the relation of practice to theory (paras. 15, 69 a, b). Each has its own temporality, but that of the latter is entirely secondary to the former. Dasein finds itself always already involved in the world and bound into a context of instrumentality, of "equipment," which is "ready to hand" for use. Heidegger gives the example of a hammer: The less the hammer-thing is merely gaped at, the more Dasein seizes hold of it in a primordial relation much more revealing of its being than any contempla· tion would be. Only later, usually when some deficiency is encountered in the tool, does that speculative stance arise, in which Dasein "presentifies" objects to itself as things independent of their use, so that they are merely "present at hand." Recall that the present is the least prestigious of the ecstases. Thus practice is a more primordial mode than contempla· tive theory. The phenomena seem to me to be misobserved here. From the wideopen receptivity of a baby's eyes to the slow contemplative inspection which precedes any proper tool-using, every appearance of satisfying human activity seems to begin with imaginative viewing. 32. Whitrow, a very perspicacious writer on natural time, concludes that from the viewpoint of natural science time is real (pp. 288-290) on the grounds that the past is determinate, that the present is the moment of determination or becoming, and that the future is a mathematical construction subject to correction by observation. Then "time is the mediator between the possible and the actual." However, I cannot see why this mediating power is called time, rather than, for instance, becoming or the passage of nature (See Sec. VI 2). Whitrow himself names numerous writers among scientists who deny the reality of time. The general difficulty is that in most of these treatments time is either already defined so as to enter the discussion as real or that the issue of its reality is not even raised. Whitehead, on the other hand, is careful to refrain from using the word time for his "fundamental fact," the "passages of nature," which includes spatial as well as temporal transitions. The passing of a temporal duration is an "exhibition" of this passage of nature, which is also responsible for the uniqueness of each act of perception and for the terminus, i.e., its object (pp. 54-55). 33. The etymology of chr6nos is unfortunately obscure. Both Greek words for time are masculine, and so, naturally, are the representations. In English, time, perhaps under the influence of feminine German Zeit, is sometimes given female attributes: "the womb of time," "sluttish time" (Sonnet 55), though we also speak of "Father Time." 104 34. A difficulty about making perceived motion precede time might seem to be raised by the well-known discovery in the physiology of per· ception that there are quanta of perception, i.e., minimal times, below which events remain unregistered or subliminal, and threshold speeds above which the individual position of a mobile cannot be discriminated and its path appears as a streak. These temporal effects might seem to imply that time underlies them and is their condition of possibility, were it not for the fact that this time is itself measured by micro-motions observable to artificially refined perception. 35. The literature concerning the imagination, physiological, psychological, and philosophical, in this century is enormous. Of the last the most interesting writings seem to me to be those of the phenomenologists. They take their departure from Husserl's Ideas (1913, especially par. Ill). The fullest and most original treatment is Sartre's Imagination (1936). The chief and most absorbing questions about the imagination are: Is it a faculty? How can it hold sensory objects without a material substrate? Are images likenesses? Whence comes their special affectivity? What is spatiality such that we can have an inner space-consciousness? Why are images primarily spatial and visual? What is the relation of voluntary to involuntary memory-images? And above all, how is the imagination related to thought: as object, product, instigator? 36. For a lovely study of the dance types of music and how they convey bodily schemata which in turn express the soul, see Wye Jamison Allanbrook, "Dance, Gesture and The Marriage of Figaro," The College XXIV, no. l (Aprill974), pp. 13-21. 37. The past is not given priority, at least not by any philosophical writers on time that I know of. For Nietzsche it is the future with its possibili· ties that conditions the present, since out of it come all valuations, including the true as that which is destined to be. So also it is in the future that Heidegger grounds authentic human existence. However, for the most part some kind of present is favored. For example, Sartre transforms Heidegger's analysis so as to place the ontolo·gical present at the center. He understands it as the phase in which consciousness makes itself present to all non-conscious beings, thus originally uniting them as copresent in a world (Being and Nothingness II l b). Hume gives primary place to the vivid presence of sense impressions, of which memory and imagination are but pale residues (Enquiry II). As for the ancients, Plato, Aristotle, and Augustine, they honor an a temporal present, and of them Aristotle with the most authoritative ex· plicitness: Speaking of the divine intellect he says (Met. 1072 b 14-18): Its way of life is like the best we have for a brief time. For that being is always in this state (which is impossible for us), since its actuality is also a pleasure. And because of that, wakefulness, perception, intel· lection are most pleasant, and because of these, hopes and memories. This view of the phases of time as reflecting divine eternity is of course compatible with the claim that the past is primary in human life. SUMMER 1983 � Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. 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Title A name given to the resource Santa Fe Commencement Address, Spring 2016 Description An account of the resource Audio recording of the commencement address given on May 21, 2016 by Eva Brann at the end of the Spring 2016 semester in Santa Fe, NM. Creator An entity primarily responsible for making the resource Brann, Eva T. H. Publisher An entity responsible for making the resource available St. John's College Coverage The spatial or temporal topic of the resource, the spatial applicability of the resource, or the jurisdiction under which the resource is relevant Santa Fe, NM Date A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource 2016-05-21 Rights Information about rights held in and over the resource St. John's College has been given permission to make this item available online. 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A Comment on Alexandre Kojeve's "The Christian Origin of Modern Science" Curtis Wil>on Alumni representative Joe Sachs Cary Stickney Curtis A. Wilson 30 Unsolicited articles, stories, and poems are welcome, but should be accom~ panied by a stamped, self~addressed envelope in each instance. Reasoned comments are also welcome. The St. John's Review (formerly The Callege) is published by the Office of the Dean, St. John's College, Annapolis, What Good and What Harm Can Psychoanalysis Do? TtOlfgang Lederer 39 Cordelia (Poem) Elliott Zuckcrman 40 Aristotle's Account of the Intelligibility of Being James Carey 51 Chameleons (Poem) John Fontaine Maryland 21404. Edwin J. Delattre, President, Samuel S. Kutler, Dean. Published thrice yearly, in the winter, spring, and summer. For those not on the distribution list, subscriptions: $12.00 yearly, $24.00 for two years, or $36.00 for three years, payable in advance. Address all correspondence to The St. John's Rem'ew, St. John's College, OccASIONAL DiscouRsEs Annapolis, Maryland 21404. 52 Intellect and Intuition Eva Brann Volume XXXV, Number 1 Winter 1984 59 Beyond the First Hundred Years: Some Remarks on the Significance of Tristan ·Elliott Zuclrcrman 63 In Memoriam John Gaw Meem, 1895-1983 William A. Darkey © 1984 St. John's College; All rights reserved. Reproduction in whole or in part without permission is prohibited. ISSN 0277-4720 Composition: Fishergate Publishing Co., Inc. Printing: The John D Lucas Printing Co. The kind permission of Harper & Raw to use the pictures on pp. 3 and 12 is gratefully acknowledged. ON THE COVER: Johannes Kepler; a portion of Kepler's Epitome of Copernican Astronomy, translated by Charles Glenn Wallis; and an image of the derivation of the number of the planets or orbits about the sun from the five regular solid figures. �ST. JoHN's REVIEW Winter 1984 Student Rebellion and the Nazis: "The White Rose" in Its Setting Beate Ruhm von Oppen I The Rise and Rule of Hitler ere someone to ask why I am giving two lectures in a row instead of the traditional single lecture, I might give as a reason an experience I had some two years ago. It was in May 1970, just after the American incursion into Cambodia, at a university specializing in theology- one that had theology as one of its three main divisions. There was student unrest all over the country and talk of "revolution:' There was something like that going on at that university on the day I spoke there. My subject was the relationship of the Nazis and the churches, a subject, I had been told, of special interest to the people there. But perhaps not on that disturbed day. The question period was dismal; discussion impossible. One questioner got up and asked: "What about student protest?" It was not a sly question; it was quite innocent and proceeded from pure ignorance, such ignorance as I was unprepared for in a middle-aged questioner. So I gave a brief and brutal answer on the history of student protest in Germany: that, indeed, loud and massive and effective protest existed in the period bifore the Nazis came to power, and that the protesters Were Nazis, or at any rate militant nationalists, who exercised considerable pressure on the academic establishment of the Weimar Republicand, incidentally, even more, on that of the Austrian Republic; that once the Nazis were in power, there was W Beate Ruhm von Oppen is a tutor at St. Jolm's College, Annapolis. This article is a slightly revised version of two lectures given at Annapolis on February 18 and 25, 1972. Her publications include &li"gion and Resistance to Nazism, (Princeton 1971); "Nazis and Christians" in "World Politics, vol. XXI, No. 3, April 1969; and "Trial in Berlin" in The College, January 1977. 2 hardly any open protest; and that the first three of the famous group of Munich students who protested in "public" against the Nazi regime and its war were dead within a few days of being caught, the rest following a few months later. A helpful colleague, a theologian and church historian, then jumped into the breach and explained that Nazi Germany was a police state- and what that meant. I must confess I had taken that as read. But the incident showed me that one cannot take it as read any longer and that any description of resistance must start with that which is resisted. Also it could be that a term like "police state;' being misused too much, has lost its meaning and like other such terms ~'genocide;' for instance, or "fascism" or "totalitarianism'~ no longer conveys anything precise or distinct. But meanings and distinctions have to be kept clear, or, if they have been blurred, have to be made clear again, not just for love of pedantry, but for tbe sake of liberty, perhaps of life itself. Lies work best when there is a grain of truth in them. The best precaution against being taken in is the cultivation of the habit of looking for tbat grain of truth and trying to see what has been done with it. Denying or ignoring the grain of truth or the facts of a matter may be magnificent ideology and rousing rhetoric, but that is no defence against the better liar. And Hitler may have been the best liar there ever was. That is one reason why we are having two lectures, the first on the police state or whatever other name one may find more appropriate for Nazi Germany, and the second on a group of students who opposed it and a professor who supported them and died with them. I must take note of two elements of risk in offering such lectures as these, here, at St. John's. Firstly, St. John's does not do "history." It is not one of our liberal arts. We WINTER 1984 �The ji'rst students to be executed. Lift to right, Hans and Sophie Scholl, Christoph Probst, july 1942. read Homer and Herodotus and Thucydides; Virgil and Tacitus; Plutarch and Gibbon; Tocqueville and Tolstoi and Marx. We read quite a lot of political philosophy. We read much that made history, from the Bible to the church fathers to the reformers and debunkers; from Aristotle to Rousseau and Kant to Hegel and Darwin to the documents of American constitutional history. Yet we do not have "history" as a subject, or a disipline. The second risk is rather peculiar to our moment in history, but here, at St. John's, it is probably the lesser of the two risks. The temper of many of the more vocal, more audible and visible of our contemporaries is ahistorical or anti-historical. There is no patience with history. It is regarded as "irrelevanC-unless, of course, disjointed bits of it can be used, torn from their context, as ammunition in some campaign. The two risks may, to some extent, cancel each other out, although they may also reinforce each other. We cultivate, perhaps over-cultivate, rationality here. By "over-cultivate" I mean a development of the reasoning faculty at the expense of other faculties. Here we stand opposed to the temper of our time which is, increasingly, anti-rational-a rebellion against the shallow "functional" rationalism of the mechanised, mass-educating, manipulative age. Our rationalism here, at St. John's, is different- more reflective and comprehensive- and therefore few of us are driven into this reactive irrationalism, in fact most of us are quite good at resisting it. But I often sense a divorce from reality, from human reality; from psychological, political, historical reality. For instance, seminar discussions of Thucydides on the revolution in Corcyra and the attendant linguistic revolution in which "words had to change their usual meanings" tend to be perfunctory: a few contemporary examples of the misuse of words by dishonest politicians or commercial salesmen will be mentioned, but the THE ST. JOHN'S REVIEW discussion lacks feeling, passion -lacks, apparently, experience; I mean: lacks the qllfllity of talk about something one has really experienced; it lacks the conviction that this is something really evil and dangerous- and should be resisted or counteracted to the best of our ability. The raw material of experience abounds. But the mental, including the emotional, engagement rarely seems to take place. I cannot here go into the question of what the reasons for this inattention may be. Quantity of comment on the phenomenon of misused language proves nothing- certainly it does not prove a realization of the seriousness of the matter. Neither does a concern for the purity and impeccability of language necessarily ensure the best politics and the most just and decent polity. But certain peccabilities are more dangerous, more insidious in their effects, than others. The more serious linguistic sins seem to me to be very closely related to the subject at the core of these two lectures: slavery and freedom, the manipulation of men (and women, and children) and the resistance to manipulation -a resistance that is needed at all times and is always fraught with risks and renunciations, but which in bad times may involve the readiness to stake one's life. fter this short introduction, let me begin in a most simple way and speak of the ways in which politics began to impinge on me at the time when things were bad and getting worse. For the students I am going to talk about were roughly speaking my contemporaries, my vintage, belonging to the same "cohort;' as I believe the trade now calls it. 1 We were born at the end of the first World War and did our growing up in Germany. I cannot think back to a time when politics was not in the air. I remember the evidence of food shortages in A 3 �my kindergarten and elementary school days. I remember the feeling of insecurity communicated by all around me when the currency collapsed, that is, when there was not just the sort of inflation we have now, but something that galloped away in geometric or exponential progression, so that, for instance, a lawyer's or doctor's earnings of one day might not be enough to buy a loaf of bread the next day. Some time ago you could see, in the window of an antique shop on our Main Street, an old German 50,000 Mark note, said to have been "used in Hitler's Germany." Perhaps it was used as wall-paper. It might be more accurate to say that it was used- as monry- in pre- Hitler Germany, though I'd hate to refer to tbe Weimar Republic as just that. At any rate it was a specimen of the kind of money that helped to bring about Hitler's Germany. 50,000 Marks now would be worth about $13,000. In "normal" times, 4 marks were a dollar. The date of issue on that 50,000 Mark note was 19 November 1922. The very fact that such a note was printed and put into circulation was, of course, a sign that inflation had got out of hand. In the summer of 1922 the dollar was worth not 4 Marks, but over 100. The next S).lmmer it was worth over 1 million. And by 15 November 1923 it was worth 4 trillion Marks ( 4,000,000,000,000). If my reckoning is right- but you'd better check it-that 50,000 Mark note issued November 1922 was worth one-eighty-millionth of a dollar a year: $1/80,000,000 or 1/800,000 of a cent. That was very cheap wallpaper. But expensive too. What it all meant, among other things, was the pauperization and demoralization of the middle class and the partial destruction of the social fabric. It was in November 1923 that Adolf Hitler, the leader of a tiny party, staged his abortive putsch or coup d~tat in Munich, when he tried for the first time, and failed, to seize power. That year had also seen, in central Germany, communist attempts to seize power; they too were unsuccessful. Hitler was sent to a comfortable prison for a while and used his leisure to write his book, Mein Kampf. When he got out again, he adopted a policy of legality and with that he eventually prevailed. By the time I entered elementary school, in 1924, a new currency had been established and, though scarce, money once more was money. But I noticed that my teachers were not enthusiastic about the political system, though we dutifully and decorously celebrated the 80th birthday of our President. His name was Hindenburg and he had been a famous field marshal in the world war, halting the Russian advance in East Prussia. Being, as it were, a personal link between the old, pre-war empire and the new, post-war republic, and loyal to the new constitution, he was a national figure acceptable to the moderate right and moderate left. And for a decade he lasted as head of state, while chancellors, or heads of government, succeeded each other at a breathtaking rate. The country had many political parties and an election system based on proportional representation, so that votes were distributed across a wide spectrum and a large number of parties; thus governments had to be formed 4 out of coalitions of several parties and were correspondingly shaky and shortlived. I also remember many elections during my school days and reports of violent rhetoric from left and right, as well as physical violence, street fights, murders, assassinations. Then, after the Wall Street crash of 1929 with its world-wide repercussions, there was another economic crisis a mere- six years after the beginning of the recovery from the earlier one, with a growing, an intolerable, rate of unemployment. It grew from 1.3 million in September 1929 to 3 million a year later, to over 6 million in 1931. With a total population of about 65 million, this meant that one in every two families was hit; and unemployment pay was at starvation level. The extremist parties, the communists and the Nazis, made great gains and finally occupied more than half the seats in the national parliament, where they were now able to paralyze the democratic process. They also joined, for instance, in a strike to paralyze the transport system of Berlin. Otherwise they could fight each other to the death, and did, with casualties on both sides, despite the general strategy of the communists at that time to treat the Social Democrats -whom they called "social fascists" for the purpose-as the enemy No. 1 and to flirt with the possibility of a Nazi victory as a promising prelude to a communist takover. Even a school girl couldn't help noticing some of these things: the transport strike, the posters, the polarization, the combination of both extremes against the middle, and the weakness and apparent helplessness of the middle. When President Hindenburg appointed Hitler Reich Chancellor on 30 January 1933, he was acting in accordance with the letter and perhaps even the spirit of the constitution. Hitler's party, the National Socialist German Workers' Party (or "Nazis" for short, to distinguish them from the "Sozis;' or Social Democrats), was by then the strongest party in the country, with about one-third of the vote; tbe Social Democrats had only one-fifth; the communists one-sixth; the Catholic Center Party, together with its Bavarian affiliate, about tbe same. There were many others, but not one of them had as much as 10% of the vote: the largest of them, the Nationalists, 8.8%. Hitler became the head of a coalition government. I still remember seeing the faces of these gentlemen in an evening paper that carried the announcement. No one knew what it meant. I was somewhat scared, for I had read Hitler's book. I had had to do it secretly, at night, with a flashlight under the bedclothes, for my parents, like many other respectable people, regarded it as pornographic. It was very long; and that was probably why very few people read it, though once its author had become the ruler of the land, it was widely and compulsorily distributed, for example, as a present to newly-weds, bound like a bible. But that did not, of ;::ourse, ensure its perusal. Life at school greatly changed in the seventeen months before I left. There was much talk of national solidarity and the Community of the People. There were changes in personnel and in the curriculum. And there was a dramatic rate of attrition. My own class was reduc- WINTER t984 �ed by more than half- probably because girls (it was a girls' school I went to) or their parents thought that since the new regime had set its face against too much academic education for women (who were not to exceed 10% of university enrollment), it was hardly worth struggling through more Latin and trigonometry and all that up to the rather stiff final exam which was normally taken at eighteen. The teaching personnel changed in two ways: there were a few dismissals, of] ews- there were very few Jews at my school. Our English teacher, who was a Jew, was at first said not to be subject to dismissal because he had not only served in the war but had even been wounded in the head; but eventually he left all the same and the next English teacher was less good; and that one was in due course replaced by an even worse one, a teacher trainee. The other change among the teachers ·was a change of tone and colour. A very few revealed themselves as Nazis which, they said, they had been all along but could only now, at last, openly avow to be. (On the whole the school had been vaguely nationalistic, but far from Nazi.) Others toed the new line as best they could and exhibited varying degrees of cravenness or caution or dignity, enthusiasm or moderation or reserve. Many new things were required; the Hitler salute at the beginning of classes, attendance at new national celebrations which proliferated and at which one had, of course, to stand at attention (with upraised arm) as the new national anthem was played and sung, the old marching song of the Nazi movement, with text by one Horst Wessel, saying: "Raise the flag, close the ranks, we stormtroopers march in firm and steady tread. Comrades shot by the Reds and Reactionaries are marching on in our ranks." It was the battle song of the new revolution. So there was all that. And there were changes in such subjects as history and science. Let me take biology, for that is where I had my brief hour of glory. I had not done well with the dissection of tulips and the like. But I shone once biology was converted into race biology. Not only was there Mendel's law, about which my father had told me before (only its implications and application were now rather different from what I had gathered from him), but, and this is where the real-if sinister- fun came in, we now learnt about the German races ~'Aryan;' of course, all of them. There were six, if I remember correctly, ranging in excellence from the Nordic to the East Baltic. Nordic was the best because Nordic man had created almost all the culture there was and he had qualities of leadership. The Mediterranean race was also quite good (for after all there had been ancient Greeks and Romans and there were modern Italians, good fascists, full of leadership). The Mediterranean race could most easily be memorized as a smaller, lightweight, and darker version of the Nordic: what they had in common were the proportions of their skulls and faces (long, narrow skull, long face) and the characteristic way of standing on one leg, with no weight on the other; one standing and one playing leg, as a literal translation of the German names for them would have it. Such legs could be seen in Greek statues and such were the legs of Nordic THE ST. JOHNS REVIEW man. The Falic race was the next best. It shared many of the sterling qualities of the Nordic- highmindedness and the rest- but could be distinguished from it by the fact that it stood, squarely, on two legs. No playleg there. Also its face was a bit broader. That race lacked, somewhat, the fire of Nordic man, or let us say the thumos, but made up for it by solidity and staying power. The colour scheme was fairly nordic: blond hair, blue eyes. So was that of the East Baltic race whose virtues were less marked than those of the Nordic and the Falic and whose features were less distinguished, including a broader skull and a broadish nose. I could not quite make out the use of this race, unless it was, perhaps, territorial, to keep the Slavs out. The Slavs were not a German race. Then there was a German race that looked, one might say, a bit Jewish, or perhaps Armenian, but it was neither. It was Dinaric and seemed to be much the same as What earlier classifications had called Alpine. Indeed this race dwelt in the mountains. It looked sturdy enough, but not as prepossessing as the Nordic; and its head had awkward measurements: Dinaric man had a prominent nose and not much back to his head. But he had a redeeming feature: he was musical. Now all this, of course, was good clean fun and easy to visualize and memorize. Indeed there were visual aids: pictures of well-known personages to help recognition and memorization: Hindenburg for the Falic race, somebody like Haydn for the Dinaric, Caesar for the Mediterranean. Then there was a picture of Martin Luther, the Great German Reformer; I forget what race he was said to represent. To me he looked Slavic. But that, of course, could not be. I suppose he was declared a darker type of East Baltic or Falic. All this was child's play, and this child played it with zest and success. History was harder. One could not inwardly laugh that off and outwardly play it as a parlor game. One had to learn, or appear to learn; appear to make one's own- to some extent, in some way, at least- one had to read, say, and write the things that had been neglected or "falsified" in the Weimar Republic of evil memory, under "the System" ("in der Systemzeit/' as the Nazis referred to it). New textbooks could not be brought out overnight. So we were all given a short brochure on contemporary history, the recent and most "relevant" period of German and European and world history. It started with the German surrender at the end of the world war (there was only one then, so it needed no number), a surrender brought about by trickery abroad and treason at home, by President Wilson's 14-point peace proposal and the stab in the back of the undefeated German army, a piece of treachery committed by Jews, Marxists, and Catholics-feckless folk, with international ties. These traitors then set up their system of abject surrender abroad and iniquity and immorality at home. They accepted the shameful peace treaty of Versailles which not only saddled Germany with sole responsibility for the war (in Article 231, which Germans called the "war guilt clause" or "war guilt lie") 2 but also provided for the payment-virtually in perpetuity-of quite crippling reparations. Germany was unilaterally disarmed (whereas 5 �Wilson had envisaged universal disarmament) and was blockaded by the British- after the cessation of hostilities-to enforce submission, and then, in 1923, invaded by the French, who marched into the Ruhr valley to seize German coal and steel production as reparation payments were in arrears. It was reparations that caused the economic misery during the republican 14 years of shame. Attempts to revise the reparations schedule to make it more tolerable were fruitless and fraudulent. The last revision provided for the spreading of payments until 1988 and the country was dying in the attempt to do the victors' bidding. The nation would have to stand together and rally round the FUhrer- or the "People's Chancellor;' as he was then still called- to throw off the shackles of Versailles. The cover of this brochure had a muscular worker on it, stripped to the waist and bursting his chains. We also learnt about the parts of Germany that had been taken away by the Treaty of Versailles, that dictated peace, and about the Germans who languished under foreign domination. We learnt that German defencelessness was further aggravated by the geographic position of the country: surrounded by hostile powers. Thus a bombing plane could take off from France and fly right across Germany and land in Czechoslovakia, without refueling. The lesson was brought home by air raid exercises. They were not very realistic, but they served to educate. I still remember leading my little troop of classmates to their several homes, staying close to the houses, as instructed, to avoid exposure to imagined falling shrapnel and flying glass. That was in the first year or so of Hitler's power, five or six years before his war. It was useless, of course, as an exercise in air raid precautions; but it was useful for fomenting fear and a spirit of national defence. It also showed that the Czechoslovak Republic, even if militarily it amounted to no more than a well-defended aircraft base, was the power that enabled France- or planes based in France- to bomb the whole of Germany. And in addition- but this point was not given too much prominence until four years later, in the crisis leading up to the Munich settlement which began the dismemberment of Czechoslovakia- in addition the country was a political entity in which six-and-a-half million Czechs held over three million Germans in subjection, as second-class citizens. Clearly the Sudeten region had to be united with Germany. So much for what was taught in class and done in extra-curricular exercises under the responsibility of the school. But there was one other thing I should mention. Schools were obliged to take their pupils to certain films, propaganda films that were being shown commercially. So, obediently, our class went to see the movie "Bitlerjunge Quex;' the story of a Hitler Youth of the working class whose father was a communist and whose mother was long-suffering and tried to cope with conditions and her husband, but in the end committed suicide, by gas, from misery and despair. Quex (who was a very idealized version of an actual Hitler Youth who had been killed) first joined a communist youth group, as was natural in view of his home background. But soon, on a camping excursion, he was so revolted by their beastly 6 ways, that he ran away, ran through the woods, and carne upon the camp of a Nazi youth group which instantly and deeply impressed him as his own and the country's salvation. (It was a sunrise scene, to make sure we all got the point.) Here were shining faces, clean limbs, real comradeship, purpose, discipline, dedication, and hope. So he joined the Hitler Youth and was active, devotedly active, in the distribution ofleaflets and all that; mostly in the poor parts of Berlin that were hard hit by unemployment-as much as the boy's own father. One day, at dawn, the communists took their revenge and his particular personal enemy, a brute of a man, pursued him through the deserted streets -also through the maze of an amusement park, a very effective, macabre, cinematic touch that, and long before The Third Manand finally caught up with him and knifed him. But Quex died for the cause, and when his friends found him, on the point of death, and propped him up, he raised his right arm in a salute to the German future and the camera swung up to the clouds and the sound track into the marching song of Hitler Youth, with the lines "the flag leads us into eternity, for the flag is more than death:' The trouble was twofold: that the film was most effective and affecting (however corny it may sound as I now tell it) and made with terrific competence and with the participation of some very good actors; and secondly that the school was under an obligation not only to take us to it, but also to discuss it with us. So we had our class discussion. I do not remember much about it except for the fact that I decided to play the part of aesthetic and dramatic critic, arguing that, powerful though the movie was, it could have been even better if it had been less black and white (metaphorically speaking), if it had had more nuances, more human diversity and verisimilitude. Why did I take that line? In order not to embarrass or endanger our teacher who was leading the discussion, who, I had reason to believe, was very unhappy about the Nazis, and who was a widow with two children for whom she had to provide. Then there was a film about Joan of Arc, replete with horrors of the Hundred Years' War. It exposed the sadism of the British and the brutality of the Catholic clergy. On that occasion I objected to the screening of atrocities; and that was about as far as one could go and get away with it. Soon after, in the second half of 1934, I got out of the country and cannot speak any further from personal experience about what subsequently became possible and impossible. Now "impossible" is a term that strictly speaking brooks no comparison. So let us look at some of the laws that existed and were passed later, which limited the freedom of expression and of assembly and of organization and action. Whatever laws may exist, and be enforced, it is, of course, still possible to do some of the things that are forbidden; but it becomes less likely that people will do them when the penalties are painful. In a police state they really are inflicted. Actually, Nazi Germany became something even worse than a police state; because Hitler's shock troops, the SS, not only WINTER 1984 �permeated and took charge of the police, but came to have a whole empire and fields of activity to themselves, outside the reach and control of the police and the army. It was the SS that ran the concentration camps and extermination camps and the campaign to improve the health of the nation (or the national economy) by killing the incurable. They were not hampered by the law but acted directly on the Fuhrer's Orders, something beyond the law. B ut I am anticipating. Let me mention some of the early laws that were passed and enforced. The first and most fundamental of them was the Decree of the Reich President for the Protection of the People and the State. It was promulgated on 28 February 1933, four weeks after Hitler had become Chancellor and the day after the burning of the Reichstag building by arson. A young-Dutch anarchist boasted of the deed and was eventually sentenced to death by the Supreme Court. Ostensibly the decree was directed against communist acts of violence. In fact it was used against all who could be said to be endangering the State, including, for instance, members of the clergy who made bold to continue to preach and practise Christianity. It not only tightened up provisions or increased penalties under the criminal code for such offences as treason, arson, the use of explosives, and the taking of hostages. But it also suspended "until further notice" a number of basic rights -and it remained in effect until the end of Hitler's rule. Three weeks later, on 21 March 1933, there was a Decree "for the defence of the government of national resurgence [Erhebung] against malicious attacks:' 3 What the word Erhebung in the title meant and the text of the decree spelt out was that this protection of the law was not only for the government but also for the "organizations supporting it:' It was the protection of government and party organizations against "malice'~ and "malice" was construed to include factual statements that were false or distorted. This decree was very effective in silencing criticism. The Nazis even tried to silence foreign criticismand to some extent succeeded. They had means of pressure and persuasion even abroad. They had hostages at home- for instance the half million German Jews. The one-day boycott ofJewish shops and businesses on 1 April 1933 was presented as an act of retaliation and warning against Jewish-instigated atrocity propaganda abroadwhere sensationalism had, indeed, occasionally got the better of factual reporting. (The more serious consequence of irresponsible reporting was that later true reports of massive horrors met with disbelief.) On 24 March 1933 there was the Enabling Bill, passed by parliament and limiting its rights in favor of the executive. This was the "Law to alleviate the distress of the People and the State:' I am translating the title of the law as best I can- though the German word "Not,') here rendered as "distress" or perhaps I should say "plight?", is another of those many-facetted and multi-level German words, with meanings ranging from "misery" to THE ST. JOHN'S REVIEW 11 emergency." (I won't here go into Wagner's use of the word.) This Behebung (literally: lifting; or alleviation) Behebung der Not von Volk und Staat demanded strong measures and the government's hand was to be strengthened against potential paralysis by parliament. There were still parties in that parliament, though the communists, after having done quite well in the elections of 5 March, were prevented from taking their seats. These elections, now far from free though they were, still only gave the Nazis 44% of the vote. But by mid ;July all other parties were abolished. (It may have had symbolic significance that the "Law against the formation of new parties;' the law instituting the one-party state, was pro- mulgated on 14 July 1933. On the same day there was a law on plebiscites, which could now be coupled with elections. The one-party rule was further buttressed by a law, of 1 December 1933, "to safeguard the unity of party and State:') Meanwhile there were also certain administrative measures and reorganizations. There was something called Gleichschaltung-a term taken from mechanics or electro-mechanics and meaning synchronization or co- ordination, or bringing into line. Gleichschaltung was applied to constitutional and administrative streamlining, as in the laws of March and April 1933, for the Gleichschaltung der Lander mit dem Reich, that is, the coordination of the Liinder, or States, with the Reich, or national government and administration. It was aimed at centralization and the weakening or abolition of powers enjoyed by the states constituting Bismarck's Reich and the Weimar Republic. Perhaps I should add another word to our glossary: Reich. It means realm or kingdom or empire. The Holy Roman Empire was, in German, Das Heil£ge ROmische Reich. It was fmally and officially abolished by Napoleon, in 1806. When Bismarck united Germany in 1871, he founded the second German Reich, or empire. The official name of the Weimar Republic was also Deutsches Reich, but the Nazis did not count that and adopted the name Third Reich to describe their own- though not officially- in _international discourse. But Reich, as I said, could also mean "kingdom;' as in Reich Gottes "the kingdom of God"-and it was this overtone that Hitler played on when, at his first big public appearance after his inauguration as Reich Chancellor, officially, in international discourse. his faith in the German people and the resurrection of the nation and "the new German Reich of greatness and honour and power and glory and righteousness. Amen."4 Yes, he said: "Amen:' It was an allusion to, and a secular usurpation of, the Prostestant ending of the Lord's prayer. 5 Hitler, a lasped Catholic, probably thought references to national resurrection and invocations of power and glory (of the German Reich, not the Reich Gottes) would appeal to the Protestant majority of the country-which was much more nationalist than the Catholics- and whose support he needed. In fact his main support and electoral base was predominantly Protestant. But to return to Gleichschaltung for a moment: it was 7 �not only Liinder that were being coordinated with the Reich, but other organizations were also brought into line, and the term was also used for the change or alignment of orientation or thinking, certainly of all expression of thinking (though this meaning was not in official use, only unofficial; it often cropped up in private comment by critics of the regime). Not only were laws passed for the rigid control of all cultural activities and the press and radio, not only was there a law against "malice;' but all language became subject to "regulation'~ explicit in the ministries and in instructions to editors, but conveyed quite clearly by implication to the general public too. This Sprachregelung was extremely effective and of a thoroughness now almost unimaginable. Even George Orwell can hardly give one an idea of the pervasiveness of it or of the feel of a linguistic universe in which things could no longer be called by their proper names. This was why all forms of non-verbal communication became so very important. Let me give you two examples to illustrate this. Let us take the word "murder:' It was taboo for actions of the government. When, in the bloody purge of the summer of 1934, the Nazis murdered Erich Klausener, the Berlin head of Catholic Action, they announced it as suicide. (Mr. Klein recently gave me the issue of the paper of the Diocese of Berlin reporting Klausener's death. 6 He evidently got hold of it at the time of those turbulent events and kept it for nearly half a century.) The front cover is occupied by Klausener's picture under the title of the paper and the Diocesan emblem, a lamb, with the inscription "Behold the Lamb of God;' in Latin. On the next page there is the announcement of his unexpected death on 30 June 1934 (and everyone knew the meaning of that date), the requiem mass for him in the presence of the Bishop and all the members of the chapter of the Cathedral of St. Hedwig, an address by the Bishop, and the burial of the ashes(ashes)-with all liturgical observances, in consecrated ground. The page after that carries the Bishop's last salute to the deceased, and then there are five more pages of obituaries. Not a word about murder. Not a word about suicide. But the fact that the ashes-the Nazis had evidently thought it wiser to cremate the body-were given Christian burial and that the funeral was a great event in the Catholic diaspora of Berlin, gave the lie to the Nazi version of his death. But such publicity was not to be possible much longer. Ten years and many unnatural deaths later, after the failure of the attempt of 20 July 1944 to kill Hitler and oust the Nazis, there were several series of secret show trials of the conspirators. This may be a contradiction in terms, but I can explain: admission to the trials and reports on them were completely controlled. The "show" aspect is harder to explain, but it was real enough: those trials were filmed and the film was intended to be shown after suitable editing. Very little of it survives after editing by Goebbels and the victorious Allies. The most moving moment in what those two sets of censors and the vicissitudes of war have spared is almost, but not quite, wordless. It comes in a sequence when one of the accused, 8 in order to explain why he took part in the conspiracy, referred to "the many murders'!...-. only to be instantly interrupted in mid-sentence, by the presiding judge, yelling, with pretended incredulity (or perhaps he could really not believe his ears); "Murders?", and then subjecting him to screaming abuse and asking whether he was not breaking down under the weight of his villainy. The accused, as far as I could tell from the film, wanted to treat this as a rhetorical question; but when the judge insisted on an answer, yes or no, paused for a moment and then, quietly, said: "No:' After which there was further loud invective from the judge. 7 The defendant was sentenced to death and hanged. Many were sentenced to death in those trials. But very few were able to say anything so clear and unsettling to the regime as this man with his explicit mention of murders and his final No. What gave it its force was the moment of reflection before. It made his final, considered, monosyllabic rejection of what he had staked his life to fight deliberate and definitive. Such, then, was this careful regulation of language, in addition to the laws circumscribing people's freedom of action and of expression. All the laws I have mentioned were enacted in Hitler's first year of power. I shall just mention a few that came later. President Hindenburg finally died, having been very doddery before, in early August 1934. On 1 August 1934, a law concerning the office of Head of State had been adopted, uniting the offices of President and Chancellor. Hitler now had them both. He instantly ordered a new oath to be administered to the armed forces, sworn personally to the new Commander-inChief, "the Fuhrer of the German Reich and People, Adolf Hitler." In March 1935 there was an armed forces law, introducing conscription. The Treaty Of Versailles had limited the size ofthe German army to 100,000 men and stipulated long periods of service in order to prevent the training oflarge numbers of short-term recruits. It was that small and highly professional army which now served as nucleus of the new. In September of that same year, 1935, the so-called Niirnberg Laws were passed by the Reichstag which was meeting not in Berlin but in the city where the annual party rallies were held. These laws, one relating to citizenship and one to the Protection of German Blood and Honour (this was the wording of the title), deprived Jews of certain civil and social rights, including the right to marry anyone but Jews or to have extramarital intercourse with gentiles. Jews (and other undesirables) had already been eliminated from the civil service by the law for the "restoration of the professional civil service" passed in April 1933. By the way: in 1935 it was still possible for Jews to leave the country. But there was the problem of where to go and how to find a livelihood. This may illustrate it: the American immigration quota for Germany was not fully taken up until1938. After the pogrom of November 1938, that German quota had a waiting list. Professional discrimination and economic disabilities had been increasing before, but it was only the excesses of November 1938- staged after the fatal shooting of a WINTER 1984 �German diplomat in Paris by a young Polish jew-that made it clear that worse might be in store. There was a policy of mounting discrimination, then of segregation and spoliation, finally, during the war, of deportation to the East, and of extermination. But that was not promulgated in a law. On the contrary, it was a state secret and carried out administratively. Most of the victims of that last phase were not German Jews, but Polish, Russian, and other ] ews from all over Hitler's Europe. he expansion of the Reich began with the annexation of Austria in March 1938 and the law bearing the curious title "Law on the Reunification of Austria with the Reich:' What was being united was the country of Hitler's birth and the country he adopted and which adopted him with such catastrophic consequences for itself and for the world. Hitler actually became a German citizen less than a year before he became German Chancellor. The dodge to get him naturalized was his appointment by some of his sympathizers and purely on paper, of course, as a civil servant of the little state of Brunswick, in order to enable him to run in the Presidential election of March 1932, a few days later. The American constitution seems a bit more careful in that respect. There were many Austrians and many Germans who wanted the Anschluss, the joining of the two countries. But the peace treaties after the world war forbade it. Many liberals had wanted it; but perhaps the conditions of 1938 were not the most propitious. Propitious or no, they brought about the Greater German Reich (as distinct from Bismarck's Lesser Germany that had excluded Austria) and a flanking threat to Czechoslovakia. Indeed, that country was dismembered a few months after. All this happened in a state of peace. The state of war did not come about until September 1939 when Hitler, having made a pact with Stalin, marched into Poland, without a declaration of war, but "returning [Polish] fire;' as the official German communique had it. Poland was subdued and partitioned between the Germans and the Russians. France fell the following summer, after neutral Denmark, Norway, Holland, Belgium, and Luxembourg. That was the stage at which Hitler's ally Mussolinijoined in. Hitler failed to invade Britain, but instead invaded Russia in June 1941. Japan and America enter the war in December of that year, over two years after its beginning. It did not end in Europe until the Americans and the Russians met in the middle of Germany in May 1945, and in Asia until two atom bombs had been dropped on Japan, in August 1945. Hitler's strongest card had been the Treaty of Versailles. His initial strength and his support in the period of consolidation of power came from the German sense of national injury and the real grievances. So long as he was juSt seen as the man who was working, by hook or by crook, for the revision or abolition of that treaty, he had support for his foreign policy far beyond the ranks of his own party. People were willing to swallow some of the more distasteful components of his domestic policy T THE ST. JOHN'S REVIEW for the sake of the liberation of the country from the shackles of Versailles. The first move in that direction came during Hitler's first year in power, in October 1933, when he took Germany out of the League of Nations as a protest against continued discrimination against Germany in the disarmament negotiations. He got this step endorsed by a plebiscite combined with new elections- only one party Eow to choose from- and the result was indeed more favourable than the 44% of the previous March, more than twice as good. Before the voting, to show the people and the world that Hitler had the backing of the greatest sages in the land and of the academic establishment, there were declarations of support (entitled, {'Bekenntnisse/J or confessions of faith) from representatives of that establishment, including, for instance, the theologian Hirsch at Gottingen and the philosopher Heidegger at Freiburg, both Rectors of their universities. 8 The declarations were enthusiastic, bombastic, and nauseating. The language in which they were couched was very German and virtually untranslatable. It represents the linguistic abdication of political responsibility and the intoxication with high-sounding and meaningless words; the use of language not in an attempt to get at the truth of a political matter, but to glorify the winds of change or the march of history or the peoplehood of a people or the leadership of such a leader. Done by a Heidegger in quasi heideggerian German, it is a bad thing. But Heidegger soon relented; he may even have repented. As Ernst Nolte, one of his students later turned historian and a great authority on fascism, put it in an essay on the types of behaviour among academic teachers in the Third Reich: "It was not long before Heidegger, with his turn to Holderlin, joined the widespread tenency to retreat from the National Socialist reality ... :' 9 Nolte, incidentally, does not think that Heidegger was so lamentably subject to the prevailing mental climate because of his philosophy. He does not consider the possibility, which I regard as a probability, that Heidegger's lack of mental resistance may have been due to his relationship with language. It is my feeling- however paradoxical it may sound when it is said about a philosopher endowed with so subtle an ear for the vibrations of words- that it must have been his politico-linguistic tin ear that failed to warn him of people who spoke Hitler's language. And he had not read Mein Kampf And the students? One hesitates to generalize, but they were, on the whole, well ahead of the general development, in the vanguard. Nazi students had taken the lead and won the votes in the elections to student organizations long before Hitler seized power and Professor Heidegger said: "Let not theses and ideas be the rules of your being! The Fuhrer himself and he alone is the German reality and law, today and in the future:' 10 1b some extent it is true to say that 11 N ational Socialism came to power as the party of youth." 11 But it is not the whole truth. For this Hirsch-Heidegger syndrome was, unfortunately, significant and fairly widespread. Yet Nazi stu- 9 �dent activism not only followed and accompanied, but preceded it. Youth was in the vanguard of the Nazi movement and revolution. Also the average age of the representatives and leaders of that party was well below that of other parties, a fact from which the Social Democrats, in particular, suffered acutely. They lacked dynamism; the Nazis had it. II The Case of the White Rose he student organizations were captured by Nazi activists long before Hitler and his party captured the chancellorship and command posts of the country and established a police state, or rather something even beyond a police state. What I call the "HirschHeidegger syndrome;' was an intoxication, a passing intoxication, perhaps, certainly so in the case of Heidegger, but none the less real and productive of real consequences at tbe time. In Heidegger's case I have suggested that the loss of sobriety may have been due to the patient's relationship with language, that is, not with his philosophy, but with his failure to test words for their meaning and implication when used in the political context. The appeals by prominent representatives of the academic establishment to the German electorate to vote for Hitler after his first significant step in foreign affairs, leaving the League of Nations, were printed and translated and also disseminated abroad as Bekenntnisse, confessions of faith, in the new Germany and its leader Adolf Hitler. Let me quote you the official preface to this collection of "confessions" by leading academics. I shall quote it in the official translation, for that, after all, was what the wider world read. The translation is a bit funny, but I shall then say roughly what it meant. It was headed "An Appeal to the Intelligentsia of the World" 12 and it began: T All science is inextricably linked with the mental character of the nation whence it arises. The stipulation for the successful scientific work, is, therefore, an unlimited scope of mental development and the cultural freedom of the nations. Only from the co-operation of the scientific culture of all nationssuch as is born from and peculiar to each individual nationthere will spring the nation-uniting power of science. Unlimited mental development and cultural freedom of the nations can only thrive on the basis of equal rights, equal honour, equal political freedom, that is to say, in an atmosphere of genuine, universal peace. On the basis of this conviction German science appeals to the intelligentsia of the whole world to cede their understanding to the striving German nation- united by Adolf Hitler- for freedom, honour, justice and peace, to the same extent as they would for their own. 1 3 There are troubles with the translation of this entire document, of course. It is not very English. For "science;' for instance, read scholarship, or learning. For other words it is harder to substitute English equivalents, for in some cases there are none. The German original of what became the "mental character of the nation" was 10 something called "geistige Art des U!lk£s," and that bristles with difficulties and booby-traps. Not only because the word %lk" had on the one hand its denotation of "people" (and there was and is no other word for that except in a few contexts, such as U!lkslied, where "folk" will do), on the other hand it had connotations of"race." But also a once harmless word like ~~rt," meaning "kind" (or perhaps even "character" as the official translation put it) had ceased being harmless and now had a racial overtone as well, a matter later made quite clear in racial legislation which used the term 1&rtfremd," or alien, to refer to alien blood But the gentle reader abroad could not know this and was probably no more than slightly bemused by the language served up to him in this document and others. What did get across, though, was the plea for equal rights, equal honour, equal freedom- that is: the plea for an end to discrimination against Germany. (It was over the matter of persistent discrimination in the disarmament negotiations that Hitler had taken Germany out of the League of Nations.) This plea for "equality" had a tremendous effect abroad. It really did seem no more than fair, and perhaps even aiming at a more properly balanced international stability (the "genuine, universal peace" of the translation). But also equal rights, honour, and freedom meant allowing Germany to conduct her domestic affairs her own way. That, too, could be presented and seen as no more than the right that either was or should be tbe right of any country. The nation state wasJ after all- and still isthe effective political unit. And it was only a country constituted or re-constituted after the first world war, like Poland, that had SJ;lecial clauses on the protection of minorities, notably jews, written into its peace treaty. 14 But then Poland was a country witb a large Jewish population and a bad history of anti- Sernitism. Germany's Jewish population was small and German anti-Semitism probably no worse than many other people's- indeed until the 1920s Germany attracted Jews from Poland and Russia, because it was such a civilised country. Let me here interpolate something that is in a curious, a mysterious way both central and peripheral to tbe story of Nazi Germany: the part the Jews played in that story. That it should have been peripheral may strike you as odd. But on the practical plane it really was: the otber nations did not go to war with Hitler or fight the Germans to save the Jews. And it is a mistake, a serious mistake, to concentrate on the fate of the Jews in that drama to the exclusion of all else. It is an understandable mistake, because regarded as a people the Jews did have the heaviest losses proportionate to their number. Even the Russians and Poles, whose losses were stupendous, were "only':_ if that word can be permitted -decimated. But of the roughly eleven million European Jews between four-and-a-half and six millionabout half-were done to death by the Nazis. 15 The exact figure is hard to establish. And it is not the thing that matters most. What does matter is the Jewish experience of forsakenness- and that can never be brought horne to nonjews by numbers. But neither must it be allowed to perpetuate Hitler's WINTER 1984 �heresy. What was that heresy? That genealogy is the only true theology: that it is by the blood of a "race" that we are saved or damned. That whole sad chapter of history has been vulgarized ·in a number of ways. The saddest of them is the vulgarization that falls into Hitler's own trap, his own way of publicly presenting or misrepresenting what he was really after: the vulgarization that sees that conflict as one of jews and gentiles, or '1\ryans" as the Nazis called them; or as one ofJews and Christians. That last mistake even the Nazis did not make: on the contrary, they were so concerned to dechristianize the gentiles -with Hitler, of course, as the new saviour of the gentiles- that one of the forms their attack on Christianity took was to treat it as a Jewish thing and therefore to be rejected by the Germans. One can even take this further. Hitler, the great liberator, once said to one of his followers who later left him, perhaps because of this dictum and all it stood for: "Conscience is a Jewish invention?' 16 Hitler was out to remove the invention and its inventors. This makes it clear, or at least strongly suggests, that behind the "racial" struggle stood a more fundamental one: a war of religion: not of Christianity versus Judaism, but of a new heathenism against the Jewish and Christian faith and tradition. That was the central significance of the Jews in that drama, as central as that of the relationship of Jews and Christians; and of Christians- the nominal and the other kind- to Christianity and to humanity. I t is dangerous and inadvisable to call any twentieth century war a "crusade?' Yet there was the unmistake- able element of godlessness in Hitler's Germany. And perhaps crusaders were never totally innocent champions of the faith. However just the cause, all war, especially modern war, is fraught with guilt and at least incidental injustice. The dilemma is inescapable. Nor do I think pacifism a way out. Some wars have to be fought. But those engaged in them should not lose all sense of the limits of the necessary and the permissible. In January 1943 Roosevelt and Churchill, meeting in North Africa, announced the demand for unconditional surrender. It meant that they wanted to announce to the world, and especially to their Soviet allies, that they would not negotiate peace conditions, such as, for instance, a cessation of hostilities in the West while Germany went on fighting on her Eastern front. I will not here go into the wisdom of that proclamation or deal with the clarification contained in Churchill's explanation two years later of what it meant and what it did not mean. 17 The doctrine was delivered at a juncture in the war when the German Africa Corps was at last being driven back, West, from Egypt and the Suez Canal not to return again but soon to surrender in Tunisia. Europe was groaning under the German yoke and the Nazi policy of coercion and extermination was in full swing. The British and American air forces were bombing Germany very heavily. The German advance in the East had been halted at Stalingrad and the remnants of the German Sixth Army were to surrender there a few weeks later. The Russians were THE ST. JOHN'S REVIEW still bearing the brunt of it, but the war was at last turning on its hinge of fate, to use Churchill's term. It was after the Stalingrad surrender and, I think, before that in Africa- though it may have been after that too- that we who were engaged in what was grandly called "political intelligence" in London heard of an event in Germany that was as surprising as it was heartening. (It was probably the beginning of my henceforth abiding, some might say obsessive, interest in what enables people to resist pressures in our difficult century.) A group of students in Munich had been executed for anti-Nazi propaganda. Their death was very sad, of course, but it also lifted our spirits. Here was a group of young people who from childhood or adolescence up had been subjected to Nazi conditioning, to Nazi education and organization; and yet they had turned against the regime, knowing full well the risks involved. What we learnt subsequently was that they had not just done it when Germany seemed to be losing the war but had started many months before. This group called itself "The White Rose" and seemed at first to have sprung up out of nowhere. But we soon learnt more. We even saw some of their prose. One of their leaflets had been smuggled out to neutral Sweden and from there conveyed to England. More details of the undertaking and end of these five students and one professor reached us via Switzerland; these reports were not always accurate. That is how legends grow. The heart of the matter, however, was not a legend but the encouraging truth that even in the most oppressive circumstances the spirit of freedom and justice may manifest itself- indeed that it bloweth where it listeth. Little by little, over the years, over the decades, the facts were established. After the war the University of Munich put up a memorial to its most intrepid professor and students and gave their names- or the names of two of them- to its Department of Political Science, and the city named streets, squares, and schools after them. Both Germanies put them on postage stamps. Collectively they had adopted the mysterious name of White Rose and headed the leaflets they printed and distributed secretly "Leaflets of the White Rose;' Blatter der Weissen Rose. The blooming of that Rose was brief: its preparation long. As for its after-effects-who is to say what they were or may be? The one woman among those sentenced to deatha girl of 21, her name was Sophie Scholl- had a dream the night before her execution and told it to her cell-mate: On a sunny day I was carrying a little child in a long white dress to be baptised. The way to the church led up a steep mountain. But I held the child firmly and securely in my arms. Suddenly there was a crevasse in front of me. I had just enough time to lay the child down on the other side before I fell into the abyss. Sophie tried to explain this dream to her cell-mate: "The child is our idea, which will prevail despite all obstacles. We were allowed to prepare the way; but we must first die for it:' 18 Willi Graf was the last of the six to die. 19 His sister 11 �in a diary her brother had kept in 1933- the first year of Hitler's power, when Willi was fifteen-where it stood suddenly, all by itself, in the midst of boyish descriptions of youth group meetings and excursions: It was this sentence: "But be ye doers of the word, and not hearers only." She then goes on: Ever since 1934 the conflict with National Socialism had been a burning problem for Willi and his friends. The question What should we do against it?' became the cardinal point of their thinking. Even the question of tyrannicide was discussed one night at their Easter meeting in 1934 ... .The friends were agreed that it was not enough to be indignant in small closed circles. ("They discuss;' she quotes Willi's comment on a visit by relatives, "the usual stuff, see the dangers, but think they have to stick it out;" and she then continues:) He wrestled with these problems, just because he inclined far more to a contemplative life and habitually subordinated politics to metaphysical values. He was not a dynamic person; on the contrary, he liked to keep his reserve and loved order. But the constant occupation of his thoughts with "our situation" (as he called the definition of his own and his friends' attitude to their time) fmally put him on the path that seemed to him inevitable. The determination to let his inner attitude result in action grew slowly but steadily. When the war started, Willi said from the outset that it must and that it would be lost. This conviction separated him from many people, even from some of the friends of his youth who believed they had to defend their fatherland at all costs. His inner loneliness increased more and more, and especially when he was drafted in January 1940 and started training in a medical unit in Munich. 20 Sophie Scholl. says that he ''was not a dynamic person." That is probably what makes him the most impressive of the six to me. Let me give you her phrase in its context, and in her words: Willi was not a political type of person in the superficial sense. He had no natural inclination to revolutionary action. But when intellectual freedom of choice is not guaranteed, or development in accordance with one's own inner law, or the ability to be simply human; when a_ regime on the contrary negates all this and enforces forms of thinking and of life which keep violating human dignity most deeply: then a young person with sound instincts and a sense of watchfulness and faith will rebel. If he is moreover plucky and prepared for a sacrifice and is confirmed and encouraged by likeminded friends, then he must actively resist such enslavement and finally become an antagonist of the spirit of the times. Thus Willi was driven to the role of having to rebel quite against his own disposition. And then she quotes the sentence which stands as motto over the whole short memoir of her brother. It is taken from the First Epistle of James, verse 22. She found it 12 After his final arrest, Willi Graf himself was asked by the Gestapo, the secret police, to give them an account of his life. And this is what he told them: He was born in 1918, in the Rhineland. In 1922 his family moved to the Saar. His father became a manager in a firm of wine wholesalers. Willi had two sisters. The family led a comfortable, though frugal, life. Religion was the center of the children's education and they were taught to respect parents and superiors. Willi's father was a man of probity in his professional and private life and demanded the same of his children. He was severe when Willi showed signs of dishonesty or disobedience. Willi's mother was affectionate and totally dedicated to her children and the welfare of her family. Willi was initiated into the observances and life of the church at an early age, and the seasons were filled with the spirit of religion. (By that, I suppose, he meant that he experienced the seasons consciously as parts of the church year.) At the age of ten, Willi was sent to what the Germans call a humanistisches Gymnasium, that is, a high school teaching Greek and Latin. His special interests were German literature, religion, and later Greek and music; also geography and history. He liked to construct things in his free time, worked on light and bell systems, and tried to understand the mysteries of radio. He liked to go walkiog, especially in the summer vacations, came to know and love his country, and became a lover of nature. During his last years at school, he had a chance to visit faraway places in Germany, Italy, Yugoslavia, and he relished the experience of distant lands WINTER 1984 �and of different people with other customs. The precious memories of these walking tours would sustain him throughout the rest of the year. His mother opened the eyes of her children, when they were still quite young, to the social and economic sufferings of others. He was taught to do without certain things so that a poorer child could benefit. He occasionally accompanied his mother on charitable missions. 2 1 The actual phrase Graf used in his draft autobiography for the Gestapo was: "Thus I learnt the significance of personal charity:' He was clearly trying to stress the contrast to the political approach of the Nazis to "the common good?' The document-his police autobiography- is characterized throughout by two things: the judicious omission of certain incriminating features of his biography of which I shall speak later; and the equally judicious inclusion of statements .intended to educate his enemies or at least to put on record the convictions that animated him. By "omissions" I mean, for instance, the discretion observed on the precise nature and circumstances of those walking-tours: they were undertaken-at some risk- by a very close-knit illegal youth group. By the attempt to educate his enemies I mean references to "personal charity;' or religion- even the appreciation of strange peoples and their ways. This brief life then continues: Willi says of himself Willi Graj in uniform. THE ST. JOHN'S REVIEW that he always had a great need for fellowship and had close friendships with playmates and schoolmates. This was what led him to join the Catholic youth organizations to which he belonged for many years and where his interest in religious and literary questions was further developed by likeminded companions. His religious and ('ideological" development was fairly unproblematic. He grew from the childlike notions formed at home and in his first religious instruction into the greater world offaith, in whose doctrines he felt secure and protected. Even violent and long discussions with boys who thought differently could only endanger this security temporarily, but not in the long run. 22 Willi's (police) autobiography continues: In November 1937 he went to the University of Bonn to study medicine. Since the summer of 1935 he had been determined to become a doctor, because, he said, he thought that would give him the best opportunity to help others. "This seemed .to me;' I am translating verbatim now, "the most beautiful task, giving, as it does, a chance to put into practice the commandment which to me is the most compelling of all, to love my neighbor. But I also worked on philosophical and literary questions in order to continue my intellectual education and to make firmer the structure of my religious views."2 3 (Actually his sister says that if it had not been for the Nazis, Willi would have gone into philosophy or theology, not into medicine; and that he only chose that subject of study because it was relatively free from ideological interference; yet that does not make Willi's statement to the Gestapo a lie; it was merely less than the whole truth; and it gave him a chance to remind his captors of a commandment they also learnt as children, only perhaps less well. Even the mention of the year 1935 as the year in which he decided to study medicine in order to help his fellow-men may have been deliberate: that was the year in which the Saar territory, detached from Germany by the Treaty of Versailles, had the plebiscite envisaged by that treaty and voted to rejoin Germany. Willi and his friends had observed developments in Germany with growing alarm; but until 1935 they had been free from the pressures to which the inhabitants, not to say the inmates, of the Reich were subjected.) He read a lot, Willi continues in his official autobiography, especially modern German writers and theological and philosophical works. He had time for active sports and the enjoyment of music. I shall quote the end verbatim too: "During these years I experienced the smaller and larger conflicts between the church and offices of the state and party and could not understand them, because no state can have permanence without religion .... All order is from God, be it the family, the state, or the people:'24 This young man of twenty-five knew more clearly and firmly what even the boy of fifteen had known when Hitler began to destroy the old order to build his own New Order, an order without God-but with the new idols of race and people, and with the divine Fuhrer himself something between prophet and deity. Lutherans had greater trouble discerning and opposing the ungodly nature of this new civil authority. 13 �But let us have a few more facts of Willi Grafs life. They come from his surviving sister, from friends, from letters and diaries. He belonged to a Catholic youth organization until it was suppressed, and then he belonged to an illegal successor organization. He would not make concessions to associates he considered faithless. When he was fifteen, in 1933, he struck off from his address book names of boys who had belonged to his group and who were now in the Hitler Youth. He refused to join the Hitler Youth, although he was threatened with nonadmission to the final school exam, the precondition of university entrance, unless he became a member. An early arrest in January 1938- there were numbers of arrests for activities in illegal youth groups-was terminated by an amnesty to celebrate the annexation of Austria. 25 The autobiography he wrote for the Gestapo after his later arrest was, of course, not only aimed at not in- criminating himself, but also at not incriminating family and friends. Those years of semi-illegality were a good training in careful formulation. And his circumspection was combined with fortitude. He was kept alive for months after the execution of the others, because the investigating authorities hoped to get more facts and names and leads from him by threats; he never obliged them. So finally, on 12 October 1943, they beheaded him too. He had been a careful reader and given to writing things down that impressed him. With friends he trusted he loved to discuss the most serious questions passionately and thoroughly. The legal and later illegal youth groups also had given members much training in the endurance of physical hardship and developed their resourcefulness and stamina. In fact, Willi became exactly what Hitler wanted his boys, the Hitler Youth, to be; the Fuhrer had put it in winged words that Nazi youth leaders were forever quoting: "Tough as leather, swift as greyhounds, hard as steel:' (Well- Hitler actually said "Krupp steel.") But there was one vital difference: Willi Graf combined these qualities with a mind of his own and an unshakable faith. A greyhound is a dog, though a very noble kind of dog. You can condition the reflexes of a dog. You can condition the reflexes of human beings too. But you should not try to make men into nothing but conditioned reflexes. And these are the chieflessons of the Nazi period to me: how terribly manipulable people are, especially in our twentieth century; but also that there are limits to this manipulability. And there is a rider: we must help to set the limits and defend them. Back to Willi Graf, though. He began his medical studies in 1937. In January 1940 he was called up and trained in a medical unit in Munich. This transfer separated him from his old friends. He. served in Germany, on the Channel Coast, in Belgium and France, Croatia and Serbia; fmally in Poland and Russia. In April 1942 he got study leave and returned to Munich. Apart from his medical studies, he worked in philosophy and theology and took an increasing interest in liturgical questions and in psychology. When there was time, he did some fencing. He joined the Bach Choir and went to concerts whenever he could. It was then, looking for new friends, that he got to 14 kuow a brother and sister, Hans and Sophie Scholl, and their friends Christoph Probst and Alexander Schmorell. With them- the men were all medical students on leave from the army and Sophie a student of biology and philosophy and musical psychology- he met Professor Kurt Huber who taught philosophy and musical psychology. They were all agreed in their opposition to the Nazis and shared many interests, chiefly in writing that mattered; and- despite their different denominations- they were united by shared Christian convictions. Jointly they came to the conclusion that they ought to engage in active propaganda against the Nazis and that this should first take the form of leaflets. 26 his may be the moment to describe the very different route by which Hans Scholl reached that point. If the group had a ringleader, it was Hans Scholl. He was what is described as a "dynamic" person. Born in 1918, the same year as Willi Graf, he was the son of a small town mayor. But later the family moved to a bigger town, Ulm. They had three daughters and T two sons, of whom Hans was the elder. They were Pro- testants, the Mother probably more pious than the father. I am not sure what their politics were, only that the father was opposed to the Nazis from the outset. Later he also spent some time in jail for this opposition. I do not know what form this opposition took. I only know that he called Hitler "the scourge of God:' That may have been what did it. But it was long before, at the very beginning, that Hans Scholl, finding his father's disapproval of this great new Movement reactionary, decided to join the Hitler Youth, and his broth:er and sisters followed him. 27 Ten years after Hitler had come to power, Dietrich Bonhoeffer, a Protestant theologian opposed to the Nazis- he later died on the gallows- wrote of the great masquerade of evil. He said: "For evil to appear disguised as light, beneficence, historical necessity, and social justice, is simply bewildering to anyone brought up in the world of our traditional ethical concepts; but for the Christian who bases his life on the Bible, it precisely confirms the radical malice of evil."28 It may seem strange now, but the masquerade was very effective. And the younger Scholls were swept away by the idea of a real people's community, the social justice and equality promised by Hitler, and they joined the march of history. In doing that, Hans Scholl was not unlike many other young Germans opposing their hidebound parents. It was not the Bible that showed Hans Scholl the error of his ways. To that he only came much later. What first put him off was the fact that the fellowship of the Hitler Youth had an element of regimentationsomething of the Gleichschaltung I mentioned before. His surviving elder sister mentions an incident that gave her-momentarily-to think; but the moment passed. She writes: We were taken seriously-taken seriously in a quite remarkable way-and that aroused our enthusiasm. We felt we belonged to a large, well-organized body that honoured and embraced everyone, from the ten-year-old to the grown man. We sensed WINTER 1984 �Ham Scholl. that there was a role for us in the historic process, in a movement that was transforming the masses into a Volk. We believed that whatever bored us or gave us a feeling of distaste, would disappear of itself. Once a fifteen-year-old girl, after we had gone to lie down under the wide, starry sky at the end of a long cycling tour, said, "Everything would be fine, but this thing about the Jews I just can't stomach?' The troop leader assured us that Hitler knew what he was doing and for the sake of the greater good we would have to accept certain difficult and incomprehensible things. But the girl was not quite satisfied with her answer. Others took her side, and suddenly the attitudes in our varying home backgrounds were reflected in the conversation. I spent a restless night in that tent, but in the end we were just too tired, and the next day was indescribably splendid and filled with new experiences. The conversation of the night before was for the moment forgotten. In our group there developed a sense of belonging that carried us safely through the difficulties and loneliness of adolescence, or at least gave us that illusion. 29 One awkward feature about Inge Scholl's book, if I may say so, is that she hardly ever gives a date for anything. But this must have been an early incident, earlier than the Niirnberg Laws-let alone the pogrom of 1938 or the deportations that started in the war. It probably took place about the time when nothing much was being done yet about the Jews, apart from verbal and pictorial vilification and the removal from the civil service. THE ST. JOHN'S REVIEW But it is another matter she mentions as an early cause of her brother's discontent. He liked to sing and he sang to his troop, accompanying himself on the guitar. What did he sing? The songs of the Hitler Youth. (I have studied their official song book-edition of 1941-and was amazed to find many good songs in it, and not the bad one I was looking for, about 'jewish blood spurting from the knife:') But Hans also sang foreign songsNorwegian or Russian, or something like that. His leaders forbade it. He disregarded the prohibition. They threatened punishment. He got. depressed. But there was a great experience in store for him. He was to be the flag bearer for his troop at the big annual Party Rally in Niirnberg. He went with high hopes; and came back disillusioned. The full implications of the regimentation-not only of the Hitler Youth, but of the whole show, all of German life as the Party clearly intended to form it in its own image -all this had now come home to him. And there was the occasional book his leaders would not let him read, because the author was a Jew, or a pacifist. But the final break came after a promotion: Hans now had the rank of Fiihnleinfohrer (which meant being in charge of 150 or so boys.) His troop had designed and made a banner for itself and showed up with it at a parade before some higher-ups of the Hitler Youth. A boy of twelve carried it. A superior Hitler Youth leader demanded its surrender. There were to be no private flags or emblems. The boy stood firm. He stood a bit less firm when the surrender order was given for the third time. Hans intervened. He stepped forward and slapped the Hitler Youth superior. That was the end of his career in the Hitler Youth. His subsequent membership in an illegal youth group ended in arrest and some weeks in jail. But he too, like Willi Graf, benefited from the postArnchluss amnesty. Gradually all the young Scholls heard of disturbing events, of things happening to people they knew. They now asked their father about the meaning of some of this and it seems that old Scholl did call things by their proper names and even disabused his offspring of the notion -very widespread in all those dreadful twelve years-that whatever horrible things might be happening, they were the doing of wild or mean or sadistic subordinates or local potentates or toughs-and that the Fuhrer did not know about them. The father explained to his children that this really was unlikely. Hitler knew. Their father also tried to explain how such a man could come to power. (I don't suppose he found it any easier than I do.) Finally it seems that he told his children that he wanted them to be free and upright, whatever the difficulties. That, at last, bridged the generation gap whichlike many another gap- Hitler had exploited so skillfully. It also sent Hans back to the sources, the foundations. Rilke was not much help, neither was Stefan George, or another poet HOlderlin; nor was Nietzsche. Hans finally found Plato and Socrates, the early Christian authors, Augustine and Pascal; and the Bible, whose words, as his sister says, now acquired for him a new 15 �Professor Kurt Huber. Christoph Probst. and surprising significance, an overwhelming relevance and immediacy, and an undreamt of splendour. He was a student of medicine now. And the war came. After a while he was drafted for a medical unit and served in the French campaign. Then he was sent to Munich as a soldier-student, a member of a military student unit. It was a strange life, commuting between barracks and the university and the clinic. And all this in a steadily worsening political climate, with oppression growing harsher every day, and more and more becoming known-piecemeal and not always reliably-about the crimes of the regime. It was mimeographed copies of a sermon of the Catholic Bishop of MUnster against "euthanasia;' the secret killing of incurables-which, however, could not be kept altogether secret, since it was carried on inside Germany- it was Bishop Galen's public sermon about this crime, his denunciation of it as not only immoral but also illegal, a sermon preached in a remote part of Germany, but disseminated throughout Germany in typed and mimeographed copies- secretly, of coursethat made Hans Scholl think of leaflets as a possibility. He was relieved that someone, at last, had spoken, openly. And, it seemed, such open speech could be spread. He was not alone. In particular, he had a fatherly friend and mentor, Carl Muth, the former editor of a Catholic monthly, Hochland, now suppressed -whom he had met in an almost accidental way and whom he thenceforth saw almost daily, learning all the while, and growing clearer and stronger. There were others too. The underground intellectuals of Munich- middle-aged or older men most of them, whom the Nazis had eliminated from public life-were an impressive bunch. They included such people as Theodor Haecker, author of a book on Virgil and translator and exponent of Newman and Kierkegaard. '' 16 Alexander Schmorell. And there were friends among the students, especially among the military-medical students. The closest among them was Alexander Schmorell, son of a Russian mother whom he lost as an infant and who was then brought up by a Russian nurse after the family's flight to Germany, where his father married again and became a wellknown physician. Alex had a great and romantic love for Russia, which he shared with his friends. Then there was Christoph Probst, the only one of them to be married, a very young father of two children, with a third on the way. Finally there was Willi Graf. Sophie Scholl came to Munich to study biology and philosophy in the spring of 1942, when she had just turned 21. She was three years younger than her brother Hans. She had had to do her labour and war service before being allowed to become a student. Her philosophy professor was the man mentioned earlier, Kurt Huber. He was a somewhat strange man, but, as far as the Scholls and their friends were concerned, the best man in the university. They all went to his lectures on Leibniz and his Theodicy. They got to know him better outside the university, too; and he introduced them to other people. They met for readings and discussions. In the early summer of 1942 the first leaflets turned up. Hans Scholl had started them, and he had been so discreet that even his sister at first did not know he was connected with them until she saw a marked passage in a book he had. It was a passage in Schiller's essay on the legislation of Lycurgus and Solon and was clearly the source of part of the first leaflet. This had had long quotations from the essay and included a passage whose contemporary relevance was pretty plain. It described the legislation of Lycurgus as a political and psychological masterpiece, indeed admirable- unless looked at in human terms. Its very perfection and durability then became a matter for regret. The longer such a state exWINTER 1984 �isted, the more harm it did. It sacrificed all moral sensibilities and severed all human ties and did not just countenance slavery but required its cruel enforcement. The Spartan code abolished natural rights and morality and treated men as means not ends. Such a republic "could endure only if the mental development of the people was arrested, and thus it could maintain its existence only if it failed to fulfill the highest and only true purpose of political government." 31 This first leaflet had begun with the words: open and befouled the whole body. The majority of former opponents went into hiding, the German intelligentsia fled to a dark cellar, there, like night-shades away from light and sun, gradually to choke to death. Now we stand at the end. Now it is our task to find one another again, to enlighten each other, never to forget and never to rest until even the last man is persuaded of the urgent need of his struggle against this system. When thus a wave of rebellion goes through the land, when 'it is in the air; when many join the cause, then in a last mighty effort this system can be shaken off. After all a terrible end is preferable to an endless terror. Nothing is so unworthy of a civilized nation as allowing itself to be "governed" without opposition by an irresponsible clique subject to base instincts. It is surely a fact that to-day every honest German is ashamed of his government. Who among us has any conception of the immensity of the shame that will befall us and our children when one day the veil has fallen from our eyes and the most horrible of crimes- crimes that infinitely exceed all measure-reach the light of day? If the German people are already so corrupted and decayed in their inmost being that they do not raise a hand and, frivolously trusting in a questionable law of history, yield up man's highest possession, that which raises man above all other creatures, if they surrender free will, the freedom of man to seize and turn the wheel of history in accordance with rational decisions; if they are so devoid of all individuality, have already gone so far along the road toward becoming a spiritless and cowardly mass-then, then indeed they deserve their downfall. 32 The leaflet went on to speak of the murder of Jews-300,000 in Poland it said-and of Poles, and of the need for more than compassion. Doing nothing constituted complicity. If they tolerated these things, Germans were guilty. Now that they had recognized the Nazis in their true colours, Germans had the duty to destroy them. 33 The third leaflet discussed forms of government and utopias- the highest of them, it said, being the City of God. The present state was a dictatorship of evil. Something had to be done about it and cowardice must not hide behind a cloud of prudence. Only passive resistance could be offered, but that must be offered wherever possible. It was not military victory over Bolshevism that must be the prime concern of Germans, but on the contrary the defeat of the Nazis. There were suggestions for various forms of sabotage, though no blueprint for general action could be given and everyone should use what opportunities offered in whatever way seemed best. This leaflet concluded with a quotation from Aristotle's Politics, a passage on tyranny. 34 The fourth leaflet had an appeal to Christians to attack evil where it was strongest. It was strongest in the power of Hitler. The leaflet had a quotation from Ecclesiastes and one from the German poet N oval is on Christianity as the foundation of peace. It also had a postscript, assuring the reader that the White Rose was not in the pay of any foreign power, adding: "Though we know that National Socialist power must be broken by military means, we are trying to achieve a renewal from within!'35 Then there was a long hiatus: for the men were sent to Russia during the long vacations between semesters. What they saw in the East confirmed them in their resolve. Hans saw Jews in labour gangs. All saw the miserable conditions prevailing in Poland. All fell in love with the Russians. When they returned to Munich in November, they resumed their secret work with redoubled energy and it became quite feverish. There were two more leaflets, the last a special appeal to students. It began with the shock produced by the staggering German defeat at Stalingrad. The students, the "intellectual workers;' should not allow themselves to become the tools of the regime, but put an end to it. A recent incident at Munich university had shown that the students could stand up to the Party. The nation was looking to the students. It ended, "Our people are rising up against the National Socialist enslavement of Europe in a fervent new breakthrough of freedom and honour:'36 The incident referred to had in fact been spectacular There were six leaflets in all, in thousands of copies. They were distributed anonymously and secretly. Those, many of them, that were sent through the mails, were mostly posted in the cities to which they were sent, in order to avoid any hint to the police that Munich was the headquarters of this activity. Risky train journeys were undertaken by several members of the group to take leaflets to cities like Stuttgart, Augsburg, Vienna, Salzburg. Willi Graf even took a duplicating machine to a friend in the West and recruited friends and sympathizers and collaborators where he could. Recipients were assured that their names had simply been taken from telephone directories- to free them of the fear that they might be on some list and thus exposed to punishment. The leaflets usually had quotations towards the end of their text, as this first one had Schiller on the lawgivers. The second leaflet began: It is impossible to engage in intellectual discussion with National Socialism because there is nothing intellectual about it. It is false to speak of a National Socialist philosophy [Weltanschauung], for if there were such a thing, one would have to try by means of analysis and discussion either to prove its validity or to fight it. In reality, however, we have a totally different picture: even in its first beginnings this movement depended on the deception of one's fellow man; even then it was rotten to the core and could save itself only by constant lies. After all, Hitler states in an early edition of ''his" book (a book written in the worst German I have ever read, and yet it has been elevated to the rank of a Bible in this nation of poets and thinkers): 'It is unbelievable to what extent one must deceive a people in order to rule it! If at the start this cancerous growth in the nation was not too noticeable, it was only because there were still enough forces at work that operated for the good, so that it was kept at bay. As it grew larger, however, and finally attained power ... the tumor broke THE ST. JOHN'S REVIEW 17 �and encouraging; but it had also been unique. The Nazis saw to it that it remained unique. At the 4 70th anniversary celebrations of the university, the Bavarian Gauleiter had addressed a crowd of about 3,000 students, many of them in uniform, on the meaning of the event and of the place of students in the German struggle. As for women students, he had no objection to their occupying places at the university, but he did not see why they should not present the Fuhrer with children, for instance a son for every year at the university; if they were not attractive enough to get a man by their own efforts, he'd be glad to send one of his adjutants to each one of them and they could be assured of an enjoyable experience. At this there was unrest in the auditorium. Women students in the gallery stood up, prepared to leave. They were stopped. The other students, especially those in uniform on the ground floor booed so much that the Gauleiter had to interrupt his speech. Later he did speak on, but the spell was broken and he kept being interrupted. He was furious and gave the order for the women students to be held in custody. The leader of the Nazi student organization demanded a voluntary identification of the women protesters upstairs. Twenty-four identified themselves and were arrested at once. The SS pushed the other students out of the auditorium. When they emerged from the building they found all the rest of the men students standing outside, like a wall, giving them an ovation. They had stood there for over an hour. In groups they broke through the cordon, got inside, seized the Nazi student leader, beat him up and held him as hostage until the women were set free. At that moment the police arrived. The students also turned on the police and fought their way through into the city. But some of them were arrested. The atmosphere, however, was electric. Students of the most diverse disciplines suddenly found themselves acting together. And suddenly all were friends; and the population of Munich was on their side. The Gauleiter called another meeting a couple of weeks later and threatened to close the university if peace and order were not restored. The men would be sent to the front, the women into the factories. But he also apologized for his earlier speech. Those who had been arrested had been set free. Clearly the students had won this round. But it was to be the only round. It may even have led to the end of the White Rose. The Scholls and their friends were, of course, immensely heartened by this experience of spontaneous solidarity against a foulmouthed party functionary. But they may have overestimated the permanent potential that could be mobilized against the Party. In any case they now became bolder. They wrote things on the walls of Munich in the night: "Down with Hitler;' and "Freedom." They managed not to get caught doing this. They were armed to shoot their way out if necessary. 37 But on 18 February 1943 Hans and Sophie took a suitcase full of copies of the last leaflet to the university, spread them about in corridors and on the stairs while lectures were in progress and doors closed, and finally 18 threw the rest down the centrallightshaft from an upper floor. The janitor saw them and took instant action to apprehend them. They were arrested and taken away. That was on a Thursday. Their trial, together with that of Christoph Probst, was on the following Monday. It was conducted by the People's Court and they were sentenced to death and beheaded the same day. 38 There were four days between their being caught and being executed. Graf, Schmorell, and Huber were also arrested and tried, together with eleven others, in mid-April. The sentences ranged from acquittal to death. Three women students, for instance, got prison sentences for failing to report treasonable activities. 39 Graf, Huber, and Schmorell were sentenced to death, Huber having already been expelled from the Faculty of the university by his colleagues. He had also been deprived of his doctorate 40 In the case of the first three, incidentally, the Scholls and Probst, there had been an assembly of the student body, called by the Nazi student organization, on the evening of the day on which the three were executed, to denounce them and to declare the loyalty of the student body to the Fuhrer and the National Socialist Movement. Attendance, again, at least according to the report of the District Student Leader, was about 3,000.41 The parents of Graf and Schmorell asked for clemency. Hitler personally turned down the request. 42 Huber's publisher asked for a stay of execution, to enable his author to finish his book on Leibniz, arguing .that it would redound to the greater glory of German culture. He was allowed to work on it in his prison cell until July, but he did not finish his book before they took him to the guillotine. 4 ' (There were about twenty of them in use in Germany at that time.) In attempts to get him to implicate a friend, Willi Grafwas subjected to considerable pressure and threats of a more painful death. He resisted to the end and was the last to die, in October of that year. 44 Inspired by the example of the White Rose, othersin Munich, Hamburg, and elsewhere- tried to carry on similiar activities. Eight more paid with their lives, in 1944 and 1945, out of more than sixty who were arrested and imprisoned. About thirty were involved in Munich and about fifty in Harnburg 45 The other groups were more heterogeneous and seem to have lacked the Christian core and cohesion and fortitude of the White Rose. 46 should like to sum up in two sentences what the story of these students seems to me to show: In order to recognize manipulation and to think not only analytically but also constructively about politics, they needed Plato and Aristotle and suchlike authors. To find the courage and strength needed to stand up to the power of the manipulators, they needed faith. But here is a postlude, on a matter closely connected with the subject of language, rhetoric, persuasion, and faith. The five students of the White Rose all sang in the Munich Bach Choir, until the end. One day I hope to be able to find out what they sang. But I can imagine I WINTER 1984 �what kind of thing it was. It was not all Bach but it was all serious music, I am sure, music whose words mattered. What you let out of your mouth always matters, of course. At a time when language has become debased, corrupted, meaningless or prohibited, what you sing matters even more. It would be interesting to know what the Nazis allowed to be sung. I know that Handel was censored- some of Handel. Willi Graf went to two performances of Messiah in December 1942, his last advent season. After the first occasion he wrote in his diary that it was an indescribable experience. What impressed him were the faith and piety behind the work. He went again, though the second time there was standing room only. Again he was deeply impressed, especially by the aria, "I know that my Redeemer liveth:' He mentioned it again in a letter to his sister- they had heard it together- his last letter, dictated to the prison chaplain before his execution. 47 But Bach is much more powerful with his words than Handel, and I just wonder what the Nazis did with cantatas and motets, or, for that matter, with the Magnificat- music that, for instance, mentions God's servant Israel. Could they allow it to be sung when they had decided to force every male Jew to have the middle name "Israel" on his papers? This was for purposes of identification and segregation, like the later edict forcing all Jews to wear the yellow Star of David on their clothes. Could the Nazis allow choirs to sing "Sing unto the Lord a new song, and his praise in the congregation of saints. Let Israel rejoice in him that made him: let the children of Zion be joyful in their King ... ?"That is Psalm 149, verses 1 and 2, which Bach set in his motet "Singet dem Herrn ein neues Lied." Or could they permit, even in Latin, the singing of Luke 1, v. 54-55: "He has helped his servant Israel, in remembrance of his mercy; as he spoke to our fathers, to Abraham and to his seed forever;' seeing how Bach hammers home the "Abraham" in his Magnificat and spreads the seed throughout the · ages? Could the Nazis allow such words to be sung, especially when they were set in such persuasive and memorable ways? Or did they insist that only songs to the new lord or idol should be sung and those that did not too explicitly conflict with the new idolatry? I do not know all the relevant deliberations of the Ministry of Propaganda or the Ministry of Education or the Reich Chamber of Music. They were"the controlling bodies for that kind of thing. But I know, for instance, that at one of his staff conferences in April 1942, Dr. Joseph Goebbels, the Minister of Popular Enlightenment and Propaganda, explained that he prohibited a broadcast of the Mozart Requiem the previous December because ((its very sombre and world-negating text would have had a bad effect on morale in the exceptionally serious situation then prevailing"; adding that this was, however, an exceptional case. One could not, he said, "destroy or regard as non-existent the earlier cultural achievements of a people just because the content of these cultural achievements" ran ((counter to a new ideology'' and he explained ('that a distinction must be made between a historical approach and enjoyment of the cultural THE ST. JOHN'S REVIEW achievements of earlier periods on the one side and the development of one's own ideology on the other."4B The bodies charged with ideological control must have weighed the risk of dangerous Christian indoctrination on the one side against the risk, on the other side, not only of jettisoning the German cultural heritage, but also of making the anti-Christian character of the regime too clear. With the churches under pressure and severely circumscribed in what they were permitted to do and say, and persecuted, and prosecuted, when they exceeded those limits, concert halls and choral societies were obvious places where the old creed could still be fostered surreptitiously. Lest you think that I overestimate this factor, let me give you three examples, two on the Christian side, one on the Nazi side. A brother of Dietrich Bonhoeffer, not a particularly churchy man, was in a Berlin jail under sentence of death. When the only surviving brother who was still at liberty (Dietrich, too, was in prison) visited his brother Klaus and said how nice it was that Klaus could hear, in his mind's ear, the music of the Matthew Passion when he read the score he had in his prison cell, Klaus said: "But the words also! The words!"4 9 Willi Graf recorded in his diary on 7 December 1942 (the day, incidentally, after that first Messiah) that he spent the first part of the evening singing in the Bach Choir. He thought it went quite well and added: "The words of the Christmas songs and of the Schutz motet have their special meaning. It is good to be able to do such things:'50 Another thing he did right up to the end was to prepare and perform church liturgies with his friends. 51 Despite the soldiering and the medical studies and the secret political work, he found time and clearly felt a need for it. The Nazis, on the other hand, made children, and grownups, sing songs for their Movement and for .Germany, and dinned into all the doctrine that there was and would be no Germany but Hitler's Germany. And the boys who had innumerable times sung the words "Germany, here we are; we consecrate our death to thee as our smallest deed; when death comes to our ranks, we shall be the great seed;' were, of course, singing something plagiarized from Tertullian, a perversion of Tertullian, who said that the blood of the martyrs is the seed of Christians. These child martyrs were sacrificed, and sacrificed themselves, for the fatherland up to the last minutes of the war, manning the anti-aircraft guns and fighting the Russians at the approaches and in the streets of Berlin- fifteen and sixteen year-olds formed into local battalions. As a surviving female Hitler Youth leader put it: ''They wanted to make true the vows of their songs?' 52 However relaxed Goebbels may have sounded in that Propaganda Ministry conference in 1942, the internal intelligence network of the SS never relaxed its vigilance where the churches were concerned and kept complaining about "church music as a means of denominational propaganda?' "Denominational" meant roughly what in America is sometimes called "Sectarian." The word was used instead of "Christian;' which was what was really meant. The fiction, which was very strenuously main- 19 �tained, was that the Nazi Party and Movement- which in its official Party Program, promulgated in 1922 and never carried out, had subscribed to something nebulous called "Positive Christianity" 53 (a matter I shall be glad to enlarge upon if asked)- the fiction was that the Nazis wanted above all to unite all Germans and therefore had to fight the divisive activities of the Protestant and Catholic "denominations." But in this Security Service report from which I have quoted, as in others, it is crystal clear that what they were in fact fighting was the Christian faith itself, and any attempt to foster it. This report, in October 1940, complained of the systematic expansion of perfomances of church music all over the Reich, both in churches and in concert halls. These events, the report said, were of high quality and very popular, made most effective propaganda for the churches, and were apt to call forth ovations from the audiences that amounted to demonstrations. 54 In April 1943, a long report on church influence on the young had a special section on the dastardly use the churches were making of singing as a vehicle of Christian education. 55 In January 1944, another long report on liturgical reform and the extra-mural promotion of church music mentioned the fact that in Alsace, for instance, the Protestant church was systematically replacing sentimental hymns of the 19th century by musically more valuable chorales of the time of the Reformation. Even brass music was being revived in the reform movement. 56 All this caused great and, I think, justified concern to the watchdogs of the regime. What they did not say, perhaps did not even realize (like the deaf adder that stoppeth her ear), 57 was that brass in church music did not just add to the fun, but has a rousing and invigorating effect; they may not have known that the chorales of the time of the Reformation were not just musically superior to the soppy stuff of the Romantic era, but textually too. The Germans had begun before any other people to sing hymns in their own language. When Luther came, he not only translated the Bible, creating something that is worthy to stand beside the English ''Authorized Version" (the American "King James Bible") but also, being very musical, made the chorale into a most important and powerful vehicle of the new persuasion, making congregations sing. He put a lot of Catholic Latin hymns into German and wrote more himself. Since then the Protestants in Germany have always had the better hymns than the Catholics- until both declined in the century of Beethoven, Schubert, and Wagner. When the crucial conflict with the neo-pagan movement approached and during the crisis itself, most musical Christians, but especially the Protestants, realized they needed more to sustain them than the spineless songs of the nineteenth century. They needed words and music that really meant something. And whereas the Catholics were largely preserved from apostasy by the clarity of their doctrine and the prescribed observances of their faith, many Protestants may be said, I think, to have been pulled out of their initial confusion not only by some of the more clearheaded and courageous parsons and laymen and laywomen, but also by a return to the truths proclaimed in 20 Bible and Hymnal. And perhaps even wordless music, provided it is pure, has some such power. 5 8 Kurt Huber, this professor of philosophy, also taught- and wrote on- music, both the physiology and psychology of hearing and music, and, his special love, folk music, the real rooted stuff- that was in fact being rooted out, trampled underfoot, by "the march of history;' by this mass movement that called itself"volkisch:' Though physically somewhat handicapped- he had had infantile paralysis- he went to great lengths to hear and preserve what still existed of such music. A companion he once took on a musical mountain trip to a rather inaccessible part of the Bavarian Alps, to hear the yodeling of the dairymaids there, reports that when they had left and had already gone a certain distance, these women sent a kind of farewell yodel after them. Huber stopped in his tracks, asked his companion for writing material, and jotted down the yodel in figured bass notation. As he did so, tears of emotion streamed down his face. 59 I think I know what that emotion was. It was the emotion that made Victor Zuckerkandl speak of "the miracle of the octave" and on which, if I understand him aright, St. Thomas Aquinas bases one of his proofs of God, the one from "governance:' That may be an odd one to think of when the world was-and still is-so visibly out of joint. All the more moving, I would say, to hear or see an example, a representation, or symbol of that governance, to hear the pre-established harmony. 1. See, for instance, Peter Loewenberg, ''The psychohistorical origins of the Nazi youth cohort, The American Historical &view, volume 76, No. 5 (December 1971), pp 1457-1502. 2. The Treaty of Peace Between the Allied and Associated Powers and Germany (with amendments) and Other Treaty Engagements, signed at Versailles, June 28, 1919 . .. Part VIII was on Reparation. Its Section I (General Provisions) started with Article 231 which read: "The Allied and Associated Governments affirm and Germany accepts the responsibility of Germany and her allies for causing all the loss and damage to which the Allied and Associated Governments and their nationals have been subjected as a consequence of the war imposed upon them by the aggression of Germany and her allies." 3. The word Erhebung, here translated as "resurgence:' can also mean uprising; other senses are uplift, elevation, elation. It is in this latter sense that T. S. Eliot used it in 1935~unfortunately, I think-in the second movement of "Burnt Norton:' the first of his Four Quartets: Erhebung without motion, concentration Without elimination . 4. Max Domarus, ed., Hiller. Reden und Proklamationen 1932-1945. Kommentiert von einem deutschen Zeitgenossen .... (Munich, 1965), p. 208. 5. Compare this tastelessness and blasphemy with the editing of a sentence in John Kennedy's inaugural address, which went through many drafts. The first draft had a sentence that ran: 'We celebrate today not a victory of the party, but the sacrament of democracy." In the final text this became: "We observe today not a victory of pai'ty but a celebration of freedom." The blasphemy was edited out. (Theodore C. Sorensen, Kennedy [New Yock, 1966], p. 271.) 6. Katholisches KirchenblattfUr das Bistum Berlin, XXX, No. 28 (15 July 1934). WINTER 1984 �7. A copy of the film, what remains of it, can be seen and heard at the National Archives in Washington. A partial transcript of the trial also survived. For one relevant fragment, see Volksgerichtshofs-Prozesse zum 20, Juli 1944. Transkripte von Tonbandjunden. Herausgegeben vom Lautarchiv des Deutsehen Rundfunks (April, 1961), p. 122; for another see Gert Buchheit, Richter in roter Robe: Preisler, Priisidenl des Volksgerichts!wfes (Munich, 1968), p. 247. 8. Bekenntnis der Professoren an den deutschen Universitiiten und Hochschulen zu Adolf Hitler und dem nationalsozialistischen Staat. Uberreicht vom Nationalsozialistischen Lehrerbund Deutschland/Sachsen (Dresden, n.d.), pp. 13-14 and 36-37 (Heidegger) and 15-17 and 38-40 (Hirsch). 9. Ernst Nolte, ~zur 'I)rpologie des Verhaltens der Hochschullehrcr im Dritten Reich;' Aus Politik und Geschichte, Beilage zur Wochenzeitung "Das Parlament," B 46/65 (17 November 1965), p. 11; now reprinted in Ern~;t Nolte, Marxismus, Farchismus, &Iter Kn'eg, (Stuttgart, 1977) where the passage "Heidegger als Paradigma'' comes on pp. 147-8; there is also a translation, by Lawrence Krader: Marxism, Fascism, Cold Jililr (Atlantic Highlands, NJ., 1982) where the article appears on pp. 106-120 under the title "Behavioral Patterns of University Professors in the Third Reich" and "Hcidegger as Paradigm" on pp. 116-7. For a series oflectures on the subject of the German universities in the Third Reich, given at the University ofMmllch, see Die deutsche Universitiit im Dritten Reich. Acht Beitriige (Munich, 1966). Fritz Leist, one of the contributors, who discusses possibilities and limits of resistance at universities, knew Willi Graf well and helped him and the White Rose group. 10. Karl Dietrich Bracher, The Gennan Dictatorship. The origins, structure, and if.fects of National Socialism. Translated from the German by Jean Steinberg. .(New York, 1970), p. 268; it is a quotation from Heidegger's Rectoral Address, Die Selbstbehauptung der deutschen Universitiit (Breslau, 1934), pp. 22 ff. 11. Walter Z. Laqueur, Young Germany. A history of the German youth movement (New York, 1962), p. 191. 12. The word "intelligentsia'' was a very odd one to usc in the context. It was meant to translate "die Gebildeten" which has such presumptuous overtones of educational elitism and self-satisfaction that it is hard to find a real English equivalent for it. Funny, all the same, that the-linguistically somewhat primitive-translators should opt for a word of Russian origin which was at best a loan word in English and should have been anathema to all good Nazis, on whom it was incumbent to despise intellectuals, but to at least appear to look up to Bildung. Perhaps they thought that only Germans had Bildung, others merely had intellect, that evil thing. 13. Sec Note 8. 14. Treaty of Peace between the United States of America, the British Empire, France, Italy and Japan, and Poland, signed at Versailles, June 28, 1919-especially Articles 2, 3, and 7-12. Also the letter, dated June 24, 1919, addressed to M. Paderewski by the President of the Conference transmitting to him the Treaty to be signed by Poland under Article 93 of the Treaty of Peace with Germany. 15. For the most comprehem·ive treatment of the subject see Raul Hilberg, The Destruction of the European Jews, (Chicago, 1961). 16. Hermann Rauschning, Hitler Speaks. A Sen·es of Conversations with Adolf Hitler on his &al Aims (London, 1939), p. 220. The quotation went on: "It is a blCmish, like circumcision:' There is no need to rely on Rauschning alone. In his table talk, too, Hitler presents himself as the great liberator from the J udeo-Christian slave morality and as heir of the Roman Emperor Julian (the Apostate), the Austrian Emperor Joseph II, of Voltaire and Nietzsche. 17. Cf. Beate Ruhm von Oppen, ed., Documents on Germany Under Occupation 1945-1954 (London: Oxford University Press, 1955), pp. 1 and 31. 18. Inge Scholl, Die Weisse Rose (Frankfurt, 1955), pp. 101-102. For an American version see Inge Scholl, Students Against 1jranny: The &sistance of the White Rose, Munich, 1942-1943. Translated . by Arthur R. Schultz (Middletown, Connecticut, 1970). 19. This account of his life is largely based on Gewalt und Gewissen. Willi Graf und die "Weisse Rose." Eine Dokumentation von Klaus Viclhaber in Zusammcnarbeit mit Hubert Hanisch und Anneliese Knoop-Graf (Freiburg, 1964). 20. Ibid., pp. 24-25. 21. Ibid., pp. 37-38. 22. Ibid., p. 38. 23. Ibid., pp. 38-39. 24. Ibid., p. 39. 25. Ibid., pp. 18-19. 26. Ibid., pp. 25-27. THE ST. JOHN'S REVIEW 27. What follows is largely based on the book by his surviving sister, Inge Scholl, Die Weisse Rose (see note 18). 28. Dietrich Bonhoeffer, Widersland und Ergebung. Aufzeichnungen aus der Haft. Herausgegeben von Eberhard B.e_thge (Munich, 1964), p. 10. cf. Letters and Papers from Prison. Revised editioll:-Edited by Eberhard Bcthgc (New York, 1967), p. 2. 29. Scholl, pp. 15f. 30. Christian Petry, Studentcn aufs SchafotL Die WezSse Rose und ihr Scheitern (Munich, 1968), pp. 36-42. For Haecker's observations on the war years see Theodor Haecker, JD.g- und Nachtbiicher 1939-1945 (Munich, 1947). There is an English translation by Alexander Dru: Journal in the Night (New York, 1950). 31. Petry, pp. 153-155. Translation of Schiller taken from Frederick Ungar, ed., Friedrich Schiller. An anthology for our Time. In new English translations and t!te on'ginal German . . (New York, 1959), p. 219. 32. Petry, p. 153. 33. Ibid., pp. 156-158. 34. Ibid., pp. 159-161. 35. Ibid., pp. 162-164. 36. Ibid., pp. 164-167. 37. Ibid., pp. 98-101. 38. Ibzd., pp. 175-183 for text of indictment and press notice about trial and execution. Also Students against ?Jranny (see note 18), pp. 105-118 and 148, for translation of indictment, sentence, and press notice. 39. Ibid., pp. 119-137 and Petry (note 30), pp. 195-211 for text of sentence. 40. Ibid., pp. 219-220. 41. Ibid., pp. 220-221. 42. Ibid., p. 211. 43. Clara Huber, ed., Kurt Huber zum Gediic!ttnis. Bildn1S eines Menschen, Denkers und Forschers, dargestellt von seinen Freunden (Regensburg, 1947), pp. 30-32. 44. Petry, p. 136. 45. Thorsten Miillcr, "Der Duft der Weissen Rose; die erste historisch-kritische Untersuchung der Affiire Scholl: cin redlichcr Versuch" in Die Zeit, 14 March 1969. 46. Petry, p. 138. 47. Gewalt und Gewissen (see note 19), pp. 87, 89, and 123. 48. Willi A. Boelcke, ed., The Secret Conferences of Dr. Goebbels. The Nazi Propaganda War 1939-1-3. Translated ... by Ewald Osers (New York, 1970), p. 234. 49. Eberhard Bethge, Dietrich Bonlwif/er, Man of Vision, Man of Courage. Translated from the German by Eric Mosbacher, Peter and Betty Ross, Frank Clarke, William Glen-Doepel. Under the editorship of Edwin Roberston (New York, 1970), p. 832. 50. Gewalt und Gewissen (see note 19), p. 87. 51. Ibid., pp. 89-93 and 95. 52. Melita Maschmann, Fazit. Kein &chifertigungsversuch ... (Stuttgart, 1963), p. 159. 53. Walther Hofer, ed., Der Nationalsozialismus. Dokumente 1933-1945. (Frankfmt, 1960), pp. 30-31. 54. Heinz Boberach, cd., Berichte des SD und der Gestapo iiber Kirchen und Kirchenvolk in Deutschland 1934-191-1- (Mainz, 1971), pp. 466-468. 55. Ibid., p. 801. 56. Ibid., pp. 877-880. 57. Psalm 58 (57), verse 4. 58. Willi Graf clearly felt something of the sort when he made the following entry in his diary, on 21 January 1943, after hearing two cello suites by Bach: "This music has a tremendous seriousness and with it a structure of a kind rarely encountered elsewhere. It tells of an order of which at one time a man was capable. We can only receive it for a future which is going to be quite different." (Gewalt und GewzSsen-see note 19-p. 94.) Compare what Stravinsky Wrote when he attacked the notion of music as "expression": ''The phenomenon of music is given to us with the sole purpose of establishing an order in things, including, and particularly, the coordination between man and time. To be put into practice, its indispensable and single requirement is construction. Construction once completed, this order has been attained, and there is nothing more to be said. It would be futile to look for, or expect, anything else from it. It is precisely this construction, this achieved order, which produces in us a unique emotion having nothing in common with our ordinary sensations and our responses to the impressions of daily life." (Igor Stravinsky, An Autobiography (New York, 1962), p. 54. 59. Kurt Huber (sec note 43), p. 113. 21 �The Christian Origin of Modern Science Alexandre Kojeve Translated by David R. Lachterman "The Earth is a noble star." Nicholas of Cusa, De docta ignorantia, II, 17 Translator's Preface Alexandre Kojive (1902-1968) is probably best known to the readers of The St. John's Review as the author of the influential book Introduction a la lecture de Hegel, Paris 194 7; 1968, 2 abridged English translation: Introduction to the Reading of Hegel, trans. James H Nichols, Jr., New York NY 1969,· of the essay, rrThe Emperor Julian and His Art of Writing," in Ancients and Moderns. Essays on the Tradition of Political Philosophy in Honor of Leo Strauss, ed. Joseph Crospsey, New York 1964, pp. 95-113; and of the section 117};ranny and Wisdom," in Leo Strauss, On Tyranny, New York 1963,2 pp. 143-188. In addition he wrote a three-volume study of the history of ancient philosophy, Essai d'une histoire raisonnE:e de la philosophic paienne, Paris, 1968-1973, with a posthumously published sequel, Kant, Paris 1973. Most recently a manuscript dating from 1943 has been published under the title Esquisse d'une phE:nomE:nologie du droit. Expose provisioire, Paris 1981. The essay translated below appeared in a two-volume collection celebrating the work of his fellow-Russian and compatriot in exile, the d~'stinguiShed historian of science Alexandre Kf!)Jri: Melanges Alexandre Koyr€:, II: L'Aventure de !'esprit, Paris 1964, pp. 295-306. The reader might be aware of KoJJve's gift for the "canularesque," a 1Jlut-on,'' as we might call it. David R. Lachterman teaches philosophy at Vassar College. His translation of Jacob Klein's The World of Plrysics and the "Natural" World appeared in the Autumn '81 issue of The St. John's Review. 22 ew historical facts give rise to as much controversy as the connection between modern science and technology, on the one hand, and religion, namely, Christian theology, on the other. To be convinced of this we need only confirm that the incredible strides m,ade by modern technology clearly presuppose a theoretical science with a universal mission, a science allowing the possibility of presenting all perceptible phenomena to the naked eye or to the armed [arme] eye as visible manifestations of invisible relations and as manifestations corresponding, in an absolutely rigorous fashion, not to human speeches of any sort, but to mathematical formulae or functions referring to these phenomena in an exact way. We can, if we wish, call this science "mathematical physics." However, it then becomes important to make precise that this "physics" is not limited to some part of the universe or to some of its particular facets; supposedly, it must and can cover, without any exception, everything which can be observed (that is, seen, at least in the final analysis.) No one will disagree that this mathematical physics with its universal mission was born in western Europe in the sixteenth century and that it cannot be found at any other time or in any other place. No doubt, we can find some small portion of it in our own day everywhere in the world. However, it remains no less true that it is only to be found when Christianity is present, if not as a religion, then at least as the civilization we have no reason not to call "Christian." No doubt, it is not only the absence of baptism that prevented and still prevents savages from devoting themselves to mathematical physics. But what prevented the subtle Chinese thinkers from doing so, the thinkers who imposed upon enormous masses of people a highly differentiated and extremely refined civilization? Why F WINTER 1984 �didn't the Indians, who benefitted from the Hellenistic arts and sciences and in turn made many other peoples the beneficiaries of those, why did they never try to surpass the exiguous limits of their heritage? How did it happen that many great Jewish thinkers, who very much wanted Judaism to have a share in certain intellectual efforts of the civilized pagans, never attempted to contribute anything at all to the development of those ideas which could some day become a science in the strict sense? And the Arabs- not prevented by Islam from actively contributing to the development and propagation of the Hellenistic civilization they were the first to renew-why didn't the Arabs try to mathematicize, for example, the chemistry they discovered, instead of being content to assimilate and perfect only the pure or celestial mathematics of the Ancients? In short, no non-Christian people was able or wanted to surpass the limits of Hellenic science. Now, the fact is that the Greeks, who did not want or were not able to pass beyond the limits of their own science, were all pagans. Since it is difficult to maintain that the Greeks were pagans because they did not do mathematical physics, it is necessary to suppose (unless we claim that civilization is a chaos of completely unrelated elements) that they were not able to work out such a physics because they wanted to remain pagans (unless we admit, something which would be perhaps misplaced in the present volume, that Hellenic science and pagan theology are independent, but complementary, manifestations of one and the same phenomenon, which would have a non-discursive character since it would belong to the domain of action). Now, in my opinion at least, this assertion is much less of a put-on [canularesque] than it might seem at first sight. No doubt, in order to take this assertion completely seriously, we would first have to agree about exactly what "classical" Paganism is, or more precisely, about the theology that served as the back-cloth to Greek philosophy from Parmenides to Proclus and, hence, whether one wishes it or not, to Hellenic science as .a whole. But, in view of the clear impossibility of arriving at such an agreement, I shall content myself with saying briefly what Paganism would have to be for the assertion at issue to be acceptable, if not accepted. In opposition to Christian theology, 11classical" pagan theology would have to be a theory of the double transcendence of God. In other words, it is not enough for the pagan, as it is for the Christian, to die (in certain suitable conditions) in order to find himself face-to-face with the Divinity. Even when he disencumbers himself totally of his body (something of which the Christian, moreover, has no need), the pagan is stopped in midcourse in his ascent towards God by a screen which, if not opaque, is at least impassable, a screen, if one wishes, which is ''divine" in the sense of trans-mundane or supraterrestrial, but in relation to which the god properly socalled is still and remains forever transcendent. The theos of "classical" paganism is not only beyond the world where the pagan lives. This theos is still irremediably beyond THE ST. JOHN'S REVIEW the 'Beyond' to which the pagan can eventually gain access after his death. By departing from the earth the pagan is never on the path which could bring him close to his God. It matters little, moreover, whether this screen which is thought to separate God from the world where the pagans live and die is constituted, as it is for Plato, by an ideal utopi~p_ Cosmos or, as it is for Aristotle, by the ethereal heaven of the planets and the stars, a heaven without any precise position in infinite, empty space, but nonetheless itself quite spatial. What matters in both of these cases is the absolute impossibility for the pagan as well as for his god of breaking through this ideal or real barrier. For, if the theory (contemplation) of the Platonic cosmos noetos or the Aristotelian ouranos is a summit which pagan man could not outstrip, neither in his lifetime nor after his death, these same Ouranos and Cosmos are also for him the extreme limit of the possible manifestations or incarnations of his god. With the two exceptions of what is in no place at all and what is in the heavens, everything in the world of the classical pagans is everywhere and always profane. Now, if the theos of classical theology is the nunc stans of a point-like eternity or the uncountable, unique, all-embracing Whole, the transcendent world where this theos manifests or incarnates itself cannot be other than a well-ordered ensemble of rigorous relations, fixed from eternity among eternal and exact numbers (it makes little difference whether these are the ordinal numbers that Plato seems to assign to each of the Ideas or the cardinal numbers which measure the radii of the Celestial spheres in Eudoxian-Aristotelian cosmology).* Inversely, in relation to this world which is still, or already, divine, the profane world where we live (it makes little difference whether it is the totality of the cosmos or only the sublunary portion of the cosmos) could not sustain truly mathematical or mathematizable relations. Far from being one or formed of orderable or denumberable unities, this profane world is constituted by fluctuating elements, which, whether they divide themselves incessantly in an indefinite manner or transform themselves insensibly everywhere and always into their ''contraries;' are by definition purely qualitative. Thus from the point of view of classical pagan theology, we can find "mathematical laws;' that is, precise and eternal ratios, only where there is no matter at all, or at the very least, where this matter is only a pure ether inaccessible to the senses. From the point of view of this theology it would be impious to search for such laws in the gross and vulgar matter of the sort which constitutes the living bodies which serve us temporarily as prisons. And this is why for convinced pagans such as Plato and Aristotle the search for a science such as modern mathematical physics would be not only a great folly, (as it would be for all the civilized Greeks, who, because civilized, were predisposed to occupy themselves with the *See Kojeve's Essai d'une histoire raisonnie de la philosophic patenne, Tome II, pp. 96~ 100; 298-300 for further discussion of the character of numbers in Plato and Aristotle. 23 �sciences,) but also a great scandal, exactly as it was for the Hebrews.' Let us admit that a believing or convioced pagan cannot do mathematical physics. Let us also admit that it is not sufficient, in order to do mathematical physics, not to be pagan or to stop being one, inasmuch as conversions of pagans to Buddhism, to Judaism, or to Islam have not been very fruitful from the scientific point of view. But is it really necessary to be or to become Chnstian in order to be able to devote oneself to mathematical physics? At first glance we would be tempted to answer "No." On the one hand, for almost fifteen centuries Christian civilization did very well without mathematical physics. On the other hand, the promoters of modern science were not, as a general rule, particularly well viewed by the Church. However, these two arguments do not resist even slight examination. First of all, even if the fifteen centuries in question were incontestably Christian, Christianity was far from haviog penetrated all the regions of cultur~ in this epoch. No doubt theology and, to a certain degree, morality (if not law) were quite quickly Christianized (the Christianization of theology itself, besides, was by no means complete). But, if we can see, for example in Gothic style, the first specifically Christian art (because willfully contrary to the "nature" of wood and stone), we ought not to forget that it took more than ten centuries before it came about. As far as philosophy is concerned, the enormous effort of the entire Middle Ages had, if not as its goal, at least as its result, to rediscover more or less authentic (and therefore pagan) Platonism and then Aristotelianism which the fathers of the Church were only too ready to neglect in favor of their new, authentically Christian theology, authentic, that is, for the most part (at least if we abstract from the patently, if wellintentioned, N eo-platonic aberrations of an Origen or a Marius Victorinus, and indeed, the put-ons which Damascius published under the name of Dionysius the Areopagite* * or the ironic writings of the classical philosopher Clement of Alexandria). And the situation was almost worse in regard to science properly so-called. The Church, rightly and effectively preoccupied, before everything else, with preserving the purity of the faith, that is, the authenticity of Christian theological dogmas, surveyed the sciences and philosophy with a rather distracted (and often far from competent) eye, so that paganism quickly came back into its own. This distraction of the responsible ecclesiastical authorities sometimes went so far as to bring them to defend certain incontestably pagan philosophical and scientific theories against apparently good Christians who wanted to Christianize those theories. Whether one likes it or not, the promoters of modern science were neither pagans nor atheists, nor antiCatholics as a general rule (and they were the latter only **See Essai d'une histoire, Tome III, pp. 526-527 for the attribution of Pseudo-Dionysius' works to Damascius. 24 insofar as the Catholic Church seemed to them still taioted with paganism). These savants were combatting Scholasticism in its most developed form, namely, Aristotelianism restored to all of its pagan authenticity, whose incompatibility with Christian theology was clearly seen and clearly shown by the forerunners of the new philosophy (which, starting with Descartes, tried for the first time to become Christian itself and which became so effectively by and for Kant.) In short and at least in fact and for us, if not for these forerunners themselves, it is because they, in th,eir quality as Christians, fought against science insofar as it was pagan that the various minor, mediocre, and great ('Galileos" were able to elaborate their new science, which is still "modern" because it is our own. Even while admitting that modern science was born from a conscious and voluntary opposition to pagan science and while affirming that an opposition of this sort appeared only in the Christian world relatively late and only in certain social milieus, we can ask ourselves what particular dogma of Christian theology is, in the last analysis, responsible for the (relative) mastery that Christian peoples (and they alone) exercise today on atomic energy (a mastery, appearing in the period of the end of history, which can contribute only to the prompt reestablishment of paradise on earth, without ever doing any harm, physical harm at least, to anyone whomsoever). To answer this question, it seems enough to survey rapidly the great Christian dogmas of the unicity of God, creation ex n£h£lo, the Trinity, and the Incarnation, neglecting all the others (in any case, derivative or secondary and even reflecting, in certain cases, after-effects [ sequelles] of Paganism). Now, as for monotheism, its responsibility is clearly irrelevant, since we find it in a pure state both among developed pagans as well as among Jews and Moslems, who are irremediably backward from the scientific point of view. As for creationism, since we also find it in an authentic form in judaism and in Islam, it is certainly not responsible for modern science. Nor, moreover, is the doctrine of the Trinity, of which pagan (N eo-) platonism is far from being completely unaware and which, even among Christians, is more an incitement to "mystical" introspection or to "metaphysical" speculation than to the attentive observation of sensible, corporeal phenomena or to experiments with these. 2 There remains the dogma of the Incarnation, which is, furthermore, the only one of the great dogmas of Christian theology which is, from the point of view of historical reality, at once authentically and specifically Christian, that is, proper to all Christian thinking and to it alone.' If, therefore, Christianity is responsible for modern science, the Christian dogma of the Incarnation bears exclusive responsibility for this. Now, if this is truly the case, history or chrono-logy are in perfect accord with "logic:' In fact, what is the Incarnation, if not the possibility that the eternal God can be really present in the temporal world where we ourselves live, without thereby los- WINTER 1984 �ing any of His absolute perfection? But, if being present in the sensible world does not lessen that perfection, the reason is that this world itself is (or, has been or will be) perfect, at least in a certain measure (a measure, furthermore, that nothing prevents us from establishing with precision). If, as believing Christians affirm, a terrestrial (human) body can be "at the same time" the body of God and therefore a divine body and if, as the Greek savants thought, the divine (celestial) bodies accurately reflect eternal relations among mathematical entities, then nothing any longer stands in the way of searching for these relations in the world here below just as much as in the Heavens. Now, it is precisely to such a search that more and more Christians, beginning in the sixteenth century, passionately devoted themselves, followed afterwards by some Jews, Moslems, and pagans. 4 But what exactly took place in the sixteenth century in the domain of science? Kant was probably the first to recognize the decisive role played by the "Copernican Revolution'' in the genesis of modern science. Now, what did Copernicus do besides projecting the Earth where we live, together with everything found there, into the Aristotelian Heaven? It has often been repeated that the Polish canon [Copernicus] displaced the earth from the privileged position assigned to it by pagan cosmology. People, however, have always forgotten to specify that this position was only "privileged" to the extent that it is thought to be the lowest thing in the world (at least in the figurative sense of these words). For all the pagans, just as for all the pre-Copernican savants who claimed to be Christians, the Earth, with all that is found there, was truly a "here-below;' in relation to which even the moon appears as something irremediably inaccessible and transcendent, as much in virtue of the supposed "ethereal" perfection of everything celestial as in virtue of the self-evident "heaviness" of everything earthly. Now, this pagan way of viewing things could not satisfy a man who, to be sure, wanted to do science, but only on condition of remaining a canon and, consequently, a Christian. However, it is not sufficient not to be satisfied with all the ancient versions in order to find a genuinely new way of seeing things. And if Copernicus succeeded where many other good Christians failed (without, to be sure, making any attempts to -succeed), it is because he displayed, not imagination, but rather the enormous (intellectual) courage peculiar to geniuses alone. However that may be, it is Copernicus who eliminated from science every trace of"docetist" paganism,*** by having the resuscitated body of Christ followed into Heaven by the totality of the terrestrial world where Jesus died, after being born there. Now, whatever this Heaven is for believing Christians, for all the savants of the era it was a "mathematical" or mathematizable Heaven. To project the Earth into such a Heaven is equivalent, therefore, to inviting these savants to undertake without ***''Docetism" is the name given by some of the early Church Fathers to the (heretical) doctrine that Christ's earthly and bodily career was merely an appearance or semblance (OOx'l]at~). THE ST. JOHN'S REVIEW delay the immense (but in no way infinite) task of working out mathematical physics. This is what Christian savants did in fact. And since they did it in a world already largely Christianized, they could do it without raising too strong an outcry against madness or even scandal. Without a doubt, the mad Copernican projection of our earth into the Aristotelian heavens provoked in the latter a certain disorder which would have scandalized a classical pagan. But truly Christian savants could not take offense at this, nor did they. What was important for them was, in effect, entirely preserved, namely, the basic scientific identity of the earth and the heavens. But, after a certain time, more exactly, after the time when a certain tendency to become an atheist rather than remain a Christian became manifest in the world (scientific and other), certain disquieting phenomena began to appear in the unified terra-celestial universe (on the high or low road towards becoming paradisical, without waiting for a reconfirmation of its divin~ character). This is because the multi-dimensional {{phase" space, where the mathematical laws of modern quantitative and quantum physics necessarily apply even in the smallest detail, resembles more and more the famous Cosmos noetos which certain pagans qualified as transcendent and called utopian, because it was a place which could not be situated, in relation to us, in any location. Whereas, on the other hand, the world where the births, the lives, and the deaths of men are situated in accessible and precise locations seems once again to be doomed to the most complete disorder, rule by pure chance. The atheistic savants of our day have thus witnessed a sort of revenge of the ancient and pagan Plato ... But, if this has been the case, this would be another story altogether. A story, indeed, which would be all the more different inasmuch as the {chance' brought once again into the picture seems, in comparison with. chance as the Ancients understood it, to be mathematizable itself, or, indeed, divinized in the pagan sense of that term. It is thought to be perfectly measurable and even- grosso modo- precise, or in any case, eternal. 1. There is still, it is true, the Timaeus. However, I have excellent reasons for believing (although I am probably the only one) that, as in all of Plato's dialogues, the theories explicitly developed in the Timaeus have nothing to do with the author's own ideas. In his dialogues, Plato exhibits fashionable theories which he judges erroneous and even pemicious, to which he is resolutely opposed, where this opposition generally takes the form of a more or less camouflaged persiflage, through which the theory being criticized is pushed to its absurd, even grotesque, consequences. (Cf., for example, Timaeus 91 d-e, where the famous "Darwinian" theory of the origin of species which Timaeus expounds has birds descend from ... astronomers (of Eudoxus' type): ''As far as the race of birds who have wings rather than hair, they arise, after a small [sic] modification, from men without vvickedness, but light [legers], who are preoccupied with celestial phenomena, but believe, in 25 �virtue of their simplicity, that the demonstrations one obtains of these by sight are the most solid.") In the dialogue which now concerns us, Timaeus is none other than Eudoxus (who was commonly called "Endoxus," by reason of his great celebrity), who irritated Plato enormously not only because he established a rival school in Athens (where the Platonic theory of ideas was completely deformed with a view to a "physical" application and where Plato himself was spitefully criticized for his lack of scientific cultivation), but also and especially because the 'scientism' of the Megarian-Eudoxian school so enormously impressed· the best students of the Academy, Aristotle foremost among them. (Cf. Philebus 62 a-d, where we can see what Plato really thought of the sciences generally and of Eudoxian "mathematical physics" in particular.) However this may be, the ironically inflated tirade that ends the Timaeus and that Socrates listens to in silent reproof (Timaeus 92 c), shows clearly what Plato does not accept in the theory he is mocking. In and for this theory the world in which we live is a sensible God (Theos aisth"etos), a contradiction in terms for Plato, good pagan that he is, of the same kind as the pseudonotion of the squared circle. Now, if Plato says that according to this theory the (sensible) world is divine, this is precisely because it claims· to find in that world ratios, veritable mathematical entities. This is, therefore, the basic idea of mathematical physics, namely, the Eudoxian attempt to find in sensible (spatia-temporal) phenomena the precise ratios which subsist among ideal (eternal) mathematical entities-and this is, for Plato, at once a scandal and an act of folly. No doubt someone could say that Eudoxus himself was a pagan as well. But, in the first place, nothing is less certain, seeing that he could also have been an atheist. Secondly, what we know of his "mathematical physics" comes to us only through Platds deliberately crack-brained mockery of it. Finally, as others have quite rightly remarked, we have to wait for the sixteenth century to see the first attempt to give scientific coherence to the ideas sketched in the Timaeus (if not by Plato ..--!'Socrates;' at least by Eudoxus..--!'Timaeus"). Until that time, although generally taken quite seriously (with, however, laudable exceptions, including the philosophical Emperor Julian), the Timaeus only had "mystical" or "magical" results (to say nothing of simple repetitions, whether ancient or modern, in which there is no attempt at understanding the text). Furthermore, Democritus himself could also have been an atheist. This does not stand in the way of the fact that in a Democritean world one can only find room for a pagan G~d, since God must necessarily be beyond, not only sensible phenomena (purely "subjective" phenomena), but beyond "atomic" (objective) reality as well. 2. Of course, the notion of the Christian trinity differs essentially from the Nco-platonic trinitarian notion (which is, in fact, purely Platonic in the sense that it can be traced back to Middle Platonism, which is itself only a dogmatic version of authentic Platonism) and the difference between these two notions has an enormous philosophical (or, if one wants, "metaphysical") bearing. However, this difference is uniquely due to the fact of the Incarnation of the Second Person. Now, it is evident that it is not the dogma of the Incarnation that has been deduced from the dogma of the Trinity. On the contrary, the Christian dogma of the Trinity is a derived dogma, in the sense that Christianity radically transformed the pagan trinitarian notion so as to make it compatible with the fact of the Incarnation (as well as the fact of the "gift" of the Holy Spirit, itself posterior to the Incarnation and derivative from it). 3. What the Incarnation is for the Christian has nothing to do with the self~styled "incarnations" which pagan myths or biblical tales have in view: to become and to be a man is totally different from taking on a human (or other) form (or appearance). Saint Augustine saw this perfectly well and showed it dearly to the Christians (see, for example, De Trinitate II, vii, 12 and IV, xxi, 31), while, on the other hand, the adepts of Judaism never had any doubt about it. 4. Without a doubt the scientific consequences of the dogma of the Incarnation were only drawn bit by bit (without, to be sure, any appreciable help from the side of the Church). For example, scientific Paganism was able to preserve itself for so long a time in the Christian world thanks to the preservation of the "Democritean'' distinction between "secondary'' and "primary" qualities, which seemed an anodyne from the theological point of view. But, the assertion that the color ofJesus' hair or the sound of his voice are only "subjective" phenomena in fact amounts to the same theological "Docetism" that the Church rigorously and effectively combatted as an obvious result of Paganism. It is no wonder, then, that Christian science ended up by putting a stop to this lamentable affair so that the responsible and competent ecclesiastical authorities did not have to intervene, at least not explicitly. Today, far from abstracting from "secondary qualities" on the model of Detnocritus, who thought them despicable, mathematical physics treats them with profound respect and seeks to mathematize them; they have the same status as those entities pagan sav;::nts judged to be noble, or even divine. A Comment on Alexandre Kojeve's "The Christian Origin of Modem Science'' Curtis Wilson s this piece intended as an amusing joke, or should we be profoundly edified? Even if it is less of a canularesque or 'put-on' than may seem the case, as Kojf:ve invites us to suppose, how are we to satisfy ourselves that it is not appallingly irresponsible? To be intellectually responsible, of course, is not the easiest thing in the world, and I can only attempt to make certain steps in that direction here. Let me confess at I Curtis Wilson is a tutor and former dean at St. John's College, Annapolis. He has just completed a study of'Thc Great Inequality of jupiter and Saturn' from Kepler to Laplace. 26 once that, when it comes to history, I am deeply suspicious of the sort of intellectual operation in which Kojeve engages: proposing single ideas as the causes of complex, multi-faceted historical changes. Can Kojeve's thesis, that Christianity is responsible for modern science, and more specifically that the Christian dogma of the Incarnation bears sole responsibility for the emergence of that science, survive a serious examination in confrontation with detailed historical facts? Even if the answer is 'yes: I think such examination will show that there are meanings the thesis might easily be assumed to have which are clearly false, and that it presupposes assump- WINTER 1984 �tions that many of us do not share. Consider the following questions: (1) Copernicus: Why did he hurl the Earth into the heavens? Was this surprising act of thought connected in some overt or covert way with the dogma of the Incarnation? That it was not so connected in an overt way seems pretty clear. In his Commentariolus, written probably as early as 1511-1513, Copernicus states his motives for renovating astronomy in a clear and quite understandable way: the planetary theories of Ptolemy and most other astronomers, although consistent with the numerical data, seemed ... to present no small difficulty. For these theories were not adequate unless certain equants were also conceived; it then appeared that a planet moved with uniform velocity neither on its deferent nor about the center of its epicycle. Hence a system of this sort seemed neither sufficiently absolute nor sufficiently pleasing to the mind. Having become aware of these defects, I often considered whether there could perhaps be found a more reasonable arrangement of circles, from which every apparent inequality would be derived and in which everything would move uniformly about its proper center, as the rule of absolute motion requires. After I had addressed myself to this very difficult and almost insoluble problem, the suggestion at length came to me how it could be solved with fewer and much simpler constructions than were formerly used, if some assumptions (which are called axioms) were granted me. 1 Essentially the same view is stated in the Narratio pr£ma of Rheticus, the pupil of Copernicus: ... [my teacher} is far from thinking that he should rashly depart, in a lust for novelty, from the sound opinions of the ancient philosophers, except for good reasons and when the facts themselves coerce him. 2 Copernicus was a convert to the Renaissance ideal of classicist renovatio, which means something quite different from 'innovation' in our sense: it means to go back to first principles. And in the Renaissance it was the fashion to believe that the ancients knew deep and important truths, which in the long 'middle age' (the term was invented by Cusanus a little before Copernicus was born) had been lost from sight. Copernicus does not question the first principle that had been adopted in ancient mathematical astronomy; on the contrary, he insists on its being quite rigorously applied. The apparent inequalities of the celestial motions must be accounted for in terms of strictly uniform circular motions: how else could these motions be perpetual? As he indicates in Revolutions IV.2, it would be absurd to attempt to account for the apparent inequalities by postulating real inequalities-which is what Ptolemy had done. Here we have Copernicus' own understanding of why he did what he did. It is with this understanding, I should think, that historical investigation of the Copernican revolution ought to begin. Not for a moment would I deny that Copernicus' Christianity makes a difference in his thinking about astronomy, but the difference it makes, when we compare his thinking with Ptolemy's, is that he is a creationist THE ST. JOHN'S REVIEW and Ptolemy is not. Copernicus thinks of the world as a machine designed by the best artisan of all: ... When I had long considered this lack of certitude in the mathematical tradition concerning the composition of the motions of the spheres of the world, I began to be annoyed that no more certain theory of the motions of the machine of the world, which was created for us by the best and most orderly of all artisans, had been established by the philosophers ... 3 According to Kojeve, 'truly Christian savants' could not take offense at Copernican doctrine, "nor did they!' Well, Luther in 1539 referred to Copernicus as 'der Nan' (the fool), and added: "But I believe in Holy Scripture, since Joshua ordered the Sun, not the Earth, to stand still." Melancthon, Luther's deputy, commenting on "the Polish astronomer who makes the Earth move and the sun stand still;' said: "Really, wise governments ought to repress impudence of mind:' J. C. Scaliger, Italo-French physician and scholar, published a book in 155 7 in which he put Copernicus' name in the margin alongside the recommendation that certain ''writings should be expunged or their authors whipped:' Maurolicus, a Sicilian mathematician (1494-15 75), said: "Nicholas Copernicus, who maintained that the Sun is still and the Earth has a circular motion, deserves a whip or a scourge rather than a refutation." The Italian astronomer Magini said that "Copernicus' hypotheses are attacked by nearly everybody for being too far away from the truth and absurd:' Clavius, the Italian mathematician, said in 1570 that "Copernicus' idea conflicts with many aspects of experience and the common opinion of all philosophers and astronomers:' Quotations from both Catholics and Protestants could be multiplied, and just about all of them are to the same effect, that Copernicus' hypotheses are absurd; and some add that these hypotheses are contrary to Scripture. I know of no reference in the Revolutions to the dogma of the Incarnation. If this doctrine influenced Copernicus' thinking about astronomy, the effect can only have been a hidden one. (2) Kepler, Galile0 Descartes, Newton: Here, among these most famous of the founders of modern science, do we find the dogma of the Incarnation showing itself as influential, as determining their theological and metaphysical and scientific thought? If influential it was, it did not show itself as such. The divergences among these thinkers go pretty deep. It is in Kepler that the theological motives are most evident: the original idea of his celestial dynamics seems to have come out of the notion that the 'signature' of the Trinity had been imprinted on the very structure ofthe Cosmos, the Sun being the image of God the Father and Creator, hence the exerciser of power, while the stars of the starry sphere were the image of God the Son, and the space between, in which light and motive power travelled from center to periphery and were reflected back again, was the image of the Holy Spirit. But I don't think anyone besides Kepler put much stock in this charming idea: Kepler's harmonies were the object of much ridicule. 27 �Nor do I think one can very well argue that the introduction of dynamics into the skies had to come by this peculiar and idiosyncratic route- granting that the idea of forces acting on celestial bodies was a very unusual one at the time. We should also note that Kepler, inspired as he was by cosmic trinitarianism, was not less evidently inspired by Platds Timaeus, with its notion of a playful demiurge, faced with the 'ananke' of the Receptacle or the recalcitrance of matter. Kepler was ever ready to acknowledge that the instantiation of beautiful geometrical patterns in the world could fail to be exact. That seems to be a pagan idea, and I think one may reasonably doubt that it is really at home in the setting of Christian theology. Galileo was another who came to consider the world as mathematically describable, but the route by which did he regard it as logically entailed by any theological doctrine. There is evidence to lead one to suppose that Galileo, like other Florentines of his time, living under a bad, tyrannical regime, but retaining family memories of the better times of citizen rule under the Republic, turned to a kind of compartmentalized way ofliving and thinking. Energies that in the old days would have gone into citizen activity were devoted to private hobbies, although the yearning for a public role remained. For a man of Galileds italianate sophistication, good taste did not countenance the notion that all one's ideas could or should be fitted together into a single grand scheme. Galileo was not a bookish man or a dreamer. He made some use (no doubt illegitimate) of 'Platonic' recollection; there are indications he was influenced by Pyrrhonist scepticism he came to this conclusion was not at all the same as (notice how often he has Salviati insisting that 'I don't Kepler's. There can be some uncertainty whether Galileds famous statement in the Assayer is fundamentally methodological or metaphysical, where he says that "the book of the universe is written in the language of mathe- know' is a good response to a question). But he is not matics, and its characters are triangles, circles, and other geometric figures without which it is humanly impossible to understand a single word of it:' I would tend to opt for the methodological emphasis. In any case, Galileo does seem to have been the first man we know of who set out consciously to discover sim- ple mathematical laws through experiment. Stillman Drake has suggested that an accidental discovery by Vincenzo Galilei, Galileds father, may have had a great influence here: Vincenzo found that when strings of equal length are stretched by weights in such a way as to produce consonant intervals, the weights are as the squares of small whole numbers, where the small whole numbers are inversely as the string lengths that give the same consonant intervals when the strings are stretched by equal weights. Vincenzo had been hoping to prove, in opposition to Zarlino, that small whole numbers have nothing to do with consonance or with pleasant-sounding inter- vals. The result surprised him. Perhaps the young Galileo was surprised, too. It may have been this that precipitated him into a search that led to the discovery of a series of beautifully simple laws: the isochronism of pendulums, the relation between pitch and frequency, the law of free fall, and so on. On Drake's supposition, the series of discoveries had been 'triggered.' A good many important scientific discoveries seem to have been similarly serendipitous. Fortune favors the prepared mind, to be sure, but Galileds overt preparation had a great deal to do with a partisan of any philosophical sect or system. As polemicist and rhetorician for the new science (his selfappointed role), he was willing to make use of anything apropos that tradition offered. And what about Descartes: what was his relation to Christianity? It is only God that can know, of course, but we should not fail to recognize how dreadfully upsetting to traditional Christian thought were the Cartesian doctrines. The Principia philosophiae was condemned by the doctors of the Holy Office in 1665 as incompatible with the Eucharist, or the doctrine of transubstantiation. Reconciling Christian orthodoxy to the new science does not appear to have been an easy matter. Descartes was .q.o doubt trying to reconcile the Sorbonne to his scientific enterprise in his Meditations on First Philosophy. But the Cartesian proofs for the existence of God and the separate existence of the human soul cannot have appeared as a godsend for the faithful: Descartes' God is a philosopher's god, immutable, incomprehensible, unresponsive to the prayerful. As to what Descartes really thought about the dogma of the Incarnation, that must remain doubtful. In the Discourse on Method he makes it clear to the reader that while conducting the most radical inquiry into first principles it is important to follow sedulously the customs of the country in which one finds oneself. And one cannot forget what Descartes as a young man wrote in his journal: that when he entered upon the stage of the world, he would do so 'masked.' My guess is that the legitimation of algebra and the overcoming of scepticism were more crucial to Descartes' classical taste in music, painting, and the drama); and attempt at a grounding of the scientific enterprise than any Christian dogma. And finally, what about Newton? In the early 1670s Newton, faced with the prospect of having to take clerical as far as one can discover, it had nothing at all to do with theology or the dogma of the Incarnation. There is no doubt that Ga!ileo considered himself a loyal son of the Church, and was utterly taken aback when its doctors study of the sources of Christian doctrine, and reached the conclusion that Athanasius had hoaxed the Church into accepting the doctrine of the Trinity, for political Euclid, Archimedes, engineering, certain scholastic studies, and the arts (for Galileo prided himself on his came to treat him as a potential enemy, or at least as an erring son. He did not suppose his science to be incom- patible with Christian theology, but neither, I believe, 28 orders as a professor at Cambridge, made an intensive reasons. Somehow a royal dispensation was gotten for him, and so he was allowed to remain professor without taking orders. In later life, as warden and then master WINTER 1984 �of the Mint, he had to pretend to be an orthodox Christian, but on his death bed he refused the offices of the priest of the Church of England. He did not believe in the dogma of the Incarnation. But now suppose the Kojevian says: All ofthis is irrelevant. The founders of modern science failed to recognize the hidden factor that permitted them to do what they did. That was the dogma of the Incarnation, the sole doctrine in the world that could overcome the double transcendence of God in paganism. But here-setting aside the fact that the pagans did have their mystery religions, and that many preChristians and later non-Christians have denied the double transcendence of God- I want to ask what sort of historical explanations we are to consider possible and reasonable. I am not an Hegelian in historical matters (Kojeve in the piece before us appears to be doctrinairely so); I do not believe it is reasonable to see the almost endlessly complicated history of human thought and affairs as the realization of the Idea. In the unprecedented intellectual upheaval of the 16th and 17th centuries, many factors were in play: the religious revolt or reformation, which had political and economic as well as doctrinal roots; the discovery of the New World, and all it did to shake up traditional views; the internal disintegration of scholastic thought through its own self-criticism; the discovery of antiquity in a new sense, as a source of wisdom and esoteric doctrine; the effect on thought of those signal inventions, the compass, gunpowder, and printing, all of them imported from China; the impact of the printing of books on learning generally, taking it outside of the universities and turning it over to autodidacts; and so on, and so on. All this mad restlessness is due to the dogma of the Incarnation? Or perhaps it is to be attributed to the invention of the horse collar and triple crop rotation, leading to the result, as Lynn White puts it, that the Europeans were full of beans? It was a time of intellectual, political, economic, and religious turmoil, and very strange notions came out of dark corners, among them the altogether astonishing notion of mathematical physics. No doubt Christian thought and belief had much to do with this particular outcome. I THE ST. JOHN'S REVIEW would not myself be willing to go further, unless we come down to particular cases. The most surprising and outrageous statement in Kojeve's whole piece, in my opinion, is the aside about the "mastery that Christian peoples (and they alone) exercise today on atomic energy (a mastery, appearing in the period of the end of history, which can contribute only to the prompt reestablishment of paradise on earth, without ever doing any harm, physical harm at least, to any whomsoever)." This was written, we note, in the 1960s, after Hiroshima. It is the hope of most of us, parents in fact or parentsto-be or parents in spirit of those who will live after us, that life on this planet can continue, and can continue to be basically good (as our untutored animal faith affirms it to be). And most of us, confronted ever more unavoidably by the evidence of how rapidly and irrevocably humankind is raping the Earth, find ourselves shocked into grim silence. In as dark a time as ours, Kojeve's optimism is either a bad joke or fatuous. Hegel's phenomenology of spirit is a rich revelation of the dialectical modes of working of the human mind, in its ever renewed confrontation with the Other. We would do poorly to reject it out of hand. Just as surely we would be less than intelligent if we were to .accept uncritically Hegel's account of the factual history of the human spirit: among some shrewd and bold strokes it includes much that is fantasy, ungrounded in the sober truths about the ways in which cultures have in fact interacted. As for Hegel's arrogant optimism about the fmal, Germanic age of the Absolute, may I assume that it would be laughed out of court today? I confess that au fin du compte I do not understand Kojeve's intention in his piece on the Christian origin of modern science. I yield to a vague though deep suspicion when I say: Caveat lector! 1. E. Rosen, Three Copernican Treatises (3d ed., New York: Octagon Books, 1971), 57-58. 2. Ibid., 187. 3. Copernicus, &1Jo/utiom, Preface and Dedication to Pope Paul III. 29 �What Good and What Harm Can Psychoanalysis Do? Wolfgang Lederer, M.D. is about seven years since I last had the honor of appearing before you. On that occasion, as I recall, I was sore perplexed by the topic your dean had assigned me. And today, once again, I find the very simplicity of my title troubling and deceptive. You are no doubt all familiar with that story about a psychoanalyst who, having been greeted by a colleague with a cheerful "Good morning!" then puzzles in his own mind, thinking: "What did he mean by that?" And thus, with professional distrust of the obvious, did I scrutinize today's topic: "What good and what harm can psychoanalysis do?" This is the theme your dean assigned me, but what did he mean by that? Is this truly a factual question? Is it not rather a challenge, a very gauntlet thrown at my feet, a taunt which scornfully demands: what good, if any, can psychoanalysis do?- and which sneeringly suggests that the potential harm, lurking in the obscurity all around the analytic couch, could well devour whatever good might come of it? I feel thrown on the defensive, and like any debater under attack I shall now reach for that somewhat disreputable but effective gambit of asking for a definition of terms: Will my honorable opponent kindly define for me the meaning of "good?" My opponent, refusing to be drawn into the mire of the abstract, thereupon answers me with strict reference to our context: "People come to psychoanalysis;' he says, "because they feel in some manner maladjusted; the good they expect, therefore, is a better adjustment." I t ''Very well;' say I, "and it follows that, the better and Wolfgang Lederer is a psychiatrist who practices and teaches in the San Francisco area. This article was delivered as a lecture on May 13, 1983, in Annapolis. 30 more perfect the adjustment reached through therapy, the greater the good?" "It would seem so;' says he. ''And is not adjustment, as in a delicate mechanical instrument, that state of meshing of gears and levers and what not, which permits the total to run most smoothly, with a minimum of friction, heat, or noise, such that no component attracts attention to itself and no further improvements need to be made?" "Indeed;' says he. "Does it not follow then;' say I, "that the individual perfectly adjusted to and within his society is one so smoothly attuned to the existing order that he causes no friction and no heat, attracts no attention, opposes nothing, demands or effects no change, is in fact standardized and therefore amenable to unit replacement like a mechanical component and, in short, may claim as his greatest virtue a total lack of individuality?" "I admit;' says he, "that such perfect adjustment, to the extent to which it could ever be achieved, would be good for the established order- at least in the short run; but that it would be akin to death for the individual:' ''And if total adjustment is akin to death, then perhaps total non-adjustment is the true good? Then perhaps the ideal man goes his own way without regard to society, custom, or law?" "Surely;' says he, "such a one would quickly run afoul of the social reality within which he exists, and would suffer destruction:' "Quite so;' say I. ''And it would seem that the good lies somewhere between total adjustment and nonadjustment, and we are merely left with the question as to where, between the extremes, the greatest good may lie. But who should have the wisdom to tell us that?" "Surely not the psychoanalyst;' says he. "Then perhaps we must approach things differently;' WINTER 1984 �say I. "People come to psychoanalysis because they feel maladjusted; but how do they know about their maladjustment?" "Because they are in pain!' ''And so perhaps the good lies simply in the relief of pain?" "There can be no doubt;' says he, "that both chronic and acute pain are bad, and quite possibly harmful, and that the relief of pain, whether physical or psychic pain, is considered a great boon." "Let us consider then, if you will;' say I, "the pain inflicted upon a man by his conscience, the pain of wrong- doing which we call guilt. Supposing a man is tortured by the memory of having killed an enemy in battle; should we not, if we can find a way, try to diminish his guilt over such a killing?" "That;' says he, "would alleviate a grievous harm." ''But what if, by chance, we succeed too well, and the man were so stripped of conscience and guilt that he considered killing permissible, under any circumstances?" "That would be inflicting harm, both on society and on the man himself." "So it is true of the pain of guilt -and perhaps of any kind of pain- that both the excess and the absence are harmful, and that there is a necessary amount of pain which is· required for survival, and therefore good?" "That comes;' says he, "from engaging in a dialogue with a psychoanalyst:' ''You do me wrong, my friend;' say I, "for I am not even a psychoanalyst:' "Then what, may I ask, are you doing here? Are you not an impostor?" N ow, let me permit my interlocutor to go back to the waiting room of my mind whence I have called him. And let me admit to you quite simply that I interpreted the term "psychoanalysis" in the title of my talk as no more than a popular label for a great variety of psychological therapies; for were I to guess, I would say that psychoanalysis proper-orthodox, classical psychoanalysis- constitutes today less than one percent of all psychological treatment, and has become mainly a valuable training device for future therapists of analytical orientation; whereas many other techniques are, and have been, practiced with varying success. Of this, let me give you some examples. We are told that in the year of grace 1584, on the tenth day of April, there was presented to the Most Illustrious and Most Reverent Archbishop of Cambray, Loys de Berlaymont, by Monsieur Francois Buisseret, Doctor of Laws, Archdeacon of Cambray, one Soeur Jeanne Fery, aged twenty-two years, a professed religious of the convent of the Black Sisters of the town of Mons in Hainaut, it having been found that she was proved to be troubled and possessed by evil spirits, to the end that it might please the aforesaid Lord Archbishop to recognize the fact and to advise suitable means for her deliverance. Jeanne Fery, we hear, was born in 1559. Her childhood was unhappy, for her father was a violent man who THE ST. JOHN'S REVIEW drank to excess. Jeanne herself was gifted with a very quick understanding and a good mind, and had a tendency to hear and gladly to treat of great and high matters. One day her father, returning from the tavern at 6 dciock in the evening, met his wife who had come out to seek him with her child in her arms and, being angry with her, he wished that the devil might take the child. In virtue of which the Devil had power to beset and hover about the aforesaid child until she reached the age of four, when he tried to gain her consent to his being accepted and acknowledged as her father. He presented himself to the child as a handsome young man, gave her apples and white bread, with which she was pleased, and, as she later wrote: "Since then I regarded him as my father by reason of the sweets he brought me; and he spoke to me in the same way [sic] until I reached the age of 12 years; and he protected me, so that I did not feel the blows that were given me:' Jeanne had been sent to a convent school, but at the age of 12 was removed to the house of a dressmaker, there to learn a trade. The devil urged her to take full advantage of her new liberty and reminded her that it behooved her to obey him in all things. Otherwise, she writes, "he would torture me in ways which he showed me: and that each person lived in the manner he taught me, but that they would not confess as much to each other ... I immediately submitted to all that he could ask!' She was then made to sign a document with her own blood, renouncing her baptism, her Christianity, and all the ceremonies of the Church: "This pact being sealed, the paper was folded very small and I was made to swallow it with an orange, which tasted very sweet until I came to the last morsel, and that was so bitter that I scarce knew how to endure it. And since then I have always had a great detestation of the Church ... and have used many insults against her ... being inspired in all things by malice and sin!' She nevertheless re-entered the convent of the Black Sisters at the age of 14, there to begin her novitiate. The devils became ever more tyrannical, but allowed her to act and to work modestly, so that she aroused no suspicion and at 16 was permitted to take her vows and thus to become a nun. The devils now deemed her worthy of parodying the sacraments and o:r~e among them, Sanguinary, came and desired from her "not a dead sacrifice, but living, and of her own body!' She wrote later: "Hearing all this, I at length gave way to their will. Immediately, this evil spirit entered into my body, carrying with him a sharp knife ... with great cries and pains he cut a piece of flesh from ... my body and, having soaked it in my blood, went and offered it to the evil spirit, Belial. ... They made me offer this sacrifice many times:' Henceforth the devils kept her in despair and tempted her to take her life. Through fear of being disgraced and perhaps put to death by a court of justice, she listened to their promptings. She gave them her girdle that they might strangle her, but being unable to do so, they urged her to slit her throat. Each time she attempted this, an invisible presence stopped her. The devils would say: 31 �"There is some wicked woman guarding her." The woman was later identified as Saint Mary Magdalen. Meanwhile,] eanne, drained of all energy and unable to declare the cause of her obvious ill health, was visited by a doctor who could make nothing of the case and prescribed remedies that were of no avail. Both her health devils, she was to be placed that day for care and nourishment in the hands of Loys de Berlaymont, Archbishop of Cambray, in whatever place he is or will be throughout his life; and that he was to instruct her in the praise of God and to answer for her conscience before God. She thus became the only nun to have an Archbishop for her and, even more, her character deteriorated. She wrote confessor. later: "When the last days of Lent came, I was sent into the church, where I blasphemed God and cursed my father, my mother, and the hour of my birth. I thought only of despair, or of drowning myself, if I could find the means and the strength. The devils ... left my poor body without any human nourishment, and the nuns had great sympathy with me when they saw the color of my face, for I looked more dead than alive:' Two days after being presented to the Archbishop, The Archbishop was a man of benign character. When the possessed nun was first presented to him, he greeted her kindly and blessed her, and thereafter had Jeanne was admitted to exorcism, and many sessions were held until November 12, 1585-a period of nineteen months. Her treatment was characterized by many dramatic events. Thus at one point the devils, "as much by reason of old injuries which they had inflicted as through new wounds which they made at their departure, cast forth great quantities of blood and putrid flesh." She was told that her illness was mortal and incurable, and it was expected that within the space of three or four hours she would die. Through the invocation of Saint Mary Magdalen, however, after the patient had passed out of her body, with her urine, twenty pieces of putrid flesh, which gave off a horrible stench, the vehemence of her suffering was appeased. At other times she endured agonies, spasms, convulsions, struggles for breath, epilep- tic fits, and nightly ravings. In May 1585, when she was being returned from the Archbishop's house to the convent against the express wish of her holy protectress, she attacked the Archbishop and other ecclesiastics with blows and kicks, delivered with such violence that they feared for their lives. Eventually the devils reduced her to a state of childishness and babbling; she was unable to recognize any person except the nun who watched over her ... and she wept continually. She was afraid to renounce the devil who had been her father, and when he was to be expelled she begged the exorcist on her knees to leave her at least this one devil so that she would not fall into imbecility. To console her for the loss of him, the exorcist promised her that he would be a father to her. From that moment she was reduced to complete childishness, ignorant of all knowledge of God ... and unable to say anything except ''Pere Jean" and "Belle Marie," the names of her exorcist and of her holy protectress. A little later she also spoke of "Grand Pere" and on questioning her the exorcist understood that she had taken the Lord Archbishop for her grandfather. Some time later, having been brought before the Archbishop at her demand, and being blessed by him, she recovered her speech. At that the intervention of Saint Mary Magdalen became apparent by means of pieces of paper which, closely folded, were discovered in the patient's mouth. The first of these demanded that, in order to set free ] eanne Fery from the possession of all the 32 her deliverance very much at heart. His intervention was often decisive. She was kept in his house even though the prolonged stay of a young nun in the house of the Archbishop could not fail to surprise people; but when at length he decided to send her back to the convent, ] eanne immediately suffered a severe relapse and in an ecstatic vision of Mary Magdalen was told that her grandfather, the Archbishop, had incurred the anger of God by sending her back to the convent. She was to return to his house for a year, after which time she would be fully relieved. When the Archbishop, to convince himself of her condition, visited her in her cell, "she was im- mediately seized by such torment, and her whole appearance was so greatly changed by the vehemence of her sufferings, that the Lord Archbishop, fearing that she might die suddenly, was forced to lift her up from her bed:' This event caused him to lodge her thereafter in his house, where she recovered her senses, having no recollection of what had occurred. On November 12, 1586, she took the Archbishop's hand and said: "Today I am restored and returned to my sisters. As to my food, you are discharged of obligation. Nevertheless, you will have charge of my conscience for the rest of my life:' W ell now: unless we take the possession by devils literally-and even at the time the ecclesiastics were not quite sure that they should -what I have just presented to you is an instance of the successful, and purely psychological, treatment of what today we would probably call a hysterical psychosis. Is it then the Roman Catholic Church that really invented "psychoanalysis?" Or at least: psychotherapy? And how is it possible that unquestioned good came of it? Let me hasten to state that, in my opinion, between exorcism and psychotherapy as it is practiced today, there are some considerable differences; but what these two· techniques may have in common, and why both of them can be effective, I should like to discuss after I have given you some samples of methods which may be much older even than the Church, and which have survived to this day. Thus, some tribes of the African Gold Coast firmly believe that there are witches which fly by night to assemblies in out-of-the way places, there to engage in cannibalism. The belief cannot be disputed, for it is not the real, material body of the witch that is supposed to be flying to such gatherings: it is the witch's spirit, her, or his, Susuma that is involved. Similarly, it is not the body of the victim that is eaten, but the victim's vital essence, his Kla. Although a person's Susuma may leave his body WINTER 1984 �without ill effect, the Kla cannot leave without causing illness or death. If the witches steal away a man's Kla and cut it up, he becomes mortally sick. If, relenting, they reassemble the parts and restore them to him, he recovers. But an already eaten or mutilated part of the Kla-say, its leg-cannot be restored, and the victim's leg will be lost or rendered useless. What makes this whole matter particularly sinister is that the witches exercise their mischief not against enemies, but precisely against those nearest and dearest to them- the members of their own village or their own family. To meet this danger, numerous shrines exist in the forest, each in charge of a practitioner of skill and ·renown, whither go patients of various kinds, seeking aid: some are self-confessed witches, bemoaning the evil they have ,wrought; others are victims of bewitchment, presenting such ills as sterility, blindness, aches and pains, and assorted misfortunes. Perhaps the most striking of all are those terrified, anxiety-ridden people who, while protesting that they have never done any harm, feel themselves being converted into witches against their will and suffer a sense of impending doom. The practitioner receives these patients with much ceremony and ritual, thus demonstrating his status and competence. He then submits each one to a painstaking interrogation, ferreting out envies, spites, rivalries, marital troubles, and kinship disputes, laying bare all secrets. And, indeed, astonishing tales of guilt and misdemeanor often emerge. Then he sums up the situation as he sees it, announces who should confess and apologize and to whom, and gives out advice and reprimand. Some patients promptly recover, but others have to stay at the forest compound for a lengthy course of daily therapy and ritual, in the process of which they form an intense relationship with the therapist. Let me present to you one such case, as it has been reported by a highly reputable European observer: Kofi, a farmer, was received into a practitioner's com- pound for long-term treatment. When first seen by the Western observer he was miserably thin, terrified, and haggard. His malady began, he said, with sleeplessness and nightmares, during which his Susuma was drawn unwillingly away to join a band of witches. He developed daily periods of blindness and became unable to hear anything except the urging voices of the witches. He also had abdominal pains, and his belly was scarred where he had made cuts to let out the evil. In despair he had went home energetic and confident of his power to remain well. This account was published in the British journal of Mental Science in 1955. Comparative psychiatry has since established that similar beliefs and practices are to be found not only all over Africa and among African populations in the Caribbean and the Southern United States, but also in South and Central America, as well as among the shamanistic tribes of Asia. It is surely reasonable to assume that a practice so widely spread, prevailing among peoples of various races and religions who had little if any contact with each other, must also be a very ancient practice, corresponding and ministering to a very basic human need. W hat, given the myriad variants of the method, ·are its essential elements? I will not fatigue you with further examples, but will attempt to derive the common denominators from the systems already mentioned: those of the witch doctor, of the exorcist, and of the psychoanalyst. In each instance, two individuals are involved with each other. One of them is designated the patient, and he is invariably anxious about something. He may think he knows what he is anxious about, or he may not. He may experience all of his anxiety as such, or he may be more aware of related symptoms, such as guilt, or depression, or some physical complaint. But in any case he is suffering in a way that seems to him both incomprehensible and abnormal or even unnatural, and he badly needs to be relieved of this suffering. The other member of the therapeutic couple is a person of high status and respect in his society, believed and believing himself to be in possession of esoteric and powerful techniques for dealing with anxiety or its derivative symptoms. This person, the therapist, has often once been a patient himself and has thus experienced and learned his skill as it was once practiced on himself. By virtue of this experience he is not only armed to do combat with the demons besetting his patient, he is also himself armored against their onslaught. He sees himself, and is seen by the patient, as having authority, competence, and immunity. Normally, this is how a parent appears to a small child. And, indeed, so long as the parents can handle themselves in the world and are not overcome by anx- stay in the native practitioner's compound, with daily ieties of their own, their child finds with them all the comfort, all the physical and psychological nurturance and healing it may need. Ideally, the child will carry this sense of security into adulthood, will inherit from the parents ritual and psychotherapy, he recovered his sight and normal hearing, though he was still languid and spent, sitting about on the ground, afraid to go out of the practi- the conviction that fate can be faced, come what may. But in fact, fortune has so many slings and arrows in store for us that even the best prepared, even the strongest travelled to a coastal town to consult a European-trained doctor, who had found nothing wrong. After a few weeks tioner's sight. But in his presence, he felt a sense of safety among us are likely, sooner or later, to find themselves and the belief that he was to be rescued. He stayed about a year and the observer saw him many times. He gradually grew fatter, lost his haunted look and gained the confidence to go out alone. At the end he was a different in predicaments, under pressures and stresses, they do not know how to handle. Our parents, as we grow up, tend to lose the status of authority we once accorded them: we are no longer so sure that their wisdom is curative or even relevant to what ails us. Worse still, we creature, with his normal loquacity and sense of fun. He THE ST. JOHN'S REVIEW 33 �now hesitate to consult them, or to confide in our friends, not only because we question their competence, but also their interest: family and friends have their own stake in our lives, they are not impartial, not disinterested, and we suspect that their counsel may have more to do with their needs than with ours. And further, the more they are devoted to us, the more our own anxiety is likely to affect them, to infect them, so that, far from offering reassurance, they are likely to create a feed-back of anxiety which beclouds what should be clarified, and far from leading to calm may escalate to panic. So there is a need for someone in whom one can safely confide, to whom one can confess one's fears, one's guilt, one's sorrow. Con-fide: from the Latin: con fide: "with trust:' Trust is of the essence; hence the importance that the therapist be a person of stature in his culture. For trust is culture-bound: a religious culture, such as that of France in the 16th century, trusts tl'i~·priest, trusts the exorcist, presents its very anxieties in religious terms. A magical society, a witchcraft society such as that of the Gold Coast, trusts the witch-doctor, and brings to him problems of bewitchment. A supposedly scientific society, such as ours- or at least such as ours tried to be during the first several decades of this century-trusts the scientist, the learned man, the doctor- comes to the psychiatrist, the academically trained, diploma'd psychotherapist. But is a man to be trusted just because he has a diploma? True, the M.D., the Ph.D., the M.S.W. or whatever other imposing and dubious letter-combinations may follow a fellow's name, mean something, designate some sort of training and preparation, some degree of professionalism. So does membership in assorted professional societies, so do books and papers published by the therapist, lectures given, reputations widely praised ... But still, asks the prospective patient: What do I really know about this particular therapist I have, on good advice of friends and after much hesitation, just called, and who, diffident and hesitant at the other end of the line, finally agreed to give me an appointment two weeks hence? Can this fellow really understand what I will have to tell him? And understanding, can he tolerate it without getting upset, without judging and despising me? Will he attend to my needs, my utterly unique predicament, and not go by the textbook, or grind his own axe? Has he the warmth, the humanity, the wisdom I need him to have? Will he not let me down, betray me, as I have so often been let down and betrayed? Indeed: Confession is risky, and trust is a precious commodity that needs to be earned. Confidences emerge only gradually, as confidence grows. In this unique relationship, where all the risks seem to be on one side, the patient tests and tests, and does well to test. Facts, pertinent but innocuous, emerge first; pressing anxieties next and behind them, half-admitted, doubts, self-doubts, impermissible feelings; and behind these: phantasies, seductive, frightening, shameful, and behind such phantasies, who knows: how much which has never yet been admitted to awareness, sleeping monsters one should have let lie, monsters that should never be permitted to trouble 34 the sleep of reason ... All this takes time- hence the long, and frequent, and intimate association with therapist-witchdoctor-exorcist-guru. All this takes courage, for we all lie to ourselves, and are afraid to face the truth. We lie to ourselves about our own actions and motives, we lie about what we do to, and want from, others. We lie above all about our own fears. We clothe them in pretexts and excuses and false assurances and truly fear nothing more than to have to confront them. And yet that is just what the guruexorcist-witchdoctor-therapist expects and demands, implying that we can trust him and that he'll see us through this journey across our own inferno. He has nerve! And for what? What good is to come of it? What reward for risking so much turmoil and pain? Gnoti seauton! said the oracle; Know thyselfl But why? What for? et us return to Kofi, the farmer, who was afraid he would become a witch. Witches eat the Kla of their own tribesmen, their own family, thus causing illness and death. Witch doctors pry into kinship disputes and marital troubles: What did Kofi confess? Could it be that he hated and wished to kill a handsome youngster he suspected of carrying on with his, Kofi's wife? Or that he wished to kill his wife, for the same reason, his wife whom he loved more than himself? Did Kofi, the farmer, go blind so he would not see his wife's flirtations? Did he go deaf so as not to hear the gossip of the village? Or take another one: Kotzo, a village clerk, powerful because he could rei'd and write. His relatives, he said, had long been trying to destroy him and had finally decided to make him a witch. They first took away, he said, the use of his right hand, so he became a failure as a clerk. His hand, we are told, trembled severely whenever he talked about it, until, after months with the witch doctor, he was cured. Did Kotzo, the scribe, admit to himself in the end how much he resented his own relatives, and his wife's relatives, all of whom mooched on him, the provider? How sick he was of working for them? How sick of their envy, of their ingratitude, of their accusations against him of arrogance and superiority? Could he go back to work because he now could admit his- tribally inadmissible- anger against his kin, and could tell them to see to their own living? But perhaps you can follow me better if I tell you about a former patient of mine, a no-longer-all-that-young lawyer. He had graduated from his law school near the top of his class, some ten years before he came to see me. He explained that he was deeply depressed and discouraged because he had failed in five state bar examinations and therefore, all these years, had had to work as a paralegal assistant of other lawyers, some of whom had graduated long after him. He was filled with shame, and dreaded the prospect of having to attempt the bar exam, in the near future, for the sixth time. He wasterrified that he might fail again. We worked at understanding his problem, and it soon became clear that he was not afraid of failure, but of success. This was the story: His father, now dead, had been L WINTER 1984 �a judge and, at home, a vicious despot. The son had lived in dread of him, and the father had despised the son. Once, in a fit of anger, the father had screamed at him: "You will never, but never, amount to anything, much less be a lawyer." Two days before my patient's first attempt at the bar exam the father had suddenly died. "I consider the magical rituals foolish and incomprehensi- ble and who would be turned off and turned away by all he saw." ''And would not Kofi the farmer:' says he, "be disappointed by your lack of ritual and feel that you cannot help him?" know this sounds absurd;' the lawyer said to me, "but "This is so!' I felt that my father had died so that I would be too upset to face the exam. Now that he was dead, he seemed to hover about me like an angel with a flaming sword, "And it follows that, just as the witch doctor could threatening me and proclaiming: 'thou shalt not enter here: The law was to be, for ever and ever, his domain, and I was to stay out. I sat for the exam anyway, but I could not think, and of course I flunked:' With this insight, and confident that by identifying the villain we had banished him, he took the exam for the sixth time-and failed again. Obviously, we had not completed our job. So we searched further, and this is what we found: His parents had had a bad marriage. His mother, deprived and lonely, had seduced him into a near-incestuous intimacy, induc- ing him to side in all things with her and against her husband. This was the cause of his father's contempt for him as a "mama's boy" who would never be a man. And he, fully aware of his connivance with his mother, felt profound guilt at having betrayed his father. This recognition changed the whole picture. Father, it now became clear, had had cause to despise him. It was his father who was the aggrieved party, and he himself the offender. He took a new and searching look, and with a, to him, surprising and new infusion of compassion not treat the lawyer, you could not treat Kofi?" "Indeed, that is likely." ''And the same would be true for the truly religious?" "To this day:' say I, "the truly religious, if not actu- ally mentally ill-meaning: psychotic-but troubled in mind and spirit, by and large prefer to go to their priest, or minister, or rabbi, and there seek and find help; and they would benefit little, if at all, from coming to see me, even if they were willing to do so." ''And so it would follow:' says he, "that you had rather they did not come to you, and that you have a certain professional hostility toward religion, because it renders people unfit to be your patients?" "Not at all;' say I. "First of all, I am willing to recognize and to approve of any therapeutic method that works, and religion has certainly worked as a therapy for a long time, and still works for very many people; secondly, I am quite willing to treat a religious patient within the context and in the terminology of his faith, provided he grants me the right to do so. But there is he came to view his father no longer as an ogre, but as another indispensable condition that must be met!' ''And what is that?" "He must not have a religious expectation ofme, he must not expect me to perform a miracle cure. Just as a weak and impulse-driven man, deeply unhappy, a man who had reacted to the failure of his marriage by conducting several scandalous affairs, thus progressively aggravating his estrangement from his wife. We now came I cannot cure by magic, so I cannot cure by the laying on of hands, or by bestowing an amulet, or a blessing. In other words, the patient must not expect to be able to sit or lie passively while I do something to fix things, across a few fragmentary memories suggesting that his but he must be prepared, with some counsel from me, to take remedial and innovative action in the face of his father had actually attempted to win the son's love but, presumably feeling he did not deserve it, had eventually anxiety. There is a saying that God helps those who help given up on him. And so my patient came to understand themselves, and that, if you forgive the comparison, is that while he need not hate his father, he also owed him no obedience. He now saw himself as the victim of parental discord, and he accepted and forgave himself for the degree to which he had cooperated in it. His guilt, he felt, had been adequately atoned for by his six failures at the bar. He presented himself a seventh time, and passed easily. even more true of the therapist, for he can only help those who are willing to help themselves:' "And does it then follow that, if your patients are to see the remedy of their ills in actions they themselves must undertake, that they must in the first place consider their ills as due to past actions of their own, that they must A t this point my interlocutor re-emerges, a puz- zled frown on his face. "I am quite confused now:' says he. "You present the story of an American lawyer, treated by you; and of an African farmer and an African clerk, treated by a witch doctor; and of a 16th century nun, treated by an exorcist; and you seem to say they are all the same? In that case, does it not follow that your training is irrele- vant, and that your lawyer could have gone for help, and could have been helped as much, by the witch doctor?" to some extent at least feel responsible for their own predicament?" "Quite true. And so, if, for example, a person blames all his ills on society, and expects society to bail him out, then I cannot help him; and this would be true, for instance, for individuals who have been taken care of all their lives, whether by welfare agencies or by a rich family, who have never exercised their own will or their own skills but expect whatever they need to be given to them:' ''Are you saying that you cannot treat either the very poor or the very rich?" "I am saying that I can only treat those willing to ex- "This does not follow:' say I; "for the witch doctor is ert themselves; and for the very poor and the very rich, not an authority in the eyes of the lawyer, who would therapy would have to have, as a first and often most dif- THE ST. JOHN'S REVIEW 35 �ficult phase, a period during which these patients must learn that money- the absence or the unlimited supply of it- is not the problem and not the cure of the problem, but that they must discover and use their own personal resources?' "You make therapy sound quite laborious:' "It is that." ''And so, for you, the best patient would be a vigorous, hence physically healthy and probably youngish person of above average intellect and personal endowment, who takes full responsibility for his life, who wants to understand where and what he has done wrong and who is willing and courageous enough to effect changes, no matter how difficult this may be. In other words: the person most deserving of your help is the one least likely to need it?" ''I must admit this;' say I. "But even such a superior individual may and often does encounter problematic life situations which he does not know how to handle, or in which he finds himself feeling and acting in ways he does not understand and which'defeat him, and for such a predicament he is likely to seek therapy. And so I further admit, unblushingly, that my patients are by and large quite superior individuals?' "I am surprised;' says he, "to hear you engaging in such snobbish value statements." "And I am surprised;' say I, "that you should assume a therapist has no values, or ought not to have a value system of his own." "But then you are like a priest, and have your own faith, and your own ideas of what would constitute salvation for your patients, and no doubt you expect your patients to accept your notions and to seek their salvation according to your creed?' ''You have hit upon a very troubling issue;' say I. "I must admit that I do have a creed, and that I have a formulation for salvation. I have it straight from the mouth of my own patron saint, Sigmund Freud, who, when asked about the goals of therapy, said: "To enable a person to love and to work:' This nut-shell formulation is surprisingly comprehensive and apt, for I find that it covers, in a general way, almost all the complaints and difficulties which bring patients into treatment. But when brings the possibility of chosing and controlling in what manner one may act differently in the future, and such increased self-control is the essence of whatever freedom we are capable of." "In other words;' says he, "a well analyzed patient can go out and feel free to do just as he pleases:' "You are now baiting me;' say I, "but I shall use my own freedom and choose to interpret your remark not as hostile, but as conveying your concern that I might confuse freedom and license. Rest assured that I do not. Licentious behavior, as I understand it, satisfies, and is often the slave of, such appetites as greed, sex, or power, in a manner that does not care for the harm that could be caused. i doubt that anyone who can love would be without care. The freedom I have in mind is the freedom to choose one's responsibilities and to assume them:' "I wonder;' he says, "how many of your patients come to you saying they want the freedom to assume responsibilities:' "Now you are making fun of me, and I am of a mind to send you away again. Of course this is not what they say they want, or what they complain of. They have their own therapeutic goals- most often the relief of some emotional distress, or the achievement of some limited ob- jective. And just as I must guard against imposing my values on them, so I must be careful to accept their own objectives- unless, of course, they are, to my understand- ing, self-destructive. No, for the patient, the good to be achieved in therapy usually has a very specific shapesuch as the passing of the bar exam- but to me as therapist it always seems to be a step in the general direction of increased freedom to love and work." "I am sorry if I offended you", says he, "I didn't mean to do that. What I really had in mind is the approaching end of your talk, and the fact that you are also supposed to dicuss the harm analysis can do. And it seemed to me that, if therapy had the power to free individuals to do evil, this would constitute harm." "Indeed it would;' say I. ''And the matter is of more than academic importance, for there have lately sprung up certain faddish therapies which encourage their patients to do just that, to 'put #1 first; to be unhesitatingly selfish in the most narrow and unenlightened way; and it comes to specifics, ethical and moral issues of great to the extent to which these therapies manage to remove complexity may arise, and there I have to try my best old and admittedly blind constraints without replacing them with new and enlightened ones, much harm is caused, both to the patients and to those around them. This kind of supposed liberation lays claim to being a to see and understand a given situation in terms of the patient's own standards, and not to impose mine on hiin. This is not always easy or successful, but I am aided by another basic principle enunciated by Freud when he said, using his own technical terms, "where id was, ego shall be''-which I interpret to mean, in a slightly expanded sense, that it is the task of the therapist to help the patient toward a maximum of self-determination, of choice, hence of freedom. This, in fact, is the only function of insight: behavior can be modified without insight, revolution, or even a rebellion, against established standards; however, the truth is it merely constitutes a delinquent evasion of responsibilities." " A nd may I ask;' says he, "before you make me vanish again, whether that is the only harm that could come from therapy? Or are there other and often is; but in that case one driven, or fearconditioned, or other-directed behavior pattern is merely dangers?" replaced by another which may be equally driven, or fear- case of the nun,] eanne Fery. You saw how she disavowed conditioned, or other-directed; whereas insight, an her parents, and took for father or grandfather first the devil, then the exorcist, and then the Archbishop. She understanding of why one felt and acted as one did, 36 "Indeed there are, and they may be illustrated by the WINTER 1984 �transferred, you might say, her feelings about the evil, non-attentive and non-giving father to another figure, one who was also evil but who was attentive and giving: the devil; and later she switched again, and transferred her feelings to the archbishop, a man who was, to her mind, as a father should be, ali-good, and whom she forced to be very attentive to her for the rest of her life. This 'transference; if I may now use the technical term, though it is in some measure essential to the cure, also has the potential for harm- if it is misused by the patient or by the therapist?' "And how did she misuse it?" "I should think that is obvious. First she used her illness itself, painful as it may have been for her, to get some attention and care she would not otherwise have received. Thus she became, for instance, the only nun to have an archbishop for confessor. But in addition she then used him-meaning his authority-for her own advantage in dealing with others. Today, it is not uncommon to hear people say something like: 'I am supposed to get angry with you, my doctor says so; or: 'My shrink tells me I don't have to do the dishes' or similar more or less serious claims in which the therapist is, without his knowledge or consent, used as ultimate authority concerning issues he knows nothing about. Such gains begotten by ills are of course ill-begotten gains and totally improper:' "Is that all?" "No, there is worse. Both Jeanne's affection for the archbishop- she, after all, never had such a good 'father'-and the advantages she derived therefrom induced her to demand that she remain his 'patient' for ever. Such a demand, today, is not likely to be voiced quite so blatantly, but it may be acted on without ever being verbalized. And it is not only the affection for the therapist or some improper advantages extracted from therapy which may induce a patient to want to continue indefinitely; it is perhaps above all the refusal to get well, because getting well means facing anxieties which the patient would rather avoid, and therefore, getting well takes courage. Think, for instance, of a person with a highway and bridge phobia. No matter how helpful it may be to understand the causes of such a fear, and to learn that fear itself is not harmful- it still takes great courage to test such understanding and to drive out onto a seemingly exitless freeway or a seemingly endless bridge. The fear of the fear-the fear that one may panic after all- is still there and must be faced. The wish to postpone the moment of truth is quite understandable, but any therapist who, today, would be as indulgent as the archbishop, would be harming the patient by permitting the ill to continue indefinitely. Therapy rarely needs to be a rush-job, but it must be clear from the . beginning and all along, that it will not go on for ever:' "You speak of the affection of the patient for the therapist;' says he. "Is that not a euphemism? Is it not because he or she is helpful and relatively nonjudgmental, and possessed of an experience of life that comes from having observed so many lives. But even this liking is not essential, and therapy can be successful without it. On the other hand, some patients do fall in love, and in such cases the therapist must be quite firm- kind but quite firm-in pointing out that such feelings have nothing to do with him as a specific individual, but that they are due to the transference and would have occurred in just about the same way had the patient seen someone else. This is not always easy to do. When a beautiful and seductive woman declares her love to aperhaps lonely and unhappy- therapist, he may have a good deal of difficulty within himself, trying to keep in mind for his own use the explanation he gives the patient." "Are you then saying that therapy also entails some dangers, and possible harm, for the therapist?" "Indeed, this is so. In the situation just discussed, the therapist must examine himself, and scrutinize his past behavior with the patient, to detect in what way he may have subtly encouraged his patient to fall in love, or to what extent such a development coincides with his own secret phantasies. And if that is the case, then he must admit that he is no longer serving the patient, but abusing the patient to his own ends, to achieve his own satisfactions. That surely is a betrayal of trust and one of the worst things a therapist can do. He must find ways of putting a stop to it as quickly as possible." <1\nd if;' says he, "the love of patient and therapist for each other is to be seen as unreal, as a transference- mirage, so to speak, does this not also hold for attachments oflesser intensity, and must they not equally be terminated?" <'The answer to this is yes and no. Even lesser degrees of attachment, such as for instance an affection spring- ing from a long and intimate collaboration (from a feeling of mutual understanding and compatability), may induce a patient to hold on to the therapist, or a therapist to try and hold on to his patient. If this happens, it is clearly detrimental. Do not forget that the therapist gets paid, and his pay should be his only personal gain. That of course is never quite true, for he also gains in experience, and from the pleasure of success with his patient, and from the opportunity to associate with the often highly interesting and accomplished persons who become his patients. But once the main purpose of therapy sessions lies in the enjoyment of pleasant company, therapy has ceased and the integrity of the relationship is compromised. Once this is recognized, therapist and patient should agree that the time has come to terminate:' '~nd that is the end of it?" "No, that is still not the end of it. There are two phenomena which tend to occur and which continue the bond. The first lies in this, that the patient commonly takes the therapist with him, as it were. That is to say, well known that patients fall in love with their therapists?" the patient, now no longer in real and regular contact "Like most things well known;' say I, "this one con- with the therapist, tackles problems which may arise by discussing them with the therapist- in his own head. After all, when you have associated with a person for months or even years, you know pretty well what he will tains a grain of truth and a whole bucket full of exaggeration. By no means do all patients fall in love with their therapists. Most patients come to like the therapist, THE ST. JOHN'S REVIEW 37 �say about a given matter, or in response to a certain question. Such inner conversations with the therapist may be quite helpful and may actually advance the therapy beyond the point it had reached at the time of formal termination. The other phenomenon is the persistence of a special intimacy between the now ex-therapist and the ex-patient so that, if the need should arise, they can always resume their work together, and pick up just where they left off, quite as old friends, who, meeting after a long separation, may feel as close as if they had seen each other just the day before. Such lifelong, potential availability of the therapist is a great comfort to the patient, and may be sufficiently reassuring to make actual resumption of therapy unnecessary." "If I understand you right;' says he, "it still is true no matter how benignly you put it, that the patient remains tied to the therapist- in reality or in his headquite as a lifelong student to his teacher, or even as a vassal to his master. And you call that a higher degree of freedom?" "Let me answer this by recalling something I have read about the training of a Zen monk. In Zen, there is the same close and lengthy association between a student-patient and a- master which we have found in other therapies. It may in fact go on longer than most others-a matter of five to ten years. Now what happens at the end? At the end, when the student has reached satori, or enlightenment, he may slap his master's face, and walk away for good. And the master? He laughs, and is happy. He knows that, by means of this slap, the student has symbolized his freedom from the authority of and attachment to the master. But does that mean that the student, now a master himself, will forget his mentor? That he will not still be influenced by what he has learned from him? Compare this to a formulation a young patient of mine came up with recently: "It all depends;' he said, "on whds in charge?' This seemed to him a great insight -and it was. All his life, up to this time, he had been embroiled in a paradoxical enterprise, namely, to win the approval of, but also constantly to oppose, all those who were important to him: his parents, his wife, and lately myself. In the process he neglected his own goals and, as might be expected, all his efforts turned out to be self-defeating. But now, he felt, it was finally he who was in charge, in the sense that he was no longer compelled, slavishly, to obey or to oppose what others expected of him; he could weigh matters in his own mind, and affirm or deny as he saw fit. He conveyed to me a great truth he had discovered: "If I ever;' he said, "if I ever gave up all inner resistance, if I ever told you without any hesitation all that is on my mind, 38 then I would not deserve to be here, there would be no point in coming to therapy: for it would mean that I have no self." He was, at this point, discussing his termination of therapy. He was ready to terminate because he had discovered, and affirmed, the validity and independence of his own self, a self he had never fully revealed, much less surrendered, in therapy, a self which was now ready, in light of all his experiences in life and in therapy, to make its own decisions. Without having to obey or reject me or any other authority-figures that preceded me, he was now ready to be his own authority, to be in charge. Surely, that is the opposite of bondage, quite properly one of the definitions of freedom, and a fitting goal of therapy?' "We seem to have reached;' says my interlocutor, "a comforting and cheerful conclusion, and therefore the proper moment for me -and you- to vanish from this stage. I shall do so immediately. You perhaps should, as is customary, end with some sort of summation?' ar be it from me to disregard the advice of my daimon ; so I shall summarize as follows: Psychotherapy is a journey which two individuals agree to take together. One of them, the patient, is, for whatever reason, anxious and feels lost. The other, the therapist, is, due to his training and experience, much less anxious, and confident that he may find, together with and for his patient, a way out of perplexity, out of fear and constriction into a realm of greater. freedom and a fuller life. The patient begins this journey with a cerfain measure of trust in the therapist, a trust based on the therapist's formal qualifications and on his reputationjust as a tourist looks with a degree of preliminary trust at an official tour guide. This trust has a "let's wait and see" quality, and must undergo considerable testing before it gradually turns into the confidence that permits a genuine "confession;' an open avowal and discussion of hitherto hidden feelings and thoughts. This process may or may not produce a greater understanding of one's past and present actions, but in any case has little curative effect unless it leads to a change in actual behavior. Such an attempt at changing the accustomed modus operandi is always frightening, and requires great courage. The benefit to be attained is a higher degree of freedom accompanied by a higher degree of responsibility. The harm that may come of it.derives not from the process proper, but only from its abuse. Given sufficient awareness of such potential danger, the trip of psychotherapy is one of the most exciting, rewarding, and safe journeys one can possibly undertake. F WINTER 1984 �Cordelia There is no cause for her to utter Nothing. The court is scarce attending: only we Were given notice that with sudden truth She'd dare to disconcert the elderly. Love hasn't yet acquired several senses: As what is played for, when we do not play For money; as the scoreless egg at tennis; As diagnosis when sopranos die. Her Can The The sisters know, can trace the naughty circle, crack the crown, can set the wheels awhirldouble rounds of Fortune and of Fire, planetary orbs of Fiend and Fool. The moonish O's in Fool are central cyphers, But Nature must annihilate extremes. Invoked, she'll teach her son to nullify, And help the hangman carry out her crimes. He'll act it awkardly, for Nature's artless When counting down the virgin sacrificeUnlike the daughter, who, unleashing monsters, Enunciates with suicidal grace. ELLIOTT ZUCKERMAN Poems by Elliott Zuckennan, a tutor at St. Jolm's College, Annapolis, appeared in the Winter/Spring 1983 Review. THE ST. JOHN'S REVIEW 39 �Aristotle's Account of the Intelligibility of Being James Carey ristotle thinks human knowledge is possible only insofar '!S things show us what they are. The self-presentational character of Being, its intrinsic intelligibility, is a theme Aristotle develops with a wide ranging investigation that runs through the better part of his corpus, especially the logical writings, the Metaphysics, aod a group of treatises on the soul and its functions. His argument for the intelligibility of Being is complex and involves many difficulties, but it can be made clear, at least in outline, even if some of its finer shadings remain obscure. By way of introduction to Aristotle's account, we should consider briefly the problem of knowledge and its object as he inherited it from his teacher. In the seventh book of the Republic, Plato has Socrates speak at length about the mathematical studies that have come to constitute tbe quadrivium of the liberal arts. Although they are indeed learnable (as their very name- Ia mathematica-suggests), their objects do not occupy the topmost segment of the divided line, nor is the manner of apprehending these objects the paradigm of knowing (noesis)'. Socrates says to Glaucon: A Now with regard to ... [the arts] which we say reach some~ thing of what is, [namely] geometry and those following in train with it, we see that they dream of what is, but that it is impossible for them to have a wakeful view of what is, as long as they leave unchanged the hypotheses they use and are not able to give an account of them. For if the starting point [or principle-arch!!] is unknown and the middle and conclusion are woven out of what is unknown, what contraption is ever going to change such [merely] consistent agreement [homologia] into knowledge. 2 An expanded version of a lecture given at St. John's College, August 3, 1979. Mr. Carey is a tutor at St. John's College, Annapolis. 40 To the extent that an argument is based on assumed and unquestioned hypotheses, any conclusion reached will be tainted by the assumptive character of the starting point. To be sure, this does not rule out the possibility that consistency might reigu within the course of the argument. Assuming that we can state all the axioms and rules of inference that govern the argument, we can say that we know the premises imply the conclusions. Such knowledge is not to be despised, aod this quite aside from the fact that the Purest exemplars of these procedures, i.e., the mathematical disciplines, by infusing habits of precision and rigor can serve as preliminary training for philosophy. Still, to arrive at insight into Being, into what is fundamentally real, aod for Plato this is the eidi! in their community with one another, the very direction, and consequendy the general style, of our thinking must undergo a reversal. Socrates says that "by the power of dialectic, discourse (logos) can reach up to the unhypothesized, the arche of all that is:' 3 Logos makes this move by regarding hypotheses not as principles of deduction but as something from which it can spring upward toward the arche. Once this arche is reached, logos is able to proceed through the domain of the intelligible "using eidi! themselves, moving through eide to eide, and ending in eidi!:'• For this to happen the hypotheses as such must be "destroyed:'' Aristotle agrees with Plato that knowledge in the emphatic sense (noesis) cannot be realized by simply deducing what follows from assumptions. But Aristotle offers a different solution to the problem of how one achieves a knowledge that is not merely "hypothetical;' and this difference in solution mirrors a difference in the evaluation of the "power of dialectic." Near the beginning of Aristotle's treatise on dialectic, the Topics, we are told what we can gain from a study of this art. 6 In the first place, it is useful for training (gymnasia). 7 It enables us to have more success in attacking a proposed subject for debate. WINTER 1984 �In the second place, it is useful in general conversation, for, having enumerated the opinions of the many, we are said that some things are by nature known through them- then able to converse with them on the grounds of what they believe and to detect any misuse they might make of the common opinions that guide their thinking. Finally, and most importantly, we can employ dialectic in the "philosophical sciences" to exhibit problems (aporiai) on others are only known through other things. 13 Aristotle calls the first principles immediate. What he means by "immediacy" can be seen by attending briefly to a special feature of his syllogistic theory. One type of syllogism shows that A belongs to C because A belongs to B and B belongs to C. We call B the middle or mediate term because it is through B that we prove A belongs to C. Hence we say that'~ belongs to C" is a mediate proposi- both sides of a question, better enabling us to discern what is true and what is false. In reading through the Aristotelian corpus, we cannot help but be impressed by the near ruthlessness with which Aristotle raises aporia upon aporia not only against the positions he opposes to his own but also against the very positions he intends ultimately to advance as true. On the whole, he represents the positions of other thinkers with exemplary fairness and often seems to have elevated distributive justice to the rank of an intellectual virtue. The relentless scrutinizing, the returning again and again to the beginning of a question, distinguishes Aristotle's attempt to make Being come to life in logos as much as it does Platds. On the basis of his acute sensitivity to the aporetic in learning, it might be tempting to maintain that, for Aristotle, dialectic and philosophy are somehow one, as they at least appear to be for Plato. But this would be an overstatement. In the Metaphysics, Aristotle contrasts the philosopher with the dialectician and the sophist. The dialectician differs specifically from the philosopher in "the manner of his power . . . dialectic is tentative (peirastike) concerning those things of which philosophy is knowledgeable:'• This is emphasized in the Topics: dialectic takes its point of departure not from what is known to be true but only from commonly held beliefs, out of which it develops distinctively dialectical syllogisms as opposed to scientific demonstrations. 9 Its attempt to selves (as we might say, they are "self-evident") whereas tion. But if there were no mediate term "between" A and C we would say that the proposition ''A belongs to C" is an immediate proposition. Since syllogisms make use of mediate terms to reach their conclusions, an immediate proposition cannot be the conclusion of a demonstrative syllogism. The immediacy of first principles, then, means that they are necessarily indemonstrable and, conse- quently, known only by virtue of their self-evidence. That the principles on which a demonstration depends must be (at least at the outset) better known than the conclusions is cardinal to Aristotle's conception of the nature of demonstrative science. It is true that he sometimes speaks of "assuming" or even "believing'' the first principles, but this occurs in special contexts, such as when he is simply delineating the formal interrelationship of terms within a syllogism. In a number of places, however, he insists that the archai must be knowable 14 A first principle is not, for Aristotle, something which is merely probable; much less is it something arbitrarily assumed for the sake of seeing what follows. This unique status of the ultimate premises of reasoning requires that they be known in a peculiar and appropriately radical manner. Aristotle shows that no form of circular reasoning can secure knowledge of them. 15 A demonstrate first principles remains only that, an attempt so-called circular demonstration would be a process both (peira).' 0 In the last chapter of the Posterior Analytics, the only passage of any length in Aristotle's works that is focused exclusively on how we come to know the first prior to the principle as conclusion-and posterior to it principles of things, neither the term "dialectic" nor any of its derivatives appears. thing except in different senses. He also shows that the form of a circular proof in its most general structure would be the following, where "X" stands for the first principle and ''Y" stands for the propositions that can be deduced from it: Y follows from X, and X in turn follows from hat makes it possible for us to know these.fi"rst principles can best be answered by initially considering what Aristotle means by this expression, "prOtai archai." He tells us that demonstrative W knowledge in the strict sense can emerge only when dependent on principles which are first, true, immediate, better known than, prior to, and causitive of the conclusions reached. 11 Without these conditions we can have a syllogism, i.e., there may be a consistent interrelation of reasons (syl-logismos), but not a demonstration, i.e., as starting point. And Aristotle takes it as obvious that the same thing cannot be prior and posterior to the same Y. But this is only a special case or, as modern logicians · would say, a "substitution instance" of the transforma- tion rule of hypothetical syllogism: "if Z follows from Y, and Y follows from X, then Z follows from X:' All that has been shown is that the initial proposition implies the conclusion. In the substitution instance all we can infer from '~ follows from x;' and "X follows from Y" is that "X follows from X." We have established, at most, that there will be no showing-from (apo-deixis), because there will be nothing reliable from which such a showing could be executed. The principles must be true because knowledge can only be of the truth, 12 and they must be first because, although what follows from them depends on them, they cannot depend on anything else. All of this is implied in the very sense of the word '&rche"-a our first principle, X, implies itself. We have not shown that X is true, but only that if X is true then X is true. Aristotle observes that "it is easy to prove anything this way.' 16 Every source or origin which does not simply initiate but curiosity, an extreme case where, given six premises with governs what follows from it. In the Prior Analytics it is three terms all reciprocally predicated of one another, THE ST. JOHN'S REVIEW proposition, whether tautological, contingent, or absurd, implies itself, but the fact of this self implication establishes nothing as to the truth of the proposition in question taken by itself. Aristotle does show, as a logical 41 �we really have a circular proof. But this authentic sample of a circular proof is still based on assumptions that are not necessarily known or, for that matter, knowable. 17 What Aristotle has shown in the opening chapters of the Posterior Analytics is that the first principles of demonstrative science cannot themselves be demonstrated. The foundations of reasoning cannot be reached by reasoning itself. As Aristotle says, to demand a demonstration of everything is the sign of a bad education. 18 But this leads to scepticism only if one fails to realize that he has at his disposal a means of knowing which is more precise (akribesteron) and truer (alethesteron) than episteme itself. 19 The first principles which this mode of knowledge has as its object are divided into two categories, the archai that all the sciences share, namely axioms, and the special archai employed by the particular sciences. These principles are, in Aristotle's understanding, expressions of the underlying order of what is. They are not simply impositions of "mind" on data presented to, the subject from an "exterior" world. Aristotle realizes that the problem of knowledge is best tackled by trying to determine what accounts for the intelligibility of Being. It seems that here Aristotle is in agreement with Plato. The one dialogue devoted almost exclusively to the question, "what is knowledge?''- the Theaetetus- tells us explicitly only what knowledge is not. Being, as the community of eide, hardly becomes a topic of thoroughgoing inquiry. Plato seems to indicate that an answer to the question "what is knowledge?" requires investigation into what it means to be a knowable object. In the Metaphysics Aristotle raises this question: does it belong to the science Which studies Being to consider the principles of demonstration? 2 0 This question is answered in the course of the treatise. Since knowledge is of what is, the problem of intelligibility is one with the problem of Being. To understand what knowledge is we have to ask the question, "What is Being?" rom the start, it must be kept in mind that, according to Aristotle, Being is not a genus, a "highest class" which somehow embraces members. If Being were a genus it would have to be divisible into subgenera which would be distinct from one another by virtue of having unique "specific differences." For instance, the definition of vertebrate is composed of the genus, animal, plus the specific difference, having-a-spinalcolumn. A vertebrate is a kind of animal, but the specific difference, having-a-spinal-column, is not a kind of animal. The specific difference was brought in from "outside" the genus and was thus able to limit the genus to give us the definition of vertebrate. In brief, the specific difference is never a member of the genus that it limits, although, of course, the sub-genus is. We should now be able to see why Being cannot be a genus. If it were divided into subgenera, the specific differences would have to be brought in from "outside" the genus as it happens in every division. But in this case the genus is supposed to be Being itself. This means that the specific differences would have to be brought in from "outside" Being. But there is no region "outside" Being from which F 42 specific differences could be retrieved to effect the division of this genus into sub-genera. If Being is a genus, it is a genus unlike any other. 21 We shall shortly see another, deeper reason why Being cannot be a genus in any sense at all. Aristotle tells us that Being or that which is (to on) can be meant or expressed in many ways. 22 We can speak of accidental being, of what just happens to be. For example, some child happens to be swimming. Aristotle maintains that there can be no science of this sort of thing, because such ways of being are not essential to what the child fundamentally is, a human being. One does not have to be swimming in order to be a human being. It is obvious that there are art indeterminate number of such accidental ways of being. Being can also be expressed in terms of actuality (entelecheia) and potentiality (dynamis). This child is potentially an adult-he is now in an incomplete way what he will later on be fully. But he is not now just a potential being; he is now actually a child but potentially an adult at the same time. Furthermore, Being can be expressed according to the various categories or modes of predication which answer such questions as: what is it? of what sort is it? how much or many is it? to what is it related? when is it? where is it? The child is a human being, is blond, is three feet tall, is the son 0f a musician, is today at the beach, and tomorrow will be at home. All of these ways of being are pertinent to the child. But they are not all on the same footing. What the child is is a different order of being than, say, the size of the child. Still the size of the child, in some way, is; the size of the child is not nothing. To appreciate all of these distinctions for Aristotle's understanding of Being, it is necessary to say soinething about the ways in which different things can share the same name. 23 Man and ox share the name "animal:' Aristotle says that they are spoken of synonymously: neither is more or less an animal than the other. A large box and the bole of a tree share the name "trunk;' but are spoken of homonymously: it is accidental that they are both called "trunk!' Finally some things are spoken of paronymously, such as a medical book, a medical prescription, a medical degree, and a medical instrument. It is not by accident that these are called "medical;' nor are they all called "medical" in the same way. They are called "medical" because they bear a relationship to one thing (pros hen) which is called medical in the preeminent sense, namely, the medical art possessed by the physician. 24 Being, that which is, is also spoken of paronymously. All things that in any sense are, quantities, qualities, relationships, places, times, etc., are always said to be with reference to something which is, in a primary and dominant sense of "is;' what Aristotle calls '&usia." This term has been variously translated: substance, essence, Entity, reality, being, real being, and beingness. None of these is wholly adequate. r'Ousia" is derived from the feminine present participle of the Greek word for "to be'' and seems to have had in customary usage the sense of property, what is one's very own; and this sense of being what is one's very own is preserved in an enhanced form in Aristotle's employment of the term '&usia."We are go- WINTER 1984 �ing to leave the word untranslated, in hopes that its meaning will become clearer in the course of our exposition. Aristotle equates the question of Being, of what is insofar as it is (on he on), with the question of ousia. 25 Unless one can gain some understanding of what it means to be ousia, one can gain no insight into what it means to be at all. But there is a special difficulty. Just as Being is spoken of paronymously, so also is ousia. In Book Zeta of the Metaphysics, Aristotle designates several ways one can speak of ousia. 26 Because ousia is the subject (hypokeimenon) of predication, the underlying material (hyle) which takes on different forms at different times can be called ousia. But material is not the privileged case of ousia. Material can be called (&usia" only because it is an enduring fundament of change. From a piece of marble a column can be formed and this column can later be transformed into a statue. The form of the column disappears and in this disappearance of the form is the disappearance of the column as such. But throughout this, the underlying material, in this case the marble, endures. In another sense the sensible singular entity that is a composite being, formed material, can be called ousiae.g. this horse I see standing in the meadow, this dappled gray thoroughbred, "this one right here" (tode ti), I say, indicating it to someone standing beside me. In the Categories, Aristotle says that such beings as these are primary ousiai.2 7 But in the Metaphysics, after introducing the sensible singular composite as a candidate for the title of (&usia'' in the primary sense, he says that such things, those beings with which we are first familiar, "have little or nothing of Being."" They lack the necessary credentials. Ousia is primarily timeless Being, that which has no history. It is what is under every condition, what is simply changeless. It is that of which we cannot say "it was not" or ''it will not be." The argument of Books Zeta and Eta of the Metaphysics leads to the conclusion that, among beings composed of form (eidos) and material, that which most deserves to be called "ousia)J is form. 29 That the eidos is the fundamentally real, that which is primarily responsible for whatever Being and intelligibility are manifested in the things that lie before our eyes, is a conception obviously of Platonic provenance. But Aristotle criticizes the Platonic understanding of eidos, or, put more moderately, the understanding of eidos holding sway in the Academy. The eide cannot account for the Being of things when they are separate from them, when they are "yonder:' The eidos of a thing, of a tree, for example, must somehow be in it. But this preposition "in" is somewhat misleading. The eidos is not in the tree in the same way the fibers of wood are in the tree. Its way of being in the tree is analogous to the way a man's character can be said to be manifested in his actions. His character both governs his actions and reveals itself in them. The eidos of the tree is similarly in the tree; making the tree what it is and manifesting what it is. Because the eidos forms the fryle into a sensible composite being, a tree, and at the same time is that very being insofar as it is intelligible, the eidos is both the form of this tree and the species, THE ST. JOHN'S REVIEW tree. By translating the one word eidos sometimes as "form" and sometimes as "species" we must keep in mind that we are effecting a bifurcation of meaning that threatens to render opaque the relationship of Being and intelligibility that Aristotle, just as Plato before him, is striving to render transparent. Let us consider again, for a moment, the relationship between the genus and species of which it is, as we say, a member. The genus, animal, can be divided into proximate subgenera, one of which is the sub-genus, vertebrate. The sub-genus vertebrate becomes clear in speech by a definition (horismos) in whch the relatively indefinite (aoristos) genus, animal, is limited by the addition of the "specific" difference, having-a-spinal-column. The resulting sub-genus is more definite (horistos) than the genus, and its definition makes this explicit. By virtue of its relative indeterminancy, the genus is, in the intelligible domain, material (hyle). And this is what Aristotle says in the Metaphysics: Concerning lryfe, some is intelligible (noCfe) and some is sensible (aisthCtC) and it is always the case in a logos [and a definition is a kind of logos] that one part is hyfe and one part is entrgeia [being-at-work]. 30 and again: Genus is spoken of ... as hylC, for that which has a differentia ... is the subject (hypokeimenon) which we call hy!C. 31 When Aristotle defines the technical expression [to be or come] from something, he says: 'a tinos," The composite is from [or comes from] the sensible hyle, but the eidos is from the hyiC of the eidos. 32 The hyle of the eidos when opposed to the hyle of the sensible ousia can only be the genus. Finally we have this striking formulation: If the genus does not exist without qualification apart from the eidos, or, if it does, it does so as hylC ... it is evident that the definition is a logos [made up] of differentiae. 33 This conception of the genus as intelligible material should not be misunderstood. The genus shares with the sensible hyle only the general trait of relative indeterminateness with respect to that of which it is the hyle. 34 By understanding the genus in this way, Aristotle is able to solve a cluster of related aporiae. In Book Beta of the Metaphysics, he argues that if the archai are universals, they will not be ousiai, because each ousia is "a this:' On the other hand, if the archai are particular (we might say individuals) there will be no knowledge of them, because knowledge (episteme) is of universals. This opposition suggests that knowledge of ousia is impossible. 35 The solution to the aporia consists in noting the precise relationship of the eidos to its superordinate genera. Genera are divisible into subgenera and these are again divisible into sub-sub-genera and so on. But this division, which is accomplished by limiting the genus in question with a specific difference, cannot go on forever. Eventually something is reached which cannot be divided. What is reached is something 43 �entirely determinate-so determinate that it is an indivisible unity. Being devoid of all indeterminancy, it is in no sense hyle, intelligible or otherwise. It is the eidos, or as we say, the species. Let us say that the eidos we are considering is the eidos, horse. We might think we could continue dividing as follows: grey horse, grey horse weighing fifteen hundred pounds, grey horse weighing fifteen hundred pounds running through the meadow at 5:00 in the afternoon, etc. But these would be accidental divisions; other things besides horses can be grey, or weigh fifteen hundred pounds, or run, or be in a meadow at 5:00 in the afternoon, etc. So the eidos differs sharply from the genus on the one hand and the composite beings that lie before our eyes on the other hand. Both the intelligible genus and the sensible composite have something indeterminate about them, and the root of this indeterminancy is hyle, intelligible in the case of the genus and sensible in the case of the sensible composite. Consequently, although Aristotle often speaks of the particular composite "individual" as <tode tz/' at the heart of the Metaphysics this expression is transferred to the eidos which is then contrasted with the particular. 36 "Tade tz~ '' a this, turns out to be a more appropriate designation for the definite and unique eidos than for the particular sensible composite. We are told at the end of Book Mu that knowing the universal is knowing only potentially, knowing something indefinite like hyle. 37 If I know only that something I see is an animal, my knowing of it is not fully actual. If I know that it is a horse and I know what it means to be a horse, then I know the eidos, the essence, a term frequently used in apposition with or as a substitute for ousia. 38 The Greek expression for what I am translating as "essence" is <to ti en einai»which means roughly the what-its-very-Being-persistently-is, an expression that is never used of the hyle, the genus, or the sensible singular composite. When I know the essence of what I encounter, I know the thing for what it is, I know actually and not just potentially. The eidos is not a universal like other universals, i.e., a genus, a class under which something is subsumed as a member. It is not an indefinite one over many, but a definite one within many. On the other hand it is unlike the particular in that whereas there are, for instance, indefinitely many horses there is only one eidos, horse. Since then the eidos or essence is the primary instance of ousia, at least among beings composed of form and material, and ousia is the primary instance of Being, it seems that the Being of a thing and its eidos coincide. 39 The genus on the other hand, as intelligible hyle, is nothing actual. This is the second reason why Being cannot be understood as a genus. According to Aristotle, Being, in the full sense, is what is actual, not what is merely potential. 40 till, we have thus far left unclarified the mode of our access to the eidos. What is first for us in the order of cognition is, according to Aristotle, a sensory encounter with a multiplicity of particulars- namely . perception (aisthesis). In what follows, I shall, to avoid S 44 unnecessarily forced locutions, translate <&isthisiS" sometimes as "perception" and sometimes as "sensation:' There is no distinction between sensation and perception in Aristotle's treatment, nor do I intend one. 41 Aristotle says that perception is a kind of "being moved and acted upon."4 2 Whatever there might be in the soul or in the dispositiort of the sense organs that would enable the subject to perceive, the act of perception itself is seen as the effect of something external to the one who perceives. The perceptive faculty (to aisthetikon) is itself a mere potentiality, 43 and Aristotle argues that what is potential cannot actualize itself but must be actualized by something else. There must be, in what is perceived, something presenting itself, something which by moving or changing our perceptive faculty and acting upon it brings perception into full actualization. Aristotle makes an analogy with fuel in this connection. Fuel cannot actualize its potentiality for burning by itself; what is needed is something else, namely fire, actually at work. Aristotle accordingly tackles the problem of perception by focussing on its object, what so to speak "ignites" the perceptive faculty, namely the perceptible eidos. Now, though the sense of touch is the most fundamental form of specialized perception, at least in the sense that all animals- all living things which perceive- have it,44 sight is singled out as the sense which most of all makes us become familiar (gnorizein) with things and reveals differences among them. 45 It is true that hearing plays a greater role in the attainment of practical wisdom (phronesis), but its role is accidental (kala symbebekos) because it is not discourse itself which is audible but rather the words (otwmata) which are themselves only symbols. 46 Furthermore we are told that it is sight which is primarily responsible for the perception of the common sensibles- shape, motion, rest, number, size- those sensibles which can be apprehended by more than one sense. 47 In the De Anima, we are told that the object of sight (apsis) is the visible (horaton). Aristotle then says that this is color. •• But immediately afterwards he tells us that the object of sight is what the color is upon, i.e., the body itself. Aristotle is not maintaining that the color and the body are two distinct objects of sight. The body is visible because it is colored. The colored body has, as Aristotle puts it with characteristic concentration, the cause of its visibility in itself. 49 The body has its color, its color belongs to it, and when its color is seen it is seen also. The color and the body are not somehow stuck together. We should understand the color along with the shape as the visible presentation of the body. In fact we do not depart from Aristotle's intention but only from his manner of expression if we say that the color is the body insofar as it is visible, i.e., the color is the body qua visible. Aristotle argues that color brings about sight by effecting a movement in a transparent medium (air or water) which forms a continuum between the surface of the object and the eye. He says that it is the very nature of color to set in motion the transparent and thus to bring about vision (assuming that a being endowed with the WINTER 1984 �capacity for sight is present). If there were no medium but only a void between the body and the eye nothing could be seen at all: color cannot set a void in motion. It should be emphasized that, though it is the medium which directly acts on the eye, it is the color which is seen, and this is because the medium is transparent (diaphanes) and cannot itself be seen but only seen through. Furthermore the medium is not transparent except when light is present. Light is in fact defined as the actuality (energeia) of the transparent qua transparent. 50 In the absence oflight the medium remains only potentially transparent. Light is furthermore said to be the presence (parousia) of fire, the absence of fire being darkness. We are also told that light is the color of the transparent. This does not mean that the transparent has a color proper to itself but only that, when lit up by the presence of fire, it communicates to the eye the color of the body seen through this medium. The essentials of the treatment of sight in the De Anima can be condensed into a single sentence: A body becomes actually visible when a medium such as air or water between it and the eye is made completely transparent by the presence of fire and set in motion by the color of the body, i.e., by the body itself qua visible. It is striking that the treatment of sight in the De Anima is focussed almost exclusively on the object of sight. This is of course consistent with Aristotle's general procedure of understanding the subject, so to speak, in light of the object. The soul as perceptive has no function of its own other than to receive the sensible eide; taken by itself the faculty of perception is nothing actual at all but only a potential for such reception. 51 The treatment of color and transparency in the De Sensu adds a few important observations to those of the De Anima. Transparency is said to be common to bodies and not just to the air or water between them. 52 When the transparent is indeterminate ( aoristos) as in air or water (as when one opens his eyes under water) then it is the nature of light to reside in it. But this "same common nature or potentiality;' i.e., the transparent, when it is in determinate bodies has a limit. We thus arrive at a refined definition of color: "the limit of the transparent in a determinate body."53 That Aristotle says color is the boundary of the transparent in the body and not the boundary of the body itself is probably in order to distinguish the definition of color from that of shape. 54 Nevertheless, since every body has within it the transparent and this is not separable from the body, 55 the boundary of the transparent within the body, the color, would coincide with the boundary of the body itself, the shape. For this reason, color can be regarded (with shape) as constituting the limit of the body. And since the eidos manifests itself in the limit of a thing, in what differentiates it from other things, we can regard color as part of the sensible eidos of body. Obviously, if bodies lacked any color at all they could not be distinguished from one another. Eidos, in general, has the characteristic oflimiting a being so that it is set off from what it is not and apprehended as what it is. THE ST. JOHN'S REVIEW We have in this section limited our discussion to sight as a paradigm of specialized perception. Much could be said about hearing, smell, taste, and touch that is relevant to Aristotle's general theory of perception, but for our purposes it is necessary only to call attention to two important features which these senses share with sight. In the first place, not only is the color of a body treated as the body itself qua visible, but the sound of the body is the body itself qua audible, the odour of the body is the body itself qua object of smell, and the taste of the body is the body itself qua object of taste. This theoretical observation is supported by our normal linguistic usage. We speak of hearing the sound of the trumpet and of hearing the trumpet itself, of smelling the fragrance of the rose and of smelling the rose itself, of tasting the sweetness of the sugar and of tasting the sugar itself. In none of these cases do we, at least at the level of ordinary experience, suppose or intend to speak as though we are perceiving two different objects, a sense datum· and a body. Aristotle's account of specialized perception gives a theoretical justification for this prescientific attitude. In the case of touch Aristotle tells us that we experience the differentiae of body qua body. By this he means the primary elements of which a body is composed, earth, air, fire, and water, i.e., the various combination of hot and cold, dry and wet. 56 It is through the sense of touch that we perceive the material out of which the body is composed. This should not be taken to mean that through touch nothing "eidetic" reveals itself. Indeed earth, water, fire, and air can be differentiated from one another only on the supposition of their possessing something {~idetic» of their own. The so-called "prime matter" would not be any one of these, but rather what they have in common as elements in spite of their specific differences, and this has no existence independently of these elements. 57 But if it did, which would contradict Aristotle's general theory of hyle, it would not be accessible to perception because this is defined by Aristotle as precisely the reception of perceptible form without hyle. 58 The same holds true of touch as of the other senses: in feeling the wetness and coldness of the ice, we feel the ice itself; the wetness and coldness of the ice is the ice itself qua tangible. Secondly, not only sight but the other senses also apprehend their proper objects through a medium either external, air for hearing and smelling, or internal, the liquid on the tongue for tasting and flesh itself for touching (because, as Aristotle says, the organ of touch is not the flesh but is within it. )59 Aristotle maintains that "we indeed perceive all things through a medium:'60 Perception is a mediated mode of apprehension. This does not mean that the medium usually distorts the perception (though it may occasionally do this); rather, because of the necessary presence of the medium for perception to take place at all, 61 the soul is never, by mere perceiving, in immediate contact with the Being of things. And this is of capital significance. Of course, our experience is not limited exclusively to present objects. We also have imagination. Although nothing can possess imagination unless it already has 45 �perception, imagination can be called into play when we are not actually perceiving, e.g., when we close our eyes and imagine what we have just seen. But imagination also differs from perception in the degree of falsity which can pertain to it. Aristotle tells us that "perceptions are always true but imaginings (phantasiai) are mostly false:' 6 2 One reason for this is that the individual senses are naturally designed for the specialized function of apprehending their proper objects, and error, when it occasionally occurs, is due to some accidental and unnatural flaw in the sense organ, either congenital or acquired. But error in the apprehension of the common sensibles, on the other hand, occurs even when the senses are functioning normally. Although what Aristotle calls the "common sense" can directly (i.e., according to its own nature- kath' auto) apprehend the common sensibles, it necessarily operates in and through the specialized senses. Because none of these senses is designed expressly and uniquely for the perception of the common sensibles there is a proneness to error in the common sense that is not found in specialized senses (i.e., when they are apprehending their proper objects). Since "an image is an affection of the common sense faculty" 63 the proneness to error of this faculty would account for some of the falsity that characterizes imagination. But this would not justify Aristotle's contention that "imaginings are mostly false." A further consideration is that the exercise of imagination is "up to us whenever we wish to do so!' This, according to Aristotle, distinguishes imagination from perception. 64 We can manipulate images in such a way that they bear little resemblance to the sensible objects which give rise to them. Nonetheless, the most important reason why "imaginings are mostly false" consists in the fact that images must differ from sensible objects. If we, through the exercise of imagination in remembering something, were to have before us an image completely true to a sensible object we had previously experienced, the vividness of this image would block out, distort, or at least interfere with our present perceiving. For an image to be regarded as an image of some sensible object it must differ from it, at least to the extent that we are able to recognize the image as an image and not take it to be the sensible object itself. When images are so vivid that they are taken for sensible objects, hallucination is the result; and Aristotle is aware of pathological states that are based on inability to recognize images for what they are. 65 There are then these three reasons why "imaginings are mostly false:' In the first place images are affections of common sense and this faculty is prone to error. In the second place, we are free to distort our images (as we say, "to fantasize") in a way that we cannot distort the sensible objects that are present to us in perception. Finally, because an image is only an image, it must differ somewhat from the sensible object that gives rise to it, and this differing is necessarily a distortion (and hence falsifying). Aristotle raises the aporia of how it is possible to remember something absent when what is present is only 46 an image and not the fact itself (to pragma) which gave rise to it. 66 This affection (pathos) exists in the soul67 and is a kind of picture (zographema ti), a kind of figure (typon tis) of the object perceived. 68 How is the perceiving of an affection present in the soul related to the remembering of something past and absent? Aristotle answers by pointing out that the image can be regarded in one of two ways. It can be focussed on within the soul and considered as an object of contemplation (theorema) in its own right or it can be regarded as an image of something else. In the latter case alone is it taken as a likeness (eikan) and a memory aid (mnemoneuma). It is to Aristotle's credit that he did not say that the image is what we remember. On the contrary, it is by attending to the present image that we remember the absent thing of which it is a likeness. Aristotle sees clearly that in being aware of an image flS an image we remember the thing itself. If we were to remember only present images (whatever that might mean) and not their past originals, we would have no way of knowing that the images remembered are indeed images of the originals. And so, for Aristotle, remembering what is past is simply being aware of present images of the past precisely as images of the past. 69 What perception and imagination (in the form of memory) allow us to encounter are the perceptible eide of things. But in the De Anima, Aristotle says that it is one thing to encounter something perceptible, his example is water, and quite another to know its essence, what it is to be water. 7 For this we need something more than perception. The recognition of the intelligible eidos is a function of what Aristotle calls nous. 71 The sensible eidos is the thing insofar as it presents itself in the mediated mode of apprehension that is perception, and perception is our first, and the lower animals' only, encounter with Being. Images are stored in the soul and what they contribute to intellectual insight (noesis), at least for us mortals, cannot be minimized. "The soul never has intellectual insight without images ... the noetic faculty (to noiftikon) knows the eide in the images:' 72 Nonetheless nous, since it discerns a single eidos in a multiplicity of particulars, operates on a different plane. When this insight occurs, the soul is in an £mmediate mode of apprehension. There is no medium, as there is in perception, between the knower and that which is known; they are somehow one. 73 Noes£s is the only mode of apprehension that Aristotle calls "being in contact" (thigein). 74 In speaking of the shift from the perceptual beholding of an array of particulars to insight into the intelligible e£dos at work in them, we should not overlook the nuanced distinction between the shape or figure (schema) which is but one among several common sensibles, and the richer sense of shape connoted by the term «morphe."The schema is only the visible or tactile limit of a thing. Considered in isolation from the thing of which it is the schema, it becomes, when suitably purified by the dianoetic activity of the mathematician, the subject matter of geometry. {'Morphe," on the other hand, a term often used in apposition with or as a substitute for «e£dos" by Aristotle, carries with it a sense not only of shape, but ° WINTER 1984 �of shapeliness, comeliness. The term occurs as early as the Odyssey, in the Phaiakian episode. In Book VIII Odysseus speaking to Eurylaos says: There is a certain kind of man less noted for beauty but the god puts a comeliness [morphen] on his words and those who look toward him are filled with joy at the sight, and he speaks to them without faltering, in winning modesty, and shines among those who are gathered and people look on him as a god when he walks in the city.1 5 Later, in Book XI, Alkinoos tells Odysseus: You have a grace (morpht) upon your words ... you have told the story of the dismal sorrows befallen yourself and all of the Argives. 76 "Morphe"is also a term that occurs frequently in biological treatises. Aristotle uses it to designate the principle that regulates a being in its wholeness. The schema is but the surface evidence of the morphe. When the morphe is discerned, one is no longer beholding the perceptible eidos, the being insofar as it presents itself to the perceiving soul; one is in contact with the eidos in the full sense of the word, the ti en einai. One is engaged in noesis. And this is not an act of abstracting. The morphe can no more be abstracted from what is seen than it can be abstracted from a piece of poetry. This term, "abs~raction;' occurs frequently in Aristotle's writings but it almost always refers to the act in which we disregard what the things are, and everything else about them except their quantitative determinations. In abstraction, as opposed to noesis, Being is overlooked. The very expression, "things-byabstraction" (ta ex aphaireseOs), is Aristotle's abbreviation for the objects of mathematics. 77 One is hard pressed to find passages in his writings where the term refers to the apprehension of an eidos, and the reason is simple: if the eidos to be abstracted were not already ''seen" by nous in the particulars, one would not know what to abstract, and this "seeing" of the eidos renders a subsequent act of abstracting superfluous. Furthermore, abstraction of the eidos would turn it into something literally abstract, something less real than the sensible composite, a product of an act of "constitution?' The mathematicals have this character for Aristotle, though not for Plato. The eide have this character for neither. The eidos, in Aristotle's understanding, is then both the essence of a thing, what it really is, and the presentational "expression" of the thing. The soul cannot force things to display themselves to it. They are of their own accord on display. If they did not have a principle of selfpresentation intrinsic to their very Being, if they were, as is sometimes said, "really just matter;' it would be impossible to account for any experience of them at all. 78 But, according to Aristotle, not a single being, intelligible or sensible, is ')ust matter." The world around us is saturated with eide, and Aristotle takes great pains to show that its beauties are manifested in the most unlikely regions of nature. 79 Aristotle cannot even playfully call this world, as Socrates can, a "barbaric bog?' 80 It is, for him, the cosmos. Even the motion of things is but an THE ST JOHN'S REVIEW effect of the radiance of the divine into the world, as prime mover, final cause. And this motion can be made intelligible by a science of nature, a physics, which he argues is an impossibility for the Platonists. 81 We are now in a position to get at least a tentative understanding of how the first principles are known. The archai of the particular sciences, at least the definitions they employ, are the results of the transfer of insights gained by nous into the medium of logos. Since the eide are unities, there is a problem as to how that kind of logos which specifies what a thing is, a definition, is not a "heap;' a pile of words. Aristotle holds that the definition is itself a unity, one part of which, as was mentioned earlier, is hyle and one part of which is energeia. The genus and the specific difference both together express what the eidos in question is, both in its relation to other eide and in its own uniqueness. Aristotle argues that only when the definition is construed in this way can it be seen that the integrity of the eidos is not ruptured in speech. This unity is not a "sum" of genus ·and specific difference quantitatively added together; it is a unity of form and material, i.e., of form and formed. Definitions articulate the interrelationship of ousiai, their community in an intelligible cosmos. 82 The archai common to all the sciences, the axioms, are also known by nous. The so-called "principle of noncontradictiOn" is expressed as an arche of being itself. "It is impossible for the same thing both to be present in and not be present in the same thing simultaneously and in the same respect." 83 The basis for this assertion is the clear insight into the determinateness of an eidos. At any one moment of time, an eidos and its own privation cannot both unequivocally be present in an individual thing. We see that this is so but we cannot demonstrate it, because, Aristotle says, nothing is more certain than this. We cannot even imagine it to be otherwise, for our images are formally governed by the very archai which govern the sensible objects of which they are images. On the other hand, if someone is willing to speak and denies this principle, we can show bizzare consequences of his denial, consequences he might not have anticipated. 84 And here, incidentally, dialectic can be put to good use. Aristotle argues that t\>is principle cannot be denied by anyone who intends his discourse to exhibit a tincture of intelligibility and not dissolve into aberration. We can show someone who denies this principle that both his speech and his actions indicate that he does not believe what he is saying, but we can do no more than this. And if he chooses not to speak we can do nothing at all. t this point we are faced with an obstacle which is perhaps ultimately insurmountable. It may be objected that Aristotle's theory does not adequately explain this shift from perception to noetic insight. What faculty do we have that permits an infallible insight into the way things are as opposed to a merely empirical generalization? The objection is, in a sense, A 47 �well taken. Aristotle's answer seems to be that this move- perience, the temporal and labored discursiveness of most ment is not entirely our own doing. He says in the De Anima that the potential intellect is passive to an intellect which is fully active, an intellect which makes all things. 85 It is the nature of a potential intellect, as it is the nature of anything potential, that it cannot actualize itself. The potential intellect, then, needs the active intellect to "actualize" it, to bring it to actual noesis. This active intellect engages in insight (noei) without ceasing. We are certainly not aware of continuous intellectual insight, and it is hard to see how this most privileged mode of knowing could be taking place within us "unconsciously" and yet incessantly. 86 These considerations lead one to the suspicion that, in Aristotle's scheme of things, this active intellect is God at work within our souls when our potential intellects have been properly made ready. The objection that this intellect is exclusively our own because it is said to be active in our souls is somewhat lame. It fails to take into account the fact that our souls are not entirely spatial and that the divine intellect is entirely non-spatial. A real difficulty consists in determining the relationship of this active intellect to the divine intellect of Book Lamda of the Metaphysics. There, he is said to have only himself as object of his thought- he is insight into insight (noesis noi!seos). 87 This is a description of divinity which those of us who admire Aristotle have trouble convincing others is not mysticism. It is difficult to see what is so lovable about noesis noesios, such that it can be said to be the ousia on which everything depends. 88 It sounds too much like an indivisible point that is simply aware of being an indivisible point, and so forever. And it is hard to square this austere conception with other things Aristotle says about divinity, namely that it is life, it experiences pleasure, it is entelecheia, it is good. Aristotle suggests a way out of this aporia. Just a few sentences after designating God as noesis noCseOs, he says that in things which have no hyle, the knower and the known are the same. 89 Now the eide are, considered by themselves, without hyli!, and so is the divine intellect. In fact, both the eide and God are called actuality. Accordingly, the divine nous could know the eide, could indeed be the eide as fully known, and thus be spoken of as only knowing himself. If the objection is raised that he would then be a plurality, the response would be that the eide constitute a whole, a community (which would explain why they animate a cosmos and not just a pile of things, unrelated and spread out in space and time). Such a community of eidi! would not be a simple unity, but neither would it have to be a mere plurality. And if the community of eidi! at its highest level of intelligibility is so organized that, given a powerful enough intellect it could be apprehended not discursively but "at a glance;' it would not be distinct from the intellect knowing it. This would be an attractive solution if we could imagine the totality of eide organized so comprehensively that "seen'' by a divine intellect it would be "seen" as a unity. But we cannot. In spite of the flashes of insight which light up our ex- of our thinking itself prevents us from intuiting the whole precisely as it is, and from imagining how an "all" could be a "one." Perhaps the most quoted passage from the Metaphysics in recent times is the following: 48 And indeed in times of old as well as now and also forever, what is enquired about and what forever causes perplexity is [the question of] what Being is, that is, what is ousia? 90 If we realize that a comprehensive understanding of ousia requires that we gain a clear insight into that which is in the most unambiguous sense- eternal, changeless be-ing, actuality devoid of potentiality, God- then we see that the question, "What is ousia?" is essentially an aporia for us. Our noesis is, after all, dependent on images, and there is no experience which could supply a store of images in which we would be able to discern the essence of the divine. As we noted earlier, to know something is (for Aristotle) to become one with it, and whatever occasional share we have of divine activity, we certainly do not in this world simply become one with God. 91 But if we cannot adequately know the divine, and Being without qualification is located only in the divine, it would seem as though, however intelligible the beings in the cosmos are to us (and their complete intelligibility ultimately hinges on the intelligibility of all their causes, including the final cause which moves the cosmos itself), the intelligibility of Being in the unqualified sense cannot be maintained. Yet we must not overlook the fact that the divine is, after all, luminously intelligent to itself. The problem, then, lic;s not with the intelligibility of the highest instance of Being, God, but with the intelligibility of the whole of Being, God and cosmos. If God is not intelligible to us, we surely do not know the whole; but, by the same token, if the cosmos is not intelligible to God, he does not know the whole either. We have considered two ways of addressing this problem. The first would be to argue for an identification of human nous in its active mode of knowing the cosmos with divine nous. The second would be to argue that the divine nous in its simplicity could engage in a noesis of the multiplicity of eidi! which organize the cosmos. The first way would entail the second, though the second way would not necessarily entail the first. There is evidence in the De Anima and the Metaphysics that Aristotle is aware of both these "solutions" (and their attendant aporiaz), but he explicitly embraces neither. In the Parts of Animals, Aristotle says that knowledge of divine things is hard to come by and yet worth more than knowledge of things around us, just as a "glimpse of those we love is more pleasant than seeing other things with precision:'92 In Book Lamda of the Metaphysics Aristotle attempts to provide us with a glimpse of the one who is loved, so to speak, "absolutely!' But the nature of this Being and His curious relationship to the cosmos in general and to man in particular remains, for us, an aporia. WINTER 1984 �1. In the sixth book of the Republic (509 ff.), Socrates makes use of a divided line to illustrate how the various grades of Being and awareness are related to one another. For a fine discussion of the divided line analogy, see Jacob Klein, A Commentary of Plato's Meno (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1965) pp. 115 ff. 2. Republic 533b. 3. Ibid. 511b. 4. Ibid. 511c. 5. Ibid. 533c. To my knowledge no one has ever made complete sense of these mysterious passages. Aristotle would argue that the dialectical ascent Socrates describes must itself be guided by a pre-dialectical knowledge (noesis) of the distinction between same and other, and he would wonder about the origin of this pre-dialectical insight. For good accounts of the koinonia tOn eidon as found in Plato's dialogues and in Aristotle's criticisms of Plato and the Platonists, see Jacob Klein, Greek Mathematics and the Origin of Algebra (Cambridge: M.I.T. Press, 1968) pp. 61-100, A Commentary on Plato's Meno (op cit.) pp. 122 ff., and Robert Williamson, "Eidos and Agathon in Plato's Republic," in Essays in Honor ofJacob Klein (Annapolis: St. John's College Press, 1976) pp. 171-187. 6. Topics 101a25-b4. 7. This term is frequently used in the Topics, rarely elsewhere. Politics 1297a17. See H. Bonitz, Index Aristotelicus, (Berlin, 1870), p. 163. 8. Metaph. 1004b25. · 9. For a discussion of the change that dialectic undergoes at Aristotle's hands, see Friedrich Solmsen, "Dialectic without the Forms," in Aristotle On Dialectic, ed. by E. G. L. Owen (Oxford at the Clarendon Press, 1968). 10. Cf. Post. An. 79a29-35, Topics 101b2. 11. Post. An. 71b20; cf. Topics 100a29. 12. Cf. Metaph .. 1017a34, 1051b2. 13. Prior An. 64b35. Cf. Physics 184a17, Nic. Ethics 1095b3. If the "gnorimos" in these last two 'passages means "known" or "familiar'' and not merely "knowable" (cf. Lidell and Scott, Greek-English Lexicon, [Oxford at the Clarendon Press, 1968] p. 355; but cf. Smythe, Greek Grammar, [Cambridge: Harvard Univ. Press, 1956,] p. 237, section 858.9), a curious problem emerges. Granted that it is we who know that which is known to us, who is it who knows that which is known without qualification (haplos)? cf. supra pp. 47,48. 14. Post. An. 71a1, 72a29, b5, b19, 99b16 ff.,Mataph. 997a6, 1005b11-17, Nic. Ethics 1139b33. 15. Bk. I, ch. 3. 16. Post. An. 73a6. 17. Ibid. 73a8 ff. The proof is as follows: 1. AaB 4, 6 2. BaC 5, 4 3. CaA 6, 5 4. AaC 1, 2 5. BaA 2, 3 6. CaB 3, 1 Every line is justified as a consequence of two other lines (written to the right of each line) by a syllogism in the first figure. The proof obviously works only on the assumption that A, B, and C are reciprocally predicable of one another. 18. Metaph. 1006a5, cf. 1005b2. 19. Post. An. 100h9-11. 20. Metaph. 995b7, 99626-997a16; cf. 1059a24, 1061b17. 21. Ibid. 998b22, cf. 1070b1; cf. Ernst Tugendhat TI KATA TINOS, Eine Untersuchung Zur Struktur und U rsprung Aristotelischcr Grundbegriffe (Freiburg/Muenchen, Karl Alber, 1958) p. 27 n. 24. 22. To on legetai pollachos- the opening clause of Book Zeta, Metaph. 1028a1 0; cf. 1003a32 for a similar formulation. 23. Cat. 1a1-15. 24. Metaph. 1003a32-b19. Concerning the character of the pros hen equivocals, see the invaluable book by Joseph Owens, The Doctrine OJ Being In The Aristotlean 'M'etaphysics'(Toronto: Pontifical Institute of Medieval Studies, 1951) pp. 107-135 and 259-287. 25. Metaph. 1028b4. 26. Ibid. 1028a30-1029a33. 27. Cat. 2all ff; cf. f.n. 29 infra. 28. Metaph. 1029b9: kai mikron C outhen lou ontos. 29. Though the eidos of a sensible thing is more worthy of being called ousia than the sensible thing itself (the composite of eidos and kyle), the eidos does not have all the marks of ousia mentioned in Book Zeta, ch. 1. It THE ST. JOHN'S REVIEW 30. 31. 32. 33. 34. is the "what-ness" (ti esti) of a thing, it is definite and, furthermore, it endures eternally. However, it is not separate (choristos) without qualification. The passage in Book Delta (1017b25) where the eidos is said to be "separate" should probably be understood as provisional, for it is qualified in Book Eta (1042a26) with the addition "in logos" (cf. Physics 193b4); see W. D. Ross, Aristotle's Metaphysics Vol. I, (Oxford at the Clarendon Press, 1924) p. 311. Indeed, in the passage in Book Eta, Aristotle contrasts the eidos which is chOristos en logoi with the composite which is chOristos haplos (separate without qualification). The eidos of a sensible being, according to Aristotle, is not separate or independent from the composite. Because the composite can be said to be chon'stos haplos, it is in this respect, though only in this respect, a better candidate for the title '&usia" than the eidos (Metaph. 1028a24-35). There is no contradiction in Aristotle's account of ousia. When it is said in the Categon'es (2a10fl) that particular composites (Aristotle's examples arc a man and a horse) are more truly ousiai than their eide, it must be remembered that he is speaking from the standpoint of predication. The eidos, the species "man," is predicated of a man, and this particular man is choriston, in a way the eidos "man" is not. In the Metaphysics, on the other hand, Aristotle is speaking from the standpoint of enduring being or essence (to ti en einaz) and the eidos "man" endures in a way that the particular man does not. Cf Metaph. 1026a7 ff. Aristotle's account is not inconsistent. Rather, ousia itself, as it occurs in the physical realm, is found partly in the composite, partly in the essence of the composite (i.e., the eidos of the composite), and wholly in neither. The eidos and the composite can each be called ousia, though for different reasons. Neither bears all the features of ousia. But whereas composite beings are not identical with their essences (1037b), Aristotle argues that simple beings, beings which are not composed of form and material, arc identical with their essences. Indeed, he says, it is for the sake of understandillg such "supersensible" beings that the inquiry into sensible beings is undertaken (1037al4; cf 1041a8, 1076a13: Physics 192a35, 194b14). This is because such beings alone are eternally subsisting, definite, "individual" (tode tz), indivisible, fully actual (i.e. without hy!e) and at the saine time separate without qualification. Each of these simple beings is wholly ousia. These ousiai are the umoved movers of Book Lamda (cf. f.n.87 infra). The study of Being qua Being comes to fulfillment in a philosophical theology (Metaph. 1026a20, 1064b2; cf. 982b29-983a12). Metaph. 1045a34. Cf 1036a10 Ibid. 1024b8. Ibid. 1023b2. Ibid. 1038a5. The indeterminateness, the "un-formedness" of hyl~ (intelligible or sensiblephysical) makes it unknowable in virtue of itself' (ibid. 1036a9). The subordinate genera are more defmite, hence more knowable, than the superordinate, and the indivisible eidos is most defmite and most knowable of all. The intelligible material within it (its superordinate universal or genus) is completely determined by the specific difference. Aristotle develops his notion of hyle, sensible-physical and intelligible, to account for indeterminateness and plurality both on the aesthetic plane and on the noetic. Sensible lryle "individuates" composite ousiai and is responsible for what is accidental in them. The genus, on the other hand, as noetic hyle, is indeterminate and, as such, permits a multiplicy of different determinations or specifications. Aristotle's lryle is the counterpart to Plato's indeterminate dyad. Cf. Phys. 192a7. On the difference between the two "triads" alluded to in this passage (Aristotle's: hyle and eidos/stercsis, Plato's great/small and One) cf. H. Apostol, Aristotle's Physics (Indiana Univ. Press), p. 202, f.n. 6 and f.n. 7. See also the works by Klein and Williamson cited in footnote 5 supra. For the most penetrating study of how eidos, for Aristotle, is implicated in steresis (privation or, better, deprivation) in the realm of plrysics (nature), cf. Martin Heidegger, "Vom Wesen und Begriff der Physis~ Wegmarken (Frankfurt am Main: V. Klosterman, 1967), originally published in Il Pensiero (Milan, III, 1958), pp. 364 ff. The "triad" of kyle and eidoslsteresis constitutes the aesthetic-physical realm but not the noetic, since sterl:sz's as it is defined in the Metaphysics (1022b22-1023a7) cannot come into play among ousiai which are eternal (the eide of sensible composites or the simple supersensible ousiai of Book Lamda; cf. f.n. 29 supra). One eidos can indeed be said to be "lacking'' in what another eidos has (1023b3, Parts of Animals 642b21 ff.), but this is a derived sense of sterCSis (Metaph. 1022b32). There is no place among what is eternal for what Aristotle calls the "'kath' auto me on" (Phys. 10lb5, cf 192a4) of steresis which is involved in the coming to presence (parousia) of something in time (Metaph. 49 �1013bl2-16, 1032b3, 1055a35-b30, Phys. 191a5-15, 193b20, 195a10). Metaph. 1003a6-17; cf, 1060b20. Ibid. 1042a28; cf. l017b25 and f.n. 28 supra, also de Gen. et Cor. 318b33. Metaph. 1087a8-25. Ibid. 983a26, 988a35, 993al9, 1007a21, 1017b22. The thematic consideration of essence begins in Book Zeta, ch. 4. 39. Aristotle (unlike St. Thomas) makes no distinction between Being and essence. The expression to einai with the dative of possession is an abbreviation for to ti en einai (Metaph. 1029bl ff. ). For the grammar and meaning of this expression, see Owens, op. cit. pp. 180-188. The eidos of a composite being is its essence, but the two terms are not synonymous. Aristotle speaks of the unmoved mover as essence (Meiaph. 1074a35) but never as eidos, perhaps because he does not want his account to be confused with that of the Platonists (sec Eugene Ryan, -"Pure Form in Aristotle," Phronesis, Vol. XVIII, No. 3, 1973, pp. 209-224). Nonetheless, there arc several passages where Aristotle uses eidos in ways that indicate he may not be thinking of it as the eidos of a composite thing: Phys. 192a35, de An. 432a2, Metaph. 1003b22. 40. Metaph., Book Theta; see especially ch. 8. 41. Certain later thinkers make a distinction between sensation and perception, the former regarded as mere reception of sense data, the latter alone involving discrimination. Aristotle would not accept this distinction for at least two reasons: 1) the soul docs not receive unformed sense data but rather sensible eide (De Anima 424a18, b4; cf. 432a3-6), and 2) aistlmis is always engaged in discrimination (ibid. , 428a4; cf. Post. An. 99b35 where aisthesis is called an "innate critical capacity" of all animals). 42. de An. 416b33. 43. Ibid. 417a7. 44. Ibid. 413b5, 414b4. 45. Metaph. 980a23, de Sen. 437a6, de An. 429a4, Problems 8866b35. 46. de Sen. 437all, cf. De Interpretatione 16a4. 47. de Sen. 437a7. 48. de An. 418a24. Aristotle also mentions here what in a phosphorescent body is similar to color. 49. Ibid. 418a30; cf. de Sen. 439a35. 50. de An. 418b19. 51. de An. 417a8. There arc also several passages where Aristotle questions whether or not the perceptible qualities themselves exist apart from the perception of them. At de An. 426a20-27, we are told that they have potential but not actual existence when they are not being perceived. (Sec, however, Cat. 7b35 ff, where this distinction is not advanced). Aristotle is perhaps speaking only of proper sensibles, such as color, and not common sensibles also (figure, size, motion, number, and unity). But atMetaph. 1036a7 and 1040a3, the independent existence of all sensible objects is called into question. In the Physics, Aristotle says that number cannot exist apart from the soul (223a22), and that the same might be said of time (223a25) which is defined as the "number of motion with respect to the prior and posterior." He also questions whether motion itself can exist apart from the soul (223a27). There is a subtle difference between the doubts that Aristotle raises in thes~ passages and those that emerge for Descartes and his heirs (cf. f.n. 78 infra). Aristotle is not calling into question the independent existence of an external world deprived of "looks" (eide) but rather the independent· existence of a world he understands to be constituted through and through by ''looks:' To my knowledge, Martin Heidegger was the first modem thinker to insist on the root sense of '/:idos" as "looks" (Ger. '(/as Ausschen"), Sein und Zeit, 1927, eleventh edition, (Tubingen: Max Niemeyer, 1967), p. 61.) For his detailed treatment of Aristotle's understanding of 'hdos" as "looks" and "'hyle" as "material" (Ger. "Strifffur") vs. "matter," see "Vom Wesen und Begriff der Plrysics:' Wegmarken (op. cit.) pp. 343 II 52. de Sen. 439a20-bl9, Aristotle realizes that this account goes against the sense ofthe word "transparent" (diaphanes); accordingly, he refers to this "common nature or potency" as ''ho legomen diaphanes." 53. Ibid. 439b12. 54. cf. Plato: Meno 76a. 55. de Sen. 439a24. 56. de An. 423b26; cf. de Gen. et Cor. 329b6 ff. 57. de Gen. et Cor. 329a25 (note use of choriston here; cf. f.n. 29 supra). Material deprived of eidos would be deprived of actuality (energeia), i.e., would not actually exist. For this reason, "material" is a better translation for "lryle" than "matter." 58. de An. 424al9; cf. de Gen. el Cor. 332a27. 59. de An. 423b23. 60. Ibid. 423b7. 35. 36. 37. 38. 50 Ibid. 419a16-22. Ibid. 428a11. de Mem. 450all. de An. 417b25. de Mem. 45la8. On recognizing images as images cf. Jacob Klein, Commentary on Plato's Meno (op. cit.) pp. 112-115, also Hans Jonas "Image Making and the Freedom of Man" in The Phenomenon of Life (New York, 1966) pp. 159-165. 66. de Mem. 450a26. 67. Ibid. 450b10. 68. Ibid. 450a30-32. 69. It is sometimes asserted that we can only remember images since the mind can only consider what is present to it. To the extent that this claim is not a mere begging of the question ("the present alone can be an object of'intending' because the mind can only focus on the present"), it is based on an ambiguity in the word "present." One can maintain with Aristotle, however, that the past can indeed become present to the soul, i.e., can be the focus of the "mental" act of remembering, without thereby becoming temporally present in its full concreteness. Indeed, if we could only focus our thought on the temporal present it is hard to see how we could ever arrive at a conception of the past or future, or time itself, or, for that matter, the temporal present. Aristotle realizes that we actually remember the past and we do so by viewing images of the past as images of the past. To have an image of the past or a memory is to remember the past itself. And in remembering the past itslf we recognize that our present images, which only assist in remembering the past, are incomplete pictures of the past we are remembering. We are capable of remembering (past) images or memories, but rarely do so, preferring to remember past "realities" instead. 70. de An. 429b11-24. Cf. f.n. 39 supra. 71. At the end of the Post An. (995b15 ff.), Aristotle addresses the question of how the universal emerges from particulars, the one from the many. We are given only a simile (though a remarkable one-100a12) for how this happens. Aristotle argues, by process of elimination, that it must be nous which knows the archai (100b12; cf. Nicomachean Ethics 1140b31-1141a8), and that the ascent to this knowing is by_ way of induction (epagoge 100b4). The discussion does not show how the particulars are so constituted that the universal can be recognized in them, nor does it tell us why the insight of which nous is capable is precise (akpibes, 100b8) and true (alethes, 100b12). This account must be supplemented by what Aristotle says in other places, esp. in the De Anima and Metaplrysics. 72. de An. 431b2. 73. Ibid. 431b17. 74. Aristotle uses lmptesthai and haphe for touching and touch as a type of aesth' esis. Thigein is never used this way but rather as mere bodily contact or as the direct encounter of nous with noeta (Metaph. 1051b20, 1072b22). See H. Bonitz, Index Aristotelieus, p. 331, for citation of passages where the term occurs. 75. Odyss9' VIII, 170. (Translation by Richmond Lattimore.) 76. Ibid., XI .367 cf. Liddell and Scott, Greek-English Lexicon (Oxford at the Clarendon Press, 1968), p. 1147. 77. See Owens op. cit. pp. 382-385. 78. When nature becomes mathematized in the 17th Century, eidos and morphe are, in effect, reduced to schema or figure, which is itself a mere transient feature of"cxtension." And since the comparatively clear and distinct notion of extension has no intrinsic connection with the self-presentation of beings, our encounter with the world must be explained by considering the nature of the "subject" instead of the "object." The world deprived .of eidos is no longer on display but shut up in itself, cxtemal, its very existence a philosophical problem. The subject is similarly shut up in himself, an "ego" rather than the soul of a living body. This subject relates to the world only through "ideas," which ideas are not, as they were for Plato, the eide themselves, but part of the inventory of that closed domain of interiority that is the mind, "representing:' somehow, the world outside. For those who maintain that the mind can only be aware of its own inventmy, its ideas, there is the special problem of how it could recognize the idea it has of an external world as the idea of an external world, or, for that matter, how it could form the idea of an internal world as opposed to an external world, i.e., how it could fonn the idea of an internal world at all. The thesis that the mind has awareness only of its own inner content would, if true, be a thesis that could not occur to the mind. 79. Parts of Anifflals 644a21-645a36. 80. Republic 533. Alan Bloom's translation of "horborin: barharikoi. The Republic of Plato (New York: Basic Books, Inc., 1968), p. 212. 61. 62. 63. 64. 65. WINTER 1984 �81. Metaph. 992b9. 82. f.n. 29 supra. Though the individual cannot be defined, its essence can be. Metaph. 998b5, 1012a22, 1042a17; cf. Post An. 9620 ff. On the unity of the definition, sec Metaph. 1037b11 ff (cf. 1041b11), 1043b24-1044a5, 1045a9-33). 83. Metaph. 1005b19, Another version is found at Post. An. 77a10. ''It is impossible to assent and deny simultaneously [one thing of another]." This ''logical" version derives its force from the "ontological" version in the Metapfrysics. Taken by itself it is not even true, insofar as one can, as matter of fact, utter a frank contradiction. One cannot, of course, do so trutlifulry, for truthful utterance accords with Being. (cf. 1011b15-21 and 1051a35 ff.) That is why Aristotle argues that the axioms are the concern of First Philosophy (Metaph. 1005a19-b18). 84. Metaph. 1006a2 ff. 85. de An. 430a15. 86. de An. 430a22; cf. Post. An. 99b27. 87. Metaph. 1074b28. How the unmoved mover ofthc sphere of the fixed stars 88. 89. 90. 91. 92. differs from the other forty-six or so unmoved movers that Aristotle has to posit to account for the plurality of heavenly spheres (1074al5) is left unanswered. They must be plural in number, and yet they arc not individuated by lryle. Perhaps they are to be thought of as distinct individual essences (like St. Thomas' angels). But, then, does each engage in noesis? in noesis noeseos? If so, it seems that they would all be gods, for they would all have the same intrinsic activity (energeia) as the unmoved mover of the outermost sphere. Yet how would they be individuated if neither by kyle nor by energeia? There is a serious difficulty in reconciling Aristotle's · cosmology with his "ontology:' Metaph. 1072b14; cf. 1003b17. Ibid. 1075a4. Ibid. 1028b4. Cf. Metaph. 982b29-983a12, 1072b22-30, N.E. 1177a13-18, 1177b26-1178a8, 1141a21. Parts of Animals 644a33. Chameleons My young life ended in a derelict house, Overrun by chameleons. I have squandered it among these; In the rapt study of a grass-green one Sunning on a white porch rail, throat bloated; Watching a brown one skinking Through interstices of sunlight In the grey shade of ivy; In the solitude of a sly one climbing The amber sides of a whiskey glass; And in the silence of a grey one Become a branch, more than disguised, Still, still as August air. This all ended by the blunt intrusion of another. And they were gone. I have not seen them again. Exotic here, but local to my childhood. JoHN FoNTAINE An alumnus of St. John's, Annapolis, Mr. Fontaine is living and writing in the Southeastern United States. THE ST. JOHN'S REVIEW 51 �OccASIONAL DiscouRsEs Winter 1984 Intellect and Intuition Eva Brann For the California Alumni I Y ou .asked me to speak about "Intellect and Intuition;' an enormous topic and yet an intimate one- enormous because the title encompasses the two most distinctively human activities, and intimate because I have, after all, no way to come to terms with it but to look into myself. But it is a congenial inquiry you've chosen and a congenial setting you've provided, because I can speak my thoughts to you pretty nearly as I do to myself. In fact most of what I will say now I thought to myselflast summer wandering up and down among the pinyons of Monte Sol. As I tried to concentrate on the matter, one obtrusive difficulty proved to be the very advantage we have in common -an acquaintance with the texts which most enticingly shape the terms in question. My effort to think would be again and again deflected by remembered formulations, resulting in a kind of short-circuiting of the tension of perplexity. That tendency to be, off and on, sucked into trusted formulations happens to be my Charybdis of reflection. The opposing Scylla of brooding consumes her victim with the need to revise and to reconstrue things from sheer honest contrariness. I must say that I am always fascinated by the fact that the world submits to the latter treatment, which indeed seems to yield very original notions; I guess this mode too catches hold of an aspect of things. I have tried, then, really to find out what I think rather than to remember what has been thought. Eva Brann is a tutor at St. John's College in Annapolis. Her essay, "Against Time," appeared in the Summer 1983 issue of the Review. 52 Nonetheless the outcome, as you will recognize, is often what a much-loved dean of our college used to call in Russian English "discovering America;' namely coming wide-eyed upon well-known worlds. In my case it means arriving, after much casting about, at places opened to us all as long as two-and-a-half millenia ago. Such forays bring back no new product and cannot be made in behalf of anyone else. But I think what holds us all together is just this-that we think well of each other for undertaking these voyages and want to see each others' logs. II Well, to the beginning, which is to ask myself how the title is meant. Is it intended to imply that intellect and intuition are antagonists, that is, "intellect vs. intuition"? After all, if I come across one of those trite double headings like "The Individual and Society'' I know perfectly well that the writer will not be celebrating a harmonious fit. On the other hand, the two terms might be meant to be joined on the same side; you will recall that Kant directs his critique against a so-called "intellectual intuition;' by which he means a vision of thought. He claims that there cannot be such a faculty because thinking cannot confront or encompass thought itself; it can only form and function over sense material. The requirement behind this denial is that the relation of thinking to its object must be firmly certified, and if thinking the truth is beholding independent thoughtobjects; such certification becomes, Kant thinks, unintelligible. At this moment I have to observe that there seem to be two kinds of starting points for any inquiry. Sometimes I am oppressed by some vague unease- indeed it would be more accurate to call it an uneasy vagueness- which WINTER 1984 �eventually draws me to that first and most mystifying step of cogitation: the coagulation of a question. But neither was the interior image of the bare enunciation, the two smaller squares constructed on the short sides sometimes, as in our case, a problem about terms is put of the right triangle and the large square on the to me, and then I find myself, by a pretty firm intellectual habit, first of all collecting and inspecting in order their corrupt, their trite, and their unfaded uses. (Incidentally, I feel entitled to use such a method for rightly directing the mind only because I try to remember how easily it can turn into a routine for avoiding thought.) hypotenuse, the revealing geometric intuition of the theorem, for the imagination is scandalously unable to I'll begin with intuition, because it is the word more squashing half of each small square into a triangle and pivoting that triangle into half of the adjoining parts of the large square. When you saw that, you knew the truth immediately and for good and without words- if I called on you right now you could, no doubt, sketch it out. It was that dynamically immobile image which was the intuitive object. The proof accomplished another purpose. 4. As a ground for all spatial and temporal imagining, Kant introduced a receptive faculty which he called widely and commonly used. And right away I notice that it sometimes means an activity and sometimes the ob- ject of that activity- either the power or its product. Here are i the uses I can distinguish. 1. We say of people- though I try not to- that they and intuitive, and people say it to themselves. They apparently mean that they apprehend things directly without belaboring them by analysis or even without accosting them with too close an inspection. There do seem to be people who, from minimal observation and no articulable reflection, see what's up. I must say that in my experience this gift is often accompanied by a royal obtuseness to those aspects of the world which are not immediately apprehensible, and that more often than not "being intuitive" means just a will-less (of even willful) habit of sticking with those feelings that accompanied first impressions. Intuitive people often accuse their supposed opposites of "being so analytical;' and of course, they have a point: there are people who pry things apart with deft inaccuracy. The object of intuition in this sense is often said to be the ineffable, and it seems to be apprehended preferably in fugue states. 2. Sometimes, again, what is meant is something more delicate in the same line, what Pascal calls the esprit de finesse and opposes to the mathematical mind. It is a disposition to learn from a multitude of immediate sources rather than to reason from a few remote principles -what we might call quick sensitivity. 3. But mathematics itself also has an intuitive mode, namely the ability to "see" mathematical objects and to form conjectures of mathematical truths way ahead of their deduction. I have heard that there are certain mathematicians who are famous for their theorems and notorious for their proofs. The object of mathematical discern the equality of differently shaped areas or to sum them. To see that the two smaller squares together are equal to the larger one it was necessary to see Euclid's construction at work: to view it as a kind of engine for the intuition; a capacity for both receiving and forming sensory material into ordered spatial and temporal structures. Hence for Kant all experience of the world is in one aspect intuition. The pure objects of this faculty, namely space and time themselves, he also called intuitions. I mention this use only because here the term designates so stupendously original and influential a concept. 5. The final meaning I can think of, most remote from ordinary use and yet, I would guess, the spring of my whole inquiry, is that very one intended by the phrase I mentioned before, "intellectual intuition." The Greeks had a single word for the capacity, noesis: they called the corresponding object noetOn, meaning that which is for the intuitive intellect. But before describing- broadly-what it seems to me the two Greeks whose works we have all read both meant by nOesis, let me dispose of a more recent derivative use. I say "dispose of'' because try as I will I cannot grasp it in my thinking. Descartes in particular speaks of intuiting propositions; people in general speak of intuitive concepts. They mean those elements and connections of thinking which are clear and distinct to them. "Clear and distinct" is a phase which seems to me primarily ap- plicable to things seen, and might be used analogously of some vision-like apprehension, but I have never held and cannot think that I ever could hold in mind a pro- intuition is particularly familiar to us in its imaginative position which was so well illuminated and so incisively geometric form, of which more in a moment. (Oddly enough for the mathematical school specifically called contoured as to be called intuitive. It is not only that I "intuitionist;' the term intuition means just the opposite: It is adopted from Kant and refers to the constructive rules of temporal finite thinking.) These objects of the geometric imagination are, I would guess, those intuitions all of us here most ar- ticulably share. For an example, let me quickly remind you of that high-point of your freshman mathematics tutorial, the penultimate proposition of Euclid's first book, the Pythagorean theorem. The picture itself, as you prob- have never met with a proposition that stayed evident for more than a moment-Descartes' examples, such as "I exist;' turn into enigmatic murk under the lightest probing- but that propositional thinking seems to me ipso facto incapable of immediate apprehension. The ancient notion of nOesis arises from the sense that appearances mask, or alternatively communicate, what it is they are. While we can reach for this "whatness" and circumscribe it with thinking we can also know it directly. As I mentioned, it is such direct taking in of what things tion: It was far too determinate in its blackboard place are which is called noesis; what is thus intuitable is called eidos, signifying that which is for the sight of the soul, and far too inexact in its broomstick boundaries. But that is to say, intuition. ably brought out in your discussions, was not the intui- THE ST. JOHN'S REVIEW 53 �In trying to make something of all these usages I must remind myself that none ofthe several ways to go about that business is innocuous and free of a heavy freight of pre-judgements. For example, I can restrict myself to following out a concatenation or a family of uses, refraining strictly from the supposition of a possible common meaning; or I can analyze how expressions containing the term are formed, attending to pre-set logical criteria rather than to the speaker's intention; or I can look for a common factor, positing that as the central meaning; or I can rank the uses, attempting to reveal a primary significance of which the others are analogies. Now in the case of the term intuition, there is a common feature that jumps out, namely that of directness and immediacy. Intuiting· is not laboriously temporal; an intuition is effortlessly and instantaneously all there. That is not to say that it may not take effortful time to come up to the point of intuition or that I cannot dwell on it and range over it and even play with it. But these are preparations and reactions. The intuiting proper and the intuition itself just take place. III But immediacy is only a relation, and a negative one at that, namely the relation of coming before us without anything intervening. Perhaps to get somewhat nearer to intuition itself- and I now find myself supposing that I do have that sort of apprehension- it would be best to begin at the other end, to turn to the way of intervening steps and mediating words, which is usually called discursive thinking, or just thinking. Reasonings, particularly proofs, are regarded as examples par excellence of this mode. Now just because it seems to me so unlikely and so contrary to my experience that thinking should really be preeminently reasoning, I want to begin by inspecting the notion of proof-and why not use as example the one that accompanies the Pythagorean theorem? I say "accompanies" for I have argued that the geometric truth is in the picture. The first thing about this or any proof is that it is in words. I am indeed discovering America when it comes to me that, above all, reasoning speaks. Now the proof seems to speak out of both sides of the mouth. On one side it only prompts me to look at the picture in a certain way. Here its words function to focus me on the geometric situation, particularly to see the dispositions of the construction we all know so well. On the other side, the proof is not concerned with its matter as a theorem to be seen but as a proposition to be positioned in a system. In this aspect the proof is really a sequence of validations which, in ensuring that the proposition has legitimate antecedents, incidentally also shows what its place in the system is. It seems to me that in reflecting on this proof, I come upon a curious discrepancy. On the one hand, the reasoning is about the picture, but in such a way that the "why and the "that;' which are one and the same in intuition, are now separated and strung out in a sequence. On the 54 other hand, this reasoned sequence is driven from enunciation to conclusion by a necessity quite apart from what it is about. If all the words of the proof which direct me to the picture were deprived of this reference- that is to say, if they became mere symbols- the proof would remain a structure of reason, although it would be about nothing. In other words, it is possible for orderly thinking, which is about something, to turn itself into mere reasoning, mere rationality. Such thinking is the last thing I come to in life, and that is why I got it out of the way first. IV There is then a primary thinking, it seems to me, which begins long before it is time for reasoning and proving. Searching, inquiring thinking is not like the linear stepwise progression of proof. (I am somewhat reluctant to say that, because so many people who despise "linear thinking" appear to want to know nothing of the effort needed for any other kind.) Thinking, once done, can always be presented in reasoned form- though rarely is its significance in the concluding line. In fact, I now remember a very famous case in point -the basic Aristotelian syllogism: All men are mortal; Socrates is a man; therefore, Socrates is mortal. As a way to discovering the conclusion it is an absurdity. Whatever effort there is goes into establishing the premise that "All men are mortal;' and to do that I must surely already know that we will all die, including Socrates- as indeed he did, with great flair. Now Aristotle himself never meant the syllogism to be taken as a deductive proof form, but rather as a record of an illumination, the discovery of the reason why we must die, namely as a consequence of our human essence, because we are human beings, because of the middle term, man. To know that is surely to know something. v Working with and against these preceding examples of thinking in extremis, so to speak, I want to make an inventory of traits shown by living, inquiring, provisional thought as I know it. I don't, by the way, suppose that everyone does as I do- I do mean that they do what I do, that we are about the same business even if the occasions of our perplexity, the tempo of our grappling and the idiom of our articulations are very different. The cavalier claim that "every one thinks differently" seems to me based on willful inexperience. (And yet- I have sometimes wondered whether some, a very few people, might not have genuinely different thinking experiences.) I will number my first observation, as mathematicians so nicely do, with the number zero. 0. Thinking is unmistakably done by me in a body, but in a body set aside in the sense that it requires to be at ease in a balmy or buoyant environment (Descartes had an oven-heated room and I, to compare small with great, have a hot bath), or independently occupied by WINTER 1984 �rhythmic motion in monotonously beautiful surroundings, among sights pleasant to gaze at without real looking. But there is also a stranger and somewhat humiliating connection: Physical stimulants affect, or better, release thinking, and a cup of coffee can cause a revelation. 1. My guess is that it is because of its bodily basis that my thinking has a motoric and mechanical mode. It can labor in low gear, lug in high gear, stall and idle-all familiar thought-experiences. Of these, that thinking which runs in neutral is the most disturbing but also illuminating phenomenon -when my mind babbles on by itself, disengaged. It shows that real thinking requires -a moment-to-moment effort to hold it to its matter, a continual spontaneity. Accordingly, no truly-thought thought seems to follow as a necessary effect from a previous thought; each comes from a fresh effort to understand. I do not mean to say that thoughts may not have necessary connection- only that I myself must think it. Indeed it now seems to me that thinking is largely the effort to break out of motoric mentation. And I also notice that as every instant thinking begins anew, so it ends with a kind of click, and "aha'' of having settled the matter (or alternatively, a pause of perplexity). Thinking appears to be in its step-wise way as discontinuous as intuition which is suddenly there and suddenly gone. So in that respect, at least, there is ultimately no difference between them. I may go back and interpose ever more steps into my thought progress; I can include between any two steps the rules for inferring the next step; in short I can make the argument as dense as possible; it will still be discrete. And as the parts, so the whole: the thought sequence ends with a mental click, the sound of the proper seating of the thought, the mark of a satisfaction which is like an assent, whose absence arouses a fidgety agony of new trials. (This experience of thinking incidentally seems to me to account for the peculiar form of a Socratic conversation, in which Socrates proposes thoughts while his interlocutor gets to say only "Yes;' "How not?" "But Socrates .. :' It is the internal activity of thinking distributed over two people.) Another observation: Those people who advocate questioning for its own sake seem to regard thinking as a kind of continuum, like a mood, which flows on until it fades or is broken, while it seems to me that thinking is in its very nature positive. As it is a series of small settlements, so in the aggregate it aims to reach a position and rest. 2. Since thinking is continually effortful, and continually monitored, it must have something to do with my willing and wanting-though I see that I shouldn't confuse that inner monitor who is satisfied or uneasy with my willing, since that monitor's business is not to force but to follow thought. I, my willful self, ought to govern my thought only insofar as I hold it to its business, and even then my willing is rather a wanting which is more exigent even than the desire for repose. What I want first and last is to possess myself and my world- not in a mode of domination but in a way of bringing out both of our respective and related contours. When I leave an experience or a problem unthought-through there is an un- THE ST. JOHN'S REVIEW supportable sense that a fuzzy accretion is interposing itself between me and my existence, that I am going to be enveloped in dumb immediacy and my life will be an unappropriated mess. I think that must be the sense Socrates is expressing when he says that the unexamined life is not to be lived ~'not to be lived" is what he literally says. I never could understand Wordsworth's "We murder to dissect" complaint: The analysis of a thing or an event, far from destroying its integrity, first gives it not merely clarity but the possibility of presence itself; We dissect to maintain life. That, it seems to me, is what thinking does: It makes me try to get hold of things, so that they are there for me. Of course, there is a kind of analysis which with deadly inaccuracy pries things apart in unnatural places and which forces affairs, particularly human affairs, into crude and demeaning patterns; it does indeed murder its matter. But that is not thinking. It is functioning with theory-patterns, and it shows that not only will but also willfulness can move thought. Truth to tell, I know it as an all too familiar temptation- the willful forcing of thought according to a pre-conceived intention. 3. Thinking is speech, quite literally interior speaking, voiceless English utterance. That observed fact makes me doubt the notion that speech is primarily or originally a kind of social interaction. How can I think so when I observe that ninety-nine out of a hundred words that I speak every day are not meant to be heard, because I speak to myself (from whom I can want nothing and can hide nothing and with whom I don't much want to play speech-solitaire) the same language as I talk with my fellow humans with whom I am supposed to be playing language games or committing speech-acts? I am surely glad that I can use language for communication, that is, for alluding to something we humans have in common, but my sense is that my speech (once I have come into it) can be used to communicate because I use it to speak to myself, not the other way around. Here is the old mystery on which I can scarcely get a handle: There is admittedly thoughtless speech. Is there perhaps also speechless thought? No matter how hard I try, I cannot get hold of a thought without a word. There may well be speechless apprehensions and they may well be those very intuitions I am trying to distinguish. But that time-taking effort I think of as thinking- can it be anything distinguishable from the speech in which I do it? Of course it cannot be speech in the merely linguistic sense, since I could use another language like German, and sometimes do. It must be (and here once again I am discovering America) speech in the sense the Greeks termed logos, which might be rendered by "thinkingspeech:' Logos has meaning, something more intimate than significance, which latter is the relation of a sign to its object. Thinking-speech is literally utterance, that is "outerance;' the silently audible embodiment (which my bodily being seems to require) of my inner activitynot its sign, but its expression. It is just because speech has meaning in this sense, because it is the external appearance of thinking, thatunless I am feeling mighty bloody-minded- I do not ask 55 �whether another speaker's statements mean anything or not according to some pre-determined criterion of meaningfulness. Rather I ask first whether the speaker means anything, that is, whether his words are expressions of a thinking effort, and next what he means, that is, how I can express his thinking as my own, and finally whether I can give assent. By saying that speech has meaning and is an expression of thinking I have tried to convey a strange apprehension, namely that it is nothing but uttered thinking; speech does not "signify" thinking or thoughts or stand for them, but it means them. Now thinking and its words are of several sorts, it seems. One sort of word intends something- I think and speak of things. For example, the pronoun "I" has come far too often into this speech. (I cannot tell, incidently, why it is called a pro-noun since surely the name Eva stands for it, and not the other way around). When I say "I;' I am sure I intend something- though I should probably not say "some thing:' What I do intend, it would take a whole new talk to try to come near, but in any case, it is that which feels my feelings, "has" my memories and "does" my thinking. Or again, when -I say "Monte Sol;' I intend a feature of the land, a mountain that, although not clearly separate in stufffrom its surroundings, derives its intendabiliy from rising like a dark green sun behind the campus in Santa Fe. Or ''pinyon;' which, unlike the name "Monte Sol;' I can say of numerous appearances and in several ways at once- a capability expressed in the term, '1ogos" itself which has behind it the sense of "gathering." (Now that I come to think of it, in this gathering lies the power of the word over the world of appearances- but then again, did the appearances not allow themselves to be so gathered, thinking-speech would come to nothing.) Accordingly, I can intend by the word pinyon any one or all of a species of the genus pine, or that kind of tree itself, or a sort of rooted censer from which to pinch aromatic needles, or a rather ragged bush which, when the rain paints its trunk black, suddenly stands forth visibily as a tree. Words of a certain sort, then, namely those called nouns, intend or reach for objects. I also observe that these intended things incite and inhibit my thinking in revealing ways. For instance if I try to think pinyon, I am almost irresistibly drawn on to thinking tree, although the reverse is not as inevitable, and that m'akes me say that pinyon "comes under" tree. And although it seems to me as self-evident as anything that whatever thought I can get hold of in speech at all is a thought I can think, the things I think about do evidently have the power to make some thoughts nearly impossible: for instance a pinyon resists being thought of as both being and not being such. If I think these thoughts anyway, I have a lot of explaining to do to myself, mostly concerned with the meaning of that word "being." But there are also words which intend no thing. Some of these mean the directing gestures that thinking seems to develop within itself as it runs, hesitates, jolts on, doubles back. For example there is "but;' a hand held 56 up by thinking to itself to admit an opposing train of thought; and there is "although;' which requires thinking to run on two tracks at once; and there is "therefore;' which means home-free. In communicating-speech I use th~se words to coax another's thinking into becoming like mine. The last use of speech is not so interesting as an accomplishment as it is fascinating as a possibility. I can willfully disregard or abstract from any definite intention a word might have, and I have been taught to do that by turning the words into symbols, say the letters A and B. I can also overlook that most intimate striving of thoughtful propositions to be about something (as Euclid's forty-seventh is about right triangles), and I show that further abstraction by using symbols like p and q. Now I often put my propositions into a kind of wordharness, and above all the one called "if ... then:' I can do that because the propositions are about things or events, and these appear to have inner connection- call them causal. So if it rains, then the ground will grow red, the pinyons will show their shape and the air will become aromatic. Now forget about that real connection of things which my thinking grasps and simply define such a relation; call it implication and let its symbol be a horseshoe on its side. By going on like this, one can establish a kind of ghost-speech, a denatured logos which is (oddly, it seems, to me) called symbolic logic. What is fascinating is the way it is done- by glancing surreptitiously at living thinking and then deliberately formulating its ways as mock-arbitrary rules (equally oddly called "axioms," a word which, as you know, originally meant "notions deserving assent"). In my experience logical thinking is both more difficult and less demanding than searching thinking and for one and the same reason: because it is about nothing. But it now comes to me that I have been carried too far in my sense that the motions of thinking-speech, its releases and restraints, are all derived from the way things are, so that speech has no necessity of its own- for that amounts to saying that there is no logic at all. Speech does have a capability, and even one intention, which is all its own: It can negate and it can literally intend "nothing." Nowhere in the world or beyond it does negation show or is nothing present, and yet my thinking has no definition at all unless I can say "no;' "not;' "none;' "nothing:' I see that with this afterthought I have started a topic too deep for present pursuit. It probably is the topic of logic proper, of logos-logic. 4. And finally and above all, thinking is "about" something. "Discursive thought'~that phrase literally means thought that runs hither and thither, going about its business. I can get hold of this best in a figure. When I think about something I begin by focussing, by getting hold-I know not how-of an intending or reaching word, which is why my first notes are usually just a list of nouns. That intending, I see, reaches for the thing itself, for this particular fragrant pinyon which grows on the mountain, and also, strangely, for the one odorless but definite species of the genus pine in which all pinyons are gathered. But what the word reaches for is not what WINTER 1984 �it gets. What I grasp in thinking-speech is not a full, present object in or out of the sensible world, but my own impenetrably peripheral hold itself; I hold captive a mere circumference. That I try to grasp firmly with one hand of my mind (which is called conceiving) while with the other I try to make out its compass, its contours, its cracks, and its connections (which is called trying to understand). That is why upon thinking my speech usually comes in sentences: subject-predicate- this is such. But here is the point. The discoveries I make in the course of these explorations are often satisfying and even illuminating, yet they are not what I am really after, not the true end of the effort, just because this thinking is always thinking round about something. What I long for in thinking is that I should not forever remain on the surface and in the fissures of this or that matter, but should penetrate within it and find the inner aspects and coimections of that which has attracted and withstood my thinking. Such penetration should, I suppose, be called insight, and what I might find there is, I guess, what philosophers call "being;' a word which stands, for me at least, more for an. incitement than for an expenence. I appear, once again, to have discovered America. It seems to be my favorite activity, in life and in thought. VI Now, after a brief review of the five traits of thinking which I have come upon, the moment will have arrived to formulate just how thinking is un-immediate. That is, after all, what I wanted to find out, so that I could tell better what intuition might be; for whatever it may be, at least it seems always to be described as an immediate mode of apprehension. To the review then: 0. Thinking is closely connected to the body and has a mechanical, even a motoric mode. 1. However, when it is a genuine effort ~t does not run continuously but comes in ever-spontaneous starts and settlements which are received or rejected by an inner monitor, myself but not my will. 2. My will, however, or rather, my need, is the source of the effort, and the need is that of coming into my experience, of appropriating my life. 3. That effort appears to my inner ear in unvoiced yet sensory utterance, and therefore this thinking-speech "means" or expresses thinking. Some of the words of this speech "intend" or reach for objects like things or kinds of things, others express the motions of my thinking, and yet others express the connections between the things that my thinking apprehends. These last can be abstracted and reestablished in disassociation from meaning. 4. And above all, thinking is "about" something, which implies that as the thinking effort is drawn to embrace being, so it is kept at its circumference. I think I now understand wherein thinking is unimmediate. It has to do with the figures that come to mind in the effort to describe it: the figures of hearing (though in a sense that is no figure since in thinking I literally talk to myself) and of touching and grasping. The heard word which expresses thinking also muffles THE ST. JOHN'S REVIEW it. Except for the trivial case of onomatopoeia, it has no similarity, no reference at all, to what it says, nor does it "stand for" anything; if there is one thing the word is not, it is a sign or a symbol. Perhaps vocables, minimal modulations of sound, were fitly elected to express our effort to capture what is: Ampler sound can affect and move us; a cry rouses attention, a music tunes the soul, but the subdued word, unsignificant and unassimilable, expression and screen at once, is the fitting form for the sheer immaterial doing which thinking amounts to. The same holds for the grasping phase of thinking. To be sure, something is disclosed by the discursive form "this is such;' but what the grasp of thinking holds it also hides. Thinking is not insight. I think I have discovered the human condition with respect to the desire to know: It is to be kept from our end by our means. Before returning to intuition let me apologize for what I might, if I talked that way, call a terminological shift. You probably noticed that I have substituted the word "thinking" for the assigned term, "intellect." I had to do that because "intellect" has connotations both too low and too high for our purpose. For on the one hand, from it is derived the name of those whose thinking motors along in theory-patterns, the so-called "intellectuals;' while on the other hand the term "intellection" serves to translate nOesis, the ancient name for thought which sees, the grandest kind of intuition. VII By now you have probably forgotten the five uses of intuition which I thought I could distinguish. But no matter, for several were only derivative and a manner of speaking about cases where something was thought to be known right off; what was interesting was only what all the uses had in common, namely immediacy. So let me, keeping in mind that features of thinking I have just delineated, propose three possible kinds of intuitive activities and their objects. 1. I seem to have a world of appearance immediately before me. (To be sure, the organs of sense are often considered as the instruments of its perception, but they are not media in such a way as to drive me to say that they intervene between me and the appearances; they are means rather than media.) But now I see that I for one would hardly want to call the world at large an intuition (though some authors have done just that) if the term is to have any definition at all. Just as thinking is concentrating, so also it seems to me intuiting must be a kind of focussing, but while thinking is about the absent, intuition is of the present. For example, in my wanderings in downtown Santa Fe,_ I often stopped before a painting which seemed to me the record of a perceptive intuition in this more restricted sense. It was the very type of a Southwestern landscape, and the Santa Feans among you know that the curse of that genre lies in the natural histrionics of Southwestern weather. In this painting three cottonwoods by an arroyo, seen against a great, vibrantly slate-gray storm sky, were lit up golden-chartreuse by a slanting 57 �sun-burst from beyond the frame. The magic of it was solely that of a memory-prompt: I have seen such scenes, briefly but, I would say, intuitively. The word is no longer much used that way, but it once meant a glance of strong regard, and also the sight which was its object. That is, of course, what "intuition" literally says: at-sight. (This ugly but accurate rendition is corroborated in the German version, familiar from Kant: An-schauung.) ''Atsight" is directed toward what is more than a mere halfapprehended surrounding, toward what is not only bifore me, but for me, the significant presence beheld in active seeing. I don't doubt that some people have a gift for such quick salient sight. 2. So much the more will there be intuitions of the imagination, at least if presence is an even deeper feature of intuition than immediacy. For the imagination, insofar as it is a capability for re-presenting perceptions, usually exercises its power for compacting or attenuating them: It may concentrate the inner vision on the high points of perceived scenes. That is why paintings and memories so easily merge. Or again, it may abstract inessentials and rectifY irregularities so as to leave a clarified schema of appearance. (Most thinking seems to take its bearing from such residual perceptions.) Or finally, it may produce its own intuitions, either rich sights never before seen, imbued with inexpressible significance, or the spare figures of geometry,· the intuitions most inviting to thought. These diagram-sights are the intuitions which words can most reliably call forth and can most satisfyingly be about. 3. And finally, there is the intuition of thought itself, intellectual intuition. When I say "there is" I mean: there might be, there must be, I wish there to be. Its object is what thinking would be about: the fulfillment of its grasp, the immediate presence of its end. It is what the great Greeks call the noet6n, the object of thought. Of 58 course, I myself have never broken through thinking to behold the object of thought, though thrice in a decade for half a moment I have had the sense that but a little was wanting. Could it be that I do see it whenever I really perceive what appears around me? Could it be that what appears and what I take in when I see is just what I think about- that what I search for without and within coincides, so to speak, behind my back? It comes home to me that it is the pursuit of those questions which is primarily called philosophy. VIII Where am I then? I have discovered that thinking, although it can hold and explore its objects, can never penetrate them, can never have insight. And so it never quite attains to "at-sight;' intuition, the direct beholding of what it is about. In our best seeing and imagining we have all experienced the felicity of such immediate presence, but my thinking, at least, seems to be forever about absence. My guess is that it holds for us all: Intuition is what we long for, thinking is what we can do. What follows? An answer comes to my inner earpartly as the remembered sound of a passage that was once read to me, partly as the recollected sense of a meaning that I then took to heart. Happily I know where to find the text, so I can recite to you literally Socrates' passionately involved speech: The other points I made in behalf of my argument I won't .fully enforce. But that, in believing we need to search after whatever one of us doesn't see, we will be better than if we believe that what we don't know we can't discover and needn't search after-that I will figlit for fully and to the end and for all I'm worth, in speech and in action. (Meno 87 B-C) Santa Fe, Summer 1983 WINTER 1984 �Beyond the First Hundred Years: Some Remarks on the Significance of Tristan Elliott Zuckerman ince my name begins with the letter Z, I'm used to being last. When I see myself listed at the end of a series of lectures on a serious subject, I imagine that I've been asked to provide the analog of a satyr-play, as exordium to the drama of the day. Today the drama has been particularly rich, and the length has been such as to be thought sustainable by only the most devoted of Wagnerians. I should, perhaps, have planned to end the day with some imitation of a Verkliirung. But my powers are, to say the least, slimmer than those with which Wagner enabled Isolde to settle into her redemptive B major. Instead, what I have in mind is a more modest Transfiguration. And for this the analog of the satyr-play has some point. For although I do not intend to be frivolous or parodistic, I do intend to take us back to Ancient Greece. A return to the ancient must seem especially misdirected, given the title of my talk. Beyond the First Hundred Years surely denotes the two decades and a half since 1959, or at least the eighteen years since the centennial of the first performance. The present, not the past, was to be my territory. But when I was asked to give this talk I knew I wouldn't be able to do what was required of me. At best, I could go Beyond a century of Tristan not in the chronological sense but in another way, more theoretical, that is perhaps better suggested by the German cognate jenseits. There was a good reason for expecting me to bring the history of the reception of Tristan up to date. Twenty years ago I published a book that is now out of print but still listed in bibliographies. The first two chapters dealt S Mr. Zuckerman gave this talk to the Wagner Society of New York on December 3, 1983. He was the last of six speakers, and the day also included a panel discussion with the principal singers of the current Metropolitan Opera production of Tristan. THE ST. JOHN'S REVIEW with the inception and composition of Tristan, and with the events that led up to the remarkable first performance and its reverberations. But after that I chronicled almost a century of the response to the work- an account that was by no means complete, but selected. The criteria for the selection had been set out for me by the man who was in the course of his life Wagner's greatest enthusiast and his profoundest critic. Indeed, before the chronicle could get going, there had to be a chapter about that very man. Since he himself had collected his animadversions under the title Contra Wagner, I tagged my account with the correlative emphasis, calling it 'Nietzsche Pro Tristan: My theme in that chapter, put now a little too simply, was that Nietzsche remained infatuated with the music of Tristan throughout his life. It was as late as the last year of his sanity when Nietzsche wrote about the 'dangerous fascination' of Tristan. According to the autobiographical Ecce Homo, the most notorious critic of Wagner's music was still looking for a work 'of an equally shivery and sweet infinity;' and he observed that the world was poor for those who had never been sick enough for its voluptuousness. It occurred to me to look for other instances of an infatuation with the music of Tristan, among people who were also worthy of interest for other reasons. Not every one I investigated exhibited, as Nietzsche did, the need to pass judgment on his response. Nor was every composer so obligingly vulnerable as the young Guillaume Lekeu, whose motto was 'je veux ttre emu' ("I wish to be moved"), and who, at a Bayreuth performance of Tristan, had to be carried out of the Festspeilhaus in a faint-during the Prelude. Nor did all the writers choose to advertise their membership by writing a story, as Thomas Mann did, called 'Tristan; and staging a Liebestod in a sanatorium. But in almost every case there were biographical as well as artistic indications of that music's power- and there was sufficient 59 �evidence to warrant the composition of a history of what I came to call, for short, 'Tristanism: The ultimate source of my interest was, needless to say, in my own less dramatic biography. I remember the moment in my childhood when I heard the climactic deceptive cadence on the radio, probably in one of the Stokowski Symphonic Syntheses, significantly voiceless and wordless. Whatever happened then was later reinforced by performances at the old Metropolitan, in the Melchior-Traubel days, the tickets provided by a friend of the family who loved Italian opera but disliked German. And so on Wagnerian Mondays I took the seat, waiting there, enthralled, for my 'moments; and sheltered from any premature exposure to the tunes of Verdi and Puccini. At the same time, among high-school friends, I defended a Dionysian Isolde against the only rival that could be summoned up among the few recordings available to us- Marian Anderson singing the Alto Rhapsody, which, despite its title, they took to be chaste and Apollonian. I was, in short, a 'Tristanite' before I ihvented the awkward term, which I thought I needed in order to distinguish what I wished to study apart from the history of social and literary Wagnerism. That history, as yet unwritten, would have to account for political and racial ideas and programs for aesthetic reform which invoked for their support half-truths about Wagner's music and whole lies from his prose. It would be a history of doctrines and movements, such as Symbolism, Naturalism and Aestheticism. Within that history, I thought Tristan would have to be set apart. The political Wagnerites seemed to me to have neglected the music-drama that was least suited to the propagation of programs about the Revolution, or evolutionary socialism, or the Folk. Nor was there a special fondness for Tristan among the doctrinaire literary Wagnerites. For the primacy of the music tended to refute their favorite aesthetic, or synaesthetic, doctrines. In contrast to Wagnerism, what I chose to call 'Tristanism' began with a direct response to the music. It was private rather than public, the result of a personal infatuation rather than an ideological commitment. Its history was not social but biographical. The Wagnerite had to learn theories and cultivate habits. The Tristanite had only to be overwhelmed. He could, to be sure, go on to verbalize his experience in impressionistic prosepoetry, as d'Annunzio did, or the American, James Huneker. Or he could, as a theorist, devote his energies to analysis of the music. A composer like Chabrier or Chausson could find the music uncomfortably recurring in his own. And an infatuation with the music could lead to a pondering of the myth -as when, in Mann, the legend is ironically retold, enacted by characters for whom the music is unwholesomely overpowering. In this respect Mann was recapitulating the experience of Nietzsche, who found the music more formidable than any variety of ideological Wagernism. As I recount the sharp distinctions I made more than twenty years ago, I want to repudiate them as exaggerated and fuzzy. If it were not presumptuous to do so, I would 60 quote from another repudiation, a great one, of a book that is as deep as mine is shallow- the Attempt at a SelfCriticism that Nietzsche wrote in 1886 as a new Preface to The Birth of a Tragedy, first published fourteen years earlier. Let me instead remind you of two facts about that book. First, that it was originally entitled The Birth of Tragedy out of The Spirit of Music. Second, that the music and the action that is described in detail- the music that most fully represented the Dionysian force that would save the culture from 'Socratic' opera- was that of Tristan and Isolde. Nietzsche had not only furnished me with my theme. He also provided the example of how one's youthful work must be repudiated -when it is inspired by the music of Tristan. If I am unhappy about how I accounted for the first hundred years, I can hardly be asked to push on to a hundred and twenty-five. But I have another, preemptive, reason for not going on. It is the plain fact that I haven't been keeping track. Before the book had been published I had already moved to a province where we don't pay proper attention to the passing scene. There is a small college in Maryland where great books are read as though they had just been written -which is to say that they are studied without much help from the opinions of commentaries-and where the questions they ask are thought of as perennial. Studying them myself, and assisting in the intense discussions that bring them to life- along with teaching such things as Greek and ancient mathematics and, happily, some music theoryhave left me with less time than a chronicler should have for keeping track of fresh views and new performances. As a consequence of my isolation, there is probably only one new thing that I can tell you about today's subject that you don't already know better than I. In the list of the so-called Great Books one now can find Wagner's Tristan and Isolde. It is 'read'- I should of course say 'heard~ in the seminars of the senior year, after weeks of Hegel and weeks of Macx. Although many works, from Chant to Webern, are studied in the music tutorials that are required of all sophomores, the seminars on music are rare events, for they average only one per year. The others are the Matthew Passion, Don Giovanni, and, sometimes, Verdi's Otello, on a double bill with the Shakespearian original. Whether or not I'm teaching a senior seminar, I encounter Tristan at least once a year, for although we generally eschew preparatory lectures, an exception is made in the case of me and Tristan, a combination that has, I suppose, become by now traditional. I always set out to restrict my remarks to a simple account of Tristanesque chromaticism, with some examples of the transformation ofleitmotives, and a sketch of the structure of the acts. But after questions and other promptings I must confess that I find myself holding forth about motivations as well as motives, about love, sex, honor, and death, and- dare I repeat it?-about my favorite theory that although the death potion is indeed poison, the love potion needs to be nothing stronger than water, or, as a student once suggested, beer. Most important, I get to hear what the students think about these matters, and to reaffirm for myself that for the young WINTER 1984 �man or woman who is at all responsive to music, the music of Tristan has lost none of its immediacy. I can therefore report- and I do so to an audience that will hardly consider it news-that well into its second century Tristan is still among the most powerful works we have. It is still the case that it is our most telling story about the conflict between love and honor, and about the intimacy of love and death; and in Wagner's version that favorite theme of ours is, as Denis de Rougemont once put it, expressed in its fullest virulence. To say that most of that power derives from the music itself would be too repetitively obvious. So I11 risk here the more daring opinion that the power is that of tonal music. It is often pointed out that Wagner's chromaticism foreshadowed what followed the tonal era. In Tristan, and then again in Parsifal, there can he found, to take an easy example, melodic lines that anticipate the equalizing{ almost want to say the democratizing- of the tones of the chromatic scale. The bourgeois heirarchy of tonic and dominant has been aufgehoben, and Tristan stands at the threshold of the next spriritual stage, the only work more World-Historical than the 'Eroica! Yet it seems to me that the potency of Tristan lies not in the kind of music that it may seem to predict, but in the effectiveness of the musical language Wagner inherited. If the myth is in the largest sense 'ours; the music is even more so: that of major and minor and the hierarchy of motions- drawn, I believe, from the nature of the overtone .series- that is one of the two or three great discoveries of European man. In the last paragraph there are subordinate clauses that are Wagnerian in their grandiosity, and there is no time here and now to substantiate them. Instead I ask you to consider a related historical observation. It iS that whereas most of art music has, in the twentieth century, entered into regions beyond Wagnerian chromaticism, indeed beyond tonal music itself, the language of popular music- of Broadway and rock-and-roll, of country music and the movies, even, to be sure, of most of the operas that hold the stage- remains solidly tonal. Not often enough is it observed that the difference between high art and popular entertainment, which was, in the past, a difference merely of style, is, in our time uniquely, a difference of language. One can sympathize with the effort to find a new musical language. How many composers were there whose early works were a perpetual Liebesnacht, or who found themselves trapped on the gloomy shores of Kareol, looking out over an empty sea? To use the only language that was effective was to use the language whose effectiveness had already been maximally demonstrated. Tonal music, in one sense still alive, was in another sense used up. Beyond Tristan there lay the choice between nothing and something new. But in another sense beyond Tristan there lay -and there still lies- Tristan itself. The enduring power of Tristan has, then, a two-fold reference. There is the power of the work itself and there is the power of the musical language in which that work was culminatingly effective. It was this double force that I was dealing with when I attempted to chronicle the first THE ST. JOHN'S REVIEW century of Tristan's sway over sensitive souls; and it was, perhaps, music itself, and not just an anti-Wagnerian prejudice, that prompted the later Nietzsche to judge his fascination to be dangerous. Of the dozen or so greatest philosophers, Nietzsche was, so far as I can tell, one of the few who were responsive to music. Among the moderns only Schopenhauer seems comparable in that respect. If we go back through the centuries, we may not stop until we get to Saint Augustine. And among the ancients, as music lover Plato stands pre-eminent. Whomever I may have skipped in this millenial sweep, you may notice that I hit upon two who moralized about their musical responsiveness. One remembers Augustine worrying about how the melisma of the chant distracted him from the sacred words it was supposed to enhance, and the recurrent ecclesiastical reform that dictated 'one syllable one note! And one remembers how many modes were banned from the ideal Republic as unsuitable for the education of noble youth. How much, indeed, of Homer himself would be banned, leaving a scant few of the verses that surely represented what noble men, including Plato and Socrates themselves, must, when less philosophically pure, have considered the most beautiful music. But with these men a philosophical chastity seems to have gone hand in hand with the extreme responsiveness to music. If I had known more when I chronicled the ambivalence of the Tristanites, I would have recognized that they belong to a great tradition, not a hundred years old but twenty-five hundred. And it may very well be that to moralize about our response, to judge its effect upon us, to find the fascination dangerous, is the highest tribute we can pay to the work that prompted it. I find myself, in short, clinging to what most people find moralistic in the full pejorative sense of the word. But it seems to me to place a higher value on art when we take it not simply as something to experience and admire and study but as something to judge, as we must judge something formidable that works on the soul. In my penultimate moments, let me give these sweeping statements a more specifically Wagnerian tum. There is a short and very funny dialogue of Platds called the Ion. The character Ion is a rhapsode-a reciter of epic verse -who has won prizes for his ability to move audiences to laughter and to tears. On an unguarded day he allows himself to be questioned by Socrates. It turns out that there is scarcely a subject about which he knows anything; he is ignorant both about the content of what he recites and, except in the most limited practical way, about the souls he can so adeptly move. Now we know that not all actors are Ionic; there are performers-we've met some today-who have an alert and articulate understanding of what they perform. But there are also those who, like Ion, seem to be unable to say anything sensible about the very thoughts and feelings that they convey, with a power that therefore must be called mysterious. They are an easy target, and one wonders why Plato should expend his satiric talents upon exposing them. There are, however, strong hints in the dialogue that Plato's target is a more important one, one which today we probably consider the most important of all. For there 61 �is an analogy set out whereby we can see that as the rhapsode is to the poem he recites, so is the poet himself to the source of his inspiration. And remember: it is no mere versifier whose knowledge is doubted here. What Ion is expert at reciting is nothing less than Homer, and what is brought into question is nothing less than Homer's relation to his Goddess the Muse. What could be a more terrible doubt to cast in an age when poets had divine muses? And what could be more uncomfortable than to engage in similar questioning in an age, like ours, when art seems again to be the chief source of revelation?-art in general, but more specifically music; and not just tonal music but that music when it affects us most- in Wagner and, pointedly, in Tristan. Nietzsche did such questioning, and he aimed at what he loved most. It is well known that he accused Wagner of being an actor, in some respects an Ion to what he imitated, but that accusation seems relatively petulant. But he also called Wagner a ventriloquist- the ventriloquist, in fact, of God. What he had in mind was something more, I think, than that Wagner gave words and music to Wotan -and to Frau Minne. But what that something more might be is hard to fathom in the work of the man who also announced that God was dead. You see how far one can go into the Beyond, when encouraged by the loftiest of the ancient thinkers and the wildest of the modern. To close harmoniously I must step 62 aside into the moderate and the measurable, and I can do so only with the help of another ancient, Aristotle. We are told in the Poetics that poetry-that is to say what today we call art- is mimetic, and that men naturally delight in imitation. The imitation meant here is nothing mere, as it sometimes seems to be for Plato. Instead art can imitate what really is, and that Aristotle thinks so is, I believe, evident when of all the arts he calls music the most mimetic. I take him to mean something like this: that the rise and fall of the musical phrase expresses the growth and decline of nature, of physis, itself. Elsewhere he asserts something further that we also can easily acknowledge: that music expresses character, ethos, the motions and emotions of that most intimate manifestation of physis, the human soul. This great and necessary mimesis is what Wagner seemed pre-eminently able to do. He is the master of the imitation of nature in its ordinary sense- of earth, air, fire, and water, of forest murmurs and conflagrations and the depths of the Rhine. But in Tristan quintessentially he showed his supreme mastery of the deeper mimesis, that of our most elementary yet ungraspable feelings. And he did so, I think, most marvelously in act 3, where the interweaving of thoughts, feelings, and remembered motives leads Tristan, in his musical selfanalysis, to the conclusion that he brewed the love-potion himself. WINTER 1984 �In Memoriam John Gaw Meem, 1895-1983 William A. Darkey t is an honour and a privilege for me to have this opportunity to remember John Meem today here in St. John's College in Santa Fe, New Mexico. I was personally honoured to have had his friendship and almost equally so, as a member of this faculty, to have shared his sustained and sustaining friendship for this college. I may as well begin by saying the perfectly obvious thing: that St. John's College would never have been here at all so beautifully on this beautiful land but for the gift of Mr. and Mrs. Meem; nor possibly would it have survived on this campus without their continued generous support. To say this is to say very much. But in another way it is to say very little; for this way of putting things omits altogether the human gifts of friendship, understanding, inlagination, tolerance, and conviction that lie behind those other gifts and make them humanly meaningful. It is about these latter that I should like to try to speak. In 1974John Meem was made a Fellow of St.John's College, thereby joining a small and distinguished company that includes Mark Van Doren, poet and teacher; Ralph Kirkpatrick, musician; Paul Mellon, philanthropist. When the college took this action everyone knew that it was very right. I should like today to address that rightness. In remembering the qualities of his friendship for St.John's College I shall also be speaking of the nature of John Meem's fellowship in the college. Since Mr. Meem's death in August, I think that all of us have felt his presence in ways that are new, heightened, and sharpened for us ii!- our awareness of I John Gaw Meem and his wife, Faith, have been principal benefactors of St. John's southwestem campus from its inception. Mr. Meem died last August. William A. Darkey, tutor and former dean on the Santa Fe campus, delivered these remarks at memorial' services at the college on 7 November 1983. THE ST. JOHN'S REVIEW his absence. One of these ways, for me, has been to see again, with new eyes, the beautiful buildings which realize his vision of the city and which we see as we go about Santa Fe in the pursuit of our daily lives. For me these principally have been the Presbyterian Church, Christo Rey, the Berardinelli Building, the Courthouse, St. Francis School, and most of all St. John's College every day. These, and also the gracious private homes that he designed, and the historic buildings that he helped to preserve. His presence is everywhere in the heart of Santa Fe. It has come to me that these buildings are not merely beautiful, though they are, but that they are also, and more importantly, exp~essions and realizations of a vision of human civility. For most of human life is acted out in buildings, public buildings and private buildings. These were the two focuses of human life to which John Meem devoted his gifts and his energies. On the one hand, churches, government buildings, schools, colleges, museums, universities, libraries, and on the other, domestic dwellings. Public buildings and private buildings together constituting the vision of a city. John Meem had a marvelous sense of the public and the private, and of the distinction between them. One recognized in meeting him, that, although he gave of himself most generously, he was a deeply private man. And yet, if any one in Santa Fe had been asked to name our outstanding public citizen, John Meem's name would have been first on any lips. I think he knew deeply in his nature that unless this distinction is firmly and discriminatingly made, neither public or private life is possible, and life itself becomes inhuman. His buildings say this to us. I think they are meant to mediate between the land and the community with its traditions, and its necessary institutions on the one hand and the individual living persons on the other. 63 �He understood well that buildings must accommodate to human needs. In the first year of this campus when the walkways were incomplete, the subject human traditions in his speculation about his own art came up between us, and he said, "I'm waiting to see arts. For Architecture so conceived and so practiced is where they go before I finish putting the walks in. It's no use trying to force people to walk where you think they should. They won't do it." Or, you'll notice that wherever you walk on the campus, the buildings are set so that they shelter you from the overwhelming space of New Mexican light and distance; and yet they always let you look out into that truly a liberal art. That is the rightness of John Meem as a Fellow of this college. For the office of the Fellows is to keep us mindful, in whatever ways they have, and perhaps mainly by example, of what we ought to be, of what we ought to be in practice in the world. I should like now to return from these somewhat abstract thoughts to the immediacies of the relationships between John Meem and the college. He served on our Board of Visitors and Governors. Whenever he could, he attended college functions, including commencements, convocations, and community seminars of which he was a most thoughtful member. He often walked on the campus in the early morning with his dogs. I have wondered what he actually thought of us, of this actual incarnation of the idea, what he actually thought of all of us here. When I let my thoughts go in this direction, I am amazed at the courage, the trust, and the generosity of spirit out of which Mr. and Mrs. Meem proposed to put this college literally in their own backyard, not just to give us a plot of unoccupied land somewhere, but to invite us to be their neighbor and to share with us the very piece of land on which they lived. i Que cosa! I think Mr. Meem has taught us something about neighborhood in a way wonderfully characteristic of him. If you walk a hundred yards or so down the path behind this building, you come to a fence and a gate between college property and the Meems' property. The fence is two strands of plain wire that you can step through easily anywhere. The gate can be opened easily, and, to judge by the footpath, it is opened fairly often; but in my experience, it has always been closed again afterwards. I infer that a lesson has been taught and learnt about the private and the public. A verse from Isaiah says, ''Your old men dream dreams and your young men see visions." John Meem saw visions certainly, and he dreamt dreams about the civility of human community. Those visions stand realized beautifully in Santa Fe and elsewhere in New Mexico. As it turned out, St. John's College was destined to be a part of his dream. I am convinced that his dream was in essence the same one that the architects of the St. John's Program had dreamt in 1937. The dream is that a well conceived program of liberal education, soundly rooted in the past and thoughtfully directed to the present, will lead young men and women to see visions of the good life, both private and public, and that they will give their lives to working out their visions in the world. During the past few .weeks I have been reading the Canterbury Tales with some Juniors and Seniors. Three lines of Chaucer's incomparable verse insist that I say them for John Meem. distance. One evening I was standing with Mr. Meem on the terrace of his own beautiful home looking southward to Sandia, and I made some remark, still with an unac- commodated easterner's eye and soul, that I found the land overwhelming and often frightening. He said simply, still looking south, "I love it." And then, after a pause, he said, "It gave me my life." I felt that he had a deep sense of returning that gift in his stewardship of this New Mexican land and its traditions. He liked to let the land lie and be what it would of itself. I once remarked on some very large and undisturbed anthills in front of his house. He said, ''Yes, aren't they lovely? They were there when we moved here." He made himself a part of this country in a most thorough way. He knew the Indian culture and the Spanish culture, not vaguely or sentimentally, but very well, beginning from the precision of his profession, and extending far beyond any narrow sense of architecture into the culture of which that architecture is a manifestation. From his understanding of these New Mexico traditions and his sympathy with them, he developed his own architectural style. His development of his own style unfolded from those traditions new possibilities for meeting contemporary needs in ways which harmonize and join with their living roots in the past. I remember talking with Mr. Meem about Sir Basil Spence's book, Phoenix at Coventry, which tells of the building of the great new cathedral there after World War II. As an epigraph to his book Spence quotes these words of the Hungarian composer Bela Bartok: Only a fool will build in defiance of the past. What is new and significant always must be grafted to old roots, the truly vital roots that are chosen with great care from the ones that merely survive. And what a slow and delicate process it is to distinguish radical vitality from the wastes of mere survival, but that is the only way to achieve progress instead of disaster. It has seemed to me that Bartok here expresses John Meem's own sense of architecture as a human art that assists us with our deepest human institutions. And I have wondered whether it could have been this sense of things that moved him to approve and to foster St. John's College; in part simply as the gift outright of a college to the State of New Mexico; but also as the very special gift to a very special college whose professed goal is to study the past, to find what is vital there and then to build upon that in the present and into the future. I do 64 think that it may well have been this understanding of that led him to foster the St. John's program of liberal He nevere yet no vileinye ne sayde In all his lyfe unto no maner wight. He was a verray, parfit gentil knyght. WINTER 1984 � Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource <em>The St. John's Review</em> Description An account of the resource <em>The St. John's Review</em><span> is published by the Office of the Dean, St. John's College.  All manuscripts are subject to blind review. Address correspondence to </span><em>The St. John's Review</em><span>, St. John's College, 60 College Avenue, Annapolis, MD 21401 or via e-mail at </span><a class="obfuscated_link" href="mailto:review@sjc.edu"><span class="obfuscated_link_text">review@sjc.edu</span></a><span>.</span><br /><br /><em>The St. John's Review</em> exemplifies, encourages, and enhances the disciplined reflection that is nurtured by the St. John's Program. It does so both through the character most in common among its contributors — their familiarity with the Program and their respect for it — and through the style and content of their contributions. 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Creator An entity primarily responsible for making the resource Office of the Dean Publisher An entity responsible for making the resource available St. John's College Identifier An unambiguous reference to the resource within a given context ISSN 0277-4720 thestjohnsreview Contributor An entity responsible for making contributions to the resource St. John's College Greenfield Library Text A resource consisting primarily of words for reading. Examples include books, letters, dissertations, poems, newspapers, articles, archives of mailing lists. Note that facsimiles or images of texts are still of the genre Text. Page numeration Number of pages in the original item. 64 pages Original Format The type of object, such as painting, sculpture, paper, photo, and additional data paper Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Creator An entity primarily responsible for making the resource Office of the Dean Title A name given to the resource The St. John's Review (formerly The College), Winter 1984 Date A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource 1984-01 Contributor An entity responsible for making contributions to the resource Sterling, J. Walter Parran, Jr., Thomas Lord, Susan Freis, S. Richard Sachs, Joe Stickney, Cary Wilson, Curtis A. Sachs, Joe Brann, Eva T. H. von Oppen, Beate Ruhm Kojeve, Alexandre Lederer, Wolfgang Zuckerman, Elliott Carey, James Fontaine, John Darkey, William A. Description An account of the resource Volume XXXV, number 1 of The St. John's Review, formerly The College. Published in Winter 1984. Identifier An unambiguous reference to the resource within a given context ISSN 0277-4720 The_St_Johns_Review_Vol_35_No_1_1984 Coverage The spatial or temporal topic of the resource, the spatial applicability of the resource, or the jurisdiction under which the resource is relevant Annapolis, MD Publisher An entity responsible for making the resource available St. John's College Language A language of the resource English Type The nature or genre of the resource text Rights Information about rights held in and over the resource St. John's College owns the rights to this publication. Format The file format, physical medium, or dimensions of the resource pdf St. John's Review https://s3.us-east-1.amazonaws.com/sjcdigitalarchives/original/0cfdf4b66c5ee4f1d0fc4f9424e1a900.pdf de920dd95ceb997451d9596ee7655fc7 PDF Text Text THE St. Spring, 1984 �Editor: J. Walter Sterling Managing Editor: Thomas Parr an, Jr. Editorial Assistant: Susan Lord Editorial Board: Eva Brann S. Richard Freis, Alumni representative Joe Sachs Cary Stickney Curtis A. Wilson Unsolicited articles, stories, and poems are welcome, but should be accompanied by a stamped, self-addressed envelope in each instance. Reasoned comments are also welcome. The St. John's Review (formerly The Col· lege) is published by the Office of the Dean, St. John's College, Annapolis, Maryland 21404. Edwin J. Delattre, President, Samuel S. Kutler, Dean. Published thrice yearly, in the winter, spring, and summer. For those not on the distribution list, subscriptions: $12.00 yearly, $24.00 for two years, or $36.00 for three years, payable in ad· vance. Address all correspondence to The St. John's Review, St. John's College, Annapolis, Maryland 21404. Volume XXXV, Number 2 Spring, 1984 © 1984 St. John's College; All rights reserved. Reproduction in whole or in part without permission is prohibited. ISSN 0277-4 720 Composition: Fishergate Publishing Co., Inc. Printing: The john D. Lucas Printing Co. Errata: In Beate Ruhm von Oppen, "Stu· dent Rebellion and the Nazis: 'The White Rose' in its Setting;' The St. John's Review. Winter 1984: page 4, column 1, paragraph 3, line 12, should read: of a dollar a year later: page 4, column 2, last paragraph, line 1 should read: Life at school changed greatly ... page 7, column 2, paragraph 3, last line should read: officially, in international discourse. paragraph 4, line 5 should read: he ended a long speech with a long sentence affirming �THE StJohn's Review Contents 2 . . . . . . The Inefficacy of the Good Douglas Allanbrook 14 . . . . . . Via Positiva; Via Negativa (poems) Gretchen Berg 16 . . . . . . Logos and the Underground Curtis Wilson 26 . . . . . . Orwell's Future and the Past Ronald Berman 34 . . . . . . Is Nature a Republic? David :)tephenson 40 ...... Between Plato and Descartes-The Mediaeval Transformation in the Ontological Status of the Ideas James Mensch 48 . . . . . . Looking Together in Athens Mera Flaumenhajt 60 . . . . . . Two Manuscripts of Jacob Klein's from the 30's Left and Right The Frame of the Timaeus OccASIONAL DrscouRSES 66 . . . . . . The Roots of Modemity Eva Brann BooK REviEw 70 . . . . . . U.S. Catholic Bishops, Nuclear weapons and U.S. defense policy Robert L. :)paeth 73 . . . . . . Cumulative Index, April 1969-Winter, 1984 ON THE COVER: Athens, Acropolis, The Parthenon. Gallery of The South Peristyle. �ST. JOHN's REVIEW Spring 1984 The Inefficacy of the Good Douglas Allanbrook T he field upon which political actions are played is one of moral desolation. If certain men or cities stand high and brilliant above this field, are remembered and praised in future generations by their countrymen or by the world, this praise, these many political encomia, almost never arise out of the goodness or true virtue of the subject; they are service rendered by words and memory to power, fame, and empire. Caesar's name lives on in the very titles of power and empire- the Kaiser, the Czar of all the Russias-while Catds suicide is cherished in the memory of a few as a proper failure, and he himself is most marvelously enshrined on the lowest slope of Purgatory as Dante leaves Hell and begins to go up. It is apposite in this consideration to rememher Thucydides' words concerning poor Nicias when his life comes to an end at the end of the Syracusan adventure, as recounted almost at the very end of Book VII of the histories. You will recall Nicias' actions against the demagogue Cleon, whom Thucydides detests, and hJs opposition to Alcibiades in front of the assembly which was to decide upon the Sicilian expedition. He attempted to deter the Athenians from the venture by calling to their attention the enormity of the cost and the vastness of the armaments required. Of course the effect of his speech on the assembly was the opposite of what he had expected, "for it seemed to them that he had given good advice, and that now certainly there would be abundant security."* And soon, "upon all alike there fell an ardent desire (eros) to sail~' (VI-XXIV, 2-3). *The translations of Thucydides are Charles Foster Smith's published in the Loeb Classical Library. Douglas Allanbrook is a composer and tutor at St. John's College, Annapolis. This article was delivered as a formal lecture in Annapolis in the fall of 1983. 2 The Spartans in the Pylos affair knew that N icias was for peace, and indeed the period of relative calm in the midst of the long war was known as the Peace of Nicias. He was a very rich and pious man, and it is a terrible irony that this very piety fatally delayed a possible retreat for the Athenians in the last awful month in front of Syracuse. He knew that the Spartans trusted him, and it was not least on that account that he trusted in Gylippus (the Spartan general) and surrendered himself to him. But it was said that some of the Syracusans were afraid, seeing that they had been in communication with him, lest, if he were subjected to torture on that account, he might make trouble for them in the midst of their success; and others, especially the Corinthians, were afraid, lest, as he was wealthy, he might by means of bribes make his escape and cause them fresh difficulties; they therefore persuaded their allies and put him to death. For this reason, then, or for a reason very near to this, Nicias was put to death-a man who, of all the Hellenes of my time, least deserved to meet with such a calamity, because of his course of life that had been wholly regulated in accordance with virtue. (VII-LXXXVI, 4-5) .. Many years ago from this platform I lectured on the Spanish Civil War, and I employed a lengthy simile in an attempt to catch the nature of what was revealed in that and perhaps in all civil wars. It struck me in my younger years that the Spanish War crystallized the conscience of the age, and revealed the more enormous civil war that is the perennial fact of our political life. My simile was drawn from Geology. Our landscapes, from sea to shining sea, with their fields of grain and their snowy Rockies, have their origins in vulcanism, in eruptions, in lava flows, in revolutions and the grinding of tectonic plates. The intent of the simile was to focus the attention of students upon the gleaming surface of our SPRING 1984 �republics, empires, and cities, and to have them note how fragile, temporary, and full of illusion is any appearance of stability. The reality underneath is the force and power of human ambitions, fears, hopes, and desires for fame. In light of this simile any place that lastS for generations with both splendor and decency should be looked at with particular attention. God knows what blood was behind Rome; it still remains a fact that this empire lasted as a place of law for an enormous stretch of time. St. Paul, a ] ew from Tarsus, demanded his rights as a Roman citizen, and hence was not tortured. The thousand years of the Most Serene Republic of Venice stand in front of us as a monument of probity and sagacity. It was certainly for an enormous stretch of time ihe best place to live and work in, and the best place to look at. It was the hub of a commercial empire, as was Athens. Both the Parthenon and St. Mark's Square are the most spendid and shining things to see and to visit. They are longlived memorials, though the increasing pollution of time has eroded their surfaces. Can the look of them tell us of Venice's long life and Athens' brief glory? As memorials they affect us more than words, and seem to speak to something apart from both them and us, a vision of a place to be cherished. In this they resemble the funeral oration of Pericles. Thucydides, however, puts us on guard against reading too much into such appearances in the famous passage in Book I: For if the city of the Lacedaemonians should be deserted, and nothing should be left of it but its temples and the foundations of its other buildings, posterity would, I think, after a long lapse of time, be very loath to believe that their power was as great as their renown. (And yet they occupy two-fifths of the Peloponnesus and have the hegemony of the whole, as well as of their many allies outside; but still, as Sparta is not compactly built as a city and has not provided itself with costly temples and other edifices, but is inhabited village-fashion in the old Hellenic style, its power would appear less than it is.) Whereas, if Athens should suffer the same fate, its power would, I think, from what appeared of the city's ruins, be conjectured double what it is. (I-X, 2-3). My geological simile came to me in the course of reading Thucydides' account of the revolution, or more properly, the civil war that occurred on Corcyra, the deeds committed in that island's internal eruption bear- ing every resemblance to the deeds committed in the Spanish War. In his account of the happenings on Corcyra Thucydides regards the larger more general war between Athens and Sparta as the catalyst which releases the convulsions of party and faction. Every city has within it democrats and oligarchs, but now the democrats can call upon Athens and the oligarchs upon Sparta. This fact brings to the surface something which Thucydides dares call human nature: And so there fell upon the cities on account of revolutions many grievous calamities, such as happen and always will happen while human nature is the same, but ST. JOHN'S REVIEW which are severer or milder, and diflt:rent in their manifestations, according as the variations in circumstances present themselves in each case. (III LXXXII-2). This sentence has the chilling precision of a scientific appraisal of phenomena, presenting a general rule which may be applied to the variables of the given case. Thucydides then applies it in detail to the particular situation on Corcyra: The ordinary acceptation of words in their relation to things was changed as men thought fit. Reckless audacity came to be regarded as courageous loyalty, prudent hesitation as specious cowardice, moderation as a cloak for unmanly weakness. (III LXXXII -4). Words given as oaths lost all coinage, and under the banners of "political equality under law for the many" and "temperate aristocracy" everyone marched to his own tune. People who joined neither party were immediately under suspicion "either because they would not make common cause with them, or through mere jealousy that they should survive." Another universal statement about human nature occurs almost at the end of this section on Corcyra: At this crisis, when the life of the city had been thrown into utter confusion, human nature, now triumphant over the laws, and accustomed even in spite of the laws to do wrong, took delight in showing that its passions were ungOvernable, that it was stronger than justice, and an enemy to all superiority. (III LXXXIV-2). The section concludes with words which the author later puts into the mouths of the Melians in their famous fictive dialogue with the Athenians: Indeed, men do not hesitate, when they seek to avenge themselves upon others, to abrogate in advance the common principles observed in such cases-those principles upon which depends every man's own hope of salvation should he himself be overtaken by misfortune-thus failing to leave them in force against the time when perchance a man in peril shall have need of some of them. (III LXXXIV-3). T his lecture cannot have the brashness and passion inspired by an event which roused my conscience in high school, and which I found reflected in my experience as a soldier in Italy during the second world war. In Italy again, when I learned to see clearly, there was a civil war going on under my nose, a country torn internally with horrors being committed under the banners of party, and the whole of the mess fusing and coming to the fore under the catalyst of the great world war between the Germans and the Allies. Instead this lecture is about the book, or rather the memorial, which puts such contemporary events into focus for me. 3 �Thucydides states that this indeed was his intention in writing such a history: But whoever shall wish to have a clear view both of the events which have happened and those which will some day, in all human probability, happen again in the same or a similar way- for these to adjudge my history profit- able will be enough for me. And, indeed, it has been composed, not as a prize essay to be heard for the mo- ment, but as a possession for all time. (lXXII -4 ). Such a book and such an attempt intend to make memory for the future. All battlefields and all wars want monuments. It is unbearable to think of all that blood shed and forgotten. Speeches after a battle on a battlefield must assert the worth and the fame of what has been accomplished by the dead. Only too often they are halflies about the Fatherland, or an invocation to the God of Battles for help in the future or a praise to him for the victory. At their best they call on Providence to help in binding up the wounds so unhestitatingly opened. Thucydides' whole enormous book is a discourse intended to memorialize. It is a landscape with no gods or God or Providence either in the sky above or under the earth in some law court in Hell. The author is enormously fussy about facts, but the book is no chronicle. Certain events are looked at with a particular intensity in view of the purpose of the memorial, and so that the book may be, if not the education of Greece, an aid to the clear seeing of all who read it. About the speeches in the book Thucydides says the following: As to the speeches that were made by different men, either when they were about to begin the war or when they were already engaged therein, it has been difficult to recall with strict accuracy the words actually spoken, both for me as regards that which I myself heard, and for those who from various other sources have brought me reports. Therefore the speeches are given in the language in which, as it seems to me, the several speakers would express, on the subjects under consideration, the sentiments most befitting the occasion, though at the same time I have adhered as closely as possible to the general sense of what actually was said. (l-XXII-1). I n this book which lays claim to being a "possession for all time" we must ask ourselves which the speeches are present-what part they play in the artful composition of this book. It is clear that spoken words are of crucial importance to Thucydides when the words are public, when they are directed toward future action, and when they issue from the mouths of certain men. Sometimes, however, the speakers are nameless; they are designated merely as "the Athenians;' or "the Corinthians." And once in the book the speeches are part of a fictive dialogue between the people of Melos and these nameless are judging concerning the future; such would be speeches made before a deliberative assembly. There are speeches made before people who are judging concerning the past; such would be speeches made in a court oflaw by a lawyer in front of a judge or a jury. Finally there are speeches mainly concerned with the present, eulogies perhaps, where the judges often are critics or appreciators of the speaker's words. These three types are formally spoken of a deliberative, forensic, and epideictic rhetoric. The business of deliberative speeches is to exhort and persuade concerning future actions, and the reason for the talking, the end at which it is aiming in its persuasion, is the expedient or the harmful. Will it further the ends of the Athenian state to slaughter the entire population of M ytilene or not? Thucydides gives us two speeches on this matter, one from the mouth of Cleon, a demagogue, which argues for the killing, and one from the mouth ofDeodatus, an otherwise unknown man in the histories, which argues against the killing. Both speeches argue from expediency, and as such fall precisely within the definition of a deliberative speech as rhetoric aimed at the useful or the harmful. While we may lament the lack of any talk of justice in the speeches of Cleon and Deodatus, Deodatus' speech saves the lives of the people ofMytilene. It is intended by the author that we take careful note that the best speech on expediency saves the population of an entire city. The business of forensic rhetoric is to accuse or de- fend, its time the past, its end the just and the unjust. Was Alcibiades guilty of impiety in the scandal of the desecration of the Hermes? If this were not cleared up, the doubt would spoil his efficacy in the minds of the assembly however much they had been moved by his speech concerning their future. Did Mr. Nixon do the right thing in lying? That again was judged, and the outcome had much to do later with the future. What I mean to say here is that though speeches concerning past actions, which have to do with justice, are distinct from deliberations concerning the future, which have to do with expediency, we all wear two hats in such matters. If in our judgement]oe did lie or did, in fact, steal, we are not going to listen to him with any particular confidence when he advises us concerning the future, how- ever prudently he may speak. ] ustice counts for something. The business of the epideictic is praise or blame, and it is most generally concerned with the present; its end is the noble or the disgraceful. At the end of this lecture we will examine the most famous of all epideictic speeches, Pericles' Funeral Oration. In deliberative speeches the judges are immediately concerned with the subject at hand. It is, after all, their lives, their wealth, their fears, and their honor which are at stake in an assembly which is debating a future action. One would expect them to be more critical and ''Athenians:' It will be helpful, and it is easy enough, suspicious given this fact. Given this frame of mind, the personal character of the speaker assumes a much greater following Aristotle, to divide speeches in general into three types. There are speeches addressed to people who importance than it does in forensic pleading. Who and what kind of a man Pericles is, has much to do with his 4 SPRING 1984 �persuasiveness. At the conclusion of Pericles' third speech in Book II Thucydides states this with perfect clarity: And the reason for this was that Pericl~s, who owed his influence to his recognized standing and ~bility, and had proved himself clearly incorruptible in the highest degree, restrained the multitude while respecting their liberties, and led them rather than was led by them, because he did not resort to flattery, seeking power by dishonest means, but was able on the strength of his high reputation to oppose them and even provoke their wrath. (II-LXV-8). The same holds true, however, for Alcibiades; character counts, both for and against. Once the enthusiasm for his youth and brilliance have had time to cool off, doubts of his virtue enter the assembly's mind, and he is relieved of his command. As a result the disastrous Sicilian campaign begins its downward plunge. Part of the study of power and politics, of things as they are, is the study of how people are persuaded to action. What rhetoric does is part of the truth of the way things are. The very first speech in the histories begins with the word "dikaion'!- it is fair or just. You may remember the situation. The Corinthians are trying to prevent the Athenian fleet from joining that of Corcyra, as this would hamper them in settling the war as they wish to settle it. An assembly is called, and first the Corcyreans and then the Corinthians speak. The first sentence of the Corcyreans, which, as we have noted, begins with the expression "it is fair;' is a most complex sentence: It is but fair, citizens of Athens, that those who, without any previous claims on the score of important service rendered or of an existing alliance, come to their neighbors to ask aid, as we do now, should show in the first place, if possible, that what they ask is advantageous, or at least that it is not hurtful, and in the second place, that their gratitude can be depended on; but in case they establish neither of these things clearly, they should not be angry if unsuccessful. (I-XXXII-!). The intent of the Corcyreans, which governs the device they employ in this sentence, is to establish the reasonableness of what they want. Facts must be faced, and dismissed if they prove to be a hindrance. The fact is that the Corcyreans have no existing alliance with, nor have they rendered any important service to, Athens; in fact they are a colony of Corinth, hence the opening section of the sentence. Given this embarrassing fact, it must be shown that what is asked is "xumphora'!- advantageous, or at least not harmful- and that the gratitude of the Corcyreans might even offer a certain security. The final reasonable appeal is that if none of the above can be established, no one's feelings are to be hurt. It is clear, even if it is not just, that the important persuasive word must be "advantage;' and that other things that might bind a political action, such as an alliance or ties of blood with the motherland, must be glossed over in light of"advantage's" claims. The speech continues with an insistence upon the changed fact of the Corcyreans' isolation in ST. JOHN'S REVIEW foreign policy. What had been formerly considered discretion is now viewed as unwise and a cause of weakness. They then hold out to the Athenians the pleasing package of both honor and advantage, honor in helping one who is wronged, and advantage in having as an ally a great sea power. They argue that the Spartans through fear are eager for war, and that the Corinthians are abetting this fear. They then brush aside the illegality of an alliance with them (the Spartans and the Athenians are at this point allied, as you may recall) with a legal argument that has a certain petty rigor, and finally end their speech with the strongest set of appeals to expediency that they can muster. First they argue that if they have more strength the Spartans will be still more afraid of breaking the truce; second they appeal to the commercial and imperial passions of Athens by pointing out the convenience of Corcyra, situated as it is so conveniently for a voyage to Italy and Sicily, and third they tote up a calculus of the naval power of Greece. There are three major navies, Athens, Corinth, and Corcyra. Two is more than three. Don't be stuck with only your own. The Corinthians in their rebuttal take up one by one the arguments of the Corcyreans. They argue that the contingency of a war in which the Corinthians fight with the Athenians is still most uncertain, and that to be stampeded by such fear will be to make a real enemy of the Corinthians; this then /will be a fact, and not a contingency. Also, and most pointedly, the Athenians of all people should not tamper 0ith colonies and allies; the whole life of their city depends on its network of rule abroad. After the two speeches the Athenians in a second session of the assembly go along with the Corcyreans, though all during the first assembly they are for Corinth. They make, however, a defensive alliance only, promising mutually to aid each other in case of attack. The Athenians believe that the war has to be faced, and do not want to give up the navy of the Corcyreans. Also they have done a calculus- or gambled on a probability- that the two navies, of the Corinthians and the Corcyreans, will wear each other out, and hence Corinth will be weaker when war comes. And too the island does indeed seem so beautifully situated for a voyage to Italy and Sicily. oth speeches are made before an assembly of judges who are debating a course of action future to them. The principal word in the vocabulary is certainly expedience as regards future benefits, and this is always contrasted with the harm that would result from not calculating on proper self-interest. Fairness and honor, fear and anger, figure also in this vocabulary, and each person in the assembly must be consulting his own desires and hopes and fears for the future. For us, the readers, these speeches are very different in meaning. We know, as did Thucydides, that the war will go on for mofe than a generation, that Athens will lose, that the society and world of the Greek cities will be debased by B 5 �the war, that words having to do with probity, honor, and justice will be tarnished. We are also perfectly aware that it will not be the end of the world~ as can so easily happen to our world right now, but that it will be the end of a kind of world in which certain cherished things somehow maintained themselves by tradition, luck, and guts against the desolation of the barbarian periphery. In other words, for us they are not deliberative speeches in that they refer to a future which we the judges do not know. We judge them not from their expediency or harmfulness to us, but as judges judging a past event. We are concerned with the just and the unjust, the good and the bad, and we accuse or defend the Athenians or the people of Melos, the Spartans or the noble defenders of Plataea, as we look back and down upon their speeches, knowing what their future is to be. They are for us writing samples open to our inspection; we are critics or appreciators or unabashed admirers. Later in Book I the Athenians give a speech which we the readers must closely examine. The occasion is a general council of the allies in Sparta after the hostilities up at Potidea have been going on for quite a time. The Corinthians have been hard at work in a preceding speech, stirring up the Spartans, inciting them to war. In their speech they have praised the Athenians' resourcefulness and derided the Spartans' old-fashioned habits. They have even put forth a general rule, stating it categorically and introducing it with the word "necessity" (anangke ): "it is necessary that things coming after other things prevail!' A more vivid translation would be "The new must by the nature of things take over:' In our role as onlookers and critics of the speech it is easy enough for us to appreciate the reason the Corinthians have for saying this, and even the effectiveness of stating it as a law. The Spartans are stick-in-the-muds, and have to be brought to their senses in a world that has changed and that is more quick in its wits than they. If we, as readers, are more than appreciators, we must ask ourselves if the proposition is true; does it have any valid~ty as a law, or persuasive power because we think it's scientific? On another level of meaning we are aware that Corinth is in many ways the same kind of place as Athens, commercial, rich, a port, and ancient. The Athenians, who according to Thucydides happened by chance to be present, asked for permission to speak. They wanted to slow down the Spartans and to show the great power of their city, reminding the older men of what they knew, and telling the younger ones what they didn't know, believing that their words would direct the Spartans toward peace rather than war. Their opening sentences should put us, the readers, on guard as to what is being done. The Athenians submit that they are not going to answer any charges or speak to the Spartans as if the Spartans were a jury deciding on matters of justice or injustice, but are only going to speak to them in order to dissuade them from making a wrong decision regarding the future. The record, on the other hand, still must be set straight. ''As for all the words against 6 us, we want to show that we have what we have in a manner that is not unseemly and that our city is worthy of being talked about:' The next paragraph in their speech brings up the great event of fifty years ago, the Persian War. There is one acid sentence in this paragraph, which employs the perennial pair, actions and words, erga and logoi. The sentence may be rendered as follows: "When we did these things" (the Athenians are speaking of their part in defeating the Persians) "when we did these things, they were risked for the sake of a common benefit, and since you had a piece of the action, we will not be deprived of the words that give us credit, if indeed there is any benefit in that." The sentence revolves like a snake about the word "benefit:' A freer translation might be as follows: "We did these things and suffered danger for a common good; since you received a share of that work, we will not be deprived of the account of what we did, if indeed there is any good or profit in an account:' The word logos, "account;' at the end of this sentence is delivered with cutting irony. Its meaning might be rendered as "lip-service':_ the homage that words pay to action. Of course the actions the Athenians are talking about are gone into in detail in the next part of the speech. They are the glorious triumphs at Marathon and Salamis, events which we memorialize as model triumphs of civilization over barbarism, triumphs which the Athenians point to as being a benefit to the Spartans as well as to themselves. The next paragraph then asks the question of worthiness. ''Are we then deserving of hatred and jealousy merely because of empire, or rule?" This is the crucial fact to be dealt with in any dealing with the Spartans. Thucydides has given as the underlying cause of the war the fear the Spartans had of Athens' rule or empire, and now the Athenians must speak to this fact of empire and rule; they must demonstrate that it is natural and inevitable, and hence not blameworthy. They begin by arguing that it was according to the necessity of the work itself that they were driven to extend their rule, and that they were under the push exerted by fear, honor, and lastly self-interest. To quote exactly: "It was under the compulsion of circumstances that we were driven at first to advance our empire to its present state, influenced chiefly by fear, then by honor also, and lastly by selfinterest as well:' Later in the paragraph they say "No man is to be blamed for making the most of his advantages when it is a question of the gravest dangers." The argument here might be stated as follows: if anyone in the world would behave in a certain way given the appropriate circumstances, no blame follows for an individual who does behave in such a way. Certainly a very familiar and only slightly sleazy inference. The argument then turns to the named individual in a way we are all accustomed to, saying that "you;' namely the Spartans, would have done the thing as we had if you had been in our shoes. The next stage is to pull in normalcy of behavior under a more telling name, "human nature." 'Thus there is nothing remarkable or inconsistent with SPRING 1984 �human nature in what we also have done, just because we accepted an empire when it was offered us, and then, yielding to the strongest motives- honor, fear, and selfinterest (the list now begins with honor and not fear, you will note)-we declined to give it up:' 'The next step is to move from normalcy of behavior to a general law, hence the next sentence: "Nor again, are we the, first who have entered upon such a course, but it has always been laid down that the weaker are hemmed in by the stronger:' The adverb in the argument has moved from "usually" to "always!' We have now not an observation of normal behavior but a binding law of universal action. The next job to be done in this most central of all paragraphs is to eliminate any principle or universal idea which will conflict with the principle of the strong lording it over the weak. This is done slyly and personally, with the intention of shaming any listener who clings to such notions. We [the nameless Athenians say] thought ourselves worthy to rule, and you shared that opinion, until you began toting up and calculating your own interests, and, just as you are doing now, began resorting to talk of justice ['t6 0tKnt6 Aoy6 ], which no one in his right mind ever put in front of force and advantage when opportunity gave him the chance of getting something by sheer strength. (I LXXVI-2). The grand reversal from blame to praise now follows, encompassing all that has been said, and carefully placing the small hand of justice into the muscular grasp of power: They are worthy of praise who, being subject to human nature as ruling over us, are more just than they might have been, considering their possession of power. We believe that anyone else, seeing our power, would demonstrate most clearly, as to whether we are walking a moderate path; in our case, however, from the very fact of our reasonableness, blame rather than praise arises in a most unfitting manner. (I LXXVI -4 ). This passage in this speech is of crucial importance to the whole book. The Athenians are explicating their power and rule. Their speech is an apology for empire, and contains an argument based on what is claimed to be a universal law, a law present in human nature, namely that the strong rule the weak. In the immediate context of Book I the speech is unsuccessful. The Spartans decide that the treaty is broken and that the Athenians are to be blamed, and decide to go to war with Athens. There is some doubt that the speech was ever made; it seems clear that Thucydides placed it here and composed it as part of his explication and memorial of the war. Its propositions are present in the words of Pericles in later speechs in the book. They are very much present in the terrifying debate on the fate of the population of Mitylene. They are the substance of the Athenian talk in the so-called Melian Dialogue. ST. JOHN'S REVIEW eaning, in even the simplest of contexts and situations, has as many layers as an onion. This is in no way intended to imply that the situation or the context determines the meaning, but tather that the context or the situation is the occasion for meaning. Who is talking and why? Is it Pericles or Cleon or Alcibiades or Nicias talking, and why do they say what they say about the war or about an expedition to Sicily? What kind of men are they- noble, ambitious, brilliant, or moderate? Are they talking to a popular assembly, or to a gathering of aristocrats? What kind of relation have they to the assembly, or the soldiers, or the aristocratic gathering, or their neighbors? What are they up to? Why does Pericles want the war? It can hardly be for the same reasons that Clean or Alcibiades are driven by, though both might use the same arguments concerning power and justice. Are any of the sentences true statements of the way things are? In the case of this invented speech we have just examined there are still further layers of meaning for us. We are an audience separated by an enormous gulf of time from the author. Why he has the Athenians say what they say when they say it, and whether what they say is true or not, must be part of the meaning to us. It would be only too easy to nod one's head and, calling a spade a spade, assent to the propositions concerning power and human nature, the strong ruling the weak, and the weakness of the good. Is it that our very nodding our heads in assent to such propositions is part of the truth of the propositions? Does it reveal something of what we are when we do assent to them? Does rhetoric reveal the other side of being, the dark side, the shabby side, the reverse side of the coin? Is part of this dilemma embodied in that famous red-herring of a term, human nature? I have heard persons of good character sagely affirm that the Melians were wrong in not knuckling under to the Athenians. It is a fact that they were all slain and their city extirpated, and the ground it stood on plowed under. The truth is that their deaths only demonstrate the weakness of the good, not ·that they were wrong. I take this to be Thucydides' meaning, and it is with the darkest irony that he puts into the Athenians' mouths in the speech we have just looked at the harsh reference to just discourse, ( dikaios logos), their attempt being to shame the Spartans for resorting to such talk, to taunt them for their lack of manliness. I will read the sentence again: M And at the same time we thought ourselves worthy to rule, and you shared that opinion, until you began toting up and calculating your own interests, and, just as you are doing now, began resorting to talk of justice, which no one in his right mind ever put in front of force and advantage when opportunity gave him the chance of getting something by sheer strength (I LXXVI-2). If we can be bamboozled by shame into knuckling under to these propositions about force and power; then the propositions become operationally true. 7 �It is very popular in all ages to dismiss just discourse, and you may recall Aristophanl'!s' bitter satire in the Clouds, where just and unjust di'scourse parade their arguments in front of the audience of Athenian citizens, an audience full of the presence of the endless Peloponnesian War. Pericles' Funeral Oration in Book II of the histories is the world's most famous speech, and it is in praise of the world's most memorable city. This speech is carefully positioned in front of the most famous description of a disease in literature, the great Plague of Athens. It is so carefully positioned in the structure of the histories that a former tutor, with his customary irony, used to insist that the plague never happened. By this I gather he meant that it was too patently plotted into the literary scheme of the histories. Terrible and terrifying pairs are placed in front of us, a juxtaposition oflight, life, and freedom under law next to darkness, death, and anarchy. Both the Funeral Oration and the account of the Plague have been imitated or copied. You will recall Lucretius' Plague, and we are all most familiar with the countless statesmen-like speeches which employ Pericles' oration as a model. There are in addition two other speeches of Pericles in the book which frame the meaning of the funeral oration. The first one is in Book I, a speech in which he urges the assembly to war. The other occurs after the war has begun, and the city has suffered the plague. It is because of the political aftermath of these events that Pericles finds it necesary to give this speech, a speech in which he urges the assembly to hold firm in its pursuance of the war. These two framing speeches, are of course, deliberative speeches, delivered before the assembly. They urge and advise concerning the future course of action to be taken by the assembly, in contrast to the Funeral Oration, which is a eulogy of the present and shining spectacle of Athens. The first paragraph of the first speech contains the essence of practical decision-making, and as such comments ironically on a future which we, the readers, know: I, 0 men of Athens, hold to the same judgement as always namely that we must not yield to the Spartans, although I well know that once engaged in the actual work of warfare men are not actuated by the same passionate temper as they are when being persuaded to go to war, but change their judgements according to what happens. I also see that I must give you the same or nearly the same advice I used to give you, and I insist that those of you who are persuaded shall support the common decision, even if we should fail, or, in the case of success, claim no share in the good judgement shown. For it is perfectly possible for the course of events to unfold irrationally and dumbly as it is for the calculations of men; it is for this very reason that we lay the blame on fortune for what turns out contrary to our calculations. (I-CXL-1). We never deliberate about what we know, but about what 8 we don't know, and we don't know the future, and especially the future of a war. We may hope for a felicitous future, but hope is wishing for what rationally cannot be counted on. There is a piercing logic in the classification of hope as a theological virtue, an excellence beyond nature; for Thucydides, however, the word carries with it an ever-present irony. A political decision is always about the future, and aspires to be a contract. It can't be a contract, however, for who will make it stick? What is the binding rule, and if the rule is binding, who will be the judge? It may be just as well that this is so, for if the decision is for war, sticking to the decision may bleed the city to death, or at the very least debase the spirit and counterfeit the moral coinage. Later in the speech Pericles goes on to insist that the slightest concession to the Spartans will be read by them as fear, whereas a downright refusal of their demands means that they will treat the Athenians as equals. This is a kind of argumentation that numbs us every day in the discussions of deterrence and equal megatonnage. Pericles throws this at the assembly as an imperative: So make up your minds, here and now, either to take their orders before any damage is done you, or, if we mean to go to war-as to me seems best-do so with the determination not to yield on any pretext, great or small, and not hold our possessions in fear. For it means enslavement just the same when either the greatest or the least claim is imposed by equals upon their neighbors, not by an appeal to justice but by dictation. (I-CXLI-1). You will note the force of the word slavery in the last sentence, though there is no clear logical path to be followed from claiming that between equals the slightest concession means slavery rather than injustice. It is cer- tainly a normal phenomenon that neighboring states hate each other. The nearer they are the greater the hate seems to be, in a kind of inverse-force law whose terms are hate and proximity. In Greece one has only to think of Thebes and Plataea, Sparta and Argos, Athens and Corinth, Athens and Thebes, or Athens and its even nearer neighbors (regarded with even more intense hatred), Megara and Aegina. This is one of the perpetual and damning observations which Dante makes as he looks at all the cities of Tuscany consuming each other in a wrath which he can only describe in bestial terms. In our own age we have only to cast our eyes on any part of the globe to observe this phenomenon: Poland and Russia, India and Pakistan, Iran and Arabia, Bolivia and Paraguay, Chile and Ecuador, Russia and China, Vietnam and Cambodia, England and Ireland. Often the hatred between neighbors grows up between states that are somehow united- this happened between the North and the South in our own United States, and the anguish of Lebanon presents a spectacle of hatred and blood between every tribe and every sect of a variety of religions. SPRING 1984 �hese hatreds are nearly ineradicable, and are a part of the calculus of power. ~hey are present all through the events of the history we are reading, but they are never the cause of a major war. This is left to the fear that exists between equals. While it was under the aegis of the greater war that the The bans had finally the satisfaction of seeing their nearest neighbors slaughtered one by one, that greater war arose from a fear between equals. Sparta and Athens are not near neighbors, and are enormously different, one from the other. They don't know or understand each other enough to be able to hate. It is the fear between equals and the humiliation of being treated as an underling by someone who is the same height as you are that is behind Pericles' statement. This is the heart of his appeal, and the goad to the assembly's manliness. As Thucydides states over and over again, a man or a state is more humiliated at being treated unjustly by an equal than at being beaten or cowed physically by someone patently bigger or stronger. We ourselves for the past thirty years have seen an obscene proliferation of nuclear arms spring like mushrooms from the ground of fear between equals. Any hope for the mere existence of the world lies in an untangling of, or an accommodation to, this grotesque calculus. And since the snarls caused by fear between equals have never been untangled in the political affairs of men, to hope for their dissolution may be irrational, and even naive. Given the presence of fear and power, reason staggers and redefmes itself. It becomes a calculus, a rationalization arising out of the presence of fear and power, and the word "irrational" comes to mean "imperfectly calculated:' It is for this reason that Hobbes, the translator of Thucydides, must redefine the meaning of words, and base all meaning in the new and mechanical psychology with its roots in the fear of war and the presence of power. If I am driven, the fo'rces that drive me must be analyzed, and a machine built to contain their energy and to ensure my life. In talking of Thucydides, who is no systemizer, we must limit ourselves to noting that in his gravest passages, when he discusses and notes the events and writes down the speeches concerning the consideration-s we have been pointing to, he employs the phrase "human nature." In the next part of his speech Pericles totes up the power and money of the Athenians. He notes that their ability to act quickly, and to decide things with resilience by means of their popular assembly. This he contrasts with the complicated allied command structure of Sparta. The Athenians' navy will be their security, and should be their hope, as it was at Salamis, and with it they need not fear for their land holdings; their strength lies in their power, their commerce, and their drachmas. Given all of these assets he hopes that Athens will prove superior. This will only happen, he warns, if they do not attempt to extend their empire while they are waging a war, or weigh themselves down with other dangers of their own making---!'for I fear more our own domestic mistakes than the calculations of the enemy." T ST. JOHN'S REVIEW We, the readers, are well aware of the prophecy implied in this sentence, and after Pericles' third speech Thucydides takes pains to point out the disasters that followed Pericles' death. He lived only two years and six months into the war, and without him Athens foundered, just as under him it was great and glorious and entered the path of war. The speech concludes by urging the assembly to adjust in a strictly legal way their affairs with the Spartans, but to do nothing upon dictation: This answer is just and fitting for the city- but it behooves us to know that the war is going to happen, and that the more willing we show ourselves to accept it, the less eager will our enemies be to attack us, and also that from the greater dangers the greater honors accrue both to a private man and to a state. (I -CXLIV-3). At the conclusion to the conclusion Pericles appeals to the memory of their fathers, who withstood the Persians, and who with a courage greater than their strength beat back the barbarian and advanced their fortunes to their present state. Thucydides comments, "The Athenians thinking he was advising them for the best voted as he told them to:' It may be that a statesman has to act as if war were inevitable, and see to it that the state is prepared. But Pericles' argument to the assembly-that not only is war inevitable but that the more we show ourselves prepared to accept war, the less eager will our enemies be to accept it- is specious. To an enemy such as Sparta, an equal in pride and strength, greater acceptance and preparedness. on the part of the Athenians will mean greater fear on the part of the Spartans, and thus greater precautions. Out of that fear and preparedness will grow further armament and further marshalling of allies, finally ensuring the truth of the proposition that war is inevitable. It is apt to the point of slyness that the completion of Pericles' complex sentence contains the appeal to the honor and excellence that accrue to a man and a city from great dangers. He proceeds to buttress this by appealing to the memory of the great patriotic war waged against the Persian barbarians. This rhetorical induction from one war to another is false, as a war between Greeks and barbarian invaders has not the same nature as a war between Greeks. It would be like arguing in this century from the nature of the First World War of 1914, which in no way was worth the price of its blood, to a position which would deny the moral necessity of the war against Nazi Germany. An argument closer to the present generation would contain the faulty inference that since the Second World War was honorable to the nation, the war in Vietnam was also, and hence should be pursued with vigor and moral certainty. After the first speech of Pericles in Book I the war begins. The Spartans invade the land of Attica. Pericles' strategy has been to pull all of the population within the walls, to abandon the countryside to the devastation of 9 �the invading Spartans, and to truSt in the navy, the empire, and the wealth of the city. Athens and Attica had been inhabited continously for a length of time that seemed mythical to its inhabitants. They were proud of having been indigenous and co-eternal, as it were, with the soil of Attica. Their habits and mores were attached to the countryside, to their estates. The city of Athens, though the center of Attica politically, was the traditional center of this long-enduring and ancient countryside, and had no existence apart from the land about. Pericles' strategy changed all of this, and the whole countryside crowded within the walls, squatting even within sacred places. The Funeral Oration takes place during the winter which closes the first year of war and the first invasion of the land of Attica. The next summer the Spartans invaded the countryside again, and before they had been many days in Attica, the Plague broke out. I shall quote from Thucydides' account: It is said, indeed to have broken out before in many places, both in Lemnos and elsewhere, though no pestilence of such extent nor any scourge so destructive of human lives is on record anywhere. For neither were physicians able to cope with the disease, since they had to treat it without knowing its nature, the mortality among them being greatest because they were most exposed to it, nor did any other human art avail. And the supplications made at sanctuaries, or appeals to oracles and the like, were all futile, and at last men desisted from them, overcome by the calamity. (II-XLVII-4) Thucydides then proceeds to inform the reader as to how he will treat of this natural disaster: Now anyone, whether physician or layman, may, according to his personal opinion, speak about its probable origin and state the causes which, in his view, were sufficient to have produced so great a departure from normal conditions; but I shall describe its actual course, explaining the symptoms from the study of which a persons should be best able having knowledge of it beforehand, to recognize it if it should ever break out again, For I had the disease myself, and saw others sick of it. (II -XLVII -3). This passage cannot help suggesting to us, the readers, that Thucydides intends to write about the Plague in the same way that he writes about the war. He had the disease and saw others sick of it just as analogously he was an admiral in the war, was exiled, and examined it then from a distance. He next describes in detail the physical nature of the Plague, and finally turns to the moral desolation which resulted from it: And no one was eager to practice self-denial in prospect of what was esteemed honor, because everyone thought that it was doubtful whether he would live to attain it, but the pleasure of the moment and whatever was in any way conducive to it came to be regarded as at once honorable and expedient. No fear of gods or law of men restrained; for, on the one hand, seeing that all men were perishing alike, they judged that piety and impiety came 10 to the same thing, and, on the other, no one expected that he would live to be called to account and pay the penalty of his misdeeds. (II-LIII -4 ). It is difficult not to compare this passage with the one which details the horror of the civil war on Corcyra, which Thucydides so clinically describes both as to its symptoms and to its progress. The attempt is to describe something so that it may be recognized if encountered again. In comparing the Plague with the civil war that broke out everywhere in Bellas there are differences to be noted- the Plague may have been carried by rats, a natural cause, whereas the civil war arose from human causes. Are human causes a branch of the natural, and are we obligated to employ the term "human nature?" If both are diseases, justice becomes medicine, assuming the meaning so common to it in the dialogues of Plato. he Athenians now suffered a change of feeling·s. They blamed Pericles for having persuaded them to go to war. Their land had been invaded for the second time; the Plague had decimated the population. The Athenians even sent envoys to the Spartans pleading for peace, but accomplished nothing. "Being at their wits' end, they assailed Pericles. . . . He called a meeting of the assembly- for he was still general-wishing to reassure them, and by ridding their minds of resentment to bring them to a milder and less timorous mood:' Pericles' third speech is then framed to meet this occasion. For us, the readers, it may be the saddest of his speeches. The war which he had argued for has begun. The glorious city which had reached its zenith under his leadership has just suffered the Plague. The anger and fear of the people have to be faced down, and the peace movement quelled. He has to ride the back of his tiger and find words to fit the situation. He begins by saying that he has expected this anger, and will show them that they have no reason to be angry with him, or to give way to their misfortunes. A man's private misfortunes are worsened by the state's disasters, so it would be folly to sacrifice the state's security because of troubles at home. You're blaming both me and yourselves, he says, who voted after all for the war. I am as competent a man as you'll find, free from influence of money, and a good patriot. If you believed me once, believe me now. Next he waves in front of their eyes the banner of near infinite rule and power, something, as he says, he had been loath to do before, as it is almost unseemly and boastful· to do so. Seeing them so cast down, however, he will raise their spirits. T You think that it is only over your allies that your empire extends, but I declare. that of two divisions of the world which lie open to man's use, the land and the sea, you hold the absolute mastery over the whole of one, not only to the extent to which you now exercise it, but also to whatever fuller extent you may choose; and there is no one, either the Great King or any nation of those SPRING 1984 �on the earth, who will block your pqth as you sail the seas with such a naval aramament as,you now possess. (II-LXII-2). That is, of course, Pericles speaking, nbt Alcibiades urging the conquest of Sicily. You can go forth, he says, to meet your enemies not only with confidence but with contempt. For contempt belongs properly to the man who is persuaded by his own judgement that he is superior to his opponent. Such is our case. . . . Fortune being equal, this intelligent scorn renders courage more secure, in that it doesn't trust so much in hope, which is strongest when you're at a loss, as in well-founded opinion, opinion founded on the facts of the case, which is a lot surer as far as the future is concerned. (II-LXII -4). These words of Pericles' find their final home in the mouths of the nameless Athenians as they present their view in the fictive dialogue with the Melians: Hope is indeed a solace in danger, and for those who have other resources in abundance, though she may injure, she does not ruin them, but for those who stake their all on a single throw- hope being by nature prodigal- it is only when disaster has befallen that her true nature is recognized, and when at last she is known, she leaves the victim no resource wherewith to take precautions against her in future. (V-CIII). They later butcher the people of Melos, and existentially demonstrate the truth of their words. The next words of Pericles follow a kind of scenario that might be summed up as follows: look at the truth, the facts, shiver, and then gird up your loins; don't be so fatuous as to play at being good, rather become famous. Every one hates you because of the empire, but "it is far too late to back off, even if someone in the present hour of danger wants to play the "good man" by shrinking from public actions." The verb in this s~ntence which carries the weight of the scorn is andragathidzetaifrom aner and agathos---.!'play the good or honest man." Pericles continues: The empire you possess is a tyranny, which it may seem unjust to have taken on, but which certainly would be dangerous to let go of. Such good and honest men would ruin a state either right here, if they could persuade others of their point of view, or if they went to found another city all of their own- men of peace who refrain from politics preserve nothing unless they are accompanied by men of action; it is no benefit in a ruling city but only in a vassal state, to submit for the sake of safety. (II - LXIII). The speech ends with an exordium to the assembly to act heroically. They are men, and Homer was their mentor: Anyone who has aspired to rule over others has been hated; but anyone who, aiming high, accepts this hate, is well advised. (II-LXIV-5 ). ST. JOHN'S REVIEW The Greek adverb in this sentence is orth6s, "getting things straight!' The author then comments: "Speaking in this way Pericles tried to purge the Athenians of their anger towards him and to channel their minds away from the present evils:' (II-LXV-1). e, the readers, have now to attempt to step back and test the meaning of this speech from our numbing distance of over 2000 years, a span approaching the everlasting memory Pericles speaks of to the Athenians. The speech is enshrined in this book designed by the author as a possession for all times. Are there true propositions, bona-fide laws, stated in this or in other speeches in this book, laws which stand and hold as universal laws of power and politics? Or are the statements exposed to our attention by Thucydides merely the sort of thing which is always said and always will be said in order to persuade an assembly or a senate or a prince when he is deliberating concerning a future course of action? Is it true that the stronger rule the weaker, and that he who rules will be hated? If it's true, must Pericles say it to the assembly? If he does say it to the assembly as a means of rousing them to continued warfare, will they then act in such a way as to bring it about that they are hated even if they weren't before? Do words aimed at the heart and passions of a people sink in to such an extent that they become the mainsprings of their actions, and become to all intents and purposes true? If Pericles, certainly as good a politician as one will ever get, finds it necessary to speak scathingly about men wanting to be good and hence not paying attention either to their own or to the state's benefit, what manly man will choose to be "good"? The later shadow of the Gorgias and the hero Callicles loom large in our minds as we read these speeches. If at the end of the Gorgias justice and right obtain only in the dark underworld court of Rhadamanthus, it is because the good and right do not rule in the desolation of the landscape of power. It would be a shameless naivete to conceive of any of Plato's political works as arising from any ground other than one of the blackest pessimism regarding human affairs. It is true that he wrote after the Peloponnesian Wars, but that war does not, in itself, account for what he said any more than it accounts for what Thucydides said. The war was an occasion, first for Thucydides and then for Plato, for observing, for reflecting, and for setting things straight. In both of them one feels the ache for, and the absence of, an efficacious good, and while Socrates may speak of himself as the only true citizen of Athens, Thucydides the Athenian has put into the mouths of his Athenians words that fix forever in our memory the inexorable grind of power, time, and moral decline. It remains now to speak of the most famous speech, the Funeral Oration. As is so with many very famous things, it turns out to be quite peculiar in many of its features. The occasion for the speech is that "the Athenians, following the custom of their fathers, celebrated W 11 �at the public expense the funeral\ rites of the first who had fallen in this war;' and "a rna~ chosen by the state, who is regarded as best endowed with wisdom and is foremost in public esteem, delivers over them an appropriate eulogy." Pericles begins his speech with the usual disclaimer made by speakers on such occasions-who am I to praise such men? Actions speak louder than words. The speaker then attempts to give the best damn speech ever heard. In this case he succeeds. After the customary opening the speech takes on a rather sour note. The gist of what follows is that those who know the dead and what they did will think that scant justice is being done them by the speaker, and those who did not know them and their actions will think, out of envy, that the speaker has committed a gross exaggeration. Despite all this, he says, he will say what he has to say. Again, as is familiar and customary upon such occasions, the forefathers and the past are mentioned; again the peculiarity is that, despite the enormous age and the weight of custom and tradition in such an ancient city as Athens, the forefathers are quickly passed over in favor of the immediate past, the fathers of those in the audience who acquired the empire, and those alive today who, in the prime of their life, further strengthened this empire so that it is well provided for both in peace and in war. The speech then immediately turns to the City itself, and becomes the most famous eulogy of the most famous city. First the polity is praised; it is a democracy where all are equal under the law in the settlement of disputes, but where those who are distinguished are honored regardless of class and wealth. Pericles then praises the liberality of the town, its freedom from resentment and back-biting, the vigor and pizzazz of its talk. It is also a place with all kinds of relaxations, games and sacrifices, fine buildings and proper houses, and it is so rich and big that all the products of the earth flow into it. The city is stronger now because it is freer in its training and abhors secrecy. The citizen takes an interest at once in both private and public things: "we are lovers of beauty with the proper ends in mind, and lovers of wisdom without softness." What is of particular interest to us as we reflect on the speeches is the next statement of Pericles, where he praises the Athenians as being the most daring in action and at the same time as believing that debate is not a hindrance to action; for most people boldness means ignorance and reasoning causes delay. "In respect of virtue;' he says, "we differ from the many- for we acquire our friends not by recieving good from them but by doing good. We alone confer benefits not by calculating our own advantage so much as trusting in our own free and liberal habits:' If we pause for a moment in the midst of the praise we realize that this speech is of course to be classified, if we follow Aristotle's division, as a speech having to do with the present; its business is to praise or blame, and 12 its aim is the noble or the disgraceful. All the other speeches we have considered, the speeches of the Corcyreans and the Corinthians, the Athenians' speech to the Spartans, and the two flanking speeches of Pericles, had to do with deliberation about future events, and the propositions embedded in them had all to do with the exigencies of rule and power as applied to the benefit of the state. When we read the glowing praise of Athens' freedom and liberality in this speech of praise, a facile judgement might tend towards cynicism. After all, men of good sense are always wary of exalted speeches, especially when they issue from the mouths of statesmen on solemn occasions. A part of prudence must always agree with Dr. Johnson's dictum that patriotism is the last refuge of a scoundrel. In this century the very name "fatherland" sounds as a nightmare when the memory of what was perpetrated in its name crosses our consciousness. What is our judgement now, and what are our feelings as the speech continues? One state:,rp.!=(nt rings so in our memory as nearly to preclude judgement. Pericles says, "Putting all this together I say to you that our whole city is the education of Greece." (A more euphonious translation speaks of the "School of Bellas:') The sentence that contains this statement continues, however, as follows: And it seems to me that every single man amongst us, could in his own person, with the greatest grace and versatility, prove hims.elf self-sufficient in the most varied kinds of activity. Many are the proofs given of our power and we do not lack witnesses, and we shall be the wonder not only of men of today but of men of after-times. . . . We shall need no Homer to sing our praise nor any other poet whose verses may perhaps delight for the moment but whose presentation of the facts will be discredited by the truth. (II-XLI-1). This is of course true, as we do all remember Athens 2500 years later. Pericles then turns to the remains of the dead, and says that it was for such a place that these men died. Don't believe, he says, the advantages of such courage by the mere words of a speaker when you yourselves know as well as the speaker what is to be gained by warding off the enemy. Rather you must when you are about your daily work, fix your gaze upon the power of Athens and become lovers of her, and when she appears great to you, consider that all this has been gained by courage. (II-XLII!-1). This is soon followed by another sentence so beautiful that it is hard to look at it: The whole world is the sepulchre of famous men, and it is not the epitaph upon monuments set up in their own land that alone commemorates them, but also in lands not their own there abides in each breast an unwritten memorial to them, planted in the heart rather than graven in stone. (II-XLIII-3). SPRING 1984 �The eulogy becomes exhortation, and its charge may be paraphrased as follows: "you have more to lose, hence be unsparing of your lives, as the difference between your present beloved splendor and a disaster: is enormous. The more you have to love, the harder you should fight; ordinary folk have no place they passionately love, as you do, a place so splendid, which shines in its might and beautY:' The speech, whose occasion was the customary eulogy over the first to die in battle, becomes the eulogy of the city, not the city as a repository of old tradition and habit, but the present city, replete with power and beauty, standing in front of the citizen's eyes like the Parthenon on the hill, a love object of incomparable worth, worth so much that there can be no hesitation in fighting for her, as she is worth the price. The adoration of her power becomes the heart of the matter. Beauty and power are exhibited to the citizens, held up to them as love objects. Eros and Ares, Venus and Mars, are linked, and the hope of immortal fame standing beyond the inevitable future blood stirs them to heroic action. They have all been brought up on Homer. The implicit argument may be summed up as follows: major premise -lovers are famous; minor premise- patriots are lovers; conclusion -fight. And fight they did. After Pericles' third speech Thucydides carefully notes: And yet, after they had met with disaster in Sicily, where they had lost not only their army but also the greater part of their fleet, and by this time had come to a state of sedition at home, they nevertheless held out ten years not only against the enemies they had before, but also against the Sicilians, who were now combined with them, and besides, against most of their allies, who were now in revolt, and later on, against Cyrus, son of the King, who joined the Peloponnesians and furnished them with money for the fleet; and they did not finally succumb until they had in their private quarrels fallen upon each other and been brought to ruin. Such abundant grounds had Pericles at the time for his own forecast that Athens might quite easily have triumphed in this war over the Peloponnesians alone. (Il-LXV-12-13). he fact remains that. they lost, and in that long swath of wartime the words and arguments which we have examined, which in peacetime might have remained underground, in wartime came to the surface, and became fixed and inexorable. They were used in the assembly which debated the fate of the population of M ytilene; they were present in the hearts of the Spartans as they led out the courageous citizens of Plataea and slaughtered them one by one; they were dramatically composed into the Athenians' dialogue with the Melians before that population was eliminated. In this same swath of time civil war erupted all over Greece, the paradigm of it being the horror on Corcyra, where words changed their meanings, and people became faceless, and words became masks behind which the anarchy of the passions paraded. The habits and customs of the past, the only T ST. JOHN'S REVIEW safeguard to be counted upon, crumbled, and the pure present showed its face like the Gorgon's head. Can the pure present of power and beauty waved like a banner in the faces of the Assembly in the Funeral Oration inflame nobly? Is the vision seen worthy, and worth such travail as the long years shift and pass? Patriotism is infinitely more difficult for all of us who inhabit these enormous modern nation-states; there's nothing to look at. To be a patriot now one has to love a principle and be willing to die for it, which is so different from gazing upon a place, bounded by its fields, beautiful to look upon, rich and marvelously racy to live in, full of ingenious and sharp-tongued people; a place where clearly one lives a better life than one would anywhere else. Can the present vision of a shining and glorious city, the love object presented by Pericles, counter that other present vision, the immediate anarchy and horror present in both the Plague and in the civil war on Corcyra? Did Nicias see the same thing as Pericles? Does Thucydides the Athenian see the same thing as Pericles? Perhaps he does, but he frames the Funeral Oration with the two speeches we have considered, and places it, in his composition, directly in front of his account of the plague. He also praises Nicias, dying far from Athens, a failure at the end of a disaster, as the man who "least deserved to meet with such a calamity, because of his course of life that had been wholly regulated in accordance with virtue." orne students with whom I read these speeches last year felt thill the study of them and of this book led to cynicism. This is to read what is intended as irony wrongly. If no solution in human affairs is possible, it is because nothing of heartfelt concern is a problem that can be solved. If no solution is possible, human excellence calls for courage and shrewdness to walk hand in hand with decency and compassion. They don't walk hand in hand usually, and the best you can get is their mutual awareness, one of the other. I was struck recently by a documentary which I saw on television; it seemed to me like an allegory of power and the good. In it two women of extraordinary toughness and calculation were exhibited to us, the viewers. The documentary was about Mother Teresa, and the scene which stuck in my memory was filmed in the grand audience chamber in New Delhi. Mrs. Ghandi, that shrewd, tough, and resilient powerbroker, gave a medal honoring Mother Teresa to that shrewd, tough, and resilient nun .. Mrs. Ghandi is the ruler of the largest and most populous democracy in the world, a nation-state that came into being in the midst of one of those blood baths which our century is full of, an event of such terrifying barbarity and slaughter that ordinary descriptions of Hell seem painted in pastel, and Corcyra seems a tempest in a teapot, in comparison. For all that, the nation lurches on in its misery, guided and coaxed and dictated to by Mrs. Ghandi. Mother Teresa performs good works, and this is seen by any onlooker S 13 �regardless of his faith or lack ther~of. It is hard to conceive that either woman, so aware Of the way things are, expects anything to change in this world she is so much in the midst of. Mrs. Ghandi, in addition to the parlous state of her enormous nation, lives under the shadow of the two monstrous powers with which she shares the continent, Russia and China. She lives also with the bloodhate of her nearest neighbor, Pakistan. Mother Teresa lives in the midst of the most utter poverty and human degradation in one of the great cities of the sub-continent. In the television encounter one could see the hard, clear glance of Mrs. Ghandi, but even more one could sense the calculation behind the nun's eyes: was the minister on the right good for a couple of ambulances, and was the fat and powerful man on the left to be counted on for a ton of medical supplies for the benefit of her hospital for incurables in the heart of that ultimate human city, Calcutta? Via Positiva Back home on a day this time of year Sharp angled red-trunked trees stand In a flat green field, new and fruitless, Each articulate leaf cutting the air clear; Down cellar where dark and cold are one Deep baskets fill with roots and gourds, Mold glitters on the step, damp webs Softly shawl the ciderjugs and jams; Past the creek where the hard water Ducks on the cleaving rock and twists Into shining braids slit with foam; There sleep stones and people, slabs and angels; Further on, after wall and hillside vault Before mountains crest, a gap opens Onto a plunging meadow faint with mist Where ral{bits flash amid the warm still grass. Gretchen Berg 14 SPRING 1984 �Via Negativa The freeway inarticulate sea Draws broken white spine and slurs The cold haze with a shining edge. What nimbus dares to charm and ride From dirt toothed with uncertain traces Pebbles and their alluvial shadows? Brittle branches thorn dark streams, Black ice reflective bridged With a splintered board or none. Pursy firs flicker and swerve Their forked moss matting An impasse in the blotted sky. Sharp waters carve the instep's arch; What name strikes blank air silent To find no ear, be dumbfound? I latecomer press my print With others speechless wonders Waiting to be spelled out. Gretchen Berg Gretchen Berg is a graduate of St. John's College, Annapolis. She lives in Vermont where she pursues her interest in writing and painting. ST. JOHN'S REVIEW 15 �Logos and The Underground Curtis Wilson AUTHOR'S PREFATORY NOTE The lecture here printed was delivered in September 1960 as the dean's 'opener: It is largely based on Edmund Husserl's Erfahrung und Urteil, which I worked my way through in the summer of'60. When Mr. Sterling recently proposed printing the lecture in the Review) conscience told me I should review the text, to determine whether I could still endorse the propositions that I put forward with such somber earnestness 25 years ago. My conclusion has been both a Yes and a No. For the heroism of Husserl's repeatedly renewed efforts to achieve a presuppositionless 'beginning' in philosophy, my admiration must always remain. And the attempt to carry out phenomenological description- the delineation of how things (tables and chairs, words and sonnets and symphonies, universals like Justice; fictional characters like Sancho Panza, beings like my cat, persons like the reader) present themselves in awareness- has a value. In 1960 I considered the Husserlian descriptions as an antidote to the self-defeating relativism that so many freshman brought to the college: the pervasive disbelief in the possibility of improving one's opinions, the bland assurance that your opinion is as good [or as bad?] as mine. Still today I see as desirable an attentiveness to the describable character of the things that present themselves in awareness, just as they present themselves-to echo the Husserlian phrase. It is a mode of thoughtfulness that, in an age of reductive slogans, needs to be encouraged. 16 But concerning the Husserlian enterprise I today have doubts that I had not quite formulated 25 years ago. The descriptions no longer appear to me securely presuppositionless or selfexplanatory; and the claim that phenomenological description constitutes "the correct method" in philosophy seems to me far too grand. "Man;' says Claude Bernard, "is by nature metaphysical and proud;" and the presumption of certainty seems to me more often illusionary than not. Methods are useful or necessary; but of method that claims to have an exclusive right we must be wary, for any method presupposes more than we are likely ever to know. In short, if I have long known that we must begin in medias res) I am no longer prepared to suppose that the mind's improvement or the advance of knowledge will consist in coming to an absolute starting-point. The very process whereby we successively pronounce the words of a sentence while intending a meaning seems to me utterly mysterious, and I think it is a miracle that we can begin at all. This is not the place to pursue these thoughts. (Let me only mention that today I would look to linguistics and behavioral biology to throw new light on the 'underground' of the liberal arts; and I see it as a task for the future liberal artists to explore with sensitivity the intricate dialectic between genotype and phenotype, between the deep or hidden structures and what appears. This investigation would not presume to avoid hypothesis; but insofar as hypothesizing necessarily involves reduction, it would be cogni- SPRING 1984 �n Platds dialogue Phaedo, Socrates speaks of having, at a crucial turning-point of his life, fled to the logoi. Previously, he says, ~e had pursued the investigation of natur~, seeking th~ <:fficient and final causes of the thmgs of the VlSlble world. But this investigation having led to nothing that he could trust he took flight to the logoi. What is characteristic of Socrates, the Socratic questioning, takes its start from this flight to the logoi. The Greek word logos (plural: logoi) has a vari~ty of meanings, but according to Liddell and Scott, Hs pnmary meanings are, first, the word, or that by which ~he Inward thought is expressed, and second, the mward thought itself. Additional and related meanmgs are: statement assertion definition, speech, discourse, reason. Now I am ~ot going to give a commentary on this passage in the Phaedo; but I wish to take a start fro~ the observation that there IS such a thing as logos, meaningful speech, speech which expresses the inward thoughL And I am going to explore the questwn: What does this fact presuppose? What underlies it? . I may as well warn you that I shall be attemptmg the most pedestrian, prosaic, d~y s?rt of d~scnptwn and ~x­ plication. I shall try to avmd zntroducznf? or constructzng, hypotheses or theories, however attractive, which would account for what is described. I shall try, on the contrary, to describe certain kinds or types of things which are recognizably involved in our speaking, and my effort will be to delineate them just as they present themselves to us, just as we are aware of t?e~. ~f there is a? ~ssump­ tion in my procedure, I think 1t IS the conviCtiOn that the "I" or self on the one hand, and the world on the other, cannot be thought of separately. Accurate description of my experience is description of the exp~rie~ce of al! "I" or self in a situation, of a presence which IS essenttally in the world and bound to the world. I shall have to I zant of the dangers thereof. The human spirit is a 'tangled wing; to use Melvin Kanner's figure for it, and I look to linguistics and biology, as to the Bible and all deep literature, for the further elucidation of what we are and how we do what we do.) And what of the poor freshmen, for whom the opening lecture of the college year is supposed to be a kind of exhortation? I tremble to think how widely my efforts must have missed the mark; years afterward I was informed that it was a standard bit of 'put-down' on the part of upperclassmen to tell the freshmen that they could not expect to understand my lecture. But even today I know not what verbal gestures might count as useful, amidst the profusion and confusion of aims and ideas that freshmen arrive with. How can I say, in one breath: (1) work patiently and hard, for the value of what you acquire will, in general, be proportional to the care that goes into the acquiring; and (2) think! be inventive! for what is in front of you can appear in a new light, and discoveries are possible! but (3) do not expect certainty? Ifi should say such things, some of the brightest of my auditors would find my sayings impossibly contradictory in tendency, and the only response I could make would be that I hope and believe it is not so. In what puts itself forward as human knowledge, it is by the care and thoroughness, and by the inventiveness and the unexpectedness that throws a new light, that I attempt to distinguish the better from the worse. I know no other way. ST. JOHN'S REVIEW Curtis Wilson is a tutor and former dean at St. John's College, Annapolis. "Logos and the Underground" was origi~ally delivered as the Dean's lecture inaugurating the 1960 academic year. 17 �analyze this experience into certain strata or levels, and because of limitations of time, concentrate on certain fundamental strata which may, unfort~nately, seem to you the least interesting. . In one respect I shall imitate the Socratic flight: I shall leave out of account all results of natural science-physics, chemistry, and biology. Over the past 350 years scientists have developed imposing structures of thought which seem to reveal to us a previously hidden world, alongside of or somehow behind or underneath the world in which we live from day to day. Arthur Eddington would say, for instance, that besides the apparent lectern behind which I stand, there is another lectern, the real one, consisting of electrons and protons. I would maintain, on the contrary, that this is an incorrect way of speaking and thinking: there is only one lectern, the one that is before me. What is meant by the electrons and protons can only be understood by considering certain procedures and experiments and the theories built up around them. In seeking the roots of these theories I shall be led back to the world of my everyday experience, and to the language in which I formulate this experience. To ignore the layered or storied structure within and underlying scientific theories, to regard the electron as somehow on a par with and alongside the table, is to commit what Whitehead calls 'the fallacy of misplaced concreteness:' So I shall begin with the analysis of everyday speech and expenence. Even here I must make a reservation. I am not trying to take account of all aspects of everyday speech. We use speech to praise and to blame, to command and to pray, or even for "whistling in the dark:' I shall be concerned only with the rather ordinary and colorless fact that in our speaking we make statements, assertions, which signify states of affairs, the "way things are;' as we say. he statement or assertion is the unit of fully meaningful speech. A single word, outside an assertion, does not have a fully determinate meaning. If I were to look and point in a certain direction, and to shout "Firel", you would probably recognize that I was asserting something. But the same word "fire" in another context may have a quite different meaning, for instance in the sentence, "The captain ordered his men to fire." There are even subtler differences due to context. The meaning of the word "fire" is not quite the same in the sentence "Civilization depends on fire," and in the sentence, "The fire was burning brightly in the hearth:' Precisely what a word refers to depends on the context in which it is used, which may be verbal or non-verbal or both. But in any case, nothing is really said until we have an assertion or statement-what traditional logic called the predicative judgment. What is predicative judgment? The word '(predication" comes from the Latin "praedicare;' originally meaning to speak out, to enun- T 18 ciate publicly. The word was later preempted by logicians in order to translate Aristotle's term katagorein. The Greek word katagorein had originally meant to denounce, to accuse in the marketplace or assembly (the root agora means marketplace or assembly). Aristotle then appropriated the term to express the meaning: to say something of a subject. What is spoken of, that about which something is said, Aristotle calls the hypokimenon, that is, the underlying; that which is said about or of the hypokeimenon is called the kategoroumenon; it is, one might say, what the hypokimenon has been accused of. The corresponding English words, which derive from the Latin, are "subject" and "predicate." Whenever a predicate is attributed to a subject, then we have a statement, an assertion, which expresses a decision regarding the validity of the attribution, or, the justness of the "accusation'~ for example, when "this" is "accused" of being a man in the statement, This is a man. Doubts about the universality of the subject-predicate analysis of assertions have sometimes been raised. Consider for instance, the statement "It is raining?' It might be suggested, in Aristophantic vein, that the pronoun ('it" stands for Zeus. But this is surely not what we mean when we say it is raining. Where is the logical subject- or is there one? I think this is a case in which we are fairly clear as to what we mean or intend, while the structure of the language fails to reflect the structure of the meaning. I do not believe it is possible to find an assertion so simple as not to involve at least two mental signs. One is an index, a sign which so to speak points to something; the other will be a sign signifying a characteristic or situation or action which somehow belongs or pertains to that which is pointed to. The assertion as a whole asserts something of something, and therefore necessarily involves a two-foldness. Language may fail to mirror this twofoldness. In the present case, I should say, we have a kind of idea of a rainy day. The indexical or pointed sign is that whereby I distinguish this day or time, as it is placed in my experience. The assertion "It is raining" as~e~ts th~t the present time is characterized by rmn1ng-gmng-on. There is another objection to the usual subjectpredicate analysis. When I say ''Alcibiades is taller than Socrates;' it may be argued that I am talking about two subjects, Alcibiades and Socrates. When I say, ''A sells B to C for the price of D;' there are four indexical signs A, B, C, and D, which are here connected by the relational predicate: ". . . sells . . . to . . . for the price . . :• The logician may claim that there are four logical subjects here, four hypokimena. The objection does not deny the distinction between subject and predicate, but points to cases in which there is not a single axis running from subject to predicate, but rather a relation which relates two or more different things. Let me pass this objection by for the moment. Because of its greater simplicity, the assertion in which a predicate is attributed to a single subject would appear SPRING 1984 �to require consideration before relations are considered. I shall return to relations later on. An assertion, I said, expresses a 1 decision regarding the validity of the attribution of predicate to subject, the justness of the accusation. It presents itself as knowledge; it pretends, so to speak, to be the truth. It may, of course, turn out to be false. For instance, I may have pointed at something and said, "That is a man;' and then it may have turned out to be a showcase mannikin. Or the statement may become and remain doubtful or problematic. Nevertheless, I should say that it belongs to the very meaning of any assertion to make the claim to being knowledge. Negation, doubtfulness, probability, or improbability are meaningful only as modifications of this original claim. Even the statements which are used in presenting to us a world of fantasy, say the fantasy-world of a novel or of the Iliad, make this claim within the context of the unity of the particular fantasy-world. The truthfulness of such a work of fantasy or imagination as a whole is a rather more difficult matter, and lies in the ways in which the fantasy-world imitates, either directly or by analogy, certain features of the world in which we live. How do we determine whether an assertion is true? Certainly we do this, day in and day out; but how? What we encounter, in asking this question, is the problem of evidence. What is an evident judgment? The word "evidence" derives from the Latin word evidens, meaning visible. The word "evidence" when used in connection with judgments does not always mean visibility, but visibility appears to be its most primitive mean1ng. think I should digress for a moment to point out that most of the terms which we use in talking about thinking depend on visual images. We speak, for instance, of "definition;' which means setting bounds or limits; of "synthesis" or "composition;' which means putting together; of"analysis;' which means breaking up; of"implication;" which means folding back upon. All these terms exploit, more or less evidently, an analogy between thinking and certain motor activities which we can perform, which we apprehend visually, and which in turn affect or change what we see. The assertion itself is something which is apprehended, not visually, but by means of hearing; although, especially in a post-Gutenburg era, we may tend to think of assertions as written out, visually. Now there appears to be a fundamental difference between what is perceived by hearing, and what is perceived by sight. What is perceived by hearing is something that comes to be successively, in time. What is perceived by sight can present itself as being there all at once, as a whole. A tone or noise or statement comes to be successively, so that its different parts exist in different times; it is a temporal event. When I see a table, on the contrary, I take all of its parts to exist simultaneously, even although what I see at any one time is only one or two sides of the table. I ST. JOHN'S REVIEW I never see all parts and sides of the table at once, I can only ·come to see all the parts in the sense that, by moving about, I am able to examine them one by" one in succession. But the table is not a temporal event. This is an important difference, which may have important consequences; but the point for the moment is this: A statement or assertion, coming to be in time, makes a prima facie claim to knowledge. Knowledge of what? We have to say, I think: knowledge of what is, and of how it is. The judgment has a subject or hypokeimenon, about which it is. This hypokeimenon must somehow be pre-given, evidently given, prior to any asserting, if the assertion is to be what it claims to be, namely knowledge of what is. But what is evillently given? Many things, perhaps, but first and foremost, what we can all agree upon, the individual, visible objects which are presented to us in the world. The object or thing presents itself to us as being there, as a whole, with all its parts, within the visible world. A temporal event, say a sound or a motion, seems, on the contrary, to demand further analysis: we want to know what is moving, or what is the source of the sound or other temporal event. The world as it presents itself to us is first and foremost a world of individual objects. T herefore, I am going to start the discussion of the problem of evidence by discussing the kind of given-ness which a visible object has. Then I shall go on to discuss other kinds of objects of awareness, which can also be made subjects of predicative judgments, and which may have their own modes of being evidently given. These other objectivities, potential subjects of judgments, are in a certain way founded upon our experience of the visible world; they arise for us in connection with our experience, but as Kant would put it, they do not simply arise from experience- I think that will be apparent. How, then, are the individual objects of experience given or presented to us? As I stated previously, I am leaving out of account all that the physical and biological sciences ran tell me of the processes involved in sensation and of the objects of experience. I wish to make, in addition, certain further simplifications. In sense experience I am confronted with individual objects which present themselves as bodies, as corporeal. But there are many individual objects of experience which do not present themselves simply as corporeal. Animals, men, and man-made objects, products of art, are indeed perceived as bodies within the spatio-temporal world, but they differ from rocky crags, rivers, and lakes, in expressing the presence or activity of what I shall call "soul." An ash-tray is not simply a natural body; what it is can only be understood by a reference to human beings who indulge in a certain vice. A human being is not perceived as such in quite the same way as a rock is perceived as a rock; there is involved an interpretation of what is perceived, as expressing the presence of soul, the psychic, the subjective, the "I" or self of this other who is before me. 19 �The soul of the other is not simply perceptible in the manner of a corporeal object; but it is understood, through more or less familiar types, with more or less familiar interpretation of the simple perceptions, as being in and the flrst time, I already know, in a sense, something about kinds of characteristics. When I examine an object for with what is simply perceptible. No.y this whole stratum it. Not only do I perceive the side which is presented to of experience, involving as it does the interpretation of me, but I anticipate, in an indeterminate way, certain what is bodily as expressing the psychic, I wish to leave out of account, so as to attend entirely to what all such experience presupposes, the experience of individual ob- of the curtain here I imagine at this moment as being jects as corporeal. Finally, as a further simplification, you must permit me to imagine that I am a purely contemplative being, examining the individual objects out of a pure interest in finding out about them. It is probably a rather rare of the characteristics of the unseen side. The other side grey; it is quite possible that it will turn out to be of another color, but I am confident that it will have some color. At the very least, the object is pre-given as a spatial object, with such necessarz'ly accompanying characteristics as color and shape; probably also as a spatial object of a more particular type, belonging to a more specific occurrence for such a pure interest to govern our activ- category. The progress of the inquiry takes the form of ity. Ordinarily we pass over the perceptions to go on to manipulating objects, or valuing them in relation to cer- correcting anticipations, or replacing vague anticipations by definite, perceived characteristics. Every advance of the inquiry has the form "Yes, it is as I expected;' or "Not so, but otherwise"; in the latter case, the correction is always a correction within a range of possibilities which is not limitless. For instance, I may expect "red"; it will tain practical aims. The "I" or self, living concretely in its surroundings, and among other selves or persons, is by no means primarily comtemplative. A pure comtemplation of a particular object can occasionally occur; this involves a stopping of normal activity; it need not be especially important. As subordinate to a philosophic reflection which seeks to discover the structure of the world, such contemplation can become serious. My sup- position here of a purely contemplative interest may be regarded as a fiction, designed to enable me to uncover a basic stratum of experience. The object does not present itself to me in isolation, all by itself, nor does it present itself as something completely novel. With the awakening of my interest, it comes forth from a background, in which I take it to have been existing already, along with other objects. Suppose, for instance, that the object which I am about to examine is this lectern; I grasp it as something already existing, something which was already there, in the auditorium, even before I was looking at it. Similarly the auditorium, with its stage and curtain and rows of seats, including the part I do not see because it does not come within my field of vision, was already there, was within the bounds of the familiar St. John's campus, within the familiar town of Annapolis, within the farther and less not turn out to be Middle C. To each single perception of the object there thus adheres a transcendence of perception, because of the anticipation of the possibility offurther determinations. In the succession of perceptions of the object, I am aware of it as an identical something which presents itself in and through its characteristics and relations, but I am also aware of it as a unity of possible experience, a substratum about which I can always acquire further information. A s I turn to the object for the first time, there is a moment in which my attention is directed to the object as a whole, before I go on to note particular characteristics, parts not quite perceived of the obvious whole. This moment has short duration; the attempt to make it last turns into a blank stare. But even as I go on to examine particular aspects of the whole, there remains an effect, a precipitate, so to speak, of this first mental grasping of the object, this taking-it-in-asa-whole. As long as the object remains the theme of my inquiry, the characteristics and aspects are not viewed familiar reaches of Anne Arundel County, and so on, separately, by themselves, but always as aspects of the ob- till I say: within the world. This pre-given-ness of objects and of the world in which they are is prior to every inquiry which seeks knowledge; it is presupposed in inquiry. The presupposition is a passively held belief, a belief which I hold with unshakable certainty. It is doxa, ject. If S is the object, and p, q, and r are characteristics, the Greeks would say. There is a passive doxic certainty in the being ofthe world and its objects; I cannot imagine it possible earnestly to doubt this belief. Every inquiry into an object proceeds on the basis of the believedin-world. Belief precedes inquiry which in turn aims at knowledge. The object itself is never completely novel, it never presents itself as something completely indeterminate, about which I can then proceed to learn. The world, for us, is always a world in which inquiry has already gone on; it is a familiar world the objects of which belong to 20 then my perceptions of p, q, and r are not isolated, but each perception of a characteristic adds to, enriches the meaning for me, of the substrate S; first S is seen to be p, then S which is p is seen to be q, and so on. And always in the background there is the sense of the object S as a temporally enduring something which has these characteristics. The persistence of S as an identity in time presents itself passively, in the harmonius succession of perceptions, as though I had nothing to do with it. Yet I must note at least in passing that this grasp of the object as an enduring thing is complex, and presupposes a structure in my inner time, in the flux of changing awareness, whereby the object presented at any moment is grasped as having been and as yet to be. What I am seeking to describe here is a receptive ex- SPRING 1984 �perience of the object in which I am first aware of the object and then examine it, noting characteristics, without actually making judgments or assertions; passing from perception to perception, without attympting to fix once for all the results of perception in the form of assertions. But it is apparent that even in this receptive experience of one particular object, prior to all judging, there emerges the basis of the distinction between subject and predicate, namely, in the distinction between substrate and characteristic. I can of course make anything which presents itself into the theme of an examination or inquiry- the color of the curtain, for instance, or the aggregate of seats in the auditorium, which presents itself in a particular spatial configuration. That with which the inquiry is concerned as its theme then comes to be a substratum or substrate, of which I proceed to ascertain the characteristics. The distinction between substrate and characteristic would thus seem to be relative to the theme of the inquiry. Some of the things I perceive and attend to, however, are of such a kind as to exist only as determinations or characteristics of something else- for instance the color here which I take as the color of the curtain. Other things I perceive and attend to are not essentially dependent in this way. The curtain, for instance, is not a characteristic of the auditorium in the same sense as its color is its characteristic. That the curtain is where it is is in a sense accidental; it could be somewhere else, and if it were, its color would have gone with it. In grasping the curtain as an object of perception, I grasp something which has a certain independence of everything else, which does not present itself always and necessarily as an aspect or characteristic of anything else. I have been using the word "characteristic" in a vague sense; and some further distinctions will be in order. n individual object of perception, a body, has parts, into which it could be divided by some process; one part could be severed from another. Such parts are to be distinguished from characteristics which qualify the thing as a whole, for instance the color of the whole, if it is of a sing1e color; its shape or form; its extendedness; its roughness or smoothness. Characteristics of the latter kind may be called immediate properties of the whole. The parts, too, may have properties, which are not immediately properties of the whole, but first and foremost properties of the parts: their shape, color, and so on. Moreover, there are aspects of the thing which are properties of properties; for in: stance, the surface of the thing is not an immediate property of the whole, but is essentially the limit of its extendedness, and hence a property of its extendedness. Some characteristics or determinations of a thing involve an essential reference to other things. The other things may be actually nearby and therefore perceivable along with the thing I am examining, or they may be presented in memory or in the imagination. I have already said that we perceive an object as being of a more A ST. JOHN'S REVIEW or less determinate type- it is a kind of tree, or rock, and so on. The recognition of type depends upon a precipitate of past experience. I do not necessarily remember particular objects which were previously experienced and which are similar to the one before me; I do not make an explicit comparison; but past experience, now apparently forgotten, has somehow produced a precipitate of habitual familiarity which operates without my being explicitly aware of it as such. But comparisons of objects with respect to likeness or similarity can also become explicit. The comparison then involves a mental going-back-and-forth between one of the objects and the other, with at the same time a holding-in-grasp ofthe one I am not at the moment attending to. The object with which I am comparing the one in front of me may be present or else absent; in the latter case it is either remembered or imagined. The similarity may amount to complete alike-ness or sameness, or it may have to do with the whole of each object but still involve difference,' as the large bright-red ball is similar to but not completely like the small darkred ball. Or again, the similarity may relate only to particular aspects of the objects, as the table and chair may be alike with respect to color or ornamentation. The relations I have mentioned thus far- relations of similarity and difference- are to be distinguished from relations which presuppose that the things related are actually present and co-existing, and not given in imagination or memory. For instance, the distance of one object from another is a relation which requires both objects to be given as present. Again, in order that an object be perceived as part of a configuration of objects, say a constellation of stars, it is necessary that all objects of the configuration be present in a perceptually grasped whole. Such relations I think I shall call reality relations, because they require the real, simultaneous presence of the objects related. All relations, whether comparison-relations or realityrelations, presuppose that the objects related are taken together as a plurality. The awareness of the objects as forming a plurality is, however, only a precondition for the grasping of a relation. In order for me to grasp a relation, there must be a primary interest in one of the objects, in relation to which the other objects are seen as similar, or nearby, and so on. I see A as taller than B; the focus of interest is for the moment on A, which thus forms the substrate of the relation. The interest, of course, can shift to B, in which case I see B as shorter than Ain a sense the same relation. All relational facts are thus reversible. The general fact that in relating objects I go from one to the other would be my reason for regarding the simple subject-predicate analysis of assertions as fundamental. The grasping of a relation presupposes that the plurality of objects related is given; but the given-ness of the plurality can be of different kinds. In a comparisonrelation one or more of the objects compared may be an imagined or fictive object rather than a perceived ob- 21 �ordered in succession.] ust how such a form comes about and there works to build my general familiarity with the perceivable world. But it is not yet knowledge. We have some way yet to go before we reach anything which can be called, in a strict sense, knowledge. The predicative judgment presupposes an active will to knowledge. I return to the substrate S, and now grasp actively and explicitly the fact that it is determined by the characteristic p. The transition from S to p no longer occurs passively, but is guided by an active will to hold S fast by fixing its characteristics. The substrate becomes the subject of a predication. Fixing the gaze on the hidden unity of S and p, I now grasp actively the synthesis is a difficult problem. But the point I am making here is that this objective time, which is presupposed in reality- of the two which was previously given only in a passive way. I say: "S is p"; or, "The curtain is beige" (if that is relations, binds together my own experience and the experience of others, so that it is experience of one world. the right name for this color). Having uttered or thought a judgment, my fictional contemplative fellow has for the first time used words. Now what does this involve? Let me first distinguish two kinds ject; and in this case the togetherness of the objects is brought about only in my own a~areness, in my own inner time, but not in the visible world. The objects related in a reality-relation, on the other hand, stand next to one another in a real duration, ill an objective time valid for all objects of the visible world. This objective time is also valid for other persons besides myself. If someone tells me of his past experience, what he remembers has its fixed place in the same public time as does my own past experience. Objective or public time is a form in accordance with which everything perceivable is All the distinctions I have been making- between substrate and characteristic, immediate property and mediate property, part and whole, comparison-relation and reality-relation -are, I am claiming, recognizable as involved in our experience of the visible world, the world of broad daylight, independently of the forms of our speech. The forms of speech, I am claiming, are rooted in these distinctions. In our actual lives, the receptive experiencing of the perceivable world, on the one hand, and our speaking, our predicative judging, on the other, are not separate but interlaced. I have separated them in analysis because they are separable, and because in separating them I find it possible to discern the ways in of words in the sentence "The curtain is beige:' First, words like "curtain" and ''beige," which could by themselves . constitute assertions in certain contexts, for instance as answers to questions. These have been traditionally known as categorematic terms. Secondly, there are words which influence within an assertion the way in which the categorematic terms signify what they signify; these have been traditionally known as syncategorematic terms. For in~ stance, the word "the" before "curtain" is a demonstrative which makes the word "curtain" refer to this curtain; the copula "is" a sign indicating the synthesis of subject and which objects present themselves in experience. It is a predicate in judgment. But it is the categorematic term very simple and obvious thing I am saying. Speech, logos, presupposes a world, the world, in which it is a fundamental fact that there are distinguishable, relatively independent objects which present themselves in and through their characteristics. The world, on the contrary, does not presuppose speech or language. "curtain" which tells me what I am talking about, and the categorematic term ''beige" which tells me what I am saying about it. These words are common nouns and adjectives; verbs are also categorematic. The meanings of such terms are what we call universals because the words in virtue of their meanings are able to refer to many particular instances. All predication involves such univer- In calling our experience of the world "receptive;' I do not mean to imply that the "I" or self is altogether sals. This fact points back to the fact that every perceived passive in such experience. Every awareness is an awareness of something; there is a polarity here, with the "I" or self at one pole and the object of awareness at the object or characteristic in the perceivable world is per- other. The "I" is affected by the object; it attends to or grasps it. Activity and passivity are interlaced in each awareness. ceived as of a more or less known or familiar type. The common nouns and adjectives used in predication refer to such types. When I say, "This object is beige;' there is implicit in this predication a relation to the general essence beige. The relation to the general essence or universal is not yet explicit here, as it would begin to be I f we turn now to the predicative judgment, we encounter a new kind of interest and activity on the part of the "I" or self. Let us suppose that I have perceived a certain object or substrate S, and then noted a characteristic of it, p. For instance, I may have isolated the curtain as an object and then noted its color. These activities- the grasping of the substrate, the holding of the substrate in grasp while I note the color, which is thus grasped as belonging to the substrate- these activities are bound to what is immediately given. The result of such activities, if I do not fix it once for all in a predicative judgment, is not really my possession. Perhaps it is not altogether lost, but sinks into the background of awareness 22 if I said, "This is a beige object;' where the indefinite article a points to generality. Later on I shall try to discuss the problem of the given-ness of universals. But in assertions about individual objects of the perceivable world, the explicit grasping of universals is not involved; the use of common nouns and adjectives is based on our passive, doxic familiarity with types of things and characteristics. Assertions about individual perceivable objects run parallel to our receptive experience of such objects. I have already mentioned judgments of the type "S is p;' "The curtain is beige:' Such judgments express the fact that a substrate is characterized by the immediate property p. If the focus of interest passes to a second immediate prop- SPRING 1984 �erty q, we get an assertion of the form, "S which is p is also q"; or the subordinate clause "which is p" may be replaced simply by the attributive adjective p modifying S. To take another case: if the property p of S is itself characterized by a property a, we get an assertion of the form, "S is p which is a"; and again the subordinate clause "which is a" may be replaced by an adverb modifying p. The use of adverbs and attributive adjectives thus presupposes prior assertions. There are assertions of the form "S has T;' which express the fact that an individual object S contains a certain part; for example, "The house has or contains an attic." Assertions of this kind refer back to experiences in which an object is perceived as being a whole made up of parts. These assertions cannot be converted into assertions of the form "Sis p''; the part which is separable cannot lose its independence and become a property. On the other hand, a statement of the form "S is p" can be turned into a statement of the form ''S has T"; for instance, the assertion "This object is red" can become "This object has redness;' or reversely, "Redness belongs to this object:' This shift involves a substantijying of the property designated by the word "red." Substantivity means standing as something which can have characteristics, and which can therefore become the subject of a predication; it is opposed to adJectivity, which means being in or on something else. Substantivity and adjectivity are not merely a matter of grammatical forms; the difference in the two depends on a difference in the manner of grasping something, either as for itself, or as on or in something. Any characteristic of a thing, although initially presented as in or on a substrate, can be substantified. This freedom in substantifying rests on the fact that already in the receptive experience of the world everything that presents itself, whether substrate or characteristic, can be made the theme of inquiry; it has characteristics which can be ascertained, including relations of sirriilarity and difference to other substrates or characteristics. Again, there are assertions based on our grasping of relations in experience, for instance the assertion '1\. is similar to B." Once more we have a subject and a predicate, but the predicate is more complicated than in the previous cases. The word "similar" is adjectival, but its adjectivity is different from that of the word ''red"; it is grasped only through the transition in awareness fi·om A to B, from the subJect to the obJect of the relation. Once again, what is adjectival can be substantified, and we can come to speak of the "similarity of A to B:' N ow this freedom in substantifying extends further, and at this point we can take a very large step forward. Having uttered assertions, I can now substantify that which they mean, the synthesis of subject and predicate which is intended in the act of asserting. I can make statements of the form, "The fact that S is p, is q;' where q can be an adjective like "just" or "pleasant." Here the subject of the sentence is itself a sentence expressing a state of affairs. As subject ST. .JOHN'S REVIEW of the new sentence, the assertion "S is p" is no longer traversed in a two-membered, upbeat-downbeat rhythm; it is caught, so to speak, in one beam of the attention, is treated as a substrate of which I can ascertain characteristics. We here encounter a new kind of object of awareness, the unity of meaning in a completed judgment. Such objects I shall call obJects of reason, because they presuppose the activity of reason or logos, the faculty of making judgments. These new objects, constituted in the activity of reason, differ radically from the objects presented in our experience of the perceptual world. The perceptual object is indeed presented in a temporal process; further examination always enriches its meaning, adds to its ascertained characteristics. But the object is always there; the examination of the object can be broken off at any point, and yet the object is always presented as being one and the same and there. The activity of the "I" or self produces presentations of the object, but not the object itself. In the case of an object of reason, on the other hand, the synthesis of subject and predicate is required for the object to be given at all; the activity of the "I" cannot be broken off at an arbitrary point, but must be carried through to completion, in order for the object to be present. The difference may be stated differently. The perceptual object, the individual object of the visible world, is presented in the course of my inner time, the succession of awareness, but it always stands before me as existing in an objective time, a time which is valid for the whole world of individual objects. It is an individual thing, distinguished from every other individual thing of the visible world in virtue of being localized in public space and time. An object of reason, the unity of meaning in an assertion, does not belong to the visible world in this way; we do not find meanings in the world in the same way in which we find things. The meant states of affairs are indeed constituted and grasped in my inner time. But what is grasped when I grasp the content of an assertion is not given as itself belonging to any particular stretch of the objective time of the world. I am not concerned here with the truth or falsity of the assertion, but only with the mode of given-ness of its content. That Caesar crossed the Rubicon may be true or false; but the kind of object I grasp when I grasp the content of this assertion, namely a meaning, presents itself as transtemporal, something which is identically the same every time I grasp it, that is, every time I think of it, but which is not itself individualized in the space and time of the visible world. What I am saying here is, I believe, quite elementary, and is tacitly presupposed in every assertion I make. For in making an assertion I intend that the auditor grasp my meaning, and I am disappointed when what he says and does implies that he has failed to understand. Any particular uttering of the assertion is an event in the objective time of the world; but I act as if what is asserted in many repetitions of the assertion is self-identical, 23 �always the same, and capable as such of being communicated. Now there is one more kind ot object whose mode of given-ness has to be discussed; tpis is the universal, the idea, or in the Greek, eidos. The Greek word eidos comes from the verb "to see;' and meant originally the "look" of a thing. The look of a thing, what we see on first impression, is the general type to which the thing belongs. In the sense of familiar type, the universal has been with us all along. Up to now I have been talking about experience of individual objects ofthe visible world, and about assertions immediately based on such experience. All such assertions involve an implicit relation to generalities or universals; this is shown by the fact that in making an assertion we have to use common nouns and adjectives and verbs, which in virtue of their meaning are capable of referring to many individuals. Words of this kind, capable of referring to many instances, seem to be fundamental to any language. Even proper names often derive from common nouns, Smith,. Brown, Klein, and so on. The implicit relation to universals rests on our typical familiarity with the world, the fact that every object presents itself as belonging to a more or less definite type. Is there any way in which ideas or universals can be explicitly grasped, as evidently given objects of consciousness? This is a difficult question. Let me point out first that every inquiry aiming at knowledge seems to presuppose that the universal can be clearly and distinctly grasped, insofar as it assumes that questions of the form, What is so-and-so, for instance, What is what we call a tree, or a meson, or courage, can be inquired into, and with effort and good luck, be answered. In Greek, the question is -ri Eanv- What is it? The what is the universal, capable by its nature of being applied to many. You must permit me once more to proceed on the basis of the simplest example. Suppose I am confronted with two objects, S and S', each of which has the property p, say "red." Of course S has its redness, and S' has its redness; there is a separateness of the properties as well as of the substrata. But there is also a unity here, an identity, which I can grasp in shifting the attention from S to S' and back again. There is a oneness in the manyness. The comparison of objects, the focusing upon that with respect to which they are similar, can go on to further cases, and need not be limited to actually presented cases, but may include the consideration of imagined, possible cases. Thus through the medium of the imagination I arrive at the notion of an infinity, an endlessness of possible individuations of the same eidos. It may be difficult to define the limits of the possible variation of instances, but in some cases I do seem to be able to do this, and to see that the universal involves definite limits, a definite structure, definite relations to other universals. For instance, I can imagine the colors of the objects to be different; there is a range of possible colors, but I seem to grasp that whatever color is, it will always be extended; an unextended color is unimagin- 24 able. Similarly, it appears clear to me that a tone or any sound must in every instance have an intensity, as well as the quality we call timbre or tone-quality. I introduce these cases of intellectual perception, not because of any importance they might or might not have in themselves, but because of what they show. It is not enough, and not quite correct, to say that they derive from experience, that they are inductions or abstractions from experience. If I observe 100 swans, and find them all to be white, I may indeed guess that all swans are white; but the conclusion is not necessary, and is in fact false, since there are black swans in Central Africa. It is not the same with the connection between color and extension; color involves extension essential(y, and I see this not just by observing particular instances of color, but by a variation of instances in the imagination, which allows me to "see" what must be involved in any case of color. And the idea or eidos, which thus appears as an identity running through the imaginable instances, presents itself, like the objects of reason previously described, as something trans-temporal, something not in the objective world with its objective time, not even immanent in the acts of consciousness, but as an identity which can be repeatedly intended by consciousness. Permit me to summarize what I have been saying. I have been aiming, not to make hypotheses, but to describe and to explicate; what I have been attempting to describe and explicate is that which is involved or presupposed in the making of assertions, judgments, predications. The description has proceeded by stages; at each stage I seek to delineate precisely what the I or self grasps, as being somehow presented to it. The making of predications presupposes, in the first place, my pre-predicative, pre-reflective experience of the world. My pre-predicative experience of the world can be separated, in analysis, from speech; our speaking, on the contrary, appears when analyzed always to point back to the pre-predicative experience of the world. Prepredicative experience is first and foremost experience of perceivable objects. The objects present themselves as in the world, along with other objects, in an objective time which is valid for all such objects. They present themselves as belonging to more or less familiar types. And they present themselves in and through their properties, parts, and relations. There is always a sense of "and so on" attaching to my experience of a perceivable object, in that I can always make further determinations, both of the internal characteristics of the object and of its relations to other objects. But it remains throughout an identity, a locus of possible experience, a substratum of possible determinations. Predication, on the simplest level, involves an active repetition of the passage in pre-predicative experience from substratum to characteristic. The flow of perceptions in our pre-predicative experience goes on harmoniously almost of itself. Predication, on the other hand, presupposes an active will to fix, once and for all, that which is given in experience, to make it my possession. SPRING 1984 �The predication is embodied in a temporal event, in a succession of sounds, the spoken sentence; but it is not itself this temporal event. The sound erherges from silence and falls back into silence; it passes li~e an arrow, leaving no trace in the air. But that which the sound expresses, the predication, is a unity or identity of meaning which can be repeatedly intended and repeatedly expressed; speaking quite strictly, it is not in the objective time of the world, but is grasped as trans-temporal. It is constituted in the activity of the I or self, but it is nonetheless an objectivity; it can be substantified, and itself made the subject of predication. Finally, I have described one further and essential condition of predicative speech, namely the universal. Every assertion I make involves categorematic terms, universals, which in their nature are capable of referring to many instances. The use of the universal in speech is based, to begin with, on the typical character of my experience of the world, the fact that objects and characteristics present themselves as belonging to more or less familiar types. The universal first enters the assertion so to speak tacitly, without its range of meaning being explicitly grasped. But the will to knowledge can be satisfied only if the universal can itself be made the subject of predication. The empirical sciences approach such universal predications by means of statistical inference; their results are always open-ended, subject to revision. But it also appears that there is such a thing as intellectual perception, eidetic insight, by which one can grasp the range of a universal, define it, and make necessary predications about it, on the basis of a variation of instances in the imagination. I may note that, on a rough count, nearly half the assertions I have made this evening are such universal assertions. My effort at description has to end here, although the stopping-point is arbitrary; there is a vast range of possible explications of this kind, which would have the aim of delineating each objectivity or kind of objectivity presented to awareness just as it presents itself. I regard such description as important, because I believe the correct method of philosophy is that of attending to and grasping states of affairs just as they are given or presented, and explicating them with respect to such of their connections and relations as are likewise presented and ST. JOHN'S REVIEW grasped. Only by a repetition of this process can philosphically primitive ideas and propositions receive adequate confirmation. Principles should not be just postulated or constructed, accepted merely on faith, whether animal or spiritual, or justified by the emotional comfort or practical success they may bring. That is part of the meaning, I think of the Socratic return to the logoi. W hat, finally, about the Underground, since the announced title of this lecture included that term? The German word "Underground" can mean anything which either in a direct way or analogically underlies something else. So in talking about hypokimena, or subjects of predication, and of the way in which they present themselves, I can claim to have been talking about the underground of speech. But as everyone knows, there is a more subversive and indeed altogether more interesting sort of underground, the one which, Dostoevski intends in Notes from the Underground. This underground is the location, so to speak, of certain writers of the present and of the last hundred years who throw to us, and in fact to the whole tradition of philosophy, a certain challenge. There are really many challenges which they throw; the challenges are difficult to characterize as a whole, but they might perhaps be subsumed under the formula of the old myth of Prometheus, according to which all the gifts which make man man, including speech, are based upon, and therefore infected by a fraud. So Camus and Jaspers and Heidegger speak of man as a castaway, shipwrecked on an island of everyday-ness. And Heidegger above all has sought to pull the tradition of philosophy up by the roots, and to show that our awareness of the world and of ideas as constituted in inner time involves a fraud. Then wisdom can only lie in the destruction, the total dismantling, of what is fraudulent in our awareness. And perhaps the four revolver shots of Meersault, the hero of Camus' novel The Stranger, are more efficacious in this respect than the discipline of listening to and following the logos. On the other hand, it might just be that the staccato notes which issue from the Underground will shock us, and cause us to look once more with open eyes and with wonder at what is our most characteristically human endowment, speech. 25 �Orwell's Future and the Past Ronald Berman C zeslaw Milosz wrote in The Captive Mind that Orwell was phenomenally popular behind the Iron Curtain because readers were "amazed that a writer who never lived in Russia should have so keen a perception into its life:' 1 But truth is not always the appropriate standard by which to judge fiction. Orwell may have given us a convincing picture of life in the Soviet Union, and of the social character of totalitarianism, but that is not all he has done. He had more than Moscow or even London in mind when writing about the chief City of Airstrip One, a province of Oceania: it may well be that Nineteen Eighty-Four is as much about Athens as it is about Moscow. A place in any work of fiction, like Pemberley or Laputa or Vanity Fair, is primarily an idea. Nineteen Eighty-Four differs radically from most stories of the future. It is not about a great calamity which comes from outside the social situation. It is resolutely conventional in its description of things and its understanding of character. There can be very few other works about the future life of man so permeated by the smell of boiled cabbage. A producer has despairingly remarked of science-fiction films that they have been all platinum hair and diagonal zippers, but there is none of that here; no fascination with the terrors of change. In many ways, Nineteen Eighty-Four seems to resist futurism. Rather it seems to require a lot of knowledge about history. It challenges our recollection of Lenin, Stalin, and Trotsky. It suggests events of the twentieth century as we have experienced them. But the book is also about certain philosophical arguments. Orwell intends us to Ronald Berman served as chairman of the National Endowment for the Humanities from 1971-1977. He is now director of the Humanities Institute at the University of California, San Diego. 26 recall many of them, beginning with that between Socrates and Thrasymachus. O'Brien is the ultimate version of those Guardians "who keep watch over our commonwealth"' and preserve the purity of its laws. It makes a good deal of sense to read Nineteen Eighty-Four in the light of Plato's Republic- and of the Politics of Aristotle. I think that the book also intends us to recall certain literary themes. It is a superb example of the topos of awakening into intellectual and spiritual life. Winston Smith shares the awakening experience -"It is not easy to become sane':_ not only with the wretched prisoners of the Ministry of Love but with all those whose awakening challenges their capacity to understand it, with Lear, with Kurtz, with Gregor Samsa. I would not call it a genre, but one of the great literary forms of the West is about a man who escapes from the Shadows of the Cave, and is blinded by what he sees. Nineteen Eighty-Four is a very literary book, full of echoes of other books. It develops ideas which have been argued for centuries. In a seilse, the sources of this book are everywhere. To go through Orwell's Collected Essays, journalism and Letters is to be overwhelmed by the names of authors and the titles of books. His work is a library of allusions to Arnold, Baudelaire, Belloc, Carlyle, Dickens, Eliot, Flaubert, Gissing, Hardy, Lawrence, Powell, Shakespeare, Waugh, and others the full mention of whom would take a very long time. He read everything, and he quarrelled with most of it. We know that Orwell read the classics because he complained in such detail about having to read them. When he was at St. Cyprian's (immortalized in "Such, Such Were the Joys") he was force-fed the classics like a Strasbourg goose. In order for the school to make a reputation off the brilliance of its students the scholarship boys were bullied into brilliance. In order to distinguish themselves on the examinations they had to become SPRING 1984 �little encyclopedias of Latin and Greek, ''crammed with learning as cynically as a goos~1 is crammed for Christmas:'' Orwell said of his involuntary mastery of the classics, "looking back, I realize that I then worked harder than I have ever done since:'4 it is a fairly strong remark from the author of Down and Out in Paris and London. Orwell's favorite reading on summer mornings at school, when he was temporarily free from his own set of academic Guardians, included the novels of H. G. Wells. It seems odd to think that Nineteen Eighty-Four should be in part a combination of two such different kinds of reading: stolen hours with Wells and soldiering through Latin and Greek. I think we should agree that Wells stayed with Orwell till the end of his life, and, I would argue, so did the reading he did with much less enjoyment. The dialogue form is rightly associated with Plato, but before looking at The Republic we ought to consider the connection between Orwell and Aristotle's Politics. For the latter, I believe, is the most essential book in that history of ideas which Nineteen Eighty-Four summarizes, and of which it is the latest statement. Aristotle's Politics contains nearly everything but Orwell's plot. The fifth book of the Politics, on the causes of revolution, describes a society penetrated by informers, spies, eavesdroppers, and secret police. It analyzes the conscious institution of poverty by the state. It discusses the rivalry between the state and other social units like the family. It refers to the public promotion of private hatreds. It talks about war as a form of domestic policy. Above all, it is about the attack on what Aristotle calls the "spirit" of the polis. There are many tactical similarities between the two books. For example, Aristotle writes that "men are not so likely to speak their minds if they go in fear of a secret police;' 5 and we can see without difficulty how this observation can have been put into narrative form. (Although, clearly, given the totalitarian history of our own century we need not go to Aristotle for the suggestion). It is probably more important for us to be aware of more specific resemblances. Aristotle, like Orwell, is not concerned with tyranny as a sudden calamity but as a development of other forms of political life. When he writes that "the methods applied in extreme democracies are thus all to be found in tyrannies" (245) he provides us with a way of recognizing and interpreting events in Nineteen EightyFour. Both the Politics and Nineteen Eighty-Four are about the development of political systems. Both are about a certain kind of tyranny, which goes far beyond merely political rule. Both are about oligarchy: Emmanuel Goldstein's book (actually written by O'Brien and his collaborators) is called The Theory and Practice of Oligarchical Collectivism, a title which neatly connects classical and Communist terminology. The phrase "oligarchy" itself leads us inescapably to its classic definition, which is in the works of Plato and Aristotle where the conception of closed minority rule enters our political consciousness. ST. JOHN'S REVIEW Aristotle describes a number of forms of oligarchy, not all of which concern us. What we are concerned with is, I suggest, the kind of oligarchy which has some connection both to tyranny and to what Aristotle disapprovingly calls "extreme democracies:' The ultimate form of oligarchy comes about when a dynasty has absolute control over property, men, and politics, "and it is persons, and not the law, who are now the sovereign" (172). The reader of Nineteen Eighty-Four tends to slide by distinctions, but The Theory and Practice of Oligarchical Collectivism recognizes the differences between stages of despotism. It is very close to Aristotle when it acknowledges that "the essence of oligarchical rule" is to be found in "the persistence of a certain world-view and a certain way of life." That ((certain world-view" means the law has been replaced by a different conception, that of power. In Aristotle, oligarchy becomes tyranny; in Orwell it becomes dictatorship. There is a passage in Nineteen Eighty-Four often cited for its quality of psychological revelation. The passage, from O'Brien's apologia for the Party, states the satisfactions of power as the reason for exerting it: We are different from all the oligarchies of the past in that we know what we are doing. All the others, even those who resembled ourselves, were cowards and hypocrites. The German Nazis and the Russian Communists came very close to us in their methods, but never had the couragee to recognize their own motives. They pretended, perhaps they even believed, that they had seized power unwillingly, and that just around the corner there lay a paradise. ... We are not like that. We know that no one ever seizes power with the intention of relinquishing it. Power is not a means; it is an end. One does not establish a dictatorship in order to safeguard a revolution; one makes the revolution in order to establish the dictatorship. The object of persecution is persecution. The object of torture is torture. The object of power is power. (116)6 The modern audience is rightly fascinated by the insight into aberrant motivation. Any teacher of Nineteen EightyFour finds that this passage gets students to realize some hidden truths about human desires. But the passage is useful to us in another way, because it makes a crucial distinction: "all the oligarchies of the past" have had political ends. And, they have culminated only in the forms described by Aristotle and other theorists. This oligarchy will be different in its philosophical imaginativeness. It will extend political definitions. Orwell has a highly organized sense of the operation of such an oligarchy. His narrative is deployed around three issues:, 1. The relationship of the state to certain individuals who represent potential opposition to authority. 2. The object, political and non-political, of unconstitutional power. 3. The tactics of authority. These issues cover the common ground between Orwell and his source. We ought to see how they take shape in Aristotle, and how they are dramatized by Orwell. 27 �I Individual and State: II The Object of Power: Aristotle's. discussion of tyranny is first of all concerned with the relationship of individual to government. He writes of the man who is virtuous or "outstanding" in a rather special way. This man is the natural object of tyranny. He need not be in active opposition to the state. It suffices that the state recognizes the fact of his excellence, that it perceives his excellence to be a potential threat. This conception is at the heart of Orwell's narrative. Winston Smith seems unheroic to us, who have been raised on a literature of more activist heroes. But it must be understood that he is more honest than the other characters- except possibly for O'Brien -and that he is capable of independent thought. And, he loves what is beautiful. In his world, these constitute remarkable differences. If his character did not constitute a danger to illicit power then the following dialogue would not have been written: Perhaps the most important thing that can be said about this part of Aristotle's discussion is that. it is not political, at least not as the phrase "political" is commonly understood. Aristotle's discussion (244) is existential. He knows what the "traditional" policies of tyranny are, but he is much more concerned with policies directed {against '~nd you consider yourself morally superioi to us, with our lies and our cruelty?" "Yes, I consider myself superior." (119) He has been kicked and flogged and insulted before saying this, and he has rolled on the floor in his own blood. I think that qualifies as "outstanding." All outstanding men are potential criminals. Aristotle was much interested in a certain story about such citizens (he mentions it on three separate occasions in the Politics). It is about the appropriate punishment for excellence. By the time the story had reached him it had become a parable of political foresight: of policy dealing with propensity. The story is about the "advice which was offered by Periander to his fellow-tyrant Thrasybulus" about the best way to deal with those potential enemies, the "outstanding citizens" of the commonwealth (237). Aristotle refers to this story a number of times, but in an . abbreviated way. Here I quote the fuller account given in Herodotus: On one occasion he sent a herald to ask Thrasybulus what mode of government it was safest to set up in order to rule with honour. Thrasybulus led the messenger without the city, and took him into a field of corn, through which he began to walk, while he asked him again and again concerning his coming from Corinth, ever as he went breaking off and throwing away all such ears of corn as over-topped the rest. In this way he went through the whole field, and destroyed the richest and best part of the crop. 7 The bewildered messenger returns home, and it is left to the subtle imagination of tyranny to interpret the meaning. Herodotus has reversed the asking and giving of advice, but he has clearly provided the essential strategy for tyranny: cut off the tallest heads. The Politics takes its departure for the study of tyranny from this story. Orwell has translated the idea of outstanding civic merit- Winston differs from the rest because of his inward honesty, his sensibility, and his intellectual stubborness- but, as both O'Brien and he acknowledge, he is indeed morally "superior." 28 everything lihdy to produce the two qualities of mutual confidence and a high spirit" (emphasis added). The statement seems oddly inexact, especially for a methodical thinker. It seems far afield from politics. But is very close to Orwell's conception of policy in Nineteen Eighty-Four. The statement is rephrased in various ways throughout Aristotle's discussion of tyranny, surfacing finally as one of his major conclusions about the subject. One of the great ends of the authoritarian state is, he states, to break the "spirit" (246) of its citizens. The Politics is a book rich in detail and in historical example- it lets us know just what policies are used by Sparta or Athens or Corinth in just what circumstances. But it is also a book of consummate psychological insight. Aristotle's discussion of tyranny is much more than a catalogue of ruinous taxes, unjust laws, and inhuman penalties. He writes about the effect of tyranny in a way which must have captured Orwell's eye. He writes about the destruction of what is intuitive in human character and free in human expression. He is concerned with friendship, confidence, trust, feeling and, above all, with spirit. He refers again and again to "spirit:' coming back to it each time as the ultimate object of tyrannic power. He insists on the human necessity for association, and his essay is largely an analysis of the forms it takes, forms which are the natural object of unjust power. Nineteen Eighty-Four is about association in all its forms, from the sexual union through the choice of friends to the formation of the family, the consent of the community, and the largest voluntary association of all, the polis itself. Each of its episodes in some exemplary way concerns the breakdown of human association. Nineteen Eighty-Four is not a story of political resistance. It is about the operation of sensibility. It does not describe the activity of a political cell-Winston's ideas of rebellion are never more than hopes or illusions. The narrative is about sexual and aesthetic consciousness. It is about a man with a sense of taste and style who perceives things artistically. Its central symbolic object is a piece of coral embedded in glass; its central act is the act of love. May I suggest that O'Brien as well as Orwell has read the Politics? To O'Brien, political theory ofthe past is an explicit challenge. He mentions that theory constantly, and always points out how its conception of totalitarianism has been exceeded by his own contribution to that subject. He takes an unholy delight in posing as a teacher, conducting a "dialogue" with the uninitiated, discussing to what degree the future will exceed the moral limits of the past. He gives us what Aristotle did not guess at: the reason why tyranny is pleased by power. And he is, I think, fully and perhaps exquisitely aware of the truism SPRING 1984 �that is at the beginning of Aristotle's fifth Book: "Men tend to become revolutionaries from circumstances connected with their private lives" (227), He must be aware of this, for it is this idea which validates his unending search for deviations of taste, style, ·.or feeling. O'Brien competes with all political theory before him. When he discusses oligarchy his version surpasses the classical definition; and when he discusses tyranny his version outdoes the pallid beginnings of injustice previously recorded. He has the trait-almost the ticof comparing the future with tbe past, which is to say of comparing his own megalomania to that of all tyrants before him. What all previous books say about the effect of tyranny on private life will be exceeded after the orgasm has been "abolished:' The entire philosophical category of "private" life will also have been abolished. III The Tactics of Authoritarian Power: How does the authoritarian state respond to the natural human desire for association? By defending itself, Aristotle writes, from "everything likely to produce the two qualities of mutual confidence and a high spirit:' The unjust state will prohibit public meetings and make "mutual acquaintance" difficult. This necessarily means the invasion of privacy, and Aristotle tells us how that is accomplished. In essence, men must live their private lives in public. What they say and whom they talk to must always be under scrutiny. Under tyranny, all citizens must literally be under the eye of government. Citizens must not confuse themselves by assuming that there are independent and opposed public and private realms. Aristotle's locution for the destruction of privacy is, to say the least, striking and anticipatory. The forced exhibition of private association, is meant to give the ruler a peep-hole into the actions of his subjects, and to inure them to humility by a habit of daily slavery. (244) By no stretch of the imagination was Aristotle thinking of television. But Orwell, who was thinking of television, may have joined an idea to its technological realization. In general, Orwell allows O'Brien to show how previous political theory, disarmed by its own limits of imagination (and possibly by its own decency), has failed to understand both the power of the state and the human nature upon which it feeds. When we read the list of state activities provided by Aristotle we sense that it provides Orwell with a skeleton structure for his story, and provides O'Brien with a history that must be exceeded: A fourth line of policy is that of endeavouring to get regular information about every man's sayings and doings. This entails a secret police like the female spies employed at Syracuse, or the eavesdroppers sent by the tyrant Hiero to all social gatherings and public meetings. (Men are not so likely to speak their minds if they go in fear of a secret police; and if they do speak out, they are less likely to go undetected.) Still another line of policy is to sow mutual distrust and to foster discord ST. JOHN'S REVIEW between friend and friend; between people and notables; between one section of the rich and another. Finally, a policy pursued by tyrants is that of impoverishing their subjects .... The imposition of taxes produces a similar result. ... The same vein of policy also makes tyrants war-mongers, with the object of keeping their subjects constantly occupied and continually in need of a leader. (244-245) One grants that these ideas have passed into universal currency and, after two thousand years, are to be found scattered from Machiavelli to Lenin. But the vein of discourse in Nineteen Eighty-Four is pointedly historical. O'Brien's favorite rhetorical mode is to invoke the incomplete tyrannies of the past from Egypt to the Inquisition to National Socialism whenever he wishes to establish the ultimacy of the Party. Orwell's historical references and phrases are more pointed than a casual reading may bring out. For example, Aristotle states that one of the best ways to waste civic resources intentionally is to undertake useless public projects: "one example of this policy is the building of the Egyptian pyramids: another is tbe lavish offerings to temples" (245). The Theory and Practice of Oligarchical Collectivism agrees that it is indispensable for tyranny to destroy private wealth by public means, but it takes the idea literally. O'Brien-Goldstein considers Aristotle's example ...!'it would be quite simple to waste the surplus labor of tbe world by building temples and pyramids" (85)- but rejects it as too simple a solution. The new tyranny not only builds enormous public works which waste private wealth; it then destroys them by war in order to absorb yet more taxation. There are other references to classical political theory, and otber echoes of Aristotle's text. Aristotle had written that under tyranny it is customary "to increase the poverty of the tyrant's subjects and to curtail their leisure" (245) and O'Brien modifies that formulation: "Leisure;' he writes, "must be abolished because the totalitarian state is erected "on a basis of poverty" (84 ). A much larger theme develops from the use of Aristotle's second major conclusion about unjust power: the aim of such power being to reduce citizens to slaves and conquer their innate "refusal to betray one another or anybody else" (246). Since that theme is in a sense Orwell's book, it becomes difficult even to organize resemblances. The phrase "betray" is everywhere in the text. But it is used in a special sense. It does not mean giving up political secrets under interrogation- it means giving up human association, betraying the "spirit" of mutual trust, loyalty, confidence, and love. This conception dovetails with Aristotle's. He is intensely concerned with the existential conditions of the unjust polis. The examples he gives and, as we shall see, the conclusions he reaches are about the emotional, spiritual, and ethical effects of tyranny upon association. The unjust polis, he writes, corrupts the feelings of its citizens, and intends above all "to break their spirit:'(246) Before he is tortured, Winston makes an important distinction between confession and betrayal. We should be aware that Orwell is having him follow the implication of the Politics: that is to say, confession is a political 29 �act while betrayal is an act directed against human association. Julia, who is measurably less conscious than Winston, begins this particular exchange by saying that "Everybody always confesses. You can't help it. They torture you" (73). Winston's reply is as follows: "I don't mean confessing. Confession is not betrayal. What you say or do doesn't matter; only feeling~ matter. If they could make me stop loving you- that would be the real betrayal." (73-74) The distinction is Aristotelian. It signifies not only that the unjust polis must maintain order but that it must internalize it. If it prevents "trust" and "confidence" from developing, it prevents the development of the one thing it really fears, association independent of political control. Under torture, Winston first betrays all of humanity, with one vital exception. That is to say, he confesses. Because confession is not betrayal, he remains, after the first stage of torture, in some sense immune to the power of the state. The measure of his character is not only that he knows this, but admits it: "You have whimpered for mercy, you have betrayed everybody and everything. Can you think of a single degradation that has not happened to you?" Winston had stopped weeping, though the tears were still oozing out of his eyes. He looked up at O'Brien. "I have not betrayed Julia;' he said. O'Brien looked down at him thoughtfully. "No;' he said, "no; that is perfectly true. You have not betrayed Julia." (121) Being a good reader of the Politics, O'Brien knows the distinction that Winston has unconsciously raised. He reserves further punishment for him, of the kind that will assuredly "break" his "spirit:' It is of some interest that O'Brien's phrase, "you have betrayed everybody and everything'' rings a change on Aristotle's implicit definition of the free and noble condition: the "refusal to betray one another or anybody else!' There is an answering passage, after Winston has been to Room 101 of the Ministry of Love: "I betrayed you;' she said baldly. "I betrayed you;' he said. (129) Julia's explanation is worth some emphasis: "After that;' she says, "you don't feel the same toward the other person any longer!' The words are the words of Orwell, but the ideas are the ideas of the Politics. When mutual trust, confidence, or love disappear, then the "spirit" has in fact been broken. Human association, the only rival left to the power of the state, has itself been "betrayed!' Sometimes words are identical-a key phrase like "oligarchy" is an automatic reference to its source. It is as much an indicator of Plato and Aristotle as the phrase "surplus labor'' is of Marx. Sometimes the words are only echoes. But the two texts continuously bear upon each other. There are some small mysteries which crossreference may be able to clarify. For example, the beginning of Nineteen Eighty-Four is anti-feminist. It is so in 30 a special way, Winston being normally sexual and in fact highly appreciative of the female body. But he hates women. Or is it that he fears them? He disliked nearly all women, and especially the young and pretty ones. It was always the women, and above all the young ones, who were the most bigoted adherents of the Party, the swallowers of slogans, the amateur spies and nosers-out of unorthodoxy. (6) Some nosing zealot in the Ministry (a woman, probably; someone like the little sandy-haired woman or the dark-haired girl from the Fiction Department) might start wondering why he had been writing during the lunch interval ... and then drop a hint in the appropriate quarter. (14) Since Orwell did not write like this in his other works, the presumption is that he had something particularly in mind. I think that he reworked classical misogyny in this case, which becomes clear if we consider the source for this idea about "amateur spies!' Aristotle is one of the great anti-feminists, and he credits women with totalitarian proclivities. Within slightly more than a single page in the Politics (244-245) he refers to "a secret police, like the female spies employed at Syracuse"; to tyrants who customarily "encourage feminine influence in the family, in the hope that wives will tell tales of their husbands"; and to the fact that "slaves and women are not likely to plot against tyrants." I have so far talked about tactical resemblances between two books. I would like to conclude with a more strategic assessment. During the course of his torture at the Ministry of Love Winston discovers the motives of the Party. They seem to transcend ordinary political ends: Never again will you be capable of ordinary human feeling. Everything will be dead inside you. Never again will you be capable of love, or friendship, or joy of living, or laughter, or curiosity, or courage, or integrity. You will be hollow. We shall squeeze you empty, and then fill you with ourselves. (113) In one sense, this statement reveals the characteristic megalomania of both O'Brien and the Party. O'Brien is a character of fiction, and one of the things about him is that he enjoys assuming the God. But the passage also has an intense connection to the Politics. It is about changes in emotion and conception- not really about political changes at all. It is about human association specifically; that is, about the feelings which connect people to each other. In short, the passage is about what we should now call social psychology. When we come to Aristotle's conclusions about the aims of tyranny- conclusions which he emphatically states twice on a single page- we see that he defines the human changes imposed by tyranny also in terms of social psychology. In fact, he defines the end of tyranny as the accomplishment of change in human feelings. The following passage, which sums up Aristotle's view of the ends of tyranny, is about psychology and ethics: Their first end and aim is to break the spirit of their subjects. They know that a poor-spirited man will never plot against SPRING 1984 �~ybody. Their second aim is to breed mutual distrust. Tyranny never overthrown until men begin to trust one another; and this is the reason why tyrants are always ~touts with the good. They feel that good men are doubly dangerous to their authori~y -dangerous, first, in thinking it sham!'! to be governed as tf they were slaves; dangerous, again, in their spirit of mutual and general loyalty, and in their refusal to betray one another or anybody else. The third and last aim of tyrants is to make their subjects incapable of action. (246) IS The vocabularies of the two passages are similar. They are both about human association. They are both about ~oc~a! ,~eeli~gs. Aristotle_ writes about "trust;' "loyalty," and spint while Orwell wntes about "love; "friendship;' and "integrity." It may be assumed that they bear on each other in a certain way, for they both argue that a political relationship is founded on existential conditions. But the passage in Orwell is clearly very extreme. It seems almost if the use of the term can be imagined, very romantic. It looks at the history of political exploitation and states that nothing in the history of the world can match its own tactics and strategy. It may be useful to compare O'Brien's sense of the ends of tyranny with modern historical examples because criticism of Nineteen Eighty-Four is almost hopelessly bound up with the belief that the book is about actual totalitarian regimes. My own sense of the matter is that it does not make much sense to interpret the revelations which come about during Winston's torture at the Ministry of Love entirely as if they reflected "reality:' We know rather a lot about twentieth-century totalitarianism after reading The Destructzon of European jewry, The Origins of Totalitarianism, and The Gulag Arch1pelago. These books are significantly different from Orwell- that is to say, they perceive ends different from those stated by O'Brien .. They do not suggest that the modern totalitarian state aims at anything more than the extinction of opposition. The KGB is not interested operationally in the feeling per se of dissidents: it uses torture to beat people down and drugs to make them helpless or psychotic. In The Origins of Totalitarianism Hannah Arendt sumnlarized the state's attitude toward political opposition: "Criminals are punished, undesirables disappear from the face of the earth; the only trace which they leave behind is the memory of those who knew and loved them :'nd one of the most difficult tasks of the secret polic~ IS to make. sure that even such traces will disappear together with the condemned man."B And of course it must be so- in a nation of 250 million prisoners it does no ~ood at all to have the worst offenders on parole. The business of the secret police is to eradicate them not change their minds. ' !_'he secret P<;>lice are. not romantic nor do they have a philosophy. Nmeteen E<ghty-Four misleads us if it suggests that we are speaking only of historical possibilities and examples. Secret police do not read books or worry about the past, although O'Brien spends an awful lot of his time doing both. Secret police have what may be called the opposite of a philosophy, for they do whatever the ST. JOHN'S REVIEW leadership requires, even if it contradicts what they were told an hour before. In fact, as Hannah Arendt so brilliantly describes, the secret police find no trouble in doing things clearly contradictory at the same time: awarding some poor befuddled bureaucrat a medal and recommending the firing squad for him. Need it be added that the secret police are often content with the appearance only of submission? They are a huge bureaucracy, and find perfection to be quite hopeless. What they want is compliance, not conversions. For example, in Poland right now the state is quite happy not to have demonstrations take place: the provocateurs do not go about arranging for people to undertake resistance in order to be entrapped. There certainly seems to be a big difference between actual totalitarian ends and those stated by Orwell. It must be fairly plain, if we return to O'Brien's revelation, that he has no political objective. But he does have a political-theory objective. And that objective is what causes the book to have such striking powers of arousing outrage in the reader. It is concerned with what I should call the nightmare of philosophy. Like the writing of Machiavelli it holds a dagger to the body of the West. It might first be noted that there is a difference between the book's quality and its effect. One recognizes that Nineteen Eighty-Four is an influential but not a great novel. It cannot be compared to anything by Dickens or ] ane Austen or even to writers not up to their exceptional standard. Orwell's mind is first-rate and his language is always a pleasure to read, but clarity and purpose do not make great art. Why then is Nineteen Eighty-Four, which IS not a great novel, a great book? In_part because it ~ddresses a great concern meaningfully; m part because 1t belongs to a series of books and meditations which have in certain ways not only captured but formed our imagination. The reader will understand when I say that this book-which is not great literaturebelongs with the Inferno, with Pilgrim~ Progress, and with another book sharing its characteristics, The Prince. In some important ways, even now in the Age of Criticism not fully understood, such books provide the archetype of experience: that is to say, we refer back to them to understand our own experience. Not all of these books are equal, but each of them has been definitive. Frankenstein is a much lesser work than the Inferno, but it has become its own kind of datum. . The reason why Nineteen Eighty-Four belongs with Pdgnm~ Progress and the rest is its view of the past. Among a gre~t ma~y other books it has in a singular way come to gnps w1th a problem that has engaged political philosophy since its beginnings. That problem, in one ?f 1t~ shapes, has been brilliantly stated by Isaiah Berlin In his famous essay on Machiavelli: If Machiavelli is right, if it is in principle (or in fact: the frontier seems dim) impossible to be morally good and do one's duty as this was conceived by common European, and especially Christian, ethics, and at the same time build Sparta or 31 �Periclean Athens or the Rome of the Rrpublic or even of the Antonines, then a conclusion of the first importance follows; that the belief that the correct, objectively valid solution to the question of how men should live can in principle be discovered, is itself in principle not true. This was a truly erschreckend proposition. 9 The principle of the good social life is familiar even to literary critics. We see it at work-and being undermined- in every one of Shakespeare's political plays. Berlin continues: One of the deepest assumptions of western political thought is the doctrine, scarcely questioned during its long ascendancy, that there exists some single principle which not only regulates the course of the sun and the stars, but prescribes their proper behavior to all animate creatures. Animals and sub-rational beings of all kinds follow it by instinct; higher beings attain to consciousness of it, and are free to abandon it, but only tO their doom. This doctrine, in one version or another, has dominated European thought since Plato; it has appeared in many forms, and has generated many similes and allegories; at its centre is the vision of an impersonal Nature or Reason or cosmic purpose, or of a divine Creator whose power has endowed all things and creatures each with a specific function; these functions are elements in a single harmonious whole, and are intelligible in terms of it alone. This was often expressed by images taken from architecture: of a great edifice of which each part fits uniquely to the total structure; or from the human body ... or from the life of society. We know these great metaphors, in Shakespeare, in Herrick, and in Sir Thomas Browne: There are two books from whence I collect my divinity; besides that written one of God, another of his servant nature, that universal and public manuscript that lies expansed unto the eyes of all; those that never saw him in the one, have discovered him in the other.10 But such metaphors now have only psychological validity, for since Machiavelli we have been forced to conclude that they were wrong, that there is no connection between morality and government, or between individual and "body" politic. Since Machiavelli, Berlin writes, we have for the most part believed simultaneously in Christian morality and in the political realism of Machiavelli. But the two contradict each other, for Christianity cannot govern and the state is immoral. It is a Gordian knot. Philosophers have described the effect of Machiavelli on the West as "the wound that has never healed." Much the same might be said of Nineteen Eighty-Four. But perhaps I ought to put the matter this way: is this book so traumatic to its audience because of its unequalled mastery of description of the art of torture? Or because, as so many suggest, it accurately describes the modern totalitarian state? Or because of some other reason, a reason more tragic still, but less visible? Nineteen Eighty-Four accepts and even exemplifies the ideas of Machiavelli- not to say the ideas of Lenin, Stalin, 32 and Hitler. But it goes beyond making a fiction of reality. It is about a world without justice. It tells us that guilt and innocence do not matter, that there is no difference between good and evil. It tells us that the object of power is power- not pain, not punishment, not redemption, not correction, not even pleasure. It even tells us that sanity does not matter, that reason has nothing to do with rule. It describes a world of random incident. No matter how tightly organized the Party may be, and no matter how strategic its intentions, life in Oceania is a series of accidents. There is no relationship between necessary causes and outcomes. Nothing really matters; there is no definitive boundary between guilt or innocence. Nineteen Eighty-Four offers a great reversal to the concept of predestination: all within it is a matter of chance. Even the most perfect monad cannot hold; even Parsons whispers in his sleep. Since its beginnings and in all of its times of trouble, the West has feared and rejected the idea of chaos. We have had much less trouble accepting the idea of the Apocalypse. Apocalypse is, after all, intelligible. But Nineteen Eighty-Four is built upon the most primitive of mysteries, of a return to a condition to us so fearful that our whole mythology is about its transcendance. The book is much more troubling than the art of the end of all things. In a sense it is the most illiberal of all books ever written, for it presupposes that all men will return, without much troubling themselves, to the chaos which is the very opposite of civilization. Even The Gulag Archipelago is about justice, for it is profoundly concerned with the discrepancies between Soviet law and punishment. But Nineteen Eighty-Four is not about the difference between constitutional and actual rights. It is about the nightmare of the West, a nightmare that has been sublimated and soothed by an endless sequence of meditations on the just society. The reason why this book is so literally reflective, why it alludes to Aristotle, Plato, Machiavelli, Hobbes, Lenin, and Hitler, is that even the last of these had an order in mind. When Nineteen Eighty-Four tells us that the past is over it means that the dream of order and justice is itself finished; that it never corresponded to human actuality. And, even for moderns, it is a shock to know that the past is over. How much more of a shock must it be to know that there is no connection between the self and the polis? Perhaps the last word ought to be left to a book that has every few pages intruded into my text and into that of Orwell: The Theory and Practice of Oligarchical Collectivism tells us, among other things, of the failure of dreams: In more primitive ages, when a just and peaceful society was in fact not possible, it had been fairly easy to believe in it. The idea of an earthly paradise in which men should live together in a state of brotherhood, without laws and without brute labor, had haunted the human imagination for thousands of years. ... But by the fourth decade of the twentieth century all the SPRING 1984 �main currents of political thought were authoritarian. The earthly paradise had been discredited.·. ~90) To give up the vision of an earthly ,paradise is to give up more than a myth or speculation. Tt is one of the many vestiges of history which are to be surrendered. There is a vision which underlies even this, however. The idea of a just state, the aggregate of good men, has also "haunted" or inspired the imagination of the West "for thousands of years." Why has that been so? First, because political science itself began in Plato and Aristotle with that conception: it is by now woven into the strands of imagination. And second, because the idea of the just state has always been in critical relationship to the imperfect facts of social life. What Orwell writes aboutwhat makes this book so painful- is the destruction of those values which make imperfect life endurable. This book is not frightening because of its absolute mastery of the detail of torture and disgust. Nor because it puts totalitarian practice into believable fiction. It frightens us- arouses what Orwell late in his life called our "instinctive horror" 11 - because it conceives of a social order without justice, and of human nature quite capable ofliving that way. There is one more thing: while Orwell was writing this book and thinking about it he was reflecting constantly on the development of such a social order. 12 He was powerfully affected by the futurist novel li0: by Zamyatin and in his review of it he said, "what Zamyatin seems to be aiming at is not any particular country but the implied aims of industrial civilization:' 13 That is to say, Orwell himself saw the future of tyranny as a natural outcome of the ideas and realities of the past. ST. JOHN'S REVIEW Perhaps that is why his own novel of the future has so much to say about the past, and why his own Grand Inquisitor takes such pride in his idea of progress. 1. From Czeslaw Milosz, The Captive Mind (London, 1953), p. 42. Reprinted in George Orwell: The Critical Heritage, cd. Jeffrey Meyers (London, 1975), p, 286, 2. The Republic of Plato, ed. Francis MacDonald Cornford (Oxford University Press, 1945), p. 115. 3. George Orwell, "Such, Such Were the Joys," The Collected Essays, Journalism and Letters of George Orwell, ed. Sonia Orwell and Ian Angus (New York, 1968). IV. p, 336, 4. Ibid, p. 338. 5. The Politics of Aristotle, cd. Ernest Barker (Oxford, 1981) p. 245. Subsequent page references arc to this edition. This standard edition was first published in 1946, just as Orwell began thinking of his novel of the future. 6. George Orwell, Nineteen Eighty-Four, ed. Irving Howe (New York, 1963), p. 93. Subsequent page references are to this edition. 7. Herodotus, The Persian Wars, trans. George Rawlinson (New York, 1942), p. 417, 8. Hannah Arendt, The Origins rif Totalitarianism (Cleveland, 1962), p. 433. On page 426 Arendt writes that "the task of the totalitarian police is not to discover crimes, but to be on hand when the government decides to arrest a certain category of the population." 9. Isaiah Berlin, Against the Current (New York, 1980), pp. 66-67. 10. This passage from Sir Thomas Browne's Religio Medici has been reprinted in Seventeenth-Century Prose and Poetry, ed. Alexander Witherspoon and Frank Warnke (New York, 1963), p. 336. ll. Orwell, "Pleasure Spots," Collected Essays, IV, p. 81. 12. See for example "The Prevention of Literature," Collected Essays, IV, pp. 59-72; the review of We, pp. 72-75; and the letter to Herbert Rogers, pp. 102-103, all of which speculate on the course of contemporary society, and the relationship of present actualities-many of them technological-to the future. This volume covers the years 1945-1949, the last five years of Orwell's life. 13. Orwell, Collected Essays, IV, p. 75. 33 �Is Nature A Republic? David Stephenson propose first of all to talk about "energy:' The word is so common and so current that it is difficult to extricate ourselves from the conviction that the conservation of energy comes close to being the unquestionable foundation of all physics and even of all nature. Recent decades have made us acutely aware of the necessary connection between energy and economy, energy and threat, energy and business. Even news reports frequently imply that energy is something that our comforts and lives depend on, and we save, spend, or waste it with greater consequence than we do money. It is hard to remember that such universal affirmation of this law is relatively recent; that three centuries ago "conservation of energy." was not a conscious part of anybody's thinking. How can one imagin~ ignorance of the now so readily acknowledged presumption that everyone must pay to accomplish a task; that a quantitative equivalence between effort and accomplishment exists and can be expressed by a mathematical equation? To question this "work-energy equation" nowadays would arouse universl astonishment and ridicule. It is quite de rigueur to presurrie the existence of unknown quantities just to balance that equation when it seems to fail in some experiment. Yet when Leibniz announced the first version of this law its apparently frequent failure in practice understandably discouraged many of those otherwise inclined to support his doctrines. There is a historical mystery here: how did such a profound revolution in consciousness take place between Leibniz's day and our own, resulting in the universal adoption of his essential theory, when the overwhelming evidence of daily experience seems to directly contradict it? I Mr. Stephenson, a tutor at St. John's College, Annapolis, delivered this lecture at the Santa Fe campus in February 1983. 34 For we see the law apparently broken every day. Think about it. Bodies skid to a stop, their energy of motion vanishing into oblivion; the fire warms my hands without thereby growing perceptibly colder; even the best bouncing ball fails to return quite to the hand that drops it; clocks need rewinding; I wake up hungry from a sound sleep; the table sustains a weight forever where my arm would quickly grow tired. You tell me that I must look more closely to discover the lost energy of these actions departing in another form. But that demand really amounts to assertion of a postulate, that, for example, motion lost by friction is equivalent to the heat thereby generated. There is no way of actually proving this equivalence. The question of whether or not a law of conservation applies has been decided a priori. Might not Aristotle's non-quantitative treatment of cause better correspond to what we see? Why should the fire lose heat to what it warms any more than a teacher give up his knowledge to a pupil in teaching him? And remember that it is everyday experience that we are considering, since we are seeking the reasons for the virtually universal adoption of a law. Conservational thinking has always persisted in some form. Probably the oldest form derives from consideration of material things. Aristotle himself makes his four elements mutually convertible but denies the possibility of their emerging from nothing. Lucretius presents his assurance that our bodily atoms will persist after death as medicine to cure our fear of that event. But many things are not conserved: knowledge, for example, or disease, or perhaps even money. If I have a cold, it is fortunately unnecessary to find someone else to give it to in order to get rid of it. Money can be devalued or invested, help to produce surplus value or can be gambled away. Whatever knowledge you may gain from this lecture has nevertheless not left my side. On the other hand, SPRING 1984 �conservation seems to be what we expect of whatever is called "substance;' so our historical problem could be restated: why and when did energy gain admission to the category of substance? If you are in doubt concerning the help offered by such a metaphysical term, Leibniz will come to your aid with a definition: "Substance is a being capable of action?'1 This definition even comprises an embryonic statement of the conservation law we seek. For consider a pendulum. Beginning at rest, it descends with increasing velocity and then ascends and comes to rest again momentarily before repeating and repeating the cycle of motion and rest. Something, therefore, in the pendulum even at rest is capable of the action that is manifest in its subsequent motion. This substance, called "absolute" or "living force" by Leibniz and later "energy"2 by others, also appears to be transferable from body to body in an elastic collision. In practice, however, some of this substance, energy, always vanishes during any collision, and it is quite possible to make the motion disappear entirely in what is called an "inelastic impact?' Fully aware of the challenge to his theory of absolute force offered by this experiment, Leibniz insists that despite appearances none of his precious substance is really lost: it merely comes to be distributed insensibly among the infinite infinitesimal parts of the bodies themselves after such an inelastic collision. But this is an appeal to faith, not evidence. I I I I I I I d _____ -"' ,_I ''-~'...... - As pointed out later in the eighteenth century, the theoretical justification for this faith immediately follows if one makes another assumption, viz, that all interactions between bodies depend only on the distances between their particles, regarded as points. But even Boscovich, whose universe is just such a sprinkling of massy points separated by forces, and who thought in other respects to have reconciled Newton and Leibniz, refused to follow this hypothesis to its conclusion and rejected conservation of energy in the face of those vivid violations exhibited by the inelastic impact that characterizes our visible world. Moreover, this example of inelastic impact may have claims on us a priori, as it did on Newton, and on Maupertuis and others of Newton's successors during the succeeding century. For if we, like them, are true atomists- if we commit ourselves to the belief that our material world ST. JOHN'S REVIEW is assembled out of ultimately indivisible particles having some, though minute, extension- then these particles must be absolutely hard: they cannot flex and change shape as elasticity requires because they would then have to have distinct parts. "If;' says Maupertuis, "in the majority of bodies the parts which compose them separate or bend, this happens only because these bodies are heaps of other bodies: simple bodies, primitive bodies, which are the elements of all the others must be hard, inflexible, unalterable."3 Contact between such hard atoms, therefore, could only follow the model of inelastic impact. Leibniz, in fact, only avoids this rock because he denies the world an atomic foundation: matter is infinitely divisible. Nevertheless, Maupertuis is not perfectly confident of his atomic prejudices: It appears, therefore, that one would be better grounded in maintaining that all primitive bodies are hard, than one would be in claiming that there are no hard bodies whatever in nature. However, I do not know if the manner in which we know bodies permits us either the one or the other assertion. 4 T his doubt, together with a kind of natural piety, led him to the formulation of one of the great principles of physics, but one which does not depend on a special understanding of material constitution: the Principle of Least Action. ((When some change in Nature happens, the Quantity of Action necessary for this change is as small as possible." ((Quantity of Action" he then defines to be the "product of the mass of the bodies by their speed and by the space they travel:' 5 The universality and unity of this principle obviously support and confirm Maupertuis's dedication to the discovery of God's work in the world. For God, or Nature under his dominion, thereby displays a kind of economy or even parsimony. The Quantity of Action is not conserved, but as little as possible appears at each natural event. The relevance of final cause seems not to have vanished from physics 6 With appropriate zeal Maupertuis seeks to derive from this principle the known mathematical laws governing a variety of phenomena, including the refraction of light, the equilibrium of a balance or lever, and both elastic and inelastic impact. In later, more capable hands the Principle emulates the fruitfulness of Newton's Laws, in this century proving remarkably adaptable to Quantum Theory and Relativity. With great deference to Maupertuis, his younger B contemporary, Euler, derived 35 �the path of a falling body from the principle, and Lagrange and Hamilton soon afterwards based entire systems of physics upon it. Maupertuis himself misapplied it. But in attempting to address the problem of impact he really invoked without realizing it the primitive form of a totally different principle: the Principle of Least Constraint. To distinguish these two principles it should help to compare them in their simplest manifestations: 1. Least Action involves the product oflength, velocity, and mass. A ball thrown into the air describes a particular arc ACB. The Principle of Least Action states that the total action involved with this path is less than it would be for any other under the same conditions. That is, although the path is shorter for a flatter arc, e.g. ADB, the velocity- determined by the height above the ground' -will have to increase so much with respect to corresponding points on the original arc that the sum of the products of mass, velocity, and path segment for the new path -which sum makes up the total actionwill exceed that for the original path ACB. Conversely a longer path AEB, while decreasing the corresponding velocities, more than makes up for this in the product IfW~AC, W'~BC; U~BC, U'~AC. IfW~AB, W'~O, U~BC, U'~AC. Other supposititious values for U, U': BD, AD. v.A c D ~ B From the figure EU2=Ac2+BC2 AD2+BD2 i.e., less than the supposititious EU2. Example of two equal bodies with equal velocities AC, BC, and sticking to remain motionless at C thereafter (the actual case), or moving off together with velocity CD (a supposed alternative case). In the first case velocities AC and BC would be lost upon impact, so that these would represent U and U', the "deviations from free motion" caused by their meeting. The "constraint'' would according to Carnot be represented by a quantity proportional to the squares of these losses, i.e., to the rectangle on AB. On the other hand, the supposed alternative case would produce losses represented by AD and DB, and "constraints" therefore proportional to the squares on these lines, whose sum is clearly greater than this rectangle. 36 by the increased path length. Actual computation will confirm the fact that the minimal path must be Galileds parabola. 2. Least Constraint. A body, or (and this is the important case) a whole system of bodies linked together rigidly, will move in such a way that the deviation in each part from free motion is as small as possible. The previously mentioned examples of inelastic impact satisfy this principle in the following way: "free motion" in this case would signifY that the bodies could be imagined as not impeding one another, i.e., as penetrating one another freely with velocities W, W', etc. Now the real nature of the impact compelling the colliding bodies to each alter its motion by amounts U, U ', etc. the principle determines this subsequent motion on the basis of collective minimum for these deviations U. 8 One can easily demonstrate in a Euclidean manner that the results of the inelastic impact of equal balls we earlier saw are precisely prescribed by this requirement alone. However different these two principles appear, they are yet more removed from the Newtonian- and to us probably more familiar-world of push and pull, offorce and resistance. For everything is by them determined from a consideration of the whole array of what is possible, the actual motions we observe selected by Nature according to their obedience to a universal principle involving some kind of economy. The whole procedure resembles much more closely the planning and choice we exercise consciously than does Newton's. Exactly what is saved in the case of the second principle may not at present be clear, but we will return to consider it later. 9 It was Lazare Carnot who first recognized the distinctness as well as the independent validity of the second principlel° Carnot is also largely responsible for the discovery of a new quantity that is conserved in all physical activity. He calls this quantity "moment-ofactivity" and identifies it with some very ordinary and vulgar notions; of labor in particular and of wages; of animal or human muscle power; of power drawn from wind or water; of machines used to direct that power. His practical interests in fact may provide the clue we need to solve our original historical riddle of energy. For our earlier dilemma can be resolved into two distinct problems: 1. How can we account for the apparent loss of energy in every physical activity? 2. How can such manifestly different phenomena as heat, motion, and electric or muscle power, all ultimately claimed to be different forms of energy, be made to exhibit this essential kinship? The questions are complementary. A reply to the second will answer the fust. But this can only be done by the mediation of another concept, the concept of "work." Wind, water, and fire can all drive engines whose work can be quantitatively compared to what muscle can do. The conversion of motion into heat through friction can then, at least theoretically, be restored to its original form by letting that heat drive a suitable engine. Energy thereby SPRING 1984 �becomes a substance taking various forms, but all of which can exhibit the action we call ('work." T he name, Lazare Carnot, evokes very different reactions in different circles. Scientists would nowadays remember him, if at all, as an obscure eighteenth century engineer preoccupied with machines and their efficiency, and the author of ''Carnot's Theorem;' which predicts that the more abrupt the change the greater the amount of"living force" lost. Percussion of the parts in a machine makes it less efficient; rapid acceleration- as in an automobile- wastes fuel. His son, Sadi, is more famous, since he founded the science of thermodynamics. To the politically or historically minded, on the other hand, Lazare Carnot stirs up memories of the French Revolution and the Reign of Terror. Insulated from the first violent days of revolution by prison walls, because he had been incarcerated after presuming to propose marriage to his noble mistress, he soon took charge of the new republic's military forces. Although disorganized and discouraged by some military defeats in the face of repeated attempts by other European nations to destroy the young republic and restore royalty to France, the army under his leadership managed to secure French borders and thereby save the republican form of government from foreign invasion. As a member of the Directorate and the Committee on Public Safety he even survived Robespierre, without, so he later claimed, condoning its bloody purges more than necessary.11 His association with Napoleon during the early campaigns did not inspire him to accept more than a temporary post in the First Consul's government, and he even dared to protest publically Napoleon's elevation to emperor. Retiring to a private life of scientific and engineering pursuits during the first decade of the nineteenth century, he did rejoin the army for the last Napoleonic campaigns, earning thereby a final exile in Germany, devoted primarily to writing memoirs defending his actions during the Terror. And in truth his greatest passion seems always to have been the cause of republican government. His scientific works, though relatively few, all display a unique marriage of the practical and the abstract. Consider, for example, his concept of a "machine." What he calls a "machine in general" is any system of objects linked together so that consecutive masses can neither approach nor recede from one another: the links are rigid but the machine as a whole need not be, since its parts may be hinged even while they are linked by rigid connections. Any ordinary machine, from a simple lever to the most complicated factory engines satisfies this definition. But so does a single rigid body, such as a baseball bat or a hammer: their parts are rigidly connected. The curious behavior of a top, gyroscope, or frisbee exhibits the unexpected effects of these linkages. Most animals- including human beings- resemble machines, for their bones do keep joints at fixed distances. 12 Most surprising of all, perhaps: water and other practically incompressible fluids ST. JOHN'S REVIEW are machines, as long as they remain in one continuous or connected mass. For being incompressible, the fluid's consecutive parts stay the same distance apart; they can slide or rotate around one another but not approach one another (imagine smooth sand in an hour glass). It is in fact characteristic of Carnot's thinking that the agents which operate machines are themselves in part machines, especially since he ultimately can include elastic connections (like muscles), as well as rigid ones, within the same theory. Galileo, Descartes, Newton, and virtually all their successors agree on one subject: uniform rectilinear motion is as natural as rest, so that any body will continue whatever motion it has in a straight line if free to do so. What happens, then, when moving bodies are linked together to form a machine? Obviously their masses mutually impede or assist one another. A lot of pushing and shoving goes on, the resultant motion being a compromise, since each constituent body must depart in some measure from its free motion. And this compromise continues to be worked out afresh each moment. The Law of Least Constraint is an expression of this compromise. By its means we can begin to understand why a spinning top does not fall over, the inertial motion of one part counteracting the falling tendency of another. We can also see how Galilee's experiments on inclined planes, which he presumed to illuminate the motion of falling bodies, could be corrected: the mutual constraint of the parts of a rolling ball producing quite a different effect from one that falls without rotating." But it need not rest with the imagination alone to demonstrate the effects of mutual constraint by the parts of such "machines-in-general:' We can reduce these effects to experience: the experience of inelastic impact. If one considers this experience, one can easily see that before impact the bodies move freely (at least with respect to one another); after impact their motion is constrained; they are linked together as by rigid connections. Carnot's general conclusions about machines, therefore, can be tested by experiment. Furthermore, the exact reverse of inelastic impact is explosion, and one can view elastic collision as the combination of these two phenomena: inelastic impact followed by explosion. Thus elastic impact or connection may be regarded as a special case of inelastic impact. But whereas the Principle of Least Constraint seems peculiarly well adapted to our understanding of machines, the equation of work and energy, or "momentof-activity" and "living force;' does not enlighten us so obviously in this respect. After all, these machines all seem necessarily to change the form of energy in ways not entirely within our control, and any such change in form can not be understood as a purely mechanical transformation. With this problem I arrive at the heart of my thesis, one which I state with the more caution because Carnot himself is not explicit about it, as far as I know. It can be derived from his work by inference, but by inference only. I infer it primarily from the fact that the 37 �abrupt changes exemplified by inelastic collision are primary for him, although he is not·'! confirmed atomist, and so does not need to make this hypothesis 14 W hat is crucial to Carnot's point- of view is his refusal to get lost in the details of a problem. He looks at phenomena grossly rather than closely, and this "gross vision" is what I believe allows him to ignore our ignorance of the inner mechanics of bodies and machines._ If"a body meet a body;' the more intimate consequences of this meeting seem to depend very much on private matters beyond our ken. That is, for I am of course thinking of mechanics, whether the bodies have a continuous or atomic internal structure, whether they or their parts are hard or soft, elastic or inelastic, it remains true that collision alters their motions. It is possible for Carnot to say something significant by consciously ignoring the doubtful processes of impact, and confining his attention to their relatively simple relationships before and after impact. Motion is probably conveyed from one body to all the parts of another through an incredibly complex sequence of inner vibrations and interactions; yet when this inward disquiet has subsided the bodies do have some motion as wholes, and this latter motion is the focus of his apparent interest. One could perhaps see him as anticipating the modern quantum physicist's tendency to imagine particles entering and leaving a "sphere of ignorance;' within which they affect one another in some mechanically indeterminate way. The assumption of such a "sphere of ignorance" then permits one to be relatively knowledgeable about what happens outside that sphere, and the relationships between objects before and after entering it. Inelastic impact from this point of view amounts merely to a succession of events in which bodies at first moving independently of one another are somehow-we need not say how-constrained to move off together. What does this "gross vision" mean for energy? The following dialog imagined between Carnot and Leibniz should answer this question: Carnot~'I observe rigid bodies and connections all around me, and many degrees of absurpt and inelastic impact but nothing so perfectly elastic as to entirely conserve your 'living force'?' Leibniz~'But these bodies can not be perfectly inflexible, for my reason demands that changes take place gradually, according to Nature's great Law of Continuity. The transfer of motion from one body to another takes time; viz., the time during which those bodies remain in contact while changing shape." Carnot~'ln that case, as I have shown mathematically, no 'living force' would ever be lost!" Leibniz (with evident satisfaction)~'Exactly!" Carnot~'Nevertheless one ought to explain the appearance of such a loss. It is after all manifest that 'living force' does disappear from the scene of action in most, perhaps even in all actions where bodies do not move freely but constrain one another." 38 Leibniz~'I am content to find that you have confirmed my expectations for the eternal survival of'absolute force; and that the Principle of Continuity required by reason has in fact entailed this survival. Look closely enough at an apparent discontinuity in Nature and you will discover continuity." Carnot ~'Why should I not trust my observation that changes do often happen abruptly, and that in fact the more abrupt the more 'living force' lost?" Leibniz ~'Your senses are not fine enough. They need to be corrected by reason?' Carnot~'But you are looking too closely! The trees are obscuring the forest. Even if as you say motion and 'living force' does survive in the microscopic motions of a body's parts, it remains irretrievable for me. The gross picture remains the significant one. Perhaps it is true that 'living force' is never lost, but it is always wasted, sometimes more and sometimes less. That is, it is lost for all practical purposes." At this point we might add two other characters to our imagined dialog. Robert Mayer or Joule, or even Count Rumford if present would no longer be able to restrain his impatience ---='But you are talking about heat! Could I not recover the 'living force; which you think is permanently wasted, by applying the heat it generates to run an engine?" It is not Lazare Carnot, but his son Sadi who answers this question. The answer is "No. There is no hope of recovering all that 'living force'." Unfortunately unavoidably abrupt changes in the temperature have the same effect on a heat engine that the abrupt changes characteristic of inelastic impact have on a purely mechanical one: Loss, not of energy, but of usable energy. This is an expression of the famous Second Law of Thermodynamics, of which therefore the elder Carnot's theorem proves to be an adumbration. This kind of a dialog somehow reminds me of Plato's "Phaedo:' All of Socrates's assurances of immortality can not entirely dispel the grief of his friends in the face of his impending death. Nor should it. It is at least as true that he will leave this world as that he will survive somewhere else. So with energy, whose loss and preservation inevitably and paradoxically take place simultaneously." R eturning to our original political question, we can now easily see that Maupertuis's principle implies a naturla monarchy; Carnot's republic. The success of the Principle of Least Action compares most easily with the government of a single intelligence, which chooses the course and concourse of bodies from among all possibilities according to the end desired and a single prevailing principle of economy. The Principle of Least Constraint, on the other hand, is a kind of law of freedom. Every body or particle deviates as little as possible from its free flight, and it does so only in order to accommodate the greatest possible compatible general freedom for all the others. Nature thus resembles the most perfectly democratic republic. 16 A presiding intelligence SPRING 1984 �may have been necessary to organize such a scheme, but not to take part in its normal daily progress by specific decisions. We might further extract from this latter principle the suggestion that, because of the continual jostle and readjustment of small motions, the most fruitful view of Nature would be to concentrate on the overall net effect, i.e., to adopt what I have called Carnot's "gross vision:' The concept of"work" or "moment-of-activity" then goes one step further by disregarding all difference in the forms of energy in the interest of a reliable quantitative judgment. But·as we have seen, this same vision that confirms the conservation of energy denies us the means to fully exploit it. The full fruitfulness of energy emphasized by its equivalence in "work" is ultimately snatched from us. Whether Carnot's political experience guided his scientific research or his science his politics is hard to decide, but one cannot escape the suggestion of mutual influence. Carnot might even have considered the resemblance between revolution and abrupt change, but, unable to prevent the inevitable losses in either case, sought to minimize themY If you think it was sang froid rather than cold blood that enabled him to maintain his position in the ruling Committee during the Terror, then you probably base your admiration on our present knowledge of the final outcome of his and others' connivance: that is the French Republic itself. As to the details of his actions during this tumultuous period: don't look too closely! Carnot's Principle of Least Constraint bespeaks a kind of natural republic; I do not know what political analogues there might be for work and energy, or for the joining of these concepts in which he played a major part. The quantification of endeavor implied by them, however, does emphasize by contrast all the human ventures that elude quantification. The importance of the former magnifies the latter: against "work" we must balance "play." A contemporary of Carnot, Friedrich Schiller, expressed succinctly the importance of this: "Man plays only when he is in the full sense of the word a man, and he is only wholly Man when he is playing. 18 But that is a subject worthy of another whole lecture. 1. Leibniz, "Principles of Nature and of Grace, Founded on Reason." 2. The man responsible for introducing "energy" as a technical term with roughly the modern meaning (but with scope limited to simple mechanics) into English was Thomas Young (cf. his lecture "On Collision": number 8 from'~ Course of Lectures on Natural Philosophy and the Mechanical Arts;' vol. I, esp. p. 78; cf. also vol. II, p. 52, §347). Though obviously deriving from Aristotle's, Evsj)ysm the word appeared more in literature than in scientific writing before the nineteenth century, and, with the exception of Jean Bernoulli's occasionally prophetic adoption of the French "energie;' seems to have born the more figurative than mathematically decipherable sense of "eagerness" and "assidu- ST. JOHN'S REVIEW itY.' In the works of David Hume this literary term does approach the scientific one. 3. Maupertuis, "Les lois du movement et du repos deduites d'un principe meta physique;' reproduced in vol V of the collection of Euler's works, "Leonhard Euleri Opera Omnia'' (Lausanne 1957), p. 294. 4. Ibid. 5. Ibid. p.298. 6. This conclusion, however, may be qualified by the fact that, as discovered by Hamilton, under certain circumstances there is a maximum of action, and in general only an extreme, or, as he calls it, "stationary" value of action is required. 7. Knowledge of energy relations may be seen to be implicit in this statement, even though all that seems necessary is something which determines velocity as a function of height alone. 8. Actually it is the same 1:MU 2 that is minimized for all masses M, M', etc., and deviations, U, U', etc., the square serving to make all quantities positive. Carnot's manipulation of these fictitious quatities, U and U', etc., derives directly from the mechanics of d'Alembert, who used them largely to avoid what he saw as the too metaphysical concept of "force." Carnot's own impatience with metaphysics may also have its source here. 9. It is, however, a true minimum principle, unlike the first one. 10. The name "Principle of Least Constraint;' or "Prinzip der kleinstel); Zwange;' comes from the mathematician Gauss (cf. his paper, "Uber ein neues allgemeines Grundgetsetz der Mechanik;' pp. 25-28 in "Werke," Bd. 5 (G6ttingen 1877). Whether or not Gauss knew ofCarnot's work might be worth investigating. The latter, however, explicitly recognized the beauty of this principle even without such an appropriate name. After rigorously deriving the principle from Newton's laws, Gauss remarked on the curious coincidence of its having the same mathematical form as the important statistical law of least squares, of which he was the author: was the same natural law appearing in two different guises? 11. He did, for example, mercilessly extirpate such potential anarchists as Babeuf. 12. Carnot, however, carefully avoided the logical fallacies of J.un:d.j3ucw; ei~ liAA.o yEvo<; and infinite regress involved in any assumption that the will or desires were essentially mechanical. Thus he says in his "Principes" (§73): ''Je rCpeterai d'abord, qu'il ne s'agit point ici des causes premiCres qui font na'itre le mouvement dans les corps, mais seulement du mouvement dCj.3. produit et inherent a chacun d'eux." 13. The descent of a yoyo is the true limiting case of a body rolling down in increasingly vertical plane. 14. I do not know of any statement by Carnot expressly concerning atoms. However, the following assertion in his "Essai" (par. XLVII) about fluids could hardly have been made by anyone committed to a merely finite division of material in the world: "On peux regarder un fluide comme l'assemlage d'une infinite de corpuscules solides, detaches Jes uns des autres ~· His definition of "fluid" in the "Principes" (§12) is a little more cautious: "Les fluides sont ceux qui se trouvent divisCs en parties si fines, qu'elles echappent a tousles sens aides des meilleurcs instrumens. Tels sont l'eau, l'air. Un fluide parfait seroit la limite vers Iaquelle tendent tous ces fluidcs a mesure que Ia tenuitC des particules est plus complCt. On ignore s'il existe un pareil fluide." 15. But lest I carry this analogy too far, I refuse to assert that just as the engineer may see his task as preventing the loss of "living force" as long as possible, so should Socrates seek to stay alive at all costs. 16. Not necessarily a purely egalitarian republic: individual mass is a factor in the calculation of constraint. 17. Consider, for example, Napoleon's opinion that Carnot was "easily deceived" simply because, as construed by Louis Madelin in his "The French Revolution," he desired to bring order out of chaos. (Heinemann English ed., p. 490) 18. Fifteenth letter of Friedrich Schiller's "On the Aesthetic Education of Man." (Ungar English ed., p. 80) 39 �Between Plato and Descartes The Mediaevel Transformation Ontological Status of the Ideas • In James Mensch I E ven the most casual reader of philosophy senses the abyss that separates Descartes from Plato. In Descartes a concern for certainty overshadows and, in fact, transforms the original Platonic conception of philosophy. Such a conception, as exemplified by the figure of Socrates, involves fundamentally a love of wisdom. Wisdom- ao<pia- is not the same as certainty. That which I can be certain of does no I> necessarily make me wise (see Phaedo, 98 b ff.) We can mark out the difference between Plato and Descartes in terms of two constrasting pairs of terms: trust and opinion for Plato, doubt and certainty for Descartes. Plato describes our attitude to the visible realm as one of trust -rr(cr~u; (see Republic, 511 e). Descartes begins his Meditations by doubting his perceptions. For Plato, the examination of opinion is a necessary first step in the philosophical ascent to the highest things. He depicts Socrates as enquiring into the opinions of the most various sorts of men. There is in Socrates a certain trust in the existence of "true" or "right" opinions. At times, such opinions can become "hypotheses"; they can become stepping stones leading to "what is free from hypothesis" (Republic, 511 b). For Descartes, precisely the opposite attitude is assumed. Because of his lack of such trust, he begins his Meditations by withdrawing from the company of men and systematically doubting every opinion he has hitherto accepted on trust. His position is summed up by the statement: "... reason already persuades me that James Mensch is author of a recently published book on The Question of Being in Husser/'s Logical Investigations. He is an alumnus of St. John's College, Annapolis. 40 I ought no less carefully to withhold my assent from matters which are not entirely certain and indubitable than from those which appear to me manifestly to be false .. :' ("Meditation I;' Philosophical works of Descartes, trans. E. Haldane and G. Ross, New York, 1955, p. 145). This lack of assent, of qualified trust, reveals the transformation that philosophy undergoes in Descartes' hands. It is a transformation of philosophy from a love of wisdom to a love of certainty. Certainty, even if it concerns what is apparently trivial, becomes the philosopher's goal. Here, we may observe that the certainty Descartes pursues has an absolute, almost mathematical character. His assent will only be given to matters "entirely certain and indubitable." This is a sign that certainty has, indeed, become the object of Descartes' philosophical love. What a philosopher loves and, hence, pursues must, in Descartes' eyes, be something absolute; nothing less than absolute certainty will satisfy Descartes. How did this transformation occur? Our thesis is that it is a result of a transformation in the minds of philosophers of what it means for an idea or eloo<; to be. More precisely put, it is the result of a transformation, occurring in the Middle Ages, in the philosophical notion of the ontological status of the idea. Because of this transformation, doubt replaces trust in our perceptions. In the consequent shifting world of doubt, certainty becomes the necessary object of both the beginnings and final end of our philosophical enquiries. II B efore we present the historical evidence for our thesis, we must be clear on what is meant by our term, ontological status. The term signifies "status of being:' An entity can be said to have the status of a merely possible being. Alternately, it can be said to have SPRING 1984 �the status of an actual existent. Here, we must note that the question of the content of a being-the question of its essence or "whatness'!_ is a question distinct from that of its ontological status. Whether something is, i.e., whether it is actual or merely a possible existent- is not answered by giving a concept delineating what the entity is. As Thomas Aquinas puts this: "I can know what a man or a phoenix is and still be ignorant whether it exists in reality" (De Ente et Essentia, ch. 4, ed. Roland-Gosselin, Kain, Belgium, 1926, p. 34 ). Kant expresses the same point by writing, '''Being' is obviously not a real predicate; that is, it is not a concept of something which could be added to the concept of a thing'' (Kitrik d. r. V, B 636). If it were a real predicate, i.e., part of the concept of a thing, then from knowing the what, I could know the whether- i.e., whether the concept refers to an actual or a merely possible existent. That this is not the case is shown by the fact that there is not the least difference in content between the thought of a possible existent and the conception that arises from its actual presence. As Kant observes, the thought of a hundred possible thalers contains the same amount of coins as a hundred actual thalers (see Kritik d. r. V, B 637). It is because of this that loans can be repaid, or, more generally, that what we think of as merely possible can be encountered and recognized in reality. If being did make a conceptual difference, if it was something "added to the concept of a thing," then when I was actually repaid, I would reply, "This is not what I had in mind when I thought of the possibility of repayment:' The distinction we have given has a technical name. It is called "the distinction between being and essence." "Essence;' as Aquinas says, "is what the definition of a thing signifies" (De Ente et Essentia, ch. 2, ed. cit., p. 7). It is the content of an idea, the idea, e.g., of a man or a phoenix as delineated by its definition. Being, as distinct from essence, refers to ontological status. Admitting this distinction between being and essence, we must also admit that what is defined conceptually is not specified according to its mode of being. The question of its ontological status, the question concerning the actual or merely possible being of what is defined, is not answered through its definition. This point applies directly to our thesis about the ideas. It does so because the ideas, considered simply in themselves, are the same as essences. An essence, as we said, is the content of an idea. An idea, however, is just its own content and nothing more. It is, we can say, a pure conceptual unit. It is such by virtue of the fact that it is, in itself, simply the conceptual content which a definition delineates. Given the fact that idea and essence denote the same thing, what we said about the essence applies to the idea. The latter, too, is necessarily silent on the question of being. Otherwise put: no examination of an idea as it is in itself- i.e., as a pure conceptual unit- can answer the question of actual versus possible being. This silence on the question of being, based as it is on the very nature of the idea, is absolutely general. ST. JOHN'S REVIEW It, thus, applies to the question of the idea's own ontological status. If we attempt to answer it by considering the conceptual content that is the idea, we are always free to answer it in two possible ways. We are free to give the idea the ontological status of a possibility or an actuality. III T he history of philosophy gives ample evidence of this freedom. For the moderns, the idea has the ontological status of a possibility. To illustrate this, we shall take three prominent figures: Kant, Whitehead and Husser!. According to Kant, every conception that the understanding itself grasps is grasped under the aspect of possibility (see "Kritik d. U rtheilskraft;' Kanis Werke, Berlin, 1968, v, 402). For very different reasons, Whitehead concurs. Ideas or essences are "eternal objects?' But, as he says, "... the metaphysical status of an eternal object is that of a possibility for an actuality . . . actualization is a selection amongst possibilities" (Science and the Modern World, New York, 1974, p. 144 ). Husser!, who would not at all be found in Whitehead's camp, agrees on this one point: possibility and essentiality are the same. The reason he gives for this is that the being of an idea is the being of an ideal or pure possibility (see Logische Untersuchungen, 5th ed., Tuebingen, 1968, I, 129, 240, II/1, 115, II/2, 103). Such examples could be multiplied. In modern times, the idea is universally given the status of a possibility: an empirically grounded possibility for the empiricists, an ideal or "puren possibility for the idealists. In neither case are ideas considered to be actualities. For Plato, however, this was just what the ideas or dol] were when he introduced them into philosophical discourse. He names them oUaia which is taken from the participle of the verb to be, etV<ll. A corresponding root is found in the word essence, in Latin, essentia. The root esse means in Latin to be. To call something oUaia or essentia was to say that it actually is. It has what is signified by the verb to be. The same point can be made by looking at the divided line (see Republic, 509 d-511 e). In a proportion involving the ratio between reality and image, the ideas are at the top. They are supremely real. They possess oucriu in the highest degree. One of the ways to see why this is so is to look at Parmenides' statement: TO yUp o.lYrO voEiv Eanv 'tE Ko.i dvo.t. We can translate this as "the same thing exists for thinking and being;' and take this to mean: "the same thing can be thought as can be." 1 So understood, we have a statement of logical equivalence: thinkability implies being and being implies thinkability. Now, whether or not this understanding agrees with Parmenides' original intention, it does yield a notion that for Plato is crucial for the status of the ideas. This is that thinkability and being pertain to the same thing. More precisely expressed, that which makes it possible for a thing to be also makes it possible for it to be thinkable. The com- 41 �mon ground of these possibilities is self-identity or selfsameness. This self-identity will turn out to be a mysterious quality. For the moment, hoWever, we may define it as the quality of something remai11ing the same with itself. · That such a quality is at the root of being is affirmed by Plato when he writes that "the very being of to be"the (w-rit f} oi'Jaia -roU dvat- is to be "always in the same manner in relation to the same things!' As Plato explains, this is to be "unchanging" and, thus, to remain the same with oneself. The ideas, "beauty itself, equality itself, and or self-sameness. This self-identity is, we observe, what allows us to take the divided line and see it as a hierarchy of beings with the ideas at the top. Levels of being could not be ordered and ranked if there were not a single standard of being by which to measure them. This, for Plato, is the self-sameness which images, things, mathematical objects and ideas respectively possess to a more and more perfect degree. IV every itself' are called "being'!...... 'tO Ov- and this, because they "do not admit of any change whatsoever" (Phaedo, 78 d). Platds position follows from Parmenides' statement and an analysis of what change means. Its fundamental intuition is that change is always change of something. This something is an underlying self-identity. The consequence is that real loss of self-identity is not change. It is rather annihilation pure and simple of the individual. Now, the presence of self-identity not only makes possible the persistent being in time of the individual, it also makes possible the predication of an idea of this individual. If change negated all self-identity, then nothing in our changing world could have any intelligible name or sense. Let us take an example: a person proceeding from a newborn baby to extreme old age. It is the presence of some self-identical element in this process that allows us to predicate the idea "human" of this individual. When the person dies, this is no longer possible. What answers to the concept "human" is no longer there. The point is that self-identity is required both for being and being thought. What is not self-identical cannot be thought and cannot be. A number of consequences follow from this reasoning. The first is that the ability to recognize being and the ability to predicate an idea of a thing always occur together. They must, if they are both based on the apprehension of an underlying self-identity. Given that predicating an idea of a thing is the same as the recognition of the thing as intelligible, "being" and "intelligibility" must be understood as co-extensive terms. One cannot ascribe the one without ascribing the other; whatever has a share in being must also have a share in intelligibility. Now, participation- !J.E'tEXEtV- means literally "having a share in." It, thus, follows that participation must be understood as participation in both being and intelligibility. We can put this in terms of the Platonic doctrine that a thing is intelligible by virtue of its participating in its idea. The idea itself is the conceptual expression of the self-identity that Plato calls the oucriu of to be. Thus, one can also say that a thing has being by virtue of its participating in its idea-i.e., participating in the self-identity that the idea expresses in terms of an unchanging concept. From this it follows that participation demands a single notion of being, one common to both the thing and its idea. A thing could not possess its being by virtue of its participation in its idea if both did not exist by virtue of the same oucriu of to be. This is self-identity 42 H ow does the transformation between Plato and the moderns occur? How do the ideas, from being understood as pure actualities-i.e., entities capable of being called 16 ov- become for the moderns expressions of possibility? From a philosophical standpoint, the answer to this question has already been indicated. Our paper's position is that self-identity is not a sure criterion of being. In particular, it does not point to the actual as opposed to the merely possible. The reason for this is that, like any other conceptual content, self-identity is part of the essential determination of a thing. As forming part of a thing's essence, it is silent on the question of the status of the being of a thing. Thus, to return to Kant's example, we can say that a possible entity-a hundred possible thalers-possess as much selfidentity as an actual identity. Granting this, we must admit that self-identity does not distinguish between the actual and the possible. An argument for the actuality of the ideas, which is based, like Plato's, on their selfidentity, is thUs bound to fail. Here, indeed, we can find the underlying reason for the ambiguity which, as we shall see, characterizes the use of the term "self identitY:' The concept per se is not ambiguous, its meaning being simply sameness with self. It becomes ambiguous when we attempt to make it into a criterion of being, something which no concept is fitted to do. For Plato, the attempt to make self-identity a standard of being arises in connection with his doctrine of participation. As we have seen, entities have being to the point that they participate-or have a share-in selfidentity. How are we to understand the self-identity which is to be shared in? We cannot understand it as simple identity with self. That which shares with another its identity with self would either absorb the other into its own identity or else lose itself in the identity of the other. Thus, if the ideas and things are related by virtue of their sharing in self-identity, either the idea would absorb the thing or vice versa. A similar difficulty arises when we take self-identity as the quality of being one. Is the oneness to be referred to the oneness of a thing or to the oneness of the idea? The Parmenides shows Platds awareness of the difficulty we are pointing to. He has Parmenides ask Socrates whether "... the whole idea is one and yet, being one, is in each of the many" (Farm., 131 a, Jowett trans.). Socrates agrees that this is his meaning and further agrees SPRING 1984 �that things must participate either in the whole of an idea or in a part of it. Both, however, seem to be impossible. Participation by parts would make the ideas divisible by parts. It would also make us say that we can predicate "part" of an idea of a thing. Such notions are strictly speaking unintelligible. Ideas, which are not material things, are not materially divisible. But neither are they conceptually divisible. A simple idea cannot be conceptually divided. As it has no parts, part of it cannot be predicated of a thing. A complex idea, so divided, would become a different idea. Here, the notion of the idea as maintaining its self-identity by virtue of its unity precludes all division. If, however, we say that the whole of the idea is participated in, we still cannot maintain the necessary oneness of the idea. If individuals participate in the whole of the idea, then, according to Parrnenides, "one and the same thing will exist as a whole at the same time in many different individuals and therefore will be in a state of separation from itself' (Ibid., 131 b). Self-separation seems the opposite of self-identity when we understand this latter as the quality of being one. To be as a whole in many is to be many rather than being one. As is obvious, at the basis of Parmenides' dialectic is the ambiguity of the meaning of being one. There is being one in the sense that an idea or concept is one; there is also being one in the sense that an individual thing is one. If, with Plato, we understand participation in terms of a single notion of being, one common to both the thing and the idea, then we are faced with the problem of trying to put together these two different ways of being one. This, of course, is the famous problem of the universals. It is: How can the idea or species be present in the individuals, or how can the single individuals share in the unity of the species? The endless debate on the question is actually about the notion of being. Both sides agree that the very being of to be is being one, but disagree on what this last means. If to be means to be one thing, then the ideas, which only have conceptual unity, are not. They are nothing but "common names" produced by habit, circles of association, historical processes- the list is endless. An illegitimate child who is not owned up puts everybody under the suspicion of parentage. If we reverse this and say that to be means to be a conceptual unity, then the same fate befalls individual things. What a thing is, its form or common nature, is what is. In itself, in its own individual unity, the thing is not. Both solutions are obviously one-sided. For just as our senses convince us that there are individual things, so without conceptual unities we would have no specifically human mental life. The debate points out a problem, but it does not per se give a solution. When, in the Middle Ages, a solution does arise, it occurs by virtue of a transformation of the ontological status of the idea. The context of this solution is set by Aristotle. More specifically, it is set by his denial that ideas or essences exist in themselves as opposed to being either in the mind or in objects (see ST. JOHN'S REVIEW Metaphysics, 991 b, 1-3, 1039 a, 24 ff.). For his medieval followers, this denial of the self-subsistent idea or essence does not solve the problem of the universals. The denial leaves intact the two notions of being on which the problem revolves. The facts of predication show this. What is predicated is the idea in the mind. Viewed in terms of the activity of predication, the idea has the characteristic of universality. As engaged in the individual object, however, the idea has the characteristic of singularity. Thus, we do not predicate the "humanity" of Socrates or Plato. The "humanity" of Socrates is part of his individuality. It is an informing form that makes him into a definite individual- i.e., into what Aristotle calls a "primary substance." We do, however, predicate the idea of humanity, which is present in our mind, of both Socrates and Plato. It has the characteristic of universality; that is, the character of one thing being applicable to many. How is this possible? How do we recognize that the ·humanity of a sensibly perceived singular is the same as the intellect's universal idea of humanity? his is the question Avicenna, and eleventh century Persian philosopher, asked himself. His answer is that such recognition is possible only by abstracting the idea or essence from both forms of being one. The unity of a universal and the unity of an individual must both be seen as accidental to the essence considered in itself. Without such an understanding, predication is impossible. Let us quote Avicenna on the essence "animal": T 'Animal' is the same thing whether it be sensible or a concept in the mind. In itself, it is neither universal nor singular. If it were in itself universal so that animality were universal from the bare fact of being animality, the consequence would be that no animal would be a singular, but every animal would be a universal. If, however, animal qua animal were singular, it would be impossible for there to be more than one singular, namely the very singular to which animality belongs, and it would be impossible for any other singular to be an animal (Logica, Venice, 1508, III, fol. 12 r, col. 1). Avicenna is here arguing that we cannot explain predication by identifying the essence either with the universality of the concept or the singularity of the thing. Predication requires both the thing and the concept, and they must be brought together through an essence that is recognizably present in each. If this is the case, then Avicenna's conclusion apparently follows. It is that we conceive something "accidental" to animality when beyond its bare content we think of it as singular or universal (see Ibid., see also Avicenna, Metaphysica, Venice, 1508, V, fol. 86 v, cols. 1-2). Avicenna's position is in some sense a return to Plato; but it is a return that transforms Platds original conception. Plato has Parmenides ask: "In the first place, I think, 43 �Socrates, that you, or anyone else who maintains the existence of absolute essences, will admit that they cannot exist in us?" To which Socrates replies: "No, for then they would not be absolute" (Parmenides, 133 c, trans. Jowett). Now, it seems to be part of the logic :of the notions that make up Platds thought they they are incapable of being absorbed in incompatible philosophical systems. They have, in other words, a certain resistance to their being misunderstood. This resistance is evident here. Attempting to follow Aristotle, Avicenna begins with the position that essences are either in the mind or in things. But then he examines predication, and the logic of the notion of an essence compels him to say that essences cannot be identified either with being in the mind or being in things. In themselves, absolutely considered, they are, as Avicenna shows in the passage quoted above, in neither. Yet the very way in which Avicenna affirms this exhibits the transformation he has wrought on Platds essence. It is a transformation of the criterion of being which underlies Plato's notion of participation. The problem with this criterion in Avicenna's eyes is its equation of being and being one. How can we understand oneness with respect to the ideas? How can an idea or essence be-that is, be one-in many individuals, each of which is also called one? Avicenna's answer is to split the category of being by asserting that to be does not necessarily mean to be one. Let us restate this. If asked how the idea can be one and yet, being one, be in each of the many individuals, Avicenna would reply that it is precisely because unity is accidental to the being of an idea that its being in the many does not prejudice the idea's own inherent being. To make the idea one is to make it present either in the mind or in things. It is to make it either an idea in the mind which is predicable of many or an individual which is a subject of predica· tion but not itself predicable of another. Both forms of being one are accidental to it as it is in itself. In itself, it represents a form of being which is other than predicable notion or physical object. Itself neither, it has the possibility of being either. In other words, from the point of view of mental notion or physical thing, it is just this possibility of being either and nothing more. Its on· tological status is simply that of a possibility. The transformation that Avicenna has worked on Platds original position can be indicated by noting the following. For Plato, participation is based on a single notion of being. As a consequence, participation in an idea is also participation in being. For Avicenna, this is not the case. The essence, insofar as it lacks unity, has not the same being which an individual entity has. Thus, participation in an essence does not mean participation in actuality. How could it if the essence, instead of being supremely actual, represents only a possibility? In fact, for Avicenna, the function of sharing being is taken over by God, the only necessary being. Things cannot become actual by participating in their essence, since essence has, for Avicenna, no inherent status of actuality. We need a further step to come to the modern no- 44 tion of an essence or idea. Once again it can be looked upon -at least in a superficial way-as an attempt to return to Plato. This return attempts to restore to the essence some notion of unity. hile Avicenna's influence was spreading through the Arab world, the Latin West was independently developing a doctrine of the transcendent properties of being. These are the properties of being irrespective of where it is found. There are a number of these properties, but we need only mention one: unity. The doctrine taught that being and unity are co-extensive properties. Where being is present, unity is present. To the point that being is lacking, there is a corresponding lack of unity. 2 When Avicenna entered the West with his assertion that an essence had being but not unity, only two alternatives seemed possible to those who thought being and unity were co-extensive. They could accept Avicenna's denial of the unity of an essence, but reject his teaching on the proper being of an essence. Alternately, they could accept his assertion that an essence has a proper being, and reject his doctrine that unity does not apply to essence as such. 3 The first course was followed by Aquinas who writes that essence, considered in itself, abstracts from "any being whatsoever" (De Ente et Essentia, cap. 3, ed. cit., p. 26). In other words, lacking unity, it must, in itself, lack being. This is part of what Aquinas means when he writes that essence and being are "really distinct!' The famous defense of this distinction is the treatise, On Being and Essence. The second course was taken by Scotus. Scotus agrees with Avicenna that essences have a proper being. He thus argues against Aquinas's attempt to conceive of essence apart from being (see Opus Oxoniense, lib. IV, d. 11, q. 3, n. 46, Vives ed., Paris, 1891-5). He also asserts that essences do have a unity- not the unity of a mental idea or a physical thing- but something slightly less than this called minor unity. 4 This unity corresponds to Avicenna's being of an essence. Such unity is demanded by the fact that the essence in the individual perceived through sensation and the essence in the mind's universal notion is, in fact, one and the same essence. How does Scotus know that it is the same essence? The answer can be drawn from the elements of Scotus's position. The first of these is that essence in itself does not express reality, this last being understood as a mental idea or extramental thing. It expresses only the possibility of a reality. Its ontological status- i.e., the status of its being- is that of a possibility (See Op. Ox., ed. cit., lib. I, d. 2, q. 1, n. 56). The second is that the examination of this possibility is the examination of the essences's "minor unity;" This means, for Scotus, the terms which make up the definition of an essence must not be contradictory. They must be compatible, that is, be capable offorming a unity. The insight here is that without this capability, the essence defined by these terms cannot be instantiated as a unity either in the mind or in W SPRING 1984 �things. It cannot be so instantiated in the mind, for as Scotus observes, contradictories cannot be thought of as single notions (see Op. Ox., lib. I, d 2, q. 1 in Duns Scotus, Philosophical Writings, ed. A. Wolter, London, 1963, p. 73). This applies to analytical contradictions such as "p and not-p:' It also applies to synthetic contradictions such as the concept of a red tone. In such a case, the notions are so "distant" from each other that neither determines the other. If we leave the notion of figure out of account, color and tonality can only be thought of as separate, unrelated notions. The same criteria of compatibility apply to instantiation in things. To say "this one" in the sensible world implies that there is a subject of predication there. It presupposes that the predicates we express are unifiable in this subject. Otherwise, there would not be one but two subjects of predication there. A further element in Scotus's positiOn is that we never leave the field of being when we talk about an essence. There is a being of an essence; in fact, there is an existence of an essence. Essences themselves are only possibles; but as Lychetus, Scotus's authorized commentator, remarks: "It is simply contradictory for any essence to have its being of a possible and not to have its existence of a being of a possible" (Op. Ox., ed. Vives, lib. II, d. 3, q. 1, n. 7). In other words, since essences have being, they also have existence. For Scotus, this means that degrees of existence follow upon degrees of essence (see Op. Ox., ed. Vives, lib. II, d. 3, q. 3, n. 1). We can illustrate this by an example: the person of Socrates. We start out with the most general essence we can think of, that of thinghood or substance. We now begin to specify this essence, idding successively the predicates, living, animal, two-legged, rational, capable of laughter, in Athens, engaged in dialectic, snub-nosed, etc. The essence, as it is further specified, gradually narrows and makes more definite its unity. The possibility corresponding to its unity becomes more defined. The possibility of a rational animal living in Athens is not the possibility ofthinghood in general. Now, the ultimate determination is, of course, one of singularity, in this case, the numerical singularity of an individual thing. When we reach it, then according to Scotus, we have an existence corresponding to this grade of determination. We have the actual existence of an individual man. This view can be summed up by saying that all individual existents are completely full essences. They are specified down to the here and now of their being. Let us make a comparison. If we say that such essential determinations must take account of every element of a person's life and, in this, also his relations to all other actual existents, we shall be able to see the monads of Leibniz peeping over Scotus's shoulder. Such monads also owe their actual existence to the fullness of their essence (see Discourse an Metaphysics, XIII). H ere, it would be helpful to mention Scotus's proof for existence of God. It involves a redefinition of Anselm's formula for God. In Scotus's ver- ST. JOHN'S REVIEW sion, it runs: "God is that without contradition than which a greater cannot be conceived without contradition" (Duns Scotus, Phil. Wr., ed. cit., p. 73). The addition of the words, "without contradition;' points to the fact that Scotus's attention is on the essence of God. Since essences are possibles, to demonstrate an essence is to demonstrate a possibility. But, as we said, the basis of essential possibility is minor unity. This is the same as the absence of self-contradition. Thus, according to Scotus, what one has to first demonstrate is that the essence of God '!wn cantradicit entitatt!....._ i.e., "does not contradict entityness." This phrase is typical for Scotus. Less literally translated, it means "does not contradict that which every entity must be in order to be." This, for Scotus, is being compatible with self. Every entity must have compatible attributes if it is to be. Thus, the major part of Scotus's argumentation is directed towards showing that God, as Christians conceive him -as causally active, as intelligent, as willing, as infinite and perfect, but especially as the first or highest- is, in fact, a compatible essence. This means, for example, demonstrating that the notion of causality is compatible with that of a first cause. It means demonstrating that the notion of perfection is compatible with the notion of a highest or first degree of perfec- . tion (see Duns Scotus, Phil. Wr., ed. cit., pp. 39-45, 48-9). All of these demonstrations, if we grant them, prove that God is possible as an essence. But what about the proof that he is an actual existent, that he is a numerical singular? To demonstrate this, we have to establish that he is unique. This is because the grade of actual existence corresponds to that of an essence specified down to the uniqueness and singularity of an actual individual. To manage this step of the proof, Scotus points out that the notion of a first in the order of causality-as well as in the orders of perfection, will, intelligence, and so forthcan only involve the same unique singular. The notion of two firsts, as he argues, is simply contradictory. It is, for example, contradictory to conceive of more than one being which, at first, is defined as the necessary and sufficient cause of the world's existence. If there were more than one, neither cause, by itself, would be a sufficient cause. The result of such arguments is the assertion that if God is possible, he must necessarily be an actual existent. This follows because God's notion specifies in the order of possibility a unique singular. His essence includes his actual existence, for it is an essence which is only possible as that of unique existent. There are a number of ways Scotus makes this point. For example, he notes that a first cause is essentially possible only as an actual existent. It is, he argues contradictory to the notion of a first cause of existence, to receive its actual existence from some other cause. Thus, if it is, indeed, possible for a first cause to exist, it must actually exist of itself. The possibility of its existence, however, has already been demonstrated by Scotus's arguments showing that the essence of a unique first cause is a compatible essence. As a consequence, we must say that a first cause does, indeed, actually exist of itself. It 45 �is an actually existent entity (see Duns Scotus, Phil. Wr., ed. cit., p. 46). A similar argument, is made about God as the measure of perfectiOn. Whatever else we might think about this proof, we should keep an essential point in mind. It only works for God. In other words, since nothing else is first, nothing else can be proved to be unique and, therefore, actual by this method. We can express this by saying that God is a deductive singular. From this notion as a first, we deduce he can only be as an actual singular. All other beings, like our example of Socrates, are singular inductively. They are' singular by the inductive addition of conceptual formal note to conceptual formal note, each further conceptual determination working to further specify the essence in question. What happens when we say that such "notes" or specific differences are infmite in number, that they comprehend the specification of the relations of our finite being to every other finite being? If we believe this, then Leibniz's God is capable of seeing in our essence the necessity of our actual existence. But we, with our limited understandings, are not. In other words, for us, every actual existent other than God is, in terms of its conceptual essence, essentially unprovable. The conclusion follows from our adoption of Scotus's metaphysics. The result of this metaphysics is ultimately to collapse being and essence together. In Scotus's words, "It is simply false that being is other than essence" (Op. Ox., ed. Vives, lib. IV, d. 11, q. 3, n. 46). Granting this, the proof of a being is also the proof of an essence. Thus, if we say that a finite being has an infinite number of specifying differences in its essence, then a proof of its actual being, as based on the examination of its essence, is a proof necessarily involving this infinity. It requires the demonstration of the compatibility of an infinite number of formal notes. Such a demonstration is impossible for a finite mind. What we are saying, then, is that in terms of our limited, human conceptions of individual beings, we never cross the boundary between possibility and actuality. This is because we can never inductively specify an entity down to this one thing, to an actually existing unique singular. We mention this to point out the transformation which Scotus has worked on the original Parmenidean equation between conceivability and actual being, vo&iv and dvat. The equation no longer involves, as it did for Plato, the identification of a limited number of underlying, self-identical elements. v L et us now return to Descartes. In his Meditations) Decartes doubts the world and then finds it necessary first to prove God in order to assure himself of the existence, say, of his ink pot. Why begin with God rather than the inkpot? The procedure is in some sense intelligible if we take into account the philosophical world into which Descartes was hom. As a number of historians 46 have pointed out, the decisive influence in this world was ultimately that of Scotus. 5 The influence of Scotus can be seen by comparing Descartes' proof for the existence of God with Scotus's original. The former is actually a truncated version of the latter. The reason why Descartes must begin with God's existence is, thus, at least historically clear. In the order of demonstration, God's existence comes first, since it is, in fact, the only existence which we can in this tradition demonstrate. What about Cartesian doubt? There are, as we maintained at the beginning, two sides to this doubt: doubt of perception and doubt of opinion. Both, we claim, can be traced to the transformation in the ontological status of the idea. Let us consider, first, the value Descartes places on opinion. As indicated above, the transformation implies that every essential predication we can make about the world only grasps its objects under the aspect of possibility. In other words, the subject of our discourse, insofar as our discourse is concerned, is only a possibility. It is an essence which we can only incompletely specify. For all our talk, in terms of our statements' essential content, the object we are talking about may or may not actually be. The implication is that our statements, considered in themselves, express what may be called mere opinion. By this, we mean that they have no inherent claim to be "true" or "right:' Because of this, their examination is not, as Plato thought, a necessary first step for philosophical enquiry. Since they are, in their essential content, inherently capable of expressing an actual reality, they must, as Descartes believes, be, one and all, doubted. What about a direct perception of the object? Plato, as we said, associates the realm of the directly perceivable with the attitude of trust. Trust, as opposed to certitude, is all that we can have if we remain on the level of direct (or sensuous) perception. On this level, we cannot confirm a perception except through a further perception, and so we have ultimately to trust our perceptions. Between this trust and the Cartesian doubt of perception, there also lies the change in the status of the idea. The idea, for Plato, is etymologically and philosophically tied to perception. The Platonic term for the idea, ei8o<;, is taken from sicSm, which means '(to perceive!' The philosophical link between the two appears when we take the ideas we garner from our perceptions of the world as the highest expressions of actuality. If we take the ideas as supremely actual, we are inclined to trust rather than to doubt our perceptions; for then we say that our ideas are and that their images, the directly perceivable things, also are. The relation here is that of actuality to image as given by the divided line. For Plato, given that the ideas are, the directly perceivable thingswhich, as images, are dependent on the ideas- must also be. This philosophical position is, of course, completely undermined once we say that the ideas have the ontological status of possibilities, i.e., that they express the SPRING 1984 �fact that what sensibly instantiates them may or may not be. At this point, they cannot provide a philosophical basis for a belief in the existence of sensible things. Trust, therefore, turns to doubt, and like Descar:tes we must turn to the benevolence of God to assure us of the world we once took for granted. A sign of the new character of this doubt is the fact that this benevolence itself becomes an object of proof rather than a matter of direct perception. In the absence of any proof to the contrary, it is, for Descartes, possible that God may be an evil, deceiving genius. Here we may remark that the direct experience of God's benevolence is grace. That grace could be considered a matter of demonstration is the surest sign that the modern age has been entered. 6 Was this transition to modernity necessary? Was it necessary for us, with Descartes, to enter an age in which we attempt to demonstrate matters which we formerly took on trust or faith? Given that the whole of the history we have recounted turns on the failure to distinguish being and essence, we cannot say this. What we can say is that the question of being, of that which, as Parmenides says, "is and cannot not-be;' still remains open. ST. JOHN'S REVIEW Footnotes 1. Both translations are given in 77le Presocratic Philosophers, trans. and ed., G. S. Kirk and]. E. Raven, Cambridge, England, 1966, p. 269. The first takes the infinitives voetv and d:vm as infinitives of purpose. 2. This is the doctrine of the Book concerning Unity by the 12 c. philosopher and translator, Gundissalinus. See Die dem Boethius folschlich zugeschriebene Abhandlung des Dominicus Gudissalinus De unitate, ed. P. Correns, MUnster i. W., 1891, p. 3. 3. See Joseph Owens, "Common Nature: A Point of Comparison Between Thomistic and Scotistic Metaphysics;' Mediaeval Studies, XIX (1957), 4. 4. See Owens, pp. 8-9. 5. As Gilson points out, Scotus influenced Descartes, not directly, but through Suarez's work, the Metaphysicae Disputationes. See Etienne Gilson, Being and Some Philosophers, 2nd cd., Toronto, 1952, pp. 106, 109. 6. By way of contrast, we may observe that for Aquinas grace is emphatically not a matter of demonstration. See the Summa Theologica, I-II, q. 112, a.5. 47 �Looking Together in Athens: The Dionysian Tragedy and Festival Mera J. Flaumenhaft L ooking at The Bacchae, we do not see all that Euripides once meant to show, for the text is incomplete. How is it that, just as we come to the most terrible parts, after Agave has ex- hibited the dismembered corpse of her son and invited the Chorus to eat of the feast, how is it that just here so much of the text is lost to us? Scholars speculate about torn manuscripts and they scour ancient citations, hoping to recover missing lines. Editors labor to piece together sections from a twelfth century play called Christus Patiens, parts of which are cribbed from The Bacchae. But we who read the play, or watch it in the theatre, realize, as we approach the end, that we can hardly bear to look, hardly bear to hear. What The Bacchae shows is obscene; what it says is unspeakable. Nevertheless, we feel compelled to see what it shows, to say what it means. This essay is a suggestion about a kind of poetic justice. Might the mangled corpse have resulted in a mangled text because, once the situation in which it was originally confronted was gone, there was no way to face such things? Dionysus may be unapproachable outside the Athenian theatre of Dionysus, and perhaps such spectacles should not be watched except in circumstances like those for which they were intended. The restored text has been brought to life in the theatre. Modern technology broadcasts the Greek drama to our living rooms and flies us to Athens in attempts to reproduce the original context. But viewed alone at home, or watched in the company of strangers, the play must have A tutor at St. John's College in Annapolis, Mcra Flaumenhaft has published articles about Shakespeare, Machiavelli, and Homer. An earlier version of this essay was delivered as a formal lecture in Annapolis on September 23, 1983. 48 an effect thoroughly different from the one it had in an Athenian festival two thousand years ago. The Bacchae, like other Greek tragedies, is about, among other things, looking together. While raising questions about Dionysus and the ordered, everyday life he disrupts, the play suggests further questions about the place oflooking in civilized human life. How do human beings look at the world around them, at each other, and at themselves? Are there things that should never be looked upon, or should be viewed only in certain circumstances? Do rulers and ruled look differently when public policy is determined in different regimes? Is the looking of spectators in a theatre related by nature to Dionysus; and is a festival like the one which once surrounded the play essential to the proper effect of such looking? Let us look together, first at Euripides' depiction of Dionysus in Thebes, and then at the festival which celebrated Dionysus in Athens. PART ONE: The Dionysian Tragedy at Thebes acchus abolishes boundaries. This god shows up oblivious to the lines and limits which define ordinary human life. "Having changed his form" (morphen d'ameipsas) (4) from divine to human, he is simultaneously god and beast, male and female, terrible and gentle. The geographical sweep of the Prologue depicts his disregard for natural and conventional distinctions alike. Transcending mountains, rivers, and great seas, he has moved over a hugh diverse continent and made it one. Different races, languages, and even walled fortresses present no barriers. The coming resembles an itinerary for an army advancing from the east, but Dionysus' advent is an easy flow. The liquid sounds (lipon B SPRING 1984 �de Lydon) (13) indicate the ease with which he has come. Embraced by the already "mingled" (migasin) (18) Greeks and barbarians in Asia Minor, he returns to the "streams of Dirce and the waters of Ismenus-." His sudden appearances are not through doors or gates or passageways. Liquid himself, he slips in. For those touched by Dionysus, life ceases to be measured, articulated experience in place and time. The women who follow him are merely ''Asians." "Having passed from" (ameipsasa) (66) their origins, they forget their former distinct lives in their single-minded devotion to Bromius. They exhort others to follow them, to be "displaced" (ektopos) (69). The stung Theban women resisted at first but, now, they too are "all mingled together" (anamemeigmenai) (37). They have left enclosed houses in a walled city to dwell on 'unroofed" rocks on the open mountains. There the distinctions between human beings and the world around them are muted. The Bacchantes are not separated from the earth by walls, floors, and shoes. They've exchanged their shuttle sticks . for thyrsus sticks, and now weave with ivy vines and living snakes. They are compared to birds, colts, and fawns; instead of woven cloth they wear animal skins. Their fire is not an instrument of art or domination. It is not used for cooking, for forging tools, or for warmth against the snows of Cithaeron. Nor does it harm them. Rather, it flows from their rods, like lightning, a visible charge from the god who electrifies them. They throw themselves to the earth and sweet liquids spring up- not in rivers, springs, or wells, but wherever the earth is touched. The god's bounty is so great that even storage containers are unnecessary. When Bacchantes dance, the whole mountain ''bacchizes with'' (sunebacheu) (726) them. But this mountain is not properly their "place:' They speak of Crete, and yearn for Cypris, Paphos, and Pieria, as well. Furthermore, their holy places are peculiar in that their sense of the holy precludes place as it is ordinarily experienced by human beings. As a proseletyzing cult, Bacchism aims at universality. The god could be anywhere, anywhere one is not confined by the constrictions and constructions of civilized life. He'll move on when he's done with Thebes. To worship Bacchus is to be in touch-with earth, air, fire, water- but not with any particular place. He promises a literal u-topia: no house, no city, no defined home on earth. The Theban counterparts of these uprooted women tear up trees by the roots. The women who worship Bacchus "out of place" also live outside articulated human time. Neither natural nor conventional time punctuates their lives; they do not plan or wait. Unconcerned with time of year, they tend no crops or animals, and store no food or wine for the future. Their plants are ivy, bryony, and fir, ever-greens whose looks do not reflect seasonal cycles, but whose lavish growth is a continual show of powerful life within. The ivy and vines grow freely, ungoverned by a set form which they must reach to be themselves. The Bacchantes live apart from men, mingling without regard to age, and their lives are unmarked by ceremonies of birth, growth, ST. JOHN'S REVIEW or death. The fertility god of seasons makes his followers barren. They leave their own infants and nurse young animals. New devotees must be made in the streets of the cities which generate them. The Bacchantes chant the remembered story of Bacchus, but they have no story of their own. They do not look back together upon their own pasts or forward to their own futures. Once again, being in touch makes them deeply out of touch as well. Immersed in the present, they are at one moment fast asleep on the ground and then fully awake and upright, or, at one moment bloody from battle and immediately after, clean and refreshed, with no memory even of re-. cent experience. The ritual orgia ---!'works in service'~ of this god require little time-consuming preparation. There are no embroidered robes, no burnt offerings, no altar or hearth, no statues, no organized feasts. In short, where there is no ordinary sense of time, there can be no articulated festival time; where there are no days, there are no holidays. The Bacchic celebrants merge not only with the earth and other living things around them, but with the god himself. To revere Bacchus is to ''bacchize" (bakcheuo) or to "bacchize oneself' (katabakchioomai). The verb does not . take an accusative outside the subject. Instead of offering libations and food to a distant divinity, the followers of Dionysus drink him and eat him raw, ignoring even bodily boundaries to become one with him. Losing oneself in Dionysis is a reassertion of one's ties to the earth, but, at the same time, it is an attempt to assimilate oneself to the condition of the god. Dionysus needs no priest to mediate between· himself and his followers, no prophet to explain him: "the leader- exarchos- is Bromius" (140) himself. Anyone at anytime can be in touch with the god. hose who merge with the natural world and with Dionysus do so while merging with others. It's not surprising that the most willing followers of Dionysus are women, who are, perhaps, by nature most attached to and in touch with other human beings. To "bacchize" is to "thiasize the soul" (thiaseuetai psychan) (75). Like most Greek choruses, the women of the thiasos, the Bacchic band, speak in the singular: "I rush'' (thoazo) (66) and "I shall hymn" (hymneso) (72). But here the dramatic convention acquires special meaning as they are made one by their dress, slogans, and the dance. Individual heartbeats merge in the drumbeat, and ecstatic music moves them "outside themselves;' not to isolation, but to thorough communion. Even Cadmus and Tiresias feel it; they say they've forgotten they are old men. Feeling the same things, they slip into the dual (194) and share a line of iambic trimeter (189). They "clasp hands and together make a pair" (xunapte kai xunorizou chera) (198); in Greek, they ()oin the horizon." "Counting out no one" (diarithmon dbuden) (209), the god "has made no distinctions" (ou gar dierech') (206). As we soon see, the priest of Apollo and the founding father of Thebes never fully lose themselves in Dionysus. But the maenads on the mountain are thoroughly merged. In a vase painting T 49 �Dionysus faces two women, but it i~ difficult to tell which of the four bare feet and arms beJong to which. The thiasos distinguishes itself from hostile outsiders; left alone, it is a unit. The Messenger mentions three groups and the individuals around whom they gather, but the women don't attend much to the division. Within the thiasos there is no opposition or competition, in deed or in speech. Once again, articulation iS foreign to Dionysus. In contrast, the cattlebreeders and shepherds distinguish themselves from each other, as well as from an easytalking city-slicker, and from the mute domestic animals whom they again distinguish as young and mature heifers (737,739). Like most messengers in the tragedies, the Messenger from Cithaeron has looked with others. He speaks in the first person plural, reporting that the herders argued about what they saw: they "matched common reports with each other in strife" (715). But the Theban rnaenads, like the Asian chorus, cried out "in one voice;' literally, "with one mouth" (athroo stomati) (725). Later as they attacked Pentheus, "all gave voice at once" (en de pas 1 homou boe) (1131). The homogeneous democracy of the Bacchantes merges into an impetuous "throng:' Ochlos (117, 1058, 1130) is a word often used in political contexts to describe a fickle mob, female or male, as opposed to the aemos, male citizens who assemble to discuss their own and the city's common business. Though the women sing antiphonal chants of some sort, there are no "winged, words among the Bacchantes. In Homer the word ameibO is used for exchange between persons, exchange of speech or private possessions -like the self-conscious talk and trade between Diomedes and Glaucus in Iliad VI. In The Bacchae it refers mostly to change of position or appearance. It signals not organized giving and receiving among separate individuals, but the fluidity of anything touched by Dionysus. The communion of the thiasos precludes private as well as public relations. Ordinarily, human love begins in distinguishing the loved one from others. Later, lovers or friends rightly feel that they have become "one:' Nevertheless, in love and friendship, the others like oneself also remain somehow other. The Bacchantes mention loveEros or Aphrodite- only as symbols of peace and release. Since they make no distinctions within the communion, they do not recognize either permissible or desirable behavior in its separate members. Their gentle closeness is thus deficient love, just as their angry violence can only be primitive justice. Unlike friends, they look neither at nor with each other, and feel no profound admiration, pity, or fear for other human beings; they are too much in touch. Finally, placeness, timeless, merging Bacchism is opposed to the human self-consciousness which develops from standing up and looking at the world, for Dionysus makes it very difficult to look. The maenads are characterized by constant motion, interrupted by falls to the earth. Euripides repeatedly calls our attention to the way in which the god confounds "up and down" (anO te kai kato), 1 turning the world topsy-turvy, and transforming 50 the relation of vision to the other senses. In the Parodos the women sing of their feet, hands, mouths, and hair. Those who feel themselves to have come alive through Dionysus evoke the contact senses: the feel of air, smell of smoke, taste of liquids, and sound of drums. In a later ode they sing of the "pale-bare foot" dancing in the "green pleasures of a meadow" (863-67). The synaesthetic mingling of visual and tactile expresses wonderfully the powerful beauty of their undifferentiating awe. Similarly, when they sing of colors in the Parodos, the effect is kaleidoscopic. For them, color permeates, is diffuse; it does not define the contours or limits of things. They prefer night and shadows to light and clear lines. A vase painting depicts a dancing maenad with head thrown back and eyes open, but glazed over. Others shut their eyes. The dancer's freely moving body extends and crosses the defmed vertical space he usually occupies. 2 Ordinarily, eyes see only when they are lifted on an upright body, away from the earth, and when they remain still long enough to gaze steadily. Through them, an autonomous individual takes in what is outside himself. But the Bacchantes "take in" the world in order to merge with it. By changing the relative status of the senses, Dionysus makes the world look different. The Bacchae odes have been compared to Romantic nature poetry or to landscape painting. But the Bacchic attitude is very different from that of the poet who looks at himself looking at the natural world. This looking requires separation from as well as kinship with, the ivy, snakes, fawns, and foals which twine, slither, and leap through a world with no horizon, a world in which they have not stood up. Wordsworth's poems are about mortality, time, memory, place, and his own changing perspective on nature and human life. He is a mature self-conscious beholder who often looks with or addresses his observations to another. And he speculates about his kinship with and his distance from the world upon which he looks: For I have learned to look on nature, not as in the hour Of thoughtless youth; but hearing oftentimes The still sad music of humanity ... (Tintem Abbey) Immersed in the beauty of the land, the Bacchantes have never seen a landscape. The latter, as the word suggests, must be "shaped" by the seer-or painter-who frames the scene with boundaries and a horizon. When a Bac- chic woman throws down the frame of her upright loom (istos), she abandons all frames and the orientation which framing makes possible in human life. One reason The Bacchae is so unsettling is that the Chorus, which in most Greek plays is tied to the city, here consists of unrelated foreigners; there is no community "point of view?' Agave thinks she has seen and killed a lion (1175, 1238), and, with eyes rolling in her head, she calls upon her son to come look. (1257). Instead of withdrawing in pity and fear, the women, for SPRING 1984 �once, are eager to look: "I see and shall accept you as a fellow reveller" (1172). Their response to her invitation to eat expresses their revulsion, but they urge her to show her trophies to the citizens. The rest of the play is Theban business and the Chorus hardly reactli to the dissolution of the city through which they have passed, but with which they have never looked. Agave finally comes to a standstill, away from her thiasos. Only then can Cadmus make her see that this is not a happy "spectacle" (opsin) (1232), that, indeed, it is "not the sort of thing to be seeri' (oud'hoion t'idein) (1244). Dionysus affects human vision not only by preventing and distorting it, but by making those he touches unable to distinguish between what should and should not be beheld. entheus rejects the god. He speaks the language of opposition, not surprising in the grandson of Cadmus, who emerged from the barbarians to overcome a monstrous dragon, and reaped civilized Hellenes from these chthonic, even incestuous beginnings. Pentheus has detached himself from these beginnings. He makes distinctions; between old gods and new, immortals and mortals, Greeks and foreigners, free men and slaves, men and women, Thebes and countryside, day and night, dignity and folly. He orders out the articulated divisions (781-83) of his male army against the female thyrsus bearers who mingle on the mountain. Pentheus trusts in gates and walls, jails and chains. Like his grandfather, he has a strong sense of his own. He must defend "my" mother, "our" women- the Greek does not require the possessive- against alien forces. He will not be touched: "Do not put your hands on me, do not wipe off folly on me" (343-344), he cries. When the two old men who have clasped hands urge him to recognize the levelling god, Pentheus draws the line. But although he is so different from the Bacchantes, he too is characterized by his disordered vision. In both his public and private behavior, he is unable to look with other human beings. King Pentheus is alarmed for the safety of his city. Most monarchs are vigilant about erotic alliances within their regimes, for the private friendships of those who see alike may result in invisible conspiracies against a king. There are no such friendships in Thebes and, as we have seen, the thiasos is characterized by an undiscriminating, blind form of "friendship:' Though the maenads are unlikely to oppose the ruler in any political way, the presence of a communion of citizens who no longer feel their primary tie to be the city does constitute a real threat to ordered political life. But King Pentheus deals with this threat tyrannically. Without father, mother, or friends, he looks and acts alone. The maenads are too much in touch to look with others; Pentheus, like most tryants, is too out of touch. His grandfather has abdicated to him, and there is no council of advisors. He alone will spy out and act against opposition. Even the feeble chorus of elders which provides a sort of public perspective in some plays is absent here. And anyone- even P ST. JOHN'S REVIEW a professional seer-who offers another point of view is suppressed. Pentheus' public behavior is tyrannical in another way. Most kings rule by their manifest presence, often through public ceremonies or processions in which the ruler exhibits himself to his subjects, or in which they are reviewed by him. 3 Even without planned ceremonial occasions, the well-being of the community requires the visible presence of its different elements. Ruler and subjects might not look together as equals, but each is a viewer recognized by the other. Pentheus rejects mutual viewing just as he rejects mutual council: only he is to be on view; the city will look to him for its well-being; opposition must be hidden away in dark dungeons. He scorns even to look upon those who disagree (252). Not surprisingly, the vision of the friendless tyrant is defective. His view of the women is based on what he's heard. "I hear (kluo), he begins a long distorting description of their imagined behavior (216ff). He "knows" of Tmolus by "hearsay" ( 462), and mistakes a bull for the odd-looking Stranger who makes him want to hear more about the maenads. The eyewitness report of the Messenger from Cithaeron, in the central scene of the central episode of the play, looks both back to Pentheus' hearsay envisionings and forward to his disastrous firsthand view of the Maenads. "Having seen the sacred Bacchantes" (664), he says that Pentheus too would have seen (737, 740) that the thiasos was a "wonder of good order to see" (693). "Having seen these things;' Pentheus "would have come with prayers" (712-13). Then he describes the attack on the villagers. In a striking image he reminds us of the way in which human eyes almost reflexively close to avoid seeing what should not be exposed to view: the garments of [bulls'] flesh were drawn apart more quickly than you could close the lids over your royal eyes" (7 46-4 7). The Messenger continued to watch this Dionysian dismemberment. The "terror" ( deinon), he says, was a "sight to see" (theam'idein) (760). From now on, Pentheus' concern shifts from his public responsibility to his private needs. For, suppress him as he will, Pentheus too yearns for Dionysus. No longer satisfied with reports, he develops a great "desire" (eros) (813) to see the maenads with his own eyes (811), to become a "watcher" (theates) (829). He says he would be sorry to see them drunk, but Dionysus remarks that, all the same, he would see these "bitter things" with pleasure (815). To look differently, Pentheus must look different. He dons the "costume" (stoiC) (828) of a maenad but, unlike the women, he is painfully self-conscious. His posturing betrays the armour between himself and the "effeminate form" (gynaikomorphe) (855) he has assumed; it is both shared costume and protective disguise. He says he has been "playing the Bacchant" (bakchiazon) (931). The verb differs slightly from the one used by the Chorus (bakcheuo); it suggests the difference between engaging in one's own activity, and watching oneself assume the customs of others. Pentheus' carefully delineated world has begun to blur. Hallucinating, he sees two suns and 51 �a double Thebes. The Stranger, who at first seemed "not unshapely" (amorphos) (453), now appears in other shapes. The transformed king is led off in a peculiar private "procession" (pompe) of unacknowledged retainers who later report what happened, and by the Stranger, "the leader of our viewing (theoria) (104 7). Unlike the maenads who fall to the earth, Pentheus rises far above it, an isolated "spy" (kataskopos) (916, 156, 981) and a "spectator" (theates) (829) of the absorbed women below. Once again, his looking is aberrant. Pentheus is a voyeur. In the private realm he wishes not to do, but to view, everything. The sexual voyeur watches actions which, by nature, should not concern anyone but the actors. By ignoring the line between private and public, he obliterates both realms. Other voyeurs who stare unblinkingly at the corpses of the dead, or the grief of the living, also see what in civilized life must be obscene, off-stage. The voyeur may seek out spectacles of bestiality, incest, necrophilia, cannibalism, and other violations of the natural lines of human life. Pentheus surely is titillated by the suggestion of such things among the maenads. In collapsing the distinctions between private and public, seen and obscene, human and animal, the voyeur may appear to embrace Dionysus. But the embrace is false. Although the Bacchantes, like animals, do not properly look with others, they do look- in their fashion- in the presence of others. As we have seen, the voyeur lacks their unselfconscious innocence. His furtiveness reveals a deliberately violated sense of shame which they do not have; he knows he should not be looking. We call him "bestial;' suggesting not nature, but degeneration. The voyeur's vicarious embrace of Dionysus is false also because, though somehow moved by what he sees, he is an isolate, outside communal, as well as private, combinations. Pentheus wants to see -"the things he should not see" (912), but his looking must be seen by no one; he must not be touched. Even as he ignores boundaries, he erects a frame around others like himself, reducing their actions and passions to material for his viewing. Pentheus' private spying, like his public violence, is tyrannicaJ4 Earlier, he speaks only of the maenads' physical behavior; now too, he can see only what their bodies are doing. He cannot share their spiritual joys or sorrows or "thiasize the soul" with others; at the end he feels only the "pain:' or ''grief' (penthos), of Pentheus. In a terrifying reversal, this solitary and too-distant onlooker is drawn swiftly into the scene. Seen by those who do not ordinarily look up, he is pulled down to the earth he denies in himself. Earlier he anticipates being held by his mother; now he reaches out to touch her cheek and is ripped apart, his ribs "laid bare" (gymnounto) (1134) like those of the animals the Messenger describes. The corpse, dismembered and unburied, will be displayed for all to see. The young man who would maintain distinctions is almost eaten, reabsorbed, by his own mother, in a terrifying violation of human time and relations. His city is shattered; its founder will be transformed into a snake 52 and will lead a mingled barbarian horde against the Hellenes he once civilized. Exiled by Dionysus, he will return to "ravage the oracle of Loxias:' that is, of Apollo (1336). Apollds priest had warned Pentheus to join him in recognizing the new god. But like the god he already serves, Tiresias remains somehow aloof, always looking from afar. His rationalized arguments on behalf of Dionysus seem alien to the spirit of the god of umnediated mergings. He is a Theban, yet he has the distance to look into Theban affairs and see more than those whose primary allegiance is to the city. Like the Bacchantes, he is in touch with a god; but he is somehow out of touch with other human beings; unmarried and childless, he has been male and female; he has looked upon copulating snakes, and once he beheld the goddess Athena naked, as she bathed. Unlike the followers of Dionysus, he transcends the city in isolation. His blindness, though related to his insight and foresight, precludes his looking together with others. He alone is not punished, but it is clear that, Apollonian vision, as well as the looking of shameless Bacchantes, and voyeur-king, is inadequate when Dionysus shows himself in Thebes.' PART TWO: Tragedy and the City Dionysia at Athem magine now another city, one which tries to provide an entire community with something like the experience of those who lose themselves in Dionysus. We are all familiar with revels which sanction temporary release from daily life: medieval Festivals of Misrule, Twelfth Night, Jewish Purim, Catholic Mardi Gras, and camp topsy-turvy days. These are characterized by reversals or blurring of political and sexual hierarchies and distinctions, by unusual masks and costumes or no clothing at all, by dramatic role-playing, by wild dancing, or by the conspicuous consumption of intoxicating beverages. The most important of the Athenian festivals was called the City Dionysia. The name differentiates it from rural festivals by attaching it to the physical city, astu; the location is crucial. This festival was far more than temporary entertainment; it was an important part of the positive training of the Athenian people. 6 Let us delay considering the dramatic highpoint of the festival and speculate about how the arrangements which led up to it address the unsettling questions The Bacchae raises about Dionysus, looking, and the city. We shall also consider some modern counterparts. Like other civic events, this annual festival is characterized by its attention to shared time and place. In late March summer agriculture and war do not demand the full attention of the citizens. The seas are navigable again, and allies send ambassadors to bear tribute and also to look at the first city. In the spring, I SPRING 1984 �the citizens are constantly aware of the distinctions between themselves and outsiders, as w~ll as between themselves and resident aliens and slaves 1within the city. As we shall see, the community which assembles to celebrate the god who obliterates boundaries' is conspicuously divided into distinct groups throughout the festival. As in most civic business in Athens, responsibility and preparations are shared. Though inefficient, this arrangement insures continual participation in public life. Like other projects whose parts are contributed piecemeal by private citizens who order and pay for them, the festival involves large numbers of people. Several months before, the Archon Eponymous and his aids, none of whom is required to have any special training in drama, choose the poets who will enter the competitions. Actors are assigned and a preliminary selection of judges is made from among the tribes. The ten names of these ordinary citizens-not drama critics-are put into sealed urns in the Acropolis; tampering with them is a capital crime. Also chosen long before the festival are the choregoi, private citizens who provide the money to outfit and train dithyrambic and dramatic choruses and flute players. This duty is called a leitourgia, a work on behalf of the leitos, or folk. Unlike the Bacchic orgia, the leitourgia is the civic duty of an individual, freely assumed, or assigned, by tribe or city. Other "liturgies" equip a warship or finance a delegation to a pan-hellenic festival. This great public giving allows an individual to exhibit his wealth, but to do so in partnership with the city, which pays the actors and endows poets' prizes. A liberal choregos spends gladly; though compulsory, the leitourgia is not a tax. His giving, like all noble action in a small homogeneous community, is meant to be seen. During the festival, the choregos exhibits not only his chorus, but himself, dressed in splendid robes, as a noble object for the contemplation of his fellow citizens. This office seems to speak to Rousseau's warning in The Social Contract, against the substitution of money for public service. In fulfilling his civic responsibilities, the choregos offers, in Rousseau's terms, both his "pocketbook and his person"; 7 he expends himself. Compare him with modern "philanthropists;~ an interesting word -who, in their own way, often privately, and even anonymously, endow museums, parks, and theatres of their own choosing. At another extreme, a manual for producers of community dramas warns against a single patron because even fmancial dependence on one person reduces the community, group, effort. a The modern representative republic often seems either to put all the responsibility into private hands, or to fear private initiative. The ancient participatory democracy requires the wealthy citizen to spend his wealth honorably, and then displays him and his work as examples of civic liberality- even magnificence- befitting a free man among equals. 9 The Proagon, before the poets' contest (agon), takes place one or two days before the festival. Here the public is officially given the details of the program. In the Odeum, a hall near the theatre, each poet stands with ST. JOHN'S REVIEW his choregos, actors, flute players, and chorus, to announce the titles, and perhaps plot summaries, of the plays. The civic meaning of the Proagon is clearer when compared with our practices. It is not a review by an outsider who discusses and perhaps recommends the play. Nor is it a coming attraction in which potential spectators are enticed by samples; there will be only one performance. Rather, it is an occasion for the many citizens who will be acting to display themselves in their own persons, as fellow citizens, to those who will be watching. In the Proagon, no one wears masks or theatrical costumes. The last event before the festival period is the torchlit night procession commemorating the coming of Dionysus to Athens. The god's image, removed earlier from the temple in the theatre precinct, is carried back from the northwest Eleutherae road to the theatre. The procession is the first properly "Dionysian" event but it differs strikingly from the various manifestations of the god in The Bacchae. Here again we see how the City Dionysia links orgia with leitourgia. Instead of lightning appearances and the removal of the population to the mountain, here a manmade statue of the god is deliberately carried within city walls, through gates and streets, and placed in a building made for institutional worship. It is escorted by armed epheboi, young men in training to defend the city, but who are not yet full members. Like the festival period, they are on the border between civic and non-civic time. In The Republic, Socrates would forbid them to watch plays and would restrict their "spectacles" to the noble warfare of their elders. 10 In his Letter to D'Alembert, Rousseau suggests that they attend community dances instead of the theatre. 11 Athens requires the young men to be present at the theatre festival, but carefully regulates their role. The next day begins the period during which all ordinary business is suspended. There is no assembly during the festival, and no legal action may be taken.] ailed prisoners are released on bail. The first official event, a turbulent procession, the pompe; is not an occasion for careful looking and distinguishing. Pressed together, or even from the sidelines or a reviewing stand, one forms not a view of the whole, but a fragmented, kaleidoscopic impression. Though it is difficult to gaze steadily, one is intensely aware of moving bodies, of arms, bellies, noses, backsides, and ritual phalluses. 1 2 Citizens and foreigners, old and young, men and women move to the same throbbing rhythm. Many wear masks, and perhaps costumes, which blend their identities with those of the opposite sex or the god they celebrate. The arrangements do, however, maintain some shape, some direction. Now the physical forms of the city, which may have blurred in the flickering torchlight the night before, are visible. The procession winds through the streets, halting in the agora, perhaps for choral dances at the altars of other gods. The epheboi sacrifice a bull and present the choicest parts to prominent city officials. Unlike the mingled Bacchantes of all ages, only unmarried girls take part in the 53 �pompe. A maiden of noble birth leads, carrying a golden basket of offerings. Others bear wine, now mixed with water, and food, now cooked with \fire, to be consumed on the way. The abundance of Dionysus in Athens is en- closed in pots, baskets, wineskins, lind other manmade containers. The rich ride in chariots. Prepared costumes identify other groups: citizens in white, metics in red, and choregoi in their finery. However immersed in the crowd they are, the celebrants enter the theatre of Dionysus together, in public procession, as citizens of Athens. They are one, but the one is an articulated community, not a thiasos. The theatron-watching place-where the entire city will spend the next few days, from dawn to dusk, is a round space like both a natural dell, and a conventional agora or an enclosure within a city wall. Most sit closely, knee to knee, with nothing between them. Jean-Louis Barrault remarks on the warmth and unity of "houses" where there is only one armrest between seats: The spectator is part of the others ... the audience is a sort of synthesis of the whole community of the world, of the promiscuity of all the others pressing one against the other; a sort of human stirring shoulder to shoulder ... which releases ... a monstrous god, a sole personality.... The audience is a kind of enormous baby ... all the adults lose their personality. 13 his might recall the Bacchantes. But it does not describe with sufficient subtlety the Athenian theatre, or the way in which "the monstrous god" comes there. The congregation includes the free male citizens, the Assembly, who often gather in a similar amphitheatre on a nearby hill; the festival gathering is not the first time they form a community. They are uniformly encouraged to attend- Pericles arranged for the city to provide tickets for all- but they are not mingled indiscriminately. And, while they are joined on this occasion by many resident aliens and foreign visitors, the aim is not a "synthesis of the ... world:' Rather, grown men, epheboi, maybe women and children, metics, and visitors, sit in separate sections, identifiable in their colored robes. Citizens may sit by tribe. It is the city of Athens that is foremost, and not the unarticulated "world." It has been conjectured that the wooden bleachers, which were later replaced with stone ones, were made from the timbers of Persian ships that these men, or their fathers, defeated at Salamis a few years before.1 4 Whatever the facts, it is important to remember the occasions on which they gathered together in the past. Finally, there is another kind of seating~'front row" stone thrones for polis officials, generals, and choregoi. Unlike Bacchantes who sit close together and look at nothing, or Pentheus, who sits alone and spies on everything, these "distinguished" citizens sit together and apart, viewing and on view. Most prominent, at the center, sits the priest of Dionysus, city official and intermediary between the god and his celebrants. Gone is the exarchos who whips up the moblike thiasos to T 54 ecstatic identification with Dionysus. A statue of the god who always looked alone in Thebes, now joins Athens as a fellow spectator at his own festival. Dionysus is present in his altar as well. The flame which burns in the orchestra throughout the festival is neither the useful fire with which men master nature, nor the narthex fire which streams spontaneously from the wands of dancing Bacchantes. The altar fire is for looking at, 15 not by solitary individuals or private households, but by the whole city together. The visual focus of the theatre is the round dancing place (orchestra) of the chorus and the platform (skene) where the actors perform. This platform usually represents the outside of a palace. There is no drop curtain to separate audience from ·acting place. Unlike modern theatregoers whom an implied "fourth wall" putS in the position of voyeurs looking into a private place, Athenian spectators, like the dramatic characters, observe what is normally on view to the public. But while attention is focused on the stage, it is not exclusively so. The performance takes place in the daytime, so the acting area is not a lit place in a dark space. Daylight preserves distinction which break down in the dark. Changing as the day passes, it keeps those who concentrate on artificial stage time in touch with natural time. Since the theatre is so large, the figures on stage are small, distant, and undetailed. The well-lit audience which sits almost circularly around them, is thus as much to be seen as the performers on stage. A citizen in the theatre of Dionysus is far more aware of himself and his fellow spectators than are modern theatre or movie goers, strangers who are absorbed by the illuminated action at one end of a dark rectangular room. Television, which enables viewers to watch in common, but in private, all the time, with no preparation or cooperation before the viewing, seems the complete antithesis of the civic viewing we are considering. The modern extended republic does its governing through representatives, now also mostly seen at a distance, on television. It is not surprising that those who stay home to view Thanksgiving parades organized by private businesses will view anything else that is shown. Electronic inventions have the potential to turn millions of viewers into voyeurs, who see without being seen, and keep in touch only by looking from afar. This technology may produce extreme unity and homogeneity, but at the same time, extreme isolation. Such isolation was less possible in the Athenian arrangements for overseeing public policy and viewing dramatic performances in full view of one's fellow citizens. Two more views are shared by the spectators in the theatre. One is of the mountains surrounding the city. Scenic shots in film versions of Greek tragedies are beautiful, but tend to remind most of us that we are foreigners. The landscape beheld by the Athenians is their own. The second view is of what they have built upon the land. Though they are outdoors, in touch with the weather and the natural contour of the hill they sit on, SPRING 1984 �they can still, as Pericles tells another congregation of Athenians and strangers, feast their eyes on Athens. The unsettling wonders they will behold in the plays are framed by the solid citizens and solid foundations of the city which makes the festival. · The Bacchae, these singers are native-born men and boys, present and future citizens. They are released from their required military training to be trained for the festival. Their trainer, though not 'a, poet, must also be native to the city. As worshippers of the god, they sing and dance, bound into a circle, crowned with flowers and ivy, but B efore turning to performances, let us glance briefly at some of our contemporary American festivals. In the context of our present discussion, they have a decidedly unci vic look. Popular theatre festivals sell tickets long distance, mostly to non-residents, and import famous actors who perform for audiences that have never before assembled and never will again. They gather at various Stratfords, for example, to "see shows." Our diverse and tolerant republic is rich in the variety oflocal ethnic festivals which are celebrated traditionally, often with the help of quite different friends and neighbors. But, in America, these festivities cannot be civic festivities, and it is evident that in a prosperous, mobile, and cos- mopolitan society such traditions tend to atrophy. National holidays like Thanksgiving, Independence Day, and presidents' birthdays do not seem to have the same intensity as local or ethnic celebrations. Another variety of contemporary festival self-consciously aims to bring together a diverse urban community. A recent Chicago- fest was run by a non-local business called "Festivals Incorporated." It offered food, crafts, entertainment, and publicity for the incumbent mayor, but deteriorated into racial wrangling. In Annapolis, a national beer company underwrites an annual city festival heavily attended by outsiders. It is advertised in the Washington Post among other area {(Festivals, Festivals, and more Festivals;' from which a private family might choose a spring outing. Most of the pleasant fairs and festivals in hundreds of American towns have a commercial basis; their most visible activity, amidst preparations, decorations, and enter- they are unmasked. Far from losing their identities, they remain distinguishable from each other and identifiable by their fellow citizens. Nor are the spectators moved outside themselves by these hymns, since the singers are not fictional personages with whom they identify. 16 The next day begins with a political display in which the city exhibits itself for its own citizens and for outsiders. After the priest of Dionysus purifies the theatre by sacrificing a pig and pouring libations, there are processions which, unlike the earlier parades, are entirely for watching. Young Athenians march before the vast assembly, carrying jars of silver talents, the year's tribute from allied cities. Citizens and strangers are honored for their services to Athens. The orphaned, but now grown, sons of men who died in battle parade in full armour. They have been educated by the city, which now displays them, as they make the transition from wardship and seat themselves, as fellow spectators, among the citizens. Now at last is the gathered city prepared to look upon what is alien, alien not only because the dramas depict semi-divine heroes, and kings, and assertive women of other cities at other times, but because, in them, civil- ized people must confront anew what they have made alien to themselves: their own buried monstrousness. The great chorus in Anti'gone articulates a paradox about man: the very thing that makes this anthropos wonderful makes him terrible. To be deinos is to be tragic. Human beings are articulating beings who rise up and distinguish themselves from the world and from other beings in the world. Only man is conscious of place, time, and mor- tainment, is exchange of merchandise; the crafts displayed for looking are for sale, as is the food. tality, and only man distinguishes between what he will do and look upon from what is forbidden. But tragedy Our hunger for something more than commercial fairs has taken an interesting form in the past few yearsfood, crafts and entertainment in a setting of medieval and Renaissance exotica. For example, at Columbia, Maryland, a "planned community" with a heterogeneous population which works in other cities, a corporation started in Minnesota hosts a "Renaissance Festival" to reminds us that man is also the only being who essentially strives to ignore or overcome such limits. Like voyeurs' peep-shows and everyone's dreams, 17 the tragedies reveal rape, parricide, incest, cannibalism, defiled corpses; their subject is human hubris, the violation celebrate another place at another time. The Washing- and impure. oflimits and the failure to articulate. In the theatre spectators must face what is mixed and mingled, mangled ton Post ad announces that, "the sixteenth century is back by popular demand!' Of course, the sixteenth century fair was also primarily a commercial enterprise. Our celebration of such things must be very different from Little Italy's saints' feasts, and even more so from Athens' Dionysia. Examples abound to demonstrate the differences between the festivals of cosmopolitan modernity and those of the ancient polis. Let us now return to the theatre in Athens. In the first watched performances, choruses from each tribe sing dithyrambic hymns, often about Dionysus. But unlike the identically masked, rootless Asian women in ST. JOHN'S REVIEW o understand the theatre of Dionysus in Athens one might have to understand why Oedipus ends his life in Athens. Repeatedly, the plays show us a tragic protagonist from Thebes- or some place like it- who brings his terrible and wonderful experiences to the most civilized city in Hellas. Athens is not simply providing a refuge for them. These extraordinary suf- T ferers are somehow gifts to insure the fertile, vital humanity of the city that takes them in. Consider Thebes, the paradigm tragic city. Cadmus comes from the east, brings the alphabet, slays a dragon, and turns a violent, 55 �chthonic, incestuous settlement into a walled and orderly city. Then Dionysus is engendered·there and, when he 1 returns, the women run for the mo untain. The young king is killed and the city is shattered. After a few generations, another watchful king exposes a baby on the mountain to avoid predicted disasters. The baby, who grows into a fully developed version of Pentheus, returns to subdue the raw-eating sphinx-monster that has attached itself to this city. Answering all questions and requests himself, standing above the earth and the city, taunting the gods, this autonomous paradigm of all human beings kills his father, sleeps with his mother, and generates his own siblings. Years later the blind, dependent untouchable comes to Athens, to a sacred grove containing the threshold to the underworld. Adopted by the city whose ways he must now feel out, and recognizing the power of love, he now gives not his power to dominate or control, but himself. Theseus recognizes that to accept him is to worship simultaneously (hama) the earth and the sky. It is not clear whether Oedipus vanishes up or down, but at last he leaves something which will pass down properly through generations of Athenians. Thebes, the city of violent beginnings, of vines and wines, of dragons, snakes, and sphinxes, of maimed walkers on earth, and of the wild mountain, has come home to Athens, the city of peaceful beginnings, of the rooted olive tree, of skilled horsemen, and the tamed sea. Athens is deepened by this presence." The plays, then, are emissaries between the community and what it must usually exclude. Like Oedipus, the tragic drama is a necessary pollutant, "terrible to see, terrible to hear" (deinos men horan, deinos de kluein) ( Oed. Col. 140-41). Like Oedipus, it is also a blessing to civilized human beings, to reconcile them with their primitive, yet ever present, origins- with the buried dragon's teeth. But these deina, terrible things, are now "most terrible to men, yet most gentle" ( deinotatos anthrOpoisi d'epiOtatos) (861). Dionysus on the mountain makes one forget the bitter things; in the theatre, he recalls them, so that remembering and looking are sweeter than forgetting and turning away. Athens understood that to be fully human, deinos anthropos must recognize both static, pure Apollo, and dancing, drunken Dionysus- and to come to "see" in the ways of both gods. Officially sanctioned Dionysian festivals, and the arrangement by which the Delphic shrine was given over to Dionysus for several months of each year, both bear witness to this understanding. But like Tiresias' arguments, other festivals -and even the sharing at Delphi- fail to recognize Pionysus fully. The difficulty is that they are all from the point of view of Apollo. One measures off part of the year, contains it within strict boundaries, and permits a weak version of once powerful devotions. Meden agan-='nothing in excess':_we hear Apollo say; metron ariston-='measure is best"- even as the revellers toss their heads and drink their wine. The wisdom which says one must know oneself, and that both Apollo and Dionysus are that self, is an Apollonian wisdom. One temporarily forgets oneself, 56 under orders from the god of clarity, articulation, and the distant view. The difficulty lies in the serial character of these arrangements, the alternation of distance a~d participation, vision and touch. Pentheus' acting and looking are not Euripides' images of the theatrical experience. For true actors and spectators experience simultaneously both Dionysus and Apollo, just as Theseus worshiped earth and sky hama, "at the same time." The actor undoubtedly "identifies" with the alien character he impersonates. But, behind his mask, he retains his self-conscious awareness of who he is. In the Proagon he showed his own face; in the drama he shows the mask of Pentheus or Dionysus. The mask may call into question our fixed identities, may suggest Dionysian flux. But, we do not see one person transforming his very face into that of another. The Chorus is also simultaneously foreign and familiar. In The Bacchae fifteen male citizens impersonate the Asian women. They sing of wild, timeless, placeless running, while executing dances which require the utmost attention to time, place, and direction. Though they speak as one and wear the same mask, they move in rectangular formations, always aware of rank. They sing of open spaces in the shadows and contact with the earth, but dance in an enclosed space, in broad daylight, on a hardened orchestra floor. They sing of experiences which obviate speech in complex diction and matched stanza?. They have committed to memory hymns to amnesia. The spectators, who behold the action on the stage, are also simultaneously themselves and others. Only as separate, autonomous souls can they feel pity and fear for others like themselves, but clearly other. As democratic equals, citizens-friends, they look both at and with each other. And like friends who act for and see themselves in each other, they see themselves in those they watch on stage. Unlike the cave spectators in the Republic, they are not in the dark; they can turn their heads. They are aware, even as they feel the real joys and terrors of Dionysus, that they watch a framed imitation, a whole with carefully articulated parts. Looking together, they can face what, if experienced firsthand or seen privately, might destroy their humanity. The "spectacle" (apsis), contest, and actors, which Aristotle and some of his interpreters dismiss as unnecessary, allow for facing such things with others. Essential to the moral and civic ends of tragedy, they are the proper work of legislators, teachers, and citizens, as well as of the costume maker. 19 et us' pause again to consider some recent American theatre "experiments;' of interest to us because they so often invoked Dionysus, while differing radically from the theatre which celebrated him in Athens. The "new" theatre of the 60's took its cues from Cezanne and Cubists; it sought kaleidoscopic, collage effects unbound by frame or linear, articulated forms. Often looking to eastern models, it was self-consciously "total;' multi-media, not just visual. The followers of L SPRING 1984 �Artaud and his "theatre of cruelty" agreed that Sophocles is too "fixed;' that the theatre must move away from looking, language, and "masterpieces?~zo Athens brought Dionysus from the mountains through the streets, into the theatre. Some "new" groups took their performances "to the streets'~ to Times Equare and Grand Central Station- in order to dissolve barriers between imitation and "life?' Others abandoned the "fourth wall" convention and the distinction between watcher and watched, encouraging audiences to mingle with "actors" and to take part in the ('action." Distinctions between what is publicly or privately viewable lost their meaning in such spectacles; nakedness was a trademark of the "new" theatre. The explicit goal was to create a democratic communion among all participants, most of whom had never come together before. Paradoxically, this communion was to coexist with different reactions from different spectators. Everyone could do and feel his own thing, but together. Theoretically, any reaction was as good as any other in this "democratization of Dionysus;'2 1 but the celebrants themselves have described violent conflicts. The deliberate avoidance of hierarchy and "rigidity" was the goal of such groups as the Living Theatre, The Orgy-Mystery Theatre, The Any Place Theatre, The Ontological-Hysterical Theatre, and the James Joyce Liquid Memorial Theatre. The name of Dionysus was often heard, even before The Performance Group produced its famous Dionysus in 69, in which actors, spectators, speeches, and sets maintained their "fluid" character from "performance" to "performance:' The published text, in which the triumph of Dionysus is unequivocal, is based on Arrowsmith's translation of The Bacchae. It includes the ruminations of the director and members of "the Group;' and closeup photographs of their writhing, blood-stained, naked bodies. It is, appropriately, not paginated. 22 The so-called "people's" theatre thrived in the 60's during the most intense opposition to American "participation in the war in Vietnam." But the "participatory" antiwar "happeniog" rarely explored broad questions of policy and conscience. It was often meant to substitute for, not speculate on, political action. The Athenians participated in the decision to fight the Persians, and those who sat together in the assembly fought together at Salamis. When they produced The Persians, however-and later plays as well- they remained spectators, and their judges were looking for universal "masterpieces!' What is the relation between ordinary aCtion in Athens and festival and theatrical action during the Dionysia? In their workaday world the Athenians look together at the same things, from differing perspectives, in order to reconcile private interests in domestic policy. From a single shared perspective they must also look together to formulate foreign policy for the whole city. This too is self-interest. Hindsight, present-sight, and foresight are for the sake of action. In their leisure time, in the theatre, they feel and judge, but not from self-ioterest. These plays are also civic actions, but they are not for the sake of further political action. Like assembly, lawcourts, and ST. JOHN'S REVIEW war, the festival unifies the citizens. The plays at the heart of the festival also make them one, not from competing, but from looking, together. Just as festival competition is somehow higher than the competitive excellence of Athens at work, so also is play watching superior to play production, because, in addition to prizes, glory, and a beautiful product, it has looking as its end. Pythagoras said that some people attend games in order to sell for gain, others to compete for fame, but that the best come to see. 23 In the shared time of the festival, and especially of the play, human beings cease trying to control the world and others in it. They do not merely merge or dissolve, but, for a time, they pause from working,· building, and fighting, to recall their relations to the earth, to other living things, to each other, and to the gods. Duriog the festival of Dionysus, looking for the sake of lookiog is joined with dancing for the sake of the dance; looking here means staying in touch. The thoughts which accompany such looking are likely to transcend particular interests, and also distinctions between people who belong to the city and others outside it. Thus, to this assembly, Athens invites its resident aliens and foreigners to behold both Athens and what Athens beholds. Many, no doubt, are mere sight seers. But for some citizens and some strangers, this dancing, looking, and feeling together may approach a communion which far transcends that of the city and that of the Dionysian communicants. Does this kind of looking require others- or very many others? Do philosophic friends require civic festival times to direct their attention to the things which transcend time? The few who emerge from the cave in The Republic appear to be solitary spectators. Perhaps they might read tragedies in private. But for most at least, the Athenian theatron is somewhere between the thiasos and theoria, and it aims at making them fuller human beings than they would be without it. aviog made such high claims for the tragic highpoint of the City Dionysia, I hesitate to bring us back to earth. But we must return, if we are to be true to the spirit of the festival. Back to the city would be more accurate, since, as we have seen, the earth and the city, though in touch, are not to be confused. The exact order of the festival events is disputed, but nearly all the schedules proposed agree that satyr plays and comedies follow tragedies. Either at the end of each day, or at the end of the festival, the spectators turn to different sorts ofDionysiac representations. It is impossible to explore them fully here, but we can at least note that both differ from tragedies in that they depict unbounded appetites, distortions, and monstrosities as humorous supplements to regulated everyday life. They, like processions and carnival merrymaking, can coexist with that life, without threatening to shatter it. The comedy after the tragedy helps to return the partially transported spectators to full citizenship, even as it mocks them. Contemporary subjects, Athenian settings, topical and personal allusions, and unmasked addresses to the audience H 57 �as citizens, repeatedly break the dramatic illusion. The awarding of prizes, crowning of victors, and processions out of the theatre, return them t~, ordinary time and place. The Assembly is the core of their non-festival life and the appropriate settiog for the formal transition back into that life. The first business transacted by the Assembly on the day after the Great Dionysia is festival business. Now only the citizens gather in the theatre to consider religious matters and complaints about the processions, contests, officials and participants in the festival. 24 Such selfconscious e-merging from festival to everyday time is strikingly missing from the mergings which are central to the Dionysian experiences we have examined in The Bacchae. And it rarely occurs after conventional theatre and television shows- contained gaps in ordinary timeor after anti-establishment performances which deliberately blur the margins of the action. The conclusion of Mardi Gras in New Orleans provides a last example. A reporter writes that at midnight a bullhorn abruptly announces that the holiday is over: " 'You must clear the streets for the street cleaners' . . . by morning the natives say, 'You'll never know it happened: "25 Mardi Gras takes over the city for a day; but like most of the festivals discussed above, it is not primarily a civic event. Exclusive "crewes" organize parades, crownings, and balls, and there is much general merrymaking, but the city does not gather as one. 26 Rather, it provides police protection and garbage disposal. The ends of the Great Dionysia and of the Mardi Gras are a telling contrast of ancient and modern notions of the ends of government. In The Bacchae the god says he will manifest himself "so that the city of Cadmus may see (horaz)" (61). But Cadmus and his people somehow cannot "see" Dionysus and survive. The city of Athens arranges to look together upon Dionysus and those who have beheld him, and at the same time to look upon those with whom they are beholding Dionysus. In this remarkable arrangement it is possible, at least, that citizens may truly drink and dance, yet look and learn, and yet again, return to their looms and to their assembly on the day after. We who live in a world where women no longer labor at looms, and free men may never set foot in assemblies, cannot return to the Athenian polis. Nor would most of us want to, knowing that the coherent public life we have been examining was accompanied by rigid sexual distinctions, by extreme censorship, by slavery, poverty, and almost continual warfare. As we buy our machine-made clothing and elect our representatives, as we feast together after watching the parade in the comfortable privacy of our homes, as we choose our plays and movies, and even our festivals, we thank whatever god we will for our physical, political, religious, and iotellectual freedom. But we too have paid a price, a price having something to do with Dionysus and with civic community. Perhaps we can avoid becoming intellectual voyeurs who restore the texts of unspeakable things, stage what should not be 58 seen, and examine with unblinking curiosity the cares of a distant time and place, by keeping always one eye upon ourselves, and by asking what our souls and cities can learn from the ones at which we have been looking. Notes: 1. Ba"ha" 80, 96, 349, 552, 602, 741, 753. 2. See Erwin Straus, "Forms of Spatiality'' in Phenomenological Psychology. (New York, 1966). I have learned much from the essays in this book. 3. One might think of the progresses of the first Queen Elizabeth, or the coronation of her namesake. See Edward Shils and Michael Young, "The Meaning of the Coronation;' Sociological Review) 1, No. 2,1953. 4. We might also remember Gyges whose injustice and tyranny are related to his voyeurism. In the Republic (II) Gyges~or his ancestor -looks on an oversized naked corpse in a hollow horse. The ring he steals from tQe body enables him to be present among people who cannot see him, and to do unjust acts with impunity. He soon commits adultery with the king's wife and takes over the rule. In Herodotus (!.8-13) the ruler of Lydia insists that Gyges look upon his naked wife. After this viewing, Gyges kills the husband and becomes ruler. Leontius is another solitary viewer of dead bodies in The Republic (VI). Although his anger and desire are at odds, it is not clear that intellect and desire are. Injustice and voyeurism are also related in the Biblical story of the lustful elders who watch Susanna as she bathes. Their looking, as much a violation as their rape would have been, is related to their being corrupt judges, violators of community. Turning their eyes from heaven, they bear false witness, and are finally exposed because they could not properly look together with Others. 5. I have found the following books most useful in thinking about The Bacchae: G.S. Kirk's translation (Cambridge, 1979); E.R. Dodds' Text, Introduction and Commentary (Oxford, 1960); R.P. Winnington-Ingram, Euripides and Dionysus (Cambridge, 1948); Walter F. Otto, Dionysus: Myth and Cult (Bloomington, 1965). Charles Segal's comprehensive study, Dionysiac Poetics and Euripides' "Bacchae"(Princeton, 1982) appeared as I was finishing the present essay. I have elminated some, but probably not all, of the overlapping material. Segal's book is indispensible reading · for anyone interested in The Bacchae and Greek tragedy. I too have learned much from many of the authors he cites: Rene Girard, Arnold van Genneps, and others. 6. I have found the following books most useful in thinking about the festival and about Athens: Alfred Zimmern, The Greek Commonwealth (Oxford, 1961); H.W. Parke, Festivals of the Athenians (Cornell, 1977). AVV. Pickard-Cambridge, Ditlryramb) Tragedy and Comedy (Oxford, 1927) and The Dramatic Festivals of Athens (Oxford, 1953). H.C. Baldry, The Greek Tragic Theatre (Norton, 1971) is an easily available paperback introduction. 7. Jean:J acques Rousseau, On the Social Contract, III, xv. 8. George McCalmon and Christian Moe, Creating Histon'cal Drama: A Guide for the Community and the Interested Individual (Carbondale, Ill., 1965). p. 48. 9. Aristotle, Ethics, IV 10. Plato, Republic, VI. 11. Jean:Jacques Rousseau, Letter toM. D'Alembert on the Theatre, IX. 12. Mikhail Bakhtin's Rabelais and his WOrld (Cambridge, Mass., 1968) contains the best discussions I know of such periods of festival abandon. 13. Jean-Louis Barrault, "Best and worst of professions," in The Uses of Drama, ed. John Hodgson (London, 1972), p. 24. 14. E. O'Neill, Jr., "Note on Phrynichus' Phoenissae and Aeschylus' Persae," Classical Philology 37 (1942), 425-27. SPRING 1984 �15. One is reminded of the Jewish injunction about Hanukkah candles: they are to have no utilitarian purpose, but to be only for looking. There is conjecture that Hanukkah customs developed deliberately in response to rur'al Dionysiac rituals: Jews no longer need hide in the mountains like beasts, wild running is replaced by standing around an altar; inarticulate shouts by psalms of praise, and flowing torches by crafted candelabras. See Theodore H. Gaster, Festivals of the Jewish Year (New York, 1966), p. 252. 16. A thoughtful discussion of the civic status of the dithyramb can be found in William Mullen's Choreia: Pindar and Dance (Princeton, 1982). Nietzsche's Birth of Tragedy consistently underemphasizes the institutional and civic context of both dithyramb and tragedy. 17. What does the dreamer behold? Often timeless, placeless, topsyturvy, his dream is peopled with fluid personae who merge with each other and their surroundings. It may resemble the shifting life of the Bacchantes, who wake or sleep in an instant. Having no memories or restrictions when awake, perhaps they sleep without dreaming. The dreamer may experience what is unthinkable in wal<;ing life. Not only J ocasta has observed that, "in dreams many a man has lain with his own mother." Like a play, a dream is often watched; Homer's people "see" their dreams. The dreamer may be a spectator of his own actions; he may be the protagonist of the drama, or "play" all the characters. In such dreams, the line between watcher and actor is blurred or even disappears. Because a dream has no continuity of time or place with waking life, and no frame or context in which it is "seen;' the dreamer is usually thoroughly absorbed by it. But at the same time, a mysterious "second sight" says it is im(y a dream:' Dreamers who lose all awareness that they dream a contained "imitation" really choke, or scream, or wake, when the dream becomes too "real;' too traumatic. They might remind us of theatre spectators who miscarry when they see the Furies, who shoot the villain, or who run from the theatre in fear. There is another sort of frame around the dream vision. Not prescribable, reportable, or censurable, the sweet dreams and hideous nightmares of civilized human beings are their own business. We cannot dream together, and so dreams can have only the most indirect, unpredictable influence upon the waking life of citizens and city. Those legends in which men about to violate their motherlands dream of violating their mothers suggest that our ST. JOHN'S REVIEW 18. 19. 20. 21. 22. 23. 24. 25. 26. dreams are not the realm in which to nurture viable community life. [For examples, see "Caesar" in Plutarch and Hippias in Herodotus (VI. 107)] The waking tyrant does what other men would only dream of doing. The dreams of good men may be better than those of ordinary ones, but no one can learn to be good while asleep. Dreams, like voyeurism, offer a less disruptive form of Bacchism, but they are still private, in Greek, 1'idiotic;' experiences. I believe that a similar story is to be found in Suppliants, Persians, Oresteia, Philoctetes, and Medea. Aristotle, Poetics, VI. Antonin Artaud, The Theatre and Its Double (New York, 1958). Daniel Bell, "Sensibility in the 60's;' Commentary, June, 1971, 73. The Performance Group, Dionysus in 69. Ed. Richard Schechner (New York, 1970). Diogenes Laertius, Life of Pythagoras. The present discussion raises questions about the looking we do at "sports events?' Consider the funeral games in Iliad XXIII, their more civic counterpart in Aeneid V, the Panathe:qaea games in Athens, and the ancient Olympic games. The single most important source of information about the festival assembly is Demosthenes' speech Against Meidias. In 349 B.C. Demosthenes served as choregos for his tribe's dithyrambs. Harrassed by Meidias before the f~,stival, and publicly assaulted by him in the theatre, Demosthenes won a preliminary motion against him in the theatre assembly. The surviving speech was never delivered-an out-of-court settlement was reached-but it conveys vividly attitudes about the festival and its civic role. Washington Post, February 25, 1982, B 1. In 1968 a group of newcomers to New Orleans, concerned about the aristocratic exclusivity of Mardi Gras, added an event in which everyone might participate. The new "Crewe;' Bacchus, founded a night parade for the Sunday before the holiday. Sunday was chosen, in part, because it was also prime television time. Floats were designed by a professional, and the event received nationwide coverage. The first king of Bacchus was not a local citizen leader, but an imported Hollywood star, the jewish Danny Kaye! See Myron Tassin, Bacchus (New Orleans, 1975). For the more traditional celebrations, see Duforn Huber, If Ever I Cease to Love (New Orleans, 1970). 59 �Left and Right Jacob Klein I. The typescript bearing the above title was found stuck in the German proofs of Mr. Klein's book Greek Mathematical Thought and the Origin of Algebra. It is published by permission of Mrs. Klein. She thinks that she recalls hearing of Adolf Mueller as a young friend who sought out Mr. Klein for conversation in the "Romanische Cafe;' a meeting place for intellectuals on the Kurfuerstendamm in Berlin. This rather early essay, probably not intended for publication, is somewhat uncharacteristic from the perspective of later writings, both in its matter which is the establishment of a political typology, and its style, which employs the abstract language of impersonal entities. Translated by Eva Brann and Beale Ruhm von Oppen. For Ad. Mueller November 1934 The following observations disregard all concrete political situations, groupings and programs whatsoever. They start with the assumption that there exist two, constantly antagonistic, human attitudes, perhaps at all times, but in any case in the Western cultural sphere within the temporal limits of its development, most especially since the Renaissance. These may be termed the "left" and the "right." 60 I n all "left" endeavors two basic motives are always to be distinguished which do, however, perhaps go back to one root. The first is the insight into the "misera conditio humana;' the misery of human existence ~'misery" understood in every sense. The consciousness of this misery has always been present, as far back as we can see. That it is better not to be born, is a saying of Sophocles. The lamentations of] ob can never be stilled. Christian consciousness has made these lamentations the basis of a universal exegesis of human existence. The sinful creatureliness of all creation is the Christian interpretation of this constantly experienced fact. 'lThe misery of the creature" which everyone must feel who can feel at all, the vanity of every wilful attempt to ignore it, the sense of compassion with all alien misery as with one's own, the contempt for pride, for glory, for power in which "compassion" and with it the deepest sources of human life are, as it were, "forgotten'~ these are all basic elements of every "left" position. In modern times they are always conditioned by Christian consciousness, even if it is no longer at all understood as such. To this first motive is joined a second: the feeling for "naturalness" on the one hand and for the "artificial;' for "imagination;' for the "unnatural" on the other. Human life always moves within certain conventions, mores, valuatiops. All these are something "artificial" as contrasted to the factual course of life with its desires, instincts, its happiness and unhappiness. "Bare" life appears here as the overwhelming phenomenon; all limits and norms which human beings erect appear not only as useless, but as fundamentally reprehensible. This view was already vital to the school of the Greek sophists, who were first to develop the great opposition of physis and nomos, of nature and convention. It is characteristic of SPRING 1984 �this view that "natural" life admits of no valuation, that it is simply not possible to maintain an affirmative or rejecting attitude in the face of the 'fundamental fact of natural existence. This view is also the root of all modern science, which, according to its own' self-interpret<ition is and must be "value-free." But since this view must necessarily place itself in opposition to whatever the prevailing "moral" estimations happen to be, it immediately acquires a polemical sense. It must attack all the prevailing norms and values; it must attack whatever is "artificial" and "according to convention": Thus it must itself affirm and deny; it must itself value the "natural" positively) condemn the "unnatural:' But thus this view ·is confronted with a question insoluble in its own terms, namely how valuation is itself at all possible. The ordinary answer to this question (which may, however, appear in many guises) is the denial of the originality of valuation in general and the reduction of every valuation to certain "natural" givens or situations. The scientific expression of this attitude is positivism. For the left consciousness of the present, that is, of the last three centuries, the fusion of these two motives is characteristic. If we abstract from all the superficial appearances of this left consciousness and imagine the "ideal" case of a left human being (such as does indeed occur in real life), we may describe him as follows: He is dominated by the urge to be absolutely truthful, not to fool himself or others, to attach no importaoce to the external, to pay the highest respect to all feelings which are "genuine;' that is, those which come from the depths of natural and creaturely life, to sacrifice himself for these.- But this kind of person fulfills his highest possibilities only in confrontation with the "other" world. His indignation against contrary conduct, against the subjection of all that is kind, genuine and truly felt can intensify so as to become- rebellion, and unconditional rebellion at that. This rebellion aims at the restoration of that condition in which alone life appears worth living- from the perspective of the "natural." If this rebellion turns to violence, this violence is understood as the self-sacrifice of one's own nature. The few genuine anarchists who have existed in the world represent this type at its purest. II. W ith respect to the attitudes of the "right" two basic motives, which however do not by any means need to go together, can be likewise distinguished. The first motive has at least this in common with the corresponding left, that it acknowledges the "misera conditio humana:' But here it is no longer a matter of"sympathy" or "compassion" with the human race. Starting from "misery" as an unchangeable and incontrovertible fact, "right" consciousness seeks to give the human being an inner support. This support is based on the necessity of"control" [Zucht] and "discipline;' and ST. JOHN'S REVIEW this necessity is in turn based on divine law. All conservatism which does not rely internally on divine law is self-delusion ( cf. the phenomenon of the Wilhelminian conservatives). The basic principles which are the standard for this discipline are in each case already contained in the factually given living tradition. But the continuation of the tradition must never undermine the forces which are at work within it: Thus preservation of the tradition does not mean mere resistance to the powers which are hostile to the tradition (the phenomenon of reaction); rather such preservation must always go back to these original forces, must always honor the commandments which are the final justification of the will to preservation, must in this sense be absolutely righteous [gerecht]. Whether such a "right" attitude is possible or not does not depend on the "self2will of the human beings whose attitude it is. Such an attitude can therefore never become the demand of a party program. A "conservative party" is merely a phenomenon of reaction; there are only conservative forces, never conservative "programs." A socalled "party of the right" therefore succumbs to the "left" under all circumstances. The second motive for the formation of a "right" attitude is the striving for power. This motive too has an assumption in common with the "left": here, too, the "natural" is acknowledged as the last court of appeaL However, the right makes a selection within the "natural" which is not only opposed by "left" consciousness, but which appears to it as simply unintelligible. So little does the "left" take this attitude of the "right" seriously that it must necessarily succumb to the right when things become serious. There is a whole series of classical witnesses to this attitude. The first is Callicles in Platds Gorgias. Everything that Machiavelli or Nietzsche later had to say on this theme is expressed by Callicles with unsurpassable clarity. For this attitude the proper fulfillment of the human being lies in the (!;randeur" of human life. This grandeur is, for the most part, connected with "glory;' but glory is, as it were, only the external aspect of inner grandeur. This grandeur may also mean the actual "mastering" [Beherrschen] of human beingsalthough this mastering may not always assume the form of external rule [Herrschaft]. What is aimed at here, in the face of all "misery;' is the human possibility of insisting on wanting-to-have-more [a reference to the verb pleonektein often used in the Gorgias] despite all obstacles, despite every weakness, despite all will to life. It is a fundamental error of all left theories to wish to derive this wanting-to-have-more from more ('original" instincts, such as the nutritive instinct, the sexual instinct and the striving for "gratification" of all kinds. Indeed, one might say that the consciousness of the left is simply determined by the fact that it not only condemns power and the striving for power but does not take them seriously. For left consciousness, "those in power" are from the outset carricatures, as are also all the attributes of power. For the attitude which is the "right" in this sense it is a question of realizing "grandeur;' not only at the expense of all sorts 61 �of weakness, but also at the expeqse of any private or public disadvantaging of any number of human beings, no matter how great. Up to tbe seventeenth century this possibility was always present as a real possibility. It was taken into account. . . . The tyrant was not only a reprehensible individual but also a danger to be constantly expected. The present situation is determined by the fact that tyrants in this sense are simply no longer possible. Today rule [HerrschaftJ is never exercised for its own sake: It must ')ustify" itself; it must be based on the interests of a class, a nation, a race. This rule no longer understands itself as "autocratic'' [selbstherrlich] but bases itself on demands which arise out of specific "conditions." It is demagogic not only for tactical reasons, but demagogy is for it an inner necessity. Therefore it must perish. The "left" and "right" types which have been described are surely seldom met with in this purity. The present day situation is in general marked by the fact that the "typical" forms of human existence become "mixed" with one another in an imperspicuous way. This has already been mentioned in discussing the second type of "right" consciousness. But it holds no less for all the "political" endeavors, narrowly understood, of the present. Here Marxism has sketched out a general scheme for determining the "true" tendencies of the historical development amidst the tangle of "convictions;' "world views" or- in Marxist terms -!'ideologies." Starting from the undeniably great preponderance of economic interests in our world, it distinguishes two powers of politicaleconomic life: the one originates in "property" which wants to hold on to itself under all circumstances, the second comes from the more or less distinct consciousness of the "propertyless'!_ the overwhelming majority of all the people of the globe -who "have nothing to lose but their chains:' The idea which was decisive for the development of this view is the idea of justice [Gerechtigkeit]. The conceptual means by which this view is articulated all come out of the arsenal of "left" consciousness. However neither of these is necessarily attuned to the other. A ccording to its own consciousness Marxism is based on positivistic science, although the impulse decisive to its formation had at first nothing to do. with the latter. Brought up in the atmosphere of Hegelian thought, Marx saw through the enormous tension which exists between this "thought" and the factual "being" of the enormous majority of human beings. He therefore undertook- though, characteristically, using the means of the Hegelian system- to turn this thinking "upside down," and in order to be able to justify his procedure he began by understanding the Hegelian system . in its already inverted form. The Hegelian system was a doctrine of the "spirit." In its concept this spirit was determined as being devoid of any immediate reference to the world; just so the spirit had once been conceived 62 by Descartes. In the face of this spirit all "nature" collapsed into something unessential and indifferent. The innocent blooming of plants and the eternal paths of the heavenly bodies appear as something infinitely inferior, compared even to the confusions of human consciousness, compared even to evil. For what is here enmeshed in confusion is still "spirit!' The opposite pole of spirit in the Hegelian system is "contingent" .. "matter." It is indeed determined by nothing but the fact that it is the opposite of spirit and to that extent "inactual." The inversion of the Hegelian system was accomplished by Marx in the sense that he took as his foundation not "spirit" but "matter!' Now Marx understood this matter not at all as the last basic element of all "nature" (thus far he remained completely Hegelian), but rather as the defining concept [Inbegriff] of human life on earth. This Marxian concept of matter is thus completely ('anthropological," exactly as is true for Feuerbach.* The whole Hegelian "left" is in this sense anthropologically oriented: It sees the "material" or "real" human being with all his desires, instincts and entanglements in a battle with nature and all her forces which oppose his will to life (wherein the left is, to be sure, in agreement with the innermost tendencies of positivistic science). But now a gradual transformation of this basic view took place.] oined in battle with the ruling norms of the state, the law, religion, the Hegelian left found its obvious ally in positivistic science, and the anthropological materialism, whose nucleus had been for Marx the critique of economic conditions, slipped by reinterpretation into a scientific materialism. (Correspondingly, "dialectic" was more and more given up in favor of "causal inquiry": Kautsky's mode was typical.* Lately a school has arisen in Russia which attempts to distinguish economic materialism much more strongly from natural science.- Its chief representative, in no way sufficient, is Deborin* who has already been excluded from the Party.- In tbis connection the recently published writings of the young Marx are very important.) That was the basis on which the "scientific. character" of socialism was understood. Indignation against "injustice" was reduced to completely value-free matters of fact. Such indignation was interpreted as [merelyJ the mode in which the "necessary" development toward socialism makes its break-through. Every possible assertion concerning the ultimate goals of human life was referred to a "time to come;' because impossible under present circumstances. The realistic goal of world revolution which must result from the antagonisms within the system of production is, for the time being, the only con*[Ludwig Feuerbach, 1804-1872, studied under Hegel, attacked Christianity in favor of a ''humanistic theology." Karl Kautsky, 1854-1938, friend of Marx, a founder of the German Social Democratic Party, leading defender of Marxist orthodoxy, first against pragmatic reformism and then against the radical Leninist left. Abram Deborin, 1881-1963, leading Soviet theoretician, lost his posts under Stalin for "Menshevizing idealism," the separation of philosophy from practice.] SPRING 1984 �crete and actualizable goal. Only after its actualization, in the "realm of freedom;' does genuine human history begin. In this transfer of the ultimate perSpective into "time to come" appears the tension betwee_n the "left" theory of Marxism and its practices, which cannot so simply be labelled "left:' Everything depends on how the idea of justice is going to be understood i!l tbe coming development of Marxism. The idea of justice stands beyond tbe opposition of left and right. [It is] its relationship to the idea of power which decides whether it is to be assigned to the left or tbe right camp. If one abstracts from all their other motives, the present "fascist" endeavors of all kinds are fighting about this relationship. Every possible reflection about this relationship, whether it come from the left or from the right, must seek to take its bearings from tbe place where it once received a fundamental treatment which has never since been surpassed- Plato. On the "Frame" of Platds Timaeus Jacob Klein The following fragment of a letter by Jacob Klein was evidently addressed to Leo Strauss. It was written toward the end of his first year at St. John's College. It was probably a draft, and there is no evidence that it was ever sent. It is published with Mrs. Klein's permission.' August 14, 1939 Dear Friend, T his time I would like to pass on to you some of the results of my Timaean brain-rackings, not only for your enjoyment, but also to gain a certain clarity for myself. As things stand, you are probably the only human being who will believe me. I believe that I have understood something about the "frame" of the Timaeus, and that would naturally mean more than the mere "frame."-The first question in a reading is this: what is the point of having the Atlantis the story bifore Timaeus' speech? As is well known, some super-subtle people have wanted to transfer it to the beginning of the Critias. What is striking about the Atlantis story is the emphasis on the "ancient," the primeval. The speaker is Critias. According to the [dramatic] date, this Critias cannot, in- ST. JOHN'S REVIEW deed, be the "tyrant'';2 he is differently characterized; he is too old, and even taking into account all the indifference to "chronology'' within the texts of the dialogues, the tyrant just doesn't fit into the affair. But naturally, one can't leave it at that. Supposing it were not the tyrant Critias, why [not] another Critias who (a) is the grandfather of the tyrant and (b) has himself in turn a grandfather called Critias? And then the first question: if he develops the "program" [27 A- B] according to which Socrates is to be regaled with his "guest gifts;' then he should properly be assigned the second speech, but in fact he anticipates the most important thing in his account as the first speaker. And the Critias itself remains a fragment . . . . Naturally it is possible that it is a natural, unintentional fragment; why not? But still, it isn't quite convincing, the less so since the Timaeus and the Critias are certainly not Platds very last works. Besides, the Hermocrates is missing, which seemed to have been firmly promised in the Critias [108 A-D] and which is, so to speak, a necessary consequence of the "program" that Critias develops in the Timaeus. Though it isn't quite apparent from this "program" [Tim. 27 A-B] what Hermocrates is to talk about. On the previous day Critias, Timaeus, and Hermocrates had been the guests of Socrates. Today Socrates is their guest. Yesterday yet a "fourth" was there: today he is ''sick:~ Critias is, then, the grandfather of the "well- 63 �known" Critias (and has himself a further Critias as grandfather). Timaeus is unknown- I mean "historically''- but in any case he is from lower Italy. Hermocrates is very well known to the Athenians (and therefore to us): he whipped them in Sicily-a capable general. Why this combination? The answer is: the three represent- Cronos, Zeus, and Ares. "Yesterday:' when Socrates spoke about the Polity, 3 three "gods" were Socrates' guests; "today" Socrates is the "gods"' guest and is "divinely" entertained. Cronos is the eldest, as is well known; thus he has to precedeprecisely in time. He is the father of Zeus and Ares; as "Critias" he is the host of the strangers Timaeus and Hermocrates. He is somber and loves the night. Therefore "Critias" ponders the old story in the night [26 B]. He belongs to the old, old time -like the story which he tells and at the end of which Athens and Atlantis disappear into the deep, as he himself did, according to the myth. But according to a -demonstrably~'orphic" interpretation, Cronos is ever and again rejuvenated- there is ever and again another "Critias!' And the tyrant Critias too bears the features of c·ronos; the Critias of the Timaeus is all possible Critiases in one. It is entirely appropriate for him, as it is for the tyrant Critias, to speak about "matters of state": the Critias of the Timaeus and of the Critias tells of a "good old time;' of a period oflife which is proverbially designated as "the life under Cronos?' Nor should one forget that for the Greeks, Cronos is associated with Chronos, although the etymology is actually incorrect. Timaeus' role as Zeus is a consequence of his role in the dialogue itself: he is the "Father" of the All, "of gods and of humans;' if only "in speech." [27 A]- he depicts the construction and ~he "genesis" of the visible cosmos. Hermocrates is nothing but a warrior. That he is suited for the relevant conversations here is the opinion of "many!' The joke is that he never even gets his turn "to speak?' These are three "gods" with whom Socrates is together, three "rulers," who ''yesterday" allowed themselves to be instructed about true rulership and who "today" instruct him about very questionable things. And comically enough, Cronos-Critias says in the Critias [107 A-B]: "For, Timaeus, it is easier to seem to speak adequately when saying something about gods to human be- 64 ings than about mortals to us." "We:' this means, are the immortals. (Cf. also Timaeus 27 C-D: the ambiguous word {'llepomen0s" 4 ) Besides, mockery of the "gods" runs through the whole dialogue. However, Cronos, Zeus, and Ares are not only the old "gods:' but much "truer" gods, namely the corresponding planets. In fact, according to the "astronomy" of the Timaeus, Saturn, Zeus, and Mars themselves together with the moon form one group of the planets, while the Sun, Venus, and Mercury represent another (revolving with the same velocity). But Selene is first of all "feminine" and secondly not the name of a divinity at all. Hence "the fourth" is "sick'~and with this the dialogue immediately begins. 5 So that is the "frame" of the Timaeus. I would like in addition to refer to the alliteration of Cmnos-Critias which is unlikely to be coincidental and to the connection of Timaeus and time [honor]. What do you think of this? How does it fit in with your "esotericism"? 1. Translated and annotated by Laurence Berns, Gisela Berns, Eva Brann, and Robert Williamson. 2. For the identification of Critias see A E. Taylor, A Commentary on Plato's Timaeus (Oxford 1928), pp. 23-25 and Warman Welliver, Character, Plot and Thought in Plato's Timaeus-Critias (Leiden 1977), pp. 50-57. 3. Politeia is the Greek title of Plato's Republic. 4. hepomenOs can mean either "consequently" or "accordingly." In the passage cited Timaeus prays to the gods and goddesses that what is said may be agreeable to them "and consequently [accordingly] to us." The first meaning conveys merely that "we" derive our pleasure from the gods' pleasure but the second implies that "we" are the gods. 5. In several conversations of later years, Jacob Klein suggested an alternative interpretation: the missing "fourth" may represent Uranos, the father of Cronos and, according to some legends, the oldest of the male gods, who was emasculated by his son. The Greek word ouranos also means the all-embracing heavens. On this interpretation, the absence of the "fourth" would suggest that the promised sequence of speeches by Timaeus, Critias, and Hermocrates lacks from the outset something needed for a complete account of the "AU:' SPRING 1984 �Den 14. August 1939. Lieber Freund, desmal moechte ich Dir einige Ergebnisse meines Timaios-Kopfzerbrechens mitteilen, nicht nur, urn Dich zu erfreuen, sondern auch, urn mir selbst eine gewisse Klarheit zu verschaffen. Wie die Dinge liegen, bist Du wahrscheinlich der einzige Mensch, der mir glauben wird. Ich glaube etwas ueber den "Rahmen" des Timaios verstanden zu haben, und das wuerde natuerlich mehr als der blosse "Rahmen" bedeuten.- Die erste Frage bei der Lektuere ist die: was soli die Atlantis-Geschichte vor der Timaios-Rede? Einige ganz schlaue Leute haben sie bekanntlich an den Anfang des "Kritias" versetzen wollen. Was an der Atlantis-Geschichte auffaellt, ist die Betonung des "Alten;' des U r-Alten. Der Sprecher ist Kritias. Der Zeit nach kann dieser Kritias in cler Tat nicht cler "Tyrann" sein, er ist anders charakterisiert, ist zu alt und, bei aller Gleichgueltigkeit gegen "Chronologie" innerhalb cler Dialog-Texte, cler "Tyrann" passt ueberhaupt nicht in die Sache hinein. Aber dam it kann man sich natuerlich nicht beruhigen. Angenommen, es sei nicht der Tyrann Kritias, warum dann [nicht] ein anclerer Kritias, der (a) Grossvater des Tyrannen ist, und (b) selbst wiederum einen Grossvater Kritias hat? Und dann die erste Frage: wenn er das "Programm" entwickelt, gemaess welchem Sokrates seine "Gastgeschenke" vorgesetzt bekommen soH, so kommt ihm die zweite Rede zu, er nimmt aber faktisch clas Wichtigste als Erster in seiner Erzaehlung vorweg. U nd der "Kritias" selbst bleibt Fragment.... N atuerlich ist es moeglich, class es ein "natuerliches", nicht beabsichtigtes Fragment ist. Warum nicht? Aber immerhin, es leuchtet einem nicht recht ein, zumal der Timaios und der Kritias bestimmt nicht die allerletzten Werke Plato's sind. Ausserdem fehlt der "Hermokrates:' der im "Kritias" fest versprochen zu sein scheint (108 A-D) undja auch aus dem von Kritias im "Timaios" entwickelten "Programm" sich sozusagen mit Notwendigkeit ergibt. Allerdings ist aus dem "Programm" (Tim. 27 A-B) nicht recht zu ersehen, worueber Hermokrates sprechen soH. Am Tage vorher waren Kritias, Timai()s und Hermokrates Gaeste des Sokrates. Heute ist Sokrates bei ihnen zu Gast. Gestern war noch ein "Vierter'' da, heute ist er "krank.'~ Kritias ist also der Grossvater des "bekannten" Kritias (und hat selbst einen weiteren Kritias zum Grossvater). Timaios ist unbekannt, ich meine ''historisch;' stammt aber jedenfalls aus Unteritalien. Hermokrates ist den Athenern ( und darum uns) sehr gut bekannt: er hat sie in Sizilien verdroschen-ein tuechtiger Feldherr. Warum diese Kcmbination? Die Antwort ist: die drei vertreten- Kronos, Zeus und Ares. "Gestern;' als Sokrates ueber die Politeia sprach, waren die drei "Goetter" bei Sokrates zu Gast, "heute" ist Sokrates bei den "Goettern" zu Gast und wird "goettlich" bewirtet. Kronos ist der Aelteste bekanntlich, er muss also- gerade in der Zeit- vorangehen. Er ist der ST. JOHN'S REVIEW Vater von Jupiter und Ares, als "Kritias" der Wirt der "Fremden" Timaios und Hermokrates. Er ist duester und liebt die Nacht. Daher ueberlegt sich "Kritias" die alte Geschichte in der Nacht (26 B). Er gehoert in die alte, alte Zeit -wie die Geschichte, die er erzaehlt und an deren Ende Athen und Atlantis in die Tiefe verschwinden -wie er selbst der Sage nach. Aber, lautnachweislicher-"orphischer" Interpretation, Kronos wird immer wieder "verjuengt'~ es gibt immer wieder "Kritias." Und auch der "Tyrann" Kritias traegt KronosZuege; der Kritias des "Timaios" ist aile moeglichen "Kritiasse" in einem. Es kommt ihm durchaus zu -wie dem Tyrannen Kritias- ueber "staatliche" Dinge zu sprechen. Der Kritias des "Timaios" und des "Kritias" berichtet ueber eine "gute, alte Zeit;' ueber eine LebensPeriode, die sprichwoertlich als 6 btl KpOvou Pio<; bezeichnet wird. U nd nicht zu vergessen ist, class fuer die Griechen- obgleich die Etymologie gar nicht stimmt- Kronos mit Chronos zusammenhaengt.Timaios' Zeus-Rolle ergibt sich aus seiner Rolle im Dialog selbst: er ist der "Vater" des Ails "Der Goetter und der Menschen':.._wenn auch nur t0 A.Oy41 (27 A)-, er schildert den Bau und die "Entstehung'' des sichtbaren Kosmos.- Hermokrates ist nichts als Krieger. Dass er sich fuer die hier in Frage kommenden Gespraeche eignet, ist die Meinung 'Vieler'' (20 B). Der Witz ist der, class er garnicht "zu Wort" kommt- Es sind drei "Goetter;' mit denen Scikrates zusammen ist, drei "Herrscher;' die sich von Sokrates ueber wahre Herrschaft "gestern" belehren lassen und ibn "heute" ueber sehr fragwuerdige Dinge belehren. Und ulkig genug sagt Kronos~ Kritias im "Kritias" (107 A/B): m:pi 9e&v ydp, d) TiJ.L(UE, A.tyovtd TtnpO<; Uv9p6:mou<; 8oKeiv iKo.vOO<; A.tyew {JQ.ov ~ 7tEpi Ov~<WV npo, ~~a,. "Wir" sind naemlich die "Unsterblichen'' (vgl. auch Tim. 27 C/D: das zweideutige Wort btaJ.LtVm<;). Im uebrigen zieht sich durch den ganzen Dialog die Verspottung der "Goetter" durch. Nun sind aber Kronos, Zeus und Ares nicht nur die alten "Goetter;' sondern viel "wahrere" Goetter, naemlich die entsprechenden Planeten. Und zwar bilden Saturn, Jupiter und Mars gemaess cler "Astronomie" des "Timaios" selbst zusammen mit dem Moncl eine Gruppe der Planeten, waehrend Sonne, Venus und Merkur eine andere (mit derselben Geschwindigkeit kreisende) Gruppe darstellen. Aber Selene ist erstens einmal "weiblich" und zweitens gar kein "Goetter"- N arne. Daher ist "der Vierte" "krank':.._womit cler Dialog unmittelbar beginnt. Das ist also der "Rahmen" des Timaios. Ich moechte auch noch auf die wahrscheinlich nicht zufaellige Alliteration Kr onos-Kr itias hinweisen und auf den Zusammenhang von Timaios und time. Was haeltst Du davon? Wie passt das mit Deiner "Esoterik" zusammen? 65 �OccAsiONAL DiscouRsEs Spring 1984 The Roots of Modernity* Eva Brann T he part of the title of this talk w.hich I asked to have announced is "The Roots of Modernity:' But there is a second part which I wanted to tell you myself. The full title is: "The Roots of Modernity in Perversions of ChristianitY:' The reason I wanted to tell you myself is that it is a risky title, which might be easily misunderstood, especially since "perversion" is strong language. So let me begin by explaining to you what I intend and why I chose to talk to you about such a subject. I think you will recognize my first observation right off; you might even think it hardly worth saying. It is that we live in "the modern age." We never stop trying to live up to that universally acknowledged fact: we are continually modernizing our kitchens, our businesses and our religions. Now what is actually meant by "modern times?" The term cannot just mean "contemporary" because all times are con-temporary with themselves. Modern is a Latin word which means ')ust now." Modern times are the times which are in a special way "just now:' Modernity is justnowness, up-to-date-ness. Perhaps that doesn't seem like a very powerful distinguishing characteristic, because, again, what times are not just now for themselves? How is our modern age distinguished from ancient times, or from that in-between era we call the "middle" ages, all in comparison with our present times? Well, the first answer is very simple. We live differently in our time from the way those who came before us lived in theirs. For instance, when we speak of something or even someone as being "up to date" we are implying that what time it is, is significant, that time marches, or races, on by itself, and we have the task of keeping up with it. Our time is not a comfortable natural niche within the cycle of centuries, but a fast sliding rug being pulled out from under us. * This talk was written in 1979 for delivery at Whitworth College, a Presbyterian school in Spokane, Washington. I was somewhat reluctant to submit it for publication, being mindful of Curtis Wilson's severe but just criticism of an apparently similar effort in the last issue of the St. John's Review (''A Comment on Alexandre Koji':ve's 'The Christian Origins of Modem Science' "). However, I was persuaded that the differences were sufficient to take the chance. E.B. 66 Furthermore, we have a sense of the extraordinariness of our times; we think they are critical and crucial, that something enormous is about to be decided, or revealed. You might say that we don't just have a sense of doom or delivery, but that things are, in fact, that way. And yet such a feeling of crisis has marked decades of every century for the last half-millenium. Modernity itself is, apparently, a way of charging the Now with special significance. To ask about the roots of modernity is to ask what made. this state, this chronically hectic state, we are in come about. By the roots of modernity I mean the true beginnings, the origin of our way of being in time. At this point you might think that I am talking of history and that I am planning to lecture to you on the various historical movements which led up to our day. But not so. Such "movements'!_ be they the Protestant Reformation or the Industrial Revolution- are themselves only the names given to the sum of events which are in need of explanation. Let me give an example. Suppose I were to explain the resolve or habit some of you live with of turning directly to Scripture for your knowledge concerning faith, by saying that you are "products" of the Protestant Reformation. This historical explanation would sound as if I were saying something significant, but in fact it would say nothing about ·the inner reasons why a part of Christianity decided to return directly to the Bible. And inner reasons, namely ideas, are in the end the only satisfying explanation of the actions of human beings. Next, in explaining my title, I have to tell you what I mean here by Christianity. I do not refer to the faith itself. Nor do I mean specific dogma, that is to say, dogmatics. What I do mean are certain spiritual and intellectual modes, certain ways of approaching thought and life and the world, which are perhaps more noticeable even to a non-Christian than to someone who lives within Christianity. I hope the examples I mean to give you will clarify what I am saying. And finally I want to define as carefully as possible what I meall by a "perversion." I do not mean something blatantly heretical or terrifically evil, which we moderns should cast out. For one thing I am not myself a Christian, and it is not my business to demand the purification of other people's SPRING 1984 �faith. For another, I mean to show 1pat all of us, simply by reason of living as moderns, have been deeply penetrated by these perversions and that we could hardly carry on without them. They are an unavoidable part of our lives. When I say "unavoidable" I do not mean that there is no possibility and no point in resisting them. In my opinion there are no inevitable movements but only human beings willing, and on occasion unwilling, to go along. These perversions are unavoidable only in the sense that once certain very potent trains of ideas had been set into the world, they were bound to be carried beyond themselves, to be driven to their inherent but unintended conclusion. Perhaps, then, I should speak less dramatically and say that it is the secularization of certain Christian notions that is at the root of modernity. Nevertheless, I do want to hold on to the stronger word to describe this development, and for the following reasons. You all know what the sin of Satan is said to have been. It was resistance to God and rebellion against his creator, and its cause was pride, the sin of sins. Satanic pride, any pride, is, theologically speaking, a perverse will, literally a will that turns things awry. In particular it overturns the relation of the creature to his creator. Satan rebels because he cannot bear to be derivative and subordinate, and least of all to be more remote from the center of knowledge than Christ. He communicates that terrible impatience to Eve in the Garden when he tempts her with the fruit of knowledge and promises "Ye shall be as gods, knowing good and evil,':..... in Latin, this is the scientia boni et mali. Now, as it happens, the men of the generation around 1600 Anno Domini- the generation which was most pointedly responsible for modernity and in whose writings it roots are to be most explicitly seen- these men were also unspeakably proud. I am thinking of names probably familiar to you: of Galileo Galilei, of Rene Descartes and of Francis Bacon, an Italian, a Frenchman and an Englishman. You need only glance at the engraving published as the frontispiece of the most accessible translation of Descartes' works to see how haughty he looks. olletheless anyone who reads their books must be struck with the sober and restrained character of their writing. They keep claiming that they are not revealing great mysteries or setting out momentous discoveries. They present themselves as merely having found a careful, universally accessible method, which, once they have set it out, can be used by all mankind. All that is needed is the willingness to throw off old prejudices and preoccupations, all that Bacon calls our "idols;" we are to throw off the nonsense of the ages and to apply sober human reason to clearly-defined problems. In other words, these initiators of modernity are preaching rebellion against the traditional wisdom, but in measured, careful, sometimes even dull words, so dry N ST. JOHN'S REVIEW that students often get rather bored with reading them. That is, they get bored partly with the measured dryness with which this tremendous rebellion is announced, partly because the Baconian-Cartesian revolution is so much in our bones, has been so precisely the overwhelming success its authors expected it to be that we, its heirs, hardly recognize the revolutionary character of its original declarations of independence. But the overweening pride of these first moderns was not essentially in the fact that they were aware of opening a new age. That was too obvious to them and they were of too superior a character to glory much in it. Their pride was the pride of rebellion, though not, perhaps, against God. Interpretations differ about their relations to faith, and I think they worshipped God in their way, or at least had a high opinion of him as the creator of a rationally accessible world, and they co-opted him as the guarantor of human rationality. Their rebellion is rather against all intermediaries between themselves and God and his nature. They want to be next to him and like him. So they fall to being not creatures but creators. Let me give you a few bits of evidence for this contention. First, they all had a cautiously sympathetic respect for Satan. For example, as you may know, both Galileo and Descartes had trouble with the publication of their works. Galileo had such trouble because he supported Copernicus in his view that the earth is not fixed at the center of the universe, but travels around, a wanderer (which is what the word planet literally means) in the world, so that we human 'beings become cosmic travelers, able to see the heavens from various perspectives. Now, the authorities of the Catholic Church at that time, considered the fixed central place of the earth as crucial to the character of the place God had chosen to become incarnate. But they were not so crude as to quarrel with an alternative astronomical hypothesis, if it happened to be mathematically satisfying. What they forbade Galileo to assert in public was that this was the true reality and not just a possible theory. In this they were in the best tradition of ancient science. The astronomers had always known that there were alternative mathematical hypotheses for explaining the heavenly motions, depending on one's point of view. The Ptolemaic, geocentric system was simply the one more in accord with the evidence of our unaided sense- everyone can see the sun running through the sky-and the system then and now most useful for navigation. What the Church required of Galileo was that he should keep science hypothetical instead of claiming that it revealed the reality of the heavens; this earth's motion could be asserted hypothetically but not as a fact. We all know that he pretended to yield, but is said to have muttered: '1\.nd yet it moves?' By that stubharness he showed himself the archetypal scientist. I mean, he made it possible for that word scientia which means simply knowledge, as in the scientia boni et mali, to come to be confined to such knowledge of reality as 67 �Galileo had, which is what we call science today. Among such realities is the fact that the he~vens are full of real matter which is indistinguishable fr,om and moves just as do the stones on earth. , Now Galileo and also Descartes, who had similar troubles with the theological faculty of the University of Paris, the Sorbonne, did find a publisher in Holland. And this Dutch publisher had a most revealing emblem which includes a very serpent-like vine twining around a tree, an apple tree, I imagine, whose fruit is the new scientia} modern science. Of course, the serpent is Satan's shape as he tempts human beings to knowledge beyond that proper to a creature! "Ye shall be as gods , knowing good and evil." A few more examples. When Bacon first sets out those procedures which are now smoothly familiar under the name of the scientific method, he constructed a type of experiment he slyly calls light-bringing or "luciferic" experiments. You all know that the angelic name of Satan before his revolution in heaven and his fall was Lucifer, or the Light-bearer. Again, some of you have probably read Milton's Paradise Lost, and perhaps you can compare Milton's Satan with Dante's. Dante's Satan is a horrible, inhuman figure encased in ice in the lowest hell in Inferno. Milton's modern Satan has much grandeur. He is in fact represented as an overwhelmingly proud, antique, even Homeric, hero. Or one last example: Dr. Faustus, an evidently not altogether fictional scholar who stands on the brink of modernity, has a real intimacy with the devil. And in those old tales from which the famous later treatments are taken Faust sells his soul to him not only for the pleasures and the dominion of the world, but also for the secrets of modern astronomy and algebra. Here let me repeat my caution: I am not saying that these founders of modernity played silly and wicked blasphemous games, but only that they still had the theological learning and the grandeur of imagination to know what their enterprize resembled. ow let me give you three enlightening complementary facts. Bacon wrote a book, a kind of scientific utopia called the New Atlantis, a place which is an imaginary island lying off the shore of America. The book is, in fact, the first description of a scientific research complex. Bacon calls the group of people in charge of it "the College of the Six Days' Work:' Furthermore, Galilee's work called the Two-New Sciences, in which he sets out the beginning of modern physics, is a dialogue taking place on a succession of days, possibly six. And finally Descartes's Meditations, intended to prepare the world for modern science, takes place in six sessions. There is no question in my mind but that these men were thinking of themselves as re-doing God's work of the creation, as creating a new world or re-creating the old one in an accessibly intelligible, illuminated form, and as revealing what they had done in a new kind of N 68 scripture. They were light-bringers, making us, their heirs, like gods, knowing a source for re-making the world, for better or worse, as new creators. Here, finally, is the point I have been leading up to; you may find it a little outrageous, but see whether you can deny it: We, almost all of us, have so totally absorbed such an attitude that we hardly notice what we are saying anymore. Let me ask you when you have last said that you wanted to "do something creative" with your life, or have been told to "think creatively" or called someone you admired "so creative:' In fact we are in the habit of referring to all our more exciting activities as "creative:' But creativity is a precise theological idea whose meaning we are partly forgetting, partly perverting to our modern use. Creativity means the ability to bring something into being out of nothing, in Latin, "ex nihilo;' frOm the very beginning, as God is implied in Genesis to have separated the heavens and the earth out of a chaos of his own creating. Clearly we are quite incapable of such production. For example, take a potter to whose work we may refer as "very creative." But a potter has clay out of which the pottery is fashioned and a wheel on which it is thrown. The ancient Greeks referred to all such work as "making," for which the Greek word is poesis, and they used that word particularly for that kind of making which is done in words and which we still call poetry. Creative poetry is therefore, strictly speaking, a contradiction in terms, and yet that adjective has a revealing significance. For a maker works on given material according to a tradition and from a pattern. But a creator is free of all those restrictive circumstances and bound above all by the inner demands of self-expression. It makes for that kind of production we peculiarly think of as "Art;' with all its courage, cleverness, sophistication and emphasis on the artist's individuality. The story of modern art is the story of the triumph of rebellious creativity, of creativity divorced from its proper, superhuman agent. But artistic creativity is only a later outcome of the original perversion of the notion, and indeed, a reaction to it. The first, and still predominant application of the notion of human creativity is the re-enactment of the sixdays' work I have already referred to. That is to say, it is the science of nature and its application, called technology, which appears to put humanity in control of the creation. Now modern science, it seems to me, has two separate roots. One is Greek. The Greeks began the development of those mathematical tools which characterize modern science. They also distinguished and named the science of physics. Physics is a Greek word derived from physis, which means growth and movement and is usually translated as "nature." But the natural science of the Greeks was, I think, in its very essence, incapable of mechanical application. It was pure theory.-Theory is another Greek word which means "beholding;' "contemplation:' The Greek physicists looked on natural be- SPRING 1984 �ings but they did not control nature. You will not be surprised when I say that I think this attitude has everything to do with the fact that the greatest of them, Aristotle, regarded the world not as having a beginning and an end but as unmade and indestructible. Something very different had to arise to induce the frame of mind which made a technological science possible. It was not merely the notion of creation, for you remember that when God asks Job in the Old Testament: "Where wast thou when I laid the foundations of the earth?", Job has no answer.- He is overcome by his own impotence in the face of God's power over nature. But these moderns I have been speaking of, they do have an answer. For example, when God goes on to ask; "Canst thou send lightnings, that they may go and say unto thee, Here we are?" Of course, the modern answer is: Yes, we were there; yes, we can. What has intervened? What has intervened is, I think, the notion that God can appear in human form and work miracles, that transubstantiations, that is, substantial transformations of nature can take place: in sum, that the creation can be controlled from within. Modern science takes, I believe, some of its impulse and much of its pathos from a secularized version of these notions. There are dozens of other aspects of modernity which have a similar origin in a secularized version of Christian notions. Because I cannot set them out carefully nOw, let me just pour them out before you and then choose that one which particularly bears on the just-nowness, the peculiar "modernity" of our time for a brief final word. Here is a mere list of such aspects. It will probably be a little unintelligible; it is certainly incomplete; but it might be suggestive. Modernity, then, has adopted from Christianity: • The search for certainty in philosophic matters, • The notion of a total adherence to an idea ( cf. the bookburning of Acts 19: 19, 20, Hume, Enquiry, last para.), • A burning interest in facts of existence and in their ordinary or extraordinary standing, • The concentration on the self and its expression, • The emphasis on the will and its power, • The fascination with freedom, • The conversion of the antique noble virtues to virtues of benevolence (such as Jefferson explicitly urged), • The passion for equality, • The notion of salvation through work (cf. Weber, The Protestant Spirit), • The overwhelming importance of the written word, • The idea of historical change. et me, by way of finishing off, dwell a little on the last aspect. I cannot imagine that there is anyone here who does not have one of two possible attitudes toward the past. You may think either that the past is too much dead and gone to bother with in this L ST. JOHN'S REVIEW modern, fast-changing world. Or you may think that you need to study the past to get some perspective on the present day and its uniqueness. But that means that whether or not you are interested in the academic discipline called history, you believe in History as a movement of time in which essential and irreversible changes come about, and many of you may also think that this movement is toward something, either doom or fulfillment, that is either progress or decline. The ancient pagans, to be sure, also knew that every present passes away, that kings die, empires crumble and ancestors moulder in their tombs. They too kept chronicles of times past, to keep alive the memory of heroes or to prove how ancient was their own descent, and they certainly thought that the world might have its epochs and its cycles. But, to my knowledge, they never, never, thought of history as having an intelligible, purposeful movement; they never thought that time contained moments of revelation, or bore a spirit, or had in it a beginning and an inevitable end. Hence they had none of our preoccupation with the future as a shape coming toward us. What we keep calling "tomorrow's world" was for them simply the "not yet;' the nothing. Now I think that this way of thinking of time was prepared for us by the Christian notion of the irruption into time of divinity, that is, by the Incarnation, and by the promise of a Second Coming and a Day of judgment and a New Kingdom. The secularization these ideas have undergone has removed their precise theological significance, and what we have retained is only a sense of doom or of progress, according to our temperaments; and a sense of the whirling advance of time. But that sense of living in a Now which is both unique and vanishing- that is exactly what is meant by modernity. Let me conclude by repeating what I said in the beginning. This is emphatically not a sermon but alecture, and so I am in no way urging some sort of purification of modernity. On the contrary, I hope to have shown that modernity consists of such perversions of notions drawn from Christianity, and that to be a modern means to be deeply enmeshed in them. But there is a conclusion to be drawn. It is that there is no way to understand ourselves and our world without some deep study of the J udaeo-Christian tradition. Let me tell you a brief anecdote. Some of my colleagues-forthe-year at Whitman College were arguing over the current curriculum reform the college is undertaking and the difficulties of finding a subject matter that all could agree on as indispensable. One member of the group finally asked: What would you all say if you were asked what was the single most necessary study? Then a man who has, I am sure, only the loosest religious affiliations answered unhesitatingly: Theology. And no one was willing to deny his explanation that students need a framework in which to think about the nature and ends of their life. My point today has been that they need the same study to understand the nature and ends of their time. 69 �BooK REVIEW The Challenge of Peace: God's Promise and Our Response. Washington, D.C.: United States Catholic Conference, 1983 viii+103 pp., $1.50 (paper) Moral Clarity in the Nuclear Age Michael Novak Nashville: Thomas Nelson, 1983 144 pp., $3.95 (paper) Catholics and Nuclear War: A Commentary on "The Challenge of Peace;' the U.S. Catholic Bishops' Pastoral Letter on War and Peace Philip J. Murnion, ed. New York: Crossroad, 1983 xxii+346 pp., $10.95 (paper) The Bishops and the Bomb: Waging Peace in a Nuclear Age Jim Castelli Garden City, N.Y.: Image Books, 1983 283 pp., $7.95 (paper) very group today seems to have a The drafting process also found the comleft and a right -legislatures, school mittee members accommodating themboards, advisory commissions, even sdves not only to the Catholic just-war committees of Roman Catholic bishops. tradition but also to new expressioJ;lS of The Committee on War and Peace of the pacifism among their fellow bishops and National Conference of Catholic Bishops to the strongly expressed views of the (NCCB) was evidently planned that way. Reagan administration and the Vatican. Archbishop John Roach, the NCCB The story of this consultative process, unpresident. who appointed the committee's precedented for an American bishops' chairman, has said, "I wanted articulate conference, has been competently told by people at the extremes:' For the left wing, religion reporter Jim Castelli in The Archbishop (later Cardinal) Joseph Ber- Bishops and the Bomb. In tantalizing detail, nardin of Chicago selected Auxiliary Castelli describes the special influence Bishop Thomas Gumbleton of Detroit, a wielded by two advisers to the commitwell known pacifist and president of Pax tee: the Rev. J. Bryan Hehir, director of Christi U.S.A.; for the right wing, Aux- the bishops' Office of International Justice iliary Bishop John O'Connor of the Mili- · and Peace, and Bruce Martin Russett, a tary Ordinariate. The other members, Yale political science professor appointed Bishop Daniel Reilly of Norwich, Conn., as the committee's principal consultant. and Auxiliary Bishop George Fulcher of Hehir and to a lesser extent Russett were Columbus, Ohio, were expected to be responsible for much of the precise swing votes. Bernardin's skills at guiding language and subtle reasoning of the this group to a consensus without visibly letter. taking sides were unquestioned. How the bishops' committee pulled The bishop's committee worked from and hauled between the hawk and the 1981 to 1983, producing four drafts of a dove positions of O'Connor and Gumblebook-length pastoral letter on nuclear ton reveals some interesting aspects of the weapons and U.S. defense policy entitled leftward drift of episcopal political views, The Challenge of Peace. The drafts but the real significance of The Challenge themselves, which culminated in the of- of Peace resides in the final text itselfficial version adopted by the NCCB in what it says, what it implies, how well it May 1983, reflect major shifts of opinion argues its case, how it can be interpreted, among the committee members, the how it will be used. The letter is signifibishops at large, and consultants to the cant both for the American Catholic comcommittee both invited and uninvited. munity and for the security of the nation. E 70 The bishops' rhetoric rings clear and strong: "as a people, we must refuse to legitimate the idea of nuclear war . . . our 'nd to nuclear war must, in the end, be definitive and decisive" (Challenge, pars. 131, 138.) [These paragraph numbers are used in all published texts of the letter; the text is available in a low-priced edition from the U.S. Catholic Conference and as an appendix to the Castelli and Murnion books.] The bishops translate their rhetoric into moral anathemas, solemnly condemning the use of nuclear weapons against population centers, retaliatory use of nuclear weapons "which would indiscriminately take many wholly innocent lives" and any "deliberate initiation of nuclear warfare, on however restricted a scale" (147-150). Although the letter avoids a blanket condemnation of any use of any nuclear weapon under any circumstances, the bishops make no attempt to specify conditions under which a nuclear weapon could be used morally. If no moral wartime uses of nuclear weapons can be foreseen, what moral status can be attributed to a policy of nuclear deterrence? The bishops' treat~ ment of deterrence mostly consists of expressions of concern and perplexity. Deterrence, they write, is "currently the most dangerous dimension of the nuclear arms race" (162); it is a "moral and political paradox" (167) as well as a "contemporary dilemma'' (174); and "any claim SPRING 1984 �by any government that it is pursuing a morally acceptable policy of deterrenc~ must be scrutinized with the greatest care" (195). ad the bishops been left to think for themselves, they might well have moved to a condemnation of deterrence, as a goodly number of their confreres wanted. But in June 1982 Pope John Paul II sent a message to the Second U.N. Special Session on Disarmament containing a sentence on deterrence that would once and for all determine the American bishops' position: "In current conditions;' the Pope wrote, "'deterrence' based on balance, certainly not as an end in itself but as a step on the way toward a progressive disarmament, may still be judged morally acceptable" (Challenge, 173). Taking this sentence as a papal directive, the bishops simply adopted it as their policy, interpreting it in American terms, elaborating it in different language, without criticizing or altering it. The effect on The Challenge of Peace was seriously to soften the core of the letter by substituting moral assertions on deterrence for moral analysis. The bishops' own versions ofJohn Paul's statement on deterrence include their "strictly conditioned moral acceptance of nuclear deterrence" (186) and their "lack of unequivocal condemnation of deterrence" (192). The strict conditions specify that deterrence must be minimally sufficient and that each new deterrent strategy and weapon must be judged "in light of whether it will render steps toward 'progressive disarm ament' more or less likely" (188). The bishops' loyalty to the Pope's every sentence prevented them not only from developing their own moral analysis of deterrence but also from uncovering a serious deficiency in the papal statement itself. John Paul evidently opposes deterrence if it is "an end in itself' but approves of it "as a step on the way'' to disarmament. But in the real world of massive Soviet threats and refractory U.S.-Soviet negotiations, deterrence never is an end in itself but definitely is a need in itself. By itself it is not -and cannot be -a step on the way toward disarmament. Deterrence is needed to deter the Soviet Union from using its weapons. If the Soviets decide not to negotiate, deterrence will be needed; if a new treaty is signed, deterrence will still be needed; if George Kennan's dream of a 50 percent reduction in nuclear weaponry is realized, deterrence will still be needed. To be sure, disarmament is another need, but deterrence and H ST. JOHN'S REVIEW disarmament are different in kind. To tie them together as the Pope did -with the American bishops dutifully agreeingconfuses any argument about the morality or immorality of deterrence policies. The moral category most in need of study with respect to deterrence is the notion of intention. To a nuclear pacifist, the intention of deterrence is analogous to the plan of a murderer and is to be damned accordingly. But since the goal of deterrence is to prevent war, not to wage war, the moral question is not that easy to answer. Michael Novak, in Moral Clarity in the Nuclear Age (archly described by Castelli as a "counterpastoral"), has vigorously argued for moral approval of deterrence: It is clear that the complexities of nuclear deterrence change the meaning of intention and threat as these words are usually used in moral discourse. Those who intend to prevent the usc of nuclear weapons by maintaining a system of deterrence in readiness for use do intend to use such weapons, but only in order not to use them, and do threaten to use them, but only in order to deter their use . . . Clearly, it is a more moral choice and occasions lesser evil to hold a deterrent intention than it is to allow nuclear attack. [Moral Clarity~ pp. 59, 61] Moral Clarity ~·n the Nuclear Age is the most cogent critique of the American bishops' judgments yet to be published, though it addresses itself mainly to the issues rather than to the text of The Challenge of Peace. The pastoral letter invites dialogue and criticism by claiming that one of the major purposes of Catholic teaching on war and peace is "to contribute to the public policy debate about the morality of war" (16). From Novak, in the book under review and in num~ erous articles, the bishops have been getting what they apparently want. In the collection of essays, Catholics and Nuclear JiVtzr, however, too much of the criticism is mild and too many of the essaysists follow the lead of the Rev. Theodore Hesburgh, who in the book's foreward writes, ''I believe [the pastoral letter] is the -finest document that the American Catholic hierarchy has ever produced" (Catholics, p. vii). The writers in this volume are mostly Catholics, about half and half clerical and lay; well-known names among them include the Rev. Hehir and Prof. Russett, the Rev. Charles E. Curran, James Finn, the Rev. David Hollenbach, George F. Kennan, David J. O'Brien, the Rev. Richard A. McCor~ mick, Peter Steinfels, Lester C. Thurow, Gordon C. Zahn, et al. nevitably when theologians take up public policy, some bizzare opinions emerge. For example, Sister Sandra M. Schneiders, professor of New Testament and Spirituality at the Jesuit School of Theology in Berkeley, locates a problem in connecting sacred scripture with contemporary issues: "The problem is;' she writes, "that we lack an adequate hermeneutical theory" (Catholics, p. 91). As to coping with nuclear weapons, Sister Schneiders believes I it is not a theory of just war, however morally sound, but the gospel imperative to make peace even at the cost of ultimate selfsacrifice that must guide our response to the question of nuclear arms. [p. 95] To counter the Soviet Union's weapons, Schneiders recommends for the United States not an arsenal but "Christian defiance of death" (p. 103). For another example, Georgetown theologian Richard McCormick brings his scholarly skills to bear on the question of intention in nuclear deterrence but gets helplessly tied up in "ultimate intent;' ('instrumental intention," "comsummatory intention;' ('objective intentionality" and "inbuilt intentionality" (pp. 173-177 passim). Catholics and Nuclear JiVtzr on the whole is much better than these examples, however. James Finn, editor of Freedom at Issue, asks a central question: Finally, we must ask whether [the bishops'] recommendations, if they become policy, would move us '(toward a more stable system of national and international security" (196), as the bishops intend, or toward some less desirable and more dangerous situation. [p. 133] Finn finds serious flaws in the bishops' analysis of deterrence, in their understanding of the facts of the "arms race" and in their joining of the traditions of just war and pacifism. His conclusion about the bishops' letter should worry all of us: "I believe their recommendations, if pressed into operation, would weaken the security of the United States and its allies" (p. 145). Another worthwhile essay in this book comes from the M.I.T. economist Lester 71 �Thurow. Entitled "The Arms Race and the Economic Order;' Thurow's piece takes up the bishops' treatment of the interdependence of rich and poor nation,s: The section of the bishops' pastoral letter that is most directly relevant to economics and the arms race is entitled, "Interdependence: From Fact to Policy" (III.B.3). Unfortunately, the section does not start with "fact" and therefore does not lead to "policy?' The essence of the section is to be found in the second half of the quotation from Vatican II: "The arms race is one of the greatest curses on the human race and the harm that it inflicts upon the poor is more than can be endured." The section essentially implies that poor countries are poor (at least partially) because they have been exploited by rich, militarily powerful countries. [Catholics, p. 207.] 72 Of this claim -a claim that has become the common coin -of today's politicalreligious rhetoric-Thurow says, "The evidence for this assertion is lacking in the bishops' letter and denied by historical research'' (p. 207). He follows with his own conclusion about the relationship of arms to poverty: "There is no doubt that the arms race hurts the poor, but the arms race that impacts the poor is not that between the Soviet Union and the United States but that among poor countries" (p. 208). Serious criticism from the left comes from the long-time pacifist Gordon Zahn, who is disturbed by the bishops' reliance on the just-war theory as their moral framework but pleased with the bishops' "recognition of evangelical pacifism as a legitimate option for the Catholic" (Catholics, p. 130). "It is time;' Zahn believes, "to dismiss once and for all the just-war formulations as irrelevant to the realities of modern war" (p. 130). Recognizing that the bishops are moving to the left, Zahn gives them his partial approval, calling the letter "a slight turn in the right direction" (p. 131). The American Catholic bishops, to their credit, have stimulated a new phase in the forty-year-old national dialogue on nuclear weapons. Whether their mixture of religion and politics will be more beneficial to the world than such mixtures have been in past centuries remains to be seen. So far one thing about The Challenge of Peace is clear: the bishops, whatever they have to teach, have a lot to learn about nuclear weapons and U.S. defense policy. Robert L. Spaeth Robert L. Spaeth, former tutor at St. John's College, Annapolis, is dean of the College of Arts and Sciences at St. John's University, Collegeville, Minn., and the author of No Easy Answers: Chn"stians Debate Nuclear Armr, recently published by Winston Press, Minneapolis. SPRING 1984 �Cumulative Index, April 1969-Winter 1984 The last cumulative index, marking eight years of publication, appeared in the July 1977 issue of The College. This spring, after fifteen years as first The College (Apr 69-Jul 79); then The College/The St. John's Review Gan and Jul 80); and now The St. John's Review (since the Winter 81 issue), it seems appropriate to bring the index up to date. The following list, arranged alphabetically by author, includes all material published from April 1969 through Winter 1984. Photocopies of specific articles are available at $.20 a page, minimum order $2.00; requests should be addressed to the managing editor in Annapolis. Aldanov, Mark The Holdup at Tiflis on June 26, 1907: the "Exes" (from The Suicides), (trans. Joel Carmichael_) ... Winter/Spring 83 Alexander, Sidney The Rainfall in the Pine Grove; The Mannequins; The Donkey Rides the Man (poems) ..... Autumn/Winter 82-3 Allanbrook, Douglas The Spanish Civil War ........ Apr 72 Three Preludes for the Piano ... Jan 73 Power and Grace ............. Jan 77 Truth~Telling and the Iliad . Summer 83 Allanbrook, Wye Jamison Dance, Gesture, and The Marriage of Figaro . . . ................ Apr Don Giovanni, or the Triviality of Seduction . . . . . . . . . . ...... Jul Mozart's Cherubino ........ Winter Ardrey, Daniel My Memoir of Our Revolution . . . Winter/Spring Aron, Raymond For Progress . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Jan Soviet Hegemonism: Year 1 . . . . . . . Summer Bacon, Helen The Contemporary Reader and Robert Frost . . . . . . . . . . . . Summer ST. JOHN'S REVIEW 74 79 82 83 80 81 81 Barr, Stringfellow Tribute to Robert M. Hutchins Oct 77 Bart, Robert S. Hell: Paola and Francesca Jul 71 Commencement Address, Annapolis 1975 . . Jul 75 Remarks at Jacob Klein Memorial Service . . . . . . . . . . .......... Jan 79 Barzun, Jacques William James, Moralist ...... Autumn/Winter 82-83 Baumann, Fred R. G. Collingwood, An Autobiography (book review) .... Jul 79 Affirmative Action and the Rights of Man . . . . . . . . .......... jul 80 Beall, James H. Solstice on the First Watch; The Horizon as the Last Ship Home (poems) . . . . . Summer 83 Bell, Charles G. The Number of My Loves (poem) . . . .. .. .. .. Jul 70 Two Sorts of Poetic Revision .... jul 73 Prodigal Father (narrative) ..... Jan 80 Five Translations (poems) ... Winter 82 Berns, Gisela Schiller's Drama- Fulfillment of History and Philosophy in Poetry . . . . . ..... Summer 82 Berns, Laurence The College and the Underprivileged . . . . . . Apr 69 Reasonable Politics and Technology Sep 70 Memorial to Leo Strauss . . . . Jan 74 Memorial for Simon Kaplan ... Jan 80 Blanton, Ted A. High School Workshop . . . . . . . Jan 74 Memorial to Leo Strauss . . . Jan 74 Blistein, Burton Some Notes on the Lost Wax Process .. Apr 73 Blum, Etta From The Hills as Waves (poems) ............ . Summer 81 Bolotin, David On Sophocles' Ajax ... ..... Jul 80 Irwin's Plato's Moral Theory (book review) Winter 81 Bonfante, Guiliano The Birth of a Literary Language . . . . . . . . . . . . Jan 80 Born, Timothy Poisie, by Paul Valery (translation) ..... Jul 73 Bosco, Joseph A. Defeat in Vietnam, Norman Podhoretz's Why ~ Were in Vietnam (Review Essay) Autumn/Winter 82-83 Brann, Eva T. H. A Reading of the Gettysburg Address .................... Apr 69 The Venetian Phaedrus . . . Jul 72 The Poet of the Odyssey . . . . . . Apr 74 Commencement Address, Annapolis, 1974 ............. Jul 74 The Perfections of Jane Austen . Apr 75 Graduate Institute Commencement Address, 1975 .. Jan 76 Concerning the Declaration of Independence . . . . . . . . . . J ul 76 On the Imag-ination ........... Jan 78 73 �Remarks at Jacob Klein Memorial Service . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Jan 79 For Bert Thoms . . . . . . . . . . . . Jul J9 Inner and Outer Freedom . . . . . Jul 79 Kant's Imperative . . . ..... Jan ~0 "Plato's Theory of Ideas" . . . . J ul 80 Madison's "Memorial and Remonstrance" . . . . . . . . . . . Summer 81 The Permanent Part of Autumn 81 the College Summer 83 Against Time Winter 84 Intellect and Intuition Bridgman, Laura R. F. Christian, ed., Tolstoy's Letters. (book review) . . . . . . . . . . . Jul 79 Brown, Ford K. Commencement Address, Annapolis 1973 Jul 73 Bruell, Christopher Summer 81 Thucydides and Perikles Buchanan, Scott The New Program at St. John's College . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Oct 72 Bulkley, Honor At Home and Abroad: Letter from Nicaragua and Guatemala . Winter 81 Cantor, Paul The Ground of Nature: Shakespeare, Language, and Politics Summer 83 Carey, James Aristotle's Account of the Intelligibility of Being ..... Winter 84 Carmichael, Joel The Lost Continent, The Conundrum of Christian Origins . . . . . Autumn/Winter 82-3 Collins, Arthur Kant's Empiricism ............ Jul 79 The Scientific Background of Descartes' Dualism· ..... Winter 81 Objectivity and Philosophical Conversation: Philosophy and the Mirror of Nature, by Richard Rorty (Review Essay) ...... Winter 82 The Unity of Leibniz's Thought on Contingency, Possibility, and Freedom Autumn/Winter 82-3 Ambiguities in Kant's Treatment of Space .......... Winter/Spring 83 Collins, Linda Going to See the Leaves Autumn 81 (narrative) ....... . A Nighttime Story (narrative) .. Autumn/Winter 82-3 Comber, Geoffrey Conversations with Graduate Institute Alumni Apr 73 Comenetz, Michael Chaos, Gauss, and Order Jul 78 Darkey, William A. In Memory of Mark Van Doren ......... Apr 73 Franz Plunder . . . . . . . .. Jul 74 In Memoriam of John Gaw Meem 1895-1983 . . . . . . . .... Winter 84 Dawson, Grace A St. Johnnie on the Job Apr 73 Market .... Dean, John Talking with ~i~tu;,es: "Les Bandes Dessmees .. . .Jul 79 74 Deane, Stephen At Home and Abroad: Letter from Moscow ............ Jul 80 de Grazia, Margreta Nominal Autobiography in Shakespeare's Sonnets . . . . . . . . . . . . Summer 83 Dennison, George Family Pages, Little Facts: October (narrative) ....... Winter 81 Shawno (narrative) Winter 82 Diamond, Martin On The Study Of Politics In A Liberal Education Dec 71 Dorfman, Alan Freud's "Dora'' ... Jul 78 Doskow, George Leven's Creator (book review) .... Jul 80 Drake, Stillman Scientific Discovery, Logic, and Luck . . . . . . . . . . J ul 80 Dry, Murray The Supreme Court and School Desegregation: Brown vs. Board of Education Reconsidered Summer 83 Dulich, Jean (pseud.) Letter from Vietnam .. Winter 82 Fehl, Philipp P. Life Beyond the Reach of Hope . . . . . . . . . . . . . ....... Jan 80 Ferrero, Guglielmo and Mosca, Gaetano Letters on Legitimacy . . . . Winter/Spring 83 Fisher, Howard The Great Electrical Philosopher . . . . . . . . . Jul 79 Flaumenhaft, Harvey Memorial for Simon Kaplan Jan 80 Fontaine, John Chameleons (poem) . . Winter 84 Ginsburg, David Ideals and Action: Commencement Address, Santa Fe, 1974 Jul 74 Gold, Michael W. A Preservationist Looks at Housing . . . . .. Jan 78 Goldsmith, William M. An Open Letter to St. John's Alumni . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Jan 78 Goldwin, Robert A. The First Annual Provocation Address . . . . . . . . . . . . . J ul 69 St. John's Asks John Locke Some Questions . . . Apr 71 Of Men and Angels: A Search for Morality in the Constitution ... Jul 76 Gray, J. Glenn The Sense of It All; Commencement Address, Santa Fe 1977 ....... Jul 77 Griffin, Jonathan Translation of Poetry (with Rim baud translations) ......... Apr 77 Guaspari, David The Incompleteness Theory .. Autumn 81 Hadas, Rachel Three Poems . . Winter/Spring 83 Ham, Michael W. Martin Duberman, Black Mountain (book review) . . . . . . . . Apr 73 Hazo, Robert G. Remarks at Jacob Klein Memorial Service ........... Jan 79 Hilberg, Raul At Home and Abroad: The Holocaust Mission . . . . . . . Autumn/Winter 82-3 Himmelfarb, Gertrude Adam Smith: Political Economy as Moral Philosophy Winter/Spring 83 Holmes, Stephen Benjamin Constant on Ancient and Modern Liberty .... Winter/Spring 83 Holt, Philip Sophocles' Ajax and the Ajax Summer 82 Myth ........ . Hook, Sidney Memories of John Dewey Days ................ . . Jan 80 Isaac, Rael Jean and Erich The Media-Shield of the Utopians . . . . . . . . . . Winter/Spring 83 Jacobsen, Bryce "When is St. John's Going to Resume Athletics?" Apr 70 Jaffa, Harry V. Inventing the Past . . . ... Autumn 81 Jenson, Kari At Home and Abroad: Letter from the Homefront: On Marrying ...... Autumn/Winter 82-3 Jones, Gregory On J ohnathan Schell's The Fate of the Earth (Review Essay) . Winter/Spring 83 Josephs, Lawrence Four Poems .............. Autumn 81 Io; Hephaestus (poems) .... Winter 82 Achilles; In Memoriam, John Downes (poems) ....... Autumn/Winter 82-3 Kaplan, Simon Remarks at Jacob Klein Memorial Service .................. Jan 79 Kass, Amy Apfel The Liberal Arts Movement: From Ideas to Practice Oct 73 Kieffer, John S. Apr 69 A World I Never Made lola Scofield, A Memorial Jul 72 Klein, Jacob Dec 69 The Problem of Freedom A Giving of Accounts Apr 70 (with Leo Strauss) The Myth of Virgil's Aeneid Dec 70 On Precision . . . . Oct 71 Discussion As A Means Of Teaching And Learning . . . . . . . . . Dec 71 Speech, Its Strengths and Its Weaknesses ....... . Jul 73 Memorial to Leo Strauss Jan 74 Plato's Phaedo ......... . Jan 75 The Art of Questioning and the Liberal Arts . . . . . . . . . Jan 79 The Copernican Revolution .... Jan 79 On a Sixteenth Century Algebraist ....... . Jan 79 The World of Physics and the Natural World (trans. and ed. D. R. Lachterman) . . . . Autumn 81 Kojeve, Alexandre The Christian Origin of Modern Science (trans. D. R. Lachterman) . Winter 84 Kuder, Samuel S. Mathematics As A Liberal Art .. Jul 69 Remarks at Jacob Klein Memorial Service . . . . . . . . . . . . .... Jan 79 SPRING 1984 �Laloy, Jean John Paul II and the World of Tomorrow ............. Jul 80, Landau, Julie Some Classical Poems of the T'ang and Sung Dynasties . . . . . . . . . . J ul 79 Some Chinese Poems Summer 82 Lazitch, Branko Not Just Another Communist Party: The Polish Communist Party .......... Autumn/Winter 82-3 Lederer, Wolfgang How Does One Cure A Soul? .. Apr 76 What Good and What Harm can Psychoanalysis Do? Winter 84 Le Gloannec, Anne-Marie The Federal Republic of Germany: Finlandization or Germanization? ....... . Winter 82 Levin, Michael Autumn 81 "Sexism" is Meaningless Liben, Meyer Three (Short Stories) ..... Jul 80 The Streets on which Herman Melville Was Born and Died (narrative) . . Winter 81 Not Quite Alone on the Telephone Summer 81 (narrative) . . New Year's Eve; Treasure Hunt; Meetings, Recognitions (narratives) . . Autumn/Winter 82-3 Littleton, Michael S. Prayers ....... . Jul 70 Loewenberg, Robert The Trivialization of the Holocaust as an Aspect of Modern Idolatry . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Winter 82 That Graver Fire Bell: A Reconsideration of the Debate over Slavery from the Standpoint of Lincoln . . . . . . . . . . Summer 82 Marx's Sadism . . Autumn/Winter 82-3 Lund, Nelson Guardian Politics in The Deer Hunter . . . . . . . . Winter 81 Sidney Hook, Philosophy and Public Policy (book review) Autumn 81 Macierowski, Edward M. Truth and Rights ............. Jan 77 Mackey, Kimo The Odyssey of the "Cresta" Apr 75 Maschler, Chaninah Gotthold Lessing: Ernst and Falk, Conversations for Freemasons Autumn/Winter 82-3 Class Day Address 1983 ... Summer 83 McGrath, Hugh P. An Address for the Rededication of the Library ............... Dec 69 Michnik, Adam Letter from a Polish Prison . . . . . Autumn/Winter 82-3 Mongardini, Carlo Guglielmo Ferrero and Legitimacy . . . . . . . . Winter/Spring 83 Montanelli, Indro Kekkonen, the "Finlandizer"... Winter 82 Morrisey, Will DeGaulle's Le fil de l'epie .... Winter 81 Mosca, Gaetano (See Ferrero, Guglielmo) ST. JOHN'S REVIEW Mullen, William Nietzsche and the Classic ... Winter 82 N avrozov, Lev One Day in the Life of the New York Times and Prava in the World: Which is more Informative? ..... Autumn 81 A Dead Man's Knowledge; Varlam Shalamov, Graphite (book review) . . . . Winter 82 Updike and Roth: Are They Writers? (Review Essay) . . Summer 82 Neidorf, Robert A. Biological Explanation Apr 70 The Ontological Argument Apr 72 Old Wars: Commencement Address, Annapolis, 1972 ............. Jul 72 Statement of Educational Policy and Program . . . . . . . . . . . . jul 77 O'Flynn, Janet Christhilf For Bert Thoms . Jul 79 O'Grady, William The Power of the Word in Oedipus at Colonus . . . . . . . . . Apr 77 About Jacob Klein's Books About Plato: A Commentary on Plato's Meno and Plato's Trilogy ................ Jan 79 Odysseus Among the Phaiakians jul 79 Ossorgin, Michael "How Was the Seminar?" Apr 69 Two Writings in the Sand; Santa Fe Baccalaureate Address Jul 74 Platt, Michael Aristotle Gazing . . . . . ........ Jan 80 Prevost, Gary Carrillo and the Communist Party in Spain (book review) .. Jan 80 Raditsa, Leo Thucydides, Aristotle's Politics, and the Significance of the Peloponnesian War ........................ Jul 75 Words to the Class of 1977; Class Day Address, Annapolis ........ J ul 77 For Bert Thoms . . . . . . . . J ul 79 The Collapse of Democracy at Athens and the Trial of Socrates ...... Jul 79 At Home and Abroad: Letter from Budapest and Pees ... Jan 80 Eyes of His Own -and Words: George Dennison, Oilers and Sweepers and Other Stories (book review) . . . . . . . . . . J ul 80 Recent Events in the West .. Winter 81 Afghanistan Fights: The Struggle for Afghanistan, by N arrey Peabody Newell and Richard S. Newell (Review Essay) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Winter 82 Laos; Marie- Noele and Didier Sicard, Au nom de Marx et de Bouddha, Revolution au Laos; un peuple une culture disparaissent ............... Winter 82 The Division of the West- and Perception ......... Winter/Spring Rangel, Carlos The Latin-American Neurosis (trans. Hugh P. McGrath, Leo Raditsa) . . . . . . . . . . . Winter Roth, Robert In the Audience (narrative) Summer Ruhm von Oppen, Beate Bach's Rhetoric . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Jan Profile of an Alumnus: David Moss . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Apr 83 81 81 75 76 Trial in Berlin . . . . . . . Jan 77 German Resistance to Hitler: Elites and Election . . . . . . . . . . . . . . J ul 79 Student Rebellion and the Nazis: "The White Rose" in Its Setting Winter 84 Sachs, Joe Aristotle's Definition of Motion . Jan 76 An Outline of the Argument of Aristotle's Metaphysics . . . . Summer 81 The Fury of Aeneas Winter 82 Scofield, Richard Dec 69 The Habit of Literature Scolnicov, Samuel Plato's Euthydemus Jan 80 Simpson, Thomas K. Faraday's Thoughts on Electromagnetism . . . . Jul 70 Newton and the Liberal Arts ... Jan 76 "The Scientific Revolution Will Not Take Place" ............ Jul 78 Prometheus Unbound Jan 80 Slakey, Thomas J. Sep 70 Personal Freedom Toward Reading Thomas Aquinas . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Summer 82 Smith, ]. Winfree The Teaching of Theology to Undergraduates Jul69 Commencement Address, Annapolis, 1970 Jul 70 Aristotle's Ethics Jan 73 Memorial to Leo Strauss Jan 74 Commencement Address, Annapolis, 1976 jul 76 Remarks at Jacob Klein Memorial Service . . . . . . .... Jan 79 Memorial for Simon Kaplan ... jan 80 St. John's under Barr and Buchanan . . . . . . . . . . Summer 82 Smith, Brother Robert Excerpts from the History of the Desert Fathers . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Apr 76 Remarks at Jacob Klein Memorial Service . . . . . . . . . . . . . Jan 79 Proof and Pascal . . Winter 82 Sonnesyn, Patricia For Bert Thoms . Jul 79 Spaeth, Robert L. An Interview with Barbara Leonard . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Oct 72 Alumni Profile: John Poundstone Jan 73 An Interview with Robert Bart Apr 73 An Interview with Alvin Fross and Peter Weiss . . . . . . . . . . . . . Jul 73 Profile: Louis L. Snyder, '28 ... Jul 73 Sparrow, Edward G. Apr 71 Logic and Reason Noun and Verb . . . . . . . Jul 71 A Reading of the Parable of the Prodigal Son .......... . Jul 78 Storing, Herbert J. The Founders and Slavery ..... Jul 76 Strauss, Leo A Giving of Accounts (with Jacob Klein) . . . . . Apr 70 What is a Liberal Education? .. Jan 74 An Unspoken Prologue to a Public Lecture at St. John's Jan 79 Tamny, Martin Boyle, Galileo, and Manifest Experience ......... . Jan 80 75 �Thaw, Eugene V. The Collection of Mr. and Mrs. Eugene V. Thaw Apr 76 Thompson, Homer A. The Libraries of Ancient Ath.ens Winter Tolbert, James M. Remarks at Ford K. Brown Memorial Service Oct 7 7 Twenty Years in Retrospect Sep 69 Twenty- Five Years in Retrospect Oct 74 Van Doren, Mark How to Praise A World That May Not Last Dec 71 Venable, Bruce Philosophy and Spirituality in Plotinus Autumn 81 Wasserman, Adam V. S. Naipaul, A Bend in the River (book review) . . Autumn 81 Webb, James Mission over Hanoi (from A Country Such as This) . . Summer 83 Weigle, Mary Martha (Marta) Brothers of Our Father Jesus-The Penitentes of the Southwest .... Jul 75 Weigle, Richard D. The Liberal Arts College: Anachronism or Paradigm . . . . . . . Sep 69 e1 76 Remarks at Ford K. Brown Memorial Service Oct 7 7 Report of the President Sep 69, 70 Oct 71-80 Richard Daniel Weigle, Celebration of an Anniversary . . . . . . . . . .. Jul 74 West, Thomas G. Cicero's Teaching on Natural Law . . . . . . . . Summer 81 Williamson, Ray and Abigail .... jul 74 Plastering Day Wilson, Curtis A. Reflection on the Idea of Science Dec 70 Apr 74 Jacob Klein at 75 Commencement Address, Annapolis, 1977 Jul 77 Remarks at Ford K. Brown Memorial Service ........ Oct 77 Remarks at Jacob Klein Memorial Service ... Jan 79 On the Discovery of Deductive Science Jan 80 Ancient Astronomy and Ptolemy's "Crime" (book review) ........ Jan 80 Kepler and the Mode of Vision Jul 80 The Origins of Celestial Dynamics: Kepler and Newton Winter 81 Homo Loquens from a Biological Standpoint Summer 83 A Comment on Alexandre Kojfve's "The Christian Origin of Modern Science" . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Winter 84 · Winiarski, Barbara Dvorak Remarks at Jacob Klein Memorial Service Jan 79 Zelenka, Robert S. The Ruin; Hommage a Dietrich Buxtehude (poem) ........... Jan 75 BlackWf!ter (poem) Summer 83 Zuckerman, Elliott The Magic Fire and the Magic Flute ........ Dec 69 What is the Question? . . . . . Apr 73 Remarks at Jacob Klein Memorial Service .................. Jan 79 Don Alfonso (poem) Autumn/Winter 82-3 Black and White;.Arriv.ll; Sixteen Eighteen; With Orjan at the Great Japan Exhibition (poems) . . . . . Winter/Spring 83 Beyond the First Hundred Years: Some Remarks on the Significance of TriStan Winter 84 Cordelia (poem) Winter 84 SPRING 1984 ��The St. John's Review St. John's College Annapolis, Maryland 21404 Non-profit Org. U.S. Postage PAID Permit No. 66 Lutherville, Md. � Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource <em>The St. John's Review</em> Description An account of the resource <em>The St. John's Review</em><span> is published by the Office of the Dean, St. John's College.  All manuscripts are subject to blind review. 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Creator An entity primarily responsible for making the resource Office of the Dean Publisher An entity responsible for making the resource available St. John's College Identifier An unambiguous reference to the resource within a given context ISSN 0277-4720 thestjohnsreview Contributor An entity responsible for making contributions to the resource St. John's College Greenfield Library Text A resource consisting primarily of words for reading. Examples include books, letters, dissertations, poems, newspapers, articles, archives of mailing lists. Note that facsimiles or images of texts are still of the genre Text. Page numeration Number of pages in the original item. 76 pages Original Format The type of object, such as painting, sculpture, paper, photo, and additional data paper Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Creator An entity primarily responsible for making the resource Office of the Dean Title A name given to the resource The St. John's Review (formerly The College), Spring 1984 Date A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource 1984-04 Contributor An entity responsible for making contributions to the resource Sterling, J. Walter Parran, Jr., Thomas Lord, Susan Freis, S. Richard Sachs, Joe Stickney, Cary Wilson, Curtis A. Sachs, Joe Allanbrook, Douglas Brann, Eva T. H. Berg, Gretchen Berman, Ronald Stephenson, David Mensch, James Flaumenhaft, Mera Klein, Jacob Spaeth, Robert L. Description An account of the resource Volume XXXV, number 2 of The St. John's Review, formerly The College. Published in Spring 1984. Identifier An unambiguous reference to the resource within a given context ISSN 0277-4720 The_St_Johns_Review_Vol_35_No_2_1984 Coverage The spatial or temporal topic of the resource, the spatial applicability of the resource, or the jurisdiction under which the resource is relevant Annapolis, MD Publisher An entity responsible for making the resource available St. John's College Language A language of the resource English Type The nature or genre of the resource text Rights Information about rights held in and over the resource St. John's College owns the rights to this publication. Format The file format, physical medium, or dimensions of the resource pdf St. John's Review https://s3.us-east-1.amazonaws.com/sjcdigitalarchives/original/608f19dce5e2e91219b859731230b3bf.pdf c6056b927d21bc37ae63857e7650022d PDF Text Text 'sReview St. John's College 1784-1984 Summer, 1984 �Editor: J. Walter Sterling Managing Editor: Thomas Parran, ·Jr. Editorial Assistant: Jason Walsh Editorial Board: Eva Brann S. Richard Freis, Alumni representative Joe Sachs Cary Stickney Curtis A. Wilson ' Unsolicited articles, stori~s, and poems are welcome, but should be accompanied by a stamped, self-addressed envelope in each instance. Reasoned comments are also welcome. The St. John's Review (formerly The College) is published by the Office of the Dean, St. John's College, Annapolis, Maryland 21404. Edwin J. Delattre, President, Samuel S. Kuder, Dean. Published thrice yearly, in the winter, spring, and summer. For those not on the distribution list, subscriptions: $12.00 yearly, $24.00 for two years, or $36.00 for three years, payable in advance. Address all correspondence to The St. John's Review, St. John's College, Annapolis, Maryland 21404. Volume XXXV, Number 3 Summer, 1984 © 1984 St. John's College; All rights reserved. Reproduction in whole or in part without permission is prohibited. ISSN 0277-4720 Compos£t£on: Fishergate Publishing Co., Inc. Printing: The John D. Lucas Printing Co. Cover courtesy State of Maryland Maryland State Archives. Laws 1784 Chapter 37 Page 1. �THE StJohn's Review Contents 2 A Search for the Liberal College (book review) Joseph Killorin 6 The Analysis of Fictions Scott Buchanan 15 . . . . . . The Breathing Side of Ocean (poem) William Thompson 16 . . . . . . The Problem and the Art of Writing jacob Klein 23 . . . . . . Passage (poem) Elliot Zuckerman 24 . . . . . . The Myth and the Logic of Democracy John S. Kiiffer 31 . . . . . . Bandusia, Flower of Fountains (poem) Richard Freis 32 . . . . . . On Mimesis Victor Zuckerkandl 40 . . . . . . The Archimedean Point and the Liberal Arts Curtis Wilson 48 . . . . . . The P~ogram of St. John's College ·Eva T H. Brann OccASIONAL DrscouRsEs 56 . . . . . . Sermon Preached at St. Anne's Church, Annapolis J Winfree Smith 59 . . . . . . The Golden Ages of St. John's College Eva Brann 62 . . . . . . William Smith: Godfather and First President of St. John's College Arthur Pierce Middleton BooK REviEw 66 . . . . . . The Early History of St. John's College in Annapolis Charlotte Fletcher 68 . . . . . . The Old Gods (poem) Gretchen Berg �BooK REviEw Summer 1984 A Search for the Liberal College ]. Winfree Smith, St. John's Press, Annapolis, 1983, vii+135 pp., $11.00 Joseph Kill orin T his is the story of how a man conceived and founded, as an act of war against the familiar educational enterprises of our age, a college to cultivate the intellectual virtues by means of what he called the liberal arts; how, after a decade, its restle~s and weary maker, overreaching to a grander goal, attempted to confound his original creation; and how, abandoned by him, it fell at first into confusion until a second man, after a good night's sleep, restored it safe and sound on its foundations, not without dire warnings thereafter against safe foundations and sleep. Who could possibly have thought, as Winfree Smith says some did think, "that it would be preferable to have someone from outside the college tell the story on the ground that I might be partial to the curriculum and the men who had most to do with starting and establishing it"? The same Athenians, perhaps, who thought some Scythian might tell their story more impartially than Thucydides? Winfree Smith "went through the program" under the conscript fathers and has acted for over forty years a part in the life of the college that itself demands a chapter. Yet his allegiance to St. John's appears only in the restraint and decorum with which he presents its history, and in the clarity with which he handles its principal intellectual concerns. The restraint is that of one who knows first-hand far more of the facts and has had cause for far sharper judgements than archives and other secondary sources record, and which facts and judgements, one assumes, must sometimes therefore be forbidden to this history. On a very few occasions he gives Joseph Killorin graduated from St. Joh.n's College, Annapolis, in 1947. He is Callaway Professor of Literature and Philosophy at the Savannah unit of the University of Georgia. 2 us only the deed with insufficient clue to motive; we need the help at least of "Some said ... , while others said ... :' Nowhere is Mr. Smith more discreet or his interpretation more needed than in the exit of Buchanan at the conclusion of this history's enthralling central episode, perhaps misleadingly titled "The Fight with the Navy in Wartime and the Departure of Barr and Buchanan:' The chapter begins, "This is a strange and perhaps incomprehensible story:' Mr. Smith links up the moves between the Navy and St. John's Board, both of whom seemed to find this local war they discovered themselves in strange and incomprehensible. No wonder. As Mr. Smith makes us see, it was a war in one man's soul, in which war Mr. Barr was merely a messenger, the Navy was merely an historical occasion, and the St. John's Board a chorus of friends found to be betrayers. For the war at the end of Buchanan's career with St.John's was a psychomachia. The Demiurge, comparing his copy of St. John's to the pattern laid up in Possibility, raged in despair. Or, can one say, his "mistaken historical judgement'' at last revealed him to himself as a N essus, not a Heracles, and in self-horror he demanded that his poisonous "program should be laid on the shelf and forgotten:' As Mr. Smith now presents this story, it is a good deal more comprehensible than it seemed on the spot (or even than Mr. Smith made it seem to me on the spot). But for so byzantine a story, res ipsa non loquitur, or at least the tears of this res do not speak out. Buchanan in April 1945 virtually offered to sell the campus to the Navy. Why within a year did he reverse himself and decide to fight the government in the name SUMMER 1984 �of"the great liberal arts college family;' "the sacred city," although he still did not wish to continue the college in Annapolis? And why, after the battle to keep the campus was won, did he denounce the St. John's Board as "stupid and blind . . . and therefore highly irresponsible to the vision . . . and disloyal" because they wished to hold on to what they had? Of course Buchanan's life had always been responsible "to the vision;' but why had he been overcome with a holy horror at housing this vision in the scaffolding of his own New Program? He called the New Program merely "a revolutionary blueprint to subvert and rebuild education, ... a bulldozer inside a Trojan horse." And when after ten years it had not yet subverted education, he cursed his program not only as "a mistaken historical judgement;' but as "a poison corrupting a household at St. John's and ... because of its being at St. John's it would become a poison wherever it was tried." It was also, in one of his favorite figures, "a wind-egg;' an empty birth. (Thirty years later he asked St. John's students how the search for a liberal college was going, "and if it's still on, why do you have the same curriculum now that we had thirty years ago?" [Embers of the World, p. 180].) Was this turning in 194 7 against the New Program connected in Buchanan's mind with his turning from a non-voter to a political activist (on the national platform committee of the Progressive Party [Embers, pp. 99-195])? Mr. Smith's summing up of Buchanan's tormented saga keeps our eye on the subject -St. John's: if there was a tragedy in all this, he says, it was that Buchanan's behavior jeopardized the only college he and they had by losing for it Mellon's $4.5 million. Not much is illumined in this history of Buchanan's charm or of his power of mind and character. (Nor do these things often appear in Wofford's conversations with him. Perhaps Saul Bellow is needed.) But that mind and that presence struck all with respect and many with love. That is why it is so important to comprehend this story as far as possible. The community, dispirited if not paralyzed entirely by the founder's curse, whispered in groups and floundered for two years. Who now could speak for them? Anyone would be measured against Buchanan. Yet neither another Buchanan nor, worse, a new prophet with a new program could save what they felt was worth the saving. What was needed was a N uma or, rather, an Augustus. And of course they knew he had actually been among them all along. Neither imitator nor innovator, he was a restorer. In Scott Buchanan and in Jacob Klein, other faculty members and students all saw plainly in act before their eyes what Heidegger called the "faculty of wondering at the simple, and of taking up and accepting this wondering as one's abode~' And Buchanan's fear that established routine (even in the best possible curriculum) might inhibit spontaneous learning was also a persistent fear of Klein's. They both saw college as an abode for practicing the habit of staying awake among the almost over- THE ST. JOHN'S REVIEW whelming inducements everywhere to sleep in unexamined opinion. One might gather from Mr. Smith's portraits, however, that Buchanan and Klein, both as philosophers and deans, not only differed about why men do not stay awake, but-far more to the St. John's point-about why men do stay awake (when they do). Buchanan saw inducements to sleep embedded in the deficiencies of the educational tools: in second-rate books and curricula, and in arts unhoned for activating and liberating men's thinking power. Under the spell of the best books and the true liberal arts the soul of any faculty member and any student learns to fly. Klein saw inducements to sleep welling from within, from "inactivity of vegetative or at best appetitive souls~' It is a part of our nature, he told our class, to fall "subservient to the appalling practical automatism of our way of life;' for intellect to sleep, to forget, before "the dull onslaught of routine and matterof-fact attitude:' Perhaps the life of almost all men (including in one year all but ten members of St. John's faculty) is mostly a sleep and a forgetting. But, yet, intellect does not die. Why do (some?) men desire to stay awake, to know in the fullest sense? Mr. Smith presents, with an admirable explication, what is obviously a treasured parable about the two Fathers- treasured, I would guess, because it shows how one of them (almost?) forgets his own deepest faith, the faith of St. John's. The self-exiled founder had wandered for six years when he returned to the sacred city he once said he had poisoned- for a conference. At St. John's "in the early days," Buchanan remembered, "we were concerned about the whole range of virtues, and the theological virtues were seriously inquired into. There was a concern about Faith, Hope, and Charity ...." Because "the intellect does not live without faith, without (hedging here; Mr. Smith may have caught his eye] something ofthe sort ... :• Mr. Smith reminds us that even Thomas does not see faith "as an imperative for bringing intellect to life:' But did Buchanan say intellect is dead? Yes. Intellect unwatered by "ideology, faith, or something or other" has died, he seemed to say, leaving everywhere in the house of dead intellect "a dismal grim dullness:' The founder's suggestion that without faith men do not desire to know thrusts to the heart of St. John's. So Mr. Smith persists, "But did Mr. Buchanan really mean that without faith (intellect] was dead?" And the historian charitably answers that this is unlikely, on the ground that Mr. Buchanan never before had faith in Faith, but only employed it for "lively intellectual gym_nastic:;s~' Now, like Mercury bearing the words of Jupiter to that other wandering founder ("heu! regni rerumque oblite tuarum!- Alas! forgetful of your own world, your own kingdom!"), or like Parsifal opening the forgotten shrine to heal the self-wounded Leader, Klein speaks. Buchanan: We have to have something that will bring intellect back to life. I have not any solution for this. Klein: The intellect lives. 3 �Some men desire to know most fully, and intellect, the highest activity, is under no necessity to proceed from or to flower in faith, much less in ideology "or something or other!' It is this other faith, in intellect itself, that both of them demonstrated in their lives: the faith that tormented Buchanan to abandon St. John's and sustained Klein in restoring it. It was the spectacle of that act of faith in intellect- most eminently in the lives of those two and of Leo Strauss, but of others too- that many of us carried away to ponder in our hearts in all the years after. Not, as our historian notes, that this confusion of faith-in-intellect with faith was not itself a regular theme for questioning. And indeed Mr. Smith himself usually led the questioning. Note the extra-dryness of tone when Mr. Smith recalls Buchanan on the sacraments or the Incarnation, or rather the idea of them. And there is no word in the vintner's vocabulary for the dryness with which we are told that a President of St.John's once said "the college as such was committed to belief in a God who listens to and answers petitionary prayer?' Intellect at St. John's came up against Faith in what seemed to us at first novel ways: some had Faith (I mean Jews and Christians now), and hated Theology, while some had no Faith and loved Theology. And, again, Mr. Smith was a citizen, we gathered, of Jerusalem, who nevertheless elected alien residence in Athens. (He once ended a review of a lecture on Kierkegaard: "Is it necessarily true that faith in Jesus Christ requires the opposition of reason? Is reason, after all, that important?" Just as he couldn't believe Buchanan thought intellect was dead, we couldn't believe Winfree thought that in any respect reason was unimportant.) Mr. Buchanan claimed equal citizenship in both Athens and Jerusalem, or rather he thought that each was also the other. Mr. Klein was a citizen of Athens, for whom the desirability of citizenship in Jerusalem was not even discussable. Mr. Kaplan (our semi-official guide to Jerusalem) and Mr. Scofield (our strongest guide to tragedy) were life-long renters in the House of Intellect; we loved them, among many other reasons, for their smiles of suspicion as they heard out the landlord in his more aggrandizing moods. Another persistent theme in the College and appearing in Mr. Smith's account of Mr. Klein was its ambivalent view of history. There was a public ban on history, as sometimes there is a public ban on alcohol; one drink can lead to the gutter, a little history can lead to "historicism," which is the curse of the intellectual class throughout and since the nineteenth century. Yet we learned (in the coffee shop) from Mr. Klein that he and Leo Strauss had studied under the greatest and most subtle "historicist" of all, Heidegger, whose "radical historicism" seemed to us, after all, a little like the attempt of Mr. Klein himself to make clear the history of "thinking:' (This conversation followed Mr. Klein's annual week of extra-curricular [!]lectures on the radical difference between Greek and Cartesian mathematics.) Yes, it turned out, there was a legitimate form of 4 history- only one: the history of thought (in Mr. Klein's-and Husserl's-written words) as "the interlacement of original production and 'sedimentation' of significance." At St. John's we were attempting to reactivate "sedimented" thought, recovering thinking, the original "wondering at the simple" (the original production would be reflected in the greatest books), out from history. All along in our often trackless seminar wandering (do they still try to cross Thomas on law with Burnt Njal?) we had been holding on, Mr. Klein made us see, to this Ariadne's thread from the thinking of great thinkers. The way in which Mr. Klein suggested we examine how words present things to us was different from the ways ofWittgenstein or Austin. We were, it seemed, superimposing, from our great authors, word on word, context on .context, examining-as on a palimpsesthow the oldest, the original, handling of this thing showed through the new and colored it, or, on the other hand, was blanked out. How startling to see through Descartes, Hobbes, Leibniz, Swift, Rousseau, the paths back to Aristotle and Plato that had led from a thinking to a rethinking! Mr. Klein in seminar, throwing up his hands from time to time, would explode with twenty minutes or so of this legitimate history. Mr. Strauss, besides his lectures, would offer at times in Klein's seminar a full evening of it. The discussions that followed later were never so keyed up and so "informed" Heidegger and late Husserl were mentioned, but we could not know then also how unique were Klein's and Strauss's "history" lectures, which, except for Strauss's Hobbes, we never read unless as mimeographed lectures. (Speaking of lecture subjects, am I alone in not remembering now what was said in a single lecture about the liberal arts-except about Music, where-aside from Augustine-you simply had to invent, the wilder the better. I see Music, the traviata of the Seven Sleepers, has been downgraded to Harmonics.) If chiefly Buchanan and Klein informed this search for a liberal college in its first twenty-one years, Mr. Smith's subject is not the separate actors but the College as a community concerned with the learning effort and particularly the curriculum, its surprisingly adaptive soul, as it moved from its first frantic plenitude through its successive, more practicable, shapes. And in the curriculum, one should mention (I am not the one to say more) a last persistent theme or obsession. I remember that in our first week the Demiurge himself warned us they had all been struggling with the "matter" of the laboratory to try to make it more rational and that the struggle would, with us, continue. The laboratory has provided a theme more native to St.John's than even faithless theology or anti-historicist history. Mr. Smith calls attention to the now ancient yearning of these knights of intellect to unify all the sciences, sheer force of analogy having regularly failed. With Humphreys,* *Humphreys Hall, where the laboratories were located in the 1940s and 1950s. SUMMER 1984 �it seemed then, the eros of intellect could not get beyond an interesting fumble. Consideration of this matter of the laboratory makes one see, on the one hand, how romantic was St. ] ohn's reach as opposed to its grasp, and, on the other hand, why an insider had to write this history. For how could any outsider write the next sentence with so little sarcasm and with so much smiling rue? give unity to all knowledge (p. 57), was nevertheless in an essential way like other modern seekers for unity through method, and thereby unlike Klein. Actually [Engelder, Dunkelberger, and Schiller] was not a bad text for learning chemistry, but it did not do much in the way of relating chemistry to the question of being qua being. This kind of overriding concern to unify the diversity of experience Buchanan shared with, say, both Dewey and Whitehead, but not with Klein, who held "it is very hard even to postulate unity" in the sciences as well as in all the other fields of learning (p. 119). Mr. Smith shows us, then, that the "radical inquiry" which "St.John's College means to be engaged in" meant, in its beginnings, at least two, and very different, kinds of questions and answers. We cannot know how a longer interchange between two such different men and different concerns might have altered the content and style oflearning at St. John's. From what interchange we actually observed there arose a spontaneity, a liveliness, a felt presence of intellect, and along with this a model of intellectual manners which it is impossible to forget. About Buchanan versus Klein, there was also, in their last years together at St. John's, a distinct but light-hearted sense of danger to students' minds, not that either man willingly (horrible dictui) provoked it in the slightest way. For the Collegian (August 20, 1943) five seniors wrote a spoof in which J ascha, having sat at Euclid's feet, and having rejected Descartes ("Jascha: All the world's in rack and ruin/Grecian dough has ceased its brewin'./Genus, species have passed by,/All that's left is x and y!'), at last, arriving at Coney Island, is enticed by a carnival barker named Buchanan: So Mr. Smith's whole view of St. John's beginnings arouses on every page comparisons with one's own partial memory of admirations, exhilarations, frustrations. We felt at once the thrill of participants in Odysseus Buchanan's plot to halt the Decline of the West by driving our unaccredited Trojan Horse into the Sacred City of Higher Education, assured by Mr. Barr on our first Sunday night that it was ripe for bulldozing, dying in fact of the bourgeois-vocational-elective-system disease. There were, to be sure, other, but "progressive;' Trojan Horses at work before us (Sarah Lawrence, Bard, Antioch, Bennington, Black Mountain, and Minnesota), and "we" found ourselves often at war with their sympathizers, instead of the common enemy we were all out to do in. What followed was mere pretension at debate about education's proper end and means in which, as it has long since become clear, there was not much will, on any side, to ')oin" the issues, except, perhaps, in Meiklejohn's reply to John Dewey (Fortune, January 1945). But the difference between us and all of them was obvious: we depended on the (mostly long past) great books. Now Mr. Smith's whole view invites us to see what could be meant at St. John's by its goal of "radical inquiry" at that historical moment (1) when the American scene was breeding such opposing Trojan Horses, all radically inquiring, and (2) when a man with Klein's view of the past joined a man with Buchanan's view of the past. Buchanan and Klein shared an anti-historicist interest in thinkers of the past, where even Meiklejohn understood history, like education, as a progress towards wisdom. Buchanan had, like that other American transcendentalist, Emerson, a trans-historical openness to past thinkers in his desire to connect all insights to the eternal. But with this he combined a modern addiction to logical systems and methods, such as Ockham's, Ramus's, and Hegel's. (That Buchanan could not see the antisystematist Nietzsche as a serious philosopher may be a sign of the differences between his education and Klein's; it was from the attack launched by Nietzsche, from phenomenology and deconstruction with their radical questioning of the metaphysical tradition, that Klein returned to the tradition with a concern for recovering thinking out of it.) Mr. Smith implies that Buchanan, for all his faith that metaphysics and theology were the sciences that would THE ST. JOHN'S REVIEW [Buchanan] was a man of the post-Cartesian world in that he was seeking methods and formulas and symbolic structures for learning or philosophizing, methods that would, he hoped, bring together the most diverse worlds of thought and imagination. All tickets win, and none do lose, It doesn't matter which you choose. Systems great and systems small, Numbered you must try them all. Won't you come and play my game, Metaphysics is its name. Uascha hesitates, then buys a chance. While Buchanan turns the wheel, Jascha murmurs.] J ascha: Oh fate, oh misery, oh dark forebodings . . . ! Buchanan (smiling): You've won a free ride on the Platinic system. f]ascha approaches the wheel, hesitates, tears the ticket up and turns to go. The entire carnival, however, converges on him in a whirling vortex. Thunder, lightning. Curtain.] We heard that the piece caused somewhat hurt feelings all-round. In any case, it turned out to be bad prophecy about who tore the ticket up and turned to go, and no doubt too light-hearted an assessment of what the game rightly was and is. 0 beloved Pan and all you other gods of that place, grant the fair-and-good man who wrote this book as many blessings as he has the thanks-for unnumbered reasons- of those he wrote it for! 5 �The Analysis of Fictions Scott Buchanan atter-day discussions of the fine arts have led to an interesting metaphor which has suggested the title of this little book. In the attempt to clarify the criterion of 'purity' in poetry, music, painting, and sculpture, and to disentagle it from the older criteria of truth, sincerity, and depth, critics have spoken of 'distance: There is no doubt that the metaphor has sharpened the sense of a certain quality recognizable in our appreciation, one which is closely related to formal clarity. On the other hand there is little sharpness or formal clarity in the exposition of the metaphor itself. In fact it seems improbable that distance should become an exact technical term in art criticism as long as the divorce between works of art and symbols is maintained. The metaphor is empty until we recall that a symbol, or a work of art, was originally only a part of something from which it had been separated, but to which it functionally belonged. The immediate suggestion from this etymology is that distance would neatly refer to the degree of separation of sign from thing signified. I shall not plead with art critics and aestheticians for a nostalgic rapprochement between works of art and symbols, but I shall plead with linguists and logicians for the inclusion of their studies within the broad traditional field of the arts. The intellectual arts, at any rate, are concerned with symbols, and, it may be added, they are at present painfully and crucially concerned with symbols as their essential subject-matter. The pain involved in this concern arises chiefly from the modern difficulty of achieving distance or detachment in the terms of our arts L The late Scott Buchanan founded the New Program at St. John's College. Ana(ysis qf Fictions appeared as the first chapter of Symbolic Distance, published by Faber and Faber in 1932. 6 and sciences. It may be that our art critics are teaching a deeper and broader lesson than they themselves realize, a lesson that should be studied by scientists and moralists as well as the man in the street. The ancient arts of the trivium, grammar, rhetoric, and dialectic, which we have relegated to the finishing school for young ladies, were concerned equally painfully with the symbols of a previous age; they were studied and applied for a thousand years before their task was accomplished and they were allowed to give place to the symbolic discipline of modern science with its operational skills and its speculative generalizations. It seems worth while to attempt a brief statement of their methods and aims, and to enquire into the possibility of reconstituting the technique to suit modern symbols. In the first place it was considered dangerous to allow students to enter upon the higher studies, law, medicine, and theology, without a thorough training in the trivial arts. The dangers were literal interpretation of symbolic formulae and violent application of doctrine to special cases. No vitally important study was safe in the hands of untutored persons who could not deal easily and fluently with figurative, abstract, and general terms. No small portion of our fear and confusion of medieval ideas is due to the untutored experience we have had with the isolated fragments of these subtleties that have persisted into modern times. Laboratory training and mathematical discipline are necessary for the successful handling of modern subtleties, and in some cases it seems that they are not enough: vide recent attempts of mathematical physicists to bring theology down to earth. The distinctions and consequent specialized treatments of subject-matters in the trivial arts are still important. In the first place the trivial artist distinguishes between what he calls impositions. There is the use of words or symbols in the first imposition, as when 'apple' SUMMER 1984 �refers to this or that concrete spherical red object. 'Apple' in the second imposition is the word itself, a part of speech or writing. The confusion of imposition leads to syllogisms like this: This is an apple. Apple is a word. Therefore, this is a word. In the second place, the trivial artist distinguishes between intentions. A term may be taken in the first intention as when Freedom is intended to refer to free beings; or it may be taken in second intention when it refers to an abstract principle which may or may not govern the behaviour of free beings. Confusions of intentions lead to more serious, because more cryptic, selfdeceptions which we shall discuss under the head of fictions. It is in terms of these two distinctions that the trivial arts operate. Grammar as a science studies words or symbols in the second imposition and the laws for combining them as parts of speech. In modern mathematical language, grammar studies notations and their useful manipulations. Rhetoric as a science studies these notations as natural objects having causal connections between themselves and with other natural objects, including man. In this respect rhetoric embraces important parts of psychology and anthropology. In addition to studying words and symbols in the second imposition, rhetoric also studies them as terms with second intention. When an orator manipulates notations in order to 'move' an audience, he almost necessarily also instructs or misinstructs it by elucidating an abstract idea or principle. The lawyer may develop a valid argument by means of enthymemes in order to convince a jury, or a teacher may analyse a geometrical figure and prove a theorem in order to instruct his pupils. The rhetorician must then give an account of the verbal magic of second impositions and also show how a discourse clarifies or obscures an ideal subject-matter. Finally the dialectician abstracts second intentions from terms for the sake of discovering and isolating the forms which many apparently diverse notations may have in common. Eventually the dialectician will be concerned with the limits and boundaries of meanings in which all symbols, even in the first imposition, are implicated. If he is easily tired with formal distinctions or powerfully moved by rhetoric, he may become a metaphysician, and hold theories about facts and universals. It should be noted how complicated, in the radical sense of the word, these sciences are. Each one can cover the whole field of symbols in the one single aspect that it selects as its proper subject-matter. Another may cover the same symbolic territory taken in another aspect, and any given linguistic or logical unit may have three interpretations, or possibly more if rhetoric be more finely divided. Adequate treatment demands at least three separate accounts which are normally complementary, but may conflict badly if they are not carefully distinguished. Finally there is a more general distinction between THE ST. JOHN'S REVIEW the tnv1um as a group of sciences whose application results in a criticism and theory of the symbols and the trivium as a group of arts whose practice accomplishes this or that ulterior purpose. It is impossible to speak, write, read, think, or observe without at the same time being as an artist, a grammarian, rhetorician, and dialectician. It is impossible to be in any adequate way more than one of these at one time as a scientist and still is quite as impossible to make an assertion in one science without inferences being forced in the others. The controversies between the nominalists, conceptualists, and realists of the late middle ages are incidents in the development and differentiation of the corresponding arts, and it would seem that the ability to understand and appreciate the arguments has again become important to us although our subject-matters seem very foreign to the ways of logic-chopping. Modern scientific training has fairly completely transferred the grammatical art from the authoritative texts of the scholastic to human experience as given material. It has also, though somewhat half-heartedly and cautiously, followed the ways of rhetoric and dialectic, but it has not yet achieved the linguistic balance and facility which it should provide. My contention is that its deficiency in rhetoric and dialectic has prevented us from discovering and maintaining proper symbolic distances in our highly specialized sects and cults of thought. The point may be presented in an illustration taken from our most familiar technical language for symbolic problems. Perhaps it is its familiarity that has encouraged us to omit scrutinizing the figurative modes from which the language has been drawn. A symbol is said to 'represent' what it symbolizes. The metaphor is taken from optical theory, where mirrors are said to reflect objects. Imagine a series of mirrors set up between an object and a human eye in such a way that the first mirror catches an image from the object and throws it on to the second mirror which in turn throws it to a third mirror, and so on to fourth, fifth, and nth in which the eye finally sees the image. There will then be a series of (possible) images corresponding to the series of mirrors. We may ca11 the image in the first mirror primary, and the other images secondary since they are derived from the first. Whether we refer to a geometry of perspective merely or add to that a theory of light transmission, there will be certain distortions to be taken into account, and hence qualifications or degrees of representative accuracy. If we add to such distortions, due to perfectly plane and efficient mirrors, the possibility of imperfect planes or degrees of concavity and convexity, and if we allow for imperfectly reflecting materials, we shall have a problem in the resolution of images such as an astronomer must solve before he can trust the data which he gains by the use of a reflecting telescope, spectroscope, and interferometer. The representation theory of symbols presupposes some such analogy as this. Notations whether they are verbal, imaginative, or operational, correspond to im- 7 �ages in mirrors. Usually primary images are all that the theory envisages and the problems of multiple distortion and resolution which arise in connection with secondary images are ignored. The theory of symbolic distance is an attempt to introduce into the critique of symbols some of the devices for circumspection and calculation that will correspond to optical theory in the art of astronomical clause can take its place. In this account of grammar it would seem that discourse is the successive selection and exhibition of sections from a matrix whose constituents are adjectives and whose order is fixed by the subsumption of adjectives. As a matter of fact such hierarchies have been the main content of European thought throughout long periods of history, as is evidenced in observation. I hope it is not necessary to warn the reader variations of the neo-Platonic hierarchy of forms, the that the analogy is only an analogy and should not be taken literally before it is fully expounded. Symbolic distance is a constituent of any set of symbols. It should first be recognized, and then its measurement should be attempted. The suggestion for the latter is that the number of reflections as given by the nota- theory of ecclesiastical and political official ranks, and the rise of the classificatory sciences. However, this analysis will not do. Forcing it leads to serious paradoxes, and in fact many symbolic forms are suppressed even in what we have already described. tions intermediate to the extremes that correspond to the For instance, the copula tends to be restricted to only one of its many meanings, namely, "is identical with;' concrete object and the observant eye would give a rough scale of measurement. We shall see that the problem of pretation when "is a case of' is allowed. Paradoxes are distortion and resolution in symbols will require considerable revision and reformulation of this suggestion, were well aware. The connective force of prepositions is and is only partially relieved of this paradoxical interborn of both these meanings as the Greek Megarians but it may serve as a working diagram or archetypal image from which the exposition can proceed. It will become lost when they are buried in prepositional phrases which clear as we proceed that unresolved distortions of sym- logical force have to be eliminated with the result that bols are favourable conditions for the production and per- whole sentences undergo reconstruction. Nouns become sistence of fictions, and that the measurement of sym- hypostatical and immanent entities and threaten the whole hierarchical structure, as F. H. Bradley so eloquently showed in his defense of adjectives against the absolute. bolic distance itself effects some degree of resolution. So much at present for the field of symbols within which we are to find and determine fictions. There will be more to say of it explicitly later, but at this point grammar calls for the choice of' the elementary units from which the field may be said to be built up. The grammar usually taught to school children deals with the parts of speech, by which it means the parts of sentences: are then used as adjectives. Conjunctions that have any On examination these paradoxes and suppressions show more or less thinly disguised the elements that have been ignored, the relations. The copula always is asserted in respect of some relation, or in logical terminology, in some category. The preposition is obviously relational nouns, verbs, adjectives, prepositions, conjunctions, and and directive. Conjunctions with logical force express very so forth. Older grammar began with smaller units, such as the parts of words: syllables, sounds, and marks, and it might even include non-verbal elements. Certainly fundamental relations, and nouns are either substantives or, like functions in the mathematical sense, systematic there is no reason apparent in the representation theory relations. In fact with the same kind of ingenuity that educes the adjectival hierarchy from the sentence struc- why these should not play the part of elementary units, but it may be well for us to start with the parts of ture, we can educe a network, or matrix, of relations from sentences, and allow generalization to follow the suggestions we find there. The form of the simple sentence seems to dictate its division into three parts, the noun, the verb, and the ad- analyzed into relations, and after the manner of the contemporary mathematical physicist we can rearrange our preconceptions in such a way as to turn the world into a relative and expanding universe. Relations are mar- jective, or the substantive, copula, and the adjective. The vellously elegant hypostatical entities, and they appeal strongly to the metaphysical imagination. We shall have to say more of the fictions arising from this mode of need for an account of more complex sentences and the possibility of substituting phrases and clauses for one or another of these parts of speech has led to the separation of the form of the sentence and the making of rules of substitution. These allow not only a prepositional phrase to be substituted for an adjective, or a copula and an adjective or an adverb for the verb, but also for the replacing of a substantive by an adjective. In fact, by the which all discourse can be drawn. Adjectives can be generation also, but here it will be sufficient to point out that we have paradoxes and suppressions like those that accompany the adjectival grammar. The chief sufferers here are the adjectives and nouns that serve as terms for perform the function of a substantive, as when it is the the relations. They are needed to anchor the relations, but their service is soon dispensed with and they give their places to relations between still other terms whose life and activity is also limited. Here again also the whole network is finally taken in one piece and attached as an adjective to some substantive of hypostatical origin and subject of a sentence, and that an adjective may be very complex as when a preposit\onal phrase or an adjectival that we are pushing good analysis too far in each of these proper selection of rules of substitution it is possible to show that any sentence expresses some section of a merely adjectival hierarchy. This means that an adjective can 8 we have Bradley's problems on our hands again. It seems SUMMER 1984 �cases, and that there ought to be a more temperate medium which will throw the precedin$ methods into complementary service. This last suggestion is reinforced by certain points in Bentharns' Theory of Fictions (Kegan Paul, 1932). It seems that J ererny Bentham spent the greater part of his life in exposing ghosts. There were ghosts in his family horne when he was a child, and later he found john Doe and Richard Roe in the law courts, as well as the economic and the natural man in Rouges of Parliament. In fact every institution harboured ghosts, and some of them were even worshipped. After a busy life spent in exorcizing ghosts of all descriptions and reputations, Bentham decided to retire to some quiet place and draw up the rules for the permanent cure of ghost-seeing in general. He had learned that the genesis of ghosts is linguistic, and he therefore knew that the required rules would be orthological, and in particular would deal with the clarification of fictions. The exposure of ghosts is brought about by the clear exposition of meanings in language. For this purpose he lays down the fundamentals of a suitable grammar and rhetoric. He begins with a classification of words as substantives, adjectives, relatives, and operatives according to the usual conventions of school grammar except for the substitution of operatives for verbs. We shall see the importance of this exception later. He then points out the various practical devices for fixing the meaning that a word shall have in a given piece of discourse. These are chiefly comparison of words by means of dictionaries and etymologies, and definition by means of classification according to genera, species, and differentiae. So much he expounds only to point out the subject-matter and the conventional and therefore recognizable ways of handling it. Nothing has happened to fictions and ghosts up to this point. And so it is with the types of grammar that we have pointed out so far; they are not sensitive enough to discriminate between fhe vicious and the efficient uses of language. The clarification of fictions requires exposition by paraphrasis. This in turn depends on a certain telescopic character in words as Bentham recognized, particularly in words that have a fictional force. A single word may stand for and at the same time obscure very complex linguistic forms. A sentence containing such a word may convey quite false and misleading intents to a hearer who cannot make the proper reference. Thus in the grammar of adjectives a single adjectival word may be substituted for a whole clause or phrase, and then this single world may occur as the subject of a sentence. The result for a naive hearer or reader may be the addition of an apparently substantial entity to the sum of things that the ordinary person would call his real world. Thus as Bentham shows, many people have fought wars and died in order to achieve Liberty or Justice, simply because they have heard someone use these words as subjects of sentences. Phlogiston, caloric fluids, and the ether have influenced centuries of laboratory practice for the same THE ST. JOHN'S REVIEW linguistic reason. Bentham recognized the telescopic character of these and other words, and recornrnend~d paraphrasis for the resolution of their distorted images. Paraphrasis is the process by which a real subject may be substituted for a fictional subject in such sentences. It has two parts, archetypation and phraseoplerosis, as Bentham very pictorially calls them. These names really refer to parts of the process by which the fictional subject was generated, and therefore call for the reconstruction of the structure that lies behind or inside the telescopic word. Archetypation is the process by which a term is made to represent a thing. In terms of the representation theory of symbols it is the setting up of the first mirror so that it will reflect some one aspect of the concrete individual. It is on such archetypes that the rest of our symbolic world depends. Phraseoplerosis is the filling in of the secondary, tertiary, and n-ary symbols that mirror for us the primary or archetypal symbols. When some of these intermediate symbols are lacking, we mistake the remaining ones either for archetypes or for individual objects, and we suffer from fictional deception. Bentham has this to say about archetypation: Simple propositions are either physical or psychological. Psychological propositions have physical propositions for archetypes; physical propositions are asserted about things either at rest or in motion. Ultimately every proposition predicates the existence, past, present, or future, of some state of things which is either motional or quiescent. These remarks have a heavier metaphysical load than we need to carry for our purposes, but it is easy to see that the distinction between physical and psychological propositions accords with the distinction between primary and other symbols. The specifically psychological side of symbols will more suitably come into the next chapter when we are discussing the production and gcowth of fictions. The formal and operational side will concern us here. Phraseoplerosis may be a very complex process, and Bentham has listed many suggestions that we shall have to systematize. The general term of the separate processes is synonymization, and these processes correspond very closely with the various sorts of transformations that take place in secondary symbols under the conditions of distortion, on1ission, and amplification of representation or mirroring. The Benthamite list follows: Antithesis Illustration Exemplification Description Enumeration Parallelism Ampliation Restriction Distinction Disambiguation (Determination by opposites) (Adducing analogies) (Showing instances) (Application of unique traits) (Of instances) (Comparison by complex analogies) (Characterization by relations to other terms) These terms are fairly pictorial and, with the explanatory phrases that I have added, help to· convey what may be better gained by reading the archetypation and 9 �phraseoplerosis of the word 'church' as Bentham gives it (Theory of Fictions). It can also be seen that the list has overlapping terms, and that it is probably not exhaustive of the processes that would be necessary in given cases. These are Bentham's brief suggestive descriptions of processes that we find him employing throughout his other writings. If we can translate his terms to a new basis, I think it will be possible to show the systematic foundation on which he was working. This new basis will be taken from the science of rhetoric, or that part of it which deals with figures of speech, but, as an account of notational structure, rightly belongs to grammar. There seem to be two important ways that sentences involve figures of speech. In one of these ways a sentence is to be understood metaphorically; in the other a sentence is to be understood literally. It is by ignoring this distinction that the grammar of adjectives and the grammar of relations gain the specious generality that leads to the paradoxes that we have noted in them. The grammar of adjectives tends to conceal metaphors, as when an adjective in one hierarchy is predicated of an adjective in another hierarchy without confessing the jump. The grammar of relations on the other hand pretends to give all sentences a literal interpretation. Each grammar has its proper virtues, but the virtues are heuristic and speculative rather than analytical. A first rough division of sentences into literal and metaphorical serves a practical and common-sense end, and the possibility of referring them both to more complicated units, the figures of speech, takes care of their complementary properties. In the language of one contemporary school oflogic sentences may be divided into two different kinds of incomplete symbols. Some sentences, those to be understood literally, need other literal sentences as co-ordinate context to make their meanings clear. Other sentences, metaphors, need to be expanded into sets of literal sentences. In this manner of speaking, metaphors are condensed summaries of systems of literal sentences, and, as we shall see, they become fictions when their exposition is ignored. · The distinction between metaphors and literal sentences is important and obvious in the literary use of language. 'Napoleon was a wolf and 'Napoleon was a soldier', though in the grammar of our schools of the same verbal form, are easily distinguishable in a literary context. In 'Napoleon was a wolf' we have a good case of Bentham's archetypation, the picture of a wolfleading a pack to the destruction of flocks of sheep, and this picture obviously represents, or can be represented by, a system of literal sentences, one of which would be 'Napoleon was a soldier: The finding and articulating of this set of literal sentences would be what Bentham calls phraseoplerosis. There is no doubt that such archetypation and phraseoplerosis would have been comforting to the ordinary folk in the Napoleonic period of history. We usually have similar but closer and less recognizable fictions in our minds, and they need similar treatment. 10 As in the case of the previous grammars, there are matrices of terms from which metaphors are drawn. As a matter of fact such matrices are constructed by the proper combination of adjectival hierarchies and relational networks, but they have much greater generality and usefulness than either of their constituents, and the process of combination would not be illuminating at this point. These figurative matrices are like those from which determinants are made in algebra, terms set in rows and columns to make rectangular patterns, some oblong and some square. Diagrammatically they look like this: a b c d a b h c i b e h c ! b e h k ! g a d g a d (1) e k d J j I (2) (3) ' c (4) ' !{ I J Thus 'Napoleon is a wolf could be interpreted as a metaphor drawn from a matrix of the first type, with four terms thus: Napoleon peasants wolf sheep (1) Or from the second type: Napoleon army peasants kings wolf shepherds (2) pack Or from type (3): ambition plans hunger hunting end means sheep success satisfaction consequences (Napoleon) (wolf) (man) It will be noted that the terms in this matrix do not include any of the terms in the metaphor except as these are expanded in the matrix. This example might easily be extended for the purposes of a psychological-ethical analysis of the history of Napoleon. Another type might state the comparative anatomy of Napoleon and a wolf. The extent and shape of a given matrix depends on the explicitness of the subject-matter, the available notations, and the purpose of the diagram. According to the mathematician a matrix should be read merely as it stands, but this is doubtfully possible in algebraic matrices, and quite impossible when the terms are verbal. The mathematician's point is that matrices are merely arrangements, and the moment any selection or rearrangement is attempted, a matrix SUMMER 1984 �becomes a determinant with a value at least potentially determined. The mathematician's insistence is somewhat like the metaphysician's insistence that a prime matter completely unformed can be separated from things and dealt with in isolation, and in the metaphysical analogue we may see what the mathematician intends to point out. For the metaphysician wishes to say that matter can enter into any of a certain class of things, and is not restricted to this as against that form, except disjunctively, either this or that. Likewise the mathematician intends to say that different determinants can be drawn from the same matrix, and this means that a matrix has a greater range of possible forms than any one interpretation can put upon it, though this range has definite limits, as could be shown by the application of a calculus of permutations and combinations to the aggregate of terms. It is the presence of the indeterminacy under a definite form that makes it so difficult to read a matrix without imputing to it one or another of the possible interpretations. On the other hand the attempt to make a matrix fully explicit meets with great difficulties. A matrix as it stands has many meanings but we do not know which one is intended. A verbal matrix is like an algebraic formula in which we do not know what is being talked about nor whether what it says is true. The fact that it has words as terms makes it doubly puzzling to the ordinary reader because we recognize the words of which we usually think we know the meaning and yet the clues these give us lead to labyrinthine confusions. Just so to some people an algebraic equation calls for solution and the filling in of unknown quantities, search for which by the untrained algebraist leads across the swamp of trial and error. The trained algebraist notes the form of the equation and follows the rules appropriate elements, the table top and the number five, but the analogy makes clear that the similarity is not directly relevant. It rather holds between two relations, one between a part and the whole of the table-top, and the other between one and five; it is between these relations only that the similarity holds. Furthermore the similarity does not hold between any two terms either of the metaphor or of the analogy, but rather between two relations about which nothing more than a similarity is stated. The distinction here between what is stated and what is not stated in the analogy shows what is definite in the matrix, and what is left indefinite, and the distinction is important to keep in mind when dealing with metaphors, analogies, and matrices in general. The example chosen above is of course of the simplest sort, and there are more complicated sorts, correspon- ding to the types of matrices diagrammed previously. In each case a similarity is stated between the respective relations that connect the terms in the several rows or columns. The primary relations connecting the successive terms in any row or column may be of any sort as long as the other rows and columns involve similar relations similarly placed. Also terms may be repeated from one row or column to another, resulting in the type of matrix from which the Greeks drew their favourite analogical formulae, the mean proportional. A completely degenerate case of this would be a matrix in which all the terms were identical and all the relations relations of identity. The other extreme of this type would be a matrix in which all the terms were distinct and different and the relations in any one row or column different from those in any other row or column. In this case we should have what might be called a thin analogy, the similarity holding only between orders resulting from quite different to it. In some cases he will know that there are no determinate solutions, in others that there are several solu- relations. All cases of physical measurement are cases of tions, and in still others there may luckily be one and only one. But there is still another kind of mathematician who will realise that the solutions are trivial illustrations only and that there is more to be learned by a study of the form itself, and that such study may proceed in either terms or relations, provided the relations give rise to similar orders. Stated otherwise, a matrix consists of rows and columns of terms, such that the relational order in one row is repeated throughout the others, and the relational order in one column is repeated through transformations, generalization, and the many tricks in mathematics that correspond to what Bentham calls archetypation and phraseoplerosis. The ways of such thin analogies. Any degree of diversity is allowed throughout the others. Obviously the most abstract matrical notation as it is written on paper fulfills the above requirement in the bare spatial relations of its terms, but generalization and manipulation of forms seem vague that does not prevent it from exhibiting the form of an and confusing to those who have like ourselves lost grasp of their language, and these remarks about mathematics may be comforting by way of citing precedent for the following remarks about matrices of words. The form that we have exhibited in matrices is the form of the analogy; this is true both for mathematics and for grammar. The relation between metaphors and indefinite number of other matrices. One further point their matrices is best shown in the expressions we have for measurement. Thus to say that the table is five feet long is a quasi-metaphorical short statement for the analogy: a certain section of the table-top is to the whole table-top as one is five. The original metaphorical statement says that there is a certain similarity between two THE ST. JOHN'S REVIEW of formal description: Any retangular part of a given matrix is also a matrix; and any given matrix may be included as a part in some larger matrix. Any shifting of the order of terms, and the rules for such shifting would come under the treatment by rhetorical operations. Bentham illustrates archetypation by an analysis of the fiction of moral obligation. Chasing etymologization as the clue, he says that the archetype involved in any reference to obligations incumbent on persons is the pic- ture of a man pinned to the earth by a heavy weight which must be removed if he is to get free. This picture is the archetype of the fiction in that it sets the pattern for the 11 �phraseoplerosis that is required to make clear just what the elements and relations are that go ioto the social situation where we fmd obligations. In another place he cites the picture of a man bound by ligatures to a load which he is carrying as the archetype of obligation, and then goes on to detail the elements in this situation. The flat literal-mindedness of these interpretations is a striking quality in all of Bentham's work; he was vividly aware of the great distances in fictional discourse and was not afraid to take them at one stride. The rest of the analysis is concerned with the details of his well-known hedonistic ethical theory. If we assume that the analysis consisted in the construction of a matrix, the picture of the man pinned to the ground by a heavy load serves to fill in the top row: man load This row then serves as an archetype or model upon which the other rows are to be built, and we may imagioe the last row as follows: person duties There will be as many intermediate rows as are necessary to make the fiction clear. In Bentham's case the middle rows would present the main terms in the hedonistic theory, and the original archetype would be expanded to more terms for the sake of a finer analysis. As the matrix grows by the addition of rows, the columns also take form and when it is complete we have another archetype in the first column, which repeats its form in the succeeding columns, and as a matter of fact this second archetype is often used in the construction itself. It would be used as an aid for the purpose of suggesting terms where the words for things and ideas are in a confused state and difficult to choose. We may call these second archetypes cognate to the first; they become useful in measuring distances as we shall see. They may displace the original archetypes in cases of emergency. It should be noted that often the relations that constitute the archetypal order in the columns are very thin relations of correspondence; whether they give place to thicker relations or not depends on the skill of manipulation applied to the matrix in deriving formulae from it. There are two important processes in scientific method that are exceptions, the so-called one-oneing of series and the observation and measurement of data. In these cases there is a stage where mere correspondence is taken as original and the process of induction passes from this to detennination of relational order (for instance, in the case of series, to the analysis of serial orders, and in the case of measurement, to the articulation of relational hypotheses). The shift of attention from an archetype to its cognate and back again sets the twin problems of mathematical and empirical induction in a most instructive light. It informs imagination and memory, and may at any time save the analytic process from complete collapse. 12 Archetypation lays down the basic structure of the matrix in the rows and columns. Phraseoplerosis completes the matrix by filling in secondary rows and columns. The remaining part of grammar is concerned with the determinants and the rules by which they are drawn from the matrix. In the first place two kinds of determinants are to be distinguished, the analogical determinant and the literal determinant. The analogical determinant is little more than a reformulation of the matrix, though there is some variation in the ways that this can be done. Thus the matrix a d g c b e h / l can be written as a determinant thus a:b:c:d:e:J:g:h:i which may be read a is to b is to c as dis to e is to f as g is to h is to i. The same matrix can also be written ·j · a .· d .· g .· .· b .· e .· h .· .· c . . ,· In the Euclidean account of proportions, from which this notation is taken, the second determinant would be said to result from the first by alternation, and other forms with which the reader will be acquainted result from the first by inversion. The application to matrices and analogies is obvious and needs no further comment. These might be called the complete analogical determinants derivable from a matrix. Partial determinants can also be derived by taking any rectangle or square of terms as they stand, or by taking the corresponding parts of selected rows or columns. For instance, a g b h gives rise to the determinants a:b::g:h and a:g::b:h The derivation of literal determinants is a more fundamental process. Suppose we try to take a single row or column by itself. We can do as Bentham did and translate it into a picture, for instance, the man bound to a load, but pictures are too ambiguous. If we are to keep the necessary degree of rigour and explicitness, we shall have to substitute some more determinate relation for the implicit or variable relation that is indicated in the matrix. Instead of simply a b c or a: b : c we shall have to say SUMMER 1984 �where R 1 and R 2 are more or less explicitly defined relations. Thus man load will have to be amplified or explicated to man bound to load. The derivation of literal determinants demands some determination of the unknown or unstated relations of the matrix. It is a more difficult process than any other so far mentioned. It leads to the notion of a fully determined matrix in which all the relations would be made explicit thus: a R''' R' R" c R''' R' b R''' e d R'"' g R" f R' h R" R"" R'''' in which the primes show the diversity and yet the similarity of the relations. Fortunately such fully determined matrices, if we may still call them such, are not always needed. If the archetype is sufficiently familiar as ,il picture, the determinate relations may quite harmlessly remain submerged, as far as the analysis of fictions is concerned. On the other hand, some degree of explicitness must be brought into the analysis at some point. Otherwise matrices, determinants, and analogies in general become the vehicles of mysteries and the multiplication of mysteries. Familiarity with pictures is a scaffolding built in imagination for the sake of the establishment of explicit relational structures. The derivation ofliteral determinants from matrices actually calls for the specification of the relations in the rows or columns concerned. These relations, as long as they are in matrices, need only be specific enough to fulfil the demands of analogical similarity; that is to say, they are apparent variables as they enter into analogies. The analogy says that there is at least one relation between a and b which is like at least one relation between c and d. It may be that there is more than one such relation on each side for which the analogy holds. Literal determinants, on the other hand, substitute constant relations for the variables, and since there may be more than one constant that satisfies the conditions of the analogy in the matrix, there may be several literal determinants for any one row or column. If there is only one such constant, we say the original row was thin; if more than one, the original row was thick Thin and thick relations make weak and strong analogies respectively, and the usual objections to arguments by analogy are directed against abuses that arise from confusing such relations. The cure for such abuses is the careful explication of literal determinants. Certain violations of the rules for drawing literal determinants from their matrices may give rise to what might be called metaphorical determinants. In the matrix THE ST. JOHN'S REVIEW a c b d it may be noted that a in the first row corresponds to c in the second row. If we now substitute 'is' for 'corresponds td, we have the simplest and most familiar type of metaphor. 'Napoleon is a wolf is an instance, and it was drawn from the matrix Napoleon wolf peasants sheep Another class of violations give rise to more subtle and lively metaphors. 'Napoleon barked at the sheep' or 'The Wolf stampeded the peasants' would seem to argue the supposition of diagonal relations in the matrix, or the product of the cognate relations. Strictly speaking this is not the case. It is easy to see that 'barked at' and 'stampeded' belong in the literal determinants for the second and first row respectively, and that the metaphorical sentences merely appear to shift them to the diagonal. A literary purpose has been fulfilled by ellipsis, which in these cases has either crushed or staggered an analogy. Metonymy and synecdoche play similar happy havoc with matrices, and likewise allegories, myths, and scientific theories with more complex analogies. It should now be clear that the results of phraseoplerosis consist in explicit relational statements extracted as literal determinants from analogical matrices. Some propositions as we meet them in discourse are metaphors which are to be analysed and made explicit by archetypation and exposition in matrices. Metaphors are thus elliptical expressions for a group of propositions that we derive as literal determinants from their matrices. The simplest literal determinant will be a proposition that states a dyadic relation holding between two terms of the matrix. Larger literal determinants can be analysed into these units. These are the atoms whose confluence in discourse results in symbolic structures, and their conjunction in analogies is the basis for the representation theory of symbols. One of the difficulties in the representation theory is that propositions do not always show in their verbal structures the kind of precise correspondence to one another and to their objects that the theory demands. I think I have shown one reason for this, namely that some propositions are metaphorically elliptical, or contain telescopic words and incomplete symbols. A!llllysis of these propositions removes the difficulty by showing their elementary units and how they do correspond in analogies. Another difficulty is due to the fact that not all the symbolic units, the relational couples, are expressed in verbal propositions. In fact relations are in a real sense themselves fictions, as Bentham says. They can be translated into other symbolic elements, and in ordinary discourse some relations are so translated and some are not. The best term to describe the symbolic elements into which some relations are translated is operation, or 13 �operative. The discovery of operations in mathematics and their careful formulation was a turning point in analytic theory. So it might have been in the other linguistic sciences. In mathematics it is possible to formulate the assumptions of geometry in terms of points, translations, and rotations. The last two are operations to be performed, first, on points and then on any elements that result from such operations. Thus a line results from the translation of a point in a given direction, and a circle from the rotation of this line about a point. When such a formulation has been made, it becomes apparent that the operations have taken the place of the fundamental relations in the older geometry. Likewise in algebra the relations in an algebraic equation can be formulated as operations on elementary symbols. Similarly the relational constituents of any language can be translated into operations, a fact which has recently been noted and developed by anthropologists and pragmatists in philosophy, and recognized by them as parallel with the operational interpretation of physics as we have it stated in Bridgman's Th£ Logic of Modern Physics. As a matter of fact any material that is used symbolically can be interpreted operationally, and this is done by substituting operations for relations in all cases. Some conservatives are alarmed at the apparent degradation of science and thought in general brought about by this translation. They think that relations have been annihilated and that therefore rigour must have been lost. They should be reminded that all the rigour that is essential has been carried over in the translation, and it should further be pointed out that there were very puzzling paradoxes in the calculus of relations that were disguised and hidden in the rules of operation. In other words operations have always been present, and sometimes their neglect has had confusing consequences. The operational interpretation of symbols recognizes these puzzles, and at the same time applies its grammar to a wider range of symbolic materials such as, for instance, the use of scientific instruments and the patterns of human behavior that enter into intellectual arts. Thus the rules of grammar become mure general and adequate as the grammarian admits that the whole field of symbols is his subject matter. However these controversial matters may stand, the point for us here is that a full analysis of fictions should include operations as well as that part of the symbolic 14 complex which happens to be symbolized in sentences. Thus the metaphor of measurement noted above, "The table is five feet long;' must be analyzed into an analogy, one side of which collslsts in the operation of successively applying the unit of length to an interval which corresponds to the multiplication of one by five in arithmetic. Most discourse for reasons of brevity and convenience is half relational and half operational in its significance, and the difficulty of deriving literal determinants from matrices is often avoided by the introduction of operations where relations are not named. Similarly, the representation theory will often not apJrly unless operations are introduced to supplement the propositional form which is deficient. Bentham realized this point a hundred years ago and for that reason substituted operatives for verbs, thus gaining at the outset directness and concreteness in the results of his analysis. The pictures which he used for archetypes, when given operational interpretation, lead directly to the detail of phraseoplerosis and the full exposition of fictions. The final interpretation of matrices would also treat the spaces between the terms in the rows and columns as blanks to be filled in with operations appropriate to the analogical form. Thus we can say that the operation that will transform a to b is similar to the operation that will transform c to d, and discover that Love makes the World go round because the turning of one's head and the apparent whirling of the visual field involve the same relation or operation, namely, rotation. With the extensions which the operational interpretation make possible for verbal symbols, sentences can enter grammar in two ways: metaphorical or literal. If they are metaphorical, they should be interpreted and analysed by archetypation and phraseoplerosis with the help of analogical matrices and the derivation of literal determinants. Literal determinants can then be asserted as propositions or entertained as propositional functions whose forms are relational. If sentences are literal, they can be placed in matrices with their proper analogical contexts. All of this may be done under the operational interpretation. Such is the grammatical account of the structure of symbols and the description of the field within which fictions arise. It remains for rhetoric to show how these structures arise in use, and what changes they undergo and pass on to other things. SUMMER 1984 �The Breathing Side of Ocean The storm has lifted and the summer sea lies still, a shimmering immensity, as the spent waves slide over the sand. The mind can almost grasp a sea this still, is tempted to forget itself until the vacationers return, crowding the strand. They are well-equipped: umbrellas erected, towels placed, radio-stations selected, bodies well-oiled and tanning, they compose a tedious leisure. Let the sun bless them with lethargy. It will suffice. I watch their children bobbing in the shallows, and remember wading here, a child-king for whom the sea dreamed freely, waves arching toward the shore with the glory of Chinese warriors, their horses crowned with foam, their swords flashing victoriously in a prism of mist beneath the chalky, mountainous clouds. At evening I meander down the beach to where the pelicans feed on dead fish. The clouds are high and thin, luminous ghosts attending the seas heavings, the waves crashing dim silver. I lie down, thinking of nothing, and watch the sea for hours, how it persists. William Thompson William Thompson is a graduate student in English at the University of Virginia. THE ST. JOHN'S REVIEW 15 �The Problem and the Art of Writing Jacob Klein T he subject of this lecture is The Problem and the Art uf Writing. And that is what I am going to talk about. My real theme, however, the theme that prompts me to deliver this lecture, is- Reading. For what we do here, are supposed to do here, most of the time, is- reading. I submit- and I hope you will not mind my saying thisthat, on the whole, we do not read too well. There are obviously many reasons for this failure, varying from individual to individual, from circumstance to circumstance. It would be quite a task to try to account for all of them. But there is one reason- one among so many-which is conspicuously noticeable. Reading means, first of all, to face a written text. And it seems to me that we do not sufficiently reflect on what this fact entails, on what writing itself implies or presupposes, and on what it, of necessity, precludes. To talk about Reading leads thus unavoidably to the subject of Writing. Hence this lecture. In reflecting about writing it is impossible to disregard the spoken word. How could we, indeed? For human speech, this marvel, this greatest marvel perhaps under the sun, is right there, behind or beneath or above the written word. It is difficult (although not impossible) to conceive that there could have been writing without human speech existing in this world. I mean, writing seems to follow speaking. Writing and speaking exhibit, at any rate, common aspects as well as aspects in which they differ. Let me discuss those similarities and differences at some length. The differences are not as clear as one might sup- The late Jacob Klein taught at St. John's College, Annapolis, for over thirty years. For a decade, from 1948-1958, he served as Dean of the College. 16 pose at first. Speaking, we might say, appears, of necessity, as an audible sequence of sounds, a sequence in time; actual human speech is never available as a whole, while anything written is visibly there at once, in a book or on a piece of paper or a chunk of stone. While reading, even silent reading, takes time, as does the act of writing, a written text, which takes up some space, is present all at once in all its parts. But what about a tape-recorded speech or conversation? Is not the whole right there, on the marked tape? Are not written records of the proceedings, say, in a law court complete in such a way as to project the temporal sequence of all the speaking that goes on into a more or less limited space in which the entire sequence is duplicated, and thus preserved, at once? Such projections, duplications, and preservations of live speech by means of manual skills or mechanicoelectrical or electronic devices amount to canning processes. The result is indeed canned speech that can be released again into its proper medium by vocal or mechanical or electrical means. The written word, however, is not at all canned speech. The primary cause for the existence of the written word is not the desire to duplicate and to preserve the sound of the spoken word, but the desire to preserve its meaning so that it could be conveyed to others over and over again. Writing tends, therefore, to a shortening of the spoken word, a shortening that manifests itself in a variety of ways. Let us consider this phenomenon in some detail. First of all, any writing is shorthand writing. Any writing will do violence to the sound of the spoken word for, although it cannot help reproducing words, its primary purpose is to convey the meaning of those words. The various methods of writing show that clearly. Chinese characters, as you all know, although they can be read, are drawn not to be read but to be understood without recourse to the medium of sounds. They are appropri- SUMMER 1984 �ately called ideograms. Egyptian hieroglyphics, at least the oldest ones, convey their meaning directly, even though out of them evolved a syllabic and alphabetic script, something that happened to Chinese characters, too. But even alphabetic writing, i.e., writing reproducing the sounds of words with the help of some thirty letters and combinations of letters, can often be read only if the meaning is grasped first. This is particularly true in the case of English writing. We would not know how to pronounce, for instance, the assemblage of the three letters BOW or ROW without the context that gives this assemblage one of its several meanings. The reason for this ambiguity is that the number ofletters is not sufficient to indicate the various sounds we are producing while speaking. Although in many cases, as in the examples given, it might be easy to remedy the situation by changing the spelling, it does not seem possible to reproduce in writing the sound of all spoken words with complete faithfulness. And that would probably still be true if we adopted a phonetic system of signs, as the linguists do, unless we multiplied the number of those signs immeasurably. It is rather remarkable that the inadequacy of our sign systems does not really bother us. It is true that something very similar can be said of spoken words (in any language) inasmuch as the same sound may convey differnt meanings depending on the context, as for example the sounds "spell;' ''lie" (lye), "die" (dye), or the sound of inflections in nouns and verbs. In cases like those, writing might help to distinguish the meanings, but it does not always do that. The relation of written signs to the sounds of words seems, on the whole, more ambiguous than the relation of those sounds to their meanings. Now, what seems to me significant is that the shortcomings of our character or letter systems appear to reflect the tendency inherent in all writing to shorten the flow of spoken words for the purpose of clarifying and, above all, of preserving their meaning. This shortening is done by reducing the number of the spoken words, by condensing them, as it were, and this in turn is done by selecting and arranging them in a proper way. That is where the problem of writing begins to emerge. Such shortening and condensing cannot be attempted, let alone achieved, unless the whole of what is to be written is in some way present to the writer- I mean the whole as a whole, not necessarily in all its details. In shortening and condensing the spoken word, writing extends the devices by which words and sentences are con- joined in live speech. The device of shading the meaning of words by inflections or prepositional and adverbial linkages, and above all, the device of combining not only words but whole sentences by means of conjunctions and variations of verbal forms- the sum total of all such devices constitutes what we call the arts and disciplines of Grammar and Syntax. These terms refer to disciplines which are the result of some reflection on the manner of our speaking. It is not without interest to observe that such reflection bore fruit, in other words, THE ST. JOHN'S REVIEW that those disciplines took shape, in confrontation with the written word, as the very word "grammar" indicates. But writing itself transforms those grammatical and syntactical devices by applying them on a much larger scale to the whole of a written work. The term "syntax" ( cruv"ta~t<;), in particular, acquires a much more comprehensive meaning. The word means "co-ordering," "putting things together in a certain order;' "com-posing." Anticipating the whole of what is to be written down, the writer has to fit the parts of that whole into a proper order. We have a direct pointing to this procedure in the title of Ptolemy's book that we study here: it is called Matherrwtical Composition (cruvra~t<; !!<XStl!i<X"tlKl'j)-"mathematical" in contrast to a possible non-mathematical composition relating to celestial phenomena. But the same term cruvra~t<; could be applied to all written works. The anticipated whole imposes upon the writer the task of com-posing its parts with the graduated emphasis due to each of them. And just as the devices of such a composition are extensions of syntactical devices (in the restricted sense of the term "syntax"), the devices involved in varying emphases, the devices of articulation, appear to be extensions of grammatieal shadings observable even in simple sentences of live speech. The shortening and condensing of spoken words in writing demand, then, modifications and extensions of grammatical and syntactical devices. In writing, the devices of Articulation and Composition add a new dimension above and beyond the one governed by grammatieal and syntactical rules. It is in these new devices that the problem of writing resides. That problem can be formulated as follows: how can the anticipated whole be made to unfold itself so as to become an actual whole, that is, in Aristotle's immortal phrase, to become something that has a beginning, a middle, and an end? Right at this point, we see that the term "writing" may be somewhat misleading if it is understood to suggest that the act of writing must be done with some kind of instrument on some visible material. A speech in a political assembly, in an election campaign, or on some other public occasion (a lecture, for example) may well be delivered without any written text, even any written notes; the speaker could, of course, have prepared his speech beforehand in writing, but he need not have done so; he must, however, have prepared it somehow by thinking about what he is going to say and about how he is going to say it; he must thus have anticipated the whole of his speech and have committed this whole to his memory, again not necessarily in all its details, but in such a way that its composition and its main articulations are present to his mind. A speaker of this kind is a writer, too. His rhetorical problem is not different from the problem the writer faces. The speaker's memory is covered, as it were, with the "imprints" of the whole. On the other hand, a letter, a hastily scribbled note, can, on occasion, be something like canned speech, if that letter or note reproduces faithfully what would have been said without writing. 17 �The distinction, then, between the spoken word and the written word reduces itself to the distinction between saying something spontaneously and saying something in the light of an anticipated whole. Yet, this does not seem sufficient. It could become more meaningful if we looked at the effect speaking or writing may have or may not have on the listener or reader. We all remember a phrase that Homer uses so often when describing human speech, the phrase "winged words" (E1tEU n·mp6EV'tU). Whence this image? In most cases, the phrase occur& when a personage, a god or a man, addresses another single personage, a god or a man. Occasionally it is also used when someone speaks to a group or a crowd of people. Minstrels in Homer are never said to utter or to sing "winged words." Now, words are not called "winged" to indicate their soaring or lofty quality. The image seems rather to imply that words, after escaping the "fence (or barrier) of the teeth'' (EpKo<; OOOV'tOJV), as Homer puts it, are guided swifty, and therefore surely, to their destination, the ears and the soul and the understanding of the addressee. Words, especially spontaneous words, can indeed be spoken in such a way as to "sink in;' as we say. But this possibility grows more uncertain with the growing indefiniteness of the addressee. It is more difficult to reach a crowd of men than a single man. Exertions of a special kind are then required. In writing, the indefiniteness of the addressee becomes almost complete. Live speech is spontaneous, not confined within the boundaries of an anticipated whole, and more often than not endowed with wings. Written speech, visibly put down or invisibly committed to memory, is prepared, composed and articulated as a whole, and may yet lack wings. The problem of writing, then, is: how to give wings to written words so that they may reach their destination, the soul and the understanding of men. To solve this problem, that is, to know how to compose and to articulate words so as to give them wings, is to possess the art of writing. However artful the composition, some of us, of course, will not be touched by the wings. There are no safeguards against that. In the main, there are two ways in which this problem Baa be solved. One is: to say explicitly all that is necessary for the meaning of the written text to be grasped, that is, not to omit any link in the chain which binds our understanding, and not to say anything which could disrupt that chain. This kind of composition is conspicuously present in mathematical works, in Euclid, Apollonius, good calculus textbooks, and so forth; it is prevalent in any writing meant to convey to us an understanding of the ways of nature, of nature's structure, of the interlocking of natural phenomena; its traces may be found elsewhere, too, especially in legal writing. The articulation of such works tends to follow the sequence oflogical inferences. In fact, it is the reflection on what is implied in this kind of composition that leads to the conception and establishment of a very special art and discipline. This discipline has 18 as its subject that element in human speech, that element of the A.6yo<;, which gives it the character of reasoned discourse. It concerns itself with the pure structures of the A.Oyo<; and bears therefore the name of Logic. Subsequent reflection may make us doubt whether words derived from actual speaking can serve as vehicles of logical inferences. This doubt, in turn, leads to more refined versions of the discipline of logic, leads to what is call today Symbolic Logic. Any writing termed mathematical or scientific is under the spell of the idea of a strictly logical demonstrative discipline that proceeds from accepted premises through a chain of inescapable inferences to irrefutable conclusions. Seldom,. if ever, does a composition embody this idea in its purity. The degrees to which this idea is being approximated form a wide range. What interests us here is the character of the wings proper to compositions of this kind. This character is the necessity inherent in our thinking. The other way in which the problem of writing can be solved is quite different. Here what is most important and decisive is not said explicitly at all. Compositions of this kind tend to articulate the whole in such a way as to raise questions about the link that holds them together. It is our answer that will either illuminate the whole or plunge us into further darkness out of which we shall be groping anew for light. Writings of this kind taunt us. The character of the wings proper to them is the taunting presence of a hidden answer, yet of an answer within our reach. In what follows I shall try to give examples of this second way of writing. I shall take them from Homer and Plato. But before embarking upon this dangerous enterprise, I have to add a not unimportant remark to what I have just said. I said that in the main there are two ways of solving the problem of writing and I have tried to indicate what they were. I said "in the main" because there are- as always- border cases and fringe phenomena in writing that may loom large before our eyes and glow in a peculiar light. Among the oldest cases of writing are, for example, written laws. There are also monuments, themselves something like imprints on the collective memory of mankind, but imprints made visible, and there are inscriptions on them glorifying the deeds of some great man or of some great ruler or of an infamous one. There are epitaphs. There are short poems expressing a mood or a whim, aphorisms, sayings, and proverbs. I omit mentioning other examples. (There are too many of them.) We tend to cherish such border cases and fringe phenomena and to devote special attention to them. But I should venture to say that they find their place on the map of writing in terms of coordinates derived from the two main stems of writing I was talking about. And now, let me turn to the first example of the second of these main stems. Consider the Iliad. Among the great many events that follow each other in the story and the description of which constitutes the whole of the poem, there are certain ones of decisive importance, which are quite familiar to us: SUMMER 1984 �(I) the quarrel between Agamemnon and Achilles which leads to Achilles' withdrawing from the fight; (II) the victorious advance of the Trojans; (III) the intervention and death of Patroclus; (IV) the reappearance of Achilles on the field of battle; (V) the death of Hector; (VI) the funeral ofPatroclus; (VII) the surrender of Hector's body to Priam. All these decisive events could be put in a diagram as follows: I JI][· ·--------------- -x --..z ,6 " ' Disregarding the more or less superficial division into books or songs and even allowing for all kinds of tampering with, and dislocations of, the original text, there is no denying that the decisive events are crowded into the last third of the whole. Between (I) and (II) events of great significance certainly do occur, as, for example, the death lost through Agamemnon's action. It is then said (I, 511-12): "But Zeus, the cloud-gatherer, said nothing at all to her and sat in silence for a long while (&ljv):' An awful silence! Thetis repeats her plea. At last, Zeus consents and nods, a sign of an irrevocable decision. Olym- pus shakes. Thetis departs, apparently satisfied that she has accomplished her mission. Has she? The second event occurs after Patr~::>elus' death (XVIII. 165-229), while the battle for Patroclus' body rages before the ships between Hector and the Aiantes and while Thetis is on her way to get new arms for her son from Hephaestus. Hera sends Iris to Achilles, without Zeus and the other gods knowing anything about the mission, to urge Achilles to intervene in the struggle for Patroclus' body. Since Achilles has no arms at this juncture, he is asked by Iris to do nothing but to show himself to the Trojans, to frighten them by his mere appearance. Achilles, "dear to Zeus" (203), obeys and does more than what Hera through Iris asked him to do. Pallas Athene, who is nearby, does her share: she casts the tasseled aegis around his shoulders and she sets a crown in the guise of a golden cloud about his head and from it issues a blazing flame. Thus he appears- alone, separated from the other Achaeans- in the sight of the foe, a flaming torch. But not only does he appear, he shouts, three times, and the wounding of many and important warriors, the Diomedean terror, the wounding of two gods, the encounter of Diomedes and Glaucus, the peaceful scenes a terrible shout, clearly heard-and "from afar Pallas Athene uttered her voice" (217-18). Unspeakable confu- in Troy, the unsuccessful embassy to Achilles, inconclusive duels among men and delightfully treacherous actions on the part of the gods-all of which contribute in varying degrees to the unfolding plot. In the main, however, the battle is swaying back and forth all the time until finally the Trojans reach the ships of the Achaeans. During all that time Achilles sits in his tent, sulking, and only occasionally watching the fight. The pivotal event, the death of Patroclus, which changes, which reverses saved. What kind of shout is this? Is it one of triumph? Of everything, occurs very late in the poem, in the sixteenth book. It is as if the poem took an exceedingly long breath to reach that point and afterwards rushed with breathtaking speed to its end. This is the more remarkable since the entire period of time the poem encompasses is one of 49 days and Patroclus' death occurs on the 26th day, that is, very nearly in the middle of that period. Why is the composition articulated in such an unbalanced way, we wonder. Let us see. There are two events-among many others-which I have not mentioned at all. Yet it is these two events that seem to be the two foci from which all light dispersed throughout the poem stems. The first takes place when Thetis, Achilles' mother, is visiting Zeus to ask for his help on behalf of her son, reminding Zeus of the help he once received from her. She wants Zeus to turn the scales of the war, to let the the Trojans have the upper hand until finally, in the hour of the Achaeans' greatest peril, 'Achilles, and only Achilles, might be able to save them from certain defeat, lead them to victory, and thus regain his honor, which he allegedly THE ST. JOHN'S REVIEW sion and terror seizes the Trojans. Patroclus' body is threat? Is it an ordinary war cry, raised to a very high pitch? It is certainly not like the bellowing of the wounded Ares (V, '859, 863). Two verbs are used to describe that shout, one of a rather neutral taint, and, at the decisive moment, another, iuxro (22S), which has a range of meanings. One of these meanings is "crying out in grief;' Shortly before (29) the same verb was used in precisely this meaning to describe the lament of the maidens at the news of Patroclus' death. It will be repeated shortly afterwards (XIX, 41) to describe Achilles' shouting when he rouses the Achaeans to battle. Why does Achilles shout now, though not urged to do so by Iris? Certainly, to frighten the Trojans, to make them desist from Patroclus' body. But can this shouting fail to express the unspeakable pain that fills his heart, the pain which had just brought his mother to him from the depth of the sea? Here indeed is a terrible sight to behold: a man raised to his highest glory by Pallas Athene, wearing the aegis, crowned by flames, radiant, truly god-like-and this same man crushed by grief, miserable in his awareness of hav- ing himself brought the immensity of this grief upon himself. The apotheosis of Achilles is the seal of his doom. And it is his voice, his brazen voice (XVIII 222), his terrible shouting, which brings terror to the foe, that expresses his misery and his doom. Pallas Athene's voice seems but a weak echo of that of Achilles or is even completely drowned out by the latter's intensity. But are not these two events related? 19 �Does not Achilles' shout sonorously echo Zeus' silence? Can we not guess now why Zeus remained silent for a long while? Surely, he had to take account of the susceptibilities of his wife, as any husband would- and in his marital relations Zeus is no exception- but is it only Hera whom he was silently thinking about? Must he not have been concerned about the whimsical nature of Achilles' plight and Thetis' plea? And, on the other hand, how could he have refused to satisfy Thetis in whose debt he was? Is it not right then and there that Zeus decided, in wisdom and sadness, irrevocably too, to accede to Thetis' demand, to give honor and glory to Achilles, but to do that in a manner which neither Thetis nor Achilles suspected? The long stretch of the poem which corresponds to Achilles' inactivity fills Zeus' silence. While the tide of the battle is being reversed, Patroclus' approaching death is announced twice (VIII, 476; XV, 64-7), the steps which lead to it are carefully pointed out (XI, 604, 790-804, especially 792-3). Achilles will get what he wants, but at the price of the greatest loss he could suffer- the loss of his beloved friend, his other self (XVIII, 79-82). In the hour of his triumph he will be the most miserable of men. The ways of Zeus are as wise as they are crooked. Zeus does not know about Iris' mission. But do the strong-headed and light-minded goddesses, Hera and Pallas Athene, know what is going on? They do not, nor does Achilles' mother (XVIII, 74-5). While Pallas Athene transfigures Achilles into a god, Achilles is mortified. He has grasped Zeus' intent. He says himself (XVIII, 328): "Not all the thoughts of men does Zeus fulfill"; as Homer has said before (XVI, 250-2), commenting on Achilles' prayer before the slaying of Patroclus: "One thing the father granted him, the other he denied:' Zeus denied him the safe return of Patroclus. He denied it for Achilles' true glory's sake. For, as Zeus confides to Poseidon, mortal men are his concern even in their perishing (XX, 21). That is what neither Hera nor Pallas Athene understand. Hera does not understand the biting irony of Zeus' remark to her (XVIII, 357-9): 'Well, then, you have accomplished this, you have aroused Achilles free of foot. Verily, the flowinghaired Achaeans must be your children:' Achilles' suffering at the moment of his triumph is Achilles' own. It cannot be matched by anything on Olympus. It is as much the prerogative of a mortal as it is the attribute of a hero. Homer is the teacher no less of Aeschylus than he is of Plato. This, then, is one example of the way in which a piece of writing taunts us to understand what is being said not 20 in so many words, but through the articulation and composition of the whole. The answer I have given may not be the right one or may not suffice. It is up to you to find a better one. Let us turn to the second example, Platds Phaedrus. This example has the virtue of being not only an example of writing, but also a piece of writing the main theme of which is writing itself. The two people who do the talking in this dialogue are Socrates and Phaedrus. Phaedrus is a young man who loves passionately everything connected with words. He is a qnA.6A.oyo~ and so is Socrates. The conversation is between two lovers of words and takes place, on a summer day, outside the walls of Athens, near a cool brook, under the shade of a tree in which cicadas make a continuous and, I suppose, sometimes deafen. . 1ng nmse. The dialogue is divided as follows: there is an introductory part which I shall omit, although it is highly significant. Then there are two clearly distinguishable parts as follows: "' Q00 ~ =· " lis. I The whole dialogue is framed, as it were, by two figures. One is. Lysias, a famous speech-writer, who, at the very beginning of the dialogue, appears on the scene in the most suitable mask, to wit, as the scroll in Phaedrus' left hand. (The scroll contains a speech written by Lysias.) Lysias remains present in that guise (although presumably not always in Phaedrus' left hand) throughout the entire dialogue. The other figure is !socrates, another famous speech-writer, who is conjured up by Phaedrus and given stature and dignity by Socrates at the very end of the dialogue. One emerges as a past master of bad writing and the other as full of promise of becoming a writer of superior standing. Between these two extremes Phaedrus is confronted with the problem of Speaking and Writing-and so are we. In the first part, three speeches are heard, the one written by Lysias and read by Phaedrus, the other two spoken by Socrates who keeps attributing their authorship variously to somebody he cannot remember, or to the local deities, the Nymphs and Pan, or to the poet Stesichorus, or to the cicadas, or to Phaedrus. The two speeches spoken by Socrates are, at any rate, painstakingly elaborate, and, if they are not to be taken strictly as written speeches, can hardly be conceived as impro- SUMMER 1984 �vised unless, indeed, they are "inspired;' that is, dictated by divine or superior powers. Lysias' speech is the plea of a man to a young boy, in which it is contended that it is better to favor a nonlover than a lover. Phaedrus considers it a wonderful speech, "charming," as he would say today. Socrates finds plenty of faults in it and proceeds to deliver a better speech on the same theme, except that this speech blames the lover and stops short at the point where it is supposed to begin praising the non-lover. Phaedrus does not succeed in making Socrates finish that speech. It remains truncated. Instead, Socrates, by way of recantationbecause he has offended Love- delivers another speech in praise of Love. This speech, the most eloquent, occupies the middle part of the dialogue and is spoken by Socrates while the sun goes through its highest course. There is a definite change in the tenor of the dialogue after the speeches are done with, and this changed tenor persists throughout the second part. The conspicuous difference in the tenor of the two parts poses the problem of the dialogue's composition. Socrates and Phaedrus begin to speak, quietly and soberly, about the spoken and written word and continue doing so until the very end of the dialogue. Phaedrus agrees with Socrates that the real problem concerning writing is to distinguish good writing from bad writing and is ready to embark on a discussion on this subject. It is here (258E-259D) that Socrates calls Phaedrus' attention to the cicadas over their heads. He tells a story about their origin: they were once human beings, even before there were Muses; now, in their present form, so says Socrates, they are supposed to report to the Muses and to tell them who among men honors whom among the Muses; they are watching, says Socrates, him and Phaedrus now, at noontime, and if they see both talking to each other and not asleep -like sheep and most men- they might be pleased and report accordingly. The question arises: why does Socrates tell this marvelous and fantastic story of the cicadas' origin and nature at this moment? It seems to be done to underscore that, from now on, Phaedrus and Socrates, instead of exchanging elaborate speeches, that is, written or dictated words, will, in leisurely and sober fashion, converse about speechmaking and speech-writing and thus restore to the spoken word its proper and unchallengeable function. The trouble is that Socrates' tale interrupts this sober conversation. And let us not forget that this sober conversation is embodied in a written text. In what follows, we witness the previous speeches being criticized and analyzed. The beginning of Lysias' speech is subjected to a special scrutiny. And in the course of it this beginning of Lysias' speech is made to repeat itself, twice (262E; 263E-264A), word for word. We hear Socrates interpreting freely the speeches he himself made, assuming the role of their "father," so freely indeed that they appear somewhat changed: the doubtful is omitted, the wording is modified, additions are made (264E ff. ). It is Socrates' way of supporting and defending the truth THE ST. JOHN'S REVIEW they might contain. We observe Socrates and Phaedrus bearing down on various books which claim to teach the art of speaking. Phaedrus, the "lover of the Muses," is not altogether satisfied with this kind of conversation which he describes as "somewhat bare" (262C). At the crucial point, when the discussion seems to revert to the problem of good and bad writing (274B), it is again interrupted by Socrates. He suddenly asks: "Do you know in what way you would best please divinity in the matter of words, either in making speeches or talking about them?" Phaedrus replies: "I certainly do not. Do you?" Socrates: ''A tale, no more, I can tell from hearsay; a tale that has come down from our fore-fathers; as to the knowledge of the truth, it is theirs alone:' And Socrates casually adds: "But should we ourselves find this truth, would any human fancy or opinion (S6l;uaJ.LU) about it still be of any concern to us?" To which Phaedrus replies: ''A ridiculous question!" Urged by Phaedrus to report what he heard, Socrates proceeds to tell the tale of Theuth and Thamous, legendary Egyptian personages, a tale in which Theuth is reported to have invented letters, and thereby writing, and to have presented this invention to the god-king Thamous. I shall read now what Thamous, according to Socrates, says (274E-275B): "Most artful Theuth, one man has the ability to beget artful things, another the ability to judge of their usefulness or hamfulness to their users; and now you, who are the father of letters, have been led by your affection to ascribe to them a power the opposite of that which they possess. For this invention will produce forgetfulness in the minds of those who learn to use it, because they will neglect their memory, inasmuch as their tftist in writing will make them recollect by means of external marks which are no part of themselves and will not make them recollect from within through their own effort. You have thus discovered an aid not to memory but to reminding. And you give to those who learn not truth but merely the appearance of wisdom: they will become acquainted with many things without proper teaching and will seem to know, while remaining for the most part ignorant and hard to get along with since, instead of getting wise, they will merely have acquired the reputation of being wise:' We should not forget that this is a tale and that we have been warned by Socrates: hearsay is no substitution for our own discovery of the truth. Again, we should not forget that this tale presents itself to us as a written text which, according to the very content of the tale, cannot be relied upon without proper teaching. Neither should we forget that the discussion of the problem of good and bad writing has, once more, been successfully interrupted. What follows in the written text is a description of writing that makes it appear a playful thing, undertaken for "amusement's sake" (276B-D). One cannot expect written words to be serious. For, as Socrates says (275D), "you would think that they (the written words) speak as if they had understanding, but should you, from a desire 21 �to learn, ask them anything about what they say, they do nothing but repeat always one and the same thing!' They cannot, therefore, defend themselves against misunderstanding and abuse. Furthermore, they cannot and do not discriminate between those to whom they speak. Any author who holds that there could be much solidity and clarity in his written work, whatever its subject, deserves to be blamed for that, regardless of whether there is anyone to voice the blame or not (277D-E; 275C). What, then, about the distinction between good and bad writing that Socrates and Phaedrus set out to discuss? Nothing is said about it. The answer to that question has been- of necessity, it seems- playfully withheld. Still, whatever has been said about the problem of writing has been enacted in the dialogue. The repetitiousness of the written word, its inability to defend itself, the superiority of the spoken word in spontaneous conversation which interprets with understanding what was written downall that has been enacted by Socrates and Phaedrus in the dialogue. Must we not continue the conversation to solve the problem of good writing, to find the answer which was not stated in the dialogue? And does not precisely the Phaedrus, as it is written, offer an example of how good writing can be done? I have few concluding remarks. Is Plato right in attributing superiority to the spoken word, to any conversation in which winged words can be exchanged spontaneously? There is a point at which this superiority seems to disappear altogether. 22 A most remarkable similarity obtains between words, spoken words of live speech, and money, money that is available in coins and bills. Both are precious, both circulate freely, coins and bills from hand to hand, words from mouth to mouth. The imprints on coins and bills are gradually erased, effaced, rubbed off, just as the meanings of words seem to become fuzzy, blurred and empty with the passage of time. There is even counterfeiting in language as there is in money. Human speech, that greatest marvel perhaps under the sun, can and does indeed deteriorate to an extent which renders it obnoxious and totally wingless. It is at this point that the written word may come to its rescue. As we so aptly say, words can be "coined." This happens both ways: words can be coined in support of cliches, fostering and increasing the ever-present tendency to diminish the vigor and meaning of speech; but words can also be coined afresh. In a letter to a friend, Virgil, a writer, says that he gives birth to verses in the manner of bears and according to their custom (parere se versus modo atque ritu ursina), that is to say, that he handles his verses the way the mother bear handles her newly born cub: assiduously and persistently she licks it into its proper shape. Such assiduous work, performed on the written word and undertaken to assure the right articulation of a composed whole, can and does restore and preserve the integrity of human speech. It is thus that the written word repays its eternal debt to the spoken word. SUMMER 1984 �Passage Ich habe unter meinen Papieren ein Blatt gifunden . . . wo ich die Baukunst eine erstarrte M usik nenne. Goethe Cold as it is, this Duomo isn't frozen Music. Measures I have in mind grow stiff To no fa<;:ade, no calculable space, No shrines for worship. God And Goethe can't discern the difference, Not having heard my music. This is not To say that music has anything much to do With sound- the unessential ear-caress Of cello or contralto. Only the tones Have number. Music moves By turnings, unprefigured, unannouncedFallings that promise risings, like the wink Of Eros at the crossing of the bar. Elliot Zuckerman Elliot Zuckerman is a tutor at St. John's College, Annapolis. THE ST JOHN'S REVIEW 23 �The Myth and Logic of Democracy John S. Kieffer D emocracy is a myth. From one point of view there is not and never has been a government or a society that is truly democratic. But on the other hand, when the name is given with sinGerity to a government, there are demands imposed on that government and its people that compel them to act so that the name is not completely falsified. This is the nature of a myth. It is a story that is both false in detail or in literal fact, true in spirit and in general. The myth of democracy is, however, in our tradition more definite than these general considerations. The myth of democracy is the history of ancient Athens. It has its quintessential formulation in the funeral oration of Pericles, though it is told by all the great Athenian writers; poets, historians, orators, or philosophers. It is a lively, living myth. When modern historians write about Athens, they reveal as much about modern political feeling as they do about ancient Athens. All the battles of politics in the nineteenth and twentieth century have been fought in the Agora of Athens. The myth of Athenian Democracy has been one of the great formative myths for our times. The goddess Athena stands in the center of it. Athenas place in the myth is exemplified in the Eumenides. She was the founder of the court of the Areopagus, which symbolized the wisdom and justice that were to replace the tribal custom of blood-feud. The Athenians saw themselves in this central myth as escaping from the reign of the daughters of Night, the furies. Now Athena is the goddess of the In the course of a lifetime of teaching at St. John's College, Annapolis, John Kieffer served as professor, tutor, President and Dean of the College. 24 household arts, of weaving, of managing. She also gives the art of persuasion and practical reason. In the Statesman Plato draws an analogy between the art of weaving and the art of government or kingship. It is not fanciful to suppose that he had Athena the weaver in mind when he did so. He must have been thinking of the way Athena had woven the fabric of her polis from the warp of the bold natures who dominated the assembly and the woof of prudence in the Areopagus. At any rate the history of Athens shows this interweaving of boldness and prudence, grandly in Themistocles and Aristides, meanly in Nicias and Alcibiades. The myth of democracy is largely legend, that is, a story explaining some great phenomenon of history. What does it explain? To take an example of another myth, in the case of the Trojan cycle it seems probable that the myths explain the breakdown of the Mycenaean world. Periods of chaos are productive of legend. But this is not the full story. The my.th of Troy as we have it is the work of a man of genius who seems to have lived long after the disappearance of the Mycenaean world. The expansion of Greece through colonies seems to have been the exciting cause of the Homeric poems. This was again a period of swift change such as to be fertile in making myths. So, for the Trojan war,. it seems that two periods of history contribute to the story. (I am not saying that the Homeric poems are caused by historical circumstances. The absolute cause must be the myth-making faculties of Homer and his unknown predecessors. I am saying that historical periods supply the material for the poet's imagination to work on. And further, that periods of change supply the most usable kind of material. Still further, it may be that the finished poem, the Iliad or Odyssey, is produced in a stable period following a period of change.) With the analogy of the Iliad and Odyssey in mind, SUMMER 1984 �we may try to see what historical circumstances furnished material for the myth of democracy. I am not going to say "the fifth century," because that was the myth. To us looking back it has historical being and becomes circumstantial to the myth; to the people living then it did not, of course, exist historically, and so could not be the phenomenon they felt called on to explain. I think the historical phenomenon I am looking for is that same period of colonization, or rather its concluding phase, that had been, in its earlier phase, the material for Homer. The second set of historical conditions for the myt~ of democracy would be the rise of the Persian empire. So it is my contention that the myth of democracy that we know from a community of bards and classic writers, and that they knew from the rhapsodes of the assembly, somehow told itself by applying its imagination to the colonizing period that ended in the sixth century B.C. and to the Persian wars. What was there about that period that aroused the imagination to see a way of government by words? And secondly, why does this produce a myth of democracy? I answer my first question first. Words must have achieved a new importance for the sea-faring colonizers. Ulysses shows by his example how his survival depended on his skill with words: his quick repartee with the Cyclops, his courteous speech and inspired tale-spinning among the Phaeacians, his self-concealing lies when he had returned to Ithaca. We can well imagine how often a group of colonizers had use for quick wit and ready tongue, to ease their way among strange tribes on the coast ofltaly or the Crimea, to gain advantage over rival groups seeking. a "home far off' on the same site, to settle disputes among the colonists themselves, now they were living far from their accustomed ways and ancestral habits. This last was perhaps most important of all, for, though hearth fire.and home gods accompanied the colonists, and ancestral customs were carried in their very souls, the change of setting must have weakened the sentiment with which the colonists regarded them. Moreover, many of their gods and customary rites must have been inappropriate to their new surroundings. Add to this that the colonizers went in small groups to widely scattered places, from the Crimea to Spain, and came from many different home cities, and so there was no central direction of their movement. They were forced to rely on their own resources. No wonder then that the colonies were often pioneers in new constitutions and in the development of written law. In all this words assume an importance not only greater than before, but also of a different kind. As confirmation from the converse let me remind you that the Spartans, who did not colonize and did not carry on commerce overseas, were a byeword to the rest of the Greeks for brevity of speech and have given us our word Laconic. No one should be surprised to notice that Homer was an Ionian and that both poetry and philosophy sprang into being in colonial areas: Sappho, THE ST. JOHN'S REVIEW Alcaeus, and Archilochus in the islands; Thales, in Ionia, Pythagoras born in Samos and settled in Southern Italy. The rise of Persia contributed to the myth in a different way. In the first place Persia created Greece. It was the threat of conquest by her world empire that made the Greeks know themselves as Greeks. This was the origin of the myth of Hellas. The Hellenes were forced into a cooperative effort for self-defence. Once more the power of words was made apparent. You cannot read Herodotus without observing how rational discussion among the allies was essential to the measures taken to meet the Persian danger and how much persuasion was needed to bring the leaders to agree on plans in common. So we have the myth of Hellas and have seen how the Greeks have discovered the power of words to hold together a self-uprooted, changing society. Why does the myth of democracy eventuate from this finding? To answer this question we may first look at the political myth that prevailed in Greece before the colonizing period and that guided the plans and actions of the colonizers. That myth, I suggest, was the patriarchal myth, the myth of fatherhood, of the wisdom of the elders. It was the myth that was to be named aristocracy when later ages became self-conscious and invented labels for its customs. Its foundation in economics was in the ownership of land and its legal expression was through ancestral custom, the laws (thesmoz) of Zeus-born kings and the pronouncement of oracles. The myth or elements of it survived all through the later age of democracy, oligarchy, and tyranny. You can feel its presence on every page of Plato. By contrast one of the formative myths of modern democracy is the Social Contract. Now the Social Contract implies the natural equality of all men; it foreshadows brotherhood rather than fatherhood and is forward-looking not backward-looking. Men in a SocialContract society ask what new agreement shall we make to deal with a new situation; in a patriarchal society they ask, what does the custom of our ancestors, or the will of our father, God, direct us to do. Probably the inner logic of political behavior will always interweave the strands of fatherhood and brotherhood. Our society is founded on the Social Contract and yet our own Social Contract, the Constitution of the United States, has become, and had to become, an institutionalized father image, the incarnation of ancestral wisdom. In the foundation of the Greek colonies this order is reversed. The colonies, as we have seen, were founded according to the ancestral model of the mother city, but by the logic of the situation, geographical dispersion, and political autonomy, the colonies were forced to look ahead, not back, and to act in practice as if on the theory of the Social Contract. Accordingly, as we have seen, they became leaders in the writing of constitutions and the making of legal codes. Moreover, as we have also seen, the Social Contract implies equality. Therefore, the tendency toward democracy acquired the backing of political practice. When the cumulative force of the many separate experiences with government showed what had 25 �happened, historic patterns came into view. Tyrannies arose, oppositions in the name of ancestral custom converted the traditional, unself-conscious aristocracies into politically conscious oligarchies, and the people, the Demos, thereby became conscious of itself as a political force. I see the grounding of the myth of democracy, then, in the colonial movement, which weakened the unquestioned acceptance of the old patriarchal way oflife of the land-owning aristocracy pictured and idealized in Homer and Hesiod, and in the Odes of Pindar. I have argued that colonizing put a new emphasis on the use of words as means of politics and that this meant a tendency away from ancestral custom toward something like a Social Contract. Another way of putting it is that tradition disappeared to be replaced by reason. Historical realities never exactly conform to categories of thought. The more rational new forms of the colonies retained traditional forms and relations and developed their own tradition. Conversely, the traditional forms began to use the mode of reason in their struggle for self-preservation. The democratic myth includes something more than a set of historical conditions and a new way of using words. It includes also an implicit change in the view of men in relation to one another and a new foundation of political power. These two changes are related to each other. If we can believe the accepted view of most historians, the colonizing movement was one expedient adopted because of population pressure. Rather than risk revolution, the citizens of the metropolis decide to encourage a portion of the populace to emigrate and colonize. So, you see, a group that may have been an unconsidered mob of base-born paupers acquires a new status. Partly this is because of its physical strength as it grows more numerous, and perhaps because of the appearance of bold and intelligent leaders in its ranks. More significant, however, is that, by the proposal to send out a colony, the old aristocracy confers on the group of colonies the dignity of a rational equal. No longer are they just a number of poor people who can be absorbed as tenants or clients and cared for in a fatherly way by the well-born land owners. It is now in embryo a corporate body with whom the aristocracy can treat in a reasonable way. This is the birth of Demos. It is noteworthy that colonization was only one of the possible expedients for dealing with the problem, but the most rational and successful one. Another was the Spartan solution of the opposite extreme. The Spartans converted themselves into a permanent police force, holding down lower orders by terror in a state of permanent subjection. Another solution, which went along with colonization, was conversion of the metropolis from agriculture to commerce and industry. This was the course taken by Athens and Corinth, the former not an active colonizer, the latter one of the greatest mothers of colonies. It was to these commercial cities that the progressive back-flow of new ideas and institutions first extended its influence and was most permanently effective. 26 In both Athens and Corinth the accommodation to the new age was made by means of tyranny. Athens, however, passed through the stage of tyranny under Peisistratus in the sixth century and went on to Periclean democracy. Corinth lapsed from Periander's tyranny into oligarchy. As you remember, Athens and Corinth were the first antagonists in the Peloponnesian War. In all this ferment which gave birth to Demos, and Anti-Demos, we may add, there operates a world force that assisted and hastened the coming of Democracy and perhaps helped move events in that direction. This was the introduction of coined money. Coinage both made possible the commerce that sustained the colonial development and was an important factor in the rise of rationality. The latter because first coinage simplified numbering and measuring goods for exchange, and then because it struck a blow against the aristocracies' system of personal values. As Marx puts it, exchange value became dominant over use value. Whatever evils follow from this exchange, it does represent a greater rationalization of human life. Protagoras' "Man is the measure" is the philosophical end product. One result was the substitution of property qualifications (represented in monetary terms) for qualifications of birth, in settling the constitutional organization of the polis. This was Solon's fundamental reform in sixth century Athens. Although he graded political power according to wealth, the successors to Pericles gradually transformed the institutions until the property qualification became meaningless. But while these reforms ended forever the old aristocratic power, they introduced the schism that was to prove fateful, that divided Greece between democracies and oligarchies. For as to the birth of Demos there always remained an uncertainty. Was Demos the poor alone, or was he the whole state? Periclean Athens came close to ending the schism, but at the cost of a new division. The Demos of Athens was corrupted by the imperial power the city gained as a result of the Persian War, and ultimately the rational basis of democracy and its appeal to the aspirations of men was lost in the struggle for power. So the myth of Athenian democracy ends in tragedy. I believe we can trace a progress in the form of one central question. Aeschylus and Pericles seem to ask the question, 'What will make democracy work?" while Plato asks rather, "Why won't democracy work?" Socrates is the pivot on which the question turns. The transformation of the question is due, I think, to the tragic flaw in the democratic myth that I have pointed out. For Aeschylus, the answer to his question is that democracy, which is represented as the victor over the Furies, will work if it reverses the compact between Athena and the Furies, now become the Eumenides, and preserves Athenas court of Areopagus. In other words he accepts the democratic exchange, but warns that the wisdom of the elders, which we have seen to be characteristic of the old aristocracies, must be allowed to make its voice heard. Democracy is to be the government of all, not the govern- SUMMER 1984 �ment of the many. Pericles, to judge from the funeral oration, finds the source of the wisdom needed to guide deliberation in the character and institutions of the Athenians. Athens is the School of Hell as, and must be, consequently, her own first scholar. For Pericles, too, colonial experiments in rational construction of government had time to sink into the consciousness of the Hellenic world, the authority of ancient wisdom, enshrined in sententious sayings, was first perverted then democracy is the government of all; Demos is not just challenged: perverted by being applied in contexts apart from the old ways of behaving, then challenged by a ra- the poor. The city will have wise leaders and a public opinion that is a judge of good leadership, even if it is not capable of originating policy. For Aeschylus and tionalizing ascription to reason. For example, the most famous gnomic utterance, "Know thyself," attributed to various ones of the Seven Sages, meant, first of all, no Pericles wisdom is something a little mysterious. They each, in fact, are somewhat complacent in accepting the doubt, know thyself to be an insignificant ephemeral creature, the kind of being Zeus in Prometheus Bound intended for destruction. The perversion of the saying is confident view that the success of Athens is due to her wisdom and that one need not doubt that the wisdom is there. Socrates' whole life was a life of questions. In him the power of rationality puts ancient wisdom to the question to declare its meaning to a new generation. The democratic heirs of the old patriarchate had inherited the noble terms, Ko./...6<;, tlya96c;, 8tKat6c;, "noble," "good" and '~ust:' But just as Cleisthenes had rearranged the patriarchal tribes of old Athens into geographic wards, in order to obliterate the political power of the ancient birth, so the sophists were rearranging meanings of the ancient words and thereby obliterating the ancient moral wisdom of the polis. As they became gradually aware of what they were doing, the Sophists summed up the discussion with the words qn)av; and v6!J.ot;, nature and convention. 'What is just by nature differs from what is just by convention" is a thesis that points up the contradiction in the democratic position of Pericles and his contemporaries. To Conservatives the ancestral custom of justice is natural and opposed to the injustice of tyranny, which is conventional. The sophists transvalue values. Ancestral custom is conventional, brute power is natural. "The natural is just" is the major premise here. The mysterious paternal wisdom that Aeschylus saw interpreted by the goddess Athena and Pericles found in the curriculum of the School of Hellas has become a subject of inquiry to the rational spirits of the sophists. Socrates therefore appears in the pivotal role of democratic dialectic. To the simple man, who was satisfied instanced in the chorus of the Antigone, "Many the wondrous things, but none more wonderful than man." The challenge, or substitution of new authority, is portrayed in Prometheus who gives man the liberal arts and the industrial arts, and frees him from his abject dependence on the powers of nature. Finally, the naked opposition to the original meaning of the saying is subsumed in Protagoras' "Man is the measure of all things." This saying is effective because it not only expresses the end point of an intellectual tendency to reverse man's relation from one of dependence on nature to one of control of nature; it also, additionally, reflects the economic and political shift from an aristocracy of land-owners, with their dependent tillers of the soil, and their own dependence on the whims of weather and season, to the commercial, sea-faring society of the colonies and Athens. In this society all things are measured by coined money, man himself becomes a coin that measures all things with which he comes in contact. Socrates is a statesman, then, because he made possible the rational criticism of politics. He is a democratic statesman, because it was only in democracy that his method could work. I do not mean that people in an oligarchy or an aristocracy could not play the game of dialectic. But for Socrates his method was not a game; it was a political program, aimed at the improvement of the process of government. The reason why it could work only in a democracy is that it is only in a democracy that the means of governing is speech. Oligarchy and with the wisdom of his fathers, he was a sophist. To the aristocracy alike rest on a non-rational foundation, the sophists, themselves, he was the supreme antagonist and reactionary. Socrates claimed to be the only true statesman in one of wealth, the other of personal prestige or nobility. Political control is reached either by purchase or by inspiring awe and in the end, sustained by force. Whatever reasoning may go on among the elite themselves, the final Athens because he alone went about asking people to examine themselves and to find out what as men they really wanted. The so-called statesmen simply out-bid each other in giving the people what they thought they authority is external to reason. In a democracy, on the growth of democracy, was tending to destroy the foun- other hand, reason is the final authority. I do not imply that a democracy always reasons well or that the authority of reason never breaks down. I mean simply that you can't have democracy without this principle. In Athens the people discovered the principle, used it implicitly without full understanding, were insufficiently self-critical dation in ancestral wisdom not alone of democracy, but of their own wisdom, and so put Socrates to death. of any orderly government. The early aristocracies could The death of Socrates was followed, within less than a century, by the death of Athenian democracy at the hands of the Peripatetic philosopher, Demetrius, of Phalerum. In their dying both became myths for us. wanted. This position of Socrates' is a rational criticism of democracy. He saw that the movement to rationality, which, as we have seen, played so large a part in the subsist in their moral life on the gnomic pronouncements of the sages, buttressed by the ambiguous declarations of the oracles. As soon, however, as the success of the THE ST. JOHN'S REVIEW 27 �There is a curious difference, however, in our reception of the myths. No one, I suppose, would hold that Socrates' death is a warning for us not to seek knowledge. Yet there have been many who have held the death of Athenian democracy a warning not to practice democracy. To a certain extent this difference may be due to the dialogues of Plato. In them Socrates is hero and democracy villain, at least as many read the dialogues. But Plato is not melodramatic. The death of Socrates is as much the tragedy of Athenian democracy as it is of Socrates. Plato, I think, makes it clear that this is his feeling. One has only to read his loving and hating satire on democracy in the eighth book of the Republic and compare it with the coldly disinterested treatment of oligarchy, the unmitigated contempt of tyranny, to see that Plato was no oligarchical reactionary. In spite of Platds anti-democratic profession we gain from him a sense of the power of the democratic myth to make itself the standard by which all other forms of government are judged. One point the myth puts immediately before us for decision. Are we going to understand democracy as a government of the many or of all? This, as we have seen, was the tragic uncertainty in Greek democracy. Thucydides has shown the irreconcilable division that drove the democrats more and more in the direction of many rather than all. It is not primarily an intellectual confusion, but a real difficulty. Walter Lippmarm has stated the difficulty for our time in his recent book, The Public Philosophy. In it he shows what confusion surrounds the term "the people" in our political thought. It is not a semantic or intellectual confusion, though he uses a semantic device to make it clear. It is the kind of confusion that cannot be cleared away, because the people means both things at once that Mr. Lippmann tries to separate. His two senses are, the electorate at any given election, "the peepul" of political satirists, and the whole host of the nation, the ancestors, ourselves who now are living, and the unborn generations to come. Government belongs to all the people in this latter sense, while the electorate of the moment is but a temporary trustee for the whole people. Yet in so far as a generation is the product of its ancestors and holds its beliefs from them (in large part) while also having in its heart hopes for its progeny, it is impossible to separate the people from the People. And on the other hand the larger People is itself a temporary part of humanity. Its habits and beliefs may be, in a larger context, as momentary as the people in any given election year. It seems to me that, just as ancient democracy both lived and died through the tension of few and many, so our democracy lives in this same tension, extended through time. Whether it will eventually die from the tension is not for us to say. Mr. Lippmann has done us a service by reminding us that it exists. Aware of it, we know better where we are and, possibly, how we should act. Mr. Lippmann's analysis brings to light another problem in democracy that has its analogue in the Athenian myth. He is concerned with the encroachment of 28 the legislative on the executive. From this point of view the history of Athens is eloquent. By the time of Pericles, and in large part owing to his policies, the Athenian assembly had acquired untrammeled supreme power. By force of his personal persuasive powers Pericles guided the policy decisions of Athens. While he lived Athens was, according to Thucydides, ('in name a democracy, in fact a government by the first citizen." The story of the corruption of affairs by demagogues after the death of Pericles is too familiar to need retelling. We have seen it repeated here under the name of McCarthyism. Demagoguery thrives because of the tendency of the people to forget that it is not the People and the second problem is the outgrowth of the first. Whether the cure for these conditions is possible within the democratic framework is not settled by reference to the myth. A slogan used by ardent democrats that "the remedy for the ills of democracy is more democracy" is an expression of faith and hope, but hardly a prescription. One asks how will "more democracy" work its curative effect. Moreover, the demonstration that cures attempted by non-democratic :means, the ancient oligarchies, the modern fascisms, are invariably remedies worse than the disease merely displays another slogan. It does not help point to a solution. Perhaps Plato offers a solution in his conviction that politics is a science, an episteme. For Plato this discovery, which he generalized from Socrates' claims to statesmanship, led to the conclusion that monarchy or aristocracy (of the wise) was the best government. Since only a few can be wise, therefore, only a few can govern. In this way democracy is put out of court. In the Politicus, however, Plato in despair puts all human government out of court, by showing, against the Republic, that a wise king must be a god, no man having sufficient wisdom for the task of kingship. Platds desperation is our opportunity. Having once and for all disposed of government by an elite, Plato forces us to the only possible course of action, which is to discover how to make do with what we have. If Plato is driven to despair because the science he held politics to be was beyond human capacity, the fault may lie in Platds conception of science rather than in human nature. Plato sets up a rigid alternative: either an all-wise king or an unchangeable code of laws, embodying the unchanging principles of political conduct. The dialectic of wisdom and reason, out of which we saw the myth of democracy grow, is replaced by complete separation of them into mutually exclusive realms. In the myth of the dialogue, the Statesman, they are placed in different eons of the world, kept apart by a cosmic catastrophe. In trying to escape Platds dilemma, let us first agree that politics is a science, that is, that a government will be successful in achieving justice only when it is conducted by men of intelligence, possessing wisdom and knowledge. I shall further premise that a dictatorship or an oligarchy, however intelligent, wise, and knowing its leaders, necessarily rests in the end on extra-rational foun- SUMMER 1984 �dations and will ultimately rely on force to keep its power, in other words, to exist. This means that opposition to the government, however rational, will be a crime. All such governments are therefore unjust. Hence, only democratic government can, in principle, achieve justice. Can democratic government achieve justice in practice? I do not know, but before fleeing with the despairing Plato to Utopia, I would consider what means may exist to make democracy worth a try. I would first see whether the rigid alternatives of Plato are really so separate. Considering his first alternative, the all-wise king, we can see that, if his wisdom is to succeed in making just decisions in particular disputes, it is not sufficient for the decisions to be abstractly just. They must be accepted as just by the parties to the dispute; otherwise, the king will have to use force and to that extent his government will be unjust. His subjects therefore must have at least the intellectual capacity to recognize justice. But so they will be intellectually above the standard supposed by Plato to measure the capacities of all but a few men. In the case of the other alternative, rigid laws governing by general principles admitting no exceptions, there is no chance at all for justice, since no particular case exactly fits a general principle. Therefore, the standard for men is even higher. The men in this society must have the wisdom to recognize that everyone must accept a little injustice for the sake of others. I have pointed out these consequences of Platds position in the Statesman because I believe they reveal two demands that just government makes on its citizens, one that they know what justice is and the other that they accept something less than justice for themselves in any given situation. These seem to me to be the presuppositions of the Social Contract, but they do not depend for their existence on the theory of the Social Contract. It is rather the other way around. The Social Contract is a myth to account for these two inescapable demands of society. It now remains to show that they can be met by a democratic society, and to suggest some of the means available to a democracy for meeting them. That they cannot be met by a society other than democratic has already been stated as a premise. The first demand requires the assumption of human rationality, while the second requires the assumption of human wisdom. You will notice that Platds hypothesis of an all-wise ruler entails rational subjects, while his hypothesis of pure rationality of government entails wise subjects. Insofar as democracy is government in which all rule and are ruled in turn, both presuppositions are entailed. You will notice too that the government of wisdom is personal government, while the government of rationality is institutional or government of law. I think you will now see how I will argue that democracy meets these demands. A government of laws is no respecter of persons, but any government other than democratic is a respecter of persons, insofar as it distinguishes a ruler or ruling class from the other members of society. The THE ST. JOHN'S REVIEW condition that makes the injustices inherent in human government bearable, however, is that they be justly distributed without respect of person. So the second demand is met by democracy. You may well say here that I have fled to a Utopia, only I am in the company of John Stuart Mill instead of Plato. I admit at least to idealizing, since I would be hard put to show that our own or any democracy is now practicing or ever has practiced these principles. I do believe that our practice under the constitution comes within nodding distance of them and I will say what means seem to me to have developed in the course of history since the days of Athens to make them less unrealistic. The two principles are that men are capable of acting rationally and of acting wisely, that is, capable of knowing principles and having the skill to apply them. The means to establishing democracy are the ways of converting these capabilities into actualities, of bringing it about that men do as they are capable of doing. From Aristotle on, teachers have recognized that men learn by doing. This fact makes sense to me of the slogan that the cure for the ills of democracy is more democracy. If democracy operated by rational discussion, the way to learn the art of rational discussion is through discussing rationally the problems encountered in society. The foundation, then, for bringing democracy into being and maintaining it is the liberal arts. There are two practical problems here. One is to have liberal arts in one's tradition, the other is to make them available to all citizens. On the first count we are in one respect more fortunate than the Athenians. They were inventing the liberal arts while they were inventing democracy. The positive work of the sophists was their invention of the liberal arts. Sophocles, Herodotus, Euripides, Aristophanes, the whole list of classic Greek authors testify to the lively effect of this invention. Thucydides and Plato confirm it, while they portray its somber side of failure. We are more fortunate in this, that having the tradition that they invented, we are less dazzled by the brilliance of the invention and can use it more soberly. On the other hand, we can lose the liberal arts by reducing them to routine, as the Greeks reduced the wisdom of their early sages to conventional opinion. Nevertheless, because we have the Greek authors, we can go back to them, and have done so from time to time to light again the fires of the liberal arts. Secondly, to make the liberal arts available to all has been the work of the universities and of educational institutions. Although education has all too often seemed to divide society into the educated and the uneducated and so to become an instrument of aristocracy, this has not really been the case. Even when education has subserved aristocracy as in Europe, where university training became the road to wordly prestige in church or government, the very possibility of acquiring this prestige drew men of ability from all ranks into the upper classes and so promoted a movement towards democracy. For, 29 �however perverted the use of the liberal arts, the simple lesson they propounded remained the indifference of reason to false distinctions of pride. When education at times became completely perverted, offering itself as a mark of culture, it generated its own antithesis in the class of self-made men, self-graduates of the "school of hard-knocks;' and the resulting discussion brought education back to its true purpose. The very existence of educational institutions tends to universal education, which is the first prerequisite of democracy. In addition to educational institutions as a ground of possibility for democracy today is a difference in the material of education. This is the shift from the spoken word to the written word, and the accumulation of a great number of books. At first sight these changes might seem irrelevant to democracy. The first great library was built by the Macedonian kings of Egypt. The decline of speech in favor of writing reflected the withdrawal of intellectuals from political activity in times of monarchy and empire. May this not, however, be an instance of Toynbee's "withdrawal and return." The oratory of Athenian democracy was partly the cause of its instability. Books gave a haven to the liberal arts and preserved them for a better day. They gave a stable form to the tradition of rationality. Whatever harm there was in the medieval deference to the authority of an Aristotle or a Galen, their books conveyed still more the authority of reason. Even before the barriers to learning had been broken by the printing press, and increasingly thereafter, there was a rational authority to rally around that could and did oppose the blind authority of despotic governments. The Bible, of course, was the spiritual center of the bookish tradition. Quite fortunately, the Bible never despotically blotted out the books of the secular tradition, as the Koran had done in the Muslim world, but Revelation took reason as its handmaiden. One consequence of this for the preparation of the new experiment in democracy was the demarcation of the political sphere from the spiritual. The Athenian experiment foundered in part because the polis demanded the whole of men's energies. As Ernest Barker has said, the polis was both state and church. Thus political conflict among the Greeks led to irreconcilable opposition and the formation of Platds two cities. The church drained away some of this passion and, by pointing to an otherworldly standard, made it possible (after much confusion, it is true) for men to differ rationally and not always feel compelled to attempt to murder one another. The church became the guarantor of wisdom in human affairs and enabled it to avoid entanglement in conflict with reason, which, as we have seen, was the confounding of Greek political life. The result of the Christian belief in the temporary nature of this life led to a 30 tempered effort to ameliorate evil conditions and prevented the doctrinaire insistence on immediate, wholesale solution of problems, the kind of attitude that so often has wrecked the order of society. Democracy, of course, was not an immediate consequence. What I mean to suggest is that our democracy is the heir to a tradition that contained it in seed, because it preserved and nourished the two conditions of wisdom and reason, so delimited that they could work together. This is manifest especially in the law. The law came to depend on written records of a peculiar sort. Where the Athenian courts pretended to the wisdom to discover absolute justice in every case they had to decide and had no concern with rational precedent, our modern law learned from the written record of justinian's Roman law the lesson of the rational adjustment of principle and particular case. Plato had proposed as a desperate remedy for the masquerade of Athenian courts as omniscent kings a rigid law which could never be changed. Roman jurisprudence had set itself the task of discovering law as a science and had transmitted this ideal to the modern world. In the concept of law that can be interpreted to fit different cases, jurisprudence gave an answer to Platds contention that democracy cannot work because government is a science and the many are not wise. By granting an appeal from the unwisdom of the momentary majority to the institutionalized wisdom of the lasting majority, the law made an answer to Plato. This is. Lippmann's "tradition of civility." I have all too briefly sketched some of the materials that democracy has to work with in the human attempt to achieve justice. In conclusion, let me say what I think I have been saying. Democracy is the best form of government because the people insist on governing themselves, and any attempt of men to govern other men against their will begets injustice, which is the negation of the end of government. People can govern themselves, because they can be wise and reasonable. Athens once made a brave attempt at democracy and left us a myth from which we can learn about democracy. Moreover, she left us the beginnings of the liberal arts, which, once given to the world, took to themselves the discoveries of Romans, of Jews, of Christians and have transmitted to us the paradigms of the science of government, especially in education, law and religion. I hold neither to the law of progress, which would affirm that democracy is the inevitable final stage of history, nor to a biological analogy which places democracy as one stage in some cyclically unfolding course of events. I think that men can and sometimes do succeed in governing themselves; that by rational self-criticism they may prolong their success; that a genuine education will sustain their self-criticism. SUMMER 1984 �Bandusia, Flower of Fountains for Martha (Horace, Odes, Book III, 13) Bandusia, flower of fountains, clear uprushing of waters, due thick, sweet wine with roses, tomorrow's rite; due this kid whose tipped brow and goatish play hint the loves and the battles to comenever! His hot, thick blood will curdle with dark your bright fall. No rage of midsummer can quicken your quiet; dispensing cool ease you soothe the meandering cattle, heal the yoke-weary ox. Fame will mirror your beauty when I speak the ilex branched over the riven rock, whence loquacious clear rivulets chatter and leap. Richard Freis An alumnus of St. John's College, Annapolis, Richard Freis is currently collaborating with the composer, Alva Henderson, on a new opera, Achilles. THE ST. JOHN'S REVIEW 31 �On Mimesis* Victor Zuckerkandl T he motif of this lecture-"motif' in the sense of what set it in motion- is Aristotle's definition of tragedy as imitation- mimesis- of human action, and in gen'eral of the arts of painting, sculpture, poetry-narrative, dramatic, lyric poetry-music, and dance as mimetic arts, imitative arts. This is the group of arts which we today call by the unfortunate term of fine arts. (I am not going to use this term; I shall call them, with Aristotle, the mimetic arts, or briefly, the arts; for the context of this lecture, then, the arts means the so-called fine arts. One of them is missing from Aristotle's list: architecture; so I will not refer to architecture either.) All these arts, Aristotle says, are mimesis, imitation. They represent, so to speak, different species of the genus imitation. The imitative element is not something secondary, accidental in them; it is their essential quality. A work of art is what it is, namely, a work of art, because it imitates; the artist is essentially an imitator. Take away from a work of art the element of imitation, there will no longer be a work of art; deprive the artist of the imitator's skill, he will no longer be an artist. This theory seems to rest on solid ground, to be in sound agreement with the facts. Nobody can deny, for instance, that every painting, every sculpture, shows something, represents something, and in this sense imitates that which it shows. (This is true for non-objective painting, too; the only difference there is that the things shown are not objects of external visual experience, but 1 The late Victor Zuckerkandl came to St. John's College, Annapolis, in 1948. He taught at St. John's for over a decade. On Mimesis was delivered as a formal lecture at St. John's College, Annapolis, in 1955. 32 objects of the imagination.) Every tragedy or comedy represents an action, and in this sense imitates the action and the people involved in it; every narrative poem tells a story, every lyric poem expresses some idea; they imitate the story, the idea. It is not as obvious with music and dance, but Aristotle states, as Plato did before himand he has a large following through the ages- that music and _dance express, and in this sense imitate, emotions, passwns. We can grant all this and immediately move on to the directly opposite position: there is no imitation in the arts. When Aristotle looked at the paintings which decorated the walls of Greek houses, what did he see? Colors and shapes covering a two-dimensional surface. The things represented are three-dimensional. How can two dimensions imitate three? By the art of perspective, we say, which creates an illusion of depth on a surface, and which the Greeks of course knew. There are no more Greek wallpaintings to be seen; they are gone. But we know the art of painting of the Greeks from the vases that have been preserved. There is no attempt at perspective here; everything is strictly two-dimensional. Would Aristotle maintain that a mediocre wallpainting which makes skillful use of perspective is a better work of artbecause it is a better imitation- than one of those perfect vase paintings? When he walked up the great steps leading to the Acropolis and looked at the Parthenon, what did he see? Among other things, the long series of marble reliefs-the remnants of which we still see todayrepresenting the long procession of men and horses at the festival of the goddess Athene. Men and horses in motion-do the sculptures imitate them? The marble does not move. How can sculpture, frozen in time, imitate motion, change in time? When Aristotle went to the theatre to see a tragedy, what did he see? Figures on the stage wearing huge masks. If they were intent on im- SUMMER 1984 �itating human beings, why should they hide the only visible testimony of their being human, their faces? When the chorus sang and danced, did they intend to imitate emotions, say, of mourning, or fear? People who experience these emotions do not dance or sing. Aristotle must have been either very naive or very unresponsive to the experience of works of art if he could hold that theory. How responsive or naive Aristotle was, I do not know. But he certainly was not that naive. We can safely assume that he was aware of these circumstances. Naive in this case is not Aristode's understanding of the arts but our understanding of Aristotle, more specifically, our understanding of the meaning of mimesis. When Aristotle says "the arts are mimesis," he did not mean that they produce mechanical duplicates, replicas, copies that might be substituted for the real thing. When he called the artist an imitator, he did not class him with the man who knows how to bark like a real dog. He understood mimesis in a wider sense which might be translated, "making of images, imaginative imitation." Image in this sense is never a mechanical duplicate; it involves a transfer into another medium, a sort of translation or transformation. The painter transforms three-dimensional things into twodimensional colored shapes; the sculptor transforms moving things into unmoving stone, bronze, wood; the poet's medium, into which he transforms actions, events, characters, are words; the musician's, tones; the dancer's gestures. In the process of transformation the maker of the image may be led very far away indeed from his model; elimination, condensation, on one hand, extension, elaboration, on the other, may produce an image which is anything but a mechanical substitute of its model (e.g., Steinberg). But always will the image be recognized as image, that is, as representing something. Its very significance rests on the fact that it is an image, that is, related to that which ·it represents. The adequate understanding of an image is not plainly to see it, but at the same time to see through it to its model, to see the relation of image to model. A closer scrutiny of the evidence, however, will show many discrepancies between even this refined mimetic theory of the arts and the observed facts. (I am not going to review the whole evidence; I merely mention a few points.) First of all, the artist himself is very inadequately described as an imitator, in any sense of the word. The young man or woman who decides to become an artist -we assume that the decision is justified- does not do so out of any desire to imitate anything-or rather, the one thing he desires, passionately desires, to imitate is another artist. The decisive events in a future painter's life are visits to art galleries, not hikes in the country; the future dramatist's fate is determined by evenings in the theatre, not by reading the newspapers or witnessing a murder. Andre Malraux, whose PsycholOgy of Art is the most comprehensive presentation of the visual arts from a non-mimetic viewpoint- it has nothing to do with psychology as we understand the term; it is a THE S1~ JOHN'S REVIEW philosophy- puts it very pointedly: "The composer loves compositions, not nightingales; the painter loves paintings, not sunsets." It is always art that makes the artist, not nature, or life. The arts therefore have no beginning- no more than language- or, in other words, the beginnings of the arts are mythical. Before we go on I want to clarify further these concepts- image, and maker of images. The prototype in a way is the demiurge in Platds Timaeus, who fashions the universe as the image of the ideal model. All the essentials are here. Where there is an image, there must be a model. The maker has his sight set on the model; he takes his bearings from the model. The image is derived from the model. The model is prior to the image, not only in time (which is obvious- the image can hardly precede the model) but also in rank: the model is more than the image- if in no other respect, then because it is the real thing; the other is 'only an image.' As Plato puts it at another place, the image is farther removed from truth than that of which it is the image. One might object that many works of art glorify, idealize, their model (for instance, in the case of an idealized portrait). But in this and all similar cases the actual model is not the real object in front of the artist, but an idea developed from the contemplation of that object-in the case of a person, the idea of his unrealized potentialities, or the idea of what this man should look like in order to look like a great man. With this understanding of image it seems hard to admit that a work of art is essentially an image. In the strictest sense there is no model. The role of the model in the making of a work of art is of the most trivial sort. This becomes evident when we watch artists at work. A famous example is Beethoven's shaping of the melody of the last movement of the Ninth Symphony, the Hymn to Joy. We have the testimony of this working process in a few sheets of sketches. If a melody is an image of an emotion, then the model here would be the emotion of joy. It is perfectly clear that the composer is not concerned with joy or any other emotion, but with the relations between tones; if there is a model, he certainly is now working with his back to it. Nor is he now engaged in matters of secondary importance, like the search for the right means to express an emotion. He is now struggling with the essential problem; success or failure of this as a work of art will not be determined by the finding of the right relation between tones and an emotional model, but by finding the right relation between tones and tones. This corresponds to the fact that when the melody is heard for the first time in the symphony it makes perfect sense- I still have yet to find the person who would find any relation between the melody there and the emotion of joy. The model, if there is one, is as unimportant to the understanding of the melody as to its making. Recently I read a paper which analyzed the seven different versions of a famous German poem- successive stages of development from a crude beginning to a finished work of art. The poet: Conrad Ferdinand Meyer; 33 �the title of the poem: Dead Love. The model is clearly recognizable from the very beginning: two people returning from a walk one evening, and realizing that their love had died, and that they themselves had killed it. The whole development has nothing to do with the relation to the model-like trying to tell the story clearer, throwing more light on the relationship between the two, and so on. It has to do exclusively with rhythm, verse, rhyme, syntax, choice of individual words- choice of words not for the sake of a better relation between words and story but between words and words. And again, the development is not concerned with means, secondary matters; the changes mark the difference between a very poor and a very good poem, that is, with the essence of poetry. As these changes have nothing to do with the realation of the words to the model, the poem cannot essentially be an image. Even more disturbing is this: the story at the end, after all the changes, is no longer exactly the same as it was at the beginning; but it is quite clear that the changes in the poem were not adjustments to a changed story; it seems rather the other way, the changes in the words, rhythms, etc., changed the story. So if we want to call the poem an image, it would be the rather extraordinary case of the image changing the model, or even of the image making the model. Or take a tragedy, Hamlet. Where is the model of which this is an image? Is it the story Shakespeare read? The chronicle which reported the events of bygone days? The vague, uncertain figure, the real Hamlet? Was Shakespeare's sight set on any one of these as the model of which he wanted to make an image? It is clear that if there is a model of which Shakespeare's Hamlet is the image, it could only be Shakespeare's Hamlet againthe idea of such a man, such a character which Shakespeare formed in his mind and then made the central figure of his play. If this is the case, the essential achievement is not the making of the image but the forming of the idea; Shakespeare would be the artist he is, not because of his capacity to make images but because of his power to produce models. But is this a reasonable account of the process? That he first figured out the man and then wrote the play about him? I would rather say that the writing of the play was his way, the only possible way, to figure out the man. By making the image he produced the model- if you want to put it in this paradoxical way. When Phidias made the statue of Zeus, what was his model? His idea of the ruler of the gods? Where did he get this idea? It was certainly not a current idea -witness the statues of the preceding generation. It was an idea generated in his own mind. And again, it does not make sense to me to imagine that he first figured out his idea and then made the image. Most likely he did not begin with the idea but with a block of material; he then uncovered the idea in the material on which he worked. If we call it an image, then the model comes into being together with the image. Those who saw it did not understand it because they knew the model; they understood the model because they saw the image. 34 That is, the statue gave them a new understanding of Zeus. The image makes the model. Not even with painters like the impressionists and their followers who turn again and again to nature in order, as it seems, to be as close as possible to their models, is the case as simple as it looks. When they leave their studios and go out into the open, it is primarily to effect a break with an outworn tradition; what they expect from nature is delivery from the dead weight of convention. Nature tells them what not to do, but as to nature being the modelwe have only to look over their shoulders and see what they do, what they mean when they say 'true to nature.' True to their own nature, maybe. Otherwise it is much less a transformation of the model into an image thanand I use once more Malraux's words- the secret destruction of the model for the benefit of the construction of the canvas. I think this is enough to give an idea of the evidence contradicting the image theory of the arts. The evidence in turn supports the diametrically opposed theory: the work of art is not an image. Still it is important, meaningful, significant. The significance of an image lies in its relation to something outside itself; the work of art, not being an image, has no such relation. Its significance therefore must lie wholly within itself. It is a completely autonomous construct, closed within itself, without any essential relation to anything beyond itself, carrying its full meaning strictly within itself. I quote (this is Clive Bell, the protagonist of this theory; he refers mostly to the visual arts, but the implications are that the theory extends to all the arts): "He who contemplates a work of art inhabits a world with an intense and peculiar significance all it own; that significance is unrelated to the significance of life . ... The representative element may or may not be harmful; always it is irrelevant. For to appreciate a work of art we need bring with us nothing from life, no knowledge of its ideas and affairs, no familiarity with its emotions ... for a moment we are shut off from human interests ... to appreciate a work of art we need bring with us nothing but a sense of form and color and a knowledge of three-dimensional space ... I appreciate music, a pure art with a tremendous significance of its own and no relation whatever to the significance of life.... The contemplation of pure form leads to a state of extraordinary exaltation and complete detachment from the concerns of life." To me this seems a theory of despair. I fail to see how anything completely detached from the concerns oflifeand one of them is the search for truth- can be in any way important, significant. This theory builds a wall around the arts, isolates them completely from the totality of human experience, makes of them a world of their own. It leaves the fundamental question wide open. No matter how self-contained a construction the work of art is, tones related to nothing but tones, colors to colors, words to words, there must be at least one relation to something which is not tones, words, colors, namely, me. Granted that music is tones related to tones, but their being so SUMMER 1984 �related must be related to me, the listener; otherwise, why should I bother? The same for the other arts. The statement about the work of art being meaningful in itself is no answer; it merely pushes the problem further back, and makes it in a sense insoluable. I understand the force of the argument which pushed the theory in this direction. The work of art can only be either an image, related to something outside itself and meaningful because of this relation, or not an image, not related to anything outside itself and meaningful only within itself. If the evidence against the image theory gets too strong-as it did -what remains but the other alternative? At this point we have to recognize that this whole alternative- image or no image- is phony. There is no either/or situation here. We have not yet fully exhausted the meaning of mimesis. It is Aristotle himself who sets us on this track. In a paragraph of his Metaphysics he uses mimesis in a very much different meaning. In Chapter 14 of the Vth book, when he talks about the concept of quality in reference to number, he mentions composite numbers. For the benefit of those who have not yet read the VIIth book of Euclid or have forgotten it, I have to explain what composite numbers are. The Greeks distinguished between linear, plane, and solid numbers. The linear or onedimensional number is simple number as we think of it when we imagine the units, so many of them as there are in the number, all lined up in one straight line; the plane or two-dimensional number is the number we get when one number is multiplied by another number: so many times so many-like a rectangle contained by two sides; the solid or three-dimensional number adds one more factor: so many times so many times so manylike a solid figure contained by three sides. For instance 24, if considered as so many units, is a linear number; considered as 3 times .8, it is a plane number; considered as 3 times 2 times 4, a solid number. A number like 25, 5 times 5, or 81, 9 times 9, is called a square number, for obvious reasons; 27, 3 times 3 times 3, a cube number. All the numbers which are not linear are together called composite numbers. Now Aristotle says: "composite numbers which are not in one dimension only, but of which the plane figure and the solid figure are the mimema':_ the word mimema means the result of mimesis; the Greeks have two words for our one, "imitation;' which means both the process of imitating and the result of that process, the thing which imitates. It is clear that none of the meanings of mimesis we have so far considered apply here. A square, for instance, is not an image of a number like 25, 36, and so on. The number is not the model of the square. The square is not derived from number, is not meaningful because of its relation to number. We do not understand a square by recognizing its relation to number. And the maker of the square, so to speak, is no image-maker, did not have his sight set on any number, did not make the square as an image of a number. The square is, W-as made as, and is understood as an element in the autonomous con- THE ST. JOHN'S REVIEW text of geometry. It is even impossible to understand a square otherwise than in the context of geometry; the study of the square-and of the plane figure, or the solid figure- involves only references to geometric figures, no reference to anything outside of geometry. Whatever meaning a geometric figure has, this meaning is completely contained within the figure as an element of geometry. On the other hand, there is, over and above this meaning of the geometric figure which we now call its immanent meaning, another, a transcendent meaningand I am using the word transcendent literally, without metaphysical connotations, that is, going beyond one's limits. The meanings of all words are transcendent: the meaning of apple pie, for instance, is transcendent, as the word is something audible, while the things belonging to it lie beyond the limits of the audible in the edible. So square or plane figure or solid figure have, in addition to their immanent, a transcendent meaning, a relation to something which is not figure but number, and this is the meaning Aristotle refers to. This meaning is not arbitrarily assigned to the geometric figures as we arbitrarily assign meanings to words or symbols; the relation seems to arise from the nature of both geometric figure and number, and therefore, when it is called up, it throws a new light on number, and reciprocally also adds to the significance of geometric figures. I would like to clarify this new meaning of mimesis further, by using a quotation of a more modern thinker. Pascal writes: The numbers imitate space. Here space does not mean geometric figures but extension, the great receptacle, that in which all the extended things of the universe have their place. In what sense can number be said to imitate space? Numbers are not images. 17 cannot be the image of 17 things as we have no 17 things without first having 17. Number is pure construct, a construct which knows only its own inherent laws, takes no regard of anything outside; numbers are primarily related to numbers, not to something which is not number. Their system is a perfect example of an immanently meaningful order. Still we all know, are all aware, that mathematics is not a beautiful game of numbers, that it has over and above its immanent a transcendent meaning. I do not refer here to the usefulness of mathematics but to its truthfulness. What this transcendent meaning is, is of no concern to the mathematician or to the student of mathematics; in the making as well as in the understanding of mathematics we are exclusively concerned with numbers in relation to numbers, not with numbers in relation to other things. This does not mean that the transcendent meaning is less important; without it, mathematics would not be what it is, namely, true. But the question of that meaning is no longer a mathematical question. When the transcendent meaning crystallizes in a philosophical mind- that of a person or a generation -as it did for instance in that thought of Pascal, then it becomes clear that the pattern of this meaning is not that of an image. If it were, we would have 35 �to say that number is the image of the order of universal space. How could it be this, as the very idea of a universally ordered space, is the outgrowth of our having numbers. The mimema here is not derived from its counterpart but reveals, or almost produces, its counterpart. This is a very disturbing observation, that a pure construct of the mind discovers itself as in profound agreement with a universal order. It is as if we were writing a test and then discovered that we had written a translation. We can now try to formulate the difference between image and mimema in this new sense. The image has its origin in the model and its significance in the relation to the model; the mimema has no model. Its origin is in its own context- number from number- and its significance is twofold. Primarily it is pure construct. It is nothing but construct, determined solely by the inherent logic of the construction, not by any outside factor. Its transcendent meaning is of an entirely different type from that of image. The relation image-model is a one-to-one relation- image of this, not of that -like that between a word and its meaning, a sign or symbol and the thing signified or symbolized (and this takes into account the possibility of one word having different meanings, etc.). The relation of the mimema to its counterpart must be different, as we see from what we have said: the mimema made and understood without any regard to its counterpart~ the mimema revealing or even producing its counterpart, and so on (this is-like saying to a foreigner: you listen only well to the sound of 'apple pie' and you will understand what it means). What precisely this relation is, is the problem which I will raise and maybe clarify a little, but not answer. The main thing, it seems to me, is to show that such a problem exists. We are so caught in the meaning pattern of words and symbols that we take this to be the pattern of meaning. Statements like: "I know this is meaningful though I do not know what it says," sound foolish to us. They would not to less positivistic minds. Socrates did not doubt that the sentences spoken by his inner voice were meaningful, although he had sometimes a hard time finding out exact1y what they meant. The ancient world was full of oracles which were supposed to speak the truth even though it was very difficult to understand what they said. And even today, the Christian does not doubt that the sentences of the Bible speak the truth, irrespective of whether or not he understands what they say. Let us come back to the mimetic arts. I would now say this: Aristotle is right in defining painting, sculpture, poetry, music, dance as kinds of mimesis- provided mimesis is understood as we do it now. I would not flatly say that Aristotle did understand it in this way when he applied it to the arts. But it might have been a marginal possibility in his mind. After all, we gathered this meaning of mimesis first from his own use of the term. We recapitulate. What have we got? Two theories. One asserting that the work of art is essentially image, significant because of its relation to the model, a transcen- 36 dent relation. The other asserts that there is no such essential relation of a work of art to anything outside itself, and that therefore its significance lies all within itself, is immanent. We have now a third possibility: the work of art is mimema as we now understand the term. The work of art has both transcendent and immanent meaning. Primarily it is pure construct, nothing but construct, made and understood without any reference to anything outside. This construct has by nature a counterpart outside, and the relation to the counterpart makes it what it is, a mimema. Accordingly the question: What does it mean? (namely, over and above the immanent context), is a legitimate one. Only we must not forget (as we usually do) that the relation between the work of art and its counterpart, which is in question here, is not the same and not even similar to that between the image and its model. The art to which this interpretation most easily and most naturally applies is of course music. The element of construction is very much in the foreground in music, perhaps more so than in any other human activity with the exception of mathematics. It comes as close as possible to the idea of a pure construct- its material, the tones, have relation only to each other, not to anything else (the opinion that the tones of music are kinds of idealized sounds of nature, need not be taken seriously); we express this also by saying that music is pure form, form without content, or-as this seems to imply empty form- that in music form and content are the same. Music is essentially tones-in-relation; whatever meaning there is in a tone points to another tone, not to something which is not tone. A perfect example of immanent meaning. Yet we are also aware that this statement, "Music is tones-in-relation;' -is not an adequate or satisfactory answer to the question which the phenomenon of music, its presence among us, puts to us. We are aware that in this answer something has not been accounted for; in other words, we are aware of the fact that music is mimesis, of the fact of its mimetic significance. Not all the threads of meaning that attach themselves to music coil inwards; some of them lead outwards, and they hold the whole construct in its proper place, as it were, the place of mimema. But although without an awareness, however dim, that there are such threads of transcendent meaning there is strictly speaking no musical experience, the knowledge what they are, where they lead to, is in no sense a prerequisite either for the making or the understanding of music. The question: What does it mean? referring to the transcendent, not the immanent meaning, is no longer a musical question. The composer does not ask it, at least never when he writes music, only when he philosophizes, which he rarely does. And the study of music, if it is to lead to an understanding of the works of the tonal art, is the study of tones-inrelation, of immanent meanings. Of course the question of the transcendent meaning is a valid question -a question for philosophy. But before even admitting it as valid, we must make sure that it is not asked in a thoughtless SUMMER 1984 �way: What does it mean?-with 'what' I usually ask for a 'this' or 'that', and so I tacitly introduce the assumption that the relation between music and its mimetic counterpart is of the same kind, of the same type, as that between a symbol and a thing, an image and a model, a word and its meaning. This way, the very asking of the question would prejudge the answer. The problem is precisely to find out what kind of relation prevails between music and its mimetic counterpart. You see, from the outset we get deep into philosophy; and so we understand why good answers to this question do not usually come from musicians but from philosophers. One of these answers, a famous one, I will now quote, not because I want to suggest that this is it, but because it helps us to understand the nature of the questions. In his Harmonies of the World Kepler writes: The movement of the heavens is nothing but a certain everlasting polyphony (intelligible, not audible) effected by dissonant tensions comparable to those syncopations and cadences wherewith men imitate those natural dissonances, tending towards certain and prescribed clauses, each involving six terms (like the six parts of polyphonic music), demonstrating and defining with these notes the immensity of time. It is therefore not too astonishing that man, the ape of his creator, should finally have found the knowledge of polyphonic song which was unknown to the ancients, so that in some short part of an hour, by means of an artful harmony of many voices, he might play the everlastingness of created time, and thus to some extent taste the satisfaction of God the Workman with his own works in the sweetest feeling of delight which comes from the experience of music, that imitation of God. The word imitation appears here twice. Certain elements of music, syncopations (which then meant a type of dissonance, not a rhyth,mic irregularity) and cadences, are called imitations of the motion of the stars; and music as a whole is called an imitation of God- Dei imitatri Musica. Clearly imitation stands here for mimesis, in the sense we try to understand it. It has nothing to do with image. Otherwise the study of composition would have to begin with Ptolemy or Copernicus. And no listener, however familiar with astronomy, has yet-as far as I know-discovered in a polyphonic piece any reference to the motions of the planets. Neither is music an image of God; atheists can be excellent composers, and religious faith is not a prerequisite to the enjoyment and understanding of music. Also many of those polyphonic songs Kepler referred to were written to decidedly nonreligious words (to say the least) and in this sense were certainly no images of God. Still, by being music, mov- composer produces a piece of music according to the laws of the tonal construct. By doing this, he produces an imitation, a mimema, of the heavens, of God. He did not know it, he did not intend it, he could not help it happen. It happens behind his back, as it were. The listener hears tones-in-relation. In hearing this he becomes aware that this is an imitation of something which is -not tones, a mimema. What it imitates he does not know and need not know; yet he may have a sense of direction in which to look for that counterpart. In some mind this awareness may crystallize into an act of mimetic recognition in which the counterpart of the mimema is apprehended. Kepler saw it in the stars, in God. The result is a new recognition of the universe, of God. I would even say, more strictly, it is the recognition of a new universe, a new God. The Universe, the God, whose imitation we recognize music to be are not the same as they were before. Not only did the man who made the music imitate something he did not know, which nobody knows, but also the imitation produced the thing imitated. This is like saying: a man writes a text and later finds out he has done a translation; or: a man is charged with writing a translation, but he gets no text; when he asks for the text, he is told that the text does not exist, but that it will come into existence by way of his translation. These are fantastic propositions. I will try a metaphor to make them more manageable. Imagine a man working on some material, some block of metal. His intention is to produce a perfect surface -whatever he may consider a perfect surface. This he accomplishes. When he has done it he discovers that his surface shows a reflection-. He-discovers that he has produced a mirror. It was not his intention to produce a mirror, he did not even know that there are mirrors. (I do not think here of mirror in the conventional sense, as a surface reflecting visual images, but of mirror in the most general sense, in the sense in which a magnetic needle might be called a mirror: its existence "reflects" and thus makes apparent the existence of a magnetic field. In the case of our man's metal surface, the reflection may for instance assume the form of vibration.) The reflection may be vague, not well defmed. The chief thing about it is that it is not the reflection of a thing that was there and seen before; it is the reflection of something so far unseen: the mirror receives the reflection from a direction where there was emptiness before. The reflection leads to the discovery that there is something there to be reflected. Considering the very special shape of the surface which seems to be the condition for its functioning as a mirror, one might even ing according to those dissonant tensions, cadences, and suspect that the thing reflected had an interest in becoming manifest in the reflection, and secretly guided the hand of the worker so that the outcome would be as desired. This sounds a little mystical. I refer to the everrecurrent comment of artists that while at work they feel the other rules of tonal motions, it imitates God. There is also the profound remark that the musician in truth enacts a play the subject of which is everlasting time; but this I won't take up now. So what are the inferences? The themselves as instruments, as tools of some power whose source is located outside themselves-a sort of Socratic diamonion for workmen. However this may be, returning to music, the tones are the surface; if they are in the THE ST. JOHN'S REVIEW 37 �right relation, they will become a mirror; there will be a reflection from somewhere, testifying that there is something out there to be reflected. To Kepler's eye the thing reflected, revealed in the reflection, was divine order. The order of tones appeared as 'imitation', as the mimema of a divine order. What about the other arts? What happens if we apply our interpretation of mimesis to them? The application there is not as obvious as in the case of music. The painter or the sculptor certainly do imitate in the conventional sense of the word, do produce images; yet if the work of art is essentially miinesis in the other sense, then the imitation in the conventional sense cannot be essential. The painting, the sculpture, are essentially, like a piece of music, free constructs, that is, determined by the laws of the construction, not by anything coming from outside. That the painting is a likeness of something is a secondary, an accidental factor; it is not that which makes the painting a work of art, a mimema. In other words: insofar as the painter makes an image he is not an artist, and insofar as he is an artist he makes no image. On the other hand, as mimema, the painting has also transcendent meaning, a counterpart; but this counterpart cannot be that which the painting represents, of which it is an image. A good painting of a chair is not essentially an image of a chair; it is essentially a construct of shapes, lights, colors, which happen to look like a chair-the reference to the real chair is non-essential. The likeness is merely an element in the construction; it belongs to the immanent meaning. The transcendent meaning has nothing to do with 'chair', real or ideal. In the terms of our metaphor: the chair of the painting is mirror, not thing mirrored; it is not a reflection, but a reflector; and what it reflects is certainly not 'chair'. I look at a Greek statue, say, of the god Apollo. I know, I have been informed, that this represents that particular god. I understand what the statue is an image of. Whether the model of this statue was a real person or an idea does not matter. I can deduce from this statue all kinds of thought regarding Greek art, religion, culture. With all this, I have only seen the image, not the mimema. I try to see better, that is, to do nothing but see, forget all information, speculation, rationalization, give the eye a chance to find its way undisturbed. After a while, the statue so to speak takes me over, takes over my body. My body assumes the attitude of the statuenot actually of course, and not in imagination- this has nothing to do with imagination- but in what I would call body-thought; my body consciousness becomes the inner. counterpart of the external attitude of the statue; I have the experience of body which the statue would have if it had consciousness. In this case the experience is of body at rest- not of body, the thing, in a state of rest, but of body and rest as absolutely one. This is contrary to our normal experience where rest is felt, when there is no consciousness of body, in complete relaxation- body being the source of perpetual unrest. Here, however, there is full presence of body, full· 38 awareness, awakeness of body-the statue stands-and perfect rest. In other words, it is rest not as absence of tension but as equilibrium of tensions. This is a revelation of a previously unknown mode of body existenceand this, not the God Apollo, or the Greek idea of a god, or Greek culture, is what this statue is the mimema of. Let us lastly consider tragedy. Aristotle defines it as imitation, memesis, of human action -a certain kind of action- done in the medium of language- a certain kind of language. As long as the word imitation is not taken too literally nobody will quarrel with this. Every tragedy has a plot, action involving people, and in this sense imitates, represents human action; and the making of a tragedy is concretely a writing- tragedies are writtenwritten language is the medium in which it comes to light. The only question is: is this, as Aristotle seems to say, that which makes a tragedy what it is? Is written work a tragedy because it is this particular kind of imitation, representation? I would deny it. If tragedy is mimesis in the sense in which we now understand it, it is primarily an autonomous construct, a language construct, not a representation. The representation in it is not its essential quality. On the other hand, as mimema it does have transcendent meaning, is significantly related to a counterpart. But this counterpart is not the story, the plot, the people, is not that which it represents-and this includes ideas, the moral, anything that can be deduced from it. This requires some clarification. The term "language construct" seems to imply that we consider a piece of poetry, such as a tragedy, primarily from the viewpoint of syntactical construction, rhythm, meter, verse, rhyme, sound- from a purely formal standpoint. We would then deal with them as organized sounds in time- organized according to certain formal patterns, not according to meanings. We would then detach the constructive element from the meanings, consider words apart from meanings. This would be a misunderstanding of the term language construct. Words arc not sounds plus meanings; they are meaningful sounds. Words divorced from meanings are no longer words, no longer language. If language is the material of my construct, then meanings are a part of the material. In handling this material I cannot but always handle meanings too. A language construct is a construct of sounds and meanings. To call tragedy a language construct does not therefore mean that it is considered, as we say, from the formal stand. point only, apart from the content. The content- plot, people, action- is itself an element of the constructionthe most important element-along with the language. The writing of a tragedy is not the making of an image of people in action, or the search for the most convincing (persuasive) way to present people in action; it is primarily a construction of people in action, whose chief means of communication is language. These people and their actions and passions have no existence apart from the words; in tragedy, as in music, form and content are SUMMER 1984 �one. The words are the tones, the people are the melodies; it is as impossible to think of these people apart from the language as it is to think of melodies apart form tones. So if tragedy is mimesis, the so-called content belongs entirely to the context of immanent meaning of the mimema; the plot, the people cannot be that of which the tragedy is the mimema. Again in the terms of our likeness: the people and their action are not that which is mirrored, they are the mirror; not the reflection but the reflector; or as Aristotle would say, they are not that which is imitated but that which imitates. With this in mind we can face the question how to understand, how to explain to ourselves, the peculiar quality of the experience of a tragedy, the difference between being a spectator in the theatre, having the thing represented really happen to oneself, watching it happen to others, reading a report about it. These other possibilities- misfortune befalling oneself, observing misfortune befall others, reading or listening to a story about such misfortune -are certainly most depressing experiences. The experience of tragedy leaves us in a state of elation. We desire it. How can we understand this? Take Oedipus Rex. Why should we expose ourselves to it? The story we know well enough. Of course, knowing the story, and being made actually to live through it-which is what happens in the theatre-are different things. But for what purpose should we be made to live through it? What else could this be but a torture? It is true that this is theatre, that it is not a real story, real happenings which we observe on the stage-and there are certain styles of representation which emphasize this quality of non-reality. But no matter how realistic or unrealistic the representation, if that story does not come fully alive on the stage and make it come alive in the spectators, we might just as well stay home and not go to the theatre at all. So what does it profit us to live through it? Aristotle's answer is: only by living through it can we learn from it; we learn through imitation. I confess I am not convinced. What can I possibly learn from Oedipus Rex-and I take the word learn to mean what we usually understand as learning? I do not want to make any cheap remarks. Seriously, the idea is that by living through Oedipus' experience and at the same time reflecting on it-as we can because we are not really living through it-we might detect the point on his way where he possibly erred and where the choice of another course might have saved him from his tragic fate. But is this really the moral of Oedipus? Does the tragedy not do the very opposite to us, namely, drive home with the greatest possible force that no matter what you do, how hard you try, fate cannot be avoided, that there is no escape from fate, and if this fate is fall, then fall one must. The whole impact of this tragedy seems to me the experience of the inevitability of fall. And what could such an experience be but of most depressing kind: still, this like any other tragedy leaves us elated. In its pattern the experience of tragedy is similar to the experience of a work of the visual arts as I have tried THE ST. JOHN'S REVIEW to describe it. It is not an illusion- believing something to be real which is not real- nor can I ascribe it to imagination -lending the color of reality to something which I know to be not real- it is an experience of participation. As I experience a tragedy I remain what I am and where I am; at the same time my consciousness spreads out and goes over into the people involved in the dramatic action- into all of them; in reference to the words, I am at the same time hearer and speaker. The words, the people, the action are all together, as we said, the construct of tragedy. By participating in them I become one with the construct, I become mirror, and I receive the reflection of something-whatever it may be- that of which tragedy is the mimema. I become aware that the immanent order of the construct is order also in relation to something else, that there is something- not a thing, rather a state, a mode, a dimension of human existence whose order is revealed in :; tragedy, in reference to which tragedy is in order. In this sense we can say: we experience tragedy as true. This is the source of the elation. Take away tragedy- there is the suffering, dejection, despair, the great visitations, the inscrutable catastrophies- the whole chaos of human misery. This chaos tragedy transforms into order. Tragedy does not explain suffering, or justify it, or give it to us as a fact to which we have to resign ourselves; but it bridges the gap between suffering and reason. Oedipus Rex is not an explanation or a justification of fall; it is I would say the logos of fall. This is then one way to redeem fall, and tragedy on the whole, one way to redeem the suffering of man. We understand that tragedy originated in the cult of the god Dionysus, the redeeming god of the ancients. We understand also why in a truly Christian world there is no room for tragedy. The Christian finds redemption in other ways. I want to come to a conclusion. In the last analysis the problem will boil down to the question about the relation between a work of art and reality. We have mentioned one theory which denied there was any relation between them. If we admit a relation, there are two possible interpretations of mimesis: as image, where reality is the source from which the work of art is derived; and mimesis as reflection, where the work of art is the source, the detector, of new realities. I will close with two legends which 'imitate', better than I would be able to, the two different views. One is the well-known story of the most, famous painter of Greece, Appelles; it is said that wheEL he painted grapes, birds would come and pick at them. The other is the story of one of the great painters of old China. When he became old he began to work on a painting which he showed to no one; he worked on it for years, and finally he called in his friends and pupils, and there it was: showing a .landscape with mountains and a road leading from the foreground back towards the hills. They looked at the painting and at the old man, and suddenly they saw the man enter the painting, begin to walk on the road, getting smaller and smaller until he finally disappeared in the mountains. 39 �The Archimedean Point and the Liberal Arts Curtis Wilson T he subject of the lecture is, in accordance with tradition, the liber.al arts, liberal artistry. And I wish to point out, to begin with, that these words "art" and "liberty" are difficult words; they do not designate anything you can point at with the index finger; they belong, not to the order of motion and perception, but to the order of action and idea. They are, as I shall try to explain later on, dialectical words. And the question arises, how are such words to be defined? Where should one begin? What standpoint should be taken in setting out to define these words? These are not merely theoretical questions; wars are fought between those who understand words like "liberty;' ')ustice;' "right," "obligation;' in different ways. Archimedes, the mathematician, is said to have said: Give me a fixed point on which to stand, and I shall move the world. He was referring, of course, to the power of the lever; to the law according to which the ratio of the two forces is the same as the inverse ratio of the lever arms. All that Archimedes requires, then, is a fixed pivot or fulcrum, a lever of extraordinary length, and a place to stand, and he will be able to move the earth. This claim would not be stated in quite the same terms by modern scientists, beginning with Newton; I shall not go into the modifications required, but only state that they are required precisely because, in a sense that is both real and figurative, man has now discovered the Archimedean point, the point outside the earth, the knowledge of which permits us to unhinge the earth. And Curtis Wilson is a tutor at St.John's College, Annapolis. The Archimedean Point and the Liberal Arts was delivered as the Dean's opening lecture in the fall of 1958 at St. John's College, Annapolis. 40 this point, being a place to stand, is also a standpoint from which man attempts to view himself. Kafka somewhere says that, while man has discovered the Archimedean point, he uses it against himself; that it seems that he was permitted to find it only under this condition. Modern science, beginning with the Copernican or heliocentric theory, is a return to Archimedes, and was so regarded by its founders, particularly Galileo. Copernicus discovers in the sun the fixed point from the standpoint of which the earth moves. He looks upon the earth as though he were actually an inhabitant of the sun. He lifts himself, by an act of the mathematical imagination, by means of ratios and geometrical diagrams, to a point from which the earth and its earthbound inhabitants can be viewed from the outside. The Archimedean point'is shifted yet once again, or rather made infinitely mobile, when Giordano Bruno announces the infinity of the universe. What is characteristic of the thought of Bruno is the fact that the term "infinity" changes its meaning. In classical thought the word "infinity" is understood negatively. The infinite is the indeterminate, the boundless; it has no limit or form, and is inaccessible to human reason which lives in the realm of form. But according to Bruno the word "infinity" no longer means a mere negation of form. It means rather the immeasurable and inexhaustible abundance of the extended universe, and the unrestricted power of the human intellect. Man no longer lives in the world as a prisoner enclosed within the narrow walls of finite ordered cosmos. He can traverse the air and break through the imaginary boundaries of the celestial spheres. The human intellect becomes aware of its own infinity through measuring its powers by the infinite universe. Einstein has insisted that we may assume with equal validity that the earth turns round the sun or that the sun turns round the earth; that both assumptions are in SUMMER 1984 �agreement with observed phenomena, and that the difference is only a difference of the chosen point of reference. Thus the Archimedean point is moved a step farther away from the earth to an imaginary point in the universe where neither earth nor sun is a center. We are no longer to be bound even to the sun, but move freely in the universe, choosing our point of reference wherever it may be convenient for a specific purpose. This shift of standpoint, from the earth to a point outside the earth, received a certain kind of corroboration in Galileo's telescopic discoveries, the discovery of the moons of jupiter and of the phases of Venus. These discoveries did not prove the truth of the Copernican theory; theories are never proved, only confirmed. And in fact, if we accept the theory of Einstein, we can no longer ask about the truth of the Copernican theory, for the Archimedean point becomes infinitely shiftable. But for those of Galileo's contemporaries who already accepted the Copernican theory, his telescopic discoveries were a confirmation of the power of the human intellect, which, by means of man-made instruments and mathematical theories, can free itself from the earth, and break down the age-old barrier between the sublunar and the celestial spheres. One cannot fail to note, in the works of Kepler and Galileo, a certain exhilaration, a sense of the power of the human mind. According to Galileo, ". . . the understanding is to be taken in two ways, that is, intensively, or extensivefy; and extensivefy, that is, as to the multitude of intelligibles, which are infinite, the understanding of man is as nothing, though he should understand a thousand propositions; for a thousand in respect of infinity is but as a cypher: but taking the understanding intensively, I say that human wisdom understandeth some propositions so perfectly, and is as absolutely certain thereof, as Nature herself; and such are the pure Mathematical sciences, namely, Geometry and Arithmetick: in which Divine Wisdom knows infinite more propositions, because it knows them all; but I believe that the knowledge of those few comprehended by human understanding equalleth the divine, as to the objective certainty, for that it arriveth to comprehend the necessity thereof, than which there can be no greater certainty." By mathematics Galileo understood implicitly the science of physics, since the book of nature, as he says, "is written in mathematical characters." For both Kepler and Galileo, man becomes a god, travelling through space, able to calculate for his own displacement, and so to arrive at knowledge which, intensively considered, is perfect. I shall not attempt to retrace the vicissitudes of this scientific faith through the last three centuries. It would be a complex story, I would even say a dialectical story, a romantic biography, as it were, of a recently deceased friend. The aim was to express qualities through figure, to substitute a geometrical configuration for each primordial quality, to explain all things by figure and move- THE ST. JOHN'S REVIEW ment considered as situated in an infinite matrix of time and space. The doctrine of atomism was part and parcel of this scientific faith, the notion of an inert matter or stuff cut up into tiny shapes. But it was soon found necessary to attribute occult qualities to the matter of the atoms, mysterious dynamic qualities like gravitation, and the atoms were gradually transformed beyond recognition. The geometrized space of Galileo has become with Einstein a symbolic space-time matrix. The development of theoretical structures has been constantly in a direction away from the simple geometrical object, which the mind's eye can see with the certainty that it is there. Einstein has to deny that at a definite, present instant all matter is simultaneously real. Whatever theoretical physics is talking about today, it is not something which is imaginable with the eye of geometrical imagination. I am told that you can learn the fundamentals of quantum mechanics in about six months; then it takes another six months to understand that you understand it, though you cannot imagine what the theory is supposed to be about. The tension between the empirically given and the imaginable on the one hand, and the content of theoretical physics on the other, has increased to the breaking point. The mirror of nature that scientific faith endeavored to build has been shattered, and the scientist finds himselflooking straight out into the unknown. Already in the seventeenth century the new conception of the world- the world as viewed from the Archimedean point- had given rise to a reaction of doubt and fear. "The eternal silence of these infinite spaces frightens me;' says Pascal. Pascal's distinction between the esprit de geometrie and the esprit de finesse is directed against the geometrical and astronomical view of the world. The geometrical spirit excels in all those subjects that are capable of a perfect analysis into simple elements. It starts with axioms and from them derives propositions by universallogical rules. Its excellence lies in the clarity of its principles and the logical necessity of its deductions. But, Pascal would say, there are things which because of their subtlety and variety defy the geometrical spirit, which can be comprehended, if at all, only by the esprit de finesse, the acute and subtle spirit. And if there is anything which thus defies the geometrical spirit, it is the nature and mind of man. Pascal holds that contradiction is the very essence of human existence. Man has no "nature;' no homogeneous being; he is a mixture of being and nonbeing. His precarious place is midway between these poles. The discovery of the Archimedean point produced a crisis in man's knowledge of himself. Self-knowledge has almost always been recognized as the highest aim of philosophic inquiry. It is impossible to penetrate into the secret of nature unless one also penetrates into the secret of man. The discovery of the Archimedean point demanded that man view himself from a totally alien standpoint, that he understand himself ultimately in terms of geometrical figure and the impact of atoms. The seventeenth-century philosophers were fully aware of this 41 �cns1s, and attempted to meet it in different ways. But the most obvious and crucial step, the step which was already implicit in the Copernican shift of standpoint, was taken by Descartes: the removal of the Archimedean point into the mind of man, so that he could carry it with him wherever he went, and thus free himself entirely from the human condition of being an inhabitant of the earth. Descartes says: I think, therefore I exist; or: I doubt, therefore I exist. Beginning with the idea of universal doubt, he concludes that there must be something which doubts, which thinks; and this something is what he is. He identifies himself as a mind, a thinking thing. And this thinking thing is the fixed and immovable point from which all else must be derived, the existence of God and of other minds, and of things which have extension or occupy space. Descartes himself recognizes the connection of his thought with the Copernican revolution, for he states that if the earth does not move, then all of his doctrines are false. Unfortunately the Cartesian removal of the Archimedean point into the mind of man fails to assuage the Cartesian doubt. Descartes' argument, cogito ergo sum) I think, therefore I exist, is faulty. For as Nietzsche pointed out, it ought to read: cogito ergo cogitationes sunt) I think therefore there are thoughts. It does not establish the existence of a something which thinks; it can only end with what it begins, namely thinking. And the questioning and doubting remain; universal doubt, not in the sense of really doubting everything all at once, which is impossible, but in the sense of the indefinite possibility of doubting things one by one as they occur in thought. And so one becomes a question to himself, asking who he is- which is one sort of question- and what he is, which is another sort of question. Both the successes and failures of the scientific revolution have resulted in an anarchy of thought with regard to the nature of man. The Archimedean standpoint leads to theories of man in terms of impulses, forces which are analogous to mechanical forces, the sexual instinct for ,_ Freud, the economic instinct for Marx. But the different theories contradict one another. No age previous to ours was ever so favorably placed with regard to the empirical sources of knowledge of human nature, and yet never was there so little conceptual agreement. And it becomes the task of modern man, if he is to avoid the piecemeal response of dissipation, and the one-track response of fanaticism, to inquire once again into the being that he is, and that he can become. I make a new start, not from the Archimedean point, but right in the middle of things. And let me begin this time with the obvious, with the observation that man is a linguistic animal. He speaks; also, he uses writing as a substitute for speech. The word "linguistic" is derived by a metaphorical extension from the word for a bodily organ, the tongue. The tongue is used in articulating the voice. The Homeric epithet for men was oi lltpo:n:e~ iivepw:n:ot; !ltpo:n:e~ is from llepi~w, the verb meaning to divide; and the phrase 42 means those who divide or articulate their voice. This does not, of course, tell us what a language is, or in particular what human language is. A chimpanzee can articulate most of the sounds used in human speech; his tongue and lips can be used to articulate sound in the same way as the human tongue and lips; but he is not a linguistic animal in the same sense as man is. The chimpanzee uses gesture and voice to express rage, terror, despair, grief, pleading, desire, playfulness, pleasure; he expresses emotions. Man also utters cries expressive of distress, pleasure, and so on, but these interJections) as they are called, are quite frequently vocal sigus of a higher order, the use of which as interjections comes about by a degradation from their proper use; in fact, they are quite frequently vocal signs borrowed from the language of theology. Man articulates his voice with the conscious intention of signifying, or sign-ifying, something to somebody. The notion of a sign is, ordinarily, wider than that of language. With respect to the relation between sign and thing signified, we can distinguish three kinds of signs. First, indexical signs, or indices. Here the sign is causally connected with that which it signifies; thus smoke is a sign of fire, because it is. produced by fire; the direction of a weather vane is a sign of the direction of the wind, because the direction of the weather vane is determined by the direction of the wind; and the position of a speedometer needle indicates the speed of the automobile, because it is causally connected with the rotation of the wheels. Secondly, there are iconic signs, or icons, which are significant of something to somebody because they are similar to that thing in some respects. Examples of such signs are photographs, replicas, geometrical diagrams, images of every kind. Finally, there are conventional signs, often called symbols; and under this heading fall most of the words of human language. Symbols are all those signs which are signs only because they are interpreted as such by some organism or mind; there is no other connection between sign and thing signified, as there is in the case of indices and icons. Sometimes the word "language" is taken in a broad sense, as any set or system of objects or events which are significant for some being, or which are such that certain combinations of them are meaningful or significant for some being. In this case, we should have to include as special cases the language of looks and glances, the language of the bees, and the language of the stars. The incredible navigation feats of migratory birds, such as the white-throated warblers which migrate between northern Europe and Africa, have been shown recently to depend on celestial navigation, a reading of the stars as indexical signs oflatitude and longitude. The experiments were performed in a planetarium, and it was shown that during the migratory period the birds decide, on the basis of the look of the sky and an inner time sense, exactly in what direction to point in order to be aiming toward their destination. If they are so far put off course as to have, say at midnight, the midnight appearance of SUMMER 1984 �the Siberian sky over their heads, they know in what direction to point in order to regain their course. The language of the bees, on the other hand, consists in significant actions which are mostly iconic. As the researches of von Frisch have shown, a honey bee that has returned after successful foraging for food goes through a strange and complicated dance, and this dance is so designed, by the direction of the step and tempo, as to show to the other members of the hive both the direction and distance of the find. None of these systems of signs is strictly comparable to human language, which differs in essential respects. But all of them consist of signs, and a sign is a very special sort of thing, which would not come into focus if we stood at the Archimedean point. Wherever there is a sign, there is a relation which is at least triadic in complexity, that is, a relation which relates at least three things. The sign stands to somebody for something. The something may be called the object of the sign; but it should not be supposed that the object is always, or even ordinarily, what we call a physical object or thing, something that is spatially bounded, capable of existing for a stretch of time, and movable. The object of the sign is just whatever the sign signifies, which might be redness or horizontality or justice. The somebody, human or not, for whom the sign is a sign, interprets the sign as signifying the object; or we may say that the sign produces in this somebody an interpretant or thought. Thus the three things related in the signrelation are (1) the sign, which will be a physical object or event in any particular case; (2) the object, or thing signified; and (3) the interpretant. A triadic relation, such as we have in the sign-relation, cannot be reduced to any sum of dyadic relations, that is, relations relating two things. Dyadic relations can be diagrammed by means of a letter with two tails, thus: -R- . It is understood that something has to be written in at the ends of the tails, to indicate the two things related. Hitting is a case of such a dyadic relation, as when we say "a hits b." Triadic relations, on the other hand, have to be diagrammed by means of a letter with three tails, thus: -1}-. An example of such a relation is the giving involved when john gives the book to Mary; the giving is a relation between three things, John, the book, and Mary. Similarly a sign signifies something to somebody. Now it is easy to show that the combination of dyadic relations only leads to further dyadic relations; for instance, by combining the relation "uncle of'' (- U-) with the relation "cousin of'' (-C-), we only obtain the relation "uncle of cousin of' (-U -C-) or "cousin of uncle of' (-C-U-); and the diagram shows that the combined relation has only two tails. Therefore triadic relations cannot be built up out of dyadic relations. Hence the sign relation is not reducible to anything involving only dyadic relations. As a consequence, no theory about the world which seeks to account for everything in terms of dyadic relations, such as we have in the impact of atoms or THE ST. JOHN'S REVIEW gravitational attraction, is adequate to account for sign relations. Lucretius, for instance, is wrong. Now given the irreducibility of signs to things which are not signs, we have yet to advance another step before we reach the level of human language. We have, in the first place, to understand the distinction between a sign which is a signal or operator, and a sign which is a designator or name; between a sign which serves as stim.ulus to a motor response, and a sign which serves as an instrument of reflective thought. Man is a naming animal. Human language is characterized by a freedom of naming. Man can devise a vocal name for anything that he can identify or distinguish as. being, in some way, one. This freedom of naming depends, for one thing, on the manifoldness of the sounds which the human voice can produce and which the human ear can distinguish; and it depends for another on leisure and reflectiveness. Among peoples whose mode of life grants them little leisure, the naming of things may be very restricted; thus Malinowski found that among the Trobrianders of the South Seas there are no special names for the various trees or bushes which provide no edible fruit, but all of these are alike called by a name we may translate "bush:' When leisure intervenes, however, the reflective botanist or zoologist, or in general the reflective namer, makes his appearance, and nothing is safe from being named, not even the Nameless, which after all has that name.' The identification that goes with naming is like the drawing of a circle, which separates all that is outside the circle from all that is inside. Among the words which name, I include adjectives and verbs as well as nouns, for all such words have the general function of identification, of signifying something that is, in some way, one. Corresponding to every adjective or verb there exists, or can be invented, a corresponding noun; in English, for instance, we frequently turn adjectives into nouns by adding N-E-S-S, and verbs into nouns by adding T-I-0-N. All such words are called, traditionally, categorematic terms. And the key to the categorematic terms, the key noun or noun of nouns, is "monad" or "unit;' which Euclid defines as that in accordance with which each of the things that are is said to be one; and which was also defined by the ancients as the form of forms, dlirov ellio~. The categorematic terms are of different sorts, depending on the kinds of thing they designate. Some of the things they designate can be simply located in space and time, and others cannot. There are, for instance, terms for simple qualities like "red;' "bitter;' "shrill." The awareness of such a quality, considered by itself, is unanalyzable and incommunicable; it is just what it is and nothing else. I can never know that my neighbor's awareness of the redness of the curtain is the same as mine; if he uses the words "red" and "blue" on the same occasions as I do, this only means his classification of colors corresponds to mine. The identification of qualities by name presupposes acts of comparison and classification. There are names for physical oqjects, "horse;' "chariot;' 43 �"Hektor!' A physical object has unity insofar as it is bounded in space, persistent for a stretch of time, and capable of moving or being moved. It is identified as an invariant within a spatial and temporal framework. The character of the spatial framework is determined by the character of possible motions. Motions are reversible, so that one can return to his starting-point; and motions are associative, so that one can change direction, add motion to motion. In other words, motions form what mathematicians call a group of operations. The character of possible motions implies that space is homogeneous, that it constitutes a uniform background against which physical objects can manifest their unity and invariance, that is, their boundedness, persistence in time, and mobility. There are names for materials, such as gold and water, and names for such strange beings as rivers and streams; whatever a stream or river is, it is something you can step into twice, though the water is never the same. There are names for happenings, events, motions; running, grasping, twisting, leaping, coronation, assassination. All the kinds of name I have mentioned so far designate things that can be pointed at. But the meaning of such words cannot he defined simply by pointing; pointing by itself is totally ambiguous; if the pointing is to be understood, something else must be understood at the same time. For instance, we have to understand that it is a physical object that is meant, or a color, or a shape, or a material, or a motion. The tree is not only a tree, but is green-leaved, tall, branched, and so on. In whatever direction one points, there is manyness, plurality of aspect. All such naming, then, presupposes and implies an act of comparison and classification, the isolation of something from a matrix or background of possible meanings. Man is an animal who compares, finds ratios; he is a rational animal. There are names for things which cannot be localized in time and space, names like "law;' "liberty," "art;' "nature," ')ustice," "knowledge," "wisdom." Such words belong, not to the order of perception and motion, but to the order of action and idea. We ascend here to a new level which, once again, is not discernible from the Archimedean point. These words cannot be defined through classification, through specification of genus and differentia. They are polar or dialectical words, which take up their meanings in relation to the meanings of other words of the same kind. The word "freedom" presents different facets to the word "tyranny" and to the word ''slavery"; and any one of these words requires the services of the others. Most if not all of the dialectical words are borrowed from the realm of the corporeal, visible, and tangible; the original reference is forgotten, and only the metaphorical extension survives. Both the Greek 0iK11, justice, and the Chinese word i, morality, originally meant a way 44 of life, that is to say, a particular way of life. But there are many ways oflife, and the adjudication between rival opinions requires a universal meaning. The universal is then grasped in the particular. The definition of the dialectical words depends on representative images or anecdotes, like the Hobbesian state of nature, or the state constructed in Platds dialogue, Republic. In all cases, naming involves the location of a kind of commonness, law, regularity, invariance- something on the basis of which one might classifY or predict. And in all cases the commonness, law, regularity, invariance, makes its appearance in a matrix of relations. Whenever anyone has managed to grasp such an invariance or regularity or commonness, he has thereby in some measure released himself from the tyranny of diversity. As Aristotle says, the soul is so constituted as to be capable of this process. And he adds that it is like a rout in battle, stopped by first one man making a stand and then another, until the original formation has been restored. The human freedom of linguistic formation is not limited to naming. Human language is combinational; it permits the combination of sign with sign to form a complex sign called the sentence, the proposition, the affirmation or denial, or-to use the Greek word-the logos. In order really to say something, one must say something about something. The fundamental type of expression with complete or independent meaning is the sentence; a meaning is completely specified only if it is imbedded in an affirmation or denial, something that could be an answer to a question. Words that, in a broad sense, name or identify, can be answers to questions. They have a certain possible completeness of meaning, which becomes actual when they are uttered in a context of other words or in a non-verbal situation which serves to specify the way in which they are being used. The single word "fire;' for instance, may have different meanings depending on the situation in which it is uttered; whether, say, by a neighbor whose house has caught on fire, or by an artillary officer, or by Pascal in his study, in an attempt to express a theological truth. Or to take a case where the context is verbal: the meaning of the word "man" in the sentence "Some man is a liar" is not entirely the same as its meaning in the sentence "Man is mortal;' and is different again from its meaning in the sentence "Man is a species!' In "Man is mortal" the word stands for all things which it is capable of signifying, all men who ever were, or are, or will be, this man and that man and so on. In "Man is a species" the word stands for a certain nature which it signifies; and it is not possible to descend to individuals, to assert that this man or that man is a species. In "Some man is a liar;' the word "man" stands not for all things it is capable of signifying, but only for an indeterminate individual, this man or that man. We may say in general that while any categorematic term is capable of signifying, the precise way in which it signifies is determined by its use in an assertion, a sentence. SUMMER 1984 �Every sentence contains, besides categorematic terms, other signs which are called syncategorematic signs, words like "if;' "with;' "by;' "the;' "is;' "every;' "because;' "not;' and signs which consist of inflectional endings or word order. These signs are not names; they determine the range of meaning of other terms, or the mode of connection of terms in sentences; they express instrumentality, the modalities of the possible or probable, tense, negation, conditionality, and so on. In translating from one language to another, these signs present the greatest difficulty, for they are most likely not to translate into a completely analogous form in the second language. The conditional "if;' for instance, can be expressed in German by a mere inversion of the order of subject and verb; Greek and Latin can express the instrumental "by" or "with" by means of case endings of nouns; .and Latin somehow- though not very happily- manages to get along without a definite article. Nevertheless, we can expect that any adequate language will supply the connective and determining functions in some way. The crucial syncategorematic sign is the sign of assertion itself. In the Indo-European languages this is supplied by the finite verb form; the verb has, in addition to its function of naming or identifying, the function of indicating that sometlllng is to be affirmed of something. In Chinese there is no verb "to be;' and instead there is a little particle "yeh;' which may be translated "indeed?' Thus one says ''Tail long indeed;' meaning The tail is long, and ''Boat wooden-thing indeed;' meaning Boats are made of wood. The particle "yeh" may be taken as an epitome of the business of the sentence, to assert or declare. There is, then, a freedom of linguistic formation in human language, freedom in the formation of names and sentences. And this freedom extends to the subject-matter of language itself; we can talk about language, use language to describe language. This peculiar atop-theatopness is characteristic pf human capacity. Thus we can make machines which make tools, which are used in turn to make macliines. And according to Kant, man is the only animal who can read a sign as sign. This implies that man is the only animal who can make signs of signs; the only animal that has a hierarchical or selfreflexive language. And it implies also that he can become aware, as by a sidelong glance, of his own linguistic activity, and raise it to the level of conscious artfulness, liberal artistry. Because of the triadic relation between the sign, the object, and the thought or interpretant, we can distinguish three branches of linguistic artfulness. Grammar will deal with linguistic formation, with the conditions which any sequence of signs, and in particular any sentence, must satisfy if it is to be meaningful. Logic will deal with the conditions which any sequence of signs must satisfy if it is to be true of any object, and in particular with linguistic transformations which preserve truth, with the derivation of one sentence from another in such a way that if the first sentence is true of any object or objects, then so is the second. Rhetoric will deal with linguistic THE ST. JOHN'S REVIEW transformations that are persuasive, with the conditions under which one thought or interpretant leads to another in the mind of the interpreter. The focal topic of grammar is the sentence; of logic, the argument; of rhetoric, the trope or figure of speech. Grammar has to do with the conditions of meaningfulness, or conversely, with the avoidance of nonsense. Meaninglessness or nonsense is to be distinguished from absurdity. A word heap like king but or similar and is meaningless, and so is Gertrude Stein's A rose is a rose is a rose, unless a comma be inserted after the second occurrence of "rose"; an expression like round square or All squares have 5 comers, is absurd or countersensical, though meaningful. The avoidance of nonsense is the business of grammar; the avoidance of absurdity is the business of logic. Grammar has to do with the recognition and distinction of forms and modifications of meaning which any adequate language must be capable of expressing, the existential sentence, the hypothetical antecedent, the generic sense of a common noun, negation, the plural, the modalities of the possible and probable, past, present, and future, and so on. If a language is to mirror truly, in its verbal materials, the various kinds of possible meanings, then it must have control over grammatical forms which permit the giving of a sensuously distinguishable "expression" to all distinguishable forms of meanings. Different languages may differ with respect to their adequacy. It is the task of the grammatical art to see through the grammatical forms of particular languages to essential distinctions of meaning, and to the ways in which meanings may be combined so as to result in the completed meaning of the sentence. Logic is concerned with relations between sentences, with transformations of sentences yielding new sentences, in such a way that if the original sentences be true of any objects of thought, then so are the derived sentences. Wherever logic is being employed, the logical function will be expressible in terms of a sequence of sentences, of which one or more will be regarded as antecedent, and one or more' as consequent. Among sentences, some are denials or contradictions of others; in fact every sentence has a denial, and the denial of a denial is the same as the original sentence denied. Everyone who cares to speak or assert anything, has to take it as a rule that a given sentence cannot be both truly affirmed and truly denied; on pain of contradiction, we say, he cannot both affirm and deny something of something at the same time and in the same respect. This principle, called the law of noncontradiction, cannot be proved. Anyone who dares or cares to deny it cannot be talked with without absurdity, for his very denial would imply a denial of his denial. He is, as Aristotle says, no better than a vegetable. There are sentences which are consistent or compatible with one another, so that one can be denied or affirmed without our having, on pain of contradiction, to affirm or deny the other. And there are sentences which are related as antece- 45 �dent and consequent, where the affirmation of the one requires us, on pain of contradiction, to affirm the other. In this case, the antecedent is said to imply the consequent. Implication always depends on syncategorematic words, words which do not name, but which connect or modify the meanings of names, words like "and;' "or;' "ifthen;' "all;' "every;' "some;' and so on. For instance, if p and q are two sentences, and if I assert the sentence "If p then q," and also assert the sentence "p;' then I am forbidden on pain of contradiction to deny the sentence ((q." Or if A, B, and C are objects of thought, and if! assert that all A is B, and that no B is C, then I am forbidden on pain of contradiction to deny that no A is C. In all applications of logic there are signs- either categorematic terms or sentences- which occur vacuously; all that is required of them is that their meaning should remain self~identical. The implication depends solely on the connective and determining words, the syncategorematic signs. The logical art enables us to pass from sentence to sentence, to draw out the consequences of what has previously been asserted, to construct the tremendous deductive sciences of mathematics and theoretical physics. An omniscient being would have no need for such an art, but man is a discursive animal, who can only pass from truth to truth in some consecutive order, in time. Rhetoric has to do with the ways in which one thought leads to another. As rhetorician, one is concerned with linguistic transformations which occur in daydreams and reveries, in jokes and poems and myths, in the formation of opinion, in the coming about of discoveries and insights. While the task oflogic is to look through signs, so to speak, toward the self-identical character of objects of thought, the task of rhetoric is to look through signs toward the polar character of thoughts. Every identification of meaning involves the drawing of a circle which includes and excludes. Every sentence involves affirmation or negation. The fundamental polarity in thought is that between same and other. There is an ancient Pythagorean table of opposites, contrarieties, polarities: odd-even, unity-plurality, rightleft, male-female, rest-motion, light-dark, good-bad, and so on. These polarities rest not only on the law of contradiction, but on the polarized character of man's life, the erotic character of his linear voyage through time and space. The other polarities become invested with Eros, the desire for pleasure, for honor and power, for community, and for knowledge. Wherever there are poles, there are tropics. The word "pole" comes from the Greek word n6Ao<;, meaning pivot. Wherever there are pivots, one expects to find something that turns; and the Greek word -rp6n:o<;, from which we derive the word "tropic;' means a turning. Thus the tropics of the earth turn round the poles. Wherever there are polar oppositions of terms, one may expect to find what are called tropes, that is, turns or figures of speech, similes, metaphors, metonymies, ironies. 46 In the 15th book of the Iliad, there is a point at which Hector is seeking to break the ranks of the Achaians, but is unable, we are told, for they endured like a tower, 'just as a rock in the sea endures despite wind and waves:' The rock in the sea is a simile, of course, for the endurance and courage of the Achaians. The polarity here is between man and rock. I read into the rock the human endurance, and then I turn round and read into the human endurance the steadfastness of the rock. I look at each from the standpoint of the other; I use each to obtain a perspective of the other. The movement is from man to rock and back to man. I obtain an echo of man from the rock. As I pointed out earlier, the words for moral notions and for the activities of the mind are derived by metaphor from words for visible or tangible things and motions. Poetry involves a regaining of the original relation in reverse, a metaphorical extension back from the intangible into a tangible equivalent. It involves the discovery of what T. S. Eliot calls an objective correlative of the interior life; that is, the finding of a set of objects, a situation, a chain of events, which will be the formula of a particular feeling or thought, so that when the external facts are given, the feeling or thought is immediately evoked. Modern science can also be viewed, on the theoretical side, as a gigantic trope or series of tropes, a series of models or images whose meanings are drawn out by logical inferences. Thus one may conceive electric current after the analogy of a river, or electric oscillations after the analogy of mechanical oscillations, and other aspects of electricity suggest other metaphors which in turn acquire corresponding mathematical formulation. Modern mathematics and mathematical physics overlies a mass of disjunct imagery which it does not appear possible to unify; instead, imagery is used dialectically to transcend imagery, in successive stages of formalization. Finally, let me not fail to mention the trope of irony, the dialectical trope par excellence. Irony is an elusive trope; its essence lies in simulation or dissimulation, in the use ofthc tension between what appears and what is. It can be savagely or gently mocking, but it also contains the seeds of humility. When Newton* sees a criminal being led to the gallows and says "There but for the grace of God go I;' he is not congratulating himself on not being a criminal; he reads himself in the other and the other in himself, and the irony lies in this peculiar combination of"yes" and "no;' as these two are connected by means of the God-term. When Socrates says "I know that I do not know;' he combines affirmation and denial in such a way as to produce a peculiar transcendence. Irony is here the net of the educator. The possibility of irony rests on the tension between what appears and what is. Man exists at the horizon be- *The hymn-writer. SUMMER 1984 �tween appearance and idea; his being is an intermediate, a metaxy, as Plato would say (co l!oca~u). And the task of education, starting in the middle of things, is to use the appearances, the images, the names and the sentences, to produce a development toward hierarchy and wholeness which uses all the terms. I have but a few more words to say. Man is a being who is constantly in search of himself; this is the human condition. Socratically speaking, he is a questioning animal, a being who, when asked a rational question, can give a rational answer. So questioning and responding, both to himself and others, man becomes a responsi- THE ST. JOHN'S REVIEW ble being, a moral being. In the image of the Republic, the movement of dialectical or dialogical thought, as guided by Socratic irony, is upward, from darkness into light, from partiality to wholeness, from appearance to intellectual vision. The Socratic irony produces a transformation of terms, a hierarchy, a perspective of perspectives, in which the contradictions of pOlitical life, and of the soul which is an inner political life, are resolved by becoming hierarchially related to the idea of knowledge. The Socratic irony punctures pretense, and points beyond, to the unity of knowledge and to the great dialectical interchange which has yet to be carried out. 47 �The Program of St. John's College* in Annapolis, Maryland, and Santa Fe, New Mexico Eva T. H. Brann I. Principles and Parts of the Program I. The Principles and Parts of the Program Authors Arts The Community of Learning II. Problems and Questions Concerning the Program The Place of the Program in American Education The Omission of Certain Studies Study Modes of the Program Institutional Difficulties "Real Life" Eva Brann is a tutor at St. John's College, Annapolis. The Program of St. John's College, was written for the Rockefeller Foundation Conference KToward the Restoration of the Liberal Arts Curriculum;' September 28, 1978. 48 E very plan of education, whether borne up by a passing trend or bound into a long tradition, is fraught with implicit philosophical principle. Since the program of St. John's College is devoted to that peculiar kind of learning which of necessity includes a reflection on its own conditions, most members of the college accept the obligation- or yield to the fascination- of engaging in ever-recurrent discussion and review of the philosophical bases that underlie their activity. A part of the life of the college (some say too much, some too little) is devoted to such reflection. To mention this activity is a matter of minutes, while to reproduce even a sample of it would require not hours but, probably, years. Furthermore, precisely because it is a living inquiry, it is impossible for one member to state the results in behalf of the whole college. That would be tantamount to announcing that we had communally determined the answer to such questions as "What is learning?", ''What are the objects of learning?", "What is human nature?", and "What is truth?" Such an announcement is, judging from good precedent, not in itself unthinkable, but it would be absurd in view of the central aim of the college, which is the pursuit of what I can only call radical inquiry. The college certainly has other and, it sometimes seems, conflicting aims. If the usual purposes of institutions of higher learning can be said to be: 1. training for scholarship or research; 2. pre-professional preparation, 3. broadening of views and sharpening of intellectual faculties and development of the sensibility, 4. initiation into the cultural tradition- then the college eschews the first almost completely, does the second fairly adequately, succeeds in the third but erratically (that is to say, about SUMMER 1984 �as well as other good schools), and accomplishes the last superbly, albeit according to its own lights. But, however well the college may do any of these things, it does them only incidentally to the central aim, which is to us the very purpose of liberal education. By radical inquiry I mean the attempt to delve as deeply as possible into the roots of the world, to bring to light not only the nature of things but also the nature of thinking. When I say that it is the central aim of the college, I do not- God forbid- mean that every waking moment is devoted to first philosophy, but rather that philosophical questions are always in the background, are always welcomed, are always on the brink of being entertained, even when the subject at hand is highly technical or acutely esthetic. Now precisely because such an inqu~ry is a search for truth and substance, it needs to be free, free in the sense of being conducted in a setting that imposes the fewest bars and the least presuppositions possible. The program of the college embodies an attempt to provide such a setting. If the actual life of the college is difficult to describe succinctly, its formal aspect, this very plan oflearning, should be quite capable of coherent and concise presentation. Now the program of the college consists of an almost totally prescribed course of studies. It sets not only the books to be read but the exact order in which they are itself. I shall try below to set out our approach to the intellectual world, an approach that still accords it enough integrity so as to engender in a faculty the confidence to derive a plan of studies from it. The enabling freedum which is essential to our sort of inquiry depends on a program explicitly embodying strong but minimal notions- strong enough to help and sparing enough not to hinder inquiry. We have agreed on two approaches as meeting these demands. They stem from an old tradition. But it is not because they are old that we adopt them; on the contrary, they are, presumably, long-lived because they contain much pedagogical wisdom. These approaches have the medieval designation of Authors and Arts. AUTHORS The wisdom of the West is handed down in a collection of books by individual authors, books of words, symbols, notes and images, books of philosophy, science and poetry, books of intellect, reason and imagination. I believe that the existence of such a written tradition is an accepted fact among all educated people. The issuing of definitive lists of these books has been a favorite activity of pedagogues since the Renaissance, and the zestful debates concerning the inclusion or exclusion of items have usually confirmed a perennial core. We tinker with our list-which we find in the main satisfactory- to be studied and even the times, to the hour, when and for various reasons. The main cause is that far more the people with whom they are to be discussed. It requires its students to forego all notions of being born a books by right belong on it than can be read in four years. (We now have an informal rule obligating anyone who wishes to add a book to the list to point out- at his peril- the one to be dropped to make room for it.) Again, humanistic or a scientific type, makes the silent speak and the speech-makers be quiet, imposes dozens of earnest formalities, requires teache.rs to teach what they certain texts turn out to be unsuccessful in discussion. do not know well to students who did not particularly choose to be taught by them, and requires relentless activity in the name of true leisure. And all these constraints Also, the splintering of the tradition in recent times makes the modern choices much less settled. So, while we invariably begin with the Homeric epics, our final readings vary. When I last taught seniors about to go forth into the so-called world, we ended most appropriately with that perfect conflation of thought and action embodied in Supreme Court decisions. These books form a coherent tradition because their are imposed, I must now try to show, in the interests of intellectual freedom. It is not, of course, academic freedom in the usual understanding, that is, the students' right to study what they please and the professors' right to say what they think. In the St. John's community, the latter is not so much a right as a duty, though a duty mitigated by a pedagogic tact. The former freedom is, except for small choices, confined to the initial decision to come to the college, though that decision is never permitted to be made sight unseen. Electives, which the program ex- common mode is response, repudiation, revival. Each book is explicitly or implicitly a commentary on, or a critique of, preceding books. Much as we regret having affixed to ourselves the fatuous formula of a "great books" college (and exactly 100 of them, forsooth!), the irrefutable experience seems to be that these books are great, that they are inexhaustible in their depth and cludes, are the most characteristic feature of modern university organization, introduced into this country definiteness, in their responsiveness and self-sufficiency. significantly by Thomas Jefferson. They were devised, on the one hand, to take account of the individual talents (and what often weighs more, the supposed inabilities) of the students, and on the other, to make up for the loss It is, after all, by these criteria that the educated consensus has chosen them and guarded their survival. What makes the study of these books relevant to practical inquiry is that they are all occupied with versions of consensus concerning a universally enforceable educa- of the same root questions. Arguments have been made in this century claiming that these questions are radical misdirections of human effort, and that the tradition is tional plan. The St. John's program, on the contrary, is based on the assumption that certain fundamental studies are still universally accesssible, reliably exciting and formulable as a plan to which a whole faculty can commit THE ST. JOHN'S REVIEW in need of a respectful but merciless dismantling, but such critiques are, and mean to be, themselves within the tradi- 49 �tion. In short, these books are helpful only on the simple working assumption that human questions are so continuously transformed as to remain fundamentally the same now, then, and tor all time. If that is false, the study of these books-and indeed any book not written here and now-is a mere antiquarian amusement. I should add an observation essential to the enterprise: The acknowledgement that there are perennial questions is the very antithesis of the claim that such questions have no answer-a presumptious supposition which implies that one has seen deeply enough into the well of things to know that it has no bottom. One chief characteristic of these works is that they are original in both senses of the term: very much the author's own product and very much at the beginning and origin of an intellectual development. Such texts differ from text books by communicating the order and the difficulties of discovery rather than delivering prepared packets of knowledge. Hence, precisely by reason of their originality, they imply a certain arrangement of studies, or better, they obviate the principal organizational features of modern university studies, which is the department corresponding to a field of study. The department is the expression of a thoroughgoing intellectual prejudgement, namely the Baconian division of the intellectual world into parcels of ground, fields, areas, within which can occur that concentrated cultivation, that intensive specialization, and that well-defined research, which make possible the advancement oflearning and the accumulation of intellectual products. Without attempting here to sketch out the intellectual revolution which made such a division of labor possible and profitable, let me simply say that this college, as an undergraduate teaching institution, is willing to forego all its advances for the sake of radical reflection. For us, students "make an original contribution" when they go, for themselves, to the origin of things. We want them not so much to think something new, as to think anew, not so much to discover truths for the world as for themselves. These books, then, in their o~iginality, precede the fixing of the divisions of studies. In the language of hindsight, in them philosophy is not yet one of many equal specialties, poetry is still a source of wisdom, physics and theology are still continuous. Hence the reading of authors involves fewer assumptions than the study of fields and permits the more natural pursuit of those questions otherwise so frustratingly formulated as "interdisciplinary?' The order in which the books are read is by and large chronological. This observation of the given order again embodies a minimum of prejudgement. In addition it makes obvious sense for the student to have read what the author has read. As Hegel knew his Aristotle or Milton his Homer or Stravinsky his Bach, so, perhaps, ought the student. In certain, though by no means all, cases it is even indispensable to be so prepared. Contrary to appearance, this temporal order is not intended to have anything to do with the "history of ideas". 50 We have no interest at all in having students learn how different notions have succeeded each other. Indeed, in distinction from every school I know of, we have no interest in the past whatsoever (though a good many of us are privately avid readers of history). The fact that some of these books are written by authors who happen to be physically dead is perfectly peripheral. For insofar as the books really do form a tradition, their matter has entered into the present. It has done so in at least two ways, which correspond to the two old senses of the word tradition: It signifies a process of handing down but also of traducing- of preservation, but also of subversion. Hence the matterrofthe older books is always there, either as an absorbed and digested element of the development or as the forgotten cause and motive of an antithetical formulation. The attitude toward the books which the college tries to foster is one of respectful~ attention combined with vigorous independence. We demand such respect even for the small number of lesser or even shoddy books which we include not on their own account but for the influence they have had. This respectful listening and critical responsiveness are meant to be carried over into the communal exercise which seems to us most appropriate to the study of tradition. We call this institutional device the seminar and regard it as the central class of the college. It is a discussion group of no more than twenty students, which-meets twice a week throughout the four years of the program on a set text. It is emphatically not intended as a rap session or an encounter group, or as some exercise in group dynamics. In fact, there is no manipulation and no method which properly belong to the seminar; on the contrary, the rule is the great Heraclitan saying, "Listen not to me but to my speech." There is, however, a certain structure. There are two seminar leaders who alternate in asking an opening question. The object of having two is to prevent the unopposed profession of authoritative opinion and to encourage students to address each other rather than the teacher. Every member of the seminar is expected to contribute to the discussion and to do so responsibly, responsively, and civilly-all members use a formal mode of address. The seminar may work at explicating the text or attempt to determine the truth. These two and a half hours can be vapid and they can be vigorous, silly or sublime, rambling, sequential, hilarious, serious. In accordance with the ancient discovery that speculative loquacity flourishes after dark, the seminars are held at night. Juniors and seniors are given a ten-week break in the middle of the year to join the only elective class of the college, the preceptorial. It is a small study group on a book or a theme, offered by a tutor and chosen by the student. ARTS Our second approach to reflective inquiry is through the liberal arts. The liberal arts are traditionally, and, I think, rationally, divided into the arts concerning speech SUMMER 1984 �and the arts concerning learnable objects, that is, the medieval trivium (grammar, rhetoric, logic) and the quadrivium (four grades of mathematics and natural science). The arts of language and of mathematics are root skills. By adapting the way of these arts, the college hopes to overcome the vexed question concerning what fields of study the institution should offer and which of these a student should be allowed to avoid. As I understand this question, it has, from the pedagogical point of view, two aspects. First, a modern university offers numerous wonderfully ingenious and equipotent studies among which young students have scarcely any way of choosing but by mere and unmatured preference. It also harbors certain dubious offerings, advertised in the language ofpiffie-land, which the same student has hardly any way of exposing but by bitter and expensive experience. Hence the choice of goods and the avoidance of trash pose an equally baffling problem to young learners, one whose acuteness increases with their obliviousness of its existence. Second, the serious studies usually require of those committed to them steeply increasing sophistication and specialization, and it is not clear that such learning is, in the language of educational psychology, transferable; indeed it often seems that a high degree of early specialization depresses rather than raises both the students' willingness and ability to bring learning to bear widely. The arts, on the other hand, are eminently transferable, for although they are always wedded to a defmite matter- the grammar is, say, French grammar and the mathematics is, say, projective geometry-the skill and the matter together can be continuously elaborated and adapted to any use. What is more, they are eminently defensible as required subjects for their own sake, for they are by nature elementary, and that means that, aside from the boom of their general accessibility, they display an inviting combination of simplicity and depth. At least our students seem to be won by some such quality when they get absorbed, for instance, in the mysteries of the copula "is" and why a certain type of Greek sentence does without it, or again, when they recover the mental leap which leads from the naive to the formal meaning of the mathematical limit notion. Once more the use of the arts in the program serves to avoid prejudgements. For these arts are antecedent, both in time and in thought, to the debilitating split between the humanities and the sciences which dominates modern schools. The skills of the trivium and the quadrivium involve continuous and complementary human abilities: It is not only that the art of mathematics can be most humane and the art of language ought to be very precise, but that the elements of both are rooted in one and the same human power, the power of thought. Furthermore, the arts help us avoid the necessity for those "methods of analysis" courses with which schools attempt to reintroduce some sort on generality into their studies. We want to circumvent them because each such method embodies an enormous amount of intellectual prepara- THE ST. JOHN'S REVIEW tion which students are scarcely sophisticated enough to to discern. For example, the tremendous intellectual predeterminations involved in the application of quantitative methods to the social sciences can hardly become perspicuous to students unless they have thoroughly reflected on the nature of quantity and the process of quantification itself- one of the very intentions of our mathematical program which can, however, hardly be achieved without some detailed but reflective study of pure mathematics. In accordance with the twofold way of the arts, the program provides for two kinds of day classes called tutorials: a language tutorial and a mathematics tutorial. These are recitation classes, most of which meet four times a week, and they are devoted to various exercises, above all to translation and demonstration. The language tutorial uses translation as the chief learning device. The languages studied and used are Greek and French. An ancient language is useful to us precisely because it is "dead;' that is to day, completely fixed and literary. Greek in particular is chosen first, because it is, in illuminating contrast to English, a highly inflected language; next, because of its intimate relation to our seminar readings; again, because of its literary riches; and finally, because most of the faculty has quite shamelessly fallen in love with it. The choice of French is more arbitrary. German or Russian might do as well, although it is argued that French poetry, in its artfulness, best lends itself to rhetorical analysis. The work of the language tutorial almost always begins with some sort of translation exercise. The object of the tutorial is above all to reflect on the relation of language to thought, of the languages to each other, of correctness to persuasiveness, of logic to grammar, of form to meaning. It is secondly to support the seminar by a slower and more detailed reading of some of the central passages of seminar books, and last (though, by our own intention, least) it is to learn the language in question, for without some concrete medium the discussion would be mere hot air. Hence the tutorial always, and sometimes rather inefficiently, shifts back and forth between the necessary rote learning and the desired reflection, the more so since language, unlike mathematics, cannot be learned by advancing in a linear sequence from agreed beginning to desired conclusions; it has no clear given "elements:' The mathematics tutorial is apparently the pedagogically most successful part of the program, and, many of us think, the most gratifying to teach. First of all, it ought to be said that in the tutorials the injunction against the use of textbooks is of necessity somewhat relaxed. As it happens, the most appropriate beginning mathematics textbook is also a work of originality and subtlety: Euclid's Elements. All freshmen begin their mathematical studies with a consideration of its first definition: "A point is that which has no part;' and they end up, four years later, with the four-dimensional geometry of Einstein's special theory of relativity. 51 �On the way, they study mostly original texts. It may seem surprising that in so unquestionably progressive a study as mathematics and mathematical physics (the tutorial includes both, especially astronomy) the original sources are good teaching tools. But suppose one thinks of it in this way: Einstein, in the famous 1905 paper which sets out special relativity, explicitly presupposes a knowledge of Maxwell's work. Maxwell cannot be understood without Newton, who, in his own phrase, "stands on the shoulders" of Kepler and Galileo. Galileo advocates Copernicus' system. Copernicus revolutionizes the Ptolemaic cosmos. Ptolemy's theories cite Appolonius' Conics and Apollonius is inaccessible without the Elements of Euclid. These are, in reverse order, some of the very texts used in the tutorial. Seen in this light the so-called "genetic" approach makes immediate sense. And yet, regarded as textbooks, these works are often cumbersome and complicated. They are frequently not conducive to efficient learning and technical proficiency. But then, it is not our object to train productive or problem-solving mathematicians, though we acknowledge and want all the benefits usually attributed to mathematical studies: precision of thought, logically valid reasoning, the power of demonstration, and an appreciation of intellectual elegance. Once again, however, the chief aim is reflection on the nature of mathematics and the possibility of its application to nature. And for that the original texts are almost indespensible, providing only they are not approached in the spirit of the history of science, that is, as repositories of past and surpassed forms of thought. Instead, we look to them as setting out both enduring intellectual acquisitions and accounts of the revolution of intention and understanding which accompany their continual displacement and absorptionrarely refutation- by subsequent discoveries. In particular, we follow with fascinated care the development of mathematical structures from those humanly immediate objects of the natural intellect which engage the ancients to the sophisticated high-level abstractions of the constructive reason which preoccupy the moderns. This implied view-that the ancients and the moderns are at once separated and connected by a deep intellectual rupture whose thorough apprehension is crucial to the understanding of modernity-is perhaps the one substantial interpretative dogma built into the program. For three years a full fourth of the students' time goes into the laboratory. It is a most problematic, and yet an absolutely essential, part of the program. While the tutorial and the seminar take off from written texts, the laboratory is concerned with what its early modern proponents, eager to assimilate the direct study of nature to respectable learning, called the book of nature. But at the same time they also spoke of putting nature to the test of torture to extract her secrets. Contained in this figure of speech is the necessity for a laboratory, literally a workshop, in which strange tools are usedinstruments not of production but of contemplation, instruments of observation and measurement. Close and 52 careful study of the appearances was certainly practiced among the ancients, but the elaborately prepared and controlled kind of experience which marks the central device of the laboratory, namely the experiment, is peculiar to the moderns. That is why this class is a separate and problematic exercise in a program devoted to interpretive reading. Pedagogically, too, the laboratory has its special difficulties. The first function of the experiments is the determination of new truths of nature. In asking students to repeat experiments, albeit crucial ones, we run the danger of mounting a deliberately rickety reenactment with unrevealing results, or of getting slick reconfirmation of predetermined laws. Add to this the necessity, in more sophisticated experiments, of using the notorious '~lack box;' the instrument whose insides are a dark mystery to the user, and it will be obvious how hard it can be to engender and maintain thoughtful excitement in this class. Our aims are clear enough. We want to reflect on that enormously powerful activity called science which has arrogated to itself the name of knowledge simply; to think about the changes in meaning that the word "phenomenon" has undergone, from the ancient injunction to astronomy to "save the appearances" to Heisen- berg's uncertainty principle; to consider the term "hypothesis'~ for example, to understand what Newton means when he announces: "I make no hypotheses"; to understand how nature must be transformed to undergo mathematization; to think about time as the beat of the soul and the reading of a clock; to study force considered as acting at a distance and as a field; to understand energy in its continuities and discontinuities; to ask what life is; and so on and on. I might add that the problem of "scientific method;' much beloved of philosophers of science, seems, somehow to fade away before the brilliance of original natural inquiry. The actual laboratory sequence remains somewhat fluid even after thirty years of practice, mostly on account of the embarrassment of riches from which to choose. At present it begins in the freshman year with the observation and classification ofliving things and the atomic constitution of matter, that is, roughly, biology and chemistry. These subjects are taken up again in the senior year and pursued beyond the threshold of ordinary observation as molecular biology and quantum mechanics. In between there is a year of classical physics. Wherever possible the preparatory readings are original papers, from Aristotle to Monad, from Galileo to Schroedinger. In the sophomore year a music tutorial replaces the laboratory. Music is traditionally the coping stone of the liberal arts, the juncture of the theoretic with the fine arts and even with theology. Here mathematics becomes qualitative in the ratios which govern consonances; here grammar becomes passionate in the tone relations which constitute a musical rhetoric. The music tutorial is generally regarded as the most difficult class to teach, because, our fond dogma to the SUMMER 1984 �contrary, previous preparation and ta1ent are necessary to the tutor and make disturbing distinctions among the students. We do require all freshmen to sing together in the chorus and to learn some musical notation, but that is not quite adequate. The music class begins with the elements of music. The theory of proportions, which has been studied in the mathematics tutorial, is applied to the construction of the Western, diatonic scale, and rhythm, melody and harmony are taken up. Then musical texts are subjected to detailed analytic listening, partly in preparation for the seminar, which includes a number of musical works. One example is Bach's Matthew Passion. The seminar might respond to the fact that Bach was a learned theologian by asking how the arias of the musical passion comment on the Gospel text -an inquiry for which the music tutorial has provided the preparation. Finally, all members of the college are expected to attend one formal weekly lecture on any subject, which is given by a visitor or a tutor, and is followed by a (sometimes interminable) question period in which the mood ranges from puppy-dog aggression to deep cooperative probing. This exercise in listening and responding to connected discourse is quite important, especially for students who are so much called on to engage in conversation. It goes without saying that we have various special devices for examining students beyond their daily performance and for reporting to them our opinion of their work. The most important formal test is the senior essay, which is intended to be a work of reflection rather than research; these essays vary in quality from dispiriting to exhilarating. One last observation on the program as a whole: Because of the many factors that have to be juggled, the integration of the parts is in stretches so loose as to be hardly discernible. HapP.ily there are other occasions when it is satisfyingly ~patent, when the tutorials, laboratory and seminar immediately and essentially bear on each other. The details of the schedule of studies and their relations are set out in the catalogue of the college, a frequently revised document to whose authority we attach great importance. THE COMMUNITY OF LEARNING It remains to say something of the community of learning in which this program is realized, that is, the students, the faculty and, briefly, the administration. First, our students. We have always maintained that the program is intended for students of widely varying intellectual capacities, and that there is no distinctive St. John's student. Since our progress is stepwise and patient and almost all the work is elementary, there should be few parts that are technically beyond anyone's range. Indeed, a slow and naive student may contribute more searching questions than a quick and sophisticated one. ·We find that, except for occasional sad cases, self-selection is the best guarantee of aptitude; the desire to learn THE ST. JOHN'S REVIEW outweighs the question of talent. Our students, consequently should and do come from everywhere-as they end up doing practically anything. As it turns out, they do, in fact, perform so very well on the standard national tests (in which we, nonetheless, place little faith) as to make the college appear far more selective than we intend it to be. There is, moreover, good corroboration that the program is indeed universally accessible. It comes from our Graduate Institute in Liberal Education, a summer- version of the program intended in the main for school teachers. Our graduate students, who teach in large part in inner-city schools, whose academic training is usually neither very recent nor, often, very good, and who are preoccupied with urgent practical problems, take to the program with great gusto and gratifying success. The faculty, on the other hand, has undeniably over the course of time grown into a certain distinctiveness, which is largely the consequence of the one circumstance we have most difficulty in explaining to the academic world. Just as we expect the students to study the whole program, so we expect ourselves to teach it. Naturally, not everyone has done every part of the program, but it is an aim to be attained, though over decades. It means constant new learning, sitting in on each other's classes, phoning for help. It sometimes means being only hours ahead of the students. But I think, on the whole, it makes us better teachers, closer to the students' difficulties and more apt to find the most revealing way out. What characterizes the faculty is, therefore, a certain proud shamelessness about admitting ignorance and engaging in public learning. One way to describe this group might be to say that it is recalcitrantly unacademic: No departmental politics-we form, if you like, one large department. No imperial references to "my field" or "my century" or "my material'!.._ we have a common subject, the program. No pride of competence or rank- our single rank and title is tutor, that is to say, "guardian" of learning. In spite of royal battles over matters of principles and gently simmering personal animosities, the faculty engages in continuous common study and conversation. When I say "faculty" I include our administrators. Our deans are, according to the college policy, chosen from among the tutors, and the other administrators, including the president, have always (as much as they could) joined in the learning and the teaching-a circumstance of incalculable value to the college. I think that most of us would say that this happy collegiality is simply a reflection of the integrity of the program. This then is a sketch of the plan and the people that constitute St. John's College. Now might be the moment to ask why a community should feel entitled to devote itself to the kind of inquiry I have described. I think our communal answer- briefly formulable but not briefly defensible- might be that such activity is both the mark and the source of human excellence. And if we are told that that is all very well, but that there are more urgent and iinmediate tasks for a college, solid, realistic, 53 �practical aims, and if we are asked how we can, in good conscience, set them aside, we might answer with some counter-questions: Have any of those myriad accom- modations to the times into which schools have been driven made education one whit more immediate to life? Have the educators' urgencies in any way made the stu- dent a better judge of the right action? Is realism in education practical? Does it work? Ever? II. Problems and Questions Concerning the Program Of course, rhetorical questions do not adequately dispose of the many difficulties raised about the college by friendly and not-so-friendly observers, and most intensively, by the faculty and the students themselves. Let me briefly list what seem to me the chief topics of debate, and indicate some first answers. THE PLACE OF THE PROGRAM IN AMERICAN EDUCATION We are often asked, and have to ask ourselves, why St. John's College has not been more widely imitated, and of what use, beyond its own minuscule enterprise, it can be to American education if it is indeed inimitable. There have, in fact, been a number of programs modelled on ours, but by and large, the departmental organization of American schools is simply too rigid to accommodate the radical modifications demanded by this program, while the propitious conjunction of factors fession, especially law and medicine. By their own report, after an initial disorientation, apparently comparable to that of Adam and Eve after their ejection from paradise, they find their years at the college both professionally and personally helpful to life in the world- though "helpful" is too bland a word for the effects of the program. It would be more candid to report that some students say they feel crippled by the habit of reflection they have acquired, while others- far more- claim that the world belongs to them as, they think, it does not quite belong to their peers. THE OMISSION OF CERTAIN STUDIES One of the apparently inevitable questions at the orientation session which the Instruction Committee, the faculty group charged with the supervision of the program, has with the incoming freshmen is: Why do we study no Eastern books? The answer is threefold. First, four years barely suffice even to begin with our own Western tradition. Nothing worth doing could possibly happen in the time we might squeeze out. Second, it is by no means clear that the Eastern books can be fitted into a Western, academic, institutional framework without making a travesty of them-that they do not demand to be approached within their own living discipline. Third, we have reason to distrust available translations, because by an undiscriminating use of metaphysical terminology they seem so often to turn Eastern wisdom into a pale and unoriginal reflection of Western philosophy. In the case of Western texts we are alert to the fact that translations will tend toward the higher gibberish and necessary to a new founding is very rare. I think we we have the communal competence to counteract this should not yield to the implication that institutions that are good in themselves are not doing their social duty unless they are also exerting wide influence around them. Nonetheless, the college does have a wider role to play difficulty- not so with Eastern works. We have similar hesitations about Islamic texts. It is not from disrepect but from the exact opposite motive that we omit these traditions. in American education, namely, as one distinctive point of reference: a self-confident but receptive center of the very notion of "encountering other cultures;' especially debate, an established repository of experience and a will- as an undergraduate enterprise. Our deeper difficulty The fact is that we have the greatest misgivings about ing source of well-tested working devices for the restora- is with the concept of culture itself, which can, notor- tion of the liberal arts. iously, include anything from menus to metaphysics. The The imputation of elitism is sometimes made in this context, but we must simply reject it. The program is intended for all literate human beings and most particularly for citizens of a republic-our style of learning is eminently participatory, and questions of political philosophy play a large role in the program. If smallness and intimacy is a sin, one might as well accuse the family of elitism. As for the expense of such an education, if the true costs of public, large-scale, higher education were ever honestly reckoned, this college, which has, as it were, only one single large department and no need for fancy hardware, might look good. Finally there is the problem of vocationalism, of preparation for careers. Is this kind of education nothing but a respectable luxury on the educational scene? In fact, way over half our students go on to graduate and professional schools and they enter every conceivable pro- 54 more immediate pedagogical problem, however, concerns the idea of "encounter" or "exposure." Surely it is not safe to encounter strange ways when one is not yet solidly grounded in one's own, nor is it sound to approach alien traditions when one cannot afford to pursue them in depth and detail. The other major omission of the program which is often questioned is that of history. Even observers who accept the fact that we do not study any of a number of other worthwhile fields wonder how we can read the texts without a "historical background." Our answer, far too abruptly stated, would be, first, that such capsule history conveys very little except a prejudgement, and second, more importantly, that the works are intended by their authors to be directly accessible and selfsufficient, and that this claim must be, at least to begin with, respected. SUMMER 1984 �STUDY MODES OF THE PROGRAM Our students seem to have little difficulty in accepting an all-required program which they have, after all, chosen, which has a fairly explicit rationale, and which has the adherence of their teachers. Indeed, they turn out to be the most orthodox defenders of the program against the inroads of elective elements. What they do complain about is the lack of choice in tutors, since they are assigned to classes and discouraged from asking for transfers. It is a necessary hypothesis of the college community that all tutors are about equal in their ability to guide classes which do not, supposedly, depend so much on the teacher as on the text and the students. Of course, the hypothesis is not quite true; our classes depend a great deal on teachers, and also all the tutors are not equally competent and exciting; a few are not even very good teachers. This is one of the perennial problems of a college whose faculty thinks of itself as primarily a teaching faculty. The best that can be said is that we do agonize over the situation. On our part, we worry about the amount of spoon feeding and handholding our students absorb and wonder whether it strengthens them or unfits them for making choices and working independently. We are never quite sure what we ought to do in this respect. Our students, again, tend to suspect us- sometimes with irritation and sometimes with a kind of intellectual frisson- of propagating some esoteric dogma through the classes. Nothing can resolve these suspicions except constant readiness on the part of the faculty to make explicit and to discuss the assumptions behind our studies. An academic critic might question the complete absence of scholarship and reasearch. Truth to tell, the students do not miss them, and they do get the benefit of their teacher's fuller attention. Perhaps there is some loss in the absence of ongoing intellectual productivity (though many of us do write quite a bit), but we comfort ourselves with the thought that there is something very timely indeed ab6ut our ambition to recollect and revivify our intellectual inheritance and our reluctance to join in the further accumulation oflargely unabsorbed rational artifacts. Finally, the scantiness of our contemporary readings is often criticized. I think that, like everybody else, we are simply embarrassed by the fragmented enormity of the material. We would excuse ourselves from fully resolving this difficulty by pointing out that the appreciation and critique of modernity, which is indeed one of our central preoccupations, is best initiated with the aid of earlier, more fundamental texts. INSTITUTIONAL DIFFICULTIES Pressure is the chief difficulty in realizing the pro- THE ST. JOHN'S REVIEW gram institutionally: the pressure of doing difficult daily preparation, the frustration of racing through extensive seminar assignments, the weariness of continuous involvement in that contradiction of terms, the scheduled conversation. We used to call the week between semesters "Dead Week!' Tutors and students alike felt like zombies. By way of relief we have been slowly cutting down the program, shortening the readings and giving ourselves some long weekends. But oddly enough, the final fact of the matter seems to be that, endless complaints notwithstanding, people like it this way. The one aspect of this problem that observers most often notice is the relentless, strenuous intellectuality of the college. Again there is some relief in the art studio, the drama groups and in amateur music. Also students have the choice of being at the Western campus, which is said to be somewhat more relaxed. But the condition itself is not curable, since it is the consequence of a pro- gram that has no intention of educating "the whole person" (an enterprise which is part impertinence, part im- possiblity), but addresses itself mainly to what is selfaware, rational and communicable, in sum, to what is traditionally called free in human beings. The faculty's contribution must be a great effort to ensure that it is not a dry and brittle but a passionate and absorbing intellectuality that dominates the community. "REAL LIFE" Our students persistently bring to us a perplexity which we share, though more occasionally and less acutely. Who is there who spends his life with objects of thought and does not sometimes feel a panic of fright that reality is not being reached, that life is going on, but elsewhere? Young students are especially vulnerable to such suspicions, because they are the most afflicted with idealism, a propensity for pitching ideas too high for action and too shallow for truth. But the sporadic fear that thought and life are forever disjoined -which has nothing to do with such mundane worries as being prepared to make a living- is an endemic anxiety of any serious community of learning and particularly of St. John's College. Now the ultimate relation of thought to things and theory to action is precisely one of those perennial questions of the inquiring tradition with which we are incessantly preoccupied. Hence all we the faculty can immediately do is to urge melancholic students to engage in lots of sports (we have a lively and inclusive intramural program) and to refrain as much as possible from being mere intellectuals- I mean, people who stake out arrid claims in a ghostly, self-sufficient environment of abstractions. Probably the best we can do is ourselves to show fairly unfailing trust, not to say faith, that thinking can reach the world and that learning is indeed possible. 55 �OccASIONAL DiscouRsEs Summer 1984 Sermon Preached at St. Anne's Church, Annapolis ]. Winfree Smith W hen the latest edition of Tieline reached me in Santa Paula, California, the first thing that met my eyes was an announcement that the St. John~ Program had been adopted by St. Anne's Church School. That, I thought, is taking too far the intimate relationship between St. John's College and St. Anne's Church which we are this day celebrating. Then, of course, a careful reading of Tieline showed that the St. John's Program mentioned therein was a program developed for pre-school children at St. John's Cathedral in Albuquerque, New Mexico, and, being for pre-school children, differed in some particulars from the St.John's College program. There certainly has been an intimate relationship between St.John's College and St. Anne's Church, so much so that Tench Tilghman in his recently published Early History of St. John~ College in Annapolis could say that from its earliest infancy St. John's College was haunted by Episcopal clergymen. During the first century of its existence under charter as St. John's at least five rectors of St. Anne's were also principals or vice-principals of the college. Those were the titles given by the charter to those who nowadays would be called presidents or vicepresidents. The Reverend Ralph Higginbotham, who had taught in the King William School, was the first principal or president of the college to be also rector of St. Anne's, having been elected rector in 1785, the year after the college was chartered. That the intimate relationship was not always a happy one is shown by the fact that Higginbotham's reputation suffered because it was thought by some in the St. Anne's congregation that he gave too For over four decades, the Reverend St. John's College, Annapolis. 56 J. Winfree Smith has been a tutor at much attention to the college and not enough to the church. There were also presidents of St. John's who were Episcopal priests but not rectors of St. Anne's. The most noteworthy of these was the Reverend Hector Humphrey who was president of St. John's for 26 years just prior to the Civil War. He is the only one of all these clergymen, whether rectors or not, to whom there is a memorial in this building, the second window along the south aisle starting from the chancel end. In 1941, when I came to Annapolis, the St. John's baccalaureate service was held in St. Anne's Church, as it had been over the years and decades. It has, however, been more than a hundred years since a rector of St. Anne's has been president of St. John's and more than forty years since the baccalaureate service was held in this building. And so one begins to wonder whether the intimate relationship still exists, as far as any institutional offices or formalities are concerned. But on this occasion it might be well for us to think rather about a deeper relationship that might exist between what St.John's stands for and what the Episcopal Church stands for. There is, as you may know, a motto of the Virginia seminary: "Seek the truth, come whence it may, cost what it will." This is a good motto for St. John's, but it is a bad motto for the seminary or for the church, and I know at least one seminary Professor who agrees. It is a good motto for St. John's because what Sf' John's stands for is the search for the truth, and there is no presupposition as to the source of the truth or as to what the truth might be if it were to be discovered. St. John's as such is not hostile to Christianity or even indifferent to it. But, unlike the Roman Catholic college where I now am, it has no religious commitment. The church, on the other hand, is not in the position of merely SUMMER 1984 �seeking the truth nor is there for the church any question as to the source of those truths which are most im- portant for human beings to know. The church rests on the assumption that God has revealed the most important truths for human beings to know and that the source from which we receive them is the Holy Scriptures of the Old and New Testaments. In spite of this assumption that there is divinely revealed truth and that it is to be found in the Holy Scrip- lead them to deny the truth of the articles that give them difficulty. We have recently read reports of a poll taken among bishops of the Church of England that disclosed that a majority of them do not believe that Jesus is God or that he was raised from the dead or that he was born of a virgin. Now the reports did not give any account of the reasons why these bishops have made these denials, i.e., what they have found so difficult as to be impossible in the articles having to do with the incarnation, the tures, there is considerable confusion at the present time resurrection, and the virgin birth. These three articles as to what the Episcopal Church stands for. My claim during the whole of my long ministry has been that the Book of Common Prayer is the guide to what the Episcopal church stands for and that the Nicene creed do not all stand or fall together. One might well believe that Jesus was truly God and completely human and believe that even now He is truly God with only a human soul without believing that His human body was raised from the dead and without believing that He was born of a human mother without a human father. I happen, as Archbishop William Temple did, to believe in all three articles, but I recognize that some Episcopalians might in one of these see a difficulty that they would not see in the others. I would claim, however, that what is definitive of a Christian is the acknowledgement that Jesus Christ, while being completely human, is God, recited as part of our act of Eucharistic worship contains those revealed truths in which Episcopalians, indeed in common with other Christians, put their trust. This claim has been challenged by several Episcopal priests on the basis of a little change in the English text of the Nicene creed as it apprears in the Prayer Book. The little change is the change from "I" to "We;' from "I believe" to 'We believe" at the beginning of the creed. The commission that made this change did so for no other reason than that they wanted the English version to be an exact translation of the original fourth century Greek version of the creed. But these priests understand whatever one may believe about the resurrection or the up what they consider the burden of the faith. Accord- virgin birth. Does the New Testament say that Jesus is God? Yes, the first verses of the Gospel ofJohn say that Jesus, who is there called the Word, not only was with God but was God in the beginning and that through him creatures ing to them, when we say "we believe;' we don't mean came into being. Do those verses say that Jesus is of one that I believe everything that we believe. When we say "we believe" we mean rather that the Episcopal Church believes all those things that are in the creed while I may believe only in God as creatorwithout believing anything about Jesus or the Holy Spirit and some other Episcopalian may believe something about Jesus without believing that Jesus is God, of one being with the Father, or perhaps even without believing that God exists. If this is the right way to understand the change from "I" to "we;' should we not, when the Prayer Book is next revised, substitute for "we" the words "The Episcopal Church'' so being with the Father? No. Does the New Testament say that anywhere explicitly? Nowhere explicitly. Yet if the Gospel of John has Jesus telling the truth when he says in that Gospel, "All that the Father has is mine;' do we not have to conclude that, ifJesus has all that the Father has, that all must include the very being of the Father? I do not know what the nay-saying English bishops would reply. Perhaps they would raise questions about the authority of the Gospel of John. A while ago I said that the church rests on the assumption that Holy Scripture is the source of divinely revealed truth. That does that each of us could say out loud "The Episcopal Church not necessarily mean that every single sentence in Scrip- believes" but where necessary and sotto voce "I don't" or "God knows what I believe"? Is it not absurd to make maybe is not so absurd. The articles of the creed are not ture is true. It may be that the pure gold of the word of God in Scripture is mingled with the dross of the human authors of Scripture. But how do we separate the gold from the dross? Sometimes it seems that all the skill, a commendable human skill, of the Biblical critics is needed to make that separation, a skill which one can- easy to accept. Different articles present different dif- not expect to average Christian to have. Also sometimes that the shift from "I" to ''We" means that we can divvy such a separation between the faith of the Episcopal Church and the faith of Episcopalians? But behind this absurdity there is something that ficulties. Even Thomas Aquinas, who, one might sup- it seems that the presuppositions of the Biblical critics pose, would find it rather easy to accept the articles of are themselves questionable. the creed, on the contrary maintains that the articles are There is a rather widespread modern dogma that is the source of one difficulty that people in the modern age have with the resurrection and the virgin birth. That to be distinguished precisely according to the distinct difficulties they present. Whatever difficulties Thomas Aquinas may have seen, there are certain difficulties which modern Episcopalians, including bishops and priests, as well as laymen, encounter. The difficulties do not lead them to say "Lord, I believe. Help thou my unbelief." Rather they THE ST JOHN'S REVIEW is the dogma that modern science has made it impossible for modern man to believe in miracles, that modern science has shown that miracles are not possible. This dogma lies behind all the talk about demythologizing Scripture. Modern science, of course, has not shown what 57 �it is alleged to have shown. To show that miracles are impossible one would have to prove the non-existence of an omnipotent God. No one, as far as I know, has ever done that. For if God is omnipotent, everything that happens is within His power, and though things may for the most part happen in the way science or ordinary experience says, they may by the will of the omnipotent God happen differently. If the difficulty is that we cannot believe anything unless it is evident to our senses or evident of itself to our intellect or made evident to our intellect through reasoning, then, to be sure, we cannot believe the articles of the creed, though we may not be in a position to deny them either. But here we touch upon something fundamental. For the very reason that we say that it is faith that grasps the truth of what is divinely revealed is that such truth is not evident to the senses or the intellect. It is not evident that there is a God. It is not evident that God is the omnipotent creator of heaven and earth. If we think we can believe only what is evident or can be evident to our senses or intellect or that faith is not a way of grasping the truth, then we should give up Christianity altogether. I maintain that the articles of the Nicene creed as a whole, with all the difficulties they present, lay a claim upon every Episcopalian. Surely they need the whole context of Christian thought and life if they are to have fullness of meaning. But these articles represent a fundamental part of what the Episcopal Church stands for. Does the truth revealed by God exclude searching for the truth? No. It provides a rich field for such a search. The human intellect has much to do in exploring the meaning of what is revealed, in tracing its presuppositions and consequences for Christian thinking and doing, and so in discovering truths that are involved in the explicitly revealed truths. It also has much to do in seeking truths not revealed in Scripture and the ways they may be related to those that are. St. John's College may be instructive for Christians as regards the discipline of thought necessary for any search and hence for this search that presupposes revelation. There is also another way in which St. John's might be an example both for 58 theologians and for inquiring Christians generally. Among present day theologians there is often the prejudice thatthe theological thought of the past is of merely historical interest, that the theology of the Fourth century fathers or of the Medieval theologians or of the reformers or of the Anglican divines like Richard Hooker or Lancelot Andrewes is old-time stuff. It is a mere prejudice that in the age-old mainstream of Christian theology there are no or few permanent insights into Biblical revelation, that in the words of a ridiculous hymn "we must keep abreast of truth;' that in theology the new supersedes the old (as it seems to have done in modern physics, not in theology), that in the present day the theologian must devise a theology compatible with what is alleged to be the thought of the present day. Liberation theology, to take one example, is based on the premise that it is only on the foundation of the teaching of Karl Marx that justice for the poor and the oppressed can be achieved, and so that theology, which rightly seeks justice for the poor or the oppressed, identifies God with the historical process as understood by Karl Marx and his twentieth-century followers, an identification that would be rejected by Marx and is to say the least doubtfully Christian. "Seek the truth, come whence it may?' A good motto for St. John's College. St. John's is open to the possibility of new truth hitherto unknown and wherever it may come from. But, as everyone knows, St. John's people read old books. They read them not because they are old, not in order to find out what this or that person or people thought in this or that past age, but because those who thought well in the past raised questions that are relevant in all times and gave answers worthy of consideration at all times. It may be well for theologians and inquiring Christians of the present day to forget about hopping on contemporary intellectual or philosophical bandwagons and seek to recover the thought of the great theologians of the past because of its perennial relevance. This thought, as all Christian thought must, centers in the question "what think ye of Christ?" and in the answer that He is both the truth and the way to the truth that He is. SUMMER 1984 �The Golden Ages of St. John's* Eva Brann F riends of the college, Fellow Students and Fellow Tutors: The theme tonight is "Liberty and Liberal Education:' but the occasion is the two-hundredth anniversary of the founding of our college. Late in 1784 a bill, no. 37, was introduced into the Maryland Senate, entitled "An act for founding a college on the Western Shore of this State and constituting the same, together with Washington College on the Eastern Shore, into a university by the name of the University of Maryland:' The "college on the Western Shore" was to become St. John's. (The fascinating tale of its naming has been convincingly reconstructed by our former librarian, Charlotte Fletcher.) So St. John's was first conceived as one of the two colleges of a state university. We have the honor of having Professor Fallaw here tonight to represent our intended sister school. I will spare you the protracted, fitful and even tumultuous history of St. John's metamorphosis into a private college. The legacy of its public origin is the Charter of 1784 which remains in essence our charter: It proclaims that "institutions for the liberal education of youth in the principles of virtue, knowledge and useful literature are of the highest benefit to society, in order to train up and perpetuate a succession of able and honest men for discharging the various offices and duties oflife both civil and religious with usefulness and reputation ... ?' The charter expresses the prevailing view in the early republic, propagated in numerous essays, that liberal education is the necessary support of a republic, *Eva Brann delivered this talk as part of a symposium on "Liberty and Liberal Education" held at St. John's College, Annapolis (September 20, 1984), for the Two-Hundredth Anniversary Colloquium. THE ST. JOHN'S REVIEW that tyranny and ignorance, liberty and knowledge are to be equated. In this spirit, a frenzy of college founding followed the Revolution; nineteen colleges were established between 1780 and 1799, among whom St. John's was one of the earliest, being chartered in the very first year "of the present favorable occasion of peace and prosperity;' in the words of the charter. The legislature's expectation for public usefulness were amply fulfilled. Between the first graduation in 1793 and 1806 (when its troubles with the state became acute), there came out of St. John's four future governors, seven United States senators, five representatives, judges galore and one governor of Liberia. That time was later termed the "Golden Age:' So also is an early Golden Age attributed to the "New Program;' our present program, on the principle that the time is always goldener on the other side of this generation. Actually, it seems to me, the whole near half-century of the New Program, constituting almost a quarter of the college's history, is a second Golden Age, though it has a distinction different from that of the first founding. Let me therefore propose a question to you which has a certain charm for me: Is this present college of ours an old school or a new school? To begin with I want to entertain you- I hope you may be entertained- with several circumstances which induce this question, some more wonderful than significant, but some significant as well as wonderful. For example, the first grammar master was called Peter McGrath; who knows but that our Hugh McGrath is his reincarnation? Similarly there was a friendly but unofficial relation between St.John's and St. Anne's Church in the person ofthe Reverend Ralph Higginbotham, the last master of the King William School and rector of St. Anne's, who was one of the stalwarts of the first founding. Now we have our Winfree Smith. What is remarkable about this relation is that it is scrupulously 59 �unofficial (though there have been lapses between the first and second founding). The college charter stood early in a developing tradition of religious liberty which prohibited religious tests for students and forbade that they be urged to attend any particular religious service. St. John's went even further: It was the first school, I believe, to have a principal who was not a clergyman, ] ohn McDowell, St. ] ohn's first president (though three clergymen, a Roman Catholic, an Episcopalian, and a Presbyterian had taken a major part in its organization). Could this same spirit of religious liberty, a spirit whose merit it is that it manages not to be anti-clerical, not to be attributed to the present college? To descend from the spirit to sticks and stones, there is McDowell Hall, a half-finished ruin in 1784, which became the college's first building, containing class rooms, the library in the octagonal room under the cupola, and the dormitory. Each student was furnished with a chamber pot under his bed, a service which has been dicontinued. McDowell burned down in 1909 but was faithfully restored. Do we inhabit an old or a new building? have been played out all the perenially absorbing institutional issues of American liberty: the rivalries of local with centralized foundations, ofwell-offwith poor man's schools, of public with private establishments, of religious with secular education. It matters even if we, tutors and students, have more urgent things to do than to absorb the history of this little local phenomenon. I would have to be an Edmund Burke to say well and clearly why the antiquity of the college matters to the cause of liberty, but I will try to say it briefly: First, in its phoenix-like propensity for reprise and revival the college is an offshoot and an index of American liberty, which seems to me quintessentially characterized by that second chance, that new departure, which does not kick its springboard under but rather preserves and absorbes its ground. And second, through its continuity, through the simple fact that it was there with its liberal tradition, the college could offer a home to a program which made a conscious and deep connection between liberty and liberal education. It is the making of that connection in the New Program which is the new wine, tart and heady, in the old bottle of the classical college. Let me conclude by say- But, of course, the question becomes really fascinating ing, quite superficially, what I conceive that connection with respect to studies. In those early days the college proper (there was a preparatory department attached) was called "the philosophy school:' The curriculum was prescribed and unified. The students read original texts and studied mathematics as well as '~natural philosophy;' that is, science. The languages were Greek and optional to be. The idea that political liberty and education go hand in hand was an article of faith with the educational writers of the early republic, a matter of preachment rather than inquiry. There was, however, much debate about the kind of education the republic required: Should it be primarily utilitarian training or liberal education, at least for youths destined for leadership? (Since Aristotle's book on educa- French. For example, the novitiates, or freshmen, read Plato and studied Euclid and the juniors read Aristotle and studied fluxions, that is, calculus. While we marvel at these detailed similarities to the present program, we must, however, remember that at that time these studies were but a version of the normal classical American college curriculum, with account taken of the science of a hundred post-Newtonian years. In histories of education our New Program is sometimes described as reviving the classical college curriculum. But granting- even revel- tion, "liberal" in this context has properly meant "nonvocational.") But even in this discussion it was repeated to weariness that, to quote our character, "institutions ling in- the apparent parallelism, is it really such a understood that liberal education somehow made for in- revival? Let me try an answer: the present St. ] ohn's is, to coin a phrase, new wine in old bottles, and that has some dividual enlightenment. For example, the Marylander Samuel Knox wrote in an essay (which won a prize offered by the American Philosophical Society in 1799) that "the one great object of education should be to inculcate independence of mind and consequently an aversion to the embracing of any species of knowledge, moral, physical, bearing on the theme of liberty and liberal education. First, the antiquity of the bottle matters. It matters that the physical place remains recognizably the same, that an alumnus of the first graduating class of 1796 could nostalgically poetize the liberty tree: And many a frolic feat beneath thy shade Far distant days and other suns have seen. (Dr. Shaw) It matters that this tiny, tough college has sprung back from two closings and several nadirs of mediocrity and that it has throughout the centuries attracted the oddly intense sentiment-accompanied, to be sure, until re- cently by rather more subdued financial solicitude-of its alumni. It matters that it is a microcosm in which 60 of liberal education are of the highest benefit to society?' My point is: In the large enthusiasm of the founding such fine-grain question as just how the liberality of education was to underwrite the liberty of the republic fell through the cracks of the argument. To be sure, it was or religious, without examinat~on and consequent conviction." (This same Samuel Knox, incidentally, nearly did us in. Belonging to what might be called the] effersonian faction in education, he prefaced his essay with an address to the Maryland legislature urging them to support local academies, that is, secondary education in the counties, rather than a college for the wealthy in the state capital. This advice was what it had long been looking for: It withdrew financial support and the college fell into its first decline.) But how one might implant liberty in a mind was as dark then as "teaching students to think for themselves" is now. It was a time not for theory but SUMMER 1984 �for turning out competent citizen-rulers, and that is just what the college did in its first Golden Age. In its second Golden Age it was right and timely for the college to ask the perennial question "what is the relation of liberty to learning?" and to make the ground of the inquiry the hypothesis that the connection may be found in the soul of the learner. Its doing so was timely because thus the college acknowledged that the easy and immediate relation of those early days between liberal learning and republican statesmanship had long been ruptured. And it was wise because thus the college brought forward the oldest and the newest, the most persistent and the most urgent, of all political questions: What is the relation of thought to action? So the hypothesis which discerning critics who charge the college under the New Program with being an "ivory tower" would have to refute are these: That we do live in a country in which there is liberty and that liberty is both exercised and preserved by true action, namely, free action. That such action is by its very nature preceded by thought, from which it follows that human beings, the young especially, ought to have a period of reflective learning as a prelude to both private and public action. That this pedagogical prelude should take the form of liberal, that is to say, non-vocational, education, THE ST. JOHN'S REVIEW not only because such learning is a deep need and a perennial possibility of the human soul, but even more because the theory that is meant to precede action cannot be pursued otherwise than freely, that is to say, spontaneously. The St. John's Program, then, is nothing but a coherent set of occasions for encouraging liberal learning. The question of real interest, just how it is specifically designed to induce liberty of soul, I leave, as is fitting, to one of the most characteristic of these occasions, the question period. BIBLIOGRAPHY Charlotte Fletcher, "1784: the Year St. John's College Was Named", Maryland Histon'cal Magazine, Vol. 74, No. 2, June 1979. Richard Hofstadter, Academic Freedom in the Age of the College, (New York 1955). David Ridgely, Annals of Annapolis, 1649-1812 (Baltimore 1841), pp. 237-244. Essays on Education in the Early Republic, ed. Frederick Rudolph (Cambridge 1965). Bernard C. Steiner, History of Education in Maryland (Washington 1894). J. Winfree Smith, A Search for the Liberal Arts College, (St.John's College Press 1983). Tench Francis Tilghman, The Early History of St. John's College in Annapolis, (St. John's College Press 1984). 61 �William Smith: Godfather and First President of St. John's College* Arthur Pierce Middleton 0 n Wednesday, November 11, 1789, an event occurred in Annapolis which the college's historian, Tench Tilghman, has described as the day that St. John's College officially began its academic career. Members of the General Assembly, the Chancellor, judges of the General Court, gentlemen of the bar, and the worshipful corporation of the city, followed by the students and a "numerous and respectable concourse of people;' went in procession from the State House, through North Street, to what is now called College Avenue, and then to Bladen's Folly, which had been converted into a suitable building to house St. John's College. There-presumably in the Great Hall- Dr. William Smith, who had been named the day before president pro tern of the College, preached what the Maryland Gazette described as "an elegant sermon;' and the Rector of St. Anne's Parish and former Master of King William's School, Ralph Higginbotham, gave an oration on the advantages of a classical education. Why William Smith was an excellent choice- indeed the obvious one- for both president pro tern of the infant college and for preacher on this auspicious occasion is what I am here to explain. And I may add that it is strange that such an eminent figure in the intellectual circles of eighteenth-century America needs any introduction at all. But the sad fact is that he is not as well known today as he deserves to be- or as he was to his contemporaries. A Colonial historian, Canon Middleton is a former Director of Research for Colonial Williamsburg, and former Research Associate and lecturer at the Institute of Early American History at the College of William and Mary. This discourse was delivered in the "'lCa and History" Series, King William Room, The Library, November 6, 1984. *An address given in the "Tea and History" Series, King William Room, the Library, November 6, 1984. 62 Born in Aberdeenshire, Scotland, in 172 7, William Smith was the son of a small landholder and the grandson of a physician and astronomer. His sister married an officer of the Royal Navy who later acquired fame as an admiral who defeated a Dutch fleet in 1797 and was elevated to the peerage as Viscount Duncan of Camperdown. One of his brothers settled in Philadelphia, practiced law, and eventually became a judge of the highest court in Pennsylvania. William Smith was educated at King's College, Aberdeen, just at the beginning of the great Scottish renaissance of the eighteenth century. After serving as a schoolmaster for a time, he came to New York in 1751 as a private tutor to the sons of a wealthy gentleman on Long Island. While there he published poetry in the New York and Pennsylvania newspapers, a letter in defense of freedom of the press, and a pamphlet on education urging the creation of a college in New York City. In 1753 he published his magnum opus, a pamphlet, (of 86 pages) entitled A General Idea of the College of Mirania, with a Sketch of the Method of Teaching Science and Religion. Intended for the proposed college in New York, it set forth Smith's concept of the curriculum and methods of teaching appropriate to a liberal arts college. And it was a real breakthrough for the twenty-six year old scholar, for, as we shall see, it fell into the hands of Benjamin Franklin and led to Smith's appointment as head of the Academy of Philadelphia, which was about to be made into a college. Smith was a strong believer in a classical education, but, in the characteristic vein of the Age of Reason, he proposed rejecting some things commonly taught at colleges and adding others. Inspired by a quotation from Archbishop John Tillotson (1630-94 ), he held that "the knowledge of what tends neither directly nor indirectly to make better men and better citizens, is but a knowledge SUMMER 1984 �of Trifles: it is not learning, but a specious and ingenious sort ofidlenessc' Consequently, Smith rejected the "Rubbish" of the vast tomes of ancient Rabbis, Schoolmen, and modern Metaphysicians, and also "the polemic writers about Grace, Predestination, moral Agency, the Trinity, Ec Ec;' and added that "The years of Methusalem would be far too short to attain any Proficiency in all the Disputes and Researches of this kind, which have so long puzzled the learned world, and are still as much undecided as at first. Almighty God seems to have set the knowledge of many Things beyond our present Ken, on purpose to confound our Pride." Instead, Smith recommended "rejecting Things superfluous and hypothetical" and urged that we "mount directly up to fundamental Principles, and endeavour to ascertain the Relations we stand in to God and universal Intelligence, that we may sustain, with dignity, the Rank assign'd us among intellectual Natures, and move in Concert, with the rest of Creation, in accomplishing the great End of all thingsc' Such a distinction was a little daring for a college erected in a colony in 1753, where the natural tendency was to avoid anything novel and to cleave, instead, to the accepted ways of the Mother Country. Smith made another distinction that was, perhaps, even more daring, by dividing the whole body of prospective students into two categories: those who had an aptitude for the learned professions, and all the rest- including those whose aptitude inclined to the mechanic arts. Different training, he thought, should be provided for the two groups. The classic languages, for example, would be of use to the former, but a waste of time for the latter. The book had no immediate results. King's College, which opened in New York six months after the book appeared, was, as Smith ruefully observed, "on a plan somewhat different:' But the copy of the College of Mirania that he sent to Franklin did produce results, and Smith was invited to be the head of the Philadelphia Academy. Before taking up his post, however, he returned to England where he was ordained a priest of the Church, and where he conducted a highly successful fund drive for the Academy of Philadelphia. Upon his return in 1754, he set about to transform the school into a college, and began his long and distinguished career as its provost. During the next quarter of a century, William Smith became a fixture in the intellectual life of the City of Brotherly Love, and one of the chief promoters of the new liberal cultural movement in the fields of belleslettres, art, music, and drama that developed there in the second half of the eighteenth century. His students at the college formed a nucleus of a group that included Francis Hopkinson (musician, composer, poet, and later a Signer of the Declaration of Independence and designer of the American flag); Thomas Godfrey, Jr. (poet, playwright, and author of the "Prince of Parthia" c. 1758-59), and Benjamin West (whose aptitude Smith discovered, and who studied art in Italy in 1760, and became the court portrait painter to George III and THE ST. JOHN'S REVIEW ultimately president of the Royal Academy). In the realm of law and politics, one of Smith's students who later made good was William Paca, lawyer, Signer of the Declaration of Independence, governor of Maryland, and a Federal judge. One of the ways in which Smith sought out and encouraged literary ability was by founding a magazine in 1757 which, though short-lived, proved to be a vehicle for many rising young men of talent. Culturally, it was the most influential periodical in colonial America-and was entitled The American Magazine, or Monthy Chronicle for the British Colonies. As Smith's biographer, Alfred Gegenheimer, has said, the almost simultaneous production by three proteges of Smith of one of the earliest American musical compositions, the first American drama to be professionally performed, and the first American painting of permanent worth is a phenomenon-and William Smith was the catalyst of this outburst of musical, dramatic, and artistic talent. Smith's fame spread far and wide, eventually reaching his fellow countrymen in Great Britain. While he was there, raising money for the college in 1759, he received the degree of Doctor of Divinity from Aberdeen, Oxford, and Dublin universities-an uncommon distinction for a colonial. Liberal though he was in cultural and intellectual matters, William Smith was somewhat conservative in matters political. Almost as soon as he arrived in Philadelphia, he began to participate in public affairs, writing pamphlets, publishing letters, and preaching sermons. Though sharing many cultural and educational ideas with Franklin, Smith soon quarreled with him on political grounds. Franklin belonged to the antiproprietary or country party, whereas Smith identified himself with the proprietary party and frequently castigated the Quakers, who dominated the legislature, for refusing to appropriate funds to defend the frontier settlements against Indian attacks. On one occasionin 1758-he was arrested by the Assembly, convicted of libel, denied the right of habeas corpus, and sent to prison. Supported by the trustees of the college and by the proprietary governor, Smith taught his classes in moral philosophy through the prison bars. Released by the courts, he went to England and appealed his case. It took a long time and a great deal of money, but eventually the King-in-Council sustained his appeal and directed the governor to declare His Majesty's "High Displeasure" at the Assembly's unwarranted disregard of habeas corpus. Smith was completely vindicated and British justice triumphed. As the controversies that led to the Revolution unfolded, Smith readily sympathized with the grievances that the colonists expressed after the Stamp Act debacle, but he was very slow, indeed, to accept the idea of independence, holding to the increasingly forlorn hope that sooner or later the British Government would make amends and grant sufficient autonomy to satisfy the Americans and to reconcile them to a continuance within 63 �the British Empire. But such was not to be, and his reluctance to embrace the concept of seceding from the Empire until after July 4, 1776, got him into trouble with the patriot party. On January 6, 1776, he was called before the Philadelphia Council of Safety charged with speaking disrespectfully of the Continential Congress. There being no evidence, the charge was dropped. Curiously enough, the next month Congress invited him to give an oration commemorating General Montgomery and the men who had fallen with him in his unsuccessful attack on Quebec. Smith also defended the colonists' action at Lexington and Concord as justifiable selfpreservation. And on December 8, 1778, Smith preached in Christ Church, Philadelphia, to a Masonic gathering in the presence of George Washington. Hence, he could scarcely have been considered a loyalist at that time. The moderation of his views, which caused some to suspect him of being a loyalist, led others to look upon him as a rebel. On December 20, 1776, the loyalist, Samuel Seabury (later to become Bishop of Connecticut), wrote to the English ecclesiastical authorities that Smith, like other Philadelphia priests, "rushed headlong into the Rebellion:' This perception of him by others as being something other than what he felt himself to be did nothing for his volatile disposition and probably provoked him to register his resentment in rather strong language. During the Revolution, soldiers were quartered on the college grounds, and most students returned to their homes. When the British troops approached Philadelphia, the college was shut down for nearly two years. It reopened in January, 1779, shortly after the British evacuated the city. But Smith's adversaries in the Assembly persuaded that body to dissolve the trustees and faculty of the college, and to substitute a new board that was more under the control of the legislature. It must have been heartbreaking for Smith to be cast out after nearly thirty years of devoted and distinguished service to the college. In 1780 he left Philadelphia and accepted a call to Chestertown, Maryland, where he became Rector of St. Paul's and Chester parishes. Since his stipend of 600 bushels of wheat per annum was inadequate, it was understood that he was free to accept a few private students, and shortly thereafter he was put in charge of the Kent County Free School, of which Charles Willson Peale's father had been the master forty years before. Within two years Smith had conceived of the idea of a University of Maryland composed of two colleges, one on each shore of the Chesapeake Bay, and he raised funds and persuaded the Maryland Assembly to charter Washington College in Chestertown. By May 14, 1783, when the first commencement took place, Smith had raised more than £10,000 Maryland currency, and the list of subscribers was headed by the national idol, General Washington, who gave £50 and permitted his name to be used for the college. At its third commencement- in 1785- nine men were awarded Doctor of Divinity degrees, including the Jesuit, John Carroll, who had helped Smith draw up the charter of St.John's Col- 64 lege the year before, and who later became the first Roman Catholic bishop in the United States and the first Archbishop of Baltimore. Meanwhile, Smith published a pamphlet in 1788 appealing to the Pennsylvania Assembly to reinstate the violated charter of the College of Philadelphia. Now that the rancors of the Revolutionary War were beginning to subside, many prominent men exerted influence in Smith's behalf. In 1789 the Assembly reinstated the old trustees, faculty, and provost. Smith was vindicated once more, but it meant that he must forsake his fledgling college in Chestertown and return to Philadelphia. Oddly enough, in the year 1789 when he served as president of St. John's College, temporarily and for ceremonial reasons, he was also president of Washington College, Chestertown, and of the College of Philadelphia as well. I wonder how often in our history one man was president of three institutions of higher learning at the same time! When Smith created Washington College in 1782, the preamble of the charter described it as a part of a projected university which was to include a sister college on the Western Shore, the two to be united under one jurisdiction. Since this concept of a state university bestride the Chesapeake (like the Colossus of Rhodes) was the product of his fertile brain, it is only natural that Smith, the most eminent academician in the United States, should have been in the forefront of the move to create a college on the Western Shore to balance the one in Chestertown. A group of gentlemen met in Annapolis on December 3, 1784, to hasten the project. They appointed six men- three clerics and three laics- to a committee to "complete the . . . bill for founding a college on the Western Shore, and to publish the same immediately:' Imagine how long it would take today! But in those halcyon days, the job was done in less than two weeks. ''A Draught of a Proposed Act ... for Founding a College on the Western Shore of this State, and for constituting the same, together with Washington College on the Eastern Shore, into one University, by the Name of the University of Maryland" was published, and later enacted by the House of Delegates on December 30, 1784. In passing, it is worth noticing that pursuant to the Maryland Declaration of Rights of 1776, which swept away all the civil and financial prerogatives of the Anglican (or Episcopal) Church, the three ecclesiastics on the committee respresented the three principal subdivisions of Maryland's Christian community: Dr. Smith the Episcopalians, John Carroll the Roman Catholics, and Patrick Allison, a Presbyterian divine, the Protestants generally, and especially the dissenters from the former Established Church. The Draught borrowed large portions of the Washington College charter which had been written by Smith. After the charter of the new college in Annapolis was enacted, Smith declared that he and his Roman Catholic and Presbyterian colleagues had draughted it "happily and with great unanimity:' SUMMER 1984 �This ecumenical concord, together with the toleration engendered by the Age of Reason, Jet them to write into the charter that all qualified students were to be admitted "without requiring or enforcing any religious or civil test" and "without urging their attendance upon any particular worship or service, other than what they have been educated in, or have the consent and approbation of their parents or guardians to attend:' But there was no idea of trying to eliminate religion from education. The college was to nurture students in their own church affiliations and provide them with opportunity to frequent their particular foJ.ms of worship in the churches in Annapolis. While all this was going on in the 1780s, Dr. Smith was active and influential in the Church in Maryland and on a national level. Four months after arriving in Chestertown in 1780, he presided over a convention consisting of three priests and twenty-four laymen, which made the first move towards organizing the Diocese of Maryland. This was the first convention of the Episcopal Church in any of the thirteen American States that was composed oflay representatives as well as clergy and that undertook to cope with the changes brought about by the Revolution in the polity and liturgy of the Anglican Church in America. Annual conventions were held in Maryland thereafter, and Smith was chosen to preside over every one of them until he left the State and returned to Philadelphia in 1789. These conventions erected the diocese of Maryland, created a constitution and canons, and, in 1783, chose Dr. Smith as biship-elect of Maryland. On the national stage, too, Smith emerged as one of the leaders, along with William White (first Bishop of Pennsylvania) and Samuel Seabury (first Bishop of Connecticut). Smith's organizing talent, impressive intellectual stature, and speaking ability resulted in his election as president of all the early general conventions of the Church, and his selectiol'l as chairman of the committees that formulated the constitution of the Episcopal Church and produced the first American Book of Common Prayer in 1789-the very year in which he served as President pro tern of St. John's College, participated in its opening ceremonies, and preached his "elegant Sermon." These are indications of his eminence in the eyes of his colleagues and contemporaries. William Smith's life and career were crowned with success and recognition, and he became one of the foremost celebrities of his day. But he suffered several adversities, and they, rather than his triumphs, give us insight into his character. One was when he was imprisoned unjustly by the Pennsylvania Assembly. Another was when he was ejected from his provostship of the College of Philadelphia by the political machinations of his enemies. In both cases he resolutely resisted and ultimately obtained vindication, which indicates his con- THE ST. JOHN'S REVIEW fidence in justice and his strength of character. After all, the classical authors whom he taught had said that as fire tests gold, so adversity tests brave men! But his other great adversity, the chagrin and humiliation of being denied consecration to the Episcopate, reveals him to be a man whose faith was even greater than his pride and his ambition. All the reasons for this disappointment are not known to us, but it appears that, like many eighteenth-century gentlemen, Smith was accustomed all his life to imbibe hard liquor in liberal amounts. He was certainly not an alcoholic-his active life and prodigious achievements make that quite clear. Although he did not habitually overindulge-at least in public- he was reported to have done so once, while attending the General Convention in New York. Smith denied the allegation and called for proof, which as far as we know was never forthcoming. The Maryland Convention dismissed the allegation as unproven-and even unlikely- but the charge hung over him like a cloud, and he never again applied to the General Convention for confirmation of his election or for recommendation to the Archbishop of Canterbury for consecration. This darkest hour, I think, proved paradoxically to be his finest hour. He was, in effect, considered guilty until proved innocent, which is a cr~el reversal of the juridical axiom. And his undeniable contributions to the Church, and especially his organizing and liturgical abilities, seem to justify his consecration as the first Bishop of Maryland. Much as he yearned for the lawn sleeves of a bishop, Smith did not allow what in his view was unwarranted rejection to curtail his devoted service to the Church. He continued to serve in any way the Church could use him. And he remained one of the most prominent priests of the Church, being chosen to preside over every convention in Maryland until he left in 1789, and over every House of Deputies of General Convention until 1801 when ill health prevented him. In addition, he had the high honor of being selected to preach the sermon at the burial of his old political enemy, Benjamin Franklin, and he was chosen to preach at the consecreation of the first three bishops of the Episcopal Church that were consecrated in America: Thomas John Claggett of Maryland, Robert Smith of South Carolina, and Edward Bass of Massachusetts. Moreover, he remained on friendly terms with Bishop White, who opposed his consecration, and with Dr. Andrews, who made the allegation against him in the first place. It would seem that love of Christ and his holy Church took precedence over egotism, righteous indignation, and- ambition. There is perhaps no better illustration of his Christian character than this. And this eminent and impressive academic and churchman was the first president pro tern of St. John's College. 65 �BooK REviEw The Early History of St. John's College in Annapolis Tench Francis Tilghman Annapolis, St. John's College Press, 1934. XIII+199 pp. Illustrations. $13.00 hen Tench Francis Tilghman wrote The Early His tory of St. John's College some forty years ago, he wanted to use it as a "kind of glass to view the changes in American educa- W tion as they affected the smaller college." What emerges in the telling is a conservative St. John's, more faithful to a liberal arts curriculum adopted in 1789 than responsive to the winds of educational change blowing through other early American colleges. Referring often to passing educational fads in American colleges contemporary with St. Johds, Dr. Tilghman details the insubstantial changes made in St. John's original curriculum until, following the lead of other American colleges, its board in 1923 adopted an elective program. Dr. Tilghman writes wittily, irreverently, and ironically about the college's trial and perils throughout one hundred and fifty years. He describes the state of student morals, faculty woes and board resilience amid the snares of sociable Annapolis, the "ancient city;' which grew more provincial while Baltimore developed into the metropolis of Maryland. The book offers an entertaining slice of Maryland history, a chronicle of youth at the Western Shore college attended by many Eastern Sharemen, where students studied, drilled, frolicked and sported. Their life styles were influenced by a series of presidents, but most profoundly by three outstanding ones: John McDowell, a graduate of the College of Philadelphia, a gentle disciplinarian who led by example; the Reverend Hector Humphrey, a 66 graduate of Yale, a stern disciplinarian with puritanical leanings; and genial Thomas Fell, educated at King's College, London University, Heidleberg, and Munich, who presided when sports and dances became an integral part of college life at St. John's and other American colleges. Private citizens and the Legislature made generous pledges to launch St. John's in 1784: the Legislature by charter promised it a perpetual grant of 1750 pounds per annum. When St. John's and King William's School merged in 1786 (Dr. Tilghman questions that it was a merger), the King William's board pledged two thousand pounds and agreed to close their school, called the Annapolis School, when the college opened. Because of this agreement, St.John's felt a special obligation to educate Annapolis youths, and in 1789 it opened a grammar school which operated as part of the college until 1923. Between 1789 and 1805, years later called the "golden age;' the college prospered. Then in 1806 a republican Qeffersonian democratic) majority in the Legislature rescinded the charter provisions which promised St. John's and Washington colleges adequate taxgenerated incomes "forever." The Republicans favored the founding of county academies over supporting the two colleges founded by the Federalists. PresidentJohn McDowell resigned in protest. Those who could have provided the needed financial support, though outraged by the perfidy of the Legislature, followed its example: they gave nothing from their personal wealth to run the college. Thereafter the board was forced to beg at each biennial session of the Legislature for what little money it received. Twenty-five years later in 1830 the board (helped by an alumni aSsociation composed of men educated in the McDowell years) persuaded the Reverend Hector Humphrey to become president. Under his administration the buildings on St. John's campus known as Humphrey and Pinkney were built. He imposed strict rules of conduct on grammar school and college students alike. He continued a voluntary military program begun in 1826, partly for discipline, partly for exercise (there was no athletic program), and partly for career training. Like the grammar school, the military program, compulsory at times, continued until 1923. Dr. Tilghman believes that the grammar school and the military program hindered the development of St. John's as a college. During the nineteenth century, student fees and state grants plus fees received from the pasturage of cows at fifty cents a head per month, a fee later raised to two dollars, made up the college income. The board converted each grant into scholarships. For instance, in 1850, when the state granted $15,000, the board offered one hundred and fifty scholarships worth one hundred dollars each. What a student was charged over and above the amount he received as a scholarship was reserved for faculty salaries, and a teacher was assigned the job of collecting it. Once in desperation an unpaid teacher sug- SUMMER 1984 �gested that scholarships be sold to produce revenue. Dr. Tilghman remarks, "How anyone could sell a scholarship, and yet have it remain a scholarship, is more than a little puzzling." Out-of-state students would have brought money to the college but none enrolled. In 1853 Professor EJ. Stearns resigned in disgust saying that St. John's remained a small provincial college because the faculty was horribly overworked and underpaid; antiquated textbooks were studied instead of original works; and "young men will not come to be treated under school-boy discipline." Yet the presidents and faculty were not provincial in either background or outlook. They came from respected colleges and universities, and when they left Annapolis many joined prestigious faculties elsewhere. St. John's offered "a complete and general education, that which fits a man to perform justly, skilfully and magnanimously all the offices, both private and public, of peace and war," like Milton's ideal college, a model cited in a letter written by President Henry Barnard. In truth many St.John's alumni filled important offices in the state, church, and military services. The early college almost expired several times for lack of money. During the Civil War the college campus was commandeered as a Union parole camp and hospital. Until the college reopened in 1866 Professor William Thompson held classes in town, thus fulfilling a college obligation by charter amendment always to teach at least five foundation, or charity, boys. In 1809 the U.S. Supreme Court had ruled for Dartmouth College against the state of Massachusetts for breach of contract. The St.John's board, believing that the state of Maryland had acted unconstitutionally, like Massachusetts, when it refused in 1806 to continue an annual grant promised St. John's by charter, sued the state in 1859. Subsequently, the Maryland Court of Appeals ruled that the state had indeed breached a contract, but because the college had continued to accept a lesser state money under an "Act THE ST. JOHN'S REVIEW of Compromise" agreed to in 1830, it no Dean Scott Buchanan, and the colonizlonger had claim to the original grant. ing expansion to Santa :Fe, New Mexico, Years later, in 1880, the St. John's board under President Richard D. Weigle, in declared that state pride alone prevented the early 1960s. it from taking its case to the U.S. Supreme Dr. Tilghman's history and Reverend Court. This veiled threat worked: "The J. Winfree Smith's The Search for a Liberal Legislature rose nobly to the occasion," CoLLege, which covers the early years under restored the arrearage accumulated since the New Program, both published by the 1861 and approved an annual appropria- St. .John's Press to celebrate the college's tion plus a five-year grant. two-hundredth anniversary in 1984, When Thomas Fell became president should be read tog·ethcr. Interesting in 1886, the college consisted of sixty-eight parallels are immediately obvious. Viewstudents and a campus full of dilapidated ing St. John's of the New Program era buildings. The student body grew and through the glass Tilghman provides, we three buildings- Woodward (the sec the Dartmouth College case cited Library), Randall (a dining-room and again in the 1940s, by President Barr dormitory), and Iglehart (the gym- when he defended the St. John's campus nasium) -were built during his ad- against encroachment by the U.S. Naval ministration. When he resigned in 1923 Academy. Earlier board efforts to unite "he took with him the affection of hun- two colleges within a university under the dreds of old students." 1784 charter preceeded the founding of Dr. Tilghman divides the one hun- a second St. John's College in New Mexdred and fifty years of St. John's history ico in 1960 under that charter. In 1890 a into eight epochs and describes in detail proposal that women be educated at St. the curriculums adopted in each. The John's was introduced by trustee-alumnus first, designed by President John ] udge Daniel R. Magruder: women were McDowell and the Reverend Ralph Hig- admitted to St. John's in 1950. In 1891 ginbotham, was the most rigorous of all. President T'homas tell unsuccessfully It required proficiency in the ancient solicited private donors for an endowlanguages, mathematics, natural philoso- ment: President Weigle made many sucphy, and logic. To graduate, a student had cessful solicitations in his administration to undergo a public examination. In the (1950-1980). A good curriculum underlate 1860s President James Clarke Well- girded the early college just as the curing introduced English literature with the riculum known as the New Program reading of Shakespeare, Milton, Spenser, undergirds today's college. Hooker, and 'T3.ylor; and he added Plato's I disagree with Dr. Tilghman's view dialogues and the Greek dramatists to the on the relationship between King list of Greek classics read. William's School and St. John's College. Dr. Tilghman treats the eighth epoch I believe that a new corporation was (1923-193 7) very briefly. I hope some day created by a merger between the two ensomeone will cover this period more fully. tities in 1786 and that St. John's College For in 1923 the board discontinued the is a continuation of King William's grammar school and military program, School. This view has been more fully making St. John's solely a four-year liberal developed in a paper that has been acarts college. Four teachers appointed in cepted for future publication. this period- George Bingley, Ford K. Charlotte Fletcher Brown, John S. Kieffer, who served as both president and dean under the New Program, and Richard Scofield -were to help steady the college at two critical junctures in its twentieth-ce/ntury life: the Charlotte Fletcher was librarian of St. John's College, Annapolis, from 1944 until 1980. Her article transition to the New Program in 193 7 1784: The Year St. John's College waJ- named was pubunder President Stringfellow Barr and lished in the Maryland Historical Magazine in 1978. 67 �The Old Gods What titanic captive, god in chains smokes the earth with his dire breath that scorches? All are bound in blood, lapping rock with flame which flares towards the sources, then reverses to fall back into the cave where puppets dance in mockery of truth. Dolphins hammer the sea to dints of foam, pressing a shield for the adamant depth; who knows what immortal agony exhorts them to friend the singer as a brother. How seeps that song of harmony filtering through fault's abyss? Stricken priestess chants her office, mad eyes trail a clue of destiny. Whose altar is the overwhelming will? The answer blinds us, leaves us asking still. Gretchen Berg Gretchen Berg is a graduate of St. John's College, Annapolis. She lives in Vermont where she pursues her interest in writing and painting. 68 SUMMER 1984 ��The St. John's Review St. John's College Annapolis, Maryland 21404 Non-profit Org. U.S. Postage PAID Permit No. 66 Lutherville, Md. � Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. 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Creator An entity primarily responsible for making the resource Office of the Dean Publisher An entity responsible for making the resource available St. John's College Identifier An unambiguous reference to the resource within a given context ISSN 0277-4720 thestjohnsreview Contributor An entity responsible for making contributions to the resource St. John's College Greenfield Library Text A resource consisting primarily of words for reading. Examples include books, letters, dissertations, poems, newspapers, articles, archives of mailing lists. Note that facsimiles or images of texts are still of the genre Text. Page numeration Number of pages in the original item. 68 pages Original Format The type of object, such as painting, sculpture, paper, photo, and additional data paper Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Creator An entity primarily responsible for making the resource Office of the Dean Title A name given to the resource The St. John's Review (formerly The College), Summer 1984 Date A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource 1984-07 Contributor An entity responsible for making contributions to the resource Sterling, J. Walter Parran, Jr., Thomas Walsh, Jason Freis, S. Richard Sachs, Joe Stickney, Cary Wilson, Curtis A. Sachs, Joe Brann, Eva T. H. Killorin, Joseph Buchanan, Scott Thompson, William Klein, Jacob Zuckerman, Elliot Kieffer, John S. Zuckerkandl, Victor Smith, J. Winfree Middleton, Arthur Pierce Fletcher, Charlotte Berg, Gretchen Description An account of the resource Volume XXXV, number 3 of The St. John's Review, formerly The College. Published in Summer 1984. Identifier An unambiguous reference to the resource within a given context ISSN 0277-4720 The_St_Johns_Review_Vol_35_No_3_1984 Coverage The spatial or temporal topic of the resource, the spatial applicability of the resource, or the jurisdiction under which the resource is relevant Annapolis, MD Publisher An entity responsible for making the resource available St. John's College Language A language of the resource English Type The nature or genre of the resource text Rights Information about rights held in and over the resource St. John's College owns the rights to this publication. Format The file format, physical medium, or dimensions of the resource pdf St. John's Review https://s3.us-east-1.amazonaws.com/sjcdigitalarchives/original/c90e86698867d0d27ae95eae9b7ed48f.pdf 64f751389a2f8afbdb6799d17700eb89 PDF Text Text THE St. o 'sReview I : ... ::: ............... ~--'~---1. ....... . . . . I ··.. . . ·.. :•. . ' I .• . .. )·<·· . · _:.-·· - Winter, 1985 '· �Editor: J. Walter Sterling Poetry Editor: Richard Freis Editorial Assistant: Jason Walsh Editorial Board: Eva Brann S. Richard Freis, Alumni representative Joe Sachs Cary Stickney Curtis A. Wilson To the editor: At the urging of alumni and colleagues, and with the co-operation of Mrs. Klein, I am undertaking to gather material for a brieflife of jacob Klein. I shall be pleased to have documents, reminiscences, or other memorabilia. I would be particularly pleased to hear from alumni who were members of his classes in his first years of teaching, especially his first seminar. Wye J. Allanbrook St. John's College Unsolicited articles, storieS, and poems are welcome, but should be accompanied by a stamped, self-addressed envelope in each instance. Reasoned comments are also welcome. The St. John's Review (formerly The College) is published by the Office of the Dean, St. John's College, Annapolis, Maryland 21404. Edwin J. Delattre, President, George Do'skow, Dean. Published thrice yearly, in the winter, spring, and summer. For those not on the distribution list, subscriptions: $12.00 yearly, $24.00 for two years, or $36.00 for three years, payable in advance. Address all correspondence to The St. John's Review, St.John's College, Annapolis, Maryland 21404. Volume XXXVI, Number 1 Winter, 1985 © 1985 St. John's College; All rights reserved. Reproduction in whole or in part without permission is prohibited. ISSN 0277-4720 Composit£on: Fishergate Publishing Co. 1 Inc. Printing: St. John's College Press Cover: A Black-Figured Amphora from the Boston Museum (Drawn, measured and analyzed by L.D. Caskey). �THE StJohn's Review Contents 2 ...... The Parable of Don Quixote Joe Sachs 10 ...... Politics and the Imagination Eva Brann 19 ...... Five From The Old Testament (poem) J Kates 22 ...... James Joyce's Soul Joseph Engelberg 27 ...... Watching Plains Daybreak (poem) Richard Freis 28 ...... Self-Portraits Elliott Zuckerman 36 ...... The Opera Singer as Interpreter: A Conversation with Sherrill Milnes Susan Fain 40 ...... Dynamic Symmetry, A Theory of Art and Nature Howard J Fisher 56 . . . . . . The Song of Timaeus Peter Kalkavage 68 . . . . . . A Note on Eva Brann's "Roots of Modernity" Chaninah Maschler BooK REviEw 77 . . . . . . Rhythmic Gesture in Mozart: Le Nozze de Figaro and Don Giovanni John Plato.ff 79 . . . . . . The Presence of Grace and Other Book Reviews by Flannery O'Connor Victor Gallerano �THE ST. JoHN's REviEw Winter 1985 The Parable of Don Quixote Joe Sachs n the twenty-fifth chapter of the first part of Don Quixote, the fortunes and spirits of the book's hero are at their lowest. He has been bruised and laughed at, and has lost part of an ear and most of his teeth. He has mistaken an inn for a castle, whores for maidens, and windmills and sheep_ for enemies. His intervention in the affairs of others has led a servant boy to be beaten worse than before, and has set loose on Spain an entire column of convicts who have made him and Sancho the first of their new victims. Even the simple-hearted Sancho has lost his trust in his master. " 'God alive, Sir Knight of the Mournful Countenance; said Sancho, 'I cannot bear in patience some of the things that your Grace says! Listening to you, I come to think that all you have told me about deeds of chivalry ... is but wind and lies, all buggery or humbuggery, or whatever you choose to call it. When anyone hears your Grace ... , what is he to think except that such a one is out of his mind?' " Shortly Don Quixote will be left alone, sunk in gloom, in the Sierra Moreno, the Dark Mountains. He had entered that lonely place partly out of fear of the police, a fear which could influence him because of his disappointment over the behavior of those he thought he was helping. But even at such a time, Don Quixote has an answer for his squire. " 'Look, Sancho; said Pon Quixote, 1Jy that same God I swear that you have less sense than any squire in the world ever had. How is it possible for you to have accompanied me all this time without coming to perceive I Joe Sachs is a tutor at St. John's College, Annapolis. His lecture The JtUry of Aeneas appeared in the Winter '82 issue of the Review. The Parable of Don Quixote was origin<>.lly delivered as a formal lecture at St. John's College, Annapolis in September, 1982. 2 that all the things that have to do with knights-errant appear to be mad, foolish, and chimerical, and everything happens backwards?' "It is Don Quixote's standard evasion when things go wrong or he is proved wrong: we are enchanted. Our senses are not to be trusted, and things are not as they seem. In this case he is ·driven to claim that everything is exactly the opposite of the way it seems, and he is right. The remainder of Part one, after Don Quixote enters the Sierra Moreno, is the long unfolding of a series of happy endings of stories yet to be made known to us, and which come to pass without any effort on Don Quixote's part. His last action in Part one is the freeing of the convicts in Chapter twenty-two, with thirty chapters remaining. Yet none of the good that is done in those thirty chapters could have happened were it not for the earlier deeds of Don Quixote. And the happy endings do not come about by some comic reversal of Don Quixote's intentions. They grow out of his deeds directly in the spirit of those deeds, by a Quixotic contagion. Finally, it is not the case that Don Quixote's actions are justified only by unforeseen cons~quences, but each of his acts is, for those who have eyes to see it, good in itself, and exactly the opposite of the way it seems. Pairs of contrasting opposites in Don Quixote are often remarked. The book combines the conventions of romantic fiction with all the ugly, smelly facts of real life. Of the two main characters, one is tall, thin, energetic, and spiritual, the other short, fat, lazy, and corporeal. The main character acts like a lunatic but speaks like the wisest of men. But the most important contrast in the book is less often noticed. It is that between the story the narrator understands himself to be telling and the one he tells, and it points the way to the underlying distinction on which the book is built: the distinction between fact and truth. WINTER 1985 �Cervantes puts between himself and his story a historian who comes from a nation known for lying (I.9,II.3), a translator, and perhaps one or more other people; it is the sort of matter about which Cervantes is not a very careful bookkeeper. But there is one consistent voice which presents to us all the episodes in the book, including those which precede the beginning of Cid Hamete Benengeli's manuscript and those for which, as Sancho notes with awe, there was no human witness. The narrator through whom we know all that we know of Don Quixote tells us that when his character decided to become a knight he looked around for a make-believe beloved just as he looked for a sword and helmet; but the same narrator gives a careful reader all the information he needs to see that Alonso Quixano has been secretly and hopelessly in love with Aldonza Lorenzo for twelve years (I.1,I.25). The narrator mocks Don Quixote's speech about the Golden Age as nonsense which only occurs to him by an association with acorns (I.11), but the goatherds to whom it is addressed are moved by Don Quixote's eloquent respect for their way oflife, and repay him with all the gifts in their power. When Don Quixote defends Marcela (I.14), the beautiful girl who chooses not to marry anyone, the narrator tells us that he is playing at defending a damsel in distress, but anyone who listens to what he says will hear him give the reason for which he became Don Quixote: that beauty demands a response from us, an effort not to possess it but to be worthy of it. Cervantes writes in the guise of someone who never sees the things that matter amid events he describes in meticulous detail. In belittling his hero, Cervantes belittles himself, and it is left to us to discover whether we are cut to the measure of that same littleness. It is a simple rhetorical trick that Cervantes plays, gently manipulating his readers by appealing to our vanity, our pleasure in feeling superior to the stupid narrator by seeing things to which his coarse sight does not penetrate. A most generous author, we are dealing with, who allows us for the most part to indulge in superior laughter at the crazy knight and the gullible squire, and still to have someone tO look down on when we see those characters more deeply and truly. The narrator's misunderstandings begin practically on the first page of this book, when he tells us that the gentleman about whom he is writing has gone crazy. It is certainly the most widely held opinion among those who meet Don Quixote, but there are three exceptions. In Part two, three sensible people come to know him and come to other conclusions about his sanity. Don Diego de Miranda, the gentleman in the green greatcoat, decides that Don Quixote is "a crazy sane man and an insane one on the verge of sanity" (II.17). And later, at an inn, which he takes for an inn, when he is on his way to Saragossa, Don Quixote meets Don Juan and Don Jeronimo, who are finally unable "to make up their minds as to just where they were to place him in the vague realm between sound sense and madness" (II.59). It is no ac- THE ST. JOHN'S REVIEW cident that this pair of judgments is made available to us, for together they mean that the categories mad and sane break down when applied to Don Quixote. He must be said to belong to both, or to neither. He is unlike other men, but the distinction between the mad and the sane does not illuminate that difference. The truly illuminating distinction is given to us by Don Quixote himself, whose judgment is always the most trustworthy in the book. When the gentleman in green is worrying about what to make of his companion, Don Quixote 6'llesses his thoughts, and breaks in on them in a kindly way. He forgives his friend for thinking him foolish and mad, and does his best to explain why he does what he does. "Even as it is easier for the prodigal to become a generous man than it is for the miser, so is it easier for the foolhardy to become truly brave than it is for the coward to attain valor. And in this matter of adventures, you may believe me, Sefior Don Diego, it is better to lose by a card too many than a card too few." Prodigality, we shall see as we go on, is one of the most important words in the book. When Don Quixote appears ridiculous, which is most of the time, it is not for lack of wits but for his deliberate choice to be prodigal. With what is he prodigal? With money, of course, but with all the things that constitute himself. When, in his fiftieth year, Alonzo Quixano became Don Quixote, it was not because his brain dried up but because he judged his safe and settled life to be a miserly one, a driedup life. From that time on he ceased to hoard his capacities to act, to befriend, and to benefit. He gives his reason for doing so again and again in a single word, the most important word in the book: gratitude. As he says to one of the shepherdesses in Part two, "My profession is nothing other than showing gratitude" (II.58). Gratitude is the reciprocal response to grace. In his discourse on arms and letters (1.37), Don Quixote explains that the highest achievement of human letters and learning is distributive justice. He has chosen instead the higher calling of the soldier, which aims at bestowing the grace of peace. The middle-aged Alonzo Quixano decided to stop living a life which received grace but returned none. In Part two, Don Quixote asserts that the greatest sin is not pride but ingratitude. This has already been shown in Part one. The whole of Don Quixote is a parable, and its first part contains two parables-within-a-parable. The captive's story is constructed as the parable of the prodigal father; ingratitude is revealed in the parable of the curious impertinent. While Don Quixote sleeps in the inn to which he is taken from the Sierra Moreno, his companions read aloud a story about a man who is curious about the wrong things. His name is Anselmo. Let us listen to him describe his complaint to his friend Lotario (1.33). "You may think, my friend, that in return for the favors God has shown me by giving me such parents as mine and bestowing upon me with no stinting hand what are commonly known as the gifts of nature as well as 3 �those of fortune, I should never be able to thank Him enough, not to speak of what He has done for me by giving me you as a friend and Camila for my wife .... Yet with all these advantages ... I lead the most empty and fretful existence of any man in this universe. . .. The thing that so tortures me is the desire to know whether or not my wife Camila is as good and perfect as I think she is, for this is a truth that I cannot accept until the quality of her virtue is proved to me in the same manner that fire brings out the purity of gold. For it is my opinion, my friend, that a woman is virtuous only in the degree to which she is tempted and resists temptation." Can you hear why he is called Anselmo? I will remind you of the words of Saint Anselm in the first chapter of the Proslogium. "Lord, thou art my God, and thou art my Lord, and never have I seen thee. It is thou that hast made me, and hast made me anew, and hast bestowed upon me all the blessings I enjoy; and yet I do not know thee. Finally, I was created to see thee, and not yet have I done that for which I was made." "0 wretched lot of man, when he hath lost that for which he was made! ... We suffer want in unhappiness, and feel a miserable longing, and alas! We remain empty . . . . I wished to smile in the joy of my mind, and I am compelled to frown by the sorrow of my heart. Gladness was hoped for, and lo! a source of frequent sighs!" Anselm puts an end to the torment in his soul by finding a proof of the existence of God, but Anselmo, who also cannot enjoy blessings which rest only on faith, when he seeks proof of Camila's love, destroys his own life and those of everyone around him. Anselmo insists that Lotario try to seduce Camila, and try again and again while Anselmo keeps himself absent from her. Since no human quality is infinite, and since every time Camila resists temptation Anselmo causes it to be increased, and since he himself is never present to his wife to help her be his wife, Anselmo finally achieves the only result that can come from his actions. He makes Camila unfaithful. He does not prove her unfaithful, because she was not so until he made her so. A wife's love is not a neutral fact to be ascertained by experiment, but a living thing sustained in part by her husband's faith in it. When Anselmo decides that his faith is an insufficient foundation for his marriage, he loses it, because there is no foundation other than faith for a marriage to rest on. And it is important (Cervantes underlines the importance by breaking the story off) that the marriage continues for a while on a foundation of deceit. The deception does not last because Camila's maid joins in it, and the chain of corruption inevitably lengthens until it pulls all of them down. Anselmo's curiosity is impertinent or misplaced because a wife's love calls not fo.r curiosity but for gratitude. In his inability to appreciate the wife he has, Anselmo removes himself from her, so that she has no 4 husband and he has no wife. The subsequent infidelity and deaths only turn into fact the truth that was already present in Anselmo's lack of faith. Don Quixote's village priest pronounces the story implausible (1.35), proving, for one of the innumerable times in the book, that he does not know how to read a story. Every marriage is founded on faith alone, but it is the unlikely and imaginary story of Anselmo that reveals that truth. And once one has gotten hold of the truth behind the implausible facts, one sees that it is a truth about more than just marriages. At that point Cervantes' story comes into its own as a parable. The story of the curious impertinent illuminates the larger story of Don Quixote, but the characters in the one do not stand for characters in the other. That is not the nature of a parable. The myths Socrates tells in Platds dialogues are intended to be interpreted, to be destroyed as stories and transformed into their philosophical content. They have no use but to invite interpretation. The allegory Dante tells in the Divine Comedy is always speaking of two or more things at once. The principal story holds together as itself, but its principal meaning depends upon the recognition of allegorical counterparts. A parable differs from both. Its content is not intended to refer to anything but itself. It is told because someone who understands it will be in a position to think about some other subject which is the teller's chief concern, and because anyone who cannot understand it would not be able to get anything out of any direct talk about that matter of chief concern. The parable draws on things close to one's experience, to prepare the imagination to deal with things less familiar. The parable of the curious impertinent reveals that there are things in the world which are invisible except to the eyes of faith, things which genuinely exist but can be destroyed if they are not believed in. In an important exchange immediately preceding the reading of the story of the curious impertinent, the priest declares that there never were knights errant in the world. The innkeeper replies that he knows there are none now, but that they surely lived in those days. Sancho worries that one of them might be right, but makes up his mind to wait and see. If there is a knight errant in the world, only Sancho will have his eyes open to see him. Don Quixote's first encounter, the first time he leaves home, is with two whores at an inn (1.2). He sees gracious ladies, and addresses them with courtesy. Their first response is coarse and cruel laughter. If the scene ended like that, we would have to agree with the narrator that Don Quixote suffers from delusions and sees not what is in front of him but what he wants to see. But something happens while no one is looking, and when we return from the stables with the innkeeper, we find the young women treating Don Quixote with kindness and bearing themselves with modesty. They have become the gracious ladies that no one, including themselves, except Don Quixote, saw them as. It is a very small and very important event, even if it has no lastirig effect on the WINTER 1985 �women's lives. For a short time at least, they were not the sluts they had thought themselves to be, but free beings, capable of accepting and returning courtesy. Their graciousness was nowhere to be seen until Don Quixote's faith and their works brought it into being, but he saw it while it was still nothing but possibility. Do you see the connection with Anselmo? He doubted the virtue his wife had, and thereby destroyed it. Don Quixote believes in the virtues the two women do not have, and thereby brings them into being. Anselmo withdraws himself from his wife. Don Quixote involves himself with total strangers. Anselmo does not know how to love the woman he is in love with. Don Quixote may have the secret of loving everyone in the world. But Don Quixote's subsequent acts of charity, with the boy Andres and with the convicts, seem to be not mad but naive, a mockery of the very notion of doing good. When he prevents Andres from being beaten, and leaves his master on his honor to pay the boy his just wages, the result is the worst beating Andres has had in his life, and the loss of his job. When Andres tells him what has happened, and curses him for it, Don Quixote is deeply troubled. When he frees the convicts, it is Don Quixote who is beaten, by the very men he tried to help, and robbed of everything he carries and wears. It is that episode which sends him into the mountains, where, for a time, he is not himself. For the narrator, there is nothing troubling about these results. They merely confirm what every grown-up in the world except Don Quixote already knows. For Don Quixote they are severe tests of his faith in people, but tests which he survives, and rightly. Don Quixote has benefitted Andres by forcing an end to a situation in which the boy regarded himself as someone who could be beaten at the whim of another, so long as the beating was not too bad. Like the two whores, Andres had taken himself at the valuation of others. They are startled to be taken for ladies. Andres is angry at being forced to be a man. We see him last on the road to Seville. We do not know what will become of him there, but we know that it will be what he makes of himself. Andres had accepted and made the best of a slavish role into which he was born and in which he was remaining by inertia. From Don Quixote he suffered the painful gift of his freedom. With the convicts, Don Quixote worries that some might be innocent, convicted only because they were poor and without friends. Others he sees to be guilty, but of no very serious crimes. But his motive for freeing them does not depend on the facts about them. Don Quixote is outraged that, whatever they have done, the king should make slaves of them. Don Quixote believes in punishment; he spends much of the book dealing it out. But he does not believe in punishment that precludes forgiveness. The king's justice rests on the ultimate in impertinent curiosity: on the question whether a man shall be allowed to continue to be a man or shall be created a slave. The convicts had not used their freedom THE ST. JOHN'S REVIEW well, but they had it not on human sufferance but by God's grace. Don Quixote does not find a solution to the problem of human ingratitude, but he does prevent its multiplication, and hence rights a wrong. 'I'he two craziest of Don Quixote's deeds in Part one seem not explicable as acts of faith or charity, because they do not involve other people. They are his attacks on the windmills and the sheep. There is a clue to the meaning of these episodes in Part two, when Don Quixote tells Sancho, "In confronting giants, it is the sin of pride that we slay" (II.S). I suspect that, in attacking both the windmills and the sheep, Don Quixote was ineffectually, but literally, confronting giants- private companies of great wealth which, under royal patent, were exploiting the land of Spain on a gigantic and unheard-of scale. One windmill is sufficient to knock Don Quixote off his horse, but it is a clump of thirty or forty of them at which he charges in anger. And it is not a flock or herd of sheep at which he charges, but a vast assemblage of them to which his word army is appropriate. There must be wrong with the unbounded commercial development that is beginning to change the face of Spain, because it is founded on pride. On the other hand, every deed of Don Quixote rests on faith in the Gospels. It should be becoming clear in what way the story of Don Quixote is itself a parable. At this point I have just about made good my claim that Don Quixote's actions in Part one are all understandable and good. I have not mentioned several encounters in which he gives and receives lumps and bruises. The most serious injury he causes is a broken leg, to an arrogant young priest who speaks rudely and treats him as though he were nothing. {I.19) Until he is in pain and unable to move, Alonso Lo_pez is too wrapped up in himself to recognize Don Quixote as another like himself to whom elementary courtesy is due. And as soon as Don Quixote sees that the man needs help, he is quick to give it. Alonso Lopez has learned his own importance from his theological education, but he has not learned who his neighbor is. If he is capable of! earning such a lesson at all, both the anger and the kindness of the crazy knight could teach it to him. Don Quixote is meddlesome, but his meddling always takes the form of pertinent curiosity. Though he talks often of the privileges of rank, he acts always as though every human being deserves honor. He is entitled to teach manners to a priest, to insist that the king accord even a criminal minimal recognition as a member of his own species,- to require a master to treat his servant with respect, to make that servant and prostitutes aware of their own dignity, and even to strike a few blows at gigantic faceless companies which do their business in indifference to what they do to the world they share with ordinary people. Don Quixote earns the right to interfere with everyone by recognizing every human life as a claim upon himself. His curiosity is pertinent because when the test comes he always acts as though the good of another pertains to him. And we are entitled to wonder 5 �All of which I will make plain to him, to the if, in Don Quixote, we are witnessing a man who loves of a whore. his neighbor as himself. When Don Quixote enters the Sierra Moreno he is far from believing that he has done anything worthwhile, but his influence is already present in the world and working its own effects. He himself is miserable and alone. He spends his time imitating the penance of Amadis of fullest extent, with my sword.' " Soon Don Quixote is drawing Sancho ahead of the others they are travelling with, to question him in insa- tiable detail about Dulcinea. As always, Sancho's disloyalty has strengthened Don Quixote's faith, and Don Quixote's healing anger at his squire has strengthened Gaul, an episode noteworthy because it makes one realize Sancho's devotion to his master. Those two are then that nowhere else in the book does he imitate anyone. Only in this brief, dark retirement from the world does Don Quixote ever try to remember something a knight in a book did in order to mimic it. Ordinarily he is the wholly themselves, while those riding along behind them opposite of an imitator, the most original of men, in the nobleman Don Fernando, who has run away from home sense that his deeds originate in himself out of the true array of possibilities before him. It is the rest of us, who has ended up in the Sierra Moreno in despair, is now have, without knowing it, become new beings in Don Quixote's image. Dorotea, who has been seduced and deserted by the and twice trusted men who then tried to rape her, who judge and act out of habit, custom, and inertia, who are in the company of three new knights-errant. Don the imitators. The enchantment of which Don Quixote speaks is primarily the siren song of habit which prevents us from truly encountering the things and people before us. We take them for what everyone else always takes them for. In a chapter which Cervantes calls" one of the most important in the entire history" (II.6), Don Quixote's niece tells him to act like what he is, a man who Quixote's curate and barber, who, contemptuous of his behavior but concerned for his welfare, have come hunt- is old, sick, and poor. In the Sierra Moreno, that is just society, has regained his sanity and hopes, and sworn how he acts. that Don Fernando will either marry Dorotea or fight him. Two men for whom the idea of chivalry is matter only for mockery, but who are in the Sierra Moreno on When Sancho returns to him in the mountains, he finds his master thinner than ever, jaundiced, fainting from hunger, and sighing for Dulcinea. But when he tries to speak to him of his beloved, Don Quixote will only say that he is not worthy of her grace (I.29). When his priest, for a joke, says he has heard of a mad sinner who will undoubtedly be damned for setting free some galley slaves, Don Quixote hangs his head in silent humiliation. It is his wonderful friendship with Sancho that brings him back to himself. Here is the colloquy which brings him out of his melancholy and restores his sanity. (I.30) "'Faith, Seiior Licentiate; (said Sancho,) 'the one who performed that deed was my master. Not that I didn't warn him beforehand and advise him to look what he was doing, it being a sin to free them, for they were all of them the greatest rogues that ever were: " " 'Blockhea,d!' cried Don Quixote upon hearing this. 'It is not the business of knights-errant to stop and ascer- tain as to whether the afflicted and oppressed whom they encounter going along the road in chains like that are in such straits by reason of their own crimes or as a result ing for their friend to bring him home, have found themselves distracted by Dorotea's distress, and each has sworn himself to her service (!.28,29). Cardenio, who has also been misused by Don Fernando, and had run away to the Sierra Moreno to escape his troubles and all human account of Don Quixote, and two despairing victims, who are brought out of their solitude by Don Quixote's friends, are now a band united by mutual faith, by the giving and receiving of charity, and by the hope that life may still hold some unlooked-for good for a young woman in distress. The four of them connive at an elaborate pretense of knight-errantry to patronize Don Quixote, while none of them notices that they are living the actuality of it. For the remainder of Part one, Don Quixote sleeps, listens, holds back from disputes to be a peacemaker, allows himself to be carried homeward in a cage, and, after one abortive attempt in the last chapter to return to knight-errantry, chooses the prudent course of returning home to await more propitious times. He, the most active of men, is for the most part con,tent with his return to passivity. We are never told why directly, but Cervantes shows us why through the Captive's story, which is Cervantes' parable of the prodigal father. Luke's story of the prodigal son begins with a young of misfortunes that they have suffered. The only thing man's heedlessness of others, the Captive's story with his that does concern them is to aid those individuals as persons in distress, with an eye to their sufferings and not to their villainies. I chanced to meet with a rosary, or father's heedlessness of self. Each leads to the premature distribution of an estate. The prodigal father, worried that he will waste what he has, sells his lands, divides string, of poor wretches and merely did for them what my religion demands of me. As for the rest, that is no affair of mine. And whoever thinks ill of it- saving the dignity of your holy office and your respected person, Senor Licentiate- I will simply say that he knows little of the laws of chivalry and lies like an ill-begotten son 6 the proceeds among his sons, and sends them out into the world. One pursues trade, and becomes wealthy; a second pursues letters, and eventually becomes a judge. The Captive, in the image of his father, becomes a knight. After twenty-two years the family is reunited, the father's faith justified, the wealth he denied himself multiplied, WINTER 1985 �the sons whose presence he sacrificed returned to him freely out of love. But this summary of the story leaves out the most important character in it, the Moorish maiden Zoraida. When the prodigal father lets go of his property and his sons, he cannot know that a stranger is waiting in the world whom only his deed will save. Of the many quixotic characters in Don Quixote, the most quixotic of them all is the Moorish princess Zoraida, who cannot take any pleasure from wealth, a loving father, or the society of her own people, because in her childhood she heard stories of the Virgin Mary from a Christian slave. She gives up everything to go with the Christian knight to a country where the Virgin Mary is worshipped. Upbringing, language, heritage, custom, and ritual do not produce faith in Zoraida; the inspiration of the imagination by stories does. The prodigality of the Captive's father, and of the Captive himself, who returns most of his inheritance and embarks on a soldier's life, · make possible her rescue from a country not hospitable to her spirit. The band of knights-errant descended from Don Quixote, and already enlarged, gives her that reception to a Christian country of which she has dreamed. Between Don Quixote's return to the inn and the Captive's arrival there, four more lives have been saved from unhappiness. Don Fernando, who arrived breathing threats and murder at Luscinda, who betrayed him after he had betrayed Cardenio and Dorotea for her sake, has relented and amended his life, making it possible for Cardenio and Luscinda to marry, and returning himself to Dorotea. Don Fernando's conversion is brought about by the unanimous and whole-hearted urging of the group in the inn, which includes the curate and barber, now involved in the lives of others by the same pertinent curiosity that took Don Quixote away from his home. As Zoraida was waiting in the world for the liberating act of the prodigal father, so, it turns out, was Dorotea, lost, alone, and in danger in the Sierra Moreno, waiting for the liberating, infectious generosity of Don Quixote. She acknowledges as much, when, finally abandoning all pretense with Don Quixote, she ~ays to him, "I am convinced that had it not been for you, sir, I should never have had the good fortune that is now mine, and in this I speak the veriest truth, as most of these worthy folk who are present can testify." (I.3 7) The long chain of entangled lives which extends to the Captive's brother's teenaged daughter and her boyfriend, which is linked in mutual generosity to realize the highest possibilities of each, which is the exact inverse of the chain of corruption extending from Anselmo, owes its existence to Don Quixote. In the parable surrounding the parable, he is the prodigal father. Don Quixote, having chosen not to hoard the grace his own life contained, made it available ih unpredictable ways to people unknown to him. Contributing also to that transmission is, of course, an immense element of coincidence, as, one after another, nine people who are THE ST. JOHN'S REVIEW in various ways making one another unhappy arrive at the same place. But perhaps coincidence is one of those categories under which things appear to our enchanted sight as other than they are. Cardenio and Dorotea are both in the Sierra Moreno because it is the place of despair, but they are not there together until Don Quixote's friends bring them together. Until that time, the latent truth that their interests coincide cannot become a fact, and that is why they are in despair. The coincidence of their connection with each other only has consequences in the world when the utterly disinterested curate and barber choose to make their cares coincide with those of two strangers. Similarly, the Captive and his brother might have spent the night at the same inn without knowing it, had Don Quixote's friends not been there to ask each for his story, and to involve themselves in those stories. If the truth of coincidence is that all lives coincide, then the fact of coincidence ceases to be surprising. Arrival at the inn where the steadily multiplying good will begotten by Don Quixote works its effects is for Don Fernando "like attaining Heaven itself, where all the misadventures of earth are at an end" (I.36). In contrast to Don Fernandds way of recognizing the truth behind the facts, Don Quixote's taking the same inn for a castle is modest understatement. I have said that Don Quixote does not do anything in Part one after he frees the convicts. He is present in the subsequent deeds as the Captive's father is present in the lives of his sons, in just the measure that they are independent of him. But it is now necessary for me to qualify what I've said, because Don Quixote, for a brief moment in Chapter forty-five, does something important. He leads an army. He leads it in a conflict in which no one is hurt because he quickly puts a stop to the fighting. But it is an episode in which, while nothing happens, the participants reveal themselves for what they are. It is thus like those Platonic dialogues which Mr. Klein has called ethological mimes. Before describing the episode I will mention two others of the same kind from earlier in this book. In Chapter four, during that first brief sally in which the whole truth of Don Quixote can be read, he encounters some Toledo merchants on their way to buy silk. For a moment they stand opposed, Don Quixote commanding them to swear that Dulcinea is the most beautiful woman in the world, one of the merchants insisting that they be shown her, or at least her portrait, before being required to commit themselves. In anger, thoroughly provoked by the rude jokes of one of the merchants, Don Quixote lowers his lance and charges. As happens as often as not with Rocinante, his horse stumbles, and he is a loser without combat. But Don Quixote on the ground, beaten by servants, with the merchants on their horses, laughing in a slightly embarrassed way, is just the enchanted appearance, the merely factual outcome of the episode. The truth of it is one man understanding that the beauty that is worth declaring 7 �and defending is the beauty that is invisible, while a group of others think of the beauty of a beloved woman as they do of the quality of a sample of silk. It is the soul of a knight and the soul of a merchant that are set before us. In Chapter twenty, Don Quixote and Sancho run afoul of another phase of the textile industry, the sounds of the hammers of a fulling mill. I am disregarding Don Quixote's advice in speaking of it. "I do not deny;' he says, "that what happened to us has its comical aspects; but it is best not to tell the story, for not everyone is wise enough to see the point of the thing:' The point of the thing is that Don Quixote is truly brave, because he is effects of such books. But what, exactly, are those harmful effects? Four chapters of the text are devoted to a mammoth debate on the subject (1.47-50). The curate, of course, contributes his characteristic argument that such books foster mistaken notions among the uneducated about the facts of the past. People might even be moved by accounts of miracles which never happened. But a new character, more elevated in the hierarchy of the Church, a canon of Toledo, is introduced to carry the principal responsibility for exposing the evils of the books which have corrupted Don Quixote. brave in the dark. The fact of the matter is that he, like It is not right, the canon argues, that amusement ever be entirely separated from instruction, and not possible Sancho, spent a night in terror of something that could not harm them, and had to endure Sancho's laughter in events in an episodic presentation and a crude style. The the morning. But does one who fears in the night have the right to mock in the daylight? Night will always come again, and will hold terrors, and Don Quixote has proved that he can face them with courage. The revelation of courage does not require a solemn occasion; for those with eyes to see, it is compatible with events that are ridiculous. In Chapter forty-five, as in the flaring of a match or a lightening-bolt, there is the briefest of military engagements: the battle over Mambrinds helmet. The battle has no outcome because Don Quixote does not allow it to. The point of the thing is the drawing of a line between the two sides, and the revealing of the genuine willingness of each to fight. There is no issue present worth fighting over, as Don Quixote says. But there is the utmost importance in discovering for what one is willing to fight. On one side is an army of police, peasants, and servants, fighting in defense of the proposition that a barber's basin is a barber's basin and belongs by right to the barber. On the other side is an army of caballeros, Don Luis, Don Fernando, the judge, and their natural and rightful leader, Don Quixote. One combatant seems to be on the wrong side, for Sancho Panza fights with the knights. But Sancho is no longer the cowardly peasant of twenty-five chapters earlier. Just five pages before the battle begins, Don Quixote has noted that Sancho has become a true man, and deserves to be dubbed a knight. (I. 44) The knights fight to defend the that pleasure could come from books that depict unlikely canon knows that the books of knight-errantry violate all these rules of good writing, because he has begun reading practically all of them that have ever been printed. In fact, he has enjoyed reading every one of them, but has always caught himself in time to remind himself that they are worthless, and incapable of affording true pleasure. He has never allowed himself to finish reading one. He once tried writing one himself, which observed all the rules of good writing, but he left it unfinished when he realized that most people wouldn't like it. Now the canon is an honest man, and if he were to hear his opinions presented as briefly as this and all in one place, he would find himself as peculiar as he finds Don Quixote. Spread over twenty pages, and supported with abundant examples, his discourse is in fact very impressive. Don Quixote, of course, mops the floor with him, but listen to the surprising way he does it. " Do you mean to tell me that those books that ... are read with general enjoyment and praised by young and old alike, by rich and poor, the learned and the ignorant, the gentry and the plain people- in brief, by all sorts of persons of every condition and walk in life- do you mean to tell me that they are but lies? Do they not have every appearance of being true?" Don Quixote does not say that the books are good, but that they are true. What is true about them? They are in touch with the deepest springs of our common humanity. There are incessant references in the book to the truthfulness of histories, by which everyone else proposition that honor exists wherever one stakes one's honor, even in the homeliest of objects. Don Quixote's means some sort of authoritative assurance of a matching- dignity elevates the barber's basin, just as his love elevates Dulcinea above the sight of merchants and his courage elevates a fuller's mill beyond the comprehension of a coward. For the only time in the book, Don Quixote has an army to lead, and the one thing he does with it, the instant it comes into being, is disband it. The battle he fights is against the automatic taking of the things in the ote sees that a more important truth lies in what mat- world at their lowest valuation, and it is both won and lost as soon as the sides are drawn. Don Quixote has learned to see the possibilities which do not appear and the truths which facts never disclose by reading books of knight-errantry. Cervantes, of course, claims that he wrote Don Quixote to combat the harmful 8 up with a dead and inaccessible past. Only Don Quixches up with the buried longings and unrealized possibilities in all of us. Cervantes' discourse remains parabolic, but it is time for our own to become direct. The effect, harmful or otherwise, of books of knight-errantry, is not the subject of chief concern. The canon, showing the monstrous improbabilities the romances ask us to swallow, mentions a seventeen-year-old boy killing a giant, an army of a million men defeated because the book's hero is on the other side, and a tower full of knights miraculously scattered all over the earth, and concludes that books full of such things have no place in a Christian state. Is it WINTER 1985 �not clear that the canon is talking of one thing while Cervantes is thinking of another, and that the name of that other is the Bible? The canon tells Don Quixote to turn to the Book of Judges if he wants to read about knightly exploits, attributing its superiority to its accuracy. But even if the story of Samson and Delilah is more factual than that of Amadis of Gaul, does the worth of the Bible depend on its quota of facts? In the first chapter of Part two, Don Quixote gives a lesson in how to read, which is wasted on his audience of the curate and the barber. He says, "the truth is so clear that I can almost assure you that I saw with my own eyes Amadis of Gaul?' Is Don Quixote talking about be willing to let him die. We are left alone at the end of Part two, in a way that we are not at the end of Part one. We have only ourselves to rely on, and no longer Don Quixote, to assimilate and come to terms with our encounter with him. If we are to carry away anything of importance from that encounter, it must survive a passage through his inexplicable abandonment of everything he believed. But Cervantes is too good a storyteller to make even half a book entirely painful to his best and most trusting readers. He gives as compensation for our ordeal Sancho Panza, for Part two is Sancho's book. With the many ways in which Don Quixote and amusement? About instruction? Those two categories do Sancho are obvious opposites, one is apt not to notice not exhaust the purposes of writing, and it is only because the canon thinks they do that he is so confused about his own experiences with books. Stories that affect us set how much they are alike. Each has left home and submitted himself to adventure and the workings of providence, Don Quixote because he longs to be acknowledged and accepted by Dulcinea, Sancho because he longs for an island, where he would be an important man, see his children honored, and not have to do any our imaginations to work. That activity can disclose ourselves to us: what we care about, what we fear, what we long for. The combination of disclosure and stimulation may, as it does with Don Quixote, inspire action. Even when it doesn't, it may enrich the interior realm from which thought and action can be nourished. It is not possible for a work of fiction to relieve boredom for a time, and then vanish as though it had not been. Because the work of ou·r imaginations is an indispensable partner in the presentation to us of a work of fiction, reading or listening to one is always an experience which must leave some mark. Under the word fiction I include history, if it is formed into stories. It follows, then, that stories cannot be received by us passively or identically. And finally, it follows that the Bible cannot be what it is, mostly stories, and be understood for the many by a learned few who would control the rightness of beliefs. In our vulnerability to stories, we are all alike, and the canon cannot rise above his own humanity. In our response to stories, where the possibility of faith lies, we are independent and free, and the canon cannot rise above us. Cervantes' book is a parable of faith, written at the time of an Inquisition. You may have noticed that I have not had much to say about Part two, and you must realize by now that I am not going to. In fact, I have used Part two as though it were Cervantes' commentary on Part one. It is more than that. In it, Cervantes magnifies Don Quixote's mistakes, failures, doubts, and miseries, so that we will THE ST. JOHN'S REVIEW work. Within their enormous sameness, their differences make their friendship the most stable of self-maintaining communities. When they pull against each other it is always for the sake of the same goal, that grace without which a life, whether devoted to honor or to pleasure, is incomplete. In the course of his companionship, his fights, and his reconciliations with Don Quixote, Sancho acquires habits which will sustain his quixotic long; ings after he has lost his friend. He has progressively become brave enough to fight in defense of his master (I.24), alongside his master (I.45), and finally in rebellion from his master (II.60). He has likewise absorbed enough of his master's wisdom that he is able, on his own in charge of his inland island, to resolve a paradox that would defeat Bertrand Russel (II. 51). But most important of all, association with Don Quixote has liberated Sancho's imagination. What Sancho sees from the flying horse Clavileno has nothing to do with knighterrantry, since his imagination has been differently nourished than has Don Quixote's. A mustard seed from the Gospels, some garbled astronomy, and memories of his boyhood as a goatherd combine in Sancho's visions (II.41). With the eyes of an imagination thoroughly his own, set free in him by Don Quixote, Sancho sees that his longing is for no earthly island (II.42). As Don Quixote is a lover of honor, so is Sancho a lover of pleasure, with sufficient imagination always to be grateful and never to be satisfied. 9 �Politics and the Imagination Eva Brann T he topic "Politics and the Imagination" is at once larger and more restricted than "Politics and the Arts;' the theme of this Tocqueville Forum.* It is more restricted because I mean to exclude the practical problem of the relation between the arts and public life. Indeed, by politics I mean here not the working processes by which public affairs are carried on, but a fundamental sphere of human interest, namely that which is concerned with the wellbeing of a whole civic community as a whole. I think that in this country even politicians in the narrow sense, who are absorbed in the machinations of power, have some inkling of this meaning of politics, while it plays a large role in the thinking of all people who regard themselves as citizens. On the other hand, the topic "Politics and the Imagination" is larger than "Politics and the Arts" because, although almost all works of art are works of the imagination, not all imagining actually results in works of art; fOr example, dreams and daydreams have no actual product. I should also say what I mean by the imagination. I take the term for present purposes in the most basic of its usual senses, namely, as our ability for forming interior images, for envisioning eventful scenes and peopled places. Such interior sights must certainly be derived from exterior perceptions, but our imagination reshapes them and infuses them with feeling. This is not the place to 'This essay was commissioned by the Tocqueville Forum of Wake Forest University for the 1983-84 series on 'Politics and the Arts: Robert Utley, director. Publication of the series in a book is planned. Eva Brann is a tutor at St. John's College, Annapolis. 10 pursue the fascinating philosophical analysis of our strange ability for forming an interior world, except to mention one of its important characteristics: the imagination is often thought of as a mediating faculty between our blind desires and our directed activity, a testing ground in which we shape our wishes into images and prepare them for execution as works in the material world. This imaginative faculty seems to me to have a definite, although limited, relation to politics. Most political reflection is concerned with the relation between hUman passion and human reasoning, with what we want and how we contrive to get it. Of course, these activities often bring the imagination into play, but they are not specifically imaginative; they do not have their origin in the imagination. It seems to me, however, that there are two definite ways in which the imagination as such has to do with politics, corresponding to the two aspects of the imagination as a place for shaping wishes and as a ground for planning works. In the first case the image remains an unrealized dream, essentially interior;' in the second case it is externalized and becomes a work of art. The first case is exemplified by that peculiarly political product of the wishful imagination, the utopia. A utopia is an imagined political community, where the emphasis is on the fact that it is imagined; it may be presented in words, but in words which depict, which are images. That is to say, a utopia is not a mere conception of reason (though its life may be presented as eminently reasonable), but the depiction of a wished-for community, communicated with as much vivid detail as the author can make plausible. It is a city painted in words. A utopia will, .of course, present itself as the imagined incarnation of the author's ideas, but that is part of an illusionistic technique used by utopian authors: at WINTER 1985 �bottom it is not the image which follows the idea, but the idea which was distilled from a vivid dream. Now insofar as the utopian image is written down in a book, the dream is, to be sure, externalized and worked up. Nonetheless, utopias are in their very nature not works of art, or at least they are not primarily such, for what is crucial about art works iS that they are meant to be the final realization of the maker's internal image, and fulfillments or ends in themselves. Most utopias, on the other hand, pretend to be nothing but beginnings, mere sketches or blueprints for communities to be wished for in the world. Although it is no proof, it is at least an indication of this fact that among the score or so of the best known utopias only one is generally acknowledged to be a work of great literary distinction, namely, the book that gave its name to the genre, Sir Thomas More's Utopia. By and large utopias give no more esthetic satisfaction than does an account of a daydream: the energy is in the wish, not in the work. The first part of my talk will therefore be about that application of the imagination to politics which produces an imaginary community, a political wishjuljillment. However, while the utopian imagination shapes and encompasses imaginary communities, the art-producing imagination may inform real communities from within. Thus, the second way the imagination and politics intersect is precisely insofar as the realized works of the imagination, that is to say, works of art, become of concern to a political community. Yet the relation of art to politics seems to me to be of necessity primarily negatioe. Just as a gardener can only select the seeds and choose the site, and thereafter can only water and wait and weed out unwanted growth, so a community can wishfully choose and encourage certain kinds of art, but it can effectively only exclude and censor what it opposes. Again, a sign of this fact is the exceedingly modest role accorded to works of art in most utopias: just as they are not generally themselves real works of art, so they admit such activity only in a very subdued fashion, for example, in encouraging styles in the crafts which are in harmony with the communal image. The grander arts, which depend more on individual gifts, are evidently considered to have too intractable a relation to the civic community. The point I am making, that the arts are related to politics most determinately through censorship, is not quite the same as a familiar argument made by David Hume when he lays it down as a principle that it is impossible for the arts and sciences to arise among a people that is not blessed with free government, claiming that monarchy is positively injurious to the arts. He himself says that this theory cannot account for a Homer, and no more can it account for Shakespeare or any great poet who takes for his subject the incomparably great. So I am not arguing that political freedom is necessary to art-a manifest falsehood-but, on a different level, that a political community can never produce art: it can only prevent it from coming on the public scene. If politics THE ST. JOHN'S REVIEW interests itself in art positively, it must perforce be by way of censorship. Accordingly the second part will be concerned with censorship of the arts in various political settings. I. Utopia A utopia is, as I have defined it, an imagined and imaginary political community, envisioned rather than conceived, a desire-filled depiction of a well-shaped communallife. The name "Utopia'' was invented by Thomas More and is the title of his little book, written in the beginning of the sixteenth century, the first full-blown utopia. It is a Greek formation and means "No-place." Utopias are no place in two senses: First, they are inaccessible. More's Utopia is an island in the New World, but the playful claim is that its coordinates have been lost; it is, of course, a fantasy island. Second, it is no place because it is a community which never could and, as surely, never should be realized. The author comments at the end of his fictional narrator's report that, while some Utopian features are rather to be wished for than expected in England, yet others are absurd and in themselves unacceptable. It is not hard to discover what features More built into his fantasy city which are either unrealizable or undesirable or both. For example, the Utopians live in handsome houses which are reallocated every decade, since there is no private property on the island. Now there are passages in the Utopia itself and in More's other works which make it clear that he regarded communism as unsanctioned by religion and impractical in this world. But More's most serious reservations concern not what the Utopians do but what they are; namely, cheerful pagans, unwitting Epicureans, unphilosophical followers of all natural, reasonable pleasures. They worship Mithras, an ancient Persian sun god, while practicing religious toleration to the point of indifference. Now More was a devout Christian and a devoted reader of philosophy who could not and did not approve of these easy opinions and loose practices for a living polity. When then did he invent the fantasy? The answer is that his Utopia is a subtle and revealing exercise in delineating delightfully a community which might be good if human beings were natural rather than spiritual beings, if they had only enemies worse than themselves, if they had no pride and knew nothing of original sin. It is instructive to imagine the kind of community such people might have, and part of the instruction is the faint repulsion we are expected to feel at the lives of weightless beings who do not share the fallen condition of real human creatures. More gives the narrator and discoverer of the island a Greek name meaning the "Babbler;' Hythloday, but behind his babble stands the discerning imagination of the author. The word "utopia'' is, as a prefatory letter to Utopia explains, to be heard also in a second way. Utopia means 11 �not only "no-place,'' but also the ('good place;' eu-topia (as in "eulogi'). For, on the surface, life on the island, with its fifty square-walled hillside cities in which each house has a garden, cities watered by pure fresh rivers fronted by solid piers and spanned by splendid bridges, is secure, pleasant, and good. This second aspect of utopia comes to be preponderant in later utopias which are no longer half-ironic images, but real wish-projections, indulgences of the author's fancy; these are, for all their intended charm, slightly repellent, as imaginary spaces dominated by someone else's dreams of perfection always will be. A fine example of such latter-day utopias is William Morris's News from Nowhere, written at the end of the last century. This Victorian Nowhere takes place right in England, and instead of being unreachable in place it is inaccessible in time; it is set in the future, but a future shaped by Morris's nostalgia for a medieval past. It is in fact a pre-Raphaelite dream, a future to return to. (I might observe here that writers of utopias naturally always play with the two .necessary coordinates of reality, space and time, and, having more or less run out of uncharted lands on earth, they go to future times, and latterly to outer space; the first futuristic utopia is Mercier's Memoirs de !Jln 2440 of 1770.) The chief feature of this future-past is the achievement of a perfect integration of human beings and nature, a m,achineless but productive pastoral, in which work is pleasure. In fact one of the mild worries of the Nowhereans is that they may use up their share of work too quickly. Work is either of the type called "easy-hard;' namely, healthy outdoor labor, or it is craftsmanship. The country is gently and tolerantly anti-intellectual. Children may read books avidly if they must, but this bookwormish affliction is expected to disappear in maturity. Books were for a time when intelligent people could take no pleasure in life but had to rely on the imagination of others. The genuinely amusing work is housebuilding, gardening and producing craftsrnanlike objects. The N owhereans are uncompromisingly egalitarian and look back with a shudder at the old ways when machines were used for ordinary work while the intelligent elite followed the higher forms of art. Morris's Nowhere has in common with More's Utopia those features which seem to belong to the very nature of an imaginative polity: its life is somewhat subdued, pastel-colored, so to speak. Morris acknowledges that passionate extremities may suddenly intrude into the peaceful pastoral, but these are incidents to be quickly resolved. Evidently, when the imagination applies itself to shaping a perfected political community, it naturally excludes just those eruptions of human extraordinariness which are the chief occasions for grand art. And, of course, that makes good sense, since the utopian imagination means to impose a certain coherence of atmosphere, a pervasive communal tranquility which naturally excludes private outbursts. The political imagination can- 12 not help but bleach out the passions and contract the private sphere. Accordingly most utopias are communitarian: More's Utopia is a tightly organized, rather herdlike, communist republic. (At least one of its magistracies is an assimilation of an English office to Platds pig city: the lowest title is that of "sty-ward;' that is, steward.) Morris's Nowhere is an idyllic socialist anarchy, which is to say that there is really no political structure to speak of: all problems are regarded and solved as social problems. Again, the ways of utopia are apparently inevitably anti-philosophical, and this feature, too, lies in the nature of the genre, first, because the imagined city is often dreamed precisely in opposition to the harsh and difficult reasonings of the philosophers, and, second, because its idyllic internal life alleviates those human predicaments which give rise to troubled quests. Of course, something similar holds for religion: utopian religions are by and large exceedingly tranquil since the suffering which intensifies religious feeling has been eliminated. The inventor has, so to speak, pre-empted all the passion and has led his creatures into the promised land. Where the two utopias differ most fundamentally is in the attitude of their authors towards them. More himself appears in his book as the somewhat sceptical listener, and as author his stance is one of ironic delight. Morris, on the other hand, depicts himself as literally dreaming the dream in which he enters Now here, and, when he awakes from it, his heart is heavy with nostalgia for a time that never was. Most post-Morean utopias are, then, unironic political dreams, and the dream politics may consist precisely in dreaming of a community beyond politics. As political dreams, utopias are naturally shaped about the intimate preoccupations of their authors, and one among these is almost intrinsic to utopian imagining. Since utopian writers are themselves inventors and contrivers of human nature and human environments, their imaginations are particularly drawn to inventions and contrivances, in short to technology, which they see sometimes as a sinister spoiler and sometimes as the bright savior of political communities. There are then, first, the wholeheartedly optimistic utopias of technological process,-whoSe optimism can be either complexly serious or simple-mindedly shallow. Early in the seventeenth century Bacon wrote the first of the positive technological utopias, the New Atlantis. It is the prototype of a research polity. Its management is surrounded with slightly sinister mystifications, but Bacon's insider's awe before the human mastery of nature which is in the offing is palpable. In the early twentieth century, on the other hand, H. G. Wells wrote A Modern Utopia which lightheadedly celebrates an international technocracy, endlessly on the move but strictly controlled by an ascet~c elite called, infelicitously, the "Samurai." Morris's News from Nowhere was in fact one sort of reaction to utopian celebrations of technology, namely the WINTER 1985 �pastoral. But there is also a very different kind of antitechnological utopia, an imaginary community which is not a dream but a nightmare. This kind of anti-utopia is not an invention of modern times. Plato depicts such a place, the mythical island of Atlantis, whose image Bacon meant to correct in his New Atlantis. The old Atlantans are the ancient enemies of Athens, corrupt halfdescendants of Poseidon, the god of oceans and earthquakes and city walls. They inhabit a geometrically circular island surrounded by concentric ditches and built over with square castles with fantastically devised walls. These earthmovers keep elephants for bulldozers. Their island is amazing and awful. In this century the fear of a now successful technology, combined with the horror of totalitarian politics, gives rise to a new political image, an image of the perversion of the polis, namely a collective of isolated, terrorized, technologically manipulated, lost souls. By the middle of our century the number of published utopias stood at about two hundred and fifty, and the most serious of these belonged to the new type, which was labelled "dystopia" or "bad-place."The most famous of these are Aldous Huxley's Brave New World, which imagines an England genetically manipulated and controlled by an orgiastic drug, and George Orwell's 1984, published in 1949, which imagines a thoroughgoing totalitarianism in which privacy has become a persecuted political sin: there is no sanctuary from Big Brother's spying eye. 1984 has come and gone. Decades have passed since · the publication of 1984 and "dystopia' has not been realized, at least not in the West. It seems to me that the dystopias themselves have had a small but effective part in this blessed fact, perhaps primarily by causing intellectuals, whose political imaginations are notoriously weak, to imagine terror and to learn to cherish what political blessings they have. Indeed the type of dystopia cannot help but be in general more effective than eutopia, because while eutopias are intimate hopes to which an author tries to win converts, dystopias are projections of real, fearful possibilities to which the author tries to open the world's eyes. But while it is in general the case that utopias have had minimal political effect, there is a small scale exception to this observation. In the nineteenth century ther.e flourished in this country, in the New World where Thomas More and Francis Bacon had once located their utopias, scores of utopian communities. There were not, of course, utopias exactly in my sense, both because they were not, strictly speaking, independent political communities- they had the American Republic as their political ground- and because they were not imaginary but very much flesh and blood. Yet they were usually based on utopian blueprints, such as those devised by Owen, Fourier, Cabet. Most of these realized dreams were brief; many ended in disaster. In fact, the more suc- as I mentioned, the latter were usually rather insipidly religious. Before concluding the section about utopias, I should say that, once the utopian genre had become established, it was used to clothe with imagined shapes all sorts of notions and speculations. There are, for instance, cosmological utopias in which the community mirrors a hypothesis of the heavens, psychological utopias which embody a theory of human control, and ideological utopias based on issues such as feminism or ecology. The genre is irrepressible. Yet, a short generation ago, utopia was declared dead. It had been discredited too long and in too many ways: in the nineteenth century by the failures of its many attempted realizations, and, more severely, by the Marxist attack mounted against "utopian" socialism in behalf of"scientific" historic principles of revolutionary develop- ment. Utopias are but small-scale editions of the New Jerusalem, the Communist Manifesto says sarcastically. Thus in our century its decline has been mourned; bloodied by the Marxist critique, it was said to have been killed off by that political pessimism which caused utopia to be displaced by dystopia. But these reports of utopias demise are premature. The genre is, as I said, irrepres- sible. Although the best known recent utopias are rational constructs, (for example Nozick's libertarian utopia), romantic, imaginative utopias continue to be written, and even the founding of utopian communities still goes on. Prolific as the utopian genre is and, no doubt, will continue to be, it has not, I have argued, and it cannot have, much political potency. The reason is inherent in its origin in the wishful imagination. That makes utopias finally rather private, even idiosyncratic, and certainly ungeneralizable constructions. The products of the imagination stand each alone; it is only the intellect which can discover universals. And therefore, even when there is wide-spread utopian activity, it cannot have the unity or coherence of an intellectual movement. Utopian visions do not reinforce one another, nor dm one imagine utopian politics arising except under the aegis of a political framework based on more universal principles, as was the case for the utopian communities in the United States. That is not to say that utopian activity is not, just in itself, therapeutic and vivifying. However, an activity which matters as an activity, rather than because of its content, is precisely what we call play, and, in the last analysis, that is what utopianism is: the imagination at play, as irrepressible and as salutary as play is a political recreation. I want to conclude by mentioning a role the imagination plays in politics in which it is not so spontaneously inventive as in the construction of imaginary com- munities, but perhaps correspondingly more powerful. cessful and long-lived settlements were usually religious I mean its role as imaginative memory, which contains our common past and our common beliefs. Most people, citizens and politicians, who love their country have a foundations and not primarily social or political utopias; vision compounded of its founding myths, its pristine THE ST. JOHN'S REVIEW 13 �principles and its historical high-points, which at crucial moments informs their political action. This vision is precisely not utopian because it is not inherently nowhere; on the contrary it is the ideal behind the here and now, the potent, practical image of a living political community. II. Censorship When a strong imagination becomes productive and by means of an adequate technique realizes it works for their own sake, its products are works of art. Such works in turn affect and shape the imagination of others. Thus art, intentionally or unintentionally, enters politics in- sofar as politics is the sphere of concern with the community as a whole. Now I have argued that communities are powerless to elicit the art which seems to them to preserve and is its worth in itself, apart from rewards?" Next it is decided that justice is better investigated "writ large." That is to say, instead of searching for justice in its original seat, the human being, the interlocutors will construct a perfectly just political community and then articulate the meaning of justice. Several books are devoted to the developmental stages of this city which correspond to the progressively higher parts of the soul as Socrates discerns them. The high point of the construction occurs right in the middle books, the fifth and sixth. It consists first in the scandalous notion that the governors of the city, corresponding as they do to the rational part of the soul, should be philosophers, and then in the detailed description of the philosophical education of these philosopher kings. There follows an account of the stages of decline and fall such a city is subject to and their causes in the souls of the citizens. The Republic ends with a cosmic myth displaying an answer to the question whether justice is a worth in itself. The imagination and its works are discussed twice: strengthen them, for the productive imagination is simply not at their disposal. Communities can do but one thing directly and effectively: they can proscribe aberrant artists and their art. The classical justification for the control of works of the imagination is to be found in Plato's dialogue The Republic, written in the earlier fourth century B.C. It is on the way to the perfect city (Books II-III) and again, symmetrically, after its fall (Book X). This last treatment is the most radical and most fundamental attack on imagining and on art that I know of. It could only make sense where it occurs, namely, after the philosophical educa- a twelve-hour-long conversation mainly between Socrates is explicitly founded on a view of our world as being but an image of true being; indeed the whole realm of things present to us is a hierarchy of images from shadows and mirror images through the natural objects which they copy and which are in turn only images of their ideal originals. Accordingly, the education of the guardians of the city begins by turning the "bringing-up" of the young into a "bringing-around" (the Greek words are agoge and peri-agoge), by wrenching them away from absorption in the multitude of seemingly vivid images to those unique, substantial thought-originals which will teach them to keep the city harmonious and unified. In the light of this philosophical understanding of the world, image-making in general is a distracting and falsifying and Plato's two brothers. In the course of it, they find occasion for devising a small political community such as the Greeks called a polis, a city. (In Greek the dialogue is actually called Politeia, meaning "political framework;' or "city-constitution.") I should point out here that the city of Plato's Republic is not strictly a utopia. To be sure, it too is "nowhere" on earth; Socrates refers to it as a "pattern laid up in heaven:' (In fact, Plato wrote another work containing a "second-string" constitution meant more for practical application.) But the city of the Republic differs from a utopia in not being an imagined place; indeed, it is severely lacking in imagined detail. It is rather, as Socrates says, tion of the governors has been set out, for this education a city "in reason:' an intellectual construct. One of activity. Since visual images are the exemplary images, Thomas More's friends, who recognized Utopia as being in a kind of respectful competition with the Republic, made just this point in his prefatory poems: Plato's city, he says, is a philosophical invention and full of philosophy Socrates attacks particularly painters and, by implication, sculptors. One may well ask what possible political harm could be done, for instance, by the Parthenon frieze, a severely choreographed depiction of the sacred procession celebrating the goddess of the city of Athens, in which human beings are shown in decorous beauty and the gods, reverently depicted a little larger than men, watch graciously from Olympus. The answer is that Socrates is here attacking not the subject or style of any art, but art itself as diverting the attention by a procession of images from those self-same unities of thought whose contemplation keeps a community whole. It is necessary to say that this radical proscription of while N a-place, its successful rival, embodies its philosophy in an unphilosophical way (namely, as a fleshand-blood fiction). The case must be put more strongly. Not only is the city of Republic not a city of the imagination, but its very building is framed by two massive and deep attacks on all works of the imagination and on the imagination itself. In Platonic dialogues where a point is made often determines its interpretation, so let me give a rapid sketch of the structure of the work, which is, in fact, rather strictly symmetrical. There are ten books. In the first of these are brought out the depths and the difficulties of the controlling question: "What is justice and what 14 the imagination is to be taken in its context. Socrates himself is, as I have mentioned, about to launch into the telling of a magnificent myth, a huge and brilliant cosmic image. The attack on the imagination is intended seri- WINTER 1985 �ously enough within the intellectual exercise he and Plato's brothers are engaged in: the thinking out of a city which would realize a philosopher's understanding of the human soul and which would therefore be safe for philosophy. But it is not, I think, meant for practical political implementation. The censorship which is closer to possible political practice is the one discussed earlier in the dialogue, at the beginning of the building of the city, in connection with the upbringing of the children. Socrates, first and last, aims at the epic poetry of Homer-a bold and scan· dalous attempt, since the Homeric poems were the great primers of Greek education. What Socrates blames Homer for is primarily the portrait of the gods to which he has accustomed the Greeks: they are lustful, quarrel- Plato thinks that it will stimulate and excite them and lead to boisterousness followed by lassitude in the citizens. Plato's Socrates deems the arts politically indigestible. The second remarkable fact is that the problems Socrates raises are very much our own. It is, for exam- ple, a much debated problem of our time whether the images children see affect their behavior and whether the shows they watch work their feelings off or work them up. Similarly some of us wonder what the social effects of our popular modes of music and dancing really are: How, to try a comical experiment of the imagination, would our public life change if we made every seven-year· old learn to dance the minuet? So the Socratic problems are much alive even if his solutions are out of tune with our society. some, unstable, mendacious, and unjust-a fact, inciden- Plato's Republic has been seen as a prototype of tally, to delight and puzzle a post-Christian reader. Fur· totalitarianism, for several reasons; because Socrates' intellectual exercise has been mistaken for a practical proposal, because Socrates' city is not a democracy (as if no thermore, the Homeric heroes are indecently woebegone and fearful of death; both gods and men are intemperate in laughing and weeping. The tragedians are attacked in addition for the very form of their poetry: its dramatic format requires the actors to do all but turn themselves into the person of the drama and so to lose their dignity and selfhood in histrionics. All these productions are to be banished from the city. Music too is to be purged of all those modes which are not tonic but relax and slacken the soul. What is left are tales of human excellence and reverent hymns. This precisely delineated call for a civic censorship of the form and content of the arts may not seem to be so radical as that subsequent attack on the imagination itself which I have just summarized. Yet that is not really the case, for what Socrates here criticizes about the arts is what it is in their very nature to be and to do: they absorb and inform the participant; they are concerned with what is human-all-too-human even when imaging the divinities; and above all, they burst the bounds of tranquil dailiness in depicting what is extreme, ex- cruciating, and passionate. The subdued decorum that dominates utopias and that Socrates too recognizes as a condition of civic tranquility is rarely .a cause of a theme or a characteristic of art. These arguments for political control of the arts are above all remarkable in that they constitute a testimonial to the knowledgeable seriousness with which Plato and his Socrates take the arts (although they make little of the artist himself). They share this attitude with their fellow Greeks. For example, the public importance of music, the power of its various modes to dispose the soul and shape the schemata of the body, was recognized throughout the Greek cities, where music and dance were part of the city's life. Thus Aristotle ends his great book on politics with a disquisition about the function of the decent third possibility between totalitarianism and democracy was thinkable), but- most weightily- just because of those censorship provisions we are discussing. Totalitarian states do, of course, have censorship of the arts-and all sorts of other censorship Socrates never proposes. I shall very briefly sketch the nature of the cen· sorship practiced in the two chief totalitarian states of our century to show how utterly different it is from the classical case. I mean, of course, Nazi Germany and the Soviet Union. The two cases differ in one important way: Nazi censorship appears to have been devoid of articulable ra· tional foundations, and appealed instead to misty but emotion-loaded semi-ideas and watchwords, while Soviet censorship is rigidly based on an ideological frame, shift· ing only as the Central Committee of the Communist Party declares changes in interpretation. The documents of both are scoldingly rancorous and brutally threaten· ing toward offending artists, although the Nazi literature on censorship exceeds the Soviet documents in a vulgarity that is scarcely communicable in English. The human plane of either is simply incommensurable with Socrates' gently ironic proposal to anoint and crown the poets and politely speed them on their way to another city. I should mention that the previous observation con· cerning the inability of states to engender art is borne out by the censorship literature itself: there are con· tinuous small-voiced complaints that politically pure art of real stature which is to replace the censored art has failed to appear. The explicit object of Nazi censorship was to purge the arts of all elements not conducive to readiness for sacrifice, obedience to Adolf Hitler, and the submersion of the self in the totality, the State, the Race. For this musical modes in citizen training. What is peculiar to last purpose a new subject, called "race-style-science, Plato, and where he differs from Aristotle, is his view of the effect of very intense experiences on the soul. While Aristotle supposes that attendance at a tragic performance will work a purgation and transformation of the passions, (Rassenstilkunde) was invented, and Nazi estheticians debated whether the tango or the minor mode or chamber music might be admitted as Germanic while proscribing atonal music for its rootless intellectualism and in· THE ST. JOHN'S REVIEW 15 �ternationally popular hits for their supra-national cosmopolitanism. Effeminacy, decadence and the Jewish spirit were to be rooted out in all the arts. Bookstores were required to remove proscribed books on pain of being blacklisted. Of course the most notorious early act of censorship was the government-supported book burning of 1933. As the books were consigned to the flames a speaking chorus of brownshirted students would call such lines as "For discipline and morality in Family and State I give to the flame the writings of .. :• and supply the name of the blacklisted authors, mostly novelists. As for Soviet censorship, Lenin set the tone long before the revolution by proclaiming that all literature is party-literature, and that literature is not an individual concern but belongs to the proletariat: "Down with nonpartisan literature, down with literary supermen." The creation of art was to be organized, for art is, above all, the organization of the emotions of persons, groups, classes, nations. Stalin later summarized this view in a politics. A totalitarian state is, or means to be, a different whole than is a Greek city, whether it philosophical or actual. The former is, so to speak, an embodied abstraction which attempts to pervade life totally from the top down and absorbs rather than bonds its individual elements; strictly speaking, its relations are not political at all because they are that of an amalgam or a collective and not of persons. Its censorship tries to reinforce this condition: the aim is not, as in the Socratic city, to shape self-possessed citizens, but to meld a people into a fervent mass. The third point of difference lies in the contrasting conceptions of the virtues that the arts are to be made to instill. To cite just the Nazi list of affirmations as revealed in the watchwords recurring incessantly in the marching songs which were the most voluminous pro- duct of the revised arts: loyalty, obedience, flag, flame, race, blood, bullet, drum, submission and the love of death. Compare to these the virtues of Socrates' citizens: much quoted phrase to the effect that writers are the engineers of the human soul. In 1920 Lenin sketched out resolutions for Proletkult, the bureaucracy in charge of the new proletarian culture: there are, he said, to be no new and special ideas but the traditional culture is rather to be appropriated by Marxist ideology. There are manifestos stating that the working class has the leadership in literature; fellow travellers may be tolerated for their expertise in technique, but all appearances of courage stemming from a knowledge of what is truly to be feared, temperance understood as a proper selfadjustment of the soul, justice interpreted as a knowledge counter-revolutionary ideas are to be ruthlessly concern with controlling and even excluding some arts eradicated. Under Stalin followed attacks (which have, incidentally, been lately revived) against formalism or so-called abstract art, for example, in behalf of socialist realism. Socialist realism demands that art always display a proud and life-affirming optimism, while works with for the sake of its own integrity. For these cities a decent of one's proper part in the community, and wisdom to be attained in the course of a long effort of learning. The object of this comparison of obnoxious totalitarian and benign Socratic censorship is to point out what it seems to me we sometimes forget: that a cer- tain kind of political community may have a defensible censorship is conceivable, and Socrates initiates the living people a dogmatic pseudo-myth of race or an discussion of its rationale. A prime example of such a debate in more modern times is the open letter, published in 1758, whichJeanJacques Rousseau sent to d' Alembert in response to his article in the Encyclopidie advising the Republic of Geneva to establish a theatre. Rousseau wrote as a citizen of this small republic, and his chief argument, which was directly influenced by Plato's Republic, is that such an alien and sophisticated amusement will undermine the simple and close communal life of the no edifying content, which divorce art from socialist truth, are declared undesirable. Now let me point out the elements in which Socratic censorship differs from totalitarian censorship. First, whereas the totalitarian censorship enforces on ideology of class, Socrates proposes his constraints on the Genevans. Rousseau, like Socrates, recognized an ir- poets as a philosophical exercise, a possibility to be considered on the basis of an ever-renewable inquiry into reconcilable conflict between the arts and the political community, a conflict perhaps less deep but correspond- the conditions of a political community; the issue is, ingly more extensive in ffiodern times when the drama is no longer a great sacred public occasion but a mere amusement. For it is just such a diversion which by its agile worldliness, its artful excitations and its isolating therefore, not this or that work or style, but the very nature of art and its relation to communal life. The Socratic attack on poetry is far more radical in thought and far less disruptive in deed than totalitarian censorship. Second, there is a deep difference between a totalitarian state and a political community in Socrates' sense. In the former the dubious bond of race or class if considered to underlie, precede and supercede the relations of individuals, while the very device on which Socrates builds his city, namely that of a soul writ large, displays his assumption that a city is ultimately shaped and determined by the souls within it, and that the political bond is one of individuals: "psychology" precedes 16 spectatorship may loosen the bonds of a small community. What then about censorship of the arts in our own political community, in a national representative democracy? It seems to me that it has no place whatsoever with us. Indeed it is a dead, or at least a dormant, issue (except with respect to pornography; and acknowledged pornography, which is for the sali.e of sexual arousal, does not come under my definition of art as a product of the imagination which is not primarily an instrument of anything). As its censoring role in the arts ought to be nil, so the government's positive function can be only WINTER 1985 �minimal. It can and should encourage the arts in general, for example, by modest funding, but it can never rightly make itself responsible for furthering a specifically communal, a truly political, art. In short, the proper attitude American republic had been formed, and formed in conscious contrast to the classical model. In an ancient city the primary bond is the political bond, and public life is not only a means to human fulfillment but its very end. of democratic governments to art seems to be friendly tolerance or supportive indifference. How can it be that an intense and critical relation The modern model, however, interposes between private and political life a social realm, "society;' a word of far between politics and the arts is justifiable in classical com- tween the individual and a determinate ideal whole, more weight with us than politics. Political bonds are be- munities while in our democracy a loose and tolerant namely the laws, traditions and public spaces of the relation is required? The answer seems to me to lie in the change of meaning both terms, politics and art, underwent in the century just before the founding of the American Republic. Let me briefly outline the related changes without attempting to articulate their deep common root. First, the notion of Art. I have been using the word as if its connotations for us were the same as in the classical context- misleadingly, for just about the time this country was founded there came to a climax a development which transformed the meaning of the term. Its original unpretentious sense was that of craft, of knowhow, of the ability to manage and produce objects of all sorts. In the later eighteenth century the notion of a "pure art work" came to the fore. Such a work of art was thought to originate in the independent esthetic realm of the radically free imagination, a world not bound to ordinary given reality, a world of free play and autonomous illusion. Correlatively the craftsman was elevated into the ''Artist;' the godlike creator of this world, a genius, an extraordinary being. And instead of the work of art as a skillfully made object there arose ''Art" simply, namely, that specially precious class of objects which is the product of the artist's absolutely self-determined imagination. Naturally this new artist claimed great authority for himself and his imaginative realm. The German poet Schiller, for instance, proposed that the problems of politics could be solved if mankind were given an "esthetic education;' so that human beings might live in the mode of an artist, by the free play of the imagination (though without themselves producing art). But although the artist's claim becomes one of universal human authority, it is not hard to see that this new understanding makes art essentially private. The final source and the final arbiter not only for the form, but, above all, for the matter of his products is the artist's own solitary imagination; such works of private creation are not made to be put in the service of the community and its divinities- the artist would consider anathema any attempt at control (as, for example, the ordinance of the Second Council of Nicea proclaiming that the substance of religious scenes is not left to the initiative of the craftsman but that the craft alone belongs to the painter). So just as the American republic was born, art became an essentially personal enterprise, and the artistic mode came to be privately over-valued and, with good cause, publicly ignored. In a parallel development that conception of a political community which was to underlie the formation of the community. Social relations, on the other hand, are between individual and individual; society as a whole is an indeterminate abstraction. It is in terms of social rela- THE ST. JOHN'S REVIEW tions that the bulk of our life, and especially our religious life, takes place. Accordingly, the political sphere is not, for most of us, the place of our fulfillment. It is rather reduced to administration, that is to say, to essentially negative governmental functions which are meant precisely to protect the private and social realms from disturbance and intrusion. A political sphere which is so restricted and which is, by a special provision of the constitution, devoid of any legitimate religious dimension, is not naturally going to give rise to a very exten- sive or elevating art- though such a thing is not impossible: the major speeches of Abraham Lincoln constitute a political art of real grandeur. But while we may always hope for more such works, especially for a renewal of great political rhetoric, we scarcely expect it. John Dewey, for example, who is, after all, the proponent par excellence of a democratic fulfillment of life, wrote a book called Art ar Experience, devoted to bringing art back from the estheticism I described before into ordinary life. But he never remotely considers the possibility of a public art celebrating our free political institutions. For him, art belongs altogether to the social realm. Of course, the fact that our art is rarely political does not mean that it cannot be thoroughly and characteristically democratic and American. Tocqueville, after whom this forum is named, foresaw in 1835, with marvelous acuity, what the sources of poetry in a democratic land might be: how when faith in positive religion is shaken the idea of providence and historical destiny assumes a more imposing appearance; how when life is crowded with petty business the march of the American people across the continent subduing nature on the way is invested with special romance; how the democratic poet concentrates more on passions and ideas than on con- crete individual men, always looking to the inner soul- in short how American poetry is suspended between grand massive movements and the most private passions of men. Is this not a near-perfect anticipation of Walt Whitman? Yet ohe would not claim that Whitman played the role in America that the tragedians, say, played in Athens. He is the poet of America as a democracy rather than as a republic; he celebrates a social rather than a political fellowship. To conclude. If the privatization of art and the socialization of politics cut the ground from under a com- 17 �munal art, is there then no public place left for the arts? Not so. I have been speaking of politics in the largest sense, meaning the national political community. But in this country the actual business of life is largely carried on in the cities, and it is in the cities that a civic life in the fulfilling, antique, sense is to be found. The cities too are the natural seats of the arts, because they are the communities in which the arts are cherished and in which the artists flourish, and so it is the cities which have the symphony halls, the art centers and the theatres. Therefore, it is in the cities that the arts and civic life still intersect, and here too those classical dilemmas concerning the divergences of the judgment of the citizen and the imagination of the artist may on occasion come to life. BIBLIOGRAPHY Aristotle, Politics (second half, fourth century B.C.) Basalla, George, "Science and the city before the nineteenth century;' Transformation and Tmdition in the Sciences, Cambridge 1984 Denney, Reuel, The Astonished Muse, Popular Culture in America, Chicago 1957 Die Deutsche Literatur im Dritten Reich, ed. H. Denkler and K. Pruemm, Stuttgart 1976 Dewey, John, Art as Experience (1934), New York 1980 Documents on Germany under Occupation 1945-54, ed. Beate Ruhm von Oppen, Oxford 1955 18 Fehl, Philipp, "Gods and Men in the Parthenon Frieze;' The Parthenon, New York 1974 Gadamer, Hans-Georg, Truth and Method, New York 1975 Holloway, Mark, Heavens on Earth, Utopian Communities in America 1680-1880, New York 1966 Hume, David, "Of the Rise and Progress of the Arts and Sciences;' (mid-eighteenth century) Jaspers, Karl, Man in the Modern Age (1931), New York 1957 Literatur und Dichtung im Dritten Reich, Documents, ed. Joseph Wulf, Rowohlt 1966 Manuel, Frank E. and Fritzie P., Utopian Thought in the Western World, Cambridge 1977 McMullen, Roy, Art, Ajfluence and Alienation, The Fine Arts Today, New York 1969 More, Thomas, Utopia (1516), The Penguin edition, 1976, has an appendix on "More's Attitude to Communism" Morris, William, News from Nowhere (1890) Morrow, Glenn P., Plato's Cretan City, Princeton 1960 Musik im Dritten Reich, Documents, ed. Joseph Wulf, Rowohlt 1966 Nozick, Robert, Anarchy, State and Utopia, New York 1974 Plato, Critias, Laws, Republic (first half, fourth century B.C.) Plato, 10talitarian or Democrat? ed. T. L. Thorson, Englewood Cliffs 1963 Rousseau, Jean:Jacques, Politics and the Arts, Letter toM. D:Alembert on the Theatre,· trans. Allan Bloom, Glencoe 1960 Sennett, Richard, The Fall of Public Man, New York 1977 Schiller, Friedrich, Concerning the Esthetic Education of Mankind, m a Series of Letters (1795) Shelley, Percy Bysshe, A Difmse of Poetry (1821) Die Sowjetphilosophie, Wendigkeit und Bestimmtheit, Documents, ed. Wilhelm Goerdt, Darmstadt 1967 Theories of Education in Early America, 1655-1819, ed. Wilson Smith, Indianapolis 1973 Tocqueville, Alexis de, Democracy in America (1835) Utopias and Utopian Thought, A Timely Appraisal, ed. Frank E. Manuel, Boston 1967 Der Utopische Roman, ed. R. Villgradter and F. Krey, Darmstadt 1973 WINTER 1985 �Five From The Old Testament Jacob This sequence is from a forthcoming book of poems based on Old Testament figures. 'Gideon' has previously appeared in Shirim, 'Aaron' in Kansas Quarterly. I crossed the river feeling for sink- holes with a crooked staff and a blind man crying "Thief1 Thief1" while my brother wept, the beggar, hungry as a hunter. He is coming to meet me. The desert trembles, he is still too far away for me to see his hands. Angels camp at the Jabbok ford. I have offered him everything I ownnothing I claim is mine by right, All I keep is the blessing I stole. J. Kates, widely published as a poet, is currently writing a novel about the civil rights movement. Kates lives in Jaffrey, New Hampshire. Who are you, dressed like my brother Esau, straining in my smooth arms, begging me to let you go? for Peter ]. Kates THE ST. JOHN'S REVIEW 19 �Aaron Samson He has stones between his teeth. Lisping, spluttering, stuttering, the words of freedom fall out of his mouth like broken nutshells, admonitions and commandments like the cracked pits of luscious fruit. I dropped like an empty bucket into her bed. Three times I tried, three times failed the test; I had not guessed my own riddle. He can do anything with his arms, he has only to lift thembut his fingers are too subtle, rebellious, fluttering like his tongue, afraid to touch what moves suddenly. Who you are and why you come to lead me in my traces like a mill- ox mashing the dull chaff under my bare feet I know, my boy, He has held his staff over his head conducting God's glory, opening passage through the water, wells in the desert; I have bent down to pluck it writhing out of the dust. I am not so stupid as you think. Your hair will grow, your beard thicken and you will find some comfort in the arms of women. From private gold I fashion public images, talking all the time. I do tricks to distract the multitudes while he stumbles up the mountainside alone and returns shimmering, speechless. J 20 A man who has never known sweetness in his belly grows sick of strength, of swinging a dry bone. J Kates Kates WINTER 1985 �Saul Gideon Once I towered over the best of my tribe. When I walked out, even on trivial errands, men who were thinking of kings whispered my name. While I was threshing wheat behind the winepress and keeping secret, he said to me, If I can strike fire from the rock I will make a man of valor out of you. ·The force of my arm drove all enemies down. Now I lift my left hand only with trouble, the right drums like five fools on the table. My sons are treacherous archers who shoot deliberately to miss the target. All this was done with words like a stick against the flesh, nothing but noises dashed against each other to let the light shine through. There is an empty seat, a gap in the company, a missing tooth throbbing in my jaw. Where is the young hero who should be here, the lad who would swagger out against giants? Have I withered to a mote in his eye now that the oil is dried? An old man can shit, can sleep, be pitied So I went against the dumb thing of Midian with ten men only like a small stand of flaming trees, and we cast it down into its silence. We are a division of the god of number. As the man is, so is strength multiplied by the trumpet of his speech and the silence of the fearful. because he is harmless, a king of wandering asses. An old man can fling a spear at a hole and watch it quiver in the mud wall J Kates but miss the music he needs to lull him into the morning. And also the song King David sang sh'ivering in the arms of Abishag. ]. Kates THE ST. JOHN'S REVIEW 21 �James Joyce's Soul Joseph Engelberg piece of writing becomes a work of art when it is rich in meaning, when it embodies level upon level of understanding. As in an archaeological investigation a hierarchy of artifacts waits to be uncovered: the equivalent of bits of doth and shards of pottery; jewelry and pots; murals and statues; rooms and houses; streets and cities; etc. Nabokm.t 1 enjoins us not to overlook in the archaeology of any literary masterpiece the beauty and greatness which can reside at the lowest level: in the details, the literary shards and bits. This is a wise admonition, but an unnecessary one for scholars of James Joyce. Much of their scholarship justly celebrates Joyce's magnificient and suggestive detail. There are, however, also in his works higher levels which await contemplation. Indeed, at the level of joyce's entire opus there lies a theme which overarches all his works. It is the subject of this essay. The story of any human life is the story of an awakening and of a falling asleep: an emergence out of unconsciousness into consciousness (paralleling the rise of consciousness in biological evolution), followed by a descent into unconsciousness and extinction. The works of James Joyce, followed chronologically, retrace this cosmic scheme. 2 Against the panorama of a civilization Joyce depicts the birth, travail, and decline of a soul. It is the story of Stephen Dedalus' soul, but it may as well be the story of Joyce's soul, or of the soul of our time. A Joseph Engelberg teaches Physiology and Biophysics at the Albert B. Chandler Medical Center of the University of Kentucky. 22 The Soul For millenia the word "soul," a word rich in connotation, was common in our civilization. It was in use as much in common life as in the most refined works of literature and religion. Then recently- suddenly- it disappeared from our midst. Why did it leave? Had we become so old and wise as to no longer need words from our spiritual childhood? Had the word "soul" become meaningless and superfluous like the word "protoplasm" in biology, "phlogiston" in chemistry, and "humor" in medicine? Had mankind begun to conceive of the human being as a machine, lacking any meaning beyond that of a bag of parts- hearts, kidneys, livers, lungs: its destiny to rust out and end on a scrap heap? What might be meant by the word "soul"? When we remember someone we may recollect some characteristic part of the body, perhaps the hands or face; some disposition of the body, such as the gait, gesture, or posture; some aspect of the inner self, such as mind, intelligence, emotion, superego, unconscious, character. But each of these is but a fragment of one's being, and "soul" does not refer to any one of them. "Soul" may be said to stand for the undivided, unitary, integrative essence of a person. That is why we cannot specify where in the body the soul resides, or what its mass and chemical composition are. Like any attribute of an entire systempopulation size, gross national product, entropy, volume,- it cannot be localized within the system. The "soul" represeJ?.tS a unity. Yet it -is not selfcontained. It is embedded in, and draws its life from family, friends, and society; from those that have lived, live now, and are yet to live; from history, tradition, and cosmos. To these the soul is connected by a myriad of bonds- the greater their number and variety, the greater its vitality, vibrancy, solidity and extension. WINTER 1985 �Should some of the bonds be cut the soul loses size and strength, and when many bonds are severed, it shrinks, becomes vestigial; the body remains, but consciousness recedes. The organism withdraws from existence and gravitates towards automatism, somnolence, sleep, unconsciousness, extinction. The body may be the first to fail, and, failing, carry the soul to its destruction. But the destruction of the soul can precede that of the body. When isolated from the influences which nurture it and give it life, the soul atrophies, leaving behind an abandoned body adrift towards a physical doom. Stephen Dedalus' Soul What the scientific instrument is to the student of nature, the work of art is to the student of human existence. It makes visible what is invisible to the naked eye. James Joyce's trilogy, A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man, Ulysses, and Finnegans Wake, is such an instrument, such a work of art. It can be likened to the vast mirror in a telescope, which collects and focuses a myriad of subliminal light impulses, enabling the eye to penetrate the reaches of the macrocosm. Joyce's trilogy brings together the subliminal impulses of a civilization. It is an instrument with which one can probe the microcosm: the soul of modern (post-enlightenment) man. The Portrait opens with the first stirrings of consciousness, the awakening of a soul from a deep, cosmological sleep. This consciousness unfolds; it culminates in the person of Stephen Dedalus. In scenes of Stephen's childhood in the Portrait, the word "soul" can scarcely be found. It is in descriptions of his adolescent years that it makes a frequent appearance. 3 Whenever the adolescent Stephen falls into an introspective mood, the word "soul" is likely to appear in his musings. Where was his boyhood now? Where was the soul that had hung back from her destiny, to brood alone upon the shame of her wounds and in her house of squalor and subterfuge to queen it in faded cerements and in wreaths that withered at the touch? 4 before him, that the more scrupulously he tries to satisfy the demands of his faith, the more he sins. He is disillusioned; he falls; he breaks with his religion. It is the first of a series of sunderings from the formative influences of his life. Thereafter the word "soul" appears less and less frequently in the text. The story of the unfolding of Stephen's consciousness is one of anguish and bitterness. It portrays his relentless struggle against the mass of social, moral, and intellectual traditions which limit his existence. He feels trapped in a tangle of family and friends, the Dublin social order, Jesuit education, the Roman Church, Irish history and nationalism, bourgeois values, heroic ideals, British political and cultural ascendancy. From early childhood on Stephen finds himself entangled in this thicket of disparate and conflicting influences thrust upon him by society. He strives with the ardor of genius, and in the light of a gifted imagination, to reconcile them. He fails. Later, at the height of perplexity and despair, he is graced at the seashore by a revelation which begins to lead him out of the mist of questions, conflicts, and introspective confusion in which he had been enveloped since childhood• It is a liberating vision yielding him the understanding that reconciliation is impossible, that incommensurables cannot be reconciled, that there is a higher sphere to which he must rise. What he cannot reconcile he will abandon. One by one he cuts the bonds which tie him to society, country, religion, tradition, friends, family. In a release of emotions long dammed he feels his being affirmed; in the agitation of a newly-found freedom he sets out to recreate the world. The Portrait ends on a heroic note. "He would create proudly out of the freedom and power of his soul ... a living thing, new soaring and beautiful, impalpable, imperishable ... To live, to err, to fall, to triumph, to recreate lifE: out oflife! ... Welcome, 0 life! I go to encounter for the millionth time the reality of experience and to forge in the smithy of my soul the uncreated conscience of my race. 6 Somnolence "Soul" appears some 170 times in the Portrait. Where it appears it represents some emotion-laden, deep, inward experience. Her image had passed into his soul forever and no word had broken the holy silence of his ecstasy. Her eyes had called him, and his soul had leaped at the call. 5 The use of the word reaches a crescendo in the descriptions of a series of sermons on salvation, sin, and hellfire preached by a priest in school at Eastertime. The sermons, and the ambience of the season, serve to raise Stephen to the level of religious exaltation. He enters upon a period of piety, but finds, as did Saul of Tarsus THE ST. JOHN'S REVIEW At the conclusion of the Portrait, as we have seen, Stephen is about to go forth to triumphantly forge the conscience of his race. Joyce's next work, Ulysses, takes up the story two years hence. It centers on a trinity of persons: Stephen Dedalus, Leopold Bloom, and Molly Bloom. The Portrait had led us to expect to find the hammerblows of heroic creation. This expectation is unfulfilled. Ulysses opens on an early morning with a feeble, drowsy Stephen in his temporary domicile, the Martello tower at Dalkey near Dublin.' Stephen Dedalus, displeased and sleepy, leaned his arms on the top of the staircase ... B 23 �Later that morning he is at Mr. Deasy's school, where he languidly and dreamily performs the functions of an assistant teacher, a job which he is about to abandon. In the afternoon he defends an abstruse doctrine in the National Library, and in the evening he carouses with medical students in a hospital. Midnight finds him in a brothel, drunk and hallucinating. Later, as the night draws to a close, bucked up by a cup of coffee and a stale roll, tired but sober after a long walk through the deserted Dublin streets and a visit to an acquaintance's house, he seeks a place to sleep. Ulysses appears to gravitate towards sleep. As it draws to a close, it is not Stephen alone who seeks rest: all the major characters are preparing their entrance into the world of dreams. The last chapters portray Stephen's journey towards sleep, the ruminations of Leopold Bloom as he prepares for bed, and the stream-of-consciousness of Bloom's wife Molly, who, in bed, in a state suspended between wakefulness and sleep, reminisces upon the events of her life and the day just past. It is the end of a long, wearying day, and one would not attach great significance to all this turning to sleep were it not for the fact that Joyce's next work, Finnegans Wake, to which he devoted eighteen of the last twenty years of his life, is set entirely in the world of sleep, dreams, and phantasmagoric language. In all this, far from the smithy in which an uncreated conscience is to be forged, it is a drowsy, listless, passive, vulnerable, defenseless, diffident, defeated Stephen we find- a Stephen unequal to the onslaught of life; a Stephen in retreat, sunk into himself, detached from those he encounters, acted upon by circumstances but incapable of acting. The Fading of Consciousness Joyce died January 13, 1941, some 24 months after the publication of Finnegans Wake. In his works he systematically traced the rise of a human soul to the very heights of consciousness, and then its subsequent descent into torpor and sleep. Had Joyce lived to write another work, what might have been the next step in this soul's journey? Might the oblivion of sleep been succeeded by the oblivion of death, leaving behind a universe devoid of consciousness-as it eXisted before humankind made its appearance on earth? It is said that Joyce was planning another work which was to have as its setting the Sea. 9 Had this work been completed, Joyce's opus would have retraced on the scale of a humble city, Dublin, the cosmic drama of the birth and rise of consciousness, and its decline into unconsciousness- the Portrait being the story of the coming to life of a human soul; Ulysses, a journey towards sleep; Finnegans Wake, the world of sleep; Joyce's projected last work, unconscious nature. The goal of life, according to Freud, is death ( cf. Beyond the Pleasure 24 Principle). Joyce's imagination appears to have gravitated towards unconsciousness, human extinction. Stephen Dedalus could not reconcile with the realities of his time and place, his idealized visions of religion, love, family, and society. Failing in this reconciliation he chose to break his connections with them. For them he would substitute the integrity of his self and soul, and build upon this foundation. Liberated from the smothering influences of his paralyzed homeland and people, and energized by an abundant spirit, he would build a new reality. Ironically, as long as he had been a part of this land and its people, his soul had burned with an ardent flame. After he cut himself loose, paralysis and torpor descended upon his consciousness. This is anticipated in the Portrait in words of a prophetic nature: The snares of the world were its ways of sin. He would fall. He had not yet fallen but he would fall silently, in an instant. Not to fall was too hard, too hard: and he felt the silent lapse of his soul, as it would be at some instant to come, falling, falling but not yet fallen, still unfallen but about to fall.lO To sin is to break up that which needs be whole. The passage brings to mind the powerful ending of "The Dead;' a story in Dub liners, of the collapse of a soul under the illusions of a lifetime and the events of an even1ng: His soul had approached that region where dwell the vast hosts of the sea . ... His soul swooned slowly as he heard the snow falling faintly through the universe and faintly falling, like the descent of their last end, upon all the living and all the dead. 11 The protagonist of this story is said to be at least in part the young Joyce's conception of what he might have become in middle age had he remained in Dublin and become a conventional success there. 1 2 The story begins with an energetic, confident Gabriel Conroy as he embarks, with pleasurable anticipation upon an evening of festivity, self-exaltation, and amorous adventure. He is a teacher at an Irish college (i.e., high school), financially secure, socially established; a reviewer of books for a prominent newspaper; a possessor of a fine wife, home, and children; a man of authority and social standing. But scarcely has he arrived at the house of his aunts for their traditional Christmas party than he suffers a series of psychic blows. These blows undermine his sense of existence, of his understanding of who he is, of who his wife is, and of what life expects of him. As the evening comes to a close, sitting at the window of an· unlit hotel room, his wife fitfully asleep beside him, he feels his identity fading: he swoons as his soul tumbles towards the cold, snow-covered, eternal land of the dead. It is another depiction of the extinguishing, through isolation, of consciousness. Still another example is found in ''A Painful Case;' WINTER 1985 �a story in Dubliners, written by Joyce in his early twenties, where he speculates as to what might become of him by middle age were he to continue to live in a society which he despises while systematically and scrupulously isolating himself from its influences. 13 The story relates the progressive involvement of a Mr. Duffy with a married woman, and his final scornful rejection of her passion. Over a lonely dinner, one evening, he learns that she has died. The news comes to him in an article describ- ing the inquest into her death. He leaves his dinner half eaten. As he walks out into the cheerless cold of a gloomy evening, he meditates upon his own nature: His life would be lonely too until he, too, died, ceased to exist, became a memory- if anyone remembered him . . . . He felt his moral nature falling to pieces . ... No one wanted him; he was outcast from life's feast. He turned his eyes to the grey gleaming river winding along towards Dublin . ... He could hear .nothing: the night was perfectly silent. He listened again: perfectly silent. He felt he was alone. 14 Mr. Duffy had labored to be free. Fate had granted his wish. He was alone. Whose soul is departing? Have we been speaking of James Joyce, or only of Stephen Dedalus, an object of his creation? Some consider Stephen to be Joyce: We ought to know a lot about Joyce, seeing that he was at great pains to tell us all he could. He put himself into all his books. He is the unnamed boy in Dubliners, Stephen Dedalus in A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man and Ulysses, Richard in Exiles, and Shem the Penman in Finnegans Wake, and, if Joyce painted them himself, who shall say that any of them is a bad likeness? (Frank Budgen) 15 Others consider Stephen to be Joyce's creation: ... my brother was not the weak, shrinking, infant who figures in A Portrait of the Artist. He was drawn, it is true, very largely upon his own life and his own experience, ... But A Portrait of the Artist is not an autobiography; it is an artistic creation. (Stanislaus Joyce)•• No matter: the works of a literary artist inevitably reveal to us something about himself and about the times in which he lives. Joyce bridges the end of the previous century, and the beginning of the present one. It was a moment when, everywhere, young, sensitive, gifted intellectuals awakened to find, on the one hand, stagnant social realities, nightmarish histories, and ancient, hypocritical religions; and, on the other, the promise of a liberated, secure, enlightened future based upon imagination, science, and reason. They thirsted for release, THE ST. JOHN'S REVIEW for a fresh start, for escape from the smothering ambience of tawdry traditions. They felt themselves to be living at the very interface of a nightmarish past, and an iridescent future. They vowed to forget the past, to create a new future, a future based upon freedom, honesty, beauty, spirit, and justice. Like Stephen, they dreamed of severing their bonds to existing history, tradition, religion, culture, and society. In the end they found, as he did, in place of liberation, in place of a new, pure, and exalted life, that an unkind fate had granted themsleep, that is to say, a lower form of consciousness. 17 Ours is an age of sleep. The seemingly feverish activity around us is that of a troubled dream. There is a great striving for sleep on earth and an eternal rest in the world to come. There is a yearning for diversion, anesthesia, alcohol, narcotic~, sleeping pills, and tranquilizers; for mental disciplines which would take us out of this world and never bring us back; for sharing the rest of the dead while yet alive. Genius appears to be falling asleep, consciousness to be departing. Its departure is reminiscent of the mystical doctrine concerning the Shechinah, the divine presence of God on earth. 18 When humankind feels that everything can be under its complete control, when it relies only upon itself and thinks that it does not need anything higher, the Shechinah turns away, and departs, as if to say "You do not need me now. I will go away and come back some other time:' The Knight of Faith Joyce reveals to us in his works the travails of Stephen's soul, of his own soul, of his age's soul. To these revelations, he joins in Ulysses the legend of Leopold Bloom, the narrative center around which other characters trace their orbits. Bloom is seemingly a scandal and a stumbling block: a mediocre, vulgar, uncultured, unassuming, undistinguished, canvasser of advertisements- hardly the counterpart of the Ulysses of Homer's Odyssey. Yet joyce saw Bloom as an embodiment of an ideal type: the good man, the complete man. 19 In what sense can Bloom be taken to be a good man, a complete man? We have spoken of the "soul" as a core of personal being measured by its capacity to integrate the "I" with the "other!' Bloom, indeed, has a rich soul. He is luxuriously connected to the world around him, the world and cosmos of Dublin and its people. In this he contrasts with other characters in Ulysses. These, leading pinched lives, are locked within themselves amidst clouds of personal obsession. They perceive the world which lies outside themselves to be contorted and an intrusion upon their inner being. Not so Bloom whose mind and vision are clear, whose heart is responsive to those around him, who exults in the world. As we follow him on his peregrinations, we become aware of the myriad connections which bind him with an inexhaustible sympathy to the city and its inhabitants. 2 Food being a prerequisite ° 25 �for existence, he feeds the hungry: in the morning his cat and wife; later the seagulls over the Liffey, the dogs in Nighttown; and, in the early hours of the next morning, a debilitated Stephen. He consoles the orphans and the widows: at Glasnevin Cemetery he leaves for the family of a deceased acquaintance an offering considered generous for a man of his means, and shows concern for their receiving the life insurance. It is not the body alone, however, which must be fed, but also the soul. Wherever he goes he enters with sympathy into the lives of those he meets: Stephen's sister, underfed and in a tattered dress; Stephen wandering about the vast reaches of his own intellect; Mrs. Breen shepherding a deranged husband; the elderly, deaf waiter at the Ormond Cafe; romantic, lame, Gerty MacDowell at Sandymount shore; Mrs. Purefoy in prolonged labor at the Lying-in Hospital on Holies Street. If Bloom is prodigal in entering such relationships it is not because he is spared affiictions of his own: there is his father's suicide, and the death of his only son; the separation from his remaining child, a daughter, who lives in a distant city; his being an outsider in the Dublin scene; his lack of commercial success and social status. Yet, in spite of such adversities and losses, there is no hint, as he touches upon the experiences offered him by this Dublin day, that he longs for a release from life, that he wishes to escape its exigencies through sleep or death. In this Bloom recalls to us the "Knight of Faith;' the Abraham-like figure in Kierkegaard's Fear and Trembling who lives for the infinite yet is firmly rooted in the daily round of a finite world. 21 What is remarkable about this "knight" is the extraordinary presence he brings to bear upon the everyday events and encounters of his life. Yet he seems commonplace to others, his special nature being unperceived by those around him. Bloom is such a knight. He is a life-force which vivifies the narrative of Ulysses and invests its earthbound finiteness with infinite longings. 26 Life, Joyce seems to tell us, lies with the "Knight of Faith" solidly rooted in existence; somnolence, sleep and death follow the cutting loose of the soul from its moonngs. NOTES 1. V. Nabokov, Lectures on Literature, Ed. John Updike, New York Harcourt Brace Jovanovich, 1980, p. 373. 2. Cf. julian Huxley in Teilhard de Chardin, Hymn to the Universe. Teilhard views each coming to life of a human being as a cosmic event: with the arrival of humankind the universe became conscious of itself. 3. The implicit suggestion that the "soul" is something acquired during adolescence is reminiscent of the Talmudic dictum that the child is born with an "evil inclination;' and that the "good inclination" begins to develop only at puberty (cf. (18), p. 89). 4. J. Joyce, A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man, New York: Viking Press, 1964, p. 171. 5. Portrait, p. 172. 6. Portrait, p. 170, 172, 252. 7. Cf. Wyndham Lewis, Time and Western Man, New York: Harcourt Brace and Co., 1928. 8. ]. Joyce, Ulysses, New York: Modern Library, 1961, p.3 9. L. Gillet, Clayhookfor jamesjqyce, trans. G. Markow-Totcvy, London and New York, 1958, p. 119. Cited by S. L. Goldberg,Jqyce, Abeland.Schumann: New York, 1972, p. 114. 10. Portrait, p. 162 11. ]. Joyce, Duhiiners, New York: Modern Library, 1954, p. 288. 12. C. H. Peake,JamesJqyce: The Citizen and the Arlist, Stanford, Calif: Stanford University Press, 1977, p. 343. 13. Cf. S. L. Goldberg, Jqyce, New York: Capricorn, 1972, p. 40. 14. Duhliners, p. 145-147. 15. F. Budgcn, James Joyce and the Making of Ulysses, Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1972, p. 18, 118. 16. S. Joyce, My Brother's Keeper, New York: Viking Press, 1969, p. 17. 17. Cf. S. Zweig, Die Well von Gestern, Stockholm: Bermann-Fischcr Verlag AB, 1944. 18. A Cohen, Ever)'man:r 'lidmud, New York: E. P. Dutton & Co., 1979, p. 42. . 19. Budgen, p. :H:1 loc cil. 20. Peake, p. :124<129 lot: . .:it. 21. A. Goldman, Tht Joyce Paradox, Evanston, I11.: NmLhwestern Uniw1·si!y Pres:-;, 1966, p. 76. WINTER 1985 �Watching Plains Daybreak for Erick Hawkins Antelope, buffalo, hawk. Avatars of Eden, these gentle, millenia! beasts dance on dawn-bleached grass ceremony and enigma. Their masks do not simply create an aesthetic distance, inviting us to rest in contemplation; they are spurs to a certain psychic motion. Habit blinds us. These masks and stylized movements, erasing the veil of familiarity in a revelation of essence, restore to us the instrument of wonder, the dishabituated eye. Love moves between the two poles of unity and separation; this distance is the place of wonder. This dance thus works its conversion; quietly coerced to wonder, we are awakened, one and new, into the revealed Peaceable Kingdom, and drawn awake to the things of this world in love. Open your eyes! Nothing has happened bifore! This is the first daybreak ever. Richard Freis Richard Freis, an alumnus of St. John's, Annapolis, has published poems in Poetry, The Southern &view and other magazines. President of the First and Vice-president of the Second USA International Ballet Competitions, he is a longstanding admirer of choreographer Erick Hawkins. THE ST. JOHN'S REVIEW 27 �Self-Portraits Elliott Zuckerman started painting again in the fall of 1977, after not having done more than an occasional picture in twenty years. As a young man I had never painted portraits or self-portraits, but since I started again faces have been the only subjects that interest me. When painting other people I enjoy the effort to get a resemblance; but when I succeed, the delight in the captured look seems to end my interest in finishing the picture. Only in a few of the earlier self-portraits have I been primarily interested in resemblance. Once a new picture is begun, the person on the canvas seems to me to be someone else, someone not-quite-me, usually looking at me, who may or may not reflect an aspect of my feelings, permanent or transient, about myself. I do not reproach myself with excessive self-infatuation, because it is not I who matters but the fellow in the picture. There are now more than seventy self-portraits. Those reproduced here were painted in oils and are all of the same dimensions: 20 X 24 inches. I EDITOR'S NOTE: It is at my urging that Mr. Zuckerman has permitted these self-portraits to be reproduced here, even though we could not afford to present them in color. I have asked him to write a brief preface. Elliott Zuckerman is a tutor at St. John's College, Annapolis. His lecture, Beyond the First Hundred Years: Some Remarks on the Si"gnificance of Tristan, appeared in the Winter '84 issue of the Review· 28 WINTER 1985 �Self-Portrait number 8 THE ST. JOHN'S REVIEW 29 �Self-Portrait number 35 30 WINTER 1985 �Self-Portrait number 46 THE ST. JOHN'S REVIEW 31 �Self-Portrait number 31 Self-Portrait number 33 Self-Portrait number 48 Self-Portrait number 26 32 WINTER 1985 �Self-Portrait number 51 Self-Portrait number 11 Self-Portrait number 29 Self-Portrait number 4 7 THE ST. JOHN'S REVIEW 33 �Self-Portraii number 24 Self-Portrait number 16 Self-Portrait number 18 Self-Portrait number 28 34 WINTER 1985 �Self-Portrait number 39 Self-Portrait number 41 Self-Portrait number 50 Self-Portrait number 10 THE ST. JOHN'S REVIEW 35 �The Opera Singer as Interpreter: A Conversation with Sherrill Milnes Susan Fain R ecently I had the opportunity to speak with Sherrill Milnes, leading baritone with the Metropolitan Opera. Our talk centered around the peculiar position of the opera singer, standing between composer and audience. For twenty years Milnes has performed on the stages of all the world's major opera houses. Most often seen in the popular Italian repertoire, he has also received much critical acclaim for performances of Thomas' Hamlet and Saint.Saens' Henry VIII. Of towering height, strongly sculptured facial features, and a unique and powerful vocal timbre, Milnes dominates a stage whenever he appears. In talking with him about his thoughts on opera, one is first struck by the specificity of his insight. The statements he makes are usually accompanied by examples from a particular work, and often even a specific passage is sung in support of the thought. · Opera, to Milnes, is a much bigger-than-life medium. It has a power to reach out to an audience in a way that cannot be ignored. The music takes longer to develop. In a play you say, "I love you~ In an opera that's a ten minute scene. There's no such thing as, "I love you;' and "I love you too;' and then you go on, which is the norm in a play. However long it would take in a play, in an opera there would be pages and pages of music, with one emotion going for that duration of time. The music is like a two-byfour over our heads which is undeniable in its power. You can't ignore it. To take a simple example, I suppose you could go to a play being tired or angry at something else in your life and really not enjoy it at all. And the play would not demand your attention. The opera would. In general, the music in opera, opera music (symphony Susan Fain is a tutor at St. John's College, Annapolis. 36 really because it is the orchestra there that is really compelling; a piano wouldn't be as much so though still the music would be more compelling than the spoken word) will just take your attention. You could hardly sit there and ignore it. It makes all of the emotions stronger, bigger, longer-lasting. For Milnes, opera characters are thus simpler than characters in a play, yet the presence of the music makes them also more powerful. One cannot layer an operatic character with multiple levels of meaning. "You can be Sherrill, being I ago, pretending maybe one other thing. But that's about as far as you can go in duplicity or triplicity of meaning!' More complexity simply confuses the audience and there is no opportunity in an opera for a long soliloquy of explanation. The Franco Zeffirelli production of Otello at the Met was a case in point. Franco had a very definite idea about !ago; that he is almost controlled, or consumed by ·some evil force that is inside him, and over which he has only limited power. Somewhat like an exorcist kind of thing, but Franco didn't say it that way. When Iago says the "Credd:....!'I believe in a cruel God who created me in his own image, out of the original slime, and after death there is nothing;- Franco imagined that this is the first time that Iago has ever said this; that it is this spirit that is saying it, and that in fact, he is almost shocked at the words that are coming out of his mouth, over which he has no control. So that at the end of the "Credo;' Iago doesn't laugh, but rather emits a horrified scream: "E vecchia fola il Ciel. (Oh my God, what have I said?) AH!" And then I cover my head with my cloak. When you laugh at the end of the "Credd:_as is traditionally done- then you have to think of the aria as if it is the hundred and fiftieth time I ago has thought this. There's a big difference in the way you do the aria if you consider that he's never said these words before, and that he's listening to some other voice speaking from WINTER 1985 �within. And that scares him. But I also found that audiences, however, didn't always understand that. And it makes the end of the third act (where Otello has swooned and Iago stands over him proclaiming "Ecco illeone . . :') a problem if you have rendered the ~~credd' in this manner. Instead of the traditional kicking of Otello, or putting my foot on his chest, Franco had me start to choke the unconsCious Otello; to start to kill him, which is also very different. Even though Iago says, "Chi puo vietar che questa fronte prema col mio tallone?" Franco had me start to choke him instead. Then at some point in choking him, all of a sudden he realizes what he is doing. He is killing, he is choking Otello, and he realizes, "This is my leader?' In a way, Iago chickens out. He always talks about being the number one, but in fact he doesn't really want to be the number one. He wants a leader next to him. It's kind of a hate and love relationship. In the hate part he's strangling him, and then he realizes, "Oh my God! What am I doing? I want Otello to be there. I don'( want to be the number one:' He wants to be the number one of the number one, but he doesn't want to replace his boss, really. So he backs off from choking Otello and sort of cringes away. All of those things had a certain curve and validity, but people didn't understand it. Franco was critical of there being too many layers, and yet he had this Iago very layered. As I recall the original performances, I and the concept were sort of clobbered. They didn't get it at all. Or else they got it- though nothing they wrote indicated they did -and didn't like it. It was very untraditional. There are certain things that people want to see. So now, even in that production, I do the traditional laugh. For Milnes there is little doubt about the rightness of yielding to the audience on these kinds of matters. Because he sees his purpose as communicating a character to the audience, rather than educating them about the possible ways to think about a character, he is sensitive to the audience's understanding. If the concept of the opera, for whatever reason, fails to effect that commun.ication, then the singer has not achieved his pur- pose. Milnes then related the story of Nicholai Gedda and the "Flower Song" from Bizet's Carmen. "Bizet wrote a very difficult, but very beautiful dimi-. r;uendo f~r the final B flat of the 'Flower Song; but traditiOnally, singers unable to execute the diminuendo have sung it loud and to great applause [Milnes then demonstrates the "Carmen, je t'aime" in booming voice]. Gedda was able to diminuendo that B flat gorgeously, almost as no other smger could, but the applause was mtmmal. The question might be asked, why lower yourself to accommodate the taste of the masses?" For Milnes, and for Gedda, there is no question about the answer. Gedda subsequently sang the ending loudly and everyone raved. Why is this not merely pandering to applause? As Milnes put it, "If you're reaching out and turnmg on the audience, that's part of what it's all about. The music is there to move the audience. It was written to that end. Part of the performer's responsibility and obligaTHE ST. JOHN'S REVIEW tion to the composer is to elicit that very response, as long as the means used are valid." This led us into a discussion of whether or not operas should be performed come scritto (as written, i.e., exactly as the score indicates) or whether there is room for interpolation and transposition. Ordinarily I would only interpolate high notes if I think they are supported by the drama. Various conductors around the world-especially Muti in this day-want only come scritto; never mind even the understood tra':lspositions like that in La Traviata [which Milnes explamed and demonstrated]. For example, Muti has a recording of Leoncavallds I Pagliacci where the Prologue is performed just as written: "Pari di voi spiriamo l'aere! Incominciate!" so that the voice goes down at the end of the phrase instead of up. I think that the come scritto in this instance is foolish. Someone might say, "Leoncavallo didn't write that. Verdi didn't write that" and so forth, as if to say that we know for sure that what is on the printed page is the only one that the composer liked. Lots of cadenzas and other stylistic things were understood and expected to be done. Certainly in the bel canto period you had to do that. Sometimes the com-· pos~r would just put a corona and you were supposed to smg measures and measures of improvised music. Various people showing off; that was the idea. Less valid perhaps in Verdi's time, but I can't believe for a minute that interpolations were not expected. These composers were ve~y prac~ical guys, and often they were writing for particular smgers who they knew would be singing the part for the first short span of the opera's life. If those singers didn't have great A flats, of course they weren't going to write a high A flat in there. That's one factor to consider. There is an interpolated high A flat in the "Pieta" in Act IV of Verdi's Macbeth: "Pieta, rispetto, amore." It's a little angular to do it. It makes a double dominant chord. You have two dominants before you go to the tonic. That's a little angular musically. But Macbeth is pouring out his heart at that point. "Is my only epitaph to be a curse?" All of this is inside Macbeth and he is wailing his soul at that moment. In that context, to take an extra high note to accentuate the pain of his soul seems perfectly appropriate. Macbeth is looking back over his life and thinking, "I did all these things, but all I ever wanted was pity, respect, and love:' Milnes than talked about what he refers to as the "craft" of singing: the limitations imposed by costume staging, and the singer's own body. How does Do~ Giovanni, or Simon Boccanegra, or Scarpia move about the stage? The desired answer is provided by the music and the drama, but to execute that movement requires the "mechanics" of singing. ~n the case of Simon Boccanegra [who is a young man m the Prologue and twenty-five years older in Act I] the problem is how do you move _as a young man? How do you go from the younger to the older? Those are mechanics. You can't just think yourself younger and thereby become younger. You have to be able to make 37 �younger gestures. I have never found that a psychological concept like younger or older can be immediately translated into a physical reality just by thinking it. How do you move older? Thinking older? What is thatthinking older? How do you think older? You have to know what muscles to relax. You have to learn how to sit down tired; which muscles aren't as elastic. Gestures have to slow down. I use a cane as Father Germont [in La Traviata] because it slows me down and stops muscular gestures. No one on the operatic stage nowadays is so old as to be able to portray old men simply by reason of being old. The operatic stage is energetic in its nature. But you have to slow certain things down. Simone, in the Prologue, has to be more energetic and evidence more off-the-top-of-the-head kinds of gestures than the older Simone. And then you're poisoned and you're slowly dying. How do you do that? There's still muscle in the music. You have to use the curves of the music. You have to get your energy up, say a big important phrase, and then be weak again'. You try to portray the death with a certain amount of physiological correctness by using the curves of the music. Movements are also determined to a large degree by the clothes you are Wearing. You have to move in a certain way because the costume demands it. Therefore, we as singers have to learn artificially how to move in the appropriate way since we no longer wear clothes like that. When you get up out of a chair you cannot push yourself up and wiggle your shoulders. That's very inelegant. As nobility you had to move smoothly. The older operatic -characters can afford to flop into chairs and struggle to get up from them. Simone does so only when he is dying since he's still a vital man at forty-five. Characters are often portrayed differently in different productions when they are wearing different costumes. Milnes spoke of some of the differences between a traditional Scarpia [in Tosca] and the concept ofScarpia [and the opera] that he encountered with German director Gotz Friedrich. Operatic characters often show different faces in different scenes and sometimes I'm not so sure that there is a connection. Scarpia is definitely one man in the church [in Act 1]. That's his external, public face with the things he says to Tasca assumed to be private, even though there is the crowd coming in for the mass. The operatic assumption is that they're not paying attention or hearing what's going on although I do, as Scarpia, from time to time check to see if anyone's watching us, because I think he should. I don't. think that the character should assume that no one is looking, even though you know that they're not staged that way, because it's not supposed to be staging from the character's point of view. But that's his external face. In a certain way, what he does in the first act doesn't so much determine what he is going to do in the privacy of his own living room [in Act II], although his sensuousness is basically the same. Various Scarpias would have to manifest that sensuality differently. If a singer is short and heavy and paunchy he would have to be very careful with the way he evidences his desire for Tasca. In fact, it's even determined somewhat by costume. In 38 the GOtz Friedrich production the black, stark kind of costume stayed for both the first and second acts. The second act opens and Scarpia is there, with his fingers tapping on the table, just staring into space. The curtain opens and he's just staring. He's not eating his food as is traditionally done. He's staring into space and thinking to himself, "I've got to get Angelotti; What am I going to do? Well, Tasca may· be my best falcon;' and so he speaks aloud his first line, "Tasca e un huon falco?' The concept of the whole opera was that Scarpia himself was under time pressure. If he didn't get Angelotti back within a certain time, a day or a couple of days maybe, his own head could roll; someone is looking over his shoulder. Of course, none of this is in the opera but it also makes perfect sense. So Scarpia is thinking to . himself, "I gotta get him. I gotta get him. I just missed him by two minutes in the church," and meanwhile there is this sense of time ticking away. Maybe he's even perspiring. He's worried. Internally he's worried. That's a terrific concept. And you're just staring into space and thinking, "How am I going to get him? Tasca e un huon falco. I'm gonna use her. And if I do this and this and this maybe I'll get Mario and Angelotti both?' In the Met production, however, the costume in the second act, very unlike the first act, is French Revolution foppish. Also correct as the style of the time. But the false elegance of the costume negates somewhat that sense that time is ticking away; that very intense kind of portrayal. So I started thinking that maybe the intense number wasn't right with the look of the costume- that false elegant, almost foppish kind of thing with vest, long coat and all that. So I went back to the also valid, more traditional, eating food. With that, instead of the driven thoughts of the Friedrich concept, Scarpia is just thinking calmly, 'Well, Tasca is probably my best falcon," as he's eating his food and drinking some wme. This concept [with Scarpia calmly eating] sets up something that I do later in the second act: throwing the wine in Spoletta's face. 'It's a good bit but the Spoletta has to say it's all right. I usually ask. The actual act of doing it is dramatically powerful because people aren't expecting it. If Scarpia takes a bite or two of the banana, a couple of sips of wine right away, and then goes into, "Tasca e un huon falco;' then when he goes back to do the throwing of the wine, it's much more set up than if he were only to take it into his hand right before he's going to throw it in Spoletta's face. Then it looks a little bit like you're picking it up because the stage directions say so. Also there's a practical consideration. You drink it down so that there is only about a half an inch of wine and you don't have liquid all over the stage. If you threw a whole glass of wine the Spoletta would be drenched. &arpia is a very special part. In a way like Iago, there are many ways to do it. I don't mean many ways from A to Z. There are not a lot of totally different concepts in terms of the whole arch of it. But there are a lot of ways to go from A to B and from B to C -the little curves all along the major curve of a character. Iago the same way. Once the vocal line is secure and the technical aspects of a part are in place, is it necessary for the singer to understand his character as a human being? For Sher- WINTER 1985 �rill Milnes, the answer is often "yes!' At the time of our conversation, Milnes was preparing to sing the title role in Verdi's Simon Boccanegra-a beautiful but complicated opera about a young man who loses his daughter and then finds her again twenty-five years later, having in the meantime become the first plebeian Doge of Genoa. There are such good human values in Simon, especially in the relationship between the father and daughter. It is the kind of role for which a singer should be older himself. Vocally, it's very difficult for a young singer because the center of the part sits low and yet you have to be able to dominate. Vocally it requires maturity, but also because of the special character of the father and daughter relationship. The more you can feel about real children, particularly having children of your own, the better that will work. Simone was also almost too good a man. If he had been a little more savvy, a little meaner, he would have dumped Paolo and never have allowed him the opportunity to poison him. Somehow he couldn't believe that anyone could do something as heinous as that. So in a way, Simone is naive. Once on stage, the performer does not have the opportunity to think about who his character is; but part of what sets Sherrill Milnes apart from less talented singers is his ability to understand the man he is embodying. Though operatic characters are indeed simpler and louder and larger than life, for Sherrill Milnes they seem never to cease to be human, even an enigma like Don Giovanni. How evil is Sherrill Milnes' Don Giovanni? There's a balance. In a Salzburg production by JeanPierre Ponnelle he staged it so that at the end, when Giovanni goes to hell, my body is still there on stage and Leporello covers me with my cape. Each person comes up to me and sings their parts and there's almost a sense that, "Gee, it's almost too bad he had to ... No, no, no, he was an evil man and the right thing happened:' There was a little sense that life was more interesting with him around. There was just a touch of that. But the Giovanni must also be dangerous enough to merit his demise. If he's just a happy-go-lucky Giovanni who likes the girls, and likes to play jokes a lot, then he's not an important enough representative of the forces of evil to merit everlasting damnation. He has to be dangerous. Funloving, but mercurial. He doesn't mind killing. He's rather amoral, although that's not really true. I think he does have his own code of ethics. When he kills the Commendatore he senses for the first time in his life that something may be going awry. He has broken one of his codes. He has fought an old man although he had tried not to. He still does it. He doesn't run away. Someone from his own rank. An old man. And I have the feeling that some kind of an alarm goes off inside Giovanni even when he runs him through, and certainly in the recitative right after. He doesn't exactly feel remorseful, because I don't think he knows how to feel remorseful. But for the first time in his life he may be worried. A little alarm goes off, so that in the first recitative, "Leporello, ove sei?" he evidences his concern. Leporello asks, "Who's dead? You, or the old one?" and THE ST. JOHN'S REVIEW Giovanni responds, "Que demando la bestia? Il vecchio!" In that response, especially if one pauses between the phrases, one can hear the warning going of£ I killed an old man though he forced me into it. I could have avoided it. It was wrong of me. Of course I was going to beat him. And I shouldn't have done it. It is this little alarm that seems to keep pushing Giovanni through the entire opera. All operas at that time were 24 hour operas. Everything took place in 24 hours. And Giovanni is propelled through this time as if he's saying, 'We're going to have fun even if it kills us." He and the time keep racing on. For all of Giovanni's recitatives I would almost run onto the stage. He's racing around through the town as if saying to himself, "Why did I do this? What am I going to do?" And he's worried. He's never been worried before. Now sometimes he forgets this alarm, like when he sees Zerlina and is distracted. But for the most part, it's always there driving him onward. Mr. Milnes was then asked about the difference between Mozart's Don Giovanni and the Don Juan stories and legends that can be read in books. What happens to the story when it becomes an opera? The beauty of the music is of course the first thing, and then the emotional power of this story being presented as an opera. One is hit over the head with the emotional power of the story when it is accompanied by Mozart's music. You don't seem to get emotionally tied to the various Don Juan stories in the same way. The great beauty of the music creates bigger-than-life emotions so that it can reach out in a much more overt and powerful way to say Something that the stories cannot say by themselves. One thing that is striking about Don Giovanni is that even though the Don is the title role in what is often considered the 'perfect opera, from a performer's standpoint, Don GioVanni himself is very shy. When you take away the recitatives, as you do when the singers rehearse just with the orchestra, Giovanni has very little to say. And yet he is the driving force. The opera has to hinge on him. Yet it is the other people in the opera who have all the big set pieces. He has only the ~h'}inpagne aria and the serenade, and in the serenade he is disguised. And both of those pieces are very s~ort. The most satisfying scene with the orchestra is the supper scene where Giovanni really gets to sing. At all other-times he'S plways playi?-g at. s<_>n:ething el~e, ~ven playin~ at being <?iovanm. So It IS m the reCitatlves that he has· the most to say and where he is most hill¥'elf. This is the hardest part to communicate to the audie-nce-the conversational things- because it is pure language. Yet this is where Giovanni is most himself. And with Leporello he is always himself. When you are playing Giovanni onstage, you are not thinking about the question of good and evil that governs the opera. You are doing the human things that a Giovanni would do in this stylized story. We have to assume that he spent three days with Elvira and couldn't stand her anymore. And he doesn't get to Zerlina for a variety of reasons. In the opera, during those last 24 hours, Giovanni succeeds with no one. It's really the rise and fall of Don Giovanni and the opera deals with the fall- the last 24 hours of his life. 39 �Dynamic Symmetry, A Theory of Art and Nature Howard J. Fisher J ust before the onset of the 1920s there began to be promulgated a certain theory that was partly mathematical, partly historical, and partly aesthetic. This theory was the invention of Mr. ] ay Hambidge, who was an artist and designer, and by it he set out to explicate some remarkable characteristics he had found in classical Greek and Egyptian designs. He propounded the theory under the title, "Dynamic Symmetry." This name was meant to be a translation of the Greek mathematical expression &uv<i.~Et aUJ.LJ.LE'tpm, a term we know from Euclid. The Euclidean expression describes a relation between magnitudes which, though incommensurable directly in length, are "commensurable in square!' The side and diagonal of a square are two such magnitudes. As we well know, these two magnitudes have no common unit. But the squares constructed upon them respectively do have a common unit; in fact the square on the diagonal is just double the square on the side, as we learn in Meno. "Dynamic Symmetry;' then, is a study of magnitudes that are commensurable in square only. It is too bad that both words have acquired meanings that are rather distant from their Greek cognates, as it makes the name of the study somewhat non-explanatory today. But the name "Dynamic Symmetry" has survived; and in any case, respect for ] ay Hambidge's steadfast pioneering probably dictates that we should retain it. Hambidge did not take a mathematician's approach to the incommensurables. His study was applied exclusively to problems of design and proportion in archi- Howard Fisher is a tutOr at St. John's College, Annapolis. Dynamic ~mmetry, A Theory of Art and Nature, was originally given as a lecture under the title, A Grecian Uf?l, at St. John's College, Annapolis in April of 1984. 40 tecture, pottery, sculpture, landscaping, furnituremaking, typography, and other arts. In fact he regarded Dynamic Symmetry as a rediscovered ancient art of design and composition which had been perfected by Egyptian and, especially, by Greek craftsmen long before its more refined appearance as a ·theoretical science in the mathematics of Euclid and others. According to an account which Hambidge accepted, Greek artisans had obtained from the Egyptians their techniques for correlating design elements during the 7th and 6th centuries B. C. E. They perfected this knowledge as a practical geometry which for some 300 years provided the basic principles for design in the Classic period. Traces of this practical geometry survived, in a more highly evolved, mathematized form, in Euclidean geometry; but the secrets of its·original artistic application otherwise disappeared. Sadly, no accounts remain that would reveal to us how the ancient craftsmen developed their designs or what principles and elements they may have employed. In the absence of historical evidence, the principles that guided the makers must be sought through examination· of the surviving works themselves. This means that any theory of the design of these things must begin by advancing a theory of analysis: it must instruct the spectator how to approach the work in order to understand it as a composition. In this Egyptian bas-relief (Fig. 1) the goddess is supporting a formalized sky in the shape of a bar. The space between the vertical_ bars on each side is in the original filled with hieroglyphic writing, which is not shown in the sketch. To analyze this design, Dynamic Symmetry looks first to the containing rectangle AE; then to subordinate rectangles such as AC, DE, and FB, that appear to indicate an underlying scheme to the composition. Rectangles DE WINTER 1985 �A mathematical language in their reconstruction it is our task to see through the mathematized version, so to speak, and to recover what we can of the ancient practices in their own terms. These practices, in Hambidge's view, would have been exclusively empirical. They were, from the first and always, directed to the ends of making, to the employment of human powers in a world riddled with other powers both active and passive. I \ I \ \ \ \ \ E Figure 1 and FB are directly given by the hieroglyphic columns. Rectangle CB (which is a square) is determined by the tops of the columns. The goddess's head occupies the space between the two remaining squares in the upper corners. In all cases it is the proportions of the rectangles, the ratios of their sides, that the analysis seeks to uncover. For according to Hambidge, all rectangles other than the squares that were used by the classical designers have sides that are not commensurable in length, but are only commensurable in square- 8uvcij.tm. cr(>~_q.t&Tpm. The first labor of Dynamic Symmetry is, then, to bring to light the elementary rectangles that govern the classical designs. Yet this enterprise cannot proceed without a simultaneous investigation into the geometric properties of these rectangles, of their possibilities for combination, subdivision, and exhaustion, as well as other relations. Euclidean geometry is the science that investigates these properties. I will therefore first set out some of the elements of Dynamic Symmetry from a geometrical point of view. Then I will discuss a few examples of how these are thought to have been made use of in the design of some works of Greek pottery and architecture. Such is the order that Hambidge himself followed in most of his writings; but it has this defect, that it inevitably makes it appear that knowledge of mathematical theory was prior to the design process, or that the designer was striving to illustrate some geometrical theorem in his work. Any such view would of course be highly anachronistic, and is quite the reverse of Hambidge's position. Nevertheless he has been misunderstood on this point by at least one critic. 1 Let me therefore emphasize that the Euclidean geometry shall be only instrumental here. It is our indispensable pathway to, as the only surviving remnant of, the ancient principles of design. But even if we are obliged to use a THE ST. JOHN'S REVIEW If limited to the intended role of a translation from the Greek, the expression "dynamic symmetry" properly signifies only the mathematical character of commensurability. But Hambidge expanded his use of the expression, playing as he did so upon a meaning which attaches to the word "dynamic" in modern English. In its modern signification, "dynamic" expresses the action of force or the exchange of energy. Conformably to this, Hamb1d15e tau!'ht that there were two kinds of symmetnes ·tn destgn. Opposed to "dynamic" symmetry which carried overtones of life and activity, there was the so-called "static" symmetry, suggestive of inertness. In thus opposing "dynamic" to "static" (in the same spirit as did Leibniz and the later physicists) he made the deliberate and irrevocable step of tying the theorems of Dynamic Symmetry to Nature- both human nature and nature at large-and particularly to growing nature. Let us turn to a thing in growing nature from which we may make a beginning.(Fig. 2) This thing is the shell of the nautilus, or rather the shape which that shell preserves throughout its development. This shape is the logarithmic or equiangular spiral, and though it can be app_rehended under many of the different properties it exhibits, we shall pay attention to its characteristic of continued proportion. The spiral (Fig. 3) can be understood Figure 2 41 �as centering about a point or pole 0 (to which the curve approaches indefinitely close). If, from 0, radii are drawn meeting the curve in A, B, C, with the angles AO B and BOC equal, it will be found then that the radius OB is the mean proportional between OA and OC. Now in particular let the equal angles AOB and BOC be right angles\(Fig.4). Then since OBis the mean proportional it follows that if AB and BC be drawn, the angle at B will also be a right angle. Continued construction of the parallels meeting the four radii, in both directions, results (Fig. 5) in the infinite "curve" called the rectangular logarithmic spiral. As you see, this shape is strictly analogous to the smooth B c ~ A ~~ Figure 3 spiral curve, only it is constructed in jumps instead of in the continuous progression that the nautilus shell appears to exhibit. Observe that since the angles at A, B, and C in this rectangular spiral are all right angles, we may therefore complete the rectangle ABCX in which AC is the diagonal and in which, by hypothesis, OB is perpendicular to AC. This reveals the principle whereby a rectangular spiral may be constructed within a given rectangle: In the given rectangle (Fig. 6), draw the diagonal BD. From a corner C drop CO perpendicular to BD, and extend it to meet AB in E. Continue constructing perpendiculars EF, FG, and so on. Q E. F. Notice. that the particular proportions of the spiral- that is the ratios of its c successive radii or chords- are determined in advance 0 by the proportions of the given rectangle. Now in the same diagram, extend EF to meet CD in X. I say that rectangle EBCX is similar to rectangle ABC D. The similarity follows from the continued proportion of the radii from 0. But here is a quicker way to see it. Since the diagonal and all sides of the smaller rectangle are respectively perpendicular to their corresponding Figure 4 D~------------------~---------,C c [ A \ \ \ \ ,../ D ~~ \ \ ~~ \ ~~ \ \ Figure 5 42 ~ \ ~"' ;'" AL-------------------~E~--------~B \/ X Figure 6 WINTER 1985 �elements in the larger rectangle, rotate the smaller one through a right angle. The two rectangles will then share a corner and a diagonal, and so must be similar- by Euclid VI.24. This rectangle EBCX which was constructed on one end of the given rectangle and also similar to the given rectangle is called the reciprocal of the given rectangle. The term '~reciprocal" also has an algebraic meaning. Suppose we are confronted with a rectangle (Fig. 7) contained by sides equal to unity and m, respectively. What will be the length of the non-unit side of the reciprocal rectangle? By the similarity of the figures, it must be x, where x : 1 :: 1 : m or, algebraically expressed, x=1/m or m=1/x. I leave it to you whether the geometric or the algebraic expression is the more fundamental. _, ., m : I I I I I B Figure 8 I J Figure 7 Every rectangle has two diagonals, as AC and BD (Fig. 8), as well as two possible locations for its reciprocal- one at each end. So in every rectangle there are four "poles" or "eyes" where the diagonals of the reciprocal rectangles intersect those of the given rectangle, as the upper sketch shows. Joining the poles G,HJ,K produces one central rectangle and four rectangles at the corners. These are all similar to one another and to the containing rectangle, since they share diagonals with the containing rectangle. A little later we will look at a Greek vase whose design plan grows out of this idea. Now every rectangle exceeds its reciprocal. But there exists a series of rectangles that are integral multiples of their reciprocals. Such are called "root rectangles." Here are some examples. THE ST. JOHN'S REVIEW Consider the rectangle ABCD (Fig. 9), which is double its reciprocal FBCE. If we choose FB equal to unity, or 1, then DC equals 2. What then will be the length of BC? As we have seen, the sides FB, BC, CD must be in continued proportion, with BC the mean proportional; hence 1 : BC :: BC : 2 or, algebraically, BC'=2 BC = -J2 or "root two!' Thus the ratio between the shorter and the longer sides of each of these similar rectangles is the ratio of one tb root two. For the rectangle ABCD in particular, if we now take BC equal to 1 (Fig. 10) we then have the longer side AB equal to root two. The rectangle is therefore called the "root two rectangle:' Naturally its reciprocal is also root-two, since reciprocal rectangles are similar to one another. It is easy to describe other root rectangles in the same 43 �D D E A E F B I Figure 11 A F I B Figure 9 e: K c.' 1', , / 1'\ )'"' \ / / D / / / / ~'], / / / / / / / / / ,/ / \ \ /:0> I / / \ \ I \ I / \ \ \ F' \ \ \ / f' \ \ I I D E I /// I i// A B C F Figure 12 B A Figure 10 unlimited; there are as many kinds of them as there are integers. But we must distinguish between root rectangles proper-such as root-two, root-three, and root-fiveand others which are root rectangles in name only. The way. For example (Fig. 11), let the side AB of the given rectangle be triple the side FB of the reciprocal rectangle. Then if FB equals 1, AB equals 3; and we shall have "root-four rectangle;' so-called, is actually just a double 1 : CB : : CB : 3 or, algebraically, CB = -J3 or "root three;' which identifies the given rectangle (and its reciprocal) as the "root-three rectangle:' Root rectangles, then, have integral relations to their reciprocals. The root-two rectangle is double its reciprocal, the root-three rectangle triple its reciprocal, and so on. Clearly the number of root rectangles is 44 square. Its sides are in the ratio two to one; thus they are rational and directly commensurable. So with all other root rectangles whose integer is a perfect square number; they are all multiple squares, so we will not con- sider them to be root rectangles, properly speaking. There is a more methodical way to construct the root rectangles, which is based on their serial evolution from a square. Consider (Fig. 12) the unit square ABB' K, with AB and KB' extended as necessary. Swing the diagonal AB' down to AC and complete the rectangle ACC 'K. I say that rectangle ACC 'K is the root-two rectangle. For it has been constructed upon the unit as one of its sides; and its other side is equal to the diagonal WINTER 1985 �of the unit square, which is of course ..J J2 + 1' or ..fJ,. Therefore its sides are in the ratio of one to root two. QE.D. By a similar application of the Pythagorean Theorem to rectangle ACC 'K we see that its diagonal, AC ', must be equal to root three. Therefore, swing diagonal AC' down to AD and complete rectangle ADD' K; it is clear that rectangle ADD' K is the root-three rectangle. In the same way, rectangles AEE' K and AFF' K are seen to be the root-four and root-five rectangles. Once a single root rectangle has been selected, the designer can construct innumerable related rectangles according to a procedure called "application of areas." In Euclid, as also in Apollonius, application of areas is a method of comparing unequal areas by comprehending them under the same height or in the same width; only attention is paid not to the size but to the shape of their difference. This, like other Euclidean topics, Hambidge viewed as the outgrowth of an earlier body of empirical knowledge or lore, supposedly serving the needs of designers. Perhaps for this reason, Hambidge was a little careless with the Euclidean terminology, preferring instead a locution that was simpler than but not fully consistent with Euclid's. I am going to follow Hambidge's account, but remember that it is not quite the same as Euclid's. Application of areas is indicated in a classical design whenever we find one rectangle superimposed upon a second, so that it shares a side2 or end with the second square AC is here applied to the side AG of the rectangle, within the end AH as breadth.) It then falls short, and the part left over is rectangle DB. If a square, as AF, be applied instead to the side, AG, it exceeds by the rectangular area BE. It is by such application of areas that many design themes are developed. Let us examine the process as applied to the root-two rectangle. If (Fig. 14) a square AB be applied to the end of a root-two rectangle, it falls short and leaves the remainder BC. If then to the end of this remainder a square CD be again applied, it again falls short and leaves the remainder EB. I say that EB is also a root-two rectangle. Thus application of areas preserves the proportions of the original rectangle! A VI -I c - ' I;! D I rectangle but exceeds it or falls short of it in extent. As in Euclid, attention is paid not to the size but to the shape !:;! of the excess or defect, "in order," as Hambidge says, "that "V ' the area receiving the application might be clearly understom::l and its proportional parts used as elements of design." 3 Suppose a square, as AC (Fig. 13), be applied to the end AH of rectangle AB. (Euclid would have said that £ M B Figure 14 We could prove this by the methods of Euclid, Book I. But I will show instead a straightforward calculation H B f--------j B I A P S9uore opplied to end Figure 13 THE ST. JOHN'S REVIEW G A of the sort Hambidge employed. It is more adapted to the needs of the craftsman in getting results for a particular case. Euclid himself does much the same in some of the later books, where the circumstances are similarly specific. Let AM be unity, so that AB is the unit square. Then by hypothesis, AC = ..fJ,, and NC and DE are each equal to ..J2 -1. Moreover, DB= 1 - ND; and this reduces to 2- ..fJ,. Hence the ratio of sides of rectangle BE will be G Squo.re applied to s'1de DB= 'l__~..fJ, =..J2 DE ..fJ,-1 QE.D. 45 �I Calculation is easier, even in the age of digital electronic calculators, if we allow ourselves the use of rational A I I /v I approximations to the irrationals involved, such as 1.414 in place of root two. But since inaccuracies are introduced by the rounding process, I wanted you to see that in this case, at least, the analysis is exact. In the same way we can show (Fig. 15) that if a square, as CB, be applied to the side of a root-two rectangle, as CK, the space FB by which it exceeds the rectangle is made up of two squares and another root-two rectangle. If root-two rectangles CK and DB are applied to both sides of the square at once, the rectangles will overlap to the extent of DK, and we can see by the equality of the sides of the square that this space comprises one square and two root-two rectangles, as the sketch shows. c c / / D __....- I I A 1 I I I HJ F ,x I I / I I ' E \ G ·, \ \ \ 8 E K 8 Figure 16 F ----- EF are root-two rectangles, for they share diagonals with the containing figure. To each end of the upper rectangle AC has been applied a square; so, as we just saw, each ..f1. {i_ ---I B K c. F j) I ~ 1--- -- -- - - - - {i. I --I - - - - ,fi. I - - - 11.. - --I of the remaining rectangles AH and IC must be roottwo. These two overlap to the extent of rectangle IH, which frames the goddess's head. (But notice the delicate leftward shift of her face and throughout her figure.) Now let us investigate the proportions of the remaining areas: IH, DE (which is the same as FB), and DK. We proved (Fig. 14) that when a square is applied to the end of a root-two rectangle the remaining area is composed of a square plus another root-two rectangle. But in the goddess design, AH is a root-two rectangle, and square AJ has been applied to it. Therefore the remainder IH is made up of a square and a root-two rectangle. But rectangle AC is a square plus a root-two rectangle; so rectangles AC and IH are similar. And the end of one of them is equal to the side of the other; therefore rectangle IH is the reciprocal of rectangle AC. Turn now to rectangle DE. It is the excess area that arises when square CB is applied to the side of root-two rectangle DB. As the previous diagram (Fig. 15) showed, it must be composed of two squares plus a root-two rectangle. And in the same diagram we saw that rectangle DK has to be made up of one square and two root-two rectangles. There is a remarkable pervasiveness of the root-two Figure 15 Application of areas is striking in the composition of the Egyptian design that served as our first example.(Fig. 16) The containing shape for the composition as a whole is a root-two rectangle, AE, sketched here as having been evolved from square CB which is applied to it. DB and 46 proportion scheme throughout this design. We have first the root-two rectangle itself, as AE, whose side -when the end is taken as unity-is 1.414. We have next rectangle DK, with side 2.414, which is one plus root two. Next, rectangle AC, whose side is 2.707; this is one plus one plus the reciprocal of root two. Finally, rectangles DE and FB, whose sides are each 3.414, or one plus one plus root two. Serving as a common element in all the foregoing rectangles-a kind of universal co-ordinating element, since it does not belong to any single root family WINTER 1985 �in particular- is the square, with side equal to one. Here are the proportions, tabulated in order. Length of Side 1:1 1 1:1.414 -J2 1 +-J'l 1:2.707 1+1+ 1/-J'J. 1:3.414 D D Ratio 1:2.414 Rectangle-Root-Two Family 1+1+-J'J. . These figures show the remarkable power of applicatiOn of areas to generate new rectangles which are still expressible in terms of the fundamental rectangle. This preservation of the proportions of the fundamental root rectangle is what Jay Hambidge called the "theme integrity" of Greek design. Virtually all of the designs studied by Hambidge show that the craftsman chose a single root rectangle and held to it. We almost never find combinations of root-two and root-three rectangles for example, in a single piece. ' Now the method of application of areas automatically preserves theme integrity among the resulting rectangles- but only if the rectangle that serves as the base of the s~stem is a root rectangle proper. Rectangles with ratwnal sides cannot be classified into "theme" families at all! 4 This is the mathematical reason why the root rectangles proper, rather than rational rectangles, were favored by the Greek designers, according to Hambidge. Only the root rectangles allow such universal harmonization between the elements and the whole. I said earlier that the number of kinds of root rectangles is unlimi~ed. But clearly as we move to higher and h1gher roots 1t becomes increasingly difficult to" distinguish them visually from one another. Now according to Hambidge, the Greek artists seldom if ever made use of a rectangle of an order higher than root five. It would, however, be most rash to conclude that the reason for this upper limit was imprecision with respect to sight. I have here drawn (F1g. 17) the root-five and root-six rectangles side by side. They do resemble one another closely; but I doubt that an>:one will maintain that the eye is powerless to d1stmgu•sh between them, provided there IS of the music that is to be played. The criteria lie in the intelligible forms, not in the sensory apparatus of the beholder. In fact there is a mathematical consideration, which has nothing to do with visual discrimination, that singles out the root-five rectangle. This is its close relation to ano_ther rectangle which was regularly employed in Greek des1gn- the rectangle of the "Golden Section!' a sufficient artistic motive to do so. The considerations h~re are analogous to the tuning of musical scales. The d1fference between the true diatonic pitches A-sharp and B-flat IS small, to be sure. But we cannot know whether it is insignificant until we know what are the tonal demands THE ST. JOHN'S REVIEW Figure 17 II As we began our study of reciprocal rectangles by reflectmg upo~ the appearance of the spiral in growing nature, so ~gmn let us return to another phenomenon of growth m order to approach the Golden Section.' Although there are a host of actually-occurring natural phenomena that could be chosen, I prefer to consider a somewhat fanciful one, which was put forward as a problem by Leonardo of Pisa between 1202 and 1228.6 This is the question: "How many pairs of rabbits can be produced from a single pair in one year?" Leonardo sup- posed that every month each pair begets a new pair which, the second month on, become themselves productive. With this supposition he found that the number of pairs in successive months would be: f~om 1, 2, 3, 5, 8, 13, 21, 34, 55, 89, 144, 233, 377, ... These numbers follow the rule that each one after the . second, 1s the sum of the two that precede it.' This is a summation series, but it is widely known as the Fibonacci series· in honor of Leonardo who was the son of Bonacci· that is, Leonardo Jiglio Bdnacci. ' It is a remarkable trait of summation series that no matter what chance number we may happen to begin with, the series quickly begin to resemble one another. For example, consider this summation series beginning arbitrarily with the number 29: 29, 29, 58, 87, 145, 232, 377, ... 47 �In fact it is a theorem, which however I shall not here prove, that all summation series, beginning with any number whatever as the first term, approach without limit the same ratio between successive terms. We can already see that this ratio, whatever its exact value (a value which is in fact irrational), can be given approximately by the ratio of the last two terms of the two series which so nearly resemble one another; that is to say, by 377/233 or 377/232 -which is a value around 1.61 or 1.62. Let us designate the exact value of the ratio, whatever it turns out to be, by the letter <p (for Fi-bonacci?). I will show you later how to express it more exactly. And let us ask the following question: "Is there a sequence which meets both the requirements of continued summation and continued proportion simultaneously?" That is, is there a sequence such that for any three successive terms these relations hold: D r c. E ' ' "- / "- "- I I ' I ' ' I "- I "- "- I "- I "-, ol '(;! I J I '- ' I F A 'l'f "- "- "- B Figure 18 (1) and ? (2) If there is such a series, it will exhibit simultaneously characteristics of the growth of the nautilus and also the growth of a population of Leonardo's rabbits; for each of its terms will be at the same time a mean proportional and an arithmetic difference between the two neighboring terms. I don't know if that remarkable combination is enough to make you want to call it "Golden." It is in any case reminiscent of the problem that faced the Demiurge in Plato's Timaeus: the simultaneous control of geometric and arithmetic means in the tuning of the Pythagorean scale. Suppose then, that there is such a series; divide the terms of equation (2) through by an+ 1> and we have rectangle FC has the same relation to the given rectangle as was set forth earlier in Figure 7, and thus it is the reciprocal of the given rectangle. QE.D. The rectangle whose sides are in golden ratio to one another is called, it will come as no surprise to hear, ,the "Golden Rectangle;' and we can state the following theorem about it, which is merely a restatement of what has just been proved: "When a square is applied to the end of a golden rectangle, it is deficient by a space which is itself a golden rectangle!' By this same relation we are also in a position to calculate <p. Since <p and its reciprocal must differ by unity, or <pi- 1/<p, = 1, Multiply through by <p for the following quadratic equation: which can also be written <p -1 =1/<p. What this tells us is, <p has a value that exceeds unity by its own reciprocal. No rational value of <p can satisfy this condition. But we can give geometrical expression to it as follows. Consider a rectangle DB (Fig. 18) whose sides are in the golden ratio to one another: let the sides be <p and 1, respectively. Then this rectangle must be composed of a square plus its own reciprocal, according to the relation we just derived. For AB = <p, and let square DF be constructed so that AF = 1. Then FB = <p -1 =1/<p as above. Therefore 48 Reducing this by the quadratic formula (but ignoring the negative root), we have m= 1 +..J5,1618 2 . 'Y which value is nicely in line with our earlier estimate. We thus have the ratio of sides of the golden rectangle. It remains only to show how to construct the golden rectangle, since its dimensions are not rational. Euclid gives two methods: Proposition 11 of Book II, To cut a given finite straight line so that the rectangle contained WINTER 1985 �by the whole and one of its segments is equal to the square on the remaining segment; and Proposition 30 of Book VI, To cut a given finite straight line in mean and extreme ratio. Either of these methods suffices, but here is a shorter way that is given by Hambidge and many other writers. With AB as base (Fig. 19), construct the square ABCD, and let BC be bisected at E. Join ED, and extend BC to F, where EF equals ED. Complete rectangle AF. I say that rectangle AF is the golden rectangle; and rectangle DF is the reciprocal, for it is deficient by a square. For let AB equal unity. J D A // / / \ / \ I I I I I I vv \'""' ":I \/ H B E ' \ \ \ \ \ I \ ' \ I \ I I ~,~ \ I ' ' I \ G c F Figure 20 DE='-"(\1,) 2 +1'- V,..j5 + V,..j5 1 +..J5 BF= V, or BF= cording to Hambidge, is found frequently in classical compositions. In order to apply it to a particular exam- 2 ple, let us draw out a few more properties of this shape. Let there be given the root-five rectangle AB (Fig. 21) with central square DC and flanking golden rectangles AI and CH. Now rectangles AC and IH are also golden and this, as we just saw, is cp. QE.D. G D A '- I I I I I "" "' \ \ \ <!-:./ \ "'I I \ I I I I B E C. rectangles, because each is formed from a golden rect- angle and the square on its side. Draw diagonals AC and HI, intersecting at E. Through E, draw FG parallel to the base, and draw also the vertical, EK. We may then immediately identify four other golden rectangles, namely EH, EI, AE, and EC; they are all parallelograms about the diameters IH and AC, and are therefore all similar to one another and to the golden rectangles AC and IH. A Greek drinking cup (Fig. 22) in the collection of the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston, 7 illustrates the plan we have just set out. What follows is one of more than 200 analyses which were published either by Jay Hambidge or by L. D. Caskey, late Curator of Classical Antiquities at MFA. F Figure 19 A \) H In this same construction we see the close geometrical connection that I said was to be found between the golden rectangle and the root-five rectangle. In the same way that we constructed rectangle DF in the previous figure, construct (Fig. 20) rectangle JB on the opposite end of the figure. I say that rectangle JF, formed of two golden rectangles and a square, is the root-five rectangle. For let AB equal unity. EH~EF~ V,..j5. But HF is the sum of EH and EF; thus HF ~ ..)5, and rectangle JF is the root-five rectangle. QE.D. The root-five rectangle conceived as a square plus two flanking rectangles is a design element which, ac- THE ST. JOHN'S REVIEW I K C B Figure 21 49 �A ,, \ \ \ '- ''- \ f ' I I IE angle. But it was the circumstance of the pedestal base being equal to the overall height that brought the figure forth as a square plus two flanking rectangles, rather than some other of the myriad ways in which the root-five rectangle may be subdivided. In Dynamic Symmetry the concern is not with line but with figure in the sense of / / / -\- 'N Euclid. (This is not "area," which is a notion that carries metrical connotations that are no doubt anachronistic.) '- ' M drinking cup, the containing figure was the root-five rect- H D I K "" c B L Figure 22 From the point of view of figure, as Hambidge several times notes, voids function in a design just as actively as do masses. In our example, the "empty" spaces FI and CG- each of which· can be shown to be a double square- are part of the spatial structure of this piece. In the sketch, we see the main design plan for the piece: the root-five rectangle I AB! serves. as the contain- ing figure for the cup (minus its handles), while the central square DC determines the diameter of the base. The join between bowl and pedestal is fixed by the intersection of diagonals, so that the rectangle AB containing the bowl and the rectangle NC containing the pedestal are similar to one another. Each is composed of two golden rectangles. The handles extend beyond the root-five rectangle. If spaces AM and HL are added to accommodate the handles, it is found by measurement that each added space is (nearly) congruent with the area NC and that each is therefore also composed of two golden rectangles. Observe also that the curve of the pedestal appears to be fixed in part by the intersection of diameters NK and EI. Finally, the lower extremity of the handle join lies on a diameter of the flanking rectangle, as AI. Such an analysis as this one raises a number of questions. Are the geometrical correlations really essential to this design, or are they just accidental? Moreover, do they Now let us take up a more complex treatment of the golden rectangle. This time I will simply assert the proportions of the design plan. The calculations are straightforward enough, but they are time-consuming. You will remember that when we were talking about the reciprocal rectangles I called your attention to the four "poles" (Fig. 8) which every rectangle has- these are the centers of the four rectangular spirals that can be drawn in every rectangle. Through the poles (Fig. 23) of golden rectangle XY draw lines parallel to the sides, X I'' ' , \ w \ I I J ', // I/ / 'f... \ I I \ I I ' I ' I, H I I " " ' ' :/ v ' X / .. " / II /-<.. I I/ //I J /K \ s/ / \ \ I '- I / I 1\ / I taining figure; we cannot credit the root-five rectangle 50 ' A reflect characteristics that are uniquely pertinent to the with this relation. On the other hand, they will be golden rectangles only if rectangle AB is root-five. It would have been equally appropriate to raise such questions in the case of the Egyptian bas-relief. If they seem of greater urgency here, it is probably because of the greater variety of things that are being counted as "correlations" in this analysis, for example, intersections of diagonals at a particular feature. Hambidge's theories have been subjected to vigorous criticism on just such points as these. • With your permission, though, I would like to defer their consideration until we have seen more of the kind of thing Dynamic Symmetry looks for in a composition. One central idea is illustrated in this example. Dynamic Symmetry is not just a theory of ratios, but rather of spatial relations which certain select proportions make possible. Here, works are viewed in respect of their containment by a figure, and in respect of their implicit articulation of that figure. In the '- \ i\ / I \ I root-rectangles, or are they merely relations that are of general validity? For example, rectangles AE and EC have to be similar, no matter what proportions govern the con- u A \ \ \ ' '-\ y A rp <fJ w J K j'J I G I H rp rp B y Figure 23 WINTER 1985 �as shown. We will then have golden rectangles at the corners and in the center, and squares WG, KZ remaining. Each of the areas AK and GB is composed of a square plus a golden rectangle (Fig. 24). So we can calculate the ratio of sides of figure AB; it is 3.618 : 2.618, or 1.382. A A. c L N E --, 'I '' / J !., I L E /~ -- I, / ~/ I I /'., I t // ' _ ; _ - --'L-- ' ' -- -- -/r----r,-- -/ 'P '' /' / / / I I I ' ,I D K M I I I L/ '' / / / / '' ' F Figure 25 I 'P ',I - / I I I / '/ ' / ' G t A H ~- the lower corner of the foot. The upper edge of a painted decorative border coincides (nearly) with side G H. The upper 2.618 rectangle functions this way: To the applied squares AM and NK correspond respectively the remainders LK andJN, both golden rectangles. The intersection of the square's diagonal, as AM, and the rect- p I D Figure 24 In his book on the Greekvase, Hambidge asserts that many of them were constructed according to proportions inherent in the 1.382 rectangle. Here9 is one of them (Fig. 25). The containing rectangle AB is 1.382. Squares AH and JB are applied at top and bottom to leave the remainders AK and GB which are 2.618. To the uppermost of these, squares NK and AM are applied; and similarly also to the lowermost, as shown in the righthand sketch. The intersections of diagonals of the squares determine the central rectangle CEFD, which is rootfive (for imagine it displaced to the right by the amount FB; it will then be seen to consist of a square plus two flanking golden rectangles). This central rectangle determines the width of the lip and the diameter of the bottom of the base. The lower portion of the figure is governed by dimensions of the rectangle GB in conjunction with the central root-five area. The intersection of diagonal QD and its reciprocal-producing perpendicular RS determines the level of the top of the base. Diagonal DG passes through THE ST. JOHN'S REVIEW angle's diagonal, as JN, determines the level of the upper edge of a decorative border. Finally, consider a line PT which bisects the containing rectangle just above the vase's greatest width. Diagonals PB and TV intersect at a level which determines the lower edge of the decorative border, while the diagonal PD passes through the upper corner of the foot. Our two vases illustrate that the classical mode of employment of the golden rectangle was more subtle than some investigators have appreciated. Although both pieces depend decisively upon the compositional properties of the golden rectangle, neither employs it as the overall containing shape. In fact, of the rectangles that do function as containing shapes in Greek pottery, the golden rectangle is by no means a predominating one, though it is frequent. to The golden rectangle has been characterized by a host of writers- and researchers as the "most beautiful rect- angle." Evidently, however, to the Greek designers a "most beautiful" shape was not one to be slavishly perpetrated at every possible occasion. Such an idea would be as ridiculous as Socrates's comic example in the Republic of the man who wanted to paint a statue's eyes purple because "the most beautiful organs deserve the most beautiful color:' Rather, as Hambidge observed, the aesthetic significance of the golden rectangle in classical design -lies in its value as a co-ordinating factor. 11 Its rich system of relations and subtle potentials for transformation afford the designer immense scope of variation while yet preserving the mathematical grounds of that unity of theme which appears to have been so important in Greek design practice. 51 �The methods of analysis used in these examples from pottery are fully applicable in other arts. Except for the dynamic symmetry. Nevertheless, Hambidge thought relative difficulty of obtaining accurate measurements, analysis of architectural works, for example, proceeds in tually became the major part of his program to effect exactly the same way and discloses identical geometrical themes. In The Greek Vase Hambidge says: "There is no essential difference between the plan of a Greek vase and the plan of a Greek temple or theater, either in general aspect, or in detail." 12 In all cases, Hambidge maintains, analysis of Greek or Egyptian compositions shows that the artist worked within a predetermined area: The enclosing rectangle was considered the factor which con~ trolled and determined the units of the form. A work of art thus correlated became an entity comparable to an organism in nature. Only such rectangles, simple or compound, were used, whose areas and submultiple parts were clearly understood. If the design for a vase shape were being planned the artist would consider the full height of the vessel as the side or end of a certain rectangle, while the full width would be the end or other side. The choice of a rectangle depended upon its suitability for a purpose, both in shape and property of proportional subdivision. A rough sketch was probably made as a preliminary and this formalized by the rectangle . .. (The Greek Vase, p. 44) that it was an inferior kind of symmetry, and it evena reintroduction of the dynamic techniques into contem- porary design. Here (Fig. 26) is a sketch of a ground plan that appears in one of Leonardo da Vinci's notebooks. It is easy to see how the plan is based upon the multiple repetition of the little square as unit. This is severe static sym- metry.14 What is most lacking in this kind of design, as compared with the dynamic designs we have studied, is the sense of governance by the containing whole. The subdivisions in the Leonardo design are not obtained from the containing figure but from the Cartesian grid ( ]_ ~ ,....., ,..- ,.... Of all the virtues that Hambidge found in designs ~ based on d)rnamic symmetry principles, this character of governance by the whole was probably in his view the - cardinal virtue. Its mathematical basis is the recurrence of the ratio of the fundamental rectangle when given areas are subdivided by application of areas-a recurrence that is peculiar to the root rectangles and which we have already recognized under the name of "theme integrity!' The intimate harmonization of whole and part was for Jay Hambidge a reflection of the organic designs produced in nature, and this impelled him to play increasingly upon the word "dynamic!' Gradually abandoning its original, severe role- the mere translation of the mathematical adverb ovv<ii'H-he more and more began to rely upon a more current usage, a usage increasingly expressive of force, life, and energy. Hambidge repeatedly contrasted the dynamic symmetry of figure and its associations with life and organism with an inferior,\ arithmetic"\ kind of symmetry that is based on the lineal unit, or direct commensurability of line. This kind of symmetry he called "static." "Static" symmetry so-called is based on a fixed unit. It is the kind of ubiquitous commensurability we come up with when we design on graph paper. "Static" symmetry characterizes the art of most of the great civilizations, ancient and modern. According to Hambidge, only the Egyptians and the Greeks mastered the practices of dynamic symmetry: and even the Greeks seem to have gone through a stage of "quasi-static" design before bringing the dynamic techniques to full fruition -and later, in the Hellenistic period, to have reverted to the static methods. Certainly the great Renaissance artists used static rather than 52 \I r7 "\. \ I 1'\ "/ " ' v / I :'\ " ~ - ltci ' v ./ / / :,.-.... i'-' \ ) If.}_ Figure 26 (or "trellis;' as Hambidge calls it). In fact this trellis vies with the containing shape for dominance and may even appear to be logically prior to it. A Cartesian grid is essentially infinite 15 and is "contained" only in a most accidental sense by the overall shape. "Limited;' in fact, rather than "contained;' is probably a better word with which to ex- press the relation of a statically symmetric shape to its outline. There is no reason inherent in the Cartesian grid why the overall shape should not have been wholly different; and if it were, the pattern of subdivision based on repetitive units would be affected not at all. When the grid pattern is as emphatic as it is in the Leonardo sketch, we can easily have the sense that the grid is threatening to break out of the square into elongations and extensions. This actually happens -as when an addition is made to an existing building. In any case, the static treatment tends to emphasize measured, counted space over shaped space. "Static" symmetry need not be based on the square. It is imposed whenever there is used a repetitiVe element, whatever that element may be. It could be (Fig. 27) the WINTER 1985 �equilateral triangle, the hexagon, or even one of the root· was an antecedent specification- this is one of the ques- rectangles. The mere deployment of a root-rectangle does tions at issue) may not have been successfully achieved by the builder, in the case of an edifice, or may have been altered in the firing process, in the case of a clay vase. And we must admit the effects of vandalism, decay, ero- not achieve dynamic symmetry unless its peculiar potentials for explication by application of areas are made use of. sion, and other ravages of time in obscuring even the dimension that was in fact achieved. Next, is it possible to give a retrospective analysis of a given geometrical form, otherwise undocumented, that can ever be more than speculative? For example, if a certain architectural facade should measure, say, 69.52 feet by 39.93 feet, for a calculated ratio of 1. 741- are we to understand this as an intended construction of the root-three proportion, 1. 732, or of the simple Pythagorean ratio 7:4, which is 1. 75? Or of some altogether different significance- or none at all? Furthermore, what categories of geometric "facts" in a design are to be regarded as having aesthetic significance? We found a feature in one of the Greek vases that fell neatly at the intersection of two diagonals. But in the overall design there are dozens of diagonals, and hundreds of such intersections. The likelihood of a chance IIIIIII I Figure 27 coincidence between a design feature and one of these intersections is high, as Hambidge's critics have noted, perhaps so high as to deprive even the most conservative analysis of any statistical validity. All of these criticisms were amply voiced during Jay Hambidge's lifetime. He and his collaborators were not without a defense of their position, but it cannot be said that the defense is satisfactory in all respects. There reIII To conclude this talk, I would like to voice a few thoughts about Dynamic Symmetry as an historical theory. Understandably, it is the historical aspect of Hambidge's teachings that has commanded most attention apd generated most controversy. He asserted that the Greek designers did deliberately aim for governance and theme integrity, and that they consciously and masterfully cultivated a system of empirical geometry to further those ends. Given the nature of the available evidence, this is an extremely difficult thesis to establish. Only occasionally can its components be formulated in a clearly testable way; and even then, the "test" is not always decisive. Ham- bidge and his collaborators repeatedly tried to show that analyses of Greek artifacts according to dynamic symmetry principles were in significantly better agreement with the actual dimensions of their subjects than were main powerful inducements to skepticism, both of a methodological and of an evidentiary nature. But despite its glamour and notoriety, I do not think that the historical aspect was the main component of Hambidge's program. His overriding aim was to restore Dynamic Symmetry to a place among the practical resources of the contemporary working artist. Most directly serviceable to the artist was his setting out of those design objectives that are advanced by the distinctive geometry of the root rectangles: elevation of area relations over line relations, efficacy of the containing rectangle, and the unity of proportion theme. Hambidge never tried to promote these attributes as eternal or universal aesthetic values; still less did he believe that the techniques for achieving them constituted a recipe for the manufacture of beauty. But he did believe that any activity that aspired to creative power demanded a substantial fabric of know-how and collective intelligible experience if it was to achieve anything. This credo other, competing, analytic systems. But these claims were found voice in his many and vigorous exhortations to just as vociferously by other parties denied 16 Fruitful pursuit of this controversy is even now practicing artists to put dynamic symmetry techniques to use in their own work. Hambidge's rationale for such hindered by a lack of sufficient understanding of the very a redirection of artistic attention was that it would restore canons of evidence themselves. For example, what level of precision is to be regarded as significant in the measurement of otherwise undocumented artifacts? For a vigor and direction that, he felt, had been lacking in modern design. There was, he asserted, a malaise plagu- we have somehow to take account of the likelihood that the dimension specified by the designer (if, indeed, there preoccupation with the individual, the superficial, the unique and the gimmicky. It had its root in a cultural THE ST. JOHN'S REVIEW ing twentieth-century art, in the form of an excessive 53 �malady that was more profound: our wholesale loss of the vision of Nature as an objective but accessible intelligible order. For the artist, absence of such a public Nature is equivalent to an emasculation of all the formal elements of his craft. Hambidge wrote: Modern art, as a rule,.aims at freshness of idea and originality in technique of handling; Greek art aimed at the perfection of proportion and workmanship in the treatment of old, well-understood and established motifs. ... this is the lesson that modern artists must learn; that the backbone of art is formalization and not realism ... The Greek artist was always virile in his creations, because he adopted nature's ideal. The modern conception of art leads toward an overstress of personality and loss of vigor. (The Greek Vase, pp. 44 and 142) Hambidge's writings played down the real primacy of his restorative program for the working artist. His arguments were skewed to the historical question to a degree that was partly unavoidable but partly needless and misleading. He wrote as if it were the fact of the Greeks' success with these methods-assuming it to have been a fact- that made plausible a modern restoration of the dynamic techniques. The weakness of such an appeal is obvious; if the truth of the historical claim is doubted, then so is the conclusion of superior merit correspondingly weakened. The nature of the evidence, the evaluative tools of archaeology and metrology, and the formulation of appropriate statistical treatments were all in the 1920s too undeveloped in the directions required by Hambidge's study either to corroborate it or to refute it; and in such a case weight remains with the skeptical position. The situation is largely unchanged in the 1980s, although comparable evidentiary and methodological questions have begun to be addressed more adequately. Much of this attenti9n has been in response to the work of Alexander Thorn on megalithic monuments in Britain and to other arChaeoastronomical investigations in Britain, Mesoamerica, and the southwestern United States. Uncorroborated (but, I say again, equally unrifuted) by other sciences, Dynamic Symmetry's appeal as a modern design practice depended essentially on the persuasive powers of one man: Jay Hambidge. During the short period of his public activity in this cause he was active indeed. Besides his own research he inspired and partly guided the research of others. 1 ' He published four books (with two more that appeared posthumously) and edited a journal, all devoted to Dynamic Symmetry. 18 He conducted classes and lectures for students in New York and Boston, and he regularly addressed professional associations of artists and designers here and abroad. His influence spurred Tiffany's of New York to offer a line of silver vessels made according to the "dynamic" ratios. But Jay Hambidge died in 1924; and with his death the 54 influence of his ideas ceased to grow, despite the labors of a company of dedicated followers whose numbers have not vanished to this day. I am sorry that obscurity has devolved upon Jay Hambidge's work. Besides the metrological questions that it raised, which archaeology and the other sciences of antiquity will continue to address in one form or another as their methods develop, there is that in Hambidge's work which is particularly valuable to the spectator of art, in expanding his observational powers. By forcing our attention beyond the line and the curve, to the rectangular shapes they may imply, Hambidge opened up what is literally a new·dimension in seeing. He once expressed the germ of this idea in the form of an aphorism. It might be a little overstated- but evidently he didn't think so. I leave it with you as a provisional final word: 19 "The line means nothing to design; the area means everything." FOOTNOTES 1. Rhys Carpenter, "Dynamic Symmetry: A Criticism," in American journal of Archaeology, Second Series, XXV, 1 (1921). See especially page 35, where Carpenter assumes that if the theory of Dynamic Symmetry is true, "slaveborn humble artisans" would have to have known a great deal about "all this geometry." For Hambidge's opinion to the contrary, see The Diagonal, I, 1 (November 1919), p. 8 (note 11 below). 2. Generally I use "side" to denote indiscriminately either the longer or the shorter of the lines that contain a given rectangle. But when distinguishing them is important, I shall use "side" to denote the longer line and "end" to denote the shorter. 3. Jay Hambidge, Dynamic Symmetry: The Greek Vase, New Haven, Yale University Press, 1920. Abbreviation for references: The Greek Vase. 4. Rectangles with commensurable sides cannot be classifi"ed into theme families. For the ratio of sides of any rectangle belonging to the Vm family can be expressed as c where a, b, c, m are integers. The family will be a "proper'' root family only if m is a nonsquare integer; if m is a square integer the radical can be eliminated and the family is said to be merely "nominal" (like the so-called root-four family). Any rectangle with commensurable sides has ratio p/q, where p, q are integers. Then if possible, let WINTER 1985 �Then, first, since p, q, a, b, care all integers, m cannot have any nonsquare value; thus the rectangle does not belong to atry proper root family. Moreover, with integers p, q given and m any square integer, integral values of a, b, c that satisfy the equation can always be found. Thus the rectangle belongs simultaneously to all nominal root families. Hence rectangles with commensurable sides cannot be classified into theme families. Q.E.D. 11. Jay Hambidge, ed., "The Diagonal" (a periodical) I, 5 (March, 1920), p. 91. A total of twelve issues of this jour· nal were published by Yale University Press; the first dated November, 1919 and the last dated October, 1920. 12. The Greek Vase, Foreword, p. 6. 13. "Arithmetic" is my epithet, not Hambidge's. 5. The term "Golden Section" is of 19th-century origin. An earlier term, "Divine Section," appears in Kepler and other 16th-century writers. Proclus refers to it simply as "the Section," and in Euclid it is the division into "mean and extreme ratio." SeeR. C. Archibald, "Notes," in The Greek Vase, pp. 146-157. 14. The plan also shows radial symmetry, which according to Hambidge is another static form. ' 6. Published for the first time in 1857. 16. Rhys Carpenter, op. cit. 7. MuseumofFineArts, Boston, No. 03.784. See The·Greek Vase, p. 116; also L. D. Caskey, Geometry of Greek Vases, Boston, Museum of Fine Arts Communications to the Trustees, V, 1922, p.175 (Fig. 132). Caskey reports a bowl diameter of 27.4 em and a height of 12.05 em which, however, appears to be a misprint for 12.15 em. According to the latter figure, the bowl diameter exceeds a true root-five rectangle by less than 3 mm. 17. Especially L. D. Caskey. 8. E. M. Blake, "Dynamic Symmetry-A Criticism" in The Art Bulletin, III (1920). Also see Rhys Carpenter, op. cit. 9. Pelike, Metropolitan Museum, New York City, No. 06.1021.191. From The Greek Vase, pp. 95, 98. 10. Caskey, op. cit., p. 6. 15. For a haunting treatment of this Cartesian truth, see Jorge Luis Borges' story, "The Library of Babel," in Ficciones, New York, Grove Press, 1962. 18. Besides The Greek Vase and The Diagonal, already cited, these writings ofJay Hambidge are listed in the Library of Congress Card Catalog: · Dynamic Symmetry, Boston, c. 1919. Microfilm 36800NK. The Parthenon and Other Greek Temples: Their Dynamic Symmetry, New Haven, Yale University Press, 1920. Dynamic Symmetry in Composition as Used by the Artists, Cambridge, Massachusetts, The Author, 1923. N7430.H3. The Elements of Dynamic Symmetry, New York, Brentano's, c. 1926 and Dover, 1967. NC703.H25. Practical Applications of Dynamic Symmetry, ed. Mary C. Hambidge, New Haven, Yale University Press, 1932. 19. The Diagonal, p. 92. • THE ST. JOHN'S REVIEW 55 �The Song of Timaeus Peter Kalkavage T his lecture is about the strangest of Platds dialogues, the Timaeus. I would like to focus our attention this evening on the famous eikos mythos, the "likely story," told by the character Timaeus. The likely story tells about the beginnings of the visible, touchable world. Our story-teller, Timaeus, takes us through the process by which the world was generated from its most radical causes and principles. Whereas the Republic dramatizes the founding of regimes both in city and in soul, the likely story shows the founding of the cosmic regime, the government of the world. For Timaeus, the world's founding depends to a great extent on the power of mathematics. Throughout the likely story, Timaeus draws the listener's attention to the arts of arithmetic, geometry, and especially the theory of ratio we find in the fifth book of Euclid's Elements. Timaeus' physicist is a mathematical physicist, and his bond with mathematics expresses his dream that the world be wellgoverned, that the cosmos no less than souls and cities display the virtues of stability, moderation, and wisdom. Timaeus at one point articulates the motto of such a physicist. It takes the form of a little jingle in Greek: pan de to agathon kalon, kai to kalon ouk ametron; "All the good is beautiful, and the beautiful is not measureless:' 1 The physicist for Timaeus represents all that is decent, healthy, and beautifully arranged, all that is conveyed by that rich Greek word kosmos. Throughout the likely story, goodness is associated with the beautiful structures of mathematics, and badness is associated with the ugliness of disorder. Peter Kalkavage is a tutor at St. John's College, Annapolis. The Song of Timaeus was originally delivered as a formal lecture at St. John's College, Annapolis in 1984. 56 I will try in this lecture to say what the world, our world, looks like through the eyes ofTimaeus' motto about the good, the beautiful, and the measured. The Timaeus is the most artful and artificial of all the Platonic dialogues. There is really not anything in it that could be called conversation. And the dialogue as a whole, so plentiful in references to life and motion, seems somewhat lacking in vitality and spontaneity. The major .characters ---'Timaeus, Critias, and Hermocrates- meet Socrates according to a preestablished plan. Socrates appears in a most uncharacteristic way. He is dressed up, kekosmemenos, as though he were going to some formal event. 2 Socrates expresses a desire for a war-movie in speech, then seems eager just to sit back and listen. The entire program is presented with extreme formality by Critias. 3 In fact, all the speeches to be given do constitute a formal event. That event is the feasting of Socrates, the dialogue's central dramatic image. The likely story of Timaeus fits well into this highly artful setting. Artfulness plays the central role in Timaeus' mythical physics. The very word kosmos suggests not only a world-order b_ut ornamentation. Timaeus' story is composed of what Socrates calls a prelude and a song4 The pair of terms also means preamble and law. The song of Timaeus, the nomos as Socrates calls it, embraces two forms of artfulness, that of music and that of politics. Timaeus' speech will show us how artfully arranged the world of becoming is. His song sings the praises of the god Kosmos, who for Timaeus is the whole of all generated things. The Platonic dialogues are all imitations oflive conversations. They are living images, dramas. This is true even of the Timaeus, which seems at times quite lifeless and undramatic. Very often in the dialogues something in a speech or interchange is not so much spoken about as it is playfully enacted. In the likely story, it is easy WINTER 1985 �to see what is being enacted, or rather re-enacted. It is the birth of the world as we know and experience it. The likely story is mimetic in this precise sense: it "plays at" world-building. It imitates the noble, though often risky process by which the gods made a world-order. At the beginning of the Critias, the dialogue which immediately follows the Timaeus, Timaeus calls the cosmos "the god who was born once upon a time long ago and who was just now begotten by speeches!'' The likely story, in other words, imitates the artist-god or demiurge. It is recreational. When god makes the world-soul, we are engaged in the various. constructions. When the gods make us, we are involved in the work of putting ourselves together. The world with all its structure comes to light for Timaeus in a divine activity we ourselves take part in. Timaeus calls this activity of world-building in speech "thoughtful and measured play!'6 Such play for Timaeus is identical with the activity of the mathematical physicist. To read the likely story profitably, we must therefore relax our preconceptions about the serious nature of physics. We must exert our imaginations and, I think, our sense of humor. There are many obstacles the reader confronts as he reads the likely story. The story is very long and very technical. Furthermore, it cannot help but strike us as whimsical and ridiculous, a sort of prank. This is the story, you remember, that Timaeus places in the region of trust, pistis-' Yet what could be more unbelievable, more unworthy of our trust, than some of the explanations we get from Timaeus? Take, for example, the story of the liver. Timaeus describes the liver as a sort of movie- screen for the soul. And the pancreas is said to be the liver's wiper8 Is there anything less unbelievable, I ~ wonder, in the apparently more scientific parts of the story? True, there is bound to be some sense behind such unbelievable accounts. But even while we see a certain sense to what Timaeus says, it is impossible not to say to ourselves "Hah! A likely story." Whatever region fhe likely story occupies, that region cannot be identified simply with trust. But there is another difficulty with the likely story. The story is apparently incoherent. It is not one seamless narrative but is composed of three stories. Timaeus makes two radically different beginnings. And in his third story, he makes no effort to show how the two beginnings are related. This problem is the greatest occasion on which the story seems to be incoherent. Timaeus himself warns Socrates and us about this problem the first time he uses the phrase "likely story!' It is worthwhile quoting the whole passage in which the phrase first appears: Don't wonder, Socrates, if we are not able to pay you back with speeches about the birth of gods and of the All, that are not in every way in agreement with themselVes and altogether precise. But you must esteem the speeches we provide as likenesses inferior to none. You must remember that I who speak and you my judges THE ST. JOHN'S REVIEW have human nature. So, in order to receive the likely story about these things, it is fitting not to search beyond this. 9 The physics of Timaeus will be a likely story for two reasons. The first is that the world is not a being in its own right but an appearance, a moving and unstable likeness of an intelligible, stable model. Proper speech about the world must therefore take the form of imagery. Secondly, the story-teller and his listeners are human, not divine. They must know their place and not search beyond the likely story. This passage ends what Socrates refers to as Timaeus' prelude. Socrates' response to the prelude is extremely interesting. He tells Timaeus to "perform the song;' a command which can also mean "execute the law."to Now there are many strange things about the passage I quoted. It is very important, first of all, because it is addressed explicitly to Socrates. But the most important feature of what Timaeus says is that he articulates the limitations of the upcoming myth. Socrates is being asked, as a human being, to take the likely story about the cosmos as merely a likeness, not as the truth. That is, the likely story begins with an apology and a caution. But why apologize for a likeness? Myths after all are likenesses. No one needs to be reminded of this fact. And Socrates, although he tells many stories, never feels the need to apologize for any of them. Indeed, we sometimes feel that a Socratic mythos has the power of showing us what dialectical logos cannot explain to us. At the end of the Gorgias, just before the concluding myth, Socrates says to Callicles, "You may think it is only a myth, but I take it to be a true account:' 11 I take what Socrates tells Calli des here to be true of all the Socratic myths. These myths are images without apology because, as likenesses, they aim at and in a certain sense contain truth. Likenesses in this sense do not function as boundaries. They are rather springboards for our perception of invisible, eternal truths. Socrates would never say, "You are only human; do not search beyond the likelihood of my story!' For Socrates, myths appear to belong to the level of the divided line called imagination, eikasia, the level at which images take us beyond themselves to that which they image.'2 As I mentioned earlier, the story ofTimaeus is com- posed of three separate stories. The high-point of the first story is Timaeus' construction of the divine, intelligent soul. In the second story, Timaeus unveils the receptacle, the supreme condition for all body, change, and appearance. The third story is about the birth of human nature. This third story is the most bizarre and most playful story Timaeus tells. The remainder of this lecture will be divided into three parts, corresponding to Timaeus' three stories: Part I-The Story of the Soul Part II-The Story of the Body Part III-The Story of Human Nature 57 �One reminder before we begin. Timaeus is a masculine world. The likely story imitates Zeus giving birth to Athena; a most accurate image, I think, for the mathematical physicist and his various brain-children. character in the dialogue, not Platds spokesman. Plato causes us to reflect on the problem of a world not by a direct encounter with the issues but through a human Even when Timaeus introduces the "mother" of becom- soul and its various motions, through the soul of Timaeus. We will thus have two questions before us con- ing later in his story, I think he retains his role as Zeus. He re-creates the womb of becoming as a dynamic stantly: What is the world; and Who is Timaeus? We medium for artful, mathematical construction. must be careful not to separate these questions. It is by The likely story begins with ·the divine craftsman, the demiurge, who gazes upon a perfectly stable and utterly intelligible model of the world. The model or paradigm simply is and thus experiences no becoming. It is that being which the cosmos imitates at the level of regular, no means clear that the likely story represents what has come to be called "Plato's cosmology." Let us now turn to the likely story. Part I-The Story of the Soul periodic motions and .the "laws of nature" which govern such motions. 22 As the not-yet-actual structure of a mov- ing world, the intelligible paradigm functions for the craftsman as a kind of "cosmic blueprint;' a plan which T he deed imitated by Timaeus' story is the birth of the world. The story is filled with language that suggests begetting. Later in his story, Timaeus will tell us that the world guides the construction of the cosmos and in which the various forms of motion, power, and life find their is the "offspring" of a "father" and a prophecy. By consulting this model, the god tries to make Becoming as beautiful, that is as orderly, as possible. "mother:' 13 He will also tell us that the pyramid is not only the element but also the seed of fire. 14 Human souls are planted, originally, in their individual stars. 15 The Before the divine ordering, Becoming is said to be in a state of disorder. Timaeus calls this condition "not at peace and out of tune."2 3 In order to regulate and tune star-gods themselves are referred to as god's "children." 16 this ugly condition, the god consults not only the cosmic blueprint but also the goodness of his own intelligence. He looks within himself in much the same way that the mathematical physicist looks within his intelligence for the mathematical principles of order. The god desires that the world imitate him as much as possible." To this end, the god constructs intelligence within the soul and soul within body. 25 The soul is that on account of which the The likely story thus aims at being a likely biology as well as a likely physics. Timaeus acknowledges that the realm of becoming is also the realm of procreation. But the central, overriding image for the likely story is that of artful production, technt God is a craftsman, a demiurge, who makes a world by giving it mathematical order. This is very different from the story in the Bible in which God says to his creatures, "Be fruitful and multiply:' In the likely story, the goodness of a cosmos derives wholly from mathematical ordering. Insofar as becoming is good, it is mathematically structured. Fruit- cosmos is a living being. What Timaeus' construction means here is that the cosmos is alive for the sake of being intelligent, not because life is a good in itself. Life is present because fulness is not good for its own sake. In fact, as we see it is impossible, says Timaeus, to make the world in- at the end of the story, the enis for begetting stems from our mindless and tyrannical nature." The female kind telligent without also making it alive. And unless intelligence is put into the world, the world will not be the best and most beautiful of possible worlds. At this point the cosmos is said to be an animal composed of body, soul, and intelligence. The cosmos is patterned after what Timaeus calls "the intelligible animal:'' 6 The intelligible animal contains the forms of all the animals that are is derived from the "first men" who were cowardly and unjust. 18 Procreation comes about because the first men "fell" from their divine and orderly condition. The theme of art is central to the entire Timaeus. The dialogue takes place on the feast day of Athena, 1• and there are numerous references to Athena in both the Timaeus and the Critias. Athena is called a lover of war, really living and are contained within the sensed cosmos. the Titan Metis, whose name means craft or cunning. The notion of an intelligible animal is one of the most perplexing notions in the likely story. It is extremely difficult to see how an intelligible dog, for example, could be called an animal. This difficulty comes up again and again for the likely story. It reappears when we are asked to accept the existence of an intelligible fire. 27 As a really living, vibrant whole with all the signs of life, the sensed cosmos appears to be more truly what it is than the The myth about Athenas birth seems to me to provide original it copies. The reason is that the sensed cosmos an accurate image for Timaeus' re-creation of the world is possessed of a soul. I think we need to remember here that, although Timaeus appeals to the image-original relationship we find in many other dialogues, this relationship has a special context in the likely story. It is in wisdom, and art. 20 She is the patroness of Athens which, as Pericles reminds us, philosophizes without becoming effeminate. 21 I think that Athena, or more precisely the birth of Athena, is one of the dialogue's implied images. Athena was born out of Zeus' head. This intellectual, masculine birth takes place just after Zeus swallows up through art. Timaeus seems to be imitating Zeus. Having swallowed up the mathematical arts, Timaeus gives birth out of his head to an artfully constructed, eminently 58 WINTER 1985 �the context of productive or demiurgic art. The artist works from a vision of perfection that appears within his intellect. So long as this vision is in the intellect alone, the perfection is uncontaminated and stable, yet unfulfilled. Fulfillment comes in the act of bringing forth the vision of perfection, actualizing it in time and space. In the context of productive art, the relationship of original to image is the relationship of blueprint to fully otherwise flabby and graceless world. This is much like the way in which the Pythagorean scale gives structure to the music we hear or the way in which Timaeus' song as a whole gives backbone to our flabby conception of the world. It is important to note that these two contrary circuits which govern Becoming, the circuits of Same and Other, are not confined to the heavens. The soul is said actualized structure. The sensed cosmos, though an im- to be "woven throughout" the body of the world "from age, is nevertheless the fulfillment of the idea within the mind of the demiurge. Timaeus proceeds to show, first, how the body of the world was constructed, and secondly, the soul. The body of the cosmos displays the good and beautiful ordering of mathematics. The four elements of body-fire, earth, center to extremity?'32 The soul ensures that the entire air, and Water-are arranged in a continuous propor- tion. ' 8 The entire body of the world is then given spherical shape and the motion of rotation. Soul is constructed next. The story of the soul is one of the most exquisite pieces of architecture in the likely story. It is based on a remarkable premise- that a soul can be built. In the likely story, we are treated to a vision of a likely soul, world is filled with the recurring patterns characteristic of music. Musical intelligibility exists everywhere. It exists not only in the heavenly motions but also in something like the vibrating string. A string vibrates periodically. It displays the togetherness of sameness and otherness. The circuits of Same and Other are therefore not confined to a place. Like music, they do not belong exclusively to the realm of body or to the realm of soul. It is impossible to say, when we are listening to a piece of music, that the music is either inside us or outside us. It seems to be everywhere. We do not "stand back" when we are really listening to a piece of music. The music penetrates and engulfs us. that is, a soul whose being in speech consists in its being Tirnaeus' account of the soul is a powerful transfor- constructed. This is all part of the re-creational activity of the likely story. The construction of the divine soul takes place in three stages. The god first mixes together the forms of Being, Same, and Other. This is accomplished, Timaeus says, "with force."2 9 Next, the god articulates the mix- mation of our ordinary experience of the world. The account requires that we see the world through the eyes of the imagination. Usually we distinguish rather rigidly between the inner and the outer; the non-extended and the extended; the soul and the body. But in the likely story the world is approached through the power of likenesses. For Timaeus the soul's act of thinking and the ture into a spine-like band, the sections of which corres- ° pond to several octaves of the Pythagorean scale. 3 Finally, he slices and bends this spine-like band into the circuits of Same and Other. 31 You know these circuits from your study of Ptolemy. Timaeus gives a two-fold meaning to the circuits. They are the outwardly appearing motions of the heavenly bodies and also the inner, invisible "revolvings" of our thinking, of our dianoia. Timaeus goes On to tell us how the circuits of Same and Other, that we see in the heavens, constitute the moving image of the eternal which we call time. The circuits of Same and Other cause the world to be measured by recurring cycles. In this way, Becoming imitates the utterly non-moving look of Being. Because of these intelligent circuits ordered ac' cording to musical ratios, the world is filled with timeliness. It is characterized by time not merely as duration, but time as a principle of "right timing" or seasonableness. Once the circuits are set in motion, the world becomes thoroughly musical as the moving structure of time. The world is enlivened and also "set straight" by the periodicity of rhythm as well as the periodicity of the musical scale. world's act of turning in a circle imitate one another. Now our souls contain the divine circuits of Same and Other. In the act of thinking we too "revolve within ourselves?' The circuits are housed in our heads, or more precisely, in our brains. This true self of each of us, the intelligence, is planted in a star before being submerged in the violent flux of becoming. As we gaze out and away from ourselves into the heavens, we are in fact looking upon an appearance of our most intimate selves. We are in a sense gazing within and not out towards a "beyond." Now gazing at the stars is an activity we all love. This ordinary activity so often associated with softness and romanticism has a very specific meaning for Timaeus. A star is perfectly shaped, it is always brilliant, and its motions are unwavering and thoroughly regular. Also, a star is deathless. No wonder gazing at the stars can fill us with admiration and longing. We are remembering, remembering what it was like, in our Golden Age, to be entirely healthy and well-formed. Through the study of astronomy we return to a likeness of what Timaeus calls "the form of our first and best condition?' 33 Astronomy vertebrae. Owing to its musicality and seasonableness, is the true homecoming of the human soul. Another powerful transformation of experience occurs in Timaeus' story of the divine soul. This transformation has to do with that special phenomenon, the physicist the soul seems indeed to function .as the backbone of a himself. Timaeus' story "saves" this phenomenon. That constantly moving order. It gives poise and rigor to an is, it shows how the activity of the physicist forms a vital I think it makes sense to compare the soul as Timaeus constructs it to a spine. Our drawings for the cutting of a monochord certainly resemble the spine with its THE ST. JOHN'S REVIEW 59 �part of the whole, how thinking about the cosmos is itself the world's own most essential act. The likely story "saves" the phenomenon of the physicist himself by allowing intellectual activity to permeate the whole ceaselessly. Thinking finds itself reflected in the object of thinking, especially in the heavens. This is another way of saying that logos as thoughtful speech as well as logos as ratio permeates the whole. The cosmos of Timaeus is an intelligent animal. It is always engaged in giving accounts of itself to itself. 34 The physicist, then, does sporadically, partially, and sometimes out loud what the cosmos does continually, fully, and in silence. Strange as the likely story is, it nevertheless has the power to account for the presence of physics and the physicist within the world. This should come as no surprise to us. As I have tried to suggest in my discussion of Athena's birth, the world of Timaeus has its home in the mind and speech of the physicist. It is his brainchild. Such a world is not the world in its originality but the world as it is re-created through the powers of art. Throughout Timaeus' praise of the god Kosmos, he is praising the physicist's god-like power of re-creation, the power of bringing the world into being through speech. The world is fulftlled for Timaeus in the physicist's act of thinking. There are of course many wondrous and admirable motions which the cosmos displays. Yet its highest activity for Timaeus is clearly that of thoughtfulness or reflection. The world longs, one might say, to make itself known and articulate. Only through the powers of intelligent human speech does the world shine forth as what it most truly is- an intelligent, living embodiment of artful structure and purpose. Timaeus calls the cosmos a "happy god:'35 This god would not be happy, would not be fulftlled, were it not for the human beings who tell likely stories about the world's structure. Through the recreational powers of the physicist, the world comes to possess something like a plot, a mythos. In this way, the world comes to be an object of trust. We can place our trust in the appearances only once we have saved them with the peculiar powers of a likely story. At the beginning of the story, Timaeus invoked to hhneteron, 36 that is, ourselves and our own powers of mathematical story-telling. Our trust in the likely story is also our trust in a world that we ourselves have brought into being. Part II-The Story of the Body I n Timaeus' first story of origins, time plays the central role. Time is said to be the moving likeness of eternal, changeless being. I think this means not that time as duration goes on forever, but that time is one of the world's supreme ordering principles. Timaeus agrees with Aristotle in the sense that time is conceived as the measure of motion. 37 Time gives the various happenings of the world rhythm and periodicity. In the cosmic region below the heavens, the world is constantly coming together and falling apart. 60 But this region is nevertheless ruled by the ever-intelligent circuits of Same and Other. The world in a sense "knows" when to do what. In his second account of origins, Timaeus unveils the other supreme ordering principle and dimension of a world- space as the giver of place. For Timaeus, space, likt time, is a moving structure. Space shakes what is within it. 38] ust as time is associated with the world's stability, space is associated with the excitation of all things that have place. Timaeus' first account of body at the very beginning of his speech took the four elements of body as the uncuttable simples out of which body was composed. In his second story the simple-minded notion of an element proves to be insufficient. What confronts us in the region below the heavens is the change of elements into each other. Fire acts on water to beget steam, a form of air. Water evaporates, steam condenses, and fire goes out, leaving its descendants earth and smoke. The element of fire is given special attention by Timaeus. Of all the elements, fire is the most spirited, the most ambitious, and the most desirous of gaining victory over the others. The elements, in other words, are themselves unstable. They appear in the wondrous display of appearing and disappearing. In order to "save" this perplexing phenomenon, Timaeus reconstructs the four elements out of the regular Platonic solids.' 9 This ingenious construction accomplishes two highly important goals. First, the elements are shown to have parts. These parts- the various sides of the regular, geometrical solids- can be rearranged to form other elements. Timaeus' mathematical physics thus accounts for the fact that an element can have integrity and iden-. tifiability while at the same time being able to suffer transmutation. There is a second goal which is of great importance to the likely story. The regular Platonic solids are called by Timaeus "the most beautiful bodies:'40 What this means is that Timaeus accounts for the structure of body in terms of principles that are beautiful and good. Timaeus here puts to work once more the motto of his physics that I quoted earlier: All the good is beautiful, and the beautiful is not measureless. Of course, what I have been calling an account of the elements is, like all accounts of Becoming, a likely story. It represents the attempt on the part of the physicist to construct the best of all possible worlds in speech. Timaeus constructs the paradigms or archetypes of the four elements. He makes no attempt to deduce the real nature of body and change from the supposition of mathematical principles. Timaeus' second attempt to account for the world's beginning unveils a new cause at work in the world. Timaeus calls this cause necessity, ananke. 41 At one point he refers to this cause as "the form, eidos, of the wandering cause."42 Fire does not act on water purposefully. Fire burns because it has to, and water must evaporate whether it likes it or not. In the second beginning Timaeus makes, the world is seen as originating in the cooperation of two causes- the good and the necessary. The good is identical with intelligence, or more precisely, with the ordering power and stability of intelligence. InWINTER 1985 �telligence is said to persuade necessity to take on the beautiful structures of mathematics. 43 In his second beginning, Timaeus acknowledges the role that mindlessness and chance play in the scheme of things. This element of chance cannot be eradicated, nor can it be fully mastered. Timaeus' reference to persuasion suggests that the god's work of ordering the world according to an intelligent and intelligible design is limited by the nature of the original condition in which the design is supposed to inhere. What we have before us in the guise of the necessary cause is none other than the primitive and unmusical condition that exists "before" the divine ordering. By leading us back to a reconsideration of this condition, Timaeus introduces us to that dimension of a world which is distinct from the purposeful activity of an intelligent soul. This new dimension is the world of power. When the gods construct our eyes, they do so for reasons that are beautiful and good. We are given eyes so that we might learn the intelligible structure of time manifested in the heavens 44 By learning about this structure through astronomy, our souls become ordered and healthy. We become assimilated to our first and best condition as stars. But unless our eyes have the power of seeing, no good will come of them. What I think this means is that astronomy, although it functions as that through which the human soul is rendered musical, is not sufficient for our complete understanding of the world. To grasp the totality of our world, to tell the whole story of the cosmos, we must become students of violent change; we must study the world of efficiency or power. There are no good ends in the world unless there are powers to actualize those ends. Intelligence by itself cannot accomplish the actualization. As Timaeus informs us, the intellect can only persuade the necessary cause to work towards the best ends. But what is ultimately responsible for this turbulent though necessary aspect of the world? What is that in which change appears? What is that in which the crafty god builds his mathematical models of the four elements? Timaeus calls this medium for appearing the receptacle. 45 He refers to it also as the mother of becoming •• and everexisting space. 4 7 Timaeus makes several attempts to say what the receptacle is. This proves to be no small matter for the receptacle, as the material ground or condition for the appearance of determinate though shifting natures, does not itself possess a determinate nature. If the receptacle is said to possess a nature at all, such a nature must be located in its indeterminateness, in its character as the receptivity to form. 48 Timaeus' attempts to speak about the receptacle take the form oflikenesses. The receptacle is compared to gold, which receives constantly changing shapes,49 to the neutral base in which perfumes can be mixed, 50 and to an instrument for purifying corn. 51 The use of images to explain the receptacle is well-suited to the receptacle's all-receiving nature. For the receptacle is not only the medium for change and the womb of becoming. It is also THE ST. JOHN'S REVIEW the ground of all appearance and imaging. It functions like the surface of a mirror. As the womb of becoming, the receptacle is "impregnated" with the mathematical structures of the four elements, that is, with the regular Platonic solids. The divine craftsman gazes at the purely intelligible forms of fire, air, earth, and water. At the same time, he is said to schematize the receptacle "with shapes and numbers:'" The purely intelligible form or eidos of each element is called by Timaeus "father:'" In other words, the world of change and appearance is born of two "parents;' the formless and all-receiving receptacle and the purely intelligible eidos. Timaeus makes it clear that the offspring which is the cosmos is something in between its two parents. The world is neither pure formlessness nor pure form but a peculiar mixture of the two. The world is the presence of intelligibility within the realm of flux. Now before the divine act of ordering, the receptacle is already filled with "traces" of the four elements. 54 What this means is that the primordial chaos could never have been ordered unless it were potentially ordered, unless it had a predisposition to be formed. Since the receptacle and its contents are in perpetual imbalance, the ghostly pre-cosmic elements are constantly vying for each other's proper places. Through its vibratory motion, the receptacle tries to send these wayward elements back to their proper places. There is a marvelous poignancy and aptness in Timaeus' account of the pre-cosmic condition. Since the dynamic interplay of receptacle and contents persists once the elemental traces are schematized with shapes and numbers, this interplay may be said to characterize the world as we know it. As our experience of our world testifies, things that are made, whether by art or by nature, tend to become unmade. The world displays itself as a realm in which things that are brought to order and unity, at the same time tend to fall to pieces. The world tends both to order and to disorder, a fact seen most vividly perhaps in the founding of cities and in their constitutions, but seen no less in the history of all plants and animals. In modern theories of the cosmos this tendency is seen even in those celestial beings, the stars and planets. Timaeus' receptacle confirms our sense that the realm of change is also the realm of mortality. Timaeus' reference to "traces;' ikhnC-literally "footprints" -of the elements suggests that prior to the divine schematism body does not exist. The so-called elements, stoicheia or letters of the alphabet, are not really elements at all. They are rather the result of a subtle and beautiful construction. So far are fire, earth, air, and water from the status of genuine elements, that a man who possessed just a little prudence, according to Timaeus, would not even liken them to syllables." Body, then, comes into being only with the god's construction of the regular Platonic solids in the medium of the receptacle, the medium of eternally unstable space. Insofar as body for Timaeus can be studied, it is indistinguishable from a mathematical object endowed with mortality. According to Timaeus' provocative definition, body is that which possesses the third dimension of depth, 61 �bathos. 56 The definition allows Timaeus to identify bodiliness with solidity, and solidity with threedimensionality. More precisely, body's solidity derives from the dimension of depth. The depth of body takes on immense mythical significance when we remember that the cosmos for Timaeus is a living being, a being with a soul. While it might seem difficult to grasp the connection between the living character of the whole and the three-dimensionality of body, Timaeus' emphasis on depth does point to the absurdity of a two-dimensional living being. But why should a living being necessarily be "solid;' that is, possessed of the third dimension of depth? The answer lies, I think, in something Timaeus says about the soul; he speaks of the soul "circling back upon herself;' autl te anakukloumene pros autin. 57 The soul or animating principle of the whole, in other words, is a principle of inwardness and reflection. One might call it a principle of "depth;' without which the world would be superficial and lifeless. The depth Timaeus sees as the defining characteristic of body thus supplies a home-mythically-for the eternally reflective source of life. I say "mythically" in order to remind us that although Timaeus' account of body dwells in the region of mathematical physics, its primary dwelling-place is the realm of stories and images. Timaeus makes no effort to derive the "real" properties of body from his mathematical principles. The likely story supplies no explanation of the descent from the purely intelligible archai to the world of body and change. All takes place by way of analogy and image-making, so that the most technical constructions (like that of the musical scale or of the regular solids) hover between the invisible and true beginnings and the world as it is given to sight and touch. Fire is not a moving pyramid; it is merely lik a moving pyramid. Nor does the likely story claim to be able to derive the mathematical structure of fire from the eidos of fire, from "fire itself by itsel£:' 5 • Even at its most apparently scientific moments, the likely story retains its character as a mathematical poem, a poem that places the mathematical arts in the service of non-mathematical meaning and "depth!' In the entire discussion of body and bodily change, Timaeus make several references to guarding and sav- ing the power, the dynamis, oflikely accounts 59 Indeed, an invocation of "Zeus the Preserver"60 stands at the head of Timaeus' second attempt to speak of beginnings. In the same breath Timaeus calls his second story about a mathematics of body "a strange and uncustomary exposition." Zeus is invoked to save us during the strange business of constructing a mathematical poem about body. He seems to be the patron god of likely stories. The account will begin in distrust, perhaps even in our laughter at such absurd hypotheses as those made by Timaeus. But our imaginations will presumably save us from distrust once we see that the mathematical hypotheses succeed in saving the appearances, once these hypotheses supply a reasonably coherent story of body and bodily change. The safety of a likely story thus stems 62 from our remembering that what we are doing is building mathematical models or analogies, that we are being recreational. The likely story in this way dramatizes for us what we now call a scientific theory. A theory must be careful not to promise what it cannot deliver. It does this by acknowledging and insisting upon its origins in a productive, imaginative intellect. Strictly speaking, theories, for Timaeus, do not belong in the realm of knowledge but in the realm of trust, pistis. For this reason, mathematical physics aims at persuasion. It is a form of rhetoric. The rhetorical connection between physics and the world is strongly implied by the fact that the divine intelligence itself is said to persuade the receptacle to assume the best and most beautiful mathematical form.6 1 We must remind ourselves at this point that the entire Timaeus addresses the problem of the world in its totality. The world of all generated things- gods and men, cities, customs, reputations, and also likely stories. All such generated things reveal in their individual fates the life of the whole to which they are subject; all reveal the pervasive and inescapable workings of necessity within the receptacle. The receptacle comes on the scene in answer to questions of physics proper. Yet Timaeus' mode of speech suggests that we see the world of bodily change as revelatory of the soul, of our souls. In fact, at the end of the likely story, we find souls going up and down the scale of animality. 6 2 This happens in just the same way that the four elements of body go up and down in their violent change of place. The cosmos, you remember, is both body and soul. And the receptacle, as the mother of all becoming, is necessarily the place of souls as well as the place of bodies. No one can deny the power that place as well as time exerts over our lives. Time and place together have to do with the meaning of a life within becoming. Such a life is unintelligible without history or, if you will, without the story or plot of a life. Insofar as an individual life comes to be defined as a story, it is governed by the Where and the When. It is of the utmost importance to us that we have a place; and at the appropriate times it is good and necessary for us to change place. Sometimes the change of place, like the change of the elements, is not smooth and continuous but is a violent upheaval. Timaeus' account of the receptacle fits well with Critias' story about the great cycles civilizations go through and the great wars between cities. In Critias' story Athens plays the role of the great liberator of the political world. Athens fights against the insolent kings of Atlantis who attempt to enslave the entire mainland. But as we know from the account given to us by Thucydides, the Athens of Plato's day launches an insolent campaign against the great and powerful island of Sicily, a campaign which proves to be Athens' downfall. In the course of history, the roles have been reversed. What is true in the political order seems to be true in the cosmic order as well. The life of the whole cannot be identified simply with the serene motions of the heavens. Life is not only intellectual activity; it is also the passion and vibrancy which cause the whole to be WINTER 1985 �alive in the first place, to reach glorious moments which tend towards tragic decay. At the beginning of tbe dialogue, Socrates says he is filled with a desire to see the best city go to war, to a fitting and beautiful war. Socrates seems to be mimicking our fondness for life in the sense of passion and vibrancy, and also our desire to witness a beautiful show of strength. Socrates is asking to see the best city transformed into a heroic city, a feat that requires great skill in the making of lively images. Timaeus' two stories of origins- the story of the soul and the story of the receptacle- reflect the two senses of the term life. The divine soul, manifested as the moving structure of time, embodies life as intellectual activity. The receptacle embodies life as passion and vibrancy. Both senses oflife are necessary if we are to tell the whole story about the life of the whole and our own spatiotemporallives as well. Yet it is no easy matter to say how these two senses of life can combine to form a coherent whole. In the last third of the likely story, Timaeus attempts to "weave together" the two supreme causes of Becoming: the good and the necessary. 63 He attempts, in other words, to harmonize the two senses oflife which the two stories of beginnings have uncovered. We might expect that given these two accounts of the world's founding, Timaeus in his third story will tell us how the two different accounts of origination are reconciled, how it is possible for the soul to be the first and best of generated things 64 and for the god to have constructed the elements of body first. 65 But Timaeus makes no effort to explain how the first story of origins fits with the second. He leaves us with two beginnings, two archai. This incoherence of beginnings is meaningful. It suggests that neither time nor space was constructed first. The world itself is characterized by a double beginning. Time as intelligence and space as receptacle interpenetrate but are not reducible to each other. This doubleness of good'!ess as intelligence and the necessity of the receptacle makes its most dramatic appearance in Timaeus' account of human nature. For Timaeus our nature and the nature of the whole imitate one another. If we find an incoherence in our own lives, a tension between our intelligent and our passionate selves, this is because such a tension exists in the world which we imitate and to which we necessarily belong. The cosmos for Timaeus is something like the human soul, and the human soul's incoherence, writ large. Part III-The Story of Human Nature W e know from the dramatic prologue to Timaeus' speech that the likely story is intended by Critias to be a preface to Critias' own story about Athens and her day of glory. You recall that the Timaeus begins with a very watered down summary of conclusions we find in the Republic about the regime that would THE ST. JOHN'S REVIEW be best according to nature. But Critias is not satisfied with Socrates' concern for a non-historical city, a city which had no actual birth in the realm of becoming: ''The citizens and city you went through for us yesterday as in a myth we will now carry over into the realm of truth."66 For Critias, Socrates failed to given an account of the best city insofar as this city would have an actual birth in the realm of becoming and history. History-or rather the memory of past deeds-is identical with truth. Critias does not distinguish between the faithfulness of this memory and the truthfulness of what he remembers. His memory is etched with stories he heard as a young boy. Critias scrupulously avoids the word mythos when he refers to his own story. He claims boldly that his account is "true in every respect." 67 It is through Critias, in other words, that we come to be suspicious of anything that has the character of a likely story. Socrates' speech is mythical for Critias, mythical in the bad sense of the term, because it was about a city with no history. It was about form without motion and place. Critias attempts to correct this lack by transforming Socrates' best city by nature into a young and glorious Athens. But Critias needs a transition from Socrates' inquiry into Being to his own concern for a begotten and therefore genuine city. Timaeus supplies this transition. Timaeus will generate a world in which things come to be and pass away in a splendid show of beautiful structure and purpose. He will construct the cosmic background and context for the cycles of human history. As Critias says, Timaeus will generate the universe down to the birth of human nature. 68 What this means is that human nature is the intended goal of the likely story. Timaeus' story of human nature began just before the gods confronted the problem of the necessary cause, the cause of power. The star-gods, who are said to be the children of the demiurge, put us together piece by piece, organ by organ. What Timaeus shows us in this very odd and at times repellent view of human nature is that for him human nature is something neither whole, nor natural, nor especially attractive. The human animal is a creature of great vulnerability and multifarious needs, and it is to these needs that Timaeus' likely story is addressed. Our neediness is summed up by the fact that we are not spherical: we lack the self-sufficiency and general happiness Timaeus associates with the spherical cosmos. Timaeus' identification of happiness with sphericity reminds us of the myth Aristophanes tells in the Symposium. But whereas that myth attempts to ground our happiness in the love we have for other human beings, Timaeus' story grounds our happiness in the study of the heavens. It is true that our complicated bodily arrangement demonstrates how well-meaning and ingenious the gods were. Like the world as a whole, man is a sort of cosmos, an artfully arranged living order. But precisely because man is so artfully constructed in the likely story, he is also something artifical or, as we say, synthetic. There is something grotesque about him. Man is a moving network of parts and functions. There is one and only one 63 �thing about man in the likely story that is completely non-artificial and unconstructed. This is his passionate nature, the nature that is at odds with the intellect's efforts to give life order and artfulness. Human nature starts out as a head. The head contains the divine circuitry of Same and Other. To this head the gods attach a torso and limbs to serve as the head's means of transport. 69 The gods then put the mortal parts of the soul into the torso. Spiritedness and the love of winning go in the chest, and the desire for food and drink goes in the belly. 70 An amusing and plausible topology of the human soul! Timaeus describes this addition of spiritedness and desire to our divine intelligence as a pollution of the divine. 71 To minimize the bad effects the mortal parts of the soul have on the intellect, the gods construct a buffer to go between the head and the torso. That is to say, the gods invent the neck. 72 Like the belly-button of Aristophanes' myth, the neck is a constant reminder of our "fall" from sphericity and happiness. Like all the bodily constructions we find in this part of the likely story, the invention of the neck points to some invisible truth about the human soul. Timaeus' account of the neck shows us in its peculiar comic fashion that human nature is ultimately absurd and incomprehensible. There is really no logos of human nature, no reasonable explanation of how the best in use is related to the worst. This seems to be implied also by the fact that Timaeus compartmentalizes the soul: intellect goes in the head, spiritedness in the chest, and desire in the belly. One can only tell likely stories about human nature, and such stories look at man in terms of artful construc- tion. The ingenious invention of the neck shows us that we do not cohere by nature. Intelligence has no business mingling with the passions, but it must mingle with them if human nature is to be born at all. The neck forcibly joins the head to the rest of us and at the same time supplies some protection for the head's "private life" of thinking. In the likely story, human nature is the most mixed and most terrible of all things. We are composed of all animal possibilities the world has to offer- the highest, the lowest, and all the stages in between. Our soul in its humanness is everything life can be. In our heads, we lead the divine life of thinking. But owing to our other parts below the neck, we partake of mindlessness. Because of this region below the neck, we run the risk of losing our human shape in our next birth. The penalty for a deficient life is transformation into a lower animal. That is, contained within our human nature is the full range of animal possibilities corresponding to the various forms of unintelligent life. This range stretches from the stars all the way down to the stupidest, most worthless animals there are. But the cosmos requires even these most worth- less animals if it is to be whole. Deficiency itself seems to be necessary to the world order, and this deficiency, witnessed in the moral hierarchy of animals, is rooted in the all-encompassing nature of man. The cosmos approaches its final perfection and completeness for 64 Timaeus as the original, healthy condition of human nature becomes degenerate with time. In the closing scenes of the likely story, the cosmos receives the animal forms destined for it by the "intelligible animal."" These forms are generated, so to speak, by the need in man's nature to actualize in timE all the possibilities which lurk within him and which constitute his being. For Timaeus, the cosmos is both just and beautiful: just because it seeks a harmonization between type of soul and type of body, beautiful because through such harmonization it shows itself to be a genuine kosmos, that is, a world governed by a wondrous symmetry and coherence, even for those beings farthest removed from the motions of intelligence. Divine care in this way makes a blessing even of the curses that man's nature brings upon the world. This intelligent care which orders all things and which seeks to make good out of bad, perfection out of deficiency, seems to be an instance of Timaeus' guiding song: ''All the good is beautiful, and the beautiful is not measureless." The beauty and nobility of intelligence consist in its care that the good triumph in all things. This divine care for the order of all things is the same as the generosity of the demiurge. It is that goodness which Timaeus, at the very beginning of his talk, characterized as the god's lack of phthonos, envy_,. As we have seen, human nature in the likely story contains within it all the animal possibilities the world has to offer. These possibilities spring from the complexity of our own nature. This complexity which makes us what we are can be looked at in the light ofTimaeus' two great cosmic principles- the necessary and the good. These two principles define human life as well as the cosmic life. Timaeus associates the passionate part of us with the necessary cause, with the receptacle. As always in the likely story, goodness is associated with the orderliness of intelligence. When Timaeus introduces our non-rational nature, he calls the passions "terrible and necessary."75 The passions belong to our necessary nature insofar as we are absorbed in the life of bodily desire, honor, and victory. The turbulence with which these passions fill us remind us strongly of the turbulence within the receptacle. The passions are necessary because without them we would not be human. To have human life at all, we must be absorbed in the impulsive, non-reasoning sense oflife. To be sure, as long as we are men and not stars, life in this sense is a condition for the life of thinking. If we do not care for our whole human lives as human beings, our intellectual life suffers. Thinking presupposes that our lower desires are held in check and that we get enough food, sleep, and exercise. Furthermore, if we had no spiritedness we would lack the daring it takes to tackle and solve such things as mathematical problems. But the lower passions are disruptive, terrible as well as necessary. Human nature is therefore in the following quandary: the necessary condition for our happiness is also an enemy to our happiness. One might be tempted to think that the gods should WINTER 1985 �have made our passions less terrible before they put them into our souls. But this, I think, would deprive them of their nature and function as passions. A passion, insofar as it is a passion, cannot be anything other than consuming and measureless. Passion must contain the possibility for being terrible. I think it is this boundless and frightening character of our passions that Timaeus points to when he says that the gods mixed all the passions with "love, erOs, that attempts all things:' 76 Since the passions for Timaeus are causes of disorder, they must be subjugated by the force of intellect. Timaeus is clear about how the· intellect itself becomes fit to rule the soul. It becomes fit through the study of astronomy. This study restores our intellect, our circuits of Same and Other, to the originally divine and musical condition we lost at birth. As I mentioned at the beginning of this lecture, the likely story takes the form of a song. Timaeus sings the praises of the god Kosmos. He sings the world into shape with the beautiful constructions of mathematics and harmonics. The song of Timaeus, the nomos as Socrates calls it, gives the world its musical and lawful shape. The center of the song's teaching is this: all the good is beautiful, and the beautiful is not measureless. It is now time for us to ask what we are to make of Timaeus and his song of order. We know from the very beginning of the dialogue that the making of order within becoming will be the dialogue's central concern. Socrates gives us our clue in his mathematical account of who is present. He counts people. That is, he replaces their human identities by their general characteristic of countableness. By counting his hosts, Socrates also implies the connection between time and number so important to Timaeus' story. By asking where the missing fourth is, he implies the im- portance of place in the dialogue, reminding us at the same time that time and place always accompany qne another. But the missing fourth remains unidentified precisely because Socrates uses numbers instead of names. Mathematics, it seems, has the power to order beings, but it is powerless to identify them. Timaeus fabricates an explanation for the absence of the fourth host. Timaeus says he must have fallen ill, for surely he would not be absent willingly from such a meeting. 77 A likely story! The very first time we meet Timaeus he is playing the role in life that he plays when he delivers his speech about the cosmos. The dialogue is filled with all sorts of playful references to our desire for the orderliness and beauty implied by that rich word kosmos. Even Socrates is ornamented, dressed up for the occasion. But it is in the likely story of Timaeus that all the various senses of kosmos find their most original place- in the world as a whole. The cosmos is thus the paradigm and source for all the ways in which order and the making of order appear in human life. In the light of what we have seen so far about the likely story, let us return to our earlier question: Who THE ST. JOHN'S REVIEW is Timaeus? What sort of man tells a story like the likely story? Timaeus is described for us by Socrates. Everything about Timaeus is splendid, even his name which suggests timC, honor. He is an honored, powerful statesman from Italy. He comes from a noble family, he is wealthy, and he rules a city known for its good laws. Socrates also says that Timaeus has "made it to the top in every philosophy:' 78 Timaeus is the paradigm of the worldly man, the successful worldly man. Unlike Socrates he is an eminently public man, full of worldly experience and known for his mastery of all learning. He seems too good to be true, more like a work of art than a real human being. I sometimes think this must be why, next to the historical characters in the dialogue (Socrates, Critias, and Hermocrates), Timaeus is conspicuously fictional. He seems to be a likely story, that is, an ·unbelievable though beautiful story. Beautiful though he is, Timaeus makes us question the virtues of a devotion to orderliness and accomplishment. Through the character of Timaeus, Plato causes us to ask this question: Is it so clear that all the good is beautiful and that the beautiful is not measureless? Is it so clear, in other words, that orderliness and goodness are the same? Even if we follow Timaeus in identifying goodness with intelligence, it is far from clear that intelligence is good solely because it is a cause of order and decency. In the Republic we get a different view of the good. There the good is that which yokes together the knower and the known. 79 In other words, the good is the ultimate cause of truth. The likely story is possessed of many virtues. Its greatest virtue is, I think, its effect on our imaginations. The story tunes and sharpens our ability to construct and to identify likenesses within a world we are used to thinking of in terms of meaningless facts. Through the power of the likely story, the realm of body and change, the object of the physicist, becomes a realm of meaning. There are reasons for the way things are. We are thus able to find ourselves reflected in the cosmos Timaeus builds in speech. But I wonder if we are able to find ourselves accurately reflected in the likely story. In the story's devotion to a moral cosmos ruled by orderliness and art, something human seems to get lost. I think the loss is especially felt in Timaeus' treatment of our passions. For Timaeus our passions are necessary but not good. Or rather, they are good only insofar as they are necessary. The passions pull us away from the orderly life of thinking. Timaeus tells us something we know all too well from experiencethat the passions are terrible. But he does not leave room for the possibility that a terrible thing is not for that reason bad. Just as goodness is not necessarily identical with order, badness is not necessarily the same as terribleness. The terrible things in us, those things Timaeus sums up as "love that attempts all things," could very well have more of a connection with the good things in us than Timaeus is willing to admit. Is not our effort to learn 65 �the truth about all things rooted in a terrible longing, a divine madness as Socrates calls it in the Phaedrus? 80 A soul possessed by the madness of philosophy is surely not the same as a soul which has "made it to the top in every philosophy." In the likely story, the beautiful appears in one guise only-the guise of mathematical structure. ForTimaeus this mathematical beauty is always linked with nobility or good character. It is never treated as something which could awaken love. Iflonging is at all present in the likely story, it is present in our longing to return to our original condition as stars. But this sort of longing is prompted by our desire to be orderly and well-shaped. Timaeus at one point refers to the lover, the erastCs, of intelligence and knowledge." But I think this refers simply to the man who loves his own noble activity of building mathematical models of Becoming. The absence of the sort of beauty I am talking about We never get to the true face of things in the story. We must rest content with a beautiful mathematical facade. The absence of the philosopher and the philosophical love of the forms in Timaeus' cosmos brings up a perplexity that lies at the heart of the likely story. Timaeus often refers to the region of the forms which our cosmos imitates. He refers also to the dialectical study of the things that are always. Why then, when Timaeus constructs the cosmos and all its contents, does he leave out philosophy as the study of the truly intelligible whole? Why does astronomy rather than dialectic become the highest human activity within Timaeus' cosmos? To answer this question, we will seek guidance from the divided line of the Republic. On the divided line the level Socrates calls dianoia is situated just below the level of dialectic. To this realm belong all those activities called arts, technai. The most important of these arts are the mathematical studies- can be seen in Timaeus' portrait of human nature. The arithmetic, portrait combines the symmetry of structure with the Socrates distinguishes these arts from the uppermost level of dialectic in the following way. The mathematical arts, unlike dialetic, make use of hypotheses which are never grotesqueness of a medical operation. Let us consider for a moment the beauty of a human face. In the likely geometry, astronomy, and harmonics. story, the face is entirely a matter of organs and their questioned. Socrates compares such hypotheses to im- proper functioning. If, for example, you wanted to say that someone had beautiful eyes, Timaeus would point out to you that the beauty of the eyes consisted in their ability to see, especially to see the objects of astronomy. The eyes, therefore, are beautiful because they lead us ages. 82 This is why Socrates says that the mathematician merely dreams the truth. 83 The mathematician is intellectually asleep, and in his sleep he has beautiful dreams whose clarity and distinctness lull him into thinking that he has found the truth itself. He is asleep because he does not search for the original beings, the forms, of which his own mathematical objects are likenesses. Caught up in his dream world of beautiful structures, the mathematician beholds images, thinking all the while that the ob- eventually to the ordering of our soul. Timaeus' account of all the other facial organs follows much the same line of thought. These organs exhibit nothing more and nothing less than the gods' attempt to reconcile the demands of orderliness with those of life's necessities. But a face is not an orderly arrangement of parts that work properly. It is a single, uncuttable look, an idea. It is something that allows us to say "This is Socrates" or "This is Theaetetus:' Because of the uncuttable look of the face, we can identify Socrates and Theaetetus despite the similarity of their faces. Furthermore, owing to the character of the human face, it is ridiculous to give an account of people by counting them. Timaeus shows us that he does not know how to look at a human face. His ingenious and well-meaning gods do not care if their arrangement of facial organs also inspires longing. Or rather, if they care, they care because such longing would cause us to "lose our heads" and become disorderly and ugly. The absence of a beauty that inspires longing in the likely story is deeply connected with the absence of philosophical love. The idea or look of the human face resembles the uncuttable look of a Socratic eidos. This eidos too cannot be reduced to a proper arrangement of parts. In other dialogues, notably in the Symposium, our perception of beautiful bodies is the starting-point for our ascent to the purely intelligible region of the forms. The likely story contains no such ascent. The cosmos is our boundary and law-giver. And, as we saw earlier, we must accept the likely story and not search beyond it. 66 jects of mathematics are in fact the truest, most original beings. Despite the iinaginativeness characteristic of the mathematical activity, he lacks the most important kind of imagination. He is unable to see beyond the clarity of mathematical objects to the more precise, -more original, region of the forms. While the mathematician works down from his unquestioned hypotheses to necessary conclusions, the dialectician works up and back to the vision of the forms. The philosophical education Socrates outlines in the seventh book of the Republic attempts to undo the mathematician's sleepiness, to make the mathematical studies a ladder to the-higher region of dialectic. What we can say about Timaeus' likely story is that it too works down from hypotheses. It embodies that intellectual activity Socrates calls dianoia. Unlike the mathematicians described in the Republic, Timaeus begins with the realm of the forms- the forms of Same and Other, the intelligible animal, and the pure archetypes of the four elements of body. Timaeus treats the forms themselves as hypotheses from which he then descends to make a world. Notwithstanding his supposition of these forms, the motion of the likely story is away from the assumed principles rather than towards them. What this accounts for, I think, is the likeliness of the likely story. In the likely story, we descend from the region of being WINTER 1985 �to the image-world of becoming. We enter the beautiful dream world of the mathematician. We build a hypothetical re-created world in speech. As the cosmos gets filled and perfected in Timaeus' story, it "closes upon itself:' It becomes a self-sufficient, self-contained god. As we build this hypothetical world with the powers of mathematics, we move further and further away from the realm of Being which was our starting-point. I think it is in this way that astronomy as the highest of the mathematical arts comes to replace the dialectical inquiry into first principles. This is one of the important things the likely story dramatizes- the covering up and forgetting of first principles as the true objects of inquiry. Such a covering up is vital if we are to guard and save the power of giving likely accounts, of constructing theories. In the likely story, our desire to ascend to the Republic's greatest study of the good gets "swallowed up" by our attraction to the beauty of mathematical structures. Because of this, the likely story necessarily takes the form of play and diversion from serious matters. True to our familiar expression "entertaining a hypothesis;' the likely story comes before us as a form of entertainment for Socrates. As we have seen, Socrates fully accepts Timaeus' conditions. He accepts the likely story as his guest-gift and does not, on this occasion, search beyond it. He thereby takes the story in just the right spirit, the spirit that shows exactly what a likely story about Becoming is. As the silent Socrates listens to Timaeus' song oflaw and order, we of course wonder what he is thinking. My guess is that he is enjoying his feast of speech, though not because he is persuaded of its teaching. I think Socrates must all the while be looking into Timaeus' face, thinking about the quality of Timaeus' soul as it is revealed in the likely story. He may be searching for some trace of philosophical longing buried beneath the clever constructions and worldly accomplishments that have no doubt spoiled the glorious Timaeus. Something is surely lacking in the Timaeus. This is signalled by the famous absence of the fourth host. The fourth host is perhaps the philosopher, who has no place in the dialogue or in the world as Timaeus re-creates it. The likely story offers us a strange and provocative look at the world and at ourselves. But we do not find ourselves accurately reflected in the likely world that emerges out of Timaeus' head, the world without human faces. For all its virtues of order and musicality, the likely story leaves us with a need that can be met, I think, only by turning back, back towards the first principles and to those Socratic stories, like the myth of recollection, which encourage us to turn back. Timaeus' cosmic song thus draws our attention to that other singer who, for now, silently listens. FOOTNOTES 1. Timaeus 87c4-5 2. Ibid. 20b7 -c3 3. Ibid. 27a2-b6 4. Ibid. 29d4-6 5. Ibid. 106a3-4 6. Ibid. 59c5- d2 7. Ibid. 29c3 8. Ibid. 71a3-72d3 9. Ibid. 29c4- d3 10. Ibid. 29d6 11. Gorgias 523al- 3 12. R,public VI, 509d6-510a4; 511d6-e5 13. Timaeus 50d2-e1 14. Ibid. 56b3-5 15. Ibid. 41c6-d3; 41e4-42a3; 42d2-e4 16. Ibid. 42e5-43a6 17. Ibid. 91a4-b7 18. Ibid. 90e6-91a1 19. Ibid. 21a1-3; 26e2-27a1 20. Ibid. 24c7-d1; Critias 109c7-8 21 .. Thucydides, Pelopponesian Wars, II 40 22. Timaeus 83e4-5 23. Ibid. 30a4 24. Ibid. 29e2-3 25. Ibid. 30b4-6 26. Ibid. 31a4- b3 27. Ibid. 51b7 ~c5 28. Ibid. 32b6-7 THE ST. JOHN'S REVIEW 29. 30. 31. 32. 33. 34. 35. 36. 37. 38. 39. 40. 41. 42. 43. 44. 45. 46. 47. 48. 49. 50. 51. 52. 53. 54. 55. 56. 35a8 35b4-36b6 36116-d7 36e2-3 42d1-2; 90c6-d7 37a2-c5 34b8-9 27d2 Aristotle, Physics; IV, 219b1-2 Timaeus 52d2-53a7 Ibid. 53c4-55c6 Ibid. 53d7-e2 Ibid. 47e4-5 Ibid. 48a6-7 Ibid. 48a2-5; 56c3-7 Ibid. 46e6-47c4 Ibid. 49a6 Ibid. 50d2- 3 Ibid. 52a8 Ibid. 51 a!- b2 Ibid. 50a4-c6 Ibid. 50e4- 8 Ibid. 52e5-53a2 Ibid. 53b4-5 Ibid. 50d2-4 Ibid. 53b2 Ibid. 48b5-c2 Ibid. 53c5- 6 Ibid. Ibid. Ibid. Ibid. Ibid. Ibid. Ibid. Ibid. 57. Ibid. 37a5 58. Ibid. 51b8 59. Ibid. 48dl-4 60. loc. cit. 61. Ibid. 48a2-5; 56c3-7 62. Ibid. 92cl-3 63. Ibid. 68e1 - 69a5 64. Ibid. 34b10-35a1 65. Ibid. 69b8- c1 66. Ibid. 26c7 -d1 67. Ibid. 20d8 68. Ibid. 27a3-6 69. Ibid. 44d3-45a2 70. Ibid. 69c5-70e5 71. Ibid. 69d6 72. Ibid. 69d6- e3 73. Ibid. 39e3- 40a2 74. Ibid. 29e1-2 75. Ibid. 69c8 76. Ibid. 69d4-6 77. Ibid. 17a4-5 78. Ibid. 20al- 5 79. Republic VI, 508e1-509a5 80. Pha,drus 243e9 ff 81. Timaeus 46d7 -8 82. Republic VI, 510b4-51la2 83. Ibid.VII, 533b6-c3 67 �A Note on Eva Brann's "Roots of Modernity" Chaninah Maschler T his note is a rather over-sized response to Eva Brann's recent "Roots of Modernity." (St. John's Review, Spring 1984) Even after several readings I find the essay (originally a lecture for students at a college under Presbyterian auspices) hard to understand. Its aim, in terms of the original audience, seemed to be to help students feel the weight of their religious heritage by proposing the thesis that not only they, as Christians, but all of us, as moderns, live on or from Christianity. Christianity's "world-historical" significance is made palpable by her sketching of an argument according to which those respects in which modern life and thought differ most profoundly from ancient life and thought (p. 69 list) can all be connected with Christianity, either directly, as preserving and implementing Christian "spiritual and intellectual modes" (p. 66), or indirectly, as expressing and drawing out the consequences of a great refusal of at least portions of Christianity. What I call a "great refusal" (negation, rejection) is given the rather different name "perversion of." H-ere begins one of my difficulties. Miss Brann's attitude to the three men whom she singles out as "founders of modernity" (Galilee, Bacon, Descartes) is complex. Sometimes she Chaninah Maschler is a tutor at St. John's College, Annapolis. 68 praises them with faint damns, as when she writes: I am not saying that these founders of modernity played silly and wicked and blasphemous games, but only that they still had the theological learning and the grandeur of imagination to know what their enterprise resembled [namely, the rebellion of Satan.] (p. 68) Sometimes she takes grim satisfaction in their getting the fall they deserved: Their rebellion is ... against all intermediaries between themselves and God and his nature. They want to be next to him and like him. So they fall to being not creatures but creators. (p. 67) Below I will try to state some of my disagreements with both these passages. Right now it is the pro-and-con attitude itself that I am taking up. A to my mind already perplexing situation (in which many of us are caught), namely, that of a non-Christian teacher who seeks to persuade Christian students, on nonChristian, intellectual grounds, to work at appropriating their own Christian heritage so that they may receive help from it in fashioning or preserving a "framework" for their thinking about ''the nature and ends Of their life" (p. 69), is made still more perplexing because the teacher chooses to describe a negation or rejection or refusal of elements of Christianity in words borrowed from the Christian tradition, words that would be appropriate for someone who cleaves to the teachings of Augustine but which I find confusing as coming from someone who expressly distances herself from those teachings. What confuses me is that the "complex" attitude seems weighted in the contra-direction; I am unable to sort out Miss Brann's reasons for this choice. When Augustine says that Satan "did not abide in the truth because the truth was not in him;' he seems to identify Satan's pride with envy, envy of the Son. By the standards of Augustinian Christianity (though not, perhaps, by those of Thomas), all human pride is ressentiment at our being made the mere image and not the reality of God, which is why people try to play lord over one another, pretending to an inequality as that of God to Man. Since, however, Miss Brann declares herself a non-Christian, she can be presumed free to distinguish proper pride from soul-and-world-destroying envy. Moreover, since, for her, Christ would either be a prophet (as he is for Moslems and Jews) or a teacher, it should be possible according to her for a later prophet or teacher so to interpret Christ's message that its spirit is saved while its killing letter is killed. It should even be possible respectfully to decline the teacher's teachings. Why, then, does she not grant this kind of liberty to the founders of modernity? Descartes, for instance, in Meditation IV, claims a will so large that it can double back on itself and shrink "commitment" to the sphere of what is evident to the merely finite human understanding. The cure for error, and even sin, is strictly WINTER 1985 �in his own power. Indeed, his "method" looks as though it should not only rid him of errors previously committed but protect him against error and sin henceforth. By teaching such Stoic self-help to others he certainly seems to make the Sacraments superfluous to the Sage. Why call this rebellion? Why isn't it, like Miss Brann's own non-Christianity, a selective by-passing of Christianity? Again, Bacon when he writes (in "Of Goodness and Goodness of Nature"), that without goodness (which "answers to the theological virtue of charity;') "man is a busy, mischievous, wretched thing;' can be read to give expression to something like that Welcoming attitude to the pre-· sent and to one's fellows for the lack of which Miss Brann so much condemns Heidegger. This attitude Bacon claims to find in a properly doctored Christianity. When he adds the sentence from Machiavelli "that the Christian faith had given up good men in prey to those that are tyrannical and unjust;' isn't it in the name of charity rightly understood that he protests against such overweening charity as does not heed God's command to love our neighbor as ourselves (a command which he construes to mean that "Divinity make the love of ourselves the pattern; the love of our neighbors but the portraiture")? To someone mindful of Luther's protest against the pride of those men who presume to "imitate Christ" it is not at all obvious how Bacon's "realism'' isn't a reminder of the need for humility. 1 Admittedly, Bacon casts himself for the· role of Advisor· to Princes (Queen Elizabeth and King James I). In that capacity he defends doctrines of royal authority at odds with those which claim that secular rulers, being charged merely with the safeguarding of goods of the body, are inferior to spiritual rulers, who are charged with the perfecting of the human soul. But critique of the doctrine of Papal Plenitude of Power (see Introduction to Marsilius of Padua, Dejendor of the Peace, Harper, 1967) was not initiated by Bacon. He was trying to preserve the English monarchy's earlier gains in authority. Since he served the ruler and the church of the realm to the best of his ability, I again wonder on what grounds he is called a rebel, though I recognize that from a Roman Catholic perspective he would deserve to be called so. Miss Brann's come-back, if I understand her, is that not only or chiefly in her estimation but in their own, the men responsible for the "project" of finding out the true constitution of the universe and of using this knowledge to improve the THE ST. JOHNS REVIEW conditions of human life were rebels, not against the church and the state, nor against God, but against the "traditional wisdom" which teaches that men can only have opinions about good and evil but cannot gain moral episteme (science). Bacon, Galileo, and Descartes themselves (on this reading of "traditional wisdom") held that the idea of a science of good and evil is "demonic?' I choose Goethe's word (which is not Miss Brann's) for two reasons: First, because as he came to use it, for instance of Napoleon, a romantic flavor clings to it and it is such a romantic reading of Paradise Lost that seems to me presupposed by her sentence about the three founders "all" having a "cautiously sympathetic respect for Satan" (p. 67). Nicholas Machiavelli didn't call himself"Old Nick." Second, because what prompted me first to set pen to paper was my more than uneasiness over her willingness to use Augustinian vocabulary to characterize the work of men who, in a period of European history when demonology had regained frightful power, tried to re-assert sanity. 2 The reason for my believing that it is important to determine how the great teachers of Christian doctrine meant their passages about Satan to be understood is that it seems to me I cannot otherwise understand or appraise opposition to their teaching. My current guess is that the Christians and non-Christians who wanted to de-emphasize the Augustinian tradition were right in holding that this tradition gave support to the witch-craze. That there had been such a craze on the continent I happened to have learned in a Dutch elementary school, where children were taught to take pride in the fact that in the little town of Oudewater a scale-test was substituted for the watertest: Anyone accused of witch craft should show levity rather than gravity, it was argued. Therefore, if the pan with the witch in it went down, that proved that the accused, though perhaps guilty of other crimes, was not guilty of a pact with the deviL Elsewhere the test was whether, when thrown into the water, the accused floated or drowned. Floating proved witch-craft. Drowning proved the contrary. More recently, I read in Montaigne's "Of Cripples" (iii,ll): our life is too real and essential to vouch for these supernatural and fantastic accidents. As for druggings and poisonings, I put them out of my reckoning; those are homicides. . .. However, even in such matters they say that we must not always be satisfied with confessions, for such persons have sometimes been known to accuse themselves of having killed people who were found to be alive .... My ears are battered by a thousand stories like this: 'Three people saw him on such and such a day in the east; three saw him the next day in the west, at such and such a time, in such and such a place, dressed thUs. Truly, I would not believe my own self about this. HoW much more natural and likely it seems to me that two men are lying than that one man should pass with the winds in twelve hours from the east to the west. How much more natural that our understanding should be carried away from its base by the volatility of our untracked mind than that one of us, in flesh and bone, should be wafted up a chimney on a broomstick by a strange spirit. I tried to get an idea of just how reliable the rumor about the witch craze was by reading H. R. Trevor-Roper's The Euro- pean Witchcraze of the Sixteenth and Seventeenth Centuries (Harper, 1969), E. William Monter's European Witchcmjt (John Wiley, New York, 1969), H. C. Erik Midelfort's Witch Hunting in Southwestern Germany, 1582-1684 and the already mentioned book about Witch belief in England by Trevor Davies. If these authors are trustworthy, Montaigne's principle, "... it is putting a very high price on one's conjectures to have a man roasted alive because of them;' was very far from the prevailing one. By some estimates, now considered melodramatic, 100,000 people were killed for witchcraft in Europe be- tween 1500 and 1700. The only book I have so far found that gives careful details about how its figures are arrived at is Midelfort's. According to him; "at least 3,229 persons were executed for witchcraft in the German Southwest" between 1561 and 1670 (p. 32). Of course, no such The witches of my neighborhood are in mortal danger every time Some new authf::!r comes along and attests to the reality of their visions. ... To kill men, we should have sharp and luminous evidence; and figure means anything exact until one knows population figures too. But that rumors about 30 Charles Mansons a year would be pretty frightening is, I think, fair to say. I bring up his name because someone asked me whether it isn't 69 �necessary to examine whether some of the accusations for witchcraft wouldn't by our own standards be warranted in the sense that real crimes were committed by those who stood so accused. Norman Cohr.L takes up the question in Europe's Inner Demons (Basic Books, 1975). The crimes (malef£c£a) of which witches were accused were: causing hailstorms or unseasonable rain to ruin the crops; causing miscarriages or impotence; bringing on sudden illness, mental derangement, or accidents, or deformities; and worst, killing babies, cooking, and eating them. The power to harm was always the result of a pact with the devil, sealed by terrible obscenities. Cohn argues (to me convincingly) that the pattern of accusation is so stereotypical (he traces it to the second century, 1 'when pagan Greeks and Romans attached it to the small Christian ·communities in the empire"), and every supposedly documented case of witches's sabbaths or infant cannibalism is so dubious that the title of his book is warranted. He chooses a passage about custom's being a treacherous school mistress from Montaigne's "Of Custom, and Not Easily Changing an Accepted Law'' (i, 23) as frontispiece. Since I am acquainted with the customary ritual murder accusation against the jews, and since some admittedly less than wholehearted investigation of this charge has never presented me with reasons to believe the justice of the accusation, I remain a partisan of those who sought to dis-enchant the world. Amongst these I count Galilee, Bacon, and Descartes. Bacon dedicates the New Organon to King James, before whom he dangles the wonderful saying "that it is the glory of God to conceal a thing but the glory of the King to find a thing out!' (New Organon, LLA ed., p. 15) Certainly Bacon hopes to win the King as patron for largescale projects of scientific research and technology. But I wonder whether he isn't also trying to distract the King's curiosity from witchcraft's secrets (on which James had written a book- Daemonolog£e, Edinburgh, 1597; 2nd ed. London, 1603) and to fasten it instead on "white magic." It is perfectly true that such a hunch would have to be backed up by passages from Bacon's writings. But these are not entirely lacking (Sylva Sylvarum, Stebbing's JiliJrks of Bacon, ii, 642£), and it cannot be considered unimportant that Parliament in 1604 passed a new statute against witchcraft according to which not the actual harm done through such craft but "the mere fact of a contract With the devil" 70 was to be punished by hanging. That a contract with Satan existed could become known through confession or by finding "witches's marks" (insensitive spots) on the naked body of the accused (TrevorDavies, p. 62). I even· wonder whether the passion that went into Descartes's program of taking life and soul out of nature had something to do with disgust at the demon mania. That Cartesianism was later used in the fight against the witch craze is shown by the Dutchman Balthazar Bekker's Betoverde J!Vereld (The Enchanted World, )6~1) and Malebranche's Recherche de Ia Verite (excerpts pp. 121ff of E. W. Monter's European Witchcraze). We would gravely wrong Christianity if we supposed that it was chiefly responsible for originally stocking the world with demons. There's plenty of Roman and Greek demonology, and Hellenistic Jewish Apocrypha are full of demons too. Only, whereas in the so-called dark ages many a bishop taught that belief in werewolves and witches is unchristian, church leaders between roughly 1500 and 1700 mostly encouraged rather than discouraged popular fears. Around 1500, the Dominican inquisitor in the little diocese of the Province of Como reports that a thousand witches were tried and a hundred burned in his area every year. According to the books I cited (to which Bodin's Demonomanie must be added), the situation in Como was not an isolated one. If the historians' reports (not easily dismissed, even by sceptics, seeing how numerous, serious, and large the tomes on witchcraft became with ·the invention of print) are reliable, then it is reasonable to wonder whether the founders of modernity concluded that they could no longer rely on the churches (Catholic or Protestant) to gentle and raise up the populace. None of the men singled out by Miss Brann were given to public ranting against the church or clergy of the country or city where they resided. They were quite scrupulous to obey and to recommend obedience to others, at least as scrupulous as Socrates had been. They not only wrote of an "interim ethics:' as Descartes does in Discourse III and Bacon in the New Organon, where he provisionally distinguishes "the proud and ambitious desire of moral knowledge to judge of good and evil" from "natural philosophy:' but they _also practiced it. And I do not see how, except by impersonating the standpoint of the Inquisitors, Miss Brann could blame Bacon and Descartes for meditating on the possibility of an ultimate "moral and political philosophy" that would be part of a perfected "natural philosophy." True, there is a great difference between meditation and publication. Still, I wonder at the ease with which she judges as due to "unspeakable" pride what- others might regard as due to a noble sense of responsibility. Let me turn now to those small but perhaps telling literary and art-historical facts on which Miss Brann's lecture relies to make vivid that the three founders were both warning their followers of the dangers of the enterprise of establishing "the kingdom of man" and advertising the glory of it. 3 They are: a) that in aphorism xciv ofBk I of the New Organon Bacon writes: Then only will there be good ground of hope for the further advance of knowledge when there shall be received and gathered together into natural history a variety of experiments which are of no use in themselves but simply serve to discover causes and axioms, which I call experimenta lucifera, experiments of light. In her judgment, this last tag is intended to recall Satan's name before he became rebel from envy of the Sun ..Son. b) that at least two of our authors seem to be intent on creating a new heaven and earth, else why should they mimic the Divine rhythm of creation by laying out their scientific synthesis over six days? c) that in his Letter to the Translator of the Pr£nc£ples Descartes compares philosophy to a tree (cf. New Organon I, 107; Advancement of Learning, Everyman ed. p. 88; "tree of Porphyry"), which can be presumed to be the very one that stood in our First Parents' garden as the forbidden tree, and which also appears on the title page of Descartes' Principles and Galilee's DiScorsi. When first one registers that Descartes' Med£tat£ons are spread out over a week sans Sabbath; that the Discourse too is divided into six; that Bacon's Great Instaurat£on (Renewal) was meant to have six parts; that the College of Bensalem is called the College of Six Days; that the Latin name of the "Preparation for Natural and Experimental History" is parasceve, which is Latin for the Hebrew Erev Shabbath (cf. the prayer that concludes Bacori's Preface to the Great lnstauration); and yes, that Galileds D£alogues may have stopped on the fourth day because that is the middle of the seven and the day on WINTER 1985 �which the heavenly bodies were madeone does stand amazed. Nor would I want to deny the Millenarian flavor of Bacon's Sabbath talk. But it seems to me that every "apocalyptic" passage in Bacon that I can remember debunks the Biblical book Apocalypse. For instance: . . . All depends on keeping the eye steadily ftxed upon the facts of nature. . . . God forbid that we should give out a dream of our own imagination [whether of a world so thoroughly gentled by the Lamb as to hold no violent motions or of a world delivered up to Demons] for a pattern of the world; rather, may He graciously grant us to write an apocalypse or true vision of the footsteps of the Creator imprinted on his creatures. The passion for knowledge is substituted for the passion for revenge! Bacon and Descartes, far from being the ones to make the world shudder with the birthpangs of the Messiah, are trying to still those pangs: to invite men to become "masters and possessors of nature"_ is their way of casting out demons. Their tactics may have been ill-advised. May be the Counter-Reformation Church, which took a leaf from Euripides' Bacchae and tried to tame the tumult through theatre and its equivalent, was wiser. (I mention the play to indicate that I am not even confident that Biblical Messianism, Jewish or Christian, was the ~~root" of Europe's upheaval). But I do not see how we can judge one way or the other until we have learned something of the political, social, economic, religious circumstances that Bacon, Galileo, and Descartes were up against. That these weren't pretty is insinuated by Bacon when, in the essay "Of Custom and Education;' he drops the names of Friar Clement, murderer of Henry III of France, and considered for canonization by Sixtus V; Juan Jaureguy, would-be assassin of William the Silent; Balthazar Gerard, the man who succeeded in murdering William. That Descartes too wants us to understand the violent circumstances surrounding his meditations on renovatio is shown by his eXplaining that what brought ,him to Germany and to that famous poele where he was sufficiently "free of passion" to think were the religious wars which, at the time of his writing of the Discourse, and even in the year of their publication, ~~were still not at an end." Some twentieth-century historians THE ST. JOHN'S REVIEW blame the Thirty Years War (1618-48) for Germany's political backwardness as compared to other European nations, identifying it as the "root" of the horrors of the first half of the twentieth century. More than a third of the population of Germany and Bohemia was killed off during that war. Returning to the much more pleasant business of gauging the sense and the weight that is to be given to the motif of the tree and the six days, I should mention that only because, like Miss Brann, I was intrigued by these details, I learned that there is a long Christian tradition of hexahemeral (six:.day) literature which goes back to the church fathers. It seems intermittently to intersect with a similar Jewish tradition, of which kabbalah is one expression. St ..Basil wrote a Hexaemeron; so too did St. Ambrose and St. Bede, and Oxford University Press recently _published a Hexaemeron by Grosseteste, this last unfortunately not yet translated. Of these books I have so far read only St. Ambrose's. It is a series of sermons delivered over the ftrst week of Lent. St. Ambrose affectionately describes the beautiful natural world that God made. He seems to be using the opening chapter of Genesis as a topical outline for natural history."" From the translator's editorial notes one learns that many of the joyous descriptive passages are culled from secular Latin authors while others are recognizably lines from Job, Psalms, the Prophets, or the New Testament where the relevant natural wonder comes up. The effect isn't really bookish. The congregation, eagerly waiting for Easter, must have felt confirmed in its faith that everything th~t God made is beautiful and good, that God cares for men. There is no hint of a conflict between secular and sacred narration or of a tug of war between edification and description. Ambrose, as he unselfconsciously allows Pagan authors (Cicero, Virgil, Ovid, even. Lucretius) to testify, reminded me of how I felt when, not far from Ambrose's Milan, in the little town of San Giovanni di Bellagio on the shores of Lake Como, I attended a festival honoring the lake and the saint who said that God is love (that saint being the one after whom the town is named). Perhaps this merely private reminiscence of the_ great fish catch, the young men's rowboast race, the lights on the water, the local padre's blessing of the children while he munches on chicken drumsticks, the sound of the churchbells, is not entirely irrelevant to the question why Galileo, Bacon and Descartes became "conspirators, for a post-medieval way of life- ( cf. Preliminary Discourse to the Encyclopedia ofDiderot, LLA ed. pp. 72-80). Before they came on the scene, others- I am thinking especially of Colet, Erasmus, More, but perhaps Nicholas of Cusa should be counted in this group as well- had done all in their power to work conservingly for reform, for restoration of something like the pastoral life and spirit (in all senses of the adjective) I felt in Ambrose and the festival of San Giovanni in Como (see Three Oxford Reformers by Frederic Seebohm, London 1869; any of Trevor Roper's books on sixteenth and seventeenth century Europe; Henry Kamen's little Signet paperback on the Spanish Inquisition). Their failure, in ·my judgment, has great bearing on the choices made by Bacon, Galileo, and Descartes. As luck would have it, St. Ambrose, while celebrating the works of the third day, seems to comment on the tree pictured under the titles of the books of Galileo and Descartes published by the Leiden Elzeviers. 5 In truth, while you realize that you possess frailty in common with the flowers, you know that you have access to delight in the use of the vine, from which is produced wine, wherein the heart of man finds cheer. Would that, man, you could imitate the example of this species of plant, so that you may bear fruit for your own joy and delight. In yourself lies the sweetness of your charm, from you does it blossom, in you it sojourns, within you it rests, in your own self you must search for the jubilant quality of your conscience. For that reason he says: 'Drink water out of thine own cistern and the streams of thine own well: First of all, nothing is more pleasing than the scent of a blossoming vine. Furthermore, the juice when extracted from the flower of this vine produces a drink which is pleasureable and healthgiving. Again, who does not marvel at the fact that from the seed of the grape springs forth a vine that climbs even as high as the top of a tree? The vine .fondles the tree by embracing and binding it with vine leaves, and crowns it with garlands of grapes. In imitation of our life, the vine first plants deep its living roots; then, because its nature is flexible and likely to fall, it uses its 71 �tendrils like arms to hold tight whatever it seizes. By this means it raises itself and lifts itself on high. Similar to this vine are the members of the church, who are planted with the root of faith and are held in check by the vine shoots of humility. A little further on in the sermon Ambrose, by merging the tower of Isiah's Song of the Vineyard with the tree just described, comes to identify the tree as the church leaders- "the apostles> prophets> and doctors" -while the vine remains the Christian Congregation. If you look again at the Elzevier emblem you will see that what twists 'round the tree is a grapevine with bunches of grapes and that the scholar who stands beside the tree seems to be plucking some (cf. New Organon ii, p. 156 and 161 on "first vintage"). Consider next a passage fi-om Pica's On lhe Dignily of Man (LLA ed., p. 28): As the farmer marries elm to vine, so the magus marries earth to heaven, that is, lower things to the qualities and virtues of higher things. Pica's lines alert us that, while listening to Ambrose, we didn't pay attention to the question who planted the tree (now identified as an elm) and who trained the vine to grow upon it. The matchmaker, God, was not pictured in Ambrose's sermon. Only His voice was heard, from far away, by those who remember the Prophet who pleaded God's case with the Congregation of Israel and its leaders ("I ask you to judge between my vineyard and me. What else could I have done for it that I have not done? I expected it to yield cultivated grapes, but sour ones were all it gave.") In Pica the matchmaker is on the scene, as he is in the Elzevier picture. Abstractly considered, Pica need not have known Ambrose's use of the vinesustaining tree; he could have taken it straight from the Italian landscape or from Virgil's Georgics. But a passage in the Heptaplous (LLA ed. p. 72) shows that Pica did know Ambrose's sermon (or at least, knew of it). Putting the two passages together, we seem to get a triple analogy: The magus imitates God by imitating the farmer, because as the farmer follows God's example when joining vine to tree in the manner of God's joining the congregation to its teachers, so the magus joins earthly to heavenly things. 72 Now that the man in scholar's garb on the Elzevier picture has been identified as a magician, Miss Brann's case seems clinched. We all know about Faust, how he made a pact with the devil and gave himself over to magic. Pica, however, believes that there are two kinds of magic. The first, he says, the Greeks called goeteian. The second sort they call by its proper and peculiar name, mageian, the perfect and highest wisdom as it were. Porphyry says that in the language of the Persians, magician means the same thing as interpreter and lover of divine things means in our language. . . The first is the most fraudulent of arts, the second is firm, faithful, and solid. . .. From the second comes the highest splendor and glory of letters, desired in ancient times and almost, always since then. No man who was a philosopher and desirous of learning good arts has ever been studious of the first. Pythagoras, Empedocles, Democritus, Plato, traveled across the sea to learn the second. When they came back, they preached it and held it chief among their esoteric doctrines ... As the first magic makes man subject to and delivered over to the powers of wickedness, so the second makes him their prince and lord . . . The second, among the virtues sown by the kindness of God and planted in the world, as if calling them out from darkness to light, does not so much make wonders as carifully serve nature which makes them. (Hepiaplous, LLA ed. pp. 27, 8) We shan't know what Pica means until we figure out what the powers of wickedness are and what lower and higher things his magus joins in wedlock. 6 Since the Hermetic writings on which he relies contain passages as crassly demonological as the terrible stuff one reads when one studies the court records of the sixteenth and seventeenth century witchtrials, one cannot rule out the possibility that goeteia is black magic and that the powers of wickedness are incubi and succubi. But I feel pretty confident that Miss Brann's suggestion that the magus, emulates the ordained priest by joining conjuring words to things (so that, where the priest "makes Christ" from wafer and wine, the magus "transsubstantiates" portions of nature) won't work: In the first place, the eucharistic miracle keeps the species (which to the scholastics means precisely the looks) the same though the substance is altered whereas Pica's and Bacon's transformations alter the specieJ but not, I believe, the substance, since the presupposition of alchemical practices is one of "catholic matter" (Newton's word). Second, the last sentence in the passage from Pica's Oration seems to rule out any except natural wonders. Indeed, it is not hard to read what Pica says about goeteian as making fun of priestly hocus pocus. This is not necessarily the same as impiety: Zwingli is a pious Christian. But it Would be a scandalous reading, and I simply do not know Pico well enough (the tone of the Heptaplous is rather different from that of the Oration) to judge: Goeteia may be witchcraft or black magic. If, then, "higher" and "lower" (in Milton, who used the same tree··vine pair, identified with Adam and Eve) are not an analogue to sacramental words and things, I can think of only two other possibilities: that the superlunary world is higher and the sublunar lower and the magus an alchemist, who knows how to channel astral virtues into earthly things so as to raise them up; or that mathemata (shapes, numbers, order relations) are the higher activating powers and sensible things lower. 7 The contrast between a stellar and a mathematical constrUction of "higher" things is probably erroneous from the perspective of the magi themselves. But either way, what matters is that the magus does not draw the liberal/servile arts distinction in the manner of the dominant Platonic tradition, that he does not deem the farmer's work so far beneath him that it cannot remind him of God's work and lure him on to do his own work. Simon Stevin, that wonderful physicist and engineer who served Maurice of Nassau and his country so well, comes to mind. Stevin seems to have designed his own logos. One of these, the endless chain accompanied by the motto "wonder/miracle that is no wonder/miracle;' is familiar to older St. John's alumni and tutors. 8 There are two others: The first shows a man digging and a woman spinning and bears the words ''Labore et Constantia:' The second is a picture of an open drawing compass, and the maxim that goes with this mathematician's tool is the same as the one that flanks the picture of the farmer and his wife. When, in an earlier review of Miss Brann's Paradoxes of Education in a Republic, I used the phrase "salvation through work," I was thinking of an attitude such as Stevin's. I intended to contrast it both with Lutheran teachings concerning WINTER 1985 �salvation by faith and with Catholic teachings concerning the indispensability of the church sacraments. I was, without saying so, "secularizing" the notion of salvation, no longer considering the soul in terms of its thousand-year journey and life eternal, but rather the human being in terms of the three score years and ten granted him or her on earth. This earthly life is disfigured by much meanness, vanity, pain, insecurity. The new burgher mood, I thought, was that of trusting that God helps those who help themselves and one another, that not only physical but even moral improvement comes, if it comes at all, from work; from the products that it yields, but also from working, and from the intellectual, moral, psychological, social, political conditions needed for work and in turn produced and maintained by work. This work ethic is often regarded as Protestant. But it really is not clear to me that it is fundamentally Christian. Yves Renouard's writings on the ethos of Renaissance Florence, Genoa, Venice, Pisa (Catholic cities all) and TrevorRoper's critique of the Weber thesis that there is a special connection between Protestantism and the spirit of capitalism, suggest that the Christianity of those who "believe in" the work ethic may be accidental. Experience of town life, and relish for it, respect for, and knowledge of, the varieties of expertise and discipline of fellow townsmen, may have more to do with it. I hope that it is becoming apparent that I am using this note as an occasion to express doubts about the insulation of "ideas" from economic and political conditions oflife; just as I am questioning the comforting hypothesis that the books that made a major diflE:rence to our ancestors' thought and life are always books that we fmd fascinating. Even if it could be said that I have shown that the choice of the six-day motif does not, cif itself, mean "Let me do it" (said by the child, the eagle-men, to God the father)- "I can do it just as well as you, and better than my elder brother;:..__and even if the Elzevier tree is probably not hung with apples, Miss Brann's contention (if I grasp her meaning) that a kind of bleak difi"ance undergirds "modernity" might still be justified. But I would urge that if one finds such a spirit in Goethe's Faust, or Marlowe's, or in Milton's Satan, it would take much analysis and argument to show that this is what secretly drives Descartes, Bacon, and Galileo. In Descartes one might see a terrible THE ST. JOHN'S REVIEW ambition to be self-begotten and selfraised which, in its twentieth century working out, self-destructs into solipsism and "no longer hoping to be less miserable but only to make others such as he is:' But the prima facie differences between him and Bacon and Galileo seem to me so great (despite Descartes's aping of Galileo's cameraderie with master artisans and his citing of many a saying of Bacon's) that I believe mor.e is gained from studying these three men's books separately and seeing the differences than from trying to find the features of Descartes underneath the skin of Bacon's and Galileo's faces. For instance: I spent much time puzzling over the sentence about not brooking intermediaries cited above. I considered four possible interpretations: 1. intellectual tradition and colleagiality as "between" God and self; 2. "adventitious" experience as "between"; 3. ordinary pre-scientific experience and ordinary ways of talking as "between"; 4. Christ and Christ's vicar on earth as "intermediaries between themselves and God and his nature." I had difficulties with all four. I'll pass them in review. Galileo expressly rejects the phoenixlike solitary genius picture of himself (Assayer, Discoveries and Opinions of Galileo (Stillman Drake, Vintage ed., p. 239), is entirely willing to distinguish peripatetic university science (represented by an anonymous individual coyly given the nickname Simplicius after that commentator on Aristotle) from Aristotle (whom he regards as a fellow scientist; see e.g. Dialogue, 2nd day, pp. 110!), is glad to recognize other men's splendor (e.g. Michelangelo'S or Copernicus's), builds his case against the peripatetic world system little by little and in great detail. How different his attitude to his fellows is from Descartes's b.ecomes apparent when one compares his way of writing dialogues with Descartes's in the Dialogue on the Search for Truth. Bacon too, though he certainly makes fun of the "vermiculate" questions of the scholastics (Advancement of Learning, Everyman ed. p. 26) and the gabby post-Socratics, does not peremptorily dismiss them but explains at length whit of their teaching he deems pernicious and why. To argue against someone is, to my mind, to aCknowledge him. Thus, only in Descartes could I find that isolation which, on one interpretation of her sentence about dispensing with intermediaries, is meant by Miss Brann ( cf. Bacon's Advancement of Learning, p. 30 Everyrrian ed. on the subject of many wits and industries and one wit; for contrast, see Machiavelli Discourses IX and Descartes' ruminations on city planning and legislation in Discourse II.) With respect to their attitude to sense experience and the question how one prepares oneself fOr being graced with insight into the principles formative of nature, Descartes again seems to me quite different from Galileo and Bacon. Yes, Galileo extols Copernicus (Dialogue, 3d day, p. 328) for having had the courage to "rape" the senses (as one translator has it; I have not checked the Italian} Yes, he distinguishes "primary" from "secondary" qualities (Assayer, Discoveries and Opinions of Galileo ed. Stillman Drake, Vintage, pp. 275ft). But, in the first place, it is not at all obvious precisely how this is "modern" (post-Christian, or "Christian by negation of Christianity"); that is, what more there is in Galileo's favoring of koina aestheta over idia aestheta than there already was in Democritus, Parmenides, and Plato ( cf Theaetetus 185ff and elsewhere; De Anima 425al5f). 9 In the second place, many passages in the Dialogue (Stillman Drake ed., University of California Press, 1962, 1st day, pp. 61f, p. 76, p. 101: see also p. 51 on how one moves to axioms) seem to me to show how much "Galileo enjoys rather than detests the fact that it is in encounters with the given world that generative ideas are suggested to the human mind. His parable about the man who has fallen in love with sound (Assayer, cited ed., pp. 256ft) confirms for me Curtis Wilson's distinction between Descartes, who gives metaphysical primacy to mathemata, and Galileo, who gives them methodological primacy. 10 Descartes reminds me just a little of Pentheus in his fear of"wet and wildness" (Hopkins' "Inversnaid"). For the reasons sketched earlier, we might do well to take his aristeia against the malicious demon rather literally and to regard the metaphysical search for guarantees of men's being capax veritatis as a theomachia! I see no such desperation in Bacon. It is true that he likes to assume a grappling stance and that there is much talk of overcoming nature as though she were an enemy (who ought to be killed?) But when he writes that nature, "to be conquered, must be obeyed," or that he wants to restore "intercourse' between the mind and nature, or that he hopes to "wed" the rational and empirical faculties, he shows, I think, that nature the adversary is also the paramour. For us it's hard to square atomism with a sense for the life in nature. But this may merely go to show 73 �that Bacon's and perhaps even Lucretius's atomism was different from Dalton's (though the prevalence of sexual metaphors like "elective affinities" in chemistry lasts through the nineteenth century). At any rate, that, even if one might accuse Descartes of pretending to seraphic direct and immediate knowledge of the nature of things, Bacon does not so pretend, is shown by many passages, fOr instance: To God, truly the Giver and Architect of Forms, and it may be to the angels and higher intelligences it belongs to have an affirmative knowledge of forms immediately, and from the first contemplation. But this assuredly is more than man can do. . (New Organon II, 15.) I reserve discussion of the moderns' alleged by-passing of or disdain for prescientific "ordinary" experience and language for another occasion, but want to call attention to their relish for the language of the market place. This leaves the last interpretation of the sentence about not tolerating intermediar)es between themselves and God, according to which neither Christ nor the chuich as avenue to Christ but the Promethean makers of modernity "save" mankind. I do not see how one can attribute such ambitions to Galileo, except on the supposition that anyone who claims to know how the heavens go thereby claims to know the way to heaven. Enough said about why I am uneasy about dealing with "moderns" en gros rather than en detail. It is a lot more plausible· to credit Bacon and Descartes with the ambition to replace Christ. Miss Brann believes she is obliged to ascribe this kind of vainglory to them because otherwise it is, to her, incomprehensible that these men, whose imagination should have been well-taught in the dangers of such knowing as removes boundary stones set to human power, were so fearless. Let me put this another way, in terms of the opening of Pica's Oration on the Dignity of Man. Pica, after citing a sentence from the Hermetic book Asclepius, 11 according to which a certain Moslem, Abdul, and the god, Mercury, agree that nothing on the world's stage is more wonderful than man, goes on to explain how he, Pico, interprets their saying: ... For the sake of your humanity and with kindly ears, give me your close attention: Now the highest Father, God the master-builder, had, by the laws of his secret 74 wisdom, fabricated this ho~se, this world which we see, a very superb temple of divinity . . With the work finished, the Artisan desired that there be someone to reckon up the reason of such a big work, to love its beauty, and to wonder at its greatness. Accordingly, now that all things had been completed, as Moses and Timaeus testify, He lastly considered creating man. But there was nothing in the archetypes from which He could mold a new sprout nor anything in His storehouses which he could bestow as a heritage upon a new son, nor was there an empty judiciary seat where this contemplator of the universe could sit Finally the best of workmen decided that that to which nothing of its very own could be given should be, in composite fashion, whatsoever had belonged individually to each and everything. Therefore He took up man, a work of indeterminate form; and, placing him at the midpoint of the world, He spoke to him, as follows: "We have given to thee, Adam, no fixed seat, no form of thy own . . A limited nature in other creatures is confined within the laws written down by Us. In conformity with thy free judgment, in whose hands I have placed thee, thou art confined by no bounds; and thou wilt fix limits of nature for thyself . .. Thou, like a judge appointed for being honorable, art the molder and maker of thyself; thou mayest sculpt thyself into whatever shape thou dost prefer. Thou canst grow downward into the lower natures which are brutes. Thou canst grow upward from thy soul's reason into the higher natures which are divine." 0 great liberality of God the Father. 0 great and wonderful happiness of man! It is given to him to have that which he chooses and to be that which he wills. (Oration, LLA ed. PP· 4,5) Comparison with Republic IX 588ff should make one wonder why what is in the Republic chiefly regarded as a risk (the risk of starving the puny little man inside and feeding the lion and the many-headed snake) is in Pica's Oration described as a marvellous opportunity (cf. also Plato's Protagoras). The very premature guess at an answer that might (if I have understood her) be in accord with Miss Brann's Hegelian-style hypothesis I suppose to be this: After centuries of the Church's teaching men their unfreedom (their incapacity to nourish their humanity except through humble submission to mystery) and after long observation of the worldly advantages gained by those who hold monopoly-access to the "works" 12 through which men are bought free from the powers of darkness, those who learned that only a fraction of humanity is raised on the doctrine of original sin came to wonder ever more passionately at the truth of this teaching. When someone who has doubts about the truth of a doctrine takes cognizance of the advantages gained from this teaching by those who teach it (cf. the Pico citation on p. 12 above, italicized sentence about the first magic), he is unlikely to continue in a condition of doubt. He is prone to deny it, or to affirm the truth of the formerly doubted proposition's contradictory. Pica's hymn to human freedom I view as an affirmation of the contradictory of the Christian teaching that men are conceived in sin. It seems psychologically plausible that a person who believes that he has "seen through" the orthodox teaching of our fall in Adam should feel as elated as a patient who finds out that the physician who warned him that the condition of his lungs was such that he'd die within the year had mistaken another man's chest x-ray for his. The source of Picds optimism, on this reasoning, would be the joy felt at being delivered from despair. Delivering men from despair lS Bacon's greatest ambition: By far the greatest obstacle to the progress of science and to the undertaking of new tasks and provinces therein is found in this, that men despair and think things impossible . . And therefore it is fit that I publish and set forth these conjectures of mine which make hope in this matter reasonable, just as Columbus did, before that wonderful voyage of his across the Atlantic, when he gave the reasons for his conviction that new lands and continents might be discovered besides those which were known before. (New Organon I, 92) Most of the New Organon is given over to uncovering and putting away grounds for despair over the human ability to acquire more perfect knowledge than is taught at the universities. But Miss Brann's identification of the Elzevier tree with the tree of knowledge gave expression to her wondering about the sources WINTER 1985 �of Bacon's confidence in men's right to, and moral ji"tness for, such more perfect knowledge. As for the right, why not, provisionally, trust that Bacon gets his hope from where he says he gets it, the verse in the creation chapter where God plans to make man in His image and such as to have dominion over all sublunar things (Genesis !:26; cf. New Organon I, 129, Parasceve last sentence; Great Instauration, Preface)? Yet the non-Christian tradition upon which Bacon and Pica are drawing, when it concerns itself with re-entering Paradise, stresses the great danger to individual and community when men who are not morally fit in terms of native temperament and careful training "resume" (by studying maaseh- bereshithindifferently the narrative of beginning and the making of the beginning) the knowledge Adam had been granted: According to one story, four men entered pardes: one went mad, one became a traitor, one died, and only Rabbi Akiba came forth whole. According to another, certain scholars who had been studying the creation story together fOr three years came to understand it. As a result, "a calf was created for them." They slaughtered and ate it. But when they had concluded their meal all their understanding proved to have left them! These stories re-affirm that what is in question is not men's ability to convert knowledge to use (as did Thales and Archimedes too) but the desirability of doing so, and the limitations, if any, upon such conversion. But is that the issue between "ancients" and "moderns"? It is an issue, and a very important one, in the opinion of those who are less persuaded of the soundness of Mr. Klein's distinction between "essential" and "accidental" history (or between "tracing things to their roots" and "tracing their history") than is Miss Brann. 10 them much of Bacon's interest in technology seems motivated by patriotic concern with the stability of the realm. Fastening men's interests, energies, intelligence on economic well-being in this life is to distract them from divisive religious passions and to unite them against those who, by promising a bliss that none has recently returned to .tell of, inflame the human imagination with a zeal that is uncheckable because falsity of promise is entirely unverifiable. Precisely such promises were, according to Bacon, made to the regicides mentioned by name in "Of Custom and Education;' and are, according to current newspaper reports, being made to Shiite terroristsJ13 It is also to give hope to the English nation and their THE ST. JOHN'S REVIEW ruler that England can, by industrial and commercial superiority, prevail over Spain and France. I am urging that Bacon's New Organon be read against the background of the Essays. The Essays (e.g. "Of Unity in Religion;' "Of Nobility;• "Of Sedition and Troubles;' "Of the True Greatness of Kingdoms and Estates") supplement what one gathers from Bacon's "Letter of Advice to Queen Elizabeth" of 1584, from his proposals for legal reform and his urging of a more rational economic and tax policy: Bacon is continually worrying over impending civil war. Less than a generation later that war broke the nation apart. It was not because he was "modern" and "charged the now with special significance" that he had a "feeling of crisis." It was because he looked across the waters and saw what was happening on the Continent and realized that many of the conditions prevalent there also obtained in England. If this suggestion, that Bacon takes a statesman's interest in technology, checks out, then we, who in the twentieth century have learned something about nationalist excesses, will of course want to learn why Bacon mistrusted nationalist passions less than religious passions. We cannot pursue that question now. Notice though that if this is the right question to ask, the "transformations" that Bacon had in mind (primarily agricultural, metallurgic, medical and only very very ultimately political) were a lot less radical than those that a Marxist stateless and classless humanity would require. In fact, my recent reading of Bacon makes me wonder whether we do not altogether misconstrue him by ascribing a rectilinear idea of time to him ( cf. "Of Vicissitudes"). His frequent talk about time seems to me quite compatible with a cyclic picture: There i~ "progress" also for those poised on the wheel of fortune, when the semicircle down has been completed. Neither self-love nor philanthropia nor nationalist ardor require that gains (in knowledge, power, security, public morality), to rank as gains, be permanent. For Lucretius, not only individual organisms and civic bodies but even worlds are mortal. Nevertheless book v lays out the story of the progress of civilization. It seems to me at least as plausible that Lucretius served Bacon as inspiration as that Christian Heilsgeschichte did. The a- or even anti-political character of Lucretius's teachings is not a good argument against me, since original Christianity is equally a- or anti-political. There are, of course, also very great differences between Bacon and Lucretius: Lucretius's theoretical interests are so limited as to be virtually non-existent. Any likely story that allays fear of death and of avenging gods will do. The only causal account he is serious about is an anthropological and psychological one, which shows that nearly all wickedness stems from fear of death. Bacon, contrarywise, though he cannot be credited with a single scientific discovery and even though he speaks much about science for use, knows of the happiness that comes of trying to find out how things really are. I venture to say that (not unlike Hobbes and Spinoza) he may even share in some version of the Platonic or Pythagorean faith that seeking to know makes human beings better, which would explain why he doesn't build hedges around potent knowing (in the kabbalist manner) but trusts that scientists will use their knowledge charitably. (LLA ed. New Organon, p. 15. But cf. Laurence Berns, "Bacon and the Conquest of Nature II;' Interpretation VII, 1 pp. 1fl) This brings me to my conclusion. If I am permitted to omit the case of Descartes, made complicated also by his expatriate condition, I would urge that Miss Brann misconstrued the moderns's interest in fruits and undervalued their interest in light, It is because of the hidden ¥1Qdynamic nature of what is really real that the modern natural philosopher, like the presocratic students of nature, must take an interest in the arts and crafts: It is the mechanical arts which give the better insight into the secret places of nature. Uncontrolled nature, with her profusion and spontaneity, dissipates the powers of the understanding and by her variety confounds them. In mechanical operations the attention is concentrated and the modes and processes of nature, not merely her effects are seen. (cf. pp. 73, 107, 109, 122, 53 ofLLA ed. of NeW Organon, all on forms as laws of action) Again and again Bacon writes that "works are of greater value as pledges of truth than as contributing to the comforts of life" (p. 114 LLA ed. of New Organon) or words to that effect. And even if it were to be shown that he conceives his own role to be that of a magus who joins the people or vine to the elm tree or ruler, there is not only pride but also humility in that matchmaker's work, since it is to be tested by the sweetness of the grapes so produced. The great question is who shall be the wine-taster. 75 �FOOTNOTES 1. "Biirgen" Luther writes: "soli man wUrgen . Standing surety is a work that is too lofty for a man; it is unseemly, for it is presumptious and an invasion of God's rights. For, in the first place, the Scriptures bid us to put our trust and place our reliance on no man, but only on God; for human nature is false, vain, deceitful, and unreliable ... He who becomes surety puts his trust in a man, and risks life and property on a false and insecure foundation; therefore it serves him right when he falls and fails and goes to ruin. In the second place, a man puts trust in himself and makes himself God, for that in which a man puts his trust and reliance is his God . ." ( U0rks iv, pp. 18-24, cited in Benjamin Nelson, The Idea of Usury: From Tribal Brotherhood to Universal Otherhood, Princeton, 1949). 2. There are many and long stretches about demons in the City of God; see also Of Christian Doctrine ii, 23. I used to read these, as well as passages in Luther about the Devil and his cohorts, metaphorically. But I now believe that this is an error. Thomas Beard, Oliver Cromwell's teacher, reports that Luther "in his colloquies telleth us how Satan oftentimes stealeth away young children of women lying in child-bed and supposeth [substitutes] others of his own begetting in their stead, in the shapes of incubus and succubus; one such child Luther reporteth of his own knowledge at Halberstadt ...." (R. Trevor-Davies, Four Centuries of Witch Beliefs, Benjamin Blom, 1972, p. 102). 3. The tree and day motifs are probably not seriously being offered as "evidence" for the Satanic self-conception of the new science, and Miss Brann may mean no more by "Satanic" than that there is something Promethean about the work and vision of the three founders. But I worry over even jokingly re-establishing connections between the old-time religion and suspicion of science. To her Satan and Prometheus may be one and the same, but to the students she addressed (and not only to them) Satan, the father of lies, and Prometheus, the titan of foresight and the friend of mankind, are not the same. What I am questioning may, therefore, be the advisability of her rhetorical mode rather than the truth of her thesis about the Christian "roots" of modernity. I am really not sure. One of the reasons for my not being sure is that it seems as though the enterprise she calls "tracing things to their roots;' which to others looks like "intellectual history;' seems to have practical implications, or at least, implications for attitude; and I have a hard time determining why a plain prose statement about the dangers of technology and the misguidedness of clflims for scientific theory stronger than those of the Timaeus would not have done just as well as a search for roots. 76 4. A dictionary observation about this expression may be in order. Bacon and Locke and Boyle and even Teddy Roosevelt all still use the word "history" or "historical" in the "data gathering" or "investigative" sense when they speak of "natural history" or "plain historical method" or "history of the winds" or "museum of natural history." 5. See the entry "Elzevier" in the eleventh edition Brittanica. It was the Leiden branch of the formerly Flemish publishing family that adopted the tree emblem (curiously referred to as "the solitary" though the message is "Non Salus") in 1620. 6. I suppose that the words "Non Salus" that accompany the Elzevier emblem allude to the words in Genesis "It is not good for man to be alone." Cf. New Organon I, 89 for a "forbidden marriage" and pp. 23, 3, 14 LLA ed. on commended marriages. 7. On alchemy, see Maryjoe Teeter Dobbs, Foundations of Newton's Alchemy, Cambridge University Press, 1975. I found this book especially helpful in its effort to explain how and why moral and religious self-formation was thought to be accomplished through alchemical practices. This should be a very important theme to anyone who values the distinction between liberal and servile arts on the ground that, unlike the merely useful arts, the role of the liberal arts is to improve the human soul. 8. Cf. Last sentence of citation from Pica on p. 12 above. 9. The rumor that Galileds "mathematization" of nature involves its "idealization" has reached me too. But I observe that however irrelevant to the finding of the weight of supposedly impure and consequently inherently inexact sublunar "sticks and stones" the Pythagorean discovery of incommensurability is, Archimedes nevertheless argues the proposition that such bodies balance at distances from the fulcrum reciprocally proportional to the bodies' weights as though they were superlunar exact bodies. Else, why treat the commensurable and the incommensurable classes of cases? 10. How unreductionist Galileo is next to Descartes is seen by comparing what Descartes writes about the heart-as-a-pump with the conclusion of Galileds parable about the man who loves sound: Well, after this man had come to believe that no more ways of forming tones could possibly exist when, I say, this man believed he had seen everything, he suddenly found himself once more plunged deeper into ignorance and baffle~ ment . . . For having captured a cicada in his hands, he failed to diminish its strident noise either by closing its mouth or stopping its wings ... At last he lifted up the armor of its chest and there he saw some thin hard ligaments beneath; thinking the sound might come from their vibration, he decided to break them in order to silence it. But nothing happened until his needle drove too deep, and transfixing the creature he took away its life with its voice. . By this experience his knowledge was reduced to dif~ fidence, so that when asked how sounds ·were created he used to answer tolerantly that although he knew a few ways, he was sure that many more existed which were not only unknown but unimaginable. I could illustrate with many more examples nature's bounty in producing her effects, as she employs means we could never think of without our senses and our experiences to teach them to us, and sometimes even these are insufficient to remedy our lack of understanding. My point is that although Descartes has read Harvey, he either fails to grasp that a pump that is a muscle is a very remarkable sort of pump or he cares about nothing except itS being a pump. (Cf. Arthur Collins's shrewd observations about Descartes' physics in "Unity of Leibniz' Thought," St. John's Review, Winter 1982/83). 11. If you want to see snakes ori the tree, the cadduceur, which is both the physician's and Mercury's emblem, is probably the icon to go for. 12. It is a matter of the greatest importance that the dispute between Luther and the Church of Rome over faith and works is not primarily or at least not solely a dispute about "passive" and "active" righteousness in the moral sense but very much a dispute about the need for or dispensability of the church sacraments. 'Works" in Sacred Doctrine corresponds to avodah in jewish tradition. Avodah ("service") is, so long as the temple with its sacrificial cult stands, the temple service. Only through the prophets and rabbinic elaboration of certain elements of their teaching, does avodah chiefly become ''doing justice, loving kindness (ahavath chesecl) and walking humbly with God." The Roman Catholic church is not just an ecclesia or synagogue but a temple and the mass is a sacrifice. I consider this information indispensable to anyone concerned with the issues Miss Brann takes up. However sane and tolerant modern American. Catholics may be, however wholesome, psychologically, a religious tradition which, through its sacrificial cult, makes re-integration of the sinner into the community a public act, the complaint of critics of the church in the days of its corruption through worldliness, namely, that it stood to profit from its monopoly on the instruments of salvation (the seven sacraments) was not fabricated. 13. Religious zeal of this sort is certainly not the privilege of the Roman Catholic Christian, as is evident from the murder of the De Witt brothers by a Protestant mob. WINTER 1985 �BooK REVIEW Rhythmic Gesture in Mozart: Le Nozze di Figaro and Don Giovanni Wye Jamison Allan brook Chicago: U. of Chicago Press, 1983. Pp. xii + 396; 11 figures. T he subjects of Mrs. Allanbrook's book, Mozart's masterpieces Le nozze di Figaro and Don Giovanni, are two of the most familiar and best loved works in the operatic repertory. Not surprisingly, they are also two of the most thoroughly studied. Mozart's version of the Don Juan legend has fascinated writers from the time of E.TA. Hoffmann and the early Romantics to the present. Figaro, while less an object of interest in the nineteenth century, has in recent years been examined for its underlying political and social message, and in relation to Beaumarchais's Le mariage de Figaro, from which its libretto is drawn. Yet the vast body of writings on these two operas by no means leaves modern scholars with nothing to add. It is a cliche, but no less valid for being one, that with a great work of art there will always be more to learn. This is particularly true when a new study offers a fresh perspective from which a work can be reexamined. In her book Mrs. Allanbrook provides a detailed and insightful critical analysis of Mozart's two great opere bu.ffe; her fresh perspective is that of the topoi, or "topics:' that underlie the music of the late eighteenth century. The term topos is borrowed from rhetoric "to designate 'commonplace' musical styles or figures whose expressive connotations, derived from the circumstances in which they are habitually employed, are familiar to all" (p. 329, n. 4 ). Once the vocabulary of these topics has been understood, they can serve as a source of "independent information [beyond our individual responses] about the expressive content of the arias and THE ST JOHN'S REVIEW ensembles" (p. 2). The "hunting fanfare:' for example, is a topic employed in any number of Classic works in obvious imitation of actual horn-calls associated with the hunt. Mozart's use of this figure to open his String Quintet in E-flat, K 614, enables a listener to place the work in a general expressive framework. The Quintet is not literally about a hunt, but an audience's recognition and understanding of the figure give the music a certain rustic quality and a sense of lightheartedness and cheerful energy, which derive by analogy from an actual hunting scene. The connection between the topical vocabulary of the Classic style and the expressive qualities of Classic music has been increasingly recognized in the last three decades. Various topics have already been identified and explored to some extent by other writers, especially Leonard Ratner (in his Classic Music: Expression, Form, and Style [New York, 1980]). Mrs. AllanbroOk's study concentrates on a particular class of topoi: the rhythmic gestures of dance, which, because they depict human beings in motion, are especially valuable topics in opera. The various uses of gavotte, minuet, and so on communicate information about the personality and feelings of each of the characters, as well as about their social positions. (An important question, which Mrs. Allanbrook never answers directly, is the degree to which these rhythmic gestures inform Mozart's non-operatic music, and the operas of other composers, as well as the two works under discussion.) The study comprises three large sections. In the first, the author outlines the variety of dances known to the late eighteenth century and spells out the social and affective connotations of each. Here she draws extensively on eighteenthcentury writings, both of music theorists such as Sulzer and Koch and of writers on dance, most of them less well~ known to musicians, such as Bacquoy-Guedon and von Feldenstein. While some of the dance topics are considered briefly in Ratner's book, Allanbrook's discussion is far more detailed and systematic. She shows a clear spectrum of meters from the most exalted, "ecclesiastical" duple meters (alta breve and 4/2) that connote the "learned" or contrapuntal style-and by extension the nobility- to the more rapid triple-meter dances with their connotations of humble frivolity. In addition, she analyzes the historical and sociological significance of the two anomalous dances, the contredanse and the waltz, that represent the new trend in the late eighteenth cen~ury towards simpler dances for novtces. The second and third sections of the book examine in turn Le nozze di Figaro and Don Giovanni, using the vocabulary of rhythmic gestures presented earlier to reach some striking conclusions. Allanbrook attempts to demonstrate that the central ethos of F£garo is pastoral, and that, far from being an operatic wateringdown of Beaumarchais's political message, Da Ponte's and Mozart's opera is most centrally about the friendship between the Countess and Susanna, her maid. The pastoral, with its connotations of bucolic 77 �simplicity, is suggested by several dance gestures used in the opera: the 6/8 pastorale and siciliano, the 2/4 gavotte, and especially the musette-gavotte. As Mrs. Allanbrook argues, the many numbers with pastoral connotations serve to suggest a world in which Susanna and the Countess can transcend the barrier of class to meet as equals and as friends. The heart of this world is the duet "Che soave zeffiretto;' whose "pastoral text and music figure the classless, timeless meadow where two women ordinarily separated by circumstance can meet and stroll quietly together" (p. 147). And it is under the aegis of the pastoral affect, at numerous other places in the opera, that the Count's schemes are defeated by Figaro and Susanna and their allies. The argument is a provocative one, though the multiple meanings of "pastoral" are never spelled out with sufficient clarity to support fully the weight of the interpretation. We may see, for instance, why it represents a refuge from the brutal and selfish world of the Count, but it is not clear why the pastoral is "classless?' In her treatment of Don Giovanni Allanbrook takes a revisionist view of the central character. While Don Giovanni is the center around whom all the other characters revolve, careful analysis reveals that he is both essentially inarticulateKierkegaard saw him as a kind of primitive life force-and empty. The author points out that the Don is anonymous; only once, in "Fin ch'an dal vino," does he sing a solo that is not a conscious performance or disguise. Further, Don Giovanni's obsession with seduction has a coldly automatic quality, like the need of an animal for food. This obsession makes him not so much evil or immoral, as has often been argued, as simply outside human morality. Don Gz'ovanni is distinguished from Figaro by the overshadowing presence of the supernatural (in the overture and finale to act II). Of necessity, this widening of the framework carries with it a price. "In accommodating the divine perspective the opera has somewhat to distort our view of that small part of the world where we were formerly at home: to gain the new dimension the vivid planes of Figaro's terra firma must be compressed into a caricature of themselves, a shadow play" (p. 199). The richness and complexity of the world of human 78 morality and interaction are greatly reduced, so that by comparison to Fi'garo the other characters in Don Giovanni (perhaps excepting Donna Elvira) have the quality of stock figures, without much depth and largely without the ability to engage our sympathies. This lack of depth has been pointed out before, particularly with respect to Donna Anna and Don Ottavio; but Mrs. Allan brook's view of the whole opera provides a powerful explanation for the phenomenon. The analytical treatment of Figaro and Don Giovanni that comprises the heart of the book has many strengths. Despite the title of the study, Mrs. Allanbrook's discussion is by no means limited to matters of rhythm; she also employs more traditional methods of harmonic, motivic, formal, and linear analysis. This flexible approach is complemented by the author's concern with textual and dramatic as well as musical matters, which enables her to make many subtle points about the dramaturgy of the works in addition to correcting older misconceptions. She successfully defends, for example, the oftmaligned series of arias that precede the finale to act IV of Figaro, by showing how they fit Da Ponte's and Mozart's view of the real subject of the opera. Similarly, she rather convincingly refutes the notion (of Edward Dent and others) that Don Giovanni was originally <;:onceived in four acts. In its broader dramatic framework her analysis presents a needed corrective to many older studies that viewed these operas from the far narrower perspective uf instrumental music. (This is largely true, for example, of Siegniund Levarie's Mozart's Le nozze di Figaro: A Critical Analysis [Chicago, 1952].) An important key to the success of Mrs. Allanbrook's approach is its creative and "humanistic" orientation. At its best her analysis emphasizes not technical features but revelations of character of musical ethos. She is most concerned with the ethical and moral world inhabited by the characters, and the power of her analysis depends chiefly on the degree to which technical points are linked to the larger central points she is making. At times the many details of the discussion may obscure the main thread somewhat, as during the extended analysis of the Statue scene in the finale to act II of Don Giovanni. At a few other moments, an analytic point seems forced or ques- tionable. Far more often, however, the reader nods and smiles in agreement at a sensitive and insightful discussion of a passage. Mrs. Allanbrook's treatments of two marvelous moments- the final reconciliation between the Count and Countess at the end of Figaro, and the Commendatore's death scene in Act I of Don Giovanni-are particularly successful. On several occasions the author shows how the rhythmic organization of a theme differs from a hypothetical, more "orthodox" phrasing. This technique, as in her discussion of Donna Anna's "Fuggi, Crudele, fuggi;' invariably leads to striking observations. In all respects but one, the prodUction of the volume matches the elegance of much of the writing. The layout and typography of the book are well styled and its abundant musical examples are carefully produced and easy to read. The virtual absence of typographical errors is equally admirable. But the lack of a bibliography is rather frustrating; its absence compels the reader to search through the 53 pages of endnotes for the first reference to a given author. The central value of Mrs. Allanbrook's study rests on two interrelated accomplishments. The analysis of two of Mozart's greatest operatic masterpieces is challenging and genuinely enlightening. Its flexibility of approach and its concern for ethical and spiritual matters make the book a model of critical analysis at its most humane. But the other achievement of this study, its presentation and demonstration of a largely new conceptual framework for studying the music of the late eighteenth century, is ultimately more far-reaching. As Mrs. Allanbrook shows, a grasp of the topical vocabulary of this music can lead to a variety of new insights into its expressive message. The section on topos and the understanding of rhythmic gesture should be required reading not only for lovers of the Mozart operas but for all students of the music of the Classic era. John Platoff John Platoff is an Assistant Professor of Music at Trinity College in Hartford, Conn. He is currently working on a study of the operas of Mozart and his contemporaries, to be called "Mozart and the Viennese Opera Buffa." WINTER !985 �The Presence of Grace and Other Book Reviews by Flannery O'Connor compiled by Leo J. Zuber and edited by Carter W. Martin, University of Georgia Press, Athens 1983, 189 pp. ($17.25) F lannery O'Connor wrote the reviews collected here almost exclusively for the newspapers of Georgia's two Roman Catholic dioceses. Anyone familiar with the species, "diocesan weekly;' will know two things. First, at a scant twohundred words even Flannery O'Connor was reined-in tight. (She called the reviews "notices.") And second, she was running-at least by New York Review of Books standards- in a slow pack. Yet in the event, the pieces bear all the marks of the thoroughbred. Surprisingly few Uust 25 of 143) touch on literature or criticism. She mostly reviewed titles in hagiography, studies of scripture, letters, and spiritual meditations. None is superficial, but neither are they "packed:' Rather, as one might expect from a writer of her wit and nicety they all are drawn to a telling point. What one might not expect is how much they seem to tell us about Flannery O'Connor herself without being exercises in selfrevelation. Given her unquestionable talents some readers will still presume to lament the "waste" of her energies in a quaint faith and backward country. American writers are, after all, conspicuous "roadplayers." And although Marion Montgomery's Why Flannery O'Connor Stayed Home is one of the better scholarly adventureS of recent .times, that author's answer, one partly grounded in the reviews collected here, will still puzzle readers charmed by the "free-agency" of contemporary author-celebrities. Flannery O'Connor did not have a THE ST. JOHN'S REVIEW "career" in any of the conventional senses. She called her activity both a vocation and a craft, the end of which was good writing. Period. She wrote, she said, because she was "good at it;' and she stayed at home most happily because she could write there. For her immediate concern was simply practical as it would have to be for any good craftsman- even for a practitioner of some version of "art for art's sake:' If her immediate and public concern was practical, Flannery O'Connor's final concern was private and spiritual. In her review of Carol'ine Gordon's How to Read a Novel she carefully distinguished those concerns. But as her reviews of other books, .especially the books of Romano Guardini, make clear, she believed that spiritual and practical things are most true to themselves when coincident in time and place. She hinted at, but lacked the space to develop, what was clearly a sacramental aesthetic. She does direct the reader to her constant source and authority in such questions, Jacques Maritain's Art and Scholasticism which she seems to have absorbed but never reviewed. Just as the "stuff' of her stories came from her locale, the rural South, so the force of her spiritual penetration of that "stuff' came from her Catholicism. She once wrote to Andrew Lytle that"... the only thing that keeps me from being a regional writer is being a Catholic and the only thing that keeps me from being a Catholic writer (in the narrow sense) is being a- Southerner?' Together the South and Catholicism formed Flannery O'Connor's one home. They combined her immediate concerns and raised her art above the parochialism of both the local colorist and the parish fabulist. More important still, they saved her from that graver parochialism known as the "literary career:' For a long time now writers have felt the need to justify their ways to readers. But often as not they have been more interested in apologizing to themselves for their own strange talents and mysterious gifts. Flannery O'Connor's needs and interests in that last regard were not unique, which is not to say that she gave any of the common accounts of herself as an artist, but it does make the scope of her reading for review less strange than it might at first appear. For she seems to have constantly turned to other minds and voices to help articulate her place, her powers, and her vocation in a world that she knew she did not make. We regularly celebrate lesser writers for tediously parading their struggles toward self-understanding, something modern writers, like their readers, tend to confuse with their art. Flannery O'Connor simply looked to share her Creator's own view of His creation and to retrieve some nuance of that perspective in her art. She called it seeing the "good under construction?' Those who dare to write from such a place verge on prophecy. The prophetic-poet is a frequent, if understated, theme in these reviews. Few modern writers seem to have been so fully conscious of what they were up to. Without pomp or fanfare The 79 �Presence of Grace tells us more about what Flannery O'Connor thought she was doing "at home'' than we have any right to expect. No one will rank these book reviews with her fiction, or with her remarkable letters, The Habit of Being. The Presence of Grace, like her occasional talks, Mystery and Manners, can only be read as incomplete notes toward a memoir of Flannery O'Connor's intellectual home. In this in- 80 stance the neighborhood is peopled with the likes of Hans Kung, Eric Voeglin, and Pierre Teilhard de Chardin, S. J. Like every memory it bears a foreground of things in sharp focus and a background of things begging to be retrieved. At the very least, the reader who takes the trouble to wade back and forth among these reviews will begin to see in Flannery O'Connor what she remarked in one of her own heroes, Friedrich von HUgel: the mark of"... a genuine encounter with the Church, a wrestling with it, a love tested by considerable adversity.. ;' The Presence of Grace tells us that a spacious and fearless mind like Flannery O'Connor's is most "at home" in such moments. To witness it here is no small delight. Victor Gallerano Victor Gallerano, an alumnus of St. John's College, Annapolis, lives in Washington, D.C. WINTER 1985 � Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource <em>The St. John's Review</em> Description An account of the resource <em>The St. John's Review</em><span> is published by the Office of the Dean, St. John's College.  All manuscripts are subject to blind review. Address correspondence to </span><em>The St. John's Review</em><span>, St. John's College, 60 College Avenue, Annapolis, MD 21401 or via e-mail at </span><a class="obfuscated_link" href="mailto:review@sjc.edu"><span class="obfuscated_link_text">review@sjc.edu</span></a><span>.</span><br /><br /><em>The St. John's Review</em> exemplifies, encourages, and enhances the disciplined reflection that is nurtured by the St. John's Program. It does so both through the character most in common among its contributors — their familiarity with the Program and their respect for it — and through the style and content of their contributions. 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Creator An entity primarily responsible for making the resource Office of the Dean Publisher An entity responsible for making the resource available St. John's College Identifier An unambiguous reference to the resource within a given context ISSN 0277-4720 thestjohnsreview Contributor An entity responsible for making contributions to the resource St. John's College Greenfield Library Text A resource consisting primarily of words for reading. Examples include books, letters, dissertations, poems, newspapers, articles, archives of mailing lists. Note that facsimiles or images of texts are still of the genre Text. Page numeration Number of pages in the original item. 80 pages Original Format The type of object, such as painting, sculpture, paper, photo, and additional data paper Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Creator An entity primarily responsible for making the resource Office of the Dean Title A name given to the resource The St. John's Review (formerly The College), Winter 1985 Date A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource 1985-01 Contributor An entity responsible for making contributions to the resource Sterling, J. Walter Freis, Richard Walsh, Jason Freis, S. Richard Sachs, Joe Stickney, Cary Wilson, Curtis A. Sachs, Joe Brann, Eva T. H. Kates, J. Engelberg, Joseph Zuckerman, Elliot Fain, Susan Fisher, Howard J. Kalkavage, Peter Maschler, Chaninah Description An account of the resource Volume XXXVI, number 1 of The St. John's Review, formerly The College. Published in Winter 1985. Identifier An unambiguous reference to the resource within a given context ISSN 0277-4720 The_St_Johns_Review_Vol_36_No_1_1985 Coverage The spatial or temporal topic of the resource, the spatial applicability of the resource, or the jurisdiction under which the resource is relevant Annapolis, MD Publisher An entity responsible for making the resource available St. John's College Language A language of the resource English Type The nature or genre of the resource text Rights Information about rights held in and over the resource St. John's College owns the rights to this publication. Format The file format, physical medium, or dimensions of the resource pdf St. John's Review https://s3.us-east-1.amazonaws.com/sjcdigitalarchives/original/23a59cf8453a88cc0bfcdcde76e38def.pdf 9d74f5084d00cfa6fe701bd8d78d3530 PDF Text Text v _ THE .•··.J' 'sReview r St. a Jl 'f I l ,i' '"i l ' .I l Spring, 1985 �f Editor: J. Walter Sterling Managing Editor: Anita Kronsberg Poetry Editor: Richard Freis Editorial Board: Eva Brann S. Richard Freis, Alumni representative Joe Sachs Cary Stickney Curtis A. Wilson Unsolicited articles, stories, and poems are welcome, but should be accompanied by a stamped, self-addressed envelope in each instance. Reasoned comments are also welcome. The St. John's Review (formerly The College) is published by the Office of the Dean, St. John's College, Annapolis, Maryland 21404. Edwin J. Delattre, President, George Doskow, Dean. Published thrice yearly, in the winter, spring, and summer. For those not on the distribution list, subscriptions: $12.00 yearly, $24.00 for two years, or $36.00 for three years, payable in advance. Address all correspondence to The St. John's Review, St. John's College, Annapolis, Maryland 21404. Volume XXXV1, Number 2 Spring, 1985 © 1985 St. John's College; All rights reserved. Reproduction in whole or in part without permission is prohibited. ISSN 0277-4720 Composition: Best Impressions, Inc. Printing: St. John's College Press Cover: From the east pediment of the Temple of Aphaia on Aegina. Fallen warrior, Parian marble. Length 1.85 m. ca. 490/480 B.C. Munich, Glyptother 85 �THE StJohn's Review Contents 3 Groups, Rings, and Lattices Curtis Wilson 12 Sartorial (poem) Elliott Zuckerman 13 The Logic of Morality Allen Clark 25 Social Science and Humanism Leo Strauss 30 Reply to Tertullian (poem) M. L. Coughlin 31 Achilles and Hector: The Homeric Hero Part I Style Seth Benardete BoOK REVIEWS 59 . . . . . The White Rose: Munich 1942-43 The Short Life of Sophie Scholl - Beate Ruhm von Oppen 63 A Lover's Afterthought (poem) Max Dublin 64 The Effects of Gravity on Health (poem) Max Dublin i i ' �I know that I speak not only for myself but for the whole community, and especially for those of us associated with The St. John's Review, when I express my sadness at the death of Thomas Parran. It was not unexpected. He had been recurrently ill for a long time, and the brave, unobtrusive way in which he bore his hospitalizations and returns won the admiration of us all. It was good to see Tom back each time and to keep up the habit of dropping into his office for some business and a pleasant talk. Being the most courteous and gentlemanly of men, he would never fail to make one welcome, and his praise for one's writing, delivered in an unassuming but convincing way, was always a pleasure to come away with. He was the Managing Editor of the Review for so many years that I came to think of him as the guardian spirit of its appearance, the more so since he had a fine eye for layout. We would sometimes chat about the articles he was preparing for the printer, and it seemed to me that his private judgments were very acute as well. St. John's College and the Review have lost a good and devoted friend, and we shall miss him. Eva Brann It was shortly after I became editor of The St. John's Review that Tom Parran's cancer came out of remission. From my first meeting with him I had been impressed by his manner - gentlemanly and courteous, yet entirely down to earth. But what I shall not forget is the grace he exhibited throughout his last year and a half. At the least to all appearances he treated his illness as but a nuisance. Never did his humor or enjoyment of life seem diminished. His was a spirit grateful for the more than a decade that the cancer had been held in check. There was no time when I was with him that he did not quickly deflect attention from any awareness of his health to other matters. He showed no need for sympathy or support in his illness, though he did not exhibit impatience with expressions of concern. He formally resigned as managing editor of the Review at the end of January, 1985. Quietly and unobtrusively he passed from the life of the college, so quietly and unobtrusively that his own passing went scarcely noticed. Walter Sterling �In Memoriam Thomas Parran, Jr. 1920-1985 �THE ST. JoHN'S REVIEW Spring 1985 Groups, Rings and Lattices Curtis Wilson The words "group, u "ring," and "lattice," as used in modern mathematics, are names for certain kinds of formal structure. Let me say at once that this will not be a lecture about mathematics; I am going to attempt to discuss the nature of intellectual work, and to use the mathematical structures, especially the group structure, as models or paradigms of structures which, so I shall claim, are rather generally present, either implicitly or explicitly, in the exercise of intelligence. To describe what goes on in the exercise of intelligence is no easy task. In a rough analogy, one might compare thinking to riding in an airplane, and now and then going up front to do a bit of steering; the riding and even the steering are possible without understanding what keeps the airplane aloft and moves it forward. This difficulty of description is rooted in the fact that thinking involves a temporal process. The fact has several aspects. In the first place, whatever is accomplished in intellectual work, whatever is grasped or understood, is grasped or understood through successive steps, by running through connections. At a certain moment, I believe myself justified in saying: "Now I understand the situation which I previously did not understand." What has gone on in the interim? Well, I take it that whenever I understand anything, whenever I grasp anything, what is understood or grasped is a complex of elements, with their properties and relations; if it were only a solitary thing, without any internal complexity or any relation to anything else, we would speak not of understanding but Curtis Wilson is a tutor and former dean at St. John's College, Annapolis. Groups, Rings, and lAttices was originally delivered as a formal lecture at St. John's College, Annapolis in September 1959. THE ST. JOHN'S REVIEW perhaps of trance. In other words, understanding is always understanding of something which is somehow many. In the interim, then, I have been presumably tracing out the relations between elements of the situation, presumably one by one, and then I say: "I understand now." But at this moment in which I say that I understand, it does not seem possible that all these relations are present to me at once, in their full significance; and it becomes a problem as to how they are present. And in any case, it is clear that the acquisition of any understanding involves necessarily a kind of evanescence; different aspects of the situation to be understood have to fall successively into the background, into the past; and when I try to understand my understanding, to grasp reflectively what has gone on in the process of understanding, it seems that I must either reactivate the original process, step by step, or else I am liable to fall into superficiality or false generalization. This problem of evanescence goes beyond any single process leading to a single act of understanding. All intellectual work is based on previous acquisitions which have become as though embedded and submerged in one's thinking. Previous acquisitions, in order to become transmissible from one person to another, or even to remain accessible to one person, have in general to be framed in words, written or spoken. And written or spoken words exercise a seductive power; increasing familiarity with certain words and patterns of words makes possible a certain kind of passive and superficial understanding; which carries us forward to another stage without our grasping the full meaning, without our having gotten to the roots of what has been presented. Even thinking which has seemed satisfying and adequate always involves an interlacing of what is grasped centrally and with a degree of clarity and distinctness, and what is accepted passively as pre-given, often without the 3 �awareness that there is an embedded structure which needs to be brought to light. Learning never starts from a zero-situation, complaining members of the teaching profession to the contrary notwithstanding. This state of affairs with regard to past acquisitions is inevitable, is an essential aspect of the human quest for knowledge. I am not the first member of the human race, nor can I actually put myself in the position of the first member of the human race. What happened in the past of the race cannot be resurrected and re-lived just as it was in fact; first because the past presents us only with a few documents and monuments, fragmentary endproducts of processes whose factual character remains inaccessible; secondly because whatever I understand of the past is understood in my own present, and in the light of my own interests and preoccupations. I cannot even re-live my own past as it was in fact, for recollection differs essentially from the original experience; I cannot abolish the fact that I now know the outcome. Moreover, I do not even remember my own birth-! suspect that no human being ever does-nor do I remember how I began to emerge from the buzzing and booming confusion of the sensations which first bombarded me. Whatever its cause, whether it is because we forget what is painful, as Freud says, or because we forget what is useless, as Bergson says, this childhood amnesia seems to be universal. We are all in the situation of Adam, who according to William James-James may not be quite the proper authority to refer to here-was created with a navel, and must have been rather puzzled by it, if no one told him what it meant. The situation with regard to past acquisitions, this engulfment in time, is mirrored by a corresponding situation with regard to the future. Whatever I accomplish in intellectual work remains open to modification or qualification by a series of future investigators, including me. If I claim to understand or grasp anything with any kind of completeness-and the nature of this completeness is just our problem-there yet remains the open possibility of grasping further relations, determinations, connections, so that what has thus far been grasped appears as a special case of something else. The difficulty of describing the mind at work lies just in the fact that the being of the mind is its work, it is what it does, and this doing involves temporal succession, a coming-to-be and passing-away of moments, with a bewildering complexity of structure which is constantly being modified, or fading into the past. So much for the difficulty. What I propose to do is to start with an example of thinking, one in which there is an advance from passive acceptance of the pre-given to an active grasp of a situation and its parts and relations. And then I shall try to frame a generalization on the basis of the example, to arrive at a model or paradigm that can be applied and tested in other cases. Now for example.* Suppose I am asked to find the sum *This example is given in Max Wartheimer, Productive Thinking. 4 of 1+2+3+4+5+6. (The correct answer is 21). What do you do when you add? Ordinarily when one is asked what the sum of 4+5 is, I suspect the answer "9" comes immediately-we even say "without thought;" one has been drilled in the repetition of the addition tables since childhood, the associations are built into one's memory, and the answer comes automatically when a situation requires it. But what if the series to be summed were much longer? Suppose one were asked to find the sum of the first 201 whole numbers? Adding them up successively would be tedious, and one might have to check the additions several times to be sure of having the correct result, which is 20,301. Is there a shorter way? The reader may know that there is a formula for the sum of any such series; it is n(n + 1)/2, where n is the last term of the series. Use of the formula involves merely a recognition of the cases to which it is applicable, a substitution for n, and a multiplication and a division, based on memorized tables. But someone will undoubtedly ask: how do we know that this formula is correct? The answer is, of course, that we can prove it. There are several proofs, but let me give one which can be stated very briefly. I write the series down twice, mice in the usual way and the second time, just underneath, in reverse order: 1 + 2 + 3 + ..... + (n-2) + (n-1) + n n + (n-1) + (n-2) + ..... + 3 + 2 + 1 (n+1) + (n+1) + (n+1) + ..... + (n+1) + (n+1) + (n+1) Then if I add the two terms in each vertical column, I find the sum in each case to be (n + 1). There are n such sums, that is, just as many as there-are terms in the series. So the sum of the series taken twice is n(n + 1), and the sum of the series taken just once is half that, or n(n + 1)/2. All right. I have gone through the proof, nodding in assent at each step, and my conclusion is that the formula is true. I may still be left with a vague sense of dissatisfaction, as though a neat trick had been performed which I clid not fully understand; insight may still be lacking. I can still ask why the formula is correct; more specifically, what is the connection between the fonn of the series and the sum of its terms? Why is just this particular formula the formula for this particular kind of series, a series of this form? There is a clue to the answer in the proof I have just given, but let me return to a particular case, the series 1+2+3+4+5+6. First I note that the series has a direction of increase going from left to right: 1+2+3+4+5+6. Next, an obvious remark, but one that will prove decisive. The increase from left to right involves a corresponding decrease from right to left: 1+2+3+4+5+6. If I go from left to right, from the first number to the sec- SPRING 1985 �ond, there is an increase of one; if I go from right to left, from the last number at the right to the next preceding, there is a decrease of one. Hence the sum of the first and last numbers must be the same as the sum of the next inner pair. And this must be true throughout: 1+2+3+4+5+6 ~ What we grasp now can be symbolized by two arrows, meeting in the center: 1+2+3+4+5+6 There remains only the question: how many pairs are there? Obviously the number of pairs is one-half of all the numbers, hence of the last number; so we get (6/2).7 as the sum, or in general (n/2)(n + 1). Here (n + 1) represents the value of each pair, (n/2) the number of pairs. If one knew the formula only blindly, then expressions of the forms (n' + n)/2 and (n + 1)(n/2) would be completely equivalent. But in view of the derivation just completed, the meaningful form is (n/2)(n + 1): we have a sum for each pair, namely (n + 1), and then we multiply by the number of pairs. The two factors of the product have different functions. The formula applies equally when the series ends with an odd number, for example: 1+2+3+4+5+6+7. ~ What is to be done with the number in the middle which cannot be paired? Well, it turns out to be half a pair, that is, (n + 1)12, so that all in all we have 3 + 'h or n/2 pairs, and the formula does not change. Or better: just take the center term and multiply it by the number of terms in the series: 7 x 4 or n x (n + 1)/2. In the case of a series ending with an even number, the corresponding thing would be to take the average of the middle two terms. In each case a central value is taken, and multiplied by n. Now I believe we can say at this point that we have more than a formula, a way of getting the correct answer. I grasp, I have insight into, the relation between the formula and the form of the series, and I can go on to work out the sums for series of different types from the type just considered. For example, I see almost at once that the sum of the numbers: 96+97 +98+ 102+ 103+ 104 is 600. For the terms are grouped symmetrically about 100, and there are six terms; so six times the central value, 100, gives 600. The formula (n/2)(n + 1) now appears as a special case only. The important thing is the basic relationship: some series show a clear relation between their principle of construction and their sum. The relationship uncovered here, the notion of a balance in the whole, compensation among the parts, symmetry, has numerous applications; it is fundamental, for instance, in the integral calculus. Let me try to re-state and generalize what is involved in the example. In the first place, I am presented with THE ST. JOHN'S REVIEW a manifold, a many-ness of elements. The elements in this case are numbers. In the second place, the elements have a certain kind of order among themselves. In the example this is what is called linear or serial order. It is grasped initially as a relation between each term and its inunediate successor and predecessor. In the third place, in the course of approaching this order from opposite sides, I come to grasp the symmetry of the situation, the possibility of pairing off the terms symmetrically about a central position in the series. I would propose that any piece of intellectual work, leading to understanding or insight of any kind, necessarily involves a consideration of a multiplicity, a many-ness, a manifold of elements and things, with their properties and relations. By an "element" or "thing" here I mean just any possible object of thought, anything that is somehow one; by a relation, any kind of connectedness between things, any characteristic of a thing that can be specified only through the intermediary of another thing. Let me add just one more term: "operation." The consideration of a manifold of things and their relations involves the performance of operations of some kind, carried out on images or symbols, or perhaps even on physical objects. The distinction between a relation and an operation is just that a relation holds between two or more elements of a manifold simply in virtue of what and how the elements are, while an operation is something that we can perform, an action that we may will to carry out. Equality, for instance, is a relation; addition is an operation. I would maintain, then, that different kinds of objects or elements and relations or orderings of things can be isolated and grasped only with the development of a corresponding set of operations. For instance, consider the linear order in our example: 1< 2<3<4<5<6. The order here is like that which I may construct by arranging different sticks, A, B, C, D, and so on, in the order of their lengths: A<B<C<D< . . . The ordering relation is assymmetrical-B is shorter than C but C is not shorter than B-and transitive-B is not only shorter than C but also than D orE or any stick farther along in the series. The construction of such a series presupposes, first, the operation of comparing any two of the objects and noting the difference, the assymmetry. Then, as one learns to proceed systematically, rather than just comparing parts of the objects at random, a further operation is presupposed: one will try to find the smallest of the elements first, then the smallest of those left over, and so on. Here one is coordinating two inverse relations: Cis larger than A orB, and is shorter than D or any longer object. In the case of the series of numbers, the ordering presupposes the more specific operation of getting from one number to the next by adding 1; in fact, the understanding of what the numbers themselves are presupposes my awareness of the ability always to add one more, and there is a sense in which one can say that one successively constructs or re-constructs the numbers by this process. The discovery 5 �of symmetry in the example depended on the possibility of applying this operation reversibly, the correlation of increase with decrease. Let me say a few words about kinds of order other than linear order. Linear order is an instance of a more general kind of order called "lattice" order, which is an instance of a yet more general kind of order called "partial" order. In general any set of a finite number of elements, in which the elements are related by a single assymmetrical relation, can be presented by a diagram; the elements a, b, c, and so on, can be represented by small circles, and an ascending line from a to b will mean that a is less than b, or is included in b or is, so to speak, at the lower pole of the assymmetrical relation between a and b. In the case of linear order, we have simply a series of circles placed one above the other and connected by vertical lines. By drawing different diagrams one can illustrate very different kinds of order. For instance, suppose we have a classification, like the classifications used in biology, or like the one presented in Plato's dialogue The Sophist. We start with a class of things-call it "A"characterized by some property. Then we subclivide A-for simplicity's sake I shall assume that we subdivide it only into two parts, B and B', and so on . . . A system of class inclusions of this kind presupposes a number of reversible OP,erations. For instance, there is the formation of the union of D and D', the result being C1 : D+D 1 =C1; C+C'=B; and so on. Reversely, C1 -D1 =D; B- C' = C; and so on. Also, there is the operation of forming the intersection of any two classes, that is, forming the class of all those elements which are in both of the given classes; thus I write: D x D1 = 0, because there are no elements ·common to both D and D1; C x B = C, because the only members which are in both B and C are those in C. This system of class inclusions forms a semi-lattice. Roughly speaking, in a complete lattice one would have to have the diagram end not only in a single circle above, but also in a single circle below. Different sorts of ordered systems will presuppose a number of different sorts of operations, and the understanding of such systems will involve implicitly the performance of such operations. Ordered systems such as I have described, in which there is a set of elements !md a single, assymmetrical relation, constitute one of the simplest kinds of mathematical structure. A more complex structure may involve several relations. Also, there is another possibility. An operation, such as addition, may be drawn from its hiding place behind a relation, be given a symbol, and be incorporated explicitly as part of a mathematical structure. Thus another simple kind of mathematical structure will consist of a d 6 set of elements together with a single operation; the most important example of this kind is group structure. We can complicate matters now by constructing systems in which there are sets of elements, and both relations and explicit operations. There is still another possibility. Operations may be incorporated in a structure not only as operations, but also as elements. That is, the character of operations may be grasped reflectively, the operations may themselves be made into objects of thought, and sets of operations may be found to have an objective structure which can be described. The structure may be that of a group, and in this case we speak of a group of transformations. Let me summarize. I am proposing that intellectual work consists in a consideration of a manifold of elements and relations. At any given stage of intellectual work, some of the elements and relations are taken as pre-given, others are not given but are progressively isolated by means of operations. What is taken as pregiven at any stage itself involves sets of related operations, which may be embedded in one's thought, but which can be unearthed by a kind of retrogressive inquiry. The interest in this connection of the mathematical theory of groups of transformations lies first in the fact that the operations, which belong initially to the subjective side, are here objectivated; one is no longer performing them, one is viewing them. In the second place, the mathematical theory of groups of trartSformations brings to the fore the question of invariance. Given a group of transformations, one asks what remains invariant or unaltered under this group of transformations. Or given a presumptive invariant, the problem is to discover the group of transformations under which this something remains invariant. The importance of the notion of an invariant under a group of operations lies simply in the fact that the most general or universal aim of intellectual work is the discovery of invariants, of that which is not timebound in a fluctuant world. Every piece of intellectual work, I should say-and I believe the remark is nothing extraordinary-aims at the cliscovery of an invariant structure of some kind. Mathematics, in the most general sense, is the study of formal structure. Group structure is just one such structure. But it suggests itself as a kind of paradigm for intellectual work generally, because it involves an explicit consideration of operation and invariant, the two poles, subjective and objective, of intellectual work. To keep these two poles in an articulate and conscious relation with one another, I would suggest, constitutes the liberal climension of intellectual work. In presenting the mathematical notion of a group I shall follow the standard textbook expositions. The notion of a mathematical group first received explicit formulation in a letter written by Evariste Galois in 1832, on the night before he was killed, at the age of 20, in a duel which had nothing to do with his mathematical interests. Since that time the theory of groups has been found to have wide ramifications; it is applied, for instance, in relativity theory and in quantum mechanics. To begin with, I SPRING 1985 �shall describe a simple example, having to do with the symmetry of a rectangle, then go on to a formal definition. Imagine a cardboard rectangle, placed against the chalkboard so rAr------~10>'"' that two of its edges are horizontal and two are vertical. I label the corners of the cardboard A, B, C, D. If I rotate the cardboard clockwise P c.through 180 deg. about its center, that is, the intersection of its diagonals, the cardboard will then cover exactly the same rectangular spot on the chalkboard as before, but now the corner A will have taken the former place of C, C will have taken the former place of A, and also the positions of B and D will have been interchanged. In the mathematician's way of speaking, the rectangle has been carried into itself by a clockwise rotation of 180 deg. Let us call this rotation R. What about a clockwise rotation of 360 deg.? This has the same final effect as not rotating the cardboard at all, and so does a rotation through any integral number of whole revolutions. Before considering these, let me ask also about counter-clockwise rotations. You will see, I hope, that a counter-clockwise rotation of 180 deg. has the same final effect as a clockwise rotation of 180 deg.; that is, the letters A, B, C, D will be carried into the same final positions in either case. Even if I rotate the rectangle through 360 deg. plus 180 deg. in either direction, or through 720 deg. plus 180 deg. in either direction, the final result is always the same. Because of this state of affairs, it will be well if we change our definition of R; henceforth let us mean by R any rotation which interchanges the position of A with the position of C, and the position of B with the position of D. R refers to any one of a whole class of rotations, or in mathematical language, designates a transformation. A transformation is specified completely by its initial and final positions; the path from the one to the other is unimportant for Bpecifying the transformation. The transformation so far ~ described exhibits the rota/ ~ )l tiona/ symmetry of the recI tangle. There are two addiI tional transformations which carry the rectangle into itself, 1-1 __ ___ _ _e- _ -- +I.. and which exhibit the reflective symmetry of the rectangle. :D Thus we may reflect the rec1 tangle about a horizontal axis ' running through its center. This transformation carries A into D and D into A, and it carries B into C and C into B. Let us call this transformation H. Similarly, we may reflect the rectangle about the vertical line through its center; let us call this transformation V. What happens if 1 perform two of these transformations in succession? For instance, suppose I first perform R, t/\ and then V. Starting from the initial THE ST. JOHN'S REVIEW Bl position~~~~' I Ii~ j, I~; 1- first obtain and then But this is the same final result I would obtain if I simply performed H. To symbolize the situation, I write RV = H, where the letters Rand V in succession, written like an algebraic product, mean that I first perform R and then V. The same sort of result occurs in other cases: if I perform two of the transformations in succession, the result is always the same as the third transformation. In symbols, RV=H=VR, VH=R=HV, HR=V=RH. What if I perform R twice in succession? The result is a total rotation of 360 deg., and I have simply returned to the starting-point. I get the same result if I perform H twice, flipping the rectangle twice over the horizontal axis, or if I perform V twice. In order to be able to write equations in these cases also, we do something a bit strange; we speak of any rotation or motion which carries the cardboard from its initial position back into its initial position as the identity transformation-although it is not really a transformation at all-and we symbolize it by "I." The transformation I has the same sort of function as zero in the addition of numbers, and the reason for introducing the one is about the same as the reason for introducing the other. I can now write: R1 =H'=V1 =1. (fhe superscript "2" just means that the transformation is performed twice in succession.) Adding I now to our list of transformations, we have four all told; there are no other transformations, distinguishable from these four, which carry the rectangle into itself; and I say that these four transformations, along with the ways in which they combine, tell us all there is to say about the symmetry of the rectangle. To say a figure is symmetrical is to say that there is a set of transformations which carry the figure into itself. In the case of a square there are eight transformations in the set; in the case of a cube there are 48; and so on. So much for the example; I have now to show that it exemplifies group structure. In order to have a group in this technical sense, it is necessary first of all to have a set of somethings-in our case, transformations-and secondly to have a way of combining any two of the somethings-in our case the operation of combining or "multiplying" transformations by performing them one after another. Let the somethings, the elements of the system, be designated by lower case letters a, b, c, ... , and let the combining operation be designated by a circle: o. Such a system will constitute a group if four conditions hold: (1) The result of combining two elements of the set is itself a member of the set; in symbols: a o b = c. This particular condition is so important that it is sometimes referred to as the group property. In our example it is clear that it applies: the result of performing any two of the four transformations in succession is itself one of the four transformations. (2) There must exist an identity element-! shall 7 I 1 ' t (. ' '' ~~ �designate it by "I" -which is such that when it is combined with any given element then the result of the combination is the given element again; in symbols: a o I = I o a = a. In our example it is clear that there is an identity transformation fulfilling this condition. (3) For each element there must be an inverse element, such that when any element is combined with its inverse, the result is the identity element. To symbolize this I shall designate the inverse of any element a by a- 1; then the condition stated in symbols is: a o a-1 = a- 1 o a = I. In our case it turns out that all four transformations are their own inverses. This is a somewhat special situation, but it is still true that the condition is satisfied. (4) Finally, there is a condition called "associativity:" when three elements a, b, care to be combined, it makes no difference whether I first combine a and b and then combine the result with c, or first combine b and c and then combine a with the result. In symbols: a o (b o c) = (a o b) o c. It can be shown that the transformations of our example, taken three at a time, obey this associative law. I give a few more illustrations of groups, to help fix in mind these four conditions, especially the first three, which are most important for what follows. Countless other examples can be found in any textbook on group theory. The positive and negative integers, including zero, form a group under the operation of addition. Oearly the sum of any two integers is an integer. The identity element is zero, and the inverse of each integer a is -a. This group is actually a subgroup of a larger group, in which the elements are all the positive and negative integers and fractions-all the rational numbers, we say-and in which the operation is again addition, and the identity element zero. The positive and negative rational numbers, excluding zero, form a group under the operation of multiplication. Thus the product of any two rational numbers is a rational number. The identity element is 1, since 1 multiplied by any given rational number yields as a result the given number again. The inverse of any rational number a is what is usually called its reciprocal, that is 1/a; for the product of a and 1/a is always the idenhty element 1. Zero has to be excluded here because it has no reciprocal. If we consider all positive .and negative rational numbers under the operations both of addition ahd multiplication, we obtain an example of a type of structure called a field. A field, in turn, is a special instance of a type of structure called a ring. Now I am proposing group structure as ·a kind of paradigm of the structures involved in rationality, in the exercise of intelligence. Let me try to justify the proposal in terms of the characteristics of a group. In the first place, the presence of group structure means that we have a closed system. To say that a system is closed means that the combination of two elements of the system always yields an element of the system, something of the same kind as the somethings I began with. If I combine 8 two musical tones, in the sense of sounding them either in succession or simultaneously, the result is not a musical tone, but something different, a melodic move or one of the intervals of harmony. But two colors, in the form of two pigments or colored lights, can always be mixed to form a color, if you include white and black and gray as colors. And two sentences when combined by such connectives as "and," "or/' but," "although," form sentences. And so on. The importance of the group property, that is, the property of a system in virtue of which it is closed, is that it provides a criterion of relevance and a means of distinguishing one subject matter from another, or one level of consideration of a subject matter from another level, or one kind of invariant from another. On any particular level of discourse, the group structure provides a paradigm of completeness; it lies at the root of the fact that there are just five regular solids, for instance, or just 32 types of crystals. When more than one level is involved, the group property may provide a criterion for distinguishing them. In the second place, because of the fact that every element in a group has an inverse, any given application of the combining operation can be reversed. If I add 7 to 5 and so obtain 12, I can always proceed to add the inverse of 7, namely -7, to 12 and so obtain 5 again, returning to the starting-point. In other words, operations are reversible. This reversibility is an essential characteristic of an operation. All operations are actions, whether carried out on physical objects, images, or symbols; but not all actions are reversible. If I write down a sentence, going from the left to the right side of the paper, the action is irreversible, in the sense that I cannot write the sentence from right to left Without first going through the labor of acquiring a totally new habit. Or if I act out of a passion, for instance wrath or love, the actions entails consequences which cannot simply be reversed, and I cannot return exactly to the original starting-point. Reversibility is, I believe, an essential condition of rationality. I would hypothesize that the possibility of progression and return, with reference to an invariant point of origin, lies at the basis of every exercise of the intelligence. Thirdly, I return to the notion of invariance under a group of transformations. The reversibility of operations, also perhaps their associativity, the possibility of performing then in different orders without changing the end-result, give them a certain neutrality. If I cut down a tree, the action is irreversible, and the world has been irrevocably changed. But if I take ten steps eastward, I can reverse the operation, taking ten steps westward; the first operation is annulled by the second. That which remains invariant under a set of such operations may, as the operations are carried out, emerge as an organizing principle. For instance, taking ten steps east and then again ten steps west, I experience a kaleidoscopic flow or series of shifting views of colors and shapes, which I organize in terms of the notions of physical object and spatial framework. There is a physical object over there, 11 SPRING 1985 �another beside it to the left, another behind it, and so on. I would propose, then, that invariants such as physical objects do not swim ready-made into our ken, as complete, pre-given wholes. The discovery of invariants goes hand in hand with the development of sets or groups of reversible operations. We attempt to assimilate new experience in terms of previously developed operational structures; sometimes everything does not go smoothly, we are thwarted in our attempt, and have to accommodate the operations to what is presented. The progress of knowledge proceeds in two complementary directions, in the direction of increasing articulation of experience as organized in terms of invariants, and in the direction of increasing awareness of operations as being in equilibrium and as forming groups. This twofold progress enables the individual subject to place himeself within the world as part of a coherent whole. The progressive emergence of the physical object as an invariant involves the development of a number of groups of operations. These have been traced out in some detail in the experiments of Jean Piaget on the child's conception of space. There is, for instance, the group of Euclidean transformations, also the group of projective transformations and the group of topological transformations. The Euclidean transformations are those which carry every point of space into another point, either by the translation of every point by a given amount in a given direction and sense, or by a rotation of all space, thought of as a rigid body, about a point or line, or by a combination of a translation with a rotation, that is, a twist. All these transformations, which are infinitely many, form a group. What remains invariant under this group of transformation is the congruence of geometrical figures, that is equality of size and sameness of shape. Euclidean geometry is largely the study of what remains invariant under this group of transformations. Secondly, there are the projective transformations. Suppose I project a plane figure from one plane to another by means of straight lines running from my eye through the first plane to the second. Any given point in the original figure will have a corresponding point in the second plane, located by means of the line which passes through my eye and the given point of the original figure. Straight lines in the original figure are carried into straight lines in the new figure, but angles and lengths in the original figure may differ markedly from angles and lengths in the new figure; thus neither size nor shape is conserved. The projective transformations, however, form a group; and projective geometry is the study of what remains invariant under this group. What remains invariant, principally the straightness of lines, the incidence of points on lines, and something called the crossratio of four points on a line, is what enables us to correlate different perspective views of an object as being views of the same object. Finally, the topological transformations. Topological transformations are those which carry one figure into another in such a way that to every point of the one figure THE ST. JOHN'S REVIEW there corresponds a single point of the other, and points that are nearby or neighboring in the one figure remain nearby or neighboring in the other. Figures can be stretched and shrunk and enormously distorted under topological transformations. A circle can be transformed into a square or an ellipse, but not into a straight line; a sphere into a cube but not into the figure of a doughnut. The relations which remain invariant under such transformations, relations like contiguity, surrounding or being surrounded, closure or lack of closure, constitute the subject matter of topology. I have listed these three branches of geometry in the historical order in which they have been made subjects of mathematical study. It is Piaget' s conclusion that the order of development in the child is just the reverse. The child grasps topological invariants before projective invariants, and projective invariants before Euclidean invariants. Each of these acquisitions presupposes the ability to carry out, in part physically but more importantly in the imagination, a corresponding group of operations. Topological invariants can be established before there is a clear demarcation between the operating subject and the objects operated on. Projective invariants involve the correlation of different visual points of view, and hence presuppose the child's realization that he is seeing from a point of view. Here the polar opposition between self and world, subject and object, begins to crystallize out. Only with the attainment of equilibrium of the Euclidean operations does the physical object appear in its final character, as an ideal unity within a spatial framework, over against the observer, accidentally where it is and capable of being somewhere else, capable of presenting constantly different aspects, but never of presenting itself all-at-once as a whole. There is one other sort of invariant, radically different from the physical object, which I wish to take up, namely idea. But first it is necessary that I consider yet another kind of thing, another sort of invariant if you wish, namely word. Words are in general the medium through which the result of any piece of intellectual work becomes the possession of more than one man; and operations with words, as well as with images and physical objects, may be importantly involved in the original carrying out of the work. What is a word? As I talk to you now, we in this room are aware of sounds corning from my mouth. The sounds, considered just as sounds, are part of the world of nature, the world of physical objects and processes occurring in space and time. As sounds, they do not differ from the sounds of nature, the sounds produced by brooks and breezes; each one is a temporal event, occurring during a certain time, and apprehended at certain places. We sometimes speak of a sound being repeated; we say that we have heard the same sound, for instance the sound of a whistle, several times repeated. If we were strict, we would say, not that the sounds are the same, but that they are similar, in the same way that we say that giraffes are similar, or objects produced on an 9 I I ' I ' \. ' ,, ' :'! �assembly line are similar. Each sound is an individual temporal process; everything belonging to the world of nature is individuated in space and time. No two individuals belonging to the world of nature, whether physical object or temporal event, can be precisely the same; but two such individuals may be similar. I submit, however, that I can repeat the same word twice. A word is identifiable as identically the same word in any number of real individual embodiments, whether sounds or concatenations of written characters. I can repeat exactly what I said before, if you failed to catch the words. Therefore the words are not the sounds, but are rather embodied in the sounds. This no doubt seems a bit strange. We have a similar problem-perhaps the same problem, I am not quite sure-when we ask what a symphony or a folk dance is, independent of its individual performances; or what the Iliad is, independent of a thousand copies or a thousand recitations of it. I do not believe that the word can be defined as a class of similar sounds or marks. When I grasp a word as embodied in a sound, the action is different from grasping the fact, for instance, that an individual animal belongs to the class of giraffes. One has to try to ascertain precisely what it means to speak or to listen to speech. Listening now to the sounds coming from my mouth, we are aware of these sounds as having functions which merely natural processes lack. Seeing my body and hearing my voice, we are aware of me as willing the sounds and giving expression to thoughts which I wish to communicate. We apprehend the sound of my voice as manifesting certain psychic processes and as embodying expressions of certain meanings or ideas. The word, then, is intrinsically relative to psychic or subjective activities. Within the objective world, there are many things which are thus relative to psychic activities. The qualification of anything as familiar or strange, useful or useless, as a tool or monument, as a slave or a king, presupposes the existence of psycho-physical beings who use things for intended ends or goals. We encounter here a new stratum of the world, over and above the stratum of the inclividual objects and processes of nature; let us call it the cultural stratum. The cultural stratum includes some things which are individuated in space and time, such as ashtrays, but it also includes objects like words and symphonies whlch are not inclividuated in space and time, but which can be repeatedly embodied in particular spatio-temporal inclividuals, physical objects or processes. The fact that words and symphonies are not spatiotemporal individuals does not make them any the less objective. Through their embodiments, they are observable, distinguishable, repeatedly identifiable somethings; one can ask questions and make verifiable judgments about them. In the grasping of such cultural invariants, there is presupposed the fact that I belong to a community, with established customs and traditions. I must have recognized myself as one among other psychophysical beings, 10 as one man among other men, who can intend the same things as I. This recognition presupposes in turn the establishment of certain modes of transaction, reversible operations in whlch I put myself imaginatively in the place of another man, in whlch I identify myself, in certain respects, with every man. Words, embodied in sounds or written characters, not only manifest psychic activities; they express meanings or ideas. An idea is not itself a psychlc activity; it is not, so to speak, within consciousness. Consciousness is always consciousness of something; thls somethlng is an object of some kind; and an idea is one such kind of object. When I grasp an idea, I grasp it with the sense that it is something I can return to and see or grasp on another occasion; also, that it is possible for someone else to grasp it, too. We can ask questions about ideas, and make testable statements about them; they fulfill the criteria for objectivity, although they are not physical objects. On the other hand, they may be exemplified or illustrated in physical objects or processes or relations, as the idea of giraffe is exemplified by a particular giraffe, or the idea of equality is illustrated in the relation with respect to weight or size of two particular boclies. But it belongs to the idea of idea that an idea can be entertained in the absence of any physical exemplification of it. The grasping of an idea presupposes certain judgments, and prefigures other judgments. We cannot sharply separate the making of judgments and the grasping of ideas, as though the ideas were first grasped, and then judgments were then built out of conjunctions of ideas the way a house is built out of bricks. Every judgment, every grasping of a relation, presupposes operations such as comparison, classification, seriation, and the ideas can emerge clearly only as these operations reach equilibrium. In large part, ideas are presented to us through the medium of speech and writing, as presumptive invariants. Most words are encountered as familiar; we understand them in the sense of being vaguely, passively conscious of their meaning. An intellectual conscience will propose the task of making this meaning distinct, of articulating, one by one, the parts of thls vaguely unitary sense. One of the most important procedures here is just the free variation of the image which comes with the word. As the operations become established whereby I pass from one form of the image to another, varying one factor at a time, they tend to assume the equilibrium of group structure. Suppose, for instance, that I uncover four variants of the image (see figure); once I can pass from any one form to any other by carrying out a specific variation, then the operations form a group; any two of them are equivalent to a third, and each is its own inverse. Besides this free but disciplined use of fantasy, there are the operations on symbols employed in hypothetical or deductive reasoning. Like fantasy, hypothetical reasoning is a way of dealing with what is physically absent; SPRING 1985 �it enables us to draw out the implications of possible statements; and to discover invariants which fall outside the range of empirical verification, for instance the law of inertia. The diagram I have just drawn will remind some of you of the traditional square of opposition, which is involved in what are called immediate inferences. The grasping of the relations involved in the square presupposes the establishment of operations whereby any one of the four propositional forms is transformed into any other, and the six operations or transformations form a group. Again, a group of operations is involved in the part of logic which deals with the propositional connectives, such as "and/' and 0t/' "if-then," "neither-nor," ~~unless," together with the sign of negation of a proposition, namely "not." Given any two propositions, p and q, we can construct sixteen fundamental propositional forms by means of these connectives, for instance, p and q, p or q, if p then q, if q then p, and so on. All sixteen forms can be expressed by means of the three logical words "and," "for," and "not." The sixteen forms, thus expressed, constitute the elements of a lattice. More important, the operations whereby one of these forms can be transformed into another constitute a group. Let me try to recapitulate what I have been saying. The work of the mind-and the mind simply is its work-is a process of attending to and grasping situations, affairs, complexes of elements that are somehow presented, and explicating them with respect to such of their detenninations and relations as are likewise presented. There is no zero starting-point for inquiry, but in any inquiry something is accepted initially as pre-given. Then either of two directions may be taken; either further invariant relations are sought by tracing out the connections between the elements, which continue to be taken as pregiven, or else the pre-given elements themselves become the problem, and it is necessary to reactivate the embedded relations and connections upon which the grasp11 THE ST. JOHN'S REVIEW ing of them depends. But whether the work proceeds progressively or retrogressively, it always involves operations, that is, actions which are reversible and repeatable. To say that I understand a situation is to say that I have performed the operations of tracing out the relations in the situation, and have the clear sense that I can perform them again. Completeness of understanding on any level implies that the operations have attained the equilibrium of group structure, so that the transformations taking us from any one element of the situation to any other have become explicit. The structure of operations thus becomes cyclical and transparent to what is operated on; new invariants may now come into view, or what has previously been taken as invariant may appear for the first time with clear boundaries. We are prone to ask ultimate questions, and inevitably we ask how far this process goes and where it may arrive. Does there exist, at the summit of the hierarchy of structures, a pure form, the form of forms, of which every other form or structure is a refracted image? Can the edifice of forms traced out in intellectual work have completeness or is there inevitably something left out, something which is inaccessible to the intellect? Plato and Aristotle recognized some such thing called Necessity or Matter, which kept the world from being completely intelligible. jerusalem, in opposition to Athens, has insisted that the highest principle is not accessible to the human intellect, and that our chief duty is loving submission rather than inquiry. Contemporary existentialism has claimed that the intellect itself is corrupt; that the freedom from engulfment in time which it pretends to give us is an illusion; and that the identification which it brings about between the self and everyman is a bar to direct knowledge of our existence and its mortality. But wherever the truth lies here, it is clear that the explication of these opposing positions, the drawing out of their consequences in every detail, is itself a task for the intellect at work. 11 �Sartorial How I envy men who remember what They know! They slide the wall of a walk-in closet And seize the robe that fits, show us the cut And cloth, the designer's label for that particular Paisley. And their drawers, how organized They are, while mine are muddled and anyway stick In every season. My birds are rarely in Their cages, and my wardrobe is a warren Of what is worn or otherwise unwearable, For stripes and tartans clash. It's easier To go out and buy a suit, And in discussion over gin or scotch, To think up something green, that will not match And isn't in the best tradition And will not be remembered. Elliott Zuckerman Elliott Zuckerman is a ttitor at St. John's College, Annapolis. 12 SPRING 1985 �The Logic of Morality Allen Oark Introduction Ethics is perhaps of all subjects the driest and tritest, and it is fortunate that it is so, for the triteness of ethics is testimony to the fact that all the basic truths of ethics are commonplaces, tediously familiar to everyone, because they were discovered very early in the history of the human race; and had they not been discovered very early, the human race would not have long survived. For ethics is concerned with those rules of human conduct that are indispensable in order for human life to be possible and (for human life to be) worth living. Human beings had to learn the basic rules of morality very early, for the same reason that they had to learn the basic rules of agriculture or dietetics, very early; because otherwise they would not have survived. Morality is, therefore, nothing accidental or arbitraiy, no matter of mere opinion, but an indispensable necessity for human existence, as indispensable as skill in finding food, as indispensable as air or water. Morality, is, in short, a biological necessity for man. For man is, like the bees and the ants, one of the socinl animals. But unlike the bees and the ants, he is not supplied with instincts that determine inevitably his cooperation with other members of the species. In place of instinct he has intelligence; and the incomparable superiority of intelligence over instinct is its capacity for error. Those who repeat the ancient apothegm Human urn est errare, ''to err is human,'' speak more wisely than they know. For this apothegm may be taken, not only as an observation about man, but as a definition of man. Man Allen Oark, formerly a tutor at St. John's College, Annapolis, delivered The Logic of Morality as a formal lecture at St. John's College·, Annapolis in 1970. THE ST. JOHN'S REVIEW is of all animals, the most prone to error; the dangers that other animals avoid through instinct, he must avoid through foresight; the flickering light of his intellect illumines his path but a few paces ahead. He lives in awareness of constant dangers, which his intellect is strong enough to foresee, but too weak to forestall. The greatest of these dangers is death. All animals must die; but only man knows that he must die. The fear of death is, therefore, a peculiarly human burden, and a peculiarly human privilege. Because he knows that he must die, he can dream of inunortality. Because he knows that the individual must die, he can dream of perpetuating his nation or his race. He can thus dream of values that transcend his own body and his own life-and can devote himself to merely imagined goals. And by so doing he enters upon the ethical life. What is the Criterion of Ethics? Most fundamental of the questions that are raised concerning ethical matters is the question of the ultimate criterion of ethics: on what basis shall we judge an action to be right or wrong? The most immediate answer, of course, is that we judge an action to be right or wrong according to some accepted moral code. It is 'right' if it conforms to the accepted moral code, and 'wrong' if it violates this code. But we soon become aware that there are different moral codes, that what has been accepted in one time and place has been condemned at other times and places, and that even moral philosophers-who might be expected to take broader views of such matters-have tended all too often to differ with each other even more than do the generality of mankind. Therefore we are forced, as soon as we reflect at all upon the questions of moral conduct, to consider the question 13 �of what is the ultimate standard, if any, by which the various moral codes, and moral philosophies, are themselves to be judged. Is there any universal moral standard, and, if so, what is it? Relativism Some may attempt to escape this question by saying, ''There is no universal moral standard; it is right for each man to follow whatever moral customs happen to be accepted in his community." This is the position known as Moral Relativism, which has a good deal of prestige these days. But of course it may be pointed out that even this position does enunciate a universal rule as binding upon all men without exception, namely, that each man ought to follow the moral customs of his own community. The position of Moral Relativism, therefore, is after all a form of moral absolutism; it does enunciate a single moral criterion which it asserts to be valid for all men everywhere; and this criterion is the criterion of CONFORMITY. Or, taking a slightly different view, the relativist may say, not that conformity to custom is right, but that it is what is everywhere CJllled "right.'' Nothing really is right or wrong, but men call things right or wrong according to their various customs. What is called right in Persia may be called wrong in Greece. We call cannibalism wrong, but the cannibals call it right, and so on. Hence there are no universal standards. Now of course the mere fact that men differ in their moral views does not prove that there are no universal moral values; for there may be ways of showing that some moral opinions are sounder than others. Furthermore, if the relativist says that "right" simply means "customary/' and 11 wrong" simply means ~~con­ trary to custom," he is mistaken. For that is not the way we use the words "right" and "wrong." We often admire martyrs and rebels and social reformers; we often say that it was right for a man to violate the customs of his time and place; that it was right for Christian martyrs to defy the Roman emperors; that it was right for abolitionists in mid-nineteenth century America to violate the Fugitive Slave Law. We can even see some moral value in nonconformity within our present society. Societies are not always monolithic. There are groups within groups, and a man who conforms to the moral code of his family may ipso facto violate that of his neighborhood; or by conforming to his neighborhood, he may defy his community; or by conforming to his community, he may outrage his tribe, or his nation. If there is no universal standard, then by which of these many conflicting standards should a man be judged? The statement. that a man should be judged only by the customs of his time and place contains, furthermore, another ambiguity. Does it mean merely that a man's action must be interpreted in the light of the prevailing customs; or does it mean that his action must be appraised only by the standards of his group or culture? If, when 14 visiting China, I see the victorious party in a law-suit press money into the palm of the judge, I cannot know whether this was a bribe or merely the payment of a legal fee until I know the customs of the country. But if I discover that the payment was indeed intended as a bribe, then I am by no means obligated to condone the act merely because bribery is condoned in China. If the bribe leads the judge to deprive a man of his legal rights, then it is unjust, no matter how completely such injustice may be accepted in that society. If the relativists deny our right to criticize customs by any more general moral standard, then, in effect, they make each custom an absolute; and I do not see how they can logically stop short of making each particular man's behavior an absolute, a law unto itself; and regarding each man's moral judgments as relevant only to himself. Moral Subjectivism The most extreme of the moral relativists have done exactly this, and have adopted the position known as Moral Subjectivism, which holds that when a man says, for example, "Stealing is wrong," all that he means to say is "I disapprove of stealing." Hence every moral judgment is merely a statement about the speaker's own attitudesa piece of his autobiography. The absurdity of this doctrine is immediately shown by the following fact. If, when I say, "War is wrong," all I mean is that I disapprove of war; and, when you say, "War is not wrong," all you mean is that you don't disapprove of war, then there is no conflict between our two statements. For it may perfectly well be the case that I do disapprove of war and you don't. Hence both our statements are true, mine for me and yours for you, and hence we don't disagree about anything after all! This apparently absurd conclusion was, however, embraced by the most extreme of the moral subjectivists, Alfred Ayer, in his little book Language, Truth, and Logic, published in 1936. In this book, Ayer says we never do disagree in our moral judgments, for the simple reason that all moral judgments are meaningless, and hence they can't possibly disagree with each other. According to Ayer, a moral judgment is not even a statement at all; it is a mere expression of emotion, equivalent to a grunt or a cry. I quote some relevant passages from Ayer' s book: "The presence of an ethical symbol in a proposition adds nothing to its factual content. Thus if I say to someone, 'You acted wrongly in stealing that money,' I am not stating anything more than if I had simply said, 'You stole that money.' In adding that this action is wrong, I am not making any further statement about it. I am simply evincing my moral disapproval of it. It is as if I had said, 'you stole that money!' in a peculiar tone of horror ... The tone of horror adds nothing to the literal meaning of the sentence. It merely serves to show that the uttering of it is attended by certain feelings in the speaker. SPRING 1985 I �"If now I generalise my previous statement and say 'stealing is wrong,' I produce a sentence which has no factual meaning-that is, expresses no proposition which can be either true or false. It is as though I had uttered the word 'stealing!' in a peculiar tone of horror. The tone of horror would express my feelings about stealing, but it would not be equivalent to any proposition at all." The ethical compenent of any utterance is simply the overtone of approval or disapproval which it conveys; or, in short, the emotive tone of the utterance. For this reason, Alfred Ayer' s interpretation of ethical judgments has come to be known as the Emotive Theory of Ethics. The Emotive Theory of Ethics seemed to its followers and its opponents alike to represent the utter destruction of ethics, the complete reduction of what had been thought mankind's noblest utterances to the level of mere animal grunts and grimaces. Needless to say, in conservative quarters Alfred Ayer was regarded as the very devil of the schools, an image of Satan himself. But may not his followers and opponents alike have been overhasty? I suggest that we, having pursued the argument to the very pit of Hell, as it were, should follow the example of Dante, and climb through this modern Satan into starlight, at least, if not daylight, on the other side of the world. Suppose then, that Alfred Ayer were right in saying that our moral judgments merely evince our moral approvals and disapprovals. Still, is not the most significant fact of all the very fact that men do feel moral approval and disapproval? The very point with which Ayer concludes his demolition of ethics, namely that moral judgments are emotional, should be the point at which the real ethical investigation begins-namely, that we human beings care about moral problems, that moral problems do enlist our loyalities, our enthusiams, our love, and hate, and fear. Of course, men are emotional about ethics, because ethics concerns the very things that we care most deeply about. The very argument by which Ayer and his followers attempt to show that moral judgments are meaningless seems to me to show, on the contrary, that moral judgments are intensely meaningful. Indeed, if men never became emotional about moral issues, morality would be of as little importance to us as astronomy. If moral judgments were merely factual propositions, like those of physics, they would impose as little moral obligation upon us as do those of physics. Moral judgments couldn't do what we need to have them do unless they were, at least in part, emotive utterances. For our moral feelings are already our commitments to action; a man who deeply feels a repugnance at stealing is already prepared to refrain from stealing and to deter others from stealing. An honorable man is not a man who merely knows that certain deeds are shameful; he is man who would feel shame at his dishonorable deeds. Therefore we must agree, I think, with the emotive theory as far as it goes, and say that a genuine moral judgment contains at least some overtone of moral feeling, of moral approval or disapproval. But-and here is the THE ST. JOHN'S REVIEW important point-it con,tains a great deal more than that. For when I say, for example, "War is wrong," I don't mean merely "I hate war" -though, in fact, I do hate war. What I mean is "I hate war, and you should, too; and you would, too, if you really understood it." I mean that I not only disapprove of war, but I disapprove of anyone's not disapproving of war, and I approve of anyone's disapproving of war. Our moral approvals are second-order approvals, so to speak; that is, approvals of approvals. What we morally approve of, we necessarily approve of approving of-and, indeed, approve of approving of approving of, and so on, to third-order, fourth-order, and higherorder approvals. Hence the very notion of moral approval seems to contain within it a potential infinity of higherorder approvals. Universality Now have we not, with this notion of higher-orderedness, arrived at the distinguishing characteristic of moral judgments, moral feelings, moral attitudes? The very distinction between righteous indignation and simple anger is that righteous indignation is anger which we approve of. When a man is righteously indignant he says "I am angry, and I have a right to feel angry. Anyone would feel angry in my place; or, if he didn't, he ought to." What is morally significant here is not the anger but the feeling of justification, the feeling that is resenting an injustice one is, for the moment, the spokesman of all mankind. You resent the injustice, not merely because it hapened to you, but because it is the sort of thing which you feel that anyone would resent, and would approve of your resenting. The greater depth and dignity of moral indignation, as compared with simple anger, comes from the feeling of impersonality and universality that accompanies it; the feeling that your feeling would be reinorced by the feelings of all who love justice. Thus the emotive theory of ethics, though partly true, has seized upon ethical questions by the wrong end. What characterizes a moral judgment is not its emotiveness, but its universality. A proof of this is the fact that if a man says, "Oysters are good," and you say, "Well, I don't happen to like them," and he says, "Well, if you don't like them you certainly don't have to eat them," he shows by his very tolerance that he is not making a moral judgment, but an expression of taste. But if he were to say, "I not only like oysters, but I demand that everybody like oysters," then indeed he would be making a moral issue of it. Precisely what distinguishes our judgments of taste from our judgments of morals is that we don't demand, or even wish, that everyone should share our tastes; whereas we do wish and demand that everyone should share our moral judgments. If a man were to say, "I happen to disapprove of kidnapping, but of course I don't care whether anyone else disapproves of it or not," we would say that he doesn't really disapprove of kidnapping; he merely dislikes it. What is essen- 15 �tial for any genuine moral judgment is that it contain an implicit demand for universality. Even the moral relativist, therefore, cannot finally avoid the question of what is the universal standard of right and wrong. He-like all other men, if they reflect upon the matter long enough-is forced to consider the question of what it is that makes an action, or a moral rule, or a moral code, right or wrong. Hobbesian Theory It seems to me that a way of approaching an answer to this question is to ask, "Why do we need to have any moral code at all?" And the answer to this question comes very easily: if there were no moral code, no moral restraints upon men, some men would take advantage of this liberty to injure their fellow men. They would take whatever they wanted and kill whoever stood in their way. No man's life or property would be safe, for even the strongest man can be easily overpowered by five or six of the weakest. Hence all men would live in constant fear of being robbed, wounded, or killed. No man could trust another, for no man would feel any obligation to keep his promises. No man could believe another, for no man would feel any obligation to speak the truth. Hence there could be no co-operation, nor even any communication among men, for the mutual trust and confidence upon which these necessarily rest would have been destroyed. Human life would indeed be, as Hobbes described it in his Leviathan, "solitary, poor, nasty, brutish, and short." It is morality, and morality alonewhether embodied in habit, custom, or law-that protects us from these evils. The basic rules of morality are those that are indispensable for the very existence of men in society; any society that tried to get along without them would soon exterminate itself, or dissolve into anarchy. The reason why "there is honor even among thieves" is that without some adherence to some rules of honor in their dealing with each other, even a gang of thieves could not long survive. One of the many tributes that vice pays to virtue is the fact that even vice cannot be successful without making use of some of the virtues. The Moral Law Well Known The indispensable moral code is well known to all of us, and is incorporated in the legal code of all civilized communities. It has received the approval of the consensus of mankind. And indeed not accidentally, for this code expresses the minimal set of restraints that are necessary for the survival of the human race and human society. This basic moral law takes the form of a list of prohibitions, a list of "Thou shalt not's," such as "Thou shalt not kill," "Thou shalt not steal," "Thou shalt not lie," 16 "Thou shalt not make false promises," and so on. These can all be summarized in a single prohibition, "Thou shalt not injure anyone." And the quickest way to decide what kinds of actions shall be considered injuries is to ask yourself what kinds of actions you would resent as injuries if they were done to you. Different men may, to be sure, resent different things, but there are cerlain things that almost any man would resent having done to him, and it is these generally resented injuries that may appropriately be restrained by general laws. The Golden Rule The fundamental principle common to all these indispensable prohibitions can therefore be summarized in a single prohibition: "Do not do to others that which you would not have them do to you,'' -in short, the Golden Rule. The principle expressed by the Golden Rule might be called the Principle of Mutuality. a. Sympathy The Golden Rule may be looked at from two other standpoints, as embodying two other aspects of human nature. First, it may be regarded as embodying the Principle of Sympathy. Such was the standpoint of Adam Smith's Theory of Moral Sentiments, published in 1759. Human society would probably be impossible unless most men felt some degree of sympathy with some of their fellow men, and indeed the roots of such sympathy seem to lie in the very structure of the human nervous system. We tend unconsciou~ly to beat time to music, to tap our feet in time with a march or a waltz. A crowd watching a tight-rope walker will tend to sway unconsciously in sympathy with his movements. When we see a man walking near the edge of a precipice, we tend to shrink back ourselves, and to gasp when his foot slips. Even when we are watching a stage play or a motion picture, we tend to be frightened at represented dangers, to shrink with fear when the villain sneaks up behind the hero, and feel an impulse to cry out a warning. Human beings like to project themselves into the feelings of others and to identify imaginatively with some real or fictitious person, in history or legend, in a novel or a play. Thus, when self-interest does not interfere, we tend naturally to sympathize with the sufferings of another person. We imagine what we should feel if we were in his place and were threatened by his dangers. When we see a man brutally assaulted by another, we tend more naturally to sympathize with the victim than with his assaillant, for we see what causes the fear and pain of the victim, while we do not see what provoked the anger or malice of the attacker. Our sympathy with the victims of crime combines with our fear of being victims ourselves to produce a general consensus of feeling that crimes ought to be punished, and that the laws ought to forbid a man to do to others that which he would not willingly suffer himself. Sym- SPRING 1985 �pathy and selfishness, which so often conflict, here coincide to give us a double motive for upholding those laws that protect ourselves as well as others. Further more, our natural sympathy, which itself was one of the fountains of morality, becomes incorporated into our moral code as itself one of the virtues to be praised, rewarded, and instilled in the young. Our natural tendencies toward sympathy acquire a moral as well as a natural status; and a man may cultivate as a moral virtue a benevolence to which his own nature might not have inclined him. At the very least he may learn to simulate benevolent behavior, and to exhibit in his actions a generosity which he may not feel in his heart. Now the fullest development of sympathy would consist in feeling each man's pain and joy as though it were your own. If aU men were perfectly sympathetic, then the pain of one would be the pain of all, the joy of one the joy of all, and hence the particular locus of the joy of suffering would be unimportant. Each man would thus treat all others as he would wish them to treat him, and thus the perfect formula for the principle of sympathy is simply the Golden Rule. b. Rationality Not only does the Golden Rule express the universalization of the spontaneous human emotion of sympathy; it also expresses the fullest application to ethics of the human faculty of reason. Human reason first begins to find application to ethics when the accepted rules conflict, or do not seem to cover some new kind of case, or when men disagree about what is right-in short, when there is moral controversy. Now in moral controversy one disputant will ask the other such questions as "Why is lying wrong?" That is, he demands reasons for conventionally accepted rules, and forces the other disputant, perhaps for the first time, to look for rational grounds for his moral attitudes. It is through controversy that morality becomes rational. By the unflagging criticism of each proposed moral principle, we reason our way up to the highest moral principle of all, which merely says that moral principles must be reasonable, that is, universal, containing nothing arbitrary or accidental. As a rule of conduct, it merely says, "So act that you could consistently will the maxim of your action to be a universal law." In other words, "Obey the rules that you want others to obey," or, in short, Don't make an exception of yourself." This is the very principle that is familiar to us all in the demand for "fair play." When we say that someone has behaved "unfairly," we mean that he has made an exception of himself; that he has not followed the rules that he expects others to follow. If we look for the formal property that characterizes all wrong acts, such as lying, cheating, stealing, and so on, we see that in every case the wrongdoer is behaving in a way that even he cannot logically will that other people behave. The cheat, for example, cannot want cheating to become an accepted practice, for, if it were accepted, then 11 THE ST. JOHN'S REVIEW nobody would trust anybody, and hence he could not cheat anybody. The liar cannot want lying to be permitted, for then no one would expect him to tell the truth, and thus he could not deceive anyone through his lies. Nor can the man who makes false promises want false promises to be permitted, for then no one would trust any promises, including his. Thus lying, cheating, fraud-and, in general, all forms of deceit-have the following purely formal structural property: they logically entail the very rule that they violate. There is a kind of contradiction in the mind of the deceitful man: he wants to deceive, and yet at the same time he wants to be forbidden to deceive. Thus the deceiver stands condemned out of his own mouth. Acts of violence or selfishness do not, indeed, entail this same kind of contradiction, since they can be conceived of as universal, but no rational man would by his own will render them so, since he would thereby harm himself. Thus there is a formal property of all acts that we commonly call wrong, namely, that they are acts that even the man who commits them wants to forbid. They are acts which no one could consistently defend on principle. They are self-condemning, like a self-contradictory proposition in logic. Such is the approach of Immanuel Kant, in his Groundwork of the Metaphysic of Morals, published in 1785. Kant goes on to point out that we could have deduced the basic axiom of morals from the bare concept of man as a rational animal. For how could man express his rationality in action except by making his conduct conform to the very principle of universality a·s such, namely, that rational imperative: "So act that you could consistently will the maxim of your action to be a universal law,'' which Kant calls the Categorical Imperative. This is, also, as you will have recognized, another form of the Golden Rule, and it succeeds in expressing the logical essence of the Golden Rule better than the familiar formula of it does. For when we say, "Do unto others as you would have them do unto you," we do not, of course, mean that whatever specific act you want someone to perform for you, you must perform that same act for him. Rather The Golden Rule means: "Act toward others according to the same moral principles that you want them to follow in their behavior toward you, and toward all other men." And this is just the meaning that Kant succeeded in expressing. Now if a man is to make his maxims into universal laws-as the Categorical Imperative says he must-then he must (according to the Categorical Imperative) accord the same privilege to each other man. That is, he must accord each other man equal moral authority with himself as a center of reason and conscience. Hence arises Kant's second formula for the Categorical Imperative, which reads: 17 �"So act as to treat humanity, both in your own person and in the person of every other, never simply as a mere means, but always at the same time as an end-in-itself." This is the Law of Respect for Humanity, on which is grounded the dignity of the individual. The reason why each man is an end-in-himself is that he is not only subject to moral laws, but also by his maxims creates moral law, insofar as his maxims agree with those of every other rational man. Thus your maxims are not valid moral laws unless you can conceive of their being voluntarily adopted by each rational man independently; and if they can be so adopted, they constitute what may be called distinctively THE MORAL LAW, in capital letters. We thus arrive at the third formula for the Categorical Imperative, which embodies the motion of an ideal moral commonwealth, or Kingdom of Ends, as Kant calls it, in which each man is both king and subject, both legislator and citizen. No law can pass without unanimous consent; therefore no man can be bound against his will. Yet once a law is passed, it is inexorably enforced upon all. The third formula of the Categorical Imperative reads: "So act as if you were, through your maxims, a lawmaking member of a kingdom of ends." Now we must not make the mistake of regarding Kant's imaginary Kingdom of Ends as a Utopia, a community of saints, or a Kingdom of Heaven on earth. It is nothing of the sort; nothing in its definition requires that its citizens be good men; on the contrary we could people it with the worst men on earth, and it would still serve just as well as a model for morality. For under the specified conditions it would be to the self-interest of each man to vote for laws against murder, theft, arson, burglary, fraud, and all other felonies; which, once being enacted, would bar him from crime. Thus a community of sinners would enact exactly the same laws as a community of saints; the only difference would be that the saints would obey gladly the laws that the sinners would obey only grudgingly. Kant's moral republic is ideal only in the sense that it is the pure idea of community as such, the very eidos of community. It is also the eidos of legal system, abstracted from all historical legal systems. From this myth of the ideal moral commonwealth, we can derive the actual moral duties of men. For it is the supreme privilege of man as a rational creature that he can imagine himself even now as a citizen of this merely possible community; and by imagining himself to be such, he can begin to act out the role of such a citizen, and thus fit himself to join the world-wide brotherhood of men of good will. In the Kingdom of Ends, each man would have the utmost freedom that a man can morally have, namely the freedom of being subject to no will but his own, since he is bound only by laws to which he has given his consent. Yet, at the same time, he has complete moral 18 responsibility, since he is inexorably bound by all the laws to which he has given his consent. Thus the three cardinal notions of morality: Moral Freedom, Moral Law, and Moral Responsibility, stand linked in an intimate logical relationship. Moral Freedom is whatever freedom a rational man would wish to enjoy on condition that he grant equal freedom to all other men. The Moral Law is whatever law would be consented to by rational men in the exercise of their moral freedom. And Moral Responsibility is the willingness of the morally free man to be held responsible for his violations of the Moral Law. The Puzzle of Free Will vs. Determinism 11 The terms "freedom" and responsibility" immediately bring to mind the notorious puzzle of free-will versus determinism, which has absorbed such a large portion of the time of moral philosophers. The supposed conflict of free-will and determinism arises from the existence of two very basic human interests: our interest in being able to anticipate how other men are going to act; and our interest in being able to hold them accountable for their acts. The free-will doctrine consists of saying that these two interests are incompahble; that insofar as we can anticipate a man's behavior, we cannot hold him accountable for it. For our desire to anticipate human acts leads us to develop various theories of psychological determinism, by which every human choice is explained as resulting from motives. But insofar as a man's choices are determined by his motives, he cannot help acting as he does; and a man is not responsible for what he cannot help. Therefore, a man deserves praise and blame only in so far as he was acting freely-that is, free from the influence of his own desires. From this argument it follows that the stronger a man's desire to do evil, the less blame he deserves for doing evil; or, conversely, the stronger his desire to do good, the less praise he deserves for doing good. Hence the only praiseworthy or blameworthy acts are completely unmotivated acts. A man's choice is good only insofar as it was not made from good motives, and is evil only insofar as it was not made from evil motives. To such an absurdity are we driven by the doctrine that free will is essential to moral responsibility; and what it shows, of course, is that free will, in fact, would be utterly destructive to all moral responsibility. For if a man really had a free will, he would be impervious to all motives, moral and immoral; he would be totally indifferent to all moral considerations, as well as to all other considerations. He would either never act at all, or would act in a completely unaccountable manner, like a lunatic or an elementary particle. Nothing could be further from the quantum indeter- SPRING 1985 �I ' just, according to his understanding of the precedents established by previous judges in previous cases. As the lower courts adjudicated conflicts between private litigants, so the conflicting precedents established by judges in the lower courts were reconciled by higher courts. In deciding a novel case, not covered by the precedents, or covered by conflicting precedents, a judge could only rule as he thought best, and hope that higher and later courts would uphold him. If a particular decision seemed too far out of line with the main body of prevailing precedents, it was not likely to be followed, or cited as a precedent in later cases, and hence would have little influence in determining the contours of that great body of precedents called collectively the Common Law of England. No one decision, no one judge, therefore, was likely to have much influence upon the shape of the law. Each decision added a page to the growing volumes of law reports which were collected year after year, which grew as a coral reef grows by successive layers of minute deposits, as one marine organism after another deposits its calcified remains upon it. From time to time commentators raked through these volumes of reports, and winnowed from them certain general principles, or legal maxims, that seemed to be implicit in the way the judges were deciding cases. Then later commentators commented upon earlier commentators, and still later ones upon these, from the Middle Ages on down through Bracton, Glanville, Littleton, Cook, and Blackstone. Gradually the law took shape, and legal principles emerged, but no one knew in advance just what shape this great organism was going to assume. Justice Holmes, writing his commentary on the Common Law in the 1880's was quite in the English spirit when he defined law as ''a prediction of how the courts are going to act." Of course the judges did not use the language of prediction in their decisions. Instead they declared "The law is this," or "The law says this," as though the law were already in existence somewhere; but in fact each decision helped to make the law, insofar as it was incorporated into the body of precedents. The judges spoke as though the law were dead and laid out in books, but in fact the living edge of the law was before them in the instant case. Only there is the living law; the rest, deposited in casebooks, is only the fossilized remains, the deposits left by previous acts of adjudication. Each judge studied the body of precedents and tried, on the whole, to rule in the spirit of the law; each decision, therefore, may be regarded as a further inquiry into what the law is really trying to say, the gist of the law. It is as though the law were trying to find itself through the medium of the courts; and the English Common Law is this continuing process of the Law in Quest of Itself. What we call the Moral Freedom-and at the same time the Moral Responsibility-of the individual is his ability to be determined by ideal goals. He can respect a moral ideal, and he can respect the process by which moral THE ST. JOHN'S REVIEW ideals are generated, and he can respect the ideal of having ideals. Moral Idealism is the principle of having ideals, of acting for an ideal end. Moral idealism is already implicit in the feedback circuits of an organism whereby it maintains self-control, the first of the moral virtues, and thus affirms its courage to be in the midst of a risky world. Man, however, is distinctively a talking organism, and it is through language that his self-control comes increasingly to operate. A man is called "rational" insofar as he is amenable to linguistic persuasions that are impersonal in form, and in ethics, as in science, the appeal by which men seek to justify their thinking or acting is the appeal to the viewpoint of the disinterested judge; but in calling him" disinterested" we do not mean that he is "uninterested." On the contrary, this is only a peculiar way of saying that he is concerned with all interests involved. He wishes to take account of all the facts; he is sensitive to all moral demands. He can see the issue from every point of view; hence his viewpoint includes all other viewpoints. The process of moral enlightenment, whereby each man approximates more and more toward the viewpoint of an ideal observer, is the only real moral progress. It is progress in the sense in which science makes progress when it takes into account more and more of the facts and harmonizes them into a coherent theory. For moral sensitivity is a form of knowledge, an awareness of what is the case. The objective observer is objective just because he is the most compassionate of observers. His emotional reactions are themselves realistic in that he feels with unerring accuracy the exact amount of pain that each act causes, shares in full the joy of victory and also the pain of defeat. His emotions are perfectly just in that they are exactly proportioned to the total human significance of the acts that arouse them. We must not make the common error of supposing that to be just or unbiased a man must be devoid of passion. The presence or absence of pers~nal emotion has nothing to do with the validity of a moral claim. A man may make an impassioned plea for justice without thereby rendering his plea invalid, or of only "subjective" validity. For he is speaking as the champion of the rights of all litigants, and of all possible future litigants, whether he intends to or not. The passion that infuses his plea represents, so to speak, or embodies the indignation of all wronged men. Their rights speak through him, and their voices blend together with one voice; he speaks with the voice of humanity. The great orator, like the scientist, is a spokesman for universal human experience. Scientific language synthesizes human experience in one way, through abstraction; and if it speaks of human emotions at all, it does so under passionless symbols. Only rhetorical language-including drama and poetry-can present emotions as emotions, causing the audience to feel what these feelings are like. The fact that the great moral leader, or dramatist, or poet speaks in emotional language in no way entails that what he says has a merely personal or 21 �\. subjective validity. What gives his utterance moral authority is the fact that his heart and mind are open to human experience to a greater degree than those of most men are. Thus his feelings acquire a representative status; that is, they are what the feelings of other men ought to be, or would be, if freed from blindness, pettiness, and narrowness of view. A large part of the ability of a great moral teacher consists in his ability to see what is there in human experience. The reason why sympathetic insight is the central moral virtue is not that sympathy itself is good, but that sympathy is a doorway to truth; it opens the mind upon the world and enables it to see what is actually the case. Sympathy is simply the realism of the emotions. The heart of ethics is the eternal possibility of reexamining all ethical maxims in the light of reason and experience to see whether the crystallized formulas still express that which we really affirm; or whether they have been preserved by inadvertence, absence of mind, inertia, or the interests of some particular class of men in presenting re-examination of a formula that benefits them at the expense of other men. Ethical theory is thus analogous to scientific theory in that the 'true' theory in either case is not otherwise definable in advance than as that limit toward which an indefinite continuation of the critical process would never permanently cease to tend. The essentially ethical act is the act of committing oneself to the quest for The Moral Law; and the essentially ethical attitude is loyalty to this quest. Men can and do develop a loyalty to the Moral Quest itself, just as they can and do develop a loyalty to the Scientific Quest. For every man has some interest in truth, if only because he does not want to have his hopes frustrated by being based on error. Similarly, he desires to avoid having to reproach himself for his own conduct, and hence may try, even now, to anticipate the demands of his future conscience. Conscience is as natural as curiosity: men by nature find goods and evils in the world, come to value certain kinds of objects, persons, and traits, and even to value them distinterestedly. But because rival goods conflict, men must learn to discriminate, to rank and compare, to evaluate. The human need to evaluate is as natural as the human need to know; indeed, the two needs are inseparable; for all knowledge involves evaluation, just as all valuation rests on knowledge; and both have their biological basis in the ability of organisms to make differential responses. Only because an organism can respond differently to stimuli A and B can it ever come to 'know' that stimulus A or B is present, and thus eventually learn to delineate the contours of its surrounding world. Only because some stimuli are painful and others pleasurable can an organism ever come to value some experiences and disvalue others, and thus learn how to evaluate its world. But organismic sensitivity merely provides the basis for the possibility of science, and morality; it is neither their substance nor their goal. Science, though it may have its 22 origin in the sensitivity of the living protoplasm, projects its curiosity into the farthest corners of the universe, far beyond any needs of man's animal body, and hopes eventually even to understand the structure of the protoplasm from which it sprang. Conscience, though it may have its origin in the defensive reactions of the cell, extends its sympathies to the widest limits of the human race and hopes at last to express the nature of man's ''glassy essence.'' Morality is as rationally defensible as science, or any other branch of knowledge; and indeed both morality and science stem from that same demand for rationality that we call logic. Ultimately, the logic of morality is simply logic itself. Morality is the logic of conduct, as logic is the morality of thinking. APPENDIX I A large part of the activity of the moral philosopher consists of either encumbering the ground of ethics with stumbling-blocks imported from other fields, or in clearing away the obstacles left by his predecessors. Were it not for such peripheral and prophylactic activities there would, indeed, be little left for the moral philosopher to do. For the basic principles of ethics are well known to everybody, and have been forthousands of years. No one seriously advocates murder, arson, burglary, discourtesy, cowardice, or lying on principle. The only genuine moral problems are problems of casuistry: of the art of applying general rules to specific cases. It is only when faced with a specific problem of moral choice that most of us become interested in ethics; jllld we are quite right, for it is only the specific cases that have either practical importance or intellectual interest. It is these that arouse our sympathies and tax our ingenuity, for the same reason that reading reports of courtroom trials and criminal cases is much more interesting than reading the Revised Statutes. And it is only casebook law that provides us with much written material in casuistry. This most important branch of ethics has been almost totally neglected. Most of the handbooks or manuals of casuistry have been written by Jesuits, and they are all in Latin. The professors of ethics have made singularly little attempt to get down to cases, and to test their own theories by seeing whether they could serve to resolve moral conflicts. APPENDIX II Hume' s famous problem of how an "ought" can be derived from an "is," i.e., how moral obligations can ever be derived from mere facts, can be answered by considering, first of all, the inference "I promised to do X; therefore I am obligated to do X." Now the premiss here is a mere statement of fact, while the conclusion states an obligation. How is this inference valid? What is needed here is not a major premiss such as "Whoever promises SPRING 1985 �p : to do something is obligated to do that which he promises," for this is only a generalization of the given inference. No major premiss is needed at all, for the statement "! promised to do X" means "I obligated myself to do X." The very purpose of making promises is to create obligations; and to make a promise simply is to take upon oneself an obligation. Next consider two friends, Damon and Pythias, and ask "Why should Damon be loyal," and suppose that Damon asks "Why should I be loyal to Pythias?" The question is unanswerable, because the mutual loyalties of two friends are not deduced from any general principle, such as ''Friends ought to be loyal to each other.'' Rather their friendship just is their mutual loyalty. When they cease being loyal to each other, they will ipso facto have ceased to be friends. They are not friends for the sake of anything beyond their friendship. Now imagine this friendship to embrace 3, 4, 5, ... n persons, so as to form a community. The question "Why should I be loyal to my community?" still does not meaningfully arise; for a community simply is a network of mutually reinforcing loyalties. One's obligation to the community is simply one's way of being part of the community. It is one's concrete ties to the other persons in the community, and is not derived from any abstract principle at all. If one no longer feels any loyalty to that community, then there is no reason why one should go on being a member of it. An obligation is a sense of obligation. Therefore a sentence like "You ought to be loyal to Damon," or "You ought to pay Tom the money you owe him" is not a statement about a moral relationship; itis part of that relationship. The uttering of such sentences is part of the way we keep friendships alive, and remind people of their obligations, and induce them to do their duties. When the Prodigal Son said to himself "I will arise and go to my father," he was not informing himself of a fact or making a prediction; he was performing an act of repentance. Similarly when the sinner says "Peccavi," "I have sinned," he is not merely stating a fact; he is acknowledging his sin thereby already beginning the process of repentance. These are instances of what I may call the "liturgical" use of language, wherein the uttering of certain words is itself a moral act: such as praying, confessing, taking a vow, making a pledge. The liturgy of the courtroom is full of other examples of such liturgical use of language: swearing an oath, rendering a verdict, pronouncing a sentence. Or consider one of the commonest examples, the making of a promise; when a man says "! promise" he by that act does promise. To promise is to utter such a sign as "I promise,'' or some equivalent sign. Now the role of language in the law is a peculiar one; for, in a very real sense, we may say that the language of the law is the law, in a sense in which, for example, astronomy is not the language of astronomy, and chemistry is not the language of chemistry. For law is a matter of words: a statute consists of words uttered by a legis- THE ST. JOHN'S REVIEW lature,. a decision consists of wor?s uttered by a judge, a verdtct of words uttered by a Jury; and legislatures, judges and juries make the law by the words they use. Law might be considered as a way of using such words as "lawful," "unlawful," uguilty/' 'not guilty/' "right," "property/' °Contract," and so on. Similarly, we might say that ethics is the language of ethics; ethics is concerned with the ways in which people influence each other by their use of such words as ''right,'' ''wrong,'' ''good,'' ''bad,'' ''virtue,'' ''con~ science," and so on. 1 APPENDIX III The Role of Language in Ethics: A Dialog jOHN (a simple-minded, unphilosophical fellow): Stealing is wrong. HENRY (a subjectivist philosopher): You mean, of course, that you disapprove of stealing. JOHN: That's right. HENRY: Now, suppose jim says to you "No, stealing isn't wrong." He, of course, merely means "I don't disapprove of stealing." Therefore, your two statements are equivalent, respectively, to the following: A: john disapproves of stealing. B: jim does not disapprove of stealing. But these two statements are both true (assuming that you both spoke sincerely). Hence there is no disagreement between you after all! jOHN: Hmm! That's certainiy odd. I'd have sworn we were disagreeing. jEREMY (a utilitarian philosopher): just a minute, Henry; you've missed the point. When john, or anyone, says that stealing is wrong, he means that stealing injures the long-run welfare of the human race. Hence, when jim disagrees with him, they are really disputing the question of whether stealing does, in fact, injure the long-run welfare of the human race. And this is a factual question, capable-in principle-of being answered by empirical evidence. GEORGE: (an intuitionist philosopher): So, you say that "wrong" simply means "injurious to the long-run welfare of the human race?" jEREMY: That's correct. GEORGE: Well now, tell me: do you think it's wrong to injure the long-run welfare of the human race? jEREMY: Of course I do! GEORGE: Now let's take your statement "Injuring the long-run welfare of the human race is wrong" and substitute for the word "wrong" your definition of the word "wrong." What we get is the statement "Injuring the long-run welfare of the human race injures the longrun welfare of the human race." But this is a mere tautology! Is that all you meant to say? JEREMY: Not exactly. Maybe I should try another definition. GEORGE: It won't do you any good. No matter what 23 �definition you give, I can show you that you are uttering a mere tautology. CHRISTIAN (A Christian): Jeremy, of course, was wrong in his definition of "wrong." What "wrong" really means is "displeasing to God." GEORGE: Oh? Well, let me ask you: do you consider it wrong to displease God? CHRISTIAN: Certainly. To displease God is wrong, indeed. GEORGE: Now let's take your last statement and substitute in it your deinfition of "wrong." What we get is "To displease God is displeasing to God" -another tautology. You see, the mistake you are all making is to assume that "wrong" is definable. But of course it isn't. For suppose you say o 'wrong' means 'X'," where 'X' is any definition you please. Then I will ask you "Is X wrong?", and you will have to say "Yes, X is wrong;" in which case by your own definition, all you have said is "X is X." You are all guilty of the Naturalistic Fallacy, which consists of supposing that ethical terms can be defined. ALFRED (an emotivist philosopher): Just a minute, George. You are very subtle, and you have been playing a trick on all our friends here. When Christian said "To displease God is wrong" is wasn't uttering a tautology; he was evincing his disapproval of displeasing God. His utterance was equivalent to saying "What? displease God!" in a peculiar tone of horror. The tone of horror added no factual content to the utterance; it merely conveyed the emotions of the speaker. The various ethical terms uright," ~~wrong/' "good/' "bad," etc., serve merely an emotive function. They convey the emotional attitudes of the speaker. The utterance "X is good" does nothing but convey the speaker's favorable emotional attitude toward X. Thus Henry was quite correct in saying that men never disagree in their moral judgments; but he was incorrect in saying that this is because moral judgments have purely autobiographical meaning. It is because they have no meaning at all. RICHARD (an imperativist philosopher): No Alfred, you still miss the point. The motive for saying "Stealing is wrong'' is not to vent one's emotions; the motive is to dissuade other people from stealing. Moral judgments have an imperative function. "Stealing is wrong" really means "Thou shalt not steal!" This explains why moral judgments seem to disagree. The judgments "Stealing is right" and "Stealing is wrong" conflict in the same way that "Shut the door" and "Don't shut the door" conflict: namely, it is impossible to obey both of them. Neither utterance is true or false; you are right there, Alfred. But they do conflict, and that is why men engage in moral controversies: each is trying to get the other to obey conflicting imperatives. JOHN: But when I say "Stealing is wrong" I don't feel that I am issuing a command at all. When I say "Shut the door" I do so because I want the door to be shut. But when I say "Stealing is wrong" it doesn't seem to me that I am merely expressing my own wishes. I feel that I am commanded not to steal. The imperative seems not to issue from me, but to be issued to me, and to everyone 24 else. I assert "Stealing would be wrong even if I didn't disapprove of it, and even if I didn't wish people not to steal." CHARLES (a logician): Quite right, John. Making a moral judgment feels more like accepting an obligation than imposing one. Isn't this because of the logicality of the human creature? We call a man "rational" in proportion as he is amenable to linguistic persuasions that are impersonal in form, that is, not dependent for their validity upon anything peculiar to either speaker or hearer. This, in turn, is part of our logical demand for universality in our statements and beliefs. Ethics is, in this way, parallel to science; for in both we seek to purge away the influence of subjective error and limited perspectives, and frame statements that shall hold true for all times, persons, and places; in short, that are invariant under shift of origin or frame of reference. It is for this reason that we are unwilling to rest content with any form of relativism or subjectivism; to do so would frustrate the demands of logic itself. This logical demand is just what Kant expressed in his so-called Categorical Imperative (which I prefer to call the Rational Imperative): "So act that you could consistently (i.e. logically) will the maxim of your action to become, by your act, a universal law." In other words, "!, as a rational man, cannot be content to act in ways that I could not justify on grounds that would be equally valid for all rational men." Now to sum up: you all are partly right. Henry is right in emphasizing the autobiographical element in all moral judgments. We expect a man to approve of whatever he calls "right" and to disapprove of whatever he calls "wrong." Otherwise we call him insincere. Alfred is right in emphasizing the emotive etement in moral judgments; for certainly we do feel emotional antagonism to that which we judge to be morally wrong. Richard is right in emphasizing the imperative element; for we do seek to impose our moral judgments on others, but isn't that because we believe them to be valid, and not merely because they are ours? And Jeremy is right in emphasizing that we expect a moral judgment not to be an isolated pellet of unexplained moralism, but to have demonstrable connection with some total economy of human goods; that every moral judgment must justify itself by reference to human life as a whole. And George is right in emphasizing that "good" can never be exhaustively defined in naturalistic terms; for, however, we define it, the question always remains open as to whether we can remain forever content with our present view of what is good. The very thing we are all searching for is to discover what we can ultimately be content to approve of, in the light of the fullest knowledge. This is the goal of moral controversy. Therefore, the one thing we all can agree upon is that we must keep moral controversy alive, and keep it logical. Rational controversy, or dialectic, is the living heart of ethics itself, just as the continuing dialectic in the law courts is the living heart of the law. The one truly unethical act would be to try to cut short the process of moral controversy itself by any arbitrary dogma. The one goal that we can all agree to seek is the furtherance of concrete reasonableness itself. SPRING 1985 �1 l Social Science and Humanism ! Leo Strauss ! I . We have been assigned the task of discussing humanISm an~ the social sciences. As appears from our program, f I humarusm is understood in contradistinction to science, This little known paper* by Leo Strauss** is of special interest to students of the thought of Leo Strauss because in it certain things are said in his own name which appear in his other printed works as descriptions of other men's views. I refer particularly to the twelfth paragraph on science. There, rather than emphasizing the opposition between, or mutual exclusiveness of, ancient and modern science, he looks forward to a more comprehensive universal science, "the true universal science into which modern science will have to be integrated eventually." The suggestion is that each science, ancient and modern, clarifies different aspects or parts of the same whole. The notes are supplied as an aid to readers less familiar with Strauss's writings, to enable them to follow up themes discussed here in places where they are treated more extensively. This paper was published by Strauss without any notes. I recommend reading it through at least once without looking at the notes. on the one hand, and to the civic art, on the other. It is thus suggested to us that the social sciences are shaped by sCience, the civic art, and humanism or that the social sciences dwell in the region where science, the civic art, and humanism meet and perhaps toward which they converge. Let us consider how this meeting might be understood. Of the three elements mentioned, only science and humanism can be said to be at home in academic life. They certainly exhibit one characteristic of academic life. According to an old adage, man is a wolf to man, woman is more wolfish to woman, but a scholar in his relations to scholars is the most wolfish of all. Science and humanism are then not always on friendly terms. We all know the scientist who despises or ignores humanism, and the humanist who despises or ignores science. To understand Laurence Berns this conflict, tension, or distinction between science and *From The State of the Social Sciences (papers presented at the 25th Anniversary of the Social Science Research Building, The University of Chicago, November 10-12, 1955), ed. Leonard D. White, (19.56: The University of Chicago Press), pp. 415425. We are grateful to the University of Chicago Press fot permission to reprint. *"Leo Strauss was the Robert Maynard Hutchins Distinguished Service Professor of Political Science at the University of Chicago, and at the time of his death in 1973 the Scott Buchanan Distinguished Scholar in Residence at St. John's College. THE ST. JOHN'S REVIEW humanism, we do well to turn for a moment to the seventeenth century, to the age in which modern science constituted itself. At that time Pascal contrasted the spirit of geometry (i.e., the scientific spirit) with the spirit of finesse. We may circumscribe the meaning of the French term by referring to terms such as these: subtlety, refinement, tact, delicacy, perceptivity. The scientic spirit is characterized by detachment and by the forcefullness which stems from simplicity or simplification. The spirit of finesse is characterized by attachment or love and by breadth. The principles to which the scientific spirit defers are alien to common sense. The principles with which the spirit of finesse has to do are within common sense, yet they are barely visible; they are felt rather than seen. They are not available in such a way that we could make them the premises of our reasoning. The spirit of finesse 25 �is active not in reasoning but rather in grasping in one view unanalyzed wholes in their distinctive characters. What is meant today by the contrast between science and humanism represents a more or less profound modification of Pascal's contrast between the spirit of geometry and the spirit of finesse. In both cases the contrast implies that, in regard to the understanding of human things, the spirit of science has severe limitationslimitations which are overcome by a decidedly nonscientific approach. What are these limitations as we observe them today within the social sciences? Social science consists of a number of disciplines which are specialized and which are becoming ever more specialized. There is certainly no social science in existence which could claim that it studies society as a whole, social man as a whole, or such wholes as we have in mind when we speak, for example, of this country, the United States of America. De Tocqueville and Lord Bryce are not representative of present-day social science. From time to time one or the other special and specialized science (e.g. psychology or sociology) raises the claim to be comprehensive or fundamental; but these claims always meet strong and justified resistance. Co-operation of the various disciplines may enlarge the horizon of the co-operating individuals; it cannot unify the disciplines themselves; it cannot bring about a true, hierarchic order. Specialization may be said to originate ultimately in this premise: In order to understand a whole, one must analyze or resolve it into its elements, one must study the elements by themselves, and then one must reconstruct the whole or recompose it by starting from the elements. 1 Reconstruction requires that the whole be sufficiently grasped in advance, prior to the analysis. If the primary grasp lacks definiteness and breadth, both the analysis and the synthesis will be guided by a distorted view of the whole, by a figment of a poor imagination rather than by the thing in its fulness. And the elements at which the analysis arrives will at best be only some of the elements. The sovereign rule of specialization means that the reconstruction cannot even be attempted. The reason for the impossibility of reconstruction can be stated as follows: The whole as primarily known is an object of common sense; but it is of the essence of the scientific spirit, at least as this spirit shows itself within the social sciences, to be distrustful of common sense or even to discard it altogether. The common-sense understanding expresses itself in common language; the scientific social scientist creates or fabricates a special scientific terminology. Thus scientific social science acquires a specific abstractness. There is nothing wrong with abstraction, but there is very much wrong with abstracting from essentials. Social science, to the extent to which it is emphatically scientific, abstracts from essential elements of social reality. I quote from a private communication by a philosophically sophisticated sociologist who is very favorably disposed toward the scientific approach in the soCial sciences: "What the sociologist calls 26 'system,' 'role,' 'status,' 'role expectation/ 'situation,' and 'institutionalization' is experienced by the individual actor on the social scene in entirely different terms." This is not merely to say that the citizen and the social scientist mean the same things but express them in different terms. For "the social scientist qua theoretician has to follow a system of relevances entirely different from that of the actor on the social scene .... His problems originate in his theoretical interest, and many elements of the social world that are scientifically relevant are irrelevant from the point of view of the actor on the social scene, and vice versa.'' The scientific social scientist is concerned with regularities of behavior; the citizen is concerned with good government. The relevances for the citizen are "values," values" believed in and cherished, nay, "values" which are experienced as real qualities of real things: of man, of actions and thought, of institutions, of measures. But the scientistic social scientist draws a sharp line between values and facts: he regards himself as unable to pass any value judgments.' To counteract the dangers inherent in specialization as far as these dangers can be counteracted within the social sciences, a conscious return to common-sense thinking is needed-a return to the perspective of the citizen. We must identify the whole in reference to which we should select themes of research and integrate results of research, with the over-all objectives of whole societies. By doing this, we will understand social reality as it is understood in social life by thoughtful and broad-minded men. In other words, the true matrix of social science is the Civic Art and not a general notion of science or scientific method. Social science must either be a mere handmaid of the Civic Art-in this case no great harm is done if it forgets the wood for the trees, or, if it does not want to become or to remain oblivious of the noble tradition from which it sprang, if it believes that it might be able to enlighten the Civic Art, it must indeed look farther afield than the Civic Art, but it must look in the same direction as the Civic Art. Its relevances must become identical, at least at the outset, with those of the citizen or statesman; and therefore it must speak, or learn to speak, the language of the citizen and of the statesman. 3 From this point of view, the guiding theme of social science in this age and in this country will be democracy, or, more precisely, liberal democracy, especially in its American form. Liberal democracy will be studied with constant regard to the co-actual or co-potential alternatives and therefore especially to communism. The issue posed by communism will be faced by a conscientious, serious, and relentless critique of communism. At the same time, the dangers inherent in liberal democracy will be set forth squarely; for the friend of liberal democracy is not its flatterer.' The sensitivity to these dangers will be sharpened and, if need be, awakened. From the scientistic point of view, the politically neutral-that which is common to all societies-must be looked upon as the clue to the politically relevant-that which is distinctive of the various regimes. But from the opposite point of view II SPRING 1985 " tl r tt. hi c, t • �which I am trying to adumbrate, the emphasis is put on the politically relevant: the burning issues' Social science cannot then rest satisfied with the overall objectives of whole societies as they are for the most part understood in social life. Social science must clarify those objectives, ferret out their self-contraclictions and haifheartednesses, and strive for knowledge of the true over-all objectives of whole societies. That is to say, the only alternative to an ever more specialized, an ever more aimless, social science is a social science ruled by the legitimate queen of the social sciences-the pursuit traclitionally known by the name of ethics. Even today it is difficult, in dealing with social matters, consistently to avoid terms like a man of character," honesty," "loyalty," "citizenship education," etc. This, or something like this, is, I believe, what many people have in mind when speaking of a humanistic approach, as distinguished from the scientistic approach, to social phenomena. We must still account for the term "humanism." The social scientist is a student of human societies, of societies of humans. If he wishes to be loyal to his task, he must never forget that he is dealing with human things, with human beings. He must reflect on the human as human. And he must pay due attention to the fact that he himself is a human being and that social science is always a kind of self-knowledge. Social science, being the pursuit of human knowledge of human things, includes as its foundation the human knowledge of what constitutes humanity or, rather, of what makes man complete or whole, so that he is truly human. Aristotle calls his equivalent of what now would be called social science the liberal inquiry regarcling the human things, and his Ethics is the first, the fundamental, and the clirective part of that inquiry. • But, if we understand by social science the knowledge of human things, are we not driven to the conclusion that the time-honored distinction between social science and the humanities must be abandoned? Perhaps we must follow Aristotle a step further and make a clistinction between the life of society and the life of the mind, and hence assign the study of the former to social science and the study of the latter, or a certain kind of study of the latter, to the humanities. I do not have to go into another implication of the term "humanism" -viz., the contradistinction of human studies to clivinity, since our program is silent about clivinity. I may limit myself to the remark that humanism may be said to imply that the moral principles are more knowable to man, or less controversial among earnest men, than theological principles. 7 By reflecting on what it means to be a human being, one sharpens his awareness of what is common to ali human beings, if in clifferent degrees, and of the goals toward which all human beings are clirected by the fact that they are human beings. One transcends the horizon of the mere citizen-of every kind of sectionalism-and becomes a citizen ofthe world. Humanism as awareness of man's distinctive character as well as of man's clistinc11 THE ST. JOHN'S REVIEW tive completion, purpose, or duty issues in humaneness: m the earnest concern for both human kindness and the betterment and opening of one's mind-a blend of firm delicacy and hard-won serenity-a last and not merely last freedom from the degradation or hardening effected especially by conceit or pretense. One is tempted to say that to be inhuman is the same as to be unteachable, to be unable or unwilling to listen to other human beings. Yet, even if all were said that could be said and that cannot be said, humanism is not enough. Man, while being at least potentially a whole, is only a part of a larger whole. While forming a kind of world and even being a kind of world, man is only a little world, a microcosm. The macrocosm, the whole to which man belongs, is not human. That whole, or its origin, is either subhuman or superhuman. Man cannot be understood in his own light but only in the light of either the subhuman or the superhuman. Either man is an accidental product of a blind evolution or else the process leading to man, culminating in man, is clirected toward man. Mere humanism avoids this ultimate issue. The human meaning of what we have come to call "Science" consists precisely in this-that the human or the higher is understood in the light of the subhuman or the lower. Mere humanism is powerless to withstand the onslaught of modern science. It is from this point that we can begin to understand again the original meaning of science, of which the contemporary meaning is only a modification: science as man's attempt to understand the whole to which he belongs. Social science, as the study of things human, cannot be based on modern science, although it may jucliciously use, in a strictly subordinate fashion, both methods and results of modern science. Social science must rather be taken to contribute to the true universal science into which modern science will have to be integrated eventually.• To summarize, to treat social science in a humanistic spirit means to return from the abstractions or constructs of scientistic social science to social reality, to look at social phenomena primarily in the perspective of the citizen and the statesman, then in the perspective of the citizen of the world, in the twofold meaning of "world": the whole human race and the all-embracing whole. Humanism, as I have tried to present it, is in itself a moderate approach. But, looking around me, I find that it is here and now an extreme version of humanism. Some of you might think that it would be more proper on the present occasion to present the median or average opinion of present-day humanistic social scientists rather than an eccentric one. I feel this obligation, but I cannot comply with it because of the elusive character of that meclian opinion. I shall therefore describe the extreme op· posite of the view which appeals to me, or, rather, one particular expression, which is as good as any other, of that opposite extreme. Median social science humanism can be defined sufficiently for our purpose by the remark that it is located somewhere between these two extremes. The kind of humanism to which I now turn designates 27 �itself as relativistic. It may be called a humanism for two reasons. First it holds that the social sciences cannot be modeled on the natural sciences, because the social sciences deal with man. Second, it is animated, as it were, by nothing except openness for everything that is human. According to this view, the methods of science, of natural science, are adequate to the study of phenomena to which we have access only by observing them from without and in detachment. But the social sciences deal with phenomena whose core is indeed inaccessible to detached observation but discloses itself, at least to some extent, to the scholar who relives or re-enacts the life of the human beings whom he studies or who enters into the perspective of the actors and understands the life of the actors from their own point of view as distinguished from both his point of view and the point of view of the outside observer. Every perspective of active man is constituted by evaluation or is at any rate inseparable from it. Therefore, understanding from within means sharing in the acceptance of the values which are accepted by the societies or the individuals whom one studies, or accepting these values "histrionically" as the true values, or recognizing the position taken by the human beings under consideration as true. If one practices such understanding often and intensively enough, one realizes that perspectives or points of view cannot be criticized. All positions of this kind are equally true or untrue: true from within, untrue from without. Yet, while they cannot be criticized, they can be understood. However, I have as much right to my perspective as anyone else has to his or any society to its. And every perspective being inseparable from evaluation, I, as an acting man and not as a mere social scientist, am compelled to criticize other perspectives and the values on which they are based or which they posit. We do not end then in moral nihilism, for our belief in our values gives us strength and direction. Nor do we end in a state of perpetual war of everybody against everybody, for we are permitted to "trust to reason and the council table for a peaceful coexistence.'' Let us briefly examine this position which at first glance recommends itself because of it apparent generosity and unbounded sympathy for every human position. Against a perhaps outdated version of relativism one might have argued as follows. Let us popularly define nihilism as the inability to take a stand for civilization against cannibalism. The relativist asserts that objectively civilization is not superior to cannibalism, for the case in favor of civilization can be matched by an equally strong or an equally weak case in favor of cannibalism. The fact that we are opposed to cannibalism is due entirely to our historical situation. But historical situations change necessarily into other historical situations. A historical situation productive of the belief in civilization may give way to a historical situation productive of belief in cannibalism. Since the relativist holds that civilization is not intrinsically superior to cannibalism, he will placidly accept the change of civilized society into cannibal society. Yet the relativism which I am now discussing denies that 28 our values are simply determined by our historical situation: we can transcend our historical situation and enter into entirely different perspectives. In other words, there is no reason why, say, an Englishman should not become, in the decisive respect, a Japanese. Therefore, our believing in certain values cannot be traced beyond our decision or commitment. One might even say that, to the extent to which we are still able to reflect on the relation of our values to our situation, we are still trying to shirk the responsibility for our choice. Now, if we commit ourselves to the values of civilization, our very commitment enables and compels us to take a vigorous stand against cannibalism and prevents us from placidly accepting a change of our society in the direction of cannibalism. To stand up for one's commitment means among other things to defend it against its opponents not only by deed but by speech as well. Speech is required especially for fortifying those who waver in their commitments to the values we cherish. The waverers are not yet decided to which cause they should commit themselves, or they do not know whether they should commit themselves to civilization or to cannibalism. In speaking to them, we cannot assume the validity of the values of civilization. And, according to the premise, there is no way to convince them of the truth of those values. Hence the speech employed for buttressing the cause of civilization will be not rational discourse but mere "propaganda," a "propaganda" confronted by the equally legitimate and perhaps more effective "propaganda" in favor of cannibalism. This notion of the human situation is said to be arrived at through the practice of sympathetic understanding. Only sympathetic understanding is said to make possible valid criticism of other points of view-a criticism which is based on nothing but our commitment and which therefore does not deny the right of our opponents to their commitments. Only sympathetic understanding, in other words, makes us truly understand the character of values and the manner in which they are legitimately adopted. But what is sympathetic understanding? Is it dependent on our own commitment, or is it independent of it? If it is independent, I am committed as an acting man, and I am uncommitted in another compartment of myself, in my capacity as a social scientist. In that latter capacity I am, so to speak, completely empty and therefore completely open to the perception and appreciation of all commitments or value systems. I go through the process of sympathetic understanding in order to reach clarity about my commitment, and this process in no way endangers my commitment, for only a part of my self is engaged in my sympathetic understanding. This means, however, that such sympathetic understanding is not serious or genuine and is, indeed, as it calls itself, "histrionic." For genuinely to understand the value system, say, of a given society, means being deeply moved and indeed gripped by the values to which the society in question is committed and to expose one's self in earnest, with a view to one's own whole life, to the claim of those values to be the true values. Genuine SPRING 1985 u lt: il c b ! " n t n ! l s ',, I. I 1.' ( l ' ' . �understanding of other commitments is then not necessarily conducive to the reassertion of one's own initial commitment. Apart from this, it follows from the inevitable distinction between serious understanding and histrionic understanding that only my own commitment, my own "depth:' can possibly disclose to me the commitment, the "depth:' of other human beings. Hence my perceptivity is necessarily limited by my commitment. Universal sympathetic understanding is impossible. To speak crudely, one cannot have the cake and eat it; one cannot enjoy both the advantages of universal understanding and those of existentialism. But perhaps it is wrong to assume that all positions ultimately rest on commitments, or at any rate on commitments to specific points of view. We all remember the time when most men believed explicitly or implicitly that there is one and only one true value system of universal validity, and there are still societies and inviduals who cling to this view. They too must be understood sympathetically. Would it not be harsh and even inconsistent to deprive the Bible and Plato of a privilege which is generously accorded to every savage tribe? And will sympathetic understanding of Plato not lead us to admit that absolutism is as true as relativism or that Plato was as justified in simply condemning other value positions as the relativist is in never simply condemning any value position? To this our relativist will reply that. while Plato's value system is as defensible as any other, provided it is taken to have no other support than Plato's commitment, Plato's absolutist interpretation of his value system, as well as any other absolutism, has been refuted unqualifiedly, with finality, absolutely. This means however that Plato's view as he understood it, as it reveals itself to us if we enter sympathetically into his perspective, has been refuted: it has been seen to rest on untrue theoretical premises. So-called sympathetic understanding necessarily and legitimately ends when rational criticism reveals the untruth of the position which we are attempting to understand sympathetically; and the possibility of such rational criticism is necessarily admitted by relativism, since it claims to reject absolutism on rational grounds. The example of Plato is not an isolated one. Where in fact do we find, outside certain circles of present-day Western society, any value position which does not rest on theoretical premises of one kind or another-premises which claim to be simply, absolutely, universally true, and which as such are legitimately exposed to rational criticism? I fear that the field within which relativists can practice sympathetic understanding is restricted to the community of relativists who understand each other with great sympathy because they are united by identically the same fundamental commitment or rather by identically the same rational insight into the truth of relativism. What claims to be the final triumph over provincialism reveals itself as the most amazing manifestation of provincialism. There is a remarkable contrast between the apparent humility and the hidden arrogance of relativism. The relativist rejects the absolutism inherent in our great THE ST. JOHN'S REVIEW Western tradition-in its belief in the possibility of a rational and universal ethics or of natural right-with indignation or contempt; and he accuses that tradition of provincialism. His heart goes out to the simple preliterate people who cherish their values without raising exorbitant claims on their behalf. But these simple people do not practice histrionic or sympathetic understanding. Lacking such understanding, they do not adopt their values in the only legitimate manner, that is, as supported by nothing except their commitment. They sometimes reject Western values. Therewith they engage in invalid criticism, for valid criticism presupposes histrionic understanding. They are then provincial and narrow, as provincial and narrow as Plato and the Bible. The only people who are not provincial and narrow are the Western relativists and their Westernized followers in other cultures. They alone are right. It almost goes without saying that relativism, if it were acted upon, would lead to complete chaos. For to say in the same breath that our sole protection against war between societies and within society is reason, and that according to reason "Those individuals and societies who find it congenial to their systems of values to oppress and subjugate others" are as right as those who love peace and justice, means to appeal to reason in the very act of destroying reason. Many humanistic social scientists are aware of the inadequacy of relativism, but they hesitate to tum to what is called "absolutism." They may be said to adhere to a qualified relativism. Whether this qualified relativism has a solid basis appears to me to the most pressing question for social science today. 9 1. The Political Philosphy of Hobbes, (University of Chicago Press: 1952), pp. 2-3, 150-155. 2. Natural Right and History, (University of Chicago Press: 1953} Chapter II, ''Natural Right and The Distinction between Facts and Values." 3. What is Political Philosophy? (The Free Press of Glencoe, fllinois: 1959), pp. 27-28; and 78·94, "On dassical Political Philosophy." 4. Natural Right and History, pp. 1 2; Liberalism, Ancient and Modem, (Basic Books: 1968), pp. v~vili, chaps. 1 & 2, "What is Liberal Education," 4 "Liberal Education and Responsibility;" pp. 23()..231; Political Philosophy: Six Essays l1y Leo Strauss, ed. Hilail Gildin, (Bobbs~Merrill: 1975), "The Three Waves of Modernity," p. 98; Natural Right and History, pp. 181~ 186, "Modem Natural Right," 253-260, 278~290, 294-323; The City and Man, (Rand McNally: 1964), pp. 1~12, "Introduction." 5. Liberalism, Ancient and Modern, pp. 214-218. 6. Natural Right and History, chapter IV, "Classic Natural Right," esp. p. 126 ff.; Studies in Platonic Political Philosophy, (University of Chicago Press: 1983), chapter 6, "On Natural Law." 7. Studies in Platonic Political Philosophy, chapter 7, "Jerusalem and Athens: Some Preliminary Reflections;" Liberalism, Ancie11t and Modem, chapters 6, 7, 9, 10; Persecution and the Art of Writing, (The free Press; 1952); SpinoZil's Critique of Religion, (Schocken Books: 1965); W1zat is Political Philosophy?, Chapters v and vi; Natural Right and History, pp. 78-93; "On the Interpretation of Genesis," L'Homme, Jan.-March, 1981, XXI(I), pp. 5~20; 'The Mutual Influence of Theology and Philosophy," The Independent Journal of Philosophy, vol. III, 1979, pp. 111-118; "Progress or Return? The Contemporary Crisis in Western Civilization," Modem Judaism, vol. I, pp. 17--45, Oohns Hopkins University Press: 1981). 8. Natural Right and History, pp. 23-24, 30-32, esp. 121-126; The Cit_11 and Man, pp. 19-29; esp. What is Political Philosophy? pp. 38-40; "Farabi's Plato," Louis Ginzburg Jubilee Volume, (American Academy for Jewish Research: 1945), pp. 364ff. and 389-393. 9. Natural Right and History, p. lff. 29 �Reply to Tertullian What speech could she make, unadvised, to explain how the serpent sang and she listened and obeyed because she'd never heard a voice she couldn't trust? And even now she guards a secret pity for the reptile. She has not forgotten his punishment. It seems he did not lose his voice, nor his song, but only had it altered. So from dress to dress she goes, searching for the cover that doesn't by its very presence recall nakedness. She envies him who at every season's change can shed the garment that fails to grow. Dear brother, whose every hiss is only a reminder of long-absent melodies. M. L. Coughlin M.L. Coughlin is a graduate of St. John's College, Annapolis now living in Annapolis. 30 SPRING 1985 �Achilles and Hector: The Homeric Hero (Part I) Seth Benardete Achilles and Hector: The Homeric Hero is the Ph.D. dissertation of Dr. Benardete submitted in 1955 to the Committee on Social Thought at the University of Chicago. · 1HE ST. JOHN'S REVIEW 31 �T . . i¥ 'I '§ : CONTENTS Part I. Style Introduction .............................................. 33 Chapter I. Men and Heroes ..................................... 36 IT. Achaeans and Trojans ................................. 38 ill. Achilles and Agamemnon ............................. 42 IV. Ancestral Virtue ...................................... 44 V. The Armour of Agamemnon .......................... 46 VI. Ajax ................................................. 47 VIT. Heroic VIrtue ....................................... .48 VITI. Achilles and Hector ................................... 49 IX. Similes .............................................. 50 X. Achilles' and Hector's Similes .......................... 52 XI. Heroic Ambition ..................................... 53 Part IT. Plot Introduction Chapter I. The Gods II. The Plot of the iliad ill. The Embassy IV. The Deception of Zeus V. Patroclus VI. Achilles and Patroclus vn. The Exploits of Achilles Vlli. Achilles and Hector IX. The Funeral Garnes X. Achilles and Priam Epilogue 32 SPRING 1985 . �Part I Style Introduction This essay falls into two parts. The first part analyzes the style of the Homeric hero, all that the heroes have most in common; the second formulates the plot of the Iliad, the tragedy of Achilles. That such a division is possible and even necessary indicates the peculiar nature of the Iliad. It is a long work. It can neither be surveyed in a single glance nor remembered in a single hearing. And yet since it is presented as a whole, it must have a certain style to maintain its unity, and a certain kind of subject that will justify its length. Its subject cannot be merely the story of Achilles, for otherwise a short tragedy would suffice, and many of its episodes would be superfluous. Whatever impression one has of Achilles' character does not obviously depend on the whole of the Iliad. Many parts, however excellent in themselves, do not seem to advance our knowledge of Achilles and his wrath. The catalogue of ships, the exploits of Diomedes, the deception of Zeus, all seem to reveal Achilles in no clearer light. Only if its scope were as universal as an ancient commentator suggests it is, would its bulk seem warranted: Were anyone to ask, noting the worth and excellence of Achilles, why Homer called his work the fliad and not the Achilleid,-as he did the Odyssey after Odysseus-we would answer that, in one case, the story concerned a single man, while in the other, even if Achilles excelled the rest, yet they too were excellent; and that Homer wished to show us not only Achilles but also, in a way, all heroes, and what sort of men they were: so unwilling to call it after one man, he used the name of a city, which merely suggested the name of Achilles. 1 Achilles is a hero in a world of heroes; he is of the same cast as they, though we might call him the first impression which has caught each point more finely than later copies. He holds within himself all the heroic virtues that are given singly to others, but his excellence is still the sum of theirs: we do not need a separate rule to measure his supremacy. Golden he may be, but the others shine as brilliant and work as much havoc. Before we can come into the presence of Achilles, and take his measure, we must first be presented with the common warrior, who is not just something abstract and mechanical but human, and with whom Achilles has more in common than he knows. They are not just gibbering ghosts and mere trophies: they are the armature on which Achilles is shaped and the backdrop against which his tragedy is played. Homer assumes our ignorance of what the heroes are, and like an historical novelist fills the landscape as he advances his plot (it is no accident that the Odyssey A former teacher at St. John's College, Annapolis, Seth Benardete is professor of classics at New York University. His most recent book is a translation with commentary of Plato's Theatetus, Sophist and Statesman. THE ST. JOHN'S REVIEW is shorter), so that their every aspect belongs to his art, until the substance of Achilles, not merely its shadow, can at last be seen and judged; indeed, had not Homer described all of the heroic world, the tragedians would have been unable to select a part and still remain intelligible. And yet, even if we discover the relevance of the Iliad's parts to one another, many of the details within the parts would still be thought needless. That the Achaeans are "well-greaved" and the Trojans "high-spirited" does not evidently pertain to Achilles or the heroes; but again, even were they found to be pertinent, why should Homer have indulged in their repetition? Surely they cannot strike more than a momentary flash in our imagination? They might have served as ornaments, were they not so common: their constant presence makes them tawdry, the burnt-out sparks of a dead tradition; and even if repeated epithets were not tedious, similar scenes, formulaic lines, and identical heroes cannot but burden our memory without improving our knowledge. To answer these charges and grasp the purpose of repetition, we must first consider, in a general way, the style of the Iliad. The Iliad, if it is to maintain its unity, demands repetition, but to avoid strain, it needs as well a relaxed grandeur. It must be rapid, easy and spacious. To write like Tacitus, if one wished, like. Livy, to record the entire history of Rome, would be intolerable; and to adopt a Livian manner, were one to devote an essay to Agricola, lessens the height of one's opinions. Regardiess of temperament, if Tacitus had abused his style, contrary to the needs of the subject itself, and written an universal history, his failure would have been certain; and even as it is, he employs a "choked" syntax, that departs from Ciceronian usage, mostly in his portrayal of Tiberius, whose mastery of dissemblance imposed a similar effort on Tacitus himself. As a student of Thucydides he attempts only small chapters of history, while Livy (like Herodotus) imitates the range of his subject. A rambling work demands a leisurely style;. a constricted view must regulate more exactly the stride of each sentence. Density seems to favour shortness as openness length. A lyric poem is both short and compact; were it longer, its very brilliance would cloy: even Pindar' s fourth Pythian, which contains but three hundred lines, is thought excessive. Aeschylus' trimeters are denser than Sophocles', and as a consequence his plays are shorter: not that a single line conveys more matter, but a greater length would shatter the whole. Vergil and Milton, for example, by employing the diction of lyric poetry, often go against the grain of epic. Each line is so overloaded that its luxury saps the strength of the whole, as if the lavishness of their genius packed the work so tightly that it became stunted. The high road of fancy, no matter how inviting it may appear, is closed to the epic poet, even as the thoroughfare of prose would betray his calling. He must steer a middle course between the whirlpool of anarchic invention and the rock of listless monotony; he must restrain his exuberance in each of the parts as he keeps 33 �his eye on the whole but still illumine the whole by the light of each part. He cannot adopt a Livian style, containing no limit within itself, whose only virtue is its flexibility, so that it can be stretched to any length; for in achieving a careless ease, he might abandon all the strictures that should limit its extension. A relaxed style seems to guarantee its own dissipation, but as soon as it is stiffened, it may lose, in turn, the only virtue that justified its apparent poverty. And Homer, whether by genius or by art, hit upon a device, partly traditional and partly his own, that at once retained the sprezzatura proper to his work as well as informed it into a whole. Formulae clearly solve a part of this problem. Their familiarity does away with the need for continual invention; their strangeness raises them above the common speech. They will not clutter the work and obscure the whole, nor will they make it vulgar and weaken the whole. They are stage directions. They dispose economically of all the necessary but unimportant actions: walking, speaking, falling and dying, all of which cannot be omitted, even though they may Jack significance. Such a diction has great advantages, but it the formulae are merely the cues and promptings to the action, they cannot belong to the whole, however much they may be a part. If they frame the words and deeds, they do not affect their matter. They have no hold on the vital concern of Homer, Achilles and Hector, nor can they pass as his own coinage. They would seem an irreducible surd and a necessary evil. If they are to be fused with the whole, they must reveal something about the heroes, something that distinguishes them from everyone else and from each other, and thus contributes to the theme of the Iliad. These differences must exist not only in the large but in the smallest detail, since as Plutarch remarks, "not in the most glorious actions is there always the truest indication of virtue and vice, but often a small occasion, a word, or a gest expresses a man's character more clearly than great sieges, great armaments, and battles with thousands slain; and just as painters catch a likeness from the fact and its features, by which character is expressed, and neglect almost entirely the rest of the body, " 2 so Homer must not Jose sight of the smallest occasion, put he must endow each one with a poetic necessity. And yet the vastness of his plan is a hindrance. To present each hero diversely would render them distinct but alien to one another, excessive detail being more likely to break up the whole than restore its unity. Each particular, in choking the whole, would itself be drowned in the others. Homer then, forced to obtain depth without density, realized that the style, which most suited the whole,· also could be worked to unite it. Formulae could be repeated without complicating the style: so epithets, were they suggestive enough, could also recur, and in their very recurrence enrich the whole. Their repetition would force us to attend to them and regard them as something more than baubles; so that, even though they are details by themselves, they acquire in the mass sufficient bulk to influence the whole. If, however, they changed their 34 meaning on each occasion, the sum of their ambiguities would disperse their common significance, and confound the simplicity of his style; but if they were fixed in meaning, they would not support the otherwise subtle portrait of Achilles: they would be thought the burden of a tradition Homer could not shake off. Confronted with these two dangers, infinite variety and idle repetition, Homer struck a balance: he set aside a certain number of occurrences of each epithet as a neutral base, by which the rest are nourished as they reveal its various aspects. Some are unaffected by the passage in which they stand (preserving the clarity); others are closely linked with their context (increasing the depth). The two kinds, though diverse, do not contradict but supplement one another: neither can be sacrificed. The first shows us how essential the epithets are to a hero, the conventions he must observe before he strikes out on his own; the second illustrates these common attributes in action and what they imply: how, when raised to the highest degree, they entail Achilles' tragedy. Neutral epithets indicate how impossible it is for the heroes to cast off their general character, even if these virtues are not required at the moment; pregnant epithets, on the other hand, show themselves in action and explain why the heroes must carry them wherever they go.' One cannot build a palace out of bricks, nor an epic out of separate words; the longer the phrase that can be heard as a unit, the less each part will be swallowed up in the whole. Although precision cannot be discarded, it must have a measure far different from a sonnet's. There must be boldness and dash in epic precision: the broad strokes of painting rather than the sharp exactness of the engraver's art. Every brush mark, regafded closely, neither shares in the whole, nor affects its design. All it presents is a blur of colour, seemingly indifferent to any larger purpose; but as soon as we view the iliad at its proper distance, what seemed at first superfluous, assumes the appearance of necessity. Yet how could Homer ensure that we would observe the correct distance, and not destroy his work by a too minute inspection? Happily there was already at hand a measure in recitation. Recitation guaranteed that no one would count the threads in the fabric, but it still allowed every thread to count. It separated primary from secondary effects, which, though indistinguishable to a reader's eye, the ear as readily keeps apart as unites. One recital may have sufficed to present the whole, another to explicate the parts, a third or a fourth would be needed to make intelligible the formulae: so we in this essay have inverted the natural order of understanding, and explained first what a hearer would come to appreciate last. The first part cannot stand by itself; it must be reinforced by the overall design; but neither is that completely independent, and in one section (Part II, vii) we have tried to bring them together. Within the framework ofthe epithets Homer "develops" his heroes, and it would almost not be too rash to assert that, if all of them were properly understood, the plot of the Iliad would necessarily follow. SPRING 1985 �Horner did not invent his formulaic diction: if he had, a certain residue of unworked elements would be absent. A swift ship, a black ship, a hollow ship are to him indifferent, metrical convenience alone dictating their use; and though he was not always careless of things, it was not until the lyric poets that they were made equal in rank to persons. He nevertheless transformed the tradition, for, as we suggested, only a poet extremely conscious of the whole would have employed so much repetition, to which no other folk-epic can offer a parallel.• He saw that the tradition could be exploited so as to turn its supposed defect into its greatest virtue. It gave him the means to combine the many and the one; display a massiveness that did not sacrifice delicacy; and thus achieve a balance between the generic and the individual, uniformity and diversity, that has always been the despair of the inferior poets. A tragedian, it is true, does not face this problem: he can always join, without intermediaries, the part with the whole, since his hero occupies all of the canvas, and every image and figure works directly for a single end. The details and the design are inseparable, and either immediately leads to the other. To show how successfully it can be managed, and yet how unlike to Homer, has prompted us to trace the imagery of Shakespeare's Coriolanus at the end of the second Introduction. There are other reasons as well that made us examine this play; but it suffices to refer to it now as an example of the differences inherent in a short and a long work. Although Vergil more inclined than Homer did to busy himself with detail (at the expense of the whole), yet he borrowed from him some of his technique; and before we exemplify the previous remarks with an Homeric instance, it is instructive to consider a much simpler one in Vergil. Aeneas is often called "pius."* Sometimes it is obviously apt, and even if it were not his peculiar badge, we would understand at once why Vergil employed it. When he has buried his nurse Caieta, at pius exsequiis Aeneas rite solutis . . .5 (But pius Aeneas, when the funeral rites were duly paid ... ) no one would object to its insertion, since the rites Aeneas performs clearly demand it; nor even when Aeneas calls himself "pius," for not only is it right to assert his piety before Venus, but the rest of the line explains the epithet, sum pius Aeneas, raptor qui ex hoste penn. tis classe veJw mecum . 6 (I am pius Aeneas, who cany with me in my fleet my household gods, snatched from the foe ... ) whoever would think first of his household gods, in a moment of great danger, eminently deserves such a title. Sometimes, however, it is not at all obvious why Aeneas should be thus distinguished, and yet it should *Latin pius has a range of meaning which is wider than "pious" or "reverent," e.g., "dutiful," "obedient," "upright." THE ST. JOHN'S REVIEW not be called even then an idle or an ornamental epithet. When Aeneas attacks Mezentius, tum pius Aeneas hastam iacit (then pius Aeneas casts a spear)', not so much because Mezentius is "comtemptor deum" ("scorner of the gods") is Aeneas glorified, 8 as because Aeneas must be shown to be pious even in war. That is what he is no matter what he does. The action does not explain the epithet, but the epithet is nevertheless its complement. It is the basis on which Aeneas' prowess rests, and as without it, he would not be what he is, Vergil employs it in its most extreme consequences, where it is not visibly effective and yet not wholly powerless. The particular action and the generic epithet are indissolubly linked, not in some mechanical way, so that Aeneas will not only be pius when he pays homage to the gods, but also when he fights, and especially when he fights an irreligious man. As Horner works on an even larger scale than Vergil, his technique differs radically. He must give more examples of the neutral as well as of the pregnant epithet. He must impress upon the audience not only how minimal the virtue in an epithet may be, but also how much greatness it can, when evoked, suggest. An epithet that shows an extraordinary range is amymon, which sometimes means a routine efficiency and sometimes a moral blamelessness. When Horner says, For [Achilles] was by far the best, and the horses also, who carried the blameless (amymlm) son of Peleus, 9 he set its meaning very high: as best of the Achaens, Achilles is blameless, even as the mortal horse he yokes in with his immortal horses deserves the same recognition;10 but when in the Odyssey he calls Aegisthus blameless, 11 he sets its meaning at the very lowest mark. Great virtue can exist with great baseness: Aegisthus was of good family, bold (Nestor is partisan when he calls him a coward), 12 and surely as excellent as Antinous and Eurymachus, the worst of Penelope's suitors, who yet excelled all the others in virtue Y Between Achilles and Aegisthus lies the whole range of virtue, whose indifference to morality the Odyssey makes clear. When, however, Athena looks for "godlike Pandarus," in order that she might urge him to renew the war, and finds him, the "strong and blameless son of Lycaon," the irony in his perfection is obvious: he is an excellent bowman but a fool." Homer takes care that such a twist may not be lost on the hearer, for he repeats the same lines later, when Aeneas reproaches Pandarus for not employing his skill, and he insists that he did all he could in vain: he should have left his bow at home .15 It is its repetition within a changed setting that marks the epithet as a variant on its common significance. As Pandarus is a blameless bowman but blameworthy for his attempt o11 Menelaus' life, so he is innocent of Aeneas' accusation, but he ought never to have brought his bow. And again, who does not feel it is charged with a different feeling, when the dying Patroclus predicts that "blameless 35 �Achilles" shall kill Hector? 16 when Patroclus forgives Achilles for sending him to his death, Patroclus whom Homer himself calls blameless after his death? 17 To restrict the epithets to mere efficiency in these scenes, or to deny that the audience would respond to them, deprives the Iliad of half its effect and turns it into a scrapheap. "Ajax in his blameless heart knew-and shuddered before-the works of the gods, that Zeus it was who completely thwarted the battle and wished the Trojans victory. " 18 If Ajax now retreats, he cannot be blamed, for conscious of his courage, he is not ashamed to yield when Zeus favors the Trojans. Kala thymon amymona is unique in the Iliad, and hence is proof against all charges of metrical convenience; and since it agrees so well with the passage, it cannot be dismissed as accidental. Poulydamas is often called blameless, 19 and though it seems at first ornamental, as we watch him in action, the epithet fills out and is explained. He first obtains it in a list of heroes, where, though it plays no role, it prepares us for his blameless advice thereafter; which Hector at first accepts but later, to his sorrow, ignores. 20 Homer, in fact, goes out of his way to confer upon him this epithet; for, when amymon no longer fits the metre, he substitutes another word (perhaps his own invention) to express the same thing: "The other Trojans obeyed the plan of blameless (amomi!toio) Poulydamas, but Asius was unwilling. " 21 Examples could be multiplied, but these suffice to indicate Homer's style and our own method. An epithet must not be considered a useless relic: each contains a real part of the Iliad. Each is worked so expertly as to cement the great with the small, and yet never lose its own identity. Together they give an easy flow to the whole, even as they add a solid intricacy. No other poet has reconciled so well the subtle and the massive: we would have to look to Plato for an equal success; who joined repetition with variety and the univesal with the particular to an even greater degree; and though in this he surpasses Homer, he himself acknowledges no worthier rival. Chapter I Men and Heroes When Hector's challenge to a duel found no takers among the Achaeans, "as ashamed to ignore as afraid to accept it," Menelaus, after some time, adopting a rebuke invented by Thersites, berates them thus: 0 moi apeileteres, Achai"des, ou.ket' Achi011 (Ah me, you boasters, you women, no longer men, of Achaea). Warriors ought to believe that to be a woman is the worst calamity; and yet Homer seems to mock their belief, in making Menelaus, who warred to recover the most beautiful of women, and Thersites, the ugliest person 36 who came to Troy, the spokesmen for manliness. However this may be, both the Achaeans and Trojans not only insist on being men as opposed to women, but also on being andres as distinct from anthropoi. Anthropoi are men and women collectively, and }lien or women indifferently: and whatever may be the virtues of an anthropos it cannot be martial courage, which is the specific virtue of men. Nestor urges the Acheans to stand their ground: My friends, be men (aneres), and put shame of other humans (an~ thropoi) in your hearts, and remember, each of you, your children and wives, your possessions and parents. 2 The Achaeans themselves must be andres*, or ''he-men''; others, their own children, parents and wives, are anthropoi. "Anthropoi, or "human beings," are others, either those who lived before-proteroi anthropoi'-or those yet to come-opsigonoi anthropoi'; and if the heroes employ it of the living, they are careful not to include themselves. Agamemnon swears that he has not touched Briseis, and even if he had, he would not have sinned very much, doing he themis anthrOpOn pelei arulron ede gynaikOn 5 (as goes the way of human beings, both men and women). But Odysseus, though he repeats the rest of Agamemnon's speech almost exactly, changes this one line, when he addresses Achilles: he them is estin, anax, e t'and rOn e te gyn11ikOn 6 (as is the way, my Lord, either of men or of women). Odysseus is aware that Achilles will find that oath more difficult to believe than Agamemnon's other promises; and so by a personal appeal, "my Lord," he hopes to remind Achilles that he too is subject to the same passion, and thus Agamemnon's show of abstinence is all the more to be admired; but lest he risk Achilles' anger, were he to number him among human beings, Odysseus omits anthropoi and distinguishes (by "either/or") between men and women, whom Agememnon had classed together. That Achilles, in spite of Odysseus' precaution, does not credit the oath, and that he would have taken offense had Odysseus called him human, his reply indicates; for he places Menelaus and Agememnon among meropes anthropoi (literally, humans endowed with speech) though it can only there mean husbands, and calls himself aner agathos kili echephron ("a good and sensible man").' Others are anthropoi, but never is another an anthropos. If you wish to be an individual, you must be either aner or gyne, "man" or Woman";_ but if you belong to a crowd, indistinguishable from your neighbor, you are both catalogued together under "human beings. " 8 The singular anthropos occurs but thrice in the Iliad, twice in 11 ,. Aner is a singular form; plural forms are andres, aneres. SPRING 1985 �a general sense and perhaps once of an individual, but in all three cases Homer speaks in his own name, and two of them occur in similes.' And not only do humans in the heroic view lack all uniqueness and belong more to the past or the future than to the present, but even Odysseus seems to young Antilochus, as a member of a prior generation, more anthropos than aner. 10 Old age is as absolute as death, which deprives Hector and Patroclus of their "manhood and youthful prime" (androteta kai heben) ," of an heroic manhood that lasts but an instant. Odysseus is consigned to the world of anthropoi and Hector to Hades. Achilles in the ninth book is found "pleasing his heart with the dear-toned lyre and singing the famous deeds of men" (klea andron); 12 whereas Aeneas, before declaiming his genealogy to Achilles, remarks that "we know each other's lineage and have heard the famous words of mortal human beings" (proklyta epea thneton anthropon).13 Deeds are done by andres, words are spoken by anthropoi; and if human beings do anything, it is only the tillage of the fields. 14 The hero's contempt for speeches is but part of his contempt for anthropoi, 15 and yet they depend on them for the immortality of their own fame. 16 Anthropoi are the descendants of andres, the shadows, as it were, that the heroes cast into the future, where these poor copies of themselves live on; and as the adulation they will give would seem to justify their own existence, it is proper that these later generations, extolling the heroes beyond their worth, should look on them as demigods: so the word hemitheoi, "demigods," occurs but once, in a passage on the future destruction of the Achaeans' wall, and not accidentally it is coupled there with andres (hemitheon genos and ron)." Under one condition are the heroes willing to regard themselves as anthropoi if they refer at the same time to the gods. Achilles makes the two heralds, Talthybius and Eurybates, witnesses to his oath: pros te theon makaron pros te thrlCton anthrOpOn 18 (before the blessed gods and mortal men). The gods are blessed and immortal, while anthropoi are mortal, and it is only their weakness, when confronted with the splendid power of the gods, that makes the heroes resign themselves to being human. "Shall there be evil war and dread strife," ask the Achaeans and Trojans, "or does Zeus bind us in friendship, Zeus who dispenses war to anthropoi?"19 Whenever the heroes feel the oppressive weight of their mortality, they become, in their own opinion, like other men, who are always human beings; 20 and the gods also, if they wish to insist on their own superiority, or no longer wish to take care of the heroes, call them in turn anthrapoi; as Athena does, in calming Ares, who has just heard of his son's death: For ere now some other, better in his strength and hands than he, has been slain or will yet be slain, for it is hard to save the generation and offspring of all men (anthrOpoi). 21 THE ST. JOHN'S REVIEW If anyone had the right to be called a hero, surely this Ascalaphus, a son of Ares, had; but Athena wishes to point out his worthlessness and deprive him of any divine status, so that Ares' regret at his loss might be diminished. For the gods are not concerned with men insofar as they are mortal, but on the condition of their possible divinity. How far apart the Achaeans and Trojans are from ordinary men, the word "~hero"* shows; Homer identifies it with aner (the phrase heroes andres thrice occurs), 22 and it clearly has nothing to do with anth ropoi, for even we can feel how jarring the union heroes anthropoi would have been." But in what consists the heroic distinction? First, in lineage: the heroes are either sons of gods or can easily find, within a few generations, a divine ancestor; and second, in providence: the gods are concerned with their fate. Zeus is a father to them-"father of men (andron) and gods" -who pities them and saves them from death, while he is not the father but the king of mortal creations-has te theoisi kai anthropoisi anassei ("who is lord over gods and men"). 24 Zeus acts toward the heroes as Odysseus was said to treat his subjects-"he was gentle as a father" 25-and he acts toward us as Agamemnon toward his men: distant, haughty, indifferent. As the providence extended over human beings is unbenevolent, Zeus dispenses war to anthropoi, himself careless of its consequences; but it is a "father Zeus" who, Agamemnon believes, will aid the Achaens and defeat the perfidious Trojans; and as father Zeus he later pities Agamemnon and sends an eagle for an omen. 26 Andres and theoi (gods) belong to the same order: they may be built on different scales, but they are commensurate with one another. 27 Achilles is a theios aner: 28 theios anthropos would be unthinkable. The direct intervention of the gods seems to elevate man to aner, whereas the flux of fortune, in which no caring providence can be seen, degrades him to anthropos. "Of all the things that breathe and move upon the earth," Odysseus tells Amphinomus, "the earth nurtures nothing weaker than a human being (akidnoteron anthropoio); for as long as the gods grant him virtue and his limbs are strong, he thinks he will meet with no evil in the future; but whenever the blessed gods assign him sorrows, then he bears them, though struck with grief, with a steadfast heart."" When, however, Zeus pities the horses of Achilles, who weep for Patroclus, he regrets that he gave to mortal Peleus horses ageless and immortal, for "of all the things that breathe and move upon the earth, nothing is more pitiful than a he-man (oizyroteron andros). " 30 Odysseus talks of anlhropoi; Zeus is concerned only with andres, those among us whom the gods favour and try to raise above the common lot of mankind. It is not the uncertainty in man's life which seems to Zeus man's sorrow; for the gods can put an end to chance and ensure his success: but even the gods are powerless to change man's fate, *Greek, heros (singular), herOes (plural). 37 �no matter how many gifts they might lavish on him. Mortality and mortality alone makes for the misery of man. Odysseus, on the other hand, did not find man's burden in mortality (already implied in anthropos) but in his inability to guarantee, as long as he lives, his happiness. Not his necessary death, in spite of the gods' attention, but his necessary helplessness, because of the gods' wilful despotism, seems to Odysseus the weakness of man. Although Zeus and Odysseus here state the human and divine opinions about man's nature, they also reflect, in a more general way, the difference between the Iliad and the Odyssey. Zeus spoke in one, Odysseus in the other. The Iliad is an image of a war-torn world, and as such is but a partial view of the world around us. This deficiency the Odysset; corrects, for it more accurately depicts the simply human things. Not man protected by the gods (man at war), but man without the gods, is the subject of the Odyssey. Odysseus indeed is an exception in his own world, and carries with him some of the providence that was so universal in the Iliad. Both Achaeans and Trojans obtained divine assistance there: but not one of the gods now favours the suitors; so that, even if providence still works for Odysseus (who must especially be helped against the suitors, andres hyperphialoi-"overweening hemen" -that they are), 31 it leaves the rest of the world intact, little affected by the gods' presence: and this is the world of human beings-" Even as the word anlhropos is more frequent in the Odyssey than in the Iliad, while the word heros occurs almost twice as often in the Iliad, 33 so Odysseus saw the cities of many men (anthropoi), and Achilles cast into Hades the lives of many heroes. 34 The Odyssey takes place after the Trojan war, when those, upon whom the heroes had relied for their fame, are living and remember in song the deeds of the past. 35 Phemius among the suitors and Demodocus among the Phaeacians celebrate an almost dead heroic world; and Odysseus also, since he shared in that past but never belonged to it, recounts rather than acts out his own adventures. As Odysseus' deeds are only mythoi so he himself is an anthropos 36 not only as opposed to the gods, which even Achilles might allow to be true of himself, but absolutely so. 37 War is the business of heroes andres, peace of anthropoi; and as Odysseus never did quite fit into the Iliad and was an obscure figure (his greatest exploit occurred at night), 38 he becomes in the Odyssey preeminent, while the former great are mere ghosts in Hades, and depend on Odysseus for their power of speech. The heroes are survivors in the Odyssey; they no longer dominate the stage, they are old-fashioned and out of favor. Menelaus is a hero (and often uses the word)," but Telemachus becomes a hero only at his court, 40 where the spell of the past still lingers. Laertes is a hero, or rather "hero-oldman" (geron heros), 41 who putters about in his garden. Other old men are heroes: Aegyptius, Halitherses, Echeneus 42 and Eumaeus calls Odysseus, when disguised as an old man, hero." The word has been preserved in the country and remains on the lips of a 38 swineherd. It has become an empty title, without any suggestion of force, nor even as an indication of rank, for Moulius, a servant of Amphinomus, can now l~y claim to it. 44 Chapter II Achaeans and Trojans To Agamemnon's demand for an equal prize in return, were he to give Chryseis back to her father, Achilles objects: "Most worthy Atreides-most rapacious of all!how will the magnanimous Achaeans give you a prize?" 1 The phrase megathymoi Achaioi would not at first draw us to examine it, though we might doubt its suitability, were it not that, after Amemenon has used it (in echoing Achilles), it never again occurs in the Iliad. 2 Not the Achaeans but the Trojans are megathymoi. 3 Why then did Achilles employ it? Megathymos bears here two senses: "great-spirited" and "greatly generous." Achilles asks Agememnon, on the one hand, how the Achaeans, generous though they are, could give him a prize, when all the spoils are already divided. And he asks him, on the other, how they, indignant at Agememnon's greed, could grant him anything more. As Achilles himself is often megathymos, 4 he transfers his own epithet to all the Achaeans, in the hope that, as his anger rises against Agememnon, the Achaens, carried along by his rhetoric, will side with him. "Great-spirited" is, as the BT Scholiast remarks, demagogic. The Achaeans should be as indignant as himself; they too should revile Agamemnon's presumption; but Agememnon twists Achilles' phrase to his own end: ... but if the megathymoi Acha_eans give [me] a prize, suiting it to my heart, so as to be worth as much- 5 Had not Agmemnon wished to echo Achilles' line, the apodosis would have been expressed (e.g. essonlai megathymoi, "they will be magnanimous"); but proleptically, as it were, he puts his conclusion in the protasis. Disregarding megathymoi as "great-spirited" (which Achilles the more intended), he assumes it means, ignoring Achilles' irony, "greatly generous": The Achaeans will give him adequate recompense because they are magnanimous, and know how to prepare a gift agreeable to the spirit of a king. 6 The thymos of Agamemnon will find a sympathetic response in the megas thymos of the Achaeans. He will have nothing to fear from so liberal an army. The Trojans are megathymoi not in generosity but in martial temper, for their leaders use it as an exhortation, 7 even as Hector urges them, as hyperthymoi ("overspirited") to fight in his absence, or not to let Achilles frighten them' They are "over-spirited" as well as "highspirited" in Homer's opinion.' Their spirit is not only grand but excessive; their exurberance in war turns eas- ily into pure fury-" They are in the opinion of others, SPRING 1985 �though not in Homer's, hyperphialoi, "over-proud" and "arrogant," 11 a vice that Homer attributes to Penelope's suitors, 12 whom he also calls agenores, "super-men," as it were, or "muscle-bound"; and this the Trojans also are. 13 Magnanimity may be a vice or a virtue. It contains for example, the intransigence as well as the fearlessness of Achilles." It recognizes no obstacles and knows no bounds. It is so high-keyed that the slightest jar untunes it; it has no slack to take up, nor any reserve to expend. It is all action and no recoil. Thus the Trojans are "highspirited" both when they see the blood of Odysseus, and when they see one son of Dares killed and the other in flight. 15 In one case, they are spurred to charge and cluster round Odysseus, while in the other they are crestfallen. Men who are high-spirited flourish on success but cannot withstand adversity. "Their courage rises and falls with their animal spirits. It is sustained on the field of battle by the excitement of action, by the hope of victory, by the strange influence of sympathy"" whereas those more reserved and less outwardly spirited (menea pneiontes,-Homerically, "breathing furious courage")17 might accomplish less in victory, but would not fall off so much in defeat. They would possess a resilience and a steadiness the Trojans lack. Nestor in the Doloneia asks whether anyone would be willing to spy on the Trojans, but he begins by assuming no one would: "Friends, no man, trusting to his bold and steadfast heart (thymos tolmeeis), would go among the high-spirited Trojans." 18 Whoever might have a thymos tolmeeis would be not only thymodes ("high-spirited") but tlemon ("stout-hearted") as well. He would be megathymos and megaletrJr, "high-spirited" and "greathearted," combined. The thymos would bestow daring, the etor ("heart") endurance:" the one would match the high spirit of the Trojans, "deaf as the sea, hasty as fire"; the other would keep him steady and patient. Thus Diomedes who is "high-spirited" and "over-spirited" picks as his companion "much-enduring" and "great-hearted" Odysseus:" for as he kills Dolan and other Trojans, so Odysseus calms the horses of Rhesus, lest they be unnerved at the sight of Hood and corpses 21 Were then Odysseus' and Diomedes' virtues united in the same person, he would be the best: so Achilles has a megaletora thymon as often as he is megathymos. 22 To be able to suffer qtrietly and act qtrickly are complementary virtues that in Achilles seem to coalesce. But the Trojans are not, except twice, megaletores: once Hector, who is himself "great-hearted,"" urges the Trojans to be so; and once Achilles is surprised that they are. 24 The Trojans are not only megathymoi but also hippodamoi, ''tamers of horses'': one word refers to their spirit in war, the other to their peaceful occupation. They exhibit, however, two aspects of the same character. Their temper in war reflects the temper of the horses they tame in peace: we must think of cavalry officers rather than of trainers and grooms: as if the quick, restive, and irritable humours they subdue in horses rubbed off on themselves.25 Pandarus calls to the Trojans: "Arise, high- THE ST. JOHN'S REVIEW spirited Trojams, goaders of horses. " 26 He exhorts them in their martial qualities, both in the nature they inherited and the skill they acquired: they would engage their whole person. In another passage, the "over-spirited Trojans" keep pressing in on Ajax, who sometimes turns to flee and sometimes checks the ranks of "Trojans tamers of horses. " 27 Had Homer not wished to indicate how close these two epithets are in meaning, he could have easily found another word or phrase. At any rate, it is one of the few instances where hippodamoi occurs in a battle scene, and the only time Homer uses it while there is fighting. 28 After Menelaus and Paris have finished arming themselves, "they walked into the space between the Achaeans and Trojans, and their glances were fearful: wonder held those who beheld them, Trojans tamers of horses and well-greaved Achaeans.""' Achaeans and Trojans both lack an epithet, when Homer sees them merely as two groups of men; 30 but as soon as Paris and Menelaus impress them with their look, and Homer turns to describe their feelings, they become distinguishable. The Trojans are tamers of horses as the Achaeans are wellgreaved: but the epithets are not of the same order. If you see the Trojans, you cannot tell that they train horses; if you see the Achaeans, you know they are well-greaved. They appear well-armed: they may or may not be brave warriors: but the Trojans, all of them, are high-spirited in war. They show, even in their wonder, all of their spirit-as if their surprise, though momentary, stirred them completely and declared their profession, while the suprise of the Achaeans glanced off their greaves. 31 The Trojans are more readily affected than the Achaeans, who can remove their armour and be different in peace than in war: but the Trojans cannot so easily shake off their temper. Their epithets are general and do not particularly belong to an army. If we saw them in peacetime, they would be still "high-spirited" and "tamers of horses." But the Achaeans' epithets describe only their military aspect and offer no clue to their peaceful appearance. We know at once more about the Trojans than about the Achaeans, who are, as it were, many-sided and polytropoi, "of many turns": 32 there is no Odysseus among the Trojans. Not their outward show but the Trojans' inner fibre impresses Horner; he sees it immediately. The Achaeans, however, wear long hair, are well-greaved and bronzeclad, and their eyes flash; while the Trojans, though no doubt they too are bronze-clad and shielded, display more of themselves, and have a kind of openness in their nature that the Achaeans lack. 33 The Trojans' epithets tell us what they are, those of the Achaeans only hint at what they are. We learn about the Achaeans-what kind of men they are-before we ever meet the Trojans, whom we first get to know but briefly at the end of the second book; and yet we may say that our knowledge of them both is almost complete by the tenth: for it is remarkable how seldom their distinctive epithets appear in the later books. Although the most sustained and violent engagements 39 �take place in Books 11-17, it is not in these books that the epithets of the Trojans and Achaeans are most frequently found; they abound instead in the early books, of which only the fifth and eighth books include great battles, and cluster round interludes in the war rather than in the war itself. Euknemides ("well-greaved") for example, occurs nineteen times in Books 1-10, but only twelve in Books 11-24; chalkochitoncm ("bronze-coated") seventeen times in Books 1-10, eight afterwards; and kare komoiintes ("long-haired") twenty-two times in Books 2-9, four later. In the case of the Trojans, whose high and excessive spirit has more of a place in war (and hence megathymoi and hyperthymoi occur throughout the Iliad), only hippodamoi suffers a like decline: seventeen times in Books 2-10, seven afterwards. When the epithets have served their purpose-to introduce us to the Achaeans and Trojansand Homer becomes increasingly concerned with Achilles, they are more sparingly used. Another reason why hippodamoi is used less frequently is that Homer assigns to the Trojans many more similes (which both supplement and replace the epithet) after the tenth book than before: they obtain two in the first half (one in Book 3 and one in Book 4, but fourteen from Books 13 to 22. Of joint similes-those shared equally with the Achaeans-there are four before Book 10 and nine after. For the Achaeans the opposite holds true: eighteen similes occur in Books 2-9, nine in Books 11-19. The similes complete Homer's description of the Achaeans and Trojans, and as we start from the Achaean side and slowly move across the lines to the Trojan (the plague of the Achaeans turns into the funeral of Hector), so the number of the Achaeans' similes diminishes, while that of the Trojans' increases. We must start then (like Homer) with the Achaean host, which is first presented in the second book, where almost half of its similes occur. When the Achaeans first assemble, at Agamemnon's command, they seem like a mass of bees that issue in constant stream from a smooth rock and then fly in grapelike clusters to spring flowers: so the Achaeans at first make the earth groan when they come from their tents, and a hum pervades the host, but then, once seated in serious concentration, they are perfectly quiet. 34 But as soon as Agamemnon has finished his disastrous speech, they seem like long waves of the sea that east and south winds agitate-they are disturbed contradictorily, and as thick-set wheat, the shrill west wind shakes them-they are pliant and disordered; and with shouts and cries, whose din reaches up to heaven, they drag their ships down to the sea. 35 In their desire to return home, they forget all discipline: no longer distinguishable as individuals as they were as bees when gathering (slight though that individuality might have been), they become the riot and chaos of wheatfield and sea. So much have they been stirred up, that even after Odysseus has checked them, they return to the assembly as they left it, shouting like the tumultuous ocean which breaks against a shore. 36 Later, when they scatter to their tents, their shout is the crash of waves against a high-jutting 40 rock, that waves never leave; 37 yet they are now more singly resolved than before, for only the east wind (no east, south, and west as before) moves them, and they center round one object-Troy's capture- like waves that always drench one rock." The individuality of the Achaeans, lost after Agememnon' s speech, is slowly restored in the succeeding similes, when they are marshalled and turned once again into disciplined troops. The glint of their arms is like fire; the stamp of their feet like the swelling crash of geese, cranes, and swans; the number of their host like leaves, flowers, and flies in spring. 39 They regain in these animal identities their former status, although they are not yet distinct until the next simile: as shepherds easily recognize their own flock in a pasture, so the leaders ranked the Achaeans for battle. 40 Then the catalogue is made, which completes their ranking, and they seem like fire spread across the whole plain of the Scamander, and the earth quakes like thunder." The Achaeans are marshalled noiselessly: the necessary clang of their weapons and tramp of their feet alone are heard; as if their high spirits had been purged in the assembly and nothing remained but a quiet resolution. Fortissimus in ipso discrimine exerdtus est, qui ante discrimen quietissimus. 42 (That army is bravest in the struggle itself, which before the struggle is more quiet.) Homer made all of the second book as a contrast to the Trojans, who as noisily prepare for war as they advance with cries against the silent Achaeans. 43 And later when the truce is broken, while the Achaeans, in fear of their commanders, silently move like the continuous roll of waves, and the only sounds are commands, "nor would you say they had speech"; the Trojans shouted, like ewes bleating ceaselessly, "nor was their clamour in concert, for the voices were mixed, as the men had been called from many lands."" As the Achaeans are silent, they can obey the orders they hear; but the Trojans would drown in their own clamour any command. The simile of the Achaeans is deliberately inexact, for the echoing shore, against which the waves break, has no counterpart in themselves. No sooner are they compared to the sea, than they are dintinguished from it. They are, what is inconceivable in nature, an ordered series of silent waves. The Trojans, however, exactly correspond to their simile: myriads of eyes pent up together in confusion. Of the Trojans' other similes in the midst of battle, four single out the clamour they make, as waves, or winds, or storm:" but the noise of the Achaeans, even when they do shout, 46 only warrants a simile if the Trojans join in, 47 and they are compared to water but once in battle: when their spirit, not any outward sign, shows vexation. 48 It is not difficult to see how the epithets of the Trojans are connected with their disorder, nor how those of the Achaeans indicate their discipline. The high-spiritedness of the Trojans would naturally express itself in cries, and the fine greaves of the Achaeans would indicate a deeper SPRJNG 1985 �efficiency. The ranks of the Trojans never equal in closeness those of the Achaeans, whose spears and shields form a solid wall, shield and helmet of one resting on helmet and shield of another, 49 Nor do the Achaeans, on the other hand, ever retreat like the Trojans: paptenen de hekastos hopei phygoi aipytr alethron90 (and each looked about, how he might escape sheer destruction). The Trojans flee, as they attack, in disorder, and more by thymos than by epistemi! ("knowledge," "skill") are they warriors. 51 They are, in the later Greek vocabulary, barbarians. Thucydides' Brasidas, in urging his troops to face bravely the lllyrians, could be describing the Trojans, who "by the loudness of their clamour are insupportable, and whose vain brandishing of weapons appears menacing, but who are unequal in combat to those who resist them; for, lacking all order, they would not be ashamed, when forced, to desert any position, and a battle, wherein each man is master of himself, would give a fine excuse to all for saving their own skins. " 52 How then are we to explain the silent efficiency of the Achaeans and the noisy disorder of the Trojans? Has Homer given a reason for this difference? Is there one principle whose presence would force the Achaeans into discipline, and whose absence would let the Trojans sink into anarchy? Aidos, "shame," seems to distinguish them. There are two kinds of aidos: one we may call a mutual or military shame, the other an individual or civil shame. 53 The first induces respect for those who are you equals; or, if fear also is present, your superiors; 54 the second entails respect for those weaker than yourself. The first is in the domain of andres, the second of anthropoi. 55 Hector shows civil shame when, in speaking to Andromache, he says: "I am terribly ashamed before the Trojans, men and women both, if I cringe like someone ignoble and shun battle. " 56 And Hector is killed because he would be ashamed to admit his error (of keeping the Trojans in the field after Achilles' reappearance), ashamed lest someone baser than himself might Bay, "Hector, trusting to his strength, destroyed his people."" As commander of his troops, with no one set above him, Hector must either feel the lash of public opinion, or become as disobedient as Achilles, who at first lacks all respect for Agamemnon and later all respect for Hector's corpse. 58 When, however, the Achaeans silently advance against the Trojans, they show another kind of shame, "desirous in their hearts to defend one another." 59 Their respect is not for others but for themselves. Neither those stronger nor those weaker than themselves urge them to fight, but each wishes to help the other, knowing that in "concerted virtue" resides their own safety. 60 Be ashamed before one another," shouts Agamemnon (and later Ajax), "in fierce contentions: when men feel shame, more are saved than killed; but when they flee, neither is fame nor any strength acquired. " 61 And even when the Achaeans retreat, they do not scatter like the Trojans, but stay by their tents, held by "shame and fear, for they call to one another continuously. " 62 Whatever fear they 11 THE ST. JOHN'S REVIEW have before their leaders is tempered by their shame before one another; and as, according to Brasidas, three things make men good soldiers-will, shame, and obedience-•3so the Achaeans show their will in prefering war to peace, 64 their shame in mutual respect, 65 and their obedience in the fear of their leaders. 66 Agamemnon as a good king and Ajax as a brave warrior appeal to military shame, when they incite the Achaeans; but aged Nestor urges them in the name of civil virtue: "Friends, be men (andres) and place in your spirit shame of other human beings (anthropoi), and let each of you remember your children, your wives, possessions, and your parents, whether they still live or now are dead; for the sake of those who are not here I beseech you to stand your ground. " 67 Even as Nestor has placed his worst troops in the middle, so that they will be forced, though unwilling, to fight, 68 so there he wishes to regard all the Achaeans as caught between the Trojans in front and their own families behind them; and he hopes by this necessity, of avoiding death at the hands of one and humiliation in the eyes of the other, they will resist. Nestor leaves nothing to personal courage: it is of a piece to rely on necessity and to appeal to civil shame; for to a man who has outlived two generations the bonds of society would seem stronger than those of an anny, nor would his own weakness give him any confidence in others' strength. As a very old man he has no peers, and all relations seem to him the relation of the young to the old, so that in making the Achaeans respect their parents, he covertly makes them respect himself. Unable to inspire his men by fear of himself and unwilling to trust to military discipline, Nestor falls back on the rehearsal of his own past prowess and on his soldiers' recollection of those absent. 69 Military shame never once arouses the Trojans, whom the cry "Be men!" always encourages; and once, when Sarpedon tries to rally the Lycians-aidas, o Lykioi, pose pheygete; nyn thooi este ("Shame, you Lycians, whither are you fleeing? Be vigorous now!")-the appeal is to civil shame: for as warriors they are urged to be "vigorous," and shame is only invoked to check their flight. 70 The Trojans rely more on their leaders than on their troops, 71 for we always read of the "Trojans' and Hector's" attacking," as if the single virtue of Hector more than equaled the mass effort of his men. 73 If the Trojans act in concert, it is rather by the example of one man than by any bravery in themselves; and Hector himself resembles Xenophon's Proxenus, who "was able to rule those who were noble and brave, but unable to instill shame or fear into his own troops, since he actually was more ashamed before his men than they before him. " 74 Aeneas, for example, can rouse Hector and the other captains by an appeal to shame, but it would be unthinkable to employ the same argument before all. 75 Though Nestor's call to the Achaeans does appeal to a kind of civil shame, theirs differs in this from the civil shame of the Trojans, which affects only their greatest warriors. How little the Trojans as a whole are affected by honor 41 �or shame, Homer shows us in the Doloneia, where under the secrecy of night the basest motives and the most cowardly actions prevai\. 76 Nestor asks an Achaean to volunteer for a night patrol, and as reward he offers great fame under heaven, a black ewe with her lamb from each of the chiefs, and the perpetual right of being present at banquets and feasts. n The two last inducements are mere tokens, deliberately intended to be insufficient by themselves; so that the real emphasis might fall on the desire for fame, which would animate only the noblest heroes. When, however, Hector tries to provoke a Trojan to the same exploit, he offers a considerable prize: the best horses and chariot of the Achaeans." The consideration of honor barely obtains mention. Hector does not even think that fame would be an incentive at all, while Nestor makes the material gain so little that fame alone must suffice. The cupidity of Dolon (though his being the only male among five sisters somewhat pardons it) is the extreme example of Trojan shamelessness, while the honorable ambitions of Diomedes, though slightly depreciated by his hesitation, is but the kind of nobility in which all the Achaeans share. Lessing grasped very well the difference between the Achaeans and Trojans, when he wrote that "what in barbarians springs from fury and hardness, works in the Greeks by principle, in whom heroism, like the spark concealed in flint, sleeps quietly, and as long as no outer force awakens it, robs it of neither its clearness nor its coldness; while barbaric heroism is a clear, devouring flame which always consumes (or at least blackens) every other good quality. If Homer leads the Trojans to battle with wild cries, but the Greeks in resolute silence, the commentators are quite right to observe, that the poet wishes to depict one side as barbarians and the other as a civilized people. I am surprised, however, that another passage, where there is a similar contrast of character, has not been noticed. The enemy leaders have made a truce, and are engaged in the cremation of their dead, which on both sides takes place with much weeping. But Priam forbids the Trojans to weep.79 'He forbids them to weep,' says Mme. Dacier, 'because he fears they may become soft, and in the morning go into battle with less ardour.' Quite true; but still I ask: Why must Priam alone be afraid of this? Why did not Agamemnon also give the same order? The meaning of the poet goes deeper. He wishes to teach us, that only the civilized Greeks can both weep and be brave, while the barbarous Trojans, in order to be brave, had to stifle all their humanity. " 80 Chapter III· Achilles and Agamemnon forces us to find other traits peculiar to themselves. Who then is Achilles? Homer begs a goddess to sing the wrath of "Peleides Achilles.'' 1 Achilles is the son of Peleus. he is marked off from all other men because of his father: as an only son, without brothers, he was entirely Peleus' heir. 2 And were we to ask, Who is Peleus? we would be told: "Aeacides," the son of Aeacus. And if we persisted, and wanted to know who he was, Achilles himself boasts it: "Aeacus was from Zeus. " 3 Achilles then is "Zeusborn," "Zeus-nurtured," or "dear to Zeus." In three generations he goes back to Zeus, and beyond him it would be foolish to go. To ask him who he is means to ask him his lineage; and as he can only define himself in terms of his past, were his ancestors unknown, he would be a non-entity. 4 In Achilles' patronymic is summed up part of his own greatness. He is partly the work of generations. Achilles has so much the springs of all his actions in the past, that Homer can call him "Peleides" without adding "Achilles," though it is Agamemnon, who even more than he depends on his ancestors, that first addresses him so; while Homer calls him "Peleion" for the first time only after Agamemnon has mocked and doubted his divine ancestry. 5 Achilles, however, is not only the son of Peleus but the grandson of Aeacus; and yet to be called "Aeacides," when he is actually "Peleides," means that he has inherited something that was common to all his ancestors. Achilles is called the son of Aeacus first in the Trojan catalogue: Ennomus and Amphimachus were both killed by Achilles in the guise of "swift-footed Aeacides."' Achilles resembles his grandfather in his ability to kill. As a warrior he is indistinguishable from his forefathers: killing is a family profession.' During the embassy, when Achilles is most idle, though ironically most Achilles (for his wrath makes up a great part of him), no one calls him the son of Peleus; rather they point out to him how much he has failed to follow his father's precepts.' When, however, he returns to the fighting, his father's name is almost as common as his own; and as he assumes his ancestral name, he takes up his father's spear, which no more could be hurled by another than "Peleides" be said of another;' while again, in the last book, where his own name occurs more frequently than anywhere else, his patronymic hardly appears,· and he is never called to his face the son of Peleus. Somehow he has outlived it. As Hector had many brothers, to tell us at first that he is the son of Priam would mean little: so Achilles, who first mentions him, calls him "Hector the man-slayer. " 10 Paris, contrariwise, does not even deserve his father's name, for his only distinction lies in his theft: he is most of all the "husband of Helen, " 11 although in his braver moments, which do not last very long, he earns the right, that other heroes have without question, to be called ''Priamides.'' 12 Achilles and Hector are heroes, one an Achaean, the other a Trojan: but to know them better, so that even away from their camps, we would not mistake them, 42 But when we ask, "Who is Odysseus?" and tum to the first lines of the Odyssey, the answer is quite different: "Tell me of the man, Muse, of many wiles who wandered SPRING 1985 �very far:" Odysseus is a clever man who wandered very far. He 1s not made distinct from other men because he is the only son of Laertes, but because he traveled. His genealogy is contained in what he himself did and not in what his father might have been. Laertes' father is known, but his grandfather is unmentioned: tradition indeed gave him two family stems. 13 Homer in the Iliad never calls him anything but Odysseus, though other heroes address him as if he were like themselves-"Zeusborn Laertiades, very-crafty Odysseus" -but even here his subtlety belongs to himself, while his divine origins (whatever they may have been) belong to his father. Homer in the Odyssey calls him "Laertiades," except in a special case, 14 only after he has returned to Ithaca. 15 For twenty years he is merely Odysseus, but he reassumes his lineage as soon as he lays claim to his kingdom. His patrimony gives him back his piety .16 Ovid understood Odysseus when he made him say: Nam genus et proavus et quae non fecimus ipsi, /Vix ea nostra voco. 17 (Race and ancestors and what we ourselves have not done, I hardly call ours.) I Even the shift from the plural "fecimus" to the singular "voco'' reflects his uniqueness. 18 Odysseus' adventures are his lineage, making his very name superfluous. He is a traveler, who "saw the cities of many men and knew their mind"; and his name, put almost as an afterthought (without his patronymic), 19 cannot make clearer his identity, nor add much lustre to his eminence. He is like Thersites, whose father and country are not given, 20 his deformity and outspokenness being title enough; so that to have Odysseus, Thersites' closest rival in anonymity, answer his abuses was a master-stroke. Their resemblance is so close that Sophocles' Neoptolemus, when Philoctetes asks about a man "clever and skilled in speaking," thinks he must mean Odysseus, whereas he actually means Thersites. 21 Moreover, Philoctetes, believing it to be a truer lineage, can even call Odysseus the son of Sisyphus; and Odysseus can tell Eurnaeus that he is illegitirnate.U When Odysseus tells the Cyclops his name-"No-one is my name: my father, my mother, and all my companions call me No-one" 23-he is speaking more truthfully than when he tells Alcinous that he is the son of Laertes. 24 His anonymity is the result of his guile, for Homer has him pun* on the likeness of outis and metis. 25 His wisdom made him no one, and cut all his ties with the past. Although Achilles, if opposed to Odysseus, seems to consist in nothing but his past, yet when opposed to Agamemnon, he becomes more an individual. Indeed, he stands somewhere in between Agamemnon and *The Cyclopes confuse Odysseus' assumed name, Outis, with outis, "no one" (Od. 9. 366, 408, 410). Odysseus' pun is based on the resemblance of the alternative word for "no one," mi!tis, to m~tis, "guile," "cunning" (9. 410, 414). THE ST. JOHN'S REVIEW Odysseus. Agamemnon does not even appear at first as himself, but as" Atreides lord of men," whil; Achille~ is "divine" in comparison. 26 Not until he differs from the rest of the Achaeans (":ho wish to restore Chryseis), though he has been mentioned thrice before, does Horner call hun Agamemnon;" even so does Achilles call him "Atreides" after he has convened the assembly, but ''Agamemnon'' when he wishes to single him out for his crime 18 Agamemnon rises to rebut Achilles, but Homer first clothes him in all possible authority: "Hero Atreides, wide-ruling Agamemnon."" This majesty fails to impress Achilles, who begms h1s reply, however, as if he agreed with him: "Most worthy Atreides," but instead of ending the line, as we later realise he should have, he cruelly inserts: "Most rapacious of all!" 30 The proper endtag ("Lord of men Agamemnon") often occurs, mostly spoken by Nestor, who, old man that he is, knows what loyalty and respect must be shown to a king. When the Achaeans are about to be catalogued, Agamemnon must have full power. He must be not only the "most worthy" because of his lineage, but also the "King of men" in his own name. 31 Later, when the fortunes of the Achaeans are lowest, Nestor again bolsters Agamemnon with his titles; and the other kings also, after the embassy to Achilles fails, subscribe in the same way their loyalty. 32 Achilles only much later, when he has sloughed off his rage, addresses him properly 33 Not until, however, Achilles swears an oath by Agamemnon's sceptre, does the conflict between them come out in the open: "Yes, by this sceptre, which never again shall grow branches or leaves, since it first left its stump on the mountain, not shall it bloom again, for the bronze blade has stripped it of its leaves and its bark: and now in turn the sons of the Achaeans, the wielders of justice, carry it, those who protect the laws that come from Zeus .... " 34 Then he flings down the sceptre, "studded with golden nails." We learn the true origin of this sceptre much later, just before Agamemnon, doing "what is right, " 35 tries the Achaeans, fearful that Achilles' refusal to fight and his desire to return home have infected the army: "Up stood strong Agamemnon with the sceptre, which Hephaestus artfully had made: Hephaestus gave it to Zeus lord Cronion, and Zeus gave it to the Treasurer of Riches (who kills with his brilliance), and lord Hermes gave it to Pelops the goader of horses, and Pelops in turn to Atreus the shepherd of his people; and Atreus when he died left it to wealthy Thyestes, and he in turn left it for Agernemnon to wield-to rule over many islands and all Argos." 36 Lessing has beautifully brought out the reason why the one sceptre receives these two descriptions: "This was the work of Hephaestus; that, an unknown hand hewed on a mountain: this belonged of old to a noble house; that to him whose fist first grasped it: this to a king whose rule extended over many islands and all Argos; that, wielded by a man in the midst of the Greeks, to whom was entrusted, with others, the defense of the laws. Here was the real difference between Agamemnon and Achilles, a difference 43 �which Achilles himself, in all his blind rage, could not but admit. " 37 The conflict between them is between authority and power, between the gifts of nature and those of an heritage. Agamemnon's authority consists in mere words (in the fame of his ancestry), and were Achilles to yield to them, as if they were deeds, he would be thought weak and cowardly." Briseis is only the pretext for this more serious difference, which must always exist, wherever power and position (potentia and potestas) do not coincide. The usurper Bolingbroke and King Richard II, for example, as made by Shakespeare, work out in more tragic fashion the dispute between Achilles and Agamemnon: for Richard relies as much on his divine appointment as Agamemnon; and Bolingbroke, like Achilles, trusts more to "blood and bone" than to ancestral right." Achilles swears by the authority of Agamemnon in terms of his own power. He swears by the sceptre as he swears by the gods: and only Achilles swears. 40 Agamemnon calls upon the gods more cautiously, as witnesses (as those who know);" whereas the gods to Achilles are no more than this sceptre, which is but the extension of his own power, losing all its force as soon as he casts it aside. Though "studded with golden nails," he holds it in no esteem. Any branch at all-" a palmer's walkingstaff" -would serve him as well. He does not need the past to rally the present. But Agamemnon, who has little confidence in his own strength, must lean upon his sceptre; unlike Hector, Achilles' equal, who leans upon a spear while he speaks." Hector's spear is replaceable, while Agamemnon's sceptre is unique: were it broken, Agamemnon would be doomed to obscurity. He swears neither by sceptre nor by gods, but rather he holds up the sceptre to all the gods. 43 His lineage, embodied in the sceptre, connects him with the gods. He looks to them: Achilles looks to himself. Odysseus alone knows how to combine, in the sceptre, the rank of Agememnon and the force of Achilles. He stops the general rout of the Achaeans, which Agamemnon's speech had caused, by making a distinction that Achilles would not, and Agamemnon could not, employ. 44 Taking the ancestral sceptre in his hand, he speaks to the kings thus: "If you disobey Agamemnon, he shall oppress you; the wrath of a Zeus-nurtured king is great; his honour comes from Zeus, and counseling Zeus loves him. 45 He uses the sceptre as an emblem of power, threatening the kings, who would be unimpressed by mere lineage, with divine vengeance. Authority lies in power. But against anyone of the rank-and-file, Agamemnon's sceptre turns into a weapon: Odysseus drives them before him with it. 46 He speaks to them quite differently: "Sit down without a murmur, and listen to others, who have more authority: many-headed rule is bad; let there be one head, one king, to whom the son of Cronus gave rule. " 47 Power lies in authority. As Zeus is Zeus to the kings, but to the common warrior the son of Cronus, 48 so Agamemnon must appear to the kings 44 as authoritative might, but to the warriors as powerful authority. Chapter IV Ancestral Virtue It is important that we do not learn the true nature of the charges that Achilles had made against Agamemnon until the second book; that the lineage of the sceptre is not disclosed until then; and that we are kept in suspense about his accusations against Agamemnon-who neither risked his life in ambush, he said, nor ever entered into the battle1 -until Achilles is no longer present, and his one defender is Thersites. 2 Only in retrospect is Achilles justified. Homer throughout the first book keeps underlining the struggle between them. Agamemnon scornfully remarks to Achilles: "If you are, in fact, stronger, a god (I suppose) gave it to you." 3 He sees what Achilles is aiming at, and, desperately, points out to him that, even though Achilles is stronger, a god gave him his strength, so that he really is no different from himself, to whose ancestor Zeus gave the sceptre. Not only does he deny the superiority of Achilles in birth (the source of Agamemnon's strength is Zeus, who is superior to any other god), but he wishes to prove that the gulf between them is not very great, since neither his own authority nor Achilles' strength is properly their own. It is a last-minute stopgap, and naturally it fails to work. But Agamemnon, confident that he has been persuasive, merely asserts what Achilles refuses to acknowledge: "so that you might know how much more powerful [authoritative] I am."' Nestor, when he tries to calm them both, adopts Agamemnon's argument. He calls Achilles "Peleides," hoping to remind him of his ancestry, and then: "If you are stronger, a goddess was your mother; but he has more authority, for he rules over more people. " 5 He does not insult Achilles by doubting his divine parentage, as Agamemnon had, but he insists on the same point. Agamemnon has greater preponderance because his kingdom is larger. The size of his empire, not the massiveness of his fist, exacts obedience. Horner seems to have arranged the catalogue in accordance with the conflict of Achilles and Agamemnon. Odysseus holds the center, just as he does in the camp. 6 but Ajax and Achilles, who occupy the camp's extreme wings, are here out of place. There are fourteen groups on either side of Odysseus: Achilles and Agamemnon are equally six places away from him. The number of ships is far greater on Agamemnon's than on Achilles' side (732 to 442); so that Homer emphasizes the wealth rather than the prowess which surrounds Agamemnon (placenames are double those on Achilles' side, and even the epithets suggest prosperity); while he neglects to list the cities of Achilles' partisans and recounts instead stories about the heroes themselves. We learn why Thoas is leader of the SPRING 1985 �Aetolians, why Tiepolemus came from Rhodes, why Nireus brought so few ships, why Achilles stayed away from the war, how Protesilaus died, and why Philoctetes is absent: 7 but with Agamemnon none of the commanders are replacements and little is said about any of them. Thus the catalogue itself reflects the individual power of Achilles and the ancestral authority of Agamemnon. 8 The catalogue is also intended to recover Agamemnon's prestige, which Achilles' attack had so greatly damaged: as if the number of his ships and of his followers would blot out his poor showing in front of Achilles, and dazzle us into acceptance of his sovereignty. Zeus also is willing, at least for a single day, to help out Nestor's plan, making Agamemnon tower over the many and superior to the heroes: "He excelled all the heroes because he was the best and led the most people." 9 Yet no one contested Achilles, when he stated that he was the best, and that Agamemnon could only boast (or pray for) such a distinction.10 And Homer's agreement, in the catalogue, with that boast is only a sop to Agamemnon's real humiliation: for no sooner has this providential superiority consoled him, than it is taken away: the Muses tell us that Ajax was the best as long as blameless Achilles remained angry .11 For this reason Ajax, in the catalogue proper, is only given a line or two, 12 and his own excellence with the spear is assigned to his namesake Oilean Ajax, who is much smaller than himself and thus no rival to Agamemnon. 13 Helen, ignorant of the dispute in the first book, sees Agamemnon enhanced by the catalogue, and unconsciously takes his part. In pointing him out to Priam"That is Atreides, wide-ruling Agamemnon, who is both a good king and a strong warrior" - 14she assigns him the virtues Achilles had claimed for himself and denied to Agamemnon. Helen settles everything in Agamemnon's favor, giving him power and authority, which Diomedes, after the Achaeans have suffered great loses, could not possibly bring himself to admit. It is impetuous Diomedes, susceptible to Achilles' rhetoric, who finally declares Agamemnon's weakness: "The son of Cronus gave you the sceptre to be honoured above all others, but he did not give you strength which is the greatest power." 15 Why Diomedes, however, can say in the ninth book what had caused the rift between Agamemnon and Achilles in the first, we must postpone answering until later. Diomedes himself in the fifth book gives us the best example of ancestral virtue; and if we look at the first hundred lines, we can understand both its strength and its weakness: how it is the main source of his prowess and, for that very reason, how inadequate it is by itself. Athena begins by putting strength and boldness into "Tydeides Diomedes. " 16 Diomedes and his father are almost identical. For over one hundred lines, while he works destruction everywhere-it is even unclear whose side he is on-1 70iomedes' own name never recurs. He acts bravely and hence in the name of his father .18 But when Sthenelus THE ST. JOHN'S REVIEW draws out the arrow, with which Pandarus had wounded him, and the blood spurts through his shirt of mail, as Diomedes, not as Tydeides, he prays to Athena. 19 His paternal impetus once checked, he must summon help in his own name: he begs Athena to stand by him even as she once stood by his father. 20 Athena responds, calls him simply "Diomedes," and promises aid . Thus restored to favour, he becomes once again Tydeides. 21 Diomedes as an individual is weak, but as the son of his father he is irresistible. Not in himself but in his lineage, of which he is very conscious, 22 resides most of his own greatness. It is ironic, however, that it should be Diomedes, a hero so narrowly bound to the past, who challenges the authority of Agamemnon. Agamemnon, as we have seen, knows how important ancestry is. When he wishes to rebuke Diomedes, who has not yet rejected his right to do so, he praises his father's courage and slights his own; and Athena herself incites Diomedes by the same argument, concluding: "Therefore you are not the offspring of Tydeus, warlike Oeneides. " 23 Athena, in denying that Diomedes is the son of Tydeus, says at the same time that Tydeus was the son of Oeneus. Not to be the son of one's father is the greatest shame: to surpass one's father unthinkable. When Sthenelus attempts to rank Diomedes and himself above their fathers, Diomedes silences hirn. 24 One must be content with "ancestral strength," which Athena in fact grants Diomedes: beyond that a hero cannot go. 25 Yet Odysseus, far from imitating his father, calls himself after Telemachus; 26 for he is not only, in a sense, the author of himself but the author of another. He is the beginning of a new Iine.27 The absence of Achilles makes Agamemnon more and more aware of his false position; so that he is at last forced to concede him everything except a superiority in age, upon which he now bases his greater royalty. 28 It is a concession, however, which Odysseus, in repeating Agamemnon's promises to Achilles, prudently omits. 29 After the embassy fails, Agamemnon's despair increases still further. He fears that Diomedes might pick, as his companion on a night patrol, Menelaus: "Nor you in shame leave behind the better, and yielding to shame choose the worse, looking at a lineage, not even if the worse is more royal." 30 Diomedes' sense of shame must not interfere with his knowledge. He must judge Menelaus stripped of his titles, which is so much easier to do under the cover of night. Agamemnon now affirms, what he just as strongly before denied, that rank and birth are no guarantee of virtue. He realizes now how wrong he had been: it takes Achilles much longer to acknowledge his guilt. At the funeral games the struggle between innate and inherited virtue reappears. It is staged for Achilles' benefit. Menelaus becomes very angry with Antilochus, because he had tricked him into yielding his advantage. The trick made him third instead of second: "You have shamed my virtue arete, you have blasted my horses, putting your own in front, which you know are much worse 45 �[Let the Argives judge between us], lest one of them say, 'Menelaus by lies and by force worsted Antilochus, and he takes the horse as his prize, because his horses were much worse, but he himself stronger, in virtue and strength (aretei te biei te). " 31 It has been usual to translate arete differently each time: first as skill, then as dignity: 32 but the point is lost unless Menelaus refers twice to the same virtue. "Better" has as its correlate "worse": the horses of Menelaus will be thought worse, and Menelaus himself better, in "virtue and strength," Menelaus would on the one hand be lying, if he said his horses were better and they were not, 33 and on the other he would be using "virtue and strength" to gain the prize. Menelaus can mean only one thing by virtue: ,•,/ Ill 11/l~'IILI> , CSI Ill CtJIIIS (There IS palrll/11 vir/1/S in bullocks, there is in horses, the virtue of their fathers) . Virtue and lineage are for Menelaus interchangeable. "You have shamed my virtue," he says, but he means his family "The Achaeans will say my horses were inferior in virtue and strength, while I won by superior virtue and strength"· Menelaus means in both cases family As his horses are good, so are they of good family: as he himself is of good family, so is he virtuous. Family and virtue are the same. Laertes in the Odyssey similarly confounds them. Odysseus begs Telemachus not to shame the race of his fathers, and after Telemachus promises he will not, Laertes, who has overheard them, rejoices because "his son and his grandson contested about virtue. " 34 Laertes and Menelaus are agreed: a virtue always descends from father to son. But what we would call skill (namely, Antilochus' device for getting ahead), and what Nestor calls "craft," Menelaus can only think of as guile. 35 Virtue is family, art is base deception. Menelaus reunites what Achilles had taken apart: he holds, like Agamemnon, the sceptre while speaking. 36 Chapter V The Armour of Agamemnon Many readers must have noticed that Agamemnon, though he plays a great part in the Iliad, po~<;esses few epithets. His honorifics scarcely match his honour. He is regularly adorned with five: Menelaus can claim at least twelve. But were these five peculiar to himself, perhaps they would prove no less illustrious for being few. This however is not the case. Anax and ron, "lord of men," he is allowed to enjoy by himself, until we meet the enemy and find that Anchises and Aeneas also have it; 1 or Nestor, in his garrulity, bestows it on Augeias. 2 These somehow may be thought worthy enough to be ranked with Agamemnon: but when Euphetes, about whom nothing is known, and worse still Eumelus, an Achaean who led but eleven ships, obtain it,3 Agamemnon's glory is stolen from him. Likewise he shares poimen laon, "shepherd of the people," not only with Dryas, whom Nestor numbers among the former great, but with the obscure Bias, Hypeiron, and Thrasymedes. 4 It is even 46 twice applied to his enemy Achilles. 5 Dios, "brilliant," needs no comment, for it adorns almost all heroes. Only eury kreion, wide-ruling, which Poseidon once us,urps, 6 and kydistos, "most glorious," which often describes Zeus, may be considered Agamemnon's own. His consolation, of course, may be that others are called "shepherd of the people" or "lord of men" only on special occasions, while he constantly enjoys them: but these few occasions are sufficient to lower his rank. Having so few distinctions, he must be more jealous of their use than Achilles, who, in the abundance of his store, can afford to be prodigal.7 To marshal his troops Agamemnon's epithets suffice: but to wage war with them would be folly. The enemy cannot be expected to consider, in the midst of battle, the extent of his sway. He stands almost naked for the business of war: he must be armed, before entering it, more carefully than anyone else. His arming of himself begins his aristeia. Piece by piece Agamemnon is put together and made a hero. The effort is so great that Athena and Hera must make "loud clamour in order to honour the king of wealthy Mycenae. " 8 His careful fitting contrasts sharply with Hector, who needs no time to arm himself, but he is shown at once bearing his shield among the front ranks. 9 Moreover, Hector fires the imagination of Homer: his essence can be caught in a simile: he is like a baleful star, sometimes flashing through the clouds, sometimes ducking behind them. 10 But Agamemnon cannot be fused into a single image: he remains in fragments. His armour clothes, it does not transform him. It is his breastplate, not himself, that calls for a simile; whose snakes gleam "like the rainbow Zeus sticks in a cloud, a portent for mankind. " 11 Not Agamemnon but his breastplate is more than the sum of its parts; not Agamemnon but his well-wrought shield is "furious. " 12 Though the bronze of his armour flashed far into the heavens, the wonder of it fails to impress us: we suspect that Hera and Athena have intervened. The statement is too literal. He is unpoetic. But Hector's bronze "shone like the lightning of Father Zeus the aegis-bearer. " 13 His armour is as miraculous as his own person. Armour makes the man: it covers his fears and his cowardice. When Paris agrees to fight Menelaus, he dons his armour, as the husband of fair-haired Helen, just as methodically as Agamemnon. Indeed, his breastplate is borrowed, and, Homer adds, "he adjusted it to fit himself." 14 And having completed Paris, as it were, Homer does not go through it again for Menelaus; who, though not much of a warrior, is so much better than Paris, that it suffices to say, "so in the same way warlike Menelaus put on his armour. " 15 Menelaus is already armed with his epithet "warlike": but Paris needs more protection than the epithet "godlike" (theoeides) can afford. Nestor and Odysseus find Diomedes sleeping outside his tent, still clothed in all of his armour, while his companions rest their heads on their shields. 16 Not even in sleep can Diomedes the man peel off Diomedes the war- SPRING 1985 �rior. Man means: armed man. Armour is a promise of power; it is, like a hero's patronymic, a proof of his eminence. If he is deprived of this emblem, which is sometimes handed down from his father, he might be mistaken for a common warrior and lose his claim to ancestral virtue-" When Hector thinks of appealing to Achilles, having taken off his helmet, laid down his shield, and rested his spear against a wall, he suddenly stops himself: "He will kill me even though I am naked and as if I were a woman. " 18 A hero becomes like a woman and thinks of himself as naked, as soon as he is deprived of spear, helmet and shield. 19 Not the force in his limbs but the force in his armour transmutes a man into a hero. He acts as if he were the instrument of his own weapons and subject to them. How elaborately the Achaeans prepare in the Doloneia, merely to attend a meeting! Agamemnon puts on a coat of mail and takes a spear; Nestor does the same; and neither helmeted Menelaus nor armed Diomedes forgets his spear-'0 Only Odysseus forgets and takes but a shield: for his part in the patrol is defensive, and Diomedes does the killing. 21 When Patroclus is stripped of Achilles' armour, Achilles knows that he cannot go into battle unarmed, and yet he feels that the armour of no one else would suit him: only the shield of Ajax would accord with his dignity/2 as if the arms of another would make him lose his own identity." When Zeus, on the other hand, fitted the arms of Achilles to Hector, at once "great Ares crept into him, and his limbs were filled with strength. " 24 Zeus no doubt partly inspires him, but it is equally the arms themselves, made by Hephaestus, that lend him support. Here is not just the flash of bronze, which dazzles the enemy and leaves him unchanged: but here is an inner sympathy between Hector and his armour that creates a single implement of war. Even the heroes acknowledge the partial identity of arms and the man, anna virumque. 25 Pandarus speaks thus to Aeneas, when he asks him who the Achaean warrior is who slays so many Trojans: "I liken him in all respects to warlike Tydeides, knowing him by his shield and his helmet, and seeing his horses. " 26 Diomedes is known by his shield, his horses, and his helmet. To lose them would be to lose the best part of himself, 27 so that every hero is as intent on capturing pieces of armour as he is on killing their owner: for should he fail to despoil his victim, he has no record of the deed. Trophies bear witness to his prowess: they guarantee his fame. Patroclus fills perfectly the armour of Achilles, and when he first appears, he is mistaken for him; 28 but it is his inability to wield Achilles' spear that tells the difference between them. 29 Had Patroclus been able to wield it, we would have had two Achilles. Chapter VI Ajax Nireus was the most beautiful man, after Achilles, who came to Troy: but he was weak and few people followed THE ST. JOHN'S REVIEW him.' Lacking both the ancestral authority of Agamemnon and the inborn power of Achilles, he showed up so poorly in the war that, outside the catalogue, he never is mentioned. That beauty does not carry with it any strength, we know already from Paris; 2 but strength can yet draw a man into beauty. Although Ajax at first is only the best warrior among the Achaeans after Achilles,' he assumes, in the stress and strain of war, when the Trojans are about to drag away Patroclus' corpse, a greater likeness to him: "Ajax, who in beauty as in deeds surpassed all the Danaans except the son of Peleus. " 4 His deeds shed a lustre over his appearance, so that he usurps the place of Nireus, whose peacetime beauty counts as nothing in battle.' The parents of Nireus gave him a superficial beauty, that reflected, as it were, the glorious bravery of their own names (Aglaie and Charopus: "Splendour" and "Flash"), but that yielded to brute Ajax in the shock of war. We know the war-mettle of Ajax before Achilles', and that he imperfectly copies heroic virtue; but his very imperfection serves as our only possible guide to Achilles. Were we to witness Achilles' valour in the seventh book, instead of Ajax', we could form no just idea of his greatness: but after having before us his inferior, though he is apparently flawless, the peculiar virtues of Achilles become something clear and precise. He doth permit the base contagious douds To smother up his beauty from the world, That, when he please again to be himself, Being wanted, he may be more wonder'd at, By breaking through the foul and ugly mists Of vapours that did seem to strangle him. We must look then more closely at Ajax. A hundred lines of the eleventh book, in which he displays more of himself than elsewhere, are the best place to begin. The Trojans have tracked down the wounded Odysseus; and Ajax, summoned by Menelaus, enters the fray, as is his custom, without a word. 6 Homer aptly compares him to a lion, who chases off jackals from a stag: "then devours it himself.'' These last words seem not only inexact (common enough in similes) but inapplicable: for Ajax has come to defend and not to kill Odysseus. Yet Homer wished to indicate, in the aside of his simile, that Ajax' excellence does not include his loyalty. He is a warrior first, an Achaean second: he could have been as readily a Trojan. 8 Ajax is all head and shoulders, and carries his shield like a turret: even in motion he seems to stand still. 9 He plays a large part in the defense of the wall: when its tower is threatened, Menestheus prefers him before others; and Tencer, just as if Ajax were a battlement, shoots his arrows from behind him and his shield. 10 As Ajax wounds one Trojan after another, Homer likens him to a river swollen by winter rains: "Many flourishing oaks and many pines it carries away, and casts much trash into the sea.'' 11 The river sweeps away not only oaks and pines (trees to which falling warriors are often com- 47 �pared) but trash: so Ajax wounded Lysandrus and Pyrasus, whose names occur nowhere else; and Pylartes, whom Patroclus later killed; and even his noblest victim, Doryclus the son of Priam, is illegitimate." He lacks discrimination in his slaughter of horses and men. 13 Ajax is hard-pressed but retreats reluctantly, like a lion driven away from cattle. The simile would have little point (it is used elsewhere of Menelaus), 14 were it not for what follows: an ass he seems, glutted on corn, whom children beat out of a field. 15 He is a beast (ther), the word Homer employs in bringing together these two similes.1• Aristotle must have had this passage in mind, when after showing how Homer made Hector and Diomedes possess a kind of noble courage, he continues: "Honour and the noble incite the brave to action, and spirit (thymos) works with them; but pain incites animals, ... who are not courageous, since pain and spirit alone goad them to face dangers they fail to foresee; for even asses, if they are hungry, would be brave, and, though they are beaten, refuse to budge from pasture." 17 Whatever nobility, then, Ajax has, he shares with Menelaus (it is of the most general kind): but what makes him unique, his stubbornness, lacks all nobility. He is a glutton in war: insatiate.t8 When Ajax is called the best, after Achilles, both in deeds and in beauty, he is at once compared to a wild boar, an animal which Achilles himself never seems to imitate. 19 Ajax after all, Homer admits, even if ennobled by war, is quite ugly. In short, as lion, boar, and ass, we may call him: thymodes ("quick-tempered") but eleutherios ("noble"), enstatikos ("ferocious") but andreios ("courageous"), arnathes ("unmanageable") but eugenes ("well-born"). 20 Chapter VII Heroic Virtue "To no man would Telamonian Ajax yield ... nor would he retreat before Achilles the man-smasher, if they fought hand-to-hand; but in swiftness he cannot rival him. " 1 ldomeneus very exactly describes Ajax thus: only in swiftness does Achilles excel him, for in pitched battle Ajax would be his equal. Achilles is better than Ajax because he is faster, and if we wish to find someone like him in this respect, we need only look to Ajax' namesake: "Ajax slew the most, the fast son of Oileus; for no one was his equal in following up a rout, whenever Zeus put fear into them. " 2 Speed is needed to follow up a rout, bulkiness to cover a retreat. That two men, who would almost match Achilles if combined (they often appear together), should bear the same name is a brilliant stroke-' Achilles is Telamonian, added to Oilean, Ajax: the shoulders belong to one, the legs to the other.' We see in each of them separately some of Achilles' vices which, because he contains both their virtues, are in himself concealed. We have come round at last to Achilles' most frequent 48 epithet, "swift-footed," which seems to occur in such reckless profusion throughout the Iliad; but Homer manages its use more finely than many suppose. Although swiftness of foot does not in itself sum tlp all virtues, for ugly Dolon has it (has de toi eidos men een kakos, alia podokes,-"who was ill-favored in looks, but swiftfooted"),' yet, if someone is more beautiful than Nireus and as bulky as Ajax, 6 it suffices to set him apart from all others. 7 It seals the doom of Hector when he tries to flee.'lt is the most obvious proof of Achilles' power, so that even his eloquence seems based upon it. He assumes it first when he addresses Agamemnon: swift-footed Achilles is pitted against the son of Atreus.• It assures Calchas, uncertain whether he may speak the truth or not: it convinces him that Achilles is stronger than Atreides, and hence he has nothing to fear 10 And Achilles, as long as he irritates Agamemnon (illustrating in his speech his power), is swift-footed, but when Athena persuades him not to use his strength, and he replaces his sword in its sheath, he becomes "Peleides. " 11 His piety, gaining for the moment the upper hand, lets him reassume his father's name. Achilles receives the epithet "swift-footed" more than any other man, but one animal has it almost as often. Horses are okypodes. They resemble Achilles in his proudest virtue, and only if we discover how the horse and the hero are related, shall we see Achilles in a true perspective. The word arete, "virtue," occurs, all told, sixteen times in the Iliad. 12 It is used exclusively of horses and men. 13 But what is equine virtue?" A horse must be both strong and beautiful: its strength resides in the legs, its beauty in the head. " 14 Thus it is the perfect image for Achilles, the swiftest and most beautiful of the heroes. What is more Aristotle assigns to the horse two virtues (among others) which, we have seen, characterize Achilles: "The virtue of a horse makes him both run quickly and abide the enemy.ts It is, therefore, right and proper that Achilles should have the best horses. 16 That Achilles harmoniously unites two virtues that usually cannot even fit together, stamina and speed, constitutes the miracle of his excellence; for what Lady Wentworth says of racehorses, that "it is doubtful whether extreme sprinting speed can be combined with extreme staying power" -no less doubtful than that "a weightlifter [can be] built like an acrobat" 17-holds true for heroic virtue. Oilean Ajax is much smaller than his namesake: 18 but Achilles did not sacrifice the swiftness of one to acquire the turret-like stolidity of the other. He is, in a real sense, more than the sum of his parts. Paris dons his armour and comes to join the fight. Homer describes him brilliantly: "And he, when he had put on his famous armout:, curiously wrought in bronze, rushed through the city, confident in his swift feet: as when some stabled horse, fed in its stall, breaks its bonds and rushes over the plain, striking the earth with his hooves, accustomed to bathe in the fair-flowing river, rejoicing: it holds its head high, and its mane streams from the shoulders (confident in its splendour), its swift legs SPRING 1985 �bring it to the pastures and the herd of horses: so the son of Priam, Paris, brilliant in his arms, came like the sun from the top of Pergamun, smiling with self-satisfaction, and his swift legs brought him. " 19 Critics have been annoyed that Hector obtains the same simile-"So Apollo said and breathed strength into the shepherd of his people, as when etc." - 20 and yet the reason for the repetition is not hard to find. Both are equally swift but exultant differently. Paris, godlike in his beauty, flashing like the sun and "smiling with self-satisfaction," 21 puts on beautiful armour; while Hector returns to the fight, after being almost mortally wounded, with renewed strength. Paris is beautiful like Nireus, Hector like Ajax: even in war Paris has the glitter of peace, even in a lull Hector terrifies his son. 22 Paris' brilliance will fade in battle, Hector's force will increase. They stand at the two poles of heroic excellence, beauty and power, which are fused in Achilles (and only these three heroes are compared to horses): "As a triumphant horse with his chariot rushes, who easily in the stretch runs over the plain, so Achilles managed his swift feet and knees. " 23 Achilles then is a mixture, among the Achaens, of the two Ajax; among the Trojans, of Paris and Hector. This general resemblance of men and horses Homer pursues even to small particulars. He tells us what is the most fatal spot for horse and man alone (they are not the same);" and he implies that, in the eyes of the gods, there is no difference between the providence extended to horses and men: Zeus pities the immortal horses of Achilles, who weep for Patroclus, even as he pities Hector, prancing in the arms of Achilles." Achilles' arms and Achilles' horses would be the two greatest prizes for Hector." That he captures one, while the other eludes him, spells out his doom. Zeus allowed him the one and refused him the other: mortal Patroclus he can kill, Xanthus and Balius he cannot. Achilles survives to kill him, they to humiliate his corpse. Virtue shows itself in foot and hand: to have both in the highest degree is to be Achilles. Yet virtue consists in another element which Achilles is slow to demonstrate: the willingness to use what one has. Horses have it almost everywhere: (to auk aekonte petesthen-"but not unwillingly the two flew forward.") 27 Obedience to the lash of his driver suffices for a horse; but in the case of a hero, though he sometimes fails to realize it, his obedience must come from within. Willingness must accompany a hero's knowledge and efficiency. Hence only the Achaeans as a body, and never the Trojans (who defend themselves by necessity)," fight with arete." Eumaeus complains to Odysseus that nothing runs smoothly any more, ever since his master went away; not even the dog Argus was cared for: "And the servants, as soon as their masters no longer stand over them, are unwilling to do what they ought; for half of virtue Zeus takes away from a man, when the day of slavery overtakes him. " 30 A man does not lose in slavery his skill but his willingness to perform enaisima ("just things" -with the sense of having been decreed by the gods), which are THE ST. JOHN'S REVIEW the things one should do if one knows them. "No one who is just," says Hector to Paris, "would ever blame your work in battle, since you are strong; but willingly you hold off and do not wish to fight. " 31 To be strong is not enough: one must wish to use one's strength: one must be willing to die." Chapter VIII Achilles and Hector When Hector sees Paris retreating before Menelaus' advance, he rebukes him sharply; Paris humbly submits but, almost as an aside, complains of Hector's ruthlessness: "Your heart is always like an unwearying axe, by which a man cuts through a ship's plank with the help of his art (techni!), and the axe increases his force (eroen). " 1 Paris' simile is unique in many ways. Nowhere else is a hero compared to a man-made thing; nor does the word techni! recur in the Iliad (common enough though it is in the Odyssey);' nor is eroi! used commonly of a man but of a spear's cast. 3 Hector is not the woodsman but the axe, or rather woodsman and axe; his heart multiplies his strength; he is self-sufficient. He carries within himself the means to greater power. He is all weapon. Hector does not stand alone in being a mere instrument of himself. Ni!li!s, "merciless," often describes two things: to avoid death is to ward off ni!lees i!mar, a merciless day; to be slain is sometimes to be cut ni!lei' chalkoi, with merciless bronze. 4 A day of death is merciless but perhaps bronze would be better called indifferent. Yet Achilles and no one else is neles. 5 His spirit is iron. 6 He is a thing, indifferent and merciless: as inevitable as death; as unfeeling as bronze. "Made by some other divinity than nature," Hector and Achilles embody the ultimate ambition of a hero: to be no man at all. That for Achilles' image stood his spear Gripped in an armed hand; himself behind Was left unseen, save to the eye of mind: A hand, a foot, a face, a leg, a head, Stood for the whole to be imagined. 7 Patroclus, who understands Achilles, begs him to return to the war; and feeling, while he speaks, that Achilles stiffens himself to refuse him, denies what seemed Achilles' inalienable possession: "Pitiless horseman Peleus was not your father, nor Thetis your mother; but the grey-green sea and steep rocks bore you, for your mind is harsh."• Thetis and Peleus could never have been the parents of Achilles: sea and rocks must have begot him. Patroclus has chosen his image carefully. Achilles' mother, instead of being a Nereid, is the sea itself; and Achilles' father, instead of being a grandson of Zeus, is a fabulous rock. "Tell me your ancestry," Penelope says to the disguised Odysseus, "for you are not from fabled oak or rock. " 9 Achilles' divine lineage, known to be but three generations, becomes uncountable and formless. He is as anonymous as Odysseus. 49 �If we compare Patroclus' bitter words with a similar passage, Achilles' uniqueness will appear more clearly. Hector cannot break through the lines of Achaeans who defend the ships, holding him back "like a great steep rock, set near the iron-grey sea, that resists the swift onrush of shrill winds and foaming waves, which break, crash and roar against it. " 10 The Trojans as waves and winds beat vainly against the Achaeans, a steep rock. Achilles may seem at first, as the offspring of rock and sea, to be nothing more than "half-Trojan and halfGreek": but he is more. Achilles is what others only seem to be. Whereas the Achaeans and Trojans are rock and sea by Horner's fiat, their identity to be changed as the scene itself changes, Achilles' character is more permanent. He is the son, however unnatural, of sea and stone, and as such beyond the whims of Horner. The harshness of Achilles resides in his elemental lineage, that of the Achaeans and Trojans in a likeness; just as the mild temper of Patroclus, when he beseeches Achilles, is shown in his weeping like a spring, "which pours its dark waters down a precipice ." 11 Patroclus' grief evokes a com- parison in which he does not become, as Achilles does, the objects in the simile but merely resembles their outer appearance. Not abandoning himself in the image, he assumes only its manner; while Achilles is the very substance of Patroclus' aspect, as if the sea were the source of every spring and the steep cliffs of every precipice. He is the reality that lies behind the accidental and the momentary, and hence he cannot change his being and his origins as others change their attributes. He wears no disguises. Chapter IX Similes Hephaestus divided Achilles' shield into three parts: sky, earth and sea. 1 Sun, moon, and stars, which seem to make up the whole of heaven, are done in a few lines; and the sea; which surrounds the shield, even more quickly; but the earth, or rather man's business on earth, takes up most of Horner's description.' The city at war requires more time to depict than the city at peace: but the peaceful tasks of men predominate over both. 3 Horner made the shield as an image of his two works, but his picture of war, the Iliad, is explained by similes taken over from the peaceful scenes of the shield; while his picture of peace, the Odyssey, merely repeats the same scene.• The ocean on which Odysseus travels is the real ocean, while the storms and tempests in the Iliad are borrowed images. War cannot explain itself. It needs to be glossed by peace. It is an abstract of peace, unable to make full use of its richness, so that the similes are restricted and, except for one detail, sometimes fail to correspond. Only the idea or sentiment that lies behind a simile can be shared with the bleakness of war.' Peace needs no similes, it is what everyone knows. A simile would merely 50 duplicate our own vision and add nothing to it. War, the unfamiliar, must be shown in terms of the familiar, so that only through the Odyssey can we understand the Iliad. The simile puts the heroes in the perspective of peace, of what they resemble in the world around us. Indeed it is because war seems more desirable than peace-to stay at Troy more desirable than to return horne-that Horner can use peaceful similes. 6 But can counterparts to the heroes be found in our world? or must peace be distorted to fit them? We must look more closely at the similes to find Homer's answer. The twelfth and thirteenth books are perhaps the clearest examples; for the heroes are restricted to the battlefield, so that the series of similes are uninterrupted and contribute to a single idea. What Hector is compared to at first sets up an opposition that Horner repeats and enlarges upon in the succeeding similes. Hector leads the charge like a lion and a whirlwind. 7 He is both animate and inanimate nature: animal and thing. 8 As a whirlwind he is absolute; his opponents are not described. As a boar or lion he becomes contentious and forms but part of the scene: hemmed in by dogs and huntsmen, his eyes gleaming with strength, the lion tries to make his way out, and not fear but rashness finally kills him.' As whirlwind, Hector is alone, and Runs rushing o'er the lines of men, as if 'twere A perpetual spoil; as lion, Hector finds himself surrounded, his liberty chained to a narrow circle, within which he must move and die. Then Asius makes his diversionary sally against the wall of the Achaeans, which Polypoetes and Leonteus, fixed like two oaks (their long roots unmoved by wind and rain), defend. 10 Here the whirlwind of Hector has become the wind and rain of Asius, who meets his first resistance in the oaken Lapiths. The absolute rush and motion of the winds encounter two oaks, which are, just as absolutely, obstinate and immobile. But as soon as they charge and engage in combat, they do not differ from the boarlike Hector. Now the Trojans under Asius are the dogs and huntsmen which the Achaeans before had represented.11 The roles of attacker and defender are reversed, but the reversal has brought no real change in the similes. They are still the same two aspects of nature: animal and thing. As Achaeans and Trojans are now equal in the eyes of Homer, the simile shifts to their weapons. The stones they hurl against one another are like the snowflakes that cover, indifferently, the fertile earth. 12 We are at war and so in the dead of winter, when nothing grows, but a blanket of snow hides every aspect of life. We are reminded now that the world of war and the world of peace do not jibe; that the winter of war has no sequel like the winter of nature; and that no spring will come after the death of heroes. Asius frets at the sudden check, which the La piths have given, to his high expectations. He compares them to bees SPRING 1985 �or wasps which stand in the way of hunters intent on bigger game 13 To Homer, Leonteus and Polypoetes are the hunters, but to Asius, naturally, the advance is all on his side. He does not acknowledge the reversal but thinks of them as a slight bother in his way. Thus again, as Asius drew an image from animate, so Homer drew his from inanimate nature: snow and bees continue the comparison of animal and thing. Even Zeus follows Homer's lead, sending first an eagle and then a whirlwind as omens: 14 but whereas Homer gives us images, Zeus gives the heroes the things themselves. Omens spell out before their eyes what Homer's similes spell out for us. After Zeus has shown his presence, Homer adapts his simile of snowflakes to this divine interference. Zeus now makes it snow, and the earth no longer seems a simple entity: Homer picks out mountain-tops, plains, steep headlands, and the worked fields of men. 15 With the entrance of Zeus, civil man also enters: he becomes part of the landscape. Men have been so far only huntsmen; now they are farmers as well. Zeus rouses Sarpedon his son, who charges like a lion among cows or sheep. 16 Men are now cowherds and shepherds. The peaceful world fills out. As the war itself is elaborated, more and more elements are seen in its mirror. Every aspect of war refracts an aspect of peace. The heroes are shadowed, in whatever they do, by the world they left behind. But Sarpedon not only is lionlike, he also is, with Glaucus, a black hurricane.l7 Never can the heroes escape from being both animal and thing. Achaeans and Trojans have exhausted the animal world. Their counterparts exist now only among men. They fight like two men squabbling over a boundary." War becomes a conventional dispute, that no longer is similar to the natural conflict between lion and sheep 19 It is man-made and arbitrary, without a true reflection in nature. The similes become more petty. After being like wind and lions, they seem to be like a woman who weighs out wool barely sufficient for her children. 2 ' For her wool she receives a wdge, even as eternal fame is the reward for the Achaeans and Trojans, that they will hand down to their children. But her wage is mean and unseemly, while they think fame glorious. They deceive themselves, she is an honest woman: gyne chernetis ale. thes. Seen by the eyes of peace, their war is foolish and of little worth. Hector raises a stone against the Achaean gate, carrying it as easily as a shepherd carries fleece. 21 His stone is as light as wool, and he himself but a shepherd. Neither the purpose of the war, nor the heroes themselves find any glory in peace. If we wish to be impressed by them, we must keep our eye on inanimate nahlre. So Hector is likened to swift-coming night, and on this note of dead nature the book ends. 22 We have followed the hero through a series of similes, which shifted back and forth between animal and thing; but this alternation was not simply repetitive: for it emphasized always more openly, in each successive image, THE ST. JOHN'S REVIEW how little ad~pted the hero was to peace; how only wind, snow, and mght really smted h1m; and how little in common have men and human beings. Man at war is half thing and half beast, but there is no nobility, no greatness in him, if we think on peace. Homer does not glorify war. As we become involved in the destinies of his heroes, he whispers more and more insistently, "there is a world elsewhere." In the thirteenth book the similes are more concerned with the battle itself than with the heroes; and as neither side overwhelms the other, the similes reflect this stalemate, animating the inanimate and stilling the force and motion in animals. Thus it is built on a series of paradoxical images. The Trojans, massed like fire or a whirlwind, advance behind Hector: the fire contains all of their flashy persistence (most evident in Hector), while the wind is their inevitable march, whose bluster belongs less to Hector than to his troops. 23 Hector himself is then compared to a boulder, that, breaking loose from a crag, rolls until it comes to the plain, where it can proceed no farther "however much it desires. " 24 A thing is granted life unnaturally, until its course is finally checked and it is brought back to its nahlral state; while in the death of Imbrius, who falls like an ash cut down by an axe, the reverse takes place: what should naturally stand upright is laid low, and its "delicate foliage," that once was held high on a conspicuous mountain, draws near the earth. 25 And again, once Imbrius lies upon the ground, the two Ajax raise him up, like lions which grasp in their jaws a goat. 26 Idomeneus rehlrns to his tent and puts on his armour: he resembles a lightning-flash sent by Zeus but unlike his image he runs back to the war." The steady streak of his brilliance has been set in motion, and thus preserves the double aspect of motion and rest with which the book started. His companion Meriones is compared to "swift Ares," while both together are like Ares and Phobos, who arm now the Ephyroi, now the Phlegyae: so impetus is united with impartiality, their loyalty to the Achaeans with their indifference (as warriors) to either side. 28 And having decided where they should lend their aid, Meriones again is compared to "swift Ares" and Idomeneus to fire. 29 The battle itself is next likened to the rush of shrill winds that raise a great cloud of dust, which in tum hovers over the earth. 30 Achaeans and Trojans are brought to a stillstand, their opposed desires endeavouring to move (like the boulder of Hector), but their equality resulting in a stationary cloud (like the level plain that stopped Hector). Asius comes up to protect the corpse of Othoneus, and he is cut down like an oak or a white poplar or a tall pine. 31 Asius dies like Imbrius, and what is naturally erect carpenters will fashion into a ship. Idomeneus attacks Alcathous, whom, although he wishes to flee, Poseidon charms to the spot; and he stands as rigidly as a tree or a stele." Thus he who wished to stand falls, and he who wished to move remains. War has inverted the world of nature and of men. Aeneas advances against Idomeneus, who, instead of 51 �flight, only thinks of holding his ground, and now, when the image of a tree would be appropriate, 33 Homer likens him to a boar, that bristles its back at the approach of men, its eyes flashing fire in defiance'' What should be permanent changes, and what should be in motion holds fast. Aeneas, on the other hand, is like a ram who waits for the sheep to follow him. 35 He retains the stationary fire of Hector, while his men continue the first image of the wind. So when he and Idomeneus stand before one another, they seem like Ares, as if their conflict has been cancelled, and they are found together in a single image. Meriones returns to prominence as ''swift Ares," even though Achaeans and Trojans are drawn closely together about the dead Ascalaphus; but he soon becomes a vulture, as he snatches the spear he cast and falls back among his troops." Adamas attacks Antilochus and, though he launches his spear with energy, it fails to penetrate the shield but remains there like a burnt stake: Poseidon has checked it and deprived it of its strength. 37 As Adamas retreats, Meriones hits him and, like an unwilling ox bound by ropes, he struggles gaspingly but in vain. 38 His forceful spear becomes a lifeless stake and he himself a bound ox: the purposes both of weapon and of man have vanished. Helenus shoots an arrow at Menelaus, but his breastplate deflects it, as if it were a winnowing-fan, from which beans or peas bounce off in a light wind. 39 All the force in the arrow is transferred into a harmless pea, while the solid breastplate becomes a moving fan. Again the reality has been reversed in the simile. Meriones kills Harpalion, who lies stretched upon the earth like a worm. 40 just as the arrow of Helenus lost its swiftness in a contemptible simile, so Harpalion loses all his dignity as the poor worm. The heroic world has almost stopped. Achaeans and Trojans fight like blazing fire, and the Achaeans try to push back flamelike Hector. 41 Though a mass of fire, Hector moves, and all the motion of the Achaeans is spent in vain. The two Ajax stand by one another like two yoked oxen, who with a single spirit drag the plow: but unlike the simile they do not move 42 Thus Hector like fire advances and the Ajax like oxen stand firm. What has been up to now a concealed paradox at last is revealed in Hector's penultimate simile: he charges like a snow-covered mountain. 43 No amount of ingenuity can explain that away; but if the sequence of similes is followed, it fits the tenor of the whole book. The correspondence between animate nature and the hero has long broken down, and now not even the inanimate world can be twisted to suit him. The Trojans fight like savage winds and stir up the sea, and as crest of wave follows wave, so they move in a perpetual order, though they effect no breech in the Achaean ranks; 44 and Hector is at last compared to "mortal-destroying Ares," who, though he tries everywhere, cannot make the enemy yield. 45 . In the twelfth book the heroes were alternately animal 52 and thing; in the thirteenth they acquire a new dimension - they sometimes are compared to gods." The reason for this is obvious: Poseidon has disguised himself as a man and is present among them 47 Once the gods actively interfere, the merely natural world no longer suffices as a source for Homer's imagery. He must transcend the bounds of everyday life and compare the heroes not to what we see and know, but to that which is beyond our knowledge. The heroes at first were made familiar to us, but now only the supernatural can make intelligible their superhuman virtues. As they take on the semblance of what is above them, they become more remote and retreat farther away from us; and such a transformation entails a kind of perversion of the oncenatural world. All the motion in the hero and his arms is brought to a halt, even as their fixity is set in motion: a tall pine falls, a wild boar stands still. Thus Homer, in elevating the heroes to a divine status, has been forced to alienate them from nature. Chapter X Achilles' and Hector's Similes Heroes are not given much to poetry: they rarely see their enemies as anything other than men to be killed. They leave to Homer the beautifying of their world.' Asius likens the Lapiths to wasps or bees, because his disappointment is so great at being thwarted; he is irritated and chagrined by the insignificance of the enemy. 2 So when Menelaus described Hector metaphorically"he has the terrible force of fire" -we can imagine how frightened he feels.' But that was only a prelude to Hector's own image for Achilles: "I shall go against him, even if his hands are like fire, if his hands are like fire, and his force burning iron."' In. the very repetition of the phrase we can feel the power of Achilles: he is something unquenchable. That Achilles, to be adequately conceived of, demands a simile, is the greatest tribute Hector could pay him; but that Hector summons up such a description only to dismiss it, gives us an index as well to his own greatness. Although Achilles and Hector are often compared to animals-eagles, hawks, lions and dogs-their largest group of similes concerns fire. Fire is unlike all other elements, for its contains within itself its own destruction: as it burns it is consumed, and it dies with the end of its opponent. It is an exact image for wrath. Sometimes Hector's (or Achilles') armour is likened to fire,' but more often they themselves are fire, which flashes from their eyes. 6 And this fury lives not just in their faces, but even more in their work: "As portentous fire rages through deep mountain-glens, and the forests, thickly-set and flourishing on the mountain, are burnt, and the wind charging everywhere fans the flame, so Achilles, armed with his sword, rushed everywhere like a god. " 7 Achilles as fire seems equal to a god; and Hector might equally be either Ares or fire.' But Homer has another name for fire besides pyr or phlox: Hephaestus SPRING 1985 �is not only his divine blacksmith, who made Agamemnon's sceptre and Achilles' armour, but he uses his name for fire itself.' Hephaestus both makes and destroys: the heroes burn with his fire as they wield his weapons. Their armour and their persons show the dual aspect of Hephaestus. To be his work and to work with his fire would seem the aim of heroic ambition. He is their all. Although Hector numerically rivals Achilles in similes of fire, he cannot claim "he is pure air and fire, and the dull elements of earth and water never appear in him." He is in fact often like a storm, or a river, or the sea, to all of which Achilles is never compared.'" He has more bluster in his nature than Achilles; his energies are more widely scattered. He is not as concentrated in his person, nor does he plunge as headlong toward his fate. His violence rages on the surface; he is not everywhere pure flame. He has other sentiments than fury. He is ''watered-down.'' Achilles has a fear of drowning. The thought that he might be drowned by the Xanthus, like a young swineherd whom a winter torrent sweeps away, provokes his bitterest complaints against his mother Thetis. 11 As fire and light, fanned by his ambition, he trembles before all obscurity. To be quenched, as it were, and returned to "earth and water" is the most shameful doom: deprived of all distinction and confounded with a swineherd. 12 Achilles ridicules the lineage of Asteropaeus, whose ancestor was the river Axius: "As Zeus is stronger than rivers that flow into the sea, so the generation of Zeus is stronger than that of a river . . . nothing can fight against Zeus the son of Cronus, not even the strong Achelous is his equal, from whence all rivers and every sea and all fountains and springs arise: but even he fears the lightning and terrible thunder of great Zeus, whenever he makes it crash in the heavens." 13 Zeus the hurler of lightning and thunder is greater than water: Achilles boasts his descent from fire and forgets that his own mother is a sea-goddess-" If he is more closely related to the gods on his mother's side, Achilles prefers to emphasize the divine lineage of his father: for there is something womanish dnd humane about Thetis that does not fit in with Achilles' image of himself. When Zeus makes the gods take sides, the river Xanthus is pitted against Hephaestus. 15 Water defends the Trojans, fire Achilles: and fire triumphs. As Achilles surpasses Asteropaeus in ancestry (as fire does water), so Hephaestus destroys Xanthus. It is the triumph of art over nature. Chapter XI Heroic Ambition Hector is bold enough to declare the ultimate end of his ambition; he would assign to himself all the prerogatives of the gods: "Would that I might be in this way honoured as Athena and Apollo are honoured, as surely as this day brings evil to the Argives." 1 Hector does not THE ST. JOHN'S REVIEW contrast the impossibility of his wish with the certainty of his success, but rather his success colours his desire. Victory is so certain, it is so much a foregone conclusion, that he presents the impossible as something tangible and real. "My concern," he says to the Trojans, "is not for the outcome of tomorrow's battle- that is as good as ours-but for my immortality." His ambition overleaps the present and reaches out beyond the immediate. Even if to become immortal is unlikely, to be honoured like Apollo and Athena is not: so that, as his certainty about the morrow gives him assurance of divine honours, these honours in turn strengthen his hope for immortality. Since Hector will win on the morrow, he deserves to be honoured like Athena and Apollo. He picks the foremost gods on each side: he does not wish partisan honour but true honour, based on something that even the enemy's gods must acknowledge.' His excellence would force their admiration. So Homer, when he wishes to praise the excellence of the Achaeans' battle-order, invokes Ares as well as Athena;' and not just because they are the gods of battle, 4 for when the battle is fiercest over Patroclus' corpse, "neither Ares nor Athena, beholding it, blame their fighting, not even if wrath came into them."' If the gods were angry, they could not find fault: no passion, which might warp their judgment, could diminish their praise. Hector wants to be immortal and ageless: it is his final goal. The end of his action, to destroy the Achaeans, should issue in the perfection of his being, immortality. But he wants even more: "Would that I might be the son of aegis-bearing Zeus, and would that awesome Hera had borne me."' To be the son of Zeus and of Hera is his ambition: to be in fact what Homer grants him in simile pushes him on. If he could break through the simile, and become what he resembles; if he could change "like to a mortal-destroying Ares" to Ares himself, he would be satisfied. According to Poseidon he believes that he is. 7 To affirm, to boast, to pray (they are the same verb euchesthai) means the same thing to Hector. Both in the past of his lineage and in the future of his desire stand the gods. If he could return to his origins, he would achieve his end. In the inability of Hector and Achilles to come full circle lies their tragedy. We must not think that Achilles and Hector are alone in this wish: even lesser heroes are compared to a divinity or honoured by their people like a god. But Hector is not content with the praise of his own fellow citizens: he wants all men, any man, to praise him.' Universal praise, which does not perish, is the closest he can approach to immortality. Fame is its substitute. If Sarpedon were fated to be immortal and ageless, he would not stay in battle; but as he cannot remain alive forever, he must nobly act and die, so that he may stay alive in the memory of others' The love of fame animates not only the hero but also his horse, and if we just glance at how the classics described and exploited the horse, we can see more readily why Homer bound them together, and gave to Achilles immortal horses. 53 �And Achilles' horse Makes many Thetis' sons. 10 The horse, of all animals, is the most naturally ambitious. It has thymos ("spiritedness"), matching man in this as in almost all other things." Xenophon speaks as if in his time thymos was the proper name for a horse's spirit and orgC for a man's; Parmenides likens his own desire to mares'; Socrates compares the good appetites of the soul to a noble horse: "upright, well-knit, high-arched neck, aquiline nose, white, black eyes, a lover of honour; " 12 and as the horse is the most erotic of creatures after man (his eros is both sexual and ambitious), 13 Vergil in the third Georgie, as part of his theme, shifts from the warhorse to love and from love to the love of glory, tarJtus amor laudem, ta11tae est victoria curac.t4 ( ... so great is their love of praise, victory is so great a care.) When Dolon offers to spy on the Achaeans, he makes Hector swear to give him, on the condition of his success, the chariot and the horses of Achilles. 15 He can think of no greater glory than that: they are at the height of his ambition. To possess Achilles' immortal horses is to become almost immortal oneself; for as they would be forever, they would always keep flourishing one's fame. They would be a more lasting monument than a grave, that may either be mistaken for something else or completely washed away. 16 They are, however, beyond Dolan's capacities, and not even Hector could manage them. 17 Nothing indicates more exactly the difference between the Iliad and the Odyssey than Achilles' horses and Odysseus' dog." The horses weep for Patroclus but will outlast Achilles and all men; while Argus, who was beautiful and swift, dies at the sight of Odysseus. 19 His life is so closely bound up with his master's that he cannot live well without him: but Achilles' horses will continue to be both beautiful and swift forever. Their immortality prevents their affection from ever being serious; 20 they do not really belong to any man, nor are they ever domesticated. They stand even beyond Achilles, and represent the futility of his end. Achilles' horses, having all the qualities desired in a horse, mixed, so to speak, with no corruptible matter, are quite naturally divine. Immortality and agelessness seem to be the reward for their virtue; and if man's perfection were the same as a horse's, then Achilles, who equals them in swiftness as in beauty, would be a god. That his virtues do not secure for him immortality points to the only flaw in his nature. When Achilles has cut through Hector's throat, Hector is still able to speak. 21 Homer makes it almost grotesquely clear; for Achilles' javelin seems to have gone out of its way to allow Hector speech: "The bronze-heavy javelin did not sever his wind-pipe, so that he might tell him something and reply in words." It is Hector's very act of speaking, not so much what he says, that should 54 instruct Achilles. Man is an animal that speaks even on the verge of death, while Achilles' horses, perfect though they are, can only speak when Hera has given, them voice." The will of a god makes them the spokesmen of Achilles' fate: but Hector needs no divine aid to foretell, even more precisely, Achilles' death. 23 The horse is the measure of man's humanity. For not to Achilles, who is all action, but to Odysseus, whose speech is like the winter's snow, is immortality offered. 24 Calypso promises to make Odysseus immortal and ageless; but he refuses on the very grounds which Achilles would have given for acceptance. When Odysseus walks through the palace of Alcinous, he sees bronze walls, gold doors, silver jambs, and last, "gold and silver hounds were on each side, which Hephaestus had cleverly made to be the guardians of great-hearted Alcinous' palace, immortal and ageless forever. " 25 Here is what Calypso had promised: here is what Odysseus rejected. To be like a golden hound, a work of art, a thing forged on the anvil of Hephaestus, is immortality. Why Odysseus prefers Penelope to Calypso, toil and trouble to heart-ease, his own rocky kingdom to a kind of paradise, the golden hounds of Hephaestus explain. He prefers to remain mortal and human: to be a person and not a thing. PART 1, STYLE Introduction 1. Prophyry, Quaestiones Homericae. 2. Alexander I. 3. [twas Milman Parry's error not to realize that the inapplicability of an epithet in some instances did not preclude its relevance in others, and that both kinds were necessary. 4. C. M. Bowra, Heroic Poetry, pp_. 233ff. 5. Aeneid 7. 5. 6. Ibid. 1. 378-379. 7. Ibid. 10. 783. 8. Ibid. B. 7; cf. 10. 812 and Servius ad loc., 826. 9. Iliad 2. 769-770. 10. Ibid. 16. 152. 11. Odyssey 1. 29. 12. Ibid. 3. 310. 13. Ibid. 4. 628-629; d. 17. 381; 22. 241-245. 14. Iliad 4. 89, 104. 15. Ibid. 5. 169-216. 16. Ibid. 16. 854. 17. Ibid. 17. 10, 379; cf. 11. 654. 18. Ibid. 16. 119-121; Odyssey 10. 46-54. 19. Ibid. 11. 57; 12, 88; 13. 790; 14. 469. 20. Ibid. 18. 249-252; 22. 99-103. 21. Ibid. 12. 108-110. Chapter I: Men and Heroes 1. Iliad 7. 96; cf. 2. 235; 7. 235-236; 11. 389; 23. 409. 2. Ibid. 15. 661-663. 3. Ibid. 5. 637; 23. 332, 790; ef. 1. 250; 6. 202; 20. 217, 220, 233; 24. 535. 4. Ibid. 3. 287, 353, 460; 6. 358; 7. 87. 5. Ibid. 9. 134; cf. BT Scholiast. 6. Ibid. 9. 276. 7. Ibid. 9. 335-337,340-341. Cf. Hesiod, Theogony416-436; Tyrtaeus fr. 9, 13-14; Aristophanes, Knights 1276-1277, 1304; Thucydides viii. 73.3, 92.2; Xenophon, Hiero viL 3. SPRING 1985 �8~3~9~-~~mme~~mma 342; 20. 204, 357; 24. 202. 9. Ibid. 16. 263, 315; 17. 572. 10. Ibid. 23. 787-791. 11. Ibid. 16. 857; 22. 363; d. 24. 6. The v.1. ha(a)droteta is a corruption of androteta (cf. Chantraine, Grammaire Home'rique, I, 110) and is not to be confounded with adrosyne (Hesiod, Works and Days 474). 12. Ibid. 9. 189; cf. 524-527. 13. Ibid. 20. 203-204. 14. Cf. Iliad 16. 392; 17. 549-550; 19. 131; but cf. Hesiod, Theogony 100. 15. Cf. Iliad 15. 741; 16. 620-630; 20. 356-368, 248-257. 16. Iliad 6. 357-358; 7. 78-91; cf. Odyssey 8. 579-580. 17. Ibid. 12. 23; cf. W. Schadewaldt, Iliasstudien, p. 118, n. 1. The heroes seem in strength more than twice an ordinary man, for they perform deeds which hardly two mortals "such as they now are" could do (Iliad 5. 303-304; 12. 447-449; 20. 286-287; d. 12. 381-383); and at the same time they possess half the strength of the gods, for, though unwilling to resist alone a god-inspired enemy, they think themselves equal if another joins them (13. SS-58, 235-238; 17. 102-104). It would seem that, while the heroes are half-gods, mortals are at most a quarter; and hence the greater frequency of dyo ("two") with the dual in the Iliad than in the Odyssey well accords with its theme, as if two sons or two warriors together (taken as a unity) reacquire a divine status (e.g., the two Ajax or the two Atreidae; d. 2. 679, 822; 4. 393-395; 5. 10, 572). Cf. J. Gonda, Reflections on the Numerals "One" and "Two" in Ancient I-E Umguages, pp. 15-20. 18. Ibid. 1. 339. 19. Ibid. 4. 82-84; 19. 224. 20. Ibid. 1. 339; 3. 279; 4. 84, 320; 6. 123, 180; 9. 460, 500, 507; 18. 107; 19. 94, 131, 224, 260; 21. 566, 569; 23. 788. 21. Ibid. 15. 139-141; cf. 4. 45; 5. 442; 24. 49. 22. Ibid. 5. 746-747; 9. 524-525; 13. 346; d. Hesiod, Works and Days 159. 23. Hesiod, in his five ages of man, never calls the heroes, unlike the other four ages, anthrOpoi (Works and Days 109, 137, 143, 180) 24. Iliad 2. 669; d. Vergil, Aeneid 1. 65 passim: divum pater atque hominum rex ("father of gods and king of men"). 25. Odyssey 2. 47, 234; 5. 12; cf. Iliad 8. 40; 22. 184. 26. Iliad 4. 84; 19. 224; 4. 235; 8. 245; cf. 5. 33; 8. 132, 397; 11. 80, 201; 16. 250; 17. 630. 27. Cf. Iliad 19. 95-96. 28. Iliad 16. 798; cf. 5. 184-185, 331-332, 839, and how in Pindar theos and anlr are linked: Py. 4. 21-23; 5. 123; 12. 22; Ne. 1. 8-9; 3. 23; fr. 224, 225 (Schroeder). 29. Odyssey 18. 130-135; cf. Iliad 24. 49. 30. Iliad 17. 446-447; cf. 20. 21. 31. Cf. Odyssey 23. 302-307. 32. We can easily measure the difference between the Iliad and Odyssey if we remember that, when Odysseus tells Eumaeus about his exploits in war~how he loved not the working of the soil nor the care for his household, but always ships and wars and well-polished lances were dear to him-it is told as part of a lie (Odyssey 14. 211-228). 33. AnthrOpos: 118 in Odyssey, 70 in Iliad; herOs: 73 in Iliad, 40 in Odyssey; the same applies to anir, phOs, brotos. 34. Iliad 1. 3-4, Odyssey 1. 3; cf. Odyssey 4. 267-268. 35. Cf. Odyssey 1. 347-352; 8. 479-480; Iliad 8. 492-493, with Odyssey 1. 358-359; 21. 352-353. 36. Odyssey 1. 219, 236; 7. 212, 307; 8. 552; 11. 363-366; 22. 414-415. 37. Cf. Seiler, H., Glotta xxxii. 3/4, p. 233, who notes that the expressed opposition of anthrOpoi-theoi is more common in the Iliad than in the . Odyssey. 38. Cf. Ovid, Metamorphoses xlii. 9-15. 39. Odyssey 4. 268, 312, 423, 617; 15. 117, 121. 40. Ibid. 4. 21, 303, 312; 15. 62. 41. Ibid. 1. 189; 2. 99; 19. 144; 22. 185; 24. 134. 42. Ibid. 2. 15, 157; 7. 155; 11. 342; 24. 451. 43. Ibid. 14. 97. It is in line with this that Eumaeus himself obtains the once proud title orchamos and ron, "file-leader of he-men." 44. Odyssey 18. 423; d. Eustathius ad loc. Chapter II: Achaeans and Trojans 1. Iliad 1. 122-123. THE ST. JOHN'S REVIEW 2. Ibid 1. 135; d. Odyssey 24. 57. 3. Ibid. 5. 27, 102; 8. 155; 10. 205; 11. 294, 459; 13. 456, 737; 17. 420; 23. 175, 181. 4./bid. 17. 214; 18. 226; 19. 75; 20. 498; 21. 153; 23. 168; cf. 9. 184, 496. 5. Ibid. 5. 135-136. 6. Cf. Iliad 2. 53, 196. 7. Iliad 5. 102. 8. Ibid. 6. 111; 20. 366. 9. Ibid. 9. 233; 11. 564; 14. 15; 15. 135; 17. 276. 10. Cf. Iliad 13. 620-639. 11. Iliad 3. 106; 13. 621; 21. 224, 414, 459. 12. Odyssey 1. 134; cf. 20. 291-292; 21. 289. 13. Iliad 10. 299; cf. 4. 176; Odyssey 1. 106 passim; d. 0. Hoffman, G/otta xxvili, p. 32. 14. Ibid. 9. 496; 20. 498. 15. Ibid. 11. 459; 5. 27-29. 16. I borrow these lines from Macaulay's portrait of Monmouth, History of England, I, 464 (Everyman's ed.). 17. Iliad 3. 8; 11. 508; 24. 364; but cf. 2. 536, 541. 18. Ibid. 10. 204-206. 19. Cf. Iliad 19. 164-170. 20. Diomedes: Iliad 5. 25, 235, 335; 6. 145; 10. 509; cf. 4. 365; 5. 376, 881; Odysseus: 5. 674 (cf. 670); 10. 232, 248, 498; 11. 403; only once is he megathymos (Odyssey 15. 2). 21. Iliad 10. 476-481, 488-493. 22. Ibid. 9. 255, 629, 675; 18. 5; 20. 343; 21. 53. 23. Ibid. 22. 98. 24. Ibid. 8. 523; 21. 55. 25. Cf. Sophocles Ajax 548-549; Odyssey 18. 261-264. 26. Iliad 5. 102; cf. 4. 509; 12. 440. 27. Ibid. 11. 564-568. 28. Ibid. 4. 355, 509; 8.110; 12. 440; 17. 230, 418; all in speeches. Similarly, knre komoOtJtes Achaioi ("long-haired Achaeans"), which we may say is opposed to hippodamoi ("tamers of horse"), rarely occurs in bat~ tie scenes (Iliad. 3. 79; 8. 341). 29. Ibid. 3. 341-343. 30. Cf. Iliad 2. 123; 3. 111, 274, 297, 319; 15. 390; 16. 564, 770; 20. 2-3. 31. Cf. Iliad 19. 74. 32. Cf. Odyssey 1. 1. 33. Even the epithet tachypOloi, "with swift horses" (of the Danaans), is more "obvious" than the Trojans' hippodamoi. 34. Iliad 2. 87-100. 35. Ibid. 2. 144-154. 36. Ibid. 2. 209-210. 37. Ibid. 2. 394-397. 38. Cf. H. Fraenkel, Die Homeriscl!en Gleichnisse, p. 20. 39. Iliad 2. 455-473; cf. 469 with 87. 40. Ibid. 2. 474-477. 41. Ibid. 2. 780-785. 42. Tacitus Hist. i. 84. 43. Iliad. 2. 810; 3. 1~9; cf. Thucydides ii. 89. 9. 44. Ibid. 4. 422-438; cf. 2. 804, 867; Aeschylus Pers. 401-407; Polybius xv. 12. 8-9; Plutarch de aud. poet. 10; Milton Paradise Lost i. 549-562. 45. Ibid. 13. 795-800; 15. 381-384; 16. 364-366; 17. 263-266; cf. 12. 138; 16. 78, 373; 21. 10. Once the Trojans attack without shouting (abromoi auiachoiJ and only then are they compared to fire (13, 39-41); cf. C. Robert, Sudien zur !lias, pp. 124-125; U. Wilamowitz, Die !lias und Homer, p. 252, n. 2. 46. Ibid. 11. 50; 18. 149. 47. Ibid. 4. 452-456; 14. 393-401; 17. 736-740 . 48. Ibid. 9. 4-8. 49. Ibid. 13. 128-133; 16. 212-217. 50. Ibid. 14. 507; 16. 283. 51. Cf. Th.ucydides i. 49. 3; ii. 11. 8, 87. 4·5, 89. 5·8. 52. iv. 126. 5; d. Herodotus vii. 211. 3, 212. 2; viii. 86. One might say that what distinguishes the Achaeans and Trojans persists in Herodotus as the difference between Greeks and Persians, and in Thucydides, on a much higher level, as the difference between Athenia.ns and Spartans. 53. Consider how in Thucydides virtue and shame are coupled: i. 37. 2, 84. 3; ii. 51. 5; iv. 19. 3; v. 9. 9, 101. 55 �54. Cf. Sophocles Ajax 1075-1080; Plato Euthyphro 12a7-12c8, Amatores 135a3-135a5 with Odyssey 21. 285-286, 323-329. 55. Cf. Aeschylus Agamemnon 937-938. 56. Iliad 6. 441-443; cf. 8. 147-156; 12. 310-321; 17. 90-95. 57. Ibid. 22. 104-107; cf. Aristotle MM 1191a5-1191a13, EE 1230a161230a26. 58. Ibid. 24. 44-45. 59. Iliad 3. 9; d. 2. 362-363. 60. [bid. 13. 237. 61. Ibid. 5. 529-532; 15. 561-564. 62. [bid. 15. 657-658; cf. 8. 345-346; 17. 357-365. 63. Thucydides v. 9. 9; d. i. 84. 3. 64. Iliad 2. 453-454; 11. 13-14. 65. [bid. 5. 787; 8. 228; 13. 95, 122; 15. 502, 561. 66. Ibid. 4. 431; cf. 1. 331; 4. 402; 24. 435. 67. Ibid. 15. 661-666; d. Tacitus Hist. iv. 18. 4; Germania 7-8. 68. [bid. 4. 297-300; cf. Xenophon Memorabilia ill. i. 8; Polybius xv. 16. 1-4. 69. Cf. Iliad 4. 303-309. 70. Iliad 16. 422-430; cf. BT Scholiast 13. 95; 15. 502. 71. Cf. Tacitus Gemwnia 30. 2. 72. Iliad 13. 1, 129; 15. 42, 304, 327, 449 passim. 73. Cf. Iliad 13. 49-54. 74. Xenophon A11abasis ii. vi. 19. 75. Iliad 17. 335-341. It is noteworthy how both here and elsewhere (5. 787; 8. 228; 13. 95, 122) the appeal to shame is either said or inspired by a god. 76. Cf. Xenophon Cyropaedeia viii. i. 31. 77. Iliad !0. 212-217. 78. Ibid. 10. 303-307; cf. BT Scholiast 10. 303; 17. 220. 79. Ibid. 7. 427 (consider 430); cf. 19. 295-299. 80. Lessing Laokoo11 I. Chapter III: Achilles and Agamemnon 1. Whether "Peleides," "Atreides," etc., are patronymica or gentilica has been much disputed; d. K. Meister, Die Homerische Kuntsprache, pp. 149-150; P. Chantraine, op. cit., I, 105-106. 2. Iliad 24. 538-540. 3. Ibid. 21. 189. 4. Cf. Iliad 6. 123 with 145-146; 21. 150 with 153. 5. Iliad 1. 146, 188, d. 178. 6. Ibid. 2. 860, 874, but cf. A. Scholiast. 7. Cf. the way each side exhorts their troops in Thucydides, e.g., iv. 92. 7, 95. 3; see also Herodotus vi. 14. 3; viii. 90. 4. 8. Iliad 9. 252-259, 438-443. 9. Ibid. 19. 387-391; cf. 14. 9-11; 16. 140-144; 21. 174-178; 20.2. 10. Ibid. 1. 242. 11. Ibid. 3. 329; 7. 355; 8. 82; 13. 766. 12. Ibid. 3. 356; 6. 512. 13. Cf. Paulys Realet~cyclopiidie vxii, 2 col. 1918. 14. Odyssey 8. 18. 15. Ibid. 16. 455; 17. 361; 18. 348; 20. 286; 22. 191, 339. 16. Cf. Odyssey 24. 270. Thucydides refers to himself only once as the son of Oro! us: when he is in command of Athenian forces (iv. 104.4); elsewhere, as an historian, he is plain Thucydides or Thucydides the Athenian. 17. Metamorphoses xiii. 140-141. 18. Cf. lliad 6. 150-151; 20. 213-214. 19. Odyssey 1. 21. 20. Cf. BT Scholiast 2. 212. 21. Sophocles Pltiloctetes 440-442. 22. Ibid. 417 (cf. Ajax 190); Odyssey 14. 202-203. 23. Odyssey 9. 366-367. 24. Ibid. 9. 19; cf. 10. 325-330. 25. Ibid. 9. 414, cf. 408. 26. Iliad 1. 7. 27. Ibid. 1. 24. 28. Ibid. 1. 59, 90, cf. 94. 29. Ibid. 1. 102; d. 7. 322; 13. 112. 30. Ibid. 1. 122. 31. Ibid. 2. 434, but note 2. 362. 56 32. Ibid. 9. 96, 163, 677, 697 with which cf. 8. 293. 33. Ibid. 19. 146, 199; cf. 23. 49. 34. Ibid. 1. 234-239. 35./bid. 2. 73; cf. B Scholiast (Porphyry); jacoby, F. SBPAW 1932, pp. 586-594. 36. Ibid. 2. 100-108. 37. L:wkoon xvi. 38. Cf. 1. 293-294. 39. Cf. Rich"'d ll 3. 2. 54-62; 3. 3. 39-53, 72-90. 40. Iliad 1. 86, 339; 23. 43. 41. Ibid. 3. 276-280; 19. 258-260. 42. Ibid. 2. 109; 8. 496. 43. 44. 45. 46. 47. 48. Ibid. 7. 412; d. Aristotle Politica 1285b3-1285b12. Cf. Xenophon Memorabilia i. ii. 58; iv. vi. 13-15. Iliad 2. 185-197; cf. 1. 174-175; ABT Scholiast 2. 186. Ibid. 2. 199, cf. 265-266. Ibid. 2. 200-205. Cf. lliad 1. 175; 9. 37, 98, 608. Chapter IV: Ancestral Virtue 1. lliad 1. 226-228. 2. Ibid. 2. 239-241. 3. Ibid. 1. 178. 4. Ibid. 1. 185-186, cf. 169. 5. Ibid. 1. 280-281; cf. 11. 786-787; Odyssey 15. 533-534. 6. Ibid. 2. 631-637; 11. 5-9. 7. [bid. 2. 641-643, 657-670, 673-675, 687-694, 698-703, 721-725. 8. Odysseus' ships are the only ones called miltopareioi, ''red cheeked,'' (2. 637), an indication to the hearers that his position is central (d. Eustathius ad lac.); and likewise the importance of Achilles is indicated by nun au (681, d. Eustathius). 9. Iliad 2. 579-580, cf. 481-483, Eustathius ad loc. 10. Cf. lliad 1. 91 with 244, 2. 82. 11. Iliad 2. 768-770, cf. 769, 7. 289. 12. Ibid. 2. 557-558. 13. Ibid. 2. 527-530. 14. Ibid. 3. 178-179. 15. Ibid. 9. 37-39; cf. 1. 231, 293. 16. Ibid. 5. 1. 17. Ibid. 5. 86. 18. Ibid. 5. 16, 18, 25, 85, 93, 97. 19. Ibid. 5. 114. 20. Ibid. 5. 116-117. 21. Ibid. 5. 134. 22. Ibid. 14. 110-127. 23. lbid. 4. 370-400; 5. 8U-813. It is not accidental that Agamemnon alone calls Odysseus "Laertiades," without adding his proper name (9. 185); nor that he bids Menelaus "call each man by his lineage and patronymic, glorifying all" (10. 68-69; cf. 5. 635-639; 7. 125-128; 8. 282-283). Nicias, Thucydides' Agamemnon, does the same (vii. 69. 2.), Cf. Xenophon Oecmwmicus vii. 3. 24. Ibid. 4. 404-412. 25. Ibid. 5. 125; d. 6. 479; 15. 641-642; Odyssey 2. 276-277; Horace C, i. XV. 27-28. 26. Ibid. 4. 354; 2. 260. 27. C( Meyer, de Homen· patrot~ymicis, pp. 61-66, who points out the rarity of patronymics in the Odyssey: but he wrongly infers from this its more recent origin, whereas it actually indicates the intended difference between the two works. 28. Iliad 9. 160-161, cf. 69. 29. Cf. Iliad 9. 392. 30. lliad 10. 237-239. 31. Ibid. 23. 571-585. 32. So Leaf ad 571. 33. Iliad 23. 572. 34. Odyssey 24. 508-515, d. Iliad 6. 209-211; Pindar Namea11 xi. 37-38. 35. lliad 23. 322, 515, 585, cf. 415. 36. Ibid. 23, 568, cf. 587-588; 1. 260; 2. 707. Chapter V: The Armour of Agamemnon 1. Iliad 5. 268, 311. SPRING 1985 ! f l ' �' 1 . . . ~ 2. Ibid. 11. 701. 3. Ibid. 15. 532; 23. 288; cf. 2. 713. 4. Ibid. 1. 263; 4. 296; 5. 144; 9. 81. 5. Ibid. 16. 2; 19. 386. 6. Ibid. 11. 751. 7. Achilles bears approximately 28 epithets, Hector 17, Odysseus 1~ Menelaus 13, Ajax 17; and of them Odysseus alone has several that are shared with no one else, mostly compounds with poly-. 8. Iliad 11. 45-46. 9. Ibid. 11. 61. 10. Ibid. 11. 62-63. 11. Ibid. 11. 27-28. 12. Ibid. 11. 32. 13. Ibid. 11. 65-66. 14. Ibid. 3. 333. 15. Ibid. 3. 339; cf. 10. 121-123; 17. 588. 16. Ibid. 10. 150-152 .. 17. Cf. Iliad 17. 195-197. 18. Iliad 22. 124-125; cf. Odyssey 10. 300-301. 19. Cf. Iliad 21. 50. 20. Iliad 10. 21-24, 31, 131-135, 178; cf. 29-30 with 3. 17. 21. Ibid. 10. 149; cf. BT Scholiast. 22. Ibid. 18. 192-195. 23. Cf. Vergil Aen. ii. 396. 24. Iliad 17. 210-212; cf. 19. 384-386. 25. Xenophon Anabasis ii. i. 12. 26. Iliad 5. 181-183. 27. Cf. iliad 7. 424; 11. 613-614. 28. Iliad 16. 278-282. 29. Ibid. 16. 141-144; cf. Eustathius ad 140. Chapter VI: Ajax 1. Iliad 2. 671-675; d. Aristotle Rhetoric 1414a2-1414a7; Lucian Dial.Jyforl. XXV. 2. But cf. niad 6. 522. 3. Iliad 2. 768. 4. Ibid. 17. 279-280. 5. Cf. Iliad 6. 156, where Bellerophon has "lovely manliness," i!norein ereteinin, a unique collocation: erateini! is used of a country or Helen's daughter (Iliad 3. 175, 239, 401; Odyssey 4. 13) and i!noree of strength (Iliad 4. 303; 11. 9; 17. 329; Odyssey 24. 509). 6. Iliad 11. 465-472; d. his silence in Book 10 and 3. 292. 7. Ibid. 11. 474-481; cf. 15. 271-180 of Hector; Aristotle HA 610a13-610a14. More than any other Achaean, Ajax (in Homer's eyes) is a lion: Iliad 7. 256; 11. 548-557; 13. 197-202; 17. 132-137; cf. Plato Republic 620b1-620b2. 8. Cf. Iliad B. 570-571. 9. lliad 3. 227; 7. 219; 11. 485; 17. 128; cf. 11. 526-527. 10. Ibid. 12. 330-350; 8. 266-268; cf. 17. 128-137. 11. Ibid. 11. 494-495. 12. Ibid. 11. 489-490. 13. Ibid. 11. 496-497. 14. Ibid. 11. 548-557; 17. 657-667. 15. Ibid. 11. 558-562, d. 67-69, its source. 16. Ibid. 11. 546. 17. Aristotle EN 1116a21-1116a35, 1116b30-1117a1. 18. lliad 12. 335. 19. Ibid. 17. 281-283. 20. Cf. Aristotle HA 488b15-488b17. Chapter Vll: Heroic Virtue 1. niad 13. 321-325. 2. Ibid. 14. 520-522. 3. Cf. Iliad 17. 718-721. 4. Cf. Iliad 13. 75-79. 5. Iliad 10. 316. 6. Ibid. 21. 527; 22. 92; cf. 5. 395; 7. 208. 7. Cf. Uvy ix. 16. 11-19. 8. Iliad 22. 161 .. 9. Ibid. 1. 54, 58. 10. Ibid. 1, 84, cf. 80. 11. Ibid. 1. 121, 148 (cf. 215), 223-224. THE ST. JOHN'S REVIEW 12. Ibid. B. 535; 11. 90; 13. 237, 275, 277; 14. 118 (cf. 15. 642); 20. 242, 411; 22. 268. 11. 763 and 9. 498 are used of Achilles; 23. 276, 374 of horses; d. Pindar Pythian x, 23; Herodotus iii. 88. 3, i. 216; Iliad 20. 411 refers only to swiftness. 13. Iliad 9. 498 is an apparent exception. 14. Theomnestus in Hippiatrica Cant. xciii. 93 (ed. Oder-Hoppe). 15. Aristotle EN 1106a19-1106a21; d.lliad 5. 222-223, 230-234; 10. 491-493; 16. 808-809; Odyssey 4. 202. 16. Iliad 2. 769-770. 17. British Horses and Ponies, pp. 23-24. 18. Iliad 2. 527-529. 19. Ibid. 6. 504-514, cf. 513 with 19. 398. 20. Ibid. 15. 262-270 (264-268~ 6. 507-511). 21. S. Leaf ad l/iad 6. 514; cf. 3. 43; 11. 378. 22. lliad 6. 466-470, cf. 318-322. 23. Ibid. 22. 22-24, cf. 162-165. 24. Ibid. 8. 83-84, 325-326; it is curious that Paris should hit the horse, Hector the man; d. 22. 324-325; 8. 85; 13. 568-569. 25. Ibid. 17. 198-208, 441-450; consider 8. 186-190; d. Eustathius ad 188-189. 26. Cf. Iliad 10. 305-306, 322-323, 402-404 ( ~ 17. 76-78). Chapter VIII: Achilles and Hector 1. Iliad 3. 60-63. 2. Cf. Iliad 23. 415. 3. Iliad 4. 542; 15. 358; 21. 251; 23. 529; 14. 488 of a man. 4. W. Schulze, Quaestiones Epicae, pp. 289-290, derives nelees of nelees emar from aleomai ("shun"), and E. Risch, Wortbildung der Homerischen Sprache, p. 76, n. 1, thinks both adjectives may come originally from aleomai, but that later both were derived from eleos ("pity"}. In any case, Homer, I think, did not distinguish them. 5. Iliad 9. 497, 632; 16. 33, 204; cf. 19. 229; Pindar Pythian I. 95-96. 6. Ibid. 22. 357. If we set aside its occurrence in lists (e.g., 5. 723), iron mostly indicates horror, savagery, or indifference: 4. 123, 510; 7. 141, 144; 8. 15; 17. 424, 565; 18. 34; 22. 357; 23. 30; cf. Odyssey 16. 294. Iron and bronze are related one to the other in Homer like steel and gold in Shakespeare's line: ''To lift shrewd steel against our golden crown'' (Richard II 3. 2. 59). 7. Shakespeare Rape of Lucrece 1424-1428. 8. Iliad 16. 323-35; cf. Aeschylus Prometheus Bound 242, 299·302. 9. Odyssey 19. 162-163; cf. Ilzad 21. 190-199; 22. 126-128. 10. Iliad 15. 618-621. 11. Ibid. 16. 3-4; d. Eustathius 16.31. Chapter IX: Similes 1. Iliad 18. 483; cf. 15. 187-193. 2. Ibid. 484-489, 607-608. 3. Ibid. 18. 491-508, 509-540, 541-606; BT Scholiast 490. 4. Cf. Iliad 18, 550-557 with 11. 67-70; all the similes of lions are derived, as it were, from 18. 577-586; but see Iliad 605-606 and Odyssey 4. 17-18; d. Odyssey 4. 1-7 with Iliad 18. 491-496. 5. Cf. Fraenkel, Dichtung a11d Philosophic der Fruehen Griechentum, pp. 58-59. 6. Cf. Iliad 2. 453-454; 11. 13-14. 7. Iliad 12. 40-50. 8. Cf. BT Scholiast 13. 39, 137. 9. Cf. Iliad 6. 407. 10. Iliad 12. 131-136. 11. Ibid. 12. 146-152. 12. Ibid. 12. 156-160. 13. Ibid. 12. 167-172 (cf. BT Scholiast). So 0. Becker interprets it: Das Bild des Weges, pp. 44-45 (Hermes Einselschrift, Heft 4, 1937). 14. Ibid. 12. 200-207, 252-255. 15. Ibid. 12. 278-289; cf. 5. 557. 16. Ibid. 12. 293, 299-308. 17. Ibid. 12. 375-376. 18. Ibid. 12. 421-424. 19. Cf. Iliad 22. 261-264. 20. Iliad 12. 433-436. 21. Ibid. 12. 451-455. 22. Ibid. 12. 463. 57 �23. 24. 25. 26. 27. 28. 29. 30. 31. 32. 33. 34. 35. 36. 37. 38. 39. 40. 41. 42. 43. 44. 45. 46. 47. Ibid. 13. Ibid. 13. Ibid. 13. Ibid. 13. Ibid. 13. Ibid. 13. Ibid. 13. Ibid. 13. Ibid. 13. Ibid. 13. Cf. Iliad Iliad 13. Ibid. 13. Ibid. 13. Ibid. 13. Ibid. 13. Ibid. 13. Ibid. 13. Ibid. 13. Ibid. 13. Ibid. 13. Ibid. 13. Ibid. 13. Cf. Iliad Cf. Iliad 39, 53. 137-142. 178-181. 198-202. 242-245. 295-303. 328, 330. 334-338. 389-391. 434-438. 12. 132-136, 146-150. 471-475. 487-495. 526-533. 560-565. 570-575. 588-592. 653-655. 673, 687-688. 703-708. 754-755. 795-801. 802-808. 12. 130, 188. 12. 465-466. Chapter X: Achilles' and Hector's Virtues 1. The poetic gifts of Achilles are by no means common; d. Iliad 1. 225; 9. 189, 323-325; 16. 7-11; 21. 280-283; 22. 261-265. 2. Iliad 12. 167-172. 3. Ibid. 17. 565. 4. Ibid. 20. 371-372. 5. Ibid. 11. 65-66; 22. 134-135; 19. 373-382; cf. 22. 317-319. 6. Ibid. 15. 605-610; 19. 16-17, 365-366. 7. Ibid. 20. 490-493; cf. 13. 53, 688; 17. 88-89; 18. 154; 20. 423; 21. 12-16. 8. Ibid. 15. 605; cf. 13. 53-54. 9. Ibid. 2. 426; 9. 468; 17. 88; 23. 33. 10. Storm: Iliad 11. 297, 305; 12. 40; river: 5. 597-599; waves: 11. 307; 15. 624. 11. Iliad 21. 273-283. 12. Cf. lliad 7. 99-100; Tacitus Annales i. 70. 1-3. 13. Iliad 21. 190-199; cf. 124-132; 20. 390-392; 14. 244-246. 21. 195 is interpolated; cf. G. Bolling, Extemal Evidence, pp. 188-189; Pasquali, G., Storia della Tradizione, pp. 225-227. Note that Achilles does not know the power of Oceanus: only the gods and Homer know. 14. Cf. Iliad 20. 104-107. 15. Iliad 20. 73-74. 58 Chapter XI; Heroic Ambition 1. Iliad 8. 538-541. 2. Cf. Iliad 2. 371-372; 4. 288-289; Odyssey 11. 543-547. 3. Iliad 13. 126-128. 4. Ibid. 18. 516. 5. Ibid. 17. 397-399; cf. 20. 358-359. 6. Ibid. 13. 825-826. 7. Ibid. 13. 54, 802; cf. 7. 298; 14. 388-391; 24. 258-259. 8. Ibid. 7. 87-91. 9. Ibid. 12. 322-328. 10. Ibid. 16. 154; 23. 277. 11. Thymos of a horse: Iliad 8, 189; 10. 492, 531; 11. 520; 16. 382, 469; 23. 468. Neither the horse nor any other animal has phrenes: for the difference between them, cf 2. 371-372 with 4. 288-289; 13. 493-494. The phrase kilta ph rena kai kata thymon usually expresses indecision: the hero is inclined one way by thymos, another way by phren: it is not tautological (1. 193; 11. 411; 17. 106; 18. 15; d. 10. 507). Homer seems to distinguish between singular phrin and plural phrenes: the singular is never used in a bad sense, but often of pleasure, rarely of grief; the plural is often in a bad sense, rarely of pleasure, often of grief and other violent passions. "Pure" passions are entitled to the singular, "impure" to the plural; the pure ones seem to be fear for others and pleasure for oneself (of fear: 1. 555; 9. 244; 10. 538; of pleasure; 6. 285; 8. 559; 9. 186 (d. 184), passim). Zeus' undivided will is singular (2. 3; 10. 45-46; 12. 173; 19. 125; 20. 23), but it becomes plural when perturbed and divided (8. 360, 446; 13. 631; 14, 165, 294; 16. 435, 444; 19. 121, 127) Consider the beautiful uses of phren in the Odyssey (6. 147; 19. 471), the only instances, I believe, of the singular used of anger and of grief. 12. Xenophon de re equestri ix. 2; Parmenides fr. 1, 1; Plato Phaedrus 253d3-253e1; cf. Iliad 10. 436-437. 13. Aristotle HA 575b31-474b33, d. 604b25-604b27; Vergil Georgica iii. 266; Shakespeare Henry V 3. 7. 1-88; Venus and Adonis 259-324, 385-396. 14. Georgica ill. 112. 15. Iliad 10. 322-323, cf. 305-306. 16. Cf. Iliad 7. 86-91, 446-451; 12. 13-33, 326-333. 17. Iliad 10. 401-404; 17. 75-78. 18. Cf. Geddes, The Problem of the Homeric Poems, pp. 205-235. 19. Odyssey 17, 291-323. 20. Cf. Iliad 1. 573-574; 15. 138-141; 21. 379-380. 21. Iliad 22. 328-329. 22. Ibid. 19. 407. 23. Ibid. 19. 416-417; 22. 358-360; d. Xenophon de re equestri viii. 13. 24. Odyssey 5. 136; 7. 257; 23. 336; lliad 18. 105-106; 19. 217-219; 3. 216-224; cf. 15. 741; 16. 630-631. 25. Odyssey 7. 91-94. SPRING 1985 I I I �The White Rose: Munich 1942-1943 by Inge Scholl With an Introduction by Dorothee Soelle. Translated from the German by Arthur R. Schultz. (Middleton, Connecticut: Wesleyan University Press, 1984) The Short Life of Sophie Scholl by Hermann Vinke With an Interview with lise Aichinger. Translated ... by Hedwig Pachter. (New York: Harper & Row, 1984) l ' i I I ' ! ! ' l l i l i ? During the escalation of the controversy about President Reagan's intended visit to the German war cemetery at Bitburg, when, after the "discovery" that there were no graves of American soldiers there, it was discovered that there were 49 graves of men of the Waffen-SS among or beside the roughly 2000 graves of soldiers of the German army, the German government made attempts to co-opt Germans with ''resistential" credentials to counteract the outrage and to demonstrate unity in the matter. Berthold von Stauffenberg, a son of the man who tried in vain to kill Hitler on 20 July 1944, was willing to go, though with a marked lack of enthusiasm. He is, as his father was, a professional soldier, a colonel in the Bundeswehr. He felt that this was not a matter of conscience; so that he would not refuse an order or request to attend. His brother, who is a member of parliament, had told his staff not to accept any such invitation. Their cousin Alfred von Hofacker, son of the man who played a pivotal role in the one-day anti-Nazi takeover in Paris in July 1944, felt that the next-of-kin of the men and women whoopposed the Nazis at the cost of their lives should not serve as figleaves to hide someone's embarrassment (Washington Post, 4 May 1985). Much could be said about the Figleaf-And-Oiive-Branch Function-ever since the founding of the Federal Republic-of the names associated with the German opposition to Hitler. There would be nothing wrong with the use of these people, their names and their memories, to build bridges and foster friendly relations between the new German republic and Germany's erstwhile enemies-if it had not tended to be a trifle too purposeful, almost a mechanism, and therefore suspect, as well as demeaning to the people thus called upon to perform this function. THE ST. JOHN'S REVIEW It is a pity, because in our epoch any example of resistance to the prevailing trend or to a totalitarian regime is of great interest precisely because it is so rare. For such exemplars to be used for propaganda or for public relations is all too likely to be a misuse. But such misuse is widespread; and it is by no means confined to one side. Some of the very concentration camp sites now have "Left" and "Right" associations. Commemorations are often accompanied by tensions among the commemorators. Dr. Michael Probst, the son of Christoph Probst, a member of the White Rose group who was put to death with Hans and Sophie Scholl, attended a recent commemorative gathering at the cemetery at Munich-Perlach where they are buried. (Most of the people executed later in connection with the July '44 plot were denied graves by a regime bent on revenge.) The ceremony attracted representatives of many groups, including the American Jewish Congress. Probst wrote an open letter to Professor Michael Wyschogrod of that organization in which he expressed his concern at the politicisation of the event. American Jews wanted to pay demonstrative honour to the White Rose for being the first to denounce the mass murder of Jews publicly, in one of their leaflets. But the gesture was also intended as a demonstrative corrective to President Reagan's visit to Bitburg; indeed, in Probst's view, it lent support to "people in Germany who oppose your President and those who elected him, who think they can thereby promote the interests of disarmament." He considers their assumption misguided and support for the tyrants of our day. "My father and his friends aimed at the spiritual renewal of the German people after the ... liberation from the Hitler regime, not their confusion. They paid for this with their lives. The dead 59 �should not be dragged into the political discussions of the day." (Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung, 6 May 1985; my translation.) On the other hand the ubiquitous media had tracked down Inge Scholl at the graveside and recorded her misgivings about Bitburg. But it did not take that television news item to show disagreements even between the families of the White Rose, this tiny group in the context of the German opposition to Hitler, perhaps even within families. just as the liberal father, Robert Scholl, had not been able to convince his children of the menace and wickedness of the Nazi regime until they had discovered it for themselves, so too he failed, 35 years later, to prevail with the young firebrands of the Left who were determined to break up a commemoration of the White Rose in the disturbed 1960s, because they objected to the conserva, tive views of some who took part. The father's plea to let the gathering proceed without disturbance was of no avail. That was in February 1968. (See, for instance, Die Zeit, 5 March 1968.) One year later Inge Scholl wrote some Concluding Remarks for her little book about the White Rose, which had become a classic since its first publication, but had now to contend with the criticisms of latterday perfectionists and pragmatists-which were, of course, often mutually contradictory. This postscript appears again in the American second edition. But the book now has an additional Introduction by the prominent theologian Dorothee Soelle. Aha, one might think: she will say something about the part played by Christianity in the lives and deaths of the White Rose group. (Christoph Probst, for instance, asked to be received into the Catholic church before he died.) Far from it: there is not a word about it, nor even about what Dietrich Bonhoeffer called "religionless Christianity." Instead there is a diatribe against NATO, the Pentagon, the arms race, and Ronald Reagan. Mrs. Soelle packs powerful punches. She says that she does not believe the people who say they did not know about the systematic mass murder of the jews while it was going on. She ends her Introduction with this nightmare-"that my children will later approach [reproach?] me and ask, 'Mom, what did you do when Ronald Reagan laid the groundwork for the nuclear Holocaust?' No matter what, I would not be able to say that I did not know. All of us know, and we have to act in one way or another. That is the legacy of the White Rose" (White Rose, p. XIV). Is it? Is it that simple? The contents of the book speak against it. Even Inge Scholl's 1969 Postscript harclly points that way. And I would say that even-and especially-if one has grave misgivings about President Reagan and what he stands for, one must, surely, discountenance such an Introduction which, instead of introducing the reader to the White Rose, uses it for political purposeshowever heartfelt. The book itself is nonetheless still valuable, consisting, as it does, of Inge Scholl's first and fundamental account 60 and an appendbc of 10 documents, such as the text of the Indictment and Sentences, a moving account by her cellmate of Sophie's last days and nights in prison, some newspaper announcements of the executions, and iln excerpt from a letter by the Norwegian Bishop Berggrav describing the scene when Helmuth james von Moltke told him about the White Rose at a secret meeting in Oslo in spring 1943. Inge Scholl's Postscript of 1969 explains that her book was originally written in 1947, for use in schools, for adolescents from the age of thirteen to eighteen-some of whom had still served in the Hitler Youth, many of whom could not understand how their parents could be taken in by the Nazis. She wanted to correct what she now saw as a political deficiency in that early book as well as the misconception that the Munich resistance of 1943 was little more than an action arising out of moral outrage without much regard for its political aspects. The Munich student rebels realized that only force could overthrow the regime. Since force was not available, they spread information and called for passive resistance. Some of them did collect what arms they could. By their leaflets they also hoped to create a sense of solidarity among individuals opposed to the regime. They hoped "to win over the hesitant, to move the uncommitted to a decision, to cast doubt in the minds of Nazi followers, to induce questioning in the minds of Nazi enthusiasts" (p. 95). They also had, and they wanted to foster, a sense of solidarity with the other European resistance groups. The third of the White Rose leaflets clearly states that "A victory of fascist Germany in this war would have immeasurable, frightful consequences." How could the regime be fought? By sabotage everywhere, by convincing everyone of the senselessness and hopelessness of the war, ''of our intellectual and economic enslavement at the hands of the National Socialists; of the destruction of all moral and religious values ... " (pp. 97-8). Politically they favoured parliamentary democracy but concentrated more on the rejection of National Socialism and of nationalism. They were appalled by the failure of the German intellectuals. In the autumn of 1942 Hans harangued them in his diary: "It is the very negation of the intellect that you serve in this desperate hour. You do not see the despair. You are rich, you do not see the poor. Your soul is dried up because you did not want to heed its call. You apply your intellect to the refinement of a machine gun, but even in your young years you brushed aside the simplest, the primary questions: Why? and Whither?" (p. 101). He felt that the educated classes were most to blame and most confused-more than, say, the workers or the dergy-and he pleaded with the educated to become politically engaged. Inge Scholl is convinced that her brother's and sister's rigor of thought was closely related to their discovery of Christianity, which "paralleled the development of their independent political stand"-helped by such older SPRING 1985 �I I friends as Carl Muth and Theodor Haecker. She also stresses the importance of personal contact with such thinkers as well as with other forbidden writers and artists. She ends her Postscript with a warning against the easy drawing of false parallels. "It is my view that one should let what happened then stand as it was. Practical applications do not exist; we should look upon it as a singular instance. It was an instance in which 5 or 6 students took it upon themselves to act while the dictatorship was totally in control; in which they accepted the lonely burden of not even being able to discuss these matters with their families; in which they took action even though the omnipotent state allowed them no room for maneuver; in which they acted in spite of the fact that they could do no more than tear small rifts in the structure of that state-much less blast out the corner stones." She ends: "It is rare that a man [ein Mensch?] is prepared to pay with his life for such a minimal achievement as causing cracks in the edifice of the existing order" (p. 103). J ! ~ ' i f ' I ! I Hermann Vinke' s Short Life of Sophie Scholl is a marvellous book. The author modestly describes it as a collage of reports, letters, documents, testimonies and photos. Again it is written for the young, from the age of twelve up; and it got the German prize for a juvenile book. In fact it is a book for all ages and much more adult than many books for "grown-ups." It is much more concrete, more detailed, more specific and circumstantial, than Inge Scholl's trailblazing story. The author works in television, but seems quite free from the temptations of one who writes with a film or a "docudrama" in mind. He lets the word speak, though he has many pictures too. He has used Inge Scholl's book, interviews with her and with Fritz Hartnagel, Sophie's friend, and he was given photographs which at last get away from the joan of Arc images and show the little girl with her siblings, with a friend playing with dolls, in her Hitler Youth blouse and skirt, in a bathing suit by the water. Some. show her with hair cut so short that one can almost understand the police arresting her in 1937 thinking she was a boy-when she was 16 and they were cracking down on illegal youth movements. Some of the best happy snaps were taken by her younger brother Werner. The wartime photos look less happy. There is a rather miserable one of her in a boisterous and bovine group of Labor Service girls in striped pyjamas; and the previously published worriedlooking one with her brother Hans and Christoph Probst when they were leaving for Russia; and the last pensive one, a blown-up passport photograph. There are also some reproductions of her drawings. Vinke reproduces long quotations from her letters and diaries. Here she does indeed speak for herself. Vinke respects her and, while presenting and interpreting her, never foists anything on her that is not warranted by the evidence. He just seems to make all the arrangements to allow her to live again. THE ST. JOHN'S REVIEW How extraordinarily alive she was! How happy, how richly endowed, as a child, a girl, an adolescent, a young adult. She was eleven when Hitler came to power and twenty-one when she died. She was eighteen in September 1939 when the war broke out and left school in March 1940. Then came the separation from her family, labor service, war service. She trained as a Montessori teacher, worked with children, then on the land and in a factory. Shortly after her twenty-first, her last, birthday in May 1942, she was free at last to go to the university. She joined her elder brother Hans in Munich and met his friends, solcliers who were allowed to study medicine and to do medical work in the army. She studied biology and philosophy and took part in their political discussions and activities. She helped with the clandestine distribution of their leaflets and was finally arrested with her brother, tried and sentenced and executed with him and Christoph Probst, all in a matter of four days in February 1943. Her parents came to the trial and were thrown out, but were able to see her once more before she went to her death. Then her family were arrested. Her brother Werner died serving in Russia. Her friend Fritz Hartnagel had managed to survive Stalingrad, later married her sister Elisabeth, studied law, and became a judge. He was reluctant to talk to Hermann Vinke, but was finally persuaded by his son, a history teacher. Fritz Hartnagel was four years older than Sophie who, however, even in her teens, was the one who set the tone politically and involved him in stern cliscussions. He was an army officer and slow to see that Germany had to lose the war. Sophie was quite clear and consistent about it. Her final break with the Nazis seems to have come in 1938-9, after the arrest of the young Scholls for illegal activities in late 1937. Her father, a liberal and pacifist even in the first world war, a mayor after the war and later, under the Nazis, a private economic consultant, had jewish clients in Ulm, and so the family was aware of the repercussions and sequel of the pogrom of November 1938. And after Munich, after Prague, the relentless drive to war was all too clear. The father, too, served time in jail, during the war-which made it doubly hard for his eldest son and youngest daughter to go ahead with their oppositional activities; they had to fear that they would endanger him even more. It was he who, in the first Nazi years, tried to restrain his children's enthusiasm for the new regime and its lies about progress and the People's Community. Once they saw the light he may have worried about the risks they took; but he was proud of them. The five Scholl children grew up in a loving, liberal, educated and educative home. They enjoyed much freedom-even, despite the parents' misgivings, the freedom to join the Hitler Youth before it was compulsory and to become leaders in it. The children roamed the Suabian and Bavarian countryside, and Sophle, in particular, loved nature passionately-and poetically. There was a great intensity about her life, an intensity which enabled her to face death calmly when it came. 61 �Even the Gestapo were impressed-and probably at a loss for an explanation. The faith that animated her, and which she was able to put in words-though quiet, she was a very articulate person-was probably at first the faith of her mother, who had been a Protestant nurse, a Diakonisse, before she married. But it was also acquired and deepened by Sophie herself, by her whole-hearted response to what went on around her, a response that made her withdraw to serious reading whenever she could, even as a labor conscript, and glad to join with Hans and his friends and mentors when she had at last escaped to Munich. But Munich brought its clandestine work and Sophie once commented herself on how carefree and childlike she was during a brief spell at home and how she became grown-up and careworn again during the short train journey back from Ulm. She was not plagued by doubts. She knew what she wanted to do, what she was doing, and why. Such wholeness, such integrity, is exceedingly rare. Else Gebel, her cell-mate between her final arrest and execution, marvelled at her serenity and her considerateness, at how concerned Sophie was not to endanger her and at how well Sophie slept even the last night before her trial and execution. There is a great "legacy" in the Vinke book-but not in the sense of Mrs. Soelle. It is so effective because it is informative, straightforward and plain-dealing and free from both polemic and unctuousness. It, too, has a kind of postscript, an interview with the writer lise Aichinger, who describes what the news of the White Rose meant to her during the war when she and her mother lived in fear and were "racially" at risk. It gave her hope and restored her faith in humanity; it gave her strength to survive. She surely shared that leg- 62 acy with many others. Many more now have cause to be grateful to Hermann Vinke for concentrating on the life of Sophie Scholl and presenting her as a person,•as an individual. This is doubly welcome after the Bitburg incident has once more shown the power of thinking in terms of collectives and the need to get away from it. The young people of the White Rose were emphatic about the importance and the responsibility of the individual. They knew the likely cost of taking responsible action under a totalitarian regime. During their last Christmas holidays at horne Hans told Inge about a recent execution of fourteen Communists and Social Democrats and added: "It is high time that Christians, too, start doing something" (p. 138). Wilhelm Geyer, a painter an.d friend of the Scholls, remembers that two days before their last leaflet action and arrest Sophie said: "With all those people dying for the regime, it is high time that someone died against it" (pp. 163-4). There were and were to be others, who paid the same price. Michael Probst, writing to Michael Wyschogrod, quotes the farewell letter of a farmer's son called up to serve in the 55 in early.:J.944. He and a friend had refused to sign and were sentenced to death. He thanks his parents for all they had done for him since his childhood. They had told him not to join the 55. He asks for his parents' forgiveness and asks them to pray for him. It took heroic virtue to make such decisions. Beale Ruhm von Oppen Beate Ruhm von Oppen is a tutor at St. John's College, Annapolis. Her article about the White Rose, Student Rebellion and the Nazis, appeared in the Winter 1984 issue of The SL John's Revieu1. SPRING 1985 �:."' ' "'.:, . .; •..";~ ·:- ..•. · '!' ···.; II ,. b A Lover's Afterthought Trotsky resisted the idea of death, was scandalized by the notion of an ice-pick in the skull that someone might thus question the integrity of his skin. He called upon the whole available arsenal, tooth and claw, he gnashed and bit and kicked and screamed and scratched, did all he could to unzip his assailantbut to no avail-poor Trotsky, he was obviously incapable of intimacy. The slave in your Persian carving, who is about to be devoured by a lion, he knows better. He casts his head back cavalier as the lion leans on him, feels the beast's warm breath, the intentness of its heartbeat, the seering potential of its unsocialized behavior. He casts his head back to reveal the neck, extends the curve, even exaggerates it a bit to make the vulnerability more palpable to the animal-the way lovers sometimes do. The stage thus set the rampager cannot help but act, and there are only two possibilities in the face of such desperate vulnerability. 1) contract the steely jaws and break and shred the unresisting skin; 2) or not. Murder or not. Both are acts of enormous intimacy, murder and forgiveness are both very romantic, but murder is a one-time act, it trivializes all the other scenes that follow but forgiveness, forgiveness is the greatest intimacy Max Dublin Max Dublin is a tutor at St. John's College, Annapolis. THE ST. JOHN'S REVIEW 63 �' l The Effects of Gravity on Health Almost everyone passed out at the meeting today, only the smokers & joggers stayed awakeall that extra energy stolen from the air. Me, I was still asleep when I arrived, even though I'd shaved already: I shaved today, I know I did, but did it by touch, with my eyes closed, so as not to disturb my repose. I know what it would take for me to awaken again but I'm unwilling to make the sacrifice, just as my sister, under different circumstances, said on her suicide tape, blithely clinging to her wounds, 'There may be some sacrifices I am unwilling to make in order to get better." Very good old girl, you always had a way with words. So much meaning and so much precision in such a compact statement, as the reviewers might say. I wonder, will we ever have suicide reviews? In the end, however, what killed her, besides gravity, was the unremitting and increasing ordinariness of the world which, being a romantic, she could hardly forgiveand a single sentence which she finally got right. I lived out of town in Cambridge then; today I pass the spot daily as I walk to work, there is no more stain on the pavement to mark the place, but surely one macromolecule of her physical being has survived the ravages of scrubbers and time and weather and lingers on, quietly living its macromolecular existence, quietly betokening to this day that last pronouncement, the steely sentence of her relentless unbecoming. Max Dublin 64 SPRING 1985 � Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. 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Creator An entity primarily responsible for making the resource Office of the Dean Title A name given to the resource The St. John's Review (formerly The College), Spring 1985 Date A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource 1985-04 Contributor An entity responsible for making contributions to the resource Sterling, J. Walter Kronsberg, Anita Freis, Richard Freis, S. Richard Sachs, Joe Stickney, Cary Wilson, Curtis A. Sachs, Joe Brann, Eva T. H. Zuckerman, Elliot Clark, Allen Strauss, Leo Coughlin, M.L. Benardete, Seth von Oppen, Beate Ruhm Dublin, Max Description An account of the resource Volume XXXVI, number 2 of The St. John's Review, formerly The College. Published in Spring 1985. 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Wt.st Yt"9Lnlll dtd ru>t t.ttst TENNE.SS£I was apart of North Carolina until admitted as a .statli!' m 1796- (Ju Plat~t84). for tt"' W•st.rrn Land claims of South Carolina and Gtor91a,su Plates 88-89 Summer, 1985 �Editor: J. Walter Sterling Managing Editor: Maria Coughlin Poetry Editor: Richard Freis Editorial Board: Eva Brann S. Richard Freis, Alumni representative Joe Sachs Cary Stickney Curtis A. Wilson Unsolicited articles, stories, and poems are welcome, but should be accompanied by a stamped, self-addressed envelope in each instance. Re~soned comments are also welcome. The St. John's Review (formerly The College) is published by the Office of the Dean, St. John's College, Annapolis, Maryland 21404. William Dyal, President, Thomas Slakey, Dean. Published thrice yearly, in the winter, spring, and summer. For those not on the distribution list, subscriptions: $12.00 yearly, $24.00 for two years, or $36.00 for three years, payable in advance. Address all correspondence to The St. John's Review, St.· John's College, Annapolis, Maryland 21404. Volume XXXVI, Number 3 Summer, 1985 © 1986 St. John's College; All rights reserved. Reproduction in whOle or in part without permission is prohibited. ISSN 0277-4720 Composition: Best Impressions, Inc. Printing: St. fohn's College Press Cover: The United States, 1783-1802. ��THE ST. JoHN's REVIEW Summer 1985 Publius 1804 A Play in Two Acts John Alvis Act I Scene 1 The morning of June 18, 1804. Vice-President Aaron Burr's private study in his townhouse in New York City. The furnishing of the library is a matter of indifference as long as there are many books precisely arranged. A crystal vase containing a single red rose is set on a small commode and at stage center on the wall a large framed picture which will be identified as a portrait of Burr's daughter, Theodosia, and her husband, Charles Alston. At rise enter from right accompanied by a seroant-woman William P. Van Ness, middle-aged, rather formally dressed in the style of the times, fanning himself with his top hat. Throughout the scene Van Ness is obviously agitated. Van Ness. [hands hat to servant-woman] Or rather, infernally hot I should I say, Mrs. Mulroy. The Vice-President expects me? Seroant-Wdman. Yes, sir. Colonel Burr instructed me to see you into the library. The Vice-President should be down directly. Van Ness. Thank you, Mrs. Mulroy. Thafs very fine. [Turns to look at the portrait] Servant-Woman. Might I bring you a cup of coffee, Mr. Van Ness? Or tea? Van Ness. [somewhat absently] Er, yes, that would be quite acceptable. Servant-Woman. Which? Van Ness. [turns to her abruptly] Beg pardon? Oh, ah, coffee . . . no . . . tea, excuse me. Servant-Woman. Tea, Mr. Van Ness? Van Ness. Yes, thank you ... Er, Mrs. Mulroy? I wonder, if the Colonel is indisposed, perhaps I should postpone my call ... Enter Burr in a dressing gown, lightly powdered hair clubbed and bound with a black band. He carries a small volume in his left hand, his index finger inserted to mark the place. Burr's movements are slow, dignified, and somewhat feline; his characteristic gesture is to close both eyes and to press the lids with thumb and second finger of his right hand. The movement is expressive of prodigious world-weariness THE ST. JOHN'S REVIEW and ennui. Yet combined with this prevailing impression of languor are movements of extraordinary alertness and decisiveness as indicative of substantial resources of energy and will. Burr. [extending his hand to Van Ness] Never postpone, my dear William. [mock sententiouslyl''Night cometh and then no man can work." Van Ness. [takes Burr's offered hand] Mr. Vice-President ... Burr. William, we needn't bore each other with ceremony; we're not in Washington, thank God. This nation should shut down at the beginning of June. The Virginia river-bottoms in summer are no fit habitation for civilized men, nor even for Southerners, I should think, though they seem somehow to have inured themselves to it; Van Ness. I trust the salubrious sea breezes of the Battery have begun to clear· your brain of the marshy miasmas. You appear to enjoy better health, sir, than the last time we met. Burr. ['m indifferent refreshed, thank you, William. I think I'd be recovered altogether could I clear my head of the latest fulminations of that fool Jefferson. Our President resents imputations of inconsistency as an old maid aspersions upon the cleanliness of her linen. Now he iS claiming that his defense of "the great principle of freedom of the press" never comprehended what he is now pleased to call"license" -to wit, the recent critiCisms of Mr, Jefferson's rougher tactics by one ... ah-Crosby? Van Ness. CroswelL Burr. Croswell, yes. Upstate smalltown newspaper. You defended him, did you not? Van Ness. I was one of his attorneys. Along with Hamilton. Burr. Hamilton, of course. One of Hamilton's few defeats. Van Ness. Yet he was brilliant in the summing up. Burr. Is he not always? Van Ness. In a good cause or a bad. Burr. So I have reason, sadly, to agree. Van Ness. I trust I shall not now be the cause of yet more sadness for you but , . . Burr. [seats himself carefully and motions to Van Ness to take a chair] I seem to have lived the better part of my life within earshot of Hamilton's lurid eloquence. What does Milton say? 1 �''his tongue/Dropped manna, and could make the worse appear/ The better reason." Van Ness. Yes, well, his tongue may have dropped you, sir, right out of the governor's race. Burr. Ah, William, such is my fate. We must not kick against the pricks. Speaking of which ... dear Mr. Jefferson has cooled toward me of late. I seem not so worthy now of his tender solicitations as some years hence when I could afford him my votes. In fact, I have concluded that His Sapience of Monticello has now determined to drive me out of his political party. He never believed I was truly a republican and in that one judgment almost alone, my estimable William, he is correct. Van Ness. [bitterly] You could have had the Presidency ... Burr. Ah, William . . . Van Ness. You could have had it, sir. Nay, but it cannot be denied! That smooth fellow Bayard. He all but begged you to offer him the bribe that would have opened the door. Burr. Yes. And I think of all the good reasons Mr. Jefferson has to dislike me, that, above anything, festers on the rind of his dear, compendious conscience. That I should decline what he could not, for the life of him, could not for all his protestations of Olympian toploftiness. Van Ness. And what did he use to buy Bayard's machination? Burr. I must say I never cared to seek the bottom of that mystery. There are too many plausible bribes that would have served. Though I should not be surprised to learn that Thomas Jefferson became third President of these benighted states at the cost of no more than a promise to keep certain Federalists in the posts they had gotten themselves well accustomed to under Washington and Adams. VanNess. And that was toomuchforyou to pay? You to whom the same bid was first made? Burr. Bayard had a kind of unctuous effluvia to him ... Van Ness. [sadly and wistfully} That odor was the fleeting aroma of a power more lasting, I fear, than ariy, my good patron, you now may ever hope to know. Burr. Besides, the man intruded with his schemes at the most inopportune moment for political brokering. Van Ness. "Politics acknowledges no sabbath," you yourself have said it, I seem to recall. B,urr. [ignoring Van Ness and absorbed in recollection] Th~ most inopportune moment. Just as I was immersed in wedding arrangements for my thrice-blessed Theodosia-the best daughter nature ever provided. We were deliberating, she and I, upon the date when I should join her and her new husband on their return from England. We had just set on a time in May when the flora of South Carolina should have come fully forth in all its savage abundance and so should have assuaged somewhat the pains of returning from civilization to these uncouth shores. Just at such a moment of paterfarnilial rapture a distinct forerunner of said James Bayard crept into my nostrils followed presently by the quintessence itself, the senior Senator from Delaware, who, with something less of c~re­ mony than was found requisite by Satan in proposing mischief to our first parents, commenced plying me with his assurances of esteem mingled with threats of my public extinction if I could not bring myself to feel, or at least profess, an equivalent esteem for himself-or his party, I forget which. In any event the bumptious indecorousness of his manner of address so put me out of any hope of a conformable temper that I am bound to say I did not much attend the particulars of his proposal and, thus transported beyond indignation, I thrust him out of doors. 2 Van Ness. And yourself out of the Presidency. Burr. Thereby propelling myself into that ungainly super£! the office of the Vice-President of these United States office which one might have thought Hamlet had some occupied from the melancholy of his dry complaint, " the air promise-crammed.'' [one voracious ingestion of a gt air] Van Ness. And only your poor pride prevented the full f, Burr. [softly} Not only my poor pride. Van Ness. Pardon? Burr. [quite softly} Not only my poor pride. Van Ness. [also abruptly lowering his voice] To be sure, not that. There was indeed, Hamilton. Burr. There is always, to be sure, Hamilton. Van Ness. He could have brought around Bayard, and al Federalist minions. Burr. "Thou sayest it." Van Ness. You, my best of captains, know it to be so. Burr. [once more rapt in meditation] As I know the abscest der my tongue, I know it, William. Once, just once, I i known the sweet relish of triumph over that man. It almost the first time I collided with him. At the very 01 of the Revolution, Howe's first campaign against Wasl ton-the summer of '76 on Long Island. Howe had jus us up pretty badly on Brooklyn Heights and we were tr to join the main body of the army where Washington stayed, in upper Manhattan. I was riding towards Wasl ton's headquarters when I came upon a little fort cram with confused, fear-bedazed rebels. They were milling a a great stout fellow, General Knox, who kept swiping a forehead and looking stupidly at everything and nothing a steer who's just been polled between the eyes. Van Ness. Henry Knox. Hamilton propped him up as VI ington's Secretary of War. Burr. [busies himself with the fire, speaking with his back to Ness] The same. This time he was propped against or Hamilton's beloved cannons. Hamilton had been p1 charge of three little brass fieldpieces that looked hardly ger than a child's toy guns. When I rode up Hamilton actually brushing the mud off the carriage as if he were a to go on parade. Always a cool little fellow except whe is embarrassed, then he turns the color of a rooster's c and trembles all over. [The housekeeper enters tentatively] Mrs. Mulroy? Housekeeper. Beg your pardon, sir. There's a lady to see) She would not send her name. Burr. Do you not know the lady, Mrs. Mulroy? Housekeeper. No sir. But if you please, sir, I believe it is the J you were showing out when I came in yesterday morn Burr. [turns back to the fire scuttle and rakes the coals} Ah, Please tell the Countess I am momentarily detained. s~ her some of your justly famed coffee, perhaps? Housekeeper. Yes, sir. [exit] Burr. [straightening up, turning to Van Ness, and, after the ch1 teristic gesture of pressing the eyes} But presently young Ha ton had sufficient cause for embarrassment. He found hin caught between his prudence and his vanity and both C< not be served. Van Ness. [sniffs his pouncet box] Knowing the man's bot less vanity and his small prudence, I cannot think it a do· ful contest. Burr. But the circumstances enforced prudence, for hear: K was unwilling or incapable of movement and what he , these men had taken for a refuge was in truth their prh~ SUMMER 1~ �or their grave. The British were strong and near, Knox was cut off from help. Yet I could not make the fellow see the danger that was only too evident to everyone else. It was evident to Hamilton once I pointed out the dust from Howe's columns and the distance up to Washington on Harlem Heights. Hamilton wavered, but at the same time he would not second me because he was obviously furious that he had fallen into a trap and that I was putting him in the position of having to give over a chance to show his bravery. So just like the fool Knox, Hamilton stared on the ground and stayed by his little guns. Van Ness. A delicate bit of an impasse I should think. Burr. Resolved only by the most desperate insubordination which, in a better army, would have gotten me summarily shot. I jumped ship, so to speak, and a battalion of Continentals jumped with me. I appealed over the head of the General to the troops themselves. Pretty much as that cheeky fellow Genet recently attempted to appeal over Washington to the people. As soon as I had informed the men of the death by hanging that I suspected was the imminent fate of every one of us, they boiled out of the gate and started up the back roads to safety. Hamilton and Knox had no choice but to follow. But Hamilton came near to a youthful demise by apoplexy. He resented my oratorical success. He was mortified to find himself hurried along like a cigar butt by a broom. And worst of everything, he was thrust out of the fort so precipitously that he lost baggage and one of his revered cannon! Van Ness. [laughing} Aye, and he's beeri seeking it ever since. The least commotion imaginable and he was certain to offer his services as a Major-General. Washington must have sickened over the ridiculousness of his promptness to declare war on his fellow citizens. Such a pother over a few amateur distillers in the western counties of Pennsylvania! Burr. [after a pause] Yes. But bating the one time just told, I cannot say that Hamilton has permitted me to catch him again thus unprepared. Van Ness. [quite softly] I think you may now have your chance. Burr. [not hearing Van Ness's last remark because absorbed in his recollections} No, I cannot say that General Hamilton has allowed me the initiative on many occasions since. [Burr ex- tracts the single rose from the vase and, as he paces back and forth and narrates his encounters with the rival, he detaches petals for each item of the narration} First, there was his levering Washington against me. Once Hamilton had intrigued himself onto the personal staff of the great man, he lost no opportunity to malign me to Washington's avid, and I must say capacious, ears. Having convinced our American Caesar that Burr was insubordinate (which I was) and not to be trusted (untrue but plausible), I never was from that moment permitted a command suited to my proven abilities. Not though I yearned for action as the foal yearns for the teat. You might think a grandee such as Washington could forget over the years. Not the Virginia squire! When Hamilton maneuvered Adams into appointing him major general during the tense time with France, I then asked for the modest recognition of the rank of Brigadier. Eventually, after some shuffling, Adams had to confess that he was set upon by the superannuated Washington-prompted by whom I leave to your capacity for inference-and forced to countermand a commission already signed! No one dared to gainsay Washington. And Washington dared not pass water without the approbation of his Treasurer and party-head. Van Ness. [attempts to rise} And Hamilton to this day continues to malign ... THE ST. JOHN'S REVIEW Burr. [playfully pokes Van Ness with the rose, forcing him back upon the settee} There! Did I tell you of the business of the archives? Van Ness. [somewhat impatient} No, or yes, your memoir of the revolution . . . Burr. [brandishing the rose aloft in mock triumph! My expose, my literary coup d'etat, my thunderclap of divine justice-slow-togather-yet-terrible-in retribution. You know, William, I have always detested the mechanical toil of scribbling at a desk, but that particular endeavor savored a piquancy altogether invigorating. I should have been famed at the very least the Voltaire of the young republic. The truth about the conduct of our War of Revolution, think of it, William! Should I have entitled it The, ah, Pumpkinification of Washington? His head resembled a pumpkin, you know. Did you ever see him near at hand? No? Well, I did, and his-ah-southern colonies resembled two pumpkins set side by side. Van Ness. [a nod of barely suppressed exasperation} Mr. Vi~e­ President. The Housekeeper abruptly opens the door without knocking and sticks in her head obviously upset. One hears behind her out in the hall a tense, feminine voice, "Tell him! Not another minute!" Housekeeper. [half in the door] I'm sorry sir, the lady here [from the hall, "Tell him now!" at which the Housekeeper befuddled steps into the room closing the door behind her and holding the knob as though she fears the woman in the hall will try to force her way in] She is really most insistent . . . Burr. So it appears. Yet milady must learn patience. Detain her just for awhile longer, could you Mrs. Mulroy? Housekeeper. [sighs hugely and plaintively] I'll try sir. [As she opens the door the voice from beyond rises peremptorily, "Well." The Housekeeper closes the door firmly behind her] Burr. Ah, yes. My literary career was subjected to the a abhorred shears" by Washington's Secretary of State, Mr. Jefferson again, who suddenly one April informed me that he had been instructed to close the archives to my researches. Only the then-as-eve:t:-timid-yet-malignant-Virginia gentleman intimated that Washington was acting under vehement Hamiltonian advice. So [detaches a few more petals] the world was deprived the only honest account of American origins it should ever have received. Van Ness. Sir. Burr. [oblivious or indifferent} Then there was the more narrowly political combats. First my little ambush of Hamilton's fatherin-law. The Albany patroon underrated my influence in the city but he paid for his confidence with his senate seat. Hamilton took such offense one would think he considered the seat a family fief. Oh, but I paid, William, for that little surprise. First payment Hamilton exacted by turning enough opinion against me to scuttle my bid for the vice-presidency in Washington's second term. My second payment was in the form of the Ambassadorship to France, which Hamilton had Washington deny me upon the return of Hamilton's friend Gouverneur Morris. Then in '96 he imposed a double charge. He saw to it that I was defeated when New York chose its senator and he sapped off enough support to cost me the vicepresidency again. Is it not droll, William, that I come by that office only now when to have achieved it means having failed to come at the real prize? The gods are indeed ironic in their givings. Van Ness. [quickly} To teach us to seize for ourselves. Burr. [appraises Van Ness] I think you are in the way of becoming an avowed Burrite. A follower of the ''embryoCaesar," the "Cateline of midnight conclave." Those, I'm 3 �told, are epithets coined by Hamilton himself in reference to the poor present object of your regard. Van Ness. [annoyed] Will you hear me, sir? Burr. [still intent on his own course of thought] And yet Jefferson told me Hamilton once proclaimed that Julius Caesar was the greatest man who ever lived. What do you make of that, William? [Van Ness shrugs and turns his head away] Perhaps the venom is in the "embryo." [Mock indignation] That my stature is something diminutive does he mock me with ''embryo, embryo''? Yet surely the man himself cannot overtop me by more than a finger's breadth. In minutes only Hamilton and I stand shorter than our partners. Although, William, you can attest that between us we attract all the loveliest of the sex. [Van Ness gestures off-handedly in a mild disgust] No? Well, perhaps you must judge of that for yourself. So, anyway, where was I? Oh, yes, vice-presidency blocked, ambassador's post reneged, vice-presidency blocked again, of senate seat despoiled [plucks rapidly one, two, three, four petals] and then, William, and then the unkindest cut of all, to pluck out of my hands the reins of the Great Republic. To block me from the Presidency even at the eXpense of installing thereby his self-avowed enemy Thomas Jefferson, southerner, slaveowner, Francophile, and foe of Hamilton's dear Federalist party and, unless trustworthy report fails me, a personal calumniator of Hamilton himself. And worst of aU, to a man of Hamilton's tastes, a physical coward who took to his heels when he was governor of Virginia, who ran from the mere rumor of the approach of British troops. How William, how could General Hamilton so have treated his fellow New Yorker and brother at the bar? Van Ness. Hamilton is reported to have said that of the two devils he preferred the one who bespoke principles. Burr. [scornfully] A thin pretense that. For a gentleman, William, only one principle Can be acknowledged: self-respect. Hamilton has sufficient experience to know I honor that single maxim and have not, nor shall not, fail in it. Van Ness. But what you think of as self-respect Hamilton calls ambition. Burr. [simply] Then he lacks discernment. [At this Van Ness shrugs urbanely] Eh bien. [Burr regards the rose now stripped down to a single petal] And do you know, I believe Hamilton may have reason to credit me with once having saved his life? Van Ness. If you refer to the "lethal" James Monroe, perhaps, sir, you somewhat exaggerate the danger of mortality from that quarter. Burr. [laughs rather broadly] Ah, poor Monroe! Yes, perhaps I do exaggerate. Yet to be sure, stranger things have occurred in duels. What with the unreliability of these pistols, who knows but that if he could have brought himself to stand at the barriers, Monroe just might have hit his man with an errant ball. And Monroe professed himself willing to accept the interview. Anyway, I took advantage of the hesitancy of both combatants to patch matters between them. Van Ness. [indignantly] But he would not have done the same for you, you may count on it he would not. Indeed, is it not true that when Hamilton made his brother-in-law call you out he plotted like_ a common assassin? John Barker Church was no Monroe, nothing like the butt of a jest, unreliable pistols or not. Burr. You hatch a verity, William, I'll attest it. I have still the hole in my coat to witness that at least Hamilton's brotherin-law can hit a mark. Van Ness. [Rising again and with bitter emphasis] Then let your enemy teach Jrou the way to clear your road! Challenge 4 Hamilton! , Burr. [mock sententiously] Proverbs has it, "He who too vehe-: mently bloweth his nose bringeth forth blood." Althoug~ should I ever have sufficient cause I should not be absolutely1 averse to drawing forth somewhat of General Hamilton' si blood. ' Van Ness. So there we are! Burr. There~ are my estimable colleague. I am not yet to the: point of irrevocable hostilities and shall not come to it so long as Hamilton comports himself according to the code. Van Ness. [quite blunt] What code? Burr. Why, the code of gentlemen, what else? General Hamil-· ton and I have always endeavored to conduct our mutual enmity in accord with the self-imposed limits one would expect of men of a certain breeding. Two sanctuaries we preserve· inviolate to attack: the camp and the hearth. Whatever I have urged against Hamilton, I have never sought to question his valor as a soldier and he likewise has respected my courage. Then, no matter how tense the contest I have never caused! distrust within his family-though perhaps occasion offered! opportunity to have done so. Neither can I charge Hamilton! with making dissension at my table or bed-although it cannot be denied that he has been solicited thereunto by occa-' sions alarming in their abundance. Van Ness. [Tense with the effort of restraining himself] Have you read the clippings I sent you yesterday? Burr. Other affairs diverted me. Anyway, I knew I could counl on your visit when I should hear from your own eloquent: mouth. Van Ness. [still quite tense] Do you have them by? Burr. So peremptory, William? Yes, I'm sure I put the papers· on the desk. Van Ness. [in his vehemence forgetting deference] Get them ancl read over the passages I've underscored. Burr. [still hesitates] But they concern my defeat in the electiori for governor, did you not indicate as much? The election was' over two months past. I'm half-reconciled now to what promises to be my continual fate of placing second. Van Ness. The matter I refer to still shOuld concern_ you. It won't die. Burr. [moving to the desk] Well, I could have made timely use of the governor's office. [Stops and turns back to Van Ness] You know Griswold and Pickering came 'round again yesterday after you had left. I have continued to leave them under the impression that I might be persuaded to a supreme military commission if events should ever allow the secession of New England and New York. Ah, William, does your heart not jump with the thought that someday we might cut free from the Virginia planters and their black chattels? Let them gaily devour each other! Van Ness. [drily and bitingly] Yes. Well, I do not know that I would now depend upon leading troops in the field if I were you. Burr. [regards Van Ness quizzically for a moment] Oh? Well, yes, I suppose not being governor I cannot now engage to deliver the militia. I could hardly do so on my authority as VicePresident of those very United States which we might need somewhat to disunify. Van Ness. [ignoring Burr's witticism] Not only that. Burr. [after a moment] Oh? Van Ness. Read the clippings. Burr. [locating his spectacles and putting them on] "Dr. Charles Cooper"? Van Ness. [rapping it out as Burr resumes reading] One of Hamil- SUMMER 1985 �ton's party men. Son-in-law to judge Taylor of Albany. A kind of a mettlesome young popinjay. But his testimony is firsthand, as you will note. Burr. First-hand it may be, but even so rather indefinite. General Hamilton and Judge Kent have declared, in substance, that they looked upon Mr. Burr to be a dangerous man'' and so you yourself have often said, William [Van Ness gestures to Burr to read on} "and one who ought not to be trusted with the reins of government.'' So? Hamilton has ranted on that theme for fifteen years. Am I to embarrass myself by so belatedly confessing that I cannot take what I am accustomed to deal out in the way of the rhetoric of political contention? Mmm? [Again Van Ness' gesture indicating that he should read on. After a few moments Burr stiffens a little as he locates the offending passage] Yes, I suppose this is what you have in mind ... "still more despicable" ... that does obtrude a certain odor . . . though one might wish Dr. Cooper had been educated to a more scrupulous regard for clear grammar: more despicable" ... more despicable than what? Than the opinion that I am not to be trusted with the reins of government? Is that itself despicable? I can't say I trust anyone with the reins of government if I have a choice in the matter. Van Ness. Mr. Vice-President ... Burr. I think Dr. Cooper is to be despised for his debauch of our mother-tongue. Van Ness. You are pleased to be pleasant. But you must see the opportunity . . . If Burr. [after his characteristic gesture and coldly without the characteristic suave irony] Spell it out, sir. Van Ness. The very ambiguity is your grievance and, if properly managed, your good weapon. Cooper's insinuation of some dark malignity without specifying your crime gives the widest scope to conjectures damaging to your reputation. Burr. Such as it is. Van Ness. [straight-facedlyl Such as it is, having been already snipped about the edges by jefferson and Hamilton. The VicePresidency of this great nation ought not be subject to a libel that will not specify its grounds. You must protect the dignity of the office. Burr. [drily] But of course. Thus the grievance. And now how shall Cooper's same damnable syntax provide me, as you say, with a weapon? Van Ness. It shall be your net to catch General Hamilton. As Burr is about to reply the door opens suddenly and the Housekeeper wedges herself in it restraining the woman whose voice had been heard before from the hall. Both women speak at once. Housekeeper. [quite upset] I'm sorry sir. Countess. [trying to get past] I shan't be fobbed off! Burr. [moves quickly to the door, pushes back the two women unceremoniously but not violently and closes the door upon them], In a moment my dove, in a moment. Take a turn about my garden. [Burr holds the doorknob for a moment until the noise in the corridor subsides, then turns back to Van Ness raising his hand as if to say "What is one to do?" Van Ness has not moved and refuses to be amused.] Van Ness. I said Cooper's ambiguity shall be your means to ensnare Hamilton. Burr. [his weary gesture] I am certain you will condescend to a decade. Yet hitherto they have never surfaced in such a devastatingly public form as to be captured in the cold print of a newspaper. Public slander justifies recourse to the ultimate means of redress. Burr. You intrigue me, William. Van Ness. [quickly and avidly as he strides to the hearth, even momentarily turning his back upon Burr] Secundus: As Hamilton is ultimately responsible for the ambiguous adjective despicable-which we agree has given unpardonable license to ruinous conjecture-so he is subject to ruin himself if he should try to avoid your vengeance by offering to disown the harm. Burr. Produce your exhibit, counsellor. Van Ness. If he should choose to back down, he cannot, because the ambiguity in the scope of the slander allows for anything and everything he has ever said against you. And that great world of wrong he cannot disavow. To attempt to do so would bring upon him not only disgrace but universal ridicule which for a man of his Caesarian vanity is not to be imagined. [A pause after which Van Ness turns back to the middle of the room, now facing Burr] Well, sir? Burr. No, William. Van Ness. [incredulous] No? Burr. My good friend, after all you hold me too cheap. Van Ness. [uncomprehending] Pardon? Burr. You set more store by my reputation than I do. As my grandfather loved to say after St. Paul, "our glory is in our conscience.'' Hamilton cannot harm my repute any more than he already has. I thank God my happiness does not depend upon the position I enjoy in the eyes of a few upstate patrons. Van Ness. You care not for your fame? Burr. That is yet another -matter. But Hamilton has not wounded my fame. As we have agreed, the letter from Cooper specifies no new indignity-certainly nothing that posterity will take note of. Although I should dearly thank whatever deities might see fit to remove General Hamilton from this world, I must have better cause to take that providence upon myself. Otherwise, William, I could not be pleased with myself. And that, my dear Mr. Van Ness, is the condition most requisite to my happiness. Van Ness. [persistent] But, do you know ... Burr. [somewhat peremptorily] Sir! We must bear our cross until we have more honorable cause to shift it. Van Ness. But ... Burr. [decisively] If you will pardon me. [Enter Housekeeper] Housekeeper. !flustered] Oh, sir, I'm sorry. But this lady insists ... [the Countess Vendimer forces her way in] Countess. Take yourself away, madame, if you please. I shall myself announce my business with your master. Burr. My dear Countess. That is quite all right, Mrs. Mulroy. I shall see the lady, and I thank you for having detainedah-entertained her, for the time you could bestow. You may leave us. Housekeeper. I'm sorry, sir. Burr. [showing Housekeeper to the door] Don't let it trouble you. Notfor a thought. [turning back to his guests] Yes. Ah, Mr. Van Ness, may I present to you my Lady the Countess Vendimer. My Lady, WilliamP. VanNess, Esquire and Attorney-at-Law, my sometime partner at the bar and longtime friend. Van Ness. [eagerly] Primus: the form of the injury gives you Countess. [after a quick nod and assessment of the embarrassed Van Ness] If he's a lawyer also I suppose he knows the word as a cause actionable in honor. Hamilton has, as you say, voiced similar damaging aspersions against your character for over well as you do, sir. On my side of the sea the term is breach of promise, what ye call it here ye may instruct me if it suits ye. explain. THE ST. JOHN'S REVIEW 5 �Burr. [presenting the Countess with the almost denuded rose, which she contemptuously brushes aside] I wonder if we might defer the clarifying of this misunderstanding untilCountess. Until you can think how to murk it up to a umisunderstanding" when plain as day it be no such thing. Oh no, Mr. First Minister. Burr. [murmuring correction} Vice-President. Countess. Let it be whatever it is; you shall not fob me off. Burr. My dear. Countess. Nay, but the time for deferring is past. You would not defer your pleasure; now you shall not defer the banns. Burr.. [turning to Van Ness] You would oblige me if you could find it in yourself to forgive this low comedy. [Van Ness extends his palm in a blase gesture of commiseration] And could you perhaps bestow the study on us for half a minute? Countess. Half a minute! Burr. Please, my dear. Van Ness. But the matter I've opened to youBurr. Ought not be made public [discreetly but definitely indicating the Countess]; surely you concur. Van Ness. [after glancing at the Countess] Even soBurr. Please, William, spare us but the quarter of an hour? Van Ness. [hesitates another moment, then sadly] Very well. [picks up his hat and looks again at-the Countess, moving slowly towards door] Burr. !lifts the stopper of a cut-glass decanter in one hand and in the other takes up two wine glasses] My Lady, could I offer some light refreshment? Van Ness. [has paused with his hand poised above the latch; he gathers himself and suddenly wheels] Hamilton has said you deserted your troops in the face of the enemy. [Burr, about to raise the decanter, sets it down with deliberate care and with the same painstaking coolness replaces the stopper and the wine goblets] Burr. [stands erect and with icy enunciation] You had best be most careful in what you now report, William. [Van Ness looks to the Countess, whose spiteful hard smile has given way to an expression of alarm fixed upon Burr, who, in turn, takes note of Van Ness' hesitation} Come now, William, you were not too delicate to blurt it out. You knew what yoti were doing just now. Before the day is out, my dear lady will have blazoned your report from Harlem Heights to the Battery. Can we not count upon your amplification, my dear? Yes, I thought as much. Well, William, say on. [turning away] You are cutting near the bone. Van Ness. [correcting} Hamilton has ,cut near the bone. Burr. [the gesture of touching the bridge of the nose] Yes. Say on. Van Ness. [measured} I have good reason to believe that Hamilton said in the presence of Judge Taylor, Chancellor Kent, Charles Cooper and others that the general opinion of your action in the war is founded upon a lie. That you were not taken with a fever after the Battle of Monmouth, as has been long believed, but that in fact you-lost your nerve. Besides himself, boasts Hamilton, Washington knew it. And, Hamilton adds byway of circumstantial proof, although Washington was too gracious ever to have spoken of your shame, for that reason-and no other-he would never consent to use you again. [a pause of several seconds] Burr. [after looking a moment upon the low table, stoops and slowly takes up the rose that he had earlier stripped of most of its petals] Tant mieux. Countess. [shaken] Dear God above! Burr. As General Hamilton on a national occasion is supposed to have replied to a similar exclamation, "We shall not require foreign aid." 6 Countess. [regaining her initiative] What about the urgency tha lies between us, sir. Burr. [only half-attentive] Who has lain .between us? Countess. I'll not be dallied with, nor deceived! Burr. [now completely preoccupied] Yes. To be sure. Countess. What? Do you choose to outface me, sir? Well, I'l give you to know that my forebears enjoyed the privilege of noble birth while yours were still pedagogues in New Jer sey. [an unsmiling Burr begins moving a reluctantly yieldin; Countess towards the door] And you must know Mr. Burr I hav1 friends who'll see to it that justice be dOne me. Burr. [stops abruptly] Mrs. Mulroy! Housekeeper. [entering almost imrilediatelyl Yes, sir. Burr. The Lady Vendimer desires to be shown to the door Countess. !freeing herself from Burr's hand] Desires-? I desir• what's mine by right. And by God I'll have it! Burr. [tense] Show her out. [The Housekeeper moves to taketh arm of the Countess who indignantly draws herself away] Countess. !fierce but not shrill] But then of what worth is th• word of a man who runs from danger? [Burr does not ,mak as though to advance on her, but, as if he had, the Countess, un assisted by the Housekeeper turns swiftly and exits. The House keeper looks after her a moment, turns back for an instant to Burr registering her amazement, then is dismissed by a summary gestuti from her employer] Burr. [turns slowly upon Van Ness] You must know of cours4 that now it is superfluous for me to inquire what corrobora tive testimony you might adduce in substantiation of you charge. Ten minutes ago the question might have been materi al. But as it is . . . Van Ness. Yes! Burr. "Yes" what? Van Ness. "As it is-" [extends a palm outward as sufficient am plification] Burr. [pensively] Yes ... yes. Van Ness. Though, if you do enjoy sufficient honor in your con science, without other consideration, I suppose the infam} can be borne. Burr. [simply] It cannot be borne. Van Ness. Not to speak of the ridicule. Burr. Enough William. You have sunk the spur as deep as the rowel. Van Ness. I am sorry. Burr. Your hatred of Hamilton much exceeds in vehemence my own. Why? Van Ness. [simply] He has all but ruined the friend I would follow through the fire. Burr. [after a moment, pats Van Ness on the shoulder, turns back to the small table and again extracts the much-abused rose from its vase] You have still the pistols I gave you on your birthday last? Van Ness. [standing quite erect and solemn] I have them still. Burr. [after a moment] U I should have occasion this afternoon to send General Hamilton a note of two or three lines, could you oblige me by presenting it to the gentleman? Van Ness. [promptly] I should be honored thus to oblige you. Burr. [again pensive] My thanks. [Burr regards the rose he holds in his right hand] You know the man has turns within turns. He may yet elude us. Van Ness. [quietly lethal] He shall not elude you, sir. Burr. [quietly, without particular emphasis, and still regarding the flower] No, he shall not. [after a pause] I'll own that Hamilton has sustained griefs-public and private-fully as numerous and as grave as my own. He maintained that he had withdrawn from public life. He seemed to enjoy the private esSUMMER 1985 �tate. Why then could he not suffer his sun quietly to set? Can you fathom the man~ my friend? Van Ness. I do not care to try. Burr. Indeed? Perhaps after all that is best. I could have been glad had I never found cause to be thus disappointed in the man. [Burr takes in his fingers the last petals of the rose, detaches them and allows them to flutter to the floor. He then holds the now completely bare stem somewhat conspicuously elevated and speaks in a tone of self-mocking surprise, calling Van Ness' attention to the naked stem of the rose] Why, he loves me not. Alas! William he loves me not. [Van Ness faintly smiling, inclines in a slight and formal bow of silent acknowledgment as the lights dim] Scene II Mid-afternoon of June 18, 1804. A large room of Hamilton's recently completed house which he has named after the estate of his Scottish ancestors, "The Grange." Two walls are almost covered with shelves of books. The study is furnished with a small sofa, two arm chairs, a low table on which are scattered several books and a somewhat higher marble commode atop which one sees a decanter of whiskey and crystal tumblers. Also atop the low table several miniature portraits which will be identified as depicting Hamilton's dead son Philip and Hamilton's Scottish ancestors. At rise Hamilton's wife Elizabeth is directing offstage instructions concerning preparations for a party. Elizabeth. And I want;avory pies, three or four, left out on the sideboard. Send own to Solomon's for petits four-the sort with the chocolate. And tell Mrs. Tryamond that she must make the blancmange herself. I shall be altogether too busy with other things. [Elizabeth looks about the room, pivoting in a complete circle while counting on her fingers. In the midst of her survey of the room, she pulls herself up as her eyes fall on a small portrait of a young man set out on the lower of the two tables. She goes to the table, takes up the portrait~ and slumps onto one of the chairs. As she is called to from offstage, "Ma'am ... Mrs. Hamilton,'' she does not answer immediately but continues to gaze down at the miniature of her dead son.] Yes. [wearily] Presently. [Still she makes no move to leave her chair. Enter Hamilton. There should be immediately apparent from his somewhat diminutive height, manner of dress, hair, walk, and general bearing a marked resemblance to Burr. His distinguishing marks are red hair, gray-streaked, a correspondingly florid complexion, and inflections of speech more rapid, less suavely languid, than those heard from Burr.] Hamilton. [brisk and animated] Verbena and honeysuckle! Let them be everywhere! Let's see, some verbena on the mantelpiece there and a spray of honeysuckle intermingled-no-! shall amend my motion. Rather, twine honeysuckle upon all the interior columns. We shall simulate the sweet melancholy of Grecian ruins. [Striding rapidly over to the large bay window he wheels upon the open room.] We'll throw open the windows at dusk and let the faint breezes stir the candle flames. And let there be cut flowers everywhere! When my daughter enters upon society the earth shall send forth its blossoms as the slopes of Olympus its flora when Hera and Zeus debauch. Elizabeth [laughing despite herselfl Debauch! Hamilton. [accepts correction with good grace] Mmm yes. A typical lapse of decorum only to be expected of a Yankee shyster staggering under his weight of belatedly acquired Homer. Let us say rather, "when the Ooud-Gatherer" -ah-" gathers the ox-eyed Hera, his stately consort." Elizabeth. I hope no young lady who trusts herself to !"Y hospitality shall be here debauched or merely even "gathered." Hamilton. Not t'OlJe thought for a moment, dearest Elizabeth. THE ST. JOHN'S REVIEW [gallantly] Unless perhaps above stairs, after the guests have been shown on their way~ a certain dark beauty, darling of the Albany patrons, yet disgraced by her marital alliance with one descendent of Scot brigandsElizabeth. Whom, said descendent of Scottish theivesHamilton._ [hastily correcting} Reivers, border raiders-not the same at allElizabeth. [insistent] Whom, said scion of border theives has debauched to the extent of eight children and hence shall not "gather" this night. Hamilton. Notwithstanding I shall be in expectation ardent. Elizabeth. And perforce in imagination you must take you your satisfaction and not else. Hamilton. [mock lugubriously] Such is my fate. Elizabeth. And deservedly so. Hamilton. [neroously taking up a wineglass and running his finger around the rim] Ah me. [sits next to Elizabeth] And how does it fare with our eldest daughter today? Elizabeth. [her sadness comes back by degrees] much the same as yesterday, and always. Sometimes she speaks so quite to the point that I think her not much to differ from any eighteenyear-old marriageable girl. They are all so flighty at their most lucid. But still the difference remains. How was I told old Mrs. Clinton put it? ''Poor Angelica Hamilton is quite amazingly, simple?" Hamilton. "Simple"? Elizabeth. "Simple." Hamilton. [patting Elizabeth's hand] Well. We must be patient. [notes the portrait under her clasped hands] What have you there? [she lifts her hands and Hamilton takes up the miniature; his face and entire posture bespeak a sorrow that verges on desolation] Ah, Philip. The first-born, the hope of the house died with you, lad. Dear, brave son. Elizabeth. [flatly] He was brave. Hamilton. And can it be that it is now over two years? The wound gapes as though it were yesterday he was taken. Elizabeth. [again quite flatly] This fall will be the third since he was shot dead. Hamilton. For a time you could not look on his picture. Elizabeth. This spring for the first time I felt I could. Hamilton. But, Angelica? Elizabeth. [shrugs] If she had wept each day these two years perhaps she would not now be as she is. Tears are rational. Angelica is deranged. Hamilton. [shocked] Eliza! Elizabeth. [emphatically but simply] Deranged. I have learned, Alexander, to call things by the names proper to them. Angelica has lost the use of her reason. Hamilton. We do not know that her condition is permanent. Elizabeth. We do not know that it is not. Hamilton. Then is it not best to continue in the way we have set out? To arrange for her something as near as may be to the usual life of a young lady? Elizabeth. I suppose so. Just so long as we do not indulge a delusion. Hamilton. [Soberly] To be sure. [a girl's voice calls from offstage, Papa, Papa! Hamilton indicates to Elizabeth his concern that she not display her grief to Angelica] Should I send her to the other children? Elizabeth. No, I'm composed. [again the call, "Papa!"] Hamilton. We're in the parlor, Angelica. [looks once more with solicitude to Elizabeth] Enter Angelica Hamilton, a slender girl who, because of her afflic7 �tion~ looks somewhat younger than her age of eighteen. She carries a keepsake album. Angelica. Poor Philip Sparrow! Hamilton. [glances toward Elizabeth and raises his hand in a gesture of reassurance] Sweet Angelica. Have you come to help us with your party? Angelica. [disarmingly] No. [Embarrassed, Hamilton turns away! Elizabeth. Do you want me to walk with you in the garden~ dear? Angelica. [ignores Elizabeth's question and stands stack-still, opening her album] Poor Philip Sparrow, the crow has pecked thy head. Elizabeth. Angelica. Angelica. Philip has gone to Cathay. Elizabeth. Philip has not gone to Cathay, Angelica. Philip is dead. Angelica. He has gone to Grandpa Schuyler~ s. He took the sleigh. Elizabeth. Not to Grandpa Schuyler's, not to China, nor nowhere. Your brother was killed in a duel. He is gone ... dead. Angelica. [stares at her mother willfully, uncomprehending, echoing her mother's intonation] He is gone ... [consults the album, then, obstinately] away. Elizabeth. [simple emphasis] Dead. [Angelica stares at her mother steadily but blankly! Hamilton. [abruptly turning back from the mantel] Let be, Eliza. _Elizabeth. [also without impatience but firmly! She must acknowledge. Hamilton. She will not~ and cannot. She is not capable. [takes Angelica by the arm gently] Do you not want to walk in the garden, Angelica? I shall show you my young gum trees. Do you want to see the new trees? Thirteen of them I've planted in honor of the thirteen colonies that became the first thirteen of these United States. Would you like to see them? Angelica. They are dead. Hamilton. [laughing! Indeed they are not flourishing. But not yet dead, my dear. Angelica. Where have you put my pistols? [Hamilton starts, looks apprehensively to Elizabeth] Elizabeth. Ah! Hamilton. [to steady his wife! Eliza. Elizabeth. John Church's duelling pistols. Would my brotherin-law had never brought them across the sea. Would he had never returned from England. Hamilton. [simply! John Church's pistols are not to blame. Elizabeth. Aye. Eaker is to blame. To slay a boy not yet twenty for defending the honesty of his father! Hamilton. Philip was abusive beyond all need. Elizabeth. [overriding! Defending his father. Hamilton. [absolute dejection] Aye. And if one speak of blame, I sent Phil to his death. He took my part against Eaker in the first place. Then he obeyed me both when he accepted the challenge ... and when he withheld fire. Elizabeth. Withholding fire! There should have been no shots to withhold. Hamilton. Well, as for thatElizabeth. [insisting] No. He need not have faced Eaker. [With vehemence and disgust] Politics! Angelica. [abruptly sings her version of the verse of an old war song! "So bring your Bible and shoot your gun." Hamilton. [corrects] "Drum/' Angelica. [sings] "We're going to war and when we die We'll want a man of God nearby, 8 So bring your Bible and follow the drum." That's the name of the song, Angelica-''The Drum"'" not gun. Do you understand, my dear? [a pause as Angelica stares un· comprehendinglyl Well, dear, go on for your walk and alloY\' your mother and I to plan your party. Elizabeth. [to Angelica] Go, call in the children to the back gallery. [she watches Angelica go out, then half-falls into a chair at center] I don't think that life shall ever be sweet for me again. Hamilton. I know~ dearest Eliza. Elizabeth. [wooden inflections] What I cannot tear from my mind are those last moments. Hamilton. Try not to think, my dear. Elizabeth. Do I not try to forget? Yet all the details of his dying usurp my mind as though they had worked themselves into the grain. Every instant they lurk just back of my consciousness. Any moment of the day, when there"s a sudden hush in the house, or maybe between the bites of a meal., or at a word that calls to mind his way of speaking-anything serves to bring back the image of his deathbed. Hamilton. [painfully but with sympathy! Ah, ElizaElizabeth. Philip, I see-ashen, tense with the agony of the bullet lodged in his spine. You and I lying on either side of the poor boy, on the same bed, clenching his hands while death took its time with him. And to the last wracking breath Philip tried to play the part he thought you required of him. Why, Alexander? Hamilton. [puzzled] Why did Philip have to die? Elizabeth. Philip had to die because you expected him to uphold your name. I ask why you laid a mortal charge upon your son. Why must he never decline a challenge, yet never fire upon ills foe? Hamilton. I did not absolutely require it of Philip. I-I said such would be my course of conduct. Elizabeth. To have said so to a boy such as Phil was as much as to have required it of him. Hamilton. Aye" I suppose you are right. Elizabeth. [numbly resigned] WellHamilton. Well, we must try to live for the other children. Elizabeth. [slumps] Yes, let us then live for the children that remain [pause]. Perhaps at last we shall be free of contention~ free of politics. Hamilton. So, we may hope. Elizabeth. You are content to be a private man? Hamilton. I could be content to live the rest of my life within these walls. Were it not for my grief for Philip and for your sadness, I should say I've never before felt such blessed peace as now. [after a moment} A man does not need to hear his name in the public cries. [another moment] I do not, I know. Elizabeth. Angelica sometimes refers to you as "the Ghost." Because you are so seldom seen. [somewhat bitterly] What with your staying in the town all the week, and your constant journeys to Albany ... and then a summons to Washington. Hamilton. [somewhat plaintively] Not Washington so much any more. Elizabeth. [agrees flatly} Not so much any more. Hamilton. [after a pause] Ah, Liza! my lot is a strange one. I've spent my life defending a Constitution I but half approved at its conception. I've neglected our own affairs just to give myself the pains to prop up that flimsy scaffold. And for my effort I have the unremitting enmity of Jefferson's party, the resentment of my own Federalist friends-and a son lost. Elizabeth. The costs have been as great as a cost can possibly be. [with force] Let us hope you have done with it. SUMMER 1985 �Hamilton. I've done with it. [a Maid enters carrying yet another vase of flowers] Maid. Sir, there's Mr. Pendleton to see you. Hamilton. [looks with slight concern to Elizabeth] You did not forget to send him an invitation? Elizabeth. I sent it Monday last. Hamilton. Show Mr. Pendleton in, Mrs. Baines. [Maid goes off right] [to Elizabeth] Are you more composed now, dear? Elizabeth. [rising from the sofa]! am. Do you wish me to stay or do you have business? Hamilton. I cannot think Pendleton has business. Perhaps he cannot come tomorrow and brings his good wishes to Angelica. Elizabeth. Alexander, he has tried before to enlist you in some new cause. Do not let yourself be flattered by men who claim to need you. [she takes his hand]! need you. Much more, and there's no flattery. Hamilton. And you shall have me, my dearest Liza. [the Maid opens door at right, announcing as she does so, "Mr. Nathaniel Pendleton."] [enter a well-dressed man of about forty, carrying his gloves] Pendleton. Mrs. Baines always takes my hat and cane but returns my gloves. Good morning Mrs. Hamilton, [to Hamilton] General. Hamilton. Mrs. Baines believes gentlemen should always have gloves about their person. It's good to see you, Nat. But you needn't address me as General. Pendleton. [bluftl Eh? has the Virginia junta demoted you, then? Hamilton. They would change the past if they could, I'm sure. No, Eliza has discharged me from the service. Elizabeth. [drily] The title seems rather inappropriate, does it not, since the function expired ten years ago? Pendleton. Aye rna' am. But there's a world of good men who still consider the rank suits your husband. Right down to the ground. And if the entire faction of Tammany still must address Aaron Burr by ''Colonel'' tWenty years since that esteemed gentleman ever bore arms, why I see no reason my friend should not have his due. Hamilton. [glances at Elizabeth] Well, Nat, that time has passed. Pendleton. [glancing down] Seasons return. Elizabeth. [quickly with even emphasis] Not that season, Nathaniel. Hamilton. [uneasily] Yes, well ... it's good you should come, Nat, at ~ season. Elizabeth. [somewhat stiffl If you should need to see my husband about some matter of businessi NathanielPendleton. [awkwardly hesitating] Well, Mrs. HamiltonElimbeth. [quickly to Hamilton]! still have to see about the cakes (Hamilton takes his wife's hand briefly, she holds his gaze for a moment longer] Nathaniel. [Pendleton bows and Elizabeth goes off right] Pendleton. What did Cooper hear from you-(Hamilton looking after Elizabeth hushes Pendleton with a gesture. When he sees the door firmly closed, he turns to his friend] What could Charles Cooper have reported your saying against Burr at the Albany meeting last April? Hamilton. God! How should I know? When did you say? Pendleton. At Judge Taylor's house, before the gubernatorial election. Hamilton. I dare say I haven't the slightest notion, Nat. [turns to the table and offers the decanter, which Pendleton refuses with a wave of his hand] Anyway, what does it matter? Pendleton. I think it matter because Van Ness has begun making something o it again. mfy THE ST. JOHN'S REVIEW Hamilton. Van Ness is fond of sowing tares. Pendleton. That he is. And last night at the Tontine Tavern he was sowing tares by means of Charles Cooper's public letter to the Albany Register. Hamilton. Why that fire is two months cold! Wasn't Cooper's letter publishedPendleton. At the end of April. But Van Ness has rekindled it. Hamilton. For what particular purpose? [pours himself a glass of wine, offers to Pendleton] Pendleton. [waving away the offer of wine] I don't know. That's what worries me. But he was making much of it with the Tammany crowd. And he swore he would call on Burr today. Try to think what you told Cooper. Hamilton. Let me try to recollect. [after a moment] What have I not said of my rival of fifteen years? I know he has been a moral reprobate for as long as I have known him. As a fellow attorney I cannot approve his abuse of the profession. He has turned public offices to hard dealing and downright fraud. He makes party allegiance in accord with his ambition, not from principle. He continues to be a threat to this republic. All of this I have maintained day in, day out. Burr knows and the world knows. I have struck at Burr and he at me over the course of a career. Does he suddenly grow tender? Pendleton. [half turns from Hamilton] I think he grows desperate. Jefferson has cast Burr aside. He terms his Vice-President "a crooked gun." Burr had hoped to rebuild his power upon the governorship. Now that he has lost that, every way must seem blocked to him. For a man of his ambition to stand still is intolerable. Rather than decline, he would choose ~ course, no matter how dangerous or destructive. Hamilton. Not unlikely, but what course? Pendleton. [turns back to confront his friend] Would you preserve this Union? Hamilton. It's curious you should ask. I was just saying to Eliza that it appears I've made an unprofitable career of supporting this ramshackle affair called a Union. Pendleton. How dear is it to you_? Hamilton. It should be more dear to me had it not fallen into the hands of atheistic demagogues such as Jefferson and Monroe. They love anything French, and they shall transport to these shores all the fury and envy let loose by the Revolution in France. Everything that we gave ourselves to establish shall be swept away in a tide of democratic passions. Pendleton. [coming closer to Hamilton and lowering his voice] Every prop of stability shall indeed be kicked aside if Burr has his way. Hamilton. Burr is no democrat. He is nothing by principle but everything by opportunity and convenience. Pendleton. Yes! And he is now the first mover in a plan to have the New England states secede from the Union. Hamilton. [regards Pendleton for a moment silently] I have heard some talk to that effect. But what would he personally gain thereby? Pendleton. The opportunity of leading.. of founding a new government with himself at its head and chief military officer for life. That's his plan. It has become the common talk in Tammany. If Burr succeeds in splitting this country into two, the Virginians shall certainly set up the southern states as an ape of France and they shall make war on the rest. Hamilton. [sits back roughly upon the sofa] And Europe will pick our bones. Pendleton. And Europe will pick our bones. Unless, General Hamilton, you save us. Hamilton. I? I've been rejected by my own party. Half the Fed- 9 �eralists blame me for attacking their man Adams. Besides a few friends, I have now no followers. Pendleton. [coming up close to Hamilton] The Federalists will return to you. They will return to a man, and every man of this nation who loves order will join them. The time approaches. Hamilton. What time? Pendleton. Time of war. Be prepared to lead out an army of government troops against Burr and his confederates in the New England states. Hamilton. Jefferson would never call on me. Pendleton. He should have to. He will have no choice. You are the man chosen by Washington to put down the Whiskey Rebellion. And you are the man Adams was obliged to turn tof against his will, four years ago during the Pennsylvania insurrection. The country looks to you now only in moments of danger, but in danger no one else will satisfy. Hamilton. [after a moment's thought] Let Jefferson find a Virginian. Pendleton. None will do. Besides, if Burr does head the secession he will look to Federalists for his money. He's already begun to court your friends. Jefferson will see he must have a Federalist to oppose Burr so that the force shall be clearly national and not a party affair. Jefferson will recall your assistance in the 1800 election when you pulled Federalist votes away from Burr. He will call upon you for another such proof of selfless patriotism. Hamilton. I doubt. Pendleton. [quite animated] Yes. And you become again Generalin-Chief. You shall lead troops into battle. [Hamilton has become rapt as Pendleton concludes with his ann raised in a gesture of signalling a cavalry charge] Only last evening I was looking at the uniform I designed for the Inspector General. Complete with plume. Have you seen it? [pulls the chord by the fireplace] Adams called for four generals with the Inspector General over them all. You don't know, Nat, what it took to get me appointed-{the door opens at right and the Maid enters inquiring "Sir"] Mrs. Baines, would you just step into my study there and bring the round box on my desk. Thank you. [Maid goes off right] Adams wouldn't have it. Pickering reports his having said to Abigail that I was the most ambitious man in this country (which may have been true then) and the most "artful" (which has never been true. Compared to Aaron Burr I am an ingenue). Anyway, Adam's entire cabinet, all of whom were in my pocket, all desired that I should have the highest command after Washington. And then when Washington himself backed me, Adams gave up. The day I heard Washington had decided to support me I gave instructions for the design of the insignia of the Inspector General. [Maid comes from right carrying a large hatbox} Yes, that's it, Mrs. Baines. {takes the box and removes the lid} Yes, thank you. [Maid goes off right} White knee-breeches, white waistcoat with gold buttons, a blue coat with gold buttons and braid, and a cape of blue lined in scarlet. All surmounted by [draws out a large, black cockade. A spectacular blue plume is affixed}. Magnificent, is it not? Pendleton. [taking the hat] To be sure. [After turning it about a little and appreciatively, Pendleton returns the hat to Hamilton, Hamilton. who muses· on it} Hamilton, {runs his finger along the plume} One could lead a charge of horse into the mouth of hell with a good mount and such hat. 10 Pendleton. [heartily and lightly] I would follow. It's strange though. I had the uniforms sent round to Washington, but what became of them I do not know. Washington never mentioned my designs. When finally we went on campaign we marched in old Continental uniforms. Rather drab old sacks. Much later this was returned to me with no explanation. Pendleton. Brilliance of attire is not thought to befit the military of a free republic. Hamilton. [takes it in] Pity. Pendleton. And so it is. Hamilton. [after a moment, walking to window at left] Do you know, Nat, when I was sixteen and left St. Vincent to sail to this country, I told my friend I must seek out a war. I was certain that only a war could give scope to my spirit and bring me fame. Just now, when I felt my blood run quicker, it occurred to me that that early conviction has never left me. I've bred children and lost them; I've enjoyed the devotion of the best of all wives; I've prospered a little; studiedf helped conceive a frame of government and set it going; known some power, and kept most of my friends. But I've felt the blood run to my heart only those times when I had a charge of men in the face of an enemy. It's only then that the stakes are clear enough and dear enough for simple action. Every other undertaking is revision, compromise, scaling down, salvaging. This entire republic is a mere dilution of the strong wine I sought. The people love safety more than hard liberty and profit more than grandeur. They shall not produce great men, and, if chance breeds them, there's no place for their ambition. The Presidency is too brief and too weak for great efforts. Pendleton. I do not ask you to exert yourself for this republic, such as it is. Act for yourself. Once men are roused, they may look about. Hamilton. [after a moment} Mexico. Pendleton. Mexico! The entire New World! And by sea who knows how far our hand may reach. There's grandeur! Hamilton. [turning half away] If we give the world more than we take. Pendleton. [pursues until he faces Hamilton again} We give a new order of human association: a public life fashioned by free and equal men taking thought together. Hamilton. [a shallow, brittle laugh] Do you so describe Jefferson's new party, a demagogue holding sway over mechanics and backwoodsmen by stirring up their envy of the rich, while he holds the planters through their fear of their slaves? Pendleton. {shrngsl Jefferson is an aberration. You will overcome him once you have put iron once again in your countrymen. You will overcome him by vote or by force. Did he not, while Governor of Virginia, run to the woods in fear of British regulars? Hamilton. [laughs] Well, Nat, you bring me up to Jerusalem. But on what foal of an ass do I ride in my triumphal way? Pendleton. [laughs in his tum] On Burr. Hamilton. [puzzled but alert] Strange vehicle. Pendleton. {now serious} At the right moment you will expose Burr and call for arms against him. But that is why you must take care now. I feared that you had flushed hlm too early and that Cooper's gossip was of the plot to secede. Hamilton. That's impossible because at the time Cooper reports my attack on Burr I had not heard Burr took an interest in such a scheme. Pendleton. Good. But nonetheless do you not see what Burr now intends against you? Hamilton. SUMMER 1985 �Hamilton. Do you mean a challenge? Pendleton. Precisely. For the sake of disposing of you, the one man he knows capable of blowing up his design. Be sure of it, a challenge is forthcoming, and on no account must you give thought of accepting it. Hamilton. Indeed I would never think of accepting it. Pendleton. [in a lower voice] Yet you must not seem to reject it. Hamilton. [begins to see the dilemma] Ah! Pendleton. Yes. If you accept there's every probability given Burr's marksmanship and experience-he hit your brotherin-law John Barker Church? Hamilton. His coat. Pendleton. He shall certainly take more careful aim this time if he's given the chance. I say if you accept, he stands good chance of ending your life, yet if you should refuse, he calls into highly public question your courage. Just the wrong time to have one's reputation impaired, on the eve of a struggle. At such a crisis reputation is everything. So you cannot accept, yet you must not appear to decline. Hamilton. [half-jesting] How if I should accept and slay Burr? Pendleton. John Church tells me though he had you practice you have never come near mark. Can you contradict Mr. Church? [Hamilton says nothing] Then my friend, you must be more effective as a leader than lethal as a marksman. Hamilton. In any case it does not matter. On better grounds I would not in any event accept a challenge to a duel. Pendleton. What? I thought you had in the past. Hamilton. That was the past. Now I hope I've put away that pernicious vanity. It does not now sit well with my conscience. Pendleton. [after a pause, with an effort] Did you not instruct your son toHamilton. I did. And I consider the death of Philip a reproof to my worldliness. Pendleton. Ah my good friend let me put case to you[Elizabeth re-enters somewhat hurriedly from right carrying an apron in one hand and another vase of cut flowers in the other] Elizabeth. [as she goes to mantel and sets down the vase] Excuse me, Alexander. There's a Mr. Van Ness to see you. He looks rather solemn. [Hamilton and Pendleton start a little and exchange a look that Elizabeth takes note of. She looks from Pendleton to Hamilton] Is not this Van Ness one of the Tammany men? Hamilton. [as Pendleton turns away] Yes he is dear. Did he state his business? Elizabeth. [regards Hamilton closely] He would not, other than to say he must see you privately. What business would you have with a Tammany man? Hamilton. [abstractedly] Ah it's hard to say. Would you show him in dear? And ... [turning slightly toward Pendleton] Nat has expressed his willingness to give me his opinion on Stower's plan for the carriage house. Could you show him the ground? Pendleton. Should I wait for you to conclude with Van Ness? Hamilton. That would be kind of you, Nathaniel. Elizabeth. [continues to regard her husband] Alexander, you have promised this day tp the family. Hamilton. I shall be only a minute, my dear. [as she hesitates a moment more] Elizabeth, if you would [Hamilton reaches for his wife's hand. Elizabeth takes her husband's hand after a moment, and hesitantly. She holds his gaze for an instant, then goes out right on Pendleton's arm meeting Hamilton's gaze a final time as she closes the door. Hamilton walks over to the mantel, extracts a rose from the vase that Elizabeth has just placed there, and is sniffing THE ST. JOHN'S REVIEW the flower as Van Ness enters, walks stiffly to center and fetches from his coat pocket a folded note.] Van Ness. [clears his throat} Mr. Hamilton. Hamilton. [replaces the rose in the vase and turns] Mr. Van Ness. We have expected you. _Van Ness. the room Hamilton. Van Ness. [other than raising his brows and glancing quickly about Van Ness evinces no surprise] Pardon? Good day to you, sir. I'm afraid my business is not agreeable. I have the honor to bear you a message from Colonel Burr. Hamilton. [a trace of mock reverence] From the Vice President. Van Ness. Er-not in his capacity as Vice President, no sir. This is a matter between gentleman, [amending with unconcealed irony] in any event, a personal matter. Hamilton. [bristles] Well, man-to it. Van Ness. I believe this note sufficiently explains. [Hamilton takes the note, puts on spectacles and reads] Hamilton. [careful and formal] You are aware this says you are to direct my attention to a phrase in a published letter? [Van Ness produces from another pocket a newspaper clipping] Van Ness. [handing the clipping to Hamilton] The passage I have underscored. Hamilton. [reading aloud] "For really, sir, I could detail to you a still more despicable opinion which General Hamilton has expressed of Mr. Burr.'' Is this the passage you are directed to call to my attention? Van Ness. It is. Hamilton. And the Vice President desires I should offer an explanation of it? Van Ness. Sir, I pray you should not refer to Colonel Burr in his official capacity. The proceeding we may have occasion to enter upon, although honorable in the highest degree, may not be considered by all parties altogether in conformity with-ah-the law of the land. Hamilton. [stares for an instant at Van Ness] I see. [glances again at the note] Mr. Burr has perceived of course that the language is ambiguous. Van Ness. I am not at liberty to guess how the Colonel may regard the grammar of the piece. Hamilton. But I mean who or what is despised by whom? [offers the clipping to Van Ness who indignantly looks away] Van Ness. [refusing to take the clipping] I suppose Colonel Burr requires of you an explanation of the reference, not a literary critique, however highly he esteems your literary powers. Hamilton. [hard] He "requires"? Van Ness. I believe the note you have in your hand expresses with tolerable clarity the intents of the gentleman who indited it. Hamilton. [reads aloud from the other note} Mr. Burr desires, [amends with a slight bow to Van Ness] requires ''a prompt and unqualified acknowledgement or denial of the use of any expressions which would warrant the assertions of Mr. Cooper." [looks inquiringly of Van Ness who inclines in a slight, formal bow of assent. Hamilton continues wordlessly to question Van Ness who at last shows his impatience] Van Ness. Well, sir? Hamilton. What" assertions" does he mean? [holds out the letter] Van Ness. Mr. Hamilton, you are known to be a most imposing courtroom performer. Doubtlessly you have it in your capacity to embarrass me with your dialectical prowess. But really sir it is most unfair that you should so question me who am merely the conveyor of the message. Colonel Burr requires either an acknowledgement or a disavowal. 11 �Hamilton. Burr knows I can scarcely disavow having said things that bear hard upon him over fifteen years of political rivalry. [turns from Van Ness, walks to the mantel and creases the note abstractedly; turns back to face Van Ness] No, I shall not be so easily trapped. I cannot comply with Mr. Burr's requirement. Van Ness. [measured] Do you mean you will neither acknowledge nor disavow? Hamilton. Yes, precisely that. The matter deserves more careful consideration. [Hamilton turns back to the mantel again and summons a servant by pulling a cord.] Van Ness. [coolyl In that case, sir, I must bid you a good day and take my leave. Hamilton. [as the maid opens the door at right] Good day, Mr. Van Ness. Van Ness. [half-turned to go out] Ah, may I ask by what means will you in due course make your reply? Hamilton. I shall write by Mr. Nathaniel Pendleton. Van Ness. [bows] Once more sir, good day. Hamilton. [bows] Good day. [Van Ness goes off right, the maid closing the door after him. In a moment Elizabeth returns] Elizabeth. [closing the door behind her, she stands against it looking apprehensively at her husband] That was the same man who came to John Barker Church when Aaron Burr challenged him to a duel. It came back to me as I was in the kitchen just now. Hamilton. I-do not recall. Elizabeth. I do. Van Ness' appearance always signifies Burr's hand. Alexander, you must tell me what now passes between you and Burr. Hamilton. Only another instance of the old struggle. Elizabeth. What is it now? Hamilton. The form has not yet become definite, the matter as always is politics. Elizabeth. [turns away abruptly] No! I don't want to hear of it. Not yet again. [turns back to Hamilton] Why can you not leave Burr alone? Leave him to his small intrigues. Why do you pursue him into every dark comer his designs bring him to? Why can't you let him be? Hamilton. [shrugs very slightly] Perhaps we share £he same dark angel. Elizabeth. Is the issue-grave? Hamilton. It could become so. But I shall not let it. Elizabeth. I must know the details. Hamilton. [hesitates] AhElizabeth. It is my due! I've borne you seven children, shared with you the loss of the eldest, helped you (so you've said) in your successes, taken the disappointments with you ... [some anger] borne one great disgrace ... Hamilton. [quickly] In the Albany paper Charles Cooper published a letter to your father in which Cooper makes vague reference to my having said of Burr something which Cooper characterized by the word "despicable." Elizabeth. It sounds so ... yague. Hamilton. That's where the danger lies. Elizabeth. What may come of it? Hamilton. Depending on how the exchange is managed nothing or . . . the last extremity. Elizabeth. How do you avoid giving further provocation? Hamilton. I'm not sure. Elizabeth. Not simply by disavowing Cooper? Hamilton. Possibly. Elizabeth. Well, disavow. Hamilton. I'm not certain that is best. Elizabeth. [alarmed] "Best"! Best for what? You cannot think 12 of provoking a duel. Hamilton. It may not be a question of provoking. Elizabeth. Why then you cannot fhink of anything but of avoiding giving that man an occasion for calling you out. Surely you conceive no other purpose but preventing such a barbarity. Hamilton. Of course. Elizabeth. [misgiving] But you have exchanged challenges before. Hamilton. I am not the man I was before. I am sincere in the religion I profess. I assure you Eliza by the faith we both revere, I abhor the cruel vanity of men slaying one another by an absurd and wicked code. Elizabeth. [baffled] Then, wherein lies the difficulty of abiding the dictates of God and of your conscience? Hamilton. Well, perhaps it will not be difficult. Elizabeth. In any case, you are clear? You see clearly that you must not accept a challenge? Hamilton. Yes, I see it clearly. [they continue to mee( each other's gaze] Is Nat still waiting? Elizabeth. I believe he is. He said he would wait until you had finished with Van Ness. Hamilton. Will you send him to me? Elizabeth. [hesitates] Will you put off Burr? . Hamilton. [simple and without hesitation] Yes. May I see Nat alone? Before~~ he would be embarrassed to go over negotiations. Elizabeth. [regards her husband carefully for a moment] I shall send him in. [they touch fingertips briefly and Elizabeth goes off right. After the door closes upon his wife Hamilton produces the newspaper clipping from a coat pocket, scans it once again, takes Burr's note from another pocket, looks from note to clipping, then replaces both papers and removing the reading spectacles stands for a moment with head bowed. As Pendleton reenters, Hamilton slowly puts the spectacles in the pocket of his waistcoat.] Pendleton. [closing the door behind him] Van Ness walked right past me without seeming to notice I was there. You must have put a thought in his head. [without replying, Hamilton hands Pendleton first the note, then the clipping. In taking the clipping Pendleton merely glances at it appearing to recognize the piece and returns to a more careful scrutiny of the note, holding out the clipping to Hamilton who pockets it once again.] Acknowledge or disavow, he says. Hamilton. Yes, quite clever, don't you think? A perfect cleftstick. Pendleton. How do you see it? Hamilton. If I acknowledge, fhe challenge promptly follows. On the other hand, Burr knows I cannot disavow for several reasons. First, on the face of it disavowal appears timorous. Second, what, in any event, am I to disavow? That I have brought severe censures against Burr to any number of men over several years many of which could be termed despicable." That is, if the idea is to supply an adjective for the degree of villainy charged. But I cannot make such a disavowal without exposing myself to the charge of misrepresenting Burr's rharacter in £he first place, or of disloyalty to my friends and supporters who have acted upon my representations. Either way, I am destroyed in the trust I have earned with men of consequence. Pendleton. It's Cooper's damnable ambiguity that has played into Burr's hand. I did not think he could have drawn the noose so tight. Hamilton. Tight if I stick my neck in it, but! shan't. I shall sim11 SUMMER 1985 �ply refuse Burr's challenge. Pendleton. Yes, but you must not say so. Hamilton. Nay, but I shall. Pendleton. [clearly alarmed] But I thought you understood! You must not flatly refuse to honor the challenge of a man who is generally thought of as a gentleman worthy of receiving and of issuing such challenges. Hamilton. But I must reject him. Since I hold his code to be impious if not wicked. Pendleton. But the code to which you refer is not held to be wicked by the generality of men, at least not by men of standing. Hamilton. Perhaps not, but I cannot see that such a consideration ought to be decisive. My honor is my conscience. I shall not enter into his code duello. Pendleton. {turns to the window and after a moment again confronts Hamilton] You must forgive me, my old friend if I put to you a question that has puzzled me awhile. This, uh, devout religiosity that has come upon you in recent years-has it occurred to you that this belated piety has something of awell-of an ad hoc character? Hamilton. Oaughs ingenuously] Ah N athaniet you are much too shrewd for me. Pendleton. [laughs also but with an air of irony] Well, but some of the more memorable public remarks of your younger days wereHamilton. As callow and ill-digested as those of any other raw youth fond of his own intelligence and finding skepticism a flashy blade with which to astonish his elders. Pendleton. To be sure. Yet even after you settled into maturity as a property holder and family head, I cannot say I found you notable for your devotions. Hamilton. Well, more's the pity. Pendleton. But you see, my dear friend, it has seemed so to most men. Indeed I venture to say that for most of those who have observed you, it appears that you did not discover you were pious until-until it became so very clear that your great opponent Jefferson was a free thinker. Hamilton. [directly but not angrily] You cannot think it! Pendleton. Well, I confess some doubt that you know your own mind. Year before last you inform us that we must proceed to form in opposition to the Virginia Jacobins a Christian Constitutionalist Party. We should work to propagate New Testament brotherhood and the Federalist construction of the United States Constitution. The project did not go far despite your efforts-or, who knows, perhaps because of those efforts. For surely you have been told that your plan was resented by unimpeachably devout men who deemed you to be setting God's Word in service of party. Not to speak of an equal number of skeptics and atheists who held the same opinion but with a different valuation. Hamilton. And you, Nat, are to be numbered in that faction? Pendleton. Just now the issue is youh belief, not mine. [Hamilton indicates he will not press] So, t ose who had no cause to be jealous on behalf of the honor of the Deity nonetheless resented the alliance just as keenly. They held the importation of religious sentiment to be an imposition and something of a concession to mechanics and store clerks. Hamilton. [still in good humor but peremptory] Enough! Upon my honor, Nat, you could stand in well for a Spanish inquisitor. How should I reply? My faith I hope is as sincere as I know how to be. I believe that man is a fallen creature in need of divine grace. And I hope to be saved by the grace of the Son THE ST. JOHN'S REVIEW of God. My political convictions now follow my religion. Assuredly not the other way about. I do not know if my mere avowal suffices to satisfy your questionPendleton. [meekly] But of course it does. Hamilton. But let me attest this faith a little by acting under it. You should do me a great favor by bearing to Mr. Burr the message that for whatever wrong I may have done him I repent it, and I shall not enter upon a challenge. Neither shall I give nor accept a challenge. Pendleton. Do not ask me to bear such a message. I should not act the part of your friend if I made that reply! Hamilton. Why? Pendleton. It would ruin you as a public figure, and it would make Burr. Hamilton. [after a moment] Nonsense, the matter is private. Pendleton. Burr, or Van Ness on behalf of his chief, will make itpublic. ---Hamilton. Well, then, publicly I can make known my principles. Pendleton. They will not be perceived to be the motives that actually motivated you. Have I not just atte:wpted to tell you in a kindly way that your professions of faith are not taken seriously? Hamilton. [takes fire] Well the world be damned! What other motive can anyone impute? Pendleton. [hesitates one instant} Failure of nerve. Hamilton. [incredulous] "Failure of nerve"! I? I have never guarded my life! Pendleton. I know it. Hamilton. [hotly] And the world knows it. My reputation will ensure that my true motives are credited. Pendleton. Men are disposed to believe the worst. They will believe the lower explanation if you do not confute them by a deed that cannot be explained away. Reputation is gnawed away by envy, by fear, even by pity. You keep what you've earned only by incessantly earning it anew. Otherwise, while they admit your former bravery, men will shake their heads and say, ''poor Hamilton, he once gave everything, until middle age taught him to be careful." Hamilton. {obstinate but subsiding] They cannot say so. Pendleton. Indeed they shall. They will say you have changed. Have you not just maintained to me that in respect of the sincerity of your piety you are not the same man the world has known? Well, the world shall say the same-but in respect of a former courage now renounced. Hamilton. [goes to_ small table and regards the miniature portraits of the lairds] I-may have to accept that consequence. Pendleton. Can you? Hamilton. [after a moment] Have you an alternative to propose? Pendleton. Temporize. Hamilton. What do you mean? Pendleton. Protest the vagueness of the issue as Burr has posed it. Have me say that you cannot reply to Burr's demand because he has not said how much is comprehended in Cooper's remarks. Say that when he brings himself to specify, you will be prompt to acknowledge or to disavow. But that without his clarifying, you can do neither. Hamilton. What's to be gained thereby? Pendleton. At the least, time for careful working. And with time who knows what may intervene to blow up Burr's project? Most important, if Burr cannot specifyHamilton. {interjecting] But of course he cannot. Pendleton. [continues undisturbed in his train of thought] If he can- 13 �not specify and the proceedings stick at that point, you may ward off his challenge without having to refuse it. Hamilton. [a shiver of impatience and repugnance] Ugh! I do not like the shuffling air of it. Pendleton. You owe yourself some trouble-and for the sake of your friends. {as Hamilton hesitates, Angelica reenters carrying a wicker basket on her arm and in her other hand the album. Both men tum to the girl presenting pleasant expressions and she places the album in Pendleton's hand] Angelica. [to Pendleton as he takes the album] Write. Pendleton. {uncomprehending but still smiling] Write what, my dear girl? Angelica. [patient and as though lucid] For my fete. Anything. [offers basket to Hamilton] Peaches. [Hamilton reaches into the basket and takes a peach without removing his eyes from Angelica] Philip sent them. [Pendleton turns away, Hamilton passes his hand over his face but then takes Angelica by the hand] And this will sustain you as you sail past Madagascar. {reaches into the basket and presents her father with another peach] Hamilton. But where am I bound, Angelica? Angelica. Cathay. Hamilton. Ah! A year's voyage. Angelica. I shall await your ship at the Battery. Hamilton. {tenderly] Where is your mother? Angelica. You must fetch him back. Hamilton. Would you ask your mother to fill another basket with those splendid peaches? For Mr. Pendleton? Pendleton. [turns back] Why thank you, Angelica. That would be most kind. [Pendleton moves to take up his gloves as Angelica bows to him and goes off right] Will you at least think over my advice today? Hamilton. You know I would do as you wish were I not bound otherwise by my conscience. I am not free. Pendleton. True. But you are now claiming a freedom you're not entitled to. {as Hamilton makes a move to protest] No, hear this last word. Then, if you are still resolved to deny any challenge, I shall bear to Burr whatever message you will. Will you hear me? Hamilton. Say on. Pendleton. My devotion to you, my old friend, is the one principle of my life I have never had occasion to question. Hamilton. I hope I may prove worthy of that trust. Pendleton. The only condition of that trust is that you do not repudiate yourself. [at a slight pause from Pendleton, Hamilton makes a gesture indicating that he should continue] As long as I have known you I have thought of you as representing the best this nation is capable of producing. In your career I conceive that I've found a proof of popular government. The essence of that proof is the demonstration that a man can serve this people yet remain a gentleman. You have not cheapened yourself in order to enjoy the favor of crowds, but you have done good for this country all the same. So you see, there's something more than personal in my concern for you. You must defend your reputation as a gentleman as much as your reputation as a patriot. The honor of a gentleman is only proved by his willingness to shed his own blood. Hamilton. {bitingly} Accompanied by the demonstration of a willingness to break the law and to shed the blood of another. Pendleton. If you do not offer such a proof, all of your past efforts already attacked by the demagogues will also be doubted by the better sort of men. They will think that in building a system to make life secure for tradesmen and mechanics you in time became more careful of yourself than a man of honor ought to be. You owe this country a better example, {points 14 to the miniature portraits] you owe it to your fathers. [Hamilton half turns to look down at the portraits and takes one up from the commode] Will you at least speak with Rufus King? [Hamilton looks up without replying but with interest} Allow me to take the reply I've suggested and use the time to talk to King. You esteem Rufus as much as I do. To me he stands for the best of the men I would have you keep -faith with. Send me with a temporizing message to Burr and allow me to send Rufus to you. Hamilton. [looks down again at the portrait, and then takes up again the plumed hat] Deliver Burr the message you proposed. [Pendleton bows and goes off right as Hamilton turns away to the window, still with the hat in his hand] Act II Scene 1 Burr's townhouse one day later. At rise Burr and the Countess are seated on a low sofa in the same drawing room presented earlier. As the Countess holds her hair up with one hand and adjusts the collar of her bodice with the other, Burr rises from his place beside her. In his shirtsleeves and waistcoat he crosses to a chair at left and takes up the frockcoat that has been draped over the back. Burr. [putting on the coat] Well, perhaps we might reconsider the terms of our-ah-mutuality. Countess. {replacing a pin in her hair] Yes, we were yesterday both of us perhaps too abrupt. Burr. But you must understand the manners of this town are not greatly in advance of the country as a whole. And the nation has not yet acquired a degree of refinement sufficient to allow us the liberty of society. Hence my directness with you which in Paris would not be required. Countess. Of course my dear {with a certain edge returning] and hence the vigor of my remonstrations with you-a promptness of resentment which in less provincial circumstances I should not for the world have thought to exhibit against my bantam gallant. Burr. {stares at the woman a moment then acknowledges without conviction] Mmm, yes. {takes out a long-stemmed pipe and begins to fill it from a tobacco pouch he takes from the side pocket of the coat] Now at what point of my narrative did we . , , digress? Countess. [adjusting herself on the divan] At the altercation between Mr. Hamilton and Mr. James Monroe. Burr. So it was. Welt the story is further illustrative of the republican manners to which I just made reference. Mr. Monroe became an actor in the farce when he went with two congressmen to hear Hamilton's explanation of why he was paying hush money to a scoundrel like James Reynolds. This Monroe, my nonpareil, is just as cold a cuttle fish as you should ever have the misfortune to know. I doubt that even your inexhaustible capacity for stimulation would kindle so much as a glint in those stony eyes. So you can fancy with what embarrassment he confronted the realization that the corruption of office he had hoped to detect was not to be, but, instead, the unpromising corruption of mere human infidelity in its ageless and humiliating, but politically innocuous, form of simple adultery. Countess. {polite snort of bored amusement} Do you have a bit of tobacco pray? Burr. Not fine enough for your impeccable nostrils, Madame. [drawing his pipe] So Mr. Hamilton, the Secretaryofthe Treasury of the United States, made one senator of that Great SUMMER 1985 �Republic and two members of the House of Representatives thereof sit down for an hour to read over half a dozen halfilliterate, dull, and redundantly scurrilous love letters which, supposedly, had passed between Mr. Hamilton and Mrs. James Reynolds. All to prove that the great Hamilton was no thief of the United States treasury, but only of another man's wife! The husband, James, sought to blackmail the adulterer, Alexander, quite possibly with the collusion, if not indeed at the instigation, of the loosely-tethered Maria, his wife, if but in name. Countess. One should think a challenge might pass between this-? Burr. Reynolds. Countess. Reynolds and Hamilton. But how Monroe? Burr. Monroe's own meanness let him in for it. He appeared to accept Hamilton's sordid explanation of his dealings with Reynolds. Then, years later when the matter becomes public, he spreads it about that he had only left Hamilton with the impression that his story was believed! Countess. Mon Dieu! Burr. At this point Hamilton and his second John Barker Church meet Monroe and his second preparatory to issuing the challenge to a duel. But Monroe shifts about, makes some protestation of his acceptance of Hamilton's account, and the matter fizzles. But, [holding up one finger] our farce must have an epilogue. Countess. Ah, you must let me have it, pet. Burr. {languidly clasps his hands behind his head] Hamilton then took it into his head that the public at large must be brought to admit his honesty in office. And how should the public be brought to admit it? In no way save by the same disclosures that convinced-or should have convinced-Monroe and his congressmen. Nothing would do but that the wide world should read Maria's love notes to Hamilton and his to her. Yes! He published them in the only book ever credited to his sole authorship. Published not only his immorality but his ridiculously conunon taste-for the Reynolds woman was a public thoroughfare-and in the process assured the lasting humiliation of his own wife, a woman as fine as the best ever bred on these shores. Countess. He subjects himself and his wife to disgrace only to prove his honesty in office? Burr. Just so! She ought never forgive him, but he is clean in his accounts-or so he had hoped. As a matter of fact, he damned himself the one way without clearing himself in the other. Men who only suspected his adultery now had proof, and men who suspected he profited by his office still continued so to suspect him. But the episode demonstrated how much Hamilton will pay to safeguard his political fame. And for that same reason, he dare not deny me satisfaction in the ~instance. [measures the Countess with his spectacles] You dO-ilOf much care for these lessons in statecraft, do you milady? Countess. {settling a pillow languidly] Not much, I confess it. {enter from right the Housekeeper] Housekeeper. Mr. Van Ness, sir. Burr. Show him in. [As Countess makes sure of her buttons and Burr relights his pipe, Van Ness enters from right, the Housekeeper departing] Van Ness. [a cursory bow to Countess] Should we converse in private? Burr. It cannot be worth the trouble, madame knows enough of our project to be more dangerous in her conjectures than in knowledge. THE ST. JOHN'S REVIEW Countess. [evenly] Diminutive bastard! Burr. [unimpassioned] Whore of Babylon! [as Van Ness looks on a little startled, Burr and the Countess exchange little bows of mutual acknowledgement] Van Ness. Very well. Hamilton equivocates. Burr. In what fashion? Van Ness. Pendleton has just given me a note in which Hamilton says that without your further specifying the grievances, he can neither acknowledge nor disavow. Burr. This is mere paltering. Van Ness. I should say so. Burr. I expected better of Hamilton. Countess. Why? A man who would insult his wife as you just told me he didBurr. [icily] Moral indignation does not become you, my dear, you tend to bray. [Countess shows her teeth, but does not otherwise reply] Let me see his note. Van Ness. [handing the note] Pendleton, of course, will be advising Hamilton. Burr. [scanning the note] How many others have been informed? Van Ness. I do not know. From Hamilton I suspect no othersBurr. [perceiving the significance of Van Ness~ intonation and emphasis turns to Countess but still without looking up from the note] Have you yet had opportunity to inform your acquaintances? Countess. [wrenches away] Hang yourself. Burr. [to Van Ness] From observing him could you discern anything further of Hamilton's intent? Van Ness. I would say he was shaken when he read the note. Though he recovered his color tolerably well. Burr. Did he raise the question of the law? Van Ness. No. Burr. Did you encounter Mrs. Hamilton? Van Ness. She saw me come and go. Burr. But Hamilton did not have her by when you delivered my message? Van Ness. She was not present. Burr. That is good. Although I am still concerned that Hamilton might inform her. He has disappointed me twice now and I begin to misdoubt his delicacy in points of honor. You recall Hamilton eventually relented when he might have pressed Monroe, and in that altercation with Commodore Nicholson at the time of Jay's treaty he showed himself somewhat too ready to accept an explanation. Van Ness. Perhaps so. But what has that to do with his wife? Burr. You have not heard the story of the Earl of Paulett and the Duke of Marlborough? [to Countess] This will answer to your taste for the piquant, rna chere. Countess. You are as copious as a gazette. Burr. Your only chronicler of the century. Well. Just after he returned from his wars in the low countries, Marlborough was assailed by Poulett for misuse of the Queen's troops. After a time, challenges were exchanged and the time and place of the interview were set. Having reconsidered, Paulett found himself not up to it. Yet, rather than retract, he had recourse to an expedient employed now and then by peaceable fellows who would have the world think them brave. He let the affair slip to his wife who saved Paulett by making sure the authorities knew of the impending interview. Marlborough was obliged by the Secretary of State to accept a composition. {relights his pipe] I'm surprised, William, to find you unacquainted with the story. Van Ness. I should think the more pertinent consideration is whether Hamilton has heard the story. Burr. [smiling] I learned it from him. [pats Van Ness on thecuffJ 15 �Anyway, Poulett' s finesse has earned him a certain notoriety and has occasioned an unwritten addition to the code of the duel. Van Ness. To wit: a gentleman is and ought to be disgraced by the intervention of his wife and thus no true man shall in this particular take his wife into his confidence. Burr. Precisely. You have a genius for inference. Van Ness. Hamilton must not be allowed to make his escape by that door. Burr. We cannot positively prevent the attempt. But if we are troubled by a sheriff or a justice you must let it be universally known that Hamilton applied to his wife rather than to his nerve. Van Ness. And certainly I shall. Burr. [to Countess] And you, my ladyship, shall assist. I know I can count upon your zeal for propagating. That is to say, for propagating the truth. Countess. [petulant] I'll turn it over. Burr. [irreverent] oTurn over" do you say? Countess. [angry] I'll think about it. Burr. Oh, I am certain you can do much better. You perform prodigies. Countess. Go to hell. Burr. "Is Saul too among the prophets:' Alas and alack . [Burr attempts to kiss the Countess on the cheek but fails as she averts her head. He takes her hand, kisses it, and shrugs as, after an instant, she pulls away with unconvincing hauteur] Burr. [to Van Ness] I shall have to write an answer to Hamilton's note. The object is to bring on the challenge as soon as may be and cut through these disagreeable delays. Van Ness. The longer Hamilton delays, the greater the likelihood that someone should intervene on his behali. He knows that, we know it, and he knows we know it. Burr. Then this is what we shall say: it is not for me to determine in what precise particulars I have been slandered. Rather, it is necessary that Hamilton signify clearly whether or no he takes responsibility for the harm already done me. If you have occasion for further conversation with Hamilton you must stress that I judge the harm to be a thing already inflicted-that will tighten our grip on him. Countess. Or his upon you. Burr. [ignoring the woman's remark] And to throw another grapnel on our prize, let us add one line more to the effect that his letter has furnished me with new reasons for requiring a definite reply. Van Ness. Still, now that fright has stirred him, the definite reply may be to disavow. Then you shall see your prize raise sail on sail and fly away. Burr. [pauses a few moments to think, idling the time by standing behind the Countess undoing one of the elaborate curls of her coiffure] Then we must be sure that a disavowal should inflict disgrace. Countess. [pulls away from Burr's irreverent doodling upon her hair and walks to a mirror at left where she attempts to repair the damage] You are a cool one, sir. You are bound and determined to ruin General Hamilton. Burr. [evenly] No, my dear, he need not suffer ruin. To avoid ruin lies in his hands [approaches Countess from behind and fastens one button at the tip of her collar. Van Ness discreetly turns away] I am only bound to slay him. [Burr's and the Countess' eyes meet in the mirror, she displaying fright. Van Ness turns back to face Burr] So William, let us phrase it in such a way that Hamilton cannot disavow without disavowing everything for 16 which he stands. Van Ness. He stands for nothing so much as unremitting opposition to Aaron Burr. Burr. Precisely. And so let us call for nothing less than a disavowal of every attack that has given teeth to that opposition. Here. [taking up paper and dipping a pen] In view of the impossibility of turning up the particular trash imparted to Cooper let us pose the question in its most lethal form. [writes] Yes. !after approving the sketch, hands the paper to Van Ness. The Countess tries to read just as Van Ness rises] Van Ness. [reciting as though to test the words by sounding them] ''The question is whether you have authorized my dishonor by uttering expressions or opinions derogatory to my honor.'' Yes. This is pretty much a summary of Hamilton's career. Burr. He cannot perceive it otherwise. The world will so perceive it. And he knows his followers will so perceive it: Can you return in an hour for the full message? Van Ness. [taking his hat] You must leave him no uncertainty. You must give him to know that you and every public man shall consider disavowal under these conditions to be the same as total remorse and promise of penance. Burr. That is for you to make clear to him, William. Do you think you can? Van Ness. [bows] I shall. [Burr sees Van Ness to the door right. Turns slowly back to Countess] Burr. It is possible, my dear, that you have just witnessed the conception of a new nation. Countess. Let us hope it is the only conception I've witnessed today. Burr. !laughs drily] Why? Caesar must have his heir. Countess. [raises her hand to ward offJ No, by this hand! Burr. Not by your hand to be sure. [pours two glasses of wine] Ah, well, perhaps I may find fruit of my loins elsewhere. Countess. You are famed for having spawned throughout New England. Burr. If half the slanders were true, I should have my army from my own begetting. But, alas, I need a party all the same. [handing a glass to the Countess] So Colonel Hamilton's old party must serve. They have grown tired of his blunders and now begin to cast their eyes on me. On Washington's birthday last they received my overtures quite warmly. Should you care to be Queen of New England? Countess. [snorts] The title would prove the best part of the job I fear. Burr. [raises his glass] Nonetheless, I propose the toast I raised to the Federalists: ''To the Union of all honest men.'' Countess. With honest women? Burr. And with their loins. [As the lights dim, Burr and the Countess clink glasses] Scene 2 Early evening of June 19. Hamilton's drawing room as arranged in Act One Scene 2. The double doors at right are open and as Hamilton enters from right sounds of a party can be heard with notes of a clavichord in the background. The tall hat box is still seen on the desk at center. Hamilton. [speaks over his shoulder as he enters] As soon as Mr. King has spoken with Angelica, please ask him to step in here. [closes the double doors muting the festive sounds, notes the hatbox on the desk and takes out the plumed cockade. After a moment Hamilton replaces the hat without having placed it on his head. He takes up a pen and a book from the desktop and removing a slip of paper tipped into the book begins jotting upon the scrap. After a time, as SUMMER 1985 �Hamilton continues to write, Rufus King enters unannounced. King, a man of middle height, florid complexion, and slightly balding, wears frockcoat and small clothes and in dress and gestures bespeaks more weight than either Pendleton or Van Ness] King. [speaks with a Maine accent and with something of the terseness for which people from that region are known} You are sketching another book? Hamilton. [setting down the pen} Rufus, welcome. [the two men clasp hands} Thanks for coming. King. [points to book and paper still in Hamilton's left hand} You work even through your daughter's fete? Hamilton. No. I'm listing those of the Federalist numbers that were from my hand. I've intended to do so for some time now. You or Pendleton can check them against John's recollection-and Madison's, if he still deems himself on speaking terms with us. King. [becoming quite grave} If you speak to me as though I might serve as your executor, I must conclude that the matter is fully as grave as Nathaniel gave me to believe. You are then pursuing a duel with Aaron Burr? Hamilton. I'm pursuing every possible alternative to such an outcome. But his last correspondence leaves me little room to maneuver. King. To what point has he brought it? Hamilton. Pendleton gave you the gist of the first exchange? King. Burr quotes the fool Cooper against you-you require a more specific grievance. That's what I have from Nathaniel. Hamilton. Two hours ago Van Ness delivered Burr's reply. He refuses to specify but instead stipulates that a disavowal must cover everything said against him that might impeach his honor. King. [without irony] That's everything. Hamilton. Very near. King. From that fact Burr gets leverage. Hamilton. Considerable leverage. The more so in that he knows I must see it in the same light as he himself. King. The care with which he selects the occasion and composes his demands argues a premeditated wrath. Hamilton. Premeditated to the last grimace. King. Further temporizing would be awkward. Hamilton. Impossible, I agree. King. Well then, do you seek my advice? Hamilton. I always welcome your advice, Rufus. Although I ask you here principally to beg some favors. [at a sign from Hamilton both men sit. King on the divan; Hamilton brings over his desk chair} King. [not unkindly} Favors first, advice, maybe, thereafter. Hamilton. Nothing but a national calamity can revive my political credit. You are therefore the proper leader of the Federalist party. King. What's left of it. And if Burr does not steal it away from us. Hamilton. The favor I would ask of you bears upon that danger. King. Ayeh. Hamilton. First, how certain are you that Burr plots a secession of New York and the New England states? King. [growing more animated as he proceeds] As certain as I am that I sit here. I have it from men of our party that are sympathetic to the idea and want me in. They are fed up with Jefferson and his Virginia Jacobins. They want to know their property is secure. They hate the whole breed of slaveholding, France-worshipping, atheistic, democratic flatters that have destroyed good order in this country. They want to see THE ST. JOHN'S REVIEW our party revived in a new nation free from the taint of the South. Hamilton. [after a moment laughs} I believe I've just heard a friend of that cause. You surprise me, Rufus. King. [uncomfortable} Ah General, I'm splitting my heart on this rock. I've fought men who've proposed no more than I've just said. But lately I've found less and less to oppose to the idea. The thought of giving this Union to Virginia slavers galls me so sore that I'd sooner see it divided. Hamilton. Then why have you held yourself out of the _counsels of those who would break off New England? King. Doubt of success, hatred of Burr. [rising] I tell you sir, nothing will satisfy that man but the throne of God! Hamilton. He could defend his new creation though. The one virtue I would not deny him is courage-at least in his ?Wn cause. King. I wouldn't trade a Virginia demagogue for a New York tyrant. [turning to Hamilton and approaching quite close} But I would pledge my life's blood to the right man. [Hamilton receives this silently staring back at King] Yes, you are the man. You could found a new nation and defend it. Hamilton. [suddenly rising goes to window at left] You are not serious. King. Face me. [Hamilton turns back to King] You can see that I am serious. Hamilton. [after a hesitation] I am not your man. King. You know that you are. Hamilton. What have I said that would lead you to think I might join such a purpose? King. All that Y2!:! have ever said. All that you've done. Hear me out. My father had six slaves on his estate in Maine. They were as well-treated as members of the family. But I quarreled with my father from the time I could make a quarrel arguing that he should set them free. And before my father was well-buried I had signed the papers and beaten them off my land. Every slave means two ruined men: himself and his master. I follow you because you"ve set this country on a course that will abolish slavery by encouraging free men to work and to love governing themselves. You found this country on the point of destroying itself by freedom run to wildness and sloth. You and Washington put freedom under law and gave us order and energy and prosperity. That's why I'm a Federalist. Hamilton. The party you so nobly extol is doomed. King. You can transform a doomed party into a new nation. A nation all of free men equal under the law. AndHamilton. You're dreaming. King. And, my dear Hamilton, a nation composed all of freemen will offer other opportunities for men of spirit. It will be a nation of soldiers-every citizen bred up in arms. We shall not then be subject to the humiliations lately inflicted by the powers of Europe. The leaders of a nation under arms could take their place with the great men of the Old World. They would figure in every chronicle of the race. Hamilton. [musing] There would certainly be war. With the South and with others. King. And with war, vigor, industry; courage ... glory! Hamilton. Some grief. King. Ayeh. But ultimately we liberate the entire New World from Spain. [after a moment, places his hand on Hamilton's shoulder} And who knows, perhaps we shall liberate the Old World from itself. Hamilton. You should awaken yourself my old friend. 17 �King. You should be President-for-Life and Commander-inChief-.- Hamilton. [about to speak falls silent and turns away] No. [but without positive conviction] King. You could be another Caesar. But more magnificent. Have you not said Caesar was the greatest man who ever lived? Hamilton. [continues to gaze out the window] When I said so, I was-dreaming. King. [ignoring or oblivious to the qualification] But more magnificent. Caesar destroyed a republic to make an e~pire. You can bring republican principles to the world. [as Hamilton remains silent and continues to gaze out the window] Give the word and the best men of New England will put aside Burr and follow you. Burr shall be crushed forever and aye and Jefferson [laughs capaciously] Jefferson will befoul himself with fright and flee to Monticello. [Hamilton laughs] Will you say the word? Hamilton. [his laughter subsides and he holds King's gaze for two or three seconds] No. [a small silence follows as neither man averts his eyes] King. [keeping himself very still] I've not known you to play a coy maid scene before. Am I supposed to entreat? Hamilton. [simply] No. King. [relaxes with one long restrained sigh] You said you had a favor to ask me. Hamilton. I want you to help prevent any scheme to have the . Northern states secede. King. !after an instant laughs mirthlessly] Ha! You refuse my prayer that you lead a secession by asking me now to scotch the whole affair? Back out on Pickering, Sedgwick and all our friends? Hamilton. Secession is treason. King. uTreason"! To stand apart from Jefferson and his Virginia cabal? Hamilton. Treason to the work we've taken in hand Rufus. [now King turns indignantly to stare out the window] I've led out troops against insurrections against this nation. You and I have worked in every way to lessen the power of these states. We've shored up the national government by every device invention could contrive. Our lives have been given to bringing strength and something like justice out of the small passions of men who think only of their near interests. Secession means betrayal of all that we have given ourselves for. King. I did not work for a strong national government so as to give Jefferson an engine for his demagoguery. He wants to level everything. Hamilton. We are agreed that the disease of this nation is democracy. But the cure is just the opposite of what you have supposed. The cure is union not secession. King. How when union only feeds the poWer of Jefferson's democrats? He has set this nation to worship the evil genius of Equality. Equality, the arch enemy of the moral world! Equality that seeks its level by degrading what knowledge and virtue have elevated! Shall every decent man be ground down between the unwise principles of the Jeffersons and the no principles of the Burrs? [the doors open letting in the sounds of the party as the Maid announces, ''Mr. Pendleton, sir''] Hamilton. [looks quizically to King who returns the expression] Please show him in, Mrs. Baines. [the Maid goes off and soon after returns bringing with her Pendleton dressed much like he was in the earlier scene and again carrying his gloves which he holds up to the retreating Mrs. Baines who ignores him closing the dou- 18 ble doors behind her] Good to see you, Nathaniel. Pendleton. [hand clasps all around] General. Rufus, I thought to find you here. I'm glad. [Pendleton shows some confusion as he looks from one to the other, evidently uncertain how far King has _been taken into Hamilton's confidence.] Hamilton. We have been discussing the exigency posed by Mr. Burr. King. [hurriedly] Do you bring news of a development? Pendleton. Nothing promising. Burr has sent no further messages and from Van Ness I am told that the last allows no latitude of interpretation. When I asked Van Ness for a restatement of Burr's latest requirement he said it meant that the General must disavow having said anything that might impair Burr's honor. King. Burr is making certain that no explanation can be offered. Pendleton. That is obviously his intent. And I should say he has succeeded. [an awkward silence] You have sounded the General? King. Ayeh. He refuses, he saysHamilton. Gentlemen, you meet here by prearrangement do you not? Pendleton. No. {Speaking simultaneously] King. Of course. [Pendleton shrugs, turns away] Hamilton. I'm not your man to lead a secession of New England states. I am your man for preventing such a calamity as far as it lies with me to prevent it. [turning to Pendleton] I was just attempting to persuade Rufus to assist in urging Federalists to repudiate the scheme. Pendleton. As far as I'm concerned, the idea loses half its attractions if you are not the guiding spirit. King. I counted on you for better persuasion, Nathaniel. [to Hamilton] General HamiltonHamilton. [to King] Secession would only open the way to the intrigues of the European powers. We do not want to be subjects again to the King of England or to the mock republic of France. King. We can fight them and Jefferson too. Nay, Jefferson won't fight. Hamilton. The constitution we now have is the best cure for the evils we all fear. A strong President, a responsible and stable Senate, respect for law-these are cures for envy and equality. But to have them we must have good Federalists. We must preserve what is left of the Federalist parly and make that remnant the guardian of the Constitution. Pendleton. A remnant, that we are. King. [bitter] A little bit of leaven for Virginia dough. Is that what we've come to, General? Is that what you're proposing we settle for? Hamilton. The better men are always few, Rufus. Do you think we would ever capture the hearts of the people? Pendleton. Remember Dallas' warning: "No party so high it cannot fall, no party so low it cannot rise.'' Politics is a changeable affair. Hamilton. Changeable it is. Yet I suspect no party shall come to power henceforth that is not some version of Jefferson's party. King. God what a prospect! Pendleton. For once I'm glad I'm not young. King. There's more honor in dying by the wall! Pendleton. You'll have no chance for such glory, Rufus. The people of New England itself will not follow us. King. They would follow Hamilton. Hamilton. You delude yourself, Rufus. I know better. For- SUMMER 1985 �tunately the scheme will never find the support it needs to carry through because it is wrong. But if you would try it, you must either lead yourself, or place yourself under Burr. Burr. I cannot lead, and I shall never serve Jefferson's VicePresident. Hamilton. Not even against Jefferson? King. !after a moment] Not though it should send to perdition all of Virginia. Hnmilton. Then you must go further and break up the scheme. Pendleton. H we do not nurse the plan along, it dies of itself. Hamilton. We can't be certain of that. If the plan goes forward, when it fails it will bring the Federalist party into disgrace. Moreover, Burr will use the plot to steal the party for himself. If you do not want to raise up Burr you must strangle his monster in its infancy. Follow me, or follow Burr. Pendleton. Burr must be destroyed. King. What would you have me do? Hamilton. Visit Sedgewick in Boston. I'll write to him also. Then Bayard in Delaware, eventually you must see Pickering. I'll make sure of Morris and Jay. Nathaniel will help me in the city. [the same thought seems to strike all three men as they fall silent. Pendleton turns aside to the window but King continues to face Hamilton] King. [in a low voice] That is the favor you said you wanted to ask? [Hamilton nods] I'll do it. {again a pause] But you must deal with the Vice-President. Hamilton. I am thinking how best to do so. King. Burr has appeared to be dead before and has brought himself back to life. Hamilton. Recovery is his genius. Pendleton. {turns back but stays by window] As with a cat, the resiliency owes to lack of principle. King. This time he must stay down. Confound it, Mr. Hamilton! Have you never hit anything with a gun? [both Pendleton and Hamilton laugh] Hamilton. Perhaps if we trundled up naval guns charged with grapeshot. [Pendleton laughs again. King does not] King. {pensively] Still pistol and ball is so unpredictable. There's always the chance. You must stipulate close range. Ten paces. Mind you, ten paces. Hamilton. {calmly] But Rufus, surely Nathaniel told you I am resolved not to accept a challenge. King. I trust you will reconsider that hasty and ill-advised resolve. Hamilton. Neither is it hasty nor adopted upon anyone's advice. It is my settled determination and taken after much thought. King. {abruptly] Then you are reconciled to losing your party to Burr? Htimilton. [surprised and hurt} You mean he can take it from me at gunpoint? King. I mean that among men whose good opinion is worth having only two qualities are indispensable: courage and honor. Once these are questioned men will not undertake any risks on your behalf. When you can no longer bring men to take risks for your principles, you no longer lead. If you are known to have declined a proper challenge you will bring yourself under question. Hamilton. [drily] It appears that you and Nathaniel are in remarkable accord. Pendleton. {hurriedly] Rufus nor I question your firmness. Hamilton. [somewhat bitterly] But you are certain other men shall. THE ST. JOHN'S REVIEW King. A Jefferson could decline to no man's surprise nor censure. Pendleton. [to Hamilton] What do you expect from your countrymen? Hamilton. If I accepted Burr's challenge, I would not fire at him. Pendleton. {exasperated] That is self-destruction. {turns in disgust back to window] King. [after a moment] This also is a settled resolve? Hamilton. I have proved it with blood more precious than my own. King. {abruptly and decisively] Then will you commit that resolve to writing? [Pendleton turns back obviously astonished and Hamilton, also surprised, stares for a moment at King] Hamilton. Of course I would. I would owe it to myself, and to posterity to correct what, without such explanation, would seem to endorse lawlessness and impiety. King. You should see now how to be certain of Burr's destruction. Pendleton. {as Hamilton takes his own counsel] What do you mean? King. {speaking only to Hamilton] Write out a full statement saying that your religious principle does not allow your taking the life of your adversary. Therefore, although you will face Burr and hazard his fire ~ will not fire upon him. You must nevertheless try to slay him. {both Hamilton and Pendleton express incredulity] No, hear me out! You must try to slay Burr. If you succeed, destroy the note. If you do not hit him but survive his fire, then your friends may publish the statement without your taking a hand in it. It Would ruin Burr and endear you both with those who honor duels and with those who condemn bloodshed. Hamilton. Come, Rufus! King. [brn.shes the interruption aside] If, on the other hand, youdo not survive, the world will condemn Burr. He may even be charged with murder. Certainly he will be ruined as a public figure. Pendleton. {speculatively] You would either destroy Burr outright, or destroy him as a public figure. Hamilton. Gentlemen, am I to understand that my carcass may be as dear to you as me alive so long as it serves to destroy Burr? Pendleton. General! King. {quietly] That's unfair old friend. I advise you to practice your marksmanship, stipulate close range, and fire first. It is~ who have boasted of wasting your fire. Hamilton. "Boasted"! King. Pride is also a transgression against divine ordinance, if I remember, as also is wilful self-destruction. You sir, are resolved upon wrong. I'm only attempting to salvage some good from the waste you're bent upon. Hamilton. But Rufus by God! What you propose is dishonorable. King. If it be dishonorable to save your party and your country. Hamilton. {appealing] Nathaniel? Pendleton. [discovers finnness and takes a step. toward Hamilton] Desperate ills require ~ remedy. Hamilton. Gentlemen this I shall say only once again. So, as you are my friends, accept my word, and do not try to sway me. I shall not fire upon Burr. [a lengthy pause as King bows his head and Pendleton painstakingly inspects his gloves] King. {very quietly and hesitantly] Does that mean you refuse to-face him? Hamilton. [as King's intent becomes clearer to him] What? 19 �King. [getting through it all at one go] And to write out the statement? Hamilton. Will you go so far as to urge me to the course you characterized as wilful self-destruction? Pendleton. Not I! For God's sake Rufus! Say you do not. King. [after allowing a certain time to elapse] No, of course I suggest no such thing. [this said in a monotone] Pendleton. Do not think it, General. [Hamilton and King are facing each other as the Maid opens one of the double doors and tenta- tively interrupts] Milid. Excuse me, sir. Mrs. Hamilton asks should I cutthe cake? Hamilton. Please go ahead. And tell Mrs. Hamilton! shall be in directly. Maid. [departing] Yes, sir. Pendleton. We had best take our leave, Rufus. King. [sadly] Ayeh. Hamilton. [as the two other men come together] My wife already suspects the reason for your recent visits. King. I'm sorry. Hamilton. Any further communications must be shielded from her. King. Is there need of further communication? Hamilton. Burr's last note must be answered. Will you be able to leave immediately for Massachusetts to appeal to Sedgewick? King. [hesitates] l-am not certain that will be advisable. Hamilton. How do you mean? King. [looking away from Hamilton] The two concerns stand or fall together. Hamilton. You can be clearer, Rufus. King. If it becomes public knowledge that you refuse Burr's challenge, I doubt that other Federalists will follow you and discard an agreement already in the making. Hamilton. Why, you must convince them then! King. [turns to foce Hamilton] I don't think! could. I'm not sure I could carry conviction. Hamilton. Ah! Does that mean you could not be altogether convinced yourself? [instead of answering, after a second King turns away to the low table and idly fingers the miniature portraits. Hamilton turns to Pendleton] And you, Nathaniel? Pendleton. [mutters as he also bows his head with embarrassment] I would try to do whatever you ask of me ... but-[trails off with a gesture of discouragement] Hamilton. [quietly} So. I see. [goes to the desk and stands with hand on the desktop and head bent] You must allow me to consider my decision. [both men now watch Hamilton intently] My decision never to fire upon an opponent~ irrevocable. Still, I may consent to accept his challenge. If I do, Nathaniel will deliver my note saying that I cannot respond to Burr's demand for explanation or disavowal and must therefore stand the consequences. That letter I have already written. [takes a sheet of paper from a drawer of the desk, creases it and hands it to Pendleton who, without taking his eyes off Hamilton's face, places it in his inside pocket] You will not deliver that letter unless I signify that you should. We must have no further meetings here that would alarm my wife. Pendleton. How then will you signify if you choose to have the letter delivered? King. And the other letter? The declaration of your intent to throw away your fire . . . ? Pendleton. [a pause] You owe an account to those who have reposed their trust in you. You owe posterity. King. [as Hamilton still hesitates] If you will not kill Burr, you must render him powerless. 20 Hami!!ton. [takes iU!I' !l!he q;d!Umed !hat tlRJ1I£! turns it >n lhiis fltr.nds] Nathaniiel, ylm must Clome by this house tonight when yw>u take your evertil!lg walk. If I decide tiD have you deli"'"' th.e letter invitiflg illomr"s duilleRge, [ siln.atl place this hat m fue window. King. [tt!lantlessiyJ Shall the sign further assure <IllS that·ymu lhave written ·out the -ement? !IKirlg bill11ds .to theilecantenand takes out its stopperJ Hamilton. llfliace 191!1![1['.,. and if the wo.rst ;ensues, you will 'lmow soon enouglk ®£ ffih::e stateme;m.t yeu desire.. King. [suggesliwe !hut not hea"'!)!~lm,dedl Yet Wlith the assU<rance ofit, I>ihou!.d """'Wmore .... mmrictiio<> to .Sedgewicikill!lld the others~ Hmnilivn. 1Jljfter .a lime} Very well King. [.rest.mined but iinlsistent"" he poum :wi11I£ Mo t'hwe :§lssses] Then, 'iE Nathaniel sees th.e halt he will kn001 illhat llhe ,.tatement has been recorded and is . ~ . availlable? Hamilton. (taking up &e plumed hN wiJJi his head i!JJ>JwdJ i!fihe sees this hat, he will know that I've left fue sta~marnHor yamnuse. King. (handing a glass of wine to Pendletnn, then ilo Hammiilton] I shall set out tomorrow morning as soon as I"ve beam Jfr.om you. [all three ponder their glasses a moment] Hamilton. {looking to King then Pendleton] If the l:lwee ;of us should meet again, let us hope the occasion be to releb.rate the perpetuation of the Union. Pendleton. And indeed we certainly shall meet again. King. And so I do hope. Hamilton. [continues to hold his glass without drinking] I wonder if our old toast is altogether appropriate at this momelll.t. King. Nothing could be more appropriate. Hamilton. [after a pause] Then-To the union of all honest men. King. ''To the union of aU honest men.'' [touches Hamilton"s glass, Pendleton raises his glass to theirs. The double doors are opened a crack and the Maid just sticks in her head tentatively] Maid. [hesitantly] Sir? Hamilton. Yes, Mrs. Baines. I was coming just now. [a bow to King and Pendleton] Gentlemen. [Hamilton goes off right, the Maid stepping aside for him and holding the door. The lights dim as she closes the double doors and as Pendleton and King turn toward each other with grave but othewise impassive expressions. They do not raise their glasses a second time] Scene 3 Same setting as previous scene, toward dusk of the same day. Angelica's party is breaking up, and one hears from offstage voices of guests taking their leave. After the voices subside, Hamilton and Angelica enter from right. Hamilton. [turning back in the doorway at right as Angelica continues into the room] Mrs. Baines, we shall want lights in a halfhour. [turns back to Angelica and takes both her hands in his] Well, my Lady, Angelica, was your party a success? Angelica. Papa, you should have seen my aunt pretend she was you. Hamilton. Which of your aunts? Angelica. Aunt Angelica Church. She made herself swell up like a bantam rooster and said she were you. Hamilton. [laughs] I hope then she did justice to my fine comb [tosses his head] and my brave voice o' the morning. Did she sing? Angelica. No, Papa. Hamilton. Your Aunt can sing with the best of this country. You should make her sing for you some day. SUMMER 1985 �Angelica. Will you ask her for me? Hamilton. [dropping his daughter's hands, searches in his pocket] Certainly. . Angelica. Will you come earlier to my next party? Hamilton. Yes, Angelica, I most certainly shall be more prompt. {takes from an inside pocket a ring] I hope you will think of your father when you wear this dinner ring. [slips the ring an Angelica's finger] Angelica. {looks briefly at the ring but makes no acknowledgement of the gift] I do not much admire Charles Lansing. Hamilton. [abstractedly] He is rather a tepid young man is he not. {kisses Angelica] Angelica. He betrayed Philip. Hamilton. [for an instant Hamilton appears perplexed and pained by the sudden reference] No, dear. Charles Lansing is several years younger than your brother. They scarcely knew each other. Angelica. [incongruously casual] In any event, you must not fail me another time. Gentlemen must observe punctuality. Hamilton. {laughs and takes her hand again] Punctual I shall be. [Elizabeth enters from right dabbing at her forehead with a handkerchief. After she shuts the double doors behind her she leans her back against them with a broad gesture indicating both fatigue and relief. Hamilton and Angelica have turned to face Elizabeth as they continue to hold hands.] Elizabeth. So here you two have hidden yourselves. I wish I could have said, ''Stand not upon the order of your going, but go at once." New York is nothing if it is not verbose. Hamilton. Poor Eliza. You've been on your feet all day. [indicating the sofa] Light and rest. Eliznbeth. {taking the place Hamilton has indicated] I'lllight but it's doubtful I'll rest. I'll hear those two dozen silly girls babbling all night. I shan't sleep. Dearest Angelica, would you hand me that pillow? {as Angelica brings a throw pillow from the stuffed armchair] Thanks, child. [settling the pillow behind her head Elizabeth stretches out full length] Did you enjoy your fete, Angelica? Angelica. From David Livingston I received a pack of cards. Eliznbeth. {to Hamilton] A strange gift. Butthen the Livingston's enjoy nothing so much as inflicting their eccentricities. May I see them, Angelica? Angelica. {dutifully handing over a small packet] I should like to be allowed to keep Mr. Livingston's gift. Eliznbeth. [glances casually at the pack of cards, then gives them back to Angelica] Surely you may, dearest. I would wager that your brother john will play a hand with you if you ask him kindly. I left him just now in the front parlor. Angelica. Papa has promised to come from the beginning of my next party. Eliznbeth. {simply] Then you may count upon it. For your father keeps his promises. [as Angelica continues to stand before her] Your brother john is in the parlor. [kindly] Angelica, will you go to the front parlor and play at cards with your brother? Angelica. {making herself, as she thinks, severe] And your promise, sir, shall I depend upon it? Hamilton. [seeing her to the door and kissing her] Aye, my dearest, you may be sure of me. [as Angelica goes off right, a brief silence falls as Hamilton crosses to the small table and takes up the glass decanter. Hamilton turns to the low table and pours into one of the wine glasses] Would you take some sherry, Eliza? Elizabeth. Thank you, no. Please do take some yourself. [as Hamilton raises his glass to her in a quiet salute] You may have a little alarmed your son. Hamilton. Oh? How should I have done so? THE ST. JOHN'S REVIEW Eliznbeth. I was speaking with john Church just a while ago. He was sitting by himself as he does whenever there's a party. He told me that as he read he sensed someone standing in the doorway. He said you asked him at last if he wanted to sleep in your room tonight. Hamilton. [directly and without particular emphasis] Yes, I should like him to be with me. I've not had much leisure to visit with the children lately. Elizabeth. [holds this reply briefly, then, affectionately} Then we must have our chat here before bed. Now I think of it, a glass of wine would suit me. Could you? Hamilton. [as he crosses back to the low table and fills another glass] A most excellent and collegial motion. [as Hamilton presents the glass to his wife she looks past him to the hat on the desk and while taking the glass with one hand, gestures toward the desk with the other.] Elizabeth. {lightly] Do you plan another expedition? Hamilton. {blank but apprehensive] What? Elizabeth. [points again to the hat] "Hector's helm," as I recall you once named it. Hamilton. {turns to follow her pointing finger] Ah ... I had intended to show it to John Church tonight. Elizabeth. You will not surprise him with that hat. Oh, he sniffed it out last fall. He's ridden his pony over half of Harlem Heights waving that feather. In fact, he gave it such hard use I will not undertake it on my oath that the plume you see is the one you had. Hamilton. {laughs] I had not noticed. Elizabeth. Yes. It may be that the brave flourish which now surmounts the crown came by way of Louisa Charles, who claims to have had it from Sanbourne's Haberdashery which, in turn, may have had it from the cast off finery of some unrecorded lady given to walking Broadway o' nights. Hamilton. [coughs urbanely] Under whatever banner, I shall prevail. Elizabeth. [after another brief interval] You were closeted so long with Pendleton and King that guests were asking after you. Hamilton. I'm sorry. The sad fortunes of the party were our theme. Elizabeth. I thought the Federalist Party had been pronounced dead. Hamilton. Very nearly so I'm afraid. Yet there is still perhaps some question concerning the manner in which it will choose to expire. Elizabeth. How would you have it die? Hamilton. I'd have it die in such a way that it might affirm the first principle of its being: the preservation of the Constitution. If we cannot depend upon appeal to men of property to maintain our existence against the party of the mob, let us leave behind a legacy for whomever may choose to oppose Jefferson and his lovers of democracy. Let them unite behind the Constitution. Elizabeth. I can think of more inspiring causes. You must forgive me dear, but if one talks of principle I must confess I see very little of principle in your Constitution. You might win my heart with the Declaration-even if Jefferson did draft it. The Declaration at least says what a human being may choose to live for and die for. But that ConstitutionHamilton. It too says what a man may live forElizabeth. I don't see it. So many rules for who must do whatbut how people are to live does not seem to be its concern. You lawyers love procedures. Hamilton. [rises and walks past Elizabeth to the window1We love procedures because we know that without them men pretty 21 �much follow the direct way of beasts. The Declaration expresses the conviction that by taking thought together men may secure justice. The Constitution lays down arrangements that insure we can come at laws in no other~ than by taking thought together. [turning back to Elizabeth]at is something to live for. -Elizabeth. [unbegrudgingly assenting] It is. Hamilton. Yet it is hardly a war cry I suppose. Elizabeth. No. Hamilton. jefferson will lay it all flat. Elizabeth. Don't let him. Hamilton. I wish I knew how to prevent him. He has seized upon the popular element and run away with it. Every move is calculated to endear him with the populace. And the popular tide carries away everything. So I said it would be if we did not provide against itf and so it has happened. Elizabeth. Some would say there's an iron law that the rich seek more and the poor seek to plunder their wealthy neighborsf and that government always legalizes the greed of the one or the other. Hamilton. Thae s true enough when a nation does not provide against its own worst passions. We tried to provide against our worst instincts. We limited the scope of the wealthy and we tried to make the kind of Presidency that could maintain its independence of the many poor. But there's nothing to prevent aristocratic crowd-pleasers like Jefferson who are willing to sacrifice stability and property for popularity. The question is whether the envy of the poor was only kept in bounds by Washington and the Federalists. What will be our fate when theref s only the party of Jefferson, or when every party seeks only to win the favor of the poor and the middling? Elizabeth. [gets up and walks over to the desk, looking down at the military hat] In any event, your countrymen could have had a man who would not demean the Presidency. After Washington, or at least after Adams. But not even the party you led would put you forward. Hamilton. As Washington's Treasurer I gained the policies necessary to put this nation on honorable footing with the great powers of the world. But my person for the highest office was considered too . . . risky. Elizabeth. Your party, for all its bluster, lacks nerve. Hamilton. I don't know. Under the circumstances I was a risk. I was caught between one compromising entanglement and ... [embarrassed] another. Elizabeth. [also embarrassed by the clumsy euphemism, looks away] Of course. Hamilton. You lcuow Eliza, I should be glad to live my life again with all its half-successes, humiliations, disappointments, and with all my own stupidities-I would live through it all again, if only I could take back the harm I did you in those three months at Philadelphia. Elizabeth. [bitterly] I've asked you never to speak of it again. Why do you now? Hamilton. {with great effort] Adultery is a crime. In my case a still greater wrong of ingratitude. I ... acknowledge. But I have prayed often for forgiveness. I hope that I have been forgiven by God and I would ask you again my dear, that you ... forgive me. Elizabeth. [turns her back to Hamilton] This is most painful. Hamilton. Not more so for you than for me. Elizabeth. [gathering herself and confronting her husband] Perhaps I am as vain as you, my dear Alexander. Perhaps I am too stiff. But one quality I esteem even more than loving compliance is honesty. I cannot say with honesty that I've forgiven 22 you. Because the truth is, as I have told you before, not that I bear an animus against you, but that forgiveness is beside the point. Hamilton. Can you be less yielding than the Lord? Elizabeth. [touches Hamilton's cheek affectionately] The Deity can afford bounty in his forgiveness since he cannot be deceived in our disloyalties. Hamilton. [bitterly] You said forgiveness is beside the point. What then is now the point of our marriage? Elizabeth. You are in some ways still a child, my dear husband. There are many sufficient reasons for our continuance in marriage. But perhaps the best is that I have more regard for you than for any man. Hamilton. How can you say that and not forgive? Elizabeth. Your infidelity transformed me into a more judicious admirer. It's because you expect more of yourself-a:nd of others-than other men do, for that I hold you dearer than any man, except your son. Hamilton. Except Philip. Elizabeth. Except Philip. Who expected as much of himself and did never fail himself. Hamilton. Then you do not blame me for Philip's death? Elizabeth. I cannot say I do not. You made him feel you expected so much of him that he felt obliged to court his death. But then you also succeeded in teaching him that there are worse ills than death and a finer thing than life. [a small rapping at the double doors, then the Housekeeper slicks her head in] Housekeeper. Ma'am. Elizabeth. Yes, Mrs. Baines? Housekeeper. John Church wants to ask something of you before going to bed. Elizabeth. Tell John Church he has my permission to spend the night with his father. Is that not what he wants to ask? Housekeeper. [has edged into the room] I think so, Ma'am. Elizabeth. If he should need anything further, tell him I shall look in on him directly. He should wait in his father's room. Housekeeper. [going out] Yes'm. {After the door closes H~illilton crosses to the large window and looks out for a moment] Hamilton. [without turning] How have you progressed with the accounts? Elizabeth. I was just on the point of finishing when Angelica's party took me away. Hamilton. Are we yet solvent? Elizabeth. For the short run we spend no more than you earn. But the debts are large. We shall be tolerably easy under them in about twenty years. Hamilton. [sarcastically] We are not so well off by far as Jefferson's pamphlet writers profess to think us. Elizabeth. If you had taken a tenth of what they laid to your charge you might retire from the bar. I doubt any man has come away poorer from government service. Hamilton. When Talleyrand was visiting he re_fused to believe that a man could retire from office poorer than when he went in. Elizabeth. Yes I recall. Hamilton. [angered] And yet Jefferson can believe the French will succeed in governing themselves. Talleyrand can be venal and think himself merely civilized. His countrymen confuse liberty with doing whatever they like. Elizabeth. [puzzled by his vehemence] Why do you permit yourself anger over affairs across the sea? Hamilton. Jefferson dotes on France as he does on any scheme SUMMER 1985 �that cries out for equality. If he can, he will ally us with France against England. That would split this nation in two. Elizabeth. There's talk of splitting off New York and the New England states from the Virginians. Would it not be possible for the northern states to ally with England? Hamilton. I would do anything to prevent that. Elizabeth. I think I have heard that the powerful men who've conceived the plan would have for their leader Aaron Burr. Is it for that reason that you oppose secession? Hamilton. I would oppose the scheme even if a decent man had been sought out to lead. If the Archangel Michael undertook to lead, still I should oppose it with my blood. Elizabeth. Why? Hamilton. The union of these states under the Constitution honors human nature. Dissolving that union would show the world almost a second fall of man. Elizabeth. You feel morally bound to share a common law with slaveholders? Hamilton. [fervent] Yes. Or else there is no hope of ever ending slavery. No, nor any hope for proving that men can rise above their inclinations so as to govern themselves. If we cannot live with this Constitution we shall declare to our children's children that citizens cannot trust the laws to their own making because they cannot trust themselves to seek justice when they have opportunity to satisfy passions. They will prefer to submit themselves to strong men rather than to trust one another. Elizabeth. I see. Hamilton. [dropping every reserve} Do you see that decent men should go any length to prevent such a shame upon us? Elizabeth. [carefully} What do you intend? Hamilton. Some way must be found to stop Burr. Elizabeth. [apprehensive] How do you mean, "stop him"? Hamilton. [becomes aware of Elizabeth's tenseness] What? Elizabeth. How do you mean to "stop" Aaron Burr? Hamilton. {evasively as he pretends casually to look over the miniature portraits] Oh, you know, there shall have to be combinations. Elizabeth. [dubiously} "Combinations"? Hamilton. Yes, as when we prevented his getting Federalist votes for the presidency in the last election. Letters will have to be written. Pressure of one sort or another must be brought to bear on men who contemplate backing his venture. Elizabeth. Burr's recent defeats must make him a desperate man. Hamilton. Presumably. Elizabeth. I think most certainly. I would not have you oppose him personally and openly. Desperate men have to be feared. He is lethal. Hamilton. I shall take care how I oppose him. Elizabeth. [very rapidly} Have you? Why did that man of Burr's come to the house sullen as thunder? I know Van Ness is a Tammany hack. Did he bear a threat from the man he serves? {as Hamilton hesitates} Did he convey a threat from Burr? Hamilton. Of course not. Elizabeth. [taking his ann} But he did. Hamilton. No! [after a hesitation} He attempted to secure my help. For Burr. He ... thought he could persuade me to support the plan of a New England secession. Elizabeth. Do not attempt to deceive me! Burr would rather fail in any project than ask your support. Rather than share glory with you he would much prefer to fail. Hamilton. !faltering} No. Elizabeth. Yes! You are lying. There;,; to be a duel. You think THE ST. JOHN'S REVIEW yourself bound in honor to keep it from me. But I read it in your eyes. I could see it in the faces of your friends and in that slinking Van Ness. [measured and cold} Do you still deny it? Hamilton. You are as dear to me as life itself. Elizabeth. [quite still} Aye. But life to you is not dear. All that is dear to you is your fame. -Hamilton. My love. Elizabeth. [stepping back and away from Hamilton's grasp} No! More than the religion you claim to have found you love your fame. More than the law you're sworn to uphold. More than me you claim to revere. More than this family. More than the son you have seen slain and a daughter lost. You love your fame more than all. [Hamilton makes a movement toward Elizabeth who again steps back raising an open hand as if to ward of!J I don't want you to touch me! [Hamilton drops his hand;; to his sides] See yourself Alexander. See youself, and do not lie. [after a moment] Mter all is said, a man does not change. When first I met you, I thought your eyes looked past me to something just on the edge of sight. You were trying to see your fame. You still have fame only in your sight. You look past me. Far past me. Hamilton. Not just my fame. My country. My honor and the good of my countrymen are joined. Elizabeth. Are they? Hamilton. [simply} Aye. Elizabeth. Be sure they are one. Once before, you have guarded your fame without helping your country that I could see. Though you sacrificed your family. Hamilton. [altogether shaken} For the humiliation I caused you ... Elizabeth. [coldly severe} No! Don't think. I'm not referring to !!!Y shame. That is nothing. It is now nothing to me at all. Don't you see I can't be wounded there because there's nothing left to wound? I've come to expect much less from you, and much more. I don't need your affection, Alexander. I've come to regard you as I suppose you've always intended to be regarded-as a man whose life belongs to the wide world, not to me. I'm used to it now. I" too respect the name you have sustained. It's all I have. Hamilton. Is that all you have of me? Elizabeth. In a narrow world it suffices. It will have to. But when I said you have sacrificed your family without helping your country I meant Philip. Hamilton. [wooden] And so I did. [turns and walks to window] Elizabeth. You have attempted to conceal your trouble from me because you thought I would shame you by begging or by exposing your plans. I shall do neither. [at this Hamilton turns back to face Elizabeth] But I shall put a demand upon you. Hamilton. [tenderly} What demand? Elizabeth. In many ways you have raised my expectations of human beings. You must now meet these expectations. Hamilton. How do you mean? Elizabeth. [abruptly takes up the medallion portrait of Philip and hold;; it before Hamilton's eyes] You must be worthy of your son. You must be worthy of Philip. Can you risk your life now having taken away your first-born and the hope of this house? Your son sacrificed for your honor no less than everything. I charge you my husband! I charge you by the blood shed by your son to be worthy of his sacrifice! Hamilton. {regarding the portrait with pain, but without turning away. After a moment his expression of anguish gives way to a slowly grawing triumph. He lifts his hand to the still upraised hand of Elizabeth that holds the portrait, and clasping hers gently brings the medallion clasped between them down to his chest] You may 23 �be sure of me. [Steps to the desk at right and taking up the cockade he looks down at the hat while speaking] I shall take no action that is not worthy of Philip. [turning full face to Elizabeth and still holding the hat with a manner sad yet triumphant] I shall act in a manner worthy of our son. [after a moment in which husband and wife wordlessly confront one another] The letters I mentioned to youElizabeth. [breaking in and brushing the matter aside] I'm mindful of the letters-Pendleton and King. Is your heart quiet now? Hamilton. It is quietfor the first time in forty years. Yet it might rest quieter still if we might say we were as we were before. [he takes her hand] Elizabeth. [not unkindly but decisively] That may not be. [slowly withdrawing her hand] My respect you haveHamilton. Your forgivenessElizabeth. [gravely but not harshly] is irrelevant. May God take you as I take you. [steps to the door, opens it, and with her hand on the latch half turns] And may God forgive your inscrutable soul. [goes off neither in a rush nor slow closing the door quietly behind.] [Hamilton stands for a moment facing the closed door. He then looks down at the hat in his hand, walks to the mirror and pauses as though he has thought to put on the hat before the glass but has changed his mind. Instead, he walks to the window, places the hat upon the wide sill, looks out in the distance for an instant, then sits at the table near the window and taking up a small extinguisher puts out slowly each of the three lighted candles. For a brief time the fading twilight from the window faintly illuminates Hamilton's face as he continues to gaze into the gathering night. Then the outside light fades completely and the stage goes dark.] Epilogue [As the lights dim upon the seated Hamilton they come up upon Van Ness standing at far left. He is dressed as he has been throughout the play except that he now holds a folded umbrella in his left hand.] Van Ness. [facing the audience but speaking as though he were delivering a deposition at an inquest] I can only repeat to the jurymen what I have earlier attested. They should discern the ob- vious intent of Mr. Pendleton [glances toward stage right] to exonerate his patron at the same time he defames my friend the Vice-President. As I have testified before, the two principals met at Weehawken, New jersey on the bank of the Hudson River at seven in the morning of July 11, 1804. Nathaniel Pendleton served as second to Colonel Hamilton, I attended the Vice-President. Colonel Hamilton prescribed a distance of ten paces. Having taken their positions the two gentlemen at the command took aim, and Colonel Hamilton fired first. His shot missing Mr. Burr, the latter fired and Colonel Hamilton fell. The Vice-President threw down his weapon and attempted to approach the fallen man. But I drew him aside and opening an umbrella before his face led him away. I have nothing more to add except to emphasize: the fir&t shot was fired by Colonel Hamilton. [As he concludes Van Ness takes one step backwards. The lights go down on Van Ness and come up on Pendleton standing at far right. Pendleton is dressed as he had been in Act Two, Scene· Three.] Pendleton. I also have nothing to add to my earlier testimony. The gentlemen of the jury have inspected the letter of General Hamilton's detailing his intentions in respect of Mr. Burr. On all sides the document is admitted to be genuine. For those of you who are acquainted with the character of the slain man-and who is not?-the fact that he so cle~rly stated his intent suffices to refute any testimony that stipulates a contrary action. Nevertheless, I shall again attest it under oath that in all the other particulars he recites Mr. William P. Van Ness recounts accurately the events of the morning of June 11, 1804. Yet in this one capital detail his testimony ought not be accepted: Mr. Burr fired first and fatally wounded General Hamilton. General Hamilton's pistol discharged as he was struck, the result of a spasm totally involuntary. As he lay in the boat bearing him back to the city he warned me to beware the pistol as it was still cocked. He did not know it had discharged. Pendleton takes one step ~qd(ahd the lights dim, then leaves a stage totally dark. John Alvis teaches English at the University of Dallas. 24 SUMMER 1985 �Abraham Lincoln's Biblical Liberalism Larry Arnhart Two Quakeresses in a railway coach were overhead in a conversation: "I think Jefferson will succeed." "Why does thee think so?" "Because Jefferson is a praying man." "And so is Abraham a praying man." "Yes, but the Lord will think Abraham is joking." This in newspapers added the information that Lincoln said it was the best story about himself he had "ever read in the papers." --Carl Sandburg, "Lincoln's Laughter--and His Religion" 1 Abraham Lincoln manifests more clearly than any other American the union of wise statesmanship and Biblical religion. At the deepest level of American history-and of the entire history of the modern Western world-there is a tension between two traditions: Hellenism and Hebraism, Athens and Jerusalem. In early American history, this tension comes into view in the contrast between the Biblical piety of the New England Puritans and the classical rationalism of the Revolutionary Founders. In critical respects, John Winthrop and Jonathan Edwards lived in a world unlike that of Thomas Jefferson and Alexander Hamilton. But Lincoln lived in both worlds, and thus he became the fullest expression of the American mind. 2 We must reflect, however, on the difficulties that Biblical religion creates for statesmanship. Two of the most obvious difficulties are political indifference and political fanaticism. A statesman must fully dedicate himself to his political community as securing the conditions for a good human life, and he must inspire a similar dedication among his fellow-citizens. But he must also recognize the sometimes tragic limits up'on what can be achieved through political action. If he is prudent in his political judgments, he is guided by some conception of the highest ends of human action; but he also knows that when the simply best is unattainable-as it usually isthen he must settle for something less than the best. But Christianity interferes with this kind of statesmanshipeither by making Christians indifferent to political life or by malcing them fanatical in their apocalyptic expectations of politics. 3 Consider the controversy among the early Christians about the interpretation of the Book of Revelations, particularly chapters 20-21. It is written that Christians will rule with Christ for a thousand years. Afterwards there shall be "a new heaven and a new earth"; the "holy city, new Jerusalem" shall descend from heaven. "And God shall wipe away all tears from their eyes; and there shall be no more death, neither sorrow, nor crying, neither shall there be any more pain: for the former things are passed away" (21:4). Many Christians interpreted this as a prophecy of the founding of the City of God on earth, and they therefore set out to fulfill this prophecy by establishing a Christian political order that would save mankind from sin and suffering. But Saint Augustine rejected this as ridiculous. He interpreted the Biblical prophecy as applying only to the ultimate salvation of Christians in heaven (City of God 20.7-9). He argued that throughout the bodily existence of Christians on earth, they must live under the secular authority of the City of Man while submitting their souls to the spiritual authority of the City of God that awaits them after death. The political history of Christianity has been a continual battle between these two points of view-the millenarian idealists versus the Augustinian realists.• The established Church in the Middle Ages endorsed the Augustinian view. But the millenarians were never com- Prepared for presentation at the 1985 Annual Meetings of the American Political Science Association, New Orleans, Louisiana, August 29 - September 1. THE ST. JOHN'S REVIEW 25 �pletely defeated. Neither side in this controversy, however, seemed to promote prudent statesmanship. The official Church seemed to merely sanctify existing institutions no matter how unjust, while the millenarian revolutionaries led mass movements that threatened to destroy all institutions. This conflict between Biblical realism and Biblical idealism has continued-although often through secular perversions of Biblical religion-in both the theory and practice of modern politics. We have been torn between Hobbesian realism and Kantian idealism. We depreciate politics by claiming that it has no claims on the soul and that the only purpose for politics is bodily security and cornlort. Or we transform politics into a salvational activity aimed at abolishing politics itself by abolishing the human conflicts that have made politics necessary. Thus, we either drain politics of any moral aspirations, or we inluse politics with a zealous striving for moral perfection. In neither case do we secure wise statesmanship. But Lincoln's Biblical statesmanship, I shall argue in this essay, escapes these difficulties. He imbues American politics with a Biblical moral fervor. Yet he accepts the natural limits of political judgment and political action. Although he appeals to transcendent standards of moral excellence, he never expects the earthly politics of human beings to conform fully to those standards. Lincoln also shows us that heroic statesmanship can be combined with religious humility. He is surely an ambitious man, a lover of glory. But he sees that political glory is transitory. It is not the highest human good in itself. Although he desires glory, Lincoln is humble insofar as he acts in the service of Divine Providence. Lincoln is not, therefore, a philosophic ruler as described by Plato or a magnanimous, "great-souled" man as described by Aristotle and Cicero. For Lincoln the activity of the statesman is good not because it serves the life of the philosopher and not simply because of the glory won by the statesman himself. Statesmanship is good because it contributes to the moral improvement of human beings as dictated by the Creator. Some recent commentators have interpreted this concern for moral elevation as evidence that Lincoln was a representative of Calvinist communitarianism in opposition to Lockean individualism. But in fact Lincoln saw the Lockean tradition of natural rights as fostering the moral emancipation of human beings in accordance with Biblical teachings. For this reason Lincoln's political thought should be identified as Biblical liberalism. We must not ignore, therefore, the importance of Biblical religion in shaping Lincoln's ultimate motives for political action. But neither must we ignore the obvious fact that Lincoln's religion was not that of an orthodox Christian. 1. Biblical deism Some of those who knew Lincoln insisted that he was a devout Christian who through prayer and Bible-reading sought God's personal intervention in his life. But others 26 claimed that he had adopted the deism of Thomas Prune, and therefore his only religion was the rationalistic, natural religion of the Enlightenment. As is usually the case in judging a man as complex as Lincoln, there is evidence for both points of view. If we rely on Lincoln's own speeches and writings, we see little that could be interpreted as orthodox Christian piety. But we do see invo-, cations of the Almighty Will that stands behind the laws of nature. This is the rational Creator as described in Tom Prune's Age of Reason, which Lincoln read as a young man. Like Paine, Lincoln saw the laws of God revealed in the laws of the universe He had created. But unlike Paine, Lincoln relied on the Bible as the best guide to God. And it is his reverence for the Bible that has convinced many people of his deep Christian beliefs. I think it is best therefore to speak of Lincoln as a "Biblical deist." From this perspective, Lincoln's religion expresses fully the American religious tradition, because it combines the Biblical piety of the New England Puritans with the natural religion of the Revolutionary Founders.' In 1846 it was easy for Lincoln to refute the charge made by his political opponents that he was "an open scoffer at Christianity." But he chose his words carefully so that he could deny being "an open enemy" of Christianity without affirming that he was an orthodox believer. One statement, however, is revealing: "That I am not a member of a Christian Church is true; but I have never denied the truth of the Scriptures" (CW 1:382). 6 Of course to refrain from denying the truth of the Scriptures may fall short of positively affirming their truth. But considering the evidence of Lincoln's careful reading of the Bible, it is clear that he founded his religion on his own study of the Bible rather than on any institutional statements of dogma. According to his wife, "Mr. Lincoln had no faith and no hope in the usual acst'ptation of those words. He never joined a Church; but still, as I believe, he was a religious man by nature .... it was a kind of poetry in his nature, and he was never a technical Christian.' ' 7 William Herndon used this and other testimony to support his claim that Lincoln believed in the natural religion of the deistic tradition. And surely Lincoln would have accepted Prune's simple creed: I believe in one God, and no more; and I hope for happiness beyond this life. I believe in the equality of man; and I believe that religious duties consist in doing justice, loving mercy, and endeavoring to make our fellow-creatures happy. I do not believe in the creed professed ... by any church that I know of. My own mind is my own church. 8 The human mind is the only true church, Paine insisted, because it is the immortal part of man through which he participates in the divine order by studying the rational laws of nature.' Pagan philosophers might have recognized this as the only proper religion for statesmen. In Cicero's Republic, Scipio Aemilianus says that the best SUMMER 1985 �teachers of statesmen are "those who by the investigation of all the things of nature have realized that this world is ruled by mind. " 10 But the cool rationalism of this natural religion is joined in Lincoln's thought to a Biblical spirituality. One example of this is in how Lincoln speaks about the religious foundation of human nature. In his speech to the Temperance Society, Lincoln criticizes the temperance preachers: they do not understand that to expect to persuade drunkards by deno1,1ncing them is "to expect a reversal of human nature, which is God's decree, and never can be reversed" (CW 1:273). That God's moral laws are manifested in the laws of human nature is part of Paine's deistic creed. 11 But compare Lincoln's expression of this idea in his speech against the KansasNebraska Act of 1854: Slavery is founded in the selfishness of man's nature-opposition to it, in his love of justice . ... Repeal the Missouri Compromiserepeal all compromises-repeal the Declaration of Independencerepeal all past history, you still cannot repeal human nature. It still will be the abundance of man's heart, that slavery extension is wrong; and out of the abundance of his heart, his mouth will continue to speak (CW 2:271). This kind of Biblical imagery, which permeates Lincoln's rhetoric, conveys a spiritual fervor in the devotion to righteousness that transcends Paine's rationalism. Despite his doubts about many points of Biblical theology, Lincoln did not worship the God of the philosophers but the God of Abraham and Isaac, a loving God who offers redemption to all men everywhere. This God of absolute righteousness and wisdom cannot be confined by human laws. His rule transcends the rule of any political authority. But for this reason, the worship of this God seems to challenge the moral claims of every political community. 2. Biblical patriotism When Jesus separated religion and politics as two realms, Rousseau complained, he "brought about the end of the unity of the State, and caused the internal divisions that have never ceased to stir up Christian peoples" (Social Contract book 4, chapter 8) .12 Rousseau agreed with Hobbes, therefore, that Christianity subverted politics when it gave the clergy the power to appeal to standards beyond the laws of the state. Men can be neither good human beings nor good citizens when they are torn between their religious duties and their political duties. "Everything that destroys social unity is worthless. All institutions that put man in contradiction with himself are worthless.'' Rousseau's response to this danger is to have the sovereign establish a ''civil religion'' consisting of those dogmas essential to social duties. Ever since the publication in 1967 of Robert Bellah's influential essay on "Civil Religion in America, " 13 many scholars have regarded Lincoln as one of the principal contributors to an American civil religion that conforms to Rousseau's designs. But while the idea of a civil THE ST. JOHN'S REVIEW religion is a pagan conception, Lincoln's "political religion," as he called it in his Young Men's Lyceum Speech, is grounded in Biblical religion; and therefore Lincoln and Rousseau are not really talking about the same thing. The public dogmas of Rousseau's civil religion ate so minimal that most people would have no trouble accepting them. The existence of a powerful, intelligent, beneficent, foresighted, and providential divinity; the afterlife; the happiness of the just; the punishment of the wicked; the sanctity of the social contract and the laws. These are the positive dogmas. As for the negative ones, I limit them to a single one: intolerance. It belongs to the cults we have excluded. Rousseau's civil religion would tolerate any religion that tolerates other religions so long as it does not contradict the dogmas of the civil religion itself. The Declaration of Independence seems to assume the same religious dogmas that RQusseau prescribes. There are four references to God in that document, two at the beginning and two at the end. First, there is the appeal to "the Laws of Nature and of Nature's God," then it is said that God created men equal and endowed them with rights. The Declaration concludes by "appealing to the Supreme Judge of the world fQr the rectitude of our intentions,'' and ''with a firm reliance on the protection of Divine Providence." This looks like Rousseau's God" a powerful, intelligent, beneficent, foresighted, and providential divinity" who judges human conduct and sanctions the principles of the American regime. Moreover, it was common for the American Founders to speak of the need for a civil religion. George Washington, in his Farewell Address, warned: let us with caution indulge the supposition that morality, can be maintained without religion. Whatever may be conceded to the influence of refined education on minds of peculiar structure, reason and experience both forbid us to expect that national morality can prevail in exclusion of religious principle. a Mason Weems's popular biography used the life of Washington himself to inculcate the union of religion and morality that Washington advocated. Lincoln was deeply influenced by Weems's book. And in his Lyceum Speech, he promoted "reverence for the laws" in language that echoed Weems's biography." But Lincoln's "political religion" differs from the civil religion of Washington and Weems. 16 While a civil religion makes religion merely an instrument for the support of a political order, Lincoln's Biblical religion presents the political order as ultimately subordinate to God's order. Lincoln's Biblical imagery of political rebirth-" a new birth of freedom" -suggests that political life must be reformed if it is to even approximate God's standards. If one compares the Declaration of Independence and the Gettysburg Address, one sees that Lincoln treats the sacred principle of human equality not as the secure foun- 27 �dation of the nation but as the high goal towards which the nation must strive .17 While Uncoln' s political religion promotes the patriotic loyalty of citizens to a regime dedicated to eternal principles of justice, it does not merely sanctify existing political institutions. Rather, it demands that citizens acknowledge and then rectify as best they can the moral imperfections in their regime. The differences between civil religion and Biblical religion can be illustrated by comparing the political religion of Shakespeare's Henry V and that of Lincoln. Henry leads his soldiers into what is probably an unjust war of aggression against France. To justify the unquestioning obedience of his soldiers, Henry declares, "Every subject's duty is the king' s; but every subject's soul is his own" (Henry V, Arden edition, 4.1.182-184). Henry argues that although men do have souls destined for an afterlife in which they will be judged by God, the needs of the soul never dictate any challenge to the authority of a sovereign ruler. God commands obedience to rulers, but he does not provide subjects any divine or natural law for judging their rulers' commands as just or unjust. Thus, Henry's civil religion puts no limits on the power of a Machiavellian prince. 18 But Uncoln's political religion appeals to "the Laws of Nature and of Nature's God" as providing standards for judging the actions of both rulers and ruled. When Lincoln speaks of Americans as God's ''almost chosen people,'' he warns them that this carries with it an almost unbearable responsibility to fulfill God's law for mankind (CW 4 :236). "We are no tyrant," Henry says of himself, "but a Christian king" (1.2.241). Yet does not Lincoln conform more closely to what we should expect of a Christian statesman?19 Lincoln's political religion eliminates any inclination to political indifference or complacency. Patriotism becomes a religious attachment to the laws. But citizens are not permitted to rest on the assumption that the laws are always just. Rather they must continually strive to bring the laws into harmony with God's justice. The political life of the Christian citizen is therefore one of restless activity. Thus, Lincoln channels into politics some of boundless moral energy generated by Biblical religion. The critics of Christianity say that it makes people apathetic about the things of earthly life. But Uncoln thinks the Biblical vision of life should inspire human beings to transform the world. 3. Biblical activism In The Age of Reason Paine scorns the Bible as an obstacle to human enlightenment and scientific progress. "We can know God only through His works." And "the principles of science lead to this knowledge; for the Creator of man is the Creator of science, and it is through that medium that man can see God, as it were, face to face." So instead of studying the Bible, man should study "the principles of the creation, as everything of agriculture, of science and of the mechanical arts.'' 20 But Lincoln believes the Bible endorses this pursuit of scientific and technological progress. For he finds in the Bible an affirmation 28 of man's essence as the perfectible being who through discoveries and inventions becomes the master of nature. Lincoln's thinking on this point is clearest in his First Lecture on Discoveries and Inventions, which was delivered on April6, 1858, before the Young Men's Association of Bloomington. 21 One of the many remarkable features of this lecture is its impressive display of Biblical knowledge: it contains thirty-four separate references to the Bible. And intertwined with Biblical exegesis is an almost scholarly survey of the history of technological progress. (If Uncoln had not had better things to do, he could have become a fine college professor.) Uncoln begins: All creation is a mine, and every man, a miner. The whole earth, and all within it, upon it, and round about it, including himself, in his physical, moral, and intellectual nature, and his susceptibilities, are the infinitely various "leads" from which, man, from the first, was to dig out his destiny. In the beginning, the mine was unopened, and the miner stood naked, and knowledgeless, upon it. Fishes, birds, beasts, and creeping things, are not miners, but feeders and lodgers, merely . ... Man is not the only animal who labors; but he is the only one who improves his workmanship. This improvement, he effects by Discoveries, and Inventions. His first important discovery was the fact that he was naked; and his first invention was the fig~leaf apron ... (CW 2:437). He then devotes his entire lecture to a careful account of how technological advances have contributed to the evolution of civilization. One good example of how he reads the Bible comes when he comments on the importance of iron tools: "How could the 'gopher wood' for the Ark, have been gotten out without an axe? It seems to me an axe, or a miracle, was indispensable" (CW 2:438). He concludes his lecture with some remarks on steam-power. The advantageous use of Steaih-power is, unquestionably, a modern discovery-. And yet, as much as two thousand years ago the power of steam was not only observed, but an ingenious toy was actually made and put in motion by it, at Alexandria in Egypt. What appears strange is, that neither the inventor of the toy, nor any one else, for so long afterwards, should perceive that steam would move useful machinery as well as a toy. Because of his Biblical understanding of the human condition-every man a miner-Lincoln finds it strange that people in the ancient world did not use their practical knowledge of nature's laws to gain power for the performance of useful work. The ancients scorned manual labor and technology as ignoble, as distractions from the truly human pursuit of understanding as an end in itself rather than as a means to some practical end. But Christians-particularly those in the medieval monasteries-saw labor and craftsmanship as service to the Master Craftsman of the cosmos. 22 Here we see another way in which Lincoln's Biblical statesmanship departs from the ancient conception of statesmanship. In the ancient world, the political realm was restricted to those few people who were free from SUMMER 1985 �the physical necessities of labor. But like John Locke Lincoln believes that since every human being is in his essence a laborer, each person has an equal right-if not an equal duty-to labor. The ann of government, therefore, is to secure and promote the laboring activity of men as they work upon the world for improvement in their conditions. The ancient denigration of labor reflects an aristocratic way of life. Lincoin' s elevation of labor reflects his Biblical liberalism. 4. Biblical liberalism Since the Bible-or at least the New Testament-does not prescribe a code of laws for secular life, it leaves citizens and statesmen free to exercise practical judgment in deciding what should be done in particular cases. But the Bible does prescribe a broad moral framework within which political judgment must be exercised. Moreover, insofar as this Biblical teaching conforms to the dictates of nature, as suggested by Saint Paul (Romans 1:18-22), it does not conflict with-indeed it reinforces-man's natural sense of right and wrong. This leads us to two questions. What are the general principles of Lincoln's Biblical statesmanship? And how does he apply these principles to concrete cases? In this section, we shall consider the first question. Lincoln's fundamental principles come into view most clearly in his arguments against slavery. Often his arguments are legal and historical. Thus, he claims that to up· hold slavery as just contradicts the principles of the American Founding as expressed in the Declaration of Independence, in the Constitution, and in other records of the views of the Founding Fathers. But he also maintains that these legal norms are grounded in standards of reason and nature. In understanding why slavery is unjust, we grasp something about the universal grounds of all morality. "If slavery is not wrong, nothing is wrong." (CW 7:281) When Lincoln appeals to universal standards, he employs three kinds of arguments-Euclidean, Biblical, and intuitionist. That is to say, he tries to show that any moral defense of slavery either contradicts itself or contradicts the Bible or contradicts our natural sense of right and wrong. Lincoln moves easily from one line of reasoning to another as though they are perfectly compatible. Many commentators, however, find his mixture of rhetorical appeals incongruous. For example, in the Gettysburg Address, Lincoln's reference to equality as a ''proposition''suggesting the demonstrative rationality of Euclidean geometry-seems to undercut the passionate tone of the speech as conveyed in the Biblical imagery of baptism, sacrificial death, and rebirth to eternal life. But I believe that a careful examination of Lincoln's reasoning will show that his three modes of argument are similar in their fundamental logic. Lincoln compares the Declaration of Independence to Euclid's Elements. Just as Euclid begins with definitions and axioms that are self-evident and then proves his propositions as logical implications of these starting- THE ST. JOHN'S REVIEW points, so Jefferson begins with the self-evident truth of equality of rights and then deduces from these the requirements of just government. "The principles of Jefferson are the definitions and axioms of free society" (CW 3:375). It is essential for Americans to accept these principles because without them political argument is impossible. Political persuasion is like geometry or any other form of reasoning in that it depends upon agreement on first principles. If everything is doubted, then nothing can be proven. If Americans disagree about the fundamental axioms of the Declaration of Independence, then their disagreements will be settled not by persuasion but by force. But how can we respond to those who deny the ·first principles? In a certain sense, we cannot prove the truth of first principles because they are themselves the presuppositions of any proof. If we try to prove first principles, we end up begging the question by implicitly assuming them in the very process of proving them. This explains Lincoln's frustration when he accuses Stephen Douglas of "a bold denial of the history of the country." To deny these things is to deny our national axioms, or dogmas, at least; and it puts an end to all argument. If a man will stand up and assert, and repeat, and re-assert, that two and two do not make four, I know nothing in the power of argument that can stop him. I think I can answer the Judge so long as he sticks to the premises; but when he flies from them, I can not work an argument into the consistency of a maternal gag, and actually close his mouth with it (CW2:282-83). The nice play on words at the end of this passage-"! can not work an argument into the consistency of a maternal gag" -suggests a way out of our impasse. If we can· not strictly prove the truth of our premises to those who deny them, we can at least show that those who deny them contradict themselves. Of course despite the importance of rational consistency, it lacks "the consistency of a maternal gag" that would enable us to stop the babbling of those who won't listen to reason. Even if we cannot make a demonstrative argument for the truth of first principles, we can make a dialectical argument. 23 To do this, our opponent must say something, he must assert something, and then we must show that his assertion contradicts his denial of our first principles. Moreover, our ultimate aim should be to show that no rational human being can deny our first principles without contradicting himself. Plato's Socratic dialogues provide many examples of this kind of argumentation. Lincoln employs this technique in arguing for the equality of rights as an axiomatic truth. In a note probably written when he was debating Douglas, Lincoln reasons as follows: If A. can prove, however conclusively, that he may, of right, enslave B.-why may not B. snatch the same argument, and prove equally, that he may enslave A?You say A. is white, and B. is black. It is color, then; the lighter, having the right to enslave the darker? Take care. By this rule, you are to be slave to the first man you meet, with a fairer skin than your own. 29 �You do not mean color exactly?-You mean the whites are intellectually the superiors of the blacks, and, therefore have the right to enslave them? Take care again. By this rule, you are to be slave to the first man you meet, with an intellect superior to your own. But, say you, it is a question of interest; and, if you can make it your interest, you have the right to enslave another. Very well. And if he can make it his interest, he has the right to enslave you (CW 2:222-23}. No rational man would argue for his own enslavement. But any man who argues for the enslavement of others must appeal to some human difference that could be the basis for his own enslavement. Therefore, no rational man can endorse slavery without contradicting himself. Human beings differ in an infinite number of ways-color, intellect, interests, and so on-but each person believes that he has a right to liberty simply by virtue of his humanity. But if I affirm that I as a human being have a right to liberty, then to be consistent I must also affirm that other human beings have a similar right. In Lincoln's words: "As I would not be a slave, so I would not be a master. This expresses my idea of democracy" (CW 2:532). Geometry teaches us the importance of consistency; and by adhering to an equally rigorous consistency in our moral reasoning, we can grasp the first principles of justice. In the letter in which Lincoln comments on Jefferson's Euclidean logic, he writes: This is a world of compensation; and he who would be no slave, must consent to have no slave. Those who deny freedom to others, deserve it not for themselves; and, under a just God, can not long retain it (CW 3:376). Notice how easily Lincoln moves from the argument of logical consistency to the invocation of divine justice. This. "world of compensations" was created by a God who is free of contradictions and who punishes those whose souls are torn by contradictions. Lincoln relies primarily on three passages from the Bible to support his Biblical argument against slavery. From the opening chapters of Genesis, he cites two verses. The first is from the account of creation: "God created man in his own image " (Genesis 1:27). The second is from God's condemnation of Adam after his disobedience: "In the sweat of thy face shalt thou eat bread, till thou return unto the ground; for out of it wast thou taken: for dust thou art, and unto dust shalt thou return" (Genesis 3:19). And finally Lincoln quotes the statement of the Golden Rule in the Sermon on the Mount: ''Therefore all things whatsoever ye would that men should do to you, do ye even so to them: for this is the law and the prophets" (Matthew 7:12). In his speech at Lewistown, Illinois, in 1858, Lincoln quotes from the Declaration of Independence and then explains: "In their enlightened belief, nothing stamped with the Divine image and likeness was sent into the world to be trodden on and degraded, and imbruted by its fellows" (CW 2:546). In 1864 Lincoln wrote the following response to a delegation of Baptists: 30 I can only thank you for ... adding to the effective and almost unanimous support which the Christian communities are so zealously giving to the country, and to liberty. Indeed it is difficult to conceive how it could be otherwise with any one professing Christianity, or even having ordinary perceptions of right and wrong. To read in the Bible, as the word of God himself, that "In the sweat of thy face shalt thou eat bread,'' and to preach therefrom that, ''In the sweat of other mans' faces shalt thou eat bread,'' to my mind can scarcely be reconciled with honest sincerity. When brought to my final reckoning, may I have to answer for robbing no man of his goods; yet more tolerable even this, than for robbing one of himself, and all that was his. When, a year or two ago, those professedly holy men of the South, met in the semblance of prayer and devotion, and, in the name of Him who said ''As ye would all men should do unto you, doye even so unto them" appealed to the Christian world to aid them in doing to a whole race of men, as they would have no man do unto themselves, to my thinking, they contemned and insulted God and His church far more than did Satan when he tempted the Saviour with the Kingdoms of the earth. The devil's attempt was no more false, and far less hypocritical. But let me forbear, remembering it is also written "Judge not, lest ye be judged" (CW 7:368). The Golden Rule seems to indicate the fundamental logic implicit in the other Biblical teachings, which is to be expected considering the emphasis that Jesus puts upon it-"for this is the law and the prophets." The Golden Rule affirms the simple fairness of reciprocitytreat others as you would have them treat you. Any reasonable person "having ordinary perceptions of right and wrong" would probably accept this rule. In fact, it may be one of those few moral principles that would be endorsed in some manner by every religion and moral code. But the vagueness of the rule invites criticism. For instance, George Bernard Shaw insisted, "Do not do unto others as you would that they should do unto you. Their tastes may not be the same. " 24 But considered in conjunction with the other Biblical teachings cited by Lincoln, the Golden Rule can be elaborated in such a way that its inherent persuasiveness becomes clear. Human beings are needy beings. And the satisfaction of their needs requires toil-no sweat, no bread. Therefore, every human being-or at least every rational adult-works for the provisions necessary for his life. He thereby assumes that it is good for him to have the freedom to provide for his needs and that it would be bad for someone else to deprive him of this freedom. But on what grounds could he justify this claim to freedom? What is there about him that would entitle him to such freedom? He cannot appeal to any of the various characteristics with respect to which human beings differstrength, color, intelligence, and so on-because then he would have to give up his freedom to those superior to him in whatever characteristic he has specified. He must therefore appeal to the special status that he has simply as a human being. As the one being "created in the image of God," man has been set apart from the rest of creation. He is the only being capable of becoming a rational moral agent, but he cannot fulfill that capacity unless he is free. It is reasonable, therefore, for a man to claim that as a human being he has a right to freedom, but only if he understands that consistency dictates that he recognize the same right for all other human beings. To avoid SUMMER 1985 �contradicting himself, every man must respect the mutuality and equality of the Golden Rule. "In giving freedom to the slave," Lincoln explains, "we assure freedom to the free" (CW 5:537). That all men are created equal is "self-evident," therefore, in the sense that all men are equally men. Moreover, the rights with which they are endowed can be regarded as the necessary conditions for human action. To deny human beings their natural rights is to assert that human beings should be treated as if they were not human, which is absurd. Thus, the injustice of slavery is so clear that anyone with ''ordinary perceptions of right and wrong'' can see it. This is Lincoln's intuitionist argument, which reinforces the Biblical and Euclidean arguments. He notes that even in the south slave-traders are despised: it is considered improper for a gentleman to even shake hands with them (CW 2:264-65). There is a natural sense of justice that condemns the enslavement of human beings. But while insisting that opposition to slavery is grounded in man's natural moral sense, Lincoln concedes that the promotion of slavery is grounded in another powerful element of human nature-self-interest (CW 2:271). It is in a man's interest to secure his own freedom while denying freedom to others. But in doing so, he contradicts himself. And to hide this contradiction from others-and perhaps even from himself-he pretends that those human beings he enslaves are not truly human. To show the falsity of this claim, Lincoln must appeal to the facts of experience-to our recognition that human beings differ in degree but not in kind and thus that they are members of the same species25 (CW 2:264-66). Slavery arises from unjustified human pride-the pride of the master that he is superior in his human essence to the slave. Lincoln ridicules the absurdity of such pride. Speaking of Douglas, Lincoln observes: "I suppose the institution of slavery really looks small to him. He is so put up by nature that a lash upon his back would hurt him, but a lash upon anyone else's back does not hurt him" (CW 3:410). Yet even as he condemns the pride of those who defend slavery, Lincoln must avoid the pride of self-righteous moralism. "Judge not that ye be not judged." To see the injustice of slave labor is to see the justice of free labor. Lincoln's opposition to slavery was part of his more general aim to support a system of free labor that permitted the laborer to improve his condition. In 1861 Lincoln described the Civil War as "a People's contest" devoted to preserving popular government "whose leading object is, to elevate the condition of men-lo lift artificial weights from all shoulders-to clear the paths of laudable pursuit for all-to afford all, an unfettered start, and a fair chance, in the race of life" (CW 4:438). Thus, Lincoln interprets equality of rights as the equality of opportunity to get ahead in life. If that's what we mean by justice, then we need not fear any conflict between justice and self-interest, because it's in the interest of all to have a chance to improve their conditions and THE ST. JOHN'S REVIEW to better themselves. By interpreting equality as the opportunity to get ahead, Lincoln turns an abstract principle into a practical goal to which common people will want to devote themselves. The chance to get ahead in life-that's what we call the American Dream. We could say, then, that Lincoln turns the Civil War into a war for the American Dream. 26 Abolishing slavery is not sufficient, however, to insure an equal right for all men to improve their conditions. To fulfill his Biblical vision of all men as laborers, Lincoln insists there must be no distinction between laboring people and educated people. And here again we see how Lincoln's Biblical liberalism departs from the aristocratic assumptions of ancient statesmanship and philosophy. "The old general rule was that educated people did not perform manual labor. They managed to eat their bread, leaving the toil of producing it to the uneducated." But this is unacceptable. Free Labor argues that, as the Author of man makes every individual with one head and one pair of hands, it was probably intended that heads and hands should cooperate as friends; and that that particular head, should direct and control that particular pair of hands. As each man has one mouth to be fed, and one pair of hands to furnish food, it was probably intended that that particular pair of hands should feed that particular mouth-that each head is the natural guardian, director, and protector of the hands and mouth inseparably connected to it; and that being so, every head should be cultivated, and improved, by whatever will add to its capacity for performing its charge. In one word Free Labor insists on universal education. Only by providing universal education for laborers can we create a community that "will be alike independent of crowned-kings, money-kings, and land-kings" (CW 3:479-81). It should be clear by now that those recent commentators who regard Lincoln as an opponent of the Lockean tradition are mistaken. 27 For Lincoln there was no necessary conflict between the Lockean tradition of individual rights and the Calvinist tradition of communal virtue. His Biblical liberalism elevated the right of each man to get ahead in life into an inspired moral goal that could unite Americans into one community. Of course the Lockean pursuit of property can become debasing. In a speech in 1860, Lincoln explains what he means by a "free society" in which all have a free chance in the "race of life." "I take it that it is bestfor all to leave each man free to acquire property as fast as he can ... we wish to allow the humblest man an equal chance to get rich with everybody else." He goes on to describe how any poor man's son can start as a hired laborer, work for himself later, and then finally become an employer of others-''and so it may go on and on in one ceaseless round so long as man exists on the face of the earth!" (CW 4:24-25). Is this the eternal promise of free government-every man restlessly trying to get rich, "on and on in one ceaseless round"? We might be reminded of Alexis de Tocqueville's melancholic reflections on the joyless life of Americans in their insatiable pursuit of material comforts. 31 �But here is where we must stress the Biblical foundation of Lincoln's liberalism. The only justification for liberal democracy is that it allows the many to share in the highest things. In practice, this is hard to achieve because it is so difficult to elevate the desires of the many. If liberal democracy is to be defensible as a high-minded way of hfe, 1t must somehow be possible to ennoble common people so that the pursuit of equality becomes a pursuit of excellence. Doesn't the Bible-both in the style of its poetry and in the substance of its teachings-contribute to that goal by combining perfect plainness with perfect nobleness and thus inspiring common people to moral excellence? Lincoln surely thought so. Lincoln's use of Biblical rhetoric to elevate liberalism is clearest in his handling of the Civil War. John Stuart Mill provides some testimony as to his success. Prior to the Civil War, Mill worried about the degrading effects of Amencan democracy. For example, in the original1848 edition of his Principles of Political Economy, he said that in America, "the life of the whole of one sex is devoted to dollar-hunting, and of the other to breeding dollarhunters." But when he revised this passage in the sixth edition of 1865, he wrote that economic growth "is not necessarily destructive of the higher aspirations and the heroic virtues; as America, in her great civil war, has proved to the world, both by her conduct as a people and by numerous splendid individual examples. "28 There is a danger, however, in turning politics into an expression of heroic spiritedness. The moral passionsparticularly those generated by Biblical religion-can excite a general frenzy that impedes good judgment. But Lincoln in the Civil War demonstrated that Biblical statesmanship could combine righteous fervor with Machiavellian prudence. 5. Biblical prudence In The Prince Machiavelli explains that "prudence consists in knowing how to recognize the qualities of inconveniences and to pick the less bad as good." 29 It might seem shocking for a Biblical statesman to exercise such prudence, especially when the "inconveniencen is slavery. The abolitionist preachers warned that any moderation in dealing with slavery was an accommodation with Satan. But the Bible itself is more cautious. Although he knows that all men are free in Christ, the Christian may have to compromise with the institution of slavery. (See Romans 13:1-8, Corinthians 7:20-24, and Ephesians 6:5-9.) Although the emancipation of all would be best, the Bible counsels patience. The Christian must not expect moral perfection in the earthly politics of the City of Man. But neither must he hesitate to promote moral reform whenever it is practicable. This explains Lincoln's handling of slavery, as indicated in his Peoria speech in 1854 on Douglas's Kansas-Nebraska Act: Much as I hate slavery, I would consent to the extension of it rather than see the Union dissolved, just as I would consent to any GREAT evil, to avoid a GREATER one. But when I go to Union saving, I must 32 believe, at least, that the means I employ has some adaptation to the end. To my mind, Nebraska has no such adaptation (CW 2:270). It is reasonable to choose the lesser of evils because the end does justify the means-but only when the end is good and the means properly adapted to the end. What are the practic~l obstacles to abolishing slavery? In h1s Peona speech, Lmcoln speaks of the racial bigotry of whites. The "feelings" of "the great mass of white people" would not permit the emancipation of the slaves on the basis of social and political equality. "Whether this feeling accords with justice and sound judgment, is not the sole question, if indeed, it is any part of it. A universal feeling, whether well or ill-founded, can not be safely disregarded." Furthermore, Lincoln does not assume that whites in the North are morally superior to those in the South. "They are just what we would be in their situation." "I surely will not blame them for not doing what I should not know how to do myself" (CW2:255-56). But while acknowledging those "feelings" of the whites that support slavery, Lincoln also speaks in this same speech bf the natural "feeling" that slavery is wrong. The problem, then, with the issue of slavery is that it creates a conflict between the selfish feelings of people and their just feelings (CW 2:264-65, 2:271, 2:281-82). According to Lincoln's Biblical understanding of human nature, human beings combine good and evil inclinations. So even as the statesman fosters human goodness, he must respect the limits set by the evil in human beings. Of course, this is even more emphatically true for the democratic statesman whose pursuit of moral ends is constrained by the need for popular consent. Thomas Aquinas acknowledges such constraints when he warns that human law is laid down for the multitude of human beings, thf majority of whom are not perfect in virtue. Therefore human law doe~ not prohibit ~ the vices from which virtuous men abstain, but onl) the more senous ones from which it is possible for the majority o: the multitude to abstain (Summa Theologiae 1-2, 94, 2). Therefore, "human law cannot punish or prohibit all evil, for were it to try to do away with all evils it would alsc do away with many good things" (Summa Theologiae 1-2, 91, 4). Furthermore, Thomas recognizes a tension be· tween legal duty and natural justice. While claiming thai an unjust law is not truly a law, he cites Romans 13:1 tc support his belief that "even a wicked law, insofar as il keeps something of the appearance [similitudo] of law, or account of the order of the one in power who made th< law, is derived from the eternal law.'' Even a wicked Ia;< may somehow promote the common good (Summa The ologiae 1-2, 92, 1, ad 4; 93, 3, ad 2). Thomas even advise• that private individuals should not depose a tyrant if th< resultant disorder would be a greater evil than the tyrant'' unjust rule (On Kingship, I, 6). Lincoln made a similar distinction between legal dutie1 and moral judgments. This was evident in his handlin~ of the Emancipation Proclamation. 30 In his letter to A. G SUMMER 198~ �Hodges in 1864, Lincoln wrote: I am naturally anti-slavery. If slavery is not wrong, nothing is wrong. I cannot remember when I did not so think, and feel. And yet I have never understood that the Presidency conferred upon me an unrestricted right to act officially upon this judgment and feeling (CW7:281). But Lincoln goes on in this letter to justify the Emancipation Proclamation as a military necessity within his power as Commander-in-Chief in time of war. The Proclamation itself, as issued on January 1, 1863, is carefully written in accordance with Lincoln's prudential restraint. Consider, for example, the concluding paragraph: And upon this act sincerely believed to be an act of justice, warranted by the Constitution, upon military necessity, I invoke the considerate judgment of mankind, and the gracious favor of Almighty God (CW 630). Lincoln never doubted the justice of emancipating slaves. But he refused to act until constitutional legality and practical necessity coincided with justice. Perhaps the most remarkable martifestation of Biblical prudence as applied to the question of emancipation is Lincoln's meeting with a delegation of Chicago Christians on September 13, 1862. Since this meeting has not received the attention that it deserves, I will quote extensively from the newspaper account found in Basler's Collected Works (5:419-25). 31 Lincoln begins by responding to their memorial recommending emancipation. The subject presented in the memorial is one upon which I have thought much for weeks past, and I may even say for months. I am approached with the most opposite opinions and advice, and that by religious men, who are equally certain that they represent the Divine will. I am sure that either the one or the other class is mistaken in that belief, and perhaps in some respects both. I hope it will not be irreverent for me to say that if it is probable that God would reveal his will to others, on a point so connected with my duty, it might be supposed he would reveal it directly to me; for, unless I am more deceived in myself than I often am, it is my earnest desire to know the will of Providence in this matter. And if I can learn what it is I will do it! These are not, however, the days of miracles, and I suppose it will be granted that I am not to expect a direct revelation. I must study the plain physical facts of the case, ascertain what is possible and learn what appears to be wise and right. The subject is difficult, and good men do not agree (CW 5:419-20). He explains that he does not raise moral objections to emancipation, such as the danger of bloody slave insurrections in the South. Nor is he any longer bothered by legal or constitutional objections, because the measure can be regarded as an exercise of his power as Commanderin-Chief. Consequently he must "view the matter as a practical war measure, to be decided upon according to the advantages or disadvantages it may offer to the suppression of the rebellion" (CW 5:421). And from this point of view, Lincoln raises about a half dozen practical objections to emancipation. I will mention only two. Lincoln worries that a proclamation of emancipation from him would be absurdly ineffective. "Would my word free THE ST. JOHN'S REVIEW the slaves, when I cannot even enforce the Constitution in the rebel states?" (CW 5:420). He also worries that after a proclamation, the fifty thousand Union soldiers from the Border Slave States would go over to the rebels. "I do not think they all would--not so many indeed as a year ago, or as six months ago--not so many today as yester" day. Every day increases their Union feeling. They are also getting their pride enlisted, and want to beat the rebels" (CW 5:423). The Christian delegates respond. We observed (taking up the President's ideas in order) that good men indeed differed in their opinions on this subject; nevertheless the truth was somewhere, and it was a matter of solemn moment for him to ascertain it; that we had not been so wanting in respect, alike to ourselves and to him, as to come a thousand miles to bring merely our opinion to be set over against the opinion of other parties; that the memorial contained facts, principles, and arguments which appealed to the intelligence of the President and to his faith in Divine Providence; that he could not deny that the Bible denounced oppression as one of the highest of crimes, and threatened Divine judgments against nations that practice it; ... so that there is the amplest reason for expecting to avert Divine judgments by putting away the sin, and for hoping to remedy the national troubles by striking at their cause. We observed, further, that we freely admitted the probability, and even the certainty, that God would reveal the path of duty to the President as well as to others, provided he sought to learn it in the appointed way; but, as according to his own remark, Providence wrought by means and not miraculously, it might be, God would use the suggestions and arguments of other minds to secure that result. We felt the deepest personal interest in the matter as of national concern, and would fain aid the thoughts of our President by communicating the convictions of the Christian community from which we came, with the ground upon which they were based (CW 5:421-22). They then answer each of Lincoln's practical objections to a proclamation of emancipation. So, for example, they argue that a proclamation would be effective, because as the Union armies march southward they could enforce both the Constitution and the proclamation. Moreover, the proclamation would have the practical effect of inspiring the people in the North to fight for a high principle. It would also stir greater support for the North in Europe. As to the possibility of the desertion of Border State soldiers, that danger decreases every day, as even Lincoln concedes. And even if some of these soldiers are lost, the increased recruitment in other states prompted by the proclamation would probably more than compensate for the loss. After an hour of u earnest and frank discussion," Lincoln concludes: Do not misunderstand me, because I have mentioned these objections. They indicate the difficulties that have thus far prevented my action in some such way as you desire. I have not decided against a proclamation of liberty to the slaves, but hold the matter under advisement. And I can assure you that the subject is on my mind, by day and night, more than any other. Whatever shall appear to be God's will I will do. I trust that in the freedom with which I have canvassed your views, I have not in any respect injured your feelings (CW 5:425). 33 �Lincoln and the Christians agree on the existence of Divine Providence, which determines the cosmic order in accordance with which human affairs must be judged. They also agree that Providence favors the abolition of slavery. But as to when and how that should be done, the will of Providence has not been clearly expressed. Lincoln has little patience with Christians who offer him contradictory opinions as coming directly from God. God is not contradictory. And if God wanted to reveal His will with respect to the Civil War, He surely would speak directly to the President. So Lincoln is left to decide the issue as best he can based on his own judgment. But these Christians from Chicago-a city famous for political craftiness-do not claim any direct revelation from God. Although God no longer works through miracles, He might "use the suggestions and arguments of other minds" to help the President determine His will. To believe in Divine Providence is to believe that despite differing opinions about great moral issues in politics, the truth ts somewhere. To find that truth God has given us minds. And it is our duty to study the "facts, principles, and arguments" that will allow us to determine what is right. Therefore, no Christian is entitled to speak about God's will concerning the proclamation if he has not shrewdly calculated the political gains and losses, because God's will may depend upon practical contingencies-such as the popular reaction in the Border States. Lincoln and these Christians from Chicago are able to engage in a tough-minded discussion of a practical political problem because of the intellectual foundation provided by the American Biblical tradition. They can agree on certain abstract principles of justice. But they also agree on the need for a practical assessment of probabilities in deciding when and how to put those principles into practice. Most importantly, their belief in Providence gives them confidence in the rational order of things and in the capacity of rational men to live in accordance with that order. And yet because of the limitation of the human mind, the will of Providence must always remain mysterious in its unfathomable transcendence of human things. So even as men rationally search for God's will-believing there is a truth somewhere to be discovered-they must forever remain humble in the knowledge of their own ignorance. Christians need such humility to escape the tempting presumption that their human purposes coincide perfectly with God's. It is especially dangerous for a statesman to believe-or to persuade others to believe-that he is God's agent for executing the final judgment and redemption of mankind. Is there not evidence that Lincoln yielded to this temptation by transforming the Civil War into a holy war? Did he not speak with the language of a millenarian prophet who saw the New Jerusalem at the end of history? 6. Biblical history Mine eyes have seen the glory of the coming of the Lord:/ He is tram- 34 piing out the vintage where the grapes of wrath are stored;/ He hatl loosed the fateful lightning of His terrible swift sword:/ His truth i: marching on. I have seen Him in the watch-fires of a hundred circling camps;/ The~ have builded him an altar in the evening dews and damps;J I cat read His righteous sentence by the dim and flaring lamps;/ His da~ is marching on. " I have read a fiery gospel writ in burnished rows of steel: f ''As y1 deal with my contemners, so with you my grace shall deal;/ Let tht Hero, born of woman, crush the serpent with his heel,/ Since Goc is marching on.'' He has sounded forth the trumpet that shall never call retreat;/ Ht is sifting out the hearts of men before His judgment seat:/ Oh, bE swift, my soul, to answer Him! be jubilant, my feet!/ Our God h marching on. In the beauty of the lilies Christ was born across the sea,/ With a glol) in his bosom that transfigures you and me:/ As he died to make mer holy, let us die to make men free,/ While God is marching on.n It is reported that Lincoln wept when he first heard Julia Ward Howe's "Battle Hymn of the Republic," and he told the singer he had never heard a better song. 33 Is there anyone among us who is not excited by this song? Isn't the appeal of this song a disturbing sign of how Biblical religion fosters political fanaticism? After all, this song portrays the Civil War as the Apocalypse-the Last Battle in which God destroys the ruling powers of evil and establishes the messianic rule of the righteous. Moreover, some of Lincoln's speeches during the war seem to indicate that he accepted this millenarian view of history. Consequently, many commentators on Lincoln's political thought-including many who are sympathetic to Lincoln-agree with Edmund Wilson's conclusion that Lincoln" came to see the conflict in a light more and more religious, in more and more Scriptural terms, under a more apocalyptic vision.'' And Wilson observes, "This conception of history as a power which somehow takes possession of men and works out its intentions through them is most familiar today as one of the characteristic features of Marxism, in which 'history' has become the object of a semi-religious cult and has ended by supplying the stimulus for a fanaticism almost Mohammedan." 34 But this image of Lincoln as spiritually intoxicated by what he believes to be his messianic role in history clashes with the prudent sobriety that we have seen in his discussion with the Christians from Chicago. Indeed, there is plenty of evidence to suggest that Wilson is wrong in his popular characterization of Lincoln as a man possessed by his own millenarian view of history. For one thing, Wilson has overlooked the connection between Lincoln's religion and his humor. Consider the story about Jefferson (Davis) and Abraham (Lincoln), which appears at the beginning of this paper as an epigram. If God suspects that Abraham is joking, is it because God knows that Abraham sees the absurdity of men on opposite sides in a war praying to the same God SUMMER 1985 �for victory? Wouldn't this make Abraham more truly pious than Jefferson? For the truly pious man knows that God cannot contradict Himself. He knows too that God has His own purposes that may differ from those of men. So in seeking God's will, the truly pious man must detach himself from his own passionate commitments so that he can look down upon the passing scene of practical affairs. Similarly, humor allows a man to detach himself from his situation and thus to gain some relief from anxiety and care. Lincoln once told a funny story to his Cabinet but no one laughed. "Gentlemen," he said "why don't you laugh? If I didn't laugh under the strain that is upon me day and night, I should go mad. And you need that medicine as well as I. n 3 s But if Lincoln had to laugh to maintain his sanity, it was because he took his role in history seriously. And it is true, as Wilson says, that Lincoln accepted the Biblical understanding of history as a linear progression unfolding from a beginning towards ever higher levels. Here is another point on which Lincoln would disagree with ancient statesmen and political philosophers. The ancient Greeks and Romans were certainly aware of historical development and historical cycles. But they had no conception of history as a rationally ordered ascent from a beginning to an end. Apparently this idea arose from Biblical religion. 36 One interpretation of Biblical historicity promotes political indifference: Why should we act if God has already determined the outcome? Another interpretation promotes political fanaticism: Why should we act with moderation if we are bringing about the final purpose of history? But Lincoln rejects both interpretations. He believes that history does conform in some mysterious way to the will of God. But this is no reason for human passivity, because God works through the deliberations and actions of men. Nor does this justify fanaticism, because since no man can claim to know God's will absolutely, every man must act within the limits of human rationality. Lincoln agrees with the Christians from Chicago that we serve the will of God by carefully deciding upon whatever course of action is reasonably justified by weighing the relevant ''facts, principles, and arguments.'' But the private deliberation of individuals will be ineffective if the general public cannot be persuaded as well. Lincoln must therefore appeal to the good judgment of the people as an expression of God's will. On his way to his first inauguration, Lincoln delivered many speeches in which he confessed his dependence on Providence as manifested in the American people. I am sure I bring a heart true to the work. For the ability to perform it, I must trust in that Supreme Being who has never forsaken this favored land, through the instrumentality of this great and in- telligent people. Without that assistance I shaH surely fail. With it I cannot fail (CW 4:220-21). In his First Inaugural Address, he was even more explicit in identifying the will of God and the will of the people. THE ST. JOHN'S REVIEW Why should there not be a patient confidence in the ultimate justice of the people? Is there any better, or equal hope, in the world? In our present differences, is either party without faith of being in the right? If the Almighty Ruler of nations, with his eternal truth and justice, be on your side of the North, or on yours of the South, that truth, and that justice, will surely prevail, by the judgment of this great tribunal, the American people (CW 4:270). Of course Lincoln knows that the people do make mistakes, especially when they act without careful deliberation. "My countrymen, one and all," he implores them, "think calmly and well, upon this whole subject. Nothing valuable can be lost by taking time." But in a certain sense, Lincoln does believe in the maxim that the voice of the people is the voice of God. If the Bible supports the claim of the many to participate in the highest things, then it is up to the many to verify that claim by showing that they can govern themselves by deliberating together as a community. But any deliberation about practical matters is constrained by the unknowable contingency of history. Chance is critically important. No human being, therefore, can know the order of history as it is known to God. In the words of Lincoln's "house divided" speech, we must first know "where we are, and whither we are tending" before we can judge "what to do, and how to do it" (2:461). But since we can at best know only the general tendencies of the near future, we can never know all the consequences of our actions. Lincoln regarded the Civil War as an evident example of this since the course of events in that war conformed to no one's expectations at the beginning of the war. Perhaps we should remember Hegel's comment, in the Preface to The Philosophy of Right, about the owl of Minerva flying only with the falling of dusk. The movements of history, it seems, are fully comprehensible only when they are completed. Therefore, those who make history cannot understand it, and those who understand it cannot make it. When Lincoln looks back at the American Revolution, he can understand its necessity. ''All this is not the result of accident. It has a philosophical cause" (CW 4:168). The "philosophical cause" of the success of the Revolution was its appeal to the principle of liberty to all. "No oppressed people will fight, and endure, as our fathers did, without the promise of something better than a mere change of masters." But he cannot be as confident that he understands his own historical role in the Ovil War. "I claim not to have controlled events, but confess plainly that events have controlled me" (CW 7:282). Since God has created human beings with certain natural inclinations, Lincoln can try to act in accordance with the regularities of human nature. But understanding these general tendencies of nature gives him no knowledge of what exactly will happen in particular cases. In the electoral campaign of 1864, for instance, Lincoln could not be sure that the voters would re-elect him. He even had to deny rumors that he was prepared to launch a coup d'etat if defeated in the election (CW 8:52). But after the election, he could see it as a demonstration 35 �of an uncertain proposition-that a ''government, not too strong for the liberties of its people, can be strong enough to maintain its own existence, in great emergencies. rr The strife of the election is but human nature practically applied to the facts of the case. What has occurred in this case, must ever recur in similar cases. Human nature will not change. In any future great national trial, compared with the men of this, we shall have as weak, and as strong; as silly and as wise; as bad and as good. Let us, there~ fore, study the incidents of this, as philosophy to learn wisdom from, and none of them as wrongs to be revenged (CW 8:100-101). Lincoln is surely not claiming that from the study of this one election we can learn to predict exactly the outcome of any similar election in the future. But we can see in this election the unchanging regularities of human nature "practically applied to the facts of the case." Many commentators, however, have concluded that Lincoln's claim to historical knowledge was not this modest. Particularly in the Second Inaugural Address, he seems to assertthat he knows God's purpose for the war because he knows that God has sent the war as a punishment for the sin. of slavery. But in fact Lincoln offers this only as a conjecture-carefully indicated by the preposition 'if.' Fondly do we hope-fervently do we pray-that this mighty scourge of war may speedily pass away. Yet, if God wills that it continues, until all the wealth piled by the bond-man's two hundred and fifty years of unrequited toil shall be sunk, and until every drop of blood drawn with the lash, shall be paid by another drawn with the sword, as was said three thousand years ago, so still it must be said "the judgments of the Lord, are true and righteous altogether" (8:333). He does not know that this is what God wills, but he does know that if He wills it, it will be just. This passage comes after Lincoln's account of how the war has failed to conform to anyone's expectations, so that we must conclude: "The Almighty has His own purposes." Rather than presuming to know God's purpose for the war, Lincoln is confessing that neither he nor any other human being can have such knowledge 37 Not long after delivering the Inaugural, Lincoln wrote to Thurow Weed: Every one likes a compliment. Thank you for yours on my little notification speech, and on the recent Inaugural Address. I expect the latter to wear as well as-perhaps better than-any thing I have produced; but I believe it is not immediately popular. Men are not flattered by being shown that there has been a difference of purpose between the Almighty and them. To deny it, however, in this case, is to deny that there is a God governing the world. It is a truth which I thought needed to be told; and as whatever of humiliation there is in it, falls directly on myself, I thought others might afford for me to tell it (CW 8:356). As in previous cases, we see Lincoln applying the principle of non-contradiction. If God governs the world, and if He cannot contradict Himself, then there must have been a "difference of purpose" between God and men in this war since no man's purpose has been fulfilled. There could hardly be a clearer denial of Wilson's asser- 36 tion that Lincoln was a fanatic in believing that his political aims were divinely sanctioned. For like Job Lincoln has questioned God as to the meaning of human suffering. And at last Lincoln has been forced to confess his own "humiliation" before a mysterious God who "has His own purposes.'' Lincoln is in a strange position here. On the one hand, he faces the humiliation of trying to serve a God whose will is never fully comprehensible to human beings. On the other hand, he welcomes compliments on his speech, which he expects "to wear as well as-perhaps better than-any thing I have produced." In fact, he was so proud of this speech that he mailed out autographed copies of the eloquent passage quoted above (CW 8:367). Thus, Lincoln displays the peculiar predicament of the Biblical statesman-he must combine humility and pride. 7. Biblical heroism The inscription above the statue in the Lincoln Memorial in Washington, D. C., reads: In this temple as in the hearts of the people for whom he saved the Union the memory of Abraham Lincoln is enshrined forever. Is this the reward that Lincoln sought-to live on in the memory of his people as a godlike hero whose image would be enshrined in temples and whose words would be carved in marble? The ancient Greeks and Romans would have understood this, since they assumed that great statesmen would always strive for the secular immortality of political fame. After all, don't the Lincoln Memorial and all the other manifestations of the Lincoln myth imitate the ancient procedures for divinizing political heroes? But if Lincoln himself sought this as the proper reward for his deeds, then we would have to question the Biblical foundation of his statesmanship. We know that Lincoln was an ambitious man. In the words of Herndon, "his ambition was a little engine that knew no rest." 38 In the winter of 1840-41, Lincoln suffered from melancholia. His close friend Joshua Speed told Herndon: He was much depressed. At first he almost contemplated suicide. In the deepest of his depression he said one day he had done nothing to make any human being remember that he had lived; and that to connect his name with the events transpiring in his day and generation, and so impress himself upon them as to link his name with something that would redound to the interest of his fellow-men, was what he desired to live for. 39 In 1863, after issuing the Emancipation Proclamation Lincoln reminded Speed of the earlier conversation and said, "I believe that in this measure my fondest hope will be realized.'' 40 Lincoln spoke candidly about his ambition. But his pride was combined with humility. In July of 1858, he prepared himself for possibly losing the Senatorial contest with Douglas. "Even in this view, I am proud, in my passing speck of time, to contribute an humble mite to SUMMER 1985 �that glorious consummation, which my own poor eyes may not last to see" (CW 2:482). (The reference is to the widow's mites in Mark 12:41-44.) In 1861, on his way to Washington, Lincoln spoke of the influence of reading Weems' Life of Washington. I recollect thinking then, boy-even though I was, that there must have been something more than common that these men struggled for . .. that something held out a great promise to all the people of the world to all time to come ... I shall be most happy indeed if I shall be an humble instrument in the hands of the Almighty, and of this, his almost chosen people, for perpetuating the object of that great struggle (CW 4'236). The success of a statesman-especially in time of warmay require that his people regard him as godlike. But while he allows or even contrives his own divinization, the prudent statesman must not deceive himself into believing what he would have his people believe. Like Shakespeare's HenryV, he must see his divinity as mere "ceremony" (Henry V 4.1.235-290). 41 Lincoln's humility was surely related to his melancholic awareness of the mortality of all human things. He was surrounded by coffins-his mother (when he was nine years old), his sister, childhood friends, his father, two children, and 140,000 soldiers. According to one of his colleagues at the bar, any literary composition "which faithfully contrasted the realities of eternity with the unstable and fickle fortunes of time, made a strong impression on his mind. " 42 His favorite poem, which he often quoted from memory, was William Knox's ''Mortality.'' Developing themes from Job and Ecclesiastes, the poem concludes: 'Tis the wink of an eye, 'tis the draught of a breath,/ From the blossoms of health, to the paleness of death./ From the gilded saloon, to the bier and the shroud./ Oh, why should the spirit of mortal be proud! 43 Death also permeated Lincoln's own poetry (CW 1:378, 1:385). Gcero quotes Scipio Aemilianus as recommending that statesmen should be taught to see "the fragility of human things and the fickleness of fortune. " 44 The greatest statesmen, Cicero suggests, may be those who are philosophers or at least students of philosophers, because a contemplative vision of the whole can foster a prudent respect for the limits of political action. But Lincoln was neither a philosopher nor the student of a philosopher." His sense of "the fragility of human things" seems to arise not from a philosophic understanding of things but from the Biblical tradition. But Lincoln combined humility with pride. And in his proud awareness of his own greatness, he seemed to resemble Aristotle's "great-souled" man-the man who knows himself worthy of great things and who seeks glory as the proper public recognition of his greatness. Surely Biblical religion cannot sanction this proud assertion of human grandeur. THE ST. JOHN'S REVIEW In fact, most of the early Christian theologians refused to recognize magnanimity-" greatness of soul'' -as a virtue.46 Thomas Aquinas, however, sought to justify the moral claims of the magnanimous man as consistent with humility before God. In describing magnanimous hope, Thomas says, "man has hope in himself, yet under God" (Summa Theologiae 2-2, 128, 1, ad 2). The greatness of the magnanimous man does not remove him from his subordination "under God." Thomas distinguishes between the perfections of God and man: God's perfection is absolute, but man's is according to his own nature-that is to say, in comparison to God, he is imperfect (2-2, 161, 1, ad 4). Thus, Thomas can endorse simultaneously without contradiction magnanimity and humility. Against the objection that Aristotle in the Nicomachean Ethics does not mention humility as a virtue, Thomas replies: It must be said that the Philosopher intended to treat the virtues according as they are ordered towards the civil life, in which they are limited to the subjection of one man to another according to the order of the lawr and, therefore, they are held under legal justice. Humility, however, as a special virtue, principally provides for the subjection of man to God, on whose account one subjects oneself in humility even to others (2-2, 161, 1, ad 5): Humility comes not from the relationships among men, but from the relationship of man to God. Magnanimity and humility do not conflict, then, since they arise from two different ways of considering man. Magnanimity expresses man's greatness, which is due to "the gifts of God''; humility expresses man's weakness, which is due to his own defects (2-2, 129, 3, ad 4). This explains Saint John Chrysostom's observation that since the greatsowed man shows his greatness by scorning all creation, even himself, he is also humble. 47 This formulation may be the best way to account for the complex character of Lincoln as a Biblical statesman. He knows that he is a great man. He is the kind of man who always tries to see things for what they are. And it is easy for him to see that he towers over everyone else. But to see things for what they are, he must look up as well as down. And when he looks up, he sees that as tall as he is, he still stands "under God." He is a proud man. But the virtue of pride differs from the vice of vanity. And it wouid be foolishly vain for him-for any manto think that his deeds will escape the decay to which all human things are prone. He must be properly humble to be properly proud. It is fitting, therefore, that Colonel Alexander McClure. chose to conclude his collection of Lincoln's Yams and Stories with a story under the title "No Cause for Pride." A member of Congress from Ohio came into Mr. Lincoln's presence in a state of unutterable intoxication, and sinking into a chair, exclaimed in tones that welled up fuzzy through the gallon· or more of whiskey that he contained, "Oh, why should (hie) the spirit of mortal be proud?" "My dear sir," said the President, regarding him closely, "I see no reason whatever."4s 37 �NOTES 1. Carl Sandburg, Abraham Lincoln: The Prairie Years and the War Years, one-volume edition (New York: Harcourt Brace Jovanovich, 1939), 573. 2, Harry Jaffa has described Lincoln's "engrafting of the passion of revealed religion upon the body of secular political rationalism." Crisis of the House Divided (Seattle: University of Washington Press, 1973), 238. In distinguishing the Biblical and classical elements of the Western tradition, I have found the following writings most useful: Oswald Spengler, The Dec,line of the West, trans. Charles Francis Atkinson, 2 vols. (New York: Knopf, 1928); Charles Cochrane, Christianity and Classical Culture (New York: Oxford University Press, 1957); Hans Jonas, Philosophical Essays (Englewood Cliffs, N.J.: Prentice-Hall1974), 21-44; Harry V. Jaffa, Equnlity and Liberty (New York: Oxford University Press, 1965), 209-29; Leo Strauss, ''Athens and Jerusalem: Some Preliminary Reflections,'' in Studies in Platonic Political Philosophy (Chicago Press, 1983), 147-73; Matthew Arnold, chap. 4 of Culture and Anarchy, in The Portable Matthew Anwld, ed. Lionel Trilling (New York: Viking Press, Penguin, 1949), 557-73; and Eva Brann, "The Roots of Modernity in Perversions of Christianity," St. John's &view 35 (Spring 1984): 66-69. 3. For elaboration of these points, see Larry Arnhart, "Statesmanship as Magnanimity: Classical, Christian, and Modern," Polity 16 (Winter 1983): 263-83. On Lincoln, see the last few paragraphs of this article. 4. See Norman Cohn, The Pursuit of the Millennium (New York: Oxford University Press, 1970); Paul Johnson, A History of Christianity (New York: Atheneum, 1983), 255-64i and Larry Amhart, Political Questions: Political Philosophy from Plato to Rawls (New York: Macmillan, 1986), chap. 3. 5. Perhaps the three best general introductions to Lincoln's religion are William J. Wolf, The Religion of Abraham Lincoln (New York: Seabury Press, 1963); David Hein, "Abraham Lincoln's Theological Outlook," in Hans J. Morgenthau and David Hein, Essays on Lincoln's Faith and Politics, ed: Kenneth W. Thompson (Lanham, Md.: University Press of America, 1983), 103-205; and Glen E. Thurow, Abraham Lincoln and American Political Religion (Albany, N.Y.: State University of New York Press, 1976). The serious flaw in Wolfe's work--as opposed to that of Hein and Thurow--is that he sometimes gives too much weight to dubious reports about what Lincoln believed. 6. The reference is to Roy A. Basler et al., eds., The Collected Works of Abraham Lincoln, 8 vols. (New Brunswick, N.J.: Rutgers University Press, 1953), 1:382. All subsequent references to the Collected Works will be indicated in the text in the same manner. 7. Quoted by William Herndon, Herndon's Life of Lincoln (New York: Da Capo Press, 1983), 359-60. 8. Thomas Paine, The Age of Reason, in Philip S. Foner, ed., The Life and Major Writings of Thomas Paine (Secaucus, N.J.: Citadel Press, 1948), 464. 9. Ibid, 482, 484, 591-93. 10. Cicero, De Republica 1.56. Compare the influence of Anaxagoras over Pericles and Socrates. See Plato, Phaedo 96b-100b; and Plutarch's Lives, trans. John Dryden (New York: Modern Library, 1932), 185-88. 11. See Paine, 595-604. 12. All the quotations from Rousseau are taken from Jean-Jacques Rousseau, On the Social Contract, ed. Roger D. Masters, trans. Judith R. Masters (New York: St. Martin's Press, 1978), book 4, chapter 8, pp. 124-32. 13. Robert N. Bellah, "Civil Religion in America," in Russell E. Richey and Donald G. Jones, eds., American Civil Religion (New York: Harper & Row, 1974), 21-44. 14. George Washington, Farewell Address, in Daniel Boorstin, ed., An American Primer, 2 vols. (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1966), 1:202. 15. Compare Mason L. Weems, The Life of Washington, ed. Marcus Cunliffe (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1962), 1-5, 172-86, 215-24; and CW 1:108-15, 4:235-36. For a brilliant commentary on the Lyceum speech, see Jaffa, Crisis 182-232. 16. See Jaffa, Crisis 238-42; and Wilson Carey McWilliams, "The Bible and the American Political Tradition," in Myron}. Aronoff, ed., Religion and Politics (New Brunswick: Transaction, 1984), 15, 24. 17. See Jaffa, Crisis, 191-92, 227-30; Wolf, Religion, 170-72; Thurow, American Political Religion, 63-87; and Glen Thurow "The Gettysburg Address and the Declaration of Independence," in Leo Paul de Alva- 38 rez, ed., Abraham Lincoln, The Gettysburg Address and American Constitutionalism (Irving, Texas: University of Dallas Press, 1976), 55-75. 18. My reading of Henry Vhas been guided by Michael Platt's commentary on the play in his book, Shakespeare's English Prince (Lanham, Md.: University Press of American, 1985). See also John Alvis, "A Little Touch of the Night in Harry: The Career of Henry Monmouth," in John Alvis and Thomas G. West, eds., Shakespeare as Political Thinker (Durham, N.C.: Carolina Academic Press, 1981), 95-125. 19. Commentators have noticed parallels between Shal<espeare's portrayal of Henry V and Desiderius Erasmus's Education of a Christian Prince (1540), trans. Lester K. Born (New York: Norton, 1965). If one adjusts for the differences between a king and a democratic leader, Lincoln would more fully exemplify Erasmus's Christian prince. Consider Lincoln's comment that he saw in Stephen Douglas' argument for popular sovereignty "a strong resemblance to the old argument for the 'Divine Right of Kings.' By the latter, the King is to do just as he pleases with his white subjects, being responsible to God alone. By the former the white man is to do just as he pleases with his black slaves, being responsible to God alone" (CW 2:278). 20. Paine, Age of Reason, 601-602. 21. This lecture should not be confused with the second lecture as revised and delivered on February 11, 1859. CW 2:437-42, 3:356-63. Richard N. Current includes only the second lecture in his collection, The Political Thought of Abraham Lincoln (Indianapolis: Bobbs-Merrill, 1967), 112-21. 22. See Jean Gimpel, The Medieval Machine: The Industrial Revolution in the Middle Ages (New York: Holt, Rinehart and Winston, 1976); Lynn White, Jr., Medieval Religion and Technology (Berkeley: University of California, 1978)i and Lionel Casson, "Godliness and Work," Science '812 (September 1981): 36-42. Of course one should also consider Max Weber's classic, The Protestant Ethic and the Spirit of Capitalism, trans. Talcott Parsons (New York: Scribners, 1958). See also Plutarch's Lives, 376-80. 23. See Aristotle, Topics 100a20-101a16; and Metaphysics 1004b19-1012b33. See also Alan Gewirth, Reason and Morality (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1978), 42-47. 24. Quoted by Alan Gewirth, "The Golden Ru1e Rationalized," in Human Rights (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1982), 128. Gewirth's essay is quite instructive. 25. See Larry Arnhart, "Darwin, Aristotle and the Biology of Human Rights,'' Social Science Information 23 (June 1984): 493-521. On Lincoln's possible acceptance of evolutionary biology, see Herndon, Life of Lincoln, 353-54. 26. See G. S. Boritt, Lincoln and the Economics of the American Dream (Memphis: Memphis State University Press, 1978). 27. See, for example, McWilliams, "The Bible in the American Political Tradition," 30-32, 37. 28. John Stuart Mill, Principles of Political Economy, ed. W. J. Ashley (London: Longmans, 1927), book 4, chap. 6, sec. 2, p. 748. 29. Niccolo Machiavelli, The Prince, trans. Leo Pau1 de Alvarez (Irving, Texas: University of Dallas Press, 1980), chap. 21, p. 135. On Lincoln's prudential realism, see Hans J. Morgenthau, "The Mind of Abraham Lincoln," in Morgenthau and Hein, Essays, 1-101. 30. The best study of Lincoln's·prudential calcu1ations in issuing the Proclamation is George Anastaplo, "Abraham Lincoln's Emancipation Proclamation,'' in Ronald Collins, ed., Constitutional Government in America (Durham, N.C.: Carolina Academic Press, 1980), 421-46. See also Anastaplo, "American Constitutionalism and the Virtue of Prudence: Philadelphia, Paris, Washington, Gettysburg," in de Alvarez, The Gettysburg Address, 77-170. 31. Richard Current reprints Lincoln's comments but not the responses of the Christian delegates. As a result, Current's editing conveys the impression that the Christians were naively imprudent in ignoring the practical problems noted by Lincoln. But a reading of the entire account suggests to me that Lincoln found the discussion with the Christians fruitfully challenging. Current, Political Thought of Lincoln, 216-19. 32. Julia Ward Howe, ''The Battle Hymn of the Republic,'' ed. William G. McLoughlin, in Boorstin, American Primer, 1:380-85. See Edmund Wilson, Patriotic Gore (New York: Oxford University Press, 1966), 91-98. 33. Should this remind us of John 11:35, which records the one occasion on which Jesus wept? At least we can say that Lincoln grieved as SUMMER 1985 �much over the deaths of the soldiers as Jesus grieved over the death of Lazarus. And although Lincoln could not raise the dead to life, he looked for every opportunity to commute a death sentence. 34. Wilson, Patriotic Gore, 102, 106. 35. Wolfe, The Religion of Abraham Lincoln, 141. 36. See Karl Lowith, Meaning in History (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1949). 37. For careful studies of the Second Inaugural that support this conclusion, see Thurow, American Political Religion, 88-108; and Hein, "Theological Outlook," 111-56. 38. Herndon, Life of Lincoln, 304. 39. Ibid., 172. 40. Ibid., 423. 41. Compare Walter Bagehot's distinction between the "dignified parts" of the English Constitution and the ''efficient parts'' --the monarch being the head of the former and the prime minister the head of the latter. Bagehot, The English Constitution (Ithaca, N.Y.: Cornell University Press, 1966), 61-86, 150, 235-38, 248-51, 262. Lincoln is one of the best examples of how American presidents can combine monarchic dignity and parliamentary efficiency. 42. Quoted by Herndon, Life of Lincoln, 496. 43. Quoted by Stephen B. Oates, With Malice Toward None: The Life of Abraham Lincoln (New York: Harper & Row, 1977), 95. 44. See Arnhart, "Statesmanship as Magnanimity," 268-71. 45. Harry Jaffa implies that Lincoln was in some manner a Socratic thinker. See Jaffa, Crisis, 5, 207-25, 232, 260-61, 264-65. For critici$ms of Jaffa on this point, see Anastaplo, "American Constitutionalism and the Virtue of Prudence," 165-68. At the least Lincoln learned from Shakespeare and Emerson the Socratic dictum that men cannot do evil without suffering evil. See Ralph Waldo Emerson, ''Compensation,'' in Essays and Lectures (New York: Library of America, 1985), pages 285-302. 46. See Rene Antoine Gauthier, Magnanimite (Paris: Libraire Philosophique J. Vrin, 1951). 47. Ibid., 430-31. 48. Colonel Alexander K. McClure, Lincoln's Yams and Stories (Grand Rapids, Mich.: Bengal Press, 1980), 368. Larry Arnhart teaches Political Science at Northern lllinois University. THE ST. JOHN'S REVIEW 39 �After Hecuba I tell you, no female's god gives birth to warriors. No, men build gods and afterward women stumble through their rubble. Choked on smoke, slipping in blood, we crept forward from the walls to drag the bodies back. But on that field, flatter than my breast, there arose an Anger before me, and she spat at me-"Why?" "Why not leave them for the birds, Hecuba? They should fill the bellies of some beast of the air for all the good of their ships on water or their horses on earth." My sisters, did you wonder at my fury to build a funeral pyre? From the first tiny flames until the last dusty ash I will watch the air carry upward all the fuel of my heart. Fire, scorch bones, blister eyes. Wind, bear away all shades of what I have loved. And when the firelight fails, I will still see it where it was. M. L. Coughlin 40 SUMMER 1985 �America's Rise to a Mature Party System Donald V. Weatherman Our image of the American founders probably differs little from the image they have enjoyed ever since we won our independence. Despite the efforts of political historians like Charles Beard, our founding fathers continue to loom in our political history like a generation of Davids conquering one giant after another. Gordon A. Wood captured the feelings most of us have toward the founders: "The awe that we feel when we look back at them is thus mingled with an accute sense of loss. Somehow for a brief moment ideas and power, intellectualism and politics, came together-indeed were one with each other-in a way never again duplicated in American history."' The greatest tribute to the American foundersgreater than all the monuments in Washington, D.C., even greater than the annual Fourth of July orationshas been the strength and endurance of the republic they founded. Their plan for government has withstood foreign wars, industrialization, massive expansion, and a bit- ter civil war. Despite these challenges to their handiwork, the regime they founded appears so secure that it is hard for us to imagine the novelty and adventure associated with such a bold experiment. Equally hard for us to remember is that one of the institutions that has proven vital to America's political existence was mortal! y feared and openly condemned by these same founders. · Political parties, as the founders understood them, were considered one of the greatest threats to the young republic. And yet, the founders themselves could not resist the temptation to organize parties in support of the causes they held most dear. For this reason, party divisions started forming early in America's political history. In time, some of the most ardent opponents of the "spirit of parties" began to soften their views on the possible effects of parties on republican government. The founders' apparent change of heart toward parties was never complete and far from enthusiastic. For this reason the establishment of a mature party system did not occur until our second generation of political leaders was in control of the national government. The historical factors leading to our first true party system (which is, unfortunately, usually called the "second American party system"') have been adequately covered in such works as Richard Hofstadter' s The Idea of a Party System. Let us now consider some of the reasons why the founders appear to have had such an ill-conceived notion of the role political parties could play in the political system they created out of the ruins of the Revolution. A full understanding of the founders' opposition to parties requires that we first determine what they had in mind when they referred to "parties." Generally, it appears that three types of parties were recognized by the founders. The first type, as we learn in Federalist 10, is indistinguishable from factions. Parties of this description are primarily economic and are "actuated by some common impulse of passion, or of interest, adverse to the rights of other citizens, or to the permanent and aggregate interests of the community." Madison provided further clarification of these parties when he continued: But the most common and durable source of factions has been the various and unequal distribution of property. Those ~ho hold and those who are without property have ever *This paper was originally delivered in 1983 at the American Political Science Association Convention in Denver. Mr. Weatherman would like to thank the Earhart Foundation of Ann Arbor, Michigan, for supporting the research and writing of this paper. THE ST. JOHN'S REVIEW 41 �formed distinct interests in society. Those who are creditors, and those who are debtors, fall under like discrimination. A landed interest, a manufacturing interest, a mercantile interest, a moneyed interest, with many lesser interests, grow up of necessity in civilized nations, and divide them into different classes, actuated by different sentiments and views. Madison left no doubt that while economic factors are not the only source of partisan differences they certainly are the most ''common and durable.'' George Washington has provided us with our second view of parties. In his Farewell Address we find a slight distinction drawn between factions and parties, a distinction that renders neither more desirable. As Washington saw it, parties ''serve to organize factions to give it an artificial and extraordinary force; to put in the place of the delegated will of the Nation, the will of a party; often a small but artful enterprising minority of the community." He warned against parties generally, but was particularly concerned about parties of a "geographical discrimination." What economic parties were to Madison, geographical parties were to Washington; the attribute these two types share is that both are products of selfish concern and serve interests other than the common interest of the community. The third and last type of party acknowledged by the founding generation is the philosophical party described by Jefferson. He believed that these parties develop because of conflicting notions about the extent to which people are capable of self-government. Jefferson explained to Adams: at length see that the mass of their fellow citizens with whom they cannot yet resolve to act as to principles and measures, think as they think and desire what they desire; that our wish as well as theirs is that the public efforts may be directed honestly to the public good, that peace by activated, civil and religious liberty unassailed, law and order preserved, equality of rights maintained, and that state of property, equal or unequal, which results to every man from his own industry or that of his father's. When satisfied of these views it is not in human nature that they should not approve and support them. In the meantime let us cherish them with patient affection, let us do them justice, and most than justice, in all competitions of interest, and we need not doubt that truth, reason, and their own interest will at length prevail, will father them into the fold of our country, and will complete that entire union of opinion which gives to a nation the blessing of harmony and the benefit of all its strength. 4 Jefferson's optimism was stated more clearly by one of his partisan successors to the White House. In a letter to Andrew Jackson, James Monroe expressed his belief that the existence of parties in ancient republics and in England was due to "certain defects of those governments" and that "we have happily avoided these defects in our system."' Given the kind of parties Jefferson had in mind, such optimism was partially warranted. Jefferson felt that his partisan beliefs were the only ones consistent with the principles set forth in the Declaration of Independence. If the partisan beliefs at that time were based on such fundamental differences, it would not be unreasonable to expect one of those parties to prevail and, thus, determine whether or not the principles set forth in the Declaration were self-evident." The founders' limited understanding of parties helps clarify two important points. First, all three of the sources cited provide an accurate and helpful description of particular types of parties that have historically existed and do currently exist in the United States. Second, while they provide an accurate description of certain types of parties, none of them describes what we generally recognize as political parties. This should not surprise us since the formal type of grassroots party organization that we are familiar with was unknown to the founders and everyone else at that time. The concerns expressed by Madison and Washington have proven to be well-founded. Harry V. Jaffa equates the parties or factions in Federalist 10 with what we call interest groups today. 6 With a few exceptions, these interest groups continue to put their narrow interests before the "permanent and aggregate interest of the community." Washington's greatest fears about parties of a "geographical discrimination" could hardly have exceeded the events surrounding the Civil War. As for Jefferson's statements about philosophical parties, it would appear that something fairly close to what he described has appeared, from time to time, in American politics. America's critical or watershed elections have usually focused on more fundamental questions than are generally addressed in American politics. But Jefferson 0 Men have differed in opinion, and been divided into parties by these opinions, from the first origin of societies, and in all governments where they have been permitted freely to think and to speak. The same political parties which now agitate the United States have existed through all time. Whether the power of the people or that of the aristoi should prevail, were questions which kept the States of Greece and Rome in eternal convulsions, as they now schismatize every people whose minds and mouths are not shut up by the gag of a despot. And in fact, the terms of whig and tory belong to natural as well as to civil history. They devote the temper and constitution of mind of different individuals. 3 Like Madison and Washington, Jefferson recognized that parties naturally blossom in free societies; he also concurred with their belief that the naturalness of parties renders them neither beneficial nor desirable to republican government. However, unlike Madison and Washington, Jefferson did in one of his more optimistic moments indicate that the United States might be able to overcome natural and civil history by freeing itself from partisan differences: With those, too, not yet rallied to the same point the disposition to do so is gaining strength; facts are piercing through the veil drawn over them, and our doubting brethren will 42 SUMMER 1985 �did not believe that such a sweeping transformation of the American electorate would be needed after the '' revolution of 1800." Lack of foresight is not the only thing that kept Jefferson from being the founder of America's two-party system. Jefferson and most of his followers viewed the Jeffersonian Republican party as the party to end all parties. What Jefferson and his followers lacked, at least until the 1920s, was what Richard Hofstadter describes as "comity." Hofstadter contends: Comity exists in a society to the degree that those enlisted in its contending interest have a basic minimal regard for each other: one party or interest seeks the defeat of an opposing interest [or party] on matters of policy, but at the same time seeks to avoid crushing the opposition, denying the legitimacy of its existence or its values, or inflicting upon it extreme and gratuitous humiliations beyond the substance of the gains that are being sought/ Few parties have been crushed as swiftly and completely as were the Federalists. To Jefferson, the Federalists were as illegitimate as the monocratic values they held. There was something like Hofstadter's ''comity'' when Jackson reached the White House. By the 1820s, people like Martin Van Buren and Thomas Ritchie were fully aware of the salutary effects political parties could have on republican government. The alliance forged between Jackson and the party chieftains of his day, and the response this drew from Henry Clay and his followers, gave rise to America's first mature party system. In Statesmanship and Party Government, Harvey Mansfield, Jr., credits Burke with "introducing parties into the public constitution. " 8 He contends that parties had existed as part of the private constitution for some time, but that it would have been totally irresponsible to go "public" with parties because that would have made parties useful to all, "good men and traitors alike."' Parties were considered a secret weapon that should be used only in the most extreme circumstances and, therefore, should always be publicly decried by the knowledgeable political actors who might find a need for parties at some point in their political careers. In this sense, parties were an ultimate political weapon whose potential was recognized by some politicians, who hoped that they would never have to resort to their use. Jefferson's involvement with party politics in the United States appears quite consistent with Burke's belief that one should resort to parties only as a last resort. But this attitude did not survive the nineteenth century. In the United States as in Britain, parties became not only public, but respectable. Mansfield posits one reason for the change. "Defining 'party' as a body of men united on some particular principle, [Burke] made parties available to good men in association against bad men." But certain sacrifices had to be made to achieve this respectability. Mansfield describes one such sacrifice: THE ST. JOHN'S REVIEW A party principle is necessarily attuned to lesser capacities than is a statesman's principle. Burke conceived the respectability of party because he was willing to accept the less exact principle in exchange for a lessened reliance on statesmen; for great statesmen are unreliable, at least in the sense that they are not always available. Burke believed that the regularity of honest men could compensate for their lack of discrimination, and that party government could substitute for statesmanship .10 Government's inability to rely on great or enlightened statesmen was noted by Publius as well. Recognition of this fact is what led him to the "invention of prudence." This could also explain what the United States did not turn to a formal party system until the 1820s. If Burke was correct in his assertion that the only-or primaryjustification for a "respectable party" is the absence of great statesmen, then the United States clearly did not need such parties as long as there was a Washington, Jefferson, or Madison at the helm. Perhaps this is why Jefferson and Madison looked more favorably toward parties in their later years. Such a change in attitude is especially clear in Madison's works. Foremost in the minds of the founding generation was how a popular government could tolerate (or survive) differences of opinion and still function as a single entity. Only after our institutions of government were wellestablished could politicians look to differences of opinion as something that might be organized to serve as a positive political force in American politics. Two of the first and most enduring proposals for using differences of opinion to serve the interests of government were developed by Andrew Jackson's two vice presidents. John C. Calhoun's concurrent majority thesis considered using these differences to the advantage of distinct or fragmented (state) interests; Martin Van Buren's permanent two-party system advocated using these differences to further a national interest or national interests. The only premise these two proposals shared was that diverse political opinions could be used to strengthen our political system. Calhoun's system proposed strength through greater decentralization of decision making, while Van Buren's proposed strength through centralization. Calhoun's proposal was designed primarily to protect economic, regional interests; Van Buren's was designed to help create, clarify, and perpetuate national political principles. Van Buren's system was posited on the belief that the political is superior to the economic; Calhoun's appears to be based on the reverse assumption. Both are based on assumptions that differ radically from those of the founders. Van Buren's recognition of the potential of political parties resulted directly from his ability to expand on the founders' understanding of parties. Unlike Madison and Washington, he had no difficulty distinguishing parties from factions. One of his numerous attacks on the socalled "era of good feeling" pointed out the difference as he saw it: 43 �In place of two great parties arrayed against each other in a fair and open contest for the establishment of principles in the administration of Government which they respectively believed most conducive to the public interest, the country was overrun with personal factions. These having few higher motives for the selection of their candidates or stronger incentives to action than individual preferences or antipathies, moved the bitter waters of political agitation to their lowest point. 11 Once he established the line of demarcation between parties and factions, Van Buren's position recalled that expressed by Machiavelli some 300 years earlier. In The Discourses, Machiavelli argued that few people understand the true nature of parties: Those who condemned the quarrels between the nobles and plebs, seem to be cavilling at the very things that were the primary cause of Rome's retaining her freedom, and they pay more attention to the noise and clamour resulting from such commotions than to what resulted from them. . . . [A]nyone who studies carefully their result, will not find that they occasioned any banishment or act of violence inimical to the common good, but that they led to laws and institutions whereby the liberties of the public benefited. (1,4) Without trying to make more of this analogy than it deserves, let me make one more comparison. According to Machiavelli and Van Buren, one of the greatest contributions by parties is their preservation of the public nature of political controversies. Governments that provide a public arena for opposition to individuals and policies maintain greater control over such opposition. Public opposition requires that one's claims be backed by evidence; when such evidence is provided, the party or parties under attack can present evidence in their own defense. An open exchange of this nature affords government a better opportunity to settle an issue and then to move on to other matters. Rumors and accusations not made public have "no need of witnesses or of any other corroboration of the facts." Furthermore, a two-fold educational advantage comes from public controversies. First, public controversies draw more people into the dispute; second, the larger number of citizens involved is permitted to consider the evidence of both sides and then to draw conclusions. There is no better way to educate the general citizenry than to make it a party to the political battles that occur within the state. Another advantage to which Van Buren alluded is that public controversies tend to stern from higher motives than do private controversies. This led Van Buren to conclude that the "era of good feeling" had "moved the bitter waters of political agitation to their lowest point." Van Buren, like Machiavelli, relied quite heavily on history to support his contention that parties have a salutary effect on republican government. He openly opposed those who claimed that the party division of the 1790s was caused by conflicting notions about whether the United States should have aligned itself more closely with 44 England or France. Van Buren recognized the sharp division on that issue, but argued that to consider this the source of partisan divisions "is to mistake for the cause one of its least important effects.' ' 12 He developed his idea about the source of party differences in this way: The Administrations of Jefferson and Madison, embracing a period of sixteen years, from first to last, opposed by the federal party with a degree of violence unsurpassed in modern times. From this statement one of two conclusions must result. Either the conduct of these two parties which had been kept on foot so long, been sustained with such determined zeal and under such patriotic professions and had created distinctions that became the badges of familiestransmitted from father to son-was a series of shameless impostures, covering mere struggles for power and patronage; or these were differences of opinion and principle between them of the greatest character, to which their respective devotion and active service could not be relaxed without safety or abandoned without dishonor .13 To Van Buren, the choice was clear: either one accepted parties as a healthy and respectable part of America's political machinery or one accus.ed Jefferson and Madison of being" shameless impostures." Since Jefferson's reputation has probably never exceeded the heights it attained during the Jacksonian era, Van Buren was confident of which conclusion the political leaders of his generationand probably the leaders of generations to follow-would draw. To make this choice clear, Van Buren relied heavily on Jefferson's actions and avoided many of his words. He cleverly drew on the partisan political history of the founders to overcome the partisan (actually anti-partisan) political theories they had espoused. Since Jefferson, Madison, and Hamilton produced the history upon which Van Buren rested his case for a permanent party system, he had at his disposal information that simply was unavailable to the founders. With his Jeffersonian prejudices intact, Van Buren built a foundation for a new partisan division based on historical attachments and governmental policies. He began his discussion by echoing Jefferson' s statement on the permanence of party divisions in Western history, but he quickly translated those natural parties into American parties and then concentrated his efforts on the specific policies and programs that had resulted from those divisionsl4 He glossed over Hamilton's theoretical differences with Jefferson and chose, instead, to focus on the policies that had grown out of Hamilton's political preferences. Van Buren realized that party loyalties and antagonisms are easier to maintain if they are attaclted to specific programs and policies instead of general theories. Van Buren's success in building a permanent party system was not based on a rejection of the earlier party theories espoused by Washington, Madison, and Jefferson; on the contrary, Van Buren was keenly aware of the permanence of the driving passions that produced these early theories. The future of American parties would be determined by their ability to maintain a tenuous balance SUMMER 1985 �between the interests described by Madison and Washington and the ideals described by Jefferson. Van Buren charted a middle course that could appeal to both the noble and the base and thus provide a common ground for both the informed leaders our country would continue to need and their less-informed followers. Statesmen are able to address the concerns of the entire community through party principles in a way that they could not with Madison or Washlngton's parties. At the same time, the less-informed members of society can recognize the practical effect certain party principles might have in a way that they probably could not have in Jefferson's parties. Van Buren certainly realized that party principles are better understood by people of "lesser capacities" than are the principles of statesmen. But given the shortage of statesmen, society as a whole is elevated by these "lesser principles." As the American political system grew increasingly democratic, there was an increasing need for partisan principles that would help "refine and enlarge the public's view.'' The founders' partisan oversight, if we can call it that, was addressed indirectly by Alexis de Tocqueville. In his discussion of patriotism, he provided at least a partial explanation of the increased need for political parties after the founding. According to Tocqueville, there are two distinct forms of patriotism: instinctive and reflective. The former he describes as a "kind of religion: it does not reason, but it acts from the impulse of faith and sentiment."" At the time of the founding, as in a time of war, such patriotism formed strong bonds between the citizenry and the state. Nevertheless, "like all instinctive passions, this kind of patriotism incites great transient exertions, but no continuity of effort. " 16 At some point citizens must make the transition to reflective patriotism if they are to maintain their attachments to their government. This requires that people "go forward and accelerate the union of private with public interests, since the period of disinterested patriotism is gone by forever.'' The transition is especially crucial to republics because while reflective patriotism is "less generous and less ardent . . . it is more fruitful and most lasting: it springs from knowledge; it is nurtured by the law; it grows by the exercise of civil rights; and, in the end, it is confounded with the personal interest of the citizen. " 17 1 As we have already noted, the hallmark of Van Buren's party system is the union it forged between the private interests that sustained the parties of Washington and Madison and the public interests whlch guided Jefferson's party. The founders could not have anticipated the necessity for political parties; in the early years of the republic, private and public interests were held together by a reverence for the authors of America's founding documents and the passions that produce "instinctive patriotism." Political parties filled the vacuum created by the passing of the founding generation and of the patriotic passions they inspired. 1. "The Democratization of Mind in the American Revolution," in Robert W. Horwitz, ed., The Moral Foundation of the American Republic (University Press of Virginia: 1977). 2. I have explained why this terminology is unfortunate in ''From Fac~ tions to Parties: America's Partisan Education." In Schramm, P., and Silver T. (eds), Natural Right and Political Right: Essays in Honor of Harry V. Jaffa. Carolina Academic Press, 1984. 3. Adrienne Koch and William Peden, eds., The Life and Selected Writings of Thomas Jefferson (Random House: 1944), p. 627. 4. James Richardson, ed., A Compilation of the Messages and Papers of the Presidents, 1789-1908, 12 vols. (Bureau of National Literature and Art: 1909), 1:381-82. 5. John Spencer Bassett, ed., Correspondence of Andrew Jackson, 7 vols. (Carnegie Institution: 1927), 2:268. 6. "The Nature and Origin of the American Party System" in Equality and Liberty (Oxford University Press: 1965). 7. The Progressive Historians: Turner, Beard, Farrington (New Yqrk: 1968), p. 454. 8. Harvey Mansfield, Jr., Statesmenship and Party Government (University of Chicago Press: 1965), p. 17. 9. Mansfield, p. 14. 10. Mansfield, pp. 17-18. 11. Martin Van Buren, Inquiry into the Origin and Course of Political Parties in the United States (New York: 1867), pp. 3-4. This point is also noted by James Ceaser in Presidential Selection (Princeton University Press: 1979), p. 135. 12. Van Buren, Inquiry, p. 270. 13. The Autobiography of Martin Van Buren, ed. John C. Fitzpatrick (Washington, D.C.: 1920), p. 123. 14. Van Buren, Inquiry, pp. 7-8 . 15. Alexis de Tocqueville, Democracy in America, ed. Phillips Bradley, 2 vols. (Vintage Books: 1945), 1:251. 16. Democracy in America, 1:252. 17. Democracy in America, 1:251-52. Donald Weatherman teaches Political Science at Arkansas College. THE ST. JOHN'S REVIEW 45 �Penelope's Dream Navigare necesse est . . . In the cold olive bed of night the work of day lies around me, as if some portion of sunlight were netted there that in darkness gives up a daily gathered heat. In imagination I smooth again the wrinkled surface of my skin, and resurrect a form of youth memory will be the shuttle of desire. Each night I lie, an island in the soft grey sea of sleep, and count, as waves, the doing and undoing that run together in a tide. My wakefulness, a forgotten watchfire, has grown cold, and still I cannot close my conscious eye. If I could, all I'd dream would be a vision: the longed-for draught, a silence unjoined from solitude, and a second, more singular journey - begun. M. L. Coughlin 46 SUMMER 1985 �Housebound or Floating Free: The American Home in Huckleberry Finn Mera J. Flaumenhaft Far from home, Huckleberry Finn finds himself in the house of a family named Grangerford. Among the neatly stacked books in their parlor is a copy of Pilgrim's Progress, "about a man that left his family, it didn't say why." Huck reads "considerable" in it and finds it "interesting but tough." Having escaped from what remains of his own natural family, and from a well-meaning adoptive family, Huck has attached himself to a fugitive slave who intends to buy or steal his own family to freedom. Missing the northern turn, the boy and the slave remain together in what has become the most famous alternative family in American literature. Huck's experiences south of Cairo raise the question of what family and civic arrangements are appropriate to human beings, and especially to human beings in the special circumstances of Twain's nineteenth century America. These alternatives help us to reflect on the meaning of the small and temporary community formed by Huck and Jim. Many of Twain's readers have noted the resemblance between the Grangerfords' parlor and that of the "House Beautiful" in Life on the Mississippi. It is clearly the same room. What differs is the point of view of the describer. Huck's delighted admiration for the "style" of the "beautiful oilcloth," plaster fruits, and fine pictures is an amusing contrast to Twain's mockery of the vulgar affectations of a typical well-to-do western family. But there is another difference between the two passages, one which points to a much more interesting question raised by the Grangerford episode. The "best dwelling" described in Life on the Mississippi is located in a river town. The passage Mera Flaumenhaft is a tutor at St. John's College in Annapolis. She has published articles about Shakespeare, Machiavelli, Homer and Euripedes. THE ST. JOHN'S REVIEW begins by calling the mansion "the home of its wealthiest and most conspicuous citizen" [emphasis added]. The house is set back in a grassy yard; the paling fence, painted white, is "in fair repair," and a brick walk leads from "gate to door." The reader might imagine the "principal citizen" [emphasis added] referred to at the end of the passage welcoming fellow citizens to his home, walking out the gate to do business in town, and leaving the town in the luxury steamboat described in the following paragraphs. The establishment Huck "runs across" in the dark after a steamboat overturns his raft is markeclly different. Located a quarter mile of rough ground from the river, the house sits in an isolated clearing away from any town and even from other houses. There is no fence, walk, or yard, and welcoming a visitor requires "unlocking, unbarring, and unbolting.'' Only by relocating the ''House Beautiful" can Twain in Huckleberry Finn connect this passage with another, not yet related to it in Life on the Mississippi, the description of the Darnell-Watson feud. For the Grangerfords' feud can only be understood by exploring the implications of their isolated way of life. While the lengthy, detailed description of the house marvelously portrays the sensibilities of a boy like Huck, it is of even greater interest in that it characterizes the people who live there-not only by what they have in the house, but by the elaborate, orderly care they take for it. By dwelling on their dwelling, we become aware that this private household is the only community in the lives of its inhabitants. Resembling Homeric Cyclopses, "they have neither assemblies for council, nor appointed laws, but they dwell on the peaks of lofty mountains in hollow caves, and each one is lawgiver to his children and wives.n The Grangerfords, however, are indoors people, the products of an economy based on slavery. Huck remarks 47 �on the Colonel's "darkish-paly complexion, not a sign of red in it anywheres." Freed from the necessity to work, by themselves or with others, they devote themselves not to public business, but to family ceremonials, to hunting, and to a peculiar debased form of dueling. Privacy reigns. As the absolute masters of over a hundred slaves, they are occupied not in productive work, but in the forms of their everyday life. This life is static and repetitious in its meticulous routines, and is uninterrupted except by the cyclical feud killings, the round of tribal parties, and by an occasional visit from a stranger boy who livens up a midnight snack with his false tales. The inequality of master and slave is echoed in the patriarchal arrangements of the Grangerfords. Before we even hear his name, we realize that the Colonel is running a private military unit: "Snatch that light away ... take your places." "All ready." He refers to his sons, fine men in their thirties, as "boys." Not free to contract themselves in marriage or occupation, they begin each day with an elaborate ceremonial in which they pay homage to the patriarchal master of the house. There is none of the easy affection which Tocqueville notes between most American fathers and the grown sons who work with them as equal men. Rather, as Tocqueville says, When men live more for remembrance of what has been than for the care of what is, and when they are more given to attend to what their ancestors thought than to think themselves, the father is the natural and necessary tie between the past and the present . ... In aristocracies, then, the father is not only the civil head of the family, but the organ of its traditions, the expounder of its customs, the arbiter of its manners. He is listened to with deference, he is addressed with respect, and the love that is felt for him is always tem- pered with fear. (II. viii) Colonel Grangerford will pass down to his sons his house, land, slaves, name, blood and the blood feud that comes with it. Like all patrilocal aristocratic families, the Grangerfords look backwards. Their past determines their present; on Sundays they discuss "preforeordestination." Though Twain may overdo Emmeline, her fixation on death and her family's morbid fixation on her, ring true. While the sons die off before their fathers in an ancient feud whose origins they can't remember, Emmeline's mother spends her days visiting the room of the daughter who has predeceased her. Every Grangerford is first of all a Grangerford, tied by name, looks, and loyalties to his tribal clan. There is little sense of individual identity apart from the home and inherited name. Family is not a bridge to relations with others, but an extension of one's self. The feud which preoccupies them expresses an excessive and inverted love of one's own. The only social activities we hear of 48 are those extended family "junketings" in which "mostly kinfolks" come for days at a time to hunt, picnic, and dance. At such affairs, one imagines, are arranged the marriages of second and third cousins, unions which preserve the uworth" of such "tribes" and, above all, prevent disastrous alliances with the sons of enemy clans of aristocracy. The Grangerfords have no public relations, and frequent no public places. We hear of the steamboat landing-which seems to welcome no one to this backwater settlement-and of the church, the only neutral meeting place of the hostile clans. There they listen attentively to the sermon-"all about brotherly love." But, recognizing only blood brothers, they keep their guns "handy against the wall." In both Huckleberry Finn and the Darnel-Watson passage in Life on the Mississippi, no one but the two families seems to be in the church. Compare this Grangerford Sunday with the St. Petersburg Sunday on which Tom Sawyer loses his pinch bug. On the latter, the church is full of children fresh from Sunday school, where Tom must introduce himself to the new judge by his full family name. Older worshippers are identified by their public position or by family name and public role: the aged postmaster, the mayor, the justice of the peace, the widow Douglas-always associated with her palatial "hospitable" mansion, Major and Mrs. Ward, Lawyer Riverson, young belles, and clerks, and the Model Boy. St. Petersburg is a community where even the town drunk acquires a sort of civic status. The church is clearly a public meeting place. After the hymn the minister "turned himself into a bulletin board and read off notices of meetings and societies ... a queer custom which is still kept up in America." The prayer which follows is a "good generous" one. Unlike the "ornery" backwoods preaching about brotherly love, it reaches out to include pleas for the church; the little children of the church; the other churches of the village; for the village itself; for the county; for the State; for the State officers; for the United States; for the churches of the United States; for the Congress; for the President; for the officers of the Government; for poor sailors tossed by stormy seas; for the oppressed millions groaning under the heel of European monarchies and Oriental despotisms. It is to this community of families that Tom makes his tri- umphal return after lighting out for a boyish adventure. Twain makes marvelous fun out of the disastrous Sunday school award, the pretenses of the parishioners, the cadences of the prayer, and the delightful busting up of the service as all hearts and minds are turned towardsthe pinch bug! But there is no doubt that the members of the congregation constitute a satisfying community of fully developed civic beings as well as family members. The same can be said of the honor-bound First Families of Virginia in Pudd'nhead Wilson. They show off their town's new graveyard, jail, town hall, churches, indepen- SUMMER 1985 �dent fire company, militia company, and "where the richest man lived" to visiting Italian noblemen. With one foot tied to their aristocratic Virginia pasts, they eagerly partake of their democratic Missouri presents and futures, visiting the homes of Aunt Patsy and the uprooted Pudd'nhead, even as they duel for their ancient honor. For all their refinement, then, the housebound Grangerfords seem peculiarly primitive in the light of the new "sivilization" on the banks of the Mississippi. It is not just that their carpets and white clothes and plastered, whitewashed walls cover over the dark savagery of their ancient feud. It is that their ancient feud-and everything else in their way of life-harks back to a pre-political condition in which human beings have not yet emerged from natural family associations to conventional civil law. Not only do his slaves and his sons remain "boys," but the undisputed master, as Cyclopean lawgiver to his wife and children, remains somehow undeveloped. As the only man among a household of women, boys, and slaves, he never deals with his equals in a public arena in which law, and not his own will, regulates relations. Political life anywhere requires the separation of individual responsibility and action from blood kinship, and the agreement to punish wrongs by disinterested communal authority and law. The first step away from patriarchal feuds is appropriately an elopement. Lighting out from their ancestral homes, Harney and Sophia take refuge across the river, to be married by authorities outside their families. The children of this union will look like Grangerfords and Shepherdsons, and will probably live in a town. No longer bound to their paternal origins, they will turn their attention to the wider community and live by its laws. Tocqueville' s observations are again helpful. Free, adult life in the United States requires that "all classes display the utmost reliance upon the legislation of their country and [be] attached to it by a kind of paternal affection"(I.xiv). American patriotism, however, goes beyond instinctive patriotic feelings which tie men to their birthplace and make them love their country as they "love the mansion of their fathers." Nurtured by the laws," it encourages citizens to exercise their civil rights" (Lxiv), and in assemblies to "salute the authorities of the day as the fathers of their country" (Lxiv). Besides Emmeline's originals in the Grangerford parlor, Huck sees pictures of Washington and the signers of the Declaration of Independence. It is not clear what place these founding fathers could hold in the hearts of the "nice family" that lives there. At any rate, one is not surprised to find that the "House Beautiful's" chief "slander of the family in oil" -in big gilt frame-"papa holding a book ('Constitution of the United States')'' -is absent from the House of Grangerford. We must return to Pilgrim's Progress, the book in the parlor. It is about a man that leaves his family. The man has only one name, the generic name of Christian. Christianity loosens the powerful bonds of blood kinship and turns man's attention from family and political life to the THE ST. JOHN'S REVIEW heavenly city. At the end of the journey all are equalfathers and sons, men and women, aristocrats and com- moners, freemen and slaves. Universal brotherly love is promised along with eternal life, liberty and happiness. The American founding fathers promised much less. In return for abandoning the unchanging names, property, privileges, duties, and ceremonies of ancient, ancestral ties, they offered unlimited mobility, individuality, and an equal right to this-worldly life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness. They guaranteed this right not by relying on the private charity of Bible-reading widows, sermons about brotherly love, or camp-meeting preachings to the wicked, but by inculcating a respect for public institutions and the secular law, a respect which was closely bound up with self-interest and self-respect. In America one could always change one's name, earn one's place, name that place, or light out for the territory. These are cures for the evils of the House of Grangerford. But they bring on their own characteristic American diseases, ones which Twain goes on to explore as Huck travels south from the Grangerfords. Excessive and exclusive family ties are replaced by excessive isolated individualism, and then by a complete lack of individuality which also threatens viable community life. And America is plagued with its characteristic outsiders, in the forms of drifters and slaves. In each incident we are still searching for a viable combination of free individuality and attachments to family and civic communities, for an appropriate American home. Bricksville, Arkansas, is deep south, far from the westem river towns of Missouri, and a good distance from the woodland, backwater compound of the Grangerfords. Its ills are a peculiar combination of American traits and the special perversions of southern slavery. The town is too close to the river; its characteristic element is mud. The traces of family, civic, economic structures are visible, but, with respect to '' sivilization,'' Bricksville' s "been there before." Private houses are "old and shacldy," propped up to avoid flooding; their gardens are full of weeds, hogs, and trash, and the fences are in disrepair, with hanging gates, "whitewashed some time or another, but the Duke said it was in Columbus's time, like enough." The human inhabitants of this community aren't at home much. They have little to do with women and children. Their ramshackly gates lead out to a public space where, again, hogs make themselves at home. Slavery has arrested the development of these men as much as it has the master, sons, and slaves of the Grangerfords. No one works. They hang around storefronts, but their only public business is conducted in grunts about "borrowing" tobacco. Their names echo the first names of St. Petersburg children and Grangerford "boys," but they are not completed by surnames; thus, they seem, at the same time, characteristically American, and yet un-American. As Huck remarks in Tom Sawyer, kings and slaves have only given names. Unarticulated from each other by home, work, or name, and unconcerned with the past or future, these ragged men loaf 49 �away their present, tormenting stray animals, much as the patched schoolboys "stir up" ticks and pinch bugs in Tom Sawyer. When a harmless old drunk bearing only the muddy last name of Boggs is shot to death, this ''com~ munity" bands together to lynch the murderer. They "swarm" to his house, terrifying women, children, and slaves, and threatening to "tromp" everything to "mush." The loafers described at the beginning of the chapter are the raw material for the anonymous, inarticulate mob which Twain would later describe as the "United States of Lyncherdom." They are faced down by the murderer, Colonel Sherburn, the most isolated individual in Huckleberry Finn. His well-cared-for house and "twenty-foot yard" are the first objects of attack; the mob must first "tear down the fence, tear down the fence." Isolated from the townspeople, Sherburn greets his neighbors from his roof, looking down on those who would lynch him. He makes the longest, most articulate speech in the book. He has lived in many places, north and south, and is apparently unattached to any human being. Unlike Huck, who also has no family, he is unmoved by the fear and grief of Boggs' "sweet and gentle" daughter. Sherburn resembles Grangerford, but this colonel stands alone. For him, armies, like mobs, are composed of subordinate half-men who can be scared into courage by their mass and by their officers. The incident which sets off the Bricksville mob is an anachronistic parody of an aristocratic duel. Sherburn's name has been insulted, and he punctiliously fulfills all the ceremonies-challenges, time, cocked pistol, discarded weapon-to avenge his detached and selforiented honor. He would not stoop to the ambushes and bowie knives of the backwater feud. He is unimaginable in the democratic militias which extended frontiers against savage Indians and resisted the civilized armies of European kings. And he is unassimilable in the democratic towns for which these militias cleared the way. In sum, he is as far from legal community as are his anonymous attackers. Twain returns to the entertainments of the Bricksville loafers twice again before Huck moves on. The murder of Boggs is reenacted in their pleasure in the drunk circus clown's danger, and in their early delight in and later revenge against the perpetrators of the Royal Nonesuch. The two frauds who suffer their wrath again raise the question of isolated individualism as an American danger. Mobility, anonymity, and an uncontrolled desire for quick riches characterize these homeless drifters. They repeatedly light out from "sivilized" communities which they "work," but within which they have no sustained working identities. Isolated at first, they form an uneasy association based on self-interest, and are never slow to cheat each other, as well as their shared dupes. Lacking true pasts or names, they are self-made men who assimilate themselves into the families of European aristocracy and American democrats whenever they stand to profit. But the true "secret of their birth" is that they have no selves. The two buddies who bellow out a version of the 50 love scene from Romeo and Juliet- Twain won't let us forget Harney and Sophia-have nothing to do with homes and families, feuding or otherwise. Their handbill for the Royal Nonesuch "fetches" their dupes in Bricksville, but it also characterizes the dupers: "LADIES AND CHILDREN NOT ADMITTED." Though they carry the rags and pieces of "sivilized" places in their carpetbags and heads, they are, like Sherburn, totally detached. We last see them, like him, being attacked by the anonymous mob which counters their violations of communal law with equally lawless punishment. *** What has this tour through river communities, homes, and families to do with the lovely boy who reads Pilgrim's Progress and then follows his heart and vows to go to Hell to save a slave? Only a reader whose own heart is as "deformed" as Twain elsewhere says Huck's "conscience" is, would fail to become deeply attached to the kid who humbles himself before Jim, writes poetry for Emmeline, "cries a little" over Buck Grangerford, and feels sorry for murderers, for Boggs, and the clown, and Mary Jane, and Silas Phelps, and even for "them poor pitiful rascals," the Duke and the King. His liveliness, intelligence, and, above all, his sympathy for others, are born of the heart. Twain gives no other indication of their origins. But Huck is a sprite-an American one to be sure-and, like all sprites, he does not partake of the lasting attachment that most mortals form. The Prosperos of this world are always sadder than the Ariels when the latter light out for freedom. Our attachment to Huck should not prevent us from recognizing that America has a tendency to invite and encourage lighting out, and that lighting out is the source of both strengths and weaknesses in the home of the free. Huck is a homeless orphan in St. Petersburg. The boy is taken in by a well-meaning widow in a nice house-in Tom Sawyer it's the best mansion in town. He's sent to school and church, and he plays with the children of respectable families. To his father's horror, he learns to read and write, and like all nineteenth century American children, to spell. But he declares his independence from his first to his last paragraphs with the only misspelling in his book-" sivilization." At home he is taught table manners and prayers, and is always reprimanded with the full version of his first name, Huckleberry! But at night, when the restrictive routine gets him down, he lights out to less confined spaces, not through the gate, but out the window and off the roof. Though there are town fathers in this village, the "sivilization" in which Huck dwells for a time is primarily female. Miss Watson and the widow of the former justice of the peace offer a stiff and somewhat dessicated family, a home from which men no longer go forth to work with other men. Huck's father is a juicier type, closer to the river. At the edges of "sivilization," he's attached to no one. There's only a passing mention of Huck's mother, and SUMMER 1985 �the paternal ''home'' has been mostly barrels in a muddy hogyard. Like all the homeless drifters in this book, he lives, not by working, but by "borrowing off" others. Pap-his full name is rarely used-disappears on the river for long stretches, and returns to plague his son for his independently acquired legacy. He cannot be received at the widow's, so he hangs around the garden fence and later climbs in by the shed. A brief attempt to "sivilize" Pap by removing him from the tan yard to a new judge's "own house," ends with Pap's lighting out offthe porch roof in the middle of the night, returning to make a shambles of a beautiful spare room. Later he imprisons Huck in an abandoned log hut in a thick wood where "there warn't no houses." There they live the disorganized life of men without women-no books, study, prayers, schedules, or neighbors-and no reliable nurture or protection. Housebound again, Huck escapes from the unpredictable rages of Pap, again not through a door or gate, but by sawing a hole in the house itself. In the long trip down the river, Huck lives among men. You can't live on the river unless you have some kind of solid platform. But the raft wigwam is unattached; it has no foundations. It houses an easy, free, unregulated life which is always in flux. As you drift by, no one knows your name, or your father's. There are no rooted trees, no adjacent yards, and no fences to admit neighbors or prevent others from "borrowing." The river washes a two story house in its flood and Huck and Jim climb in a second story window to plunder the dirty detritus of its anonymous former inhabitants. Their possessions are further increased by the loot taken from the murderous thieves who are left to die in the well-furnished Walter Scott. The prime cigars which Huck takes from the Walter Scott remind us that life on the raft is not so pure as it might at first seem. Like native American huckleberry bushes, which are neither cultivated nor woods-wild, but which thrive on cleared land where human settlers have left their mark, Huckleberry Finn lives off the "sivilized" life from which he continually escapes. His canoes, hats, melons, cigars, and even his company, are supplied by settled towns along the river. The "lazying," "borrowing,'' ''smoking'' idyll is the attractive version of the more disturbing American lives led by the Walter Scott thieves, the Bricksville tobacco chewers, and the Duke and the King. Huck, like them, has no settled home. Huck is a sojourner in various houses for brief periods in his trip down the river. At Mrs. Loftus', the Grangerfords', the Wilkses' and the Phelpses' he is welcomed, entertained, and told all about the inhabitants. Aunt Sally, who at last knows who he is, invites him to remain permanently grounded in a community of family farms. This prompts him to light out for good. All his other hosts never learn his name, which he freely changes for new acquaintances. They'll never see him again. Huck is a homeless guest-friend who'll never reciprocate by freely offering his own hospitality. His own river home is peculiarly open to visitors. He himself welcomes the Duke THE ST. JOHN'S REVIEW and King because they are fugitives from "sivilization," and need help. By the time Huck realizes what this means, his home has become their castle, and the best he can do is to try to "keep peace in the family." As we have seen, they "borrow" freely from their oppressed hosts, and eventually return one of them to his stalj.is as goods for their own profit. Having no natural or conventional attachments, and no fixed place in a community, Huck is powerless to defend himself, his home, and his friend against invaders. Jim's need for defense raises radical questions about what kind of home America can be for all the people who live there. America is born in the declaration that all men are created equal and that they are endowed with inalienable rights to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness. But perhaps there is a tension between the unequivocal recognition that slavery is an evil, and other principles of the new nation. Having abandoned public exhortations to love one's neighbor and to fight for his soul, and having relinquished the direct formation of character in its fullest sense as a public goal, America's social contract seems to have let loose self-interested individualism. In this respect, the masters of huge estates and homeless drifters like the Duke and King may not be so different from each other. Southerners already in the awkward position of depending on slaves, might justify wrenching black Africans from their homes and keeping them homeless in the land these masters considered their own. Even a confused belief that enslaved blacks were less than human, incapable of contract, was sufficient to deny them the rights declared at America's foundation. Twain's Pudd'nhead Wilson is as dark a depiction of the consequences of this belief as can be found in American literature. It is no accident that uprooted slaves so readily turned to the destination and freedom promised in Pilgrim's Progress. To those deprived of names, families, homes, and possessions, the ''home in that rock" seemed a sure future. Angels in sweet chariots would carry them to the home America promised to all men but, in practice, did not provide. Twain's story makes no argument for Jim's rights as an American. His powerful case against slavery is founded on his depiction of Jim as a full human being who is capable of having home, family, friends and work. On his own, Huck sleeps in the open. It is Jim, the domestic slave, who makes their first ~~home/' a cavewith several rooms and a front door-to protect them from the elements and from other human beings. Their second house, the raft wigwam, is made and repeatedly repaired by Jim. It is he who stands watch most often and who tends the hearthfire during Huck's absences. And, most tellingly, it is he who grows "homesick" on the river. For Jim, Huck's judgment that "there warn't no home like a raft" must be qualified. Attached to his wife and children, who do not even have the legal status of family, he looks forward to work among other grown men, and to keeping the money he will earn by that work. Though the future for men like Jim is clearly bleak, the 51 �former house slave, ''Miss Watson's big nigger Jim,'' in seeking freedom seeks the right to own property-a house for his family-in his own full name. Considering the numerous snatches of poems, plays, and songs which echo through this book, it is interesting that Jim never sings the spirituals which Twain learned in his boyhood, and loved to sing long after he had left the south. Jim's "religion" seems relatively uninfluenced by Miss Watson's. For him full adult freedom must mean looking to the immediate, this-world, future, and freely contracting for marriage, work, and property of his own earning. Jim's aspirations, though clearly limited by his education and the society he lives in, are the clearest indication that he is, by nature, fully human-more fully human than many of the "free" men Huck meets on their journey, and, perhaps, more fully human than Huck himself will ever be. Despite the risks Huck takes for Jim, and despite his genuine chosen friendship and concern for him, his attachment here, too, is passing. Huck fails to comment on the news of Jim's freedom, and never speaks to him alone after Tom reveals it. Likewise, he has no response to Jim's revelation that Pap is dead. The offer of female "sivilization" is quickly rejected and the last word from our American sprite is that he will "light out for the territory ahead of the rest." This time he'll go alone, and we know that Tom's plans for ''a couple of weeks or two'' of "howling adventures amongst the Indians" are unlikely to materialize. America will follow, of course, with her Declaration of Independence, churches, schools, and plans for future city halls, roads, and fire departments. But Huck Finn, the perennial boy among boys, whose freedom consists.in lighting out through windows and off roofs, lives always in the present. Always in transit, never at home, he has no destination. His future offers only repeated lighting out. Another American future lies with kids like Tom Sawyer, who hang around the fences of the little girls they court and eventually marry, who 52 whitewash the fences that separate their own houses from those of nearby neighbors, and who are expected to grow up and to go the National Military Academy and the best law school in the country. And it lies with grown-up men like Judge Thatcher-and, perhaps, someday, like Jimwho have work of their own and greet their neighbors through front doors and garden gates. The picture looks much prettier in Tom Sawyer, the book for children who'll follow in Tom's footsteps. When they're older, perhaps, they'll be ready to think about Huck and what he rejects and embraces. Some readers think that not only the fence is whitewashed in the earlier book, but also the greed, hypocrisy, and potential violence of the town Huck once considered home. The dark hints about St. Petersburg are surely more fully developed in Huckleberry Finn, and Tom is, in some ways, the most disturbing character in the book. But St. Petersburg with all its warts must be compared to the alternatives we see. There is little doubt that community life as one goes down the river gets worse, that Grangerford feuds and Arkansas towns are more debased than the more northern town from which Jim runs. Huck's lighting out, his natural delight in the water and stars, and his unexamined goodness, teach us much about the defects of the "sivilized" places he moves through. Their slavery is more than a defect. It is an unacceptable evil, and Twain has no illusions about the ease with which this evil can be eradicated. But, as we have seen, Huck's life depends on the lives of these towns. And, despite the shortcomings which Twain so sharply reveals in the townspeople, their rootedness and their attachment to homes attached to other homes, are the only foundations on which viable American communities can be built. If freedom can mean anything besides continual lighting out, these are the men and women who will be at home in America. If not, then Twain's book is very dark indeed, and he has left us all alone and homeless. SUMMER 1985 �1784: The Year St. John's College Was Named Charlotte Fletcher In late December 1784, a western shore college was chartered by the Maryland General Assembly and was given the name St. John's College. Contemporary records do not reveal how and why the name was chosen. If the college was named for a saint, there were three strong contenders. First was St. John Chrysostom. In 1807 he was a favorite of two of fhe college's early graduates, John Shaw and Francis Scott Key (class of 1796), who were young poets with literary ambitions. Chrysostom, the "golden-mouthed" bishop of Constantinople, was a muse to John Shaw. "By the blessing of St. Chrysostom, '' he wrote Francis Scott Key on January 24, 1807, "As I am in great haste, and in no less need for our Saint's assistance, I hope you have not forgotten our plans, but will soon be ready in the litany, 0 Sancte Chrysostome! ora pro nobis. I have examined the college library and find many valuable books in it. There is an edition of Chrysostom in twelve volumes, three of whlch are wanting ... ' ' 1 After 1870, John the Evangelist was generally accepted as the favored saint. In a dedication speech at the opening of Woodward Hall on June 18, 1900, John Wirt Randall commented that the Evangelist's name was particularly appropriate for an educational institution because it suggested "more than those of the other apostles-the relation between a scholar and a teacher."' Indeed, St. John's College at Cambridge University was named for the Evangelist. Randall knew this, and also that a college historian of the 1870s had claimed that certain unnamed 1784 incorporators had attended St. John's College, Cambridge. For this reason, it was believed, the Annapolis college had been named "St. John's" after the Cambridge college.' In 1894 Bernard Steiner introduced another theory about the origin of the college's name. He wrote: "Other authorities say the name (St. John's) was given in comTHE ST. JOHN'S REVIEW pliment to the Masonic fraternity then very strong in Annapolis."' It is true that the seal of St. John's College, as well as that of Washington College (founded 1782), bears a masonic symbol. It is also true that the old Masonic lodge of Annapolis warranted by the St. John's Grand Lodge of Massachusetts in 1750 was a St. John's lodge. It was a "modern" lodge, i.e., descended from the Grand Lodge of England (founded 1717). Other Maryland lodges of the colonial period were chartered by the Grand Lodge of Pennsylvania and were "ancients," or Ancient York Masons. It was customary to call all local lodges that were warranted by Grand Lodges by the generic name St. John's lodges. 5 But if the college was named "in compliment to the Masonic fraternity then very strong in Annapolis,'' as Steiner suggested, a fhird saint, John the Baptist, could have been the one honored in the naming of the college. The Masons honored two St. Johns, John the Baptist and John the Evangelist. Steiner's reference to an active Masonic fraternity is also unclear because the old Annapolis St. John's Lodge was moribund after 1764. 6 Yet many Masons visited Annapolis in the revolutionary period. They came from the counties of Maryland and other states of the Confederation to attend the Continental Congress, the General Assembly, and the General Courts. They included officers in the Maryland Line7 and other distinguished military figures. Moreover, throughout the state new "ancient" lodges were being warranted under the Pennsylvania Grand Lodge, and members of "modern" lodges who wished to enter into the mysteries of Ancient York Masonry were being "healed." Two Masons in Kent County were active in promoting Ancient York Masonry in Maryland during the 1780s: they were the Rev. William Smith and Peregrine Leatherbury, who had been among the incorporators of Washington College in 1782. 8 53 �The year before, Smith, the Grand Secretary of the Pennsylvania Grand Lodge, had digested and abridged an Ahiman Rezon, or book of masonic constitutions, for the Pennsylvania Grand Lodge. Published in 1783, the Ahiman Rezon was a guide to Masons on moral conduct and discretion and laid out an orderly procedure to be followed at lodge meetings. Repeatedly, it designated the two St. Johns' days, that of the Baptist on June 24 and that of the Evangelist on December 27, for special business and festive occasions. 9 However, it offered no information about the Masonic symbols used at the time on official seals like those of Washington and St. John's colleges. Two books on European Masonry of the period, however, do offer examples of Masonic symbols used as teaching devices. An old Russian Mason in Tolstoy's War and Peace described an example to Pierre Bezuhov when he instructed him in the mysteries of Masonry. The old man described a mount, raised stone by stone by succeeding generations, on which the temple of wisdom, or Solomon's temple, was erected. 10 This description was an aid in identifying the device adopted for the St. John's seal (see Figure 1). The layers of stones in the pile number seven, the usual number of steps leading up to Solomon's temple and a number corresponding to the seven Masonic virtues. On the St. John's seal, a man climbing aloft carries a T-square .11 The second book about European Masonry of this period, Jacques Chailley's Magic Flute: a Masonic Opera, 12 is replete with illustrations of Masonic devices. Washington College adopted one that shows a shield hung from a column. The three stars on the shield symbolize the three Masonic degrees of St. John's Masonry: apprentice, fellow-craft and master mason. Key-like tools hold garlands of roses as a drapery above the column to celebrate the enthusiasm that brought about the founding of the college. A picture in the book13 identified these tools as the miniature trowels used in Masonic rites to "seal" the mouths of initiates (Figure 2), i.e., to remind them of the first Masonic virtue, discretion, or the keeping of secrets. The date on the Washington College seal-1782commemorates the year that the college was founded, which was also a year in which two well-established Masonic lodges were flourishing in Kent County .14 If the St. John's seal had been similarly dated with the year that it was chartered, its seal might also constitute evidence of a Masonic fraternity in Annapolis in 1784. But the St. John's seal is dated 1793, the year that the Board of Visitors and Governors ordered that a seal be designed and executed to imprint diplomas for the college's first graduates.15 Coincidentally, it also commemorated a significant date for Annapolis Masonry: in 1793 the Amanda Lodge No. 12, an "ancient," was founded, creating a brotherhood of Annapolis Masons to help lay the cornerstone of the new capitol at Washington in November 1793. 16 The Masonic device on the St. John's seal dated 1793, then, does not refer to a Masonic fraternity in Annapolis 54 in Annapolis in the 1780s and does not substantiate Steiner's theory. Yet a Masonic enthusiasm had promoted education throughout Maryland in the 1780s. In 1784 the imminent creation of a Western Shore college was greeted with fervor by Freemason William Smith in his introduction to An Account of Washington College. The preamble of the "Charter of 1782" published therein described an eventual state university comprised of a Western and Eastern Shore college united under "one supreme legislative and visitatorial jurisdiction." Smith's uplifting and inspiring introduction was written in the spirit of the times: For however flattering it may be to consider the growth of these rising states as tending to encrease [sic] the wealth and commerce of the world; they are to be considered in another more serious view, as ordained to enlarge the sphere of HU- MANITY. In that view .the great interest of civil LIBERTY, the parent of every other social blessings, will not be forgotten .. .. We must regard the'great concerns of religion and another world. We must attend to the rising generation. The souls of our youth must be nursed up to the love of LlliERTY and KNOWLEDGE; and their bosoms warmed with a sacred and enlightened zeal for every thing that can bless or dignify the species . ... 17 In that spirit-wishing "to attend to the rising generation" and to found a university-a group of gentlemen met in Annapolis to promote a Western Shore college on December 3, 1784. They ordered that the reverend john Carroll, William Smith, D.D. and Patrick Allison, D.D. together with Richard Sprigg, john Steret and George Digges Esquires, be a committee to complete the heads of a bill for founding a college on the Western Shore, and to publish the same immediately, with a proper preamble for taking in subscriptions .... Accordingly, by December 16 the text of "A Draught of a Proposed Act, Submitted to Public Consideration, for Founding a College on the Western Shore of This State, and for Constituting the Same, together with Washington College on the Eastern Shore, into One University, by the Name of The UNIVERSITY OF MARYLAND" was released to the public. 18 One subscription list was actually filled by December 16. Known as the Annapolis list, it bore signatures of sixty-two subscribers who pledged a total of 2703 pounds. Those who pledged were planters, legislators, state officials, a barracksman, a silversmith, a carpenter, a clergyman, a tavern-keeper, a barber, a sea captain, and all the merchants of Annapolis. The six men ordered "to complete the heads of a bill for founding a college on the Western Shore" were to be known as ''subscription agents.'' They were a clergyman and a layman from each of the three major religious denominations in Maryland, the Roman Catholic, the Presbyterian and the Protestant Episcopal. Of these men, only William Smith was from an Eastern Shore county. SUMMER 1985 �The "Draught" borrowed large portions of the Washington College charter of 1782 but added a new preamble and plan for electing members to the Board of Visitors and Governors. Much else was left out because, as they explained, it would merely repeat similar articles in the Charter of 1782." A letter written by William Smith dated January 16, 1785, told how in early December he had been called "in Conjunction with two Oergymen of other Denominations ... to draft the University Law which we happily did Zeal of the Eastern Shore for the Advancement of Learning, in that the Sum of five thousand pounds which the Act required ... has been nearly doubled in less than One Year, they trusted that the Genera1 Assembly will think this College deserving of their further Attention and favors, and will extend their Views to the establishing and encouraging of Seminaries of Learning in the State. 25 with great Unanimity.' ' 20 While "happily" drafting the "Proposed Act," the subscription agents expanded paragraph 9 of the Charter of 1782, which read "youth of all religious denominations shall be freely and liberally admitted ... according to their merit ... without requiring or enforcing any religious or civel [sic] test," by adding "without urging their attendance upon any particular worship or service, other than what they have been educated in, or have the consent and approbation of their parents or guardians to attend." Apparently, the authors of the text that finally became the "Charter of 1784" intended that students should enjoy religious liberty and that the college would nurture students in their own faith, for as John Carroll said, "It being an intended stipulation that provision be made, from the College funds, if necessary, to procure all of them opportunities to frequent their particular forms of worship. " 21 To the paragraph on civil liberty contained in the Draught, the Charter of 1784 added an introductory clause for emphasis, saying the college would be established "upon the following fundamental and inviolable principles" -and made several other changes as well. Where the Draught had read "upon the most liberal and catholic plan," the Charter of 1784 omitted the word 'catholic. ' 2 William Smith explained the necessity for omitting "and catholic." The word 'catholic,' he wrote, "although intelligible enough to many, yet-is not approved by many others, on account of the vulgar application to one particular church. " 23 He continued to use it in his own letters, however, in its all-embracing sense. When the Charter of 1784 was finally enacted, he proudly commented that "Maryland has been among the last of the States in her Provisions for Learning; but none of them can boast so noble a Foundation as her University now is." 24 In May 1783, eighteen months before the passage of the Charter of 1784, William Paca and his council sent a message to the General Assembly recommending that the legislature give special attention to two issues as soon as peace was firmly established: "Trade and Commerce" first, and then "Matters of so high Concernment as Religion and Learning." For the latter they recommended "Public support for the Ministers of the Gospel," which the Maryland Bill of Rights allowed, and acknowledging the strong public encouragement given Washington College, as shown by the THE ST. JOHN'S REVIEW As a matter of fact, the three clergy agents who were commanded in December 1784 to "complete the heads of a bill for founding a college on the Western Shore" had been engaged in "Religion and Learning" all their lives. All were teachers and educators. John Carroll was a graduate of St. Orner's College in France and of the Jesuit academy at Liege, Belgium; he was a priest and a teacher at the Jesuit college in Bruges until the Jesuit order in Belgium was suppressed by a papal bull in 1773. In 1784 he was engaged in organizing the American Catholic Church. Patrick Allison, a graduate and then a teacher at the College of Philadelphia, came to Maryland in 1764 to become pastor of the Baltimore Presbyterian Church, where he served for the remainder of his life. And William Smith, a graduate of the University of Aberdeen, was the young Scotsman whom Benjamin Franklin had recruited to develop the Philadelphia Academy into a college. He was the teacher of Natl.J!al Philosophy and Provost of the College of Philadelphia from the time the College was chartered in 1753 until the revocation of its charter in 1779. In 1784 he was rector of Chester Parish, Kent County, and President of Washington College, as well as a leader in the formation of the new Protestant Episcopal Church. 26 All three men were polemicists who wrote pamphlets, letters to the newspapers, and petitions to the Assembly on behalf of their particular churches, sometimes attacking each other. Though sectarian interests divided them, the rise of Freemasonry may have created a climate that allowed them to work in concert for the advancement of learning. Indeed, John Carroll described a new kind of religious freedom in America following the Revolution: in these United States our Religious System has undergone a revolution if possible, more extraordinary, than our political one. In all of them free toleration is allowed to Christians of every denomination; and particularly in the States of Pennsylvania, Delaware, Maryland, and Virginia, a communication of all Civil rights, without distinction or diminution, is extended to those of our Religion. This is a blessing and advantage, which is our duty to preserve & improve with utmost prudence. 27 Either Freemasonry or the Spirit of '76, or both, created such a climate. In the fall of 1784, John Carroll replied to a "Letter to the Roman Catholics of Worcester," which was published in three different issues of the Maryland 55 �Gazette28 after having been printed as a pamphlet in Philadelphia the previous winter. The author, Charles Wharton, Carroll's cousin and ex-jesuit, had recently joined the Protestant Episcopal Church. In the "Letter" he explained to his former congregation in Worcester, England, the doctrinal reasons for his leaving the Roman Church. All three parts are scholarly, referring often to the church fathers, and especially to St. john Chrysostom, who he claimed supported his Protestant view of the Scriptures. Carroll, a convinced Catholic, took the opposite view and refuted this argument in a pamphlet, ''An Address to Roman Catholics on Wharton. " 29 He quoted from the volumes of Chrysostom that he found in the "public library" in Annapolis. 30 Responses from Catholic readers assured him that he had succeeded in reaffirming their faith. When Wharton published another letter, "To the Roman Catholics of Maryland,"31 Carroll refused to reply: "I shall forbear reviving a spirit of controversy, least it should add fuel to some spark of religious animosity. " 32 Carroll was eager that Catholic youths and teachers seize the opportunity offered them by the Maryland colleges. 33 Patrick Allison, on the contrary, was far more conten- tious in 1783 and 1784 because he saw a concerted effort to set up a new established church in Maryland. Along with Anabaptists, Methodists, Quakers, and Roman Catholics, he continued to smart from having been taxed for the support of the Church of England in Maryland before 1776. Immediately after Governor Paca's address in May, 1783, he began writing a series of articles in the Maryland Journal against the tax proposed to "support the ministers of the Gospel." Allison thought the tax could only benefit the new Protestant Episcopal Church, which had been designated heir to all real property of the old established Church of England. Moreover, because the church's membership and property already exceeded that of the other sects, the tax would extend its influence out of all proportion to that enjoyed by the others, and, indeed, lead to a new church establishment. He suggested that to prevent such a development, former Church of England property be divided among all the sects that had paid a church tax before the Revolution. 34 The first of Allison's articles (published july 15, 1783) attacked the clergyman nominated by the Maryland Convention of the Protestant Episcopal Church to become the first bishop of Maryland, William Smith. Allison used his rapier pen exuberantly: Nor is it my wish to disturb the reverend Dr. S. in his retirement from the world and the things of the world, where he is inhaling copious draughts of sublime contemplation, purifying himself by a course of mental recollection, contrition, and extraordinary devotion, for the mitred honours to which he is destined. 3s Smith took no lasting offence at Allison's attack, although it may have been one of the factors influencing the church to reject him as a candidate for bishop. Smith 56 was perhaps toughened by years of controversy endured in Pennsylvania before he came to Maryland. In 1758 and 1759, while William Paca and Patrick Allison were attending the College of Philadelphia, Provost Smith was jailed by the Pennsylvania General Assembly on a charge of libel. However, with the backing of the trustees of the college, he had continued to conduct classes and to function as Provost while in jail. 36 An appeal to the King freed him but did not endear him to the Assembly: they already felt threatened by Smith's efforts to promote the Church of England in Pennsylvania. Finally, in 1779, when they revoked the charter of the College of Philadelphia, he was ousted as both Provost and teacher. He then moved to Chestertown and started a school. This school merged with the Kent County School and under his direction grew in size and importance to the point where its trustees petitioned the General Assembly of Maryland to charter it as Washington College. 37 It seems most unlikely, however, that Smith, the Freemason, would have suggested the name "St. john" to honor a Masonic fraternity in Annapolis at the time when the "Draught of a Proposed Act" was being written: he would have been afraid that such a suggestion might destroy the "great Unanimity" that the committee was enjoying. Furthermore, though many Catholics, and notably john Carroll's brother Daniel, belonged to the Masons, Carroll would have had a deep personal aversion to them: they had played an active role in the suppression of the jesuits in Europe. But while he would not have chosen to honor the Masons, most likely he would not have objected to naming the college after his patron saint (who was one of the "johns"). Allison, however, had actually expressed his personal distaste for Masonry when he ridiculed Smith's participation in Masonic purification rites. 38 Moreover, the Presbyterians (like the jews) consider all members of a congregation saints, and they (the Presbyterians) scarcely ever name their institutions after any except St. Andrew and St. Giles. These two agents, then, Carroll and Allison, would certainly not have suggested the name "St. john" to honor the Masons. On December 24, 1784, ten days after its publication in Annapolis, the "Draught of a Proposed Act" appeared in Baltimore's Maryland Journal. Six days later a revised version that incorporated hitherto unpublished sections borrowed from the Charter of 1782 was enacted by the House of Delegates. It included provisions for collecting revenues through licenses and taxes on the Western Shore for the support of the college39 and outlined a policy for the governance of a University of Maryland. Where blanks had been left in the Draught for insertion of a name, "St. John's College" now appeared. The naming action was a fait accompli at the time the bill was introduced, for the Journal of the House reported neither motions nor discussion regarding the college's name. Neither the Maryland Gazette, nor the Maryland Journal, nor the Journals of the Senate and the House of Delegates for the November 1784 Session of the General Assembly, explains what happened. Some special influence was SUMMER 1985 �at work in Annapolis during the last week of December 1784. While Governor Paca spent Christmas at Wye Hall on the Eastern Shore, the General Assembly convened every day, including Christmas and Sunday, in Annapolis. Two major pieces of legislation that he had recommended in the message of 1783 were slated to come up during his absence: one bill embodied the interests of "Trade and Commerce," and the other, the interests of ''Religion and Learning.'' Although promotion of the second, the "University Law" (St. John's College), began early in the session, action on it was delayed until the report from a conference of Maryland and Virginia legislators concerned with "Trade and Commerce" was pushed through the Assembly on December 27. The Journals of the House and Senate report that General Washington and General Gates arrived in Annapolis on December 22. On the same day the following Maryland commissioners were appointed by the Assembly to confer with the Virginia delegation: Senators Thomas Stone, Samuel Hughes and Charles Carroll; and Delegates John Cadwalader, Samuel Chase, John DeButts, George Digges, Philip Key, Gustavus Scott and Joseph Dashiell. George Washington-the lone Virginian after General Gates had fallen ill on arrival-was chosen to chair the conference. The Senate and House Journals give the barest facts about the conference, and the newspapers less. A letter from George Washington, in Annapolis, to the Marquis de Lafayette in Paris on December 23, is more forthcoming: You would scarcely expect to receive a letter from me at this place. A few hours before I set out for it, I as little expected to cross the Potomac again this winter, or even to be fifteen miles from home before the last of April, as I did to make a visit in an air~ba11oon in France. I am here, however, with General Gates, at the request of the Assembly of Virginia to fix matters with the Assembly of this State respecting the extension of the inland navigation of the Potomac, and the communication between it and the western waters; and I hope a plan which will be agreed upon, to the mutual satisfaction of both States and to the advantage of the Union at large. " On December 22 five days of unremitting labor began for all the conferees. If there were any parties, balls or dinners given in honor of Washington between December 22 and 29, 1784, in Annapolis, the Maryland Gazette failed to report them. On the 28th, Washington wrote James Madison at the Legislature in Richmond, "It is now near 12 at Night, and I am writing with an Aching Head, having been constantly employed in this business since the 22nd without assistance from my Colleagues, Genl. Gates having been sick the whole time, and Colo. Blackburn not attending .... "41 The Journals of the House and Senate do reveal one strange hiatus in these five days of intense legislative effort. On December 27 the commissioners who were THE ST. JOHN'S REVIEW preparing a Potomac bill introduced their report in the House of Delegates and received a first and second reading early in the morning session (only nine dissenting votes were cast). From the House the bill was taken to the Senate, where it was read and ordered "to lie on the table" until the Senate reconvened at five o'clock for a "post meridiem" meeting: the House followed suit and also adjourned for a "post meridiem" meeting to begin a half hour later than the Senate's. When the Senate reconvened at five o'clock, the Potomac bill, entitled "An Act for Establishing a Company for Opening and Extending the Navigation on the River Patowmack," had a second reading; the Senate then concurred with the action taken by the House and adjourned, probably no later than six o'clock. The House had reconvened at five-thirty, and since they had no business to transact-their meeting had apparently been called so that they would be on hand if needed by the Senate-had adjourned forthwith. The Potomac bill thus passed both houses on December 27, 1784, the Festival Day of St. John the Evangelist, the anniversary celebrated by all Freemasons. On the following day, December 28, the Senate resolved "that an attested copy of the act . . . be transmitted to Gen. Washington and Gen. Gates ... signing by the governor will be complied with when he returns to town." On December 29, the House proceeded to take action on the second major bill of the session, the "University Law," which was submitted by gentlemen whose names were on a list of Annapolis subscribers dated December 16, 1784 requesting that the General Assembly enact legislation to establish a Western Shore college." Like the "Draught of a Proposed Act," which headed all the subscription lists, the Charter of 1784 allowed one vote toward election of a Visitor and Governor to each subscriber who paid nine pounds or more on any list totaling one thousand pounds. Other provisos in the Charter for electing members to the Board of Visitors and Governors differed in some significant respects from those in the Draught. Where the Draught specified "person or persons" as sources from whom the agents might solicit contributions, and who might form a class of subscribers who could elect one board member, the Charter of 1784 adds ''bodies politic and corporate" ; 43 and where the Draught said the last seven members elected to the Board to complete an aggregate of twenty-four "may be chosen from this or any part of the adjacent states," the Charter narrows the geographical field to "any part of this state." In both documents the first seventeen members are required to be residents of the Western Shore 44 These provisos are among the "considerable alterations'' to which William Smith referred in a letter to the Rev. William White in late December 1784: Considerable alterations were made in the plan first settled by Mr. Carroll, Dr. Allison and myself, respecting the nice provisos amongst different denominations in proportion to their subscriptions. The paper was printed off before I came 57 �over. But I was told by Carroll of Carrollton, Mr. Sprigg, etc., that the alterations were made in concert with Dr. Allison. I am satisfied, as I hope all our society will be, with the plan as it now is, and as I would have agreed it should originally have been, as I know that a few grains of mutual confidence and benevolence among different denominations of Christians will be better than splitting and torturing a design of this kind with all the provisos possible . ... Carroll of Carrollton, Mr. Digges, etc. have subscribed liberally, as it is expected the rest of that society will do. 45 During his less than peaceable sojourn among the Quakers in Pennsylvania, William Smith had very likely learned to call all denominations ''societies,'' a term used by some denominations but very seldom used by the Episcopalians and Catholics to whom he referred in this letter. For example, the rapidly growing denomination of Methodists called themselves "members in society" and their congregations "societies" as late as 1857 46 During Christmas 1784, they were organizing the Methodist Episcopal Church at a conference in Baltimore, declaring themselves independent of the British Conference in the choice of their bishops and superintendents. They were also laying plans to found a college of their own to educate their youth. In response to the request of the Annapolis subscribers, the House of Delegates on December 29, 1784 proceeded to order a committee of seven men - Samuel Chase, George Digges, Allen Quynn, Nicholas Carroll, John Cadwalader, David McMechen and Gustavus Scott- to prepare and bring in a bill for "Founding a college on the Western Shore of this State." Chase, Digges, Cadwalader and Scott had been on the committee to confer with Washington on the Potomac bill; all but Scott and Cadwalader were signers of the Annapolis subscription list dated December 16. The very next day they were ready with the bill. The Journals reveal no additions or corrections to the bill as introduced on December 30. The name "St. John's College" as well as any other changes made in the Draught must have been agreed on beforehand. The only recorded discussion or motions on the House floor while the Act was under consideration came from jealous Baltimore town delegates: they proposed that some of the proceeds collected in Baltimore from the taxes and licenses designated for the support of the college be returned to Baltimore. When the question on the total bill finally came-no changes had been made in the text introduced by the committee-there were 33 yeas and 18 nays. The nays came from the counties farthest removed from Annapolis-Harford, Cecil and Washington Counties; the Eastern Shore (they already had a college) and southern Maryland delegates were almost to a man in favor. The one Baltimore delegate who voted yea was David McMechen, a Freemason. 47 One year before (December 23, 1783), when Washington had resigned as Commander-in-Chief before the Continental Congress in Annapolis, the Maryland House 58 of Delegates had sent him the following message: Having by your conduct in the field gloriously terminated th~ war, you have taught us, by your last circular letter, how t< value, how to preserve and to improve that liberty for whid we have been contending. We are convinced that publh liberty cannot be long preserved, but by wisdom, integrity, and a strict adherence to public justice and public engage ments. The justice and these engagements, as far as the in fluence and example of one state can extend, we an determined to promote and fulfill; and if the powers giver to congress by the confederation should be found to be in competent to the purposes of the union, we doubt not ouJ constituents will readily consent to enlarge them . ... 48 Proud to have enlarged the powers of the Confederation by the expeditious passage of Washington's Potomac bill, the Maryland legislators named the Western Shore college for the day when his bill was enacted, the Feast Day of the Evangelist. (If the Eastern Shore had not already preempted the name for their college, "Washington" might have been a natural choice for the Western Shore college.) Not only was it a day that they had ~n­ joyed in the company of their former Commander-mChief, but also it was a day that would have had specral significance for Washington, the Freemason. George Washington, a private citizen in 1784, would have observed the Feast Day of the Evangelist. Young George had been initiated as a Mason in the Lodge ~t Fredericksburg on November 4, 1752. He attended vanous Masonic functions while Commander-in-Chief of the Continental Army, notably the celebration of the anniversary of the Evangelist in Christ Church, Philadelphia, on December 28, 1778, when William Smith preached the sermon. On December 23, 1783, the brethren in the Alexandria Lodge had sent greetings to him on his return home, which he had acknowledged on the 28th of December as "Yr. Affect. Bror & obedt Servt" These were not Christmas greeting that were being exchanged: they were the customary exchange of greetings between Masons on the anniversary of the Evangelist-December 27. On June 24, 1784, on the anniversary of St. John the Baptist, another festival day observed by the Mason.s, Washington was invited to dine with Lodge No. 39 m Alexandria. He had replied, "I will have the honor of doing it .... "Minutes of Lodge No. 39 for that day record The Worshipful Master Read to the Lodge a most instructive lecture on the rise, progress & advantages of Masonry & concluded with a prayer suitable to the occasion. The Master & Brethren then proceed' d to Jn° Wise's Tavern, where they Dined & after spending the afternoon in Masonick Festivity, returned again to the Lodge room. The Worshipful Master with the unanimous consent of the Brethren, was pleased to admit his Excellency, Genl Washington as an Honorary Member of Lodge No. 39. 49 Two months after his visit to Annapolis in December 1784, on February 28, 1785, Washington walked in a SUMMER 1985 �procession of Freemasons at the funeral of his friend William Ramsay. Moreover, Maryland Masons were particularly in the habit of observing the St. Johns' days with festivities. According to Schultz, "It will be observed how scrupulously our Brethren of Maryland in the early times observed the Saint Johns' days and the custom was continued as we shall see by the Lodges in the jurisdictions for many years.''so It is possible that the Maryland General Assembly returned for a "post meridiemn meeting on December 27, 1784 for an evening dinner to celebrate the festival of the Evangelist with Freemason George Washington. The Journals of the House and Senate show that they did adjourn and reconvene in the evening, probably for a joint affair. The House had completed its business for the day; there was no reason for them to reconvene at fivethirty, one half hour later than the Senate had scheduled their evening meeting, unless it was to participate in some sort of event with members of the Senate after the Senate had concurred with the House's action on the Potomac bill. The Senate reconvened at five o'clock. An hour would have given them ample time to read the Act and concur-no debate or voting was required for this. Their business could have been finished easily by six o'clock-in time for a St. John's dinner. The "post meridiem" meeting scheduled by both Houses on December 27, 1784-a rare event in the recorded history of the two Housesindicates some special circumstance. Another possibility is that a festive dinner was held during the afternoon recess, although the majority of the legislators were not Masons. Certainly a number of them were Masons, and even those who were not Masons accepted Masonic rituals. Masonry provided an accepted ceremonial in the young republic: for example, Washington, as well as many other prominent men, was buried with Masonic rites. Nonetheless, in spite of much interest in Freemasonry in Annapolis during the 1780s, there was no active Annapolis lodge in 1784. But gentlemen of the town enjoyed several social and literary clubs, notably the Hominy and Tuesday Evening Clubs, where subjects of literary and philosophical interest-and Freemasonry perhaps-were discussed by "enlightened men." On the other hand, the counties of the state and Baltimore had only their Masonic lodges for fraternal occasions and for intelligent conversation. Also, Washington, the Freemason, was aware that a Western Shore college was being founded as part of a University of Maryland; he knew that an act for establishing it would be introduced after he left Annapolis. Just a week later, on January 5, 1785, he wrote Samuel Chase, a member of both the committee to confer on the Potomac bill and the committee to present the Charter of 1784 to the House of Delegates, that the attention which your assembly is giving to the establishment of public schools, for the encouragement of literature, THE ST. JOHN'S REVIEW does them great honor: to accomplish this, ought to be one of our first endeavours: I know of no object more interesting. We want something to expand the mind, and make us think with more liberality, and act with sounder policy, than most of the States do. We should consider that we are not now in leading strings. It behooves us therefore to look well to our ways. 5 2 Washington was clearly intrigued with the grander scheme of which the Western Shore college was a partthe University for "the encouragement of literature"and his letter showed that he must have talked about the bold scheme with Samuel Chase and perhaps others. When eleven members were finally elected to the Board of Visitors and Governors in early 1786 from the various classes of subscribers, the Board was duly constituted. Under the date of March 21, 1786 they published the following notice: "The subscribers of St. John's College, by order of the visitors and governors, are hereby requested to make their first payment to the subscriber, treasurer to the college on or before the first day of June next. (signed) BENJAMIN HARWOOD. " 53 Previous to this, all notices published by the subscription agents had been addressed to "subscribers of St. John's or the Western Shore College." In the notice dated March 21, 1786 "Western Shore College" was omitted, and "St. John's College" appeared in roman type, alone, for the first time. "St. John's College" became the corporate name when enacted in the Charter of 1784. The tradition promulgated in 1870 that said that the college was named by its incorporators after an English institution had little basis. If honoring a noted English college had been the reason for calling the Annapolis college "St. John's," few of the Maryland populace would have been pleased, so soon after the conclusion of a bloody war with Britain. In 1971, President Richard D. Weigle searched the student rolls at St. John's College, Cambridge (also Oxford) University to discover which men associated with the 1784 incorporation had actually registered there. Evidently the generally accepted theory that the Annapolis college had been named after St. John's College, Cambridge (or Oxford), and which went unquestioned for many years thereafter, reflected the anglophilia of the 1870s rather than the anglophobia of 1784. For no names of men directly tied with the founding of the Maryland college were found. At the same time, The Board of Visitors and Governors of St. John's College, Annapolis and Santa Fe, were persuaded that prospective students and donors were repelled by the name "St. John's College," and they considered adopting a secular name instead. 54 As a preliminary step in effecting a change in name, a committee of the Board sent a questionnaire to all alumni, students and faculty to gather their reactions. Response from the group was overwhelmingly in favor of continuing to operate as "St. John's College," a name now rich with associations gathered over the years, including the 1937 adoption of a curriculum nationally known as the St. John's Pro59 �gram. 55 The Board proceeded no further. In 1786 the name already had strong associations, and the first Board of Visitors and Governors continued to use it. They did not revert to "Western Shore College," or any other name, although through process of law they could have. Indeed "St. John's College" proved so acceptable that it prevailed through the first stormy half century of the college's history, and long after participants in the naming had died. Although no one had bothered to record the circumstances from living memory, we have seen that the records show that a remarkable legislative performance did take place on the Feast Day of St. John the Evangelist, December 27, 1784, when on behalf of their good friend, George Washington, Maryland legislators enacted the first piece of cooperative legislation among the various states in the Confederation following the definitive "Treaty of Peace." They were naturally proud of a name that reminded them of that day, and they adopted it for the new college several days later. Thus, although no contemporary records state why the college was called St. John's, one can infer that it was in honor of the Evangelist, and coincidentally, it was in compliment to the Masonic fraternity of Annapolis in 1784. Perhaps some few were reminded of the Cambridge college as well, but no contemporary records suggest this. It is hard to understand why a cloud of mystery has ever since enveloped the circumstances of the college's naming, but if Masons were responsible, one could expect secrecy about their role: discretion, the keeping of secrets, is the first of the Masonic virtues. Acknowledgments I could not have accomplished the necessary research nor have written this paper without help from many quarters. Source material was obtained in the following collections: EpiscOpal Archives in Austin, Texas, the Hall of Records, the Maryland State Library and the St. John's College Archives in Annapolis; the Maryland Historical Society, the Maryland Diocesan Library and the Maryland Room of the Enoch Pratt Free Library in Baltimore; and the Manuscript and Rare Book Division at the Library of Congress. I am grateful to Kathryn Kinzer for many insights and for all the books she borrowed on interlibrary loan; to Roberta Hankamer, Librarian Grand Lodge of Masons, A.F. & M. Library, Boston; to Eva Brann, Mary Fletcher, Phebe Jacobsen, Mildred Trivers, Margaret Ross, Harriet Sheehy and Allison Karslake for reading my manuscript; to Archivist Miriam Strange for her constant helpfulness; and to President Richard D. Weigle for granting me two months' leave from my library duties in the summer of 1977. REFERENCES 1. Poems by the late Doctor John Shaw, to which is prefixed a Biographical Sketch of the Author (Philadelphia and Baltimore, 1810), pp. 92-93. A short essay on the "Eloquence of St. Chrysostom: with a translation of a homily on patience" was published by Shaw in Port Folio, n.s. 3 #2(1807): pp. 17-19. 2. Memorial Volume: Dedication Ceremonies in Connection with the Formal Opening of the Henry Williams Woodward Hall at St. John's College, Annapolis, Md. (Annapoli,, 1900), pp. 30, 31. 3. Bernard Christian Steiner, History of Education in Maryland, Contributions to American Educational History, #19 (Washlngton, D.C., 1894), p. 103n. 4. Steiner, History of Education in Man;land, p. 103n. 5. Encyclopedia Britannica, 11th ed., s. v. "Freemasonry:" Coil's Masonic Encyclopedia, s.v. "St. John As a Generic Term and As a Lodge Name;" 60 Edward T. Schultz, History of Freemasonn; in Maryland, 4 vols. (Baltimore: Mediary, 1884), 1:389-390. 6. One Hundredth Anniversary, 1848-1948, Annapolis Lodge No. 89, A. F. and A.M. (Annapolis, n.d.), pp. 12, 13. 7. Generals Otto Holland Williams, John Swan, Mordecai Gist, Major Archibald Anderson, Capt. Stephen Decatur, Commodore James Nicholson, Col. Nathaniel Ramsey; see Schultz, Freemasonry in Man;land, 1:97-106. (General Lafayette also visited Annapolis many times.) 8. Schultz, Freemasonn; in Maryland, 1:382, 393, 396, 397. 9. William Smith, Ahiman Rezon, Abridged and Digested, As a Help to All That Are, or Would Be Free and Accepted Masons (Philadelphia, 1783), pp. 62, 65, 66. 67, 80, 82, 83. 10. Leo Tolstoy, War and Peace (New York, 1931), pp. 323-336. 11. Motto encircling the St. John's seal: "Est Nulla Via Invia Virtuti" (No way impassable to courage). There are seven masonic virtues: (1) discretion, the keeping of secrets; (2) obedience to the higher authorities of the order; (3) morality; (4) love for mankind; (5) courage; (6) liberality, and (7) love of Death. See Tolstoy, War and Peace, p. 331. 12. Jacques Chailley, The Magic Flute, the Masonic Opera: an Interpretation of the Libretto and the Music (New York, 1971), pl. 35, p. 130. 13. Coil's Masonic Encyclopedia, s.v. "St. John." 14. Lodge No. 6 in Georgetown on the Sassafras and Lodge No. 17 at Chestertown were founded in 1766. 15. St. John's College, Minutes of the Board of Visitors and Governors, July 2, 1793: ''Resolved: that Bishop Carroll, Bishop Claggett, Mr. Nicholas Carroll, Dr. Scott, Mr. John Thomas, Mr. Jennings and Mr. Hanson, or any three, be a committee to attend at any time, when requested by the principal for the purpose of superintending a private examination of such students as shall be candidates for the first degree to be conferred, at a commen~:ement to take place in November next." "Resolved: that the said committee be authorized to procure for the board one common public seal and likewise one privy seal with such devices and inscriptions as they shall think proper; the particular uses of the said seals to be hereafter ascertained, fixed and regulated by this board." 16. One Hundredth Anniversary, pp. 13, 14. 17. William Smith, An Account of Washington College (Philadelphia, 1784), p. 2. Compare with Pierre Bezuhov's speech to the Petersburg lodge in 1809 (Tolstoy, War and Peace, p. 405). 18. Maryland Gazette, December 16, 1784. 19. For text of the Washington College charter of 1782 see Smith, Account of Washington College, pp. 5-14. Hereafter Washington College's charter will be cited as "Charter of 1782;" "Draught of a Proposed Act ... "will be cited as "Draught" or "Proposed Act" (Maryland Gazette, December 16, 1784), the Act bearing the same name as the "Draught" will be cited as the "Charter of 1784," or the "University Law" (Laws of Maryland, Made and Passed at a Session of Assembly Begun and Held at the City of Annapolis, on Monday the first of November, in the Year of Our Lord One Thousand Seven Hundred and Eighty-Four [Annapolis, 1785], c. 36). 20. William Smith to William White, January 26, 1785. The Rt. Rev. William White Papers, v. 1, #56, Archives Historical Collection of the Episcopal Church, Austin, Texas. 21. The John Carroll Papers, ed. Thomas O'Brien Hanley, 3 vols. (Notre Dame, 1976), 1:158. 22. ''Charter of 1782,'' paragraph 9: ... ''and youth of all religious denominations and persuasions, shall be freely and liberally admitted to equal privileges and advantages of education, and to all the literary honors of the college, according to their merit, and the standing rules of the seminary, without requiring or enforcing any religious or civil test whatsoever upon any student, scholar or member of the said college, other than such oath of fidelity to the state as the laws thereof may require of the Visitors, Governors, Masters, Professors and Teachers in Schools and seminaries of learning in general" (Smith, Account of Washington College, p. 10). "Draught" "First, That the said intended college shall be founded and maintained for ever upon the most liberal and catholic plan for the benefit of the youth of every religious denomination, who shall be freely admitted to the equal privileges and advantages of education and to all the literary honours of the college according to their merit, without requiring or enforcing any religious or civil test or urging their atten- SUMMER 1985 �dance upon any particular religious worship or service, other than what they have been educated in, or have the consent and approbation of their parents or guardians to attend; nor shall any preference be given in the choice of a principal, vice-principal, or any professor or master in the said college on a religious score: but merely on account of his literary and other necessary qualifications to fill the place, for which he is chosen" (Maryland Gazette, December 16, 1784). "Charter of 1784" "II. Be it enacted, by the General Assembly of Maryland That a college or general seminary of learning, by the name of Saint John's, be established on the said western shore, upon the following fundamental and inviolable principles, namely; first the said college shall be founded and maintained for ever, upon a most liberal plan, for the benefit of youth of every religious denomination, who shall be freely admitted to equal privileges and advantages of education, and to all the literary honours of the college, according to their merit, without requiring or enforcing any religious or civil test, or urging their attendance upon any particular religious worship or service, other than what they have been educated in or have the consent and approbation of their parents or guardians to attend" (Laws of Marylandf 1785, c. 36). 23. Smith to White, January 26, 1785. Speaking of opposition to theReligious Bill in the General Assembly of 1785, Smith wrote "some men who call themselves Christians,-but I need not tell you, seem never to be pleased with any Thing however Christian, or however Catholic, where their Numbers will not enable them to be the sole or chief Directors .... "In passing it is interesting to note that the word "Christian" never appears in either the 1782 or 1784 charter. 24. Smith to White, January 26, 1785. 25. Archives of Maryland, ed. William H. Browne, 72 vols. (Baltimore, 1883- ), 27o408-409. 26. For Carroll see John Carroll Papers, 1:xlv-li; for Allison see John H. Gardner, Jr., First Presbyterian Church of Baltimore . .. (Baltimore, 1966) and William B. Sprague, Annals of the American Pulpit, 9 vols. (New York: Carter, 1857-69), 3:257-63; for Smith see Horace W. Smith, Life and Correspondence of the Rev. William Smith, 2 vols. (Philadelphia, 1879), 1:22-28, 2:18-23, 34, 35 (2 vols. in 1 reprint 1972, New York, Arno). 27. John Carroll Papers, 1:80, 81. 28. Maryland Gazette, September 30, October 7, October 21, 1784. 29. John Carroll Papers. 1:82-143. 30. John Carroll Papers, 1:112: "I procured a friend to examine the edition of Chrysostom's work belonging to the public library in Annapolis." The "public library" -known today as the Annapolitan Library or the Thomas Bray Collection-is in the possession of the St. John's College Library and is on deposit at the Maryland Hall of Records on the college campus. These are the volumes referred to in John Shaw's letter January 24, 1807 (see note 16). 31. "To the Roman Catholics of the State of Maryland; Especially Those of St. Mary's County," Maryland Gazette, November 25, 1784. 32. John Carroll Papers, 1:191. 33. John Carroll Papers, 1:185, 186. Carrull wrote to Father Eden at the Academy of Liege, April1785: "Do you know any young men of improved abilities and good conduct, capable of teaching the different branches of science with credit and reputation? It is now in contemplation to establish two Colleges in this state, open to Professors and Scholars of all denominations, and handsome appointments are to be annexed to the professorships. To me it appears, that it may be of much service not only to Learning, but to true Religion, to have some of these Professorships fi11ed by R. C. men of letters and virtue; and if one or two of them were in orders, it would be so much the better. " 34. Maryland Journal July 15, 1783, "To the Public:" October 28, 1783, "To the Han. the General Assembly:" November 26, December 7, December 14, 1784. "To the People of Maryland;" December 28, 1784, "A Design to Raise One Sect of Christians above Another.'' A restatement of these articles may be found in Allison, Candid Animadversions cited in note statement of these articles may be found in Allison, Candid Animadversions cited in note 35. 35. Patrick Allison, Candid Animadversions on a Petition Presented to the General Assembly of Maryland by the Rev. William Smith and the Rev. Thomas Gates, First Published in 1783 ... by Vindex (Baltimore, 1793) pp. iiiv, 1-16. 36. University of Pennsylvania, Minutes of the Trustees of the College, Academy, and Charitable School (Wilmington, 1974), p. 91: "The Assembly THE ST. JOHN'S REVIEW of the Province having taken Mr. Smith into Custody, the Trustees considered how the inconvenience from thence arising to the College might be best remedied, and Mr. Smith having expressed a Desire to continue his Lectures to the Classes, which had formerly attended them, the Students also inclining rather to proceed on their Studies under his Care. They ordered that the said Classes should attend him for that Purpose at the usual Hour in the Place of his present Confinement." 37. Smith, Life and Correspondence of Rev. William Smith, 2:34, 35. 38. Schultz, Freemasonry in Man;land, 1:382-393: "When Bro. Smith removed to Maryland, he was the Grand Secretary of the Grand Lodge of Pennsylvania, and as all Lodges of Ancient York Masons in Maryland were under the jurisdiction of the Grand Lodge of Pennsylvania, he was active in his official and other Masonic duties. The Lodges which had existed in Maryland prior to the introduction of the Lodges by the Ancients, were held under the authority of the Moderns, or other branch of the Masonic fraternity, and as these had now no ruling head in America, many of their members sought admission into the Ancient York Lodges. Brother Smith, and Brother John Coats, a Past Deputy Grand Master of the Grand Lodge of Pennsylvania, who also resided at the time in Maryland, were deputed by the Grand Lodge of Pennsylvania on the 2nd of September, 1782, to take to their assistance such true brothers as they might see proper, and enter into the mysteries of Ancient York Masonry any respectable Modern Masons in Maryland who might desire to be so healed .... " and Allison, Candid Animndversions, p. 3. 39. The sources of revenue are similar to those enacted for Washington College in ''An Act to Provide a Permanent Fund for the Encouragement and Establishment of Washington College," Votes and Proceedings of the House of Delegates for the State of Martjland (Annapolis, 1783-5), pp. 15-18. 40. Writings of George Washington, ed. John C. Fitzpatrick, 39 vols. (Washington, D.C., 1931-44), 22:17, 18. 41. Writings of G. W., 22:20. 42. Walter Bowie, James Brice, John Bullen, John Callahan, Charles Carroll of Carrollton, James Carroll, Nicholas Carroll, John Chalmers, J. Chase, Samuel Chase, Abraham Claude, John Davidson, George Digges, Joseph Dawson, Joseph Eastman, Joshua Frazier, Thomas Gates, Alexander Golder, John Graham, T. Green, William Hammond, Alexander Hanson, Benjamin Harwood, Thomas Harwood, William Harwood, Samuel Hughes, Daniel of St. Thomas Jenifer, Thomas Jennings, John Johnson, Rinaldo Johnson, Philip Key, James Mackubin, Nicholas Mancubbin, George Mann, David McMechen, John Muir, James Murray, Ben Oake, Aquila Paca, William Paca, George Plater, Edward Plowden, Allen Quynn, James Reid, Christopher Richmond, Abasalom Ridgley, John Roger, Richard Sprigg, Charles Steuart, James Steuart, John Steuart, William Steuart, J. D. Stone, Thomas Stone, Michael Taney, Alexander Travers, James Tro(?), Charles Wallace, James Williams, Nathaniel Yates. (Annapolis Subscription List, December 16, 1784 in St. John's College Archives.) 43. "Draught": "Thirdly, ... agents ... are hereby authorized and made capable to solicit and receive contributions and subscriptions ... of any person or persons, bodies politic and corporate, who may be willing to promote so good a design.'' "Charter o£1784:" "III. ... and they are hereby authorised to solicit and receive, subscriptions and contributions ... of any person or persons, bodies politic and corporate, who may be willing to promote so good a design." "Draught" and "Charter of 1784": "Secondly, there shall be a subscription carried on in the different counties of the western shore, upon the plan on which it hath been opened, for founding the said college; and the several subscribers shall class themselves, according to their respective inclinations, and for every thousand pounds current money which may be subscribed and paid, or secured to be paid, into the hands of the treasurer of the western shore, by any particular class of subscribers, they shall be entitled to the choice of one person as a visitor and governor of said college .... "The addition of "bodies and politic and corporate" allowed the King William School to give 2000 pounds and to qualify as two classes of subscribers, each of which could elect a member to the Board of Visitors and Governors of St. John's College. 44. "Draught of a Proposed Act," Maryland Gazette, December 16, 1784: " ... and provided further, that is in three years from the first day of June 1785, there shall not be twenty-four visitors and governors 61 �chosen as aforesaid by classes of subscribers of one thousand pounds, each class; the other visitors and governors being not less then eleven duly assembled at any quarterly visitation, shall proceed by election to fill up the number of twenty-four visitors and governors, as they shall think most expedient and convenient: provided nevertheless, that seventeen of the said visitors and governors shall always be residents on the western shore of this state, but that the additional visitors and governors (to make up and perpetuate the number of twenty-four) may be chosen from this or any part of the adjacent states, if they are such persons as can reasonably undertake to attend the quarterly visitations, and are thought capable, by their particular learning, weight, and character, to advance the interest and reputation of the said seminary .... " "Charter of 1784: "IV.... Provided always, that seventeen of the said visitors and governors shall be resident on the western shore of this state, but that the additional visitors and governors (to make up and perpetuate the number of twenty-four) may be chosen from any part of this state, if they are such persons as can reasonably undertake the quarterly visitations, and are thought capable, by their particular learning, weight, and character, to advance the interest and reputation of the said seminary.'' 45. Smith, Life and Correspondence of Rev. William Smith, 2:249. 46. The History of American Methodism, 3 vols. (New York, 1964), 1:222. 47. Schultz, Freemasonry in Maryland, 1:105. 48. Votes and Proceedings of the House of Delegates of the State of Maryland, 1783-85 (Annapolis, 1785), p. 73. 49. William Morley Brown, George Washington, Freemason (Richmond, 1952), p. 332. 50. Schultz, Freemasonry in Marylimd, 1:76-78; and Man;land Gazette, December 29, 1763: "Tuesday last, being St. John's was observed by the Brethren of the Ancient and Honorable Fraternity of Free and Accepted Masons with great order and decency.'' 51. Coil's Masonic Encyclopedia, s.v. "St. John." Smith, Life and Correspondence of Rev. William Smith, 2:85-86. 52. Writings of G. W., 22:25-27. 53. Maryland Gazette, March 30, 1786. For earlier notices to subscribers see Man;land Gazette, June 9, 1785 (no name at all, only reference to the Act); December 1, 1785; January 12, 1786. First eleven members of the Board of Visitors and Governors who were elected March 1786: Thomas Claggett, D.D. and William West, D. D. (Episcopal clergymen, who would later be elected bishops); subscribers on the Annapolis list of December 16, 1784: Nicholas Carroll, John H. Stone, William Beans, Thomas Stone, Samuel Chase, Thomas Jennings, A. C. Janson, John Thomas (a Quaker) and Richard Ridgeley. 54. Robert Reinhold, "For Relevance, the Students at St. John's College Turn to Galileo," New York Times, October 18, 1971, 39:1. 55. St. John's College, Minutes of the Board of Visitors and Governors, May 12 and 13, 1972. A branch college, St. John's College, Santa Fe, New Mexico, was founded in 1963. Charlotte Fletcher was Librarian of St. John's College, Annapolis, and is now retired and living in Annapolis. 62 SUMMER 1985 �Montaigne Brother Robert Smith ' ' ' A Ia memoire de M. Jacques de Monleon, homme complete In his introduction of the Essays, "To the Reader," 1 Montaigne states he has only one purpose in writingto help his relatives and friends to recover after he has gone the features of "his habit and temperament." This modest calim inspires two questions: 1) Why should we, who are not his relatives and perhaps not yet even his friends, bother to read his book? 2) Why should we believe him when he says such a complex book, stuffed with quotations from other authors, is a self-portrait? Besides, what kind of self-portrait can we expect when we read the title of the first essay? Is it the very general statement that we-all men, supposedly-arrive at the same ends by diverse means? Moreover, the first paragraph asserts that "the commonest way of softening the hearts of those we have offended when, vengeance in hand, they hold us at their mercy is by submission to move them to commiseration and pity."' What kind of selfportrait is that? Maybe most of us have not thought a great deal about how one goes about making a portrait of oneself, but, off hand, it does not seem obvious that the way to do so is to bring up circumstances that one sincerely hopes never to find oneself in and then to follow up with a plausible prescription for escape from that plight. Why make general statements if one intends personal and private ones? Therefore, our two questions can be restated: Are Montaigne's Essays really a self-portrait? Even if they are, what interest do they have for us? Montaigne wanted to be judged for his whole book. He was not satisfied with just parts of it. He kept adding thoughts right up until his death. He would certainly have wanted us to hear him through before judging him. However, in the interests of keeping this discussion a manageable length, and, I hope, as a preparation for further reading of Montaigne, I propose to discuss here just the first essay, although Montaigne did not write this es- THE ST. JOHN'S REVIEW say first, by giving it the place he did, he asked us to read it first. The first essay is, therefore, an introduction. It has other advantages, too. It is short--a mere ten paragraphs--and Montaigne made additions to it not long before his death. These additions show that the subject of the first essay was of lasting concern to him and covered most of his life as a writer. However, before we begin to analyze the whole essay, I call your attention to a little phrase in the second paragraph. The phrase is "our Guienne." I intend to expand these two innocent words beyond all proportion because they imply a world that Montaigne' s first readers knew and that we do not, unless we have read and digested all three Books of the Essays. Nearly all I have to say about u our Guienne" comes from them, and what comes from other sources is unimportant. By dwelling at length on "our Guienne," we may acquire some of the advantages that the first readers had over us when they opened their books to Essay One. One more prefatory remark. I feel the weight of the task before us. It seems important to try to answer the questions posed above, especially the one about Montaigne' s importance to us. I think of generations of students whom I have heard or overheard saying they don't care about Montaigne' s kidney stones, however painful they may have been to him. He would certainly have been on the side of these complainers. Unless a clearly private matter like pain has general significance, it is an intrusion to bring it up in company. It is not unreasonable to have the fleeting thought that all or most of Montaigne' s private business is just that, private-a matter for him and his relatives, not for the rest of us. I hope to change your mind about that. On the other hand, in the four centuries since they first appeared the Essays have been read and loved by many people. Does it seem likely that all those readers were 63 �led by morbid curiosity about the private life of a sixteenth century French gentleman? Certainly not all Montaigne's readers were antiquarians. Shakespeare read and quoted the first English translation of the Essays almost in the lifetime of Montaigne. At least one passage in The Tempest is a word-for-word transposition of that translation into blank verse. 3 Apart from this direct quotation, there are skeptical passages on the condition of man in Measure for Measure that echo similar questioning in the Apology for Raymond Sebond. 4 Montaigne, like Shakespeare, parades before our eyes an array of characters, from the historically important to far less important people. We meet kings and subjects, men and women, wise men and fools, indeed a wide sampling of mankind. We are shown all the ups and downs of their lives, and to be uninterested in the works of these authors, Shakespeare and Montaigne, is to show lack of interest in life. Let us now turn to "our Guienne." Our Guienne Guienne is a deformation of the word "acquitaine," 5 a Roman name for the southwestern part of France. In Acquitaine is found a piece of land called Montaigne, where our author was born. His family name was Eyquem, but he called himself, and was called by others, Michel de Montaigne. For us the name Guienne brings to mind three things: 1) the land in which Montaigne was born, 2) the college at which he was education (which was called the College of Guienne, and was in Bordeaux, capital of Acquitaine), and 3) political institutions, like the Parlement of Bordeaux, where Montaigne exercised public responsibilities and over which he presided when he became Mayor of Bordeaux. The Parlement, along with a governor appointed by the king, was responsible for the assessment and levying of taxes, for enforcing laws, and for military operations. This last point is important. During all of Montaigne' s active life, a civil war was being waged in France, and much of it was fought in southwest France. 6 The war was of direct personal concern to Montaigne: he took part in military operations, he was forced to flee from his home, and, with his family, he lived as a refugee for several years. Let us now examine each of these associations with ''our Guienne.'' I. The Montaigne lands Montaigne was born in the castle of Montaigne in 1531. That fact and his family's ownership of the lands on which the castle stood (and still stands) were the basis of his claim to be a member of the nobility. 7 The significance of this claim lies in the fact that the military commands, the higher administration of justice, the levying of taxes, and the administration of justice were placed in the hands of a small group of people, the parliamen64 tary nobles. More importantly, this situation was accepted by all. No one seriously questioned the right of the nobility to rule. They did not depend on the king for their position, and, like his, their status came to them through inheritance. A nobleman often had on his own land men on whose services he could draw as soldiers. The nobility could and sometimes did wage civil war against the king. The king was still only first among equals. After Montaigne' s time the king began successfully to erode the power of the nobility, and two centuries later, the Revolution abolished their privileges altogether, but none of this gradual decay had started in Montaigne' s time. Montaigne assumed that he had wide responsibilities, and others concurred. He spoke realistically of himself when he said that he was capable of being adviser to the king. 8 There was a king in Paris who trusted him and who helped to make him mayor of Bordeaux. In nearby French Navarre, there was a man waiting in the wings to become king of France. This man twice visited Montaigne's house, and when he succeeded as king in Paris, Montaigne was one of those who aided in the transition from one dynasty to another. Montaigne was influential with each of two suspicious rivals. He said of himself that he was honest and disinterested enough to say exactly what he thought without flattery. In doing so he was rendering a priceless service to men whose office invited flattery. No doubt it was Montaigne' s awareness of his own integrity that made it possible for him to speak the way he did about his own capacities, but it was also possible because as a nobleman he had an unassailable, intrenched position. Montaigne was well aware of the advantages of being a nobleman, and he was concerned with the obligation of living up to what was essentially a military profession. 9 In this context virtue is mainly military and political virtue-integrity in carrying out public charges, fearlessness in face of death, and courage against any adversitytrue mauliness. When he was young, Montaigne thought that intrepidity is an advantage nobles have over the common herd. 10 Later he saw the peasants on his lands face death with courage and without ostentation." Montaigne thought like a member of a governing class. For him education meant the formation of judgment, so that one could take on public responsibility." His heroes were all public figores, most of them military and political leaders. That Homer, Vergil, and Socrates were also heroes for him shows the complexity of his mind. Even so, Vergil and Homer sang of military men. II. The College of Guienne Like many people who attend good colleges, Montaigne was ambivalent about his alma mater. He did say that it was the best college that ever was, but he also blamed it for spoiling the purity of his Latin. 13 He could say so because he brought to his school an extraordinary preparation, one that none of his fellow stuSUMMER 1985 �dents could approximate. His father, like many of his contemporaries, thought that education meant being able to read, write, and speak the refined Latin of imperial Rome. His actions were fully consistent with his beliefs. He took no half measures. He had his son brought up hearing only Latin spoken. From the age of two, Montaigne had a Latin-speaking tutor in attendance. Even before that, all the servants who came into contact with the child spoke in Latin exclusively. Even his father and mother mustered up enough Latin to speak in Latin in their son's presence. 14 As a result Montaigne, was unlike anyone who had lived in France for more than a thousand years before his time: His native language was Latin. The first books Montaigne read were by the best Roman authors and his taste in literature was formed by them. At a very young age he knew all of Ovid's Metamorphoses. He alsoknewVergil, Plautus, and Terence. Later he knew historians and philosophers. To the very end of his life, Seneca held his attention. The fair-mindedness and the respect for virtue he found in Seneca-and another favorite author (read in translation) Plutarchwere echoed in his admiration for the Emperor Julian. Despite the antipathy of Julian toward the Church and of churchmen toward him, Montaigne said, ''He was in truth a very rare man, being one whose soul was deeply dyed with the arguments of philosophy, by which he professed to regulate all his actions; and indeed there is no sort of virtue of which he did not leave notable examples. " 15 Montaigne saluted this man because their shnilar educations made them, over the gap of the centuries, compatriots. In the same place where Montaigne speaks so admiringly of Julian, he also speaks disapprovingly of the fanaticism of those who destroyed all existing copies of works by Tacitus because they contained some sentences contrary to Christian belief. 16 In discussing miracles he did say that one C<!n well doubt the prodigies attributed to the relics of St. Hilary du Bouche!, but lh<!l it is illegitimate to dismiss their authenticity out of mere prejudice <!g<linst mimcles in general when they <!re <!!tested to by refined minds like those of Caesar and Pliny."' He expressed a sympathy <!ny well-educated Roman might h<!ve- felt. This does not erase the fact that Montaigne was a Catholic, and, in my opinion, a devout one in his later years. On the contrary, there were different strains alive in his memory, but one did not destroy the others. Again, Montaigne was like a late Roman of consular familyChristian, but retaining pre-Christian memories. After this education at home, Montaigne went, at about the age of six, to the College of Guienne. 17 There he was surrounded by young people striving with pain and misery to learn the language that had become second nature to him. No wonder he said his Latin had been corrupted. Still, he was active, reading a lot on his own, and taking part in Latin plays written by his tutors. He apparently did well as an actor. One play performed in his time at THE ST. JOHN'S REVIEW school was about Julius Caesar. One of his shrewder tutors simply left around books by Latin authors that were not officially being studied. Montaigne fell into the trap and surreptitiously (or so he thought) read many non-program books that were still in the best Latin. Among these were the less than edifying comedies of Plautus. He spoke of Ovid as a source of delight. He also carried on the work of writing Latin compositions, but unlike his schoolmates he did so in his native language. The authors he read during his school-days-Vergil, Seneca, and Ovid, for example-were to remain his favorite authors for the rest of his life. If we add Plutarch, in French translation, we have completed the list of his most favorite authors. In the Essays he sorts out his impressions of them and shows their superiority over lesser, although important authors-Cicero, for example. Late in his life, when he wanted to express what his love affairs meant to him, he turned to Vergil for the words that express for him what is splendid in the sexual act 18 Around those verses he grouped his further and more complicated evaluation of what the erotic side of his life meant to him and how he did or did not square it with his religious convictions. Thus the authors that Montaigne started to read in his youth and continued to read throughout his life were the touchstones for evaluating his scattered thoughts about all that mattered to him. This is shown most strongly in his judgment about what essentially constitutes virtue 19 III. The Parlemenl of Bordeaux Montaigne was for many years a member of the Parlement of Bordeaux, 20 which ruled over not just the capital city but also the surrounding province. Montaigne, like his father before him, served as Mayor, or presiding officer. We now so closely associate the term "mayor" with a city official that we have forgotten its more obvious meaning-Major (Maior), i.e., senior member of a governing council. The Parlement was a body of nobles who had, as has been said, responsibility for making laws, administering existing laws, hearing suits, levying taxes, and directing military operations during the civil war. And we must note that a civil war meant a war that was even more savage than other wars, and the fact that the alleged grounds for fighting were religious made the struggle very bitter. When Montaigne wrote of parlays, ambushes, and of the breakdown of law he was not mulling over passages in Plutarch or Caesar's Gallic Wars as much as he was thinking about his own life. When he was quite young, perhaps still in school, he witnessed a mob murder the Mayor of Bordeaux, who had left the safety of his fortified residence to parlay with his angry fellow citizens. The civil war was dangerous for Montaigne personally. He had to flee his home and lands with his family and servants. He found shelter where he could. The workers 65 �on his lands were scattered; his vines could not be cared for, and his grapes could not be picked, so he lost his main source of income. Once he was surrounded and captured by a hostile band, and he describes vividly in the Essay On Physiognomy" how he was capriciously saved from death because his captors decided he had an honest face. The war affected him on a more deep personal level. The war was eventually fought between Protestants and Catholics, but in its beginnings it was fought between Catholics who had become reforme, reformed Christians, and Catholics who had refused that choice. At first-and by that I mean for a number of years-the reformed allowed themselves to be killed without resistance." Later, they and their political leaders took to arms. After that, as in all wars, especially civil wars, horrible things were done by each side. 23 It is very important to note that the lines did not harden all at once. Many Catholics did not like all that was done and said by their clergy or their co-religionists. Some of these troubled men and women never broke with their own tradition, while after a long time others did so. This firming up of sides was still going on during Montaigne' s lifetime: At some time Montaigne must have chosen to remain a Catholic. Many others whom he knew made the opposite choice. His own brother was one of these, at least for some years, and his sister was until her death. 23a Montaigne' s choice was to remain in the Catholic Church, "in which I die and in which I was bom!" 24 That this choice was a personal choice need not concern us directly, but the political decisions that went along with it influenced his work as a public official, as adviser to kings, and as writer of the Essays. The longest Essay, the Apology for Raymond Sebond, is an attempt to show that there were no justifiable religious grounds for fighting a civil war. Montaigne tries to prove that human reason is not capable by itself of proving theological or moral truths. The opinions of men, including the wisest and most learned, are many and diverse. Custom has not led mankind to a consensus on the most serious matters. Worse, reason relies finally on the senses, and they are unreliable. Consequently, no one can claim that he has a right to impose his own version of religious truth by force of arms. Montaigne's advice is that we should remain in the way of our fathers and so avoid public disorder. He charged guilt on both sides, accusing each side of proclaiming they were justified in fighting for religious convictions when they were really acting out of worldly, partisan interest. His proof was that they changed principles as soon as interests suggested. "See the horrible impudence with which we bandy divine reasons about and how irreligiously we both (Catholics and Protestants) reject them and take them again as fortune has changed our place in these public storms. This proposition, so solemn, whether it is lawful for a subject to rebel and take arms against his prince in defense of religion-remember 66 in whose mouth-this year just past the affirmative of this was the buttress of one party (the Protestants when the king was a Catholic), the negative was the buttress of the other (the Catholic) and whether the weapons make less din for one than the other .... " 25 Montaigne was addressing men who had reversed their strongly touted positions because the lawful claimant to the throne was now a Protestant. Montaigne' s political effort was to put an end to the civil war. It was not to support the Catholic extremists who wanted to force their opponents to conform. Because there were deep religious convictions on each side, there could be no political solution except mutual tolerance. A law to this effect was made by Henri IV after he came to the throne and became a Catholic. Montaigne's own efforts were in conformity with that solution." Montaigne' s conciliatory bent of mind was not to the taste of extremists on either side. Montaigne tells how close he came to being put to death by Protestants who had captured him in an ambush. Extremists on the Catholic side had him held in the Bastille until he was rescued by members of the Royal family. 26• Using terms proper to the quarrels Dante was involved in, Montaigne said, "To the Guelfs I am a Ghibelline, and to the Ghibellines a Guelf. 027 Now we have seen how our author was deeply rooted in his native Guienne. Because of his position there he was also concerned with the political life of France. He was an adviser to kings and he participated in the effort to end the civil war. He was also a private man working in his library to put his own thoughts in order. The record of that effort is the three Books of the Essays. It is through them that we know him. Through them he belongs not just to Guienne or to France, but to all of us. Let us now turn our attention to Essay I, 1. The title of the Essay tells us that we can come to the same end by diverse means. This general statement is hardly a confidence about his personal life, since the "we" presumably includes everyone, and by that token is not special to him. However, let us have enough faith in our author to see what his seemingly vacuous title may be leading to. If we persevere, we will see that, step by subtle step, he was making a self-portrait. The essay reproduced here (see Appendix) has ten paragraphs, but in its original form it had only seven. These seven paragraphs are marked by the letter' A' and are paragraphs 1-4 and 6-8. Montaigne twice made additions to his original text. First he added paragraphs 5 and 9 and the first sentence of paragraph 10. They are marked by the letter 'B'. Still later he added the rest of paragraph 10 in his own handwriting on the margin of the last edition published in his lifetime. This addition appears as the bulk of paragraph 10 in our text and is preceded by the letter 'C'. When studying the text of a Montaigne Essay, readers will find it less confusing if they first read the 'A' text and see what structure it has and then read the later additions. After all, that is how he wrote them. SUMMER 1985 �For example, the original text of this first essay has a clear structure. In paragraphs 1-4 Montaigne proves what he sets out in the title, and in 6-8 he makes three attempts to draw general conclusions from what he has shown. Let us look at what he says more closely. His topic throughout the essay is something dramatic, but especially so in the first part: How does one soften the heart of an enemy whom one has offended and who has at hand the means of taking vengeance? Montaigne did not need a strong imagination to know what those words meant. Memories of ambushes in which he had been caught and scenes when someone he knew was torn apart by a mob were sufficient. (Most of us, seeking a relevant example, would have to refer to childhood, when an irate parent, teacher, or schoolyard bully had us in his or her power! Of course, when I say this I am speaking of myself and probably of some of you. Others may well know from harsher experience what Montaigne is talking about.) ( Montaigne says the commonest way of softening an enemy is to submit to him, to show that we recognize that we are in his power. By doing so we transfer the responsibility for acting to the aggressor, who holds unquestioned power and must decide how to use it. Montaigne was not thinking of an ordinary situation, such as an irate parent, but of another one entirely. He was considering ruthless conquerors who had been moved to spare the lives of those they were minded to kill, not because their prospective victims were submissive, but because they bravely stood up against their opponent despite the odds. Although the stakes were life and death, they kept self-respect and honor uppermost in their minds. Paragraph 2 gives an example of this kind of bravery. An angry Prince of Wales, having been injured by the citizens of Limoges, was forced to take their city by armed force, and as he was vengefully watching his soldiers butcher the citizenry, including women and children, he saw three French gentlemen who with incredible boldness were still holding out. Although they were defeated men, they refused to admit defeat. This valor aroused the admiration of the Prince and led him to spare their lives and those of the other Lirnousins. Pitiable sights had no effect on him; great bravery did. This point is also illustrated in paragraphs 3 and 4. What possible lesson can we learn from the general truth that some angry rulers have been softened by pity and others only by admiration for bravery? Montaigne makes three attempts to answer this question (paragraphs 6, 7, and 8). First, he says, tentatively, that the three historical examples are more to the point, more useful, in teaching us how to escape being killed, because they show what softened the hearts of a hardheaded military leader. Presumably it is such a man that we-or at least Montaigne-should most fear. He reminds us that they held up unshaken against appeals to their pity but bowed to examples of great bravery. The fact that weaker natures, such as "women, children and the com- THE ST. JOHN'S REVIEW mon herd, are inclined to subdue their desire for vengeance because of easy-going indulgence and softness" is relatively unimportant, presumably because such weaker people are less likely to have the lives of others in their power. To save our lives it is more important to know how to soften the wrath of someone who can take them. This conclusion is too facile for Montaigne. He immediately remembers that death may come not only from those who hold in affection masculine and obstinate vigor but also from "less lofty souls" (paragraph 7). Sometimes they will be moved by pity, sometimes by "astonishment and admiration." Paragraph 7 The people of Thebes having put their generals on trial for their lives for continuing in their posts beyond the time prescribed ... , they just bravely absorbed Pelopidas who bowed under the weight of such accusations and used only pleas and supplications to protect himself; whereas with Epaminondas, who came out and related proudly the things done by him and reproached the people with them in a haughty and arrogant manner, they did not have the heart even to take the ballot in their hands~ and the assembly broke up, greatly praising the loftiness of this man's courage. These examples partly reverse the point of paragraph 6. If we take into account both inflexible admirers of virtue and weaker people, both appeals to pity and examples of audacity may be useful. This is Montaigne' s second general position. It is immediately revised in paragraph 8. There we read about one of the great generals of all time, Pompey, first behaving like the Prince of Wales, then on another occasion totally unlike him. Here is Pompeius pardoning the whole city of the Mammertines, against which he was greatly incensed, in consideration of the valor and magnanimity of the citizen Stheno, who took the fault of the people on himself and asked no other favor but to bear the punishment alone. Yet Sulla's host, who displayed similar valor in the city of Praeneste, got nothing out of it, either for himself or for others. This inconsistency leads Montaigne to attempt a third generalization: "Truly man is a marvelous, vain, diverse and undulating object. It is hard to found any constant and uniform judgment on him." Note he says 'hard,' not impossible. By comparing these three tentative conclusions with the first four paragraphs, we can learn what Montaigne means by an Essay. He says elsewhere that, if he could, he would make decisions, but since he cannot, he writes essays." In the first four paragraphs of the present Essay he sets down certain thoughts that have come to him from 67 �reading history. Then he attempts to judge his own musings, to say what can be learned from them. He says this assessment is the purpose underlying the reading of books. Reading yields matter to reflect on, so that we can form our judgment. We should not be put off by the tentativeness of the judgments arrived at. Montaigne is a lot nearer to knowing what importance to give the three examples in the first part of the essay after trying to assess them than he was by merely reading them. The verb "to essay" is akin "to try". 29 It is also related to "trial," where judgments, however fallible, are delivered. Moral and political judgments are made by careful and repeated comparisons with what we know and have stored in our memory. They do not have the firmness and majesty of grand generalizations, but they are not devoid of content either. We may gradually discover the meaning for us of what we claim to admire and/or reject. In another essay, Montaigne says "History is my quarry. " 30 It is the source of the stones with which he intended to build the monument he would leave for his relatives and friends. We see better how this works in paragraph 5. Upon rereading the examples in the first part of this essay, Montaigne discovers that either of these waysappeals to pity or an outstanding example of bravery" would easily win me." This is what he learned about himself by re-examining those examples. Not only bravery moves Montaigne, but so do pitiable sights. There are "tears of things" as his favorite poet Vergil tells us, "For I am wonderfully lax in the direction of mercy and gentleness. As a matter of fact; I believe I should be likely to surrender more naturally to compassion than to esteem." The expressions "as a matter of fact" and "I believe" indicate that Montaigne is learning something on the spot. Furthermore, when he says he is likely to surrender more naturally to pity he is claiming to have a glimpse of something quite stable, a natural tendency in himself. Not everything about him, then, is completely diverse, vain, and undulating. Self-portraits need ground from which the figure can emerge. Those who know Montaigne' s essay On Three Great Men will have remarked upon two names in this first essay: Epaminondas (paragraph 7)"and Alexander (in the last two paragraphs). They are the names of two of the three men whom he considered the greatest in human history. The third is Homer. What we can learn about Montaigne by looking at the reasons he gives for choosing these men over all others? 31 The choice of Homer, although sincere on Montaigne's part, is really a disguised way of pointing to Vergil, his real hero among the poets. Montaigne never read Homer in Greek and claimed not even to know him. He praised him partly because "it is principally from Homer that Vergil derives his ability ... he is his guide and schoolmaster, and ... one single detail of the Iliad furnished both body and matter for that great and divine Aeneid. " 32 Montaigne denied that these were the determining reasons for his choosing Homer as one of the three greatest men in the 68 world. Instead he pointed to the place that Homer holds in history and that "makes (him) ... a source of wonder to me almost above man's estate. And indeed I am often astonished that he, who by his authority created and brought into credit ... many deities, has not himself gained the rank of God." Still Montaigne would say "possibly in his art ... Vergil may be compared with him. I leave it to those men to judge who know them both. I who know only the one can say only this according to my capacity that I do not believe that even the Muses themselves could surpass the Roman." How much Montaigne owes to Vergil can be seen only by reading very many essays very well. His choice of Epaminondas as the second greatest man is almost as bizarre as picking Homer and praising Vergil through him. We do not know much about Eparninondas, and Montaigne did not either, mainly because Plutarch's life of him did not survive. Still, Montaigne's reasons were serious, and, I think, deeply personal. He admired Epaminondas because ''his resolution and valor did not arise from ambition but from motives that wisdom and reason are capable of implanting" in a wellordered soul. "As for ... this (military) virtue he has ... as much in my opinion as Alexander himself and Caesar. But as for his character and conscience, he very far surpassed all those who have ever undertaken to manage affairs. For in this respect which must principally be considered, which alone truly means what we are, and which I weigh alone against all the others together, he yields to no philosopher, not even to Socrates. " 33 "In this man, innocence is a key quality, sovereign, constant, uniform, incorruptible." If we do not know fully the grounds for such a judgment, since we do not know Epaminondas, we do learn about Montaigne from it. What he admired most was moral integrity in a man vigorously carrying out his public and private duties. "In this man alone can be found a virtue and ability full and equal throughout, which in all the functions of human life, leaves nothing to be desired, whether in public or private occupations, in peace or war, whether in living or dying greatly or gloriously. I know no form or fortune of man that I regard with so much honor and love." Those words are a clear statement of what he admired and sought in life. He may not have known much about Epaminondas, but from that little he learned how to say what he most admired and what he thought he should strive for. It is not possible here to recount all that Alexander meant to Montaigne. (It would be easy to write an entire lecture on that subject alone.) Briefly, there are seventy-one mentions of Alexander in the Essays, and they were made at all periods of Montaigne' s writing. Alexander, his works, his deeds, and his habits, are used as means of measuring other great men. How far short do others fall from that overpowering figure? He is almost a god in relation to other men, even great ones. 34 Still, Montaigne says that he could imagine Socrates, if circumstances had been other than they were, accom- SUMMER 1985 �plishing all that Alexander did, but he could not imagine Alexander achieving what Socrates did. 35 Socrates seems not to be included in the list of the greatest men only because his virtue was of such a high order that it put him on a higher plain. "The soul of Socrates . . . is the most perfect that has come to my knowledge ... I know his reason to be is powerful and so much master in him that it would never so much as let a vicious appetite be born. " 36 Montaigne said this even though he knew and told the story of Socrates' overhearing people discuss his facial appearance and saying that it had the marks of lust on it. Socrates interrupted them to say that they were right. Those tendencies were within, but that he had overcome them by effort. 37 Cato the younger also seems to be a man so far above others as to brook no comparison. "Cato alone suffices for every example of virtue. " 38 Thus the last two paragraphs of the essay are a glimpse of Montaigne wrestling with a disturbing flaw in the character of his hero, Alexander-his cruelty. As mentioned above, Montaigne says it is difficult to found anything stable on man, because he is such an undulating object. This statement applies even to the ebb and flow of Montaigne' s own thoughts. On the one hand, Alexander was a supremely great man, on the other hand he was cruel, which was in Montaigne' s judgment a great vice. The condition for growth in understanding is to face these contradictions. The truth about human thought is flux, but flux in which some line of constancy must still be sought. Montaigne ends the essay by trying to find out what possibly could be in a great man's mind that allows him to be shamefully cruel. The fact that in paragraphs 9 and 10 he comes up with two different and plausible explanations means that he has not found one true explanation. However, the act of facing the problem and producing plausible hypotheses is progress. The quest is not an idle one. It is part of his finding out what he should admire and at what point those whom he thought were heroes have to be rejected. Julius Caesar might appear to have as much claim to be admired as Alexander, but he is rejected because he overthrew the civil government and plunged his country into civil war. In examining Alexander's cruelty Montaigne is questioning his own right to admire him. This is a deep moral question. Anyone reading the last paragraphs of this essay will gain an authentic glimpse of Montaigne's way of thinking. They will see Montaigne creating Montaigne-by trying to judge his own loyalties. When I was mid-way into the writing of this piece, a friend asked me what I was writing about. When I told him, he said, "Good. You will be getting away from all that heavy philosophy" by which he meant the Hegel I was reading for seminar. I disagree. It is questionable whether anyone deserves to be called a philosopher who departs very far from the self-examination Montaigne carried on to the end. THE ST. JOHN'S REVIEW NOTES 1. All quotations from Montaigne are taken from The Complete Essays of Montaigne, translated by Donald M. Frame, Stanford, 1965. References are made to that work as Essays, followed by the Book, the num- ber of the essay and the page in the Stanford edition. 2. Essays I, 1, 3. 3. Tempest II. 1, 148 ff. Cp. Essays of Michael, Lord of Montaigne, translated by John Floris, Vol. 1, chapter 3, 219-20, Everyman Library no. 440, London-Toronto, 1910. 4. References to Measure for Measure and the Apology for Raymond Sebond are found in The Relations of Shakespeare and Montaigne, by Elizabeth Robina Hooker [Modern Library Association XVII (1903), 358-59, and 360 fl.]. 5. See Encyclopedia Brittanica, 14th-Edition, "Guienne." 6. For information about the political events in which Montaigne was involved, I am especially indebted to Henri IV, Babelon, Paris, 1982, and to Montaigne, a biography, Donald M. Frame, San Francisco, 1954. 7. See La ]eunisse de Montaigne, R. Trinquet, Paris, 1972, 41-77 for a complete account of how the Montaigne family came to be numbered among the nobility. 8. Essays, IlL 13, 825 ff. 9. Essays, I, 14, 38. 10. Ibid. 11. Essays, m, 12, 805. 12. Essays, I, 26, 109 ££. 13. Essays, I, 26, 129 ££. 14. Essays, I, 26, 128. 15. Essays, II, 19, 507. 16. Ibid. 16a. Essays, I, 27, 134. 17. Essays, I, 26, 129. 18. Frame, Montaigne, 40. 19. See Essays, Book I, 20, "That to Philosophise is to Learn to Die." This essay, written early, has additions made in the last year of his life. His starting place is in one place an opinion of Seneca's, against which he engages in a vigorous polemic (p. 26 ff.). 20. See Frame, Montaigne, 234--45. 21. Essays, III; 12, 812. 22. See Cambridge Modern History, Vol. II, London and New York, 1918, 290 fl. 23. The most memorable of these tragic happenings is the massacre of St. Bartholomew. See The Massacre of St. Bartholomew, Henri Noguehe, translated by Eliane Engel, London, 1962. 23a. Frame, Montaigne, 30 ff. 24. Essays, I, 56, 229. 25. Essays, II, 12, 323 and note. Even more severe about the Protestants is III, 12, 798. 26. See Frame, Montaigne, 179. 26a. Ibid., 281. 27. III, 12, 798. 28. III, 2, 611. , 29. See Olivier Naudeau, La pensee de Montaigne et le developement des Essais, Geneve, 1972, p. 51 and note 51. For all the last part of the lecture I am deeply indebted toM. Olivier's book. Anyone seriously interested in Montaigne owes it to himself to read it. 30. I, 26, 107. 31. See II, 36, "Of the Most Oustanding Men." 32. Ibid., 569. 33. Ibid., 573. 34. Ibid., 572. 35. III, 2, 614. 36. II, 11, 308. 37. II, 12, 809. 38. II, 13, 462. 69 �1 By diverse means we arnve at the same end Appendix 1.) A. The commonest way of softening the hearts of those we have offended, when, vengeance in hand, they hold us at their mercy, is by submission to move them to commiseration and pity. However, audacity and steadfastness-entirely contrary means-have sometimes served to produce the same effect. 2.) Edward, prince of Wales, the one who governed our Guienne so long (a person whose traits and fortune have in them many notable elements of greatness), having suffered much harm from the Limousins, and taking their city by force, could not be halted by the cries of the people and of the women and children abandoned to the butchery, who implored his mercy and threw themselves at his feet-until going farther and farther into the city, he saw three French gentlemen who with incredible boldness were holding out alone against the as~ sault of his victorious army. Consideration and respect for such remarkable valor first took the edge off his anger; and he began with these three men to show mercy to all the inhabitants of the city. 3.) As Scanderbeg, prince of Epirus, was pursuing one of his soldiers in order to kill him, this soldier, after trying by every sort of humility and supplication to appease him, resolved in the last extremity to await him sword in hand. This resoluteness of his put a sudden stop to the fury of his master, who, having seen him take such an honorable stand, received him into his favor. This example may suffer another interpretation from those who have not read about the prodigious strength and valor of the prince. 4.) Emperor Conrad ill, having besieged Guelph, duke of Bavaria, would not come down to milder terms, no matter what vile and cowardly satis~ factions were offered him, than merely to allow the gentlewomen who were besieged with the duke to go out, their honor safe, on foot, with what they could carry away on them. They, great-heartedly, decided to load their husbands, their children, and the duke himself on their shoulders. The Emperor took such great pleasure in the nobility of their courage that he wept with delight and wholly subdued the bitter and deadly hatred which he had borne against this duke, and from that time forward treated him and his humanely. 5.) B. Either one of these two ways would easily win me, for I am wonderfully lax in the direction of mercy and gentleness. As a matter of fact, I believe I should Pe likely to surrender more naturally to compassion than to esteem. Yet to the Stoics pity is a vicious passion; they want us to succor the afflicted, but not to unbend and sympathize with them. 6.) A.Now these examples seem to me more to the point, inasmuch as we see these souls, assailed and tested by these two means, hold up unshaken against one and bow beneath the other. It may be said that to subdue your heart to commiseration is the act of easygoing indulgence and softness, which is why the weaker natures, such as those of women, children, and the common herd, are the most subject to it; but that, having disdained tears and prayers, to surrender simply to reverence for the sacred image of valor is the act of a strong and inflexible soul which holds in affection and honor a masculine and obstinate vigor. 7.) However, in less lofty souls, astonishment and admiration can engender a like effect. Witness the people of Thebes: having put their generals on trial for their lives for continuing in their posts beyond the time prescribed and foreordained for them, they just barely absolved Pelopidas, who bowed under the weight of such accusations and used only pleas and supplications to protect himself; whereas with Epaminon~ das, who came out and related proudly the things done by him and reproached the people with them in a haughty C. and arrogant A.manner, they did not have the heart even to take the ballots into their hands, and the assembly broke up, greatly praising the loftiness of this man's courage .... 8.) A. Truly man is a marvelously vain, diverse, and undulating object. It is hard to found any constant and uniform judgment on him, Here is Pompeius pardoning the whole city of the Mamertines, against which he was greatly incensed, in consideration of the valor and magnanimity of the citizen Stheno, who took the fault of the people upon hlmself alone and asked no other favor but to bear the punishment alone. Yet Sulla' s host, who displayed similar valor in the city of Praeneste, got nothing out of it, either for himself or for the others. 9.) B.And directly contrary to my first examples, the bravest of men and one very gracious to the vanquished, Alexander, forcing the city of Gaza after many great difficulties, came upon Betis-who was in command there and of whose valor he had experienced marvelous proofs during this siege-now alone, abandoned by his men, his armor cut to pieces, all covered with blood and wounds, still fighting on in the midst of many Macedonians who were attacking him from all sides. Stung by such a dearly won victory-for among other damage Alexander had received two fresh wounds on his person-he said to him: ''You shall not die as you wanted, Betis; prepare yourself to suffer every kind of torment that can be invented against a captive.'' The other, with a look not only confident but insolent and haughty, stood without saying a word to these threats. Then Alexander, seeing his proud and obstinate silence: "Has he bent a knee? Has any suppliant cry escaped him? I'll conquer your muteness yet; and if I cannot wring a word from it, at least I'll wring a groan," And turning his anger into rage, he ordered Betis' heels to be pierced through and had him thus dragged alive, tom, and dismembered, behind a cart. 10.) Could it be that-hardihood was so common to Alexander that, not marveling at it, he respected it the less? C.Or did he consider it so peculiarly his own that he could not bear to see it at this height in another without passionately envious spite? Or was the natural impetuosity of his anger incapable of brooking opposition? In truth, if it could have been bridled, it is probable that it would have been in the capture and desolation of the city of Thebes, at the sight of so many valiant men, lost and without any further means of common defense, cruelly put to the sword. For fully six thousand of them were killed, of whom not one was seen fleeing or asking for mercyT but who were on the contrary seeking, some here, some there, through the streets, to confront the victorious enemy and to provoke an honorable death at his hands. Not one was seen so beaten down with wounds as not to try even in his last gasp to avenge himself, and with the weapons of despair to assuage his death in the death of some enemy. Yet the distress of theb: valor found no pity, and the length of a day was not enough to satiate Alexander's revenge. This slaughter went on to the last drop of blood that could be shed, and stopped only at the unarmed people, old men, women, and children, so that thirty thousand of them might be taken as slaves. Brother Robert Smith is a tutor emeritus at St. John's College, Annapolis. 70 SUMMER 1985 �Occasional Discourse Mental Imagery (The College and Contemporay Cognitive Science) Homecoming Lecture, September 1985 Eva Brann I am very much alive to the fact that this is Homecoming weekend-homecoming not only for the alumni but also for me. I've been gone from St. John's far and long-as far as Delaware and as long as a year. So I look on the place where I've spent exactly half my life as an astronaut in outer space looks on the very small planet which is home. That, together with the nature of tonight'ssubjed, prompts me to indulge in five minutes' worth of looking backwards. When I came to the college well over a quarter century ago, I entered a fresh and heady world of learning, leaving behind what I felt, rather than understood, to be a hide-bound, dreary academia, the academia of the decade after the Second World War. The college, then only existent in Annapolis, was less than a third the size it is on this campus now, and it had a kind of guardian spirit, a philosopher king, as one might say (provided one said it with a smile), in Jacob Klein, the Dean. It was conveyed to me that he had described me as behaving like a fish in water, and that was just how I felt-like one who was disporting herself in her element, to whom understanding came as she breathed. I am recounting this largely for the freshmen among you. For as it may for you, it turned out for me that one cannot glide along in freshman glory forever-there followed the notorious sophomore slump bringing sophomore sobriety and with it a second beginning, the exchange of a weightless exhilaration for abetteranchored interest. One can't be forever tumbling about in one's element; the time comes when the thronging intimations of truth have to be turned into precise questions and problems. The program itself offered the way: twentyeight hundred years' worth of commentary on fundamental questions, not excluding the question whether these are always the same or subtly or even cataclysmically different in different ages. THE ST. JOHN'S REVIEW So, like most of my colleagues at the college, I paid only very passing and largely aversive attention to the contemporary state of affairs. (I mean intellectual affairs, since ignoring politics for very long is what a citizen does at her peril.) At the end of tonight's lecture I mean to make a principled argument for living in isolation from "current thinking;' from vogues and trends, for long stretches of time. Nonetheless, a moment eventually came, and happily an opportunity too, for catching up. I simply felt a certain avidity to know what the world was saying. I did a lot of reading, but of course I haven't begun to master the matter-no one could, anyhow. Yet I think I have certain inklings concerning at least one area and its associations which I'll come to in a minute. Let me, though, repeat to you in the largest and vaguest terms my first impressions: Our contemporaries have verve and sophistication. Quite a few of the best are, not to mince words, charming (or not so charming) smartalecks. Their intellectual mode has explicitness, precision, and often a kind of purity. All the possibilities which used to remain obtusely unconsidered in the mid-century have been articulated and worked over. The engine of invention has been producing faster and faster, and the mill of rational speech has been grinding finer and finer. I hear that there is a Chinese curse: "May you live in exciting times" and also a Greek counter-curse: "May you hear nothing new:' Well, we're afflicted in the way of China and blessed in the way of Greece-at least on the face of it. I want to claim right away that this condition of affairs can't help but draw in the college. It may and ought to affect the program in only a limited way, but I think it might put us in a new position vis-a-vis the intellectual world which I want to sketch out in a broad and somewhat undigested way later on. Consequently my lecture will have two parts, which I will call with grand simplic71 �ity Psychology and Philosophy, the first to set out what I learned this past year and the second to be a sort of coda of conclusions for us. So then; I. Psychology Again, I must begin with a bit of intellectual history, both personal and public. For a decade now my thoughts have circled about the theme of the imagination. In fact, I have collected so much stu££ that my ideas are beginning to sink under its weight-the time has come to carve out some conclusions. As for the theme itself, I have been drawn to it along several approaches-and, as I've learned, when all roads lead to Rome, to Rome one must go. One of these approaches is bookish. The imagination plays the role of the missing mystery in a number of philosophical texts, by which I mean that a faculty by that name is given a central task while its operation is left sanguinely unexplained. As Kant says, it is: "a hidden art in the depth of the human soul:' I might say here what is, broadly, meant by imagination in the philosophical sense: It is a faculty which presupposes that somehow or other two worlds of objects are present to us, one of which seems to us to be outside, the other inside ourselves. The inner world1 in turn, appears to consist of two realms, one of which, though lacking a certain feature of "thereness" which belongs to the external world, has at least one characteristic apparently and yet elusively in common with it: it is shaped and colored and, in short, space-like; the other realm is non-sensory and word-like. Philosophical texts have much to say on the role the imagination plays in cognition, that is, in knowing. Lately they have said quite a bit about the unintelligibility of imagining, but what has rarely been confronted head-on is the question: "How is such an ability possible?" And that is what of Delaware where I am teaching. It turns out that there is a new and burgeoning science called cognitive psychology and in it a fiercely embattled area called mental imagery. The title of tonight's lecture, "mental imagery;' betokens the translation into the new science of the old mystery concerning inner, space-like representations ("representations;' as opposed to the original external presentation, though our juniors are about to learn that most philosophers of the seventeenth and eighteenth century think that representations are all we have). The newness of the science that studies mental imagery is expressed in the fact that most of what I am about to report to you was published within the last five years. That it is indeed a science can be seen from its method: It tortures nature, as Kant puts it, or teases out the facts, as psychologists like to say, by simple but clever experiments. As for the slippery and intriguing business of turning a philosophical question into a scientific problem-what changes the issue undergoes on the way and which endeavor ends up guiding which-! hope to say something about that at the end. To introduce cognitive psychology and to explain its special interest in mental imagery, in what actually goes on when we see images before the mind's eye, I must one last time go backward to give you a thumbnail sketchwritten on a tiny thumb at that-of the history of psychology. The state of psychology represented a considerable part of the aforementioned intellectual dreariness of the midcentury. In the half-century which lies between about 1910 and 1960 the discipline was dominated by two schools, a soft one and a hard one, so to speak. The former was psychoanalysis. Freud proposed as a provisional theoretical framework-ultimately reducible to biology-a model or topography of the soul, in which the most extensive territory was assigned to the unconscious, a pandemon- imagination. ium of anti-social passion, which a skill£ul analyst might nonetheless tease out into the open and render less harmful. Although its founder did not think of psychoanalysis as primarily therapeutic, it eventually became almost wholly the province of psychiatrists. The imagination played a role in psychoanalysis since the interpretation of dreams was thought to give access to the unconscious. However, the interest was in establishing a symbolic interpretive vocabulary for therapeutic use, and that turned out to be scientifically soft, that is to say, not extensively amenable to verification. At the same time the imaginative agency that did the dream work, that turned the pas- The third and last approach 111 mention is through the fact that the imagination is usually regarded as the source of made-up realms such as dreams and fictions. Since by my reckoning I spend about 62.5% of my day betwixt the one and the other of these, I wanted to learn something about the power that is behind these non-existent and allimportant worlds. But tonight I haven't got much to say about that topic. In search of a clue to my theme I set about reading the shelves of the excellent research library at the University subject of study. The interest in their symbolism suppressed the interest in the images. (Freud also had a theory of the origin of imagining in infantile wishfulfillment-hallucination.) The hard school was behaviorism. It was very much driven by what post-Freudian psychologists refer to as their irrepressible "physics envy:' Its crude but forceful tenet was that to be a science, psychology must deal with what is verifiably observable. Therefore internal events, intrigues me. Another approach is through politics. The imagination is a puzzle not only as a universal cognitive capability but also as a general human gift which may be abused either through hyperactivity or desuetude. I've become convinced that most political catastrophes are connected to a fault in imagination: the inability to imagine accurately the minute daily detail which any large vision might entail. So I became interested in what one might call "imaginative coherence;' or the projective powers of the 72 sions into symbolic representations, was not itself a central SUMMER 1985 �being ipso facto unobservable and at best known through the unverifiable reports of introspection, were excluded from its field of inquiry. No event is more internal than a mental image, and so Watson, one of the founders of the school, uttered his notorious dictum directed at reports of "reminiscence-imagery:" "Touching, of course, but sheer bunk:' Sir Arthur Eddington summarized this mind-set, which at once bedevils and buoys up the sciences, in a sarcasm which might well stand as the epigraph of this lecture: "What my net can't catch isn't fish:' In the sixties both empires waned, psychoanalysis because as a theory it was unverifiable, as a therapy it was expensive, and as a world view it had been established. Behaviorism, on the other hand, choked by the huge accumulations of quantified experimental results unlevigated by any interesting overall theory, more or less died of tedium, though its method, too, had seeped into general opinion. But mainly it was a new and vigorous interest that usurped their place, the interest in cognition, in the temporal stages of learning in childhood and in the patterns and processes of cognitive events in adults. Piaget, who pioneered the former investigation, called "genetic epistemology;' had long had a special interest in the imagination because he thought of it as not as a congenital ability but as a symbolizing function developing in the second year of infancy, intermediate between mere perception and rationality and responsible for the first interiorization of representations. The concern with imagery in adult cognition sprang from several sources. One was a recollection of the fascinating imagery studies undertaken by experimental psychologists in pre-behavioral times. Another was the spectacular new discipline of Artificial Intelligence, the attempt to write programs which would, when run (sometimes rather incidentally) on computers, simulate human cognition. Cognitive functions involving figurative features turn out to be both rather recalcitrant to simulation and theoretically intriguing. The effort fed a very old philosophical debate concerning the distinction between space and thought, for which the contemporary computer terms-I will just throw them out for the moment-are given by the pair "analog" and "digital:' Yet another source of the new interest in images is the burgeoning new brain science. The gist of the problem here is that, contrary to earlier expectations, the brain events which appear to be the accompanying conditions of, or to mediate, the cognitive function of imagining show absolutely no evidence of any formations of the sort that used to be called "engrams;' formations analogous to the imagery reported by subjects; that is to say, there are no pictures in our brain, although the whole scientific community, with no significant exception, supposes that in some, often rather sophisticated, sense cognition is just brain states and events. (Note, therefore, that when I spoke before of computers merely simulating cognition and brain events merely mediating it, I was speaking far more conservatively than do most cognitive psycho!THE ST. JOHN'S REVIEW ogists.) The most pertinent source is, finally, philosophical, not however insofar as the imaginative faculty is acknowledged but precisely insofar as it is denied. In this century was written the first full-scale thematic treatment of the imagination that I know of in the history of philosophy, namely by Jean-Paul Sartre. He was inspired largely by Edmund Husser!, who founded phenomenology, a philosophical school which is interested in the description of experiences as experiences. However, it is not that work which most cognitive psychologists take account of but rather Ludwig Wittgenstein's scattered and, above all, Gilbert Ryle's systematic attack on the possibility and significance of cognition through mental imagery. Ryle's Concept of Mind is one of those bold books which mask the obscurity of their position by the hard-hitting clarity of their opposition. What Ryle attacked is what he identified as the essence of Cartesianism, namely the very idea of internal mental representation which I spoke of before: the notion that we have something-ideas, thoughts, symbols or pictures-in or before our minds. What Ryle found absurd in mental representations, and so rejected on logical grounds, was that they required a mind's eye, a mental mannikin before which to appear; he dubbed it "the ghost in the mind's machine:' What he objected to in the interiority of mental representations was their lack of public evidence; here he followed the methodological requirements of the behaviorists-but he went further, converting the requirement of observability into a conclusion of non-existence. It's Eddington's fishy argument all over: What my net can't catch, just isn't. Naturally, mental images were included in this annihilation. I want to interject here a comment on the attitude of students of cognition toward ordinary experience. Their method-driven mode sometimes makes them cavalier about what they nowadays call "folk psychology;' meaning everybody's natural suppositions, for example the distinction we all ordinarily make between ourselves and our bodies, and, most to the point, the fact that we all just do seem to see pictures in our head. For my part, no theory is plausible which, yielding to mere logical squeamishness, fails to begin by honoring and to end by grounding what we naturally say and believe. This, happily, is the hypothesis of the book from which most of what now follows is taken (from it, I should say, with the aid of about six-hundred and sixty-six other texts). The author is Stephen Kosslyn, a cognitive psychologist at Harvard. The title of the book, published in 1983, is, pertinently, Ghosts in the Mind's Machine. Its impetus was the sense that, Ryle notwithstanding, we do have and also use mental images, and that methods might be devised for testing and tricking truths about them out of subjects-in short, to make mental imagery somehow observable by devising experiments which would make the protocols of introspection more reliable. (I should say here that Kosslyn has succeeded in developing a detailed theory of the structures and processes un73 �derlying mental imagery, but it would go too far to try to describe it tonight.) The problem proposed itself in three parts. The part investigated first was: do people use mental imagery in solving some problem? If the answer was yes, the question: "do people have mental images?" would have been implicitly answered. The second part was to determine what the distinctive features of such imagery might be. The third part, which shaded confusingly into philosophy, was to determine the essential nature of such imagery. You might think these are plain enough questions, but to ask them clearly and to answer them productively turns out to be a, possibly bottomlessly, complex business. The first problem, then, whether people have mental imagery, was attacked by Galton a century ago by the naively empirical method of sending round questionnaires to great men, asking them to describe their breakfast tables. It was partly the surprising response of a number of the scientists among the respondents that sent the subject into eclipse-they claimed not to have such imagery. No one regards this result as very significant nowadays; experiments presuppose that subjects can and do follow the order: "Visualize (or imagine) x"; the result of the experiments is taken further to corroborate the assumption. In the seventies Alan Shepard and his associates devised a series of experiments designed to reveal the mental representations of subjects by seeing if they actually used imagery in doing certain tasks. (I want to note two items on the way. First, people under the constraints of an experiment are called" subjects" by psychologists. It is obviously a major question whether a subject is coextensive with a full human being. Second, in order to avoid the distracting bustle of visual aids, I shall choose from a horde of experiments those most easily describable in words, and I shall omit some of the complicating control features.) Shepard presented the subjects with pairs of pictures of somewhat complicated three-dimensional block shapes. In half of the pairs the two shapes were slightly different, in the other half they were the same, though differently oriented, at increasing angies of rotation. The subjects were asked to look at the pictures and then to judge whether each pair included different or identical shapes. The hypothesis was that the response time would be a linear function of the angle of rotation, that is to say, subjects would take longer to answer in proportion as the second member of the pair was farther rotated from the original. The results startlingly confirmed the hypothesis, and were interpreted to mean that the subject mentally performed a rotation on the second member of the pair to see if it would be brought into coincidence with the first, taking twice as long for a doubly large angle. Consider how remarkable it is that the participants, who had been looking at mere drawings, apparently did the mental rotation of the depicted solids not flatly in the picture plane but through a mental space, mimicking depthperspective. 74 (I want to point out here that "reaction time" is the bread and butter of cognitive psychology, used in boring cases to festoon with numbers a dull fact no one disputes, but in interesting ones to make cognitive processes reveal themselves. It means, of course, that in the most telling cases subjects are required to report on some kinetic aspect of pre-given imagery. Since it seems to me that when most itself, most absorbing, our imaginative capacity tends to self-produced timeless tableaus and transformation, it follows that the imagery processes clocked by cognitive psychology are characteristically of a narrowly mundane sort-but that is the price to be paid for hard results.) It is. the second part of the problem, concerning the distinctive marks of mental imagery, to which Kosslyn addressed himself. Here much ingenuity was required first just to articulate the features which an internal image might display and then to devise experiments to make them manifest themselves. Kosslyn, too, fell back on the very hypothesis attacked by Wittgenstein and Ryle, the notion that our imagery has something depictive, something picture-like about it. Let us stop to see what in our experience of imaging might drive us to the picture analogy. First of all, people do in fact experience themselves as viewing their images "in their heads." -Much as they inspect scenes and portraits and still-lives outside, they seem to be gazing on appearances in inner space. (In fact, there is a curious and beguiling theory that the earliest art images are cave paintings because caves serve as a physical representation of the black internal space that appears when the eyes are shut.) Furthermore, they don't think that the landscape or persons or objects themselves appear but their likeness or image, just as happens in a picture. That's after all, exactly why we call it "imagining." Not to be what it represents is the hall-mark of any image, be it on mirrors, reflecting pools or photographic plate, as you can read in Plato's Sophist. And finally, mental images share with artificial images the fact that they are shaped by and imbued with the author's knowledge and feelings, and sometimes even more: It seems somehow to be possible to imagine and to paint what the eye of perception has never seen. Guided by some such considerations (and helped by the new field of visual information processing), Kosslyn could frame a first precise question: Do we actually scan our interior images? To elicit an answer he devised tht: following double-checked experiment. Subjects wen shown a picture of an island containing seven unevenly distributed features, a rock, a tree, a beach and so on. They were to inspect it until they could hold it before theil mind's eye, and fixing on a given location, they were tc determine whether or not a certain announced featurE was on the island by making an imaginary black sped move to it at top speed, and when it had arrived, the; were to press a button. The reaction times bore out Koss· lyn' s expectations. The little speck took proportionally more time to reach more distant features. Subjects wen SUMMER 1985 �evidently passing mentally over the intermediate distance, that is to say, mentally scanning their images. To explain the double check part of the experiment I have to begin to say something about an old battle of latter-day gods and giants that rages in cognitive psychology. These days the antagonists are called "imagists" and Hpropositionalists," or, for fun, 11 iconophiles" and "iconophobes." The former claim that we both have images and use them cognitively along with propositional thought. The latter (whose chief proponent is Zenon Pylyshin) argue either that we don't have them, or that if we have them we don't use them-that they are merely along for the ride, ''epiphenomenal,'' and that all cognition is propositional. I won't attempt to be precise about what is meant by "propositional" (except that it implies notfigurative and non-spacial representations), but let Kosslyn's double-check indicate the distinction. After having had his island experiment criticized by the propositionalists because, they claimed, reaction times could have been the same had the subjects run through mental lists of features rather than scanned their mental images, Kosslyn simply instructed a second group of subjects not necessarily to use images but just to answer as quickly as possible, on the supposition that seven features could easily be kept in mind as a list. Lo and behold, reaction times were indifferent to the distances of the features from base. Apparently the task could be done either by scanning mental image or by consulting a word-like mental list. Next Kosslyn investigated the mental image as object. First he posed a rather startling question suggested by the picture analogy. As opposed to sculpture in the round, picture images, be they mirror reflections, newspaper photographs, paintings, or wax impressions, are all manifested on a medium: silvered glass, newsprint on paper, paint on canvas, wax. The question became: Do mental images have a medium which underlies all imagery in general? What is the inner picture plane like? For example wax takes impressions differently if it is dry or soft (here Kosslyn cites Plato's Theaetetus where the mental medium is compared to a wax tablet), and paper can be coarse or fine grained. Does the mental medium too set a limit on the resolution of images? If so, it would underwrite the picture-likeness of the imagery, since pictures are distinguished from their real originals precisely by the fact that we can expect real objects to offer almost infinite prospects of detail, bounded only by the acuteness of our sight, whereas a picture has an inherent limit of resolution past which we are no longer looking at the images it carries; for example, a human being can be in- spected down to the pores of the skin and beyond, while a newspaper photo presently dissolves into mere dots. To test the grain of the mental medium, subjects were asked to conunit to memory pictures of a rabbit next to an elephant and of a fly next to a rabbit, so that the larger animal would in each case take up most of the mental space. They were then asked to report the features of the large and the small animals. The latter took consistently THE ST. JOHN'S REVIEW more time, as if the small features were harder to see, or as if the viewers had to zoom in on them. Since many people have a favorite familiar rabbit while few have a favorite fly, they were also asked to look at a tiny rabbit next to a large fly, lest they be reporting features from mere verbal memory. Again the tiny animal's features took longer to make out. Kosslyn concluded that the mental medium had a definite grain which makes small objects harder to discern-perhaps somewhat dubiously since the result might be equally attributed to the resolving power of the mental eye. But then he didn't consider the mind's eye to be an organ of sight, as we will see. (I must inject here a doubt I feel myself about Kosslyn' s procedures, which is that he always has subjects memorize objects which are pictures to begin with, that is, he works with mental images of real images. There may be a predisposing factor in that, but let us set it aside for this lecture.) Again the propositionalists demurred, claiming that subjects were not inspecting mental images but verballike lists of features. They would look at the larger animal, which also had more features, first and store its description ill their short term memory. (Short term memory is the kind of memory where we "keep," say, telephone numbers we have just looked up between the book and the dial.) Now experiments have shown that the short term memory can hold only plus or minus seven items. Consequently the small animal's features had simply been crowded out, and subjects would have to dig into their long term associative memory files, where general coherent knowledge about flies is stored, to answer questions about them, and this would take longer. Again Kosslyn devised a double-check. When subjects are asked without a picture whether cats have claws they can answer just as immediately as when asked if they have heads. In fact, claws which are spatially small, have as much associative memory strength as heads which are comparatively large, but when subjects are asked to answer the question by inspecting a mental image, they nonetheless take longer to ascertain the presence of claws than of a head. The medium does seem to obscure small features, and furthermore, in general, we seem to be able to solve memory tasks in two ways, through mental images and through verbal registration. (Ask yourself, for example, how many windows there are in your house. Most people answer by taking a mental walk through the place. Now wait five minutes and ask yourself again. Usually the answer will come in a word-fourteen in my case.) Finally, Kosslyn considered, a medium has a size and a shape. For real pictures these are given by the dimensions of the frame. For our perceptual window on the world the size is given by our angle of vision and the shape by the fact that our eyes are set horizontally side by side-consequently our visual field is roughly elliptical. To measure the size of the field-medium, Kosslyn had subjects mentally walk toward memorized images of animals of various sizes, a rabbit, a dog, a cow, until they 75 �overflowed the mental field. The subjects then placed a real tripod at a distance from a real wall which they judged equal to the mental distance of overflow of each animal. That distance, it tumed out, increased proportionally with the size of the animal. The angle of sharp central mental vision was calculated with a little trigonometry to be roughly 25°, similar to that of the perceptual field. Furthermore, subjects were to imagine walking toward a foot-long ruler held first horizontally and then vertically. The vertical ruler overflowed the field sooner than the other, showing that the inner medium, too, is roughly elliptical in shape. Most people suppose that seeing and imagining have similarities. That they can be confusingly alike was shown in a famous experiment made by Perky in 1910 on the eve of the great eclipse of imagery studies and replicated more recently in improved format. She seated subjects before a screen in a well-lit room and asked them to project the mental image of, say, a banana on the screen. (There seem to be animal and vegetable psychologists.) Unbeknownst to them she projected a faint slide image on the same place. Subjects declared themselves a little surprised that while they were thinking of the banana as lying on its side, they kept imagining it as standing on end, but no one caught on. Kosslyn considers her results as well as his to indicate that perceiving and imagining share certain cognitive processes. For him that means, of course, that they share brain mechanisms, namely those that take. place well behind the organs of visual perception (as suggested by the fact that people who lose their eye-sight in youth continue to have mental images). So much for a small sampling of the experiments and their results. Now comes the serious business, the effort to say what all this might amount to, in itself and for us. II. Philosophy I hope I have not left you with the impression that the so-called propositionalists have been repulsed. All the conclusions have been called in question, though for my part, I'm pursuaded by the design itself of Shepard's and Kosslyn' s experiments that introspection can be tricked into yielding disciplined, hard information about internal, that is, psychic, states and events while the results indicate first, that we have an intemal space-like receptacle which resembles in some respects the medium of pictures and in others the field of perception, and second, that the images therein are cognitively effective, that they are at least sometimes used in the act of knowing and are not merely epiphenomena-idle accompaniments of cognition. That's what I am persuaded of, but as I mentioned, in cognitive psychology the battle between the so-called iconophiles and iconophobes continues to ragesome say ad nauseam. I think, however, that the combatants show good instincts in carrying on, because although within cognitive science it may be that as the formula- 76 tions become more and more refined the issue becomes more and more obscure, and perhaps finally recalcitrant to experimental resolution, from the philosophic point of view the question won't go away. Before summing up what, in rock-bottom terms, that question is and why it matters, let me just quickly run through some of the subsequent perplexities concerning the imagination. There is the great dual question about the relation of perception and imagination: could we perceive if we didn't imagine?; can we image what we haven't perceived? Then we might ask whether we inspect our mental images passively or whether in beholding them we are actually producing them. Then there is the question of the difference between real images and imagination-images: what is the distinction between perceiving an image such as a portrait, and imagining a perception, such as the visualization of a friend's face? Then we can ask about composition of images: are they wholes made of parts?; for instance, can they fade in sections or are they fragilely integral, generated and lost as a whole?; and in general, how sturdy or evanescent are they? Are they altered piecemeal or by so-called blink transformations? Do they obey compositional laws like the "law of good form'' proposed by the Gestalt psychologists? And since mental images, whatever else they are, are somehow images, there are all the questions about the way they mix being and non-being first raised in Plato's Saphist and now treated in logic under the heading of fictional or non· existent objects. These are the enticing inquires which would come next. But for now let me state the two terms which seem tc sum up the debate, as I said, in the most rock-bottom and revealing way, namely: depiction vs. description (Ned Block). The pictoralists say that some of our mental representations are picture-like. Aristotle's famous remar1 that "the soul never thinks without images" would seerr to be the founding dictum of this camp. (Though that ha' been doubted, in fact by Martha Nussbaum, who lecturec here a couple of years ago, in her commentary on thE De Motu Animalium.) The descriptionalists claim that al, our mental representations are language-like, that om inner representations, although about the world, are neve1 like it. I am now going to conclude by trying to show wha· matters about this controversy and how it might affec us in particular. First, you might think it was pretty obvious that thE debate would drive its proponents smack into such ques tions as: what is depiction? What can it be but thE representation of an object as a space-like image (not, b) the way, necessarily visual)? But what is representation what is space, what is an image? Well, the psychologist' mostly do what I've done tonight, skirt around theS< questions. But when the moment comes to take them Uf a student of this program should be way ahead. Wha is the inner point of the sophomore study of analytic ge ometry, for instance, but to think about just these issues' There is a picture on one side of the text and an equatior SUMMER 1985 �on the other. The diagram is spatial and figurative and appears to image something. The equation consists of letters and signs and seems to symbolize something. Are they two manifestations of the same object which they represent differently? Is the equation closer to words or to logic than the figure is? What is the difference among figure, symbol and word, and what difference does that difference make? A successful sophomore mathematics tutorial cannot help but be a rather deep introduction to the depiction-description debate. In fact, come to think of it, our study of Apollonius already offers a prime introduction to the issue: Remember the propositions where figure and words jibe at the beginning and at the end, but in between we are required to follow letter manipulations which are geometric nonsense (or are they?), while, on the other hand, Apollonius' very understanding of his curves as conic sections can't be adequately rendered in symbols (or can it?). Images, however, are only a subheading of the category representation, and mental images co;me under mental representations in general. Cognitive psychologists are one and all committed to the existence of mental representations-else what would their experiments be forcing into the open? But as I mentioned way back in this lecture, students of philosophy in this century have taken to attacking the whole notion of representation. Recall that the title of Kosslyn's book Ghosts in the Mind's Machine was intended as a rebuttal of Ryle' s attack on mental representations, images, of course, in particular. Kosslyn could take this position because he thinks he has solved the very problem of that mind's eye before which the images appear whose necessity made mental imagery an absurdity to Ryle. Of course, the mind's eye is just a sub-problem: all mental representation requires a self, or subject, or, derogatorily, a "homunculus," before whom the representations are present, and that fact always leads to bottomless difficulties-though, in my opinion these are mysteries we'll just have to live with. I mentioned earlier on that Artificial Intelligence, or computer simulation of cognitive processes, was one of the impulses behind the new study of mental imagery; Kosslyn was able to construct a computer model of his theory, and it is indeed through a computer analogy that he means to dispose of the question: "what or who watches the pictures of the mind?" The answer is simply that the imaginal medium of a computer, the display screen, is actually an array of dots, and that the computer's central processing unit, the analogue of the mind's eye, can "interpret" the imagery because it is immediately translatable into words and numbers like: there is a dot in row 5, column 7. So a computer can both generate and read images without benefit of a mind's eye. "Goodbye homunculus" is Kosslyn' s chapter heading for this solution. Now, to my mind, it is both a surrender and an evasion (though, I should add, Kosslyn seems to know exactly what he is doing-! just can't make out his explanation). It is a surrender of the notion that imagery THE ST. JOHN'S REVIEW has some ultimate cognitive independence or value, because it implies that an image is only what is called an "emergent" whole, or as he says: a display "does not have to be a picture to function as one." That is to say, the image emerges from non-figurative elements, namely from dots marking coordinate positions. Furthermore the interpretation, so called, of the image, the computer simulation of its comprehension, is nothing but just the stored matrix of these points expressed in words and digits, or even in digits only. In short, images are at the bottom "digital," and not "analog," a pair of terms from computer science which I've mentioned before, referring to discrete word-, digit-, or symbol-like representations as opposed to continuous, figurative, or space-like representations. What we know when we apprehend an image is finally its algebra, just as Descartes first implied in his Geometry, which, as I mentioned, we study so carefully for that reason. The evasion in Kosslyn' s solution to the mind's eye perplexity is simply this: As he explicity says, cognitive science is not competent to deal with experience, with the conscious sense we have of our cognition (although Dennett has tried to provide cognitive science with a theory of consciousness). As a science it is bent on turning the interior into an exterior, on making inner processes observable, and consciousness is hopelessly and recalcitrantly andessentially interior. (It is this conscious experience to which the phenomenological school of philosophy which I mentioned before specifically attends.) Consequently, the computer analogy simply circumvents the perplexing sense we have of an inner vision-an evasion which is practiced throughout the Artificial Intelligence community, only that generally the "what my net can't catch isn't fish" principle is in full force. What is evidently possible, though hellishly complex, is to devise equipment and programs which will "perceive" simple scenes, and image them, or put images having the established features of mental imagery on the display and read them off-an accomplishment which is then hypothesized to give insight into human imagining. If you think about it, what the fish principle does is to put philosophy under the domination of science-with the whole-hearted concurrence of what might be called the hard-nosed branch of academic philosophy. The cognitive scientists decide what method of theorizing will keep their inquiries within the concerns of science, and then more or less knowingly move to exclude from being what their canon excludes from notice-that after all is just what it means to turn human beings into experimental subjects. And they do this without let or hinderance, not to say with the connivance, of a large part of the contemporary academic philosophical community. For the contest about who asks the questions has been won by the scientists, in this case the cognitive scientists ("Cognitive Science" being the overall name for "Cognitive Psychology," "Artificial Intelligence," "Informa' tion Processing," and so on), and they sit inside calling the digital tune, while the professional philosophers skulk 77 �at the windows making comments. This state of affairs can't help but eventually arouse our community's anxious interest, because, while our program is built on the trust that the important questions are perennially the same however diverse the attempted answers, the capitulation of philosophy to science makes urgent the question of questions I mentioned in the beginning, namely whether the terms of the questions themselves may be transformed radically and beyond translation from age to age. For science itself, by its very progressive nature, undergoes periodic revolutions which appear to some to consign the old problems and terms to irreducible incommensurability with the new ones, and perhaps philosophy should reflect this discontinuity. We could do the intellectual world a great service by rousing ourselves to a rigorous debate with the very clever contemporary proponents of this point of view. Lest I seem to have gotten away from the significance to us of the imagery debate, let me quickly show how it fits in. On the one hand there is a bunch of terms like 11 imagistic," Lpictorialistic," analogous" and ~~analog." On the other there is "propositional," "descriptional," n symbolic" and digital." As we have seen, even the scientists who have devoted themselves to discovering . the precise characteristics of mental imagery soon abscond into the camp of those who believe that all cognition is finally to be characterized by the second complex of terms, although somehow the first keeps intruding itself on experience. Why is the battle so drawn out while underneath the profession is so unanimous? The chief reason is this: Human experience may speak for the significance of our imaging power, but the underlying impulse of cognitive scientists is to turn the mental into the physical (forgetting, by the way, that their heroes, the physicists, are meanwhile busy turning the physical world into an intelligible one). Specifically, they expect to explain all cognitive processes in terms of the sort of logical functions which can be realized as a physical machine, be it computer or brain. Now as I mentioned, brain science apparently has at present no evidence that well accommodates picture-knowing, although there are basic facts of the brain's functioning which would lend themselves to the "digital" cognition. So it is plain that the impulse in cognitive science would be to explanations in those terms. Now I have a deep-felt though not yet very wellgrounded suspicion that it is our imagining capacity which will turn out to be the impregnable center of our embattled humanity-embattled, because it appears to be infernally difficult to articulate in principle the difference between the activity of a perceiving and reasoning human being and the behavior of a sophisticatedly programmed machine, that is if the factor of self-consciousness or inner experience is disallowed, while the purely and precisely rational argument for hanging on to what I might as well call the soul, are confoundedly elusive. We might talk about that in the question period. My inklings that the imagination will be crucial in fi11 11 78 nally distinguishing human cognition from its computer simulation do have some evidence and some arguments in their favor. The evidence is chiefly in claims from critics of the Artificial Intelligence project that it will come to its limits in capturing just those functions which have analogue character. The arguments I can only gesture toward by bringing up, belatedly, a pair of pertinent terms which is conspicuously missing from the imagery debate: imagination and intellect. It is one of those old thought complexes whose meaning is supposed to be hopelessly inaccessible to us once its transformation into the current terms has been accomplished. Well, since I can believe that only for a minute at a time, I think there is a world of light to be gotten from carefully retranslating the debate into these terms, since we can then re-ask (without ignoring the new contributions of cognitive science) old but unanswered questions concerning our strange double power to bring the looks of this world into ourselves while leaving its stuff outside, and to bring forth within us figures which were never of the outer world and yet can act potently on it. One of the chief boons will be that the traditional pair, unlike the contemporary set, is not an opposition but a conjunction, and that whenever imagination and intellect are considered as equally and unseverably necessary to knowledge, reflection on thinking, reasoning, acting intelligently, takes on a very different coloration than when the faculty of imagery is regarded as an analytical embarrassment. What I mean is: to my mind what the contemporary intellectual world needs most urgently is a revision of its mode and its understanding of rationality. Early on I described the thinking of our more interesting contemporaries as being smart, precise, pure. That begins to catch its flavor but of course not the serious impulse behind it, which is, to think of thinking as essentially analytic and formalistic, symbolic, logical rather than analogical. I am using somewhat opaque buzz-words because I have not yet quite come to grips with what is going on, except for a sense that sweet reason requires the curbing of this rampant rationality, requires, if I may put it this way, a logically legitimate way of respecting the mysteries. Now I can imagine that it might be one of our students who is destined to work out such a revisal, having been prepared for the task by a program which does not segregate works of the imagination from works of the intellect and which contains many texts honoring-and also despising-the appearances in a way wholly different from that of current cognitive science-a way in which our environment is not understood as a source of information to be processed but as a world of figures sending us significant looks and speaking to us in intelligible tongues. And in general, it is because of the temporal cosmopolitanism of the program, its intention to make a serious attempt at empathy into radically diverse human possibilities, that the St. John's program can be a protection against the regimented seduction of the bubbling Babylon which constitutes our contemporary intellectual SUMMER 198: �world; were I a child's mother I would not wish to send it out there unprepared in some such way, because for all its vaunted multiplicity and its vigorous polemics, the marchings and wheelings of opinions take place in amazingly close formation-as is perhaps not so surprising considering the temporal parochialism of university training. When I said in the first couple of minutes of this lecture that I hoped to give reasons for maintaining distance from "current thinking," enticingly brilliant though it bepractically I suppose this means clearing only a very modest and very deliberately designed space for it in the program-! had in mind mainly this phenomenon of homogeneity. It has recently been given a sophisticated rationale under the heading of "the social justification of belief" by Richard Rorty (who lectured here a couple of years ago) and has been joyfully taken up by parascientific disciplines such as Anthropology (Geertz) and Educational Studies (Bruffie). "We understand knowledge," Rorty says, "when we understand the social justification of belief," meaning that knowledge arises not from taking in and testing for oneself what ihe world has to give, but from devising language for obtaining the concurrence of the community accredited to judge, while learning means being absorbed into that society which carries on the pertinent, essentially terminological conversation. To me this view of a community of learning seems like philosophy's self-imposed revenge for its voluntary subjection to science, for it is modelled on the current philosophy-of-science view of science as a social construction (which, by the way, apparently infuriates practicing scientists, insofar as they pay it any mind). Now this college is not only a program but also the community designed for the study of the program, and those of our students who were self-aware members of the former should make peculiarly discerning judges of the pervasive and potent view I've just described. For the community Rorty projects is a spatially scattered league of competent professionals whose largely written communications are aimed at the fixation of shared belief, while St. John's is a living community of people of carefully guarded amateur status who converse with each other face to face, to save their souls, and, standing somewhat apart, prepare for four years to grapple with a present that has been twenty-eight hundred years in the making. To conclude: Under these circumstances it is not so sur- prising that, while in the sciences hopes are high, the dominating philosophical mood is, according to temperament, either a rage for finis-writing or a lugubrious nihilism-a zealous anticipation of an end to philosophy which is no consummation but either a self-destructive bang or an unravelled whimper of mere endless argumentation. But I imagine that some of us can think of an understanding of philosophy by which it excapes these ignominies. If philosophy is directed wonder then we need not follow the lead of the sciences in asking only warrantably pursuable questions or abandon answers because their complete formal justification proves elusive. Then we are permitted to assume that when something arouses such wonder in us it is given to us, first and last, as wonderful, however relentlessly we may work it over in between. A practical illustration: Close your eyes and summon the image of some attractive shape-an elegant object, a familiar face, a significant scene. When you have it before your mind's eye, ask yourself, perhaps vaguely at first but then more pointedly, what might have to be true for that wonder to occur. How could such an inquiry, refreshed by frequent recurrence to the inner experience itself, peter out into mere argumentation? It seems to me to consist of continual beginnings, impulses toward a truth which is just out of sight. Eva Brann is a tutor at St. John's College, Annapolis. THE ST. JOHN'S REVIEW 79 �80 SUMMER 1985 �Mozart's Happy Endings: A New Lool< at the "Convention'' of the "Lieto Fine" Wye J. Allanbrook We romantic moderns all too often make the tacit judgment that the conventions of eighteenth-century opem buffa are hollow devices.....!'mere convention:' We tend to think of them as having been elaborated to serve a purely musical function, and offering no support to the drama, or even hindering it to the extent of causing serious obstruction. A case in point is the elaborate many-sectioned finale which closes the principal acts of an opem buffa. Certainly the innovation of this so-called "chain" finale was largely responsible for the great success of the comic-opera style in the mid- and late-eighteenth century; its fast pace and musical continuity offered a pleasing antidote to the monolithic stops and starts of opera seria. But the finale style nevertheless had its detractors, even at the time, notably Lorenzo da Ponte, who may be the first in that line of critics who raised the cry of "mere convention" against this fertile form. DaPonte, writing, one suspects, with concealed pride about his mastery of finale poetics, calls the finale "a little comedy or small drama all by itself:' Enumerating ironically the types of singing which must take place in it--''l'adagio, !'allegro, !'andante, l'amabile, l'armonioso, lo strepitoso, l'arcistrepitoso''-he comes at last to '1o strepitosissimo;' with which it must close. This, he says, "in musical jargon is called the chuisa, or rather the stretta, I know not whether because, in it, the whole power of the drama is squeezed together, or because it gives generally not one squeeze but a hundred to the poor brain of the poet who must compose the words:' The practice of gradually massing all the characters on stage as the finale concludes he terms a mere "dogma of the theater;' and complains that this convention prevails over the plot "in the face of judgment, reason, and all the Aristotles on earth:'' This talk of "mere convention'' implies the presence of a truth buried beneath the convention which one can get at by stripping away its calcified layers. In one extreme THE ST. JOHN'S REVIEW case, Mozarfs Don Giovanni, the attempt to get at this supposed underground truth has occupied realizers of the opera for two hundred years. The section which most offends is of course the moment in the second-act finale after the Don has descended to Hell when the rest of the characters reassemble, chatting almost urbanely about their experience with the mysterious shade they encountered on their way in. Then in a stylized movement reminiscent of the French vaudeville finale, each pair (and Leporello solitary) steps forth to pronounce his or her fate. Finally, for what in da Ponte's terms would be the strepitosissimo, the characters are called upon by Zerlina, Masetto, and Leporello to sing what they call the antichissima canzon, and all give vent together to the moral of the story: "This is the end of the evil-doer: And the death of wicked men is always equal to their life!"2 The first line of the moral is set as a pious and wildly fake fugue, the last as a passage of stile legato, motet style, the strings dropping out-another massive period to balance the squaredoff fugue. The antiquity of the style of these two periods makes it clear that this is indeed the antichissima canzon called for in the text. Successive critics have found this epilogue woefully inappropriate, its symmetries pallid and empty after the Dminor fireworks of Giovanni's disappearance. Jahn gives an appalling catalogue of various scenes nineteenthcentury stage directors conceived as substitutes for the epilogue which would free the truths of the opera from the fetters of "mere convention:' In one performance in Paris the Don's descent into Hell was followed by the entry of Donna Anna's corpse borne by mourners and the chanting of the Dies irae from Mozart's Requiem. Jahn hinlself preferred to omit the entire epilogue, restricting the entry of the other characters to one final D-major scream after Giovanni has fallen.' Even the recent Cambridge Opera Handbook devoted 81 �to Don Giovanni, with intelligent commentary by Julian Rushton, speaks of the scena ultima "problem;' and terms it a "trivialization of the action"4 which is necessary only to provide the obligatory measures in the proper concluding key. But such judgments are surely misguided; does it make any sense to turn Don Giovanni into a tragedy? Mozart gave us a clue to the answer to this question by calling the work in his own private catalogue an opera buffa, and its familiar classification, dramma giocosa, meant about the same thing. To have the opera end on a dying fall in imitation of the great nineteenth-century operatic tragedies is to force a private meaning on this work which it will not bear. Clearly stripping away conventions is not the answer; instead we must enter imaginatively into them and make them come alive. It is my intention within the brief compass of this paper to examine one occasional practice of opera buffa which I have noted which seems to me to provide a way into the question-the habit of making music into a subject of discourse at the close of an opera buffa's last-act finale. To focus attention on music in opera, where music is the natural mode of expression, and thus not a theme or subject matter, it is necessary suddenly to put music in relief by placing quotation marks around it. This is most frequently done by troping into the operatic setting a kind of music which is usually used for some social or ritual purpose-Gebrauchsmusik, "occasional music:' It is of course great fun to use occasional music in an opera, and most composers have tried it in one form or another. In Don Giovanni three stage orchestras playing social dance music are characters in the first-act finale, and a windband on stage in the second-act finale plays three famous tunes as Ihfelmusik for the gluttonous Don. Giovarmi, and Cherubino in Le nozze di Figaro, both sing obvious songs, and in Figaro's third-act finale a Turkish march and a fandango play crucial roles. These are all uses of occasional music which emerge from the plot, and at the same time play a more significant-even symbolic-role in the cosmos of the opera. But there are other occasions in Mozart's operas when music comments on music in a purely musical way. For example, toward the close of an ensemble Mozart often lets music take over on the way toward the final cadence, notably in those sublime and dramatically purposeless digressions into species counterpoint in the second-act finale of Le nozze di Figaro or the second-act sextet of Don Giovanni, where the antique vocal style becomes the only topical reference, and we are carried away to the climax on the wings of Fuxian song. But belonging to a third and special class of overt musical reference in these operas are the moments at the very end of last-act finales when music is named-when attention is drawn to the human habit of celebratory music-making. Then the singers, by way of rejoicing, self-consciously sing, and in realizing that they are singing, we the audience surrender our doubts about the events on stage, compelled by the sheer exuberance of their choral song. This occurs at the close of Don Giovanni when the characters sing out the antichissima canzon. It also happens at the close of Le nozze 82 di Figaro, where the participants, after the orchestra mimics suitable martial music in a brief interlude, call upon each other in chorus to run off and celebrate "to the sound of the happy march;'' all doubts about the permanence of the reconciliation they have just witnessed momentarily dispelled in the joy of shared festival. A random sample of opera buffas of the last three decades of the eighteenth century yields a number of last-act finales which display the same habit in one form or another. In Pasquale Anfossi's La finta giardiniera of 1787, the lovers in their closing duet imitate bird songs to celebrate their happiness, commenting on this in the text. In Haydn's I:incontro improvviso (1775), another seraglio opera; the delivered lovers enjoin each other to rejoice by singing happy tunes, at which point the texture turns conspicuously imitative to suit actions to words. In Cimarosa's Giannina e Bemardone (1781) the entire last-act finale is framed by occasional music, in the person of a military band which is on stage throughout. The characters comment on the beauties of the music at the opening, and at the close of the finale command the band to play again so that they can dance. Then in antiphonal choruses the men and women sing nonsense syllables~'Laira, laira, lallallera;' and so on. The close of Cimarosa's famous II matrimonio segreto contains a brilliant chorus consisting of extravagant vocal excursions in imitative and concerto style, on the text "Let there be music, let there be singing; everyone must shine:'6 Martiny Soler's Una cosa rara, one of the operas quoted in the last-act finale of Don Giovanni, concludes with the two female leads dancing and singing a "seghidilla'' in honor of their queen Isabella. Even closer to home, the Bertati-Gazzaniga Don Giovanni Tenorio closes with a comically triumphant chorus in which the survivors all imitate the sounds of musical instruments, again with nonsense syllables. The text is worth quoting in full: All: Let us no longer speak of this dreadful event. Now let us thlnk instead of rejoicing . ... What shall we do? Women: a a a I want to sing. I want to leap. Duca Ottavio: I want to play the guitar. Lanterna: I want to play the bass. Pasquariello: And I, to add to the fracas, want to play the bassoon. Duca Ottavio: Tren, tren, trinchete trinchete tre. Lanterna: Flon, flon, flon, flon, flon, flon. Pasquariello: Pu, pu, pu, pu, pu, pu, pu, pu. All: What beautiful madness! What strange harmony! Thus shall we all be happy.' None of this will seem surprising to anyone familiat with the conventions of comedy. Comedies traditionally end with weddings; Figaro takes this convention fm granted when in the second-act finale to Le nozze di Figan he seizes upon it to manipulate the discomfitted Count, taking Susanna's arm and saying to her with feigned in· nocence: "To finish the farce happily, and after the cus· tom of the theater, let us perform for them a matrimonial SUMMER 1985 �tableau:'• Two horns in horn fifths add the flavor of the ceremonial to his music. By bringing his own comedy within the prescenium arch under the sanction of its conventions Figaro is trying to ensure that it can play itself out to his satisfaction. Shakespeare's comedies often close with double or triple weddings, and the blessing of music and dancing. As Titania puts it at the end of A Midsummernight's Dream: Hand in hand, with fairy grace, Will we sing, and bless this place. Of course many operas were in fact officially celebratory: as feste teatrali commissioned to honor a royal wedding or other ceremony they put their blessing on an actual nuptial rite. In Martin's Una cosa rara the seguidilla in honor of the queen would have joined fact and fiction when performed on a royal occasion. Comedy ends with the assertion of the proper orders, and thus an act of communion and public festival is in order. Roman comedy often ended with an invitation issued to the audience to an imaginery banquet, and in Old Comedy the players even threw morsels of food to the audience.' In eighteenth-century opera buffas composers substituted for the communal feast the musical banquet of the Tones Macht-the "power of the tone" celebrated at the end of Die Zauberflote-the sheer power of music to effect a sense of joyous commonality. It is no accident that in several of the examples I mentioned above the choruses close with bird song imitations or nonsense syllables. The word is a distinguisher, a divider; at the moment when the barriers between audience and performers so carefully kept erected during the course of the drama are to be lowered, language is an alien influence, hindering complete surrender to the healing process of music. Comedy, as I have just said, ends with the assertion of the proper orders of society, and in most of the opera buffas I have quoted from above, that assertion is achieved unequivocally, with no doubts about its validity or strength. When the imbroglio is finally untangled, the appropriate couples joyfully united, there is only celebration, and no regrets. But that cannot be said to be true in the extreme case of an opera buffa which I cited at the beginning of this paper-Don Giavanni, where the survivors appear at best diminished creatures in a pallid and unpalatable universe after the departure of the Don. Nor is it entirely true for Le nozze di Figaro. For there, although the private pastoral reconciliation sequence which Susanna and Figaro join in promises true wedded bliss for the servant couple, the public ceremony in which their noble counterparts are reconciled is much less convincing; surely the future holds more pain for the gentle Countess from her husband's harsh and philandering nature. Great comedies like these two operas of Mozart's do not seek to please by merely mechanical couplings and uncouplings, or a harsh and reductive caricature of human foibles. Yet it is this very quality of depth and honesty 1HE ST. JOHN'S REVIEW which occasions the wrongheaded charge that their endings are incommensurate with their content, and do not in fine "tell the truth:' Certainly it is true that the joyful assertion of the Tones Macht at the end of Don Giovanni functions rather like the traditional deus ex machina-a celebration of life in the face of cruelty, disorder, and blighted hopes. So the most venerable comedy we possess-Homer's Odyssey-closes with Athene the dea ex mach ina stopping the raised ax of the emaged and bloodthirsty Odysseus and ringing a curtain of sanity and order down over a dismaying scene of violence and nearslaughter. Comedy ends with the assertion of the proper orders, but this assertion may not necessarily be the crown of a serene and sane society; it may indeed be a lid clapped on disorder and despair. Only our greatest playwrights and composers-the names of Shakespeare, Moliere, and Mozart might nearly complete the list-can live with comedy on those terms. Having no illusions about the darker side of human nature, they nevertheless choose to assert at the end of their works the goods of continuity and order, and the equilibrium of good sense. Is this not often the braver, higher act, to assert that life goes on in the face of disorder, and not to succumb to the easy temptations of melodrama or to the solitude of tragedy? The cry of the lieto fine, the happy ending--''This is the way things ought to be, just exactly as they are''-is not always a facile assertion of an earthly utopia, but a pledge to make the best of a bad-or at least a difficult-job. The communal celebration effected by the healing power of the tone is hardly "mere convention:' but a gesture of the hopelessness of any more articulate celebration superintended by the word, the explanation. The celebration in these two great opera buffas of the necessity of human accommodation to what is moves one to suspect that comedy at its greatest has a range and power which are capable of encompassing even the tragic mode. 1. Lorenzo da Ponte, Le memorie di un avventuriero (Milan, Club degli 1973), p. 78. 2. ''Questo il fin di chi fa mal:/E de' perfidi Ia morte/ Alla vita sempre ugual!" 3. Otto Jahn, The Life of Mozart, trans. Pauline Townsend, 3 vols. (New York, Kalmus, n.d.), III, 213-214. 4. W.A. Mozart, Don Giovanni, ed. Julian Rushton (Cambridge, Cambridge University Press, 1981), pp. 64-65. 5. "A1 suon di lieta marcia." 6. "Che si suoni, che si canti, tutti quanti ha da brillar." 7. "Tutti. Pill non facdasi parola Del terribile successo; Ma pensiamo in vece adesso Di poterci rallegrar ... Che potressimo mai far? Donne. A a a, io vO cantare: Io vO mettermi a saltar. Duca Ott. La Chitarra io vo suonare. Lant. Io suonar vO il Contrabasso. Pasq. Ancor io per far del chiasso TI fagotto vO suonar. Duca Ott. Tren, tren, trinchete trinchete tre. Editori, e e 83 �Lant. Flon, flon, flon, flon, flon, flon. Pasq. Pu, pu, pu, pu, pu, pu, pu, pu. Tutti. Che bellissima pazzia! Che stranissima armonia! Cosi allegri si va a star." 8. "Per finirla [Ia burletta] lietamente E all'usanza teatrale, Un' azion matrimoniale Le faremo ora seguir." 9. Northrop Frye, Anatomy of Criticism (Princeton, New Jersey, ton University Press, 1957), p. 164. Prince~ Wye J. Allanbrook is a tutor at St. John's College, Annapolis 84 SUMMER 19~ �Achilles and Hector: The Homeric Hero (Part II) Seth Benardete Achilles and Hector: The Homeric Hero is the Ph.D. dissertation of Dr. Benardete submitted in 1955 to the Committee on Social Thought at the University of Chicago. Til.E ST. JOHN'S REVIEW 85 �CONTENTS Part I. Style Introduction Chapter I. Men and Heros II. Achaeans and Trojans III. Achilles and Agamemnon IV. Ancestral Virtue V. The Armour of Agamemnon VI. Ajax VII. Heroic Virtue VIII. Achilles and Hector IX. Similes X. Achilles' and Hector's Similes XI. Heroic Ambition Part II. Plot Introduction .............................................. 87 Chapter I. The Gods ............................................ 89 II. The Plot of the Iliad . ................................. 92 III. The Embassy ........................................ 94 IV. The Deception of Zeus ................................ 99 V. Patroclus ........................................... 100 VI. Achilles and Patroclus ............................... 102 VII. The Exploits of Achilles .............................. 104 VIII. Achilles and Hector ................................. 106 IX. The Funeral Games ................................. 107 X. Achilles and Priam .................................. 109 Epilogue ................................................. 110 86 SUMMER 198 �Introduction It is very difficult at the present time to talk sensibly about the Homeric hero, for not only has "virtue" itself become an anachronism, we ourselves no longer responding to it at once, but also, because of this unawareness, we either dismiss with contempt the tragic hero, who embodies all virtues, or we rank him beyond his worth. We have lost a just appreciation of virtue, which only the world around us, and not poetry alone, can supply. Unlike the philosopher, who may write down all of his thoughts, the tragic hero resists translation. No matter how well he is described, unless we have seen him beforehand in action, and know what kind of man he is, the poetic hero will ever remain alien to us. Unless we are in immediate sympathy with Achilles, and regard not his submission but his apostasy as the sign of his greatness, the Iliad will never seem real. His submission, which his humanity imposes upon him, signifies his tragedy: but his greatness lies in his disregard of all civility. We, however, tend to turn his virtue into a vice, repelled by his superhuman excellence and secretly pleased with his downfall; or if we are more unconventional, we will blame ''society'' for his own failure and assign his defects to his opponents. The reason why we are so apt to distort the tragic hero, ignoring either his vices or his virtues, is the absence of examples in our midst, by whom we could be guided in our estimate of their poetic counterparts. Indeed the "Homeric Problem" perhaps could hardly have arisen, had not the hero as a reality no longer been recognized and understood. Most other ages have had an Alcibiades or a Marlborough to lend substance to the poet's fiction; so that the paradoxical mean between virtue and vice which the tragic hero maintains, being both better than ourselves and yet unexceptional in justice and virtue, was at once convincing. If we, however, must THE ST. JOHN'S REVIEW look in vain for contemporary examples of the hero, our only recourse is to fictional accounts that may impress more deeply than the Iliad itself. Where then are we to find them? Plutarch's Lives perhaps would have served us best: but if his "moralizing historiography," which was "for centuries the mental fare of the reading public," was "weighed by the nineteenth century and found wanting, " 1 we cannot hope that a reference to him now would suffice to restore him and make intelligible to us the tragic hero. Although Plutarch has no other theme than the hero-and how difficult it is either to praise or blame him2-he is too old-fashioned to be of any use. We need a poet whom we still read and partly understand: so I have invoked the aid of Shakespeare's Coriolanus, not in order to compare it with the Iliad and note the differences, but rather to appeal to everyone's imagination, which Coriolanus, stripped of divine intervention, might more easily excite. Since it is much shorter than the Iliad (as well as simpler), its actors are forced to be more outspoken than Achilles and Hector, who only hint at what Coriolanus and Aufidius state openly. By glossing the Iliad with this play, and thus making it less inaccessible and more pertinent, I hope that my analysis of the Iliad proper may carry more conviction than it otherwise might have done. The play's motif is the transformation of Coriolanus from a man to a god: it is, like the Iliad, an experiment in immortality. Coriolanus' progressive alienation from Rome, from his friends, from his family mark his progress toward a divine status. He becomes at last alienated from his own body and ends up as a mere thing. He is thought at first to be a god by others: he becomes a god at the end in his own opinion. The play moves, as it were, from simile to fact, from metaphor to tragedy. Caius Marcius, outraged by the people's insistence on their rights, who are in war nothing but "cushions, 87 �leaden spoons, irons of a doit, ~~ comes on the scene, after Menenius has likened them to a body's limbs and the Senate to its belly, crying' What's the matter, you dissentious rogues, That, rubbing the poor itch of your opinion Make yourselves scabs? The people are to him superfluous sores, whose authority (vested in their tribunes) he cannot respect, for they lack all power. Menenius had given them a place, however small, in the commonwealth; Marcius denies them all place, except what they might unlawfully usurp. They are worse than strangers: they are a hostile infection. Their weakness constantly increases his contempt, which reaches its first climax in the battle where his own prowess earns him the title "Coriolanus."' So even while he curses the people as enemies, he is assuming the name of the enemy's city. In his Roman triumph, he becomes less Roman. When Lartius hears how Marcius entered the gates of Corioli alone, he announces the first stage in his becoming more than human:' 0 noble fellow! Who sensibly outdares his senseless sword, And when it bows, stand'st up! He is like "his sword, death's stamp,"' Where it did mark, it took; from face to foot He was a thing of blood, whose every motion Was timed with dying cries. Once set in motion, he cannot stop but seems a perpetu: a! instrument of death, indifferent to the object of his slaughter and unsparing of himself. The operations of his sword have been communicated to himself; and, now that he is transmuted into that which he himself should wield, whoever has, can use him. 7 He becomes like the spoil he so much had despised. But Coriolanus needs an enemy, no matter who it may be; for what Valeria says of his son applies equally well to himself:' I saw him run after a gilded butterfly; and when he caught it, he let it go again; and after it again; and over and over he comes, and up again; catched it again: or whether his fall enraged him, or how 'twas, he did so set his teeth, ·and tear it; I warrant, how he roammocked it!" Coriolanus thinks all things are gilded butterflies, whose brilliance irritates his ambition, but whose capture deprives them of their worth. To attain or lose his object is equally fatal; his restlessness longs for ever-greater aggrandizement. Surfeit would kill him. The envious tribunes, Sicinius and Brutus, are the first to notice his godlike state:' As if that whatsoever god who leads him Was silly crept into his human powers, And gave him graceful posture. 88 And when Coriolanus grows angry, calling the plebs ''those measles,'' Brutus remarks: 10 You speak of the people, As if you were a god to punish; not A man of their infirmity. To him Sicinius was a "rotten thing," but to Brutus hE is the "disease that must be cut away;" and though Menenius objects to the Tribunes remedy, yet he thinko Coriolanus is ''a limb that has but a disease,'' or a ''fool gangrened. " 11 Not only the tribunes but Menenius, whc before had called the people limbs, must now call Cori· olanus so. He and the people reverse their roles: he be· comes the boils and plagues he thought they were. 12 Frorr being at the center of the body politic, he is now an in· fection at its extremity. "Too absolute" and "too noblE for this world," hating all dissemblance and rhetoric, hE can only play what he is; 13 and unable to be a traitor tc himself, he prefers to be a traitor to Rome. He is decree( an outcast. "I shall be loved when I am lack' d," he telh his mother, as if in echo of Achilles' threat: 14 but Achille• did not have to help the Trojans in his own person-Zew was his surrogate-while Coriolanus enters into oper conspiracy with Aufidius, the enemy whom he had mos: hated and most adrnired. 15 As his hatred of the peoplE had turned him, metaphorically, into one of those whorr he thought most inimical, so now his former hatred o Aufidius seals his alliance. 16 Aufidius welcomes him compares him to Jupiter, proclaims him a "noble thing' and "Mars. " 17 He assumes all the aspects of an avehg ing deity. The Volscians make their attack on Roman territory and Corninius brings the news that Coriolanus has joinec them: 18 He is their god; he leads them like a thing Made by some other deity than Nature, That shapes man better; and they follow him Against us brats with no less confidence Than boys pursuing summer butterflies, or butchers killing flies The gilded butterfly that his son had chased, as if in sym pathy with his own attack upon the Volscians, is trans formed, by his wrath's alchemy, into Rome and he people. Though his opponent is different, his fury is tho same. Cominius beseeches him, who "wants nothing o a god but eternity and a heaven to throne in. " 19 to sparo his native city, urging an "old acquaintance," but20 'Coriolanus' He would not answer to; forbad all names; He was a kind of nothing, titleless, Till he had forged himself a name i' th' fire Of burning Rome. Having dropped the surname Coriolanus, which hao been in his exile the one thing that remained his, 21 h wishes now to be known as "Romanus": he has switcheo sides, but stayed, ironically, the same. SUMMER 198! �Unmoved by Corninius and later by Menenius; his mother, wife and son come to petition him, when the Romans send them as a last resort; but he resolves to refuse them:22 I'll never Be ~uch a gosling to obey instinct, but stand As if a man were author of himself And knew no other kin. Only for a moment, however, does he succeed in checking instinct; for he soon succumbs to natural affection. But having failed to acquire "Rornanus" as a title, and Aufidius having denied his right to the "stolen name Coriolanus, in Corioli," he belongs nowhere. 23 Traitor to Rome, he seems to have betrayed his adopted city. His divinity played him false; it admitted of no political sanctions; it passed beyond his own power: he became its slave. He could not fulfill the obligations that the image of himself, made by others and perfected by himself, imposed on him. Out of place everywhere, an alien deity in the shape of a man, his nature trips him up in the end. Once having gone beyond the bounds that he thought conventional, he could not return to Convention. 24 The no-man's land, into which he had trespassed "like to a lonely dragon, " 25 was set with the lures of his own conceits, that drew him finally to his ruin. Achilles is Coriolanus: both are gods in their wrath. Achilles' attack on Agamemnon's authority corresponds to Coriolanus' refusal to acknowledge the tribune's office; his loss of Briseis to the loss·of the consulate; the ingratitude of Agamemnon to that of the people; his withdrawal from the battle to the other's banishment; the fulfillment of his wish that Zeus avenge his wrongs to Coriolanus' invasion of Rome; his rejection of the embassy of Ajax and Odysseus to the other's denial of Corninius and Menenius; and his acceptance of his duty, after Patroclus' death, corresponds to Coriolanus' sparing of Rome after his family's petition. But that Patroclus had to die before Achilles returns to the war, that Patroclus is not even related to him, that his mother is divine and his father far away, and that he is not married: all this deepens Achilles' tragedy. His ties to this world are more attenuated than Coriolanus'; and as it is easier for him to break them, so it is harder to renew them. Drained of all human substance, isolated from other men, but unable to become divine, Achilles cracks, turns monstrous, and dies. Chapter I The Gods If the heroes regard divinity as the end of their ambition, we must first see what the gods do-before we can understand why Achilles and Hector, Sarpedon and Ajax, are so desirous to become like them. Blunt Ajax states the paradox of heroic virtue: "Alas, even a fool THE ST. JOHN'S REVIEW would know that Zeus himself defends the Trojans: the spears of all, no matter whether good or bad do hurl them, hit their target: Zeus makes all go straight. " 1 Zeus' partiality makes it almost impossible to practice virtue. Were Ajax to retreat, he would be blameless-' Zeus can render vain and useless the distinction between good and bad, base and brave. What should prove meritsuccess-may be wholly undeserved. The javelin-cast of Paris, were Zeus to wish it, would go as straight as that of Hector; if the gods had always favoured Nireus, he would have equalled Achilles. Were not the providence of the gods inconstant and fitful, 3 they would obscure completely any natural order of excellence; but as it is, they sometimes withdraw and let the heroes run themselves. Then does the world run true; then we can see the heroes for what they are. After Achilles sets the prizes for the horse-race, and urges the best Achaeans to compete, Horner gives us the order in which they accept the challenge. First Eurnelus, who excelled in horsemanship and had the best horses;' then Diornedes with the horses of Aeneias; third Menelaus with one horse of his own and one of Agamemnon's; and then Antilochus. 5 Before Horner tells us who carne last, Nestor counsels his son on the power of craft. Although Antilochus' horses are swift-footed, they are slower than the three pairs of horses that entered before him, yet faster than Meriones' which are the slowest of all. 6 Meriones is naturally reluctant to compete: only after Nestor, whose praise of craft gives him a chance, has spoken at length can he bring himself to risk his horses in a contest they cannot possibly win. If we look at the race itself, we see that Horner has presented the horsemen in the order in which they should, but do not win.' That Eurnelus should have been first, although he comes in last, Achilles, Horner, and all the Achaeans acknowledge; and were it not that Achilles wishes to gratify Antilochus, even in his misfortune he would have taken second prize. 8 Had not Apollo and Athena interfered, Diornedes would have either come in first ·or tied Eurnelus: 9 we shall never know which, but m any case he would be second. Menelaus was due for third place, but the craft of Antilochus upset him; and yet if the course had been longer, he would have outstripped hirn.'0 Antilochus then should have been fourth, and Meriones, unequal in skill to the others, fifth. 11 Two things disturb the natural order; art and providence. If Apollo had not wished to help Eurnelus, Athena would not have broken his horses' yoke, nor given more strength to Diornedes' horses. 12 The gods made him who was to be first last, and him who was to be second first. And Antilochus' art put him ahead of Menelaus: 13 but human art is not eternally superior; for the natural slowness of his horses would have eventually betrayed him. 14 Thus providence and art stand very close to one another: both change the hierarchy set up by nature and substitute for it an unpredictable order. The superiority of art is short-lived, and given enough time, nature triumphs: whether the gods too are subject to nature re- 89 �mains to be seen. Homer has also given a third order, the line-up, that the casting of lots determined. Here no one is in his right place except Menelaus: Eumelus is second, Diomedes last, Antilochus first, Meriones fourth. 15 Menelaus, who was third in excellence and third in victory, is also third when mere accident tells his position. Chance mistakes everyone else but Menelaus: mediocrity is all that you can trust it to find out. The heroes can never be certain, in whatever they do, that they will be successful. They live in constant apprehension that the gods may interfere; who not only may give them strength but deprive them of victory. They often snatch the heroes from death. At the start of Diomedes' exploits, had not Hephaestus saved Idaeus, "hiding him in night," he "would not have escaped a black doom;" but he was saved only because Dares, his father, was a priest of Hephaestus and might have been vexed if his son had died.'• Diomedes' bold strength, bestowed by Athena, could not overcome the opposition of Hephaestus, who, as the son of Hera, was partial to the Achaeans, but did not dare disappoint his priest, Trojan though he was. 17 When Athena sees what Hephaestus has done, she fears lest the other gods might save their own favourites; so, confident that the Achaeans will press their advantage, she persuades Ares, her most formidable enemy, to stand aside, with herself, from the battle. 18 Ares complies, and each Achaean king slays a Trojan: Agamemnon slays Odius, Idomencus ·Phaestus, Menelaus Scamandrius; Meriones slays Phereclus, Meges Pedaeus, and Euryphylus Hypsenor .19 Among the Trojans who are slain, Scamandrius was taught to hunt by Artemis; Phereclus was the son of Harmonides, who "knew how to make many curious things, for Pallas Athena loved him;" and Hypsenor was the son of Dolo pion, who served as priest to the river Scamander. And yet Scamandrius dies as surely as Odius, when they both turn to flee, even though one was Artemis' favourite; and Phereclus meets the same fate as Padaeus, though the one was illegitimate, and the other had a father who was taught by Athena. Neither Artemis, nor the Scamander, nor Athena saved the heroes to whom they were attached; and they are slain along with those who had before been less fortunate and had always lacked divine protection. As soon as the gods withdraw, everyone indifferently dies: bastard as well as a priest's son, plain coward and a coward whom Artemis loved. "Loathsome darkness" seized Phaestus, whom no god had ever befriended; and "purple death and strong fate closed the eyes" of Hypsenor, whose father was the priest of the Scamander. The death of neither is much adorned: Homer merely states what happened; but later, when the gods reappear, Aeneias kills Crethon and Orsilochus (their ancestor was a river), and they not only die, when "the end of death covers them," but they die beautifully. They are like two lions who, having caught sheep and cattle, are slain at last by men; and they fall like tall pines. 20 Their death 90 appears not only as itself but as something else: doubled in the simile's reflection, it magically loses all its horror, becoming beautiful and almost pleasant. Heroes may die horribly-Homer sometimes is medically precise-yet in his similes of death, employed only if the gods are present, nothing but a noble death, purged of grossnes' remains. The gods transfigure death, which is, withou1 them unfeigned, but in their presence more poetic. It might be objected to this, that no distinction can hE drawn between Homer and the gods; but, although Homer inserts the gods whenever he pleases, he doe' not treat them as his own machinery, over which he ha' any control. He accepts them to be as real as the heroe• themselves, and to actively belong to the story; while hE rarely shows himself to be present. He only tells wha1 happened, not what he himself has made. To us it rna} seem a pious fiction, but we are forced to accept it. Home1 separates himself from his work: he presents neither th< narrative nor the speeches nor the similes as his own; anc if they follow a pattern, we must understand their proxi· mate causes, before we can refer everything to Homer That the gods alone can inspire a simile about death. holds true throughout the Iliad; for even the one excep· tion, that I know of, supplies another proof. Patroclus. whom the gods never prompt or encourage, drives hi• spear through the jaw of Thestor, and grabbing hold o it, drags him over the rim of his chariot, "as when a man. sitting on an overhanging rock, pulls from the sea a sacrec fish with hook and line, so he dragged him gaping or the end of his shining spear. 21 The death of Thestor ghastly in itself, becomes more ghastly in the simile; fo: no gods are present but only Homer, who, feeling bounc to stand beside Patroclus on his one triumphal day, call• to him as if he himself were there. 22 Homer favour: Patroclus and follows him everywhere, calling hin ''horseman Patroclus'' and repeating ''you answered hin this, Patroclus." To no other hero does Homer seemS< attached, but since the gods are absent, he can, as it were only ensure the aptness and not the beauty of a simile When Patroclus has killed Thestor and many other Tro jans, and Sarpedon rushes against him, Hera persuade: Zeus not to save his son, who soon after is killed b' Patroclus. 23 Sarpedon, however, unlike Thestor, di'" beautifully-like a white poplar, or an oak, or a state!~ pine-and nobly-like a high-spirited bull whom a lim slays in the herd. Thestor died like a fish without tho benefit of the gods; Sarpedon' s death was heralded b~ bloody drops that Zeus poured down. The gods beauti fy death; they order the ugly chaos of war; they are tho gilders of the heroic world. We have seen the heros godless in snatches of war: wo must now see them thus over a longer period. Athen. and Hera return to Olympus at the end of the fifth book "having stopped baneful Ares from his slaughter o men;" and the sixth book announces the departure o all the gods. 24 Each event will now be unconditioned h: the gods: the heroes will act without them and hence wil act differently. SUMMER 198. �Diomedes kills Axylus, who was "a friend to human beings" -philos d'en anthropoisi-"but no one of them warded off his mournful death." 25 When the gods are absent, it is sadly fitting that a philanthropist, whose kindness benefited other mortals but not the gods, should die. He does not share in a divine providence. He is alone. Menelaus captures Adrastus alive, whose horses had entangled his chariot and spilled him on the ground. 26 As an accident puts him at the mercy of anyone who might find him, Menelaus cannot congratulate himself on his own prowess. He owes everything to chance and nothing to himself; and aware of this, he is willing to accept ransom, until Agamemnon comes up and rebukes him for his leniency, urging him to kill all the Trojans, "even a boy still in his mother's womb." Nothing equals the cruelty of Agamemnon's advice or Menelaus' action. Though Agamemnon himself later kills the two sons of Antimachus, who plead for their lives, he at least defends his decision to kill them; and when Achilles rejects Lycaon' s supplication, his excuse is his fury which, ever since Patroclus' death, has overtaken him 27 Here Agamemnon, without offering any excuse, persuades Menelaus to kill Adrastus; and, Homer adds, "saying what he ought, what is just" (aisima pareipon).Not only Agamemnon has become cruel but Homer as well; for the gods, who before had taken sides, are now nowhere to be seen. Their partiality had made the heroic world moral; they had set limits to right and wrong, however arbitrary they sometimes may seem; their disapproval, which depended on their affections, had guided Homer in his own judgment. When Achilles refuses to save the life of Tros, who wordlessly grasps his knees, Homer tells us his opinion: "He was not a sweet-tempered man nor mild it\ spirit;" and when Achilles slays twelve Trojans as an offering to Patroclus, he again blames him: "He resolved evil deeds in his heart;" for Homer, knowing that some gods disapprove of Achilles, can echo their opinion. 28 But now that the gods have lost all interest in human affairs, no one tells the heroes what they ought to do, and without the gods they become monsters. Hector, encouraged by Helenus, charges the Achaeans, who retreat and cease their slaughter: "They thought some one of the immortals had come down from the starry heaven to aid the Trojans. " 29 The Achaeans mistake Hector for a god, when no gods are present; they think he has come from the starry heaven when he is a mortal who crawls upon the earth. 30 As heaven and earth, gods and men, have never been so far apart, the heroes confound them. Diomedes, whom Athena had so recently favoured, cannot tell whether Glaucus is a god or a man; he is as uncertain as Odysseus when he confronts Nausicaa. 31 He asks Glaucus: "Who are you, 0 most mighty power, of mortal human beings (kala thneton anthropon) ? Only here does a hero call another to his face a "human being" and not a "he-man. " 32 Diomedes reck- ons in absolutes: Glaucus is either human or divine; he cannot be, what he himself once was, divinely inspired. Critics have been puzzled that Diomedes, who has THE ST. JOHN'S REVIEW wounded Aphrodite and Ares, should now be unwilling to fight Glaucus if he turns out to be a god. 33 But there is no difficulty: the gods have departed and left the heroes, Diomedes along with the rest, alone. His ability to distinguish between man and god depended on Athena's favour: 34 as soon as she withdrew from the battle, he knew no more than the Achaeans, to whom Hector seemed a god. The burden of their mortality oppresses Diomedes and Glaucus. One seems at a loss without the gods, the other sees all men as alike and undistinguishable: "as are the generations of leaves, such are those also of men. " 35 Genealogy is a mere succession of men, akritophyllon, 36 "undistinguishable leafage." But Glaucus wishes to gloss over his own sense of smallness, and to impress Diomedes with his divine lineage, even if he cannot quite believe it himself. He deals in superlatives: Sisyphus was the craftiest of men; Bellerophon said his battle with the Solymi was the fiercest he had ever entered; and Bellerophon slew all the men who were best in Lycia. 37 Glaucus, the son of Sisyphus, fathered blameless Bellerophon, whose beauty and manliness came from the gods, and whom the gods escorted to Lycia and helped to slay the divine Chimaera. Providence sponsored his deeds, and even the king of Lycia was forced to believe in his divine descent. But Glaucus knows how fitfully the gods favour men: Bellerophon became hateful to all the gods and wandered alone, "avoiding the track of human beings;" and two of his children fared worse: Ares killed Isandrus, and Artemis in anger slew Laodomeia. And yet all their fates were supernatural; Glaucus' ancestors were not ordinary mortals. Thus Glaucus himself, looking back on his past, partly proves that men are like leaves, and partly tries, as he bolsters himself, to astonish Diomedes. 38 If he cannot claim that he is a god, at least he has divine ancestors. And Diomedes, who before had such contempt for the genealogies of Pandarus and Aeneias, 39 now finds an excuse to break off the combat. As his grandfather Oeneus entertained and exchanged gifts with Bellerophon, so he and Glaucus should exchange their armour and proclaim themselves "ancestral friends." Axylus, a friend to strangers, dies; Glaucus and Diomedes, whose grandfathers were friends, agree to separate. Axylus had no divine protection, while Glaucus had its shadow, a divine lineage. In his lineage are the gods, whose presence then can save Glaucus (or Diomedes) even now. By calling up his past-made glorious by heaven-Glaucus reminds Diomedes that the gods control, morally and physically, the actions of men. He holds up, as a desperate shield, the flimsiest providence; but Diomedes, no more anxious than himself to fight, jumps at his offer. Their ancestral friendship replaces the gods, who are, more remotely, their ancestors.4° When Hector has returned to Troy and bid his mother pray to Athena, he curses Paris: if the earth swallowed up Paris and he saw him descending to Hades, Hector would forget his sorrow. 41 Hector's wish before, though just as vehement, that he be without offspring and die 91 �unmarried,42 Paris' cowardice had warranted; but now, whether he shirks or not, Hector longs for his death. Zeus Olympius raised Paris as a bane to the Trojans, for Zeus Olympius is gone. 43 Everyone feels the absence of the gods. When Helen had heaped scorn on Paris' strength, he falsely attributed his defeat to Athena: "Now Menelaus has won a victory with the help of Athena, but I another time shall be victorious over him; for there are also gods on our side. '' 44 Another time he will be victor, whenever the gods so wish it. Although he then was wrong about Menelaus, he was right about himself-Aphrodite did save himso it seemed reasonable to suppose that some god had protected Menelaus. His mistake was justifiable. But now not even he thinks the gods make for victories: niki! d'epameibetai andras. 45 Victory alternates between men: who knows why? No longer Aphrodite but Fortune is his goddess: Athena has just refused the Trojans' prayer. 46 Helen feels despair more deeply than Paris. Priam had kindly received her on the ramparts of Troy; and she, provoked by his kindness, had burst out with: "Would that death had been pleasant to me when I followed your son to Troy." 47 But now, though Hector has not even spoken to her, her sense of guilt is even greater: on the very day she was born, not on the day she committed her crime, she wishes to have died; but, she adds, the gods decreed otherwise. 48 Hector leaves Helen and Paris, and meets his wife Andromache with his son Scamandrius. They form a beautiful but gloomy scene. Despair finally overtakes Hector; he predicts the fall of Troy: "Well I know this in my mind and my spirit, that there will be a day when sacred Ilium will perish, both Priam and his people."" What Agamemnon had foretold, when Pandarus wounded Menelaus, Hector has come to believe, and in the very same words prophesies: but Agamemon saw Zeus, shaking his dark aegis, as the cause of Troy's capture. 50 Hector sees nothing. The future is black: the gods have deserted. 51 The absence of the gods has made the sixth book the darkest in the Iliad, and we can now better understand how the gods interfere in the heroic world. In the Iliad providence makes a difference; it is despotic and can either enhance or nullify a hero's virtue; but in the Odyssey it is kind and just (except for Poseidon, a benign ogre), and it never interferes with merit but only assists it; none of the gods favours the suitors. War and peace differ most in this. In peace failure is man's own responsibility, 52 for the gods have less at stake and exert little influence. In war the heroes become puppets of the gods, and submit to a fate beyond their control: necessity sets the course and is the prevailing wind. And yet men still remain responsible: this is the theme of the Iliad and the tragedy of Achilles. 92 Chapter II The Plot of the Iliad Hector and Paris re-enter the battle in the seventh book, appearing like a fair breeze that a god sends to tired rowers; and after some success on their part, Athena and Apollo agree to stop the war for a day, and let Hector challenge an Achaean to a duel. 1 Helenus, a prophet, intuits the plan of the gods, who do not openly show themselves but assume the shape of vultures, and remain, as in the sixth book, invisible to men 2 Hector is pleased with his brother's proposal, and offers to fight anyone whom the Achaeans might choose as their champion; he also promises, if he should kill his opponent, to give back the corpse for burial, so that a mound may be built near the Hellespont, "and someone of later times, sailing by in a large ship over the wine-faced sea, may say: 'That is the tomb of a man who died long ago, whom excellent though he was, glorious Hector killed': so someone will say, and my fame shall never die." 3 Hector wants immortal fame. Though he believes that Troy will be taken, he wants a monument to be left behind for himself' It shall perish, he shall live on. The gloom of the sixth book, brought on by the gods' absence, is dispelled in the seventh by the light of a future glory. Hector finds his way out of a godless present in his fame to come. Fame is despair's remedy. If the gods are gone, if they no longer care, then men must take care of themselves; they must adopt a surrogate for them, and Hector suggests what the Achaeans reluctantly accept, immortal fame. Instead of being dependent on the gods, they will become dependent on other men (anthropoi). They will snatch from the very uncertainty of war a permanent gain. No matter who will be victorious, and regardless of the justice of their cause, both sides can win glory. They can share in the success of their enemy, and even find a certain satisfaction in being killed. The difference between the combat of Menelaus and Paris, that took place a few hours before, and the present contest of Ajax and Hector, indicates the great change in the character of the war. Menelaus fought with Paris to settle the war, Ajax and Hector fight in a trial of prowess. They fought to decide the fate of Helen-who would be her husband?-Ajax and Hector fight without any regard for Helen, but only to determine who is the better warrior. They exchange threats and boasts; Menelaus and Paris fought in silence. They were in deadly earnest, while Hector and Ajax can break off their combat and give each other gifts in parting. Menelaus had wished to accept Hector's challenge, but Agamemnon (with all the other kings) restrained him, for though he was the right opponent against Paris, he would have now lost his life to no purpose. He is no longer the champion of his own cause. Had Menelaus killed Paris, he would have recovered Helen; if Hector now wins, the Achaean~ would recover Ajax' corpse, which would serve, once i1 SUMMER 198! �was buried, as a memorial to both Ajax and Hector. Fame and renown would seem to be as precious to Hector as Helen is to Menelaus, and his new ambition so much inflames him that he can refer quite brazenly to the Trojans' perfidy. 6 Whatever oaths they may have broken, whatever injustice they may have done, has no relevance now. As long as Helen was at the center of the dispute, the Trojans were in the wrong; but now that she is discarded, and becomes merely a theme for heroic exploits, right and wrong no longer apply. "Publica virtu tis per mala facta via est" ("The public way of justice is through crimes"). As the cause of the war has changed, so also have the central characters. Helen unleashed a war over which she loses control. The war, having worked loose from its origins, now feeds itself: the desire for Helen generated the desire for fame, but the offspring no longer acknowledges the parent. There can now be no other end to the war than the destruction of Troy. The restitution of Helen will no longer suffice. Diomedes speaks for all the Achaeans when, in answer to the Trojans' proposal (of returning all the stolen goods except Helen), he says: "Now let no one accept either the goods of Alexander or Helen herself; for even a fool would know that the ends of destruction have already been fixed for the Trojans. 7 Not even if the Trojans give back Helen would the Achaeans stop fighting. The war has passed out of her hands and become common property. No longer is the war petty. It has transcended the bounds of its original inspiration and assumed the magnificence of heroic ambition. Paris and Menelaus now have minor roles, Helen is scarcely mentioned. 8 She was a necessary irritant that has become superfluous, and Helen herself knows this. "Upon myself and on Paris," she tells Hector, "Zeus has placed an evil fate, so that we might be the theme of song among men (anthropoi) who shall be." 9 Not herself but her fame justifies the war: in the perspective of later generations can be found her own raison d' etre. What gives purpose to the quarrel is not a present victory but a future fame. In the third book Helen was weaving into a cloak many contests of the Achaeans and Trojans, "who for her sake suffered at the hands of Ares. " 10 As the war had been staged for her benefit, she had gone up on the walls to watch her two husbands, Menelaus and Paris, fight for her; but now an impersonal fame has overshadowed any personal pleasure, although she may still find some comfort in a future glory. Her pleasure has become more remote and less immediate: nothing that can be woven into cloth or that can be seen. She is the plaything of the future (of her own renown) and no longer manages her own destiny .11 She is caught up in a larger issue and concedes her own insignificance. And Menelaus, like Helen, realizes the change which Hector proposes, for he berates the Achaeans and calls them "spiritless and fameless in vain,' ' 12 since they are not eager to accept Hector's challenge; for unless they are animated by fame his challenge is meaningless. They must disregard Menelaus and look to themselves. Their own aggrandizements, not THE ST. JOHN'S REVIEW Menelaus' vengeance, must become their aim. As their ambition, in becoming more selfish, becomes more grand, so their prowess, in advocating immortal fame as its end, can at last justify itself. Socrates once derived the word heros ("hero") from eros ("love")13 and though it is a jest, it is metaphorically true. The heroes, or their ancestors, are the offspring of gods who fell in love with mortals; and they retain in themselves a divine longing, which is not just confined to physical desire, though that is its origin, 14 but which prompts them to a transcendent hope, that turns their only weakness into their best resource. If they are fated to die, if they are barred from becoming inunortal in deed, their death can ensure them a fictional immortality. Were a goddess to fall in love with them again, they could only continue an heroic line; but were they to turn aside from a hopeless quest, and rely on themselves, they would be assured of a deathlessness unaffected by the gods (oiothen oios, "all alone"). 15 War absorbs into itself the desire they have for self-perpetuation (after Helen left Sparta, she became barren); 16 for it unites their virtue with their ambition, so that, in displaying the one, they satisfy the other. And if we are not repelled by allegory, no better image for the Iliad could be found than the fable told by Demodocus, about the adultery of Aphrodite and Ares and its detection by Hephaestus. Here is all the horror and glory of war in secret agreement with the desires and delights of love, which the threads of art, more subtle than a spider's web, bind together and reveal. Homer has carefully prepared the shift from Helen to fame as the cause of the war, a shift that the magical disappearance of Paris first indicates. When victory is almost within Menelaus' grasp, as he drags Paris toward the Achaeans, Aphrodite breaks the strap by which Menelaus held him, and "snatching Paris away, she hid him in a great mist, and set him in the sweet-smelling bridal chamber."" Paris is as effectively dead as if he had been killed. Overcome by desire for Helen, he is indifferent to fame: if Athena gives victory now to Menelaus, the Trojans' gods at another time will aid him. 18 He becomes isolated from the war, which now begins again without him. Although his original injustice began the war, it continues by the injustice of Pandarus, which serves as the transition between the recovery of Helen and the desire for fame. Not Paris but Pandarus wounds Menelaus. Paris disappears, and the responsibility for the war spreads among the Trojans, while among the Achaeans Menelaus remains the central figure, about whom they still rally. But he too disappears in the seventh book, when Agamemnon persuades him not to accept Hector's challenge." To transform pettiness into grandeur, a private quarrel into a public war, may require injustice; but once the transformation is completed, once both sides accept the new conditions, the demands of justice no longer apply. Were it not glory that we more affected Than the performance of our heaving spleens, 93 �I would not wish a drop of Trojan blood Spent more in her defense. But, worthy Hector, She is a theme of honour and renown; A spur to valiant and magnanimous deeds, Whose present courage may beat down our foes, And fame in time to come canonize us. 20 The change that takes place among the heroes finds its echo among the gods. Aphrodite saved Paris, but Diomedes in the fifth book wounds her, and she never reappears among men. Even as Paris, a man wholly dominated by desire, disappears, so Aphrodite, the divine principle, as it were, which gives him most support, retires, and leaves the war to Ares and Apollo, Athena and Hera. 21 After the contest of Ajax and Hector, Nestor proposes that a trench be dug and a wall built as a protection for their ships and themselves." The kings agree, and while they are labouring at the wall, the gods, seated by Zeus, admire their work, and Poseidon speaks among them: "Zeus father, what mortal on the boundless earth shall still disclose his plans to the immortals? Do you not see how the Achaeans have built a wall for their ships and run a trench about it, but they have not offered famous hecatombs to the gods? Its fame will go as far as the dawn scatters light, and they will forget the wall that I and Phoebus Apollo built for the hero Laomedon. " 23 Poseidon fears that the fame of the Achaeans' wall will outstrip the fame of his own wall. He interprets the wall as an insult to the gods. Fame is not a concern of the gods: they can neither hinder nor advance it. Not even the destruction of the wall, which Homer describes," prevents us from hearing of it. As long as the war concerns the quarrel which Hera and Athena had with Paris, 25 the gods are the ultimate authority; but as soon as the war turns away from Paris and embodies the desire for fame, the gods seem unnecessary. Just as Hector attempted to break loose from them, in challenging an Achaean to a duel, so Nestor takes up his suggestion and proposes the building of tomb, trench, and wall. Hector was unsuccessful, for he does not kill Ajax. Nestor succeeds for a time, but even his attempt is thwarted by the gods. The wall would make the Achaean camp as permanent as Troy: should they win or lose, it would remain as a record of their siege. Nestor improved on Hector, for victory was the price of his fame, while Nestor relies on a collective effort that disregards prowess as well as success. The wall is the most glorious attempt to break out of the gods' influence, it fails. But Zeus helps them along in their belief, for he forbids in the eighth book any intervention by the gods in the war. 26 In the fourth book Hera was given carte blanche to do what she wanted, but now that her personal revenge has been transcended, Zeus no longer will brook any interference. The desire for fame enhances everything. The shield of Nestor, nwhose fame reaches heaven," and the "curiously-wrought breastplate of Diomedes, which Hephaestus had fashioned" become the objects of Hector's arnbition. 27 These unknown arms become desirable 94 in the light of fame. Everything is worth acquiring if fame is the goal. Tencer is encouraged and urged on by the offer of a tripod or two horses or a woman, if Troy is captured. 28 Tencer, who plays no role in the fifth book and is mentioned once in the sixth, becomes in the middle books an important figure. And in the same way, Glaucus and Sarpedon, Idomeneus and Meriones, become more important. Everyone joins in the desire for fame. Once the transition has been completed to the second cause of the war, Homer begins to lay the foundations for the third cause. It is now in the eighth book that Zeus outlines the death of Patroclus and the return of Achilles. 29 Even as the disappearance of Paris announced the shift to the second cause, so Zeus' prophecy indicates the final cause. Thus three causes underlie the Iliad: Helen first, fame second, and Patroclus third. From personal revenge to impersonal ambition and back again to revenge is the Iliad's plot. The love for Helen turns into the love for fame, which in turn becomes Achilles' love for Patroclus. From eros to kleous eros ("love of fame") to eros is the cycle of the Iliad: but how Achilles' eros unites the other two will be our final problem. Chapter III The Embassy Agamemnon calls an assembly of all the Achaeans, where he proposes in earnest what he had once used as a test of their resolution; and yet now they hear silently the same speech which before had upset them and induced them to return home 1 Their roles are reversed: Agamemnon wishes as much to flee as the Achaeans had wished before, and they now seem as determined to stay as Agamemnon had been intent on capturing Troy. Agamemnon, however, has changed his speech in two respects: he no longer addresses the Achaeans as a whole (though they all are present) but only their leaders, and he omits to say how shameful their flight would appear to future generations. 2 What now keeps the Achaeans seated, though they are troubled in their hearts, 3 is the desire for immortal fame. The plague and the withdrawal of Achilles had so broken their spirit that not even the prospect of disgrace had then dissuaded them; but now, even though Agamemnon fails to mention it (for fame no longer attracts him), they are inclined to stay. As long as Agamemnon wished to capture Troy, the ignominy of his return was paramount; but his despair now makes him ignore what has inflamed everyone else. Even as Menelaus had been replaced by Ajax, so Agamemnon, ouce his brother's suit lost its importance, had to yield his own preeminence. He knows that the Achaeans will not obey him, that the darkness of the night as well aE their new ambition will check them. He hands over tc the Achaean kings the business of the war. He is as ready now to humble himself before Achilles, as prompt on thE SUMMER 198 �morrow to be wounded and remain out of action for the rest of the lliad 4 Thus Diomedes can openly assert Agamemnon's wearness, 5 for Agamemnon has already abandoned his pretensions to power, now certain that no one will question his authority. Were Helen their object, his force must equal his rank, so that the Achaeans may be obliged to avenge an abstract wrong that does not affect them; but if their appetites are engaged, if immortal fame is now their object, so that defeat would seem a personal disgrace, Agamemnon can afford to forego an absolute sway and be content with the titular superiority. Diomedes can bid him depart as brusquely as he himself once ordered Achilles to return home, and be as confident as Agamemnon once was that the others will stay behind. 6 Even without Agamemnon the Achaeans cohere and stick together: he has become superfluous. But fame is so much more an inducement than justice, that Diomedes goes even farther than Agamemnon ever did: the others can also depart, he and Sthenelus will win alone. Thus he usurps the power of Agamemnon and replaces Achilles as the emblem of virtue. Nestor, in partly approving of Diomedes' rebuke of Agamemnon, assigns to him the leadership of the war (of the young), while he reserves for Agamemnon his authority in the council (among the kings).' He distinguishes between the sceptre and the fist of Agamemnon, and thus prepares the way for his reconciliation with Achilles. But although he is willing to grant Agamemnon's weakness before the whole assembly, he does not wish to propose before them the embassy to Achilles: for if they remain ignorant, they can always count on Achilles' future support, but if they know (as Achilles hopes},' its success would compromise Agamemnon, and its failure would deprive them of hope. Were Achilles to re-enter the war, Agamemnon would be forced, in admitting his error, to surrender his sceptre; whereas Diomedes can excel Agamemnon by night (the Doloneia) without being his rival by day: he is wounded soon after him in Book Eleven; but should Achilles refuse to return, the Achaeans, in losing their mainstay, would also lose heart. Nestor knows that Diomedes' nocturnal prowess will not seriously affect Agamemnon's authority; but he fears that an Achilles, able to support his ambition by daytime deeds, would disturb again the hierarchy of command. Achilles must be coaxed by something other than the return of Briseis, something that no longer will allow him to threaten Agamemnon, nor show up his own pride as petulance. And that bait is immortal fame. Nothing more clearly reflects the changed purpose of the war than the embassy to Achilles. It offers the Achaeans their best chance to reconcile Achilles with Agamemnon. If Hector had not made his challenge, the embassy would have been impossible. Only on this new basis can the Achaeans hope to persuade Achilles to forget his wrath, and be aroused by a new ambition that affords greater scope to his fury. If Helen has disappeared as the cause of the war, Briseis should also lose her importance. If the stake is now immortal fame, and the con- THE ST. JOHN'S REVIEW flict is indifferent to Menelaus' just complaint, then Achilles' quarrel with Agamemnon, who as unjustly provoked him as Paris did Menelaus, should be resolved in favour of this larger issue. An indivisible trophy, inunortal fame, will replace the division of spoils. What would always lead to disputes, the petty arithmetic of how much each man is worth, will vanish before a more generous calculation, whose scales are no longer in the hands of Agamemnon but of all mankind. The exact weighing of virtue in the coinage of booty becomes contemptible, and what is beyond measure, immortal fame, is now set up as its standard. Achilles is to be lured by honour: he can forgive Agamemnon because Agamemnon can never again dishonour him. Merit would be the only guide to reward, and, in spite of Agmemnon's jealousy, Achilles would receive his due. Let Agamemnon deprive him of all material gain: it can only please for a lifetime, and Achilles in the future will so much the more be recompensed. Achilles' fame lies beyond the touch of envy: if he can now show himself magnanimous, the authority of Agamemnon will yield before his own power. Agamemnon must rely on gifts and bolster his rank by the arbitrary display of his will, but Achilles can trust in the present to his might, and to his deeds in the future. The quibbles on their relative positions among the Achaeans will not arise in the face of Achilles' future superiority. Agamemnon can irritate Achilles, but Achilles' revenge is assured. As long as Achilles looks to Agamemnon for satisfaction, no number of gifts can disguise Agamemnon's false position, nor persuade Achilles to relinquish his claim to Agamemnon's sceptre; but if he can only look beyond this temporary injustice, his ascendancy to come his own virtue guarantees. Agamemnon's sway extends no further than the narrow circle of the Achaean camp, and his every act of aggrandizement is bought at the price of a future ignominy; while every accommodation by Achilles to his mean tyranny will only increase his reputation and add lustre to his name. Achilles' dangerous ambition, to rule over all the Achaeans, can be diverted into a safer and more glorious end. To render him harmless as well as more worthy of himself prompts the Achaeans to send the embassy: that Achilles cannot bring himself to accept their offer, and that he cherishes more deeply his present humiliation than a lasting fame, all this makes the beginning of his tragedy. The embassy prayed to Poseidon that they might easily convince the great heart of Aeacides (Mega/as phrenas Aiakidao) "whom they found pleasing his heart (phrena terpomenon) with the clear-toned lyre-beautiful it was and intricately wrought, and it had a silver bridge-he chose it from the spoils after he had sacked the city of Eetion, and with it he was pleasing his spirit (thymon eterpen) and was singing the famous deeds of men" (klea andron). 9 Achilles as Aeacides, as the grandson of Aeacus, sings the deeds of famous heroes. In taking up the lyre he puts on his ancestral self: as he finds his pleasure in the past, he becomes part of the past and loses his present identi' 95 �ty. Excluded from action, he sings of the actions of others; he consoles his inactivity by rejoicing in others' prowess; and wrapped up in their past, he lives more by his own past than by himself. Achilles remained by the ships, and though "he never visited the ennobling assembly (agoran kydianeiran), nor ever went to war, yet he was destroying his spirit, and kept on longing for the battle-cry and war. " 10 His self-imposed idleness still chafes him. His absence from the war has not diminished his desire. Even the assembly seems a place to win glory: kydianeira ("bringing glory") is used elsewhere only of battle, but Achilles, now that he is cut off from all action, sees even in speaking a certain prestige. As he cannot share in present deeds nor in present counsel, he cannot hope for a future fame. He is isolated from the present and the future and so only the past exists as something which cannot be taken from him. He sacked the city of Eetion-no one can deny it-but the witness to his virtue is this lyre, which testifies as wen to his failure; for it gave him an instrument more suited to a blind Demodocus than to an Achilles. He celebrates the deeds of others, but others should celebrate his own. The lyre cannot satisfy him, for he is now forced to please himself instead of having others please him. His pleasure is in another's fame and not in his own. Klea andron ("the famous [deeds] of men") stand one remove from erga andron ("the deeds of men"); they are the reflection of virtue, not virtue itself; and Achilles, in singing of another Achilles, becomes the shadow of what he was. In becoming a minstrel, he has become unwillingly an anthropos; in withdrawing from the war, he deserts his own character. If martial exce11ence is denied Achilles, he no longer is Achilles, no longer what he thinks and we think he is. His "name" depends on his deeds, and he cannot abandon all deeds without forfeiting himself. In becoming passive, he loses that which distingoished him: "idleness is the corruption of noble souls. " 11 But it was the very source of his actions, his megalopsychia ("greatness of soul"}, which had made him withdraw and betray his former self. And the tragedy of Achilles lies here: what made Achilles destroyed AchiJJes. As soon as he reflects, he is lost, and he is bound to reflect, to pick up this lyre, once he stops fighting. If he ever doubts the worth of what he has been trained to do, he will destroy himself. Any check to his outer action will turn aU that force upon himself. His sword needs an object, and if it is wanting, it will be himself. When the embassy arrives, he is ripe for persuasion. When Odysseus has enumerated the gifts Achilles will receive, if he puts off his rage, he te11s Achilles that "even if Atreides is hateful to your heart-he and his giftstake pity at least on aU the other forlorn Achaeans, who will honour you like a god: surely you might have great honour among them, for now you might slay Hector, who in his murderous lust would come quite near you, since he says no Danaan, whom the ships brought hither, is his equal. " 12 Odysseus is quite willing for Achilles to reject Agamemnon's gifts, but he tries to irritate Achilles by repeating the boast of Hector, even though Hector did 96 not mention him but Diomedes. 13 Achilles is right to reject Agamemnon's gifts, for though the gifts acknowledge Agamemnon's need of Achilles, they do not admit Achilles' superiority. Not only do they gloss over his cha11enge to Agamemnon's rank, but they aim to restore Agamemnon's predominance. Agamemnon has put a price on Achilles' worth; he has calculated his equivalence in terms of so many horses and so much gold, and were Achilles to accept them, he would be accepting Agamemnon's estimation of himself. If he is reducible to a cipher, he must submit to Agamemnon's domination. He would not acquire a greater rank, were he to allow ffiOre" to mean "better"; for then he would acknowledge Agamemnon's right to settle his worth: but he had withdrawn his support originally because Agamemnon had presumed to decide what he could and could not have. To accept the gifts is to accept Agamemnon's authority; and what is more, to receive seven Lesw bian women, whom he himself had captured, 14 would humiliate himself. In giving them to Agamemnon, Achilles was the arbiter of Agamemnon's worth: in giving them back, Agamemnon would usurp his own position. Were then Achilles to acknowledge Agamemnon'' equation, and confound numerical superiority with natural greatness, 15 his whole attack on Agamemnon's posi· lion would fail. Even as the catalogue of ships was intended to confound number with strength, and thus whole peoples an mentioned who never reappear in battle (for example, the Rhodians and Arcadians}, so now Agamemnon'• generosity gives a limit to Achilles' exce11ence, and hall his promises can never be put to the test. Achilles wil not live to enjoy the spoils of Troy, nor will he be abl< to claim Agamemnon's daughter, nor the seven cities below Pylos. Not even if his daughter rivaled Aphrodite ir beauty and Athena in skill, would Achilles marry her .1' He could not. Only if he returns now to his father's home. could he hope to marry; only his withdrawal now woulc assure him the wealth Agamemnon so vainly promises. only in Phthia would he live with the ease he carmot hav< in the future if he stays. Agamemnon wished to reestablish his position prio1 to Achilles' withdrawal, to forget his injustice so tha Achilles might forget his weakness, and to reduc< Achilles' attack on his authority to a mere outburst of tern per. But once the gap between them has been opened no appeal, that seeks only to restore Achilles' former sta tus, can bridge it. Once Achilles has seen how valuabl• he is, he will never be content with less than complet< domination. If Achilles had not retired from the war, h• would have never known if he was as great as he as sumed, nor would the Trojans have ventured to fight ii the plain, nor would the Achaeans have built their wall His wrath freed the war from a static siege, where th• worth of each hero could never be tested, and turned i into a precise measure of excellence. Achilles' absenc1 from the field lets Diomedes and Ajax, Hector and Sar pedon come forward, and make the frame, as it were 11 SUMMER 198 �within which we must see Achilles, when he at last reappears. The random sorties, that had made up so large a part of the war, 17 have now given way to a full-scale war, a war for immortal fame. It is this new kind of engagement Achilles is asked, but cannot bring himself, to join; nor is he asked so much for the sake of Agamemnon (or Menelaus or Helen) but because of Hector, who can now become the measure of Achilles' prowess, which no longer has to be weighed by the amount of booty he receives. Achilles, however, refuses to consider the war as changed, but prefers to gloat over Hector's success rather than accept it as a challenge." He takes for granted what is by no means so certain, that he is better than Hector .19 He does not see the war as anything other than what it was. He is indifferent to immortal fame. Achilles had already protested against the war in the first book, saying that he had not come to fight because of the Trojans, who had neither driven off his horses nor plundered his land, but to obtain redress for Agamemnon and Menelaus." Achilles had been fighting in an alien war; a war he had joined more out of lack of any other attraction than out of a deep-seated feeling to see justice done. He was willing to stay, if his prerogatives were respected, and if nothing occurred that more affected him. But Agamemnon, in taking away Briseis, had not only dishonoured Achilles, but also had made Briseis herself more desirable than she was. She may not be worth fighting over, 21 yet she is the equal of Helen, who could not be dearer to Menelaus than Briseis to Achilles. 22 If the Achaeans fight for Helen, he askes the embassy, why should not he fight for Briseis? If Agamemnon leads so great an expedition to recover so small a prize, why should not he desert a war that can bring him no satisfaction, and has already brought him disgrace? As long as Achilles hammers away at the pettiness of the war, he is perfectly justified: and yet he fails to see the change he himself brought about. Achilles is careless of immortal fame. Although he mentions it as a choice his mother gave him, it does not move him; although his return means the loss of his fame, he still considers it a possibility. 23 His fame and his return are balanced for him, as if they were equal alternatives; and they are nicely poised if one has the chance, like Achilles, to reflect upon them. He had not at first thought there was an alternative. He had resigned himself to a short life, 24 but his enforced idleness made him reflect. To choose immortal fame demands a certain blindness to the pleasures of life, of which Achilles, in his very minstrelsy, has become aware. Life seems more worthwhile than a bloodless renown. 25 Achilles, in having no care for the Achaeans, loses all care for his fame. Their destruction and his ignominy seem minor losses. He cannot pity them unless his "name" has greater weight than himself. Achilles believes in the absoluteness of his virtue: it does not need to be put into action, nor does the opinion of others measure it. He wishes to enjoy his virtue alone, 26 without performance and without regard for others. He does not need to use his virtue in order to prove himself virtuous. THE ST. JOHN'S REVIEW What Shakespeare's Odysseus tells him, he does not believe, 27 That no man is the lord of any thing, Though in and of him there be much consisting, Till he communicate his parts to others; Nor doth he of himself know them for aught, Till he behold them formed in the applause Where they're extended; who, like an arch, reverberates The voice again; or, like a gate of steel Fronting the sun, receives and renders back His figure and his heat. Achilles finds his applause not in earth but in heaven, where Zeus honours him. When Phoenix warns hinl that it would be baser (kakion) to defend burning ships than to receive Agamemnon's presents now,Z8 he replies, "I think that I am honoured by the will of Zeus" (phroneo de tetimesthai Dios aise). 29 He can disregard the honour he would have from the Achaeans, because he has a greater honour from Zeus. Achilles sets Zeus higher than immortal fame. What the Achaeans and Trojans have tried to escape from, the arbitrary decrees of the gods, Achilles trusts completely. He does not find them arbitrary, for they are mere extensions of himself: they are his surrogates. In neglecting human affairs, in thinking he can decide when to interfere and when not, Achilles is elevated to a god. He despises the promises of Odysseus, that the Achaeans will honour him like a god, for he believes that Zeus (his Zeus) has bridged that "likeness," and transformed it into a complete identity. Achilles is a god. He wears the ring of Gyges. He does not heed the advice of his mortal father, 30 nor of those who are dearest to him: Phoenix, Odysseus, and Ajax. 31 He has cut all his ties with mortality but one. Patroclus is the flaw in his presumed perfection, and is the silent witness to his own doom. The true subject of the embassy is not Agamemnon and his gifts, nor even immortal fame, but Patroclus. Achilles is given the cruelest choice: inlmortal fame, but without the enjoyment of a living renown, or a present luxury and ease, but without fame. Hector could challenge Ajax because he knew he would not die 32 Immortal fame was something in the future and not what would at once ensure his death. Euchenor knew he would perish if he went to Troy, but he knew as well he would die of a cruel disease if he stayed at home 33 He chose the more glorious end, and shunned not a peaceful old age but a painful death. And Adrastus did not believe his father, who prophesied his death at Troy. 34 Achilles is quite different from Adrastus, Hector, or Euchenor. Unlike Adrastus he believes his mother, unlike Hector his prowess will certainly end in death, and unlike Euchenor he could enjoy his kingdom. If Achilles were not Achilles, the choice would never arise, for his wrath lies outside the will of Zeus, and it was the pause in the fighting which his wrath afforded that made the decision acute; but insofar as Achilles is Achilles (that is, virtuous) there can only be one answer, to elect immortal fame. And yet Achilles decides too late, when, no longer willingly, he 97 �reenters the war. He is forced by necessity, as he himself admits, 35 and that necessity is Patroclus' death. Achilles decides not by himself but by another. Patroclus makes his decision for him. He wanted to be absolute, but he discovers that it entails the death of his companion. In trying to escape all dependence on other men, he sends to his death Patroclus. When he at last returns to the war, he no longer fights for immortal fame, though he may deceive himself into so believing, 36 but to avenge Patroclus, and that vengeance is what Phoenix had called baser and less honourable than acceptance of Agamemnon's gifts. 37 But before we look at this final stage, we must first look at an absolute Achilles, an Achilles most clearly revealed in the speech of Phoenix. 38 After Phoenix has pledged his loyalty to Achilles, he inserts the story of his life most casually. "I would not wish to be left apart from you," he tells Achilles, "not even if a god himself would promise to scrape off my old age and make me a blooming youth again, such as I was when I first left Hellas, with its beautiful women;" after which he tells how his mother begged him to sleep with his father's concubine, and when his father learned of it, how he cursed him and called upon the Furies to make his son childless, which, Phoenix adds, "the gods, Zeus of the dead and Persephone, fulfilled. " 39 Phoenix recites this as if the mere remembrance of his youth sufficed to recall his entire past, and yet it retells, though ambiguously, Achilles' own action, and weighs the right and wrong of his wrath. Achilles bitterly allows Agamemnon, in spite of his promised oath, to sleep hereafter with Briseis, 40 and, with that assumed, Phoenix can draw the parallel between his own story and Achilles'. Phoenix, insofar as he slept with his father's concubine and was cursed by Amyntor, and insofar as the curse was fulfilled by Zeus, is like Agamemnon, who will soon sleep with Briseis, was cursed by Achilles, the curse to be fulfilled by Zeus. If the conflict between Agamemnon and Achilles is seen as similar to that between a father and his son, where, strangely enough, Achilles assumes Amyntor's and Agamemnon assumes Phoenix' role, we cannot tell who was right and who wrong; but Phoenix goes on to say, in lines that Plutarch alone has preserved, 41 that he considered killing his father, was restrained by one of the gods, and finally left home and came to Phthia. 42 And likewise, Agamemnon dishonoured Achilles (by taking away Briseis), even as Amyntor dishonoured his wife and son (by having a concubine); and Achilles would have killed Agamemnon, just as Phoenix would have killed father, had not Athena restrained him; and again, having withdrawn from the war, he intended to return home. Phoenix then is also like Achilles. His dishonour, his wrath, his murderous intent and its check, his escape from home, all correspond to something in Achilles' own past. Phoenix has presented a complex story, so that Achilles may have the best of both roles. As an outraged father or a dishonoured son, as Amyntor or Phoenix, Achilles is justified; but Phoenix, by telling it in such an offhand way, wishes to warn Achilles that his grievance 98 is now past history, that already he has obtained as much vengeance as could be wished, and that, if he persists, he will destroy himself. The loyalty of Phoenix to Achilles should serve as a model for Achilles, of what he owes to Patroclus: for the gods protected Phoenix in his youth, but he would not now accept their aid even if they promised to make him young; just so Achilles, who has been favoured by Athena and Zeus, should not now look to them for assistance. Meleager' s story, then, is the condemnation, as Phoenix' own was the justification, of Achilles. It is introduced expressly as a warning to Achilles, and as Phoenix had summarized the books before the embassy in his own life, so now he fort ells the subsequent events of the Iliad in the story of Meleager. 43 The high-spirited Aetolians were defending the city of Calydon against the Couretes, and as long as Meleager fought, things went badly for them; but when he became angry at his mother and stayed at home, the attackers began to succeed, and the elders of the Aetolians, promising a great gift, beseeched Meleager to return; his father, mother, and sisters urged him, but only when his wife Cleopatra recounted how many sorrows befall a captured city, did he pity the Aetolians and re-enter the war 44 It is not difficult to see how this corresponds to the plot of the Iliad, but the most important point, I think, has not been noticed: the situation is completely reversed. Meleager is not one of the Couretes but one of the Aetolians; he is not attacking but defending Calydon; and not his friend but his wife persuades him to forget his wrath. Meleager is Achilles, the high-spirited Aetolians are the high-spirited Trojans, and Cleopatra is Patroclus 4 ' Achilles then is a Trojan, and even as Patroclus' namE is reversed in Cleopatra, 46 so the whole story present' a mirror-image of the events at Troy. Achilles has become, in his wrath, an exile; he has turned into an enemy, nol just an observer, of the Achaeans; he has changed hi' allegiance and become enrolled as a Trojan ally. He is 2 Trojan outside the walls, a Hector enraged. The Trojan' could have appealed to Hector, as the Aetolians did tc Meleager, by recounting the human sorrows that wou!C attend a captured Troy: 47 but the Achaeans could nol move Achilles except by pointing to a silent Patroclus If Hector had withdrawn from the war, and had Priam. Casandra, Hecuba, and Andromache beseeched him tc return, Phoenix' story would exactly correspond; bu; their very absence in Achilles' case lays stress on his iso· lation, and shows how close he has come to an inhumar self-sufficiency. Hector could be as much Meleager ae Achilles is: but he is a civil Achilles, an Achilles who ha• not lost aidos ("shame"); and yet in all else he resemble• him, so that this first meeting between them, as it were in the realm of an old fable, marks the first stage in thei ultimate identity. Agamemnon had ended his speech of reconciliatior thus: "Let Achilles submit-Hades is implacable and un conquerable, and therefore he is the most hateful of al the gods to mortals;" 48 and though Odysseus quit< reasonably omits it when he addresses Achilles, yet h< SUMMER 198 �replaces it by promising him that he will be honoured like a god. 49 He somehow suspects Achilles' divine pretensions, and Phoenix more openly, when he urges Achilles to relent because the gods themselves are not inexorable, ''whose virtue, honour and power are greater,'' numbers Achilles among the gods. 50 Agamemnon and Phoenix try to persuade Achilles by example, and as their choice of Hades and the gods depends on what they think would seem convincing to Achilles, we can readily measure his ambition by his refusal. Achilles wants to be absolute: he almost succeeds. He has forced himself into a posture that can admit (and ask) no quarter. He thinks himself alone, splendidly alone, and though Patroclus proves him wrong, his conviction lasts long enough to seal his doom. As long as he believes in his own uniqueness he is as monstrous as the Cyclops. What is metaphorically true in the Iliad becomes a fabulous reality in the Odyssey. 51 Both live alone: Polyphemus actually, Achilles by belief. Both cultivate and consult only their thymos. 52 Both are huge (pelorios): Polyphemus is so huge that the stone which blocks his cave not even two and twenty wagons could move; Achilles is so huge that three Achaeans had to bolt and unbolt the door to his tent. 53 If Polyphemus were killed, Odysseus would never be able to leave the cave: if Achilles were killed, the Achaeans would never take Troy. 54 War is like the cave of the pastoral Cyclops, from which none escape but by the unwilling help of its denizen. Polyphemus must be blinded so that Odysseus may escape, Achilles must lose Patroclus so that Hector may be killed. Polyphemus devours the companions of Odysseus, Achilles wishes his angry strength would allow him to devour Hector 55 Thus Polyphemus is one extreme of Achilles' charter, as his immortal horses are the other: one the embodiment of the animal, the other of the thing. Achilles is called merciless, and he has a merciless heart (nelees etor), and only Polyphemus is also said to be so neles thymos). 56 Polyphemus is wild and untamed (agrios) so is Achilles. 57 The Cyclopes are lawless (athemistoi), not because they do not lay down laws each to his own family, but because they do not have regard for one another, that is, they lack civil shame. 58 Achilles likewise gives commands among his followers but has no regard for Agamemnon's decrees. 59 Polyphemus boasts that he does not pay attention to Zeus: Phoenix warns Achilles that he does not regard the Litai 60 Polyphemus then is the brute perfection of Achilles, Achilles without weakness, without Patroclus. He is what Achilles wants to but luckily cannot be. He shows what a monstrosity is bred out of disobedience to order, no matter how arbitrary that order may seem. He is almost Homer's final verdict on Achilles, whose disrespect for Agamemnon, though a trifle, unleashed a fury that sweeps Achilles on to his own death. Then everything includes itself in power, Power into will, will into appetite; And appetite, an universal wolf, So doubly seconded with will and power, THE ST. JOHN'S REVIEW Must make perforce an universal prey, And last eat up himself. Chapter IV The Deception of Zeus Achilles acts like a god, but Patroclus makes him forfeit that likeness. Though he suppresses nature, it finally betrays him in the shape of his friend: naturam expelles furca, tamen usque recurret ("You may expel nature with a pitchfork, yet it will always return"). His imitation of immortality cannot last: Patroclus stops it. But the gods whom Achilles imitates, do they too have their Patroclus? Are they too subject to a power beyond their art? Homer gives us his answer in the so-called "deception of Zeus." When Hera sees Poseidon in disguise urging the Achaeans to battle, she thinks of a plan to end the war quickly: to put on a disguise that will deceive Zeus. She enters her chambers, made by her son Hephaestus, the lock on whose doors no other god but herself could open, and adorns herself as artfully as possible.' Then, taking aside a guileless Aphrodite, Hera begs of her: "Give to me love and desire, by which you overpower all immortals and mortal men. " 2 Her excuse is that she wishes to reconcile Oceanus, the "genesis of the gods," and Tethys, who have been at strife with one another, and for a long time have not slept together, ever since "wrath fell upon them. " 3 Aphrodite grants her request and gives her a magical girdle, "wherein there was love and desire and persuasive speech, that is wont to steal away even the mind of the prudent." 4 Having put on this girdle, Hera goes to the brother of Death, Hypnos, the "king of all gods and all men. " 5 If he will lull to sleep Zeus, she promises, he will receive a golden throne and a footstool, made by her son Hephaestus. 6 Hypnos at first refuses, protesting that he would even put to sleep Oceanus-has per genesis pantossi tetuktai ("he who is the genesis for all")-but not Zeus, unless he himself so wished it; and reminding Hera how he had deceived Zeus once before, when Heracles sailed home from Troy, and had not Night saved him-"queen of gods and of men" -Zeus would have cast him into the sea? Hera deprecates his fear: Zeus does not care as much for the Trojans as he had for Heracles; and she changes her reward: anyone of the Graces shall be his bride. 8 Hypnos then agrees, if Hera will be willing to swear an oath, 9 and once she is sworn, he accompanies her to Olympus where Zeus surveys the Thasians and Mysians.'° Coming into the presence of Zeus, while Hypnos assumes the shape of a bird, Hera's beauty dazzles Zeus, and he wishes to sleep with her at once. 11 Hera, however, "thinking guile," says it would be shameless to sleep out in the open, where anyone might see them: would it not be better to retire to her own chamber, which her dear son 99 �Hephaestus had made? 12 At last Hera's plan is discovered: she wished to lure Zeus into her chamber, whose lock no one but herself could open; and once locked in, Zeus would have to submit to her terms, and the Trojan war would come to an end. And yet she cannot persuade Zeus (in spite of her girdle), for his desire admits of no delay. They sleep together, and "under them the divine earth sprouted fresh grass, the dewdrenched lotus, the crocus, and the delicate hyacinth.' ' 13 Thus Hera is foiled by nature. Even as Hypnos would not accept her proposal, as long as she offered him the throne of Hepaestus, so Zeus' passion outstrips her guile. She had hoped to enlist natural powers, sleep and desire, into the services of art: to entice Zeus by the charms of Aphrodite and hold him by the craft of Hephaestus. She believed that nature would submit to art, but she ought to have known, when Hypnos rejected the throne made by Hephaestus, that art must submit to the passions, that the superiority of art is ephemeral, and that nature will always triumph. Thus the deception of Zeus is a failure." If then Hera fails to deceive Zeus, it is not surprising (as some have thought it is) that Poseidon does not help the Achaeans more than before; for Hypnos, who is as guileless as Aphrodite, did not know what Hera had intended, and, thinking her plan a success, goes of his own accord to tell Poseidon 15 The Achaeans are entitled to no more than a short respite. Their leaders succeed in routing the Trojans, until Zeus awakens and forces Poseidon to retire from the war . 16 Sleep, Desire, and Night have equal powers over gods and men, and only Death, the brother of Sleep, is man's peculiar fate. Mortality distinguishes men from the immortal gods. It makes the gods, who are free from death, the masters of men. Although they are subject like men to sleep, desire, and night, yet their immortality grants them one advantage: they are not forced to be moral. The gods have the ring of Gyges, which allows them to do whatever they wish without regard for the consequences. If they sometimes feel responsible for their charges, they help them; but if they ignore the heroes, they never pay for their neglect. If they choose to be as arbitrary as Achilles, they will never feel as guilty as he, after he has sent Patroclus to his death. Ares is easily soothed by Athena when he hears of his son Ascalaphus' death: 17 the revengeful grief of Achilles cannot be solaced. Mortality puts a limit to Achilles' irresponsibility, not only by checking his aggrandizement but also by forcing him to admit, that he can lose something more precious than his own life. His virtue cannot stand alone; for even when he thinks he is self-sufficient, he relies on the gods; and this reliance becomes so great that in the end he can do nothing unless they assist him. Achilles thought he was closer to Zeus than to Agamemnon, but when Zeus denied his prayer, that Patroclus return alive, he discovered his ties with anthropoi were stronger than his claim to immortality. When Sarpedon rushed against Patroclus, and Zeus pitied them both, undecided whether he should have Sarpedon or not, Hera dissuaded him, and Zeus 100 quite readily resigned himself to the loss of his son;" while Achilles, who imitated his indifference (as herelied on his protection) could not bring himself to accepl the death of Patroclus. He feels compassion more strongly than a god ever can. His natural affections outstrip hi' self-taught principles. His indifference crumbles. He comes to see himself as more the son of Peleus than the son of Thetis, more human than divine. Cyclopeau Achilles, an automaton of enormity, puts not only himself but all heroes on trial. His experiment in immortality is disastrous, for it depends on a providential world, a world that the gods must always take care of. Achille' sums up heroic virtue, and shows that its price is eternal providence. Pantes de Theon chateus' heroes. Chapter V Patroclus Patroclus was much affecteq by Nestor's appeal, and as soon as he returned to Achilles, forgetting to repor what he was charged to find out, 1 begged Achilles to re enter the war:z ainarete, ti sea allos onCsetai opsigonos per, ai ke me Argeioisin aeikea loi mou amoreis? (accursed [or dreadful] in your virtue, how will anothe even yet to be born have profit from you, if you do not ward of shameful ruin for the Argives?) Achilles' virtue is accursed and dreadful, for no one iu the future (let alone now) will take pleasure in or derive benefit from it, unless he prevents an unseemly disaster. Patroclus warns Achilles, as Phoenix had warned him before, that he is gambling away his fame as he holds stubbornly to his virtue. What Nestor had said, that Achille' would enjoy his virtue alone-oios tes aretes aponesetaiPatroclus takes to mean the loss of immortal fame. Agamemnon had pleaded with Achilles (through Odysseus) to help Agamemnon; Odysseus on his own accounl had pleaded with him to help the Achaeans; Phoenix had pleaded for him to help himself; and Patroclus to helf posterity. He can be as isolated in the present as he wants, if he will display toward the future a ghostly beneficence; but were he to abstain from all action, his untested virtue would deny him all fame. Achilles insists so mud on immediate honour, to compensate for his early death, that he ignores the danger of a lasting infamy. He wish· es to enjoy now, in fact, what posterity can only granl him in fancy, to gather into the present moment all ol the future. He cannot balance, against his conscious per· fection, a promised glory. Although he has threatenec to leave, he must stay, so that the defeat of the Achaean' may sustain his intense awareness of his own virtue. In deed he would even wish for the death of all Achaean' and Trojans, were he and Patroclus to escape (beini SUMMER 19E �neither Achaean nor Trojan), "in order that we might alone destroy the sacred heights of Troy." 4 He does not think on the banenness but merely on the self-sufficiency of such a triumph; which would make him at last the absolute master of his own honour. When Odysseus reported Achilles' refusal to Agamemnon, he only mentioned Achilles' threat to depart at dawn, and not his milder answer to Ajax, that he would not consider "bloody war," before Hector would come to the ships and tents of the Myrmidons. 5 The parable of Meleager had made Achilles slightly modify his threat: but the change is useless. Were Hector to succeed in breaking through the wall, Achilles' belated action might save himself, but it would not help the Achaeans, whom Hector would attack, not on Achilles' flank, but on Ajax'. Achilles had speciously moderated his stubbornness, so that he might flatter himself by his own good nature, and yet remain as adamant as before. As the Achaeans are given impossible conditions to fulfill, should they wish to appease Achilles, Achilles can persevere in his own conceit and at the same time pretend his willingness to relent. He can compromise without compromising himself. He can regret his obduracy but keep his wrath 6 He can send out Patroclus, in all righteousness, without his yielding at all, and can thus ensure his return, which the Trojans might otherwise hinder, if they set fire to his ships? He will obtain honour from all the Achaeans, as well as Briseis and glorious gifts, even though he will not have submitted to Agamemnon. Achilles carefully avoids any mention of the embassy, as he now understands what Phoenix had meant, when he warned him that to accept Agamemnon's gifts, if the ships are already burning, would not only be baser but entail less honour. 8 He now admits what he could not foresee, that "it is impossible to cherish anger continuou~ly. " 9 But having admitted that, he cannot bring himself to confess his error. He must re-enter the war, and yet he must maintain the absoluteness of his own virtue, but not compromise his chance of returning home. And Patroclus' s request, that he be allowed to put on Achilles' armour, gives him the almost-perfect solution. He will not go himself but will send a surrogate, who is the mere extension of himself. Patroclus will be mistaken for him, and thus he can rout the Trojans without ever leaving his tent. But one thing upsets him: suppose Patroclus, this inanimate toy, suddenly is fired by his own ambitions? Suppose his success will be too brilliant and involve Achilles in a greater dishonour?10 Were Patroclus to do more than assure the return of Briseis, and either kill Hector or capture Troy, Achilles would be eclipsed by the very instrument of his design. Patroclus might become independent of Achilles; he might be able to achieve what none of the other Achaeans had been able to do, freedom from Achilles' tyranny. Achilles might find that his armour was superior to himself, that the weapon and not its owner guaranteed success, and that his own renown could accomplish more than his own prowess. His fears are unfounded: Patroclus does not excel him: THE ST. JOHN'S REVIEW but he also fails to return. And his failure to return, the one flaw in Achilles' scheme, sets the stage for Achilles' own tragedy. Patroclus puts on Achilles' armour, but leaves behind Achilles' spear, which no one could wield except Achilles." Automedon yokes Xanthus and Balius to the chariot, and puts between the traces the blameless Pedasus, a horse Achilles had taken when he sacked the city of Eetion, "who even though mortal followed immortal horses." 12 A three-horse chariot is elsewhere unknown to Homer. Why then should Patroclus add a mortal horse, that at best would be superfluous and at worse a hindrance, to the two immortal horses of Achilles? "Homer wishes to show us," the BT Scholiast remarks, "the nature of the hero, that it is composed of the mortal and immortal." Quite true; but why should Homer wish to insist on such a point now? His meaning goes deeper. Even as Patroclus is Achilles' one tie to humanity, and with his death dies Achilles' pity, 13 so Pedasus is Patroclus, whose death reveals how impossible it is to yoke together, as Achilles had wished, the rights of divinity with the duties of men. Pedasus is a mere appendage to these inunortal horses, Patroclus is nothing but the trace-horse of Achilles: but the wounded Pedasus can more easily be disentangled from his reins than the dead Patroclus discarded by Achilles. Patroclus was to be only an extension of Achilles, while his death, though it cuts him off completely, binds him more closely to Achilles than he ever was bound in life. Pedasus was a blameless horse, not only because his excellence ranked him with Xanthus and Balius but also because he was not responsible for his death; and Patroclus likewise is blameless, 14 his virtue being almost the equal of Achilles' and his death Achilles' fault. Achilles' share of mortality dies with Patroclus and Pedasus, and all that remains of him is the immortality of his horses. Homer speaks to Patroclus throughout his aristeia, as if he somehow felt responsible for him and wished to console him for the harshness of his fate. Not his prowess nor his victories but his ineluctable death enlists Homer's sympathy: "Whom first, whom last did you kill, Patroclus, when the gods called you to death?" 15 Homer had spoken to Menelaus when his life was in danger, or when he thought his petty triumphs should be celebrated; 16 and it is not accidental that he, who shares so little in heroic ambition, and Patroclus, who is so little responsible for his fate, should be the two persons whom Homer most often addresses. The plot involves them, one at the beginning, the other at the end: but the plot is not their own doing. Patroclus' death follows so quickly on the heels of his success, that no one, except Achilles, moves so much under the spell of doom. And yet the doom of Achilles is part of his destiny (it is almost self-made); Patroclus' death is alien to Patroclus and belongs more to Zeus and Achilles than to himself: so Homer, in calling to him, seems to stand beside him and to be in at the kill, lest Patroclus, without the gods and without Achilles, feel himself completely abandoned. 101 �Zeus was undecided whether he should save Sarpedon or not, and later he could not decide whether Hector should die: 17 but he had no doubts about Patroclus. The death of Sarpedon was arbitrary: he could have survived Patroclus. The death of Hector was in itself unnecessary: it could have been otherwise. Both are heroes without a fixed destiny; not everything they do leads to one end; they can repeat themselves. But Patroclus could not be reprieved: not because his death arose from an inner necessity (and in this he resembles Sarpedon and Hector), but because his death was the trigger to Achilles' death. It foreshadowed another's death, a death that could not be avoided. It set off another's tragedy. That no god protests the fate of Patroclus indicates that none will protest Achilles'. Chapter VI Achilles and Patroclus If Menelaus had always seemed to cut a poor figure, whether he worsted Paris or volunteered to fight Hector, he more than makes up for it after the death of Patroclus. His efforts are sustained and his exploits prodigious. He shows as much concern for Patroclus' corpse, says Homer, as a mother would feel for her first-born calf. 1 But what is he to Patroclus, or Patroclus to him, that he should be spurred on to such virtue? He does not act so much out of some regard for Patroclus, as because he feels his own interests are at stake. He sees that the war has re-adopted its original character. As he had gone to war to avenge the rape of Helen, so Achilles will re-enter the war to avenge Patroclus' death. A private quarrel will become once again the main theme of the Iliad. Achilles will fight for Helen. 2 When Menelaus' love for Helen had been transmuted into the desire for glory, he had lost his importance, handing over to others the conduct of the war;' but as soon as Achilles' love for Patroclus will shape the rest of the Iliad, Menelaus reassumes, as a sign of Achilles' return, his abandoned role. Almost spent is the ambition with which Hector had inspired the heroes, while the desire for vengeance, which had initiated the war, returns once again as its cause. The combat of Achilles against Hector and that of Menelaus against Paris have more in common with each other than with the contest between Ajax and Hector. They are in earnest, while Hector and Ajax competed for glory. They are provoked by hatred, while Hector could exchange gifts with Ajax. They are the rightful champions of their own cause, while Ajax was picked by lot and Hector could have been Aeneas. And yet the central part of the Iliad, which dealt with the love of fame, does affect the struggle between Achilles and Hector. Achilles is not merely Menelaus nor is Hector merely Paris, but Achilles unites Menelaus with Ajax (the personal vengeance of one with the impersonal 102 ambition of the other), while Hector retains the role he played against Ajax, even though he takes on some fea· lures of Paris. Ajax and Menelaus join in protecting the corpse of Patroclus, and thus indicate how the first twc parts of the Iliad come together in the end. We must no" see how Achilles puts off his wrath and re-enters the war. When Achilles had prayed to Zeus, that Patroclus pus! back the Trojans to the city as well as that he return safe ly to the ships, Zeus granted the first request and denie< the second; 4 and this new plan of Zeus', which Theti: failed to report,S marks the first ruptrue between Achille: and Zeus. As long as Thetis had told him what Zeus in tended, Achilles could not fail to believe in his own pow er; nor, as long as the Trojans continued to triumph could he doubt the infallible result of his prayers. He i: indeed pious Achilles. Never had he made a mov• without the assistance of a god, whether Athena ha< checked his impulse to kill Agamemnon, or Thetis ha< answered his appeal for revenge: so he persuaded him self that they would never desert him, and he could af ford to dispense with his mother's intervention. H treated the gods as if they were under his thumb, an< were as obedient to his whims as he had hoped Agamem non would be. Achilles, who thought himself the maste1 becomes the slave of the gods. He cannot live withou them. He must live miraculously. Patroclus is absent longer than Achilles expected, and he begins to recall what Thetis had once told him, thai the best of the Myrmidons would die, while he was stii living. 6 Although he had known about this prophecy, h< had forgotten it in his haste to obtain satisfaction, anc free himself honourably from his own intransigence; anc since his convenience advised him to ignore it, he sc much the more easily could plead his forgetfulness. Anc yet Achilles' memory is a strange mixtrue: he could keef fresh the injury dealt him by Agamemnon, but he coulc not remember the fate of Patroclus. Even he is uneasy uncertain if he dispatched Patroclus in good faith; for ir repeating now his admonition to Patroclus, he proves hi1 innocence by slightly changing his warning:"! chargee him to return to the ships," Achilles says to himself "when once he had averted the baneful fire, (and charged him as well) not to fight against Hector. " 7 Bu he had not told Patroclus to avoid Hector. He did forbi< him to attack Troy, lest Apollo might rout him, but h< now omits the baser motive which had dictated hi: concern-his fear that Patroclus might achieve more glm; and honour than himself8-and substitutes for that th< pretense that he had warned him about Hector. Indeed in his prayer to Zeus, he actually referred to Hector a: Patroclus' opponent: ''In order that even Hector will se< if our comrade knows how to battle alone. " 9 These an not the words of someone who can truthfully say h• warned Patroclus; but they are the words of an Achille: who deliberately forgot the doom of Patroclus, so tha his own pride could be appeased. Perhaps "deliberate ly" is too strong an indictment, but his guilt is there. H is not innocent of Patroclus' death, nor is he in turn corn SUMMER 19E �pletely responsible. He stands, like all tragic heroes, an ambiguous trial tortured by the doubt of his innocence, as he protests the consciousness of his guilt. He shares his guilt with Hector, who is, as it were, his agent; but he also shares Hector'S innocence, who merely carried out the will of Zeus. His fury against Hector far exceeds the fury of an innocent man. He exacts from Hector the penalty he feels that he himself should pay. He attempts to drown in the slaughter of Trojans the growing sense of his own guilt. He expresses both is innocence and his guilt, his grief at the loss of a friend and his pain at being his murderer, when he tells his mother, ton apolesa, 10 which can mean "I lost him," as Achilles now intends, or, what he finally comes to believe it means, "I killed him." The murder of Patroclus was not Achilles' aim, but the casual conseq11ence of his wrath. He had delegated his shadow of himself, dressed in his own armour, to vindicate his honour. He had not so much been desirous for Patroclus' death as he had been anxious for himself. He was careless of Patroclus because he was certain of his success; but his certainty was more a necessary hope to further himself than. a proved conviction that it would not harm Patroclus. As soon as Achilles learns of Patroclus' death, "a black cloud of grief engulfed him,'' and he throws himself upon the ground, megas megalosti tanystheis keito ("mightily in his might, he lay stretched out"), as if he were dead. His captured slaves surround him and utter cries of lament, and Antilochus fears he will commit suicide, "severing his throat with iron. " 11 Achilles' muttered wailings are heard by his mother who, when all her sisters are gathered round her, laments the imminent death of her son, 12 0 moi egO deilC, 0 moi dysaristotokeia (" Ah me, wretched that I am; ah me unhappy bearer of the best of men.") Accompanied by the tearful Nereids, she leaves his father's cave, and standing near Achilles takes his head in her hands. It has often been noticed that all of this scene resembles a funeral, and that it signifies the death of Achilles." The phrase keito megas megalosti ("he lay mightily in his might") was used of Cebriones' death, 14 and far from being a blemish was purposely planted there to explain its occurrence here. Achilles is dead. Keiso megas megalosti ("You lay mightily in your might"), Agamemnon tells him in Hades, "and your mother came out of the sea, whom the immortal Nereids followed." 15 Thetis holds Achilles' head just as he will hold the head of the dead Patroclus, and Andromache, Hecuba and Priam that of Hector. 16 With the death of Patroclus, Achilles himself dies. ''I honoured him above my companions,'' he tells Thetis, "equal to my own head. " 17 Patroclus is Achilles' head, and his death has cost Achilles his own. 18 He is now no more than a corpse. He stays alive by the THE ST. JOHN'S REVIEW nectar and ambrosia Athena gives him: the very medicine Thetis gives the dead Patroclus and Aphrodite the dead Hector, so that their bodies might not decay. 19 Achilles' and Hector's ambition, to be immortal and ageless, is finally granted them; they obtain the elixir of immortality,'0 one when he is dead, the other when he wishes that he were. Achilles belongs to the world of the dead, and his every action will seem as mechanical as a somnambulist's, and as ineffectual as a dream. Achilles is a work of art. He has more affinities with the golden hounds of Hephaestus than with the natural elements in his own lineage. His denial of nature is his constant attempt to break out of mortality. Hence it is only fitting that the eighteenth book should open with a catalogue of the Nereids and end with the making of his shield.21 The Nereids represent all that he refuses to acknowledge, the superiority of nature over art; and the shield proclaims all that he wants to be his, an ordered and fabricated world. The shield is surrounded by Oceanus, 22 placed at the limits of man's nature, and beyond which it is impossible to go. Ocean is the only one of the gods that does not obey Zeus' summons, when he calls all of them to assemble. 23 He is the only one beyond Zeus' power. Hera had pretended she could reconcile Ocean with Tethys, but she never does; Hypnos had pretended he could lull him to sleep, but he never does; and Achilles pretends that Zeus is stronger than the Achelous, but he only briefly succeeds.z< Hephaestus conquers the Xanthus, so that the Olympian gods, who make the heroic world providential, may dominate the Iliad. The gods appear on the shield in the city of war, but they are absent in the city of peace: 25 so it is not by chance that the gods are less active in the Odyssey, nor that Odysseus travels to the end of Ocean, where Hades is, the absolute end of man. 26 Heroes live in a poetic world, a world where accident has almost vanished, and everything takes place according to fate. Providence is chance unblinded. The gods are technai ("arts"}, who correct the faults of nature: but they are a small part of the whole. They beautify the whole, and as war is uglier than peace, they play a greater role in the Iliad than in the Odyssey. Achilles needs them; without them he is a Cyclops; with them he just manages to be noble. Achilles dies in Book Eighteen. He dies when the providential world on which he depended breaks down; but he is resurrected by art and goaded on by the gods for the rest of the Iliad. He cannot help the Achaeans until he is rearmed: the despoiling of Patroclus has stripped himself. He is refitted by Hephaestus, so that he may take his revenge: but it is merely a concession of the gods, merely a fiction of Homer's, merely a sop to Achilles. He becomes a puppet, who performs his ghostly motions by a kind of inertia. The display of his virtue comes too late: he cannot redeem, no matter how great his slaughter, the virtue he lost in sending Patroclus to his death. Achilles is Achilles because he is a warrior, but before he was willing, and now he is compelled. He has lost his will. "Truly it is not base," Thetis tells him, "to ward off destruction from 103 �your wearied companions" :27 but it is not noble either. Achilles becomes a contrivance, a thing, a work of art. He has lost that greatness of soul which, ironically, he more displayed in his anger against Agamemnon than now in his revenge on Hector. He becomes more hateful to himself than Hades ever was. 28 He becomes his worst Before Achilles arms himself for battle, he is reconciled with Agamemnon: but one must not take Agamemnon's self-humiliation as the vindication of Achilles. Agamemnon can afford to be abject because Achilles cannot now dispute his authority: he is too busy defending himself from his own guilt to make any demands on another. Achilles had compared himself to Heracles, "whom fate and the cruel anger of Hera conquered, and so even I, if there is made a like fate for me, shall die. " 29 Achilles begins here his self-deception. He must omit in his own case the anger of Hera that was partly the cause of Herades' death; for it was not the wrath of a god but his own wrath that sealed his fate. He tries to return to where he was before his wrath, when he was okyrnorotatos allan ("doomed to an early death beyond all others"), 30 and he had had no doubt that he would die at Troy. His wrath then became his fate, taking over his external destiny and making it his own. He brought himself to do through his own action what fate had planned in advance. He becomes free of fate only to become enslaved to his own character. Vainly he tries to restore a fateful world, where he would no longer be responsible. What Agamemnon does so brazenly in the defense of himself (excusing his own folly on the grounds of Zeus'), 31 Achilles also does; but he is more subtle than Agamemnon as his sense of guilt is much stronger. He wishes that Briseis had perished when he sacked Lyrnessus,'2 as if Briseis were to blame and not himself, or as if he could not have found another pretext for his wrath. He wishes that strife and anger had perished among gods and men, 33 so that he would not have been able to err. He shows himself indifferent to the gifts of Agamemnon, 34 as if he had never cared for honour and was always careless of rewards. He longs to go to war without eating, as if he had never feasted when the Achaeans were dying. 35 "The Achaeans cannot mourn a corpse with their bellies," Odysseus tells Achilles, "for too many die day after day, one after the other: when could one cease from toilsome fasting? But we must bury him who dies and weep for a day, having a pitiless heart. " 36 Achilles must have a pitiless heart (nelea thymon), and Achilles once did have a pitiless heart: when he had neither fought nor wept for the dead. 37 His pitiless heart had kept him from the war, and his softened heart has made him return. When he should have showed his mildness, he preferred to be hard; when he should now show his hardness, he must be mild. His responsibility to Patroclus is too oppressively his own burden for Patroclus to be numbered among the other dead. Achilles tries to redeem his innocence by fasting, as if physical privation would show his inner loss, but by fasting he only stands condemned. 104 Chapter VII The Exploits of Achilles Achilles begins his exploits in the twentieth book, and Homer addresses him by his father's name, "son of Peleus," for with his return to the war he becomes like his father. He takes over again the office which Agamemnon had filled in his absence: the Achaeans now arm around him as they once were ordered to arm by Agamemnon.' Achilles now enters the war with eagerness: akoretos, "insatiate," Homer calls him. The Trojans take fright as soon as they see him, "swift-footed Peleion ablaze in his armour, equal to mortal-destroying Ares. " 2 His virtue, his patronymic and appearance are enough to warrant a simile, that also the presence of the gods justifies. 3 He is known to the Trojans as the son of Peleus (by his father's name) and as swift-footed (by his special virtue). Apollo urges Aeneias to confront him, calling him simply 'Peleides Achilles" ;4 but Aeneias will not venturE forth, as he knows exactly what Peleides Achilles implies: he does not wish to fight against "over-spirited Peleion," nor stand his ground, as he once did, before ''swift-footec Achilles. " 5 Even as Achilles to him means violent anger, so "swift-footed" means the son of Peleus 6 His swift· ness is an inherited virtue, his anger his own: Aeneiaf can resist neither. Aeneias Anchisiades meets divine Achilles. 7 Anchises. who mated with Aphrodite, begot Aeneias; Achilles i1 divine, an epithet that suggests his genealogy; for at one< it is "Peleides" who stands before plain Aeneias; but th< son of Peleus, after a simile, becomes Achilles once more, who threatens Aeneias with his power: he speaks to hin as divine and as swift-footed, in his lineage and virtoe. Aeneias is unimpressed, "great-hearted" as he is, 10 an< before launching a recital of his own lineage, calls hin Peleides, which he inunediately retracts, saying, "they sa: you are the son of Peleus and Thetis, but I boast to be th son of Anchises and my mother is Aphrodite. " 11 Th doubt that he raises about Achilles' parentage contrast with the certainty he has of his own; and yet he puts fm ward a tedious lineage as a shield against Achilles' su periority, hoping to find in his past a counterweight t' Achilles' present greatness.U Aeneias hurls his javelin, Achilles holds up his shiel' in fear: he fears as "Peleides" the spear of "great-hearte, Aeneias," but as soon as he recovers his own spirit an hurls back a spear, he becomes once again Achilles." An as Achilles he rushes at Aeneias shouting dreadfully, bt as "Peleides" he would have killed him, had nc Poseidon pitied Aeneias and come to where he and"£< mous Achilles" were standing." He sends down a mil over the eyes of Peleides Achilles, for as the son of h father he would have killed Aeneias, but when Poseido scatters the mist, he turns into plain Achilles; 15 wh speaks to his "great-hearted spirit" and decides to rail the "Danaans lovers of war. " 16 Achilles was the first t SUMMER 19: �f' 'lovers of war'') in speaking of ~he Myr<illiidons ;ami! Tw,ijans, and only after that do Hector, Ly<llll>n, ""'d Hmmer employ it: Lycaon when he beseeches Achilles, Homer when he either thinks of Achilles or Achilles is almut to speak. 17 It is, like megathymoi Achaioi18 '('"ihigh-;Sjplirited Achaeans"), an epithet that depends solely•onAdlnilles' presence, or that applies to no one unless :fhrey.,.,.,omehow transformed by Achilles, and become wellle~;-. ·of him. Hedter <encourages the "over-spirited Trojans to face ""!Relerom:·'' 19 Oruy if he recalls them to their highest ex•Geil!:ellllle,, - d degrades Achilles to his lowest, patronymic iidiOI!l!tiiiy, 'Will bis illlnetoric carry conviction. As the son ·l>if lb.iis Jliaitimer Adhililes <can be approached, for., Achilles" he :says mill not ifull£llll!Ms boasts, but fail in lb.alf of what he ~""'"-' 0 iNfotJI'Il'lkiides Achilles, as it w.,.-e, with all hl!;~, hu!tlhra:lf®'f Achilles, the weakren-, ancestral Jha]U,, l:lledm pmnniises tro ifight. Apollo, how<eover, disagrees,, and reminJlliimlg IE!ector of plain Achillles, who is what lb.e tlb.lnks he iis, furbids him to meet Mrilles. 21 Achilles &en, shO!Iili!mg meadfully, engages Ephition, whom he kills and boasts l()lWt6f as "divine.' . .n Next he goes after "godlike l'olydol1lli.S'"' who "surpassed all the youth in swiftness": Achi!l!es lllhterefore kills him in the capacity of "swift-footed diviilme Achilles. " 23 Achilles becomes more and JIWl)re furious: he kiills ten heroes one after the other (in t:birty-five lines), at~d yet his name is never mentioned. 24 1:11iEwe Homer passes judgment on him: 25 11l1Se pkil~pto!mnoi ou gar ti glycythymos aner en oud' agaiWJdlrwOn ("for not at all sweet-tempered nor gende.of mood was the man") He is not "sweet-tempered" but "high-spirited," he is not mild but pitiless. He loses his name in his fury: he is like fire: he is equal to a god. 26 He goes through blood as "high-spirited Achilles," and desires to obtain honour in his father's name. 27 Achilles continues to destroy the Trojans. He drives them into the river Scamander, and jumps in after them "equal to a god:" he is "the Zeus-born" (ho diogenes), inhuman and nameless. 28 His name returns: "divine Achilles came on Lycaon as an unforeseen evil. '' 29 He observes Lycaon as swift-footed and divine, expecting him to flee; but Lycaon stands still, so Achilles, not having to pursue him, drops "swift-footed" and raises his spear to kill him as "divine;" 30 and then Lycaon beseeches him, and Achilles replies "unsweetly" and kills him as plain Achilles. 31 The river-god Xanthus wishes to stop "divine Achilles, 32 but the son of Peleus jumps on Asteropaeus, despising his lineage and boasting his own. 33 Asteropaeus is as frightened as Aeneias was: he calls him "highspirited Peleides-" He avoids the spear of Achilles and tries to remove it from the river-bank in which it is lodged: thrice he tries and fails to budge it-the spear of Achilles-but on the fourth try, his last, it is the spear of Aeacides, the spear no one but Achilles could wield. 35 THE ST. JOHN'S REVIEW A:s "Peleides" he slays seven heroes, but as "swift Achilles," !by pursuing them, he would have slain more, had noUhe:Xanthus begged him to fightelsewhere. 36 He oont~usly ignores the river, though he pretends he will obey it, and rushes <~gainst the Trojans "equal to a .god;;"'"'7 a:mt as soon as the:Xanthus has reproached Apollo fm his neglect of the Trojans, Achilles as "spearrenrnwned" pursues them. 38 The river, "a great god," swa:Nrows up Achilles in its stream, and "Peleides" l'i'fu'eats, and as "swift-footed, divine'' he flees. 39 In blamillmg his mother for his present setback, he looks to heaven "" the son of Peleus, and as such Poseidon encourages ;hJim;40 Wlhen il'riam looks out over the plain of Troy, he sees Peleides. " 41 He is afraid lest Achilles jump ower t:be wall, and he calls him that "pernicious, baleful m;m'" (mKilms aner). 42 Oulos is used of Alles, of fate, and of fire, bul nowhere directly of anyone mortal except Achilles. 43 JHiector, it is tme, is compared to a baleful star, or a deadly liire, or a muderous lion (oulios aster, oloon pyr leOn o!oophron},44 but again, Achilles really is what Hector only seems to be. He is the end of Hector's ambition. Achilles conditions the use of oulos, for in almost half of its instances it is either said by him, or of him, or to him. The formula epi geraos oudOi ("on the threshold of old age"), for example occurs in Homer five times, but only once, when Priam addresses Achilles, does it become olooi epi geraos oUJliji, "the baleful threshold of old age. " 45 Priam calls Achilles oulos aner, that anonymous man, and often in the last books he is merely "that man": deios ("hostile"), atasthalos ("ruthless"), omestes (" savage") 46 After Homer reveals that the Achaeans would have captured Troy, had not Apollo encouraged Agenor to resist Achilles, Agenor sees him as "Achilles the sacker of cities."47 Achilles is "sacker of cities" not so much by the cities he has taken, 48 but rather by the Troy he hopes to take. His success has been anticipated in a simile: "As when smoke rises into the broad heavens from a burning city, and the wrath of the gods set it afire, and made toil for all and imposed cares upon many, so Achilles made toil and cares for the Trojans." 49 Achilles is the smoke, which foretells the end of Troy, even as he is like the wrath of the gods (who now look down on the scene) that sets the torch to Troy. 50 !f we look back over the similes of Achilles, this one belongs to them as the last in a series. He was, at the beginning of his exploits, first like Ares and then like a lion, his divine and natural aspects alternately displayed; and again he became like a god, but instead of returning to an animal identity, he foreshadowed Hephaestus' help and seemed equal to fire; after which he once more was a god and fire (they now coalesced); and again he became like a god but then returned to the animal world in the shape of a dolphin, for he plunges into the Scamander to pursue the Trojans; afterwards he was a god and an eagle as he fled the river and again the Scamander itself compared him to the gods, while as soon as the river subsided, he reunited fire with divinity, resembling both the smoke of a city and the "llllWlllSI:rouS 105 �wrath of the gods. 51 As Achilles conquers Troy in a simile, so the g<>ds dispute later "about Hector the corpse and Achilles the sacker of cities, " 52 for Hector alone made the city stand, and after his death the Trojans weep as if "all Ilium were already smouldering." 53 Although Achilles, by killing Hector, becomes ptoliporthos ("waster of cities"}, it is nothing but poetic license that grants it, which leaves him as ineffective in action as he was before in his absence. We have traced the action and the epithets of Achilles up to his encounter with Hector, trying to show how in these last books the epithets become more striking, exact, and horrible, while his conventional epithets tend to diminish; how the anonymity of Achilles is stressed more and more, until his patronymic almost disappears in the end; 54 how, in short, he has prepared himself for his battle with Hector. Chapter VIII Achilles and Hector Hector is a civil Achilles. Respect for those weaker than himself dominates everything he does. His mother and father cannot persuade him to avoid Achilles, ashamed, as he is, lest someone baser than himself might say, "Hector, trusting to his strength, destroyed his people." 1 He is like Menelaus who, when he saw Hector advancing towards him, wished to flee but feared the reproach of the Achaeans, if he should abandon Patroclus who died for his honour. 2 If Menelaus had resisted singly the Trojans, he would have done so out of shame, but, unlike Hector, he reasoned it away, thinking that no one could blame him, were he unwilling to fight against a godfavoured man. Hector is held by shame. He fears more keenly the scorn of Troy's citizens than Menelaus the scorn of the camp. His fear of others, not any inner restraint, makes Hector stand up to Achilles.' He had given to And"omache, when she foreboded his death, two reasons why he must continue to fight: his shame and his spirit' Even as now he felt shame then, but his high spirit, which had been trained to be brave, no longer is present. He is forced on by a necessity as great as Achilles' that has nothing to do with virtue. He hoped to kill Ajax and thus acquire immortal fame: now he is content to die famously before Troy.' He is concerned more with his own renown than with the fate of his people: his sense of shame has placed him above shame, and made him disregard any interest but his own. Although he cares more for Andromache than for the rest of Troy, he prefers to act rashly than to save even her: 6 for to maintain his own self-esteem exceeds all other cares. In this respect he resembles Achilles, who had cherished his anger, though it meant death to the Achaeans, and now belatedly defends them for the sake of Patroclus. Hector to Andromache was everything: father and 106 mother, brother and husband. 7 Achilles was everythin to Patroclus: he compared himself to a mother an Patroclus to his daughter; he will be compared to a fath< who burns the bones of his son; and Apollo will be ir dignant that he shows more care for Patroclus than me do for a brother. 8 And yet in spite of their responsibil ties, both Hector and Achilles shirk them. Hector has bt come an alien because of his shame, Achilles was isolate from the Achaeans out of shamelessness.' Both are drive to a combat each had sought to avoid. Achilles' vain ei fort to re-establish his honour corresponds to Hector' attempt to correct his mistake: as if Achilles could balanc the death of Hector against the loss of Patroclus, and He< tor, in clinging to his civil shame, could maintain hi renown. At the cost of Troy's fall he preserves his sham< He abandons Troy. And Achilles, in reacquiring his mru tial spirit, loses his virtue. Each has made his own exce lence contradict itself. In his desire to be the perfect here each has ceased to be a hero at all. Hector wonders if he could escape Achilles' fury, wer he to offer him the return of Helen and all the wealth Pari had taken with her; but he cuts himself short in so idl a hope by saying, "There is no time now to chatter wit him from oak and from rock, like a youth and a mak as a youth and a maid chat with one another." 10 To whil away the time (so neatly expressed in the epanalepsi' a youth and a maid may beguile each other with the1 talk of fabulous origins and "old stories": 11 but Hectc must resolve his dispute with Achilles as quickly as pm sible, and were he to offer Helen back, who was the arcli and origin of the war, 13 he would be guilty of a gros anachronism. Patroclus' death is the cause of Achille' reappearance, while Helen's bigamy has become a mythical as a lineage from oak and from rock. The desir for immortal fame had already discarded Helen, an though that desire is by now less vehement, she does nc reassume her former role. She has been replaced b Patroclus. An obsolete Helen cannot appease a reveng< ful Achilles, not even if he himself pretends that he fight in a foreign land for her sake. 14 She had been unsucceS> ful in settling the war, when the certainty of Troy's Caf ture inspired the Achaeans;15 and she is no mor successful now, as Achilles seeks his revenge for him wh can never be restored. Achilles pursues Hector round the walls of Troy, an though he is swift-footed, he cannot overtake him: "A in a dream one cannot pursue him who flees, and neith< is one able to elude nor the other to pursue, so Achille was unable to catch Hector nor Hector to escape. " 16 The belong to a dream's endless pursuit, where the pursm cannot catch the pursued, nor the pursued escape th pursuer. Achilles' swiftness, which his epithet podiiki ("swift-footed") had promised, is in the act belied. H does not measure up to his notices. His most outstanc ing virtue, by which he excelled Ajax (his closest rival i perfection}, is put to the test and found wanting. An Hector, who thought that his encounter with Achill< would be more decisive than the dalliance of a youth an SUMMER 19: �a maid, prolongs it as long as he can. Just as they make a circuit of the wall three times, so in their shared dream they thrice cannot elude one another. But the dream is more real than their combat, for Hector's death is supernatural. Were it not that Apollo deserts him and Athena deceives him, Hector would have continued to outdistance Achilles. His death is contrived. It satisfies Achilles' revenge, it bolsters his prestige, it puts together out of the scraps of his virtue a final victory. He does not prove himself superior to Hector, but only proves that the gods surpass both. What was to demonstrate his excellence merely shows up his weakness. Patroclus' death was necessary for Achilles to realize his guilt; Hector's death is necessary to make a fitting end. Homer ennobles Achilles as much as he can, and after his real death in the eighteenth book, allows this armoured shell to become human again. When Hector asks Achilles to respect his corpse, even as he would give back Achilles' were he to die, Achilles savagely replies: "As there can be no trusted oaths between lions and men, nor are wolves and sheep of one heart in their spirit, but ever think evil of one another, so you and I cannot be friends. " 17 Heroes had often been compared to either lions and wolves, or men and sheep: but it had always been a momentary likeness and not a permanent condition. The similes had been the comments of Homer, and not what the heroes thought of themselves. The accidental difference between man and man had been expressed by the natural antagonisms among animals: but it had never been elevated to a rule. Achilles is quite willing to let Hector be a man, and assume for himself the role of a lion. 18 He does not intend it as a chance identity, but as nicely expressive of his lasting hatred. He wishes that his fury and strength would allow him to devour Hector, 19 as if a simile to him were but an optative, and to be a beast his ultimate ambition. Hector at his death wears the arms of Achilles, 20 which Patroclus had worn to deceive the Trojans, so that they would mistake himself for Achilles; 21 and they were tricked enough to grant the Achaeans a short respite, while they themselves were forced back to the city. 22 Hector, then, in wearing these arms, partly resembles Achilles. 23 He resembles him as much as Patroclus ever did. He faces Achilles in the guise of Patroclus, who, as the image of Achilles, had gone to war, and now returns to confront him as Hector. Hector is what Patroclus had seemed to be before his death: a mere extension of Achilles. As Patroclus' death made him an individual and not just a lesser Achilles, so the death of Hector stresses the difference between arms and the man. He must be killed where Achilles' armour does not cover him: where the quickest death for a man happens to be: 24 where Achilles can see most clearly his own flaw. Hector is · almost panchalkeos ("all made of bronze")," almost a thing, almost Achilles. He shares with Achilles the murder of Patroclus, and with Patroclus a likeness to Achilles. Thus Patroclus is the means to the final identity of Achilles and Hector. THE ST. JOHN'S REVIEW Chapter IX The Funeral Games After the death of Hector, Achilles triumphantly ends his speech with a paean, which includes all the Achaeans in his own success: ''We have slain divine Hector, whom the Trojans prayed to as a god. " 1 Although he slew Hector by himself (if we omit Athena's assistance), 2 and had forbidden anyone else to attack Hector, lest he might come second in the kill, 3 he feels for an instant no longer isolated, and is quite willing to share his greatness with the other Achaeans. If he can only be numbered among them, they may take part credit in his victory. His slaughter of Trojans has restored his generosity and given him once more a good opinion of himself. He so far forgets his grief in the display of his prowess, that he wants to press his advantage, 4 as if he had resumed the war to gratify the Achaeans, and not to avenge Patroclus' death. The war almost regains it lost purpose-the destruction of Troy-and Patroclus almost becomes as superfluous as Helen-nothing but an irritant to immortal fame-until Achilles checks himself and remembers his guilt, "unwept, unburied Patroclus. " 5 He cannot shake off Patroclus as the Achaeans ignored Helen, nor can Patroclus be converted as Helen was into some higher end. He must always remain a private sorrow. Achilles must cling to Patroclus as to himself; he can no more abandon him than himself; he must always remember the crime he has done. Torn between his reacquired virtue and his festering guilt, he cannot quite hold on to his new status, nor slough off completely his former isolation. As he has been galvanized into action by the death of Patroclus, he must keep himself alive by continuous performance. To make amends to Patroclus, he abuses Hector, 6 for it is the only action he can do that does not betray Patroclus (by starting a spiral of ever-greater aggrandizement); but the longer he prolongs this mechanical savagery, the more withdrawn he becomes, and, instead of allaying his guilt, he only increases his remorse. Weariness at last overcomes Achilles, and he falls asleep on the shore, only to be awakened by the ghost of Patroclus, who complains that he now neglects and has forgotten him.' Achilles then, promising Patroclus to bury his bones with his own, stretches out his hand to embrace him; but Patroclus like smoke eludes his grasp, and Achilles, astonished as by a revelation, cries out:' e ra ti esti kai ein Aidao domoisi psyche kai eidOlon, atar phrenes ouk eni tampan 0 popoi Alas! Even in the house of Hades the soul and image are something, but there are not at all phrenes. The psyche is something after death, but there are no phrenes at all. 9 Death is the loss of phrenes: the powerlessness to fulfill what one desires. Patroclus cannot clasp Achilles' hand, for though his ghost looks exactly like his 107 �living self (in height and in features, in voice and in clothes), 10 he can only gibber and vanish like smoke. Yet his failure is no different from Achilles', who cannot abuse Hector's corpse. He threatens to give Hector to the dogs, but Aphrodite protects him, anointed with ambrosial oil, and Apollo covers him with a cloud, lest the sun dry him. 11 No matter how much Achilles tries to humiliate Hector, he only succeeds in humiliating himself. He is as ineffectual as the dead Patroclus, and as paralyzed now in his action as he was before when he refused to fight. He had thought that it was his psyche that he risked whenever he went into battle-aiei emen psychen paraballomenos polemizein ("always risking my psyche in fighting"),12 but now he knows his psyche would have survived his death, while his phrenes have disappeared in his ineffectiveness. 13 Achilles tries to burn Patroclus, but the pyre will not light; and though he prays to Boreas and Zephyrus and promises them sacrifices, they do not hear him. Iris must go in person to the winds, begging them to heed Achilles' summons, and only then do they came and fan to a blaze the pyre .14 What should happen as a matter of course must now happen by the gods. Achilles cannot even start a fire without divine intervention. He has become so isolated from the ordinary world that only the gods can keep him going. The Trojans have no trouble in burning Hector; but Patroclus' s death, having broken Achilles' last tie with man, brings about his break with the world. He is a breach in the world. He belongs now completely to another region, where every action must be managed by the gods. If the winds had answered his appeal by themselves, if Iris did not have to plead for him, the scene would have shown Achilles' hold over them. But they do not respond; they are indifferent, as Iris is not, to his grief. The isolation of Achilles is in this chain of command: he cannot start a fire directly, nor can he enlist the winds in his cause: Iris must intervene. Even as the gods gave him ambrosia and nectar, so that he could demonstrate his virtue, so now the winds must sustain his simplest desire. They are like the knocking at the gate in Macbeth: they serve to recall the humdrum world, from which we, in our sympathy with Achilles, have been slowly removed. The winds seem rather comical, as they sit at their feast: but it is we, who have fasted with Achilles and seen the world through his eyes, that have become tragic. We have come to expect failure: that the corpse of Hector should not decompose, and that fire should not burn. Cause and effect, will and act, have been split apart, and only the gods hold them together. When the pyre has been quenched and the bones of Patroclus collected, Achilles sets up a series of games in honour of Patroclus; but Achilles himself does not participate. He stands apart and distributes prizes. He says his horses are the best, but he cannot prove it. 15 He says he would take the first prize, if he competed; but he cannot put his boast to the test. He is the swiftest of heroes, but he could not overtake Hector, nor can he now excel Odysseus and Oilean Ajax. His virtues are as idle now 108 as they were at the beginning. They hold a promise th< is never fulfilled. He obtains the epithet "swift-footed' more often in this book, when he can do nothing wit it, than anywhere else. 16 Only here is he called "hero," and his patronymic, which had tended to disappear dru ing his exploits, again becomes frequent, for he regair somewhat his former honour. He sees reviewed befor him all of the virtues he himself once had, just as he sa1 in the catalogue of ships all the glory he squanderec Homer had listed him in the catalogue, even though h played there no role; and he assigns him here the tas of offering prizes to others, since he cannot win a priz for himself. He is no more a part of the games than 11 was a member of Agamemnon's host. He is as isolate at the end as he was at the start; there by the paralys of anger, here by the paralysis of guilt. Though his m thority has never been greater, all his power is gone. H has reversed roles with Agamemnon, whose power t now acknowledges and whose authority is now his owr He gives Agamemnon the first prize, without proof, i the casting of fue spear. "We know how much you exo us all and are the best in power and in spear. " 18 AchillE had insisted before that he was fue best, and thi Agamemnon had only usurped that title;" but now t piously grants Agamemnon more than we ourselvE would admit. As Agamemnon is best in the catalogue, so is he best in the games; and as it was the fiat of Homo and of Zeus that made him there outstanding, so it is tl fiat of Achilles here that lends him prestige. Not only do< Achilles abandon all his pretensions to rule, but he lear over backwards to en11ance Agamemnon. He heaps upc him all of his own ambitions and makes him as power£ and as absolute as he himself once was. And yet, in n letting Agamemnon prove himself, he hints at his re weakness and his own generosity. Among the games Achilles set up was discus-throwin and the discus itself was the prize, a mass of iron whi< he had taken from the sacred city of Eetion. 21 There wou be nothing remarkable in this, if we did not rememb the other objects that came from there: the blamele horse Pedasus, the lyre with which Achilles pleased 11 heart, Hector's wife Andromache, and the concubine Agamemnon, Cryseis. 22 The return of Cryseis provokE Agamemnon and led to his taking Briseis, who came fro Lyrnessus near Thebe (the city of Eetion); 23 Andromach the wife of his enemy, stood for Patroclus in the sto of Phoenix; the lyre showed up Achilles' inaction and tl wasting of his virtue; 24 the deafu of Pedasus, as that Patroclus, was the death of the mortal Achilles; 25 and tl mass of iron, which he may not toss, stresses aga Achilles' idleness. Thus the city of Eetion is Achilles' ci of failure. On that expedition which showed Achilles his best, he captured the implements that now reveal t defects. He must even in war, while he proves hims• virtuous, collect the symbols of his future doom. He never apart from his destiny: the seeds of his wrath, l isolation, and his guilt were contained in the eviden of his prowess. His casual acquisitions, which were t SUMMER 1' �spoils of war, instigate his wrath (Chryseis and Briseis), recall his unpractised virtue (the lyre and the discus), and destroy his humanity (Pedasus and Andromache). What should have confirmed his excellence signify instead his tragedy. Chapter X Achilles and Priam Achilles cannot sleep after the funeral games, where he has seen every kind of excellence that was once his own boast, and he remembers Patroclus, "for whose manhood and strength he longs. " 1 The loss he sustained in the death of Patroclus is made more poignant by the "manhood and strength" that the other Achaeans have just displayed; who mock Achilles' present ineffectiveness, since he has only the memory of his past actions to measure against them. Unlike Odysseus who gladly forgets his toil as he sails homeward, Achilles must now regret that all his bravery is over. 2 His self-inflicted grief does not allow him respite: he must always go over again the irrevocable past. As the recalling of what he was is its empty iteration, so his dragging of Hector's corpse is vainly repeated, for he can no more restore Patroclus by his memory, than he can disgrace Hector by dragging.' Apollo protects Hector even as Aphrodite had before, and since they keep him beautiful, they deprive Achilles of everything but the semblance of action. All the gods who favour the Trojans pity Hector, and urge Hermes to steal his corpse; but Hera, Athena, and Poseidon object because of their old hatred of Troy.' No longer are Achilles and Hector central, but the war has become once again a mere feud among the gods. The wrath of Achilles was an interlude in the Trojan war: it suspended its first cause-Paris and Helen-and allowed the heroes a greater scope to their ambitions; but now that Achilles has almost worked out his tragedy, the war returns to its origins. He has become as superfluous as Helen once was. Yet Homer makes this heavenly dispute his own final indictment of Achilles. Were Hermes to steal Hector's corpse, Achilles would never become human. He would be left to rot in his savage isolation, without ever understanding his dependence on the gods and other men. He would have been like Sophocles' Ajax, had not Athena intervened and saved him from himself; for it is she who in diverting his fury away from the Atreidae, makes him realize the enormity of his crime. If Ajax had killed them, he would never have killed himself, and thus asserted his claim to greatness. He would have rejoiced in the slaughter, as we see him doing, and he would have been killed by the Achaeans, without reacquiring the honour he deserves. Suicide is the one reflective action of Ajax which shows us his virtue stripped of rewards. So Achilles, were Hector to disappear like Paris, would never be forced to give him back to Priam, by THE ST. JOHN'S REVIEW which show of maganimity he is admitted into the family of men. To feel shame once again, to pity someone weaker than himself, redeems Achilles, so that he can eat, sleep, and even lie down beside Briseis. 5 Although Ajax obtained a posthumous triumph by his own hand, and Achilles is truly noble as he confronts Priam, yet we must never forget that Athena alone made Ajax' suicide possible, and that Zeus alone brought about Achilles' vindication. That they both follow the prompting of the gods, when they could have resisted, is at once a proof of their greatness and of their insufficiency. The gods make the heroic world inhabitable. Had they not stopped Achilles, he would have continued his senseless dragging of Hector. He would never have escaped from his monstrous impotence. Had Hera prevailed, and her distinction between Hector and Achilles been accepted (that a mortal is less than the offspring of a god), 6 Achilles would never have realized his own humanity. Achilles is as mortal as Hector, and his divine parentage allows him no more irresponsibility toward men than a mortal parentage allows Hector to betray Troy. If Hector's excess of shame, in putting his own renown before Troy's safety, destroyed him, so Achilles is no different by his lack of shame, which also destroys him. Achilles' honour might be more than Hector's/ but his fate is the same. If Hector only seemed to be the son of a god,' while Achilles is half-divine, yet they both share a common death. If two men equally desire immortality, but one has the edge in the means to obtain it, he still is no different from the other. As long as the gap between the gods and men remains open (and if they are to be distinguished, it must be so), no matter how similar to them a man may seem, the distinction is fatal. Hector's funeral can end the Iliad, and the scene be a purely Trojan affair, since the difference between a divine and a mortal lineage, like that between Achaean and Trojan, has at last disappeared. In losing his divine status and in gaining a civil shame, Achilles becomes the image of Hector, whose funeral can represent his own. · Priam decides to reclaim his son, after Iris has urged him in the name of Zeus, and his friends escort him as far as the plain, "with great lamentations, as if he were going to his death. " 9 Zeus then sends Hermes to conduct him to Achilles' ships, so that no one might see him, "before he comes to Peleion." If we remember that Hermes is the conductor of the dead,'0 it is not strange that he should be Priam's guide. Achilles died when he heard of Patroclus' death, and was miraculously revived in order to have his revenge; 11 but now that he has finished his work, he belongs once again to Hades 12 With the coming of night, Hermes leads Priam to Hades, where a ghostly Achilles was as unable to harm Hector as Sisyphus to roll his stone up the hill. His paralysis is the price of his guilt, which he cannot expiate no matter how long he may weep. His every action is timeless, for it has no end. What he says of grief, that there is no effect nor action in it, 13 is equally true of his guilt, which holds him in Hades, where causes have no consequence and desires 109 �lack fulfillment. "For how long do you devour your heart," Thetis asked her son, who, in abandoning his wish to devour J7Iector, has turned upon himself. 14 He becomes his sole object. He no longer has anything beyond himself, on which he can vent his fury, but must always be reminded, and yet remain always unsated, by the past-the bones of Patroclus and the body of Hector. His grief alternates with his guilt, abusing Hector or devouring himself. He can never escape from his own hell. In order to stress the unreality that surrounds Achilles, Homer makes as real as possible the scenes at Troy. He reports all the speeches at Troy-what Iris said to Priam, what Priam to Hecuba and Hecuba to him-while he makes Achilles in two lines agree to return Hector's corpse; and though "mother and son in the throng of ships spoke many winged words to one another," we do not know what they said. 15 This silence conveys more effectively than his words could have done the isolation of Achilles. It allows us to imagine the magnitude of his grief and prevents us from underestimating it. Its vagueness makes it more precise. At Troy, however, Homer minutely describes how they harnessed a wagon to bring Hector back; and if, for all its exactness, it has never yet been fully explained,'' at least it stamps Priam's setting forth as vivid and real, so that the tent of Achilles, which has as many rooms as a palace, may seem the more insubstantial. Its huge doors, which require three men to open and three to close, do not belong to the same world as that of this wagon; 17 for it reflects the loneliness of Achilles' guilt and the vastness of his grief, and has nothing to do with the everyday world, but corresponds to the fantasy he himself has made. As soon as Priam entered Achilles' tent, "he grasped his knees and kissed his dread man-slaying hands, which had killed many of his sons: as when a great doom seizes a man, so that he kills another in his fatherland, and comes to a foreign land, to the home of a rich man, and wonder holds those who see him, so Achilles was astonished beholding godlike Priam. " 18 The simile seems pointless except for the wonder felt at the coming of a murderer: for Priam did not kill anyone, but Achilles, with his "man-slaying hands," did slay Priam's sons. If Achilles had come to Priam, it would have been more natural to compare him thus than to compare the innocent Priam to a murderer, and the guilty Achilles to a wealthy man. Priam seems to represent someone else, and I would suggest he is the dead Patroclus, who once came to Peleus, having killed his playmate in Opoeis 19 Priam would come then in the guise of Patroclus to Achilles, who would now be Peleus; for just as Peleus "kindly" received Patroclus, so Zeus promised that Achilles would kindly receive Priam. 20 We are transported back to Phthia, to the palace of rich Peleus, so that the courtyard, megaron, hall and antechamber are all, metaphorically, in place. If Achilles is cut off from the present, Priam must appeal to the past. He must conjure up a civil world, where Achilles would feel again the 110 sense of shame: so his first words are, "Remember yo1 father." 22 If Achilles remembers his father, he will a knowledge the mortal half of himself; he will rememb Peleus' reception of Patroclus and will thus pity Priar "Achilles wept for his father and in turn for Patroclus.'· By this shift in identities, Achilles becomes civil. r weeps for Peleus, for that is himself; he weeps f, Patroclus, for that is Priam. Achilles confronts Patroclu no longer as a ghost but as the father of his enemy, wl asks him for the corpse of him who killed him. B Achilles killed Patroclus as much as Hector did: thus P: am as Patroclus asks for Achilles. The corpse of Heel' is mortal Achilles, and it is he as well as Hector who buried at Troy. 24 Quis utrumque recte norit, ambos nove: ("Whoever knows either rightly knows both"). Epilogue Homer began his Iliad by asking the Muse to sing tl wrath of Achilles; he asked her to describe not Achill< but Achilles' wrath, which began at a certain moment ar brought about a certain end. We hardly see Achilles apa from his wrath, and though he may exist apart, he wou not then be a subject for poetry. Achilles is as uninh ligible without his wrath as he is inconceivable away fro Troy. Achilles is his wrath, and his wrath is his fate. is his greatness. The moment of the Iliad is all of Achille This single blaze is he. He has no history. Were we see him sacking the city of Eetion, we might mistake hi for someone else. As a mixture of all the heroes-the prio of Agamemnon and the ancestral virtue of Diomedes, tl loyalty of Patroclus and the shame of Menelaus, the pm er of Ajax and the swiftness of his namesake, the beau of Paris and the greatness of Hector-Achilles does n assert his independence until he retires from the war. N until he is alone, does he show himself unique. He on becomes visible when he is about to die. Nothing mw can be said about him, that does not concern his deal The last days of Achilles tell us what he always was, f. only in departing from heroic virtue, and in assuming ' unheroic posture, does he reveal himself. When we turn to the Odyssey, we find Homer indiff• ent to what stories the Muse might sing: "At any poir goddess, daughter of Zeus, begin to tell even us.'' 1 If tl Muse had begun differently, and described Odysseu other adventures, we would have seen the same rna There is no single adventure that makes Odysse1 unique. Whether he slays the suitors or blinds Polyph mus, Odysseus cannot be taken for someone else. If I had never gone to Hades, he would still be a subject f poetry. Homer must select from Odysseus' travels tho that would form a poetic unity; but that unity lies m side himself and is more imposed upon him than diet< ed by him. Teiresias tells him how he will die/ but th death does not tell us more what kind of a man he is th< the episodes Homer chose. His fate is not all of himso as it is for Achilles; it would not reveal anything mm SUMMER 11 �He is polutropos, "of many turns." The Achilles of Homer and Achilles himself coincide. There is no non-Homeric Achilles; but there would be an Odysseus without Homer. Odysseus partly tells his own story, and for a single night among the Phaeacians he usurps Homer's role. He is both different from and the same as Homer: but Achilles, as it were, employs Homer and lets him be his chronicler. He is the doer, Homer the talker, and had Homer sung of another man, Achilles would not have survived at all. Except for one fatal instance, Achilles does not bother about his fame. 3 Odysseus, however, sings his own praise and does not need Homer's muse. He is more independent than Achilles: he stands apart from his poem. He is not completely contrived. It is the nature of the tragic hero to be inseparable from his poet, while the comic hero exists even away from his fictitious self. What would Ajax be without Sophocles? a bad loser. Would Socrates be different in life? Achilles is poetic: he cannot be translated into the common world. He can only breathe in the world that Homer made for him: in the Odyssey he is a ghost in Hades. The tragic hero has character, the comic hero personality. The one is stamped with certain attributes and cast into a single mold; the other wears as many masks as he needs. The comic hero can lie; the tragic hero must tell what he thinks is the truth. 4 He does not shift from one scene to the next, but he always carries with him all of himself. He cannot suppress nor conceal. He can never be a hypocrite. He is sublimely unaware of chance: he would not stoop to craft. Although Achilles is a work of art, he would not use art himself. He could no more tell : Polyphemus that his name is "No-one" than restrain himself from killing him. The tragic hero is forever ; trapped in the Cyclops' cave. To deceive another is to deceive himself; he would never sidestep an approaching doom. He himself weaves the net that ensnares him, for · he feels that only necessity can prove his greatness. His imprudence is his foresight. It springs the trap of his fate, and in his fate he lives. He fosters and feeds the extreme situation, so that, with the odds all against him, he can make his killing. The comic hero, however, is a catalyst: there are no "solutions" that can precipitate his compound self: he is personally inert though he may disturb everyone else; but the tragic hero enters into an "irreversible reaction," and 1/there's an end." After a certain point he cannot retreat but must always advance to his end. There are no rehearsals for the great event. He can never repeat his past. Achilles made his way into his death, Odysseus talked his way out of his. Odysseus finds dangers, Achilles invents them. Poseidon prevented Odysseus' return home, and Odysseus, no matter how much he might have profited from his travels, did not welcome them. Achilles becomes angry at Agamemnon: no prophecy foretold it. He worked out for himself how he was going to die. Odysseus' death is divorced from him. Achilles made his fate his own affair; he set the stage for the end. He is, in sense, the real poet of the THE ST. JOHN'S REVIEW Iliad, and Homer nothing but his scribe. The tragic hero is rebellious, the comic hero revolutionary. Whatever laws the one may break seem to himself undeliberated acts; while to the other every violation is a matter of policy. One follows a destiny, the other a program. Achilles and Coriolanus invite disaster; they do not play it. Odysseus and Prospera calculate each move: they leave nothing to chance. To be rebellious is to pit nobility against necessity; to be revolutionary is to match wits with chance. There is no victory in rebellion: there is only the deed itself. The tragic hero "kicks against the pricks," though he knows what Hector means, xunos Enualios, kai te ktaneonta katekta Alike to all is the God of War, and he slays utterly even him who would slay. Note There are at least two related errors in this study. Under the impression that Homer had to be proved a poet through the smallest element, I attempted to vindicate the epithets rather than to look at the larger units of action, which, however traditional their parts may be, could not be subject to tradition in the same way. In my "The Aristeia of Diomedes and the Plot of the Iliad" I tried to make up for this defect. And again under the influence of modern poetry, I believed that the discernment of a symbolic pattern was enough to show the poet's hand, even though the pattern could not be grounded in any plausible sequence of actions. So I thought it was not necessary to link Achilles' rebellion in Book I with the combat between Paris and Menelaus in Book Ill. That combat merely signified the state of affairs at Troy prior to the shift to the love of fame away from the original cause of the war, the love of Helen. I did not observe that Menelaus' acceptance of Paris' challenge meant that Menelaus no longer claimed Helen by law but saw the necessity to prove his claim. Though Achilles failed to replace Agamemnon, he forced everyone to acknowledge the right of natural right. By reading Homer too poetically I did not read him poetically enough. PART II: PLOT Introduction 1. W. DenBoer, Laconian Studies, Preface. 2. 0., e.g., Cimon II. 3.Coriolanus 1. 1. 163-165 (following the lineation of the Cambridge Works of Shakespeare, John Dover Wilson, ed.). 4. Ibid. 1. 9. 62-66. 5. Ibid. 1. 4. 53-55. 6. Ibid. 2. 2. 105-108; cf. 5. 4. 18-22. 7. /bid. 2. 2. 108-127. 8. Ibid. 1. 3. 61-66, cf. 67. 9. Ibid. 2. 1. 216-218, cf. 262-263. 10. Ibid. 3. 1. 80-82, cf. 254-259. 11. Ibid. 3. 1. 178, 219-221, 293-295, 304-306, cf. 234-235, 308-309. 12. Ibid. 1. 4. 30-34. 111 �13. Ibid. 3. 1. 254-259; 3. 2. 14-16, 39-41, 46-64, 99-123; cf. 4. 5. 139; 5. 3. 40-42. 14. Ibid. 4. 1. 15; cf. 4. 6. 42-46; ll. 1. 240-244; 9. 351-355. 15. Ibid 1. 1. 229-231; cf. 1. 10. 4-16. 16. a. ibid. 2. 2. 15-23; 4. 4. 12-26. 17. Ibid. 4. 5. 104-121, cf. 197-198. 18. Ibid. 4. 6. 91-96; cf. 5. 4. 11-14; King Lear 4. 1. 36-37. 19. Ibid. 5. 4. 23-24. 20. Ibid. 5. 1. 10-15. 21. Ibid. 4. 5. 76. 22. Ibid. 5. 3. 34-37, cf. 149-153. 23. Ibid. 5. 6. 85-101. 24. Cf. ibid. 2. 3. 116-120. 25. Ibid. 4. 1. 30; cf. 4. 7. 23; 5. 4. 12-14. Chapter 1: The Gods 1.Iliad 17. 629-632; cf. 13. 222-227; 20. 242-243, 434-437; Odyssey 18. 132-135. 2. Cf. lliad 16. 119-122. 3. Cf. Iliad 15. 139-141; 16. 446-447. 4. Iliad 23. 288-289; 2. 763-767. 5. Ibid. 23. 290-304. 6. Ibid. 23. 304, 310, 530. 7. Cf. the foot race, Iliad 23. 754-792. 8. lliad 23. 536-538, 556. 9. Ibid. 23. 382-383. 10. Ibid. 23. 526-520. 11. Ibid. 23. 530-531. 12. Ibid. 23. 383-400. 13. Ibid. 23. 515. 14. a. iliad 23. 344-348. 15. lliad 23. 352-357. 16. Ibid. 5. 9-24. 17. a. lliad 20. 297-299. 18. lliad 5. 29-35. 19. Ibid. 5. 35-83. 20. Ibid. 5. 541-560. 21. Ibid. 16. 406-410; cf. Odyssey 12. 251-255. 22. Ibid. 16. 20, 584, 693, 744, 754, 787, 812, 843. 23. Ibid. 16. 419-491. 24. Ibid. 907-909; 6.1; cf. 11. 401. 25. Ibid. 6. 11-19. 26. Ibid. 6. 37-65; cf. 2. 831-834. 27. Ibid. 11. 122-142; 21. 99-106; cf. 21. 95 with 23. 746-747. 28. Ibid. 20. 463-469; 23. 175-176. 29. Ibid. 6. 108-109. 30. Cf. lliad 6. 108, 123, 128-129, 131, 142, 527. 31. Iliad 6. 119-129; Odyssey 6. 149-153. 32. Cf. Ilir:.d 9. 134 with 276; 21. 150; consider Odysset; 7. 208-212. 33. But cf. Basset, CP xviii, pp. 178-179. 34. Cf. Iliad 5. 128-132, 827-828. 35. Iliad 6. 146. 36. Cf. 21. 462-466, where Apollo speaks. 37. Iliad 6. 152-211. 38. Cf. Aeneas' speech to Achilles, Iliad 20. 200-241, where he recites his lineage; note the frequency of anthropoi and of superlatives (204, 217, 220, 233) the gods are absent (144-152). 39. lliad 5. 244-256. 40. Cf. Iliad 6. 229 with 230, 235. 41. Iliad 6. 280-285. 42. Ibid. 3. 40, cf. 56-57. 43. Ibid. 6. 282-283. 44. Ibid. 3. 439-440; cf. 4. 7-12. 45. Ibid. 6. 339. 46. Ibid. 6. 311-312. 47. Ibid. 3. 173-174; cf. 24. 763-764. 48. Ibid. 6. 345-349; cf. 3. 180 with 6. 344. 49. Ibid. 6. 447-449. 50. Ibid. 4. 163-168; cf. 127-129. 51. Note the frequency of daimonie: ibid. 6. 326, 407, 486, 521, cf. 318; 7. 75. 52. Odyssey 1. 32-34. 112 Chapter II: The Plot of the Iliad 1. lliad 7. 1-42. 2. Ibid. 7. 43-61. 3. Ibid. 7. 87-91. 4. Cf. Iliad 6. 444-449. 5. Iliad 7. 104-107. 6. Ibid. 7. 69-72, cf. 351-353. 7. Ibid. 7. 400-402. 8. Cf. lliad 11. 122-142. 9. Iliad 6. 357-358. 10. Ibid 3. 125-128. 11. Cf. lliad 6. 323-324. 12. lliad 7. 100. 13. Plato Cratylus 398c 7-dS. 14. Cf. Plato Symposium 206cl-209e4. 15. lliad 7. 39, 226; cf. 6. 1; 11. 401. 16. Odyssey 4. 12-14. 17. lliad 3. 369-382. 18. Ibid. 3. 439-440. 19. Ibid. 3. 126-128. 7. 104-107. 20. Shakespeare Troilus and Cressida 2. 2. 195-202. 21. Cf. lliad 5. 330-333, 348-351, 427-430. 22. Iliad 7, 337-343; at 342 the volgate hippon would be merely a rr take arising from laon; cf. 18. 153, where cod. A has laoi superscriptu 23. Ibid. 7. 446-453. 24. Ibid. 12. 10-33. 25. Ibid. 4. 31-33; 24. 27-30. 26. Ibid. 8. 7-22. 27. Ibid. B. 191-197. 28. Ibid. 8. 287-291, cf. 285 with 9. 133. 29. Ibid. 8. 473-477. Chapter III: The Embassy 1. Iliad 9. 18-25 ~ 2. 111-118; 9. 26-28 ~ 2. 139-141. 2. Ibid. 9. 17; 2. 110, 119-138. 3. Ibid. 9. 4-8. 4. Cf. lliad 11. 276-279. 5. Iliad 9. 37-39; cf. Part I, Chap. IV above. 6. Ibid. 9. 40-46; 1. 173-175. 7. Ibid. 9. 53-75. 8. Ibid. 9. 369-372. 9. Ibid. 9. 184-189. 10. Ibid. 1. 490-492; cf. 9. 440-443. 11. BT Scholiast 1. 490; cf. Iliad 18. 104-110. 12. Ibid. 9. 300-306. 13. Ibid. 8. 532-538. 14. Ibid. 9. 128-130. 15. Cf. lliad 2. 123-133. 16. lliad 9. 388-391. 17. Thucydides i. 11. 18. lliad 9. 348-355. 19. Cf. Iliad 7. 113-114; 20. 434-437. 20. Iliad 1. 157-160. 21. Ibid. 1. 298-299. 22. Ibid. 9. 337-343. 23. Ibid. 9. 410-416. 24. Ibid. 1. 352. 25. Cf. Odyssey 11. 489-493. 26. Iliad 11. 762-763. 27. Troilus and Cressida 3. 3. 115-123. 28. lliad 9. 601-605, cf. 249-250. 29. Ibid. 9. 608. 30. Ibid. 9. 252-259; 438-443. 31. Cf. Iliad 9. 197-198. 32. Iliad 7. 52-53; cf. 20. 337-349. 33. Ibid. 13. 666-670. 34. Ibid. 2. 830-834. 35. Ibid. 18. 113; 19. 66. 36. Ibid. 18. 121. 37. Ibid. 9. 601-605. 38. I do not enter into the "discrepancies" in Phoenix' speech: t SUMMER 1 �are less important, even if they do exist, than its purpose. 39. Iliad 9. 444-457. 40. Ibid. 9. 336-337. 41. Ibid. 9. 458-461 are found in his de aud. poet. 8 (459-460 also in Coriolanus xxxii, and 461 in de adul. et amic. 72b), where he says Aristarchus excised them out of fear: scholars are divided as to whether they are genuine or not; cf. G. M. Bolling, The External Evidence for Interpolation in Homer, pp. 121-122 (with bibliography); G. Pasquali, Storia della Tradizione, pp. 231-232; Bolling in The Athetized Lines of the Iliad, pp. 26-27, tried to refute Pasquali (unsuccessfully I believe). 42. Iliad 9. 462-480. 43. Cf. BT Scholiast I. 527; W. Schadewaldt, op. cit., pp. 139-143. 44. Iliad 9. 528-600. 45. Cf. lliad 9. 351-355, 551-552. 46. E. Howald, cited by Schadewaldt, op. cit., p. 140. 47. Cf. Iliad 6. 407-439. 48. Iliad 9. 158-159; cf. 1. 177 = 5. 891; consider 9. 312-313. 49. Ibid. 9. 302-303. 50. Ibid. 9. 497-501. 51. Cf. Part I, Chap. IX above. 52. Iliad 9. 255, 496, 629, 675; Odyssey 9. 278; cf. Eustathius on Odyssey 1. 69; 9. 183; 16. 31. 53. Iliad 24. 453-456; Odyssey 9. 240-243. 54. Odyssey 9. 302-305; cf. Iliad 9. 458-459. 55. Iliad 22. 346-347; cf. 24. 409; Odyssey 9. 291. 56./liad 9. 497, 632; 16.33, 204; Odyssey 9. 272, 287, 368; cf. Part I, Chap. VTII above. 57. Iliad 9. 629; 21. 314; 22. 313; Odyssey 2. 19; 9. 215, 494; cf. Odyssey 9. 118-119; Iliad 6. 97-101; 24. 41; agrios is also used of battle, fire, and Athena's wrath (Iliad 17. 398, 737; 4. 23). 58. Odyssey 9. 106, 112-115, 215, 269, 274-278. 59. Iliad 9. 97-99. 60. Iliad 9. 510; Odyssey 9. 275. Chapter IV: The Deception of Zeus 1. Iliad 14. 153-186. 2. Ibid. 14. 198-199. 3. Ibid. 14. 200-210. 4. Ibid. 14. 216-217. 5. Ibid. 14. 233. 6. Ibid. 14. 238-241. 7. Ibid. 14. 242-262. 8. Ibid. 14. 264-268; d. BT Scholiast 270. 9. Ibid. 14. 271-276; cf. 15. 36-48; Aristotle Met. 983b 30-33. 10. lliad 13. 1-6. 11. Ibid. 14. 280-328; cf. 3. 442-446. 12. Ibid. 14. 329-340, cf. BT Scholiast 338. 13. Iliad 14. 347-348. 14. Some may object to my applying the terms "nature" and "art" to Homer, as if he thought so abstractly; but if it be kept in mind that I understand by nature that which always acts in the same way and is indifferent to us, even though the gods may try to coerce it, the distinction is clear: the heroes appeal to the latter but not to the former, who are gods that cannot be apostrophized (thus the winds do not hear Achilles, Iliad 23. 194-195); and from the gods' point of view, Sleep and Night are at the service of all, since by themselves, having no human offspring, they do not take sides. 15. Iliad 14. 354-360. 16. Cf. Iliad 14. 14-15 with 15. 7-8. 17. Iliad 15. 113-142. 18. Ibid. 16. 431-461. Chapter V: Patroclus 1. Iliad 11. 611-615. 2. Ibid. 16. 31-32. 3. Ibid. 11. 763. 4. Ibid. 16. 100; but cf. 17. 404-407; 20. 26-27. 5. Ibid. 9. 650-655, 682-683. 6.lbid. 16. 61-63; cf. P. von der Muehl, Kritisches Hypomnema zur Ilias, pp. 241-242. 7. Iliad 16. 80-82. THE ST. JOHN'S REVIEW 8. Ibid. 9. 600-605. 9. Ibid. 16. 60-61; cf. 4. 31-33. 10. Ibid. 16. 87-90; cf. 22. 205-207. 11. Ibid. 16. 130-144. 12. Ibid. 16. 145-154. 13. Cf. Iliad 21. 100-105. 14. Iliad 17. 10, 379; 23. 137. 15. Ibid. 16. 692-693 (cf. 5. 703-704; 11. 299-300), cf. 20, 584, 744, 754, 787, 812, 843. 16. Ibid. 4. 127, 146; 7. 104; 13. 603; 17. 679, 702; 23. 600. 17. Ibid. 16. 433-438; 22. 168-176; cf. 20. 277-299. Chapter VI: Achilles and Patroclus 1. Iliad 17. 4-6; cf. BT Scholiast 16. 7-11; 17. 133-137. 2. Iliad 19. 324-325; cf. 9. 337-339. 3. Cf. Part II, Chap. II above. 4. Iliad 16. 241-252. 5. Ibid 17. 404-411. The iterative 'anayyEA.AeaKs (409) determines the sense of l>fll"Ocs ys (410), which bears its normal meaning: a return to the immediate present after a stated time in the past (Ameis-Hentze); and it does not mean, as it is usually taken, that Thetis never told him, which contradicts 18. 9-11; in Odyssey 22. 185-186 tpotpf:saKs serves the same purpose (d. lliad 20. 408-411). Cf. how the interatives in Iliad 1. 490-492 explain 'eK l"OlO in 493. 6. Iliad 18. 9-11. 7. Ibid. 18. 13-14. B. Ibid. 16. 87-94. 9. Ibid. 16. 242-244. 10. Ibid. 18. 82. 11. Ibid. 18. 22-34. 12. Ibid. 18. 54. 13. Cf. J. Kakridis, Homeric Researches, pp. 65-75. 14. Iliad 16. 776. 15. Odyssey 24. 39-48. 16. Iliad 23. 136-137; 24. 712, 724. 17. Ibid. 18. 81-82, cf. 114; 23. 94. 18. Kephale ("head") sometimes means psyche ("soul," "life"), and I suspect it means so here (Iliad 4. 162; 17; 242; cf. Odyssey 2. 237 with 3. 74 and the v. i. Iliad 1. 3.). 19. Iliad 19. 38-39, 352-354; 23. 185-187. 20. Odyssey 5. 196-199. 21. Iliad 18. 39-49. 22. Ibid. 18. 607-608. 23. Ibid. 20. 4-9. 24. Ibid. 21. 194; cf. Part I, Chap. IX, X; Part II, Ch. IV above. 25. Iliad 18. 516-519, 535-540. 26. Odyssey 10. 508-515; 11. 12-22. 27. Iliad 18. 128-129; cf. 9. 601-602. 28. Ibid 9. 312-314. 29. Ibid. 18. 119-120. 30. Ibid. 1. 505, cf. 417-418. 31. Ibid. 19. 86-136. 32. Ibid. 19. 59-62. 33. Ibid. 18. 107-108. 34. Ibid. 19. 147-148. 35. Ibid. 9. 225-230. 36. Ibid. 19. 225-229. 37. Cf. Part I, Chap. VIII above. Chapter VII: The Exploits of Achilles 1. Iliad 20. 1-2, 11. 15-16; 20. 3 ~ 11. 56. 2. Ibid. 20. 45-46, cf. 26-28. 3. Cf. lliad 20. 447. 4. Iliad 20. 85. 5. Ibid. 20. 88-89, cf. 80. 6. Cf. Iliad 22. 188-193. 7. Iliad 20. 160. 8. Ibid. 20. 164, 174. 9. Ibid. 20. 177. 10. Ibid. 20. 175. 11. Ibid. 20. 200, 206-209, cf. 105-106; 6. 99-100; and Odyssey 1. 215-216, 113 �where Telemachus doubts his parentage. 12. Cf. Part II, Chap. I above. 13. Iliad 20. 261-263, 273. 14. Ibid. 20. 283-291, 320; cf. 302-304. 15. Ibid. 20. 321-322, 341-342. 16. Ibid. 20. 343, 351-352. 17. Ibid. 16. 65, 90, 835; 17. 194, 224; 19. 269; 21. 86; 23. 5, 129. 18. a. Part 1; Chap. II above. 19. Iliad 20. 366. 20. Ibid. 20. 367-370; cf. 22. 250-258. 21. Ibid. 376-378. 22. Ibid. 20. 386-388. 23. Ibid. 20. 407-413. 24. Ibid. 20. 455-489. 25. Ibid. 20. 467; cf. 2. 241; 13. 343-344; 14. 139-140. 26. Ibid. 20. 490-494. 27. Ibid. 20. 502-503. 28. Ibid. 21. 17-18. 29. Ibid. 21. 39. 30. Ibid. 21. 49, 67. 31. Ibid. 21. 98 (cf. 11. 136-137), 116, 120. 32. Ibid. 21. 136-138. 33. Ibid. 21. 139-199. 34. Ibid. 21. 153. 35. Ibid. 21. 173-179. 36. Ibid. 21. 208-213. 37. Ibid. 21. 222-227. 38. Ibid. 21. 233. 39. Ibid. 21. 251, 265. 40. Ibid. 21. 272, 288. 41. Ibid. 21. 527; 3. 229. 42. Ibid. 21. 536. 43. Ibid. 24. 39. 44. Ibid. 11. 62; 15. 605, 630. 45. Ibid. 24. 487. M~m~nm22M~M~D~mm~~ 47. Ibid. 21. 544-550. 48. Ibid. 9. 328. 49. Ibid. 21. 522-525, cf. 18. 207-214. 50. Menis ("wrath") is used only of Achilles (Iliad 1.1; 9. 517; 19. 35, 75) or the gods (1.75; 5. 34, 178, 444; 13. 624; 15. 122; 16. 711; 21. 523). 51. Iliad 20. %, 164-175, 447, 490-494; 21. 12-14, 18, 22-24, 227, 252-254, 315. 52. Ibid. 24. 108. 53. Ibid. 22. 410-411, cf., 287-284 54. The frequency of his patronymic is: 20 in Book 20, 12 in Book 21, 11 in Book 22, 17 in Book 23, 5 in Book 24. Chapter VIII: Achilles and Hector 1. Iliad 22. 105-107. 2. Ibid. 17. 91-105. 3. Cf. Iliad 11. 404--410; Schadewaldt op. cit., pp. 61-62. 4. Iliad 6. 441-446. 5. Ibid. 22. 108-110, cf. 514. 6. Ibid. 6. 450-465. 7. Ibid. 6. 429-430. 8. Ibid. 16. 7-11; 23. 222-225; 24. 46-48; cf. 9. 632-633. 9. Ibid. 22. 123-125. 10. Ibid. 22. 126-128. 11. Cf. Odyssey 19. 162-163; A. B. Cooke, CR, xv, 1901, p. 326; U. Wilamowitz, op. cit., pp. 97-98; P. von der Muehl, op. cit., p. 234, who translates Hesiod Theogony 35 as "alte Geschichten." 12. Iliad 22. 129-130. 13. Ibid. 22. 116. 14. Ibid. 19. 324-325. 15. Ibid. 7. 400-402. 16. Ibid. 22. 199-201. 17. Ibid. 22. 262-265. 18. Cf. Iliad 12. 167-172; 17. 20-23. 19. Iliad 22. 346-347; cf. 21. 22-24; 24. 41-44. 20. Ibid. 17. 183-197. 114 21. Ibid. 11. 22. Ibid. 16. 23. Cf. Iliad Peleides''). 24. Iliad 22. 25. Cf. Iliad 798-801 ~ 16. 40-43. 278-282. 17. 214 v. i. J.lT!Yct9UJ.l(!) 7t~A.c1rovt ("[like] to high-spiri 322-325; cf. 8. 324-326. 20. 102; d. Eustathius ad loc., 510-511; 13. 321-323. Chapter IX: The Funeral Games 1. Iliad 22. 393-394; cf. 16. 243-244. 2. Cf. 22. 216-223. 3. Iliad 22. 205-207; cf. 16. 87-90. 4. Ibid. 22. 379-384. 5. Ibid. 22. 385-388; cf. 9. 608-610. 6. Ibid. 22. 395-404. 7. Ibid. 23. 59-70. 8. Ibid. 23. 103-104. 9. Cf. Odyssey 10. 493; 11. 475-476. 10. Iliad 23. 66-67; cf. 2. 57-58. 11. Ibid. 23. 184-191. 12. Ibid. 9. 322. 13. Cf. Iliad 14. 139-142. 14. Iliad 23. 192-216. 15. Ibid. 23. 274-284. 16. The frequency of "swift-footed" is: 6 in Book 20, 5 in Book 21 in Book 22, 14 in Book 23, 4 in Book 24. 17. Iliad 23. 824, 896. 18. Ibid. 23. 890-891. 19. Cf. Part I, Chap. III, IV, above. 20. Iliad 2. 482-483, 579-580. 21. Ibid. 23. 826-828. 22. Ibid. 1. 366-369; 6. 395-397; 9. 188; 16. 153. . 23. Ibid. 2. 689-691. . 24. Cf. Part II, Chap. III above. 25. Cf. Part II, Chap. V above. Chapter X: Achilles and Priam 1. Iliad 24. 6. 2. Iliad 8-9; Odyssey 13. 91-92; Cf. Iliad 19. 319-321; 23. 56; Ody 7. 215-221. 3. Iliad 24. 9-21. 4. Ibid. 24. 22-30. 5. Ibid. 24. 675-676. 6. Ibid. 24. 56-63. 7. Ibid. 24. 66. 8. Ibid. 24. 258-259. 9. Ibid. 24. 322-328. 10. Odyssey 24. 1-4. 11. Cf. Part II, Chap. VI above. 12. That the suffix -de (denoting motion toward, d. English "-ware is only used here of a person-Pelefonade, "the-son-of-Peleus-war· (Iliad 24, 338: it is unique until Ap. Rhod. iii. 647).-recalling at o thanatonde, ''deathwards'' above and the common Afdosde ''towards house] of Hades" (24. 328; cf. 9. 158, 312-313), also S;!J-ggests this. Horace C i. x. 13-20. Note too the unique locative Aidi, "in Hadt at 23. 244 in Achilles' mouth. 13. lliad 24. 524; Odyssey 202, 568. 14. Iliad 24. 128-129; 22. 346-347. 15. Ibid. 24. 139-142. 16. Ibid. 24. 266-274; cf. Leaf II, App. M, pp. 623-629. 17. Ibid. 24. 448-456. 18. Ibid. 24. 477-483. 19. Ibid. 23. 85-90. 20. Ibid. 23. 90; 24. 158. 21. Ibid. 24. 452, 644-647, 673-674. 22. Ibid. 24. 486. 23. Ibid. 24. 511-512. 24. Cf. Iliad 20. 127-128with 24. 209-210; 16. 852-853 with 24. 131Epilogue 1. Odyssey 1. 10. 2. Ibid. 11. 134-136. 3. Cf. Part II, Chap. III above. 4. Cf. Plato Hippias Minor 364d7-365d4, 369a7-371e5. SUMMER 1 �• Paradoxes of Education In a Republic Theory and Practice: Eva Brann Jan H. Blitz Paradoxes of Education in a Republic. By Eva T.H. Brann. (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1979. 172 pp.: cloth, $12.95.) In this short yet comprehensive book, Eva Brann examines American higher education in the light of the foundations of the American political regline. Reviving the ancient notion of Education as the culmination of political craft (p. 10), she argues that" American education embodies certain root dilemmas that would become much more amenable to reflection and resolution if they were seen as originating in the very foundation of this country" (p. 1). 1 Miss Brann therefore examines the educational writings of the Founding period, particularly those of Jefferson, and sets forth "several paradoxes of education in a republic in general and of the early American Republic in particular in order to recover the roots in thought-and quite incidently, in time-of some familiar practical perplexities in American education" (p. 1). Her explicit assumption is that the beginning truly rules in America, "both insofar as its consequences inform our educational institutions and insofar as it provides an everapplicable reference" (p. 13). Miss Brann considers the paradoxes of education under three general headings. Chapter One deals with the paradox of Utility, which concerns the purposes and ends of education; Chapter Two, with the paradox of Tradition, which concerns the ways and means; and Chapter Three, with the paradox of Rationality, which concerns the content and substance. Each chapter traces the general paradox it deals with to its intellectual roots in the Enlightenment ("this Republic was founded under the THE ST. JOHN'S REVIEW aegis of the Enlightenment" [p. 27]) and then concludes with an attempted resolution of the paradox it discusses. Miss Brann's specific educational proposals are contained in these resolutions. The resolutions taken together amount to the restoration of classical education in America. Miss Brann seeks the revival of a mode of learning that was "sometimes unwittingly and sometimes explicitly repudiated" by our Founders (p. 20) and which consists primarily in the reading of the collection of texts, chiefly of poetry, science, and philosophy, that constitutes the Western tradition. She intends, however, something far more radical than what is ordinarily called classical education. She seeks a return not merely to a certain set of texts, but to the classical notion of intellect (p. 144), whose activity the ancients called contemplation or theory (p. 132) and she calls inquiry (pp. 22, 142-144), and which is aroused not by practical problems but by paradoxes or perplexities inherent in things themselves (pp. 1, 62). She seeks to replace "the mode of Rationality," which derives from the Enlightenment and is characterized by the use of reason as a tool or a method for manipulating and managing the world, with a "question-asking mode, in which instrumental reason yields to receptive intellect, theoretical construction to contemplative theory, critical delimitation to expectant openness" (p. 22). What most distinguishes her ambitious book is not simply that it advocates the restoration of classical theory in America, but that it does so on the grounds that such inquiry is the mode of learning most suitable to the American polity. Theoretical reflection, Miss Brann argues, is "that education most apt to foster what is of the essence to this best of all practicable polities" (p. 148). 115 �I The paradox of Utility consists in treating learning, "which is naturally an end in itself" (p. 20}, as a means. The idea of utility, which pervades modern life, is that of instrumentality, of means. In education it refers to learning intended for worldly use. Thus, for example, mathematics, considered by the ancients the sort of learning that should be pursued primarily for its own sake or to draw the soul to philosophy, comes to be thought of by Locke and the other writers of the Enlightenment chiefly as a training of the mind for use in the world. The mind, whose leading faculty is thought to be instrumental reason, is itself considered essentially a tool, which is employed or used on the matter it studies. Miss Brann, on the other hand, maintains that Aristotle is correct when, in "the first sentence of the founding work of first philosophy," he says, "All human beings by nature desire to know/~ or, as she retranslates more precisely and more forcefully, "All human beings hunger (oregontai) to know by their very nature" (Metaphysics, 980a22). Far from being merely instrumental, knowing fulfills an aspect, perhaps "the essential aspect," of human nature. "[U]tilitarian education is [therefore] a contradiction in terms, a perverse enterprise. Learning is naturally done for love, not for use; it is itself a mode of living, not a mere means" (p. 59). Miss Brann's resolution of this dilemma is to construe liberal education as an inquiry into ends. Liberal education, she points out, is the traditional term for non utilitarian education. While the term has several meanings, literally it means "pertaining to freedom or to the free (liberi)." It can refer to the upbringing of children who are to be free adults ("free children in particular are called liberi in Latin"}, or it can be interpretated to mean liberating people from the shackles of guardians or conventions. "But in its original use the term means, precisely, free from the bonds of utility" (p. 60). As an inquiry into ends, liberal learning is the complement rather than an alternative to useful learning. It provides the kind of learning that intelligent practice requires but instrumental knowledge inherently lacks. It is therefore also a perfect complement to the American Republic. "We live in a Republic that does not attempt to provide happiness but to facilitate its pursuit; hence, all its ways are instrumental-our public realm is primarily one of means. Therefore, the inquiry into purposes, goods, ends, ought always to have been crucial" (p. 61). In a word, "liberal education provides that inquiry into ends which is crucially necessary to a republic congenitally engaged in instrumental activity" (p. 20). Miss Brann's general resolution is very compelling. Surely, there is something perverse in treating learning merely as a means-indeed, a means to a further means such as wealth or power-and, even more so, in pursu- ing the knowledge of means while ignoring the knowledge of ends. To be a means, Miss Brann observes, 116 is precisely to be ultimately discounted in favor of an enc "When that end is improperly established-false or fm gotten-the mode of usefulness acquires a pathology" (f 25). Particularly in an "open-ended" polity in which tr< clition is discredited and the individual and his choice are infinitely valued, people need to reflect thoughtful! on their ends. Yet Miss Brann's resolution is itself paradoxical. P she presents it, liberal education is at once the culmino tion of the natural desire to know and a necessary co rective of the inherent deficiencies and tendencies of tt American polity. It is both an end in itself and a form< prepractical republican training. As an end in itself, it ''naturally done for love, and not for use,'' and ''is itse a mode of living." As a form of republican training, neither is to be done for its own sake nor is itself a moe of living, but exists "to provide for the possibility an protection of the good life in the worldly sense" (p. 59 Seen in the one light, liberal education seeks knowled! in the hope of applying it to "the perplexities of living' seen in the other, it seeks a kind of learning "that is Til instrumental, except in a most oblique way" (p. 61). Aristotle appears to be Miss Brann's principal if not h sole authority in the presentation of her resolution. St not only quotes mainly from him, but seems to rest eve1 important point in her argument on a quotation from U Politics or the Metaphysics. Yet Miss Brann tacitly depar from Aristotle even while apparently deferring to hin While explicitly restoring his distinction between liber and useful learning, she attenuates his related and no le: important distinction between theoretical and practic inquiry, between philosophical and non-philosophic education. Just as she uses the term liberal education · embrace both purely theoretical and prepractical educ tion, so she argues that reflection on the practical pe plexities of life can "conduct us" to the realm of pu reflection, quoting a passage from the Metaphysics (982( contrary to the sense of the passage, to support this stri ingly non-Aristotelian conclusion (p. 62). 2 Why she do: this is not immediately clear, but comes to light, upc reflection, in Chapter Two. The reason is implicit in h attempt to resolve the paradox of Tradition. Far fro being wanton, Miss Brann's peculiar use of Aristotle Chapter One proves to point to what she evident considers the central problem of "our problema1 modernity" (p. 111). II Chapter Two deals with the paradox of Tradition. Mi Brann uses the term tradition in a special sense. "By t tradition I mean neither the old customs nor the rece routines, neither the sedimentary wisdom nor the pet fied habits of communities. I mean, to begin with, a C< lection of books," specifically, "the collection of te> generally recognized as the founding books of Weste learning" (pp. 64, 20). Most immediately, the parad: SUMMER 19 �of tradition concerns the Founders' repudiation of the bookish tradition that made them what they were. More broadly, it concerns the Enlightenment's repudiation of the tradition as the principal means of becoming educated. Ultimately, 'it concerns the self-repudiation implicit in tradition itself: "traditio literally means both transmission and betrayal" (p. 67). Miss Brann reserves the term the tradition for the founding books of Western learning because the determining fact for the Western tradition is that it is handed down in texts and acquired by study. Originating with Homer and the Bible, ours is essentially a written tradition. She thus sometimes uses the terms tradition and the tradition interchangeably. The paradox of our tradition is ultimately the paradox of tradition itself. The paradox of tradition is inherent in the nature of writing. Writing provides "an artificial memory, a way of storing the inventions of the imagination and the discoveries of the intellect externally." Without it, knowledge would soon perish and vanish into oblivion. Yet, this artificial memory also induces a deeper, though usually insensible, forgetfulness. It permits us to acquire knowledge without inquiring into its intellectual roots-to take, or take over, what is handed down (traditur) as "given." Writing's pejorative tendency is to replace wisdom with memory. Miss Brann describes the prevailing position of the Enlightenment with respect to the tradition as one of repudiation. This position, she says, has three distinctive features. First, "Modernity was to prevail." This meant not only that contemporary writers were to prevail over ancient ones, but that "a productive complex of secularism and science, of care and competence in the present world-' present' in every sense-won the day" (p. 74). Second, science, with the aid of instruments and experiments, was to yield to the cry, "things, not words." This was "a revulsion against book learning, against words both as notions and as utterances, in favor of real, literally 'thingish,' preoccupations" (p. 75). And third, books were no longer to be approached with the trusting expectation that they may reveal important truths, but with the skepticism that things may prove them wrong. In brief, "the transnti.ssion or tradition of knowledge was discredited in favor of the advancement and diffusion of knowledge-these were the new key terms" (p. 74). At the same time, however, the Founders were primarily concerned with citizen education. In the "Rockfish Gap Report," Jefferson writes that the final end of higher education is ''to form [youths] to habits of reflection and correct action, rendering them examples of virtue to others, and of happiness within themselves.'' The great difficulty, Miss Brann observes, is that the Baconian curricula implicit in the repudiation of the tradition, particularly in the preferential concern for "things, not words," while "almost elegantly appropriate" to America's materialistic concerns and to "the vigorous intellectual materialism that naturally forms part of the founding THE ST. JOHN'S REVIEW philosophy of this Republic" (p. 95), cannot by their very nature ever fulfill this end. The Republic's essential educational requirements are fundamentally at odds with its characteristic life and tastes. Miss Brann's proposed resolution of this dilemma is ''the recovery of the very tradition in which the Founders who repudiated it were so well versed" (p. 102). When discussing the Founders' classical training, she remarks that they had the tools and the taste to appropriate the classical tradition. "They were founders of a polity without 'a model on the face of the globe' (Madison, Federalist 14) who had the advantage of perfect selfawareness because they knew that which allowed them to distinguish the new from the old" (p.88). They knew in detail and from original sources, for example, what it was that made the antique participatory democracies unsuitable models for modern republics. However, when she says that within the tradition there are studies that are "fundamental and necessary to mastering life in the Republic" (p. 108), she does not mean primarily political works. She means, rather, the founding works of modern science. Notwithstanding the importance she gives to ancient political writings ("when the ancients become inaccessible, the moderns become unintelligible" [p. 88]), she argues that a theoretical study of science must constitute the core of modern citizen education. Aristotle to the contrary notwithstanding, a theoretical inquiry into science must be the core of prepractical education in a modern republic. The reason for this uniquely modern necessity is the problem that Miss Brann evidently considers the central problem of ''our problematic modernity.'' Both our world and our understanding of our world are formed and constantly transformed by modern science. Miss Brann indicates the fundamental difficulty when, explaining why such a study of science is not likely to occur even in a conventional elementary science course, she says she opens four reputable textbooks in elementary physics and finds that "Each uses, from the very beginning, the first dimensionally secondary quantity of the science of motion, namely, velocity/' that is, each begins with a ratio or a quantity that is compounded of elementary quantities, in this instance, space and time. Thus I observe that all four books begin past the point where naive questions might be asked. Yet who understands without reflection how the time, how the place in which we live and have our being, can be transmogrified into mere magnitudes capable of entering into a ratio, and how those magnitudes have in tum been transformed into quantities able to constitute a rational number? All such questions are regarded in textbooks as outside actual physics. And yet they can never be considered with any immediacy in the abstracted fields of philosophy of science or history of science, but only in the actual context of real if elementary science. But considered they must be, for our problematic modernity is the residue of such transformations (p.111). Modern science, in addition to altering our physical world, alters even more fundamentally our basic understanding of the world and of our mode of being in the 117 �world as it prepares its subjects for study. In Miss Brann's telling example, it mathematizes, or algebratizes, what it studies. It deliberately" denatures" nature in order to study it. In the Republic (514b-515c), Socrates identifies non-philosophers with cave dwellers, who, having their legs and necks chained so that they cannot move, see only the shadows of artifacts before them. Whatever they see they understand in the light of conventional or received opinions, which they take for the truth of things. Miss Brann suggests that much the same is true of us. Notwithstanding the Enlightenment's intention to bring the light of reason into the cave to dispel the shadows, we modems, too, are prisoners in such a ~ave. Our imprisonment, however, is far more problematic because it is in large part the result of science. Whereas in the Republic the prisoners can escape the cave by moving from the artificial light of opinion to the, natural light of science or knowledge, science itself casts the darkest shadows in our cave. We moderns are the passive recipients of readymade scientific methods, terms, and premises that alter our natural perception of even "the time ... [and] the place in which we live and have our being." The scientist has replaced the legislator. Thus whereas in the Republic the cave is open at one end to the natural light of the sun, in our cave the artificial light of the Enlightenment tends to eclipse the opening. By teaching us to understand our world, including our mode of being in the world, in the light of the requirements of the Cartesian method, modern science threatens to imprison us in a world of its own making. A reflective study of science is therefore indispensible to our self-knowledge. Without it, we cannot possibly understand our world, including ourselves. We cannot act intelligently. In Aristotle's best polity the education of citizens never goes beyond the imitative arts. Because ancient cities "lived by tradition in the widest sense" (p. 114), the natural ground of practice was "given." Even as tradition opposed nature in one fundamental respect, it preserved it in another. In our polity, on the other hand, the repudiation of tradition has obscured both the conditions and the nature of practice. The natural ground of practice must therefore be recovered. Theory must recover what the repudiation of tradition has caused us to lose. "[W]e moderns require [theoretical inquiry] precisely as moderns .... What was an exemplary culmination for the ancients is for us a common necessity" (p.115). Aristotle's distinction between theoretical and practical education must be at least partly obscured in order to recover the Aristotelian realm of intelligent practice or prudence. Now someone who agrees with Miss Brann on the need for a reflective study of science might also think that such a course of study could consist in the reading of certain contemporary works in the philosophy and the history of modern science. That is, in fact, what is usually done in most American colleges and universities. Miss Brann, however, maintains that the study must consist in the reading of the originating works of the scientific 118 tradition-the writings of Galileo, Kepler, Newton, ar the other first founders of modern science. "[F]or us is to be either tradition or technique, ... we either retw to the roots or fall prey to the consequences" (p. 111 The reason for this necessity at first seems paradoxio It is "precisely because of the progressive character science" that it is "philosophically necessary" to stuc the original sources of the scientific tradition (p. 112: Miss Brann explains that "In each of its supersedil movements the scientific enterprise enters a higher sta of abstraction and becomes more remote from and fc getful of its immediately intelligible origins; there is sedimentation of significance." Philosophical works, on tl other hand, are neither simply timeless, like those poetry, nor progressive, like the discoveries of scienc but "are related in both and neither fashion." Almost ' such works address their predecessors and are address• in turn by their successors. "Hence, the philosophical b dition proceeds, but not progressively; it is rather a kil of spiral on which motion comes periodically over tl same position, but at a higher level." By "higher however, Miss Brann means ''an extremely dubious at problematic rise, which may, in fact, be a fall" (p 112-113). It may be "unavoidably the case," she saj quoting from Bacon, that 'in the arts mechanical the first deviser comes shortest, and til addeth and perfecteth; but in sciences [that is, philosophy; Pl; and Aristotle are among those instanced] the first author goeth f thest, and time leeseth and corrupteth.' It is at least poss1ble tl in philosophy all successors are unavoidably epigones and th works attenuating elaborations and leveling explications of the ori nal deep insight. The possibility must be contemplated that philosophy a pejorative principle is at work, that the loss of im cence, of immediacy, of naivete, must in the very nature of the thi bring with it a loss of depth (p. 113). Miss Brann thus suggests that the modern scientific e terprise, by its very nature, presents in extreme form t forgetful tendency of the bookish tradition. It epitomiz what it repudiates: it exemplifies the paradox of tradih and of writing itself. We must return to the foundi works of the scientific tradition, then, because mode science, owing to its progressive character, is itself a tJ dition in every sense of the term. III The last chapter deals with the paradox of Rationali It contains Miss Brann's explicit call for the return to t ancient notion of the intellect. Taking as her starting po Tocqueville's observation that the people in whom t intellectual principles of the Enlightenment have reach their worldly embodiment are also the people amo whom less attention is paid to philosophy than amo any other, she explains that wherever human beings c< gregate some mode of thought becomes incarnate in t community. This mode, differing both in itself and in communal appearance, may be the tacit, inbred rna SUMMER 1' �tenance of a grown tradition, or the devoted, continual exegesis of a God-given law, or the strenuous, correct adumbration of a certified ideology. For us, the mode is rationality. Whereas these other ways of using reason ''are not the way of reason," ours is self-consciously rational. Our way requires "an incessant application of the personal instrumental reason to the world, accompanied by an unremitting demand for articulate explanatory speech. And yet it is such reasoning and such speaking as can be embodied in a people and become a national habit" (pp. 121-122). Our way is at once reasoning and unreasoned. An ''unreasoned use of reason,'' it is the Cartesian method as an assimilated habit (p. 121). Most of Chapter Three is spent describing certain fundamental facets of rationality and their inbuilt pedagogical paradoxes. Briefly stated, these include the pervasive tendency to dichotomize subjectivity and objectivity, leaving us, like Swift's Laputians, no middle ground on which to fix both eyes; and the familiar opposition between the head and the heart, which, resting at bottom on the understanding of reason as a coldly wielded instrument serving a selfish will, teaches us finally to see ourselves as oppressed by the very power of our minds. The facets also include the Lockean conception of the mind as an instrumental rational tool whose last resort is self-evidence and which works on an alien matter obtained as evidence through what Locke calls experience. The former tends to forestall reflection (what is selfevident requires no explanation), while the latter tends . to forestall immediacy (Lockean experience comes through · the senses packaged as "phenomena," "facts/' "data/' "information," etc. "It delivers wood, not trees" [p. 1341). Above all, rationality's familiar aspects include the ; replacement of classical theory with Cartesian theorizing. · Whereas classical theory is an activity which exists "for · the sake of seeing and presenting the object as it is in its · very nature, for the 'ardent love, the proud, disinterested love, of what is true'" (p. 132), Cartesian theorizing, which confuses receptivity to truth with making mental artifacts, involves methodological problem-solving and is ultimately concerned with controlling the matter it •. studies. Miss Brann argues that the root of all these and other related facets of rationality is "self-thinking." Self-thinking • is a Kantian term capturing what she calls the ''chief commandment" of rationality and what Tocqueville calls the principal character of the American mode of thought, namely, "to seek the reason of things for oneself and in oneself alone" (p. 21). It means always to think for one. self, which, as Kant says, is Enlightenment. The "self" as used in the term refers to the agent who thinks, not •to the object of thought. It is self-insistent rather than self. reflexive. 11 It signifies a conscious, self-assertive resistance to authority, a mental declaration of independence." An "assertion of individual sovereignty," it declares that "It . is before this supreme court of the self that all cases are ultimately brought for adjudication" (p. 125). While selfthinking thus corresponds directly to the political enfran- THE ST. JOHN'S REVIEW chisement of the individual, it nonetheless ultimately undermines the conditions for republican life. For republicanism rests on "a public realm in which the thought of all coincides to form a consensus," but the obligation to think for oneself turns everyone else's thought-and finally even one's own-into mere opinion, and thus dissolves the basis for a truly public opinion, leaving the field to either a Locke an "forcelike vector of the larger mass of atomic judgments" or "a necessarily compromised public consensus" produced by "continual cession of individual thinking" (pp. 125, 126). Miss Brann argues that the ultimate consequence and culmination of the various aspects of rationality is a preoccupation with form over substance-" a ubiquitous formalism, a deliberate preponderance of methods over ends, of pursuit over realization, of possibility over actuality" (p. 21). The incessant demand for certainty, for example, continually directs attention away from the knowledge of things themselves to the formal conditions of knowledge. The matter itself, as well as the approach to learning, becomes highly formalized as strenuous efforts are made to replace substance by logic and content by structure. Miss Brann says that a useful phrase for the formal is that it is the condition of the possibility of an object, required so that it might exist, but not included in what it is. Thus, in making decisions, "the decision making process" comes to matter more than the decision itself; in morals, the sincerity of the judgment matters more than the content, and the intention and the background of the deed are more regarded than the deed itself. In short, process and manner eclipse purpose and content. However, "Most pervasive in their formalistic consequences~'' Miss Brann observes, ''are the very founding terms of this Republic." The principle of equality is a formal notion, whichever of the two major contending interpretations is accepted. If equality is taken to mean equality of opportunity, it is merely a condition of the possibility for becoming or gaining some possible good. If, on the other hand, it is taken to mean equality of results, it similarly lacks substance, focusing attention not on a good but on the comparison of its possession. Likewise, liberty, "our noblest and our most exemplary formal principle," is nothing but the condition for the possibility of being or doing or having something. "It is noble precisely because it bestows nothing concrete at all." And as for the pursuit of happiness, "that most characteristic of American rights," the phrase literally speaks for itself (p. 141). Miss Brann proposes the return to the classical mode of inquiry and the classical notion of intellect as the resolution of these dilemmas. In Chapter Two she used the term inquiry for the reading of the written tradition. Here she means it to go beyond such study and include the asking of questions. Generally synonymous with reflection, it is, as quoted earlier, "a question-asking mode, in which instrumental reason yields to receptive intellect, theo.etical construction to contemplative theory, critical delimitation to expectant openness" (p. 22). It is con- 119 �cerned with giving reasons, not with mere reasoning; with finding depth, not with achieving certainty; with thinking, not with "thinking for oneself." Most of all, it is concerned with seeing things as they are in their very nature, without the mediation of modern methodology. It involves the activity and the perfection of one's natural intellect. Miss Brann's resolution raises a paradox of its own, which in the final analysis underlies her book as a whole. How can the classical notion of inquiry be combined with-indeed, put in the service of-modern political principles that rest fundamentally on the theoretical repudiation of that notion? More particularly, how can wereject Rationality as a public mode and still retain our Republic's Founding political principles? In elaborating her third resolution, Miss Brann explains the "revealing double capacity" of a question. A question, she says, "can be asked either of a fellow human being or about things. When addressed to a human being, it is a demand for the communication, the sharing, · of truth. When addressed to things, it serves notice that the world is held responsible, that it is thought to be able to answer, to speak out of its depths, to be endowed with reasons" (p. 143). Inquiry in this sense implies or presupposes that the mind is naturally open to the truth, that there is a fundamental harmony between the mind and the world at its depths. Yet this is exactly what the Enlightenment's repudiation of the tradition denies: "For let men please themselves as they will in admiring and almost adoring the human mind, this is certain: that as an uneven mirror distorts the rays of objects according to its own figure and section, so the mind, when it receives impressions of the objects through the senses, cannot be trusted to report them truly, but in forming its notions mixes up its own nature with the nature of things" (Francis Bacon, The Great Instauration, "The Plan of the Work"). That is, the mind is essentially projective, not receptive. It naturally confuses the seeking of truth and the making of rational constructions. On this view, theory in the classical sense is impossible, belief in its possibility resting on nothing more than the mind's inherent tendency to deceive itself. And just as the Enlightenment rejects the classical notion of the intellect, so it also rejects the possibility of disinterested inquiry. Contrary to the ancients' claim that theoretical wisdom could ever be chosen for its own sake, the authors of the Enlightenment insist that no human activity can ever be free in the sense that Aristotle means when, denying that the highest science is a productive science, he says that "just as we say a person is free who exists for his own sake and not for another's, so this alone of all the sciences is free, for only this science exists for its own sake" (Metaphysics 982b25-28). According to the Enlightenment, liberal education in the strict sense ("an education beyond utility" [pg.62]) is impossible because, contrary to the classical understanding, the highest in man rests upon and is reducible to the lowest: needs necessarily predominate life. 120 In presenting her resolution of the paradox of utility Miss Brann claims that liberal education in the strict sens is a natural right (pp. 62-63). The modern notion of nah · ral rights, however, directly implies self-thinking an hence rationality as a public mode. The natural right t self-preservation entails the right of everyone to decid for himself the best means of preserving his own life. ''A ways to think for oneself" means, ultimately, always t have the right to judge for oneself the best means t preserve oneself. Self-thinking thus derives directly fror the primary concern for and natural right to self-prese1 vation. It is the effective guarantee of our most impo: !ant right. Rationality as a public mode is thus inseparabl from the rights to Life, Liberty, and the Pursuit of Hal piness as fundamental political principles, as indeed Mi• Brann herself seems to say in setting forth the parade of Rationality (pp. 122, 125). Miss Brann wants to con bine what she evidently considers the best of the ancier and of the modern worlds-namely, classical theory an the American polity. Yet she herself observes th; "modes of study have wide political implications" (1 101). Whether, or in what way, classical liberal educatio and modern liberal democracy can be combined is lht a question her resolution leaves open. 3 Miss Brann claims not to take sides in the battle h tween the ancients and the moderns. "For my part," sl says, "I think that were this contest ever finally abm doned the Western tradition would have ended." TI peculiar quarrels that constitute the contest "both mm the tradition and perennially recollect it" (p. 69). Thu later, in a note, she explains, "It goes without saying th my own inquiry takes a middle ground in interpretir modernity as a ruptured continuation, at once debilite ing and invigorating, of the ancient tradition" (p. 16' It is true that, in one sense, she does not take sides: tl revival of the tradition "does not aim at a return to tl past but at its reappropriation for the present. The pa matters, not as it has gone before, but as it has gone in the present" (p. 148). In a deeper sense, however, sl does take sides, as, indeed, it seems she must. The a dent understanding of the intellect and of nature is h constant point of reference. Her guiding intention is recover that understanding by studying the intelleclll roots of the modern world from its perspective. 4 1. All italics are original. 2. Miss Brann often uses the term theory equivocally. Sometimes uses it in the strict sense of "pure reflection" (p. 58; see esp. p. 1 but at other times it includes reflection on human affairs in the wi• sense. Indeed, occasionally she uses it when she does not mean all. For example, she describes as "theoretical" certain studies fav< by Jefferson that, later, in a stricter context, she attacks as "abov, an antimetaphysical polemic, which leads to an empirical metho analysis" (pp. 57, 58, 93). In order to make her case, she often sl insensibly between the wide and the strict sense of the term. 3. It should be noted that, in the last sentence of the book, Miss B1 offers a cryptic reinterpretation of "the essence" of the American ity: "that it be a republic of incomparable equals" (p. 148). She does explain what she means by this. Miss Brann uses the term republic ambiguously throughout the b SUMMER. �Early in the book, when saying that it is "specifically education in a republic" that she wants to consider, she presents the meaning of the term in a way that obscures the primary distinction between ancient and modern republicanism. She retains the public realm as the core of the meaning of a republic, but she redefines the public so as to make it include rather than oppose the private. The contrary of the public becomes not the worldly private but the other-worldly communal. By republic she seems to mean the City of Man as distinguished from the City of God (p. 11). 4. Just as with other key words, Miss Brann uses the term paradox ambiguously. At times she makes no distinction between a paradox and a problem. To resolve a paradox is the same as to solve a practical problem. The resolution disposes of the paradox or alleviates its undesirable effects. It is in this sense of the term that her proposed resolutions are intended to remedy ''some familiar practical perplexities in American education" (p. 1). At other times, however, she sharply distinguishes a paradox from a problem, calling it "a dilemma inherent in [a] thing itself, the kind of inner breach not improperly called tragic'' (p. 1). Whereas "to solve a problem is, after all, to dissolve the matter of the inquiry, since a solved problem is a matter of indifference" (p. 132), a paradox "is an incitement to an inquiry and to a resolution intended not to collapse the paradox, but recover its roots" (p. 148). An insoluble object of contemplation, it is something to be recovered, not removed, to be understood, not addressed. In the end Miss Brann seems to intend classical inquiry to resolve the educational paradoxes of modernity in both senses at once. As she says at one point, "I am suggesting that a recovery of the deep and vital founding paradoxes will prove therapeutic" (p. 45). As her inquiry shows, the tension between these practical and theoretical senses, which proves to underlie her inquiry, is perhaps inescapable in the modern world. Jan H. Blitz, an alumnus of St. John's College, Annapolis, teaches at the University of Delaware. THE ST. JOHN'S REVIEW 121 � Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. 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Creator An entity primarily responsible for making the resource Office of the Dean Publisher An entity responsible for making the resource available St. John's College Identifier An unambiguous reference to the resource within a given context ISSN 0277-4720 thestjohnsreview Contributor An entity responsible for making contributions to the resource St. John's College Greenfield Library Text A resource consisting primarily of words for reading. Examples include books, letters, dissertations, poems, newspapers, articles, archives of mailing lists. Note that facsimiles or images of texts are still of the genre Text. Page numeration Number of pages in the original item. 121 pages Original Format The type of object, such as painting, sculpture, paper, photo, and additional data paper Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Creator An entity primarily responsible for making the resource Office of the Dean Title A name given to the resource The St. John's Review (formerly The College), Summer 1985 Date A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource 1985-07 Contributor An entity responsible for making contributions to the resource Sterling, J. Walter Coughlin, Maria Freis, Richard Freis, S. Richard Sachs, Joe Stickney, Cary Wilson, Curtis A. Sachs, Joe Allanbrook, Wye Jamison Brann, Eva T. H. Alvis, John Arnhart, Larry Weatherman, Donald V. Flaumenhaft, Mera Fletcher, Charlotte Smith, Brother Robert Benardete, Seth Blitz, Jan H. Description An account of the resource Volume XXXVI, number 3 of The St. John's Review, formerly The College. Published in Summer 1985. Identifier An unambiguous reference to the resource within a given context ISSN 0277-4720 The_St_Johns_Review_Vol_36_No_3_1985 Coverage The spatial or temporal topic of the resource, the spatial applicability of the resource, or the jurisdiction under which the resource is relevant Annapolis, MD Publisher An entity responsible for making the resource available St. John's College Language A language of the resource English Type The nature or genre of the resource text Rights Information about rights held in and over the resource St. John's College owns the rights to this publication. Format The file format, physical medium, or dimensions of the resource pdf St. John's Review https://s3.us-east-1.amazonaws.com/sjcdigitalarchives/original/460b9dac86a6e54cf1967133f734c8b1.pdf b66302efd52bf8075c9ca3fb8bf11d9c PDF Text Text THE St. o 's Review Winter, 1986 �The cover is the work of Lydia Sparrow. Editor: J. Walter Sterling Managing Editor: Maria Coughlin Poetry Editor: Richard Freis Editorial Board: Eva Brann S. Richard Freis, Alumni representative Joe Sachs Cary Stickney Curtis A. Wilson Unsolicited articles, stories, and poems are welcome, but should be accompanied by a stamped, self-addressed envelope in each instance. Reasoned comments are also welcome. The St. John's Review (formerly The College) is published by the Office of the Dean. St. john' s College, Annapolis, Maryland 21404. William Dyal, President, Thomas Slakey, Dean. Published thrice yearly, in the winter, spring, and summer. For those not on the distribu- tion list, subscriptions: $12.00 yearly, $24.00 for two years, or $36.00 for three years.. payable in advance. Address all correspondence to The St. John's Review, St. john' s College, Maryland 21404. Annapolis, Volume XXXVII, Number 1 Winter 1986 ©1987 St. john' s College; All rights reserved. Reproduction in whole or in part without permission is prohibited. ISSN 0277-4720 Composition: Best Impressions, Inc. Printing: The John D. Lucas Printing Company �Contents m 1 Memorial Addresses The Writings of William O'Grady ON THE POETS 1 6 8 10 16 23 28 Odysseus Among the Phaiakians Odysseus With His Father A Scene from Electra About Sophocles' Philoctetes The Power of the Word in Oedipus at Colonus On Almost Seeing Miracles About The Winter's Tale ON THE PHIWSOPHERS 30 37 44 46 Platds Republic and the Search for Common Objects About Human Knowing Reflections on Beginning Ptolemy Negation, Willing, and the Places of the Soul ON CHRISTIAN THEMES 53 57 61 65 About Dante's Purgatory A Way to Think about Dark Times Sadness and Courage The Bible and the Human Heart FROM HIS STUDENT YEARS 70 90 105 Hegel and Marx: Studies in Man's Self-Assertion Kant's Moral Philosophy Theory and Practice in Hegel's Phenomenology �Bill O'Grady died in his sleep on January 6, 1986; his death entirely unexpected, preceded by no sign of illness. He was 40 years old. He had been teaching at St. John's since 1970. This issue of his occasional pieces is preceded by memorials to him delivered at services in Santa Fe and Annapolis. Joe Sachs, his colleague and friend, has gathered his writings together and prepared them for publication. To those who knew him, Bill O'Grady was a touchstone of the soul. He was teacher to his colleagues no less than to his students. We are fortunate that some of his words were written so that he may continue to teach at St. John's College. Walter Sterling �WILLIAM O'GRADY 1945-1986 �ii �Memorial Addresses Robert Bart, Tutor, Santa Fe Mr. Bart's words were prefaced with a title, "The Starry Messenger," and the inscription: In memory of William Walsh O'Grady who died on January 6, the day of the Epiphany, when the Redeemer was first shown forth to men. When the terrible news of Bill O'Grady's death came to me last week, my heart froze. He died a young man, barely 40, within months after he had gotten married, a lover who had waited and watched all night until the dawn came to suffuse his day with its pure light. Of his loss and of his wife's loss, I cannot speak. These are mysteries no man can approach save in silence and humility. I do want to share a few thoughts with you about our loss. One of his friends said of him a week ago: I will never have a better friend and the College will never have a better teacher. These striking words have echoed and re-echoed since, as more and more of us who were his friends have felt that we could rightly say the saine thing. How is it that the broken heart can endure such loss? How can it begin to recover, as it does? That is a mystery of which we must speak, inadequate as our words will be. Bill O'Grady's death is the worst news I ever expect to hear. Why? Because always and everywhere he was the bringer of good news, the good news that the heart in hiding no longer dared to hope for, that it was sure it was dead to forever. Such news is life in the desert, and its bearer is an angel of mercy, a wonder past all telling, yet the only thing worth telling. To lose such a messenger seems like death itself. Yet there is worse, my stubborn heart protested. It is worse by far to lose the message. Bill's ardor was all for the truth; his presence was always the presence of something beyond him that he saw and felt keenly and set about expressing with sovereign eloquence. Bill never came empty-handed. When he came he would announce, earnestly, I have three things to say, or maybe four, and that burden he would always uufold each time, carefully, in all its severe beauty. Bill loved the truth with a fierce and knowing love. It possessed him wholly when he spoke so that one forgot him and attended to his words alone. He spoke boldly because of the clarity with which he saw and the faithfulness, yet he spoke shyly because of his own modesty. Maybe others had a different experience of him, but to me he never came by chance, if there is such a thing as chance, but always deliberately, to bring me good news. He never failed to be present at the times of greatest distress and his presence itself was always a blessing. For the heart in its deepest anguish cries out for the beloved as Philoctetes did for ten long years on Lemnos, and Job through awful days and nights: the heart cries, Will he never appear? Yet when God comes to Job and Hercules to Philoctetes, they do not say: I am here, be content. They come with a message and a message whose harsh and humbling truth is the only possible consolation. It brings hope. Bill's ways were mostly gentler, more human and humane, for he rarely presumed or cared to speak the hard truths that his kind words sometimes implied. Yet despite his tender heart he was a hero like Hercules. Not of course to look iii �at. He was slight, always tense, straining, awkward when he moved. Early in our acquaintance in a rare moment of laughing at himself, he told a few of us at Eva Brann's, how he was the despair of his shop teacher at school, since he couldn't learn to do a single thing right. He was always ashamed of his clumsiness, but through that whole tale one also saw how he had suffered for his teacher and loved him in his frustration, and made him a friend for life. Bill's labors were mighty, and twelve times twelve, at least. Apparently it was easy from a distance to think him romantic or sentimental, Irish, and impractical. Irish he was to the core, but of all the rest it is enough to say that he was a lover, and love has no traffic with mere romance. Its business is tougher, its joys are solid. Love, as Socrates says, is endlessly inventive. Being poor, it must be, yet it is the child of resource. Love in practice is a contriver of incomparable skill, awkward and even at a glance unlovely, godlike, but no god. Yet it is the infallible messenger and bond between gods and men, without whose help we will never know anything worth knowing. Such was Bill O'Grady. What then was Bill's message? Like any great healer's it was in every case utterly specific. Though he drew inspiration always from books, he was never so lazy, abstract and sentimental as to rest content with formulae. So too his teaching could not possibly invite imitation. He was a great artist. He dealt with the concrete. With unerring diagnostic power, he would bring to a sufferer the exact words that were needed, words that were as true as they were unexpected. Love and art are always original. It is the curse of our imagination that in our weakness and our illusion we recreate the world in our own imperfect image and believe it is as we imagine it. In our darker moments such lies cause much of our despair. Bill fought against those illusions. He was always ready with sympathy, but he always found deeper and surer consolation. More often than not he came to me to tell of the honest or generous word or deed of a person I had not trusted; or in general, when all things seemed to have turned to ashes, he would tell me what was really going on while my gaze was distracted by my own foolish feelings. The brilliance of the treasures he unearthed gave me joy and relief, and shame and courage. His memory was one of the wonders of this world; it is right that we should struggle to remember him always, as we are doing this afternoon, but if we knew him Rt all, we knew that we could never remember him as he remembered us, just as we could not know him as he knew us. In that knowledge he could detect the words we needed to hear, words of his own for sure, and precious for that reason, but his words were almost always words about others, about what they were doing and saying. Gently he turned our thoughts away from our grief or pain. His words had the marks of true revelation, they brought joy, and sorrow as well, joy that things are as they are, sorrow that we had not, after all, seen them for what they were. But the joy and the peace were always predominant: In discovering the poverty of our vision, we discovered the riches of what he knew and saw. It would be merely foolish to speak of him as sentimental, since the mark of sentimentality is its abstraction, its falsehood. He was always immediate and concrete. It was enough to hear him quote one's own words, to know his grasp of fact. Days and years after the event he could report words one had spoken truly. It was in a way a terror to know him, a holy terror, not so much because he was so good, which he was, but because his knowledge of each of us was both strict and generous, and because of course, we are often unworthy of generosity as we are unworthy of our true selves. He fought with himself not to judge, though he was drawn that way mightily. He almost always won. As a result, his love was uncompromising, his loyalty perfect. He saw what he saw as surely and as relentlessly as the truths of mathematics and his brilliant vision of each person purged defects. Love which purifies can afford to seem blind. He was deeply concerned with forgiveness. He believed ardently in Purgatory, perhaps as a hope for himself. He thought of forgiveness as an absolute obliteration of evil; by means of forgiveness evil passes into the nothingness from which it arises. Such forgiving is a hard taskmaster, to which Bill submitted eagerly. He was not blind to evil. He hated it when it forced itself on him, but it took force. His rage, which was not infrequent, was like the sharp sword of Justice. He set himself to overcome evil by his courage and love. He won that battle over and over, in the College no less than in the lives of those who were privileged to know him; their number is legion. He was always a private person, yet he had more friends and true lovers than anyone I have ever known. At times he was bone-tired and weary. I wonder if anyone ever suffered more. For that reason he respected the weariness of his friends. At times, before he was married, one might have thought, with Kent as he looks on Lear, he hates him That would upon the rack of this tough world Stretch him out longer. But Bill believed in the Divine Comedy of this world and the Next; he loved the girls too much, he once said, to be a priest. Marriage was his unfailing hope. Hope is one of the three heavenly virtues and true hope is a strenuous discipline. Straining toward that and loving his friends and his teachers and the words men have written in books made life good to him, if not easy. Such hope and faith and love are hard to sustain. But with Lear, holding in his arms the dead Cordelia, one could hear him say: iv �Look on her, look, her lips, Look there, Look there, in wonder at bright life renascent from the dross in his hands. Who more surely than Bill O'Grady would confirm one's faith in the toughness of the soul and the innate power of life to endure the most terrible onslaught, withdrawing briefly, only to reappear in memory, in hope and in truth. Please rejoice with me then in the memory of William Walsh O'Grady. Curtis Wilson, Tutor, Annapolis "Not ignorant of evil," Dido says when she first meets Aeneas, "I know at least one thing-to help the afflicted." It was characteristic of Bill O'Grady to insist that what he knew or was clear about was something simple, some one thing amidst many others unknown, put forth usually with an apology for its inadequacy to the full complexity of what there is, yet put forth with a certain insistence. And then the one thing, with further articulation, would break into a wondrous multitude of things, like light through a prism; for his fellow-feeling, and his sense of the suffering of others, was combined with a remarkable acuity of discernment and intellectual force. The dominant quality was the concern with the wisdom of the heart; a wisdom that he sought with moral intensity as much in everyday relations as in the study of Homer or Sophocles or Nietzsche. Bill 0' Grady has been such a unique presence in this College; that presence has had so much to do with the soul of the College; and he has been taken from us so suddenly, and so sadly. For months I have known that, for me, this particular week in January would be packed with busy-ness; I did not know that in the midst of other doings I would be stumbling to find the right words to characterize so unique a presence as Bill O'Grady has been; nor have I any confidence that with more time I could be even moderately successful. In fact, the situation is one that Kierkegaard would characterize as a repetition: it is exactly the situation that Bill O'Grady has repeatedly found me out in; that is to say, he has repeatedly found me busy, involved in trying to decipher intellectual puzzles whose solution would not necessarily touch the heart. I am grateful to him for never blaming me for my acquisitive curiosity. His presence was inevitably a demand, a kindly but insistent demand, that the human heart be taken into account. I have wanted to respect that demand, to live up to it. Others, I imagine, have felt something similar. I'm grateful to Bill for a number of insights into a number of books. I am grateful to him for a letter he wrote me, when he was on the Instruction Committee and I was dean, and he had discerned how exhausted I had allowed myself to become, and how dispirited; the only thing to be done with me, I knew, was to put myself in wraps until the animal spirits regained their resilience. Such mere mechanisms were not in his thoughts. He wrote me a letter, a lovely letter of comfort. So few of us manage to do things like that. More than once, when I was dean, Bill helped me by telling me what the real situation was that I was confronted with, how it was that the words that X had spoken meant the opposite of what they seemed to say, or what it was that Y would have said if Y had had the confidence to speak to me, or what some student was undergoing, that I knew nothing about. Such revelations are precious to any mere administrator. I know that there are uncounted students who owe debts of gratitude to Bill O'Grady, back through the years. I remember how during his first and only sabbatical year he was to be seen at the oddest hours, in the coffee shop, paired in earnest conversation with one senior after another, over senior essays, reminding me, no doubt inappropriately, of Lear's line near the end of the play about two birds in a cage. No, it is not within my reach to say here the right words, about what Bill O'Grady has meant to so many of us, and will always mean. I have in my hands a letter to Bill from his father, written when Bill was about to finish his first year of college at Notre Dame. Joie has given me permission to read from it. ''Hope the exams have been going as well as possible, but don't worry about 'em. As the man said, your main objective is to become a sophomore, and I believe you have that just about accomplished ... "There is one thing I would like to say in this last epistle. The year, I am sure, has been a rewarding and stimulating one for you. It has possibly opened up many new byways for you to explore ... you have learned that, in addition to the selfish and the self-seekers and the just plain no-damn-goods in this world (and there seem to be too many), there are also intelligent, brilliant, selfless people, who love their fellow men (and there are more such people in the world than we realize). "But I am sure, too, the year has also brought to you disappointment in various measures, a certain kind of loneliness, a difficult adjustment to college life, to people of all kinds, a diminishing, perhaps, in some areas of your ideals as feet of clay become more apparent, and, in short, all the trials and tribulations that go to make up this none-tooperfect world. All of this while you were facing, up to this time, at least, the most difficult adjustment of your life. v �"And despondent though you must have felt many times, you never showed it in your letters, in your visits home, and in your own blithe spirit. "In other words, you were the epitome of plain old-fashioned guts, the kind that never shows up on an athletic field, on a battlefield, or in other facets of life. "It is the kind that is unseen, unknown (for the most part) and always unheralded. "You displayed rare courage, true courage. You displayed maturity in its purest sense ... the kind we all strive for but seldom accomplish. "I am so very, very proud of you. Love, Dad'' The last line, applied to Bill's all-too-short life as a whole, speaks, I am sure, for many that are here. We are so very proud of him. Marilyn Higuera, Tutor, Annapolis That singular command I do not understand: Bless what there is for being. Which has to be obeyed, for What else am I made for, Agreeing or disagreeing? Most people would attribute these words toW. H. Auden, but in my mind they will always belong more to William O'Grady. For they were a gift, a blessing, one of many, he gave to me. They are supporting me today in more than one way in my remembrance of Bill. For I'm going to try to "bless what there is for being." You see, I have these tangible forms of memory: little scraps of paper with such poems or lines of C. S. Lewis as Bill thought would cheer me or remind me of a vision obscured. I have books, favorites of Bill's that are now, of course, mine too. And I have little essays, opening new worlds of thought to me. Bill knew that these were things which could give comfort. It is, however, the mere fact that Bill would share such things with me that leaves me full of wonder. I know he would sometimes overcome the restraints of convention and the habits of the year to share his private readings with his classes, too. How fortunate we, to have known such a man-someone who would reveal so much of his heart and soul, share the most important things, offer them to so many, and hope so humbly for response. And there are other blessings. The words, so wonderfully crafted, freely flowing forth, prompted by the purest of generous intention. What I remember most are his stories: tales of characters known, seemingly allegorical events of his life, tales of tales. They weren't anecdotes; Bill didn't tell them for their charm or wit. He told them because he hoped truths could be seen, and comfort had, in such histories. These highly polished, many-faceted offerings of his shine yet among us. My personal experience of Bill 0' Grady is an invaluable treasure, and I know that very many of you knew-and treasure- him in the same way. We didn't seem to need the slow, indirect approach to friendship, the caution of sharing backgrounds, trading opinions. Out of immediate trust, we were friends. It is this unconditional openness, the ever-ready heart, the loss of which I feel most acutely. But there remain the scraps of paper, the precious jeweled stories, the glimpses of the possibilities for the human heart; these exist and they are blessings of William 0' Grady. Cary Stickney, Tutor, Santa Fe "To heal the broken-hearted, to proclaim deliverance to the captives and recovery of sight to the blind, and the opening of the prison to them that are bound." These words oflsaiah have echoed in my mind since I heard of Bill O'Grady's death. How often those sound like impossibilities: healing the broken-hearted, opening blind eyes. But they are what he did. He liked a line from Don Quixote in which the knight replies to Sancho's plea that he give up his beliefs, "You only say that, Sancho, because you love me. Moreover you do not know the world very well-therefore you suppose to be impossible things which are merely very difficult.'' One of his colleagues on this campus who had co-led a semi- vi �nar with him said, "He made things possible for me, ways of reading and speaking, that had never seemed possible before.'' It does not seem possible for me now to say anything worthy of who Bill O'Grady was and how much he taught me. Nevertheless I must try. One of his friends in Annapolis said of him, "He knew that the proper work of the human intellect is to affirm, and that anything else, however impressive it may seem, is wasted unless it serves that end." That seems altogether right to me. Yet no one was better aware than he of all there is in the world of sorrow and suffering to make the question "How may I praise?" seem unanswerable. But he was able to enter the suffering, to understand it, in a way that could both reveal it for what it was, and in the very act of doing it this justice, reveal the wisdom that comes in suffering, the grace that comes somehow violent, the chance to love and bless and forgive even in the midst of darkness, anger, and pain. To those who have heard or read his lectures it is enough to mention Priam in the tent of Achilles, Oedipus and his word of love, King Lear and his final vision. He taught by example. He never wasted time showing off or sparring; he spoke only of things he truly cared about. And so his students learned to speak their hearts and minds. He knew that we cannot learn to think well or speak well or write well without first discovering what the things are that call out to be thought, spoken and written, that matter to us, that move us. I don't know how many books first called out to me because of something he said in a class or a lecture or a question period. I do know that one has led to another and that the process does not stop. He has helped me to ways of seeing that I will have with me always. I don't know for how many students it is true over his seventeen years of teaching at the college that they would not have gone on to graduate but for an encounter with him; nor do I know how many others might have emerged from four years study of the great books without anything more than a jaded bewilderment posing as sophistication, had it not been for something Bill said. He spoke to the heart. He could say things of such depth and power in words both so simple and so penetrating that often when he had finished there seemed nothing more left to say on a subject. When towards the end of a question period he would speak from where he had been sitting on the floor to say that he had been trying to think about one of the questions raised earlier and that he had three things to say, people would smile at his characteristic beginning; but when he had said the three things there was usually a silence full of gratitude and respect as both the lecturer and the audience were realizing how much had suddenly appeared in a new light, and that his question and his answer were what they would remember most of all from the evening. Homer speaks of winged words, Isaiah of words that do not come back empty. Bill strove for those kinds of words, and reached them more often in his forty years than I shall if I live to be eighty. He spent hours in long-distance calls to friends around the country, and had a nearly insatiable appetite for conversation. Once I asked him how a vacation had gone, and he replied, "Not so well: I hardly had any good conversations." His own lectures he saw as preparations for conversation. Learned as he was, devoted to reading as he was, it was the living, spoken word, "the word of the heart signified by the word of the voice" that he loved. And he loved the people who spoke; loved them in a way that took joy in their being who they were and that praised their unfolding and growing and flourishing and that shared his courage to go on growing with them. No one could say better or truer things about students in Don Rags. Some of his words that have meant the most to me I do not think occur in any of his lectures, though they shine through ail of them. I no longer remember when or where I heard them, nor just how he said them, for I have thought them and tried to understand other things by their help so many times that I can only say them in my own way now: Everything that is best and most important for us is a gift. It is not what we are able to prove, or what we deserve, or what we possess, that finally matters, but what we are sometimes able to give and receive. Michael Littleton, Tutor, Annapolis Mr. Littleton spoke extemporaneously. He read from a lecture Bill had written on "Dark Times," from a passage on the Iliad. Achilles discovers that the question that had seemed all-important to him, that of much time or little time, is not the one that matters most. The most important question is rather whether enough time has been received, and has been given. Mr. Littleton read also, from the end of The Brothers Karamazov, Alyosha's speech to the boys from the grave of Ilusha. Mr. Littleton's talk included reminiscences of a sophomore seminar in which he and Bill were together. The students complained, he said, that not only did the two tutors look alike, they asked equally incomprehensible questions. A disagreement developed between the two of them through the year, he said, over the question whether the image of God includes anger. vii �Nancy Buchenauer, Tutor, Santa Fe I have few words to say here, largely because I feel so strongly how inadequate I am to say the smallest part of what there is to say of William O'Grady. William 0' Grady was a great man and a great teacher. In a few words he could make vivid and urgently important the contents of a book; he would find a sentence which one saw at once was vital to the subject and which made the reading something greater and more wonderful. When he pulled together a few strands of the text, a new understanding rose up to delight the mind and to make one certain that the author could have had no less to say. During the year I was in seminar with Bill I learned more than I ever had before; I learned how to read books with my whole being and not to keep what they said at a distance from myself. My life was transformed by the discovery that the books were addressing me, and that I never would be the same again after reading them. I discovered a spiritual world which I could no longer bear not belonging to or striving to attain. My eyes were opened and taught to see clearly for the first time that there is no truth without love, for the truth of love is the greatest truth of all. Bill O'Grady was a kind man who knew of the sufferings of others and suffered much pain himself. He advised 16 senior essays at a time in order to say no to no one; he taught preceptorials in addition to seminar so there might be more for the students to choose from; he talked endlessly and glaclly with students at all hours and helped them with the pains and joys of living. He called out of the people around him what was most serious in them, and what was most virtuous. He taught those of us who were new tutors while he was here what being a tutor could be, and he would meet with us ungrudgingly and open-heartedly to show us a passage in Kepler or a letter of Plato which would open our minds with erilightenment about our whole endeavor, and he would send us off full of excitement to read again the texts he had made "new and beautiful" as Plato made Socrates. Bill O'Grady gave all he had to others. We who were his friends will never live without the blessing of his gifts to us. George Doskow, Tutor, Annapolis We are here this afternoon to commemorate the loss of our friend and colleague, Bill O'Grady. Like many of you, I have known Bill for a long time. We were co-leaders in a Freshman Seminar in his first year at St. John's, and my impressions of that year are as clear now as they were fifteen years ago. There were two things in particular that stand out for me about Bill at that time, and they are things that didn't change during the intervening years. I don't know how to rank them, for they seemed equally important to him, so the order I give them now is of no significance. The first was his passion for learning and understanding. The only times I saw him unhappy were when he would say things like, "I didn't discover anything interesting during this rereading of ... " whatever book we happened to be reading for that evening. He fully expected to find something new and exciting every time he read a book, and was discouraged and thought that there was something going wrong for him whenever he didn't. He never thought he had finally come to the center of anything and merely had to tie up the loose ends. For him, the books we read were an inexhaustible resource, and the freshness and love with which he came to them each time he reread them bespoke his enclless curiosity and passion for knowing. For him, learning was an adventure. I remember him once remarking that he would never do anything heroic or magnificent in the world, and that writing an essay was his one way of being heroic, it was his encounter with the world. But Bill was not only a passionate student; he was a passionate teacher as well. He expected each seminar or tutorial he went into to be as much an adventure for each student in the class as it was for him. His idea of a good seminar was not one in which there was a reasonable conversation in which some ideas were worked out or some good points made. It was one in which he saw someone really learn something, when he saw something happen to a student which might transform her or him. For him, learning was not the acquisition of knowledge but the expansion of a soul, and he worked tirelessly to try to make it happen. He had endless time to spend with students one on one whether they were in his classes or not, and he would talk with them not only about their books and studies but about them. He cared about each and every student he knew, and he tried to give each student what that student needed. He really listened when others spoke. I remember his being able to recount what some student had said in a seminar months before, so long before that I could scarcely remember what book we had been reading, and to recount it in almost the exact words the student had used. Partly, of course, that was a function of his remarkable memory. But it was even more a function of his caring, of his always trying to understand not only what was said, but more importantly what it meant to the person saying it, and his way of putting the various things a student had said over the course of time into a composite picture of that student. And, unlike most of us, he did that over and over, year after year, sometimes to a state near exhaustion. Bill was a good friend and colleague, generous and caring, helpful and sympathetic. I will miss his presence deeply. viii �Phil LeCuyer, Tutor, Santa Fe In the midst of our grief we wish to speak our thoughts and feelings for Bill 0' Grady. Centermost each of us knows what is lost. But from our different temperaments, abilities, and kinds of friendship with Bill, each of us knows a loss something different from the person next to him. Our deepest griefs are here unutterable. Yet we wish to speak our thoughts and feeliogs for Bill O'Grady. I had heard much about him before his first lecture in Santa Fe. I was excited for him to be here, but unprepared for how joyous and skillful and encouraging he was to those of us coming to the Odyssey for the first time. The discussion continued beyond all hours, and yet at the end we were not exhausted-we were exalted. Later when Bill had come to live here, we visited each other many times to talk about the Odyssey or about King Lear or about the Brothers Karamazov, or on other occasions to talk about our College in the strength of its vision, in its limitations, its need. At some point I became aware that Bill cared about the College by caring correctly for each of us who participate in it. Caring correctly-what is that? When Bill turned his attention to me, I felt as if he expected me to say something true, or even better, something genuinely desirous of a deeper truth. Bill believed in the distinction between truth and untruth, between genuine and fake. Mere information meant little to him. He aspired to insight, and his aspiration was often and amply fulfilled. In meetings Bill would sometimes preface his remarks with the phrase, "There are three reasons why ... "or "There are five reasons why .... " This way of beginning often struck me as slightly comical, because Bill's reasons were not connected to each other or ordered as numbers are. They were always fused one to another by his steadfast love for his friends, his authors, and his College. I, among many others, am nourished by that love, by his presence in my soul, by his life. Edward Sparrow, Tutor, Annapolis Mr. Sparrow spoke extemporaneously. He composed the following text for this collection. Bill always seemed to me completely concentrated wherever he was. It was impossible not to feel the intensity of the man whenever I would see him on campus, the total bearing of his intelligence and sympathy on whatever he was doing, his excluding, only because of his including more important things, anything that was not significant to the occasion, his generous focusing of his time and his ability on the concerns of students. Because at the college we spend most of our time, and the most significant parts of it, reading, thinking, and talking to one another, and because the college was Bill's real home, his concentration of himself into the passionate vitality of the moment would show up in conversations-the conversations I would have with him and the conversations which I would see him having with other faculty members and, especially, with students. I so well remember him standing by the stairs outside McDowell, his feet crossed, and, as he talked, his face showing quickly changing expressions of reflection, puzzlement, recognition, sorrow, and pleasure. I especially remember the way his eyebrows would go up and his face assume a look combining reflection with concern for the understanding of the person he was talking with. And then sometimes he would smile, with a suggestion of embarrassment and sorrow, incline his head slightly, and the encounter would cease, leaving a distinct and poignant absence in a place which had been filled with the presence of his sensitive, delicate, and penetrating, intelligence. It now occurs to me that it was this intense and total presence in what was occupying his mind at the time that was responsible for his use in his speech of unusually many adverbs. I had often noticed this way of talking of his, for not many do it. One who uses many adverbs, it seems to me, is concentrating his thought not only on the precise subject of his thinking but also on the way it is related to other things, to the how of it, and the when and the where. Bill's intensity with the things of the mind and of the heart naturally led to his giving the impression of not caring much about anything else. It always struck me, when he would come to the house, that he would never have anything to say about the appearance of things, or their taste or smell. One felt that he was rather waiting-but not deliberately so-when something that was then closer to the man, and in itself more important, would come up. For Bill was a passionately mindful man. Remarkably intelligent, yes, remarkably astute "philosophically" yes, remarkably well read, yes-how surprised I was to learn, when speaking to him about some of Gerard Manley Hopkins' poems, that he was familiar not only with all of them but also with Hopkins' original Greek and Latin poems-but, I thought increasingly as I saw him during the passing years, a man for whom concerns of the heart, and especially of the pain of the world, became more and more paramount. How deeply he was touched by the sorrows, efforts, and perplexities of his students! How much, how deeply, he was moved by Homer-by Odysseus in tears recalling in Phaeacia the horrors of the war; by the meeting between the old and nobly begging Priam and the young and nobly touched Achilles! ix �How much many of us were benefited by his introducing us to the wrenching story of Kristin Lavransdatter and to the short stories of Flannery O'Connor! And how much, in later years, Bill seemed to find more and more questions and answers and meanings in the Psalms and the Gospels. It is impossible ever to forget Bill. A mind alive with insight, a sensitive and sorrowing heart supremely dedicated to the intellectual and moral good of his students, he seems to have passed through the world as one not touched by it. Yet he draws after him the admiration, gratitude, affection, and love of those privileged to have known him. Frank Durgin, Student, Annapolis Mr. Durgin spoke extemporaneously. One of the things he spoke of was the name of God told to Moses in the third chapter of Exodus. It is usually translated "I am who I am." Mr. O'Grady had said in a seminar that it might instead be translated "I shall be present who shall be present." Mr. Durgin said that name applied to Mr. O'Grady himself: to him and to many other students, Mr. O'Grady was always present when he was needed. Michael Dink, Tutor, Annapolis Mr. Dink, at the request of Mrs. O'Grady, read some passages from a favorite book of Bill's, The Diary of a Country Priest by Georges Bernanos. They included the following. I have been trying once more to get some sleep. It seems hopeless . . . I know now that youth is a gift of God, and like all His gifts, carries no regret. They alone shall be young, really young, whom He has chosen never to survive their youth. I belong to such a race of men. I used to wonder: what shall I be doing at fifty, at sixty? And of course I couldn't find an answer, I couldn't even make one up. There was no old man in me . . . I have tried to open my eyes to death in all the simplicity of surrender, yet with no secret wish to soften or disarm it ... I can understand how a man, sure of himself and his courage, might wish to make of his death a perfect end. As that isn't in my line, my death shall be what it can be and nothing more ... God might possibly wish my death as some form of example to others. But I would rather have their pity. Why shouldn't I? I have loved men greatly, and I feel this world of living creatures has been so pleasant. I cannot go without tears. Nothing is farther removed from me than stoic indifference, so how can I hope for the death of a stoic? Plutarch's heroes both terrify and bore me. If I were to go to heaven wearing such a mask, I think even my guardian angel would laugh at me. Why worry, why look ahead? If I feel afraid I shall say: I am afraid, and not be ashamed of it. As soon as Our Lord appears before me, may His eyes set me at rest ... How easy it is to hate oneself! True grace is to forget. Yet if pride could die in us, the supreme grace would be to love oneself in all simplicity-as one would love any one of those who themselves have suffered and loved in Christ. Paula Rustan, Alumna, Santa Fe A tribute to William O'Grady, written as part of a fellowship proposal, was read by Sharon Garvey, a former tutor. I remember hearing this tutor speak for the very first time. I was standing with a group of sophomores like myself. After a few moments, I realized as I looked upon the faces of my classmates that we were all feeling the same thing-we were simply awestruck. At first we believed it was what he said; every word seemed extraordinarily thoughtful and his way of speaking was very beautiful. It wasn't until much later that I came to understand the true cause of our astonishment that day. This tutor was moved by the most beautiful and the most sad things, and above all, he was willing to share his deepest thoughts and feelings about these things, with us. Because of this we thought him fearless. His trust in us made us love him, and we wanted more than anything else to match his gift of sincerity with a gift of our own. So we tried very hard to be like him. We too tried to speak from the heart. We recognized his love for the books, and we too wanted to love the books. Attempts to pattern ourselves after this tutor led us to consider the books more carefully than ever before, and likewise to give greater weight to our own infant feelings and thoughts. We tried to love him by loving the things he loved best; and, as it should be, we ended up loving those things, the books, in and for themselves. X �Joe Sachs, Tutor, Annapolis I will never have a better friend, and the college will never have a better tutor. Everything important I know about how to be a tutor I learned from Bill, and I think I am not alone. He knew, first of all, that the proper work of the human intellect is to affirm, and that if its other work of criticizing, questioning, and negating is not in the service of affirmation it is a waste of time. He knew, too, that everything worth studying is bigger than we are, so that the life of every good student is an almost daily battle with discouragement. That was why he never made demands on students, or on anyone but himself. All he did was offer each of us all he had to give, all the time. He knew everything there was to know about giving. No man ever accumulated fewer possessions in forty years. He just couldn't see the point in having anything, except to give it away. He had a car for a little while when I first knew him, until he thought of someone he could give it to. And his was a marriage of true minds. Almost the first thing Joie did after they were married was give away her car. She has a wisdom we older friends of Bill didn't have. She didn't try to change him by one iota. But he changed us. To name some obvious ways: when Bill came to the college we did not read The Brothers Karamazov or the Philoctetes, we read the Divine Comedy in three seminars, and the sophomores had five classes to try, or pretend, to prepare. The program is incomparably better because he was here and was such a fighter. I can tell you that he didn't like to fight. It cost him more misery to win a fight than to avoid it, but he couldn't help fighting when someone else had no other champion. He never compromised because he was never fighting for principles, just for people. Bill's first year in the college, the dean had the good sense to tell him that St. John's wanted him to stay for the rest of his life, if he could find some livable way of being here. I think we all know he never did. There was not a day for him when St. John's was not an agony of too many needs to answer. But his eyes were open, and this agony was an inseparable part of his happiness. He was here a long time before he decided finally to commit his life to St. John's. He saw that choice with complete clarity the day Mr. Klein was buried, in the spot where he too now lies. What was worthy of that good life was worthy also of Bill's. Bill loved Mr. Klein's insistence that Socrates meant just what he said in the Republic, that the love of wisdom and the Jove of learning are the same. There is truth. If we are learning, we are learning it, and that is our way of having it. Bill read the same books over and over and over, with an intensity that never lessened. Just a week ago he told me that he now had the Iliad pretty well by heart. The best books never fail us, no matter how often we fail them. The twenty-second psalm begins: "My God, my God, why hast thou forsaken me?" But it is followed by the twenty-third, "The Lord is my shepherd, I shall not want." Bill knew that there was no way to the twenty-third except through the twenty-second. And he loved a little meditation of C. S. Lewis on the death of Charles Williams. Let me appropriate its last sentence. When the idea of Bill O'Grady and the idea of death had met, it was the idea of death that had to change. Martin Cohen, Tutor, Santa Fe In the Fall of 1982 I was a student in Bill O'Grady's Graduate Institute tutorial. I think that during the first few sessions especially, he came across to some of the students as nervous, or apologetic, or somewhat afraid. Something of his stature, I suspect, was apparent even at the beginning to all: the comments he made were too good not to earn respect; he listened, sometimes for a long stretch, as we glanced off the book, and when we needed him, he spoke in a voice which conveyed such consideration, such living with the realities that the book addresses, that the class was transformed from a sequence of reported impressions about a book that was blandly assumed to be great, into a collective endeavor to understand. There was such tenderness in his voice. He was a powerful man, and no special generosity of perception from others was needed for that to be seen. I was shown something about Lear's reunion with Cordelia, Caliban's humanity, courage in facing death in Hopkin's Wreck of the Deutschland, and many other matters, that will remain with me imperishably, and that I could have learned from no one else. For me, I would guess for others, too, the neat partition into strengths and weaknesses that his personality allowed a person willing to judge, or to condescend, to make, did not fundamentally make sense, it did not correspond to the music of his voice or his being. I did not hear a man who was afraid, but a man tremulous before the truth. Each nervous gesture was a Jesson in what a person with the integrity to challenge himself every instant might well choose to be nervous about; his apologies were a disclosure of the workings of aspiration, humility and respect for others. xi �This is my impression of Bill, looking at him, as best I can, with a kind of sight I think he used to transfigure his perception of others-a kind of sight that does not latch on to isolated qualities in order to diminish another human being. I do not know what Bill saw as he looked at the students in his class. I can guess that the person who could easily have been dismissed as stupid, always engaging with the surface of the book, was perceived as offering a sensibleness, an antidote to intellectual presumption, a grounding to the discussion; that he not only saw through the person who wanted to impress others with smart-sounding phrases, but saw through the seeing through, to the core of desire for knowledge that made the person bother with this form of falseness. I know that he felt honored to be with us in that class. And what a kindness it was that he was so free of condescension that he could feel that way. I don't mean that blatant condescensions that many exorcise from their actions, or even subdue in their mind and heart. The lack of condescension I attribute to him is one that is hard to envision, let alone enact, one which opens into a respect so vibrant and unfettered that it becomes reverence. I do not know at all well what heart is in that interesting sense that marries with and enlarges what the mind is, and enlivens such concepts as spirit and soul. As much as any man I ever met, Bill earned the right to use these words in his speech. It is, perhaps, a start to say that the heart sees to the heart of things, and sees the wholeness that is given some meaning and unity by that central core. It was his gift to see us that way; it was also his gift to let us see him that way. His enormous and manifest intensity and caring knit together and pervaded all of his qualities, so that when I discern, for example, that a quality of his like hesitancy is replete with integrity and self-scrutiny, I am not achieving a delving perception of a hidden essence, but accepting an insight he offered me by having the power to so visibly invest every fiber of himself with caring about honesty, integrity, truth and love. But the person who accomplishes such an integration through intensity and caring about the good can, perhaps, see the beginniogs of such a situation in others, and perceive and love what is not so visible in them. Yet Bill did not stop there. He understood not only that frailties are sometimes the radiant emanations from a beautiful heart of things, but that frailties are also frailties, to be answered with compassion and courage, not just explained away. There is greatness in understanding this only after the person knows, through the power of loving appreciation, how not to understand it. Weakness and wrongness cannot be explained away. The simple lyricism of Bill's speech and writing has a firmness and honesty that did not explain away difficulties, but met them with compassion and courage. He could be sharply critical. When I try to look at the heart of this, I imagine I see several things: I see that his harshness was often directed toward harshness, his condescension, if it could be called that, was directed toward condescension, and was not a fundamental condescension of the heart. I glimpse a depth of perception he had, which knows how to simultaneously embrace the glory and the painful deficiency of reality, but is bound by the nature of words and emotions to sometimes emphasize one, sometimes another, of these aspects. I see a man who had the courage to throw himself so fully into the awareness of the radiance of others that occasionally he shielded his eyes, due to the vulnerability that was the other face of this courage. He embodied an understanding of that event, which for many remains a strange rhapsody limited to the realm of literature, that radiance is, at once, what we most need, and what we protect ourselves against. Most of all, I remember a statement Bill made that we do not have enough wisdom to be dishonest. His criticisms, and his multi-faceted responses, had great honesty. Bill taught something about heart, without at all abdicating the moral and intellectual imperative of discrimination. To this community, whose mission is so clearly connected with discrimination, and so deeply and elusively connected with other matters, his loss, and the legacy and challenge I think he leaves behind, are incalculable. It is hard, perhaps unwise, perhaps impossible, to institutionalize a commitment to heart, in the same way that one can insist on increasing clarity of discrimination. We can caress a small fragment about heart and mind in Pascal, hoping it will yield its secret, or find other writings that explicitly talk about heart, but we have lost a man who brought huge resources of mind and heart to all the works. I know he loved St. John's; I know he wanted it to be better than it is. And while I cannot claim to know what he hoped for, or to be a mediator who could articulate his legacy, I offer a last impression: Bill knew how to revere a book, and bring a steady commitment to intelligent inquiry, yet I imagine him saying, tenderly, and only to those who want to listen, that one can read book after book, and talk about them with a kind of intelligence, but it doesn't matter unless something else is present. Remember to look for, and long for, what that might be. Once, after another memorial service in this room, I spoke with Bill briefly. He made a comment about the way a community acknowledges the passing of one of its members. Somehow, in a sentence, he conveyed a depth of respect for the way a community can perform that function, can show a collective grace and appropriateness that a single person cannot presume to possess. And in that moment, I felt his gratitude that he was a part of a community. He lived his life with a perception of the preciousness of people and things, that is, perhaps, only given to those who know something about their own mortality. I offer my prayer that this man, who gave so many gifts, receive a gift of goodness and peace. Xll �Mary Hannah Jones, Alumna, Annapolis The following text was composed for this collection. Bill O'Grady was the best teacher I have ever known, the best teacher I can even imagine. He set no limit on the time and attention and concern he gave to St. John's students. He gave to all of us without measure. He told me once that he had chosen to be a teacher because teaching is the life of service. I never understood fully what he meant by the life of service or what it was for him to lead that life, but I do know that Bill 0' Grady was always holding himself out for other people, always straining every nerve to be of service to his students and his friends. As we all know, the life of service took its toll on Bill O'Grady. That generosity which he made his life's work required everything of him. The strength to sustain the effort it demanded and the courage to endure the vulnerability it entailed took every ounce of resolution he could summon up. It was, I think, the common experience of his students and friends to find that for all his frankness and openness there was finally something mysterious and even awesome about Bill O'Grady. The thing that was mysterious about him was also what was most moving about him: the strength and the passion that sustained his arduous life of service. Once when he was teaching a class on Sophocles' Oedipus at Colon us I heard him say something about what he hoped would come out of his teaching. He said that he hoped that some day, when his students were much older and in some sort of despair, they would be able to remember how beautiful Sophocles was, and that memory would somehow sustain them. He thought it was possible that the beauty and wisdom of certain old stories might have the power to sustain us through all the sorrow and dismal failure of ordinary human life, which is a wonderful possibility indeed. He was always striving, despite all the darkness of the world which he so keenly felt, to hold out certain possibilities to his students and friends: that passion might add something to intellect and the heart inform the mind, that even pain and sadness might be a sign that something is still alive in us that is worth keeping alive, that after the experience of a thousand failures it might still be a good thing to make one more attempt, that the world might after all be a place in which there could be shining deeds of virtue and secret acts of love. Perhaps all the darkness of the world has now been utterly dissolved for Bill 0' Grady. It is now our task in our loneliness for him to keep ourselves open to those possibilities he spoke of so passionately. It is difficult to compare Bill O'Grady with anyone else-he was always so completely himself. But there is a man in one of Nabokov's essays who reminds me of Bill. This friend of Nabokov's had, Nabokov says, the moral equivalent of perfect pitch. I think something like that could be said about Bill. He had some sort of inner orientation that gave him an unfailing sense of what was important in books and in life. He knew what mattered and he had the courage and resolve to stake everything on what mattered. And this also was something he shared with his students and friends. Bill was somehow able to elicit by virtue of his own moral seriousness a truth in our minds and hearts that but for him would never have existed. Though I doubt that he would approve of my saying so, I think Bill had a deeper feeling for justice than anyone I have known. I don't mean justice in the ordinary sense of the word (he told me once that devils were just) but in the sense he gives the word in his Oedipus at Colonus lecture, which is not unrelated to the ordinary sense. Bill could give voice to truths he felt deeply and let them fill the world for that moment for him and for us. There is a kind of justice in that, the justice of allowing each thing to speak out what is in it. He could find in his wide sympathy a place for everything and time to tell its story. I think Bill was a little like his own characterization of Philoctetes. What seemed true to him at the time he gave complete expression to, and though those things might not be logically compatible with what he said at some other time, it would have been unjust to have left them unsaid. It is difficult to find words adequate to describe the experience of being in one of his classes. He was unlike any other teacher I have ever known. I remember the first few days I was in his sophomore Greek class. The keenness and concentrated intensity of his intelligence were almost frightening. We were all stunned into silence by his brilliance, until we realized that the intensity of his mind was matched by the depth of his patience. He was able to extend his sympathy to any student's thoughts however feeble. His love and knowledge of the texts was astounding, but still more impressive to me now is his never losing sight of who we were and what we were awkwardly trying to do. He always conveyed the sense that those monuments of unaging intellect which we properly venerate are themselves in the service of ordinary, obscure human beings, and our own most important task as students of the liberal arts was to begin to discover whether we were beasts like Typhon or gentler, simpler animals. He told me once that the things he said in class and in conversation came from the students-he could not have said those things without them. At the time that puzzled me enormously. I could not believe that he said such wonderful xiii �things just on the spur of the moment, still less that those things came somehow from the students. But now I think I understand what he meant. When I was in class with him I felt that I could share his vision of the world-it was as if I could see things for the moment with his eyes. And I think that was partially true for him also. The way he saw things changed a little on account of the students and that is what he meant by saying he could not have spoken so well without them. He said his writings always came out of his classes. I like to think that there is some faint trace of those of us who were his students in those wonderful things he wrote. That sense of having had a shared vision of the world means more to me now than any specific thing I learned from him. The gesture of his I most loved and most associated with him as a teacher was his outstretched right hand, extended so generously to so many students over so many years. I think it always came as a surprise to his students that Bill could speak with such vehemence and passion about what he thought needed to be said, but also listen with such discernment and sympathy to what other people had to say. He had a kind of reticent courtesy and delicacy about other people's thoughts and feelings that was amazing. Something that particularly moved me about him was that although he hated guile and deceit he would on occasion allow deceit to be practiced on him. He told me that one of his favorite parts of the Odyssey is where Nausicaa tells her father that she wants to clean all the linen for the sake of her brothers, who are eitheoi thalethontes and always calling for fresh clothes for the dance, but her father knows in his heart that she is thinking of her marriage and yields to her request. I think Bill was always allowing things to pass unnoticed to spare other people embarrassment or distress, knowing full well in his heart that the truth was otherwise. His sense of the suffering in other people's lives, even in the most ordinary lives, was remarkable. He told me once that the most important thing the Judeo-Christian tradition had brought to the heritage of the Greeks was the capacity to give weight to the suffering of obscure people and to enable us to see a kind of tragedy in their lives. There is a passage in Middlemarch that reminded me of Bill as soon as I read it. Speaking of common sorrows Eliot says, "That element of tragedy which lies in the very fact of frequency, has not yet wrought itself into the coarse emotion of mankind; and perhaps our frames could hardly bear much of it. If we had a keen vision and feeling of all ordinary human life, it would be like hearing the grass grow and the squirrel's heart beat, and we should die of that roar which lies on the other side of silence. As it is, the quickest of us walk about well wadded with stupidity." Bill knew that element of tragedy if anyone ever did, and perhaps that is why his frame had to bear so much. Bill told me once that the surest proof of the resurrection for the disciples was not the opened empty tomb but the abundant joy flowing into the hearts of the faithful. I am not one of the faithful but I cannot make my heart dark and empty enough to accord with a world in which his spirit has been extinguished forever. Many of us used to be angry with Bill for not caring for and protecting that seed of fire in him as Odysseus does when first in the land of the Phaiacians. But now I hope that the God in whom Bill trusted has done that for him, has blown that spark into a flame with the brightness of a star, and has given him the beauty that all of us who loved him thought he already possessed but which he could somehow never see. I know that Bill thought that something like that was possible. I want to believe that he was right in that, as he was right in so many other things. xiv �The earliest of the writings in this collection is from Bill O'Grady's twenty-first year. As a senior at Notre Dame, he was already the master of a powerfully direct style, and of an intellect that cut to the heart of whatever was before it. One can discern changes in his later writings: he never again buried any of his thinking in footnotes; he revised his opinion of the course of Hegel's political thinking; and he probably moderated his revulsion at Aristotle's "natural slaves" and Plato's "noble lie." But there is nothing that one could call development in his thinking; it was fully mature when he stepped from college. The final paragraphs of that earliest essay outline the program for a life from which he never departed, and of which the publication of these writings is an extension: to make his own experience of the eternal accessible to others, to share the grace of the gifts he possessed, and to use teaching as a way to let the love of truth overflow into a love of human beings. The authors with whom he chose to dwell did change through the years, from the modern philosophers to the ancient, and finally to half-adozen or so poets with whom his spirit was most at home. There is, however, no necessary or best order in which to read his writings. Each of them lets its topic occupy the whole world while it is being considered, a way of proceeding which he called "justice" in his lecture on Oedipus at Colonus. And the division here into groups is an arbitrary separation of things that overlap and impinge everywhere and in every way. Lear finds his way into a lecture on De Anima, because whatever is to be filled from outside must first become empty. But if that were the whole story of human life, Diotima's definition of love would be the last word on it; since it is not, Duns Scotus' re-definition of love turns up in every kind of context. Poets, philosophers, psalmists, and theologians were not in rivalry, as Bill 0' Grady read them, but complementary: each helped him press his thinking and imagination toward their ultimate object, with an intensity of intelligent passion that blazed into light in lecture after lecture. Only two of Bill O'Grady's lectures have appeared before in this journal, and only one ever found its way into the college bookstore. Many were given on only one campus, and then sometimes only in the summer or outside the regular Friday night series. Two lectures were originally written for audiences outside the college and on prescribed topics (courage and "dark times"), and three brief pieces were composed to be read to one or another of his classes. A few of these writings have been published in Energeia and other student magazines. Bill made no effort to get any of his writings to a wider audience, but he always said yes when any editor asked him for one. Everything that could readily be found appears here, including his three remarkable student theses. Gratitude for help in unearthing various of these buried treasures is due to William O'Brien, Burnet Davis, Mary Hannah Jones, and Kathryn Kinzer; and Walter Sterling has been the most generous of editors. Joe Sachs XV ��THE ST. WINTER JoHN's REVIEW 1986 Odysseus Among the Phaiakians When Odysseus awakens alone on Ithaka after an absence of twenty years, the land looks strange to him and he fears that he has been betrayed by the Phaiakians, who promised to take him home. Odysseus says, "Come, let me count my goods and look them over," lest something have been taken away. "So speaking, he counted up the surpassingly beautiful tripods and caldrons, and the gold and all the fine woven clothing. Of these things nothing at all was missing." Having returned home, Odysseus needs to know what he has brought with him, what he has to offer. The most important things, the things he most cares about, the things he must possess if he is again to be husband to Penelope, father to Telemachus, son to Laertes, king to his people, are not things that can be counted and looked over. Still there is some solace in counting what can be counted, and finding that of these nothing is lacking. But in the measure that Odysseus is able to trust that he has also managed to return home with what is most important, with a heart that is whole and brave, he is greatly indebted to the Phaiakians, the people of Scheria, among whom he stayed for three days. They are indebted to him as well, as I shall try to show. My attempt here is to understand something of what happens while Odysseus is among the Phaiakians. Odysseus' encounter with the Phaiakians immediately prior to his homecoming is not a chance encounter. Two assemblies of the gods on Olympus (recounted in books one and five) have been held to arrange that his return, which is clearly a big and difficult matter, should come about in the right way. In particular, both when Athena comes to Nausikaa in the form of a dream, bid- ''Odysseus Among the Phaiakians'' appeared in the July 1979 issue of The Review. 1HE ST. JOHN'S REVIEW ding her to think of her marriage and to do her laundry, and when Athena herself goes through the city calling the Phaiakians to assembly, she is said by Homer to be "devising the return of great-hearted Odysseus." The assembly culminates with Odysseus weeping bounclless tears as he hears the story of the fall of Troy. We must try to understand in what way the encounter with Nausikaa is important for Odysseus, supplies him with something needful; and, we must try to understand the meaning of the tears shed by Odysseus as he hears his greatest victory sung. The premise of my attempt to understand is that according to Homer the gods sometimes make available to human beings what they need most. That Odysseus' needs as he comes to the land of the Phaiakians are urgent and delicate appears most vividly in this simile describing his shelter during the first night. ''As when a man buries a firebrand beneath the dark embers in a remote place where there are no neighbors, and saves the seed of fire, having nowhere else from which to kindle fire, so Odysseus buried himself in the leaves." The fire has almost died in Odysseus; only a seed remains from which however the full blaze of fire might grow again. But if the seed dies, there is no other source from which fire might be kindled. And this seed has come to be, in a strange way, outside of Odysseus: he must dispose of it, protect it, care for it, in an anxiously selfconscious way. Odysseus and Nausikaa are together only twice, the second time very briefly. Nausikaa asks Odysseus to remember her, since he owes her his life. Odysseus, promising to remember her always, uses a different and extraordinary word: "You have given me my human life" (the difference in Greek between bios and zoe). One could almost translate: "You have en-humaned me." Odysseus means, to begin with, that when he first saw 1 �Nausikaa in her loveliness and innocence he knew for certain that the world does not contain only, or even chiefly, monsters. He has, after all, seen so many monsters that as he swims toward the island of Scheria Athena must specially intervene to supply him with presence of mind when, afraid of being dashed against the sharp rocks or, again, of being carried farther out to sea, a third fear suddenly rises up-a monster may appear. Thus the wholly convincing gentleness of N ausikaa' s appearance is immeasurably important. But even more important, perhaps, is a discovery Odysseus is led to make about himself. He hears himself saying to Nausikaa: "I have never seen anything like you, neither man nor woman. Wonder takes me as I look on you. Yet in Delos once I saw such a thing, by Apollo's altar. I saw the stalk of a young palm shooting up. I had gone there once, and with a following of a great many people, on that journey which was to mean hard suffering for me. And as, when I looked upon that tree, my heart admired it long, since such a tree had never yet sprung up from the earth, so now, lady, I admire you and wonder." Not only is Nausikaa herself invincibly lovely and innocent, but she reminds of other lovely and innocent things seen long ago and almost forgotten: there have always been such things in the world. Above all, Odysseus becomes aware that just as long ago-so much violence ago and so much hideousness ago-his heart was capable of responding in awe and gratitude to the appearance of lovely and innocent things, wholly without reference to how they might be useful to him; so now his heart is capable of the same: it is somehow the same heart. This is a very difficult thing to know, and it is the sort of thing that human beings, sometimes, most need to know. This is the deepest meaning, perhaps, of Odysseus' gratitude to Nausikaa for having been an indispensable source of his human life. Athena in arousing Nausikaa to go to the river where she will meet Odysseus is said to be devising the return of Odysseus. The very same words are used as she summons the Phaiakians to assembly. Why is the assembly, described in book eight, of such importance for Odysseus, even before he begins to tell his story? Near the beginning of the meeting Odysseus weeps, though he tries to conceal it, as he hears the minstrel sing of a quarrel between Achilles and Odysseus. Then athletic contests take place, and Odysseus' heart seems to lighten. After his victory in throwing the discus, he speaks "in language more blithe," as Lattimore translates. Again, Odysseus seems to share fully in the enjoyment of all the Phaiakians as Demodicus sings of the adultery of Aphrodite with Ares, although this enjoyment is perhaps not altogether easy to understand. (The gods are of course inunortal, so that their doings always seem somehow comic, but here Hephaestus is so pained as to utter the wish that 2 he had not been born; moreover, Poseidon's urgent attempts, apparently inspired by compassion for Hephaestus, to bring to an end the unseemly spectacle of the vulgar laughter of Apollo and Hermes, remind us disconcertingly that Poseidon is other and more than the mere persecutor of Odysseus.) After these incidents, and before he reveals his name, Odysseus weeps again, but this time in a vastly deeper and wider way, as he hears the song, which he himself requested, of the strategem of the horse and the fall of Troy. What do these tears mean? How have they come about? Is it good that Odysseus should shed them? Before trying to understand this happening, let us listen to a translation of Homer's astounding words: "So the famous singer sang his tale, but Odysseus melted, and from under his eyes the tears ran down, drenching his cheeks. As a woman weeps, lying over the body of her dear husband, who fell fighting for his city and people, as he tried to beat off the pitiless day from city and children; she sees him dying and gasping for breath, and winding her body around him she cries high and shrill, while the men behind her, hitting her with their spears on the back and shoulders, force her up and lead her away into slavery to have hard work and sorrow, and her cheeks are wracked with pitiful weeping. So Odysseus shed piteous tears from under his brows." The earlier tears, the tears over the quarrel with Achilles who has died, are perhaps not too difficult to understand. But what of these final tears, necessary before Odysseus can name himself? How can the tears of the victor be likened to the tears of the vanquished, the tears of the sacker of cities to the tears of a woman trying to hold on to her dying husband, which she cannot, to shelter him from further blows from his enemies, which she cannot? I think the pain in Odysseus' soul at this moment has two sources. The first has to do with Odysseus' request to the singer that he sing kosmos hippou which means, to begin with, the ornament of the horse, the device of the horse, the horse as the product of resourcefulness, artfulness, cleverness, the horse as the manifestation of wit and talent considered in isolation from all else. But kosmos hippou, as the singer well knows and truthfully sings, means finally and fully the world of the horse, the world out of which the horse came to be, the world of prodigious single-mindedness, of goals to which all else becomes subject, of the breaching of Troy as the end, an end justifying all things, including the perversion of worship represented by the horse. Again, the world of the horse is the world the horse leads to, the fall of a holy city, the broken-heartedness, homelessness and utter forlornness of Andromache. Odysseus weeps because he is deeply implicated in the perversion of high things and in vast human suffering, and because his delight in the play and display of his own incomparable resourcefulness has in WINTER 1986 �some way distracted his attention from what he has been implicated in. But this sorrow felt by Odysseus, a deeper sorrow perhaps than most human beings ever know, is not the deepest sorrow felt by Odysseus, who has come to Scheria from the island of Calypso, where deathlessness and agelessness are available to human beings. The deepest and widest sorrow that Odysseus feels, which somehow makes bearable all that is involved in facing his responsibility for the fall of a city whose men and women also prayed to Zeus, is sorrow over a world-the world of mortals-in which all dear things are doomed to failure; which attempts, however, except in the eyes of utterly base human beings, are never objects of scorn or condescension. The breadth and impartiality of Odysseus' sorrow shows itself again in book twenty-three. When Odysseus and Penelope are finally in their bed together, and after they have made love, Odysseus tells stories. He begins after the fall of Troy, and what he tells are "all cares, both so many as he had placed upon human beings and so many as he himself, sorrowing, toiled through." As Odysseus weeps these tears in which the whole mortal world is bathed, Alkinous, king of the Phaiakians, asks Demodicus to cease from singing, and tells Odysseus that the time has come for the stranger to reveal his name. But Alkinous, who surely suspects strongly that this stranger is Odysseus, in whom Poseidon is going to be exceptionally interested, if he is in the fate of any storm-driven wanderer, "digresses" remarkably. After requiring of Odysseus that he declare his name, he recounts what he has heard from his father, namely that some day Poseidon, angry with the Phaiakians for giving conveyance to some man, will turn the returning ship to stone and surround the city with a great wall to hide it. Alkinous gives Odysseus a chance to lie, to deny that he is Odysseus, or at least to present himself as an Odysseus on good terms with Poseidon. At any rate, if Odysseus does present himself as persecuted by Poseidon, he had better have some great good thing to offer the Phaiakians, in gratitude for which this people would be willing to run a very great risk-this people which has enjoyed, ever since its removal from the vicinity of the Cyclops who harried them savagely, a perfectly riskless existence; an existence, moreover, requiring no patience: the fruit trees are always in season, and human sorrows are understood to be fashioned by the gods "so that there will be a song for men who are to come" -as if to say: let's get the sorrows and the lives over with, so that the song can begin. And it turns out, after Odysseus has told his story, that it seems to the Phaiakians that he has given them a great good thing, namely, the most wonderful stories they or anyone else have ever heard; moreover, he has somehow THE ST. JOHN'S REVIEW brought them to understand that it is not quite right for human beings who live and choose to live a riskless existence to delight in stories about human beings whose lives are full of risks. The Phaiakians somehow understand, when Odysseus has finished speaking, not only that sheer gratitude for a wonderful gift requires that they try to give Odysseus some good thing in return, namely, conveyance to his homeland, regardless of the risk to themselves; but also that in order truly to possess Odysseus' wonderful stories, genuinely to enter into them, they themselves must run risks, must not lead an altogether sheltered-hence storyless-existence. And so they risk the thing they love best, their access to the sea, for the sake of Odysseus, and for their own sake. It is not entirely clear how their risk turns out, partly because of a textual question: Zeus says to Poseidon either "Turn the ship to stone but do not surround the city with a mountain to hide it" or "Turn the ship to stone and surround it with a huge mountain to hid it" (in Greek the difference between mi!de and mega). But in either case, we are told by Homer that Poseidon turned the returning ship to stone "and then he went away." II. Now let us consider for awhile the tales Odysseus tells to the Phaiakians during the wondrously long night of the assembly. The tales are full of monsters of various kinds and it is difficult for us to understand the status of these beings. Perhaps it would be good for us to keep in mind Socrates' statement in the Phaedrus that to know myself includes knowing whether I am a being as fierce and complicated as the monster Typhon or one to whom a gentler and simpler nature belongs-it seems difficult to speak of the human soul without speaking of monsters of one kind or another. But however uncertain we m(ly be about what account to give of the Cyclops, Skylla, the Siren and others, Odysseus' tale is never unintelligible to us. This is so, I think, because centrally the tale is about human companionship, human pain at its being fractured, and human joy at its being restored. As we read in the first lines of the Odyssey, Odysseus suffered many sorrows deep in his heart struggling to achieve his soul and the return of his companions. These two objects of his striving seem to involve each other deeply. The return of his companions turns out to be impossible. This impossibility is rooted both in the nature of the world-the adverse winds holding Odysseus and his companions on the island of the Sun cannot change until the prohibition against eating the sacred cattle has been violated; and in the nature of the companions-as the encounter with the Lotus-eaters indicates, to become forgetful of one's return follows from not being ready to 3 �bring back tidings: unlike Odysseus, his companions are not able in imagination and speech to make their life before the departure to Troy and their life after that moment into one life-that is why they cannot return. But, as the next line informs us, what Odysseus desired most of all was to draw his companions to himself (erusthai). This was his ultimate task in relation to them, as theirs was actively to allow themselves to be drawn to Odysseus. In this task both Odysseus and his companions succeed. Their success receives its perfect seal in Elpenor's words to Odysseus in the underworld, that is, from beyond life in which of course it is always possible to reappraise what has happened. Elpenor, the youngest of Odysseus' companions, wholly affirms his life in the companionship. He asks Odysseus to remember him, and he asks that the oar with which he rowed be erected on his burial mound as a memorial to the time when ''I was among my companions." These final words spoken by Elpenor, and the affirmation they contain, render articulate and therefore somehow bearable the sheer gesture which Odysseus describes as "the most piteous sight my eyes beheld in my sufferings as I questioned the ways of the sea": six of his companions seized by Skylla reach out their hands toward an impotent Odysseus and utter his name. Let me try to sketch briefly what happens to this companionship in the tale he tells the Phaiakians from the Adventure of the Bag of Winds to the Adventure of the Stag, and then make a suggestion about how such stories come to take shape. When Odysseus sleeps, and while his ships are within sight of lthaka, his companions open the bag given to Odysseus by King Aolius and a hurricane drives the ships far from Ithaka. Odysseus immediately considers throwing himself into the sea and ending his life. The alternative, as he puts it to himself, is not simply to go on living, but rather "to go on being among men." All that Odysseus and his companions have shared during ten years at Troy seems to stand revealed as mutual infidelity: there is mistrust, jealousy and resentment at ingratitude on the one side, and on Odysseus' side absent-mindedness, lack of imagination and complacency. That Odysseus brings these charges against himself is clear from two considerations: first, in narrating the adventure to the Phaiakians, Odysseus speaks of the prospect of an early return having been ruined by "our own folly;" and, second, Odysseus after the fact is able to reconstruct in his previously inattentive imagination the pained and resentful conversation among his men which he did not hear because he was asleep. Odysseus decides to endure in silence and remain, but he conceals himself (kaluptesthai) and withdraws, as, we understand, do his men: no one has the heart to look anyone else in the face. In what follows the aloneness of Odysseus is not 4 spoken of, but rather presented in three tableaux. When they come to the island of the Lastrygonians, after the adventure of the winds, the other nine ships drop anchor inside the harbor, Odysseus' ship alone outside the harbor. On this island, as again on the island of Circe, Odysseus alone climbs up to a high place of outlook and there takes his stand, a solitary figure against the sky. But then, on the island of Circe, a sort of miracle happens: as Odysseus is returning to the ship, "Some one of the gods pitied me, being alone, and sent a great stag with towering antlers right in my very path.'' Odysseus slays the stag and, with much trouble on account of its size, manages to carry it back to the ship. And then "I threw him down by the ship and roused my companions, standing beside each man in turn and speaking to him in kind words: 'Dear friends, sorry as we are, we shall not yet go down to the house of Hades. Not until our day is appointed. Come then, while there is something to eat and drink by the fast ship, let us think of our food, and not be worn out with hunger.' So I spoke, and they listened at once to me and obeyed me, and unconcealing themselves (ek-kaluptesthai, the undoing of the concealment and withdrawal resulting from the Adventure of the Bag of Winds), along the shore of the unresting sea, they wondered at the stag; for truly he was a very big beast. But after they had looked at him and their eyes had enjoyed him, they washed their hands and set about preparing a communal high feast." Well, I think that it is not exactly the stag they are wondering at, big though it be, but rather, shyly, they are wondering at the miracle of the restoration of companionship and the possibility of communion that has somehow taken place. A number of important events affecting their reconstituted fellowship follow, events which show that not only has their fellowship been re-constituted, but it has been constituted at a deeper level. The next morning Odysseus addresses his men in a way he has never addressed them before. He says that none of them, including himself, knows the place of the rising of the sun or of its setting: they are deeply ignorant regarding the encompassing things. But perhaps, all the same, there is some metis, some device, some plan, says polumetis Odysseus, the man of many devices. Then he says: "But I do not think so." Odysseus is at a loss, and says so out loud. Events, however, arrange themselves, and Odysseus must risk emasculation, that is, in some way risk his relation to Penelope for the sake of his men whom Circe has turned into swine. This adventure has a happy ending, and Odysseus' men, having feared that he was lost, tell him in winged words, '"0 great Odysseus, we are as happy to see you returning as if we had come back to our own Ithakan country." But this moment is not enough. As Circe says to all of them, "Now you are all WINTER 1986 �dried out, dispirited from the constant thought of your hard wandering, nor is there any spirit in your festivity, because of so much suffering." Odysseus recognizes the truth of this: the companionship, which is not forever, needs festive time spent together. And Odysseus must let his companions tell him how much time is necessary. They come to him at the end of a year spent on Circe's island and say that the time has come to go. Once more they make for home. But of course only Odysseus returns. The others perish at sea for having eaten the sacred cattle of the Sun, after valiantly resisting this temptation for a long time. In response to their urgent plea not to measure their endurance by his own endurance, nor to ask of them that they make his endurance their own measure, Odysseus wanders off while his companions choose likely death at sea over starvation. Once again, Odysseus knows exactly what they say to each other without having been present. He knows their ways and respects their dignity. Above all, he has heard Elpenor, the youngest and most foolish of them all, who fell to his death because of athesphatos oinos, IDOre wine than even a god could say," pronounce his blessing upon the time "I was among my companions." Let me try to say a few words concerning this story Odysseus tells to the Phaiakians about his experiences in companionship in the middle of a world populated by monsters. How does it become a story rather than a mere sequence of happenings? For me this question means especially: how does Odysseus know that the appearing of the mighty stag was brought about by some one of the gods-he does not say which one-who pitied him because he was alone? For after all, only on this "interpretation" of the appearing of the stag does the stag become the beginning of reconciliation and the restoration of communion. My suggestion would be that, although· at the 11 THE ST. JOHN'S REVIEW time of this happening Odysseus was somehow aware of its meaning, he comes to comprehend its full meaning only when he puts it into a story. I mean two things by this. First, Odysseus does not describe his feelings of loneliness; rather, he describes one ship outside a harbor and nine within, and a man twice taking his stand by himself on a high place of outlook. Again, he describes himself and the others withdrawing into concealment and emerging from concealment. Happenings seem to be more important than feelings for story-telling. But second, and more important, and in some way qualifying my first suggestion, I think it is of decisive importance that Odysseus tells his story to Alkinous and Arete, not to himself. It is probably true that important stories, true stories, the narration of the truth of what happened, must be prepared in solitude: perhaps Odysseus could have said nothing true about what happened if he had spent any fewer than seven years in concealment with Calypso. But, I suggest, the most important truths of any story are the truths we hear for the first time as we tell the story to someone else, try to reach his soul with our words, try to make him understand how it was. I cannot, of course, prove this, but I firmly believe that when Odysseus heard himself telling Allcinous and Arete that the stag appeared because some one of the gods pitied him in his aloneness, he knew immediately that this was the truth of the matter, although he had never before said any such thing to himself, even tentatively. Let us leave Odysseus for now. He has many troubles still to face when he reaches Ithaka. But for now we can with Homer be happy as the ship of the Phaiakians carries him homeward: "She carried a man with a mind like the gods for counsel, one whose spirit up to this time had endured much, suffering many pains: the wars of men, hard crossing of the big waters; but now he slept still, forgetful of all he had suffered." 5 �Odysseus with his Father The Irishman Robert Fitzgerald, one of our translators, writes this about the pertinence of the Odyssey: "Electronic brains may help us to use our heads but will not excuse us from that duty, and as to our heartscardiograms cannot diagnose what may be most ill about them, or confirm what is best. The faithful woman and the versatile brave man, the wakeful intelligence open to inspiration or grace-these are still exemplary for our kind, as they always were and always will be." What I want to ask is: what can we learn from the Odyssey about how the wakeful intelligence, as we see it in Penelope and Odysseus, can be open to inspiration or grace, how it can keep itself open to these. This question is another version of the question we were wondering about at the end of our last meeting, and about which Ann-Martine spoke so beautifully: how do the gods appear to human beings in time of peace? Let me try to make this question more specific by presenting some thoughts about the coming together of Odysseus with his Jather. When Odysseus sees Laertes for the first time in twenty years "with great misery in his heart, and oppressed by old age, Odysseus stood under a towering pear tree and shed tears for him, and deliberated then in his heart and his spirit whether to embrace his father and kiss him and tell him everything, how he was come again to his dear native country, or question him first about everything, and make trial of him. ''Odysseus with his Father'' was originally written as a preceptorial paper (of the kind the students were asked to write) in Santa Fe; the second paragraph refers to a student who read a paper at a previous meeting. Later "Odysseus with his Father" was delivered as a summer lecture in Annapolis. 6 In the division of his heart this way seemed best to him, first to make trial of him, and speak in words of mockery.'' Thus Lattimore. It is useful to know two things about the Greek. First, "to make trial of" is the midclle-voice peiraomai, which means as much "to make trial of oneself in relation to" as "to make trial of the other." Second, "mockery" translates kertomios, which means literally "heart-cutting." It is clear before long that the heart into which Odysseus' words cut is his own. Why must Odysseus come together with his father by speaking words that cut into his own heart? · Let us listen to Fitzgerald's fine and revealing translation of the story polumetis Odysseus tells his father: "Yes, he said, I can tell you all those things. I come from Rover's Passage, where my home is, and I'm King Allwoe's only son. My name is Quarrelman." And so on. This "story" is inept, clumsy, unconvincing. It is the only such story Odysseus tells in the whole poem. Why is this so? I think that Odysseus tells his father a story because he needs time to be near his father before revealing himself, and he gives himself time by doing what he knows he can do-telling stories. The story is inept because Odysseus is so full of feeling, so little "self-possessed" in the ordinary sense of the term: the story is illcomposed because he is ill-composed. Why is this so, and in particular why does Odysseus need to give himself time before he can embrace his father? I think there are two reasons for this. The first is that it is never a light or easy matter to embrace in its actual presence a long hoped-for thing, particularly when one's hoping has been of that special kind that we call hoping against hope. And indeed there has been for Odysseus WINTER 1986 �much to hope against. Eight years before returning to Ithaka Odysseus hears from his mother in Hades who died from grief for him that his father's life is nothing but sorrow and longing on his account and that harsh old age is upon him. During the next eight years he hears nothing of his father. In this time his imaginings about coming together with Penelope and Telemachos must have been full of uncertainties and anxieties. But of his father-of the chances of finding him alive-how often did he dare let his thoughts turn that way? And yet how often, thinking or not, must this hope have died within him and then been re-born, the re-birth being as painful as the death? I think that somehow, as Odysseus stands in the orchard, all of this must repeat itself in him, so as to be finally settled. And that is one reason why he needs to give himself time in his father's presence, before embracing him. A second reason is something very difficult to speak of, and I shall say only a few words. I think that as people become middle-aged, it is hard for them to be willing to see how old their parents have become, and what suffering is visible in their faces. This seems especially so when one is aware, as Odysseus polustonos surely is, of the extent of one's own responsibility for that suffering. And so Odysseus must force himself really to look at his father. Finally, his body tells him when he has had enough time, or, rather, when he cannot stand to have any more: "and now in his nostrils there was a shock of bitter force as he looked on his father. He sprang to him and embraced and kissed and then said to him .... " What is appropriate for Odysseus to say to his father? What is the proper way for him to reveal himself? Laertes is not Telemachos or Euricleia or Eumaios or Penelope. Who are these two, father and son, for each other? One might have expected Odysseus to have given much thought to this matter; and to have composed a plan. But clearly he has no plan, nor has he at this moment the self-possessionto design one on the spot. Casting about wildly, as it seems to me, he first tries the scar, the wound inflicted by the tusk of a boar. But he immediately knows that this is not right. Let us step back for a moment and think for ourselves about who Laertes might be and what wanderings about his son might be on his mind. In Book 1 Athena disguised as an old family friend speaks to Telemachos of "the aged hero Laertes." We readily see him as aged-we hear again and again of the shroud being prepared for him-but how is he a hero? ln Book 22 the vile hands of Melanthios hold "the ancient shield, all fouled with mildew, of the hero Laertes, which he had carried when he was a young man. TilE ST. JOHN'S REVIEW It had been lying there, and the stitches were gone on the handstraps. '' In Book 4 a desperate Penelope thinks to ask Laertes for help, but Eurucleia dissuades her from adding to his afflictions, speaking as if he were nothing but an afflicted one. Moreover, our questions about Laertes as hero come not only from his age and sorrow. We are pretty certain that the Phaiakians know no songs about Laertes. In that sense the son seems vastly to have surpassed the father. And that is not an easy thing to live with, either for fathers or for sons. We wonder why Odysseus became king of Ithaka at so early an age (20 perhaps). And yet we also know something altogether wonderful about Laertes. In the early books of the poem, we hear from Mentor, Athena, and Penelope that Odysseus, young as he was, was a wonderfully good and just king. (A few years ago a young friend of mine, then 17, told me she liked that part a lot-that someone young could be good at something important-because in general what she had learned from the Odyssey-which seemed true to her but a little sad-is that nobody can understand anything abouHhe world until they're middle-aged.) All three witnesses praise the young Odysseus above all for having been, in his kingliness, "as gentle as a father." Well, no one, I think, can be as gentle as a father without having learned gentleness from his father, and so Odysseus' debt is immeasurable, unsayable. But something must be said, at this very moment, by Odysseus to Laertes. What words will come, and what will be their source? We remember that long ago Athena told Telemachos, as he was making his beginning in the world: "Some of it you yourself will see in your own heart, and some the divinity will put in your mind." Odysseus says to his father after 20 years: "Let me tell you of the trees in the well-worked orchard, which you gave me once. I asked you of each one, when I was a child, following you through the garden. We we,nt among the trees, and you named them all and told me what each one was, and you gave me 13 pear trees· and 10 apple trees, and 40 fig trees; and so also you named the 50 vines you would give. Each of them bore regularly, for there were grapes at every stage upon them, whenever the seasons of Zeus came down from the sky upon them, to make them heavy." Odysseus tells his father that nothing in his life, which to such an extent has become matter for song, has been more important to him than a certain afternoon spent with his father when he was 10 years old and beginning to learn of the seasons of Zeus. My question is whether children and parents can speak and hear such words in the world without the grace of the gods. 7 �A Scene from Electra I would like to talk to you about a scene from Sophocles' drama called Electra, the scene in which Electra recognizes the young man standing before her as her brother Orestes, for whose return she has longed and prayed, year after year, but whom she now believes, for apparently "sufficient reason", to be dead. I shall use this scene somewhat freely, though I hope not arbitrarily or arrogantly, because I really want to talk to you about something else-that is, I shall take this extraordinary recognition scene as a sort of parable for the advent of hoped-for and saving truth into the soul, which advent sometimes seems to be a kind of miracle. I shall read you a translation of the scene, and then make a few comments. Let me explain that Orestes has come home in disguise, preceded by a messenger who tells a richly circumstantial and plausible tale of Orestes' death in a chariot race, and himself claiming that the urn he bears contains the ashes of Orestes. Electra now holds the urn. Orestes makes certain the chorus is friendly. Now I quote. Orestes: Then give up this urn, so that you may understand everything. Electra: Do not in the name of God do this to me, stranger. Orestes: Obey him who now speaks, and you shall never go amiss. Electra: Do not, I beseech you, take from me the dearest things. Orestes: I refuse to permit you to keep this. "A Scene from Electra " was written for one of his classes in one of his first years at the college. 8 Electra: 0, I am wretched over you, Orestes, if I shall be deprived of your burial. Orestes: Do not blaspheme. Your lament is not just. Electra: How is it not just that I lament my dead brother? Orestes: It is not fitting for you to utter this phrase. Electra: Am I held in such dishonor by the dead? Orestes: You are held in dishonor by no one; but this is not for you. Electra: It is, if this is indeed the body of Orestes I hold here. Orestes: But it is not the body of Orestes, except dressed up in speech. Electra: Where then is the grave of that miserable one? Orestes: It does not exist; for of the living there is no grave. Electra: What are you saying, lad? Orestes: There is nothing false among the things which I say. Electra: Can it be that the man lives? Orestes: If I have life. Electra: Can you be that one? Orestes: Having looked at my signet-ring, once our father's, learn if I speak true. Electra: 0 dearest light. Orestes: Dearest, I bear witness with you. Electra: 0 voice, have you come? Orestes: No longer learn from another place. Electra: Do I hold you in my arms? Orestes: May you hold me always. Now for my comments: Before she can "understand everything", Electra is required to give up the urn supposed to contain the remains of Orestes. This urn fits perfectly into, and hence WINTER 1986 �represents, the whole context formed by what Electra "already knows". It represents the web of "well-attested facts" into which any new truth must fit, the verisimilar or ''truth-like'', the coherently circumstantial, hence plausible-thus the messenger's description of Orestes' fatal accident during the chariot race is full of detail both highly technical and vivid. And finally it represents the "realistic", i.e. the resigned and the proudly disenchanted, as opposed to the urge to hope against hope. All of this-the merely verisimilar as well as the pathos of having cast off all comforting illusions-Electra must give up if she is to have Truth Itself. And why must she do this? Not because it inherently makes sense, still less because it is the correct method of attaining truth so that universally it should be our policy, but because truth requires it of her here and now. Thus Orestes in response points not to the content of the requirement but to that which, at this moment, utters the requirement: "Obey him who is speaking and you shall never go amiss.'' Moments later, these words break forth from Electra: ua dearest light" -not, we must understand, any socalled "light of reason" within Electra which has searchingly and critically scrutinized a would-be truth and found it admissible, but a light whose source is outside of Electra and which has flooded into the darkest places of her dark and bitter soul. Is it indeed the signet-ring, once their father's, now in the possession of the man claiming to be Orestes, which causes Electra to know that the man who stands THE ST. JOHN'S REVIEW before her is in truth the hoped-for deliverer from the agonies of her existence? Let us see: Electra: "0 voice, have you come? IOrestes: "No longer learn from another place." The word translated as "learn" is punthanomai, which means "to learn by hearsay, having inquired" or in general to learn second-hand, which meaning was decisively determined by the usage of Herodotus. That is, Orestes is saying: Learn that it is I who have come, not through any external signs or proofs, e.g. the signet-ring, or some other human witness, or some coherent account of how my being alive is to be reconciled with the report, including the report given by me, that I was dead-but rather, know that it is I through the very experiencing of my voice; not through the plausibility of the content of what I say but through the joy in your heart when you hear me-that joy must be so strong and deep that it could not possibly have been caused by an imposter or based on delusion. Profoundest joy is caused by a being, not be the mere idea (which may be true or false) of a being. Finally, Electra says "Do I hold you in my arms?" Orestes replies-in the optative mood; it is a prayer"May you hold me always." With the miraculous advent of hoped-for and saving truth into the soul, the agonies of one's life are not yet over. Serene security is not established. But it is possible, in the midst of all agonies, to hold the truth tight against one's breast. Because, in the end, the reason why men have arms is not in order · to ward off, but in order to embrace. I wish you happiness. 9 �About Sophocles' Philoctetes In Sophocles' Philoctetes, Neoptolemus, son of Achilles, addresses to Philoctetes this question: "Then is there not in the world also room for changing one's rrtind back again?" I propose in this lecture to reflect on the meaning of this question within the play (and beyond it) and on the answer given by the play. To do this it will be necessary for me to explore the meanings of two words which occur in the play, the word analabein used by Neoptolemus and the word daimon used by Philoctetes. When N eoptolemus is confronted by Odysseus on his way back to Philoctetes' cave to restore the bow, he declares his intention in this way: "Having sinned a shameful sin, I shall attempt to take-up-and-back-again (analabein)." At the play's end, Philoctetes declares his willingness to go "whither the great destiny (megala Moira) brings me, and the judgment of friends, and the all-subduing daimon, who brought these things to fulfillment.'' (Let me remark parenthetically: my interpretation of these two words does not precede my interpretation of the play as a whole. This procedure implies that one does not understand what a play says from understanding what all the words say but rather that one comes to understand what certain crucial words say from understanding what the play as a whole says. This in tum implies that poetry, dramatic poetry as well as lyric, is essentially a matter of naming things, of pronouncing a revelatory word, prior to which the thing named is not fully present in the world.) Let us return to analabein and daimon. Familiarity with "About Sophocles' Philoctetes" was delivered as a Wednesday night lecture in the spring of 1975. 10 the main lines of action in the play must be presupposed, but it will be helpful to take explicit notice of certain utterances first of Neoptolemus, then of Philoctetes, in the scenes in which we are first introduced to them. Neoptolemus' initial resistance to Odysseus' proposal for capturing Philoctetes' bow by guile culrrtinates in this assertion: "For I was bom to do nothing from base artfulness, neither I myself nor, so they say, he who fathered me forth (ho ekphusas)." Neoptolemus wishes to be worthy of his father, whom he first saw when Achilles lay on his funeral pyre, of whom, living, he has only heard. But the word by which Neoptolemus characterizes Achilles appears to bear special emphasis in this context. (Compare Philoctetes' later denial-more hopeful than confident-that Neoptolemus has done anything exo tou phuteusantos-outside of and alien to him who fathered.) Ho phusas by itself would mean the father, the one who begot, who fathered. But Neoptolemus speaks of himself as having been fathered forth (ek-phusas), fathered out from, placed out from, exposed. Philoctetes is not the only solitary figure in the play. Odysseus counters this assertion by Neoptolemus, as he also couhters his other objections. His blandishments culrrtinate in this promise, whose involuted form brings out the most important point: "Wise (sophos) as well as, the same man, also valiant (agathos) you would be called at the same time (hama)." Odysseus seems to hold out to the New Warrior-the meaning of the name Neoptolemus-the prospect of a wholly new and unprecedented mode of being human. Some men, Nestor for example, are widely called wise; others, perhaps Achilles above all, are widely called valiant; if there is anyone who is-the same man-called both wise and vali- WINTER 1986 �ant it is Odysseus, but only in a certain manner. As he himself says: "Of whatever sort there is need at a given time, such a one am 1''-that is, valiant when circumstances require, wise when that is appropriate. But Odysseus holds out to Neoptolemus a still more prodigious prospect: he, the same man, would be called both wise and valiant at the same time. He would not be subject to that fragmentation and dispersion in tiroe which has been the lot of even the most excellent men hitherto. Neoptolemus' natural endowments and the configuration of events are so in harmony that the world may have a chance to behold in his person and action a fullness hitherto only dreamt of. The young man immediately responds: "I shall act, having dismissed once for all all shame." He uses the aorist participle, indicating that the dismissing of shame is here understood not as a continuing struggle to which one may or may not prove equal, but rather as an event which occupies a moment a moment which recedes further and further into the past as time goes by. Let us now consider Philoctetes' first speech as he addresses Neoptolemus and the sailors: "Do not, having feared me, be struck with hesitation and shrinking back in the face of one who has grown savage away from himself (from apo-agriomaz). '' Philoctetes knows well enough what sort of aspect he must present to strangers, nor does he say that his having grown savage or wild is a matter of appearance only. He does however insist that in growing savage he has grown away (apo) from himself, not, we must understand, merely away from what he once was, so that kindness should be extended in memory of what once had been, but away from what he is right now, from what he truly is. The terrible tension of this position emerges more sharply from the immediate sequel: "But having pitied a wretched man, alone, afflicted so very lonely and friendless, utter a sound." Let us consider the sequence of adjectives: along (monos), lonely (eremos) and friendless (aphilos). A rock lying in the middle of a field can be alone-there can be only one rock, not two-but it cannot be lonely, and no more can it be friendless. That a rock has no friends does not make it aphilos. Only a being which is in itself referred to friendship, to living with friends, only a social being, can be friendless. But the inner referredness to living with friends, without which one is incapable even of being friendless, may not be a simply secure, automatically viable possession. Within the experience of a man who is forced to live for a long time without friends, may not the very referredness to friends and friendship atrophy, so that the man's soul, in respect of its openness to and (prior even to any specific yearning) its relatedness to other men, will shrivel up toward and into the mode of being of a rock, no more capable of being friendless than of having friends? Does not the resistance to this shrivelling up require a sustain1 THE ST. JOHN'S REVIEW ing of the capacity for friendlessness, an active refusal to cease to feel a lack? Thus it seems that there may be brave affirmation, even perhaps a sort of pride, as well as an appeal to pity, in Philoctetes' characterization of himself as "alone, lonely and friendless". Whether or not there is pride in this appeal, there is surely magnificent pride in what Philoctetes says next: "Make exchange. For it is not right, either for me to fail of having you, at least in this matter of exchanging speech, nor for you to fail of having me". Philoctetes asserts that he, too, for all his pain and poverty, has something to offer. What he has to offer Neoptolemus in particular is what we must try to see. But first we must know what it is that Neoptolemus needs and hopes for. This is summoned up by the word analabein, which occurs only this once in Sophocles' extant writings. In his encounter with Odysseus after he has decided to restore the bow, Neoptolemus says that he has sinned (hamartanein), that his sin (hamartia) is shameful and that "I shall attempt to take-up-and-back-again (analabein)". The name of what he hopes to do is analabein. What does this mean? For the moment I shall translate labein as "take". Ana used as a prefix may mean up (anablepo, I look up; anabaino, I go up, I mount) or it may mean back, backwards (anachOreo, I go back, I retreat or withdraw) or it may mean again (anagignosko, I know again, recognize; anamnesis, recollection). Here we are permitted and disposed by the play to take it in all three senses at once. Neoptolemus must attempt to take up-that is, in the first place, take up responsibility for what he has done and is doing. In the scene with Philoctetes in which N eoptolemus reveals his intention to take the archer to Troy, Neoptolemus' resolve to carry out Odysseus' plan is shaken as he touches Philoctetes, weakened by a fresh attack of his sore, in helping him to his feet. The young man says: "I know not whither it is useful to turn the wayless word" and" All is disgusting (literally: "unhandy", duschereia) whenever someone, leaving his own nature, does things which are not fitting for him". But instead of acting on these impulses, or on the other hand setting himself in opposition to them, he literally abdicates, denying that he is an agent at all in the affair. He says: "A great necessity rules over these things". And when Philoctetes says climactically: "I am destroyed, wretch that I am, I have been betrayed. What have you done to me, stranger? Return the weapons to me irnmediately."-his reply is not that he will not or even that he cannot but rather that "it is not possible", not perhaps because of some choice he has made but rather because "both the just and the advantageous make me (poiein) obey those in authority" as if "the just and the advantageous" were authentically agents; the 'T' has disappeared in favor of a "me" who is the object of a making (poiein). The taking-up which Neoptolemus must at- 11 �tempt, which he has already begun but which he must sustain, shunning all evasions, is primarily the takingup of responsibility as an I who is a center of choice. But analabein also means "to take back". It is not clear that Neoptolemus can take back his deed of betrayal, restore to their pristine condition Philoctetes' soul as well as his own. According to the words of Odysseus' original commission, the proper object of Neoptolemus' act of kleptein (which may mean "deceive" but primarily means "steal") was not, as one expected, Philoctetes' bow but rather his soul. Hence the bare act of restoring the bow hardly constitutes the taking-back of what Neoptolemus has done. But whether or not a taking-back in the decisive sense is possible, a movement backwards/ a going back, is part of what Neoptolemus must attempt. Thus Odysseus describes him as "turned back again (au palintropos) on the road" and he himself says that he is "about to undo so much as I did sinfully in the time before". Whatever else may be involved in Neoptolemus' "repentance", one necessary ingredient is a retracing of his steps and a submitting to having his action determined by what he has already sinfully done-"so much as" means "no more than" as well as TIO less than"; there is no margin for spontaneity. Taking-up responsibility as an agent after one has sinned requires takingback, that is, requires accepting in a manly spirit the melancholy prospect of the absolute loss of spontaneity. But analabein also means "taking again" or "taking anew" as anagignOskein means knowing again, recognizing and anamnesis means remembering again. It suggests that a kind of newness, or at least renewal, is indeed possible. One must suppose that Neo-ptolemus, the new warrior, the young warrior, hopes so with all his heart. For he must feel that what he has lost is most of all his youth. But this means, in Greek, which speaks of the young as hoi neoi, the new ones, that he has lost his newness and his capacity for beginning something new, something which not only has never been before, but which is moreover not simply the consequence of what has been before. Although it is indeliberate, it must seem to Neoptolemus a cruel irony when Odysseus asks "Surely you do not plan something new?" "Nothing new", Neoptolemus replies-that means, nothing new, nothing young, nothing spontaneous, no new beginnings, not now nor ever; nothing but, inwardly, one staggering and reeling reaction, ending only in death, to one premature and confused action; and outwardly, the attempt to walk with measured and manly tread while supporting the chain of events which one forged unknowingly. From this point of view, Neoptolemus' attempt at analabein must be an attempt to take again and take anew his being young, his being an originator of new things, his being a genuine beginner. But it seems that here the labein of analabein must be not a "taking" but rather a 0 12 "receiving" as this ambiguous verb permits. His youth and his newness seem to be something which Neoptolemus must receive anew rather than take anew. Hence his "I shall attempt" must mean in this case "I shall hope". Analabein in the sense of taking up responsibility is within Neoptolemus' power to do; analabein in the sense of taking back what he has done is, at least, within his power to attempt; but analabein in the sense of receiving anew his newness can finally be only an object of his hoping-it is only within his power to the extent that the attempt to take up and to take back, which are its necessary but not sufficient conditions, are within his power. Beyond that, Neoptolemus must renounce all claims on what will follow; nothing is owed him. Neoptolemus indeed performs this renunciation: "Let the future be what it will". But if his being young and being new is something which Neoptolemus can only receive, not take, anew, it must be from Philoctetes if from anyone that Neoptolemus can receive this. It is to Philoctetes that he addresses the question: "Then is there not in the world also room for changing one's mind back again (metagnonai)?" It is for Philoctetes to answer this question not only because he is more experienced in the ways of the world than is Neoptolemus, but above all because the relevant world is his world, the world of the island of Lemnos. The answer seems to be for him a matter of resolution, not mere declaration. (Even in the world of Lemnos, however, it is not clear that Philoctetes' will is the final court of appeal: Philoctetes himself, as he bids the island farewell, asks that it send him on his voyage "without blame"perhaps there is an important connection between the island as such and the megala Moira-the great destiny-of which Philoctetes speaks at the end of the play.) But what exactly does Neoptolemus hope to receive from Philoctetes? It seems that one cannot quite answer "forgiveness". The New Testament word which is translated as "forgive" (as in "forgive us our debts as we forgive our debtors") is aphienai. This word occurs in the play only in contexts which strictly preclude this rendering. Two notable instances are: Neoptolemus "having dismissed all shame" and Philoctetes praying that he be "released" from the light of day so that he might do down to Hades. Nor is there any other word in the play which can be translated as "forgiveness". This perhaps surprising "omission" may be connected with another "omission". The verb iasthai, to heal, cure, and its derivatives such as iasis, healing and iatros, one who heals, do not occur in the play. Again and again with regard to Philoctetes' disease one speaks of cessation, respite, relief, softening, but never quite of healing. Could this mean that in the most radical sense no healing either takes place or is promised in the play? And could this in turn be because no forgiveness is granted, if by "forgiveness" we mean that which is commensurate with our deepest WINTER 1986 �need? To understand the point of this last question one must ask oneself: what if, as might have happened, Neoptolemus had indeed "changed his mind back again" but it had not been within his power to restore the bow (suppose for example that Odysseus had it securely in his possession). And suppose it had not been in Neoptolemus' power to take Philoctetes home; and again, that a glorious success for Philoctetes at Troy had not been ordained and hence could not be promised. In a word, suppose that Neoptolemus really had, through his sin, brought Philoctetes to doom and destruction for which on the level of action there was no remedy; and yet that Neoptolemus had truly and sincerely changed his mind back again. Would there have been an answering movement within the heart of Philoctetes, in acceptance of Neoptolemus' hopeful proffer of friendship, and in pity for the suffering of Neoptolemus, the suffering of contrition? To be sure, the play does not permit one to answer such a question definitively, but the exclusion of the words "forgiveness" and "healing" from the world of the play perhaps indicates the limits of Sophocles' most generous hope in this matter, and also, perhaps, provides some insight into the celebration of the mystery of the literal undoing of the deeds and life of Oedipus-their procession into non-being-in Oedipus at Colonus, the play immediately following Philoctetes, with which Sophocles ends his life as a dramatist at the age of 90. But all of this appears to be what the play is not about. Let us try to re-enter the play itself. If what Neoptolemus hopes from Philoctetes is not radical forgiveness, what does he hope? What may be required of Philoctetes? More revealing than anything else are the two imperatives which Neoptolemus addresses to Philoctetes as he attempts to restore the bow, both of which, remarkably, are progressive imperatives, expressing continuing action rather than a discrete event whose definite end is clearly envisaged, such as is expressed by the aorist imperative. Neoptolemus says: "Be accepting from my hand these weapons" and again "Be stretching forth your right hand and be master of your weapons" (as if to say: the moment must be prolonged into a lifetime, Philoctetes being rightful master of the weapons only so long as he is stretching forth his hand in trust and exposedness). But is Philoctetes capable of so sustained and persevering an effort? Is he willing to undertake it? What support must he require, in what may he place his trust, as he exposes himself thus indefinitely? In any case, the play is rightly named for Philoctetes: the disposition of the plight of Neoptolemus as well as the disposition of the plight of Philoctetes depends upon Philoctetes. By the play's end Philoctetes has assented to the words of Heracles and has paid homage to the "all-subduing daimon, who has brought these things to fulfillment". What is the connection between the words of Heracles THE ST. JOHN'S REVIEW and the all-subduing daimon in which Philoctetes now places his trust? Let us consider the situation of Philoctetes immediately before the appearance of Heracles. Philoctetes has been an archer. His inescapable arrows, as Odysseus puts it, "send death on ahead" (propempein). That is, he does not expose himself as other warriors do; it is almost an occupational deformation in him to separate himself from other men, not to run the risks of nearness which others run. When once he did "draw near" (pelazein) a hidden-because-uncovered shrine (a pun on kalupteinlakaluptos) he was bitten by a viper. Now on his island, he has already rejected the invitation of the chorus to "draw near (pelazein) to one who draws near to you wholly well-intentioned." And his very last words prior to the appearance of Heracles will be "I shall prevent the Greeks from drawing near" (pelazein, again). It is from out of this sort of experience that Philoctetes speaks as he now considers whether he might return with Neoptolemus to Troy: "For not the pain of the things which have already gone by bites me, but I seem to foresee the sort which it is necessary still to suffer from these men. For in those in whom the mind has once become the mother of evils, it teaches them to be evil in other things too." This ascription of utter uniformity, hence reliability, to the souls of those who have once been guilty of betrayal permits one to orient oneself unequivocally in the world, to enjoy an impervious security in the disposition of one's soul, though not of course in one's body. But is it true? Does it not involve an arrogant foreclosing of possibilities which are not legitimately at Philoctetes' disposal to foreclose? Against the background of this general attitude, however, Philoctetes takes up a radically different attitude toward Neoptolemus in particular. Now instead of ascribing utter uniformity, hence predictability, to the soul of Neoptolemus, understood as the source and ground of his actions-which ascription would seem to make friendship and trust between the two men impossible, since Neoptolemus' soul has once become mother of evils-Philoctetes in effect denies that Neoptolemus has a soul, that is, he denies that there is any constant source and ground, uniform and predictable or otherwise, of Neoptolemus' actions. Sufficiently telling in this respect is Philoctetes' use, three times within the crucial conversation in which N eoptolemus restores the weapons, attempts to persuade him to come to Troy, and finally agrees to take him home, of vocative participles (which are rare in Greek, and indeed have no distinctive endings of their own, being indistinguishable rather from nominative participles): "0 one who just spoke the dearest things, if you say genuine things" (Here the participle is aorist in aspect). Again: "0 one who just gave dread counsel" (another aorist participle). And again: "0 one who has spoken a noble 13 �word" (here the participle is perfect in aspect). What does it mean to address someone repeatedly in terms of what he has done, indeed what he has just now done, this very moment? It means to identify the doer with the doing, to deny that there is a self which grounds the doing, which is its responsible and somehow dependable cause, which stands behind it and disposes of it, which transcends it in such a way that it is not exhausted by the sum of all its doings, far less by any one of them. We are reminded perhaps of the Aristotelian equation of divine nous and noein, the equation of a noun and a verb, pointing to a mode of being which is sheer doing. But to use participles whose aspect is aorist as Philoctetes does in the first two instances means, in contradistinction to Aristotle's God in whom the absence of mere capability ensures perfect changelessness-utter chaos, an unconnected sequence of sheer happenings, each one passing quickly away, giving one no hint about what to expect next, so that one clutches at the happening now momentarily manifest if its content is favorable to one. Within the realm in which the doer is identified with his doing (in the present case most especially with his saying) the only cure for the unbearable anxiety thus engendered is to convert, with all the energy of hope and insistence at one's disposal, some primarily discrete and singular action (expressed by the aorist participle) into the perfect tense, constituting some one doing or saying as the definitive, stable, reliable one: "0 one who has spoken, definitively and permanently, beyond all possibility of revocation or alteration, a noble word". This is how the play would end, it appears, save for the intervention of Heracles, after which a new answer is provided to the question, in what can one place one's trust in a world in which men's doings and sufferings cannot be foreseen. The new answer is-in the allsubduing daimon. What does this mean? But first, what does the appearance of Heracles accomplish? Why is it necessary? That is not easy to say, but I would make two suggestions. In general the appearance of Heracles seems necessary as the remedy for the partial but powerful truth enunciated by Odysseus: experience seems to refute positively, but to confirm only negatively. Odysseus tells Neoptolemus that he too, being young once, had an active hand and an inactive tongue, but that now, "going forth into the test (elenchos)," he sees that among mortals the tongue, not the deeds, rules in all things. The use of the word elenchos is remarkable. It signifies a test of a particular kind, namely a testing with a view to refutation, so that to come through the test successfully is nothing positive, but only the absence of refutation, the non-experience which is not-being-overthrown. Greek has a number of words for test or trial which are not negative in this way: peira, krisis, agon. But for Odysseus there 14 is evidently no affirmative experience of being vindicated, being confirmed in the rightness of one's action, the goodness of one's being. Odysseus' view finds some support in certain of our ordinary ways of speaking: by "having a good conscience'' we mostly mean ''having a clear conscience", that is, the absence of a bad conscience, the silence of conscience itself. For Philoctetes this situation must be particularly acute, since his long experience with his disease is that "it comes from time to time, perhaps when it has had its fill of wandering", so that his wellbeing is its absence and its absence is its not yet having returned. The apparition of Heracles perhaps means within the terms of the play that at some moments men are justified in requiring more than the negative indication of not having been refuted ("a silent conscience") as a basis for their actions. But the words of Heracles have a much more particular significance as well. The core of their significance, I believe, lies in his use of the dual number (for both nouns and verbs), indicating not mere twoness but rather a "natural pairing" with respect to Philoctetes and Neoptolemus. The dual forms occur in this powerful affirmation: ''For you are not strong apart from this one to take Troy, nor this one apart from you, but as twain lions, ranging together, the two of you keep guard, this one over you and you over him". The use of the dual had not been dared by Neoptolemus himself; here it is used to yoke Philoctetes and Neoptolemus by someone who had earned the right to apply it to himself and Philoctetes, by Heracles, the old companion of Philoctetes. Thus in the Philoctetes the motion of the Antigone is reversed in one crucial respect: there in the beginning dual forms are used both by Antigone and Ismene to refer to the two of them, but this is soon shattered and never repaired within the play; here the action concludes with dual forms, having begun with the absolute isolation of Philoctetes and a reminder of the abandonment of Neoptolemus by "the one who fathered me forth". But if Neoptolemus and Philoctetes can become companions, Neoptolemus must be, and be acknowledged as, a being somehow like Philoctetes. But Philoctetes is above all a being who lives through his doings and sufferings: he invites Neoptolemus to see his "homeless home within" so that the younger man may learn "from out of what I was living through (dia-zen) and how stouthearted I am by nature." Philoctetes himself is not any of his doings and sufferings, nor is he all of them put together; Philoctetes himself lived through them. (We should notice that sufferings and doings are not sharply distinguished within the play. When Heracles, playing on the double meaning of ponein as ''to labor'' and ''to suffer'', says that he will tell Philoctetes ''how great were the sufferings I labored at and came utterly through", we are reminded of Philoctetes' own fierce pride in WINTER 1986 �"feeding" -not merely passively suffering-the insatiable disease for ten long years.) Thus when Philoctetes recognizes in Neoptolemus a genuine companion for himself-when, moved above all by the vividness of the prospect which Heracles announces ("like twain lions hunting together"), he assents to Heracles' pairing of them, he must recognize in Neoptolemus too a constant (literally: standing with) ground of his doings. But the play tells us that this constant ground cannot be understood in the sense of Aristotelian character (ethos) which is a sort of second nature, namely a definitely and fully formed form whence characteristic actions flow and in the formation of which habitual choice, gradually accumulatirig, looms large, the very word ethos (character) being a lengthened form of ethos (habit), as Aristotle says in the beginning of book two of the Nichomechean Ethics. Rather, on the basis of the play we would have to say that this constant ground, in which Philoctetes may and must trust, is Aristotelian character supplemented by something which Aristotle seems to leave out of consideration, namely the possibility of radically changing one's mind back again. The play gives a name to this constant ground-it is the all-subduing daimon. It is as Heracleitus writes (fragment 119): "ethos is a man's daimOn." Or rather, since this saying seems to indicate that the extraordinary and strange thing-daim on-is to be understood in terms of that which is more ordinary and less problematical-ethos, we should perhaps, in faithfulness to Sophocles, reverse this saying: daimon is a man's ethos-that thing whose structure and limits we imagine we know well enough under the title of character, is in truth deeply mysterious and perhaps not simply human. That there is something in man which is not simply human-what might this mean? Let us close with two questions. Heracles concludes his speech by admonishing Philoctetes and Neoptolemus, whenever they ravage the earth, "to reverence the things in relation to gods (ta pros theous)". Ordinarily one supposes that Heracles is referring to such things as altars, and one is reminded of the story according to which Neoptolemus, at the sack of Troy, savagely and impiously slays Priam as he clings to the altar of Zeus, a suppliant. But such a phrase as Ia pros theous is inevitably heard differently by different men. Might some man, having learned something from Sophocles, be justified in understanding "the things in relation to gods" to include, and somehow to culminate in, the daimonic within man, the mysterious source of freedom and constancy, which would then be par excellence the proper object of reverence, the gods themselves being too far away? Again, in the final moments of Oedipus at Colonus, the sightless Oedipus, who for twenty years has had to be THE ST. JOHN'S REVIEW led and guided, now becomes leader and guide of his daughters and Theseus. At a certain moment, audibly to all, "A god calls him many times and in many ways" and the rest is incommunicable. But before that moment, Oedipus himself says, as he leads his followers: "That from god which is present urges me on (to ek theou paron). "That from god which is present, which is nearby, is not god. And yet its being from god seems not at all external to it-it is no mere messenger-no more than it itself seems external to Oedipus. "That from god which is present, which is nearby" -what or who is it? Themessage who recounts the final moments of Oedipus' life on earth says: "When we had gone away, we looked back after a short time and saw the man nowhere still being present (ton andra oudamou paronta)." Oedipus' being is a being present, just as the being of that which is from god is a being present. When the man is present nowhere, that from god which is present seems also to have departed. Is what urges on the ancient Oedipus as he comes to his final end-that from god which is present, that presence which is somehow divine-anything different from Oedipus himself? And yet in indicating that for Sophocles there seems to be a divine presence indistinguishable from Oedipus himself, at any rate in his last moments, we must not forget that there is also, and irreducibly other, the god who calls to him many times in many ways and speaks only these words: "You there, you there Oedipus, why do we delay to go? For a long time there has been delay from your side". This god (who is called simply theos, with no article, and who seems to be, one is tempted to say, beyond Zeus and Apollo and Hermes and the others who have been named frequently throughout the play) accepts Oedipus into his company; he refers to Oedipus and himself as "we". The ineffable communion between that which is present from god within Oedipus and theos itself seems to be the last word of Sophocles' last play. In the wholly mysterious light of the Oedipus at Colonus, we can perhaps see a little more clearly into the Philoctetes. It seemed to us that the answer given by that play to the question, on what can one rely and in what hope within the realm of human affairs is: the allsubduing daimon. The twofold nature of this daimonhence the range of meaning of Ia pros theous (the things in relation to gods) if not of theos itself-is perhaps clearer now: there is both the constant presence of the "daimonic" within man and the sometimes-unpredictable and incalculable-blazing into this-worldly manifestness of the "daimonic" without man, which however must be longed for if it is to appear. For, at the end of the play, in his only address to Heracles, Philoctetes first reveals to us the secret of his heart: the voice which he has just heard and which he will obey has been for him for quite a while phthegma potheinon, the longed-for voice. 15 �• The Power of the Word In Oedipus at Colonus Shortly before his disappearance from the human world, Oedipus speaks these words to his daughters: "All the things that are mine have perished, and no longer will you have the toilsome tendance of me. It was hard, I know, daughters. But one word by itself cancels all these agonies: to philein, the action of loving .... " But we ask: even if love itself could be thought to prevail over great suffering, could be thought somehow to count for more than suffering within a life shared between persons, why should the power of the word be so exalted? How can a mere word dissolve actual sufferings? The strangeness of the matter is accentuated by the Greek word order, which by postponing the word epos (which means "word") first pits one thing against many, hen monon against ta panta tauta, and then, as starkly as may be, finishes the line by placing epos immediately and tensely next to mochthemata (agonies, sufferings). To understand a little the meaning of the power of to epos in this drama of Sophocles' old age will be the attempt of this lecture. But first a number of other matters must be discussed. I shall organize my thoughts under these headings: the terrible darkness acknowledged by the play; the significance of the Athens of Theseus as worthy receptacle for Oedipus; Oedipus himself-how he thinks of himself and what he hopes for and demands; what happens at the end of the play, or at any rate how this happening can be distantly characterized; and finally how the utterly mysterious ending of the play throws us back upon the "The Power of the Word in Oedipus at Colonus" appeared in The Review in April 1977. 16 saying, just as mysterious in its own way, about the power of to philein, with its strange dependence upon the power of to epos. I. The most terrible words uttered in any play of Sophocles are uttered in the play he wrote when he was ninety years old. The chorus says: "Not to be born (me phunai) prevails over all meaning uttered in words. By far the second best, when one has come to light, is to go to that very place from which one came as swiftly as may be." We must try to understand what moves the chorus to speak as it does. Let us listen to a translation of the strophe which immediately precedes the words just quoted: "Whoever craves the greater portion in living, having disdained the moderate, will be manifest in my judgment as cherishing perversity. For the long days pile up many things closer to pain; as for the things which give delight, you would not see them anywhere, whenever one falls into more than is fitting." So far we seem to be hearing a lament upon old age: life is without delight and full of pain for the old. As we learn later (to our surprise, until we reflect a little on how such things are likely to be), the chorus is thinking not so much of the ancient Oedipus as of itself: the second strophe begins: "In such a condition is this wretched one, not I alone." We must remember that the chorus of old men have recently been humiliated, have had their impotence unmistakably demonstrated as Creon's forces have carried off Antigone and Ismene in their presence despite their pledge of protection to Oedipus. But as the chorus hears itself uttering this lamentation, a more universal lamentation is kindled: "The Ally brings WINTER 1986 �equal fulfillment to all when the doom of Hades has blazed up, without wedding-song, without lyre, without festive dance-death in the end." That death comes to men as an ally or deliverer (the Greek word, epikouros even suggests that there is something youthful about death), that it comes equally to all and somehow fulfills, might seem to make death not at all inimical to men. But in describing its coming the chorus hears itself stringing together privatives whose very sounds seem mournfulanumenaios, aluros, achoros. Wedding-song and the lyre and festive dance are things which give genuine delight; to be deprived of them is a cruel pain. What if, as sometimes seems true, the delights are simply in the service of the pain, for the sake of the pain, are made briefly available only so that the great pain of losing them may sweep over men? Then might one not be impelled to say: Not to be born is ineffably the best. Second best is to leave, as swiftly as may be, this world of torture, of grievous pains and of delights which mock by their transience? But do we not object: that might be true if there were only one generation of humankind, but in fact men and women leave sons and daughters behind them-there is always delight in the lyre, not indeed for me but for some human being, and even for some human being whose life would not have come to be without my life. But can the chorus do justice to this fact, the fact of generation following generation so that delight in the lyre never dies, without doing a terrible injustice to the spectacle which has just been present before its eyes? We recall: Oedipus has just been told that his son wishes to speak with him. He says: "My son, King, hateful to me, whose words I would endure hearing most painfully of any man's." It has come to this in the life of Oedipus-exactly how the blame is to be apportioned seems of secondary importance-that his son's voice is the most painful thing in the world for him to hear. And, the chorus knows, he must nevertheless endure hearing it: he will not be spared even this final agony. Of all the terrors and grievous spectacles in the tragedies of the Greeks, there is perhaps none more excruciating than this, that a father has come, irreconcilably, to hate his son. It is under the impact of this spectacle most of all, I think, that the chorus says that it would be better never to have been born. But is this not, after all, an unwarranted generalization from an insufficient number of cases? In some lives things turn out very painfully indeed, but surely most lives are not so full of agony as the life of Oedipus. Would not a broader, more balanced view be more just? I do not think so. For the chorus is not really engaging in "generalization,'' in such a way that it is appropriate to adduce counter-examples, to survey in detachment, having stepped back from the immediate event, the full range of human experience and to find therein the proper place, alongside other happenings, of such a happening. The THE ST. JOHN'S REVIEW chorus is constitutionally incapable of such a steppingback. And for that very "limitation" we must be grateful to it. For as the chorus allows the intensely painful spectacle before its eyes to fill up the whole world for a moment-the intensive finding expression in the unlimitedly extensive-a sort of justice is accomplished: the moment receives its due, finds truthful voice in the human world. I do not mean merely that the chorus is (psychologically) incapable of stepping back and placing this moment alongside other moments in some sort of "balanced" way or even merely that (morally) it would be somehow indecent for the chorus to try to do that. I mean fully that truthfulness about such momentary spectacles requires that they be allowed, for a moment, to occupy the whole world and all time. There is indeed-and it is to be cherished-a kind of truthfulness which tries to do justice to human experience in its wholeness, but that presupposes truthfulness about particular experiences, and this truthfulness, it seems to me, is greatly jeopardized by objections against the "exaggerated," "one-sided," "insufficiently detached and comprehen: sive'' mode in which certain terrible spectacles are origi- nally spoken of, given voice to, and hence not only allowed to enter the human world, but in a manner secured there against annihilation by the human propensity to ignore and forget and scale down to manageable dimensions, a propensity understandable enough as flowing from the soul's desire-with which, however, others of its desires and needs may conflict-to shelter itself against what cannot be somehow mastered in thought, allocated and defined, against what Antigone later calls ta alogista. But the needs of our psychic economy-even if it could be established that those needs include distortion of what is-is not the only legitimate consideration; there is also the requirement in justice that what has happened, what has appeared, be given its due, be given a place in the human world in and through human speech, however "irrational" that speech may be. For Athens to be a proper place for the appearing of the disappearing of Oedipus, not only the detachment, balance and capacity to generalize of Theseus is required-of Theseus who says, upon encountering Oedipus for the first time: "I know that I too am a man, and that tomorrow my share of the day is no greater than yours" -but also the capacity of the chorus to lend its voice unreservedly to certain terrible moments, maintain- ing no "broader horizon," and thereby allowing those moments to appear as what they are. II. But if Theseus without the chorus does not constitute an Athens which is a proper receptacle for Oedipus, neither does the chorus without Theseus constitute such 17 �an Athens. What is the Athens of Theseus? Theseus himsell declares its aspiration in these beautiful words: "Not by speeches but by great deeds done are we zealous to make life radiant for ourselves (ton bion Iampron poieisthai)." To make life radiant, to create and sustain a realm in which deeds of shining brightness may be done, may appear without distortion or obfuscation, may be seen and spoken of and remembered, may inspire and measure-all of this (it is, of course, object of hope and energy rather than secured fact) takes on its full meaning only against the background of the identification throughout the play-by no means only in the chorus which we have considered-of phunai and phanein, of being born and of appearing, coming to light. For the Athens of Theseus' aspiration the right response to the miracle of appearance-! appear in a world which appears to me -is not the longing for disappearance, but the transfiguration of appearance into radiant appearance, of coming into the light of day into coming into the light of glory-this transfiguration understood, however, not as a violent alteration but as a sort of continuation and culmination. That Athens longs to shine, to make life radiant for herself, is somehow understood by Oedipus even prior to Theseus' declaration. In charging the chorus not to repel him, not to make the gods to be nothing for themselves by failing to honor them in the only form in which they can be immediately encountered, namely in the presence of such bearers of divine dooms as Oedipus hirnsell, he enjoins them: "Do not, by giving service to unholy deeds, obscure happy Athens (eudaimonas Athenas kaluptein)." Eudaimonia must be understood as something essentially visible-earlier a stranger says to Oedipus: "You are noble, to one who sees you, except for your daimon "-and to obscure it, to darken and conceal it, is the worst injury Athens could suffer. For eudaimonia is not happiness in our sense, something which may or may not show from the outside-even if it usually does, we regard it primarily as a quality of consciousness, which must then be expressed in order to become visible-but is essentially and originally a mode of appearance within the world: to make it less manifest is to make it less. Connected with Theseus' serious eagerness for a radiant space of appearances is his abstention from intimacy with Oedipus, from the compassionate closeness which the presence of great suffering seems to urge. His first address to Oedipus is truly wonderful in this way, in the way of preserving the distance which respect requires between persons who do not know each other well. For Theseus not to preserve this distance would be for him to see nothing in Oedipus except what calls forth compassion; it would not only annihilate that in Oedipus which transcends fitness for compassion, but it would make it impossible for Theseus and Oedipus to appear 18 to each other at all. For such appearing seems to require not only separateness, but even some measure of distance; it is likely that lovers only seldom appear to each other, and then as disconcertingly alien. At any rate, Theseus' attitude is clear from the wording of his fundamental promise to Oedipus. Twice he uses in the first person singular verbs which one expects to take a personal object, namely Oedipus. But in both instances Theseus avoids so direct a relation between himself and Oedipus. First, he says, "Something terrible would be the action you might happen to mention to be of the sort from which I would stand aloof (exaphistaimen)." And then -my translation here follows the Greek word order as closely as possible-"so that no one who is a stranger, just as you are now, would I turn away from (hupektrapoimen)"-it looks as if Theseus is promising not to turn away from Oedipus himself; but then he completes the sentence-"helping to save." He would not turn away from the action of helping to save Oedipus: an action, not a person, is directly intended by his pledge. The "impersonal" character of Theseus' discourse, this preserving of distance out of respect, seems to me a marvel of Athenian civility, when it is joined, as of course it is here, with a willingness to act and to incur risk on behalf of the suppliant. III. But who is this Oedipus, what does he think of himself, what does he hope for and demand? Perhaps his crucial statement is that who he is, who he is in his very nature (phusin) or taken by himself (kathauton) as he variously puts it, has not yet been revealed. His story, known to all,-the story of the murder of his father and marriage with his mother-does not reveal who he is: such is his claim. At first he tries desperately to keep the chorus from learning his name, not because he thinks that name designates a monstrous self, but because it has come to designate the protagonist of a monstrous story, and he knows from experience that the chorus is unlikely to make this distinction: "You drive me away, having feared my name alone," he says to the chorus. Men encounter his name in such a way that an encounter with the man himself seems impossible. This seeming impossibility drives Oedipus to a breathtakingly radical defense. Not only does he claim that in respect of his infamous deeds he himself was more acted upon than acting-"My deeds are things which have suffered rather than acted" -but he indicates an apparently inhumanly severe criterion by which acting must be distinguished from suffering. He asks: "And yet how was I evil in my nature (phusin), who having been acted upon was acting in return (antedran)?" The immediate referent of this question-the whole passage is cast in extraordinarily unspecific, one is tempted WINTER 1986 �to say distilled and metaphysical, language-must be the provoked slaying of his father at the crossroads. But ultimately he is thinking of his whole life, which in his twenty years of trying to understand-he calls himself the wanderer Oedipus (in Greek, "the planet Oedipus"), but his wanderings have had a hidden center-has formed itself into a sort of standing now, removed from sequential time in which one moment follows another. For Oedipus as he thinks back upon his life every moment is present in each moment. That is how we must understand what he says next: "As it was, knowing nothing, I came where I came (we understand: to the crossroads where he slew his father). I was being acted upon by others, I was being destroyed by those who did know (we understand: what they were doing when they exposed me as an infant).'' The earlier moment is not only effective in the later moment; somehow in Oedipus' thinking it has come to be indistinguishable from it. Time as non-sequential, every moment fully present in each moment-perhaps this experience of time is what Oedipus names when he speaks of "vast time which is with me" (makros chronos suniin). Vast time is with him, not behind him as if he were within time in such a way that his very existence creates a difference between future and past, between what lies ahead and what lies behind, with reference to which all moments can be sequentially ordered. But what we must primarily try to understand is the meaning and bearing of Oedipus' claim that only those actions reveal who one is, reveal one's own nature and one's self taken by itself, which originate wholly within the self, which are truly doings, not sufferings, whereby-and this is the radical part of the claim acting-in-return is merely suffering in disguise. Only in and through radically spontaneous action do I reveal who I am. But who ever heard ofsuch a thing? Are not all of our actions in one way or another actions-in-return, not indeed mere conditioned reflexes, but actions considerably shaped by the fact that we are not absolute beginnings, but merely newcomers upon a scene in which many things have happened before our appearance? Does there exist anywhere in the world the sort of absolute freedom, the possibility of wholly unconditioned action which Oedipus not merely dreams of but insists upon if there is ever to be any action which can fairly be taken to be revelatory of my very self, of who I am in my own nature? But on the other hand does Oedipus not have good reason for this insistence? Should he unprotestingly accept as truly and adequately revelatory of who he is, the story of which he has become the protagonist, in such a way that the very name Oedipus has come to mean the protagonist of that story and now stands in the way of any genuine encounter with the man himself? Cannot that THE ST. JOHN'S REVIEW very self ever come to light, not merely so that others may know it as Oedipus already knows it, but so that Oedipus himself may come to know it, in the measure that men can know themselves? Oedipus' most far-reaching claim at the beginning of the action of Oedipus at Colonus, whose premises are that a man's true self is revealed by his doings rather than by his sufferings, and that doings-in-return are merely sufferings in disguise, is that Oedipus himself has been revealed not at all through all that has happened. We shall have to consider later whether the wondrous happenings at the end of playor, perhaps, which of the wondrous happenings-affect this situation. But although Oedipus does not know who he is in his innermost self -except that he is sure that "the man who murdered his father and married his mother" does not even begin to answer the question -he does know that he has come to be the bearer of certain characteristics, and these he declares unequivocally. The only perplexity is that the ·characteristics which he bears contradict each other. He expresses to Theseus the contrast between the unseemliness of his presence and the benefits which will flow from it: ''I have come to give my wretched body to you as a gift, not lovely to look upon, but the benefits from it are greater than a beautiful form." And more intimate than the contrast between his looks and the consequences of his presence, though still not touching his very self, still a matter of properties of which one happens to be the bearer, is the contradiction between these two utterances of Oedipus: first, to the chorus: "I come here sacred and pious" and then, in an access of gratitude to Theseus after the recovery of his daughters: "And now, lord, stretch out your right hand to me so that I may touch it and, if it is permitted, may kiss your head. And yet, what do I utter? How could I, having become wretched, wish you to touch a man in whom there dwells every stain of evils?" Sacred and pious, yet so stained by evils that having invited contact with an unstained man fills him with horror. And we must notice that his feelings are actually even more complex than this opposition, since it is clear from the context that Oedipus' piety consists largely in the recognition of his own sacredness, that is, in the recognition that in such bearers of divine doom as he himself is the city encounters the divine more authentically-and in a manner more subject to divine judgment -than it does in ritual worship; and in this recognition there is surely as much of bitterness as of pride for Oedipus, who knows from within, though unprovably, how little being the bearer of this or that divine doom has to do with who one really is. And as there is bitterness in his claim to be sacred and pious, so there is pride in his avoiding contact with those who are not polluted: certain sharings, he tells Theseus, are available only to the "experienced" (empeiros) among mortals. 19 �IV. But what does happen to Oedipus at the end? This question, though inevitable, must not be treated as a problem to be solved or as a riddle to be guessed. Theseus, after all, is not entrusted with a secret which might or might not be kept depending upon the fidelity of the trustee, but rather he witnesses a happening that is essentially beyond words. Let us try to gather such indications as the play offers. First, it appears that Oedipus cannot be said to die, if by dying we mean coming to the end of a lifetime which can be represented as a straight line whose beginning is a point representing the moment of birth and whose end is a point representing the moment of death (all questions of the continued separate existence of the soul in another place being left in abeyance). Rather, the drama induces us to imagine a curve which returns to its place of origin, and which is the course for a motion of reversal, not a mere retracing in opposite order of what has already been traversed, but a reversing motion which cancels and undoes. This strange notion is hinted at in Oedipus' early prayer to the Eumenides, in which he recounts an oracle given to him from Apollo, according to which he would find at the sanctuary of the Eumenides a termia chOra, a final place, where he would kamptein ton bion, end his life, bringing benefits to his friends and ruin to his enemies. This at any rate is the most ordinary way of understanding these expressions. But immediately before uttering his prayer Oedipus has said: "However much I may say, all that I say will see." Oedipus does not claim that he himself sees, even metaphorically, but he says emphatically that his words are knowing; his words, early in the action, know more than he himself does. In view of this, it seems important to observe the original and most concrete meanings of tenna and kamptein. For tenna means originally not the end or final point but rather the post or mark around which runners or chariots turned to complete the race by returning to the place from which they began; similarly, kamptein means originally not to end or conclude, but in general to bend, and in particular to guide one's horses around the turning point as one enters the home stretch. Has Oedipus come to Colonus, more particularly to the sanctuary of the Eumenides, simply in order to end his life or rather so that he might undergo a motion somehow opposite to the motion which has brought him there, and which is to issue in a reversal of the effects-and perhaps more than the effects-of the original motion? The same strange image is suggested by the chorus which we considered earlier. Second best in relation to me phunai, not to be born, is not thanein, to die (swiftly) but rather "to go back to that very place from which one 20 came." Here again human life is not understood as following a rectilinear course. But if there is somehow in the life of Oedipus at Colonus a motion which reverses the original motion, how are its effects visible within the play? Without pretending to be exhaustive, I shall give three examples. First Oedipus, who throughout his life, and even before he was born, has been the object of prophecy, now becomes the author of manifestly authoritative prophecy. Early in the play, when Ismene comes reporting that there are new oracles respecting Oedipus, he asks "Of what sort? What has been prophesied, child?" Ismene answers, tellingly: "You have been prophesied as about to become a thing sought." Not merely events involving Oedipus but Oedipus himself is the object of prophecy. But by the end of the play Oedipus himself is accepted both by Antigone and Theseus as the one who issues authoritative prophecies. Theseus says: "I see you prophesying many things, and none falsely." And Antigone says something similar about Oedipus' prophecies (in all three instances the precise term thespizein is used) in trying to dissuade her brother from his intended action. Again, the word menis, meaning "wrath," a word generally reserved for the anger of gods (the exception being the anger of Achilles) also undergoes a striking reversal in respect to Oedipus. He says to Creon regarding his own infamous deeds: "For so it was pleasing to the gods, who were perhaps wroth with our family from of old." But in the interview between Polyneices and Oedipus, the son speaks of his father's "heavy wrath" toward him and asks to hear fully the reasons why he is so wroth. But the most striking turnabout-we remember that Oedipus had prayed to the Eumenides for tis katastrophe, some catastrophe, which seems to mean, rather indefinitely, "some turnabout" -which the play presents is visual (or imaginative) rather than verbal: from having been, from his first appearance before our eyes, pathetically in need of a guide and leader, Oedipus becomes, in the closing moments of the action, himself the leader: "Children, follow along this way. For I, new and strange (kainos), have been made manifest as leader to you in turn, just as you were to me.'' But the play's indications of a sort of reversal and return - the replacement of the image of the straight line by the image of a curve which returns, and the several verbal and visual specifications of katastrophe, turningabout-are only one aspect of the matter. Just as fundamentally the play seems to insist that life and death must be understood essentially in terms of appearance and disappearance, of being present and being absent. The identification of phunai with phanein, of being born with appearing, seems to require as well the identification of dying with disappearing. And the simplest an- WINTER 1986 �swer to the question, "what happens to Oedipus at the end of the play?" is-he disappears, he is no longer present. Moreover, as the messenger reports, he is seen no longer being present: "When we had gone away, after a short while we turned around, and we saw the man, him, I mean, nowhere still being present (ton andra oudamou paronta eti)." His absence itself is present in the world. From this moment, the name of Oedipus is not pronounced. Repeatedly he is called keinos, that one. He is no longer houtos, this one, the one right here, but rather that one, the one over there. In the closing lines of the play the word keinos veritably clangs in our ear-we hear it, emphatically placed, three times within nine lines. It happens that keinos, as well as being a demonstrative pronoun, is sometimes used for kenos, poets finding the lengthened syllable useful. Kenos means "empty". We are tempted to hear his new name as meaning that Oedipus has now become, within the human world, a shapely void, a definite nothingness-he has left a place in the world which cannot be occupied by another. But if we must say that Oedipus undergoes a sort of reversal and return, and that in the end he becomes a sort of well-formed nothingness, we must also say that he becomes in some manner a god. This takes place both indistinctly and distinctly (though not on that account comprehensibly). lndistrinctly there is a sort of merging of Oedipus with and into the Eumenides, the "fierceeyed mistresses" (potniai deinopes) who can be at the same time "sweet daughters of ancient darkness" (glukeiai paides archaiou skotou) because they are not exactly persons but rather powers. This merging, as it is adumbrated within the play, emerges as these words uttered by the chorus in prayer: "As we call them the Eumenides (those of kindly temper}, may they receive with hearts kindly in temper (eumenes) the suppliant unto salvation" are echoed by these words of Theseus in reference to Oedipus: "Who would cast out the being kindly in temper (eumeneia) of this sort of man?" There is also a more distinct way in which Oedipus, in a manner, achieves divinity: he is, audibly to the city of Athens, admitted into the company of the god-there is no article in the Greek-who speaks of himself and Oedipus as "we." The messenger reports: "And god calls him many times and in many ways. 'You there, you there, Oedipus, why do we delay to go? For a long time there has been delay from your side."' And Oedipus hearkens to the call. However difficult it may be to understand the merging of a human person with the somehow impersonalindividually nameless, for example-powers which are the Eumenides, or the divinization through admittance into the company of a god who addresses human beings audibly to all in human-even homely-speech, the difficulty is enormously compounded when we put THE ST. JOHN'S REVIEW together-as we seem to be required to do-these indications of divinization with the indications already considered of annihilation or de-creation, a sort of creation into nothingness. How can Oedipus both become a god, and be undone (not merely have this or that feature of his condition reversed, not even in some more intimate way become other, become a "changed man", but proceed from being into nothingness in a way comparable in its radicalness to the bringing forth of something from nothing)? Is Oedipus more than a man as the play ends, or less than a man, less even than a stone? Or can there somehow be a unity of such opposites? Let us withdraw from this question for a moment to consider another opposition. At the play's end, Theseus tells Antigone that it is not right to mourn since grace (charis) has been made available to Oedipus in the form of chthonian night-and-darkness (nux). Disappearance from the human world, no longer standing in the light, is equated with night and darkness. And yet the vision itself of Oedipus disappearing leaves Theseus ''holding his hand in front of his face shading (episkion) his eyes" against what appeared. In the face of the brilliant radiance of Oedipus' disappearance, Theseus seeks shade (skia), seeks darkness-one is as little able to see in superabundantly brilliant light as in utter darkness. Divinization against de-creation, radiant light against darkness-have these opposites perhaps some hidden unity? Perhaps, without uncovering that unity itself, we shall have gained something if we can come to see the unity of these opposites as having its ultimate source in the unity of another pair of opposites, the most primordial unity of all. I think the play guides us in this direction. Could it be that these oppositions are experienced as mere stumbling-blocks, scandals, objectionable contradictions which do violence to human thinking, only by those for whom the earth on which men walk and the Olympos of the gods are ultimately two, not one? The messenger reports that shortly after Theseus is seen shading his eyes, he is seen "reverencing the earth and the Olympos of the gods together in the same speech (ho autos logos)." Theseus for a moment must somehow understand that the two are one-"the same logos" surely does not indicate merely a prodigious synthesizing feat of human intellect. And if we are to understand Sophocles at all-! do not pretend to understand him very well-we must try to understand this oneness in such a way that no reduction is performed: neither are the Olympian gods-or anyhow the Olympos of the gods-merely a noble lie in the service of decent human life on earth, nor is human life on earth a mere field for divine operationsmen are not in that sense the playthings of the gods-in such a way that it is foolish for human beings to take their own lives-their joys and their sorrows - seriously. But it is very difficult to understand the oneness of the earth 21 �and the Olympos of the gods. Let me add one remark. If I am right in thinking that something like the de-creation of Oedipus-his creation into nothingness-takes place in the play-not merely the exalting of someone who has been cast down, or the rewarding of one who has passed a test, or the recompensing of someone whose sufferings were, after all, not merited (or at any rate out of all proportion to merit)-if, that is, I am right in thinking that we witness, however obscurely, not merely the undoing of the effects of what has happened, of what has been, but the very undoing of what has happened itself, the creation of what has been into what is not-then I think we are not very far from the belief and hope in Him who takes away the sins of the world, who takes away not merely their "natural" consequences but who takes away the very sins themselves so that they are no more; or very far from the need that there be a second Adam (deuteros and eschatos as Paul says), not merely forgiveness of the sins of the first Adam. Perhaps ultimately there can be no forgiveness without annihilation. But this takes us far beyond the human realm, since surely no human being has the power to undo what has been done, although the experience that nothing less than this would be sufficient does seem to be a human experience, though perhaps not a common one. v. But, we must ask, does the wonderful ending of his mortal life, whatever its "content" be, satisfy Oedipus' hope and demand that who he himself is be made manifest? We must answer unequivocally that it does not. We are glad, to be sure, for the mildness of his passing, for the "kindly intent" (eunoun) displayed by the gods' final visible action upon him. But we have heard .Oedipus insist fiercely and implacably that he himself must be separated from the story of what has befallen him (which includes even what seem to be his own actions). The incomparably privileged passing is part of his story, but it is not, any more than his earlier monstrous deeds, part of himself. And yet the inclination to ascribe to Oedipus himself what properly belongs to the final action upon him, is very difficult to resist. We hear the messenger succumb to it: ''For the man, not mourning nor pained with disease, was being led forth, if ever anyone among mortals, wonderful (thaumastos)." The properly adverbial has been made adjectival; what properly characterizes the "how" of the being led forth is made part of the "what" of the man himself. And does it not indeed seem impossible that this marvelous happening should have nothing at all to do with who Oedipus is in himself, in his very own nature? Yet is it not true that he is now led into glory as earlier he was led into ruin, that once more he is simply an object of divine action? The chorus prays: "May a just divinity augment him back 22 again." He was acted upon before; he is acted upon again in a way which, if it is not simply capriciously related to who Oedipus is, at most manages to vindicate without revealing, to deprive the earlier divine action of its appearance of having authoritatively revealed who Oedipus is. Vindication without revelation, the nullification of a previous pseudo-revelation-does this not leave Oedipus still longing for the making manifest of who he is? Or has this manifestation already occurred, without immediate divine involvement? Perhaps the very opaqueness of the ending of the story of Oedipus throws us back upon an earlier moment, the moment when Oedipus says to his daughters: "It was hard, I know, daughters. But one word by itself cancels all these agonies: to philein, the action of loving." In this utterance we find one alone pitted against many, and not even the action of love pitted against many sufferings, but the word, the mere word. What can this possibly mean? First we must understand: it is clearly the saying of the word that counts, the human action of declaring it. And the ultimate reason why this is so is that the declaring of such a word is, in Oedipus' sense, the only truly free, hence genuinely revelatory, human action. For consider: how does one know that love cancels suffering, or fails to cancel it? Surely not as one knows that in a given instance water quenches or fails to quench fire. There is in the contest between love and suffering no process there to be observed-not even an interior one from which outside observers are of course excluded but which the self can observe. There is no process which is there to be observed so that its outcome-love quenching or failing to quench suffering-can be accurately reported as the word conforms itself to what is there. Nothing is there, in that sense; there is no accomplished fact for the word to conform itself to. But that means that the saying of such a word is a radically free act, not a being-acted-upon, not an acting-in-return; and as radically free it is, according to Oedipus' radical requirement- to which he has been driven in his resistance to the reduction of himself to the protagonist of a dreadful story-genuinely revelatory. Now we know who Oedipus is in his own nature, taken by himself, not as the bearer of this or that divine doom, not even as the one who nobly endures such a doom or who comes to be the conduit of certain effects or the bearer of certain properties as the result of such a doom, but as he himself is: Oedipus is the man who pronounces the word philein, who says and means that the love in his life is more important than the suffering, who says that not as a result of observing an antecedently existing state of affairs, as if the power of love in his life had triumphed whether he affirmed it to triumph or not, but out of the mysterious depths of human freedom in unconstrained and unconformed affinnation, which creates the self even as it reveals it. WINTER 1986 �On Almost Seeing Miracles I have called this lecture about King Lear "On Almost Seeing Miracles" because I would like to talk with you about seeing and almost seeing. Before I speak directly about King Lear, however, let me read you some words from a very great work which is contemporary with Shakespeare's play. Late in Don Quixote the squire Sano Panza earnestly and even desperately entreats his lord to giveup his mad faith in visions. Don Quixote replies: however, my main concern is with this statement made by Quixote as he lies dying: "you only say that, Sancho, because your love me. Moreover, Don Quixote, the most serious and passionate reader of books about whom we ourselves read, can renounce books of knight-errantry only in favor of other books, which he does not name. He clearly does not mean the Gospels and the Letters of Paul, of which his speaking and thinking has been full from beginning to end. Rather, I think that Quixote supposes that at least for people of a certain kind (a kind to which he belongs) there is the need for certain other books -they are not likely to be many - to help bring the Gospels together with our own primary experience of the world: not to exemplify, prove or bolster anything, but to help us begin to see in how many ways Christ is in the world or, if not that, at least where His absence is most felt. Since Quixote does not give us a llst of such books, I shall venture one, quite personally, of course: The Divine Comedy, Don Quixote, King Lear, The Brothers Karamazov. I shall mention as well the final plays of Sophocles - Philoctetes and Oedipus at Colonus:-and the Iliad, to make clear that I am not primarily concerned with biographical or psychological questions about whether this or that author is a Christian believer - such questions seem to me not very answerable. Let me now turn to King Lear itself. In the final scene you do not know the world very well - therefore you suppose to be impossible things which are merely very difficult." I think that all books really worth reading make us wonder about who the people are who know the world well. I brought up Don Quixote for another reason as well. As some of you know, the book ends with Don Quixote on his deathbed apparently renouncing and recanting his life as a knight-errant (on which he did not embark until he was fifty years old). It is difficult to know how to understand this apparent recantation, and how to feel about it. One thing to be borne in mind, I think, is that Quixote - or Alonso Quixana the Good, as he was known for most of his life - is a deeply charitable man, who does not wish to cause fruitless pain to his relatives and friends gathered around his deathbed. For the moment, ''On Almost Seeing Miracles'' was originally written to be given at the University of Chicago at the invitation of Leon Kass. It was delivered as a formal lecture on April16, 1982 in Annapo- lis and on April 30, 1982 in Santa Fe. THE ST. JOHN'S REVIEW "My judgment is now clear and unfettered, and that dark cloud of ignorance has disappeared, which the continual reading of those detestable books of knight-errantry had cast over my understanding. Now I see their folly and fraud, and my sole regret is that the discovery comes too late to allow me to amend my ways by reading other books that would enlighten my soul." 23 �Lear says: "I know when one is dead and when one lives." The question is whether this is true. It is only Lear who, in the moment before his own death, sees breath and life on Cordelia's lips. Does his being the only one to see life in Cordelia mean that he is deluded? If he is deluded, are we pained because his long labor toward clarity and integrity of vision is, in his final moments, rendered ineffectual? Or are we somehow grateful for his delusion, unwilling to see the hugeness of his suffering explode beyond endurance? This is a very difficult alternative to face. There is, however, another possibility, although it is not more than a possibility. Perhaps Lear alone sees what is truly there to be seen because he alone has been prepared to see it, he alone has learned to see. It should not, after all, scandalize us that we are not able to follow Lear to the very end of his immense passion - it is amazing that we, who indeed are not likely to live so long or see so much, have been able to follow Lear so far as we have. If Lear truly sees a living Cordelia, it is not because souls are immortal in some Platonic or Aristotelian sense - due to their incomposite nature, for example -but rather because there is resurrection of the body in the Christian sense. It seems to me that Lear speaks profoundly when he says: "She lives! If it be so, it is a chance which does redeem all sorrows that ever I have felt." Only a chance, a happening, an event, something that has come to be but might not have come to be, can redeem sorrows. there are, of course, varieties of Stoicism somehow stemming from Socrates, Plato and Aristotle - which can help one to endure sorrows through some insight into how things are and must be and, guided by that insight, through the exercise of will power. But I think that Lear is right in claiming that only some kind of sight and insight into ap event can redeem another event - and for Christians of course the happening which redeems all happenings is the life, death and resurrection of Christ. But what kind of sight and insight would this be? Faith is the evidence of things unseen - that means, according to the Latin root of "evidence," what is visible, seeable in what is unseen; so the Letter to the Hebrews, traditionally ascribed to St. Paul, tells us. I do not understand very well what this might mean, but let us, in trying to understand, reflect together on what Kent says in the stocks: "Nothing almost sees miracles but misery." 24 This saying seems to leap out of its immediate context and stand over the play as a whole, seeming too powerful to be tidily contained by its immediate context. That immediate context is important, however. Kent, as he awaits the sunrise- the scene begins minutes earlier with Oswald saying to Kent, "Good dawning" - strains to read a letter which has, almost miraculously, reached him from Cordelia. He tries to make out the characters on the page but is not quite able to do so. Perhaps we can say that Kent "almost sees" in two senses. First, the time has almost come - and he knows it - when he will plainly see what the letter says: the sun is rising and soon, perfectly reliably, there will be abundant light. Second, even now, at this moment, he almost sees - he knows that the characters, which he can make out just so far as to descern that there are characters, form meaningful words; moreover, they come from Cordelia, who knows how to love and who is remarkable for her good practical sense and her energy. I think it is good to keep this passage in mind as we try to hold ourselves open to the possibility that Lear at the play's close sees or almost sees a miracle. That this possibility is the true one can neither be confidently asserted nor dismissed. I think that if we have been properly moved by the play, the one thing of which we are sure is that the fact that no one else sees in the end what Lear sees - a living Cordelia - by itself proves absolutely nothing. What I primarily want to do tonight, however, is to talk with you more generally about seeing and almost seeing. How does Lear learn to see some things, at least, that are truly part of the world and that he was incapable of seeing at the beginning of the action? What is the role of misery in this learning? I propose to prepare a conversation with you about these questions by presenting reflections on a number of moments or brief stretches within the play's action. Regan tells us that Lear "hath ever but slenderly known himself." This realization begins to come to Lear himself when Goneril not only frowns upon him but begins to talk to him in harsh and humiliating ways. Lear's response is remarkable: "Does any here know me? This is not Lear. Does Lear walk thus? Speak thus? Where are his eyes - Who is it that can tell me who I am?" Lear begins to see that indeed we need other people's faces, their whole way of being toward us, in order to know who we are. A mere mirror cannot tell us how we look, since the smile and the eyes that a mirror sends back to us is merely the look called forth by seeing our own mirror-image - and how could there be beauty in such a look? Lear, it turns out, is greatly blessed in having liv- WINTER 1986 �ing mirrors to tell him who he is and even what he looks like. First there is his shadow, the fool: ''But the great one that goes upward, let him draw thee after.'' Then Kent: ''You have that in your countenance which I would fain call master. What's that? Authority.'' And finally Cordelia: "These white flakes did challenge spite of them. Was this a face to be opposed against the jarring winds?" but rather to let something of the world be conveyed to us through our passions; not to see our feelings, but to see feelingly into the world, as Gloucester has it; or better, to let the world enter us feelingly- it seems that there are truths in the world that can enter us in no other way. Lear's exposure to the storm seems in some way to be the answer to his prayer for patience and noble anger. He suffers his passions as he suffers the wind and rain and thunder and cold. He is determined to expose himself, without protection, as well to the one as to the other. Later he expresses his gratitude to the storm. Lear has discovered for himself some version of Aristotle's great insight that the soul must be somehow nothing so that it can become each of the things that are and thereby know them. At the very least Lear discovers that the soul must not be everything if it is to come to know the world. It is just because the fool, Kent and Cordelia love Lear not merely out of their own superabundance, without reference to who he himself uniquely is, but rather love what they see in him, that Kent can say truly to Lear after he has fully come together with Cordelia: "You are in your own kingdom, sir.'' Some day, we are told, we shall know even as we are known, shall see even as we are seen. But we know and see so little of how we are known and seen. It seems that a great task is to learn to see the seer, to pay serious enough attention to other people to know whether they are paying serious attention to us. Lear, at the beginning of the play, has a great deal to learn about looking and seeing. Even deep into the second act he is capable of saying to Regan, after he has broken with Goneril: "Her eyes are fierce, but thine do comfort and not burn." It is simply not possible that Lear is really looking into Regan's eyes as he speaks these words, nor, it seems, has he ever looked into them. The thing seems so strange and unlikely, until we reflect that we, most of us, do it almost all the time. What cure, if any, is there for this inability to look, to pay attention, to see what is present? Late in act two, shortly before the storm, Lear tries hard to figure out what he needs, what is his true need. His speech is immensely powerful, and is often said to be incoherent, its parts not making sense together, as he asks first for "that patience, patience I need," and then asks "to be touched with a noble anger." I think that there is confusion in the speech, and great pain, but that at bottom Lear is beginning to know what he really needs: he needs to be acted upon by what is truly present in the world, to be patient in the sense of the Greek paschein, pathein, to suffer, to be "pathetic." But in order to suffer what is truly present to us we must be appropriately present to it, and this seems to require that we summon up and sustain what is most our own. The point is not, of course, to relish noble anger or any other passion for its own sake, THE ST. JOHN'S REVIEW 'They flattered me like a dog, and told me I had the white hairs in my beard ere the black ones were there. To say 'ay' and 'no' to everything I said! 'Ay' and .~no' too was no good divinity. When the rain came to wet me once, and the wind to make me chatter; when the thunder would not peace at my bidding; there I found 'em out, there I smelt 'em out. Go to, they are not men o' their words. They told me I was everything. 'Tis a lie- I am not ague-proof." Only when he has learned, thanks above all to the storm, that he is not everything, is he capable of paying attention to the plight of the "poor naked wretches," for whom he had taken, he now knows, "too little care" because he had not "exposed himself to feel." A man who thinks he is everything has no incentive to expose himself to feel what is not himself. But for one who has exposed himself to feel, paying attention to others leads to praying for them - and also for oneself, so that one might pay better attention to them - and this is Lear's prayer in the storm. But it would be wrong, I think, to understand Lear's suffering in the storm as something that merely humbles him in the sense of a painful, if necessary, mortification of his self-importance. He also makes discoveries, in the enduring of his exposedness to the storm, which fill him with awe, amazement and even, a friend of mine has suggested, something that can almost be called delight. Let me read Lear's speech to the fool, the speech for the sake of which I first begin to love Lear. 'My wits begin to turn. Come on, my boy. How dost, my boy? Art cold? I am cold myself. Where is this straw, my fellow? The art of our necessities is strange, And can make vile things precious. Come, your hovel. Poor fool and knave, I have one part in my heart That's sorry for thee yet.' One can begin to love Lear for the ''one part in my heart 25 �that's sorry for thee yet," but just as great a discovery, and it does seem to bring a sort of delight to Lear, is contained in "Art cold? I am cold myself." No longer supposing oneself to be everything means not having to be alone in the world: as his discovery requires Lear to say "the others too" and finally "you too," it frees him as well to say ''me too.'' Lear continues to learn after madness has overtaken him. We say with Edgar "0 matter and impertinency mixed; reason in madness.'' Lear discovers for himself the Sermon on the Mount: he who commits adultery in his heart has offended deeply; and there is a murderous way of saying to one's brother "Thou fool." He comes to perceive - surely shamefully late for a king - that poverty and wealth radically affect the administration of justice. Any he learns other things of similar sort. How, we must ask, is Lear's "eye of anguish" finally to be closed? How can healing take place? It is important, I think, to keep the following words of Kent in mind, which tell us that Lear's madness is only one of the things that needs healing: "Well sir, the poor distressed Lear's in the town Who some time, in his better tune, remembers What we are come about, and by no means Will yield to see his daughter A sovereign shame so elbows him; his own unkindness, That stripped her from his benediction, turned her To foreign casualties, gave her dear rights To his dog-hearted daughters - these things sting His mind so venomously that burning shame Detains him from Cordelia.'' The question is, are there in the world "blessed secrets and unpublished virtues," as Cordelia hopes, more powerful than the burning shame that detains us from those who love us and whom we love? The burning of Lear's shame is truly hellish: "but I am bound upon a wheel of fire, that mine own tears do scald like molten lead." My words about the coming together of Lear and Cordelia will be very inadequate. I do wish to suggest several points. The first is simply that they do come together, and each is somehow able to receive the best the other has to offer. There is immense pain in the world of this play - not only Gloucester is tempted to say: "As flies to wanton boys are we to the gods; they kill us for their sport" - but at least the powers that be in this world do permit this moment for which "reconciliation" is far too weak a word. Second, the more I read the scene, the more I am moved by Lear's concern to know where he is, where this encounter is taking place. Let us listen: "You do me wrong to take me out o' the grave; thou art a soul in bliss; but!- You are a spirit, I know. Where did you 26 die?- Where have I been, where am I?- Methinks I should know you, and know this man. Yet I am doubtful, for I am mainly ignorant what place this is- nor I know not where I did lodge last night - Am I in France?" "In your own kingdom, sir," replies Kent. Where does this meeting between Lear and Cordelia take place? This meeting in which Lear's "I know you do not love me; for your sisters have (as I do remember) done me wrong. You have some cause, they have not" is met by Cordelia's uNo cause, no cause"? It is a place in our world, although our world does not seem able fully to contain it - so, at least, it will seem to Lear later as he and Cordelia are led to prison: "No, no, no, no. Come let's away to prison. We two alone will sing like birds i' the cage. When thou dost ask me blessing, I'll kneel down And ask of thee forgiveness. So we'll live, And pray and sing, and tell old tales and laugh At gilded butterflies, and hear poor rogues Talk of court news; and we'll talk with them too Who loses and who wins; who's in, who's out - And take upon us the mystery of things As if we were God's spies; and we'll wear out, In a walled prison, packs and sects of great ones That ebb and flow by the moon." The event of perfect mutual love, of Cordelia's asking for her father's benediction as Lear asks for his daughter's forgiveness, seems to Lear too huge to be contained by the finite and brief time of its occurrence. The power of the event seems to Lear uncontainable by any time - to enact it day after day, again and again, would not begin to exhaust its meaningfulness. And yet the meeting has taken place in our world, although what has made it possible seems to be something that is most of the time invisible - the "blessed secrets" and "unpublished virtues" of the earth, of this world, in which Cordelia has placed her hope. It is of crucial importance, I think, to realize two things about this happening. First, what Cordelia offers to Lear is somethlng beyond forgiveness: ''no cause, no cause'' belongs to the realm of "Behold him who takes away the sin of the world" rather than to that of "forgive us our debts as we forgive our debtors." Second, it would not be true, from Cordelia's point of view, at any rate (nor from Kent's) to say that Cordelia "has found it within herself" to forgive and more than forgive. It is not that Cordelia has some extraordinary power - that she is very good at forgiving, for example - and is pleased to use it; but rather that, in looking upon Lear's face as he sleeps, seeing "these white flakes that should have challenged pity of them. Was this a face to be opposed against the jarring winds?" WINTER 1986 �- she sees nothing except what is worthy of love, she is aware in herself of nothing but love for her father. "Nothing will come of nothing," Lear had said in the first scene. Cordelia, as she looks upon her father, is aware of no effect of not-loving in herself; therefore there is no cause of not-loving in her father: the power belongs to Lear. As it seems to Cordelia, Kent speaks truly when he says that the place of the coming together of Lear and Cordelia is "your own kingdom, sir." Cordelia had said as much earlier: "0 dear father, it is thy business that I go about." And, much earlier, the fool had said the same: "But the great one that goes upward, let him draw thee after.'' But the moment of "no cnuse, no cause," and the recognition of the infinite depth of that moment in "When thou dost ask me blessing, I'll kneel down and ask of thee forgiveness," are not the final things to be faced in the drama. Already Lear has spoken of himself and Cordelia as "taking upon us the mystery of things, as if we were God's spies." It seems that we know two things about spies in general: they find themselves in alien territory, in the service of an authority that is distant; and they are meant to spy, to look, to keep their eyes open and to report what they see. There is, we suppose, danger in being a spy: not only that one may be found out and seized and prevented from further seeing - and also of course punished in some exemplary way - but also that one may in one's spying see painful things, since the territory is indeed alien. For a spy, at any rate, there does not seem to be a clear distinction between mere contemplation, mere beholding from a distance, and being touched in the flesh. Lear in his way seems to divine the failure of this distinction in the case of spies: he and Cordelia will not merely be spectators in the presence of the mystery of things; they will take that mystery upon themselves. We, who do for the most part seem to be, in the presence of drama, mere spectators, learn painfully what Lear means about the disappearance of the difference between merely seeing and being touched in the flesh because we are the kind of beings we are, really to see is to be touched in the flesh. In no other poem of which I know do we find words such as these spoken by Lear in which the absolute scandal, the all but unspeakable outrage, of death is faced directly: "and my poor fool is hanged: no, no, no life? Why should a dog, a horse, a rat have life, and thou no breath at all?" Why should a dog, a horse, a rat have life, why should they go on breathing in and breathing out, and Cordelia not at all? That is the outrage, pure and simple. Only secondarily does Lear give her death reference to himself: HThou'lt come no more"- that is, of course, come TilE ST. JOHN'S REVIEW to me, to Lear- "Never, never, never, never, never." It is almost impossible, I think, for us to give full weight to the immediacy, the wholly unsheltered and unsupported character of Lear's final, or next to final, seeing and sight. Let me briefly compare this moment with the other moment in the poetry I know in which the death of a precious human being comes deeply home to us. I am thinking of the lamentation for Hector in Book 24 of the Iliad. That is a moment which makes us weep. But there the great grief, the agonizing sense of loss in which we somehow participate, is bearable. I think the most important reasons are two. First, the utterances of Andromache, Hecabe and Helen find themselves in a context of ritual mourning: "But the others, when they had brought him to the glorious house, laid Hector on a corded bedstead, and by his side set singers, leaders of the dirge, who led the song of lamentation- they chanted the dirge, and thereat the women made lament." The city, even a city that is about to fall, and that knows it is about to fall, can provide a shared and known rhythm into which heartbroken lamentation can insert itself: it is somehow the public, ritual setting of her lamentation that permits Andromache to speak so intimately to her fallen husband: "For at they death thou didst neither stretch out thy hands to me from thy bed, nor speak to me any intimate word whereon I might have pondered night and day with shedding of tears.'' The city somehow provides rhythm and measure for the uttering of the most deeply personal feeling. Second, Andromache does not bear exclusive responsibility for uttering the world's grief over the loss of Hector. There is also Hecabe, the mother, marvelling at the look of her son, "all dewy fresh as one who has newly appeared," by grace of the gods Apollo and Aphrodite, by whose intervention the corpse has been miraculously preserved; and there is even Helen to mourn Hector. But for Lear, king though he has been, there is no city, no ritual, no rhythm, no measure; nor are those about him, even Kent who loves Cordelia dearly, able to participate in his experience, nor he in theirs. His only words to them are accusing: "Howl, howl, howl- 0 you are men of stones. Had I your tongues and eyes I'd use them so that heaven's vault should crack.'' Lear has learned to see, and since we cannot know which sight is his final true sight, we cannot know whether or not what he finally sees is bearable, for him or for us. 27 �About The Winter's Tale (To the memory of my father, William Walsh O'Grady, Sr.) I. Perhaps we are meant to read act five (especially the statue scene) of The Winter's Tale under the influence of the "sleepy drinks" we were given in act four (the sheep-shearing feast). Sleepiness need not mean dullness and the anxious inability to think straight. (How do we know, incidentally, that straightness is the most important quality of thinking?) Sometimes when we are very sleepy we are wonderfully receptive, open, free from the compulsion to challenge everything that offers itself to us. Perhaps there are a number of things in act five which we are not meant to ask questions about. II. The play as a whole seems to be about two kinds of imagination. One kind (which dominates the first half of the play) is called "affection", whose intensity stabs the center, which makes something of nothing, much of little, which is aware of doing that and likes it, which builds up a private dream world-Hermione truly says "You speak a language that I understand not. My life stands in the level of your dreams'' -which at some level of awareness it knows to be a private dream world and to which it tries to subjugate that part of the world which is not its own creation (hence the contest against the Delphic oracle involving the deliberately irreversible action of "commending strangely to chance" the infant child). The second kind of imagination is called "faith". It is the faith which Leontes must awaken if he is to behold a miracle, or anyhow a wondrous happening. ill. What is the miracle? What does the statue scene mean? Perhaps there are two miracles. First, the statue of Hermione is called a ;'picture'' and even an ''image.'' "About The Winter's Tale" was written in 1976 and distributed to his friends. 28 An image comes to life-that means, Hermione is released by the awakened faith of Leontes from the rigid confines of the image into which Leontes had turned her (quite independently of her physical death) in his lust to be creator of heaven and earth. From being experienced by Leontes as his own static creation, she comes to be experienced by him as offered to him, not created by him, and as spontaneously moving and speaking, not static as somehow our images of people always are. For Leontes to experience Hermione as she truly is, as a living woman rather than an image, he must awaken his faith. Butand this may be the second miracle-for Hermione to be a living woman means not only not to be an image in Leontes' dream world but also not to be dead. It seems possible that Hermione has indeed died, quite literally, and been brought back to life. This would be a miracle indeed. And yet it is not clear that it would be a greater miracle than the first one, Leontes becoming capable of letting Hermione be a living woman. (We may remember Jesus saying that although it is a big thing that a person be cured of bodily disease, it is a bigger thing that he be released from his sins-the second requires greater power to accomplish.) At least one can say this much: Hermione's return from death would do Leontes no good unless he were also capable of seeing her no longer as his own static creation (whether in the mode of jealousy or adulation or in any other mode). N. Of the two kinds of imagination, affection whose intensity stabs the center, and faith, how does Leontes go from one to the other? By being himself re-created, it seems. And we are told what are the agents of his recreation: tears and flowers. He himself tells us that tears will be his re-creation. And sixteen years later, as he looks upon Florizel (The Floral One) and Perdita (who has lov- WINTER 1986 �ingly and discerningly told us about flowers}, Leontes says "Welcome hither, as is the spring to the earth". Tears and flowers re-create Leontes: they heal his diseased imagination. We are not told in what way tears and flowers can heal and re-create. Perhaps that cannot be told. But perhaps it would be enough to know-if it could be known-that it is tears and flowers that have such power, even if we do not know how they work. V. But something important has been left out of my account, namely the importance of tales, especially of old tales, which seem to stand in still a third relation to imagination, different from the perverse imagination which lusts to create heaven and earth and the holy imagination without which miracles cannot be seen. What is the relation between old tales and truth? One thing seems to be said about this in the play, but perhaps most deeply the very opposite is being said. Three different speakers say that because the wondrous things which have happened before their very eyes are so like an old tale, it is hard to believe the things which have happened before their very eyes-one must be suspicious of, on guard against, what sounds so much like an old tale. And yet I think the opposite may be true. Far from their sound- THE ST. JOHN'S REVIEW ing like an old tale making it more difficult to trust the genuineness of the wondrous things which we experience, I think it is only the existence of old tales that makes it possible to experience wonders as what they are and to trust one's memory of them. If there were not already in existence, long before we come on the scene, certain old tales-Cinderella, tales of King Arthur, the wedding feast at Cana in Galilee-! think we would always succumb to the temptation to deprive the true wonders that truly befall us of their wondrous character, to make them ordinary (or worse) and explain away anything in them that is not of everyday. If in advance of encountering the most wonderful moments of our lives we did not already know in imagination that our world might be, not necessarily is, but might be a place in which wonders happen, perhaps we could never experience wonders. But we can know this in advance, in imagination, so long as there are old tales in existence. And Shakespeare's play The Winter's Tale seems to have been meant to be added to the already existing supply of tales. That is why its truths are big and sirople truths-tears and flowers. 29 �Platds Republic and the Search for Common Objects In this lecture I shall make suggestions about how to understand the relation between the beginning of Plato's Republic and the center of the dialogue; that is, between the attempts in the first book to say what justice is, and the account in the sixth and seventh books of the highest principles of being as a whole and man's relation to those principles. In the first book of the Republic three opinions concerning justice are somehow "refuted" by Socrates. What is a Socratic refutation? What does one mean by "refuted"? One does not mean that the opinions in question are shown to be altogether outside of the truth; rather, they are shown to be one-sided, incomplete, they leave out something important, they are partly right but by virtue of taking themselves to be wholly right they are wrongthe whole truth, however, would have to do justice to each partial truth. However, this account does not yet make clear the drama and even violence of certain conversions of opinion: it does not yet make clear that the "incompleteness" involved in a false opinion is often not of such a sort that the person holding the opinion can keep all that he has and simply add something to it; rather, he is very likely going to be forced to deny something he had always affirmed. What induces him to do this? In the Platonic dialogue Gorgias Socrates says that in conversing with a man whom he believes to hold a false opinion, he always tries to bring the man to be a witness against himself, disregarding all other possible witnesses, while showing the "Plato's Republic and the Search for Common Objects " was delivered as a formal lecture at St. John's College, Annapolis in March, 1973. It was originally written for another audience. 30 man himself that what he mostly thinks, and what he thinks he entirely thinks, is contradicted by something else which he also knows, though he may have chosen not to think about it much before. I think it is not incongruous to give an example of a "Socratic refutation" from the Bible. In the second book of Samuel it is recounted that David, having been anointed king over Israel, having been delivered from the enmity of Saul and having received from the Lord prosperity in all things, desired Bathsheeba, wife of Uriah, whereupon he arranged to have Uriah killed and took Bathsheeba for his own. Then "Yahweh sent Nathan the prophet to David. He carne to him and said 'In the same town were two men, one rich, the other poor. The rich man had flocks and herds in great abundance; the poor man had nothing but a ewe lamb, one only, a small one he had bought. This he fed, and it grew up with him and his children, eating his bread, drinking from his cup, sleeping on his breast; it was like a daughter to him. When there carne a traveller to stay, the rich man refused to take one of his own flock or herd to provide for the wayfarer who had come to him. Instead he took the poor man's lamb, and prepared it for his guest.' David's anger flared up against the man 'As Yahweh lives,' he said to Nathan, 'the man who did this deserves to die! He must make fourfold restitution for the lamb, for doing such a thing and showing no compassion' Then Nathan said to David 'You are the man.' " Nathan says a few more words, and David says "I have sinned against Yahweh." Let us now turn to the first book of the Republic and in particular to the opinion of Thrasyrnachus concerning justice. After the mild and simple-minded view of Cepha- WINTER 1986 �Ius and the shifting and confused view of Polemarchus we are in a way grateful for the fierceness and intransigence of Thrasymachus' position. For all that it is intransigent and sharply stated, however, it is not quite clear. In particular, it has two parts which are distinct, as Socrates brings out more clearly than Thrasymachus himself, who seems to think they come to the same. (They are, however, connected.) First, justice is the advantage of the stronger; and second, justice is the advantage of the other-for oneself, injustice pays. The tacit premise of the first part of Thrasymachus' position, which eventually becomes explicit, is that the just is identical with the legal and that laws are framed by whoever is most powerful in a state-the few in an oligarchy, the many in a democracy-exclusively with a view to their own advantage. As regards the second part, that justice is the advantage of the other, but injustice is one's own advantage, it is clear that not quite the same thing is meant by justice: if justice were here identical with legality, justice would be advantageous for oneself from the point of view, say, of an oligarch in an oligarchical system of laws. Rather, in this instance justice means, as Thrasymachus makes reasonably clear, the opposite of "having more''; not merely "having more" than other men-as though it were simply and automatically true that justice requires that all men have equal amounts of all good things-but nhaving moren than one's share which, however proves to be meaningless, since there is no share; that is, there is perceived to be no possibility of a non-arbitrary allotment of shares, no fitting limit to what one might have short of what one can get away with taking; so that injustice is "having more" simply, pleonexia. There is a connection between the first part of Thrasymachus' thesis and the second part, however: the thesis that the practice of justice, i.e., recognizing and deferring to limits to the fulfillment of one's desires different from the limits of one's power to fulfill them-is the advantage of the other but folly for oneself, may emerge when one has "seen through" the laws which pretend to be just, i.e., pretend to be oriented upon the common good. One sees through this pretense, discovering that the laws aim at the partial and private good of those who make the laws and one concludes, or anyhow Thrasymachus concludes, that this could not be otherwise for the sufficient reason that there is no common good-the only good things, the only truly desirable things, the things for which a man might long with all his heart, are essentially not common, are incommunicable, are essentially of such a sort that my having them excludes your having them. And since the good things cannot be shared, and since they are limited in number, I would be an utter fool to spend my life giving way to you with respect to those things which each of us most wants-! would die with my hands empty, my heart's 1 THE ST. JOHN'S REVIEW desires unfulfilled. I may indeed have to give way to you on occasion-we may have to devise some system of taking turns-lest you violently overpower and kill me as I try to take what you also want, but such giving way strictly depends on lack of power, on practical limits to what I can get away with; and such giving way is, moreover, a constant source of anxiety and pain, making bitter incursions upon my pleasure in such desirable objects as I have been able to gather unto myself. Such is Thrasymachus' view of existence, and it is one which we must take utterly seriously as indeed, as contrary to superficial appearances, Socrates himself does. The ordinary decent opinion about justice is that justice is good and that men ought to do their best to be just, or at least, surely, that they ought not to regard themselves as entitled to take whatever they can get away with taking. It is the radicalness and passion of Thrasymachus' attack upon this view which sustains the radicalness and passion of that extraordinary conversation which fills the rest of the Republic and which must have occupied fifteen or sixteen hours. The patent insufficiency of Socrates' reply to Thrasymachus in the first book provokes the impassioned indignation of Glaucon and Adeimantus at the beginning of the second book, who say that they would like to be friends of justice but unless Thrasymachus' radical thesis can be radically refuted they don't see how they can be. Let us however, look at what appears to be the weakest of the conspicuously inconclusive arguments which Socrates uses in the first book against Thrasymachus and see whether even it may not point to a more adequate response. Socrates bids Thrasymachus consider the manner of experts, of men who know, for example musicians and doctors, with regard to the question of "having more''. It turns out that the expert wants to know the same with respect to his subject as another but to know differently (better, more) than the non-expert. But this seems to say nothing about possessing the same and possessing differently (more, better), unless knowing were somehow a mode of having, and indeed such a mode as corresponds to an object the possession of which is nonexclusive, so that my having it does not exclude your having it. What if the shareable things were the knowable things or, more precisely, the shareable things were things as knowable? If there were utterly lovable objects such that your having them did not exclude my having them, might that not, not indeed eliminate, but somehow make bearable the ordinary condition of men which is to long for goods of such a sort that your having them excludes my having them-not that men would no longer care about such things, but they would not place their ultimate hope in such things so that the pain of giving way in turn would seem not merely offset by what one had received abundantly of another kind from another 31 �source, but might come to be seen, on occasion, as an act of generosity of that source whence one had received to one's heart's content that infinitely shareable good thing. But whoever heard of such a thing? Even if things as knowable might be in some peculiar way shareable, is it so clear that things are knowable? Again, are not things as knowable, pallid, lifeless, ghostlike, mere abstractions as we say? And again, not only would there have to be genuine, nonfabricated beings of thought and not only would they have to have a kind of splendor, but knowing them would have to be an activity which so fully engaged the soul that to know them would be to dwell passionately among them. Finally, supposing all the rest were possible, how could such an experience be possible for any but a very few men and how could it have any politically relevant consequences? These are the questions which the great images of the sun, the divided line and the cave in books six and seven of the Republic attempt to answer. The center of Plato's Republic is dominated by three great images: the sun, the divided line and the cave. They occur in this order for very good reason within the dialogue, but for our purposes it seems best to consider the divided line first, thus beginning at the center of the center. The line has two sections, each of which in turn has two sections. Each section represents a human relationship to things, a theoretical rather than practical relationship, one is inclined to say, since there seems to be no question of acting with respect to these things, of changing them. To understand in a provisional way the meaning and justification of the two main sections, representing the intelligible and the sensible, it is necessary to reflect briefly on the presuppositions of meaningful speech: We say the sentence "this is a table" and we mostly understand each other. There are a great many things we are willing to call "table" but one name somehow names them all. Thus the possibility of meaningful speech requires that there be somehow, somewherethere is room for enormous disagreement regarding the mode and place-a one for the many, a one with reference to which we call the many by the one name "table". Furthermore, although everything visible and tangible changes, this one must be unchanging. For, if a particular table begins to change-to fall apart or to rot-there comes a point beyond which we are no longer willing to call it a table. This would not be so if the standard with reference to which we call the table a table were itself changeable; in that case its changes could perfectly well keep pace with the changes of the visible table, and the name need never cease to apply. Thus generally stated, it seems that everyone would have to agree that there must be a one for the many and an unchanging for the 32 changing if human speech is ever to be meaningful. (Whether our naming of things corresponds to genuine articulations in the world of things, or is rather determined by human utility-biologic necessity some might say-need not be immediately decided.) But of course we all know this. There are, as we all say, "concepts" of things as well as things; there are "abstractions" or "universals" and it seems that we cannot get along without them. But most of us are sure that, however indispensable, ~~concepts" or abstractions~~ are fundamentally pale and lifeless, even ghostlike; in particular we are sure that all the lovable things are visible and tangible things. Let us look more closely at the divided line to see whether we can discover Socrates' opinion about this matter. We are made wary by the fact that there is no word used by Plato which can properly be translated as ''concept'' or ''abstraction'' or ''abstract'' or, incidentally, as "absolute." Whenever one comes across one of these words in a translation of Plato, he may be sure that the translator has not understood Plato's thought. However immediately understandable, at least provisionally, is the main division of the divided line into, let us say, beings of sense on the one hand and beings of speech or thought (the Greek word logos means inextricably both together) on the other, we are puzzled when we face the full articulation of the line into eikasia (the faculty of seeing images as images, e.g. the ability to recognize the reflection of a tree in a pond as an image of the tree, not the tree itself); pistis (the trust we habitually place in what is given to the senses-above all to sight-so that although we are of course sometimes deceived, these very deceptions are usually uncovered by further looking or smelling or tasting or touching); and then, on the second main section dianoia (thinking things through, in the sense of all deducing from hypotheses, the paradigm for which is geometry) and noesis (suffice it for now to say that this is understood as a higher kind of thinking than dianoia.) I think the two main questions we are inclined to ask are these: what have images-the fact that trees are reflected in ponds, for example-and the ability to recognize them as images, to do with the admittedly important question of the relation of beings of sense to beings of speech and though; and, how can there be a higher kind of thinking than the energetic and restless motion of thinking things through, descending from certain hypotheses, certain posited beginnings, toward the consequences which ensue from them? To the first question Socrates gives an astonishing answer: the structure of image-original, of the relation between the image and that of which it is the image, is the best clue to understanding the relation between the beings of sense and the beings of thought. This is an utter reversal of our habitual way of thinking. We are mostly II WINTER 1986 �inclined to think that abstractions and concepts, however indispensable they may be, are surely derivative from, and wholly dependent for their being upon, the beings of sense. But if one claims that beings of sense stand to beings of thought as the reflection of a tree in a pond stands to the tree which stretches toward the sky, one is saying precisely that, for their very being, beings of sense depend upon, are founded upon, beings of thought: without the original tree stretching toward the sky, the reflection of the tree in the pond would not be. What can such a claim possibly mean? I shall try in a few minutes, in discussing the image of the sun, to indicate Socrates' answer to this question. For now let us notice another consequence of this understanding of the relation of the beings of sense to the beings of thought in the light of the relation between image and original in the visible world: the one which unifies the many is not more "abstract" or universal than the many-the tree itself is, if anything, more concrete" than its image in a pond. A digression may be helpful here. Usually when one reads in a translation of Plato such phrases as "the concept of justice" or "justice in the abstract" or "absolute justice", what Plato has said is "the just itself" or, sometimes, "the just itself by itself". How we are to begin to interpret this usage Plato has indicated to us in his dialogue Phaedo, in which immediately before speaking of how we are, so to speak, "reminded" by the variety of equal things of the "equal itself" and by the variety of just things of the "just itself", Socrates mentions that by the picture of a certain friend, we are reminded of "that friend himself", who is surely not more "abstract" than a picture of him. Precisely in the Phaedo, a dialogue which reports a conversation among Socrates and his friends concerning the question whether the soul is immortal, a conversation taking place immediately before Socrates is to be put to death by the city of Athens on charges of impiety and corrupting the young, it is of crucial importance to know whether the so-called "ideas" or "forms", the invisible beings of thought, have such "concreteness", such richness and splendor, that a man could actually make his home among them, could dwell passionately among them. For, Socrates' justification for having spent his life in philosophizing, in consequence of which he is poor, without power or prestige and indeed under sentence of death, cannot be that he has thereby succeeded in answering all questions or even all of the most important questions-or even a single one of the most important questions-since he confesses to deep ignorance regarding every important question. His apology must rather be that he has discovered a world, a world of incredible splendor, and that he has learned a little about how to live in it, how to move and how to see in it. This world is the world of the beings of thought, 11 THE ST. JOHN'S REVIEW of the invisible beings. This is the true Hades, the true afterworld and place of inrmortality, Socrates claims, punning on the resemblance to the Greek word "Hades" of a Greek word for "invisible". Thus in the great myth with which the Phaedo closes, Socrates describes the dwelling of the blessed after death in a world above the world which we inhabit. This world above is said to be of such brilliance and clarity, that as our air is to our water in respect of transparency, so their air is to our air; and our most beautiful emeralds are chips from their mountains. But those who have understood the deep seriousness of Socrates' playful pun on Hades and a-eides, (a word for "invisible") thereby understand that in this myth Socrates is not speaking of life after death but of what he himself has somehow experienced in his own passionate thinking in this life. Let us return to the Republic. What of our second perplexity regarding the articulation of the divided line, our perplexity as to how there could be a higher form of thinking than dianoia, that restless "thinking things through" which deduces consequences from hypotheses? This higher kind of thinking is called by Socrates noesis. He seems to mean two things: first, that the arts and techniques, paradigmatically geometry but also for example, contemporary mathematical physics, as fundamentally hypothetical-deductive disciplines, although they charm us by the clarity and certainty which they yield and the facility with which we can proceed in and through them, the competence with which we can master them and through them master other things-that, despite all this they exhibit a deeply inadequate relation to their beginnings, inasmuch as their characteristic movement is away from those beginnings, deducing consequences from them so as to encompass a wider and wider range of phenomena, rather than returning to the beginnings, the first principles and sources, again and again, not merely to make certain they are "solid" enough to support the edifice of a "system" (since "solidity" as such is compatible with utter opaqueness), but because the beginnings are in themselves most worthy of wondering and questioning reflection. Against the charm of competence engendered by the confident and facile movement away from the beginnings characteristic of the arts and techniques, Socrates proposes the humility of the attempt to question and wonder about those beginnings themselves-humility, because in trying to do that one finds oneself, again and again, proceeding awkwardly, uncertainly, even ludicrously. Nevertheless, not indeed because humility and being humbled are as such good things, but because the beginnings (sources, principles) are most worthy of being thought about, the highest kind of thinking, though not the most elegant or masterful, would be the consideration of these. Thus far the highest section of the divided line stands for, not indeed a new 33 �set of objects of thought, but a different direction of thinking in regard to the beginnings and principles, for example of geometry, but also of other arts and techniques, theoretical and practical. There seems also to be another aspect to Socrates' claim that there is a higher form of thinking or knowing than dianoia, a form which, characteristically, lacks the prefix dia-the "through" or "between" or "among" which indicates motion of thought. This higher form is pure noein, pure taking in, not running through, bringing together and separating, not, as we say, discursive thought, but pure beholding, taking in and nothing but taking in, taking to heart, bearing in mind, rather than figuring out, comparing, analyzing, deducing. That so still and restful a relation to the knowable things is possible for us as a permanent possession, steadily at our disposal, Socrates seems to deny. But that the hope for such a relation animates our thinking, and that from time to time we are vouchsafed intimations and tokens and earnests of such a relation-the relation with which, after all, our cognizant relation to the world begins: we open our eyes and the world appears to us, presents itself to us, prior to any figuring out or thinking through on our part-seems to be a deeply held Socratic opinion. We turn now, briefly, to the image which, in Socrates' presentation, precedes the image of the divided line and of which, indeed, the image of the divided line is presented as an explication, namely the image of the sun. We come to this with two questions especially: how are we to understand the way in which the things of sense are said to depend for their very being upon the things of thought, as the analogy with the relation of the reflected image of a tree to the original tree requires us to do?; and, where is the sun itself in the image of the divided line, which indeed seems to involve correlations of ways of knowing and knowable things on various levels-eikasia, pistis, dianoia, noesis-but which leaves no room for, and does not seem to require, a third thing in addition to the knowers with their ways of approaching things and the knowable things with their ways of being available? The greatest learnable thing, according to Socrates, which in dignity and power is somehow beyond being, is the idea of the good, or as seems to be said interchangeably, the good simply. Socrates declares himself incapable of speaking of it directly; he will speak instead of that which is the offspring of the good and most like it, namely the sun. The sun, and the light of which it is the source, is first regarded as that which yokes together visibility and the power of seeing; neither of these two alone, nor both together, can become actual unless a third thing, the sun (and its light) is present; only then is the visible actually seen and the sightful actual seeing. The mode of being and doing of the sun and its light is characterized first as a yoking and holding together, then as being the 34 source of a certain overflow, and finally as giving and conferring. Now Socrates says: as the sun in the visible realm, so the good in the knowable realm: the good confers upon the would-be knower his knowledge, his actual knowing, and upon knowable things their truth, their being actually known. Thus the full and authentic relation between knower and known depends upon something beyond that relation, upon a source which is neither in the knower nor in the knowable. And if it should be that man's most authentic relation to things altogether is his relation to them as knower, then it would have to be said that man's most authentic relation to things is sustained and even created by a source by no means at his disposal, which is to say that he cannot regard himself as master of the highest relation to things of which he is capable. To live while perceiving the source of one's most authentic relation to things to be outside of oneself, to be moreover not at all at one's constant disposal and to be finally, in its very being unfathomable, need not mean to live in unrelieved anxiety. It does seem to mean, however, that something like faith and hope and even charity might be among the intellectual virtues, the virtues without which one cannot achieve fullness precisely as a knower. At any rate, it seems to be the perception of certain consequences of depending for one's most authentic relation to things upon a mysterious source not simply at one's disposal that moves most men to choose to live in caves, or as Socrates more precisely says, cavelike dwellings; for it is fairly clear from Socrates' account that the men who live in the cave have chosen to do so, have not simply found themselves in so sorry a plight. And the deepest ground of that choice, indeed the very meaning of living in the cave, seems to be the unwillingness to acknowledge one's dependence for one's own happiness and for the rightness of one's relation to all things, upon a source not at one's disposal. The pride of competence which belongs to the arts and techniques, the general disparagement of mere words, the scorn for "abstractions" and the opinion that language, rather than revealing for the first time the things which truly are, is a mere instrument for communication with a view to all sorts of practical ends, or, more subtly, the fierce loyalty to "experience" which issues in the opinion that words are always inadequate to experience without ever considering whether experience might not be inadequate to words-all of these seem to be aspects of living in the cave and to have as their source the unwillingness to be, as we say, "insecure", to risk the sort of exposedness and unshieldedness, the being disoriented and dazzled and unable to defend oneself should need arise which, humanly speaking, is the decisive experience of those men who in Socrates' account venture without the cave. But there is another aspect of the sun image which we must notice. After discussing the way in which the sun WINTER 1986 �supplies to visible things their being actually seen, he reminds Glaucon that the sun also provides for visible things their coming to be and growth and nurture. Similarly, he emphatically says, the things over which the good presides-which means, finally, all things, since the sun itself, hence also the world over which it presides, is said to be the offspring of the good, begotten by it-receive not only their being known, but also their very being itself, and the meaning of their being, from the good. He uses a slightly different word for the two relationships, however: the pareinai, the being present, being right there, of the good supplies things with their intelligibility; the proseinai, the "being in relation to" of the good supplies them with their being. This seems to mean that the good is the cause of intelligibility in things in a somewhat more direct or immediate way than the way in which it is the cause of their being. Could it be that in and through its causing their being known the good causes their very being, for the reason that "to be fully" finally means "to be known," so that things which are not known cannot be said to be fully, to be all that they might be and, somehow, long to be? Could this be what is meant, finally, by saying that the things of sense are founded upon the things of thought (as the reflection of the tree is founded upon the tree which stretches toward the sky)? The claim might be, in other words, that the things of thought are prior in being to the things of sense, in such a way that the things of sense require, in order to achieve their own fullness, to be known. We have now, perhaps, caught some glimpse of the ultimate answer proposed by Socrates to the radical challenge of Thrasymachus: although not all lovable things are shareable, there are lovable things which are shareable; there are beings of thought of great splendor, and knowing them is dwelling with them, and men can do that together without any man giving up the full and overfull enjoyment of that which his heart most desires. But if such an answer makes any sense at all, surely it makes sense only for a very few men, for the philosophers, the lovers of wisdom who can somehow make their home among the beings of thought. At most those few men might find assaugement of the pain flowing from the disproportion between their strangely unlimited desires and the limitedness of that which, in the visible world, answers to those desires; and might therefore find it bearable to be just men even after they have seen the things which Thrasymachus has seen. But politically, for the city as a whole, this is surely a marginal phenomenon. Has it any political relevance at all, in Plato's opinion and in ours? For Plato this question is inseparable from the question about the relation between philosophy and poetry, which for Plato takes the form of "the ancient quarrel between philosophy and poetry." What this means in the context of the Republic and of THE ST. JOHN'S REVIEW Plato's thought as a whole, I shall not here pursue. In closing I shall however turn, in the hope of clarifying a little what might be involved in the quarrel between philosophy and poetry, to the greatest champion of the poets among the philosophers, and to the greatest poet. I mean to Nietzsche and Homer. Nietzsche is, of the great philosophers, at once the greatest opponent of Plato and the greatest champion of the poets. The connection between these two positions emerges from the first two pages of the "Prologue" to his Thus Spoke Zarathustra. Zarathustra comes forth from his cave in the mountains on a certain morning as the sun is rising. He addresses the sun: "You great star, what would your happiness be had you not those for whom you shine." We must understand: by the sun Nietzsche means, after Plato, the highest principle of the being of what is. The highest principle of being, and hence being itself, is said to depend for its "happiness" on its relation to man. By "happiness" Nietzsche means what the Greeks meant by eudaimonia, usually translated as ''happiness''. By eudaimonia is meant, however, no quality of consciousness, no feeling or mood, but rather a sort of radiant fullness of being. Thus Nietzsche says that the highest principle of being, hence being itself, depends upon man for its completion, its radiant fullness, for its meaning and meaningfulness. How does man perform his part? Not, according to Nietzsche, through an essentially passive contemplative activity, but through poetic activity, through making in the widest sense-for example the making of festivals as well as the making of poems in the ordinary sense. But Nietzsche continues in a remarkable way, indicating that although the highest principle of being somehow depends upon man, upon human activity-which seems the opposite of Plato's view-that human activity itself is not sheer ''creation''. Nietzsche writes: ''For ten years you climbed to my cave; you would have tired of your light and of the journey had it not been for me and my eagle and my serpent. But we waited for you every morning, received your overflow from you, and blessed you for it." Hence the fullness and the very meaning of being depends upon human poetic activity; but that poetic activity is essentially a waiting, the receiving of an overflow, and the returning of a blessing. We wonder whether Nietzsche is in every way opposed to Plato, whether the poets are in every way opposed to the philosophers. We must consider a related thought of Nietzsche's. Nietzsche's Zarathustra proclaims that God is dead. By this he means not merely the Biblical God, however, but rather Platonism in the widest sense. (He says that Christianity is Platonism for the many.) By "Platonism" Nietzsche understands the distinguishing between a sensuous world and a supersensuous world in such a way that the sensuous world is wholly depreciated: whatever 35 �meaning, whatever value it has is strictly derivative from the supersensuous world, the world of eternal ideas and of eternal being generally. For Nietzsche this represents a slander upon the earth, upon what is given to the senses and passions, upon what offers itself to us by simply appearing to us. Against this slander, Nietzsche calls upon men to be faithful to the earth. The poets, he thinks, or at least a certain kind of poet, are faithful to the earth in this sense. Is this a just rejection of Plato based upon a just understanding of Plato? I think it is not just, but it is partly justified by a crucial ambiguity at the heart of Plato's writings. According to Nietzsche's understanding, the realm of the supersensuous in Plato's thought is the measure of the realm of the sensuous: that which offers itself to us by appearing to us is allowed to count as true being only in the measure that it measures up to the measure; whatever does not fit within such confines is non-being, darkness, contemptible aberration. And indeed one sometimes does receive the impression that the Platonic ideas, the invisible beings which are the truest beings, are, above all, measures and standards. But there is also another, very different, notion of the ideas in Plato, above all in the Phaedrus, where it is said by Socrates that all of the ideas-not only the idea of beauty-are essentially beautiful, and the essence of the beautiful is to be ekphanestaton, that which shines forth most, not measuring, counting and discounting, delimiting and excluding, but rather illuminating in shining brightness the darkness of the realm of human affairs. This notion of the character and function of the beings which most truly are seems to correspond more adequately to the origin of Socratic philosophizing, as Plato reports that in the Theatetus, which origin is, not at all a search for measures, but the pathos of thaumazein, the admiring wonder at all that is as it is, no mere perplexity or puzzlement, which as such can be answered, cleared up and dissolved, gotten rid of; but rather a sort of marvelling called forth by the beautiful which can be articulated and purified in various ways, but which terminates most fittingly in the beholding of the ultimate source of the shining quality of the world which originally called it forth. This seems to be the deepest and truest understanding of the character of the supersensuous-of that realm which is opened up and finally dwelled in by passionate thinking-to be found in Plato's thought. The notion of the ideas as measures seems secondary and is, one suspects sadly, a consequence of Plato's anxiety lest philosophy seem too "impractical": a glimpse of the source of the light shed upon the darkness of human affairs by that which shines forth most, does not provide one with the sort of immediate title to rule politically or to advise political rulers, which is provided by the claim to have seen measures and standards in accordance with which one can directly distinguish between right and 36 wrong actions, good and bad men. At any rate, Nietzsche seems never to have suspected that the ideas, the beings of thought, were ever anything but supersensuous measures applied arrogantly to the sensuous world; and his judgment of Plato develops accordingly. But let us ask in conclusion: if the notion of the true beings, the beings of thought, as ekphanestaton, as that which shines forth most, seems genuinely correlative to the genuine beginning of philosophy, thaumazein as admiring wonder, what can the poets tell us of this admiring wonder? The word thaumazein is used by Homer in book twenty-four of the Iliad in a context of extraordinary power and beauty. Priam, the Trojan king, has come to Achilles to entreat him to hand back for burial the body of Hector, Priam's son, Troy's greatest warrior, whom Achilles has slain to avenge the death of his own dearest friend Patroclus at Hector's hand. Priam comes into Achilles' tent and kneeling down clasps Achilles' knees and, king though he is, he begs Achilles for his son's body, and kisses Achilles' hands, the hand of the murderer of his son. Achilles, who has been dominated by a merciless and despairing rage since the death of Patroclus for which he is himself in a way responsible, begins to weep when Priam bids him think of his own father. As they remain next to each other, Achilles standing and Priam kneeling, Priam weeps and Achilles weeps too. I shall quote: "So he spoke and stirred in the other a passion of grieving for his own father. He took the old man's hand and pushed him gently away, and the two remembered, as Priam sat huddled at the feet of Achilles and wept close for manslaughtering Hector and Achilles wept now for his own father, now again for Patroclus." Achilles relents from his rage, agrees to give back the body, and behaves kindly toward Priam. The source of their reconciliation is somehow that the tears they shed, Priam's tears for Hector, Achilles' tears now for his own father, now for Patroclus, form one stream and cannot be distinguished. When they have done with weeping, Achilles prevails upon Priam to eat dinner. After they eat, a moment occurs which is the peak of humanity within the Iliad: "But when they had put aside their desire for eating and drinking, Priam son of Dardamus, gazed upon Achilles, wondering (thaumazein) at his size and beauty, for he seemed like an outright vision of Gods. Achilles in turn gazed on Dardanian Priam and wondered, as he saw his brave looks, and listened to him talking." One must imagine that as they gaze upon one another, these enemies, this Greek and this Trojan, with admiration and wonder, their eyes are still moist from weeping, and it may be that their admiration has a kind of purity and clarity which it could not have otherwise. This is perhaps what the poets know better than the philosophers: that one can sometimes see most clearly what beauty there is when one's eyes are wet with tears. WINTER 1986 �About Human Knowing I. I propose to share with you some rather simple-rrrinded reflections on certain formulations concerning human knowing, formulations ventured by Aristotle in the later parts of his treatise on the soul. But first I must tell you something of the question which has guided my reflections, and to do this I must refer to a statement by Socrates in book seven of the Republic about the vision of the idea of the good. There is something impetuous, to put it mildly, about beginning on so lofty a peak; my only justification is the simple and direct urgency which characterizes Socrates' introduction of "the good" as "that which every soul pursues and for its sake does all that it does, divining it to be something, but being at a loss and being unable to lay hold sufficiently of what in the world it is or to make use of any abiding trust concerning it as concerning other things, and on account of this failing of any possible benefit from other things." In book seven Socrates says that having seen the idea of the good, it is necessary to conclude that this is "the responsible source for all things of all things right and beautiful" (pasi panton orthan te kai kalOn). Two points in this sentence seem to me remarkable. The first is the collocation pasi panton, "for all things of all things," that is, "for all things of all things right and beautiful." The good is responsible for all things right and beautiful, but it is this for all things. The dative plural pasi is a so-called ethical dative or dative of interest: all things are affected by, have a stake in, the things that are right and beautiful. "About Human Knowing" was delivered as a formal lecture at St. l,~hn's College, Santa Fe it; March, 1980. It was originally titled Reflections on Anstotle s Thmking of Thinking." THE ST. JOHN'S REVIEW To say that all things have a stake in, are perhaps somehow redeemed by, the presence of right and beautiful things in their midst, however few and fragile these may be, seems to me a kind of correction of the terrifying indictment against the poets and against the world brought by Socrates at the end of book two; namely, that the poets fail to recognize that the god, who is good, can be responSible only for the good things in the world, which are greatly outnumbered by the bad things; for these latter, some other responsible source must be found. This, I think, is the great Socratic objection against the poets (outweighing any worry about the adulterous Zeus being a bad model, or about the poets dealing with mere imitations of imitations and arousing passions which ought to be subdued): the Iliad ends with the feasting of a glonous feast; the whole is celebrated in such a way that questions of the rightness or wrongness of particular actions, the goodness or badness of particular men, are overwhelmed in the blessing that the poet pronounces upon all that is. The poets confirm what Achilles tells Priam in book twenty-four: "So the gods have spun for suffering mortals, for those sorrowing to live" (not, as it is usually translated, "for mortals to live in sorrow") and they know what Achilles also learns, that in the living of human beings moments of grace and graciousness appear--" So Achilles spoke, and took the aged king by the nght hand at the wrist, so that his heart might have no fear" --and in appearing irradiate all that is and has been. It seems to me that the Socrates who in book two blames the poets for not blarrring most of what appears m our world, blaming it for its failure to measure up to the non-appe?ring measures which Socratic philosophizmg seeks to discover, says something importantly differ- 37 �ent in the pasi panton, the "of all things right and beautiful for all things," of book seven: here he holds himself open in some way to the Homeric possibility of blessing all that is for being. The matter remains ambiguous, however, as we can see from a consideration of the second remarkable feature of the Socratic statement in book seven. The idea of the good is said to be the responsible source, not of all good things, but of all right and beautiful things (orthO te kai kalii). The good can apparently be understood with a view to what is right and straight and with a view to what is beautiful. The two notions seem quite different. That which is right or straight or correct seems to be a kind of standard or measure in relation to which other things are found to be deficient, to be crooked and perverse, and are thereby accused and condemned. The beautiful, according to Socrates in the Phaedrus, is ekphanestaton, that which shines forth most and in shining forth casts a kind of splendor upon the not-so-beautiful things in whose midst it is encountered. It could appear from the sentence which we have been considering that the "ancient quarrel between philosophy and poetry" is reflected within Socratic-Platonic philosophizing itself, insofar as u quarrel" translates diaphora, which means literally "being borne apart, bearing oneself apart" and the good itself seems to bear itself apart between the right and straight (measures and standards) and the beautiful which as such calls forth measureless affirmation and praise, which is the great action of Homeric poetry. II. The idea of the good is the responsible source not only for the conjunction of knower and known but also for the coming to be and being as it is of what is--so books six and seven of the Republic tell us in the three great images of sun, divided line, and cave. As to the manner of its being responsible, we find only a few hints. The following seems important. Socrates says that being knoum is present (pareinai) to the known things by virtue of the good and that their very being and the meaning of that being belongs to them (proseinai) by virtue of the good. Pareinai means being present, being right alongside. Proseinai is not so definite; it means to be in relation to, to be attached to, to belong to. This difference suggests that the good is somehow the source of the being of things through being the source of our knowing of them. This suggestion bears importantly on my inquiry. According to Socrates in the Theatetus, philosophizing begins in the pathos of thaumazein, of admiring wonder. Does it properly complete itself (not as a permanent condition, but rather in its highest moments) in affirmation (not mere acquiescence) and praise?--this is my question, and, following what I take to be Socrates' suggestion, I am supposing that to ask whether "to be" means "to be worthy of praise" in- 38 valves intimately the question of the relation between "to be" and "to be known." It is for help with this question that I turn to Aristotle's treatise on the soul, and in particular to his account of nous, the capacity to receive the intelligible, the "part" of the soul by which we know. Ill. Aristotle's first important statement about nous occurs late in book one of De Anima. It reads: "The capacity to receive the intelligible seems to come to be in us and not to perish ... The receiving of the intelligible and the beholding are extinguished when something else within us perishes, but it itself is unaffected. Discursive thinking (dianoeisthai) and loving and hating are not affections of that (i.e., of nous) but rather of this thing here (a human being) which has that, insofar as it has that. Therefore also when this one (a human being) perishes, it (nous) neither remembers nor loves. For these actions did not belong to that, but to the common, which has perished. Nous is perhaps something more divine and is unaffected." At first glance this passage seems to proclaim the apartness or aloofness of the capacity to receive the intelligible within the individual human soul as a whole. Nous seems to be imperishable, while I am perishable, I who am distinguished from everyone else by the memories, loves and hatreds that are uniquely mine, and whose discursive thinking, thinking things through by one path rather than another, is permeated by my memories, desires, hopes and fears. But on closer inspection it is clear that nous is deeply involved with what is my very own. Although "discursive thinking, loving and hating are not affections of that (nous)," they are affections of the one who possesses nous "insofar as he possesses it." At the very least, the presence of nous appears to be a necessary condition for those actions and passions of the soul that are specifically human. But nous seems to be still more deeply implicated in the life of the human soul: to say that when this one here perishes, nous does not remember or love, makes sense only if in some way nous did share in memory and love before this one here perished; or in other words that to koinon, the common, to which remembering and loving belong, is a genuine community in which nous genuinely shares, in contrast to some sort of arrangement whereby the imperishable and impersonal merely dwells as an alien in the midst of other powers. It is the original involvement of nous in the memories and loves and hopes and fears that are uniquely mine that seems to justify our speaking, not of the apartness or aloofness of nous within the human soul, but rather of its transcendence, that is, of a process of going beyond and leaving behind. This process-character is more clearly seen in the anamnesis thesis of the Meno, in "recollecting" WINTER 1986 �as the soul's descent into itself beyond memory (the ana of anamnesis and analabein indicating "up" as well as "again"), so that it can bring up again, itself from out of itself (autos ex hautou) the knowable things as known. Aristotle himself focuses attention not on the descending (or transcending) but rather on the moment when, having left behind what is uniquely my own, I am face to face with the intelligible things. We shall return to this matter later. Let us now turn to the five great and simple propositions regarding knowing which Aristotle ventures in De Anima. They are prepared by and worked out in analogy to his analysis of sensing (aisthesis), primarily of seeing, because "seeing is sensing most of all." (We remember that in Greek oida, I know, is properly perfective: I have seen.) 1. The soul is none of the beings (ouden ton oniOn), is nothing. 2. The soul is in a way all things (panta Ia onta). 3. The soul becomes identical with what it knows. 4. To know is somehow to suffer (paschein, pathein). 5. The full actuality, the energeia, of what acts resides in what is acted upon. (None of these propositions contains more than eight words in Aristotle's Greek.) It is true that ultimately (in chapter five of book three) Aristotle radically changes the perspective in which he views human knowing. But these five propositions retain at least provisional validity even then, and in any case these are the propositions Aristotle insists upon first of all and for a long while. Let us try to gain some understanding of them. IV. The first two propositions-the soul is nothing, the soul is all things-are closely connected. The soul can receive all forms because it itself is formless. We are reminded of "the receptacle" in the Timaeus, whose character is so difficult to make out, seeming sometimes to be the in which of the visible and tangible in the sense of their place (topos), sometimes the of which in the sense of a mouldable material; again, the mouldable material sometimes seems very much like the knowing soul. In any case, Plato and Aristotle agree that what is to receive all forms without deforming them must itself be formless--both argue, using the same uncommon word, paremphainein, that anything appearing alongside what is received would result in distortion. It is no doubt difficult to understand in any articulate way what Aristotle means by saying that the knowing soul is in a way nothing. In general, Aristotle's literary noesis noeseos, his knowing of knowing in the sense of being able to write a treatise about knowing, seems to have three chief characteristics. First, his principal propositions THE ST. JOHN'S REVIEW are extremely brief, and although they are sometimes amplified by way of examples and distinctions, they themselves are not presented as results of antecedent reasoning. Second, the word pas, "somehow," occurs in these propositions very frequently, strilcingly more frequently than in Aristotle's writings on other topics; moreover, he does not seem eager to explore or articulate these "sornehows"--perhaps the rigidity of writing and lecturing is not the proper form for such exploration. Finally, in many ways Aristotle seems to follow a kind of via negativa, a way of negation, in his discourse about the knowing soul-perhaps it is not only easier, but essentially more fitting, to say mainly what the soul is not, and to give preponderate weight to the other beings in the world. Indeed, Aristotle twice in almost identical words indicates his "method," his way of approach, in a sense that virtually predetermines the "nothingness" of the soul. He says that before considering the parts or powers (moria or dunameis) of the soul, for example nous, we must consider their deeds or works (erga), for example the action of noein; and before considering their works, we must consider their objects, ta antikeimena, the beings in the world that lie over against them. From this point of view the soul might be thought of as nothing but the "place" or "dimension" in which the things of the world have their being as no longer "being over against." One could even understand this in a Hegelian way: through deeds of the soul which accomplish the necessary ''mediation'' men make themselves at home in a world which originally objects against them. But of course what is decisive for Aristotle is that the things which lie over against aisthesis and nous, receive their names from these human powers: from the very beginning ta antikeimena are aistheta and noeta. What this means ultimately we can see only when we have considered chapter five of book three. Let me try to give a simple, non-conceptual example of part of what might be involved in the proposition that in order to be open to all the beings the soul must be nothing. I shall limit myself to claiming that the soul must not be everything. We know from the words of King Lear that only when the storm, by rnalcing him cold, wet and miserable, had taught him that, contrary to the claim of his flatterers, he was not "everything," was he capable of paying attention to the plight of "the poor naked wretches," for whom he had taken "too little care" because he had not "exposed himself to feel." A man who thinks he is everything has no incentive to expose himself to feel what is not himself. Let us also listen to a description of the proper emptiness of thought by Simone Well, the French thinker and writer, for whom attention is the essence both of corning to understand and of prayer: "Attention consists in suspending our thought, leav- 39 �ing it detached, empty, and ready to be penetrated by the object; it means holding in our minds, within reach of this thought, but on a lower level and not in contact with it, the diverse knowledge we have acquired which we are forced to make use of. Our thought should be in relation to all particular and already formulated thoughts, as a man on a mountain who, as he looks forward, sees also below hiro, without actually looking at them, a great many forests and plains. Above all our thought should be empty, waiting, not seeking anything, but ready to receive in its naked truth the object that is to penetrate it." v. The third of Aristotle's vast and simple propositions about the knowing soul holds that in the activity of knowing, the soul becomes what it knows, comes to be the same as what it knows. His formulations vary slightly: nous becomes all things; when knowledge (episteme) is at work it is the same (to auto) with its object (pragma); the activity of knowing (noesis) is one with the thing known. What is striking about the latter two formulations is that the object or thing known is named in the dative case" identical to" or 0ne with," indicating that the thing known is the standard to which knowing must conform itself, direct and adjust itself. As Aristotle states explicitly in book twelve of the Metaphysics, when he is speaking primarily of the divine knowing activity, this conformation is perfectly accomplished in the case of things without material--that is, in the case of knowers in whom there is no material (hule), no mere capability; that is, as we shall see, no distinction between the doer and the doing, which is to say that the perfect knower must be perfectly selfless. In the case of human knowing, original confonnation is "repeated" by achieved adjustment, which must involve perfect self-forgetfulness. What this means will, I hope, become clearer later. But if the knower is to come to be the known, a kind of action is required on the side of the known as well. In facing the thing we face, say an oak tree in the middle of a field, we are primarily affected by the sensible form (aistheton eidos) of the tree: we are made to know what it is to be this oak tree. But, Aristotle says, there is an intelligible form (noeton eidos) residing in the sensible form, and in some wholly mysterious way that sensible form can give way to the intelligible form, can allow the intelligible form to shine through it, so that we are made to understand not just what it is to be this oak tree, but rather what it is to be oak tree simply. Aristotle's understanding of what happens when, having been led properly (this is the meaning of epagoge, usually translated as "induction") up to a particular tree so as to stand face to face with it, we come to understand what it is for a tree as such to be, is itself very difficult to understand. Two misunderstandings are particularly 0 40 likely. The first stems from our habitual supposition that in coming to know we do all the work: talk about sensible form "giving way" to intelligible form or "allowing it to shine through" sounds very strange to us. The fourth of Aristotle's great propositions addresses this issue, and we shall consider it soon. But the other source of likely misunderstanding is our habit of associating the terms ;/abstractions" and "universals" with Aristotle's thinking. I think these terms are very mischievous, and at the risk of tediousness shall try to explain why. As to the first, we must be aware that Aristotle never speaks of "abstractions," but rather of "things in abstraction" (Ia en aphairesei) or more fully of "things said in abstraction" (Ia legomena en aphairesei), that is, things which result from a "lifting off" or "taking away" (that is what apo-haireo means) of some "parts" from the wholes of which they are parts; or a "disregard of everything except ... (whatever we happen to be interested in)," which disregard, although it is in some way a willful act of attention on our part, seems also, at least in some cases, to be invited and guided by the wholes themselves which we primarily face. Above all, it is important to remember that aphairesis, "abstraction" -which names a process, as en aphairesei names a mode of being resulting from this process-is introduced by Aristotle primarily for the sake of giving an account of the manner of being of mathematicals (for example, triangles or multitudes of pure units) and is always related polemically to the Platonic understanding of the mathematicals. Since the primary issue is the manner of being of the mathematicals, Aristotle (unlike Thomas Aquinas, for example), shows no interest in the "mechanics" -the agents and stages-of the "process" of abstraction. The term "universal" comes from a word used more broadly by Aristotle, with no special reference to mathematicals. Again, however, the main point is that Aristotle's word cannot be used in the plural; indeed it is not even a noun. He speaks always of Ia katholou, that is things considered kala holou, according to their wholeness; the preposition kala and the genitive noun holou form an adverbial phrase. Aristotle is always aware of a certain tension between the generality of certain kinds of inquiry, and the particularity of what in each instance we face: a sign of this awareness is the clarity with which he can distinguish between a consideration of magnitudes generally (such as we find in book five of Euclid) and a consideration of general magnitude (i.e., algebra). Again, the famous doctrine of the four "causes" bears witness to Aristotle's constant mindfulness of the presence of the inquirer: an aitia, the Aristotelian word usually translated as "cause," does not cause anything; that is, there is no verb related to the noun ailia which can be translated as "to cause"; the only verb formed from aitia is aitiaomai, meaning "to hold responsible" (sometimes "to WINTER 1986 �blame"), which clearly belongs to the point of view of the inquirer. Let me make one more observation about the proposition that we become identical with what we know as the intelligible forms work on us through the sensible forms, the "invisible look" of tree through the "visible look" of this tree right here. Aristotle speaks of the intelligibles, ta noeta, as residing in images as well as in sensed things, and although his remarks in De Anima on the faculty of imagination are sketchy and inconclusive, I believe that the only way to understand his remark in the Poetics that poetry is closer to philosophy than is history, is by supposing that the intelligibles are able to shine through images in whose shaping the imagination has enjoyed a certain freedom-the Achilles of the Iliad, for examplenot only more vividly but also more precisely than through what is simply given to the senses (mere history). VI. We have already seen that the fourth of Aristotle's great propositions about knowing is called up immediately by the third: as the knower comes to be identical to the knowable, the knowable does all the work. Aristotle writes: "To know is in some way to suffer, to be acted upon." It is not that we, as would-be knowers, go to work upon things, attempting to grasp them, comprehend or conceive them, order, 'analyze and synthesize them; rather, our part is to be alert, to be awake, to be prepared ourselves to be grasped and moulded by the things themselves working upon us immediately by their sensible forms and through these by their intelligible forms (or as Aristotle say outside of De Anima, by the ti en einai of tode ti, the "what it was to be" of "this here something"). This way of understanding how we come to know differs radically, I take it, from our habitual way of regarding the matter. Three explanatory remarks may help. First, Aristotle's analysis singles out a special moment, the highest moment, within our experience of coming to know, what we sometimes speak of as a moment of insight, when we genuinely do come to understand what it is we are facing. It is of this moment that he says that we, as would-be knowers, are essentially not working but are being worked upon. He thereby leaves temporarily out of account the work, which is ours, of trying to "recollect" (that is, trying to free ourselves from those particularities within ourselves which prevent us from being open to all the beings as they are); again, he temporarily leaves out of account all of our experimental divisions and collections, analyses and syntheses, our step-bystep labors of all sorts; again, he temporarily leaves out of account what follows the moment of noein as the pure receiving of the intelligible, the pure being-formed by the THE ST. JOHN'S REVIEW intelligibles we face: in chapter six of book three, immediately following his most sublime discussion of that "aspect" of nous which is imperishable and divine, we read of nous as "one-making" (to hen poioun) in the sense of the compounding of thoughts (sunthesis noematon), what we sometimes call "predication," in which for the first time we encounter the true and the false (to alethes and to pseudos). Thus, the experience of suffering, of being acted upon by the knowable things, is not said to be characteristic of all moments of our experience as wouldbe knowers. But I think that Aristotle means that the moment in which to know is to suffer is not merely the highest moment, but also the moment which somehow empowers and guides all the others: as the telos (fulfillment) of the would-be knower, it is present from the beginning, not merely as norm or proposed objective, but as effectively moving. Second, it is worth noting that Aristotle is very much concerned lest the suffering, the being acted upon, of the knowing soul be thought to be an indignity. Thus he painstakingly distinguishes between the being acted upon in which a contrary is destroyed by a contrary and the being acted upon which entails the saving (soteria), of that which is potentially, its coming into its own (eis auto) and into full possession of what it was meant to be (entelecheia). Finally, we must be aware that the kind of suffering involved in coming to know is not exactly "passive"according to Aristotle it is rather a sustaining, a paying attention, a holding oneself in readiness. Perhaps it might again be helpful to think of Lear, who only seems to be contradicting himself when he asks the gods first, not for patience in general, but for "that patience I need" and then, moments later, asks to be "touched with a noble anger." To be acted upon truly by what is present to us we must be appropriately present to it, and this requires that we summon up and sustain what is most our own. (What is most our own is of course a great question.) We come now to the fifth and final of Aristotle's crucial propositions prior to the radical shift of perspective in chapter five of book three. Aristotle writes: "The energeia, the being-at-work, the fullness of being, of that which acts resides in that which is acted upon.'' That is, although it is the sensible and intelligible being of the things in the world that works upon our souls, rather than our souls working upon them, those things themselves are incomplete until they have acted upon us-the things of the world receive their fulfillment in our souls. Aristotle says that the einai, the sheer being, of the things in the world and the einai of our souls, are different, but the energeia of the things in the world is one and the same with the energeia of our souls; and that energeia is said by Aristotle to reside in (hyparchein en) our souls. Energeia means literally being-at-work and can here, I think, be translat- 41 �ed as fulfillment (telos) or fullness of being; for as Aristotle says in chapter eight of book nine of the Metaphysics: "The name energeia is said with a view to ergon, the work, and converges toward entelecheia (possessing the end within)" and "just as teachers think they have accomplished their end when they have displayed their pupil being-at-work, so it is with nature (phusis)." Aristotle's final two propositions-things work on our souls and things have their completion in our soulsmight perhaps be understood in a provisional way by amplifying a phrase Aristotle uses apparently casually. He speaks of the "producers (in Greek: poets) of actuality (that is, of their own actuality as well as the actuality of the knowers)" as being outside of us. It seems plausible to say that the poet, in achieving the actuality of his poem, thereby achieves his own actuality. He is not sheer superabundance; he is somehow deficient until his fullness comes to be in the poem. And yet presumably it makes more sense to say that he is working on the poem rather than that the poem is working on him. VII. We come now at last to the famous fifth chapter of book three of De Anima in which Aristotle radically shifts the ground of his discussion by distinguishing two "aspects" of nous. This chapter, consisting of nineteen lines, has been the subject of centuries of interpretation and contention. I can say only a little about it here. Aristotle distinguishes between "the sort of nous that is such in respect of becoming all things, and the sort that is such in respect of making all things, a sort of condition [Greek hexis from echein, the action of holding oneself in a certain way] such as light. For in a certain manner light too makes things which are potentially colored actually colored [so that they can then, and only then, work on the soul's power of sensing, of receiving the sensible form-this must be the point of the comparison]." It seems-! submit this interpretation with great tentativeness-that one would now have to say that the knowable must be actually known in order for it to work on the human knowing soul (which is, Aristotle says here, "pathetic"). Thus it is only provisionally true that the knowable works on that which knows rather than that which knows working on the knowable-more adequately one would have to say: there is an eternally perfect active condition in which all of the knowable things are fully known. The human knowing soul must enter into that already existing active condition, must somehow allow itself to be invaded by that active condition; that eternally perfect active condition in which the knowable is known, and not the knowable as such, is what forms and transforms my soul when I achieve insight into what something is. Thus in the last analysis the intelligible is not "poetic" with respect both to things knowable and 42 to our souls. Of this nous, which is not "at one time thinking, at another time not thinking,'' it is not said in the present chapter that it is divine or that it is god. It is however said to be separate, unaffected, unmixed, fully at work, deathless and eternal-attributes which Aristotle ascribes to god in book twelve of the Metaphysics, where it is declared that the true name of god, of the first mover upon which as upon their ruling beginning (arche) the heavens and the whole of nature depend, is noesis noeseos, thinking of thinking (where "thinking means not "thinking about" but rather something like "being in contact with," thigganein). In a moment I shall try to suggest something about how we might understand this strange name of god as we encounter it in the Metaphysics. But first let me suggest a possible reason why god is not mentioned in chapter five of book three of De Anima, at the peak of Aristotle's analysis of human knowing. In chapter five this second aspect of nous, that which ''makes all things,'' is characterized as choristos, separate. But six lines later we find the aorist passive participle of the verb chorizein, and we must translate: "When it has been separated, it is alone the very thing which it is." But if there is a time when it has been separated, then there must have been a time when it was not yet separate, when it was deeply involved in the life of "the common" of which Aristotle speaks in book one. Despite the enormous gulf between the perishable and the imperishable, Aristotle is unwilling to assert unconditionally the "aloofness" of nous within us while we are alive. VIII. Let me now try to say something about noesis noeseos, thinking of thinking (or knowing of knowing) as the name Aristotle gives to his god. It is clear from Aristotle's presentation in book twelve of the Metaphysics that the formulation noesis noeseos is derivative from the formulation hauton noein, "to think itself," and that this formulation is a paradox meant to make us see what is of decisive importance about Aristotle's god, namely that he has no self. For by "the self'' we mean, I think, that which stands behind and disposes of its possible activities, now perhaps placing itself, as we say, "umeservedly" into one activity rather than another, but always with the possibility of withdrawing itself from the first activity. In the divine no us, which for this very reason is identical with noein, with the activity of knowing, there is no possibility, no mere capability, no hule-its being is exhausted by its doing; its very being is to be completely at work. The perfect self-forgetfulness which we seem occasionally to approximate when we are, as we say, "completely absorbed" in some matter we are thinking about, is according to Aristotle an approximation to a kind of merging with the divine nous which, being perfectly WINTER 1986 �selfless, need not forget itself. I have been speaking as if book twelve of the Metaphysics, in which Aristotle presents his theology, his account of nous or noesis noeseos as the first and highest being on which depends the being and being in motion of all the other beings, were nothing but the culmination of the analysis of human knowing in book three of De Anima. That of course is not true. But for my purposes the most useful characterization of the Metaphysics as a whole is the following. Aristotle gives two accounts of the proper subject matter of what we call his metaphysics and what he called "first philosophy (prole philosophia)." These accounts are importantly different: first philosophy considers being qua being (to on he on), attempts to answer the question what does it mean to be; and first philosophy asks about the highest being, the first being, the being that is most of all-Aristotle expressly identifies first philosophy and thealogia. What is remarkable is that neither of these questions seems to be simply prior to the other for Aristotle. It might seem to us that either of two procedures is possible. One could upon consideration decide what it means to be: for example "to be created" or "to be an object placed before itself by a subject" or "to be material for the will to power" or "to be at work in the self-forming of well-formed things"; having thus decided what it means to be, one could look around to discover which particular being fulfills this criterion in the highest degree. Or else one could upon consideration single out one being as first and highest and then, keeping in view what is most characteristic of this being, not only rank the other beings according to the degree in which they possess this characteristic, but also conclude perfectly generally that to be means to be, in some degree, in this way, to possess this characteristic. We know that the two great words in Aristotle's first philosophy are energeia and noesis noeseos. To be means to be at work, to be active, and the highest being, the being that is in the fullest sense, is noesis noeseos. My own impression is that neither of these great words is prior to the other in Aristotle's thinking; that, on the contrary, Aristotle presents us with the most glorious example of circular reasoning that has ever been. But this much we can say, I think: for Aristotle thinking is the highest human activity not because it is the purest or the least bodily or the most needful with a view to guiding conduct or even-at least not directly-because by virtue of communion with what is imperishable, it itself is least vulnerable to the wounds of time; but rather precisely because it is the most active activity. Aristotle, his eyes wide open, sees activity all around him: acorns coming to be oak trees, baby squirrels growing to maturity and generating offspring, the stars circling, as it seems, endlessly; he sees human beings running around busily in their households THE ST. JOHN'S REVIEW and workshops and cities; but none of these activities is sufficiently active for him. To think what is-this for Aristotle is the most active activity. Perhaps as a metaphor for the relentlessly, resistlessly "energetic" character of the activity of thinking what is, we can use these wordsHegel, I think, would approve-from the Antigone in which the chorus speaks of the awesome strangeness of man: "And she, the greatest of gods, the earth, ageless she is and unwearied-he wears her away as the ploughs go up and down from year to year and his mules turn up the soil." The relation between thinking and Being is like that. IX. Let me now, at the end of these reflections, return to the question which, I said, has been somehow guiding them. I said that, following a clue offered by what seemed to me to be a connection between two statements by Socrates at the heart of the Republic, my inquiry into the question concerning the knowing soul and its relation to the being of things in the world, was for the sake of understanding whether to be could mean to be worthy of praise. I have of course managed to show little or, more likely, nothing, about the praiseworthy character of the being of things in the world. But I think I have learned something about the relation of knowing and praising: only a genuine self-and therefore neither divine nous nor we ourselves insofar as we lose ourselves in merging with the divine nous-is capable of praising, of taking a position with regard to what faces it, of affirming and praising, and this for the reason that affirmation and praise are meaningful only when they are chosen by a being for whom refusal and rejection are also possible. That is why I cannot agree with what I understand Aristotle to be saying in his discussion of human happiness in book ten of the Ethics. He writes: "It would seem that each of us is his nous, since indeed it is the sovereign and better part. Therefore it would be absurd if someone would choose not the life of himself [hautou, now identified with nous], but rather of someone else." Because I think with Augustine that the greatest delight for human beings is found in affirming and praising, and that delight is the sign of fullness of being, I think it is better to say, not that nous is the highest in man, or is man most of all, but rather that the will is, with the understanding that the will's most perfect action-which is a free action-is to love. In the words of John Duns Scotus, the thirteenth century Franciscan thinker who learned from Augustine as well as from Aristotle: Amo: Vola ut sis-"I love you: I will that you be." This is, perhaps, what the Bible means when it tells us that we are created in the image of a Creator God; not only are we able to know, in our way, the beings of the world, but we are also able-though not at all constrained-to say yes to them, to affirm them and love them. 43 �Reflections on Beginning Ptolemy I. . In the first paragraph of the Almagest Ptolemy emphaSIZes that, in contradistinction to practical science, theoretical science is essentially progressive: there is no need for a continual return to the beginnings; the characteristic movement of theoretical sciences is expansion outward to encompass, via deduction from the original hypotheses, more and more phenomena. This appears to be a wholly un-Platon.ic procedure. For Plato, who goes so far as to call arithmetic "the study of the one" (which is, strictly speaking, prior to all arithmoi), the beginnings are the object of reflection; they are never possessed securely, never simply at our disposal as knowers; we must return to them again and again, in order that the radiance of their evidence may grow for us and in us; the mere solidity of any edifice, any "system," which may be constructed upon them, proves nothing, and above all does not still the eros of the knowing soul, which longs, not to be filled up with one thing after another, but rather to know, and thereby somehow to dwell with, those beings which truly are and which as such illuminate in shining brightness, the other beings which somehow ~re. (According to the Phaedrus the true beings, the eide, are essentially beautiful, and the essence of beauty is to be ekphanestaton, that which shines forth most. This notion seems very different from, and even in conflict with the notion also found in Plato of the eide as measures, as ~tan­ dards in accordance with which we determine in what m:asure that which offers itself to us by appearing to us w1ll be allowed to count as true being. A measure must, by definition, be confined within its own confines, while the beautiful "shines forth.") . Specifically, the beginning from which Ptolemy contmuously advances, never to return, is the postulate that the movement of the heavenly bodies must be account''Reflections on Beginning Ptolemy'' was probably written for his freshman math class in his first year at the col1ege. 44 ed for strictly in terms of regular circular motion. Ptolemy does not elaborate the theological and physical grounds for this postulate. He seems to suppose that this has been done adequately by Aristotle, the metaphysician, and that he himself, as a mathematician, need assume no original responsibility in the matter. For Aristotle the superiority of circular motion to rectilinear motion is a reflection of the superiority of energeia to kinesis, of activity which is self-contained, seeking nothing outside of Itself, to activity which seeks what it does not yet have (1t 1s noteworthy, however, that Aristotle in De Anima Book I, rejects Plato's or Timaeus' notion that circularit; IS an appropriate image of thinking-Aristotle says that both prac!Jcal and speculative thinking move toward an end, which they reach). For Aristotle the mode of being of God, on which the mode of being of the heavens and the wh~le of the kosmos depends, is sheer energeia; nous IS md1stinguishable from noein; God is radically self-less, if by the self we mean that which stands behind its activities and disposes of them, placing itself, perhaps, "unreservedly" in a given activity, but always capable of withdrawing itself, wholly or in part, from that activity. Such a mode of being, in its radical self-lessness, is very diff1cult to understand, and there is nothing in the whole of Aristotle's writings more disconcerting than the ninth chapter of the twelfth (theological) book of the Metaphysics wh1ch begms, "The things concerning nous (God) contam certain perplexities,'' and concludes forty lines later with all important perplexities apparently cleared up. Ptolemy, many case, who agrees with Aristotle that God is sheer energeia and must be imagined "high above somewhere near the loftiest things in the universe," must have been satisfied . From the foregoing it is possible to characterize Ptolemy's astronomy in two ways: first, astronomy is not autonomous, but rather moral and theological considerations are relevant, though one hopes not tyrannically so, in determining its own first principles; but second, the astronomer himself, though submitting to WINTER 1986 �moral and theological considerations, does not undertake any original responsibility for these-hence the absence of any need for returning to the beginnings in an attempt to deepen, on the basis of new insight into the celestial manifestations of the divine, one's understanding of the mode of being of the God so manifested. If Aristotelian theological considerations form the proximate foundation for Ptolemy's astronomy, however, Plato's Timaeus forms the broadest and deepest foundation. The claim of the Timaeus seems to be that the question regarding the constitution of the physical world must be raised within a perspective which is not at all indifferent to, but rather urgently concerned with, the distinctioneven the contest-between human nobility and human baseness. The physical kosmos, whatever else may be true of it, is a place within which acts of moral heroism (Athens of old vs. Atlantis) occur and have very great evidence, not as something else-something lower-in disguise, but as themselves; it is also a kosmos in which men attempt to understand, and do in fact succeed in understanding some few things, in such a way that one long conversation about important matters can make men eager for another long conversation the very next day. The question therefore arises, whether human excellence, moral and intellectual, are at home in the physical kosmos, are not merely occasionally possible, in spite of everything, but are somehow supported by that kosmos, so that there is some sort of kinship between the human and the non-human, such a kinship as elevates the human rather than reducing it-all of this independently, it would seem, of any question of particular providence, such as the Biblical tradition might affirm. That such a kinship indeed obtains seems to be what is meant by calling the visible kosmos a living (and knowing) being: the whole is living by virtue of certain of its parts, which are, however, absolutely essential parts, in no way mere accretions which might just as well not have been; that is, part of the being of the lifeless is to form the setting for life (and ultimately for knowing); if life were not, it itself would have intrinsically a different meaning. In a word (and the distinction between logos and mythos is not so clear in the clialogue as appears at first glance: within thirty lines of the first mention of eikos mythos, eikos logos occurs), the kosmos is good because it was made by a good and nonenvious God to be as much like Himself as possible. There are indeed limits to that possibility: there is the realm of necessity, of the errant cause, never wholly conquered by ordering Nous. Thus at the beginning of Timaeus' second account, it is well to invoke, not the gods in general as at the beginning of the first account, but "God the Savior," as thought descends into that from which it might well need to be saved. II. What is the meaning of anomaly or irregularity in the THE ST. JOHN'S REVIEW appearances which the astronomer beholds? Should it be accounted for, as the Republic and Timaeus seem to suggest, with reference to the imperfectness of the material in which the "original" is "imaged" or should it be accounted for by the addition of special mathematical hypothesis (e.g. epicycles upon deferents with definite ratios between their radii) to the primary mathematical hypothesis (e.g. regular circular motion of the same and the other)? If we follow what Plato seems to say in this matter instead of what Ptolemy does, isn't astronomy redundant with respect to geometry-that is, if we look at imperfect circles in the heavens only to "see through" them to the perfect originals, why not just look in the first place at the perfect originals, which at least for Plato are independently available (unless, to anticipate, the point were precisely to recognize that we must "see through" mere appearances in order to reach those beings with which, as knowers, we truly belong)? But Plato presumably would have approved of some version of what Ptolemy does, if that tradition is accurate according to which Plato "sets the mathematician the problem of ... saving the appearances," that is, not saying right off "what can one expect of mere appearances" so that one is well advised to "let the things in the heavens go." Still, the meaning of Timaeus 37B and following seems to be that the knowing soul has access to the sensible world, the world of appearances, through the otherness within itself and to the thinkable world through the sameness within itself (though the Sophist surely maintains that otherness pervades the eidetic realm as well; but this seems to be from a quite different perspective). If this is so, then u anomalies" or "irregularities" in the sensible world would be necessary in the sense that mind would not experience the sensible world as other-hence would not rightly know itself-if the sensible world were adequate to logos. Perhaps from this point of view the introduction of specific mathematical hypotheses to account for apparent anomalies is a way in which mind, having recognized otherness, overcomes it and comes home, so to speak. That is, "to let the heavenly things go" as imperfect imitations-due to the recalcitrance of their material-of perfect originals is to be radically homeless in this world, the world overarched by the visible heavens; to show that "behind" even these apparent anomalies there might be thought to be rationality (that which is adequate to logos) would be a sort of conquest rather than dismissal of what seemed alien to mind. Thus, there is rationality "above" (in the realm of the "originals"); there might be thought to be rationality "behind," whereby in "thought to be" one emphasizes "thought" -one could almost say "thought into being" or "brought into being through thought," so as to accomplish a less remote sort of transcendence, whether playfully or desperately one hardly knows. 45 �Negation, Willing, and the Places of the Soul This lecture has three parts. In the first part I shall sketch Hegel's presentation of the primacy of the subject in modern metaphysics and of negativity as the meaning of subjectivity. In the second part I shall sketch Heidegger' s attempt to expose willing as the core of thinking not only in the thought of Nietzsche but already in that of Descartes and even in that of Plato. In the third part I shall try to bring out some suggestions contained in Plato's Timaeus, not indeed about the subject or the self, but about what human soul might be. I hope that the coherence of the three parts will emerge in the course of the lecture. I. In the preface to the Phenomenology of Spirit Hegel writes: "According to my view, which must justify itself by the presentation of the system, everything depends on this, that we comprehend and express the true not only as substance but just as much as subject." We must try to understand this statement, which is central in Hegel's thinlcing. But two preliminary considerations may help us orient ourselves toward that thinking. First, one of the most important words in the language of Hegel's thinking is "concrete." By it he means almost the opposite of what we might suppose. We are in the habit of saying, for example, that to experience a tree concretely we must walk into the middle of a field and stand face to face with the tree; if we read a book about trees, we are encountering the tree only abstractly. For Hegel "Negation, Willing, and the Places of the Soul" was delivered as a formal lecture at St. john' s College, Santa Fe in April, 1981. It was later delivered as a summer lecture in Annapolis. 46 the situation is reversed: to read a book about a tree is to experience the tree as concretely as may be. The reason for the reversal is this. To experience a tree concretely is to experience it in its concrescence, its having grown together with the other things on which it depends and with which it deeply belongs: air, water, soil, sunshine, but also human thinking. The tree and human thinking about the tree have already grown together by the time any of us appears on the scene. Moreover, this concrescence, this having grown together, belongs to the being of the tree as well as to the being of human thinkingthis is one of Hegel's great thoughts, which he learned from Aristotle. Thus in reading a book about trees I am facing the tree and human thinking about the tree as having grown together; I am thinking about the tree concretely, as is not possible for me as I stand in a field facing the tree in what now appears as its nakedness. Hegel took his experience of reading books very seriously. In that experience he felt himself to be most deeply in touch with the world in the fullness of its being. The books he took most seriously-this brings us to the second preliminary consideration-were those of Aristotle. In two matters of utmost importance he simply follows Aristotle. At the end of his Encylopedia, presenting the all-encompassing circular education, Hegel says that Aristotle alone named God truly: noesis noi!seos, thinking of thinking. That means for Hegel: thinking is the most active activity, the most energetic energy, both as worldbuilding (thinking produces the Roman world, thinking produces the Aeneid) and as self-contained: thinking is of all activities the one in which sheer aliveness is most concentrated. Second, Hegel never wavers in following Aristotle's view that in the most important motions the end is effectively present in the beginning, as the oak tree WINTER 1986 �is at work in the acorn. Hegel however disagrees with Aristotle in two points that are almost as decisive. He thinks Aristotle is wrong in supposing that the part of the soul that thinks is separate from the part that loves, hates and remembers. From Hegel's point of view Aristotelian nous-the capacity to receive the intelligible-is merely inhuman rather that authentically divine. Hegel has learned from the Christian doctrine of the incarnation and passion of God Himself that the relation of human and divine can be truly understood only under the symbol of the crucifixion: thus we read on the final page of the Phenomenology that absolute knowing is accomplished through the "recollection and Golgotha of Absolute Spirit." Second, and connected with this, Hegel thinks the tragic poets were right as against Aristotle: the truth about the divine is revealed in the fate of human beings within human communities rather than in the coming to be and passing away of things without special reference to human communities. Let us return to Hegel's assertion that what is crucial is to understand the true not only as substance but just as much as subject. It is a commonplace to say that since Descartes the subject, the ''I think,'' has been the beginning for metaphysics and that in Kant's "Copernican Revolution" human subjectivity wins its decisive victory. But the Cartesian and Kantian positions, though important for Hegel, are not sufficient. For in them the so-called subject, which has indeed been accorded primacy, is still being understood fundamentally as a substance: Descartes speaks of a "thinking substance" and Kant of a "transcendental I," which is always one and the same, which was never young, which does not tremble in the face of death. Against these insufficiently radical attempts to establish the primacy of the subject, Hegel insists that subjectivity is a movement, the movement of self-positing, of throwing itself under (sub-jacere) a world of things so as to become what it is, rather than a constant standing under or lying under (substance, hupokeimenon). To secure the being of the subject against being construed on the model of substance, Hegel speaks of subjectivity as negativity. Being as a whole is revealed in and through the being that can think and say "no" and, moreover, can carry this "no" out in practice. In Hegel's · discussion the work of negativity is unfolded in three stages. First, the process of lifting off" chair" from "this chair here" (which process since Aristotle-and on the basis of a misunderstanding of him-has been called "abstraction," that is aphairesis, that is "lifting off") is understood by Hegel in a dramatic and violent way. To lift off "chair" from "this chair here" is to destroy uthis hereness," to do away with "immediate existence," the being here or THE ST. JOHN'S REVIEW there of particular beings as they are given to us. It is, by the power of our thinlcing, to overcome mere giveness. Second, the very discursiveness of human thinking, the motion of thought from part to part, is understood by Hegel as exhibiting what he calls "the tremendous power of the negative." That we think and speak at all means, according to Hegel, not only that we transform "this chair here'' into ''chair'' but also that we separate ''chair'' from all other things in the world; in general, in our thinking and speaking we separate parts from the concrete wholes to which they belong and which alone are actual. In Hegel's language, the discursiveness of human understanding introduces "the unactual" -but this introduction of the unactual is the very action which makes change possible by making room for change: change can only mean re-arrangement of parts; to say "no" to the whole does not generate progress but rather annihilation in the form of suicide or merely theoretical nihilism. Finally, the power of human thinking to destroy immediate existence in the form of the this-hereness" in which things are given to us, and to tear particular things out of the contexts in which we encounter them, is seen in its full prodigiousness only when we follow Hegel in supposing that the self is passionately disposed to say no to what it primarily faces-that it is radically restless and dissatisfied-and this because at bottom it is passionately disposed to say no to itself: it is in every respect "unhappy consciousness," the telling name given by Hegel to the hero of his greatest book. The difference, according to Hegel in the "Introduction" to the Phenomenology, between natural things and human existence is that "consciousness destroys every form of limited satisfaction for itself" so that serious education for human beings is a "way of despair," that is, as the German word Verzweiflung suggests, a way of being torn in two as a violent conversation takes place within each of us between "natural conciousness" and "real knowledge." Or, as we may say, the ultimate meaning of Hegel's claim that the subject belongs within the true just as deeply as do the beings which the subject faces, and that the core of subjectivity is negativity, is that thinking is willing and that willing properly issues, not in praise and love-"! love you: I will that you be" as the Franciscan thinker Duns Scotus has it-but rather in revolution. Here, however, Hegel's thinking takes a somewhat unexpected turn. For, in his understanding, revolution is for the sake of the fullness of being. What I have called the fullness of being, Hegel designates as "living substance" in contrast to substance thought of as constituted by the beings in the world opposed to subject. From the point of view of "living substance," Hegel says: "What seems to happen outside it, as an activity directed against it, is its own doing; and thus the substance shows that it is essentially subject. When it has shown this complete11 47 �ly, the spirit has made its existence equal to its essence" and, we may add, history has come to its proper end. Or, as Hegel said earlier, in and through the discursiveness of human thinking, understood as "the tremendous power of the negative," "the concrete separates itself and makes itself unactual," so that it can move itself. There is no more fundamental thought in Hegel than that the oak tree is effectively present in the acorn. In this final point, of course, Hegel is by no means a representative modern thinker. For our purposes let us return to the assertion that the deepest posture of human beings toward the world in which they primarily find themselves is negative, that thinking is willing and that willing issues not in affirmation or praise, but in destruction. Heidegger can help us with this. II. I shall draw primarily on a long essay called "Nietzsche's Word 'God is dead'" in which Heidegger in a set of wide-ranging reflections interprets section 125 of Nietzsche's Gay Science. In that section, entitled "The Madman," a madman carrying a lantern in the bright morning hours runs into the market place to announce that God is dead and, just as astounding, that we are his murderers, you and I. It is this second assertion which Heidegger is especially concerned to understand. As his interpretation develops, the murdering of God is understood as the murdering of the meaningfulness of all that is. In other words, guided by Nietzsche but going beyond his analysis, Heidegger tries to understand nihilism, "that uncanniest of guests that stands at our door." According to Nietzsche, nihilism means that "the highest values hitherto are devaluing themselves," so that what is required is a "revaluation of all values," as the subtitle of Nietzsche's unfinished masterwork, The Will to Power, has it. But Heidegger is led to wonder about the very language of "value" which abounds in Nietzsche's writings: valuing, devaluing, creating new values. Perhaps nihilism means not that the highest values devalue themselves but rather that what is, what offers itself to us by appearing to us, should be evaluated at all, should be driven into some sort of order by reference to one extrinsic standard or other. The central attempt of Heidegger' s essay is to explore whether nihilism can be understood in this second sense and, if so, where its origins are to be found. We cannot follow Heidegger's discussion in all its richness and complexity. Its decisive steps are: first, to show the dependence of Nietzsche's understanding of value on his understanding of will, and second, to point to the presence of a willful element in thinking as understood by Descartes and even by Plato. As he writes sweepingly in another place: "Thinking, understood in the traditional way, is a kind of willing." 48 According to Heidegger, the most important thought in the final phase of Nietzsche's philosophizing is "will to power." Will to power is said by Nietzsche to be "the innermost essence of Being." But the phrase "will to power" is likely to mislead us, as Heidegger points out, since according to Nietzsche's understanding willing as such generates power: the will to humility is just as powerful, just as power-generating, as the will to domination over others. Therefore he proposes that we understand will to power as will to will; that is, the ''innermost essence of Being'' is to be understood as the will willing itself, the willing of willing. Heidegger goes on to claim that "Modern metaphysics, as the metaphysics of subjectness, thinks the Being of what is in the sense of will." He understands Nietzsche's great thought as the culmination of modern metaphysics, completing the elevation of willing to unchallenged supremacy within the relation of human being to being as a whole, so that in our time "the earth itself can show itself only as the object of assault, an assault that, in human willing, establishes itself as total objectification." Heidegger identifies the grounding principle of Nietzsche's metaphysics, the metaphysics of the will to power, and notices that it is a value-principle: "Art is worth more than truth." He wonders about evaluative thinking altogether, and this leads him back to a consideration of Descartes, Plato and the pre-Socratic thinkers. I shall present a sketch of the sketch he gives. In Descartes' thought, that which constantly underlies everything that is, (the hypokeimenon in Aristotle's language) is the cogito, the "I think" of the fundamental proposition "I think, therefore I am." But the Cartesian cogito means co-agito; to cogitate means to co-agitate; ''I think" means "I drive together into the unity of a system." Cartesian thinking, according to Heidegger, is fundamentally willful, doing violence to beings rather than letting them be what they are. Nothing is more characteristic of Heidegger' s own late writing than the passionate insistence on the will-not-to-will, which is meant to prepare the way for the tranquility of "letting-be," that is, of thinking that lets things be what they are. Heidegger perceives the same element of willfulness, which refuses to let beings be what they are, in the thought of Plato, though in a less blatant form. For there the eidi!, the non-appearing beings of thought, are ultimately understood as measures, in relation to which everything that offers itself to us by appearing to us must inevitably fail to measure up, and hence is said to be only in a certain measure. The positing of the idea of the Good is murderous of Being, that is, destroys the meaningfulness of what appears. Meaningfulness is now conferred only by the willfully established frame within which what appears is allowed to appear. Heidegger WINTER 1986 �writes in another place: "From the standpoint of space, the difference is this: appearing in the first and authentic sense of bringing-itself-to-stand in togetherness involves space, which it first conquers; as it stands there, it creates space for itself; it produces space and everything pertaining to it; it is not something copied. Appearing in the second sense (i.e., Platonically understood) emerges from an already finished space; it is situated in the rigid measures of this space, and we see it by looking toward it. The vision makes the thing. Now the vision becomes decisive, instead of the thing itself. Appearing in the first sense opens up space. Appearing in the (Platonic) sense merely circumscribes and measures the space that has already been opened." Thus in order to encounter a kind of thinking that does not represent to itself what it thinks about but rather allows it to be present in its own way, that places nothing before itself (Kant's characteristic word vorstellen, usually translated "represent" means literally "to place before") but rather heeds what comes before it, we must turn to the pre-Socratic thinkers. And this Heidegger has done repeatedly, with the greatest seriousness and with the greatest and most imaginative sympathy. But even in Heracleitus and Parmenides, Heidegger concludes, "Being is not thought as Being." In these thinkers there is indeed no distortion through willfulness, but there is a kind of obliviousness of the mystery of Being. What is lacking even in Heracleitus and Parmenides is insight into the tragic character of the thinker's relation to Being, the insight that Being must be thought historically with a vision to its withholding itself from man, withdrawing from man variously in various epochs, thereby engendering a variety of tragedies of thought. Heidegger, who seems never to have given thought to tragedies of action such as Sophocles and Shakespeare present, regards the history of metaphysics not skeptically or negatively but tragically as a sequence of shatterings against fatefully appointed limits of which the configuration changes from epoch to epoch, but never the immensity. Thus his final word on the "willfulness" that characterizes the traditional understanding of thinking is this: "The false opinion easily arises that the human will is the origin of the will to will. In fact, on the contrary, man is being willed by the will to will without even experiencing the essence of this willing." III. We began by considering a little the meaning of Hegel's claim that to comprehend the true we must begin with subjectivity of the subject and above all must understand subjectivity as negativity. With the help of Heidegger's reflections on the role of willing within metaphysical speculation since Descartes, we tried to see Heger s view THE ST. JOHN'S REVIEW not merely as one of several important alternatives but rather as a radicalization and unsurpassably acute expression of a tendency that has been powerful for centuries. We have also been stirred-! at least have been stirred-by two further claims of Heidegger: first, that the traditional understanding of thinking, according to which thinking is kind of willing, is so murderously destructive of meaningfulness in our experience of the world that the only hope for us is to attempt to renounce willing, to will not to will, and then wait to see if we can learn to let things be as they are; second, that this tradition in which thinking is at bottom a kind of willing originates with Plato. Although these matters are difficult to judge, I believe Heidegger may be right in his first claim. I doubt that his second claim is true. But I think it might be worthwhile for us now to pay some attention to Plato's way of speaking about the human soul. With this in view, I propose that we look at the Timaeus. There are several reasons for this choice. One is that while we are reading and talking about the Timaeus, it is almost impossible for us to forget that playfulness has a proper place in discussions of the most important matters. I fear that our consideration of Hegel and Heidegger may have induced us to forget this. The Timaeus seems to me to be, in the guise of presentation of the genesis of the visible and touchable world, above all an invitation to think about the human soul in certain ways. This hypothesis is at least plausible: after all, the "feast of words" offered to Socrates as recompense for his own gift of the day before-something like the conversation recounted in the Republic-is meant to delight Socrates; and Socrates seems to take delight most of all in words about the human soul. I shall consider certain statements about the soul contained in Timaeus' mythical account of how soul was fashioned and apportioned, as well as what seems to be implied about the soul in Timaeus' account of "the receptacle." But first we must notice a remarkable feature of this dialogue altogether, namely its undercutting of oppositions that seem familiar and well-established in other dialogues. Two examples seem especially important. The most famous phrase from the Timaeus is eikos muthos, likely story. But 27 lines after the first occurrence of this phrase, the very same set of words is referred to as eikos logos. The difference between muthos and logos, so emphatically insisted upon in other dialogues, seems far from clear-cut in the Timaeus. We shall have to try to understand why this is. Again, the opposition at the heart of the Meno, the opposition between memory-understood as merely idiosyncratic and closely associated with Meno' s incapacity to learn-and recollection as the soul's descent into itself beyond memory, seems in the Timaeus to be somehow undercut as we hear of Critias' attempt to reach back at 49 �once into himself and beyond himself in order to recover an account he heard when young from his old grandfather who heard it from his father who heard it from Solon who heard it from an Egyptian priest who relied upon written records extending back 8000 years-that is, to within a thousand years of the time of the event to be recovered. Let us turn now to the introduction of soul within Timaeus' account of the framing of the world in which we find ourselves. The non-envious demiurge, we are told, discovered upon consideration that among visible things none Jacking intellect is more beautiful than what has intellect, comparing wholes with wholes. But it was not possible to place intellect directly into body. Rather, it was necessary to place intellect in soul and soul in body. Soul appears first within this account as a bonding thing, necessary for the holding together of intellect and body. Even more: Timaeus' account seems to imply that only mortal soul can serve this function. For soon we encounter this powerful conjunction: "in order that there might be mortal things and the whole might be truly a whole." The wholeness, the oneness of the world is an acute problem in the Timaeus as it is not in the great central images of the Republic. The divided line, though it has sections, has no gaps; it is one continuous line. Similarly the path leading out of the cave into the sunlight is one path. But in the Timaeus we are presented emphatically with the image of a demiurge who looks up there to see the changeless originals in the image of which he fashions the material down here. We imagine him, as we imagine any craftsman, looking repeatedly back and forth between the model and the copy which is gradually taking shape. As his gaze moves between model and copy, it encounters vacancy. Are there two widely separated worlds, one unchanging and invisible, the other changing and visible, or are they somehow one? They are somehow one, Timaeus' account implies, only because there are mortals, beings who live but do not live forever, who, themselves perishable, long for the imperishable, so that their very longing holds the two worlds together bonds them into one world. We shall return to this theme. Various remarkable things are said by Timaeus about the fashioning and distribution of soul. Let us consider three which seem at first sight very strange and even outrageous: the world is an animal, the courses of the planets are made of soul, and the soul itself is made of music. I think that these propositions appear outrageous only on the basis of essentially Hegelian premisses, namely that human being have in the beginning a radically negative relation to the world, that there is no primary experience of feeling at home in the world, but rather one experiences the urgent need to make oneself at home, by violent deeds of mind and hand, in a world that is primarily alien. For, apart from these premisses, what is more 50 natural than to regard the world around us as composed above all of what is alive and what sustains life, so that the cosmos would most like to be called to zoon, the living being? And can it really be that what is alive is alien to us? Descartes could suppose that dogs and horses, unlike human beings, are mere machines. But no one, I think, who has looked into the eyes of an injured dog he was trying to help, could take this supposition seriously: in such a gaze soul knows that it is indeed encountering soul. Again, the soul does not seem to find the motion of the heavenly lights alien: we wish upon stars, wonder at times at their special brilliance, which we delight in pointing out to each other; and investigating their complex regularities involves deep satisfaction. So little do we find the motion of those lights alien that it makes sense, to me at least, to say that their courses are made of soul. I have always imagined that such men as Ptolemy, Copernicus, Brahe and Kepler must have had deeply healthy souls and that Ptolemy was speaking from authentic experience when he said that the benefit of his astro-nomical studies was to train the imagination how "not to forget in whatever things we happen upon the consideration of their beautiful and well-ordered disposition." I think that there are elements of our experience which Hegel explains better than anyone else; but I do not think that subjectivity understood as negativity and Abraham understood as the archetypal unhappy consciousness which refuses to be at home in the world are models that illuminate our experience of living under the starry skies and alongside all manner of living things. Finally, if Timaeus' account makes any sense at all, that is, if soul is what holds together intellect and body, and thereby holds together that which is unchangeable and that which is forever changing, then it makes sense to say that if soul is made of anything, it is made of music. For in music we face the mystery of the inseparable unity of number ratio (logos), than which nothing pleases intellect more, and sensibility of such depth that it seems that without music we could hardly know who we are as feeling beings existing in time. In the beginning of Timaeus' account of the demiurge' s introduction of intellect-in-soul into body, we hear not that the motions of the visible world had been disorderly in general, but rather that they had been "out of tune" (plemmelos). That the soul is made of music seems to imply that our relation to logoi, accounts of all kinds, is inseparable from such things as Critias' memory of his grandfather's eagerness in telling and his own delight in hearing the account of Athens of old, the telling itself having taken place during a religious festival in honor of Dionysus in which children born during the year were admitted into the companionship of the city. The question is whether there WINTER 1986 �is anything in our experience more trustworthy than such tales, tales inseparable from the circumstances of the telling of them. I think the dialogue suggests that there may be nothing more trustworthy. We remember how the Timaeus begins: "One, two, three-but where is the fourth?" It is hard not to think, among other things, of the fourth-that is the uppermost-section of the divided line. But if the fourth section is missing, the section in which the soul exhibits its power of making its way "without images by the forms (eide) themselves through themselves," then the remaining three powers of the soul must somehow comprehend the living whole which in the Timaeus the soul faces. But that means that pistis, trust, has become the in-between pqwer, the power of the soul that sustains the movement from consideration of image to consideration of original and back again. The most beautiful example I know of the high dignity of the action of trusting within what seems a purely theoretical consideration occurs near the end of the Sophist. The stranger asks Theatetus whether he like almost everyone else supposes that the world around us was thrown up by chance, or whether he supposes that some sort of provident care was involved. Theatetus, who is about 18 years old, says that he thinks about that question all the time-what a wonderful young man! I cannot help interjecting-but that, probably because he is young, he at one time holds the one view, at another time the other. But now, Theatetus continues, as I look upon your face and know that you think there has been provident care involved, I think that too. The stranger replies that he suspects that, being the young man he is, Theatetus will always somehow incline to that view. There is no hint of apology or embarrassment in this exchange. I think that the main purpose of the Timaeus is to speak of soul in such a way that we can see why there should be no apology or embarrassment. In following Timaeus' account of the fashioning and distribution of soul, we have perhaps learned something about the place-or better, the places-of soul in the world that surrounds us. Could it make sense also to speak of the places within the soul, of shallower or deeper places within the soul from which our words variously come, of places in our hearts into which we receive certain persons and certain things? I think that Timaeus' discussion of the "receptacle" (hypodoche) is an attempt to address this question. That discussion is after all an attempt to speak of a "within which/~ a "place," having" depth," prior to the existence of body, namely at a (mythically conceived) time prior to the introduction of regular plane surfaces arranged in three dimensions. At this time we encounter nothing of body except certain ''powers'' and "traces" (dunameis and ichne). Thus the being of the receptacle is said by Timaeus to be reachable only with difficulty by a kind of "bastard THE ST. JOHN'S REVIEW reasoning" with the help of "nonsensing" (the word anaisthesia used strangely). I do not know exactly what these strange phrases mean, but it seems clear that Timaeus does not wish his speaking about the receptacle to be understood as merely metaphorical, that is, as involving the mere transfer to another domain of words belonging primarily and most properly to the domain of body. Again, there are moments during Timaeus' account when it is difficult not to understand the receptacle as "intellectual soul" pure and simple. Titis is especially true if one has read the third book of Aristotle's treatise on the soul. That which is to receive all incoming forms without deforming them must itself be perfectly formless-this language is used by Timaeus of the receptacle and by Aristotle of the soul's power of knowing. The use by both of the uncommon word para-phainein, to appear alongside, makes the coincidence all the more striking. Finally, Timaeus passes almost insensibly from speaking of the· receptacle as chora, place or room, which receives all bodies (somata), to speaking of it as the genos of place-roughly, the class of place-which receives not things but classes of things. It looks very much as if an attempt, perhaps bound not to succeed entirely, is being made to speak of a way of being that underlies the being of body and the being of soul. We must try to see how far we can discern the results of this attempt. First, however, we must backtrack and notice two things about the introduction of the receptacle into Timaeus' account. The first is rather obvious. The first part of Timaeus' account had dealt chiefly with the things fashioned through intellect-through nous. Now the role of necessity must be taken into account, since the visible whole has come into being. through the persuasion of necessity by intellect, so that "for the most part" the things coming into being might be led toward what is best. Necessity, ananke, is said to have the form of the ~~errant cause," and as Timaeus' thlnking and ours descend into its realm, the realm of mere ''powers'' and "traces," we must invoke, not merely the gods in general as at the beginning of the first account, but-the words are said solemnly, I think-God the Savior (theos soter). It is in connection with the confrontation of the possibility of chaos that the receptacle is introduced as a third thing in addition to the model and its copy. But there is also a second point to be noticed about Timaeus' second beginning. We now distinguish in our thinking among that which comes to be, that within which it comes to be, and the source from which what comes to be is born, springs forth. "Is born, springs forth" is my translation of phuetai. The verb phuein, from which is formed the noun phusis, usually translated "nature," means "to beget" or "to send forth shoots." In 51 �the passive it means "to be born" and "to grow." With the use of this word we are emphatically in the realm of what is alive as, we now realize, was not quite the case in the first account. For then the two words repeatedly used to characterize the activity of the demiurge were plattein, to fashion by molding (the source of our word "plastic", and sunhistemi, to bring to stand together. We were at bottom still in the realm of statue-making. And surely we do not forget that the whole "feast of words" to be presented to Socrates was animated by Socrates' dissatisfaction with mere statues-he had wanted to see something alive. The dialogue seems to suggest that if we are to see something truly alive, the form of the errant cause must somehow be taken into account and God the Savior invoked. Let us return to the receptacle itself. How are we to understand its receiving function? It is said to be a place (topas) to provide room (chora). These are rather indefinite and neutral words. But the receptacle is also said to provide hedra for all things that have birth. Hedra can be understood neutrally as "place," but its richest as well as its quite frequent meaning is "shrine" or "temple." The 52 place provided by the receptacle seems to be a very special one. Above all, "receptacle" does not seem to be an adequate translation for hypodoche, a noun formed from the verb hypodechomai. The primary meaning of this verb is ''to welcome.'' It is. the word that is used, for example, in book 14 of the Odyssey when the disguised Odysseus is said to delight in his heart because the swineherd Eumaeus "knew how to give welcome." Could this strangest of dialogues be suggesting that our world is the sort of "within which" that gives welcome to what is born into it; and that there are, as well, souls in the world which are able to give still more intimate welcome to what springs forth? We do after all say such things as: "she has a place in her heart for him." The muthos or logos presented by Timaeus seems to me to come closer than anything else in the Platonic dialogues to suggesting that the place we have in our hearts for persons and things is the very best place to be, better even than the hyperouranios tapas, the super-heavenly place, spoken of in the Phaedrus as the abode of the changeless originals which truly are. One wonders what the listening Socrates thinks about this suggestion. WINTER 1986 �About Dante's Purgatory (To the memory of my mother, Isabel Geddes O'Grady) I would like to present some quite fragmentary thoughts about Dante's Purgatory and about what the purgation of the human spirit might mean, why human beings might hope for it and why they might fear it. I am very eager to know whether these thoughts make sense to you. I Let me begin with a passage from Augustine's Confessions, occurring just before he recounts the moment in the garden when he hears a voice "as of a child" inviting him to "take up and read' a passage from St. Paul that seems addressed specially to him. He reads and "as if before a peaceful light streaming into my heart, all the dark shadows of doubt fled away". But this is how Augustine describes his condition before receiving and responding to the invitation: What was there that I did not say against myself? With what scourges of self-condemnation did I not lash my soul, so that it would follow me as I strove to follow you? [All of these words are spoken of course to God.] Yet it drew back; it refused to go on, and it offered no excuses for itself. All arguments [against being a Christian] were used up, and all had been refuted. There remained only speechless dread and my soul was fearful, as of death itself, of being kept back from that flow of habit by which it was wasting away unto death. In order to understand something of Augustine's paralyzing dread, which only the most definite invitation (as Augustine understood it) from God Himself could ''About Dante's Purgatory'' appeared in the Spring 1986 issue of Energeia. THE ST. JOHN'S REVIEW overcome, we must understand somethlng of what he means by "the force of habit", which is his remarkable and bold paraphrase of what St. Paul calls "the law of sin". I think he means by habit something very radical, something that is perhaps suggested in some words spoken by the adulteress-heroine in Graham Greene's novel The End of the Affair. Sarah is resisting the renunciations-above all the renunciation of her lover-which she is coming to believe God requires of her in fulfillment of a bargain into which she entered out of desperation and love. She writes in her diary: Nothing to do till seven when Henry (her husband) would be back. Had a couple of drinks by myself. It was a mistake. Have I got to give up drinking too? If I eliminate everything, how will I exist? I was somebody who loved Maurice (her lover) and went with men and enjoyed my drinks. What happens if you drop all the things that make you I? She means, I think, and Augustine means, that what arouses dread is not so much the prospect of giving up the reliable pleasures for the sake of something less well known, nor even the anticipated pain of the straightening of what has been crooked in one's life and one's self; but rather the possibility that there will be nothing left to mean when I say "I"-the very word will no longer have content. What am I, am I anything at all, when stripped of the ways of being I have chosen to make my own and have somehow placed myself into and taken responsibility for in laboring through my life? When the human spirit, my very own spirit, has been purged of all that is displeasing to God, will there be anything left of me?-this most disquieting of questions is felt by Dante the pilgrim as well as by ourselves. 53 �II I think it is impossible to understand Dante without holding fast to the realization that he insists with equal passion on the legitimacy of two fundamental human desires: the desire to enjoy the highest good, to be in the loving presence of God, to be as full of His grace and light as one may be; and the desire to be one's very self. Neither of these desires must be sacrificed to the other-this is the source of many of the great tensions of the Comedy (as well as being the reason, I think, why there is no regret, let alone resentment, in a hierarchical paradise: Cunizza, for example, within the sphere of Venus, knows that she could be a more perfect vessel for God's light only by ceasing to be Cunizza-and this she cannot want). Because of the properly irreducible duality which Dante recognizes as fundamental to humankind's deepest desire, the purgation of the human spirit is a complicated matter. But it is also of the greatest importance that the journey of Dante the pilgrim does not begin at the base of the mount of purgation. If that were so, some calculation of cost and benefit might be imaginable: how much is one willing to sacrifice for how great a good. The fact is, however, that Dante arrives at Purgatory having emerged from Hell, having seen with the greatest clarity-a clarity none of us, I take it, possesses-what the alternative to purgation is. That alternative is unbearable. Therefore purgation is necessary: Dante cannot impose conditions or otherwise negotiate; he can only hope that at the end of the purgation of his spirit, his "I myself" will still have some content, and indeed will have its most proper content, whose properness is recogniza- ble not only by God but also by Dante himself. III The alternative to purgation (whether in this life or afterwards) is Hell. Allow me to digress briefly upon what I take to be the principle of the choice for Hell. I think that according to Dante's presentation the principle of that choice is, above all, the unwillingness to be moved by another, to have the source of one's motion outside of oneself. That is why the extreme of Hell is sheer frigid immobility: those who were unwilling to be moved by another are ultimately unable themselves to move; at the furthest point from the unmoved mover Who draws all beings to Himself, we encounter the unmoved movers whose only power-an irresistible power, it seems-is to repel. It is important to be aware that the unwillingness to have the source of one's motion outside of oneself can, and often does, assume subtle guises. It is possible to seem to be moved by another, by a being outside of oneself, while in fact using that other as a mere substratum upon which to project one's own fantasies, so that in fact one 54 is being moved by one's own fantasies, and the source of one's motion is exclusively and securely within oneself. This appears to be part of the meaning of the dream of the siren, the ancient witch, which Dante experiences upon the terrace of sloth. IV I said earlier that Dante as a character in the poem possesses perfect clarity concerning the alternative to purgation, and that we do not. But we seem to have some clarity about that alternative, and in any case neither Dante's submission to purgation nor our own seems com- prehensible as nothing but flight from; there is surely also an element of the motion toward. After all, what overcomes Dante's final dread of the flames through which he must pass is the promise of Beatrice awaiting him on the far side. But the elements of flight from and motion toward seem to me intimately connected, as I shall try to indicate by distinguishing between two aspects of purgation of the spirit as presented by Dante. The first has to do with the so-called seven deadly sins. Of three of these-pride, anger and lust-Dante knows himself to be more guilty than he is of the others. These sins, or perhaps roots of sin, are surely serious and dangerous matters; but one can, after all, do something about them. At least within certain limits, willing avails to mortify pride, for example, and to restrain at least the outward eruptions of anger-one can undertake to practice gentleness of speech. But to be lost in the dark wood, to come to oneself again in the dark wood, seems to involve more than recognition of one's entanglement in particular sinful ways. Dante's own heart is not fully healed until at the top of the mount of purgation, "the ice that was bound about my heart turned to breath and water and with anguish came forth from my breast by mouth and eyes". What had happened to Dante, above and beyond his particular violations of the conduct proper for human beings, is that his heart had grown hard and cold; and he knew that; and he knew that he could not, by howsoever heroic an act of will-power, undo that hardness and coldness. The most he could do-and that was difficult enoughwas to sustain his sorrow that it was so, his sadness that his heart was no longer capable, as the heart of the young boy had been capable, of opening in awe and gratitude in the presence of the beauty presented to him in the figure of a little girl, and of resolving to be as good as he could be so as to be worthy, not indeed to possess her, but to be in the world that contained her. Had Dante been unable to sustain his sorrow over the growing coldness of his heart, had he self-distractingly or cynically accommodated himself to it, he would have been truly dead, and neither the grace of God, nor the graciousness WINTER 1986 �of Mary, Lucy and Beatrice, would have availed him anything. v Let us now finally enter Purgatory with the pilgrim Dante. In the first Canto he is perfectly silent. What does this silence contain? There must be in it great relief, and wonder, and some bewilderment. Above all, there is the certain knowledge that Hell must be rejected, and hence the way of purgation must be chosen, must be submitted to. What will this submission require? Dante first of all hears the severe Cato say that although Marcia was, in the old mode, the surpassing love in his life, in the new mode he is wholly unmoved by her. Whatever Cato means by these words, they must be heart-rending for Dante to hear. When Dante does finally speak, in the second Canto, it is to ask Casella, the friend of his young manhood, to sing for him "one of the songs oflove which used to quiet all my longings, so as to refresh my soul with them for a while, which is so spent coming here with my body." But Dante prefaces his request in this way: "If a new law does not take from you the memory and use of these songs." It seems to Dante entirely possible that a new law does forbid lovely and, as it seemed, innocent things which once brought him consolation and refreshmentand if it is so, the new law must nevertheless be submitted to. But what then will be left, not merely of consolation and refreshment, but of Dante himself? I thing these worries are very much on Dante's mind, as they may be on ours, and they are hardly alleviated by Cato' s sharp rebuke, castigating delight in song as blamable negligence. Well, it requires the presentation of Paradise itself before Dante and we can even glimpse the aliveness, the richness and fullness of personality, the being more myself than I have ever been before, enjoyed by the spirits whose purgation has been completed. But there are two moments within Purgatory itself that I should like to indicate briefly as bearing upon our hopes and fears in this matter. The first occurs in the second Canto. As the thousand souls disembark from the angel-piloted ship, they sing, all together with one voice, In exitu Israel de Aegypto, "when Israel went out of Egypt", a hymn of liberation and deliverance. And, Dante expressly tells us, they sing "all that is written after of that psalm". Let us listen to a few more words from this hymn (Psalm 114) which Dante heard: The mountains skipped like rams, the hills like young sheep-Why, mountains, do you skip like rams, and you, hills, like young sheep? Dance, 0 earth, at the presence of THE ST. JOHN'S REVIEW the Lord, at the presence of the God of Jacob, who turned the rock into a pool of water, the granite cliff into a fountain. There is in these words heard by Dante the promise that in the delivering, liberating, purging action of God there comes to pass the greatest and most joyous enlivening of all his creatures-submission, still less renunciation and loss, are very far from being the final moment. VI And yet as we read the end of the Purgatory-the second moment to which I wished to call attention-we cannot help but feel a heart-rending sense of loss: "But Virgil had left us bereft of him, Virgil sweetest father, Virgil to whom I gave myself for my salvation"; and Dante, in Eden, weeps. I cannot say anything adequate about this moment. But I would like to say something about Virgil's words, Virgil's poetry, of which Dante has not been left bereft; and then, very·shyly, about Virgil himself. In the thirtieth Canto, in which is told the re-union of Dante and Beatrice and the loss of Virgil, we encounter two lines from the Aeneid, the first spoken as it were by Dante the poet, the second by Dante the pilgrim. The poet in describing the pageant in honor of Beatrice tells us that as she approaches "there rose up a hundred ministers and messengers of eternal life, who all cried, Benedictus qui venis ("blessed are you who come", which must be referred to Beatrice despite the masculine grammar) and, throwing flowers up and around, Manibus o date Iilia plenis ("with full hands give lilies")". The second of these utterances occurs originally in book six of the Aeneid, as Anchises speaks ~orrowfully of the early death of the beautiful young man Marcellus, his life cut short before its full flowering, bringing a sorrow which is now overwhelmed by the splendor of Rome's accomplishments. At first glance it appears that by transferring to an occasion of rejoicing words originally belonging to an occasion of mourning, the Christian poet is correcting the pagan poet who knew so well of the tears of things and the affairs of mortals that touch the heart: mourning has been transformed into joy. But upon reflection we find that it is not so simple. For the words "Blessed are you who come", that is, "Blessed are you who come in the name of the Lord" (Matthew 21-9) are spoken to Christ on Palm Sunday as he enters Jerusalem acclaimed by a great crowd. That is, they are spoken at the beginning of the week of the Passion of Christ, the agony that revealed most fully the depth of the tears of things. The Christian poet cannot simply transform or reverse Virgil's words-mourning into rejoicing; he must first of all deepen them or at the very least-which is not so littleremember them. 55 �Now let us turn to the words from the Aeneid which Dante the pilgrim utters at his moment of greatest need, of greatest awe, bewilderment, and overfullness. As he sees Beatrice and once again, for the first time in ten years, feels ''ancient love's gret power'', he can find no words of his very own, no words originating with him. But he needs words, and words are available, from Virgil: "Not a drop of blood is left in me that does not tremble; I know the marks of the ancient flame." "I know the marks of the ancient flame" -the words are Dido's as she comes to realize that the part of her that died with the death of Sychaeus is coming to life again in the presence of Aeneas. That the story which comes out of this experience turns out painfully is immaterial here; what matters is the experience itself, an experience which has befallen men and women in all times and places, and which once upon a time was tenderly and . truly understood and put into unforgettably beautiful words. That true and unforgettable words had once been found for such an experience, and that, through the loyalty and devotion of Dante they were not forgotten, had the result that in the most overwhelming moment of his life, Dante did not have to live wholly out of his own resources. It is true of course that the pilgrim Dante must make Virgil's words his own: Virgil's Latin becomes Dante's Italian. VII I cannot close without trying to say something about the loss of Virgil himself at the peak of the mount of purgation, whatever may be the consoling power of the knowledge that we do not lose his words. Of the distress- 56 ing question of the destiny of the "virtuous pagans" much could be said, and the least that should be said is that their apparent exclusion from the presence of God seems to have been as distressing for Dante as for many of us-he returns to it again and again, finally in the heaven of Jupiter, the sphere of justice, where his question about the possible salvation of those who know not Christ receives a negative answer theologically but an affirmative answer empirically: the pagan Ripheus, an obscure figure in the Aeneid who is said in that poem to be the most righteous of the Trojans, is encountered by Dante in Paradise. The only suggestion I have to make about this matter is the following. I think Dante would have been very grateful for, and would have made good use of, a certain speculation of the astronomer Johann Kepler. Traditionally, of course, Christ is thought of as the mediator between man and God, as occupying a sort of in-between position. Kepler suggests an image complementary to this one in his discussion of the regions of the world. There are three of these, he says, corresponding to the three Persons of the Trinity by way of a "divine symbolizing." In the center is the sun, symbolizing the Father. The sphere of the fixed stars symbolizes the second Person, Christ; and the region in between, which of course includes the earth and its denizens, is pervaded by the Holy Spirit. Thus it is we human beings who occupy the inbetween position, our lives centered in the Father and contained by Christ; or as Kepler puts it more fully, "formed, contained and terminated" by Christ. Or, as St. Augustine says near the beginning of the Confessions, quoting the 139th Psalm which speaks to God: "If I descend into hell, you are present." WINTER 1986 �A Way to Think about Dark Times I have been asked to talk about dark times, about the darkness of the times in which we live. I shall try to do that, but it seems to me that, being who I am, for better and for worse, I can only indirectly carry out what has been asked. A sign of that indirectness, which I hope will not dismay you, is that I shall present what I have to say in the form of reflections on brief passages from four books, the most recent of which was written about seven centuries ago. But I shall try very hard to make myself understood and I hope that some good may come from our being together. From the Iliad of Homer, composed more than 2500 years ago, I wish to talk about what it means for one human being to offer another as much time as he needs; from the Confessions of St. Augustine about what it means to be faithful to that original care for one's own wellbeing which seems to be a part of each of us; from Dante's Purgatory about the sort of weeping that might be redemptive and about how one can keep intact one's capacity for that sort of weeping; and finally from the Gospel of St. John about why it might be that if all the deeds done by Christ were to be written down, the world itself could not contain the books that would be required. I would like to begin with a moment in the Iliad because that book seems to me to be very much about time. In pondering the assignment to speak of living in dark times, I had to ask myself what it would be like to live in bright times. And it occurred to me that the difference between dark times and bright times might not be the most important difference, just as Achilles, the beautiful young "A Way to Think about Dark Times" was originally delivered at the University of North Carolina at Greensboro. It was published in the Spring 1986 issue of Energeia. THE ST. JOHN'S REVIEW warrior who is the hero of Homer's poem, comes to his proper wisdom when the choice which had always seemed so important to him-a long life versus a short life, much time versus little time-comes to be replaced by the difference which depends not upon choice, but rather upon a sort of grace. I shall try to explain what I mean. Because of a certain prophecy, Achilles believes he has a choice between a brief life of unforgettable glory or a long, undistinguished-though not unhappy-life. He broods much over this choice and is greatly confused. Then his dearest friend is slain in war and he is impelled into action of a despairing and merciless sort. He slays scores of men and even does battle against a mighty river. He finally slays Hector, the slayer of his friend. In his rage he drags the body of Hector on the ground behind his chariot, around and around the camp, every day for twelve days. But the gods Apollo and Aphrodite protect Hector's body, and the natural outcome does not ensue-Hector's body is preserved rather than being mutilated beyond recognition. Finally on the twelfth day Priam, who is very old, the father of Hector, comes to Achilles to ask for his son's body so that a proper funeral might be celebrated, with ritual lamentation and the feasting of a great feast. Achilles and Priam weep together, Achilles now for his own father, now for his dead friend, Priam for his dead son. Their tears somehow form one stream and are indistinguishable. Achilles, moved by the beauty of Priam, grants his request-he is willing to restore the body of Hector. And-this is the one act of divine grace which takes place within the Iliad-there is a body to restore, not a formless mutilated obscenity which would break Priam's heart to see, but the body of Hector, young and handsome. Reconciliation takes place within the Iliad because Achilles 57 �has been given enough time, as much time as he needs. At no earlier moment would he have been capable of transcending his rage and despair. Had Priam come earlier his petition would have been futile. But if the gods had not, contrary to all rational expectation, preserved the body of Hector while Achilles was enduring and laboring through his rage, if divine grace had not secured harmony between the requirements of Achilles's inner time and the requirements of the world-time which men share, Achilles would have had nothing to offer Priam except regret, and the most beautiful moment within the Iliad, from which light streams upon all of the darkness and bitternesses of the poem, would never have occurred. Homer writes: But when they had put aside their desire for eating and drinking, Priam, son of Dardonos, gazed upon Achilleus, wondering at his size and beauty, for he seemed like an outright vision of gods. Achilleus in turn gazed on Dardanian Priam and wondered, as he saw his brave looks and listened to him talking. Achilles has been given-graciously, independently of any claims he might have-enough time, and he knows it. Anyone who has experienced being given enough time-and part of that experience seems to be a powerful sense of how easily things might have gone otherwise, how likely it is for one to be given not quite enough time-the question of much time versus little time, of a long life versus a short life, cannot seem very important. Thus Achilles asks Priam how long he will need to mourn and bury his son. Priam says twelve days and explains why. Achilles grants him twelve days-he will hold back the war for that long. Achilles, having himself been given time, gives Priam enough time. This is Achilles' imitation of the gods, his truly god-like act within the Iliad. And it seems to me that for us too, it is utterly important to give people as much time as they need, to let them tell us just how much time that is, and to understand that clear reasons cannot always be given for needing just that amount of time. But I do not think that many of us-I leave out of account a few great souls among us-are capable of giving another time unless we ourselves have, in one form or another, had the experience of being given, beyond any fair claims we can make, and contrary to all rational expectation, enough time. However dark our times may be, I do not think that such experiences are altogether impossible for us. And when they do befall us, surely gratitude requires that we make available to another, as graciously as may be, what has been made available to us. Let me now turn to the Confessions of St. Augustine, a book written about 1500 years ago. The title Confessions means something different from what we might suppose. For Augustine, the proper subject of confession is the 58 goodness of God. But God's goodness is shown not only in the deep-down, always-present goodness of His creation, but also in the mercy He shows to sinful man. Hence to acknowledge and praise God's goodness includes acknowledging and praising His mercy, and that requires that the occasions of that mercy, the sins and sinfulness of our lives, be set forth. That in turn requires a travelling through memory. This is what Augustine does in his Confessions: he presents himself in his neediness in order to present God in His graciousness and to give Him praise for His graciousness. According to Augustine, this praise is not so much our duty as it is our deepest delight, the delight for which we were made. I would like to consider with you something Augustine says about himself as a young child. He finds something wonderful in that child, something altogether worthy of praise. That something is no achievement of the child, nor any potential for achievement, but rather something wholly God-given: it is, Augustine says, "a care for my own well-being" which shows itself, among other ways, by the fact that "I shunned sadness and dejection." This may seem strange to us. We are accustomed to saying and perhaps thinking that it is a matter of course for each of us to care for himself-"to take care of number one," as we sometimes say-the only surprising thingperhaps even a miracle-being that occasionally we also care for other people. But for Augustine the most difficult thing in the world is to care for our own well-being, or more precisely, to be faithful to that original care for our own well-being with which God endowed us in the beginning, to go on caring for our own well-being, to go on shunning sadness and dejection. The reason is that we grow weary, feel worn-out, are bewildered and embarrassed as we attempt to sustain the care for our own well-being. We long for rest. Not that Augustine thinks we ought not to long for rest. He says to God: "Our hearts are restless until they rest in Thee." But until that most proper rest comes to be, the human task is to be faithful to the original restlessness and to the original care for our own well-being from which it springs. Augustine does not praise himself in the Confessions, one reason being that he knows the great power of what he calls "the passion for self-vindicationrr, that is, not merely pride in the sense of having too high an opinion of ourselves, but rather the awesome passion to vindicate ourselves when accused, whether by others or by ourselves. Augustine does not suppose that this passion within him needs any help from him. But if he were to praise himself, to find something praiseworthy in his life-achieved with the help of God of course but still achieved by Augustine-it would be for being faithful through many years to his own restlessness, for sustaining, in the face of so many temptations to come to some false settlement, to some false peace, that restlessness WINTER 1986 �which so wearied him. From the point of view of the Confessions, written when he was about forty-five, he writes of himself in his thirtyfirst year, fully the thirteenth year of his most earnest searchings for a truth in which his heart and mind could find genuine rest-that is, the thirteenth year of what we so easily refer to as an u adolescent religious crisis." He writes of how weary he was, and how embarrassedhow embarrassed, since he had been making such a fuss about his own well-being for so long a time, instead of getting on with the practical business of life (he was, after all, a Roman). But he held out in his weariness and his embarrassment until, as he recounts it, he received a true invitation from the true God. And then he said yes. Now let me turn to a passage in the Divine Comedy. There is a certain story told to Dante by a soul in Purgatory which I would like to tell you. But first I must say a few words about how Dante thinks of Purgatory. The souls in Purgatory-every one of them-will one day be in Heaven with God and each will be filled-in the measure possible for each without his ceasing to be himselfwith light and joy. But first-and this is what Purgatory is for, according to Dante-a kind of patience is necessary, and a coming to understand the ways in which our lives have been perverse, and an attempt-for once, happily, an attempt which is bound to succeed-to straighten out what has been crooked in them, not because otherwise God could not stand the sight of us, but because otherwise we would be simply ashamed and bewildered and miserable in the presence of God. The straightening out of what has been crooked in our lives-in us-is painful, but it is pain which the souls in Purgatory do not wish to avoid. Now let me recount to you the story which one of the souls in Purgatory tells Dante. His whole life, he says, or almost his whole life, had been full of violence and hatred, of hating and being hated. He met his death hunted down by his enemies, who wounded him and drove him into a swamp, where as he lay dying he saw pools of his blood form alongside him in the stinking water. He was alone and there was no one, even far away, who loved him. The moment before his death he shed a tear. The devils came to take him away to Hell. But angels came who would not permit them. The devils were furious at the unfairness of it: "On account of one little tear (una lacrimetta in Dante's Italian) we are deprived of what is rightfully ours," they shriek, "What is one little tear against a whole life-time of violence and hatred?" But the angels are firm, and the soul goes to Purgatory, to prepare itself for the presence of God. I want to reflect with you upon that one little tear, so strangely powerful. First, I think it must be not merely a tear of self-pity, of feeling sorry for oneself-! think some wider sorrow must be in it, some sorrow for hav- THE ST. JOHN'S REVIEW ing offended God or having offended against the beauty of His creation or some sadness at having betrayed things one shouldn't have betrayed. But I am not so sure that there may be nothing of self-pity in it. It would be strange, after all, and perhaps perversely prideful, to see and sorrow over the deep sadness of the world-the "tears of things", as Virgil says-and to exempt oneself, to stand above that sorrowful world and look down upon it. No, I do not think that self-pity-of which we so often speak harshly-must be excluded from that tear, although of course much more must also be included. Second, we must be aware that to shed such a tear, to shed the right kind of tear, is not an act of will. We cannot heroically, at that final moment, make ourselves do it through strenuous exertion. Such a tear comes forth or it does not. It comes forth from a heart in which there is still some goodness. Here, I think, is where the will comes in, where trying hard and struggling come in. Not indeed that kind of struggle to be as good as good can be, the straggle to be very good. Rather I am thinking of human beings in whose lives it is much too late in the day to make of their lives a beautiful thing which might gladden those who behold them, but for whom the question is: after so many betrayals of the things I ought least to have betrayed, after so many acts of violence against what I ought most to have cherished, what difference could one more betrayal, one more act of violence, possibly make? What difference could there possibly be between a thousand betrayals and a thousand and one? Perhaps I could resist this present temptation to betrayal-it would be painful, but perhaps I could do itbut what's the use? What difference could it possibly make? And surely tomorrow I shall be guilty of some new betrayal. What Dante means to say, I think, is that it does make a difference: that one moment of fidelity in the midst of a thousand betrayals does not indeed make a life into a beautiful thing in which men and angels may rejoice, but it may be enough to keep somehow intact a heart capable of shedding the right kind of tear when it matters most. Let me conclude by saying a few words about the final sentence of the Gospel of St. John. That sentence says: "But there are also many other things which Jesus did; were every one of them to be written, I suppose that the world itself could not contain the books that would be written.'' This makes sense, I think, only if we suppose that John does not have in mind only the deeds of Jesus during his thirty-three years in Palestine, where of course he encountered only a not very great number of souls. Rather, John must mean that every soul that has ever been in the world or ever will be encounters Jesus in one guise or another, knows him by one name or another, responds, however obscurely, to his invitation. And I 59 �thlnk it is not blasphemous to speak of these deeds of Jesus as being not only for our rescue-although surely it is right for us to think of them in this way most of the time-but also for his own fullness and therewith for the fullness of the creation. For we must take seriously his being a person. And of myself as a person I know that there are some things in me which are brought out-and in some mysterious way even called into being-only by a certain friend, other things brought out only by another friend. The loss of a friend is the loss of a part of me. As Jesus issues his invitation in as many ways as there are souls in the world, the creation comes fully into its own. These words may sound to you outrageously serene coming from one who was asked to speak about the darkness of our dark times. Surely an urgent and bewildered sense of our need for rescue, and painful doubts about 60 the very possibility of rescue, its availability in any comprehensible way, are among the deepest parts of our experience here and now. But I wonder whether there are not moments in the experience of each of us in which we can somehow sense the truth of these words spoken by Wisdom, that is, somehow, by Christ: "I am from eternity, and before the earth was made I was with Him forming all things, and was delighted every day, playing at His feet at all times; playing in the world. And my delights were to be with the children of men." How such moments-moments in which the world seems a deeply innocent place-are to be put together with the dark moments is very hard to say-it is surely beyond my power to say-but not to give voice to them at all seems to be a lie. WINTER 1986 �Sadness and Courage I have been asked to speak briefly about some traditional understandings of courage. In trying to do that, I shall present, quite selectively and impressionistically, thoughts from the writings of four thinkers in our tradition: the Greek Aristotle, who lived more than twenty centuries ago; the Italian Dante, who lived about seven centuries ago; and then from the sixteenth century, the Spaniard Cervantes and the Englishman Shakespeare. These thinkers belonged to very different cultures, very different situations of time and place, but their thoughts about courage seem to me profoundly to belong together. I hope very much that the bookishness of my approach will not prevent you from recognizing the experiences of human beings in the world that I shall be attempting to point to. Aristotle in his Ethics speaks of courage primarily as it shows itself on the battlefield. This does not, I think, mean that he supposes that the courage of soldiers is the highest or truest form of courage; rather he supposes that in this form certain properties of courage, always and everywhere, are visible with special distinctness. We speak of courage in a great variety of contexts, but in doing that we often use metaphorically language that belongs primarily to the experience of warriors in battle-the language of withstanding attack, enduring the prospect-which is terrible, full of terror-of wounds and ultimately of death, the language of holding one's ground rather than running away or evading, of continuing to press forward even though one's intactness, one's being intact, has already been violated and greater violation is likely or even certain. "Sadness and Courage" was delivered at the University of North Carolina at Greensboro. THE ST. JOHN'S REVIEW In any case, I should like to stress three points in Aristotle's analysis of courage. First, the brave man endures the terrors and dares the deeds of courage for the sake of what is noble. This means, to begin with, that the willingness to suffer violation of one's intactness-the loss of a hand, or a power of doing something, or a consoling and sustaining view of the world, or one's very being alive-is not ultimately for the sake of something outside of oneself-so that a cause might prevail, or so that one might be praised by others or escape their blame-but for one's own sake, for the sake of a deeper intactness of the self which would be shattered by flight from other terrors. But one cannot, according to Aristotle, finally understand courage as the exchange of terrors for terrors, as if the flight from ultimate violation of the self assumed the guise of willingness to suffer other violations. For the being intact, the being unbroken, of the self is not merely defended in the courageous act-it is affirmed unconditionally and thereby brought fully into being. The self in its integrity, its wholeness, shines forth in radiance and splendor. By "the noble" -to kalon in Greek-Aristotle means something very much like "the beautiful," and the beauty he has primarily in mind is the beauty of the integrity of the self. Aristotle's analysis makes clear, in the second place, that courage does not decisively depend upon natural endowment. In particular, Aristotle knows that some human beings are more spirited than others, more impetuous, more given to powerful surges of feeling that incite to action. But this is not courage. Again, some human beings are endowed with optimistic imaginations, others with pessimistic imaginations. This also must be distinguished from courage. Courage for Aristotle is roughly what we would call an act of the will, of which, ultimately, those who are not impetuous and those whose 61 �imaginations are wholly pessimistic are just as capable as those whose natural endowment is more encouraging. It is not quite right, however, to speak of courage, in Aristotle's understanding, as an act of will. Rather he speaks of a habitual disposition in choosing, by which he means to emphasize the wonderful fact that in choosing to do a brave deed now, I not only accomplish the deed itself, but I am also making myself into a person for whom it will be less difficult to do another brave deed later. But Aristotle's final remark about courage in the Ethics, his book about happiness, makes clear that it is never easy to be brave. This is what he writes; The death or wounds that courage may bring will be painful to the courageous man~ and he wil1 suffer them unwillingly; but he will endure them because it is noble to do so, or because it is base not to do so. And the more a man possesses virtue as a whole, and therefore the more happy he is, the more he will be pained by the prospect of death; for to such a man life is worth most, and he stands to lose the greatest goods, and knows that this is so, because he chooses nobility in struggle over the sweetness of his good life. Aristotle knows that even and especially for the best human beings it is difficult to do brave deeds; he also knows that it is painful for the communities to which these human beings belong to behold their heroes as they face their greatest tests, not because they fear that their heroes may fail, but because they have some sense of the awesome cost of their hero's victory. Now let us turn from what, superficially speaking, can be called the pagan world, to the Christian world, to Dante's Divine Comedy. I shall try to suggest something of Dante's understanding of the possibility of warriorsaints. In his journey through the three worlds of Hell, Purgatory, and Paradise, Dante's encounter in Paradise with the souls in the sphere of Mars, named after the Roman naming of the god of war, seems especially significant within the poem as a whole. (I must remark parenthetically that Dante's paradise is hierarchicalsome ways of being are placed higher than others-and as an image of this Dante ascends through the visible heavens, encountering souls within each of the planetary spheres in turn: thus the superiority of Mars to the sun reflects the superiority of suffering wounds for the sake of the truth, to merely knowing the truth by rational means.) There are various signs of this special significance, but the most important is that here, in the 81st of the Comedy's 100 cantos, for the first time Dante beholds, in a momentary vision, Christ Himself. This is not easy to understand. That Venus, the pagan goddess of passionate love, can be baptized, can become Christian, is perhaps understandable. But how can Mars be baptized? Does not the Sermon on the Mount, with its injunction 62 to turn the other cheek, decisively oppose this possibility? For after all, the warrior-saints not only endure wounds for the sake of the truth-they also inflict wounds, and even death. I cannot here consider the claims of Christian pacifism, which surely must be taken utterly seriously. But perhaps we can learn from Dante's description of what he sees on Mars something about the way in which a Christian warrior might understand his own use of violence in inflicting wounds. First, against the ruddy background of the red planet itself, Dante sees a shining white cross. Moving against the background of the cross, wholly within its confines, the souls of the saints are seen as brilliant sparkling rubylike splendors. As these splendors move across and up and down, they sing a mighty hymn. Dante reports that he was unable to understand the hymn. He says, "I perceived indeed that it was of high praise, for there came to me the words 'Arise' and 'Conquer,' as one hears without understanding." Dante does not claim that he can understand the words to a hymn appropriate to warrior saints, to human beings who, held within the pure white light of the cross, are willing to endure wounds and to inflict them. But he tells us that he has heard snatches of that song and that by this hearing "I was so moved to love that till then nothing had bound me with so sweet a chain." Finally, Dante reports that at a certain moment the cross of white light and the ruby-like sparklings in motion upon it "flamed forth Christ." The pagan hero Achilles wants his deeds of valor to show forth his own image, not that of someone else-no other face may conceal his own. But for the Christian perhaps it may not be so, because deeds of valor involve the inflicting of wounds as well as the suffering of them, and the inflicting of wounds has become, with the Sermon on the Mount, radically problematical. What I think Dante means is that a Christian can draw his sword against an enemy only because he knows that not only his own suffering of wounds, but just as much his enemy's suffering of wounds inflicted by him, can be transformed into participation in the sacrificial suffering of Christ which takes away the sins of the world. His own suffering, and that of his enemy, can be so transformed only if he and his enemy will that it should be. But the very awareness of this possibility includes the awareness that one's enemy-a real eneffiy, since there are real issues in the world, and real contests-is ultimately one's brother, for whom Christ died as for oneself. Now let me turn from viewing courage in the perspective of the suffering of wounds in the sense of trauma (the ancient Greek word for wound), to courage seen in the perspective of the undramatic heavy sadness that pervades so much of our lives. I have in mind Thomas Aq- WINTER 1986 �uinas' definition of the virtue of perseverance, understood as a part of the virtue of courage. Perseverance is "a habit of the mind whereby a man stands steadfastly, lest he be moved from what is virtuous by the assault of sadness." Accordingly, I shall talk a little about courage in relation to discouragement, the experience of being disheartened. I shall do this with reference to Don Quixote as Cervantes presents him, and Prospera and Miranda as Shakespeare presents them in The Tempest. Don Quixote seems to me to be the right hero for a world in which many of the most important truths are of such a sort that now you see them, now you don't. Courage is what you need when you're not seeing them. Don Quixote has great contempt for the demand all of us are tempted to make, the demand that I should not be required to risk myself for the sake of any truth that is not evident to me in a constant way. Only truths-for example, the truth of mathematical propositions-which are of such a sort that whenever I want to I can bring them before my eyes and have my assent compelled by their indisputable evidence, can be the proper basis for action-so runs the argument against which Quixote does battle. But what of those moments, which happen when they happen, which cannot be summoned or conjured, in which the world convincingly appears as a place in which brave and courteous deeds can be dared and have a chance-needless to say, not the certainty-of succeeding, in which the vision of a beautiful lady can inspire the desire to become worthy of her praise? What of these moments indeed? say the evil enchanters, whose power in the world is very great, according to Quixote. The enchanters say: We can render these moments perfectly ambiguous. First, we will not allow you many of them-most of the time the world will have a very different look for you, so that your task will be to be faithful, in the midst of the greatest ambiguity, weariness and distraction, to the remembered moments in which the world was visible as a place in which chivalry is not ridiculous. But this fidelity is the hardest thing in the world-not only are you unable to make yourself see the world now as it appeared then, not only does the remembered moment lack the power to transfigure the dullness of the present world in any immediate way, but the remembered moment may lack the power even to hold its own, stand its ground. After all, maybe the vision itself was sheer delusion. Or maybe everything has been transformed, enhanced, exaggerated in memory. Are you sure you remember exactly how the world looked when it seemed a possible place for your dreams? To contend against such doubts, and the weariness they bring, and the dull sadness that grows out of that, human beings need, according to Quixote, the greatest and most resourceful courage. And I think we can acquire, from the example of Don Quixote, THE ST. JOHN'S REVIEW as well as from other sources, some of the resourcefulness and versatility that is required for doing battle against evil enchanters. Finally, let me speak briefly of Prospera and Miranda, father and daughter, in Shakespeare's Tempest. The action of the play takes place on an island, and it is not quite clear how the island is related to the mainland on which we seem most of the time to live. But the Tempest seems true to me, and very important. I don't know whether the external way in which I shall have to speak of what happens in the play will be of any use at all. But I shall try. Because of a strange conspiracy of circumstanceschiefly an apparent storm and an apparent shipwreckProspero has come to have power over men who 12 years earlier committed great injustice against him. By various artful and magical devices he creates an order in which each person whom the tempest has brought to the island has his proper place. There are several incurably wicked characters, for whom no change of heart, no repentance is possible-they are brought to vivid and effective awareness that they are subject to higher powers, that they cannot work their unchangeably wicked wills with impunity. There is another character-Alonso-who is capable of change of heart, who repents and, full of contrition, hopes for forgiveness. And forgiveness is somehow granted. But the ultimate context of the play is not the world of sin and repentance, and of forgiveness as the highest object of human hope. That world would be the ultimate context if the Fall were the beginning. But it is not. The deep-down indestructible goodness of the creation is the beginning-God looked upon all he had created and, behold, it was very good. And so, to be truthful, Prospero must lead this company of sinners, impenitent and penitent alike (Prospero himself, as well as Alonso, being a penitent sinner) to see his daughter Miranda, whose name means "she who is to be wondered at, admired, astonished by." Miranda is a young woman of 15, whose goodness, in boldness and in shyness, we have seen throughout the play. Prospera leads the company to the shelter in which she is playing chess with the young man she is to marry. And then the unveiling of Miranda, her revelation, takes place-the company of sinners can and must see the ultimate context in which their own sinfulness-penitent or impenitent-has come to be. That context is the inexhaustibly fresh, deep-down beauty of the creation. But something even more important takes place. Miranda herself, who has seen only two human beings before now, looks upon this all-too-human company and says that she beholds a brave new world. Her father says, '''Tis new to thee.'' Prospera does not mean that Miranda is naive or inexperienced and will soon learn that things are very different from how they appear to her. Something wholly different is happening here. Not only 63 �is the original goodness of the creation overwhelmingly visible, compellingly visible to all, in Miranda hersell; that original goodness is still visible in the world as stained by sin, is still visible in the persons of the penitent, and even the impenitent, sinners upon whom Miranda gazes. Prospera not only looks upon Miranda, but also follows her gaze. He cannot see what she sees. But he knows that what she sees is there to be seen, is true. And he knows that he himsell could, not merely know, not merely assent to intellectually, but immediately see this truth, if he were as good as Miranda is. But he is not. And he is not because he has somehow chosen not to be. This is the final sort of sadness I meant to point to~ not the kind that comes from living in a world in which 64 the most important truths are of such a sort that now you see them, now you don't~but the kind that comes from not being able to see at all in any sort of immediate way, but merely to assent in one's thinking, distantly; combined with the awareness that one would have been capable of seeing, if only one had been better~but one had not wanted that badly enough. To live with the first kind of sadness, it does seem to me that the human virtue of perseverance, as part of the virtue of courage, is required. But as for the second kind of sadness, I am not sure whether there is any virtue that is effective against it. At the end of The Tempest, the last play Shakespeare wrote, Prospera says, "My ending is despair, unless I be relieved by prayer." WINTER 1986 �The Bible and the Human Heart ''Create in me a pure heart'' we hear in Psalm 51, tradi- tionally associated with David after the prophet Nathan came to him because he had been with Bathsheba. I wish to talk about what these words addressed to God might mean, and about some of what the Bible teaches about the human heart. My reflections are organized into four parts: indications regarding the heart in Psalms 19, 51 and 73; circumcision of the heart as the heart of the Law; the suffering servant and the healing of the heart in DeuteroIsaiah; and the relation between time and the purgation of the heart in Dante's Purgatorio. I. Psalm 51 both asks God to create in me a pure heart and offers to God my own broken and contrite heart in confidence that He will find the offering an acceptable sacrifice. Why should one so greatly wish to have a pure heart, and why does the offering to God of one's own pain avail in the creation of such a heart? To the first of these questions, the Psalms give two answers which particularly impress me. In Psalm 19, which begins "The heavens declare the glory of God" and passes without seam into praise of the sweetness of God's Law-" sweeter than honey dripping from the comb" (as though nothing could be further from the Psalmist's mind than to distinguish between a natural creation and a human moral spiritual creation)-the final petition addressed to God is that "the words of my mouth may always find "The Bible and the Human Heart" was the last lecture Bill O'Grady gave at St. John's College. It was given at Santa Fe just before Christmas in 1982 and then at Annapolis on Good Friday in 1983. It appeared in the Winter 1984 issue of EnerReia. THE ST. JOHN'S REVIEW favor in your presence, and the whisperings of my heart." One reason, I think, why one would wish greatly to have a pure heart, and even be willing to undergo suffering for the sake of having one, is that inescapably one must hear the whisperings of one's own heart, and no one could wish to listen all his days to vile whisperings-whisperings of jealousy, resentment, anger, revenge, whether or not these issue forth into overt actions. The beginning of Psalm 73 gives a second answer, compatible with the first. We hear: "The Lord is good to Israel; God gives good things to the pure in heart." As the Psalm unfolds we realize that these words do not mean what we might at first suppose. It is not that Israel is pure in heart and that God therefore gives her good things; nor that some portion of Israel is pure in heart and to that portion God gives good things. In general it is not as if God has two kinds of things to give, good things and bad things, and gives the one to one kind of human being and the other to another kind. Rather, God gives good things and nothing but good things to all human beings. But it is only the pure in heart who can experience the good things God gives to all human beings as good things, only the pure in heart who can experience the world as it truly is, only they who know what is happening. To become pure in heart, to submit to the purification of one's heart, is to come into touch with God's creation and with his always present, ever contemporary action of creating. To come into touch with God's creation requires, the Psalmist seems to tell us, that we ourselves submit to being created-not merely to having been created, but to be being created right now. Thus "create in me a pure heart" seems to mean more than "cleanse or purge my 65 �heart." It seems to mean: continue to create my heart, create it in purity, shape it and reshape it until it is as you would have it be. Thus to offer the sacrifice of a broken and contrite heart does not mean merely that, in quid pro quo fashion, however generously from God's side, his response to my sincere contrition is forgiveness and loving-kindness; but rather that in offering God my broken and contrite heart, in saying yes to the brokenness and tornness of my own heart I am saying yes to his creating of my heart, of me, his creating of me right now. It seems that it is not a matter of earning a pure heart as a reward by bearing one's pain in fortitude and gentleness; rather, to say yes to the creation in oneself of a heart whose whisperings are not vile and which can experience all that God gives as good-as what it truly is-is to say yes to the brokenness and contrition of the heart in process of creation: that is simply how hearts are created. Why this should be so I do not understand. Perhaps we can learn something-not in the way of dispelling mystery but in the way of learning to face it more sensitively and discerningly-by turning first to a few passages from Deuteronomy and then to certain words from Isaiah. II. For what I am trying to think about, the crucial passage in Deuteronomy is the one that speaks of circumcision of the heart. Since our current habit is to pass easily from law to legalism, any connection between law and our hearts seems strange to us. The matter becomes stranger still when we read (Deuteronomy 10:15) that it is because God himself has a heart and set his heart on our fathers, that there is such a thing as the Law. I think these words from Martin Buber about the meaning of the word "Torah," not rightly translated, he thinks, as "Law," will help us to make a beginning. "In the Hebrew Bible, Torah does not mean law, but direction, instruction, information. Moreh means not lawgiver but teacher. God is repeatedly called this in Old Testament texts. 'Who is a teacher like him?' Job is asked, and Isaiah promises the future people of Zion: 'Thine eyes shall see thy Teacher' ... The Torah of God is understood as God's instruction in his way, and therefore not as a separate object. It includes laws, and indeed laws are its most vigorous objectivizations, but the Torah itself is essentially not the law. A vestige of the actual speaking always adheres to the commanding word, the directing voice is always present or at least its sound is heard fading away." Let us now hear about the circumcision of the heart: "Circumcise your heart then and be obstinate no longer, for the Lord your God is God of gods and Lord of lords, the great god, triumphant and terrible, never partial, never to be bribed. It is he who sees justice done for the 66 orphan and the widow, who loves the stranger, and gives him food and clothing. Love the stranger then, for you were strangers in the land of Egypt." To begin to understand what the circumcision of the heart might be, let us consider the three verses preceding the words I just read: "And now Israel, what does the Lord your God ask of you? Only this, to fear the Lord your God, to follow all his ways, to love him, to serve the Lord your God with your whole heart and your whole soul.'' I wish to propose four things about this passage: that the order of the verbs-fear, follow, love, serve-is seriously meant; that fear of the Lord means, to begin with, a proper mistrust of the human heart-that is, of my heart; that the passage from fear to love depends considerably on the right kind of use of and experience with our own power of imagination; and that one does not have a whole heart or whole soul with which to love anything until one has set out on this way which God has made available to use. As to my first claim: one must begin by fearing Godwhatever exactly this phrase may mean, at any rate it is not supposed that one should or could begin by loving Him. Then, out of fear or something like that, one attempts to follow His ways. And then, in the course of that attempt, one makes certain discoveries about what is possible in the world, about what is possible for oneself in relation to one's fellows. In reflecting on those discoveries-and no amazing intellectual gifts are required for this reflection to lead where it ought-one comes to see what the world is like, and becomes eager to love the maker of such a world; comes to see what one's own way of discovery is like, and becomes eager to love the maker of such a way of discovery. Following His ways from fear becomes serving Him from love, and in that passage one discovers what it is to have a whole heart and a whole soul. I proposed earlier that an essential constituent of what is meant by "fear of the Lord" is a proper mistrust of the human heart. Let me read you another passage from Martin Buber, in which what I mean is said wonderfully: "The doctrine can best be described as that of granting direction to the human heart. The heart of man-this unformulated insight is at the basis of the doctrine-is by nature without direction, its impulses whirl it around in all directions, and no direction which the individual gathers from his world stands firm, each one finally is only able to intensify the whirl of his heart; only in trust in God is there persistence: there is no true direction except to God. But the heart cannot receive this direction from the human spirit, but only from a life lived in the will of God. Hence the Torah has assigned to man actions agreeable to God, in the doing of which he learns to direct his heart to Him. According to this purpose of the Torah WINTER 1986 �the decisive significance and value does not lie in the bulk of these actions in themselves but in the direction of the heart in them and through them" I suggested that of decisive importance for the transition from fear to love is a certain kind of experience with imagination. To illustrate what I mean, let me cite this passage from Deuteronomy. "]£you are making your fellow a loan on pledge, you are not to go into his house and seize the pledge, whatever it may be. You must stay outside and the man to whom you are making the loan shall bring the pledge out to you. And if the man is poor, you are not to go to bed with his pledge in your possession; you must return it to him at sunset so that he can sleep in his cloak and bless you; and it will be a good action on your part in the sight of the Lord your God. You are not to exploit the hired servant who is poor and destitute, whether he is one of your brothers or a stranger who lives in your towns. You must pay him his wage each day, not allowing the sun to set before you do, for he is poor and is anxious for it; otherwise he may appeal to the Lord against you, and it would be a sin for you." Such laws as these seem to rest on the recognition that our making each other's lives miserable only infrequently stems from sheer malice or greed or vindictiveness. So often the injury we cause our fellows stems from inattention, from failure of imagination, unwillingness to bother to see. The "Law" gives us, among other things, practice in bothering to see, in paying attention, using our imagination, giving thought to what cannot immediately be seen. And once we have encountered our fellows in a truly attentive way, on whatever occasions, we cannot so easily-cannot without knowing what we are doing, without knowing our right hand from our leftact maliciously, greedily, or vindictively toward our fellows; since now they are for us real people, like ourselves. Let me add one thought about the importance of a directed sequence for the attempt to obey the Law. I shall speak for a moment of the New Law, as the Gospel of Matthew presents it, that presentation beginning with Jesus' words: "Do not think that I have come to abolish the Law and the prophets. I have come not to abolish them, but to complete them." These words come at the beginning of the so-called Sermon on the Mount, culminating, we are inclined to say, in the injunction to "turn the other cheek." Almost always we use this phrase with tongue in cheek, speaking knowingly of its impossibility, as if we knew that from experience. Let us try for a moment to be more circumspect, or at least slower. Several points seem to me remarkable in Jesus' teaching in this place. First, "turn the other cheek" goes beyond "resist not evil." What is enjoined is not passivity, non-doing, but an action, an offer: offer now, at this moment, the other cheek as well. Second, a very specific reason is given: so that you will become children THE ST. JOHN'S REVIEW of your father who is in heaven, who makes his sun to shine upon the good and the bad, his rain to fall upon the honest and the dishonest. I think this means: Everything that is in being, including every human being, God wishes to be. (One offers the second cheek, after all, not to evil in general but to some human being.) As I offer my other cheek to the man or woman who struck me, I am saying and meaning to him or her not "won't you be ashamed of yourself and change your ways?"; not "] am so self-possessed as to be superior to this situation, hence unprovokable"; but rather "as my father in heaven wants you to be, so do !-who am and want to be his child-want you to be; and that wanting you to be goes deeper in me than my not wanting to be struck by youas to which I make no calculation or guess about your response.'' But what I most want to say about this passage I can say more clearly and simply with regard to the passage that immediately follows it: "Love your enemy and pray for those who persecute you." The love one can have for one's enemy after praying for him-that is, talking to God about him, on his behalf, for him; imagining his good, imagining him, and asking God for his good-would be, it seems to me, vastly different, deeper, richer, more tender, more imaginative, more real, than the dutyenjoined love which precedes and somehow originally motivates our praying for him. III. In the book of Deutero-Isainh there seems to be announced a new way in God's dealing with man. In chapter 42 we hear of a servant of God "who does not cry out or shout aloud, or make his voice heard in the streets. He does not break the crushed reed nor quench the wavering flame." It seems that there will be a new inconspicuousness, gentleness, patience in God's dealing with man. In chapters 52 and 53 it is powerfully impressed upon us that the servant is above all a suffering servant, and we hear the awesome words ''in his wounds we are healed." I wish to make a suggestion about how we might begin to understand these words. I am not concerned to identify the suffering servant with Jesus of Nazareth, or with another individual human being who is still to come, or with Israel as a people. Rather, I am concerned to try to understand the suffering servant as an illuminating symbol of an ultimate human possibility, a symbol just as comprehensively pertinent as, say, the philosopher-king or the pagan hero. That is, I wish to ask: what would it be like for us to understand the deepest part of our own experience with ultimate reference to one of whom it is said "in his wounds we are healed." 67 �I should also make clear that I have no theological theory of atonement to present. I find it disconcerting that these are usually couched in mechanical language-a balance must be restored-or in commercial metaphors-a debt has been incurred and must be paid by someone especially qualified. I think that in those theories God is thought of as being mastered by necessities over which surely in truth he himself is master. In any case the text of Isaiah makes clear that we must look on as the one who is wounded suffers for us and that he must be willing that our healing should come through his being wounded. It is some human intelligibility rather than cosmic or theological intelligibility that we must hope to find. Above all, it seems important to try to understand what in us is most in need of being healed. Let me offer what I can by making this simple beginning. About 2000 years ago the rabbi Hillel spoke these words: "If I am not for myself, who will be for me? And if not now, when? And if I am only for myself, what am !?" The first two questions by themselves would seem to be merely rhetorical in a hard and cynical way: no one, as any fool knows, will be for me if I am not for myself. But when we hear the third question-and if I am only for myself, what am !?-we realize that the first questions, however shyly and mistrustfully, are genuine, even desperately hopeful questions. The questioner knows that everything would be different-all sorts of extraordinary possibilities would have to be considered and maybe even tried out-if only I could know that there is someone in the world who is for me, who cares about my being as deeply and strongly as I care about my being. In the 13th century Duns Scotus, the follower of Aristotle and still more of St. Francis, wrote in his discussion of the human faculty of willing: Amo: Vola ut sis. I love you: I want you to be. And what if, loving you, wanting you to be as fully as you can be, I come to understand that what prevents you from being fully and freely is that you are so anxious for yourself, so fearful that unless you are forever busy being for yourself, not only will you incur all sorts of particular practical disadvantages, but finally you will not be at all, since there is no one else with such care for your being as would sustain and nourish it and thereby hold it in being. Then would not the response of love be: I will be for you. I will be for you in a way that is unambiguously visible to you. I will be Jess, so that you can be more, not of course because we are competitors, you and I, for some limited amount of being, but precisely because the one thing that prevents you from coming fully into your own, from being all that you can be, is your fear that only your own self-assertion maintains and upholds you in being. It is that desperate preoccupation from which, above all, you need to be healed. And when you have been healed from that by beholding the willingness with which I ac- 68 cept my own diminution, my own being made, for your sake, Jess-less free and easy, Jess graceful, Jess powerful, Jess joyful-then you will begin to see that you can be for me too, that we were made for each other, that the center is neither in you nor in me but between us, among us all, and that deeper than the sorrow of crucifixion-and I am thinking especially of its daily undramatic forms-there is the joy of overcoming the two most shameful and finally deadly things for human beings, which are aloneness and unfruitfulness: "Unless a grain of wheat falls to the earth and dies, it remains alone; but if it dies it brings forth much fruit." IV. I would like to say something finally about how hearts might become pure-most especially, might become beautiful; and in what way purgation works-especially: what is the relationship between the soul that has been purged and the times of its life. In the 12th Canto of Dante's Purgatorio, the penitants receive a blessing from the angel of the terrace of the purgation of pride, the first and greatest of the sins to be purged. Hear Dante's description of the angel: "Towards us came the fair creature, clothed in white, and in his face he seemed like a trembling star at dawn." It is, I think, for a middle-aged man such as Dante was when he wrote this passage, the deepest of sadnesses to be aware of how beautiful a creature of God can be-is meant to be-and that you are not beautiful, because you have made yourself not-beautiful. That one is nevertheless found acceptable by God is a very great thing, and in a way it is enough. But in a way it is not enough. One had wanted to be beautiful, to seem to someone else "in one's face like a trembling star at dawn." And one still wants that, if only there were a way. Dante seems to say that there is a way, and that is because hearts are full of time and times. If that were not so, purgation would perhaps have to be thought of as being like sculpting, so that my heart through my actions and willings has come to have a certain shape, a certain look, on which the action of purgation must go to work as with a hammer and chisel, destroying and removing as much of what I have made myself into as necessary to reach a presentable shape, so that the great fear of the one purged is not so much the painfulness of the chiseling as it is that so little of me will be left that I won't any longer know what I mean when I say "! Jove" or "I praise.'' But on the very terrace of the purgation of pride Dante presents an altogether different image of how a beautiful heart-now, a beautiful life-can contain everything that I have in my life made my own. Dante speaks of an incomparable divine art able to produce "an image which WINTER 1986 �was not silent" or "visible speech." Thus we read (Canto 10) of Mary: "The angel who came to earth with the decree of the many-years-wept-for peace that opened heaven from its long interdict appeared before us so truly graven there in a gracious attitude that it did not seem a silent image. One would have sworn he heard 'Ave-hail,' for she was imaged there who turned the key to open the supreme love, and in her bearing she had the word imprinted 'Ecce ancilla Dei' -Behold the handmaid of the Lord." And then the Emperor Trajan: "Depicted there was the glorious deed of the Roman prince whose worth moved Gregory to his great victory-! mean the emperor Trajan; and a poor widow was at his bridle in a posture of grief and in tears. The place about him seemed trampled and thronged with Knights and the eagles in gold above them moved visibly in the wind. The poor woman among all these seemed to say 'Lord, avenge me for my son that is dead, for whom I am stricken' and he to answer her 'Wait now till I return' and she 'My Lord' like one whose grief is urgent 'if thou return not?' and he 'He that is in my place will do it for thee' and she 'What shall another's goodness avail thee if thou art forgetful of thine own; he therefore 'Now take comfort, for I must fulfill Dante concludes: "He [God] for whose sight nothing is ever new wrought this visible speech, new to us because it is not found here." Now, I find two things in this passage very remarkable. The first is the notion of "visible speech" itself, of "an image that is not silent." For what God's art has accomplished is to bring together a visual image which as such gives wholeness and permanence, and speech as what is essentially temporal and transient. As St. Augustine tells us wonderfully: unless each syllable passes away to make room for the next, we would never hear the whole statement. And in Dante's imagination God has not merely fused the permanent and the transient, that which is whole all at once and that whose completeness requires sequence and hence passing away; but rather He, our Creator, has made us see that the whole and permanent image on which we can gaze without motion contains all of motion and time that was important. Nothing has been merely chiseled away, removed, destroyed to reach the final image. The second remarkable thing is that although there is a very special beauty in the immediate, wholehearted and apparently uncomplicated response of Mary to her calling-"Hail-Behold the handmaid of the Lord"Trajan's recalcitrance, wrongheadedness and confusion THE ST. JOHN'S REVIEW seem to make an indispensable contribution to the loveliness of his own action of humility in finally dismounting-getting off his high horse-to do his simple duty. Surely, more humility was required of Trajan in the end than would have been required of him had he not collaborated with the widow in "creating a scene." In any event, although Mary's unfaltering humility is lovely indeed, it seems that Trajan in looking upon the image of his own action-his own life-could not simply regret his own recalcitrance and wrongheadedness. And could he not have been in the image of himself-the image of his heart as it finally contained his life-something a little like "a trembling star at dawn"? Let me close with another reflection about Trajan, who seems to be a very important figure for Dante, being encountered on the first terrace of the mount of purgation and again in the 20th Canto of Paradise. There, deep in the indescribable beauty and joy of Paradise, Dante is still troubled over the destiny of the virtuous pagans. He asks about them in the heaven of justice. He receives a dogmatic theological answer, but then is permitted to see the presence in paradise of two pagans: the Trojan Ripheus, an obscure figure from the Aeneid, said there to have been the most just of the trojans; and the pagan emperor Trajan, who was (according to a legend in which surely Dante did not believe literally) brought back to life on account of the prayers of Pope Gregory who was moved by the story of his life. After returning to earth he was baptized and thereby made capable of redemption. I think the real point of the story lies elsewhere for Dante, and that it has much to do with how Dante understands pride. For it must be that Trajan accepted his salvation not as granted to him as a being apart, in isolation from others, "considered in his own right" as we say, but rather as a link in a chain, a member in a sequence of human persons moving and being moved. For consider: there is the widow moved by love of her lost son, then Trajan moved by a mother's love; then an eyewitness moved by Trajan' s humility and telling the story of that; then a chronicler being moved by the story to write it down; then Gregory being moved by what he read to pray for Trajan; and finally God being moved by Gregory's prayers. In this sequence it is difficult to find praiseworthy initiatives; what seems praiseworthy, rather, is that each member be unwilling to allow a motion of love which began outside of himself or herself to end in himself or herself. Not to interrupt the motion of love through the world-this seems to Dante to be the highest action of which the human heart is capable. And to me too. 69 �Hegel and Marx: Studies in Man's Self-Assertion But the great difference between the service of God and the service of an idol is that a man who serves God is spiritually nourished by grace, whereas the servant of an idol has no such nourishment. An idol has no spiritual food to give and no grace to send down; it is created by a misguided application of spiritual energy, and in its service the soul remains shut up in itself, self-centered, with no outlet to superhuman realities. That is the fatal side of the worship of false gods. Religious psychology remains, only religious ontology is lacking. -Nicolas Berdyaev Introduction There is nothing more fundamental to man's existence, situated as it is between being and nothingness, than his thirst for absolute being. History indicates, profound art reveals, and philosophy must try to explicate two archetypal ways in which man attempts to assuage that thirst. He can assert himself unlimitedly in thought and deed, as though he could generate being by the sheer extensiveness and depth of his mastery over existence, that is, over the visible world in which he discovers himself. Or he can open himself to divine grace (and, as well, to the secular graces whose source is ultimately divine) by seeking first, not mastery over existence, but the Kingdom of God; by being silent before the mystery of existence (which is no less mysterious than the mystery of being itself; how can one speak of God needing creation?); and by seeing in the visible world signs of the invisible world which alone is connatural to man's thirst for being, as men somehow know even when they appear "Hegel and Marx: Studies in Man's Self~ Assertion" was written at Notre Dame in 1966. 70 to be most obsessed with mastering the visible world. It is the assumption of this essay that in the main modern man is following the way of self-assertion. Naturally it would be absurd to suppose that in the pre-modern world, in classical antiquity say, there were no men whose law of life was self-assertion. The resemblance between the position of Callicles and that of Hobbes is regularly and rightly remarked. But there is a way in which even Hobbes does not adequately articulate the spiritual orientation of modern society. For modern society, on the level of political organization (whatever Hobbesian encounters may occur in a-political spheres), has transformed the war of all against all into the war of all against the One, to use the language of the earliest Greek philosophers. This development seems to me to parallel exactly the essential difference between the tyrants whom Callicles envied and the modern totalitarian regimes, namely that the animating impulse of the former is private avarice (whose objects may indeed be metaphysical, but whose character is nevertheless private), whereas the latter aspires precisely to a collective self-assertion vis vis what I can only call, at this stage of the argument, the One. From this point of view, it will be noticed, the difference between modern totalitarian regimes and those modern regimes which oppose them is one of degree rather than of quality. (It is tempting to say that the difference is a matter of less or more patience, but that would not be entirely fair.) But it would be intolerable not to add immediately that the difference in degree is worth spending one's life for and that no man has the right to say that there is nothing to choose between a quarter truth and a total lie. However, there is a way in which the impulse toward collective self-assertion at the heart of modern society is a WINTER 1986 �effectively concealed by the modern talent for thinking and speaking in short-range terms, thereby obscuring the presuppositions and implications of our thoughts and deeds. That is why it seems to me particularly valuable to undertake a study of two such thinkers as G.W.F. Hegel and Karl Marx, for they understood and described in perfectly explicit ontological terms the nature of the modern spiritual enterprise. They understood its nature because they realized vividly how radically it conflicts with the view of things embodied in classical philosophy, which they knew very well, though we have largely forgotten it (or, if we remember the letter, we can only with great effort obtain access to the spirit). Hegel and Marx complement each other in a number of fairly obvious ways. I would suggest, and this essay will elaborate upon, one in particular: the thought of Hegel represents a deliberate reversal of the Socratic understanding of the way of the philosopher in the world; and the thought of Marx represents a deliberate reversal of the Aristotelian understanding of the hierarchy of human activities. Thus Hegel describes philosophy as the possession, not merely the love, of truth and asserts that its purpose is to announce to man that he is the measure of all things; and Marx asserts that man's essentially human activity is neither contemplation nor political action, but rather labor, and that man is completely defined by his sociality. The above remarks stand in need of one important qualification, however. We must beware of imputing to any thinker, whatever the phenomenal evidence, a deliberate closing of his soul to grace, simply because the mystery of human personality is impenetrable. Moreover, I have taken Hegel and Marx, not as causes of the modern spiritual orientation, but as two of its most articulate representatives. It follows that we cannot presume to impute to modern society en masse a deliberate closing of its soul. It sometimes appears that modern man is not aware of any alternative to his present orientation, as though the Western tradition of twenty-five centuries had nothing to say to him; nothing, at any rate, that he can understand. Surely the historic failure of Christians to be worthy of their vocation, the betrayal of the glad tidings by those responsible for the Crnsades and the Inquisition and similar but subtler enterprises, is cause for tears-and for petitions of divine mercy. In view of these last considerations, the purpose of the final chapter of this work is to indicate that the alternative to the modern way of self-assertion is not easy. It is not easy personally and it is not easy politically. It is tense and exacting. The possibilities of failure are not only great, but diabolically subtle. In view of these characteristics, my remarks could hardly hope or pretend to be conclusive. Mainly they are indications of dangers and intimations of hopes. In some sense they constitute an THE ST. JOHN'S REVIEW agenda, an obviously personal one, and I hope that as such they do not obtrude unduly on the reader. But they also seem to me to have fairly broad theoretical relevance, and so I have presented them. I should like to express my gratitude to Professor Edward Goerner, Professor Nicholas Lobkowicz, Professor Gerhart Niemeyer and Professor Frank O'Malley, by the effects of whose wisdom I have become, in the course of this study, a little less foolish. Hegel This chapter on Hegel has two principal parts. In the first I shall consider the significance of The Phenomenology of Spirit. In the second I shall propose an interpretation of the full course of Hegel's philosophic career, immediately with a view to accounting for the politically reactionary character of the thought of his final years, and ultimately with a view to raising more general questions to which I shall recur in the final chapter of this work. I The Phenomenology of Spirit, published in 1807, is by general consent the greatest of Hegel's works. It consists in a systematic description of the historical progression (which Hegel takes to be inevitable both as to content and as to order) of stages of consciousness or philosophies leading up to and culminating in Systematic Science. Systematic Science may be characterized as perfect lucidity or perfect self-consciousness: its content is precisely the review of all philosophies that have preceded it, with a realization of their imperfection as successively closer approximations (but only approximations) to Absolute Knowledge. Absolute Knowledge is the knowledge that Absolute Spirit is the truth of all things, in the sense of being their end, understood in rather an Aristotelian way. Absolute Spirit-this is the key concept-is both the subject and the object of a self-consciousness purged of all its accidental or idiosyncratic features. It exists in an individual person only insofar as he has the same consciousness of what he is doing as every other person can have of what he (the other person) is doing. The primary referrent of "Absolute Spirit" is an individual person; only secondarily and metaphorically does Hegel mean anything "pantheistic" by it.' Finally, the three supreme realizations of Absolute Spirit, in ascending order of perfection, are art, religion and philosophy. But the foregoing describes only abstractly what Hegel is about. Actually, The Phenomenology of Spirit is one of the great intellectual and passional adventures in all of philosophic literature. Hegel speaks in his preface of the "highway of despair" which Spirit must traverse, of "the 71 �seriousness, the suffering, the patience and the labor of the negative" to which Spirit is subject. However, it seems that these dark words are used rather ironically by Hegel, who knows, after all, that all will come out well in the end. More appropriate as categories of Hegelian interpretation are those proposed by Jacob Loewenberg: the histrionic and the comic. When Hegel writes in his preface: 2 "In my view-a view which the developed exposition of the system itself can alone justify-everything depends on grasping and expressing the ultimate truth not as Substance but as Subject." he implies that the philosopher who would accomplish Systematic Science cannot merely detachedly regard all the philosophies which have preceded him: he must actually impersonate the philosophers who created the philosophies and must transcenq each in its turn as it is about to collapse, leaping to safety an instant before the wagon plunges into the abyss. For all his denunciations of German romanticism, Hegel was in this respect the weirdest romantic of all. Loewenberg further points out that the odyssey of spirit in history is essentially comic in Hegel's view. For each view of things, necessarily partial (before Hegel), to consider itself total, despite having witnessed its predecessor's claim to totality exposed as ridiculous, is really comical, and rnoreso in measure as the number of cases of exposed folly available for inspection increases. With the exception of the quite lurid language with which he denounces the Terror concomitant upon the French Revolution, I think it can be said that Hegel's tone throughout verges on amusement, and in some cases (for example, in regard to the yearning of the unhappy consciousness and to Aristophanes' lament that the formerly reverenced was now being ridiculed) is pure amusement, pure unless tinged with scorn. That, given the inner logic of the dialectical method, there can be no total or final view, and that Hegel's position is therefore the most comical hitherto, is almost too obvious to remark. Rather than trying to present a balanced and relatively complete account of the content of The Phenomenology of Spirit, I shall limit myself to an analysis of four" dialectical moments" in Hegel's argument: his epistemology in relation to Kant and Aristotle; the master-slave relationship the critique of the Beautiful Soul; and the depictorialization of Christianity. Hegel's epistemology In the first section of Phenomenology, Hegel traces the development of self-consciousness epistemologically, from sense-awareness through perceptual consciousness (where it is perceived not only that a thing is there, but also that it has qualities) through scientific understanding (against which the Kantian critique, Hegel holds, is valid: the understanding does prescribe forms) to self-consciousness as the realization that it is the truth of all things. 72 Kant had made the human mind the measure of phenomena, in that it prescribed the forms under which the sensuous manifold was organized. For Kant. however, the thing-in-itself was not measured by the mind, indeed was inaccessible to the mind. Hence the mind was autonomous (self-legislating, self-normative), but subjectively autonomous. Hegel wanted to preserve the autonomy of the mind, while overcoming the mere subjectivity of its knowledge.' Concerning the allegedly inaccessible thing-in-itself, he writes in a famous passage: "It is manifest that behind the so-called curtain, which is to hide the inner world, there is nothing to be seen unless we ourselves go behind there, as much in order that we may thereby see, as that there may be something behind there which can be seen." (p. 212) 4 What is striking in this formulation is that it is not contended that the human mind is already and abidingly the principle of coherence of the phenomenal world, but rather that the phenomenal world lacks such a principle and that the human mind ought therefore to supply it. Hegel is not making a statement of what he believes to be ontological fact; he is issuing a directive, recommending an attitude. Seeing no sign of any other telos in things, he will impose one of his own. In a word, there is a stronger element of will in Hegel's "idealism" than is ordinarily recognized. 5 My immediate interest is to point out how radically such an attitude differs from that of Aristotle, to whom Hegel is so often facilely assimilated (for example, by Findlay and Marcuse). For Aristotle there was as a matter of course something behind the phenomena, namely, the first cause on which all existents were radically dependent. and which was itself entirely independent of human minds. For man to impose his own telos on things Aristotle would have thought simply unnaturaleverything had its own telos, inunanent in one sense, but ultimately defined in relation to the transcendent first cause. Also it should be mentioned that although Hegel indeed makes much of Aristotle's notion of divine thought as thinking about thinking, Hegel construed that notion in a sense that would have been incomprehensible to Aristotle. For Aristotle the contemplation of God by man-though that is man's most godlike possibility-is by no means identical with God's self-contemplation, the sign of which is that man must strain every nerve to engage in contemplation, which he can bear only for a short time, since men become Weary, and finally die. That we are not behind the curtain of phenomena until we insert ourselves there, that we are the end of things not by discovery but by imposition, accounts for the necessity of the annihilative action of man on man (the master-slave relationship) and of man on nature (labor as mastery). It accounts, more generally, for the highly active character of Hegelian contemplation. Most of all, WINTER 1986 �it explains why "it is clear at the same time that we cannot without more ado go straightaway behind there" (i.e., behind the curtain of phenomena)-the question finally is not one of discovering our divinity, but of actually divinizing ourselves, of becoming worthy of our Lordship over our own creation. 6 The Master-Slave Relationship Hegel's primary interest is in the social rather than the epistemological dimension of the development of self-consciousness. Still the leitmotiv is the desire of self-consciousness to impose itself as the truth of the other, in the peculiar form of eliciting from the other an acknowledgement of one's existence: ''Self-consciousness exists in itself and for itself, in that, and by the fact that it exists for another selfconsciousness: that is to say, it is only by being acknowledged or recognized." (p.229) But to recognize a self-consciousness in Hegel's sense is to recognize that it is the truth of all things, including oneself. So according to Hegel's account, I demand that another self conform to my self, recognize my self-consciousness as the truth of all things. But for him to do so, it seems to him, is self-annihilation. (However, he is mistaken-my selfconsciousness ultimately coincides with his, all that is accidental or idiosyncratic having been purged or prescinded from, so that for my self-consciousness to be the truth of all things is also for his self-consciousness to be the truth of all things.) Hence, he resists me; death hovers over both of us in the ensuing struggle; if one of us submits to the other to forestall death, a master-slave relationship is established. The relationship is mediated by nature in the dual sense that fear of nature's death is the slave's strongest impulse and that the slave technologically transforms nature for the delectation of the master. But the master's conquest is futile: he is recognized as an autonomous consciousness by a consciousness whose autonomy he does not recognize. At first glance it appears that Hegel has revived the ancient and valuable insight that a despot is no more free than his subjects. But for Hegel the barrier to the freedom of the master is the necessarily servile form of the consciousness by whom his own consciousness is acknowledged; recognition of some sort (eventually and ideally of all by all) is indispensable for the true existence of self-consciousness. For the ancients, contrastingly, the argument had several levels, the most obvious of which was that a despot is unfree, but the deepest of which was that to need to be acknowledged at all is a sign of unfreedom-one most fully is, and is therefore most fully free, in relation to the center of one's own inner being.' That is why Socrates (in the Republic), after conceding hypothetically that by virtue of one's possession of the ring of Gyges, one's deeds and thoughts might be unknown (or known incorrectly) by all save oneself, argues that still one's true quality Gustness or unjustness) would be what it was.' THE ST. JOHN'S REVIEW At any rate, as Camus points out, the only historical function of Hegel's master consciousness is to arouse ser- vile consciousness. Hegel writes of the slave's dialectically necessary liberation: "But as lordship showed its essential nature to be the reverse of what it wants to be, so too, bondage will, when completed, pass into the opposite of what it immediately is: being a consciousness repressed within itself, it will enter into itself, and change round into a real and true independence." (p.237) Hegel goes on to say that it is precisely by the activity of labor (in the sense of giving form to things) that the slave attains to self-consciousness. The thing is an object of his consciousness; the thing is in some sense he, since he has given form to it; so in being conscious of it he is selfconscious. But his attainment of self-consciousness would still be impossible without the master. The relationship between the two conditions (the master and the activity of laboring) for the attainment of selfconsciousness, hence freedom, by the slave is summarized by Hegel: "Without the discipline of service and obedience, fear remains formal and does not spread over the whole known reality of existence. Without the formative activity making the thing, fear remains inward and mute, and consciousness does not become objective for itself." (p.239) How strange a child must freedom be, bastard born of the forced copulation of abject fear in the face of the master with unbounded self-assertiveness in the face of nature! Although it is true that for Hegel labor is one of the ways out of slavery, it can definitely be said, contrary to Herbert Marcuse,' that for Hegel slavery is antecedent to relations of production and property. The primordial struggle in Hegel's world is for spiritual prestige; that the slave transforms nature at the behest of the master is only a sign and consequence of a relationship of prestige which is radically spiritual. Critique of the Beautiful Soul Despite its initially innocent appearance, the critique of the beautiful soul is one of the most politically portentous moments in Hegel's system, and a moment which we shall now scrutinize. The beautiful soul is so loath to stain itself that it refuses to act, but not at all loath, Hegel claims, to judge those who do act. It is a form of consciousness for which Hegel has the utmost contempt: "It may well preserve itself in its purity, for it does not act; it is hypocrisy, which wants to see the act of judging taken for the actual deed, and instead of proving its uprightness and honesty by acts does so by expressing fine sentiments." (p.671) It must be remembered in this connection that Hegel is reacting against the Romantics (especially Novalis, it has been suggested) by whom he found himself surrounded, among whom a cultivation of anguished scrupulosity seems to have been all too common. But Hegel goes far beyond mere deprecation of the excesses of Romanticism, 73 �as we can see by attending to his remarks on the beautiful soul's criticism of the man of action. 10 Hegel writes: "This process of judging, then, takes the act out of the sphere of its objective existence, and turns it back into the inner subjective sphere, into the form of private or individual particularity. If the act carries glory with it, then the inner sphere is judged as love of fame ... and so on." (p.672) However, Hegel goes on to argue, the inner subjective here is just one aspect of an individual's action, which also has a universal aspect. Viewed in its individual aspect, Hegel assumes, any action is indeed pure sin; but one need not view it in that aspect. To view it in that aspect is somehow paltry, characteristic of a "moral valet": No hero is a hero to his valet, not however, because the hero is not a hero, but because the valet is-the valet, with whom the hero has to do, not as a hero, but as a man who eats, drinks and dresses, who in short, appears as a private individual with certain personal wants and ideas of his own. In the same way, there is no act in which the process of judgment cannot oppose the personal aspect of the individuality to the universal aspect of the act, and play the part of the moral valet towards the agent. (p.673) How different from the Christian view in which some acts are regarded as objectively intolerable, but as possibly subjectively innocent (so that full knowledge and intent are necessary for sinfulness)! We have really not escaped from the world in which innocence is a possible attribute only of a stone: a child, insofar as he dresses himself idiosyncratically, or in any way has personal wants or ideas of his own, is subjectively sinful. And as to the objective and universal aspect of an act, Hegel in this section makes no differentiations respecting moral quality: presumably, at this stage of the dialectic at least (and I can think of no important qualifications to follow) any action is objectively innocent. Ivan Karamazov's ''everything is permitted'' receives a double impetus from Hegel: how can one make moral discriminations when, subjectively speaking, all are guilty; and objectively speaking, all are innocent? But for the beautiful soul which would deny that all actions are innocent and all motives are guilty (the "cunning of reason" is here anticipated by Hegel), Hegel has nothing but categorical rejection: "It thereby proves itself to be a form of consciousness which is forsaken by and denies the very nature of spirit; for it does not understand that spirit, in the absolute certainty of itself, is master and lord over every deed, and over all reality, and can reject and cast them off and make them as if they had never been." (p.675) Hegel was not Stalin. Stalin seems not to have been particularly anxious about metaphysical justifications. But it is nonetheless true that Stalin, master and lord over 74 every deed and over all reality, can cause statues to be removed from museums, and history books to be rewritten, thereby annihilating those beautiful souls who would deny his (and their own) divinity, rejecting them and casting them off and making them as if they had never been. The Depictorialization of Christianity It is important to recognize the unpolitical, inward-looking content of the final stage of Hegel's dialectical journey: art, religion and philosophy seem remote from the harsh and deadly realities of the Terror 11 We shall not attend to Hegel's survey of the naturereligions of the early East or the artistic religion of Greece, but shall notice in some detail his interpretation of Absolute or Revealed Religion, i.e., Christianity. In general Hegel says of religious consciousness that it has achieved the vision of itself as the truth of all things. Thereby the religious consciousness has the same content as Hegel's own philosophy; only, in religious consciousness, the vision has not yet been purged of pictorial representations and hence is not fully universal." The purport of Hegel's treatment of Christianity is clearly revealed in his discussion of the Incarnation, which emphasizes not that fact, but the consciousness' belief in it: "The Absolute Spirit has taken on the shape of selfconsciousness inherently, and therefore also consciously to itself-this appears now as the belief of the world, the belief that spirit exists in fact as a definite selfconsciousness, i.e., as an actual human being; that spirit is an object of immediate experience; that the believing mind sees, feels and hears this divinity. Taken thus it is not imagination, not a fancy; it is actual in the believer." (my emphasis, p.757) Although for Hegel the Christian symbols possess a species of truth, they must be transcended, or interpreted notionally .13 He is careful to instruct us on how to make the transition to philosophy, especially on what not to do: "What this self-revealing spirit is in and for itself, is therefore not brought out by the rich content of its life being, so to say, untwined and reduced to its primitive and original strands, to the ideas for instance presented before the minds of the first imperfect religious communion, or even to what the actual human being incarnating the divine spirit has spoken." (p.764) Hegel thus proceeds to interpret Christianity philosophically. There are grounds for speaking of a Quaternity or Quinity, but he can make philosophic sense out of the Trinity: "There are thus three moments to be distinguished: Essential Being; explicit self-existence, which is the express otherness of Essential Being, and for which that Being is object; and self-existence or selfknowledge in that other." (p.767) The Fall is a figure of Spirit's loss of innocence, its becoming conscious of good and evil. It is difficult to say exactly what Hegel means by u good" and u evil". n Good" seems to mean that Di- WINTER 1986 �vine Essence and nature are one, which is the case. "Evil" seems to mean that Divine Essence and nature are other to each other, which is also the case. If we find this situation puzzling, it is due to our addiction to the principle of non-contradiction and "to the soulless copula 'is'." One more outstanding symbol needs to be translatedthe death of God, which, properly interpreted, is cause for rejoicing. First, self-consciousness itself has not died, only a person: "This self-consciousness does not therefore really die, as the particular person is pictorially imagined really to have died; its particularity expires in its universality, i.e., in its knowledge, which is Essential Being reconciling itself with itself." (p.781) Moreover, the death of the historic God-man \s necessary and entails, astoundingly, the death of God Himself, God the Father: "The death of the mediator is death not merely of his natural aspect, of his particular self-existence: what dies is ... also the abstraction of the Divine Being. For the mediator, as long as high death has not yet accomplished the reconciliation, is something one-sided which takes as Essential Being the simple abstract element of thought, not concrete reality." (p.781) Concerning the anguish which some souls experience because God Himself is dead, Hegel writes: "This feeling thus means, in point of fact, the loss of the Substance and of its objective existence over against consciousness.'' (p.782) That is, God does not exist apart from human self-consciousness; or, man is divinized. With the depictorialization of the Christian Creed, Systematic Science is accomplished. It has been objected against the description of Hegel's system as an embodiment of colossal pride, first that Hegel never claimed to have brought history to a close and accomplished the divinization of man by virtue of his own prodigious intelligence, but rather he freely acknowledged the contributions of his predecessors; second, that Hegel did not divinize himself only, but rather all of mankind; and third, that he divinized only the highest thing in man, namely his reason, to which man was obliged to conform himself.14 In regard to the first objection, we must first notice the strange fact that nowhere in his writings (as far as I know) does Hegel reflect on the peculiar grace by which doctrines were revealed to him which righteous men of old times earnestly desired to be told, and were not. Moreover, and decisively, that Hegel should regard himself as the fulfillment of the action and passion of Christ (whom, after all, he implicitly considered the greatest of his predecessors) can hardly be designated otherwise than as colossal pride. As to the second objection, clearly Hegel did not underestimate the difference between implicit and explicit, inchoately and perfectly selfconscious divinity, i.e., between the vulgar and the philosophers. Thirdly, as I have tried to show, man's be- THE ST. JOHN'S REVIEW ing obliged to live in accordance with reason poses no limits for him with respect to action, due to the wilful element in Hegel's notion of reason, which for Hegel does not so much exist in things as it can be successfully imposed on things. The judgment must stand: Hegel's Phenomenology is the most extreme expression of the hubris which dominates almost all of modern philosophy. II I propose now to look at Hegel's philosophic career as a whole and to interpret it as the product of a journey on a highway of despair which, unlike the one traversed in Phenomenology, was by no means methodical, but was utterly real, a journey at whose end came the abandonment and betrayal of that freedom of individual reason (including conscience), and especially of philosophic reason, to which he had always, so he thought, given the highest place. When I speak of abandonment and betrayal at the end of Hegel's philosophic journey, I suppose an interpretation of Philosophy of Right (1820) and of Hegel's subsequent lectures until his death in 1831, as, in the last analysis, a surrender of freedom of individual conscience and reason and, worse (though of only derivative relevance in this context), the establishment of success as the criterion of right in international relations. A number of attempts have been made to extenuate Hegel's seemingly servile acceptance of all that is (in accordance with his famous formula asserting the rationality of the real). Marcuse makes these points: we must keep in mind the place of Philosophy of Right in Hegel's overall system-the state is the highest .being within the realm of objective mind which is, however, subordinate to absolute mind; also, the racism, chauvinism and antirationalism of the pseudo-democratic ideologists among those liberals whom Hegel opposed were closer to Naxism than Hegel was; and finally, Hegel's doctrine displayed some definitely liberal features-publicity of legal proceedings, clarity of legal language, tolerance of such religious minorities as the Quakers and Jews insofar as consistent with public order. These arguments have some force; but not enough to neutralize such a statement, of which there are many in Philosophy of Right, as this: "The state, which is the realized substantive will, having its reality in the particular self-consciousness raised to the plane of the universal, is absolutely rational. This substantive unity is its own motive and absolute end. In this end freedom attains its highest right. This end has the highest right over the individual, whose highest duty in turn is to be a member of the state.'' 15 The position enunciated here by Hegel is directly anti- 75 �thetical to the argument he urged with considerable ardor at the beginning of his career in a pair of theological essays written in 1795 and 1798. The two differ considerably as regards the way in which Hegel analyzes the relationship between Kantian and Christian ethics." But they have one thing in common-their insistence that for man to submit to any authority other than his reason is grossly demeaning: "No man can relinquish his right to give unto himself the law and to be solely responsible for its execution. If this right is renounced, man ceases to be man.'' Likewise, at the end of Phenomenology, despite recognition of the historically recurrent instances of conflict between individual and community, the perfect autonomy of the philosopher is nevertheless affirmed. However, there has been a significant change in Hegel's position in Phenomenology as compared with the earlier writings: in the distinction between the Christian religion with its pictorially represented, hence imperfect, truth, and Hegel's own notionally represented truth, is implied a distinction between the many who are not capable of comprehending a depictorialized Christian doctrine, and the few who are, between the vulgar and the philosophers. In view of this distinction, Hegel's advocacy in Philosophy of Right of uncritical submergence in the concrete mores and laws of the state might be supposed to refer only to the vulgar, to those incapable of philosophic reflection; the autonomy of the philosopher might be supposed to remain unimpaired. However, that is not the case. As Marcuse rightly emphasizes, it is the essence of Hegel's dialectical philosophy to be critical ("the power of negative thinking"), pointing out the partiality and one-sidedness of what is before its gaze (this is not just a matter of criticizing past imperfections; the imperfections are in fact archetypal; there are 20th century Kantians), holding forth an ideal of fullness and perfection. But Hegel writes in his preface to Philosophy of Right: To apprehend what is, is the task of philosophy, because what is, is reason. As for the individual, every one is a son of his time; so philosophy also is its time apprehended in thought. It is just as foolish to fancy that any philosophy can transcend its present world, as that an individual could leap out of his time or jump over Rhodes. If a theory transgresses its time, and builds up a world as it ought to be, it has an existence merely in the unstable element of opinion, which gives room to every wandering fancy. And these words, from the final paragraph of the preface, justify me, I think, in speaking of personal despair in connection with the philosopher who spoke of knowledge as reconciliation with reality: "Only one more word concerning the desire to teach the world what it ought to be. For such a purpose philosophy at least al- 76 ways comes too late ... when philosophy paints its grey in grey, one form of life has become old, and by means of grey it cannot be rejuvenated, but only known. The owl of Minerva takes its flight only when the shades of night are gathering." The lectures of Hegel's final years are full of dithyrambic nonsense about the glorious odyssey of the world spirit toward greater and more perfect freedom (from Oriental despotisms where only one is free to Germanic Christendom where all are free); but obviously these panegyrics imply a compromised notion of freedom which would never have satisfied the young Hegel or what is best in the Hegel of Phenomenology. The question, which we cannot fully answer because we cannot see into the soul of any man, but which we must ask because we too, perhaps, would philosophize (and which we can partially answer because Hegel's writings give us clues as to the perceptions that affected his attitude) is: how did Hegel come to despair, first of all, that men whose ultimate recourse was their personal conscience, might live together in concord; and second, that a philosopher might invoke possibilities of perfection as a criterion against which to measure the actual? It is a commonplace that Hegel shrank back with revulsion from the Terror of the French Revolution. 17 But the question is, what did the Terror signify for Hegel? what fear did it confirm? why did he forebode its recurrence? Marcuse emphasizes the economic side of Hegel's thought, and argues that Hegel's deification of the state was motivated by his perception that the economic antagonisms generated by capitalism preclude the possibility of a stable order unless such an order be imposed by government. He quotes from an early (1804) Hegelian manuscript: "This system [i.e., capitalist production] moves hither and yon in a blind and elementary way, and like a wild animal calls for strong, permanent control and curbing." It is certainly true that economic conceptions play an important part in Hegel's thinking: he anticipated Marx (in texts not known to Marx) by explaining alienation in a specifically economic sense as the result of abstract labor, and by denouncing the dehumanizing aspects of mechanization; anticipated Lenin by explaining imperialism as springing from the capitalist mode of production; and in an early manuscript he even says that perfect love is impossible under the condition of private property, which emphasizes particularity by binding one lover up with a "dead thing" which is outside the union of the lovers. Most significantly, Hegel's notion (in Phenomenology) that labor is the beginning of the way out of bondage was very influential on Marx, as we shall see. But it seems to me that Marcuse' s economic emphasis is exaggerated, that it was the perception of another reality, more fundamental than economics, which was primarily responsible for Hegel's trepidation. The nature WINTER 1986 �of this perception can best be indicated by focusing attention upon Hegel's attitude toward Sophocles' Antigone, to whom he refers in his early theological writings, in Phenomenology, and in Philosophy of Right, which I am talcing as marking the three salient stages in Hegel's philosophic development. Hegel shows comparable interest in no other author and in no other literary figure; I think it is no exaggeration to say that throughout his career he felt that it was Antigone and her problem with which he had to come to terms. His first interpretation, in The Positivity of Christianity, was unambiguously individualistic, exalting individual freedom without qualification. When Antigone, defying the law of her state (the will of Creon), invokes the law of God which is "an everlasting law, unwritten and unchanging, and no man knows when it was first put forth," Hegel takes her to be referring to nothing but her conscience, since the everlasting law, he says, has no external manifestations. In Phenomenology, in his discussion of umeflective ethical life, revolving around the foci of community (expressing human law inunediately, divine law derivatively) and family (the inunediate expression of divine law), Hegel at first seems to see Antigone merely as the expression of one branch of the ethical order in conflict with the other branch, represented by Creon. He holds that both are acting as they must and yet both are guilty; on the level of unreflective ethical life, no resolution is possible. But then Hegel goes a step further: he notes, as between human law and divine law, a peculiar difference in their modes of command: "For the commands of government have a universal sense and meaning open to the light of day; the will of the other [i.e., divine]law, however, is the inner concealed meaning of the realm of darkness, a meaning which appears expressed as the will of a particular being, and in contradicting the first is malicious offense." (p.486) (It is true that formally speaking Hegel acknowledges that the divine law is mediated through the family; but it is Sophocles' Antigone which he has read, and he knows that Antigone and her sister Ismene are utterly unable to understand each other.) "The inner concealed meaning of the realm of darkness" -that is, one runs a terrible risk in opposing the posited laws on which shines the light of day, risks being tempted by a demon rather than by God. Kierkegaard thought the risk incumbent upon man, the very source of his dignity; Hegel, in view of the French Revolution, thought the risk could and should be avoided. But there is another dimension to the problem, as we shall see. In Philosophy of Right Hegel twice mentions Antigone, the first time in support of his assertion that no one knows the origin of customs; the second time, in connection with his identification of objective consciousness with man- THE ST. JOHN'S REVIEW hood and subjective consciousness with womanhood, he speaks with unmistakable nostalgia of Antigone, whose piety "Sophocles most superbly presented," Antigone, whose appeal was to "the law of woman, the law of an inner life, the law of the ancient gods and of the underworld, the eternal law, whose origin no one knows, in opposition to the public law of the state. This opposition is in the highest sense ethical and hence also tragic; it is individualized in the opposing natures of man and woman." (p.l72) But man has his essential place in the state, and woman in the bosom of her family; hence the subjective pole of the opposition is excluded from political life. Thus has Hegel finally dealt with Antigone. Hegel must exclude Antigone from the political realm because she is one of "those who, as they say, seek the Lord, and in their untutored opinion assure themselves of possessing all things directly" (p.261)-"directly," that is, without the mediation of class or community, standing in absolute relation to the absolute, beyond good and evil as embodied in humanly posited laws. "From such persons can proceed nothing except abomination and folly, and the demolition of all ethical relations." (p. 261) This was the lesson Hegel thought he had learned from the French Revolution and the Terror: that society could not tolerate those who lived beyond its posited good and evil, could no more tolerate those who pursued absolute good than those who pursued absolute evil. The problem, from a political point of view, of transcending established ethical relations, has a dimension which Kierkegaard, in his extreme introversion, did not recognize: the problem is not simply that an individual who does away with mediation and stands related absolutely to the absolute is subject to temptations which may be either demonic or divine and whose origin he may therefore mistake. From a political point of view,'' which dominated Hegel after the Terror, actions which flow from unmediated divine temptations may be as intolerable as those flowing from unmediated demonic temptations. This perception has, as far as I know19 , its incomparable realization in Melville's Billy Budd, in the preface to which Melville announces explicitly that it is written under the shadow of the Terror which reversed the shining hopes of the beginning of the French Revolution (the metaphor for which, in the story, is the Great Mutiny). The central expression of the irresolvable antinomy in Melville's story is Captain Vere' s exclamation upon the murder of Claggart by Billy Budd: "Struck by an angel of God! Yet the angel must hang!" Billy Budd, who transcends the sphere of ethical existence, who enters into the kind of unmediated relation to the absolute which the terroristic champions of the absolute rights of man entered into; who not only was a foundling, without family, but who when malignantly accused by Claggart is struck 77 �utterly dumb, unable to express himself in language, the mode of the ethical and universal; who alone is able to deal with Claggart, since Claggart' s evil, "partaking nothing of the sensual or the sordid," is beyond the ordinary experience of men, hence beyond their legal arrangements; whom Captain Vere knows and says will be acquitted by the judgment of God-Billy Budd is guilty under the law of the Mutiny act and must hang, lest there be anarchy on ship, because the absolute morality he incarnates is, in the words of Captain Vere, "incapable of being embodied in lasting institutions." The same perception of the implications of the French Revolution, more than any anxiety over contradictions inherent in the capitalist mode of production, impelled Hegel to his final political position. (The perception was his even more bitterly since, unlike Captain Vere, he had no belief in a divine last judgment that might rectify faulty but necessary human judgments.) The same perception led him to hope that Antigone would stay within the bosom of her family and, her father and brothers dead, would remain with her sister Ismene outside of the public realm; or, to put it more generally, that individual conscience would not oppose the laws that be; that to this end philosophy would abjure its task of criticism, for, as Hegel wrote in Philosophy of Right: "Uneducated men delight in surface reasonings and fault-findings. Faultfinding is an easy matter, but it is hard to know the good and its inner necessity. Education always begins with fault-finding, but when full and complete, sees in everything the positive." (p.256) This we may designate as Hegel's final betrayal of philosophy. But it was not his first. For in his preface to Phenomenology he had written that it was his purpose to enable philosophy to "lay aside the name of love of knowledge and be actual knowledge" -which Plato had said was the possession of God alone. We must consider carefully the import of this last statement. Some of those who are not inclined to dismiss the application of Plato's saying to Hegel as sentimental rhetoric might think it sufficient to deprecate Hegel's immodesty in some such terms as these of Karl Popper, a thoroughly modern writer: "He even accomplished the deduction of the actual position of the planets, thereby proving that no planet could be situated between Mars and Jupiter (unfortunately it had escaped his notice that such a planet had been discovered a few months earlier)." That is, one can never tell what science may discover next week (or may have discovered last week without one's noticing it); hence, one ought not to claim to have full possession of all knowledge. The trouble with this kind of argument is that there is no theoretical reason why science may not some day have, in fact, discovered all the planets. Then, presumably, modesty would be out of place. 78 But Plato had something very different in mind. For him knowledge was not a matter of empirically verifiable theses but of salvation, not a collection of truths and techniques, but a loving orientation of the soul to truth itself. And it was an orientation not easily sustained. The lover of truth was beset by rhetorical lures and sophistical traps. Wrestlers turned debaters might throw him time and again. There were easy truths, popular truths and impressive truths-but there was only one Truth. There were truths of the assembly, of the generals, and of the court which could condemn one to death-but Truth was one, and not to be bargained with. In the Phaedrus, the very dialogue whence comes Plato's saying that the love, certainly not the possession, of knowledge is man's highest vocation, Socrates is shown to experience and succumb to the temptation known to every thinker in every age-"by sinning in the sight of God to win high renown from man." Socrates realizes his sin, asks forgiveness and recants, which is all that one can do, although one knows that the temptation will recur, and that one may again succumb. That is why Socrates cannot conceive of man as a possessor of sophia, but only as a lover. But his love, though it falter, is nonetheless the radical meaning of his existence. Marx The primary objective of this chapter is to discover the image of man limned in the writings of Karl Marx (as manifest particularly in his early writings20) and to suggest, in a far from exhaustive way, that a critique of that image, in measure as the critique is valid, also tells against contemporary Western civilization. To this end, my remarks are organized under four headings: Marx's relationship to Hegel; the problem of the origin of alienation in Economic and Philosophic Manuscripts of 1844; the relationship of Marxian man to nature-the problem of contemplation; and the abolition of alienation in the new society. I Hegel's influence on Marx was profound and essentially twofold. From the Phenomenology Marx learned that man accomplishes his humanity through history by overcoming all that resists him, by struggling to impose himself on things as their end and by finally asserting himself as lord over all he surveys. He learned secondly (what had been a corollary for Hegel but was to be primary for Marx) that the activity of labor, in the sense of acting transformatively on nature, of impressing one's form on it in masterly fashion, is crucial to man's progress toward unlimited self-assertion. Hegel's notion of labor as the reduction and annihilation of natural objects not merely to assuage man's material neediness but essentially as a WINTER 1986 �mode of man's self-assertion, has already been noticed. Marx adopts it with virtually no change (despite his Feuerbachian language). He differs significantly from Hegel, however, in that he accepts labor, understood thus, as the definitive mode of man's coming to freedom, that is, to collective lordship. For Hegel, labor was the beginning of the way out of slavery, the beginning of the road to freedom but, though indispensable, it was not sufficient: man's divinity was finally accomplished by philosophic speculation (transformed Christianity), whose realization that self-consciousness is the end of all things did not even purport to be so much a matter of discovery as of successful imposition. For Hegel, history revealed that man had succeeded in acting toward nature and society21 as if they had no proper end of their own independently of his impulse toward self-assertion. But there was something unsatisfactory about the "as if'' -men were known to have qualms of conscience, intimations from they knew not where, 22 that perhaps man is not the measure of all things. Philosophy, for Hegel, had to banish any such doubt (compare Hegel's scorn for the yearning for otherworldly fullness of the Unhappy Consciousness) and assert that of course God is the measure of all things, but that, as the philosophic vanguard of Germanic Christendom has been the first to recognize, man is God. That is, whatever resistances, interior or ex- terior, still remained to man's self-assertion had to be abolished speculatively, by a kind of willful contemplation. Marx did not have the same faith in the ability of willful contemplation to abolish resistances. He was more profoundly concerned than Hegel with man's ontological completeness: not self-consciousness but flesh-andblood man must be the end of all things. Hence practice rather than contemplation had to consummate man's lordship. Whereas for Hegel contemplation fulfilled practice (labor and politics), for Marx practice was consummated by more practice. Or, to be more exact, one kind of practice consummated another, that is, revolutionary action consummated labor, in such a way, however, that its whole virtue was to secure the liberation of labor. Labor was clearly a higher good than revolutionary action: as we shall see, Marx makes quite clear that it is labor which he considers to be man's essentially human activity. Marx's reaction against the Young Hegelians in the 1840's has two principal aspects, one of them predictable from what has been said above, the other as surprising as it is revealing. The first is that the young Hegelians, particularly the Bauers 23 but ultimately even Feurbach, had what was to Marx a quite incomprehensible unconcern for what I have called man's ontological completeness. Marx writes: According to the reports of our ideologists, Germany has, during the last decade, undergone a revolution of unexampled 1HE ST. JOHN'S REVIEW proportions ... a revolution in comparison with which the French Revolution was mere child's play. With unbelievable rapidity one empire was supplanted by another, one mighty hero was struck down by a hero still bolder and more powerful in the universal chaos. During these years, from 1842 to 1845, Germany went through a cataclysm more violent in character than anything which had happened in any previous century. All this, it is true, took place only in the region of pure thought. For we are dealing with a remarkable phenomenon-the decomposition of Absolute Spirit. (Gennan Ideology, p.6) But men are natural, flesh-and-blood suffering beings, not pure spirits, Marx cries out: his evaluation of the heavenly perturbations of left-wing Hegelianism is unequivocal: "Ideas never lead beyond an old world system but only beyond the ideas of an old world system. Ideas cannot carry anything out at all. In order to carry out ideas men are needed who dispose of a certain practical force." (Holy Family, p.160) The second aspect of Marx's revolt against the YoungHegelians is his anxiety, which seems to have been shared by none ·among them, as to how it is possible to philosophize at all after Hegel, after the completion of the system. Is one fated to be a mere epigon, racing against one's colleagues to apply mortar to the system's few chinks? Marx says explicitly in his doctoral thesis on Democritus and Lucretius that he undertook investigation of the post-Aristotelians partly with a view to answering this question for himself. The answer he thought he found was that according to a "historical law," after certain "key points" (e.g. Aristotle and Hegel) philosophy becomes practical, appearing as "a practical person hatching intrigues with the world." Marx's answer to the existential question which posed itself to him at the beginning of his career was that, in his time and place, one could justify one's vocation to philosophy only if one's philosophizing issued in action. Not only did the world of flesh-and-blood men require practical, and not merely theoretical, salvation, but the philosopher himself could achieve his own justification only by engaging in action. The perception of both of these exigencies (there is no definite evidence for asserting the primacy of either one or the other in Marx's mind) stands behind the famous eleventh thesis on Feuerbach, which sums up the first ten: "Philosophers previously have only interpreted the world differently; the point, however, is to change it." And Marx was serious enough to realize that the action of a philosopher would be sheer dilettantism, would leave the world unchanged, unless he enlisted assistance-which, fortunately, was near at hand in the mission of the proletariat. 24 II The concept of alienation as developed in the 79 �Manuscripts of 1844 may be analyzed into five components, which I shall merely state here, postponing explication and commentary until the next section. For the alienated man: (1) The product of his labor becomes an object over against him and oppressing him. (2) The objects of nature on which he labors seem to him alien and oppressive. (3) He feels alienated as regards his laboring activity: activity appears as suffering, strength as weakness, begetting as emasculating, etc. (4) He is estranged from his species: man's life-activity is production, but production, under the condition of alienation, appears to man as the means to his individual life rather than the very substance of his species life, which in fact it is. (5) Man's estrangement from his species-being immediately entails that one man is estranged from another, as both are estranged from their common essential nature: "If the product of labor does not belong to the worker, if it confronts him as an alien power, this can only be because it belongs to some other man than the worker. If the worker's activity is a torment to him, to another it must be delight and his life's joy. Not the gods, not nature, but only man himself can be this alien power over man." (p.79) So it is man who oppresses man (that is, one manoppresses another). However, Marx goes on to insist that this social relationship is not aboriginal, but is consequent upon what can only be called an individual and interior fall from grace. It is true (for Marx) that "In the real practical world self-estrangement can only become manifest through the real practical relationship to other men." (p.79) But self-estrangement itself comes first, and this primordial act/condition "engenders"" the social aspects of estrangement: "The relationship of the worker to labor engenders the relation to it of the capitalist, or whatever one chooses to call the master of labor. Private property is thus the product, the result, the necessary consequence of alienated labor, of the external relation of the worker to nature and to himself." (p.80) Even more explicitly: "Though private property appears to be the source, the cause of alienated labor, it is really its consequence," though "later this relationship becomes reciprocal." (p.81) Marx is aware that he has left a large question in suspension: "We have accepted the estrangement of labor, its alienation, as a fact, and we have analyzed this fact. How, we now ask, does man come to alienate, to estrange his labor? How is this estrangement rooted in the nature of human development?" (p.82) Marx thinks that "we have already gone a long way to the solution of this problem" by inquiring not into the origin of private property but rather into the nature of alienated labor: for when one speaks of private property, one thinks he is concerned with something external to man, whereas "when one speaks oflabor, one is directly concerned with 80 man himself." (p.82) But Marx concedes that the problem bears closer examination. At this point, the editor of the Marxist-Leninist Institute informs us, the first manuscript breaks off unfinished. Marx's failure to show "how this estrangement is rooted in the nature of human development" is absolutely crucial to his thought in both its analytic and its hortatory aspects. He does not settle this question unambiguously in any of his later writings, throughout which he seems to be looking for some kind of "original sin," since in general he does not hold particular capitalists of his day responsible for the crimes of capitalism, but rather he holds the system itself responsible. Relevant in this connection is Marx's discussion of 11 So-called primitive ac<;:umulation" in the second book of Capital (chapter 26). He rejects the explanation of bourgeois political economists that private property came about because in the beginning there were two sorts of people: "one, the diligent, intelligent, and, above all, frugal elite; the other, lazy rascals, spending their substance, and more, in riotous living. Thus it came to pass that the former sort accumulated wealth and the latter sort had at last nothing to sell except their own skins. And from this original sin dates the poverty of the great majority." No, Marx insists, there was no such idyll as that: "In actual history it is notorious that conquest, enslavement, robbery, murder, briefly force, play the great part." But although his explanation differs from that of the bourgeois political economists in that he attributes to the ancestors of modern capitalists not greater (puritan) virtue but rather greater brutality, he agrees with them, it seems, in supposing that the original sin was social, not individual. The Marx of 1844, as has been noted, insisted that the original sin was radically individual, though it immediately (somehow) engendered social consequences and a reciprocity of cause and effect soon set in. As I said above, Marx's perception of the nature of original sin has extreme importance for the hortatory aspects of his thought. If man's present misery is social in origin (brutally rather than idyllically social, the Marx of Capital would say), then the communist revolution should automatically secure man's happiness (insofar as "the theory of the Communists may be summed up in the single sentence: Abolition of private property"Communist Manifesto). But if private property is not the source but rather the consequence of man's alienation as Marx insisted in 1844, then the abolition of private property, while bringing the above-mentioned reciprocity to a halt, does not automatically secure man's happiness. Rather, it appears, the abolition of private property, hence of the slavery-sustaining reciprocity, merely gives man the free choice he had in the beginning (but not after the reciprocity set in) as to how he shall relate himself to himself and to nature, how he shall regard his productive ca- WINTER 1986 �pacity, whether as his own or as alien; whether he shall accept his ability to produce-including his ability to produce beautiful objects-as his distinctively and essentially human quality, or whether he will succumb to the temptation to regard his productive capacity as merely a means to the preservation of his own life, as if there might be more to human life than production, for the sake of which production might be carried on. But to grasp the full significance of these alternatives (whose statement here anticipates the analysis contained in the following section), we must shift our attention from the problem of the origin of alienation to that of the content of alienation as understood by Marx. III An attempt to elucidate the content of Marx's notion of alienation requires an investigation of his understanding of man's proper relationship to nature. 26 Such an investigation leads us ultimately to ask why, for Marx, contemplation, which the ancients considered to be man's most perfect way of relating himself to nature, was precluded. We know that for Marx Communism, that is, the overcoming of alienation, signified "the genuine resolution of the conflict between man and nature" and "the consummated oneness in substance of man and nature." At the same time, however, the very meaning of man's existence consists in his differentiation of himself from nature, a differentiation which is accomplished by labor. Marx, although he does not go so far as to say-as Engels does in his essay "Labor in the Transition from Ape to Man" -that "labor created man himself" in an explicitly evolutionary sense, makes clear what he thinks to be man's specific difference: "We can distinguish men from animals by consciousness, religion or whatever we like. They themselves begin to distinguish themselves as soon as they begin to produce the means of life, a step which is conditioned by their bodily organization. In producing their means of life, men indirectly produce their material life itself." (Gennan Ideology, p.7) For Aristotle, production of the means of life was the only "human" activity which did not distinguish men from animals, since unlike the capacity for political life and for contemplation, it patently pertained to animals as much as to men. In Manuscripts of 1844 (though not, as far as I can see, in Gennan Ideology), Marx tries to take this challenge into account: Admittedly animals also produce. They build themselves nests, dwellings, like the bees, beavers, ants, etc. But an animal only produces what it immediately needs for itself or for its young. It produces onesidedly, whilst man produces universally. It produces only under the dominance of immediate physical need, whilst man produces even when he is free from physical need and only truly produces in freedom THE ST. JOHN'S REVIEW therefrom . ... An animal forms things in accordance with the standard and the need of the species to which it belongs, whilst man knows how to produce in accordance with the standard of every species, and knows how to apply everywhere the inherent standard to the object. Man therefore also forms things in accordance with the laws of beauty. (p.75) It appears, then, that for Marx man's production differs from that of an animal in principally two respects: man also and most authentically produces without material constraint; and man not only produces more variously than animals, but also deliberately produces beautiful things." To the consequences of these criteria we shall advert later. But the foregoing account of the difference between man and animals in terms of their respective modes of laboring is only an external and phenomenological treatment of the human activity of labor. The question is, how does human labor appear, not to an outside observer, but to homo laborans himself; what are actually his motives for laboring? If one views Marx against the background of such of his predecessors among political economists as Hobbes, Smith and Ricardo, his answer to the question is astonishing indeed. But, as we have seen, Hegel gave the same answer. Marx writes (Manuscripts, p.76): "The object of labor, therefore, is the objectification of man's species life: for he duplicates himself not only, as in consciousness, intellectually, but also actually, in reality, and therefore he contemplates himself in a world which he has created." 28 We are now in a position to see what for Marx is the root (and, in a sense, pre-social) meaning of alienation: that an individual man, instead of defining himself in terms of his participation in the masterly transformation of nature by the species mankind, should regard his labor as merely a means to his individual life, as though there might be a higher good than labor, for the sake of which labor might be conducted: "Life itself [from context, 'productive labor'] appears only as a means to life. " 29 (p.75, Manuscripts) To appreciate the enormous disparity between Marx's conception of man's relationship to nature and that of the ancients, we must broach the question of contemplation, which was for the ancients the primary mode of man's relating to nature, to which all other modes were hierarchically ordered. It is a question of which Marx is patently not unaware. His attitude toward it, which is absolutely central to his thought, may be seen under tluee interrelated aspects. First there is his remarkable position (Manuscripts, p.112) with respect to the idea of creation, which is, he holds, "very difficult to dislodge from the popular mind" because to contradict it "contradicts everything palpable in practical experience. " 30 Still, "a being only considers himself independent when he stands on his own feet; 81 �and he only stands on his own feet when he owes his existence to himself", so that Marx quite willfully chooses to adhere to "spontaneous generation (as) the only practical refutation of the theory of creation"; or, better yet, he would prefer not even to raise the question of creation, which is an "abstraction" and "perverse". Second, we may consider Marx's attitude toward Feuerbach, against whom his principal charge is that Feuerbach's materialism is contemplative, by which Marx means more than that Feuerbach did not advocate political revolution, though that is no doubt a leading element of his indictment. But Marx challenges Feuerbach's contemplative attitude in a far more radical way: "He does not see how the sensuous world around him is, not a thing given direct from all eternity, ever the same, but a product of industry and the state of society .... The cherry tree, like almost all fruit trees, was, as is well known, only a few centuries ago transplanted by commerce into our zone, and therefore only by a definite action of a definite society in a definite age provided for the evidence of Feuerbach's senses." (German Ideology, p.35) Marx's assertion has implications, as I suspect he was aware, far beyond the narrow context of his particular dispute with Feuerbach. It raises the question whether the wonder before existence which the ancients knew, the feeling at once of surprise and reverence before all that is, is compatible with prodigious technological feats and capacities (compare Marx's observation that Greek art presupposed a naivete which is inaccessible to us modems except in the mode of nostalgia). If one were to think that wonder is still possible, he would have to affirm, in the teeth of a widespread modem opinion, that to know how to handle a thing is not equivalent to knowing it; that, in St. Thomas' terms, the inexhaustible lux which is the quality of a being as such, is not amenable to being concentrated into a laser beam. The third point which we must notice in regard to Marx's attitude to the question of contemplation is the most remarkable of all, because it is unmistakably as though he is addressing his argument directly to Aristotle, whose thought he evidently knew very well. Against an implicit background of Aristotle's notion of theoria as man's highest, most godlike possibility (which implied, among other things, that man is not completely defined by his sociality), he writes: "But again when I am active scientifically, etc.-when I am engaged in an activity which I can seldom perform in direct community with others-then I am social, because I am active as a man. Not only is the material of my activity given to me as a social product (as is even the language in which the thinker is active): my own activity is social activity, and therefore, that which I make of myself, I make of myself for society and with the consciousness of myself as a social being." (Manuscripts, p.104) 82 The question which we may fairly put, since Marx's argument is implicitly addressed to Aristotle, is, what would Aristotle make of such an account? He would, I think, first point out that by "active scientifically" Marx means two things which he fails to distinguish: one of which is ordinarily performed "in direct community with others", the other of which never is, cannot possibly be, so that Marx's use of "seldom" is an indication of the hybrid character of his notion of "scientific activity". As regards the first meaning-that is, the first stage-of "scientific activity", Aristotle would agree to its social character: the material, whether written or spoken, on which one reflects is a social product in the sense of being the product of many men; and one reflects in the medium of language, which is man's distinctive socialpolitical characteristic. But then there is a second stage, 31 Aristotle would say, when one cannot possibly be "in direct community with others" (although they or their written words may be physically present) and when speech is at once no longer necessary and no longer possible. It seems that Marx would reply that, even if the distinction of stages be conceded, even during the second stage I am active "for society and with consciousness of myself as a social being." As to the first point, Aristotle would agree that one's contemplative activity may well have consequences "for society" (Plato would insist that it must and cajole the philosopher accordingly), but would have to affirm in addition that, preeminently among all activities, it is done for its own sake. As to the second point, Aristotle would agree that one always experiences within himself an impulse toward communion with other men ("for no man would want to live without friends"), but would have to affirm in addition that, at least for a few, there is an impulse toward the contemplation of divine things, so that the philosopher must "strain every nerve to live in accordance with the best thing in him", which entails, in conflict with his naturally political being, his radical isolation from men. 32 Marx, like Aristotle, thought that it was natural for man to be among other men. His naturalism was so consistent that he felt constrained to insist that even when he was active scientifically, he was not violating his social nature. Aristotle's naturalism however, profound though it was (surely more profound than that of Marx, who never clearly articulated the difference between mere life and the good life in the context of man's being-together), was not consistent: "But such a life would be too high for man; for it is not insofar as he is a man that he will live so, but insofar as something divine is present within him. But we must not follow those who advise us, being men, to think of human things and, being mortal, of mortal things, but must, so far we can, make ourselves immortal, and strain every nerve to live in accordance with the best thing in us; for even if it be small in bulk, much WINTER 1986 �more does it in power and worth surpass everything." (Nicomacbean Ethics X, 7). IV Our investigation of the content of Marx's notion of alienation can proceed further only by attention to what Marx understood as the overcoming of man's alienation, the accomplishment of his authentic existence; that is, we must try to indicate the shape of Communist society as Marx envisaged it, thereby viewing man's present deficiency against the background of his plenitude. In her essay "Tradition and the Modern Age", Hannah Arendt devotes several interesting pages to pointing out what she considers to be central contradictions in the work of Marx, not with a view to refutation and rejection of his thought, as though only those mediocrities whose systems display perfect internal consistency were worthy of respectful attention, but rather (she says) for the sake of indicating his true greatness-the unprecedented perplexities which he perceived and with which he tried to come to terms, and their illumination by his failure. She poses this fundamental challenge to him: "If labor is the most human and productive of man's activities, what will happen when, after' the revolution, 'labor is abolished' in the 'realm of freedom'? What productive and what essentially human activity will be left?" This problem indeed seems to warrant consideration. We have seen the quite definite sense in which Marx deems labor to be man's essentially human activity. We may recall that for Marx man's production differs from that of an animal in principally two respects: man also and most authentically produces without material constraint; and man not only produces more variously than animals, but in addition he deliberately produces beautiful things. The first of these criteria forms the basis for Marx's prediction of the content of the "realm of freedom", namely the "abolition of labor" (German Ideology) in such a way that in this respect he is technically not guilty of the contradiction with which Hannah Arendt taxes him, though he is certainly guilty of considerable ambiguity. Herbert Marcuse' s explanation (in Reason and Revolution) of the import of the "abolition of labor" seems acceptable: These amazing formulations in Marx's earliest writings all contain the Hegelian term Aufhebung, so that the abolition also carries the meaning that a content is restored to its true form. Marx, however, envisioned the future mode of labor to be so different from the prevailing one that he hesitated to use the same term 'labor' to designate alike the material process of capitalist and of communist society. He uses the term 'labor' to mean what capitalism actually understands by it 1HE ST. JOHN'S REVIEW in the last analysis, that activity which creates surplus value in commodity production or which 'produces capital'. Other kinds of activity are not 'productive labor' and hence are not labor in the proper sense. Labor thus means that free and universal development is denied the individual who labors, and it is clear that in this state of affairs the liberation of the individual is at once the negation of labor. "A content is restored to its true form ... the future mode of labor to be so different from the prevailing one ... "-we must try to specify just how the true, future mode of labor differs from the present, capitalist mode. We have already noticed one formulation of this antithesis: in Manuscripts Marx contrasts labor as the objectification of man's species life with a view to human self-contemplation, with labor as a mere means to individual self-preservation. But Marx's later writings on this opposition between modes of laboring are less Hegelian, considerably more human. In German Ideology [p .53 of the abridged edition of 1970 of the publisher cited (ed.)], he writes: That is to say that according as labor comes to be divided, everyone has a definite, circumscribed sphere of activity which is put upon him and from which he cannot escape. He is a hunter or fisherman or shepherd or 'critical critic' and must remain so if he does not want to lose the means of subsistence-whereas in the Communist society, where each one does not have a circumscribed sphere of activity but can train himself in any branch he chooses, society by regulating the common production makes it possible for me to do this today and that tomorrow, to hunt in the morning, to fish in the afternoon, to carry on cattle-breeding in the evening, also to criticize the food-just as I please-without becoming either hunter, fisherman, shepherd or critic. Here Marx is protesting against the brutal narrowing of man's activity (and of course, as he makes amply clear in Capital, a hunter's range of activity and variety of faculties employed are enormous compared with those of a factory worker under conditions of mechanization33); and against the identification of a man with his job, as though the significance of a human being could be exhausted by the way in which he sustains his material life. Marx is perfectly well aware that departure from the most brutally narrowing division of labor is inefficient from the point of view of material production. Such inefficiency will be tolerable only on the twin preconditions of modern technology (which Marx asserts could only have been developed under capitalism, which enforces, by virtue of its relentless laws of competition, a species asceticism whereby man is able to overcome his originally complete dependence on nature) and the revolution ushering in first the lower, disciplinary phase of Communism and then the higher phase-only when "with the development of the individual in every sense, the productive forces also increase and all the springs of collective life 83 �flow with abundance" (Critique of the Gotha Program); with such abundance, in fact, that the inefficiency of unspecialized activity can be ignored. Or, more exactly, such inefficiency can almost be ignored: it seems to me that Marx was more faithful than is generally supposed to his early (Manuscripts) insight that "as a natural, corporeal, sensuous objective being, [man] is a suffering, conditioned, limited creature, like animals and plants." A distinct echo of this statement is to be heard in a well-known passage in the third book of Capital (chapter 48, section 3): The realm of freedom actually begins only where labor which is determined by necessity and. external Suitableness ends; thus in the very nature of things it lies beyond the sphere of material production in the proper sense. Just as the savage must wrestle with Nature to satisfy his wants, to maintain and to reproduce his life, so must civilized man, and he must do so in all social formations and under all possible modes of production. With his development his realm of physical necessity expands, as do his wants; but at the same time the forces which satisfy these wants also increase. In this field freedom can only consist in that socialized man, the associated producers, rationally regulate their metabolic interchange with nature, bringing it under their control instead of being ruled by it as by blind forces, and achieve this with the least expenditure of energy and under conditions most favorable to and worthy of their human nature. But it will always remain a realm of necessity. [my emphasis] Beyond it begins the development of human energy which is carried on as an end in itself, the true empire of freedom, which, however, can blossom forth only with the realm of necessity as its basis. Consistently with this view, Marx (in the first volume of Capital) hails the British Ten-hour Bill, entailing as it does increased leisure for workers, as the Magna Carta of labor. But we must ask Aristotle's question of Marx: how is one to occupy his leisure? Can Marx really believe that the only thing worth doing for its own sake is work performed in the mode of a hobby (i.e., without material constraint)? What does Marx's postrevolutionary man do when he tires of fishing, hunting, breeding cattle and criticizing the food, as tire he must? Marx was profoundly right to assert that man is not merely accidentally human when he is laboring, and that labor is not merely a necessary evil, but can be a positive good, a way for the partial34 realizing of man's perfection; that in any case (this, I think, is what Marx wanted to affirm most of all), what an ensouled man does can never, never be merely accidentally human. 35 But the terrible tragedy of Marx's thought is that, having saved man's labor from sub-humanity, he comes dangerously close (particularly in Manuscripts and German Ideology) to asserting that man is merely accidentally human when he is not laboring. 36 The Marx of Capital realized, 37 at least at moments, that labor, although it contains possibilities of positive value and ought not to be despised, is ulti- 84 mately for the sake of leisure. Regrettably he did not, in the light of this realization, explicitly reconsider the problem of what activities and what faculties are the truest expression of man's humanity; so that if Hannah Arendt is not right to speak of a flagrant contradiction at the heart of Marx's theory, still one may speak of a remarkable silence there, a silence which could hardly have been unnoticed by Marx himself, whose attention to Aristotle has already been recorded. We can see this matter in sharper focus if we follow Hannah Arendt in likening the technologically enabled, post-revolutionary freedom from the necessity of labor to the slavery-based freedom of a Greek citizen. For the Greeks such freedom made possible political life and the life of contemplation (both of which, action no less than contemplation, aspire toward the beautiful; compare particularly Diotima's discourse in the Symposium); whereas for Marx both of these modes of being appear to be ruled out-political life in the sense of the government of men being replaced by "the administration of things" (public cult-whether in the way of Aeschylean drama, imaging forth in unforgettable beauty the majesty of a people's quest for justice, or in the Christian way of liturgical prayer-having of course been excluded a priori); and contemplation impossible for reasons already noticed. But it must be realized that the perplexities which Marx encounters (in the aspects of his thought with which we have been concerned) are by no means peculiar to any "utopian" framework, but are fundamentally characteristic of bourgeois society. 38 The aspiration to transform nature with a view to human self-contemplation is, after all, and despite the modern distaste for metaphysical language, a perfectly bourgeois ideal (compare Bacon: "knowledge is power" and Descartes' Discourse on Method: "replace theoretical with practical philosophy" so as to make ourselves umasters and owners of nature"). Moreover, it is an ideal which has been largely realized. The problem is that contemplation of the image of man which we have succeeded in impressing upon nature does not delight us, though the ancients were quite sure that delight belonged to contemplation. The image of ourselves which we behold in a technologically transformed nature can be described at best as weirdly composite and confusing; and there are not a few who think it hideous. The following is an excerpt from a concluding section on Politics and the Love of Being. That the sort of statesman that the many were likely to heed would not lead them to virtue was Plato's conclusion in the Gorgias and the Phaedrus, his dialogues on persuasion. But in the Theatetus we find a qualification WINTER 1986 �which, though its political relevance is not immediate (which is not to say that it has no political relevance at all), is of central importance for the lives of those philosophers whose love of truth entails ineluctably a love of all men (and if it does not, it is not an authentic love of truth). After Plato has made Socrates say that the many, in their mass-character, will always deride philosophers; that, archetypally, the Thracian maid will always laugh at Thales; and that in particular the philosopher's ineptitude in the assembly and the law courts will incur the scorn of the many, he has Socrates continue: "But there is one thing about them; when you get them alone and make them explain their objections to philosophy, then, if they are men enough to face a long examination without running away, it is odd how they end by finding their own arguments unsatisfying. Somehow their flow of eloquence runs dry, and they become as speechless as an infant.'' There are two things which we must notice about this passage. The first is that, even after singling him out from the herd, Socrates does not claim to be able to effect his interlocutor's conversion to the philosophical way of life. All Socrates claims to be able to do is to cause his interlocutor's flow of eloquence to run dry, and that only if his interlocutor has a certain minimal honesty. Socrates knows well that conversions are not wrought by mere human arguments; but silence may, under favorable circumstances (that is, with some kind of grace already operative) be wrought by mere human arguments; and only in silence, and not during a flow of eloquence, can one hear the voice within oneself that tells him that he is not the measure of all things, but that he must seek that measure with all his strength of heart and mind. The second remarkable aspect of this passage (which seems to me more Socratic than Platonic) is the indication that in some sense the experience of the eternal is accessible to the many and not only to the few, though surely only the few can discover a prime mover or a selfthinking thought. If the experience of the eternal is accessible to all men, and not only to the few capable of effective conceptual dialectic (and I do not see how a Christian can believe otherwise), and if that experience cannot be touched by political action in the sense of mass evocation (to such an extent, indeed, that to communicate at all with the masses the philosopher must tell lies, as Plato thought), so that the best one can hope from politics is that an external harmony can be secured (which, abstractly speaking, will not be inimical to the formation of individual souls in virtue-though in concreto one cannot be sure); then it would seem to be the responsibility of a man whose love of truth overflowed into a love of all men not to engage in politics at all, but rather to be a teacher who cares for the individual souls under his tutelage. THE ST. JOHN'S REVIEW But if one were to follow such a course, one could not help feeling that one's sphere was hopelessly restricted, that all the men for whom one cared but who were not one's students were beyond the pale of whatever grace was being dispensed through the medium of oneself. Then one might begin to wonder whether there might not be a way of touching the experience of the eternal in each member of the assembled many. And that one could discover, if at all, only by trying. Notes 1. This is a somewhat bold statement, though j. N. Findlay, among others, would agree. It is undeniable that what I have called Hegel's secondary or metaphorical usage occurs very frequently. Nevertheless, it is fairly clear that Hegel would not speak of Absolute Spirit in a world without individual conscious beings; and it seems least disconcerting to interpret Hegel as little pantheistically as possible. 2.Phenomenology of Mind, Baillie edition, 1964, p.SO. 3. Findlay cautions against setting up an antithesis whereby Kant is a ''dualistic idealist'' and Hegel an ''objective idealist,'' lest Hegel be conceived as an idealist of the Berkelian sort. Clearly Hegel is not that: he thinks there were things in the world before there were conscious spiritual beings. Hegel's idealism is rather teleological than strictly ontological. Findlay himself says, "Hegel's thoroughgoing teleology means, further, that nothing whatever in the world or our thought can have any meaning or function but to serve as a condition for the activity of self-conscious Spirit." My argument certainly means to assert no more than this. 4. All quotations from Phenomenology of Mind are from Baillie edition. Hereafter, page numbers will be given in text. 5. A more common interpretation is this one by Marcuse: "The transition from the Logic to the Philosophy of Nature, and from the latter to the Philosophy of Mind are made on the assumption that the laws of nature spring from the rational structure of being and lead in a continuum to the laws of the mind." That is, there is a Greek-like faith in a pre-established harmony between the mind and the structure of the universe; man does not impose, but rather discovers, himself (his rationality) as the truth of all that is. I think, however, that with respect to Hegel one can speak of faith in such a harmony only in the weak sense that Hegel believes there is nothing in the universe th;;1t can effectually resist the imperialism of the human mind, i.e., if the mind did not place itself behind the curtain, there would be nothing (or nothing effectual) behind the curtain at all. Two quotations make quite vivid the element of wilfulness in Hegel's epistemology- ontology: "And self-consciousness is thus only assured of itself through sublating this other, which is presented tO self-consciousness as an independent life; self-consciousness is desire. Convinced of the nothingness of this other, it definitely affirms this nothingness to be for itself the truth of this other, negates the independent object, and thereby acquires the certainty of its own self, a true certainty, a certainty which it has become aware of in objective form" (Phenomenology). Second, in Philosophy of Right, paragraph 44, addition (Marcuse' s translation, p.191, Reason and Revolution) concerning the will (which Hegel regards as a mode of reason, not really distinct from it) he writes: ''Only the will is the unlimited and absolute, while all other things in contrast with the will are merely 85 �relative. To appropriate is only at bottom to manifest the majesty of my will toward things, by demonstrating that they are not self-complete and have no purpose of their own. This is brought about by my instiUing into the object another end than that which it primarily had. When the living thing becomes my property it gets another soul than it had. I give it my will. Free will is thus the idealism which refuses to hold that things as they are can be self-complete." Notice in the second quotation the contradiction between ''no purpose of their own" and "another end than that which it primarily had." What Hegel seems to be implying is that things do have some kind of an inherent nature, but not an effectual one, i.e., man can get away with violating it. I hope my point about Hegel's wilfulness is now established. I should add that in one sense Hegel is justified in speaking of man's discovery of himself as the truth of things. After his self-imposition, accomplished in history, man can indeed discover himself. Since Hegel's standpoint in Phenomenology is the end of history and yet Hegel impersonates characters within history, the resultant ambiguity is reflected in the interchangeability of ''discover'' and ''impose.'' 6. To create is to give form to chaos. For Hegel, reality as it immediately presents itself is in chaos, since it has no effectual form, that is, no form that can resist man's will to lordship. 7. Among modern writers, no one has had deeper insight into these matters than Berdyaev: "Freedom is freedom not only from the master but from the slave also. The master is determined from without; the master is not a personality, just as the slave is not a personality. Only the free man is a personality, and he is that even if the whole world should wish to enslave him ... a man gets into the position of master over some other man because in accordance with the structure of his consciousness he has become a slave to the will to mastership. The same power by which he enslaves another, enslaves himself also. A free man does not desire to lord it over anyone." (Slavery and Freedom, p.61). 8. Actually, the matter is more complicated than that. Socrates wanted, for the sake of a disinterested investigation of justice, to disregard considerations of reward and punishment on earth and in the afterlife. Hence he negated political life and the ordinary Greek gods, both of which he re-introduced quite optimistically after the conclusion of the argument, asserting that the gods always and men usually recognize and reward justness. But his hypothetical negation of the gods of reward and punishment need not mean that he had become (if only for the sake of argument) godless; nor do I mean merely that he might still have had a god in the casual sense in which, for example, conscience is said to be divine. 9. Marcuse writes: "Marx makes reference to Hegel's definitive insight, which disclosed to him that lordship and bondage result of necessity from certain relationships of labor, which are, in turn, relationships in the 'reified' world. The relation of lord to servant is thus neither an eternal nor a natural one, but is rooted in a definite mode of labor and in man's relation to the products of his labor" (Reason and Revolution, p.115). Neither did Hegel say that slavery was consequent upon particular relations of production and property, nor did Marx interpret him to say that. The Marx of 1844 insisted that private property was a result, not the cause of self-estrangement. Not only was Marx' explanation of (wage) slavery no more "materialistic'' than Hegel's; in a sense it was more radically spiritual, in that for Marx the origin of slavery was antecedent even to man's spiritual relations with other men: although man's selfestrangement was worked out among other men, the original 86 sin was radically individualisitic-man' s rebellion against his species life, as if labor could be a mere means to a higher end, instead of the essentially human activity expressive of man's dominion over nature. This point will be further developed in the chapter on Marx. 10. It should be recalled that earlier in Phenomenology (p. 488), at the transcended-yet-preserved level of immediate ethical life, to act was indeed to sin: "Hence innocence is an attribute merely of the want of action, a state like the mere being of a stone, and one which is not even true of a child." Hegel reminds any among us who considers himself innocent that Oedipus too considered himself innocent until the awful revelation came. 11. Marcuse makes a valuable suggestion in this regard, which I basically accept, with qualifications which will become clear later. He writes: "Luther established Christian liberty as an internal value to be realized independently of any and all external conditions ... German culture is inseparable from its origin in Protestantism. There arose a realm of beauty, freedom and morality, which was not to be shaken by external realities and struggles; it was detached from the miserable social world and anchored in the soul of the individual. This development is the source of a tendency widely visible in German idealism, a willingness to become reconciled to the social reality. This reconciliatory tendency of the idealists constantly conflicts with their critical rationalism. illtimately, the ideal that the critical aspects set forth, a rational political and social reorganization of the world, becomes frustrated and is transformed into a spiritual value" (Reason and Revolution, p.15). 12. "What we [the philosophers] are conscious of in our conception-that objective being is ultimate essence-is the same as what the religious consciousness is aware of." However, ''Pictorial presentation constitutes the characteristic form in which spirit is conscious of itself in this its religious com munion. This form is not yet the self-consciousness of spirit which has reached its notion as notion; the mediating process is still incomplete" (p.761; p.673). 13. On the transcending of Christian symbols in general, even in less extreme forms than by Hegel, my own attitude is close to that expressed by John Updike in these "Seven Stanzas at Easter'': Make no mistake: if He rose at all it was as His body; if the cells' dissolution did not reverse, the molecules reknit, the amino acids rekindle, the church will fall. It was not as the flowers, each soft Spring recurrent; it was not as His Spirit in the mouths and fuddled eyes of the eleven apostles; it was as His flesh: ours. The same hinged thumbs and toes, the same valved heart that-pierced-died, withered, paused, and then regathered out of enduring Might new strength to enclose. Let us not mock God with metaphor, analogy, sidestepping, transcendence; making of the event a parable, a sign painted in the faded credulity of earlier ages: let us walk through the door. The stone is rolled back, not papier-mache, not a stone in a story, but the vast rock of materiality that in the slow WlNTER 1986 �grinding time will eclipse for each of us the wide light of day. And if we will have an angel at the tomb, make it a real angel, weighty with Max Planck's quanta, vivid with hair, opaque in the dawn light, robed in real linen spun on a definite loom. Let us not seek to make it less monstrous, for our own convenience, our own sense of beauty, lest, awakened in one unthinkable hour, we are embarrassed by the miracle, and crushed by remonstrance. 14. Findlay, for example, consistently with his understanding of Aristotle wholly as an immanentist, writes, "Hegel's religion, like that of Aristotle, consists in 'str.aining every nerve to live in accordance with the best thing in us' " (p.143) 15. Philosophy of Right, Dyde Edition, 1919, p.240. Subsequently page numbers will be given in text. 16. In "The Positivity of the Christian Religion" (1795) and "The Spirit of Christianity" (1798), Hegel had analyzed in two quite different ways the relationship between Kantian and Christian ethics. In the earlier essay he argued that Christ was Himself a Kantian, who was compelled by the ineptness of the Jews to whom he preached to call attention to his own unique personality, although his message was really that one ought to behave in such a way that one's action would permit of self-consistent universalization. Hegel approves of Christ's Kantian message and regrets the obtuseness of the Jews. By thesecond essay (there is conjecture that the dramatic change was wrought largely by the influence of Hoelderlin on Hegel), Hegel is arguing that Kantian ethics are really not satisfactory, that one is not free when one's reason (the universal) is overmastering and enslaving one's particular passions and interests. Both moments are overcome, Hegel thinks, in Christian love, which he understands here in a quite mystical way. In general, Hegel's criticism of Kantian ethics is one of the most sensible elements of Hegel's thought. 17. It is also well-known that in his early days as a student at Tubingen Hegel hailed the French Revolution with enthusiasm. But that was before the Terror, which he describes in Phenomenlogy in memorably lurid language: "The sole and only work and deed accomplished by universal freedom is therefore death-a death that achieves nothing, embraces nothing within its grasp . . . it is thus the most cold-blooded and meaningless death of all, with no more significance than cleaving a head of cabbage or swallowing a draught of water." 18. Whether this is the only possible political point of view, or whether at least the outlines might be discovered of a different sort of reconciliation between service of the absolute and the relativity inevitably characteristic of political life will be considered in the final chapter of this work. 19. This discussion owes much to the suggestion of Hannah Arendt in On Revolution that Billy Budd ought to be read in the light of the French Revolution. 20. References are to Economic and Philosophic Manuscripts of 1844 (Moscow, Foreign Language Publishing House, 1951); The Holy Family (Moscow, Foreign Language Publishing House, 1956); The German Ideology (New York, International Publishers, 1939). Page numbers will appear in text. References to Capital are by book and chapter number. 21. That man's absolute autonomy with respect to nature would necessarily have implied his absolute autonomy with respect to society, i.e., his proceeding on the assumption that human being-together has no inherent telos (e.g. the promo- THE ST. JOHN'S REVIEW tion of nobility, the perfection of man's natural being), would have been self-evident for Aristotle, whose thinking was controlled by a profound analogical awareness. Hegel's logic here is Aristotelian, and thereby he is at once more consistent and more realistic than Vico. 22. Christendom had once known where; and so did Socrates, whose whole mission he seems to have conceived as the inducing of men to heed the intimations springing from their own souls that they were not the measure of things. 23. Sidney Hook reports that Bruno Bauer was wont to make such statements as: "Theory which has enlightened us about our own nature and which has given us the courage to be ourselves ... has reduced the Christian state to an unessential appearance." (From Hegel to Marx, Ann Arbor Paperback, p.99) 24. Of course, there were serious limitations, of which Marx became increasingly aware, to the collaboration between the philosopher and the proletariat: the "working men of all countries" could not respond to the philosopher's call to "unite" until their consciousness had evolved sufficiently; and even then their response would be quite untheoretical. 25. How this "engendering" takes place, what it looks like, is surely mysterious, but I am more interested, as will appear presently, in the nature of the interior fall itself, apart from the problem of-how an individual psychic state could engender consequences in the objective world. Marx's construction here appears to be archetypal rather than historical, but it is hard to say (as in the case of Hegel's master-slave relationship) how the archetype is related to objective happenings-which does not invalidate it, however, as an attempt to say something about the human soul. 26. By ''nature'' I understand more than the mere aggregate of brooks, trees and squirrel~ though they are of course comprised. By it I mean, as the ancients did, being in its sheer givenness. That is, our experience of the universal precedes our enumeration of individuals; compare Heidegger' s observation that we find ourselves in a "field of being". 27. A certain ambiguity in the text quoted above permits the suspicion that by "laws of beauty" Marx means nothing more than what is now commonly referred to as "the principle of elegance''. But it seems to me that Marx, who loved Aeschylus and Shakespeare, was not such a barbarian as that. 28. Of course, Marx is by no means unaware of man's material neediness. Compare this statement from Holy Family: "The egotistic individual in civil society may in his non-sensuous imagination and lifeless abstraction inflate himself to the size of an atom, i.e. to an unrelated, self-sufficient, wantless, absolutely full blessed being ... (but) his profane stomach reminds him every day that the world outside him is not empty, but is what really fills." But Marx's faith is precisely that this situation, i.e. man's dependence on nature, can be overcome. In~ dispensable to such an overcoming is the exploitation of labor by capital and the competition-enforced asceticism of capitalists, the combined effect of which is to enforce a species asceticism whereby man's initial dependence on nature can be overcome to such an extent that man can lord it over nature without limit. 29. The following propositions have the same sense, but somewhat ambiguously: (Manuscripts) "The worker therefore only feels himself outside his work, and in his work feels outside himself. He is at horne when he is not working, and when he is working he is not at home." The question is, what is the negation of this state of affairs, i.e. when alienation is abolished will the worker feel outside himself when he is outside his work, or will he feel fully human during both labor and leisure? There are hints that Marx intends the latter but, as we shall see, on the whole he does not theoretically go beyond the former. 87 �30. It is striking that even St. Thomas does not go so far as to say that the idea of creation is commonsensically obvious (as Marx does here). Rather, though he agrees with Aristotle that man's being radically dependent on a cause outside himself is commonsensically obvious, he holds that the fact of creation, i.e. of a time when the world is not, can be known only by revelation (S. T. i-i, q.46, arts. 1, 2, 3). On man's immediate experience (which Marx says must be suppressed) of radical dependence on an external cause, comM pare Chesterton's image of how the world appears to someone standing on his head, i.e. radically dependent because obviously pendent, suspended from the heavens. Even on a right-sideup view of the world, it is commonsensically obvious that whatever holds the world together, it is not man, although it is quite possible that man may yet cause its disintegration. 31. As regards the second stage, which Thomas and such a neo-Thomist as Josef Pieper would insist is a grace, beyond huM man compulsion, man's effort being a condition for it but not a sufficient cause, I am not sure that Aristotle, although he says that contemplation is somehow superhuman, would say that man is unable by his own power exclusively to seize the experience, however briefly. (Plato's image of the philosopher leaving the cave, contrastingly, is suffused with the suggestion of grace.) Of course, for Aristotle, there are some men who do not have the capacity for contemplation at all, so one may perhaps speak of a kind of grace in that respect. But the problem with speaking of grace for Aristotle, whose God is "too far away", is always: from whom would the grace come? 32. We must notice a very perplexing ambiguity in Aristotle's reflections on the tension between the contemplative and political ways of life. In arguing for the superiority of the contemM plative way, he attributes to it "self-sufficiency, leisureliness and unweariedness (so far as this is possible for man)." But in the very next paragraph he speaks of "straining every nerve" which does not seem consonant with unweariedness. In the light of St. Thomas' discussion of contemplation (S. T. ii-ii, q.180-182), I would suggest two principles of resolution, both of which, I think, Aristotle has somewhat confusedly in mind. On Gregory's statement "we can remain fixed in the active life, whereas we are nowise able to maintain an attentive mind in the contemplative life", Thomas comments: "That the duraM bility of the active life in the present state surpasses the durability of the contemplative life arises not from any property of either life considered in itself, but from our own deficiency, since we are withheld from the heights of contemplation by the weight of the body", where "weight of the body" must not be understood puritanically, i.e. it includes, though not as poignantly for Aristotle, the impulse toward human communion on earth. The second and more decisive distinction invoked by Thomas is in response to the statement by Gregory that ''The mind does not remain long at rest in the sweetness of inward contemplation, for it is recalled to itself and beaten back by the very immensity of the light." Thomas comments: "No action can last long at its highest pitch. Now the highest point of contemplation is to reach the uniformity of Divine contemplation.... Hence although contemplation cannot last long in this respect, it can be of long duration as regards the other contemplative acts", which include, most importantly, "contemplation of the divine effects'', since we are not angels and must therefore come to know discursively from premises. But although the contemplation of divine effects is continuously delightful, it is not just any truth which is the perfection of the intellect, but rather ''The ultimate perfection of the human intellect is the divine truth: and other truths perfect the intellect in relation to the divine truth.'' 88 But aside from formal distinctions (to return to Aristotle), I am not so addicted to dear and distinct ideas as to reject the possibility that there might be a kind of peace at the heart of a strenuous effort to live superhumanly, especially if, unlike Aristotle, one believes in a God who is not too far away. 33. Marx insists (in Capital) on an "essential difference" between the division of labor which organized laborers into various handicrafts and the division within a mechanized workshop. Clearly no one who regarded the matter from a purely technological point of view would perceive an ''essential difference''; but Marx knew that it is somehow more compatible with human dignity (quite apart from the Hegelian aspiration to contemplate oneself in things) for a man to fabricate a thing in accordance with his idea of how it ought to come out than it is for him to tighten six screws on an object which is known to him neither at the beginning nor at the end of its process of fabrication. It may be that men need to handle things in order to find out about them, and to find out about themselves too. (Not, to be sure, to find out all there is to know about themselves, but to find out thlngs about themselves which they could not discover in any other way.) But if men do not at the same time have a deep respect for the givenness of the things they handle, they may be altogether dazzled by the transformation their handling is able to achieve-and then they will be deluded not only about things, but about themselves as well. 34. At this stage of the argument there enters a theoretical temptation to which intellectuals of a decent sort are peculiarly susceptible. By ''a decent sort'' I mean in this context those who want very much to affirm without condescension that they share an exactly common humanity with those to whom the life of the mind is not available. They know that their "job" is one they undertake freely and for its own sake (though naturally philosophers too must sustain their biological life) and they think it unjust that others be compelled to work at jobs which the others would not freely choose for their own sake. But it is simply false to say that things can be-or even worse, are-arranged so that everyone is paid for doing what he would like to do even without pay. That is, one must not maintain romantic illusions about the employment of the many: their jobs might not be altogether joyless (if they entail creation or genuinely human cooperation), and the many might be bored without them, but they are simply not undertaken in the same spirit of freedom as is the life of the mind. 35. Here Marx was right as against Aristotle and as against the self-misunderstanding of Christians. As to the first, although some extenuation is possible, it must finally be said that Aristotle's doctrine of natural slavery means that there are activities which cannot be humanly performed; that labor is slavish and a man who performs it is only accidentally human. As to the second, compare H. Arendt, p.332 The Human Condition, where she writes: "Nor did the curse by which man was expelled from paradise punish him with labor and birth; it only made labor harsh and birth full of sorrow. According to Genesis (2: 5, 15) man (adam) had been created to take care and watch over the soil (adamah), as even his name, the masculine form of 'soil' indicates .... The current popular misunderstanding of the curse is due to an unconscious interpretation of the Old Testament in the light of Greek thinking. The misunderstanding is usually avoided by Catholic writers." 36. Marx writes in German Ideology (p.7): "This mode of production must not be considered simply as being the reproduction of the physical existence of the individuals. Rather it is a definite form of activity of these individuals, a definite form of expressing their life, a definite mode of life on their part. As individuals express their lives, so they are. What they are WINTER 1986 �therefore coincides with their productionr both with what they produce and how they produce. The nature of individuals thus depends on the material conditions determining their production.rr Notice the shift from ''a definite form of expressing their lifeu to "what they are, therefore, coincides with their production". This kind of outrageous illogic, of which there are other notorious instances in Marx, is extremely perplexing, for surely he was not deficient in mental power. 37. The distinction I am proposing between an early and late Marx is not to be confused with another distinction between the Young Marx as existentialist and the Old Marx as historical materialist. Moreover, my distinction is only roughly adequate to my own purposes. The following passage from Manuscripts contains the indication of a higher good than labor which I have said characterizes some passages in his later writings: uThe formation of the five senses is the work of the entire history of the world up to now. Senses limited by crudely practical needs have only a narrow meaning. To the starving man the human form of food does not exist, only its abstract essence as food. It could be available in the crudest form and one cannot say THE ST. JOHN'S REVIEW wherein the starving man's eating would differ from that of animals feeding. The worried, poverty-stricken man has no mind for the finest play; the dealer in metals sees only the market value, not the beauty and originality of the metal. He has no rnlnerological sense." One of Marx's major failings, I have been arguing, is his inability to systematically integrate such insights, wherever they occur in his writing, as this one. 38. In the same spirit as my remarks are these by R.H. Tawney (The Acquisitive Society) concerning what he terms 'industrialism': "It assures men that there are no ends other than their own ends, no law other than their own desires, no limit other than that which they think advisable. Thus it makes the individual the center of his own universe, and dissolves moral principles into a choice of expediences ... under the impulse of such ideas men do not become religious or wise or artistic, for religion and wisdom and art imply the acceptance of limitations. But they become powerful and rich. They inherit the earth and change the face of nature, if they do not possess their own souls.'' 89 �Kant's Moral Philosophy Introduction This study is concerned primarily with Kant's moral philosophy as that is found in the Foundations of the Metaphysics of Morals and the Critique of Practical Reason. We are told by Kant at the outset that knowledg~ of what man ought to do is accessible to human reason. The classical philosophers of ancient Greece held the same, as did the medieval thinkers who followed them. Kant, however, differs from such older thinkers by holding that although reason can come to know what man ought to do, reason can and must do so without resort to nature: man can learn nothing from nature regarding what he ought to do. For the older ''rationalists'', reason was emphatically in tutelage to nature in moral matters as in other matters; for Kant reason is strictly divorced from nature in moral matters. Therefore in order to understand Kant's metaphysics of morals we must also have some understanding of Kant's metaphysics of nature. The book which contains Kant's metaphysics of nature in principle is, at least at first glance, the Critique of Pure Reason. This is true even at second glance if by umetaphysics of nature" we mean necessarily nscien tific metaphysics of nature." But is there not such a thing as what we may call a "pre-scientific metaphysics of nature"? Aristotle's casual yet characteristic remark that "existence is good to the virtuous man" (Ethics, 1166al9) is not strictly dependent upon the teaching regarding final causes in the Metaphysics, but surely the two are not Kant's Moral Philosophy. M.A. Thesis, University of Chicago, 1968. 90 wholly unrelated. We suggest that it is at least possible that a kind of pre-scientific metaphysics of nature emerges from Kant's moral philosophy, especially if account is taken of the Critique of Judgment and in particular of the analytic of the sublime contained therein. However, at first glance it is the Critique of Pure Reason which contains Kant's metaphysics of nature in principle. To this work we must briefly turn before studying Kant's moral philosophy proper. Disregarding, in deference to obvious exigencies, the technical complexities of the first Critique, we shall try to state in its most general terms the problem posed by Kant's scientific metaphysics of nature. Against the background of this problem, we shall consider Kant's moral philosophy as a whole under the following headings: II. Moral philosophy and the common man ill. The categorical imperative as an irruption IV. V. VI. VII. from without The meanings of freedom Happiness and sublimity Nature and morality re-considered Conclusion. I. The Critique of Pure Reason According to Kant's first Critique the human intellect cannot know nature as it truly is, as it is in itself. The human knowing activity transforms what is to be known; the intellect prescribes its laws to nature; in attempting to know nature the human intellect ultimately encounters only itself. What Kant means by these assertions is WINTER 1986 �explicable primarily in terms of his doctrine of the transcendental ideality of space and time (elaborated in the "Transcendental Aesthetic") and his doctrine of the transcendental synthesis, preceding and enabling empirical synthesis, of the appearances in the manifold (elaborated in the "Transcendental Deduction of the Categories of the Understanding"). Both doctrines, as stated by Kant, are exposed to serious objections. However, since we are interested only in the most general sense of the problem posed by Kant's scientific metaphysics of nature, we may disregard the question of how far these two Kantian doctrines are sound. We shall consider instead the problem implied in a famous passage from the preface to the second edition of the Critique of Pure Reason. Referring to the experiments of Galileo and· others, Kant writes 1 : within a particular horizon or under a particular aspect: once the horizon or aspect has been projected, man's knowing is objectively constrained-he need not fear subjective deformations of Being within that horizon or under that aspect. This is true not only of scientific projections but also, though far more ambiguously, of poetic projections as Nietzsche, despite his emphasis on creating values, also understood very well. Among many similar passages, we consider Beyond Good and Evil, paragraph 2133 : They learned that reason has insight only into that which it brings forth according to its own projection, and that it must not allow itself to be kept, as it were, in nature's leadingstrings, but must itself show the way with principles of judgment based upon fixed laws, constraining nature to give answer to questions of reason's own determining. Accidental observations, made in obedience to no previously thought out plan, can never be made to yield a necessary law, which alone reason is concerned to discover. Reason, holding in one hand its principles, according to which alone concordant appearances can be admitted as equivalent to laws, and in the other hand the experiment which it has devised in conformity with these principles, must approach nature in order to be taught by it. It must not, however, do so in the character of a pupil who listens to everything that the teacher chooses to say, but of an appointed judge who compels the witness to answer questions which he has himself formulated. Now, according to Heidegger (H, p.187) "all sight is grounded primarily in understanding" (~projection): there is no sight that does not presuppose some kind of projection; the question is only, which of various possible projections will one attempt. By showing that all sight is grounded in projection, "we have deprived pure intuition (Anschauen) of its priority, which corresponds noetically to the priority of the present-at-hand [i.e. the eternal] in traditional ontology." Pure looking, too, presupposes a projection: contemplation is characterized as a "deficiency" (H, p .88) in our having to do with entities, achieved by deliberate abstention from authentic poetic activity. Such deliberate abstention must be regarded as a projection, albeit an inauthentic one. (As Heidegger puts it in Gelassenheit, written much later, to will not to will is already to have willed.) Contemplation as deficiency is later discussed under the heading of "curiosity". In that later discussion, however, Heidegger makes a remarkable admission (H, p.216): "Curiosity has nothing to do with observing entities and marvelling at them-thaumazein. To be amazed to the point of not understanding is something in which it has no interest." But-we must say-if the sight that belongs to thaumazein (as the ancients experienced it) is possible, then surely not all sight is grounded in projection. For surely the astonishment which somehow "seized" the ancient philosophers could not have been compelled by any sort of projection, whether scientific or poetic. Indeed any such projection would presumably hinder if not preclude astonishment, unless perhaps it were to shatter against astonishment. And yet perhaps one must undertake some sort of projection. One cannot attempt to look in all directions at once without becoming dizzy-at least that much must be granted to Heidegger. But what kind of projection occasioned or at least did not preclude, the sight articulated by Aristotle in the Metaphysics (984 b 11-15): "For it is not likely that either fire or earth or any such element should be the reason why things manifest good- The key word in this passage is "projects" [Entwe!fen]. In the typically modern view knowing has the character of projection. The most coherent and profound articulation of this view is to be found in the thought of Heidegger. We shall limit ourselves to a consideration of several relevant passages from Being and Time. Decisive for mathematical physics, according to Heidegger, is' the way in which Nature herself is mathenu~tically projected. In this projection something constantly present-at-hand (matter) is uncovered beforehand, and the horizon is opened so that one may be guided by looking at those constitutive items in it which are quantitatively determinable (motion, force, location, time). Only 'in the light' of a Nature which has been projected in this fashion can anything like a 'fact' be found and set up for an experiment regulated and delimited in terms of this projection . ... In the mathematical projection of nature, moreover, what is decisive is not primarily the mathematical as such; what is decisive is that this projection discloses something that is a priori. Thus the paradigmatic character of mathematical natural science ... consists in the fact that the entities which it takes as its theme are discovered in it in the only way in which entities can be discovered-by the prior projection of their state of Being. That is to say, man can know entities as they truly are 1HE ST. JOHN'S REVIEW Artists seem to have more sensitive noses in these matters, knowing all too well that precisely when they no longer do anything 'voluntarily' but do everything of necessity, their feeling of freedom, subtlety, full power of creative placing, disposing and forming reaches its peak-in short that necessity and 'freedom of the will' then become one in them. 91 �ness and beauty both in their being and in their coming to be, or that these thinkers should have supposed that it was; nor again could it be right to entrust so great a matter to spontaneity and chance''? What would it mean to speak of a "natural" projection? In view of the above considerations we propose to formulate the problem posed by Kant's scientific metaphysics of nature provisionally as follows: Mathematical natural science knows nature as it truly is in itself, but nature is not the whole (~nature in the sense of Aristotle). That is not to say that there are in the whole other "things", above and beyond "natural things" (supersensible things, perhaps). It is rather to say that nature (as understood by mathematical natural science) is the whole viewed under a particular aspect. Hence although mathematical natural science knows nature as it truly is in itself (i.e. without intrinsic distortion), it does not fully know nature. Its knowledge of nature suffers from a kind of extrinsic (to nature) distortion: to know nature fully or without any kind of distortion one would have to know nature in the perspective of the whole. But how can one gain access to the whole? Must one not always view it under a particular aspect (if not under the aspect of mathematically determinable nature, then under some other particular aspect)? And must not the projection of the aspect under which the whole is to be viewed always be the result of a decision among possible aspects? But if every projection of an aspect rests upon a mere decision, surely the variety of aspects cannot be ranked against one another. But if the variety of aspects under which it is possible to view the whole cannot be ranked against one another, but merely stand side by side, how can we possibly have knowledge of the whole? How can we even view the whole as a whole without some kind of hierarchical integration of the variety of its aspects? But what if there were a projection of an aspect that did not rest on human decision merely, but into which men were forced, as it were, by an irruption from without? Would not such a projected aspect be able to claim a certain priority (not, to be sure, as though it could by itself sufficiently disclose the whole, but as though it must be the principle by which the variety of other projected aspects must be hierarchically arranged so that, as a whole, they could sufficiently disclose the whole)? But what might such a projected aspect, compelled as it were by an irruption from without, be like? In what manner of experience might such n compulsion" originate? In something like thaumazein? Not for Kant. In something like the categorical imperative? II. Moral Philosophy and the Common Man Kant's political philosophy is not, strictly speaking, democratic but rather republican in the sense, specified 92 by Kant, of representative government conducted in a certain spirit. (See Perpetual Peace, "First Definitive Article".) His moral philosophy, however, is radically democratic. We begin with a famous passage': By inclination I am an inquirer. I feel a consuming thirst for knowledge, the unrest which goes with a desire to progress in it, and satisfaction in every advance in it. There was a time when I believed this constituted the honor of humanity, and I despised the common man, who knows nothing. Rousseau corrected me in this. This blinding prejudice disappeared and I learned to honor man. I would find myself more useless than the common laborer if I did not believe that this attitude of mine [as an inquirer] can give worth to all others in establishing the rights of mankind. Kant elsewhere credits David Hume with having awakened him from his "dogmatic slumber''. But to be awakened from dogmatic slumber is surely less wonderful than to be cured of blindness. Kant confesses that he owes more to the wisdom of Rousseau than to the wisdom of any other man. How can Kant's thirst for knowledge as partly quenched by his progress in knowledge support or assist the common man who, at any rate "by inclination", has no interest in philosophy and who, moreover, "is well able to distinguish, in all cases that present themselves, what is good or evil, right or wrong" so that "there is no need of science or philosophy for knowing what man has to do in order to be honest and good, and indeed to be wise and virtuous' '?5 Kant's knowledge can be of assistance or, more generally stated, philosophy is necessary, because sophistry exists and the common man is exposed to it: "Innocence is a splendid thing, only it has the misfortune not to keep very well and to be easily misled. On this account even wisdom-which in itself consists more in doing and not doing than in knowingdoes require science as well, not in order to learn from it, but in order to win acceptance and durability for its own prescriptions." (F, p.73) Sophistry as Kant understands it is of two kinds. One kind of sophistry is the occasion for Kant's remark in the preface to the second edition of the Critique of Pure Reason that "I have therefore found it necessary to deny knowledge in order to make room for faith." That is, the metaphysical (noncritical) position which Kant characterizes as empiricism and which asserts that the theses of the antinomies of pure reason are false would, if valid, reveal morality as chimerical. To prevent this result, Kant must show that the assertion of the falsity of the theses is unjustified. True (i.e. critical) theoretical philosophy must prevent false theoretical philosophy from corrupting the common man: its mission is essentially defensive. However, Kant does not seem to think that false theoretical philosophy will ever become popular or politically relevant: "Thus empiricism WINTER 1986 �is entirely devoid of the popularity of transcendentally idealizing reason; and however prejudicial such empiricism may be to the highest practical principles, there is no need to fear that it will ever pass the limits of the Schools, and acquire any considerable influence in general life or any real favor among the multitude." (P, p.429; A474~B502) The more important kind of sophistry to which the common man in hls innocence is exposed, then, does not come from a source external to the common man. The common man is not simply innocent: the principle of his corruption is within him rather than without. Although he knows of duty, he is also tempted by happiness, by the total satisfaction of his needs and inclinations. From this situation there arises a "natural dialectic-that is, a disposition to quibble with the strict laws of duty, to throw doubt on their validity or at least on their purity and strictness, and to make them, where possible, more adapted to our wishes and inclinations." (F, p.73) But although the common man is not unqualifiedly innocent, he is fundamentally good. When brought to see that to adapt the strict laws of duty in any degree to the desire for happiness has as its result "to pervert their very foundation and destroy their whole dignity", he rejects any such adaptation, whose result would be one "which in the end even ordinary human reason is unable to approve." The weakness or shame of the common man is his shortsightedness. The common man, we may say provisionally, is corruptible because he is shortsighted in regard to the realm of freedom, because by himself he does not clearly see the ultimate result of the momentary ascendancy of desire for happiness over dutifulness, namely that the dignity of the law, hence his own dignity or worthiness of respect-his most precious possession-is ruined by such an ascendfancy. But the strength or glory of the common man is also identical with his shortsightedness. For the common man, Kant supposes, is likely to be shortsighted in regard to the realm of nature; he is likely to lack worldly prudence or shrewdness (to say nothing of theoretical science in the strict sense). But he need not have worldly prudence or shrewdness in order to be good; indeed he is more likely to be good if he has neither; lacking worldly prudence he is, as it were, driven toward goodness (i.e. strict dutifulness as unqualified obedience to the categorical imperative) as toward a last resort. From this point of view (although qualification is required, as we shall see, in view of the function of "typics"}, Kant must regard with suspicion those men without theoretical (i.e. critical) science who nevertheless do possess worldly prudence (such as Aristotle's gentlemen, perhaps): for them unqualified obedience to the categorical imperative is not, or at least not obviously, their last best hope for living well. All of these points seem to be suggested by the following THE ST. JOHN'S REVIEW passage': What is required in accordance with the principle of autonomy of choice is easily and without hesitation seen by the commonest intelligence; what is to be done under the presup- position of its heteronomy is hard to see and requires knowledge of the world. That is to say, what duty is, is plain of itself to everyone, but what is to bring true, lasting advantage to our whole existence is veiled in impenetrable obscurity, and much prudence is required to adapt the practical rule based upon it even tolerably to the ends of life by making suitable exceptions to it. But the moral law commands the most unhesitating obedience from everyone; consequently the decision as to what is to be done in accordance with it must not be so difficult that even the commonest and most unpracticed understanding without any worldly prudence should go wrong in making it. In view of the fact that both the glory and the shame of the common man is his shortsightedness, the philosopher bears a peculiar responsibility in regard to him. The philosopher must try to correct the common man's shortsightedness respecting the realm of freedom without correcting or in any way disturbing his shortsightedness respecting the realm of nature. Not only must the philosopher carefully refrain from giving the common man prudential precepts respecting the realm of nature, but he must also carefully avoid the appearance that such clarity as he does provide respecting the realm of freedom is merely ancillary to the desire for happiness as it is found in the realm of nature. This is a considerable rhetorical task, as we shall have occasion to see. But the full purport of Kant's democratism in moral matters has not yet been brought out. That purport becomes clear only when it is realized that according to Kant's view, democratic morality entails what we may call, perhaps a bit too shockingly, democratic ontology. Not only is the common man as good as anyone in moral matters, but moral matters (rather than physical matters, broadly understood, as Aristotle thought) are the way of access to the most important truths about the whole, and to theological truth in particular. After controverting what he takes to be the only possible theoretical proofs for the existence of God (ontological, cosmological and physicoteleological) and arguing that on the basis of moral experience the existence of God may be an object of rational faith, Kant anticipates an obvious objection (P, pp.651-2; A831~ B859): "But I may at once reply: Do you really require that a mode of knowledge which concerns all men should transcend the common understanding, and should only be revealed to you by philosophers? Precisely what you find fault with is the best confirmation of the correctness of the above assertions." Not only is it true, as Kant believes to have shown amply, that moral phenomena, fully available not only to non-theoretical men but also, and in a way especially, to non-prudent non- 93 �theoretical men, provide exclusive access to the most important truths; it is also fitting that it should be so: anything different would be unfair. In this context we must make one final observation. As is especially conspicuous in the Foundations of the Metaphysics of Morals, Kant begins with pre-philosophic moral experience and claims that, in the decisive respect, he does not intend or wish to go beyond that experience; surely he intends to say nothing that contradicts that experience; any judgment which so much as seems paradoxical from the point of view of that experience must be rejected (Pr, p.8): "A critic who wished to say something against that work [Foundations] really did better than he intended when he said that there was no new principle of morality in it but only a new formula. Who would want to introduce a new principle of morality and, as it were, be its inventor, as if the world had hitherto been ignorant of what duty is or had been thoroughly wrong about it?" This assertion will not seem very remarkable to us if we think of Aristotle; but it will seem remarkable indeed if we think of two of Kant's most famous successors. Hegel and Heidegger both agree with Kant in holding that moral phenomena and not natural phenomena are the way of access to such truth about the whole as is possible for man. Moreover, both begin from moral phenomena as they present themselves in ordinary experience. Both, however, interpret moral phenomena in a way that is, to say the least, paradoxical from the point of view of ordinary experience, as one could easily show, although to do so here would lead us too far afield. But Hegel and Heidegger are permitted, at least by their own principles, radically to contradict ordinary moral experience: for both of them, although some qualification is necessary in the case of Hegel, ordinary moral experience is fundamentally devoid of truth. For Kant, as we have said, ordinary moral experience is fundamentally truthful. In view of this fact, we must try to determine whether Kant's explication of ordinary moral experience is truly faithful to that experience. In particular, we must apply this criterion to Kant's founding of the categorical imperative-which is experienced (according to Kant) as somehow irrupting into man's life from without-upon autonomy, which originates wholly within man. III. The Categorical Imperative as an Irruption From Without At the conclusion of each of the first two chapters of this thesis it has been asserted that according to Kant's conception the categorical imperative is an experienced reality and, moreover, a particularly impressive one. Its impressive character, we have said, is related to Kant's 94 quest for a kind of knowledge that would not presuppose a projection by the knower, hence a transformation of the known: it was suggested that only a kind of irruption from without the knower could make such knowledge available. These assertions regarding Kant's conception of man's experience of the categorical imperative must now be justified. The treatment of the categorical imperative in its allegedly irruptive character as presented in this chapter will be incomplete, however, for at least two reasons: the relation of the categorical imperative to the problem of transcendental freedom cannot be fully brought out before the thematic discussion of freedom (chapter N); and its relation to the autonomy of the willing subject cannot be fully brought out before the thematic discussion of happiness and sublimity (chapter V). The categorical imperative is a major theme of both the Foundations of the Metaphysics of Morals and the Critique of Practical Reason. The latter contains Kant's more fully considered position and is of primary importance for our purposes. But to understand the position of Practical Reason, it is helpful to be aware of the difficulties in the position of Foundations which led Kant to the later position. We therefore begin with a discussion of the account of the categorical imperative found in Foundations. In Foundations Kant, following popular moral philosophy, as he believes, begins with the concept of the good will, which alone is capable of unqualified goodness. To elucidate this concept, he considers "the concept of duty, which includes that of a good will, exposed, however, to certain subjective limitations and obstacles" (F, p.65). By mere analysis of the concept of duty he believes to show that unless duty rests on a categorical imperative-an imperative at once unconditional (i.e. not in the form "if ... then") and permitting no exception in favor of oneself-it is baseless. 1bis having been shown, a crucial task yet remains: "We are still not so far advanced as to prove a priori that there actually is an imperative of this kind-that there is a practical law which by itself commands absolutely and without any further motives, and that the following of this law is duty" (F, p.92). Kant has proceeded regressively from "good will" to "duty" to "categorical imperative"; he now regresses one step further, still analytically as he claims, to "principle of autonomy" (F, pp.98-100). But beyond this principle it is no longer possible to proceed by mere analysis: we have arrived at an irreducible synthetic a priori judgment which as such is in need of justification (F, p.112). A brief digression: The relationship between the categorical imperative and the principle of autonomy will occupy us later. For now two points are sufficient. First, as regards the synthetic priori judgment which Kant is about to attempt to justify (F, pp. 115 ££.), the problem is essentially the same whether one supposes the cate- a WINTER 1986 �gorical imperative to rest upon the principle of autonomy or upon some other principle or upon no principle at all: one ought to obey the moral law wherever it ultimately comes from, and that "ought," over against "is" is the core of the problem. Second, whereas Kant had assumed that the categorical imperative would be immediately recognized by all (even if they themselves had never bothered to formulate it so clearly), he implies that the principle of autonomy, which he derives from the categorical imperative by mere analysis, had been recognized by practically no one before him (F, p. 100): "We need not now wonder, when we look back upon all the previous efforts that have been made to discover the principle of morality, why they have one and all been bound to fail. Their authors saw man as tied to laws by his duty, but it never occurred to them that he is subject only to laws which are made by himself and yet are universal ... " To return to our main argument, what exactly is the synthetic a priori judgment which Kant is so anxious to prove lest the experience of duty be revealed as "chimerical" (F, p.112)? That is not easy to say. His seemingly authoritative formulation of it is as follows (F, p.115): "An absolutely good will is one whose maxim can always have as its content itself considered as a universal law.'' Some- what later, however (F, p.122), he suggests that the judgment in need of justification receives its synthetic character from the fact that it contains "ought" plus the moral law. The "ought" is the result of the transposition into the realm of nature of a being who, in the realm of freedom "would" obey the moral law. The third, mediating term (which is always necessary for the justification of a synthetic a priori judgment) "in which both of them are found" (F, p. 98)-i.e. on this interpretation, both the "would" and the "ought"-is then the concept of man as residing both in the realm of freedom and in the realm of nature. This second formulation of the judgment in need of justification seems to bring out Kant's argument more clearly than the first. At any rate, the justification of the crucial proposition requires proof not only of the possibility but also of the necessity (F, p.124) of conceiving of man as resident in two worlds, in one of which he is free while in the other he is subject to sensuous determination. To say nothing of the inadequate arguments of Foundations itself regarding the noumenal/phenomenal duality within man, even the argument pertaining to the third antinomy in the Critique of Pure Reason establishes at most the possibility of so conceiving of man. How show the necessity of so conceiving of him? Although alluding (F, p.124) to the result of Pure Reason (A553 ~ B561) that reason even in its theoretical employment requires the idea of freedom for regulative purposes, Kant actually limits himself (as he had in Pure Reason, A802~ B830) to an appeal to ordinary experience for the establishment of "practi- THE ST. JOHN'S REVIEW cal" (as distinct from "transcendental") freedom. In ordinary experience, the reality of freedom is "grounded on a consciousness-and an accepted presuppositionthat reason is independent ... of sensibility" (F, p. 125). Needless to say, consciousness of oneself as free is of no consequence theoretically after the demolition of rational psychology in the "Transcendental Dialectic" whereby it was established that as regards my actual (noumenal) self I can know only that I am, not how or what I am. Therefore the attempted justification or deduction of the categorical imperative as a synthetic a priori judgment in Foundations is unsuccessful. It is unsuccessful because if the categorical imperative can be deduced or derived at all, it can only be deduced or derived from the freedom of the will; and as Kant saw quite clearly by the time he wrote the Critique of Practical Reason, the categorical imperative is itself far more certain, or at any rate more immediately certain, than the freedom of the will. We turn now to consider the status of the categorical imperative in the Critique of Practical Reason. Here we are concerned to establish that Kant finally regards the categorical imperative as underivable from anything else and also that he regards man's experience of the categorical imperative as the experience of an irruption from without. In the preface to Practical Reason Kant has a clear statement regarding the relation between freedom and the moral law (Pr, p.4): "though freedom is certainly the ratio essendi of the moral law, the latter is the ratio cognoscendi of freedom. For had not the moral law been distinctly thought in our reason, we would never have been justified in assuming anything like freedom, even though it is not self-contradictory. But if there were no freedom, the moral law would never have been encountered in us." Given the moral law, however, we are not only justified in assuming freedom, but we are required to assume freedom. That is, Kant says in effect that ''thou canst because thou oughts!" (Pr, p.30): "He judges, therefore, that he can do something because he knows that he ought, and he recognizes that he is free-a fact which, without the moral law, would have remained unknown to him." But the question in which we are particularly interested is, how, in what manner, are we given the moral law? Kant writes (Pr, p.31, emphasis added): "The consciousness of this fundamental law may be called a fact of reason, since one cannot ferret it out from antecedent data of reason, such as the consciousness of freedom (for this is not antecedently given) and since it forces itself upon us as a synthetic proposition a priori based on no pure or empirical intuition.'' No deduction of the categorical imperative is possible; however, none is necessary. Its validity does receive support from certain theoretical considerations (Pr, p.49): 95 �"This kind of credential for the moral law, namely that it is itself demonstrated to be the principle of the deduction of freedom as a causality of pure reason, is a sufficient substitute for any a priori justification, since theoretical reason had to assume at least the possibility of freedom in order to fill one of its own needs." But the circumstance that acceptance of the moral law as valid entails consequences which are perfectly consistent with a strange but unavoidable result of Pure Reason, is not the strongest reason why the moral law may be accepted as valid without a priori justification. The moral law is simply a ''fact'', or as Kant frequently says ''a fact as it were'' and therefore "firmly established of itself" (Pr, p.48). The possibility, indicated in Foundations that it could be "chimerical" was a mere logical possibility, not a real possibility. The reason why Kant is tempted to call the moral law ''a fact as it were'' rather than simply a ''fact'' is, it seems, that "it forces itself upon us." A "fact as it were" is more, not less, impressive than a "fact". Ordinary facts are reducible to "objects" "here or there" which we may "intendrr and which, if we do not nintend" them, are nothing to us. The categorical imperative is not an "object" "here or there" waiting for us to "intend" it. We discover it in action without ulooking" for it. We "see" it without "looking" for it; we are forced to "see" it. But in view of the strict limitation of ''seeing'' to senseknowledge in the first Critique, Kant is not able to speak of our consciousness of the categorical imperative in quite this way. He does, however, in one place speak of it as a "revelation". Regarding those thinkers who, while admitting "practical freedom" yet deny "transcendental freedom" (for example, Spinoza), Kant writes (Pr, p.97): "Thus they deprive us of the great revelation which we experience through pure practical reason by means of the moral law-the revelation of an intelligible world through realization of the otherwise transcendent concept of freedom.'' A discovery can be forced: we can put nature under our conditions and force her to answer our questions. A revelation cannot be forced by us: its supremely authoritative character rests on its having irrupted into our lives unsolicited from without. This is the essence of Kant's understanding of the categorical imperative as encountered by man in moral action: the "fact as it were" is more impressive by far than any mere "fact". Whether that understanding is ultimately compatible with Kant's putatively analytic regression to the principle of autonomy as the necessary condition of the categorical imperative is another matter. For now it is sufficient to notice one other point about the passage just quoted. Although man cannot force a revelation, he can ''deprive'' himself of a revelation once given. In this case he can do so by denying transcendental 96 freedom while admitting practical freedom (as Spinoza does). "Therefore it will be necessary to add something here as a protection against this delusion and to expose empiricism in its naked superficiality" (Pr, p. 97). Despite our initial impression, one cannot leave it at "Thou canst because thou oughtst." A more comprehensive discussion of the possibility of transcendental freedom is necessary. We proceed to the next chapter. IV. The Meanings of Freedom Kant's fullest treatment of the problem of the freedom of the willing subject is contained in the Critique of Practical Reason. Kant requires two conditions for the establishment of human freedom in a sufficiently strong sense: negatively, the human actor must be ''transcendentally'' free, not merely "practically" or "psychologically" free; and positively, true freedom consists in autonomy, i.e. submission to such self-legislation as can be consistently universalized. In affirming the first condition, Kant rejects the teaching of Spinoza; in affirming the second condition he accepts the teaching of Rousseau. The problem of transcendental freedom is emphasized without being solved (cf. A803~ B831) in the Critique of Pure Reason. The problem of autonomy (regarding which the first Critique had been wholly silent) is emphasized in Foundations, where the problem of transcendental freedom receives less attention. In the Critique of Practical Reason, Kant attempts to treat the two problems together in a fully comprehensive way. We turn first to Kant's treatment of the problem of transcendental freedom and his rejection as untenable of such merely practical or psychological freedom as is not supported by transcendental freedom. We confront, as Kant did, the teaching of Spinoza (chapter 4, Theologico-Political Treatise7 ). Spinoza begins by saying that all law depends either on natural necessity or on human decree. For example, the law that all bodies, impinging on lesser bodies, lose as much of their own motion as they communicate to the latter is a universal law of all bodies, and depends on natural necessity . ... But the law that men must yield, or be compelled to yield, somewhat of their natural right, and that they bind themselves to live in a certain way, depends on human decrees. Now, though I freely admit that all things are predetermined by universal natural laws to exist and operate in a given, fixed and definite manner, I still assert that the laws I have just mentioned depend on human decree ... I have stated that these laws depend on human decree because it is well to define and explain things by their proximate causes. The general consideration of fate and the concatenation of causes would aid us very little in forming and arranging our ideas concerning particular questions. Let us add that as to the actual co-ordination and concatenation of things, that is how things are ordained and linked together, we are obviously ignorant; therefore it is more profitable for WINTER 1986 �right living, nay it is necessary for us to consider things as contingent. In his discussion of the third antinomy in the Critique of Pure Reason, Kant agrees with Spinoza that we do in fact judge human actions as if they were free. According to Kant, in so judging we presuppose a phenomenallnoumenal distinction, i.e. we presuppose the essential timelessness of the acting subject. Consider "a malicious lie by which a certain confusion has been caused in society." We proceed in this enquiry just as we should in ascertaining for a given natural effect the series of its determining causes. But although we believe that the action is thus determined, we none the less blame the agent, not indeed on account of his unhappy disposition, nor on account of the circumstances that have influenced him, nor even on account of his previous way of life; for we presuppose that we can leave out of consideration what this way of life may have been, that we can regard the past series of conditions as not having occurred and the act as being completely unconditioned by any preceding state, just as if the agent in and by himself began in this action an entirely new series of consequences ... in the moment when he utters the lie, the guilt is entirely his. Granted that we do in fact judge in such a way, the question is whether, apart from considerations of social utility, we judge justly thereby. Kant thinks that we do. So far is he, at least in this respect, from being a "fictionalist" in the sense of Vaihinger, that he simply denies that we have a right to employ the concept of practical freedom without also maintaining transcendental freedom: "The denial of transcendental freedom must, therefore, involve the elimination of all practical freedom." (P, p.465; A534~ B562). Again in Practical Reason he writes emphatically (Pr, p.100): "Without transcendental freedom, which is its [freedom's] proper meaning, and which is alone a priori practical, no moral law and no accountability to it are possible." Once more: "And if the freedom of our will were nothing else than the latter, i.e. psychological and comparative and not at the same time also transcendental or absolute, it would in essence be no better than the freedom of a turnspit, which when once wound up also carries out its motions of itself." However, our freedom is not that of a turnspit; ''the judicial sentences of that marvellous faculty in us called conscience" testify otherwise: "as a pain, repentance is entirely legitimate" (Pr, pp. 101-2). Generally stated: the viewpoint of the actor is more authoritative than the viewpoint of the spectator. But on what other basis than "thou canst because thou oughts!" does Kant affirm transcendental freedom? Spinoza too, after all, admitted that there was such an experience as repentance, though he denied its (non-political) legitimacy. According to Kant we are finally justified in affirming transcendental freedom by the convergence of the testimony of conscience with a THE ST. JOHN'S REVIEW requirement of theoretical reason, namely the requirement that reason think an uncaused or spontaneous cause. The theoretical requirement is stated at Pure Reason A533~B561: Hence the causality of the cause, which itself happens or comes to be, must itself in turn have a cause; and thus the entire field of experience, however far it may extend, is transformed into a sum-total of the merely natural. But since in this way no absolute totality of conditions determining causal relations can be obtained, reason creates for itself the idea of a spontaneity which can begin to act of itself, without requiring to be determined to action by an antecedent cause in accordance with the law of causality. Transcendental freedom is established by the convergence of the need of theoretical reason to think spontaneity with the experience of conscience which tells men that repentance is legitimate. The convergence is particularly impressive according to Kant because "This agreement was by no means sought after." On the basis of this convergence we must assert that man is free, even if we could so well know the natural (=temporal) conditions of his action that "his future conduct could be predicted with as great a certainty as the occurrence of a solar orlunar eclipse." (Pr, p.103) Contrary to Spinoza, the assertion of man's practical freedom and responsibility is not a mere convenient fiction; it is just. We turn now to consider Kant's teaching regarding the positive meaning of freedom. Freedom in the full sense is more than the spontaneity or essential timelessness of the willing subject; freedom is not license to do as one likes; freedom is obedience to law. But an absolutely decisive qualification is necessary: freedom in the full sense consists in obedience to a law which we give to ourselves. In this respect Kant follows Rousseau (Social Contract, book 1, chapter 8): "For just as motivation by sheer appetite is slavery, so obedience to self-imposed law is freedom." Kant's term for self-legislation is "autonomy". The alternative to autonomy is heteronomy, i.e. obedience to a law originating without rather than within the willing self. The heteronomous principle par excellence is happiness. The affirmation of the principle of autonomy as the supreme principle of morality presupposes the critique of happiness as a principle of morality. This is not obvious; to see that it is so, we turn to Kant's introduction of the principle of autonomy in the second section of Foundations. There are two main kinds of imperatives: categorical and hypothetical. The former has the form: "do this." The latter has the form: "if you desire that, do this". From experience we know that the moral law presents itself in the former mode, i.e., as Kant puts it, we experience the moral law as unconditioned. But is not the force of a conditioned requirement identical with that of 97 �an unconditioned requirement if the condition of the conditioned requirement is necessarily given? It would seem so. (It will not, or at least not obviously, suffice to object that "do this" differs from "do this if you desire that, which in fact you necessarily desire" in that the latter involves two terms whereas the former involves only one: as we shall see, the former too necessarily involves a second term, namely respect or, correlatively, sublimity.) As it happens, Kant does think that there is one condition that is necessarily given, namely the desire for happiness, corresponding to which there is what Kant calls an assertoric imperative, which he treats as a special case of hypothetical imperatives. Now, necessity appears to be the requirement to be met by a principle of morality: "Laws must completely determine the will as will ... They must thus be categorical, otherwise they would not be Jaws, for they would lack the necessity which, in order to be practical, must be completely independent of pathological conditions, i.e. conditions related only contingently to the will." Since happiness is not related only contingently to the will, but is necessarily related to every human will, why cannot happiness serve as the principle of morality? (We abstract here from Kant's dubious assertion that only what is a priori can be truly necessary, so that happiness is desired universally by a mere "natural necessity". This abstraction will be justified in chapter 5.) The reason why happiness cannot so serve is that "the concept of happiness is so indeterminate a concept." (F, p. 85) To begin with, different men believe that different things will make them happy, as Aristotle, in his book about happiness, had also recognized. But might there not be among the variety of understandings of happiness, one sovereign understanding of happiness that somehow contains the "truth" of the variety of understandings? Following Aristotle, we consider the desire for "knowledge and insight." Then we must realize that "this might perhaps merely give him an eye so sharp that it would make evils at present hidden from him and yet unavoidable seem all the more frightful or would add a load of still further needs to the· desires which already give him trouble enough." By "knowledge and insight" Kant surely does not mean contemplative metaphysics, which he believes to be impossible for reasons stated in the first Critique. Whether contemplative metaphysics, if it were possible, would make men happy is a question which Kant does not raise. We shall return to this subject again. For now it is sufficient to notice that the denial that man's duty can be discovered in the empirical or natural, i.e. the denial that in order to discover what operations they ought to perform men can take their bearings by happiness, rests upon two premises, neither of which is self-evident. One is that what is not required of all men because not possible for all men (e.g. quest for knowledge) is not necessarily 98 required of any man or that duty in order to be duty must require the same of all men: otherwise the heterogeneity of the natural, i.e. the fact that different men believe that different things will make them happy, could not disqualify happiness as the principle of morality and compel resort to the a priori, i.e. to autonomy as the principle of morality. The second is that the claim of knowledge in particular to make men happy presents itself equivocally to those few men to whom it does somehow present itself, i.e. even those few men who experience a vocation to knowledge have reason to suspect that knowledge may not make them happy. But even if one were to hold that knowledge does make some few men truly happy, and therewith that philosophy constitutes their end, i.e. constitutes the operation which they ought to perform and in that sense their duty, the difficulty indicated by Kant's first premise still remains. Leo Strauss' writes: "According to Aristotle man is by nature meant for the life of human excellence; the end is universal in the sense that no man's life can be understood, or seen as what it is, except in the light of that end." But according to Aristotle human excellence as the end of man is ultimately identical with the life of contemplation, which is possible only for a few. In the light of this end, how must the life of the noncontemplative men, i.e. the life of almost all men, appear? In the last analysis, from Aristotle's point of view, as instrumental to the contemplative life of the few. The "good life" as superior to "mere life" has unqualifiedly valuable content only for the few contemplative men, although it is for the sake of a good life that all men somehow choose to live in cities. This is not to deny that the non-contemplative men are better off in the city than they would be without the city. It is only to say that the highest good simply, possible only for a few, is radically incomparable with the highest good that is available within non-contemplative experience which, according to Aristotle, is necessarily the only experience of the many. Kant must regard such a situation as intolerable for reasons, we must say, far closer to the teaching of Christianity than to modern democratic ideology which also, of course, must regard such a situation as intolerable. And yet one is forced to wonder whether Christian thought, which must no doubt insist that salvation (as the highest good simply) is possible for all men, can unqualifiedly deny the superiority of contemplation to action without at the same time collapsing the first commandment of love wholly into the second commandment of Jove. Concerning this problem we can say nothing more here: a comparison of Aristotle, Augustine and Aquinas in regard to the meaning of contemplation and happiness might be the beginning of an adequate formulation of the problem. At any rate, only after the elimination of the possibility of an empirical (=experiential= natural) source of WINTER 1986 �the principle of morality is Kant able to conclude to an a priori source, i.e. pure reason itself as self-legislating. Even so, in the Foundations Kant comes to this conclusion somewhat tentatively (F, p. 99): "Thus the principle that every human will is a will which by all its maxims enacts universal law-provided only that it were right in other ways-would be well-suited to a categorical imperative in this respect: that precisely because of the Idea of making universal law it is based on no interest and consequently can alone among all possible imperatives be unconditioned.'' There are three points to be noted in this passage. First, the categorical imperative is the primary datum: it is to it that the principle of autonomy must be well or ill suited. Second, although well-suited in one respect, there are other ways in which the principle of autonomy might be right or wrong: there are other relevant criteria. Third, contrary to what Kant implies here, we may say provisionally that according to Kant's usage, an imperative may be unconditioned (since "conditioned by a necessarily given condition''=''unconditioned'') even when based on an interest: that is, respect is a different kind of interest than happiness, but it is still an interest, the important point being that it is a necessary interest. The actual requirement, then, for the unconditioned character of an imperative is not that it be based on no interest but rather that the interest on which it is based be necessary rather than contingent. The third point as just developed, however, is open to an important objection: is it fair to impute to Kant the view that man's obedience to duty is based on an interest, i.e. on respect for the law, which is equivalent to selfrespect? Kant obviously wishes to distinguish sharply between taking an interest in an action and acting from interest (F, p.81) and this appears to be a reasonable distinction. Yet Kant appears to make this distinction within his own position while denying its use to what we may call the Aristotelian position. Otherwise stated, Kant tacitly identifies Aristotle with Epicurus (compare Practical Reason, pp.21-23; also p.115, where he says that with respect to the relation of virtue and happiness, "of the ancient Greek schools, there were only two opposing each other on this issue-Epicureanism and Stoicism"). This identification has two stages. To begin with, Kant implicitly reduces "happiness" in Aristotle's sense to "pleasure". How far is he justified in doing so? Without attempting to explain fully what Aristotle understands by happiness, we may at least emphasize that he does not understand happiness as an end of human activity in the sense that particular human activities might be more or less effective means of bringing it about (as a raindance brings about a shower, but the use of certain chemicals brings it about-perhaps-better). Aristotle does not contradict himself when he says both that contemplation 1HE ST. JOHN'S REVIEW is for its own sake and that contemplation is for the sake of happiness: happiness is (morally or intellectually) virtuous activity. However, as a provisional statement, the reduction of happiness in Aristotle's sense to pleasure is not wholly illicit. Surely Aristotle supposes, without embarrassment, that (morally or intellectually) virtuous activity is also on the whole pleasant activity, and in particular that the most virtuous activity-contemplationis the most pleasant. Aristotle insists, however, that pleasures must be understood in terms of activities rather than activities in terms of pleasures: pleasures must be ranked, and this must be done in accordance with the rank of the activities to which they specifically pertain. These activities must in turn be ranked in accordance with the character of the human soul. (It is at this point, of course, that the tenability of Aristotle's strict separation between ''theoretical reason" and "practical reason" becomes questionable: within active or political life, prudence may be enough; but is prudence sufficient for the choice between the life of_ action and the life of contemplation?) In view of these and other considerations, Aristotle's conclusion in regard to the moral problem of pleasure is that pleasure is essentially good, even though base men find pleasure in base activities. For Aristotle, no psychological problem (as we would say) arises in regard to pleasure. For Kant, however, the moral problem in regard to pleasure is inseparable from, if not identical with, the psychological problem in regard to pleasure. Kant's thesis is therefore as follows: Since the virtuous man according to Aristotle knows and cannot but know when he chooses the good that he is also thereby choosing the pleasant, he must be choosing the good for the sake of the pleasure which it must yield: hence he behaves immorally though legally. Similarly, however, since Kant must admit that in choosing to do his duty the virtuous man according to Kant knows and cannot but know that such a choice will enhance his self-respect, why could not one say that he does his duty for the sake of enhancing his self-respect? It would seem therefore to be fair to state Aristotle's thesis and Kant's thesis at least provisionally in the same way: either to say that in both cases moral imperatives are "based on" an interest (whether in happiness or respect) or, more adequately-especially in view of Kant's assertion (F, p.75) that it is impossible for men to discover their actual motives in such matters-to say that in both cases moral imperatives are ''invariably accompanied by'' an interest (whether in happiness or in respect). In either case, we recall, Kant would require that the interest be necessarily rather than merely contingently related to the human will: if happiness may not be excluded-anymore than respect-as a principle of morality on the ground that it is a mercenary, hence immoral principle, it may yet be disqualified on the ground that, even abstracting 99 �from the indeterminateness of its concept, it is not necessarily related to the will in the way in which respect is. This question will be taken up again when we have said more about the phenomenon of respect. V. Happiness and Sublimity The critique of happiness as a principle of morality does not entail the rejection of happiness as an authentic good. The summum bonum toward which all men strive, according to Kant, comprises not only virtue (=worthiness of happiness) but also happiness itself, however one may understand happiness: the fact that "the concept of happiness is so indeterminate a concept", although it decisively disqualifies happiness as a principle of morality, does not disqualify happiness as a constituent of the summum bonum. It is true that within the summum bonum happiness is subordinate to virtue. Kant's most striking statement to this effect occurs at the beginning of Foundations. After arguing that had happiness been nature's purpose in regard to man, it would have been better served by instinct than by reason, he asserts that nature's unconditional purpose in regard to man is the development of a good will (=virtue), for which purpose reason is indispensable. If that unconditional purpose is accomplished, the cultivation of reason ''may even reduce happiness to less than zero without nature proceeding contrary to her purpose" (F, p. 64). Yet although happiness is properly subordinate to virtue, it is an indispensable constituent of the summum bonum. Not to regard it as such is, according to Kant, in a way contrary to ~'nature''. We consider his discussion of Stoicism in Practical Reason (Pr, pp.131-2). The Stoics were right, as against the Epicureans, in choosing virtue as their supreme practical principle. But they made several grave mistakes. First, they thought that man could be strictly virtuous in this life, partly because they "exaggerated the moral capacity of man ... beyond all the limits of his nature, making it into something which is contradicted by all our knowledge of men", and partly because they underestimated the requirements of virtue. ("But all this they could not have done had they conceived this law in the same purity and rigor as does the precept of the Gospel.") Second, "they also refused to accept the second component of the highest good, i.e. happiness, as a special object of human desire." They made their sage "like a god in the consciousness of the excellence of his person, wholly independent of nature (as regards his own contentment), exposing him to the evils of life, but not subjecting him to them." But, Kant continues remarkably, "the voice of their own nature could have sufficiently refuted this." Happiness is therefore an indispensable element of the summum bonum. Not only virtue but also happiness 100 proportioned to virtue may reasonably be required by man. Yet Kant is sure that in this world we do not encounter happiness proportioned to virtue. Happiness must therefore belong to "a world invisible to us now but hoped for" (P, B841). It is true that not all moral philosophers have considered another world necessary for the equalization of happiness and virtue, but Kant can scarcely fathom those who have not: "When we see ourselves obliged to seek at such distance-namely in the context of an intelligible world-the possibility of the highest good which reason presents to all rational beings as the goal of all their moral wishes, it must appear strange that philosophers of both ancient and modern times have been able to find happiness in very just proportion to virtue in this life (in the world of sense) or at least have been able to convince themselves of it." If happiness is to be proportionate to virtue at all, we must postulate the existence of God and the immortality of the soul. Kant therefore dissents from the "optimism" of Aristotle in particular. At first glance Kant's requirement of another world for the equalization of virtue and happiness appears to be Christian in inspiration (if we disregard Kant's insistence that God be strictly just rather than merciful). However, whereas Augustine (City of God Book 1, chapter 8) both requires and believes to find that even in the vicissitudes of man's temporal existence God's just intervention is sometimes operative although-lest we become mercenary-not systematically operative; Kant, although he might believe to find signs of particular providence, apparently would not require any such signs as a condition of his rational faith. In this respect Christian tradition, insofar as that is authentically represented by Augustine, is far bolder than Kant in demanding happiness for man on earth. We resume Kant's argument. Happiness proportioned to virtue (in this life) is not the hallmark of human excellence. If it were, human excellence would be nonexistent. But there is a quality which overcomes "the curse of creaturely worthlessnessn, as Max Weber once called it. That quality is sublimity. Sublimity is strictly correlative to respect. This is brought out clearly in Practical Reason (pp.74-92: "the incentives of pure practical reason") but is also implied in Foundations (especially p.107). We respect the moral law because it mortifies our inclinations and humiliates our self-conceit: "thus respect for the law cannot be attributed to a supreme being or even to one free from all sensibility, since to such a being there could be no obstacle to practical reason" (Pr, p.79). In respecting the moral law we respect ourselves as givers of the moral law, i.e. as givers of the moral law in the face of natural obstacles and as thereby exalted above all natural obstacles (F, p.107). Moreover, the feeling of respect "is the only one which WINTER 1986 �we can know completely a priori and the necessity of which we can discern." Herein lies its superiority to happiness as an interest "invariably accompanying" (c£. chapter 4) moral imperatives: happiness, though related to the will of every man, is not so related a priori. However, although respect alone is related to the will a priori, we must notice that it never comes into effect except in opposition to inclinations which must be given in experience. It becomes more difficult to understand how respect carries with it a stricter necessity than happiness. We are inclined to wonder whether the principle of autonomy is not heteronomous, i.e. whether, as Hegel suggested, its existential significance, as distinct from its logical significance, does not absolutely require the existence of a hostile world. We must therefore consider seriously the possibility that happiness and respect or sublimity are, despite Kant's protestations to the contrary, of equal rank as regards their formal characteristics, i.e. as regards their universality and necessity as possibilities of human life. We must consider seriously the possibility that Kant's moral teaching invites us to decide between happiness and sublimity as authoritative principles of human life according to essentially substantive rather than formal criteria. In order to establish more precisely the significance of the concept of sublimity in Kant's moral philosophy-a concept employed by Kant with striking frequency whose parallel use would be impossible to imagine in Plato, Aristotle, Augustine or Aquinas-we turn to his thematic discussion of the sublime in the Critique of Judgment. Whereas the judgment of the beautiful involves the free play of the imagination with the concepts of the understanding (though not with any determinate concept), the judgment of the sublime involves the free play of the imagination with the ideas of reason. The mathematically sublime is distinguished from the dynamically sublime: they are exemplified respectively by the immensity and the might of nature. But nature can be called sublime only in improper speech, for it is only our own rational self which is truly sublime. Regarding the immensity of nature, "in our rational faculty we find a different, non-sensuous standard, which has that infinity itself under it as a unity, in comparison with which everything in nature is small, and thus in our own mind we find a superiority to nature even in its immensity.' ' 10 It is the same with the might of nature, or the dynamically sublime: "And so also the irresistibility of its might, while making us realize our own physical impotence, considered as beings of nature, discloses to us a faculty of judging independently of and a superiority over nature. Thus humanity in our person remains unhumiliated, though the individual might have to submit to this dominion" (J, p.101). And in conclusion: "Sublimity, therefore, does notre- THE ST. JOHN'S REVIEW side in anything of nature, but only in our mind, in so far as we can become conscious that we are superior to nature within, and therefore also to nature without us (so far as it influences us)" (J, p.104). Rational man, so far from being a pupil of nature, must forcibly subdue and belittle nature by means of a yoke wholly of his own devising (the idea of infinity thought as unity) even in order to measure nature: this is the meaning of pure theoretical reason. Rational man, so far from being inclined by a friendly nature toward his own proper end, must resist with all his strength (wherever that may have come from) the meretricious allure of nature's principle, the principle of happiness, which principle merely disguises the fact that man is radically threatened by nature: this is the meaning of pure practical reason. Man is radically threatened by nature in such a way however, that his greatness, his dignity, his excellence consists in his sovereign contempt for all that nature (in the guise either of storms at sea or of those of his fellow sensuous-rational creatures who are sensuously determined) can do to him. There is a limit to the goodness that is possible for him: he can do no more than obey the moral law in every case: as regards morality in the narrow sense, he can be no better than God. But there is no limit to the sublimity that is possible for him, for that depends upon the degree of nature's hostility toward him, to which no limit can be assigned in advance. This, we venture to say, is the core of Kant's pre-scientific metaphysics of nature. But what of hope, what of happiness, both of which Kant affirms in a way? Would not a more moderate interpretation accommodate both sublimity and happiness as hallmarks of human excellence according to Kant? But is this not absurd? If ever it was necessary to choose between alternative hallmarks of human excellence, it is necessary to choose between sublimity and happiness. In view of a good many tendencies, epitomized by the most famous passage of the Critique of Practical Reason (which passage must be understood in its context) one is inclined to think that Kant chose sublimity: "Two things fill the mind with ever new and increasing admiration and awe, the oftener and more steadily we reflect on them: the starry heavens above me and the moral law within me.'' VI. Nature and Morality Reconsidered We have said that happiness and sublimity radically contend in Kant's moral philosophy: one or the other, but ultimately not both, must redeem "the curse of creaturely worthlessness." We have said that in the end Kant inclines toward sublimity as the hallmark of human excellence. This inclination is not unrelated to Kant's subordination of religious consciousness to moral 101 �consciousness, 11 but it is actually broader than that subordination: even within strictly moral consciousness, Kant rejects the attempt of "the ancient Greek schools" to contrive "an identity between such extremely heterogeneous concepts as those of happiness and virtue" (Pr, pp .115-16). The extreme heterogeneity of happiness and virtue reflects the extreme heterogeneity of nature and morality. Perhaps Kant's most radical statement of this heterogeneity is the following (Pr, p .86; emphasis added): "For since he is a creature, and consequently is always dependent with respect to what he needs for complete satisfaction with his condition, he can never be wholly free from desires and inclinations which, because they rest on physical causes, do not themselves agree with the moral law, which has an entirely different source." However, there remain two Kantian doctrines for us to consider which suggest that the sources of the realm of freedom and the realm of nature are not "entirely different". One is Kant's doctrine of teleological judgment; the other is his doctrine of the "typic". We must review these doctrines briefly if our presentation of Kant's view of the relation of morality to nature is to avoid drastic oversimplification. In the introduction to the Critique of Judgment Kant declares that the third Critique is intended as a means of combining the concepts of the realm of nature and the realm of freedom (J, p.12): Now even if an immeasurable gulf is fixed between the sensible realm of the concept of nature and the supersensible realm of the concept of freedom, so that no transition is possible from the first to the second, yet the second is meant to have an influence upon the first. The concept of freedom is meant to actualize in the world of sense the purpose proposed by its laws, and consequently nature must be so thought that the conformity to law of its form at least harmonizes with the possibility of the purposes to be effected in it according to the laws of freedom. There must, therefore, be a ground of the unity of the supersensible, which lies at the basis of nature, with that which the concept of freedom practically contains. The faculty of judgment, in its reflective (as distinct from determinate) employment, spans the gulf by dictating that we shall hypothetically project the form of purpose onto nature, with reference especially to organized beings (since "it is absurd . . . to hope that another Newton will arise in the future who shall make comprehensible by us the production of a blade of grass according to natural laws which no design has ordered" (J, p.248)) but ultimately with reference to the whole of nature, since the inability of mechanical laws to explain any part of nature constitutes a failure in principle to explain the whole of nature. Although at times Kant speaks of this projection of purpose as a mere (optional) heuristic principle, on the 102 whole he maintains that the mechanically inexplicable character of a blade of grass (for example) absolutely requires such a principle. The principle of natural purpose is then the basis for a physical teleology which, while only a preparation for theology, and in need of being completed by moral teleology (which contributes considerably more to the possibility of theology) is yet not altogether negligible (J, p.307): For the theoretical reflective judgment, physical teleology sufficiently proves from the purposes of nature an intelligent world cause; for the practical judgment, moral teleology establishes it by the concept of a final purpose, which it is forced to ascribe to creation in a practical point of view. The objective reality of the idea of God as moral author of the world cannot, it is true, be established by physical purposes alone. But nevertheless, if the cognition of these purposes is combined with that of the moral purpose, they are, by virtue of the maxim of pure reason which bids us seek unity of-principles so far as is possible, of great importance for the practical reality of that idea, by bringing in the reality which it has for the judgment in a theoretical point of view. However, although according to its introduction one of the chief purposes of the Critique of Judgment is to reveal such a (partial) harmonization of the realm of nature and the realm of freedom as has just been sketched, in the concluding passages of the book (J, p.331) Kant declares that such a harmonization is fundamentally superfluous: The moral proof ... would preserve all its force if we found in the world no material, or only that which is doubtful, for physical teleology. It is possible to conceive of rational beings surrounded by a nature which displayed no clear trace of organization, but only the effects of a mere mechanism of crude matter ... and yet reason, which here gets no guidance from natural concepts, would find in the concept of freedom and in the moral idea founded thereon a practically sufficient ground for postulating the concept of the original Being in conformity with these. Kant's final word on the relation of the realm of freedom to the realm of nature is therefore that the realm of freedom need find no support at all in the realm of nature, although in fact it does find a little support. The ascent to ontology, and in particular to theology, begins essentially from moral, not natural, phenomena. We turn to Kant's doctrine of the "typic", limiting ourselves to the barest indication of the issues involved. In Practical Reason (pp.70-74) Kant says of the typic that its relation to practical reason is analogous to the relation of the schema to theoretical reason: both perform a mediating function between the a priori and the empirical. There is one primary typic of the moral law, of which other typics may presumably be regarded as specifications: "Ask yourself whether, if the action which you propose should take place by a law of nature of which you yourself were a part, you would regard it as possible WINTER 1986 �through your will." Although the term "typic" does not appear in Foundations, several interesting examples of the employment of typics in moral judgment do occur there. We attend to one in particular. After Kant has stated the categorical imperative for the first time in Foundations (F, p.88), he gives an alternative version of it: "Act as if the maxim of your action were to become through your will a universal law of nature." This version, according to Practical Reason, is a type of the categorical imperative, and Kant makes use of it in applying the moral law in four illustrations that immediately follow. The third illustration (F, p.90) concerns whether a man is duty-bound to develop his "natural" talents so far as possible, even though "a system of nature could indeed subsist" even if he did not. Kant concludes that a man is so bound, for a reason which is stated clearly somewhat later, after still another version (apparently, another type) of the categorical imperative has been formulated, enjoining that humanity in oneself as in others be treated not only as a means but also as an end: "Now there are in humanity capacities for greater perfection which form part of nature's purpose for humanity in our person. To neglect these can admittedly be compatible with the maintenance of humanity as an end in itself, but not with the promotion of this end" (F, p.97). Kant indicates that here he speaks of imperfect or meritorious rather than perfect or strict duty. Still, it is clear that in the long run Kant is not satisfied with purely formal ethics; and that when he wishes to give some minimal substantive content to duty, he expresses himself in terms of natural teleology. One can only say that on the basis of the first Critique, as not decisively modified by the third Critique, such expressions appear to be essentially without foundation, however commonsensically plausible they may be. Moreover, aside from the difficulties posed by the conclusions of Kant's theoretical metaphysics, Kant's manifest pre-scientific orientation in this matter induces one to wonder whether "nature's purpose for humanity" is not both figured out and achieved by man in despite of nature's hostility rather than given to man by a friendly nature who inclines man toward what is good for him and on the whole supports rather than thwarts those inclinations which she has given him. The pre-scientific orientation to which we refer emerges clearly from the following characteristic passage in "Idea for a Universal History with a Cosmopolitan Intent' ' 12 : In this, Nature seems to have moved with the strictest parsimony, and to have measured her animal gifts precisely to the most stringent needs of a beginning existence, just as if she had willed that, if man ever did advance from the lowest barbarity to the highest skill and mental perfection and thereby worked himself up to happiness (so far as it is possible on earth), he alone should have the credit and should have only himself to thank-exactly as if she aimed more at his ra- 1HE ST. JOHN'S REVIEW tiona! self-esteem than at his well-being. VII. Conclusion We now briefly review the results of our investigation of Kant's moral philosophy. Moral phenomena, not natural phenomena, are the basis for the ascent to ontology, and in particular to theology: moral phenomena, while not simply sufficient for the disclosure of the whole of Being, are yet our best, and ultimately our only way of access to the whole of Being. The categorical imperative is the moral phenomenon par excellence. The fact as it were" is far more impressive than any mere "fact" because it irrupts into our lives unsolicited from without. We need not look for it in order to see it; we are forced to see it. What we need to look for or desire to establish we thereby distort. The categorical imperative is more authoritative than the findings of natural science because it forces itself upon us unconditionally, whereas they are conditioned by our questions. The categorical imperative, hence ultimate truth so far as that is knowable by man, is accessible to all men. The common man, the man without theoretical science, is in a way more susceptible to its revelation than the man with theoretical science, although the conclusions of true (i.e. critical) theoretical science, while they cannot independently establish, nevertheless cannot contradict, what is revealed by the categorical imperative. The common man is in a way especially susceptible to the revelation if he lacks prudential knowledge of the world, of the realm of nature: he is in that case not tempted to risk disobedience to the infinitely simple categorical imperative. The categorical imperative is experienced by all men as a constraint from without, an unconditioned constraint (whose form is never "if ... then" where "if" is optional) and one that permits no exception in favor of oneself. But mere analysis reveals that its true origin is within man: autonomy is the ground of the categorical imperative. Whereas all men recognize, however vaguely, the categorical imperative, Kant is the discoverer of the principle of autonomy. At first glance it appears that no one before Kant discovered the principle of autonomy as the ultimate ground of man's experience of duty because no one before Kant had undertaken a critique of pure reason. But the immediately relevant assertion of the first Critique, namely that necessity can never arise from the merely empirical, i.e. from nature (even if we ignore the prima facie difference between the necessity proper to moral imperatives and that proper to physical regularities) is rather assumed than proven by the first Critique. Moreover, Kant's argument for autonomy as the supreme principle of morality rests only partly on the above-mentioned assertion. The more important part of his argument concerns specifically moral phenomena without reference to physical science. That is, Kant con11 103 �eludes to the principle of autonomy as the ground of the categorical imperative only after having eliminated the natural or empirical candidate, i.e. happiness. His most important arguments against happiness as a principle of morality are ultimately independent of the first Critique. They are chiefly three. The most obvious is that happiness is a mercenary principle, hence not truly moral. But this assertion, as we have pointed out, is questionable: The fact that pleasure is known by Aristotle's virtuous man to accompany his virtuous action no more convicts him of being mercenary than does the fact that Kant's virtuous man knows that self-respect will accompany his virtuous action convict him of being mercenary. The other two foundations of Kant's critique of happiness as the principle of morality are less obvious: indeed, he hardly mentions them, so much does he take them for granted. However, they are neither unimportant nor unquestionable. The first is that different men believe that different things will make them happy and therefore would be required to do different things if they took their bearings by happiness; but what is not required of all men is not required of any man necessarily, and the moral law is meaningless without necessity. The second is that contemplative metaphysics, which according to Aristotle makes man happiest, cannot make men happy, since even if we could know the whole, which we cannot (this assertion does depend on the first Critique), we have no reason to be confident that the whole is good (this assertion is based on a kind of pre-scientific orientation which is especially visible in Kant's writings on the sublime); and if the whole is not good, why should man be made happy by knowledge of it? We approach the same point from a somewhat different angle. Happiness is not, as at first sight appears, rejected as a principle of morality on purely formal grounds, i.e. because, not being a priori, it can yield only contingent, even if universal, imperatives. Respect no less than happiness turns out to require experience. Respect is strictly correlative to sublimity. Happiness requires experience of a nature that is friendly to man; sublimity, hence respect, requires experience of a nature that is hostile to man. Despite the assertion of the first Critique that we do not truly encounter nature at all, Kant believes to have encountered nature sufficiently far in a prescientific way to decide that the hallmark of human excellence is sublimity rather than happiness. The assertion that Kant regards sublimity rather than happiness as the hallmark of human excellence, or that he regards the whole as unfriendly rather than friendly to man, stands in need of some qualification. Three qualifications are especially necessary: happiness as an indispensable element of the summum bonum is provided 104 for by rational faith which is grounded in morality, though happiness is not immediately provided for by morality itself; the faculty of teleological judgment partly harmonizes the realms of freedom and nature; and the natural teleology assumed in Kant's use of typics also suggests that reason and nature are not infinitely remote from each other. But these qualifications, taken together, seem less impressive than Kant's pervasive orientation by sublimity rather than happiness. Kant's moral philosophy, which requires its own submission to the judgment of common-sense moral experience, therefore contains two intimately connected positions which from the point of view of common-sense moral experience are questionable: an experience whose most impressive characteristic is that it seems to irrupt upon us from without actually has its ground in our own self-legislation; and sublimity, not happiness, is the hallmark of human excellence. Notes 1. Immanuel Kant, Critique of Pure Reason, translated by Norman Kemp Smith (New York: St. Martin's Press, 1967), p. 20. Hereafter cited in the text as P. I have altered the translation slightly, following the Prussian Academy edition of Kant's Werke. 2. Martin Heidegger, Being and Time, translated by Macquarrie and Robinson (New York: Harper and Row, 1962), pp. 413-14. Hereafter cited in the text as H. 3. Friedrich Nietzsche, Beyond Good and Evil, translated by Walter Kaufmann (New York: Vintage Books, 1966), pp. 139-40. 4. Cited in Ernst Cassirer, Rousseau, Kant, and Goethe (New York: Harper and Row, 1963), p. 1. 5. Immanuel Kant, Foundations of the Metaphysics of Morals, translated by H. J. Paton under the title of Groundwork of the Metaphysics of Morals (New York: Harper and Row, 1964), pp. 71-2. Hereafter cited in the text as F. 6. Immanuel Kant, Critique of Practical Reason, translated by Lewis White Beck (New York: Liberal Arts Press, 1956), p. 38. Hereafter cited in the text as Pr. (Compare F, p. 71, for a similar passage.) 7. Benedict de Spinoza, Theologico-Political Treatise, translated by R. H. M. Elwes (New York: Dover, 1955), pp. 57-8. 8. Leo Strauss, The City and Man (Chicago: Rand McNally, 1964), p. 44. 9. Hegel's polemic against Kantian moral consciousness, not only on the ground of its alleged empty formalism but also on the ground that Kantian autonomy is actually heteronomous, runs through the Phenomenology of Spirit. See especially pp. 619-20 and 634-5 in Baillie's translation (New York: Humanities Press, 1966). 10. Immanuel Kant, Critzque of!udgment, translated by J. H. Bernard (New York: Hafner, 1966), p. 101. Hereafter cited in the text as J. 11. Cf. Richard Kroner, Kant's Weltanshauung (Chicago: U. of Chicago Press, 1956), pp. 42-50. 12. Immanuel Kant, On History, compiled and translated by Lewis White Beck (New York: Liberal Arts Press, 1963), p. 14. WINTER 1986 �Theory and Practice in Hegel's Phenomenology Introduction This study of Hegel's conception of the relation between theory and practice is oriented in two directions. On the one hand it seeks some clarity regarding the foundations of contemporary revolutionary thought in the West. That thought is unthinkable without the conception of radical human conversion through labor and political struggle, of the overcoming of "alienation" by such "negation" as is at the same time "creative." The broadest and deepest foundation for this conception, which Marx largely took for granted, was laid by Hegel. According to the interpretation of Alexandre Kojeve (which, no doubt, one cannot accept in every respect), Hegel succeeded in holding together themes which later, in Marx and Heidegger, became separated to the detriment of a true view of human existence: Marx knows of political struggle and of labor as technological transformation of nature but he loses sight of human freedom as consciousness of death; Heidegger knows of human freedom as consciousness of death but neglects political struggle and labor, hence cannot give an account of concrete human existence. But while looking ahead from Hegel to contemporary thought, the present study also attempts to look back from Hegel toward the Platonic-Aristotelian view of the city and man, which Hegel rejects on the ground that according to that view the lives of the non-philosopherswhich is to say the lives of most men-are lived irredeemably outside of the truth. Thus unlike such men as Theory and Practice in Hegel's Phenomenology. Ph.D. Thesis, University of Chicago, 1970. THE ST. JOHN'S REVIEW Hobbes, whose decisive objection against classical political philosophy is that it aimed too high, exaggerating the power of reason against the passions, Hegel's decisive objection against classical political philosophy is that it aimed too low, reserving the highest human possibilities for only a few men. The former objection is made in the interest of sound, i.e., peaceable, political practice; the latter ultimately in the interest of true theory, and in particular of true theology. For Hegel's objection against classical political philosophy is, broadly stated, that it misconceives the relation between the religious experience of the many and the truth available to philosophic activity; and that thereby it misconceives the nature of the divine as such. Whether or not one sympathizes with Hegel's essentially theological critique of classical political philosophy-or has primarily any interest in such questions at all-one cannot understand Hegel's philosophy in general, nor those elements within it which prepare the way for Marx and Heidegger in particular, without seriously taking it into account. That this is the case will, I hope, be established by the present study. That the themes indicated have in this study been brought into focus upon the question of the relation of theory and practice was not necessary, but neither is it farfetched. Such a focus is suggested, for example, by Marx's "Theses on Feuerbach," of which that relation is the primary topic and which is an excellent clue to Marx's specifically revolutionary thought. Moreover, such a focus permits a pointed comparison with Aristotle in the respect indicated above, since Aristotle distinguishes theoria and praxis not only as specifically different human performances-theoria concerned with the immutable, praxis like poiesis with the mutable-but primarily as alternative ways of life: the life of contem- 105 �plation which finally takes place beyond the city, and the life of politics lived wholly within the city. The present study is concerned almost exclusively with Hegel's Phenomenology of Spirit. For all sorts of practical reasons I had to choose, and I think with Marx that the Phenomenology is Hegel's greatest book. The study is cast, except for an initial chapter of orientation and a final chapter of conclusions, in the form of a selective commentary on the Phenomenology, which mainly, although not always, follows the order of Hegel's own presentation. Thus my first chapter outlines very broadly certain contrasts between Aristotle and Hegel; more precisely, starting from Aristotle it tries to state in the most elementary terms what sort of considerations induced Hegel to make "history" the central category of his metaphysics. The second chapter is a commentary on Hegel's own introduction to his philosophy as a whole, his own presentation of its intention and originality, contained in the "preface" to the Phenomenology, his first book. The commentary deals with such matters as Hegel's understanding of "subjectivity" and "negativity," the relation of the Phenomenology to Hegel's later system, and the character of Hegel's language. An appendix considers the Aristotelian view of the relation between energeia and dunamis which, so far as I can see, Hegel accepts, with decisive consequences for his philosophy as a whole. The third chapter continues to lay the foundation for the central concerns of the study by way of a presentation of Hegel's theses concerning the ''experience of consciousness," contained in his lntroduction" to the Phenomenology. This presentation is determinedly uncritical, since the theses advanced seem to be of such vastness that judgment must await exposition of the concrete content of the Phenomenology. The fourth chapter treats Hegel's "epistemology" and "philosophy of science," examining material in Chapters I, II, III and V of the Phenomenology, with a view to the relation between the "problem of knowledge" and historical praxis. 11 Chapters V, VI and VII form the core of the study. Chapter V has two subjects: Hegel's presentation of the dialectic of master and slave as the key to praxis (found in the first half of Chapter IV of the Phenomenology); and Hegel's contrast of the Greek and Christian views of man (in the second half of Chapter IV, especially the chapters on "Stoicism" and "Unhappy Consciousness"). The sixth chapter is a selective commentary on Chapter VI of the Phenomenowgy, examining Hegel's view of history as tragedy, from Creon and Antigone to the French Revolution and Napoleon, culminating in the critique of the beautiful soul and "God appearing in the midst of men." Chapter VTI treats Hegel's critique of the Enlightenment view of revealed religion (in Chapter VI of the Phenomenology), Hegel's own view of Christian revelation (primar- 106 ily Chapter VTI of the Phenomenology) and, as the culmination of the Phenomenowgy, Hegel's presentation in Chapter VIII of the convergence of the critique of the beautiful soul (as the highest expression of postRevolutionary consciousness) with the re-enactment of the passion of Christ (the central event, according to Hegel, for Western man), with which convergence praxis terminates in pure theoria in the mode of Schaedelstaette and Erinnerung. The eighth and final chapter of the study has two parts: one reviews the Marxist and existentialist sides of Hegel'-s thought with a view to assessing the adequacy of Kojeve' s interpretation in particular; the other investigates in a very tentative way certain relations between Hegel, Aristotle and Plato with a view to the question of the relation between philosophy and the city and the theological implications thereof. Chapter I Hegel and Aristotle I. The most famous modern statement regarding the relation between theory and practice is the last of Marx's "Theses on Feuerbach": "The philosophers have only interpreted the world in various ways; the point, however, is to change it." But the actual import of this statement can be understood only if one realizes that prior to Hegel no philosopher had ever "interpreted the world" in Marx's sense. (For various reasons, we shall here leave Socrates out of account.) That is, no philosopher had expected to learn anything of great importance from looking at the "world," namely at the world of human affairs or, in Platonic-Aristotelian terms, at the city. What Aristotle called first philosophy (what we know as the Metaphysics)-which he regarded as by far the worthiest knowledge, whose possession made a man supremely happy, so that if the gods were capable of envy they would envy such a one-has fundamentally two themes: being qua being and God as the highest being. About these subjects one can expect to learn nothing from events within the cities of men, as Aristotle says explicitly in Book VI of the Ethics, because it is "absurd" to think that man is the highest being in the cosmos. But when Aristotle says that man is far from being the worthiest object of knowledge-that he is by no means a good clue to the related questions of being qua being and the divine being-he has in mind (and properly insofar as the Ethics forms a part of his political writings) man insofar as he lives in the city, insofar as he engages in praxis and poiesis. Man insofar as he transcends the city by engaging in theona is a most worthy theme of investigation. Indeed book lambda of the Metaphysics, which presents Aristotle's theology, does so by presenting the WINTER 1986 �convergence of the analysis of motion contained in the Physics and the analysis of knowing-which is first of all the analysis of human knowing-in book three of De Anima: the first cause of motion is revealed as noesis noeseos. Thus knowledge of the human (theoretical) soul is of great importance for the understanding of the highest matters. "The [theoretical] soul is somehow all things"; it is the part which is perfectly open to the whole, which reflects the whole and therefore is in a way itself a whole. But what of the "practical soul" and the "poetic soul," i.e., what of those human faculties concerned with acting and making? Are their variegated actualizations in any important way revelatory of being qua being and God as the highest being? Hegel's affifmative answer to this question is decisive for his whole philosophy. Aristotle's answer in general is surely negative and yet, just once, he seems to hesitate. By attending to his singular "hesitation'' we may perhaps be able to suggest the considerations which prompted Hegel to break with Aristotle-despite so many and such profound agreements-on the decisive question of the locus of the highest truth. II. The passage which we must consider is Aristotle's discussion of the pambasileus or" all-king" in the second half of book three of the Politics. The general context is Aristotle's argument that rule of law, completed by equitable men, is preferable to personal rule. But there may, Aristotle suggests, be exceptions to this generally sound policy. Indeed the pambasileus, if such a one exist, is the exception, in this as well as other respects. Aristotle approaches the possibility of such an exception with considerable circumspection, taking it up, dropping it, then taking it up once more. At 1284b25, after declaring that ostracism is relatively justified when practiced upon individual men who stand to other men "as lions to hares" (i.e., as utterly superior to other men in respect of power owing to wealth or number of partisans or similar factors), Aristotle raises the more difficult question posed by a man utterly superior to other men in respect of human excellence: Nobody, we may assume, would say that such a man ought to be banished and sent into exile. But neither would any man say that he ought to be subject to others. That would be much as if human beings should claim to rule over Zeus, on some system of rotation of office between themselves and him. The only alternative left-and this would also appear to be according to nature-is for all others to pay a willing obedience to the man of surpassing excellence. Such men will accordingly be kings in their cities for all time. At 1287a Aristotle resumes discussion of absolute kingship. In general he again commends rule of law rather THE ST. JOHN'S REVIEW than rule by one man, however excellent, since all men are sometimes subject to self-regarding passions: "He who commands that law should rule may thus be regarded as commanding that God and reason alone should rule; he who commands that a man should rule adds the character of the beast." Again (1288a), "It is neither expedient nor just that one man should be sovereign over all others." This is true not only among equals; it is "even true when the one man is superior in excellence-unless his superiority be of a certain kind." Of that certain kind Aristotle goes on to speak as follows: "When it happens that the whole of a family, or even a single person, is of excellence so outstanding as to surpass that of all the rest, it is only just that this family should be vested with kingship and absolute sovereignty, or that this single person should become absolute king." But it is not only a question of justice among human beings. There is also the consideration of "what is fitting" simply. For, "a whole is never intended by nature to be inferior to a part; and a man so greatly superior to others stands to them in the relation o( a whole to its parts." This last is surely a very striking image. Aristotle's earlier comparison of the utterly superior man to Zeus is obvious enough. But what does it mean to say of a man-of a man, moreover, who unlike the philosopher emphatically has his being within the city-that he stands to other men as a whole to its parts? If a man is as a whole, must not his soul somehow reflect, and hence be revelatory of, the whole? What the image of whole and part might mean with respect to human action may perhaps be suggested by viewing Greek tragedy from a certain angle (by no means the only possible one) according to which the chorus represents the desire-not indeed of the philosopher but rather of the polis as such-to know. Let us then regard the chorus as the polis facing its king. The chorus, though its welfare is radically bound up with that of the king, does not act with respect to the king; rather it breathlessly beholds the king in action. It beholds the king in action and the fate of that action in order to discover the limits of man, or the relation between the human and the transhuman. The king is peculiarly well-suited to be the "experimenter" because he is somehow more than other men. But he is surely not identical with man as such; consequently the limits which his action and the fate of that action disclose are not the limits of man as such. The king, though a more extreme or perhaps exaggerated "part" of man as such, is nevertheless only a "part"; the disclosure of man's limits which he achieves is only a partial disclosure, a disclosure of man's limits in a particular direction. The chorus, in beholding his disclosure, is led to reflect on other partial disclosures achieved by other men; the fate of one king reminds of the fates of other kings; and from a variety of partial disclosures of the 107 �limits of man the chorus attempts to compose an image of the limits of man as a whole, of the relation between the human as such and the transhuman. But what if there were a king who stood to other men not only as a more extreme or exaggerated part to other parts, but as a whole to parts? Then might the disclosure of the limits of man, of the relation between the human and the transhuman, be accomplished once for all. The premise of this interpretation is that the polis, and not only the philosopher, desires to know-and this not only in the obvious sense that knowledge is necessary to guide action, to ensure that men choose true goods, but also in the sense that one of the motives of action itself is the desire to know, not as if man can know only what he makes (as Vico may have thought) but rather in the way of initiating a kind of dialogue with that which is not human. It is surely true, as Aristotle says, that men do not become tyrants to avoid exposure to the cold. But it may also be that they do not become tyrants only because they crave a superabundance of material goods or even because they desire prestige or mastery simply for its own sake. It seems at least possible that men become tyrants in order to discover something: to discover how far they can go, to discover whether and how the divine will respond to their action. Such a train of thought as has been sketched in the preceding paragraphs seems to have determined the core of Hegel's metaphysics which, like Aristotle's, has as its fundamental themes the question of being qua being and the question of God as the highest being; but which, unlike Aristotle's, finds the primary locus of truth not in the realm of phusis but rather in the cities of men, which constitute the place of "history" only because they first constitute the place of stories. Nothing could be more emblematic in this respect than that while both Aristotle and Hegel rank tragedy higher than epic, Aristotle offers the reason that qua made thing tragedy has more parts than epic without loss of integrity, whereas Hegel gives the reason that the theology of the tragedies is superior to that of the epics, its representation of the divine more profound. III. But there is another aspect of the matter which we must at least suggest. The difference between Aristotle and Hegel concerns not only the meaning of praxis (as the theme of the tragedies, for example) but also the meaning of poiesis (and of techne as its peculiar way of knowing), of poetry in the broadest sense as man's capacity to make, to make poems and statues but also to build cities, to fabricate a world in general. The decisive question is: are the eide perfect (finished) from the outset, as they exist in the realm of phusis prior to human intervention? If one answers affirmatively, then one must hold 108 with Aristotle that art is to be understood fundamentally as mimesis, as imitation of nature (which should not of course be understood in too crude a sense), so that "meaning" precedes and underlies art. If one were to hold, however, that the eide are far from perfect at the outset, that they can be brought to perfection (given "meaning") only by human intervention, then one must understand art as creative in the modern sense or, in Aristotelian terms, as violence (bia). (What is meant here, of course, is violence with respect to the eide themselves; a kind of violence with respect to the material in which the eide are to be embodied is characteristic of all fabrication.) We may compare Heidegger's interpretation of the famous first chorus from Sophocles' Antigone in which interpretation techne is equated with violence-Gewaltand the poet is he who "violently carries Being into that which is. " 1 Hegel indeed holds that the eide are not perfect from the outset (as they exist in nature) and that human intervention, which he understands as labor (Arbeit), is necessary to bring them to their perfection. That such intervention has a violent character is sufficiently indicated by the fact that according to Hegel's account labor originates in fear of violent death and essentially consists in 11 desire repressed." But what Hegel's presentation of the story of master and slave particularly emphasizes is that not only are the eide of those objects on which man expressly labors imperfect at the outset, but the eidos of man is also imperfect at the outset, and in violently bringing the eide of the non-human world to their perfection, he at the same time, and violently, brings to perfection the eidos of man. Thus Marx can write: "The outstanding thing in Hegel's Phenomenology and its final outcome ... is that Hegel conceives the self-production [Selbsterzeugung] of man as a process, " 2 whereby the biological connotations of Erzeugung, which means especially "procreation," very well express the profound ambiguity in Hegel's thought as to whether man in violently transforming nature into a human world finally stands within or without nature; for if, contrary to Aristotle, violence itself belongs essentially to nature, then Hegel's emphatic distinction between nature and Spirit (Geist) becomes thoroughly questionable. IV. We have indicated that Aristotle and Hegel differ decisively with respect to the status accorded to human praxis and poiesis in relation to the highest themes of metaphysics, namely being qua being and God as the highest being. But it is just as important to appreciate that this difference presupposes their fundamental agreement as to this, that the end of man is to know and the end of the whole is to be known: the whole is not fully actual without being known, and to participate in the act of WINTER 1986 �knowing the whole is to participate to the greatest possible extent in the life of the divine. Thus Hegel's originality consists in his view that knowledge of the highest presupposes praxis and poiesis-presupposes the citynot only as precondition (which Aristotle certainly admitted) but also and above all as object. History is the central category of Hegelian metaphysics, as one often says, only because for Hegel the city has become the object of metaphysics. The realm of praxis (in the wide sense, including poiesis) has become the object of theoria. For Aristotle the proper object of theoria is what cannot be otherwise than it is, what is necessary and hence eternal (Ethics, book six). For Hegel theoria retains the Aristotelian meaning, though turned toward a non-Aristotelian object. Thus for Hegel events within the city cannot be otherwise than they are; they are necessary and hence eternal. The eternal is indeed not accessible from the beginning, according to Hegel; it becomes accessible only in (better: as) history. Nor is there a history of revelation only, as if being were "in itself" complete from the outset, only human knowing being incomplete. The history of revelation is the history of being-the "in itself" is actual only when it is known by human beings. Thus deeds are meaningful not merely as revelatory of what already is, but also as (in a certain sense) creative. And yet events within the city are eternal because they are necessary; and they are necessary because they are elicited by the telos which is present from the beginning, not indeed as a mere norm, but as effectively moving. (Compare the appendix to Chapter II.) History according to Hegel has achieved its telos with the French Revolution and its culmination in Napoleon on the one hand and with the writing of the Phenomenology of the Spirit on the other. History is over; no meaningful (i.e., revelatory-creative, whether in the mode of praxis or poiesis) deeds remain to be performed in the cities; all that remains is pure understanding. To grasp Hegel's notion of the "end of history," which is at first sight so shocking, we may ask ourselves what Aristotle would have replied to the Hegelian claim that no meaningful deeds remain to be performed within the cities. Aristotle's answer would surely be-none ever remained to be performed. Chapter II Foundations of Hegel's Philosophy I. Hegel's own understanding of the originality of his philosophy is expressed decisively in this assertion: "According to my view, which must justify itself by the presentation of the system, everything depends on this, that we comprehend and express the true not as substance but just as much as subject. " 3 THE ST. JOHN'S REVIEW The proximate meaning of this claim is clear enough: Hegel presents himself to his contemporaries as synthesizing Spinoza' s philosophy of substance and Kant's philosophy of subjectivity. Spinoza's philosophy is defective because in it ''self-consciousness is merely submerged, not upheld." (p.l9) This according to Hegel is true of classical ontology altogether, above all of Plato and Aristotle, by whom what Spinoza called "substance" was called "nature" or "being." Only with Descartes does self-consciousness or subjectivity receive its due; in his lectures on the history of philosophy Hegel says, after speaking of Bacon and Jacob Bohme: "We come now really for the first time to the philosophy of the modern world, and this begins with Descartes. With him we really encounter an autonomous philosophy, which knows that it comes autonomously out of reason and that selfconsciousness is an essential moment of the true. Here, we can say, we are at home, and can, like the sailor after a long journey on the stormy sea, cry 'Land' ... In this modern period the principle is thinking, thinking which goes out from itself. " 4 The modern philosophy originated by Descartes culminates in Kant, for whom consciousness of objects, i.e., of objects systematically interrelated which thereby constitute a knowable world, presupposes selfconsciousness. But even Kant's philosophy, inasmuch as it "clings to thinking as thinking," is insufficient; it is "generality as such, the same simplicity or undifferentiated, unmoved substantiality." (p.19) That is, although Kant understood that the constitution of a knowable world presupposes self-consciousness, he understood the self or subject according to the categories appropriate to substance or nature as those categories were propounded by the ontological tradition originated by Plato and Aristotle, above all according to the category of identity ("unmoved substantiality"): the"!" of the "I think" is always one and the same, just as the world which it constitutes is always one and the same. This Hegel radically denies: the category according to which the self or subject must be understood is negativity. And since substance includes subject, by which alone it can be revealed in discursive speech (truth~substance as revealed in speech by subject), substance itself includes negativity: it cannot be interpreted solely according to the category of identity. Substance properly understood, i.e., substance in which negativity reigns as much as identity, is called by Hegel "the living substance" which is not only substance or nature in the traditional sense but also "subject" or "the pure simple negativity." (p.20) The relation of knowing, therefore, is not an "original" or "immediate" unity of knower and known, of subject and substance, but rather a unity which emerges only at the end, a u sameness which reconstitutes itself" after "the bifurcation of the simple or the duplication which 109 �creates opposition." (p.20) Once man has been brought forth by nature, once negativity has broken in upon the self-identity and self-harmony of nature-which is otherwise ''eternal recurrence of the same,'' with spiders spin- ning webs for aeons without novelty-i.e., once history has begun, dissonance reigns till the very end, till the end of history when subject is reconciled to substance, the knower to the known, by pure knowledge, i.e., knowledge without desire to change what is known, knowledge as contemplative rather than projective. (To speak of man being brought forth by a self-identical, self-harmonious nature is not to speak of a "natural" process. Nor does Kojeve's interpretation of the masterslave struggle as not only revelatory in an archetypal way but as literally anthropogenic seem convincing. What Hegel seems to have in mind is rather the difference between Adam before and after the first sin: only after the original sin is Adam a man in the full sense, i.e., negativity incarnate or "creative discontent.") The true, therefore, comprehended and expressed not only as substance but also as subject, or as living substance, emerges only at the end of history, as the reconstitution of the original unity shattered by negativity of which man is the bearer. The true as it finally emerges is "its own becoming, the circle that presupposes its end as its purpose and thus has it for its beginning and is actual only through its execution and end." (p.20) The final reconciliation or reconstitution of unity is present from the beginning as purpose; moreover, it is apparently effectively present: the purpose is not only "given" as a mere norm but its actualization is virtually guaranteed. "Mediation is the self-identity that moves itself" (p.21)that is, the acorn is already identical with the oak but movement is required for that identity to become actual. Thus the life of God and the divine knowledge might be spoken of as "love's playing with itself," but such an expression is mere edification unless justice is done to "the seriousness, the pain, the patience and the labor of the negative." (p.20) And yet one must wonder how justice can be done to them if there is no risk of ultimate failure. We must return to this question in relation to Kojeve's "existentialist" interpretation of Hegel. Among the implications of what has been said-namely that the true is subject as well as substance and that subject is pure negativity-a particularly important one is that "it is only as science or system that knowledge is actual and can be expounded," (p.23) whereby "system" includes the coming-to-be of the result as well as the result itself, thereby preserving the negative in the final affirmation. But the highest expression of the originality of Hegelian philosophy, summing up the expressions which we have reviewed, is "the conception which speaks of the absolute as Spirit. This is the most sublime concept, and it 110 belongs to the modern world and its religion [i.e., Christianity]." (p.24) Spirit is "being-in-itself" (nature or givenness or thesis), "being-for-itself (human selfconsciousness or negativity or antithesis) and "beingin-and-for-itself" (synthesis, or nature as transformed and revealed by man, including man's self-revelation, i.e., his revelation of himself to himself not as part of nature but rather as nature-transforming and -revealing, hence as nature-transcending). Kojeve's interpretation of this passage is that Hegel's anthropology, as the core of his ontology, is radically Christian rather than Greek: the subject which is the core of his ("living") substance is Christian man as capable of radical conversion (Saul becomes Paul), as having no "natural place," as estranged from nature and himself through ''original sin,'' hence oriented toward the future and compelled to struggle for Versohnung, for the reconstitution of unity on a higher plane. The question concerning the relation between Greek and Christian anthropology is a vast one, which we cannot take up here. One aspect of it will emerge when we discuss the master-slave dialectic and the slave's capacity for "conversion"; another aspect will emerge when we consider Hegel's critique of stoicism and skepticism, which he takes to be the "existential" outcome of the Socratic school, and in relation to which he regards Christian self-consciouSness as an advance. According to Kojeve, Hegel accepts Christian anthropology but rejects Christian theology (the human meaning of which is belief in the immortality of the soul) because of its various contradictions of an allegedly logical kind (e.g., free historical individuality-Saul becomes Paul-is contradicted by the operation of divine grace) but above all because it affronts man's "infinite pride/' 5 which is the driving force of human self-creation in history. Hegel accomplishes the "secularization" of Christian belief, according to Kojeve, by introduction of the idea of death as the end in the Heideggerian sense, and implicitly announces his atheistic intent in this passage: "The Spirit, that, so developed, knows itself as Spirit, is science. Science is the actuality of Spirit and the realm that Spirit builds for itself in its own element." (p.24) Kojeve reads this passage as if it said that Hegelian science, i.e., exclusively human science, is the sole actu- ality of Spirit, and that of course is the whole question, since Thomas Aquinas himself says that in some sense man's knowledge is a "participation" in God's knowledge (which is essentially self-knowledge) and that God's knowledge is his being or actuality. The question is therefore whether Hegelian science-i.e., the science possessed by Hegel and those who have understood him-exhausts the divine science. For most purposes one would probably have to say that it does, except for the WINTER 1986 �difficulty that the telos is somehow present, as effectively moving, from the beginning. II. We have seen that according to Hegel truth as revealed being must be understood as subject as well as substance and that subjectivity must be understood according to the category of negativity. We must now try to determine as exactly as possible the Hegelian understanding of negativity. Negation is possible according to Hegel both on the plane of thought and on the plane of action, in the form of labor and political struggle. Negation on the plane of action will concern us later; her~ we must be concerned with its precondition, which is negation on the plane of thought. Hegel's claim is that human thought prior to the end of history is essentially projective rather than contemplative, is essentially "thinking the thing that is not" and desiring that it come to be. (The "and" in the last sentence is misleading. Thought and desire, or more precisely thought and will, are not according to Hegel two faculties: "The will is rather a special mode of thinking, thinking translating itself into existence, thinking as the urge to give itself existence" -addition to paragraph four, Philosophy of Right. Thus at the end of history, when thinking has fully succeeded in translating itself into existence-when the world has been brought into complete conformity with thinking-all willing ceases.) But the essentially projective character of human thought has certain preconditions which must be understood; moreover, that essentially projective character is qualified by its end (first realized at the end of history) which is contemplation and which must also be understood; therefore a comprehensive analysis of human thought in general is sketched in a few very important pages of the ''Preface.'' The primary precondition of projective thought is the power of abstraction as such, the ''cancellation of exis- tence" (p.28) which transforms empirical things into thought things. This activity, the discovery of the eidos or the working out of the first abstractions, whereby the eide from being embodied in matter are translated to an intellectual existence as the meaning of words, was according to Hegel performed long ago, and its results are available to us. Moreover, it seems to have been performed "naturally" rather than historically/' as is indicated by the following passage (p.30): 11 The mode of study in antiquity had this difference from the modern mode, that the former was the thorough education and perfection of the natural consciousness. Testing itself against every separate part of its existence and philosophizing about everything which came forth [remember that For Aristotle phusis is precisely that which comes forth without THE ST. JOHN'S REVIEW human intervention], it made itself into a universality that was active through and through. In modern times, on the contrary, the individual finds the abstract form ready made. But this activity of performing the primary abstractions-to say nothing of the fact that it was merely contemplative, not yet projective-was deficient even in its own terms: it was not performed perfectly lucidly; it was "the movement of the particular spirit which does not comprehend itself." That is, not only Napoleon (as is the implicit assumption of the end of Chapter VI of the Phenomenology) but also, for example, Euclid and Plato did not really know what they were doing. They generated and possessed knowledge, but did not adequately know themselves as knowers. Lacking adequate selfconsciousness, they lacked noeseos noesis which according to Hegel can emerge only at the end of history, since it is the possession of the universal self or spirit, which coincides with a particular self or spirit, namely Hegel, for the first time at the end of history. That means that noeseos noesis-which Hegel, with explicit reference to Aristotle, identifies with divinity at the end of the Encyclopedia-must have a very different meaning (qualified by "history") for Hegel than for Aristotle: it is above all, as Hegel says on the final page of the Phenomenology, Erinnerung or a kind of interiorizing re-collection. For Aristotle, "knowing of knowing" as the divine activity-indeed as the divine being-seems derivative from "self-knowing" which is self-knowing only in a deceptive way, namely because nous as the capacity for knowing is somehow nothing until it becomes its objects (becomes identical with them) so that in knowing them it knows itself, i.e., the only self which it can be said to have. Thus the divine nous, in which there is nothing of "capacity" or "becoming" but rather eternal energeia has for its proper object the sum total of all eide; the phrase ''knowing of knowing'' as pointing to ''self-knowing'' is a paradoxical way of expressing precisely that the divine nous does not have a self, i.e., that his doing is indistinguishable from his being rather than possessed by and at the disposal of his being. That on the highest level doing is indistinguishable from being or, better expressed, being as doing is indistinguishable from being as possessing, is also reflected in the convergence of energeia which emphasizes doing a deed and entelechia which emphasizes possessing one's end in oneself. Another interpretation of "knowing of knowing" according to Aristotle seems possible, however, and would perhaps be closer to Hegel's meaning. That is, if a human knower is to know the whole perfectly he must first know the "whole" (i.e., the whole in abstraction from one's knowing of it and thereby from knowing in general in which one's knowing participates) and then one must take into account one's very knowing: one must 111 �know the whole as including knowing; the whole is not only known but (by virtue of one of its specific parts) also knowing. The known if it is not to be incomplete must include the knowing: knowledge of the whole (as distinct from the "whole") is knowing of knowing. Here too a kind of recollection would seem to be involved, but it would not seem to be "historical"; surely it would not involve recollection of happenings in the cities of men. If this second interpretation of Aristotle-which may have been Hegel's interpretation-is correct, the question arises whether there is for Aristotle a God beyond knowing man. One would probably have to say that there is, at least in the sense that the telos is somehow present from the beginning. Now everything-above all, the question whether God can come to be in time-depends on the mode of the presence of the telos in the beginning. (See Appendix A.) So far, we have followed Hegel's discussion of the working out of the primary abstractions, of the discovery of the eidos or the translation of empirical things into thought things. We have not yet considered human thought in its projective character, namely in that character which Hegel takes to be decisive. To this we must now turn. We begin with a difficult passage: "But what is thus separated, the unactual itself, is an essential moment; for only because the concrete separates itself and makes itself what is unactual, is it the self-moving. The activity of separating is the strength and labor of the understanding, which is the most astonishing and the greatest, or rather the absolute power." (p.29) In order to understand this passage it is necessary to keep in mind that according to Hegel only the whole is concrete and thus actual. But human understanding is discursive or analytic: it cannot comprehend the whole all at once but must break it aown into parts, must '' abstract" each part, one after the other, from the (concrete) whole which alone is actual. The part thus abstracted is "unactual." But only because the concrete whole "separates itself," i.e., only because the concrete whole has a part, namely man or human understanding, which is capable of breaking the whole into "unactual parts," does the whole "move itself," i.e., only therefore does negativity transform self-identical being into "history~' or progress." This is true, however, only on the basis of a tacit but crucial premise, namely that (discursive) human understanding is not contemplative but essentially projective. That is, the power of separating parts from the whole "intellectually" makes possible the construction of radically new arrangements of the parts which can be opposed to the given "real" arrangement and on the basis of which the given "real" arrangement can be transformed, the motor of the transformation being human desire. Only so can the concrete "move itself" through the absolute power of human understanding; only so is 11 112 self-identical being transformed into history and progress through negativity, i.e., through human activity-labor and political struggle-which transforms the given "real" whole on the basis of an "intellectually" rearranged whole. Hegel says the same somewhat more explicitly in the next few sentences (pp.29-30): The circle that rests closed in itself and, being substance, holds its moments, is the immediate and therefore not perplexing relationship. But that the accidental as such, separated from its circumference, that the bounded which is actual only in its connection with others, should gain an existence of its own and separate freedom, that is the tremendous power of the negative, the energy of thought, the pure ego ... It is the same which above was called the subject which, by giving determinateness existence in its element, cancels abstract immediacy~ i.e., immediacy which barely is~and thus is the true substance: that being or that immediacy which does not leave mediation outside itself but which is mediation itself. Thus the subject is true substance or thought is identical with being; but not originally or immediately identical with being; but not originally or irrunediately identical with being-that is the "not perplexing relationship"as the ontological tradition from Parmenides on had held. Rather, only and precisely because it is indeed possible to "think the thing that is not" and then to act on the basis of such an" error" -i.e., only because the "energy of thought" includes "the tremendous power of the negative'' or because human thought is essentially projective rather than contemplative-only so do thought and being come to be identical in the end (of history). Moreover, Hegel insists that this identity mediated by history has significance not only from the point of view of thought, but above all from the point of view of being itself: "When the negative thus appears at first as the non-identity of the ego and its object, it is just as much the non-identity of the substance with itself. What seems to happen outside it, as an activity directed against it, is its own doing; and thus it shows itself to be essentially subject." (p.32) That is, it is not that man, somehow standing outside of being, reflects upon it from without. Rather, being reveals itself through man, comes to speech and consciousness in man (a little later Hegel speaks of "the self-consciousness of substance"); man is an "organ of Being" as Heidegger has it. The Absolute "wills" to be with us, as Hegel says in the introduction, and that is the ultimate reason why there is man. Substance shows that it is essentially subject: that means, man's presence in the universe is not accidental or casual; he does not just happen to know some objects; what he knows, what can be known, is essentially knowable, and he is there in order to know, for the sake of knowing, i.e., for the sake of the self-knowing, the self-illuminating, of substance, without which it would not be fully actual. WINTER 1986 �III. We must now say something about the language in which Hegelian thought is cast. That thought is inseparable from that language, as Hegel expressly declares in his polemic against a style of thinking which he calls Rasonnieren, which we may translate as "argumentative thinking." Hegel's most serious objection against argumentative thinking is that it does not understand the nature of propositions as such: it does not distinguish the speculative or truly philosophical proposition from ordinary propositions, construing, rather, all propositions on the model of the latter. The true distinction according to Hegel is as follows. In ordinary propositions the predicate indicates a (universal) quality or attribute inhering in a self-subsistent entity (~grammatical subject). Contrastingly, speculative propositions posit an identity between one self-subsistent entity (~grammatical subject) and another self-subsistent entity (~"predicate" which is not a universal in the sense that it could be "predicated" of anything else-" the content is not something general that, free from the subject, could be assigned to several others" (p.50)-so that it is better not to speak of the "predicate" but rather of the "substance, essence and concept" of the subject). The identity which is posited by the speculative proposition, however, is a mediate one; that is, the "subject" becomes the "predicaterr or the "predicate" discursively reveals itself as the truth of the "subject": "the identity of subject and predicate is not meant to destroy the difference between both that is expressed by the form of the proposition; rather their unity is meant to emerge as a harmony." (p.51) The new language-significantly, Hegel several times notes that what he calls "speculative" has affinities with what used to be called "mystical"-reflects the nature of being, which it alone is able to reveal. As Hannah Arendt has suggested, the discovery of the new and uniquely adequate language would by itself seem to entail that history has reached its end in the decisive respect, whatever might be made of the ambiguous passages in various of Hegel's writings which particularly concern that issue. The core of the new language as the adequate reflection of the nature of being is the translation of being into becoming: the new language knows of "no content that functions as an underlying subject and receives its meaning as a predicate''; it wholly does away with ''the fixed repose of the underlying subject"; in a word, "In this movement [of the speculative proposition] the resting subject itself perishes." (p.50) The movement of the speculative proposition imitates the movement of being which it reveals. There is, however, a most important aspect of the new understanding of being-namely that any part, qua part, is abstract and unactual, only the whole being concrete and actual-which tortures Hegel's language in an amaz- THE ST. JOHN'S REVIEW ing way. One example must suffice. A crucially important term for Hegel in the Phenomenology is Begriff which means being-as-revealed-in-and-by-human-speech, the integral actuality from which a "subjective side"-e.g., Wissen, Denken, nur Begriff-and an "objective side"Gegenstand, Sein etc.-can be abstracted and, as abstracted, spoken of-but they are only abstractions. Thus Hegel points out the linguistic problem of expressing the radical unity of opposites: "Talk of the unity of subject and object, of the finite and the infinite, of being and thinking etc., signifies that which they are outside of their unity, and in their unity they have a different significance than their expression says." (p.34) This is one of Hegel's cardinal thoughts: the "unification" of subject and object (etc.) always comes too late, as if they were first of all entities constituted in themselves which only subsequently enter into their famous relationship. Rather, they are essentially relata, and as such are abstractions outside of their relationship. To indicate in a graphic way what would be involved in avoiding abstraction, one would always have to write not "the unity of subject and object" but rather "the unity of subject-knowing-objects and object-known-by-subjects." Hegel's analysis anticipates that of Husser! ("consciousness is always consciousness of something") and Heidegger ("Dasein finds himself always already-in-the-world"). Although not inunediately apparent, the decisive (though not unquestionable) presupposition of this analysis is the elimination of any notion of "an idealized absolute subject" (Heidegger, Sein und Zeit) as a "relic of Christian theology" -a relic, one may note, which still plays a crucial (limiting) role in Kant, for whom adequate knowledge of the Ding an sich would be possible only for a "subject" whose thinking originated its objects, namely for the divine intellect, who would no longer be a subject in the proper sense, namely one to whom objects are given. To put it otherwise, the Hegelian-Husserlian-Heideggerian "overcoming" of the subject-object relationship (as" always coming too late") presupposes that being is exhausted by its appearance to man. IV. We must now say something about the systematic relation between the Phenomenology of Spirit on the one hand and Hegel's logic, philosophy of nature and philosophy of right (in a broad sense-c.£. Hegel's addition to paragraph 33 of Philosophy of Right-including the philosophy of history) on the other. We begin near the beginning of the "Preface" to the Phenomenology, Hegel's first book: "The true form in which truth exists can only be the sdentific system of it." (p.12) Hegel's aim is to contribute to the end that philosophy be able to relinquish its name of "love of wisdom" and be "actual wisdom." The claim 113 �to have accomplished this aim can only be justified by showing "that the time has come for the elevation of philosophy to science''; one can claim to possess, in contradistinction to all earlier thinkers, absolute knowledge, only if one can give an account of oneself as possessing that knowledge, i.e., of the becoming of that knowledge within oneself. But that means that one must be able to give an account of history altogether as the becoming of knowledge generally: one attains perfect selfunderstanding in and through understanding all of history and one attains perfect understanding of all of history in and through understanding oneself. But to show that the time has come for the transformation of philosophy into wisdom is precisely to accomplish or realize wisdom: "For this [demonstration that the time has come ... ] would show the necessity of that aim [to transform philosophy into wisdom] even while accomplishing it." (p.12) A crude image may help explain: it is not as if one ascends a mountain and, reaching the top, beholds what lies on the far side; rather one beholds the path itself by which one has ascended: the content of absolute knowledge is the way which leads to absolute knowledge. And yet in a sense one may and must speak of a vista "on the far side of the mountain" to be beheld, namely (to use the convenient and suggestive terminology of Whitehead) the world of "objective immortalities" (i.e., the content of the Philosophy of Right in a broad sense as well as the Philosophy of Nature, both being supported, as it were, by the Logic) which is constituted by "actual events" along the path. That is to say that the Logic (the most interesting case) and the Phenomenology have the same content, only what the former has in the mode of "outwardness" ("God as He is in His eternal essence before the Creation"), the latter has in the mode of "inwardness" ("the Golgotha of Absolute Spirit"). If the content of the ''ascending path'' is identical (except in mode) with that of the "vista on the far side," then neither has ontological priority. But it appears that one must also say that neither has epistemological priority, neither is simply "first for us." In other words, the question is, how does Hegel know that he has reached the absolute peak of the "mountain" (which has, of course, temporal rather than spatial being) so that what claims to be wisdom is not merely one more philosophy? The answer is, by understanding the path as complete and also the vista as complete. But he can understand the path as complete only by understanding the vista as complete and he can understand the vista as complete only by understanding the path as complete. One might, however, suspect an "experimental" or "anticipatory" priority of the vista as inducement for looking back upon the path, which tentatively confirms the finality of the vista which in turn confirms the finality of the path. Still, the experience of 114 the "event" of Napoleon and the "world" constituted by him must have been existentially-if not analyticallyindivisible, so that it seems safer to assign no priority. To clarify this interpretation somewhat, we may look at Hegel's explicit remarks in the preface concerning the relation of the Phenomenology as "the first part of science" to the other part of science, namely, above all, the Logic. He says that the first part of science is distinguished from the other part by the fact that it contains "the element of immediate existence." He says also that the first part as distinguished from the other part contains the negative and the false. These two propositions come to the same and can be expressed by saying that the difference between what we have called the "path of ascent" and the "vista beheld" is that time counts in the first but not in the second; that is, in the second there is no sequence, no past or future, only sheer presence. The connection between immediacy and negation is that to abstract from immediacy-as the Logic, but not the Phenomenology does-is to not have to negate it; and negating it takes time. The Phenomenology essentially takes time to read; the Logic takes time to read only accidentally. This leads us to consider, though not for the last time, Hegel's conception of the relation between time and eternity, which for Hegel as for Plato is equivalent to therelation between becoming and being. We quote two famous passages from the preface concerning this relation: "The appearance is the coming to be and passing away that itself does not come to be or pass away; it is in itself and constitutes the actuality and the movement of the life of the truth." And more flamboyantly: "The true is thus the bacchanalian whirl in which no member is not drunken; and because each, as soon as it detaches itself, dissolves immediately-the whirl is just as much transparent and simple repose." (p.39) This possibility of viewing the "whirl" (in which time counts) under the aspect of "repose" (i.e., eternity, in which time does not count) seems to have been in a way anticipated by Spinoza, for whom knowledge of God in the highest sense, i.e., "intuitive knowledge" or "knowledge of the third kind" is knowledge of Him not qua one eternal substance, which (abstract) knowledge is supplied in the first book of the Ethics, but rather in his infinitely many modes which are ever-changing (though, it is true, not "progressing," still less culminating in an "end of history")-the ever-changing modes seen, however, under the aspect of eternity. We may remind ourselves of Kojeve' s remark that Spinoza decisively anticipates Hegel except that, unlike Hegel, he cannot give an account of how he has come to absolute knowledge, i.e., to divinity. Chapter III The Appearing of That Which Appears Hegel begins the "Introduction" to the Phenomenology WINTER 1986 �with implicit reference to Kant's Critique of Pure Reason. The proper subject of philosophy is the absolute, but the request for a preliminary clarification of the human faculty of knowledge (Erkennen) seems reasonable. Perhaps knowledge is an instrument of which we dispose or a medium through which we see. But to use an instrument on something alters it; to see it through a medium distorts it. If either is the case, knowing so will not help us to know the absolute, as if by subtracting the alteration or distortion from the gross result we could obtain a net result equivalent to the absolute as such. The absolute would "scorn cunning ofthat sort." If knowledge of the absolute is possible at all, it is only because the absolute intrinsically "already is and wishes to be with us." (p.64) That is not to say that if genuine knowledge is possible it must be immediate, easy and intuitive, or that particular deceptions and errors are impossible. What is involved is rather a general attitude of reliance upon and trust in the truth-revealing capacity of the human mind (which presupposes the truth-revealing capacity of the human senses) or the connaturality of mind and being. In this respect Hegel aligns himself with Plato and Aristotle (compare the importance of pistis in the divided-line image in the Republic) and against the modern "school of suspicion" (Nietzsche) founded by Descartes; generally speaking, i.e., independently of specific grounds for distrust, one may regard appearances as trustworthy. Under modern conditions, however, this trust is not immediate or naive; it has rather the form of "placing distrust in this very distrust'' and construing as ''fear of the truth" what presents itself as "fear of error." (p.65) That Hegelian trust as a fundamental attitude is thus polemically conditioned, however, renders questionable its congruence with the Platonic-Aristotelian confidence in the natural harmony of mind the being. Indeed the Hegelian confidence in the human faculty of knowledge should not be understood primarily with reference to Plato and Aristotle, but rather with reference to Hegel's understanding of Kant. The Kantian limitation of knowledge, according to Hegel, concludes that the absolute is inaccessible to human knowledge by starting from the conception of knowledge as an instrument or medium, i.e., by presupposing "a distinction of ourselves from this knowledge." (p.65) That is, the Kantian critique limits knowledge but fails to give an account of its own activity of limiting: there is knowledge which is limited and there is knowledge which delimits and which itself must be unlimited, lest there be an infinite regress-the latter is Hegel's concern. One arrives at the same result by considering what Hegel means when he says that the proper object of philosophy is the absolute. The absolute is what is known in absolute knowledge. Absolute knowledge is, as Heidegger suggests, knowledge which has absolved itself from dependence upon things for its THE ST. JOHN'S REVIEW truth. Truth meant traditionally-e.g., in Thomas Aquinas-the adequation of thought to thing. But therelation (adequation or non-adequation) of thought to thing can itself be encompassed by thought-hence there is nothing outside of thought; hence thought is absolved of dependence on something outside of itself in order to have truth; hence thought is absolute. This is a central idea of the "Introduction," as we shall see. Hegel's philosophy must be a philosophy of consciousness because there is nothing outside of consciousness to which consciousness could be related-and if there were, consciousness could encompass that relation as well. What then according to Hegel is the essence of consciousness? His most fundamental statement is this (p.69): What is limited to a natural life, is not able through itself to transcend its immediate existence; but it is by another driven beyond that, and this being wrenched out of its setting is its death. Consciousness, however, is for itself its own concept. Thereby it immediately transcends the limited, and since this limited belongs to it, consciousness transcends itself. With the particular there is posited at the same time the 'beyond,' were thls only, as in spatial intuition, next to the limited. Cons~ ciousness thus suffers this violence from itself; it destroys its own limited satisfaction. Thus consciousness is radically distinguished from nature by virtue of its continual self-transcending, its restless negation of the present in favor of what does not yet exist. But Hegel's decisive proposition-"Consciousness, however, is for itself its own concept"-says much more than this. It says that not only does consciousness repeatedly transcend itself, assuming one "shape" (~self­ world relation) after another in its quest for "satisfaction," but also that the goal of this process-where for the first time knowledge "is no longer compelled to transcend itself" (p.69)-is fixed, not indeed as a mere norm but as effectively moving, as telos presiding over the movement of consciousness, which movement is soon characterized emphatically as "dialectical." (p.73) This must be understood quite literally: the nature of consciousness according to Hegel consists in a kind of discussion between what he provisionally calls "natural consciousness" and "real knowledge." (p.67) That in each "shape" of consciousness there is a discussion taking place between two partners is reflected in the fact that the collapse of every limited shape of consciousness is experienced as happening along a "highway of despair (Verzweiflung)," (p.67) whereby the connotation of" doubleness" borne by Verzweiflung is by no means accidental. That ''consciousness is for itself its own concept'' is explicated in two further propositions: "Consciousness gives itself its own criterion" (p.71) and "Consciousness examines itself." (p.72) Both refer to the redundancy (as well as impossibility) of an "external" or "transcenden- 115 �tal" or even npreliminaryrr critique of consciousness or knowledge (Hegel henceforth identifies the two), of bringing some outside criterion to consciousness or knowledge. That consciousness is in principle aware of the possible difference between the "in itself" of its object and the "being for it" of its object makes possible the revision of putative knowledge in the light of new evidence; but it is senseless to speak of an "in itself" which would not finally be also "for us." Not only are all possible criteria necessarily present in consciousness, so that they need not be introduced by the "critic," but the inherent movement of consciousness, characterized as self-transcendence guided effectively by a fixed goal, is precisely the examination, the immanent comparison of knowledge with its object (which stand or fall together, since all knowledge is knowledge-of-an-object and every object is an object-as-known), which the "critic" was eager to perform. The would-be critic has indeed nothing to do: he becomes a pure observer, whose single responsibility is to "omit" (Weglassen) all preconceptions; all that remains is "the pure looking on." (p.72) In the "Introduction" the Phenomenology itself is characterized as "the exposition of the knowledge which appears" (p.66) or "the story of the education of consciousness toward science." (p.67) The method of the Phenomenology is dictated by the nature of consciousness: precisely because consciousness examines itself, that method can be purely descriptive or phenomenological in the Husserlian sense; precisely because the selfexamination has been ''dialectical,'' has consisted in each of its shapes in a discussion between unatural consciousness" and "real knowledge," a duality whose original unity is the movement of consciousness, the method of the Phenomenology can be, for the first time in history, non-dialectical; precisely because the movement of consciousness has been the "self-accomplishing skepticism," (p.67) any methodical skepticism, i.e., skepticism in the mode of resolve, is unnecessary. But although no "addition" on the part of the phenomenological observer is necessary, he does see something additional, i.e., something has emerged "behind the back" (p.74) of all earlier shapes of consciousness. What does this mean? What we have said so far is summarized by Hegel in the sentence: "This dialectical movement which consciousness executes on itself-on its knowledge as well as on its object-insofar as out of it the new true object arises, is precisely what is termed experience." (p.73) But "experience'' for Hegel has an unusual meaning, as he emphasizes. Not only is it much broader than the special Kantian meaning, namely that theoretical knowledge of the world which is possible for beings capable only of finite intuition, but it is also strange from the point of view of the ordinary notion of experience according to which 116 we learn from experience the untruth of our first knowledge-of-the-object through acquiring some later knowledge-of-the-object which has become available "casually and externally." (p.73) Contrastingly, according to Hegel's understanding of experience, it is not that the old knowledge-of-the-object is replaced by the new knowledge-of-the-object, but rather the old knowledgeof-the-object itself becomes the object of the new knowledge, which is therefore not knowledge of an object on a par with the old knowledge of an object, but rather knowledge of knowledge of the object, or knowledge of the relation between knowledge and its object, or as Heidegger says knowledge of the objectivity of the object, i.e., of that by which the object is an object which, however, is precisely its relationship to knowledge as consciousness, so that the "objectivity" of the object in the sense indicated is precisely, at least since Descartes, subjectivity. '' 6 In any case what we, the spectators at the end of history, are able to see is not only the content of the new object which arises in the transition from one shape of consciousness to another-which content is also visible to those still within the story-but also its "form or pure origination." (p.74) The "form or pure origination" of every such transition is knowledge of knowledge or selfconsciousness; it has primarily nothing to do with new discoveries regarding objects in the world. Thus a man regards objects in the world differently from how a boy regards them; but a boy becomes a man not by first learning something new about objects, but rather in and through becoming conscious that he himself is a manthe new attitude toward objects follows from his new self-consciousness. Hegel recognizes of course that the relationship between consciousness of self and consciousness of objects is in important respects reciprocal. But his analysis assigns a definite priority to self-consciousness for the reason, it seems, that only so can change or progress be accounted for: the relation of self to itself is ultimately groundless-the self (as distinct from the soul) does not objectively precede its interpretation of itselfhence self-grounding or free, in a way in which the relation of self to object is not; and freedom in this sense is the condition of change or progress. In any case, recognition of this uconversion of consciousness," whereby the form of origination of the new object consists in the first knowledge-of-the-object becoming itself an object of knowledge, which latter is therefore knowledge of the knowledge of the object or self-consciousness, so that every self-world relationship is ultimately reducible to self-reflection-this is "our addition," (p.74) namely this is the insight possible for the first time at the end of history and in the mode of recollection. Compared with the insight into the inner form of all acII WINTER 1986 �tual transitions from one shape of consciousness to another, the other insight possible for the first time at the end of history, namely the insight into the principle of "determinate negations," (p.69) whereby the external order of the shapes of consciousness is constituted into an intelligible progression, is of secondary importance and, indeed, is derivative from the first insight. That is, on the basis of the insight into the form of transition as such, the relation of any shape to any other shape can be made intelligible. Thus the final "shape" is not a shape at all but rather the shape of shapes or the idea of ideas, i.e., the final object of knowledge is not an object, not even the knowledge of an object, but pure knowledge of knowledge as such. That is, what has been effective as moving throughout finally becomes perfectly conscious of itself. If the final "shape" is no shape at all but rather the shape of shapes, hence beyond discourse of the kind which is appropriate to shapes as such, then indeed one may follow Heidegger in asserting that the "way of the soul" re-created by the Phenomenology does not lead through false appearances into the true appearance (~Being), but rather that from the standpoint of absolute knowledge one beholds "the appearing of that which appears" which appearing is not itself an appearance or: Being is not itself an entity. But we must emphasize one thing which Heidegger ignores, namely that if the ultimate "shape" is a shape of shapes, hence no true shape, then the penultimate shape becomes of very great interest indeed. It is the shape highest in rank and must to a unique degree imitate the "shape" which is, as the shape of shapes, beyond shape. That penultimate shape is presented by Hegel as arising from the convergence of the critique of the beautiful soul as the necessary consequence of the French Revolution with re-enactment of the passion of Christ. We shall later have occasion to try to understand this. Here we may remark in conclusion that Hegel's notion of 11 determinate negation" has in itself always possessed considerable evidence, as for example in the case of Nietzsche's 11 paganism," which as essentially antiChristian is necessarily post-Christian, hence fundamentally different from all naive or immediate "paganism." But that "determinate negations" can be seen from the standpoint of the end of history to have been necessarynamely, not only did the earlier, because negated by the later, make a difference to the later, but also, given the earlier the later could not have been otherwise-is of course a very different matter. Chapter IV Hegel and "The Problem of Knowledge" I. The first three chapters of the Phenomenology THE ST. JOHN'S REVIEW proper-on ''sense-certainty,'' ''perception'' and "understanding" -concern what is usually referred to as "the problem of knowledge": they review and criticize three significant epistemological positions. The criticism purports to be internal, to be inseparable from the review; it also of course purports to have some cogency. But it does not purport to be conclusive taken by itself. What is most characteristic about Hegel's own "theory of knowledge" is precisely that in the last resort it appeals to extra-theoretical considerations, to human praxis in the world. This means on the one hand that praxis in the sense of labor and political struggle is a test of putative theoretical truth (including the truth of "theory of knowledge"). This aspect of Hegel's thought has of course been developed by Marx and (in somewhat different terms) by American pragmatism. But it also means that theory itself is a mode of human praxis, and that that theory must take this fact about itself into account. For example, the content of natural science must somehow take into account the fact of natural science, namely the practice of certain men who are natural scientists and who have a certain experience of, e.g., wonder, freedom and purposiveness. With these considerations in mind we shall briefly examine, first, Hegel's immanent critique of the epistemologies designated by "sense-certainty," "perception" and "understanding" and his climactic appeal to a wider "practical" experience; and, second, some of his reflections on modern (Newtonian) natural science in itself and in its distinction from human science. II. Sense-certainty (sinnliche Gewissheit) is to begin with the bare apprehending of a "this-here-now." Nothing could be more certain; but, as develops in Hegel's analysis, nothing could be Jess true. For not mere pointing, but only language can be the medium of truth; and language introduces the universal-"now," applying indifferently to all particular moments, is itself non-particular or universal-which is therefore the truth of sense-certainty. One could perhaps hold that mere pointing rather than language is the medium of truth; but one could not say so without self-contradiction. This according to Hegel is the flaw of all positivistic epistemologies: in declaring that only the individual and not the universal truly is, they overlook the fact that "the individual" is the most universal concept of all. Even animals are wiser than empiricists: they are so "idealistic" as to trust things of sense as utterly insubstantialthey "eat them up." (p.87) Hegel's joke points to his contention that, although to a certain extent immanent criticism is possible, epistemological questions are answered decisively on trans-epistemological grounds. 117 �The key point about "perception" (Wahmehmung: "perceptual understan<ling" might be a better translation) is that it is identical with "sound common sense" (Menschenverstand). Ordinary common sense is superior to sense-certainty in that it admits that one must deal with universals and not with mere thises. n However, it does not go far enough; it stops short of admitting the necessity of the most "abstract" universals (which it calls mere "thought-things") which, however, secretly structure discourse. Philosophy thematizes precisely these and thus, unlike sound common sense, is not mastered by them. More specifically, common sense is obscurely aware of certain contradictions-a thing is one and many (a unity with many properties, whereby it is not clear whether the unity is contributed by the subject or the object), is self-subsistent yet involved in a network of relations with other things-but tries to minimize these contradictions by such locutions as "in so far as" and "in one aspect." Philosophy, contrastingly, apprehends such contradictions as being at the heart of reality and pursues them relentlessly. The third chapter of the Phenomenology is entitled "Force and Understanding, Appearance and the Supersensible World." The first pair of terms refers roughly to a certain interpretation of Newtonian natural science, the second pair to Kant's transcendental idealism. Hegel's criticism of Newtonian natural science is summarized in the sentence: "It is an explanation that not only explains nothing, but is so plain that, while it makes as if it would say something different from what is already said, it really says nothing at all, but merely repeats the same thing over again." (p. 119) That is, the Newtonian concept of force (Kraft), while it purports to offer insight into the nature of bodies, is actually reducible to the regularity or lawfulness observed in the motion of bodies. Hegel writes: "A law is expressed; from this its inherently universal element or ground is distinguished as force; but regarding this distinction it is asserted that it is no distinction, rather that the ground has entirely the same constitution as the law ... In other words, force has exactly the same constitution as law; both are thus declared to be in no way distinct." (p.119) This discussion anticipates the famous distinction between causality and lawfulness made by Emile Meyerson in Identity and Reality: lawfulness or regular succession is no doubt sufficient for purposes of prediction and action but science seeks understanding, namely an insight into the natures of its objects on the basis of which one can see that the effect is equal to its cause, so that "Things are thus because they were already previously thus," i.e., "the principle of causality is none other than the principle of identity applied to the existence of objects in time. " 7 Hegel's chief objection against Kantian transcendental idealism is that if there is a noumenal world, there is prac0 118 tically nothing which can be said about it-but this at least calls into serious question the very existence of the noumenal world: "The result is of course the same if you place a blind man amid the wealth of the supersensible world ... and if you place one with sight in absolute darkness or, if you like, in pure light, supposing the supersensible world to be this. The seeing man sees in that pure light as little as in absolute darkness, and just as much as the blind man in the ample wealth which lay before him." (p.112) But to say that the unknowability of the noumenal realm can as well be explained by its nonexistence as by the limited faculties of the knowing subject is not to have refuted the latter position. Indeed Hegel does not think that a strictly theoretical refutation is possible here, as becomes clear from the final paragraph of Chapter III. His declaration of what is usually called the transition from critical to absolute idealism is well-known: "It is manifest that behind the so-called curtain, which is to hide the inner world, there is nothing to be seen unless we ourselves go behind there, as much in order that we may thereby see, as that there may be something behind there which can be seen." (p.128) But the immediately following sentences, appealing to trans-theoretical experience to solve an "epistemological" problem, are equally important: "But it is clear at the same time that we cannot without more ado go directly behind there. For this knowledge of what is the truth of the notion of the realm of appearances and its inner being, is itself only a result arrived at after a long and devious process, in the course of which the shapes of consciousness 'meaning,' 'perception' and 'understanding' disappear." (p.129) That is, to know that the truth of consciousness of objects is self-consciousness-i.e., that the world of objects in which men find themselves poses no absolute limits to either their knowledge or their action-requires trans-theoretical experience. And, as Hegel concludes, to know fully what the self encounters in its radical selfencountering "requires a still wider compass" (noch weiterer Umstande bedarf). (p.129) The next chapter of the Phenomenology, entitled "Self-Consciousness," begins with the story of master and slave, originating human praxis in the form of labor (~technological transformation of nature) on the one hand and the political struggle on the other. III. To complete our sketch of Hegel's "theory of knowledge" we shall consider several aspects of his treatment of the physical science of his day in the first half of Chapter V of the Phenomenology, entitled "Reason as Observation" (Beobachtende Vemunft). We recall first by way of preliminary that the Phenomenology, which is to culminate in absolute knowledge, is according to the "Introduction'' the ''science of the experience of conscious- WINTER 1986 �ness," and consciousness is radically distinct from nature. Thus Hegel's primary interest is not in nature as such but rather in the observation of nature, namely in the experience of natural scientists. The fact that there is natural science is according to Hegel more revealing than the content of natural science at a particular time. Hegel begins his discussion of modern natural science by emphasizing that its characteristic orientation presupposes a break with common-sense experience: "Formerly, consciousness merely happened to perceive and experience much about the thing. But here it itself institutes [anstellt] the observations and the experience." (p.183) This of course echoes the famous passage in the Preface to the second edition of the Critique of Pure Reason in which Kant maintains: ''Accidental observations, made in obedience to no projected plan, can never be made to yield a necessary law, which alone reason is concerned to discover." Rather, the mind must look beyond such objects as merely happen to be given, and, in the light of a conception somehow "in advance of" what merely happens to be given (Newton's "body left to itself'' would, after all, never have been encountered ''empirically"), draw up a plan whereby nature is put under conditions "experimentally" and forced to answer questions devised by the mind, which can have "insight only into that which it brings forth according to a project of its own.'' Employing the language of Kant in the Prolegomena, one may say that whereas for ancient science Erfahrungsurteil arises "naturally" or "non-violently" out of Wahrnehmungsurteil, for modern science a kind of thinking-projecting which is inseparable from experimentation is necessary to effect this transformation. That on the modern view scientific knowledge can arise out of prescientific knowledge only through the intervention of thinking as horizon-projecting on the one hand and experimentation on the other, seems to be grounded in a denial of thaumazein, the wonder or astonishment which according to the ancients is the origin of science. This at least seems to have been the understanding of Descartes (Passions of the Soul, Part II, articles 75-77) for whom, although wonder is somehow necessary in the beginning, it must be replaced by the discipline of method: But it much more frequently occurs that we wonder too much, and that we are astonished in perceiving things which deserve little or no consideration, than that we wonder too little. And this may entirely prevent or pervert the use of reason. That is why, although it is good to be born with some inclination towards this passion, because that disposes us for the acquisition of the sciences, we must at the same time afterwards try to free ourselves from it as much as possible. For it is easy to supplement its defects by special reflection and attention which our will can always oblige our understanding to give on those occasions where we judge that the matter which presents itself is worth the trouble. THE ST. JOHN'S REVIEW However that may be, reason (in the sense of modern science), by virtue of its anticipatory project into the world, is confident of discovering itself there in what appears to be alien. By means of its project, "it plants the symbol of its sovereignty on the heights and in the depths of reality." But-and this is of decisive significance-" this superficial 'mine' is not its final and supreme interest" because "Reason has a presentiment of being a deeper reality than pure [Kantian] ego is." (p.184) Otherwise stated: reason desires to find itself in the diversity of concrete reality, not only in the "reduced" objects of mathematical natural science; the whole human being, not merely the "transcendental ego," desires to be at home in the world; reason is more than ''abstract reason,'' as Hegel puts it. To satisfy its broadest and deepest longing, reason cannot limit itself to mathematical natural science, i.e., to a world of "reduced" objects; rather it must "descend into the depths of its own being, and seek reason there rather than in things." (p.184) Having found itself in man's spiritual (~historical) experience, reason can then turn back to the world of ("reduced") natural objects, whose truest significance, in the light of which its other possible determinations must be seen, is to be the setting in which human development toward perfect self-consciousness occurs. As regards Hegel's discussion of particular questions within the natural sciences, we shall limit ourselves to three topics: the problem of causation within mechanics; the difference in principle between inorganic and organic being and the prefiguration by the latter of the life of Geist; and the difference in principle between natural and human science on the ground that "man's being is his act." 1. Mechanics seeks the laws of motion of bodies. The question arises whether such laws can be necessary or must be merely contingent or empirical. Kant rightly saw that laws could be necessary-and Hegel agrees with Kant that "unnecessary laws" are no laws at all-only if nature is apprehended as "experience/' that is, in concepts (Begriffen). Here he was right against Hume. He was wrong however in thinking that such Begriffen are merely subjective: "the concept sets itself forth in the form of thinghood and sensuous existence." (p.189) Necessary connection according to Hegel is not our contribution; it is given in nature. He offers the following analysis: The law that all dropped stones fall does not require that every existing stone has been dropped and has fallen; nor does it mean that many stones have been dropped and have fallen, so that by analogy we can affirm a "high probability" that the next one will likewise fall. There is a difference of essence between "so far every time" and "must necessarily." Not mere induction, but "insight into the pure concept" in addition to induction is required before one can speak of truth rather than mere probabil- 119 �ity. For example, "that a stone falls is true for consciousness, because to it the stone is heavy, i.e., because in weight, taken in itself as such, the stone has that essential relation to the earth expressed in the fact of falling." (p.191) How can a stone be heavy "to consciousness"? precisely because for Hegel, contrary to Descartes and Hume, consciousness is not disembodied, is not mere "detached" beholding. That consciousness according to Hegel is essentially incamate is strikingly clear from his account of the origin of self-consciousness in the struggle between master and slave-the constitutive character of fear of death would be impossible with respect to Descartes' thinking substance. More prosaically, it is clear from his anti-Cartesian theory of organism, of which we shall speak briefly below. Thus Hegel holds that we do not, contrary especially to Hume, merely behold drop/fall sequences, but rather exist bodily in a world: much of our experience is non-theoretical in a literal sense~that is, it consists in something other than ("detached'') looking. Therefore such concepts as "weight" (more generally: "force" and "resistance") are available to us-in the mode of actum rather than datum as Hans Jonas has put it-and form the basis of our projection of the world as nature. Given that projection, Hegel goes on to say, we interrogate particular happenings in certain pre-specified ways; we take them as instances of types rather than as mere individuals. Crucial to this abstraction from their individuality is experimentation. Experiment seems to plunge reason further into the empirical and contingent, but the opposite is actually the case: the experiment is regulated according to a transempirical project (e.g., "a body left to itself") and the varying of conditions aims at the greatest possible generality. 2. Hegel insists upon the difference in principle between inorganic and organic being. His orientation on fhe whole is decidedly Aristotelian, especially against the background of the Cartesianism which pervades modem biology generally. In particular, Hegel restores the Aristotelian concept of soul as "the organic substance qua inner" (p.199) over against fhe Cartesian concept according to which soul is identical with consciousness (which is understood primarily as pure thinking) and is possessed only by man, so that "animals" are merely automata-explicable wholly in mechanical terms-which exhibit a certain class of behavior. Not only does Hegel permit soul as inwardness-in-general to extend downward through animals to plants (though, contrary to Spinoza and Leibniz, not to all being as such) but also, again like Aristotle, he understands soul primarily as activity, namely the activity of maintaining organic individuality as constant form through change of matter: "The activity as such is nothing but the pure insubstantial form of its being for itself ... and the purpose of the activity does not fall outside the activity." (p.198) Indeed, only 120 with respect to organic being can we even speak of individuality in the strict sense: "the 'individuum' consists in preserving itself [sich erhalten] in relation to another" and inorganic being fails this test: "What, however, stands on a still lower level [than plants] cannot any longer distinguish itself from another; it gets lost when it comes into opposition" (p.188) as, for example, in chemical reactions. The activity by which organic being preserves itself through active commerce with its world must be understood in terms of intrinsic purpose: ''the organic is in fact the real purpose itself" which is to say that "the last or the result is just as much the first which starts the movement, and is to itself the purpose which it realizes. The organic brings nothing forth, but rather merely preserves itself, or what is brought forth is as much already present as brought forth." (p.l95) A remarkable assertion follows: uThis is exactly, however, the way self-consciousness is constituted." (p.l96) Organic life is an analogue and, so to speak, prefiguration of the life of Geist. The sole difference between them, Hegel says here, is that organic life attains only to self-feeling (Selbstgefuhl) whereas human life, as the vessel of Geist, attains to self-consciousness. But both must be understood with reference to the effective presence of telos in the beginning, whereby "what is brought forth is as much already present as brought forth." This creates great difficulties for Kojeve's interpretation, according to which human freedom is essentially creativity, i.e., the faculty of bringing into existence something which has never been before. 3. In the final sections of "Reason as Observation" Hegel makes an emphatic distinction between natural science and human science: the methods appropriate to the former produce only confustion when applied to the latter. He takes this matter up under the heading of "psychology" on the one hand and "physiognomy and phrenology" on the other. Psychology according to Hegel (he has in mind of course its pre-Freudian varieties) attempts to explain individual behavior in terms of environment: "the given circumstances, place, habits, customs, religion and so forth." (p.225) But psychology overlooks the fact that the individual creates a "world" out of a mere environment through his choices; or if he does not choose, it is because he has chosen not to choose. Thus "a world for the individual" can have either of two meanings: "It is fhe world of the individual only insofar as this individual was merely fused and blended with it, had let that world, just as it is, pass into his own nature, and had taken up towards it merely the attitude of a formal consciousness; or on the other hand it is the owrld of the individual in the sense in which the given has been transformed by him." If a man becomes a thing, it is because he has so chosen, and thereby he is not a thing: "the individual either lets the stream of reality flowing WINTER 1986 �in upon him have its way, or breaks off and diverts the current of its influence." (p.226) Psychology according to Hegel must admit that individuals with like environments have different "worlds"; it now tries to account for this fact in terms of differences in individual bodies, transforming itself into physiognomy and phrenology. There is a certain valid ground for this attempt, Hegel holds, in the peculiar psychophysical unity of man: body is not only a condition but also an expression of spirit-here one may think of Hegel's discussion of Greek gymnastic as "living work of art." Man is essentially incarnate and worldly; therefore, for example, the audible word is not a mere sign but an expression of thought; in a way the outer not merely indicates but actually gives the inner. Thus Hegel's objection against physiognomy and phrenology (and in general any anthropology which treats man as a thing) is not that it attempts to read the inner in the outer-Hegel agrees that what remains purely inner cannot strictly speaking be known; for reasons which we must discuss when taking up the "critique of the beautiful soul," Hegel is very doubtful about the value of introspection-but rather that it attempts to read the inner in the outer as (static) being rather than as act. He writes, against any such "naturalistic" anthropology: "The true being of a man is, on the contrary, his act; in it his individuality is actual." And again: "Individuality exposes itself (stellt sich dar) in action as the negative essence which only is insofar as it cancels (aufhebt) being." (p.236) We may amplify this last remark by observing that what is meant is the cancellation of being (i.e., of what is merely given) both within and without the actor himself, who changes himself in and through changing the world. One may restate Hegel's argument by saying that the "naturalistic" anthropologies against which he contends are ''deterministic'' and hence miss human freedom, but this is adequate to Hegel's intention only if one understands by "freedom" not "freedom of choice" but rather the capacity to bring something new into the world through action, which ncreation/' however, presupposes negation or destruction, at least as regards ''form,'' of what has been before. Chapter V Self-Consciousness and Historical Praxis I. With self-consciousness "we have now passed into the realm where truth is at home." (p.134) Life is the soil of which self-consciousness grows (although its "growth" can hardly be characterized as ''natural'' -at least not in Aristotle's sense-since the decisive moment in that "growth" consists in its radically opposing itself to its origin, namely to life) and the core of life is desire. Desire THE ST. JOHN'S REVIEW mediates between consciousness of objects as other and consciousness that otherness is mere appearance. This latter consciousness is equivalent to self-consciousness: the self is conscious that the end or truth of objects is itself, so that consciousness of objects collapses into selfconsciousness, i.e., the otherness of objects is revealed to be mere appearance. This is not to say that "intellect" precedes 0 Will": desire is so to speak experimental or dialectical and, moreover, on the level of mere animalistic existence, is a failure-otherness turns out to be more than mere appearance. Desire and satisfaction with respect to particular natural objects constitute a neverending cycle; animals depend on things, experiencing only occasionally interrupted need; otherness as such is not overcome. Without the overcoming of otherness, whereby the self achieves its independence from nature as such (as distinct from the annihilation of particular natural objects) self-consciousness is not possible; animals therefore lack self-consciousness. Independence of the self from nature as such, hence self-consciousness, can result only from the self's radical denial of its natural neediness, its need for natural objects; that is, from the self's voluntary exposure to death (non-being): the self must show that "it is fettered to no determinate existence." (p.144) The fundamental motive for that denial and that exposure according to Hegel is not, for example, the love of a friend for whom one would lay down one's life, but rather the desire for "recognition'' or prestige, which is an irreducible human datum. Recognition, however, can be conferred by no mere natural object, but only by another (incipient) selfconsciousness. One must speak of an "incipient" selfconsciousness for the reason that ''self-consciousness exists in and for itself ... only as something recognized" (p.141); that is, one's mere certainty of oneself (whatever the content of that certainty at a particular time: in the beginning each self is certain of himself as the sole center of existence; in the end it is only one's human dignity as such which is affirmed) is raised to the level of objective truth only by the mediation of social recognition. With this qualification one may say that "self-consciousness attains its satisfaction only in another selfconsciousness." (p .139) Hence ensues a life and death struggle for pure prestige between two self-consciousnesses, each bent on enforcing recognition-by which his subjective certainty will be transformed into objective truth-that he alone is the center of existence. If one submits to the other in order to forestall death (failing which "contingency," according to Hegel, there would have been no history), a master-slave relation is established. The relationship is mediated by nature in the dual sense that fear of nature's death is the slave's strongest motive-the motive which originated and sustains his servile condition-and that the 121 �slave technologically transforms nature for the delectation of the master. But the master's conquest is futile: he is recognized as an autonomous consciousness by a cons- ciousness whose autonomy he himself does not recognize. Master consciousness, oscillating between bloody struggle for prestige and effortless consumption, is a dead end: its sole historical function is to arouse servile consciousness: "But as lordship showed its essential nature to be the reverse of what it wants to be, so too bondage will, when completed, pass into the opposite of what it immediately is: being a consciousness repressed within itself, it will enter into itself, and change round into an authentic independence." (pp.147-8) It is above all by labor (Arbeit, which in some contexts is better translated as "work") that servile consciousness changes itself. Labor is "desire restrained," (pp .148-9) satisfaction postponed (one may think, for example, of the making of tools, whereby immediate consumption is foregone in favor of increased or refined consumption at a later time); in this sense one may say that labor requires and develops the power of abstraction, of liberation from absorption in immediate wants. Not only is material nature technologically transformed thereby, but "culture" in general-language, poetry and philosophy-is also generated by servile consciousness, whose principles are fear of violent death and the renunciation of prestige or glory (although the desire for recognition in the widest sense-recognition of one's dignity though not of one's superiority-is not renounced). Through its achievements servile consciousness gains self-confidence, i.e., achieves genuine self-consciousness. For this process both fear and labor are absolutely indispensable. Without labor "fear remains inward and mute" (p.149); that is, it produces neither a transformed world nor a transformed self. Without fear of death (deepened and made allpervasive-in contradistinction to mere haphazard animal fear-by the abiding presence of the master, which presence now of course is "intellectual" rather than u sen- suous" as at the time of the actual battle) labor might transform the world, but the transformation would lack range and depth (would be the work, as Kojeve puts it, of a "reformer" rather than a "revolutionary"); might transform the self, but the self-confidence produced would be frivolous, lacking in ultimate seriousness. It is important to realize that here for once-in contrast to all that Hegel so often says concerning how great deeds are brought about by "unwitting" agents-the advantage which the slave has over the master is ultimately a matter of knowledge: in being shaken to the core of his existence by fear of "death, the absolute master," (p.148) the slave has a deeper knowledge of the true human situation than does the master. In any case, given both labor and fear of violent death, we are on the road to freedom, which for Hegel as for Plato is equivalent to wisdom and 122 which is further equivalent, for Hegel but not for Plato, to the plenitude of self-consciousness. The passage which we have been considering is of great importance for an understanding of Hegel's thought as a whole, and in particular for an understanding of his conception of the relation between theory and practice as well as for an understanding of the relation between Hegel and Marx. Therefore we shall pause to offer the following questions and reflections: 1. Who is the more "political" thinker, Hegel or Marx? In one respect one may certainly say that Marx's thought is more political, namely in the sense that he issues a call for revolution, whereas Hegel's philosophy of the state (The Philosophy of Right) is purely contemplative, i.e., concerned to exhibit the essential rationality of what is already present, whereby Hegel emphasizes that no meaningful deeds remain to be performed. In another respect, however, Hegel's thought is more political than that of Marx: for Marx-surely for the late Marx-the movement of history is propelled by changes in modes of production and property relations, of which political struggle is a mere "reflection"; for Hegel, political struggle in the sense of struggle for recognition or prestige is antecedent to all production and property: that the slave transforms nature at the behest of the master is only the sign and consequence of a struggle waged for purely "ideal" values. Moreover, there is a way in which Marx's thought differs from that of Hegel not only by being economic-deterministic where Hegel's is political, but even by being individualistic where Hegel's is social. That is, in the Manuscripts of 1844 Marx insists that private property is the result, not the cause, of human selfalienation, and that although man's self-alienation is worked out among other men, the ''original sin'' was radically individualistic, consisting in man's rebellion against his species life, as if labor could be a mere means to a higher (private) end, instead of being the essentially human activity expressive of man's (species) dominion over nature. It is true that Marx later-even by 1845-seems to have dropped this conception. And we must add that it is also questionable how far Hegel's conception of the •fundamental structures of human existence is actually social, i.e., how far it necessarily postulates the existence of a plurality of men. At first glance it appears that Hegel places an enormous emphasis on the radically social character of human existence: he insists that selfconsciousness exists only by being recognized by another self-consciousness; the social is partly constitutive of the individual. But by "the social" Hegel does not ultimately mean "men in their plurality" as can already be seen from several passages characterizing the "society" constituted by the life and death struggle which issues in the master-slave relationship. Hegel says of this "society" that it is essentially a unitary self-consciousness which WINTER 1986 �"breaks itself up into two extremes" (p.142) which "qua extremes, are opposed to one another, and of which one is merely recognized, while the other only recognizes." (p.143) But the true reality is the unitary (though of course not static) self-consciousness of the "society"; the duality of the two self-consciousnesses who engage in the life and death struggle is somehow a kind of foreground illusion. The sort of interpretation in which Hegel indulges here is of course possible only in retrospect; for Marx, insofar as he not only looks forward to but also calls for a meaningful revolution, the evidently opposing forces within society can hardly be seen as a mere foreground refraction of a societal self-consciousness (whether as such or as a "reflection" of material factors) which is essentially one-though containing oppositions-and unfolds according to its own law. 2. Does the slave really want to become something different from a master? We have seen that according to Hegel master-consciousness is a blind-alley: the master is not satisfied because he is recognized only by a selfconsciousness which he himself does not recognize in the same way. Therefore only servile consciousness can be "progressive." No doubt the slave has powerful incentives for transcending his condition; the question is, toward what will he transcend it. Hegel tacitly assumes, and Kojeve explicitly states, that the slave does not desire to become a master; therefore, discontent with being a slave and not desiring to become a master, he must in transforming himself create a ''new man.'' History is the story of the creation by servile consciousness of the new man. But is it true that the slave does not wish to become a master, to lord it over those who have lorded it over him or failing that, to lord it over someone? Are not resentment and revenge likely to come into play in revolutionary situations, as the analyses of Nietzsche and others have suggested? To this one might reply, as Marx would presumably have replied, that the empirical motives of those engaging in the revolution are irrelevant; what alone is decisive is the set of objective conditions-on the one hand the advanced stage of technological development and on the other the extreme concentration of private wealth into the hands of very few-because of which for the first time in history a class can emancipate itself without enslaving another class. But even if Marx is justified in making this claim (which one may doubt), Hegel would not be justified in making a similar claim. For Marx there is no prestige-battle as constitutive of human consciousness; the master-slave relationship which assumes various guises throughout history is economically motivated as it is economically "justified": in the beginning man is radically needy and impotent vis a vis nature; only by a kind of species asceticism, submitted to by bourgeois (who must for reasons of competition re-invest rather than consume) as well as proletarian (who cannot afford THE ST. JOHN'S REVIEW to consume), has man's original weakness vis a vis nature been transformed into tremendous power. In the measure that one must speak of motives at all, the driving motive of history according to Marx is greed, and greed is meaningless when a practically unlimited supply of material goods becomes available. For Hegel, however, not the desire for material goods but rather the desire for recognition is decisive, and recognition, unless its meaning somehow be transformed in the course of history, is always only limitedly available. That is, according to the original meaning of recognition, to be recognized is to have one's certainty of being the center of existence, for whose sake all objects (including wouldbe subjects) exist, socially confirmed. lf the extension of recognition from one master to a class of masters and ultimately to all men is the goal of history, surely one may ask whether the finally achieved recognition of each by all will have the same power to satisfy which the originally sought recognition had. Strangely enough, it may be more pqssible to make so-called "material values" superabundantly available than it is to make certain at least of the so-called "ideal values" superabundantly available, and this makes the notion of an "end of history" even more problematical in a Hegelian than in a Marxian context-all this on the assumption, that is, that the master-slave dialectic is so exclusively constitutive for Hegel's conception of historical movement as Kojeve takes it to be. This one may doubt, as is indicated by the following brief consideration of the role of deathconsciousness in Hegel's philosophy. 3. The slave is enslaved according to Hegel by his fear of death which moves him to submit to the master; therefore his ultimate liberation require& that he overcome his fear of death. The slave's fear of death is his inability to transcend or ''abstract from'' his natural being and thereby from nature in general. In labor, however, the slave technologically transforms nature, cancels its original form and imposes on it a form originated by himself. This no doubt constitutes a kind a transcendence of nature: "In cancelling the actual form confronting it," servile consciousness is "destroying precisely the alien reality before which it trembled." (p.l49) But Hegel does not suppose that even with the conquest of nature to the greatest extent (the only limit being, apparently, man's natural mortality), its transformation into a world of which man alone is the measure, fear of death automatically disappears. (We ourselves perhaps have some reason to think that under such conditions fear of death is more easily covered up and kept from view, however.) Rather, the slave's fear of death must somehow be overcome by a specific conscious act. The precise character of this act in Hegel's conception is difficultto determine. Kojeve offers this account": The slave is enslaved because he is unwilling to risk his life in a struggle to the death. 123 �Therefore, before servility can be finally overcome and the new man fully created, the slave must overcome his fear of death by risking his life in political struggle. Various ideologies-e.g., Stoicism, Christianity-are mere evasions and postponements of what is finally inevitable, namely that the slave risk his life in bloody revolution. According to Hegel the French Revolution is the crucial revolution, and the Terror, imposed by slaves on slaves (there being in the strict sense no masters since the demise of paganism, i.e., the victory of Christianity) is the experience in which modern man achieved adequate death-consciousness as essential to adequate selfconsciousness in general. Adequate death-consciousness means not only acceptance of the finality of death, of the radical mortality of man, all hopes of an afterlife being abandoned, but rather, in addition, sati~faction (which is not to say happiness) in human mortality, on the ground that if man were not mortal, i.e., if there were a God, there would be a being of infinite worth which owed nothing to human cr ation, and this would affront man's infinite pride, whic, can be "satisfied" only on condition that human exit ~nee be as nearly causa sui as possible, so that if an irrec cible "givenness" remainsthe fact of Being as such-, can be discounted as virtually worthless. (We may a< that for Kojeve communist revolution fits the Hegeliar. i.teria better than the French revolution, though he faults J\: 'll"X for not insisting on the necessarily violent character of the revolution, i.e., on the way in which revolutionary violence as such is constitutive of the consciousness of the "new man.") There is, however, a great difficulty with Kojeve' s interpretation. That is, in his discussion of the French revolution, Hegel indeed speaks of the centrality of the experience of death to the Terror, but he characterizes that experience as follows: "It is thus the most coldblooded and meaningless death of all, with no more significance than cleaving a head of cabbage or swallowing a draught of water." (p.418) Such an experience of death hardly qualifies as constitutive of the perfectly adequate self-consciousness the achievement of which is to bring history to an end. Yet there is no doubt that a new attitude toward death arising in the wake of the French revolution, namely in Hegel's interpretation of the French revolution, is a crucial element in the transformation of philosophy into wisdom which is accomplished by the end of the Phenomenology. But that attitude toward death, as we shall see in the seventh chapter of this essay, is essentially the product of Hegel's "recollection" of the experience of Christ on the cross, and while that attitude may not be identical with resignation, neither is it identical with the satisfaction of man's pride in his self-creation. "Reconciliation," which is from the outset the goal of Hegel's philosophic effort, is a highly ambiguous matter. For the 124 present we may conclude that although the master-slave dialectic is of great importance for Hegel, it is not so farreaching as Kojeve' s interpretation would have it: in particular, Hegel's death-concept derives primarily from sources other than the revolutionary experiences generated by the dialectic of master and slave. II. After the section setting forth the story of master and slave, Hegel takes up, under the heading of "Freedom of Self-Consciousness," the phenomena of Stoicism, skepticism and Unhappy consciousness" (i.e., primarily but not exclusively the self-consciousness of medieval Christendom). These are the products of servile consciousness on its way toward freedom. With regard to Stoicism in particular it is important to realize that although Hegel alludes to Marcus Aurelius and Epictetus (saying that Stoicism exists "on the throne as well as in fetters" (p.153)), he actually has in mind the attitude of classical philosophy altogether (especially Plato and Aristotle), of which the Stoical school of late antiquity was so to speak the popular outcome. This is clear from the breadth of his characterization of Stoicism: ''Its principle is that consciousness is a thinking being, and that anything is really essential for consciousness, or is true and good, only when consciousness in dealing with it adopts the attitude of a thinking being." (p.152) What Hegel intends can perhaps be understood by reflection upon the following passage from Aristotle's De Anima (408;sub26-30), if one remembers that the primary question concerns not the immortality of the soul but rather the unity of the soul as such, which is to say the unity of the human person as such: "Discursive thinking, loving and hating are affections not of the mind (nous), but rather of the individual which possesses the mind, insofar as it does so. Memory and love fail when this perishes; for they were never part of the mind, but of the whole entity which has perished. Presumably the mind is something more divine, and is unaffected." One may say that according to Hegel's implicit interpretation, the philosophers of classical antiquity were somehow able forcibly to focus the full flame of their human hopes into the "part" of themselves which could make purely contemplative contact with reality. That part satisfied, they were happy. To speak of "human !,opes" as the origin of philosophy and of a "forcible" solution to the problems they pose is perfectly in keeping with an important tenet of Hegel according to which the function of philosophy from the beginning is to provide "reconciliation with reality," which presupposes an original disharmony between man and reality, as Hegel makes explicit in his first published writing, "The Difference between Fichte's and Schelling's Systems," in which he states: "Estrangement [Entzweiung] is the source of the 11 WINTER 1986 �need of philosophy [Beduerfnis der Philosophie] ... When the power of unilication has disappeared from the lives of men, and the opposites have lost their live relationship and interaction and reach independence, the need of philosophy emerges." 9 This conception of the origin of philosophy, of course, stands in the greatest possible contrast to the Platonic conception according to which the origin of philosophy is thaumazein, the admiring wonder at all that is; which wonder, moreover, is for Plato a pathos, or a condition into which man is thrown, so that there is no question of the philosopher's achieving a "reconciliation" by any kind of deliberate action on himself. In any case Hegel says of the Stoical attitude, or of the attitude of classical philosophy in general: "Freedom of thought takes only pure thought as its truth, and this lacks the concrete filling of life. It is, therefore, merely the concept of freedom, not living freedom itself.'' (p.153) His most exact charge against Stoicism is this: "the content is indeed held to be only thought, but is thereby also taken to be determinate thought, and thereby determinateness as such." (p.154) This seems to be a strange objection. Surely in Hegel's view the concept of a thing . must be determinate, i.e., the concept of the thing must receive its detenninations from the thing. However, what Hegel means is that prior to political struggle and labor, detenninations are imposed on thought from without by what is simply given. After the world has been "rationalized" through political struggle and labor-i.e., rendered conformable to universal human desires-although determinations still seem to be imposed from without, they are imposed by what has already been transformed by man. That is, things impose their determinations on conceptual thought only after their determinations have been imposed on them by man; so thought is ultimately subject to no foreign determinations but, by the end of history, encounters only itself wherever it goes, and this in a far more radical way than Kant had ever imagined. Thus Stoical consciousness is inadequate; it asks for too little; it attempts to think itself out of that world which is the authentic correlate of human hope in all its breadth and depth. Stoicism perishes, finding its nemesis in skepticism, "this polemical attitude toward the manilold independence of things," (p.155) which defines itself in theory as solipsism (only oneself is real) and in practice as nihilism (one regards no norms as binding). Hegel's essential objection to skepticism so understood is simple: it fails to meet the criterion, for Hegel a most important criterion, of unity of theory and practice-"Its deeds and its words continually contradict each other." For example, "It announces the nullity of seeing, hearing and so on, yet itself sees and hears. It proclaims the nothingness of essential ethical principles, and makes those very truths the sinews of its own conduct." (p.157) 1HE ST. JOHN'S REVIEW Ill. Unhappy consciousness unites consciousness of master and slave into one, and its whole being is constituted by awareness of self-contradiction: specifically, the changeable experiences itself as null in relation to the unchangeable, toward which it is drawn only to be repulsed. Unhappy consciousness is primarily Jewish consciousness-in early manuscripts which he never published Hegel characterizes Abraham as the prototypal stranger on earth-and in this sense we are all Jews, always. Absolute pain and longing, consciousness of sin and hope for redemption, give to existence a depth and seriousness unknown, for example, to the selfaffirmation and -celebration of the human in Greek religion. The historic mission of the Jewish people is to spread its longing across the face of the earth. Jewish existence, though never simply left behind, is superseded by the event of Christ, which is in turn superseded, without being left behind, by existence under the reign of the Holy Ghost (by which Hegel understands the community of Christians coming to adequate selfconsciousness). World history since the death of Christ is the story of this coming to self-consciousness, and thereby of the full reconciliation of the human and the divine. We shall at this stage of the Phenomenology view this developing reconciliation from the human side, but it is necessary, and will later be possible according to Hegel, to view it as well from the side of the divine, from which, for example, the birth of the child in the manger would appear not as a mere contingency but in its necessity. Since, however, at this stage the reconciliation is seen as initiated by the divine from without human consciousness and therefore, according to Hegel, as contingent, the remoteness of the divine from the human (of the "beyond" from the "here") is not overcome but merely transformed into a remoteness in historical time (''then'' and ''now''). The experience of such remoteness constitutes the existence of the medieval church, as the ''movement of an infinite yearning.'' Of understanding it has little: "Its thinking as such is no more than the discordant clang of ringing bells or a cloud of warm incense, a kind of musical thinking, that does not reach the level of concepts, which would be the sole immanent objective mode of thought." (p .163) And yet, even as such, it is superior to either Stoicism or skepticism (as the outcome of classical Greek philosophy) precisely because it demands much more: it attempts radically to stay with the world. To suffer from the remoteness of truth is to yearn that truth be fully present. Unhappy consciousness holds together, and therefore suffers from the contradiction between, what Greek philosophy had sundered: "pure thinking and particular existence (Einzelnheit)." (p.162) Again, Hegel would seem to have in mind all that is symbolized by the "impersonality" of the so-called 125 �agent intellect (in Aristotle's De Anima), in which there is nothing of love, hate or memory, but as which man exists when he performs the highest activity of which he is capable, so that when Thomas Aquinas calls Aristotle "the Philosopher," the meaning is not so much that Aristotle is the greatest philosopher as that all philosophers, insofar as they philosophize truly, are indistinguishable, hence nameless. With this one may contrast the enormous importance of personal names and changes of names in both the Old Testament (e.g., Abram becomes Abraham) and the New Testament (Simon becomes Peter, Saul becomes Paul). Such considerations as these seem to be present to Hegel's mind when he contends that the biblical orientation does justice to human individuality (Einzelnheit) in a way in which the classical understanding of man does not. In Hegel's view it remains for a still higher form of selfconsciousness than that of medieval Christendom to "rise to that level of thinking where the particularity of consciousness is harmoniously reconciled with pure thinking itself." (p.163) But unlike Greek philosophy, which settled for too little, the unhappy consciousness of medieval Christendom at least presents the fully human demand intransigently. The symbol of the defectiveness of this existence (of the non-coincidence within of certainty and truth) is that after all the "trouble, toil and struggle" (p.164) of the Crusades, only the grave of Jesus is discovered. There now arises, conditioned by the first stage, the second stage between the event of Christ and the fullness of time, namely Reformation this-worldliness. (Hegel makes the incidental suggestion that the Reformation and the Renaissance were not so different: the difference lay perhaps in how frankly one enjoyed this world.) The Reformation turn toward this-worldliness, if not inspired by otherworldly motives (in the sense of Weber's famous interpretation), is at least understood with reference to another world in which men still believe. From this understanding there results a certain ambivalence, guilty conscience, hypocrisy and secret pride. Protestant consciousness is characterized by the rejection of idolatry (the unchangeable cannot be confined by a "mere shape") and by a "thanks-giving" or confession of its own nullity (the doctrine of predestination or at least of man as depraved). Every man a priest, the world is interesting again: production leads to enjoyment. Yet although the turn to this-worldliness is necessary, there is something spurious about Protestantism at this level: its humility is suspect. It does after all enjoy the world and accomplish much, and its declaration of its nothingness before God is after all its act, which has a kind of greatness. A third, post-Reformation stage is therefore necessary, namely (though not unambiguously) the Catholic 126 counter-Reformation. This third attitude, which "follows from the second" (i.e., from the turn toward thisworldliness) is asceticism, broadly understood. It differs from pre-Reformation otherworldliness (and is thereby conditioned by the Reformation) in that it renounces a mastery of the world and a "freedom of consciousness" which are seen as actual possibilities-the face of the earth has actually begun to be changed. Medieval Christendom somehow knew no other way than its own; postReformation Catholicism does. Under this third dispensation, it is in the "functions of animal life" that the enemy (the devil) is seen "in his proper and peculiar shape." This enemy "creates itself in its very defeat" (p .168)-that is, the way not to be dominated by the flesh is not to contend against it but rather to pay it no special heed. Moreover, this form of self-consciousness surrenders its freedom of thought and action (decision) to a priesthood; it even submits to using a language (Latin) which it does not understand. Yet for all the respects in which it is regressive, it somehow has a greater depth than immediate Protestantism. This is a very important fact, which must be borne in mind when one is considering the "Lutheranism" of Hegel's later, more popular presentations as, for example, the Philosophy of History. Thus the self-renunciation which characterizes this third attitude is more sincere than is Protestant "thanksgiving," which too willingly accepts dominion over the earth, and whose declaration of its own nothingness is somehow prideful, as a sign of which it would not submit to using a language it did not understand. The third stage is in a way closer to the truth: to negate one's particular will is implicitly to affirm universal will, even though falsely mediated by priests. There is a kind of secular self-confidence without depth, to which simple Protestantism is somehow inclined; one can be at home in the world in a shallow way. There must be a kind of counter-weight: the counter-Reformation broadly understood is a form of eternally necessary Jewish consciousness which forever forbids human beings to be satisfied with the merely human. In any case, only now, and not after the Reformation as such, can one say that "there has risen the idea of Reason," (p.171) i.e., German Idealism as culminating in Hegel has become possible. There is, however, something very curious about Hegel's discussion of what we have taken to be primarily the Catholic counter-Reformation. This becomes clear from the first page of Chapter V of the Phenomenology, immediately following the discussion of unhappy consciousness, which it summarizes as follows. Reason is the certainty that individual consciousness is inherently absolute reality. That certainty is accomplished once for all (in principle) with the life and death of Christ, but it remains to be fully elaborated. Essential to that elaboration WINTER 1986 �is not mere Protestant consciousness as such, which is too individualistic, but Protestant consciousness mediated by an experience in which "the individual (Einzelne) has renounced itself" while at the same time becoming, vis a vis "unchangeable consciousness" nreconciled to it." (p.175) It appears at first from Hegel's discussion that this experience is identical with counter-Reformation priestly asceticism: the mediator between individual consciousness and unchangeable consciousness who brings about renunciation from the side of the former and reconciliation from the side of the latter, and who is "directly aware of both" and "the consciousness of their unity which it proclaims to consciousness and thereby to itself" (p.l75) and is thereby "the certainty of b.eing all truth" would appear to be the (Catholic) priesthood. And yet in view of the enterprise of the Phenomenology as a whole and of the crucial function within that enterprise of the "critique of the beautiful soul" (compare Chapter VI of this essay), it appears that one must finally identify the mediator in question with Hegel himself, who requires from the "critic" of the "hero" that he renounce his claim qua individual, while showing the "critic" that qua universal he is reconciled to the divine, so thatthe true "counter-Reformation"-consisting in the self-renunciation of the "individual"-is Hegel's understanding of the French Revolution, and the true priestmediator is Hegel himself. These remarks cannot be fully intelligible until a later section of this essay: suffice it for now to say that Hegel's discussion of what must roughly be designated as the "counter-Reformation" as a stage in the advance of Spirit superior to Protestant consciousness as such, in a certain way prefigures that peculiar modification of Christian consciousness in which Hegelian wisdom itself consists and which Hegel regards as bringing history to its end. Chapter VI History as Tragedy I. Chapter VI of the Phenomenology, entitled "Spirit" (Geist), differs from the preceding five chapters in that they treated, as Hegel now puts it, of abstractions, while it is concerned with the concrete: they treated of individual psychic orientations while it considers temporally successive social worlds. Briefly: while they were analytic or archetypal, it is historical ,regarding in turn Greek ethical life, Roman abstract legal order, and the tension between civilization and faith in the Middle Ages; then the Enlightenment, which resolves the tension but misinterprets what it has done; then the French Revolution; and finally the several varieties of post-Revolutionary moral consciousness culminating in the ''critique of the beautiful soul." We shall defer consideration of Hegel's presen- THE ST. JOHN'S REVIEW tation of the Enlightenment critique of religious faith until the next chapter, and shall in the present chapter sketch the main lines of Hegel's interpretaiton of Greek ethical life, the French Revolution, and the critique of the beautiful soul. II. Hegel begins the chapter on Spirit by discussing Greek Sittlichkeit, which we may translate by "ethical life" or "ethical existence," keeping in mind that Sitte means primarily "custom" or "usage." Sittlichkeit is for Hegel the antithesis of Moralitat, by which Hegel understands above all Kant's purely formal morality (the principle of non-contradiction given imperative form), to remedy the (literal) insubstantiality of which is one of the original impulses of Hegel's philosophy in general. Hegel gives the following account of Greek ethical existence: "The simple (einfache) substance of Spirit, as consciousness, divides itself into parts (teilt sich)." (p.318) Greek Sittlichkeit essentially constitutes itself in a two-fold way: as human law, the law of the polis (Hegel's word is Volk) and as divine law; the former being reflective (akin perhaps to "regimen in Aristotle's sense, i.e., the conscious purpose of the authoritative part of the community), the latter unreflective or inunediate. The two stand in contrast: on the one hand "the Penates of the family," on the other "universal Spirit" as that which "shapes and preserves itself by work (Arbeit) for the universal." (p.320) There is essentially one and only one ethical act which is not political (i.e., which belongs to divine rather than human law), namely the cult of the dead. As Fustel do Coulanges was to show in detail, cult of the dead is the core of the family as ethical. The decisive bond of the family is not natural-not only is not desire, but is not even love, which is natural rather than ethical insofar as it regards the individual's unique being (Einzelnheit) rather than his universal (~interchangeable, commensurable) deeds-but rather ethical, and that means: cult of the dead as devotion to the "entire family." In general what elevates the individual to "virtue," what "subjugates his naturalness and unique being (Einzelnheit)" and draws him toward "living in and for the universal" (p.320) is political life (only in the Gemeinwesen can one achieve das Allgemein); in general only through political life does the individual transcend his merely natural existence (unique being) in the direction of ethical existence (universality). But there is one absolutely important exception, namely the cult of the dead in which, at the level of the family (i.e., pre-politically), the natural is raised to the ethical, in the following way: Death is the immediate issue of the individual's "natural having-become," but the sacred duty of a family member is not to permit it to be merely 127 �that, but rather "to assert the right of consciousness" (p.321) so that what is suffered is also done (p.323): This last duty thus accomplishes the complete divine law, or constitutes the positive ethical act toward the given individual. Every other relation toward him which does not remain at the level of love, but is ethical, belongs to human law, and has the negative significance of lifting the individual above the confinement within the natural community to which he belongs as actual. It must be emphasized that the lack of actuality which characterizes everything which is merely "inward," which is not externalized" or u objectified" in action, is true not only for the outside observer, but just as much for the subject himself: "Hence the individual cannot know what he is before he has brought himself to actuality through the deed." (pp. 277-8) This conception that actual being must be sheer doing, upon which Hegel insists so strongly, has two altogether disparate dimensions. On the one hand it might be said to be an Aristotelian conception: the highest being-noesis noeseos as divinity-must be sheer doing lest something "within it" lie waste, some possibility or capacity be unrealized, which would as such constitute imperfection of being. This is also true for Aristotle, albeit in a less radical way, on the level of practical virtue: the aretai are energeia-that is, they truly exist only in the performing of virtuous deeds. But Hegel's conception also has a dimension wholly alien to Aristotle, namely the flight from the "bad infinitude" of what remains merely inward; of intentions which, endlessly determinable, are endlessly determined; of self-suspicion, self-deception, hypocrisy, "bad faith" and every kind of equivocality-a flight from all of these into unequivocal appearance in the world, where one's actions have an objective meaning, e.g., by serving or disserving a particular cause. What Hegel proposes is indeed a renunciation by the self of that in itself which cannot appear unequivocally in the world, which cannot be judged objectively whereby "objectively" means both "intersubjectively" and "historically". What cannot so appear and be judged still somehow is, but Hegel never tires of denouncing it as "unactual" and depreciating it in every way possible. No such denunciation could be even suggested by Aristotle, who after all is talking about an altogether different matter: his highest model of the identity of actual being and sheer doing is the divine nous, which is in the strictest sense nothing but its knowing activity, of which, therefore, it cannot dispose, and thus it cannot in any but a paradoxical sense be said to have a self, since a self seems to be above all that which disposes of possibilities. But this is to say that Hegel, famous as the philosopher of self-consciousness, is in a very important sense the philosopher who radically turns against the self and 11 128 toward the objectivity of deeds in the world. Of course one must add that thereby it is precisely the self which turns against the self: that is, the self, whose primary nature it is to be constituted by "what it would have done" (had it not been prevented by external circumstances or even by some inner weakness) as well as by "what it has done," has among its possibilities the possibility of renouncing possibility in favor of actuality, of defining and confining itself into what it has done, into what has appeared unequivocally in the world and can be judged with certitude. It is this possibility which Hegel calls upon the self to realize, and his motive seems to be the motive which, in one form or another, has dominated modem religious experience since the Reformation and modem philosophy since Descartes-namely the quest for unshakable certitude, leading to the radical depreciation of such modes of being as can never be made to yield certain knowledge. We return to the critique of the beautiful soul, having established that the ''guilt'' and ''forgiveness'' at issue have nothing to do with "evil motives." Now the crucial point is that Hegel, although he condemns the judging consciousness qua beautiful soul for blaming the allegedly evil motives of the actor, nevertheless insists that the actor is actually guilty. Moreover, the actor knows that he is guilty-not indeed because of his "evil motives" but because he is only a part-and therefore (according to Hegel's account, which now turns into a story) confesses to the judging consciousness, expecting that the latter will reciprocate, since he too is only a part, and hence guilty as such, only the whole being innocent. The actor recognizes himself in the judging consciousness, recognizes their common guilt flowing from their common particularity. But the judging consciousness qua beautiful soul refuses to confess, refuses to recognize himself in the actor. Thus according to Hegel the beautiful soul "shows itself to be a consciousness which is Spiritforsaken and Spirit-denying; for it does not know that Spirit, in its absolute self-certainty, is master over every deed and over all actuality and can cast them off and make them as if they never happened (ungeschehen mach en)." (p .469) (For the understanding of Hegel's analysis it is important to be aware that "judging consciousness" translates Hegel's term beurteilende Bewusstsein. Urteil is "judgment," Teil is "part," teilen is "to divide into parts, to separate." The passages we have been considering are full of plays on these verbal affinities. Thus Hegel blames the beurteilende consciousness weil es die Handlung teilt, i.e., because it arbitrarily separates the universal side of the action from the inner side which is particular. Again, on another level the beurteilende consciousness is at fault because, even taking the action itself as undivided, it regards only the part-der Teil-and not the (ethical) WINTER 1986 �whole, hence only the guilt of the individual and not his justification. Finally, the beurteilende consciousness separates-teilt-itself from the acting consciousness: to refuse "to see oneself in the other" is to refuse to see both oneself and the other under the aspect of the whole, i.e., to refuse to understand the relation of the parts to the whole whereby each part, although guilty in itself, finally shares in the innocence of the whole and is thereby justified. This aspect of Hegel's thought obviously has profound affinities with the thought of Spinoza in which, however-according to Hegel-"sel£-consciousness is merely submerged, not upheld.") Hegel now gives the story a different ending: this time the judging consciousness, having come to understanding, "renounces the thought that divides and separates (dem teilenden Gedanken) and the harshness of the beingfor-itself that clings to such thought, for the reason that in fact it sees itself in the first [i.e., in the actor]." The former beautiful soul now extends "forgiveness" (Verziehung) to the actor, and there ensues "reciprocal recognition which is Absolute Spirit." (p.470) Or again,: "The reconciling yes, with which both egos desist from their existence in opposition ... is the God who appears in the midst of those who know themselves as pure knowledge." (p.472) But the polis (Volk), which "has its actual vitality in govenunent," d()es not merely tolerate the singular ethical claim of the family (representing divine law) within the context of its own general ethical pedagogy; rather its own pedagogy radically depends on the ethical existence of the family. This is true for the reason that, in the measure that it is the product of conscious purpose, the city is constantly in danger of dissolution qua ethical, of degeneration into a mere network of relations produced by the private and particularistic strivings of men who, no longer aware of universal purposes (i.e., of purposes recognized as superior to their individual existence, for the sake of which their individual existence must if necessary be negated), have sunk from ethical existence back into merely natural existence. As we know from the master-slave paradign, to rise above merely natural existence one must risk one's life, i.e., hold it less important than something else. "Something else" in this case is the community as promoted or defended by war: "In order not to let them get rooted and settled in this isolation and thus break up the whole into fragments and let the spirit evaporate, goverrunent has from time to time to shake them to the very center by war." (p.324) Only when they "are made, by the labor thus imposed by government, to feel the power of their master, death" are individuals prevented "from sinking into merely natural existence." Thus in a radical sense the principle of the city is the voluntary collective exposure to the power of death. But death always befalls one who belongs, THE ST. JOHN'S REVIEW in precisely this respect, to a family. "The community therefore finds the true principle and corroboration of its power in the essence of divine law and in the kingdom of the underworld." (p.324) Thus there is, as constitutive of Greek Sittlichkeit, primarily a harmony between the city and the family, between human law and divine law (p.328): Neither of the two is alone self-complete. Human law as an active and living principle proceeds from the divine, the law holding on earth from that of the underworld, the conscious from the unconscious, mediation from immediacy; and returns whence it carne. The power of the underworld, on the other hand, finds its realization on earth; it comes through consciousness to have existence and activity. But what is primarily harmonious contains nevertheless the seeds of its destruction. The stable world of Greek Sittlichkeit is deficient in that ''self-consciousness has not yet come to its rights as a unique individuality (einzelne Individualitat)." (p. 330) The individual is recognized as an ethical being by the city insofar as he risks his life in war, i.e., performs a universal action of which, however, any exemplar is interchangeable with any other-one individual qua citizen is indistinguishable from any other individual qua citizen. He is recognized within the family as an ethical (trans-natural) being insofar as he shares in the familial cult of the dead, i.e., in the devotion to the ''entire family''-his uniqueness remains unexpressed. To vindicate his uniqueness, which so far exists only as an uunactual shadow," he must, in a pregnant sense, act: "The deed is the actual self." (p.331) But, as emerges, there are certain situations-which situations, according to Hegel, most profoundly reveal the human condition as such-in which to act is to incur guilt; and as guilt is avenged by destiny, the world of Greek Sittlichkeit perishes. Now Hegel presents an interpretation of Sophocles' Antigone, which he regards as the most perfect expression of Greek ethical existence and its contradictions. Antigone of course represents the divine law, the concern of the family with cult of the dead; Creon represents human law, the requirements of the polis, of governmental concern with the universal. Hegel takes great pains to emphasize the purely ethical character of their tragic conflict, in which there is nothing "psychological" in the modern (romantic) sense: "there is no arbitrary will, no struggle, no indecision." (p.331) (With this Hegel contrasts the drama of Hamlet, who "delays in avenging his father's murder which has been revealed to him and institutes additional proofs-because the spirit revealing this might be the devil" (p .513)-this is found in Hegel's discussion of Greek tragedy in Chapter VII.) Ancient tragedy is a drama of ethos or character as necessary, pre-given character (pp.331-2): 129 �The ethical consciousness, however, knows what it has to do, and is decided, whether it is to belong to divine or human law. The immediateness of its decision is something inherent (ansichsein) and hence has at the same time the significance of natural being, as we saw. Nature, not the accident of circumstances or choice, assigns one sex to one law, the other to the other law; or conversely both the ethical powers themselves establish their individual existence and actualization in the two sexes [i.e.;. woman belongs to the side of the family and divine law, man to the side of the city and human law]. To one pre-given character the other pre-given character is necessarily unintelligible: "Since it sees right only on its own side, and wrong on the other, so of these two that which belongs to divine law detects, on the other side, human arbitrary violence, while what belongs to human law finds in the other the obstinacy and disobedience of subjective self-sufficiency." (p.332) The decisive point is that although both Antigone and Creon do what they (ethically) must, both are guilty; by upholding one side of the ethical order, each has violated the other side and "neither of the powers has any advantage over the other that it should be a more essential moment of the substance common to both." (p.337) (Therefore it would be absurd, from Hegel's point of view, to blame the Greeks for insufficient attention to "rights of conscience" or religious liberty.") To say that both Creon and Antigone are guilty is to speak not of moral-psychological guilt but rather of what might be called ontological guilt, the guilt which necessarily attends the self-affirmation of a part as such- recall that Greek ethical existence is constituted by the fact that "the simple substance of Spirit divides itself into parts (teilt sich)" -whereby the part ineluctably takes itself to be the whole. In any case Hegel emphasizes that "motivation" is irrelevant to guilt as understood in ancient tragedy (p.334): 11 Guilt is not an indifferent entity (gleichgultige Wesen) with the double meaning that the deed (die Tat) as actually exposed to the light of day, may be the doing (Tun) of a guilty self, or may not be so, as if with the doing there could be connected something external and accidental that did not belong to the doing, from which side, therefore, the doing would be innocent (unschuldig). In the end there is only one side, and action-which al- ways "sets in motion what was unmoved" (p.336)-is guilty as such: "Only not-doing is innocent, like the being of a stone, not even of a child [whose being is already doing]." (p.334) Both, then, are guilty and both suffer ruin, Creon as well as Antigone; destiny (Schicksal) can permit no one-sided triumph. But in perishing, both come to knowledge: Hegel quotes (freely) from Antigone: "Because we suffer, we recognize that we have erred." (p.336) Such recognition by no means implies that one would act differently if one had it to do over again; the guilt of being a part is inescapable. 130 III. The French Revolution according to Hegel is the outcome of the philosophy of the Enlightenment. The principle brought forth by that philosophy is that of "utility" (Nutzlichkeit) in a special sense, namely "the revocation of the form of objectivity." (p.413) Objectivity ("object" is Gegen/stand-that which stands against men) must here be understood broadly as signifying the existence of an order independent of human will to which men ought to conform. When such an order is no longer thought to exist-when, as Hegel puts it, self-consciousness /Jsees through" the object-human will becomes of paramount importance, as is clear from Hegel's discussion. His cardinal statement is this: "This revocation of the form of objectivity by the useful has however already happened in itself, and out of this inner revolution there emerges the actual revolution of actuality, the new shape of consciousness-absolute freedom." (p.413) But, Hegel continues, the "form of objectivity" in the sense of an obligatory order independent of human will, represented concretely by the church and the aristocracy, could be "revoked" by rationalist or utilitarian criticism only because what that criticism confronted was "nothing but an empty semblance of objectivity." (p .414) That is, the church and aristocracy, the visible representatives of "objectivity" (and for Hegel what is not somehow visible represented cannot be said actually to be), had lost their vitality, could no longer be seen- even by themselves-as representing a transhuman order. Criticism became truly possible, i.e., possible-as-effective rather than possible as a mere dream, only when the reality criticized had already begun to change. (To avoid misunderstanding: the core of that reality as Hegel understands it is self-consciousness; there is no question of "ideal" factors reflecting a change in "material" factors in the Marxian sense.) The opposition to the church and aristocracy had already taken root within the selfconsciousness of the church and aristocracy; otherwise that opposition would not have been possible in any other ("external") self-consciousness. This is what Hegel means, ultimately, by Volkgeist. As for the French Revolution itself, Hegel's attitude is ambivalent, as it was from the beginning of his public career until the end (so that one cannot on the basis of Hegel's published writings distinguish an early "liberal" phase from a late "conservative" or even ~~reaction­ ary" one). On the one hand, it is the French Revolution in which, as was requisite, "Both worlds are reconciled and heaven is transplanted to the earth below." (p.413) But although its ultimate principle-the "revocation of the form of objectivity" in favor of human autonomy-is true, the Revolution goes radically astray: "Universal freedom can thus produce neither a work nor a deed; there is left for it only negative action; it is merely the WINTER 1986 �fury of destruction." The Revolution is based upon Rousseauist principles, but these are defective. Contrary to Rousseau, that universality is spurious "which does not let itself attam the reality of organic articulation" (p. 417); moreover, direct democracy is not feasible in a great nation-state; nor is legislative supremacy: executive unity of command is required for action, so that who has the power of general legislation is of little moment in a time of crisis. Finally, an abstract understanding of universality, which takes it to be incompatible with any definite action at all, leads to charges and counter-charges of factionalism, and finally to the Terror, culminating in the law of suspects whereby alleged partiality of intentions replaces alleged partiality of action as the definition of crime. What results is death, the "most coldblooded and meaningless death of all, with no more significance than cleaving a head of cabbage or swallowing a draught of water." (p.418) In the wake of the disasters brought about by such an extremity of Moralitat, one might have expected a return to Sittlichkeit, and this in a way happens: "These individuals, who felt the fear of death, their absolute master, submit to negation and distinction once more arrange themselves into various spheres, and return to a restricted and appointed task, but thereby to their substantial actuality." (p.420) The Restoration follows the Revolution by right. But although individuals return to their stations as far as political life is concerned, Spirit itself passes on to the land of thought. That is, Spirit realizes that it has had enough of political action: "universal will" knows itself to be "essential reality" not as "revolutionary government or anarchy struggling to establish an anarchical constitution, nor itself as a center of this faction or the opposite" but rather as "pure knowing and willing'' which is somehow the same as ''pure knowing of essential reality as pure knowing." (pp.421-2) This seeming progression (which Hegel treats as an equivalence) from "universal will" to "pure knowing and willing" to "pure knowing" entails that "absolute freedom leaves its self- destructive actuality, and passes over into another land of self- conscious Spirit," (p.422) i.e., from France into Germany but more importantly from the realm of practice into the realm of theory, from politics into philosophy. 1 IV. Hegel discusses post-Revolutionary moral orientations under three headings: "the moral world-view," "dissemblence" (Verstellen, which means also "shifting" or ''displacing''), and ''conscience'' (Gewissen, which is Spirit certam-gewiss-of itself and which is a kind of knowing-Wissen). Of these the third is the eminent locus of truth according to Hegel; it forms the summit of THE ST. JOHN'S REVIEW the first six chapters of the Phenomenology and at its climax Hegel announces that "God has appeared in the midst of men." Chapter VII is devoted to an explication of religious experience, especially Christian religious experience, and Chapter VIII, entitled "Absolute Knowledge" presents the composition-indeed the convergence-of the results of Chapter VI and Chapter VII and, above all, the translation of that convergence into Hegel's speculative language. The core of the phenomenon of "conscience" as Hegel presents it is the critique of the beautiful soul. We must try to understand this as exactly as possible. Hegel's critique of the beautiful soul (schone Seele) begins with the characterization that it is a form of consciousness which "lacks the strength to externalize itself, the strength to make itself a thing and endure existence (Sein). It lives in dread of staining the radiance of its inner being by action and existence. To preserve the purity of its heart, it flees from contact with actuality and ... [refuses] to translate its thought into being." (p.462) It is not at all loath, however, to judge those who do act. Hegel's contempt for it is unqualified: "It may well preserve itself in its purity, for it does not act; it is hypocrisy, which wants to see the fact of judging taken for the actual deed, and instead of proving its righteousness by acts does so by expressing fine sentiments." (pp.465-6) But Hegel goes far beyond deprecating the excesses of a certain kind of romanticism, as we can see by considering his presentation of the specific character of the beautiful soul's criticism of the man of action. Hegel writes (p.466): Concrete action ... involves the universal side, which is that which is taken as duty, just as much as the particular (Besondere), which constitutes the share and interest of the individual. Now the judging consciousness does not stop at the side of duty ... It holds on to the other side, diverts the act into what is inner (das Innere) and explains the act from selfish motives and from an intention different from the act itself . . . This judging, then, takes the act out of its existence (Dasein) and turns it back into what is inner, into the form of private (eigen) particularity. If the act carries glory with it, then the inner is judged as love of fame ... and so on. There follows a restatement in terms of the "hero" and the "moral valet" (p.467): No hero is a hero to his valet, not, however, because the hero is not a hero, but because the valet is-the valet, with whom the hero has to do, not as a hero, but as a man who eats, drinks and dresses, who, in short, appears in the uniqueness (Einzelnheit) of his wants and ideas. Similarly there is no act in which the judging cannot oppose the side of the uniqueness of the individuality to the universal side of the act and play the part of the moral valet toward the actor. Thus Hegel clearly holds that every act-even those 131 �which contribute to reason and justice and happiness in the world-can be condemned with respect to "the side of what is inner" which in the restatement is interpreted as the uniqueness (Einzelnheit) of the actor as such. But Hegel is not saying-what would be preposterous- -that all men act always from evil motives. Rather he holds that motives or intentions are strictly spealcing unknowableto the actor as well as to the observer-so that a man must be judged solely according to the objective or worldly meaning of his actions, e.g., whether they serve the cause of reason and justice in the world. Judged in that respect, all action turns out to be both justified and guilty: justified insofar as it is necessary for "progress" (which means, for Hegel, the self-unfolding of the whole), but guilty insofar as it is itself merely partial and, being a selfaffirming part, necessarily violates other parts which have a legitimate claim not to be violated-all of this quite independently of any question of motives and intentions. When, as Hegel's account continues, the "hero" confess- es his guilt to the "moral valet" and asks for forgiveness, what is involved is the guilt of being a part, not of having "evil motives." Before examining this matter of "confession" and "forgiveness," however, we must make sure of Hegel's strenuous depreciation of all concern with the "inner" in the sense of motives and intentions. We earlier quoted Hegel's dictum that "the true being of a man is rather his deed" in discussing Hegel's critique of naturalistic anthropologies. Now we must examine the negations of a different kind which are also intended by that dictum. Bluntly stated, action in Hegel's understanding appears to be a kind of escape from the equivocalities of the inner life, as appears from the following passage: "The act cancels (aufhebt) the inexpressibility of what self- conscious individuality actually intends, with regard to such intending, individuality is endlessly determined and determinable. This bad infinitude is annihilated in the completed act." And more fully (pp.236-7): same time disparity on its outer side, in the sphere of existence-the lack of correspondence of its particular individuality (besondere Einzelnheit) with reference to another individual." (p.463) But secondly, and obviously, the actor or hero par excellence in the story is Napoleon, and it is Hegel-more precisely, one possibility or temptation known to Hegelwho is the beautiful soul confronting and accusing him and tinally, the temptation overcome, forgiving him. That this struggle also takes place somehow within a single consciousness means first that after all, the historical Napoleon actually confesses nothing, since he understands little; it is Hegel impersonating Napoleon who confesses, and Hegel impersonating, so to speak, a part of himself, who confers forgiveness. But the event which has thereby taken place within Hegel's consciousness has ipso facto taken place within the consciousness of the society of which Hegel is a part and that consciousness, conceived as an individual, is for Hegel the most authentic locus of truth. Chapter VII The Golgotha of Absolute Spirit I. In order to understand the conclusion of the Phenomenology we must understand Hegel's attitude toward Christian revelation. Our discussion will have tluee parts: Hegel's critique of the Enlightenment view of Christianity (found in Chapter VI of the Phenomenology); Hegel's understanding of Christian revelation as it is in itself (Chapter VII); and Hegel's presentation of the convergence of the critique of the beautiful soul with what he takes to be the deepest meaning of Christian experience, and the translation of that convergence into speculative language, which accomplishes absolute knowing as Erinnerung and Schadelstatte (Chapter Vlll). II. When his work and his inner possibility, capacity or intention are opposed, the former alone is to be regarded as his true actuality, even if he deceives himself about it and, turning back from his action into himself, intends in his inwardness (das Innere) to be something different than he is in his deed ... The character of the deed is constituted by whether it is an actual being, which holds up, or whether it is merely an intended work which, in itself nothing, passes away. What is the concrete meaning of the story of the struggle between the actor and the beautiful soul? First, the event narrated is both psychological and sociological; that is, the struggle goes on within a single soul and also between individual souls, as is always the case for Hegel. He says so directly in this instance: "While in this way the opposition, into which conscience passes when it acts, finds expression in its inner life, the opposition is at the 132 Hegel speaks of the movement of modern rationalism originated by Descartes and culminating in Kant under the title of "pure insight." Pure insight has as its goal "to cancel every kind of independence which is other than self-consciousness, whether [independence] of the actual or the implicit, and to make it into the Concept," whereby the Concept is precisely "that which finds no opposition in an object." (p.382) But modern rationalism as pure insight cannot be understood solely as an original attitude toward the world; it is just as fundamentally determined by its polemic against another attitude toward the world, namely religious faith. Thus "pure insight only appears in its authentic activity insofar as it enters into conflict with faith." (p.384) Hegel now presents the struggle between ''Enlighten- WINTER 1986 �ment" and "superstition." The general tenor of his presentation is that although in a variety of ways the Enlightenment understanding of religious experience is amazingly superficial, in the end the Enlightenment has the higher right over against faith. This fact is compatible, however, with the fact that Hegelian wisdom as the highest has more in common with the lower (Christianity) than with the higher, for all that the higher was a necessary moment. We shall follow the main points of Hegel's presentation. The first and most fundamental charge of insight as Enlightenment against faith is that faith produces its putative object out of its own consciousness. But this charge is invalid for two reasons. First, insight itself produces its own object; that is, it produces its unity with its object, or it produces its object as object-for-it. In the same way, precisely, is faith productive of its unity with its object through action and obedience in community. According to the intention of faith, the Absolute Being is of course not produced by human action; "But the Absolute Being for faith is essentially not the abstract being that lies beyond the believing consciousness; it is the spirit of the [religious] community, it is the unity of that abstract being and self-consciousness. The action of the community is an essential moment in bringing about that it is this spirit of the community." (p.391) But even as productive, faith does no more than insight does; if insight is to accuse faith on this account, it must accuse itself as well. But the charge of insight is invalid for a much deeper reason. Not only is insight itself just as "productive" of its object as faith is of its object, but faith enjoys a decisive superiority: it knows, as insight does not, that what it is producing has in a definitive way already been produced: "That spirit [of the community] is what it is by the productive activity of consciousness, or rather it does not exist without being produced by consciousness. For essential as this production is, it is just as essentially not the only basis of Absolute Being; it is merely a moment. The Absolute Being is at the same time (zugleich) in and for itself." (p.391) That is, human productivity, though necessary, is insufficient; and what is sufficient, already is. Otherwise stated: pure insight, as theoretical and practical idealism, is never-ending productive striving (what Hegel sometimes calls "the everlasting oughtto-be" -perennirindes Sollen); but that toward which it strives has already been accomplished, from all eternity. That is what faith, in its way, knows, and thereby in the most important respect it is superior to Enlightenment and indeed final, unsurpassable. The more derivative elements of the Enlightenment critique of religion are likewise misguided, although in the end they have a certain right. To begin with, it is absurd for pure insight to suppose that religion experienced in the depth of the souls of whole peoples could be a pri- THE ST. JOHN'S REVIEW estly deception (p.392): When the general question has been raised, whether it is permissible to delude a people, the answer in fact was bound to be that the question is pointless, because it is impossible to delude a people in this matter. Brass in place of gold, counterfeit instead of genuine coin may doubtless have swindled individuals many a time; lots of people have stuck to it that a battle lost was a battle won; and lies of all sorts about things of sense and particular events have been plausible for a time; but in the knowledge of that inmost actuality where consciousness finds the immediate certainty of its own self, the idea of delusion is entirely baseless. Furthermore, insight attacks the object and basis of faith, and its mode of worship; it attacks these, however, in a fundamentally uncomprehending way. As to the first, the believer of course knows that, for "example, the communion wafer is also mere bread. Nor does faith rest simply on ''some particular historical evidences'' which, considered as such and in connection with problems of transmission WOuld assuredly not even warrant that degree of certainty about the matter which we get regarding any event mentioned in the newspapers" (p.394); rather, faith rests above all on the inner testimony of spirit, and if it is too serious (which is not to say it should be wholly indifferent) about finding confirmation in historical evidences, then Enlightenment has already taken root within it. Finally, as regards worship or cult, and its alleged "unspirituality," there is a kind of seriousness about the attempt to bring the outward into accord with the inward (e.g., in monasticism or even in occasional fasting), notwithstanding the greater importance of the inward and the danger of falling into merely external ritualism; of this seriousness, however, Enlightenment in its concern with ''religion within the limits of reason alone," is oblivious. But for aU that Enlightenment misinterprets and does injustice to faith, its right is finally the higher right (pp .400-1): 11 But since the right of Enlightenment is the right of selfconsciousness, it will not merely retain its own right too, in such a way that two equally valid rights of Spirit would be left standing in opposition to each other, without either satisfying the claims of the other; rather it will maintain the absolute right, because self-consciousness is the negativity of the Concept, which [negativity] is not only for itself but also gets control over [ubergrieft] its opposite. And because faith itself is consciousness, it will not be able to deny Enlightenment that right. Enlightenment is finally able to subdue faith because it has already taken root within faith: by the end of the struggle, Enlightenment no longer confronts faith in its purity but rather a faith which has already been permeated by Enlightenment. 133 �Enlightenment is, however, unable to rise above the struggle between itself and faith; it cannot bring to light their hidden unity. A kind of understanding is necessary which will transcend and reconcile the seeming opposites. Such an understanding is provided by Hegel, who in every case "synthesizes" the two one-sided extremes. For example, faith is one-sided in forgetting that without human activity God would not be God for man; Enlightenment one-sidedly imagines that nothing but action or production by man is involved. Again, with regard to the question of sacramentalism, Enlightenment holds that sense-things are only sense-things; faith holds that on Sunday sense-things are divine; true comprehension would show that every day is Sunday, i.e., that to be at home in the world of sense is to experience the divine, not-and this is crucial for Hegel-because there is less to experiencing the divine than had previously been thought, but because there is more to being at home in the world of sense. However, prior to the Hegelian transfiguration of the struggle between Enlightenment and Christianity, that struggle appears to have been won by Enlightenment. But Hegel adds, in what seems to be a kind of selfreference: "It will yet be seen whether Enlightenment can remain in its satisfaction: that longing of the turbulent [truben] spirit, mourning over the loss of its spiritual world, stands in the background." (p.406) III. Chapter VII of the Phenomenology, entitled "Religion," treats of Oriental "natural religion," Greek "art-religion" and, climactically, Christianity as "revealed religion." There can be no doubt that for Hegel the event of Christ is of incomparable significance for world-history. Perhaps his most remarkable statement to this effect is his description of the Nativity (pp.524-5) These forms [i.e., the forms of Greek religious experience, through whose procession ''substance'' becomes increasingly "subjective": statuary and epic poetry, lyric poetry, Dionysian cult and tragedy, and finally Aristophanean comedy as the triumph of "absolute subjectivity"] and, on the other side, the [Roman] world of personality and legal right, the devastating wildness of content with its constituent elements set free and detached, as also the thought-constituted personality of Stoicism, and the unresting disquiet of Skepticism-these compose the periphery of the circle of shapes which attend, an expectant and pressing throng, around the birthplace of Spirit as it becomes self-conscious. Their center is the pain and longing of the unhappy self-consciousness, which permeates all of them and is the common birthpang at its being brought forth-the simplicity of the pure Concept, which contains those shapes as its moments. Christianity is for Hegel "Absolute Religion." Religion 134 in general is "self-consciousness of Absolute Being as it is in and for itself." (p.350) The specific difference of Christianity is the Incarnation. (The German word is Menschwerdung, which not only stresses the human rather than merely fleshly "vessel" of the divine, but also stresses the process-character of Incarnation, since -werdung is from werden, "to become.") "This Incarnation of the Divine Being, its having essentially and immediately the shape of self-consciousness, is the simple content of Absolute Religion. In it the Being [Hegel no longer says "Divine Being"] is known as Spirit; it is the Being's consciousness of itself that it is Spirit." (p.527) The Incarnation as God entering into time is in no way a dinimution or adulteration of divinity: "T)le Absolute Being which exists as an actual self-consciousness seems to have declined from its eternal simplicity; but in fact it has thereby attained for the first time its highest Being." (p.529) But it is necessary to understand the Incarnation radically, as religious thought in its characteristic mode of Vorstellung does not. (We shall translate Vorstellung somewhat unsatisfactorily as "religious imagination.") Religious imagination is deficient in general because it is modelled upon "relationships derived from nature," i.e., it does not understand the essential difference between nature and Spirit. More particularly, it is deficient in that "it takes the moments of the movement, which Spirit is, as isolated immutable substances or subjects instead of transient moments." (p.535) That is, the relation of Father and Son within the Trinity must be understood in such a way that when the Son has come, the Father no longer is: "It is the Word, which, when spoken, externalizes [entaussert] the Speaker and leaves Him behind emptied [ausgeleert], but is as inunediately perceived, and only this self-perceiving is the existence of the Word." (p.534) The meaning of the Incarnation radically understood is therefore that Christ's consciousness of himself as divine (~his consciousness "that the divine nature is the same as the human") (p.529) is (exhaustively) the Divine. All that remains for the life of Absolute Spirit to be complete, according to Hegel, is that Christ's self-consciousness become universalized, that all men share in it. But in order to see why 1800 years were necessary for this universalization, and in particular why the critique of the beautiful soul as the culmination of the secular movement of modernity was necessary, we must consider more carefully what Hegel states and implies about Christ's self-consciousness. The crucial question is: at what moment according to Hegel does Christ attain perfectly adequate selfconsciousness? There is only one possible answer: when he realizes that his cry from the cross at having been forsaken will not be answered (pp.545-6): The death of the mediator is death not merely of his natural WINTER 1986 �side, of his being-for-himself ... but also of the abstraction of the Divine Being. For he, as long as his death has not yet accomplished the reconciliation, is something one-sided, which knows [falsely] as essential Being the simplicity of thinking in opposition against actuality. This extreme of the self does not yet have equal worth with essential Being; the self first gets this as Spirit ... [The death of the "abstract" representation of the Divine Being] is the painful feeling of the unhappy consciousness [here, Christ himself] that God Himself has died. This harsh expression is the expression of inmost simple self-knowing; it is the return of consciousness into the depth of night where I~ I, which distinguishes and knows nothing more outside it. This feeling thus means in fact the loss of substance and its existence over against consciousness. But at the same time it is the pure subjectivity of substance, the pure certainty of its~lf, which it lacked when it was object or immediacy or pure essential Being. Thus the Resurrection properly understood is nothing but "the movement by which God's individual selfconsciousness becomes the universal, becomes the [religious] community." (p.544) Or, to put it in traditional language, the descent of the Holy Spirit, as the third Person of the Trinity, is itself the Resurrection. Shortly after the long passage quoted above regarding the death of God-i.e., of God the Father-and Christ's becoming conscious of it, Hegel anticipates the essential result of the final chapter of the Phenomenology by referring back to the critique of the beautiful soul (p.546): We saw how the Concept of Spirit arose as we entered Religion [i.e., at the conclusion of Chapter VI]: namely as the movement of Spirit certain of itself, which forgives evil and thereby at the same time leaves aside its own simplicity and rigid unchangeableness, or the movement in which the absolutely opposed knows itself as the same, and this knowledge breaks forth as the "Yes" between these extremes. The religious consciousness, to which Absolute Being is revealed, beholds this Concept and cancels [aufhebt] the distinction of itself from what it beholds; and as it is subject, so it is also substance; and is thus itself Spirit just because and insofar as it is this movement. In other words, Hegel here suggests, by way of anticipation, a strict parallel between Christ seeing himself and only himself in the Father (as he does on the cross) and the judging consciousness seeing itself and only itself ion the man of action (i.e., recognizing that both are guilty insofar as they are mere parts, but innocent insofar as the whole unfolds itself .in and through them). How Hegel understands this "parallel" we must now try to see. IV. Hegel begins Chapter VIII, entitled "Absolute Knowing," with the assertion that the content of revealed THE ST. JOHN'S REVIEW religion is perfectly true; only its mode of expression, namely Vorstellung, which imports "the form of objectivity," is imperfect. "All that remains to be done now is to cancel and elevate [aufhebt] this bare form or rather ... its truth must already have announced itself in the shapes of consciousness." (p.549) There follows a brief review of the stages of consciousness traversed throughout the Phenomenology, culminating in "moral selfconsciousness" in the specific form of "Spirit certain of itself'' with its moments of ''action,'' ''recognition'' and "forgiveness." Then Hegel declares: "This reconciliation of consciousness with self-consciousness thus shows itself to be brought about in a double-sided way: in one case, in the religious Spirit; in the other case, in consciousness itself as such. They are distinguished inter se by the fact that the one is this reconciliation implicitly, the other explicitly and consciously. As we have considered them, they at the beginning fall apart ... The unification of both sides has not yet been exhibited . . . " (p.553) The. remainder of Chapter VIII consists in the exhibition of this unification. Now Hegel expressly mentions the "beautiful soul," characterizing its form of consciousness as the selfintuition of the Divine." (p.554) He again points out its one-sidedness, then speaks of its fulfillment in action whereby "its self-consciousness attains the form of universality, and what remains is its true Concept, the Concept that has attained its realization-the Concept in its truth, i.e., in unity with its externalization." Hegel continues (p .554): 11 This [i.e., the true] Concept gave itself fulfillment partly in the acting Spirit that is certain of itself, partly in religion. In the latter it won the absolute content qua content or in the form of religious imagination or of otherness for consciousness. On the other hand, in the first the form is just the self, for that shape contains the acting Spirit certain of itself; the self accomplishes the life of Absolute Spirit. This shape [which culminates in the ''conversion'' of the beautiful soul], as we see, is that simple Concept, which however gives up its eternal essential Being [like the eternal God who enters unreservedly into time], exists, or acts. That is to say, nineteenth century consciousness must and does appropriate for itself the consciousness of Christ which, as regards its content, namely that "the divine nature is the same as the human," is true. This appropriation occurs through the action of "Spirit certain of itself," i.e., Spirit including both the moment of confession (~Napoleon as impersonated by Hegel) and the moment of forgiveness (~Hegel). This action of "Spirit certain of itself" is in the decisive respect nothing new: it was all performed long ago; but it must be imitated-imitatio Christi (p.555): The same thing that is already established in itself, thus 135 �repeats itself [wiederholt sich] not as knowledge thereof on the part of consciousness and as conscious doing. Each lays aside for the other the independence of determinateness with which each appears confronting the other. This laying aside is the same renunciation of the one-sidedness of the Concept as in itself constituted the beginning; but it is now its own act of renunciation, just as the Concept renounced is its own Concept. That is, Christ's coming to the realization on the cross that he has been forsaken (that there is no divine fatherhood, only divine brotherhood) is re-enacted by the judging consciousness as beautiful soul who realizes that, qua mere part, he has been forsaken (for his is "a form of consciousness which is Spirit-forsaken and Spiritdenying") and yet that qua sharing in the life of the whole he is divine ("God appeacing in the midst of those ... "). Hegel concludes: "Thus, then, what was in Religion content, or a form of imagining [Vorstellen] another, is here the doing proper of the self." (p.555) That is, the action of Spirit in the nineteenth century (~decisively Hegel's forgiveness of Napoleon in recognition of the true relation of part to whole) has the same content as Christian religious consciousness: it is the interiorizing appropriation of that content. "This last shape of Spirit ... is Absolute Knowing." (p.556) Absolute knowing, following upon and requiring the beautiful soul's experience of his forsakenness qua mere part but of his divinity qua sharing in the unfolding life of the whole, corresponds strictly with "But Jesus, again crying out in a loud voice, yielded up his spirit" (Matthew 27:50). Seen in this light, Hegel's final "reconciliation with reality" appears more ambiguous than is usually thought. (See Appendix B.) In any case, we may now understand why the theoria in which the Phenomenology terminates exists in the mode of Erinnerung (sometimes written Er-innerung by Hegel to emphasize that the recollection involved is at the same time an "interiorizing" or "making inward") and Schadelstatte. (p.564) Schadelstatte, rendering "Golgotha," means, as does the original Hebrew, "place of skulls," Thus on the one hand Schadelstatte means the same as Erinnerung: that is, the activity of "recollecting" which constitutes the Phenomenology brings to new life the "skulls" that once were living Spirit. In the "Preface" Hegel writes that "to hold on to what is dead" (p.29) requires the greatest effort and the greatest strength. This is the "exertion of the Concept" -die Anstrenung des Begriffs. It accomplishes a kind of resurrection of everything that once was Spirit and this constitutes the Geisterreich, the realm of spirits. But Schadelstatte also means Golgotha as the place of the crucifixion of Christ, thereby indicating that among the shapes of Spirit, all of which were indispensable, there is one above all the rest, the re-collection of whose experience unto death brings history to its end in the Phenomenology of Spirit. 136 Chapter VIII Summary and Reflections I. We indicated in the Introduction that our consideration of Hegel's conception of the relation between theory and practice looked in two directions. On the one hand it looked ahead to contemporary revolutionary thought, characterized by a kind of synthesis of Marxism and existentialism which, guided by the interpretation of Kojeve, we suggested could be understood only on the basis of Hegel. On the other hand it looked back to the Platonic-Aristotelian view of the relation between philosophy and the city, which Hegel rejects with decisive consequences for his thought as a whole. Now we must summarize our findings with a view to these two themes, which we shall consider in reverse order. II. The most explicit classical discussion of theoria and praxis is found in Book VI of the Nicomachean Ethics. There Aristotle poses the relation between theory and practice in terms of the difference between their respective objects. Theoria is concerned with what cannot be otherwise than it is, what is necessary and hence eternal. Praxis is concerned with what can be changed by man (within the category of praxis in the wider sense, praxis in the narrower sense differs from poiesis-which also concerns what can be changed by man-in that its product is embedded in its very process rather than remaining in the world after the process leading to it has been completed) and is guided by its own kind of sight, namely the phronesis of the statesman, which is for almost all purposes independent of theoretical sophia as episteme completed by nous. With a view to Hegel's thought, there are two things to be said about Aristotle's treatment of theory and practice. First, Hegel accepts, with far-reaching consequences, the Aristotelian characterization of the proper objects of theoria, namely what cannot be otherwise than it is, what is necessary and hence eternal. But second, Aristotle's discussion of the relation between theory and practice is distinctly derivative-in this as in other respects he seems remote from the experience of Socrates-and as such blurs the essential conflict between the men of action and the philosophers which is decisive for classical political philosophy as a whole. From the point of view of Platonic political philosophy-and in moral/political matters Hegel's thought is as emphatically oriented toward Plato as his metaphysics (especially the importance of energeia and noeseos noesis) is decisively influenced by Aristotle-the relation between theory and practice presents itself most concretely as the relation between the philosopher and the city. Thus the center of Plato's po- WINTER 1986 �litical philosophy is the cave parable in Book VII of the Republic, in which the life of the philosopher who leaves the cave and the life of those who remain within the cave are not only emphatically distinguished abut also held together, albeit in tension. The ground of the possibility of their being held together, as also the ground of the necessity of their tension, is that according to Plato's presentation those who remain in the cave are also concerned with seeing or understanding, just as are those who leave the cave. Moreover, both are concerned with understanding the same matters: the "originals" with which the philosopher, at the summit of his ascent, comes face to face, are originals precisely of those images which all in the cave are trying to understand. Thus Plato presents us with an intransigent alternative: if the life of the philosopher is lived according to the truth and within the truth, then the lives of those who do not leave the cave-namely those who engage in the merely "practical" and "poetic" activities of the city-are lived outside of the truth; either the ideas or the gods of the city-hence the trial of Socrates for impiety. The fundamental determinant of Hegel's conception of the relation between theory and practice is his attempt to integrate what Plato had deemed incapable of integration, namely political life and religion on the one hand and philosophy on the other, so that the lives of the many might not be outside of the truth. 10 Thus the terms in which Hegel takes up the problem of the relation between theory and practice are fundamentally those of Plato rather than Aristotle (not that there is a simple opposition between the two, but rather that Aristotle's discussion is more derivative in character). We may therefore ask whether, starting from Plato, one is forced to accept the Aristotelian understanding of theoria (which, as we have said, Hegel does accept) according to which its proper objects are those objects only which cannot be otherwise than they are, which are necessary and hence unchangeable and eternal. At first glance it seems that Plato surely holds that the proper object of true knowledge must be unchangeable rather than changeable, so that the noetic world is distinguished from the world of the senses precisely by its unchangeableness. This is the interpretation of Aristotle-and indeed the ordinary interpretation-according to which the doctrine of ideas was for Plato the solution to the problem posed by the Heraclitean world of flux in which nothing stays put long enough to be known, with which world Plato had been made familiar when young by Cratylus (Metaphysics, 987 30 ff.) But one may wonder whether the "transcendence" of the ideas can be understood simply in terms of the superiority of the unchangeable to the changeable. Plato's language surely suggests, at least some of the time, a transcendence in splendor and radiance. Let us consider an attempt to state the meaning of THE ST. JOHN'S REVIEW the transcendence of the ideas in terms other than those of changeableness and unchageableness11 : It seems that two kinds of phenomena lend support to Socrates' assertion [of the doctrine of ideas in the Republic]. In the first place, the mathematical things as such can never be found among sensible things; no line drawn on sand or paper is a line as meant by the mathematician. Secondly and above all, what we mean by justice and kindred things is not as such in its purity or perfection necessarily found in human beings or societies; it rather seems that what is meant by justice transcends everything which men ever achieve; precisely the justest men were and are the ones most aware of the shortcomings of their justice. The first thing to be noticed about this interpretation is that according to it what we may roughly call "moral phenomena'' have an incomparably higher noetic status in Plato than in Aristotle: the doctrine of the transcendence of the ideas is the core of Platonic metaphysics and that doctrine finds its most important support in moral experience. It is because of what he hopes to learn regarding the unity of the whole from "moral phenomena" that Plato so relentlessly attempts to drive beyond the evident multiplicity of virtue-the virtue of a citizen, the virtue of a woman, the virtue of a child, the virtue of a slavetoward their unity; whereas Aristotle considers it foolish to seek such a unity of virtue since, after all, nothing about the affairs of the city need reflect the unity of the whole. The second thing to be noticed about Strauss' interpretation is that, although the idea of justice in the sense of the question concerning justice is eternal (coeval with man on earth), those experiences from which one can learn about justice do not at all seem to be incapable of being otherwise. According to Strauss' interpretation, those experiences which teach the most about such things as justice-hence, for Plato, contrary to Aristotle, which are most revelatory of the whole of being-are those experiences in which the most just men learn the limits of their justice. And it seems that-precisely because of the transcendence of the ideas-one can assume in advance neither that the full range of those experiences has been exhausted at a given time-hence there would seem to be in Plato, contrary to Aristotle, an opening toward the possibility of revelation-nor that there is any necessity about the way in which such experiences unfold. (After all, Aristotle's concept of "necessity" is inseparable from his concepts of energeia and dunamis, which he introduces in express polemic against the Platonic chorismos thesis, for the sake of explaining change in the sensible world.) The eternity-not necessity-of the idea of justice would thus mean the constant demand that the lover of wisdom try to understand in a unified way the variety of experiences in which the most just men learn the limits of their justice. Thus the transcendence of the ideas would 137 �be understood not primarily in terms of unchangeableness-what cannot be otherwise, is necessary and hence eternal-but rather in terms of a divined wholeness or (since the wholeness sought could not be a merely additive matter) a divined unity. The point of these remarks, highly tentative and incomplete as they are, is that Hegel's metaphysics, as a "metaphysics of morals," commits one to a philosophy of history dominated by the category of necessity only on condition that one accepts-as Hegel does-the Aristotelian account of the character of the proper objects of theoria, which account is, however, oriented upon a "metaphysics of nature." That there could be a "metaphysics of morals" leading to a non-necessitarian philosophy of history, namely a philosophy of stories which would seek, without help from the category of necessity, the unity of those stories which somehow most compel attention, is at least indicated by the interpretation of Plato which, following a hint in Strauss, we have suggested. But this is not the way which Hegel takes. III. We must now summarize our findings with respect to Hegel's relation to the view of man characteristic of contemporary revolutionary thought which, following Kojeve, we may understand provisionally as a synthesis of Marxist and Heideggerian thought. (We mean of course the early Heidegger, above all the author of Sein und Zeit.) According to Kojeve, the superiority of the modern (Marxist-existentialist) view of man to the classical view lies in its greater concreteness. Thus Descartes, Kojeve suggests, merely summarizes the anthropology of the whole previous tradition of philosophy when, starting from the cogito ergo sum, he proceeds immediately to an explication of the "I think" without first explicating the "I am." In opposition to this procedure, Marx holds that before reflecting on one's thinking activity one must first reflect on the concrete conditions of one's being as such. Marx understands these conditions primarily in terms of the historical world created fundamentally by labor as technological transformation of nature and derivatively by revolutionary political struggle. Heidegger also holds that before reflecting on the purely theoretical subject one must reflect on the concrete conditions of his being. (It is true but not immediately relevant that Heidegger claims in Being and Time to be concerned with the being of man only for the sake of gaining clarity about being as such.) Heidegger, however, does not primarily understand those concrete conditions in terms of history (still less in terms of economic history or any "rational" history at all), but rather in terms of the temporality of the individual human subject who is, concretely understood, no mere theoretical (beholding) subject, concerned only with being intelligently present to Being in 138 its sheer presence (ousia=parousia for Heidegger's interpretation of classical ontology), but rather is always constituted by his particular memories of the past and care for the future, and above all by his consciousness, whether lucidly sustained or furtively evaded, that he must die. We said in the Introduction that according to Kojeve's interpretation, "Hegel succeeded in holding together themes which later, in Marx and Heidegger, become separated to the detriment of a true view of human existence: Marx knows of political struggle and of labor as technological transformation of nature but he loses sight of human freedom as consciousness of death; Heidegger knows of human freedom as consciousness of death but neglects political struggle and labor, hence cannot give an account of concrete human existence." We shall now briefly review those passages in the Phenomenology which strongly support Kojeve' s interpretation, and then marshall several considerations which would have to be opposed to that interpretation. 1. In the Preface to the Phenomenology Hegel stresses not only the importance of the right understanding of subjectivity for the right understanding of being as a whole, but also and especially that subjectivity must be understood as negativity: the "I" of the "I think" is not always one and the same; it becomes, creates itself in and through re-making the world in which it finds itself; but creation of the new presupposes destruction of the given at least as regards ''form''; the motive for creation of the new is dissatisfaction with the given; man's primary relation to the whole is one of disharmony, dissonance; only at the end of history, when the self-made man confronts a world which he has himself made (formally if not materially) does harmony reign. 2. In Chapter IV of the Phenomenology Hegel sets forth the dialectics of master and slave, set in motion by the fundamental passions of desire for recognition or prestige on the one hand and fear of violent death on the other, in terms of which both labor as technological transformation of nature and political struggle are to be understood, whether these are seen to culminate in the French Revolution as Hegel thought or the Communist Revolution as Kojeve thinks. 3. Also in Chapter IV, Hegel affirms the superiority of Christian existence which, refusing to separate ''pure thinlcing" from "particular existence," demands "the resurrection of the body,'' over against Stoicism, which Hegel interprets as the existential outcome of the Socratic school and which settles for the fulfillment or perfection of the "agent intellect." 4. In Chapter V, in his discussion of phrenology and physiognomy, Hegel enunciates the doctrine that "the being of a man is his deed": one must act in order to become an individual, and one is no more than one does, WINTER 1986 �whereby what one does has a purely "objective" (i.e., intersubjective and historical) meaning. This passage, incidentally, provides ample support for Kojeve's interpretation of Hegel as an atheist, at least in one important sense: the radical depreciation of what is inner-the realm of intentions-as strictly unknowable, presupposes that there is no God who can see into the hearts of men and render judgment accordingly. There is no more atheistic assertion in Hegel's philosophy than: "World history is the world court of justice." Whether atheism-namely, in this context, the impossibility of certain knowledge regarding what remains inner-commits one to the radical depreciation of the inner as "unactual" is perhaps difficult to say; certainly, however, the converse is true: one who believes that a man is no more than he has done, must be an atheist. Against Kojeve's interpretation, however, one would have to say: 1. Hegel's Aristotelianism, or perhaps one should say his "biologism"-in any case the doctrine of the presence of the telos in the beginning not as a mere norm but as effectively moving-is finally incompatible with an understanding of human existence as "founded" on a future which is sheer possibility. Nor can this difficulty be removed merely by saying as Kojeve does that Hegel's dialectical natural science, which as such is "magical," must be rejected while his dialectical human science is retained. What is at issue is not whether nature is or is not dialectical in the sense of "dialectical" preferred by Kojeve-namely, "determined" out of a future which is sheer possibility-but rather what Hegel means by "dialectical"; and that seems to Hegel to be as adequately expressed in terms of bud, blossom and fruit as of ancien regime, revolution and counter-revolution. Moreover, as we have seen, Hegel unambiguously maintains (in the Preface and in Chapter V) that the end is presupposed in the beginning when he is expressly speaking of Geist, namely of man's historical relation to being as a whole. 2. Standing against the existentialist interpretation of Hegel is also what one may call Hegel's Spinozism, namely his conception that only the whole is in the strict sense actual. This conception leads to a transmoral notion of guilt-every part as such being guilty (only the whole being innocent) insofar as in affirming itself it necessarily violates the equally valid rights of other parts-which determines Hegel's analysis of Greek tragedy, his critique of the beautiful soul, and his understanding of the passion of Christ as the experience of the death of God. Kojeve, who apparently agrees with Hegel's official judgement on Spinoza's philosophy-that in it "the subject is merely submerged, not upheld" -does not appear to wonder whether Hegel is perhaps in the end not so far from Spinoza as Kojeve' s existentialist interpretation requires. But one must wonder about this. 1HE ST. JOHN'S REVIEW 3. One must also be much more serious than Kojeve is with regard to the theological character of Hegel's thought. Who after all can doubt the theological origin of Hegel's assertion in the Introduction to the Phenomenology that "the Absolute already is and wills to be with us"? Indeed Kojeve' s rather vulgar prejudice against religion in general (whose deepest root he takes to be that fear of death which all" adults" have overcome) vitiates his presentation of Hegel's thought in various ways. Thus according to his interpretation, Hegel presents Greek tragedy as resting upon the relegation of labor-wherein alone according to Kojeve individuality and activity (as distinct from mere being) are reconciled-to the periphery of the polis, which was essentially an orgattization of masters, i.e., of warriors. This is an ingenious interpretation, but there is scant basis for it in Hegel's text. Hegel indeed sees the essential tragedy of Greek Sittlichkeit in the conflict between the city and the family, but he understands that conclict not at all as a conflict between a laborless city and individuality, but rather as a conflict between human law and divine law. One aspect of the neglect by Kojeve of the theological character of Hegel's thought is roughly identical with his neglect of the Aristotelian character of that thought, particularly of the priority of energeia over dunamis whereby the future is not sheer possibility but rather is profoundly guaranteed. But even more misleading is Kojeve' s imputation to Hegel of the view-that religion arises out of cowardice and wishful thinking, and that adequate human self-consciousness requires atheism as the acceptance, dictated by intellectual honesty, of man's utter lack of support in the universe and above all as required by man's "infinite pride" which is the driving force of his self-creation in history. No one should wish to enlist Hegel under the banner of orthodox Christianity; but neither was he guilty of the contemporary puerilities which Kojeve ascribes to him with regard to religious matters. Appendix A Aristotle on Actuality and Potentiality On the basis of the agreement between Hegel and Aristotle as to the divinity of noeseos noesis, the decisive question whether God can come to be in time is seen to depend on the mode of the presence of the telos in the beginning. We must determine Aristotle's thought in this respect as carefully as we can. We turn first to Aristotle's discussion of the priority of energeia over against dunamis in Book IX, Chapter VIII of the Metaphysics. Aristotle states that energeia is prior to dunamis in logos (later used interchangeably with gnosis), in ousia, andin one sense though not in another-in time. The case of logos or speech and gnosis or knowledge is relatively 139 �clear. We know and are able to speak of some thing or kind of thing as capable of seeing, for example, because we know it to have actually seen. Although qualifications would eventually be necessary, it is generally true that we are able to speak of capabilities or potentialities only because we have at some time seen them actualized. The priority in one sense but not in another of energeia over dunamis in time is also clear as far as it goes, but it points beyond itself. Aristotle says that dunamis is temporally prior in the sense that before this man there was this embryo, but prior to this embryo there was another (specifically but not numerically identical) man: "For it is always by a thing in energeia that another thing becomes energeia from what it was potentially; for example, a man by a man and the musical by the musical, as there is always a first mover, and this mover already exists in energeia.'' But a discussion of whether and in what sense energeia is temporally prior to dunamis is necessarily inconclusive, for the reason that Aristotle teaches the eternity of the visible world, so that priority in the decisive respect must be not a matter of before and after in time, but rather a question of rank of being, a question concerning ousia or beingness. Aristotle indeed maintains the priority of energeia with respect to beingness. His argument is articulated into three crucial assertions. First, the higher is efficacious, or nature tends toward the higher. Second, form is higher in rank, higher with respect to beingness, than matter, hence the formed is higher than the unformed. Third, form at work, form which is fully energeia, is higher in rank than form which is merely present or not at work. For example, a man is higher in rank than a boy, but a man performing manly deeds is still higher in rank, in beingness. Thus there is motion from the unformed toward form; but when that motion is complete there is, not "rest" at the level of form, but rather the sheer blazing forth in actualization/manifestation of selfpossessed form. The decisive point is that both motionsif motion be taken in a broad sense to include the blazing forth of a completed form-are "intended" by nature, and especially the second: "And so just as teachers think that they have achieved their end when they have exhibited their pupils at work, it is likewise with nature." And this "intention" is efficacious-all that is tends toward actualization-not by virtue of the past or heredity or "recollection in the widest sense" (which Kojeve suggests is the foundation of biological existence in general, upon which he takes Aristotle's thought to be exclusively oriented, as distinct from human existence which is "founded" on a future which is sheer possibility), which might seem to be implied by Aristotle's comments about the temporal priority of man to embryo, but rather by virtue of the lure of a possible future, whose possibility as a real possibility is secured by the energeia of the eternal 140 prime mover, as Aristotle says a few sentences later. How the eternal prime mover has efficacy in the mode of lure we must briefly explain, although we shall limit ourselves to one aspect of the matter. It is well known that in Book XII of the Metaphysicswherein the analysis of motion (Physics) and the analysis of knowing (Book III of De Anima) converge in such a way that the first cause of motion is revealed as noeseos noesis-God is presented as moving the universe by being an object of desire, Himself unmoved. But to understand this thought somewhat more exactly, we may perhaps begin with a passage in Book II of De Anima concerning what Aristotle calls the nutritive soul (415a27-b8): Its operations are reproduction and the assimilation of food. For this is the most natural operation among living creatures ... namely to reproduce one's kind, an animal producing an animal and a plant a plant in order that they may participate in the eternal and divine in the only way they can; for all strive for this, and for the sake of this act according to nature ... Since, then, they cannot participate in the eternal and divine by continuity of existence, because no perishable thlng can remain numerically one and the same, they participate in these in the only way they can, some to a greater and some to a lesser extent; what persists is not the individual itself, but something in its image, identical not numerically but specifically. Thus all animate being attempts to participate in, is moved by its desire for, the "eternal and divine." The eternal and divine-that means, to strive for the highest kind of being is to strive to be outside of time; divinity seems almost to be an epiphenomenon of timelessness, rather than the other way around, so that it is difficult not to be reminded of Nietzsche's analysis of classical philosophy as animated by "the spirit of revenge" as "the revulsion of the will against time and its 'it was."' However that may be, plants and animals share in the eternal and divine, not individually, but by virtue of the everlastingness of their species. Everlastingness is the most perfect reflection or approximation within time of the eternal in the sense of the timeless. The heavenly bodies possess a still more perfect kind of being, since not by mere participation in a species, but in their very individuality, they enjoy everlastingness as the product of their orexis toward the most perfect, i.e., timeless being. This fact is the ground of Aristotle's assertion in Book VI of the Ethics that man is by no means the highest being in the cosmos since, to say nothing of other considerations, he is inferior to the heavenly bodies. What Aristotle refers to, of course, and properly inasmuch as the Ethics forms part of his political writings, is man insofar as he lives in cities. For man insofar as he transcends the city, namely man insofar as he engages in contemplation, thereby participating, however intermittently, in the perfect and timeless life of the divine nous, enjoys not mere everlast- WINTER 1986 �ingness but actual timelessness: contemplation is according to Aristotle the activity par excellence which is impervious to time. Appendix B The French Revolution and Christianity We have said, on the basis of texts whose purport, however strange, seems unmistakable, that the reconciliation with reality which Hegelian wisdom claims to provide requires, above all, insight into two great events: the life and death of Christ, and the French Revolution culminating in Napoleon; and that according to Hegel the relation between these two events is such that the second is a killd of repetition of the first or, more precisely, that the proper understanding of the second makes possible for the first time the authentic appropriation, in the mode of Er-innerung, of the first. Formally considered, the common term between the two events, seemingly so disparate, is according to Hegel a certain understanding of the relation between part and whole. Therefore the decisive question is: what is the whole of which Hegel, on the basis of his insight into these events above all others, recognizes himself to be a part and is thereby reconciled? Or, what is the meaning of history? At first sight Hegel appears to give as straightforward an answer to this question as one could desire: the meaning of history is the progressive realization of freedom in the world. In a famous passage of his Lectures on the Philosophy of History, Hegel sketches a development from the Oriental world, where only one is free, through the Greek and Roman worlds, where some are free, to the modem Christian world, shaped by the Reformation (which Hegel calls "the German Revolution") and the French Revolution, where all are free. Thus a line runs from Christ through Luther to the French Revolution distinguishing the modern world from the ancient and signifying the advance of freedom: Plato's Republic is said in Hegel's Philosophy of Right to be inimical to "freedom" or u subjectivity" or u subjective freedom." But although "freedom" is the key term in the Philosophy of History and the Philosophy of Right (in contrast to the Phenomenology itself where "knowledge" or "wisdom" occupies the corresponding place; this difference seems to indicate not a shift in Hegel's thought but rather the greater suitability of "freedom" as a readily accessible and exciting lecture theme), it is very difficult to say exactly what Hegel means by the term. Three principal meanings can be distinguished in Hegel's fluent usage. First, there is freedom as liberal democracy, corresponding with the most obvious meaning of the French Revolution: the overthrow of "despotism," secular and clerical, in the name of the "rights of man," the privatization of religion, the emancipation of commerce from THE ST. JOHN'S REVIEW pre-capitalistic restraints and in general the elaboration of the distinction between state and society. The second principal meaning of freedom is that in virtue of which Hegel regards the Christian view of man as superior to the classical philosophical view: having discussed this before, we may summarize it here as ''wholeness of personality," symbolized by the "resurrection of the body" over against the perfection of the "agent intellect" alone. This is the understanding of freedom which was made possible by Christ and mediated by Luther. The third principal meaning of freedom in Hegel's writings is that intended, in their diverse ways, by Plato and Spinoza, whereby freedom is understanding, and he who does not understand is radically unfree, especially if he is unhindered from doing "whatever he likes." In Hegel's popular presentations, especially the Philosophy of History, the celebration of freedom seems most obviously to intend freedom in the first sense, that of liberal democracy. But this is hardly Hegel's last word on the subject, as becomes clear if one reflects on his deeply pessimistic characterization of capitalism in the Philosophy of Right-the inevitable pauperization of the masses under capitalism leads directly to imperialism and finally has no other remedy than war in the interest of domestic unity (compare paragraphs 245, 246 and 324)-to say nothing of the much more bitter indictment contained in the so-called Jena system (which Hegel never published), written before the Phenomenology. Thus although one must say that Hegel was willing to accept modem liberal democracy for various reasons-some of them not so different from the reasons of Spinoza, for examplehis acceptance of it was surely not so unqualified as to enable him to regard the emergence of liberal democracy, taken by itself, as the meaning of history. Rather, it was freedom in the other two senses which we have distinguished-Christian freedom as "wholeness of personality" and Platonic freedom as wisdom-whose emergence Hegel regarded as constituting the meaning of history, and in view of which he affirmed himself to be reconciled. And of the two, Hegel understood the former to terminate in the latter: when he criticizes classical philosophy for having severed "pure thinking" from Einzelnheit, he has in view not at all the replacement of "pure thinkillg" by Einzelnheit but rather the integration and redemption of Einzelnheit within "pure thinking." The meaning of history is the emergence of wisdom. Thus wisdom recognizes that the meaning of history is the emergence of wisdom, of itself. But what is therelation between recognition and reconciliation? Or, what is the temper or mood of Hegel's "reconciliation with reality"? Is Hegel's view more like Aristotle's (according to which happiness from understanding depends on the intrinsic goodness of what is understood: as Aristotle puts it in Book Lambda of the Metaphysics, "there are 141 �some things which it is better not to see than to see"); or is it more like Spinoza's (according to which intellectual joy derives from the understanding of necessity as such, in which the primarily good and evil are subsumed and neutralized)? Conclusive texts are lacking, but it is difficult not to feel that Hegel is very far from Aristotle in this matter. Hegel's Phenomenology will be incorporated in the text by page number only, with reference always to Volume II of this edi- tion of Hegel's works. Ed.] 4. Ibid., Vol. XV, p. 328 5. Alexandre Kojeve, Hegel, Versuch einer Gegenwarligung seines Denkes (Stuttgart: Kolhammer, 1958) 6. The exposition offered here is greatly indebted to Martin Heidegger's commentary on the ''Introduction'' to the Phenomenology, found in Holzwege (Frankfurt-am-Main: Klostermann, 1950), pp. 105-192. Notes 1. Martin Heidegger, Introduction to Metaphysics (Anchor Books; New York: Doubleday and Co., 1961), p. 135 2. Karl Marx, Economic and Philosophic Manuscripts of 1844, trans. R. Milligan (Moscow: Foreign Languages Publishing House, 19560, p. 80 3. G.W.F. Hegel, Samtliche Werke, ed. Hoffmeister (Hamburg: Felix Meiner, 1928- ), Vol. II, p. 19 [Hereafter all citations of 142 7. Emile Meyerson, Identity and Reality, trans. Kate Loewenberg (New York: Dover Publications, In., 1962), p. 43 8. Kojeve, op. cit., pp. 51-7, 67, 211-12, 223 9. Hegel, op. cit., Vol. I, p. 40 10. Compare Hegel, op. cit., Vol. V, pp. 462-4 (Encyclopedia of the Philosophical Sciences, 3rd ed., paragraph 552) 11. Leo Strauss, The City and Man (New York: Rand-McNally, 1964), p. 120 WINTER 1986 � Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource <em>The St. John's Review</em> Description An account of the resource <em>The St. John's Review</em><span> is published by the Office of the Dean, St. John's College.  All manuscripts are subject to blind review. Address correspondence to </span><em>The St. John's Review</em><span>, St. John's College, 60 College Avenue, Annapolis, MD 21401 or via e-mail at </span><a class="obfuscated_link" href="mailto:review@sjc.edu"><span class="obfuscated_link_text">review@sjc.edu</span></a><span>.</span><br /><br /><em>The St. John's Review</em> exemplifies, encourages, and enhances the disciplined reflection that is nurtured by the St. John's Program. 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Creator An entity primarily responsible for making the resource Office of the Dean Title A name given to the resource The St. John's Review (formerly The College), Winter 1986 Date A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource 1986-01 Contributor An entity responsible for making contributions to the resource Sterling, J. Walter Coughlin, Maria Freis, Richard Freis, S. Richard Sachs, Joe Stickney, Cary Wilson, Curtis A. Sachs, Joe Brann, Eva T. H. O'Grady, William Bart, Robert Higuera, Marilyn Littleton, Michael Buchenauer, Nancy Doskow, George LeCuyer, Phil Sparrow, Edward Durgin, Frank Dink, Michael Rustan, Paula Cohen, Martin Jones, Mary Hannah Description An account of the resource Volume XXXVII, number 1 of The St. John's Review, formerly The College. Published in Winter 1986. 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Richard Freis, Alumni representative Joe Sachs Cary Stickney Curtis A. Wilson Unsolicited articles, stories, and poems are welcome, but should be accompanied by a stamped, self-addressed envelope in each instance. Reasoned comments are also welcome. The St. John's Review (formerly The College) is published by the Office of the Dean. St. John's College, Annapolis, Maryland 21404. William Dyal, President, Thomas Slakey, Dean. Published thrice yearly, in the winter, spring, and summer. For those not on the distribution list, subscriptions: $12.00 yearly, $24.00 for two years, or $36.00 for three years, paya,ble in advance. Address all correspondence to The St. John's Review, St. John's College, Annapolis, Maryland 21404. Volume XXXVII, Number 2 and 3 Spring 1986 ©1987 St. John's College; All rights reserved. Reproduction in whole or in part without permission is prohibited. ISSN 0277-4720 Composition: Best Impressions, Inc. Printing: The John D. Lucas Printing Company The cover is the work of Lydia Sparrow. �Contents PART I WRITINGS PUBLISHED IN MEMORY OF WILLIAM O'GRADY 1 The Return of Odysseus Mary Hannah Jones 11 God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob Joe Sachs 21 On Beginning to Read Dante Cary Stickney 29 Chasing the Goat From the Sky Michael Littleton 37 The Miraculous Moonlight: Flannery O'Connor's The Artificial Nigger Robert S. Bart 49 The Shattering of the Natural Order E. A. Goerner 57 Through Phantasia to Philosophy Eva Brann 65 A Toast to the Republic Curtis Wilson 67 The Human Condition Geoffrey Harris PART II 71 The Homeric Simile and the Beginning of Philosophy Kurt Riezler 81 The Origin of Philosophy Jon Lenkowski 93 A Hero and a Statesman Douglas Allanbrook ��Part I Writings Published in Memory of William O'Grady ��THE ST. J0 HN' s REVIEW Spring 1986 The Return of Odysseus Mary Hannah Jones The first view Homer gives us of lthaka is a feast of the suitors at the house of Odysseus. In between bouts of unrestrained eating and drinking the suitors listen to songs. Phemius the bard sings for them, not by choice but under compulsion. The song he sings this night is the nostos, the return, of the Achaeans from Troy. (1.326) The nostoi are traditionally a part of what is known as the epic cycle, the poems which told the whole history of the Trojan war and its aftermath. Critics have noted that this reference to the nostoi at the feast of the suitors contains an evident and double-edged irony. There is one story of homecoming that cannot be sung yet, the story of Odysseus, which he will bring home with him. The Odyssey is in fact just another of these homecomings, the nostos of Odysseus. But the painful irony for the suitors is that this story of return has already been set in motion. Such was Athena's purpose in coming to the feast of the suitors this night. Athena's presence has already set in motion the series of events which will culminate in the return of Odysseus. But his return is a complicated matter indeed. Fully onehalf of the Odyssey, books one through twelve, is devoted to bringing Odysseus from Calypso's island to his native land. Many things have to be achieved before Odysseus can set foot on Ithaka. The return of Odysseus is in part a matter of fate. He is many times said to be fated to see his friends and home again. It is partly a matter of divine intervention. Athena An alumna of St. John's College, M.H. )ones has been teaching at Marshall University. She is now studying and teaching at the University of Pennsylvania. THE ST. JOHN'S REVIEW recounts Odysseus' virtues and sufferings to Zeus twice and twice urges that such a man deserves to be released from sorrow. But most of all the return of Odysseus is determined by enormous human effort. Odysseus must strive in every way possible to achieve his return, and his family and friends must strive to keep open a place in their lives for him. Athena sets in motion a plan for the return of Odysseus which demands the greatest possible effort on the part of everyone concerned. The beginning of Athena's plan for the return of Odysseus is the sending of both Telemachus and Odysseus on a journey. Telemachus must travel to Pylos and Sparta; Odysseus must painfully make his way to Scheria and there win convoy home. Let us examine these two journeys and try to see why they are necessary to achieve the return of Odysseus. The first four books of the Odyssey are the story of Telemachus: how he makes preparation for the return of his father. In his conversation with Mentes, who is of course Athena in disguise, we are shown how much is needed to prepare him. When Mentes asks Telemachus if he is indeed the son of Odysseus, Telemachus makes a reply that is shocking by Homeric standards. Telemachus says that he has been told that he is the son of Odysseus, but that he himself does not know, for no man can know his own parentage. If this were true it would mean the collapse of the heroic world, since heroes are only heroes because they trace their descent from a god. Everything depends upon what is passed on from father to son; that is why the heroic genealogies are so important. Knowing a man means knowing his father and grandfather and other ancestors. If Telemachus is to be anyone in Homer's world, he must 1 �first come to know that he is the son of Odysseus. This is the preparation that he must make for the return of his father. Athena sends Telemachus on a journey that contains many echoes of Odysseus' adventures. Telemachus sails by night to distant places; he meets a beautiful enchantress; drugs are secretly placed in his wine; he is the guest of people who want to detain him too long. But none of these things is in itself a sufficient reason for this dangerous journey or a preparation for the return of his father. When Athena is relating her plan to Zeus she says, "I will send him (Telemachus) to Sparta and to sandy Pylos, in order for him to inquire after the return of his dear father, if he may hear something, and in order for him to attain noble kleos among men." (1.94-5) The Greek word "kleos" means interchangeably fame or glory and the story or song which glorifies. Athena is sending Telemachus on his journey to inquire after a story and to become part of a story, because only in this way can he enter the world of his father. The first stage of Telemachus' journey is to Pylos to the palace of the wise old king Nestor. They come upon Nestor as he and his sons and the other men of Pylos are making sacrifice to Poseidon. But Telemachus is suddenly afraid to approach this famous counselor. He says to the disguised Athena, "Mentor, how shall I go? How shall I greet him? I am in no way experienced in well-wrought speech." (3.22-23) Telemachus has good reason to be abashed at his inexperience in speaking. Nestor's primary excellence in the war at Troy was his skill in speech and in council. To be able to speak well is part of being a hero. Phoenix in his famous speech to Achilles in book nine of the Iliad says that Achilles' father had sent him (Phoenix) to the young Achilles in order to initiate him into the heroic world: to teach him to be a speaker of words and a doer of deeds. (9.443) These two complementary aspects of heroism are continually referred to in Homer. When Achilles in Hades asks Odysseus whether Achilles' son Neoptolemus became a champion in the war, Odysseus replies that Neoptolemus always spoke well in council and always distinguished himself in battle. (11.511-515) When Penelope tells of her great fear for Telemachus on his journey, she says that he knows nothing either of the toils of battle or the councils of men. (4.818) Speaking words and doing deeds are the two poles of the heroic world, and just as Achilles surpasses all others as a warrior in battle, so Odysseus surpasses all others as a contriver of well-wrought speech and counsel. Nestor himself says that there was no one at Troy who could compete with Odysseus in metis, skill in council. (3.120) In the Iliad Odysseus acknowledges Achilles' supremacy on the battlefield but boasts that he is the best in council. 2 Odysseus is the hero of speech as Achilles is the hero of deeds, and perhaps this accounts for the obvious difference in style between the two epics. Deeds are resplendent and certain, but can leave no room for subtlety, while words may be as subtle as the skill of the speaker makes them, but they can never be as certain and unambiguous as deeds. And so the Iliad takes its clarity and bright passion from the splendor inherent in great deeds, while the characteristic doubleness and complexity of the Odyssey derive from the ambiguity inherent in all speech. Athena replies to Telemachus' shame-faced question by saying that he was not born and reared without the favor of the gods. (3.28) Telemachus' birth will make him a speaker of well-wrought words; he must rely on his Odyssean heritage. Telemachus and Athena join Nestor's sons at the sacrifice and participate in the feast. In the course of the ceremony greater deference is shown to Athena than to Telemachus, because Athena appears to be a man at least a generation older than Telemachus. But when the time comes for Nestor to question the strangers, it is Telemachus, not Mentor, who speaks for both. Telemachus deftly and courteously explains why he has come and how he hopes Nestor can help him. Nestor, in his long reply to Telemachus' well-ordered and concise speech, touches upon Odysseus' special excellence, his primacy in council, and then breaks off to say, "(such was) your father, if indeed you are his son. Wonder holds me as I look upon you, for indeed your words are like his, nor would anyone have thought that a younger man could speak so like him." (3.122-125) In his encounter with Nestor Telemachus first finds what can give him the only true assurance that he is indeed the son of Odysseus: he sees in himself the qualities his father is famous for. Nestor says that he and Odysseus never spoke at variance in the assembly or at council, but always, having one heart (hena thumon echonte) advised the Achaians for the best. In the long conversation that ensues Telemachus forms an alliance in speech with Nestor just as his father had. He and Nestor by means of their teasing speeches manage to provoke Athena into giving a manifest sign of her divinity. Nestor begins by shrewdly observing that there might yet be hope that Odysseus will return. And if Athena should choose to show favor to Telemachus as she openly favored Odysseus and stood manifestly by his side, then the wooers would soon forget marriage. Telemachus, who had certainly recognized the stranger Mentes as a god in disguise, replies that the aid of a god is too great a thing to hope for, and as for Odysseus, his hoped-for return could never come to pass, not even if a god should will it. Athena interrupts in exasperation to say that it is easily within the power of a god to bring a man home, even from far away, and it is surely better to return late SPRING 1986 �after many toils than to be murdered at homecoming as was Agamemnon. Telemachus reiterates that it it impossible for Odysseus to return, and cleverly seizes on Athena's mention of Agamemnon as an excuse to change the subject. He asks Nestor to tell the whole story of Agamemnon's murder. Athena waits impatiently as Nestor talks on and the sun slowly sets. When Nestor finally brings his story to a close Athena forcefully suggests that it is time to go home. She directs Nestor to give Telemachus a chariot and horses for his journey to Sparta and then disappears into the clouds having transformed herself into the likeness of a sea-eagle. Telemachus and Nestor by their partnership in speeches have attained from Athena the manifest sign of divine favor she had once shown to Odysseus. In his exchange with Nestor Telemachus has explored the possibilities of speech in their comic aspect. He has playfully challenged a goddess in speech, in much the same way as Odysseus will vie with Athena in speech in book thirteen when she first confronts him without disguise. But in his journey to Sparta Telemachus is given a taste of the bitterness speeches may contain and the griefs and dangers that may be hidden in them. When Telemachus comes to the house of the storied Helen and Menelaus, he arrives at the wedding of Menelaus's son (by a slave woman), Megapenthes, whose name means "monstrous grief." That night Helen and Menelaus tell stories about the heroic deeds of Odysseus. The stories which Helen and Menelaus tell are only told on account of the influence of the drug which Helen casts into their wine. Helen acquired this drug in Egypt "where the grain-giving earth bears the greatest profusion of drugs, many good in mixture, and many baneful." (4.228-229) The special character of this drug is that it takes away all grief and anger and brings forgetfulness of all evils. But first we should recount the events which precede Helen's recourse to the drug. When Telemachus and Nestor's son Peisistratus, who accompanies him to Sparta, first arrive at the house of Menelaus they are astonished by the wealth it contains and remark upon it. Menelaus overhears what they say and replies that the wealth he amassed from his years of wandering is not worth the lives of his friends who died at Troy. But it is for Odysseus especially that he mourns since it was he who undertook the greatest labors for Menelaus' sake. Telemachus, who had been so selfpossessed at Nestor's house, loses his composure and is unable to reply to Menelaus. Peisistratus speaks for him and they are all reminded of the losses they suffered at Troy and they all weep. At the suggestion of Peisistratus, whom Homer calls wise, Menelaus proposes that they give over speaking about Odysseus and the others THE ST. JOHN'S REVIEW whom they have lost. In the morning, he says, there will be mythoi, stories, for Telemachus and him to tell each other to the full. (4.214-5) It is then that Helen casts the drug into the wine and makes a second beginning of mythoi, stories (4.239). She says, "Feast now as you sit in the halls and take delight in stories: I will tell appropriate things." The word I have translated as "appropriate things" is "eoikota" which comes from a very common verb which means "to be appropriate or seemly" but also "to seem or appear to be." Lattimore translates this same sentence "What I tell you is plausible." Helen goes on to tell her story. I could not tell you all the number nor could I name them, all that make up the exploits of enduring Odysseus, but here is a task such as that strong man endured and accomplished in the Trojan country where you Achaians suffered miseries. He flagellated himself with degrading strokes, then threw on a worthless sheet about his shoulders. He looked like a servant. So he crept into the wide-wayed city of the men he was fighting, disguising himself in the likeness of somebody else, a beggar, one who was unlike himself beside the ships of the Achaians, but in his likeness crept into the Trojans' city, and they all were taken in. I alone recognized him even in this form, and I questioned him, but he in his craftiness eluded me; but after I had bathed him and anointed him with olive oil and put some clothing upon him, after I had sworn a great oath not to disclose before the Trojans that this was Odysseus until he had made his way back to the fast ships and the shelters, then at last he told me all the purpose of the Achaians, and after striking many Trojans down with the thin bronze edge, he went back to the Argives and brought back much information. The rest of the Trojan women cried out shrill, but my heart was happy, my heart had changed by now and was for going back home again, and I grieved for the madness that Aphrodite bestowed when she led me there away from my own dear country, forsaking my own daughter, my bedchamber, and my husband, a man who lacked no endowment either of brains or beauty. (4.240-266, Lattimore's translation) Let us look at Helen's story closely. She begins by describing it as a labor of Odysseus, but in fact the subject of Helen's story is Helen. It is about how she alone recognizes Odysseus in disguise, but there is more than 3 �this. She alone overcomes his guileful avoidance of her, she takes his disguise from him, she bathes him, and she wins his complete trust. Odysseus, so wary and distrustful in other circumstances, tells her panta noon, all his mind. This is the story of the triumph of Helen over yet another man. Helen ends her story on a note of selfjustification. (And this is most necessary, since in telling of her intrigue with Odysseus she has revealed herself as the betrayer of the man she betrayed her first husband for.) She says the other Trojan women wept, but she was glad, for her heart was already (i'de) turned to go back to her home. Apparently we are meant to think that the events Helen recounts happened fairly early in the war. After Helen finishes Menelaus tells a story which is meant to be a complement to her story. In fact he begins with almost the same words she had used. Here is the way that strong man acted and the way he endured action, inside the wooden horse, where we who were greatest of the Argives all were sitting and bringing death and destruction to the Trojans. Then you came there, Helen; you will have been moved by some divine spirit who wished to grant glory to the Trojans, and Deiphobos, a godlike man, was with you when you came. Three times you walked around the hollow ambush, feeling it, and you called out, naming them by name, to the best of the Danaans, and made your voice sound like the voice of the wife of each of the Argives, Now I myself and the son of Tydeus and great Odysseus were sitting there in the middle of them and we heard you crying aloud, and Diomedes and I started up, both minded to go outside, or else to answer your voice from inside, bu.t Odysseus pulled us back and held us, for all our eagerness. Then all the other sons of the Achaians were silent: there was only one, it was Antiklos, who was ready to answer, but Odysseus, brutally squeezing his mouth in the clutch of his powerful hands, held him, and so saved the lives of all the Achaians until such time as Pallas Athene led you off from us. (4.266-289, Lattimore's translation) Although the ostensible subject is Odysseus, in fact the real subject of this story is also Helen. It is about her attempt to seduce and betray not one leader of the Achaians but all of them. She can imitate their wives very well-Helen can pretend to be anyone's wife-but she was not able to overcome Odysseus, and he prevents the other men from yielding to her. Since it is the wooden 4 horse the Achaian leaders are hidden within, we know exactly when this attempted seduction took place. It was in the day Troy fell, the very last day of the war, long after Helen said her heart was already turned back to her home and husband. Menelaus' story perfectly matches Helen's. Her story was about a successful intrigue, his is about a foiled one; her story contains a justification of herself, his contains a condenmation. It is not hard to see why Helen casts the drug which dulls grief and anger into their wine. Without such a drug she and Menelaus could hardly bear each other's stories. Telemachus, who has been silent since his father's name was first mentioned, abruptly brings an end to these sly and hateful stories. This night at Sparta has introduced Telemachus in some measure to the sorrow and bitterness that Helen and the Trojan war have brought into the world. But even here in Sparta he is recognized by all as the son of his father. (4.143) Telemachus has seen something of his father's nature in himself, and he has gained some insight into the world of heroes and stories. He will never need to say again that he does not know who his father is. Telemachus will return to lthaka prepared to meet his father, as was Athena's plan for him. Athena's plan for Telemachus has been accomplished. But what of her plan for Odysseus? Like Telemachus Odysseus must also be prepared for his return; he cannot go directly home. First he must journey to the land of a mysterious people who live at the ends of the inhabited world. But what is it that these Phaiakians will do for Odysseus? There are two gods who speak of what will happen to Odysseus during his stay with the Phaiakians. Poseidon, when he first catches sight of Odysseus on his raft approaching their land says, "So indeed he is close to the land of the Phaiakians, where it is his fate to escape out of the great bond of misery which has come upon him." (5.288-90) The word which I have translated 'bond' is peirar, which properly means rope or cord. By derivation from this original sense it comes to mean end or limit or boundary, as well as the extreme stage or crisis of something. In the land of the Phaiakians Odysseus is fated to reach the final limit of his misery and escape from it. The other god who speaks about the Phaiakians is Zeus, who says that the Phaiakians will honor Odysseus like a god and send him home, ''bestowing bronze and gold in abundance upon him, and clothing, more than Odysseus could ever have taken away from Troy, even if he had escaped unharmed with his fair share of the plunder." (5.38-40, Lattimore's translation) Everything he had gained in his victory at Troy Odysseus has lost in his painful wanderings. But the Phaiakians will somehow make good what was lost. What he receives from them will re- SPRING 1986 �store to him what he now lacks. From what Zeus and Poseidon say, it seems that Odysseus must go to the land of the Phaiakians because only there can he escape finally from the misery that has bound him and only there can he find some sort of compensation for what he now painfully lacks. Let us examine carefully Odysseus' stay among the Phaiakians to see how his fate and the plan of the gods for his return unfold. Zeus says that Odysseus must endure terrible suffering in his journey from Calypso's island to the land of the Phaiakians. (5.33) And his journey is indeed painful. He sails for eighteen sleepless days and then is battered by a storm sent by Poseidon which destroys his raft and leaves him no recourse but to swim through the swollen waves for another two days and two nights. When he crawls onto the shore there is scarcely a spark of life left in him. He finds shelter under two thick bushes and covers himself in the fallen leaves. Homer conveys Odysseus' state of utter exhaustion and depletion in a beautiful simile: As when a man buries a burning log in a black ash heap in a remote place in the country, where none live near as neighbors and saves the seed of fire, having no other place to get a light from, so Odysseus buried himself in the leaves, and Athene shed a sleep on his eyes so as most quickly to quit him, by veiling his eyes, from the exhaustion of his labors. (5.488-493, Lattimore's translation) This simile speaks to more than Odysseus' physical state. When Odysseus crawls naked onto the shore of Scheria he has lost everything: his companions, his ships, his treasure, his youth, his sense of heroic identity. Odysseus has failed in everything he has tried to accomplish since he sailed from Troy. The only partial victory he was able to attain, his triumph over the Cyclops, resulted in the curse of Poseidon which brought on him and his companions the worst fate possible. The consequences of the wrath of Poseidon destroyed his companions and delayed his return home until matters reached a desperate state even in Ithaka. For seven years Odysseus has remained a captive on Calypso's island, weeping over his many sorrows and feeling each day the ebbing away of what remains of his life. (5.152) But it is not just that Odysseus has been deprived of the good things that make life worth living. Odysseus has been worn down by his sufferings; he is crushed and bound by his grief. When Odysseus first makes his supplication to the Phaiakians that they send him home, the king Alkinoos in his reply remarks that Odysseus looks like one of the immortals. This is of course very common in Homer: all the heroes resemble the gods, that is part of why they are called heroes. But to Odysseus this remark seems a bitter irony. He says, "Alkinoos, let this THE ST. JOHN'S REVIEW not be in your thoughts. I am not like the immortals who hold broad heaven, either in form or stature, but like mortal men. Whomever you know of men, who bear the greatest burden of misery, to those I liken myself in my distress." (7.208-212) Later Laodamus will say of Odysseus that he looks like a champion, but he has been broken by his many hardships. (8.137) Odysseus cannot return to Ithaka in this state. Athena has sent Odysseus to Scheria for him to find, if he can, a restoration of what he has lost and a healing of the sorrow that has broken him. Let us see how the Phaiakians give Odysseus what he needs to go home. While Odysseus is deep in his sleep of exhaustion, Athena goes to set in motion the first part of her plan for him. She goes to the palace of Alkinoos, the king of the Phaiakians, and finds there his young daughter, Nausikaa, asleep in her chamber. She appears to Nausikaa in a sort of dream, and, taking the likeness of another young girl who is a friend of Nausikaa's, urges her to gather the soiled linen in the palace and take it to the washing places beside the river. There of course she will meet Odysseus, but why is this necessary? Homer says that Athena goes to the house of Alkinoos, "devising the return of great-hearted Odysseus." (6.14) Let us try to see how Odysseus's encounter with Nausikaa is a necessary part of Athena's plan. Nausikaa goes with her handmaidens to the washing pools near where Odysseus lies asleep. After the linen is washed and dry and they are almost ready to return to the city, "then Athena took other counsel, to awaken Odysseus in order that he look upon the lovely girl who would lead him to the city." (6.112) Athena wants Odysseus to look upon Nausikaa, but what does he see? A few lines before they meet Homer gives a description of Nausikaa: But when she and her maids had taken their pleasure in eating, they all threw off their veils for a game of ball, and among them it was Nausikaa of the white arms who led in the dancing; and as Artemis, who showers arrows, moves on the mountains either along Taygetos or on high-towering Erymanthos, delighting in boars and deer in their running, and along with her the nymphs, daughters of Zeus of the aegis, range in the wilds and play, and the heart of Leto is gladdened, for the head and the brows of Artemis are above all the others, and she is easily marked among them, though all are lovely, so this one shone among her handmaidens, a virgin unwedded, (6,99-109, Lattimore's translation) Odysseus is awakened from his deep sleep by the cries of the girls as they are playing. They all scatter as he 5 �approaches them except Nausikaa to whom Athena gives the courage to stand fast. Odysseus' supplication of her also contains a description of Nausikaa: I am at your knees, 0 queen. But are you mortal or goddess? If indeed you are one of the gods who hold wide heaven, then I must find in you the nearest likeness to Artemis the daughter of great Zeus, for beauty, figure, and stature. But if you are one among those mortals who live in this country, three times blessed are your father and the lady your mother, and three times blessed your brothers too, and I know their spirits are warmed forever with happiness at the thought of you, seeing such a slip of beauty taking her place in the chorus of dancers; but blessed at the heart, even beyond these others, is that one who, after loading you down with gifts, leads you as his bride home. I have never with these eyes seen anything like you, neither man nor woman. Wonder takes me as I look on you. Yet in Delos once I saw such a thing, by Apollo's altar. I saw the stalk of a young palm shooting up. I had gone there once, and with a following of a great many people, on that journey which was to mean hard suffering for me. And as, when I looked upon that tree, my heart admired it long, since ~uch a tree had never yet sprung from the earth, so now, lady, I admire you and wonder, and am terribly afraid to clasp you by the knees. The hard sorrow is on me. (6.149-169, Lattimore's translation) Homer often compares mortals to gods. In describing Nausikaa he likens her to Artemis in a beautiful simile. It is true that Nausikaa is like Artemis; Odysseus says so also, but quickly passes on to make a still more beautiful comparison. He likens her not to a goddess but to a mortal being, a delicate young sapling. It is easy to see that Odysseus' comparison is the more appropriate one. Homer's gods, since they are immortal and ageless, can never have the tender innocence which is Nausikaa' s loveliness. Only a mortal creature can be young. Nausikaa is the first mortal Odysseus has seen in seven years. It is important that Odysseus, newly returned from the company of gods, see in Nausikaa the beauty that only mortals possess. But this first vision is not all that happens between Odysseus and Nausikaa. Let us recount the events more fully. When Athena comes to Nausikaa in a dream she says that Nausikaa ought to attend to the soiled linen because she will need much clean linen for her wedding, which will not be long delayed. When N ausikaa asks her father for the cart and mules to take the linen to the distant washing pools, he understands that she has her wedding in mind, though she is too shy to say so. (6.66) When Odysseus first addresses her he also speaks of marriage: "may the gods give you everything that your heart longs for; may they grant you a husband and a house and sweet agreement in all things, for nothing is better than this, more steadfast than when two people, a man and his 6 wife, keep a harmonious household." (6.180-184, Lattimore's translation) When Odysseus first approaches Nausikaa he is naked and starving and encrusted with the brine of the sea. But after he has eaten and bathed and clothed himself Athena effects a transformation in his appearance, the most elaborate in all the poem, and one surely intended for Nausikaa's benefit. Then Athena, daughter of Zeus, made him seem taller for the eye to behold, and thicker, and on his head she arranged the curling locks that hung down like hyacinthine petals. And as when a master craftsman overlays gold on silver, and he is one who was taught by Hephaistos and Palla Athene in art complete, and grace is on every work he finishes, so Athena gilded with grace his head and his shoulders, and he went a little aside and sat by himself on the seashore, radiant in grace and good looks; and the girl admired him. (6.229-237, Lattimore's translation) While Odysseus is sitting on the shore, Nausikaa says to her handmaids that she wishes such a one as he might be her husband, or that it might please him to remain. Nausikaa has begun to fall in love with Odysseus, and it is clearly part of Athena's plan that she should. When Odysseus returns to Ithaka, he must make anew beginning, he must start his life again for the second time. Perhaps through seeing the youthful Nausikaa's incipient love for him Odysseus is able to find something still young in himself, something that gives him hope that he will be able to make a new beginning in Ithaka. Perhaps it is important for the middle-aged and painfully experienced Odysseus, (who is twice called in Scheria pater xeinos-revered father), to feel that there is still something in himself that can move and be moved by N ausikaa' s fresh-heartedness. Nausikaa helps to bring out in Odysseus, even recreate in him, something that has laid dormant in his nature for a long time. Later, in their final conversation, he acknowledges the importance of what she has done for him. When she asks him to remember her when he is safe in his native land he says, "There always I will pray to you as to a goddess, all my days, for you, maiden, have given me life." (81.467-9) But Odysseus' meeting with Nausikaa is only part of Athena's plan for his return. At the opening of book eight Alkinoos leads Odysseus to the assembly of the Phaiakians, which he has called in honor of the stranger. This assembly lasts all day and all through the long night. Five books, more than one-fifth of the entire Odyssey, are spent relating the events which happen here. The assembly is clearly a vital part of Athena's plan, for it is she, in the likeness of Alkinoos' herald, who goes about the city call- SPRING 1986 �ing each man to assembly. Here the same words are used as were used of Athena's appearing to Nausikaa in a dream: in gathering the assembly Athena is said to be "devising the return of great-hearted Odysseus." (8.9) And, just as Athena had earlier made Odysseus more handsome so that Nausikaa would admire him, so here she also magnifies Odysseus' appearance, and many of the Phaiakian lords wonder at him. (8.18) Why has Athena gone to so much trouble to bring about this assembly? How is Odysseus' presence here part of her plan for his return? When Homer is describing how Athena in disguise calls all the Phaiakian men to assembly he goes on to tell us what her purpose is. Homer says that Athena is contriving all this for Odysseus "in order that he might be welcomed and win awe and reverence from all the Phaiakians, and that he might complete the many aethloi (contests or labors) through which the Phaiakians made trial of Odysseus." (8.21-23) Let us try to see what this means and why it is necessary. At the end of book six, Odysseus, before he makes his way to the palace of Alkinoos, waits in a grove sacred to Athena. There he prays to the goddess in a way which reveals something of his state of mind. His prayer is, "Listen, child of aegis-bearing Zeus, unwearied one. Hear me now, since before you did not hear me in my affliction, when the glorious earth-shaker brought affliction upon me. Grant that I may come to the Phaiakians as one to be welcomed and to be pitied." (6.324-327) Odysseus only hopes to be pitied, but being pitied is not enough for a hero. He cannot return to Ithaka merely as an object of pity. That is why it is part of Athena's plan that he win from the Phaiakians the awe and reverence that are appropriate to his heroic stature. The Phaiakians attach great value to contests. Laodamas, the favorite son of Alkinoos, says that there is no greater glory for a man than what he wins by his own hands and feet in competition. (8.147-8) And so contests form an important part of the Phaiakian assembly which Athena has convened. The young men of the Phaiakians compete with one another in running, wrestling, leaping, throwing the discus, and boxing. Odysseus looks on, but he does not wish to participate. When Laodamas invites him to join in a contest he says, "Laodamas, why do you urge this mockery? I have sorrows on my mind far more than contests." (8.153-4) Odysseus is, as he says later, bound by his misery and suffering. (8.182) But he is not allowed to remain a bystander. A young Phaiakian prince insults him by saying that Odysseus does not join in contests because he does not know any: he looks like a huckster, not an athlete. (8.164) Stung by the young man's sneer, Odysseus hurls a heavier discus much farther than any of the Phaiakian athletes had. Athena is there on the playing THE ST. JOHN'S REVIEW field, in the likeness of a Phaiakian man, solely in order to declare that Odysseus has won the contest. Of course Athena does not need to do this, since, as she herself says, it is obvious to everyone that his throw is far beyond any of the others. Athena is there only to mark the importance of the occasion for Odysseus. Odysseus has been stung into making trial of and revealing his excellence (arete), as Alkinoos says. (8.237) And all of the Phaiakians are astounded. (8.235) By showing his excellence, by allowing it to flare out in him, Odysseus comes to know that he still possesses that excellence, even after all the years when he lacked the opportunity to exercise it. For the first time in the poem Homer says that Odysseus rejoiced (gethesen 8.199) and he is able to speak "with a lighter heart" (8.201) and to trust his excellence enough to challenge all the young men. Odysseus boasts that he can hold his own in all the contests they have held, and mentions two contests which appear to be unknown among the unwarlike Phaiakians, shooting arrows and hurling spears. For the first time among the Phaiakians Odysseus marks out his place in the heroic world. He claims that he was second only to Philoktetes in archery and that he can hurl a spear farther than another man can shoot an arrow. (8.119; 229) Odysseus now asks for more than pity-he makes claim to the awe and reverence that must be his due if he is to rejoin the world of men as the hero Odysseus. And the Phaiakians make the appropriate response. They give him princely gifts, the sort called by Homer xenia, meaning gifts of guest-friendship. Such gifts establish a permanent reciprocal relationship between the kingly house of Odysseus and the lords of Scheria. They represent the Phaiakians' full acknowledgement of Odysseus as a lord and a hero. But the greater part of what Odysseus must do in achieving his nostos is yet to be done. Let us look again at Athena's purpose for this assembly as it was stated at the beginning of book eight. There we were told that Athena had assembled the Phaiakians in order that Odysseus "might complete the many aethloi (contests or labors) through which the Phaiakians made trial of Odysseus." What does this mean and how does it happen? This is a strange and difficult passage in many ways. The word aethlos (contest or labor) which occurs here is used of the games of the Phaiakians. Those contests are also called aethloi. But this statement of Athena's purpose cannot refer to the games of the Phaiakians. Odysseus can only be said to have won one game, the contest of throwing the discus; but here he is said to fulfil manypolloi-aethloi. What could this refer to? What are these aethloi and how does Odysseus complete them? Let us look at the Greek text a little more closely. The Greek text reads: kai ekteleseien aethlous pollous, taus 7 �Phaiekes epeiresant' Oduseos. There are three words here that admit of a wide range of meanings: ekteleo, peirao, and aethlos. Let us look at them one by one. Odysseus is said to complete (ekteleo) many labors. Ekteleo means to complete or accomplish or fulfill, to bring to completion or fruition. The word teleo alone means to accomplish or complete. The prefix "ek" gives an additional connotation of finality. Ekteleo often has the sense of giving a final end to something, making it finally complete. When the suitors finally force Penelope, after her long delay, to complete the web she has been weaving so long, ekteleo is the word used to express that action. The second key word in this passage is peirao. Odysseus completes many labors, through which the Phaiakians make trial of (peirao) him. Peirao is a word which is used continually in the Odyssey and it is not always easy to express its full meaning in English. It means to make trial of something in the sense of to try to find out about something. Peirao means to encounter something in such a way as to learn something about it, to find out its true nature. When Odysseus first takes his famous bow into his hands and turns it around examining it, peirao is the word that is used. The last and most important word is aethlos. Odysseus completes many contests/labors (aethlm). This word is particularly associated with Odysseus. The original sense of the word seems to be contest. So the games of the Phaiakians are called aethloi, as is the contest of Odysseus's bow. Aethlos can also mean task or labor, the most famous being the labors (aethloi) of Heracles. But an aethlos is not just any purposeful activity or labor. It carries with it a strong connotation of suffering. An aethlos is a labor that involves suffering; it is a labor that is also a hardship. The word aethlos is associated with Odysseus because it is the word that is regularly used to refer to his deeds. When Helen and Menelaus are telling stories about what Odysseus undertook and accomplished they are telling about his aethloi. (4.241) But of course the most famous aethloi of Odysseus, the labors which define his heroic identity, are the adventures which he relates to the Phaiakians at the same assembly which Athena gathered at the beginning of book eight. These aethloi are, I believe, the only ones this passage at the opening of book eight could refer to. The translation I propose for this puzzling statement of Athena's purpose is: "that Odysseus might bring to a close his many labors/hardships, by which the Phaiakians came to know him." The many aethloi which Odysseus brings to a close are the ones which he tells to the Phaiakians, and the way in which he brings them to a close is by telling of them. Athena's chief purpose in gathering this assembly is the activity which occupies part of the evening and all of the night: Odysseus' telling of 8 his labors and revelation of his identity. The culminating labor of the hero of speech is the long telling of his own story. But Odysseus has been prepared to tell his definitive story, the story of his many years of painful and fruitless wandering, by listening to another story about another aethlos of Odysseus: the story of the fall of Troy. Let us look at this scene, which immediately precedes Odysseus' revelation of his identity and his long telling of his aethloi. After the dancing and feasting which form such a large part of the Phaiakian assembly are over, Odysseus asks the bard Demodocus to sing the song of the wooden horse, which is of course the stratagem of Odysseus by which the city was finally taken. Demodocus tells the whole story of the fall of Troy through to its ending at the house of Helen's new husband, the Trojan leader Deiphobus. There, Demodocus says, Odysseus, having endured the most terrible battle, finally conquered through great-hearted Athena: So the famous singer sang his tale, but Odysseus melted, and from under his eyes the tears ran down, drenching his cheeks. As a woman weeps, lying over the body of her dear husband, who fell fightiog for her city and people as he tried to beat off the pitiless day from city and children; she sees him dying and gasping for breath, and winding her body about him she cries high and shrill, while the men behind her hitting her with their spear butts on the back and the shoulders, force her up and lead her away into slavery, to have hard work and sorrow, and her cheeks are wracked with pitiful weeping. (8.521-530, Lattimore's translation) This simile used to describe the quality of Odysseus' tears is the most astonishing in all of Homer. Homer compares the conqueror of Troy to the most miserable and innocent victim of war. The gulf between this woman and the warrior Odysseus is as great as it can be. And yet the resourceful sacker of cities weeps the tears of this desolate and defenseless woman. This grief of Odysseus is broad enough and deep enough to encompass all the oppositions of our human nature. His tears encompass male and female, attacker and defender, victor and victim. There is a moment in the Iliad as well in which the tears of the victor and the defeated mingle. Achilles and Priam, two hardened enemies, are able to exchange comfort and a kind of forgiveness by means of such tears. But perhaps the deepest understanding of these tears is to be found in the works of Homer's greate'st student and interpreter, Virgil. In the Aeneid, in Virgil's imitation of this passage in the Odyssey, Virgil gives a beautiful name to these all-encompassing tears-they are the lacri- SPRING 1986 �mae rerum, the tears of (and for) things. Virgil's battered and wandering hero, Aeneas, sees in the halls of Dido in Carthage a painted portrayal of the fall of Troy, just as Odysseus in the halls of Alkinoos in Scheria listens to the song of the fall of Troy. Aeneas weeps as he looks upon the paintings and he says, ''Here too honor receives its due reward, here also are the tears of things, and here mortality touches the mind." (1.461-2) (Sunt hie etiam sua praemia laudi, sunt lacrimae rerum et mentem mortalia tangunt.) The lacrimae rerum are the tears of all humanity, the tears of mortality, and for this reason there is no distinction in them between Greek and Trojan, conqueror and conquered. The perspective from which victor and victim are alike in their painful mortality is a divine one, but in Homer's pantheon it belongs only to the Muse. All the Olympian gods, even Zeus, take sides in the war at Troy, supporting one side and hating the other. But the poet Homer, in his communion with the Muse, is able to tell the truth of both sides. The poet is not bound by the misery of the defeated or the elation of the victors. He can sing of the mortality of both. Odysseus is able to break the bond of misery that has held him by merging his suffering with the sorrow of all mankind, that is, by seeing his sufferings as a story. Alkinoos had said, just before Odysseus begins his long telling of his aethloi, that the gods spun destruction for the Achaians and the Trojans at Ilium so that there might be a song for men yet to be. The sorrow and the song are linked by divine agency, and this may be the only true grace of the gods bestowed upon men in the world of Homer. In stories there is the possibility of healing. The song somehow makes bearable the sorrow and destruction from which it is made. Odysseus brings his aethloi to a close by telling of them and this also is the way in which the Phaiakians come to know him. Odysseus had postponed naming himself until the moment when he began his story. But it is necessary for Odysseus to reveal himself to win the only sort of conveyance the Phaiakians can offer. For the Phaiakian ships have no pilots; the ships are guided by the thoughts and minds of the Phaiakians. (8.559) Phaiakian sailors cannot convey an anonymous passenger to an unknown destination. To give Odysseus conveyance home they must know who he is and so he must tell his story. The Phaiakians have done for Odysseus what Poseidon and Zeus said that they would do. They have restored to him what he lacked, his sense of heroic identity, and they have allowed him to escape from the bond of misery which had held him. The Phaiakians convey Odysseus home in a deep and mysterious sleep. "They bent to their rowing, and with their oars tossed up the sea spray, and upon the eyes of Odysseus there fell a sleep, THE ST. JOHN'S REVIEW gentle, the sweetest kind of sleep with no awakening, most like death." (13.78-81, Lattimore's translation) This sleep is indeed like death, it is like the death which has been prophesied for Odysseus, which is to be very gentle and from the sea. This death-like sleep is an appropriate way for Odysseus to return to his rightly and irrevocably chosen mortality. But what of the Phaiakians who have given Odysseus so much, what happens to them? Just after Alkinoos asks to know Odysseus' name he refers to a prophesy his father told him, that someday Poseidon, angry with the Phaiakians for giving safe convoy to all men, would strike one of their ships returning from convoy and fling a great mountain around the city. When the Phaiakians give Odysseus convoy home they quite knowingly take this risk, for Odysseus has certainly not represented himself as a favorite of Poseidon. As the ship that gave Odysseus convoy to Ithaka is within sight of the city of the Phaiakians, Poseidon does indeed strike it. He turns the ship into stone and fixes it immovably in the water: the swift motion in which the Phaiakians delight has at last been stilled. Alkinoos recognizes what has happened as a fulfillment of the prophesy and hastens to offer sacrifice to Poseidon that he might take pity on them and not fling a mountain about their city. These prayers to Poseidon are the last we see of the Phaiakians. Theirs is the only unresolved fate in the Odyssey. But can we say anything at all about what has happened to the Phaiakians on account of Odysseus' stay with them? When we first meet the Phaiakians the words Telemachus uses of his father in the first book of the Odyssey (1.243) could equally well be applied to them: they are aistos, apustos, unseen and unheard of. They live so far apart from other men that no one knows who they are. Homer tells us that their obscurity is deliberate; they became the furthest of men in order to be the safest of men. They fled to Scheria to escape the savage Cyclopes (6.6), but clearly also to escape from everyone else who might possibly harm them. Nausikaa says that the Phaiakians now have no cause to fear anyone (6.200-3): they lead a perfectly safe if unheroic existence. They were outside of the heroic world and the risks that heroism entails. But with the arrival of Odysseus the heroic world has come to them, and they take the risk of participating in it. Zeus describes their giving convoy to Odysseus in language appropriate to heroism. He says that they did so "yielding to their might and strength." (13.143) The Phaiakians have entered into the heroic world; they have become part of the song that was so conspicuously missing at the feast of the suitors in book one. These great delighters in poetry have become part of the noslos of Odysseus. 9 �And it is perhaps appropriate that we do not know their fate. The Phaiakians have taken a risk and entered into a story, and the whole risk of entering a story is that one can never know whether the end will finally be endurable or not. 10 SPRING 1986 �God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob Joe Sachs One of the most difficult sentences in the Bible is in the fifth verse of the sixth chapter of Genesis: ''And the Lord saw that ... every imagination of the thoughts of man's heart was only evil continually." In Biblical usage, the heart is the place and source of all thought and purpose. The inward life of the human creature is thus said to be only and unceasingly evil, poisoned by imagination. But it is just this capacity for inward and imaginative thought that distinguishes man from the other creatures. Every genuinely human action proceeds from choice, and choice is only possible when an array of possibilities is first represented in the imagination. The less active, flexible, and free the imagination is, the more constrained and slavish will be the action. So it is the very power that makes us what we are that is said to make us evil, and indeed to make us unworthy to live, since the text of Genesis continues: "And it repented the Lord that He had made man on the earth, and it grieved Him at His heart. And the Lord said, 'I will blot out man whom I have created from the face of the earth.'" In carrying out this purpose of His heart, God would be blotting out His own image. Should we say that the image had been defiled because the medium in which it was placed had become corrupt? I think it is worse than that. The power for which we are condemned is the image of God. The Bible does not say in what way we carry that image, but the phrase "image of God" is linked with Joe Sachs is a tutor at St. John's College in Annapolis. This is the text of a lechtre given at St. John's in 1986, in October in Annapolis and in November in Santa Fe. It appears here by permission of The Great Ideas Today, a publication of the Great Books division of Encyclopedia Britannica, Inc. THE ST. JOHN'S REVIEW our dominion over the animals and with our being created male and female. Now some animals dominate others, simply by force, and man is certainly not unusual among the animals for being made male and female. But a dominion which is not merely violent, and a sexuality which is not just a matter of coupling in response to desire, are possible to human beings because we are capable of thoughtfulness for others and for one another. That thoughtfulness, which is imagination freely exercised for the sake of the good of another as well as of oneself, is thus the image of God. How is it that it can be not only evil, but only evil continually? It is easy to see that anything which depends on freedom can be misused. If not, it could not be properly used, freely. But why must the imagination always be misused? When the snake tells Eve that God is a liar, and is cheating her of good things because He wants to keep them to Himself, is she not free to say no to him? She is, but if she did so, it would be an answer based only on faith. She does not know that God's purposes are for her good. Where knowledge is lacking, imagination can always multiply possibilities. But why shift one's faith to the snake, and to the unknown benefits he promises? The snake is smart enough to give no reasons for distrusting God, and to give no content to his promises. "Your eyes shall be opened," he says, "and ye shall be as God, knowing good and evil."(3.5) All the work of persuasion is left to Eve's own imagination. If we cannot say why the persuasion will necessarily succeed, I think at least we all know that it must. If it didn't, Eve would not be our ancestor, but belong to some other race. But the most telling display of the power of imagination comes after the fruit is eaten. The eyes of Adam and 11 �Eve are indeed opened, but to what? "They knew that they were naked." What is happening here? Whatever it is takes place only in the imaginations of Adam and Eve, and can be discerned only in the imagination of the reader. Just before this moment, Eve had implicated Adam in her act, and just after it, Adam will try to shift all the blame onto her. Adam and Eve had been "one flesh," but now each has begun to treat the other as something to be used. The two look at each other, and neither likes the way it feels to be looked at in that way. Do you know that feeling-the feeling that comes when someone is looking at you with speculation? Adam and Eve cannot fail to know it, because each is experiencing it from both sides at the same time. Their response is the invention of clothes. They produce an imaginary safety, which is an outward sign of genuine inner barriers. Each has isolated himself by imagining how he might increase his own good at the expense of the other. It is to this new condition of solitary suspicion and distrust that their eyes are opened. Here the power of imagination has already gone out of control. Each of the two human beings has imagined the possibility of selling out the other, and as a consequence, each has imagined as well that the other is imagining the same thing. Imagined wrongs become genuine threats, and, with the making of clothes, what had been only irrner begins to have outward effects. Some readers of Genesis say that the snake was right when he said that Adam and Eve would not die when they ate the forbidden fruit. Perhaps that is when they became mortal, these lawyer-like readers say, but God said "in the day that thou eatest thereof thou shalt surely die," and we've got Him there. But God had also said that it is not good for man to be alone, and each human being has now begun considering that it might be better to be alone, to put his own good first and sacrifice the other to it. That possibility of separation immediately, and apparently uncontrollably, began becoming real. If Adam and Eve before that day had lived a life as one flesh, then surely on that day they did die: they died as one being and were re-born as two. Perhaps that is the way in which the imagination is only evil. The imagining of bad possibilities is an experience which cannot be erased; it makes us different and may make our lives worse. On the other hand, the imagining of good possibilities (for example, that God intends our good) seems to require effort to sustain, and to be always vulnerable to suspicion. The imagination is the source of both suspicion and faith, and it always makes suspicion the line of least resistance. The imagination is the image of God and the source of our freedom, but it is a freedom weighted toward isolation. It seems then that the power which is needed to make 12 life good tends by its own nature to make life bad. For example, my guess is that Abel was not a very interesting man, and not capable of much-that he was accepted for the little of which he was capable. It is his brother Cain, whose imagination leads to hurt feelings and murder, on whom God places a special mark of protection. Cain is cursed (is the first human being to be cursed), but his life is preserved, as presumably Abel's life could have been protected and preserved but wasn't. Throughout the Bible, it is the murderers, like Moses and David, and the thieves, like Jacob, on whom God's care is lavished. On the interpretation I am offering, the image of God is more fully present in Cain than in Abel, though also at greater risk of being perverted and destroyed. It is Cain who builds the first city, and it is his descendants who first make musical instruments and tools. But it is also Lamech, Cain's descendant in the fifth generation, whose song is preserved (4.23-4): "I have slain a man for wounding me, and a young man for bruising me; if Cain shall be avenged sevenfold, truly Lamech seventy and sevenfold." Can such a creature as man be saved from becoming what he thinks he wants to be? Command and punishment have been present since the first generation, but still the tormented murderer Cain has been succeeded by the self-satisfied and boastful murderer Lamech. It is another Lamech who is the father of Noah, but the first Lamech typifies the world God judges too far gone in violence and corruption to be allowed to endure. (6.11-13) Lamech not only kills, but glories in the slightness of the pretext for killing; he takes joy in multiplying in his imagination those whom he will kill for offenses which have not yet happened. By destroying others, he has built himself up into a mighty man of renown. (6.4) The human creature, left to itself, degenerates into this Cyclops-like being who boasts of being a law to himself. What does God give to the human creature to protect it from its own deadly inertia? The answer, I think, is threefold. God gives man a history, a covenant, and a Law, and the third cannot be understood apart from the first two. Some might think that the Law of Moses is simply a list of explicit prohibitions and commands meant to replace or at least hold back the imagination. On such an interpretation, the Jew need never make his own choices or risk his own judgment since everything he need ever do is spelled out in the hundreds of laws of the Torah. Now I hope to show that this is a misunderstanding of the Jewish Law, and in fact almost an inversion of it, but even if it were not, it would be no solution to the difficulty posed by the first six chapters of Genesis. If the faculty of imagination were beaten down in us, made powerless in our lives, the creation would be diminished, void of the image of God, and stunted at the SPRING 1986 �level of the things that creep on the earth. The Flood is not a curtailment of the creation but a renewal and affirmation of it. It is the beginning of history, and the occasion of the first covenant. God's first deed in the newly-washed world of Noah is to declare that He will never again destroy this world. This commitment on God's part is the covenant with Noah. Although God also gives two laws to Noah and his descendants, and although the word for covenant means a contract for which pledges are exchanged between two partiesf it is of the utmost importance to see that God's promise is in no way conditional upon any performance or promise on man's part. The covenant is spelled out over nine verses (9. 9-17) as repetitious and emphatic as anything in the Bible. Mankind will never be destroyed under any circumstances. In order to see that this promise is not conditioned by man's observance of the law requiring capital punishment for murderers, one need only look at the reason given for the promise in chapter 8, verse 21. Mankind will forever be spared because "the imagination of man's heart is evil from his youth." The reason for the covenant of universal forgiveness is identical to the reason given in the sixth chapter for universal condemnation and destruction. Human evil is pardoned, because it is in us from youth, that is, from before the time when we are responsible: it is our native condition. Whatever the purpose of the laws already given and to be given, they are not the price of the divine protection of human life. The rainbow is like the mark of Cain, placed now upon the whole human race. It says: this criminal has forfeited his right to live, but that life will be maintained by something stronger than his deserving. The sixth chapter of Genesis is often seen as the strongest evidence for the inconstancy of God in the Bible. He repents of the creation, reverses Himself, and destroys what He had made. Then in chapter 8, God reverses Himself again. Does the second reversal double the evidence of inconstancy? Or does it cancel it? The underlying reason for the perpetual pardon of mankind is the same as the underlying reason for its destruction. That is why the world after the Flood is not a new order of things, but· an affirmation of the original creation. It is all right that the imagination of man's heart is evil; he was made that way. That is not the flaw that shows creation to be faulty, but part of the design. God's twice reversing Himself, on account of one unchanging reason, shows that neither He nor His relation to his creatures has undergone a change. Mankind after the Flood differs from mankind in Eden in only one way. He does not have a different heart; he has a history. It is possible to look at the God of the Bible as a bumbler, trying first one thing and then another in an effort THE ST. JOHN'S REVIEW to undo the unforeseen consequences of His past mistakes. But what if God's relationship with the human creature were fully formed from the beginning, but man, from his side, could only come into possession of that relationship by acquiring a history? God will send Abraham to a mountain to kill his son. Abraham will return with Isaac alive and unwounded, but for the rest of his life Abraham himself will have an unforgettable history. That episode is called a test or trial of Abraham (22.1), but for whose sake is he tested? An unconditional and irrevocable covenant has already been made with Abraham (12.1-3, 13.14-17, 15.18-20, 17.4-14), and its fulfillment depends upon the existence of Isaac. (17.19) Therefore God knows both that Abraham will pass the test and that he will not kill Isaac. Abraham is changed in order to become what God already knows him to be. The only difference after the test is that Abraham has come to know about himself some of what God already knew. History then is like a lens through which man can see himself and God. A human covenant is an attempt to determine an unknown and uncertain future by two parties who bind themselves mutually to bring it about. What then can be the meaning of a covenant between man and God? The first use of the word, for the covenant with Noah, is in a context which emphasizes the absence of the mutuality which is ordinarily the essence of all covenants. When the great covenant is made with Abraham, it is set out in the form of an exchange. In return for the promised land and a multitude of nations and blessings, Abraham must circumcise all the males of his household. (17.9-14) But the ritual of circumcision is not a return made to God, but a sign of the acceptance of His promise. If the circumcision fulfilled Abraham's side of the contract, it would make no sense for him to be put through the test of the sacrifice of Isaac, in which he is asked to destroy the possibility of the fulfillment of God's side of the bargain. When Abraham lifts the knife on the mountain in Moriah, he is abandoning any humanly intelligible role in bringing about the things promised him by God. My suggestion is that it is only at that moment that Abraham appropriates the covenant. That is the moment when he knows that he did not enter into the relationship with God simply for the sake of the things God would give him, since in asking for Isaac's life, God is saying in effect "Give back everything I have given you and any possibility of ever getting any more of it.'' God already knew that Abraham's side of the covenant was nothing but his believing it (15.6): "Abraham believed in the Lord, and He counted it to him for righteousness." After the test on the mountain Abraham knew those same things about himself: both how strongly he believed and that his belief was the only thing he had to offer God. 13 �The change of his name from Abram to Abraham is an indication that the man with whom the covenant is made does not yet exist when the covenant is first announced. Abraham cannot see who God is or what God is asking of him until his own life has unfolded sufficiently. In that way, divine covenant is inseparable from human history. And that is why the covenant of forgiveness with Noah can only be made with a human race that knows of the destruction in the Flood and of the violence and corruption that preceded it. Noah and his descendants possess a world which does not differ from the one given to Adam and Eve, but to Noah's generation that world is seen refracted through its history. The world after the Flood can be seen as a possession that could have been lost, that almost was lost and was only spared by the free choice of its creator. But how does that differ from a world that might not have been made, and only came into being by the free act of creation? It differs only in being more fully known for what it is. It is with the knowers, the inheritors of a history, that God first makes a covenant. Similarly, Isaac is no different after Abraham's ordeal on the mountain, but to Abraham he must have become more precious as a son who could have been lost, but was spared by the free act of God. But Isaac was already a miraculous son, given to Abraham and Sarah when they were far beyond the natural capacity for child-bearing. Again, Abraham's history only makes Isaac more fully known for the free gift he is, the Abraham has come to know this truth with excruciating vividness. It has been pointed out to many of us by Mr. Littleton that the word love occurs first in the Bible when Abraham is commanded to kill his son: "Take now thy son, thine only son, whom thou loves!." (22.2) Perhaps the creation, or the bringing to sight, of human love also occurs first in the giving and re-giving of Isaac with a joy and a pain beyond any in the power of nature. The covenant that promises that the world will endure is made with a generation that knows not to take the world for granted, and the covenant that promises the blessing of descendants is made with an Abraham who knows not to take a child for granted. Those with whom covenants are made have been given the chance to know themselves and the things they have as creations of a creator. That, I think, is always the meaning of covenant in the Bible: the discovery and acknowledgment of createdness. This meaning of covenant is best exemplified in the history of jacob. As with so many of the things we have looked at, this point is revealed by first seeming to be its opposite. The covenant between God and jacob is first made at Beth-el, when jacob is on his way east toward the home of his uncle, in the land from which Abraham had departed. It is worth listening to every word of it. 14 God speaks to jacob in a dream, saying (28.13-15), "I am the Lord, the God of Abraham thy father, and the God of Isaac. The land whereon thou liest, to thee will I give it and to thy seed. And thy seed shall be as the dust of the earth, and thou shalt spread abroad to the west, and to the east, and to the north, and to the south. And in thee and in thy seed shall all the families of the earth be blessed. And behold, I am with thee, and will keep thee withersoever thou goest, and will bring thee back into this land; for I will not leave thee, until I have done that which I have spoken to thee of." jacob awoke, and "vowed a vow, saying," (vv. 20-22) "If God will be with me, and will keep me in this way that I go, and will give me bread to eat, and raiment to put on, so that I come back to my father's house in peace, then shall the Lord be my God, and this stone, which I have set up for a pillar, shall be God's house; and of all that Thou shalt give me I will surely give the tenth unto Thee." Here, surely, is a man of imagination. Where Abraham believed, jacob spells out terms and conditions. Where Abraham did just what he was told to do, jacob offers extra inducements, to hold God to his bargain. It is not the case that Abraham never bargained with God. There is the obvious instance of the dialogue over Sodom and Gomorrah (18.17-33), in which Abraham artfully drives down to ten the number of righteous people needed to save his nephew's life. And there is a less obvious moment when Abraham, having laughed at the thought that his ninety-year-old wife and hundred-yearold self would produce another child, tries to talk God into substituting Ishmael for the promised son. (17.18) Indeed, in his defense of Sodom, Abraham challenges God to His face, asking "Shall not the judge of all the earth do justly?" Like Adam, Cain, Moses, and David, Abraham does not submit to God without a struggle. But what we see in jacob at Beth-el is something utterly unlike any such challenge or struggle. Open conflict seems to bring men closer to God, but jacob holds himself apart. Though he is afraid at Beth-el, he is cool with God, and keeps his wits about him in an effort to protect himself from any fraud on God's part. And jacob has reason to be cautious. God speaks to him about his seed, while jacob is running for his life; God makes promises about all the families of the earth, when jacob doesn't know if he can ever see his own family again. Abraham had also been at Beth-el (12.8), but heading west, toward God's promise. jacob is there heading east, running away from the mess he has made of his life. The covenant has been announced to him, and jacob has vowed a vow, but at this point in his life, the covenant with jacob has not yet come into being. The turning point in jacob's life does not occur when he is at Beth-el, but seven years, one month, and one day SPRING 1986 �later, on the morning after his wedding. What God's appearing to him did not accomplish, Laban's deception of him does. jacob had been successful at extortion, with his brother, fraud, with his father, and petty legalism, with God. Now, for the first time and all at once, he is a victim of all three at the hands of his uncle. The most surprising thing, to one who has followed the story of jacob to this point, is that he lets himself be taken advantage of. The moment when he does so is like the moment when Adam and Eve look at each other and make clothes, in that the Biblical text gives us not one word about what fills that moment, or about what causes the next thing that happens to come out of it. The crucial event again takes place only in the imagination of the character, and again can only be discerned by the imagination of the reader. We have to back up a bit, to try to see the context of that moment whole. jacob begins life with a brother who is older than he, stronger, and preferred by their father. Against these disadvantages are set the facts that jacob is cleverer than Esau, preferred by their mother, and unhampered in the pursuit of his own advantage by any respect for justice. We first hear him speak when he gives voice to an inspiration that shows the quality of his imagination. (25.31,33) Esau has, from birth, the rights of the first-born, but jacob has at this moment food, and his brother is very hungry. Why not extort the former by withholding the latter?, thinks the man who will be so artful at drawing up a covenant. If Esau wants food badly enough right now, let him first swear away his birthright forever. Esau agrees, and jacob discovers that even the weaker can be a successful bully. jacob now has everything his brother was entitled to by law and custom, and lacks only what his father has the power to give by free choice out of love. His mother Rebekah thinks of a way for him to steal even that, and jacob is quick-witted enough to carry it off. just as his brother's hunger offered an opportunity for advantage-taking to an imaginative man, his father's blindness can now be the making of jacob. He can set out in the world with everything, except trust. There is only one moment in the swindling of his father for which jacob is unprovided by his mother. (27.20) When Isaac asks how he had found venison so quickly, jacob immediately has an answer: the Lord your God helped me. This is a remarkable answer, seizing upon Isaac's trust in God as another weapon against him, along with his blindness, and quietly urging him to get on with the blessing, since so far this Lord is only Isaac's God. The story of jacob's first theft, of Esau's birthright, ends with the sentence, "So Esau despised his birthright." (25.34) This means, one presumes, that Esau thought so little of the birthright that it was worth no more to him than a bowl of lentil soup. There is no way to absolve THE ST. JOHN'S REVIEW Jacob from injustice in the exchange, since it is not an Esau free from duress who agrees to it, but one in whom hunger is used for torment by a brother's cruelty. Still, the magnitude of the crime is lessened if the loss was not very important to Esau. But in the case of this second theft the same argument would have to work the opposite way. It is Isaac's caring so much about the blessing in God's covenant that jacob uses to strengthen his hold over his blind father. The story of jacob's second theft could fittingly end, "So jacob despised his father." It is easy to despise Isaac, or to overlook him altogether. He is present at what is perhaps the most sublime moment in the Bible, but as a child and at the wrong end of a knife. In the trial of Abraham, Isaac in no way acts. In the first episode in which Isaac attempts to act, his efforts are useless. (26.1-12) In a time of famine, Isaac goes to the king of the Philistines, attempting to protect himself by calling his wife his sister. If some Philistine wanted Rebekah, and knew her to be married, he might kill her husband. But Abraham has been there before Isaac, and used the same deception with the same king. Abimelech had been in danger on account of Sarah (Ch.20), and now avoids trouble by protecting Isaac, who gets what he wants in spite of his utter ineffectuality, because of the memory of his father. At this same time God renews the covenant with Isaac, but says He is doing so for Abraham's sake. (26.5,24) A brief series of wanderings and troubles then ends at Beersheba, which Isaac so names to signify that he has found water and a place to rest only by good fortune. (26.32-3) And that is the whole story of Isaac's life, up to the crowning humiliation in his old age at the hands of his wife and his son jacob. There was a time when I wondered at the expression, God of Abraham, Isaac, and jacob. Why does the ordinariness and incompetence of Isaac merit a place equal to those of his father and son in the naming of God? It was Mr. Littleton who pointed me in the direction of an answer. What does Isaac do when he discovers that he has been fooled and betrayed? He blesses jacob again, this time deliberately and voluntarily. (28.3-4) If I am correct that there is a moment in the life of each of the patriarchs when he makes the covenant his own, it must be this moment of forgiveness in which Isaac does so. Isaac's one free and effective act in the account we are given of him is an acknowledgement that he cannot act at his own caprice. Esau is his first born and the son he loves, but he will not be the heir of God's promise. To some extent, Isaac undoes jacob's crimes by saying yes to their result. Acting now from knowledge and choice, Isaac gives jacob what jacob had first stolen from him. But the pardon is not complete, because Esau does not participate in it, and he is the one of those wronged by jacob. Esau in fact feels that nothing will satisfy him but killing 15 �Jacob, and goes so far as to hope for Isaac's death, to let him feel free to do the killing. (27.41) Even in his murderous rage, Esau has more respect for his father's feelings than Jacob ever had. Jacob passes through Beth-el and travels to his uncle's home far to the east near what is now Iraq, to escape his brother. His mother thinks it wi!l only take a few days for Esau to forget what Jacob has done to him. (27.44-5) Jacob does not share her optimism, for after a month with his uncle he proposes that he spend another seven years working for him as the price of marrying Laban's daughter Rachel, with whom Jacob is already in love. (29.18) Why does Jacob make this offer? He is certainly a man who knows how to get important things cheaply. He got his brother's birthright for a bowl of soup and his father's blessing for a lie, and he offered God absolutely nothing until God should first give him everything he wanted: a safe and comfortable journey and return home. Now he freely offers seven years of work for a woman he already desires. Can it be that he is simply trying to make certain of outlasting Esau' s anger? That can't be the whole reason, since he could be spending that same time as Rachel's husband. I suspect that Jacob is offering those seven years more to himself than to Laban, that he wants a long time to forget about looking out for himself, to submerge himself in work, out of which he might emerge as a better man to begin a life with Rachel. I think this is not as far-fetched an interpretation as it might at first seem. When Jacob first comes into the presence of Rachel and Laban he weeps tears of relief and gratitude (29.11-13), and this is after a journey offive hundred miles or more in which, perhaps for the first time in his life, Jacob must have known deprivation, fear, and uncertainty. Just as Tolstoy's Pierre found no true freedom with the largest private fortune in Russia and the best education available in Europe until he had discovered in prison what a human being is, so too may Jacob's journey have been the beginning of his growing up. But the best evidence that Jacob's servitude was a freely chosen penance is the way he acts when it is over. We have finally returned to Laban's deception of Jacob, and Jacob's un-deception the morning after. We have now to try to enter Jacob's imagination when, having discovered that he married and slept with Leah, he confronts Laban. (29 .25-6) "What is this that thou has done unto me? did not I serve with thee for Rachel? wherefore then hast thou beguiled me?" are the questions that come tumbling from Jacob's mouth. Listen to Laban's cool reply, and try to hear in it what Jacob must be hearing. "It is not so done in our place, to give the younger before the first-born." Do you hear it? To a Jacob who was still the shallow and unfeeling thief of his younger days, this would be a lame excuse and nothing more. To a Jacob 16 whose thoughts are full of the wrong he has done his older brother in his own place, Laban's words must be like a knife that stabs him to the heart. Does Laban know what Jacob has done at home? Do his words mean, "I have not injured you but given you exact justice for your crimes''? It is certainly possible that in all that time word might have come to Laban from some traveller or servant or Jacob himself of what Jacob had done. But it does not matter. Even if Laban does not know fully what he is doing, it is done with exquisite accuracy. A marriage with Laban's undesirable daughter has been extorted from Jacob, as Esau's birthright from him; the consumation of that marriage has been achieved by disguise and fraud, as the first giving of Isaac's blessing was achieved; and Jacob has been outwitted in his contract, as he sought to outwit God at Beth-el with codicils and loopholes. In the face of this triple humiliation, our resourceful Jacobaccepts it. He takes it, as we say, like a man. In this moment of passivity and failure Jacob is for the first time as much a man as his father was. I have called this moment the turning point in Jacob's life. It is not, however, the occasion of a life-long sacrifice, since the customs of the time permit Jacob a second wife, and he marries Rachel only a week later. Nor is it the occasion of a complete change of Jacob's character, since he eventually comforts himself with a lot of petty cheating of Laban. (30.25-32.3) Thirdly, it is not the moment when Jacob appropriates the divine convenant; that is an unmistakable event thirteen years later. The moment when Jacob stands before Laban and hears his mockery is the first time we see Jacob swallow his pride. Jacob has already acknowledged his fault, according to our reading of the story, but he now accepts that the working off of that fault will not be a matter of his own private arrangements with himself, answerable to no one else. When Laban says, in effect, "You can have Rachel too, but I'll take seven more years," we hear only, "And Jacob did so." (29.28) Like his father and grandfather before him, Jacob has begun to accept that it is not he who directs his own life, and to be wiling to live on terms other than his own. Jacob sets out for home after spending twenty years with Laban, seven for Leah, as it turned out, seven more for Rachel, and six more to earn livestock and servants. (31.41) Near the River Jordan he camps at Peniel, having sent half his followers to another encampment, while he waits to meet Esau, and perhaps to be killed. The second thing Jacob does at Peniel is to send a succession of messengers carrying gifts to Esau; the first and third things he does there are the interesting ones. Taken together, they replace the covenant at Beth-el, of Jacob's eastward journey. This time it is Jacob who initiates the encounter, and again we will listen to all his words, as he prays SPRING 1986 �(32.10-13): "0 God of my father Abraham, and God of my father Isaac, 0 Lord, who saidst unto me: Return unto thy country, and to thy kindred, and I will do thee good; I am not worthy of all the mercies, and of all the truth, which Thou hast shown unto Thy servant; for with my staff I passed over this Jor- dan; and now I am become two camps. Deliver me, I pray Thee, from the hand of my brother, from the hand of Esau; for I fear him lest he come and smite me, the mother with the children. And Thou saidst: I will surely do thee good, and make thy seed as the sand of the sea, which cannot be numbered for multitude." Jacob's prayer at Peniel is certainly self-regarding, selfserving, and self-seeking. The important thing about it is that it is a prayer. Jacob reminds God of His promise, but does not claim to have made any exchange for it or promise to make any return for it. He speaks now as one who has nothing to offer but his need. When Jacob says he is unworthy of the mercy and truth he has received, he is using a way of speaking fairly common in the Bible, the Oriental courtesy of self-abasement. It is not a way of speaking we have ever heard from Jacob, though, and in this case I think he means exactly what he says. There is much good in his life, two wives, eleven children, and great wealth, and it is all sheer blessing, and not his own doing. There is also more than enough bad in his life, enough to cost him his life and perhaps the massacre of all his family and dependents, and that is his doing and just what he deserves. There is none of the spelling out of obligations of the covenant at Beth-el, but only a giving voice to the conviction that he himself cannot provide himself the minimum conditions of carrying on a life. Having sent his prayer to God, and presents to his brother, Jacob that night sends away his family and everyone and everything else with him, and spends the night alone. (32.23-5) But when Jacob isolates himself, he is not alone. We are told, abruptly and mysteriously, "there wrestled a man with him until the breaking of the day.'' Abraham struggled with God face-to-face over Sodom and over Ishmael, and something similar occurs with Adam, Cain, Moses, and David. It is in the strange and beautiful episode of Jacob's wrestling that the meaning of all such struggles becomes accessible. I am not talking about symbolism, but about how and to what end the wrestling match takes place. Let us first simply look at what happens in that struggle at Peniel. We know that the wrestling match goes on all night, that Jacob continues despite a serious injury, either a sprained thigh muscle or a dislocated hip, that his adversary is called a man in the narration but is taken by Jacob himself to be God, and that Jacob is striving not to throw or pin this adversary or in any way get the bet- THE ST. JOHN'S REVIEW ter of Him, but only to remain in His embrace. Jacob fights in order that he not be let go, except with a blessing. If the wrestling match is taken together with Jacob's prayer, it provides further evidence that Jacob's honest opinion is that all the good in his life comes only from God, and that if he stands on his own merit, he deserves to be killed by his brother. And this finally is the full meaning of the Biblical covenant: It is the bargain one can make only out of utter clarity that he has nothing to bargain with. The fierceness of Jacob's struggle reflects the knowledge he has gained of the desperation of a life without God. Anything he could hope for without God, he has learned that he doesn't want. And this moment is Jacob's full and final appropriation of the covenant, his explicit acknowledgement of his createdness, his essential and inescapable dependence upon a creator. The meaning of the moment is recognized by the change of Jacob's name to Israel, he who strives with God. And Jacob becomes Israel also in the sense that none of his progeny will be excluded from the covenant: he is the blessed nation promised to his grandfather and father. In this way, Jacob's wrestling is the completion of creation: the separation of light from darkness, land from water, family from family, and brother from brother comes to an end after thirty-two chapters of Genesis. If Jacob's wrestling is the culmination of the history of creation, it must somehow address the troublesome sentence with which we began: "And the Lord saw that ... every imagination of the thoughts of man's heart was only evil continually.'' That sentence was interpreted to mean that the instrument of human freedom has an inherent inertia toward making its worst suspicions come true by actions intended to guard against them. The history of mankind before the Flood was summarized as a motion from the self-tormenting murderer Cain to the self-congratulating mass murderer Lamech. The three Hebrew patriarchs do not have purified hearts; what they have are ordeals which lead to self-knowledge as created beings, and trust in a divine promise of prosperity and a rest from troubles, but not for themselves. It is natural for all human beings to want something for themselves, in the present. Esau asks his father if he does not have a little blessing left over for him (27.36); Lot, escaping from Sodom, asks God if he can't stay in a city, just a little one (19.20); and Abraham meets the first explicit account of the covenant with a request that a little something be done for Ishmael (17 .18). But none of the patriarchs is given anything out of the ordinary in his own lifetime, except an invitation to trust God. The history of mankind after the Flood, up to the coming into being of the nation Israel, is a return to sell-torment, but relieved by a promise of peace for future generations. The covenant does not transform the conditions of human life, 17 �but it presents itself as a step toward such a transformation. jacob's life after he becomes Israel is still full of trouble. He has a life, because Esau does forgive him (33.4), but he himself seems to have learned nothing from his conflict with his brother. Like his father before him, jacob openly loves one of his sons most, and brings about hatred in his house. (37.1-4) As a result he loses that son, and then the son second dearest to him. When he is reunited with them in Egypt, he is brought before the Pharaoh, who asks him, ''How many are the days of the years of thy life?" jacob replies, "The days of the years of my sojournings are a hundred and thirty years; few and evil have been the days of the years of my life, and they have not attained unto the days of the years of the life of my fathers in the days of their sojournings." (47.8-9) Why does jacob talk this way? Is he a bitter man at the end of his life? Does he feel that God's promise has been a deception? His words in the following chapter make it clear that this is not his attitude toward his life. When jacob is on his deathbed, he hugs and kisses his grandchildren and says to joseph, "I had not thought to see thy face; and lo, God hath let me see thy children also." (48.11) Jacob does not lack gratitude. Pharaoh seems to look at him though as an aged man specially favored by fortune. I think what Jacob is saying to him is: I am no one special. I am an ordinary man. Others have lived longer. If I am distinguished in any way it is in the same way as my father and grandfather, in not having had a life at all in the settled sense, but a never-ending wandering. Did Jacob receive the things he insisted upon at Bethel? He certainly did not starve or freeze to death, he got back to Beersheba, and he was not attacked. In deeper ways, though, he got both more and less than he asked for. Safety is too weak a word to describe what jacob gained when he looked on Esau's forgiving face and said it was like seeing the face of God. (33.10) On the other hand, home is too strong a word for a place jacob had to leave in his old age, not only for food but for release from the anxiety about his children with which his last years were troubled; and I doubt that jacob would have been much comforted to know that the Egyptians gave him a royal funeral. (50.2-3) For jacob, home and security remained only promises for a distant generation, while the joys of his life always came unexpectedly, with the intensity of gifts that one cannot take for granted. And what became of the imagination of jacob's youth, in which he set himself against everyone and everything else in the world? It seems to have been not overcome or crushed, but fed by the knowledge he gained from experience and promises he was given by God. The Jacob who warns Pharaoh against envying him is not a man 18 in whom imagination has died. It is in his imagination that jacob judges his life as one that has never come to rest. That is a long way, though, from the time when that same imagination sought to find its rest by defeating and outwitting everyone else. jacob's imagination looks at the past through his history and at the future through the divine convenant, and finds an in-between, human kind of rest in the acceptance of troubles as worth enduring. The Law of Moses incorporates jacob's understanding of his life. The jew is commanded to recite, every year when the harvest comes, the words "a wandering Aramean was my father." (Deuteronomy 26.5) A land flowing with milk and honey is never to be taken for granted, but to be looked on as achieved through a history of struggle. But is the land the completion of the promise made to Abraham, Isaac, and jacob? Why is the promised land not a new Eden, and just as likely to be lost? Is memory strong enough to outweigh the corrupting tendency of imagination simply by evoking the history and the covenant? I will argue that the life of the wandering Aramean, the Syrian nomad, is transposed from the outer to the inner human realm by means of the Law itself. I once listened to a learned man explain that the jewish Law contained nothing spiritual, that it concerned itself exclusively with external possessions and outward acts. This man went so far as to claim that the Hebrew word translated "covet" in the tenth commandment means instead "obtain by magic," but I cannot recall that he had anything at all to say about the command in Leviticus to love your neighbor as yourself. (19.18,33-4) His purpose was to show the inferiority of judaism to Christianity, but I have also heard more than one rabbi explain that the superiority of judaism consists precisely in its concentration on the outer things under a man's control, rather than on the inner and involuntary things. It seems to me, though, that the regulation of outward life in the jewish Law is always for the sake of its significance for inward life. The keynote of the whole Law is sounded in the command to the hearer to talk about the law all the time, whenever one is free from necessary business. (Deuteronomy 6.6-7) It is not a Law to be memorized, but one to be interpreted. It does not bring the life of moral struggle to an end, but stimulates that life. Most of what the Law has to give is not on its surface, but evident only to the imagination, through the activity of interpretation. The ultimate Biblical response to the corruption of human life by imagination is the giving of the Law, not to replace the imagination but to feed it with strong meat. Now some of you may be thinking, that sounds good, and there are some good things in the Law of Moses, but isn't much of the Law unenlightened and even barbaric? For example, doesn't that Law approve of slavery? The SPRING 1986 �Law does not forbid slavery, and certainly recognizes its existence, but as far as I can determine, every mention of slavery in the five books of Moses deals with the freeing of slaves. The most extensive ordinances deal with Jewish slaves, who must be set free after six years of work (Ex. 21, Deut. 15), liberally furnished with livestock, grain, and wine (D 15.13-14). Most remarkable is that the slave owner is commanded not only to free the slave, but not to do so grudgingly. (D 15.18) Further, any slave, Jewish or otherwise, is exempt from the famous law of retaliation, an eye for an eye, a tooth for a tooth. This is true in one way in the Code of Hammurabi, a Babylonian king contemporary with Abraham: there the eye or tooth of a slave is worth less than that of a man, but requires a payment of money to the slave's owner. (Laws 196-201) Presumably the slave's owner is free to knock out eyes and teeth as long as the slave has eyes and teeth to knock out. But in the Law of Moses, the slave's eye or tooth is worth his freedom: a slave owner who strikes his slave must set him free for the eye's sake, or for the tooth's sake. (E 21.26-7) And every fiftieth year is a jubilee year in which all slaves must be set free. (Lev. 25.54) Slavery in the Bible, then, is a limited institution, with laws made to mitigate its harshness. But we have yet to consider the most interesting of those limitations, the law concerning runaway slaves. Again, for the sake of contrast, we mention the Code of Hammurabi, under which anyone harboring a runaway slave was to be killed. (Law 16) In our enlightened times, this was not a capital offense, but still the United States Constitution required that anyone held to forced labor in one state had to be returned from any other state. (Art. 4, Sec. 2) And in the nineteenth century, Congress passed a law under which a federal judge was paid twice as much when he found an accused person to be a runaway slave as when he let him go. The law preventing slaves from running away follows simply from the logic of the institution of slavery itself. If someone can choose with his feet not to be a slave, and the law does not compel him to return, he is no slave in the first place. A law permitting a slave toescape his servitude is bad law and bad logic. Listen to the Biblical law on the subject: "Thou shalt not deliver unto his master a bondsman that is escaped from his master unto thee; he shall dwell with thee, in the midst of thee, in the place which he shall choose within one of thy gates, where it liketh him best; thou shalt not wrong him.'' (D 23.16-17) Any slave who doesn't want to be a slave, and who can run away, is no longer a slave, but is protected by the law. Is not the very institution of slavery undermined by this little restriction? Why then does the Law not explicitly forbid slavery? What is the attitude toward slavery implicit in the Law? Think about it, as the sixth chapter of Deuteronomy requires. THE ST. JOHN'S REVIEW The logic of slavery, that leads to the duty of returning a nmaway slave, is the same as the logic of war, that leads to conscription. If war is right and the nation is at war, individuals cannot be permitted to refrain from fighting by their own choice. If we are at all on the right track in understanding the Law, then, we should expect to find military conscription absent or even forbidden, and this is just what we do find. There is one law in Deuteronomy that forbids a man to go into battle during his first year of marriage, and commands him to stay home and make his wife happy. (24.6) Mr. O'Grady used to comment that this law has no provision for cases when there are not enough soldiers left. It is unconditional in choosing the happiness of a young bride as a higher end than victory in battle. Let us listen to the general law governing the conduct of battle (D 20.5-8): ''The officers shall sp"eak unto the people, saying: 'What man is there that hath built a new house and hath not dedicated it? let him go and return to his house, lest he die in the battle, and another man dedicate it. And what man is there that hath planted a vineyard, and hath not used the fruit thereof? let him go and return unto his house, lest he die in the battle, and another man use the fruit thereof. And what man is there that hath betrothed a wife, and hath not taken her? let him go and return unto his house, lest he die in battle, and another man take her.' And the officers shall speak further unto the people, and they shall say: 'What man is there that is fearful and faint-hearted? let him go and rehlrn unto his house, lest his brethren's heart melt as his heart."' Not only a new wife, but also a fiancee, a new house, and a new vineyard have higher claims on a man than does any battle, but again there is one further restriction that seems to undermine the whole institution of war. Under the Jewish Law, no one can be a soldier if he doesn't want to. The Bible is full of bloody warfare, and even glorifies it, and in certain special cases forbids humane treatment of the enemy. (D.20.16-18) These things can be defended, but are still disturbing to most of us. But anyone who was thus disturbed in his heart in Biblical times would, under the Law, be automatically exempt from fighting. Under such a law, the Vietnam war probably could not have been fought, but there is no such calculation in the Bible. Does the Bible teach the rightness of war? In the third place, let us consider usury, the lending of money at interest. The Bible in no way restricts this practice, so long as the borrower is not a Jew or a resident alien. (D 15.3, 6; 23.21) From a fellow Jew, no form of interest in goods or money in any amount may ever be taken. (D 23.20) Usury is permissible in foreign commerce, but never to be part of the life of one's own community. Within the community one may lend, and accept a pledge as collateral for repayment, but with three restrictions: a mill or millstone may never be taken as a 19 �pledge, since without it a man may not turn his crop into bread (D 24.6); if the pledge is a garment, the lender must return it to the borrower every night, since he may have no other covering to sleep under (D 24.12-13; E 22.25-6); and under no circumstances is the lender to go into the borrower's house to choose the article to be taken in pledge, but he must wait outside and take what he is given (D 24.10-11). The necessity to borrow from one's neighbor must, under the Law, have no cost in money or goods, in hardships the lender might be unable to foresee, or even in embarrassment. But the most remarkable provision for the borrower is a law requiring that all debts be cancelled every seven years. (D 15.1-11) Here is what the Law says to the lender: "If there be among you a needy man, one of thy brethren, within any of thy gates, in thy land which the Lord thy God giveth thee, thou shalt not harden thy heart, nor shut thy hand from thy needy brother; but thou shalt surely open thy hand unto him, and shalt surely lend him sufficient for his need in that which he wanteth. Beware that there be not a base thought in thy heart, saying: 'The seventh year, the year of release, is at hand;' and thine eye be evil against thy needy brother, and thou give him nought; ... Thou shalt surely give him, and thy heart shall not be grieved when thou givest unto him." This law is not only for the protection of the poor; it seems even more strongly concerned with protecting the rich man against his own feelings. Perhaps one might say of all three, slavery, war, and usury, that they are all right, so long as one does not think that they are all right. A fourth institution provided for in Deuteronomy is monarchy. (17.14-20) For about a thousand years from the time of the patriarchs, Israel has no king, but the Law foresees a desire for one when the people reach the promised land. The Law authorizes a king, so long as he does not multiply for himself horses, wives, or gold and silver, if he copies out the Torah for himself and reads it all his life. He is to be a king without pride over his subjects, regarding himself primarily as a subject of God. Does the Law sanction monarchy, or make it impossible? The last institution I will ask you to consider is private property. You will not be surprised to hear that in the Bible it is neither forbidden nor simply approved, but is a qualified legal right. A tenth of every year's income must be set aside, in part for celebration, and in part for the use of priests, strangers, widows, and orphans. (D 14.22-29) But the amount from which the tenth is taken is not everything that grows in a man's fields. When one harvests grain, olives, or grapes, one may not glean his fields. (D 24.19-22) Something must always be left behind for the needy. And at any time of year, anyone may enter the vineyard of another and eat his fill, so long as he carries nothing away, and may take away from another man's cornfield everything he can pluck with his hand. 20 (23.25-6) We must conclude that the produce of a man's own land belongs to him, as long as he doesn't take all of it or use all that he takes, and that it belongs also to everyone else, as long as they do not abuse that right. At this point, I think it is safe to conclude that the effect of the Jewish Law is not to settle the questions of the moral life, but to unsettle them. This does not mean that the Law is vague about how people should act, or leaves loopholes for the clever to escape its requirements, or even, God forbid, fosters a belief that morality is only relative. On the contrary, the Law is so clear about where obligations begin and end that it reveals an unmistakable two-sideness in anything that purports to be the principle or end of human life. Some discussions of morals and politics are doctrinaire, deducing actions rigidly from formal principles. The Bible exhibits a treatment of human things of another kind, a kind which one finds also in Plato's dialogues and Aristotle's Ethics. This non-formal approach requires the exercise of judgment, the drawing of lines, and the balancing of conflicting goods. It is the opposite of irrational, but it does not restrict itself to conclusions accessible in the understancling by logic; its proper instrument is the imagination. When we hear in a political or moral discussion, as we do every day, that some conclusion follows because otherwise, "where do you draw the line?" the speaker is doing no more than confess the inadequacy of his imagination to the topic before him. The formalistic approach to human things is always an evasion of everything that matters to us. On the contrary, the Law of Moses is full of everything human, including war, slavery, and every gradation of political and economic oppression. Its purpose is not to wipe out these evils-that could only be accomplished by wiping out us, their authors-but to provide ammunition for a never-ending struggle against them. Jacob's wanderings in the Syrian desert were for him and for his descendants the primary characteristic of his life. It was the promise of rest in the divine covenant that made such a life acceptable. But the covenant is not a literal promise of earthly peace and prosperity. Moses knew this when he said both "there will be no poor among you ... if only you will obey the voice of the Lord your God," and also "the poor will never cease out of the land." (D 15.4-5,11) The purpose of the Law, as of the covenant, is to prevent a coming to rest in the wrong place. This is not to say that the Law cannot be obeyed, but that there is no such thing as a completion of such obedience. The more one succeeds in obeying it, the more this Law opens the imagination to the more that still needs to be done. This is not an infinite process that makes all striving futile, but one that makes striving ever more effective. Such striving toward an end reflects the strife, in any thoughtful human being, of the imagination with itself. SPRING 1986 �On Beginning to Read Dante Cary Stickney It seems to me that the question at the root of this lecture is about what is same and what is other. I will try to give some meaning to that empty-sounding pair of words. In Aristotle's book called On the Soul there is the suggestion that learning is like nutrition. This means that things which look very different from us are able to form a part of us. Our soul can transform bread into bone and muscle, and in an analogous way can transform the things in the world into thought and knowledge. Of course the bread must already somehow be bone and muscle, even if only potentially, and the beings in the world must already somehow be thought. It turns out that the most knowable aspects of all things are indeed in their essence nothing but thought, the thought of nous poietikos, Active Mind, which continually thinks all things and precisely by this divine and pure activity makes them what they are. There must then be some part of the human soul that resembles this Divine Mind, if the soul is to be capable of truly knowing anything at all. But this is to suppose that we are different only in degree from God, not in kind. Aristotle seems to take very seriously the possibility that a few human beings can for brief moments think the thought of Thinking thinking Itself and thus in fact be one with this Divine Mind or God. And as astonishing as such an idea may sound, it is not at all easy to understand what knowing means without supposing some sameness between the truth and our souls. The consequences of this sameness, however, seem to Carl Stickney is a tutor of St. John's College in Santa Fe. This is the text of a lecture given at St. John's College, Santa Fe, shortly after Bill O'Grady's death in January 1986. THE ST. JOHN'S REVIEW lead to our being at least potentially no different from God. If this is so, it does away with the notion of otherness, and the related ideas of wonder, surprise, and gratitude. As Aristotle himself points out, Philosophy may be born in wonder, but those things that appeared wonderful, once they are understood, are no longer wondered at; so, he says, when we have once understood the proof of the incommensurability of the diagonal (with the side of the square) we find it so little wonderful that the wonder would be if it were commensurable. But this is to say that the only things that might have a permanent claim on our wonder are the things that are not possible at all. So knowing becomes a progressive destruction of wonder. Many things may seem at first mysterious or surprising-nothing may be allowed truly to be so. I suspect I am not being entirely fair to Aristotle and I will be glad to talk about that with you afterwards, but let me now continue trying to sketch the question I see. If, in Aristotle's language, as the hand is the tool of tools, so the soul is the form of forms, then it follows, that there can be no real gifts to the learner, for as Kierkegaard puts it there is nothing which is not already his. It is mere coincidence when and how something is learned, since the underlying sameness of the knower and the known means that the learner somehow always knew it. How else, indeed, could he have recognized it when he saw it, on the occasion we call learning? Let me suppose that this is not a mistaken but only an incomplete account of knowing. What is missing? I have tried to say that gifts, wonder, surprise, and gratitude do not seem adequately accounted for by an understanding that makes them into illusions or superficialities. But what is the alternative? If I am to receive a gift in the full sense of the word it 21 �must be something truly different from me, something I could not by my own efforts ever have achieved for myself. How then will I know what to do with it, or how will I be able to receive it? How am I different from a dog, say, who is given a violin? If I then say it must be a twofold gift and that I must be given the ability to receive the gift along with the gift itself, I seem only to have pushed the question back one step. For if I am to be able in turn to receive that ability, I must already be capable of such ability, at least potentially, and then it follows that I already have the gift itself potentially. In other words, if it is possible to give the dog the ability to accept the violin, then the dog is potentially human; but the potentially human needs no gift, in the extreme sense here proposed, to become actually human, and an actual human is only receiving his own when he receives a violin. The alternative, then, in order to explain the possibility of this perhaps over-strict interpretation of gifts, requires a mystery. The mystery is that it should be possible to be remade in a radical sense, so as to become capable of receiving a gift which is genuinely other from oneself. In the example, the mystery would be that a dog who was in no sense potentially human, should nevertheless be made human in order to receive a violin. Could there be gratitude in such a case? We might say: Not unless the dog could somehow have desired such a remaking. But that seems to require a knowledge or belief in the dog that such a possibility could exist; and how can a creature be aware of something that in no way belongs to its potentialities? Apparently another twofold gift is required: a message about possibilities and the ability to understand or trust in the message. This seems again to require previous gifts in order that a desire to hear such a message precede the grateful acceptance of the message, and we seem to have fallen into an infinite regress. But perhaps it was hasty to say there could be no gratitude without previous desire. We sometimes say we are grateful to be alive, yet we do not suppose that before we were alive we could have had any kind of desire at all, not even the desire to be alive. Still, we say we are grateful. Of course it may also be that we don't know what we're talking about when we say such things, but in that case gifts and gratitude return to superficialities. Thomas Aquinas provides us with a better example than the transformation of a dog. He argues that the blessed are given additional light in order to see the essence of God. That is, God must create another kind of light, which in turn is described as giving a new form to the soul and making it resemble God more, so that it may receive the vision of God Himself. Perhaps a better example still has to do with friendship and love. Can we love without being loved? I don't mean can we desire to possess without being ourselves desired, 22 but can we affirm another being without a simultaneous awareness of something that affirms our own being? What does it mean to say "I rejoice in your being as you are" if the T that rejoices has not been able to let go of its expectation that all things should be reducible to versions of the way it is? But when it does let go of that expectation it faces the possibility that although the other is real enough, its own apparent difference from that other may be the illusion which must be destroyed. I cannot rejoice that you are you if that means that I must become just like you, for then whatever makes me see you as different and thus enables me to rejoice, is just what must be destroyed in me. I must then be able to refrain from reducing what is other to what is same, or to refrain both from making you into me and me into you, if a love that is more than mutual consumption is to exist between us. But where do I get the confidence that there is room for our differences to exist together? Only from love, only from some knowledge of being loved by someone. Dante's Hell is full of people who did not succeed in imagining the possibility of such love, and they are arranged within the descending order of the cone according to what kind of substitutes for love they chose. This at any rate is what I hope to show. The difficulties of reading the Comedy are many and of many kinds, but among the greatest are those which mirror the difficulties of Dante the Pilgrim in his journey. The first is his fear at the prospect that he must encounter Hell at this very moment. Why not leave it an open question whether there is such a place and what it is like? Why not leave such investigations to the Heroes and Saints, and be content to find out later, indefinitely later ... after death, in fact, if find out one must? "Besides," he says, 1 am not someone capable of corning to conclusions about it, or of doing great things afterward. In short the trip would be wasted on me," and so too speaks many a reader. Dante's unwillingness to face his journey is not an unfamiliar response. When God speaks to Moses from the burning bush, Moses replies, "Who am I, that I should go unto Paraoh and that I should bring forth the children of Israel out of Egypt?" and again after God has named himself to Moses and told him what kind of journey lies ahead, "But behold, they will not believe me nor hearken unto my voice, for they will say "The Lord hath not appeared unto thee."' Dante's words are "Neither I nor anyone else believes I am worthy of this." Confronted with the possibility of a profound transformation of himself, a change whose results will make him a being who can look God in the face, Dante, like Moses, wavers. Both begin with a question: Dante asks Virgil to see if his strength is adequate to such a task, while Moses more straightforwardly asks "Who am I. .. ?" Each reveals the 11 SPRING 1986 �difficulty of understanding such a change; partly each wants an assurance that he already has all he needs, already is the one who can do what must be done. Partly each is already convinced he is not now and never can be such a one. They do not receive the sort of answers they hope for. Moses, the exiled murderer who has abandoned his own kin in their slavery as well as his adopted people in their tyranny, has good reason to wonder who he is and good reason to suppose that nobody will believe the Lord has appeared to such a one as he is. It is as though he foresees he will soon hardly believe it himself. God replies "Surely I will be with thee ... " and Moses seems not to hear the words that follow but asks in effect, "But, who are you?" Here too he cautiously and politely lets the hypothetical doubting children of Israel stand for his own doubts: ''When ... they shall say to me, What is his name? what shall I say unto them?" He wants a way to be sure God is with him, a name to call to make God come to him. God's answer is reminiscent of Odysseus's reply to Polyphemus in its refusal to provide a handle on the one named, for Moses can no more summon God by calling ''I am that I am'' than Polyphemus could call down punishment upon Odysseus by crying "Noman has done this to me!" But God's answer is richer than that of Odysseus. Rather than making Himself impossible to call upon by declaring, like Noman, that He has no being, God reveals such fullness and activity of His being that there could be no question of needing to call Him, for how could He ever be absent? The name refers to no limits in space or time, so that the first word of the earlier reply "Surely I will be with thee ... " suddenly takes on much more resonance. The name's possible future meanings, "I will be who I will be" or "I will be gracious unto whom I will be gracious," remind Moses of the rest of that reply: "Surely I will be with thee; and this shall be a token unto thee, that I have sent thee: when thou hast brought forth the people out of Egypt, ye shall serve God upon this mountain." The token that God has appeared to Moses is something that hasn't happened yet. It is something that will only happen if Moses is willing to let his need for assurances wait and to allow his transformation to begin in an activity that falls outside the world of masters and slaves: trusting. Of course no one, slave or master, attains freedom in the course of one conversation, even if the conversation is with God, and Moses must ultimately be provided with three signs, all three transformations themselves, and with his brother Aaron as his spokesman before he will undertake his journey. Yet a change has begun that will lead him back to the mountain. Even when provided with Virgil, his brother-poet, and with a similar promise about a mountain, Dante hesitates. After an eloquent, learned, and pious speech about Ae- THE ST. JOHN'S REVIEW neas and Paul, the Roman Empire and the Church, he concludes with the remark about his own unworthiness quoted earlier. Virgil's answer is as unexpected as God's to Moses and among other things provides the first smile of this Comedy. "If I have rightly understood your speech," he says, "you're suffering an attack of cowardice.'' But Virgil knows he cannot rely on any simple desire in Dante to throw off all cowardice or to return to the delightful mountain. Neither Dante's love of himself nor his love of God is straightforward and free enough yet for that. So Virgil appeals to what was once ·Dante's strongest desire: to be loved by Beatrice. That she has chosen Virgil to help, with his beautiful words, and that she has gone into Hell for his sake, these are what act like the sun on the closed-up, drooping flower of Dante's soul. It is the assurance of being loved that allows Dante to begin a journey whose goal is to transform him into a true and active lover. So too it seems that the children of Israel must begin their journey out of Egypt to freedom with the assurance that they have a more powerful master who will treat them better than Pharaoh has. Dante's journey does not diminish the importance of being loved or reveal Beatrice's love as an illusion, but it profoundly changes the meaning of those things; and Israel's journey does not make it untrue that they belong to one more powerful than Pharaoh, but the meaning of their belonging and of his power is transformed. How can a slave look freedom in the face all at once? But even to begin, he must feel something like love. If the reader joins Dante on his journey, then perhaps this is out of a reflection of the dawning hope that love may free us from fear. For we are all sometimes in doubt about what those things are that truly have power to hurt us and we wonder whether we really see most clearly when we are most afraid. There is a story in the Book of John which illustrates the way the world can look to the eyes of fear. A crowd of people is gathered around a pool called Bethesda. The people are sick, blind, lame, wasting away. Every so often an angel enters the water and the people see motion; this is what they are waiting for, because the first one to enter the water after that motion will be cured. Jesus meets a man who has been waiting a long time, but because of the very weakness he hopes to cure he can never be the first one into the water. Somebody always beats him to it, and nobody is willing to lose his own chance just to help someone else. Everyone is so desperate to escape his own sufferings and so sure that it is all a matter of being first to grab from the limited supply of luck, that they have turned the possibility of health into one more source of suffering. That pain and weakness should make us compete ruthlessly with each other for the most important things, and that we may be doomed to useless suffering by mere bad 23 �luck are dark and frightening thoughts. I presume they are among those which constitute the dark wood where the poem begins. I don't think we know at the start just what it means that the right way had been lost, but in the course of the poem we learn two things that may help us guess. The first is that the woman Dante had been in love with, and who had seemed to him the most beautiful in the world, has died. It takes some considerable imagination to try to understand the lost feeling that might produce. It may help to hear Augustine's words about the death of a friend: "At the grief of this my heart was completely darkened, and whatever I cast mine eyes upon looked like death unto me. Mine own country was a very prison to me and my father's house a marvel of unhappiness; and whatsoever I had shared with (my friend) turned to excruciating torture without him. Mine eyes sought him out everywhere and he was not given to me; and I hated all places because they did not hold him, nor could they now tell me, as when he lived, 'Behold, though absent now, he will come shortly.' I became a great riddle to myself .... " The second thing we learn is that Dante is disgusted at what has happened to his city and his church. They seem to have fallen irrecoverably into the hands of the vile and the ignorant. How do these two losses constitute Dante's own lostness? I suppose that for the most part we are not each our own light, but that we illuminate our lives and our paths by reference to particular experiences that have come to be paradigms for us. Like small suns, they allow us to distinguish one thing from another, foreground from background, straight road from savage forest. Most of us share the early experience of parental love and care, and from this may remain a kind of clarity we have in common about the simplest obligations of kindness and mercy, even if such illumination be reduced to the dimmest of glows. Another common light might issue from our experiences of the larger home of a political community, as a stable sustaining order within which certain kinds of diversity first become possible at all. Our friends, too, shed light on things for us-especially on the question of who we think we are. We wish to please our friends, to be worthy of their desire to please us, and so we try to see with their eyes. The way that they see something becomes for us an illumination of a way that thing is. That the world can contain such friends is likewise illuminating; it may seem to encourage a certain expectation about the character of the world itself, as, that it will be altogether understandable, or that the things most important to us will turn out to be the most important in every sense. It may be very hard to say how certain experiences become the paradigms in the light of which we 24 will see the world and ourselves, but it is not hard to see that no such paradigm is inviolable. We may forget or cease to pay attention to former experiences; we may make the unwelcome discovery of deep faults in our parents, our community, or our friends. Most of Dante's paradigms are in ruins at the start of the poem. Yet even when we believe that the world is not a place that can hold what is most beautiful or well-ordered but that all such things are the soonest destroyed, we are not deprived of all illumination. Dante, at any rate, can see still the sun, and in its light a delightful mountain as well as three threatening beasts. They will not leave him and he cannot get around them. They seem to belong to him in some way, as if they are his own particular weaknesses and fears. The third of these beasts, the she-wolf, is so frightening that he loses all hope of climbing the mountain and is driven back "to where the sun is silent." He tells us she has made him like someone who had once been glad to win but now that he must lose, "afflicts himself and weeps in all his thoughts." This is a three-line portrait of despair. It is already harsh enough when we say dismissively of someone else, "He is a real loser." We mean, "forget about him; he can do nothing right; it is not even worth wondering whether he wants to; he might as well not exist." This is probably what jesus means when he says that there is a way of calling your brother a fool which puts you in danger of the fire of Hell. But when someone says it of himself, when he not only blames himself for his misfortunes, but sees himself as the greatest misfortune of all, then he is practically in Hell at that moment. There is something terrifying in the solitary pride which responds to the pain of loss by silently turning its teeth on itself, whose every thought is a weeping and a self-affliction. The eerie silence of the whole first part of the first canto is heightened in the line about the place where the sun is silent, for none of the three beasts has yet made a sound, nor has Dante, and now he is driven into a darkness in which the sun itself cannot speak. What does the sun say when it does speak? Perhaps it says that things are different: there are mountains and valleys, straight paths and trackless wastes, and all the different things between. It is only during the cloudiest nights or in the darkest woods that all is one. As long as there is light we have the possibility of choosing between one way and another; we are in utter darkness when we suppose we have no choice, or that it makes no difference what we choose. Still things are not altogether dark even now for Dante, for at this moment he sees the dim shade of Virgil, "There was offered to my eyes one who seemed faint from long silence." Why Virgil should be described this way seems clear. He has not for some time been among Dante's SPRING 1986 �sources of light. Whatever he once had to teach has been learned already and perhaps almost forgotten. At this moment though, he is Dante's last chance. Virgil tells him that the only way leading past those beasts goes through Hell, and reports Beatrice's words that only that which has power to harm us deserves to be feared. Dante has yet to learn how Hell has no power to hurt him, but for now the name of Beatrice is enough. Let me return to the question of otherness for a moment, before we join Dante on his journey. I think a certain experience of books may help explain what I want to say. One may learn after a time neither to be offended by nor merely to gloss over those passages in a seminar reading which seem most repugnant to one's own understanding, but rather especially to note them as the places where the book most clearly has something to teach. Often enough we may only let it teach the distinguishing peculiarities of its own position, without allowing it really to change anyone's mind about anything, but sometimes the very thorniest places in a text reveal themselves as rose gardens and the steepest, rockiest spots yield undreamt-of views in all directions. One reason this can happen is that there is an orthodoxy, a party-line we share at St. John's, according to which it is expected to happen. This means we do not stop trying because it has not happened on a particular night or by a particular time. The expected result occurs often enough to keep us going. We have confidence that the Author has already thought of most of our own first objections to any of his remarks and so we look past those first reactions for what we assume will be at least adequate replies, and we try to suppose that they will be better than just adequate. All of this allows us to change, if not so far as to simply adopt a completely new viewpoint on the spot, yet far enough to know that we have become importantly different by encountering the real strength of a position which nevertheless is not now and may never become fully our own. We do not always insist that either the book is wrong or we are wrong, although on the other hand most of us recognize the dangers of that slothful avoidance of difficulties which reduces all difference to an excuse for taking no stand at all. Speaking about her own work (in Mystery and Manners, p. 111), Flannery O'Connor said something which may apply to all stories worth remembering: I often ask myself what makes a story work, and what makes it hold up as a story, and I have decided that it is probably some action, some gesture of a character that is unlike any other in the story, one which indicates where the real heart of the story lies. This would have to be an action or a gesture which was both totally right and totally unexpected; it would have to be one that was both in character and beyond character; it would have to suggest both the world and eternity . ... It would be a gesture that transcended any neat allegory that THE ST. JOHN'S REVIEW might have been intended or any pat moral categories a reader could make. It would be a gesture which somehow made contact with mystery. Perhaps it is not only what makes a story hold up as a story, this contact with mystery, but what makes a life hold up as a life. To encounter and affirm what is other, to allow oneself to be changed, that is the mystery. But I must try again to speak of the right way to affirm what is other. If I can say more than "I am glad to see things have turned out just as I would have planned them," if I can see that sometimes things turn out far better than I could ever possibly have planned them, then I may be able to believe that things are always in that one process of a plan better far than anything a human can devise. This would put me in a position to affirm even what is most painful and what seems useless or worse. I would not affirm it in the expectation that I could always eventually demand to be shown clearly what had been good about it and that I had a right to satisfaction on that score; as if the fact of having powers of judgement and understanding automatically made me nothing but an implacable judge, eternally measuring everything against his own fixed standard and perhaps eternally finding it all wanting; but neither would I despair of the chance that the things which hurt worst might be part of a re-making of my own self which would allow me to see and to love in genuinely new ways. It must be that the painful things of the world are the real gifts, as the repugnant passages in the books are the most noteworthy, that is, if there are real gifts at all; and it must be that we all believe we are blessed with such gifts whenever we succeed in loving anyone, even briefly, who is irreducibly different from us. It is the second book of the Comedy that deals explicitly with the painful gifts which are given for our transformation. In the tenth canto, at the beginning of Purgatory proper, there is a description of three sculpted reliefs on the wall of the terrace where Pride is purged. Each depicts a transformation: the first of Mary at the Annunciation, the second, of David dancing before the Ark of the Covenant, and the third, of the emperor Trajan humbling himself to a poor widow. But transformation is not only the content of these reliefs, it is even more strikingly present in their form. They are, says Dante, images which surpass both Art and Nature. They seem to live, speak, sing, and dance, even to embody the temporal sequence of a conversation. There is a suggestion of how to understand transformation here. The images are not trans- formed into the very people of whom they are images, but they have become more nearly perfect images in a way that was not naturally contained among the potentialities either of marble or of the art of sculpture. What it is to be a sculpture has not been destroyed, but trans- 25 �figured in a way that is "both in character and beyond character." So too may it be for human beings, made in the image of God, if they can humble themselves to accept burdens as gifts. But to begin to read Dante is to begin with Hell. Where is the hope of transformation, love, or affirmation of the other here? First we might wonder why there is a Hell at all. Why should not all human souls, if there are such things, be gathered into God at the end of earthly life? Wouldn't that be the act of truly loving God? Perhaps it would, but then we must ask whom He is loving, and whether His love can rightly compel that He be loved in return. Let us suppose He loves all to whom He gives Life, and that the gift of Life and Being is a sign of this love. If it is a gift with no strings attached, then it must be possible to do what one likes with it. What if one chooses to lead a life directed to oneself alone, and thus directed away from God? God must not have made such a choice impossible, unless he was only pretending to give a gift in the first place. If he made it possible, though, he must have made a place, or something like a place where one could be away from Him, where one could be as far away as one chose, given the limiting condition that to be an infinite distance from God, who is the source of all Being, would be the same as to cease being altogether. But to withdraw all being from those who wished only to be by themselves would be to attach strings to the original gift again, so that the bottom of Hell must not be infinitely but only indefinitely far from God. On this showing there is nothing outrageous in Dante's claim, expressed in the famous inscription above the Gate, that Primal Love made Hell. Had God's love required a positive response, He would only have been loving Himself in the end. By making Hell, God affirms the otherness of the souls he has made, even and precisely when they themselves are unwilling to affirm anything but what is the same as themselves. What about that claim? How do we know that in fact the damned have done anything worse than embracing the pleasures and possibilities of Life? Surely the great Pagan Philosophers and Poets, among whom is Virgil himself, are not justly placed in Hell? Surely Odysseus, that lover of wisdom and seeker after new experiences, is not to be condemned as essentially selfish? Surely all the famous lovers who have given up everything else for the sake of their passion, and who define for us the very meaning of losing oneself in another, are not to be seen as unwilling to affirm what is other? We must join Dante on his journey and see. Let us begin near the bottom of Hell with Odysseus, or as Dante calls him, Ulysses. Presumably the extreme condition of those in the lower circles will make their characters easier to recognize. 26 Dante and Virgil are in the eighth of the nine circles of Hell, the circle of fraud. They come to the eighth chasm within that circle, the chasm of the false counsellors, the location of Ulysses. Dante prefaces the tale with a fairly explicit comparison of himself to Ulysses, the great traveller and teller of tales. "I sorrowed then and sorrow now again when I direct my memory to what I saw; and curb my genius more than I am wont, lest it run where Virtue guides it not; so that if kindly star or something better have grated me the good, I may not grudge myself that gift" or, more literally and strikingly, " ... so that I may not envy my own self." It is universally conjectured that Dante did not know the works of Homer, except through the Latin authors' retellings, so that it would be vain to look for a place in Homer where Odysseus begins one of his tales "I sorrowed then and sorrow now again when I direct my memory to what I saw;" yet how true to the spirit of much of the Odyssey they ring! Indeed they are mostly sorrowful tales the Homeric Odysseus brings home. He, too, has been in Hell. Of course, as we learn in a moment, Dante has a new version of Odysseus's last voyage to tell, in which the hero never does go home at all. This nonreturning Ulysses seems to represent to Dante a dangerous possibility of uncurbed powers. Like Ulysses, he has been granted an epic voyage, but he explains his strange trip at one point in Purgatory with the words, "To return here once again where I am do I make this journey." One might grudge oneself a gift if one saw it had been wasted. The chance to go far from home and to experience remarkable things is a good, but if treated as an end in itself may lead to self-contempt. Here, as in many other places, Dante reflects the condition of those around him; he says that he had raised himself so high to see that he could have fallen into the chasm without a push, had he not grasped a rock. One may go far and raise oneself high in pursuit of adventure and experience, but without something solid to hold onto such heights become chasms. What does Dante see from his promontory? Passing by in the endless circular motion characteristic of every level of Hell are the souls of the false counsellors, each swathed in flame. All he sees are the flames themselves, but he tells us that each one steals a sinner away and none shows the theft. Virgil adds that each spirit swathes itself with that by which it is on fire. Now the previous Canto described a visit to the chasm of thieves plain and simple, who physically steal things away when the owners are not watchlng. This chasm, one step worse, contains those who steal with their words that which words are best suited to steal, namely, as Plato might say, the soul's convictions about what is noble and base, right and wrong, or as Dante perhaps suggests, the soul itself. The false SPRING 1986 �counsellors are not immune to the deceit they practice; they have all ended by deceiving themselves and so they appear as an embodiment of hidden theft. The false illumination provided by their words in their lifetimes derived from a fire that has consumed their own souls. The most convincing and successful liars are the ones who learn to divide their souls so that they may believe their own lies and still profit from others' belief. But such dividing breaks down and burns away the soul of the deceiver as surely as it defrauds his hearers. All of this becomes clearer by the example of Ulysses. But what is he doing here? Surely it is not just his reputation for lying tales? After all, every poet, including Dante, must lie one way or another. Virgil points out the two-tongued flame which holds Ulysses and Diomedes and explains that they suffer together for stealing away the young Achilles from his wife with their representations of the glory of the coming Trojan war, for stealing the statue of Athena from Troy, and for the taking of Troy by the trick of the horse. Dante is enormously eager to speak with them and beseeches Virgil to wait, as though it is clear to him that Virgil has not said enough, or as though he suspects he has more to learn from Ulysses. Virgil tells him this is a praise-worthy request but stipulates that he, Virgil, will do the talking, and proceeds to ask Ulysses to tell ''where he, having lost himself, went to die." Here begins Ulysses's own showing of why he is in this part of Hell. When I departed from Circe, who beyond a year detained me there near Gaeta, before Aeneas thus had named it, Neither fondness for my son, nor reverence for my aged father, nor the love I owed which should have gladdened Penelope, Could conquer in me the ardour that I had to gain experience of the world and of human vice and worth; I put forth on the deep open sea with but one ship and with that small company which had not deserted me. Both the shores I saw as far as Spain, far as Morocco; and saw Sardinia and the other isles which that sea bathes round. I and my companions were old and slow when we came to that narrow pass where Hercules assigned his landmarks, To hinder man from venturing farther; on the right hand I left Seville; on the other had already left Ceuta. "0 brothers," I said "who through a hundred thousand dangers have reached the West, deny not to this so brief vigil of your senses that remains, the experience, behind the sun, of the world without people. Consider your origin: ye were not formed to live like brutes, but to follow virtue and knowledge." With this little speech I made my companions so eager for the voyage, that I could hardly then have held them back, and turning our stern towards morning we made our oars wings for the mad flight, always gaining on the left. Night already saw the other pole, with all its stars; and ours so low, that it rose not from the ocean floor. Five times the light beneath the moon had been quenched, and rekindled as oft, since we had entered on the arduous passage, THE ST. JOHN'S REVIEW When there appeared to us a mountain, dim with distance; and it seemed to me the highest I had ever seen. We joyed and soon our joy was turned to grief: for a tempest rose from the new land and struck the forepart of our ship. Three times it made her whirl round with all the waters; at the fourth to lift the stern aloft and plunge the prow below, as pleased Another, until the sea was closed above us. The flame falls silent and Virgil dismisses it. Have we heard enough? We have heard Ulysses counselling his shipmates and we must decide if his counsel was false. No one will deny that his story is as impressive as any page of Greek Tragedy, but perhaps there is something false precisely about tragedy. First to disturb us is the solitude of Ulysses, all the stranger because he shares his flame with Diomedes. Yet he begins his story with the confession that no bonds of love to his family had finally made any difference to him, and he allows us to suppose that much the greater number of his companions had deserted him. Or had he in fact deserted them, as he did his own family? His goal, after all, is ultimately "the world without people.'' Whether Dante had read Homer or not, he understands the aloneness of the tragic hero, who requires only some minimum of companionship in order that his honor still have meaning. Ulysses bound to Diomedes but somehow looking at no one, thinking of nothing save his own story, is a faithful echo of a scene two thousand years earlier in Homer. As Achilles in Book XVI of the Iliad gives Patroklos permission to borrow his armor to help the Greeks, thus setting the final unfolding of his own tragedy in motion, he warns him not to go too far in killing Trojans, partly because he would thus deny Achilles himself due honor; then he says these terrifying words: "Ah, Father Zeus, Athena, and Apollo! If only not one of all the Trojans might be left, nor even one of the Argives escape death, but we two alone, so that alone we might tear down the crowning battlements of Troy!" This is the "world without people'' indeed. He needs only the mirror of one friend in which to see his own glory reflected, but it is his glory to stand utterly apart, needing no one and nothing else. Surely it will be these words that come back to haunt Achilles when Patroklos dies, for they nearly admit that Patroklos himself is only an instrument for the furtherance of Achilles' own glory. It is not hard to see that Achilles has voiced a wish that everything which is not himself should perish, and that Patroklos survives in the fantasy only insofar as he belongs to Achilles. Does not Dante's Ulysses display the same tendency to sheer self-absorption? His fraudulence runs deep, for he himself believes that he is focussed on what is other, what lies beyond the limits of the known, and indeed he seems to be rewarded with a glimpse of Mount Purgatory, a sight never before seen by man. But he reveals 27 �in his own words that after all it was a "flight," that is, away from something, and that he was lying to propose to his crew that one follows virtue and knowledge by going to the world without people. In this Ulysses who flies from what is other, namely the obligation to love, and transforms his crew into his mirror so that- he may witness himself in the land where there are no others, Dante has united Ulysses the teller of tales with Ulysses the plunderer of cities. The world and all possible experiences are to be plundered and consumed in order to make a tale whose justification is only that it is all about me, Ulysses. This is why he represents such a great temptation to Dante. He has succumbed to what could be called ''Art for Art's sake'' and transformed everything into mere grist for his poetic mill. Nothing will be allowed to be so different that he may not encounter it and give it its place in the story of his life. Like the thieves in the neighboring chasm he is neither one nor two, for on the one hand he believes only in himself, single and solitary, and is constantly proving his freedom from all else by abandoning, sampling and going beyond, plundering and assigning place to everything there is, and on the other hand he requires an audience of some kind to be with him, in whose eyes he can see that he alone is. We now see Virgil's wisdom in asking to hear the last adventure. Any other tale would only have left us with the triumphant Ulysses, having survived incredible dangers, still outward bound. The only moment of real bitterness for Ulysses, even in his last tale, is when he must say the words "And the prow went down as pleased Another." Finally he must submit to make sense of his experience by grudging reference to another, he who thought to go behind the sun itself, as if his own light were sufficient unto all things. Is Ulysses typical of all who are in Hell? I do not want to take the time to give a detailed answer now, but perhaps a brief beginning will serve. Hell is shaped like a cone sloping to its point at the bottom. All the damned are within the cone and adjacent to one another in descending order of the gravity of their sins. As students of Apollonius know, any cone contains infinitely many possible cones with parallel bases and of varying sizes, each an image of the rest. So too the adjacent lower sin often proves to show something about its predecessor; for example, after Dante has requested the story of Paolo's and Francesca 's first kiss and swooned away at its conclusion, as if it had been too much for him, he awakens in the circle of the gluttons, who have all indeed had too much and whose attitude toward the world is more clearly recognizable as that of consumers and 28 leavers of waste than is the attitude of the great lovers, which nevertheless verges on it. So, too, the whole cone verges to that one point at its bottom, and as students of Pascal know, when one takes ever smaller cones and approaches that base circle which is indefinitely close to the point of the vertex, one may perhaps speak of the circle becoming a paint. All levels of Hell share the selfreference of circular motion, but as one approaches the bottom, the circles are smaller and smaller; there is ever less motion or apparent difference from one moment to the next, and at the very bottom there is no motion at all; souls are frozen in ice; the last one of these described is in itself a kind of circle "like a bow bent face to feet." This is the level of the traitors, and it is plain that they represent Ulysses' tendency to abandon and stand apart taken to the nth degree. They are in one sense the very freest of all the souls, for what could be freer than to violate all expectations and turn away from everything in an act of treachery? One declares oneself bound by no common standard, defined by no one else's image of who one is, and finally not even by one's own previous notions. One becomes "Noman." The perfectly treacherous act is thus, in its very spontaneity and freedom, self-consuming, and it is fitting that the three souls being endlessly broken in the mouths of Satan are all suicides. It reveals that there can in fact be nothing perfectly evil, for the perfectly evil would destroy itself. So too, Satan himself, this point at the center of the universe, is shown at last to be strangely unimpressive, and even laughable, as Virgil unceremoniously uses him for a ladder. Dante's last view of Hell is of Satan upside down, his legs splayed like someone who has been hurled headfirst into a snowbank and whom no one has thought fit to extricate just yet. The most important things remain to be said. They are in the form of contrapositives to the scenes from Hell. I will say a few of them: If the perfectly evil destroys itself then the perfectly good maintains itself eternally and effortlessly in being. If Satan is the ultimate example of self-centeredness and isolation from all otherness, then the God who makes himself human and suffers death must be the ultimate example of the affirmation of what is other. The sphere is the shape of Paradise for Dante, and the sphere seems a fitting opposite to the point. I began by speaking of bread; let me end with one more contrapositive: if to affirm what is other requires the mystery that we should be remade, might there not be a bread which, instead of being reduced to a part of us when we eat it, can instead make us a part of it? SPRING 1986 �Chasing the Goat from the Sky Michael Littleton An Approach to Dante's Comedy To approach Dante's Divine Comedy humanly would be to draw near enough to its central fire to feel warmed and brightened by it-to sense with affection something of the heartbeat of its comedy and the scandal of its particularity. This is something one can do by oneself, perhaps; but it would be better, if possible, to do it with friends who can help by looks, gestures, questions, flashes of wit and courtesy-by gentle acts of almost angelic insight or grace. It takes a prodigal intelligence, a surplus of imagination, and more than a touch of pride to grasp the possibilities for comedy in exile, separation, and other such dull privations, to discover something good precisely in the dark woods of a mid-life crisis or in any of the "grey Novembers of the soul." There is something natural about getting lost-something as natural as drift or as falling leaves, as easy to do in a crowd as outside one. Man, the thinking animal, is that creature who can lose his way; who can come to see that he has lost it; and who, with the assistance of another, can begin to find his way back to the right path. It is not entirely clear how the trouble begins. Life can be beautiful, each moment in its time, yet no two moments are alike. When do we first begin to feel the sadness of our autumn? When do we begin our grieving? Ah! as the heart grows older It will come to such sights colder By and by, nor spare a sigh Though worlds of wanwood leafmeal lie; And yet you will weep and know why. Michael Littleton is a tutor at St. John's College, Annapolis. This is the text of a lecture given at St. John's College in Annapolis in 1981. THE ST. JOHN'S REVIEW Even as we reach out to grasp the eternal, we are drawn by stages into the winter of the soul. Instead of an altar of earth we fashion for ourselves a golden calf-trusting in, yet fearing the loss of, animal vitality. While barely taking the risk of separateness, we are plunged with Adam into the secret things-without knowing the bottom, without knowing the architect's design. Place and time seem to conspire against us; and we fall tragically, understandably, in love and in hate with God's world, as victims more of our own desire than of the blindness of fate. What scope is there for comedy, given the weight of these matters, the gravity of these concerns? There is good precedent for the attempt to celebrate human lostness in ways which either complement or transcend the tragic ones. The Odyssey, for example, wins and warms us as much by its truth as by its strangeness. Sometimes, after great hardship in life, what has been lost is found, passing every test that mind and heart can devise to tell against the identity of the new with the old. Isaiah's discovery of the identity of Jerusalem even in the darkness of Babylonian captivity holds true, even where Israel had suffered double for her misuse of David's project and dream. In St. Luke's Gospel there are three parables clustered together celebrating things that are lost and later found: a lost coin, a lost sheep, and a lost son-the socalled prodigal son. If lostness can be celebrated, even in a small way, it can be comic. Dante himself has some delightfully simple things to say about this. In a letter to Can Grande de Ia Scala his friend and patron, Dante explains his choice of title: 29 �.. . Here beginneth the comedy of Dante Alighieri, a Florentine by birth and not by character, to understand which be-it known that comedy is derived from "comas" a village and "ada" which is song, whence comedy is, as it were, rustic song. So comedy is a certain kind of poetic narration different from all others. It differs then from tragedy in its content in that tragedy begins admirably and tranquilly whereas its end or exit is foul and terrible and it derives its name from "tragus" which is a goat and "oda" as though to say goatsong, that is, rank like a goat, as it appears from Seneca and his tragedies: whereas comedy introduces some harsh complications but brings its matter to a prosperous end. He goes on to say that tragedy and comedy differ in their mode of speech. Tragedy is exalted and sublime, whereas comedy is lax and humble: If we have respect to the content of this work we can see that the title of it is justified since its beginning is horrible and rank for it is Hell and in the end it is prosperous, desirable and gracious for it is Paradise. Whereas if we have respect to the method of speech the method is lax and humble for it is the vernacular speech in which very women communicate. These comments, helpful as they might ultimately be in understanding Dante's comedy, appear to raise many more questions than they answer. It may be comforting to be promised a happy ending, a goat-free village, so to speak, which will not overly tax our intellects or sublimate our spirits. But the ordinary reader, whether comically inclined or not, is likely to encounter severe difficulties in understanding and sympathizing with Dante's supposed comic intent. There has never been a comedy like this one for making demands on its readers. Definitions will not help much, but it may be worthwhile to make note of goats, villages, and women speaking in the vernacular. You all know the literal story upon which the Comedy is built. The poet Dante, together with Virgil, his beloved guide and author, makes the descent into Hell, down to the very frozen depths where all vitality and life congeal. They manage to go up by going down, emerging on the other side at the foot of Mt. Purgatorio. There to greet them is Cato, the just. Together Dante and Virgil ascend the mountain and pass through the purgatorial fire. At the top of the mountain Dante is reunited with the heavenly lady who was his childhood love, a woman he loved and deeply admired, and whose death had shaken him deeply. Meeting her there, Dante feels again the power of the ancient flame. Then the lady, Beatrice, becomes his guide to Paradise and to the vision of God and of His city. She is aided, near the end of the journey, by St. Bernard. It is impossible to either dismiss or be completely content with the literal level of Dante's poem. It has its liter- 30 a! power as a vision claiming to represent things as they are in the afterlife as it was understood in the year 1300: Hell, Purgatory, and Paradise. It has meaning on many levels beyond the literal, however, just as does the Bible, which was Dante's model. One striking fact about Dante's Comedy, which shows his courage as a man, and is one of the essential differences between his approach to his work and that of Virgil and Homer, is that he puts himself in his own poem. It takes some courage to do that, especially given the way he actually appears in his poem. He does not seem to have much concern for his reputation. Why does Dante so openly write about himself? It may be appropriate to consider his comedy as essentially involved with individuation; and to view individuation as the coming to birth of the genuinely comic impulse in the soul. Dante might be said to celebrate a mid-life crisis and its resolution. That resolution can best be described as a completed journey to the heart of the poem. Dante's hero is neither a founder of a city nor an apostle, but a poet who knows what he wants to do and what he wants to be. He must submit himself to the strangeness of the poem's discipline and its pilgrimage, not just as an observer, not just as a poet, but as a human being in search of a real and lasting place in the affections of his fellow citizens, in that Florence which does not deserve to die. His poem is his prayer to and for this city. One of the very first glimpses we have of Dante, the pilgrim, in the poem, after our initial introduction in the dark woods, is in his meeting with Virgil. Dante is protesting. He knows that he is summoned to make a journey, but he is not very eager to go. He says, "But I? Why go? Who permits it? I am not Aeneas, I am not Paul. Neither myself nor others deem me worthy of it." The ancient world, in the person of Virgil, replies with a touch of disdain, "If I have rightly understood thy words, thy soul is smit with coward fear." Dante has no rejoinder. How can the goat-song, the goat of tragedy, be chased from our skies if no one is willing to take the risk of Hell? Canto II of the Inferno addresses this problem. Dante is trying to face the difficulty: The day was departing, and the brown air taking the animals that are on earth from their toils, and I, one alone, was preparing myself to bear the war both of the journey and the pity which memory that errs not shall relate. Dante is all alone, plummeting downwards. In his words, he has come to himself, but it does not seem to have done much good. As we see him here, he is hellbent, retreating from his purpose to climb the holy hill of god. When he meets the shade of Virgil in the wilderness, the biblical place of temptation and of dialogue SPRING 1986 �either with God or with the devil, Dante is all alone with his love. One asks, why should it be Virgil who appears to Dante? The answer seems to be that Dante had no other vital possibility. His love for Virgil is real and powerful. When the shade of Virgil appears to him in the desert, Dante's love and admiration for him enables him to move in a way that unites his natural tendency to gravitate downwards with his will to climb the hill of God. Virgil makes it possible for him to put these two things together. But it is more than his love for Virgil that gets Dante moving. At the end of this conversation, Virgil manages to tell Dante that he has been in touch with a heavenly lady who happens to speak Italian, if that is the way to understand the Italian word "favella. " He says that her eyes were brighter than the stars. You know how important the stars are for Virgil. Her eyes shone brighter than the stars. Her voice was soft and gentle and she spoke in her dialect ... It is an interesting prospect to imagine Beatrice speaking to Virgil in Italian, with tears in her eyes, and the ancient Latin poet hearing the modern dialect and clearly recognizing its Latin roots and what had happened to them with the passing of time. In the first part of the Inferno it is pity (pieta) that predominates, even before we have reached Hell's gate. We see Dante, preparing himself to face the journey, and the pity of it; Virgil, telling Dante how moved he was to hear of his plight from the heavenly lady; and Beatrice herself, explaining to Virgil that there is a noble lady above who, moved to pity Dante at his impasse, in turn has moved Santa Lucia, who has appealed to Beatrice and set her lovely eyes weeping. It is not only Dante whom Virgil pities: there is pity written on his face for the anguish of Hell's people, perhaps including himself. Anyone who has read the Aeneid knows that for Virgil, as well as for his hero, Aeneas, there are tears in the nature of things. Dante, who undoubtedly wept as did Augustine for Dido in her forsakenness, swoons with pity when he discovers the tragic thread which connects the sorrow of Paolo and Francesca with Dido and gives to their lives something of the same essential meaning. Soon, however, Dante must learn to feel and express not just pity, but anger, as the evils born of incontinence begin to show themselves in all their ugliness and meanness. Pity without noble anger is like music without gymnastics. There is something flabby and spineless about a confrontation with the dark side of one's human nature if anger is altogether lacking: not the sullen anger which sulks and feeds on itself; not the violent anger of factions or party strife; but the noble anger that sides with THE ST. JOHN'S REVIEW reason and wholeness and cuts through the murk of things and brings them to a proper decision. Anger is essential, according to Virgil, for entering the city of Dis, the walled city of Hell, where injustice entrenches itself, seizes control of reason, and organizes it- self with violence and wrath. We wait with the two poets outside the gates of the city. Many of its grave citizens are Florentine. We are encountering insolence on an an- gelic scale; and neither Virgil's anger nor Dante's fear seems entirely adequate to the difficulty at hand. The human ability to integrate evil into one's conscious mind and remain intact is severely limited. Only angelic "thumos" -the anger from above-is adequate to force the unlocking of Hell's gate. The city of Dis, with its iron walls, high towers, and grave citizens is in some way Dante's own city. In another way it is not. It seems organized and walled against him. It is violent, proud, and preoccupied with its own fame, like the city of Babel. In it Dante first learns of the dark exile he is to experience in less than fifty months. In it he also hears gentle words of encouragement: My son, thy fortune reserves such honour for thee that both parties will have a hunger of thee, but far from the goat shall be the grass. Dante is coming to his own, but he is not permitted to stay. The violence of Florence, even in men of great dignity and nobility, is all too reminiscent of that monster of Crete, the Minotaur, unnatural offspring of royal woman and beast. Is this monster the same monster we meet in Book VIII of the Republic, which tries to come out in Timocracy, Oligarchy, and Democracy, and eventually manifests itself in the tyrant's greed for power and tragic withdrawal into spiritual isolation? This monster is frozen and despairing, unable even to weep. Once, says Virgil, the world was chaste. Now there are tears in the nature of things. They all flow downwards from the brokenness of the Old Man of Crete, into the river Phlegethon. Virgil remarks in passing that nowhere in Hell will Dante see a more notable sight than this river, the third of the streams of Hell, which has the power to quench the flames of whatever lies above it. We are nearing the midpoint of the Inferno now. We are reaching the point of Virgil's greatest influence on Dante, and the point where Dante must begin selfconsciously to differentiate himself from Virgil and allow his own comedy to begin to breathe and live. For the first time, now, Dante begins to speak of the Commedia. The importance of this is underscored by a new obstacle to the poets' descent. They are impeded at this halfway point by a waterfall. There they can hear the water flowing down to lower Hell. There seems to be no 31 �way to continue the descent unless Dante is willing to make use of the vehicle of his own imagination. He takes off his rope girdle and at Virgil's request throws it into the pit. "Watch out," Virgil tells him. "It is going to be your own thoughts that come back to you like a boomerang." In no time at all a monster appears with a human face and the tail of a reptile or scorpion. Dante must entrust himself to this weightless creature of his own imagining. Dante's comic imagination in the lower parts of Hell is severely limited by its subject matter, the abysmal depths of evil. At one point, however, in Canto XXI, it is irresistably funny. One relaxes in spite of oneself. Dorothy Sayers' vital translation clearly catches the spirit of it. It is exceedingly dark in this realm. Dante is intently gazing at black boiling pitch that reminds him of Venetian shipbuilders at work, when suddenly Virgil cries out, "Guarda, guarda!" "Look out, look out!" Dante turns around, "longing to see the thing he has to shun," and behold, "a grim black fiend comes over the rock ridge at a run." "Wow! What a grisly look he had on him!" The tempo of all this is presto, like the beginning of the finale of Act 1 of Don Giovanni. Our poet, our would-be hero, has to crouch down behind a rock while Virgil deals with the demons there through their leader Malacoda. When the danger seems less, Virgil summons Dante from behind the rock in unforgettable fashion: Thou, cowering there discreet hid mousey-mouse among the splintery, cracked crags of the bridge, come down. All's safe for it. There is nothing Virgilian about the names of the demons in this ditch. They are all good (or bad) Italian; they remind one of Santa's reindeer. Listen to them: Alechino, Calcabrina, Cagmazzo, Barbariccia, Libicocco, Draghignazzo, tusked Circiatto, Graffiacane, Farfarello, and Rubicante il Pazzo. Although this is not exactly high comedy it is surely comic relief. If we surrender ourselves at this point to Dante's art we do not really feel terror. Instead we begin to feel, for the first time, a counter motion to that of the descent. This counter-motion in the soul is confirmed a few cantos later in the explicit comparison of Virgil to the sun. In Hell the real sun has been left behind. Like Socrates in the Phaedo, Dante has taken flight from the directness of its beams, to logos-in this case the logos of tragic poetry. Dante the pilgrim is now consciously making use of that poetry to help him through Hell and bring him closer to his heart's desire. Virgil is compared to the sun in Aquarius as it is melting the hoar frost, which the peasant has mistakenly taken for snow, at a time when snow 32 would be a calamity for his flock. Soon afterwards we find Virgil exhorting Dante not to lose heart. At this point in their descent the poets have to climb. We have been going down in order to get up, but now we must go up a little in order to go down. Virgil appeals to fame as a stimulus, which is just and right. It is part of the integrity of the pagan world; and it helps Dante as well as his readers. However, Dante and his readers have already begun to differentiate themselves from Virgil's perspective. The movement upwards which the appeal to fame suggests carries with it a strong temptation for the judea-Christian conscience. We are made to realize this in the canto that dramatizes Dante's meeting with the shade of Ulysses. He recounts for Dante a speech in which he calls upon men to leave aside all brutishness and to be concerned with fame, intelligence and virtue. This speech, together with his sea voyage beyond the pillars of Hercules, represents the strongest motion of ascent in lower Hell. Dante must oppose that motion within himself; he must, as he says, curb his own genius. The appeal to fame is by no means without its dark side, and Ulysses, the old voyager, represents Dante's greatest temptation: to do it all with art. Let us move now into the world we know and try to see it with new eyes. The Purgatario in its essential meaning is the world we know. Literally it is of course a world we are not yet in a position to know; but it moves us with all the force of a world that we have perhaps left behind. If one relaxes, reading the Purgatorio, one gets the sense of sailing into Honolulu early in the morning, on one of those perfect days when it is not too hot and the air is pure. One smells the perfume in the air. According to Dante, Florence belongs to our "widowed northern clime." He must have wanted Purgatory to be south, really south, under jerusalem, out there somewhere where those fresh, sweet smells and temperatures are, and those stars which have not been seen since Adam and Eve; and yet there they are, shining in the face of Cato. Here is the first problem: what is Cato doing there? Is he there because he represents justice? That is part of the reason. But perhaps more importantly, Cato is there because he is the man who knows that freedom, true freedom, is not a gift from Caesar. At present we see Cato with his face shining before the four cardinal virtues, which, like the stars, have long been hidden. He seems to claim the rocks at the foot of Mt. Purgatory for himself. He represents for us the longing for true freedom and the beginning of the discipline that points to it. Our first sense of this discipline in Purgatory has to do with the use of time. Virgil and Dante are moved to stop, to look and to listen. The appeal to the eyes is very strong, SPRING 1986 �initially, in the Purgatorio. The face of Cato, the sunlight and the stars, make it easy to stand and gaze. But Cato makes some immediate sharp separations when Virgil tries to move him with an appeal to his wife Marcia's beautiful eyes. Cato says, "No, you can't appeal to that here. While I was alive that moved me; but you can't appeal to that. But if you want to appeal to a heavenly lady, now that's another matter. You can do that." Virgil is a little uncomfortable with this. He is not used to it. Then Cato rebukes him and Dante for getting too absorbed in the love poetry of Casella. Virgil does not know at first how to respond to this unfamiliar sense of urgency. He speeds up too much, at first, before finding a more appropriate motion. Then he plucks a tough, flexible reed for Dante, which comes out of the ground freely, unlike the golden bough that Aeneas struggled to remove. Now there is a scene that recalls both Ulysses' sea voyage and the scene before the walls of the city of Dis, where the angel came across the swamp and frogs jumped out of the way. Across the waters, at the foot of the mountain, comes an angel, piloting a boat without oars. Within the boat are more than a hundred spirits, singing together, "In Exitu Israel de Egitto. "They are singing the Tonus Peregrinus, one of the oldest chants still sung in both the church and the synagogue. The Psalm text refers to Israel's exodus from Egypt, from the land of strange speech. The feeling evoked here is that of the urgency of the exodus. There was no time for secondary matters; everything had to be done in haste. This feeling of exodus is one of the most important aspects of the Purgatorio. We hear that song; and we apply it to ourselves both as individuals and as nations. We are engaged in coming out to freedom just as the Israelites were when they came from Egypt to Mt. Sinai, where the whole people together heard the voice of God. Dante and Virgil are now in unexplored territory. They begin to move with the people of the exodus, although at a different rate and with somewhat special circumstances. What is happening to come-dy and tragedy here? Let us make note of the astronomical situation. The goat is at the zenith-on the meridian-as Dante and Virgil hear the song of Exodus. It is morning in Purgatorio, and the goat is Capricorn, where the sun was on the darkest and longest day. Now that day is dawning, the goat, which was visible a few hours earlier, is put to flight. It begins to set. The tragic part of the poem is now behind us. Comedy has been conceived, but it has not yet come out into the open. There is a discipline which precedes its birth: a discipline related to this new feeling for time and its importance. Pride, envy, and wrath are the truly grave sins here on the journey, because they cast a shadow of fatality over THE ST. JOHN'S REVIEW human endeavor. They make even a proper discussion of the freedom of the will difficult, to say nothing of the implementation of the arts of freedom in the lives of men and women and their nations. It should be clear that there can be no significant earthly lightness, no gentle comedy in the soul of man, without some progress through the realm of love's disorders. Let us go at once with Dante and Virgil to the needle's eye, the first landmark inside the gates of Purgatory proper. You remember that one: it is easier for a camel to go through the eye of a needle than for a rich man to enter the kingdom of heaven. What does this mean for Dante and Virgil? The rich young ruler of the Gospels obeyed all the commandments but nevertheless remained troubled. Perhaps there was in him a touch of the ancient city's concern with fame, which does not admit the idea of risking one's reputation by not being well off, He could be said to be miserly about his reputation. This must be resisted. One cannot simultaneously view oneself as rich, as somebody important, and also be truly open to the discipline that looks to God's future gift of freedom for oneself and for the whole people of the Exodus. Here, in contrast to the rich young ruler, we see the courage of Dante's risking himself in the poem, and the prodigality of his comic imagination. He at least is willing to risk his reputation. This may be because he does not take freedom for granted, in the sense of simply believing he has it, without a view to where it came from, as a process, as a coming out. If there is no disciplined attempt to come out into freedom, especially to come out from under pride, envy, sloth and wrath, then there is no real freedom. The Comedy does not even begin to talk about the freedom of the will until after those things have been at least provisionally addressed. And it is not until these things have been addressed that comedy is really born for the souls that are there in Purgatory. Then we hear the name of King Midas. There is a wonderful line that says that it is right that we always, forever, laugh at the example of King Midas. It really is funny. Once pride, envy, wrath and sloth are out of the way, here in the circle of the avaricious, the real laughter begins. There is some really powerful political avarice being purged in this circle. But that problem need not detain us forever, need not keep us from laughing, because it has in principle been dealt with. Midas shows us that. Now comes the meeting with Statius, and the birth of comedy. There are a number of events here to consider quickly: there is an earthquake, there is fear, there are heavenly hosts singing. The Roman poet Statius, a Christian poet, appears on the scene. He does not know that Virgil, who was his inspiration, and whom he has always loved, is present. Five hundred years in Purgatory have not diminished his love for Virgil. Like a coal miner with 33 �a lamp on his back to show others the way, Virgil was the light for Statius. Dante in the meantime is trying to keep quiet; he does not know what to do. He is caught between Virgil and Statius. He knows that there is nothing Statius would like better than to know that Virgil is standing near him. He cannot hide his feelings, and he laughs, not knowing whether it is right or wrong to do so. And it is right. Statius, who has just now freely stepped into the possibility of Paradise, is responsible for that earthquake. What he does next touches the very heart of comedy. Statius, who has just become free to leave his punishment and go to Paradise, stops, and says, "I love that Virgil so much, I would stay, just one more day." He is willing to put off the vision of God for one more day, in order to spend it with Virgil. Who is speaking here? The sinner? No, this is the purged Statius. This is the birth of comedy, for Dante. This is the ability to do what Cato could not do, at the bottom of Purgatory: the ability to bind oneself in the downward direction, to love what is below. Statius is free to do that. What was he purging, then, in this circle? Virgil was concerned. For many years the reputation of Statius' love for him had reached him down there with Homer and the virtuous pagans. On the basis of what he had heard, he had conceived for Statius a greater love than he had for any other living soul. Virgil could not bring himself to think that Statius could be purging avarice. Somehow it seemed all wrong; and, indeed, it was all wrong. He was purging not avarice but prodigality-prodigality which, when made right in the discipline of Purgatory, becomes the very generosity that is the soul of comedy. Statius later goes on to discourse on creation and on what is involved with beginnings. His view is that binding downwards, which we have seen in the gesture of his love for Virgil, is already implicit in the creation of man. Creation is a binding downward from highest heaven to the created soul. Statius stays with Dante and Virgil now as they move up the mountain. Together they go through some very important transformations. A few cantos back, Dante had to be delivered from the allure of the Sirens' voices; he had to be urged onward, away from them. Now they reach the top of the mountain, and the purgatorial fire. Dante passes through the fire with Virgil on the one side and Statius on the other-and Beatrice ahead. He intends for us to hear the Siren's song here. Through the fire we find that everything is transformed. Nothing is really lost. The Sirens are there in a new, good form. They are calling Dante forth, not to his worst imaginings, such as he had to face in Geryon' s flight, but to his best imaginings. When Dante emerges from the fire he sees a magnifi- from the Bible that are deeply moving. What Dante hears is the invitation, in Latin, from the parable of the sheep and the goats: "Venite benedictis patris mei." "Come ye blessed of my Father and inherit the Kingdom." In this parable the sheep and the goats are separated on the basis of their deeds. The marvelous thing in the parable is that the unrighteous say, "When did we not feed you, when did we not clothe you, when did we not take you cent view. It is evening in Purgatory. He hears words Now Dante is ready to enter Paradise. Paradise is ini- 34 in?" The answer: ulnasmuch as you did it not to the least of these my brethren you did it not to me." The righteous, the sheep, are equally surprised by the verdict, and ask, "When did we do it?" "When you did it to the least of these you did it to me." We hear the voice of the new Sirens here, the voice of the Shepherd King, the voice of Scripture. The atmosphere here is intoxicating. Dante does not miss the point of it. He responds to this occasion by celebrating himself as a goat. He settles in for the night. His image is a pastoral one, of wanton gOats on the heights, which are now made tame. The shepherds, the pastors, are of course Virgil and Statius. The Christian and the pagan poet are both pastors to him. Keeping in mind the play on the goat song in Dante's letter to Can Grande, we can see the possibility that Dante is now casting himself in the role of the goat, who must be chased if comedy is to replace tragedy. He seems to be willing to accept this role. A few cantos later Dante meets his beloved lady Beatrice, the inspiration of his life. She in effect shames him for not having lived out the full implications of what she had been to him in his young life in Florence. He has to go through the shame. He has to admit that he gave up too soon on the mystery of her person, chasing things of lesser worth, after her death. She shames him for being, in effect, a goat. Something in him must depart, must be cast off as an exile. The meaning of the invitation, "Come ye blessed," and the separation that is part of it, is very complex here. Dante, the pilgrim, hears the words of the parable as a promise. Standing symbolically for all men of good will, he accepts the invitation and presses forward to the goal. On the other hand he hears the rejection: good will is not enough. It must become deed. In his wanton joy upon the heights of God's holy mountain Dante knows himself as both sheep and goat. He has to admit to having gone astray. He must take back the slander of the woman who was God's gift to him, and own up to having been a goat in relation to her. Her charge against him is this: that believing her to be a merely temporal delight, he turned away from her, to politics, philosophy, and other women. He exiled her, so to speak; and now he must suffer his own symbolic exile. SPRING 1986 �tially the power of Beatrice as fact, as holy and present fact. She dominates everything. It is in her eyes and in her smile. Dante is now free to take his fullest joy in the sight of her. The human face is allowed to shine in its proper glory as a revelation of God. We start with this reality; here is the real Beatrice, who set Dante's spirit trembling within him. And in this reality, there is free movement; we move in and with the free- dom of motion that is inspired by God. Instinct has been restored to its pristine purity, and is now a trustworthy guide. From the outset in Paradise Dante's impulses are right, even when his ideas are all wrong. Intelligence is at play everywhere; wit is dancing warmly, courteously, and lovingly in this festival of light, meaning, and deepest communion. Tragedy is very far behind. There are only hints of it in the degradation and failure and imperfection implied by the shadow of the earth's cone. And even these are lovingly, vividly transcended in Cunizza's speech, in the heaven of Venus, in which she forgives herself for having been conquered by love. "I joyfully grant myself indulgence," she says. There is is joy here that extends to all of God's works; there is a humanizing and freeing of the conscience. When he enters this heaven, Dante is still in quest of his city. There has been a dark prophecy of his exile since his time in the city of Dis; and it is still on his mind. While he is in Paradise we still do not know what is going to come of this prophecy. But here Dante is looking for his own true Florence-a Florence that he could celebrate fully, and love fully. He is looking for his home. Here, in the same circle with Cunizza, Dante meets the harlot Rahab, whom we know from the story of joshua and jericho. jericho is one of the oldest walled cities in the world; and Rahab lives in its wall. In contrast to the wall in the city of Dis, with the Furies on top of it, here we have a mediating link. This woman lives somehow in jericho, but not altogether, because she lives in the wall. She has sheltered the Israelite spies, preserving their lives while the authorities in jericho are seeking to kill them. It is an unforgettable deed. She thereby saves herself and her family and becomes, in the memory of the Biblical people, a true member of the city for all time. According to tradition, she becomes the great-grandmother of King David; and in the New Testament she is part of the genealogy of jesus. This is a tremendous image: of a harlot, an outcast, one abused. Here is a picture of exile but also of faithfulness and courage. This is a mediating link for Dante. He says that here Rahab "finds peace." The walls of the old city are coming down. The new city appears a little later, in Canto XV. This canto is analogous to the moment in the Aeneid when Aeneas visits Anchises, his father, in the underworld. THE ST. JOHN'S REVIEW Dante meets his ancestor Cacciaguida here, and discovers "the limits of {his} Paradise, and {his} grace." Here the eyes of Beatrice blaze with their most brilliant smile. Here, in the Mars of the martyrs, Dante discovers his own proper self-respect and his deepest response to the city of Florence as the promised land of his own destiny and choice. It is here that Dante discovers how noble are his own proximate beginnings, and how beautiful Florence was before it abandoned the gentle purity of its manner of life and embraced luxury and faction, bartering away its birthright and its peace. But we somehow cannot believe that the city of God is here for Dante: a city that unites the older Florence or Cacciaguida with his own Florence. What is missing from this older city? What more could Dante ask, or contribute? The answer comes as an easily overlooked aside. His ancestor addresses him with the formal "you," the old : Roman "voi." Dante is immersed in the conversation, when Beatrice gives him a little smile of warning. Almost as if in response to Dante's desire, the voice of Cacciaguida has begun to sound more sweetly and gently, "Con voce piu dolce e soave. '' But it is not as Dante observes, "in this our modern dialect: Ma non con questa moderna [avella. '' Cacciaguida is not speaking the language of the village, the language that women speak, the language of comedy. The woman Beatrice smiles at this; and Dante begins to know his own contribution to his city. Ten cantos later, in a garden-like setting, Dante sees the solution to his problem of ancient and modern. He has gone through his examination in theology by Sts. Peter, james and john, who have been present to him in light and in speech. Dante has just recovered from a temporary blindness when a fourth light appears to him. Beatrice informs him that it is Adam. Dante burns with desire to speak. Adam dramatizes his presence like an animal moving beneath a covering. Then he proceeds to answer Dante's questions before Dante asks them. He addresses Dante as "my son" !figlio mio). One of Dante's unspoken questions concerns the idiom or language that Adam had used. What was the holy language? Was it Hebrew? Adam answers: The tongue I spoke was all quenched long before the work that never might be completed was undertaken by Nimrod and his foil<. For never yet did product of reason maintain itself forever because of human preference which does change in sequence with the heavens ... The use of mortals is as the leaf upon the branch which goeth and another followeth. It is all right, says father Adam, you may write the poem in Italian! The language of comedy-and of women-is all right. This begins to return Dante to the ground of his own humanity and temporality. 35 �There remains one last word to say about the goat. In Hell goats were mentioned in two places: first in Canto XV where Brunetto Latini prophesies both Dante's exile from Florence and his escape from the conflicting factions, and also the honor in store for him: Thy fortune reserves such honor for thee, that both parties will have a hunger of thee. But far from the goat shall be the grass. In this utterence the goat is a metaphor for the factiontorn city of Florence. The second reference is at the end of Canto XIX where Virgil softly deposits Dante on a ridge high above the simoniacal popes, in a place where even goats would have difficulty. In Purgatory, at the bottom of the mountain, in Canto II, the goat is in the sky. It is the constellation Capricorn, and it is being driven from the sky by the dawning equinoxial sun. At the top of the mountain Dante becomes the sole goat. He must submit to a symbolic death 36 of repentance in order to receive the gift of life, as mediated through the eyes of Beatrice, his intelligent, devout, and lovely lady, radiant in her immortal garb. In Paradise there is only one reference to the goat. It comes in Canto XXVII, immediately following Dante's meeting with Adam. Now it is St. Peter who speaks: And thou my son, who for thy mortal weight (or burden) shalt return again below. Open thy mouth and do not hide what I hide not. As our atmosphere raineth down in flakes the frozen vapours when the horn of the heavenly Goat is touched by the sun, so did I see the ether adorn itself and rain upward the flakes of the triumphant flashes which had made their stay with us. This semblance of snow flurries in heaven, occasioned by the misuse of authority on the earth, and the consequent corruption of faith and innocence in all but the smallest and newest of children, helps our poet Dante to take up his mortal burden and begin to call things, in Italian, by their true names. SPRING 1986 �The Miraculous Moonlight: Flannery O'Connor's The Artificial Nigger Robert S. Bart Mr. Head awoke too early to get up yet on the morning he was to take his grandson Nelson to Atlanta. The room was flooded with moonlight that silvered the boards of the floor and brought out the pattern in the ticking on his pillow, so that its material seemed brocade. Everything in the room was dignilied by the light, even the slop jar on the floor. There was only one dark spot right under the window, where Nelson was asleep on his pallet. But in spite of that, in the moonlight Mr. Head's eyes gained a look of 'ancient wisdom.' He was confident in the 'calm understanding' (pp. 102-103)* he had gained in his 60 years, the 'choice blessing' of age. He contemplated the day before him with ripe satisfaction. The moon was full, but at first only half of it showed in Mr. Head's shaving mirror. It appeared to be awaiting gravely his permission to enter the room the whole way. It was almost as if Mr. Head were not only in command of himself and the day's expedition, but of nature as well. When the whole round moon rolls into sight, Mr. Head goes back to sleep, sure his 'will and strong character' will see that he awakes before his grandson does. As we become aware of Mr. Head's stature as a human being, his role in the journey he is to take with his grandson is compared to that of Vergil with Dante, and Robert Bart is a tutor and former dean of St. John's College, Santa Fe. This is the text of a lecture originally given on Homecoming weekend in Annapolis in September 1986, and then given in Sante Fe in April 1987. Mr. Bart writes, "This lecture was composed the summer of 1986, while the whole world was brooding and suffering over the injustice in South Africa and the murderous hatred it engenders." THE ST. JOHN'S REVIEW of the archangel Raphael with Tobias. As many of you are aware, Vergil is summoned by Beatrice, coming down from heaven and urged by many higher beings. Vergil is to help Dante in his despair as he faces the terrible obstacles that confront him when he tries to escape from the dark wood and reach the blessed light. Vergil is the teacher who knows the way, and who knows that that way must lead through all the circles of hell before he and Dante may ascend to the light toward which Dante has tried to proceed directly. As Dante says, Vergil is his 'author,' the man without whom he would not be who he is, and without whose book the Divine Comedy would never have been written. Tobias is less well known to us. He is the son of the blind Tobit, whose story is told in the Bible. (In Protestant texts the Book of Tobit is found apart in the Apocrypha.) After many years of war, Tobit thinks it is now possible to reclaim a large deposit he has left in a distant country. But, being blind, he must entrust the mission to his young son Tobias. The archangel Raphael, who has pity on the old man and his son, appears opportunely in the guise of a man who knows the way and undertakes to be Tobias' guide. He pretends to be a kinsman. Tobias and he set out together, as in the several Renaissance paintings of the subject, the Archangel walking along, holding Tobias' hand, the youngster's dog trotting beside them. The Archangel has a complex mission in mind and thanks to his direction not only is the deposit recovered, but a wonderful fish is caught whose gall cures Tobit's blindness on their return. As if this were not enough to make it the happiest of expeditions, Raphael has in mind also the prayers of Sarah, a girl who is the victim of the demon Asrael. Already Asrael has killed 37 �seven bridegrooms of hers one after another as they sought to consummate their marriage on their wedding night. Tobias too wins her for his bride, but following the ritual set forth by Raphael drives the demon away forever. There is a modern prayer addressed to the archangel for travellers when journeying into a far country. But perhaps because no one is ever entirely at home in this world, it is a prayer for everyone to meet with those who will bring them happiness in a province of joy, and in such a way as not to remain in ignorance of the interests of their true country. Such are the guides to whom Mr. Head is compared during his early morning reverie. Yet even before he falls asleep again we are made aware that some of his intentions in the 'moral mission' (103) he plans are not quite as exalted as those of Vergil and Raphael. Indeed, he wants his grandson to see the city for what it is, to see that it is not such a 'great place' (104) as he supposes, and so to rest content with him home in the country. It is to be an educational experience, one with a moral tone. As he later says to a stranger on the train: 'The thing to do with a boy,' he said sagely, 'is to show him all it is to show. Don't hold nothing back.' (109) Mr. Head may even be right that there is no good reason to go to the city except to learn to shun it. But as we come to know Nelson's resistance to this idea, we find sympathy for his rebellion. Nelson is ten and around the fact of his coming from Atlanta he is putting up a crucial fight for his independence. His grandfather is determined to compel the lad to conform to his own convictions. Mr. Head is not unlike Vergil, in that he knows in advance what he wants his companion to learn from what he is shown. In his complacency, he supposes, as we have already seen, that he has nothing to learn himself. Now Nelson takes pride above all in the fact that he was born in Atlanta and that on this projected trip he is only returning to his true home. Mr. Head intends that he shall find out once and for all that this home is nothing to be proud of. It is Mr. Head's expectation that then Nelson will be ready to submit to his grandfather's wisdom, having found out at last that he is not as smart as he thinks he is. (104) The struggle between them is of a wider scope than over the question of whether Nelson is really going to Atlanta for the first time. There is a hint of the harsh duel which engages them when the first disturbing word intrudes on Mr. Head's reverie in the moonlight: he knows it will irk Nelson if his grandfather is up ahead of him, and Mr. Head has every intention of doing so. It is clear at once that each is engaged in provoking the other. Was there ever a beginning to this stuggle? Are they committed to this rivalry forever? It is an important sign of 38 how the day will unfold when in fact Nelson is up well before his grandfather. Mr. Head only awakes to the smell of breakfast cooking, in spite of the trust in his own determination to rouse him in time. It is a first defeat. Mr. Head's early satisfaction with himself and the world he dominates is matched in kind by the silent gloating of his grandson. Nelson is already up and dressed. He is sitting waiting for his grandfather to wake up and find him already drinking his cold coffee in the half dark. He doesn't say anything, with his hat pulled low over his eyes. He needn't: he can save his remarks for a time when they will be more telling. He knows he has won the first round of the day. Their life together consists of such attack and counterattack, well-aimed thrust, parry, and brilliant evasion: "It's no hurry," Mr. Head says, "You'll get there soon enough and it's no guarantee you'll like it when you do neither." (105) A moment later he continues: "You may not like it a bit ... It'll be full of niggers." The boy made a face as if he could handle a nigger. "All right," Mr. Head said. "You ain't ever seen a nigger." "You wasn't up very early," Nelson said. Nelson is clearly 'a child who (is) never satisfied until he (has) given an impudent answer.' (104) But if Mr. Head has his way with the boy, at the end of the trip Nelson will count himself fortunate that he has only been to Atlanta once. Meanwhile Nelson continues to insist that this is his second trip, in spite of the fact that when he left Atlanta he was an infant in the arms of his mother. The euphoria of the opening of the story hardly prepared us for the resentments underlying the stinging exchange between them. It is so funny its deeper sense may pass unobserved. (This was Flannery O'Connor's favorite story, one which she used especially when invited to read aloud.) The old man is confident in his ready wit and his sure authority grounded on experience, though he betrays underlying tension in the persistence with which he needles Nelson. One cannot help relishing their exchanges: each has the same quick, dry wit, the same skill in repartee, in finding the other's weak point every time. Perhaps in the contrast between the early morning dreams of Mr. Head and the sparring going on between him and his grandson, it becomes evident that he may be heading for more trouble than he had imagined. Since the rivals are almost equally matched, we doubt whether the child will after all be crushed. Perhaps, instead, he will learn in time to hate his grandfather with a settled hatred because Mr. Head wants to have it his way always. Nelson has an 'ancient' look, not of wisdom but 'as if he knew everything already and would be pleased to forget it.' (105) Has he any capacity for wonder? Did he have SPRING 1986 �it perhaps before he set himself on guard against every nasty surprise his grandfather prepares for him? He has learned to expect the worst, to be put down by Mr. Head at every turn, to have his dignity insulted; but was he perhaps born without generosity, without openness anyway? Can it be decided whether it is Nelson who is the cause of the old man's drive to gain control over the rebel lad? Does the real provocation lie in Nelson, while Mr. Head is only making a necessary response? Or are they simply two of a kind? Surely they are well-matched opponents, astonishingly much the same in their opposition despite the difference in their ages. They look almost exactly alike in feature, so much so that they might even be brothers, we are told. Mr. Head has a youthful expression and the boy, as we have seenf an ancient look. Each from his side closes the huge gap in years between them. Nelson scowls with a fierce expressionless face, as though experience had destroyed any youthful openness in him, if he ever had any, while Mr. Head looks alert and grins. (107) When they sit on the train, Nelson, schooled by his grandfather, puts his hat on his knee, exactly like Mr. Head. They keep converging, and yet the possibility of fierce alienation is there, all the more for their sameness. Their wit is identical, but it is used to sharpen their differences. More deep in their character is their fierce pride expressed in their common fear of being made a fool of: life has taught it to Mr. Head in his long experience and it sears his memory, as when in a large store in Atlanta 'he had got lost ... and had found his way out only after many people had insulted him.' (114) If he avoids such humiliation when he can, he is equal to it when he can't escape it. When the dining car waiter tries to keep him out of the kitchen declaring haughtily that 'passengers are not allowed in the kitchen' Mr. Head stops, turns to him and shouts: 'and there's a good reason for that. .. because the cockroaches would run the passengers out.' (112) Both grandfather and grandson are on guard, wary and armed: both anticipate defeat at the railroad station: what if the train simply fails to stop for them? Each is prepared to ignore the event should it occur, to triumph instead by a feigned indifference. Nelson is surely of the same flesh and blood as Mr. Head, but that seems mostly to contribute to his bitter suspicion and animosity toward his grandfather. They are engaged in the same contest for superiority, but they cannot both win. Sure of his own victory, Mr. Head fails to see what it will do to Nelson. Under his grandfather's pressure, Nelson is sharpening every weapon he has, yet his swift, fierce retaliation may in the end wound him more than his grandfather. Yet not only do they have much in common but they care more than anything else in the world about the other, even if that care is without tenderness, yield- THE ST. JOHN'S REVIEW ing or affection. How far their situation is then from the fantasies of Mr. Head in the early morning! Nelson is no innocent Tobias to be led by the hand through a series of welcome and wondrous adventures. Mr. Head, as his name suggests, will direct the expedition, but they have not gone far in the lessons he wishes to impart before Nelson begins to suspect that he is not going to enjoy the day at all. Mr. Head is too compromised before he begins and too little aware of himself and his grandson to be able to withstand much more than their first experiences. Before they even set out, Nelson with his sharp-eyed vision asks: "If you ain't been there in fifteen years, how you know you'll be able to find your way about? ... How you know it hasn't changed some?" "Have you ever," Mr. Head asked, "seen me lost?" Nelson certainly had not but he was a child who was never satisfied until he had given an impudent answer and he replied, "It's nowhere around here to get lost at." "The day is going to come," Mr. Head prophesied, "when you'll find you ain't as smart as you think you are." (104) As Mr. Head's illusions are stripped away the results could turn out to be comic, but the tension between him and Nelson forebodes catastrophe. It is not necessary to follow the unfolding of their adventures and their struggle in full detail. As might be expected, Nelson is entranced by the city and is absorbed by its store windows. Radiant with pride he proclaims, to Mr. Head's horror: This is where I come from! Mr. Head sees he must take 'drastic action.' He makes Nelson stick his head in an opening into the sewer system and explains: ... how it contained all the drainage and was full of rats and how a man could slide into it and be sucked along down endless pitchblack tunnels .... Nelson was for some seconds shaken. He connected the sewer passages with the entrance to hell .. .. He dfew away from the curb. Then he said, "Yes, but you can stay away from the holes," and his face took on that stubborn look that was so exasperating to his grandfather. "This is where I come from!" he said. (115-116) Soon Nelson discovers that his grandfather has been going in a circle and promptly observes: "I don't believe you know where you are at." (116) Thereupon Mr. Head gets really lost. They discover that their lunch has been left on the train in their haste to get off. Nelson seizes this advantage to say: "You were the one holding the sack .... I would have kepaholt of it." (117) Their misfortunes begin to weigh on them. It is hot. They want to sit down but can't find a safe place to do so in the colored section of the city. They go on walking. Nelson keeps muttering, "First you lost the sack and then you lost the way," while Mr. Head growls, "Anybody 39 �wants to be from this nigger heaven can be from it." (118) A nigger heaven is by inference a white man's hell. In saying this Mr. Head only intends to mock Nelson's enthusiasm for his native city, but he is also betraying his own anxiety and the effects of his own mistakes. Doubts are assailing him more and more about his morning ambitions. But what he does not yet envision is the way that soon Atlanta will become a living hell for him, leading him to suppose that it would be a relief to slip into one of the sewer holes and disappear forever. Already Mr. Head is somewhat shaken. Perhaps he might have acknowledged his predicament, were it not for the boy's acid spite. And yet, all during the day there have been moments when Nelson drew near to his grandfather. Although he has been made to feel an idiot by the way his grandfather treats him on the train, he is proud of Mr. Head's triumph with the big black waiter. He realizes then that ... the old man would be his only support in the strange place they were approaching. He would be entirely alone in the world if he were ever lost from his grandfather. A terrible excitement shook him and he wanted to take hold of Mr. Head's coat and hold on like a child. (112) Again, he is about to leap out of his seat at the suburban stop of the train, when Mr. Head orders him to keep his seat: bitter experience on his first trip had taught Mr. Head not to make Nelson's mistake. The author says that Nelson for the first time in his life understood that his grandfather was indispensable to him. And finally, as they realize they are utterly lost in a Negro section of the city, Nelson takes 'hold of the old man's hand, a sign of dependence that he seldom showed.' (117) It must be noted that this is after Mr. Head has shamed him over his disturbing encounter with the large colored woman: "You act like you don't have any sense" the old man had 'growled.' (118) There is a seesawing back and forth in their relations, as when Mr. Head asserts his authority by the threat ''If you want to direct this trip, I'll go on by myself and leave you right here." (117) Mr. Head is pleased to see the boy turn white; earlier when Mr. Head warned him not to lose his ticket, lest he have to stay in the city, Nelson had said: '"Maybe I will," ... as if this were a reasonable suggestion.' (108) But Nelson keeps on asserting his independent judgment and intelligence: it cannot escape him that his grandfather's direction is not to be trusted. Hot, tired and hungry, Nelson declares he will rest. He sits down and goes to sleep. Watching the boy Mr. Head realizes that when he wakes up he will be cockier than ever; the weary old man yields to an evil inspiration to teach Nelson a lesson that he will never forget. Sometimes that is necessary, he rea- 40 sons, with a boy like Nelson, who will not be put down. Mr. Head hides around a corner in an alley and rouses the boy by banging on a garbage can. Nelson wakes up with a start. Not finding his grandfather, he dashes down the street in terror, 'like a wild maddened pony.' (122) When Mr. Head finally catches up with him he has knocked down an older woman who is screaming for the police. Mr. Head approaches them with the greatest timidity and caution, but as he comes nearer Nelson catches sight of him and springs up from where he was sprawled to clasp him around the hips. But Mr. Head imagines that a policeman is approaching from behind. He tries to detach Nelson's fingers from his flesh and says: "This is not my boy ... I never seen him before." (123) He feels Nelson's fingers fall out of his flesh. The crowd that has gathered gives way in horror at his denying 'his own image and likeness,' (123) obvious from the remarkably close resemblance of the two. Angry as they are, they are unwilling to lay hands on him as if he had revealed himself a monster by denying his own flesh. They break the wall they had made to surround him and he walks off. Nelson trails after him, his 'two small eyes piercing into his back like pitchfork prongs.' (124) As time passes this way Mr. Head's efforts at reconciliation between them fail. Both are thirsty but Nelson is not tempted to relent by the offer of a Coca Cola. "With a dignity he has never shown before' he 'turned and stood with his back to his grandfather.' Mr. Head begins 'to feel the depth of his denial.' (124) A second effort to get Nelson to drink from the spigot he has found, only leads the child to stare straight through him for nearly sixty seconds. Now Atlanta indeed has become a hell for Mr. Head. He fears they may not make their train, something he was worried about even while Nelson slept, when 'the possibility of missing it was too awful for him to think of.' (122) They are really lost. Mr. Head in his remorse fears that the city will unleash all its horrors on them both. Aware of his own deep disgrace he nevertheless suffers for his grandson, thinking that through his fault he was leading Nelson 'to his doom.' (124) But Nelson's implacable fury travels behind him always at the same fierce distance; Nelson savors his revenge as though this situation were all that he had been living for up until now. Lost, shamed and goaded by the hatred and judgment of his grandson, Mr. Head becomes desperate in the now deserted part of the city. Suddenly he is aroused by a man with two bulldogs that bark; he waves both arms like someone shipwrecked on a desert island. He cries out his agony: I'm lost. .. I'm lost and can't find my way and me and this boy have got to catch this train and I can't find the station. Oh Gawd I'm lost! Oh hep me Gawd I'm lost! (126) But the man who comes to his rescue bears no resern- SPRING 1986 �blance to an angel of mercy. He is fat, baldheaded and wears golf knickers, a ridiculous outfit. In the most matter of fact, but pleasant way he tells Mr. Head they are only three blocks from the suburban stop and can just make the train in time. As if 'returning from the dead' (126) Mr. Head says in wonder: We're going to get home! But Nelson, a little closer now, could not care less. 'His eyes were triumphantly cold. There was no light in them, no feeling, no interest ... Home was nothing to him.' (127) Mr. Head's vision in the morning has come to this: he has disgraced himself before everyone, but most of all he has disgraced himself irretrievably in Nelson's eyes. Nelson's 'mind had frozen around his grandfather's treachery as if he were trying to preserve it intact to present at the final judgment.' (125) Mr. Head knew it would continue just that way for the rest of his life. Or could it be otherwise, even though that might be his just desert? Of course in the ordinary give and take of family life, a way is usually found to get around such seeming deadlocks: children are taught to set aside their indignation and to forgive and forget. No small part of this aspect of their education has been in the hands of their mothers and women in general; but Nelson has not known any women. In any case, such 'forgiveness' is a kind of magnanimity, indulgence or tolerance, a willingness to overlook what has happened, especially if it not recur. It is a great, an almost indispensable condition of peace in the world. But it is often also a sign of a sort of superiority which disdains to make much of what it treats as tri!Ies. To a proud nature like Nelson's, one that craves justice, such a compromise has no appeal. Mr. Head, too, would find such condescension intolerable in the end. It would heap coals of fire on his head. The disgrace remains untouched by tolerance, which is essentially galling to pride. Besides, under Nelson's implacable condemnation Mr. Head discovers that his betrayal becomes a heavier and heavier burden, apart from what Nelson or anyone feels. It has made clear in a flash that he is too much of a coward to risk his skin even for his grandson and that there is no limit he will not surpass in order to escape danger. He has shown in that moment the worst that he is capable of, and it is dreadful. He is fully exposed to the light of the sun, which Flannery O'Connor says 'shed a dull dry light,' so that 'everything looked like exactly what it was.' (120) In that light Mr. Head knows that what he has done is monstrous. That same sun in rising made the sky a dull red, reducing the moon to something gray and transparent, 'hardly stronger than a thumbprint and completely without light.' (106) In this hard daylight the moon is 'useless' and Mr. Head is left naked and base before our eyes and his own. There can be no doubt that his vanity and Nelson's proud revenge have come to be seen for exactly THE ST. JOHN'S REVIEW what they are. All that moonlit dignity of noble and divine figures was mere moonshine and shallow illusion. Mr. Head has acted worse than a fool or an idiot, the thing he feared most: he has shown himself to be a sinner, one of the worst, and he knows it. His treachery resembles that of the apostle Peter. In all of the four gospels the story of Peter's denial is told, and in almost the same way. Jesus knows that he is about to be taken to be crucified. I quote from Luke. 22:31 And the Lord said, Simon, Simon, behold, Satan hath desired to have you, that he may sift you as wheat: 32 But I have prayed for thee, that thy faith fail not: and when thou art converted, strengthen thy brethren. 33 And he said unto him, Lord I am ready to go with thee, both into prison, and to death. 34 And he said, I tell thee Peter, the cock shall not crow this day before that thou shalt thrice deny that thou knowest me. An a little later Jesus is taken: 54 Then they took him and led him and brought him into the high priest's house. And Peter followed afar off. 55 And when they had kindled a fire in the midst of the hall, and were set down together, Peter sat down among them. 56 But a certain maid beheld him as he sat by the fire, and earnestly looked upon him and said, This man was also with hlm. 57 And he denied him, saying, Woman I know him not. 58 And after a little while another saw him, and said, Thou art also of them. And Peter said, Man, I am not. 59 And about the space of one hour after another confidently affirmed saying, Of a truth, this fellow also was with him: for he is a Galilean. 60 And Peter said, Man I know not what thou sayest. And immediately, while he yet spake, the cock crew. 61 And the Lord turned, and looked upon Peter. And Peter remembered the word of the Lord, how he had said unto him, Before the cock crow, thou shalt deny me thrice. 62 And Peter went out, and wept bitterly. It is almost impossible to imagine to oneself the remorse that Peter felt as he wept so bitterly. No doubt Flannery O'Connor is remembering it when she describes Mr. Head's despair. She is, I sense, also reflecting her reading of Dante's Hell when she says: He felt he knew now what time would be like without seasons and what heat would be like without light and what man would be like without salvation. (127) Yet unlike Judas, who also betrayed Jesus, Peter did not go and hang himself. Perhaps he remembered the words of David, the Psalmist: 2 Bless the Lord, 0 my soul, and forget not his benefits: 3 Who forgiveth all thine iniquities: who healeth all thy diseases; 4 Who redeemeth thy life from destruction: who crowneth thee with loving kindness and tender mercies; 5 Who satisfieth thy mouth with good things; so that thy youth is renewed like the eagle's. (Psalm 103) 41 �And a little later in the same Psalm: 8 The Lord is merciful and gracious, slow to anger, and plenteous in mercy. 9 He will not always chide: neither will he keep his anger forever. 10 He hath not dealt with us after our sins: nor rewarded us according to our iniquities. 11 For as the heaven is high above the earth, so great is his mercy toward those that fear him. This is a Psalm of David, who, because he had taken Bathsheba, treacherously caused her husband to die. Perhaps when he had drunk the cup of his grief to the dregs Peter took comfort because Jesus had also said to him: When thou art converted strengthen thy brethren. Peter lived to fulfill Jesus' prophecy, when the Lord said: Thou are Peter (which is to say, a rock) and upon this rock I will build my church; and the gates of hell shall not prevail against it. (Matt. 16:15-18) Few accounts in the gospels have given more comfort than this story of Peter, who denied his Lord and master and was yet chosen to be the foundation and head of His church. The comfort comes, not from the glory at the end, but from the hope that it is possible somehow to get beyond evil done, which seems by its very nature an unalterable fact, utterly irrevocable. It will always be remembered by the doer at least, even if the world is too big or too busy to keep it in mind. It is Jesus' claim to be able to forgive sin, to make it as nought, that expresses his greatest power and the greatest good he confers on men and women. Such forgiveness is not mere generosity, fine as that might be, nor a lofty readiness to overlook another's baseness. It is an unsparing frankness in facing evil, just as when Jesus turned to look upon Peter when he had denied him thrice; and it is also a blotting of it out altogether. Only so, it seems to me, might the Psalmist offer in the end of what I read the renewal of one's youth, of one's innocence, like the eagle's. But what about Nelson? Suppose, as the crowd of women do when they shrink back in horror from Mr. Head, that Nelson's cold hatred and persecution of his grandfather is justified: is it any the less deadly for him? Does it not freeze him and cut him off from all openness and warmth toward the world? Was that always going to be his way? Is it conceivable that he may forgive, as men are commanded to forgive? On one level it does not seem so. Why should he? How can he, in the face of what his grandfather has done to him? * * * Now, with your patience, I must review some of the most important aspects of the story which you must have been puzzled long since at my omitting. This part of the lecture I think of under the heading The Color Black. Its motto might be: the moon only shines at night. 42 In the story blackness has a puzzling ambiguity. In accordance with immemorial tradition, black is the color of what is threatening and evil. For instance, the sewer which Nelson, and later his grandfather, come to associate with hell, is described as 'a pitchblack tunnel,' (115) filled with foul drainage and rats. Yet when Nelson imagines himself looking down and down into the eyes of the large colored woman who calls him sugarpie, he feels as if he were 'reeling down through a pitchblack tunnel.' (119) The ecstasy and terror are expressed with the same image and color. Let me pursue blackness as evil, first. As Nelson and Mr. Head get into a section of Atlanta where only black people live, they are afraid. The menace they feel culminates in the sentence: 'Black eyes in black faces were watching them from every direction.' (117) Nelson is afraid of the colored men; he doesn't want to be laughed at by colored children. Again, as the sun is going down on them Mr. Head is afraid that if dark overtook them in the city, 'they would be beaten and robbed.' (124) And finally when he loses all hope after Nelson rejects a drink at the spigot and stares right through him, Mr. Head envisages his future 'in a black strange place.' (125) As the story unfolds it seems fitting that the rebel Nelson's pallet was the only dark place in the room that the moonlight has not transformed by its magic. True, the slop jar, out of the shadow and 'made snow-white in the moonlight, appeared to stand guard over him like a small personal angel.' (103) But can that snowy angel save him from his own dark resentment, and his triumph in it? The two major encounters-we have with black people give us a different and much more complex sense of blackness. Both of the colored people are different from Mr. Head and his grandson: they seem sure of themselves and almost at ease, where we see the other two as tense, on edge, suspicious, cautious, fierce and afraid. Even Mr. Head's calm dignity and serene expression have their fragility. He first loses them for the reader when the tremendous coffee-colored man comes down the aisle of the train. Until then Mr. Head seems sure of himself, even in the provoking exchanges with Nelson: he imagines that he knows how the excursion to Atlanta will work out. But when the majestic man with the yellow satin tie and ruby pin comes along, making deliberate and slowmoving progress with his black cane and his train of two young women, 'a light fierce and cautious both' comes into Mr. Head's eyes. (109) 'He caught Nelson by the arm' and as the procession goes by, his grip tightens insistently. The huge man gazes over the heads of all the passengers, nor does Mr. Head look him in the face. There is something opulent and exotic about the procession as it passes, rich and generous, filled out by the young women with their throaty voices and the man's SPRING 1986 �sapphire ring; but they put Mr. Head on edge, and when he and Nelson see them again, separated by a saffron curtain from the rest of the passengers, Mr. Head explains with triumphant disgust: 'They rope them off.' (110) He talks as if they were pigs. Then, too, our eye is directed to the man's heavy, sad face. The truth is, I think, that Mr. Head is afraid. The source of his ferocity toward the blacks is his fear, his fear of what is other than himself. The sign of his attitude toward what is black is expressed clearly when he says, "There hasn't been a nigger in this county since we run that one out twelve years ago." (105) Nelson has grown up in a pure environment: he has never seen a "nigger." It is impossible for Mr. Head to imagine himself living with what is black. He is a fanatic, a purist. He is a man who recognizes himself as 'upright and brave,' (115) whom all his friends admire. He has been too good to need forgiveness, to deserve mercy. His approach to what he sees as evil is to drive it out brutally, whether in himself, in Nelson or in their surroundings. He does not understand what it means that the moon can only shine in the black night. When he cannot escape the blackness in himself, he can only despair. Yet, when he learns that he can no longer rope it off or run it out, maybe there will be some hope that like Peter the apostle he can exchange his confidence in himself, which rests on a vain delusion, for a knowledge that Dante's Vergil possessed: the knowledge that it is only by passing through the valley of the shadow of death that he can reach his true country and a province of joy. Up until now he has, like Nelson, thought you could simply keep away from the holes that lead down into the lower depths. But man is not born to live Iilywhite. He is born to sin and to the need for atonement and redemption. This knowledge comes to Mr. Head only after he admits his own blackness; it is mediated by the shattered image of a wretched Negro. But Mr. Head is far from that understanding when he catechizes Nelson about the tremendous coffee-colored man. Nelson, who has never seen a Negro, answers his questions with the innocence of pure reason. ::what w,~s that?" (Mr. Head inquires) ... A man . ... "What kind of a man?" ... "A fat man." .. . "You don't know what kind?" .. . "An old man." . .. "That was a nigger." (110) Deliberately humiliated by his grandfather, tricked by the endless ambiguity of blackness, Nelson feels a fierce, raw fresh hate for the cause of this insult to his intelligence. He supposes he knows now why his grandfather dislikes them. He feels that the Negro had deliberately walked down the aisle to make a fool of him. His first real en- THE ST. JOHN'S REVIEW counter with the alien, the unknown, the truly other has made a fool of him, thanks to his grandfather. But it is not only his grandfather's doing that there is an alienation in the world. As Hegel knew, and Marx after him, man makes his own alienation and must suffer first if it is to be overcome. Nelson's second real involvement with a Negro is the black woman he asks directions of when they are lost. Not knowing what he is about Mr. Head prompts their encounter, because he is too proud and too scared to ask a black person for help. No words of mine should intrude on this great scene: Up ahead he saw a large colored woman leaning in a doorway that opened onto the sidewalk. Her hair stood straight out from her head for about four inches all around and she was resting on bare brown feet that turned pink at the sides. She had on a pink dress that showed her exact shape. As they came abreast of her, she lazily lifted one hand to her head and her fingers disappeared into her hair. Nelson stopped. He felt his breath drawn up by the worn~ an's dark eyes. "How do you get back to town?" he said in a voice that did not sound like his own. After a minute she said, "You in town now," in a rich low tone that made Nelson feel as if a cool spray had been turned on him. "How do you get back to the train?" he said in the same reed-like voice. "You can catch you a car," she said. He understood she was making fun of him but he was too paralyzed even to scowl. He stood drinking in every detail of her. His eyes traveled up from her great knees to her forehead and then made a triangular path from the glistening sweat on her neck down and across he tremendous bosom and over her bare arm back to where her fingers lay hidden in her hair. He suddenly wanted her to reach down and pick hlm up and draw him against her and then he wanted to feel her breath on his eyes while she held him tighter and tighter. He had never had such a feeling before. He felt as if he were reeling down through a pitchblack tunneL ''You can go a block down yonder and catch you a car take you to the railroad station, Sugarpie/' she said. Nelson would have collapsed at her feet if Mr. Head had not pulled him roughly away. "You act like you don't have any sense!"' the old man growled. (118-119) Referring in a letter to this moment in the story Flannery O'Connor commented: I meant for her in an almost physical way to suggest the mystery of existence to him - he not only has never seen a nigger but he didn't know any women and I felt that such a black mountain of maternity would give him the required shock to start those black forms moving up from his unconscious. (78) The woman is utterly alien to him, black, maternal, female, for it is impossible for me not to sense the first stirrings in the boy of the erotic, whose distinction from the maternal remains one of the great puzzles of a man's life. Nelson longs to be embraced by her, tighter and tighter. He senses the 'pitchblack tunnel' (119) as a road 43 �to the fulfillment of his heart's desire, a desire he never knew before but discovers in her. With the wisdom of his inexperience, at the same moment that he wants to be drawn up somehow into her, he wants to collapse at her feet in acknowledgement of the goddess. He has met his other in its full otherness and he is prepared to overcome its alienness in any way that he can. Mr. Head intervenes roughly and shames him over and over: "And standing there grinning like a chim-pan-zee while a nigger woman gives you directions. Great Gawd." (120) But the black goddess has done her work: as Nelson dozes on the pavement he is conscious of "vague noises and black forms moving up from some dark part of him into the light. His face worked in his sleep .... '' (121) As he fell asleep his shoulders twitched as though some involuntary power were working within him. Later this notion becomes more explicit, when he is following his grandfather to torment him, like an implacable fury from hell, his eyes like pitchfork prongs: ... his mind had frozen around his grandfather's treachery as if he were trying to preserve it intact to present at the final judgment. He walked without looking to one side or the other, but every now and then his mouth would twitch and this was when he felt, from some remote place inside himself, a black mysterious form reach up as if it would melt his frozen vision in one hot grasp. (125) In some ways Nelson seems an emissary from hell, an Ate to take vengeance on those who betray their family. But more truly, what he found in his longing for the great black woman was to plunge into the fullness of life, black and white. No wonder it makes him drunk with its allembracing power so he goes reeling down the pitchblack tunnel that is as yet only a prison for Mr. Head, made of his blind and narrow despair. But even for him, as the deadening sun fades, out of the gathering dusk his attention is caught by something like a cry. It draws him out of his utter indifference to everything he might ever care for. He didn't care if he never made the train and if it had not been for what suddenly caught his attention, like a cry out of the gathering dusk, he might have forgotten there was a station to go to. He had not walked five hundred yards down the road when he saw, within reach of him, the plaster figure of a Negro sitting bent over on a low yellow brick fence that curved around a wide lawn. The Negro was about Nelson's size and he was pitched forward at an unsteady angle because the putty that held him to the wall had cracked. One of his eyes was entirely white and he held a piece of brown watermelon. Mr. Head stood looking at him silently until Nelson stopped at a little distance. Then as the two of them stood there, Mr. Head breathed, "An artificial nigger!" It was not possible to tell if the artificial Negro were meant to be young or old; he looked too miserable to be either. He 44 was meant to look happy because his mouth was stretched up at the corners but the chipped eye and the angle he was cocked at gave him a wild look of misery instead. "An artificial nigger!" Nelson repeated in Mr. Head's exact tone. The two of them stood there with their necks forward at almost the same angle and their shoulders curved in almost exactly the same way and their hands trembling identically in their pockets. Mr. Head looked like an ancient child and Nelson like a miniature old man. They stood gazing at the artificial Negro as if they were faced with some great mystery, some monument to another's victory that brought them together in their common defeat. They could both feel it dissolving their differences like an action of mercy. Mr. Head had never known before what mercy felt like because he had been too good to deserve any, but he felt he knew now. He looked at Nelson and understood that he must say something to the child to show that he was still wise and in the look the boy returned he saw a hungry need for that assurance. Nelson's eyes seemed to implore him to explain once and for all the mystery of existence. Mr. Head opened his lips to make a lofty statement and heard himself say, "They ain't got enough real ones here. They got to have an artificial one.'' After a second, the boy nodded with a strange shivering about his mouth, and said, "Let's go horne before we get our- selves lost again." (127-128) Puzzled as we are by this account, we see at once the effect of this artificial nigger: the deadly gap between grandfather and grandson is closed: they speak identical words in an identical tone. Once more they look and act exactly alike, each as much a human as the other, each in a desperate need of help, of mercy. What can we make of this plaster figure himself, this obscene monument to the despotic power of masters? When the master tires of the exercise of brute force over the bondsman, he wants a more flattering image of his power. His lordship, grounded though it is in violence, is to be sugared over by the happy smiles of his grateful slaves. Hence are born those revolting statues of jolly, eager, liveried little black men, that infest the American landscape, grinning and eating their watermelon. This one is woefully defaced, but he was meant to look happy. In saying this Flannery O'Connor has, as so often, a double meaning: the master wants his bondsman to look as though he loved his bondage; but more fundamentally, she means that every man and woman and child is created by God to enjoy blessedness. This one instead in his disfigured state has a wild look of misery. How has that misery served to bring Nelson back to his proper place beside his grandfather and liberated his grandfather from the intolerable burden of his knowledge of his own blackness? Behind that broken figure leaning forward, with the wild look of misery, am I wrong to see the figure proclaimed by Isaiah, the suffering servant of the Lord, SPRING 1986 �in and from whom there is a promise of healing and peace for all men? All through the centuries of their oppression the Jewish people have placed their trust in these words; they have trusted that their suffering had a meaning beyond itself and a hidden purpose. It not only marks them as God's chosen and beloved, but by its means the iniquity of all men is to be atoned for. In that belief, some devout Jews died in the horrors of Hitler's concentration camps. Let us listen for a moment to Isaiah: "Behold my servant: ... he shall be exalted and extolled and be very high." (52:13) Yet right away the prophet goes on to say: 53:2 ... he hath no form nor comeliness and when we shaH see him there is no beauty that we should desire him. 3 He is despised and rejected of men and acquainted with grief: and we hid as it were our faces from him; he was despised and we esteemed him not. 4 Surely he hath borne our griefs and carried our sorrows; yet we did esteem him stricken, smitten of God, and afflicted. 5 But he was wounded for our transgressions, he was bruised for our iniquities: the chastisement of our peace was upon him and with his stripes we are healed. 6 All we like sheep have gone astray; we have turned every one to his own way, and the Lord hath laid on him the ini- quity of us all. 7 He was oppressed, and he was afflicted, yet he opened not his mouth: he is brought as a lamb to the slaughter, and as a sheep before her shearers is dumb, so he openeth not his mouth_ And again later Isaiah says: 61:1 The Spirit of the Lord God is upon me; because the Lord hath anointed me to preach good tidings unto the meek; he hath sent me to bind up the broken-hearted, to proclaim liberty unto the captives, and the opening of prison to them that are bound; 2 To proclaim the acceptable year of the Lord and the day of vengeance of our God; to comfort all that mourn; 3 To appoint unto them that mourn in Zion, to give unto them beauty for ashes, the oil of joy for mourning, the garment of praise for the spirit of heaviness: that they might be called the trees of righteousness, the planting of the Lord, that he might be glorified. These passages declare to me, as to a long tradition of readers, that the glory denied to the servant of the Lord at one time, will be seen one day by all, as it is always beheld by God Himself; that what is repellent in the drab light of day will be exalted and extolled in the end. That by a servant's stripes we shall be reconciled and healed. Thinking, I believe, of these words of Isaiah, one whom many believe to have been that servant himself said: Blessed are they that mourn: for they shall be comforted. Blessed are the meek: for they shall inherit the earth. Blessed are they which hunger and thirst after righteousness: for they shall be filled. (Matt. 5:4-6) THE ST. JOHN'S REVIEW And a little later: Blessed are the peacemakers: for they shall be called the children of God. Blessed are they which are persecuted for righteousness sake: for theirs is the kingdom of heaven. (9-10) As the demeaning light of day yields to the gathering dusk this cry of hope is heard. Indeed, one day the Lord may take vengeance against those whose injustice has caused the suffering of the meek, but even more important is the fact that it is by their suffering that the world at large is set free from its bondage to itself. The artificial nigger is a monument 'to another's victory.' (128) First, in an obvious way, he is a monument to the merely worldly victory of the strong over the weak, of the master over the slave. But that is of little significance compared to the victory whereby men and women who have been defeated and enslaved exercise a saving power reserved to them and their suffering alone. The first is a hollow victory, the other the only eternal one and the source of all ultimate rejoicing in the world. Mr. Head and Nelson do not see this just like that. But they feel its power at work in them as they draw together, side by side, each once more the very image of the other, the old and the young united. They see that victim and they wonder at it. Things begin to be restored to their best, to the vision of the early morning which has proved so false during the day and which yet begins to restore itself in the twilight. As is proper, when all things are at their best, the child can look to his elder for understanding. But all Mr. Head can say is: They ain't got enough real ones here. They got to have an artificial one. (128) He senses the superfluousness of adding even one artificial nigger to the terrible burden on the souls of white men and women caused by the presence of millions of real black men and women oppressed by them. Such a statue is, as Flannery O'Connor wrote in a letter 'a terrible symbol of what the South has done to itself.' (140) Or, as she wrote in another letter, 'There is nothing that screams out the tragedy of the South' (101) as such statuary does. It is, as we have seen, the ultimate corrupting effort of the tyrant to flatter himself at the expense of a whole people's misery. Yet if indeed it turns out that it is also a monument to the victory of those who suffer and of their power to redeem and to prompt 'an action of mercy.' (128) as Flannery O'Connor calls it, they are the opposite of superfluous. Though they remind all feeling men of the iniquity of their suffering, they also bring to the fore the power that brings good out of evil, that reduces evil to the ultimate nothingness that it is. Such a power is forgiveness: Nelson's response to his grandfather is to say, in direct opposition to his usually 45 �unforgiving nature: Let's go home before we get ourselves lost again. (128) He speaks as if they had shared equally in the responsibility of their getting lost, and perhaps even in the expedition itself, something Nelson had denied in his rage at his grandfather's betrayal. (120) By a power that seems to come from beyond himself, he becomes reconciled with his grandfather and freely takes on himself as well whatever blame attaches to Mr. Head. Now he is free to turn home, home which a moment before 'was nothing to him.' (127) The mysterious power that Flannery O'Connor ascribes to the monument and that brings Nelson and Mr. Head together, and both of them together with the broken plaster figure of the Negro and with all of the slaves and the abused blacks that he represents, its effectiveness in Nelson, it seems, rests on those black mysterious forms that cause 'a strange shivering about his mouth' (128) when he speaks consolingly to his grandfather. Earlier they were working to 'melt his frozen vision in one hot grasp,' (125) to release him from his subjection to his moral outrage at his grandfather's denial of him. There can be no doubt that what first came to him in the 'black mountain of maternity,' the first woman that he knew and felt as a woman, that worked on him as he slept under the pitiless light of day and later when he became his most malignant, these black forms are what prepared him to receive the action of mercy that sprang from the artificial nigger. In this story the ambiguity of blackness is resolved: black is the color of human redemption through suffering, the means of reconciliation and peace. Black as darkness, the enemy of light, and as a source of fear to Mr. Head and Nelson is no more, and no less, than the ultimately powerless illusion, which melts before the triumphant power of suffering that redeems, in this case the suffering of black men and women. Nonetheless we cannot forget the ruin which has been made of that figure of plaster who was meant to look happy: we must pursue justice with every power we possess. Yet as the sun goes down the real victory is certified by the power of that broken and crucified nigger. This perception is quickly confirmed in the story. The sun, that by its matter-of-fact light reveals everything at its worst, has gone down by the time Nelson and his grandfather get back to their junction. As before, they fear the train will not stop; but it does and as they get off, 'the moon, restored to its full splendor, sprang from a cloud and flooded the clearing with light. As they stepped off, the sage grass was shivering gently in shades of silver, and the clinkers under their feet glittered with a fresh black light.' (128) The moon, gracious ruler of the night, silvers the scene and makes the fresh black glisten in all its glory. By its light everything is seen at its best, as what it truly is, redeemed not only from its mere fac- 46 tuality, but from the surrounding darkness of night. The story might easily have been content to mock Mr. Head's early vision of his role as a guide on a moral mission. Indeed, it shows his inadequacy to it, but it also restores his vision at the end, corrected. What moved him at first was hardly love for his nephew nor for good in itself, yet equally as much it must be said that if he and Nelson have passed through a kind of hell on earth, they end up closer by far than they would have had Mr. Head succeeded in breaking Nelson's rebellious spirit by the force of his will. Instead, broken himself, he is approached by the small, silent and searching judge who miraculously moves him to accept forgiveness. The train which bore them from the junction at the day's beginning emerged from a tunnel, like a demon from the pitchblack tunnels of hell, terrified by the cold light of day. At the day's end it disappears 'like a frightened serpent.' (129) In both of these images it has something of the serpent of Eden, the instrument whereby Nelson and his grandfather are brought to a season in hell. From that perspective their home in the country is their true country, to which Raphael might have led them, and so it seems to Nelson at the very end. But at the same time, his sense of its blessing has only been achieved because he has had an experience in Atlanta, an experience of the black shapes that move within him and that suggest a possibility for understanding and love, an experience of a different sort from his grandfather's. It is he that has been moved by the wonderful, godlike character of the huge black woman, and who, we feel, will never be the same as long as her power stirs within him. How such a change will manifest itself is left for the future, but his nature as a rebel might, in my imagining, carry him far. As for Mr. Head, has his lilywhite conception that separates evil and good in an unqualified way suffered any modification in the presence of the artificial nigger? It is perhaps idle to speculate: the opportunity is before him. In the next to the final paragraph Flannery O'Connor speaks the whole sense of the power of the moon's light, of the redemption through agony and of the transformation of evil into good. Mr. Head begins with the belief that his moral rectitude will be enough to get him through the day, as through life in general. When that fails him in the worst way, what he seeks, and finds, is a less simplistic view, one in which despite evil done and failure, betrayal and judgment, there is hope for forgiveness and renewal, like the young eagle's. In one way it seems to me that the train, as the serpent of Eden, has led Mr. Head and his grandson to betray themselves to the worst that is in them: vain pride and base fear on the one side, and on the other rebellion and deadly hatred. But at the same time their sojourn in this SPRING 1986 �hell has brought Mr. Head to know that he is not one of the great guides of men, but a mere creature like others, one with high aspirations, but who in fact gets utterly lost, endangering the grandson he really loves; that he is a being who has no recourse but to call on God in his abject despair and humiliation. But thus he opens himself to the mercy that 'covered his pride like a flame and consumed it.' (129) Nelson, watching his grandfather, feels in his fatigue the resonance of his inveterate suspicion of him, but even his dark and naturally scowling face lights up at the end in the miraculous light of the moon, letting its grace work on him for one more moment. It reveals what he really is within so that he can say: I'm glad I went once, but I'll never go back again. (129) He sacrifices in these simple words his pride in being different, in being born in Atlanta, his superiority over his grandfather and his resentment of him. In a letter Flannery 0 'Connor said that her disposition was a combination of Nelson's and Hulga's (101); Hulga is at the center of another of her stories. She adds that perhaps she flattered herself. Hulga's shallow but brightly optimistic mother christened her 'Joy,' but at the first opportunity she changed it herself legally to Hulga, the ugliest name she could think of. Of Hulga Flannery THE ST. JOHN'S REVIEW O'Connor wrote (in 'Good Country People'): Her constant outrage [at the world in general and her mother in particular] had obliterated every expression from her face .... [She has] the look of someone who had achieved blindness by an act of will and meant to keep it. (171) Is it not fitting that Flannery O'Connor, who could know in herself the capacity to blind herself deliberately to all the wonder of the world, should write of a light that in bestowing itself unstintingly makes the world a wonder to discover, a joy to behold in its fresh black light? Such a light restores their true dignity not only to Nelson and Mr. Head, but to all the insulted, degraded and abused, while setting them free not only of their chains, but of their hate, their fear and their wounded pride. I wonder if Nelson ever said Tm glad' about anything? True, he only mutters it. *All page references to the stories are to A Good Ma~ is Hard to Find and Other Stories, Harcourt, Brace, JovanoviCh Harvest/HBS edition, 1977. Those to the letters are to The Habit of Being, Vintage Books, 1980. 47 ��The Shattering of the Natural Order E. A. Goerner It is not very new to say that we are in the midst of a world-civilizational crisis or period of revolutionary changes centered in the so-called first and second worlds which constitute the area of predominantly European culture. The very title of this series, "The Broken Mirror; Changing Values in the Modern Age,'' may be thought to hint, as darkly and as fragmentarily as only a broken mirror may, at something of the sort. Moreover, it has become a commonplace, since Alexis de Tocqueville published his Democracy in America, to point out that it is a crisis in which America necessarily plays a pivotal role. Our communal life, weighed down with fewer of the resistant traditions of the old world and characterized by the special dynamisms peculiar to the new world, stands at the leading edge of the development of the worldcivilizational developments that have their origins in European culture. What I wish to reflect upon here is a central feature of that crisis that is coming to a head in our part of the twentieth century that I would like to call "shattering of the natural order." What I have in mind by that phrase is the shattering of nature as a given, fixed, sacred, normative context and structure for human life. Taken in its broadest sense, the shattering of the natural order as a norm of life had already begun in classical antiquity but was interrupted by the barbarian invasions only to begin again in the latter part of the middle ages Edward A. Goerner is a professor of Government at Notre Dame University. He was Bill O'Grady's teacher. Remembering Bill O'Grady Profes- sor Goerner writes, "I have the clear impression that the likes of him are much rarer in our present environment than they were two decades ago, making his memory blaze up like some life-saving bonfire on a frozen shore." THE ST. JOHN'S REVIEW and the early modern period in a somewhat modified form. The fundamental intellectual or spiritual orientations that have shattered the order of nature as the norm of life are not peculiar to our time. But what is special to our time is the translation of those orientations, which were once the property of a relatively restricted philosophical and scientific elite, into revolutionary technological changes that are now transforming the lives and thoughts of the mass of ordinary men and women. Because so much of our twentieth-century replacement of the world of nature by a technological artifact seems so unprecedented, it is easy to misunderstand it for lack of a proper context. I should like to begin with an attempt to provide, in very rough brush strokes, a broad context for my main thesis about the end of the natural order. In the great cosmological empires of the ancient world (Egypt of the pharaohs, the successive empires of Mesopotamia, China, Japan) the amazing order of the natural cosmos was seen and worshipped as divine in such a way that the proper conduct of life consisted in conforming one's individual life and especially the life of society as a whole to the patterns established by that cosmic order. Society as a whole could be understood as a micro-cosmic replication of the great and divine cosmic, that is to say natural, order. The main function of the ruler, whether conceived of as a god in Egypt, as the Son of Heaven in Japan, as holder of the mandate of Heaven in China, or steward of the gods in Mesopotamia, was simply to ensure that the earthly affairs of their societies reproduced the ever repeated order of the cosmic rhythms. These systems of thought and life were astonishingly stable over long periods of time but all succumbed to a set of inner problems and devastating shocks from the outside. The Chinese and Japanese empires only 49 �began to break down the strains produced by western intrusions beginning in the nineteenth century. But the cosmological empires of Mesopotamia and north Africa that were in contact with Europe, especially through Greece, were under severe strain well before the birth of Christ. In Egypt, where the order of nature was incredibly regular and favorable to an agricultural civilization, and even the problem of death seemed to have been successfully dealt with by the techniques of mummification and the practices associated with the construction of necropolises, the second intermediate period, during which the tombs were widely plundered and destroyed, left a deep anxiety in its wake. In Mesopotamia the insertion of human society into the cosmic order was always problematic, as the evidence from the New Year's festival shows, and the religion of the cosmic gods did nothing to deal with the problem of death, as the Gilgamesh epic shows. The attempts at raclical religious reform by the Pharaoh Akhenaton and the departure from the Egyptian fleshpots by the Israelites under Moses and their subsequent rejection of Mesopotamian religious forms are all signs of a crisis in fundamental beliefs about the nature and relations of man, the world, and the divine. Among the ancient Greeks, never fully incorporated into a wholly cosmological structure of thought or society and open to the perplexities flowing from a growing knowledge of the diversity of beliefs about the intracosmic gods, the experience of the progressive weakening of the pagan mode of religious percepticm and practice led to a whole set of attempts within the educated classes to find a new ground of order for life not in visible nature but in the intelligible order of the soul, a process that generally took the name of philosophy. The philosophic revolution among the educated was, with a time lag, accompanied by a religious revolution among the masses who converted to a transcendent God and away from paganism, the religions of the natural forces, necessarily polytheistic and varied according as, in different places and contexts, nature manifested herself differently. On the political level, the conquests of Alexander the Great brought an end to the great cosmological pagan empires of Egypt and Mesopotamia, i.e. an end to astonishingly powerful and long-lived attempts to erect world orders envisaged as microcosmic replications of the natur- al order of the cosmos. The Hellenistic conquests ended a period of almost three thousand years during which the principle of political order was the given order of the cosmos. They did so both by importing Greek philosophy and the Greek sense of history and by shattering the claims of the Great King and of the Pharaoh to be the secure representative of the unchanging cosmic order. 50 In the flux produced by the overthrow of the cosmological empires, there was a long period of struggle in which the ultimate form or frame of reference for the successor empire, that of Rome, was at issue. A reactionary current attempted to re-constitute the empire as a cosmological one, which one can symbolize by the title sol invictus, invincible sun, assumed by some emperors. A philosophical current, which one can symbolize in the Emperor Marcus Aurelius, envisaged an empire governed by a kind of philosopher-king. Finally, there was the current of transcendent religion which, speaking very generally, took two main forms. There were the world-denying forms of gnosticism such as the Manicheism of which St. Augustine was an adept before his conversion to Christianity. Here the visible, bodily, natural world was taken as essentially evil, an enormous snare and delusion. By contrast with, the inhabitant of the classical cosmological empire for whom the experience of the order of the cosmos was an experience of the sacred, of the divine powers that made and governed the world, the manichee viewed the very same natural phenomena as a trap set by the demonic forces designed to keep human beings unaware of the clivine spark hidden in their evil flesh, a divine spark which ought to be liberated to escape the world and be re-united with its radically other-worldly divine source. Politically, that meant that one could have no loyalty to the kingdoms and empires of the world, all of which were evil and especially so insofar as they were organized and functioned in terms of the symbols of the natural cosmic order. The other major form that the current of transcendent religion took was that of orthodox Christianity which did indeed affirm the transcendence of God, thereby responding to the spiritual distress produced by the progressive discovery in the ancient world that the cosmos was not itself divine, but also affirmed the goodness of the world in important ways. The material world is good in its origins accorcling to the logos doctrine of St. John's gospel. Moreover, although the created world is seen as marred by sin, it is redeemable rather than something to be despised and escaped. This fundamental goodness of the created, material world is expressed in the doctrine of the incarnation, affirming that the divine Word itself became flesh in Jesus, and in the doctrine of the resurrection of the body, affirming that bodiliness itself is so good that it is capable of a transformation and elevation suitable to being in a more direct relation to the world-transcendent God. This orthodox Christian account of the status and value of the natural material world of which human beings are an integral part was the one that eventually came to be the accepted truth of the matter in the Roman Empire in SPRING 1986 �its dying days. Politically, it meant that the things of this world, including political rule, had a sacredness insofar as they reflected the creative mind and will of God from whom the world came, including the world of human nature and political order. At the same time, the emperor and the order he maintained could no longer be thought of as sacred in the full sense of being themselves simply divine. It is idle to speculate on the direction that developments might have taken if left to themselves. They were interrupted by the barbarian invasions which, by driving the empire back to the level of hunting-gathering and primitive agriculture, postponed the full working out of the civilizational issues at the heart of the collapse in classical times of the religions of the forces of nature. In any case, as the middle ages ended, the philosophic and scientific revolutions of emerging modernity launched a still more radical attack on the conception of nature as the norm of human action. It is characteristic of modernity that human artifice is clearly seen as a superior alternative to the chaos of nature. In social terms, the famous u state of nature" is described as a chaotic conclition of war, according to Hobbes, or as so unstable as not even to be constantly a state of anything, war included, according to Locke and Rousseau. On the level of the physical world, continental rationalists abandon all hope of discovering an order given in and manifested by the material world, all of whose phenomena are of doubtful interpretation; rather, an intelligible order of the world is to be constructed based on the single indubitable experience of the self. The English empiricists also replace the given, natural chaos by a world of artifice, but theirs is constructed on the basis of experimentally falsifiable hypotheses. Well, at this stage of the argument someone must be saying: if the civilizational crisis we are facing operates on this scale, there doesn't seem to be any reason to think it is coming to its denouement in the next few years in America or even in the next century or so, nor does it seem likely that Americans can form a very clear idea of just where they fit in such a development that extends over millennia. And so, finally, it is even less clear that America can have any reasonably foreseeable and desired impact, one way or another, on processes of such glacial movement. However, what is peculiar to our time and place is this: the deep spiritual-intellectual re-orientations away from nature and towards its replacement by a comprehensive human artifice were once only the intellectual projects of a small, scientific-philosophic elite. But now the technological manifestations of the modern project have begun to revolutionize everyday life in ways that were, until quite recently, scarcely imaginable. Moreover, the pace THE ST. JOHN'S REVIEW of the technological revolution whereby nature is replaced by artifice seems to be accelerating. The everyday perceptions of the world by the great mass of our population are changing rapidly in deep but dramatic ways, in economics, agriculture, medicine, genetics, communications, politics, art. Many of those changes are in conflict with the last social structures, including the family, that were inherited from the natural world in terms of which much of our traditional moral teaching was articulated. Finally, those new perceptions of the world are in conflict with many of the perceptions through which many men and women had come to experience God. In fact, all of those areas are closely interrelated parts of a comprehensive civilizational project at the leading edge of which America now stands, scientifically, technologically, economically. That project is quite simply the conquest of nature by human technology so that nature and natural processes are replaced by an artificial human construct and artificial processes. At the deepest level, now for the first time widely shaping mass public consciousness, the natural order of things has come to be understood as nothing more than one particular and non-privileged arrangement at a particular moment in cosmic evolution. That order changes of its own accord and, more to the point, at the particular stage at which we now live, changes in every order of things tend, more and more, to flow from human technological interventions which occur at an ever faster rate with ever broader consequences. In other words, the transformatory developments that have moved with a glacial slowness over millennia are no longer proceeding at that pace and we shall have to face the massive consequences of changes begun long ago by others but just now coming to a climax. Let me descend from the level of abstractions to an example from the more concrete structures of a particular line of practice, agriculture, whose seemingly changeless patterns over millennia established a rural or peasant culture much of the content of which, suitably baptized, constituted a kind of bed-rock of human experience which much Christian moral teaching took for granted. The speed with which the foundations of that rural or peasant culture have been destroyed in the western world is amazing. When I was a boy, my family and I used to spend the summers living in an unused barn that had been fixed up to live in. Every one of the agricultural processes which I saw and participated in on the adjacent farms and which were customarily seen as manifestations of God's bounty has been replaced by artificial and industrialized processes. No longer does the bull mount the cows. They are artificially inseminated or perhaps participate in the genetic process solely by carrying to term embryos of super-cows fertilized in vitro. No chickens run 51 �in the farmyard nor does any rooster crow to herald the dawn and Peter's shame. They live out their short lives in metal cages without ever putting a foot on the ground or knowing when cock-crow comes since their coops are lit by electric lights to lengthen their eating day so they fatten up more quickly on their standardized and artificial diet with their beaks cut off in such a way that they cannot work off their pent-up aggressions by pecking one another to death. That is all old hat. Everyone knows that the far greater technological revolution in agriculture is just starting. Hitherto inexistent species and varieties of plants and animals will be created from one day to the next in genetic engineering laboratories. The slow evolutionary success of species and the much faster, but still very slow, process of plant and animal breeding will be replaced by annual model changes and, perhaps, by protein, fat, and fiber grown directly in huge industrial versions of today' s test tubes-without all of those low demand, low-profit side products like heads and feet, lungs and bones. Now I don't want to oversimplify things. The patterns and rhythms of agriculture were not wholly natural by any means. In that sense, only the wilderness or the Garden of Eden was natural. That was recognized in certain ancient Mesopotamian myths. Man was said to have been made to do the hard work of caring for growing plants and animals in order to relieve the gods of this tiresome work which they previously had had to do for themselves before human agriculture and herding were introduced. Nevertheless, the character of the agricultural and herding economies was such that men only cooperated with and helped along processes that were already established by nature. The industrial revolution took us much further from nature much faster. But the great upheavals in the patterns of life produced by the industrial revolution will, I think, seem small by comparison with those that we are now entering upon. The typical machines of the industrial revolution were surely artificial enough, but they were still close enough to nature and natural experiences that one could see and feel how they worked, comparing them to their obvious natural analogues. As a little boy I was a great taker-apart of things. I remember taking apart a little gasoline engine used for model airplanes. I could see how it worked. And I could feel the compressive force and the suction of the cylinder as it moved up and down. And the same with the toy steam engine I took apart. I could see and feel the power of the gases that drove those engines when I made little bottle bombs by putting baking soda and vinegar in a corked bottle and watching the cork blow off. And the first thing I took apart was, much to my mother's irritation, a kitchen scale that I broke in the process. But I could see how the gears worked and 52 I could feel the springiness of the steel spring and compare it with the springiness of saplings I had bent and let snap back. My son understands how microchips are made and what they do. But he could never have found that out by looking at or feeling them or taking them apart and comparing them to natural things he knows. I do not mention any of this with a view to celebrating as an alternative the good-old peasant life of some bygone age but simply with a view to pointing out that the same technological processes that we have used to transform the lives of plants and animals in astounding ways are now being introduced into the socio-biological processes of mankind. The modern technological project set out to relieve man's estate, as Bacon put it, by way of the scientifico-technical conquest of nature. What that may turn out to mean has just begun to make itself fully felt in the fact that the conquering army has, as was inevitable, turned around and begun to conquer that very part of nature, ourselves, whence it set out. The chemical regulation of fertility, the relatively easy mechanical interruption of pregnancy, i.e. artificial birth control and abortion, are only hints of what is on the way. Every conceivable relationship having to do with human reproduction is in the process of radical transformation. During the summer of 1984 I followed a court case in France in which a young widow [a Mme. Parpalaix] obtained a court order, after considerable public and judicial debate, granting her possession of the frozen sperm of her dead husband by whom she wished to bear an orphan. That, of course, is just a human version of a process common for some time in animal husbandry. It is only the beginning of a development in which the natural act of copulation is being replaced for purposes of reproduction by one or more processes now the subject of intensive work: not only in vitro fertilization but, eventually, in vitro gestation as a whole, ultimately of human beings whose genetic make-up is itself structurally artificial. Moreover, the modification of the genetic make-up of already living animals and, therefore, of humans too seems to be inescapably on the way. What leverage can traditional moral thinking, rooted in the rightness of natural processes, have on such technological processes? What can the family, the nuclear remnant of once-powerful bio-social structures, mean in a context in which women conceive orphans by dead husbands or, soon, when children are born or, rather, constructed or reconstructed by biological materials whose origins cannot be localized as belonging to any particular historical persons? Will they be the children of whatever person or corporation holds the patent on the genetic process or of the licensee who used the technique to produce them? and what does "children of" mean in that context? Will not the production of new species in- SPRING 1986 �termediate between men and animals become possible and, thus, sooner or later happen? Such technological changes are obviously not isolated but are rather part of the vast technological revolution in which we are engaged so that we are both surrounded by and are ourselves becoming ever more artificial products of man's conquest of nature, of every form and every process that is simply given. Moreover, the desire to acquire that power is so vast that we categorize the parts of the world in accordance with the degree to which they have acquired such powers, the degree to which they are developed, developing or under-developed. The desire for that power is so great that we harness ourselves like slaves or draft animals to its realization. We submit ourselves to all sorts of risks and hardships so as to keep the revolutionary process of ever-expanding technological power going. For quite some time in the modern world major technological changes have produced major forms of social disorganization. Those changes have occurred in quite short periods of time as civilizational changes go. In most of the technologically advanced countries a majority of the population was driven from rural, agricultural life to urban, industrial existence in a matter of a generation or two, sometimes by means of governmental force and ter- ror as under Stalin, sometimes by the forces of the capitalist market backed by the police. Those changes seem to have been only the foretaste of a kind of epidemic nomadism in which industry shifts from place to place in response to technological changes in industrial processes as well as other causes producing an almost universal deracination. In the shift from rural to urban life there was room for a large number of relatively unskilled laborers. The direction of present technological change, on the other hand, seems to provide ever less room for productive life for large numbers of people whose native or developed capacities do not fit them for participation in an economy where unskilled or semi-skilled labor is in decreasing demand. An immediate consequence of such changes is perma- nent structural unemployment for large numbers of people who are unlikely, often for the rest of their lives, to have any prospect of stable, respected, and decently paid work, their capacities being as little in demand as steam driven automobiles. In the longer run, it seems inevitable that proposals will be made and funded for the development of genetic techniques to produce future generations with higher levels of intelligence but with psychological properties of the sort that make for docile subjects of intense technical schooling and productive effort, in short, a race of super-slaves. One can imagine a high level of tension between such concerns for the col- THE ST. JOHN'S REVIEW lective demands of a high-tech economy and the demands of individuals for genetic techniques allowing them to satisfy their individual procreative fantasies, a demand that already manifests itself in the work on techniques to pre-determine the sex of one's offspring, not to speak of demands to alter one's individual genetic makeup to satisfy this or that personal fantasy. In another direction, I think we must expect work on the chemical codes of life, searching for ways to arrest and perhaps even reverse the natural aging process. Aside from the psychological problems that success in that area would bring-think of what it would mean to be Tiresias, even with a young body-the demographic and social consequences of such techniques would be staggering. Hone of the causes of the world's demographic explosion was the control of communicable diseases, imagine what would occur if the process of aging toward death were arrested! Would we have to control population by stopping the production of children? Export the surplus to outer space as modern Europe exported its surplus to America? When the genetic engineers came out with their new models of intelligent beings, would the old models have the obligation to put themselves on the human junk heap and die? That may seem like an alarmist projection, but that is what, analogously, we are already doing in economic terms with unskilled laborers or wrong-skilled laborers whose training or retraining is not "cost-effective" and would, therefore slow down our race to conquer nature. And if the old models don't want just to go off somewhere and die, will the new models arm themselves for a war to produce by force the now artificial evolutionary succession of species or sub-species of intelligent beings? That is what, analogously, we have already done in North America and others are still doing in Latin America where culturally, rather than genetically, obsolete huntergatherers have been and are being largely exterminated to make way for the new models. I hope you will forgive my engaging in such depressing science-fiction. Even if not exactly those problems, then others not too different are likely to be thrust upon us in our lifetimes. Problems and questions of this sort are likely to come upon us in an increasing flood in the next century. America is surely to be at the center of the struggles such problems set off. As things presently stand, I do not see any reason to be especially hopeful that either America or the first and second worlds as a whole will be any more successful in dealing with them than we have been with the questions of that sort that we have already had to face: modern scientific medicine, which tended to produce population explosions until countered by artificial contraception, which has, in turn, been followed by striking demograph- 53 �ic declines in the first and second worlds where it is widely practiced, and medically easy abortion, which has contributed greatly to those same demographic declines in many countries and, at least, makes us uneasy at the possibility that we are accomplices in legalized murder. The great majority of Americans have long abandoned what was once a widespread moral rejection of contraception and they are shifting away on the matter of abortion because, I think, they have posed the question in the individualistic language of rights as the universe of discourse within which the matter is to be discussed. In all such cases what is involved is the use of an artificial mechanical or chemical technique to interrupt the natural chain of events whereby another human life is produced, continues on its trajectory, or is ended. The interruption is produced because one or more persons wish some of those events to take place without the others. The way in which "natural" and "unnatural" was taken as a standard in moral thinking, and still is in much official Catholic moral teaching on such matters, was to think of each discrete natural chain (e.g., copulation, fertilization, maturation of the foetus, and birth) as normative. But at the center of the modern technological conception of reality is the denial that any particular causal chain is normative and that for two reasons: first, any causal chain can, in principle, be altered by human intervention and, second, since our scientific conception of nature excludes any idea of a perfect end state for the whole, our power to alter causal chains can only be directed by individual desire or value judgment. That is to state the matter objectively. To state the matter subjectively: what drives our present civilizational project in its peculiar features is the lust for a liberating power that frees man from every given, natrrral causal chain. It is liberating in that it enables man to stop or redirect every natural sequence and thus to replace what had hitherto seemed to be natural, i.e. necessary and inevitable and, thus, supra-human, patterns of events by an infinity of other patterns that better suit our pleasure. My reason for focussing so much on the bio-genetic side of our technological revolution was to make clear that mankind itself, as a fixed biological species, becomes a target for this drive for liberating power. In this context, man, as individual and as social being and as a being reflexively shaped in part by an environment he himself increasingly produces, has as a defining nature only the paradoxical power to change nature, including his own nature. In this sense, his definition is his power to change his definition. Analytically, one may distinguish two main forms in which that lust for liberating power over nature manifests itself. At the center of the process, power over and freedom from the limits of the natural order is most fully ex- 54 perienced by the scientifico-technical creators of the new cosmic artifice. The full experience of creative selfassertion is evidently limited to a relatively small number of researchers and technological entrepreneurs who participate directly in the production of wholly new processes and species. At the other pole, where mass participation in the process is possible even for those with no scientific or technical comprehension of the processes they command, there are the consumers of the massproduced products of the technological revolution who use "wonder drugs," electronic, mechanical, and biological "miracles" by the dozen, talk to one another via signals bounced off man-made moons, have children by dead husbands, feel the beat of artificial hearts, excrete with the aid of artificial kidneys, after having consumed milk-shakes made without milk and frozen cheese pizzas made without cheese. Obviously, many people fall somewhere in between. However, much of the struggle about modern forms of social organization, I mean about capitalism and socialism, can be understood in terms of the difference in emphasis given to one or the other of those sides of the lust for self-divinization through technological power. All the societies derived from more or less orthodox Marxism focus on the fact that the technological processes whereby man becomes creator of the world out of natural chaos are collective processes and they tend to favor systematically human collective self-deification in the process of creating a world in the productive process. Capitalist socio-economic organization is also, of course, designed to structure collective production processes. Nevertheless, the teleological emphasis is not so much on the collective production of the new world as an end in itself but rather on the creation of an infinity of private worlds constituted by the choices of particular combinations of products and services to realize one's personal paradise, which choices shape the mix of the production process. Evidently, that simple picture needs to be made somewhat more complex given the fact that the makers and sellers of products can enhance their ability to construct each his own private paradise in the measure that he can manipulate the choices of others toward those products from which he profits. At this level of analysis, the individualism of the capitalistic versions of the technological revolution is especially visible, as Marxists do not tire to point out. But, at a deeper level, those social organizations that emphasize the collective production rather than the private consumption side of the process are quite as individualistic although this is not often noted. Given that the drive for technological power is the drive to free man from the order of natural patterns and allow him freely to substitute patterns of his own choosing, the SPRING 1986 �choice of the particular forms that the production process will take is a free choice or, rather, a free positing of one set of forms for the world rather than other: free and, thus, arbitrary. Those who, in socialist economies, control the productive process are those whose dreams of world-creating power are actualized. Something like that is true of the masters of capitalist firms but there is this difference: the capitalists are constrained by the need to flatter and serve the private worlds represented by the choices on the free consumer market. Those constraints are much less stringent on the state capitalists, i.e. the rulers of socialist societies. Moreover, private capitalists can sometimes be checked by the semi-independent power of the state to influence the rate of investment, the rate and distribution of consumption, and even the production or character of specific products. Well then, I seem to have described a dead end. On the one hand, our modern experience of power to modify nature in seemingly limitless ways, including our own biological nature simply excludes the possibility of claiming sacred, divinely sanctioned rightness to the patterns and sequences of nature given before we knew our power. There is no going back to Egypt, no going back to the remnants of a cosmological form of civilization from which the children of the Hebrews fled under Moses. In Moses' time going back could be a serious temptation. Today it can only be a frivolous and romantic selfdelusion, perfectly possible for isolated individuals and groups who choose, as ancient men and women could not choose, to live wholly within the rhythms of the given. Such a course is simply impossible for modern societies as a whole. On the other hand, the far more dangerous temptation is to worship ourselves, more specifically our will to power, as the immanent and radically self-liberated creators of the world. Both Hobbes, the remote forefather of liberal capitalist society, and Marx, the father of socialist state capitalism, clearly understood their projects as forms of collective self-deification. Every aspect of human existence is to be reduced to or harnessed to the unlimited extension of human power. In each case the driving force is the illusion of a kind of Dionysiac frenzy of selftranscendence whereby one hopes to acquire the technological power to satisfy the deepest desire of one's individual or collective heart of hearts. The illusion is that there is yet another level of perfect consumer satiation or of the glorious victory of socialist labor just around the corner and requiring just one more great struggle, either to liberate finally the divinely productive capacities of infinitely inventive avarice by "getting the government off our backs" or to liberate the collective rationality of the productive process by stamping out the last remnants of bourgeois individualism. In THE ST. JOHN'S REVIEW either case, the illusion of a sacred, yes, divine achievement before which all other considerations pale is what justifies driving masses of people, whether with guns and police terrorism or with unemployment and bankruptcy proceedings and hunger to Siberia or the Sun Belt as, at earlier stages, we drove and were driven from the farms and cotton fields to the factories of Moscow and Detroit. That illusion justifies dumping on the human junk-piles of history those human beings whose forms of life are obsolete: kulaks, or unskilled labor, or primitive huntergatherers, as time and situation may have it. The irony of our awesome technological power over nature is that we too are objects in nature. We are in the process of coming to a power to change nature to suit ourselves. But, that same power is a power to change ourselves to suit ourselves. But, what are we ourselves and what will suit ourselves, if we can change ourselves? The question before us in the face of this situation in which we find ourselves is whether there is a middle way between the extremes of a romantic back-to-naturism and a mad rush to the shapeless hubris of unlimited technological self-assertion; we have already had to look at that problem in the external sphere of ecology where we have been frightened by the prospects of our power to create synthetic chemical substances that can poison all of us or by the prospects of nuclear accidents and nuclear war, but the problem is turning inward as our bio-genetic power grows. The question is whether there is a middle way both on the level of theoretical reflection on the experience of life as it is revealed in the light of our power to transform every natural sequence and on the level of the density of the individual and social practice of life. Such a middle way, if we find one, would have had to abandon for good the old and comforting but false belief in an essentially fixed, changeless creation whose divinely established patterns have only to be endlessly repeated in order to attain contact with the divine source of "the eternal return," to use Eliade's term. Such a middle way, if we find one, would also have had to abandon the powerfully intoxicating, demonic illusion of the decisive technological "breakthrough," to use a term current in the West, or of the revolutionary technological "parausia" to use a traditional theological term to refer to Marx's dynamic and technological version of religion as human self-projection. To put it that way is not really fair. The first question is whether such hopes are really illusory hopes? and why? I will not pretend to answer such questions. But I will venture some guesses on the directions that reflection might profitably take by way of a start. I think we need to return to the origins of classical Greek philosophy and the ways in which it attempted to deal with the beginning breakdown of pagan, that is 55 �intra-cosmic natural, religion. I don't mean to propose some simplistic return to ancient Greek philosophy as a sort of new dogma. But, I think we may still be able to learn something from the clialectic, Socratic and ironic via negativa that searched for a new ground of order in a cosmos whence the Olympian gods had fled. The Athenian fundamentalists and other know-nothings who charged Socrates with atheism were surely wrong but they weren't altogether off the track. Ancient philosophy was engaged in a search for a principle of order that transcended visible nature and its sequences, which had been the object of pagan religious awe and worship. Approached in this context, I suspect that Socratic irony still has something to teach us. Ancient philosophy, which included the sorts of stuclies that we now call science, may also have this other interesting feature about the way in which it dealt with the technological consequences of scientific knowledge. It may well have consciously taken a path away from the technological exploitation of the considerable range of scientific cliscovery it had achieved. For example, the ancients knew perfectly well about steam power and actually built experimental devices to transform the thermal power of steam into mechanical power but seem to have scorned and/or feared the consequences for nonphilosophic society of turning such devices to what Bacon called "the relief of man's estate." Secondly, it seems to me that we need to reflect on and work out the ethical and technological implications of such limit perceptions as are represented by Godel's theorem. To what extent is it necessarily the case that every increase in clarification, precision, technical control in one respect is purchased at the price of obscurity, imprecision, loss of control in another just because the character of our scientific noetic processes is, ironically, not that of holistic but rather of inevitably partial knowledge? Such reflection naturally leads to a more 56 general consideration of limitedness; on the ethical level that would translate into a reconsideration of the truth of Greek philosophic irony and of the literature of tragedy, essentially matters of limitedness. This is, it seems to me, especially important for those of us who are Christians and who may too easily tend to overlook the truths of philosophic irony and of the literature of tragedy because of faith in an ultimate divine comedy consisting in an order that transcends the worlds of both nature and artifice and that includes divine forgiveness and love. Positively, it seems to me, we need to ask what a defensible conception of holistic thought might look like given that it can not be identified with any simply static conception of the great chain of being. Given that the universe does not seem to be such a static chain of being, a conception which gave ontological plausibility to certain kinds of natural law ethics for example, the question is whether there is another and better mode of holistic thinking capable of ethically and aesthetically guiding and fanning our technological powers now aimlessly and formlessly growing like some sort of societal cancer. Theologically, that will require a deep re-articulation of the meaning of the passages in Genesis in which Adam and Eve are given precedence and dominion over other creatures, grants that, strangely, are both easily interpreted in terms of our present sense of power and that have often enough been used as justifications of a kind of limitless right to exploitation for the satisfaction of any human desire, however trivial, so that man becomes the bully of the world. Theologically, the question for us now, with all of our exploding technological power, is what can it mean to use that power as would a being made in the image of God? I think that, after Auschwitz, Gulag, and Hiroshima, we may have an inkling of our ability to act in ways that suggest something other than the image of God. SPRING 1986 �Through Phantasia to Philosophy Review with Reminiscences Eva Brann I The Unending Story by Michael Ende is both literally and in several other ways the most wonderful book I've read in ages. I think it will be easily received into the canonhitherto almost exclusively English-of great "children's literature" along with the likes of Wind in the Willows and the Alices. (Die Unendliche Geschichte, Thienemanns Verlag, Stuttgart 1979. In English: The Neverending Story, Doubleday 1983, illustrated; G.K. Hall1984, large print; Penguin 1984, paperback.) But first a puzzlement, expressed in the raised eyebrow quotes above. What exactly makes "children's literature" children's literature? Criteria close at hand are: who it is for or by or about (and assorted other prepositionally expressible relations). Perhaps, first of all, children's books are those written for children. However, one famous such book (I forget which) is dedicated to "children of all ages," which rather ruins the category. What is more, at least one pair of very famous ostensible children's books, the Alice books, is notoriously detested in childhood by the same people who later love them as children's books, myself included. For one thing, I despised the simp of an author who seemed seriously to believe that sweet (albeit perky) innocence was an essential attribute of little girls when I, an expert, knew that they constitute a considerable part Eva Brann is a tutor at St. John's college, Annapolis. The central importance of stories to human life was a constant theme of Bill O'Grady's thinking. Both the form and the content of this article would have made him glad. THE ST. JOHN'S REVIEW of society's criminal element. And for another, I was repelled by what I could sense, though not pinpoint, as a hidden agenda. For the Alice books, being among other things romans clef, require a key, and an unpossessed key is just alienating, in distinction from unplumbable depths, which feel mysteriously homey. Furthermore, whomever they might be written for, children's books are, willy-nilly, largely read by co-opted adults who would surely go crazy reading them to children if they didn't develop their own sneaking attachment to them, as they certainly do. Just try shouting "Dr. Seuss" in the right adult company and back will come a chorus: "I do not like green eggs and ham! I do not like them, Sam-l-am." (Incidentally, I've often wondered in how many children "Dr. Seuss," by one of those homonymic misassociations that enrich infantile imaginative life, fosters friendly feelings toward the Greek "father of gods and men.") Nor are children's tales exclusively written by adults. Besides the endless oral fabrications with which children regale their peers (or at least used to), they also occasionally indite quite fancy and elaborate stories. By and large these productions are a lost corpus, of course, but there are Austen and Bronte juvenalia, C.S. Lewis in Surprised by Joy records in some detail the modes and motifs of his childhood works, and I can even cite one extant, purportedly genuine, child-written classic: Daisy Ashford's nineyear-old summary judgment of the Victorian world, The Young Visitors ("To tell you the truth my Lord," says her socially shaky hero, Mr. Salteena, "I am not anyone of import and I am not a gentleman as they say he ended getting very red and hot.") No more is being about children a sufficient test, since, although, as far as I know, children's books always have a 57 �some children as heroes or assistant heroes, so do some eminently adult books, for instance the pitiful and spooky brother and sister pair which is in unholy cahoots with a corrupt ghost in James' Turn of the Screw, and the juvenile perpetrators of all manner of un-innocent mischief in a good many Saki stories. Nor are there topics and tones which are peculiarly suitable or unsuitable for children. Take supposed children's modes like fantasy, fairy tales and magic, and there will be plenty of authors who can do that for grown-ups (somewhat heavy on the Irish, to be sure). W.B. Yeats, W.H. Hudson, H. Rider Haggard, James Stephens, George MacDonald, C.S. Lewis, Walter de Ia Mare, Charles Williams, J.R.R. Tolkien come helter-skelter to mind. Take, on the other hand, a topic to which it might be thought to be hard to recruit children: political philosophy, and I can name a children's book which I recognize in retrospect as a childhood propaedeutic to the study of Plato's Republic; it is Hugh Lofting's Voyages of Doctor Dolittle in which the island Indians of Popsipetel force the Doctor to become their king, acclaiming Doctor John Dolittle as King Jong Thinkalot. "As for the poor Doctor, I never saw him so upset by anything. It was, in fact, the only time I have known him to get thoroughly fussed," says Stubbins, the Doctor's ten-year-old assistant and companion (compare Republic 347 and 520). In the morning the unwilling, but duty-bound philosopher king dispenses justice and in the afternoon he teaches school. "I have often thought," Stubbins observes, "that Popsipetel under the reign of Jong Thinkalot was perhaps the best-ruled state in the history of the world." If asked nicely I might produce an article on the parallelism between the Popsipetelian and the Platonic paradigms, plus a comparison of Socrates and the Doctor. The one tone which was thought, at least until recently, to be entirely taboo in children's books, because children both shouldn't and couldn't be made to respond to it, was that of erotic passion. Now, Freud aside, the latter is surely false: In high-strung times especially, children are quite capable of sudden accesses of full-blown desire. Such an episode is described in Thomas Mann's Depression story, "Disorder and Early Sorrow," to the uncanny accuracy of which I can bear personal witness. As for the sense that children shouldn't be subjected to explicitly erotic descriptions, some adults think that they shouldn't be either. On the other hand there are plenty of children's books that have a strong undertow of implicit passion, and quintessential passion too, the kind that possesses and tyrannizes and even destroyssuch, for example, as surfaces in the self-surrender of the lovable little clairvoyant boy, Charles Wallace, to the seduction of "It" in Madeleine L'Engle' s A Wrinkle in Time. 58 Nor does security and gentleness, in the manner of Mister Rogers' relaxation exercises, universally obtain in children's books. The Hauff fairy tales, which generations of German children grew up on, were smug and cruel at once with a kind of philistine sadism, and the children's poem which was the gaudium of the nursery, Wilhelm Busch's "Max and Moritz," ended with the two bad boys being ground through the flour mill, their particles promptly forming two loaves shaped in the images of those holy terrors. This literature may have something to answer for, but that's very much an undecided question in child psychology. Still, I do know that a modicum of suffering is the spice of a tale and that when I was little I always specified to my father that my goodnight story should be "very sad," by which, I understand in retrospect, I meant that it should be as excruciating as possible right up to ''and they lived happily ever after.'' (German tales end, incidentally, with "and if they haven't died before then on this day they're living" -not exactly sweetness and light either.) These unholy joys were encouraged in later childhood, in latency as they used to say, by the wildly popular adventure novels of Karl May, fat, satisfying green and gold tomes of Inclian adventure, homoerotic sadism and missionary zeal. (The latter by-passed me, but completely, in my GermanJewish childhood-the white scout's noble Inclian intimate Winnetou-mine too, for a year or so-converts on his death bed, and I never knew it until a recent rereading: Karl May is now available in this country in translation.) And then came comic books, the American outlet for these tastes-two years of alternating greed and surfeit which started in my third week or so in this country behind a vent on the roof of the YMHA of Boro Park, Brooklyn. Consequently the first English word whose meaning I ever consciously sought and savored was ''sinister.'' Comic books are, of course, read by adults as much as by children, with naive absorption as by soldiers stranded in barracks and with nostalgic sophistication as by student connoisseurs in dorms. There are even upper class imported comics, the Tintin series. In fact the earliest comics I know of, proto-comics really, the running caricatures of the aforementioned Wilhelm Busch (Victorian, in English periodization), are really meant for adults. The point this is ambling towards is that being in pictures isn't confined to children's books either-though I've never seen adult picture books as telling and discovery-rife as, say, Mitsumasa Anno's Anno's Journey. Finally, trying to find some ideal characteristic of children's literature, Clifton Fadiman ("The Child as Reader," Great Books Today, 1983) comes up with this: It supplies children with a sense of freedom enjoyed in security. True enough, but so does adult escape litera- SPRING 1986 �lure. And, come to think of it, what novel-reading isn't escape-from the mundane to an enhanced world? The long and the short of it seems to be that no set of criteria infallibly picks out "children's literature." One is thrown back on a purely extrinsic determination-who it's meant for-and that's easily subverted. Let but a welldisposed grown-up read a good children's book andpresto!-it's adult literature, wrong addressee notwithstanding. But that leads to a much deeper and trickier question: Do children read their books differently from the way an adult reads them? It doesn't take much logical acumen to see that the answer is going to be bedeviled by a Cretan Liar type paradox: Those who argue for the otherness of childhood can't claim to have much inside knowledge. That ought to be a stumbling block both to "child's world" romantics and to epistemological geneticists. For suppose that children's cognitive abilities do develop in stages that can neither be anticipated nor reversed, then each new stage effects a radical transformation in consciousness, which the fully developed adult (as exemplified in the experimenting scientist himself) can perhaps conceptually reconstruct but never empathetically recover. (As it happens, it does turn out that certain Piagetan experiments, when replicated under somewhat more empathetic conditions, come up showing children to have more cognitive capability at an earlier time than the geneticist staging predicts. In fact, I keep wondering if a case couldn't be made for Piaget having shown that children are just natural Aristotelians: They apprehend motion as prior to time, they consider movements to be governed by their goals, they conceive place rather than coordinate space, and, in short, their cognitive ontology recapitulates the historical phylogeny of physics-a shift in perspective rather than in capability.) One fall-out from the strict developmental view of children is the notion of "reading readiness." And yet unready reading provides the windfall joys of a child's life. I recall getting into one of my father's medical reference books (streng verboten!), section: tropical diseases, and thrilling to the illicit attractions, depicted in glorious technicolor, of some burgeoning cases of elephantiasis. And that was quite a while before I was ready to decipher the text. (I was slow to learn to read, probably because I spent the first grade, God knows why, at Volksschule No. 4, homeroom teacher Fraeulein Pfefferkorn, a young functionary of the BDM, the Nazi girls' league, and our primer was all about an avuncular Fuehrer and a certain little brown Heinz who got to give him a pretty posy at a parade.) On some Sunday mornings, ready or not, my father would break open a huge volume of the encyclopedia (Der Grosse Brockhaus) and read to me. My preferred course THE ST. JOHN'S REVIEW was to set out from the coolly scientific heading "Vulkan," tracking references to doom-preparing "Vesuv," landing finally in panicky "Pompeii," where a black cloud of sulphur fumes and pumice hail is preparing the great romance of archaeology. Incidentally, when a decade or so later I discovered Bulwer-Lytton's classicalkitsch classic The Last Days of Pompeii, it was sheer reminiscent magic, including a persistent illusion that that slender-columned Campanian villa idyll came to an end on a Sunday morning in a villa in Berlin-Dahlem. (Actually I have no idea what day of the week dawned, a silent blue scorcher-the birds had ceased to sing-on August 4, 79 A.D. The Berlin villa, having been legally stolen by an 55 family, was destroyed in an Allied air raid probably as late as 1944.) Seven years more, and I was a declared classical archaeologist (though Greek rather than Roman, my taste having grown very pure in the meanwhile). Which goes to show how long-lived and far-working are such out-of-turn childhood experiences. And it isn't only grownup wonders that children take to; perfectly mundane texts will also serve. I recall that just after I learned to read I acquired an avidity for the ''Directions for Use" on boxes, bottles and cans. That taste too has stuck: I have a little collection of direction delights, among them the instruction booklet from an abacus (1947), touted as "the pet calculator of japan," "Which Brings Comfort and Convenience on Your Life." The relation of childhood to adult reading has of course got a history. Louis XIII of France was born in 1601. As a little boy the Dauphin was told goodnight stories, for instance of Melusine, the tutelary fair of the house of Lusignan, who turned into a half-serpent on Saturdays. just the same tale was told among adults at evening gatherings (Philippe Aries, Centuries of Childhood). In the course of the seventeenth century, adults turned increasingly to more sophisticated entertainments: Children's stories" are originally abandoned adult tales. Generalizing wildly, I have an inkling that modern views on the distinctiveness of childhood have less to do with "the discovery of the child" than with the construction of new ideas of maturity-and of adult diversion, for instance that it fails to divert unless it reveals the true existential horror at the heart of things. One test for continuity of consciousness is to read to yourself a book that was read to you when you were very little. I have tried it. There is a German nursery book, still in print and going strong in Germany, called Little Peter's Moon Trip. It concerns a cowardly cockchafer (of the melodious species Melolontha melolontha, I've lately learned) whose hereditarily missing sixth leg must be recovered from the brute of a man-in-the-moon who keeps it hanging from a nail driven into a birch branch (broken from the birch in our garden, which I loved equal11 59 �ly for its waving white and green grace and because it offered illicit bark-pulling, the most satisfying dismemberment there is). It has been over half a century, but the very cover wafted me back into that bourgeois nursery midsummer night's dream (actually May, cockchafer time), with its character-crowded cosmos, its heavenly highway for secret excursions. But it also came back to me that at four I had been half-repelled by the book, and now I know explicitly what I then knew implicitly, namely why: only unexceptionably good children were candidates for the moon mission, there was lots of piety in the sky, and all the goodies were blond-which left me out on all counts; besides the pictures were too broadstroked-you couldn't walk into them and discover details, and there was no wit at all. On the other hand, Doctor Dolittle, who came into my life at about six, had from the first and still has my wholehearted allegiance, because I sensed then what I recognize now: that the books are an introduction to human excellence. It was to my moral advantage, I think, that for several years I was Tommy Stubbins and the Doctor was my own father got up in cutaway and top hat: the kindly physician who can't remember to collect his bills but can call on all the animals for help in their own language, the unfussed explorer who simply sails out of Puddleby-on-the-Marsh on a borrowed boat, who in a shipwreck secures first Stubbins but right after his beloved notebooks, the muddling master of the jury-rig who, in the words of the parrot Polynesia, the senior animal in his menagerie, always u gets there," the comfortable homey round gentleman whose rare righteous wrath shakes the earth, the world's most learned naturalist who never stands on his dignity and never loses it-a just and a wise, and in the opinion of his intimates (and in mine), a great man. Antipathies and allegiances that survive so long unchanged surely do betoken a continuity of consciousness. In fact, judging from personal experience, the only stage to which childhood is really alien is adolescence. Quasiadulthood is a time of such hot subjectivity, such excessively large and excessively particular passions that it devalues just those objective delights adults and children have in common. Children's writers (except for a few who don't write but construct their books to satisfy a market, or what is worse, a theory) naturally work on the same-world hypothesis; indeed the highest praise they can hope for is that which Hugh Walpole gives the author of Doctor Dolittle: "Mr. Lofting believes in his story quite as much as he expects us to." If they do preach or pull their punches or wax sentimental it is because they have for a moment lost that inward mirror-vision by which a grown-up sees the child within observing the grown-up 60 without. Meanwhile, just by condescending, they acknowledge at least the commensurability of the worlds of children and adults. The matter is worth dwelling on because it looks like a peculiarly accessible case of a set of problems, or rather of related impossibilities, that preoccupy contemporary philosophers: the impossibility of radical translation, translation utterly from scratch, of our language into another, the impossibility of entering empathetically into an alien or ancient culture, the impossibility of recovering the terms of a theoretical frame of reference after it has undergone a shift-and ultimately, the opacity of individual human beings to each other. The relation of child to adult might seem to epitomize all four "incommensurabilities." But there is the mitigating circumstance that while none of us can, in principle, have been members of a tribe that said "gavagai" while looking where we see a rabbit, or have seen the planets revolve about us as a Ptolemaic geocentrist, or have lived as "archaic" Greeks (situations considered by authors like Quine, Kuhn and Feyerabend), some of us, at least have been children. I for one would, to be sure, wish to claim something more: When I was little I said "Hase" where I now say "rabbit" and I feel somehow confident that then and now I mean the same by both vocables: some such creature as the immortal Hazel of Watership Down. Somewhat later I spent four years studying intensely enough to see dance in my dreams just those pots and pans on which said "archaic" Greeks depicted themselves in looming black shadows and which archeologists call ''Geometric'': and though they never lost their mystery for me (and I certainly couldn't do with the bizarre conceptual analyses so thoughtfully provided by proponents of the radical difference of the archaic mind) the satisfying way in which the glossy brown-black line ornament lay on the pot and the simple telling grandeur of the funeral scenes got to me. I knew that those potpainters knew what they were doing and that, but for the least substantial of obstacles, the twenty-eight hundred or so years between us, I would know it too. Minimally, at the time those Attic silhouettes felt closer than the non-objects of contemporary painting. And finally, living, like the rest of us, in a manifestly ptolemaic world, ignorant of all astronomy, and happening to study Ptolemy's Almagest some time before Copernicus' Revolutions, I couldn't help but see the world ptolemaically, or so I thought. Or, looking at it from the flip side, why dwell on the inaccessibility of former centuries and other cultures when one's own time can be completely uncanny and one's intimates can be as the aliens from outer space? But even suppose that my sense of secular solidarity is mere self-delusion, there is still that one case of crossing into another world which is not hopeless. I was never SPRING 1986 �a Greek (I guess), but I, my personally identical I, was once, extensively and devotedly, a child, and it seems to me that in figuring out how one's childhood frame of mind is recovered one might also learn how other places and other times become accessible. Do we have a faculty for this project? Of course we do: memory for the recovery of our former self and imagination for entering into other worlds. These faculties (parenthetically: faculty psychology is back, see Jerry Fodor, Modularity of Mind) display a certain persistence and a certain evanescence, having to do, I suppose, with the character of their objects, which are not presentations but re-presentations, that is, not solid things that are there, but the see-through shades of their absent selves. Now what I want to say about the road to recovery naturally concerns only full-blown childhood and doesn't reach into pre-linguistic babyhood. (Memory of and in infancy is a particularly fascinating but difficult chapter in cognitive developmental psychology.) Furthermore, since I'm thinking not about the daily coping of childhood but about its imaginative life, especially with respect to books, I'm not talking of adult memories of childhood existence, but rather of that remembrance of things past which is essentially memory of memories. What I mean is that as soon as a new book has been taken in it becomes part of the imaginative memory, there to begin its episodic afterlife, perhaps in the case of a goodnight story even in that very night's dream. (Incidentally, this kind of remembrance is pretty recalcitrant to investigation-glory be!-and for all the enormous amount of work done on memory recently, I haven't found much on it.) In remembering one does, to be sure, sometimes come on oneself reading. (A vivid memory: reading my first self-read book, Robinson Crusoe-recommended to the parents of Europe, as I later delighteclly discovered, as the one and only book fit to be a child's first by Rousseau himself in Emile. While securing my island in imagination, I simultaneously worked away at poking a hole in the plaster wall of the nursery, intended in time to be an escape route from the enforced after-mid-day-dinner rest hour. Hole discovered on brother's information. Scene and plaster job. Tremendous revenge on little beast.) But mostly the images we remember were already memory- images in childhood-and therein lies the recovery: we return through the imagination to the imagination, a hermetically sealed, secure depository. Not really, someone might argue. Over time and growth the kaleidoscope of the mind has shifted out of all recognition and its image bits have entered new and transforming contexts. Well, I want to propose a figure which illustrates at least how it feels to live in both worlds. In 1832, Necker, a student of perception, drew atten- THE ST. JOHN'S REVIEW lion to a phenomenon which is now all over the literature. "Necker's Cube" is simply a perspective outline drawing of a solid. When observed, it flips, willy-nilly so that the front corner is suddenly, without transition, in back. It is impossible to see both positions at once, nearly impossible to fixate one position for long, very hard for those used to perspective drawing to see it as a flat picture. The so-called "perceptual paradox" associated with the figure is just this: that we cannot help seeing reversing cubes when the single stimulus itself is in fact a plane design. The "interpretative paradox" is analogous. There is a common "flat" stimulus, the text itself, taken as mere material for make-believe. Children are, of course, fully aware that they can, with an effort, deflate the book, that there is a safety exit into plane prose. (I remember being at a play about an enchanted forest with Tony, a friend of mine, then four, who at the eeriest part whispered to me apotropaically: "You know, it isn't real.") But the spontaneous position is to read the text perspectivally, as a world with depth. And in that reading different corners come to the fore, unbidden and irrepressible, corresponding to the preoccupations of then and of now. Imagination-memory, I would say, is the capability for perspectival reversals, and so the faith is: unless the road is blocked by trauma, childhood is accessible, as are all other human terrains.* II That faith is reinforced by The Neverending Story, the Baedeker into imagination-land, the imperial realm of Phantasia (no, repeat, no, relation to the Disney extravaganza), which is certainly a children's book by all available criteria, and a hugely popular one. There has, it appears, even been a movie. To begin with, Ende's Neverending Story, subtitled "from A to Z," is beautifully made. (Incidentally, it abounds in puns like that on Ende's name, repeated from his other wonderful book, Morna, and in paradoxes like the one expressed in the subtitle, providing young and old with the joys of catching on.) Each page is headed by a nice garland; each chapter begins with a full page illumination of its proper letter (by Roswitha Quadflieg). Best of all, the book is printed in two colors. For this is *The day after I finished this jeu d'esprit I carne on a multiply serendipitous reference-Clifford Geertz in "Found in Translation: On the Social History of the Moral Imagination," citing Lionel Trilling, who in his last essay (on the ever-piquant theme of reading Jane Austen with American students) calls this ''one of the significant mysteries of man's life in culture: how it is that other people's creations can be so utterly their own and so deeply part of us." 61 �a tale of a passage into Phantasia, first reluctant and reversible and then deep to the point of no return. The print is red for the waking and working world (Mundus mundanus in my private cosmography) for Stop! Danger! Wake up!, I suppose, and it turns spring-green for Phantasia. Green-skinned too, is the slim, severe, noble lad Atreju of the Indian tribe of the Purple Buffalo, Bastian's Phantasian friend and finally his savior. Bastian Balthassar Bux, the "hero of passage," is a fat, serious and lonely little boy, gourmet of apple strudel and spinner of tales, flabby in body and sturdy in soul. For content, this is a big substantial book containing myriads of characters and sub-worlds. For Phantasia is both infinite and highly anisotropic; in each of its places dwells a different kind of being. What is more, Phantasia abounds in stories to be: 11But that's a story for another time" is the neverending refrain, just as the book really starts when it seems to be ending. Here's its skeleton: On a mundane morning, Bastian, running from his tor- mentors, finds himself on the inside of a glass door saying" Antiquariat" in mirror-writing. He feels compelled to steal a book bound in shimmering copper colored silk, entitled, of course, The Neverending Story, and bearing the sign of two snakes biting each other's tails (recognizable by aficionados of the hermetic as the double ouroboros, the symbol of cyclical endlessness). With it he hides in the storage attic of his school where he makes camp and begins to read. The print turns green. He is looking into Phantasia, a threatened land. Its child empress is sick and her sickness is reflected in Phantasia' s progressive piece- meal annihilation. There is only one cure: a human being must enter Phantasia and give the Infanta her new name. As the school-tower clock strikes the afternoon hours it comes to Bastian that he knows the name, that he is chosen to save Phantasia-and not only Phantasia but also the real world, because in proportion as the former is swallowed by non-being, the latter is possessed by lies; their salvation is conjoined. At two o'clock he slips out to pee and eats his lunch apple; at eleven he glimpses a monkish ancient in Phantasia who is writing the copper colored book Bastian is reading. Just before midnight he realizes that both realms will be caught in a treadmill of eternal return unless he acts. At the stroke of twelve he is in Phantasia, in the Night Wood of Perelin, and the print turns green until the end when Bastian tells his father the whole storyexcept for once, when he prominently strews his initials BBB in red sand over the Painted Desert Goab. It is the first clue of his coming corruption. Now, having grown beautiful in body, celebrated as the savior, he conducts a triumphal progress through the realm. He is wearing the amulet Auryn, the golden, the Glow. It bears the ouroboros on the obverse and on the reverse the legend 62 "Do as you will." Bastian misunderstands it as license to ''Do as you wish,'' wherewith his desires become indefinite and destructive-the classical outline of a tyrant. As he goes, he falls deeper and deeper into selfforgetfulness. On the way, there are many wonderful characters and episodes. There is for example Atreju's conveyance and companion, Fuchur, the Dragon of Gladness (Gluecksdrache) who floats and swoops through the air in joyous bows (just like my dragon kite), and has a voice like a bell. (Hermann Hesse has a little essay-1949-on the golden sonority of the vocable Glueck.) The episode closest to my heart comes late in the book at the nadir of Bastian's amnesia: his days with Yore the miner, who has charge of the "pit of pictures" and the "lode of dreams," where are deposited transparencies, tablets thin as a breath: our memories and dreams, for "a dream cannot come to nothing once it is dreamt." Bastian must search these image-archives for a familiar dream as a clue to guide him out of his oblivion. After several days of forlorn sorting, he finds a dream tablet of a man in a lab coat holding up the impression of a denture, which fills him with enormous longing. This is the beginning of his ascent and return to his father (who is in fact a dentist). The Neverending Story is full of delights which an alert child may sense and an adult connoisseur may decipher. It is a real work of literature, meaning that it maintains far-flung connections with its kind, being full of allusions, borrowings, references: like Carroll's Alice, Bastian goes through the looking glass, like MacDonald's Phantasies, he finds the road to fairy-land, like Rabelais' Thelernites, he does as he will. And right in the middle of the book traces turn up of one previous Phantasia-traveler who made the song Bastian's knights sing all the time. Translated from German, it goes: When that I was and a tiny little boy With hey, ho, the wind and the rain ... They recall his name as "Shexpir or the like." Evidently one adult who made it. III There is an age-old philosophical perplexity, the dreamwake confusion, propounded for instance by the Chinese sage Chuang-tzu on apparently awakening from a dream: "Who am I then? A butterfly dreaming that it is Chuangtzu or Chuang-tzu dreaming that I am a butterfly?" (3rd century, B.C.), again by Descartes in the Meditations (17th century A.D.) and lately in The Bear That Wasn't (reviewed in Gareth Matthews' charming book Philosophy and the Young Child). Young children are, of course, very much alive to just such linguistic and philosophical puzzles. Parental anecdotes about their midget metaphysicians SPRING 1986 �abound, always delightful, an occasional sense of oracular self-mystification notwithstanding. So out of the blue the aforementioned Tony said of God (who was not exactly the talk of his family): "He is so big, sooo big he's an idea -Anselm-in-embryo! Indeed there is more to it than pleasure in puzzles. Not for nothing do we enter upon rational life enthralled to negativity, the metaphysical problem. I mean the "terrible twos", a condition whose essence a lovable little boy Peter whom I used to sit for (or rather, on) would express in the remarkable phrase he prefixed to his continual stream of objections: "Want not to want ... " Negativity first, and later existential panic: I recall awakening every night for some weeks to watch the darkly heaving ramification of the well-loved walnut outside the nursery window and to know that my mother could die. Yet later, at seven or eight, my father succeeded in inducing in me the first conscious moment of philosophical wonder I can recall. He was taking a privatissimum on the first Critique with his friend Arthur Liebert, then the President of the Kantgesellschaft. On a Sunday morning walk through the spring woods he showed me that my hands were bewitched, that, though like as two peas in a pod, I couldn't bring them into congruence. A quarter century later, when I discovered his source in para. 13 of the Prolegomena, Kant's illustration of his claim that space is not a property of the things themselves but the form of their outer intuition, all the original amazement came back to me, and henceforth the pure material of the outer form of sensibility was permanently dyed spring-green. All these approaches to philosophy-and, really, they're not peculiar to children-occur in The Neverending Story: playful puzzles, deep fear, serious questions. But literally the most wonderful mode is the predominant one: Here is a philosophical story book, a book of speculative myths, a working vacation for the imagination. The grandest philosophic myths, those Socrates tells in the Platonic dialogues, are end-myths; they consummate the dialectical argument with the high of a cosmic vision. Now, in contemporary philosophy, grandeur being out of favor, mini-myths, flairless, little thought-constructs, are placed throughout the logical argument: Martians, counter-earthlings, brains-in-a-vat and possible worlds inhabited by that one-and-only unicorn whose affliction is non-existence. Finally, there are the real myths, the ones that are not made but re-told, and these are good as preludes to philosophy: In the Metaphysics (A) Aristotle says: "Wonder is the beginning of philosophy," "myths are composed of wonders," and so "the myth lover (philomythos) is somehow a philosopher (philosophos)." But he also says that wonder is really a sense of one's ignorance and that one takes to philosophy as "an escape from ignorance." And so he announces a slow11 THE ST. JOHN'S REVIEW starting but irresistible development: the way of science is the way away from wonder. Two millennia later, a founding text in natural philosophy will bear the still wondering legend "Wonder and is no Wonder" about its central diagram (the endless chain around the prism, Slevin 1605); four centuries later it will be near-universal dogma that science and philosophy mean demythification. The myth-lover is meant to come to maturity; much of our education is devised to sober us up. Yet there is also a sense, endlessly analyzed and bemoaned (and not only by those soft spirits who want to reimmerse themselves in magical murk), that something has been lost, that the world we hoped to gain by taking our two-and-a-half-thousand year temperance pledge has somehow lost its shape and color. What is it that myths did for the world? They made it visible, I imagine, by-ugly but apt termpotentiating the appearances, that is to say, by making them significant. The Necker cube shows that even the objects of mere perception depend on interpretative preconceptions to take shape. Myths might be thought of as analogous interpretative schemata for the human shaping of phenomena. They bring out in appearances just that depth and color from which measuring science and rational philosophy soberly abstract; hence they give them visibility-a word used here certainly in an extended, perhaps in a private sense: I call appearing objects "visible" when I do not look past them as being mere unsuggestive particulars, or through them as being mere representative instances, but at them as recalling through their very looks both themselves and something beyond. (This mode of significant appearing is usually called "symbolic," but it shouldn't be, since by long-standing usage a symbol mainly "stands for" something else.) Genuine myths, the sort that are not composed and read but received and reenacted, are mostly extinct, and the notion of reviving them through deliberate acts of creation is a practical contradiction in terms. Yet all is not lost. A grand enough fairy tale can stand in for those bygone world-frames. (So, come to think of it, can a great grown-up novel.) Such stories make something of the mundane world; they back it with a vibrant ground and bring it out with vivid contrasts. Ende's books, both Mama and The Neverending Story, do even more: They reflect on what they are doing while they are doing it-a feature they share with the finest speculative works. They tell wonderful tales and wonder about tale-telling. They represent the annihilation of the imaginative realm as the great emergency of contemporary life, and even as they tell the story of its peril they accomplish its restoration. Ende' s mythophilia is a beginning of philosophy which is not just to be left behind. Nil admirari advises the Roman poet, follower of a latter- 63 �day philosophy; he means both "Wonder at nothing" and "Think nothing wonderful." Omnia admirari, "Wonder at everything and find everything wonderful" must be the Phantasia-traveller' s postulate. Its requirements determine both the kind and the mode of the thinking which begins in Phantasia. For first, certain questions can take on flesh and flourish there unashamedly which are skeletons in the logical closet. And second, the Phantastic mode of imagining is an unabashed reversal of the (pretended) order of rational investigation: Here the questions are candidly reached through the answers, since the imagination, for all its tolerance of the antic and the monstrous, is constitutionally partial to certain kinds of doing and being and inimical to others. I'll come to an end with a small sampling of the neverending stream of questions which wells up in Phantasia. Phantasia, the realm of the imagination, subsists independently of human attention-and yet its existence depends on a periodic human invocation, a timely Adamic re-naming. Bastian says: "I would like to know, just what is going on in a book when it is closed?" And his discoveries speak to and, of course, contradict current solutions to long-debated problems such as: What is the nature of fictional, or possible, worlds? What is the standing of non-existent objects? How do they comport with ''reality''? Phantasia' s topography is infinite and yet centered. It has, as Bastian learns, a perilous port of entry (Perelin, the Night Wood) and a magical place of exit. He enters each of its places as a separate world and yet he progresses through the land of phantasy as through one empire. The lay-out of fictional worlds (their boundaries and compatibility) is treated-with severely averted eyes-in 64 the logic of fiction ("deviant" logic, so-called!). Its doctrines, particularly concerning the question "Are all fictional worlds connected?" deny Bastian's experience of the cohesion of all stories. Phantasia is the realm into which nothingness first erupts; that is what Bastion is called on to deal with, and he learns that escape from the treadmill of mere recurrence, the revivification of a sad daily existence, and truth telling itself depend on saving this realm of the imagination-a powerful though deviant answer to the question, endlessly revolved in contemporary philosophy, "What is the crisis of modernity?" Phantasia can engulf and corrupt, too. As his sojourn loses its aim, as he forgets his daily shape and his human mission and tyrannizes the realm he has saved, it becomes a thicket of sophisticated un-meaning; here apes play aleatic compositional games, which when continued for all eternity will produce all stories and all stories of stories including the Neverending Story. Even Bastian in his pride is appalled at the insult this extreme of esthetic formalism offers his copper-colored book; he becomes a partisan in the great question of esthetics: "Does art have meaning over and above its form?'' And finally, as the Neverending Story ends, Bastian, emerged from Phantasia, tells his father the story of his reading of the story of his journey into the realm where the story of his journey is being written. He would like to know, Bastian says, "How could this book occur within itself?" He has found the fairy-form of a cluster of questions that are the fascination of present-day intellectual life: recursion and self-reference. Enough said. The point's been made: One way, a wonderful way, to philosophy passes through Phantasia. SPRING 1986 �A Toast to the Republic Curtis Wilson The custom of giving this toast at the President's dinner is a rather old one, having been initiated in the early years of the New Program by Scott Buchanan, and continued without interruption down to this time. My task is to try to say what it means. St. John's is a rather unusual place, and one of its peculiarities is its peculiar mixture of traditionalism and questioning-questioning that can become radical. When I first came, I was shocked by many of the questions, especially those of the Ti esti? variety. In the second seminar I attended here, the opening question was, What is a hero? During the course of the seminar, the leader who first posed the question, repeated it, in measured tones, in truly Aeschylean style, no less than three times. It was not a question I knew what to do with; it was not one I had hoped to hear. I really had no use for heroes. In the several uncomfortable silences, the only thing I could think of was that line in Bertoli Brecht's play, Galileo: it is a sad time, Galilee says, when a country needs heroes. The Brecht line has long ago lost its charm for me. The staggering question that Winfree Smith asked remains. And in general, the most important questions for me have become-not those which admit of systematic reply, though I am very fond of working out anything algebraic and easy-but those which arrest the mind in the presence of the awesome, the beautiful, or the utterly mysterious. And so I am grateful to colleagues who ask Curtis Wilson is a tutor and former Dean of St. John's College, Annapolis. Mr. Wilson gave this traditional toast at the President's dinner in Annapolis for the seniors of 1977. It was a special favorite of Bill O'Grady. Mr. Wilson has kindly consented to its being published here just as it was given. THE ST. JOHN'S REVIEW unanswerable questions, and insist on our stretching our thought toward the height and depth of them. Underlying the toast I must give tonight is such a question. What do we mean by the republic? It has to be the republic, not this one or that one. Robert Bart first explained that to me. The Latin term res publica means that which is public, the public thing. Early on, it was used to refer to the contents of the public treasury, the common wealth in the most literal sense. Later on, its meaning was extended so as to include the whole body of institutions and traditions and knowledges by which the lives of the citizens were shaped, and on which they depended in order to have a realm of freedom and action. The corresponding Greek term was politeia. Ocero used res publica to translate the term politeia, the title of a dialogue by Plato. Politeia meant originally citizen life, the life of the free citizen. The life of the citizen within the polis was always sharply contrasted with everything private-with everything having to do with family or kinship or household, everything having to do with the necessities of survival, with food-getting and childbearing. Politeia was a realm of speech and freedom and action. It was a higher realm. Only in this realm was great speech or great action possible. Such are the origins of the term republic. In the last quarter of the 20th century, all of this can seem rather far away from us. The polis, the political community based on face-to-face relationsf is no longer. Citizen virtue is harder to summon up. We are members not of a polis but of society. Society, the sociologists tell us, is a web of relations. The relations are so intricate and far-reaching as to be well-nigh untraceable. We find it hard to see where our responsibility begins and ends. The distinction be- 65 �tween the public and the private becomes badly blurred. And to say the worst that can be said, in society no one really acts, and instead of speech and action and freedom there is behavior, which is studied by the behavioral sciences. Society is ruled by an invisible hand, that is to say, by nobody. And as Rousseau well knew, we members of society, offended terribly by society's invasion of our privacy and its attack on our dignity, nevertheless bear within ourselves a guilty conscience. I exaggerate, perhaps, in painting the dark picture. There are sparks of light in the darkness, and they are to be cherished and protected. But I think it not so bad a thing that the dark prospect should be before us, and turn us back into ourselves. We have to assess what we are about. There is a justifiable contemptus mundi, or turning from the world, and a justifiable amor mundi, or turning to the world, and we must learn to balance and use them aright. There is an inner court of the soul, in which ends and means have to be judged and sorted out and arranged in hierarchy. We cannot do everything. We must find the center from which we go out, and to which we return. These inner tasks are imposed on us with especial urgency, because we live when we do, and not in a simpler time. Carrying them out, we may come to see that we are not islands unto ourselves. In being what we are and becoming what we become, we are dependent on a heritage of tradition and knowledge; we are dependent upon friends who can ask unanswerable questions, and now and then show faith in our possibilities. And by a calculus that may be simpler or subtler, we may determine to pay back something for what we owe. For Who (says Donne) is sure he hath a Soule, unlesse It see, and judge, and follow worthinesse, And by Deedes praise it? hee who doth not this, May lodge an In-mate soule, but 'tis not his. 66 This toast includes Plato's Republic or Politeia, a work which as much as any other addresses itself to the question of the relation of knowledge and citizen virtue. Citizen virtue was always problematic, because it would not explain its altruism to itself. Plato's Republic gives citizen virtue a new grounding, not in knowledge but in the quest for knowledge. And I think this knowledge that is sought, if the heights and depths of it are recognized to be as high as they are and as deep as they are, will lead to a new kind of civic virtue, not doctrinaire, but more gentle and more humane. This toast includes the Republic of Letters, by which is meant the community of writers living and dead, who have sought the truth, responding to one another, laboring to complete what others have begun, maintaining their faith in the possibility of human knowing through the use of language. The toast, in effect, pledges allegiance to the maintenance and fostering of that republic. The toast includes the Republic of the United States of America. The American dream, people were saying a few years back, was becoming a nightmare. We should pledge our alertness to try to keep that from ever happening. Much is wrong. But there are freedoms of thought and action which we enjoy, not merely because of favorable economics, but because of political traditions, and they are not enjoyed widely in the world. To the maintenance of those freedoms, we should also pledge our lives and our honor. Finally, this toast includes the Republic that is St. John's College. This college is an attempt to provide circumstances under which the great and unanswerable questions can be asked, in which we can be stretched to the height and depth of them, in which we can discover and rediscover the center from which we go out, and to which we return. Ladies and gentlemen, I give you the Republic. SPRING 1986 �The Human Condition For Bill O'Grady, teacher and friend. When rage relented After iron dropped flesh screaming, And armor dripped darkly, Achilles wept for mortality. After Hector, god-like of Troy, Lay bare at his mighty feet, Torn and burned By rough rock bloodstained Round ramparts relentless, Achilles wept for mortality. After stately Priam, weeping, Went to recover, In arms of longing, Flesh he called his own, Achilles wept for mortality. After fatherly tears convinced, And supplicant hands touched For compassion, And stirred his beating heart, Achilles wept for mortality. After stream fell, indistinct, From eyes together touched By memories strong Of father old And son died young, Achilles wept for mortality. And after, These enemies, both human, Gazed in wonder, He at beauty, And he at words sonorous and brave, As only eyes still wet Can clearly see, When rage finally relents. -Geoffrey Harris Geoffrey Harris is an alumnus of St. John's College, Annapolis. THE ST. JOHN'S REVIEW 67 ��Part II ��The Homeric Simile and the Beginning of Philosophy Kurt Riezler Translated by David R. Lachterman Translator's Preface Kurt Riezler (1882-1955) is quite probably already known to many readers of The St. John's Review in virtue of his book Man: Mutable and Immutable. The Fundamental Structure of Social Life (Chicago, 1950) and Leo Strauss' eloge printed in What Is Political Philosophy?. Riezler's somewhat astounding civic and administrative careers during the Wilhelmine and then the Weimar regimes in Germany have been lucidly record- ed in Wayne C. Thompson, In the Eye of the Storm. Kurt Riezler and the Crises of Modern Germany (univ. of Iowa, 1980). His scholarly career began with a monograph on ancient Greek political economy and produced in the years before his exile in the United States two philosophical treatises, Gestalt und Gesetz: Entwurf einer Metaphysik der Freiheit (Munich, 1924 [~Form and Law: Sketch of a Metaphysics of Freedom] and Traktat vom Schonen: Zur Ontologie der Kunst (Frankfurt a.M., 1935) [~Treatise on the Beautiful: Towards an Ontology of Art], as well as a notable edition and trans- lation of Parmenides' poem (Frankfurt a.M., 1934). In the United States,in addition to Man: Mutable and Immutable, he wrote Physics and Reality: Lectures of Aristotle on Modern Physics (New Haven, 1940) and a lengthy essay "Political Decisions in Modern Society," published in Ethics 44 (1954). It is perhaps worth noting that Riezler regarded Heidegger as his most important 'teacher', although he appears to have read him through Goethean lenses. The essay translated below, under the title "Das Homerische Gleichnis und der Anfang der Philosphie, appeared in the periodical Die Antike 12 (1936), pp. 253-271. Curiously, Riezler prints the German versions of R. SchrOder and Voss von Rupetogether with the pertinent Greek texts of Homer. I have followed his practice by translating these from German into English, even when there are marked departures from the wording or syntax of the original Greek. The notes are my own. THE ST. JOHN'S REVIEW The poet sees and announces the soul as world, the world as soul. The unity of the two is his secret. Goethe, in his Maxims, calls art the go-between, the agent of an "unknown law in the object, corresponding to the unknown law in the subject." The concepts with which the aesthetic, psychological, philosophical tradition in which we live grapple with this secret stem from a way of thinking for which the basic fact is the antecedent division of subject and object, soul and world. Face to face with the original unity which is poetry's secret this initial rending of the question can only flee into the asylum of the 'irrational.' The irrational, however, designates the unknown only relatively to a ratio; this ratio falls silent in the presence of this unknown. The beginnings of Greek philosophy antedate the separation of subject and object. Even for Plato the question of the soul is ultimately at one and the same time the question of the world. For Heraclitus, as well as Parmenides, the greatest of Plato's predecessors, the qJUatc;, the Kotvo~ Myo~, of both is something prior to the separation of subject and object, the true being of the soul as well as the world, and thus is cosmology and psychology at the same time. Here, too, the unity of the two questions explains why our concepts are unsuitable as well as why the inner meaning of these teachings remains inaccessible. If both secrets-this inner meaning and that correspondence of an "unknown law" -are closed to us for the David R. Lachterman (Annapolis, 1965) teaches in the Departments of Philosophy and Greek At Pennsylvania State University. 71 �same reason, can we perhaps dare to get close to the one secret with the help of the other? Perhaps the question of the marvel of sensuous animation, when developed in terms of the perplexities posed by one concrete problem might be able to unveil the inner meaning of those teachings and find its way to that meaning in its own right. The seeing and telling of the poet is a knowing of the senses and the soul. What is known is not the object as object. What is seen, told, known is Goethe's "unknown law": soul as world, world as soul. Among the means for achieving this knowledge we find simile and contrast. Homer, the "wisest of the Greeks," uses both with equal mastery. Theophrastus (de sensu, I) divides the views of the Ancients in regard to knowledge into yvromc; <il> o~oi<jl and <il> i';vuv<i<jl-knowing through the similar and knowing through the opposite. According to him, Parmenides, Empedocles, Plato held the first view; the followers of Anaxagoras and Heraclitus, thesecond. Can we perhaps find in the poetic achievements of simile and contrast in Homer the meaning of this 'knowledge?' The issue itself will decide whether this question does or does not make sense. I This question must first be directed to those similes in which this achievement is most penetrating and surprising. These fall into the group in which the poet constructs the simile into a parallel narration, which then unfolds the whole image in a parenthesis in accordance with its own law, between a 'just as' and a 'so'-clause in a parenthesis and does this even though the narration itself is presented as a sensible, visible event and therefore does not seem to need the simile. Similes of this kind are peculiar to Homer. They are also the similes in face of which the concepts with which they are usually discussed reveal their inadequacy. Od. XIX, 204-209: " ... the listening woman melted into flowing tears. As the snow gathered on the ridge of elevated mountains, snow which Winter made to fall, begins to stream as the Spring dissolves it and fills the bed of the running currents, So the woman melted into tears; her cheeks ran for the husband, who sat next to her. . '' (From the German of R.A. Schroder) -rfl<; 0' lip' &KouoUoT}<; Pts 06.Kpua, niKeto Ot X.Pffi<;. cb<; Of: X.tQw KUTUTl'jKET' 'ev 'aKport6/...mmv "opef:mv, "11v t' EUpo<; Ka-rt-rTJ~Ev, Em)v Ztqmpo<; KataxeUlJ TT]KOJ.LtVT}<; 0' dpa Tfj<; 1t01"UJ.LOi rt/...i!80UOl (JtoVTE<; W<; til<; 1"1'!Ks-ro KaAO. rtapilla 06.Kpu x.EoUon<;, KAmoUon<; EOv "avOpa, rtapi!J.LEVOV. Here, in the first place, singling out one or more points of comparison, the whiteness of the snow and of the 72 head, the streaming of the water and of the tears, is of no help at all. Perception? What becomes perceptible? Surely not Penelope's external form through mountains, snow, wind, currents. Mood? Certainly not in the sense that our mood when snow starts to melt is meant to let us feel Penelope's mood. The term "mood" is dangerous. Everything for which the history of the arts requires it is far away from Homer. The simile embraces the entire destiny of Penelope and grasps in retrospect and prospect her inner destiny in the unity of an external image. We see her grown stiff and frozen over long, desolate years, see beneath the first, joyous news the hardness, the cold, the darkness begin to soften outside and inside, to grow warm; we see, by anticipation, even without the poet's speaking about it, in a single, mute self-movement of the image, the entire melting of the snow and see the life begin to glitter once again when Penelope for the first time begins to know that the stranger who brings the first news of her husband is himself this husband. The narrative itself, even if it had wanted to say all of this, could scarcely have linked together the elements which vibrate together and have related them to one another in the way the simile in the unity of its image succeeded in doing. The terms 'intuition' and 'mood' court and contend for the marvel of' animation.' The unity of simile and narrative actually accomplishes that marvel. The 'animation' seems a double one. Penelope's tears animate the inanimate snow but, the unanimated gives back two fold to the animated the animation if receives. In the presence of the first animation we usually stammer about transference and anthropomorphism but this way of talking is out of the question here. The second animation is the greater marvel: how can the dead event animate the living, not only for the Greeks, but for us as well, whose picture of Nature is unanimated? Take a second example: Iliad XVII, 53-59. Menelaus kills Euphorbus who, according to XVII, 811 is fighting in his first battle. They exchange words before they begin to fight. Menelaus reminds Euphorbus of his brother's arrogance and death. Euphorbus draws from the other's warning only the exhortation to avenge his brother and to put his parents' pain to rest by placing in their hands Menelaus' head and weapons. They fight Menelaus' spear strikes through the still delicate neck of Euphorbus and blood steeps the charming locks and the clasps of silver and gold which hold them together. Everything is sensibly there; nothing non-sensible needs an intuition which only the simile might be able to give it. II. XVII, 53-59: "As a man tends the swelling sapling of an olive tree/ In a lonely spot, where the water gushes up,/ SPRING 1986 �Lofty it grows and stately, and the cooling drafts/ Of all the wafting winds set it gently in motion And gleaming it burgeons in white flower.// But, a wind suddenly coming with a powerful whirl/ Rips it from its pit and lays it down on the earth." (Translated after Voss von Rupe) olov DE -rptq:>et Epvot; Uvilp Ept811AE<; EA.o.illt; xOOpcp f:v o'ton6A.cp 08' UA.tt; Uvo.PtPpuoxev U3wp, KaA.Ov t11A.e86.ov· -rO OS TE nvmat Oovtoumv, nav-roiwv &vt~ffiV Kai te PpUst "av8ei: A.euK6.Y tl.ew o' t(aniv~<; UVE~O<; Mv l.ail.am non~ P68pou t' eSta-rpe\lfe Kat f:Se-r<ivua3' eni yaiu' Once again the simile and what it achieves are entirely transparent: the olive-tree, sheltered, cooled by winds, sparkling with white blossoms, now uprooted and laid low, embraces in the unity of a single image the parents' concern, rearing and suffering, the youth's beauty, gentleness and sudden end, animating the narrative and animated by it. Euphorbus' death, like Penelope's tears, is the manifestation of human-being [Daseins] itself, as a totality of powers which joined to one another prevail over and through man and nature, soul and world in the same fashion. We would search in vain in these two similes for the basis of the reciprocal play of animation in the usual points of comparison and their aggregate. The whiteness and the running water in the simile of Penelope-what is qualitatively and objectively common leaves us in the lurch. The third or middle terms of comparison are of a special sort. Not all cases of qualitative and objective commonness can be such thirds. The power of animation dwells only in those which, as in the simile of Penelope, are circumstances and movements both of things as well as of the soul-coldness, hardness, rigidity, warming, softening, dissolving-and as features of the first are also ways of being of the other. These tertia therefore are not only commonnesses, (KotV<i) of any sort whatsoever, belonging to the simile and the narrative, but similarities (o~ota) of the subject and the object. Their peculiar character has no name in the conceptual language current among us. I want to avoid naming them. However, these Oj..t.ota, each considered in its own right, are not the animating factor in these similes. Neither singly nor in their sum are they the true teritium. The key to the animation lies in their concatenation. On their own they are abstract and dead. The simile, like the narrative, interlaces them, lets them be what they are together with and through one another. Constantly trying to name them in isolation makes them lifeless. The tertium is an interweaving of these o~ma, which are joined to one another in simile and narrative in the same fashion, UvO. -r6vatrr0v A6yov. The tertium is in a certain sense a primum It is clearly the function of the simile to detach us THE ST. JOHN'S REVIEW from the object as object. The poet forces our eye from Penelope's face to the snow-covered mountain, from the youth sinking downward to the uprooted olive-tree. In this the objective component of both the simile and the narrative and, indeed, the one through the other becomes transparent and now is no longer only object, but 'manifestation,' an image of something. The image is something seen from the first. It is not an image of the object as such, not Penelope nor the snow, but Goethe's "unknown law." Physis, the style of the entity, the Greeks named it. The analogous intertwining of those Oj..t.ota in simile and narrative is a particular aspect, a look, the eidos of the whole of this physis, which for Homer is not only human-being as a particular entity, but the being of all that is alive. And everything is alive, lively. However, the Homeric similes are multiform. What they achieve in the narrative is in these two cases something particular, comprising the existence of Penelope as well as that of Euphorbus. In other cases the similes perform differently. However, what the simile achieves for the narrative must be grasped on the basis of what it achieves for poetry. The story narrated, even without the simile, is manifestation, is show and announcement in the transparence of appearance. The simile serves this achievement of the narrative in many different ways. The poet demands greater and lesser services. Let us take first a much-discussed example of another kind, which surely can be felt even in a merely fleeting contact, like the litter of a butterfly's wing. Od. V, 50. Hermes is flying over the sea, like a sea-gull. Od. V, 50-53 " ... descending from the aether he fell upon the surface of the high seas, stoutly he swept into it over the abyss, like the cormorant,/ Who fishes in the dread bow of the foaming, salty wave And often streaks its wings with salt-foam." (R.A. Schroder) ... f:~ al8Spot; EJ.meae 1tOVTQl aeUa-r' EneH' Bni KG)la A.lipQl Opvt8t f:otKOOt;, Ot; te Ka-rU OetvoUt; K6A.nout; &.A.Ot; chpuyStow ix8U Uypci:laawv nuKwU nteptl 8eUe-rat &.Aill:l. The god doesn't catch any fish. The poet seems to be following the special image of the simile, over and above the so called tertium. No doubt he does this for the sake of the sensuous concretion of the sea-gull which we now see as a living gull in front of us. But, this senuous concretion achieves much more. Thanks to it what is quick is now also easy, effortless, playful mastery and control. Hermes would catch fish if he wanted to. Hermes' flight over the sea is the prelude to Odysseus' clumsy, unavailing raft. The image of men whose lives are difficult is present together with the image of the gods, the pcla ~&v,c<;. Each little word attends to the co-presence of the 73 �difficult in the image of the easy. There are the 8Etvoi K6A.not of the waves; previously there was the staff with which Hermes deludes men's eyes or wakens the sleepers "whom he wills." The simile, like the contrast, is dependent on the transparence of the narrative. What does the much censured blood-pudding in Od. XX, 25 achieve? Odysseus, reining in his fury at the maids, turns back and forth in his lair, with no means of overcoming the suitors. is separated from both. A survey of this artful technique leads past many 'halting' and so easily censured Homeric similes, through nuancings of every kind, to the very disappearance of the comparable in the opposed. In Iliad I, 86 the opposition has absorbed the similar and replaced the "so as" with an account of time. As long as the golden day increase, the battle goes on hither and yon without any resolution. Od. XX, 25-28: "As one roasting meat keeps turning the pig's stomach full 1/. Xl, 86-90: "But, at the hour when woodsmen prepare a meal/ Deep in the glade of the mountain, once their arms have grown tired/ with felling mighty trees; they become/ sated with their labor and long now for refreshing food:/ Just then,;he Danaeans daringly broke through the enemy's ranks . .. inw<; &t &pu1"6f-to<; nEp Uvllp cl.:mAicrcral"O &dnvov of fat and trickling blood/ Over the fire from one side to the other/ And the thoughts of the roast lingers in his mind . .. " (R.A. SchrOder) cO<; &' On; yacr't"Ep' &vilp noA.E.o<; nupOc; ateo11Evmo q..tnA.Ei'rJv Kvfcrnc; n: Kai at11a:wc;, Evfla Kai Evfla m6AA.u J.uiA.a S' ffiKa A.tA.aiE'rat, Cm-rn 8ftvm, &<; Cip' Oy' E.v8a Kai Ev8a V. .icrcrE'r:o J.LEPilllPiS<Dv What the simile achieves is simple: only the bloodpudding can achieve it. It alone links together into a unity Odysseus' turning to and fro with the completion of the "well-done" plan, finished on every side, as well as with the impatient desire of the hungry man. The service done to the poetry by the simile lies not in the points of comparison, but in their interlinking. For the critic the blood pudding is encrusted with impressions which make its preparation unsuitable as a simile for needs of the soul. Nonetheless, this encrustation is post-Homeric. The simile achieves still more, however not through the points of comparison and their interlinking, but through a deviation of the simile from the narrative, a technique quite frequent elsewhere in Homer. The blood-pudding becomes fully cooked; the plan does not. Athena lends the helpless Odysseus her assistance and summons him to sleep. Here, as in many other passages, the difference between narrative and simile is an artful technique. It shows how the events should or could have unfolded, but did not. The lion with whom the suppressed hero is compared is killed; the hero finds an opening, and gets through. In such difference the co-presence of what didn't occur serves the living concretion, the 'shiningthrough' of existence just as it is. The actual in its own right, in its whatness [Sosein] is alive, 'concrete' and full of presence, in the midst of a swarm of possibilities among which it stands, threatened and needy, in hope, yearning, fear or blindness. In the world of the living the possible is actual and at work. In this insight, too, Homer is wiser than many of his critics. As the simile presses out beyond the strictly comparable Homer is allied with Shakespeare; in restricting himself to the tertium Goethe 74 oUpEo<; E.v 131'!crcrumv, E.nEll"' f:.KopEcrcral"o x,dpa<; l"liJ.lVWV &Ev&pEa f-lUKpli, U&o<; 1"1~ f-llV 1KE1"0 euf!OV ai>l"oll l"E yAUKEpoto 7tEpi <ppEva<; \f!EpO<; atpd, Tiif-lo<; cr<pij <lpEl"ij Aavaoi Pil~avl"o <pUAayya<;- The reckoning of time here conceals the comparison of Danaeans' exertion in battle with the heavy labor of the wood-cutter. The image, meanwhile, points at the same time to their discrepancy: for the first time in the image the Danaeans' courage and perseverance in battle becomes impressively visible; but, so, too, does the other, gentler side of life, everything about it which the words K6poc;, /i8oc;, yMKEpoc;, i~Epoc; can attach to the resting wood-cutters-in the midst of the battle and without any other relation than that of time. (cf. Dante, Inferno II, i). The so-called 'contrastive effect' merely poses a question; it does not supply the answer. What is the contrast meant to be? Alternation? Intensification? These terms do not reach the issue at which they are aimed. In each and everyone of his mobile images Homer sees to it, through the smallest, unnameable details, that all the oppositions between which man's life is tensely strung always remain present to one another, that the bright stands close to the dark, the easy next to the difficult, fear next to courage, nothingness next to magnificence each inescapably linked to the other. He has a thousand ways of doing this. He avoids any chorismos of the 'Evuv-riu-any isolation of the opposites from one another. Where the episode, as in the battles in the Iliad, is in opposition with itself, he interrupts the report of the battle and tells in a pair of verses about the marriage of a warrior who was just killed and about the days of his glory. In Iliad XIII, 1 he lets Zeus, looking downfromMt. Ida, train his shining eyes away from the battle around Troy and onto the friendly peoples of Thrace, peoples who drink milk, the most just among men. Or in Iliad SPRING 1986 �XXII, 145, with Hector breathlessly, passionately pursued by Achilles, and while the supposedly uninvolved poet is himself in the grip of the highest emotion, he lets the heroes race past the two sources of the river Scamander and pauses to depict them the one stream which rises from the warm spring, the other, cold as ice; there are ' the stone troughs, there in times of peace the women and the fair daughters of the Trojans used to wash their shimmering garments. To be sure it is correct that the antithesis 'intensifies,' that, as Gottfried Hermann in his commentary on this passage in Aristotle's Poetics remarks, '' repente objecta pacis imago, certamen redditur terribilius," that in Rembrandt too "et lumen ab umbra et umbra ab lumine tan tam accipiat vim, quantam singular per se numquam habitura essen!. " 1 But, is "intensification" really the ultimate expression for the poetic achievement of contrast? Homer does not intend only the most frightful battle, nor does Rembrandt intend only the darker darkness. What is there is something ultimate which is seen, which has no nameGoethe's "unknown law." Physis as the forming of the 'Being'" of every being which 'is' there, the source of the essentiality of every essence-this ultimate object of sight is fitted together indissolubly out of war and peace, out of the dark and the bright. Neither the battle nor the darkness is something which can be separated (xwptm6v). It is thanks to the light that the night is. Homer does not look for antithesis because it intensifies. He sees a whole, as that in accord with which the one as well as the other is meant to shine through; because this whole is and is seen, the contrast or antithesis intensifies. There is a way, in both poetry and painting, of contrasting opposites which does not intensify. In these cases, the dark and the bright, even when in contrast with one another, remain insubstantial and empty, For both are placed externally next to one another, out of a learned knowledge of contrastive effects, not of the vision of their unity, as the 'manifestation' of that nameless whole. Let me return once more to Homer's similes. In Iliad XI, 547-557, 557-565, two successive similes are developed into complete images of the lion greedy for battle and the stubborn ass. Ajax is both. Homer has us leap from one image of battle to the lion, from the lion to the ass, from the ass to the next image of battle in complete detachment from the objectivity of the object. The changing of the battle-scenes themselves takes place as an exchange of similes. The oppressive phantasy of many interpreters would have liked to stick with either the ass or the lion. Ajax attacks, the hero attacks his inferiors, one against many: a lion storming about greedy for battle; before the crowd of dogs and shepherds who protect the herds with spears and torches he has to turn away, growling. Now, he, like an ass, under the blows of impotent youths who THE ST. JOHN'S REVIEW want to drive him forward, slowly grazes in a meadow and then goes back again satisfied, when and as he pleases. In attacking and returning it is one and the same hero, who imposes on the many inferiors the law of their action. The exchange of similes varies one and the same identity, the way a change of positions would do. In both images doing and suffering, courage and fear, power and powerlessness, rage and forbearance, the one and the many, the noble and the mean are linked together. The mode of interweaving changes something identical. The change is sudden, violent only as far as the objective is concerned; that in accord with which this objective is transparent as 'appearance' changes without any violence the aspect alone, which it offers as something identical-just as is done in every narrative of changing events, which shines through as poetic vision in keeping with that nameless element which in the changeable interweaving of its moments remains identical as a whole. A "weaker" poet might indeed be on his guard against letting his Ajax turn from a lion into an ass without any transition: only the most extreme power of "transparence" can know how to manage the objective character of the object [mit dem Gegenstandlichen des Gegenstandes umspringen.] Iliad XVI, 751-776 embraces three similes in the unity of a single battle-scene. Tone, coloring, feeling are passionately intensified. Hector and Patroclus, the soldiers of the Trojans and the Danaeans fight inconclusively for the corpse of Cebrion. Patroclus, pouncing upon the corpse of Cebrion, is compared to a lion which, breaking into the stables, is hit in the breast-"his own power undoes him." Patroclus, however, is unwounded; the simile thus distances itself from the narrative, this time because Patroclus' imminent death is meant to be foreshadowed. Homer is rich in such advance indications through nuancing. just after that Hector leaps from his chariot: now both are like lions who fight on the top of the mountain for the carcass of a deer <iJ.upro JtEtvciovtE, ~Eya <ppovEoV'tE (both hungering and both thinking high thoughts.) Now the crowds of the Trojans and the Danaeans storm against one another. 11. XVI, 765-770. "And as the Winds, the East and the South, Vie with one another/to shake a thick wood In the forest valley,/Beech and ash, the Wild cornel with its long bark,/ So that they knock their pointed boughs against each other/and the noise of breaking branches Rings out powerfully:/ Just so the Trojans and Danaeans rushed against One another ... '' (Voss-Rupe) <he; &' 'Eup6c; 1'E N6Toc; 1'' tpt&aivetov UAA.i}Aoav oUpeoc; Ev flrlaaw; j}a8tnv mJ,EJ.tt~EJ.tEV UA.11v 75 �qnw6v 't"E J.1EAil1V 't"E 't"UV\J(j)A.Ot6V 't"E Kp<iVElUV, at 't"E npO<; aAA.liA.a<; Ej3aA.ov t"avuftKEa<; Ot:ou~ tlx:U 8EanEcriu, 1t6:rayo~ 0€ 't"E Uyvuj..t Ev<irovo· We; 't"p&E<; Kai 'Ax. awl E1t' UA.AliAotcn 8op6V't"E~ Ol)ouv- The simile does not depict the reciprocity of the battle "with little success," but depicts the warriors' unchained rage, passion, confusion in an image of the greatest agitation. An interpretation sticking to the objective relates the pointed carcasses to the pointed spears. But, the true tertia here are not of this sort. This image is followed immediately by the image of a dead man who, amidst the darting spears, the flying arrows, the hurled stones, lies there in a whirl of dust "mighty in his mightiness, the arts of the horses forgotten." KEho ~eya~ ~eyuA.rocr'ti A.eA.ucr~evo~ innocruv6.rov[776]. The corpse, too, is there from the start: the image of its rest follows upon the image of the totally unleashed battle. In this way Horner links life to death. The images of battle in the Iliad hold good of the whole of human-being. They inflect the whole set of forces 'between' which life is alive. This 'between' is a term drawn from Plato's doctrine of the soul. II. If I turn now to the philosophical issues concealed here, this is not done for the sake of the poet. His understanding can do without the elucidation of those issues. We can understand the poet even when our aesthetic concepts shatter against his animated world. The service which simile and contrast perform for 'animation' contains a philosophical problem of great merit. Here we can follow the hints given by this service only into the inner life of the first questions and answers of Greek philosophy. For the development of this philosophical problem I must refer to my Traktat vom Schoonen (Frankfurt, 1935). The tertia of Homeric comparisons are of a special sort. They are not random commonalities of objects in simile and narrative. They seem to be sof because our question about them stops with their objective commonness, e.g., the white color, the running water. If we go on to ask about what is in these commonalities from which their animating power stems, their special character becomes visible. These tertia are what is common to soul and to things, to the inner and the outer. The o~mu of simile and narrative are o~mu of subject and object. Even the antithetical pairs of contrastive effects are o~otu of this kind. The alliance of these o~mu with 'animation' concerns the issue itself and is not an historical matter, whether of Horner or of Greek philosophy. It accompanies the marvel of art everywhere, in every age and in every mode of art. The painter talks about values or valences of colors: opaque-clear, bright- 76 dark, warm-cold. The animation of colors rests on the play of these 'values.' These values are common to the soul and to things. They are, let me say in passing, not sensible qualities of the eye alone; something in them is common to several senses. In the case of sounds, too, there is the bright and the dark, the warm and the cold. However, the problem of these 'intermodal' sensequalities does not belong here. For an age in which qualities, properties and attributes have lived for centuries in a lasting marriage to things and regions of things the problem of these Kmv6. and their mode of being has been lost. This age explains the common in terms of 'transference.' The term "metaphor" is late; it stems from the time when that lasting marriage was concluded and the tie between thing-region and property was fixed. Transference, however, explains nothing. The o~mov which it is meant to explain precedes it as something in the things bn the basis of which the transference is possible and meaningful. Besides, the Homeric similes are no metaphors. The two lions are not ~eya (jlpoveov'tE in virtue of metaphor. Nor is ~eyu8u~ocr or "high-minded" a metaphor. Greatness and height are not originally properties of trees and mountains, tied to bodily space. There 'is' greatness and height in the soul just as there is in trees and mountains prior to the separation of subject and object. Under the 'jurisdiction' of mythical thinking the image is the very thing itself. The unity of image and thing counts as the decisive mark of this mythical thinking; however, the unity rests on nothing other than the fact that for this thinking a KOIVOV of image and thing is the original being, npciHro~ ov prior to the objective duality of both: the leonine, therefore, manifest as a first and as the same in this lion and that lion, in its image and in many other instances. The jurisdiction of mythical thinking, however, is at the same time freedom from that enslavement to the object in which we live. Something of this spell and the freedom it confers extends to the similes of Horner, indeed, over and above these, to the end of all poetry and, perhaps,-of all philosophy. I do not presume to settle anything about the mode of being of these Kmv6.. I shall not even give them a name drawn from the later history of philosophy. Their nature is Ci'ton6v n. They are, in any case, neither objects nor concepts. I want to accept them as the poet announces them, without giving them a name: as ways of being, situations, powers, essential features of an existence which is at once the being of the soul and of things. The poet lets these KOtv6. 'appear': he reveals them as what shines through in sound, tone, word, rhythm, object. These Kmv6. of subject and object are therefore manifestly KOIV6. of the so-called 'form' and, at the same time, of the so-called 'content,' 'values' of the vowels, SPRING 1986 �consonants, of the syllables, words and sentences, of tone and rhythm, as well as qualities of what these tonalities designate. This 'common,' too, is O:ron:6v n and, as a problem of the issue itself, accompanies the marvel of all art. 'Form' and 'content' or what we try to separate under these terms reciprocally animate one another just as simile and narrative do. The root of this reciprocal animation is the same in both cases. Philosophy, that poor hobbler on the crutch of the concept, has to try to name what the poet allows to 'appear.' We have names for such Kotv<i from the beginnings of philosophy: the warm and the cold, the dense and the rare, the bright and the dark, the heavy and the light and so on. The i\~mov and l;vania based on yv6.iat~ ,q; 6~o(1J ii 'U l;vavtil] are of this kind. They are Kotv<i of the soul and and things-not the 'material' elements, the designation under which they entered into our philosophical tradition from the reports of the Aristotelians. As Kotv<i they provide the basis for knowledge. Goethe (Farbenlehre, historischer Teil, I) says about Empedocles' 'pores': "We can also observe that this ancient did not take this idea so crudely and corporeally as many moderns have; instead, he merely found there a more convenient symbol. For the manner in which the outer and the inner are each present for the other, in which the one is on har- mony with the other, bears witness straightaway to a higher viewpoint, which appears still more spiritual when expressed in that general thesis: Like is known by like."' Empedocles, fragment 109 (Diels): "With earth we observe the earth, with ether, the divine ether, with fire, however, the destroying fire, love with love, hate with wretched hate." In this passage the so-called four elements appear on the same level as love and hate as es- sences, not as 'stuffs.' Nor is the earth the earthly, water-is not our water not even for Empedocles, simply an heir and descendant of this poetic teaching. III Let me return to the poet in my search for a way of pointing out the original meaning of this teaching. The o~ota of the Homeric similes, like the l;vav,(u of his contrastive effects, as Kmv6. of the soul and things, are not xwptcrt<i, not set apart from one another. The poet does not set them apart from one another; he relates them to one another, intertwines them and lets their interlacings change. just this interlacing is the source of animation. The Kmv<i are live only in it. Not the hard taken by itself alone, without relation to the soft but the hard as something which has become hard, something which subsequently will become soft. But not only this-the poet is on his guard against isolating not only the contraries, but also pairs of contraries. His 'hard' in its presence THE ST. JOHN'S REVIEW together with the soft is at the same time and, indeed, essentially and always, among the bright and the dark, the warm and the cold and other pairs of this sort. It is 'among' many. It is alive in this 'betweenness.' The poet does not separate. He does not name. For naming is a dividing. He lets [the Kotv<i] 'become manifest'manifestation intertwines, intertwining animates. What becomes manifest is life itself, the being of all that is alive, as a totality of changing forces intertwined with one another: the poet's way of giving form to the object holds good for its transparence much as it does for the movement of sounds and tones in the arrangement of words and rhythm. Homer's wisdom is his 'knowing' about the whole of existence: his art is to let this 'knowing' become manifest. Hence, these Kotv<i of subject and object are surely not an original many. They would be dead not only if they were separated, but even if they were arrayed alongside one another. They would be words, not essences. Their 'concretion' is their 'having grown together into one another.' There is actually only one Kmv6v, whose sides, moments, joints are these Kotv<i, one KotvO<; A.6yo<; of life itself. Homer sees this Kotv6v in the change of forms and events, in the shifting interlacing of its moments, as one and the same. The tertia of the Homeric similes are not single joints, moments of this one, but analogies of a particular interlacing, Analogy detached from the objectivity of the object, serves to make this interlacing transparent. The particularity of the interlacing of the Kmv<i is a special aspect of the one Kotv6v, of what ultimately shines through. The poet's vision and voice aim at this latter. As the events change the progress of the narrative alters the interlacing of the moments and, with it, the particularity of the aspects. The change itself reveals the single concatenation as a special aspect of their eternal arrangement. After the snow-image of Penelope dissolving into tears the poet continues: Od. XIX, 209-212: And the bold Odysseus/pited his sorrowing Wife deep in his heart. And still/he kept His gaze fixed and straight, as if his eyes Were of horn and his brow of iron./ Artfully he hid his tears." (R.A. Schroder) ctutUp 'O&Uaawcr 8UJ.Lip j..tEv yoOroaav Eitv EAeaipe yuvalKa, (Hp8aAiloi &' ffic; Ei. Ktpa Eatacrav ai&npoc; O.tptj..ta<; Ev j3Ae<ptipmmv &OAcp &' 6 ye O<iKpua KEU8ev. ne The simile of melting snow shines through these verses as well, with the force of its transparence, verses which now repeat in a transformed arrangement the conflict of hard and soft and much else which is nameless in the 77 �gestures and behavior of Odysseus. The same existence changes the manner of its visibility. The Homeric similes are impassioned movement. But, deeper than any change is a rest which inwardly prevails through the restless events. This rest is not, by any means, a subjective repose of the epic, detached poet. Homer is always and everywhere passionately affected. What is at rest is what is seen, not the poet's seeing eye. Movement itself, its passion, is what is at rest: What ultimately shines through, inescapable and eternally fitted together, existence itself, the changeable, as something eternally alike. The classical, as a systematic, not an historical concept, must be based on this unchangeable arrangement of what is ultimately seen. I dared to undertake this task in my essay on the beautiful. We are now, for the first time, getting closer to that inn~r meaning in which the first visions of Greek Philosophy harmonize with one another. These visions have their roots in Homer's vision of the world. Homer is closer to its inner meaning than Theophrastus. According to Theophrastus's report concerning yviiicn~ -.:0, the iS~tota seem to be an original many, elements of the inner and the outer, from the mixture and separation of which the particular features of things and their changing structures arise and pass away. The controversial question of knowledge is then whether we know the bitter through the bitter outside of us or through the sweet. The original teaching, however, knows nothing of such an alternative. Homer's knowledge embraces both. It comes about both -.:0 6~toicp as well as -.:0 evavncp. Parmenides and Heraclitus, too, oppose the separation of contraries. For both their separation is a \jleiioo~. Heraclitus, Fragment 57: "Hesiod is the teacher of most men. He is supposed to know the most he-who does not even know day and night-they are one." Parmenides, Frag. 8, line 53: "Mortals establish two instead of one and in this they go astray: darkness and light, divided from one another, each on its own not the same as the other, both the one and the other for itself." From this division, the npiii-,;ov \jleiioo~, arises, o6~a the specious knowledge of mortals. If the contraries are inseparable and night and day are one and the same, then the alternative of yv<ilcn~ -.:0 iwoi1J 6~toicp or evav-.:icp is a controversy within 06~a. In Parmenides and Heraclitus alike, naming, too, is in disrepute, along with the separation of these i\~tota from one another. Naming occurs as separating (Farm., Frag. 9; Heraclitus, Frag. 67). Philosophy, although directed to making conceptual distinctions, begins by discrediting naming. 'Ovo~t<il;ew as naming of things separately is opposed to true voe\v. This voe\v is not 'conceptual' thinking. This voeiv is a seeing, the seeing together of the inseparable. The 'commons' of the soul and things, on which this 78 knowledge rests, are no more in this philosophy than in Homer an original many, which must be divided and then placed in a sequence. There is an original one, which, being prior to its manyness, articulates itself in the latter as into its own moments. These moments are not anything 'objective,' spread out in space and time, they are present to one another: as "continually present even while absent" (Farm., Frag. 2). Thus the very same voii~ which has to do with truth sees (A.euooet) these moments. There is, therefore, only one 'common.' This 'common' is the 'one' of Anaximander, concealing and securing in itself all oppositions-it is the much-debated ov of Parmenides, which never is something of the past, never something of the future, but O.d viiv, 6~toii niiv, is the eternal present and everything at once; it is the Kotv6~ Myo~ of Heraclitus, the essence and styling [Artung] of what is, which is there and insofar as it 'is'-qnJat<;, which loves to conceal itself (Frag. 123). Attending to <pUat~ we say and do the true (Frag. 112). What these thinkers strive gropingly and vainly to say-Heraclitus in riddling words, trans)Ilitted to us only in fragments which have grown dumb and been misconstrued, Parmenides in the verses which command us to see what it is unsayable, an unsayable mirrored in a phenomenology of nature, over whose specious essence the goddess of the truth in the hidden holds swayHomer sees and announces this, by letting it 'appear' without saying it. The vision of the poet outlasts the concepts of the philosopher. Thus, Homer might help us to understand Heraclitus: Heraclitus, Fragment 67 (Diels): [scil. EO'ti llECO] 0 9E:0c; flllEPrt f:lHpp6vn, X,f:illOJV 9Epoc;, n6AE:Iloc; dpi!vn, K6poc; AtJl6cr, &.AAotoG't"cu SE 0Krocrngp nUp, Cm6't"av OUJlJltYfi 9u001J.aow, 6voJl6.i;.E:'t"ctt St Kn9' 'n8ovl)v 'gKciO't"OU, ["The God is day night, cold heat, war peace, satiety want; comes different just like fire whenever it is mixed with per~ fumes it is names after the flavor of each."] Karl Reinhardt's interpretation emphasizes the oppositions: Being Change Name. It is the God, Day Night, Winter Summer, War Peace, Satiety Hunger he changes himself only as the fire does, when it is mixed with the perfumes. The Name however, is a nugatory choice of each man. 3 Homer's images, shapes, events-the entire world of his objects and their changes is the color and lambency of the flame, the changing look of the same, which as one is inescapably fitted and joined to itself, the being of the soul as well as of things-the unknown, which it is the poet's might and secret to let shine through. The power of philosophy is the living question. Without the latter the testimonies of past thinking remain as dumb SPRING 1986 �as the things themselves-with it, the one might illumine itself in the other. Thus the secret of animation in simile and contrast in Horner might help us in explaining the inner meaning of the first philosophical question and the first answer. The very formulation, however, which that secret finds in this explanation, conceals a hidden danger, even though it may be more appropriate to the problem than the concepts of our aesthetics. This danger is the separation of appearance and "idea." The multicolored world of sensible shapes is for the poet appearance, shining through as appearance, and in this shining through is essence itself and its truth. This essence is only in appearing. The appearance is itself what appears. The course of philosophical endeavor splits apart this unity. It devalues appearance into semblance. Its pathos is directed against the mortals, whose "long-experienced habit" (Farm., Frag. 1, line 34), abandoned as they are to changeable things, stumbles in the darkness. Philosophy as it gropes for the true essence uses as its means abstract thought. "Reason" stands opposed to the senses. However, every separation of Opat6v and vorrr6v, of a mundus sensibilis and mundus intelligibilis, every chorismos of sensible thing and idea, stands powerlessly before the marvel of the beautiful. For precisely this is the marvel and its incomparable power that here thinking happens as perception, the intelligible itself turns into the THE ST. JOHN'S REVIEW sensible, unnamed, but visibly there "in person" -the vorp:6v itself, this is precisely that ultimate, which in the question of being as "what is sought and gives rise to perplexity from long since and now and in the future" (Aristotle, Metaph. Zeta 1) has always been wooed by the greatest names in philosophy. Indeed, this V011t6v 'is' only as 6pat6v. It is in no way xrop1<n6v. Any essence which does not appear lacks essence for any art. Plato, too, who placed the 'beautiful itself' and the pure vision of it above every visible appearance, knew about this (Phaedrus 250e): "It was the lot of beauty alone that the most visible is at the same time the most worthy of love.'' Hence, the inner marvel of art, warning against any chorismos, accompanies the history of philosophy. Translator's Notes 1. These references are to G. Hermann's annotated edition of the Poetics (Leipzig, 1802) and read in translation: "when the image of peace is set suddenly in contrast, the contest is rendered more terrible" ... "light takes from darkness and darkness from light more force than either could ever have had on its own." 2. See Goethe, dtv-Gesamtausgabe, Band 41 (Munich, 1963), p.12. 3. See Karl Reinhardt, Parmenides und die Geschichte der griechischen Philosophie (Bonn, 1916). 79 ��The Origin of Philosophy Jon Lenkowski I According to a long and venerated tradition, what came to be called "philosophy" originated in the ancient Greek world-more specifically in Ionia in Asia Minor (now southwest Turkey). Its birth is dated at somewhere around the very late seventh or early sixth century b.c., and is tied to the name of a certain Thales of Miletus-tied to Thales mainly on the strength of two statements attributed to him: viz., that the arche of everything is water, and that all things are full of gods, or full of soul-dark sayings, very dark sayings! The appearance of philosophy there, as well as elsewhere, was entirely unprecedented. It has long been of great interest to scholars, why and how philosophy might have appeared just when and where it did. This has led to all sorts of conjectures, some more likely than others. Let me pursue for a short while the best of these. Let me tell you a likely story. First the Mediterranean itself. Its geography encouraged coastal development, navigation and trade. The broken geography of the Greek peninsula and the neighboring islands in particular promoted this. This had political consequences as well: for the fact that the Greek world was broken up into a number of small entities deterred any tendency toward centralized autocratic rule and fusion into a large imperial entity, as had happened to the great river civilizations of Babylonia, Sumaria and Egypt. The Jon Lenkowski is a tutor at St. John's College, Annapolis. The Origin of Philosophy was originally delivered as a formal lecture at St. John's College, Annapolis in 1985. THE ST. JOHN'S REVIEW tendency of these small Greek tribes and villages was rather to retain their independence, so that when they did form into cities ruled by kings, the authority of the king was limited by a council of peers. In the meetings of these councils all things got discussed and decided. It was here that the tremendous role of the logos, of the spoken word, of argument (where one had to listen as well as be listened to) got developed. It was here also that self-legislation appeared for the first time. With all political matters being decided by these councils-an atmosphere in which the notion of law by fiat would be anathema-deliberation about what laws would be best would have to play a prominent role. But such a discussion could only occur if it had already been seen that laws themselves are not eternal and immutable. This realization was also the result of travel and trade. (It should be noted that the two great lawgivers, Lycurgus and Solon, had travelled extensively-something which was thought to qualify them to be legislators.) Exposure to the different peoples around the Mediterranean seems to have produced a spirit of give-and-take, not only with respect to goods, but perhaps more importantly with respect to customs and opinions. This exposure produced an entirely unprecedented openness: reflection on the varieties of ways oflife and traditions led necessarily to reflection on one's own beliefs and inherited customs. Everything could now be reflected upon and discussed-which meant that it was no longer immutable. Hence Hegel wisely remarks (Einl., Vorles. Gesch. Phil.) that political freedom and freedom of thought are inseparable, and that therefore philosophy only appears in history where free institutions are formed. 81 �In the same way that the physical layout of the Mediterranean encouraged travel, it also encouraged colonization. Miletus in Ionia in Asia Minor was one of the first of such Greek colonies. This land was Greek-speaking and was peopled by Greeks who had colonized it after fleeing from marauding Dorians on the Greek mainland before 1000 b.c. By the seventh century, Miletus was itself already a metropolis, itself sending out colonies. Thales of Miletus seems to have taken advantage of all the opportunity this setting offered. Like most of what is supposed to be known about him his dates are conjectural. His birth is probably somewhere between 636 and 624 b.c. (this depends on whether one believes Diogenes or Appollodorus), and he lived until approximately 546 b.c. His ancestry was most probably Ionian and therefore Attic (according to Diogenes I, 23), through he may also have had some Phoenician blood (according to Herodotus I, 170). He was in the olive trade-a fact which obliged him to travel fairly widely in the eastern Mediterranean. He seems to have taken full advantage of this. While visiting Mesopotamia, he apparently learned what the Babylonians knew of astronomy. Most of this was mathematically imprecise, and based on observational records, most of which are questionable. But he was, as a consequence, able to predict an eclipse on 27. or 28. May, 585 b.c.-an important enough event since it changed the course of a war. He may even have written a treatise on nautical astronomy-though this is doubtful. He also travelled to Egypt and learned what they knew of geometry. Here he seems to have really come into his own element. There are either five or six theorems attributed to him-again, according to whom one believes. What one must notice in these theorems is a mathematical precision and theoretical generality not present in any of the so-called "approximate area" formulas of the Egyptian geometry. Especially in his theorem that the sides of any similar triangles are proportional, we see a fully developed interest in generality. Something like the universal seems to have been discovered. It may, then, have been his success with mathematical generality that led him to seek for generalities elsewhere as well. Hence his pronouncements that the arche of all things is water and that all things are ensouled. As for the particular contents of these pronouncements-again conjectures. Listen to Aristotle: "Probably the idea was suggested to him because the nutriment of everything contains moisture ... also because the seeds of everything have a moist nature." (Meta 983b) And: "Some say soul is diffused throughout the universe, and perhaps that is what Thales meant in saying all things are full of gods:' (De An. 411a) This concludes my likely story. Notice how comprehensible it's all become! Why, then, do I still have the nag- 82 ging sense that something is missing-not something in the details of this account, but something essential? What I've lost, or missed completely, in my attempt to reconstruct the historical event, is everthing philosophical. If I really pay attention to this, I see that this failure, which historians of philosophy customarily settle for, is the inevitable result of having taken the question of the origin of philosophy to be a historical question in the first place. I see, furthermore, that not only this, but any attempt to turn philosophy into a historical event, finally leads me nowhere-nowhere at all. It looks as though we'll have to make a completely new beginning-perhaps a quite different kind of beginningin order to find our way to the beginning of philosophy. In making this new departure, it may not be necessary to abandon completely our interest in Thales. Of all that is written about Thales, most of it is repetitive, unimaginative and tedious-a point which I have, in these opening few minutes of the lecture, tried to make you painfully aware of. But by far the greatest fault of writers on Thales, is their failure to take him seriously. This is true not only of the chroniclers, but also-sad to say-of philosophers themselves. One rare and beautiful exception is Friedrich Nietzsche. He speaks briefly of Thales in his little book, Philosophy in the Tragic Age of the Greeks. Let's listen: "Greek philosophy seems to begin with an absurd notion, with the pronouncement that water is the origin and mother's lap of a11 things. Is it really necessary to stop and be serious about this? Yes, and for three reasons. First, because the pronouncement asserts something about the origin of things. Second, because it does so without pictures or fables. And finally, third, because in this pronouncement is containedeven though only in larval form-the thought: All is One. The first-mentioned reason leaves Thales still in the company of the religious and superstitious. The second takes him out of this company and shows him to us as a natural scientist. But it is in virtue of the third reason that Thales is to be regarded as the first Greek philosopher:' The thought: All is One. That is, Thales is the first philosopher because it is he who first discovered The Whole. What does this discovery of the whole point to about the mind or understanding of its discoverer? And why does this make him the first philosopher? It is this question which the remainder of this lecture will address. II In the second chapter of the Metaphysics Aristotle says: "For it is by wondering that men both now and in the beginning began to philosophize:' (982b12-13) Philosophy begins in wonder-but in what precisely does wonder begin? We refer philosophy to wonder, but in so doing we must not forget that wonder itself may be cause for wonder. SPRING 1986 �Aristotle goes on to say in the same passage: "So .. . they philosophized in order to escape from ignorance ... :· (982bl9-20) And: "One who is in perplexity and wonder thinks himself to be ignorant:' (982b17-18) To philosophize is to seek to escape from ignorance. And to know that one is in a state of ignorance is to be in a state of perplexity and wonder. The two states are the same. Thus, knowledge of ignorance mediates the relation of philosophy to perplexity and wonder-which means that to philosophize and to be in wonder and perplexity are the same. In the Theaetetus Socrates tells this as well to Theodorus: he says that the philosopher is"... ignorant and perplexed in all things:' (175b4-6) But something else surfaces here in connection with wonder itself. Aristotle speaks of "one who is in perplexity and wonder". To be in perplexity and to wonder are the same.1 To wonder is to be in perplexity. Theaetetus bears witness to this. He says, in response to Socrates' statement of the puzzles of size and number: ''And by the gods, Socrates, I am perplexed as soon as I begin to wonder what on earth these things are, and sometimes when I begin to look into them I really become dizzied:' (Theaet.155e6-8) Socrates responds: "This affection, to wonder, really shows that you are a philosopher; for there is no other beginning of philosophy than this ...." (Theaet. 155dl-4) We can marvel at this, and can so be led to ask whether wonder and the marvelous are the same. We can marvel at something-a thing of beauty or astonishment-because it is extraordinary or unique. We can become captivated by it. Such a thing could be called "wonderful", but is this that wonder in which philosophy begins? "Captivation'' is a fit word here because the beholding of the marvelous is kind of bondage. It is a standing-still, a cessation of motion, a rr6.6T]!!ct or affection induced from without. Albertus Magnus, however in his Commentary on the Metaphysics of Aristotle, makes the following observation: "Now the man who is puzzled and wonders apparently does not know. Hence wonder is the movement of the man who does not know on his way to finding out, to get to the bottom of that at which he wonders and to determine its cause:' (In I Meta., Tr. 2, Ch. 6) Although the beholding of the marvelous may give rise to wonder, they do not seem to be the same. Wonderthat wonder which is identical with puzzlement-is a movement, a movement in the one who is puzzled. Is it then a rr6.6T]~tct induced from "within''? Is it a rr6.6T]~tct at all? Or is it perhaps an tvtpyEtct, a being-at-work? Or is that the peculiar character of philosophy-that it is a rr6.6T]!!ct which is at once an tvtpyEtct? In Pericles, Shakespeare has Simonides say: "...Wonder, that is king of thoughts:' (II, iii, 28) Is wonder, then, a way of thinking? If so, it would be an extraordinary way of thinking. THE ST. JOHN'S REVIEW But in this way would it be a movement. This is more than to marvel or to be astonished. To wonder is to think 6.rr6pro~, to think "without passage'': to "move without moving''-an extraordinary way of thinking! Wonder is indeed the most baffling of things, for it calls forth itself; and this it does in two says; 1. It is rrctp6.A.oyov-unexpectable; it is absolutely spontaneous, absolutely unmotivated. And 2. It causes us to wonder about itself. What can evoke wonder? According to Aristotle, "... at · first they wondered about the strange-out of place (&.or6rrwv)-things closest at hand, and then continuing in this way step by step, they came to be in perplexity about the greatest things, such as the affections of the moon, and those of the sun and stars, and about the coming-tobe of the All." (Meta. 982b13-17) One can wonder about everything, about the whole. This is not surprising. We know already from Hesiod (Theog. 780) that Thaumas is the offspring of Tethys and Gea. Wonder is the offspring of the waters and the earth. Wonder is the offspring of the whole. It is from the whole that wonder arises. It is the whole which evokes wonder. This means that the condition for wonder is the being of the whole, the having of a whole. It is only within the whole, within the framework of the having of a whole, that wonder can arise. And this means that wonder is possible only for man. Wonder is human but, to follow Hesiod, it has a divine origin. The connexion which Theaetetus makes between wonder and perplexity leads Socrates not only to the further connexion of wonder to the origin of Philosophy, but also to the divine origin of wonder. To refer to its divine origin is, we know from numerous passages in Plato, to suggest that no account can be given for it4 , and that is to point to its own perplexing character. Wonder is sent to man from the gods. It is a "divine gift"(0E!ct ~to!pct). But to be in wonder is to be perplexed, is-in Theaetetus' words-''to become dizzied". A truly strange-ironic-and marvelous gift! To wonder is to be in perplexity. But what exactly is it to be in perplexity? Is it the same as to "seek to escape from ignorance"? Aristotle begins the Metaphysics in the following way: 'f\11 ~e~ by nature ?esire to know. A sign of this is the delight we fmd m our sensmgs; for even apart from their usefulness, sensings are delighted in for themselves alone, and above all others that sensing which comes through the eyes ... for ... we prefer, so to speak, seeing to everything else. The reason is that, more than any other kind of sensing, seeing makes us know and makes manifest many differences:' (980a22-27) Seeing earns its preeminence and its delightfulness from the fact that, more than any other kind of sensing, it "makes manifest many differences". It is through sight that "manyness" is made most manifest. But that means 83 �that the delight (6.y<inl] ot~) is taken in the manyness itself. The desire to know makes its first appearance as the love of manyness. It is the endless variety of sights that first attracts one's attention and interest. It is not simply the beauty of these sights, but their seemingly endless chang:ingness, that evokes one's interest. One delights in the anticipation of what is to come. This 6.y<inl]ot~ is at once "delight" and "love". The desire for knowledge first appears as the "love of novel sights". We are reminded here immediately of the distinction which Glaucon makes (Republic V, 475d, 476b) between qnA.oO&a!!l!l ("love of novel sights") and qnA.T]KOia ("love of hearing from mere pastime") on the one hand, and qnA.ooo<pia on the other hand. He is very hesitant to include the <ptA.oOE<i!!OVE~ and <ptA.ljKoot among the philosophers. Why? Because they run around trying to miss nothing. They make no distinction as to their worth among the things that may be learned. No learning is worthier than any other. This is learning which occurs therefore in the complete absence of what is good-which raises the question of whether it is learning at all. No distinction is acknowledged between the less important and the more important things. Yet the recognition of this difference between the higher and the lower is the mark of the wise man, and-though it sounds a paradox-it is doubtful whether there can be learning which is not guided by wisdom. They are not philosophers because they do not learn with an eye toward wisdom; they fail to see the difference between that learning which is wise and that which is not. But most importantly: they are not philosophers because their "desire for knowledge" does not arise from a condition of self-conscious ignorance. If the love of novel sights is the beginning of the desire for knowledge, then the beginning of the desire for knowledge is not itself the beginning of philosophy. Philosophy begins in wonder, but the love of novel sights is mere curiosity. Curiosity begets thinking which is not unopov (perplexed), and as such is unetpov (indefinite) i.e., it has no natural end; it has no goal. But to wonder is to think aporetically: it is not unEtpov because wisdom is the goal of philosophy, however ultimately aporetic that wisdom may be. Curiosity and wonder are not the same. In Being and Time, Heidegger remarks that "... curiosity is concerned with the constant possibility of distraction. Curiosity has nothing to do with eauT]<il;EtV-with the beholding of entities in wonder. To wonder to the point of not understanding is something in which it has absolutely no interest." (Sein und Zeit, §36, p.172) I know I'm being very hard on curiosity, but I must tell you that I'm doing so to make a point, to emphasize the difference-and I think it is a very great difference-between curiosity and wonder. But I would probably not be inclined to go as far 84 as Hegel who characterizes curiosity (because of its "rambling''- Faselei) as a disease. (Phil. des Geistes, §408, Zusatz) To wonder is to be in perplexity. And if that is not to be identified simply with the "desire to know" (since the latter first appears as mere curiosity), we have to ask again: What is it to be in perplexity? In Theaetetus, Socrates spends some time in a digression with Theodorus (172-177), in which he is careful to distinguish the way of philosophy from the way of contentious arguing. Within this conversation he gives us a description of the philosopher, a description which is playfully modelled on Thales, and especially on the reputed fact of Thales' having fallen into an open pit or well. We want to see if this description helps us to understand what it means to be in perplexity. The relevant text is 173c7-174e5. There are nine distinguishable characterizations of the philosopher. I will mention just the first of these: He doesn't know the way to the agora, or the whereabouts of the court or the senate. (173c7-d2) Does this tell us something about the philosopher's perplexity? It does if we translate it into a more general formulation of the claim. This would be the claim that The genuine philosopher doesn't know what is clear and obvious to everyone-the things which are most familiar to, and taken for granted by, everyone else. This clearly distinguishes the philosopher from everyone else: In what common understanding finds most familiar, most relies on, takes most for granted, the philosopher sees the greatest of difficulties. It is the philosopher alone who sees that what we (i.e. common understanding) begin with, and initially regard as most clear and intelligible, is in itself most confused and unintelligible. To move from what we regard as clear to what is in itself clear, we must first have acquired the insight that what we initially regard as clear is really "anopov. To acquire this insight is to begin to philosophize. To be a philosopher is to be in perplexity about all that ordinary understanding takes for granted as clear and intelligible. We can make this point even more forcefully: In the midst of this discussion with Theodorus, Socrates relates the story of Thales' having fallen into a well, or pit, and points out how laughable this is for ordinary understanding. But shortly thereafter (174c4-5), he characterizes the philosopher generally as always"... falling into pits and into every sort of perplexity...." Earlier in the dialogue (165b7), in response to Theaetetus' claim that any answer would be impossible, Socrates purposely uses this expression, "being caught in a pit" ("tv <ppea-n ouvq:6!!EVo~"). SPRING 1986 �"Being caught in a pit" is to be understood here as being caught in a question from which there is no escape. Socrates understands Thales' falling into the pit completely non-literally: to fall into a pit means to fall into perplexity. Thales fell into a pit. The ground gave way beneath his feet. He lost his ground. He lost that on which he was used to standing, that which he could ordinarily trust. What slipped away from Thales was the totality of the things which are accepted and taken absolutely for granted by everyday under-standing, the things upon which we ordinarily stand, the things which usually stand under us-all that is familiar, our familiar grounds. To fall into perplexity then means that all this slips away. If this happens constantly, as Socrates suggests at 174c4-5, that means that to be a philosopher is to be constantly without ground to stand on. All that was familiar becomes and remains strange. No longer can anything be taken for granted or trusted. Thales was apparently the first to suffer this, which is why he is the first philosopher. But what precisely is involved in this fall into perplexity, in which ones loses one's ground? What is this "ground" that one loses, and what is involved in its loss? To "fall into perplexity" ("si~ psa1a Ef!rci1mov") requires, of course, something to fall from. It presupposes the de facto givenness what is to slip away. And this means it presupposes within the philosopher himself a prior non-philosophic condition. That means: a prior condition of naive acceptance and trust. So not only is wonder possible only for man; it is possible only insofar as man already has a world. But this too needs clarification; for the world does not after all disappear or become radically transfigured with the fall into perplexity. The world does not suddenly change and become unrecognizable. Things go on exactly as before. Our passive expectancies concerning the general flow of things remain fully operative and undisappointed. I will borrow an expression from Edmund Husser!, and say that, although I have acquired the nonnatural-i.e., philosophical-posture, the typicality of the world and of our experience of the world remains entirely unaffected by this. Husser! comes to mind especially in this context because there is no one in modern timesand I mean no one-who has devoted as much attention to the problem of the beginning of philosophy. Let me quote one short passage from the Cartesian Meditations: "Meanwhile the world experienced in this reflectively grasped life goes on being for me (in a certain manner) 'experienced' as before, and with just the content it has at any particular time. It goes on appearing as it has appeared before; the only difference is that I, as reflecting philosophically, no longer keep in effect (no longer accept) the natural believing involved in experiencing the world-though that believing too is still there and grasped by my noticing regard." (Pp. 19-20) THE ST. JOHN'S REVIEW So everything remains recognizable and familiar. What becomes transformed, however, is this familiarity itself. It is this familiarity itself which now becomes strange. We need not rest here with paradox: This "familiarity" has two aspects, which coincide but are not the same. We are from the outset "at home" in the world. That means: not only is there always a certain regularity about the world, at least as to its general style, but the world is also from the outset there for us as simply- immediately (not through some "symbolic" system, e.g.), unthematically, naively-understood. Every encounterable objectivity has not only a typical style, but also a determinate meaning or sense. The world itself, as the universal, most comprehensive context of all things, of all the particulars within it, is thereby the universal context of sense in which each particular, delimited, or partial sense is located. Each partial or delimited sense is such only by virtue of its being found, located, within this comprehensive context of all sense. The world is the universal context of all sense. It is a "meaning-context"; it is the universal meaning-context. We have from the outset, accordingly, a certain understanding of the world as such, as a whole; from the outset the world as a whole has for us a certain sense. This is the most pregnant sense of "familiarity". Though this "understanding'' remains for the most part non-thematic, we are never without it; we always move with this horizon of understanding. This horizon of understanding is our world. To "have" a world, to "be at home" in the world, to have a comprehensive, all-encompassing context of meaning and sense, of understandability-all of this is to say the same thing: The world is the comprehensive context of meaning and sense. To "fall into perplexity" is to lose one's footing, to lose one's ground. Falling into perplexity involves the slippingaway of the totality of what is accepted and taken absolutely for granted by everyday understanding. This is captured nicely by the German word, Un-heimlichkeit, because of its double sense of "homelessness" and "strangeness': "uncanniness". One is longer "at home"; all that is familiar (in the designated sense) becomes strange. To "fall into perplexity" means that the world comes as a whole to lose its in-se-et-per-se understandability. That means: it ceases to hold sway as ultimately valid and independent. It is no longer simply "understood". In fact, it is only now that the question of understanding, of the world's understandability, becomes at all an issue. The world now presents itself as no longer in-dependent, but as in need of grounding, in need of explanation. All the "parts" of the worldall things and events, including ourselves-though they remain, and remain as recognizably the same as before, though they retain, that is, their typicality-nevertheless become strange. They become no longer simply understood or understandable. When we say that the ground 85 �slips away, then, we mean that what slips away is the sense of the world: i.e., the world itself, as the comprehensive context of meaning. What slips away is our understanding. To fall into perplexity is to come to no longer understand anything. We lose our grounds, the things which ultimately ground our understanding. It is these "grounds" whereby our understanding is guided, whereby it understands, when it understands. Whatever we understand, we understand via these grounds. These grounds are always at work, though we ordinarily remain unaware of them thematically. But should a question arise concerning any of the things we ordinarily experience, the thing in question is referred by our understanding automatically, passively, to these grounds. I.e., understanding moves automatically to these grounds to "locate" the things in question, to return it to its understandability. In this way, "things"-all things, including our selves-dependent on these grounds, are traceable to them; these grounds underlie and are at work in all things. They account for all things. To say that they account for all things, for everything, is also to say that they are responsible for the various ways in which things are interrelated. By this I don't mean interaction in the narrowly mechanical sense, but rather the internal references A has to B and to other things, the references inherent in the being of A, in its innerness, in its whatness. It is to these "whatnesses" that things and their interrelations are to be referred, in which they are grounded, and on which they are completely dependent. So it is that things are more than a mere "many", more than just isolated individuals, but are f!Opta-i.e., are parts of a whole (6A.ov). The whole (to 6A.ov) is, accordingly, more than a composite "All" (mlveetov niiv). It is an order of interrelations, an ordered whole, a KO<lf!O<;. The whatnesses of things bind things together so that all things form together a comprehensive context of interrelations-i.e., a "world", a K6<;J..to<;, an ordered whole. It is only insofar as things are so bound together that we can at all speak of a "world", an integral whole. "The world", then, as an ordered whole, is this interrelatedness of whatnesses. It is this that I had in mind when I referred to the world as the comprehensive context of meaning and sense. The "grounds" to which I have been referring, then, turn out to be the "whatnesses" of things, which account for all things and their interrelations-which is to say: for the world. To say that they account for everything is to say that they are the &.pxai-the principles-of everything. The whatnesses are the np<iltm&.pxai, the first and ultimate principles. They are the principles of everythingwhich means not only of things, but also of the counterpart of things, understanding. The principles are at work 86 not only in things, but also in our understanding. They at once make things intelligible, and cause understanding to be. From the viewpoint of the &.pxai, the world and understanding are counterparts of each other, expressing the double being-at-work of the &.pxai. The fact that Plato and Aristotle called these &.pxai interchangeably "el011" and "vol]t6." reflects not only the priority of the &.pxit, but also its peculiar doubleness. Its being at once a VOl]tOV and an e!&o<; is exactly reflected in the correspondence between understanding and the world. "Understanding" is the noetic expression of the &.pxai; "the world" is the eidetic expression of the &.pxai. It is, then, these 'apxai, the "whatnesses" of things, through which things are at all intelligible and through which understanding is at all possible, which are our familiar grounds. In the fall into perplexity it is these whatnesses that we lose. And when we say that it is our understanding that slips away, that we come to no longer understand anything, we mean that we come to no longer understand the whatnesses of things, through which alone we at all understand. The whatnesses of things are, of course, not the only kind of" grounds". One tends to think, e.g., of what are called "efficient causes"-in terms, that is of "conditions" (necessary or sufficient) and "results". These are also grounds of certain kinds. For us moderns, it has become more and more customary to focus our attention on these whenever something has become a "problem" for us. But by what-we should want to ask-are we guided when we attempt to determine these efficient causes and conditions? How do we know to what we should turn in order to make what has become problematic once again understandable? The turn to these is a turn to something determinate, and it must therefore be guided by something. But what could give such guidance, if not the whatness of that which has become problematic? Without a knowledge-however non-thematic-of this, how could we know that the thing in question can affect and be affected by other things of just these determinate sorts? Thus an understanding of the whatnesses of things is necessarily presupposed by the specification of all relations of cause and effect, condition and result. But if we do in that case continue to have this understanding of the whatness of that which has become problematic, then no true perplexity results, since we are guided easily and swiftly enough to those conditions which render the thing once again non-problematic. As long as those bearings which provide such guidance remain, we do not fall into perplexity because, though something has become problematic, we are pointed immediately to the way out of the problem. Perplexity is what it is precisely because it involves the coming to be without any such bearings. Since, therefore, any specification of the relation of cause- SPRING 1986 �effect, condition-result, is only intelligible-is in fact only possible-provided the whatness of the thing in question remains unaffected-i.e. continues to be "understood" (however non-thematically) and continues to guide any assignation of an efficient cause-it is not these groundsefficient causes-which are involved in the fall into perplexity; it is rather the whatnesses of things-i.e. the "bearings" themselves. The assignation of efficient causality must presuppose, for its bearings, an understanding of the whatness of what has become a problem. But in the fall into perplexity-into "un-understanding" -it is precisely this that we no longer have. There is yet another problem having to do with this ability of ours to refer what has become problematic to something else. It concerns this referability in general. An examination of this will make us see more clearly the utterly radical nature of the fall into perplexity. When we do lose our "understanding" of something (i.e., of its whatness), we suppose that we continue to understand other things-in fact, things at large. And indeed, the loss of "understanding" of the particular things compels us to tum to other things (i.e., to other whatnesses) which we suppose we understand-to refer it to these in order to "locate" what has ceased to be simply "understood", in order to retrieve our understanding of what has become a problem, to become once again "at home" with it, to render it once again familiar. What has become un-understood thus reveals, in its ununderstandability, that it is not something isolated, but has essential, intrinsic connexions with other things. This is, of course, something we always "knew", though it is perhaps only now for the first time that we take notice of it at all. And neither is that to which we now turn something isolated; this too presents itself rather as essentially interconnected with other things, including the problematic whatness we have just referred to it. In thus turning to these other things, we find ourselves referred ever beyond them. We come to see that the difficulty with which we began is far more extensive than we had at first seen. We discover the irony of our search: that each advance presents to us yet further obstacles. We come to see that the self-disclosure of the philosophic problem is a revealing that it is always hiding much more than it lets us see. A certain whatness becomes a problem. If, in its referral to yet another whatness to "locate" it and therefore retrieve our original "understanding" of it, the movement of thinking stopped there, no perplexity would result, since the original whatness would immediately cease to be a problem, for we would have now immediately "located" it (much like quickly finding something we had mislaid)-and this by virtue of the fact that it does always contain (even when it has become problematic) THE ST. JOHN'S REVIEW these "paintings" to other such whatnesses. This fact, that it does contain such "paintings" to other whatnesses, might appear to land us back in the very same difficulty which we discovered in our examination of efficient causality-viz., that insofar as the now problematic thing does continue to give us "bearings", we must still understand it, with the result that no perplexity occurs. Here, however, the matter is somewhat different: We lose our understanding of something-e.g., what it means to be a "human being". Though we continue to "know" that a human being is an animal, and therefore that the whatness of human being is connected with the whatness of animal, we are now aware that we do not know how they are connected, that we do not understand the precise nature of that connexion (indeed, this connexion, having now become problematic, for the first time becomes thematic for us), though we had always thought we did understand this. This brings directly to mind two notable cases in the dialogues of this incipient self-awareness: At Meno SOb, Meno confesses that he had always thought he knew what human excellence is, but now can't answer this question. At Sophist 244a, the Stranger says that we had all along thought we knew what being ("oov) is, but are now perplexed (rptopljKcr~ev) about it. This event in the Sophist is especially pertinent here. We, as well as the Stranger and Theaetetus, are brought to this insight that we are indeed perplexed about being-and are brought therewith to the initial thematization of being in the first place-by the inner logic of the movement of thinking from the initial questionability of "the sophist" through the questionability of inquiry (ZT]"Eau;), of art (TEJGVT]), of the image-making art, of falsehood (IJ!Eiloo~), and thence of non-being (~1)6v). Though they become perplexed about the whatness of being, their tum to just this bespeaks their recognition of the centrality of the whatness of being, its central connexion with everything they have been talking about from the beginning. This is clear not only from an examination of the whole series of themes that led them to the thematization of being, but also from the immediate context of 244a, as well as from what follows this passage: The immediate context has to do with the claim of certain of the physical philosophers that the only things that are are the "hot" and the "cold"; and the Stranger's and Theaetetus' insight is that they do not explain what the "m:e" means. Their own thematic discussion of this question (244b sq.) leads them through an uncovering of the five "greatest classes" (~tytam ytvl]), to the subsequent discussion which turns out to be a mirror image of the whole "preliminary" discussion, moving in reverse order from being to non-being (256d sq.) to falsehood (259d sq.) to the image-making art (264c sq.) to "EJGVT] in general (264d sq.). Apart from other 87 �things, this signifies that the connexions among these things (i.e., among these whatnesses), though having become problematic, have been preserved. The movement of referral of one theme (therefore: one whatness) to the next exhibits, at each step, the incipient recognition of the non-independent-i.e., problematic-character of what they take as their theme. The fact that the discussion subsequent to their thematic treatment of being and the greatest classes-iS a minor-image of the "preliminary" discussion which leads to the thematization of being, signifies among other things that, with the articulation of the problem of being (with the disclosure of its ultimately aporetic "structurerr), there is nowhere else to move to, but back to where they had begun, and along the very same path they had then taken. Thus these connexions among the whatnesses, as well as our recognition of them, remain, though they are now no longer simply "understood". The whatnesses and their interconnectednesses remain what they were-and yet, on the side of understanding, they have now revealed themselves to be indeed strange: the whatnesses show themselves to be non-independent, and their interconnectednesses too are opened up- which is to say: they too reveal themselves to be problematic. In fact, even what it means to be a "connectedness", a "connexion", is no longer understood, is problematic. So: even though the now problematic whatness can be immediately and automatically referred to one or more other whatnesses, it does not thereby immediately cease to be a problem. This movement of referral to yet ever other whatnesses is of necessity continuous, and it is just this which constitutes the fall into perplexity. The inherent logic of this movement of referral forces one constantly onward, until one reaches the point where, though referral still remains imperative, there is nothing left to which that referral can be made. The incipient aporia of a certain whatness necessitates its referral to ever other whatnesses, co-implicating from the outset all whatnesses in its own un-understandability. The movement of referral (as exhibited paradigmatically in the Sophist) reveals the thoroughgoing interconnectedness of all whatnesses. The fact that, in the attempt to retrieve the understandability of the original whatness, this referral moves through ever other whatnesses until one reaches a dead end which is at once a demand to proceed, shows that it is this thorough-going interconnectedness of all whatnesses that is involved in the fall into perplexity: there is nothing left to which to turn. The fall into perplexity is radical and total: it is the loss of all bearings, all grounds. 1bis can be formulated in yet another way: In the language of Republic 510b-511c, something becomes a problem-i.e. it reveals itself to be non-independent and therefore to be merely a 'onoee<n<;, to have been so all 88 along, whereas we had always up to now (however nonthematically) understood it to be in-se-et-per-se understandable and therefore as itself an upxl\, as its own upxl\, as independent, as in and of itself intelligible. The selfrevelation of its non-independence, of its merely "hypothetical" character, is at once its self-referral to something else (another whatness), something which at first appears in and of itself intelligible and therefore truly independent and ultimately grounding. But because the whatness with which we began has become problematic, even though it refers itself to-and therefore directs our attention to-another whatness for its grounding, its connexion with this second whatness also at once becomes un-understood. This renders the second whatness problematic (since it is now unclear how it is connected with the first), and leads thinking beyond it to locate that which would ground the connexion between the first and the second whatness. In other words, the second whatness, which had, when we were first referred to it, appeared to be in and of itself intelligible, as its own upxl\ now too reveals itself to be merely "hypothetical" and to require a ground, an upxl\. This necessarily leads us beyond itself to locate that which would ground it as well as the first whatness. But that to which we are now referred (some third whatness) presents the same difficulty, revealing its at first apparently archaic character to be in truth merely hypothetical, and therefore revealing the need to go beyond it to its ground. And so on. This matter is somewhat complex and involves more than merely a successive transformation of Upxa.i into 'uno6Em~v:;. The con:rlexions remain what they were-it's just that theynow disclose themselves as unclear, as no longer understood. The upxui remain as upxui relative to what they ground, but they now show themselves to be questionable, problematic, opaque. I.e., they now show themselves to be problematic both in themselves and as grounds, as to how they ground. Though they remain as grounds relative to what they ground, they now show themselves to be non-ultimate, for they now show themselves to not be in and of themselves intelligible. They point, that is, beyond themselves to the demand for that which would make them intelligible. This is not merely the transformation of 'upxui into 'onoetcret<;-indeed, it is our mere supposition ('on6eems) of these 'upxui which is now in suspension; perhaps it would be more accurate to say that the 'upxui-the whatnesses-reveal themselves to be 'unoK&(fl&VU: they "lie under" or "behind" what they ground, but not in an ultimate way, not with ultimate and absolute intelligibility-and this is so not only with regard to the relationship of whatnesses to "things", but also with regard to the interconnexions among the whatnesses themselves. It is in their ultimacy as grounds (i.e. their ultimate clarity and intelligibility as SPRING 1986 �grounds) that they fall away, revealing, point to, the demand for ultimacy; revealing, that is, the ultimate unclarity (and hence ultimate groundlessness) beneath them. It is this which was meant by saying that the fall into perplexity is the loss of one's grounds. Let us see how far we have come: We have seen that in the fall into perplexity all things, all connexions, remain, but as "un-understood". We no longer understand them-"what" they are. All whatnesses "slip away" from us, and this is what is meant by saying that we lose all our grounds. We have seen that, in the incipient aporia of a single whatness, all whatnesses are, from the outset, implicated-and that this is necessary, since otherwise the incipient problem would, in its referral to other whatnesses, immediately cease to be a problem. The fall into perplexity is radical and total: we no longer understand anything. In view of the thorough-going interconnectedness of all whatnesses it can be said that in the fall into perplexity we lose our understanding of the world as a whole. Though the world continues to be "there", and retains it typicality it is lost on the side of understanding. Earlier, I characterized "the world" as a thoroughgoing interconnectedness of all whatnesses, and therefore as a comprehensive, all-encompassing context of meaning and understanding-a characterization completely consistent with the ancient understanding of the world as a K6o:~o<; an ordered whole; a characterization, in fact, by which along this concept of the world as a KO<l!lOS becomes at all intelligible, since "order" bespeaks thorough-going interconnectedness-which is, in turn, intelligible only by reference to the whatnesses of things. In the fall into perplexity, then, we lose-on the side of understanding-the world as a whole, the whole context or framework of meaning which ordinarily guides our understanding, from which our understanding ordinarily takes its bearings; we lose that horizon of understanding within which we ordinarily always move. We lose, in fact, the very context-character of this context. There is, on the side of understanding, a thorough-going dis-integration of the interconnectedness of all whatnesses: things cease to have an understanding-reference to other things, There is a breakdown in the integratedness of the whole; there is, on the side of understanding, a breakdown of the whole itself. The whole ceases, for understanding, to be a whole. This context, normally thoroughly "closed", self-contained, thoroughly integrated, now "opens up", dis-integrates. As a consequence of this, things cease, on the side of understanding, to be "parts" (!l6pw.) of a "whole", but "break up" into a mere maniness. Things go on just as before, but now they are accompanied by our consciousness of not knowing how or why they do so. This is the essence of the fall into perplexity. THE ST. JOHN'S REVIEW The wholeness of the whole necessarily bespeaks limits, determinations, in terms both of ultimate encompassedness or enclosedness, and systematically ordered parts within. In the fall into perplexity these are lost. The internal interconnectednesses of parts are lost in the sense that they become unclear; the ultimate encompassedness is lost in the sense that that self-referral of a problematic whatness to ever other whatnesses to resolve itself, finally terminates in yet a further demand to proceed, opening up thereby the "outer boundaries" of the whole, and revealing thereby its ultimate non-independence. The whole ('t:o oA.ov) reverts to a mere "All" ('onfiv), in which the interconnectednesses of "'mfiv'u and the ultimate understandability of both "J.nfinu and 'o nfiv are absent. In the fall into perplexity, the whole become indeterminate, un-limited, limit-less, and this "openness" is indeed rev- ealed as something ultimate-and this in two senses: 1. externally, for the whole is not itself part of a larger whole to which it could then be referred, and thereby located and retrieved; and 2. internally, because of the breakdown and collapse of the "bounds" separating the 'upxui from each other-and therefore the breakdown and opening up of the 'upxui themselves. In this way does the "breakdown" of the whole amount to the disclosure of its ultimate non-independence and ultimate openness. The aporetic truth of the whole thus disclosed turns out to be the least expectable of things: the whole isaporetically-the "unetpov. And here one must ask in passing: Is this what Anaximander discovered? viz., the ultimacy of this openness, boundlessness(" unetpov); that it is in its ultimacy that the "limit-less" is the "ground" of everything-that ultimately boundlessness ('o "unetpov) underlies everything. In this way, then, the incipient aporia of a single whatness produces an opening up of the whole. This whatness now presents itself to us as something strange, and moreover as something we cannot simply refer to some- thing else (some other whatness) to obviate its strangeness. The interconnectednesses of all whatnesses having themselves now become problematic, we can no longer depend upon that self-referral of one whatness to others, which would ordinarily in such circumstances serve to resolve the incipient difficulty, thereby preserving and sustaining the holistic character of the whole. This selfreferral, though it remains (the interconnectednesses re- main, though as problematic), now shows itself to lead nowhere, to go no distance at all toward resolving the problem of that whatness about which we first became perplexed. Our recognition that all whatnesses have been co-implicated from the outset in the aporia of a single one, now forces us to remain with, to remain before, this par- ticular whatness, to keep it before us-though we no longer understand it-and thus sustain the tension of 89 �knowing and not knowing in which it involves us. It presents itself to us indeed as a tenswn, and m two senses: First of aJJ, it presents itself both as what 1t 1s, and yet as something unclear; for it is precisely what-it-is that has now become unclear. That is one tension. The second tension relates more obviously to us, to understanding: although we remain in contact with this whatness, this contact has become distantiated or stretched-opened up without breaking entirely-so that we now "have" this whatness-have it before us-and yet do not know what it is that we now have. In thus suddenly becoming for the first time problematic this whatness at once becomes for the first time them~tic for us. In becoming problematic, it for the first time awakens our thematic interest5 in itself. It is in its first becoming something problematic, strange, that our attention is first caJJed to this whatness. We behold th1s whatness now in an attitude of 8eropEtV ilnopTJTlKOV -a posture of beholding aporeticaJJy. Inseparably embodies in this beholding are the arche's having become thematzc, as weJJ as its having become problematic. This is to say that this beholding embodies the afore-mentioned tension between knowing and not knowing. And that is to say that the posture of 8eropdv ilnopTJT!K6v-~f beholdmg aporetically-is the self-formatwn of a questwn .. A question, so formed, and embodymgm th1s way the tension between knowing and not knowmg, 1s not sunply some sort of "thought-object"_, over and against us; it is far rather a state of tension wzthm us. As a tenswn, the question calls upon us, awakens us, set~ thinking in motion. A question so formed, constitutes Itself as a demand. It is this demand that the question makes upon us, which prompted me at the outset to characterize wonder as a thinking Un:6po)(;''-without passage; as a ''movement without transition". The question sets thinking in 1 11 motion, but this motion is "without passage": Here thinking is unable to proceed, and yet unable to rest. The question is a dynamic tension within us-in other words, a demand upon us. The being of a question is not primarily its verbalization or linguistic formulation. These merely express zt. The being of a question resides in that noetic disposition. or posture of 8eropetV 'unopTJnK6v, ~mbodymg the te~s10n between knowing and not knowmg. Th1s posture 1tself is identical with the question, for it is one with the selfformation of the question. Here I am helped by Hans-Georg Gadamer. Let me quote you a passage from the second part of Truth and Method. He says: "Any speech which intends to open up or lay bare someth~g, requires forcing open this very thing through ~he que~t10n. To question means to bring into the open .. What IS questioned must be put in suspension or brought mto unsettledness. 90 Every (genuine) question only acquires its sense by passing through such unsettledness, in which it becom~s an open que~~ tion. Every genuine question demands th1s openness. (Wahrheit und Methode, p. 345) It is, as I've argued, a certain whatness that comes to be in question-which is to say that this noetic posture I am describing is a relationship which understandmg has to this whatness. I have already described our aporetic relationship to this whatness as a thematic "having" which is at once a not knowing what it is that we have. This indicates that the question that so forms itself is not just any question. Insofar as it is the whatness of something which has become a problem for us-the whatness itself, which we cannot refer to anything else to resolve the problem~the question which so forms itself mu~t express just this relationship; insofar as our noel!~ attitude of eeropEtV U1l0PTJTIKOV arises in the already mdlcated manner, just precisely from a whatr:-ess be~o~e problematic, it must be just this whatness 1tself wh1ch IS reflected in the self-formation of the question. The whatnesses of things are the whatnesses of things precisely because they are the ilpxui in whose terms all things are understood; a1l things are referable to, are subsumable under, these whatnesses for their understanding-i.e., not only all particulars and all relations among particulars, but indeed the whole matrix of interconnectednesses which we call our ''world''. Hence an encounter with a strange or unfamiliar object immediately forms in us the question, ''What is it?'', whose resolution involves the referral of the object to the appropriate whatnesses. But where do we stand when these whatnesses themselves have become strange? A whatness becomes strange, problematic. Thinking is set in motion, yet this thinking is iln6pro~-without passage. We are unable to rest, and yet unable to proceed. We have this whatness now before us-though we are now aware that we do not any longer know what it is that we have before us-what this whatness is. The prethematic familiarity which we had always had with this whatness now gives way to a posture of 8eropetv ilnopTJnK6v. Having this whatness before me in this way, and unable to move anywhere, I must ask it-as I would have to ask of any strange object-what it is. The question which thus forms itself in our noetic posture of eeropdv U1!0pTJTIKOV is not just any question. The fall into perplexity is the self-formation of the "What is" question. III My argument has centered around a certain claim about the beginning of philosophy, and has attempted to show genetically and epagogically that the beginning of philosophy-or, what is the same thing, the fall into SPRING 1986 �perplexity-is the self-formation of the "What is" question. My claim for the unique priority of just this question receives textual corroboration from two sources: 1. That this question in particular is ultimate-i.e. that it is not resolvable into some other question-is supported by Phaedo 96 where Socrates, in criticizing the other ways of asking after the real (viz., the otiHi and the<\>), argues that these other ways are, and must be, reducible to the -riecnt. 2. That this question in particular is most central is supported by Aristotle who, in Topics I, 9, 103b23, places the -riecrn at the top of the list of the categories, and who in Metaphysics Z, 1028a15, says that, though -ro ilv is spoken of in many ways, the primary sense is -ro -rlecrn. In other words, the primacy and centrality of the -riecrn in the category-articulation of -ro ov indicates the primacy and centrality of this question as a question with respect to all the other possible questions which the categories express. This is to say: any and all questions which can be asked to anything are ultimately and necessarily referable to the primary and central question, the "What is" question. I have already had occasion to refer to a certain passage from Hans-Georg Gadamer' s Truth and Method, where he indicates that the being of something first comes to light in the questioning about it-that it is the question which first reveals the being of the thing questioned. I think I'm saying the very same thing when I say that, in becoming problematic for us, a whatness becomes for the first time thematic as well, and that these two moments are inseparable. To say that the being of what is questioned is first revealed in the question about it, must necessarily mean that the ''being'' of what is questioned is itself an aporia-that its revelation is the revelation of an aporia; for otherwise the question would not be, or would cease to be, a question. But if the being in question is revealed to be aporetic, that means that what it is is in question. And if it is the "what-it-is" that is revealed in the question to be an aporia, then the question which performs this revelation can only be the "What is" question. *** The argument of this lecture has revolved around a single point. That point is the point of connexion between wonder and the "what is" question. We have not moved beyond that point. We have only opened it up to show that the "What is" question is formed in a noetic attitude of "beholding aporetically" (8ewpeiv unopT]nK6v). In modern times it is above all Heidegger who reminds us of this. He speaks of wonder, the upxlj of philosophy, as that "clisposition" (Stimmung) in which we are brought before the being of beings. (Was ist das-die Philosophic?, Pp. 25-27) What does this mean: to be brought before the THE ST. JOHN'S REVIEW being of beings? It is, of course, to be brought beyond the beings themselves to that which both transcends them and yet is their being-that which, while not being one of them, makes them be what they are. But "what they are" is not something univocal-not a mere homogeneity (for if it were, then heterogeneity would be completely unaccountable)-and if we understand this phrase, "the being of beings", accordingly, we can say that wonderthe fall into perplexity-brings us before the being of each being, the "what is" of each being, its £too~. 1biS transcendence which wonder brings about does not result in the collapse of all the beings into a mere homogeneous unity in which all difference disappears. In being brought before the being of beings, wonder brings us before what is irreducibly an eidetic manifold, a range of whatnesses. Nor, in turn, is our transcendence of these whatnesses (we are, after all, now before themi.e., beyond them) simply the move to some thing beyond them; this move is far rather from these whatnesses taken as independent, to these same whatnesses taken as no longer merely independent; it is the move to their ultimate non-independence. 6 Wonder is the O.pxlj of philosophy because it is that radical and all-encompassing transcendence which is at once both a thematization and a revelation of the essentially aporetic innerness of the being that is thematized. It is in just this way that, in transcending the whatnesses of things, wonder both reveals them and opens them up as ultimate problems. In transcending the whatnesses of things, wonder becomes the "What is" question. *** This insight marks, at least in its explicit formulation, if not the traditionally-held historical beginning of philosophy, then certainly the Socratic beginning of philosophy-for we know the "What is" question to be the Socratic question. The cliscovery of the ultimacy and centrality of just this question seems to have been the original achievement of Socrates, at least as he is presented in Plato's clialogues. A study of the significance of this achievement may not bear upon the historical question-except perhaps to show that philosophy is essentially Socratic, and that the Socratic beginning of philosophy is therefore the same as the essential beginning of philosophy. I have, of course, indicated this already, but only in broad outline. To work it out in detail is the task for which this lecture has been only a prologue. *** Let me conclude by way of an epilogue: I began this lecture with a likely story. My point, of course, was to try to persuade you how barren and ultimately uninterest- 91 �ing such an account must be, since it cannot help but destroy just what it sets out to understand. But I now notice that, in my attempt to place before you the essential origin of philosophy, I too have had to give you a sort of reconstruction. And I therefore cannot end, without at least posing to myself the question, whether this too has not been a likely story. Thank you. Notes 1. I will indicate here in passing that Aristotle links the two participles under the single article:OO Cutop&v Kai 9aUJ.L<i~rov ot-rm O:yvoeiv. 2. This is seen clearly if we contrast it with someone like Meno. Meno's torpor, his immobility though it may astonish him is anything but wonder. 3. In the Theaetetus(155d1) Socrates in fact refers to -rU 9x;uJ.La(.Etv (i.e., an activity) as a nli9o<;. 4. As Socrates says at Republic II, 382d2-3: " ... ou'x 1:6 ~i] eoevat, 5nn-r'a},;q9E<; Exet nepi t& naA.m&v .... " (" ... for we don't know where the truth about ancient things lies .... "). 5. This notion of "thematic interest" is taken from Husser!. Cf. Erfahrung und Urteil, §20 et passim. 6. Cf. Republic VI, SlOb sq.; Phaedo 72e sq. 92 SPRING 1986 �A Hero and a Statesman Douglas Allanbrook Some years ago, together with a friend of mine, I climbed a high mountain in southern Italy. It was wild and savage country, though in the valley under the mountain there were several bleak and stony villages and on the other side of the mountain was the sea and the ancient town of Elea, city of Parmenides and Zeno. It's country fit only for goats and there was evidence of those interesting and destructive beasts everywhere. We followed goat-tracks all morning as we zig-zagged up the mountain. We got to the top around noon: it was a spare and flinty summit. The sun was clear, hot, and disinterested. On one side of the view was the glittering Mediterranean, cut by the curve of the coast from the cape of Palinurus to the citadel of Elea. On the other side were the heart-breaking ranges of the desolate province of Lucania. Everything was harsh and clear. We soon noticed at a distance of perhaps a quarter of a mile a solitary figure seated on a large boulder. As we got nearer to him we could see that he was a goat-herd and there were lots of his charges cropping away at whatever poor sustenance they could uncover at this barren height. He was old and rudely dressed. He moved not a muscle as we approached; though he was looking at us his eyes were careful not to show a flicker of expression. We were embarrassed and, wanting some con- tact with this solitary figure, we took out cigarettes, offered him one and took each of us one ourselves. He lit his and we lit ours and then we asked about his goats Douglas Allanbrook is tutor emeritus, St. John's College, Annapolis. A Hero and a Statesman was originally delivered as a formal lecture at St. John's College, Annapolis, in 1966. THE ST. JOHN'S REVIEW and about paths down the mountain. Still without a flicker of expression he looked at us and said "Voi siete quelli delle tasse" ("You're the people from the tax office"). The story ends here, since he said nothing more and was not interested in what we had to say and he went his way with his goats and we went our way back down the mountain. If we are going to talk about politics, and cities, and the origins of a particular modern nation-state, great caution is necessary. The true story I just told is a political story. It has to do with property, taxes, and suspicion. There was a head tax on each of those goats, a tax imposed by the central bureaucracy of a modern nationstate. The goat-herd was a citizen of a nation-state, whatever that means. None of us in truth likes to pay taxes, though here we have an elaborate contractual dance within which we can legally quarrel about the amount and nature of our yearly incomes. Some years ago our leading literary critic wrote a bitter and lengthy attack on taxes, citizens, and contracts. Certainly any attempt to talk with that man on that mountain about contracts between citizens, about constitutions, about man as a political animal, about rights and duties, about his patriotism, about the exigencies of national armaments, would have been futile and unjust. All of us have in truth deep suspicions within us as to our relation with this many-headed entity, the state. Politics, in one very basic if low understanding, is a dirty business, and the aura of greatness and the talk of virtue and the marble monuments are only too often meant to gild the mouldy reality. If we pride ourselves on having a different relation to the state than the man on the mountain in the story, we must be perpetually careful about what we subscribe to as members of a body politic. We are in truth mem- 93 �hers of a greater republic. If that is not so in some manner, however tenuous and slight, the words of the King of Brobdingnag to his gullible visitor, Gulliver, are perennially true: "I cannot but conclude the Bulk of your Natives, to be the most pernicious Race of little odious Vermin that Nature ever suffered to crawl upon the Surface of the Earth." There's a true story from the Spanish Civil War of an anarchist peasant, illiterate and desperately poor, who stood on a hill watching the destruction and bombardment of the great port city of Malaga. He reveled in the destruction as being the destruction of pride and wealth. He looked forward to a cleaner world of freedom and brotherhood. These opening remarks are meant to serve as a backdrop both to the general discussion of politics inherent in what will be set forth and to the specific events, the making of the modern nation-state of Italy, which will be the main matter of the essay. I should like to frame the subject more precisely now by giving you in a rough translation passages from two works of imagination which have specifically to do with Italy and generally to do with certain pregnant events in the coming-to-be of any modern state. The first passage is the opening of Stendhal' s novel The Charterhouse of Parma. On the 15th of May, 1796, General Bonaparte made his entry into Milan at the head of that young army which had just passed the bridge of Lodi and had just made the world aware of the fact that after the course of so many centuries Caesar and Alexander had a successor. The incredible feats of bravery and genius which Italy witnessed in these few months aroused a people that had been asleep: eight days before the arrival of the French, the people of Milan saw in them only a collection of barbarians and brigands, always in the habit of fleeing before the troops of his imperial Highness, the Emperor of Austria: at the least, that was what had been drilled into their heads three times a week by a little newspaper no larger than your hand, printed on dirty paper. In the middle Ages the Republicans of Lombardy had given proof of a courage equal to that of the French, and because of this had seen their city entirely destroyed by the emperors of Germany. Since they had become faithful subjects [fidCles sujets} of the Emperor their main preoccupation was to letter sonnets on pink taffeta handkerchiefs on the occasion of the marriage of a girl who belonged to some noble or rich family. Two or three years after this great event in the life of the girl she would take an official companion, a young cavalier: often the name of the young man she had chosen would occupy an honorable place on the marriage contract. Often in- deed he would be chosen by the family of the husband. There was an enormous difference between such paltry and effeminate doings and the deep emotions which the unexpected arrival of the French army aroused. Soon enough new and deeply felt ways came to the surface. The whole population realized on the 15th of May, 1796, that everything that they had respected up till then was manifestly ridiculous and even hateful. The departure of the last Austrian regiment marked the demise of old-fashioned ideas: it was now the fashion to live in the open; it was realized that to be happy after so many 94 centuries of pale sensations one had to love one's fatherland with a real love and to be on the lookout for heroic actions. One had been plunged into a black pit by the continual and jealous despotism of Charles the Fifth and Philip the Second: their statues were overturned and all of a sudden they all found themselves bathed in light. For the past fifty years, while the Encyclopedia of Voltaire had been flashing through France, the priests had been preaching to the good people of Milan that to learn to read or to learn anything of the ways of the world was hardly worth the trouble and that to pay ones tithes to the priest and to confess faithfu11y all of ones little sins was practically a guarantee of a post in paradise. To accomplish their task of enervating a people that formerly had been both so terrifying and so intelligent, Austria had sold them on the terms of a good bargain the privilege of not having to furnish recruits to its army. The second passage is from the novel The Leopard (Il Gattopardo), written by a Sicilian, Giuseppe Tomasi, Prince of Lampedusa and Duke of Palma. The novel was published shortly after his death in 1957. The protagonist of the novel is the Prince of Salina, a figure drawn largely from the author's own grandfather. Most of the novel takes place in the years 1860 and 1861 in Sicily. These were the years in which Italy became a nation. Sicily played a peculiarly important part in this event. In the Spring of 1860, Garibaldi landed with his famous "thousand" at Marsala on the western coast of Sicily and in a few weeks had conquered the capital, Palermo. This was accomplished by a rare combination of sheer courage and good luck, and abetted by the venality of the troops opposing him. He then went on to conquer the rest of the southern kingdom of Naples. The details of this event will occupy us in great detail presently. The scene from the novel takes place shortly after the first and most famous general plebescite that Italy has ever witnessed. The population of Sicily was asked to vote "yes" or "no" to the following proposition: ''The Sicilian people desire to form an integral part of Italy one and indivisible under Victor Emmanuel as their constitutional King." Sicily was of course already conquered and her legal rulers in Naples were besieged by Victor Emmanuel. The results in the Prince's village of Donnafugata had been as follows: registered to vote 515; actually voted 512; voted "yes" 512; voted "no" 0 (zero). The Prince, a highly intelligent and large man who has done valuable work in astronomical calculations, is out hunting with his faithful follower, Don Ciccio. Don Ciccio is, among other things, the organist of the local church and as poor as poor can be, which is very poor in Sicily, where much of the population is often on the verge of starvation. The only other person you really need to know about is the mayor of the town. He is a "new" man, as they said at the time, a wealthy peasant who has profited enormously from the commotions of the past six months, whose fortune now equals or even surpasses that of the Prince. He is des- SPRING 1986 �tined to be a future member of the new Italian parliament. The Prince suddenly asks Don Ciccio the following question: 'And you, Don Ciccio, how did you vote on the famous day?' The poor man jumped; taken by surprise, in a moment in which his guard was down, he hesitated, not knowing what to reply. The Prince took what was only surprise for fear, and was irritated. 'Well really, what are you afraid of? There's noth~ ing here except us, the wind and the dogs'. The list of witnesses was not a happy one, to tell the truth: the wind is a gossip, the Prince was certainly half Sicilian. The dogs were the only ones to be completely trusted and that only inasmuch as they were not equipped with a language. Don Ciccio pulled himself together, however, and his peasant shrewdness suggested to him the proper reply-that is, no repfy. 'Excuse me, your Excellency, your question is fruitless. You know as well as I do that at Donnafugata every~ one voted "yes." The author of the novel then traces the thought of the Prince as he trunks back over the past few weeks. Many humble people had come to him for guidance as to how to vote. He had told them all to vote 'yes'. Italy had been born on that day and that was that. Some evil fate must have been present, however. He could not dismiss thls from hls mind. At any rate the new country was born and one had to hope that it could live in the form it was cast in; any other solution would have been worse. He felt that the overly neat set of figures, 512 'yes', 0 for 'no', that the banal rhetoric of the election day speeches, had killed something or someone. Suddenly Don Ciccio gets to his feet: have changed anything in the final result, they would have if anything made it more significant: and one would have avoided this black bile of the soul. Six months ago one heard a harsh despotic voice which said 'Do as I tell you or you will be beaten.' Now one had already the impression that this threat had been replaced by the soft words of a money-lender: 'But you signed yourself. Don't you see your signature? It's perfectly clear. You must do as we say, look at the contract: your will is equal to mine.' As you recall, the first scene from Stendhal took place in the North, Milan, in 1796. The second passage was laid in the southernmost part of the South, in southern Sicily, in the very moment of the emergence of Italy as a state. Now certain geographical and historical facts must be presented at some length. Afterward the lives of the two men chiefly responsible for this unification will be discussed at some length. Without facts, events and characters, political discussion is without substance. First geography. At the very least then Italy is a peninsula, hemmed in at the top by the encircling ring of the Alps and on the other sides by water, cut in two down the middle by the Appenines. But geography does not make a nation any more than a common language does. It has often been pointed out that the patriotism of the He spoke in dialect and gesticulated, a poor puppet who was ridiculously right. '1, your Excellency, voted "no." "No", a hundred times "no." I know what you told me: necessity, unity, opportunity. You're probably right: I don't know anything about politics. I leave those things to others. But Don Ciccio Tumeo is a ''galantuomo'', poor and miserable, with patches on the seat of his pants.' (and he whacked one of those neatly sewn patches to make his point more effective) 'and benefits I don't forget; and those pigs in the City Hall swallow my opinion, chew it up, and then defecate it in the form they want. I said "black" and they make me say "white." For once in my life that I could say what I thought that bloodsucker of a mayor annulled me, acted as if I didn't exist, as if I never had anything to do with anyone, I who am Don Francesco Tumeo La Manna son of Leonardo, organist of the Mother Church of Donnafugata' (he bit his finger to restrain himself). At this point calm settled on the Prince who had finally solved his enigma: now he knew whom and what had been killed at Donnafugata and in a hundred other places in the course of that election day : a new-born babe had been killed: good faith and trust: the very creature that should have been taken care of, whose good health would have justified so many other stupid vandalisms already committed. The negative vote of Don Ciccio, fifty votes like it at Donnafugata, one hundred thousand no's in the whole kingdom, would not THE ST. JOHN'S REVIEW ~ l!lilim f<ingMm Df Sardint"tt C.rJd from Sar•Un&'tt 1:4 France, /860 OJ]] .Austrt'"an g f/nifiei. in 1860 '" 95 �Italians during most or nearly all of their history resembled that of the ancient Greeks. It was love of a single town or commune, not love of a country. To be sure, she had been quite homogeneous in religion from the time of Pope Gregory and there was a certain common culture and language as is clear from reading Dante and Machiavelli. Like the Greeks, the Italians were never united, except by foreign conquest, until the events which we are to trace took place. There is also obviously an enormous difference between Delphi and Rome, though the difference is more political than religious as far as the unity of the peninsula was concerned. Metternich' s cynical definition of Italy as a "geographical expression" is not without an element of truth, as is usually the case with political statements which offend. Except for the Po valley in the North, the country is poor and rocky and lacking in natural resources. Yet as all who have read Thucydides know such poverty can lead to resourcefulness and daring as well as to political backwardness and apathy. I can't see that any particular thing is to be explained by the geographical settingthough it is a setting within which events and politics are colored. The barrier of the Alps and the provinces of the Alps have often been disputed as to whether they are German or Slav. The state of Piedmont had its roots firmly in French speaking Savoy. Malta in the far south and Nice on the Western Riviera were always disputed territories. In one sense there has been an official language since the time of Dante. The spoken language has always varied enormously-to the extent that the dozen or so dialects are largely unintelligible outside their native districts. These dialects have their own literatures, just as the various regions preserve still, over a hundred years after unification, their own customs and ways of thinking. Up until the unification these various regions were politically divided with different traditions and systems of law, coinage, weights, and measures. One of the great annoyances of older Italy was the proliferation of customs barriers, set up not only between states but between cities and ancient communes. There were twenty-two customs barriers along the course of the Po river with all of the red tape and fuss that that implies. Such a state of affairs was disastrous for both agriculture and commerce. In the Northwest corner of Italy lies the region of Piedmont. Since 1815 this state included the important port of Genoa and the island of Sardinia. The King of this state was generally called the King of Sardinia and his family was the oldest ruling family in Europe, the House of Savoy. The Province of Savoy was part of the state of Piedmont until 1860, when it was bargained away to Napoleon III as part of the price for his acknowledging and fighting for the new state of Italy. Turin, the capital of Piedmont, became the first capital of the new Italy. To 96 the east of Turin lies, in the middle of the great plain of Lombardy, the city of Milan. Lombardy was an Austrian province until1859, when it was conquered by Piedmont. Still further to the east is Venice and its province. For countless centuries it had been an independent state, the "Serenissirna Republica." After the Napoleonic period it became an Austrian province for seventy years, until in 1866 it became part of the new kingdom of Italy. On the South of the Po valley were the independent duchies of Modena and Parma. These were indirectly under the rule of Austria, Parma having been given as a kind of consolation prize to Napoleon's Austrian wife. To the east of these cities were the provinces of Emilia and Romagna, property of the Pope. This northern phalanx of cities and provinces was and is incomparably the richest part of the country. Milan, the greatest city of the North, became the commercial and artistic center of the new kingdom. South of the Appenines on the west lies Tuscany. It was a Grand Duchy with its capital at Florence. The Grand Duke was Austrian. South of Tuscany is Rome, the seat of the Pope. Rome was a smallish Baroque town surrounded by antiquities. It was the capital of the ghostly empire of the Church and the temporal States of the Church, a territory which stretched in a lazy arch up through Umbria and the Marches around into the Po valley, a crazy quilt of cities and provinces pieced together by the nephew of a Pope, Cesare Borgia, as may be recalled from reading Machiavelli. The Southern half of the peninsula, from sea to sea, plus the island of Sicily, constituted the ancient and long-suffering Kingdom of Naples, sometimes known as the Kingdom of the Two Sicilies. In the rest of Italy it had always been known simply as the regno, the kingdom. It was one of the last stands of the famous Bourbon family in European history and it fell to pieces in a few short months in 1860 and was incorporated into the new Kingdom of Italy. It was the largest and oldest political unit of the peninsula, having existed as a kingdom for a half a millennium. The differences between the Kingdom of Naples and the North were profound. Naples and Palermo were on a different layer of civilization from Turin, Milan, and Florence. This was a deeper difference than that to be found between Boston and New Orleans in, say, 1850. Most of the inhabitants of this kingdom lived in squalor and misery, buffeted by earthquakes and droughts, and constantly subject to malaria. The next-to-the-last bourbon king, Ferdinand, who died two years before the demise of his realm, kept up the trappings of a feudal system, feared ideas, and kept his subjects sealed off as best he could from agricultural and industrial trends current in the rest of Europe. Roads were non-existent in many huge regions of the "kingdom." There were recurring peasant revolts in this kingdom, especially in Sicily. These were not "modern" revolts SPRING 1986 �but sporadic upsurges of black violence, in which a village would go berserk and slaughter the priests, the lawyers, and the land-owners. The capital, Naples, was the largest city in Italy and the fourth city in Europe at this time, ranking in population after London, Paris, and St. Petersburg. It was a fatalistic city and its kings were not ambitious. Ferdinand had a certain mordant wit and used to characterize his ancient domains as "being bounded on four sides by water-on three sides by salt water and on the fourth by holy water." The Sicilians detested the Neapolitans and this fact became most important in the events leading up to the unification. Ferdinand was called King Bomb, "Re Bomba," by his subjects, because of the cruelty of his bombardments of the insurgent city of Messina in 1848. Enthusiasm of any kind was always suspect. One eager young lieutenant, who had fought with distinction in Sicily, begged to return to the conflict. King Ferdinand looked at him with incredulity and asked if once wasn't enough for him. The city of Naples had formerly been a proud center of learning. It was the home of philosophers, of Vico, Campanella, and Giordano Bruno. The Southern mind at its best is contemplative and ab: stract. The future lawyers of the new state were apt to be Southerners. There was a brief and high-minded revolution in 1799, sparked by the nobles and upperclass patriots. It was put down, assisted by Lord Nelson and the British fleet, with the utmost cruelty. The counterrevolution of the Bourbons was led by that bloody prince of the church, Cardinal Ruffo, who publicly hanged the outstanding men of the realm in a square which is today know as the "Square of the Matyrs." The common people, the rabble, took little interest in these upper class doings and were more content with their old kings and superstitious and conniving priests. In defence of the Bourbons it must be noted that they always kept food prices low, were not ambitious, preserved the lazy corrupt ways of the kingdom, and developed a kind of kinship in both speech and practice that the common people could understand. Certainly the Kingdom of Italy after 1860 governed the region worse than the Bourbons and in a more despicable manner. A huge army of occupation was necessary, all of the provinces were given over to bandits, food was taxed, conscription was introduced, and all local industry was effectively destroyed by the North. They were given no autonomy and their ancient customs of law were brushed aside. As part of a "liberal" policy the lands of the church were broken up and sold to the most venal of speculators. The common peasant found himself ground down and reduced to more abject misery than before. The principal alleviation to this desperate state of affairs was supplied by the escape valve of emigration to America and by the money which returned from the New World in a steady stream. This fru- THE ST. JOHN'S REVIEW gal, and passionate people had to turn aside from their native land to find any decency or daily bread. In the thirty or forty years before 1860 the Bourbons had forced into exile or had imprisoned in the foulest of medieval fortresses the intelligent and independent minded among the Neapolitans. The presence either in exile or in prison of the most enlightened segment of the subjects of the kingdom had a powerful influence on the liberal opinions of the rest of Europe. The States of the Pope were in as parlous a condition as the Kingdom of Naples. There had been a brief flirtation with a constitution when Pius IX came to power and all of Italy had been swept with admiration and wonder at the idea of a liberal pope. "Who ever heard of a liberal pope'', commented Metternich. His predecessor, Gregory XVI, had been one of the worst and most reactionary rulers imaginable. Pius's liberal leanings were soon swept away. In the midst of the strange revolutionary fervor of 1848 a brief and glorious Republic was set up for three months in Rome, led by the visionary Republican Mazzini, and defended with desperate courage by the only hero of modern times, Garibaldi. This republic was soon put down by foreign troops, the army of the republican-emperor of the French, Napoleon III, and the full force of clerical repression was loosed on these unhappy states. Every vestige of representative government was swept away, any institutions protecting person and property against absolute power were abolished. The free press was abolished and spies, both clerical and lay, were unleashed. Prisons and galleys were filled with those who had worked for the Republic. The Vicar of God on earth retained his power only by the presence of foreign troops and mercenaries. Rome, the very name, Rome, had always been present in the mythology and aspirations of a certain few people in the peninsula. After the brief and glorious defence of its Republic in 1848, it became a symbol of a united state of Italy. For better or worse in 1870 it was made the capital of the new Kingdom when it was captured, in a brief and inglorious campaign, by the soldiers of Victor Emmanuel. Pius IX, with great ill-grace, retired within the walls of the Vatican, a self-styled prisoner, and the first Vatican council wrestled with the problems of his "infallibility." Tuscany to the north was ruled by a pliable and kindly old gentleman, the Grand Duke Leopold, who was not disliked by his people and was restored to power after the troubles in 1848. He wanted to make his rule popular and expressed disapproval of the Papal tyranny. In some ways the State of Tuscany was a model to Europe. Its legal and penal systems were exemplary, its universities were good and it was a tolerant place. Without the power of Austria, however, the Duke would not have been there. In the great northern provinces of Lombardy 97 �and Venice the Austrians after 1848 had learned the better part of wisdom and ruled with an admirably efficient and even honest bureaucracy, backed by a highly trained army and often excellent generals. They abolished many of the trade barriers, took the first census of population, and collected taxes justly. No other region of Italy was on any comparable level. At the time of the conquest of the city of Naples by Garibaldi there was wild popular enthusiasm. One of Garibaldi's slogans and cries was always "Hurrah for Italy and Victor Emmanuel!" A Neapolitan was observed by an Englishman present in the city at the time to cry out these words "Hurrah for Italy!" and then to turn to his neighbor and ask "But what is this Italy they're talking about? Is she the daughter of the King?" Even if one knew what Italy was and that it existed, a noted and intelligent Italian minister after the unification commented in a famous phrase that Italy was made and now one has to make Italians. In our own country, 1860 marks the beginning of the deepest and bloodiest travail and the questions of what the country was, if it was one, and who could be a citizen, was settled, if indeed settled, by oceans of blood. At least in Italy there was not much blood shed, but the question remained open. What one thing is referred to when the phrases 'it went to war', 'it is a good place', 'it has a destiny' are employed, the "it" referring to a nation? The question has to be answered sometime, and the avoidance of the question and the lack of good sense in the answer to the question has been the cause of untold suffering and horror. In 1922 the nation of Italy was taken over by a ruthless and pretentious journalist. With the help of his bands of thugs he ruled and mismanaged the country until the disasters of international war put an end to him and his immoral and farcical rule twenty-three years later. Nowadays there are hosts of new "nations", and the problem of understanding and defining state and citizen and good rule is discouraging and imperative. We shall perhaps come to some better understanding if we look backwards now in greater detail to the origins of the Italian state. After all, it came into being not under the aegis of any historical necessity but through the actions and decisions and thought of certain extraordinary men. Two men's actions were largely responsible for the creation of this state of Italy, Count Camillo Cavour and Giuseppe Garibaldi. One of them, Cavour, is generally considered the most consummate statesman of the century, and the other, Garibaldi, is one of the only genuine heroes I know of. The unification of the whole peninsula would have been impossible without both of them, yet there was no meeting of minds between them. They profoundly disliked and distrusted each other. This misunderstanding is not only personal, though it is that, 98 but is deeply involved in the nature of political action and thought. It is not going to describe much to say one was on the left and the other on the right. They both supported the king in their own ways and neither man was an extremist, though both were capable of extreme and even rash actions. There were two main parties at the time of the unification: we must understand them to understand these two men, even though Garibaldi's power rested on deeper things than party planks and Cavour exhibited a mastery of power that no party could explain. One party was known as "the party of action", it was a popular, democratic party, republican in its origins, with lines left open to a more radical left. The other party, known as "liberal" (though today in this country it would perhaps be known as "conservative") believed in a constitution with very limited suffrage. It deeply and at times fatally mistrusted popular movements. It was a party interested in commerce, banks, landlords, and free institutions. Cavour once said that the liberal method was good because "free institutions tend to make people richer." Cavour said to the parliament of Piedmont in March 1850 "You will see, gentlemen, how reforms carried out in time, instead of weakening authority, reinforce it; instead of precipitating revolution, they prevent it." The popular party in Italy had its prophet and its theorizer in Giuseppe Mazzini. He spent his life as a revolutionary agitator and as an inspiration to revolutionary youth. He was exiled from Piedmont in 1831, lived in France and Switzerland until he was exiled from those countries. He spent the greater part of his days in England, which he dearly loved. He was interested not in the mere political unification of Italy but in its resurrection. This resurrection was to be accomplished through the exertions of ordinary people. It was not to be brought about by any appeal to self-interest. The problem was moral more than political. One should put no trust in Kings and alliances. Redemption should come by sacrifice. America was no answer to him. He wrote that it is "the embodiment, if compared to our ideal, of the philosophy of mere rights: the collective thought is forgotten: the educational mission of the state overlooked. It is the negative, individualistic, materialistic school." His great cry was "Dio e populo" -"God and the People." As was quite natural for such a religious visionary, he detested the Pope, and for three glorious months in 1848 he ruled the Roman Republic. His method was continual insurrection. Though he was under sentence of death for most of his life, he made many trips surreptitiously back to Italy. Many courageous people followed him and lost their lives in one abortive uprising after another. His ideas went further than Italy; he envisioned a world of popular nations, rising in moral fervor as the fulfillment SPRING 1986 �of God's Providence. Though he was a mild and lonely man he became one of the most feared and hated men of Europe. In the earlier years after 1814-15, when the old and repressive orders were re-established in the Peninsula after the Napoleonic years, his program was the only thinkable one for ardent souls. While it may have been Utopian to think that the people would rise on their own initiative, putting aside selfishness, in those years noth- ing else was thinkable, since the Peninsula was governed by strongly entrenched governments who would suffer no talk whatsoever of constitutional reform. ks the years of the unification came round, many of his most faithful followers left him and became more practical. He found that the people rose only for selfish and non-national reasons and he was bitterly disillusioned. "I had thought to evoke the soul of Italy, but all I find before me is its corpse." The country was "rotten with materialism and egoism." He must have known at the end that his own intransigence was somewhat to blame. He had been capable of saying "I feel ready to stand before God as pure and confident as any believer in the world.'' He also confessed that he loved men at a distance but that contact with them made him hate them. It goes without saying that he and Cavour detested each other. He accused Cavour of "substituting Machiavelli for Dante" and Cavour, before 1860, had found his talk of national unity "silly twaddle." Cavour was perfectly content to have Mazzini plotting and leading ineffectual uprisings, as it only proved to the rest of Europe and to his conservative friends that he, Cavour, was the bulwark of order against such disturbing and revolutionary upsets. After his death the King, when Italy was safely one, would personally unveil a statue to this Republican prophet, a man who had been under sentence of death throughout the unification. Every third street in Italy is named after him and quite properly so. Mazzini had a function which is more properly religious than political, the visionary and mystic function of filling people's heads with hopes that are incapable of realization. These hopes are dangerous, because they unleash power. They define "nationality" and put a flame under it. The popular party, however much it may have abandoned Mazzini, never abandoned the idea of one nation, democratic and popular. If the nation was not to be under Mazzini' s god it would be under Victor Emmanuel, of all people. Garibaldi, who was originally a disciple of Mazzini, broke with him. The two men never trusted each other from the moment Garibaldi pledged his allegiance to Victor Emmanuel. Garibaldi himself was loved by the people as few men have ever been loved, but he was perfectly prepared to impose freedom on them if they didn't want it. Garibaldi was often thought of as a lion: not only was he courageous and honest, he could be ferocious and dictatorial. 1HE ST. JOHN'S REVIEW He was little troubled by ideas and he had lots of red hair on both the top and the front of his head. Mazzini in England once asked an English friend of his "Have you ever seen a lion at the Zoological Gardens? Did you ever look closely at the face of a lion?" "Yes, it's without detail." "Is it not a foolish face? Isn't it the face of Garibaldi?" The radical popular party is to be understood as falling somewhere between Mazzini and Garibaldi. Mazzini preached the gospel of insurgent nationalism based not on self interest but on duty and God. Garibaldi preached, if indeed it were preaching, Italy and Victor Emmanuel. He aroused enormous popular sympathy by the sheer force of his courage and honesty. As a general of irregular troops he was singularly gifted. He also, much to the annoyance of many, showed on occasion great good sense. The Liberal party of Cavour was not interested in National Unity or any religion that was connected with it. They abhorred popular movements and believed in cautious Constitutic:'ns and economic progress. Their innovations were concerned with new and better administration, mechanical progress, trade, and utilitarianism. Their model was England and its Parliament. They were of course anti-clerical; Cavour once defined Christianity as orthodox utilitarianism. Behind both parties lie revolutionary theory and practice. We, a revolutionary country, have perhaps grown used to the Declaration of Independence, but it was and may be viewed as a shocking and radical document. The events that followed its publication were also shocking. The Revolution in America and later in France not only showed that rulers could be overturned; they proceeded to demonstrate that it was proper and justifiable to do so. What had been for centuries regarded by most sober and prudent men as the ultimate civil and moral crime, rebellion, was now a thinkable foundation for society and morality. Hand in hand with these revolutions went the doctrine of "the sovereignty of the people" and of the popular will. Any discussion and any political action that has to do with modern "nations" must of necessity deal with these powers and the ideas inherent in them. The varying uses of the word "democracy" are as manifold and protean as the fish of the sea, and the word "the people" is as varied and multifold in its political usages as "democracy". At the time ofthe two Revolutions the doctrines of equality and brotherhood had the negative function of denying any group of human beings the right by either blood inheritance, privilege, tradition or ancient conquest to lord it over the rights of other human beings. The immediate application of these "inalienable rights" was to deny the rights of kings and priests and hereditary aristocracy. The positive affirmation of these rights is held by many political thinkers to be impossible: they 99 �are indeed almost impossible of definition. Talk about them easily degenerates into slogans. The serious discussion of them occupies most of our political thought. Mazzini, as you recall, felt that any talk of "rights" of "the people" had to be transformed into talk about "duties" of people, and he submitted that America was an example of the philosophy of mere rights and that it overlooked the educational mission of the state. Poor Don Ciccio, in the Sicilian story I told you earlier, was deeply wounded as a loyal man that his opinion, registered on a plebiscite meant to express the general will of the people, was discounted and falsified. As a defender of the old orders of Kingship and fealty he felt an obligation to repay benefits received with a "no" on his ballot that was to be registered by the new orders. If the new orders had not the courage or common sense to register protest, good faith was tarnished and non-existent and there was nothing left for any man of honor to respect or support. The new orders of the Liberal party of Cavour never inspired trust. This liberal party accepted the facts of the two revolutions and tempered them so as to make them reasonable. They detested the Pope and the Priests and wished no part of them in the running of the government. A Constitution was for them a way of keeping the king and protecting themselves from him simultaneously. It also served to protect them, who were generally midclle class people, from what they already regarded as the masses and from the license to which such people were subject. They were at the beginning confident that money and progress and opportunities for educated people could substitute for good faith and trust. It should perhaps be stated more fairly that they had faith and trust in what seemed possible and profitable. The definition of politics as the art of the possible has always titillated the pragmatic and the unwary. Let us now turn to the life and doings of the head of the Liberal Party, that master of the possible, Cavour. Without him there would have been no nation. He died a few months after the creation of the nation and without him the nation faltered. Count Camillo di Cavour was born in 1810, the younger son of a Piedmontese nobleman. He entered into politics as a minister in 1850 at the age of 40. He became prime minister in 1852 and was almost continuously in power until his death in 1861 at the age of 51. He was a shrewd and witty conversationalist with blond hair and blue eyes, portly in later life. Except in matters of dress, in which he was proverbially careless, he liked order. As was the case with Garibaldi, his command of Italian was imperfect. This was perfectly understandable, as the Italian language was, in general, unacceptable in the French-speaking society of Piedmont. All of his travels in the early years were to France and England. He was much better versed in French literature and English 100 history than in things Italian. As a younger son in a strictly regimented and backward society his education was not the same as that of his elder brother, who received training in Latin and Greek and acquired a taste for metaphysics. Young Camillo was sent to the Military Academy, where he became a prize student in mathematics, a subject which he always prized as forming habits of precise thought. He graduated first in his class from the Military Academy and was commissioned a lieutenant in the Corps of Engineers. Liberal ideas from abroad soon fascinated him and he was rash enough to write several essays. His family was shocked. His father had a post as the Royal chief of police and suggested a kind of semiexile for him. He was assigned to garrison duty in the Alps. There he studied English, read the works of Adam Smith and Jeremy Bentham, and followed with keen interest the workings of the English government. All of his life he felt more at home in things English and more at ease with Englishmen than with Italians. At 25 he resigned his army commission and for the next 15 years managed the family estates (at Liri). There he became famous as a bold innovator, introducing new accounting methods, crop-rotation, machinery for making beet-sugar, livestock-breeding, etc. During these years he also traveled extensively in England and France, observing factories and talking to politicians. In his rule over Piedmont he showed the same spirit as he had in running his farm: he took over an old-fashioned and illfunctioning unit and modernized it with the best available means. He was not at all interested in model farms, only in farms that worked and showed a profit. His family in all his earlier years found him a perverse and strange creature, often charming but interested in bizarre subjects such as political economy. His two maiden aunts could not imagine what he did when he went to Paris, since all he was interested in was politics and revolution and he never went to the theater. It is perfectly true that in later years he only went to the theater to sleep. On one of his trips to England he inspected gasworks, factories, hospitals, and prisons. He is said not to have objected to the use of the treadmill in itself in the prisons he visited, but he did think that unfruitful labor was demoralizing. Useful labor with a small gain would reform the convict. On his Parisian trips he gambled extensively. Indeed, gambling was a lifelong passion of his, which he controlled with difficulty, though he was often a clever and fortunate speculator. When he was prime minister he could be audacious to the point of folly, yet on the whole he was prudent and sensible. In 1845, though still a private man, he was one of the most unpopular men in the whole of the stuffy and provincial little city of Turin. Charles Albert, the King, a bigoted and querulous monarch, would often inquire SPRING 1986 �of Cavour's father as to the health of his son Camillo and of his extraordinary visits to hospitals and prisons. When talking to other persons the king would describe Cavour as the most dangerous person in the kingdom. He was so hated by the conservatives that he was privately asked to retire from his job as treasurer of an Orphan Asylum: his connection with it set all of higher society against the charity. He was equally detested by the radicals. One day when he asked leave to speak at an Agricultural association which the radicals controlled, most of the members rose and left the building. His older brother always disagreed with his politics. When Camillo was in power he always voted against him, though they lived together in harmony until the end in the family palace in Turin. In 1847 Cavour founded a newspaper in Turin to which he gave the name of II Risorgimente (the resurgence). It was this newspaper's name which became the official title of the whole Italian movement towards unification. He claimed that the experience he gained running a newspaper was as valuable to him in his later work as the knowledge of mathematics. Time was running short for the despotic and priestridden government of the king, Charles Albert. In many parts of Italy the yoke of foreign despotism was being preached against. The independent kingdom of Piedmont was more backward in its internal structure than that arch-devil of tyrannies, imperial Austria. Mystical fellows imagined a united Italy with the Pope at its head; it seemed a kind of miracle when an amiable and popular Cardinal, Feretti, was elected Pope as Pius IX and began to act like a Liberal. Cavour now for the first time showed his qualities of prudent daring and right timing. A public meeting of leading journalists and citizens was called to discuss petitions that the people of Genoa had urged. The Genoese, a lively and commercial people, were fed up with the slowness of things in the capital city of Turin and urged, among other things, the expulsion of the Jesuits, who were regarded as the worst enemies of a liberal Pope. Cavour announced to the consternation of all extremists at this meeting that what the Genoese demanded was not too large but too small. While the king remained an absolute prince he could not grant or would not consent to one thing or the other. The government itself was not one thing or the other. It had lost the authority of an autocracy and had not gained the power of any expression of the popular will. What was wanted was not any particular reform but a constitution which would retain both the monarch and the people. Cavour felt from the first to the last of his life that this form of government was the only one possible in a country such as Piedmont, a government which combined freedom with order. One of his principal political axioms was always "no state of siege." THE ST. JOHN'S REVIEW The Moderates thought Cavour had gone out of his mind, and the Radicals were furious, because they felt a Constitution would pull the teeth out of any revolution. They had no intention of being stuck with some imported English abomination such as a House of Lords. Cavour was given the nickname of "Milord" Risorgimento. The first two months of 1848 showed the accurate timing of Cavour. Constitutions became the order of the day. All over Europe revolution broke out. Every puny princeling in Italy seized upon that valuable device, which serves such good purpose in times of trouble and interregnum, a constitution. Charles Albert of Savoy, King of Sardinia and Piedmont, finally broke down after desperate family councils, threats of abdication in favor of his son Victor Emmanuel, and long hours of fasts and religious vigils. He had in former years secretly engaged himself always to govern the country as he found it governed, which promise had been deviously gotten from him by Prince Metternich of Austria. A high ecclesiastic now convinced him that it would be a greater sin to abandon his people in their need than to break a promise he could no longer maintain. Though in general his penmanship was of the highest quality, the signatrue "Carlo Alberto" written at the bottom of the Constitution of 1848 betrays a trembling hand. The Piedmontese Constitution of 1848 remained in force as the Statute of the new state of Italy for one hundred years until the year of our Lord, 1948. In the hands of Cavour this Constitution was a pliable document. It remained so in the hands of lesser men. Right of public assembly and right to freedom of expression in the press were granted but in practice were not inviolate even under Cavour. Ministers were technically responsible to the king and not to the parliament, though often in practice this meant a parliamentary government based on the cabinet. It was flexible in either direction: everything depended on the character of the King and his ministers. "The king nominates and dismisses his ministers" was in another article. He was not obliged to follow their advice; there were only vague generalities concerning ministerial responsibilities. Nothing definite was stated as to legislative initiative. The king alone had the executive power. Generals and admirals were appointed directly by him as Ministers of the Army and the Navy. By their oath of allegiance they were responsible only to him. The Constitution was received among scenes of high excitement and enthusiasm. Groups sang strophes of a new hymn called "Brothers of Italy". Cavour, doubtless remembering the reception his constitutional proposals had received earlier, whispered to his neighbor, "We are so many dogs." Shortly after this, while Austria itself was in the throes of revolution, the city of Milan liberated itself in five 101 �heroic days of barricades, the only truly popular insurrection in the whole history of the "Risorgimento." There was great agitation in Turin as to whether to go and help Milan. The English informed Carlo Alberto that the least act of aggression would place his throne in danger, but Cavour sensed the right course at that moment. The real danger to the dynasty was not to act. Non-action would most probably lead to Republican overthrow of the throne. In addition, a student of England's internal affairs, such as Cavour, could not conceive that England would allow a war in defense of an unpopular tyranny, to hinder the development of a more liberal state. Cavour wrote the most impassioned article of his life, the gist of which was that audacity was prudence and temerity wisdom and that the zero hour of the dynasty was at hand. Charles Albert invaded Lombardy with his army, entered Milan, and won a small victory. He passed a messy and disturbing year between Milan and Turin, as the Republicans of Lombardy and the Piedmontese could come to no political agreement and the king was muddle-headed. The Army was incompetent. The Austrians struck back a year later and utterly defeated the Piedmontese. Charles Albert was a broken man. He went into exile leaving the kingdom to his son, Victor Emmanuel, who had the courage to refuse the lenient terms Austria offered to him if he would repudiate the Constitution. Piedmont was in a dreadful state for two years. The good sense of Cavour finally prevailed; he became a member of the government in 1850. When he was furiously assailed in Parliament as being a lover of the English, he with great calm pointed out that it was the only country that had survived the storms of revolution. He told the assembly and preached constantly the doctrine that reforms carried out in time reinforced authority and, instead of precipitating revolution, prevented it. By 1852 he was in complete control. The King disliked him but was constantly outmaneuvred and had the sense to see that no-one else could do the job. Banks were established to provide credit, tariffs were reduced. Exports and imports trebled. The railroad network included half the mileage of Italy by 1859 and was a great help in the military mobilization of that period. A tunnel was bored through the Alps, bringing Paris to within a day's journey. The foundations of an armament industry were established, a canal was built which irrigated large sections of the country. International banks invested heavily. Cavour cared for the country as he had so successfully cared for his own estates. In 1852 Cavour accomplished what he felt to be his political masterpiece. It amounted to the destruction of a party system. Secretly, behind the backs of his colleagues and of the Prime Minister whom he wished to supplant, he made an alliance with an unscrupulous poli- 102 tician of the left-center, Ratazzi. This man was later, after Cavour's death, a most lamentably inept Prime Minister. The idea was to wed the right-center and the left-center so as to effectively eliminate the extremes. This would make for moderation and the golden mean in everything. It worked only too well with Cavour. It meant later that power was based on alliances within an amorphous government majority. All shades of opinion could be comprehended. Instead of resigning, ministers could try to change their policy and build another compromise. Anyone who didn't play the game was out of the picture. Any effective opposition was castrated. These are the politics of an opportunist who is both enormously sensitive to the shifts of opinion and who attempts to encompass all of them. Parties, in such a system, tend to become clusters of clients around their patrons. Such things as platforms and principles are constantly adjusted and have little meaning. It leaves government perilously free from opposition and criticism; there seldom will be any alternative government with a different policy and composition. In Italy no strongly articulated parties were to appear until the times of Socialism and Fascism in the twentieth century. This system was praised by men as eminent as Croce. In Cavour's hands it worked like a house-a-fire until1860: Piedmont flourished and became the center of Italian and European interest. Cavour was temporarily out of power after his first "marriage" with the left; but a ministerial crisis soon brought him back as Prime Minister, where he remained almost without interruption until his death. The retiring Prime Minister had written to a friend of his concerning Cavour: "the other one, whom you know, is diabolically active, and fit in body and soul, in addition, he enjoys it so much." Soon afterward charges of corruption were brought against the ministry in the matter of elections. Ratazzi, Cavour's ally on the left, admitted that constituencies were led to believe that it would be to their advantage to return the ministerial candidate. In the course of the debate, Cavour got up and not only acknowledged the "interference" but said that without it constitutional government would collapse in Piedmont. I quote him in this context "If you must resort to extraordinary means, then adopt them as energetically as possible, so that the grandeur you aim at may make up for the hateful methods you employ, and so that your government will not appear ridiculous as well as odious.'' Corruption in politics is in this way legitimized, and public and private life have separate codes of morals. The art of the possible is a definition that perhaps applies more precisely to diplomacy than to politics. In the field of diplomacy Cavour is generally regarded as a master. Let us examine the givens of his diplomatic problems and the aims and ends of his policy. The State SPRING 1986 �of Piedmont had been artificially put on its feet by the victorious powers of Europe after the Napoleonic Wars. It was designed as a buffer state that would separate the spheres of Austria and France. As such, neither Austria or France would suffer it to cease to exist. It was to the benefit of those two great powers to see to it that it fell not too extensively under the influence of either power. This gave a possibility of audacity of maneuver to the state of Piedmont that Cavour was well aware of. The other important fact was England. England was jealous of France and vice versa. They aimed at preserving a balance of powers on the continent. If Cavour were to gain the aid of France and Napoleon III in conquering and defeating the Austrians in the North so as to expand Piedmont into a kingdom of Northern Italy there was the genuine risk of not being able to get rid of France once one had finished using them. The counterweight of England might be used at such a juncture. This possibility was always another cornerstone in Cavour's structure. These were the everpresent possibilities of the power balance, the givens of the situation to be manipulated. Nothing would have happened all by itself, though many things happened by chance. Cavour was a great improviser and gambler and used to say that no one was a politician who made firm plans for next week. Nevertheless he had a shrewd insight always into the odds of the game and into the givens of the gamble. In 1853, feeling reasonably secure at home, and having overhauled the internal structure of Piedmont and reorganized the army, he voluntarily entered Piedmont as a belligerent on the side of France and England in the Crimean War, a war fought for the most devious reasons against the Russian Empire. Public opinion in Piedmont was incensed at this war. The Russians expressed what is certainly the truth when they stated that they found the entrance of Piedmont into the war to be 11 extraordinarily gratuitous." King Victor Emmanuel, a rough and ready corporal in character, brought up among military men and interested mainly in horses, and .ladies, was delighted with the idea and had said that if he couldn't go he'd be glad to send his brother. The Army Corps that was sent to Russia, while not covering itself with glory, won a tidy battle; the other nations admired the order of its encampments and the composure and constancy with which it endured the rigors of an epidemic of cholera that killed over 1200 of its soldiers. At the news of the victory the people of Piedmont became enthusiastic, and the King was disappointed when the war ended. Cavour entered this war in order to put his little state on the map and to gain the privilege of sitting in at the peace conference that concluded the war. The war had cost a great deal and the national debt soared. Cavour spent a careful two months at the peace conference. He unofficially THE ST. JOHN'S REVIEW called the attention of French and English dignitaries to the corruptions and injustices of both the Papal and the Austrian rule. The conference ended officially. The next day, however, at an unexpected extra meeting, Europe suddenly found itself talking about Italy and the necessity of something being done about Vienna and Rome. No one said anything in writing, but Cavour had managed to launch a kind of cold war in which nothing was strictly delimited. It was a risky business. Austria was a great power and had been mortally offended. France and England, almost without realizing it, made semiofficial statements of sympathy to Piedmont. This newly emerging concept, a possible kingdom of Italy, was made a European concern. The next move was to get an army into Italy that would have the power of destroying Austria in its provinces of Lombardy and Venice, and, having destroyed those armies, would then hand over to Piedmont the area conquered. This Cavour proceeded to do by enlisting singlehandedly and in a most secretive manner the help of Napoleon III, emperor of the French. Napoleon III was a vainglorious dictator-emperor, a nephew of the great Napoleon, a former conspirator and socialist, a dreamer who had the ways and manners of a second-rate waiter in a fancy restaurant. Filled with ideas of the rights of nationalities, he was an anti-papist married to a pious and powerful woman, a former socialist who depended on the Church party in his own country. He is perhaps the only dictator who was dedicated to giving more freedom to his own people and actually did so. He led his country to disaster at the end, namely foreign invasion and defeat. As opposed to Napoleon I and Hitler, this dictator had no fire in his guts. Cavour met with this devious and mercurial man secretly at a small town called Plombieres, and there made a pact the full details of which are not known. What does seem to have been bargained for was the cession to Piedmont of Lombardy and Bologna and the granting to Napoleon of the ancestral province of the King of Piedmont, Savoy and the city and region of Nice, the birthplace of Garibaldi. This pact was the acme of secret diplomacy entered into privately by two men without consultation with their respective countries. It was left to Cavour to deliberately provoke an incident which would give a legitimate cause of war between Austria and Piedmont, at which point Napoleon III, against the wishes of the majority of his subjects, would enter Italy at the head of his army. It is difficult to know what honesty would imply in such a man as Napoleon III. In Cavour's case it is certainly true that he did not mention that he had more in mind than the Austrian provinces. He was fomenting unrest in Parma, Modena, Bologna, and the large province of Tuscany. It is not at all clear 103 �what kind of eventual political settlement Cavour had in mind for all of these possible provinces. He was playing at possibilities; a federation of provinces may have been all he had in mind, though certainly such a federation was to be headed by him and not the Pope. The official "lives of the Saints and founding fathers", which are always draped on men after a nation has been founded, obscure these facts of actual policy. Neither Napoleon III or Cavour had the slightest idea that Victor Emmanuel would shortly be King of all Italy. Neither of them wanted such a result. Napoleon III was obliged to the Pope, and no one at the moment took Garibaldi seriously. Napoleon III, after his secret pact, began to prepare opinion in France and Europe for his coming intervention. At the same time he began in every way to try to squirm out of it. He had been in his youth enough of a revolutionary to know of the passions his intervention would arouse among Italian Liberals and Radicals. He, the defender of the Pope, was to aid the most violently anti-clerical nation in Europe. In addition there was the furious fact of Cavour. He used as much ingenuity to get out of the trap as Cavour did in trying to keep him in. The stupidity of the Austrians saved Cavour's game at this moment: they rose to his bait and needlessly sent an ultimatum to Turin at the very moment when England and the other powers were about to accept a scheme for the demobilization of the three great powers. Cavour, who had been in a state of almost hysterical tension for days, rubbed his hands in glee and war was quickly declared. The Austrian Army vacillated, giving time for the French to arrive; and the forces of France and Piedmont defeated the Austrians at the Battle of Solferino. Parma, Modena, Bologna, and Tuscany threw over their rulers, proclaimed their independence, and instituted governments, the heads of which were all Cavour's men. Now Napoleon III did something that is often called an act of perfidy. It was not. The Italians, after Solferino, expected to surge onto Venice and drive Austria from the northern plain. Napoleon, after the battle, had had enough. He had never really accepted his own actions. He saw that he had exacerbated sensibilities both in France, in Europe, and within himself. He visited the battlefield the morning after. The sight of thousands of corpses caused him to vomit. He quickly arranged a peace treaty with the Emperor of Austria, returning everything to its original rulers except for Lombardy and Parma, which reverted to Piedmont. Napoleon gained nothing. Cavour was humiliated and furious. The Radicals regarded the treaty as the destruction of his infamous methods of diplomacy and immoral alliances. He lost his temper to the extent of calling his king an unmentionable name to the King's face, and he flounced out of office leaving 104 Napoleon holding the bag. The stigma of treachery descended upon the Emperor of the French; Cavour saved for himself the reputation of an outraged patriot. Garibaldi said the fairest thing after Solferino: "Do not forget the gratitude we owe to Napoleon III, and to the French Army, so many of whose valiant sons have been killed or maimed for the cause of Italy." Everything worked out well for Cavour however, as the revolted provinces of Tuscany, Bologna, and Modena remained in the hands of his men. No one bothered to enforce the return of their older rulers. Cavour was soon in correspondence with Napoleon on this matter. He did, however, insist that Napoleon be given Savoy and Nice. He was back in power soon enough when a cataclysmic event occurred which overturned all calculations. Garibaldi with a thousand men conquered Sicily, and moved on to overturn the entire kingdom of Naples, all of this with the intention of moving all the way to Rome and proclaiming there a united kingdom of Italy with Victor Emmanuel as King. He had already proclaimed himself dictator and fully intended to make a present of the South to the King of Piedmont. This startling man, Giuseppe Garibaldi, was born in Nice on the 4th of July, 1807. He was 53 at the time of his finest achievement, the overthrow of the Kingdom of Naples. He died in 1882 at the age of 75. When he visited England in 1864 popular enthusiasm reached such heights that the government was preoccupied. President Lincoln offered him the command of a northern army in 1864. Garibaldi considered himself an American citizen for a great part of his life. It would be hardly correct to talk about the upbringing of Garibaldi; it hits the mark more to simply say that he grew up, the son of a simple sailor in the small port city of Nice. His father earned the family's living with his boat. He was the captain of a small craft that coasted along the Riviera from Nice to Genoa and occasionally as far as Barcelona in the other direction. His mother at the beginning thought she would like her son to be a priest, as it was one sure way of avoiding his entrance into military service. A priest who was a family friend was entrusted with preparing the boy for seminary. He had absolutely no success and Garibaldi detested the Church with genuine fervor all of his life. A retired military gentleman had much more success with the boy and was most happy with his pupil. No one could ever teach him grammar or syntax, as was gloriously evident in all of his later public utterances; but Garibaldi committed to memory and impressed on his soul enormous amounts of Roman history, whole sections of the "Divine Comedy," and entire pages of certain novels of Voltaire. He had a splendid boyhood around the port, was a famous swimmer. At the age of thirteen ran away from home SPRING 1986 �with two friends on a fishing boat borrowed for the occasion. At the age of fifteen he began signing on as a sailor, voyaging over all the Mediterranean and the Black Sea and to the Orient. Navigation was difficult in those days; he became and remained all of his life an expert mate and captain. He also had his first taste of sea fights, as pirates were a constant menace in those days. At the age of 26 he had been on the sea for eleven years and was the quintessence of what the Italians call simpatico: handsome, healthy, open, strong, enthusiastic, and completely honest. He was first mate on a ship bound for the Black Sea and the Orient at this time. Twelve extraordinary men were on that ship, crazy men, visionary men. They were followers of the revolutionary socialist SaintSimon and were led by an actor with a large voice and extravagant gestures who had been on the boards at the Comedie Fran~aise. The French police had grown unhappy with this group and they were emigrating to freer lands. Garibaldi was entranced with the actor; for the first time in his life he had to do with a man who was an "intellectual," a man with a whole bag full of theories and visions and new religions. The religion was an exultant potpourri of Temples of Theology and Industry, of the Woman as a Messiah, etc. One distinction the actor made remained perpetually in Garibaldi's soul for the rest of his life. This was the distinction between a soldier and a hero. A soldier, according to the actor whose name was Barrault, was ''he who defends his own country or attacks a foreign country; in the first action he is pious, in the second unjust." The Hero, on the other hand, is "he who making himself a citizen of the world takes as his homeland Humanity and offers his sword and his blood to whatsoever people there be that are fighting against tyrarmy." These words from the mouth of the tawdry and rhetorical visionary became in the actions of Garibaldi's life a force that destroyed a corrupt and ancient tyranny, the Kingdom of Naples, and that led Garibaldi to deeds of valor in both the New and the Old Worlds. He was, in the terms of the above distinction, a hero and not a soldier. His patriotism was directed to all peoples. Many were puzzled when, at the end of his life, a great and revered Italian hero afflicted with crippling arthritis, he went to France in 1870 and fought against the Germans one of the few successful campaigns of that dismal war. Subtle minds, diplomats, and statesmen never could believe he meant what he said. Victor Hugo, in the sad days of the defeat of France, rose and called the attention of the French Assembly to the fact that Garabaldi was the only military leader who had not suffered defeat. He said that "no one rose to defend this land of France, which has so many times taken in its hands the cause of civilization: not one king, not one nation, but one man .... " One of the most prevalent sins of the cultivated THE ST. JOHN'S REVIEW and worldly mind consists in mistrust of fervor and simplicity. Statesmen realize they must deal with such phenomena, which are always popular, but it is a rare statesman who can bring himself to believe that a simple and good man means what he says when he says it out loud and in public repeatedly all of his life. The bitterest pill of all for the adept statesmen is when the simple and heroic man exhibits plain horse-sense in the midst of a difficult and complex political situation. We must also be on guard that our good taste and sense of literary style and syntax do not stand in the way and prevent us from sensing the truth. Garibaldi, in his memoirs, writes of the vessel on which he made this voyage as "not being the vehicle charged with exchanging the products of one country with those of another, but as being the winged messenger that carried the Word of the Lord and the Sword of the Archangel." Soon afterward he met with a believer-member of Mazzini's revolutionary association, "Giovane ltalia," and heard for the first time the words Patria and Italia combined and was told that it was Mazzini the armed prophet who employed such words. Young Garibaldi was soon enough at Marseilles searching out the disciple of the faith. We know little of this first encounter between Garibaldi and Mazzini; they both remained silent in later years concerning it, perhaps because of the deep mistrust and pettiness which fogs all of their later connection. At any rate, Garibaldi was baptized into the new faith and took the solemn oath "invoking on my head the wrath of God, the hatred of men, and the reputation for infamy if I ever betray in all or in part my oath." The master told the new disciple that "if we throw out a spark of live fire, Italy will be a volcano." Garibaldi declared himself ready to be the spark; he was soon given money and a mission. This mission was to circulate along the whole Ligurian coast (the Italian Riviera) sigrring people up for the movement in preparation for an uprising that would be sparked by Mazzini' s invasion of the North from Switzerland. He soon had thousands of signatures, since his honesty and directness were irresistible. The headquarters at Marseilles now directed him to enlist in the Piedmontese navy in order to infiltrate the conspiracy among the enlisted men. He enlisted in 1833. The naval records described him as having "reddish hair and eyebrows, broad forehead, aquiline nose, round face and chin, healthy natural color.'' The Piedmontese navy had the peculiar habit of requiring their recruits to adopt a pseudonym. Garibaldi chose the name "Cleombroto." The recruiting officer must have been embarrassed to inscribe on his records the name of the ancient Spartan hero, the brother of Leonidas and the father of Pausanias. Garibaldi very successfully organized a revolutionary cell on board his first ship and was transferred to another vessel. He had dis- 105 �tributed lots of money and enthusiasm. He managed to obtain a medical shore-leave at Genoa on the days that · were fixed for the insurrection, but on shore the insurrection never took place. Mazzini never left Switzerland, the plot was discovered. Garibaldi fled back to Marseilles with a sentence of death proclaimed against him by the government of Piedmont. This was in 1834. Back in Marseilles there was a great fracas of accusations and bickerings, which always accompany conspiracies, and Garibaldi had his first frustrations and disillusionments with Mazzini. Later in life he used to characterize the "disciple" as an expert in "Revolutions by Correspondence." He began shipping out again as a first mate. In 1835 he left Europe for South America. He remained there for thirteen years and learned the techniques of guerilla warfare that were to shake the Old World later. He found himself already noted among the Italian exiles in Rio when he landed. He was much feted by the revolutionaries and Mazzinians of Brazil. He soon wearied of talk and became a kind of pirate chief, with the official title of head of the Navy of the insurgent Republic of Rio Grand of the South, which had proclaimed its independence from the empire of Brasil. The government of this republic was mostly on horseback, an association of wildly independent cowboys and ranch owners. The details of this period are complicated. Garibaldi fought on land and sea, on horseback, in all kinds of weather: he developed techniques of living off the land and of lightning attacks; he was captured and tortured; he married a wornan of the people, who was a constant companion in these wars and who bore children in the midst of campaigns. During the last eight years in South America he was the principal sustainer of the republic of Uruguay, defending Montevideo against the dictator of Argentina, Rosas. In the last years he formed an Italian Legion; for the first time the uniform became a red shirt. In all of these wild years, on horseback and in the middle of insurrections, there are two important things to be noted: he would never fight unless he had an official document either from the roving Republic of the Southern Rio Grande or from the Republic at Montevideo, and he never made any money from his fighting. At the time of his glory in Montevideo as defender of the Republic, his wife, the loyal Anita, had to beg candles from the neighbors. When he left South America in 1848 he must have been the only General who ever left that troubled continent without funds or a carefully cherished bank account in Switzerland. The glorious news of the 1848 revolution in the motherland rendered Garibaldi and the Italian Legion frantic with impatience to return to Italy before it was too late. A public subscription among the Italians at Montevideo finally raised the money for a boat. Garibaldi and sixty- 106 three of the Italian legion set sail and finally disembarked at Nice in June of 1848. There was wild enthusiasm for him as his feats of valor in South America had made him famous to an extent that he had hardly realized himself. He almost immediately offered his sword to Charles Albert, the head of the government which had condemned him to death thirteen years earlier. Charles Albert hemmed and hawed and finally sent him up to Turin to the Ministry of War. There he found great distrust, and it was suggested that he go and help the Venetians, who were in revolt against Austria, and become a kind of pirate chief. He was disgusted and went to Milan, where the popular revolution received him with enthusiasm and made him General. He and Mazzini met, but the tables were turned from fifteen years earlier; Mazzini enrolled in Garibaldi's troops as a standard bearer. The Piedrnontese army collapsed under the assault of the Austrian's. Only Garibaldi fought on. He called for volunteers and carried on a guerilla warfare with success and courage as long as humanly feasible. In the opening months of 1849 Rome revolted. The Pope fled to the protection of the King of Naples. Garibaldi and Mazzini both arrived, and Mazzini for three splendid months was the effectual ruler, the chief of the "triumvirs" of the newly proclaimed Roman Republicthree months in which he acquitted himself with charity, tolerance, and even political skill. The days of this Republic were numbered. Napoleon III had no intention of tolerating its existence. The first French Army which attacked Rome was roundly defeated and repulsed by Garibaldi. New troops arrived and all the might and modern armament of France was brought to the siege of Rome. Garibaldi and his men defended the city from the heights above the Vatican with furious courage and spirit. Garibaldi was finally forced to retreat. He himself never considered that the Roman Republic had ceased to exist: he always regarded himself as its general. He now began a retreat with what remained of his troops across the length and breadth of half the peninsula, eluding the combined forces of the Kingdom of Naples, the Duke of Tuscany, and the Emperor of Austria. This retreat has become the epic of the Italian nation and is a modern "anabasis." The whole month of July he twisted and turned and confused the generals of the enemy. Food and ammunition became scarcer and scarcer. Many of the troops melted away. He had said to the volunteers that left Rome with him the following words, words which he had pronounced in the midst of St. Peter's square, under the Egyptian obelisk that is the central ornament of that great and noble space: Fortune, who betrays us today, will smile on us tomorrow. I am going out from Rome. Let those who wish to continue the war against the stranger, come with me. I offer neither SPRING 1986 �pay, nor quarters, nor provisions; I offer hunger, thirst, forced marches, battles, and death. Let him who loves his country in his heart and not with his lips only, follow me. By the 31st of July he had arrived at the tiny and independent Republic of San Marino. There he finally dismissed his troops. With a few followers he fled to the coast of the Adriatic and tried to gain Venice, which was still holding out against the Austrians. In all of this retreat he was accompanied by his loyal wife, Anita. She was pregnant and near to death in these days; he finally left her corpse in a peasant's cabin in the marshes near Ravenna, and fled to escape the Austrian police. He made his way across the Appenines. With the help of a clandestine organization he proceeded from the coast of Tuscany to a port near Genoa, Porto Venere. The government of Piedmont quite typically was afraid to allow him on their soil; his travels continued until finally he arrived in New York in July, 1850. An enormous welcome had been prepared for him, which he declined. He lived as a private citizen on Staten Island, hunting and fishing with his friends there and earning his living in a candle factory. He tired of this and took up his old profession of sea captain, voyaging as far as China and Australia. In 1854, he returned to Europe, inherited a bit of money from his brother and that, together with his savings as a captain, allowed him to buy an island. This island was to be his home from now on. It is a small and rocky place off the coast of Sardinia. With the help of faithful friends and companions he built himself a kind of South American dwelling of four rooms, all on one floor. He raised goats and cows and scratched a bit of produce out of the bare soil. He was always happy on his domain of Caprera, receiving many of the notables of the world there in patriarchal simplicity. The great events of 1860 were now approaching. Garibaldi was annoyed that Italy and Piedmont were relying so heavily on foreigners and on diplomacy. Cavour was well aware of his presence; he intended to use him, up to a certain point. If Garibaldi were on the side of the king, the whole popular movement could be swung away from Mazzini; such unreliable firebrands, and the horrors of republicanism could be avoided. This went well at first, as Garibaldi got on excellently with Victor Emmanuel. Despite striking differences, their characters had certain strong things in common. They both liked cigars better than perfume, bowling better than whist, and battles better than politics and diplomacy. One of the mysteries of the whole unification is exactly what the king said to Garibaldi. Even Cavour never knew all that passed between them. While the French and the regular Piedmontese armies fought the Austrians, Garibaldi, at the head of special troops, was held in the sidelines. The General Staff were embarrassed by him; they were cut THE ST. JOHN'S REVIEW to the quick in their professional pride when he won astounding victories with his troops. The policy of Cavour was to give him a certain rein but never too much, to obstruct his free maneuver. In the eyes of the people and in the eyes of those fervently interested in a new nation he was the only figure of honesty and courage. He also was the only Italian General who gained victories. By April of 1860 the new Parliament of the expanded state, which now included Tuscany and all the northern plain except Venice, met. Garibaldi erupted on the floor of the parliament, furious at the cession of Savoy and his own birth place, Nice, to France, which action he regarded as a crime. Cavour said Tuscany was certainly worth Nice, but nothing could stop Garibaldi's outburst, which caused embarrassment even to his friends. He resigned from parliament and wrote that his soul was in mourning, that he was full of disgust. Ten days later he left for Sicily and the greatest adventure of his life. The departure of this expedition, which was the culminating event in the making of the nation, was attended by the most complete confusion. It seems practically sure that Cavour wanted no part of it; he had formed a new kingdom of upper Italy, it had a monarchicalconstitutional government that was functioning; he was desperately afraid of disturbing Europe any further, let alone unleashing internal troubles of a radical nature. Let the Bourbons rule the South and he and the King the North: the height of folly would be to stir up Rome and the Pope, whom France was sworn to defend. The King probably liked the idea of the expedition but was afraid of Cavour. It is probably correct to say that the expedition was arranged privately, though there were all sorts of semi-private groups involved. It was off and on until the night of the departure, when it finally left in two old rented steamers. The moneys for the enterprise only arrived by the last train down from Milan, late in the evening. The rifles promised never turned up; all the early fighting was done with rusty and decrepit flint-locks. Sicily did not rise immediately upon Garibaldi's landing, though the terrain was somewhat prepared by months of agitation and by the presence of revolutionary groups scattered throughout the island. The expedition was by no means composed of workers or peasants: the majority of the volunteers were doctors and professional men and students of the northern plain. Once the expedition sailed, Garibaldi's agitation of the earlier weeks vanished and his peculiar mastery over the hearts and actions of his men was in evidence. The odds against success were enormous. The Neapolitan government had at its disposal a large professional army with 25,000 men in arms in Sicily and a navy that was sizable and far stronger than Piedmont's. They were sailing to an island that was as strange as Africa to them. If they failed they could ex- 107 �pect only derision, death, and exile. Their own northern government would certainly disown them in defeat. They landed at the little port of Marsala on the Western coast on May 11, under the eyes of the Neapolitan fleet. They barely got ashore when one of their boats was scuttled and the other destroyed by the enemy. They were alone on this strange island. Two days later Garibaldi declared himself dictator in the name of Victor Emmanuel and Italy. For Garibaldi the name ''dictator'' was a noble and antique title, borrowed from the Romans, signifying the assumptions of extraordinary powers for a certain prescribed length of time, in the name of and for the good of the people. On the 15th he won a decisive battle at Calatafirni, a battle fought against great odds and won with raw courage and bayonets. The Dictator well knew that this battle was the one which would make or break him, as the astute and long-suffering southerners would not flock to him until some measure of success had been gained. Twelve days later he entered and captured the capital city, Palermo. All of his guerrilla tricks and craftiness were employed. For nights beforehand the mountains around were covered with watch fires; his informants gave him information as to the easiest entrance-way. He had also in the meantime decoyed a part of the enemy troops into the interior. When he broke his way into the city the Neapolitan General, holed up in the Palace with over 18,000 men, bravely declared that he would bombard the city, exhibiting that peculiar faith in civilian bombardments which is so striking a feature of modern warfare. The effect on the civilian population, as is always the case, was hatred and loathing of the perpetrators of such barbarities. The Sicilians detested the Neapolitans to begin with: the bombardment was the most effective means of increasing that hatred. The Neapolitans panicked and Garibaldi, with his simplicity and grandeur, was worshiped almost as a God by the city. General Lanza, the Neapolitan General, felt he had to sue for an armistice, but in perfect Bourbon style he said that it was impossible for an officer of His Majesty to treat directly with a brigand. He asked a British Admiral who was in port to get in touch with the bandit chief. The Englishman said he could take no part in such dealings but was glad to offer his ship as a meeting place for two parties who were to be regarded as equals. His Excellency, Giuseppe Garibaldi, played it most coolly. He was capable of great dexterity at times. He was down to the last few rounds of ammunition and well knew that the troops he had decoyed into the interior were on their way. He signed a truce and immediately procured for himself by requisition all of the ammunition depots of the capital. Naples panicked completely. On the 6th of June 20,000 troops of the King of Naples surrendered and filed on board the Neapolitan ships and left. 108 While the capitals of Europe resounded with his name and he was absolute dictator in a major capital Garibaldi settled down in one very humble room of the Palace with his cot-bed, saddle, and a good supply of cigars. If even his closest friends had doubts as to his ability to govern, it can easily be imagined how frenzied and apprehensive Cavour was, a peninsula away in Turin. Surrounded by Mazzinians, radicals, moderates, frightened conservatives, uprising peasants, generals, and student visionaries, Garibaldi governed well. Everything was done in the name of Italy and the King; he consistently appointed ministers of sound, moderate stature. Though one of the most ardent anti-clericals of his time, he understood the religious superstitions of the Southerners and participated in high mass at the Cathedral, sitting in the throne of the Apostolic Delegate with his red shirt and bare sword, a secular Archangel, while the Cardinal performed the holy office. This was an act of plain good sense. Only if performed by a man of lesser stature could it be called Machiavellian. The next six months made the nation. They are six months of political conflict between the statesman, Cavour, and the hero, Garibaldi. The difference between these two men is not to be thought as a difference between right and left, though that pair of tags applies. It is a difference between keen intellect and simple courage, between knowing what popularity means and being popular. If there are mythological parts to the soul of a state, these two men represent two of the parts, two good parts, but two parts between which there can be seldom any meeting. Cavour represents coolness and faith in Parliamentary ways, combined with Machiavellian methods and pragmatic awareness of the importance of material things; Garibaldi represents enthusiasm, nationalism, honesty, self-sacrifice without hope of reward, and courage. Cavour lost the first rounds in this conflict. Garibaldi's expedition to Sicily, which Cavour had regarded as both idiotic and dangerous, had succeeded. Cavour now had to swallow this immense fact and adjust his policy, namely to take Sicily away from the dictator and get it into his own hands. He sent a vainglorious and despicable man to Sicily to attempt to take over the government and represent his interests. This man only aroused dissension in the island. He was banished from the island by the dictator's orders on the same boat with two common spies. Cavour then tried to annex the island immediately to the state of Piedmont by the method of a quick plebiscite, hoping therein to stop Garibaldi's avowed intention of marching on to Rome and Naples. He failed in this, Garibaldi insisting on a regional assembly that would respect the local interests of the island. Cavour next tried to prevent Garibaldi's crossing the straits to SPRING 1986 �the mainland, but again suffered defeat. The straits were crossed with great wariness and skill by Garibaldi, probably with the confidence of the king, who was another of Cavour's problems. The Dictator, with supreme confidence and skill, won a major battle on the mainland in Calabria and marched straight north by forced marches to the capital city Naples, with the remnants of the Bourbon power disintegrating before him and the population aroused to enormous heights of enthusiasm. Cavour indulged in the shabbiest of double dealings with poor little King Francis at Naples, treating officially with him through ambassadors, who were negotiating for an agreement while at the same time trying to foment a popular rebellion of his own through agents and trimmers within the kingdom. It was to no avail. Garibaldi entered the greatest city of the Peninsula in triumph on the 7th of September, Francis, the last of the Bourbon kings, having fled a day or so before to the fortress of Gaeta. Once again the Hero, surrounded by adulation and absolute ruler in one of the greatest cities of Europe, did not lose his head, but showed himself eminently fair-minded. As a loyal subject of his king, he immediately made a present of the entire Neapolitan fleet to the Admirals of Piedmont. This again was an enormous fact to be faced by Cavouran entire and ancient realm was being offered to the King as the result of a popular revolution and uprising led by a heroic Dictator. He again tried to provoke an immediate plebiscite so as to annex this uncomfortable kingdom to his own government and give it the semblance of respectability before Garibaldi should proceed on to Rome upsetting the whole apple cart of international diplomacy and offending the clerical government of Napoleon, who were, as you recall, the sworn defenders of the Papacy, and without whom Cavour and his northern Italian kingdom would never have come into existence. Garibaldi's march to Rome was thwarted by the unexpected resistance of the Bourbon's army north of Naples. He fought his greatest battle and won it, though it was at a price in men and materials that stopped his further advance. This battle, which was fought on a major scale and was by no means a guerrilla skirmish, showed Garibaldi to be the most skillful general on the scene by any criterion of generalship. It was now that Cavour stopped losing and assumed command. Breaking all rules of international behavior and adopting his opponents' tactics, he proceeded to invade a neutral state, attempting to give it the appearance of a popular uprising. He sent the King and the army of Piedmont on a ruthless march of invasion through the states of the Pope, with the avowed purpose of their answering a cry from the downtrodden subjects of his Holiness's government. The real purpose was obvious to everyone-he would by this stroke assume command of the revolution, forestall Garibaldi's ad- THE ST. JOHN'S REVIEW vance to Rome, and arrive on the scene in the now defunct kingdom of Naples with the King and Army of Piedmont. He won this move: it was his greatest moment. It is a most paradoxical moment and was an enormous gamble. He had somehow to persuade people to back a revolution in order to prevent a revolution. He had to push for a policy of universal suffrage and popular sovereignty by plebiscite, an idea which he and his party abhorred for the most profound and reasonable political reasons. It must be realized that to support a plebiscite after the overthrowing of a legitimate government implies the right of rebellion against any constituted government. He had to swallow the idea that a popular concept of nationality as proposed by Mazzini was, in the newly emerging reality, a practical idea. With consummate tact he suggested to Napoleon Ill that Cavour was the only safeguard against Garibaldi and revolution and suggested to Garibaldi that Napoleon III was an ever-present danger to the unified state. This amounted to threatening Napoleon with Garibaldi, and Garibaldi with Napoleon, and hence neutralizing both, leaving himself, Cavour, as the kingpin in the game. In the midst of this he was sending arms secretly to Hungary, as a revolution there would have been handy in preventing any Austrian intervention and just might mean getting hold of Venice. Not the least of his difficulties was Victor Emmanuel, who had been given his head and was in command of the armies. The King had to be made to realize that he was a constitutional monarch, that is to say be made to think he was the boss while leaving Cavour as the true master. The last scenes of the drama unfolded in Naples. Garibaldi, with a few followers, went forth to meet the King as he was advancing at the head of his armies. He took off his hat and saluted the King as the first King of Italy. He and the King rode together awhile on horseback in silence. Garibaldi was melancholy; the King was embarrassed. A few days later the Hero rode in the same carriage with his King into Naples, as the King's ministers had felt it essential for appearance's sake. The King refused even to review the ceremony that marked the dissolution of the Dictator's troops, troops which had just gained for the King a kingdom. Garibaldi suggested that he be retained for a year as ruler in the South, as he had full command of the people's love and trust. This was refused. He was offered a title, a yacht, an income. He refused all of these, saying that he had not fought to make a career for himself but to make Italy. He departed from Naples a few days later, an embittered man, complaining that he had been thrown aside like an old orange peel. He took with him only a few essentials for his island farm, among them a bag of seed-corn. This conflict remained an essential flaw in the new 109 �state. The majority of the citizens in the south of the new Kingdom remained uninterested in and detached from the distant government at Turin. In the North, where the majority of Garibaldi's volunteers came from, deep mistrust was sown. On the 14th of january, 1861, the new Kingdom was proclaimed officially. Garibaldi wrote to his friends that to make the country great one had to get rid of politics, which was a" dirty and bestial" thing. He described the Parliament as a nasty assemblage of words and sold interests. He appeared in Parliament on the 18th of April in his red shirt, South American poncho, and flowing beard. Looking straight at Cavour she said: "I ask of the representative of the Nation if, as a man, I will ever be able to shake the hand of him who has made me a stranger in Italy." This ghastly scene, together with the terrible worries from the south, hastened Cavour's death, which occurred less than a month later. Mazzini, as you recall, had faith in "Dio e populo." Garibaldi had faith in the King, no matter what happened, and had faith in a free people, whom he was prepared to liberate whether they were ready or wanted it. Cavour, despite all his skill and cunning, had faith in a Parliament, a faith that may have been as misleading sometimes as the faiths of Mazzini and Garibaldi. It is only fair that we read Cavour's own statement of faith, 110 as it is perhaps the only statement that is acceptable to prudent men. I quote from a letter he wrote in French to a friend of his in December of 1860: For my part I have no confidence in dictatorships, especially if they be civilian dictatorships. I believe that one can accomplish many things with a Parliament that would be impossible under absolute power. An experience of thirteen years has convinced me that an honest and energetic minister, who has nothing to fear from the revelations of the representatives, and who is not of a nature to be intimidated by the violence of faction and party, has everything to gain from parliamentary conflict. I never feel so weak as when the Parliament is not in session. This is understandable, as I could not with impunity betray my origins, or deny the principles of my whole life. I am the son of Liberty, it is to her that I owe all that I am. If a veil is to be put on her statue, it will not be done by my hand. If one persuaded the Italians that a dictator was a necessity for them, they would choose Garibaldi and not me. And they would be right. The Parliamentary road is longer, but it is surer. The elections in Naples and Sicily don't frighten me. I am told that they will be bad: so be it. The Mazzinians are less to be feared in Parliament than in their clubs-the calm even air of Turin will quiet them. The majority of the nation is monarchial, the army is pure and cleansed of all Garibaldian stain, the capital is ultra-conservative. If with all of these elements we cannot move ahead, we should prove to be the greatest of imbeciles. SPRING 1986 ��� Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource <em>The St. John's Review</em> Description An account of the resource <em>The St. John's Review</em><span> is published by the Office of the Dean, St. John's College.  All manuscripts are subject to blind review. Address correspondence to </span><em>The St. John's Review</em><span>, St. John's College, 60 College Avenue, Annapolis, MD 21401 or via e-mail at </span><a class="obfuscated_link" href="mailto:review@sjc.edu"><span class="obfuscated_link_text">review@sjc.edu</span></a><span>.</span><br /><br /><em>The St. John's Review</em> exemplifies, encourages, and enhances the disciplined reflection that is nurtured by the St. John's Program. 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Creator An entity primarily responsible for making the resource Office of the Dean Publisher An entity responsible for making the resource available St. John's College Identifier An unambiguous reference to the resource within a given context ISSN 0277-4720 thestjohnsreview Contributor An entity responsible for making contributions to the resource St. John's College Greenfield Library Text A resource consisting primarily of words for reading. Examples include books, letters, dissertations, poems, newspapers, articles, archives of mailing lists. Note that facsimiles or images of texts are still of the genre Text. Page numeration Number of pages in the original item. 110 pages Original Format The type of object, such as painting, sculpture, paper, photo, and additional data paper Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Creator An entity primarily responsible for making the resource Office of the Dean Title A name given to the resource The St. John's Review (formerly The College), Spring 1986 Date A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource 1986-04 Contributor An entity responsible for making contributions to the resource Sterling, J. Walter Coughlin, Maria Freis, Richard Freis, S. Richard Sachs, Joe Stickney, Cary Wilson, Curtis A. Sachs, Joe Allanbrook, Douglas Brann, Eva T. H. Jones, Mary Hannah Littleton, Michael Bart, Robert S. Goerner, E.A. Harris, Geoffery Riezler, Kurt Lenkowski, Jon Description An account of the resource Volume XXXVII, number 2 and 3 of The St. John's Review, formerly The College. Published in Spring 1986. 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Format The file format, physical medium, or dimensions of the resource pdf St. John's Review https://s3.us-east-1.amazonaws.com/sjcdigitalarchives/original/e135a839d3f5734df662dac67d615f9f.pdf 111cbb45ea98e31646e4fb29b9eabcdc PDF Text Text The St. John's Review Volume XXXVIII, number one (1988 - I) Editor Elliott Zuckerman Editorial Board Eva Brann Beate Ruhm von Oppen Cary Stickney (Santa Fe) John Jim Doren (Alumni) Robert B. Williamson Assistant to the Editor John Lavery The St. John's Review is published thrice yearly by the Office of the Dean, St. John's College, Annapolis; William Dyal, President; Thomas Slakey, Dean. For those not on the distribution list, subscriptions are $12.00 yearly. Unsolicited essays, stories, poems, and reasoned letters are welcome. Address correspondence to the Review, St. John's College, Annapolis, MD 21404. Back issues are available, at $4.00 per issue, from the St. John's College Bookstore. © 1988 St. John's College. All rights reserved; reproduction in whole or in part without permission is prohibited. ISSN OT/7-4720 Composition Best Impressions Printing The St. John's College Print Shop �A Notice about Volume Numbering and Dating The two preceding issues of the Review were Volume 37, number one, which contained the writings ofWilliam O'Grady, and Volume :rl, numbers two and three, the double issuethatincludedessays in honor of Mr. O'Grady. They bore the dates Winter, 1986, and Spring, 1986. The Review now continues with Volume 38, of which there will be three issues, labelled one, two, and three, and bearing the date 1988, without the specification of seasons. No issues of the Review bore the date 1987. �Contents LECTURES 1 ... 25 . " 'Ear-Tickling Nonsense': A New Context for Musical Expression in Mozart's 'Haydn' Quartets ftYe J. Allanbrook Some Interpretations of The Magic Flute: The Auden Translation and the Bergman Film Beate Ruhm von Oppen OCCASIONAL SPEECHES 41 The Program Old and New Douglas Allanbrook 47 Truth Given and Truth Sought: Two Colleges J. Winfree Smith FICTION 55 ... How Liberty Won the Sweet Sixteen From The Tales of the Liberty Renaissance Ken Colston VERSE 66 Two Translations of La Fontaine Elliott Zuckerman BOOK REVIEW 71 . " Allan Bloom: The Closing of the American Mind Eva Brann Decorations by Emily Kutler Musical calligraphy by Tina Davidson ��'Ear-Tickling Nonsense': A New Context for Musical Expression in Mozart's 'Haydn' Quartets Wye J. Allanbrook My talk today is a "likely story" -an attempt to present a coherent aesthetic context in which to place some familiar music, in the light of several questions that have occupied me recently. The music is some string quartets of Mozart. The questions are threefold: first, the problem referred to by the teaser in my title: why did late-eighteenthcentury theorists and critics think so little of music without a text, that "ear-tickling nonsense," as one described it?' Second, why is there so little recognition today of the importance of the topos, or characteristic musical style, to the rhetoric of Classic music? And finally, perhaps most perplexingly, what does instrumental music express? Can we say that it is about something? I think the three questions are related, and the following is my attempt to tell a convincing story about this music that takes them into account. It is strange that a repertoire we place high in the canon of serious music-the Classic instrumental ·repertoire-developed without Wye J. Allanbrook is a Tutor and Assistant Dean at St. John's College, Annapolis. She is the author of Rhythmic Gesture inMozarl: Le nozzedi Figaro and Don Giovanni (University of Chicago, 1983). This lecture was written while she was in residence at the National Humanities Center in North Carolina. It is a sketch for the introduction to a book on the chamber music of Mozart and Haydn. A shorter version of the lecture was delivered at the October, 1987, conference of the Midwest Society for Eighteenth-Century Studies, and was awarded the prize for the best paper. 1 �2 THE ST. JOHN'S REVIEW spokesmen for its new and.compelling ways; no one seemed to be watching. Or the few who were watching clung to a tradition that devalued instrumental music as at best unnatural and uninstructive, and at worst "nothing but mere noise. " 2 We think of the last decades of the eighteenth century as the time when instrumental music had at last attained its majority: Haydn "fathered" the string quartet and symphony, so the story goes, and J.S. Bach had already contributed masterworks for various instrumental ensembles. Nevertheless, as one observer points out, in Bach's oeuvre vocal works predominate; he did not grant pride of place to these autonomous instrumental marvels. 3 And, as the quotations suggest, writers on music in the latter half of the century seem strangely to overlook the untexted works of instrumental genius that were being composed under their noses. We expect such "mainstream" music to have been as central to its own time as it is to ours, and not, as is more the truth, somewhat condescended to. Did late-eighteenthcentury writers on music simply ignore a considerable body of eloquent and popular music? Is this another occasion to chide music theory for being myopic about actual musical practice? My "likely story" lays less blame at the feet of the theorists and critics of the period, although it does not pretend to return them to full authority. The very aesthetic theories that devalued instrumental music-the body of mimetic doctrine-nevertheless provide a surer foundation for understanding its late-eighteenth-century flowering than any theory that followed. But our peculiar modern unease with aesthetic theories that characterize art as referential, not to say imitative, has blinded us to this relationship, leaving us to construct after our own lights a picture of Classic instrumental music that has stubbornly prevailed. Although it is fairly well accepted that Baroque music operated under the old-fashioned Aristotelian dogma that art is imitation, most students of what we call "Classic" music abandon this kind of talk with relief, even though these two repertoires have in fact much in common. Talk that suggests pictorialism or a program is avoided by the sophisticated. Of course it is difficult to ignore the obvious: no one would think of discussing Beethoven's Sixth Symphony without mentioning the pastoral, or Mozart's so-called "Hunt" Quartet without a reference to the type of music that gave it its nickname. But these are considered exceptional, and the ubiquity of such allusions is ignored: no standard analysis of the first movement of Mozart's String Quartet in D minor, K. 421, mentions the flavor of the antique lament it takes on by using that old-fashioned organizing device, the chaconne bass; or that his Sonata in B-flat major, K. 333, opens with the piano imitating a music box playing a tune in the so-called Empfindsamer, or "sen- �ALLAN BROOK 3 sitive" style. Although sophisticated techniques exist for structural analysis on the deepest levels, the level that is in fact most palpable, and moves us most directly-the level on which the expressive gestures that enliven the work are operating-is generally treated as though it didn't exist. One reason for this silence is the powerful legacy left by writers on music aesthetics in the nineteenth century. The intellectual traditions of the previous age have been rendered opaque to us by the radical change in attitudes toward expression in music that took place over a period of one hundred years. Two oft-quoted remarks provide the extremes for this enormous traversal of aesthetic distance. "Sonata, what do you want of me?" asked Fontenelle, or at least, more importantly, in 1768 Rousseau says he did. 4 A little over one hundred years later Walter Pater turned matters on their head in a remark that has become an aphorism: "All art aspires constantly to the condition of music. " 5 My gloss of this hypothetical exchange between epochs: the eighteenth century asks a rhetorical question: "Instrumental music, whatever can you imagine you offer me?" The nineteenth century's reply is, resoundingly, "Everything. " Clearly, the type of music each era embraced as the appropriate paradigm for the art was closely linked to the prevalent attitude toward musical expression. Eighteenth-century theorists and composers consistently gave primacy to vocal music, to music "completed" by a text. Rousseau quotes Fontenelle approvingly on instrumental music's inscrutability because of his own strong preference for song. His article on unite de melodie in the Dictionnaire (1768) clearly articulates this prejudice: Now the pleasure in harmony is a pleasure of the senses pure and sirilple, and the pleasure of the senses is always brief; saturation and boredom fol- low it quickly. But the pleasure in melody and song is a pleasure of interest and feeling which speaks to the heart . ... Music, therefore, must necessarily sing in order to move, to please, to sustain interest and attention . ... Any music that does not sing is boring. [italics mine] Rousseau's judgment was echoed by most respectable writers through the century. H. C. Koch, an important thinker about musio to whose work I will return, could still write in his Musikalisches Lexikon of 1802, in the article Instrumentalmusik, "It remains an absolute fact that song maintains a most obvious and undeniable superiority over instrumental music. " 6 �THE ST. JOHN'S REVIEW 4 It is true that Koch has some positive things to say about the possibilities for imitation in the instrumental works of certain composers: The possibility of injecting ... a particular [bestimmt] character into the sonata, as a pure piece of instrumental music, has long since been demonstrated by the sonatas of C. Ph. E. Bach, and in Haydn's and Mozart's works of this type one finds more recent evidence for this assertion. (article Sonate) But he still finds it necessary in the last analysis to make the same judgement about the relative merits of instrumental and vocal music that his predecessors had been making throughout the century. The sonata presents a blank and impenetrable facade to these writers because, in their opinion, without language it can imitate no objects, and thereby offers the listener mere sensual pleasure instead of moral articulacy. Music left to itself, they argued, can paint feelings only in a vague and generic way, since its means of painting are necessarily "indeterminate" (unbestimmt). Koch concedes that textless music can "work directly on our hearts and ... arouse in us pleasant or unpleasant feelings." "If, however," he continues, it should undertake to stimulate in us feelings for which the situation in which we find ourselves offers no occasion, feelings to which our hearts are not open, . .. it lacks the means to make these feelings interesting to our hearts. It cannot make intelligible to us in these circumstances why it wants to transport us into gentle or sad, exalted or happy, feelings; it cannot awaken in us either the images of that good whose enjoyment is to delight us, or the images of that evil that is to cause fear or distress . ... In vocal music, on the other hand, the text prepares the spectator, helps him to the intended frame of mind, and gives interest to the feelings to be expressed. (article Instrumentalmusik) Only a text can provide a context, can supply for the music the determinacy necessary if the listener's cognitive and moral faculties are to be brought into play. Because pure instrumental music moves the feelings directly, without reference to an external correlative or final cause, it must always remain incomplete. But confidence in the expression in music of such moral universals, and in the existence of the universals themselves, was on the wane. Thus, as the nineteenth century began, this apparent deficiency began to take on the look of a virtue. As they came to place a high value on originality and individual expression, writers delighted in the very muteness and lack of prescription in instrumental music that had so disturbed the eighteenth-century rationalists. As Joseph Kerman points out, it was not "hymns or waltzes or cantatas" that Pater idealized, but "pure" symphonic music, 7 which, precisely because of this freedom from con- �ALLAN BROOK 5 nection with extra-musical things, epitomized to the Romantics what is most "musical" about music. "Pure music" had the potential to be the truest poetry, "which is all the purer," said one early nineteenthcentury critic, "the less it is dragged down into the region of vulgar meaning by words (which are always laden with connotations). " 8 In short, the doctrine of music as a mimetic art yielded to that of music as an autonomous one, and there was little looking back. We today have inherited this aesthetic with its elevation of instrumental music as the dominant mode, and consequently we resist a perspective that asserts the natural primacy of song as a first principle. So firmly are we in the grip of this particular notion of musical priorities, however dimly we perceive it, that the high position the eighteenth century accorded to melody seems touchingly primitive, and not worthy of much attention. *** If Classic instrumental music is not the ideal and autonomous music the Romantics imagined, how can we bend mimetic doctrine to describe it? A brief look at the long history of the doctrine is in order: in one form or another it influenced thinking about art from classical antiquity until the end of the eighteenth century, when it seems to disappear. Although the nature of object and imitator has varied with different aesthetic practices, one central assumption unifies them all: that of a world held in common among human beings, which it is the artist's role to copy in some fashion in his art-to "catch in his mirror," in M. H. Abrams' well-known metaphor.• This world is external to the individual soul, and the composer must look to it to give form to his musical materials. Of course the constituency of this external worldthe nature of nature-has varied from time to time. Most mimetic doctrines are in some way didactic or corrective: in the Renaissance music was essentially a Pythagorean art, imitating the numbers that inform God's cosmos; human music, by vibrating in time with universal harmony, would bring human souls into a proper attunement. But over the years after the publication of works like Descartes' Les passions de l'ame in 1649, attention turned to humankind in a more rational, mechanistic cosmos, and the enterprise was to represent human nature by codifying our passions and thus speaking to our· souls. Descartes legitimized the passions, acquitting them of mere excess, and proposing them as an instrument whereby the body could be brought under some measure of control. ''Even those who have the weakest souls,'' he stated, "could acquire absolute mastery over all their passions if we employed sufficient ingenuity in training and guiding them." 10 Thus, �6 THE ST. JOHN'S REVIEW although the moral intent was somewhat mooted in the eighteenth century, still to "paint the passions" amounted to a moral imperative to the composer. "The expression of the passions in their different modifications," says Koch in his article on expression, "is the proper aim of music, and ... the principal requirement of every composition.'' ''Expression'' became the word of choice in the later eighteenth century, supplanting "imitation" in accounts of music's natural task, and this use of the all-important word has misled many modern scholars. But too frequently in eighteenth-century texts the term has been read as meaning "self-expression"-the venting, or "pressing out," of the artist's original and idiosyncratic feelings in an uncalculated, spontaneous manner. As a result, recent writers have tended to discover this predominant doctrine of nineteenth-century aesthetics in texts earlier and earlier in the eighteenth century, assuming that the word "expression" directs the composer to turn inward to his private passions. 11 Yet in most cases the adoption of the word "expression" in eighteenthcentury texts does not represent a substantive rejection of mimetic doctrines, for the question does not actually turn on the use of the verb to "express" over the verb to "imitate." The crux is whether or not there exists a confidence that human feelings have models, which we can construct because of our shared knowledge of what the passions are like. If such a confidence exists, then the composer is involved in the act of expressing feelings, of "painting the passions," not when he looks to the unique inner authority of his own emotions to give shape to his musical materials, but when he consults these universal authoritative models. Where this confidence in a shared human nature is absent, as it was in the nineteenth century, feelings are judged not to be susceptible of codification; they are fluid, mysterious, part of the dark self. Clearly, however, Koch still trusts in the consensus gentium; he sees the composer in possession of a "science"-a psych-ology-for portraying the passions, which he defines as "movements of the soul" (Gemuthsbewegungen). Because music is a sequential art, he argues, it is "fully suited to portray all these kinds of movements of the soul, so to make them perceptible to the ear, if they are only sufficiently familiar to the composer and he is sufficiently in possession of the science to imitate each movement through harmony and melody." (article Ausdruck 12) On occasion Koch seems to hint that the source of the feelings is to be found within the composer himself, in passages that have been interpreted as a nod toward the doctrine of self-expression: "Only that," he says, "which [the composer] feels vividly will he express success- �ALLAN BROOK 7 fully." (article Ausdruck) This sentiment would seem to echo the dictum of C.P. E. Bach-"the extreme expressionist of the eighteenth century," as Dahlhaus calls him 13 -that a musician cannot move others unless he himself is moved. But the rest of Koch's discussion leaves no reason for doubt that for him the subject matter of music is not the personal and interior, but the enduring and universal passions of men as they are recognized by persons of reason and taste. Success comes to the composer from his familiarity with the structure of these shared passions, and from a careful study of the means music has at its disposal to imitate them. To "feel vividly" is to put oneself in the mode that the model codifies, to see what it feels like to experience a particular passion; study-not self-expression-makes the artist. Koch was not alone in styling passions as "movements of the soul.'' It was the consensus in the eighteenth century that the link that binds music and the passions is motion-that music imitates the passions by means of musical movement. One could quote as an exemplary passage Daniel Webb's argument from his Observations on the Correspondence Between Poetry and Music (1769): I shall suppose, that it is in the nature of music to excite similar vibrations, to communicate similar movements to nerves and spirits. For, if music owes its being to motion, and, if passion cannot well be conceived to exist without it, we have a right to conclude, that the agreement of music with passion can have no other origin than a coincidence of movements. 14 Johann Jakob Engel, in his Ueber die musikalische Malerey (On Painting in Music; 1780), a treatise that Koch quotes extensively, elaborates a theory of the reciprocal transmission of these vibrations from soul to body and from body to soul that is typical of popular attempts at scientific explanations of music's effects: Since all representations of the passions of the soul are bound inseparably with certain corresponding movements in the nervous system, they are maintained and strengthened by the observation of these movements. Yet not only do these corresponding natural vibrations arise in the body when previously in the souls the representations of the passions have been aroused~ but also these representations of the passions arise in the soul when p,reviously in the body the related vibrations have been produced. The influence is mutual: the same path that travels from the soul into the body travels back from the body into the soul. By nothing, however, are these vibrations so cer- tainly, so powerfully, so variously produced, as through pitches. 15 In this resonance theory of affects, if the soul can be the sending oscillator, Engel reasons, why can't the process be reversed? �8 THE ST. JOHN'S REVIEW There are obvious problems with this ''theory,'' none of which should worry us unduly; they do not seem to have troubled its advocates, and our concern is with what satisfies them. The principal difficulty is precisely what does occur in the soul of the listener: is he transported by the effects of pitches to experience the passion in its fullness on the spot, or does he merely recognize the feeling pricked out by the tones? Somehow the motions of the tones, imitating the recognizable motions of our passions, steal upon us as listeners and have thie effect; we recognize what we already knew, and in the directness of this sensing lies the enigma that often causes heavy weather in modern struggles with the question of expression in music. Engel's position on the question is somewhat ambiguous. When he is advancing the theory of sympathetic vibrations, he does use the verb "awakens" (erweckt), as if the listener were roused to experience the same emotion as the subject. But he follows by comparing the effect on the soul of the listener to the ''compassion," or "feeling with" (Mitleid, Mitfreude), that arises in the soul when one hears the howls of a suffering beast (p. 143). This comparison gives a certain distance to the feeling in the listener's soul; compassion is not the same as passion. In speaking of imitation in more narrowly musical terms, he neatly sidesteps the problem by calling the effect of the oscillations an "impression" (Eindruck) made on the soul. When the actual act of composition is in question, the feeling is not so much aroused in the soul as it is impressed therein, perceived, not awakened: ''the impression of a gentle color has something similar to the impression of a gentle pitch on the soul" (p. 140). Peter Kivy, in his influential book on musical expression, The Corded Shell, in which he elaborates a modern theory of expression that takes its inspiration from eighteenth-century writings, is critical of what he terms the "arousal" theory, arguing, for example, that no listener could or would willingly endure the range of emotions and the deep anguish depicted in a five-hour performance of Tristanl 6 His studied readings of the texts seek an exactitude in these writers that they do not possess. They are interested in the exercise of their craft, and somewhat loose in determining the precise way in which the listener is affected. Is the listener aroused? Does he recognize? Both accounts have some plausibility. At times the notion of being "transported irresistibly" (p. 144) to joy or sadness does find a place in the prose, but the specter of an audience now moved to martial wrath, now dulled to melancholy, does not seem to weigh on the minds of these writers. Surely they would find the picture of an audience collectively weeping in the concert hall as absurd as does Kivy, and are using the verb "to arouse" in a metaphorical sense. Perhaps the happiest resolution of the �ALLAN BROOK 9 question is to take "arouse" as "arouse to sympathetic cognition of," in accord with the ambiguities eighteenth-century proponents of the theory seemed to have comfortably accepted. *** Both Engel and Koch assert that music has sufficient means to imitate tbe motions of the passions, and they inventory these resources in various passages. Here late-eighteenth-century mimetic theories grow vague. Recent scholarship has rectified the false impression that writers in the tradition of the Baroque doctrine of the affections-Mattheson et al.-not only retained the confidence that the passions could be codified, but had codified them thoroughly . 17 Such attempts were, in fact, rare, and often idiosyncratic; the confidence didn't produce the cookbook. Later eighteenth-century notions are even less specific; the notion of the imitation of move;nents is left to a large extent to the taste and science of the composer. Koch, for example, lists as the devices at music's disposal: !)Harmony, ... which in gentle and pleasant affects must progress lightly and naturally, without great complexities and heavy delays; in unpleasant, especially vigorous affects, however, [it is] interrupted, with frequent modulations, . .. with greater complexities, many and uncommon dis- sonances .... 2)Meter, by means of which just by itself we can imitate the general quality of every kind of movement. 3) Melody and rhythm, which ... are also already capable by themselves of picturing the speech of all passions. 4) The alterations in strength and weakness of tones, which also contribute much to expression. 5) The accompaniment, and especially the choice and variety of accompanying instruments; and finally 6) Modulations and delays in other keys. (article Ausdruck) Elsewhere, in the article Leidenschaft ("passion"), Koch quotes a long excerpt from Engel that categorizes the passions themselves, following it up with a lengthy but again only general discussion of particular musical devices for representing them. The concern seems to be that too profuse a system of categories will lead to gimmickry in music. We can better understand this concern if we look at the kind of composition these writers disapproved of. The change in terminology from "imitation" and "mimesis" to "expression," far from stemming from a disaffection from the aesthetic position that art is properly a reflector of a common nature, seems to have come about on account of a growing distaste for the narrowly mimetic effect, for the habit of "madrigalism" or "word-painting." Much of the word-painting in Baroque vocal texts seemed all too bes- �THE ST. JOHN'S REVIEW 10 timmt, too "determinate," for this galant age. Engel makes clear this distinction between the mimetic expression of feelings (Empfindungen) and the mere representation of an object-"word-painting'' in the strictest sense of the word: The composer should always paint feelings rather than objects of feeling; always the state into which the soul and with it the body are removed through contemplation of a certain circumstance and occasion, and not this circumstance and occasion itself . ... One should . .. paint the inner movements of the soul in a storm rather than the actual storm that arouses these move- ments. (p. 146) Often, as both Koch and Engel point out, the internal and the external will coincide. A musical figure, for example, which paints the restless bobbing of a skiff on the sea is really catching the motion of the soul torn between fear and hope; Koch uses this example in his own article on "painting," "Malerey." In other cases, seizing on a single word and giving it an individual expression- "painting" it-will either trivialize the feeling of the whole or divert it in an inappropriate direction. The advice to paint feelings rather than objects was hardly new, having been given as early as 1719 by the Abbe Dubos, in his treatise on a comparative system of the arts, 18 and it was echoed with increasing frequency as writers looked back with scorn on what they took as the madrigalizing habits of their Baroque predecessors. By the end of the century it had become canonical. The inscription placed by Beethoven at the head of the Pastoral Symphony, ''Mehr Ausdruck der Empfindung als Malerey" ("Not painting, but the expression of feeling") has been connected with Engel's formulation quoted above, ''The composer should always paint feelings rather than objects of feelings." Beethoven's characterization of the expressive matter of his famous programme symphony manifests the thorough distaste of the times for too literal a connection between tone and text. In this context Koch quotes an image from Sulzer's article Ausdruck: The kind of work that merely fills our imaginations with a row of harmonious tones without engaging our hearts, resembles a heaven beautifully painted by the setting sun. The lovely mixture of various colors amuses us; but in the figures of the clouds we see nothing that can engage the heart. (article Ausdruck; italics mine) Again there is the echo of that phrase of Rousseau's: ''to engage the heart.'' The desideratum is a music that, neither abstract nor filled with fussy pictorialisms, speaks directly to the soul. And the operative metaphor is still captured in the word "speaks." *** �ALLAN BROOK 11 Clearly, from this account, the aim of this music is the same as that of the art of rhetoric-to persuade. That is, to arouse the listener to sympathetic cognition of common human conditions. To learn just how Classic instrumental music is to "speak to the heart," we can again turn to Koch. In his article on instrumental music, he invents a pseudohistory for its development, hypothesizing that instruments first performed separately from voices at the time of the Pythian games in honor of Apollo. This could take place because the victory songs with their texts were already familiar to the spectators. The entire substance of such a piece . .. was not only a well-known theme, but also an engaging one. The feelings it was supposed to express were nearly aroused in the spectators already; their hearts were . .. opened up just for these feelings. It is thus understandable that music in these circumstances could have a very specific effect on the hearts of the spectators even without song, that is, without being united with poetry, through its inarticulate but passionate tones, which in their sequence and movement had certain similarities with the natural utterances of these feelings. These were the circumstances in which at this time the remarkable separation of song from instrumental music took place, which in later times had such a great influence on music. On the one hand it gave rise to the high degree of development instrumental music has now attained, but on the other hand ·it assured that [instrumental music] would be used on those occasions and circumstances in which it must necessarily work a specific effect on our heart. If instrumental music . .. is meant to awaken and maintain specific feelings, then it must be involved in such political, religious, or domestic circumstances and actions as are of pronounced interest for us, and in which our heart is predisposed to the expression of the feelings [the music] is supposed to awaken and maintain. (article lnstrumentalmusik) Koch's account is revealing because it connects successfully expressive instrumental music closely with occasions; instrumental music is properly "occasional music," because the occasion provides the particularity the medium lacks by itself. He thus identifies the source of the efficacy of the topoi or characteristic styles: the "political, religious, or domestic" associations they bring with them supply the context that complements the indeterminate feelings aroused naturally by the textless music itself; the minuet was the favorite dance of the ancien nigime, fugues were popularly used in church music. The step Koch fails to take is to realize that these occasional styles can be imported from their religious or social rituals into art music to provide that music with the particularity-the referentiality-mimesis requires. For this reason he must always assert that the high instrumental forms are poorer than their vocal correlates. �12 THE ST. JOHN'S REVIEW At the same time these characteristic styles begin to be woven together in a new way. Where a Baroque work would imitate one temperament, one stance, in each movement, a Classic movement admits of several, in a play oflight and shadow. The result is that each movement is not monolithic, but an entire universe of discourse, functioning as a cosmic mirror, a micro-world reflecting the protean activities on the stage of the theatrum mundi. Having a serene confidence in the pre-existing hierarchy of kinds and classes, Classic instrumental music approvingly images them in their variousness and order. The characteristic styles, the "commonplaces" of musical discourse, are a readyto-hand vocabulary of musical expression gathered from the simpler music written to accompany daily activities: court life, worship, the hunt. From their connections to the noble, middle-class, and humble, the pious and impious, whatever is proud or abased, tranquil or restJess, antique or modern, in these occasions, they draw their referential power and their affect. There is a second way in which this music imitates the word: the topoi, the content, as it were, have to be woven together "grammatically" into a convincing musical "text." Here the developing teaching about the "syntax" of a musical period is important. Whereas in earlier music its resemblance to speech was most often remarked in the most obvious imitations of speech rhythms-recitative, and its descendant, declamation-in Classic music the relation of speech to music becomes thoroughly internalized, extending to all articulations of musical lengths. Koch begins his treatise on the composition of melody, a volume entitled "The Mechanical Rules for Melody," by comparing melody to oratory: Certain . .. resting-points for the soul are generally necessary in speech, and thus also in the products of those fine arts that attain their goal through speech, namely poetry and rhetoric, if the subject they present is to be comprehensible. Such resting-points for the soul are just as necessary in melody if it is to affect our feelings. 19 Although Koch never doubts that vocal music is music's paradigm, his treatise is clearly about instrumental melody; it provides a sure training in the musical period-the 4-, 8-, or 16-measure phrase-and the techniques like extension and elision that help to make "instrumental speech" extensive, persuasive, and engaging. The point is not that vocal music ceases to be a model for Koch, but that the new instrumental music also maintains a connection with Rousseau's notion that passionate speech is the origin of the art of music. The solidifying of the ways of the musical period in imitation of rhetorical principles is connected with the new habit of admitting contrasting affects into a movement, �ALLAN BROOK 13 thus allowing variety and structural counterstatement. This combination results in works that do indeed "engage the heart" by their persuasive powers like a convincing oration-a "discourse of the passions." The formal principles of this music are borrowed from rhetoric, with the topoi-lively imitations of the way we are-embedded in its matrix and shaping the surface. This interweaving produces the image of moral suasion without a specific moral content; the principles of rhetoric and mimesis come together in a passionate speech-without-words-the overt theater of topic against the background of grammar and rhetoric as structural process. The range of topoi available to Classic composers reflects the homely and the elegant in their quotidian world-music that accompanies daily activities or has a resonance from concert life, the church, even musical pedagogy: the courtly-marches, fanfares; the hunt; the pastoral, as represented in the slow 6/8, the Siciliano, the more sophisticated gavotte, and the drone or musette; the exotic-for example, Turkish music; the Empfindsamer or 'sensitive' style with its intimacy and unpredictability; the declamatory, to break an even stride or make a regular rhythm more thorny; the musical dialogue; the brilliant, soloistic, concertante style; the passionate Sturm und Drang; the singing allegro, with its trammel bass and vocal melody; the music box, the mechanical clock; the contrapuntal, otherwise known as the learned, or bound style (stile legato), because of its strict old-fashioned control of dissonance, often found in the solemn "church" meter of alia breve or 2/2; its extension, the ecclesiastical, and, ultimately, the sublime, often represented by a topos I have called the "exalted march" 20 ; social dances such as the Liindler, the bourni'e, the minuet and contredanse; types of basses like the descending-tetrachord or chaconne, associated with lament and the antique; the minor mode, which is a special affect for Classic composers, not a mode of expression parallel to the major; the wind serenade sound, so prevalent in Mozart's piano sonatas (he took great delight in having the salon-bound pianoforte imitate out-of-doors music); �14 THE ST. JOHN'S REVIEW the "tune," which so often sprouts out of seemingly neutral material to reveal a new rhythmic stratum and a newly articulate voice, and is an effective stabilizing force. Clearly, topoi, types, styles, tend to shade into structural devices-opening and closing gestures, for example, or styles that normally create or undermine stability: the march is a typical opening gesture, while the drone and the tune provide broad areas of arrival, adding besides the flavor of folk and the country. Fugato is an obvious undermining gesture. Topoi even become, as it were, "movementspecific.'' While the minuet and contredanse reveal Classic instrumental works as latter-day dance suites, they also have sound compositional and affective reasons for appearing there. The minuet provides a laboratory for Classic composers' experiments with meter and topic, because the paradigmatic regularity of the minuet's period structure, combined with the built-in ambiguity of its evenly accented triple measures, offers an open field for experiment; often the first step away from naivete results in the greatest complexity. The contredanse finale offers a civilized wit that is an appealing closing gesture for a work; the notion of the sublime instrumental finale, so familiar to us from the symphonies of Beethoven, does not appear in Mozart's music except in the last movement of the "Jupiter" Symphony. Parts of the catalogue above suggest that topoi not only serve a structural function, but often are topoi by virtue only of the structural function they serve, and this is true: conventional opening and closing gestures sometimes cannot be categorized as other than that. Indeed, some movements offer more of a topical formedness than others, in which the rhetorical play with periodicity, meter, harmony, and other less referential musical devices presents itself as the surface of the work. In other words, not all movements have as obvious a topical "conceit." It begins to seem that structure itself is expression; the two weave in and out in the Classic composer's effort to "engage the heart by a discourse of the passions.'' *** Having stunned you with this catalogue of topoi Leporello-style, let me end with a few examples to illustrate the rich fund of devices I've mentioned; they are drawn from Mozart's String Quartets dedicated to Haydn. I'll start with a favorite movement, the finale of the Quartet in G major, K. 387, which brilliantly counterstates a motetlike alia breve fugue with a breakneck contredanse (ex. I): �ALLAN BROOK 15 Molto '"'tJTO VIr!. I II II + J' Vfn.JL kI f via II '· .. < ==-- =:---. II"' ~~ ~.~ ~ ~ ~ ;-,.~~ ~ ~ ~ .,. I~ It# E ~ .~ " ~ r-r-.-, r-r1i ~ II.'. II 11:=-- A '•.£! .. " _=., r-ril I';" ~ I'; j ~~ +- ~- .. ~ . ......, . I' . w ' Aside from the wit of decomposing a sober fugue into a country fiddler's tune, this opening illustrates the enormous power that the possibility of counterstatement gives to a work, assisted by the incisive profiles of the tapai, and why the ultimate effect of this music is that of clearsighted comedy: the monoaffective style conduces to the survival of the serious and magniloquent, but in music that plays with affect the high-minded will always give way to the undermining commentary of the comic. Mozart uses fugal techniques more overtly in this movement than in other sallies on the learned tapas: he sets up a second subject cleverly fashioned to fit in the interstices of the first: the t\'10 together build up tension for the move away from home base to a new harmonic place, the key of the fifth degree, the dominant. Final arrival there is confirmed by that most stabilizing of tapai, the "tune," which grows out over the accompaniment figure in the first violin. Working on a third �16 THE ST. JOHN'S REVIEW rhythmic level to provide a mean between the longbreathed phrases of the fugue and the headlong fiddling of the contredanse, it specially "engages the heart" with the exuberance of its articulate singing voice while providing closure for a major section of the movement. In the coda the learned and the galant have a final tangle and resolution: a little imitative dialogue on the transition figure leads to a tight stretto of the opening subject-four entries of it in the space of six measures- which relaxes into the reductio ad absurdum of a galant cadence crafted out of that same sober motif Again the frame of comedy indicates that nothing is immune to change in this gloriously many-faceted world. The minuet of this same quartet shows us Mozart setting the mechanical in motion, throwing off the rhythm both of the phrase and of the measure. He creates two ten-measure phrases by offbeat punctuation in the accompaniment followed by a four-measure piano-forte alternation in duple rhythm, a playful "tick-tock" that momentarily suspends the minuet's regular triple beat (ex. 2): ):.:-.... .l --ff I J . ,L I~ 1' fJ'f J'ft J f p ~ ' 'J "' ,, I I - 1'-l ~ 11 ~-# '-'-.J.J 1".:..7--I' f p j 1' i 1' f f I f .P f �ALLAN BROOK 17 The imbalance created by this mechanical tick-tack is set right in measure 21 by a series of waltz-like four-measure phrases: again the "tune" is a force for stability, and the more eccentric Minuets in the chamber works all tend to end with one. *** The first movement of the A-major Quartet, K. 464, has period structure itself as a subject matter. One can clearly see the joins where a 32-measure song reprise has been pulled apart and new, more mobile and forceful material interleaved, to turn these 32 measures into a fullfledged quartet exposition. (At this point the reader will find the discussion easier to follow if he has a copy of the score at hand.) This imaginary reprise would have a remarkable consistency in itself, and could stand alone as the first section of a briefer, less imposing movement. It opens with a typical 16-measure period in a simple sentimental singing style, properly symmetrical and with all its parts. The triple meter also emphasizes the unassuming nature of the theme (ex. 3): ./• .. f ___,--- • J' I p+ ... ..r ~ I . . . ... 11: • -....._ 1' -e- iJ' , .:. .;.. ... ;. 7 . #- 1' At arrival on the new harmonic plateau, the dominant, four more measures of this Ur-Reprise stabilize the new key. Next, four measures provide a final cadence in E, the dominant, consisting of the opening material made closing by a re-harmonization. And finally four more measures provide a brief valedictory coda. But the exposition is swollen from 32 to 87 measures by the much more dramatic and labile material that forces itself in at the joins in �THE ST. JOHN'S REVIEW 18 this Ur-Reprise; it is almost a textbook illustration of Koch's methods of melodic extension. An inflection of the minor mode and a brief fugato in the pathetic style on the opening theme provide the departure from A major, home base, but only reach C, an intermediary between A and E, where an entirely new "tune"-a Liindler with hurdy-gurdy drone bass-provides four measures of a false stabilization, in the wrong key (ex. 4): Jl..t ----.. ' J' . " b... ' ' ' I 1.. ' .J. ..fi: .... • II" '-" .P ,L .P q~../ ' ~ ~., I"' 'I L J..J I I"' .P : ~r I I . I I If'-../ A passage in concerto style pushes away from the C major and arrives in E for the second part of the Ur-Form. The four measures of this so-called "second theme" look to be repeated, but a passage in dialogue style opens out into an ascending passage of parallel chords in the "bound style," answered by a similar passage descending, but in a more sentimental vein. More concerto style brings the exposition to the embedded four-measure closing theme, which is separated from the codetta by yet more measures in imitative style. The bound style in the exposition is pure churning of the waters, but grows substantive in the development, where harmonies and rhythms turn dense and clotted. Most interesting is the Coda, where a rhythmic retardation in bound style gives one serious pause before the opening motive is made three times cadential-a final summary of the embedded Ur-Reprise. I'll close with a discussion of the D-minor Quartet, K. 421, because it strikes me as a rare example of topical unity over four movements rather than the affective counterstatement that is usually the rule from part to part. The first movement opens with a chaconne or <;Jescending-tetrachord ba~s-a slow-motion descent through flat 7 to 5, and after a pause on 5, the tonic (ex. 5): �ALLAN BROOK 19 J I;:J2J This is an ambiguous opening for the first movement of a quartet, with its suggestion of the antique and the pathetic, rather than the usual brisk annunciatory march. Its unusual pathos caused one nineteenth-century French theorist, Jerome-Joseph de Momigny, to put it to words as a tragic duet between Dido and Aeneas. 21 The first violin ornaments the pathetic bass with galant-style figures, but in bits and pieces (ex. 6): The four measures are repeated in a more expansive register, and it is this slightly varied repetition that articulates the frrst period's cadence, rather than a through-composed unit as is more conventional in these beginnings. This opening ambiguity is in keeping with a movement in the minor mode, where often the key attained in the motion away from home base provides not the usual counterstatement or challenge to the home key, but a consolidation and stabilization in the major after the weaker minor. Here the F major arrives as a singing allegro, with ornamental cantabile figures over repeated sixteenths, each measure arranged iambically to provide arrival (unlike the open-ended trochees of the chaconne). The development begins with a startling play on the linearity of the chaconne, at first mimicking the opening period but in the surprising key of E-flat major; the bass, however, fails to stop at the appropriate tone, extending the vertiginous scalar motion ad absurdum-or four more steps to F, and a sleight-of-hand modulation to the key of A minor. Thus the most distant key attained in the movement-theE-flat -is abandoned in a matter of measures by this cool dissolve down the scale to a key surprisingly close to home base. �20 THE ST. JOHN'S REVIEW While the development proceeds to a further anatomizing of the figures of the opening period, in part in fugal style with close entries, it takes place in thoroughly familiar keys; the harmonic crisis is over before it began, and it is the drama of the chaconne that has given form and affect to the movement. Little that is new takes place in the recapitulation. But hearing the cantabile tune-earlier an affirmation of arrival in upright F major-recast in the minor leaves an imbalance that, if one accepts the premise that the minor is a weaker reflection of the major mode, the rest of the quartet must put right. I will pass more quickly over the other three movements, because my primary interest is in that unusual topical unity that seems to prevail over the whole, and in how the D-minor uncertainty is worked out. The second movement is a simple and grave Siciliano in F major. Its single eccentricity is that the figuration in the opening phrase is rearranged: the normal fifth measure that we expect is inserted between measures 2 and 3, causing a new and passionate accent to intrude in the trim rhetoric of the eight-measure period. That we recognize this displacement is further proof of the syntactical clarity that informs this music (ex. 7): ~misplaced~ r s. 2.. A.,1, ~ p ~ . I~, J'' ' J' ' ffl)' -._..- • .... ~- -~· ......., "']~ ~ 1"'~- r 1 3' ' m.f ;, ~ p I' ........ �ALLAN BROOK 21 Strikingly, Mozart ends the movement with measure 5-the triadic upbeat figure that was misplaced; he is clearly aware of his original permutation. In fact, I am increasingly struck by Mozart's habit of summarizing in some neat and economical way at the end of a movement his primary intent with the whole. The third movement, the Minuet, is based on another chaconnetype bass; it is a dense, gnarled, motet-like ten-measure period with polyrhythms throughout, and no half-cadence-again the minuet as ground for rhythmic and textural experiment. The fourth movement, a theme and variations, echoes the topic of the second, just as the Minuet did that of the first. The theme is a bittersweet, Empfindsamer Siciliano-a nostalgic pastoral song-in D minor, with gypsy violin figuration perhaps borrowed from a tarantella-a high repeated-note figure (ex. 8): �THE ST. JOHN'S REVIEW 22 The first reprise stays in D minor throughout, and the move to a major key in the second reprise is damped by its brevity. So the movement seems at first to provide no resolution to the grip of the minor. Since even Mozart's great G-minor Quintet ends with an affirmative movement in G major, this dwelling in the minor seems uncharacteristic. Yet at the very end a quicker, gigue-like variation, with the wayward tarentella figure tossed obsessively from voice to voice and growing into substantive material, ends in a surprising and otherworldly major cadence in which the tarentella receives its apotheosis (ex. 9): "'# ~ I , e· f f •' .p •••• "'t:"' ~- ' . ltrr· y, . ,7- ' ~~7}.' I~ ~· ~· 11f : f~ ,7T: Y: ~71 The allusive brevity of the resolution-perhaps the Pythagorean perfection of the major third has an ecclesiastical resonance here-is fully in keeping with this terse and idiosyncratic work. *** What then is the end of Classic instrumental music? To engage the heart, to persuade. To persuade of what? That a complete and winning whole has been presented, a convincing mirror of the cosmos in its variety and its order; styles, types, ways of being are stated and counterstated, developed and transformed, tangled and resolved. Always there is the narrative attitude, though never a story; always the shape of moral oratory, but never the moral. The imitative and referential are rarely absent from this great instrumental repertoire, which quietly blossomed while everyone was praising song. If at the end of my "likely story" I may diffidently offer what may seem a fanciful comparison-! hope it won't seem utterly so in �ALLAN BROOK 23 your second thoughts-I would summon up the comedic vision of Dante's Divine Comedy with the panoramic nature of its embrace, nothing less than all human affairs, and its tranquil confidence in the mode and order of God's creation, and its commitment to a comic equilibrium, adjusting imbalances and asserting a "happy ending." It is a view of the world in which even the tragic mode must take its proper and limited place (remember the special treatment of the minor mode in Classic music as a dependent of the essential major). In service of this vision, both men use the vernacular to "engage the heart." Dante develops the vulgar tongue into his powerful dolce stile nuovo, that most appropriate language for speaking to common humanity about sin and redemption, while Mozart develops the charming simplicities of the galant style-artless dance melodies and popular tunes-into a complex musicallanguage that nevertheless remains true to its origin in the musical vulgate. Both had as predecessors an elevated and weighty languageDante the high Latin tongue and Mozart the grand and pathetic style of the Baroque. Encompassing both hell and paradise, and the purgatorial ground in between, the Comedy sets them in order, culminating in the great final vision of the deity who holds them properly in place. In the same way, the Classic repertoire, a secular divine comedy, taking the best of the notion of passionate speech, and the best of the powers of instrumental music and the dance, with them mirrors all categories of human experience in a mode of profound urbanity; it is a moral entertainment in the deepest sense. Footnotes I. Christian Gottfried Krause, quoted by J. F. Reichardt, Schreiben iiber die berlinische Musik, Hamburg, 1775. For a fuller discussion of eighteenth-century opinions of the new instrumental music, see Bellamy Hosler, Changing Aesthetic Views of Instrumental Music in 18th-Century Germany (Ann Arbor, UMI Research Press, 1981), pp. 1-30. 2. Johann Georg Sulzer, Allgemeine Theorie der schonen kiinste, 2nd ed., 4 vols. (Leipzig, 1786-87), s.v. lnstrumentalmusik. 3. James Winn, Unsuspected Eloquence: A History of the Relations between Poetry and Music (New Haven, Yale University Press, 198l),y. 217. 4. Jean-Jacques Rousseau, Dictionnaire de musique (Paris, 1768), s.v. "Sonate." The translations in this essay are the work of the author. 5. Walter Pater, "The School of Giorgione," in The Renaissance, following the text of The Works of Walter Pater, vol. I, p. 135. Quoted in Winn, p. 289. 6. Heinrich Christoph Koch, Musikalisches Lexikon (Frankfurt am Main: August Hermann, 1802), s.v. Instrumentalmusik. �24 THE ST. JOHN'S REVIEW 7. Joseph Kerman, Contemplating Music: Challenges to Musicology (Cambridge, Harvard University Press, 1985), p. 65. 8. Remark in an article in Allgemeine musikalische Zeitung (1801) quoted by Carl Dahlhaus, Esthetics of Music, trans. William Austin (Cambridge, Cambridge University Press, 1982), p. 27. 9. M. H. Abrams, The Mirror and the Lamp: Romantic Theory and the Critical Tradition, London: Oxford University Press, 1953. 10. Rene Descartes, The Philosophical Writings of Descartes, trans. John Cottingham, Robert Stoothoff, Dugald Murdoch; 2 vols. (Cambridge, Cambridge University Press, 1985), I, 348. II. See, for example, John Hollander's distinction between "imitation" and "expression" in The Untuning of the Sky: Ideas of Music in English Poetry (Princeton, Princeton University Press, 1961), pp. 172-76; Alan Lessem, "Imitation and Expression: Opposing French and British Views in the 18th Century," Journal of the American Musicological Society 27 (1974), 325-30; Winn, pp. 232-38. For a dissenting view, see John Neubauer, 12. 13. 14. 15. 16. 17. 18. 19. 20. 21. The Emancipation of Music from Language: Departure from Mimesis in 18th-Century Aesthetics (New Haven, Yale University Press, 1986), pp. 149-67. Here Koch is quoting from Sulzer (s.v. Instrumentalmusik), from whose work he adopted many opinions. Dahlhaus, p. 22. Daniel Webb, Observations on the Correspondence between Poetry and Music (London, 1769), p. 7. Johann Jakob Engel, Ueber die musikalische Malerey (1780), in J. J. Engel's Schriften, Vol. IV: Reden und iisthetische Versuche (Berlin, 1844), pp. 142-43. Peter Kivy, The Corded Shell: Reflections on Musical Expression (Princeton, Princeton University Press, 1980), p. 23. See, for example, George Buelow, The New Grove Dictionary of Music and Musicians, ed. Stanley Sadie (London, 1980), s.v. "Rhetoric." Dubos, Jean Baptiste. Reflexions critiques sur Ia pOesie et Ia peinture. 1719. Paris, 1770. Facs. rpt. Geneva: Slatkine, 1967. Heinrich Christoph Koch, Versuch einer Anleitung zur Composition, 3 vols. (Leipzig, 1782-1793), II. S. 77. Allanbrook, Wye J., Rhythmic Gesture in Mozart: Le nozze di Figaro and Don Giovanni (Chicago, University of Chicago Press, 1983), pp. 18-22. JerOme-Joseph de Momigny, Cours complet d'harmonie et de composition, 2 vols. (Paris, 1806), I, p. 371 and pl. 30. �Some Interpretations of The Magic Flute: The Auden Translation and the Bergman Film Beate Ruhm von Oppen The interpretations I want to discuss are not those of the theoreticians but those of practitioners: producers, directors, translators. All translation is bound to have an element of interpretation. I do not know whether producers and directors are so bound; they could simply be faithful to plot, text, music, and stage directions-unless there are compelling reasons to depart from them. And here I do not speak of "inner'' compulsions, but of political taboos. To take just two: the masonic anti-feminism of Mozart's masonic opera and the wicked blackamoor Monostatos. His one aria makes it quite clear that he is more lecherous than wicked. It is very quick in tempo and to be sung pianissimo. Will he have to become colorless in our enlightened age? Bergman, in his film of 1975, had him somewhat swarthy, perhaps a swarthy redneck, but took care to introduce representatives of all humanity, a cunning racial mix, in the audience he shows us, people who are unlikely to represent the audience of a Scandinavian opera house, but whom it Beate Ruhm von Oppen is a Tutor at St. John's College, Annapolis. Her German edition of the wartime letters of Helmuth James von Mo1tke is about to be published by C.H. Beck Verlag, Munich, with an English edition to fol1ow. Her essay on Moltke, 'Trial in Berlin,' appeared in the January, 1977, issue of the Review. 25 �26 THE ST. JOHN'S REVIEW pleased the master of obtrusive symbolism to put there, so that we should know that Mozart's Magic Flute is a work for everybody, every man, woman, and child, and has a universal message. In the second half of the twentieth century the Metropolitan Opera in New York found this eighteenth-century fairy-tale blackamoor an embarrassment. So the old Met had a production with a white Monostatos and a black Pamina. The new Met, in a new production in the midsixties, with a gorgeous setting by Chagall, tampered with the German text (they were singing the work in the original language and were afraid that New Yorkers might understand it) so that in this aria of complaint Monostatos is made to sing of his frustration not ''wei! ein Schwarzer hiisslich ist" (because a black man is ugly) but "wei! ein Wilder hasslich ist" (because a savage is ugly). I do now know how many liberal consciences were saved by that change. Mozart's music here is so light, so unvengeful, in fact the music of a darker Papageno and not, say, a raging Ferrando after Dorabella' s betrayal of him in Cosi fan tutte, that the editorial precautions seem superfluous. When W.H. Auden and Chester Kallman were commissioned to produce an English version of The Magic Flute with which NBC was going to celebrate the bicentenary of Mozart's birth on television in 1956, they too deleted all reference to the color of Monostatos (and the performance had the black beauty Leontyne Price as Pamina). But then they also deleted all elements of Freemasonry, deleted Pamina' s dead father and made her illegitimate, changed the order of scenes, and took a lot of other liberties. They produced an interesting and readableeven singable-libretto and one that I want to discuss later in some detail. Convinced, as they said in their preface, that the original libretto needed not just translating but improving, they set to work to produce something that would sound as though the music had really been composed for it-not the usual translation into a non-language they call "operese" (we all know examples of that, I'm sure) but a poetic recreation, so to speak, which reads so well that they had it printed with especially emphatic warnings against infractions of copyright. Their work raises two or three questions. Did the original libretto need improving? Is their version an improvement? How singable is it and how faithful to the music? In other words, would Mozart, if he knew enough English, have approved of it? We know that he took the work very seriously-despite the tricks he played on one occasion, with unexpected glockenspiel, on his fellow-mason, librettist and first Papageno, Emanuel Schikaneder. But then Schikaneder should have been the first to understand, as an experienced Shakespearian actor who knew the importance of light relief in certain circumstances. He just didn't like to be upstaged from the wings. �RUHM VON OPPEN 27 Despite the playfulness Mozart was very serious about the work, as he told his wife, as he told those around him in his last illness, when he was struggling-unsuccessfully-to finish his Requiem. When he knew there was a performance of the Magic Flute at the Theater an der Wieden, he took part in it in imagination, followed its progress, saying: now they've got to this bit or to that, singing, and probably wondering whether he would ever see it again. There is another reason to think that Mozart took the work seriously: a contrapuntal study on the cantus finnus of the Men in Armor in the second finale may have been the first thing he wrote down of the entire opera, or at any rate of the second act. It is an ancient hymn with text by Martin Luther based on the twelfth Psalm, "Ach Gott vom Himmel sieh' darein." At the most solemn moment of the Magic Flute it is the tune of this hymn which is sung by the guardians of the dreadful gates of the final tests, but with a text about purification by fire, water, air, and earth. The Auden/Kallman translation has great felicities-one of them the setting of this chorale, and no wonder, for Auden was a fervent hymn-singer and came into his own with the language of hymnology even in its Masonic-Egyptian variant: "Now shall the pilgrim tread a valley dark and dire ... " ('Dir.e' is treated disyllabically, as a spondee.) But there are infelicities too and, what is worse, infidelities not just to the original libretto but to that libretto as composed, interpreted in the music. The composer, after all, was the first interpreter. Mozart once wrote to his father, in connection with an earlier opera, The Abduction from the Seraglio, that the text has to be an altogether obedient handmaiden to the music. That means for us that, since the music is there, it must govern translations. The translator is bound by the interpretation of the composer. Wben the composer makes something clear, he has to reproduce that clarity as best he can; where the composer is deliberately ambiguous, he has to try to preserve the ambiguity. Just one example: In Tamino's long and crucial dialogue with the Speaker, where the Speaker patiently and forcefully and step by telling step disabuses Tamino of the illusions he arrived with, having believed the tale of woe, vengeance, and promise of the Queen of the Night, this impetuous if noble young man reaches the point where he exclaims: ''So ist denn alles Heuchelei!"-meaning "So then everything is hypocrisy!" The text in the score at that point has an exclamation mark, but the music introduces doubt, indeed a question into this sentence. The Speaker was in E-flat major. Tamino exclaims: �28 THE ST. JOHN'S REVIEW (wW!Jehen) ~ ) ~'j . The D flat on which he lands is a hovering 3, of B-flat minor, as shown by the accompaniment: the exclamation is not just some accusation of hypocrisy he casts in the Speaker's teeth, but an expression of agonized doubt. And a translator must keep the ambivalence of that phrase and not write, like Auden/Kallman: "Then it is all a painted lie" or, like Dent: "Your wisdom's naught but vile deceit!" He should keep the phrase open-ended, express some doubt about who is doing the deceiving, say something like "Then all is naught but vile deceit!" ~which can apply either to what he has just been told here or what the Queen told him before. When the Speaker is about to leave and when he has left, the hypocrisy phrase has a counterpart in Tarnino's questions "When will this veil of dark be lifted?" and "When, endless night, wilt thou be riven?" (I follow the translation by Ruth and Thomas Martin). And he gets the mysterious but reassuring answers first from the Speaker, then from the Speaker's phrase played by the orchestra, while the unseen chorus shrouds itself in frightful ambiguity by singing that Tamino will see the light "Soon, soon~or never." It is the orchestra that tells Tamino and the audience that all will be well. Perhaps the time has come to give you a synopsis of the plot of this two-act opera. Tamino, a prince, dressed in a Japanese hunting outfit, runs on the stage, in C minor, pursued by a monstrous serpent. He calls on the gods to help him and falls in a swoon. He still has his bow, but no arrows left. Three Ladies come in on his last syllable and downbeat and rescue him with javelins and a sudden switch, a deceptive cadence, to the chord of A flat which instantly moves on to the dominant-seventh chord of E flat when they refer to their might making the monster die. �29 RUHM VON OPPEN 1. u.z. Dame. ' ., • 3. L Dame. I J I. ~ ~ I . J I 5tirb, Un - 9e.- heur! durch un.s - 1 re . . I 5tirb, Un - 9e - heur! d~n::h uns- re schiit - l·, : jl "' Macht! {.) ~. : Macht I ...... - ze+ mich. p::i-8- : 1..-.::1 (he falls, fainfing) . I sf ~ . G. Ore~. ~ . ~ I .,. l.,.i,..j.oo .,. ~ L {.) I 'Z • They indulge in some triumphalism, then fall in love with the recumbent young man, then fall out with each other as they realize they must tell their mistress (the Queen of the Night) about this incident and none of them can trust the others not to take unfair advantage while she is away. The only solution is to depart together. Enter a man looking like a bird and singing a cheerful ditty about his trade as bird-catcher and his desire to catch lots of birds from among whom he could choose one. Tamino comes out of his swoon and in the ensuing spoken dialogue tries to find out where he is and who this Papageno is. Papageno does not know much-he does not even know who his parents were-he only knows that he earns his keep by catching birds for the Star-Flaming Queen and her Ladies. Tamino remembers that his father often told him about her. But how did he stray into her realm and who saved him from the serpent? Once assured that the beast is quite dead, Papageno claims that he killed it, with his bare hands. This is the signal for the Three Ladies to return, put the record straight, put a lock on Papageno's mouth to teach him a lesson about lying, and give a small portrait of the daughter of the Queen to Tamino, with promises of happiness, honor, and renown if he does not remain indifferent to it. He does not. He sings a beautiful aria about it. It is love at first sight. �30 THE ST. JOHN'S REVIEW This brings on the Queen who, in a first plangent, then acrobatic, and always imperious recitative and aria instantly addresses and appropriates Tamino as "My dear son," telling him not to tremble; he is, after all, guiltless, wise and pious, just the young man to console her deeply injured maternal heart. Suffering has been her lot since her daughter was abducted by a villain, despite all her cries for help. The mother's help was too weak. But now, in Allegro moderato: Tamino will go to liberate her, will be her rescuer and her husband. After the Queen has left, with as much eclat as prepared her arrival, Tamino wonders whether he is hallucinating and calls on the gods not to deceive him, but to protect and strengthen him. In the quintet that follows, the Three Ladies relieve Papageno of the lock on his mouth, give Tamino a magic flute from their Queen, which has the power to protect its player, give Papageno a set of bells with similar properties, and tell the men to proceed to the evil Sarastro' s realm. They say farewell and turn to go but are asked how that destination is to be found. They take a deep breath and tell the men, in an Andante that is free from their previous assertiveness, that "Three Boys, young, fair, and wise" will accompany them on their journey and will give counsel that should be followed. The men repeat this most important piece of instruction and another round of farewells concludes the scene. Next we see a sumptuous Egyptian room and hear three slaves complain of the black Monostatos, their overseer and tormentor, who, they hope, will at last get his just deserts because he allowed Pamina to escape. But they seem to be wrong: Monostatos drags her in, tells them to chain and fetter her, and to leave him alone with her. In the trio that follows, she pleads with him: though death cannot make her tremble, it is her mother who will die of grief. She falls in a swoon; but before Monostatos can do a thing, Papageno wanders in and he and Monostatos scare each other into exits in opposite directions. Papageno rallies and returns with the sensible argument that since there are black birds, why should there not be black men too-both he and Monostatos had previously thought that the other was the devil. He finds Pamina and they have quite a conversation. Pamina is very pleased that the young Prince her mother is sending to her rescue is in love with her already, and she assures Papageno that heaven will provide him too with a friend of the opposite sex sooner than he thinks. Then follows their duet about love, by which alone we live and have our being and, indeed, touch on divinity. The whole opera does not have a love duet for the hero and heroine. So this duet for Pamina and the Child of Nature is not only beautiful but important in the context of the whole. The first Finale begins, as does the second, with the Three Boys. It is their first appearance, Ingmar Bergman notwithstanding; we have �RUHM VON OPPEN 31 only heard about them before; but here they are, telling Tamino that this path will lead to his goal, but that to prevail he must conduct himself like a man. He must be steadfast, tolerant, and taciturn. When he asks them about Pamina, they reply that it is not for them to tell him about her and they just repeat their admonition to steadfastness, tolerance, and taciturnity; in brief, the Boys sing, be a Man and you will win a Man's victory. They go off, leaving Tamino to mull over their wise teachings and to explore the place they have led him to. Is it the seat of the gods? The architecture is evidence of wisdom, work, and arts, and where these dwell, vice is unlikely to maintain its dominion. He sees a door, goes up to it, with threats against the cowardly villain Sarastro, and is rebuffed by a voice from within. He sees and tries another door, with the same result. But when he knocks on the third door, an awe-inspiring Old Man appears and in a marvelous recitativic dialogue of 52 bars gets him, in modulation after modulation, from Aflat major to A minor, and from naive and erroneous certainty to serious, painfully serious questioning. In other words-and in music quite unlike any other in Mozart-he starts him on his quest in earnest. What went before was just youthful impetuosity and heroics. The Old Man calls the Queen's claims in doubt, says that Sarastro had good reasons for his actions, but that he, the Speaker, is not free to divulge them. After he has gone, Tamino is told by unseen voices that Pamina is still alive and he starts to give thanks to the gods on his flute. But he breaks off when he remembers that, though alive, Pamina is not there and goes off in search of her. She whom he seeks enters from another side, with Papageno and a hurried little duet about the need for fast feet and quick courage against the rage and ruses of the enemy. If only they could find Tamino before they are caught! Pamina calls his name, Papageno tells her he has a better signal and plays the five notes on his Pan pipe, to which Tamino responds offstage on his flute. But before they have finished exclaiming about this happy turn of events, this establishment of communication, here is Monostatos, who has caught up with them and calls his slaves to bind them. Papageno makes them dance instead, enchanted, to a spell-binding tune from his bells. But then, with a sudden change of key, we hear Sarastro's retinue from the distance: the Lord of the Realm himself is approaching. Papageno would like to flee or hide, or at least escape by verbal subterfuge; but Pamina tells him that the truth must be told, whatever the consequences. She kneels before Sarastro, confesses her guilt of trying to escape, but pleads the wicked moor's lecherous demands in mitigation. Sarastro knows all and understands all. He knows whom she loves, he will not force her to love-him?-but, but (lowest note) he will not give �32 THE ST. JOHN'S REVIEW her her freedom. And all her pleas about her mother who will die of grief are unavailing: Sarastro knows her to be a proud woman who would make Pam ina unhappy. A man is needed to guide the hearts of women, for without him all women exceed their proper sphere. Enter the officious and triumphant Monostatos with the captive Tamino. The lovers see each other for the first time but are restrained from instant embrace by popular murmuring and the interference of Monostatos. Then he prostrates himself before Sarastro, asks for due punishment for the bold malefactor, Tamino, this daring would-be abductor, foiled only by the vigilant Monostatos, who anticipates a rich reward and instead gets taken away for a beating. The people's acclaim for the wise Sarastro ends the act. By now, of course, we have a prima facie case for a complaint not only from the Civil Liberties Union but also from the Women's Liberation Movement. But the show must go on. I am still telling you the true story, not what Auden and Bergman did with it. The second Act opens with a solemn march of the Sarastrian priests and a conference with Sarastro in which he informs them of Tamino's arrival and his Quest. He seems to have all the qualities needed-virtue, discretion, benevolence-and, Sarastro thinks, deserves their help. When one of the priests asks whether, as a prince, he will be up to what awaits him, Sarastro replies: he is more, he is a man. The tests he is to undergo are not without risk and may, in fact, cost him his life: but should he die, he will be given to Isis and Osiris and taste the joys of the gods before those assembled. They signify their assent at various stages of this proceeding with three lots of masonic chords on wind instruments (without clarinets, though, since they would, presumably, make the sound too soft). Sarastro and the priests then sing a prayer to Isis and Osiris, not just for Tamino, but for the new pair. There follow the tests for Tamino, with Papageno tagging along and not trying very hard. The first test is silence, especially toward women. The Three Ladies come to tempt the men and tell them of dire things in store for them. Tamino speaks (or sings, it is a quintet) only to shut up Papageno. The Ladies depart in dismay. The scene changes and Monostatos sings his very light little aria of sexual frustration based on racial injustice. The Queen of the Night enters, gives Pamina a dagger, and tells her to kill Sarastro, since Tamino had not done the job she sent him to do. Pamina tries to plead with her, but her mother launches herself into a furious aria about hell's vengeance boiling in her bosom. If Pamina does not kill Sarastro, her mother will disown her and sever all the bonds of nature. In the spoken dialogue after her disappearance Monostatos tries to blackmail Pamina into entrusting herself to him, to love him or die. But Sarastro intervenes, simply dis- �RUHM VON OPPEN 33 misses Monostatos and tells Pamina he will take no revenge on her mother. He then sings his famous aria about the better ways of these sacred precincts: if someone has fallen, love will bring about reform. Guided by the hand of a friend he will walk into a better land. In these sacred walls (Mauern: the German for Freemason is Freimaurer) no traitor can lurk, because the enemy is forgiven. The last couplet is beautiful and hard to translate: Wen solche Lehren nicht erfreu'n, Verdienet nicht ein Mensch zu sein. Literally it means: whoever does not rejoice in such teachings does not deserve to be a human being. With its music it is a very powerful conclusion, because, as in the first stanza, where Sarastro sang about the journey into a better land at the hand of a friend, the singer's vocal ascent is continued by the strings when his voice turns down again. Wbat can a translator do with a memorable phrase like that? The Martins have: "Who by this law is led aright/will ever share the gods' delight"; Dent has: ''Those whom this bond can not unite/are all unworthy of the light.'' Auden and Kallman go wild: "The tyrant on a golden throne/Lives in the desert all alone.'' It is a message that seems to me excessively far removed from Sarastro's, though, I admit, it scans right-but so do the two others. The Three Boys appear for a second time and in a trio tell Tamino and Papageno that they have come to restore their instruments to them and that at the third meeting joy will be the reward of virtue. But first there are more tests and troubles, the worst of them just about to happen. Pamina enters, does not know of Tamino 's vow of silence, thinks he no longer loves her and sings what is probably Mozart's saddest and most beautiful aria, in G minor: all the happiness of love is gone, and if Tamino will not look at her tears and feels no more longing, she must find rest in death. She walks out to a brief four-bar postlude. But she does not-yet-attempt suicide. She is brought into the presence of the Priests and Sarastro. Sarastro tells her to take her last farewell of Tamino, who may now speak again and is about to undergo his final testing. The farewell trio for her, Tamino, and Sarastro combines pathos with solace. Sarastro is clearly sympathetic to their plight and, in fact, promises that they will all meet again. This trio, in this place, does cause some confusion in the plot. But we are musically too much captivated by it to worry about that. Still, Auden and Kallman have a case for a reshuffle here. Meanwhile Papageno, fond though he is of food and drink, does want a wife too and has a nice strophic song about it all. Who turns up? An old crone who says she is eighteen years old and that he must �34 THE ST. JOHN'S REVIEW swear that he will marry her or forever live on bread and water. Papageno as usual takes the line of least resistance and swears. She is transformed into a young woman, feathery just like Papageno, and her name is Papagena. But once more those priestly busybodies intervene and send her packing because Papageno is not yet worthy of her. Which brings us to the second Finale. The Three Boys start it, with a song about the imminence of sunrise, the disappearance of superstition, and the victory of the wise man. Then there is an invocation for the return of peace-when they see the distraught Pamina entering with her dagger and suicidal intentions. They stop her just in time and restore her to life by telling her that Tamino loves her, whereupon they all go off in search of him. (I am giving a very bare account, throughout this Finale, of the plot that is full of the most beautiful dramatic changes and music.) A change of scene brings us to two big mountains, of fire and of water. Two Men in Armor and with flaming helmets guard the gates, and after the contrapuntal introduction mentioned before, they sing the solemn hymn about purification by the four elements: whoever can overcome the fear of death will rise to heaven and, illumined, will then be in a state to devote himself entirely to the mysteries ofisis. Tamino presents himself and asks them to unlock the gates. Pamina's voice is heard, calling to him that she must see him before he goes. He is now allowed to speak to her and to enter the temple with her. Once more a last couplet, sung by Tamino and the Two Men in Armor, sums up a new message: A woman who fears neither night nor death is worthy to be initiated. Pamina enters on a simple but radiant musical transformation. The bit about the woman worthy of initiation was in A-flat major, the strings work up, touching on the relative F minor, to an emphatic halfcadence on the dominant of F, followed by a long rest, and Pamina comes in on a rising major sixth, C -A, that is, in the unexpected parallel major of the relative minor. It is one of Mozart's miraculous economies . ... ~ .... ....-- Quar+. I I (.) �35 RUHM VON OPPEN Andantt q~di Pam ina (Tamino umarmend) r If fijf I r ~ Ta - mi - no __ mein! ~ If 0 r- p I I.. ' } welch em Gluck! Tamino shows Pamina the dreadful gates which threaten death and destruction. Pamina simply replies that she will be at his side, she will lead him, herself guided by love. Tamino is to play the flute which will protect them. Then she tells him the brief history of the flute. In a magic hour her father carved it from the depths of a millennia! oak, mid thunder and lightning and a roaring storm. But now it is to be played and lead them on their dreadful journey. They pass safely and serenely through the fire, accompanied only by flute, timpani, and some subdued brass chords; after the fire they go through the water. On emerging from that they see a door opening on a brightly illuminated temple and are hailed and invited by the choir within. The next transformation brings us back to Papageno and his troubles. He is still wifeless and threatens to hang himself if no-one will take pity on him. He seems about to do it when the Three Boys once more intervene to save him, too, and tell him to play his magic bells. When he does it, Papagena enters and "they sing of married bliss and numerous progeny. All that remains to be tied up is the matter of Monostatos, the Queen of the Night, and her Three Ladies. They have a conspiratorial quintet in which they propose to enter the temple and destroy it. Monostatos reminds the Queen that she has promised him the hand of her daughter for his services. She reaffirms the promise. But before they can mount their attack on the temple, they are discovered and plunged into eternal night. The loudest chord reveals the whole stage transformed into a sun, Tamino and Pamina are dressed in priestly robes, flanked by Egyptian priests on both sides. The Three Boys hold flowers. Sarastro celebrates the rays of the sun, which dispel the night and destroy the ill-gotten power of the hypocrites. There is acclaim for the new initiates, and the gods Isis and Osiris are given thanks before the final chorus, a chorus about the victory of strength and the endowment of beauty and wisdom with an eternal crown. �36 THE ST. JOHN'S REVIEW So much, then, for the plot. It is not quite what you get in Bergman. Auden and Kallman, too, eliminated the masonic element, tampered with Pamina's parentage and switched the sequence of some scenes around, perhaps to their advantage. But what strikes me as somewhat wilful is a change in the general style of the text, at least at times; there were no nymphs and shepherds in the original-there are in A & K. There was good reason for their absence in the original; the serious aspiration of the masonic enterprise and its serious antagonists, balanced by the feathery children of nature, Papageno and Papagena. Nymphs and shepherds conjure up the wrong imagery, something like Dresden china. Auden and Kallman bring them into Sarastro's aria about forgiveness, at the point where they also depart from the mini-homily about the importance of these teachings of the Brotherhood. Where Sarastro just sings that "whoever does not rejoice in these teachings does not deserve to be a human being," Auden and Kallman have, not just "The tyrant on his golden throne/lives in the desert all alone" but two extra lines before these two (they often introduce extra lines where Mozart just repeats): The homely shepherds when they love A green and homely pasture rove, The tyrant on his golden throne ... etc. In fact that whole number is made, by A & K, into a new song, good in itself, but rather remote from the-well-known-original. They say in their preface that that is what an operatic translator may have to do sometimes: get the gist of a number, then step back and write something really coherent and shapely of his own. That may be a tenable point of view, though I still think it makes for better reading than singing. Auden and Kallman must have relied on having an audience which did not know too much about the original, not even famous highlights like Sarastro's aria. They may also have thought there was no harm in approximating Mozart to Sullivan by rendering his text, in places, more in the manner of Gilbert. They had few qualms or none about introducing extra syllables where there were available notes in the score, even if in the original setting those notes were tied together. In the case of Papageno it does not matter much. When he first introduces himself as "Der Vogelfiinger bin ich ja," they have The lark, the ruddock and the willow-wren And the jolly nightingale I ken; In vain do all the pretty little creatures fly When they the tall birdcatcher spy. �37 RUHM VON OPPEN The German replaced by the pattering "In vain do all the pretty little creatures fly" was "ich Vogelfiinger bin bekannt. ... "All right, give patter song to Papageno: J r p bin be - kannt rJ. Ei rJ. Gl I r . p the fan - 9er [Ich] Vo - gel - ?:f E tJ CJ Q [~ !H J [In] Vain do all pret-ty lit -tie crea-tures fly In their Notes, Auden and Kallman grant that the effect is different but take their stand on the belief "that The Magic Flute should sound more staccato than Die Zauberjlote." In another case, that of the duet about love sung by Pamina and Papageno, the translators get slightly cold feet about this and their stand begins to wobble, and quite rightly too. Still, pride forbids them to put the "pedantic" alternative version, with its proper scansion, in the text itself. They relegate it to the Notes at the back, where they inform us that ''The German lyric is written in iambic rhythm, i.e., in 4/4 time'' (I merely quote, though I must interpolate that every sophomore knows that iambs can be written in any time signature). They continue: "This Mozart has set to a tune in 6/8, so that certain syllables have to be (my italics) spread over two notes, linked by a slur." Naughty Mozart! If only he'd had the sense to stick to the iambic 4/4, there would have been no need to spread syllables over two notes. But now that the notes are there, the translators are jolly well going to use them, and in their main text give us this: when IO"ve In his bOsOm desire hils impla'ntid The heart Of th€ he'rO grOws g€ntli 3nd ta'me; ~ ./ ~ ';' .~ / - / - - ./ - And soon from his passiOn enkindled, enchanted, - :"" - ~ /~The nymph receives the Impetuous flame ... - / for the German -/- ,--: _ _,._/~ Bei Miinnern, welche Liebe fiihlen, - _..-Fehlt auch ein gutes Herze nicht. / / / Die siissen - dann derTrfebe mftzllfifhten, .. -- - Weiber erste Pflicht. ,...,._-- lst / �38 THE ST. JOHN'S REVIEW In the comments at the back of the book they say they ''found that the English language cried out for an anapestic rhythm [?] similar to that of the notes." And they continue: "If the original relation of syllables to notes is not an accident of the German prosody, but a profound musical idea, then, of course, we are wrong, so he who is pedantic, let him be pedantic still and sing instead: When Love his dart has deep implanted, The hero's heart grows kind and tame, And by his passion soon enchanted, The nymph receives his impetuous flame . ... ·' There's that nymph again, who, as I said, is absent not only from that number in the original, but from the entire opera, which is simply not written in the nymphs and shepherds and cupid style and in which love, or Liebe, has the proper German feminine gender. The posing of the phoney alternative between "accidental prosody" or "profound musical idea" is hardly worthy of the librettist of The Rake's Progress. Simple respect for the gentle, not to say tender, character of the combination of the two successive notes in one syllable, .or the music of the music-and-words together, should have made the translators put the version they call "pedantic" in the main text. In a later essay on "Translating Opera Libretti" they argue a bit more cautiously, go into the interesting difference of quantitative and accentual prosody, and call on singers to sing both the iambic and the anapestic versions (as they call them) several times without prejudice and ask themselves which, in English, sounds the more Mozartian. I am no singer, but I have tried both, quite often, and have no doubt that a version with Mozart's syllabification sounds more Mozartian. Perhaps they chose the wrong idiom in their "When Love his dart has deep emplanted"? They also state that "in English, on account of its vowels and its many monosyllabic words, there are fewer syllables which sing well, and are intelligible when spread over several notes, than there are in either Italian or German-English being, intrinsically, a more staccato tongue." They also say that feminine rhymes are more uncommon and more often comic in English than in German. I wonder about both those statements. Looking, for instance, at Dido and Aeneas, I found many unfunny feminine rhymes and Purcell doing beautifully with more than one note per syllable from the very outset and throughout the work. I underline the syllables that are given more than one note: �RUHM VON OPPEN 39 Shake the cloud from off your brow. Fate your wi-shes does allow. Empire growing, pleasures flow-fig, Fortune smiles and so should you. Banish sorrow, banish care, I Grief should ne'er approach the fair; Banish sorrow, ba-nish care, Grief etc.; Then Dido herself: "Peace and I are strangers grown .... [and later] Yet would not, yet would not, would not have ]1 guessed." It was, incidentally, on that monosyllabic two-note "it" that the German translators found themselves forced (or free?) to introduce an extra syllable. And so on, throughout Dido, one comes up with quite a lot, from the beginning right through to the end: ''With drooping wings ye Cu-pids come ... and scat-ter roses on her tomb. Soft, soft and gentle ... as her heart, ... keep here your watch." Remember, the Auden/Kallman translation was made for television. Its authors actually say that on the stage operas should be, they think, performed in the original languages and audiences should get a translation to read, so that they know what it is all about. Along comes Ingmar Bergman and does a film on the Magic Flute which is sung in Swedish and has captions, or translations, in the languages of the country it is shown in. I was amazed at the syllabic fidelity both of the sung Swedish and of the English translation. It was faithful in other respects too: to the meaning of the text and, I think, usually to the rhyme scheme. The only serious departure from the original that I detected in the Swedish and English was the excessive punishment given to Monostatos. In German he gets a bastinado of77 strokes, in Swedish 555 (and Bergman's English translator follows that). I thought it might be for the sake of syllables. Not so, I am told by a friend who knows Swedish: it is simply that the number 7 is quite unsingable in that language. But 555 seems rather a lot. I have left myself with very little time to discuss that film. Opinions were violently divided, ranging from blissful enjoyment to outrage. Let me simply mention some major distractions and distortions-leaving aside the fillings in Tamino's teeth. The business, especially the sensuous business of pawing, is obtrusive and out of place. The fire and water ordeals do not take place in Dante's Hell or Wagner's Venusberg and we should be spared the writhing nude figures. If Bergman decided to cut out the Freemasons, why did he have to make Sarastro and his Priests into Keepers of some Nordic Grail? How did he have the nerve to bring on those cute three boys prematurely to sing music Mozart gave to the Three Ladies? Why must the quintet of conspirators near the end be represented as a heaving army on the move? Above all: he �40 THE ST. JOHN'S REVIEW makes Sarastro Pamina's father and not just in the spiritual sense, but as her begetter, with clearly incestuous leanings. This is too much! Mozart's opera is quite explicit about Pamina's deceased father and his legacy of the flute and the Sevenfold Shield of the Sun, which he bequeathed to Sarastro, whom he considered a worthy successor. He very particularly did not want his wife to inherit it. Why the change? To foist some Freud on us? Heaven forfend any importation of twentieth-century psychology into this work. But Jung would be more suitable than Freud if something of the kind were done. But if it were done, it were better done honestly, in a new, twentieth-century opera. Michael Tippett has done it and called it The Midsummer Marriage. It is clearly akin to the Magic Flute, and equally clearly Tippett's own. Using Mozart for selfexpression, as Bergman does, strikes me as impermissible, despite all the various beauties of the film and the many people it introduces to the music. Seductive, verging on the corrupting. �The Program Old and New Douglas Allanbrook Fifty years ago Stringfellow Barr and Scott Buchanan founded a program of studies at St. John's College in Annapolis. We are here tonight to celebrate that program, a program dedicated to the proposition that men are educable, a program grand in its aspirations and full of good sense in the ways in which it lays out its specific course of studies. Though it is difficult to imagine its having been instituted anywhere except the United States, the allegiance to the program may be found in the minds and hearts of thoughtful men anywhere. Two men are particularly linked with both the aspirations and the matter of the program, Mr. Buchanan and Jacob Klein. Mr. Buchanan was a quintessential Yankee, Mr. Klein a Russian Jew. Without the imprint of these two extraordinary men we would have no program. For all of us-alumni, faculty, and students-who have studied the program with some care there is no tension in this heritage other than that implicit in the nature of discourse and study. Fifty years is a long span of time in the ordinary train of human events. Many students and many teachers have come and gone since those waning years of the great Depression, years already shadowed by the imminence of the second great war of the century. Technical changes both beneficent and terrifying have multiplied at a geometric rate these fifty years. Money and bombs can be mutually exchanged Douglas Allanbrook, the composer, is a Tutor Emeritus at St. John's College, Annapolis. This speech was delivered to the alumni of the college in September, 1987, on the occasion of the fiftieth anniversary of the New Program. 41 �42 THE ST. JOHN'S REVIEW anywhere in no time at all. There has been a certain progress in the medical lengthening of our lives. Politics remains the same, though more expensive-a change in quantity that affects the quality. We are all tempted on many occasions to say as we grow older: tutto declina-everything is going to pot. The phrase belongs most properly in the mouth ofFalstaff, in Verdi's opera. Verdi himself was of course at a remarkably advanced age to have been writing such an ebullient marvel. Falstaff is something of a fool, though a self-conscious one. He is also shrewd, no dumbbell. He contemplates his youth, his salad days when he was young and thin, a fetching page for the Duke of Norfolk. The comedy for him and for us who are getting older consists in confusing our own waning powers with whatever there is out there that is perennial and young: love, romance, energy, glory, intellect, and sharp vision. It takes a certain distance to realize how perennially fresh this program remains as generations of students pursue its disciplines and goals. The senior classes it has been my pleasure to teach in recent years thrust in front of me the fact that this is not an experimental program but a program that works, and works for an amazing range of people. A class which discusses Valery and Wallace Stevens with acumen and passion consisted a mere four years ago of high-school students, some of whom knew no grammar, and whose cherished books, depending on the generation, were Catcher in the Rye, and Lord of the Rings. Only too often these would be accompanied by that ever-present virago, Ayn Rand. One of our duties as tutors is to realize what can happen, to be aware of all that does happen in these four years. I would hope that the program would retain its luster for those of us who have spent our adult lives in it. The reasons for the efficacy of the program should now be stated. But before we talk of its grand aspirations, which keep it pointed where it should be pointed, let us examine its good sense. Its entrancing folly we will look at last. The daily round of its tutorials and laboratories is a slogging through elementary things slowly and methodically. There has never been any reasonable doubt as to what these elements are and where they lie. They are found underneath the common skills of daily life: the grammar, rhetoric, and logic of language, the reasoning and structures of mathematics, the daily experience of nature, the rhythm and tones of music. From the very beginning fifty years ago it was deemed essential that modern science be dealt with, both as theory and as a world of objects to be sensed and measured. Many who are not acquainted with our regular classes find what I have just said vague and just a bit pious. The very term "liberal arts" is such a casual catch-all for almost any curriculum. There has also always been the vulgar and catchy phrase which would describe the program as the ''great books course.'' Peo- �ALLAN BROOK 43 pie then quite naturally are apt to be either aghast or delighted to find that elementary does mean elementary. Sentences are to be parsed, congruence of triangles to be proven, nitrates to be distinguished from nitrites, the lack of a urinary bladder in a bird to be noted, Yankee Doodle to be played on a musical scale constructed on a monochord. Tutorials are classes with stubborn simple things to learn. What is studied in them is not arbitrary. The program has never subscribed to the kind of looseness which finds that it makes little difference what is studied as long as it is done with conviction and provides a "learning opportunity.'' What is studied in these classes at the college is not cultural, not intended to be a substitute for experience of the world. For fifty years neither history nor the fine arts have had a place on the program. Elementary education has neither the intention nor the time to expose students to the vast panoply of splendors which the world exhibits, though a certain necessary nostalgia is present because we don't look at Chinese painting or the French and Russian Revolutions, or, in general, learn to appreciate what a sophisticated man appreciates. There has been no faltering these fifty years that there be tutorials in language and mathematics, that there be laboratories, and (for thirtyfour years) that there be music tutorials. As for modernity, we study its roots in Baudelaire, Hegel, Marx, Freud, and Einstein more thoroughly than any other undergraduate college in the country. The program does not change in any essential ways. This is not because of stultification; the program stays as it is because it has its roots in reasonable judgments as to what is elementary. The tutorials and the laboratories often employ manuals and similarly uninspired materials. This again makes good sense if the learning of elements requires help, which it so often does. The program has always had the obligation to exercise a student in matters that in certain countries were traditionally dealt with in high-schools, gymnasia, or lycees. Tutorials are, however, fixed on splendors. The grandest books are read: Baudelaire, the inventor of modern sensibility, Einstein and Dedekind, Sophocles and Lavoisier, and, in the freshman language tutorial, Plato's M eno, which deals with the crux of how men learn things and how they deal with what they learn. These texts are read slowly and at length. They are chosen as exemplifying the highest expressions of the liberal arts, whether they be by Shakespeare, Euclid, Pascal, Newton, or Homer. We are nearing the entrancing folly of the program. Sancho Panza plods through the fields of elementary grammar, logic, rhetoric, mathematics,and laboratory while simultaneously Don Quixote canters on, reading Plato in Greek after three months of grammar, and Einstein after only the slightest acquaintance with Maxwell's equations. �44 THE ST. JOHN'S REVIEW If we leave the tutorials the quest becomes more quixotic. The freshmen read Homer straight off on their entrance to the school, and the nearly unreadable text of Hegel's Phenomenology is the roadblock which the seniors encounter as they begin their last year. The good sense of the plodding part of the program and the enormous difficulties in dealing with the true elements cannot be coped with without the ever-receding goal of encompassing the very best that has been set down in writing. Sancho Panza and Don Quixote belong together. The death of the knight leaves Sancho bereft. Without Sancho the world is only half there, even though his shrewd horse-sense is well up to ruling his "island." For fifty years a proposition has been voiced that the books are the teachers. A certain inference follows from this: Everyone in a class is a learner, including the teacher. This inference is not quixotic. It is founded not only on the importance of the books that are read but also on an understanding of how things are learned-on an understanding of the soul. Learning is not necessarily play, as some would have it, but it certainly involves activity on the part of the learner. Opportunities for learning must be placed in front of the student, his opinions tested and challenged. It is for this reason that Plato's Meno is not only the core of the freshman language tutorial but also provides the clue to how learning is thought to come about in this old program of ours. Let us list certain things that this implies: No answers given but every opportunity for any possible answer is provided, if there be an answer. Willingness to live with the skepticism that may follow upon this. Wit, irony, and shrewd observations as to what any particular person is capable of answering, given that person's make-up. Seriousness deeper than faith concerning this natural life-giving endeavor of the intellect and the heart. Living with and putting up with the open-ended and neverending quest that lies behind conversation and argument. It is all these habits that lie behind our program, not any set doctrine of Platonic "ideas" or Platonic "politics." A certain role is then envisaged for a teacher or a tutor in this program. He may or may not be an expert in some field of knowledge. In class, with the help of books, materials, and instruments, he provides opportunities for learning, and he himselflearns as the perennial conversation flows. This is the life of the program and hence of the college. It could all be done just as well if we hired a bunch of twofamily houses and furnished them with chairs, tables, and blackboards. These past several years or so when I was on the search committee for our new presidents, traveling around the country and talking to a great variety of people, it has been illuminating to me to note that the program is known and widely known and respected for what it is, and not for what it is not. I have had the same experience in talking �ALLAN BROOK 45 to many artists, writers, and composers whom I know as a director of an Artists' Colony. What we are commands respect. Every college from here to Peoria exposes its students to a mixed menu of liberal arts, fine arts, history, and, in general, appreciation of what is appreciable. It would be foolish of this college to attempt any such thing. It would also be impractical, since most colleges and junior colleges are better qualified than we are to-offer cultural education. The more serious objection would be that the program would be diluted. It should be clear that without this program we are nothing in particular, though Annapolis and Santa Fe are charming towns and the local cultures of some interest. I was delighted when I arrived here thirty-five years ago, one hot afternoon after riding the bus down from Baltimore, fresh from four years as a professional musician, to walk into a remarkably messy office and to begin talking with someone who did not consider music to be the most important thing in the world. This was one of the principal reasons for my coming to St. John's. The program is and always must be dedicated to the excellences of the reason. That there are other splendors is too obvious, one would think, to be argued. These various splendors do not negate each other, but the program rightly insists that there is a hierarchy of them. We may not need Aristotle to rank them for us, but he is a great help. There is also implicit in the program another perennial question having to do with the highest excellences. It takes the form of a kind of debate, or better still a conversation, as to the ends of the intellectual excellences: are they aimed at the theoretical or the practical? · This may be stated more formally as enquiring about the relations between the moral and the intellectual virtues. Are we preparing for citizenship or for something higher, more open-ended, more beguiling, and entrancingly more dangerous? Such a tension arises from the nature of the intellectual excellences. It is a philosophic question. The college, if one can speak of it apart from the program, must always be chary of making claims for its graduates. The program is no panacea for success or necessary preparation for good citizenship. It also cannot teach anyone to think. These fifty years have shown the freshness, the good sense, and the grandeur of the program. There is no history of the program, apart from all of us, old and young, who have passed through it. If we are ashamed of this program, or bored with it, or unhappy that it does not encompass a greater range of cultural splendors, we have been poor students indeed. Its aspirations and humble good sense are meant as a guide to all who would pay attention to their better selves. It is often an aid for those who have not noticed what they came equipped with, who have need to recollect from what race they are sprung. We need �46 THE ST. JOHN'S REVIEW not be abashed at being different, nor should we boast too fervently of our successes. We are a small place and the program will never swamp the world. What it does is too normal, too extraordinary, and too little interested in success. Let's hope it will never lose its great-souledness. �Truth Given and Truth Sought: Two Colleges J. Winfree Smith Bishop Ziemann, President McArthur, members of the Board of Governors of Thomas Aquinas College, members of the faculty, students of the College, parents and guests of the graduating seniors, and especially graduating seniors, members of the Class of 1987: First of all, let me say that I was deeply moved by the invitation to give this address. I regard it as a sign of the affection that exists between me and this class and between me and the members of this community, and also as a sign of the growth in mutual understanding and Christian charity between the Roman Catholic Church and the Anglican Communion of which the American Episcopal Church to which I belong is a part. This could indeed be an occasion for you to assure me of what Pope Paul VI assured the Protestant theologian Karl Barth sometime during an hour-long conversation in 1966. He lovingly assured him of his prayers that certain deeper insights might still be given him in his old age. That, at least, is Barth's account. We do not have the Holy Father's account of that conversation. When I began thinking about what should be the subject of this address, many reminiscences of my earliest experiences of the Catholic Church came to me. I shall mention a few that take me back more The Reverend Mr. Smith is a Tutor Emeritus at St. John's College, Annapolis. This speech was the commencement address, delivered in June, 1987, at Thomas Aquinas College, Santa Paula, California, where he had been a visiting tutor for two years. 47 �48 THE ST. JOHN'S REVIEW than fifty years. Sometime in the spring of 1935 I was called to the priesthood of the Episcopal Church and was headed for seminary that fall. I was then a graduate student in history at the University of Virginia. Having been a Presbyterian, I had acquired a bit of theology in my early youth by memorizing the Westminster Shorter Catechism. But one of my teachers at Virginia, Scott Buchanan, who more than any other single person was later on the founder of the St. John's program and hence one to whom Thomas Aquinas College is also indebted, got me interested in the theology of St. Thomas, especially his theology of the Eucharist. I thought I ought to find out how the Eucharist as understood by St. Thomas was celebrated in the Church which held his doctrine. Every week day during Lent of 1935, I attended Mass at the Catholic Church in Charlottesville and so became familiar with the Latin Mass as it was celebrated in the United States fifty and more years ago. I still have the missal edited by the Benedictine Abbot Cabrol which I acquired in 1934 and took with me to Mass. During all the time that I was in the Episcopal seminary, when I was not doing my assigned work and maybe sometimes when I should have been, I was studying the theology of St. Thomas, having acquired the twenty-one volume translation of the Summa 7heologiae made early in this century by English Dominicans. One day, a classmate of mine came in my room, looked over my books and said, "You don't have books that anybody else has." "I suppose that's right," I said. "Well," he exclaimed as he left, "it doesn't seem to bother you." I have always been grateful for this study and at this moment am especially grateful because it means that what I have in common with you and what we both hold precious entered my life a long while ago. Let me now cease reminiscing and come to the real subject of my talk. Often when I was a visiting member of the faculty here, people asked me, and now often in Annapolis people ask me about the difference between Thomas Aquinas College and St. John's College. One can consider this question about the difference only if one is aware of how alike these colleges are. Both have in common the view that one can best learn by reading books of the greatest excellence and that within limits and always with the possibility of making changes one can identify these books and make a list. The lists for the two colleges are very much the same, though not identical. The two colleges are in agreement that no student can learn as much from a book through reading it by himself or through listening to a supposed "expert" explain it as he can by conversing about it with his fellow-students under the guidance of one or two fellow-learners called teachers. One can learn through reading and conversing only if one has a good understanding �SMITH 49 of grammar, rhetoric, and logic. Both colleges, therefore, have stressed those traditional liberal disciplines, the arts of the trivium as well as the quadrivial arts of arithmetic, geometry, astronomy, and music that provide readily accessible examples not only of ways of learning but of learnable things. What, then, is the difference between these colleges? A simple answer to that question is that Thomas Aquinas College is a Christian college, whereas St. John's has no commitment to Christianity. That, however, does not tell one very much. Many colleges are nominally Christian. At this college, the center of the curriculum, and hence the center of intellectual life, is the Christian religion itself. The study of sacred theology is the intellectual enterprise that gives direction to all others. A sign of the centrality here of the Christian religion and of sacred theology is the presence of a theology tutorial. At St. John's there is no theology tutorial, although the Bible and several theological works are read and seriously discussed by all the students. Thomas Aquinas College, as a Christian college, assumes that there are truths revealed by God and known by faith. St. John's does not make that assumption but considers it a possibility to be earnestly investigated. I have deliberately called this college a Christian college, and so far I have not used the word "Catholic" of it. For I can imagine that there might be an Eastern Orthodox college or an Anglican college or a Protestant college that might take this college as a model, and so might have as the center of its curriculum sacred theology based on what has been revealed by God in Holy Scripture and articulated through the tradition of the Church. I am thinking of revealed truths held in common with the Catholic Church by many Christian communions: that God is the omnipotent, and consequently the omniscient, creator and sustainer of the heavens and the earth, that He is three persons or hypostases in one essence, that man's nature is corrupted by sin and in need of grace, that grace is mediated through Jesus Christ who as the second person of the triune God is truly God and who also is one with us in being completely human, that those who put their trust in Christ rejoice in the hope of the blessedness of the coming kingdom of God. I am aware, to be sure, that the statement I have just given of revealed truths held as such by many Christian communions is from a Catholic point of view incomplete. It may indeed be incomplete from the point of view of other communions, for as Pope John Paul II, anticipating the beginning of the Marian year, says in his March 25th encyclical on the Mother of the Redeemer, "It is a hopeful sign that these churches and ecclesial communities [he is referring to churches and ecclesial communities other than the Catholic Church] are finding agreement with the Catholic Church on fundamental points of Chris- �50 THE ST. JOHN'S REVIEW tian belief, including matters relating to the Virgin Mary. For they recognize her as Mother of the Lord and hold that this forms part of our faith in Christ, true God and true man." Thomas Aquinas College is definitely a Catholic college in its adherence to the whole of what in the Catholic Church is to be taken as matter of faith. It is its great merit that it stands so firmly and clearly for God's saving truth as the foundation of theology, and for theology as the supreme intellectual enterprise. Sacred theology is, then, a quest that starts with faith. St. Anselm's phrase "faith seeking understanding" is a good way of describing it. It is not simply a body of demonstrations deduced from a minimum of principles as Euclid's geometry or Newton's mathematical science of nature is. The Bible itself does not, in the main, prove things about God. It is a story to be read as a story-a true story of God in relation to man, beginning in Genesis with the creation of man as the highest earthly creature and ending with the new heaven and the new earth in the Apocalypse. Sacred theology, whether as Biblical theology or as based on articles of faith found in the Bible or in ecclesiastical tradition, offers a vast realm for the intellect and the intellectual imagination to explore. Sometimes in this exploration there occur demonstrative reasonings. Sometimes, as St. Thomas indicates when he refers to the various meanings the same text of Scripture may have, theology employs allegory and anagogical reasoning. Anagogical reasoning, in his view, has to do with eternal glory and matters relating to the ultimate object of hope; because of the origin of the word "anagogical," such reasoning can also be thought of as reasoning that leads up to. There is in theology reasoning that leads up to as well as reasoning that leads down from. Theology is, in either case, faith seeking understanding. The outcome in this life is not the replacement of faith by understanding. It is only in another life, the life of the age to come, that faith is to be replaced by the intellect's vision of God. As long as those in the pilgrim Church are wayfarers, to use a favorite name of St. Thomas for Christians, they walk by faith and not by sight. St. John's College, I have said, has no commitment to Christianity. That does not mean that it is hostile to Christianity. It is a philosophical college in a very large sense of the word "philosophical.'' Philosophy, like sacred theology, is a quest, a quest for wisdom moved by the love of wisdom. But it is a quest that does not presuppose revealed truth. What does it presuppose? It presupposes what Socrates calls "the things around us" and what Genesis calls "the heavens and the earth," the sky above, the earth on which we dwell, plants and animals and human life on the earth. It presupposes also the meaningfulness of human speech. For it is only in speech that we can �SMITH 51 put before us the questions that arise as we behold with wonder the things around us. It is worthy of note that Aristotle's names for particular categories are in the form of questions: the "what?", the "how great?", the "where?", the "when?", and so on. The questions philosophy raises are the questions that are most important for human beings, such as the question of what the best life for man is, or the question of the relation of the human to the non-human, or the question that Aristotle says was asked long ago and is always being asked and occasions difficulties: the question of what being is. Philosophy seeks wisdom or knowledge about being as a whole and in its parts. One might well wonder whether with such an ambitious aim and without the help of divine revelation the quest and the questioning ever attain what is being sought. That wonder becomes all the greater when one has to consider that over the centuries there have been many answers, often conflicting answers, to these questions and that the love of truth requires that one not prejudge the answers but honestly and humbly examine the reasons behind them. Of answers that really conflict with one another, some must be only opinions. Some opinions get knocked out in the course of philosophizing. The true answer may be something that is still to be sought with the benefit of whatever opinion has stood the testing. Scott Buchanan used to give as one criterion for a great book that it raises unanswerable questions. I would agree with those who, on the other hand, say that a question, if it is meaningful, is asking for a true answer. The true answer may not be easily accessible to the philosopher. There may be some answers never actually reached. The undertaking is indeed a tremendously ambitious one. Some Christian thinkers have regarded it as too ambitious and have spoken of the pride of philosophers even to engage in such an undertaking. However ambitious the undertaking is in itself, St. John's is defined by it. The faculty and students there may not be philosophers. But they perceive philosophizing in the background of what they do and they perceive the fundamental questions it raises. Among these is the question of revelation. The very attempt to philosophize brings one face to face with the question whether the most important truths are not truths which cannot be seen as truths by the unaided human intellect and so have to be accepted on authority. For us who are Christians, that question is answered even if there are differences among Christians as to the relation between the authority of Scripture and the authority of the Church. Revelation contains all the truth we need to know for our salvation. It does not provide answers to all the questions inquiring minds might legitimately ask. Sometimes we can test by revelation answers not contained in revelation. Sometimes we are left wondering and, if �52 THE ST. JOHN'S REVIEW no Socrates is present, or no one like Socrates, we have to remind ourselves of our ignorance of many things. I believe that Christians must reject much of modern thought which does not stand the test when examined in the light of revealed truth. Of course, that it does not stand the test is something that has to be shown. Is modernity, then, to be rejected wholesale? It is impossible to deny that modern science has led to the discovery of many truths and that it has made possible an enormous increase in man's power over the world at the same time that it has come to place all of human life in jeopardy. One cannot say that it has led to wisdom. Respect for the truth requires that we make distinctions. Never forgetting the ancient and Biblical emphasis on duty and obedience to law as primary, we must acknowledge the rightness of one modern idea that has been voiced by several popes and that underlies the Constitution of the United States with its amendments, and that is the idea that human beings just by being human have certain rights, for instance the right to liberty. In my opinion, it is a good thing that the Constitution forbids any religious test for public office under the United States and that the first amendment forbids Congress to make any law prohibiting the free exercise of religion. It was a shameful thing that in England between 1673 and 1828 no one could hold civil or military offices without taking an oath in denial of transubstantiation. One might be compelled with one's lips to profess or deny this or that religious doctrine. But the heart cannot be compelled. As the Second Vatical Council declared, "No one is to be forced to embrace the Christian faith." Aristotle in the Ethics presents two kinds of life as good kinds: the philosophic life and the political life, and of thes~ two the philosophic life is immensely superior. According to Christianity, the life of faith is the best kind of life and it need not require very much in the way of philosophy or even of theology. I do not have to exhort you to live the life of faith. It is given you to do so. Nor do I expect most of you to devote your lives to theology or the philosophizing that accompanies theology. But I would hope that your life in Christ would be a life in which you continue, in a way made available to you by this college, to be concerned with the profound theological questions and the profound answers, and the questions raised by those answers. Political life you can hardly avoid. At the present moment, one wonders whether the noble attempt of the founders of our republic to solve the problems of government by the institutions of government will come to grief. The founders well knew that the problems of government cannot be solved merely by the institutions of government. Government of the people and by the people will be government for the people only if the people are educated in the way in which this college has sought to edu- �SMITH 53 cate you, the way of righteousness and truth. We do not expect America or the nations together to become by human means the kingdom of God. But that does not relieve us of our duty to order our own lives and to do what we can, however small, to make human life for all men on this planet not only possible but worthwhile. Our political hope, whether for America or for the nations of the earth, may be~ as maybe political hope always is~a hope against hope. We have a sure and certain hope expressed in the prayer given us by Christ our Lord when He bids us to pray to God our Father that His kingdom come. �1 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 �How Liberty Won the Sweet Sixteen From The '!hies of the liberty Renaissance Ken Colston To The Not Overcareful Reader of These Tales There are those who maintain that the entire story was a countrybred New Journalist's confabulation, that Clyde Trample, by profession editor-and-typesetter-in-chief of the tiny Northern Kentucky Chronicle, quirky amateur historian and acerb wit by disposition, made it up out of whole cloth, sending the boxed results to a half-dozen renegade presses simultaneously, his area weekly having recently come into a workhouse Macintosh word-processor and two letter-quality printers. Skeptics point out that there's no such town in northern Kentucky as Liberty, that the Interstate 64 doesn't even have an extension, that no governor in Kentucky ever wore hair even with the tops of his ears, never did, never will, and that Louisville high-school basketball teams don't compete in the Twelfth or Thirteenth Regions, neither one. Clyde will reply with eye-rolling smugness that of course in order to protect his newspaper from unseemly and costly litigation he had Ken Colston is the Director of Residence at St. John's College, Annapolis. The Tales ofthe Liberty Renaissance was originally written for the Writing Seminars at the Johns Hopkins University. Published here are the framing preface and the first part of the first of the novel's six tales. 55 �56 THE ST. JOHN'S REVIEW to change the names of certain key personages and of all the critical locales, but that everything in the book happened as written, give or take a few colorizing details, and that he can prove it or kick your ass over it, your choice. Then some ill-read nitpicking yokel will ask why if the names is changed does Clyde keep his just as his mother-haw! haw!-give it to him on the day he was born. Whereupon Clyde will grip. his Mont Blanc Diplomat like a Barlow knife and retort, "Hasn't any of you narrow-eyed incest-begot stump-hilljacks ever heard of playful self-reference?" How Liberty Won the Sweet Sixteen It all started with the men who cooked up the United States Supreme Court, but it is better to pursue a shorter thread. The Kentucky part of it started long enough ago for memory to be slightly imperfect when the Fabulous 89th Congress voted money to the Commonwealth Department of Highways to connect Interstates 64, 71, and 75. The new extension would run right past Liberty, render the buzzard-dropped burg equidistant from Louisville, Covington, and Lexington, and pull it into the enlightened lap of the Great Society. They were even going to build two rest areas, one north and one south of town. So excited were some Libertines that you would have thought that Ford and General Motors had broken ground for assembly plants. Jacob Range Taylor had to hire three pretty chain-smoking saleswomen to handle all the calls in his real-estate office, a move that galled the Backwards-Dunking Baptists. When the news broke in the Liberal, readers accused Editor Clyde Trample of being in cahoots with Jacob Range. The feed-capped bench jockeys who sat and spat under the catalpa trees by the courthouse in July humidity or in their pickup trucks during January rain had their suspicions: "Clyde's made the whole thang up." "Jacob Range has put his place up for sale. Wants a million dollars. Hit's got to be a lie." "Better not be. Ape Collins has bought apiece of land off Taylor for a truck stop." "I know one thang: if the road comes, a bunch of dern niggers'll come with it. This town ain't never amounted to nothing." That was a lie, for Liberty had had its day in the sun-in fact, had had several. Almost two centuries before, Erasmus Lee Jefferson, a second cousin of our beloved Thomas, had nourished high hopes for �COLSTON 57 his Utopian settlement along Quick Creek, a branch off the Kentucky River. Erasmus had hit the Territory Trail with a wagonload of curious odds-and-ends: nineteen children by his first four wives, Diderot's and D' Alembert's Encyclopedie, a swivel chair badly in need of an oiling, a telescope with a cracked lens, a rabid fifth wife, two long-rifle boxes of sugar-cane stems packed in mud, and a map of Caintuckee that was off by nearly ten degrees of latitude. Erasmus was determined first to cultivate Saccharum officinarum and then he'd think up some perfect society worthy of his dreamed Caribbean wealth. In the beginning, he was lucky. The February of his arrival was April-like, and his wife's rabies cleared up and left her wickedly ambitious. She planted right away. The growing season was hot and muggy, and the first frost wasn't until December. The harvest was beyond all hopes. Then a fleet of Cincinnati keelboats took a wrong turn off the Ohio River and ran aground in Erasmus's back yard just as his wife was wondering what to do with the bumper crop. The captain believed that he'd never steer back on course without unloading some of the scrawny and useless passengers, and Erasmus's wife, Gladys Ruth, believed that the crop would rot on the banks like washed-up cattails unless white slave labor turned the presses. So the two entrepreneurs made a swap, a barrel of raw syrup in exchange for each man, a half-barrel for each woman. That is how most of the clans arrived-the Armstrongs, Robinsons, Henrys, Colstons, Cobs, and Taylors. The captain was so impressed with Gladys Ruth that he dubbed the still unnamed landing Little New Orleans and sold nonnotarized stocks on it in Louisville, St. Louis, and Natchez. By Christmas the town boasted a trading post, a hardware store, a bank that issued its own currency, a schoolhouse with alphabet horns in Attic Greek, but no church. That Easter, after putting away a pint of young rum, Erasmus screwed up his courage and took on Gladys Ruth. He gathered together the family's newly acquired white slaves, carved them off twenty acres apiece of his huge claim, and set them free. "We couldn't have kept them anyways," he shrugged to Gladys Ruth. "For this knobby terrain, like that of ancient Attica, will not admit of bondage. The future is Liberty.'' Gladys Ruth posted three of her stepsons around the sugar presses. Thus, the new town had a name, but Erasmus wouldn't register it with the Post Office until he decided upon the kind of society he wanted. He took his time because he didn't want to blow it. Our age of mere perpetuation forgets too easily the enormous responsibility borne by the founders, who knew that one false step and destiny might never recover. If they read the rivers wrong, prosperity would harbor elsewhere; if they made no place for the arts, their garden crofts would �58 THE ST. JOHN'S REVIEW soon be pig sties; if they didn't strike the right balance between freedom and control, their descendants would live in chaos or in chains. It was quite a burden, and it gave old Erasmus pause. There was so much choice; Liberty could be anything he wanted: a theocracy, as in Massachusetts; a corporation, as at Jamestown; a haven of religious tolerance, as in Pennsylvania; a republic of small farmers, as cousin Thomas dreamed about; even a communistic conglomeration of phalanxes, as some of Tom Paine's friends advocated. The kinds of societies were as numerous in those heady days as the brands of soda in these humble times. Erasmus put off his decision, and the Kentucky Postmaster in the young state capital refused to deliver the mail without a toponym in the books. Petty-minded bureaucrats, too, can trace their ancestry. Erasmus brought up the matter with his hard young wife. ''I fear lest Government retard the People, Gladys Ruth,'' he told her that May, when, owing to the mild winter, the mosquitoes were already as big as hummingbirds and so full with blood that they lay on the grass like foundered cows. "So the hell with gov'ment," Gladys Ruth exclaimed. "Just sign that 'air form from Frankfort so's we can get the 'skeeter netting Momma's sent us.'' "Hot damn!" Erasmus cried. "That's enough to make Robespierre look like a Tory. Fiat sic. " And sick it was. Word soon went around that the gobblers and knobs north of Lexington and south of Cincinnati were a lawless territory, and those sawed-off hills and scrub clearings and swampy valleys filled up fast with Klinkenbeards and Harrisons. In those days, if justice wasn't local, it didn't exist: no higher authority gave a damn about some crackpot settlement on the edge of the Shawnees' stomping ground. Before long, the town was so dark and bloody that the Indians shied away. One night, the corpulent head of the Klinkenbeards disappeared, and a few days later a rummed-up Harrison bragged that his brothers had diced him and tossed him into a spicy burgoo. A feud was on. They gut shot each other's women and children, beheaded each other's old men, and spoke disrespectfully to each other's coon dogs. Under pressure from his Baptist constituency, who were embarrassed by the bad name Liberty was giving the whole state, the Governor dispatched up the militia. They got scared and mutinied just above Quick Creek, beyond which they had heard that even Georgians feared to go without a Klinkenbeard or Harrison escort. Human decency went by the boards. The Henrys and Boyds walked around naked. The McGoffins staffed a whorehouse with midgets, livestock, and the hearing-impaired. Apparently getting wind �COLSTON 59 of this pleasure dome, some dubious emigres who claimed to have shamed the licentious court of Louis Fifteenth showed up with their Jesuit confessors in a rickety carrosse. They introduced love aids made of precious metals and ostrich feathers and offered the patent rights to anyone-man, woman, or animal-who could show the ennuye Dauphin something new. This supposed royal heir was so obese that he couldn't close his right eye and had to have an effeminate attendant moisten it every five minutes with salt water. The contest was on, and after three days a big Floyd woman and her jack mule won. In no time at all, gobblers-and-knobs smiths were selling their erotic wares to hucksters bound for the Louisiana Purchase. To this day, one of these contraptions shows up every now and then at a Liberty garage sale. One rare find is called a cat tweezers, from chatouilleuse, and it still grips like a professional bowler and cuddles like a collie puppy. Those old boys were craftsmen. Young Liberty was as experimental as a freshman dormitory at a prestigious university, and custom was razed like a country church by a tornado. The Taylors ate breakfast at sunset; the Jeffersons used Bible paper as fire tinder; the McDarmint girls refused to give in to their daddies. Nothing passed on authority. One forward-looking Jefferson boy decided that cooking was a superfluity. He began eating his pork raw and wound up trading ten acres of prime bottomland to an Armstrong witch for a worm charm. Another concluded that, Newton notwithstanding, a wheel and an inclined plane created rather than saved work. His warehouse went bankrupt, and late in life he found a negative sign in the wrong place. In those revolutionary years, if they thought of it, they tried it. Some daring Robinson women taught a dozen black bears to dance. This was a huge success until one night a wild-eyed high-stepper went into heat and mauled a strongly cologned stringer from a Louisville tabloid. These folies ursines went out of business, and the furry chorus girls were ground up into meat patties. Erasmus Jefferson proclaimed his desire to teach every boy and girl in the gobblers and knobs to do percentages and the brightest to read Greek, and he was the only laughing-stock. So it is when the world is new but the people in it have been around: no traditions, no obstacles. Liberty's frrst promoters found that they could bill the town anything they wanted. The keelboat captain called it Little New Orleans, and Erasmus came up with Kentucky Athens. An Austrian Egyptologist of the first water, enticed by Erasmus's spurious find of Shawnee pictographs bearing striking resemblances to those recently discovered hieroglyphics, proclaimed this sugar-cane town the Luxor of the West, never minding that Liberty's would-be namesake was plunked smack in the middle of the desert. The �60 THE ST. JOHN'S REVIEW French Jesuits who rode with the obese Dauphin sent back word to Rome that they had come upon the Sodom and Gomorrha of the New World. In rushed a tough Spanish comparu'a de Jesus recently reinstated by Pius IV and ready to prove their mettle in spiritual reform. They hitched a ride with a one-armed Harrison teamster, who talked ethics with them: "Personally, I don't care what kind of fucking a man does so long's he keeps it in the family." He drove his mule up a steep knob, where his relatives were butchering for a burgoo. The Black Robes took one look at the ceremony and turned north to work with the Shawnees, where Satan had not gotten such a foothold. The Jesuitical allusion held, however, and old men and women high up on Quick Creek still can be heard saying that they were born in "Solomon and Gonorrhea." Erasmus surveyed his anarchic Utopia and wondered where he had gone wrong. He didn't like what he saw, but he asked himself where one should draw the line. Cannibalism was not his cup of tea, but de gustibus non disputandum est. The Dionysian carrying on broke his heart. His dream of writing the definitive rebuttal to the Federalist Papers dried up; Gladys Ruth infected him with the pox; he walked bald and shivering through the muddy streets, talking in Greek to the hogs and hounds. When a vision rots, the dreamer's mind goes bad with it. The next fall, the weather's pendulum swung back like a swing seat pumped by a hyperactive kid. A heavy snow piled in on All Saints' Day, a foot dropping in four hours. Erasmus looked at his map and ran out into the snow in his long underwear. "Those pox-spreading land speculators!" he shouted. Gladys Ruth went tromping through the drifts barefoot, wielding a cane sickle. "There ain't enough survived the cold," she declared, "to soak a sugar tit." That night she left town with the banker, blizzard or no blizzard, and everybody with any sense or ambition followed them, which explains why Liberty would remain poor and overcrowded for more than a century. From boom to bust in three years: this foreshortened frontier story was a miniature of the land of sudden sweeping change. As soon as the snow melted, the remaining Libertines got religion. It was called the Quick Creek Great Awakening of 1813. Abraham P.S. Cob, a harelipped charismatic who had a way with the damned and dispossessed, picked on Erasmus Lee Jefferson in a sermon that lasted for the entire week-long slow thaw. That babbling beanpole, P.S. whined, was an atheist, a heliocentric, a Jacobin, a polyglot, and a Bachelor of Arts. He burned the Bible, worked on the Sabbath, and advocated vaccination. Moreover, like other Godless men such as Voltaire and Franklin, he himself suffered from the pox. No wonder the Almighty went so far as to blow in on a Catholic holiday. �COLSTON 61 P.S. played to an outdoor crowd warmed by bonfires of burning sugar barrels on the banks of Quick Creek. On the seventh day of P .S.'s homily, his shivering congregation took fever. They shaked and quaked, quook and shook, and then they headed for Quick Creek with Erasmus, dunking him backwards, nine-hundred-and-sixty-nine times-a backwoods allusion to long-lived Methusaleh-and a Revolutionary War sawbones said that his heart probably stopped on the hundredth immersion. After this ritualistic purification, they jumped in themselves, all but the Klinkenbeards and Harrisons, which must have disappointed the crawdads. Then they stormed over to the schoolhouse with flaming oak boards, burned that last and best hope for mankind to the ground, and urinated on the ashes. They raised a log church on that very spot. It collapsed three times that winter and killed six people, but was raised anew each time with increased faith. After the first collapse, the Harrisons and Klinkenbeards headed for the briars and overhangs. P .S. joined forces with some Robinson and Armstrong elders, and together they made Liberty's first laws: against cannibalism, bestiality, bundling, hatless women, Sabbath-breaking, public defecation, atheism, polygamy, snuff, chin whiskers, earrings, whist, spirits, and the French language. The Gallic influence got the blame for the late iniquity. Night rides against homesteaders with names such as Le Jenne and Bomarshay were not uncommon. Despite the heroic efforts of three Jefferson first-born males, Liberty would not get another school until the twentieth century, and that one would not have been built without a mysterious order from Frankfort and a squadron of Army military police. The obscure little village oscillated between boom and bust throughout its !50-plus years. On the eve of Fort Sumter, a Cob discovered a rich saltpeter vein near Quick Creek. Within a month, three gunpowder plants went up. After the Battle of Manassas, however, where four kegs mysteriously blew up as if sparked by spontaneous combustion, Abraham Lincoln banned the purchase of all supplies from unreliable Gobblers-and-Knobs Explosives. In the 1880's, the Southern Railroad put through a section of track connecting with the CovingtonLexington line in hopes of stimulating regional logging. The project turned out to be only so much worthless steel and labor, for timber companies soon learned that the local white oak and scrub pine was full of termite holes even when green and became dry and splintery when seasoned. The last bringer of hope was Liberty Pike, started in the New Deal and intended to be an alternative route for U.S. 25. Then mercurial Mars (to mix mythology) dealt Liberty another cruel blow on the day that lives in infamy. With the country's resources devoted to the national interest, all work on Liberty Pike was immediately stopped, �62 THE ST. JOHN'S REVIEW and it wasn't resumed until after Potsdam, when less generous Fair Dealers saw fit merely to connect the Freedom Highway, as it was known, to U.S. 25 via winding back roads maintained by poor counties. For the last thirty years, the county seat of Cob County had been at least two hours away from the three great cities of the Commonwealth Golden Triangle. Cut off for so long from the world, Liberty was unto itself. Even in the mid-1960's, Bill Ed Tuck, the barber, used hand clippers. Pap Henry, the druggist, sold two gallons of enema refills a week; Ape Collins, owner of the Pure Oil gas station and a six-footer with a sevenfoot arm span, packed standard transmissions with sawdust; Rudy Smoot, the grocer, operated a milk truck; Doc Puckett, the chiropractor, wrote prescriptions without having a medical degree; most of the Harrisons and Klinkenbeards owned stills. For beer, the best bet was bootleg, since Cob County was dry, or Wilma Harrison's First/Last Chance on the edge of wet contiguous Crackenham County. But this new expressway promised to bring Liberty up-to-date, and fast. That was how the story of the founding was told in an obscure historical journal by the ambitious wife of an archaeologist whom the Commonwealth sent down to dig around before the extension construction began. With the reluctant help of the Backwards Dunking Local Missionaries, she interviewed the courthouse bench jockeys, the patients at the old folks' home in Ararat, and the regulars at the First/Last Chance. The journal was eager to increase its circulation and jazzed up the wife's prose and invented a few corroborating facts without substantially changing the thesis. When the article was published, Brenda Mane Armstrong, aspiring School Board member and head of the Local Missionaries, was livid. She seized the tapes she was storing for the wife in the church basement and spearheaded an angry but unsuccessful protest on ecological grounds against the archaeologist's digs out where the wife was told had been the Territory Trail. "You're tearing up nature and everythang," Brenda Mane said. The archaeologist looked for weeks and never found a sign of the Trail, although he did delve into an Eastern Woodland midden, from which he scraped out a buffalo pelvis. Determined to fish out some pioneer remains, he explored along Quick Creek, but found nothing more interesting than two ordinary fossils, as common as dirt, and they were borderline at that. "I can't understand it," he told his wife. "I haven't come across anything more than seventy-five years old-not a square-head nail, a threadless bolt, or a piece of cast iron. This town has nothing beneath the surface." �COLSTON 63 "Are you calling me a liar?" His wife got huffy. "I've seen copies of the newspaper from the Civil War." The issue was never resolved, and it destroyed their marriage. The bench jockeys got a big kick out of it. The wife may have been referring to yellowed issues of the Liberal, for Clyde Trample still used antique type, spelled "public" with a final k, spurned headlines and photographs, and wrote columnlength paragraphs. He ran excerpts from her article on the back page to get Brenda Mane's goat and did a profile on the new governor, who sported a Paul McCartney haircut and drove a Jaguar. So even before the first bulldozers were heard, Liberty made ready for the extension. The Cob County Commissioners took bids on a sewer system. C. Williamson Robinson, known as the Incest Defender, began reading up on personal injury law. The Dairy Queen put in a whole new line of ice-ball flavors. Morgana Tuck, Billy Ed's wife, made him buy a neck vacuum. She had blamed the unfulfilled promise of Liberty Pike on her husband's failure to go electric. "This time," she said, "we're not going to let a major highway connecting us to the throb and beat of the nation get away from us.'' She herself built up a beehive hair-do on her head just as she had seen on a short woman in Cincinnati. Unfortunately it collapsed on her one day when she was buying Rainbow Bread at Rudy Smoot's. Delph Henry, Pap's smart-mouthed boy, saw it cave in on one side and said, "Quick, Ma, let's git out of here before !hey's a swarm!" And even before the first dust clouds billowed, the local churches-queer little sects that had been cut off from low Protestantism for better than a century-voiced their opinions. The Unlimited Adventists hailed it as yet another Coming. The Grape Juice Christians said it was the beginning of the end to regional temperance. The Squawking Methodists railed that it was going to be a freeway for the Antichrist. But the Backwards Dunking Baptists, who proudly claimed to be the first Baptists to practice immersion in the revealed manner before all the others climbed on the bandwagon, were the biggest church in Cob County and their attitude counted most. "We withhold all judgment," Reverend Isa Dale said, "for a later date in the future down the road 'cause there is some good thangs to be said for progriss." It was Frank Collins, Ape's trouble-maker of a son, who saw the first signs of the highway. He was on the truck-stop site, standing on the cab of an asphalt truck looking through binoculars. "Here they come, Daddy," Frank shouted. "Bulldozers and cement trucks and a Negro road crew." �64 THE ST. JOHN'S REVIEW Ape threw down his asphalt rake and cussed Frank down from the cab. "Don't let me ever hear you call them Negroes again, boy," he said, snatching away the binoculars so violently that Frank's head snapped back. He mounted the cab and took a look for himself. "Them's niggers, sure enough.'' Yes, it was true: the government was actually paying them money to stand around with spades over their shoulders. A few operated the big bulldozers, and one was even a foreman, giving orders to a white crew. It was hard to take, sort of like watching old athletes sit the bench while young bloods gained applause. The bench jockeys jabbered about it: "I ain't never going to drive on no road built by niggers." "You reckon they'll be driving on it?" "Shore. It don't go now heres but to nigger cities." "Can niggers drive?" ''I seen one driving a Mercury the other day. It was a automatic.'' But that they vowed never to drive on the extension didn't keep them from watching it being built. During the day, they walked from the courthouse down to sit among the honey locusts for a close look at the devastation. It had the magnitude of a disaster movie: dynamite exploded hills from the ground up, like earthquakes; bulldozers razed bushes and woods, like floods. Trees lay stretched out and helpless like bombed soldiers. Deer and rabbits ran recklessly about as if fleeing a forest fire. Pretty soon, dairy farmers who had long since let their cows go dry got two hundred dollars an acre and free barbwire for their wildonioned and yellow-clovered pastures, through which the blazed area ran, glinting and straight like a zipper. Taking a detour only around the horse farms near Lexington, it swerved otherwise for nothing, relentless, wide, and cold-eyed, like a convoy of tanks through a forest. "Kiss my ass,'' exclaimed one bench jockey sitting on a lawn chair, ''if that ain't going to be a road!" Day by day, the Negro highway workers inched closer and closer to Liberty. They drove to the job site six to an Oldsmobile; they fished and hunted crawdads on their lunch hours; they got within two miles of the white women. Boss Dunn said he saw a whole gang of them corning out of the woods behind his trailer, each carrying a possum by the tail. Any day now he expected to see them talking to somebody he knew. Finally, it happened, one day when the temperature reached a hundred and the road crew was within walking distance of Market Street. The Negro foreman tightened his belt a notch and headed straight for town. By the time he passed the bench jockeys, he had drawn a following of nine boys who thought he was either a space man or a profes- �COLSTON 65 sional boxer. If he didn't change direction, he would run smack into Pap Henry's drug store and soda fountain. It was scandalous enough to make the bench jockeys stand up. The foreman was brilliant with sweat, and most of the gathered crowd had never seen a Negro. In fact, they didn't know you weren't supposed to use that word anymore. Of course, neither Pap Henry's nor anything else in Liberty had ever been segregated, and, since the last black in town was a telephone lineman who set foot on earth only for lunch and coffee breaks, they weren't real sure about unwritten laws concerning the mingling of the races. Nevertheless, they .had the feeling that this young fellow who shone like Sidney. Poi tier was going to attempt something reckless and forbidden. He did. He bought the boys some candy. "Give me a bag of suckers for these childerns," the foreman said inside Pap's. The boys defied their daddies by accepting, plunking the suckers into jaws packed with chewing tobacco. Then the foreman walked over to the fountain, and the cashier, Lilian Waters, forgot to push in on her drawer. She had rung up ten thousand dollars. Delph Henry got scared and ran into the back room to fetch Pap. The customers stood close by so as to see which stool they would have to avoid sitting on forevermore. Well, he pissed off everybody by not sitting down. ''I's hot and dripping everwhar," he explained. Lilian forced a denture smile for a few seconds and then huffed, "Well, we get by with the fan." While the foreman eyed the menu above the ceramic-and-steel milkshake mixers, the customers were taking their time looking over the Epsom Salts and enemas. Finally, Pap Henry emerged from the back room, twitching his neck as if to scare off flies. "Root-beer float," the foreman said. Sheriff Boone was standing in the doorway by then, and he distinctly noticed that the foreman forgot to say please. The Sheriff was ready to go to work, for there must have been a dozen voters in there. Pap's neck twitched some more, and then he picked up the ice cream scoop with a flourish. "Hit's on the house," he announced. "I was just fixing to send out some flyers. Until that 'air road is finished, everthang on the menu's ten per-cent off for you and the rest of your crew." Pap was a horse trader, and that was a smart move, for the Dairy Whip was a quarter-mile closer to the ·extension, and he had been looking for a chance to run it out of business for a long time. * ��I \\ ., I �Two Translations of La Fontaine La Cigale et la fourmi La Cigale, ayant chante Tout l'Ete, Se trouva fort depourvue Quand Ia bise fut venue. Pas un seul petit morceau De mouche ou de vermisseau. Elle alia crier famine Chez Ia Fourmi sa voisine, La priant de lui preter Quelque grain pour subsister Jusqu'a Ia saison nouvelle. Je vous ~aierai, lui dit-elle, Avant !'Out, foi d'animal, Interet et principal. La Fourmi n'est pas pretense; C' est hi son moindre ctefaut. 'Que faisiez-vous au temps chaud? Dit-elle cette emprunteuse. -Nuit et jour tout venant Je chantais, ne vous cteplaise. - Vous chantiez? j' en suis fort aise. Eh bien! dansez maintenant.' a a La Fontaine, Fables, I, 1. 66 �LA FONTAINE 67 The Cicada and the Ant The cicada, having sung her song All summer long, Was left deprived When the north wind arrived: Not a bit of worm laid by, Nor bite of fly. To her neighbor the ant She went to chant Her complaint of starvation And borrow a ration Of grain Till summer came round again. 'I'll pay you back with interest before Next fall,' she swore Upon her Insect's honor. The ant was not a lender (Heaven defend her From such an accusation!) She asked the beggar 'What did you do When the days were warm and the sky was blue?' 'Night and day throughout the summer I sang my song to every comer.' The ant: 'I'm sure your singing was entrancing: Now try dancing. ' E.Z. �68 THE ST. JOHN'S REVIEW Le Corbeau et le renard Maitre Corbeau, sur un arbre perche, Tenait en son bee un fromage. ' ' ' Maitre Renard, par I' odeur alleche, Lui tint ii peu pres ee langage: Et bonjour, Monsieur du Corbeau. Que vous etes joli! que vous me semblez beau! Sans mentir, si votre ramage Se rapporte ii votre plumage, Vous etes le Phenix des hotes de ees bois. A ees mots, le Corbeau ne se sent pas de joie; Et pour montrer sa belle voix, II ouvre un large bee, laisse tomber sa proie. Le Renard s'en saisit, et dit: Mon bon Monsieur, Apprenez que tout flatteur Vit aux ctepens de eelui qui I' eeoute. Cette le9on vaut bien un fromage, sans doute. Le Corbeau honteux et eonfus Jura, mais un peu tard, qu'on ne l'y prendrait plus. 1,11. �LA FONTAINE 69 The Crow and the Fox Sir Crow was perching in a tree Holding in his beak a brie. Sir Fox, attracted by the cheese, Spoke words like these: 'Such handsome plumage! Such a sleek veneer! If your trilling Is half so thrilling How sweetly you must sing! Please do so: Of all the woodland warblers, let me hear The Caruso.' The victim has no choice: He must show off his voice. He opens his great beak and drops the cheese. Seizing the prize, the fox observes: 'Mon cher, Here is a lesson worth a camembert: Every flatterer Lives on the income of his flatteries.' The crow, ashamed and shaken, swore that he Never again would be a flatteree. E.Z. ����Book Review Allan Bloom: The Closing of the American Mind* Eva Brann I Here is a book which compels the question whether we should be glad of its existence. My answer is that we should be thrice glad, glad once that it was written, and glad that, having been produced, it found such favor with the public. The bulk of this review will address itself to the reservations which prompt the question in the first instance. Of the two reasons for rejoicing in its success-it is at the date of this writing in first place on the best-seller list-one is somewhat sly and the other quite straightforward. First, Mr. Bloom's book is the jeremiad of liberal education; but a Jeremiah eagerly heard, a prophet honored in his own land, is a prophet more than half refuted. As for the plain pleasure, it is simply that the book will do some concrete good. Some good, evidenced in small incremental improvements: the ear of a foundation here, a modest program there. Mr. Bloom himself has no illusions about a great systemic reprise of liberal education (380). An indication of the practical impossibility that the requisite cohesion should ever come back, is in the concurrent success of E. D. Hirsch's book, Cultural Literacy, in which is advocated a return to what used to be called "general information" (now defined descriptively as acquaintance with a list of some 3800 terms), while the one solution Mr. Eva Brann is a Tutor at St. John's College, Annapolis. Shy is the author of Paradoxes of Education in a Republic (University of Chicago, 1970). This review was written in July, 1987. *New York: Simon and Schuster, 1987 71 �72 THE ST. JOHN'S REVIEW Bloom finally offers-to be sure, with many cautionary contortionsnamely the reading of Great Books (344), is disavowed in Hirsch's preface. In truth, the thought of our whole vast establishment suddenly converted to liberal learning is somehow appalling, like the image of a continent-sized wheel of fine, ripe cheese. The factor of scale seems to me serious and of the essence. Communities of liberal learning require small size and spontaneous beginnings; the unanimity which ensouls and maintains them becomes oppressive and mechanical when hugely magnified and centrally mandated. In fact, it is strange to me that Mr. Bloom fixed on the universities as the possible loci for the learning whose loss he mourns, when surely our three thousand or so small colleges are its more likely home. The glory of the modern university has properly been not in contemplative reflection and aporetic conversation but in cumulative research and brilliant breakthroughs. And I will pit my experience in a score of more or less obscure little schools against his among a thousand university students: In these places student souls are still capable of grand longings, books are read with receptive naivete, and religion is not debased to the frisson of' 'the sacred.'' Small places are our internal educational frontier, and the spirit lives in the sticks. With respect to the effective influence the book might exert (as opposed to the passing waves it superimposes on the roiled ocean of opinion), there is something to be regretted in Mr. Bloom's policy of presenting himself as a voice crying in a wilderness; for in fact the wilderness has quite a few cultivated clearings. He speaks namelessly of his teachers and not at all of the institutional foci of resistance to the rot he exposes. His likely motives are most reasonable: not to be set aside because of sectarian associations, and, by suppressing the names of his allies and predecessors, to win the right of keeping the targets of his contempt anonymous. Consequently this irate tract manages to preserve a certain American civility. Nonetheless, the price is that general readers will have to discover for themselves the addresses of the contemporary sources and places where effective resistance is carried on, such as St. John's College itself.* *Some of these fellow-fighters in the battle against the soul-unstaying piffle-terms, those relaxants of shape and significance, which are the real, or at least the most interesting, butt of the book, such as creativity, self, culture, life-style, and communication, are hearteningly easy to find. For example, there are Judith Martin's vastly popular ''Miss Manners" books, which, under the guise of pronouncing on etiquette, often ironicize our linguistic mores; thus Miss Manners bids us to "make a special effort to learn to stop communicating with one another, so that we can have some conversation." Here is no inconsiderable ally! �BRANN 73 One word more on the reception of the book. Quite a few people are obscurely enraged by it and express that aversion-just as Mr. Bloom indeed predicts-by means of certain schematic terms, such as racism, elitism, and nostalgia-mongering, that are currently used to impute as sin unpopular though perfectly defensible opinions. It should not be considered a sin for Mr. Bloom to observe regretfully the more than occasional self-segregation of black students in the universities. Again, if one really wished to show him wrong, one would not angrily call him an elitist-silly term-but, by refraining, prove that democracies can indeed contain even their contraries. On "Firing Line" in May of this year Mr. Bloom respectfully but skeptically characterized the views of Midge Deeter (who is, incidentally, one of his predecessors in worrying about America's young) as "serious populism." For my part, I subscribe to this sort of populism, which precisely disavows the entity called "the People" because of the conviction that people one by one have in them, besides sound sense, the roots of reflection; thus they occupy places in a continuum with the deepest philosophers and are capable of participating to some degree in a common liberal education. This proposition is what Mr. Bloom evidently disbelieves. He thinks that philosophy, the highest pursuit, is not for everybody. I think he is wrong, democratic or undemocratic aside. (I do not want to concede either to him or to his opponents that his own opinions are truly any more incompatible with strong democratic sentiments than many other things one needs to believe along with one's civic creed. There is an argument which in its amplitude would have brought even Mr. Bloom into the democratic fold had he cared to use it: pluralism.) To begin with, his view of aristocracy has a stylized, unreal air. He seems to think that the honor-seeking aristocratic type, the magnanimous lover of the beautiful and the useless, is dominant in real-life aristocracies, just as he must think the vain, sycophantic, utilitarian, democratic type is pervasive in democracies (250). From what I read and hear, "the beautiful" for aristocrats has usually meant-and still means-mostly horseflesh, and if Mr. Bloom were not first run through by his aristocrat's sword for impugning his stud as useless, he would soon find himself dying of boredom from the nobleman's conversation. To be sure, Squire Western is more lovable than the aesthetic snob Mr. Bloom unwittingly delineates. These aristocrats, who, Mr. Bloom himself is careful to state, are far from being philosophers, are said by him to be likely to admire philosophers for their uselessness (250). To my knowledge they used to require them to work for their places at the bottom of the table as pedagogues and secretaries. But the main point is that a careless opposition has confused the issue here. The non- �74 THE ST. JOHN'S REVIEW utilitarian is not the useless but it is that which is beyond both the useful and the useless, and in particular it is what makes all usefulness possible. Talk of the uselessness of philosophy obscures its universal needfUlness. As for the actual citizens of a democracy, Mr. Bloom writes as though in this country no businessman had ever written sophisticated yet beautiful poetry or had ever composed advanced yet lovingly American music, no backwoodsman had ever achieved incomparable yet popular grandeur, no sailor had ever told an enormous moral myth which was also an account of the whaling industry. Mr. Bloom draws from his anti-populist views one simple rule for the university: It should not concern itself with providing its students with the democratic experiences they cannot escape in democratic society, but it must provide those they cannot have there (256). It should be a safe-house for aristocracy. This injunction seems to politicize and turn into paradox a true pedagogical precept, namely that colleges and universities should provide no "lifeexperiences" at all but should attend to book-learning and the other theoretical pursuits which are their proper business. Whatever is done in an American school cannot help but come out as a democratic experience, not least the free and direct discussion of Great Books. For it involves the democratic presumption that a cat may look at a king. Europeans tend to find this typically American and somewhat comical. I have heard the charge of nostalgia-mongering with respect to what seems to me Mr. Bloom's very restrained rehabilitation of the fifties. To be sure, I don't quite believe his claim that these were the great days of the American universities. As I recall it, they were the very years when professors anticipated Mr. Bloom in bemoaning the apathy and lack of public commitment on the part of their students, the years whose prosperous philistinism retarded my Americanization by a decade. But his praise of the fifties is in any case only the prelude to the damning of the sixties, the anathema of the book, which Mr. Bloom hates with verve enough to energize every chapter. This autobiographical impulse is patent to everyone. Not that one would blame him. What happened at Cornell, what the faculty seems to have permitted itself by way of moral indeterminacy, might well inflict a trauma never to be forgotten. The only saving grace of the episode, which so blessedly distinguishes it from the case of the German universities under the Nazis, is that the people of this democracy never made common cause with the professors. This is the moment to say a word about Mr. Bloom's writing. As The Closing is, of necessity, something of a magpie book intellectually, so in style it has a sort of mongrel eloquence: literately turned phrases suddenly develop colloquial cadences, the prose is inspissated �BRANN 75 with metaphor, and the exposition is torrential. It aroused in me a sense of sympathetic recognition. This is a style formed under the pressure of the most pervasive sort of anxiety there is. For most human misfortunes, from physical pain to miscarried love, there is local relief and the prospect of recovery, but the fear for the spirit of one's country is an incessant taint upon the enjoyment of life. Mr. Bloom's country is the America of the Universities, and the anxious patriotism which steals the serenity from his style does his sentiments honor. II To pass from the circumstantial to the substantive: Is this a good book? People regularly refer to it as brilliant. So it is, but brilliance belongs to the demi-monde of intellectual virtues. It would be silly to regret the flamboyance which is winning it its audience; at the same time it would be wrong not to register, for the record, certain substantial doubts. Let me begin this way: I would not recommend the book to students, not because it will offend their sensibilities-it can do them nothing but good to be forced to defend themselves articulately-but because it is a book not only of generational pulse-taking but also of intellectual history. I would not wish our ·students to get their intellectual history from this book (I shall shortly argue that it is a little too coarse-grained even of its kind)-or indeed from any book. To my mind, the notion that the intellect might have a history, that thought might develop a direction over the generations, should come to students as a late and suspect insight, long after each individual work of thought has been given its a-historical due. The Closing of the American Mind is, I am implying, a historicist enterprise or, more fairly, next cousin to it. Since historicism, the notion that the temporal place of a text determines its significance more than does the author's conscious intention and that history through its movements is a real agent, is Mr. Bloom's bete nair, this is no small charge. But there is no getting around the fact that the book continually places and positions great names evaluatively from the outside in-of internal philosophical substance it contains very little. Similarly it persistently sums the spirit of the times and seeks its genealogy in intellectual movements. For example, he says that the university as we know it is the product of the Enlightenment (250), a typical historicist summation in which the tree vanishes into the forest. Indeed, some of his judgments are simply distance effects (as are most historicist conclusions), which dissolve under a close inspection. A crucial example is �76 THE ST. JOHN'S REVIEW the claim that nowadays "all the students are egalitarian meritocrats" (90). If that were true, and a group held a belief without exception, one would indeed be driven, willy-nilly to the thought of a domination by a supra-individual spirit, that is, a congenital psychic infection by history. In fact it is probably false. In my experience there are always some students who are acutely if reticently proud of the advantages accruing from the right sex, religion, and social status, while those who do believe that "each individual should be allowed to develop his special and unequal talents" without reference to those factors might, I put it to Mr. Bloom, not just generationally believe it but also individually think it; it is certainly what I think. The title itself is revealing. It is, to be sure, not Mr. Bloom's choice. He wanted the euphonious and accurate title "Souls Without Longing" (the French title is "L'Ame desannee''). But he condoned "The Closing of the American Mind." The "Closing" part is fine: one of the most convincing chapters is the early one in which he shows how openness corrupted, which becomes the lazily tolerant path ofleast resistance, forecloses passionate doubting, and how the springboard of learning is vigorous prejudice. But "the American Mind" is debased Hegelianism, and a scandal. Americans do, happily, still have certain areas of consensus; nonetheless, they have more than one mind among them. It is utterly clear to me that Mr. Bloom does not mean what his words say, but it is odd that he is willing himself to supply the example of that soul-slackening disconnection of thought from utterance that he so spiritedly attacks. In fact this permissiveness exacts its price at the end, when he makes the judgment without which the book would be pointless: "Philosophy is still possible" (307), even, presumably, in America. His philosophy of history (and the project of the book really requires one) is simply too diffuse to support this optimism after all the gloom: he has obscured the only basis upon which the possible can, according to Aristotle, ever become actual, namely prior actuality. In short, "still" is the stumbling block here. Perhaps what is missing rather than a philosophy of intellectual history is its antithesis, a theory of opinion-holding, particularly an explanation of how and with what effect people say non-thoughts and become attached to terms of low thought-content. I hold to the axiom, which must seem culpably cheerful to Mr. Bloom, that shallow opinions are mostly shallowly rooted. Therefore I cannot share his passionate sadness at the deficient eros, the spiritual detumescence (136), of the American student soul. Though somewhat masked by the gormless language of the "sensitive, caring and non-possessive relationship," lustful, hurtful, exclusive love goes gloriously on. �BRANN 77 But whether it does or no, there is something not quite consistent in this mourning over the de-compression of the soul. Mr. Bloom describes with wicked verve the fatal invasion of the limpid American mind by the dark knowledge of the German refugees. He must know what a crucial role adolescent intensity played in shaping both these Europeans and their persecutors. I think that when Americans trivialize the continental depth (!57) they so eagerly absorb, they are often very sensibly-and not altogether unwittingly-counteracting their own intellectual prurience. And so, when the young cluelessly acclimatize Heideggerian Gelassenheit as "staying loose" (or so Mr. Bloom pretends to believe), it may not be such a tragedy: at least from staying loose there is a possible road to reason. My doubts so far have really concerned the nature of generalization as practiced in this book, but my final set of complaints concerns its quality. The text seems to be stuffed with truth that is not the whole truth and not nothing but the truth. Of course it is very hard to hit all the small nails squarely on the head with so large a mallet, yet there are fine and there are coarse ways of epitomizing spheres of thought and trends of opinion. Mr. Bloom's often anonymous and torrential mode of presentation makes it hard to tell whether the trouble is with his accuracy or his perspective. Moreover, he sometimes seems to present an anonymous modern opinion as though it had but to come in contact with the air to self-destruct, while his great moderns, Rousseau and Nietzsche, seem somehow to merit awed admiration for setting us on the road we are condemned for following. Mr. Bloom's relation especially to Rousseau is the mystery of mysteries to me. One of the excellences of his exposition is the continual pointing to Rousseau not just as the uncannily accurate analyst but as the brilliantly effective originator of the corruption-prone side of modernity. (The book neglects to its detriment the complementary side, the reverence-producing splendor of modern science and mathematics). But then why is Mr. Bloom not on record as being at least as repelled as he is fascinated by this "inverse Socrates" (298)? For Socrates is the pervasive hero of the book-Socrates the anomalous man, that is, not Socrates the conductor of fairly comprehensible conversations, or the contemplator of communicable truth. This curtailed Socrates comes before the American public brusquely defining the task of philosophy as learning how to die; from this picture it takes but a few steps to reach the conclusion that there is an incomposable quarrel between the philosophers and most of mankind (277 -8). Mr. Bloom manages to turn Socratic philosophizing into an utter arcanum simply through by-passing its substance. I think that when Socrates is brought on the scene he should appear as practicing the life he thought �78 THE STJOHN'S REVIEW worth living. Indeed, the fact that actual philosophy is kept at one remove in this book, that it is a tract on the love of the love of wisdom, is responsible for a certain skewing in the analysis of contemporary ills. Let me give one of many examples I could cite. That "the self is the modern substitute for the soul" (173) is an indispensible insight in the analysis of modernity. But in the section devoted to it Mr. Bloom simply suppresses reference to "subjectivity," the philosophical term through which are to be reached the deep and not ignoble motives for the substitution: to be utterly unfooled, to confront nature as its knower, to be freely good. Consequently contemporary talk of the self and its discovery is deprived of the respectable strain that, it seems to me, still somehow resonates in the most debased chatter. Our "three-hundred-year-long identity crisis" is, for all its latterday indignities, the unavoidable working out of a brave and compelling choice: We are essentially neither ensouled instantiations of an eternal species, nor creatures whose souls are made by God, but ungrounded spontaneous individual subjects. The function of philosophy should be not to shame us for it, but to re-dignify our dilemmas. I want to end with the chapter on music, a chapter that is close to Mr. Bloom's heart, and that he mistakenly thinks is unregarded. In fact, young readers turn to it first and rage at it, thereby confirming his observation that rock is their love. It is, to be sure, in a book that insists that the best is for the few, somewhat inconsistent to discount the lovers of classical music because they are fewer than one in ten, but the main point, so truly observed, is that the adherence to rock is universal. (I have never heard anyone young speak against it.) I do not quite believe that rock "has one appeal only, a barbaric appeal, to sexual desire" (73). I am a sporadic watcher of MTV and know that what the visualizations pick up in the music is its weirdness, whininess, bizarrerie, meanness, and scariness-in sum, a whole vocabulary of extrasexual excruciation, which is often ironically and even wittily exploited. The appeal is not so hard to understand; it is its universality and depth that remains a mystery. For Mr. Bloom's explanation does not quite reach the love aroused by this, or any, music. For him, following, as he claims, Plato and Nietzsche, music is the "barbarous expression of the soul," the soul's primitive, pre-rational speech, pure passion. I take it as read that he knows his Republic, but where in it did he find this theory? His own translation corrects the impression given by earlier versions that the musical modes express the passions (Rep. 398 e 1). According to Socrates they rather shape them. Moreover, the music must follow the words, which it couldn't do if it had no close relation to reason. (Indeed it was �79 BRANN Socrates' Pythagorean friends who propagated the great tradition or music as qualitative mathematics.) Some musical modes are more soulrelaxing than others, but these latter, the bracing ones, are the most potent instruments that the community possesses for forming the soul into grace amenable to reason. It follows fhat there is nothing truly primitive or pre-rational even about the most orgiastic music, and that when a sect succumbs to Wagner or a generation to rock, the explanation cannot start from raw passion, but must begin with corrupt reason. Mr. Bloom has succumbed to the prime error of those dark Germans, which is to think that the soul of a rational animal somewhere harbors a naturepreserve of pure primitive passions. III To conclude. The Closing of the American Mind is not only an opportune summation of decades of critique, but it is also among the early tappings of a turning tide. For the tide is turning, though not to float a happy and harmonious new liberal learning, but to ground us in a sad new abstinence. It has very suddenly come home to us that the world is full of dangers just where we sought our pleasures: spending, sex, substances, sound, even sunshine. We will be drawn in upon ourselves, we will have to take new thought, and in these straits liberal literacy, the attentive reading of good books, may eventually play a modest role as something of a saving grace. Because of Mr. Bloom this thought may come a little sooner to a somewhat larger number of people. Moreover, since it comes embedded in a critique of our current condition that is wholly passionate and largely true, there will be a more immediate effect: Some readers of the Closing of the American Mind are bound to experience a re-opening of their minds to the all-but-foreclosed understandings behind our present. That will be its success beyond celebrity. �JACOB KLEIN Lectures and Essays CONTENTS 1986 393 pages, hardcover, $22.50 The World of Physics and the "Natural" World 0 On a Sixteenth-Century Algebraist 0 The Concept of Number in Greek Mathematics and Philosophy 0 Modern Rationalism 0 Phenomenology and the History of Science 0 The Copernican Revolution 0 The Problem of Freedom 0 History and the Liberal Arts 0 The Problem and the Art of Writing 0 The Idea of Liberal Education 0 Aristotle, an Introduction 0 Leibniz, an Introduction 0 On the Nature of Nature 0 On Dante's Mount of Purgation 0 On Liberal Education 0 The Myth of Virgil's Aeneid 0 A Note on Plato's Parmenides 0 On Precision D About Plato's Philebus 0 Plato's Jon 0 Speech, Its Strength and Its Weaknesses 0 Plato's Phaedo TO ORDER: Send a check for $22.50 plus $1 for postage and handling to ST. JOHN'S COLLEGE BOOKSTORE, P.O. Box 1671, Annapolis, MD 21404. (Maryland residents add $1.13 state sales tax.) � Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource <em>The St. John's Review</em> Description An account of the resource <em>The St. John's Review</em><span> is published by the Office of the Dean, St. John's College.  All manuscripts are subject to blind review. Address correspondence to </span><em>The St. John's Review</em><span>, St. John's College, 60 College Avenue, Annapolis, MD 21401 or via e-mail at </span><a class="obfuscated_link" href="mailto:review@sjc.edu"><span class="obfuscated_link_text">review@sjc.edu</span></a><span>.</span><br /><br /><em>The St. John's Review</em> exemplifies, encourages, and enhances the disciplined reflection that is nurtured by the St. John's Program. 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Creator An entity primarily responsible for making the resource Office of the Dean Publisher An entity responsible for making the resource available St. John's College Identifier An unambiguous reference to the resource within a given context ISSN 0277-4720 thestjohnsreview Contributor An entity responsible for making contributions to the resource St. John's College Greenfield Library Text A resource consisting primarily of words for reading. Examples include books, letters, dissertations, poems, newspapers, articles, archives of mailing lists. Note that facsimiles or images of texts are still of the genre Text. Page numeration Number of pages in the original item. 79 pages Original Format The type of object, such as painting, sculpture, paper, photo, and additional data paper Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Creator An entity primarily responsible for making the resource Office of the Dean Title A name given to the resource The St. John's Review, 1988/1 Date A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource 1988 Contributor An entity responsible for making contributions to the resource Zuckerman, Elliott Ruhm von Oppen, Beate Stickney, Cary Van Doren, John Williamson, Robert B. Lavery, John Sachs, Joe Allanbrook, Douglas Allanbrook, Wye Jamison Brann, Eva T. H. Smith, J. Winfree Colston, Ken Description An account of the resource Volume XXXVIII, number one of The St. John's Review. Published in 1988. Identifier An unambiguous reference to the resource within a given context ISSN 0277-4720 The_St_Johns_Review_Vol_38_No_1_1988 Coverage The spatial or temporal topic of the resource, the spatial applicability of the resource, or the jurisdiction under which the resource is relevant Annapolis, MD Publisher An entity responsible for making the resource available St. John's College Language A language of the resource English Type The nature or genre of the resource text Rights Information about rights held in and over the resource St. John's College owns the rights to this publication. Format The file format, physical medium, or dimensions of the resource pdf St. John's Review https://s3.us-east-1.amazonaws.com/sjcdigitalarchives/original/b20a694177aaf6a881dda8f670000d9c.pdf a8fa356949cd8bf7417438857ddce1b8 PDF Text Text The St. John's Review Volume XXXVIII, number two (1988-2) Editor Elliott Zuckerman Editorial Board Eva Brann Beale Ruhm von Oppen Cary Stickney John Van Doren Robert B. Williamson The St. John's Review is published thrice yearly by the Office of the Dean, St. John's College, Annapolis; William Dyal, President; Thomas Slakey, Dean. For those not on the distribution list, subscriptions are $12.00 yearly. Unsolicited essays, stories, poems, and reasoned letters are welcome. Address correspondence to the Review, St. John's College, Annapolis, MD 21404. Back issues are available, at $4.00 per issue, from the St. John's College Bookstore. © 1988 St. John's College. All rights reserved; reproduction in whole or in part without permission is prohibited. ISSN 0277-4720 Composition Fishergate Printing The St. John's College Print Shop ��Contents LECTURES I . . . . . . . Fictional Selves and Ghosts: St. Augustine's Confessions Howard Zeiderman 21 ....... Human Being, Beast and God: The Place of Human Happiness According to Aristotle and Some Twentieth-Century Philosophers Deborah Achtenberg 49 . . . . . . . Dead Leaves: Illustrations of the Genealogy of the Epic Poem Jonathan TUck OCCASIONAL SPEECH 75 . . . . . . . Commencement Address Curtis Wilson VERSE 82 . . . . . . . Two Poems Carolyn Wade Loring 84 . . . . . . . Another Fable of La Fontaine Elliott Zuckerman BOOK REVIEW 87 . . . . . . . Thomas Flanagan: The Tenants of Time Eva Brann Sketches of McDowell Hall by Emily Kutter. ��Fictional Selves and Ghosts: St. Augustine's Confessions Howard Zeiderman In Book VI of the Confessions, Augustine describes an incident that he observed in Northern Italy. At that time, Augustine was still a professor of Rhetoric. He was in love with words; he was not yet a lover of the Word. The incident occurred in Milan. He had travelled there in order to hear the man purported to be the greatest speaker alive. That man was Ambrose, the Archbishop. Ambrose was a very busy man, who was almost constantly surrounded by people. It was during one of his rare moments of solitude that Augustine observed him. Here is Augustine's description: For very short periods of time, when he was alone, he was either refreshing his body with food or his mind with reading. When he was reading, his eyes went over the pages and his heart looked over the sense, but his voice and tongue were resting. This picture of a tired man reading alone is not unusual for us. We might well wonder why it is even mentioned. Is it to show that the great Ambrose is like the rest of us- tired, somewhat harassed, and in need of solitude? No. Augustine does not see the similarity. He sees differenceand it startles him. He cannot understand why the bishop, though alone, is not reading aloud. He puzzles over the sight for the next fifteen lines, but cannot come up with a convincing explanation. In the end he must Howard Zeiderman is a Tutor at St. John's College, Annapolis. This lecture was delivered at the Annapolis campus in January, 1988. 1 �2 THE ST. JOHN'S REVIEW resort to the holiness of Ambrose. As Augustine says: Whatever his reason for acting in this way, it would certainly be a good one. This passage about Augustine's incredulity at Ambrose's reading silently startles me. What should I make of it? I feel that, although I understand the words, I am missing something. And a careful re-reading of the passage doesn't bring me any closer to the sense. Such a passage- and each text that we read at St. John's contains many of them-does not immediately occasion my approval or disapproval, my agreement or disagreement. Usually, it is so far from helping me understand something that I feel as if I understand nothing. Eventually I must move on to more familiar ground, but the passage stays with me. It is like the ghost of a text. And like a legitimate ghost, it haunts me. It is haunting because, through it, a remote, dead world momentarily becomes visible. Let me try to explain what is so troubling for me about this passage. Reading is a fairly complicated activity. When I read, I try to understand. And I succeed when I am being thoughtful about the meaning of words. Thinking and understanding are private activities. They occur ultimately in a place I call "inside myself." So I tend to think of serious reading as an inside activity as well. Of course there are special circumstances in which we read aloud, either with others or alone. People read aloud when they are learning to read, or when they are sharing with others what they've previously read. Sometimes we do in fact read aloud what we have never read before, but then, frequently, we lose track of the passage, and have to back-track for a silent re-reading. And there are remarkable passages, like Augustine's description of Ambrose, which we read aloud to understand what, on a previous silent reading, we had not understood. Now in this passage about Ambrose, Augustine is startled by the very opposite of what would startle me. In order to make sense out of the passage, I would like to claim that reading aloud plays the same role for him that silent reading plays for me. But I can't do that. To do so would be to turn what is inside and private-what I think of as reading-into what is outside and public. Where would I find the place I called "inside myself'? And what would happen to the thing I call myself? What on earth could Augustine mean by the words "myself' and "me"? Our "selves" don't seem to have the same boundaries. The same difficulties arise if, instead of actually re-writing the text, I simply interpret the reading aloud that Augustine and Ambrose usually did while alone, as a form of what we do when we read aloud. However, this won't work either, because all of the forms that I have described are modifications and variations of "reading-as-1-know-it" -that is, variations of silent reading. We cannot strip from what we know as reading aloud �3 ZEIDERMAN the circumstances of its particularity and dependence, and then take what results as a general case. You're probably beginning to feel lost. As these questions open out, I too begin to feel lost. In fact, I begin to lose myself. The categories that are implicated in these questions- reading, understanding, thinking, physical, meaning, sharing, inside, outside, public, and private- are not just peripheral to what I am. They are the crucial items in terms of which I define myself. When those categories become fluid, who and what I am becomes fluid. What can one do in such a state? One can, of course, retreat from such a passage to recover oneself and one's sanity. But there is a kind of arrogance in retreating back into myself untried. Or one can push forward to lose oneself completely in madness and absurdity. This is the path of despair, where nothing, least of all myself, has meaning. It is at just these moments, when facing this choice, that I need others. What I can not do alone and yet must do- precisely because I am haunted- I may be able to do with others. I hope this exploration has given you a sense of a relation between us as readers and a certain kind of passage. Such passages are to be found in every work we read here. They assert something which is not just wrong, or unusual, or distasteful, but, rather, uncanny. This kind of uncanniness I have called "haunting." And this characteristic does not only apply to passages. Entire texts can haunt. In fact every text we read here can haunt. I will explore this characteristic through the work which haunts me mostthe Confessions. It is this work, too, which is my favorite of the books we read here, and the one that I judge to be the greatest. Since these are more common ways of describing books, we will look at these approaches in order to find out how a book haunts. ••* There are many accounts of the greatness of the texts we read. Some of these focus on the style or beauty of the work; others focus on the content and depth. Dante is a good example of the former, Descartes of the latter. Described differently, these two categories may be called rhetoric and poetry for style and beauty, and philosophy for content. A much more serious characterization of greatness breaks through the perspective of the two categories just mentioned. This third type of characterization shows the remarkably intimate connection between the how and the what. Examples of this sort of work are Platonic dialogues, and Hegel's Phenomenology of Mind. These two are obvious candidates for the third approach, �4 THE ST. JOHN'S REVIEW which looks at style and content, the poetry and the philosophy, at the same time. This approach is, as I said, the most serious. I believe that all the works we read here, not just the Dialogues and the Phenomenology, satisfy it. In any case, one consideration is common to each of these three approaches: by calling a book great-with respect to its form, its content, or both of these combined-we are intending to describe the book itself, and not ourselves. The search for a suitable definition and characterization has objectivity as its goal. At the other end of the spectrum is the subjective approach to a text. This, of course, has more to do with us as individuals than with the text. Each of the works is loved by some, hated by others. We frequently admit to our friends, though not in a seminar, that one or another book is our favorite. This occurs with friends because usually our friends are interested in our likes and dislikes, without demanding "proof." And in their company, I may feel encouraged to try to reveal my concerns, affections, or disaffections. That is, in talking about my "favorite" book, I may reveal important things about myself, not about the text. So the characterization "great book" speaks ostensibly about the book, and the characterization "favorite book" speaks primarily about me. Since, in my judgment, the Confessions is the greatest program book, and since it is also my favorite program book, I will use it to illustrate these two categories. Yet neither of these two categories is what I mean by a "haunting text." That characterization is a description that is equally about me and a text. How a text haunts may be made clearer by pointed contrast to the other two categories. And here again the Confessions will illustrate what I mean, because it is the book which haunts me most. In fact, the Confessions is most haunting, and raises the question of haunting texts to starkest visibility, perhaps because in it Augustine himself is haunted. ••• The Confessions is probably the easiest work on the list to misread, and the way we misread it is predictable. There is nothing more common in our world than writing autobiographies. Everyone in this room has probably written at least one, even if only as a part of an application requesting an autobiographical essay. And it is very hard not to read the Confessions as autobiographical. Yet, insofar as we do so, it becomes difficult to see in what way the Confessions is great. Though we, here and in the rest of the world, expect application essays to be autobiographical, we do not expect seminar essays, lectures, and important books to be autobiographical. The autobiography is not viewed as an activity, or a part of one's on-going �ZEIDERMAN 5 life; it is viewed usually as the record of one's activity, composed at a distance from oneself. A bit of history may be useful here, not, as we often rightly fear, to dismiss a work, but rather to help us avoid dismissing a work by misconstruing it. The Story of My Life by Cellini, and the Confessions by Rousseau, both written more than a thousand years after Augustine, define our notion of autobiography. These works help set the stage in the eighteenth century for the emergence of the form of writing which both attracts and repels us. There are very many examples of such autobiography to choose from- and yet none of them is on our reading list. And when one reads Augustine's Confessions as an example of this category that was, in many respects, created by Rousseau-in other words, as autobiography-then its place on our list seems suspect. Of course, we might then include Augustine's Corifessions not because of its merits but because other texts that we consider great require this particular work. In other words, the Confessions is considered great by other writers, whom we consider great. A few of these writers are Anselm, Thomas Aquinas, Dante, Chaucer, Luther, Montaigne, Descartes, Rousseau, Hegel, Kirkegaard, and Wittgenstein. So we include it too. Faced with our own uneasiness about the greatness of a work, we sometimes allow this kind of evidence to count. However, this kind of approach can be dangerous, if we grow complacent, and put the book on our list only for the sake of reading another work. But if we regard the evidence of those other great thinkers as an incentive to exploration, then we put the book on the list because it presents a task. The task would be a hard and probing kind of questioning about ourselves and about those other thinkers, though still not necessarily about the book in question. It could lead to investigating how we and those we consider great are different on fundamental matters of judgment or thought. And this investigation, though not the same as what a haunting text makes possible, is nonetheless similar to it. Let us take another step to see how the greatness of the Corifessions may be viewed more from the inside than from the outside. Let us take three approaches to the text which we can initially describe as the perspectives of Dante, Descartes, and Hegel. These three were on the list of those who were in awe of Augustine,· and their concerns may help direct our attention to aspects of the work that viewing it as autobiography makes suspect- if not impossible. In another rough characterization of these three approaches, Dante may stand for poetry, Descartes may stand for philosophy, and Hegel stands for the attempted reconciliation of the other two. This third characterization, Hegel's perspective, may be obscure. However, �THE ST. JOHN'S REVIEW 6 if we remember that in Plato's dialogues philosophy aspires to being, while poetry is enmeshed in becoming, Plato's "ancient feud" between philosophy and poetry may be understood as the feud between being and becoming. St. John's seniors can inform their Jess knowing friends that in Hegel's Phenomenology of Mind the two realms of being and becoming become so intimately involved with one another that they are no longer two realms. *** We will look at the poet's perspective first. Virgil appears as Dante's guide in the Inferno, and much of the Divine Comedy involves the relations between Virgil's poetry and Dante's own. Virgil does not appear as a character in the Confessions. His Aeneid, however, does. Augustine states that when he was young, reading the Aeneid was a source of pleasure, and reciting it was a source of glory. As an older man, he views his youthful devotion to the poem as a waste of his time and talents. Yet in spite of what he claims was a waste of time, he acknowledges that he also learned to read and write from this effort. The question arises whether this boy who grew up in and around Carthage and who, like Aeneas, finally found his home in Rome, was able to turn his childhood Jove for the Aeneid into something fertile and memorable in his adult life. I will mention only a few parallels with the Aeneid to show the extent to which Virgil's fiction echoes in Augustine's account. In the Aeneid, Aeneas meets Dido in Book I. So too in the first book of the Confessions Augustine meets Didn, as Virgil's character. In Book II Aeneas moves in and out of Carthage in his narrative to Dido; Augustine at the same time moves in and out of Carthage spatially. In Book III Aeneas finally finishes his account of his arrival on Dido's shore. As he speaks and Dido listens, she is increasingly captivated by his words and falls in love with him through his account. So too in Book III Augustine finally brings his wanderings to a pause in Carthage; like Dido, he too falls in Jove. And he says that the object of his Jove is the idea or the account of Jove. In Book IV of the Aeneid we read of the seduction in the grove, and of Aeneas' reawakened desire to go to second Troy-Rome, though he only knows of it indirectly. In order to leave Carthage he must deceive Dido; she despairs and dies by her own hand. In Book IV of the Confessions we read that Augustine too has moved on to seduction. He writes: So for the space of nine years [in Carthage] I lived a life in which I was seduced and seducing, deceived and deceiving, the prey of various desires. �ZEIDERMAN 7 And later in Book IV Augustine, too, is moved by the rumor of Rome: Why was it, Lord my God, that I decided to dedicate this book to Hiereus who was an orator at Rome? I had never seen the man but had come to love him because of this very great reputation. It is at this point that Augustine's desire to go to Rome emerges. Both he and Aeneas set out on their journeys in Book V. In Book VI, when Aeneas is in the underworld viewing shadows, Augustine is struggling to break the bonds of the Manicheans. That is, while Aeneas is seeing spirits without their bodies, Augustine is grappling with the idea of spiritual substance. These new ideas seem as insubstantial to Augustine as the shades of Hades seem to Aeneas. And as in Hades Aeneas is both alive and dead, so too Augustine in Book VI says: My life in you I kept on putting off from one day to the next, but I did not put off the death that daily I was dying in myself. Aeneas leaves the underworld of shadow at the end of Book VI, but it takes Augustine many more pages to be freed. The Aeneid plays a role in the Confessions, but the Confessions are not merely a duplication of a previous book. The Aeneid had twelve books, the Cotifessions thirteen, and in many cases-crucial ones-the characters and incidents of the Aeneid are displaced in the Confessions. The most startling transformation is that of the story of Dido's abandonment, lament, and death. In Book V of the Confessions, it is Augustine's mother who takes on the role of Dido, and it is there- not Book IV as in the Aeneid- that he leaves her weeping in Carthage and that he acknowledges the lie he told her. And both of these kinds of changes are the same. The increase in the number of books and the displacement of incidents occurs because there is another book which is also woven into Augustine's text. That book is, of course, Genesis. The last books of the Confessions is Augustine's treatment of Genesis, but again, a careful reading will show that Genesis pervades the entire work. For instance, when Augustine describes his mother in Carthage crying over his departure to Rome, he speaks using the language of Genesis: So she wept and cried aloud showing in herself the heritage of Eve. Having begun to look at the Confessions in this way, we see that it could not conceivably be an autobiography. The events are artfully recounted, �THE ST. JOHN'S REVIEW 8 following patterns provided by the Aeneid and glosses provided by Genesis. And although the end of Book IX seems to mark the end of the domination by the Aeneid and the beginning of the movement toward Genesis, there is in fact at each moment an interplay between the two texts. The Aeneid supplies the external circumstances of the account, the outer facts, and Genesis fills what is internal. Now the Confessions begins to take on the shape of a fiction, or even a poem- in Latin or Greek, something made. We could continue in this way, admiring the subtlety of composition and the attention to detail in this beautiful piece of rhetoric. At the end of it, we could be vindicated in not viewing it as autobiography. We might then feel inclined to include the Confessions on the reading list as a work great in itself, not just as a work admired by those whom we take as great. *** This little account was a sample of the lecture you might have heard on the Confessions as a great poem. If we now adopt the perspective of Descartes, we can both take what we've seen further and also see the Confessions from yet another angle. This perspective would have us focus on the role of philosophy. Philosophy appears prominently in three books of the Confessions. These are, first, Book VII, and then Books X and XL In Book VII, where Augustine has just entered his final struggle with the Manicheans, he discovers books of philosophy. Reading them is what first leads him to the possibility of immaterial substance, not just as the negation of matter, or as a shadow in Hades, but •.s something positive and distinct: as soul. Yet even the notion of soul is treated as merely theoretical. At this time, both the books and their ideas are represented as things interesting but external. And in Book VII Augustine keeps his distance from these books for another reason. He realizes there is one thing he could not learn from them. He could not learn humility. In Book X philosophy reappears, no longer as a study but as a way of life. Philosophy is now Augustine's own activity. And the living philosophy effects a movement similar to, but greater than, the movement effected by the reading of the books. The activity of philosophy leads Augustine from the outside to the inside. He begins to investigate his own soul, to search for traces of his being. The activity of philosophy in Books X and XI marks the transition from the narrative of external circumstances, patterned on the Aeneid, to the investigation into spiritual considerations, as seen in the treatment of Genesis. So we see that for Augustine philosophy plays the role of the inbetween. It is the in-between of inside and outside, of flesh and spirit. The �ZEIDERMAN 9 role of philosophy for Augustine- as the movement from outside to inside- dictates its form. For, of all our faculties, it is not reason nor imagination nor sensation that first presents itself as taking the outside into the inside. Rather, it is memory. And memory becomes the focus of Augustine's investigation, which in turn opens the question of past, present, and future. This focus on time in Book X sets the stage for the treatment of how to construe the account of beginning-that is, Genesis-in Books XII and XIII. The activity of philosophy in the Corifessions thus plays a role which is the re-enactment of the role that his passive dependence on the books of the Platonists played in Book VII. Such would be the sketch of another lecture on the Corifessions as a great book. This time the concern was with the content of the work itself rather than with the way the work echoes other great works. And the content-philosophy-is not in conflict with the poetry but has a definite relation with it. For now, looking back on his use of the Aeneid, we can see that Augustine, like Virgil, created a memory, or a kind of story. Poetry has set the stage for philosophy and the philosophical pursuit of Book X. What poetry presented, through books, for a passive audience, philosophy makes one's own, through activity. ••• I have presented two sketches for lectures on the greatness of the Confessions; the first took greatness to be something in the style or poetry; the second took it to be something in the content or philosophy. These two sketches together form a prelude for yet a third lecture, which takes the third approach to greatness. It would begin with the status of the reader- how should the reader read the Confessions? Is the reader passive, as Augustine was in the Aeneid section, or active, as he was in the philosophical exploration of memory and time? It is this aspect which probably most interested Hegel. It is his Phenomenology of Mind, of all the books we read, that most requires the reader to supply, in response to one section of the text, the transition to the next. The role of the reader of the Confessions is comparable, though as different as the Hegelian dialectic is from sin. An example may bring out the course a reader undertakes in the Confessions. At the end of Book II, Augustine describes an incident which no reader of the text ever forgets. When he was a boy, Augustine and a few friends stole some pears from a neighbor's tree. The fruit- unlike that fated fruit in the Garden-was neither pleasing to the eye nor good to eat. Indeed, the boys threw the pears away. When he asks himself why he did this, �10 THE ST. JOHN'S REVIEW Augustine's only answer is that he did it for the sake of doing wrongthat he loved sin for its own sake. The whole description is so vivid that the incident becomes a kind of drama for the reader. The reader witnesses the wrongdoing. Thus the reader plays the role of spectator. He observes a scene in which Augustine, and not himself, plays a part. This in fact sets the stage for the next scene of the Confessions. At the opening of Book Ill, when Augustine is a student in Carthage, he himself becomes enmeshed in being a spectator. He attends the theater, revelling in the grief, sadness, and joy that he witnessed there. He remarks again and again that these spectacles are external and utterly remote from him, displayed for him insofar as he is their witness. But was not this the reader's relation to the story about the pears? What has happened here is that Augustine has prepared a place for the reader, and then occupied that place himself within the text. There must be some distance between the author of a text and the readers of that text. However, Augustine, by writing about himself, makes that separation between reader and text as extreme as possible. And yet we have just seen how Augustine, in making the reader play the part of spectator, has started to diminish that very distance. Elsewhere in the text, the reader adopts other roles -listener, judge, critic, admirer. At each step, the separation between external reader and the text diminishes. This distance vanishes completely at the end of Book IX. This is also exactly the place that marks the culmination of the external circumstances supplied by Virgil's Aeneid. There, at the death of Monica, Augustine's mother, Augustine's Dido, he prays. (How unlike Aeneas!) And so by means of these Confessions of mine, I pray that my mother may have her last request of me still more richly answered in the prayers of many others besides myself. In other words, Augustine invites the reader to join with him in prayer, to do the very thing that Augustine is doing. The distance between Augustine and the reader, between Augustine and me, or between me and not- me, dissolves if we join him in the activity of prayer. Again, at the very same place, at the end of Book IX, Augustine leaves the account of his external circumstances and goes on to philosophical activity. And what is the topic of that activity? Memory. Memory- we all have it, although what Augustine remembers is different from what I remember, or from what you remember. And even within each memory, the me and the not-me differ, since each of us is a different thing from the content of our memory. The tension between reader and text, between �ZEIDERMAN 11 me and Augustine, between me and not-me has been brought into the text itself here at the end of Book IX. And that tension moves on into Book XI and the treatment of time. The distinction between me and not-me culminates in the placing of the self in time: now there is a difference between the me-l-was and the me-l-will-be. And why is the distinction between what I am (or have been or will be) and what I am not so very important? It is important because it is the distinction between my soul and my sin. For Augustine, the soul is who he truly is, and the sin, although in some way his, is what he is not. With the treatment of time, we and Augustine finally face, in its clearest form, the inheritance of the eating of the first fruit. For Adam and Eve, looking for godhead, found sin, death, and time. Augustine invites us to pray with him at his mother's death. If we join him in prayer at the end of Book IX, and through that initial breaking of the barriers of self are able to reach the question of time, then we are ready, at Book XII, to enter the book of Genesis. Thus the reader moves from passive to active. He was merely a passive spectator at first, when he watched the drama of Augustine's life. If he responds to the invitation to pray, then he becomes active. But the core of that activity is precisely the difference he has just gone through- the difference between action and passion, what I do and what happens to me, or, in other words, between the me and the not-me. The account you have just heard takes the previous accounts into a new mode. For the poetry or fiction that became a stage for philosophy is now so entwined with it that both the how and the what, and the text and the reader, are revealed as temporary categories. Yet, though this account is about the reader, it does not essentially touch us. It is not about us as individuals, but about us as the readers of this particular text. In other words, this is still a lecture about the Confessions as a great book. And in all such lectures, the audience, like Augustine and the reader in the first nine books, is passive. The lecturer, who has spent time making himself passively dependent on a book in studying it, reveals some of its subtleties, and invites the listeners to undertake a similar relation. And although a listener may leave the lecture and go on to study the text with others, the effort suggested by the lecturer remains an individual and solitary one. So in all of these sketched lectures, the greatness of the book has been the concern. The approaches that I have associated with Dante, Descartes, and Hegel, do not involve me-as-an-individual, because their focus has been the text itself. It has been with something which is not me. ••• �12 THE ST. JOHN'S REVIEW The other end of the spectrum from looking at the Confessions as a great book is viewing it as my favorite book. Such a perspective is not primarily focused on Augustine but on myself. When I view the Confessions as my favorite book, I don't stand on the ground of the text. Instead, I consider the text on my own ground and as dependent on my activities. And, although considering the book's greatness necessitated avoiding reading it as autobiography, considering the book as my favorite book is intimately connected with autobiography. In fact, it involves me in giving an autobiographical account of myself. I do not have to surge into the story of my life. But I do have to give an account-as one does with friends-of what the Confessions has meant to me as an individual. It has meant many things- the most suitable of which to address in a lecture has to do with my life and thought, and the works of two modern philosophers: Wittgenstein and Heidegger. Both these writers are from our world, a world where "reading" means "reading silently." One or the other of them absorbs and influences many of our contemporaries. Their work makes them as different as two thinkers can be, and yet they display two significant similarities. For both, their work falls into an earlier and later stage, the latter stage being an explicit denial or rejection of the former, like Augustine's in the Confessions; and both wished to end philosophy. Please don't misunderstand when I say they wished to end philosophy. That does not mean they wished to end thought, or seriousness, or responsibility. Rather they felt that philosophy as a separate and autonomous activity, which they both associated with Descartes, made one thoughtless, frivolous, and irresponsible. These two were never casual about philosophy. At one time, there was nothing more important, or more natural, for them to do. They did not criticize philosophy from the outside; they were "insiders." Yet, in spite of heroic efforts to end philosophy, they each failed- not just once, but twice! My own thought has gravitated around their efforts because I agree with them- I feel their desire and I feel their failure. And like them, I don't feel it from the outside. Considering the One and the Many, being and non-being, categories, language, and truth, was more important, and more natural, than anything else for me. In fact, at one time it was life's breath. Yet at times one recognizes that what comes naturally- one's gifts, one's abilities, even one's breath itself-causes one to suffocate. Though I had been drawn to Wittgenstein and Heidegger before that crisis, my shortness of breath involved me with their work more and more intimately. They were a kind of artificial respirator through which I could consider my own task and theirs. If I scrutinized their work, I might be able to avoid their failure. In those days I was like a chess player studying the games of past grand masters, or like a pathologist doing an autopsy �13 ZEIDERMAN on a victim of the disease I myself was suffering from. However, the more I thought about what they had attempted and failed, the more I realized it was not their lack of cleverness and intelligence that was responsible. In fact, quite the opposite. It was precisely their intelligence and cleverness which caused for each not only one failure, but two. They failed because they were geniuses and because their proposed audience was an elite group of thinkers who could fathom the issue and comprehend certain works. The result was not the end of philosophy at all. Instead, there was an increase of technical and arcane talk. And, because Wittgenstein and Heidegger were "canonized" as new philosophers, they gave rise to a grotesque hagiography, developed and carried on by their own disciples, who should have known better The more I studied them, the more I agreed with them on their diagnosis of the ailment. But even more pervasive than they supposed, the disease, philosophy, appeared. Those infected were not just readers of certain books, or practitioners of a certain philosophical school of thinking. The diseased were not just the intellectual inheritors of Descartes, but in fact everyone who lived in a Cartesian world-which is just a shorthand for the modern world in which we all perform every act and gesture of our lives. It was at this moment that I remembered the Confessions. Was not Augustine similar to Heidegger and Wittgenstein? Was not he himself burdened with his own gifts and was not he as skilled at technical rhetoric and philosophy as anyone? He felt, as acutely as anyone, the desire for philosophy and the hunger both for truth and for his own discovery of that truth. And did he not only face these horrors but succeed in resolving them in a work that was for everyone, not merely professors and intellectual technicians? And wasn't Augustine's indictment of philosophy similar to my sense of why Heidegger and Wittgenstein failed? For their greatness prevented them from seeing beyond their greatness. Augustine recoiled from philosophy because it could never teach him humility. It was because of these concerns and thoughts that I was drawn to the Confessions. In my own concerns and confusions, I needed an ally and a friend. And I didn't turn to the Confessions because he had achieved what I was attempting. His concern and mine differ. Unlike Augustine, the name I heard with my mother's milk was not Christ's. I was not a Christian and the task and need I felt were mine, not Christian. So I didn't read him to learn "how-he-did-it." I read the Confessions as the struggles of someone similar to but yet quite different from myself. In short, I read it as autobiography, and it is as autobiography that it has been my favorite book. *** �14 THE ST. JOHN'S REVIEW We have now looked at two ways of reading the Confessions-as a great work and as my favorite work. As a great work I read him as a scholar would, bringing to bear a knowledge of other books he uses, the responses of other writers to his work, and what, for lack of a better word, I must call history. It is because I am familiar witb the genesis of what we call autobiography, that I realize that reading the Confessions as autobiography would be remarkably anachronistic. Once I hold that tendency in check, the book opens up, and I can become in some sense passive as I learn from it. On the other hand, when I read the Confessions as my favorite book, I read it quite differently. Then I read out of my own activity and I read it precisely the way I guarded against before. In the first case I read him out of knowledge, in the second case out of need. Although both these ways of reading may involve other people, they are primarily solitary. When I speak about the greatness of the Confessions, I'm telling you something. I may depend on the work of others and even prompt you to find aspects of the work I had missed or gotten wrong. I could, therefore, in telling you, also gain something in return. But our relation to each other is essentially solitary. In sharing with you remarks about the Confessions as my favorite book, we again can become useful to one another. Your need may be similar to mine, and you too may decide to turn to the Confessions. But again my reading the Confessions was private and silent- just like the kind of reading Ambrose did one time in Milan. Both of these silent ways of reading are important, even though they are so different from one another. In fact from the perspective of one kind of approach, the other is suspect. From the vantage point of my need when I read Augustine as my favorite book, the greatness of the Confessions seems sterile, a mere diversion. From the perspective of my studies of Angustine, reading the work for encouragement and consolation seems undisciplined and self-indulgent. Yet, as I said, both approaches are important and even necessary. The third approach to a text, where we are haunted by a text, overlaps with these two familiar approaches and yet differs importantly from them. In the third approach to the text we may start by reading the words silently and privately, but we must go beyond this to reading publicly. What I mean by public reading is an essentially cooperative activity. In this approach, not only do we depend on one another, but knowledge and need are also no longer held apart. They too merge toward one another. This occurs when the Confessions begins to haunt us. Need stops being my particular need, but it is rather a need we all feel, and the relevant knowledge is precisely what we all lack. It is in this context that we no longer read as solitary �ZEIDERMAN 15 explorers or solitary sufferers; au individual reads as preparation for what reading makes necessary- a conversation. In reading the Corifessions as a great book, I withheld viewing it as an autobiography. In reading it as my favorite book, I read it as I would read such a work written by one of our contemporaries. My expectation in seeing such a work is that it is autobiographical and I read it as such. Though I said both readings had a kind of legitimacy, nonetheless a tension and conflict exists within me between these readings. For is it or is it not autobiography? Well, in one sense it is clear that it isn't. Yet it isn't just not-autobiography. Our normal expectation on reading the Confessions, and the label it often carries on its book jacket, aren't just misplaced. To view it without keeping in mind that a man Augustine wrote about his life-and therefore that it is autobiography-would be to fathom its greatness but lose the life of the text. But imagine such a work being published today. It might gain a few readers and perhaps even a sympathetic review or two. But on the whole it would be viewed as silly, or pretentious, or even irresponsible and absurd. It is a text that could not be written now, in our present. It is a past text, but clearly it is not a dead text-nor is it a text that is truly alive. The text is an in-between text-not entirely dead nor entirely alive. It is a ghost. I need to describe more clearly what such a ghost text is and how it haunts. The Confessions haunts because its greatness- some aspects of which l mentioned- seems incompatible with its form as autobiography. Insofar as we penetrate the scope and intricacy of the work, the expectation of a roughly factual account of someone's past life becomes increasingly problematic. And as the work begins to look fictional, its truth becomes suspect. Fictionalization, whether intentional or accidental, will earn our criticism because fact and fiction have to do with truth and nottruth. The evidence, however, from the earlier part of this lecture, is that Augustine did indeed shape his story in a way that we would call fictionalizing. If he is replacing fiction for fact, is he truthful? The answer seems obviously to be no. But suppose that fact and fiction are different for Augustine than for us- that truth is different for him than for us. By this I don't mean that he holds truths different from the ones we hold, but rather that he means something other than what we mean by the word truth. What a strange suggestion- and yet it has already come up earlier in this lecture. For to ask about what one means by truth will involve what one means by self. And then, if a self is different, then the thing which a self writes- an autobiography- will be different from any autobiographical essay or text we have ever read or written before. I think that this suggestion is right-that truth means something strange for Augustine. But �16 THE ST JOHN'S REVIEW though I say this, and though I can explain why I say this, I don't understand what it means. Augustine reaches a conclusion about truth in his discussion of Genesis. In pondering the meaning of its first line- In the beginning God created heaven and earth- he considers various possibilities. In the end, he presents his opinion: every truth any reader knows is contained in the first line of Genesis. In trying to understand this startling suggestion, I come up with analogies. Is the first line of Genesis like a mathematical axiom of such power that in itself it contains all other truths? Or is it like a painting, which presents to each viewer a personal and legitimate vision? Both of these options are, however, implausible. They make more sense to us than they would to Augustine. Perhaps to probe the meaning of the first line one needs charity, or love, without which, says Paul, one's words are like the clanging of a bell. This looks more promising. Love or Charity turns sound into meaning and, one could say, into truth. But if charity gives meaning to utterable things, and makes them true, then it seems that all utterances would mean the same truth. As I say these words, you may feel we have returned to Paul's clanging bell. Without having resolved this riddle about the first line of Genesis, let me go on to another one. Augustine states that if his task had been to write such a book, he would have wanted to write it as Moses did. Is it possible that he did this very thing in writing the Confessions? Let us think about what we mean by confession. Usually confession involves an acknowledgment of a past action, and a resolution with respect to the future. Confession is a bridge, an inbetween like the ghost text, and, as philosophy was for Augustine, between the past and the future. The security of that bridge depends on the commitment of the confessor. Only time can reveal that commitment. When the confession is made to another person, then that person must risk entering into the confessor's future. When the confession is made to God, there can be no secrets between the confessor and God. In such a case, however, those outside the confession know of it only what the confessor then chooses to make public. With this much to guide us, can we say whether the Confessions are addressed to us or to God? Augustine speaks often, and passionately, to God, referring to him as "You." And, although it occurs less often, he does speak both directly and indirectly to the readers. So the answer seems to be that the Confessions are addressed both to us and to God. Now God can certainly hear this confession and judge or forgive Augustine. But can we? Were we his contemporaries, we would be able to forgive Augustine some personal offense. But of course we are not his contemporaries; our forgiveness would be irrelevant to him. But can we even presume to forgive �ZEIDERMAN 17 him? For what? His recorded offenses are against God, not against us. To say this another way, only God can judge or forgive. So although Augustine is in part writing for us, he cannot be confessing to us. By con- fessing to God in our presence, Augustine affords us the opportunity to listen neither in judgment nor in forgiveness. What is the alternative to listening in judgment or with forgiveness. It is to listen charitably. Now remember what Augustine said about Genesis- that he would have liked to have written a book like that. Somehow, for Augustine, Genesis was written through or in charity. Somehow Moses was able to write such a book. Augustine could not presume to reproduce this effort. But he has been able to produce a text which can really be read only with charity. If it is read without charity, the Confessions becomes the mere clanging of a bell. We can try to disguise the clanging by reading it as a great book, or as our favorite book. It is when we read it with charity that each of its lines -like the first line of Genesis- becomes all of the truths we know. It is when we read with charity that the differences between me and notme, between my truths and your truths, vanish. *** Do you really understand what I'm saying about the Confessions? It's hard for me to see how, because I don't. And it's not from ignorance or lack of effort that we don't understand. If you feel that my words shimmer before you, tempting you, yet eluding your grasp, then you feel what I feel. You are in the presence of a ghost, as I am. The Confessions are a ghost which haunts. The Corifessions succeed at the task that Augustine set for himself, or that was set for him. But what such a task is and how it was fulfilled remains deeply impenetrable. And we do not penetrate it by learning yet another ingenious aspect of the text, which might emerge from reading still more carefully. For when a text begins to haunt, the locus of attention is not the text, as it is when the text is a great book, nor ourselves, as it is when the book is one I love or hate. In other words, we are neither passive nor active. Rather, the locus of attention is what I can best describe as what is in between us and the text- the gap between our deepest expectations and those of the text. Becoming clearer about this haunting in-between cannot be a solitary activity. I need others- but not for their information or insights and not for encouragement. That is, I need others neither as scholars nor as friends. At this stage, I need others to help me see something about myself. To use their help, and to offer help to them, my private and solitary reading must give way to public reading. Our public reading, a modern reflection of the �18 THE ST. JOHN'S REVIEW sort of reading Augustine expected of Ambrose, is conversation. Our understanding of the Confessions as a great book or as my favorite book may be enhanced by conversation; our facing it as a haunting text is absolutely dependent on conversation. A ghost text has two interrelated functions. It elicits the most salient categories of our world. It also affords us the opportunity to think through those deepest habits that have thoughtlessly determined our lives. So a ghost text brings to the surface the true ghosts. These reside not in texts but in ourselves. They are the haunting accretions of our past, our educations, our social, economic, and political environments. It is in the presence of the ghost text that these other ghosts come forth. To confront one means to confront them all. And so what do these considerations have to do with our activity here? Great books are, as I once read on an envelope, great teachers. Great books, as the story goes, are written by great minds- great thinkers- and understanding these books involves understanding these minds. But that requires understanding the languages in which they wrote as well as understanding the other works that they produced. In other words, this effort is scholarship. Some of us are better, some are worse at it. If our communal task is scholarship, then our activities here are doomed to failure. For we read only parts of books, in a variety of translations, and make the effort to speak with one another about them in the strange format we call the "seminar." Another approach to the reading of great books is to read them because they raise timeless concerns- the issues which have troubled or absorbed humanity. Among these concerns we will find some that are of particular importance to each of us. But if this is our approach, it is hard to grasp why we read our particular texts to raise these issues. There are hundreds of textbooks which have been written precisely to raise these timeless concerns. There, these concerns are called the problem of free-will, the problem of meaning, the problem of justice. And the result of this attitude is what one would anticipate. Our texts would evaporate. Problems and issues require solutions or stances. The result is an argument or debate among those animated by a particular issue, with others who are unmoved having nothing much to say. The text would become either loved or despised, depending on whether one agrees or disagrees with Plato's politics or St. Paul's theology. These two ways of reading are like those intermediate parts of Plato's divided line where opinion and understanding are highlighted. Reading for greatness belongs to the part of the line where understanding resides; reading for the timeless issues belongs to the part where opinion resides. �ZEIDERMAN 19 There is a next step in Plato where one struggles to move beyond hypotheses. What I am describing also forces us to leave the realms of personal opinion and scholarly understanding in order to face our most invisible assumptions and have the courage to explore them. The relation to texts which I am calling haunting can make this possible. The tension between my sense of meaning, language, truth, fiction, fact, and life, and Augustine's in the Confessions, first forces me to attend to what is so pervasive in me as to have been invisible. Because my sense of these terms constitutes my world, the Confessions seem otherwordly, or ghostly. So some translation is necessary. Yet it does not matter that these texts are read in various translations, because the true effort of translating begins once the ground opens between me and the text. It is also all right that we read parts of works. For we are reading not authors or books, but what I call texts. Authors and their corpuses- intact entities- give an artificial appearance of life. The temptation is very great to enter into them and to substitute them for ourselves. In this task of confronting a haunting text, each of us is essential. Though ghosts are hard to see, they, like everything we see, may be seen from different perspectives. What haunts me will overlap with but will not be identical with what haunts you. And if I make that attempt to confront these ghosts, and to exorcise them, then I will need your help. If you are making that attempt, you will need mine. Descartes, making the effort without help, so lost his sense of perspective that he looked for certainty to hold onto, conflating it with knowledge. So I need your certainties to risk exploring what has become uncertain for me. I need your uncertainties to help reveal to me the fabric of my own beliefs. The problems we face are not timeless and universal. They are absolutely timely, because they are yours and mine. And the text is essential because without it thought is not sufficiently decisive- neither sufficiently radical nor sufficiently conservative. In my example, I would have circled endlessly around questions of meaning, truth, and their relation to thought. Only by allowing the Corifessions to haunt me am I enabled, however dimly, to sense the possibility that these questions may concern not thought but rather will, and might be answered not by my words but by something that I need the entirely unphilosophical humility to hear. These are disturbing prospects, which I have few notions how even to explore. As bare possibilities, they shatter my pride but in the same moment hold open possibilities that my despair has foreclosed. The proper way to address such matters can be neither monologue nor argument, even if at times we do speak in those ways. Rather, speech must be confessional. Yet one is not confessing for oneself alone nor for something that one has �20 THE ST. JOHN'S REVIEW done. Confession is the acknowledgment of a chasm between us and the ghost-like text, and it is the commencement of the exploration of the ghosts in us- those beliefs and opinions that we have inherited and that invisibly chart the courses of our thoughts, our desires, and our lives. It is when a text haunts us that we are both ready for and in need of conversation. Every text we read here is such a haunting text. You can see that if you ask yourself whether any of them could be written now. The answer probably is that more or less they all could. Insofar as they could be written now, they are great or our favorites. Insofar as they could not be, they are ghosts. Haunting texts afford us the opportunity to make visible these most salient and elusive aspects of ourselves. Yet within this realm of exploration and change, these texts also can be great books, and we can love some and recoil from others. In fact, the same work can be all of these. Everything that I have said tonight I have in some measure learned from Augustine. These remarks are Augustinian. That I am here to attempt this task, I owe to the role the Confessions has occupied in my life as my favorite book. Yet what I have learned and gained from them takes its true measure from my response to those ghosts which this and other ghostly texts revealed in me. And ultimately the ghostly and otherworldly quality of the text makes me recoil from it. That recoiling also makes the Confessions one of my least favorite texts. For though I learn from Augustine's ability and subtlety, feel encouraged and comforted by the similarity of our purposes, and see myself for the first time through our differences from him, ultimately I recoil because his world and his God are not mine. �Human Being, Beast and God: The Place of Human Happiness According to Aristotle and Some Twentieth-Century Philosophers Deborah Achtenberg 1 Early in the Nicomachean Ethics, Aristotle distinguishes human beings both from plants and from the other animals. Later, he distinguishes us from the god. How are we different? And, why are these differences important? We are different from plants and non-human animals, not to mention the simple bodies, because, unli!(e them, we can act. Fire must go up and stones must go down; plants must move by nature to their end; the other animals must follow their passions. We human beings, to the contrary, can act: we are more flexible; we are not bound by our feelings or by our end; we move towards what we take to be good. We are different from the god because, unlike the god's actions, ours is not guaranteed of success but must, if it is to succeed, be in accord with something outside ourselves. 1 That something Aristotle calls ntelos" or "end." He also calls it "nature," "the mean," or "the good." We are in between, then, beings which have a limit (a constitutive limit or telos) without having action, Deborah Achtenberg is an Assistant Professor of Philosophy at the University of Nevada-Reno. This lecture was delivered at St. John's College, Annapolis, in February, 1988. 21 �22 THE ST. JOHN'S REVIEW and the one being which has action without limitation: the god is a te/os without having one; the god's aim, like ours, is for the good; but, unlike us, the god's every aim meets its mark. These differences are important because, according to Aristotle, something's good is its completion and completions of things different in kind are themselves different. Happiness is the human good, according to Aristotle. Therefore our happiness will be what completes beings of our kind, not what completes plants, the other animals, or the god. Human beings, he says, are distinguished by reason- or logos-based action; every action is aimed at something believed to be good; but our beliefs may be false or the relevant ones may fail to inform our passions. The good, then, is the completion of this our defining function or activity (ergon); it is the completion, or, we might say, full development, of both intellect and feeling so that intellect hits the truth and informs feeling. Such developed intellect and feeling is called virtue. The good according to Aristotle is a life of activities in accordance with virtue; it is, in other words, a life in which developed capacities for intellect and feeling flourish. Recognition that the human good is relative to the human kind is important, then, because it enables us to avoid two common mistakes: on the one hand, the supposition that we are less than we are and, on the other, the supposition that we are more. For we tend to reduce ourselves to the level of plants and the other animals and, at the other extreme, to raise ourselves to the level of a god; sometimes we give up action and content ourselves with the feeling of the moment, whatever it may be, and other times we believe our action, just because we choose it, is good. We give in to our fear, for example, because it is painful to overcome it; or, we convince ourselves that what we fear should be feared even when the evidence shows otherwise. We turn in a co-worker we envy, for another example; then we forget our envy and convince ourselves that it was righteousness instead. Contrary to our suppositions, however, we are not the same as the other animals nor as the god; we can neither cease to follow some logos, nor in general act successfully without following a logos well. We get angry, for example, when we think we have been slighted; but our belief may be false, and if it is, then the anger will disrupt a friendship. We eat, for another example, because we believe that to do so is pleasant or nourishing, but if that belief is false- because, say, we've eaten too much- we will suffer discomfort or pain. Our anger is not like the instinctive spiritedness of a wolf;' instead, it results from a belief. Our eating is not like the natural movement of plants, which must send their roots down into the soil and their leaves up towards the sun; it is governed, instead, by a belief- the �ACHTENBERG 23 belief that the food in front of us is pleasant or nourishing. Our actions are, whether we think so or not, governed by reason (logos); they are not mere motions; nor are they without external limitation and guide. We do not move by nature or by instinct (pathos) to the good; instead, we move towards what we think is good. For these reasons, human happiness- the full development of our species-given capacity for intellect and feeling-is not easy. For full development of intellect and feeling is not by nature; instead, it is an accomplishment (ergon).' Nor, however, is it against our nature. Aristotle is neither a romantic nor a Victorian. He is in between those who would have us follow our every feeling, and those who would have us act against themthose who would say "if it feels good, do it" and those who would say "if it feels good, don't do it." For we do not attain happiness by nature, nor do we attain it by thwarting our nature. Instead, we attain it by developing our nature, and when we develop it sufficiently, what feels good and what is good are one and the same. This is freedom. 4 For freedom is not doing what you want, unless what you want and what benefits you are one and the same. Nor is freedom lack of limitation; instead, it is awareness of beneficial limitation and accord with it. Such a state, however, is rare. For the acquisition of first-stage development of our species-given capacity for intellect-informed passion and action- that is, the acquisition of virtue-is not easy: anyone, for example, can get angry; but to get angry at the needed time, to the needed extent, at the needed person, and so forth, is an ergon- an accomplishment, a piece of work. 5 But we don't want to work. Instead, we want to be at work. We don't want to try, but to do; we don't want to attempt, but to achieve our aim. What we want, in Aristotle's terms, is energeia or entelecheia, where energeia means activity or being-at-work and entelecheia means completeness, being-at-end or full development. Unlike plants and the other animals, we can act; that is, we can both devise and follow plans to achieve full development; unlike the god, however, our action need not achieve full development, for our plans sometimes are bad, and sometimes, though good, do not inform our passions and thus motivate our aims. Human beings can act, but our action is not "by itself." It succeeds only if it is in accordance with something else, specificially if it is in accord with virtue. Compared to human beings, then, plants and the other animals are passive; they cannot act, but can only move. Compared to the god, however, we are passive. The god is the only being whose action is in no way responsive; it is "by itself'' activity. Our action is in part responsive; it is activity in accordance with virtue. �24 THE ST JOHN'S REVIEW What, however, is activity in accordance with virtue responsive to? In general, virtue, whether it be the virtue of a plant, an animal, or a human being, whether it be a virtue of the body or of the soul, is developed capacity. Simple capacity is the capacity to experience feelings or engage in actions of a certain kind; developed capacity, or virtue, is the disposition to experience feelings of that kind or engage in actions of that kind only when they are beneficial or enabling, and not when they are harmful or destructive. 6 Virtue, in other words, is the disposition for the good- a disposition to experience feelings and engage in actions which are beneficial or enabling and not those which are harmful or destructive.' Human virtue-virtue of character at any rate-is, according to Aristotle, a disposition to choose the mean. Speaking about the mean, therefore, must be a manner of speaking about the good. For all virtues are dispositions for the good. The mean is an analogy taken from mathematics. If ten is too much and two is too little then six is the mean. Aristotle is not, however, attempting to rnathematize human affairs. In- stead, he is using a mathematical analogy in the realm of the qualitative. He does so also in the Metaphysics: telos, Aristotle's fundamental discovery, is a qualitative intensifier. To be good is not to be of a certain quality or kind; instead, it is to be a complete or fulfilled one of a kind, or, simply, to be complete: a lyre-player and a good lyre-player are not different in kind, nor are a kitten and a cat. In the non-mathematical realm of feelings and action, regarding, for example, courage, recklessness is the excess, cowardice the defect, and courage the mean. Consider a particular action, such as rushing ahead in battle. To rush ahead when rushing ahead will lead to disaster is the excess; the one who does this is reckless. To refrain from rushing ahead when rushing ahead would lead to victory is the defect; the one who does this is cowardly. Both to rush ahead when appropriate and to refrain from rushing ahead when refraining is appropriate is to achieve the mean; the one who does this is courageous. Consider also a feeling, such as confidence. To feel confident when confidence is harmful- about a rash plan of attack, for example-is the excess; the one who does this is reckless. To lack confidence when confidence is enabling- about a well thought out plan of attack, for example- is the defect; the one who does this is a coward. Both to feel confidence when appropriate and lack it when its lack is appropriate is the mean; the one who does this is courageous. It is this, that is, virtue, which Aristotle calls an accomplishment or piece of work (ergon): not simply to rush ahead nor simply to retreat, since any normal person has the capacity to do either, but to rush ahead or retreat when needed, as needed, where needed, as the logos directs for the sake of the �ACHTENBERG 25 beautiful; not simply to feel confidence nor simply lack it, but to feel confidence or lack it when either is what is needed for the end at hand. The human being with virtue, then, is disposed to choose the mean; that is, to experience certain feelings and engage in certain actions only when, where, and as they are needed. The needed is what is needed for a certain end; it is whatever is instrumental to or constitutive of it. 8 The needed is the same as the good. Choice, too, makes reference to the good. We are different from beasts and from the god because we can choose and thus act on our choice. Choice, according to Aristotle, is not mere desire; instead, it is desire which has been informed by deliberation; if not prevented, it issues in action. Choice distinguishes us from beasts, as well as from children, in this way: they simply act on their desires, while we can choose; that is, we can act on deliberation-informed desires. Deliberation is a kind of thought (dianoia); specifically, to deliberate is to reflect on which action or state of affairs is conducive to one of our ends; 9 it presupposes phron"i!sis or practical wisdom, the perception of some action or state of affairs as one of our ends. (For example, through phronesis we discover that studying with a certain person is conducive to wisdom, for we judge this person to be imaginative and able to stimulate our imagination; then we deliberate about the means needed to be able to study with him- housing, food, employment, and so forth)." Since the good, according to Aristotle, is end- that is, completion, fulfillment, or full development- choice makes reference to the good. 1b choose is to desire and, if not prevented, do, what one takes to be good. Now we have seen that all the important elements of Aristotle's definition of human virtue make reference to telos or the good; for a disposition is a developed capacity, that is, a capacity for the good; choice is not just desire but deliberation-informed desire, and to deliberate is to see particulars as conducive to an end; deliberation presupposes practical wisdom, that is, the perception of some action or state of affairs as an end; and the mean is just that feeling or lack of feeling, just that action or abstention from action, which is needed by some end. All of this is important because human happiness, that is, the human good, is the full development of this specifically human, not animalic or divine, virtue: neither beasts nor the god have deliberation or practical wisdom. Human virtue is developed human capacity; human happiness is a life in which human virtues flower or flourish; it is a life of activities in accordance with human virtue. Consider, then, the place of human happiness. It is in between that of the beasts and that of the god. We can consider it by considering �26 THE ST. JOHN'S REVIEW pleasure. For, importantly, Aristotle's definition of pleasure and his definition of happiness are fundamentally the same." Pleasure, according to Aristotle, is unimpeded activity of a disposition in accordance with nature. Since it is unimpeded, it, like happiness, requires virtue. But virtue, though it is in accordance with nature, is not simply by nature. Instead, it requires instruction and habituation over the course of a life. Hence, as I've said, it is not easy. Keep in mind that the god, according to Aristotle in the Metaphysics, has the pleasure all the time which we can share only some of the time. Now we can see why: because the god's activity always has its end, while our activity attains its end only if it is done in accordance with virtue. Sometimes it is done in accordance with virtue, but much of the time it is not. Often we make an effort, but our effort is impeded. Often we try, but do not do. We try to run the marathon, but our feet get in the way. We try to play the lyre, but our fingers get in the way. We try to do a mathematical proof, but instead hit a dead end, when our current stage of mathematical capacity reaches its limit, or, instead, when we find ourselves reflecting on the rumbling of our stomach, or about someone we love, or, worse, someone we hate. Successful activity- energeia- is not by nature. It is a piece of work, an accomplishment, an ergon. Or, at least, acquiring the developed capacity and necessary conditions for its exercise is a piece of work. Once those have been acquired, the actual exercise of virtue is not work- it is being-at-work, or energeia. Then we don't try, but do. Then, for a short period of time, our every aim meets its mark. Our feet are where they are needed when they are needed. Our fingers hit the right note at the right time. We think, and actually engage the required object. Then our activity seems, and in a sense is, effortless. For then we are acting in accord with our developed skills or intellectual capacities. Virtue of character (ethike aret{j) is required as well, so that our loves and hates, our fears and desires and wishes, do not get in the way- do not impede us- and, in addition, so that we see, and thus desire, what the situation calls for. In addition, intellectual virtue and virtue of character require instruction and habituation- instruction for the intellect and habituation for character- and these require that we are raised in an appropriate city: one with sufficient land for food, with sufficient trade for necessary goods, with the right size for easy governance, with an appropriate balance between the rich and the poor to prevent faction, with an appropriate regime for us to utilize the character of the people, with a sufficient military to avoid war or win it and so to remain as much as possible at peace, with the right aims to develop our human capacities. All of these are the condi- �ACHTENBERG 27 tions of our happiness- of our full self-development, both of yours and mine, both in Aristotle's time and, as I think at any rate, in ours. 12 Of course, these conditions do not always come about, and even if they do come about largely, they do not come about completely. Societies are not perfect; they develop some people's capacities, while leaving the capacities of others fallow. Even if they do develop your capacities, your capacities are not limitless. Some are easy to develop; others are much harder; and the development is preceded by its lack. Pleasure, since it requires virtue, is not easy; instead, it is an accomplishment (ergon). It is because pleasure" is not easy that we tend to confuse ours with that of the beasts and with the pleasure accompanying the functions we share with plants. For these are easier than the pleasures intrinsic to developed, that is, virtuous, activity. For example, we confuse bodily pleasure with pleasure entire since it is intense and therefore easy. Bodily pleasures, of course, are good, but bodily pleasure is the better part of pleasure only for the other animals. So, too, it is because of the difficulty of acquiring the pleasure intrinsic to virtuous activity that we seek extrinsic ones, the ones Aristotle calls superficial ornaments. 14 Each virtuous or unimpeded activity has its own intrinsic pleasure; but activities are very often left incomplete or unfinished, when we don't have the time or the resources or the capacity. This is displeasing, frustrating, or even painful; frustrated activities lack their intrinsic, or natural, pleasure. Then we find relief in bodily pleasure, since it is easy, and expels our pain. Or we seek extrinsic pleasures, like excess food or drink, or, for us, television or movies or video games, since our ordinary activities cannot find their completion. We are not gods. Our activities often miss their mark. So we seek the pleasures we share with the other animals, or the pleasure we get from the activities we and the other animals share with the plants, the vegetative activities related to growth and procreation, or whatever is largely passive; we drink something, stuff ourselves, turn on the VCR, and get close; we, as we say, "veg out." And all of this is because human happiness is in between- in between that of the beasts and that of the god; in between non-action and action which is at every moment successful. We can act, but our action, to be successful, must be responsive, responsive in just the right way to the object of our action. When we do the needed act, at the needed time, in the needed place, in the needed amount, and with the needed aim, then we succeed. When we do so, then we are free, since we are not impeded on any side, and we are pleased and happy; but to be able to do so, as we have seen, is a serious, and difficult, accomplishment. *** �28 THE ST. JOHN'S REVIEW We are led back, then, to Aristotle's notion of end or telos. Telos means end or goal, completion, fulfillment, or full development. It is one of the four causes, the four answers to the question why, discussed in the Metaphysics. It is Aristotle's fundamental discovery. There is efficient cause, or the source of motion; material cause, or the out of which; formal cause or what he calls by the unusual phrase the "what was being"; and final cause-telos-or the "for the sake of which." How shall we understand te/os? We can see how necessary it is to understand it, if we are to understand what we have done so far, since each of the parts of Aristotle's definition of virtue presupposes it. By te/os, Aristotle means, I propose, constitutive limit. As the edges of a table not only limit the table, but constitute it, so virtue not only limits our activity, but allows it to be, fully, what it is. Tete are contrasted to limits that are not constitutive, but destructive or disabling: split the table with an ax and the new limits will not constitute, but destroy, the table; engage the enemy recklessly and you will not engage the enemy at all, but be defeated by him. Limits differ; not all limits are destructive or harmful; others are beneficial. Those which constitute an action or thing are beneficial; they are its tete. Consider, for further illustration, an example from a skill, namely, playing the lyre. Is putting your finger on the string constitutive of lyre-playing? Sometimes it is, and sometimes it is not. Sometimes pressing the string is lyre-playing; other times, it makes noise. In running, sometimes leaning forward will enable you to run -will be a constituent of running-and other times it will cause you to fall. Sometimes speeding up will enable you to run and other times slowing down will do so. When you fall, you cease to run, so in that case, leaning back or speeding up, leaning forward or slowing down, is not constitutive of, but destructive of, running. When it is the cause of continued running, it is not only that, but also a constituent of running; it is part of the tetos. Or, put another way, then it is a constituent of what it is to be running. This latter phrase shows the connection between form and end in Aristotle's metaphysics, and explains why he uses the unusual coinage, the "what was being" (to ti en einat), as a substitute for form. The "was," here, is an imperfect, and commentators disagree on just how to take it. They agree, however, that it refers to repeated action. I propose that the "what was being" means what something was being all along. When you leaned forward and fell, your intent or aim was not to fall, but was to lean forward and run. Leaning forward was intended to be running; but, sadly, or sometimes comically, it was not. When you leaned back and ran, your intent was fulfilled or completed; your leaning back was running all along; �ACHTENBERG 29 it was a constituent of running; running is what leaning back, along with the other movements made, was being." Another way to understand telos is as the completion or development of potential. Virtue, for example, is first-stage development of potential. When I have, for example, the intellectual virtue Aristotle calls "science" or episteme, the capacity to demonstrate or give arguments through the study of logic or analytics, I have developed my latent capacity to demonstrate. The second, or more complete, development of that potential is to activate that developed potential, that is, to demonstrate. The progression is capacity, developed capacity or virtue, activity. But this way of understanding telos is just another example of the first way. That is, it is another example of telos as what constitutes something or as what enables it to be what it was being, all along, in potential. Acquisition of virtue, Aristotle says in the Physics and De Anima, is not alteration. It is not to become different or to change kind, though it may involve this. Instead, it is to develop or complete the kind that something already is. Telos, then, is not a kind. To talk about telos or completion is not to distinguish things into kinds or categories, but to distinguish potential from development within kinds or across them." Tete, in fact, may be very different in kind, as we can see from the example of courage, where the telos in one case may be to run forward, and in another case to run around, and in another to retreat. Just as in playing the lyre the telos may sometimes be to depress the string and other times to release it, so on the battlefield courage may sometimes require running forward, and other times running back. Telos, then, is relative- not, as we would say, subjective, but relative to the context and to kind." As Aristotle puts it, completions of things different in kind are themselves different. Since good, according to Aristotle, means te/os, good, too, according to him, is relative-again, not subjective, but relative to context and to kind. The Ethics is about the human good and so, as we've seen, it is relative to the defining human kind or activity (ergon). Moreover, as previously stated, it is easy for us to misidentify our good with that of plants and beasts or with that of the god. We might think that the good life is the life of pleasure, as Aristotle points out in Nicomachean Ethics 1.5. But that is not the good life for us- not, of course, that pleasure is not good; pleasures are good, Aristotle says, and the best life and the most pleasant life are one and the same. But the life of pleasure, by which he means the life guided by desire alone, is not our good; for our desires do not always guide us toward what's needed. As our good is not the same as that of plants or the other animals, so, as we've seen, it is not the same as the god's. For the god's only good is himself; while the good for us, until we've �30 THE ST. JOHN'S REVIEW achieved it, is outside ourself. The god is always complete, while we are not. We can constrast the beasts, human beings, and the god in this way: the beasts have a te/os or constitutive limit, but cannot act, since they lack choice; the god has (or is) activity, but has no telos or constitutive limit, since the god is at every moment already complete; and human beings are in between. We have both action and a telos: we are neither as fixed as the other animals, nor as free as the god; we can act, but our action, in order to be successful, must be the realization of a constitutive limit. 2 So far I have described Aristotle's account of the place of human happiness in between that of the beasts and that of the god and shown how that account rests on his metaphysics- on his understanding of human nature and its full development, and on full development, or te/os, in general, as the guide and constitutive limit of our aims. I find Aristotle's account largely persuasive; I do not find the standard objections to it decisive. As may have been evident to you, however, I have not described Aristotle's account as he would describe it. Instead, my account of Aristotle has a point of view. I see Aristotle's ethics from the standpoint of the difficulty of happiness- the difficulty of achieving a life in which developed capacities for reason-informed passion and action flourish. Specifically, I see it from the standpoint of the difficulty of achieving this kind of happiness in modern individualist society, a society in which the various con- ditions which together are required for a fulfilled human life are compartmentalized, and we are thus prevented from attaining our aims-work is separated from family, politics from business, study from religion and psychology, and so forth. In addition, I speak from a standpoint which might be called liberal, or even left, since it begins with the assumption of the equal importance of full development for all" and with the belief in the capacity of the group to raise each of its members to a higher level, their desires to claims of justice," and their capacities to a higher level of development or virtue. 20 In the twentieth century, two philosophers have gone back to Aristotle's conception of the place of human happiness, the political philosopher Leo Strauss and the moral philosopher Alasdair Macintyre. Of these two, Strauss's point of view is closer to that of Aristotle and Macintyre's is closer to the one which I have expressed, while Strauss recognizes, as I do, the importance of a metaphysical basis for an Aristotelian account and Macintyre does not. In what follows, I will give a brief sketch of each one's return to Aristotelian ethics and, in so doing, begin to make the case for a return like my own, to a liberal, but metaphysical Aristotelian ethics. �ACHTENBERG 31 In "An Epilogue" (1962), Strauss argues, against then contemporary political science, for the Aristotelian belief in the irreducibility of human nature. Man, he says, is a being sui generis, not reducible to any other kind. Contemporary political science reduces man- to a being without latitude; to a being for whom every stimulus is a value. But man is not such a being. Instead, man is a being distinguished from every other known being because it posits values. A desire does not make the desired thing a man's value; for a man may fight his desire or, if overpowered by his desire, he may blame himself. This shows that the desire does not make something his value; only choice does this, where choice is not the choice of means to pregiven ends, but the choice of ends- the positing of ends, or, rather, the positing of values." By reducing man, Strauss says, the new political science strengthens the worst proclivities of democracy. "By teaching the equality of all values, by denying that there are things which are intrinsically high and others which are intrinsically low as well as by denying that there is an essential difference between men and brutes, it unwittingly contributes to the victory of the gutter."" These are stirring words. They are addressed to that within us that seeks something noble, to the ineradicable desire for the high, and they speak about what happens to that desire and to us when man is reduced to less than he is. In "Philosophy as Rigorous Science and Political Philosophy" (1969), Strauss addresses the same problem, this time not in political science but in contemporary philosophy. He divides then contemporary philosophy into its two still predominant groups, despite name changes and changes in views: the positivists and the existentialists, where positivism is the belief that only scientific knowledge is genuine knowledge and existentialism the belief that all principles of knowledge and action are historical (where by "principle" he means "ground" or "basis"). Though these two schools seem quite different, Strauss points out, they are united by their common rejection of political philosophy. Each rejects the knowability of the good, positivists because the good cannot be known scientifically, existentialists because even science is just one form among many of viewing the world, all equally groundless, all of equal value. The positivists, then, like the new political scientists discussed in "An Epilogue," would make us less than we are, for their rejection of the good implies the impossibility of choice. The existentialists make us more than we are, for though they accept the importance of choice and action and believe that human beings posit values, they believe such values cannot be known- that they are the result, instead, of groundless human choice or of historical fate. Existentialism arises, Strauss says, out of a desire for a code to live by when the ideals of wisdom and of rigorous science are separated; that is, when our desire for the good �32 THE ST. JOHN'S REVIEW is accompanied by the belief that the good cannot be known. Heidegger is the existentialist Strauss has in mind; he is the center, Strauss says, not part of the flabby periphery, of the existentialist movement." As a young man, years earlier, Strauss had already noted this difficulty in Heidegger's teachings- the problem which arises when the ineradicable desire for the high is severed from metaphysical or theological ground. Heidegger, he sensed, "spoke of something of the utmost importance to man as man."24 He aimed at something important or serious, we might say. Nonetheless, "What I could not stomach was his moral teaching, for despite his disclaimer, he had such a teaching. The key term is resoluteness without any indication as to what are the proper objects of resoluteness."25 It was this moral teaching, Strauss says, which led Heidegger later to side with the Nazis. Strauss saw the same difficulty in the teachings of the political philosopher, Carl Schmitt, in the thirties." Schmitt opposes the neutrality of the modern state, with its low goals (humanitarian-pacifist morality, comfort-guided economics, or non-controversial technology). In its place he puts the affirmation of what he calls "the political as such," understood as the division of human beings into fighting groups-friend-foe groups always ready to fight. Against neutralist modernity, neutral because humanitarian and pacifist in character, Schmitt poses the non-neutrality of the fighting group which, because its members are ready to risk death, is not neutral, but affirms. Strauss notes two difficulties with Schmitt's affirmation of non-neutral politics. First, it is as neutral as the liberalism it opposes. He calls it "liberalism preceded by a minus-sign,''27 or the "affirmation of fighting as such, regardless of the object of fighting":" Whereas the liberal respects and tolerates all "honestly held" convictions, so long as these respect the legal order or acknowledge the sanctity of peace, whoever affirms the political as such, respects and tolerates all "serious" convictions, in other words, all decisions leading up to the real possibility of war. 29 Second, Strauss notes that Schmitt's affirmation of the political, that is of fighting, as such, is not consistent, since sometimes he affirms it not as such, but on the basis of the moral, where morality is understood not as humanitarian-pacifist but as affirmation of the serious over against the reduction of life to mere entertainment, to a life, as Strauss characterizes it, in which man has forgotten what counts.'" Still, though, Strauss says, even this affirmation of the moral remains neutral. For Schmitt does not answer the question, what are the proper objects of fighting, or, more �ACHTENBERG 33 generally, the question, what is right. That is, Schmitt rejects the neutralization of human beings, but puts groundless affirmation in its place. To find an answer to the question what is right or good, to the question what is the proper object of our resoluteness, of our ineradicable desire for the high, Strauss turns to the pre-modern- to the classical philosophy especially of Plato and Aristotle and also to the Bible; to Athens, as he calls it, and to Jerusalem, each offering an object for our aims, though one is found through reason and the other not through reason but through revelation." According to both, man is justified when he is in accord with something outside himself: justice is compliance with the natural order according to classical philosophy; righteousness is obedience to the divinely established order according to Bibilical religion. Strauss turns back to these because he believes that what is needed cannot be found in modernity. For, according to him, modernity is united in its progressive rejection of value. It is, therefore, characterized by its progressive abandonment of that the positioning of which distinguishes human beings from the other animals. Modernity has, according to Strauss, three waves: a first wave which, I suggest, we can identify with the first mistake pointed out by Aristotle, the reduction of the irreducible human kind to the status of plants and non-human animals; a third wave, which can be identified with the second mistake pointed out by Aristotle, the error of raising ourselves to the level of gods; and a transitional second stage, containing elements of both. The first stage he identifies variously with Hobbes or Machiavelli and the rise of modern science; the second with Rousseau; and the third with Nietzsche. Machiavelli turns us away from the "ought" to the "is"; that is, from how one ought to live, to how one does live; Rousseau identifies the "ought" and the "is," since, according to him, there is no appeal from the existent general will to some principle or ground beyond and constitutive of it; and Nietzsche abandons the "is" for the "ought," or at least for value, since, according to him, all truths are values and all values are created- not discovered, but created. Modern science, like Machiavelli, is part of the first-wave move away from value; for it, too, is founded ou the rejection of the classical belief in natural ends: ends towards which we and all other beings are directed; ends specific to each specifically different nature, ours being determined by our rational and social nature. These ends give all beings, including human beings, a place within the whole. Man has a place in an order he did not originate; he has power, but his power is limited; he cannot overcome the limitations of his own nature. 32 Modern science leaves us with a mechanistic science of nature, thus rendering the question of human ends always a problem. �34 THE ST. JOHN'S REVIEW The philosophy of late modernity is no better; for it results in historicism. Hegelian historicism suggests that history is in its final decline, so it cannot provide the objects to guide our aims. Non-Hegelian historicism provides us with two choices, a universalist historicism represented by Marx's vision of a mobile, not deeply rooted, world society dedicated to the full development of everyone, and a particularist historicism represented by Nietzsche's anti-egalitarian vision of the man of specialization who is subject to harsh limitation, against the man who follows goal after goal, in aimless "full development." The former is the liberal ideal Schmitt rightly rejected. The latter is akin to the ideal which Schmitt proposed and Strauss rejected. The one is universalist and peaceful; the other is particularist and warlike. Each, as we've seen, is neutral, and so cannot provide us with proper objects. We could be stronger about the particularist ideal and say that its desire for the high, severed from metaphysical or theological ground, easily becomes the rule of muscle, or blood, or land. Strauss did have this in mind about Heidegger, whose unguided resoluteness, according to him, led directly to his siding with the Nazis in 1933, as I have mentioned before. Whether the same could be said of Schmitt's affirmation of the serious understood as warlike and particularist and his becoming a Nazi, I do not know. What's needed, then, is a principle or basis on which to judge- between particular and universal, war and peace. Plato gives us an example of this in the Euthyphro, Apology, and Crito. The principle- the proper object of our aims- is the good, understood as wisdom, or human wisdom, and the apparent means to it, namely, philosophy or dialogue. Socrates does not commit the injustice of allowing Crito to steal him out of prison. Why not? Not out of obedience to Athens simply because it is his own. We know from the Apology that Socrates would disobey Athens in one case, namely, if he was forbidden by the city to philosophize. Not because Athens is simply just, that is, in accord with a universal principle, as we know it is not from the conviction and sentencing of Socrates. Instead, because Athens, though imperfect, is not wholly bad, but comes close to justiceSocrates was raised and educated in Athens, and allowed to philosophize for many years. The Crito and Euthyphro remind us that Socrates stands between affirmation of the particular and of the universal. Crito affirms the particular- his friendship group, of which Socrates is a member- and cannot see a more universal entity, Athens and its laws, as the proper object of his affirmation. Thus Socrates must personalize the laws- make them more particular-to motivate Crito's obedience. Euthyphro, on the other hand, affirms the universal. In the name of piety he is prosecuting his father for allowing a killer to die in a ditch. A workman killed a �ACHTENBERG 35 workman and Euthyphro's father left him too long in a ditch, where he died. There seems something inhuman about Euthyphro's unconcern about the particular-his unconcern about his father-apparently for the sake of a universal principle, justice. Crito can only help his friends and harm his enemies; Euthyphro, apparently, stands by a principle no matter who is hurt. Socrates stands in between: he helps Athens, his own, not simply because it is his own, but because it is in many important respects, though not in all respects, good. Awareness of the good, then, not only provides a basis for judgment; it also is not "absolutist" but allows for ambiguity. The things around us, as Socrates says in the Republic, tumble about between being and not being, in this case between being and not being just. According to Aristotle, too, the good provides a basis on which to judge- to judge regimes or forms of govermnent and to decide between war and peace. Just regimes are distinguished from unjust ones not, as we might say, by the consent of the governed, but by rulers who rule not for their own but the common good, where the good is understood by him, as we've seen, as a life in which developed capacities of intellect and character flourish. Without an understanding of a substantive human good we are left with affirmation of limitation as such or the claim that all limitation is dominance, that is, that all limitation is to be opposed; but opposition to norms ought to be for the sake of something; it ought to be for the sake of norms which can lead to human development, to constitutive, not harmful or destructive, norms. The good also provides a basis for deciding between war and peace: war is not for its own sake; it is not the end. We would call a man a murderer who made enemies of his friends for the sake of war, Aristotle says in the Ethics. Instead, war is for the sake of peace. Peace, too, is not the end, however; it is itself guided by another criterion, namely, the good life, understood, again, as a life in which developed human capacities flower." 3 What I have sketched here is Strauss's account of the two schools of contemporary philosophy, divided by their estimation of human action, but united by their rejection of the good and by their common origin in the progressive rejection of the good by modern philosophy and science. The rejection has three waves: the first turns from the "ought" to the "is"; the second identifies them; and the third replaces the "is" with the "ought" or at least with value. The result is historicism of two sorts, one affirming the universal and peace; the other the particular and war. What's needed, instead, is a principle or ground for deciding between these, the principle �36 THE ST. JOHN'S REVIEW which Biblical religion called god and pre-modern philosophers called the good. Strauss's writings are an invaluable series of reflections on this modern trend along with interpretations of the ancient writings which counter it. His writings have not until recently been much considered by American professional philosophers, however. There are a number of reasons for this neglect. I suppose a principal one is simply that Strauss's philosophical origins are in Continental Europe rather than Britain. American philosophy, as a discipline, has been and still is principally Anglo-American in content and style, despite its current interest in themes which derive principally from Nietzsche. A second reason is Strauss's perceived political conservatism. 34 It is right, I believe, to call Strauss a "conservative," but important to see what that might mean. His is not the extreme conservatism which affirms the particular as such (whether it be race, land, or tradition) or war for its own sake. His comments on Carl Schmitt demonstrate this, as does his invocation of the distinction between the ancestral and the good." Instead, he is conservative in his recognition of the need for something to guide or limit the ineradicable human desire for something high- for the serious, as he puts it when speaking about Schmitt; for a code to live by, as he puts it when talking about existentialism; for objects for our resoluteness, as he puts it when speaking about his early reaction to Heidegger. It is the fact that this desire, unguided, is dangerous that leads Strauss to associate what I have called "accord with something outside ourselves"- the accord with virtue and thus with telos which is required according to Aristotle for happiness- with the high or noble. Recall that it was Heidegger's moral teaching-unguided resoluteness-which according to Strauss led him to side with the Nazis. Philosophy, Strauss says, though privately extreme, must be publicly moderate." This is one part of Strauss's conservatism. Another is his thoroughgoing privileging of rank. For a random example, consider this passage from "An Epilogue": the new political science "must begin to learn to look with sympathy at the obstacles to it if it wishes to win the sympathy of the best men of the coming generation- those youths who possess the intellectual and the moral qualities which prevent men from simply following authorities, to say nothing of fashions."" Strauss's students extend this privileging. Allan Bloom, in his recent book on the crisis in American education, The Closing of the American Mind· How Higher Education has Failed Democracy and Impoverished the Souls of Today's Students, is not reticent in stating that the students he has drawn his conclusions about are those who are both talented and well-off. "A �ACHTENBERG 37 word about my 'sample' in this study," he says. "It consists of thousands of students of comparatively high intelligence, materially and spiritually free to do pretty much what they want with the few years of college they are privileged to have-in short, the kind of young persons who populate the twenty or thirty best universities."" The privileging of rank is another part of Strauss's conservatism. Recently, however, Alasdair Macintyre, his origins not in phenomenology and existentialsm but in what he calls analytical philosophy, and his aim not to provide proper objects for the ineradicable desire for the high but to find a pluralist account of happiness as unity, has, like Strauss, called for a return to Aristotle. In After Virtue (1981; second ed. 1984), Macintyre calls for a return to an Aristotelian ethics to rescue us from the twin evils of end-neutral emotivism on the one hand, and Aristotle's "metaphysical biology'' on the other." The similarities between these two different accounts of our current impasse and its origins in the Enlightenment are worth noting. Macintyre, like Strauss, believes that the West is currently in a dangerous state, comparable to the period of the decline of the Roman empire into the Dark Ages. 40 Strauss calls our current state a "crisis": Western man no longer knows what he wants, Strauss says; for he has lost his faith that he can know what is right and wrong, good and bad." Macintyre calls our situation a state of "grave disorder in the language of morality": "we have-very largely, if not entirely-," he says, "lost our comprehension, both theoretical and practical, of morality."" He labels that disorder with the name "emotivism," where by "emotivism" he means the doctrine that all value judgments, and more specifically all moral judgments, are nothing but assertions of personal preference or feeling." We live, Macintyre states, in a specifically emotivist culture. For people now think, talk, and act as if emotivism were true;" that is, they live, talk, and act as if value judgments were mere expressions of personal preference. The result of this is that contemporary moral debate is interminable, each side shrilly shouting its moral claims as if they were transpersonally true, while in fact basing them on nothing more than personal preference. Thus arguments about war and peace, abortion and choice, social welfare and capitalist freedom, go on interminably, without any prospect of resolution. In addition, emotivism results in a specifically emotivist self, a bifurcated self, divided into two value-neutral parts: one, the organizational self of bureaucratic man, in whose activities ends are taken for granted and the means to ends are manipulated; and another, the personal self of private human beings, for whom values are central, but purely a matter of arbitrary choice. The emotivist self results from two beliefs, the belief that actions �38 THE ST. JOHN'S REVIEW are not value-guided but reducible to mere behavior, and the belief that roles and traditions are not definitive of who someone is, but mere matters of arbitrary choice. These two beliefs should remind us of beast and god: the managerial self on the one hand, and the expressive self on the other. Like Strauss, Macintyre points out that neither school of contemporary philosophy can get us out of our predicament. Neither, he says, could even diagnose it. For analytical philosophers and phenomenologists, though divided by differences in vocabulary and style, are united in their dedication to description over evaluation, the former to description of language, the latter to description of structures of consciousness." As the analytical phllosopher C. L. Stevenson claimed that value judgments like "Thls is good" simply mean "I approve of this; do so as well,"46 so the existentialist philosopher Jean-Paul Sartre argued that claims to rational morality were nothing but the exercise of bad faith by those who were unable to tolerate the recognition that their own choices were the sole source of moral judgment, and the existentialist phllosopher Nietzsche claimed that would-be objective moral judgments were just the mask worn by those whose willto-power was too weak for them to assert themselves with archaic and aristocratic grandeur." Like Strauss, Macintyre sees this existentialist alternative to analytical philosophy as dangerous: the Sartrean existentialist as well as Nietzsche's Obermensch "belong," he says, "in the pages of a philosophical bestiary rather than in serious discussion."48 Like Strauss, Macintyre finds the origins of our current predicament in the collapse of the two principal teachings of the pre-modern West: the rational ethics of Aristotle and the theological ethics of divine law. The moral scheme of these two teachlngs dominated the European middle ages from the twelfth century onwards, according to Macintyre. The scheme has three parts: man-as-he-happens-to-be; man-as-he-could-be-if-herealized-his-le/os; and the precepts of rational ethics for moving from one to the other. This moral scheme, however, presupposes a number of views which have been rejected since the Enlightenment: it presupposes an account of potentiality/actuality, of the essence of man as a rational animal, and of the human telos. For virtues are those developed capacities which enable us to move from our mere potential to the realization of our essential nature. The precepts of rational ethics are, in other words, teleological, instructing us on how to move from potency to act, from our potential to our nature or telos. Unfortunately, theological ethics has the same scheme: man-as-hehappens-to-be; man-as-he-could-be-if-he-realized-hls-le/os; and the precepts which enable us to move from one to the other. The scheme is the same, �ACHTENBERG 39 though the precepts are expressions not of teleology but of divinely ordained law. On both accounts, the third element in this scheme-the precepts-are lost. For Protestantism and Jansenist Catholicism unite with seventeenth-century philosophy and science in the claim that reason cannot comprehend essences or transitions from potency to act. Like Strauss, Macintyre sees the Enlightenment rejection of teleology as progressive, starting with the early Enlightenment's "mechanistic account of human action"" and ending with Nietzsche's claim that my morality is only what my will creates:" we must create new tables of what is good, Nietzsche says; we "want to become those we are-human beings who are new, unique, incomparable, who give themselves laws, who create themselves."" It is not hard to see that these two phases, like the first and third waves of modernity described by Strauss, are the two mistakes pointed out by Aristotle, one of supposing that we are less than we are, the other of supposing we are more. For the mechanistic account of human action consists in the belief that human action can be explained wholly in terms of antecedent, mechanistic causes, and not at all in terms of the end which we set for ourselves; while Nietzsche claims not only that we set our own ends, but that in doing so we make those ends good. Mechanists claim we cannot act, but instead are pushed; while Nietzsche claims our action is its own justification. One identifies us, if not with the beasts, at least with mechanism; the other identifies us with the gods. Like Strauss, however, Macintyre's claim is not that Nietzsche is wrong or that he is trivial. Instead they both agree that his diagnosis of the ultimate result of modernity is both apt and profound; it is his prescription which they reject. They both agree that modern philosophy is, through and through, incapable of giving ground for value judgments, but deny that this means we ought to or can create our own values. Instead, each sees Nietzsche's critique as a critique not of ethics, politics, or rationality itself, but of the modern understanding of ethics, politics, and rationality." Each thus calls for a return to pre-modern philosophy, Strauss to (among others) Aristotle, Macintyre not to Aristotle, but to an Aristotelian ethics. To do so, Macintyre gives his own Aristotelian account of a virtue. A virtue, according to him, is a quality whose exercise enables us to achieve the goods which are internal to complex forms of human activity." He calls such activities "practices": a practice, according to him, is a coherent and complex, socially established, cooperative human activity; arts, sciences, and games are practices, as are politics and the making and sustaining of family life." A virtue, then, is a quality which makes it possible to attain the goods internal to complex forms of human activity. For example, a chess player who lacks the virtue honesty may win at the game �40 THE ST. JOHN'S REVIEW of chess by cheating; he thus will achieve a good external to chess, prestige, for example, or status, or money; he will not, however, insofar as he cheats, achieve the goods intrinsic to chess: he will not in fact have played a good game of chess; nor will he have extended his chess-playing skills, nor attained the enjoyment intrinsic to the game of chess itself- its competitive intensity, for example. Macintyre's definition of a virtue is, arguably, Aristotelian. According to Aristotle, a virtue is a disposition to choose the mean, where the mean, as I have described it, is just what is required for the end in question, and so could be understood to be what Macintyre has called an intrinsic good. In addition, the virtuous man, according to Aristotle, does what is needed or appropriate not out of compulsion or simply from habit, but because he desires it for its own sake: the courageous man does what is needed, when needed, and as needed, not for the sake of money, nor simply because he is angry, but "for the sake of the beautiful," that is, for its own sake. This is what distinguishes the one who has virtue from the one who merely has continence: in the virtuous man, desires and beliefs are in harmony, and the virtuous action is without conflict or regrets; the continent man, to the contrary, does what he believes is appropriate, but must overcome a contrary desire in order to do so. The difficulty, however, is that Macintyre's account provides no way to distinguish between one who overcomes fears and dangers in battle in order to enjoy, for example, war for its own sake, and one who does so in order to defeat a tyrant. Remember that according to Aristotle we would call the one who would make enemies of his friends for the sake of war a murderer. His point is that one who fights war not for the sake, ultimately, of the flowering of human virtue, but for the sake of the enjoyment of war itself, is not virtuous but vicious. As I have shown earlier, it is the end, the telos, which, ultimately for Aristotle, determines which capacities are virtues and which vices: capacities for the good are virtues; those for what is bad are vices. Macintyre's account of the end or telos of our virtues is curiously empty. The good life, according to him, is a unified life- the life of a unified self, one not bifurcated into the mechanized actions of an end-neutral manager on the one hand and the expressive life of one who arbitrarily chooses roles on the other. Instead, it is a life unified by a narrative which connects the individual's behavior both to his or her intentions and to larger, communal settings and roles. Action, on this account, is not mechanistic, but guided by what the actor takes to be his or her end; nor is action wholly selfdetermined; instead, it gets its intelligibility and its identity from the larger community and tradition of which it is a part. �ACHTENBERG 41 Which ends, however, and which community traditions, ought we to use to organize the narrative of our life, and which ones ought we to avoid? There Macintyre is silent. But there lies the difference between being happy and being miserable, between tyranny and just rule, between justified and unjustified war. For the ends we set, and the traditions we follow and roles we fill, can lead to full human development, or away from it. Macintyre, on this point, devolves into a groundless pluralism. There are different norms which we might pursue, he points out; sometimes, he states, these different norms may be incommensurable; each makes sense only in its own context. "The good life for man," he states, "is a life spent in seeking for the good life for man.'"' According to Aristotle, however, every action and choice aims at something believed to be good; aiming at what one takes to be good is not the distinguishing characteristic of virtuous actions as opposed to vicious ones; instead, it is aiming at what in fact is good which distinguishes them. It is in order to help us improve our aim that Aristotle writes the Ethics itself. His listeners know what is beneath us- the life of slaves or beasts- and are aiming at the high; they are the aspiring gentlemen of the day. But, their aims need guidance. Macintyre's positive account, then, fails, or at least needs to be much further worked out. For, though it allows that there is distinction between human action and mechanical causation, it does not give us a guide for our action, and thus becomes a version of the mistake which he imputes to Nietzsche. Macintyre states the alternatives in ethics starkly: Nietzsche or Aristotle. It is not clear that his own account describes the alternative which he prefers, however; for intrinsic good without a guiding aim-energeia without a telos-is not Aristotle at all, but is Nietzsche. Macintyre finds himself in this impasse because he rejects Aristotle's account of human happiness and substitutes for it his own. He does so for one principal reason: because he rejects what he calls Aristotle's "metaphysical biology," that is, because he, like the Enlightenment philosophers he mentions, rejects teleology. As stated earlier, however, I do not think these objections to Aristotle's ethics are successful. First, though Aristotle's account does rest on his biology, it does not rest on the part most commonly, and I think rightly, rejected: it does not rest on the belief that living beings move by nature towards their end. The ethics presupposes that human beings have an end; but it denies that we move by nature towards it: virtue and happiness, according to Aristotle, are not by nature, as I mentioned before; every action is aimed at something believed to be good, but our beliefs may be false or may fail to inform our passions. �42 THE ST. JOHN'S REVIEW Second, though Aristotle's account of human happiness does rest on his metaphysics, specifically on his account of potentiality and completion (dynamis and entelecheia), this part of his metaphysics is arguably true: it is arguably adequate to the phenomena- to the distinction between, for example, a blind person and a sighted person with his eyes shut; moreover, the fact that it is puzzling-and I think that it is-does not argue against its truth, unless someone can show that the real cannot be puzzling. Third, I deny that Aristotle's account of human happiness- specifically, his account of the human ergon and its telos-makes human beings more fixed than they actually are." Aristotle's account of the human ergon, instead of making human beings more fixed than they actually are, locates the source of our evident versatility: we need not follow our passions, for example, but may act against them, or even alter our tendency to have them; the other animals must follow their passions; we, however, can act. 57 Macintyre's Aristotelianism arises not out of reflections on the dangers of the unguided desire for the high, but on the need to overcome the fragmented quality of modern life. A virtue, on his account, is a human disposition which makes a unified life possible. His account is, still, however, liberal: he wants an Aristotelian ethics which is pluralist rather than exclusive; one which does not claim "institutional hegemony"; one which is applicable to people who live in different societies and follow different codes. In this, however, he has gone too far; for, since the good is relative, it is not vagueness about the good, but the good itself, that is, te/os, which provides the needed diversity. Conclusion We are left, then, with two contemporary Aristotelianisms, one conservative and metaphysical, the other liberal and anti-metaphysical. The latter is problematic since it falls into one of the two alternatives it was devised to avoid: it leaves us pursuing arbitrary aims. The former is not problematic, but partial: accord can be identified with the high, but it can also be identified with wholeness or unity. Which is the American problem, the uncontrolled desire for the high or the fragmentation of desire, the tyrant or the "as-if' personality, Alcibiades or Gary Hart? The answer, I suppose, is both. The two accounts also differ in origin and in aim. Strauss's origins are in phenomenology and existentialism and in reflections on Nazism and other right-wing teachings; his aim is to find a plausible and efficacious aim for the ineradicable human desire for the high. Macintyre's origins are in analytical philosophy and in reflections on the increasing fragmentation of contemporary life; his aim is to find a historical and pluralist account of happiness as unity. �ACHTENBERG 43 Macintyre's anti-metaphysical Aristotelianism is not an isolated case. As philosophers turn increasingly towards the continent, whether to Nietzsche or to Heidegger, their interpretations and revivals of Aristotle do so too. It began perhaps with Hannab Arendt's attempt, in the fifties, to found an Aristotelian account of action on natality rather than entelechy (that is, on our capacity to begin something new rather than on human nature and its te/os); it continues with Martha Nussbaum's attempt, in the eighties, to interpret Aristotle's ethics as grounded not in metaphysics or nature, but in ordinary language; it continues in the current attempts by AngloAmerican interpreters of Aristotle, Timothy Roche and Alfonso GomezLobo, for example, to show that the Nicomachean Ethics does not have a metaphysical foundation; and, as I've stated, it continues in Macintyre's ongoing attempt to found his Aristotelian ethics on narrative structure rather than metaphysical ground. For those who, like myself, associate themselves both with Aristotle and with liberalism- that is, both with Aristotle and with the pursuit of progress and change- these two types of Aristotelian ethics cry out for a third: for a liberal, but metaphysical, Aristotelianism, the outlines of which I have only begun to sketch out. It would, first, be an ethics dedicated to the same goal as Aristotle's: happiness understood as the full development of our species-given capacities for intellect and feeling. It would presuppose, however, the equal importance of full development for all; this could perhaps be justified on moral grounds, as it is by William Galston in Justice and the Human Good, or on practical grounds, as a means of engendering public spiritedness in the liberal state. It would see the prudent pursuit of this goal- full development for all- as its ground, that is, as the principle on the basis of which to judge between beneficial and harmful change. It would recognize, as Aristotle does, self-government, not big government, as a constituent of, and not just a means to, such full development, and community as its condition- as Aristotle recognized the city as its condition in his time- since the liberal state remains largely neutral about the human good, with state being separate from church, from economics, and, largely, from culture. It would recognize as well the ambiguous relationship of the liberal state and capitalist economy to such communities, that the state and economy often destroy communities rather than sustaining them, by pandering to our desires for passive pleasure on the one hand and immortality on the other, to our consumer desires and to our proliferating attempts to overcome death. It would privilege neither the downtrodden, as much of the American left does, nor the talented, as does Strauss. It would recognize the capacity of the community to raise the level of each of its members, their desires to claims of justice and their �THE ST. JOHN'S REVIEW 44 capacities to higher levels of virtue or development; the community, in other words, would be that particular body, intermediate between state and family, as Michael Sandel has said, through which our particular capacities, desires, and needs are raised to the level of the universal, without ever losing their rootedness in the particular: our capacities developed to the extent of their human potential, our desires and needs fulfilled in accordance with our common hnman nature. It would be a liberalism that would not deny, in its search for wholeness through community, the need for daring and risk, but would recognize that risk taken on and for oneself or one's group can be ennobling, as Michael Walzer has said in his discussions of the self-management of dangerous businesses." And it would be a teaching about happiness which could animate a sound pluralism- a pluralism based not on subjective whim, but on the relativity of good to context and to character; what is required to develop human capacities varies from place to place and person to person: sometimes we need to toughen up, other times to loosen up; sometimes to control our impulses, other times to discover them; sometimes we need a kick in the rear, sometimes a help up; sometimes we need sports, sometimes to learn parenting; sometimes we need great books, sometimes we need therapy; sometimes we need poliiical participation, sometimes communion with God. The origin of this Aristotelian ethics would be in American philosophy and reflections on the fragmented, not to say narcissistic, American self; its aim would be to identify accord not just with the high bnt also with wholeness. It is an account that I hope to detail further in the future. Notes I. 2. 3. 4. 5. 6. 7. 8. 9. Our own end is only outside when we have not achieved it. Nicomachean Ethics 3.8. Nicomachean Ethics 2.9. See Politics 1 on slavery. The slave lacks choice; it is lacking that which makes him a slave. Nicomachean Ethics 2.9. Metaphysics 9.1; Physics 7.3. Nicomachean Ethics 1.5. I distinguish here so-called final and instrumental good or bad: the beneficial and harmful are final (that is, intrinsic); the enabling and destructive are instrumental. Again, instrumental and final good, where final means constitutive, as I argue below. Nicomachean Ethics 3.3 1112b; 6.9 1142b. �ACHTENBERG 45 10. Nicomachean Ethics 6.8 1142a; 6.9 1142b. II. Pleasure is unimpeded activity of a disposition in accordance with nature (energeia tes kata physin hexei5s, anti de tou aistheten anempodiston). (This is Aristotle's first definition, Nicomachean Ethics 7.12 1153al4. The second does not conflict with it. 10.4 1174b3l.) Happiness is activity in accordance with virtue. Virtue is a disposition in accor- dance with nature (kata physin). So activity in accordance with it is unimpeded. Therefore, happiness is unimpeded activity of a natural disposition, specifically, of the disposition to choose the mean or to hit the truth. 12. The city (polis) does not, and cannot, exist here today. So, some other condition is necessary for full development, as I state below. 13. And thus happiness. 14. "Superficial ornament" is interpretive. Aristotle says pleasure "hosper periaptou tinos" (1.8 l099al6). Ross translates this, "pleasure as a sort of adventitious charm." Irwin translates it pleasure "as some sort of ornament." 15. That this implies that each of these movements, by being together with the others, is more than itself- is raised to a higher level of development- is a reason for beginning to think that Athens and Jerusalem -that is, hierarchy and equality-are not as separate as they sometimes seem. Each "low" motion, by being together with the others, is raised to a higher level. 16. Metaphysics 9.1. 17. For example, running forward is the telos relative to one battle, but not to another; it is a context-relative good. For another example, intellectual instruction is a good relative to a human being, but not to a beast or to the god; it is a good relative to kind. There are, also, I maintain, goods relative to differing character or psychology: some people need competition; others need cooperation. 18. For this, see William Galston's full development principle in ''Equality of Opportunity and Liberal Theory," in Justice and Equality, Here and Now (Cornell, 1986), p. 92. 19. See Hanna Pitkin's reference to Joseph Thssman in "Justice: On Relating Private and Public," Political Theory, August 1981, p. 347. 20. Currently, though, the American left privileges the downtrodden. Hence, in that sense, my standpoint is liberal, not left, since it privileges neither the downtrodden nor the talented, as I say below. It includes some elements from the left, though, specifically, the left suspicion of the relation between capital and human development. �46 THE ST. JOHN'S REVIEW 21. Leo Strauss, "An Epilogue," in Liberalism, Ancient and Modern, p. 221 (reprinted from Essays on the Scientific Study of Politics, ed. Herbert J. Storing, Holt, Rinehart and Winston, 1962). 22. "An Epilogue," p. 222. 23. "Philosophy as Rigorous Science ... ," p. 30. 24. "A Giving of Accounts: Jacob Klein and Leo Strauss," The College (St. John's College), April 1970, p. 3. 25. "A Giving of Accounts," p. 3. 26. "Comments on The Concept of the Political by Carl Schmitt," (1932), reprinted in Spinoza's Critique of Religion (Schocken, 1982). 27. P. 350. 28. P. 350. 29. P. 350. 30. P. 346. 31. I think it is possible to defend certain principles found in the Bible without resorting to revelation. As mentioned in a previous note, each first-stage potential is raised to a higher-stage potential by being together with other first-stage potentials. This is often true among people: the group can raise its members to a higher level. 32. Leo Strauss, "The Three Waves of Modernity," in Political Philosophy: Six Essays by Leo Strauss (Bobbs-Merrill, 1975), pp. 85, 87. 33. Nicomachean Ethics 1177b. 34. "The real issue is Strauss's ruthless determination to use these old books to 'moderate' that idealistic longing for justice, at home and abroad, which grew in the puppies of America during the years when Strauss was teaching and writing." M. F. Burnyeat, "Sphinx Without a Secret" (New York Review of Books, May 30, 1985), p. 36. 35. The City and Man (University of Chicago, 1964); Preface, Liberalism, Ancient and Modern (Basic Books, 1964). 36. "A Giving of Accounts," p. 4. 37. P. 204. 38. The Closing of the American Mind (Simon and Schuster, 1987), p. 22. 39. Alasdair Macintyre, After Virtue (Notre Dame, 1981; seconded., 1984). 40. Strauss, "An Epilogue." Macintyre, After Virtue, p. 263. 41. "The Three Waves of Modernity," p. 81. 42. P. 2. 43. Pp. 11-12. 44. P. 22. 45. P. 2. 46. P. 12. 47. P. 22. �ACHTENBERG 48. 49. 50. 51. 52. 53. 54. 55. 56. 47 P. 22; p. 113. P. 84. P. 114. P. 114, quoting Nietzsche, The Gay Science, section 335, p. 266. After Virtue, pp. 22, 114; "The Three Waves of Modernity," p. 98. P. 191; see also pp. 219, 223. Pp. 187-188. P. 219. As has been argued by, for example, Hannah Arendt in The Human Condition (University of Chicago, 1958) and by Bernard Suits in "Aristotle on the Function of Man: Fallacies, Heresies and other Entertainments" (Canadian Journal ofPhilosophy 4, September 1974), p. 23. 57. See my argument in support of this in "On the Metaphysical Presuppositions of Aristotle's Nicomachean Ethics," forthcoming, Journal of Value Inquiry, Martinus Nijhoff, The Hague. 58. Michael Walzer, Spheres of Justice: A Defense of Pluralism and Equality (Basic Books, 1983). ��Dead Leaves: Illustrations of the Genealogy of the Epic Poem Jonathan Tuck Poems, like people, have parents-and grandparents-and a whole remote ancestry of other poems to which they owe their own begetting. Though poets may try to set themselves up as a second deity, creating from nothingness with perfect power and freedom, still the poems they make bear ancestral markings and acknowledge their indebtedness. Each spring growth of foliage seems to remake the whole world anew; but each leaf is of a kind-a larger family-and also has more particular origins. The leaves fall and die, but not before they transmit something of themselves to their offspring. So too the leaves of a book, pages traced vein-like with lines of verse, take part in this cycle of begetting. Poems, too, can die to the world, although not exactly as leaves or people do. Some poets claim to have made the most permanent of objects, more enduring than bronze or monuments of stone, exempt from the ravages of time. Such claims are typically written in dead languages; or in any case they must have for us a quaint, antique sound. We know better: Words are winged, and if in their flight they fall on barren soil, nothing dies as fast. Their only chance for survival, for immortality, lies in their power to propagate. *** Jonathan Thck is a Thtor at St. John's College, Annapolis. This lecture was delivered at the Annapolis campus in April, 1988. 49 �50 THE ST. JOHN'S REVIEW In the Homeric No-man's Land, the space between the two armies, the Achaian hero Diomedes, son of Tydeus, meets Glaukos of Lycia, a Trojan ally. Diomedes has just gotten away with assaulting two of the immortal gods, despite a rebuke from Apollo; but now he grows cautious. He is not willing to join battle with another divinity, he says, so he prudently inquires about Glaukos' identity and origins. Both the question and the caution that prompts it are surprising to us: Diomedes has been busily slaughtering scores of others for some time now without any such scruple or ceremony. In his aristeia, his finest hour on the battlefield, he has shown a strength that transcends human limitations, and it is the desire to defeat those limitations that makes men fight at all- so that their glory may be a song for men to come. Yet now, oddly, Diomedes feels hemmed in by his mortality. His strange moment of pensiveness in the midst of the battle prompts his question to Glaukos, and the answer at first shows the same mood of quiescence: "Tu&€.i&n J.u:;y<i9u).ts, 'til\ y~::vsftv Epssivstc;; otTtnsp q>UA.Arov yevsr}, 'tOiTJ oe Kat Uv&pOOv. q>UAAU '" ~uiv ,. UVE~O<; xa~6.St<; ):BEt, ana M e· u).n 'tTJA.s96roaa qnlst, Eapoc; 0 • E:myiyvs-rat ffip11· ffi<; &.voprov YEVEij 1\ ~·v !pUEt 1\ s· U1t0A~yEt. ei &' &9EA.stc; Kat 'tCll1ta Oa:tlJ.lEVUt, O<pp' EU stBUc; itJJ.E'tEpnv ysvsitv, noA.A.ol OE IJ.tv liv&psc; icraow· "Great son of l)rdeus, why ask of my generation? Like to the generation of leaves is that of men. The leaves are dashed to the ground by the wind, but then the wood Burgeoning brings forth others, and the time of spring returns. So with the generations of men: One blossoms, another dies. Yet if you wish even so to ask and learn the facts About my family stock, it is known by many men ... " -Iliad VI. 145-151 Glaukos too seems to be oddly conscious of human insignificance. In his simile of the leaves, the chiastic order of presentation suggests a difference of emphasis between the life story of the leaves and that of men. The leaves are first dashed to the ground, but then the wood brings forth more. New life here follows death; while in the one line devoted to human affairs the generations of men first bloom and then die. Syntactically the word &.no).Tjyet gives the line a kind of abruption, since it here lacks its more usual complementary genitive or participle. In sound, however, it drifts away into a kind of dying fall, with the repetition of the long 'ay' sound �TUCK 51 in ft li'unoA.ljyBI. The tone is melancholy and detached. We might even suspect Glaukos of being afraid of Diomedes and resigned to his own imminent death; certainly he has good reason to be, given what we have seen of Diomedes' prowess. But the sentiment conveyed by the similitude of the leaves goes beyond either bitterness or quiescence: It has a kind of noble, philosophic serenity that makes the passage seem detachable from its context. In a sixteenth-century edition of the poem there might be a little picture of a hand in the margin, with an index finger pointing out the portable sententia. There is a grandeur-in-misery here in being able to be aware of such things; like Pascal's thinking reed Glaukos seems to be finding his dignity in self-knowledge. So the shift is especially jarring to us when in the next line Glaukos says in effect: "But if you really want to know, my family has a proud history." And then he is off into an exciting account of the noble feats of his grandfather Bellerophon. In like manner, we the audience are emotionally whiplashed by the peculiar ending of the episode. Diomedes announces in tones of delight that he and Glaukos are ~svot, guest-friends, by virtue of their forbears' friendly relationship, and he proposes a separate peace: He and Glaukos will each find other men to kill; with each other they will exchange armor in token of comradeship. The two men clasp hands, and we share in their gladness. Here in the midst of the welter of warlike, self-aggrandizing appetites is an island of sublime, heroic good will. Here past friendships mean more than present frenzy. But we are sadly jolted by the author's last words in recounting the episode: But Zeus son of Kronos stole Glaukos' wits away, for he exchanged with Diomedes his armor of gold for bronze, for nine oxen's worth a hundred! (VI. 234-6) So much for the timeless claims of guest-friendship. Just like Glaukos when he proceeds to recite his genealogy, Diomedes returns abruptly to the selfassertive world of present needs and desires. Perhaps we can better understand the back-and-forth movement of this episode by returning to the image of the leaves and asking the following odd question: Why does Homer choose to compare men in their generations to leaves specifically? One immediate answer is that he is putting in .the mouth of Glaukos something very like a pun: to qn)A.A.ov (with an acute accent and two lambdas) meaning "leaf" is very similar in sound to to q>ii:\.ov (with a circumflex accent and one lambda) meaning "tribe, �52 THE ST. JOHN'S REVIEW race, stock, a group of people with a common origin." From this latter word comes our Latinate English "phylum," used in biological classification. The word for "leaf" seems to come from the ancient word q>A&ro, "to teem with abundance," while the word for "tribe" is descended from q>Uro, "to bring forth, produce, beget, generate." It is hard to doubt that the two roots are related, if not united, somewhere in their Indo-European past So Glaukos seems to say jokingly, "Son of Tydeus, why do you ask me about my yevel\, my family stock? The family stocks of men (<pilA.a) are dashed to the ground by the wind ... "Only now, in listening, do we realize that the other word, <puA.A.a, was meant. But apart from its wit, the connection is very apt. We need not ask of a man's individual lineage, for men are as multitudinous and as faceless as leaves on the trees. Yet Glaukos does go on, proudly, to give his genealogy; men, like leaves, may be many but they are not all the same: They come in kinds, preserving important distinctions. This opposition of multitude to orderly variation is shown in another Homeric use of the pun on <puUa, in Book II of the Iliad. Nestor publicly advises Agamemnon: "Marshal your men by tribes [<PUA.a.], by clans, Agamemnon, oe so that clan may help clan, and tribe help tribe [Q>GA.a qnlA.ot<;]. If you do this, and if the Achaians obey you, you'll know then which of your leaders and men is a coward, and which is worthy, each group fighting as a unit." (II. 362-6) In this passage the word <pilA.a is used three times in the space of two lines, giving it a memorable emphasis. Nestor's advice is taken, and a bare hundred lines later we hear this: They stood in the flowering meadow of Scamander, countless, as leaves and flowers blooming in season. (II. 467-8) And later in the same book of the poem, the goddess Iris, disguised as Priam's son Polites, has this to say to the Thojan assembly: "Indeed, I have gone many times into manly battle, but never yet saw such a host, so many. For they look most like leaves, or the sands of the sea, as they come to the plain to fight against our city." (II. 798-801) �53 TUCK Thus in a short space we see these two near-homophonic words used to balance off the faceless multitude of the Achaian forces, like leaves of the forest, as seen from without, against the orderly distinction in their arrangement by clans, as seen from within. The simile of the leaves carries within it another pair of opposed, yet complementary qualities. Glaukos' speech to Diomedes seems to invoke the cyclical recurrence of the leaves from one spring season to the next. If we ignore distinctions among individual leaves or generations of them, it would seem that the generality of leaves is immortal, at least in Diotima's sense of immortality through successive begettings and substitutions (Symposium 208 a). Yet leaves as individuals are proverbially light and fragile, playthings of the wind, and nothing can be more final than their individual death, as Achilles reminds us: "But this I say, and swear a great oath to it: By this staff, which will sprout no leaves or shoots ever again, since it left its stump in the hills, nor bloom anew, for the bronze blade has stripped it of leaves and bark, and now the Achaians' sons bear it in hand as judges while they uphold the laws ordained by Zeus ... " (I. 233-9) When we look at the leaves from the outside, ignoring their several particularities, they seem to go on forever. In choosing to look from the outside, we gain a kind of god-like detachment, but we lose the urgent immediacy, the specialness of a particular set of leaves- the cutting of the tree up in the mountains, the cruel stripping of the bronze blade. So too if we look at the lives of human beings in the largest spatial and temporal context, all single human destinies merge into the continuing story of the race. Thus we can seem to cheat our mortality, but the eternal life we gain is a kind of living death; in becoming part of an anonymous multitude we lose what is specifically valuable in human life. We become vegetables, machines for eating and begetting. So we must seem to the gods, as we learn from another of Homer's uses of the emblem of the leaves. In Book XXI of the Iliad, Apollo answers Poseidon's challenge thus: "Earthshaker, you would say that I was senseless if I were to fight with you for the sake of mortals, those wretched ones, who now like leaves are full of blooming life, feeding upon earth's fruits, �THE ST. JOHN'S REVIEW 54 but then droop into death. So let us now quickly leave off our fight; let them decide it." (XXI. 462-7) If on the other hand we emphasize a different aspect of the leaves, their individual fragility and the finality of their passing, we are led inward, into an autumnal landscape of pathos and regret. So too in the story of humanity, a focus on the particular identities and valuable uniqueness of single people goes along with an awareness of their inevitable doom. This is the view we call "tragic"- and in daring to look in this way we assert our own dignity, our capacity for heroism and self-knowledge. As Glaukos returns to recount his own particular lineage, as Diomedes returns to the world of private appetites, war, and thievery, so throughout the Iliad we return constantly to the pathos of the concrete. In this poem it is the death of the leaves that is finally the more important. Think in contrast of the Odyssey, with its emphasis on what endures and is reborn, with its great image of the bed rooted in the olive tree. But the power of the simile of the leaves is that it holds in unresolved counterpoise both views of human experience. Socrates claims that the same man can write both tragedy and comedy; I claim that Homer is here, with a kind of perspectivism, writing both at the same time. In its generality, the simile seems to move above the level of the poem's battlefield narrative, making us cast our eyes forward and backward in a grand synoptic gesture of inclusion. But the inclusiveness would not be complete if we lost the particular diachronic context from which the simile arises. It is this inclusiveness that characterizes the poems we call "epics." Though the human stories epics tell are fixed at a particular point in history, no human story of any consequence can be complete unless it is located in the larger world of space and time that the gods inhabit. Spatially epics go up to heaven and down into the underworld; temporally they go forward and backward, even to the beginning and end of human history. Yet they retain a constant rootedness, a grounding in the singularity of the human actions they tell; hence the tradition that epics begin and even end in the "middle of things." Furthermore, they have sometimes been thought of as constituting an encyclopedia of all human wisdom, a compendium of all the !ores and knowbows of different trades and callings, not to mention ethical teachings, cosmologies, and religious revelation. (This view of the epic poem as a repository of all knowledge helps us to understand Plato's treatment of the poets in the Ion and the Republic.) In the most extreme case, a poem like the Aeneid could be used for divination- the book opened blindly �55 TUCK and a finger pointing to a randomly chosen passage. The text so chosen would foretell the future or give practical advice, as many believed in the Middle Ages. It is hardly possible to imagine such a practice applied to the texts of the great lyric or dramatic poems. The sheer size and scope of the epic itself, as well as that of the subjects it takes for its province, invite us to treat it as an inspired utterance or sacred book- perhaps even as a domain coterminous with Nature itself. So the writing of an epic is an act of enormous audacity, because such a poem aspires to swallow up all possible experience and hold it in the fixity of a human artifice. It is the binding of Proteus, or to vary the metaphor, it is a kind of rival Creation. And yet these leaves too must die. ••• A new generation of leaves, descended from these Homeric ancestors, springs forth in Book VI of the Aeneid. Aeneas and the Sibyl see the ghostly images of the dead, gathered at the shore of the infernal river: hue omnis turba ad ripas effusa ruebat, matres atque viri defunctaque corpora vita magnanimum heroum, pueri innuptaeque puellae, impositique rogis iuvenes ante ora parentum: quam multa in silvis autumni frigore primo lapsa cadunt folia, aut ad terram gurgite ab alto quam multae glomerantur aves, ubi frigidus annus trans pontum fugat et terris immittit apricis. stabant orantes primi transmittere cursum, tendebantque manus ripae ulterioris amore. Here a whole crowd came streaming to the banks, mothers and men, the forms with life all spent of great-souled heroes, boys and girls unmarried, youths put on pyres before their parents' eyes: As many as in the woods, in fall's first cold leaves drop, or landward from the raging deep as many birds gather, when the season's frost drives them across the sea to sunny lands. They all stood praying to be first across, and stretched out hands in love of the farther shore. (VI. 305-14) The leaves occupy only a line and a half, and the movement of the verse dramatically whirls them away into the following companion simile of the �THE ST. JOHN'S REVIEW 56 birds. This is the effect of the striking elision of the last syllable of the Latin word for "leaves," folia, after two short syllables with light, voiceless consonants at the beginning of the word: -UU- UU -UU-U Lapsa cadunt folia, aut ad terram gurgite ab alto. '-' Although the phrase ad terram- "to the ground" or "toward land"-belongs formally to the second simile, it serves metrically here as the destination of the leaves' swift motion. In this brief picture we feel powerfully the ephemeral lightness of the leaves, pathetically helpless against the driving wind of Virgil's hexameters. The passage is impressive enough in itself, drawing as it does upon Virgil's pictorial use of rhythm. But I want to claim much more: The specific power of the passage comes from our consciousness of the allusion to its Homeric antecedent in Iliad VI. At this point, remembering the well-marked dualities in Homer's treatment of the leaves, we expect a second view of them, returning in the spring after the wind has dashed them to the ground. Of course we don't get it, and our expectations are powerfully frustrated. But our continued awareness of Homer's leaves leads us further, to meditate upon the reasons for this departure from the precedent. In the first place, Glaukos spoke as he stood in the upper world, on a field of men living or dying; the Virgilian leaves, however, are compared to the shades of humans already dead. By setting his adaptation of the leaf-simile in the underworld, Virgil reminds us of his own spirituality, a spooky otherworldliness in marked contrast with Homer's rootedness in the natural rhythms of this world. Secondly, we realize that the Homeric completion of the simile in the more upbeat view of the leaves' renewal does have its own surrogate here in Virgil's recension of it: The birds, in Virgil's second simile, are a sort of phantom stand-in for the returning leaves of spring. Superficially the point of similarity seems to be only the multitude of fallen leaves or of birds gathering on the ground: We had not thought death had undone so many. Of course there is a pictorial similarity too: The birds are leaf-like in appearance, tossed and buffeted by the wintry winds as they flutter to the ground. But these birds are also gathering for a new flight, a migration across the water into the sunny warmth of their winter home, probably in North Africa. In this respect they refer us back to the souls of the dead, waiting to cross the Styx. But the crucial point, distinguishing them from the leaves, is that these same birds will presumably return northward with the following spring- not a new generation, as with Homer's leaves, but these birds themselves. It seems clear that we are being referred �TUCK 57 forward as well, to Anchises' Pythagorean account of the transmigration and re-embodiment of souls, later in Aeneid VI. The sunny lands of the south recall the blessed, luminous groves in Elysium, where some fortunate souls are sent after they "hang suspended in the empty winds" or "purge their crimes in the vast flood of the sea" (VI. 740-1, where gurgite vasto is a verbal echo of gurgite ab alto in line 310 of our passage). Virgil seems to be suggesting, in specific, self-conscious contradistinction to Horner, that a kind of personal immortality is possible, even if only for a few: not a derived "immortality" through the survival of one's offspring, but an enduring self, preserving one's identity and abiding in the land of the blest. This happy prospect might lighten our prevailing view of the human landscape of labor, mutability, and death; but the few who are to enjoy it must meet very stringent (and very Roman) ethical standands. The melancholy longing felt by the others, the fallen leaves, is what Virgil returns to at the end of our passage, with the sound effects of the justly famous line: tendebantque manus ripae ulterioris amore. So far I've been arguing that Virgil's revision of the leaf-simile works in a kind of counterpoint with our memory of its Homeric source. There is even a reminiscence of Homer in Virgil's use of rhythm. I have already described how the elision at the end of the word folia hurries us from the dying leaves to the second simile of the birds. Let's look again at the movement of Homer's line: - u u qn\l.l.a <11. ~ev ,. u Uju Uliivs~o<; xa~ciot<; uu II- u u - - xtst, iil.l.a M S'ul.11 1"TJAB86roaa cpUet. The shortening of the diphthong, long by nature, at the end of the word ?(Est is a metrical effect known as "epic correption." Here, atypically, the correption occurs at a bucolic diaeresis- a pause after the fourth whole foot of the line. We would like to linger at such a marked break in this breathless-sounding, conspicuously dactylic line, but the shortening of ?(ESt snatches us up and hurries us along, with marked enjambment, into the next generation of the leaves. The rhythmic force of this device is exactly analogous to that of Virgil's elision; and it comes at the analogous moment in the development of the similitude. Our feeling both of the correspondence between the two passages, and of the differences, is thereby sharpened. Perhaps I should apologise for dwelling on such small details in these �58 THE ST. JOHN'S REVIEW Greek and Latin texts. I wanted to illustrate the degree of intimate familiarity that Virgil must have had with Homer's poem, and that he also expects from the ideal reader of his own revisionist version. We all know about the large-scale structural ways in which the Aeneid subsumes both the Iliad and the Odyssey: There are the references to the first lines of both Homeric poems in Virgil's first line; there are the plot parallels with the Odyssey in Aeneid I-VI and with the Iliad in VII-XII; there are the close resemblances of certain characters (Turnus, for instance, to Achilles sometimes, and other times to Hector). But such detailed imitation, allusion, and pointed variation as I have tried to show go much further: They amount to a constant pressure, or presence of the older author in the newer. Virgil- surely one of the most self-conscious poets who ever lived- cannot help but acknowledge his indebtedness to his master; at the same time, by varying the allusion he shows his authenticity and independence. To be writing an epic at all means to be working in a certain tradition, to be a "son of Homer" and to admit it. In one sense this admission also grants Homer's implicit claim to have created a second world in the vastness of his artifice. Pope made this point memorably in writing of Virgil: When first young Maro, in his boundless Mind A work t'outlast Immortal Rome design'd, Perhaps he seemed above the Critick's Law, And but from Nature's Fountains scorned to draw: But when t'examine ev'ry Part he came, Nature and Homer were, he found, the same. (Essay on Criticism, 130-5) But if this should be the last word, then epic would be a Titan that devours its own children. How can Virgil or anyone else write a second epic with similar aspirations of inclusiveness? A truly successful epic would exhaust the conditions for the writing of another such poem. The very power of Homer's original epic forces Virgil at once to include it and to depart from it, to struggle against his own roots. The particular qualities of epic poems make it especially hard to write in a tradition, and make unavoidable the rivalry between any single epic poet and his predecessors. I have already mentioned the cosmic inclusiveness of epic, its encyclopedic quality that seeks to leave no subject matter remaining for any successor. Though epic poems try to embody the whole of human experience and human history, each one does so from a particular point of view. For epics tend to be "national," to recast history in terms of the destiny of a particular nation or culture. So to acknowledge one's epic predecessor is to participate in a rivalry of cultures- Rome ver- �TUCK 59 sus Greece, say, or Christian versus Pagan. Even more problematically, the poet is not a mere mouthpiece for one historical or nationalistic worldview. It is true that such a view speaks through him; he is a prophet, speaking for another as the word implies, and the "Muse" is an image of the cosmic providence that seeks, through epic poets, to make itself known to humanity. But the poet is also engaged in a heroic act of self-assertion, in daring to take up the task of writing such a work, and as a prophet of his own Muse he speaks for himself. So the family drama of poetic influence, the Oedipal conflict of the poet with his own forbears, is sharpened and magnified by the special demands of the epic tradition. For Virgil, the solution to this predicament is to incorporate or subsume Homer into his own poetic universe. (It is thus that I can speak of the presence of Homer within the text of Virgil.) His allusion to Homer's leaf-simile, for example, summons up all the specific affect of the passage in Iliad VI, where the leaves are made into a powerfully ambiguous emblem both of the pathos of mortal finitude and of the ways in which the cyclical self-perpetuation of nature transcends that finitude. Virgil, I say, invokes all this; and then by subtly varying it, he goes beyond it, projecting this dual perspective on the natural world into a new dialectic with the realm of the supernatural. So his poem implicitly claims that it contains and supersedes the parent poem. Homer's epic inclusiveness aspired to the swallowing-up of the whole natural world. The Aeneid shares this aspiration but adds to it: In addition to swallowing the primary world of nature, Virgil claims to have swallowed up the secondary "world" of Horner's poem. Thus in the theogony of the epic poem, each newly-generated Titan swallows its parents. I have said that by its nature epic locates present human actions in a larger historical context; this "epic present" is emphatically the intersec- tion of past and future. But the heroic act of writing an epic must itself be located in a similar temporal context, with poetic predecessors and successors arranged in a providential order that sets off the magnitude of the present poem. Virgil's poetic self-consciousness brings a second, selfreferential story into his narrative: Behind the drama and great labor of the building of Rome there is the drama and the great labor of the building of the Aeneid. Each of these two great actions comes from a Greek precedent which it acknowledges, incorporates, and seeks to transcend. Each action also seeks to project itself indefinitely into the future: The perpetual glory of the Roman imperium is to be accompanied by the everlasting fame of Virgil's poem. But Virgil is sufficiently aware of the necessary mutability of human affairs to entertain a melancholy scepticism about the staying power, both �60 THE ST. JOHN'S REVIEW of the empire and of the poem. He expresses his concern about his own poem's posterity by another use of the image of the leaves. In Book III, Helenus prophesies to his kinsman Aeneas about the arrival in Italy: "Arrived there, when you reach the city of Cumae, the sacred lakes and whispering woods of Avernus, you'll find the frenzied seer in her deep cave who sings the fates, and notes them down on leaves. The songs the lady writes, she puts in order, leaf upon leaf, and shuts them in the cavern. There they remain untouched and in their places. But when a gentle breeze blows in the door, the hinges turn, the delicate leaves are scattered; then as they flutter through the cave, she never cares to replace them or remake her songs. Unhelped by Sibyl, vistors hate her halls." (Ill. 441-452) For this reason, when Aeneas comes in Book VI to consult the Sibyl he begs her to sing her prophecies herself, rather than entrusting them to the leaves and making them whirling playthings of the swift winds. He promises to build a temple to Phoebus and Trivia, where a shrine will be set apart to preserve the Sibyl's written prophecies, with priests as caretakers. The possessed prophetess, the Sibyl, is here a stand-in for Virgil himself. Like her, he is divinely inspired; and he is our guide into the underworld just as she is for Aeneas. That there is a relationship between the Sibyl and the figure of the poet is also suggested by a verbal correspondence: In her prophecy the Sibyl says bella, horrida bella, et Thybrim multo spumantem sanguine cerno. war, savage war I see ahead, and Tiber foaming blood. (VI. 86-7) In Book VII, speaking in his own voice in the new invocation to the Muse, Virgil says tu vatem, tu, diva, mone. dicam horrida bella, dicam acies, actosque animis in funera reges. �TUCK 61 Oh goddess, guide your seer! I shall sing savage war, battle-lines, and kings by courage driven to death. (VII. 41-2) Here the word vales, "seer" or "prophet," which has been repeatedly used to refer to the Sibyl, is applied to Virgil himself in his capacity of epic poet, and he puts into his own mouth an echo of her own phrase horrida bella, "savage wars." And as Virgil is in some sense the Sibyl, he wonders if his prophetic poem will in the end, like her writings, become a "plaything of the winds." The written word is treacherous, and perhaps any such attempt to arrest the flux of experience in the fixity of human artifice is doomed. Perhaps, as he himself has subsumed and superseded Homer, some new poet will come and swallow up Virgil's poem too. Th be thus superseded is not annihilation, but it is a very ambiguous kind of poetic immortality. It may be that the golden bough itself serves in part as an emblem for the contradictions in Virgil's view of his poetic posterity: The bough is artificial, yet a kind of second nature. It has the durability of metal; yet it can be plucked and then grows again of itself. To the person chosen to receive it, it serves as a ticket of admission to the realm that contains the past, the future, and the ultimate mysteries of human destiny. Yet we remember that it yielded itself only reluctantly even to the hand of Aeneas; and if it chooses to deny itself to you, no violence can harvest its riches. It flashes an eerie glint of gold in the shadowy woods, near the jaws of foul-smelling Avernus; and its metal leaves give off a tinny rattle against the wind. *** The dictionary tells us that it was only in late antiquity that the Latin word folium, "leaf," was first used to refer to a sheet of paper or page of a book. As far as I know, the connection between the leaves of the forest and the human artifice of poetry is first made explicitly by the poet Horace, a friend of Virgil, in the critical treatise known as the Ars Poetica: Ut silvae foliis pronos mutantur in annos, prima cadunt, ita verborum vetas interit aetas, et iuvenum ritu florent modo nata vigentque. Debemur morti nos nostraque, sive receptus terra Neptunus classes Aquilonibus arcet regis opus, sterilisve diu palus aptaque remis vicinas urbes alit et grave sentit aratrum; �62 THE ST. JOHN'S REVIEW seu cursum mutavit iniquum frugibus arnnis, doctus iter melius: mortalia facta peribunt, nedum sermonum stet bonos et gratia vivax. When at the year's end forests change their leaves, The oldest fall first; so with the generations of words: The former die, the newer bloom like boys. For we and all things ours are owed to death: The harbors that we build (a royal task!); The barren marshes, then a place for boats, Now drained for plowing, feeding farms nearby; The dams that bend the river's angry course And save the crops-These mortal works shall die, Nor shall the grace and glory of discourse live. (Ars Poetica 60-69) But though this connection had been made, and though Virgil's Sibyl wrote her prophecies on leaves, the word itself probably did not have for Virgil the witty self-reference that its linguistic development, and the predominance of written culture, later made possible. For Dante, the closeness of the related Italian wordsfoglia, "leaf of a tree," andfoglio, "page in a book," makes explicit the doubleness of the drama of the leaves. In the primary world of nature, leaves die and others succeed them; in the second, rival nature that is the world of epic poems, what is said to happen out in the woods can also be referred to the successive generations of pages of verse. So Dante's use of the image of the leaves is even more explicitly selfreferring, and Dante's poem is even more self-conscious than its predeces- sors about its context in literary history. It is appropriate, then, that the family drama of Dante's relation to his poetic father, Virgil, is internalized and made explicit within the poem's narrative: Both "Dante" and "Virgil" are characters in a poem written by the first man and pervasively influenced by the second. And their relationship as Dante depicts it certainly reflects the intense ambivalence he feels toward his great forerunner. Virgil is the powerful and beloved guide; but his guidance is fallible and limited in scope- his pupil will go farther than Virgil can take him. And the most powerful indicator of all is that Virgil finally is a damned soul, one of those who have" lost the good of the intellect." As a denizen of Hell he is made to assist in an extended revisionist reworking of his own Book VI. Whenever a Virgilian passage lies allusively behind, or within Dante's text, the implied claim is that Virgil had an inkling, partial at best, of the authoritative version we get from the younger poet. The movement is from shadowy types to truth: Virgil went forth into the night, holding �TUCK 63 a lamp behind him to aid his successors. Dante sees more and knows better, and so now does Virgil- but too late. It is in this emotionally charged atmosphere that we see, in the third canto of Inferno, a new generation of the leaves that first grew and died by the River Scamander, on the fields of Troy. Virgil the guide and Dante the pilgrim have come to the banks of the Acheron, where Charon, the steersman of the livid marsh, transports across the water the souls of the damned: Come d'autunno si levan le foglie l'una appresso dell'altra, fin che '1 ramo vede alia terra tutte le sue spoglie, similmente il mal seme d'Adamo gittansi di quel lito ad una ad una, per cenni come augel per suo richiarno. Cosi sen vanno su per l'onda bruna e avanti che sien di 18. discese, anche di qua nuova schiera s'auna. As in the fall the leaves are taken away Each followed by the next, until the bough Sees on the ground all its despoilments lie, In that same way the evil seed of Adam Hurl themselves from the shoreline, one by one At signals, like a bird called by its lure. Thus they embark over the dusky waves, And even before they land on the other side, Again on this side a new crowd is gathered. (III. 112-120) Dante leaves no doubt that he is alluding to the Virgilian passage we have just examined. The simile comes at the analogous point in the narrative- an encounter with Charon, a passage over an infernal river into the underworld. Even the second simile of the birds is included: "At signals, like a bird called by its lure." But having drawn Virgil's text into his own poem, Dante proceeds to transform it by a skillful reallocation of emphasis. The extended treatment of the leaves dwells on the consequence, the result of their fall: "The bough/Sees on the ground all its despoilments lie." Our first thought is a kind of pity for the tree that has suffered the plundering of its spoils. Virgil gave us the pathos and vulnerability of the leaves themselves, but Dante is here speaking of their source, the tree which is now denuded. Still, the two passages both seem to be portraying passive �64 THE ST. JOHN'S REVIEW victims of the force of another. So we are puzzled and disquieted at the way Dante's version continues: In that same way the evil seed of Adam Hurl themselves from the shoreline ... The violent contrast between si levan, "are taken away," and gittansi, "hurl themselves," heightened by the reflexive form of both, makes us doubt the aptness of the simile. Onr perplexity is increased when we notice a hidden wit in the use of si levan: Levarsi can mean "to raise or lift oneself up" as well as "to be taken away." In anticipation of the moral significance of verticality in the poem, "lifting up" is set in polar opposition to "casting down." Dante is implying that leaf-like souls, unlike Virgil's passive victims, fall by their own choice in an act of deliberate violence. It is thus fitting that onr sympathy is diverted, in Dante's version, from the leaves themselves to the bough of the denuded tree. What is this tree? We probably think first of the forest of the suicides in Canto XIII of Inferno, where both Pier della Vigna and an anonymous Florentine suicide, now turned into a bush, fit the picture of the bereaved plant, deprived of its foliage, staring at the ground. There too the immediate reaction, both ours and the pilgrim's, is pity. But the word spoglie, "despoilments," is used in that canto to refer to the bodies the suicides have cast off by their own act. Along with the pilgrim we must learn the hard lesson that recnrs throughout the Inferno: The justice of God often does not easily accord with onr immediate passions of pity and love. Our wills must be shaped anew. The suicides have offered violence to more than themselves, and we must look farther to find the tree from which the damned souls, the leaves, have torn themselves. In the thirty-second canto of Purgatorio, Dante and Statius are following the great pageant of revelation, including the triumphal car drawn by the Griffin, symbol of the incarnate Christ: So, passing through the lofty forest, bare Through fault of her that trusted in the serpent, The song of an angel kept our steps in time. As far as in three shots, perhaps, an arrow Loosed from the bow would fly, so far had we Moved on our way, when Beatrice descended. Then from them all I heard a murmur: "Adam"; And they formed a ring around a tree, despoiled Of leaves and other foliage in each branch. �65 TUCK Its living tresses widen all the more As the tree goes higher; even by the Indians In their great woods, its height would be admired. "Blessed are you, Griffin, since with your beak You pluck not from this tree so sweet to taste; For later on the belly wrenches from it." Thus circling around the mighty tree The others shouted; and the animal twice-born Cried: "So the seed of all just men is saved." (XXXII. 31-48) The Griffin goes on to renew the tree laid bare by the fault of Adam. We can see that the epithet if mal seme d'Adamo, "the evil seed of Adam," in our original passage, was not lightly chosen. These leaves are not generalized symbols of the condition of mortality; they are particular reminders of the human act that originated that condition. The emphasis on "seed" in Jriferno III (Cf. III. 104-5), reinforced by sound effectssimz1mente il mal seme d'Adamo-here finds justification. Though the evil seeds ironically bear no fruit, cast on the barren ground of hell, the good seed of Adam is Christ, the first fruits and the seed of all righteousness, repairing the damage wrought by Adam's fall. By his act the tree of the knowledge of good and evil is transformed into the great tree that is an epithet for Heaven in Paradiso XVIII: l'albero che vive della cima e frutta sempre e mai non perde foglia. the tree that lives from its top and always bears fruit, never losing its leaves. (XVIII. 29-30) It seems that we have accounted for Dante's adding to his Virgilian source the detail of the tree contemplating its own despoliation. In so doing he turns the falling of the leaves into a typological image of the fall of humanity, and of all nature. Through Christ's saving act, however, the leaves as well as the fruit are restored to the tree, and so the integrity of the restored tree is a kind of image of the Incarnation, the marriage of the human and the divine. These things are known to a Christian through the revelation of Holy Scripture; but Virgil as a Pagan has had no access to scripture, and thus he has departed by the time Dante and Statius see the tree's antitype in the pageant at the end of Purgatorio. Dante the poet's �66 THE ST. JOHN'S REVIEW revision of the simile from Aeneid VI shows both the rhetorical power and the spiritual limitations of the older poem. Another image of this transformation is Dante's use of Virgil's birds. We remember that in the Aeneid the birds seemed almost as passive as the leaves: "the season's frost/ Drives them across the sea." The difference was that the death of the leaves was utterly final and definitive, while the flight of the birds left open the possibility of a cyclical return. Dante takes Virgil's migrating birds and reduces them to one hunting bird, probably a falcon returning to the falconer's lure. Here is a conspicuous revision of Virgil, for whom the points of similarity between leaves and birds were multitude and helpless passivity. Dante's bird is only one, and its passage is a willed act of obedience to a command. Whose command? Virgil himself is made to tell us, in his capacity as guide, in Purgatory. Look up, he tells Dante the pilgrim, "Turn your eyes to the falcon's lure, whirled round By the Eternal King, with his mighty spheres." Then like the falcon, who looks first below Then turns to his master's call, straining ahead From craving for the food that draws him thither, Just so was I. (Purgatorio XIX. 62-67; Cf. Purg. XIV. 145-7) When a soul ordained to bliss or to damnation proceeds to its eventual resting place, it resembles the falcon heeding the command of the falconer-that is, God. But unlike the migratory birds of the Aeneid, this falcon is on a one-way journey, propelled by its own will either for good or for evil. The damned souls which hurl themselves from the shoreline are following their appetites into hell, just as the more blessed falcon of Dante's comparison in Purgatory strains ahead toward the Lord's supper. Dante's version of the simile implicitly condemns the melancholy quietism of Virgil, who makes Anchises say quisque suos patimur manis, "Each of us endures his shadowy doom." Even the damned souls in the Comedia hurl themselves forward, instead of stretching out their arms in ineffectual longing. As Virgil revised Homer, Dante revises Virgil. In each case filial piety toward a literary parent causes the imitation; but in each case the imitated model is subverted by implicit criticism. By subsuming the source into his own poem, assimilating it into even small details of the allusive passages in the text, the succeeding poet suggests the incompleteness of the origina~ �TUCK 67 now fleshed out by his own still more inclusive epic vision. Virgil's revisionism is sometimes ambivalent: He seems to feel a kind of nostalgia for the simpler, more naturalistic view of history that he finds in Homer's poems, but he knows he lives too late to indulge in it. There has been a tragic fall from naive archaic heroism into the necessity of a political art. The greater self-conscious artificiality of Virgil's poem is in part an implied celebration of purposive human artifice in the building of Rome, but also in part an expression of Virgil's regretful awareness of the human costs of the great enterprise. As we have seen, Virgil's ambivalence emerges in his prospective view of his own poem's posterity. In casting himself as the Sibyl, he appropriates to himself the authority and lasting power of divine inspiration; but in the image of the scattering of Sibyl's leaves he expresses his worry that the inclusiveness and integrity of his poem will be compromised with the passage of time. Virgil knows that when a poem is subjected to the kind of systematic and intimate textual revision that he himself performed upon Homer's work, it suffers a kind of diaspora, a tearing and scattering of the unified imaginative vision of its creator-poet, wind in the Sibyl's cave. In this Virgil was a true prophet, as we recognize when we consider his treatment in the Commedia. In contrast, Dante shows greater confidence in his power to subsume his predecessor and to preempt any that might come after him. To some extent this confidence results from his own self-assertive personality; but it is also the confidence of the Christian humanist that his creed is the true, valuable, and permanent interpretation of the partial truths of the ancients. In the measure that Heaven is the True City, "that Rome of which Christ is a Roman" (Purg. XXXII. 102) which includes, fulfills, and transcends the Rome that Aeneas labored to build, so the journey chronicled by Dante is the true Aeneid. All human descents into the underworld are types of Christ's descent to harrow Hell. All human journeys to beatitude are types of his resurrection and ascension. Thus a literal truth- the truest of all truths, for Dante- is incarnated into the ostensible fiction of the narrative of the Commedia. Dante the pilgrim instantiates Christ by dying and rising with him, as the poem's chronological scheme makes clear. (Dante descends into Hell on Good Friday of the year 1300 and emerges on Easter Sunday. See Inferno I. 36f., XXXIV. 68, 112f., and especially XXI 112-14.) In the same way Dante the poet claims to provide a kind of incarnation in literary history analogous to Christ's incarnation in real human history. In the complete interpenetration of Dante's mythos and his subject, the word made flesh is made word again, as an organizing principle for experience; and then by the powerful immediacy with which it is made present for us, it is made flesh once again. Christ the Logos is �68 THE ST. JOHN'S REVIEW here allegorically a ratio, a master relationship between the human soul and divinity that is replicated in a kind of continuing proportion by Dante the pilgrim, by Dante the poet in his retelling, and by us, the readers. The unity and incorruptibility of Christ himself serve as a kind of guarantee of the integrity and incorruptibility of Dante's poem. We see this with extraordinary power at the end of the Commedia, where the unity of the creation is imaged as the cohesion of a book of pages bound together: 0 abbondante grazia and' io presunsi ficcar lo visa per Ia luce etterna, tanto che Ia veduta vi consunsi! Nel suo profondo vidi che s'intema, legato con amore in un volume, ci6 che per 1\miverso si squaderna: sustanze e accidenti e lor costume quasi conflati insiemt; per tal modo che ciO ch' i' dico e un semplice lume. La forma universal di questa nodo credo ch' i' vidi, perche pili di largo, dicendo questa, mi sento ch' i godo. Un punta solo m•e maggior letargo che venticinque secoli all' impresa che fe Nettuno ammirar l'ombra d'Argo. 0 grace abounding, from which I took heart To fix my gaze upon the eternal light So long that I spent all my seeing there! Within its depth I saw that there was gathered Bound up by love into a single volume The scattered pages of the universe: Substances, accidents and their relations, As if together fused, in such a way That what I tell of is a simple light. The universal form of this complex I think I saw, because now even more In telling it, I feel my joy increase. One instant is to me more Lethe-like Than twenty-five centuries of oblivion For Neptune, marvelling at the Argo's shadow. (Paradiso XXXIII. 82-96) In the phrase "bound up by love into a single volume," the world volume is used wittily to mean both a book and anything turned-like a sphere, �TUCK 69 for example. The word is used in this second sense repeatedly in Paradiso (XXIII. 112, XXVI. 119, XXVIII. 14). But the most important preceding use of volume comes in Inferno I, where Dante also pairs it with amore, "love." "Or se' tu quel Virgilio e quella fonte che spandi di parlar si largo fiume?" rispuos' io lui con vergognosa fronte. "0 delli altri poeti onore e lume, vagliami '1 lungo studio e' 1 grande amore che m'ha fatto cercar lo tuo volume. Th se' lo mio maestro e 'l mio autore; tu se' solo colui da cu' io tolsi lo bello stilo che m'ha fatto onore ... " "Are you that Virgil, then, that famous spring from which pours forth so great a stream of speech?" I answered him with shame upon my face. "0 light and honor of all other bards, Let the great zeal and love avail me now That long have made me search throughout your volume. You are my master, my original; And you alone are he from whom I took The style whose beauty brings me honor too." (1. 79-87) The honorific word volume, applied first to Virgil's work, refers to the epic inclusiveness that allows him to involve and encompass so vast a world within his poem. But its last use in Dante's poem, framing the Commedia at the other end, as it were, shows how much larger a claim he makes for his own volume. The time-honored image of the "Book of the World" is here adapted to two purposes: It expresses the sense of integrity and oneness that Dante the pilgrim perceived in all of creation, with the power of the vision vouchsafed to him in the highest of the heavens; but it also selfreferentially implies the power of Dante's poem to convey this same sense, though mediated by language, to his audience. The encyclopedic claims of epic are made literal. But at the end of the passage there is a sudden reversal: One instant is to me more Lethe-like Than twenty-five centuries of oblivion For Neptune, marvelling at the Argo's shadow. �70 THE ST. JOHN'S REVIEW The all-inclusive power of epic has also been internalized and made contingent on the visionary power and articulateness of the poet. If his capacity for beatitude proves to be fleeting, as is the common case for living human beings, his volume will be in effect squadernato- scattered in single pages throughout the universe. Remarkably, however, by locating himself and his own failure of vision within the narrative, Dante asserts the scope and lasting power of the vision that he admittedly fails to depict or even evoke in a lasting way. Unlike Virgil, whose survival and fame seemed to depend on the continuance of an earthly empire, Dante links his own poem to the eternal actuality and truth of God's empire. That he is not able to convey it directly somehow guarantees that it is there. This rhetorical strategy accounts for the great paradox of the last canto of the Commedia: that in the most successful evocation of divine presence in any work of literature, the inexpressible is expressed precisely through a failure to express it. Thus when Dante appropriates Virgil's image of the Sibylline leaves, it has a quietude and sweetness remote from Virgil's disturbing melancholy. Dante is here revising and subsuming not only Virgil's poem but his own: Qual e colui che somn'iando vede che dopa il sogno la passione impressa rimane, e l'altro alia mente non riede, cotal son io, che quasi tutta cessa mia visione, ed ancor mi distilla nel cor il dolce che nacque da essa. Cosi Ia neve al sol si disigilla; cosi al vento nelle foglie levi si perdea Ia sentenza di Sibilla. As is the man who, in his dreaming, sees And then, the dream past, still its imprinted power Remains, but all the rest from him is gone, So too am I now: Almost all the vision Falls off from me apace; yet there distills Within my heart the sweetness born of it. Thus in the sun the snow unseals itself; Thus in the wind, among the delicate leaves, The prophecies of Sibyl went astray. (Paradiso XXXIII. 58-66) ••• Skipping over three hundred fifty years and some notable episodes in this family history, we come to a new death of leaves, newly reborn, in �TUCK 71 Milton's Paradise Lost. Satan, cast into hell, rears himself up from the burning lake and struggles massively to the shore. Nathless he so endur'd, till on the Beach Of that inflamed Sea, he stood and calld His Legions, Angel Forms, who lay intranst Thick as Autumnal Leaves that strow the Brooks In Va/lombrosa, where th' Etrurian shades High overarcht imbowr; or scatterd sedge Afloat, when with fierce winds Orion armd Hath vext the Red-Sea Coast, whose waves orethrew Busiris and his Memphian Chivalrie, While with perfidious hatred they persu'd The Sojourners of Goshen, who beheld From the safe shore thir floating Carcasses And Brok'n Chariot Wheels. So thick bestrown Abject and lost lay these, covering the Flood, Under amazement of thir hideous change. (I. 299-3!3) I have time only to sketch in the most compressed and cryptic way how Milton receives and transforms this legacy of the simile of the leaves. Like Homer he locates the passage generally in a context of huge, heroic battlefield conflict. Like Virgil he compares the leaves in their multitude to the number of the fallen. Like Dante he gives us the final sight of the leaves on the ground, in the fallenness of a Christian Hell. And there are numerous other particular points of allusion as well, to these authors and others, like the epic poet Tasso, the Biblical narrator of Exodus, and most especially the prophet Isaiah: And all the host of heaven shall be dissolved, and the heavens shall be rolled together as a scroll: and all their host shall fall down, as the leaf falleth off from the vine, and as a falling fig from a fig tree. (Is. 34:4) The richness, the plenitude of this catalogue of allusion testifies to the inclusiveness of Milton's encyclopedic epic. Yet the sheer range of the field surveyed, the number of sources invoked, is dizzying to us: The leaves of these preceding volumes lie as thick as those in Vallombrosa, and we surveying them are like the fallen angels, amazed at the wild declension of images and the change from one to another. The passage becomes a kind �72 THE ST. JOHN'S REVIEW of labyrinth, as the pun on "amazement" suggests. What are the sources of our difficulties? Perhaps we can enumerate some. First, the different sources alluded to are made to work against each other. Let me give two examples. Vallornbrosa, a pretty rural convent outside of Florence, seems to provide a concrete, naturalistic, this-worldly location for the fallen leaves. That suggests that the simile will be faithful in spirit to Horner's practice of constrasting the violent scenes of his narrative with incongruously peaceful vignettes of country life. But the place Vallornbrosa is chosen for the particular reason that its name is significant: It means "Shady Valley," the Valley of the Shadow of Death, an allegorical landscape like Dante's. Our satisfaction at recognizing this wordplay does not last long. At the end of the line, "Etrurian shades" adumbrates, if l may use that word, the presence of the Etruscan or pre-Roman ghosts of the Aeneid, in whose underworld there is also a valles umbrosa. The lineation gives us time to be confused; then the enjarnbed remnant of the clause makes us realize that the word "shades" refers not to ghosts, but rnetonyrnically to trees. We are back in the placid natural landscape again. A second example: Our awareness of the presence of Virgil and Dante within and behind Milton's text conditions us to think of spirits waiting on the near side of a body of water, preparing to cross over. It is on the hither shore that both Aeneas and Dante the pilgrim stand, contemplating the numberless dead. But here the simile of Pharoah's chariots ("Busiris and his Mernphian Chivalrie") chasing the fleeing Israelites (''the Sojourners of Goshen") leaves us with no firm place to stand: At first we are with Pharoah, pursuing from the near shore; then, by the magic of a subordinate clause, our perspective shifts to the farther shore and we are with the Hebrews, looking back. But what we are looking at is the wreck of Pharoah's army, now not on either shore but scattered in or on the water, like the fallen angels. The shift from one invoked source to another enforces on us abrupt dislocations in space and time. Another source of difficulty for us comes from the unique temporal setting of Milton's story. As his poem goes on to show, the fall of Satan and the rebel angels helps to cause the fall of humanity and of all of terrestrial nature. Such phenomena as the change of seasons, the corning of storms, the death of leaves or of any other living thing- all these result from and instantiate the first corning of death that Milton depicts. It is thus incongruous for him to use these later, more familiar phenomena in similes: Th do so is to compare a thing with itself, or a subset of itself, as if I were to say, "The earth's rotation on its axis is as regular as the alternation of night and day." As Wallace Stevens once remarked, identity �TUCK 73 is the vanishing point of resemblance. Milton's implicit claim is that the primary truths of human history, told in his poem, are more intelligible in themselves than any poetic comparison could make them. At worst, poetic comparison will mislead us, like the inappropriately tranquil scene of Vallombrosa. In trying to reduce the subject to the narrow limits of our fallen human comprehension, poetry causes us to make mortal errors again and again. The sheer difficulty, the deception and complexity of Milton's verse are often attempts to make us aware of this repeated process. Even at best, any statement of likeness would be redundant, strictly speaking. The originating status of Milton's subject matter is so all-encompassing that no comparison can be found which is not absorbed into the thing compared to. Hence no epic simile in the ordinary sense is possible: If the normal action of the similes is to include other realms of experience in an epic narrative, here we find that all of those realms are already automatically included. And so are we, the beholders. The poem cannot offer us a god-like or privileged place to stand, from which we can contemplate in detachment the unity and comprehensiveness of creation. It is our very fallenness, our implication in the events narrated, that causes our difficulties in reading. Milton's poem thus conspires rhetorically against itself, but only after disposing of its precursors. We saw Virgil rewriting Homer and Dante rewriting Virgil; but for Milton there is no single epic forerunner, no fatherly master-poet to whom he is irretrievably indebted and whose precedent he must overcome. In place of an intricate counterpointing of two texts, we get from Milton an all-out assault on what he portrays as a monolithic tradition of epic poetry. As he claims in the invocation at the start of Book IX, all conventional heroic narrative is intrisically inferior to the story that he alone is trying to tell. But he too, of course, is fallen, dependent on the inspiration of a heavenly muse. His greatest source of information and also of difficulty is Holy Scripture itself. A revisionist treatment of Genesis can only dramatize its own futility, and that of all human poetic artifice. As I've claimed, other epics try to swallow up their predecessors and preempt their successors. Milton's more radical project is to chop down the whole family tree, and his own branch with it. It is somewhat alarming to reflect that he may well have succeeded. Many literary historians consider Paradise Lost to be the last true epic poem in Western literature. I do not know whether this is true; if it is not, I am similarly puzzled by the question of who the legitimate heirs are, in the generations that follow. But the succession we have seen suggests at least a direction: inward, away from the narrative representation of physical experience. As the tradition goes on, more of the poem's essential content �74 THE ST. JOHN'S REVIEW consists, not in its self-containedness as a text, but in its interaction with its own past and future, The burden of the successor poet is to inherit the tradition and make it new, to use an intimate familiarity with the work of another as the new material for a radically originating act. Perhaps this process can be a paradigm for you and me, not writers of epics but readers of them. We too must remake the poems we read, approaching them with qualified piety and then dismembering them, assimilating them into ourselves. They are the true and valid sources of our self-making, lenses through which we view the whole of things, tokens of admission not only into other worlds but into our deep selves, the underworld in which we learn our destiny. If we don't appropriate what we find in these pages, making them ours by wrenching them out of their own place and time, then they are dead leaves indeed. But if they find new life in us- if our re-vision of these received texts becomes a new mode of vision, ours and yet not ours alone-then we too might be able to see the whole world as one place, bound up by love into a single volume, for as long as the vision lasts. Note: Given the nature of my argument, it seems indispensable for me to acknowledge at least a few of my own literary debts. Anyone who has read the work of Northrop Frye and Harold Bloom will recognize how deeply and pervasively this essay has been influenced by them. There are brief treatments of the topos of the leaves in C. M. Bowra's From Virgil to Milton and John Hollander's The Figure of Echo. I have consciously borrowed several points from R. G. Austin in my treatment of Virgil. My reading of Dante owes much to Erich Auerbach, E. R. Curtius, and Charles Singleton; my reading of Milton, to Stanley Fish. All the translations, however, are my own. �Commencement Address Curtis Wilson Members of the graduating class: It is an honor to be asked to speak to you on your Commencement Day. A recent book bears the title How to Survive Education. I haven't read it, and do not know how it's done; but you've done it, and we con- gratulate you. I myself, who came here forty years ago next August, have not quite made it through: I have still the junior and senior language tutorials to do. The St. John's program does a lot of stretching and spreading thin. If a sheet of plastic is stretched to its tensile limit, it is likely that a hole will open in it here or there. In trying to cover as much as we do, we are quixotic. Quixoticism has been our keynote from the beginning. Fifty-one years ago Scott Buchanan and Stringfellow Barr brought forth on this campus a New Program, dedicated to the proposition that liberal education is possible. The enemy was the elective system, introduced by Charles Eliot in his inaugural address as president of Harvard in 1869, and since then adopted in colleges and universities generally. Before Eliot, the curricula were all-required, but- and this was Eliot's objection- they had failed to incorporate the modern natural sciences. Year by year the natural sciences were transforming the world and our picture of it. Eliot, by licensing the natural sciences as elective possibilities, aimed to broaden, deepen, and invigorate education. One consequence, a good one, was that the universities became nurturers of natural science. Another was that Curtis Wilson, Thtor and twice Dean of St. John's College, Annapolis, reached retirement this year. He delivered this address to the graduating seniors in Annapolis on May 22, 1988. 75 �76 THE ST JOHN'S REVIEW liberal education lost its sense of identity and direction. Adding to the muddle were the new social sciences, so-called. College education became a grab-bag of choices ranging from the sublime to the ridiculous. Barr and Buchanan set out to do the impossible. We were all, students and tutors, to become autodidacts, tackling the reading of a veritable Everest of books. The books were to be chosen for their classic quality, for being first-rate. The great works of mathematics and natural science would be included, starting with Euclid and continuing through Newton, Maxwell, and so on. We would become literate in the classics of the scientific tradition, as well as in the classics of literature and philosophy. In my one leisurely conversation with Buchanan, in 1965, he wanted to know how we were getting on with Maxwell and Josiah Willard Gibbs. Gibbs, if you haven't heard his name before, was a nineteenth-century American, one of the great physicists. I had to confess that we hadn't managed to cram Gibbs's works on thermodynamics and statistical mechanics into the program. This program that Barr and Buchanan conceived was accused of being Epimethean, medieval, backward-looking. In fact, it was as Promethean as all get-out. Like John Dewey, Buchanan came from Vermont, and like him mixed Yankee pragmatism with a visionary dream of what this country could be. He expected the college's new program to become the seedbed of an American Renaissance. As for the natural sciences, he had the idea of a hands-on approach. He saw the laboratory as the distinctively modern institution for the acquisition of knowledge; and so he dubbed one whole part of the program "the laboratory." At different times he considered organizing it round medicine, or the airplane engine. A good carpenter himself, he wanted the students to get handy with hammer and saw, plane and drill. And in the laboratory, both intellect and manual technique were to be brought to bear. All this was to be done in a marvelously original, eclectic way. For organizing principles, Buchanan turned to medieval tradition. He had the library collection reorganized under the rubrics of the seven liberal arts, so that physics, for instance, came under music. What a librarian's headache! Buchanan was aiming to tweak all our complacencies. Of those heady times, which were before I arrived, I have gathered intimations from here and there. One of the earlier tutors told me how, in the autumn of his first year, his senior math students- all male, of course-took him to a local pub, sat him down with a beer, and commanded him to stop considering himself responsible for their education. They were responsible; if they needed help, they would ask for it. In the middle of the academic year in which I arrived, 1948-49, Jacob �WILSON 77 Klein became dean of the College; he was to remain so till 1958. It was a time of consolidation. A new president, Richard Weigle, proceeded to put the College on a tenable financial basis. Coeducation was introduced, a step, it was hoped, in the direction of civility. The faculty, weary of more chaos than it was comfortable with, became more insistent that students acquire something more like ordinary competence. As the dean put it, the glories of fifth-century Athens must now be succeeded by the more pedestrian achievements of an Alexandrian age. The obbligato of social revolutionary fervor dropped to a whisper. From my first decade here what has remained most clearly in memory are the dean's opening lectures. Huffing, clearing his throat, Jacob Klein would begin by speaking of the trepidation he felt, in attempting to formulate our task. All knowledge, he would be telling us, was our province, and to keep the wholeness of it in mind was enormously difficult. For it was ever our tendency to make ourselves comfortable by limiting the view. He would speak of the babble and unexamined jargon of everyday speech. Are we not prisoners to it? In Plato's simile of the cave, we must somehow be freed of our chains and turn round, looking away from the shadows to what causes them. Surely there is something right about this image of education, whatever the mystery or confusion concerning the rest of the story, the Sun and the upper regions and the fourth part of the divided line. But what was mainly being impressed on the hearers of those lectures was a simple idea and a sobering one: the thought that to take account of the wholeness of things is difficult and demanding. Of these lectures the one that I remember best was Jacob Klein's final lecture as dean, delivered in September, 1957. The text has not survived, but the title was "The Delphic Oracle and the Liberal Arts." It dealt with the ambiguity of the injunction "Know Thyself." One meaning is this: Know that you aren't god. Know that you are a finite, mortal being, dependent on your fellow human beings, prone to error, prone to hybris, the error of overstepping your boundaries. The lesson to draw is modesty, sobriety, circumspection, a sense for our equality with our fellows. Th a student this could mean: doing the homework, learning the paradigms. To a scholar it could mean: getting the footnotes right. The other meaning rested on the recognition that everything is connected with everything. From the farthest reaches of the cosmos to the depths of the human psyche, nothing is simply isolatable, so as to be fully understandable by itself alone. Hence, to know myself, I must know everything. The quest for self-knowledge is thus inherently incompletable. But the oracle, under this interpretation, enjoins it. In what I have been recounting, there is an aspect I do not want you �78 THE ST. JOHN'S REVIEW to miss. We at this college are a bunch of crazy autodidacts, holding madly onto two horns of a dilemma. If you did not quite know what you were getting into when you first came here, surely the truth has dawned on you by now. In the last thirty years the program has not changed in essentials. Some things we do better. But I myself, conniving with others, have helped add to the madness, in seeing to it that we get to Maxwell's equations, relativity, and quantum theory. Mature physicists admit to having been discombobulated in their first encounter with these theories. To get them to seem familiar, the only way is to trace and retrace the routes that have led to such odd consequences: undulations where there is nothing to undulate, events strictly correlated yet separated in space, with no message passing in between, and so on. Imagination has been instrumental in leading to each such result, but the result transcends and contradicts the imagination. As J.B.S. Haldane put it, the world is not only queerer than we have imagined, it is queerer than we can imagine. My discomfort over what we fail to do would be greater if you had not met, at least briefly, with this encouragement and rebuff to our analogizing. What I have said is no excuse for remediable faults in the program. As to what could be improved, I have ideas, and so do some of my colleagues, but our ideas are not all the same. But the main point I have been making is that the program here is an unfinishable affair. The remaining words I have for you are by way of homily. To your stack of books, you must now add what Descartes called the great book of the world. The image is not in every way apt, but it is preferable to thinking of the world as an unalterable harsh mechanism, to which you are required to adjust your misfitting shapes. A book can be read, and that, as you know, is an active, formative process. 'Ity observing the world; there is much that is thus to be learnt. But the stance of the altogether detached observer that Descartes projects of himself is probably neither possible nor really desirable. A better simile for you is that of organic adaptation. You must adapt to the world; and, in ways that, to begin with, may not seem as important as they are, the world will have to adapt to you. For four years you have been discussing works of literature and philosophy, writing essays, analyzing plays and poems and arguments. These exercises have developed in you a number of skills that should be prized: the habit of listening carefully, of being attentive to a question and seeking out its sharp edge; the habit of readiness to enter into another person's thoughts, and to assume a new intellectual posture in response to new facts or ideas. Here and there, by bits and pieces, these habits should prove transferable from one context to another. �WILSON 79 For God's sake, don't say, as one graduate put it on a resume a few years ago, that at St. John's you learned to think. These hyperboles will harm you. There is no point in merely astonishing strangers with our strangeness. Mind that some of our patterns here are all-too-easily turned into caricature. We inculcate the respect for great books, tbe taking seriously of the texts we read, as possibly revealing truth. A good habit. Works about our authors we eschew, telling you that these should not be your authorities, that you should think for yourselves. A good pedagogical ploy. But it does not mean that a biography of Cervantes, say, might not reveal something important about the book begun in the prison of Seville; or that the composition of Shakespeare's audience might not have something important to do with the composition of his plays and the wondrous mix of the high and the low that he achieves. Our authors were creatures of flesh and blood, and their works, in many cases, were prompted by the paradox of real-life situations. They were not always merely chatting with one another. We tutors, who are paid, I guess, to defend all these books, are not to be imitated in all our sophistries. Not everything in the books we defend is defensible. Kant gets from the first to the second Critique by leap rather than logic. Newton fails in Book I to prove satisfactorily a crucial proposition on which Book III depends. Not every failure of logic in the Platonic dialogues is necessarily to be explained away by reference to the mythos of the dialogue. Graduates, I gather, tend to become nostalgic for St. John's-style conversations. Well, you can have them again, and better, in new circumstances, when you have completed more homework. You will need friends, of course, and to cultivate friends is difficult in this age of endless mobility and of work-days that stretch on into the night. Don't fail to cultivate friends. There are conversations waiting out there to take place. It may not be very easy to find where and when they can occur. Tentatively, you can begin to take a bit of initiative. You must find your own footing, your point of vantage and vision, freed at last from both the comfort and the annoyance of pedagogical authority. After having been stretched in so many directions, you must begin to assess, and reassess, where your own redefined center of gravity may be, and where your powers can take you, and what you can discover. I wish that we at the College had managed to give more attention to heuristic. The word comes from a Greek verb. Archimedes used its firstperson singular perfect as he leapt from the bath, on making his great discovery. To discover is indeed a perfect thing, in the sense that it brings elements together, makes a new whole. How do you go about making discoveries? �80 THE ST. JOHN'S REVIEW There are no very particular rules. In general you need to be asking a question, focussing on it, wrestling with it. You have to have the bravura to suppose that the parts of the answer can come together for you. You have to have faith in your powers. The evidence for there being something we could call unconscious thinking seems to me very strong, A manifold of processes must go into the recognition of a face or any other gestalt, but it seems to come instantaneously. So with the "Aha!" experience of discovery. In discovery there is a kind of interweaving of the old and the new, the Epimethean and the Promethean, the traditional and the innovative. In learning anything, we learn it less well before we learn it better. Our ignorance frequently consists in knowing what is not so or not quite so. Discovery is the finding of the new or the different within the matrix of what is already present, whether in latent memory or conscious thought. There is no point in merely clinging to what is past. What you learned and forgot can come back after years to haunt you, or to fill in the gap in an uncompleted gestalt. As Buchanan put it, we learn to swim in winter, and to ice-skate in summer. You must have faith in possibility and in what is hidden within yourselves. The quest must be to find the question and to persist in the questioning. In a book about Chinese brush-and-ink painting, I found some precepts that are eminently applicable to discovering. Here they are: Follow tradition in basic design. For powerful brushwork, there must be ch'i or spirit. The brush should be handled with spontaneity. Be original, even to the point of eccentricity, but without disregarding the li of things (li means principles or laws or essences). Learn from the masters but avoid their faults. Now I am supposing- is this a mere academic's dream?- that such rules are not applicable only to mathematical discovery or originality in painting. The questions to which heuristic is applicable need not be high-falutin or esoteric. With a bit of good will and heuristic, with patience and pluck, you might be able to transform the daily routines in schoolroom or office, or the community for some miles around. Oh, if you must, save the world, or write another great book! But I have thought it wiser to wish you a simpler destiny, neither tragic nor comic, but similar to the one that Odysseus chose at the end of the Republic. I think I have about finished. Oh yes! do read and re-read some of Montaigne, when you get the chance. Such is my homily for you today; it is from the heart. May you fare well, �-:___ - - - / �82 THE ST. JOHN'S REVIEW Two Poems Going Down the Mountain The journey down the mountain Leaves us silent, intent on stepping, Mule-like and heavily laden, On the cobbled stream bed that serves as road. Wind-blown aspens shake and splatter Gold on the dark mountains- so Zeus Brought grief to the high-towered girl In such a glittering shower. Divine conceptions are just the thing To bring the whole weeping weight of our Humanness upon and between us. We pan where the water still runs, Recovering what we carry: gold, Hid in the murk of the ancient clay. Carolyn Wade Loring, an alumna of St. John's College, Annapolis, taught in the College in 1987-88. �83 LORING To Ella, who died March 16, 1973 The mountains in evening don't keep their distance, But approach and recede, as if a tired And heavily breathing animal Drew one after another its aching breaths, Until another day's labor was done, And sleep fell over the whole. Rain also, beaten by wind Through the ravaged stonework of our wall, Pools and sinks and spills down one stone face To another, and to the gray earth below Where a lilac, tended three years now, Chooses, without conviction, to live. Grandmother: your ironic eyes, Paler and bluer than water-reflected sky, Saw all and wondered. Why now, After fifteen years of grieving, Is your face as close as the mountains, Where many animals, in secret, become earth? Carolyn Wade Loring �84 THE ST. JOHN'S REVIEW La Chauve-souris et les deux belettes* Une Chauve-souris donna tete baissee Dans un nid de Belette; et sit6t qu'elle y fut, L'autre, envers les souris de longtemps courroucee, Pour Ia devorer accourut. Quai! vous osez, dit-elle, a mes yeux vous produire, Aprf:s que votre race a t§.che de me nuire! N'@tes-vous pas Souris? Parlez sans fiction. Oui, vous l'@tes, ou bien je ne suis pas Belette. - Pardonnez-moi, dit la pauvrette, Ce n'est pas rna profession. Moi, Souris! Des mechants vous ont dit ces nouvelles. Gr§.ce a l'Auteur de l'Univers, Je suis Oiseau: voyez mes ailes: Vive Ia gent qui fend les airs! Sa raison plut, et sembla bonne. Elle fait si bien qu'on lui donne Liberte de se retirer. Deux jours aprf:s, notre 6tourdie Aveuglement va se fourrer Chez un autre Belette aux Oiseaux ennemie. La voilA derechef en danger de sa vie. La Dame du logis avec son long museau S'en allait Ia croquer en qualite d'Oiseau, Quand elle protesta qu'on lui faisait outrage: Moi, pour telle passer? Vous n'y regardez pas. Qui fait l'Oiseau? c'est le plumage. Je suis Souris: vivent les Rats! Jupiter confonde les Chats! Par cette adroite repartie Elle sauva deux fois sa vie. Plusieurs se sont trouves qui d'echarpe changeants Aux danger, ainsi qu'elle, ont souvent fait Ia figue. Le Sage dit, selon les gens: Vive le Roi, vive Ia Ligue. * The Fables of La Fontaine, Book II, fable v. Fables i and ii of Book I, with English i versions, appeared in the previous issue. �85 LA FONTAINE-ZUCKERMAN The Bat and the Two Weasels A bat rushed headlong into a weasel's nest. She was not a welcome guest. The weasel, who for the longest time Had hated mice, sprang to attack. 'You dare,' She said, 'set foot inside this house After your sort have been so hard on me? Speak without lying: are you not a mouse? Oh you're a mouse all right, or I'm No weasel.' 'Pardon me,' Replied the bat, 'but that's not what I am. What, me a mouse? I wonder where You can have heard Anything so absurd. Thanks to the author of the universe I am a bird. Look at my wings: Long live the race Of those who cleave the air!' She reasoned so persuasively She was set free. 'IWo days later, Our heedless bat Barges in blindly at Another weasel's, an abominator Of birds. Again her life's in danger: Mistress Muzzle was just about Th crush the avian stranger, When she indignantly cried out: 'What do you take me for? A bird? But you're Not looking carefully. What makes a bird? It is the plumage. I'm A mouse: Long live the rats! Let Jupiter confound all cats!' Thus for a second time The bat kept death away With repartay. People there are who, like the flittermouse, When threatened know what party to espouse. As circumstances change, it's wise To choose which attribute to emphasize. E.Z. �- \~ / �Book Review Thomas Flanagan: The Tenants of Time* Eva Brann Here is a book that lives up to its captivating title. For its perspective on human events is that from which time is most apt to seem like a place, and a place- here Ireland- seem like a temporal being. It is the perspective of history. It is from the point of view of history that we live "in" our fixed century as in a dwelling and in our changing nation as in a stream. Like many good things, the title does double or even triple duty: One of the deep themes of the book is the tenancy of land, the acute catastrophe of eviction for the peasantry and the more muted melancholy of sellingup for the landlords. Finally, there is that personal passage of time, that strange conjunction of public times passing and private days waning, when the termination of our lease on life is in sight: The title is taken from- or worked into- a reflection by the most reflective character in the book, the schoolmaster Hugh McMahon, who says in the very center of the text: We are all tenants of Time, and whatever it is that reminds us, that thing we will convict as a murderer, like the messenger bringing bad tidings (428). Master McMahon hates the testimonials of time's passing, and consequently he himself refuses to testify. Though the kindest of men, he gently Eva Brann is a Thtor at St. John's College, Annapolis. * New York: Dutton, 1988 87 �88 THE ST. JOHN'S REVIEW and quite informatively stymies the young historian with whose appearance the book opens. For Hugh himself is not a historian such as would put the stamp of by-gone on the object of his research, but he is rather an antiquarian who tries against hope to prevent the Gaelic tongue from passing into history-though he himself had once drilled it out of his pupils. It is as a reflection on history that I want to recommend The Tenants of Time to the St. John's community. For a deep doubt concerning the doability and leachability of history is, as it were, the negative foundation of our program of study. So we are left to come to extracurricular grips with the potent impossibility of this discipline. This book, which is at once about the delusory living, the shifting remembrance, and the abortive writing of history, might have been made for the likes of us. Before getting to the thought-provoking gist of this novel-history, let me say something about how it reads. The novels which best typify their genre are long and historical. Think of War and Peace and Remembrance of Things Past. The two, bulk and history, are connected. It is, after all, the business of narrative prose fiction, as opposed to poetry and drama, to follow out the setting and circumstances of the precipitating events and characters in indefinitely ramifying detail until the fiction has been seamlessly implicated in a public world, the world whose scale is too encompassing to be a fiction. In The Tenants of Time this interweaving is done to perfection. The historical figures, such as Parnell and Gladstone, consort so comfortably with the fictional participants that one is pleased to find them not distinguished by so much as an asterisk in the appended list of characters. This novel, which is both long (over 800 pages) and historical, indeed reads in certain respects just like history: It is muted and intricate, many-faceted, and replete with the sort of scene-setting detail that only primary research can turn up. It is, even, at first, a little tedious, as good history often is, with the absorbing tedium of a tale levelly developed, without the compact actions, the crises, that are the stock-intrade of drama. I think in all the forty-one chapters I received a shock just once; others may find up to three surprises. This levelling of the dramatic niveau is carefully devised. Every critical event is anticipated, "prevented," as the Bible used so aptly to say, approached obliquely by hints or glancing announcements. Novels are long partly so that readers may inhabit them during a span of real time not utterly incommensurate with that of the novelistic events. To make that time seem very long and yet to make the reader never wish to emerge- that is the quintessential novelistic art. This book was as hard to take leave of as it took long to read. But whereas from one perspective we are being drawn into a fabric of accurately researched detail with its numerous interwoven threads, its clues �BRANN 89 and knots, from another it is the characters of the novel who start to come out as people. They begin as alien silhouettes outside the compass of our care and end up having captured our affection. They are Irishmen, recall, and each chapter is assigned to one or more of them (and once to a woman) to report their doings or to record their voices. The latter is most delicately done. They all sound different and yet, with the sparest use of dialect, just with an occasional idiomatic turn, they all sound Irish- which is the more remarkable since this novel was written by an American. My particular point here, though, is that if the book is devoted to history, the chapters belong to the people. That turns out to be the crux of this enterprise. From Homer on, literary works have often been reflexive, that is to say, about themselves (as the Odyssey is about the telling of the odyssey). It is only an illusion of recent frequency that makes us think of this mode as modern. So it is not especially striking for this historical novel to be about the writing of history. What is remarkable is how reflectively it is done. The situation is that in the first chapter-the year is 1904-a rather prissily conscientious young historian called Prentiss turns up in the town of Kilpeder in County Cork, to do research toward a book on the abortive local Fenian rebellion of 1867. In the last chapter he gives up the project as impossible and takes up the law instead. At the same moment the novel about the same incident has, of course, come to completion, and what is it but the desired history? Inference: When history turns out to be impossible, the novel may do its work. That this upshot is not frivolous appears in the course of the final conversation, when Prentiss lets off a rehearsed epigram. It is aimed at the converse proposal of certain German historians, to the effect that history is merely a narrative fiction: A taste for fiction has always seemed to me the unfailing mark of an imaginative deficiency (816). This mingy witticism has a small truth in it: A person of perfect imaginative repleteness could probably find complete satisfaction in such real-world fragments as make themselves available. But it is evident that the author of the epigram believes neither with the Germans that historians are a species of novelist, nor, as Prentiss pretends, that novelists are historians manques- both rather light-minded notions- but something more subtle, namely that novelists come to a consummation just when conscientious historians give up. �90 THE ST. JOHN'S REVIEW To appreciate this claim one must ask why, actually, Prentiss does give up. It is because he finds himself stymied from both sides. On the one hand, this supposedly compact tale of a temporally and spatially local event keeps going, as a German idiom so nicely puts it, "from the hundredth to the thousandth." The ramifications of discoverable fact run wild. On the other hand, some sources who know won't tell, and what is worse, those who do tell, generously and intimately, won't tell all, leaving Prentiss with some all-too-well-formed enigmas, both intimate and public. He is too much of a historian and too little of a novelist to invent the truth. So he falls between the stools of too much and too little knowledge, as will, it is implied, any historian who takes the judgment-seat. The novelist has the advantage in both realms: He penetrates his characters' privacies, not because they are his, but because he trusts himself to know what it is like to be a young man in J(i!peder, because he can see the paradigm in the person and give individual shape to the specimen. But he also paints the larger picture more successfully, for where the honest historian is obliged to seek a pattern-in-chief- Prentiss is all for patterns- the novelist can represent the oscillations of perspective as the ultimate truth. For example, as their particular messy little uprising of '67 recedes for the four Kilpeder leaders personally- recedes more and more into nostalgic inconsequences and into shame-faced irritation with its balladistic glorificationthe Fenian rebellion as a whole begins to hang like an ever-darker incubus over the great historical event of their maturity, the Parnellian Land War. (In fact the author makes sure that it reaches even into the reader's present, for he unobtrusively presents the imprisoned Fenians as a pattern for the LR.A.: The former shivered naked in their blankets rather than wear the Queen's convict-uniforms, and the same "blanket protest" has been recently employed by the latter.) And that complex of dampings and reverberations rings truer than would any assessment on the historical level. Perhaps it is this licence to write history from the bottom up, or better, from the inside out, that allows the novelist to consummate his labors, to achieve a whole, when the wise historian will accept defeat. For whereas history, having no natural being, becomes amorphous under very close scrutiny, characters under the novelist's pointed attention gain "a local habitation and a name." Flanagan's four Kilpeder men are a memorable set, real friends as much in their untimely distances as in their long-breathed loyalties. There is Tully, the infinitely charming play-boy, the felicitously and also fatefully unconforming son of the local "gombeen" man, the money-lender and merchant prince in whose interest the noble land war against the aristocracy finally turns out to have been fought. There is his cousin, Delaney, the heir-apparent in spirit of the Tully ambitions, carried �BRANN 91 high by his shrewd, fierce energy and brought down by a whole-hearted passion which exactly parallels that of his hero Parnell. Then there is the above-mentioned schoolmaster and his remote relative, Ned Nolan, the accredited Fenian commander of the uprising, who turns terrorist. Ned is a dark, God-forsaken, pure-hearted man whom the others love, and who, it finally appears, loves them- with fatal results. What the novelist as historian does particularly well is to build up through his individual people, somehow, by hook or by crook, an impression of a whole people. Perhaps the Irish are a people whose nature specially requires slow narrative development, for it is revealed in antitheses: lo- quacious and inarticulate, soaked in spirits but delicate about its rituals, strong for brotherhood and ready for fratricide, in turn fanatically renitent and ever ready to turn informer. Now, one might ask, what is Ireland to us or we to Ireland that we should steep ourselves in its nature and its history? Well, as I have urged, The Tenants of Time is almost as much a book about history as of history, and therein lies its special interest for us. But isn't it also true that any people that is genuinely what it is (as some are not) can capture our sympathy- and this one, lovable and damned, more than most? Moreover there are at present some forty million Irish-Americans: Irish history has spilled over into American history. The book itself has America as a kind of resonating background: Like the present-day I.R.A., the Fenians are partly financed from here, and they are officered by veterans of the American Civil War. Thus Ned, sergeant of the G.A.R., captain of the I.R.B., and, finally, retired terrorist, dreams of a little house on the Hudson. America is the place where the Irish, like most of us, have come for refuge, be it in the notorious "coffin ships" during the potato famine or by frigates sent to rescue failed rebels. It therefore makes sense that an American should produce a novel of Ireland, the more so because America is to history what Athens once was to tragedy: the chosen place of resolutions. It is both moving and right that an attempt to understand Irish history should be made on the other side of the Atlantic, that ocean whose winds carry the mists that make Ireland green, and on the note of whose name the book fitly closes. �� Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource <em>The St. John's Review</em> Description An account of the resource <em>The St. John's Review</em><span> is published by the Office of the Dean, St. John's College.  All manuscripts are subject to blind review. Address correspondence to </span><em>The St. John's Review</em><span>, St. John's College, 60 College Avenue, Annapolis, MD 21401 or via e-mail at </span><a class="obfuscated_link" href="mailto:review@sjc.edu"><span class="obfuscated_link_text">review@sjc.edu</span></a><span>.</span><br /><br /><em>The St. John's Review</em> exemplifies, encourages, and enhances the disciplined reflection that is nurtured by the St. John's Program. It does so both through the character most in common among its contributors — their familiarity with the Program and their respect for it — and through the style and content of their contributions. 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Creator An entity primarily responsible for making the resource Office of the Dean Title A name given to the resource The St. John's Review, 1988/2 Date A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource 1988 Contributor An entity responsible for making contributions to the resource Zuckerman, Elliott Ruhm von Oppen, Beate Stickney, Cary Van Doren, John Williamson, Robert B. Sachs, Joe Achtenberg, Deborah Brann, Eva T. H. Zeiderman, Howard Tuck, Johnathan Wilson, Curtis Loring, Carolyn Wade Description An account of the resource Volume XXXVIII, number two of The St. John's Review. Published in 1988. Identifier An unambiguous reference to the resource within a given context ISSN 0277-4720 The_St_Johns_Review_Vol_38_No_2_1988 Coverage The spatial or temporal topic of the resource, the spatial applicability of the resource, or the jurisdiction under which the resource is relevant Annapolis, MD Publisher An entity responsible for making the resource available St. John's College Language A language of the resource English Type The nature or genre of the resource text Rights Information about rights held in and over the resource St. John's College owns the rights to this publication. Format The file format, physical medium, or dimensions of the resource pdf St. John's Review https://s3.us-east-1.amazonaws.com/sjcdigitalarchives/original/3090c5f2e851a45cd5adea6b7a07bde5.pdf 2ac958207447c1d1616e6c10c9ce28ab PDF Text Text The St. John's Review Volume XXXVIII, number three (1988-89/3) Editor Elliott Zuckerman Editorial Board Eva Brann Beale Ruhm von Oppen Cary Stickney John Van Doren Robert B. Williamson Subscriptions Assistant Ninda Letaw The St. John's Review is published three times a year by the Office of the Dean, St. John's College, Annapolis; William Dyal, President; Thomas Slakey, Dean. For those not on the distribution list, subscriptions are $12.00 per year. Unsolicited essays, stories, poems, and reasoned letters are welcome. Address correspondence to the Review, St. John's College, Annapolis, MD 21404. Back issues are available, at $4.00 per issue,- from the St. John's College Bookstore. © 1989 St. John's College. All rights reserved; reproduction in whole or in part without permission is prohibited. ISSN 0277-4720 Composition Fishergate, Inc. Printing The St. John's College Print Shop ��Contents ESSAYS I . . . . . . . The Fields of Light Peter D. Pesic 17 . . . . . . . Brilliancies Involving Equilateral Triangles Samuel S. Kut!er STORIES 45 ....... Autopsy Melinda Rooney 55 . . . . . . . Petrella's Blood Leo Pickens VERSE 63 Three Poems Robert J. Levy REVIEW ARTICLES 67 . . . . . . . The Analytic Art of Viete Richard Ferrier 75 . . . . . . . The English War and Peace: Paul Scott's Raj Quartet Eva Brann Diagrams by Emily Kutter ��The Fields of Light Peter D. Pesic Socrates: Then just take a look round and make sure that none of the uninitiate overhears us. I mean by the uninitiate the people who believe that nothing is real save what they can grasp with their hands and do not admit that actions or processes or anything invisible can count as real. Theaetetus: They sound like a very hard and repellent sort of people. Socrates: It is true, they are remarkably crude. Plato, Theaetetus (155e) Those who reflect on physics often express a certain dismay at what seems the aridity of the "new science" that began with Descartes's project of a mechanical understanding of Nature. Granted that its results are imposing and powerful, the question remains: What is interesting about it? Here interest bears its original economic sense, as when capital yields interest. In this usage the Latiu interesse signifies the emergence of new and different accrual to the initial deposit of an idea. It denotes something novel, even surprising, proceeding from given premises. This essay will try to show how the attempt to describe Nature solely in terms of palpable matter leads, through its own inner development, to a new understanding that transcends matter. To put it tersely, matter is not material. It calls forth a new mode of being, the field, which ultimately eclipses matter itself. The question concerning the nature of light reveals this shift with particular clarity and was in many ways also the ground for its occurrence. Peter PeSiC is a Tutor and Musician-in-Residence at St. John's College, Santa Fe. This essay is based on a lecture delivered at the Santa Fe campus in April, 1984. It is dedicated to the memory of the author's father, Paul PeSiC (1912-1988). �2 THE ST. JOHN'S REVIEW Lucretius can stand here as an exponent of the initial thrust of these accounts. Following Epicurus, Lucretius suggests that an object sends out films of atoms which detach themselves from its outer surface and float outwards.' Some of them, quite by accident, encounter the eye and give rise to the visual image. Others, impinging upon ears or nose, give rise to sounds or smells. This account may be contrasted with the hypothesis Plato entertains that the eye itself sends out rays whose encounter with the object constitute vision. 2 The activity of the eye in Plato's account is essential. For Lucretius the eye is a passive receptor that converts the impinging atoms into the visible sensation. Thus he explains vision in terms of traveling material substances. His account is in many ways similar to the account Newton offers much later in his Opticks. However, for Newton the light is not simply atoms from the surface of the body that enter the eye. He speculates that the rays of light are "very small bodies emitted from shining substances."' The light is distinguished from the shining substance that emits it. As Newton writes: The changing of Bodies into Light, and Light in Bodies, is very conformable to the Course of Nature, which seems delighted with Transmutations . . . . Eggs grow from insensible Magnitudes, and change into Animals, Tadpoles into Frogs, and Worms into Flies . ... And among such various and strange Transmutations, why may not Nature change Bodies into Light, and Light into Bodies? 4 It is noteworthy that Newton chooses these organic images of transformation in describing the behavior of light rays, themselves composed of inorganic bodies regulated by mathematical principle. A crucial similarity to Lucretius nonetheless remains: Light is "very small Bodies" traveling until they impinge upon the eye, which. is a material structure also. Many powerful conclusions flow from this approach. Color, for Newton, results from the different sizes of the light particles. Refraction results from the acceleration of these particles as they move from air into glass or water. A comprehensive account is formed that seems to encompass all known optical phenomena. Yet, as Newton admits, the only sure account is really a mathematical description of the phenomena which leaves largely unknown the underlying physical reality, just because he will "feign no hypotheses" concerning the forces he describes in the theorems. In his Queries, however, Newton suggests that particles of light will now most readily account for the theorems he proved earlier when speaking of rays of light. These rays are mathematical entities which he had discussed �PESIC 3 as such without needing to specify their nature. For Newton, there is a difference between the assurance with which he speaks of the mathematical properties of the rays and the diffidence with which he speculates that the rays are composed of particles. But, as Newton starts to speak of the manner in which glass or water affects the rays so as to cause the appearance of refraction, he remarks that these substances "act upon the Rays of Light at a distance ... and this Action and Re-Action at a distance very much resembles an attractive Force between Bodies."5 He makes similar assertions elsewhere that the force of gravity also and perhaps all forces between bodies seem to act at a distance. That is, one body can affect another, distant body in a manner that simply depends on the distance between them. For Newton, it would go too far, at this stage at least, to assert that such a force must necessarily travel somehow between the bodies. Mathematically, it seems to act at a distance, and we should not then "feign the hypothesis" that such action at a distance then implies transmission of the force passing in some describable way through the space intervening between the two bodies. So in his public writings Newton felt that describing gravitation or the action of glass upon a light ray as action at a distance was all he could do with full circumspection. But privately Newton felt the necessity to go further. In a celebrated letter to Bentley he wrote that it is inconceivable that inanimate brute matter should, without the mediation of something else, which is not material, operate upon and affect other matter without mutual contact, as it must do if gravitation, in the sense of Epicurus, be essential and inherent in it. ... That gravity should be innate, inherent and essential to matter, so that one body can act upon another at a distance, through a vacuum, without the mediation of anything else, by and through which their action and force may be conveyed from one to another, is to me so great an absurdity, that I believe no man who has in philosophical matters a competent faculty of thinking can ever fall into it. 6 In some of his Optical Queries Newton tried to account for gravitation in terms of the pressure of some medium, but much of this work he left unpublished because, as Maclaurin wrote, "he found he was not able, from experiment and observation, to give a satisfactory account of this medium, and the manner of its operation in producing the chief phenomena of nature." 7 So for NeWton, at least, the attempt to advance the Lucretian notion that light is simply a stream of small bodies led to the need for some sort of mediation of the forces acting between bodies. Newton felt �4 THE ST. JOHN'S REVIEW that such mediation required some sort of medium, and that medium baffled him. In reaching this impasse, Newton considered and rejected the suggestion of Huygens that presumed the existence of a universal medium or aether, and described light as waves traveling through this medium, much as water waves represent a state of vibration which passes through the medium of water.' Huygens imagined the space between bodies as packed with small, hard particles of equal size. When a body began emitting light at some point, he considered that these ether particles would transmit a shove much as a pool table packed with billiard balls would transmit an impulse imparted to some ball at the edge of the table. But Newton replied: A dense Fluid can be of no use for explaining the Phaenomena of Nature, the Motions of the Planets and Comets being better explained without it. It serves only to disturb and retard the Motions of those great Bodies, and make the Frame of Nature languish ... so there is no evidence for its Existence, and therefore it ought to be rejected. 9 Such a dense medium is for Newton the prime example of a "feigned hypothesis," as he terms it, which turns from the appearance of empty space to the daring and questionable supposition of an invisible and dense ethereal medium pervading space. Thus for Newton the notion that rays of light are "very small Bodies emitted from shining Substances" 10 is vastly preferable. Though he rejects the dense medium he felt was necessary for Huygens's theory, Newton nonetheless did not hesitate to argue for a "much subtiler Medium than Air, which after the Air was drawn out remained in the Vacuum." 11 He argues that this subtle, rarefied medium would give way before the passing planets and not disturb their orbits, and its varying density would explain the refraction of light and the transmission of heat. All this seems less paradoxical when Newton asserts that his ethereal medium is not like that of Huygens, "which fills all Space adequately without leaving any Pores, and by consequence is much denser than Quick-Silver or Gold." 12 The resistance of Newton's ether would be inconsiderable, he argues, because it is so rarified. There are void spaces between the ether particles which permit Newton's ether to be more or less r~refied or compressed. Those void spaces allow his ether to slide around the planets without hindering them, whereas Huygens's picture fills space with particles densely packed with no space between them. Thus one comes to see that Newton's ether is not in his eyes a feigned �5 hypothesis, because it seems to him unavoidable in explaining the refraction of light and yet does not impede the motion of bodies. But that leaves him in the quandary about how forces act between the particles of material bodies. For Huygens, bodies act by direct contact, and not at all at a distance. For Newton, it would seem that, finally, bodies can only act at a distance, since he does still require the empty spaces between bodies. But, as Newton himself admitted in the letter we cited earlier, such a notion of action at a distance is disturbing and mysterious. To quote him again, "It is inconceivable that inanimate brute matter should, without the mediation of something else, which is not material, operate upon and affect other matter without mutual contact .... " These words, "the mediation of something else, which is not material," are thrown into even higher relief. Newton seems to understand that this mediation is not simply by means of a material medium. That is, if for instance we consider that two bodies exert forces on each other by sending little particles out, we are still left with the problem of how these little particles act, by direct contact, or at a distance. So there is no escape from our problem of how bodies exert forces on each other simply in postulating even smaller particles that somehow accomplish this mediation. Eventually, we must face the question: action at a distance or direct contact? Huygens's notion of direct contact would seem satisfying except for Newton's objections and the further problem of the unyielding hardness of the particles that is required. For imagine two bodies coming into contact. If they are not absolutely rigid and hard, there is a certain delay from the moment of first contact and the resulting recoil. That implies a certain mediation of the directness of contact. Even worse, when is the exact moment of contact? The edges of the bodies would have to be perfectly sharp and square for one to be able, even in the imagination, to assign a true moment of contact, rather than a certain interval during which they contact each other and interact. Perhaps our problem would disappear if we were to treat each body as a Euclidean point, much as Newton teaches us to do in the Principia." But it is very disturbing to think that the force only springs into existence in the moment of contact, when the two points coincide. For if two points coincide, they are really not two points, but one point. And how can one point exert a force on itself? Or what sufficient reason would give the magnitude of such a force, exerted by a dimensionless body at no distance? On the other hand, if the tWo points do not coincide, our supposition of force as direct contact would say they cannot exert any force on each other! As if this were not difficult enough, our picture of material bodies as points, which we required in order to speak exactly of contact between bodies, is really a mathematical representation �6 THE ST. JOHN'S REVIEW only, as Newton says. The bodies we are familiar with are irregular and rough and hence couldn't simply be treated as points, even if the argument about points would have worked! Another way of putting this is that even if I envision a body as composed of point-like atoms, those points could never touch. I am left with the strange and disquieting conclusion that no material bodies have ever touched, in the sense that I cannot find the moment of contact even if I picture the bodies as points or composed of points. Perhaps difficulties such as these moved Newton to speak of action at a distance, since no simple hypothesis of action by contact will do. Yet it was the inscrutability of action at a distance that made him speak of "the mediation of something else, which is not material .... " 14 This mediation offers a reasonable escape from our dilemma. If action by contact is fallacious, then the mediator cannot be material but must be "something else." This leads to the conclusion that the natural philosophy of matter cannot remain complete without invoking a mediation that is not material. So matter must point beyond itself. The full implications of such a statement must rest on inquiry into what we mean by "matter." The rough sensual description of matter as something weighty, and able to be touched, seen, and smelled, obviously begs the question, since we must refer to organs of sensation or measurement which are themselves material. By speaking of it in terms of interactions between material objects and material measuring instruments we still beg the question of matter (by itself, in itself). In a celebrated passage, Newton writes that All these things being consider'd, it seems probable to me, that God in the Beginning formed Matter in solid, massy, hard, impenetrable, movable Particles ... and that these primitive Particles being Solids, are incomparably harder than any porous Bodies compounded of them; even so very hard, as never to wear or break in pieces; no ordinary Power being able to divide what God himself made one in the first Creation.~~ What these particles are, or are made of, would seem almost an inadmissible question, if they are to be the primitive, most basic constituents. Yet if they are not simple points and have some size, we surely must entertain the question of what forces between the points of these atoms make them so extraordinarily hard. The atom seems to dissolve into a constellation of immaterial forces. Even were the atom utterly dimensionless and point -like, we would have the pregnantly absurd situation of matter, which presumably occupies space, occupying no space at all! And if the atom is extended �7 in space, we can still speak of the distance between certain points within the atom, or the forces between these points. But we have just shown that there can be no matter simply at a point. If we cannot say that there is matter at any point, where then is it? Our problem reflects an ambivalence in Newton's own thought between the material, physical world and the mathematical principles, which speak of forces that are not material but mathematical entities. In this mathematical view mass itself is a pure magnitude and not palpable stuff. In speaking of hard particles Newton means, I suppose, to return to the world of experimental appearance from the world of mathematical principles. Even though he wishes to show that the mathematical principles guide and describe the observed motion of bodies perfectly, yet the language and rhetoric of mathematics jar against that of "stuff' and matter. It was Kant's insight at this point to say that what we can know of matter is force and only force. To attempt to speak of matter in itself, beyond the character of the forces experienced, is to ask to know something beyond our capacity. Kant goes on to argue that an absolute and empty space through which Newton's action at a distance might act is "nothing at all belonging to the existence of things." 16 These powerful observations were to a great degree ignored by practicing scientists of the time, though it must be said that Kant's teaching of the primacy of forces in natural philosophy had an immense influence through the German Naturphi/osophie. I would suggest that the heart of field theory, and even of relativity and quantum theory, lies implicit and foreshadowed in Kant's deep insights. Indeed, I do not think that modern natural philosophy has yet by any means exhausted the depths he pointed out. Let me turn from Kant and return to Newton's thought that it does make sense to speak of "solid, massy, hard, inpenetrable particles." What is it that makes us so sure that "brute inanimate matter," as Newton calls it, really must be part of our conception of the world? We seem to pay respect to our sensations and give them credit, as it were, by referring them to a thing, matter, which is the true source of smells, tastes, and sights. But our argument has led us to see the solid mass of matter dissolve into a web of interacting forces. Why do we continue to speak simply of matter? Perhaps because it would seem like an insult to our senses if we denied them an external source and origin. Nevertheless, even with the greatest enthusiasm for a notion of matter and of primitive particles such as Newton had, we have been led to consider a maze of forces as the key to the behavior of matter, as if mattereven if we should cling to this notion- were finally at the disposal of the forces and wholly guided by them. Whether we begin with streams of light �8 THE ST. JOHN'S REVIEW particles, as Newton does, or with an undulating medium, the mystery of light is contained in that non-material mediation which is the actuality of the reception of the hypothetical light particles or of the hypothetical wave. Finally, there is always a gap across which a leap, an act of mediation, must occur. It is here that Aristotle helps, in a way that shows that the interweaving of these themes is not merely historical but even more richly complex. I present it here intentionally out of chronological order to stress the timelessness of the insight. In De Anima Aristotle has much to say about vision that speaks eloquently to the point we have reached in our inquiry. Light, he says, is "the activity [energeia] of the transparent in that [it is] transparent.m 7 He, too, understood that it is in the transparent, seemingly empty, gap that the true nature of light lies. Light is "neither fire, nor in general any body, nor an emanation from any body (for in that case it would be a body of some kind), but the presence of fire or something of such kind in the transparent." 18 He goes on to explain that, since in his view there are no void, empty spaces, there is no space for another body to enter in. So light cannot simply be a body, for it would have to be at the same place as other bodies (the air, for instance) at the same time. Rather, light is energeia, a word closely related to work and activity, and is the particular activity of the transparent medium he calls metaxu, literally the "in-between." It is not this metaxu that is light, but rather light is a kind of activity or energization which is perhaps best expressed by the way Aristotle speaks of energeia elsewhere throughout his works. One gets the sense of maturity, of coming to full bloom, of a process or an organism coming into its full estate. Aristotle also observes that "matter is relative to some thing," signifying that matter exists in a state of relation to form and purpose." He does not consider that it exists apart from these larger relations. In the case of light, Aristotle speaks of a state of being energized and active which applies to this transparency between seer and object. This energization of the in-between zone seems to tally with the sort of "nonmaterial mediation" Newton was groping for. Yet there are many divergences also: Newton's light particles travel in a void, while Aristotle's light is the energization of a region replete with substance, not void anywhere. In that respect Aristotle seems much closer to Huygens's picture of a dense medium through which vibrations pass. So Aristotle's view emerges as an immensely suggestive synthesis, before the fact, of Newton's play of forces (which he might understand as a sort of energeia) and Huygens's vibrating medium. This constellation of accounts seems in want of further development, and indeed it is Newton who finds the crucial issue. In criticizing Huygens �PESIC 9 he remarks that if light were wavelike motion propagated through a fluid medium, like water waves, it would necessarily follow that light should not simply travel in straight lines but rather bend around obstacles just as water waves do. As he puts it, The Waves on the Surface of stagnating Water, passing by the sides of a broad Obstacle which stops part of them, bend afterwards and dilate themselves gradually into the quiet Water behind the Obstacle. The Waves, Pulses or Vibrations of the Air, wherein Sounds consist, bend manifestly, though not so much as the Waves of Water. For a Bell or a Cannon may be heard beyond a Hill which intercepts the sight of the sounding Body, and Sounds are propagated as readily through crooked Pipes as through straight ones. But Light is never known to follow crooked Passages nor to bend into the Shadow. For the fix'd Stars by the Interposition of any of the Planets cease to be seen/0 This would seem a critical problem, since Huygens also admitted that light seems to travel in straight lines, and he had to resort to rather tortuous and unconvincing arguments to make his light waves not seem to do just what Newton argued they might do. Thomas Young first observed phenomena that indicated that light does not simply travel in straight lines but indeed bends around obstacles just as Newton said that it would do if it were a wave. This seemed to be the moment of triumph for Huygens's notion of a vibrating medium, and of disgrace for the Newtonian picture of light as a particle. In the century following Young's first experiments, the great drama of the elaboration of the theories of electricity and magnetism unfolded, led by Faraday and Maxwell, leading to a notion of light as a wave composed of electric and magnetic fields. What are these fields? In them may be the reappearance of Aristotle's notion of energeia, its phoenix-like rebirth after centuries in which Aristotle's physical thought was usually said to be simply wrong, dead, and useless. This may be an example of how the process of thought does not unfold simply historically, the later views a product of what preceded them. Aristotle grapsed an essential facet of the problem of light in a way one appreciates more fully after reading Newton, Huygens, and Maxwell. The term field in this sense was in essence created by Maxwell, but it emerges from Michael Faraday's earlier discussions of what he called lines of force. The nuance is, I think, crucial and reveals much about Faraday and Maxwell. The son of a blacksmith, and himself a bookbinder's apprentice, Faraday became a laboratory technician at the Royal Institution in London. Through many years of reading and ceaseless experimentation, he became a great luminary of European science. He hated the term "physicist," which had only recently (1830) been �10 THE ST. JOHN'S REVIEW coined by Whewell, and wished to be, and to be called, a philosopher, an "unmathematical philosopher"21 to boot, quite uneducated mathematically and separated from the great tradition of mathematical physics that Newton inaugurated with his Principia. Faraday wrote no treatise as Newton and Maxwell did, but left instead his episodic Experimental Researches and his Diary. As Thomas Simpson has written, these works were not theory, but a vast weaving and unweaving of suspected powers, a process of continual discovery and identification, a great, highly unified for- mulary for the production and classification of effects .... [He] is the great 'discoverer'; the paradigm for Faraday is Odysseus rather than Euclid: in a sense he, too, travels from land to land, reporting wonders, guided by legend and myth, rumor or divine love. For Odysseus, the dominant desire is to see men's cities and to know their minds, and to gather all this together in the return to Ithaca. For Faraday, it is to investigate all the powers of nature and to unveil them as esssentially one in the lecture hall on Albemarle Street. 22 Faraday was the most practical of men and intensely attentive to the vivid detail of experimental phenomena. He was a true virtuoso of experiment, insightful and indefatigable, and endlessly inventive. He grew up with notions of electricity and magnetism as palpable and ponderable stuff. Yet this immensely practical and clear-sighted man gradually convinced himself that the true seat of electric and magnetic effects is the space surrounding electrified or magnetized bodies, whether that space be filled with some noticeable substance like air or seemingly empty. Strange, is it not, for such a man to pass from the palpable bodies he sees before him to consider instead the impalpable, empty space between? Yet it was many experiments that led him thither, perhaps the most pregnant being one of the simplest. Consider a magnet upon which have been sprinkled iron filings. These filings seem to align as if to outline invisible lines that characterize the magnetic force. The presence of the filings makes the force visible. Does it not seem inescapable, thought Faraday, that these same lines of magnetic force are present even before the filings have been introduced? Many other considerations, particularly the characteristic curvatures of the lines, moved Faraday to speak of the lines as "physically real."23 Further, he felt persuaded that there was no need to speak of electric or magnetic fluids or substances, that these lines of force were the real, the essential seat of electric and magnetic phenomena. He writes that "as magnets may be looked upon as the habitations of bundles of lines of force, they probably show us the tendencies of the physical lines of force where they occur in the space around."24 �11 Faraday seemed happiest with a vision in which his physical lines of force arch through space, without even ether, invisible yet physical. His friend Maxwell, in an admiring letter, describes this vision: "You seem to see the lines of force curving around obstacles and driving plump at conductors, and swerving towards certain directions in crystals, and carrying with them everywhere the same amount of attractive power ...."25 In many parts of his great Treatise, Maxwell frankly admits his debt to Faraday, making us feel that he had indeed realized Faraday's vision in a mathematical way that Faraday himself could not have achieved." In his letter to Faraday, Maxwell goes on to say that you are the first person in whom the idea of bodies acting at a distance by throwing the surrounding medium into a state of constraint has arisen, as a principle to be actually believed in. We have had streams of hooks and eyes flying around magnets ... ; but nothing is clearer than your description of all sources of forces keeping up a state of energy in all that surrounds them ... . 27 Even this frank praise reveals something about the two men. Faraday's lines of force become, for Maxwell, the "state of constraint of the surrounding medium," which he feels has a mathematical form and which he calls a field. Those physical, yet immaterial, lines of force Maxwell understands as states of a medium and the fields are the states of polarization of that medium. Though Maxwell describes himself as translating Faraday's ideas into a mathematical form, the differences between the two men are extremely interesting. Writing to the great theorist Ampere, Faraday himself remarks that I am unfortunate in a want of mathematical knowledge and the power of entering with facility into abstract reasoning; I am obliged to feel my way by facts closely placed together so that it often happens I am left behind in the progress of a branch of science, not merely from the want of attention, but from the incapability I lie under of following it, notwithstanding all my exertions . ... I fancy the habit I got into of attending too closely to experiment has somewhat fettered my power of reasoning, and chains me down; and I cannot help, now and then, comparing myself to a timid ignorant navigator who, though he might boldly and safely steer across a bay or an ocean by the aid of a compass which in its action and. principles is infallible, is afraid to leave sight of the shore because he understands not the power of the instrument that is to guide him. 28 Faraday wrote to Maxwell, "I was at first almost frightened when I saw �12 THE ST. JOHN'S REVIEW such mathematical force made to bear upon the subject, and then wondered to see that the subject stood it so well.m 9 There is gentle irony here, as well as respect for the power of the mathematical symbols Maxwell was forging. Also, Faraday maintains a certain pride in the integrity of his own progress, even as he self-deprecatingly calls himself a "labourer." He knew the value of his labors, or at least felt serenely confident that posterity would sift the gold from the dross. Yet there is also the note of a wistful Moses, who sees the promised land from afar and recognizes that he will not himself enter into the fullness of it. In the case of Faraday and Maxwell, the promised land was the fields of light. It was left for Maxwell, through the power of his mathematical symbols, to discern in exact mathematical detail how light might be the coupled undulations of electric and magnetic fields, how moving a charged body sends a wave down their lines of force, a wave we can perceive as light. Yet I must emphasize that, in his own way, without mathematics, Faraday found these fields of light. He says that "the view which I am bold to put forth considers, therefore, radiation as a high species of vibration in the lines of force which are known to connect particles.... It endeavors to dismiss the ether, but not the vibration."30 It seems to me that this discovery may be more wonderful than Maxwell's mathematical deduction and translation, in the way that one admires the pioneer explorer even more than the settlers that follow him. But there are excellences in both men that should be savored. Together they saw how the field leaps free of its source and can travel through boundless space. Maxwell followed Faraday also on a further flight of speculation. If indeed these lines of force flex far from any body and if their state of tension is the true seat of the electromagnetic interactions, perhaps the notion of electric charge as a sort of fluid or simple material substance should be abandoned. The true actuality of electricity, magnetism, and light lies in the mediating fields; matter and charge dwindle and disappear from sight. At first Maxwell tried to think of "empty space" as filled in imagination with gears and idle wheels, an elaborate mechanical structure that helped guide his understanding as he wrought his equations." Though he cherished his gears and wheels, when he came to write his Treatise he omitted all mention of them, now relying on the finished mathematical structure. Maxwell continued to believe that there might be a physical ether of which the fields were states of vibration, even though he ceased describing it in simple mechanical terms. Here the practical Faraday is more visionary still, for Faraday understood the lines of force as themselves sufficient, without any need for an ether to give them substance and habitation. The lines of force, the fields as Maxwell thought of them, are all that �13 is. The great project of the purely material and even mechanical understanding of Nature has demanded these immaterial mediators which at last have eclipsed matter. It does seem very odd simply to discard matter in favor of ghostly fields. Here it is helpful to think of music. Victor Zuckerkandl has written that "music is movement of tones in dynamic fields." 32 Music is indeed in no single note, but rather it is in the web of interrelationships that can be aptly termed a field. That is, the music is also between the notes. There is no silence in the sense of a void, utterly blank. The silence that precedes a piece of music is part of it, as one realizes when watching the different silent gestures a conductor uses to give the up-beat that precedes the sounds. I suppose here is Aristotle's insight regarding the absence of utter physical nothingness in the world, of sheer emptiness. If we take either Faraday's or Maxwell's account, there is not nothingness anywhere, for the field is there. Aristotle has shown us how energeia must emerge from a prior state of preparation, of dynamis, and not from nothing. The contemporary quantum theory of fields has argued, in extending Maxwell's mathematical theory, that sheer emptiness is self-contradictory." This agrees deeply with Aristotle and gives the sense that the seemingly empty space, the silence, is the heart of activity, of music. At times this vital silence is brought before us with particular intensity. The silences of a great work of art are the seat of its mysterious power and deserve our closest attention. Let me give you an example. Schubert, in his next-to-last piano sonata, in A major (0.959), concludes with a rondo based on a theme he had written when he was twenty, and which also became the song "Irn Friihling." Here is the theme as he first presents it at the beginning of the rondo (measures 1-16): RONDO. �THE ST JOHN'S REVIEW 14 Here is how Schubert shows us this theme at the end of the movement, after many variations and vicissitudes (measures 328-347): 11•-t+- I ~ ~ L ~· -==~ ' dlm. ' "' "" -~ r ~ :>........ t ~~~ I ··r ~~q-r. . ,.....,...,., I I "flo T~<~ T - The silences form a final revelation of the inner life of the theme. In each silence something immense happens. We are plunged into the field of force that is the music, when the music stops-as it would seem-and yet evidently does not stop. It is like that when we look at the light which only exists in and by virtue of the so-called "empty space." Our experience, then, is a field. �15 Randomly bumping particles and mechanisms do not hold much prospect of touching the sort of beings we are, but speaking of fields is more like us. A field is most of all a state of inter-relationship which has an inner integrity. In grasping such connections, the human mind shows its affinity with the field. Perhaps in closing we should recall Einstein's first encounter with an object suspended in a field- a simple magnetic compass which his father gave him at four or five years of age. That this needle behaved in such a determined way did not at all fit into the nature of events, which could find a place in the unconscious world of concepts (effect connected with direct "touch"). I can still remember-or at least believe that I can remember- that this experience made a deep and lasting impression upon me. Something deeply hidden had to be behind things. 34 Recalling this in later life, he also remembered how he "trembled and grew cold." Notes I. Lucretius, De Rerum Natura IV, 42 ff. 2. Plato, Theaetetus 156d. 3. Isaac Newton, Opticks (New York: Dover, 1979), p. 370. This and most of the following passages can also be found in Peter PesiC (ed.), Junior Laboratory Manual (Santa Fe: St. John's College, 1986), 2 vols. 4. Newton, Opticks, pp. 374-75. 5. Ibid. pp. 370-71. 6. Isaac Newton, Principia (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1962), val. 2, p. 634. 7. Cited by Maxwell in W. D. Niven (ed.), The Scientific Papers of James Clerk Maxwell (New York: Dover, 1965), val. 2, p. 316. 8. See Christiaan Huygens, Treatise on Light, in Great Books of the Western World (Chicago: Encyclopedia Britannica, 1952), val. 34, pp. 553-75. 9. Newton, Opticks, p. 368. 10. Ibid., p. 370 11. Ibid., p. 349. 12. Ibid., p. 352. 13. Newton, Principia, val. I, pp. 19 ff. 14. Ibid., val. 2, p. 634. �16 THE ST. JOHN'S REVIEW 15. Newton, Opticks, p. 400. 16. I. Kant, Metaphysical Foundations of Natural Science (Indianapolis: Hackett, 1985), p. 132. See L. Pearce Williams, The Origins of Field Theory (Langham: University Press of America, 1980), pp. 32-43. I have continued this inquiry in a forthcoming essay "The Principle of Identicality and the Foundations of Quantum Theory." 17. Aristotle, De Anima 418b 9-10. 18. Ibid., 418b 14-17. 19. Physics, II, 194b 9. 20. Newton, Opticks, pp. 362-63. 21. See the valuable essay by Thomas K. Simpson, "Maxwell's Treatise and the Restoration of the Cosmos," in The Great Ideas Today, (Chicago: Encyclopedia Britannica, 1986), p. 226. 22. Ibid, p. 227. 23. Faraday, "On the Physical Lines of Magnetic Force," included with his Experimental Researches in Electricity in Great Books of the Western World (Chicago: Encyclopedia Britannica, 1952), vol. 45, pp. 816-19. 24. Faraday Experimental Researches in Electricity (New York: Dover, 1965), vol. 3, pp. 435-36. 25. L. Pearce Williams (ed.), The Selected Correspondence of Michael Faraday (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1971), vol. 2, p. 882. 26. See, for instance, J. C. Maxwell, A Treatise on Electricity and Magnetism (New York: Dover, 1954), §528. 27. Faraday, Correspondence, vol. 2, p. 882. 28. Ibid., vol. 1, p. 134. 29. Ibid., vol. 2, p. 864. 30. Faraday, "Thoughts on Ray Vibrations," in his Experimental Researches in Chemistry and Physics (London: Taylor and Frapcis, 1859), p. 370 (reprinted identically by Culture et Civilisation, Bruxelles, 1967). 31. See his writings on the theory of molecular vortices to be found in Maxwell's Scientific Papers, vol. 1, pp. 451-88. 32. Victor Zuckerkandl, The Sense of Music (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1959), p. 37. 33. See, for example, P.A.M. Dirac, Quantum Mechanics (New York: Oxford University Press, 1958 [4th edition]), pp. 306-10. I have also addressed this matter in a forthcoming essay, "Virtuality and the Paradox of the Vacuum." 34. See Einstein's "Autobiographical Notes," in P. A. Schilpp (ed.), Albert Einstein, Philosopher-Scientist (New York: Harper and Row, 1959), p. 9. �Brilliancies Involving Equilateral Triangles Samuel S. Kutler In the very first proposition of the Elements, Euclid constructs an equilateral triangle. Among the theorems that I know about involving equilateral triangles, the most brilliant are presented here. Although none of them appears in the works of Euclid, every one of them, I am convinced, would have delighted him. Most of the books listed in the bibliography are referred to in this article. They present beautiful mathematics that does not require many preliminaries. I. Odom's Golden Section Theorem When I wanted to construct a golden section on a simple plane figure, the finest example known to me before 1988 was the regular pentagon, where the diagonals, AD and CE of figure I, cut each other in golden sections at the point K (Elements XIII.8). In the early 1980s George Odom found an even simpler and more elegant way to produce a golden section. Odom's theorem appeared as an elementary problem in The American Mathematical Monthly' in 1983. Since I do not always read or even skim through the Monthly any more, I would not have known about Odom's theorem at all if it hadn't been for David Fowler, who refers to the theorem both in an article in Ancient Philosophy', where I first saw the construe- Samuel Kutler is a Thtor at St. John's College, Annapolis. 17 �THE ST. JOHN'S REVIEW 18 B c A K E D FIGURE 1. Diameters AD and CE cut each other at Kin golden sections. tion, and in his book entitled The Mathematics of Plato's Academy. Here is a statement of Odom's theorem exactly as it appeared as problem E3007: Let A and B be the midpoints of sides EF and ED of an equilateral triangle DEF. Extend AB to meet the circumcircle (of DEF) at C. Show that B divides AC according to the golden section. Although no figure was published to accompany the problem, figure 2 is included here to illustrate Odom's theorem and to facilitate attempts by readers to find their own proofs. Both the solution that was published in the Monthly' in 1986, and another that is equally simple, appear at the end of this section. Let us recall the definition of a golden section under one of its two other names. In the Elements, Euclid calls it a line cut in extreme and mean ratio and defines a straight line to be cut in such a ratio when as the whole line is to the greater segment, so is the greater to the less. [VI, def. 2] Even before Euclid begins his treatment of ratio and proportion, he makes use of a line so divided to construct a regular pentagon. Consequently, he must give an equivalent ratio-free formulation: To cut a given straight line so that the rectangle contained by the whole and one of the segments is equal to the square on the remaining segment. [II.ll] �19 KUTLER F FIGURE 2~ ~------Cyo Odom's theorem: B divides AC according to the golden section. The thirteenth and final book of the Elements concludes with the construction of the regular solids inscribed in spheres and the proof that "no other figure, besides the said five figures [pyramid, octahedron, cube, icosahedron, and dodecahedron] can be constructed which is contained by equilateral and equiangular figures equal to each other." The first six theorems of that book involve a line cut in extreme and mean ratio. In the analysis of these solids the golden ratio appears frequently. For example Euclid concludes his proposition 17 on the construction of the decagon with the insight that "when the side of the cube is cut in extreme and mean ratio, the greater segment is the side of the dodecahedron." Another name for the golden section was given in the early sixteenth century. Fra Luca Pacioli published a book in Venice in 1509 (reprinted Milan 1956) on the golden section, with drawings by Leonardo da Vinci. Pacioli coins a name for what will later be called the golden section. It appears in his title: De Divina Proportione. Dan Pedoe quotes Johannes Kepler, who, in his own w'ritings, adopts the name divine proportion, and writes about it (and Elements I.47) that Geometry has two great treasures: one is the theorem of Pythagoras: the other the division of a line into extreme and mean rati.o. In the second half of the twentieth century, H. E. Huntley adopts the name for his book: The Divine Proportion. Just as George Odom later finds the golden section using the circumscribed circle of an equilateral triangle, �20 THE ST. JOHN'S REVIEW Huntley finds it in an inscribed circle of an almost-equilateral triangle (see figure 3, in which there is a doubled 3,4,5 triangle; that is to say, a 6,5,5 triangle). Finally, the name golden section itself seems not to have been used until the 1830s in the second edition of a textbook by Martin Ohm. Professor R. Herz-Fischler, who published a history of the golden section' in 1987, speculates that rather than coining the term himself, Martin Ohm is citing a name that had recently come into current usage. D K FIGURE 3. A golden section in a doubled 3-4-5 triangle. BED is a right triangle with sides BE : ED : : 3 : 4. Extend BE to F so that EF=BE, and join FD. Let the bisector of angle B meet DE at K. Then K is the center of the inscribed circle to triangle BDF. Inscribe circle GEH in triangle BDF, and let BK meet that circle at both C and A. DK : KE : : BD : BE [VI.3], so that the diameter of the circle= BE. The square on BE=the rectangle AB, BC [111.36]; that is, AB : BE : : BE : BC; but BE is equal to the diameter AC, so that AB : AC : : AC : BC, and AB is cut in a golden section at C. �KUTLER 21 Enough about names! When I saw Odom's theorem, I could no more get it out of my head than I can do so with certain tunes. At first I thought it was because this most important ratio of all was constructed with the very first figure that Euclid constructs: the equilateral triangle. Furthermore, nothing else was needed but a circumscribed circle and a straight line constructed through any two midpoints and continued, on one side or the other, until it reaches the circle. As Fowler put it in his article, "[this] surely must be its simplest construction." It took me days to realize that something else was bothering me. Theorems as simple and delightful as the one by George Odom are not what mathematicians are interested in these days; such discoveries are made in antiquity or its renaissance. Maybe I could find out how George Odom hit upon his construction. David Fowler left a clue in a footnote of his article: I first heard of this construction in correspondence with H. S. M. Coxeter; who was inquiring if anybody had come across it before. Coxeter had received it in a letter from George Odom. For me at least, Harold Scott MacDonald Coxeter is the world's leading geometer. I was reluctant to bother him with my questions, but my curiosity overcame my reluctance, and I telephoned Professor Coxeter, whom I had met in 1972. What follows is an approximation of part of the telephone conversation: SSK: Is George Odom a mathematician? HSMC: No, he is an artist with an amateur's interest in mathematics. SSK: Did he have a proof for his construction? HSMC: Yes, but not as elegant as the published one. SSK: Do you know how he discovered his theorem? HSMC: Yes, he was studying the icosahedron in my book Regular Polytopes. SSK: Do you think that perhaps one of the ancient Greek mathematicians had discovered Odom's theorem? HSMC: (Knowingly) No, I don't think so. Since our conversation, I believe that I have figured out why Professor Coxeter seemed to be certain that this theorem was unknown until the 1980s: The construction is so simple and beautiful that it would have been shown from one friend to another, been written down many times, and survived. Now, as I promised, I will present two proofs. The first is printed below figure 4. I have supplied the steps, since Jan van de Craats of the Netherlands submitted it as a "proof without words" and it was so published in the Monthly in the Aug.-Sept. issue in 1986. The second one, with figure 5, is an even shorter proof; it was submitted by David Fowler and others. It makes splendid use of Euclid's crossed chord theorem (111.35). �THE ST. JOHN'S REVIEW 22 FIGURE 4. The proof of Odom's theorem by Jan van de Craats: For the proof, modify figure 2 by continuing CA to the circle at G and construct GE. Angles GEB and BCD are equal, since they stand on equal circumferences. So are angles EGB and BDC. Then triangles GBE and BDC are equiangular and hence similar: GB: EB:: BD: BC, but GB=AC, EB=AB, and BD=AB; so that AC : AB : : AB : BC, and AC is cut in a golden section at B. I myself found a three-circle construction of a golden section on Saturday, November 12, 1988. This theorem, which is illustrated in figure 6a, is both inspired by and derived from Odom's theorem: Let there be three concentric circles. The radius of the middle circle is double that of the inner and half that of the outer circle. From any point on the inner circle draw a tangent line that makes a chord AC on the middle circle, and extend this chord from the point C until it reaches the point B on the outer circle. Then AC is cut in a golden section at B. Because of this discovery, I no longer believe David Fowler's assertion that George Odom's construction is the simplest possible. For the three-circle construction seems to me to be a bit simpler even than Odom's. Except for the line that is cut in a golden section, it consists entirely of circles. Furthermore, rather than the six golden sections that can be constructed on Odom's diagram, there is no end to the number that can be constructed �23 KUTLER E F D FIGURE 5. The proof of Odom's theorem by the crossed-chord theorem: Rectangle GB, BC=rectangle EB, BD [111.35], which implies that GB: EB:: BD: BC; but GB=AC, EB=AB, and BD=AB, so that AC : AB : : AB : BC, and AC is cut in a golden section at B. A FIGURE 6a. The three-circle theorem. The three circles are concentric. The middle circle has double the radius of the inner circle and half the radius of the outer circle. AC touches the inner circle at H. AC is cut in a golden section at B. �THE ST. JOHN'S REVIEW 24 on these circles. If one considers a sequence of circles in the plane, all con- centric, each of which has a radius double that of the one immediately within it, then a tangent can be drawn to any one of the circles and golden sections can be imagined to appear on this diagram smaller, or larger, than any given size. Neither Odom's theorem nor mine begins with a line that is to be cut in a golden section, but figures 6b and 6c and their accompanying explanations show how these theorems lead one to such a construction. Perhaps this construction is published for the first time here. ~ 12oo· A·~c FIGURE 6b. To cut a given line in a golden section. Construct angle CAD=30°, and angle ACD=a. Let a be the angle whose sine is 114 {see figure 6c). Construct angle ADB=120°. Then B cuts AC in a golden section. FIGURE 6c. To construct angle a for figure 6b. Construct a circle with a given line LM as its diameter. Let LN = \l.i LM, and construct a circle with LN as radius. Let P be one of the points where the circles intersect. Join PM. Then angle LMP= a, an angle whose sine= \l.i. �25 KUTLER II. Morley's Theorem It is impossible to trisect the sixty-degree angle of an equilateral triangle with straight lines and circles, or, to use the language of instruments, with straightedge and compass. Trisectors of an angle can be constructed, however, with the use of conic sections. On page 356 of Geometrical Investigations by John Pottage, he constructs a regular three-pointed star from the trisectors (see figure 7), and he asks his readers to show "that the star covers exactly two-fifths of the area of the triangle." Although Pottage does not mention the intersections DEF of the trisectors that are adjacent to each side of the triangle, they are indicated on figure 7. Because of the symmetry of the original equilateral triangle, it is to be expected that the three points DEF themselves form the vertices of a new, centered, inverted, equilateral triangle. Next let us consider (see figure 8) a triangle for which each of the angles can be trisected with straightedge and compass: an isosceles right triangle. A FIGURE 7. A three-pointed star made from the trisectors of angles A, B, and C. The area of the star is two-fifths that of the triangle. D, E, and F are the vertices of an equilateral triangle. �THE ST. JOHN'S REVIEW 26 A FIGURE 8. The trisectors of the angles of the right triangle ABC meet at points D, E, and F, which appear to be the vertices of an equilateral triangle. Again we expect the trisectors to meet with their intersections forming the vertices of an inverted triangle, perhaps another isosceles right triangle. But figure 8 does not exhibit a right triangle. To the eye, it too seems to be equilateral. Finally, figure 9 is a representation of the same kind of trisected figure now for a scalene triangle. Even here, the triangle DEF seems to be equilateral! As in the case of Odom's theorem, no one seems to have investigated such a configuration before the last hundred years. This time the discovery occurs at the very beginning of this century. Let us quote from the Biographical Notes' about Frank Morley, a President of the American Mathematical Society in 1919 and 1920: By about 1900 the following result due to Prof. Morley was well known to Cambridge mathematicians and others: "if the angles of any triangle be trisected, the triangle, formed by the meets of pairs of trisectors, each pair being adjacent to the same side, is equilateral." The first reference to it as "Morley's theorem," a term now in general use. seems to have been ... in 1914. In 1924, Frank Morley revealed how he found his theorem. Just as George Odom found his construction that takes place all in one plane while he was reflecting on a more complicated configuration, a solid figure; so did Morley find his elegant theorem that involves nothing but straight lines by considering a more complicated situation in which a higher order curve, a cardioid (see figure 10), touches the sides of a triangle. In 1909 the first �27 KUTLER FIGURE 9. The trisectors of scalene triangle ABC meet at points D, E, and F, which again appear to be the vertices of an equilateral triangle. The proof accompanying figure 11 determines the lines HF and KE. elementary proofs were published in response to a challenge in the Educational Times. None of these proofs is quick, for it seems necessary to calculate the sizes of many angles. The proof that accompanies figure 11 is a ghostly one, by H. D. Grossman', in which the top part of the figure is never drawn and only comes into being at the last step of the proof. The motivation for this proof can be seen in figure 9, where each of the trisectors is extended. The whole effort is to determine lines HF and KE of that figure and to determine that they are the trisectors of the invisible summit angle. What is the next step to take after considering Morley's theorem? Perhaps this: On page 98 of Mathematical Gems, Ross Honsberger asks his readers to show that Morley's theorem holds also in the case of the trisection of the exterior angles of a triangle. He has a solution on pages 163 and 164. �28 THE ST. JOHN'S REVIEW FIGURE 10. A Cardioid. From any point X on the circle ABC, let A be the center and AX the radius of another circle. The cardioid is the envelope to these circles. The point X is called the cusp. Frank Morley discovered the theorem that bears his name by considering how a cardioid touches the sides of a triangle. FIGURE 11. H. D. Grossman's ghostly figure for Morley's theorem. �KUTLER 29 Proof of Morley's theorem: 1. BC is the base of the triangle for which we shall prove Morley's theorem. The base angles are 3b and 3c. A is the invisible vertex at the summit, and the angle is 3a. 2. Let BF and BD trisect angle B, and let CE and CD trisect angle C. 3. Let BF and CE meet at S. 4. Construct angles SDF and SDE each equal to 30". 5. D is the center of the inscribed circle of triangle SBC. Therefore OS bisects angle BSC. 6. Triangles FDS and EDS are congruent. FD =DE, and triangle FED is equilateral. 7. Angle EDC=60"+b, and angle FDB=60"+c. 8. Angle FDT=60" -b, and angle EDR=60" -c. 9. Construct angle DFH=60"-b, and angle DEK=60"-c. 10. Angle HFB=60"-c=a+b. 11. By Euclid's fifth postulate HF meets BT, at an angle=(a+b)-b=a. Similarly, EK meets CR at angle a. The proof will be complete when it is demonstrated that the straight lines BT, H F, KE, and CR meet in a single point, which must be the vertex A otthe triangle. 12. Draw FK, which bisects angle EKD. 13. By Euclid's fifth postulate, EK meets BT, and it meets it at angle a, and F is the center of the inscribed circle of the triangle with sides BT, BK, and KE. The bisector of the summit angle of that triangle divides the summit angle into two angles each equal to a; therefore it must either be parallel to HF or coincide with HF. And it must coincide with HF because F is the center of the inscribed circle, and that is where the angle bisectors of the triangle meet. 14. Similarly, in the triangle with sides FH, HC, and CR, the bisector of the summit angle coincides with EK. 15. Thus the undrawn angle at A is trisected by FH and EK, and the trisectors adjacent to each side of the triangle meet at points D, E, and F, which are the vertices of an equilateral triangle. �30 THE ST. JOHN'S REVIEW III. Viviani's Theorem On page 22 of Mathematical Gems, Ross Honsberger does not consider Viviani's Theorem to be one of the outstanding theorems involving equilateral triangles. It is a mere "easy property" to serve his needs later. To use his own image of a gem, I believe that this theorem is a gem when it is placed in the proper setting, but Ross Honsberger did not choose to do so. I attempt to remedy that omission here. Much of the beauty of Viviani's theorem will be lost if it is even stated at the beginning of the discussion. It depends on a surprise. Let us delay our formulation of Viviani's theorem and pose a problem of finding a minimum. For any point in or on the boundary of a triangle, construct the perpendiculars to the triangle's sides. For which point is the sum of these perpendiculars a minimum? To frame a conjecture for this problem, consider a scalene triangle as in figure 12, where calculations have been made at several points showing the sum of the distances to the sides. When we look at the calculations A (30, 60) 6o~ 1 62.1 . t 64.5 '"'- 6~.7 64.1 66.6 .8 66.2 68.6 ""''6~0~ 71.1 7~.3" ""' z: ::: ::: :~: ;:~ ::~ :~·:~~ . /00 65.0 67.5 ~ 70.0 J.........__ _ _ • _ _ _ _ _ . _ - B (0, 0) 72.4 7'!:_il_2L3___ 1~1 8_~,1__ 84.6 87.o 89.4 c (100, 0) FIGURE 12. The minimum sum of the distances of perpendiculars to the sides of triangle ABC seems to be at the vertex of the greatest angle A. �31 KUTLER given on that figure, a reasonable claim is that the minimum lies at the corner of the triangle with the largest augle. In that corner two of the three perpendiculars are unnecessary, and certainly the point at the largest corner is closer to its opposite side than is the case at either of the other corners. We shall prove at the end of this section that this conjecture is correct. But first, it is easy to build on the conjecture for an isosceles triangle in which the equal base angles are each larger than the summit angle, by claiming that either of the vertices at the base serves as a minimum. This claim is also correct. Finally, consider an equilateral triangle. It seems clear that there are three minimum points- namely, at the three corners or vertices- but it is not clear. Unlike the other claims, this one is false! The search for a minimum here is misguided. Instead Viviani's theorem holds: For any point in or on the boundary of an equilateral triangle, the sum of the perpendiculars to the sides of the triangle is always equal to the height of the triangle. The beauty of this theorem, then, depends, at least in part, on its surprising character. A proof of Viviani's theorem is given accompanying figure 13. It depends on a theorem that is not in the Elements, and could not B c FIGURE 13. Viviani's theorem. Triangle ABC=triangles APB, BPC, and CPA. y,BC•AF= Y2AB•PR+ v,BC•PS+ y,cA•PT. But both AB and CA are equal to BC, so that y,BC•AF= \I,BC•PR+ \I,BC•PS+ Y,BC•PT. Therefore AF=PR+PS+PT. �32 THE ST. JOHN'S REVIEW A FIGURE 14. The sum of the perpendiculars is a minimum at the vertex with the largest angle A. Triangle ABC=triangles APB, BPC, and CPA. V2BC•AF= V2AB•PR+ V,BC•PS+ V2CA•PT. But BC>AB, and BC>CA. Therefore V2BC•AF < V2BC•PR+ v,BC•PS+ v,BC•PT and AF<PR+PS+PT. be there, that the area of a triangle equals half the base times the height. Readers are encouraged to construct a proof in the manner of Euclid. To conclude this section, accompanying figure 14 is the proof that I promised to give, that for scalene triangles the minimum point for the sum of the perpendiculars is at the vertex of the largest angle. (This is problem 17 in Maxima and Minima Without Calculus by I. Niven, who gives this solution on pages 279 and 280.) IV. Napoleon's Theorem In Ross Honsberger's chapter on Equilateral Triangles on page 34 of Mathematical Gems, we read: Historically, the following theorem is known as Napoleon's theorem, although it is very doubtful that Napoleon was well enough versed in geometry to have discovered and proved it himself. Whatever its origin, Napoleon's theorem is wonderful: Consider any triangle with equilateral triangles drawn outward on each of the three sides, as in figure 15. Napoleon's theorem states that the centers of these three triangles are themselves the vertices of an equilateral triangle. �KUTLER 33 FIGURE 15. Napoleon's theorem. The points K, L, and M are the centers of three equilateral triangles drawn outwardly on triangle ABC. To prove that K, L, and M are the vertices of an equilateral triangle. What is perhaps surprising here is that no matter now unequal the sides of the original triangles, a perfect equilateral triangle will still be formed. The advantage of placing equilateral triangles on the sides is that there is no need to worry about which center we have in mind: the center of gravity, the center of the inscribed circle, the center of the circumscribed circle, the orthocenter (where the three heights meet), or some more exotic center. The extreme symmetry of the equilateral triangle guarantees that all of these centers merge into a single point: the center. An excellent setting for Napoleon's theorem is another minimum problem that was posed by Fermat to Torricelli: Find a point in an acute-angled triangle so that the sum of the distances to the three corners is a minimum (see figure 16). This problem is now called the airport problem: Where should we build an airport so that the sum of the distances to three cities is a minimum? In figure 17, we have added a construction to figure 16 in which triangle ACN is rotated 60 degrees about point A to position AED. Moreover, we have joined points C and D as well as Nand E with straight lines. In that process, two equilateral triangles have been constructed: AEN and ADC. Consequently, the sum that we wish to minimize, BN + CN +AN, can be replaced by the equal path BN + NE +ED. In the same figure 17, the letter �THE ST. JOHN'S REVIEW 34 c ----"'B FIGURE 16. Fermat's problem (the airport problem). In an acute-angled triangle find the Fermat point F such that the sum FA+FB+FC is a minimum. The point N is a nonFermat point, since there are smaller sums than NA+NB+NC. c FIGURE 17. A path is found equal in length to BN+NA+NC. Rotate triangle ACN 60° about A. Connect CD and NE. Triangles ACD and AEN are equilateral. Since NA=NE and NC=ED, we have BN+NA+NC equal to path BN+NE+ED. This path will be a minimum when the three segments BN, NE, and ED lie in a straight line. Such a path is drawn in figure 18. �35 KUTLER N stands for a Non-Fermat point because the path is not a minimum. The excellence of this method of proof is that we shall know at once when we have F, a Fermat point, as in figure 18, for the path will be minimized when F is chosen so that BF, FE, and ED all1ie in one straight line. Underneath figure 18 is a calculation that shows that the Fermat point is the one in the triangle that makes all three angles AFB, BFC, and CFA equal to 120 degrees. Figure 19 shows the first of two constructions that enable us to locate the Fermat point. Because the opposite angles ADC and AFC of quadrilateral AFCD sum to two right angles, the circle about equilateral triangle ABC passes through the Fermat point F. Thus we have the first of our two constructions for F: To find the Fermat point for any acute-angled triangle ABC, construct an equilateral triangle outwardly on one of the sides AC. Then the Fermat point is the intersection inside the triangle of the circumcircle of triangle ABC and the straight line BD. There is another construction for the Fermat point illustrated in figure 20. Here we have equilateral triangles ADC, AOB, and BHC constructed outwardly on each side of the triangle. For the same reason that the Fermat c D FIGURE 18. The Fermat point F solves the airport problem. The three angles at Fare each equal to 120": Angle AFB=180"-angle AFE=120". Angle AFC=angle AED=180"-angle AFE=120". Therefore angle CFB must also be equal to 120". �36 THE ST. JOHN'S REVIEW FIGURE 19. First construction of a Fermat point. By 111.22 the opposite angles of the undrawn quadrilateral ADCF are equal to 180°. Angle ADC=60°, so that angle CFA= 120°. Consequently F satisfies both conditions for a Fermat point: F lies on BD, and angle AFC= 120°. point lies on BD, it will also lie on AH and CO. Not only do we have this second construction for a Fermat point, but we are also all set up for Napoleon's theorem, in which we must show that the centers of the three equilateral triangles are necessarily the vertices of an equilateral triangle. Consider the circles about the two upper equilateral triangles in Figure 21. CF is a chord of both circles. By the first proposition of Book III of the Elements, the perpendicular bisector of CF must pass through the centers K and L. Similarly, in figure 22 the perpendicular bisector of AF passes through K and M, and of BF through L and M. Since the three chords FC, FA, and FB make angles of 120 degrees with each other, a simple calculation shows that the angles of triangle KLM are each equal to 60 degrees. This is enough to determine that triangle KLM is equilateral, and our proof of Napoleon's theorem is complete. I close this section with two questions: 1. Is Napoleon's theorem still true if the triangles are drawn inwardly? 2. On any triangle draw similar triangles outwardly on the three sides. For which kind of center for the triangles will the three centers form the vertices of a triangle that is similar to the other three? �37 KUTLER H c D FIGURE 20. Second construction of a Fermat point. Just as the Fermat point must lie on BD, it must also lie on both AH and CO. Than we can construct the Fermat point as the intersection of any two, or all three, of the lines BD, AH, and CO. F \ I \; FIGURE 21. The beginning of a proof of Napoleon's theorem. Again F is the Fermat point. By 111.1, the perpendicular bisectorto the chord CF must pass through the center's K and L of both circles. �38 THE ST. JOHN'S REVIEW FIGURE 22. Conclusion of Napoleon's theorem. By 111.22, the angles at K, L, and M must each be equal to 60", and triangle KLM is equilateral. V. Triangles of Maximum Area As an appetizer: For all triangles inscribed in a given circle, which has the greatest area? The delightful method of solving this problem that is presented here comes from pages 19 and 20 of The Enjoyment of Mathematics by Rademacher and Toeplitz: This proof comes in two parts. We show that of two triangles inscribed in a circle I. An equilateral triangle has a greater area than any triangle that has only one side equal to an equilateral triangle. 2. A triangle with one side equal to an equilateral triangle has a greater area than a triangle with none equal to an equilateral triangle. Let triangle ABC be inscribed in a circle with one side AC equal to an inscribed equilateral triangle oriented with AC as its horizontal basefigure 23. If an equilateral triangle AHC is inscribed on the same base, �KUTLER 39 FIGURE 23. The area of an inscribed equilateral triangle is greater than any other inscribed triangle on the same base. then as everyone knows the equilateral triangle will rise to the highest point H of the circle, and since of two triangles on the same base, the one with the greater height has the greater area, the equilateral triangle has a greater area than the scalene triangle with one arc equal to 120 degrees. The proof will be complete when it is shown that of inscribed triangles, the triangle with one side equal to an equilateral triangle is always greater than one with no sides equal to an equilateral triangle. Such a triangle must have at least one side-say AB-cutting off less than a third of the circumference, and at least one side-say·BC-greater than a third of the circumference; it does not matter whether the third arc is greater or less than 120 degrees. Place AC as the horizontal base, as in figure 24. Now, let arc CB*=AB, so that triangle ACB* can be considered the mirror image of triangle CAB about the vertical diameter. Finally, if AH is the side of an inscribed equilateral triangle, then, since AH is greater than AB and less than AB*, H must lie in the arc BB* across the top of the circle, and H will be higher than Band B*. This means that the triangle AHC, which is taller and on the same base, is necessarily of greater area than ABC. Consequently, any triangle with one side cutting off one-third of the circumference of the circle has a greater area than a triangle that does not have such a side, and the proof is complete. The last theorem was the appetizer. Here is the main course: Of all triangles with the same perimeter, the equilateral triangle has the greatest area. �40 THE ST. JOHN'S REVIEW FIGURE 24. Triangle AHC, which has one side AH equal to that of an inscribed equilateral triangle, is greater than triangle ABC, which has no such side. Triangle AB•c is the mirror image of triangle ABC when the vertical line through the center serves as the mirror. I know an algebraic proof of this theorem that I learned from pages 47 and 48 of Maxima and Minima Without Calculus by Niven. While away from my library in the snmmer of 1988, I was able to devise a two-part proof that seems to me rather elegant. When I returned to my books, I learned that Ivan Niven himself suggested the first part of the proof that I had found: 1. On a given base and for a given perimeter, the isosceles triangle has the greatest area. As in figure 25, let ST be the base, and let ST+ TU +US be the given perimeter. Then the locus of all triangles on the base ST lies on an ellipse. Moreoever, the point U* where the triangle is isosceles is located at the highest point of the ellipse. Thus the first part is clear: Again, since the area of a triangle is equal to half the base times the height, the isosceles triangle has a greater area than any triangle on the same base with sides that equal its sides in length. 2. To show how the equilateral triangle dominates in size any isosceles triangle with the same perimeter, let us take an example that presents a �41 KUTLER FIGURE 25. The semi-ellipse is the locus of all points U such that SU + UT is constant and greater that ST. The isosceles triangle SU 'T has a greater area than that of any other triangle inscribed in the semi-ellipse. method that will work for every triangle. Begin with a scalene triangle with sides of length {7, 10, 5}. From the last theorem this triangle has a smaller area than the triangle {6, 10, 6}. The trick now is to let the base be 6 rather than 10, and so we write the same triangle {10, 6, 6}. Then the same averaging method of finding a new isosceles triangle on this base yields the triangle with larger area: {8, 6, 8}. Notice how the triangles are becoming closer in shape to an equilateral triangle. The next steps yield {7, 8, 7}, the next {7.5, 7, 7.5}, and so on in infinitum. As Isaac Newton would say, this sequence of triangles of ever-increasing area is ultimately equal, or is equal in the limit, to the equilateral triangle. All that is needed to make the proof rigorous-but I will not do so here-is to show that the ever-increasing sequence of triangles differs from its limit, the equilateral triangle, by less than any pre-assigned difference D. I was very pleased with my discovery, and I wondered if anyone had ever followed the same line of reasoning. I found it all carefully worked out in Nicholas Kazarinoffs excellent book called Geometric Inequalities. Following his presentation, on page 41, which he attributes to Simon Lhuilier, Kazarinoff presents what he calls a "clever geometric construction ... due to Jacob Steiner [that) neatly avoided the method of successive approximations employed by Lhuilier." However, Lhuilier's method is charming, and is in fact a fine theorem with which to teach the theory of limits. The next question For all plane figures with a given perimeter, which one contains the greatest area? is addressed as the sole subject matter in chapter 22 of The Enjoyment of Mathematics by Rademacher and Toeplitz. �42 THE ST. JOHN'S REVIEW VI. Concluding Remark In an involved connected account- Euclid's Elements or Newton's Principia- a large measure of the beauty that one finds comes from the more or less systematic presentation. I have tried to illustrate in this article that there is another kind of beauty that one can appreciate: particular theorems that, in order to delight, need not be presented in a long chain of argumentation. No doubt any of the sections here can be extended, and I have made some suggestions about how to continue beyond what is presented here. My claim is, however, that these theorems and proofs can be appreciated just as they stand. Each is a good in itself. In the bibliography given below such goods abound. VII. Footnotes I. Vol. 90, p. 482. 2. Vol. VII (1987), pp. 201-10. 3. Vol. 93, p. 572. 4. A Mathematical History of Division in Extreme and Mean Ratio (Waterloo, Ont.: Laurier). 5. R. C. Archibald: A Semicentennial History of the American Mathematical Society, Vol. I (Menasha, WI: The Collegiate Press, 1938). 6. The American Mathematical Monthly, Vol. 50 (1943), p. 552. VIII. Bibliography Coxeter, H. S. M. Introduction to Geometry. 2d ed. New York: Wiley, 1969. __ and Greitzer, S. L. Geometry Revisited, New Mathematical Library, No. 19. New York: Random House, 1967. Courant, R., and Robbins, H. R. What is Mathematics? New York: Oxford, 1941. Davis, P. J. and Hersh, R. The Mathematical Experience. Boston: Birkhauser, 1981. Fowler, D. H. The Mathematics of Plato's Academy. Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1987. Honsberger, R. Ingenuity in Mathematics. New Mathematical Library, no. 23. New York: Random House, 1970. __. Mathematical Gems. Washington, D.C.: Mathematical Association of America, 1973. __. Mathematical Gems II. Washington, D.C.: Mathematical Association of America, 1976. �KUTLER 43 Kazarinoff, N. D. Geometrical Inequalities. New Mathematical Library, no. 4. New York: Random House, 1961. Niven, I. Maxima and Minima Without Calculus. Washington, D.C.: Mathematical Association of America, 1981. Pedoe, D. Geometry and the Liberal Arts. New York: St. Martin's, 1976. Polya, G. Mathematics and Plausible Reasoning. Princeton: Princeton Univ. Press, 1954. Rademacher, H. and Toeplitz, 0. The Enjoyment of Mathematics. Princeton: Princeton Univ. Press, 1957. Pottage, J. Geometrical Investigations. Reading, MA: Addison-Wesley, 1983. Steinhaus, H. Mathematical Snapshots. 3d ed. New York: Oxford, 1969. ��Autopsy Melinda Rooney The first time Lucy went to see her father take a horse apart it was near Halloween. She'd been asking to go for weeks. She was sitting on newspapers in the middle of the kitchen with a pumpkin between her legs, scrubbing it with water and a stiff brush. He came in and swung a chair around and sat on it backwards. She looked up at him. When he didn't say anything she looked back down and picked up a black magic marker and drew a wobbly line around the pumpkin's stem for the knife to follow. "Lucy?" "What." She didn't look up. The long blade of the butcher knife squeaked in the pumpkin. "Do you want to come watch tomorrow while I post a horse?" She looked up, leaving the knife standing handle-up in the pumpkin. "Really?" "I'm asking you if you want to come with me. It'll be a whole morning, a Saturday. Do you really want to give up a whole Saturday morning?" "Yeah," Lucy said. There was a silence. "How come?" her father said. "I don't know," Lucy said. "To see what you do. I never get to see what you do." I want to see a dead thing, Lucy thought. "Well, okay. You'll have to be up early in the morning. I need to be there by six-thirty." "Okay." Melinda Rooney, a graduate of St. John's College, Annapolis, is currently living in Chicago, where she studies creative writing and teaches composition at the Univer~ sity of Illinois. 45 �THE ST. JOHN'S REVIEW 46 "Are you supposed to be using that knife in here all by yourself?" "Yeah." "Lucy?" "What?" "You really want to go," he said. She looked down and pulled the knife handle back with her finger then released it and watched it vibrate, embedded in the pumpkin. "Yeah," Lucy said. "I want to see." "It's not very pleasant," he said. "I know," she said, grabbing the stem of the pumpkin and pulling the top off. She held it above the newspapers, pulp and seeds hanging like sticky hair, then dropped it and stuck her hand in the hole and closed it in a slippery fist of thready pulp. Warm air rose from it. "I know," she said again, leaning down and speaking into the pumpkin. Her voice had a thick echo. "I just want to see how you do it." "Okay," her father said. He stood suddenly and said "Be careful with that," and walked away. When Lucy was ready for bed her mother sat her on the edge of the bed and looked at her forehead and said "Now stay out of your father's way tomorrow. This is his job. He doesn't have time for all your questions the way he does when he's at home." She finally looked her directly in the eyes. "All right?" Lucy nodded. "All right," she continued. "Just save them all up for when you get home, and he can answer them then. All right?" "Okay." "0 kay," said her mother. "All right," she said again, leaning stiffly over to kiss her. Lucy arranged her stuffed animals around her body in a tight embrace. There was a plush tiger that had belonged to her dead aunt, fixed in a lying-down position with a pink nose and plastic whiskers like fishing line. There was a hinged bear, stiff and stuffed with straw, with prickly fur and a roar box that mooed when you tilted him. There was a St. Bernard with patchy fur and one shredding cardboard eye. Lucy had seen him lying by the side of the road and made her mother stop the car so she could run back to get him. He'd been lying on his back, one ear thrown out above his head. His coat was clogged with gravel and old rain. He was clean now, but he still smelled like road. There was a grey felt snake six feet long, �ROONEY 47 When Lucy was sleepy she would feel the bed jump and wiggle, then settle into a rising and falling like it was travelling across water and her animals would sway and murmur with the movement and then it was the next morning but tonight she wasn't sleepy. The bed sat still as a stone and her animals were stiff and silent. Lucy did everything her father did. She followed him everywhere. When he plowed a garden she had marigold seeds in styrofoam cups on her windowsill, or beans, sprouting in little white curves. When he started writing books she'd begged for a toy typewriter. She'd sit on the toilet seat and watch him shave, then once took a razor blade from its waxy white paper and drew it across her cheek, laying it so neatly open it took almost five seconds to start bleeding. Lucy's father was sad the way Lucy was sometimes sad, the way she was sad at night. It was worst when animals died. And animals died a lot where they lived, in a country house on a high-speed road. He would sit in a chair and stare in front of him when kittens died, or dogs, or the little ducks or birds Lucy brought horne and fed sugar water from soaked QTips. They always died and he would sit and watch them and he would tell Lucy it was nature and that was the way things lived and died but once their eyes dropped closed or their heads sagged against torn-up towels in their cardboard boxes he would have to leave the room and he could barely speak for days. The first time this happened that Lucy really noticed it was when one of their cats had a kitten that was brain damaged and it cried from the time it carne out of her mother to the moment she died, almost a day later. The mother didn't know what to do. She would curl herself around it then jump up and walk away. Lucy's father put the whole litter into the wagon of his tractor and sat with them, drinking cold coffee. All the kitten could do was lie still and cry. He sat with them for an afternoon and when she finally died he took her out back in the palm of his hand and buried her. He dug the grave with a spoon. He carne into the kitchen and sat Lucy down at the table and explained how her brain hadn't got put together the right way and so she had died. "Nature takes care of things like this," he said, "and death is sort of a relief," and he got up and left the room. He carne horne one day and told Lucy's mother he'd found a horse that had been struck by lightning in a field and Lucy went upstairs and made beds for her animals out of shoeboxes and lined them up like hospital cots. �48 THE ST. JOHN'S REVIEW She asked her father later what he did with the horse and tried to imagine its insides. He had to be all black like the inside of a bag of charcoal, his blood hard and red like clay. He said they'd cut it open to make sure that's how it died. That was when she started wanting to see an autopsy. Lucy woke up in the cold dark and saw her father sitting in a little chair by the window. "Is it time to go?" Neither Lucy nor her animals had moved in her sleep. "Almost," he said, looking out the window. "What time is it?" "Quarter to five." "It's still dark," Lucy said. "I know." There was a noise in the air. Her father stood up and pushed the chair under its little desk. It was a wooden desk with a white metal top scattered with plastic letter magnets. Lucy hardly ever played with it anymore because she couldn't fit under it without lifting it off the floor with her knees. Her father looked at her, startled. "What?" he said. "I didn't say anything." ' "Oh. I'm sorry. I'm tired." "Oh." "We have to leave in about a half-hour," he said, standing up and· walking to the bedroom door. "So up." They had to walk a long way to the garage. Dull white frost sat in the grass and Lucy wore her father's sweater, tears standing in her eyes from the early cold. It hung to her knees. She bunched the sleeves in both fists and smelled her father all around her. There were buckets and a length of hose in the bed of the truck and the floor of the cab was covered with fine gravel from other men's boots. Thick heat filled the cab as they drove and Lucy started to talk. "What's wrong with this horse?" "A nervous system thing. Convulsions." "Oh." There was a pause. "Can't you fix it?" "Not really. I'm not even sure we'll be able to see anything once we open it up. This only shows up in tissue samples." "What only shows up?" "The problem. What's wrong." "Germs?" "Yeah," her father said, "Well, sort of." "How can you find little germs in all that horse?" "Microscopes." �ROONEY 49 The sun was up. Lucy remembered a movie her father had in the home movies box that was a filly running around a paddock with men circling around her. She had a funny, jerky run and her legs would fly out at odd angles and her head would toss back as though she were on strings. When she stood still she looked fine but she could never stand completely still. They were almost to the lab when Lucy said "How can you fix what's wrong if you have to kill him to find out what's wrong?" There was a long silence as they pulled through a humming metal gate. "So that maybe we'll be able to fix it next time," he said, pulling around a curve and letting the wheel slide through his fingers. "Oh," Lucy said. The building with the autopsy room in it was at the end of a long asphalt drive spotted with flattened dung and wet hay. Four men were huddled together in front of giant motor-driven doors. The doors were latched shut and bound with a thick chain like the doors to a big freezer. Lucy's father jumped out of the truck and half-ran, half-walked over to the men and they talked quietly, their words puffs in the cold air. Mist rose from the grass. The men turned and walked off in different directions and Lucy's father came back to the truck and opened the door. "Okay, hop out," he said and she slid down from the high seat. He kicked arcs in the gravel as he thought a minute. "Okay," he finally said. "I'll take you in and get you settled. It'll be a few minutes before you see me. I have to get dressed and talk to these fellows and get everything set. Will you be okay for a few minutes by yourself?" Lucy nodded, suddenly frightened. "You can't touch anything," he said. They walked over to the giant doors and he unlocked the chain lock with a silver key and pushed a button. Somewhere a motor jumped and sighed and the doors rattled open on their greasy tracks. He walked Lucy over to a long counter at the other side of the room where he lifted her up so that she was sitting next to a deep sink with a thin curving faucet. "I'll be back in a minute. I'm going to go find you something to play with," he said, and disappeared through a door. Its square glass window had a wire net running through it. The room was all gray cement and stainless steel; the floor had a silver drain in it for hosing away mess and the counter Lucy sat on was lined with glass jars of old white twisted guts soaking in formaldehyde. There was a table with an electric saw in it for cutting bone. There was a rusty hook hanging from a chain in the ceiling, and a steel �50 THE ST. JOHN'S REVIEW table with a groove down the middle. Lucy looked down at her feet, stuck the toe of her sneaker into a drawer handle and tried to pull it open but it was locked. There was a long yellow bone behind the faucet handles. Lucy's father came back through the door with both hands full. He stopped at the counter and lined up what he'd brought. The best were syringes, minus needles, wrapped in thick plastic. "You can play with these in the sink if you don't splash too much," he said, handing them to her. There were a few glass slides with little pink explosions of stained tissue and a magnifying glass with a heavy black handle. There were three or four heavy silver cylinders that her father said were cow magnets. He told her they put the magnets in cow stomachs and they would collect little metal things like nails or staples they picked up as they grazed so their stomachs wouldn't get cut. "Do you think this will keep you occupied for awhile?" "Yeah, definitely." "Okay, I'm going to get dressed. I'll be back in a couple of minutes." Lucy sat on the counter, banging her heels against the metal drawers. She picked up a cow magnet and walked around the room, touching it to metal things and pulling it off again. She went back to the sink and ran it half full of water and grew absorbed with the syringes, drawing water into the narrow plastic barrels and shooting it against the side of the sink. It made a ringing sound. When Lucy turned around there were three men in the room who were looking at her, startled. "My dad's getting dressed," she said. They were wearing baggy green clothes and paper slippers over their shoes that looked like the white paper frills on Thanksgiving turkeys. Her father came in dressed in the same way except he wore black rubber boots with thick red soles. Lucy emptied the sink then jumped to the counter and hooked her toe in a drawer pull. Her father sharpened a knife. The big freezer doors slid open again and two men in green with parkas on walked in with a white horse who jerked and wobbled like a mechanical toy. Even as she stood still some part of her was moving, twitching the wrong way and she stamped as Lucy's father walked to her carrying a syringe. Lucy thought suddenly of a toy she'd taken from her dentist's treasure chest years before- a hinged donkey that collapsed when you pushed a button under its little stand- and her father pinched a fold of skin at the base of the horse's neck and slid the needle in and after only a few seconds she sank to her knees and died on the tile floor, as though she'd �ROONEY 51 suddenly been overcome by sleep. He stepped back and away as she stretched out on her side. Lucy's hands sat cold in her lap while the giant iron hook was lowered from the ceiling and two men bound the mare's legs together with rope. They hooked the loop in the rope over the hanging hook and a motor whined loudly as the hook rose again, pulling her up and off the ground. The hook followed a track in the ceiling over to the big steel table and they lowered the horse onto it, her back fitting neatly into the groove. They released her legs and unwound the rope and a man came in with a hose and sprayed down the floor. Her white head hung upside down off the end of the table and her tail brushed the floor, its ends dampening. Lucy's father stood so she couldn't see his hands but by the way his back tensed she knew he was cutting her open and there was a sound like wet fabric tearing. Steam rose from her body and she spilled apart on the table and onto the floor. The guts smelled like wet cardboard boxes and were more colors than Lucy had expected- green, blue, yellow. Her father slid most of the horse out onto the floor like he was digging through a pile of laundry. No one was talking. She looked again at the electric saw:Jhe words "Butcher Boy" were spelled out in red and silver letters opposite the thick blade. "Dad?" Lucy said, sliding off the counter and standing with both hands fixed in drawer pulls. She stepped forward but her hands stayed cold and locked on the handles. "Dad?" She felt a thick pain under one eyebrow where she'd fallen once and hit the corner of a table. "Can I see what you're doing?" With blood on them she could suddenly see how white and thick his arms were and when he turned to face her she saw a gash of brown blood by his ear and under one eye. His mouth was fixed in a line when he said "What, Lucy," and she suddenly remembered when she'd gone with her mother to see him play ice hockey once and he had been standing in a little net cage wearing a white plastic mask and her mother had pointed and said, "Look! There's your father!" and she'd looked at the mask with its slanted black holes and screamed "That's not my father!" and a man on the bleacher in front of her jumped and tossed his popcorn in a yellow shower. She'd screamed until her mother picked her up and carried her to the car. She'd fallen asleep on the cold seat and refused to go into the house all night. "Lucy," he said now. "What." She felt the drawer pulls making ridges in her hands. �52 THE ST. JOHN'S REVIEW "You have blood on your face," she said. He looked at her. "I want to go back to t~e car," she said. "Lucy," he said, "I'm busy. Sit down." He turned back to the guts. "Dad!" she shouted. "Hey, John, I'll take her back to the car," one of the men said. "No," he said, "just . . . "He fixed the knife handle up in the horse's belly. He turned to Lucy. . "Lucy,'~ he s~id. "Sit down. You carne tCi see this. Now sit down." They stared at each other for a long minute that smelled of blood and formaldehyde and some dead, rotting thing. Then· she jumped back on the counter and held a cow magnet until it grew hot in her hand and her eyes had cleared and her father had emptied the horse. When it was over he walked out of the room and the men hosed what was left down the drain or out the door to an open dumpster. All that was left of the horse was a white shell, the ribs standing stiffly like hands reaching up, waiting to be given something. Lucy slid off the counter and looked at the slides with the magnifying glass, then looked up to see one of the men standing next to her. He had black hair cut so short the skin of his head looked blue and his arms were raw with harsh soap and goosebumps. He had black plastic glasses on with a string attached and he offered Lucy a piece of gum. "You okay?" he said. "Thanks." He opened his mouth to say something, then paused, cleared his throat, and looked away before he finally said "What do you think of all this?" "I don't know. It's okay. It's interesting." Her voice shook. He looked at her for a moment. He walked away, then stopped and turned around. "Do you want me to take you in to see your dad?" Lucy looked at him for a long minute, backed against the counter. "I guess," she said, not moving. "Or I could just wait for him here." "Come on," he said, walking back over to her and reaching out his hand. "I'll take you to him." She went reluctantly, feeling the pull of the man's arm in her shoulder. He took her through a heavy wood door into a room full of lockers and loud talking and cigarette smoke. Her father was at a sink, soaping his hands and scrubbing between his fingers with a little brush. He looked over at her. She sat down on a bench and the man who'd brought her in walked away without a sound. They stared at each other. �ROONEY 53 "What do you have in your mouth?" he finally said. "Gum." She paused. "That man gave it to me. He thought I was scared." There was a silence. "Give me one more minute," he said, and rinsed his hands and arms and disappeared into the lockers. He came out a few minutes later in his regular clothes. He didn't even pause in front of her but only said "Ready?" and took her wrist and walked back out into the autopsy room. He walked to the counter and gathered. up the syringes and. magnets and gave Lucy the slides to carry. The man' who'd given lier'the gum was coiling up the hose. ·-'""'·· ...· _, .. - . . Lucy's father smoked a cigarette and the ash grew long ·and dropped off as he drove. "Well?" he finally said. "What?" "What do you think?" "I'm not sure." "Was it what you expected?" "I'm not sure." "We couldn't see a thing," he said, rolling the window down an inch and thumbing the glowing butt out the window. "We'll have to wait for the tissue samples." "Oh." Lucy looked out the window. "Do you want to know what I found?" "I thought you said you couldn't see anything." There was a long silence. "Well, we won't know for sure until the tissue comes back," he said, almost to himself, then, his voice higher and a little afraid, "It's, it's kind of like when you carve your pumpkins, and you find one strange seed in the middle of all the regular ones. You know what I mean?" "I guess." It was quiet the rest of the way home. Right before they pulled into the driveway he slowed down, as though he were going to pull over, and looked at her. "Lucy?" She moved suddenly back against the door, feeling the arm rest in her back as he pulled the truck onto the shoulder and stopped. She saw his face change and he reached out to her and took the back of her neck gently in his warm hand. "Oh, Lucy," he said, his voice small. "What?" �54 THE ST. JOHN'S REVIEW There was a long silence. He sighed and took a knot of her hair in his hand and forced brightness into his voice. "Don't you ... don't you want to ask me any questions?" His thumb was rough over the pain in her eyebrow. He smoothed it over and over. Lucy said "No, not really," because she couldn't think of anything else to say. Her chest was full of hurt. He sighed and said "Okay. Maybe some other time then, right?" He pulled the truck into the driveway in a whisper of gravel. "Okay?" She looked at him for a long moment and he looked at her and she just said "Yeah, okay" and got out of the truck and walked into the house. �Petrella's Blood .......- Leo Pickens Zia Pina sat at the hearth stirring beans boiling in a pot over the fire when Bob finally came downstairs for breakfast. "Sleepyhead!" "Easy," Bob said. "I'm on vacation." "Did you sleep well?" Zia Pina asked. "You weren't too cold?" "No." "Sure?" She regarded her distant cousin carefully. "I'm sure," he said. She frowned. "Tonight we will give you another blanket." Zia Pina rose slowly. The old widow was barely five feet tall, but so fat that she needed a small stool to sit at the dinner table. She could then push her bulk underneath the table top and reach her food. "What legs," she muttered. "What legs. The spirit still works fine. It's just these legs that don't." She opened a cupboard and took down a coffee pot. Bob took the pot from her hands. "Sit down," he told her. "In America, men know how to make coffee. Understand?" Zia Pina hesitated, puzzled. "No!''. she said finally. She grabbed the coffee pot, and as she did so Salvatore entered the kitchen. He was tall, thin, and worn. Still handsome, his close-clipped mustache gave him a certain dignity, even though his clothes were dirty and ill-fitting, and his shoes, without laces, had holes at the seams. "My God! What are you doing?" he asked Zia Pina. "Why are you fighting with our guest?" Leo Pickens, a graduate of St. John's College, Annapolis, is Director of Athletics at the college. 55 �56 THE ST. JOHN'S REVIEW "I'm making the young man some coffee. What's it to you?" Salvatore put an arm around her shoulder. He drew back her black scarf. "Look," he said to Bob, and he pulled gently at her hair. "Look at this old woman. It's snowed in her hair!" "Ahhh ... " Zia Pina lifted a thick arm and cuffed him. "This old woman never dies! I'd give a million lire to anyone who could kill her. But it's impossible. She'll outlast us all!" Zia Pina's heavy body shook with laughter. A ridge of gum appeared where her upper teeth once were. "What kind of nephew says such things?" she said. "What kind of nephew?" "So you think you can make him some coffee?" "But of course~"--- "But you don't know how to make coffee." "Madonna," she said. "You think that because I'm old I can't do anything?" "Well," Salvatore said, grinning, "old bones do make the best soup." After his breakfast, Bob followed Salvatore outside. The morning was cool and softly radiant. Pasquale, Salvatore's brother-in-law, sat on a low table next to a fire burning under a barrel of water. He was sharpening a pair of long knives. Pasquale was small and stooped, with sunken cheeks. Bits of tobacco from his handrolled cigarettes clung to the corners of his mouth. Old as he appeared, Pasquale's movements were still spry and unlabored. Pasquale greeted Bob with something he could not understand. Pasquale's accent was thicker than that of the others. Bob looked to Salvatore for help. "Pasquale," Salvatore explained, "says you are just like all Americans." "How's that?" "Because you sleep late." Bob laughed. "Where did you learn this?" Pasquale's face contorted. "Huh?" The old man had as hard a time with Bob's textbook Italian as Bob did with Pasquale's dialect. Salvatore translated for him. "He says this isn't true." "But it is true," Pasquale insisted. "And how do you know?" Salvatore asked. "I just know," Pasquale said. "Ah!" Salvatore slapped Pasquale on the back of his head, and pushed his beret down onto his nose. Salvatore winked at Bob and held a finger to his temple. "This man is crazy." �PICKENS 57 "I know," Pasquale repeated. He adjusted his beret and continued to tend to his knives. "I just know." Salvatore checked the water in the barrel and then picked up the length of rope lying on the table. The three of them set off through a stony field planted with artichokes and olive trees. A spur of the nearby mountains was crowned by a village of white rock and faded rose-tiled roofs. Snow still topped the mountain's highest peak, Petrella. Ever since he was child, the mountain had loomed large in Bob's imagination. His father told stories of his childhood during the war, when his family, driven from their village, lived for a time in one of the hollows below the crest. During the bombing of Monte Cassino, his father climbed to the top of Petrella to watch the Allied bombardment of the monastery. The war had been a carnival for the boy, and the endless night of bombing, a spectacular shower of fireworks, never to be forgotten. To return to Italy and climb Petrella again was an undying wish of his father's. Smoke now curled upwards at the mountain's foot, where farmers were burning weeds and bramble that grew along the edges of their land. "What a stink!" Pasquale announced when the men reached the sty. The pig was an enormous gelder, its belly, cnest, and haunches caked with mud. It sniffed at their legs through the fence. Bob could feel the animal's warm breath through his jeans. "Does he have a name?" he asked. "Name?" asked Salvatore. "A name," Bob repeated slowly. "Does he have a name?" Salvatore shrugged. "Pig," he said. "We call this pig." "You have pigs in America?" Pasquale wanted to know. "Many pigs," Bob said. "More than in Italy." The Italians looked at each other with genuine surprise. "Really?" asked Pasquale. Bob nodded. Salvatore entered the pen, his feet sinking into the muck of straw and excrement. Getting on his knees, he slipped a noose around one of the pig's front legs, then passed the free end of the rope to Pasquale. Pasquale and Bob pulled while Salvatore pushed, his knees set heavily into the pig's flanks. The pig grunted deeply and fought them in the mud. Slowly, the men muscled the pig toward the gate. When the pig's head smacked violently against the door jamb, it suddenly squealed, and the noise echoed through the valley. The pig struggled against them harder than before, but the three of them finally shoved the animal out of its pen. The pig grew calm, eagerly nosing the artichokes on either side of the path as Pasquale led it slowly �THE ST. JOHN'S REVIEW 58 with the rope. Salvatore lightly jabbed at the pig's flanks every now and then with the fallen branch of an olive tree. "Have you ever done this before?" Salvatore asked. "No," Bob said, "but- I thought you hit it on the head first." "Before the war, in the time of Mussolini, we did it like that. Then we could not kill our own pigs. We had to take them to a butcher and the meat would be given to everybody. So we did it at night and hit the pig on the head because then it wouldn't make noise when you cut its throat." Salvatore stopped and turned around. He pointed at the mountain with . the olive branch. "On the other side of Petrella is Monte Cassino." "I know," Bob said. "Po rca miseria!" Salvatore cursed, and he began to teli.Bob of an incident during the war, when the front stretched from Formia on the coast, through the nearby village of Ansonia, to Monte Cassino. Ausonia was used as a German command post by General Kesselring. The people's farms were destroyed by the continual Allied bombing. Bob nodded. Salvatore's description matched what his father had told him. There was hardly a thing to eat, Bob knew. Snow was carried down from Petrella for water. One day, the Germans garrisoned in Ansonia were sent out to round up all the people in the countryside. They were to be sent to a concentration camp in Rome. Salvatore was a boy at the time, and his family, along with several other families, including Bob's father's, had made shelter together in a stable. This was where the German soldier found them. As they were leaving, the German spotted Bob's father returning to the stable through the field with a Polish deserter. The German took aim and told them to halt. Bob's father immediately dropped behind a pile of rocks. The Pole froze. The soldier threatened to shoot the Pole if he did not find the boy at once. Zia Pina, then a stout matron in her prime, began pleading with the German. She suddenly grabbed his rifle, and another of their group crashed a stone into the soldier's face. The German tried to flee, but he was chased down and stabbed to death. "It was about this big," said Salvatore, holding up his pinkie. "What?" Bob asked. "The knife we had," Salvatore said. "We had to stab him again and again it was so small." Salvatore watched Bob's reaction carefully, "Your father never told you this?" "My father?" asked Bob with sudden revulsion. He shook his head. Salvatore smiled nervously. He shrugged, then continued with his story: the next day, a German patrol came looking for the missing soldier. The Italians protested that they knew nothing. The Captain of the patrol warned them that he would begin shooting one of them a minute until the soldier �PICKENS 59 was found. Zia Pina confessed and they unearthed the body. The Captain was so enraged by the mutilation of his man that he immediately executed ten of them. The rest were taken prisoner. But just as they were departing for the concentration camp in Rome, Ansonia was bombed by the Americans, and many escaped into the hills during the confusion of the raid, among them Salvatore, Bob's father, and Zia. "The streets of Ausonia are made of stone," said Salvatore. "The Ger- mans wore these steel-soled boots so they could never catch us in the street." He laughed, and slapped Pasquale on the back as they led the pig up to the table near the fire in the yard. "Whaq" asked Pasquale. "The war," said Salvatore. "What a time to be young, eh Pasquale?" Pasquale spit. "Porca Dio," he muttered. The pig's mouth was tied shut, and the heaving bulk was lifted onto the table, its head dangling over one edge. Pasquale tied the hocks, and setting his boot into the pig's rear, pulled its hind legs straight. Salvatore directed Bob to put his weight upon the pig's mid-section and hold taut the rope binding the front legs. The pig's frightened breathing wheezed from its muzzled nose and mouth. Zia Pina appeared with a steaming pot of water, which she poured over the pig's neck while Salvatore cleaned away the dirt. She set the empty pot under the pig's head, and Salvatore scraped the blunt edge of a knife back and forth slowly along the pig's gorge, searching for the vein, before finally digging it forcefully into the pig's throat. He twisted the blade back and forth, and the blood poured across Salvatore's wrist and splattered into the pot. The pig shuddered and twisted, crying mutedly through its clamped jaws, blood spurting with the animal's convulsions. The pig's breathing gradually slackened as the blood drained from its body. Suddenly, the mass lunged. Then it lay still. Zia Pina took the pot of blood into the house. Pasquale poured steaming water from the barrel over the carcass, while Salvatore scraped his knife across the body. Bristle and skin peeled off as easily as bark from a sycamore. The two men worked quickly, without speaking. When they were finished, the carcass lay white and cold, like a slab of marble. There was the stench of hair and flesh smoldering in the fire. The corpse was hung upside down from a chain secured to a rafter in the garage. Blood trickled down the jaws onto the pavement, spreading slowly under the soles of Salvatore's laceless shoes as he cut into the loins. The layers of white fat, like heavy folds of warm curd, yielded easily. He continued the incision down the belly, across the chest, and along the throat. He cut open the neck and yanked out the esophagus. Salvatore then opened up the belly, which gave off a humid, fecal odor, and he gathered and pulled �THE ST. JOHN'S REVIEW 60 the coils of intestine and stomach out of the body cavity onto a wide board that Zia Pina held. The body was propped open wide to dry with staves. Finally, Pasquale draped the hanging corpse in a bed sheet to keep the flies away. The only part that showed was the pig's head. Its small eyes were closed. The mouth gaped. And the skin of the face, with all the stress of the gutted corpse upon it, was creased by thick wrinkles that made the gutted pig appear as if it were smiling. Bob was still something of a curiosity to his relatives at lunch that afternoon. They watched him closely as he ate. The kitchen was warm and smoky. There was the smell of tripe simmering on the stove, and Bob thought of the dinners at his grandmother's when he was a little boy. "I haven't had such good sauce since my grandmother died," Bob said to Zia Pina. "If you can cook like this all the time, why don't you come to America with me." "Ah," she groaned. "I'm on my way to the grave." "But Zia," Bob said. "Don't worry. We have graves in America, too." She began to put more pasta into Bob's bowl. He held back her hand. "I've had enough," he said. She frowned. "But you just said you like it." "I do." She gave him another portion and pointed at his dish with her big wooden spoon. "Eat!" she commanded. Pasquale poured Bob another glass of wine. "And drink," he said. "For he who does not drink, does not eat." Bob took another sip of the heavy red wine. "What do you eat in America?" Zia Pina asked. "What's America? What's America?" Pasquale interrupted loudly. "Hot dogs! Ketchup! And Coca Cola!" Pasquale laughed and repeated ''What's America? What's America?" He then asked Bob, "Do you like it here?" "Very much," Bob answered. "Here life is ugly," said Salvatore. He sat drained and limp in his chair. The wine had made him dark and moody. He raised his hand. It was large, black, and dirty, like the burl of a tree root. "Life is ugly here." "Madonna!' Zia Pina exclaimed. She began to pass around clean plates. "Why do you have to talk in such a way" "Why?" he said. "Because we work and eat and sleep until one day we die." "Be quiet!" said Zia Pina, and she clanked her serving spoon in Salvatore's plate as she gave him a portion from the pot she had taken from the refrigerator. There was a silence as she continued to serve the table. �PICKENS 61 "What are we having now?" Bob asked. "Try it first," Zia Pina said. Bob took a bite. The three of them watched him expectantly. "What is it?" he asked. "Do you like it?" "What is it?'; asked Bob again. "The pig's blood," she said. Bob's throat constricted. He looked up, trying hard not to betray his disgust. He avoided Zia Pina's eyes, and gazed past her, out the kitchen window, at the mountains in the near distance. The slopes of Petrella were ruined stairs, abandoned terraces of fig, olive, and orange trees. A marble quarry deeply scarred the mountainside yellow and beige. Bob looked back down at his plate, took another bite, and said through his mouthful, "It's good." He waved for Zia Pina to put more onto his plate. "Ah!" Salvatore and Pasquale nodded with approval. They clinked their glasses against the wine bottle and swallowed their wine in a gulp. "Yes," Salvatore said, and he smiled. "He is one of us." ��Three Poems Robert J. Levy Robert J. Levy is a graduate of St. John's College, Annapolis. These poems are reprinted from his collection of poems entitled Whistle Maker (published by the Anhinga Press of Tallahassee, Florida), which received the Anhinga Prize for Poetry for 1986. Last year Mr. Levy was awarded a Creative Writing Fellowship by the National Endowment for the Arts. 63 �THE ST. JOHN'S REVIEW 64 In Sickness Three weeks married to our symptoms and no change in sight. Hot flashes baffle us by day. Sudden chills confuse us through the night. Even sickness, however, can begin to look like health in time, and ours, despite its fever sweats and rheums, has become domesticated to a pattern of remissions, always brief, that allows us both to spell the other for awhile before the next attack begins. Monday you read me Baudelaire in bed. Tuesday it is my turn to bring you meus/i and a peach. As the days wear on we trade off the thermometer between us like an Olympian's baton: We run our relay race to see who can take care of whom the best and for how long. We just can't do enough for each other. Frankly, all this fevered giving becomes quite tiresome after three weeks sick in bed, and soon we feign all our infirmities- withered hands, a vile catarrh . . . anything to inject a little selfishness into our lives. What parity there is in marriage and disease is slowly weakened to the point of no return. Still, we are left much less alone somehow, in love once more with the mundanity of being well, having returned, at long last, to our chronic norm. �LEVY 65 The Tristan Chord More alone with this music than ever before I find myself thinking of you, of that other loneliness, and of how you always had the words for everything, the way you once called a Beethoven quartet "the scraping of horses' tails on cats' bowels." No doubt you could have talked a rainbow into grayness. How many times have you walked out from the opera humming arias like souvenirs? What you take away with you is candy: deliciously oblique and self-contained, a thing that comforts by confining music to the boundaries of conversation. But if you would only listen, quietly, you would hear ... nothing. Not music but music's aspiration to a silence so complete whatever you might say about it would be, pathetically, about yourself. This is the Tristan chord. It melts like ice in the palm of a word. Like a shell's susurrus, it sings of where it came from, where it's going, but not of what it is. And where do you fit into all of this? You don't. You never did. And that's the core of it. I could tell you how your words have broadened my experience of art, of life, etc. . .. They haven't changed a thing. Lately, I find myself rehearsing the 'Ifistan chord in all its variations. I've been thinking how you and I are like two notes upon a stave, parts of a tune but not ourselves a tune. I've been thinking how words escape us- or we from them. I've been thinking that the search for cadence takes a very long time. �THE ST. JOHN'S REVIEW 66 On the Pythagorean Theorem If we listen to those who wish to recount ancient history, we may find some of them referring this theorem to Pythagoras and saying that he sacrificed a brace of oxen in honor of his -from Prod us discovery. Just as a bell curve is a kind of breast with meaning, or graphed hyperbolae can represent the coy geometry of lust (the soft curves of infinite approach and loss), so too I can believe that when Pythagoras deduced the theorem, his sacrifice of oxen to the gods was not prompted by piety alone. Was it for the sake of gods the dumb beasts were spitted, charred and sent ethereal, to bovine heaven? Did he believe the theorem had descended, courtesy of some mathematical Prometheus, from on high? I would like, instead, to think that the electric "click" of certainty, flooding his mind like light into a room where only dark had been before, was like the voice of a lovely woman reclaiming him into the world. At once abstract and visceral, the "ah ha!" of sudden knowing was like the "ahhh ... " of sexual release, and knowledge struck the belly of his mind with the neat certainty of wine. I would like to think he understood that truth was not otherworldly, that a fact may reek of burning meat and its proper offering must be the smoke from flesh on fire, the smell of food and sex, the aroma (corrupt, delicious) of knowledgethe smoldering thigh pieces of the beast. \ �The Analytic Art of Viete: A Review Essay Richard Ferrier Francois Viete: The Analytic Art: Nine Studies in Algebra, Geometry, and Trigonometry from the Opus restitutae mathematicae analyseos, seu Algebra Nova. Translated by T. Richard Witmer. Kent, Ohio: Kent State University Press, 1983. As knowledge of the classical languages ceases to be numbered among the tools essential to the educated man, it becomes more desirable to have suitable translations of significant authors who wrote when those languages were the common possession of the learned. While this work has long been done and redone in the so-called humanities, it has always proceeded at a slower pace in mathematics and natural science, so much so that when the new program was established at St. John's College over forty-five years ago, heroic efforts were demanded to produce English texts of such central works as the Conics and the Almagest. These translations, the hasty offspring of necessity, have remained without competition until very recently, while every year sees new versions of Platonic dialogues or classical tragedies. Among the mathematical classics included in the new program was Fran9ois Viele's Introduction to the Analytical Art, which J. Winfree Smith first translated for use in the mathematics tutorial. Mr. Smith's version Richard Ferrier, an alumnus of St. John's College, is on the faculty of Thomas Aquinas College, Santa Paula, California. 67 �68 THE ST. JOHN'S REVIEW is included as an appendix to the translation of Jacob Klein's Greek Mathematical Thought and the Origin of Algebra.' Mr. Klein argued there that Viete's new algebra, or "specious logistic," as he called it, was the first truly symbolic mathematics and that careful study of Viete's achievement and its development at the hands of Descartes and others would shed light on the symbolic character of modern thought, including the number concept and the notion of scientific law. Those who are skeptical of this interpretation of Viete's work must nonetheless acknowledge that he was a great mathematician. F. Ritter, who wrote the most complete survey of Viete's life and works, accorded him the impressive title, "inventeur de l'algebre moderne," and the opinion of Augustus De Morgan, writing in the Penny Cyclopedia of 1843, put the same claim in this vivid language: If a Persian or a Hindu, instructed in the modern European algebra, were to ask, "who, of all individual men, made the step which most distinctly marks the separation of the science which you now return to us from that which we delivered to you by the hands of Mohammed Ben Musa?" the answer must be-VIETA. The present volume includes the Introduction as well as eight treatises on various mathematical topics. These last, which treat of the theory of equations, multiple and partial angle formulae, solutions to cubic and biquadratic equations, and the application of specious logistic to Geometry, are here published in English for the first time. In performing this labor, Mr. Witmer has facilitated the study of Viete's thought by those who have an interest in his mathematical achievements and philosophical significance but lack the Latin necessary to read the often difficult and dense original text. Such readers may well have been puzzled by Viete's tantalizingly brief discussion of procedure and aims in the Introduction, but they have heretofore been unable to interpret that text by comparison with the execution in detail of the program it enunciates. In particular, Viete proposes a threefold analytical art comprising Zetetic, Poristic, and Exegetic or Rhetic, but readers have not been able to agree on what precisely is the nature or function of each part. Poristic has presented the greatest obscurity, but there are doubtful matters in the other two as well. Several of the texts here translated contain the evidence by which these questions can be settled. Exegetic, or the art of actually exhibiting the unknown magnitude in a geometrical problem, is the subject of two of the treatises, A Canonical Survey of Geometrical Constructions and A Supplement to Geometry. The latter contains Viete's only references to Poristic (pp. 395-97) and gives an example of a complete synthetic solution to the problem of inscribing �FERRIER 69 a regular heptagon in a circle. The meaning of such terms as "specious logistic" and "zetetic" will be clarified by their use throughout all the treatises, but especially the Preliminary Notes on Symbolic Logistic (Latin: Ad logisticen speciosam notae priores) and the Five Books of Zetetica. Viete's apparent identification of Algebra with the whole of Analysis and his relation to Descartes can be examined more fruitfully through these texts, and the notion of a geometrical algebra, which has been used to describe the second book of Euclid's Elements, can be clarified. Particularly interesting in this last connection is the comparison of Elements II, Viete's Survey, and Paolo Bonansoni's Geometrical Algebra translated and published for the first time by R. Schmidt.' And now, with a sense of playing the odious part of Celano at this banquet, I must warn the reader against uncritically falling to. Mr. Witmer's translations are so seriously flawed that the reader cannot trust them in just those places where the greatest interest lies; and, though he may use them, the reader would be well advised to consult Mr. Smith's earlier and superior version of the Introduction and, if possible, the Latin original.' Some of these flaws are the fault of the publisher. The numerous solecisms in Greek orthography are annoying but they are no real obstacle to understanding. Others seem to come from a lack of mathematical insight. 4 Readers with knowledge of Euclid will not be misled by hearing the vertex angle of an isosceles triangle called a "vertical angle," though they may be irritated at the irregular usage. The unfamiliar technical term "mesographic" is not synonymous with "cube duplication," as a footnote gives us to understand. It is rather to be rendered as "mean finding" or, as Witmer himself awkwardly puts it, "the discovery of two mean continued proportionals between two given ones [sic]." (p. 395) The most serious of the deficiencies seem to arise from Witmer's having rejected the possibility that changes in notation imply a qualitative change in the object of mathematics or in the mode in which it is conceived. These are precisely the points that Klein investigated, concluding that Viele was a revolutionary figure in the history of mathematics. Witmer's neglect of these considerations shows up most clearly in his avoidance of all English words that suggest the Latin "species" or the Greek "Eliioc;". Viete calls his new algebra "Specious Logistic" because it "is exhibited through the species or forms of things." The last phrase is, in Latin, "species seu rerum formas," an expression that surely is meant to remind the educated reader of Plato and especially Aristotle, who uses exactly equivalent language.' Could anyone guess at these echoes in Witmer's rendition (p. 17): "Symbolic logistic employs symbols or signs for things"? In fairness I should point out that here, and in various places through the �70 THE ST. JOHN'S REVIEW book, Witmer does give the Latin and, where they exist, various French translations as well as Smith's. But why should the more interesting and accurate rendition be relegated to a footnote? There are numerous indications that when Vifte uses "species" and its cognates, he intends to sug- gest to the reader the philosophic use of these unusually weighty terms. The related word genus is used throughout the Introduction in such a way as to force these reflections upon the reader, most emphatically in Viete's statement in Chapter I of the effect of the law of homogeneity, which he calls "the prime and perpetual law of equations." There he employs the significant expression "Solemnis magnitudem ex genere ad genus vi sua proportionaliter adscendentium vel descendentium series seu scala," which Witmer colorlessly renders "a formal series or scale of terms ascending or descending proportionally from class to class in keeping with their nature." Compare with this version Klein's "venerable series or scale of magnitudes ascending or descending from genus to genus ... " or Smith's "series or ladder, hallowed by custom, of magnitudes ascending or descending by their own nature from genus to genus." I am reminded by this text not only of the hierarchy of species and genus in scholastic philosophy but also of Jacob's dream (Genesis 28, 12), where we· find a ladder "scalam" with angels of God "ascendentes et desc.endentes per earn." Is it on this scale that the heights of heaven are to be ascended? The founders of modernity, as readers of the tradition know, are not unwilling to portray their project as an assault on the heavens through Promethean or even Satanic metaphor. The whole Introduction, it will be recalled, cadences with the proud boast "NULLUM NON PROBLEMA SOLVERE": to leave no problem unsolved. That the transformation of the mathematical meaning of species or Ellioc;. particularly in its Diophantine use, is a starting point for Viete's own specious logistic is most plainly supported by Viele's claim that Diophantus used species calculation but hid this fact in order to excite admiration at his wit and ingenuity. This means that Viete understands himself not as innovator but as renovator, which explains the "restitutae" in the title, the comparison to finding "fossil gold" in the dedicatory letter to his patroness, and his plain statement there that his new algebra is "in truth, old." He has cleansed and restored the art of algebra as he had received it from the Arabs by attending to certain clues and traces of a pure original algebra found in the procedure of Diophantus in the Arithmetica and the method of analysis as it is discussed by Pappus, Apollonius, Theon, and, in a way, Plato. There are strong reasons, therefore, against translating the conclusion of chapter 5 of the Introduction so as to suggest that Diophantus did not have specious logistic and that in consequence he is to be admired, �FERRIER 71 as it were, for operating under a handicap. Witmer's version runs thus: [In his Arithmetic Diophantus] assuredly exhibits this method in numbers but not in symbols, for which it is nevertheless used. Because of this his ingenuity and quickness of mind are the more to be admired." (p. 27) Compare this with Smith: [Diophantus] presented it as if established by means of numbers and not also by species (which, nevertheless, he used) in order that his subtlety and skill might be the more admired. 6 In translating the Survey and the Supplement it is important to keep the language of specious logistic separate from that of classical geometry. Like Toomer's otherwise admirable Almagest, Witmer's Survey treats the operations of algebra as simply equivalent to construction of figures and composition or decomposition of ratios. Th illustrate, the expression "rectangulam sub CF, FG" (Prop. 9, Survey) which harkens back to Euclid's "To urro Tiiiv BA, Ar rreptex6~evov 6p9oyrovwv," should be translated "the rectangle contained by CF and FG." In Vi~te it signifies a definite individual rectangle. Witmer translates it as CFxFG," turning it into part of an equation, for example "CF'+(CFxFG)= DF'." This goes beyond translation and becomes, intentionally or not, an interpretation of the relation between Algebra and Geometry. Both the Survey and the Supplement concern themselves with just this relation, the bond between geometry and algebra. This is what makes them part of exegetic, the third part of the Analytic art. When the equation of the magnitude which is being sought has been set in order, the rhetic or exegetic art ... performs its function ... in regard to lengths, surfaces, and solids, if it is necessary to show the magnitude itself. And in the latter case, the analyst appears as a geometer by actually carrying out the work in imitation of the like analytical solution7 ••• the skillful geometer, though a learned analyst, conceals this fact and presents and explicates his problem as a synthetic one: ... 8 It is thus no accident that Viele's exegetical treatises employ the language of classical, synthetic, geometry. This could also be shown by a more detailed examination of the diction and structure of the propositions they contain. Viete was here writing in the manner of Euclid. With such texts the pattern for modern English translations ought to be Sir Thomas Heath's translation of Euclid's Elements. It is one thing, however, to show that Viele �72 THE ST. JOHN'S REVIEW gave these works a geometrical character and content, and another to uncover his reasons for doing so. Perhaps it will not be out of place to attempt an answer to this question by sketching the scheme of the simpler of the two, the Survey. There are three parts to this text. In the first eight propositions, Viete offers constructions as geometrical interpretations of various algebraic operations involving terms of the first and second genera, or degree, as we would say. Proposition 6, for example, is a problem: "Given two straight lines, to find a third proportional." In the 1646 edition, this enunciation is followed by a line set in different type, apparently serving as a kind of title for the proposition following. It reads: "The Operation of Division." The next five propositions divide into two groups. First Viete proves three theorems on continued proportion. These theorems involve lines forming squares and rectangles suitable for interpreting the three types of quadratic equations that have at least one positive real root.' Next come two problems by which the line or lines that interpret the unknown term in the equation are found. In the last seven propositions, Viete accomplishes for certain simple biquadratic equations what these five do for the quadratics. Everything in the Survey is ordered to the problems that construct the line interpreting the unknown. Viete titles such a problem the "mechimice" of its equation, because in it he exhibits the device, the standard and regular procedure, by which the root of such an equation can be exhibited as a line constructed geometrically. Unlike Descartes, Viete does not regard these lines as solutions to the equations. It is in his Zetetica (e.g., in Zetetica III, prop. l) that Viete gives the properly algebraic solutions, not, interestingly, as formulae, but rather more in the mode of data stated in words. Why did Viete give the roots in two distinct ways? In particular, why did he write treatises giving the geometric construction rather than rest in the zetetic, or algebraic, solution? The answer lies in the fact that Specious Logistic, though of the highest universality, remains for Viete an auxiliary procedure. He has yet to make the object of the most universal method the highest object. He thinks a mathematician should proceed in something like this manner: A traditional geometric question is proposed, such as the division of a given line into mean and extreme ratio. This problem is expressed as a quadratic equation in one unknown. After suitable simplifications have been carried out in accordance with the stipulations governing specious logistic, the equation reduces to one of three standard forms. The geometer then consults the Survey for the construction that corresponds to an equation of that form. The resulting line solves the geometrical problem. The geometrical problem, I say, not the equation. �FERRIER 73 The whole figure drawn, including the line sought, explicates or interprets the equation. A detailed example of this procedure, minus the analysis that yields the equation (Viete is just as cunning as the ancients here), as applied to the inscription in a circle of the regular heptagon, completes the Supplement. Viete is thus more firmly rooted in the ancient tradition than one might think from reading Mr. Klein's account. For him as for Aristotle, quantity exists only as the magnitudes of geometry or the numbers of arithmetic. Geometry calls on algebra in answering its own proper questions and translates the aid into its own proper solutions. The equation as such is not something whose solution is of primary interest. There is therefore no excuse for the following translation of the first sentence in the Survey: "This is a review of the rules of geometric construction by which all equations not exceeding the quadratic can be readily solved.mo In particular, there is no excuse for translating "explicentur" as "can be solved." There is also no excuse for translating "consectarium ad mechanicen" as "Corollary on the Geometric solution" of an equation. This translation may lead readers into the mathematical details with only occasional misdirection, but with respect to the interesting and problematical features of Viete's work it could well have taken as its motto, NULLUM NON PROBLEMA OBSCURARE. Notes 1. Translated by Eva Brann (Cambridge: M.l.T. Press, 1968). 2. Annapolis: Golden Hind Press, 1985. 3. All of Viete's extant works are now available in a facsimile reprint of the 1646 edition, with foreword and index by Joseph E. Hofmann (Hildesheim and New York: Georg Olms Verlag, 1970). 4. For example, D should be corrected to 2D on p. 416, and an editor should not keep silent on the related matter of Van Schooten's erroneous emendation of the inference concerning the size of the angles in proposition XVII of the Supplement (p. 405). 5. Physics 193a31. 6. GMT, p. 345. Witmer's error is less excusable in that it also demands bad Latinity; "quibus tamen usus est" simply cannot mean "for which it is nonetheless used." 7. This text misled Klein into thinking that exegetic merely translates into geometry the already resolved equation- something that becomes �74 THE ST. JOHN'S REVIEW possible after the first few pages of Descartes's Geometrie but which is never done in the work of Viete. (GMT, pp. 167-69, 164) 8. Introduction, Chapter VII (GMT pp. 346-47). 9. The three types of quadratics are x' + px = r', x'- px = r', and px-x' = r'. These are the forms of the quadratic as Viete received the algebraic tradition from the Arabs. Even Descartes holds to this classification in the Geometrie, rejecting the form -px-x'= r' because its only real roots are negative. I 0. The Latin runs ''Effectiones Geometricas quibus equationes omnes quae quadratorum metam non excedunt, commode explicentur, ita canonice recenseo." I offer the following: "Those geometrical results by which all equations that do not exceed the bounds set by squares may be conveniently explicated, I list in standard order as follows." �The English War and Peace: Paul Scott's Raj Quartet Eva Brann I. The Post-final Novel II. The Philistine Satan III. The Respectful Englishman IV. The Telling Image I. The Post-final Novel I want to begin with a judgment of luminous wrong-headedness. It has appeared twice in the pages of a widely-read weekly book review: The Raj Quartet is one of the longest, most successfully rendered works of 19th century fiction written in the 20th century. It is, of course, meant to be put-down, not praise. What is wrong-headed is the prank played with chronology. Time serves us in no other way than as an imperturbable order of succession. Dates of existence give us the only hard ordering frame we have for the world in its going. Consequently if a novel was completed in 1975, it is a contemporary novel, and should be counted as such. And that is, of course, precisely what is illuminating in the dictum above. It implies that citizenship in one's time does not accrue by mere reason of date of birth but must Eva Brann, a Thtor at St. John's College, Annapolis, has been writing review articles regularly for the Review. 75 �76 THE ST. JOHN'S REVIEW be earned by passing a critical test: The honor of being here and now is bestowed by the craft of critics. With respect to novels this perverse notion, that the times accredit the work rather than the work the times, takes potently concrete shape. One would think that all the books recognized as novels come to establish a genre: the fairly lengthy prose fiction. For such an ex post facto genre the exception proves the rule, and so deviations are readily accommodated: There are novels all in rhyme (e.g., Vikram Seth, Golden Gate), non-fiction novels that are meticulous reportage (e.g., 1\uman Capote's In Cold Blood), and novels which are one-fifteenth as long as others (cf. Robbe-Grillet's In the Labyrinth and War and Peace). In criticism, however, instead of novels there appears something called "The Novel." It behaves not as a genre but as a species: It has a line of evolution within which throw-backs like The Raj Quartet are discernible. Since it has become maladaptive, it is probably heading toward extinction, to join the dinosaurs. It is on this evolutionary hypothesis that what David Lodge calls the sermons on the text "Is the novel dying" (38) have become a preoccupation of criticism. There is some agreement about the change in environment to which The Novel is failing to adapt. It is Reality that is killing The Novel (5), or rather the transmutation of reality, not from one state of affairs to another, but out of itself altogether: "Reality is no longer realistic," as Norman Mailer says in The Man Who Studied Yoga. What this paradox is intended to mean is that there is no common phenomenal world anymore; our environment has gone surreal. Hence it requires a new novel, one that experiments with "fabulating" techniques: inversions of fact and fiction, randomness, surrealisms both vulgar and sophisticated, and bottomless subjectivism. Now there has got to be something wrong with this vision of things. That the phenomenal world has illusionistic aspects is simply the wisdom of the ancients, and it is not what is meant here. That our contemporary world has been largely transmogrified into second nature, so that primary beings are harder to find, and that the traditional centers are giving way to fragmented perspectives- these and all the other much-debated features of modernity may make the genealogy of "Reality" harder to trace. But surely the notion that reality is over is a decision and not a finding, a sort of deliberate self-spooking. To put it another way: the coroners of Reality are also its assassins. Oddly enough, among the motives for writing finis to the traditional novel one powerful purpose is precisely the establishment of a purer, sharper reality. Recall that "reality" is Latin for "thinginess." Robbe-Grillet's �BRANN 77 ''chosisme" is intended to disinfect things and purify them of their human meaning, so as to restore their pristine independence. Either way, what is clear is that the putatively dying novel is the socalled "realistic novel." What would be a good description of this, essentially the traditional novel? To begin with, realism, the usual critical term, is not quite accurate, for the great traditional novels are full of psychic and surreal episodes. There is, however, a delineation by Iris Murdoch of a novel of tolerance which comes closer to the novel that is said to have come to its end: A great novelist is essentially tolerant, that is, displays a real apprehension of persons other than the author as having a right to existence and to have a separate mode of being which is important and interesting to themselves. I must say that the defense of the characters inhabiting great novels in terms of their civil rights gives me a little pause. (Murdoch is defining the great novel as an expression of Classical Liberalism.) Moreover, tolerance seems a faint term for the affirmative sympathy great authors bestow on their characters. Nonetheless, "real persons more or less naturalistically presented" as being "mutually independent centers of significance" are indeed to be found in the works of the novelists she mentions, among whom are Jane Austen and Tolstoy. Now here is a huge claim: Paul Scott belongs in this company. Let me begin to defend this claim with respect first to tolerance and then to Tolstoy. I shall use as a small preliminary example Scott's treatment of a character who really requires a lot of toleration: Captain Jimmy Clark, one of the old boys of Chillingborough, the public school that plays a fatal role in the book. Scott himself describes him in a later essay as a "wretched cad of a chap," who, regrettably, succeeds in seducing Sarah, the major woman of the novel. Yet for all his sexual cockiness and brutal candor, it is he, and not the gentlemanly chaps, who has the ear for fine classical sitar playing. That too is in Scott's account. It figures in, though it does not outweigh Clark's coarseness toward Sarah. Tolerance does not preclude fine moral reckoning (see III). As for Tolstoy, the comparison was suggested in passing by David Rubin, whose brief account of the novel is laden with insights. He was corrected in a review by Lawrence Graver, who proposes that Trollope rather than Tolstoy is the proper counterpart. Now I am a loyal Trollope lover, but this comparison seems to me absurd. Trollope is said to have had more than an amateurish knowledge of English parliamentary politics, and he certainly has a wide and nuanced knowledge of English types. But who �78 THE ST. JOHN'S REVIEW was ever shaken by the fateful pathos of his setting or his people, as one might be by Scott's? On the contrary, Ttollope's world is the quintessence of snugness. That is why he was so fervently revived during the Second World War. No, the comparison with Tolstoy is much more telling. First, War and Peace and The Raj Quartet are both long-breathed and large-scened, though they do differ from each other-as the Russia of 1812 differs from the Anglo-India of 1942. Tolstoy's Russians offer indomitable though inertial resistance to the Western invader of their large land; the British depicted by Scott subjugate an immense continent with half-hearted sedulousness. That apotheosis of warm-hearted Russian girlhood, Natasha, finds her entirely lovable completion in bossy, dowdy houswifehood. The ungainly, inhibited English girl Sarah, on the other hand, finds at the end rele~se from family and a dawning love of her own. In both novels these consummations take place in the short epilogue of peace- deadly in the Indian case-that succeeds the great war. The Russian book is elemental and golden, overlaid with the sheen of a serene love of the land; the English book is complex and melancholy, ridden with moral scruple, decline, and loss of faith in England. Accordingly Tolstoy and Scott, who both reflect on history, have opposite views of it. Tolstoy thinks that it is only the integral of very small human differentials, which consequently make all the difference. Scott, sensitive to India's immensity, emphasizes the frailty of human action in the face of history's "moral drift" (1987, 13). Nonetheless, they and their novels end alike, with the children: Just as, in the last pages of War and Peace, Andre Bolkonsky's son Nikolai fervently promises to make his dead father proud, so The Jewel in the Crown ends with an episode that postdates the quartet as a whole. Parvati, the lovely young daughter of a dead English mother and a self-exiled Indian father, goes off to her music lesson. She will grow up to be a gifted keeper of the great tradition, the Indian music that her mother had just begun to understand. Putting The Raj Quartet in Tolstoyan company implies of course that it is a great novel. Let me specify the elements that seem to me to make it so: (l) First there is indeed that widely affirmative mode Murdoch calls tolerance. Elizabeth Bowen says somewhere that "a novelist must be imperturbable." Scott, on the other hand, advises the novelist: "You must commit yourself" (1987, 79). It appears to be the fusion of these, serene engagement and subtle wholeheartedness, that is the psychic mode of great novels. (2) The great novels are full of resolved complexity. The net they knit is enormous, but there are no dropped stiches or loose ends. The prime example in the Quartet is the underground life of one of the two precipitating characters, Parvati's occulted father, Hari Kumar, the Angli- �BRANN 79 cized Indian with whom Daphne Manners falls in love and who is accused of her rape. He vanishes from view after the first book, re-emerges in a harrowing interrogation in the second, only to disappear, as it seems, for good. His absence hovers over the second half of the novel: Has the author forgotten him, left him dangling? But he returns toward the end, though not in propria persona- those connections are missed. He reappears rather as a printed voice, a voice of infinite melancholy, writing essays about the lost Eden of England, indeed about Chillingborough, essays which are signed with the name Philoctetes, the betrayed archer-hero with the incurable wound. (3) A great novelist has in mind thousands of bits of knowledge which when selected appear to accrue significance on their own. Scott refers to this property as "graces bestowed'' (1987, 215). He lists as examples both the name Daphne, which is a laurel native to Eurasia and the name of a nymph metamorphosed into that shrub while running from a god; and the name Philoctetes, which Scott relates to the Great Archer Hari. But such felicities are legion in the novel. (4) In all the great novels I know there is an inextricable reciprocity of scenes and characters, of atmosphere and action. The Raj Quartet is full of subtle deeds and fine-spun conversations which slowly weave a magnificent panoramic tapestry. But it also exudes strong, strange-familiar redolences, enveloping auras, which seem to precipitate the individual figures. In Section IV below something will be said about how Scott achieves this effect. (5) The occurrences and deeds of great novels are explicit. In particular is the evil done literal evil. I shall dwell on this matter in the next section. In sum, a very great novel, a post-final novel, was completed little more than a decade ago, although The Novel was supposed to be dead. Or as Scott puts it, inveighing against the "literary body-snatchers ... the sort of people who prove that the novel is dead because they want it to be": "Well, if the novel is dead, all I can say is that it's having a lovely juneraf' (1987, 193). II. The Philistine Satan The Raj Quartet has something War and Peace lacks: an evil presence of enormous pathos. It is the almost vibrant desolation around this person which confirms Scott as a "tolerant" novelist in the'most positive sense. This villain is Ronald Merrick, whose name, as so many in this novel, sounds overtones, here those of merit gone wrong. There are, to be sure, other unadmirable characters in the book. Authorial tolerance, as has been �80 THE ST. JOHN'S REVIEW said, does not preclude personal or moral aversion. There is, above all, Sarah's mother Mildred Layton, a languidly snobbish, rigid Memsahib, who displays, however, her own sort of arid valor. There is also Pandit Baba, the fanatical behind-the-scenes instigator of rebellion, Merrick's ultimate nemesis, who has, for all his slipperiness, a certain blunt righteousness. But neither of these has the odor of unholiness that hangs about the monstrously efficient District Superintendent of Police in Mayapore, later a captain in the Indian army, who acquires a defacing scar and a prosthetic hand. But great treatments of human evil do not take refuge in indeterminate demonisms. They have the courage of their moral revulsion: Definite crimes are committed. Thke for example that dark evil which preoccupies Marlowe in Conrad's Heart of Darkness, surely the greatest novelette of our century. For all its ineffable horror, there are also namable misdeeds: Kurtz has allowed himself to be worshipped as a god, with human sacrifices. Or consider how much more vaporous Dostoevsky's Possessed became when the first editor prudishly excluded Stavrogin's confession, which reveals the actual deed corresponding to his spiritual perversion: He had seduced and driven to suicide a little girl. Scott's Merrick tortures and molests prisoners, and drives one of them to suicide. He manipulates superiors, blackmails subordinates, and abuses confidential knowledge- always working discreetly, though at the limits. Moreover, the explanation of this appalling man's conduct is given along straightforwardly secular lines, in terms of an unfortunate conjunction of sexual pathology, social inferiority, and tearingly ambiguous racial feeling. This not unsympathetic account, rendered after Merrick's lurid semisuicidal death, comes from the most understanding quarter, the wise and decent sophisticate and long-inactive homosexual, Count Bronowski (Book IV, 594). It is because there are real crimes and secular diagnosis that Merrick can acquire theological gravity. This perspective is provided by one of the most moving figures in fiction, Barbie Batchelor, the missionsary spinster whose book, The Towers of Silence, is the intense heart of the Raj series. She is the sort of person one could not stand to spend an hour with in a social setting. She scurries about officiously and talks compulsively. But Scott follows her fate from her own center, from the threatening void behind her chatter, through the spells of "imaginary silences," moments of insight when she does not know whether she has actually uttered anything, to her final mute madness. Her despair derives from love deprived of an aim; above all she is oppressed by an intense devotion to an absconded god. �BRANN 81 This woman's precarious sanity is finally unhinged as a direct result of her encounter with Merrick. She is packed and ready to leave Panko! when she first catches a glimpse of him; she gasps "both at the sight of a man and at the noxious emanation that lay like an almost visible miasma around the plants along the balustrade which had grown dense and begun to trail tendrils." In the course of their meeting- he had sought her out as he had gone after other victims he had chosen: men, women, finally a child- he teaches her about despair. In particular he reveals to her the despair behind the suttee-like death of her friend and heroine, Edwina Crane. Miss Crane had set herself afire after the fatal beating of the schoolmaster Chaudhuri, who had been protecting her from a mob on the road from Dibrapur: "There is no God. Not even on the road from Dibrapur." An invisible lightning struck the veranda. The purity of its colourless fire etched shadows on his face. The cross glowed on her breast and then seemed to burn out (375). Having thus undone Damascus, he sends her off on a tonga which, overburdened with the weight of her trunk (it contains the testimonials of her life), careens down-hill to calamity. Her last sane words are: "I have seen the devil." That Merrrick is Satanic is utterly clear: He has a sort of non-being; he is "a man," as Guy Perrin, the fresh hero of the last book says, "who comes too late and invents himself to make up for it"- too late, that is, for the kind of domination he longs to exercise. He hunts and catches souls. He purveys despair. But he is a smaller and newer devil than Milton's "lost Archangel" who rules Pandemonium in self-confident grandeur. Merrick is goaded to middle-class ressentiment by the frosty superiority of the Chillingburians, white and black, not possessed by rebellious pride. What is more devastating, he is a renegade without a Lord, consigned to traveling to and fro in India and to riding up and down in it with no one to report to. He is a devil in a world without a god, a humanistic devil, a human devil, a human being. Now I am mindful of the cheap frisson to be gained from that notorious interpretational identity: "The ostensibly human character X is really the mythical Y," the Great Earth Mother, say, or the Wicked Witch of the West. But aside from the fact that Scott's indicators are urunistakable, it is actually only to Barbie Batchelor that Ronald Merrick is the devil, and his essentially human deviltry is the direct complement of God's absence: In a world from which God has absconded a man can be a demon. �82 THE ST. JOHN'S REVIEW The wonder is that this frigid philistine can invest his own perverted person with such a bleakly piteous aura. Scott's early novels, some of which are clear preludes to The Raj Quartet, are all about the moral struggle of lonely men against forces of disintegration. It is almost as if Merrick had been molded out of the negative to their common essence. III. The Respectful Englishman As the complement to the delineation of the policeman's private perversion, the novel as a whole bears a moral mission. It is an engrossing fact that the mission is a noble failure, at least in one of its two facets. When faced on a certain occasion with a direct qnestion by an Indian abont the present-day contribution of his work, Scott had no positive answer (1987, 147). Nonetheless he made it clear, and others understood, that he was combatting two evils: the ignorance of the English not so much about India-that is beyond novelistic cure- but about their own moral responsibility for its fate (1987, 157); and the ingrained lack of respect the English aliens have for the dark-skinned Indians in whose land they are camping. It is for racial arrogance alone that Scott shows real contempt. Now The Raj Quartet is indeed a deeply absorbing history lesson in the rise and fall of the raj, the English rule of India. So far the mission is fulfilled. It is otherwise with the respect of the British for the Indians. For this has in turn two aspects, a racial and a religious one. The germinal and controlling event of the book is the consnmmation of Daphne's and Hari's love in the Bibighar Gardens, and her subsequent rape by a gang of hooligans, for which Hari is arrested by Merrick. True to his promise to Daphne (exacted by her for his protection, not hers) he never divulges the truth of the affair. Hari Kumar is for Daphne Manners a full human being; in the intimacy of this affair color is nothing. But he is also Harry Coomer, a Chillingburian, Englishman through and through- indeed the novel's English gentleman par excellence. If color is at least in one decisive instance conquered, Indianness, Hindu Indianness, is another matter. Except for Kumar and the above-mentioned Chaudhuri, "B.A., B.S.C.," who "did not profess to be a Christian" but "on the other hand, ... did not profess any other religion," no hero of the book is born Hindu. Indeed there are many unsavory Hindus like the Pandit. In Staying On, which bears to the Raj tetralogy the relation that a satyr play has to an ancient tragic trilogy, it gets worse. There we find that mountainous monument of petty corruption, who exceeds the nastiest Britisher in nastiness, Mrs. Boolabhoy. �BRANN 83 In truth, the Indians, who, like the two Kasims, have the authorial respect are Muslims, and even when apostate they are not unmindful of their history. Young Kasim is not the only Muslim in this novel who dies an unassuming hero's death defending English women. I do not know whether Scott was aware of the fact that he favors the Muslims. The inclination certainly goes way back in India novels. "One does not write out of one's feelings for books but out of one's feelings about life," says Scott (1987, 160). But books are part of a writer's life, the more vitally so the less he is playing "Can you top this" with the tradition. The book vital to the shaping of The Raj Quartet's mission was of course E. M. Forster's A Passage to India. Scott was puzzled and disturbed by Forster's final judgment that the liberal Fielding and Dr. Asiz cannot be friends. Forster's earth and sky say: "No, not yet," "No, not there." But now it should be possible, Scott thinks, to portray such a friendship (1987, 1962). Perhaps so, but it is to my point that Asiz is in fact a Muslim. There is an old, old history of British revulsion from Hinduism (Rubin, 8, 168), and Scott does not break out of it. Perhaps in Hinduism the West may face its uttermost antithesis, where appreciative respect is perilous. I do not know. But I do know that Scott's failure should give us pause in our incessant sanguine calls for understanding our non-Western fellow humans by means of heaps of self-denigration and a few three-credit courses. It can't be done: At most we can examine ourselves to discern what is inalienably ours, what is insuperably alien, and what is residually common. Accordingly, this English novel is more than anything about being British, that is to say, about being an English man or woman cut off from and forgotten by England, camping on alien soil, coping with obligations and succumbing to spiritual temptations not known at home. Such highly local trials bring out deeply human quandaries. Except for the color question, Scott's sympathy is inexhaustible, so much so that he has been, absurdly, accused of being an "imperialist-manque." But then the novel has also been called anti-British: If it is, then anxious reproaches are not a part of love. In fact, of course, the charges balance out, confirming the work as the "moral dialogue between writer and reader" that Scott thinks a novel should, among other things, be (1987, 149). He does not think, however, that the moral effect is the essential function of a novel. Here is what a novel, more centrally, is: It is "a view into a private vi- sion of reality." (1987,104). For Scott this definition has a meaning at once deep and precise. �THE ST. JOHN'S REVIEW 84 IV. The Telling Image The deeper meaning is that a novelist works with being and with a perspective on being, with reality acknowledged and with reality viewed. It should be said here that the catchword "reality" includes all sorts of observed otherness, from infinite landscapes to intimate reveries, from hardest thinghood to surrealist visions: Viewed reality is precisely reality viewed as experience, "human reality" (107). The implication of this complex notion is that one might work out-not here, though-a metaphysics specific to the "the novel of tolerance," the traditional great novel par excellence. Of course a novelist of Scott's stature was deeply preoccupied by what one might call "applied metaphysics." His reflections, scattered but cohesive, are to be found in the essays collected in On Writing and the Novel. The more precise, almost technical meaning of Scott's definition is that a novel is the telling of an image. Here is the author's most specific idea of "what a novel is'': A series of images, conveyed from me to you, in such a manner that my view of life is also conveyed- BUT ONLY TO ONE PERSON AT A TIME: THE READER (consenting adults). IT IS THAT READER I'M WRITING TV (212). So to begin with, and as he continually emphasizes, a novel is a communication; indeed it is a sort of love affair between the writer and each separate reader. This intention distinguishes him from the experimental writer, whose responsibility is to keep the genre alive by his innovations and the critics at work by his sophistication. That is not to say that Scott is not a very clever narrator. He uses a great multiplicity of means: audacious perturbations of time, such as reprises, anticipations, parallelisms; large varieties of sources, fictive and real, such as diaries, newspaper accounts, descriptions of cartoons; and, above all, the several kinds of narration: direct, oblique, third-, second-, first-person narrative. In fact there are in The Raj Quartet two distinct narrators. The first of these is an anonymous inquirer who investigates the ramifications of the Bibighar affair in the first book. The second is Guy Perrin, the character obviously closest to the author. He is introduced in the last book as a "breath of fresh air," to represent a healthier "modernity," a man who baffles Merrick's designs on him (214). We learn in Staying On that the delicate understanding between him and Sarah, first expressed in the aftermath .of the Hindu massacre of Muslims during which they had failed to save their friend Ahmed Kasim from self-sacrifice, had resulted in a happy marriage. The "question of who is telling the story" �BRANN 85 (212) was on Scott's mind; one might say that its asking- whose first occurrence is in Plato's Republic (393)- is one chief mark of a self-conscious, reflective writer. The telling, the narrative, is packed into the "small, hard rectangular object" (114) which the reader gets to hold. The material book and the telling between its covers are successive reductions of a first, originating element: the image. Here then is Scott's most concise definition of a novel: A novel is a sequence of images. In sequence these images tell a story (74). Hence the language of a novel is for all its verbal linearity not a telling but a showing (74). This secret of Scott's novels is first set out in an essay, antedating The Raj Quartet, called "Imagination and the Novel" (1961). And indeed, the earlier novels which, though fine in themselves, look in hindsight like exercises for the Raj, are full of such images. In The Chinese Love Pavilion, for example, a crucial image is the "landscape without figures," "the intimate distances preserved behind glass,'' pictures of India painted by the narrator's grandfather. They are shown to signify the complication introduced into the romantic love of_ the land by the presence of real people, dark-skinned natives and white dispensers of justice. Here one can see how the image invokes the moral preoccupation of a novel. Indeed, in "Method: The Mystery and the Mechanics" (1967), Scott goes so far as to say that writing which does not grow out of an image but in which, conversely, the image is fitted to the text, is flat and tenuous (75). He "won't begin until the images start coming" (212). The mystery-for Scott that image is the writer's mystery-must precede the mechanics. Again, in The Birds of Paradise the narrator is beset with images, often flashing forth as from a lost paradise (Swindon). However, mention of this novel gives an opportunity to make a different, though essential point: Scott's aboriginal image is not a literary image in the usual sense. The dead paradisea regia of the title and the very live parrot with which the narrator makes do are-very resonant-literary images: of beauty fallen prey to consumption, of rajahs and of the Raj. But the image Scott means is another thing: It is a vision, a literal vision of the visual and, secondarily, of the auditory imagination, a sight before the mind's eye with the specific properties of internal vision: First, ... the primary materials, from both the author's and the reader's point of view, are the images. Secondly, ... because they are images- illusions of a mobile, audible, human activity-there are perhaps no actual rules to follow which will ensure they hold together, or to depart from which will �86 THE ST. JOHN'S REVIEW lead to collapse. You could say that because the images are not tactile. the question of their holding together simply doesn't arise ... (110). This passage presents the canonical properties of visual imagery established in the disciplines and sciences that study them: freedom from the laws of motion and of inertial bodies; elsewhere Scott adds yet another, release from temporal determinacy (83). But it also says something about the special relation that the image-based novel establishes between author and reader: The reader's absorption of the novel recapitulates its genesis in the writer's imagination: Both begin with the image. And end with it. Scott's theory is entirely abstracted from his practice, and accordingly the Raj books begin with, are sustained by, and end on an image, the specific spontaneous vision from which and into which the novel grows. One might say that the novelistic image acts somewhat like an Aristotelian form: It guides the novel's coming into being and it is the shape of its completion. The governing image of The Raj Quartet is that of a girl running (82, 84). The writer starts "bombarding the image with experience," the image here being a girl he's met briefly in Calcutta, a husky, awkward girl (85) as both Daphne and Sarah will be. The image opens up, shows the plot, the problems it contains. The Jewel in the Crown begins with this running girl, gawky Daphne Manners fleeing from the Bibighar catastrophe. It closes with a running girl, Parvati, her graceful golden-brown daughter running to her music lesson. And the whole quartet ends with a double image in a song by the Muslim poet Gaffur: the bowman choosing his arrows and the girl running with the deer- Hari and Daphne raised to a mythical vision. The running girl is indeed the human figure of the image, but behind that figure is a scene, an Indian setting, vast and variable, "conveying to a girl running ... an idea of immensity." Hence the whole image consists of the landscape and the figure in it: a reciprocating vision of intimating atmosphere and poignant action. Works Cited Scott, Paul. The Chinese Love Pavilion. London: Eyre and Spottiswoode, 1960. __. The Birds of Paradise. London: Eyre and Spottiswoode, 1962. __. The Raj Quartet. New York: Avon Books, 1979. Book I: The Jewel in the Crown [1966] Book II: The Day of the Scorpion [1968] �BRANN 87 Book III: The Towers of Silence [1971] Book IV: A Division of the Spoils [1975] __. Staying On. London: Heinemann, 1975. __. On Writing and the Novel: Essays by Paul Scott (1961-1975). Edited by S. C. Reece. New York: Morrow, 1987. Graver, Lawrence. Review of Paul Scott: On Writing and the Novel· and David Rubin: After the Raj. The New York Times Book Review, March 15, 1987. Lodge, David, The Novelist at the Crossroads. London: Routledge and Kegan Paul, 1971. Murdoch, Iris. "The Sublime and the Beautiful Revisited." The fule Review, 49 (1959), pp. 247-71. Rubin, David. After the Raj: British Novels of India. Hanover, N.H.: University Press of New England, 1986. Swinden, Patrick. Paul Scott: Images of India. London: Macmillan, 1980. ������ Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource <em>The St. John's Review</em> Description An account of the resource <em>The St. John's Review</em><span> is published by the Office of the Dean, St. John's College.  All manuscripts are subject to blind review. 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Creator An entity primarily responsible for making the resource Office of the Dean Title A name given to the resource The St. John's Review, 1988-89/3 Date A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource 1988-1989 Contributor An entity responsible for making contributions to the resource Zuckerman, Elliott Ruhm von Oppen, Beate Stickney, Cary Van Doren, John Williamson, Robert B. Routt, Deidre Sachs, Joe Brann, Eva T. H. Pesic, Peter D. Kutler, Samuel S. Rooney, Melinda Pickens, Leo Levy, Robert J. Ferrier, Richard Description An account of the resource Volume XXXVIII, number three of The St. John's Review. Published in 1989. 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Format The file format, physical medium, or dimensions of the resource pdf St. John's Review https://s3.us-east-1.amazonaws.com/sjcdigitalarchives/original/8b8edf3edf7a42ddf2769c1ee00e83eb.pdf 4e1f9849d47bc720be41b18415771cb1 PDF Text Text The St. John's Review Volume XXXIX, numbers one and two (1989-90) Editor Elliott Zuckerman Editorial Board Eva Brann Beale Ruhm von Oppen Cary Stickney John Van Doren Robert B. Williamson Subscriptions Assistant Deirdre Routt The St. John,s Review is published three times a year by the Office of the Dean, St. John's College, Annapolis; William Dyal, President; Thomas Slakey, Dean. For those not on the distribution list, subscriptions are $12.00 per year. Unsolicited essays, stories, poems, and reasoned letters are welcome. Address correspondence to the Review, St. John's College, Annapolis, MD 21404. Back issues are available, at $4.00 per issue, from the St. John's College Bookstore. © 1990 St. John's College. All rights reserved; reproduction in whole or in part without permission is prohibited. ISSN 0277-4720 Composition Fishergate, Inc. Printing The St. John's College Print Shop �v ...... Preface David Lachterman I . . . . . . The Music of the Republic Eva T. H Brann 105 . . . . . . Eidos and Agathon in Plato's Republic Robert B. Williamson 139 . . . . . . What is "The Good" of Plato's Republic? David Lachterman 173 . . . . . . Imitation John White 201 . . . . . . A Note About the Authors �Preface Although the four essays iu this volume were conceived and generated on separate occasions, they form, I think, a true collection, and not only by virtue of their common theme, Plato's Republic. First, all four authors are "historically" indebted to the speeches (spoken or wntten) and to the silences of Jacob Klein. The first two writers were his colleagues, while the third and the fourth were students at St.John's College during four of the more than forty years Jacob Klein taught there. The ec·;ays gathered together in this book, however, are not static testimonies to his ·'influence," but are intended as lively episodes in the continuing, even L nremitting, course of serious reading and education he practiced, often •n the most playful manner. (The colloquial expression "former teachcc·" is here, if anywhere, an oxymoron.) T\.,: Platonic dialogues were his exemplars of that uncanny kinship between nlay and seriousness to which Plato, or a soul-mate, refers in the Sixth Letter (kai tei tes spoudes adelphei paidiai- 323d). Imitating, or commenting OL. these exemplars, he brought to the awareness of the authors of these .essays the status of the dialogues as "ethological mimes." Interrogation o ,· the souls and opinions of the interlocutors, with, on a very few occas: ms, a display of the abrupt "turnabout" (periagoge) in which, according to Socrates (Rep. VII, 518d), the beginnings of education consist, takes orecedence over any of the putative theses, theories, or systems to which Platonic thinking was reduced or calcified, as early as Aristotle's On the Ideas (Peri !dean) and as recently as Hegel and Heidegger. Noteworthy is the way the comic poets of Plato's age (e.g., Theopompus, Amphis, Aristophon) and their Athenian audiences seem to have been quite amused by such reductions or by their ascription, in all seriousness, to Plato; compare, too, the newly discovered papyrus-fragment in which v �vi PREFACE the dramatic, or miming genre of the dialogues is discussed ( =P. Oxy, 3219). An exotic modern variant, or obversion, of the same thoughts may be found in Nietzsche's Twilight of the Idols (par. 5): "Socrates was the buffoon who got himself taken seriously: What really happened there?" Klein's own account of these "ethological mimes"· is familiar from the Introductory Remarks to his book A Commentary on Plato's Meno (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1965); his renditions ofthe various modes of Socratic interrogation and its dramatization by Plato are available in his lectures on the Phaedo, the Ion, and the Philebus (Essays and Lectures, ed. E. Zuckerman and R. Williamson [Annapolis: The St. John's College Press, 1985]), as well as in his last book Plato's 'Ii'ilogy (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1977). Accordingly a very few comments should be sufficient here. (For further reflections on some differences between Klein's approach to Plato and now traditional or institutional fashions, see the review of Plato's Trilogy in Nous 13 [1979], pp. 106-12.) Emphasis on the dialogues as "ethological mimes," on their dramatic, sly, convoluted ironies, is not at odds with the presence in those same dialogues of Platonic "teachings," those teachings with which Klein was equally preoccupied, especially in his first. book Greek Mathematical Thought and the Origin of Algebra (trans. E. Brann [Cambridge, Mass.: M.I.T. Press, 1968]; German original, 1934-1936). The link between that emphasis and this preoccupation may be stated in the following, unavoidably truncated, way: that to take the due measure of Socratic interrogations one must reflect deeply on the sources of their governing begin, nings or archai. Reflection of this sort leads, in turn, to consideration of the most plausible source of those sources (esp. Aristotle, Metaph. A6, 988a7-14). Mathematics, especially arithmetic, carries a heavy weight in the bulk of ancient testimonia concerning the outcome of Plato's reflections on the governing beginnings and their own sources. Three speculations- not necessarily shared in full by Klein or by all four authors in this volumesuggest themselves: (!) If mathematics does play this conspicuous role in Platonic reflection, this is due not to its being a precise technique of problem-solving or a formal deductive system, but to the way its elements and their connections come home to us as truly ta mathemata, the items we can succeed in understanding by questioning and learning. · (2) When it is a question of the very first among these first beginnings or archai, understanding and discursive articulation (dianoia) part company. Reports of Plato's "mathematical" speculations on The One, The Unlimited Dyad, etc., refer to his "unwritten opinions" (agrapha dogmata); �LACHTERMAN vii rivers of ink have subsequently flowed over these reports. Secretiveness or esotericism, however, seems less the point than the acknowledgment that what makes learning always possible is not open to discursive articulation (either in speech or in writing). Paradoxically, perhaps, the underpinnings of intelligibility are not themselves intelligible, at least not in any accustomed fashion. When Plato, in the Seventh Letter, speaks of "the weakness of the logos" (to asthenes tou logou), this is not an index of human finitude or of the critical limits of reason, but an indication that logos, a collected tally of the beings that belong together in discourse and learning, cannot offer a similar reckoning of its own ultimate archai. These make their appearance, if at all, in the interstices of discourse, and with the suddenness characteristic of recognition as well as of eros (cf. Symp. 2!0e). (3) Because speculation on the "mathematical" constitution of the governing beginnings remains tied to concern for the human enterprise of learning (and of failing to learn), Plato's putative "unwritten opinions" cannot be divorced from his crafting of psychic characters in words, his ethopoiia, as the Ancients called it. Ethopoiia, mathematics, and what was later named "ontology" meet at the point of optimum responsiveness to the testing demands of Socratic questioning. Souls are all together better off by virtue of this responsiveness. Hence one version of the probably legendary inscription over the entrance to the Academy explains "'Let no one who is not a geometer enter here.' That is, let no one who is unjust come in here, for geometry is equality and the just" (Cf. Johannes Tzetzes, Chiliades, VIII, 974-77 [ed. Kiessling]). The three points just made can also be put somewhat differently. According to an anonymous follower of the neoplatonic school (ca. 6th C. E.), each Platonic dialogue "is a cosmos," composed of elements at first hearing motley (poikilos), but finally arrayed decorously with one another (Anonymous Prolegomena to Platonic Philosophy 16.1-40 [ed. Westerink]). In the light provided by Klein's own readings we might be tempted to discern three dimensions of a dialogue such as The Republic, three measures of responsiveness through which that written artifact is given amplitude and audibility: (a) The seeming impromptus of Socrates, the two strangers, and the other interlocutors, given voice by Plato's ethopoietic art (the dialogue as eiki5n); (b) Plato's formal orchestration of these voices, always modulated to suit the disparate perspectives of his listeners and readers (the dialogue as phantasma); (c) The dialogue of the soul with, and within, itself (Soph. 263e), provoked by Plato's two-fold art (the dialogue as psychagi5gia or maieusis). �viii PREFACE The Platonic dialogue as a "cosmos" takes its proportions from the interplay of these three dimensions. In sometimes very different ways the authors of the following essays try to do justice to that interplay and thus to both versions of Jacob J(lein's teaching. Eva Brann's "The Music of Plato's Republic" first appeared as a special supplement to The Collegian (March 1966) before being published in the inaugural issue of AGON. Journal of Classical Studies (April, 1967). In it the animated structure of so-called "ring-composition" in early Greek poetry, or in the design of "geometric" vases, is displayed as the shaping force of The Republic as well. By exposing the plot of the dialogue she renews the truth of Aristotle's claim in the Poetics: "The governing principle and, so to say, the soul of the tragic play is the tale it tells (muthos)" (1450a39). So, among many other things, she shows how the dyad of descent and ascent, far from being merely part of the spectacle (apsis) of the dialogue, is consubstantial with its primary philosophical themes. It might be worth recalling that, according to tradition, when the young Plato mounted the dais to defend the accused Socrates, the dicasts shouted him down (Kataba, kataba: D. L. 11.41). The Republic, on Brann's reading, is Plato's Anabasis. Robert B. Williamson's "Eidos and Agathon in Plato's Republic" was originally published in Essays in Honor of Jacob Klein (Annapolis, 1976). In it he moves to the center of the questions elicited by Socrates' talk of "forms" (eide/ideaz) and of their interconnection under the yoke of The Good. This movement is promoted by Williamson's thesis that, long before Socrates introduces "the look of The Good" in Book VI, the divergent opinions about justice expressed in Book I presuppose that one could provide a set of criteria for being just or doing justly that are "free of all opposition" to one another. The intelligibility of an eidos is, under this aspect, its capacity to satisfy many, even disparate, criteria (for being just, for being large, etc.), without contradiction. The Good, eluding express accounts of "What it is," poses multiple quandaries concerning the interrelatedness of the eide with one another and with their images. Why, in other words, is there apparently a Whole? Versions of the third essay, "What is The Good of Plato's Republic?" were delivered as lectures at Trinity College (Hartford), Haverford College, The Johns Hopkins University, and St. John's College (Annapolis, November, 1984). Its epideictic form and length have been kept; as a result arguments are compressed into proposals and the requisite scholarly references are largely absent. As the chronological and substantive sequel to the essays by Brann and Williamson, my piece takes for granted much of what they have already argued. I attempt to find a mean between �LACHTERMAN ~ I ix Socrates' elliptical and his ''daemonically hyperbolic" (Rep. VI, 509c) statements about The Good. In particular, I undertake to show that Socrates' management of the conversation from the beginning of The Republic furnishes clues to some of the characteristics claimed for The Good. The roots sustaining his persuasive practice may be sought in the reflections awakened by those claims. Somewhat along the lines of Williamson's (more guarded) description, I suggest that The Good is the omnium gatherum. The fourth essay, John White's on "Imitation," was originally presented as a lecture at St. John's College, Santa Fe, in the Spring of 1987; it has been modified for publication in this format. In it he studies perhaps the central paradox of The Republic, one not fully reckoned with in the preceding essays: A dialogue in which Socrates offers fundamental and austere arguments against mimesis and mimetic poetry is itself a work of motley poetry. Does the dialogue's own poetic nature "cancel much that was said in the first nine books?" White pursues this question by investigating Socrates' most noble opponent, Homer, especially the Homer of The Iliad. On his reading, The Republic, like The Iliad, is the forging of a shield; Socrates is a new and very different kind of Hephaistos. As he suggests at the end of his essay, The Republic tries to hold together thumos and mind, poetry and philosophy, the desire for greatness and the desire for truth. There are, then, many overlappings, even repetitions, to be found in these studies. Neither historical sequence nor allegiance to Jacob Klein can fully explain these phenomena. The Republic is a speech about communities whose very being is in speech. Perhaps, as Eva Brann suggests, the community formed by Socrates, Thrasymachus, Glaucon, Adeimantus, and the others is Plato's written emblem of what the best communities might look and sound like. In The Statesman Plato has the Eleatic Stranger say: "Th be sure, when human beings do things in common it is a pleasure for them to think similarly" (homonoein; Politicus 260b ). Or, in the Pythagorean aphorism closing the Phaedfus, "The things of friends are common." David Lachterman �The Music of the Republic Eva T. H. Brann SURVEY OF ARGUMENTS I. Mythos A. The Republic is composed of concentric rings encompassing a center. 8. The outer ring represents Socrates' descent into the house of Pluto-Cephalus. 1. The oath "By the Dog'' is an appeal to Hermes the Conductor of Souls. 2. Socrates assumes the role of Heracles, founder of cities. 3. His longest labor is the bringing up of the triple monster Cerberus- the soul. 4. His greatest labor is the release of a new Theseus. PAGE 7 8 ' 8 9 11 11 II. Logos A. The second ring represents the founding and degeneration of cities "in speech" (Books III, IV and VIII, IX). 1. Four cities are founded: the city of demiurges or craftsmen, of warriors, of guardians, and of philosophers. 2. To these correspond four degenerate forms. B. These cities are "in speech" only, since they can be neither generated nor regenerated. 1. The Phoenician tale implies that men can be mined as a public treasure. 12 12 12 13 13 �MUSIC OF THE REPUBLIC 2. The just city founders on the un-naturalness of human nature and on the "founding paradox." 3. The degenerate cities themselves are actual, but the argument about them is "detached." 15 17 In Polemarchus's house justice, defined as "doing one's own business," is the craftsmen's specific virtue. I. The "demiurge'' is opposed to the "panurge" in all his forms. 2. The inner justice of the philosopher converts this definition into "knowing one's own soul." 3. For the philosopher the argument that justice is profitable fails. 17 17 20 20 III. Ergon I In the center of the Republic Socrates founds the philosopher's city "in deed" (Books V-VII). I. A public vote forces Socrates to propose his communal design. 2. Other works corroborate the assertion that the philosopher city is not identical with the guardian city. 3. Socrates' city in the Timaeus is not that of the Republic. Th ; paradoxical condition for bringing about the city is that its founder must already live within it. I. Socrates lives so as to fulfill this condition. 2. Glaucon has the qualifications of a young ruler. 3. The bodily community of the guardian city is replaced by a dialogic community. Democracy, the exact inverse of the just constitution, perversely proves to be the soil for the just city. The just city can be brought to life by providing a fitting macrocosm, as in the Timaeus. I. Temperance replaces justice in this city. 2. Antiquity in the Timaeus represents spurious actuality. 3. The city of the Laws is non-Socratic. 21 21 22 23 24 24 25 26 27 29 29 30 30 IV. Music A Glaucon's education in Books V-VII is Socratic music. I. The guardians' training is accomplished by purged trad.itional 'music (Books II and X). 32 32 �BRANN 3 a. Socrates corrects the myths of gods and Hades but postpones the correction of the myths of man. b. The Republic itself exactly obeys the stylistic requirements of "purged music." c. This music is explicity excluded from the plan of the philosophers' education. 2. Socrates' new music is "philosophical music." a. Socrates has spent his life making music. b. Socratic mimeseis of truth are images rather than myths. c. Such images are sketched in the soul by long reflection. d. Socratic images induce a logos, while myths are preceded ~= e. Socrates fulfills his own requirement that all poets make an "image of the Good." f. Socrates corrects the Promethean Myth of Man in the "cave image." g. These two images respectively represent the One and the Indefinite Dyad of Plato's "Unwritten Teachings." 3. His plan for the philosophical education is presented musically as the "prelude" of mathematics and the "hymn" of dialectic. 4. The central dialogue is a symmetric texture of images and their explications and correlations. B. The discovery of opinion (doxa) is Glaucon's introduction to philosophy. I. The outer dialogue requires the "helmet of Hades," which obviates reputation or "good opinion" (Books II and X), but the central conversation is governed by "true opinion." 2. Summary of 474-480 (Book V). As "becoming" is between being and non-being, so "opinion" is between ignorance and knowing. 3. "Opinion" correspond.s to "spirit," the mean between "reasoning" (logistikon) and "desire" in the tripartite soul. 4. The /ogistikon, properly called the "calculating power," is a lesser faculty than "knowledge." 5. After the new division of the soul as an "instrument of learning" the terms of the "lower" tripartite soul designate desires. 6. The finer division of the soul by the device of finding "the middle" is the dialogue's main pre-dialectical exercise. C. The orator Socrates is elected to defend philosophy before the democracy (487-505, Book VI). 32 33 34 34 34 34 35 35 36 36 36 37 38 '38 38 39 40 41 42 43 · 44 �4 MUSIC OF THE REPUBLIC I. Adehuantus is the expert on corruption. 2. Socrates, by his images, persuades the many to accept philosophers as kings. 3. He refuses Adeimantus access to the "highest study," the Good. D. Socrates tells Glaucon of the Good in a "true image," the "sun image." I. Summary and tables of 506-511 (Book VI). The sun image is explicated by the Divided Line. 2. This image requires Glaucon to exercise the two lower, "doxastic," powers of the soul. a. The lower of these, likeness-making and recognizing (eikasia), known to Glaucon as a game, is Socrates' chief instrument in this context. The image itself forces Glaucon to recognize the visible world as a mere image or likeness. b. His trust (pistis) in the visible world is shaken and a belief in the rule of the Good is substituted. c. Socrates' non-dialectical or "doxastic" presentation of the Good serves both to avoid misunderstanding and to instill a kind of artificial recollection in Glaucon. 3. The Divided Line, a figure for knowledge, provides training for Glaucon's power of "thinking." 44 44 46 46 46 48 48 50 50 51 a. Dianoia, "thinking things through," involves a higher eikasia in two ways: Natural objects are here regarded as images; and analogies are to be made by recognizing likenesses. b. The mathematical faculty characteristic of Glaucon, the dianoia, is discovered by him as a "mean." c. Socrates particularly invites Glaucon to a dialogue on number; this passage is the only approach to dialectic in the Republic. d. Dialegesthai has three meanings: conversation among the many, dialogue between a knower and a learner, and dialectic, the movement of the soul within itself. 4. The mathematical model of proportion (analogia) is fully exploited. a. The Good is not a "study" in the usual sense. b. The absence of the dialectical accounts (log01) of being is expressed by the absence of definite ratios (logo!) between the line segments. 51 53 53 54 56 56 56 �BRANN c. The "embodied soul" has solidity; the "knowing soul" is "non-dimensional." d. Socrates forms four proportions from the Divided Line, showing Glaucon how sameness of relation runs through the whole before he knows the parts themselves. e. This induces Glaucon to trust the bond of similarity (homoiotes) required for dianoetic ascent, which is by likenesses. f. The Good, by exercising a downward eikasia and likening things to itself, makes the ascent possible. g. The mimetic arts are condemned for usurping the power of the Good (Book X). 5. The image of the Good implicitly introduces Glaucon to the fundamental problems of dialectic. a. The Good has three capacities: as progenitor it fathers the sun; it is the responsible cause (aitia) of knowing; it is the ruling source (arche) of being. These are presented in reverse order of "political" importance. b. A diagram shows how being is articulated doubly by the Good, and particularly why becoming is doubly apprehended, namely in sense perception and opinion. c. The Good is not a differentiating but a binding source, complemented, the image implies, by a secondary "dyadic" source. d. "Likeness," which fails to account for "participation" within the realm of being, takes the place of "otherness" beyond being. It is that "bond" by which the whole becomes one, the bond which the three-term proportion of the Divided Line expresses. e. In the dialectic progress from "what each is" to "what the Good is," the latter is revealed as the order (taxis) of the "whole," and thus as the pattern of all political community. f. The One is treated explicity in no Platonic dialogue, least of all in the Parmenides. g. The Myth of Er contains the mythical counterpart of the sun image - a model of the world within the world. E. Socrates tells Glaucon of evil in a second "true image," the "cave image." I. Summary and table of 514-517 (Book VIII). The cave is to the upper world as the place of visibility is to the place of thought. 5 57 58 ' 61 62 62 63 63 64 65 67 69 70 71 72 72 t �MUSIC OF THE REPUBLIC 6 2. While in the sun image the places prepared by the Good for the soul are shown, the cave image shows the actual dwelling of men; thus the cave image explicity includes ignorance and even deceit. Ignorance, however, corresponds to non-being. 3. Therefore a different correlation of the images is implicit: being becoming non-being : 73 74 sun image cave image intellectual realm sensible realm underground realm 4. Non-being is the mother corresponding to the Good as father. a. Politics as the dissembling art of managing human stupidity has a special place in the cave image. b. The cave as a womb is a figure for non-being, to which is opposed the realm of being under the sun; between them lies the road along which "coming into being" takes place. c. Socrates identifies the cave as the mortal Hades, the "sightless place." The backward position of the prisoners signifies human perversion, which is corrected by the Socratic "conversion." d. Socrates alludes to Pythagoras's descent into Hades; in fact the dialogue itself has the form of a Pythagorean "recollection exercise." F. Socrates recites the "hymn of dialectic" for Glaucon. 1. The ascent from the cave represents the road of learning, which has three parts: a. "Conversion" is not within the formal plan because it is, in effect, now being accomplished. b. The "haul upwards" is effected by Socratic mathematics, pursued not for its own sake or as giving the order of being, but as "inverse" dialectic. It consists of the analytical solution of such problems as the construction of a hypothetical cosmos according to a purified Pythagorean mathematical order. Its analytic approach permits a constant return to its own hypotheses, which reflect the requirements of the logos. c. "Dialectic" itself is withheld from Glaucon as accessible 75 75 76 76 77 78 78 79 �BRANN 7 only by the long path of study; instead its praises are sung in a "hymn." d. Having heard the plan, Glaucon, as an initiate of the mysteries of learning, becomes a fellow law-giver. 2. The ages for study and practice are set out as in a formal curriculum. a. The education of the rulers always leads out of the city, which contains nothing "fair" for them; in it geometry is substituted for eros. b. Because of the hypothetical character of "patterns," the rulers in the Constitution do not study constitutions, but learn to rule "in the light of the whole." c. Socrates introduces the dead philosophers as "new divinities." d. Socrates has brought up his Theseus from Hades. 91 91 92 92 94 95 95 •** I. MYTHOS A. " Socrates begins most of his investigations not at the center but at the periphery .... " At the center of Plato's second longest dialogue, the Constitution (Politeia), usually called the Republic, there is an ergon, a deed or accomplishment. In order to find this center it is necessary to establish the periphery. The Republic is composed on the plan of concentric rings; the themes on the diameter reappear in reverse order as if they were reflected through a central axis. The outermost periphery is a setting of myth. A broad inner ring consists of the construction and destruction of the successive forms of a pattern city in "speech," logos. The themes of this ring, for instance the attack on the poets, are also symmetrical with respect to the center. This center itself, clearly defined as such by the plan of the dialogue, presents the actual founding of a city in "deed," ergon. The Republic, as will be shown, exemplifies the insight quoted above, which Si2Sren Kierkegaard expressed in his dissertation The Concept of Irony, With Constant Reference to Socrates (London 1966, p. 70). · �MUSIC OF THE REPUBLIC 8 B. I. Anyone who has used an annotated edition of the Republic' will have read the curious anecdote told by Diogenes Laertius and Dionysius of Halicarnassus about the beginning of the work. Dionysius reports that many stories about the care Plato took to "comb and curl" his dialogues were current, especially one about a tablet found at his death, which contained "that beginning of the Republic which goes 'I went down yesterday to Peiraeus with Glaucon the son of Ariston,' transposed with subtle variety." We may infer that some special meaning was to be conveyed by the beginning. Indeed, there is something curious about its style: ancient as well as modern Athenians·, when they visit their harbor, usually go not "to Peiraeus" but to the Peiraeus (e.g., Thucydides VIII, 92, 9);' this is Cephalus's own usage (328c6), and since he lives there he ought to know. The phrase is to be heard in a special way. Now it happens that the Athenians did hear a certain meaning in this name- it meant the "beyond-land," he Peraia, the land beyond the river that was once thought to have separated the Peiraic peninsula from Attica.' Therefore let us try reading: "!descended yesterday to the land beyond the river, together with Glaucon, the son of Ariston ... "; "in order to· offer my devotions," he goes on, "to the goddess ..... " The goddess, we learn at the end of the first book (354all), L �BRANN 9 is Ben dis, a Thracian stranger identified with Hecate, 4 the guardian deity of the underworld. Socrates is on his way back up to town when Polemarchus with his companions detains him and presses him to come to his house, where they find Cephalus, Polemarchus's rich old father, sitting in state. He is on that "threshold [to Hades] which is old age" (328e6).' As he himself explains, he scarcely has a body anymore; he is, as his name signifies, a mere "head"-as Socrates slyly points out, he sits on a head-rest, a proskepha/aion (328c!). His riches, ploutos (331b7), Socrates suspects, are his great comfort. A strange light is thrown on him and his house by an ancient source that reports that he was over thirty years dead at the dramatic date of the dialogue, namely between 411 and 405 B.C.; his son himself has only a few more years to live before his death at the hands of the Thirty Tyrants.' We are in the city of shades, in the house of Pluto. Socrates takes occasion to refer to this situation throughout the dialogue, for instance when he declares to Thrasymachus and the others who are there, in solemnly ambiguous language, that he will not cease his efforts until he has prepared them "against that other life when, born again, they may happen to hold such discourse" (498d3-4). And the very figure for the young guardians of the city which he builds for his audience is a reminder of the setting: they are to be like watchdogs, who, as true lovers of wisdom, determine their friends and their enemies by the test of their knowledge or ignorance of them- they know the art of loyalty. The perverse pattern of such dogs is Hesiod's hound of Hades, who possesses the "evil art" (Theogony 770) of fawning on strangers and devouring those at home in Hades who try to escape. The guardians are tamed and converted hounds of hell. 2. What is Socrates' business down there? To detect the myth that provides the venerable setting for Socrates' descent it is necessary to go rather far afield for a moment. On certain occasions Socrates uses an oath that was evidently considered in antiquity to be his very own: ''By the dog!"- and in the Gorgias (482b5) more explicitly: "By the dog, the Egyptian god!"' Socrates uses the oath twice in the Republic and, as elsewhere, in passages concerned with the philosopher's part both in human speech and in politics (399e5, 592a7; cf. Cratylus 4llb3). Who is the Egyptian dog-god on whom Socrates calls? Plutarch (On Isis and Osiris 368e-f) describes him in this way: He is born of an underworld mother but nursed by a heavenly goddess and thus belongs to both these realms; he can see his way both by light and by dark and therefore has the office of mediating between the upper and the lower world. His Egyptian name is Anubis, but to the Greeks he is Hermes, the �10 MUSIC OF THE REPUBLIC Interpreter, the ''psychagogue" (cf. Phaedrus 27Ic!O) who conducts the souls of the dead and guides those who must descend into Hades while yet alive (cf. Diogenes Laertius VIII, 31). He is also the bringer of political wisdom to men (Protagoras 322c2). In particular, Hermes is known as the guide of the hero Heracles in his famous descent into Hades (Odyssey XI, 626), and he is often so represented on vases. Heracles himself is a most versatile hero.' He is the chief founder of cities- witness the many cities called Heracleia. He is the great civilizer, "using music" (Plutarch, On Music XL, 4), at which he is proficient, in this task. He is the guardian of boys' education, the guardian of the palaestra, and the boys devote their hair to him. He teaches men letters; Plutarch jokingly calls him "most dialectical" (TheE at Delphi 387d). He is a partisan of virtue, having, according to a story told by Socrates (Xenophon, Memorabilia II, i, 21; cf. Plato, Symposium 177b), chosen to follow Virtue rather than Vice as a teacher because of the happiness (eudaimonia) she had promised. But Heracles' greatest fame derives from the deeds or labors imposed on him by the unjust king Eurystheus. These include the killing of the snake-headed Hydra and of the Nemean Lion; but his most awesome deed is his descent, his katabasis, into Hades. His task there is to bring up to the light of day the triple monster Cerberus. He has Hades' permission to do this, but he is instructed to persuade the beast and make it more gentle, not to hurt it. On his way into Hades, so the story goes, he at first forgets his business and allows the shades to detain him in conversation. Before returning, he performs an incidental labor, a parergon, in releasing Theseus, his emulator and the founder and lawgiver of Athens who had been chained down in Hades; however, he fails to free Theseus's companion Pirithous. While in Hades, Heracles is nearly washed away by the underworld river. This hero is, as it were, made for Socrates, and Socrates himself makes the comparison. In the Apology, speaking of his search for a wise man, he says to the court: "And by the dog, men of Athens-for I must speak the truth to you- ... those who had the greatest reputation seemed to me nearly the most deficient ... , so I must show you how I wandered as if performing certain labors ... " (22al). Every Athenian would of course recognize the allusion; most translators put it into the text. In the Cratylus Socrates says to Hermogenes: "You are raising a class of names not to be despised; however, since I have put on my lion helmet I must not be cowardly.... By the dog, I am having an inspiration" (4lla-b). Again, in an interlude in the Phaedo, Socrates explicitly consents to take the role of Heracles in the battle of argument, with Phaedo taking the role of Iolaus, Heracles' friend (89b-c). As they talk, Socrates plays with Phaedo's hair: �BRANN 11 as Heracles, the hair is his due, and as Iolaus's friend, the intimacy is hls right. There are certain signs and indications that Socrates plays this same role in the Republic. He "descends" to the land beyond, is caught in conversation in the house of Pluto, and, like the phantom Heracles whom Odysseus meets on his own visit to the shades- the true Heracles is among the gods- he tells down there the story of his own descent (Odyssey XI, 601). He first fights the sophist Thrasymachus, who comes at him "like a beast" (336b5)' and with whom he says he would as soon quibble as "shave a lion" (341c1). A little before, Thrasymachus, laughing sardanion-"Iike one doomed," as the scholiast explains the word- had addressed him "0 Heracles! this is that wonted dissembling of Socrates" (337a4). This is, of course, nothing but a popular exclamation of wonder, but it sounds almost like the lion's roar of recognition; by the end of the first book the lion is subdued. And at one point, Socrates refers to the wrong way to kill the Hydra, implying that he knows the better way (426e8). 3-4. But the longest labor begins after the "prelude" (357a2) of the first book." In the nine books following, the running motif will be that old Heraclean theme, the relation of virtue to happiness, which is ever recalled, even in the midst of yet greater matters that are curtailed in its favor (e.g.,445a, 580b, 608c); this relation is to be examined in a man who is wearing the Ring of Gyge_s (359dl), and as Socrates adds, the Helmet of Hades too (612b5), a magic cap that deprives hlm in life of all appearance and reputation and puts him on a level with the bare, stripped souls in Hades (cf. Gorgias 523c). In the course of this argument Socrates will indeed teach his audience letters, using the great text of the city to teach them the small letters of the soul (368d; cf. 402a7). He will also, as we shall see, found a city. By the "psychagoguery" of his rhetorical music (Phaedrus 261a, Aristophanes, Birds 1555") he will release his Theseus, blamelessly confined to Hades (39lc9). But his longest effort will drag to light a triple monster having, like Cerberus himself, a blush of snakes for its lower part (590bl). For when he has plumbed in argument the remote depths of the tyrant's life, Socrates recalls once more "those first words because of which we are here" (588b2), namely Thrasymachus's claim that injustice under the reputation of justice is profitable. To conclude the case against hlm they "model an image of the soul in words" (588bl0). It will, Socrates says, be a creature such as is found in ancient myth, a Chimaera or Scylla or a Cerberus, whose nature it is to have "many forms grown together into one" (588c4) under the outward guise of a man's shape. As soon as this soul has been hauled up and cleansed of its accretions (611), �12 MUSIC OF THE REPUBLIC "we have," Socrates says, "discharged ourselves of this argument'' (612a8). Heracles has delivered Hades from its monster, a deliverance that signifies that exposure of human nature which is the condition of its rescue. And he has, incidentally, brought up a young Theseus (the name connotes nomothesis, law-giving)- Plato's brother, Glaucon. Having ceased to enact a myth, Socrates closes the dialogue by telling one, a recollection of one of the "myths which are told about those in Hades." These are the very myths that keep tormenting Cephal us, because he is so close to these things (330d7). In it Er, the Pamphylian or "Alltribesman" (614b4), is charged by the souls to carry back to the living the long tale of their thousand-year journey, of the ascent or descent that is their reward or punishment. He actually tells only of the end of these journeys, since, as Socrates significantly observes to Glaucon, who has noW listened the better part of a day and a night, the story itself would take "a very long time to go through" (615a5). Socrates ends the dialogue by urging Glaucon to hold fast to the "upward way" (cf. 514b4), so that they may do well in the thousand-year journey "which we have just gone through" (62ld2). He must mean the ascent of the dialogue itself (e.g., 473a5, 544b2). This then is the setting of the Republic: Hades with its tales and a deliverer willing to go down and able to come up- a most appropriate setting, for down there, so it is said, justice is close at hand (330d8, 614c3; cf. Apology 41a, Gorgias 523, Sophocles, Antigone 451). In recounting the discourse Socrates will then be playing that "noblest of games": telling myths about justice and other things" (Phaedrus 276e). ll. WGOS A. 1-2. We come now to the arguments, the /ogoi, that form the broad middle ring encircling the center. Just as the question concerning the connection of justice to happiness is answered by bringing to light the human soul in its mythical shape, so the soul itself, that is, its formal "constitution," is discovered by raising and taking down cities. This is done "in speech" (logoi) and not, to use a pervasive Greek opposition, "in deed" (ergoi, e.g., 382e8, 383a5, 498e4; cf. Laws 778b). Let us first follow how these cities are constructed in argument. At the beginning of the enterprise Socrates says: "Come then, let us make a city from the beginning in argument" (logoi, 369c9; cf. also 369a5, �13 BRANN 472el, 592all). The object is to find the nature of justice by looking at the largest context to which it is applicable-hence the city founded in speech will have to be just. Socrates and his interlocutors first found a community of craftsmen,· workers collected to ply their own trades so as to supply each other's wants, making the city as a whole, as opposed to its citizens, self-sufficient (369b). In this city the full political weight of the Greek name for craftsmen, "demiourgoi" (370d6), "public workers," is realized. This city is, as we shall see, the most liberal model from which to read off the definition of justice that runs through the Republic, but just as Socrates is about to articulate that definition, Glaucon stops him. Here, he says, we have a city of pigs (372d4). He means that the citizens' whole being, like that of pigs, is absorbed in consuming and providing for consumption-there is no place or leisure for honor and nobility (cf. Aristotle, Politics l291a18). Socrates, though still maintaining that this is the "true" .and "healthy" city (372e6), yields to Glaucon, and, giving up once and for all that self-sufficiency definitive of the natural city (Politics J253a2), changes the "first city" (373c5; Politics l29la17) by the addition of luxury and that soldier element which will procure wealth and maintain safety. He assents to the construction of this "fevered" city because in it one might see "how justice and injustice grow up in cities" (372e5); this city, then, will somehow contain the seeds of injustice also. He describes the natures and the training of the soldiers or "guardians," a subject to which we must return. At the end of this long argument (375-414) Socrates again reorganizes the city, this time by dividing the "guardians" into guardians proper, older men who rule, and their "auxiliaries and helpers" (414b5), the younger fighting men. This third, tripartite, city suffices for reading off the similar constitution of the soul and for showing conclusively that, as in the city, so in the soul, justice must be profitable. Socrates now considers the positive half of his task finished and is about to go on to investigate how injustice comes about in cities and souls (445-449, Book IV). He is interrupted. Three whole books (V-VII) intervene, in which a fourth and very different city is founded. Not until Book VIII does he return to the argument. In Glaucon's figure, "like a wrestler he assumes again the same position" (544b5) and goes on to account in order for the four degenerate cities (544-592). When this argument, the complement to the genesis of cities, is finished, Glaucon once again refers to "the city that we have just been founding and that is preserved in speech only, for I do not think that it is anywhere on earth" (592a!O). B. I. Now what is· the meaning of the claim that the genesis of the city, �,., IT ,, !, ;' 14 MUSIC OF THE REPUBLIC or the city itself, is only "in speech"? It means of course first of all that no actual city of living men comes into being while they speak or as a consequence of their discourse. But that is mere fact. What is more interesting is that no such city can come to be now or later, by the design and intent of the argument itself. These word constructions are not "constitutions," the practical patterns for working cities such as Plato and his pupils were invited to write for Greek cities, nor are they even a model for such patterns- they are instead contrivances for a different purpose, and intended to reveal themselves as such." The dialogue conveys this first of all in one astounding fact: no human being is ever born into any of the three cities- they cannot regenerate themselves; they are unnatural. The first city is constituted by the collection, the second by the addition, the third by the division of adults who are all of one and the same generation; the institution of each city is simply the rearrangement of readymade human material. This is reflected in the actual physical settlement of the third city, which is, at first, said to begin with the separate encampment of the guardians, who found, as it were, a separate city (415d8, Critias 110c6, Politics 1264a25 ff.); hence the guardians' progeny will be born, quite literally, outside of the civilian city. Furthermore, this same third city is later said to be settled by the expulsion of all souls over ten years old (540e5), a contradiction that reflects the two irreconcilable geneses of the just city; in the books relevant in the present context the city is understood as a re-constitution of available communities, while after the central books it is a radically new institution demanding a radical change in the character of citizens, to be achieved only by a lengthy process of education; it is a city essentially of children. Now the re-constitution that brings about the third or guardian city in the early books is secured by the circulation of one noble lie, the "Phoenician myth," "our trick," which will persuade "especially the rulers them- selves, and if not them, the rest of the city" (414cl). To be sure, Socrates later admits, the founding generation itself can never be brought to believe the story, but he dismisses this crucial difficulty by high-handedly treating these citizens as the creatures of this argument that they indeed are: "Let this matter be left to rumor to carry about as best it can, while we arm our Earthborn and lead them forth, under the leadership of their rulers" (415d6). Suppose then that the founding was somehow accomplished and that the myth was somehow in practice accepted. The citizens would now believe that their youth and education was a dream; that they were really formed like metals in the womb of the earth, their mother, who sent them up fully formed, so that they had never been children; and that tl\ey are therefore all brothers, though of different metals. Those who have an ad- �BRANN 15 mixture of gold must rule and those of silver must assist, for, as an oracle foretells, the city will fall when a man of brass or iron rules. The purity of the metals must be carefully preserved, and if a gold or silver parent has a child with an admixture of brass or iron he must consent to see it put into a lower class. (For the earth as the common mother of citizens, see Menexenus 237c, 239a.) The "lie" in this myth is not that men are of different metals or that the city cannot survive the wrong kind of ruler-all that is true-but rather the claim that the citizens have no proper natural birth and no privacy, that is, no secrecy of soul. Under their flattering epithet "earth-born" (4!5d7), which intimates that they are Giants, or that they were moulded by a god, are hidden the claims that they are natural bastards who have a mother but no father and that their soul can be accurately assayed like any ore. So too the continuation of the city depends on the citizens' belief that each generation is newly mined, like a public treasure," from the earthly element on which the city rests. But the curious character of this "needful lie" (414b9) is that it catches up, so to speak, with its perpetrators: the myth must not only somehow be believed at the outset if the city is to be founded, but it ought in fact not to be a lie at all, if the city is to breed true. For if men are not born from a common parent at the right time and with pure souls easily assayed, the guardians cannot control the new generation and insure the stability of the city. Its first birth will refute its foundations. 2. The community (koinonia) of women and children, the "source of the greatest good to the city" (464b5), is intended to achieve exactly this community of birth. All children born in the same year are to be ignorant of their parents and are to be called brothers and sisters, although the ignorance will eventually lead to incest (461e2; Politics 1262a35). These children of the city will be tested and assayed all the time, but one of the conditions for stability is beyond the guardians' control: the timing of the mating. For as Glaucon wisely observes, the best are drawn by necessity to have intercourse with the best, but this necessity is "not geometric but erotic" (458d5). Yet the guardians' control of breeding is to be precisely "geometric." The Phoenician myth, in accordance with Phoenician greed (436a2), makes of men a Plutonic treasure to be dug up and refined at will; the scientific counterpart of the myth is to consider them a crop to be sown and harvested in accordance with the heavenly motions. The geometry of these motions as they affect breeding is, however, not known to the rulers. In Book VIII Socrates has just resumed the discussion of the degenerate cities when he stops himself and prays to the Muses �16 MUSIC OF THE REPUBLIC to tell him "how discord first arose," an allusion to the Iliad (I, 6) and the fall of the city of Troy. The Muses' response is a mathematical myth. A city so constituted as his, they say, can hardly be moved (546al), but since everything that has a genesis also has a degeneration, the city will not last forever. Note that in the order of argument the decline in fact follows immediately upon the beginning, with no account of the city's life and history intervening at all. This end must come (and may, as Aristotle points out, come on the day after the city's birth, Politics 1316al7) because the rulers' reasoning, or rather their "calculating power, mixed with sense" (bl) as it is, will not be able to apprehend the "geometric number" that governs births. The Muses recite this fabulous number, which in fact no one has ever practically understood. Thus .the generation of rulers is corrupted, and as a final consequence of their baser metal they neglect the study of music and themselves lose the power of testing souls. This is the genetic revolution initiating the declining succession of Hesiod's ages from gold down to iron, a revolution radically different from the political revolutions the city undergoes thereafter (Politics 1316a14 ff.). Human generation is thus an impenetrable mystery, and the city founders on the rock of the fact of bisexual generation. The human be-. ing, considered as that unstable union of body and soul, does not run true to type as does a plant (and, as Aristotle [Politics 1262a] observes, where a child does resemble its parent in looks, that very fact immediately destroys the founding illusion of common birth). If it is the nature of each kind to generate its like, human nature is un-natural; dwarf peas always bear dwarf peas, but golden parents may bear brass children. This is the insuperable problem that is again attacked in the Statesman. In this dialogue the Golden Age, the age of the direct divine rule of Cronos, is mockingly characterized by the fact that men grow directly from the earth and have no human birth (271), while in the Human Age the proper mixing of human bents (trop01) by mating is the specifically human object of the political art (310). Later on Socrates quotes an old phrase" to contrast the city with non-human nature: "You do hot think," he says~ "that constitutions come out of 'an oak or a rock' and not out of the characters of those in the city?" (544d8). Very nearly the same figure is used by Vergil for the human', race of the Golden Age of Saturn; they are sprung from "trunks of , or a rugged oak" (Aeneid VIII, 315): the Golden Age is the age when men spring up "naturally," like vegetables, and ripen to ineducable childhood. ·• The dialogue itself tacitly underscores the impossibility of genetic trol, both at the very beginning and at the end. For of those said to present in Cephalus's house, five are full brothers, two of them, Gl•mcon,, and Adeimantus, sons of Ariston, and the three others, Po•lernarctms, �17 Lysias, and Euthydemus, the host's sons. The conversation itself will show how the sons of the "Best"- Socrates often alludes to the meaning of the father's name (e.g., 327al, 368a4)- differ profoundly, and something similar was known of Polemarchus and Lysias (Phaedrus 257b ). The Myth of Er, moreover, which concludes the conversation, shows why generation is intractable; human natures are determined not on the hither side of life by other humans, but in the "divine place" beyond by each soul for itself (617d6). The coming to be of the city is therefore not in accord with the coming to be of human beings. The enigma of regeneration is, however, only secondary to the paradox of the city's foundation itself. For it seems that only those will be content to accept this constitution who have accepted the "dye" of its laws (430a3). The just city can only be realized by its own children; to begin it must already have begun. We see why the act of settlement itself is so curiously and doubly contrived: At one time it seems to amount to the separation of those adults who might be fit to govern and who establish the ideal city by leaving the real city. But at another time the new city results from the removal of all adults whatsoever who by this act appear to found a city of children. This is what is meant by claiming that the three cities that have been constructed are cities in speech only. · 3. The degenerate cities that are symmetrical with these three cities are, on the other hand, all too realizable- indeed, they exist. Socrates underscores this by mentioning, in this context alone, actual Greek cities, namely Crete and Sparta, the timocracies, the first of the less-than-just cities (544c3). Yet here too, in a different way, the argument is remote from the deed. The argument to which Socrates returns in the eighth book had been merely initiated at the end of the fourth. Of the five "bents" (trop01) of the soul, one alone is good while the other four illustrate the multifariousness of evil; to these latter correspond four cities. The interlocutors have "so far ascended in argument" (445c5) as to stand on a look-out tower whence to view the manyness of vice. This discussion of vice, when picked up three books later (544), continues to rise until, having traversed timocracy, oligarchy, and democracy, the interlocutors finally look down on the sinkhole of tyranny and the abyss of the tyrant's misery, which is 729 days, that is, two years of continual travel, beneath them (587e). This is what characterizes all serious discussions of vice: they must certainly not bring about that of which they speak, but rather become more detached the closer they come to the truth, just as the best judge of criminals should have the least experience of crime ( 409a). The effect of this "remoteness" �MUSIC OF THE REPUBLIC 18 on the argument itself is that the degeneration of cities is presented as an inevitable, irresistible, downward progression (which Aristotle finds implausible, Politics 1316a20 ff.), not, indeed, of the natures but of the nurtures of successive generations. Here the argument represents, as it were, its own impotence- the situation is in actual fact desperate (Seventh Letter 325d ff.); in a few years a fierce battle between the democratic faction and not one but Thirty Tyrants will be raging about the sanctuary of the very goddess whose feast is now being celebrated (Xenophon, Hellenica II, 4, 11), and the tyranny will have destroyed the host's family; while yet a few years later a temporarily restored democracy will have murdered Socrates (399 B.C.). c. I. The facts of the host family's condition and politics determine the conversation in yet another and pervasive way. The family ran a prosperous business in manufacturing and selling shields, and both Polemarchus and Lysias are known to have been democrats, though, we may suppose, of a decent and moderate sort. This is the clue to the peculiar treatment of the virtue that later gave the subtitle "On Justice" to the dialogue.. It is not usually Socrates' way to inquire whether a thing is profitable or unprofitable before having inquired "what it is" (e.g., Republic 354c, Meno 7lb); but this is just what happens with respect to justice in the latter books of the Republic. From the second book to the end the question is: Is justice profitable? The knowledge of what justice is, is assumed. As Socrates, somewhat to Glaucon's annoyance, insists (432e8), when they come to find justice in the city they have constructed, they find there nothing more than they had put in; the city is just because they have made it that way (433al, 443b7). The working definition, which is not the result but the assumption of the argument, is that justice is "doing one's own business and not meddling" (433a8), a definition they have heard from many others and have themselves often given. Justice so conceived is, to begin with, simply the opposite of the literal understanding of the names for various degrees of wrong-doing. There is polypragmoneuein (433a9, 443d2, 444b2), literally "much-doing" or being a meddling busybody, and panta poiein (596c2), "doing everything" or being a jack-of-all-trades- Socrates' favorite description of the sophists' easy expertise (cf. 397, 596; cf. Sophist 233d9). And worst of all, there is panourgein (409c5), "being up to anything" or simple shameless wickedness, the behavior of the man who takes full advantage of the impunity given by Adeimantus's Ring of Gyges, the wily Odyssean wisdom �19 man of "many bents" (Lesser Hippias 365e2; cf. Phaedrus 27lc2). :tinsitivelv. justice is acting in accordance with that conveniently ambiguous eu prattein, either "doing Tight" or "being well," with which the Rim•u/Jttc ends (463e4, 519e2, 62ld2; cf. Politics 1323b31). From this point of view the simply just city is, as Socrates himself says, first, the self-sufficient city of demiurges or craftsmen who both know to do their own business and do it (372e6, 428bl2). In them virtue indeed "wisdom," in the good old-fashioned sense in which sophia means in English used to be meant by "cunning," namely craft and skill, aretemeans the power to do work, the "virtue" of an agent (cf. 350c4, . j'""'·· cf. Aristotle, Nicomachean Ethics, 1141a9). We may well ask how a view so practical, almost banal, comes to underlie the dialogue. It is necessary here to recall that justice in the city is exposed by finding and analyzing out the other virtues and considering the remainder (427el3). Thus wisdom is found to be the rulers' virtue, courage that of the warriors, temperance the agreement of all on who shall rule (432a). Justice is then found in each class as a remainder: as that virtue by which the class does its own work and nothing else. Now clearly in this context temperance is somewhat redundant. In fact, when Socrates turns from the city to the soul he makes no distinction between justice and temperance (443d4; cf. Laws 696dll, where temperance is called a mere "appendage," and Charmides 16lb6, where Critias very knowingly, as he thinks, proposes the present definition of justice as a definition of temperance). We may therefore say that justice, precisely because it is the one virtue that all three classes possess, stands out as a unique and special virtue for the craftsmen, "the popular and citizen virtue" (Phaedo 82all), the practical virtue of non-rulers. (In fact, it is pointed out in the Statesman [307e] that rulers who possess this virtue too literally endanger the city.) It is the virtue by reason of which each performs "that to which his own nature is most fitted" (Republic 433a5), by which, we might say, a human being is ever at his best. In some cases this means quite simply quietly "minding one's own business," as must the lover of wisdom, for instance, in acity not fitted to his nature (496d6, Gorgias 526c4). Justice might therefore be termed the private public virtue, which turns particular natures to the general account (423d). This is why its presence is the greatest good and its absence the greatest ruin to cities (443c4-444b8)-it allows the city to assimilate even those men who are by nature private. (Hegel, in his interpretation of the Republic, which is in this point the opposite of Aristotle's, understands and appreciates justice in precisely such terms, namely as the integration of the particular as particular, the confirmation of the individual in the whole, "the being-for-itself of each part"; History of Philosophy, Pt. I, ch. 3). �~·· 20 MUSIC OF THE REPUBLIC This virtue, understood not as a relation toward others but as decently self-serving self-respect, is therefore quite naturally discussed in these terms under the roof of the kind of people who would constitute the multitude, the merchant and artisan class, of the third city. This class would supply young warriors like the sons of Ariston with their armor and would occasionally send a philosophically disposed son like Polemarchus (cf. Phaedrus 257b4) up into the ruling class. Socrates is speaking that saving "dialect of democracy'' (Fifth Letter 32ld), which many people think they know but very few really master. 'I ! 2. But Socrates never allows us to forget that this third city is a dialogical phantom and that the justice in it is, for all its apparent practicality, a mere "idol" (443c4). For the true virtue lies not in deeds concerned with the outside but in the inner disposition of the "classes" (gene; d3) of the soul and their ordering. We shall see that in the case of the true ruler, that is, of one so "constituted" as to be able first of all to rule himself, the distinction between "his own affairs" and "others' business" vanishes. For him that which is most common is also most his own "and with his private affairs he will preserve the common business" (497a5). In him, "doing his own business" wili be turned into "knowing himself," which means "looking ... at myself, whether I happen to be some beast more complicated than Typhon [Cerberus's father, Theogony 311] or a gentler and simpler animal" (Phaedrus 230a; cf. Timaeus 72a5). True justice is concerned with that in man which is "truly about himself and his own business" (443dl; cf. Alcibiades Major 130eff.); the true ruler knows not only that he should do his own business but what it is. In Aristotelian terms, the practical or moral virtue turns into an intellectual one, in comparison with which the old justice is "somehow near to the body" (518d!O). This individual character of justice is one of the reasons why, as we shall see below, the soul is the one single subject of the dialectical method in the Republic. 3. The "inversion" of justice in the case of the true ruler, in the philosopher king, leads to a curious suspension of the main argument in the central three books. If justice can only with difficulty be proved to be profitable for the guardian rulers, because of the hard life they lead (419a, 465e4), for the philosopher kings this proof is altogether impossible. For those who already consider themselves to be living in the Isles of the Blessed (519c5), the descent into the city to take office cannot be made to seem like happiness (519d8), nor can it possibly improve the tone of their souls. They must be made to enter politics "forcibly" (520e2); in fact their reluctance is a guarantee of their suitability (e4). Glaucon sees immediately that �21 object of the city constructions that constitute the outer rings argument, namely that justice brings happiness- an argument still iUTILchly maintained for the warriors (466b)-has been lost; he wants to if the philosopher rulers are not being treated unjustly (519d8). nco·•"·'' answer is an evasion (cf. Politics 1264b16); it is not their hapbut that of the whole city which is to be considered. When all is and done, the true rulers of the Republic enter politics only out of gratitude, and simple decency (516c, 520a-e). III. Ergon A. Socrates is about to go on with the investigation of the unjust cities he is again restrained, as orice before on his way up to Athens (327), a conspiracy of Polemarchus and Adeimantus (499). After some whispera vote is taken, and the decree that has been passed is announced by /,)£''.TlLra:;yn1ac:hus (450a3). Thrasymachus represents that "force" (Phaedrus which boasts of its ability to rouse and soothe the multitude (and is itself so easily managed by Socrates) and now speaks for them: Socrates must expand and defend that principle, mentioned before with conspicuous brevity (424al), which is to give the city unanimity or, better, a perfectly public character: "Friends own what is common" (499c5). Here is a new political reading of a current phrase (cf. Lysis 207cl0, Phaedrus 279c6, Laws 739c2), which may mean, significantly, two things: "What a friend owns is at the service of his friends," or "What friends own insofar as they are friends is communal by nature." They particularly want to know about the equality of education for men and women (45lb) and the community of wives and children (457b). Socrates reluctantly complies and faces the first two of the three waves threatening to overwhelm him (473b6). When he has faced them, and gone on to describe such a city's relation to other Greek cities, Glaucon erupts: "But it seems to me, Socrates, that if one were to allow you to talk about such matters you would never remember what it is you pushed aside in saying all this, namely this question: Is such a constitution capable of coming into being and in what way is it possible?" (47lc). And he insists on this question even though Socrates stalls by getting him to admit that the object of their discourse was the discovery of justice and injustice and their respective merits, and that the "city in speech," having served that purpose, is none the worse for being �"I ''i 22 MUSIC OF THE REPUBLIC impractical (473al). But since Glaucon does insist (understandably, we cannot help feeling) on trying out their just constitution as a practical political pattern, he must not, Socrates stipulates, force him to show that "what they went through in speech can completely be in deed"; Glaucon must content himself with as close an approximation as is possible (a5). This approximation will be reached by making the least possible number of changes to improve things now done badly in cities, changes that will amount to a re-founding of the city according to the constitution just discussed. There may be one or two or more such changes, but in any case there should be as few as possible (b4). So Socrates, like Odysseus, meets that third wave which will carry him to his Phaeacia (Odyssey V, 313, 425). The one thing that must be changed, he announces solemnly (c2) is this: "Unless either philosophers rule in the cities, or those who are now called kings and dynasts philosophize genuinely and sufficiently, and these two-namely political power and philosophycoincide, and the many natures of those who now pursue either way separately have been excluded by necessity, there can be no end of evils, my dear Glaucon, in cities, or, in my opinion, in the human race" (ell). He adds that he cannot see how any other city can be happy in public or in private. Together with Glaucon he now prepares the ground for a new, a fourth, city. It is necessary to show why this "one change" may be said to produce a new city; is it not merely the third, the guardian constitution, put into effect? Both Socrates and Glaucon, at least, do seem to regard these two as different; Socrates calls the guardian city, as opposed to the fourth city, "the first selection" merely (536c8), and Glaucon refers to the new city as the bettter of the two (543dl). And rightly so, for as Socrates himself says, an actual city is never the same as its pattern, its paradeigma (472d9, 473a). The guardian city and the philosopher city differ, then, as does a realization from its plan. The discourse on the possible city will be, among other things, a subtle consideration of the relation of pattern to product, of "theory" to "practice." In its course that which makes the pattern possible will prove to be that which makes it superfluous: the fourth or philosophers' city will have no constitution separable from its very life. 2. The philosopher kings, to pursue the difference between the cities further, can certainly not be regarded as part of the constitution of that just city which must have been known generally as "Socrates' city." Aristotle, in his critique of what "Socrates says" in the Republic, mentions the warrior class and the community of women, children, and goods, but omits all mention of the philosopher kings (Politics 129la20, 1261a4). Aristo- �BRANN 23 phanes, too, in The Female Parliament (427), where the community of goods and women becomes the law of Athens, fails to seize the comic opportunity inherent in the subject of female philosophers. It is likely that this plaY was written before the Republic, and we may infer that peopleSocrates in particular- had long been talking about such a city. In the dialogue there are enough passages parallel to the play" to constitute an acknowledgment to posterity that Aristophanes' women's city is a parody of Socrates' already notorious city. In fact, the nod to the comedian is explicit, for, in facing his first wave, Socrates remarks that after the men's part has been played out it is only right to recite "the women's drama" (45lc2); moreover, in going to meet his third wave he says, as if speaking from a familiar experience, that "it might overwhelm him with laughter and disrepute" (473c8). 3. Last and most weighty is the account Socrates himself gives of his city in the Timaeus when he recapitulates the constitution that he had presented to his friends in a discourse on the previous day. There is no reason whatever to conclude that the Republic is that discourse. In fact, while the Republic is recounted on the day after the Bendideia, the Timaeus, quite appropriately, takes place on the Lesser Panathenaea, a festival that occurred two months later, also in the Peiraeus (26e); during the festival a gown was sent up to Athena "on which the Athenians, her nurslings, could be seen winning the war against the people of Atlantis" (scholiast on Republic 327a). Furthermore, the dramatic year of the Timaeus seems to be earlier than that of the Republic." The city Socrates recapitulates in the Timaeus is, in any case, not the city of the central books of the Republic, for, although his account is said to be complete (19a7), the philosopher kings are omitted; it is rather the "third city" with all its notorious features. We may infer that Socrates proposed this city on various occasions and that it was known as "his." This guardian city therefore differs from the philosopher city as the best pattern differs from its realization, and, it has now turned out, as the impossible differs from the possible. Socrates himself explains to Adeimantus, when he asks whether this guardian city they have founded is the city suited to philosophy, that it is that city in many ways but that in addition there "would always be needed someone understanding the reasoning [logos] behind the constitution- that same one who guided you when as a law-giver you laid down the laws" (497c8). The difference between the cities is therefore not constitutional, for the older guardians will still rule, and rule so as to achieve the most harmonious community possible. The difference is rather in the rulers themselves, in what they know and in what �24 MUSIC OF THE REPUBLIC they will look to, in their education. We shall see whether this may not outweigh any more externally obvious formal difference. B. I. However, the claim is not that the fourth city is a possible city but something more dramatic: that it is actual, that ii comes into being while Glaucon and Socrates converse, that it is a city "in deed," ergi#. According to what has been said, this could happen only if one paradoxical condition were fulfiiled: if there were some one adult who actually lives in the just city, and who, as a living citizen of the city, can bring up another within it and so begin the accelerating "cycle" (424a5) of the reciprocating interplay between the citizens' education and their nature. This founder must be a first citizen not only in the sense that he possesses what Socrates calls "the constitution within himself" (59lel, 608bl) but also in the sense that he has such external relations- natural, as we shall see, to any truly educated human being (423e4)-as correspond with the constitution of the third, the fully differentiated just city, and its working counterpart, the fourth or the "possible" city." What would such a life and such a man look like? To begin with, he would have to be brave and a soldier proven in battle, who put the safety of his comrades before his own (Apology 28e, Symposium 220d5), past the age of fighting and over fifty years old (cf. Republic 540a4; Socrates is about sixty), but still spirited in the defense of philosophy (Republic 536c4), which he had steadily pursued from an apt youth (Parmenides 130b) to old age. He would have no private possessions (Republic 337d8, Apology 31c2), bnt would live with .his friends as if all their goods were held in common (Apology 38b6, Crito 44e, Republic 337d!O). He would regard all promising young men as his sons to the neglect of his private family, and they would regard him as a father (Apology 3ib4, Phaedo 60a7, 116a6). When he wished he would possess the persuasiveness to make gentler the enemies of philosophy so that they would accept its rule (Republic 354). He would be able to ascend in thought above the city, leaving his body behind (Symposium 174d5, 220c3). He would be willing, though not eager, to undertake political tasks (Republic 327, Apology 31c). He would regard it as part of his charge to select and educate the best among the young for future rule, and he would prevent them from reaching too high too fast (Republic 506d7, 533al). Finally, he would possess some special quality that would hold him to philosophy and protect him from corruption (496c4). Such a man would fulfill Socrates' last words concerning the possibility of the city, for, without caring in the least whether she �BRANN 25 is or ever will be in fact, "he will do her business and that of no other" (592b3). The references after each statement above give passages in the Platonic dialogues where Socrates is so described. He is a man, the dialogues assert, who is here and now doing the business of the just city. Thus we see that the sum of Aristotle's criticism of Socrates' city, that its communality is really not the bond uniting a multitude, but rather the bond of each good man with every other (Politics 1263a29), is deeply accurate, and what is more, that Aristotle's politics are ultimately not so very different- "and friendship seems to hold cities together; and lawgivers care more for it than for justice" (Nicomachean Ethics 1155a23). The reason that the corporate genesis of the third, the guardian city, is presented as a insurmountable dilemma is that that city was never meant to be a self-sufficient body politic, nor, for that matter, a single soul writ large, but something between thesethat set of relations, correctly called friendship, which is essentially political, as we shall see, and which a philosopher institutes between himself and his fellow-citizens whenever he is able. And when this kind of man comes to power, "our constitution, which we have told as a myth in speech, will achieve its consummation in deed" (501e4). As we shall see, Socrates is in power. 2. In the same way we must look at the nature and condition of the youth, whom he will educate to be a helper and auxiliary first and later a successor and ruler. He will be a young man of twenty (537b8), markedly spirited (357a3, 44la2, 548d9), and with some experience in soldiering, open to the influence of music and with a strong bent toward mathematics. Now this is a picture of Glaucon, "erotic" like Socrates himself (474d4; cf. Symposium 177d8), a young man of about twenty, whose manly courage and desire for victory are emphasized together with his receptivity to music (548e5); he has already distinguished himself in battle (368a3), is delighted by mathematics (528e7, 531a3), and is the son of the "Best" of fathers. He is therefore quite right to offer himself as a "helper" (474bl; cf. the "helpers" of the guardian city, 414b5) and to say that "perhaps I could answer more fitly than another," for he is the reason why Socrates is taking so much trouble on himself (474a5); he is "responsible" (509c3) for Socrates' overcoming his reluctance to speak on the highest matters. And we must not forget that as the dialogue closes Socrates speaks to Glaucon -and him alone-of the "upward road" as if they were again all by themselves, as they had been when they "came down" at the beginning. There is some additional evidence in favor of Glaucon as a prospective ruler. Xenophon (Memorabilia III, vi) recounts a conversation in which �26 MUSIC OF THE REPUBLIC Socrates persuades Glaucon, who is less than twenty years old and wants to become head of state immediately, that he knows nothing of statecraft, nothing of revenues, and nothing of military management, and that he should perhaps first learn something about these subjects .. Socrates, Xenophon says, took an interest in Glaucon "for the sake of Plato and Charmides"; he alone succeeded where everyone had failed, and persuaded Glaucon to restrain his ambitions until he should have become competent enough not to make a fool of himself. We see that Glaucon must in fact have been very interested in politics and that Socrates was known to have been interested in him. The Republic even contains the counterpart in the Platonic mode of the Xenophontic dissuasion: Glaucon is persuaded that the mark of the true ruler is that he has no ambition to rule and despises the "political life"- the subtlest possible deterrent for a proud young man (520e4 ff.). Beyond this Glaucon's name had for Plato the tremendous advantage that unlike that of Critias and Charmides it was not tainted with political crimes. He may have died young, for scarcely anything is known of him, except that he wrote dialogues (Diogenes Laertius II, 124)- and was Plato's brother. 3. The philosopher's city is coming into being while Socrates and Glaucon converse: the primary political act is the "conversion" to a philosophical education of one youth by one man. Because he engages in this kind of activity, Socrates can maintain in one and the same dialogue (Gorgias 473e6, 52ld6) that he is not one of the "political men" and that he alone in Athens practices the "truly political art." (Plato's own activities were in accordance with this principle, Seventh Letter 326b ff.) The contrived bodily community of the guardian city (416d) is here converted into a natural dialogic community. This is by nature a community of two; throughout the dialogue Socrates has one interlocutor, and when another enters, it is by way of interruption (e.g., 449bl, 487bl; cf. Gorgias 474a). But minimal as it is, it is a true community as opposed to the artificial unity of the guardian city. For the latter is an artificially composed harmony of "one out of many" (423d6, 443el), in musical terminology a diapason (cf. the dia panton as a characteristic of "otherness," Sophist 253el), an "all-encompassing consonance," but it has no one natural source and no discernible end beyond subsisting as a unity. There is, as we shall see, no eidos, no idea of a city, while the community that underlies dialogic communication is, on the contrary, precisely eidetic and, unlike the guardians' community of bodily goods (416d), indestructible. For the eidos that underlies speech is not a delicate adjustment of "one out of many" in which the many constitute and enter into the unity, but an indivisible one "by �27 BRANN itself'' and opposed to all multiplicity (e.g., 479; contrast the preposition used for the community of eide: "one idea through many" [Sophist 253d9] with that used for the relation of many sensible things to their eidos: "many ... under one idea" [Republic 507b6]). The eidos is the "common thing," the thing public by nature that belongs to friends. The foundation of the fourth city, the establishment of that Politeia which is indeed rightly translated by Republic- that is, Commonwealth- consists in beginning that dialogue with which any Western education, an education that is the making of a free citizen, begins. We shall see exactly how Socrates goes about this founding act. As Rousseau half-truly observes in his Emile, "Plato's Republic ... isnot a political treatise, as those who merely judge books by their titles think. It is the finest treatise on education ever written." c But first it is necessary to see where and under what circumstances his foundation takes place. The conversation of the Republic is held on the day of the Bendideia in the Peiraeus, the harbor of Athens, which was united with the upper city by the Themistoclean walls (Thucydides I, 93), so that the dialogue may be said to take place within Athens. In the mythical dimension this place is revealed as Hades; in fact it is a turbulent center of Athenian democracy. The cult of Bendis, a new Thracian import, is itself a symptom of dissolution, "a new workshop of turbulent revelry," as a comic writer" seems to have described it. Its celebration is to culminate that night in a torch-race and an "all-nighter" (328a8), an orgiastic affair which the young men are clearly waiting to join. Socrates and Glaucon, both citizens of this democracy, will conduct their conversation, which occupies the central books of the Republic, within this setting. It is, in a strange way, the right setting, as the dialogue itself intimates. To show this let us look at the degenerating cities and citizen souls of Books VIII and IX. There are four of them, in downward order: timocracy, oligarchy, democracy, and tyranny (544c). But exactly as in the case of the just city, the monarchy and aristocracy are regarded as being two names for one constitution (445d4); so a case may be made for taking democracy and its inevitable degenerate consequence, tyranny, together (cf. Politics 1292al8, where democracy is said to be analogous to tyranny; also 1286bl7). For not only do they in fact alternate with each other in Athens at this time, but within Socrates' scheme they have this important trait in common, that they are both less than cities, almost non-constitutions, to which no definite �. 1: 28 MUSIC OF THE REPUBLIC kind of soul corresponds (557cl). This bracketing of the two gives us the following scheme: 3. monarchy-aristocracy 2. warrior city l. craftsmen city 0. I, I tl timocracy oligarchy democracy-tyranny, which conveys a kind of inverse correspondence between the best and worst. The correspondence of opposites is evident in a number of ways: the just rulers, especially when the elders of the third city become the philosophers of the fourth, make no distinction between their own and the public business (497a5), and in a perverted way neither does the tyrant, whose rule is a private nightmare publicly staged (573, 576b5)- for in private the tyrant is himself, like his city, almost absolutely tyrannized. Like the just constitution, the democracy contains three classes, which again correspond inversely: the have-nots in the democracy form the lowest and largest class, the class most eager for revolution, while in the just city they are in highest and least class (428e7), the unpropertied class most devoted to the preservation of the city. And again: the ruling class in the democracy cannot fight because of its luxuriousness (556c8), while those who have that strength and should be the watchdogs become wolves to the human fold (415e2, 566a4). These cities then are related by Socrates as extreme opposites which meet (576d); he even describes them by the same term: the just city is called "the city of beauty" or "fair-city" (kal/ipolis, 527c2), and so is the democracy called, bitterly, the "fairest" of constitutions (557c4; the same of tyranny, 562a4) for the colorful variety of constitutions to be found within it. All the other characteristics contribute toward putting the citizen of a democracy into a perverse and yet peculiarly intimate relation to the just city, but it is this last that makes democracy practically the best base of Socrates' enterprise. (The ordering of constitutions in the Republic is made in abstraction from considerations of legitimacy; contrast the classification of the Statesman, 29ld ff., where democracy is "the best of all lawless constitutions"; also 303a8; cf. Politics 1289b9. From this point of view, incidentally, such sub-political democracy is the degenerate counterpart of that Cyclopean pre-political self-sufficiency which must have preceded the cooperation of the craftmen's city; cf. Odyssey IX, 187 ff.) For, as he tells Adeimantus, it plays host to so many constitutions that "he who happens to want to found a city, as we are now doing, must go to a democratic city"; having picked a constitution he likes he may then proceed to settle his own city (557d). This is precisely what Socrates does, who, �29 BRANN as he himself points out, even while sitting .in an Athenian prison, never considered leaving a perverse Athenian democracy for a dully decent timocracy like that-of Sparta or Crete (Crito 52e5); in fact, the perverse excellence of Athens is epitomized in this- that Socrates is taken seriously enough to become the center of a public scandal. Socrates' dialogic community is one of the many Athenian constitutions. D. !. A consideration of the guardian city as it appears in the Timaeus will bring out the full force of Socrates' founding act. As we have shown, two things are required to bring the best city into being as an actual political body: that the breeding of the citizens should be founded in nature and that the vicious circle by which the established order makes citizens in its own image should somehow be broken. These very conditions are fulfilled in the Timaeus in a way totally different from that of the Republic. Although the guardian city and its institutions are said at various times to be according to nature·(e.g., Republic 428e9, 456cl), it is the nature of the soul that is really meant- a most un-natural nature, as we shall see. The consequence of this unnatural psychic base is that the city no sooner ceases to be regarded as a mere pattern and begins to have corporeal life, than ii enters its road of dissolution. For it, change or "motion" (kinesis) is always "discord" (stasis, 545d), since "a constitution in agreement with itself caniwt be. changed" (d3); for it also, motion is unintelligible, since the question "how ... then does our city come to have changed?" (d5) is answered only by the inaccessible mystery of the mathematics of birthgoverning celestial cycles (546). Now in the Timaeus Socrates expresses . precisely this wish: to see his city "put into motion" (19b8), like a person who sees some fine animals painted or resting and feels a desire to stir them. His hosts therefore must find a way to move his city without dissolving it. The entertainment that Timaeus, Critias, and Hermocrates provide for Socrates on the Panathenaea (17al, 26e2), unlike the bitter feast Thrasymachus serves him on the Bendideia (354a!O, 357a2), is truly amusing for him. They present to him the frame of his picture, as it were, by providing a mathematical hypothesis (see below IV D 3 a), a "supposed eidos" (48e6), which will serve as a pattern for that mathematically moving macrocosm into which the harmony of his animated city will fit consonantly. In the Republic the largest context (and that one of strife) had been Hellas (470e4); now it is the numbered heavens. Whereas in the Republic the city was a soul writ large, in the Timaeus the city and th.e soul is a cosmos writ small (24c, 27b, 30d, 42e ff., 69b). The rulers of such �MUSIC OF THE REPUBLIC 30 a city would not need to do any intricate geometrizing- contrast the forced, unnatural imitation of celestial circular geometry in Atlantis with the natural lay-out of Athens (Critias 111, 113d). Obviously, in this setting the main political virtue would not be what might be called the "substantial" virtue of justice, which makes each man true to himself, but rather the "relational" virtue of temperance, which keeps him in balance, "sound- minded" (si5phri5n)- "sane." This virtue is understandably dim in the local context of the Republic, for as Socrates says there (430e6), "temperance is a sort of cosmos"- an interior adjustment in tune with an outer order (cf. Theon, Mathematical Matters Useful for Reading Plato, Introduction: "For the harmony of the cosmos, the good order of the city, and temperance in private affairs are one and the same"). · ' 2. The city itself they animate by translating it into history. Its citizens .are indeed earth-born, sown by the twin gods Hephaestus and Athena, she the goddess of wisdom and war and he the patron of the craftsmen of the city. To this natural genesis corresponds a natural end: the city sinks out of sight in a cataclysmic earth-quake (Timaeus 25c7). Socrates had presented them with a theoretical myth (26b4, c8), and a factual myth, a tale of antiquity, is the gift they return. The city of the Republic, on the other hand, is only as old as "yesterday." It too has a source beyond itself, but this source is not within nature, visible or intelligible, but beyond nature itse/f(540a8). The true ruler must be in touch with this source- thus the love of attainable wisdom is what is meant in this dialogue by philosophy (cf. Sixth Letter 323d); Glaucon's question about the genesis of the best city turns into a question about the genesis of a philosopher (504b ). Socrates is going to answer this question with a practical demonstration. 3. Socrates' city, it is necessary to note, is mentioned once more, briefly, in a dialogue from which Socrates is absent, the Laws (cf. also Diogenes Laertius III, 52). There an old man, an Athenian stranger of So!onic-as opposed to philosophic-wisdom (cf. Republic 536d!), sets up, in the course of a walk through Crete, a "constitution." It is a constitution not only in the first sense of the word, in which it means the institution of rulers and ruled as in the Republic, but also in the second sense, namely as a code of laws for the rulers to administer (Laws 75la). He mentions the guardian city of the Republic in which "friends have all things in common" as a city inhabited by gods, a "pattern" for his own (739el)-he clearly means an unattainable and impracticable pattern. The cities he can undertake to build are only the second and the third best (e5; cf. Republic 445c5, where �BRANN 31 the best city is said to be unique, while the degenerate forms are several). The constitution that is then given, a conflation of monarchy and democracy (Laws 693d), is meant as a practical political model for actual cities, and it was in fact so used. This city differs from the best city in its essential characteristics: property, women, and children are no longer held in common (740), and a concomitant adjustment is made in the citizens' and rulers' education, which is no longer "eidetic" but rather "aisthetic," based on sense experience (817e ff., 967)-it is often observed that the word "philosophy" does not occur in the dialogue at all. Now the city of law is discussed in the Statesman, a dialogue where Socrates is present, and it is evidently discussed in his spirit. There it is called the "second sailing" (300c2), i.e., that laborious rowing by which boats are moved when the wind fails (scholion on Phaedo 99c); the phrase means not "second best," but rather "least worst" (Aristotle, Nicomachean Ethics 1109bl). The city of law is said to be merely the best of all those cities which are not true and genuine cities at all but only copies (Statesman 293e3); the "only constitution" is that in which the rulers are men of knowledge (c6). The Eleatic Stranger, the chief interlocutor, mentions one aspect of the rule of law that particularly bears on the education of such men, that is, of philosopher kings, as it is set out in the Republic: Whatever, he asks, would be the meaning of a mathematics studied according to a "code of law" (299e4)?- clearly the liberal study of mathematics set out in the Republic is not appropriate to the rulers in the Statesman. Moreover, the one hope for the rule of law is, the Stranger says, its meticulous preservation under all circumstances (300c), a demand totally incompatible with the radical excellence demanded of Socrates' foundation (Republic 50la). · The practical city, the city of law, is therefore essentially opposed to the philosopher city. One might say that the former is firmly founded in the "Cretan" realm of the underworld judges Minos and Rhadamanthus (Laws 624b) while the latter leads ever beyond it. One more remark on the significance of Socrates' absence in the Laws. In the Politics Aristotle gives a critique of the Republic, in his usual way cutting through Socratic "brilliance" and "originality" (1265al2, 129lall) to reach the sober political content of the dialogue, and consequently stripping away the "extraneous arguments and those about education" (l264b39), until he finally reduces the Socratic foundation to one law: "that the guardians shall not farm" (1264a9)-and the Spartans have already thought of that! Thus the Republic is made to emerge as an insufficiently detailed forerunner of the Laws, while the Laws are regarded as a Republic made practicable (1264b26 ff.). And Aristotle proceeds to underwrite this interpretation by pretending that Socrates, the man who never left Athens ex- · �MUSIC OF THE REPUBLIC 32 cept on a campaign, is the much-traveled (Laws 639d9) Athenian stranger! It seems that for him the presence or absence of Socrates determines the mode of dialogue. IV. MUSIC A. Ia. We shail now show that, like Heracles, Socrates uses music to "civilize" his young guardian. He uses not the traditional music of the poets but his own restoration of true music; he shows how to apply seriously Damon's thesis that a change in the character of a city's music produces a change in the fundamental laws (424c5). Socratic music is, as we shall see, philosophical music, the music of truth. Its special force will lie in this, that its logoi are at the same time erga, this coincidence being precisely what the poets cannot achieve; they, for all their speeches, leave no true works behind at all (599b3). By "music" the Greeks mean whatever activity is under the care of the Muses, that tradition consisting of the arts and skills which we call "arts and letters," and among these especially poetry and melodic music. To be "amusical" is to be an uneducated boor. Accordingly, the upbringing of the guardians of the third city, described in Book III, is to be "that discovered over a long period of time," namely gymnastic to strengthen the body, and music for the soul (376e2) to make it gentle and "wellarranged" (40ld8). But this available music will have to be purified and purged. Now music is understood to be altogether "image-making and imitative," mimetic (Laws 668a6), so that the purging consists of condemning the poet's false and deteriorating representations especially of gods and heroes, and of expunging the passages where he "makes images vilely in his logos" (377el). Children must, then, be. told myths that will be, on the whole, lies- albeit harmless ones- though they will contain some truths (377a4). Socrates gives a practical demonstration of this purgation in reviewing passages containing myths- as Aristotle did later, he regards poets primarily as "myth-makers" (377bll; cf. Poetics 145lb)-harmful to the tone of the soul. When he has criticized the myths, particularly the Homeric tales, "about gods ... and demigods as well as heroes and about those in Hades" (392a4), among them the slanders concerning Theseus's presence there (391c9), he declines for the moment to go on to correct the myths concerning men. For these are the myths the poets are worst at telling, but we cannot correct them until we know how justice works (392b). We �BRANN 33 may accordingly expect such a correction of the myths of man later on. Socrates concludes by requiring not only the poets but all imitative artists to devote their works to "the image of the Good" (40lb2). lb. Not only are the stories of the poets, their logoi (392c6), purged, but their mode of speech, their texis (ibid.),. which corresponds for them to the modes of melodic music, also comes under Socrates' review. His remarks make the whole dialogue itself the vehicle of a most fundamental reflection on the dialogic mode, for the form of the Republic is a subtle but precise example of the approved texis. Socrates distinguishes two basic poetic modes. The first of these is straight narration, in which the poet 'himself is speaking directly while his characters speak in indirect discourse; for example, Homer says that "Agamemnon ... said [t0 Chryses] that rather than release his daughter he would grow old in Argos with her." In the second mode the narrator drops out entirely and the characters speak in their own persons, as in all drama (392d5). Epic represents a mixture of these two basic styles (394c4). The first mode is honest enough, but the second mode is censured. It is bad because in it the poet, by hiding himself, hides the fictional nature of his work and evades all responsibility for its truth, leaving the actor.(or reader) caught in an unwitting imitation. For the actor becomes, as it were, the character-all too often reprehensible- whose direct speech he declaims. But the guardians should be allowed to imitate only good men (395d). The Republic itself, however, has that form which is exactly designed to provide at once the most complete poetic responsibility, the greatest mimetic force, and the most worthwhile imitation. For the narrator, Socrates himself, is always present and responsible, and he keeps himself before us with the ever-recurring phrases "he said" and "I said" (393cll; contrast Theaetetus 143c); nor is he an anonymous mouth-piece whose work a reader reads, as he does the Homeric epics, without ever learning who the poet was. (We see here, incidentally, one reason why Hesiod, who not only identifies himself but even warns.the reader that his source, the Muses, will sometimes lie [Theogony 22, 27], is, if less loved, yet more acceptable to Socrates; Republic 546ei, 607c8). The teller is Socrates, backing his own words with the acts of his own life. At the same time the words and arguments are dramatically direct, in the sense that the reader can almost hear them- he may imitate them in the sense of rehearsing them in his own soul and trying them out for truth; he can let the logos turn into an ergon. This text is almost an "unwritten teaching," having overcome the dead letter. And finally, the Republic as a whole- and this is a feature it shares with other dialogues- is just the required imitation of the activ- �34 MUSIC OF THE REPUBLIC ity of the "best of men" (Phaedo 118al6); it is Plato's imitation of Socrates, an imitation that will prove its authenticity by serving the double function of commenting on the original while representing it. Consequently, we can distinguish between what Socrates says and what the dialogues say; the most striking example of this is the Phaedrus, which is so written that, when rightly read, it casts doubt on Socrates' assertion within it that the written word cannot teach (274c ff.) We shall see that similar tensions, similarly inviting to thought, are written into the Republic. lc. Yet in Book VII, when Socrates revises the guardian education for the philosopher city, even this purged music is explicitly and emphatically excluded from the formal plan of education as containing no "learning matter" (mathema, 522a8, 537; cf. 504dl) leading. toward being. For such music is merely "ethical" (522a4), i.e., an habituation of the soul that does not lead to knowledge; it is a training but not an education, a conditioning but not a journey to the source, for "the dialectic pursuit alone travels in this way" (533c7). Consequently, the musical training is completed very early and culminates in gymnastics (cf. 376e6, 546d7, S91c5). 2a. We know from the dialogues, however, that there is a music yet different from both the traditional and the purged music, the philosophical music mentioned above. Evidently it was Pythagoras who first appropriated the oldest of the Muses, Calliope, for philosophy. " Socrates gives her, together with the next sister, Urania, the same office in the Phaedrus, where Urania watches over those who make stories about the heavens and the gods, while Calliope cares for those who compose "human stories" (259d6). And in the Phaedo Socrates tells of a dream that has come to him often and in various shapes but always with the same message: "0 Socrates, make music and let that be your work" (60e6); he has always taken this dream to mean that he should pursue philosophy, that being "the greatest music" (6la3; cf. Republic 499d4, 548b8). 2b. What then is this philosophical music, this "imitation of inquiry" (historiken mimesin, Sophist 267e2)? In the passage of the Phaedo quoted above, Socrates says: "I myself am not a myth-teller" (61b5). This is literally true, for he is not one who makes imitations of what never was nor will be, producing mere phantasms (cf. Sophist 236c), but he is one who makes images of what is. We must immediately mention an almost paradoxical exception to this: the logos of the cities built "in speech" is, as it were, Socrates' own myth; he speaks of ''the constitution which we told as a myth in speech" (50le4). But otherwise Socrates, although he is willing enough �BRANN 35 to act out a myth, avoids telling myths of his own making; the "noble lie" of the guardians is a myth attributed to the Phoenicians (414c4); that anti, Homeric Nekyia or Descent to Hades, Socrates' substitute for Odysseus's false and tedious tale to Alcinous (cf. scholion on 614bl and Note 11), which closes the dialogue, is attributed to Er and only "saved" by Socrates (62lb8); in other dialogues too Socrates avoids responsibility for myths (e.g., Gorgias 493, Phaedrus 244, Meno 81). Images, on the other hand, are his very own mode; as Adeimantus ironically remarks at one point: "It isn't the usual thing, I suppose, for you to speak through images" (487e6). 2c. An account of how such images as Socrates makes are formed is given in the Phi/ebus (38e). When someone goes about reflecting much by himself, many true opinions and accounts become written into his soul, as by an inner scribe. This scribe is succeeded by a painter who draws images illustrating these inner accounts, and if the accounts are true, then so are these images. 2d. Socratic images therefore differ from myths in being the direct consequence of an inner argument, and not the persuasive counterpart and conclusion of a public conversation. When the dialectic attempt has ended, often in failure, the imagination, as Kierkegaard says, feels fatigued and reacts: "The mythical is thus the enthusiasm of the imagination in the service of speculation ... " (Concept of Irony, p. 132); the same faculty, in its vigorous sobriety, produces the images here called Socratic. In their presentation myths are thus preceded by an argument, as nearly the whole Republic precedes the Myth of Er, and dialogic passages precede the myths of, for insta.nce, the Phaedo, the Phaedrus, the Symposium, and the Gorgias; images, on the other hand, are either actually followed by an explication of the interior argument that went into their making, or they themselves give plain hints how the participant in the dialogue should reflect on them. This reflection is of a very peculiar kind, and in inducing it lies the special strength of the Socratic image: each such effort is accompanied by a reflection on the effort itself, for to study a Socratic image always means to study not only its content but the nature of "image" and "imaging" itself. The study of Socratic imagery is then exactly what Socrates himself says music ought to be: the study of true being and its images; as he repeats twice, this is one and the same art and effort (402b7, c7). In Aristotle's opinion the making of such images, which are, as we shall see, based on analogy, the chief sort of metaphor (Poetics 1457b16), demands by far the greatest poetic gift, namely "the ability to see what is like" (1459a8). We shall see that this is also the philosophical gift. In �36 MUSIC OF THE REPUBLIC Socrates' images the "ancient difference between philosophy and poetry" (Republic 607b5) is reconciled. 2e-f. Socrates himself fulfills the demand he makes of all poets, which is to "make an image of the Good" (40lbl). His image of the Good is the "sun image"· or "likeness" (eikona, 509a9, homoioteta, 509c6), which dominates the center of the dialogue. It is followed by that example of a "corrected" Myth of Man which Socrates had before omitted (392a8). The myth that he chooses to correct, tacitly but devastatingly, is indeed the most crucial of all stories concerning humans. It is the one dramatized by Aeschylus in the tragedy of Prometheus Bound. It tells how the treasonous immortal Prometheus gave men fire (252), how he opened their eyes (447) and made them see, and how he made them come out of the caves they had been, antlike, inhabiting (452) into the light of day to see the heavens and to become wise (476). As Socrates re-tells this myth in his "image of the cave" (Republic 514), it turns out that the fire Prometheus brought was a counterfeit light (b2); those few who know how to nse it only abuse it by allowing it to project deceptions (b8); men's eyes are as blind as ever (515c9); they continue to live deep in a dark cave and their wisdom is worthless (516c4-7). We might note here in passing that in the Phi/ebus Socrates intimates that the true Prometheus is Pythagoras (16c), and that in the Protagorasthe sophist himself, while crediting Prometheus with having brought the other arts to men, claims that he omitted the political art, which Hermes brought later directly from Zeus to all men alike (322c1). 20 2g. The logos belonging to these images is absent in the Republic, but its terms may be recovered from that tradition dealing with Plato's oral "Unwritten Teachings," particularly the lecture- or meetings- Concerning the Good (see Note 28). In these terms, the terms of the Academy, the "image of the Good" represents the One and the "image of the cave" the Indiifinite Dyad; this interpretation will be pursued below in somewhat more detail. So much, however, must be said at the outset: While it is a serious enterprise to attempt to bring out what is in the dialogues without being written there, it is a very external approach to discover in the texts some Academic formula, and it is patent folly to think that the wisdom which never would or even could be written (cf. Seventh Letter 341c-d) can be recovered by making such identifications. For what is thus recovered is obviously precisely its dead written image, as found, for the most part, in Aristotle. For Aristotle, here as always, proceeds soberly and seriously to profane the Academic mysteries in the interests of formulable truth. The �BRANN 37 very "mathematical" nature of the "Unwritten Teachings" supports this point of view, for it is evidence that there was a live community concerned with what is learnable par excellence, a group for whom the terms of the teaching were pregnant with semi-technical meanings, which, bandied about out of context, become exactly what Plato feared: somewhat fantastic fossils of truth. Nor does it signify much that Plato himself on some occasion did speak to the public in the language of the school, giving out such schematisms as anyone may carry away in his memory or his pocket and as everyone would have heard of anyhow-or that for some students "mathematics had become philosophy, although they say that it should be studied for the sake of something else" (Aristotle, Metaphysics 992a32 ff.). It is, after all, a remarkable fact of the tradition concerning the "Unwritten Teachings" that the doctrine that must have been their central matter, the doctrine concerning the order or taxis of the eide as discovered by dialectic (cf. Philebus 16d-e), is divulged by no one, not even by Aristotle (see Note 35). 3. The particular object of Socrates' music in the Republic, which may be contrasted with the battering ram of his rhetoric in the Gorgias, is to work a gentle and orderly revolution of the soul in respect to the love of wisdom. The musical art is the ability to give an inviting preview of the "marvelous way" that, according to the Seventh Letter (340c3), must be given to any beginner- it is an art which Socrates once refers to as the "art of conversion" (518d3). According to the stated plan of the philosophers' education, at twenty those chosen to study begin a formal sequence of mathematics culminating in a "synopsis" (537c2). At thirty, after another selection, the young philosophers enter upon the long road of dialectic, which again culminates in a synoptic vision, that of the Good itself (540a8). Just as Socrates had first introduced Glaucon to the Good as the "greatest learning matter" (megiston mathema) poetically, by an image, so he now sets out the plan of study that will prepare Glaucon to reach the Good as a "hymn": "Don't we know," he says, speaking of the mathematical studies they have just surveyed, "that all these things are only the preludes of the hymn which we must study?" (53ld7; cf. Timaeus 29d5, Laws 722c6). And a little later, playing on the double meaning of nomos, law or song, he speaks of the "law which the activity of dialectic fulfills" or the "song which it performs" (532al). Socrates will not turn this song into expository prose, since "no longer, dear Glaucon, will you be able to follow ... , for you would no longer be seeing an image of what we are discussing but the truth itself, as it appears to me" (533al). Socrates' music, as the art of conversion, is nothing but the poetic synopsis of the end as well as the I I �MUSIC OF THE REPUBLIC 38 road of the philosophical education itself. It is designed to turn Glaucon into the right course by showing him "what the business as a whole is . . . . For once he hears this, if he is indeed properly philosophical and worthy of the undertaking- a man divine- he is persuaded that he has heard of a wonderful way and that right now he must concentrate on it, or else life will not be worth living" (Seventh Letter 340b-c). So this was the significance of the omission of music from the plan of education: the very presentation was itself to be the musical overture to learning. We shall see that when the object of study is the "highest learning matter" the images and songs in which it is previewed demand the highest art. 4. Books V-VII, which contain the central images, are again, like the outer books, roughly symmetrical about the center. Upon the completion of the just city, culminating in the discussion of the community of women and children (V, 449-471: VIII, 543a), Glaucon asks his question concerning the possibility of this city. Socrates answers it by introducing the philosopher kings. This question and its answer frame the center of the dialogue (V, 47lc-473: VII, 540d; cf. 466d8). The next inner theme is the definition and- here Adeimantus interposes- the defense, temperament, and proper age of the philosopher (V, 474b-VI, 502: VII, 535-540). At the innermost core is Socrates' initiation of Glaucon into the philosophical education, effected by two great images, the "sun image" and the "cave image," which are interwoven with explications and with each other, as shown in the table: 507 a ff. [sun image 509d ff. explication of the sun image by the r I "Divided line" 514a ff. 517b ff. 522a ff 533a ff. lr cave image correlation of the two images explication of the cave image in the "plan of studies" l · correlation of the explications of both images. We have before us a composition of intricate but clear texture. B. I. Glaucon's introduction to philosophy will itself have a prelude. He will discover for himself the meaning of "opinion," doxa. �BRANN 39 Opinion in its various meanings determines the musical key of the different parts of the dialogue by its absence or presence. The outer ring of logoi is explicitly spoken in a signature appropriate to the absence of the "good opinion" (doxa) of mankind and its homonymous consequence, "reputation (doxa)." Adeimantus had stipulated at the beginning (Book II) that the argument about justice must "remove reputations" (367b5), and Glaucon had provided the magic Ring of Gyges, 21 which will allow the wearer "to do anything"- that is, to be a complete crook, pan-ourgos, without being either seen or blamed. At the end of the argument (Book X) the ring and also the concealing Helmet of Hades, which the argument had been, so to speak, wearing, can be removed (612b5), for even on the supposition that the opinion of men carries no weight, justice has been proved profitable. At the center of the dialogue, however, where an ergon is set into the logos, the opinion of mankind cannot be supposed away, for the many will have to be won to some sort of acceptance of philosophy if anything is to be done. But it is really as the individual inner source of this public opinion, as the faculty of the soul Glaucon will soon learn to call doxa, that opinion becomes of overwhelming importance at the center, for both the older and the younger lover of wisdom. For about the "greatest learning matter" Socrates himself has, as he repeatedly says, only opinion (506c4, e2, 509c3, 517b7, 533a4; cf. Phaedrus 278d), although opinion so well founded that Glaucon will not be able to follow him without a long course of study. So also the "interest" on the capital Good, its "child" (Socrates plays on the double meaning of tokos: child and interest, as in our phrase "bearing interest"), which he gives to Glaucon, will provide the latter only with opinion. But since the interest is not paid in counterfeit coin and the child is no bastard (507b5), we may infer thatOlaucon will conceive not false but "true opinion," and this is the beginning required if positive learning, as distinct from a preliminary purgative refutation, is to take place. However, throughout the conversation the Good, that one thing which everyone wants in truth and without regard to "seeming" (doxan, 505d8), will have to be approached by opinion: "A man should remember that he is human not only in his fortune but also in his demonstrative knowledge" (quoted from On the Good, Vita Aristotelis Marciano 953b, ed. Bekker). 2. As so often in the Republic, the conversation makes its own mode the object of reflection- in the case of doxa, at its very inception; Socrates' opinions on the highest matters are prefaced by ~n inquiry into the meaning of opining. The "third wave" has just closed in on Socrates (Book V, 473c6); he �40 MUSIC OF THE REPUBLIC and Glaucon must now define the philosopher (474b5). Just as there are some who desire love, he says, and some who desire honor, there are some who desire wisdom, and all of it. Glaucon asks whether lovers of wisdom then include lovers of sights and sounds. Socrates answers with a distinction which he would have difficulty, he says, in getting anyone but Glaucon to admit (47 5e6): The just and the unjust, the good and the bad, are each one by itself, but "in communion with deeds and bodies and one another they are imagined in every way and appear each to be many" (476a4). Now lovers of sights love-and apprehend- beauty in its manyness and are asleep with respect to true beauty itself, being unable to distinguish this one from the many, but the philosopher loves the one true beauty. The "thinking" (dianoia) of the philosopher is knowing and is to be called knowledge, gnome, while the lovers of beauty only opine and have opinion, doxa (476d5), Furthermore, knowledge must be of something which is, and which is "that which is completely," and which is therefore completely ''to be known," gni5ston, w~ile "what is not" is entirely unknowable," agniiston (477al). Now if there is something "between" (metaxy) complete being and complete non-being, then, as knowledge was said to belong to being and ignorance (agnosia) to non-being, so to this "thing between" must correspond something that is itself ''between ignorance and knowledge" (episteme, aiD). This is found to be opinion, having an object and a "power" (dynamis) different from both knowledge and ignorance (b8; cf. Symposium 202a). If he and Glaucon can discover what it is that, being more shadowy than being but brighter than non-being, lies between them, they will have found "that which is to be opined," the doxaston (478e3). Then they will name it, "assigning extremes to extremes and means to means" (e4). They will appeal to the lover of beauty in manyness and ask him if all these things he loves are not also sometimes ugly, and if the same is not true of things just, great, or heavy- that they will all be found at some time to be the opposite, so that they cannot be said to be or not to be one thing or another, but are tossed about in-between being and non-being. Lovers of such things should be called "lovers of opinion" and not "lovers of wisdom" (philodoxous: philosophous, 480all). So ends Book V: becoming, genesis, that "inbetween thing," has not been explicitly named, but it will clearly have to play a fundamental role in Socrates' subsequent presentation. 3. The foregoing argument cannot help reminding Glaucon of an earlier one (Book IV), in which it had been concluded that cities derive their constitutions from the individual constitutions of their citizens. 22 Socrates had then asked whether the three capacities of the soul, desire, spiritedness, and reasoning, belong to three different parts or whether each of these �41 ; belongs to the whole soul (436a8). To show that they are. indeed three separate parts, Socrates and Glaucon had posited a strict correspondence , between desires and their objects. If a man wants at the same time to drink and not to drink because he knows that he ought not to, then his soul must contain opposing parts: a "bidding" and a "forbidding" part (439c6). There are then two parts, the rational part or logistikon "with which· a man calculates" (logizetat), and the desiring part or epithymetikon which is "unreasoning" (alogiston) and in which desire (epithymia) is located (439d). Between these two, the "forms" (eide, e2) that are ordinarily recognized, Socrates inserts a third (e3), the spirited part or thymoeides. Glaucon, obviously listening to the name, thinks that it is more akin to desire than to reason. But Socrates points out that it can be an "auxiliary" of the reasoning part, since it makes us feel high-minded anger, or thymos (440e). Finally, these three parts are arranged within us as the "three terms of a musical proportion" (443d6), and thymos becomes "the in-between power" (479d8), which, while itself obedient to reason, can in turn govern the body (403d, 4lle6). Glaucon had therefore been asked long before the present argument to distinguish the parts of the soul by means of their relative objects and to understand one of these parts as a mean between two extremes. If we juxtapose the results of both exercises we get the following result: BOOK IV logistikon thymoeiaes epithymetikon BOOKY gnosis doxa (agnosia) For the middle parts this correlation is indeed tacitly but unmistakably made in the dialogue. For instance, a chief characteristic of the warriors, who as a class of the just city correspond to the spirited part of the soul, is the "preservation of law-abiding opinions" (433c7) within them; in fact, as Aristotle points out (Politics 1327b40), their thymos is the source of their discernment. Also, in a limocracy, which represents spiritedness among the degenerating cities and is emphatically presented as lying "between" aristocracy and oligarchy (545c6, dl), the chief characteristic of citizens is love of honor (548c7), which implies an interrelation of the thymos with the external doxa called reputation. 4. The logistikon, on the other hand, is not quite coextensive with· gniisis. Here we must stop to observe the name itself. In the traditional · double division of the soul into a rational and an irrational part, the first, �42 MUSIC OF THE REPUBLIC as having "reason" (logos), that is, the power of giving accounts (Nicomachean Ethics, 1102a30), was quite properly called logikon, a term evidently used already by the Pythagoreans. 23 Why then does Socrates call it the logistikon,.connecting it explicitly with the verb logizesthai, to reckon or calculate (439d5), rather than ·with the logos of dialegesthai (5llb4, 534c3)? It is because the logistikon is a restricted power, a power of planning, whose specific "work" later turns out to be calculation (cf. Nichomachean Ethics 1139a13), measuring,. and weighing-in short, whatever corresponds only to the lower part of the knowing power, to that power of mathematical thinking which Glaucon will discover later, once again as a mean between opinion and knowledge; and will learn to call dianoia. We must remember that the guardians as dog-philosophers have an admixture of ignorance in their knowing power, since they rewgnize the city's enemies by the criterion of their own ignorance of them (376bS). Moreover, their service as soldiers and administrators requires a knowledge of applied mathematics, an ability to be correct in matters sensual, which forms a part, although a secondary one, even of the philosophers' education (522c). The lowest capacity, on the other hand, the epithymetikon, might well be said to correspond to ignorance in a certain way, since the object of the first, pleasure, partakes, as Socrates later shows Glaucon, of the object of the second, non-being (585)- though actually "ignorance ... is a voidness in the condition of the soul" (b3) and no capacity at all. It follows that the tripartite soul bf Book IV, although it has a coextensive middle part, both begins and ends on a level below the soul described in the central conversation. How is this new soul to be understood? 5. At the very beginning of the articulation of the first soul Socrates had warned that nothing accurate could come "from such proceedings" (methadon, 435dl) and that a "longer and fuller way'' (d3) would be needed, a requirement repeated at a crucial moment in Book VI (504b2). With the discovery of doxa Socrates has started Glaucon on this longer way. The soul that now emerges is the soul as "the organ by which each man learns" (518c5; cf. 527d8), analogous in its passive openness to an organ of sense. The parts of this soul are specifically called "powers" (477b, c, e) when first introduced, and· this describes them completely- they are nothing but the soul's capability of taking in, without modification, beings of a different degree, of "having ideas" in the original sense; this is why in a crucial place (5lld7) they can as easily be called "receptivities" (pathemata) in the soul. Compared to this learning soul, the three parts of the first soul sink to mere tendencies, dispositions, or appetites (cf. Nicomachean Ethics, �43 U02b30). Indeed, the alternate name of the logistikon is "the wisdom-loving part" (philosophon, 586e4), and the love of wisdom is often called an epithymia, a desire, in the central books (e.g., 475b4, 8; 517b6). And of course, the very name of the thymos, with its allusion to epithymia, implies a kind of reflexive desire, as opposed to the desire that goes out upon an object. This means that in a sense allthese parts function as desires,. as activating human wants, and so it fits very well that the wisdom-loving· part should not be coextensive with the knowing part, since when the soul truly knows, it no longer desires the objects of knowledge but has attained and moves among them (cf. Note 10). Thus, once the learning soul has come into focus, the terms of the tripartite soul are used mostly to distinguish' temperaments or ''lovers.". The philosopher, for instance, is defined by means of a division of men into lovers of erotic pleasure and wine, lovers of honor, and lovers of wisdom (474c8; cf. 435e7). Again, the degenerate cities ate characterized by different prevailing appetites, and when tyranny is discussed the three parts of the first soul are even explicitly connected to three "pleasures" or "desires" (580d). This restlessly desir" ing tripartite soul is the embodied soul, a monstrous, precariously conflated unity (588d); it turns into a single rising organ of love only at the sight of beauty (Phaedrus 249d ff.), under the influence of that divine madness (244} which induces visions of the invisible. In contrast, the increasingly more receptive soul of the center, although still using the senses, is more nearly the soul by itself, whose oneness, presumably similar to that of the Whole, is a subject,· as Socrates says, for a more advanced inquiry (see next section). · 6. The "division" of the soul is the pre-dialectical "exercise," the gymnasia (Parmenides 135c8, d4, 7), of the Republic. Almost every reference to the dialectical process of "dividing" refers to distinguishing the parts or the objects of the soul (454a, 476a, 523a, 580d, 571a-b, 595a-b, 618c). "Division" or diairesis is not here a very formal undertaking, as can be gathered from the numerous names given to these parts: eide, gene, mere, pathe (435b, c, e, 439e, 441c, 443d, 442b, c, .612a5). In the course of the central conversation a quadripartite learning soul will emerge, but Socrates indicates that more divisions might be made in a more complete study (534a7) and that the question whether the soul is ultimately "many or one in kind" (612a4; cf. 443d7) has not really been settled. An important aspect of this dialectic exercise is the finding of the "in-between," the metaxy, which Glaucon immediately recognizes as analogous to the mathematical problem of "finding the mean." The ability to discover means is the chief gift necessary to the dialectician (Philebus 16el). The soul becomes the object �MUSIC OF THE REPUBLIC 44 of this exercise, not only because, as we have seen, the philosopher's version of the definition of justice is "Know Thyself,"24 but also because the politically indispensable "art of leading souls," rhetoric, depends on a knowledge of the divisions of the soul (Phaedrus 27ld; in the Republic Thrasymachus is told to acquire this art-Socrates is teaching him his own business, as it were). However, the undertaking remains a mere exercise because, as we shall see, Socrates must exclude true dialectic from the Republic. c. 1~2. Adeimantus, named the "Dauntless," who has heard and is shaken by every current doubt (cf. 362e, 419a), interposes an objection (487b): Socrates' argument about the excellence of philosophers is convincing in words, but in deed everyone knows that these people end up either scoundrelly or impotent, especially if they keep philosophizing past their youth. Socrates proceeds to win Adeimantus and the rest of the crowdthere are, besides Glaucon, eight named and several nameless auditors"in deed" (327c, 328b). He does not deny the accusation, but he will justify his demand for the rule of the philosophers by an image (487e5) and. its. explication (489a4); the image is that of a mutinous crew and the good but powerless captain. There follows a series of images that show that the greatest of all sophists, the Many, is in fact the greatest corrupter of natures, who corrupts the best most deeply; this Public Sophist is like a great brute that the little private sophists know how to propitiate (492a-493d). Thus philosophy is left desolate and any little tinker may, as it were, take her to wife (495e). There are, however, some good natures who are for various reasons incorruptible- Socrates here cites as one such reason his own "divine sign," the daimonion (496c4); when soon after he speaks of a "wellborn and well-bred ethos" (b2) one can scarcely help thinking of the Heraclitean saying that "ethos is a man's daimon" (Diels, Vorsokratiker, Fr.. 119). Such a nature will run to shelter as from a storm and will live-and die-in private. Thus such a man will do great deeds but not the greatest, which can only be done within a suitable constitution (497a). Adeimantus's worries about the slanders of philosophy he has heard are allayed. They return to the question of the possibility of the city, and now Adeimantus wants to know whether any of the contemporary cities are suitable to philosophy (497a9). Not a single one, says Socrates (who, however, as we know, himself lives and acts as a philosopher in Athens), not even the city in speech that we have just founded, because it too is deficient without the addition of a man, of a living law-giver (497d)-the �BRANN 45 very one they were talking about when Adeimantus interrupted. This man's main problem will be how philosophy may be pursued in such a way as not to ruin the city; the solution, as announced .by Socrates, is that not the young but those advanced in life must most devote themselves to philosophy. Adeimantus remarks how serious Socrates seems to be here, but he thinks that most of his hearers will object just as earnestly, and Thrasymachus most of all. Socrates says reprovingly, "Do not make a quarrel between me and Thrasymachus, who have just become friends- although we were not enemies before'.' (498c9). Thrasymachus approves this remark by his silence (cf.450a5)_ It is no wonder, Socrates goes on, that the people are hard to persuade, for they have never seen a virtuous man rule in a similarly virtuous city. This is why no city or constitution will ever become perfect until either some necessity forces the lover of wisdom to take care of the city, or the true eros of philosophy falls on princes. This may very well happen; in fact it may already have happened if there is now some "barbaric place" (499c9), or if there ever was or will be a situation, wherC a virtuous man rules: "The constitution we discusSed has cOme into being and was and will be, whenever this Muse is in power in the city" (d2). We must.not attack the many, for they will then become gentle and will believe that no city can be happy which is not painted by an artist looking "to the divine pattern" (500e3). Such an artist will begin with a clean slate, painting on it a constitution whose model is both the just and the beautiful and the temperate itse.lf and the actual condition of men (50! b), and the many will accept him. So a conclusion has been reached: Our law-giving is difficult but not impossible (502c). In this interlude with Adeimantus, Socrates completes the practical foundation of his city. Having been voted into office, he succeeds by his oratory in allaying the popular fears of the "philosophical clan" (50!e3); his persuasiveness is due to his ability to present a persuasive example of the uncorrupted lover of wisdom- himself. In defending what appears to both of them a crucial matter, the life-long pursuit of philosophy, he even becomes, as he himself remarks in retrospect, a spirited orator who speaks "as an indignant man will" (thymotheis, 536c4). He is anxious for, and successful in, preserving the peace with Thrasymachus, the single sophist who represents that brutal public sophist, the people (cf. 336b5). And when he imagines that their city may at this very moment exist in some barbarian . spot, we must recall that the dialogue must by now have been going for well over ten hours; it is night, and we may imagine the barbaric sounds of a Thracian orgy beginning to penetrate into the house, the celebration the company had come to attend but which they will now miss as they sit through the rest of the night under Socrates' spell. �MUSIC OF THE REPUBLIC 46 3. Socrates is now actually finished with Adeimantus. He will use him as an interlocutor only once more, in the discovery of the degenerate cities (548d8-576bl0), for Adeimantus is the expert on accounts of the worst. However, they continue a little beyond. Socrates reviews the three waves he has faced and ends by daring to formulate the "possible city" boldly in terms of the guardian city: "Guardians in the accurate sense, it must be ordained, are philosophers" (503b5). These must be at once quick and gentle and able to undertake. the "greatest learning matters" (503e4). Adeimantus wants to know what these are, and Socrates reminds him of their former study of the soul and its virtues and how they then said that a longer road must be taken to reach better things (504e). But what are these things? Adeimantus asks insistently. Socrates is annoyed that Adeimantus either does not understand or is trying to make trouble, "since you have often heard this-that 'the idea of the Good' is the greatest study" (505a2), for this alone is what everyone wants not in seeming but in truth. Although Socrates has already said that this Good cannot be either knowledge or pleasure (505c), Adeimantus presses to be told whether it is either of these or yet something else. A sarcastic exchange follows, in which Socrates denounces Adeimantus's unwillingness to hear, and Adeimantus scores Socrates' propensity for repeating the opinion of others (!); this ends in Socrates' refusing to talk to him about the Good (506cll). Now Glaucon returns to the conversation and implores Socrates not to stop just as the consummation of the argument is ahead; they will be satisfied if Socrates speaks of the Good as he did before of the virtues (d2). Glaucon does not realize that they have, in fact, already set out on the "longer path." D. i ,I I. Socrates yields to Glaucon. He will speak, though not of the Good itself but rather of its "offspring," which is most like it (506e). Socrates reminds Glaucon of the "oft-told" story of the one and the many (cf. 476). Those many good and beautiful things are seen but not known, while the thing itself, by which what was many comes "under one idea," is "known" but not "seen" (507b9). Now the artificer of the senses has made sight the most costly of the senses, since it needs a "third kind of thing" (el), light, to work. The sun is he of all the gods in heaven who gives us this light, and so the "sense" (aisthesis) of sight and the "power" of being seen (e6) depend on him. The eye is, of all "the organs of sense," "most like the sun" (508b3). This sun is the child of the Good, a child begotten "analogous to itself" (bl3). For the Good is "in the place of thought" in relation both "to thought and to things thought" (nous, noumena, cl) what the sun is �47 BRANN "in the place of visibility" (c2) in relation to sight and things seen. Socrates completes the analogy by likening "that in the soul which knows in this way" to the eye; as the eye sees things "clearly" (dl) when lit up by the sun, so the soul knows or merely opines things in the measure that the idea of the Good gives or fails to give "truth" (atetheia, d5). Glaucon is amazed. Adeimantus's question is now certainly answered; the Good cannot be either knowledge or pleasure (509a6). Socrates says that there is yet more to be seen in the image (a9), for the sun provides not only visibility but also growth and "becoming," genesis (b3), though it is not itself Becoming. Analogously the Good is the source of being, though not itself Being (b7, 9). This "image" or eikon, which we shall call the "sun image" for short, is best seen in a schematic sentence: As the light sun is responsible for giving So the { Good visibility the place of in { truth vision to objects of { thought { thought clarity which are therefore perceived with by the { knowledge eye becoming , and is also the source of { soul { being This image is now explicated in the "Divided Line." Glaucon is to take the "double kinds" (509d4), the "visible" (horaton) and the "intelligible" (noeton), and to cut them, as he would a line, into two unequal parts. Then he is to cut each section again in the same ratio (d7). Thus he will have, in the lower part, one subsection related to the other "in respect to clarity and lack of clarity" (d9) in the same way that images such as shadows and reflections are related to that of which they are images, namely natural objects and manufactured things (510a). To this whole lower part belongs "the opinable" (doxaston, a9). Next, the lower subsection of the upper part is considered. Here "the soul, using those things before imitated as images" {510b4), proceeds "from hypotheses" not "to the beginning" (ep'archen) but "to the end," while in the uppermost section she makes "her way" �48 MUSIC OF THE REPUBLIC (methodon) without any use ofimages but by the "ideas" or eidethemselves and through them alone, up to the un-hypothetical beginning (b6). Socrates explains the lower of these subsections in terms of the work of the mathe- . maticians, who assume certain hypotheses without giving an account of them and who reach consistent conclusions on the basis of these. In doing this they may use the "visible looks" of things, but these are not what they are really thinking about. The true object of their thinking is the intelligible eidos (5lla3), the "look" that "one may see in no other way than by means of the thinking faculty" (dianoia, al); thus Socrates indicates that his use of the term eidos is fundamentally ironic. In the top section this paradoxically named "intelligible look" itself, the eidos noeton, is attained by "the power of dialectic" (b4), which uses the hypotheses as "hypotheses in effect" -or "in being." This is a double entendre which means both that the soul is now aware of the hypotheses as being so far nothing but hypotheses and that it will now treat them as hypotheses underlying being. And having risen by means of these "up to the unhypothesized, unto the beginning of the whole," it descends, using nothing sensible, but only the hypotheses which are now no longer "suppositions"; these are the eide themselves (b-e). Book VI closes as Socrates assigns four "affections" or receptive powers (d7) of the soul to the four sections: thought or noesis to the highest, thinking or dianoia to the second, trust or pistis to the third, and to the lowest image-recognition" or eikasia; ,these are to be "ordered analogously'' to their objects (e2). (Noesis, usually "intellection," and nous, usually "intellect," are here both rendered by "thought" to contrast their perfect and direct mode with the progressive and intermediary mode of dianoetic "thinking.") A table (see next page) relating the line to the sun image will make the correlation clearer. 2a. In presenting the sun image to Glaucon Socrates is requiring him to exercise his doxa. Of the two "doxastic" poWers,· the lower, whose pregnant name is eikasia, and which is thrown in at the very end with conscious nonchalance, will prove to be the most pervasive of the four "affections." Ordinarily the verb eikazein means to "imagine," both in the sense of making an image and likeness, and of discovering a likeness or likelihood; so it means to compare or conjecture. The noun eikasia means both the ability to make or see images, likelihoods, and conjectures, and the image, likelihood, or conjecture itself. For Glaucon the word would probably call to mind a witty and malicious amusement with which clever people spice their symposia, called "likenesses" or eikasiai." The game consisted of representing someone in an image, whereupon the victim might retaliate �49 Source of the Whole truth Idea of the Good clarity ideas thought or know lege as exercised in dialetic hypotheses thinking as exercised in mathematics place of intelligibles: being Intelligible things ---~--------------------- ------------~-- Things of sight and opinion natural and artifiCial objects trust Sun place of visibles: becoming recognition reflections . and making of images by making a "counter-image"- or by refusing to play. So Meno tells Socrates that be appears to be "most like" (80a5) a torpedo fish (while Socrates ostensibly declines to make a counter-image-of course the whole dialogue is an unflattering portrait of Meno); and Alcibiades, in the one true triumph of his life, appearing in the Symposium as the god Dionysus himself, speaks of Socrates "through images" and compares him to one of the Sileni in his train, except that, in his image, which is "for the sake of truth" (215a6), this Silenus is more sober and far more divine than the god himself. And in Xenophon's Symposium (VI, 8; cf. also VIII, 43) Socrates curtly forbids the game when the eikasiai threaten to become in-· jurious and false. Now Socrates is in the habit of introducing great matters u11der the image of a game or riddle (cf. 479bll, 521c5), and Glaucon will soon see that the "game of images" is an image- arid an example- of the most distinctive of human faculties. In the meantime it must startle him to hear "conjecturing" elevated into a power of the soul along with thought itself. But as the meaning of Socrates' central image penetrates he must notice that this image itself required a peculiar application of his ability to see images. For he is, on the one hand, intended to imagine by means of the image what the Good is "like," but he is also, on the other hand, required to recognize simultaneously �. il 50 MUSIC OF THE REPUBLIC that the sun's world is but a likeness, that his own visible world is a counterfeit of being. Socrates had in fact prepared Glaucon for the fundamental importance of this power to recognize an image as an image when he had intimated earlier that to fail to possess it is to be permanently asleep· to being: "Look, isn't that just what dreaming is: when someone either in his sleep or while awake regards that which is like to something not as like but as the same as that to which it is like?" (476c4). In taking in the sun image, Glaucon then learns to use his eikasia in both of the fundamental senses that Socrates, as the savior of the true and original meaning of words, has restored to it. 2b. Similarly the next power, pistis or trust, comes into play. For just as in seeing the sun's world as an image Glaucon has been forced to lose trust in the visible world, so in seeing the sun as an image of !he Good and "most like it" (506e3) he acquires a better doxa of this world, a trust that life and government in the image of the Good are possible here. This trust is the "eikastic" counterpart of that persuasion to virtue which is the purpose of Socratic myth-telling (cf. 62lcl, 3). The question "whatever is the Good itself?" is bidden goodbye for now" (506el), and no explicit dialectical account of the Good is given at all. The Good appears here only as an object for belief, namely as the motive for study, the end and incentive to learning and doing. It is "that which every soul pursues and on account of which it does everything, having a pre-sentiment .that there is some such thing" (505dll). It is the one same, single, thing which all human acti.on, be it for show or genuine, intends not in seeming but in being, that which makes anything, including the virtues, good for us, namely "useful and profitable" (504a4). What makes the difference between attaining this true desire or missing it is precisely knowledge or lack of knowledge of the Good (e2). In that sense only is it the "greatest study," for, as we shall see, in another sense it is no "learning matter" at all. Nevertheless, the explicit consideration of the relation that human excellence and the human good have to the agathon, the good, was dropped as soon as Giaucon re-entered the conversation (506e); clearly it is a question to be discusseq either very superficially or only after long preparation (cf. Aristotle, Magna Mora/ia 1182a27, who refers to the discussion of this question in Concerning the Good). 2c. Perhaps the absence of any direct reflection on the nature of the Good seems to be in want of some further explanation. An Aristotelian anecdote about the audience's reaction to Plato's "Lecture on the Good," that half-mythical event when he spoke to the public �BRANN 51 of the "Unwritten Teachings" of his school, is related by Aristoxenus in his Harmonic Elements (II, 30), and is pertinent here: "They came, every one of them, expecting to get some one of the goods considered human, ... but when his reasonings appeared to be of mathematical studies and numbers and geometry and astronomy and [when he said), at last, that the Good is the One, I think it seemed to them very strange indeed; and then some sneered at it and others criticized it. Now what was the reason for this? That they knew nothing beforehand, but just like intellectuals (eristik01) were present to lap it up on the strength of the mere name." Now Socrates himself has several such argumentative types, such "eristics,'' on his hands- one of them Adeimantus, to whom he is careful to mention the "idea of the Good" as something Adeimantus has often heard of before, as something which is a cause of usefulness and profit and without which a man "cannot have the sentiments of a gentlemen" (505b3). Adeimantus reacts with a pat, eristic question worthy of the obtuse cleverness of a Meno: "But you, Socrates, do you think the Good is knowledge or pleasure or some other thing besides these?" (506b2; cf. Meno 70a); clearly this is a standard, routine question about the Good (cf. Philebus 19c). Here, Plato, as is his wont, nobly shows a Socrates wiser in practice than Plato himself was, for in the two dialogues dealing with the Good, the Republic and the Philebus, Socrates finds tactful ways to choose his interlocutor and to bring him along. In the present dialogue he silences Adeimantus by suggesting to him that he has heard it all before- the ritual-like use of the term "idea of the Good" (505a, 505e, 517b, 526e, 534b), although it is made clear enough that the Good is not an eidos at all, sounds like a soothing allusion to current discussions (cf. Epicharmus in Diogenes Laertius Ill, 14, 27). Meanwhile he gently brings Glaucon to face, without taking refuge in clowning, the "awe-inspiring enormity" (509cl) of this Socratic Good. But Socrates' indirection is not only a matter of avoiding public misunderstanding; it also has a positive pedagogic purpose, which is precisely to prevent Glaucon from pouncing precipitously on some bare truths that might turn his high spirits (cl) into bored sneers. In providing Glaucon with images to reflect upon, Socrates instills in him a kind of artificial "recollection" (cf. Meno 81c), which will enable him to "recognize" the logos whenever he himself should come upon it." This is, after all, what the effect of any artfully wrought image ought to be- a slow or a sudden dawn' ing of its logos. Therefore in some way a dialectical account of the Good, formulable in terms not unlike those of the "Unwritten Teachings," must be latent here.'' We shall try to work it out. 3a. When Socrates has delivered his sun image Glaucon asks him to �52 MUSIC OF THE REPUBLIC go once more through the "likeness of the sun" (509c5) in order to fill in whatever had been omitted before. Socrates' answer to this request is the dividing of the line. The "Divided Line" is the mathematical figure for an implicit logos and the possibility of learning what is yet unknown. The choice of a linear figure is itself meaningful, for the line, as the unique connection of two point-monads, stands for the closest of all relationships, that of like to like, of which the knower and the known are the paradigm (cf. Aristotle, On the Soul, 404b23, citing Plato; Metaphysics 1036bl3 f., on the Pythagoreans); it stands as well for the possibility of incommensurable and hence irrational, i.e., not directly expressible, relations. Th understand this explication of the sun image, Glaucon will have to exercise his dianoia. The word dianoia can be used quite generally for what we would call "mental activity." For instance, Socrates himself says (476d5): "Why may we not call the mental activity (dianoia) [cf. Sophist 263d] of one who knows, 'gnomi,' and of one who opines, 'doxa'?" This word, doxa, too, will be "restored" by Socrates to its full significance. The dianoia, which goes with the third section from the bottom of the line, is, then, the power used in thinking or, as the phrase goes, in "thinking things through"; this thinking is the soul organ's restless scanning of the articulations of being for distinctions and comparisons. It means attending to, or searching for, that in things which can be grasped in thoughtful words, such as the Greeks calllogoi. This scanning involves a higher kind of eikasia, which may be termed "dianoetic eikasia.m 9 For sensible things, when caught in speech, reveal themselves as mere imitations of something which the logos is truly about-as the "visible aspects" (horomena eide, 510d5) copying the true invisible "looks" (eide) of the thing itself. Likewise in the Phaedo (100a2) Socrates intimates that those who look at things in terms of /ogoi are Jess involved in images than those who look at them more literally with their physical eyes. In the Sophist (26le) it turns out that this is because logoi are "manifestations" (de/ornata) of being. The natural objects considered by the dianoia are therefore described primarily as "images"; in the dianoetic section, the soul proceeds by "using the very things before imitated [i.e., the natural objects that were imitated in the lowest section] as images" (510b4, 5lla7). The originals of these new images are -somehow-caught in what speech says: recall that the term logos stands for the meaning as well as for the words that convey it. By entrusting its inquiry to this logos, the dianoia is, in effect, "supposing" such originals; it is literally "hypothesizing" them so that they may serve as the basis of all distinctions, comparisons, inferences, and deductions. Now in an inquiry by means of logo!, certain results turn out to be �BRANN 53 primary and pervasive (522c8). Among these are the fact that a thing can always be called "one," and together with another, "two," that counting seems the inevitable concomitant of naming; furthermore, that in different things the same shape can be discerned and that it is caught accurately only in speech and never in a representation. To work out the parts and interconnections- they seem to be inherently perspicuous- of these objects that speech has discovered, it is necessary to recognize them as pure and separate, Hence arise the mathematicals, the "objects of study" par excellence, which form an especially important province of the dianoetic realm. On the highest level they supply the subjects of that indispensable pre-dialectical "exercise" in which Parmenides engaged Socrates in his youth (Parmenides 135e); for the Platonic Parmenides the most important hypotheses to be investigated are, of course, the two suppositions concerning the "One," namely that it is or is not. However, any common name is in fact a dianoetic hypothesis as well, and any sentence is a dianoetic structure- both are worthy objects of study. 3b. If for Socrates, the philosophical poet, the fundamental nature of the present discourse is eikastic, for Glaucon, the mathematical enthusiast, it is dianoetic. Summarizing in his own words, but accurately, what he has learned from the division of the line, Glaucon perceptively brings out a central fact only implicit in Socrates' words, namely that the objects of the dianoia are the same as the noeta of the uppermost part-thatthey are these noeta before that complete logos, which brings the thinker up to the thing itself, has been reached. In fact, he ends by treating the divided line as if the whole purpose of the division had been only to set the terms for defining the dianoia. For, observing that the very name of dia-noia suggests something in-between, or a mean, Glaucon defines it, in analogy to his earlier definition of doxa, as "something between doxa and nous" (5lld4), as the naturally intermediate faculty par excellence (cf. Symposium 202, where Eros as daimon is the corresponding intermediary). 3c. Socrates, of course, depends on the mathematical predisposition of his.young philosopher-mathematics being after all the young rulers' childhood amusement-in introducing him to the exercise ofthis, the lower noetic faculty (cf. 508c4, 509dll). In Book VII, Socrates takes the act of beginning the long description of the formal mathematical education that is the "prelude" to dialectic (53ld7) as an opportunity to engage Glaucon in a serious "methodical" dianoetic exercise. When Glaucon, accurately recalling the musical education of the guardians, perceptively concludes that this training cannot be the study that the future philosophers need, �54 MUSIC OF THE REPUBLIC Socrates asks him: "0 my marvelous Glaucon, what would be such a study ... ?" Glaucon eagerly interrupts to ask in turn what study might indeed remain to them (522b6). Socrates now invites him pointedly to become his "fellow viewer" (523a7) while, as he says, he makes divisions within himself about the studies that might lead toward being; he is to "say 'I agree' or 'I disagree,' " watching carefully that Socrates is "oracling" correctly. The discussion that follows shows Glaucon that arithmetic is precisely the study wanted, since it is "inviting to the dianoia" (524d3) and "arousing to noesis'' (d5), and that all the best natures should be educated in it-to which his slyly docile response is: "I agree" (526c7). Socrates proceeds to initiate him into the very study of "the one and the two and the three" (522c-526c) that Parmenides had once taught him. This is Glaucon's first and only step on the dialectical way; here and nowhere else in the Republic is undisguised direct philosophical work done-a "huge work," as he has begun to realize (5llc3, 53ld5). Glaucon intends to do it seriously, and when Socrates asks him whether he means to carry on as if demonstrating before others or in his own behalf, he wants to converse chiefly for his own sake. But, as Socrates says, suddenly speaking straight out to us beyond the dialogue, "if someone else should be able to profit in some way, you won't grudge him that" (528a2). 3d. But why should Glaucon need to be especially invited to this dialogue, since they are already in the midst of one and have indeed come precisely, as Polemarchus says in the beginning, to converse (328a9)? Evidently there are various ways to "converse." In fact, three meanings of dialegesthai can be distinguished within this dialogue. First it can mean a conversation in which anyone may and can take part. This, despite Thrasymachus's efforts to stage an exclusive rhetorical display, is its meaning in the "prelude" (357a2) of the dialogue, Book I. It can also mean that "power of dialectic" proper (5llb4, 532d8, 533a8) in which the logos, the account-giving power, leaves all sense perception behind and is moved "by the eide themselves," advancing "through them and into them" (5llcl). This activity is what is imitated by sight (532a2); as the soul ranges over noetic "sights," as the name eidos, "sight, look, aspect," indicates, so the eye sees things at once distinct and together. It is clear that Socrates regards the soul as truly moving (cf. Timaeus 36el) both upward and downward ouly in dialectic, which is thus repeatedly called a "way," meaning a pursuit or a method, a "journey'' (533b3, 532el, 3; 533b3, c7; 532e3). In contrast, the conclusive motion of the dianoia is downward (510b6, d2) as in deduction, that of the lowest power, eikasia, is back and forth as in comparisons, and the next-to-lowest power, pistis, �55 ' enjoys rarely disturbed rest. In the use of its lower powers the soul is therefore said to be bogged down and made sluggish (533dl, 61lc). The cause is its association with the body; the soul is never quick with bodily life but only with the logos, and its proper motion is a "heavenly journey" ' (cf. Phaedrus 256d8). But this dialectic is only praised in the Republic (532al); its actual exercise is impossible to one who is not already "practiced" (533a9) in dianoetic studies (and perhaps to any mortal), for dialectic is thought out-thinking itself. And indeed the "propaedeutic" (536d6) , mathematical studies are carefully trimmed: they exclude not merely all "banausic," i.e., applied, elements, but also any explicit "eidetic" admix- ture as well; for instance, nothing is said of Plato's arithmological teaching, the "eidetic numbers" (cf. Metaphysics 1080a12 ff.), although, as we shall see, allusions to dialectical terms abound. There remains a middle dialegesthai, which happens to be the one characteristic of this central conversation. This is speech between two souls. Such speech must have a sensible clothing of sound, the audible dialogue. Such dialogue is strongly distinguished from myth telling and hearing (e.g., Protagoras 320c, 3Z4d, Gorgias 523a, Timaeus 26c), since the latter appeals to trust and imagination, while the former involves primarily the dianoia. For the dianoia supervenes as soon as sense perception is expressed in words, which inevitably gives rise to dilemma, especially to selfcontradiction (524e3). In supplying hypotheses to solve these dilemmas the dianoia brings in noeta and thus invites the uppermost faculty of thought, noesis (523al). In itself the dianoia is the faculty of differences, distinctions, and contradictions. As such it ever ranges betwixt and between and is called out by human perplexities as well as by mathematical problems (530b6). Unguided, it can easily become an aporetic or "wayless" affection (524a7). Therefore in such a dialogue one of the interlocutors must know somewhat more than the other, must have advanced into dialectic, so that he will be able "to ask and answer most knowledgeably" (534d9, 528b8; cf. Phaedrus, 276e5). In this dialogue with Glaucon Socrates exercises such a superiority even more than usually, since their conversation is "synoptic" and requires a large foreknowledge. The introduction to arithmetic mentioned above displays precisely the required relation of the interlocutors: Socrates makes dialectical divisions "within himself' (523a6), which he then "shows" to Glaucon (a9), while Glaucon is to look on with him and to respond to Socrates' affirmations or negations (cf. Sophist 263el2) with his own agreement or disagreement. But this dialogic superiority is evident most of all in the very naming of the powers of the soul with which Book VI closes. For these powers are, as it were, named from aboye, from a synoptic point of view. Anyone who has not left the first three sec- �56 tions cannot possibly know their true names: doxa, as used ordinarily,', means the faculty of judgment; people rarely think that they have what to Socrates is "mere opinion," but they think that they know their minds; in· fact, the various provinces· of the dianoia, such as the arts and mathematics (5llc6, d3), are particularly highly regarded by their devotees, as producing nothing less than knowledge (533d4). For Socrates, of course, the dianoia is below knowledge. 4a. Let us return to the invitation to reflection that is extended to Glaucon by the sectioning of the realms "as if" they were a line; he must wonder why, as has been said, the Republic has no dialectical treatment either of the Good or of the eide under it. This missing logos is, however, absent in a different way for both of these dialectical objects. Let us begin with the Good. The Good has no "place" within the realm of being, for it is "beyond being" (509b9). Since it is that which is "un-hypothesized" it cannot be traversed in the same way as the "hypotheses to being," the stepping stones of the logos (5llb8). Consequently there is in this dialogue no power of the soul that corresponds to it, as is signified by the fact that it is off the top of the Divided Line. Although within the context of the imagery of sight the eye of the soul is said to look at it, a distinction between movement "among" and "through" the eide (510b8, 5llc2) and movement "up unto" the Good (5llb6, 533c8) is pretty generally maintained; the latter has about it something tangential and momentary; a glimpse of the Good is "scarcely" (517cl) achieved. Consequently this beholding is not quite knowing in the dialectical sense at all, for the "idea of the Good" is the result not of a unitary act of sight but of "abstracting" and "determining in logos'' (534b9). Socrates repeats this several times: The Good as responsible source is known only after the eidetic vision; it is known on the downward return, so to speak, by a syllogismos or collection of logoi, a logos of logoi (516b9, 517cl}. It is, in effect, the most comprehensive of all those "collections" (e.g., Sophist 267bl) that follow the "divisions" of dialectic. The Good, the "greatest study," is a "learning matter" or a mathema only in a new and strange sense, for it is learned in the movement away from it-to confront the Whole as a knower is to step back among the parts. 4b. For those realms, however, that are on the Divided Line, the absence of logoi takes on a different significance and form. It is essential to the following discussion to recall that the word logos means not only account or reasoning but also the mathematical relation of ratio, a double mean- �BRANN 57 ing of great importance particularly in Pythagorean contexts (e.g., Epinomis 977c3). Now we are told that each of the unequal main sections of the line is again to be cut "in the same ratio" (509d7), but we are neither given the ratio itself-we are not even told whether it is numerical or irrational, i.e., a ratio of commensurable or incommensurable lines- nor are we definitely told whether the greater or the less of the unequal segments is to be the upper one (cf. Plutarch, Platonic Questions lOOld). We can conclude nothing except that the two middle segments must be equal, which means that pistis and dianoia are in some way coextensive. That is indeed necessary, since the realm of the dianoia uses the realm of natural objects as corresponding images. 30 4c. This absence of definite ratios is the more noteworthy because for the earlier tripartite soul the numerical ratios of the parts are, playfully, given: they form the musical progression of the "highest," "middle," and "lowest" place in the diapason (443d6; cf. 432a). If the "middle" is here taken non-technically to designate the mean through which the "first consonances," the fifth and the fourth, are compounded (cf. Nicomachus, below) then these are as 6:4:3, the three terrns of a harmony, where 4, which represents the spirited element, the thymos, is a "harmonic mean." (If the meseis understood as the string of the fourth, then, as Theon, Hiller, p. 62, shows, this ratio can be immediately obtained.) The use of the terms of the "harmonic proportion," i.e., for b ~ 4, a(6):c(3)::a- b(2):b- c(l), may have a special significance here. Nicomachus (Introduction to Arithmetic II, xxvi) says that Philolaos the Pythagorean regarded this proportion as the "geometric harmony," expressing the cube, which has 12 sides, 8 angles, and 6 faces, so that its characteristics are given in the terms 6:4:3. The tripartite "embodied" soul is therefore here characterized as the basic solid. Now Aristotle (On the Soul404bl6 ff.) reports a similar Platonic oral teaching about the soul. The noetic cosmos, called "the animal itself," arises "from the idea of the one and primary length and breadth and depth": so that in respect to the soul, which is similar to that animal, "intellect (nous) is one; knowledge (episteme) is two, since it is uniquely related to one; the number of the plane is opinion (doxa); and sense perception (aisthesis) belongs to the solid." Evidently the Academy too believed that the soul reaches some sort of solidity as it meets the body. We may ask further how this dimensional structure is related to the quadripartite "knowing" soul of the central Republic. Although it is certainly not the same, there is an instructive relation between them which is best seen schematically: �MUSIC OF THE REPUBLIC 58 On the Soul 404b23 I 3 2 no us episteme doxa (pistis) } 4 aisthfsis { dianoia eikasia ~ Republic 534a The dimensional soul will be seen to be the more comprehensive of the two since it possesses elements for apprehending both extremities of dimensionality, namely unit and body, where the former is the source of the whole soul, and the latter is its full-grown structure. The soul of the Republic has, as we have seen, no clear and separate capacities corresponding to these; furthermore, as the Divided Line shows, it has no dimensional progression, for apprehension of solids occurs in one of the middle sections. On the other hand, it does have what one might call a certain reflective depth, which arises from the eikastic reduplication of episteme in dianoia and of pistis in eikasia that takes place within its two major parts, noesis and doxa (534a)." In summary, it might be said that the dimensional soul is all-embracing or cosmic, which is why some can say that "the soul is the place of the eide" (On the Soul 429a27), while in respect to the soul that goes with the realms of the Divided Line, it might rather be said that "the eide are the place of the soul." The soul ranges all over this place, sometimes settling in one spot and then moving again, remaining always somewhat a stranger-in accordance with the similarity between knowledge and the pervasive, piece-meal eidos of otherness described in the Sophist (257c7). Later we shall see the significance of the fact just pointed out, namely that the soul of the Republic is not a cosmic harmony of number ratios. But if the logoi themselves are absent, this much about them is given: they are the same throughout, for sameness of ratio defines a proportion, an ana-logia or "recurrence of logoi." How is Glaucon to interpret the mathematical fact that is here presented to his dianoia? 4d. We should, first of all, keep firmly in mind that this mathematical �59 presentation is itself only a simile; Glaucon is to cut the realms "just as" he would a line (509d6). He has no reason to think either that the realms of being literally have mathematical ratios to one another or that the inexplicitness of the logos in any way implies that the ratio of any two quantities is indeterminate (as are the greater and the less, a ratio technically known as "indefinite," aoristos, Metaphysics 1021a4); on the contrary, the logos here stands for the possibility of articulate human language. Thus cautioned, let us see what the model will yield. Immediately after the fundamental division of the line and description of the lower subsections has been made, Socrates reads off a first proportion (510a9): opined : known :: images : imaged object · This proportion announces that the internal relations of the two lowest are the same as those of the whole, that the relations connecting whole are mirrored in even its lowest parts. At the very end of the nividled Line passage he reads off yet another proportion (5ile3): segments of line : truth :: affections of soul : clarity which means in mathematical terms that the affections of the soul are correspondents (Euclid V, Def. 11: Given a:b::c:d, a and c, as well as and d, are said to correspond) of the realms of being that the line segments re>>re,;ent. Or, using analogical reasoning- that is, inferring the likeness correspondents (cf. Metaphysics 1016b34, 1093b18; Topics 108a7)-we conclude that known and knower are alike (cf. On the Soul, 404b18). the analogical method brings out the bond that "yokes together with strongest yoke" (508al), the linking of known and knower by the clarilight of truth; this illumination can bind them because they are both the Good" (509a3), that "ruling source" of the "community'' of knowns knowers (cf. Sophist 248all). And finally, in concluding the explication of both the sun and the cave Socrates forms two more proportions (534a3): being : becoming :: thought : opinion thought : opinion :: knowledge : trust :: thinking : image recognition first of which signifies that the gradations of knowing are the same the degrees of being. The last, more extended, proportion displays paricularlv well the force of the mathematical form Socrates has chosen. For �60 MUSIC OF THE REPUBLIC, since the affections of the soul are coordinated with linear magnitudes, ,, they may be "alternated" (Euclid, Elements V, Defs. 12, 3), so that the first is to be the third as the second to the fourth-and this is exactly what: Socrates has done here; he has alternated the original proportion of the segments, so that now knowledge : thinking :: trust : image recognition This new form of the proportion draws attention to the close relation of each faculty in one main segment to the corresponding faculty in the other, a relation which mirrors that of the main faculties and again that of the realms of being. The last ratio, which links thinking (dianoia) with image recognition (eikasia), particularly justifies the notion of a "dianoetic eikasia," a thinking use of images, while the preceding ratio shows a certain special relation between knowledge and trust, which we experience in that unassailable finality or incorrigibility, analogous to the selfsufficiency of knowledge, which certain sense perceptions possess (523bl). Obviously, by using the various Euclidean operations (Euclid V, Defs. 11-18) on these proportions, and by attending either to the sameness of the ratio relation or to the likeness of the correspondents in the new proportions, it is possible to obtain a variety of illuminating results. That this would be a legitimate enterprise is shown by the 'ierm Socrates uses when he dismisses further division of the line lest there be a surfeit of "multiplicate logoi" (534a7), a punning reference to the "duplicate" and "triplicate" ratios of the theory of proportion (Euclid V, Defs. 9-10)." All of these further results would be, however, only the expression of two fundamental similarities: First is that of the knower and the known, mentioned above, which Socrates has in mind when he tells Glaucon to "order them [the affections of the soul] analogously" (5lle2) to the realms of being; and second is that-really prior-similarity of each degree of being to the next higher degree. It is by reason of this similarity that the successive realms of (I) images, (2) natural objects, (3) mathematicals, and (4) eide are described in turn as (1) "that which is made as something similar," (2) "that to which it is made similar," and (3) "that which was before copied and is now treated as a likeness" (cf. 510al0, b4, 5lla7); and (4) even the eide themselves are, as we learn from other sources, formed in the likeness of the Good understood as the One (see below), being themselves each one (e.g., Metaphysics 987bl8 ff. -the formula is on/hen, being/one. This four-stepped ladder of similars is what .makes upward transition, · i.e., the .dialectical road, possible. It is, we should note, completely ar- �BRANN 61 ticulated first in the Divided Line; the sun image has only two undifferentiated realms, the intelligible and the visible. The Divided Line in a certain way preserves this original homogeneity of the larger realms; images and natural bodies are not found in differently constituted realms, for both are sensibles and either have their own body or use an alien one-reflections themselves are "in water" and "on smooth bodies" (510al)-so that the difference is not really that between the plane and the solid dimension or between visible and palpable things. Similarly, hypotheses and eide are equally intelligibles. What differentiates the realms internally is not, to use a latter-day expression, a different "material," but rather the reflective distinction of like to likened and of genuine to counterfeit, which reflects in the parts of the line the imaging relation of the sun to the Good. 4e. Glaucon will, then, see that the logoi relating certain aspects of the whole are one and the same throughout, that on account of similarity or likeness (homoiotes; cf. Sophist 231a7, Statesman 285b6) there is one logos pervading the whole. In presenting this notion to Glaucon mathematically, Socrates is signifying that he is presenting him with such hypotheses about being and becoming as will make thinking itself possible- and by this he means thinking consistently, namely "in such a manner that the sameness of logos is preserved" (homologoumenos, 510d2; cf. Aristotle, Topics 108b8). But if the characteristic dianoetic direction is downward to conclusions by deductions that win "agreement" (homologia) because the logoi in different souls have remained in concord, the discovering dianoia moves upward by an analogia. It is this latter use that is chiefly required in any search, and is therefore suggested to Glaucon in this part of the dialogue: "Make an analogy ... " (524d9; cf. 509b2). An explication of this means of learning is given in the Statesman: When the teacher chooses some thing about which the learner has right opinion to "lead him up to" (anagein) as an example, that is, when the teacher shows the learner a para-deigma, i.e.,. "something to be shown beside" some unknown, which is able "to lead [the learner] to" (epagein) this unknownthen this unknown may become known to the learner by a recognition of the analogy (277d9; here Socrates, in the reflexive mode characteristic of him, explains "example" by giving an example of an example, just as in the Republic he explains "image" by an image.) The sun, as an image of the Good, is just such an "example," and since the Good is far above the sun, the epagoge, the "bringing up," of Glaucon will be a true ascent. In fact, it will be an ascent-though only provisional-to the source of all examples, to that paradeigma which is no longer example but exemplar. We might summarize this exposition from a different point of view by �62 MUSIC OF THE REPUBLIC- saying that the Divided Line tells the story of "recollection" mathematically, by presenting through proportions that "affinity" of all nature (cf. Meno 81dl) which makes it possible to move with a sense of recognition in unknown places. Aristotle will reduce this upward, or inward, journey to the "logical" procedure of epagoge or induction, of which he makes Socrates the inventor (Metaphysics 1078b28). 4f. The first and original affinity, the sun image implies, is that which the Good as progenitor has with the sun as the offspring made in its image. In other words, the Good itself possesses an image-making power that it passes down to the eide and that they pass on in turn (cf. Phaedrus 250a6). This "downward eikasia," as it might be called, by making our world a progression of likenesses, is originally responsible for our own ability both to make ourselves like to the highest things by homoiosis (500c5, Theaetetus 176bl) and to recognize likenesses or to make analogies. It is, we might say, responsible for our "upward eikasia" and for the pleasure of recognition it gives us (cf. Aristotle, Poetics 1448b8); it is a power so unobtrusively indispensable that without it we would never "know ourselves" even in the most superficial sense of having confronted in a mirror our own looks, the eidos of our own face! 4g. We can now see precisely why the criticism of poetry in Book III turns into that radical "ancient quarrel between philosophy and poetry" (607b5) in Book X. This quarrel, which already engaged Pythagoras, who descended to Hades to watch Homer and Hesiod suffer for their lies (Diogenes Laertius VIII, 21), is now given a precise cause. In the light of the sun image, poets are usurpers and perverters of the power of the Good. They are more despicable even than that charlatan who, having carried a mirror through the world, claims to have "made everything" (596c2), when he has really only borrowed the lowest effects of the power of the Good. For poets make artificial images, using a perverted power of eikasia, a "low" (603b4) generation called "mimetic'' or imitative (602all), which produces images of good and bad things indiscriminately (604el, Sophist 233c; cf. also 267a) and distracts the listeners from true being (605a9). Such mimetic products are not natural likenesses but are separated from the true source of images by the interposition of a human maker, who "makes images vilely" (Republic 377el). Poetic mimesis makes artificial imitations;" "artists," to speak in modern terms, arrogate to themselves an unauthorized function of "creativity," while Socratic eikasia makes likenesses in the sense of observing those that are already there by nature, clothingthem in figures and putting the figures into words. �BRANN 63 sa. We must now go on to see exactly what conjectures about the Good the sun image allows Glaucon to make on reflection, even though he cannot yet reach a full and sure logos. In the image the Good is presented in three successive capacities, a triplet proved to be fundamental by its recurrence in the Philebus (20b8). It is presented first as the father of the sun (508bl2), then as that which is responsible for knowledge (e3), and last as the source of being (509b7)." The first of these might be called its cosmogenic function, by which the potent male Good generates the sun as a male offspring to be lord of the visible world and an intermediate source of the world of becoming, analogous to the Good itself as ruler of the world of thought (508c4, 517c3); the obvious question that arises here is whether the sun also has a mother-the cave image will deal with that. However, although the sun resembles its maker in its brightness, its continual risings and settings clearly mark it as a part of the world of becoming and passing away, while at the same time they bear evidence that the Good is also a source of motion (cf. Alexander on Aristotle's Metaphysics 988all ff., ed. Hayduck, p.59). In its second capacity the .Good is several times called the aitia, the "responsible cause" (508e3; 517c2), and aitos, "that which is to be called to account" (516c2) both for the passive state of the so-called nooumena, "beings known" (508el, 509b6, d8) and for the active knower (508e2), that is, for the soul in its "act of knowing" (509b6)- this aitia is, however, yet more beautiful and more honorable than these effects. In its third capacity, the Good is called king and lord (509d2, 517c4) and arche, "ruling source" (510b7, 511b7) of the whole, or the "arc he itself" (533c8), "in power and seniority exceeding the nature of being" (509b9); it gives things both their "state of being" (to einaz) and their nature as beings or beingness" (ousia, 509b8). The latter two capacities are reduplicated by the sun as source of sight and becoming. Socrates presents these functions in the order that will bring Glaucon up by analogy from the visible many to the invisible one (507b2). In the order of logical generation, however, the listing should clearly be reversed, since being itself must somehow precede the confrontation of active and passive beings and this split must in turn come before the birth of a world perceptible and perceived by sense. The grandest, most inclusive, most politcally relevant, function of the Good is therefore its rule (arche) over being; next it acts as the "answerable cause" (aitia) for teachers and learners, while its most private function is that of a father. But in truth neither order holds, for the Good itself is not hierarchically ordered, being itself the source and beginning of all order- "the arche itself' (533c8). �MUSIC OF THE REPUBLIC 64 5b. The diagram below shows the parts of this order; all its terms except one are taken from the text: Good ------.. archi aitia father ~ ~ ';;;wumena truth noesis /'/~'~/arity genesis doxaston genesis horaton sights sight [dogmata] doxa This scheme shows the Good as presiding over and bonding a kind of pervasive duplication: the Good as the reason for knowledge is responsible for the unifying confrontation of knower and known (right side) and so also for the agent of noesis, the soul (508d4; cf. Sophist 248cll, e ff.). As direct source, the Good also gives rise to ousia, beingness (left side), which, by reason of the soul's presence, has a second aspect: it is the "place" (508cl, 509d2) provided for the soul, the topos noetos, which contains the "things for thought," the noeta (the -tos ending signifying the capability of being thought; cf. Sophist 248d4). Finally, as generating source, the Good puts forth the Sun, a sensible second source that reduplicates the whole structure of being on the lower level of sense and becoming. At this point, the diagram brings out an aspect of the sun image that is of fundamental importance to the human place in the whole. The soul, which arises in the first instance as a knowing soul (508d6), is in some way also involved with the world of becoming: some aspects of sense "invite thought" (523bl). Furthermore we do have opinions, that kind of set mental reaction significantly expressed in the phrase beginning "I feel that . . . . " Human speech, too, can accommodate itself to becoming, since it is capable of the same admixture of non-being that gave rise to becoming (477a; cf. Sophist 260b!O). In other words, the human soul as the moving agent of knowledge has a faculty, doxa, by which it ranges over becoming and has a place there. This place contains "that which is to be opined," the doxaston, and the name of these things, as apprehended by the soul, �BRANN 65 has been added in the diagram-they are the dogmata, a word denoting both ordinary opinions (cf. Republic 538c6) and their political counterparts, the decrees and ordinances of the city. Thus from the point of view of the human soul genesis, becoming, belongs to being as one of its gradations Gust as the representative of the Good, the sun, is not above but within this world); hence doxa has a certain kinship with knowledge (Meno 86a). But from the point of view of the body, becoming is the place of "sense perception," aisthesis (507c4, e6), and, most characteristically, of "things to be seen," the horata, whose organ of perception is the eye, which is "most like the sun" (508b3), just as the soul is like the Good. This is why Socrates has two names, doxaston and horaton, for the segment and realm of becoming (509d), just as each human being has two "organs": that "by which" it sees, the soul; and that "through which" it sees, the eye (Theaetetus 184c6; cf. Timaeus 28a2). Becoming is then, in a sense, "within" being, not an external accretion to it (cf. M. Heidegger, Nietzsche [Pfullingen 1961] I, p. 207). 5c. However, seen in another way, the diagram brings out a certain downward doubling, effecting the differentiation, or rather proliferation, from one to many that Socrates had recalled when he introduced the image. Whence does it arise? Now although no sourc>' beside the Good is mentioned, the language of the image persistently implies that something already there is capable of "taking" the gifts of the Good in various ways. The Good "provides" (parechei, 503el, 509a7; cf. b3, 517c4) what is known with that truth of which the things known "partake" (metechei, 5lle3, 4); it "gives" this power to the knower (508e2), makes intelligibility "to be present" (pareinai, 509b7) in things, and causes being "to be added to them" (proseinai; b8). One might be tempted to think of some underlying "material" (with which Aristotle, speaking in his own terms, does indeed equate that in Plato's teaching which "takes" the Good, Metaphysics 988all), except that the Good does not actually differentiate some available stuff, but rather binds something disposed to come in a two-fold way. For instance, just as the "yoke" of light yokes two different things, vision and visibility (507c6), so the truth is the bond by which the Good binds the disparate knower and known. This dyadic disposition appears also in other ways: in the "double eide" (509dl, 4, 6) of the visible and the knowable (cf. the "two morphai of Parmenides' "double philosophy," Diels, · Vorsokratiker, I. fr. 8, 53 and p. 218, 6) and their two-fold subdivisions (534al), and in whatever makes "division into two," the complement of making analogies (534a6), possible. We have here an intimation of that secondary dyadic principle, so often mentioned by Aristotle under the name of the �66 MUSIC OF THE REPUBLIC Indefinite Dyad, which in Plato's arithmological teaching is the secondary arche complementing the Good understood as the One. Although it is only an intimation, it is one that must attend on any presentation of the whole, because the second principle has "a certain likeness to the whole" by reason of which it "contains all things" (Aristotle, Physics 207al9). As Speusippus explains: "For they held that the One is higher than being and is the source of being; and they delivered it even from the status of a principle. For they held that given the One in itself, conceived as separated and alone, without the other things, with no additional element, nothing else would come into existence. And so they introduced the Indefinite Duality as the principle of being."" This second arche of Being is discovered and described in the Sophist, in pursuing the source that makes sophistical speaking (commonly known as "Double Thlk," Dissoi Logot) possible. A difficulty had arisen over the necessary two-ness of Being. This two-ness had been a consequence of the very fact that plays so pervasive a role in the sun image, namely that there is both knowing and something knowable; therefore Being, as known and knowing, possesses a knowing and living soul and is thus in motion, while as knowable it is steadfast and at rest (248d ff.). Being was thus both in motion and at rest, and this resulted in a quandary: Being kept cropping up in speech as "some third thing" beside these irreducibly separate two, motion and rest, so that neither of them could be said to be (250b-d). The solution to this quandary was found in the nature of the Other, which goes "through everything" (255e3), and has a correlative, the Same. For these make it possible to say that Being can be both motion and rest, since each of the two is just what it is by reason of being the same with itself and is not the other by reason of being other than that other, i.e., by participating in the Other. In this way the deliverances of speech were justified and the logos was saved. The eidos of the Other is described in the Sophist as always relative (255d), effecting Non-being, which is infinite (256e) and cut up into many parts (257c). But these are exactly the terms associated by Aristotle with the Indefinite Dyad (Metaphysics 987b19 ff., 1087b13 ff.)." Plato, he says, made "the other nature" (cf. Sophist 256el, 257c7) a dyad because the numbers "outside the first" (i.e., after the One and the Dyad) can be "begotten from her just as from a matrix" (Metaphysics 987b34) by the One as begetter. The first such definite arithmos is the eidetic 1\vo (ibid. 1082all), Being (cf. Note 35). This "two-making" arche is precisely one of those "responsible causes of division" (Sophist 253c3) which is being sought, and, as has been srud, it is the source of the possibility of that confrontation between knower �BRANN 67 and known which the Good confirms with its illuminating truth. Clearly, then, such an arche is in the background of the sun image. We shall see, however, that in the context of the human good, namely that concerned with the embodied soul, it will appear not as a second source of being but as something opposed to that good, as the source of evil. But for the human knowing soul Socrates has coined a special term- it is "like the Good," agathoeides, or well-formed (Republic 509a3), and so are all its situations. Sd .. We must now take a last looli:-at the role of similarity or likeness in the sun image, not merely insofar as it permits ascent by analogy, but as a constitutional principle. In the conversation of the Parmenides- which is, incidentally, recounted to Adeimantus and Glaucon- young Socrates had tentatively presented "likeness" as a solution to the problem of methexis, the "participation" of the many sensible things in the one invisible eidos (132cl2). He thought that the eidemight be "patterns in nature" (d2), patterns to which "the sensible things become like and hence are things likened [i.e., copies]"; therefore "their participation in the eideis nothing but this being made in their image" (d4). Parmenides shows him that his solution is impossible. The eide cannot be "in nature," i.e., among beings, as patterns since, likeness being reciprocal, the pattern would be indistinguishable from its copy- both would be like and would require yet a third eidos above them to be like to (e7). This form of the "third man" argument (cf. Metaphysics 990b17) amounts to saying that patterns, as mere patterns, are not necessarily above their copies in the scale of being and need have no originating power, that they have no nature by and in themselves, nothing that permits them at once to retain their oneness as eide and to be a source of manyness- they are not sources. (This same criticism is in fact made by Aristotle of the Platonic eide, Metaphysics 1079b.) At this stage young Socrates does not even suspect that the problem might have to be considered on a higher level, namely that of the participation of the eide in each other, of the communities they form with each other, and, beyond that, ofthe whole they belong to altogether (129d6), and hence he does not see that his eidetic solution might after all be usable. Yet, as we shall see, there is a place for such a solution. One aspect of the higher methexis problem, the problem of the several "communities" that the eide have with each other, was, as we have seen, considered in the Sophist (254b7), where the solution to the question how both rest and motion can be was given in terms of the correlative archai of the Same and the Other. Both of these extend throughout Being, for by being one and the same with itself each eidos remains integral and in- �68 MUSIC OF THE REPUBLIC dependent, while by being other than another it becomes so related to that other, namely as another "other," as to be capable of being together with it in a "community" (256a!O). That is why Otherness is the bond of Being. Now if the point of view taken is not within but "beyond Being," Likeness performs just such a function as Otherness did within Being, and, in a way, does so more plausibly. For within Being, the secondary, reflexive eidos of the Other was the source of community, the "bond" that ran "through everything" (255e3; cf. 253a5, cl), while the primary Same was responsible for the separate and independent oneness of each being (254d15). But the bonding of the whole is achieved precisely because of the Likeness of each thing within it to a pattern beyond and so to each other thing; it is exactly the failing power of "being like" that manifests itself within Being as the peculiar effect of Otherness called "being an image of" (Sophist 240a8). The fact is that Parmenides' objection fails as soon as the pattern is really of a different order and sufficiently beyond reach, as the Good indeed is: " ... [and furthermore] the Good is not being but yet beyond Being in seniority and exceeding it in power" (Republic 509a3, b8). Note that while it was impossible for Being to be "some third thing" (Sophist 250b-d) beyond its constituent eide, the Good is to be imagined as precisely such a "third kind" of thing (Republic 507dl, el). From the highest point of view, that of the whole, not otherness but likeness is the bond; in terms of the knowing soul, not logos but analog/a is required. It is a token of this that the knowing part of the soul, to which the Other is compared in the Sophist (257c7), is said in the Republic to be "like the Good" (509a3). It is precisely this bond by which the Good makes everything one whose mathematical image takes the form of a proportion: "And the most beautiful of bonds is that which makes itself and the things bound together as much as possible into one. Proportion accomplishes this most beautifully. For when the middle term of three numbers ... is such that as the first is to it, so it itself is to the last, ... then necessarily all will turn out to be the same. They will all become one with each other" (Timaeus 31c2; cf. Metaphysics 1016b34). We can now see a second reason for the equality of the middle sections of the Divided Line: the three-term proportion (i.e., a:b::b:c) "makes one" or unifies by means of the power of the "inbetween," the metaxy-the Divided Line represents a harmonized Whole. Socrates had already described and named this beautiful union, the true home of the philosopher, in that "persuasion to the rule of philosophy," addressed to Adeimantus and the others, which precedes the presentatiop of the sun image to Glaucon (487b ff.). His language then was in terms of man and god; in keeping with his purpose he gave an anthropomorphic �BRANN 69 view of the realm of being, as it were: "For there is surely no leisure for him who has his thought truly set on beings to look down into the affairs of men and by fighting with them to be filled with enVy and malice; but looking at such things as are ordered and always remain set, and observing that they neither do injustice nor have injustice done to them by one another, all being set in an ordered whole (kosmi5i) and according to logos, he imitates these and makes himself as like [to them] as possible.... And so the philosopher, conversing with what is divine and like an ordered whole, himself becomes as divine and ordered (kosmios) as is possible for man" (500c-d). Socrates is throughout employing the word used of the visible world, cosmos, and the man who becomes like a god is presently called a demiurge, who, like the divine artificer in the Timaeus, uses a "divine pattern" (Republic 500e3; cf. Timaeus 28a7) in making his work of art, the city. We see that the interior order of the world of being is to be imagined as analogous to a cosmos, an ordered visible world, having a taxis, a hierarchical order. The Good is to be understood as the comprehensive source of this order, which is here presented in the familiar language of Pythagorean cosmology: Justice is a reciprocal matter, the parts of the whole are related "according to logos," that is, as in ratios, and participation in the order is by imitation and likening (cf. Metaphysics 1075al2 ff.). We may conjecture that this is a popular presentation of that taxis (whose terms are also borrowed from the Pythagoreans) which supervenes when the Good is understood as the One, the articulating ailia of the eide, which makes them what they are (ibid. 988al2), and above all makes of the "greatest eide," motion and rest-which together form being-the eidetic 7Wo. The taxis that thus arises is that arithmological structure of the eide which is the prototype of all ordered associations, ordinal and cardinal (see ibid. 1080a ff.; also Note 35). 5e. Although Socrates had introduced the sun image with a reference to "the things said earlier [cf. 476] and often spoken of at other times" (507a7), namely the many and how they participate in the one idea that is "what is" in these many things (476a7, dl, 507b5), yet within the image he goes, as we have seen, beyond the oneness of each eidos to a still higher point of view, the way to, which is sung in the "hymn of dialectic." There he says that "when someone leaves behind all sense perception to set out for that itself which each thing is (ep' auto ho estin hekastos), and does not leave off before he grasps in thought that itself which is the Good (auto ho estin agathon), then he is at the very end of the knowable" (535a5; cf, 507b5, 7). Now the repetition of the phrase in which "the Good" is substituted for "each thing" is clearly meant to catch Glaucon's attention �70 MUSIC OF THE REPUBLIC and to convey to him something- actually the most pertinent thing in the dialogue- about the nature of the community governed by the Good itself. For upon having grasped what each thing is in itself, one would expect to learn what all things are together, and it is in place of this expected phrase that "the Good" occurs. This sentence then hints how the Good as the "source of the whole" (5llb7) will have to be understood: it is not simply a different being but precisely the oneness of all beings (cf. 244e ff.), the All as that Whole which comprises what each partial whole is as well as what it is not, that within which different things are at one. It is "the source which is the Whole" (he tou pantos arche, 511b7; cf. the end of Note 35). As such the Good is indeed the fit pattern of all community, and in the Republic especially of the political community: "using it as a pattern" (paradeigmatl), the rulers are "to order the city and private men and themselves" (540a9); dialectic turns out to be the-eminently politicalstudy of communities (cf. Sophist 253d). Socrates has, in his own efforts, not only composed the quarrel between philosophy and poetry, but he also composed the quarrel between philosophy and politics, for he has shown, in speech and in deed, that the lover of wisdom best knows and most desires genuine community. 5f. Nothing more direct is said here or in any other dialogue about that primary dialectical aspect of the Good-that it is the One (cf. Note 35). However, there is a dialogue in which Adeimantus and Glaucon are shown (on some occasion that must have occurred after Socrates' death) the reason for Socrates' silence. This is the Parmenides, in which Antiphon, their younger half-brother who has given up philosophy for horses (the dialogue itself shows why such things happen), recites from memorythat is to say, without drawing any consequences- an old conversation. In it Parmenides performs a demonstration exercise for the then young Socrates, generously taking his own One (137b4), namely that One about which he himself says that "it is," while others say that "it is not," and showing Socrates what follows from either assertion. The dialogue ends- as some think, too abruptly-with the conclusion that "whether the One is or is not, it and the others, in relation to themselves as well as to one another, both are all in every way and are not, and both appear and do not appear.- Most true" (166c). The dialogue has shown that when the One is conveyed in speech, as Parmenides' One is capable of being conveyed (cf. Parmenides' own poem: e.g., "it is necessary both to say and to think ... ," Diels, Vorsokratiker Fr. 6), such speech leads to its own denial (cf. Philebus 15d), while that denial itself cannot stand firm but leads again. into its opposite. Everything possible to speech has been said about the �71 one and has had the wrong consequences, so that nothing remains for parmenides but to fall silent. Socrates is listening; he knows that one hypothesis, the very hypothesis that is not possible to rational speech, has been omitted, namely that "the One is not one," and that that is the crucial possibililty (cf. Sophist 258d, where the dialectical equivalent, "Non-being is," is, with apologies to Parmenides, introduced). "Father" Parmenides, having confronted his own One in speech and having allowed its difficulties to emerge, is about to engender a new One in the rising generation. Socrates, recognizing the ultimate powerlessness of logos to convey this One, which as a true whole has "parts" (Sophist 244d14 ff.) and "rules" an order, remains silent; for, as far as the greatest matter is concerned, Plato thinks that "it can never be just said, as are other learning matters (mathhnata)" but requires long and iptimate intercourse (Seventh Letter 341c5). 5g. One last additional observation: What is characteristically Socratic about the sun image is that it is reflexive, an image of imaging. But more than that, in presenting the sun as an image of the whole, it shows not only how imaging itself is possible, but also how that particular kind of philosophical imaging which makes the whole reappear within itself is possible- how we can "see" the Good. This aspect of the imagery of the Republic is reflected in the central visual image in the closing myth. The place in the Myth of Er where the souls choose their lives (616b) is not immediately easy to imagine. There seem to be two irreconcilable images; " the first one consists of the whole of heaven, which has a shaft of light passing through it and the earth (b5); the second consists of Necessity sitting at the earth's pole whirling a spindle tipped with a spindle-whorl that represents a planetary system hung on chains let down from the heavenly light encircling the whole (c4). Now if we recall what a spinning woman actually looks like, these two disparate images become integrated: Necessity sits spinning. Between her knees she has a long distaff at the top of which a cloud of white woot is fastened; it feeds into the thread as it is spun. This thread is twisted into yarn by the spin of the whorl-weighted spindle, which is tied to the end of the thread; onto it the finished yarn is wound. In the figure of the myth the axial shaft of light represents the distaff, the chain of heaven is the thread that is· being spun, and the whorl of the spindle of Necessity is a miniature planetary system, an orrery, a model of the Whole, within whose sight the souls choose their lives. Thus, finally, the same image, now taken as a mythical, magnified and other-wordly, complement of the cave image, makes evident the ultimate position of the human soul as an onlooker and therefore, strangely e~ough, an outsider, in respect to the whole. This placing of the soul is necessarily �MUSIC OF THE REPUBLIC 72 glossed in Socrates' philosophical images, for every effort they are designed to elicit amounts to a de facto mending of this split. E. !. Book VII begins with this invitation to Glaucon: "Now, after this, liken our nature, as far as-education and the lack of education is concerned, to the following sort of state" (514al). The sentence is dramatic. "After this" indicates that what has immediately preceded- that is, Socrates' naming of the affections, the pathemata, of the soul, the last of which is eikasia (cf. also 51la7 for apeikazein)-is the necessary prelude to what is now to come; the word pathos has a tragic flavor, and the poetic position of the preposition peri after its noun is surely meant to enhance this (cf. Poetics 1459a2). Glaucon is now to use his power of eikasia to see (514al) the dark drama of human nature under an image. This image will show what human beings are and do within the whole. Behold, he says, men living as in a cavelike underground habitation (oikesei, 514a3) with a wide entrance turned toward daylight. From childhood on, their legs and necks are fettered so that they can only see straight ahead but are unable to turn (periagein). Their light comes from a fire burning behind them. Between this fire and themselves runs a road, alongside of which a screen wall has been built. Behind this wall men pass back and forth carrying artificial objects. To Glaucon's exclamation "What an out-of-the way [atopon] image and what out-of-the-way prisoners" (515a4) Socrates replies with quiet irony: "Like us" (515a5). And, he goes on, these prisoners see only their own and each other's shadows, which are thrown on the wall they face, together with the shadows of the things carried about behind the wall. If they converse it is about these shadows, which are as truth to them; the echo of words spoken behind the screen wall seems to them to be the·speech of these shadows. Now suppose a prisoner was released and forced to stand up and turn around, and was compelled to answer questions about the things formerly behind him; he would be "perplexed" (aporein), his eyes would hurt, and he would regard the shadows as having more being than the things now before him. And if someone dragged (e6) him up the steep road and out of the cave by force to look at the light of the sun, his eyes would be so pained that at first he could see nothing. But after a while he would be able to see "first" shadows, "after that" "images" (eidOla) of things in water, and ·"at last" the things themselves. From these he could raise his eyes to see the moon �73 N the stars at night, when the sun itself is absent. And finally he would the sun in its own place; after that "he would infer" (syllogizoito) that snn was "responsible" (516c2) for the seasons and years and was caretaker of everything. Then if he recalled his former habitation he would feel that he was now happy. The honors given down there to those who were good at observing, remembering, and giving oracles (c8) about shadows would be nothing to him and he would do anything rather than live like that (e2). But if he had to join the competition, his eyes being still full of darkness from his sudden descent, he would make himself ridiculous (cf. 509cl). Men would then say that by ascending upwards he had ruined his eyes and that it was not right to attempt to go up. And as for anyone who tried to release another, if they could catch him they would kill him (517a6). This image (eikona, 517a8) "must now be attached" to what has been said before: Glaucon is to "liken" the "situation that appears through sight" to the cave-like habitation: the power of the sun to the light of the fire, the forced climb of the prisoner into the light of day to the ascent of the soul and its vision in the place of thought. In a table: Good Dialectic J :~g:t sky ~ natural objects place of thought shadows and images Dragging up Fire Sun screen. wall place of sight Conversion { prisoners shadows 2. This correlation of the sun and the cave images seems, though brief, explicit enough, from the conjecturing about shadows at the bottom up to the lovely motion of the soul in the upper realm. Yet a certain reservation is expressed. If you interpret the ascent (anabasis) in the former to �MUSIC OF THE REPUBLIC 74 be the upward way (anodos) in the latter, Socrates says, "you will not fail to fulfill my expectations. But perhaps only god knows if that is what truly is" (517b4). Let us look independently at the interrelation of the two images. The sun image shows how the Good has everywhere prepared places for the soul to know. There is motion within these places but not straight ascent-'the word anabasis is never mentioned. The cave image, on the other hand, deals with the actual habitation of human nature, that is, of the embodied soul, and with the painful steps and stations of its slow ascent. Furthermore, in the first the Good itself is not actually represented but is to be caught by analogy, while in the second the sun represents the Good and an underground fire is in turn contrived to repr~ent the sun. This means that in the given correlation of the images our v(sible world comes, curi. ''· ously, to occupy different levels: Sun Image Cave Image Being intelligible r e a / sensible world Becoming sensible world underground realm Still later in Book VII, after the detailed discussion of the mathematical arts that are to "haul" the soul toward being, Socrates himself blurs this correlation and seems to maich the upward trek of the soul into the sun's world with the raising of the bodily eye, the world outside the cave with the place of sight (532b6). Furthermore, in the sun image the Good is beyond the realms of being and becoming, while in the cave image its representative, the sun, is, of course, within and part of the world. And finally, while the sun image, as explicated by the Divided Line, refers only to different degrees of the capacity to learn but not to the incapacity of ignorance (cf. 585b3), the cave image is explicitly about both education and lack of education (514a2); it is very much concerned not only with "mindlessness" (aphrosyne, 515c5) and "want of knowledge" (amathia, 518a7) but even with positive deceit. For those who carry "idols" back and forth as puppeteers manipulate their "marvels" (thaumata, 514b6-Socrates plays on the double meaning "puppets : marvels") are indeed engaging in that complex form of dissembling which the orator shares with the sophist (Sophist 268b; cf. 260c8). 3. Now at the very beginning of their conversaiion Socrates and Glaucon had determined that ignorance (agnoia) must necessarily be �75 'a";igt1ed. to non-being, knowing (gnosis) to being (478c3), and opinion to an unnamed intermediate, partaking of both and later identified becoming. It must be in order to recall this scheme that the main segments of the Divided Line are at one point called gnoston and dox, aston (5!0a9). Thus it is obvious that wherever becoming occurs non-being ·is implied. But since non-being is not explicitly named in either of the images, Glaucon should conjecture that it is present somewhere somehow, in that manner appropriate to "that which is not." The following new correlation, in which the levels of the "sensible world" in both images are made to coincide, does reveal it: Sun Image Cave Image Being iritelligiple reaim Becoming sensible world ....,.... sensible world underground realm 4a. To put in a word the effect ol seeing the cave image in this new juxtaposition with the sun image: the cave image is intended to complete the image of the Whole, and that requires taking into account human badness in all its organized obtuseness and assigning it its place within being~or rather non-being (Seventh Letter 344b; Plotinus, Enneads I 8, in fact locates evil in non-being). This is why its presentation ends with a brusque reference to that most telling crime, the execution of Socrates (517a6). The introduction Of this factor, namely human badness, and its management, which is called politics, comes out clearly in the table that outlines the cave image. As opposed to the main segments of the Divided Line with their two subsections, each realm here has a third part, the screen wall with its puppeteers in the lower realm· and the starry night sky with its moon; bright with reflected solar light (cf. 617al), in the world above. We may interpret the former as representing the politicians with their laws and ordinances, their "image-making," their dogmata (cf. Statesman 303c). (Here we must recall that political deceit is practiCed in any city, even in the just city, though there "nobly"; Republic 414b8; cf. 382d). The latter will then be their cosmic counterparts, the "laws of nature" (Timaeus 83e5), which are best studied in the nocturnal sky-although, Socrates thinks, better yet not studied at all (529a). �76 MUSIC OF THE REPUBLIC 4b. When Socrates first introduced the source of the visible world as a son, Glaucon had immediately inferred that as a parent the Good was a father (506e6). The cave image now provides the answer to the obvious question: Who is the mother? It is Non-being, the realm in which things are not in themselves but only in relation to another; in the terms of the Sophist, it is the realm of the Other (257b), whose human effects are alienation and ignorance (Republic 478c3) as well as privacy in the literal sense, privation. (The Greek word for a private person is "idiot.") These effects in turn lead to injustice and all sorts of evil (444al, b8). It is not easy to imagine, for in its elusiveness (Sophist 237bl 0) it is experienced only as a bewilderment of the eye, that positive apprehension of darkness which is felt after the descent into the infinity of "human evil" (517d5; cf. 445c6) so feelingly described by Socrates (5!7e3). The cave represents non-being under the guise of a womb, where, as in the Phoenician myth (414c), the "earth-born" race gestates. From the point of view of the human soul struggling with a body and with other men, the Good is at work throughout the whole only "in a certain way" (516cl) but not directly. For its light never penetrates into ihe cave, where a counterfeit takes its place; to the lighted realm of being on which the true sun shines, there is opposed a dark realm of non-being (cf. Sophist 254a); between these reahus is the steep road along which men "come into being," the road of genesis or birth. Socrates' cave is the very image of that "Indefinite Dyad" whose nature is womb-like, murky, material, un-substantial, bad (cf. Note 35). 4c. Socrates, however, has a figure of his own for such life as goes on in the cave. Befme, he had forbidden the poets to slander the underworldnow he himself commits such a slander against our earth. Earlier he had struck a line from the Odyssey (XI, 489), the one in which Achilles as a shade among shades laments, saying that he would rather be "a serf on earth slaving for another portionless man" (386c3) than a king among the dead- now Socrates himself puts this very line into the mouth of the man forced to descend once more into the cave, our habitation (516d5)! Just as in the Phaedo there is proposed a place rather to be taken "as truly the earth" than the hollow in which we live (IIOal), so in the Republic Socrates points to a place to be taken as truly the underworld, a truly shadowy and obscure Hades (508c, 517d)-a new realm distinct from the underworld of myth, the "invisible Hades," the Aides a-ides of after-life, which is invisible rather than dark, a place pure of all bodily sight (cf. Phaedo 79b7, 80d5, Craty/us 404bl), a "divine place" (topos daimonios, 614cl). The new Hades is the realm of living souls, Socrates' mortal Hades. It therefore adds to the "intelligible" and the "visible" place a third, a �BRANN 77 "sightless" place (cf. Phaedrus 248 ff. for another such myth concerning the places for the soul). Its inhabitants live in a dream-like isolation (533b8; cf. 476c4; cf. Heraclitus, Diels, Vorsokratiker Fr. 89) reminiscent of the mindless flittings of the shades in the traditional Hades; like the shades in Hades they are incapable of touching each other (Odyssey X, 494; XI, 204), while some go completely to sleep, having, as Socrates puts it, "arrived in Hades before they have woken up here" (534c7). We may conjecture that Aristotle's own cave story, reported by Cicero (On the Nature of the Gods II, xxxvii, 95), was a counter-image to combat Socrates' scandalous view. For the inmates of Aristotle's cave, a well-furnished underground apartment, need only a chance to catch a glimpse of the upper world with its sun by day and its stars in their regular courses by night, to know immediately that theirs is indeed a world ruled by gods. But this splendid world, Aristotle, contrary to Socrates, implies, whose divinity is immediately apprehended by anyone with unjaded vision, is precisely, our own present habitation, toward whose beauty our senses have grown dull. What is most characteristic of Socrates' moral Hades is the willfulness of its inhabitants, who resist and mock their liberator (517a). Again Aristotle's cave image is instructive, for its inhabitants are prisoners by nature and must wait for the "jaws of earth" to open before they can come up. But for Socrates' men the way is open; the Good has prepared other and better places for the soul, and there is no necessity to sit below; they seem to cherish their chains- in a certain engraving of the "Antrum Platonicum" (1604 A.D.) the huddled prisoners very tellingly wear no visible chains at all. Perhaps, then, the most important aspect of the cave is that it is not a natural cavern but a "cavelike underground chamber" (514a3; cf. Axiochus 371a8), clearly an artificial prison made by men for men. The position of the prisoners itself indicates stubborn perversity; they are facing the wrong way round and have a perverted vew; that is why they must first of all be "converted" (518c8), or, failing that, must be dealt with by "persuasion as well as compulsion" (519e4). The cave is the human city always and everywhere, a prison compound within which true community is to be achieved only at rare propititious moments. 4d. Glaucon should have no difficulty in recognizing the place. He has some acquaintance with Pythagorean doCtrine (53la4), and the notion of the world as a prison and life as a lfving death are both well known Pythagorean teachings (cf. Gorgias 493a), as is also that of the "descent into Hades." Pythagoras himself is said to have "told how he descended (katabas) to look on the way of life of those who have gone below, to see how entirely different were the lives of the Pythagoreans" (Aristophon in �MUSIC OF THE REPUBLIC 78 Diogenes Laertius VIII, 38)." In fact, the dialogue of the Republic as a whole has a Pythagorean setting, for just as the lectures of Pythagoras were said to have taken place by night (Diogenes Laertius VIII, 15; cf. the "nocturnal council" of the Laws [961]; also Plato's "night clock," Athanaeus, IV, 174c), so it must be well into the night when the central part of the Republic is spoken. What is more, its very form has a Pythagorean cast, since it seems to be that of a Pythagorean exercise: it was evidently part of the discipline of a Pythagorean to attempt, before starting the day, to "re-collect" within himself in its entirety whatever conversation he had had the day before." This would provide an additional reason why the dialogue is told by Socrates as having taken place not just recently, but "yesterday" (327a1), and would explain why he does not address it to anyone: he speaks it within and to himself- Plato, even more truly than Alcibiades, can "open up" Socrates (Symposium 216d6). Certainly if we are to take seriously the form of the Republic as a report of a conversation that lasted the better part of a day and a night, we shall find it to be a somewhat incredible feat, which needs to be accounted for by some such power as a special mnemonic discipline would give. In the Republic, we may infer, Socrates is shown as a master of the Pythagorean practice that provided a congenial discipline or askesis, useful in preparing the soul by a kind of habituation for that inward recovery of truth. which is given a temporal cloak in the myth of recollection (Meno 81) and is particularly displayed in mathematical investigations (ibid. 82; cf. Note 27). F. Ia. After the cave image Socrates considers with Glaucon the actual education of the philosophers. He begins significantly: "Would you like now to see in what way such men will come to be born [in the city] and how one will lead them up into the light, just as some [e.g., Heracles '"] are said to have ascended from Hades to the gods?" (52lcl). The sequence of learning, which follows closely the "pathos'' of the cave drama, has three stages: "conversipn" (periagoge, 515c7, 515c8, d4, 521c6), the "haul" toward being, effected by mathematical studies (mathema holkon, 515e8, 521d3, 527b9, 533d2), and the "divine sights"of dialectic (theiai theoriai, 517d4). "Conversion" is what we are witnessing in the dialogue itself. Since it precedes all education and is more the effect of meeting a man than engaging in a study, it is not part of the explicit study plan. Nevertheless there is an "art of conversion" (518d3). Since this first act is largely a matter of making the soul recognize the shadows on the wall as mere shadows, �79 it is clearly an eikastic art, namely Socratic music, the persuasive imagery of truth. As we have seen, it may be said to take the place of that traditional habituating music used in the education of the warrior-guardians but so emphatically excluded from the philosophical education (522a4). Note that in the image, as in fact, the city will try to prevent such conversions and will call them corruptions (517a). It cannot be said that these philosophers-to-be are born and bred in the just city-their upbringing seems in fact to be conceived against a hostile background that can hardly be the education provided by the guardian city! lb. The long "haul" into the light of day is accomplished chiefly by the "hauling study'' of mathematics (522c5-53ld6). The program appears to be that of Pythagorean cosmogenic mathematics (530d8)." In arithmetic, "that lowly little thing" (phaulon), 42 the "one" and the "two" and the other numbers are distinguished; in plane geometry the surfaces of bodies and in solid geometry the bodies themselves are studied; in astronomy bodies are put in motion; and, finally, the audible relations of moving bodies are studied in harmonics. In this way the cosmos imaged in the Myth of Er, with its heavenly bodies giving out a harmony as they revolve, is constructed. There is only one difference between this Pythagorean cosmos and the Socratic study, but one so deep that it is very hard to grasp for Glaucon, who loves physical studies, especially astronomy. He immediately identifies Socrates' phrase about "seeing the things above" with "looking into the [sky] above" (529a2), and Socrates has to rebuke him: that kind of astronomy, the "visible music" of the Pythagoreans (cf. Theon, Mathematical Matters Useful for Reading Plato, Hiller, 5, 17 ff.), in truth makes its students "look downward altogether" (a7). Socrates demands that in the serious study of mathematics, that paradigm of every "learning matter" (mathema), not only all practical applications, but even every suggestion of an admixture of sense experience should be put by, and only those true motions and numbers and figures which are grasped by the logos and the dianoia alone should be studied (529b). Glaucon, who follows well enough the early part of the discussion, which is concerned with demonstrating the dianoetic power of arithmetic, is somewhat puzzled by the non-physical "dimensional" studies that follow (526d ff.). For indeed it is the extended effort of actually doing pure mathematics that is needed to complete the conversion from sense (533d3), and this is still before him. Ancient commentators, such as Plutarch, Theon, and Proclus, have a standard way of referring to the use and meaning of the mathematical course of the Republic: they simply assert the elevating effects of such studies. One of the reasons why there should be this effect is of far greater �80 MUSIC OF THE REPUBLIC · consequence than the others, since it amounts to a genuine interpretation of the sequence of subjects. There is a strong ancient tradition that attributes to Plato and the Academy the theory that the whole of being arises, as it were, in a mathematical way: From the One and the Indefinite Dyad spring the Ideal Numbers; from tbese the sequence of dimensions is educed, until first the mathematical solids are attained; and then the sensible world itself is brought about"- the "dimensional soul" discussed above belongs to this context. Now aside from the internal difficulties of this view, which Aristotle discusses at length in the Metaphysics (1080b24 ff., 1085a8 ff.), and its essentially stultifying character, there is an almost insuperable difficulty in interpreting the mathematics of the Republic along these lines. For in the Republic mathematical objects, since they are among the images that reflect the realm of being and comprise the realm of the dianoia, are fitted into a scale of increasing genuineness, within which they lie between natural object and being. In the theory mentioned, however, the mathematical structure comprises the whole of things arranged in a scale of decreasing dimensionality and concreteness. 44 It therefore becomes absolutely necessary to go to the dialogue itself to see why the young philosophers must study Socrates' mathematics, aside from its generally purifying effect, which amounts to a conversion of the merely "embodied soul" into an embodied by primarily "knowing soul" (527d8). We may expect that, as usual, Socrates is quietly presenting Glaucon with something astounding. For it turns out, upon inspection, that the mathematical order Socrates is talking about is indeed a reflection of being and that this means that it is an inverse of the realm of being. Glaucon must use his imagination to see why this is so. A diagram (see next page) picturing the realms of the Divided Line will show what needs to be seen. The whole realm of natural objects is here pictured as a cone with the sun at its vertex. It casts a reflection or shadow (510al) which, like most natural images (as distinct from more deceptive artificial ones), is opposite or inverted in relation to the original, and "produces a shape (eidos) that yields a sense perception the opposite of the usual sight" (Sophist 266c3). This natural fact may now be applied as imagery to the noetic realm, and the beings of the uppermost realm may be imagined as reflected by the dianoetic objects in the same way. In the diagram mathematics is then represented by an inverted cone having its dimensionless vertex at the bottom (representing the elementary study of the unit) and opposing its base to that of the conical sector of a sphere (representing being), in order to indicate both that mathematical objects are only a small part of the dianoetic images of being and that, unlike mathematics, the dialectic as- �81 Intelligibles Mathematicals . ---------- Natural objects "~- ' '' ' '' '' ' Reflections cent within being does not end· in an upper limit but culminates in a kind of source and beginning which is at once central and encompassing. 45 We must now show the meaning of this inversion of the dialectical order in Socratic mathematics. One observation does, however, already seem warranted: Such mathematics does not lend itself to institutionalization; Socrates cannot have been announcing the study program of the Academy (not to speak of a state education), especially since "no one unversed in geometry" was allowed to enter there, and the members were evidently left by Plato to engage in all sorts of advanced study with great freedom." Let us look, then, at the elements of Socrates' presentation in their order. �82 MUSIC OF THE REPUBLIC .· To introduce "the study concerning the one" (525a2), Socrates brings in one finger, a finger that is simply one and seems to:"have nothing contradictory within itself (523d6). In it, sight sees everything ::poured together," confused, indistinct, and for this very reason seif-sufficient; the finger is "absolute" for the sense of sight (524d!O). -But as soon as two other fingers, one greater and the other smaller than tl;J.e first, are brought in, sight reports that the first finger is now both great and small, and the other senses will report similar oppositions. At this point, the soul in its perplexity calls on the "counting capacity" (logismos, 524b4) and· the dianoia to determine how many objects it is really dealing with, and thus arises the distinction between the visible and the intelligible (524cl3). For the dianoia separates out the great and the small as being "each one, both together two" (524b!O), a formula that, though it does not solve the problem, states it precisely, i.e., "arithmetically": Tho different items, namely the great and the small caught in speech, can be together in one, namely the physical finger. "The whole of number" is gotten analogously (525a6)- whenever something is no more one than the opposite of one (a plurality), it is an assemblage of so and so many things taken together, and that defines an arithmos, a "numbered collection."47 The "second" study, which, Glaucon knows, is "next in succession," is geometry (526c8). After plane geometry, which is the study of the "second increase" (i.e., the second dimension), must follow the study of solids taken "by themselves" (528b ). "Fourth" comes the study of astronomy, which deals with solids in visible motion. Since there are at least two kinds of motion, a last, sister study is required, namely harmonics, which is concerned with motions relative to the ear. In pure harmonics consonant numbers are studied; these are the numerical relations presented in a theory of numerical proportion dealing with simple and compounded ratios-such relations bear on genesis, as we know from the "marriage number" (546). At the end of this course, the "community . . . and kinship" of these studies must be grasped, and what is peculiar to them must be collected (53!d2). This is the basis upon which dialectic is finally to be laid, "just like a coping stone" (534e2). The elements of this study in the order in which they appear are, then: 1. the sensible undifferentiated one, 2. the great and small by comparison, 3. the "hypothetical" ones that add up to two, and every other number, 4. the dimensional structure of the mathematical cosmos, 5. the community or cosmos of all these mathematical objects seen synoptically. Although the dialectical way is not explicitly described in the Republic �BRANN 83 (533al), we have collected enough of its elements to name them in the order in which they would become the center of attention: 5. the community or cosmos of eide seen in a preliminary synopsis, 4. the lowest ranks of eide, 3. the eidetic number-assemblages going back up to the eidetic Two and its constituent eidetic ones, 2. the arche of the Great and Small, I. the One. The dialectical objects are, as can be seen, in fact encountered in the reverse order of those that have the same name in the mathematical sequence. For the mathematical studies ended with a community of moving and related solids that had first been set out in terms of their elements of "growth" (the progress of dimensions), then "by themselves" (solid geometry), and finally in their "consonances" (astronomy and music). So, in reverse, the dialectician must survey first and foremost the front presented by those eide closest to genesis in order to distinguish its elements. He must try to see at once "which kind is consonant with which" (Statesman 285b; Sophist 253b, where harmonics had just been used as the type of such knowledge), and whether any elements extend through all the others; "for he who can see things together is a dialectician" (synoptikos-dia/ektikos). · Note that it was precisely the final phase of the mathematical development that provided the required training and testing of the synoptical ability (Republic 537c)." After this beginning synopsis (of which Socratic music is a foretaste) it will be possible to see and order the communities of eide and to rise among these, attaining the larger eide, or gene (Sophist 254d4). These higher genera contain more of being but belong to smaller- or rather, prior-eidetic assemblages or numbers. Finally being itself, the greatest "genus," (genos) (ibid. 243dl), the eidetic Two, will be reached, together with the two great gene it comprises, rest and motion (ibid. 250; cf. Note 35). At this point it will be possible to recognize that the eide that run through all the others are beyond Being and ought not to be called eide but archai. Thus two sources appear beyond the objects that were first the hypotheses of mathematics and then the beings of dialectic: the Other (ibid. 259a-b ), called by many names, of which the chief are the Indefinite Dyad and the Great and Small (e.g., Metaphysics 987b20, 1087b5), and the One, the non-hypothetical "beginning of the whole" (510b7, 5llb7): in the One. everything again rests without opposition, just as once before, at the beginning of the road and at the opposite extreme of being, the finger combined in fact that which is incompatible in words. Socrates himself emphasizes the opposite ways of mathematics and dialectic at crucial points. The segment of the intelligible, he says, is cut �84 ~ MUSIC OF THE REPUBLIC "in such a way that in one part of it the soul is forced to search from hypotheses, using the things before imitated as images, and journeying not toward the beginning (archif) but toward the end, while in the other, the one that leads toward the non-hypothetical beginning, she goes [up] from hypotheses and [proceeds] without the images used in the former section, journeying by means of the eide and through them" (510b; also c, 511a, 533c). The mathematical way is thus in itself a deduction, moving away from beginnings. But, at the same time, as a learning process, it is an "elevation (epanagogif) of what is best in the soul to the sights seen among beings" (532c5), though, as Socrates gently and tacitly informs a too enthusiastic Glaucon, it is not knowledge of being itself but only an approach to it (527b9). How can Socrates imagine that these two motions take place at once? To begin with, Socrates shows no interest whatever in that straightforward deduction of mathematical fact which is the pride of mathematicians, and which, because of its logical rigor, becomes for Aristotle the paradigm of "apodeictic," i.e., demonstrative, knowledge (e.g., Posterior Analytics 71a3). This form of proof, in terms of which mathematical systems like Euclid's Elements are presented, is called "synthetic." Socrates, oddly enough, implies that this form of proof is to be left to all the non-mathematical arts, which deal with "geneses and syntheses" (533b5). His own approach is "analytical" or, what will be shown to amount to the same thing, "hypothetical" (cf. Phaedo IOOa, Meno 86e). The discovery of analysis as a formal method of proof was attributed in antiquity to Plato, who was supposed to have imparted it to his pupils as a means of finding solutions to problems." As Pappus explains, it differs from synthesis, which leads from agreed-on assumptions to conceded consequences, in the direction of its motion, "for in analysis we assume that which is sought as if it had already come about, and we inquire what it is from which this results, and again what is the antecedent cause of the latter, and so on, until by retracing our steps we come upon something already known or belonging to the class of the first principles, and such a method we call 'analysis' as being 'solution backwards' [anapalin lysin, i.e., reduction]." Pappus goes on to distinguish two kinds of analysis, theoretical and problematical; in the former we assume a hypothesis and trace out its consequences until we come to something admittedly true or admittedly absurd (the second is what is known as a reductio ad absurdum or negative proof), while in the latter we assume a solution or a construction as if it had been found, and trace out its consequences until we come to something known to be possible and obtainable, or the reverse.'" Analysis is therefore a means both of returning to and thus reflecting on those beginnings that Socrates calls hypotheses (e.g., 510b). It is also �BRANN 85 a means for achieving "agreement" (533c5) concerning the consistent consequences of any "suppositions" (the precise rendering of the Greek plural of hypothesis) that happen to be offered. Now whether or not Plato was really first to recognize in this a formal mathematical method, he himself certainly regarded it as Socrates' very own mode of conversing, which, "while he is the man he is," remains his only way (Theaetetus 197al)." For the most striking form of analysis shown in the dialogues, which people find "not unpleasant" (Apology 33c4), is the reductio ad absurdum, of which the Socratic refutation or elenchos is the great nonmathematical example. It is used for silencing professional "eristics" by disposing of their dangerous absurdities, and for producing in those who are wellcdisposed that perplexity of soul which is the beginning of serious inquiry; its complement is "Socratic ignorance" (Republic 354b9). Accordingly it occurs in the Republic only in the first book, where it is used in the provoked and forcible conversion of the violent Thrasymachus and as a "prelude" to the real inquiry (cf. 349al0, 354); thereafter Socrates uses the gentler way of his analogic "music." We must now see how the mathematics he proposes is also, in some sense, "analytical," consisting as it does of "conversion-aiding arts" (533d3). To begin with, the mathematical enterprise is analytic in the same way as is any Socratic "search," in which the object is always assumed as something known of which the consequences will emerge in the course of the inquiry (cf. Meno 80e ff.). Socrates regards mathematics as just such a search (e.g., 523a2, 524e5, 528b-c, 53lc6); in fact it differs from any Socratic conversaiion only in the greater commonness of its objects (522c). Thus the question "What ever is a finger?" is transformed in the course of the mathematical inquiry into the question "What ever is the one?" (523d4, 524e6), and Socrates gets Glaucon to admit that the power of counting finds in a finger opposites that are "each one, both together two," precisely as earlier he had gotten him to agree that since the beautiful and the shameful are opposite, they are "two, and each one" (524bl0, 476a2). In other words, Socrates is interested not so much in getting on with the specific mathematical science as in returning again and again to its hypotheses; a sign of this is the preposterous name he gives to "arithmetic," which he calls "the study of the one" (525a2), as if number science consisted of nothing but its beginning principle, that "source of the whole of number" (Aristotle, Topics 14lb9), which is not even included among the numbers (cf. Euclid, Elements VII, Defs; 1-2). But Socrates intends his young philosophers to practice analysis also in a more technical sense, namely as "problematic" analysis. Each of the two final, more or less physical, sciences is to be studied, in Socrates' strange �86 MUSIC OF THE REPUBLIC phrase, by "rising to problems" (530b6, 531c2). To see what the nature and purpose of such problems is- besides supplanting observation- we must look at the order of Socrates' mathematical course. Theon, for instance, observes that non-sensible harmonics, since it is the study of "pure" number relations, of logoi and analogiai, should naturally follow immediately after arithmetic in the mathematical order (Mathematical Matters Useful for Reading Plato, ed. Hiller, p. 17). It is therefore not surprising that Socrates thinks it necessary to justify his own different ordering with an appeal to the very men whose preoccupation with matters sensible and experimental he immediately disowns; harmonics is to be understood as cosmic music, the sister science of astronomy, "as the Pythagoreans say, and we, Glaucon, agree" (530d8, 53lb7). By accepting this ordering, Socrates obtains a last propaedeutic study that is at the same time non-sensible and physical, namely the unheard music of the unseen heavens underlying the "eye's sky" (Socrates' pun: horatos- ourimos, 509d3). Now we can see just what it means to "use problems" in astronomy, "bidding the things in the heavens good-bye" (530b7). According to tradition it was Plato himself who raised that epochal question of astronomical hypotheses, setting this as "a problem for those interested in these matters: By what hypotheses of regular and ordered motions can the appearances associated with the motions of the 'wanderers' [i.e., planets] be saved?" (Simplicius, Commentary on Aristotle's On the Heavens 292bl0). The young philosophers will, presumably, work on just such problems, contenting themselves with "saving," not too exactly, the more basic ap- pearances such as the daily motion of the stars and the sun. Here "saving" the appearances means first of all learning to regard them as mere appearances of something more nearly substantial (namely the hypotheses) and so "bidding them good-bye." Using, then, the visible heavens as a nicely made but not very important "pattern" (259d7 ff.), they are in turn to make a construct such as might be "hypothesized as a pattern" (Timaeus 48e5) by some mythical demiurge who wants to bring our visible world into being. Note that this mythical demiurge is a requirement of cosmic genesis, since the mathematical hypothesis itself, being no paradeigmatikon aition, no responsible pattern, i.e., not having the power of a true source, will never yield the sensible world by itself- there exists no deductive account of the sensible world from the mathematical cosmos alone." The profits from working such problems will be many: The students will learn to make images that will exceed the visible original in truth, that is, they will learn to make noetic hypotheses about the whole of appearance and to deduce their consequences; in attemPting to '~save" the appearances they will learn what a mere appearance really is; and they will get used �BRANN 87 to Jiving with their mathematical cosmos as a preparation for dwelling with the invisible and bodiless noeta (cf. Sophist 246b7, Statesman 286a5). It is unlikely that this study will much resemble the spherical geometry presented in those dull "Sphaerics" (like that of Theodosius) which are supposed to be realizations of Plato's "pure" astronomy. We must rather imagine that the young philosophers will be asked to reflect on matters such as the true significance of astronomical notions like "obliquity," "error," "anomaly," and their opposites. They will find these studies "useful ... in the search for the good and the beautiful" (Republic 53lc6), since they concern equality, symmetry, consonance, and order; they will have regained the world on a higher level. When their time has come for the pursuit of dialectic, which "takes up (anairousa) the. hypotheses" (533c8), in the senses both of "removing" them and of "raising" them to a higher mode, they will "take up" first their hypotheses about the whole, meaning that they will convert them into that array of lower eide governing the world of appearances and human excellence within it. These are the eide close to the world, which the dialectician encounters first (500c, 484c-d, Gorgias 508a) and which, while least in being, are longest in logos (e.g., Statesman 267a-b). But we are also told, quite incidentally, that static geometry too is to be pursued in problems (530b6). Here again the order of studies proves interesting. The geometry orginally proposed was plane geometry (528d3). Next, Socrates brought in astronomy, but, right away, with an air of significance, asked Glaucon to "draw back" (528a6), and delivered a speech in praise of the study of that missing third dimension which seems "not yet to have been discovered" (b4). Solid geometry, the study between earth measurement and the motion of the skies, aiming at objects that lie between heaven and earth, is, he implies, in some special way the city's business; it is a political affair, which ought to be carefully supervised and which is even less than the other studies to be pursued privately (b6 ff.; cf. 525c2). He might, however, have stopped himself sooner, for he had already interrupted the dimensional development of his mathematical world, in fact at its very beginning, when he had introduced the "second increase" of plane geometry even though he had omitted any mention of the first, the linear dimension. The one-dimensional study, however, so conspicuously missing in the Republic, is solemnly introduced in the Laws (820a-b), where it is presented precisely as the necessary prerequisite of stereometry, i.e., of solid geometry. It is the study of irrational lines, the special interest of Socrates' young counterpart Theaetetus (Theaetetus !47d ff., 144d8), who is also credited with the first cogent presentation of all the regular solids called "Platonic."" We happen to know what the classical problem in solids is: it is the problem of doubling the cube, according to �88 MUSIC OF THE REPUBLIC legend originally raised by Minos, the underworld judge, and later again by the Delians, whom Apollo had ordered to double his altar, and who were said to have brought it to Plato for solution." Socrates himself uses the plane version of this problem to display the natural knowledge of a slave boy whose education consists simply in knowing Greek, and who is able to find, under Socrates' supervision, the side of the double square; it is the irrational diameter, the single mean between the two squares (Meno 82b ff.). We might conjecture that as the doubling of the square, done in the sand on the earth, is the slave's problem, requiring for its solution only the learner's nature, so the doubling of the cube, done in the solid world of bodies, is the citizen's problem, requiring both nature and nurture, and that it therefore represents practical politics. For stereometric problems are solved by finding two means, sometimes called "powers" (Theaetetus 147d3), which are in this case themselves irrational, though commensurable in cube (Euclid, Elements X, Defs. 1-4). Stereometric analysis then represents the work of finding ways and means to reconcile that which has no common measure by going into a higher dimension (cf. l!.pinomis 990d8); mechanical, that is, mere de facto, solutions are considered unacceptable. This is perhaps why Socrates mysteriously tells Glaucon not to allow his children, who will have charge of the city, to be like "irrational lines" (534d5); he means they should not be like that which has failed to rise to the higher dimension in which commensurability and consonance are possible: There is, indeed, something obvious in taking problematic analysis as the paradigm of practical planning, and, accordingly, Aristotle in the Nicomachean Ethics compares deliberation to the analysis of diagrams, for "every deliberation is a search" (1112b20). Such a use of mathematics. can be quite a dangerous game (as we moderns well know), but at its best it articulates terms that serve well in the press of action, clarifying the nature of tricky inquiries and providing models for solving complex problems (cf. Meno 86e). Socrates concludes his exposition of the philosophers' mathematical education by suggesting to Glaucon that "the experts (dein01) in these matters can't seem to you to be dialecticians" (53Id9). This distinction between mathematicians and philosophers is ever his theme; for instance, he observes that "inasmuch as they themselves [the mathematicians] don't know how to use their discoveries they turn them over to the dialecticians to use, if they have any sense at all" (Euthydemus 290c3). Socrates again has a special way of characterizing the helplessness of the mathematicians' arts: "They dream about being, and cannot behold it as if awake, [at least] as long as they use hypotheses that they leave undisturbed, unable to give an account ofthem" (533b8). For Socrates, mathematics will always remain a �BRANN 89 dreamlike and "phantastic" enterprise. For instance, in the Philebus, where . in the course of the investigation of the human good he constructs just such a "bodiless cosmos" (64b7) as was described above, using principles like the One, the More and Less, and Number (23c), he always attributes his knowledge of these to a god, a myth, or a dream (16c, 18b, 20b, 25b ). For him mathematical objects are shadows or reflections on the surface of being, catching its mere form; they are more immediately accessible to the human understanding than being itself bur have no substance of their own. They are interesting only insofar as they are in turn reflected in the sensible world, which they divide and collect and shape in a less substantial but more general way than can the more numerous, non-mathematical eide. (These purer eide, caught by human speech, also appear in the dianoetic realm as hypotheses.) This ordering function in the world is what gives the mathematicals their special standing as "the middle things" (Metaphysics 987bl5, 1090b31), differing from sensible objects in being eternal and immutable and from the eide in having each a plurality of instance (while each eidos is unique). This function is also why their study is capable of "hauling the soul from becoming towards being" (521d3). The mathematical part of the dianoetic realm contains, as it were, the ordering elements, the taxis, of being, where these element,, including shapes and numbers and their relations, are taken as independent objects, just as reflections and shadows may be regarded as rendering the precise, albeit intangible, shapes of the bodies to which they belong. It might be useful to give one example of an attempt to "take up" a mathematical hypothesis in the double sense of canceling it and raising it into its eidetic original. Out of the many hypotheses of mathematics, such as units, numbers, ratios, proportions, "the odd and the even.and figure and the three kinds of angles" (510c4), let us choose the most fundamental objects, the one and the first number, two. The senses of sight and touch elicit from us merely the words "a finger," but in comparison with other fingers, a greater and a smaller, we have to say of the same finger that it is both great and small. However, "great" and "small" are opposites and evidently not capable of being simply thrown together. We therefore say that the finger comprises both of these objects intended in speech in such a way that they are "each one, both together two" (524b), i.e., two things at once in the finger; thus arises the first "multitude composed of units" (Euclid, Elements VII, Def. 2), the number two. Since each one object of sense includes oppositions "infinite in multitude," every number can arise in this way (525a); each unit of sense reveals itself as numerous. Now let the inquiry concern not some unit in the world of sense, but the greatest single noetic object, Being itself. After �90 MUSIC OF THE REPUBLIC . a survey of the possible opinions (Sophist 242b!O ff.,), it is decided that Being must comprise two "most opposite" eide, Rest and Motion (250a8), neither of which is by itself Being but both of which are indeed Being. Hence that Being appears as "a third thing beside these" (b7). If we now try to apply the hypotheses of mathematical unit and number to these opposites comprised by Being, that is, if we try to "count up" Being, we see that they are no longer adequate. For to count up units it is necessary that they should be mere units "capable of being thrown together and indifferent" (symbletai kai adiaphoroi, Aristotle, Metaphysics !08la6), just as "great" and "small," being both "determinations of size,, are on that common ground indistinguishable and therefore capable of addition (526a3). But Rest and Motion have no such common ground, being irreducibly different; in the sight of the whole (where there is no relativity of motion) nothing can be at once at rest and in motion. Furthermore, if we made such a reduction we would lose exactly what we are after in dialectic, which is "the thing itself," in its very nature. Being is not, therefore, a counting- number and the result of adding two mathematical units, but a community of incomparable eidetic monads, neither prior nor posterior to their "number," namely Being, the unique Two (ibid. !08la ff.). We can see that here the mathematical hypotheses of the one and the two, having taken us up into Being, must themselves undergo a transformation; naturally this can never be achieved by the dialogues, which do not leave the realm of human /ogoi and of the dianoia-within speech Being must be put down as a permanent perplexity (Sophist 250e5), and whatever solutions are offered must be somehow misnamed. For when in the Sophist the problem of Being, there pointedly formulated in terms of the Not-being of each of its "constituent" eidetic ones (25ld ff.), is solved by means of "the Other" and "the Same" (254e ff.), then these two will, when presented in speech, appear to be hypotheses exactly like the other three eide, Rest, Motion, and Being. The Same and the Other will therefore be counted with these three among the five greatest eide (255c), although they have the nature not of beings but of that which is "beyond being," of archai. In the context of the Republic the more important of the archai in the Sophist is that whose eidetic name is "the Same." For this is precisely the One, which, itself beyond all articulation, is both the wholeness of being and the source of the oneness of each being-that which makes a being "one and the same" with itself and thus makes it just what it is. Here the mathematical one, the uncuttable and indifferent minimal (525e ff.), is, as we have seen, the total inverse of the dialectical One, which is the Whole and the source of everything (5llb7; on these disparate functions of the Platonic one, see Metaphysics !084bl3 ff.)." �BRANN 91 The central purpose of Socratic mathematics, then, is the examination of the hypotheses provided by human speech, a reflection about speech carried on within speech. As so often, Socrates' very example is chosen to express the reflexiveness of the inquiry, for a finger-is a pointer, and Socrates is pointing at this pointer. The purpose of such reflection is, in turn, to bring the soul up to that highest internal "power of conversation" (he tou dialegesthai dynamis, 533a8; cf. 511b4, Parmenides 135c2). In such conversation the soul, freed from all the senses (Republic 532a6) and raised beyond the intermediate dianoetic logoi (cf. Phaedo 99e5), confronts being immediately by means of its own noetic logos (Republic 511b4, 532a7, 534b9, c3), which is simply its power of having a direct relation, a "ratio" to being. le-d. The activity of this higher logos, dialectic itself, is beyond Glaucon's present reach and no part of the preliminary survey. To set out on the dialectical road would be to see "no longer an image ... but the true itself' (533a3); the "most serious matters" are withheld from Glaucon, and so from any mere reader of the dialogue (cf. Seventh Letter 344c). Instead, Socrates chants his "hymn" in praise of dialectic (532al), and with that Glaucon must be content. The Republic, in which for pedagogical reasons philosophy appears as the fulfilled love of wisdom, does not resolve for us this question: Has even one human, embodied, soul has ever been able to withdraw entirely into the noetic realm to move "by means of the eidethemselves through them and into them?" Has even one soul ever addressed itself in wordless speech to invisible sights? Or is the human limit perhaps reached when, while seriously exercising our power of provisional thinking and speaking, we have a sudden flash of trust in our own hypotheses? Glaucon has now been given the necessary preliminary synopsis (Seventh Letter 340b8) of these propaedeutic synoptic studies in which the young rulers are to prove their aptitude for dialectic (537c); he has also been given an intimation of uliimate sights. After this Socrates addresses him as a fellow law-giver, while he rehearses with him what he, Glaucon, would do "if he were ever to nurture in deed those whom he is now nurturing and educating in speech" (534d3, 8, 535a3, 537c9)-that is, what Glaucon will do once he himself becomes a teacher of rulers. (Here it is interesting to note that Theon, elaborating in great detail Socrates' allusion to philosophy as an initiation into the mysteries in the Phaedrus [250c], makes the fourth stage of the initiation, which follows the full vision, the stage in which the initiate is authorized to transmit his knowledge to others [Hiller, 15, 1 ff.].) �92 MUSIC OF THE REPUBLIC Together they review once more the virtues required in the nature of :, the future philosophers. At this point Socrates again brings up the danger to the "puppies" (539b6; cf. 498) in taking up dialectic too early. In the last image of this central conversation Socrates likens them to sons who on growing up discover that their alleged parents are not their true parents and wbo, consequently, losing trust, begin to ask questions about the traditions in a "eristic" way and to scorn the laws (539a3). Note that in this cautionary image the cause of disillusionment in the precocious dialecticians is precisely that Phoenician myth (414c4) which contains the faith of the dog-guardians! We see that philosophical puppies are both more acute and more dangerous than full-grown watch-dogs. The philosophical city, as Alcibiades' mentor well knows, is always playing with fire. 2a. This brings them to the final question, which Socrates obviously considers of acute importance in the serious execution of his program. This is the matter about which he had before spoken "as an indignant man will" (536c4); it is the question of age, the fitting of the progress of study and practice to human growth. Its significance can be gauged by reference to the Laws. There, where the purpose of study is the growth of piety, and its objects are tbe gods revealed in astronomy (966c) rather than the Good attained by dialectic, the definite and written assignment of ages to studies is said to be useless (968d). It becomes feasible -and, because of the dangers of premature exposure, indeed crucial- only where there is to be a genuine ascent of the soul. We might say that what Socrates is here talking about is the "biological" development of the human soul and its proper program of nurture (Republic 492a). Why this is so sensitive a matter is made plain in the discussion of the human natures suitable to philosophy that both immediately precedes and follows the central section on the great images (490-496, 535-536). Man being a conflation of body and soul, the soul must, at least in the beginning, live its life in conjunction with the body and exposed to its influence.. But tbe best natures will also be well set up in body (535a-b), in addition to possessing vigorously the virtues that are "somehow close to the body" (518d!O). Such vigor, however, is particularly sensitive to disrupting influences (491b ff.). The schedule of studies clearly takes account of this obtrusive parallel life of the body: gymnastics occupies the years of greatest sexual vigor, practical politics the prime of life, and the later years, when the body fails, while also it is no longer possible to learn "many" things (536dl), are given to the contemplation of the single highest thing. The ages Socrates assigns to each stage of growth (539d8) are best seen in a chart fitting them to the ascent of the cave image: �93 BRANN Sun Goo·"d' natural objects dialectic shadows mathematics 50 35 .- 35 Outside 30 till 20 deat h higher screen wall political office lower Inside prisoners gymnastics mathematical play 50 17 birth After fifty, Socrates says, the time has come for the philosophers to "behold" the Good itself and, using it as a "pattern" (540a9), to order (kosmein, bl) the city and to educate others to live in the city as its guardians. Thereafter they will spend their lives in philosophy whenever possible, but when their turn comes they will descend and govern, considering it "not as something fair but as necessary" (b4). The last phrase recalls one last time that for the philosophers the chief thesis of the dialogue, that justice brings happiness, is suspended-they are just out of mere necessity or, at best, from a Cephalus-Iike sense of duty owed (cf. 331d2), It also shows why this is: As Aristotle (Politics 1262a35) observes, only incestuous love is not explicitly forbidden in the "fair city"; all other kinds of lovers are prohibited from being together because of the disruptive strength of the pleasure involved. The kallipo/is, the "fair city," has, most deliberately (521a), nothing "fair" for which a philosopher ntight willingly descend; witness the fact that it is so called insofar as its citizens study solid geometry (527cl, 528c7). In this city geometric is substituted for erotic interest (546; cf. 458d5 and Plutarch's phrase on the ·business of the Academy: "to become happy through geometry," Dian 14, 2; cf. Epinomis 992a4). Here "love" means primarily the ascending love of truth (e.g., Republic 490b2), and human eros is allowed only a subordinate and utilitarian part in it (459-460, 468c; cf. 521b4), though such eros alone can be imagined as sufficiently strong to bring the philosopher down by his own desire. But it is necessary that the �94 MUSIC OF THE REPUBLIC commerce of friendship should replace the intercourse of lovers, that private love should be absent here, where the dialogic community is to be displayed as the fundamental political community. Thus in the Republic the Good and not the Beautiful is the theme-correspondingly in the dialogue "About the Beautiful," set, in contrast to the Republic, without the wails of Athens, love and philosophy rank above politics (Phaedrus 248d). But Glaucon receives compensation at another time: it is to him that the speeches made about eros at that famous symposium are recounted. He hears them in circumstances that are the direct counterpart of the descent to the Peiraeus which opens the Republic, namely "going up from Phalerum," Athen's harbor in earlier days (Symposium 172a2, c3). 2b. What is most remarkable about the age chart itself is that the rulers' education, although initially founded if not in, at least in behalf of, the city, leads them initiaiiy and recurrently straight out of and beyond it, so that practical experience comes to them late and episodically. In terms of the cave, it is conspicuous that no mention is made of a look behind the scenes of the puppet theater, of something that might be construed as a political apprenticeship. The counterpart of this lack of practical training is the absence from their studies of all political theory, of all formulations that are abstractions from practical polities. In the dialogue called the "Constitution" the study of constitutions is not advocated. The reason for this is in the nature of such patterns: the pattern of the just city is not an eidos, a being responsible for what is, but an ideal, significantly located not in the "hypercelestial place" (Phaedrus 247c2) with the eide, but in the sky (592b2; cf. 529d7) with Cloudcuckooland. A model, or paradeigma, unless it be a causative model or paradeigmatikon aition, is only a schema or a mimesis, having the mode of being of a work of art (50la9, Laws 817b4); it is not an object of dialectic knowledge. Were it otherwise, nothing would be necessary for the young rulers but to be trained in the loyal administration of this best constitution; they would undergo "indoctrination," and the inteiiectuals among them would come to possess what is called an "ideology." Instead, they are to look to the one effectively responsible pattern, which is that "beyond being"; the political wisdom of the Republic demands that governing be learned by looking, so to speak, in the other direction, upward; even in practice the rulers will truly look at affairs "in the light of the whole" (540a8). The ability to do this, irreplaceable by any technique or formula, is called human wisdom, phronesis (433dl, 52lb8), the virtue containing the political virtues (Symposium 209a6). Were it only visible, it would be the loveliest of ail the virtues (Phaedrus 250d5) ....The best thing is that not laws should be in power but a kingly man with human �BRANN 95 wisdom" (Statesman 294a 7). The image of a man possessing phronesis at work, which might be called "Socrates in the city,'' is to be found in Xenophon's Memorabilia, which is intended to be the practical record, the reS gestae, of Socrates. Cut off from its philosophical source, phronesis becomes Aristotelian "prudence," the independent practical virtue of the politician (e.g., Nicomachean Ethics, 114la30). The different functions of prudence are a just measure of the distance between the Platonic Politeia and the Aristotelian Politika. 2c. Having come to the end of life, the philosopher-kings will at last be allowed to depart permanently to the Isles of the Blessed, and the city will honor them with memorials and sacrifices- if the Pythia permits, as divinities (daimosl), otherwise as happy men (eudaimosi, 540cl). Socrates, speaking from beyond the grave, as it were, is ending the conversation with a sly reference to himself: he has indeed just advocated (to be sure, with the permission of the friendly Delphic oracle) the introduction of "other new divinities" into the city, exactly as the indictment against him was to state (Apology 24cl; cf. 21a6; he was also, incidentally, honored in Athens after his own death very nearly as he here prescribes, e.g., Diogenes Laertius, II, 43; cf. also Xenophon, Apology 15). And he has also, outrageously, implied that to be an eudaimon is a greater thing than to be a mere middling daimon (cf. Symposium 202el), for to be happy is to live in the mode of "the happiest side of being" (Republic 526e3), the Good. 2d. And now Socrates and Glaucon are emerging from their deeply private dialogue back into the context of that city which had been developed for the whole company, the "city in speech," the just or guardian city. Socrates himself recalls this city, a revolutionary community of men and women, by a smiling rejoinder to Glaucon, who had allusively praised Socrates' ancestral demiurgic skill as a "maker of men-statues" (540c4; cf. Euthyphro llb9); he reminds Glaucon that he can shape women too, for they were to share in this city (540c5). Socrates now founds this guardian city quickly and with charming offhandedness: All inhabitants over ten years are to be driven out "into the wilds"; this forced emigration will leave a clean slate for the lawgiver (54lal; cf. SOla). Glaucon recalls accurately where they had been when they digressed: Socrates, like the wrestler he is (Heracles, we recall, is the master of all wrestlers") is to put himself into his former position so as to continue to wrestle with the account of the city in its degenerating forms. Socrates, by descending with Glaucon into the mythical setting of the Peiraic underworld, has shown him that he lives his life as one imprisoned �96 MUSIC OF THE REPUBLIC in a mortal Hades. But this demonstration is itself a release, the first step of the rescue; unlike the poets, who fail to wrest from Hades the shade they desire (Symposium 179d), Socrates, a new Heracles, knows the way to bring his Theseus back up to the world of light. Yet Glaucon's later life is almost a blank for us. He seems to have done little in his time, and no reputation, either good or bad, has survived him; certainly he founded no new Athens. We may be sure that this fact, presumably already evident when Plato was writing the Republic, is meant to reflect on the dialogue. It forces us to ask whether in the face of this fact the labor of Socrates must not be considered altogether lost. Then we ought to remind ourselves that while Socrates is speaking to Glaucon, the dialogue itself is speaking to us. And consequently it may happen that Socrates' words are "not fruitless but have seeds, whence others arise in the soil of other souls," so that Plato's "imitation of Socrates" may succeed where he himself failed. Notes 1. Plato's Republic, ed. B. Jowett and L. Campbell (Oxford 1894) III, p. 4; The Republic of Plato, ed. J. Adams, 2nd edition (Cambridge 1963) I, p. 1. For a discussion of the "concentric" organization of the Republic postdating the present essay, see R. Brumbaugh, "A New Interpretation of Plato's Republic," Journal of Philosophy 64 (1967), 661 ff. In this essay, all translations are by the author. 2. Liddell and Scott, Greek Lexicon (Oxford 1958), see Peiraieus, p. 1354b. It is, however, certainly permissible to omit the article, cf. 439e7. 3. Pauly-Wissowa, Real-Encyclopaedie der klassischen Altertumswissenschaft (Stuttgart 1937) XIX, i, p. 78. . 4. Ibid., III, i; see "Bendis" p. 269. The torch race mentioned may be ac- : counted for by the fact that Thracian Hecate had the epithet Phosphorus, Light-bearer. ' 5. Adams, op. cit. (supra, N. I) I, p. 5. 6. Jowett, op. cit. (supra, N. I) II, pp. 2, 7, and 79, on 368a3. 7. Also Gorgias 461a, 466c; Phaedo 98e; Phaedrus 228b. The scl1toliast to Wasps 83 says that Sosias is imitating Socrates' oath "by the Aristophanis Comoediae, ed. Dindorf (Oxford 1837) III, 460; cf. Gorgias, ed. Dodds (Oxford 1959) p. 262; also Lucian, Ph:ilo.~op•hie' for Sale 16, who connects Socrates' dog with Anubis, Sirius, Cerberus. �BRANN 97 8. Pauly-Wissowa, Suppl. III, see "Heracles," pp. 1007 ff., 1018 ff., 1077 ff.; also Aristophanes, Frogs 108. 9. See Phaedrus 267c9, and Aristotle, Rhetoric 1400b19, on Thrasymachus's notorious violence. 10. Socrates, having completed the refutation of Thrasymachus, begins anew and in a new mode: "Socrates no longer comes forward with questions in the character of a man who is ignorant ... , but as one who has already found what he seeks." Schleiermacher's Introductions to the Dialogues of Plato, trans. W. Dobson (Cambridge 1836), p. 356. II. Aristophanes actually compares Socrates to Odysseus, another famous visitor to Hades. But in the Republic the comparison is, if suggested at all, made to discredit Odysseus. For the Myth of Er is offered as an improvement over Odysseus's supposedly boring and false "tales of Alcinous," that is, as a new Nekyia (614b1, see scholia; cf. also Kierkegaard, Concept of Irony p. 130, note). Furthermore, his soul, disenchanted with ambition, chooses the perfectly private (620c6), the most un-Socratic life. 12. E.g., Plutarch, Against Colotes, 1126c-d. 13. Cf. Hippolytus's wish that human generation could be circumvented and children's seed could be temple treasure to be bought for "gold, silver, or a weight of brass" (Euripides, Hippolytus 621). 14. The old saying is used by Socrates in a similar way in the Apology (34d5). He too, he says, quoting Homer, has a family and is not sprung "from oak or rock," that is, he too has a private genesis. The original meaning of the phrase, which occurs in the Odyssey (XIX, 163), was evidently no longer known to the scholiast on 544d8. 15. See Adams op. cit. (supra, N. I) I, pp. 345 ff. 16. See F. M. Cornford, Plato's Cosmology (London 1937), pp. 4-5. For a totally different point of view and concomitantly different years for the dramatic date of the Republic, see A. E. Taylor, A Commentary on Plato's Timaeus (Oxford 1928), pp. 15-16, 45. 17. A similar case is found in Xenophon's Cyropaedia and is expressed in the apparent lack of a niatch between the title, which seems to promise an account of Cyrus's upbringing by the Persians (!, ii, 2), and the content, which turns out to be instead the education Cyrus gave the Persians. This is because Cyrus, whose name means the "Lord," is at once the beneficiary and the source of Persian customs; Cyropaedia therefore means "The Lord's Education" both in the objective and the subjective sense of the genitive. 18. Cratinus, from a lost play, The Thracian Women. The cult of Bendis evidently was good for comedy; it seems to have been the subject of Aristophanes' lost Lemnian Women. �98 MUSIC OF THE REPUBLIC 19. SeeR. Hack forth, Plato's Phaedrus, Library of Liberal Arts (New York 1952), p. 118. Plato founded a shrine to the Muses in the Academy (Diogenes Laertius IV, I; cf. III, 25). 20. An otherwise silly ancient story to the effect that the whole Republic was stolen from the writings of Protagoras, in Diels, Fragmente der Vorsokratiker (Berlin 1954) II, p. 265, seems at least to indicate that on matters political there were points of apparent similarity, probably equally shocking to sober citizens, between Socrates and the sophist. 21. Glaucon's Gyges story is a witty transformation of Herodotus's version. In the latter, what is right and lawful is for every man to keep private things private or "to scan his own" (I, 8, 16); this barbarian counterpart of justice, a sense of shame, is tacitly transformed into the definition of what is just in Greek cities, namely "to do one's own," i.e., to find one's political place. Furthermore the main fact about Gyges' crime in Herodotus, that he is forced to do injustice precisely because he is seen in the act imposed on him by the king, is inverted in Glaucon's story, where by reason of the invisibility afforded by his ring Gyges becomes a criminal voluntarily and with impunity. 22. Note that in this context Socrates first acknowledges the natural world as the setting and source of human nature. The character of peoples is, as in Herodotean ethnology, dependent on the clime under which they live: Thracians, Scythians, and northerners in general are lovers of honor, Phoenicians and Egyptians are lovers of money, and the Hellenes in the middle are lovers of knowledge (435e; cf. Timaeus 24c; Epinomis 987d). Even the geographic place of philosophy is the center. 23. See Adams op. cit (supra, N. I) I, p. 144, note on 435b). 24. See Charmides 164d5 for Critias's version of the Delphic background of this saying. 25. See J. Klein, A Commentary on Plato's Meno (Chapel Hill1965), pp. 112-15. 26. See Meno SOc, The Meno of Plato, ed. E. S. Thompson (Cambridge 1961), p. 112. 27. Throughout the dialogue Socrates' reiteration of themes, such as the "oft-told" tale of the one and the many, as well as the recapitulations he often elicits from Glaucon, have the effect of making Glaucon "recollect" (e.g., 507a7, 522bl, 544b4) from time to time the springs and the course of the argument. This is, obviously, not genuine Socratic recollection (see above, IV E 4d) but an exercise of that power of memory which philosophers must possess as part of their natural endowment (535cl). Such memory-recollection (anamnesis) was especially cultivated by the Pythagoreans: "A Pythagorean man does not arise �BRANN 28. 29. 30. 31. 32. 33. 34. 35. 99 from his bed before he has recollected what happened yesterday. And he performs the recollections in this way. He tries to recover by means of the dianoia what he first said or heard ... " (Iamblichus, Life of Pythagoras 163, 20). The passage goes on to describe the discipline of completely recalling the logoi and erga of the previous day, a discipline that was considered part of the training needed for the acquisition of knowledge. It is obviously a technique Socrates himself had mastered. The most important ancient reports of the "Unwritten Teachings" are conveniently collected in K. Gaiser, Platons ungeschriebene Lehre (Stuttgart 1963), pp. 445 ff. See also J. N. Findlay, Plato, the Written and Unwritten Doctrines (New York 1974). Klein, op. cit. (supra, N. 25), pp. 115-25, "The Dianoetic Extension of Eikasia ." Klein, ibid. 119 and note 27, where the proof according to Euclid V of the equality of the middle segments is given. Cf. Klein, ibid. pp. 191-99 on the "solidity" of the soul in the dialogues. For further sources on the "dimensional soul" see Gaiser, op. cit. (supra, N. 28), pp. 545 ff. See 0. 1beplitz, "Mathematik und Ideenlehre bei Platon," Zur Geschichte der griechischen Mathematik (Darmstadt 1965), p. 59. The objects on the Divided Line are only twice referred to in terms of mimesis (510b4 and 532a2, cf. 507c6). In the Philebus, the Good as a human good comes to Socrates as a dream-like reminiscence of a "third thing," other than and above both pleasure and human wisdom (20b8), i.e., it is a "one" above the other "two." It has three characteristics: It is "perfect," "adequate," and "choiceworthy" (20d); its power, again, cannot be "caught" in one idea but must be captured in three: beauty, symmetry, and truth (65al); their relation is not unlike that of the three effects of the power of the Good, namely world, knowledge, and being, in the Republic. Again Eudemus (Wehrli, Fr. 31; cited by Gaiser, op. cit. p. 480, note) says that Plato distinguished three ways the Good functions: as productive, as end, and as exemplary cause; these again correspond roughly to the Good as father, as end of learning, and as pattern of being. The whole complex is caught in a German word-play: the Good is the "U rsprung," that is, the "Ur-sache" of all"Sachen" and their "Sachheit" (M. Heidegger, Platons Lehre von der Wahrheit [Bern 1954], p. 40). Gaiser, op. cit. (supra, N. 28), p. 531; see F. Cornford, Plato and Parmenides (New York 1957), pp. 3-11 for further references. For one playful allusion to the Indefinite Dyad in the Platonic dialogues �100 36. 37. 38. 39. 40. 41. 42. MUSIC OF THE REPUBLIC themselves see J. Klein, "A Note on Plato's Parmenides," in Lectures and Essays, ed. R. Williamson and E. Zuckerman (Annapolis 1985), pp. 285-88. Further terms used of the Dyad in Metaphysics 989bi9 ff.: material, the great and small, similar to the female, responsible for evil. For Being as the eidetic 1\vo, see J. Klein, Greek Mathematical Thought and the Origin of Algebra, trans. E. Brann (Cambridge 1968), p. 93. The dialectical name of this or of any other eidetic number is not given explicitly in any ancient source. On the Good as the "First" and "the source which is the whole" see Klein, Meno, p. 123 and n. 39. The homoia and associated terms like paradeigma and analogia, reduced however to mere principles of classification, figure largely in the work of Speusippus, Plato's successor in the Academy; see PaulyWissowa, III, A. 2, pp. 1641-58. Themistius (Gaiser, op. cit., p. 535) says that Plato spoke of methexis in the Timaeus but called participation homoiosis in the Agrapha Dogmata. Cf. Adams op. cit. II, pp. 441, 470 ff. There is also a curious story about an artificial Hades that Pythagoras is said to have built- a little chamber under the earth into which he disappeared for a long time and then ascended, announcing that he had dwelt in Hades (Diogenes Laertius VIII, 41). Iamblichus, Life of Pythagoras 165, 12; see Note 27. See Jowett, op. cit. III, p. 326. Adams, op. cit. II, pp. 163 ff. Diogenes Laertius remarks on Plato's special use of the word phaulos, pointing out that he uses it in the two senses of "simple, honest" and "bad" (III, 63). Actually, of course, Socrates often uses it ironically to mean "the great thing that everyone else overlooks." 43. The ancient texts are collected in Gaiser, op. cit., pp. 478-508. The difficulties in using these sources to reconstruct the A graph a Dogmata are (I) that they often mention Plato and the Pythagoreans indiscriminately; the longest account (Sextus Empiricus, Against the Mathematicians X, 248 ff.) even attributes the "dimensional" teaching to the Pythagoreans alone; (2) that they rarely tell by whom, to whom, or with what pedagogical purpose such a scheme was proposed. Aristotle, for instance, refers to the Timaeus in this context (On the Soul404bl6), which should give one pause-the account there is, after all, proposed as a myth (29d2). Nor can the frequent references in the ancient literature to On the Good help here, since no one knows whether that was a public lecture or a series of lectures or a kind of seminar. �BRANN 101 In other words, it is not possible to say what Plato himself thought of "dimensional generation," whether he approved it only for certain pedagogical purposes or became himself a thoroughgoing Pythagorean. In any case, since we know that the dialogues often play on certain differences between the author himself and Socrates, it would, even if Plato's opinion were well known, still be necessary to investigate Socrates' understanding of the Pythagorean order within the dialogue itself. The locus classicus for such a cosmogenic order is the Epinomis, a dialogue said to have been tacked on to the Laws by Philip of Opus (Diogenes Laertius III, 37). Its purpose was to expound that astronomical theology which was to be the wisdom of the "midnight council," the rulers of the non-philosophical city of the Laws. Here the cosmos arises from a continual doubling of the unit, which produces a series of terms, 1:2:4:8, such that each term duplicates the ratio that the previous term has to the unit. These duplicating logoi express the relations of the dimensions of the cosmos, from the dimensionless one, through that doubling of the point which gives rise to the line, up to the solid that is the cube of the "linear" number two, i.e., eight (990e ff.). The duplication is to be understood as the effect of the dyadic arche. 44. Plutarch, in his third Platonic Query (IOOlc ff.), in which he discusses the (undecidable) qiiestioii which segment of the Divided Line, the uppermost or the lowest, ought to be the longest, attempts to conflate the opinion that "the dianoia is as nous among the mathematicals, which are as noeta appearing in mirrors" with the genetic dimensional theory. The difficulties into which this leads him are instructive. He first makes Plato induce the mathematical cosmos from the noetic principles: "He leads the noesis concerned with the eide out of its abstraction and separation from body, going down in the order of mathematics ... "; next we reduce that cosmos by abstracting its dimensions until "we will be among the noetic ideas themselves"; and finally, the sensible world is deduced from these by reading the realms of the Divided Line roughly downward, as stages of dimensional growth. In this account it is entirely unclear in what way the noeta are the principles of mathematics on the one hand, and of the sensible world on the other, and whether the production of mathematicals is the work of human noesis or of the noeta as sources. 45. A centered sphere (as opposed to Parmenides' partless sphere) seems at least to convey more of the expressible characteristics of the Whole than the usual pyramid (cf. Sophist 244e). The center, which in our �102 MUSIC OF THE REPUBLIC diagram marks the end of the dialectic ascent, is, according to Aristotle (Physics 265b4), at once the arche, the meson, and the telos of a sphere, so that, in a manner of speaking, it encompasses the periphery. This corresponds to the fact that Glaucon's assumption, that the top of the dialectic ascent is "a rest . . . and an end" (532e3), is quite wrong- there stiJJ must follow a syllogismos that takes the argument back again to the periphery, where the power of the center as cause, aitia, is first fully apprehended (516b9; this noetic syllogismos, which is preceded by an ascent, e.g., Statesman 267a4, is not to be confused with the dianoetic deduction, e.g., Republic 510b5). It is, of course, convenient that all three of Aristotle's terms are also terms used of the Good. The radial lines may then represent the indefinite dyadic source, which is doubly delimited by the center and its periphery to produce the actual finite sphere of Being. But extended attention to such diagrams always implies that thought has ceased. 46. See Proclus, Commentary on the First Book of Euclid's Elements, ed. Ver Becke (Paris 1948), pp. 58-62; on the motto over Plato's "mouseion": "Let no one unversed in geometry enter here," see Elias, Commentary on the Categories, Commentaria in Aristotelem Graeca (Berlin 1900) Vol. XVIII, Pt. I, pp. Il8, 13 ff. Socrates' resistance to the advanced and "technical" study of mathematics is attested also by the Memorabilia (IV, vii). Xenophon represents him as advocating exactly the kind of mathematics opposite to that which he repeatedly insists on in the Republic, namely useful and applied mathematics, such as earth measurement. But when Plato and Xenophon differ in a deliberately diametrical way there is usually a vital point of agreement; here it is Socrates' deep objection to mathematics as an independent study pursued for its own sake by private experts, a study that would fit into the "doxastic" rather than the "noetic" segments of the Divided Line. The very mental virtues required and acquired by such studies, keenness and sharpness (Republic 526b, 535b5), are regarded by him with a certain suspicion because they tend to live in a little soul (519a), and his parodies of professional talk (527a, 531b) are worthy of a "large-thinking" Swiftean Laputa. 47. See Klein, Greek Mathematical Thought Pt. I, 6. 48. Of course, mathematical studies provide practice not only in what might be called "cosmic synopsis" but also in that preliminary "synagogif" or collection (Phaedrus 266b4) which consists in "seeing together and bringing under one idea things scattered everywhere" (265d3), i.e., in collecting particulars into one eidos. �BRANN 49. 50. 51. 52. 103 The necessity of "cosmic synopsis" was emphasized by Speusippus, in whose opinion "it is impossible for anyone to define any of the things that are unless he knows all the things that are" (P. Lang, De Speusippi Academici Scrip/is, Fr. 31b.) Sources in Gaiser, op. cit. (supra, N. 28), pp. 461-67. Aristotle (Nicomachean Ethics !095a32) furnishes the general background by noting that Plato was concerned with the direction that the road of inquiry ought to take, whether toward or away from principles. See The Thirteen Books of Euclid's Elements, ed. Heath (New York 1956) I, pp. 136-41. See Klein, Meno, (supra, N. 25), pp. 82-87. For the Simplicius passage see Gaiser, op. cit. (supra, N. 28), p. 464; for the ·"pattern cause," p. 480, note; for Theophrastus's comment on 53. 54. 55. 56. the absence of a deduction of the visible world, pp. 493-94. See Euclid's Elements (Heath, supra N. 50) III, I ff., p. 438. See T. L. Heath, A Manual of Greek Mathematics (New York 1963), pp. 154-55. Klein, Greek Mathematical Thought Pt. I, 7 C. Pauly-Wissowa, Suppl. III, p. 1007. �Eidos and Agathon in Plato's Republic Robert B. Williamson This essay is in two parts. In the first I argue that the "forms" (eide, ideal) discussed by Socrates in the Republic begin to become intelligible to us if we think of them as wholes of a certain kind. In so describing them, l point to several fundamental misconceptions into which the beginning student of Plato may be led and which are sometimes found in scholarly writings. In the second part I apply the results of the first part toward an understanding of what is said of the "good" (agathon) in the images of the sun, the line, and the cave of Books VI and VII. I. The Objects of Philosophy After Socrates' long "digression" on war in Book V of the Republic, Glaucon protests that the company will not release him from his obligation to solve the problem of the possibility of founding in deed the just city that had been founded earlier in speech (Books II-IV). Socrates reluctantly agrees to ride the third and greate>t "wave of paradox," after warning that "if we do discover what sort of thing (hoion) justice is," we may find that justice and "the completely just man" are "patterns" (paradeigmata-472c4, d5, 9) which no man or city could perfectly "come to be" (genesthai- d7). Patterns that are discovered only in speech may, nonetheless, be those things to which we must first look exclusively (apob/epontes-c?) if we are to discern how the men and the cities around us, which imperfectly partake of them, stand in regard to happiness or its opposite. Is it not the case, Socrates asks, "that it is the nature of acting (praxis) to attain to less of truth (aletheia) than speaking (lexis)?" 105 �106 EIDOS AND AGATHON (472b-473a)'. Whereas Glaucon assumes a perfect familiarity with what justice and' the just city are (extending even to things Socrates has not mentioned- cf. 47lc4-e5) and asks only after its possibility, Socrates suggests that the pursuit of the question of possibility may require the reopening of the question "What is justice?" and that the answers to both questions may reveal a disproportion between acting and speaking which is not simply a matter of fact but is grounded in the "nature" of acting and speaking. This suggestion is fortified by Socrates' initial statement of the third paradox: The "least change" that would bring any of the existing cities into the form of government hitherto described as just would be that "either the philosophers rule as kings in the cities or those who are now called kings and potentates philosophize genuinely and adequately" (473b4-d3). Philosophers can be philosophers whether or not they are kings; but kings and men of power, if they are to be such in more than name, must philosophize (cf. Gorgias 466b4 ff.). The highest activity within the city will be seen to depend on another activity which does not in turn depend on it. Before Socrates can explain his paradox, he must make clear to Glaucon and the others who the philosophers are. As the name itself says, they are "lovers of wisdom." The word philosophos expresses no qualification: They are not lovers of one kind of wisdom as opposed to another- for example, of Homeric wisdom or arithmetical wisdom. Like all true lovers, they yearn for all of what they love (474b3-cll), all of that eidos''' (475b5). Glaucon protests that the title "philosopher" will thereby extend even to the "lovers of sights and sounds," the philotheamones and phi/ekooi, who travel to the festivals eager for any innovation and are loath to engage in serious discussion (dl-el). The "lovers of sights" may include not only the idle spectator but the connoisseur, who perceives that there is more than one way to write a good tragedy and who resists the attempt to reduce those ways to a univocal definition of tragedy.' Socrates replies with an argument that is of decisive importance for the remainder of the dialogue and yet of exasperating brevity: "Since noble (kalon) is opposite to base, they are two."Of course."- "Then since they are two, is not each also one?"- "That also." -"And the same argument (logos) holds for just and unjust, good and bad, and all eide: Each is itself one, but by community (koinonia) with activities (praxeis) and bodies and one another each shows forth itself as a multitude of appearances (phantazomena pol/a)" (475e9-476a7; cf. 402c2-d2). The philosophers are set apart from the "lovers of sights, the lovers of arts, and the 'practical men'" in that the latter's concern is with the many things that are noble, just, or good (ta kala, etc.), whereas the former are concerned with "the noble itself" (auto to kalon) or "nobleness itself' (auto kallos), etc., each of which is one (476a9-cl). �WILLIAMSON 107 The argument as it stands seems purely sophistical: Because justice and injustice are opposed they are two, and because they are two each is one. Socrates is not above employing sophistries- the Dialogues abound in them- but his sophistries differ from those of the sophists proper in that they are psychagogic, that they suggest the possibility of a redirection of our thinking. In the rest of this section I shall outline what I take to be the line of thought suggested by Socrates' argument. When in our ordinary dealings with men and actions we judge them to be just or unjust, good or bad, noble or base, we refer to a variety of more or less clearly articulated criteria. Some of these are developed and examined in Book I: Justice is repaying one's debts, helping one's friends, rendering what is due, obeying the laws, etc. And there are more: The distribution of property may be determined justly by need, desert, ability to use well, prior possession, the wishes of the previous owner, a tendency to contribute to the common good, existing legal enactments, etc. Yet there are many practical cases, pragmata,' in which the application of one or more criteria excludes the application of others. Xenophon tells of how the young Cyrus was assigned by his teachers to judge a case between two boys; the larger boy had found the smaller boy wearing a coat too large for him, had taken it from him by force, and had given him his own coat, which had been too small for the larger boy but fitted its new owner perfectly (Cyropaedia I, iii, 16-17). The decision and its aftermath need not concern us here. The case could be decided in only one of two ways; yet considerations (of what is appropriate, of voluntary exchange, of the laws, etc.) could be adduced in support of either alternative. One might, of course, deny the validity of all but one or a few of the criteria of just decision; however, the unity of justice that Socrates urges against the "lovers of sights" is not of that kind.' Rather, it is because either decision will satisfy some criteria and violate others that we can say of either that it is both just and unjust. This, however, borders on contradiction, and we must, as Socrates argued earlier (436b8 f.), distinguish between the respects in which a single pragma is just or unjust. Pragmata of the sort described by Xenophon are just in one respect and unjust in another respect and therefore neither wholly just nor wholly unjust. The distinction, however, is effected not merely through our concern with the praxis (the actual assigning of the coats) but through our thoughtful comparing of the criteria of judgment themselves. That it is just to render to each what is appropriate to his nature is not a principle that is true for some pragmata and false for others; it is true for all relevant pragmata, though the pragmata may in some cases demand the violation of that principle because of the impossiblity of following both it and some other more pertinent principle.' Our way of �108 EIDOS AND AGATHON calling a pragma both just and unjust presupposes a permanent opposition between the criteria of just and unjust. Several more steps are wanting before we can speak of the unity of justice as opposed to the plurality of dikaia, of just things. First, it is a premise of Socrates' argument that all relevant pragmata are just in some respects and unjust in others (479a-d). There cannot be a pragma that satisfies all criteria of justice. If there were, our judgments of pragmata that are neither wholly just nor wholly unjust could be referred to it as a standard. But if this premise in its general form is almost baldly asserted by Socrates in the course of the argument at 479a-d, it is examined throughout most of the Republic in terms of the specific question, How do the possible forms of justice and injustice make their appearance in the succession of cities that come into being in speech and in the corresponding types of human soul? Do Socrates and the brothers in fact succeed in constructing a city and e<;lucating a class of rulers who fully realize "what justice is"? I think the answer, intended by Plato and his Socrates alike, is "no." Here I can give only an outline of my reasons for saying this:' I. The just man is provisionally characterized as one who "minds his own business" or does those things that are his own (and not another's), ta hautou prattein (433a ff.). One's own business is here understood in terms of the art (technif) to which his unature" is best suited; hence, each man is to practice the one art that is his own and to abstain from all other arts. This is possible, however, only if his art is supported by other arts practiced by other men, that is, only if he is a member of a community of artisans. The justice of one man thus becomes the justice of the citizen, which is essentially partial, determining him as part of the whole community of artisans. Thus the just city, in which each man minds his own business, is the just pragma within which the justices of the citizens find their appropriate places. II. The just city, however, is a specious whole. First, though each art requires the support of other arts and hence of a city, it requires the city only in general. The arts do not of themselves guarantee that particular attachment to "this" city which is patriotism. This deficiency is most pronounced in the warriors' art, which presupposes a distinction between friends md enemies which it cannot of itself draw but which must be supplied by an education based on stories (mythoz) that are only partly true. Second, the city is a whole consisting of potential wholes, the individual citizens (cf. the analogy between the city and the �WILLIAMSON 109 soul, 434d ff., and the alternative offered to Adeimantus of each man performing all the necessary activities for himself369e6-370a4). The cohesiveness of the city requires that each citizen's nature be understood as radically partial. This is accomplished through the identification of nature with aptitude for a particular art (see esp. 454c7 -d6), an identification that is in some cases forced and results in the fragmentation or "chopping up" of human nature (cf. 394e8-395b6 and Symposium 223d3-6). Socrates' "well-bred lie" (414b8 ff.) is designed to lend plausibility to the city's claim to wholeness: The natures of the citizens are assimilated to their arts (the artisans and their instruments share a common birth-414d5-el), and both nature and art are generated in the native soil (chi5ra) of the city. Being a specious whole, the just city is at best an image (eidolon) of the justice that Socrates now discovers in the soul of the just man (443c4 f.). · III. The formula ta hautou prattein, "performing its proper activities," now applies to each of the three parts of the just soul, the reckoning (logistikon) part ruling over the appetites (epithymim) through the assistance of the spirited part (thymos). The harmony so attained may often depend on the constraining . force exercised by the spirited part over the appetites, which are not of themselves disposed toward measure (439d-442b). Further, the just soul described in Book IV needs the external supports of the just city, for it is a justice founded merely on opinion and habit (see esp. 619b7-d5 and 522a2-5; political wisdom [sophia] is identified in Book IV with good counsel [eubou/ia]428b6-8). If justice is to stand fast (cf. Meno 97d4-98a8), it must be founded on knowledge. However, knowledge is not a mere addendum to opinion, leaving its form and content unaltered, as I shall argue in the rest of this essay. Indeed, it is doubtful whether the account given in Book IV of the tri-eidetic soul is at all adequate for the understanding of philosophic knowledge, which requires a turnabout (periagi5ge) of "the whole soul" (508c4-9; cf. 6llel-612a6). IV. The activity of the philosopher-sage, founded on knowledge and free from inner constraint, now appears to be the wholly just · pragma. In the just city, however, the philosophers must be constrained to rule, that is, to do what is not their own business. Socrates can justify this "injustice" against the best part of the city only by reminding Glaucon that the philosopher-sages owe �110 E/008 AND AGATHON the city a debt for their education and indeed for thek very generation (519c8-520el). At the metaphysical peak of theRepublic Socrates is obliged to defend a breach of the principle of "doing one's own business" by an appeal to the obligation to pay one's debts- to the justice of Cephalus! The city's justice (understood as "doing one's own business") is purchased only with a breach of that same justice in the name of another standard of justice (paying one's debts). The two standards are not reconciled in practice. The criteria that are separated by our "thinking them through" (dianoia) are of a different kind than the pragmata that are referred to them; they are not analogous to the standard meter, which is like the things of which it is a measure: an extended body. A second step is missing, however. Granted that no pragma can be both just and unjust in the same respect and that from this it follows that justice and injustice are opposite and separable by our thinking them through, are we entitled to infer that justice and injustice are each one? May not the words "justice" and "injustice" refer to two mutually exclusive sets of criteria, neither of which sets can be reduced to a single common defining element? But in the very posing of this question we betray assumptions that are foreign to Plato and are inherited from Aristotle. If Plato thought of the relation of a superior eidos to the eide beneath it in terms of the Aristotelian relation between a comparatively undetermined genos (kind) and the eidethat are determinate actualizations of it, then the chorismos (separation) thesis leads to insuperable difficulties, as Aristotle argued': If the superordinate genos is one and separate from its subordinate eidif, how can it be predicated of the latter in a way that does not destroy its unity (cf. Philebus !Sa-b)? Further, must not the eideMan, Dog, Horse, contain each within itself the characteristic of Animal, thus rendering the superordinate eidos Animal ontologica!Iy and logically superfluous? And, if the eidos Man includes characteristics of Biped and Animal, how can Plato insist on the separateness of the eide Biped and Animal, and at the same time insist on the unity of the eidos Man (Met. H, 6, 1045a14-22)? These difficulties and more are adduced by Aristotle against the two-fold claim of separateness and unity. But Aristotle's aporiai themselves depend on certain assumptions about the Platonic eide: that they are predicated of one another according to the scheme of genus, species, and differentia; that the unity of an eidos should exclude any complexity; and that the eide are irreme\liably separated from one another. Following these assumptions, we are easily led to conceive of the superordinate eidos as a sort of template that cannot be put to use, for the eide under it must either always of themselves or never bear its shape.' �WILLIAMSON 111 I suggest that the unity of the eidos of justice is not to be expressed through some formulaic "definition" of justice. Many of the Dialogues, it is true, begin with what seems a search after a univocal formula that will serve as an answer to the question ti esti x (What is x?); but those dialogues relentlessly frustrate that search by the repeated discoveries that the word "x" is used in a variety of ways. Yet if the search for an answer to the ti esti question is to make sense at all, if "serious discussion" (to dia/egestha~· cf. Parmenides !35b-c) is to be possible at all, the "lovers of sights" must be wrong in their claim that any attempt to understand any subject matter must dissipate itself into a multiplicity of observations, however trenchant. Serious discussion and hence the Dialogues themselves are grounded in the supposition that in matters of our greatest legitimate concern there is a unity of meaning that underlies the ambiguities of ordinary speech and judgment. Only thus can the Socratic "flight" from the observation of things to the examination of spoken accounts (/og01) be justified (cf. Phaedo 99c6-e6). The accidental dramatic structure of the Platonic dialogue presupposes as the ground of its validity a systematic" interconnection of the objects of discourse and a pure dialectic that consists, not in a static "gaze" that takes in an utterly simple object, but in a motion from one of its objects to another. This motion of pure dialectic, described in Books Vi and VII of the Republic, is associated in the "later dialogues" and perhaps in the Republic (cf. 454a) with a method of division (diairesis). What seems to be required of the superordinate eide (as I shall further argue in the next section) is neither a univocal nor an analogical unity, but a structured unity that includes the subordinate eide in their systematic interrelations. The question .li esti dtkaiosyne (What is justice?) must receive its answer, not in a defining formula such as "doing the things that are one's own" (ta hautou prattein), but in a complete account that encompasses all the valid meanings of justice and vindicates the presupposition that they are coherently interrelated. (It should be stressed that the Republic does not provide such a complete account and thus does not reveal the grounds or lack of grounds for its own guiding supposition.) Is there any basis for this presupposition in our ordinary dealings with issues of justice and injustice? That there is is suggested (but by no means conclusively) by the way in which we confront situations analogous to that of the two boys and the coats. In such cases we are unable to apply one criterion without violating another; we look for the "more just" or "less just" alternative. In doing so we rank the various relevant criteria, assigning a higher status to one over another. To be sure, our decisions may often enough be arrived at on the basis of considerations irrelevant to the question of justice and injustice, but by and large each of us lives in accord- �112 EIDOS AND AGATHON ance with a hierarchical ranking of criteria: We tend to prefer certain kinds of legitimate claims over others. These rankings differ from person to person and society to society both in the criteria admitted and in the comparative ranks to which they are assigned. The selection of criteria and the reasons for ranking them are in almost all (if not all) cases partial. Such a partial hierarchy of criteria, when it is developed explicitly and publicly, might well be called an "ideology." Particularly in the past two centuries, the more theoretically inclined of the "lovers of sights" have argued that the "concept" of justice vanishes into a multiplicity of ideologies or, on a less articulate level, "cultures." However, the Dialogues show how hierarchies of criteria can be put to the test in various ways. Cephalus, the metic and financier, instinctively gives priority to the virtue of honesty, but he can easily be shown how adherence to honestY in some cases may require the violation of the principle that one should benefit one's friends and how the latter is in such cases preferable to honesty. Polemarchus adopts the position that justice is helping friends and harming enemies, but the first half of his definition becomes trivial when the attempt is made to identify it with a single activity (that of the watchmanthief), and the second half leads to the absurd result that justice is the art of making men unjust. Thrasyrnachus's identification of the just with authoritative convention, to nomimon, must be replaced by a notion of a "superior" who correctly perceives his advantage. In these passages cases are cited in which several criteria must be brought to bear and the relative priority of these criteria must be reevaluated. (To take the example of Cephalus, we normally help our friends- in the ordinary sense of "help"when we repay our debts to them and keep our promises to them; it is perfectly natural that, given his character and way of life, Cephalus should treat honesty as the comprehensive form of just dealing, but, as Socrates' example of the homicidal madman suggests, Cephalus's ranking of criteria is based on certain assumptions that are normally but not necessarily fulfilled.) In all three conversations, with Cephal us, Polemarchus, and (up to 343a) Thrasymachus, the need for a reformulation and re-ranking of criteria is based on the premise, adopted by ordinary opinion and Socratic dialectic alike, that justice is an excellence, an arete. The complete vindication o( tha( premise, which is the unaccomplished goal set by the Republic, would require the proof that the criteria of justice are interrelated in a way that is essentially free of all opposition. If the foregoing hypothesis is correct, it follows that for Socrates every (partially) just pragma abstracts from the totality of interrelated criteria that are "what justice is," 6 eon OtKCUOOUVT]. And if, as Socrates suggests (596a6 f.), what holds for "just" and "justice" holds for all common names �WILLIAMSON 113 and predicates, then a pragma "is" in the way an abstraction "is"; its being is partial and derivative from that which properly and fully deserves the names applied to it. Thus, to refer to the eide as "hypostatized abstractions" is to overlook that inversion of the ordinary understanding which is essential to the "Theory of Ideas." The fact that pragmata can be described in a multitude of ways- as just, tall, three, rapid, sitting, speaking, human, etc.- if anything, confirms rather than obviates their abstractness for Socrates. Precisely because of its manifo)d character, a pragma can be both just and unjust, noble and base, good and bad, etc., but none of these wholly. Being neither wholly what it is called nor wholly not what it is called, the pragma occupies a middle position between what in the strict sense "is" and what simply "is not," between "being" (to on) and "nothingness" (to medamei on) (476e6-477a8). We misconceive the relation between pragma and eidos (for example, between something just, dikaion ti, and the just itself, auto to dikaion) if we assimilate it to the relation between a "particular" or "instance" and a "universal." Here again we are tempted to Aristotelianize Plato, but the Dialogues point in another direction. The young Socrates, when questioned by Parmenides concerning the kinds of things he admits as eidif, approves such things as one, many, like, unlike, just, noble, and good and confesses to having doubts about such things as man, fire, and water; but he refuses to accept certain "ridiculous" things such as hair, mud, and dirt as having an eidos separate and different from the things with which we deal (Parmenides 130b-d). Note that Socrates does not deny that the last group have eide (that is, distinctive "looks" by which each can be recognized and not confused with the others); he merely denies that their eide are separate and distinct from them. The suggestion that Socrates rejects the last group because its members are "unpleasant" or "trivial," though partially correct, is inadequate." In fact, Socrates gives an explicit reason for his rejection: "By no means . . . but these things are the very things we see" (00/iai-L(i)~ ... uA.:\.iHaU~a 1-LBV YE ii7ttp oproi-LEV, ~ailta Ka\ ElVUl- d3 f.). What interests us here is the positive implication of Socrates' reason: If there is a separate eidos of something, then what that something is is not what we see (or otherwise perceive through the senses) when we look at it. What that thing is is its eidos, or "looks," and this "looks," according to Socrates, is invisible (aeides) and accessible only to our thinking (dianoia, noesis). But this is not the case with a particular or an instance, of which we can justly predicate the eidos in question. Even of an imperfect instance of x we can say that it is partly x. Rather, the similes of the divided line and the cave in Books VI and VII and the account of the three ranks of craftsmen in Book X describe the relation between eidos and pragma as I �114 E/008 AND AGATHON analogous to that of a visible object and its image on a reflecting surface. Whatever it is, a mirror-like image of a horse is not a "particular" horse nor an "instance" of a horse. We can perceive a mirror-image in at least two ways. (i) Most frequently we see that it is an image of something else (that it both is and is not what it is -cf. Sophist 240a7 -c6), although from habit we may say of the mirrorimage, "That is a horse." (ii) Less frequently, we may be "taken in" by the mirror-image and actually take it to be a horse. Now from a Platonic point of view, (i) is analogous to the way in which pragmata are understood according to the "Theory of Ideas"; (ii) is analogous to what Plato must have regarded as the crucial mis-identification of common sense, which reaches its fullest philosophical expression in Aristotle's identification of hekaston with to ti en einai (Met. Z, 6). Suppose the mirror of our example could be replaced by a pan-aesthetic mirror capable of reflecting images not only of color and shape but of weight, hardness, tone, odor, etc. Then, according to (ii) we could say of the horse-image, "That horse is white," that is, we could predicate white of it. But this is not necessarily the case with (i): In a perfectly consistent way-perhaps the most natural way-we could maintain that to say "That is a white horse" of a mirror-image that is recognized as such is an elliptical way of saying "That is an image of a white horse." (Compare "That is Abraham Lincoln" said of the image on a Lincoln penny.) In this way of speaking, we do not mean to predicate "white" of the image at all, or, if we do, we are guilty of mistaking the image for its original. 12 Now, if it should turn out upon sufficient examination that all of our perceptions are "provocative" of noesis (that is, of a thinking that looks away from them toward that by which they can be understood to be "what they are")-if no visible thing is what we see-then the mode of being of a pragma is analogous to that of an image in our pan-aesthetic mirror. Instead of referring to them as "abstractions," we may better !ikenpragmata to reflected images, eikones, which are perspectival, which only partially reproduce their originals. We ·may thus reserve the term "abstract" for our perceptions and judgments that have pragmata for their objects, that is, for our doxai. But whether it is true that all of our perceptions are provocative in this way is perhaps a question that cannot be settled by a single argument but requires that we consider each type of perception separately." The imperfection of pragmata resides not so much in their lack of precision- the objects of pure mathematics are precise, but they are not eide (see note 20 below)- as in their fragmentary character. Pragma stands to eidos as non-self-subsistent part to permanent whole. Pragmata may indeed appear to be wholly what we call them (for example, Cephalus can �WILLIAMSON 115 console himself as having lived a "just" life on the basis of honesty alone), but Socratic examination sooner or later brings to light the contradictions implicit in those ways of speaking and living that misidentify the part with the whole. It is this distinction between part and whole that permits us to speak of a "separation" (chi5rismos) of the eide from pragmata in a way that eludes Aristotle's charge that the eide are ontologically redundant (e.g., Met. B, 2 997b8-l2). In the following section I shall argue that an analogous separation occurs within the realm of intelligibility. A final remark. I have described pragmata as images of what they seem to be, and in so doing I have stressed the point that an image is of something else. Nevertheless, an image cannot be completely referred to its original; it must contain or be connected with a third thing which is not simply referable to the original. Otherwise the image would be no image at all, but rather apart or privative state of the original (as when we look directly but nonetheless perspectively at a visible object or when we look at it in near darkness- cf. 508c-d). The third thing is, of course, the medium in or on which the image is produced, the mirror in our example. Socrates frequently refers to media in his references to the relation of the visible object to its reflections, that is, to the relation holding between the analogues of the eidos and its pragmata-images." But in the Republic he nowhere develops an explicit or non-metaphorical account of the medium in which the pragmata-images of the eide are produced. Instead of the threefold distinction between original ( =eidos), image ( = pragma), and medium, Book V divides all things into fa onta ( =eide= originals), ta metaxy ( =pragmata=images), and to medamei on (what in no way is). The third class is not the medium but- nothing at all! Thus, the pragmata-images are ontologically defined by Socrates as being nothing more than mixtures of being and non-being. As a result they are distinguished from the eide only in terms of what they are not; they in fact seem to be no more than privative states of the eide. Our likening of pragmata to abstractions was not so imprecise after all. II. The Greatest Mathema Just before embarking on a discussion of the education of the potential philosopher-rulers, Socrates reminds Adeimantus of his earlier warning that their determination of "what justice, moderation, courage, and wisdom each is" was based .on a tri-eidetic division of the soul and that this division fell short of preCision (akribeia), for which another "longer way around" (makrotera periodos) was required (504a4-b8; cf. 435c9-d7). Now �116 E/DOS AND AGATHON that they are concerned with the education of rulers "in the most precise sense" (akribestata), the longer way with its greater precision can no longer be avoided entirely, though in fact it will be indicated only in outline (hypographe-504d6). Indeed, the satisfaction with which the company had earlier accepted the easier and shorter way, which consisted in "moulding" (plattein) the soul through the use of mythical typoi, now appears to be a kiud of sloth (rhaithymia) rather than something which might satisfy them "within due measure" (metriOs). For "a measure of things such as these which falls short in any way of what is (tou ontos) is not a measure at all (ou pony metrios)"; "nothing incomplete (ateles) is a measure of anything" (504bl-c5). The longer way, if traversed in full, must lead through the mathemata (things that can be learned and hence understood) to the "greatest mathema, which is most fitting to the guardians." "Are not the former things the greatest," asks Adeimantus, "or is there something yet greater than justice and the things we have described?" (c9-d5). Greater than the study of justice, which is itself in need of greater precision (d6-e3), is the greatest mathema-the study ofthe "look" (idea) of the agathon (505a2). The study of the agathon is the precondition of any accurate understanding of justice, for it is the agathon "by which just things ... become useful and beneficial" (a3 f.). Unless we know the agathon, whatever else we know is of no benefit (a6-b3). Yet, as Socrates will more than once insist, "we do not know it adequately" (a5 f.; cf. 506c2 f., 517b4-7; 532d2-533a7). We are obliged to consider Socrates' words with the utmost seriousness: The knowledge and possession of justice (including the justice described in Book IV) will not advance us in the slightest degree (cf. 505bl: ti pleon einat) unless we possess and know the agathon, and we do not have this knowledge (a6-b3). Against this most explicit admission of ignorance must be weighed all passages that appear to settle the problems concerning justice (cf. 506a). Socrates' profession of ignorance is mitigated in three respects. First, he knows what the agathon is not. The agathon is not pleasure, as the many believe; nor is it intelligence (phronesis), as those who are more clever believe. The former are compelled to admit that some pleasures are good and others bad, and the latter, when asked of what the knowledge which is the agathon is, sooner or later reveal the circularity of their reasoning with the answer "the agathon is knowledge of the agathon" (505b5-dl). These negative results are merely sketched here, for in the sequel Socrates will show the impossibility of identifying the agathon with anything else: The agathon will be revealed through a "daemonic hyberbole" to be "beyond being" (epekeina tes ousias) and thus distinct from any of the things that �WILLIAMSON 117 are (509b6-c2). Second, he recognizes that the agathon is "that for the sake of which every soul does everything it does, divining what it is [its ti einml, while being perplexed and unable to grasp sufficiently what it is" (505dll-e2). Whereas there are some men who are content to have only the appearance of justice (cf. Glaucon's story of the ring of Gyges), no one is content with anything less than the agatha that are (dS-10). Since pretence (for example, the appearance of being just when one is not) is for the sake of some ulterior good, the agathon, as the ultimate reason for which anything is desired or done, is beyond all pretence, all duplicity, and, as we shall see, all opposition. Thirdly, although the consideration of the direct question "What is the agathon?" is too much for the present inquiry, Socrates will speak of the "offspring of the agathon and its closest likeness" (ekgonos te tou agathou ... kai homoiotatos ekeinoi- 506d8-e5). This offspring is the sun, and it is an image of a special kind, for it is an image which is fathered- that is, in part produced- by the thing of which it is an image (508bl2). The agathon is known to Socrates at once through an image and as the generator of an image. Thus, the simile of the sun should account in part for its.elf, perhaps by illustrating the possibility of images in general. ' At the basis of the simile is the "agreement" reached earlier that although we speak of many things that are agatha or kala, we may in these cases as in a/[ "turn about (palin au) and posit one look (idea) of each, positing it as being one, and call it what each thing is" (507b2-8, following Adam: see his Appendix VII to Book VI). We thus suppose two "places" containing two different kinds of "object" for the soul: the "Intelligible Place" (topos noetos), and the "Visible Place" (topos horatos) (509d2 f.), the one containing the ideai which can be known through pure thought (noeisthm) but cannot be seen and the other containing the things that can be seen (and generally the things perceived by the senses, aistheta-507c4) but not known by pure thought (507b9 f.). Within the latter place the various kinds of sensing (aisthesis) are correlated with their special objects (aistheta): hearing with what is heard, etc. However, in the case of the "power of seeing and being seen" (ten tou horan te kai horasthai dynamin) there is need of a "third kind" (genos triton) if there is to be an actual case of seeing and being seen. This is light, which "yokes together" the sense of sight and the power of being seen. Of the "gods in the sky" it is the sun that is chiefly responsible for light and thus for seeing and being seen "in the most splendid degree" (hoti kal/ista- 508a5). Neither vision (apsis), _nor the eye, "in which vision occurs," is the sun, but the latter is "most like the sun" (helioeidestaton) of all the organs of sense. Further, the sun, being the cause of vision, is seen by "this very thing" that �118 EIDOS AND AGATHON it causes (507cl-508bll). Analogously, the agathon presides over the Intelligible Place, yoking together thought (nous) and what is being thought (ta nooumena). It "provides the things being known (Ia gignoskomena) with their a/etheia (their "truth" or "revealedness ") and the knower with the power [of knowing]" (el-3). It is the cause of episteme and a/etheia, neither of which is the agathon but which are both "like the agathon" (agathoeide- 508e3-509a5)." In addition to providing the conditions for visibility to the visible things (horata), the sun also provides for their coming into being (genesis) and growth, though it is not itself genesis. Similarly, the agathon provides the things that are known not only with their being known but also with their "being" (on) and "beingness" (ousia), "though the agathon is not beingness but surpassingly beyond beingness in ancestral rank (presbeia) and power" (509b2-IO). The multitude of interpretations of the simile of the sun are sufficient testimony to the elusiveness if not the inaccessibility of the thought behind Socrates' words. Yet the importance of the passage for our discussion of the objects of philosophy requires an effort toward interpretation. Such an effort must, I believe, depend in large measure on Platonic writings other than the Republic. In the second part of the dialogue named after him, Parmenides illustrates for Socrates' benefit the kind of "exercise" that must precede any serious attempt to "define the kalon, the dikaion, and the agathon." With the aid of young Aristoteles he examines through a series of "suppositions" (hypotheseis) the implications of saying that "one" or "many" are or are not (Parmenides 135c-136b). They begin by supposing that "one is" (hen esli: or, that "there is one thing"-the expression is, perhaps deliberately, ambiguous) and by insisting to the fullest possible degree on the meaning of the word "one" in the expression (137c-142a). The results are forbidding. If the one is simply one (or, if there is only one thing), it cannot be at all many (or, there cannot be many things). Thus the one cannot admit a plurality within itself; it cannot be a whole having parts. But neither can it be one of several beings: that is, it cannot be "other than another" (heteron heterou-139c3-5, e3). For, if there were another than the one, the one would be both one and other than another. It would therefore be not one simply but two, since it would not be one by virtue of its being other than another and it would not be other than another by virtue of its being one. Nor can the one admit of any relation to itself, such as sameness, likeness, or equality, for to say that something is the same as x is different from saying that it is one. Being neither pros heteron nor pros heauto, the one cannot admit of relation at alL Therefore, it cannot �WILLIAMSON 119 be "said," known, perceived, or opined, for the unperishing quality of logos is that, sometimes dividing and at other times combining, it causes the one and the many to become the same (Philebus 15d4-16a3). At best the one could be named. But even here the difficulty recurs. For either the name of the one would be distinct from the one and thus in relation to the one, or the one and its name would be identical. In the latter case the name would not be a name tinos, of something, not even of itself; it would be without reference and thus not a name at all (cf. Sophist 244b6-dl3). Finally, the one is unable to admit the relations older than itself, younger than itself, and of the same age as itself. It is therefore not in time, and thus it neither was, will be, nor is. The one does not partake in beingness (ousia) and "in no way is." 16 To be, then, is to be in relation to something else (pros alia t1)- to make a difference. Thus, the Eleatic Stranger (parting with his master, Parmenides) can offer as a "boundary (horos) to distinguish the things that are" the following criterion: "Everything that possesses any power (dynamis) of any kind either to work any effect (poiein) in anything of any nature or to be affected (pathein) even in the slightest degree by the most paltry thing, though it be only on one occasion, really is (ontos einm)" (Sophist 247d8-e4) .. We may recognize three elements in the Stranger's horos: (i) that to be is to be pros alia ti; (ii) that the modes of being pros alia ti are poiein heteron hotioun and pathein hypo tinos, that is, that they are aspects of an active-passive relation; and (iii) that a being need not always be actually pros allo ti but need only possess the power (which will sooner or later be exercised) to be pros allo ti at some time and in some way not necessarily predetermined. It follows that no being can be solely responsible for its own being; its being depends in part on there being something other than it with which it can at some time or other enter into the active-passive relation. Being is twofold, and, like the number two (or, in modern terms, "pair"), it cannot be identified with any one of its members, though- and here the numerical analogy breaks down- it can be said that each of its members "is" (cf. Sophist 249d-250d and Klein GMT, pp. 86 ff.). On the other hand, to be cannot consist merely in being pros allo ti, for each being would thereby vanish into the others to which it was related. Each being that "really is" (ontos esti) must be something (einai=einai tl), that is, it must be what it is in and by itse/J, auto kath' hauto, and prior to any relation with another being into which it may actually enter (cf. Sophist 252d). Every being is at once kath' hauto and pros allo ti. Or, to employ terms more familiar to the Sophist, the archai of being (on) are the self-same (t'auton) and the other (thateron), which "is always other than another (heteron heterou)" (254d ff., esp. 255cl2-e7). I, i �120 EIDOS AND AGATHON The kath' hauto and pros a/lo ti aspects of being are unified (that is, are aspects of one being) when a being, A, affects or is affected by another being, B, precisely because A is what it is. It would seem that for Plato this can occur in two exemplary ways. Either A can be known by B to be exactly what it is, or A can re-produce itself in another than itself- that is, A can produce an image of itself, B. For the present, let us consider the former way, which the Stranger discusses in his critique of the "gods" or "friends of the ideai." Apparently these were the absolutistic proponents of the theory of ideai (among whom the younger Plato may or may not have belonged), who insisted on the kath' hauto aspect of ousia to the extent of denying ousid any active-passive relations (Sophist 248a-c). The Stranger proceeds to set this right (248d-249b). If, as the "friends of the ideai'' assert, soul knows and ousia is known, soul must in some sense act and ousia be acted upon. In the Stranger's terms, soul possesses motion, kinesis, and ousia is moved, kineisthai, "to the extent that it is known." Thus, kinesis extends even to the ldeai; if the ideai were entirely unaffected and simply kath' hauta, they would be unknown and irrelevant to everything else (cf. Parmenides l33b-l34c), and the supposition that the ideai are would have neither meaning nor explicative value. On the other hand, nous is possible only if there is an enduring sameness in its objects, that is, only if ousia partakes of rest, stasis (Sophist 249b8-c5). Thus, the exemplary pair of beings, "that which thoroughly and perfectly is" (to pante/os on- 248e7 f.), is knowing soul co-present (cf. pareinai- 249al) with known ousia. Both members of this pair participate in differing ways and degrees in the prime eidetic pair kinesis-stasis, which itself is immediately under (or is identical with) the genos being (250a-d; cf. Klein GMT, pp. 86-91). The foregoing considerations permit us to discover the affinity of the two seemingly diverse statements about the agathon: that the agathon provides the noeta with aletheia and nous with the power of knowing, and that being and ousia attach to the noeta by the agency of the agathon. Each noeton is and is one thing (i.e., is a monas-cf. Philebus 15a-b) because it can "at some time·and in some way" enter into the exemplary active-passive relation, that is, the knowing-known relation. In "yoking together" nous and the noeton, the agathon is the source of their (copresent) being. Unlike light, which is a "kind" distinct from the visible objects, aletheia is a property of the noeton. The kath' hauto and pros alto ti aspects of the being of the noeton are united in its capacity to stand revealed11 to nous. The agathon is accordingly the responsible source for the unification of the two aspects of being and thus of the being of all ontic pairs. Indeed, it would seem that in his oral teachings Plato identified the agathon �WILLIAMSON 121 with ''the One," which, along with the "undetermined Dyad," is the ultimate principle of all that is." It is through participation in the One that every unit is one and every multiplicity of units is yoked together as a single determinate pair, triad, tetrad, etc. As the source of the unity of all antic pairs, the agathon-One is itself not a being but "beyond ousia." Or, what amounts to the same, the agathon-One is the exemplary source of all communities (koiniiniaz) of relata without being itself essentially related to anything else (i.e., without itself being pros al/o ll)." There is, however, a further effect for which the agathon is responsible. The "offspring" and "likeness" of the agathon is the sun. And since the sun is responsible for the genesis of visible things, the agathon may be said to be the "grandfather" of all that exists (or, better, "occurs") within the Visible Place. But the efficacy of the agathon is here diminished in two ways. First, the grandfather is a necessary but not sufficient source of his grandchildren; there must be a separate act of generation on the part of the son-father. Second, whereas the a/etheia and ousia with which the agathon provides the noeta are interdependent, the same is not the case for the visibility and genesis that the visible things receive from the sun. Earlier Socrates observed that the visible things could have color in them (and hence occur) without the sun's light, which caused them to become seen objects (507dll-e5; cf. Note 15). Later, Socrates qualified this by assigning to the sun the additional office of providing the visible things with "genesis, growth, and nurture" (509b3 f.). Nevertheless, it seems that the genesis of the visible things is independent of their being seen, although their visibility is dependent on their genesis and both are dependent on the sun. This independence of genesis, however, should not be interpreted as a mark of its excellence. For genesis is not pros aisthesin dynamei in the way that ousia is pros noun dynamei, because genesis is already pros al/o ti. The mode of being of the visible thing is that of an image, which is always an image of something else, i.e., of what is. The visible thing is, as I argued in the previous section, devoid of any content, any determinations, that can be called strictly its own. Everything it is is derivative; its being is that of an other. Thus, it has only one of the aspects of being: It is pros alios ti without being kath' hauto. Because of this the things in the Visible Place (wherein exist all cities, including the just city) can be overlooked, mistaken, and misrepresented; and it is because of this that they are objects of doxa, which can be either true or false, and of lies, whether well- or ill-conceived. The diminutions in the efficacy of the agathon can be further explained by reference to the similes of the line and the cave. Socrates responds to Glaucon's request to fill in his account of the two "Places" by asking him �122 EIDOS AND AGATHON to consider a line divided into two unequal parts, which are in turn divided into sub-parts bearing the same ratio to each other as do the initial parts (509c-d). The line is first employed as a representation of things seen (horomena) and thought (nooumena) as they are related in degrees of clarity (sapheneia) and obscurity (asapheia) (509d8 f.). Subsequently the interpretation splits into two corresponding sides: the things that can be seen or thought (ta eph' hois, ta noeta-511e2, c6, d2) and the corresponding "pathemata in the soul" (d7), of which the former are graded according to their comparative a/etheia and the latter according to their comparative clarity (e2 f.). (The terms employed shift in the course of Socrates' discussion; for simplicity I have chosen, more or less arbitrarily, a stable set of terms from among them, capitalizing the names of the major divisions.) The upper main section of the line represents the Intelligible Place, comprising the Noeta ( =gnosta) on the side of objects and Noesis ( = episteme) on the side of the affections (pathemata) of the soul.. The lower part, representing the Visible Place, similarly comprises the Doxasta ( =horata) and Doxa. The lowest sub-section contains what are, in our ordinary way of regarding things, images (eikones), for example, "shadows, and then reflections (phantasmata) in water and on dense, smooth, and bright surfaces" (509el-5!0a3); the sub-section above it is composed of the things of which the things of the lower sub-section are images (animals, plants, artifacts, etc.). On the side of the pathemata of the soul the lower subsection corresponds to eikasia, thepathema of the soul when it recognizes a (visible) image as an image and refers it to its (visible) original; the upper sub-section corresponds to pistis, the trust we ordinarily place in the visible objects around us, believing that they are exactly what they seem to be (5!0a5 f., 51lel; cf. KleinMeno, pp. 112-14). Over this twofold region of Doxasta presides the sun, which, as the simile of the cave makes explicit, casts the variegated shadows and reflections that fill the lowest sub" section (509d; 5!4b). It is the sun that, along with the surfaces on which the shadows and reflections appear, is the cause of there being a sub-division of the lower part of the line. The agathon presides over the Intelligible Place, which is sub-divided analogously to the lower part and the whole. The higher and lower subsections are referred, on the part of the soul, to noesis and dianoia respectively. The activity of dianoia characterizes the practice of the geometer, the arithmetician, and indeed the practitioners of all genuine arts (technaz) that deal with a special subject matter and call into play the faculties of calculation and measuring (cf. 602c ff.). Here the "originals" of the lower section are employed as images of objects within the Intelligible Place"the odd and the even," "the square itself," etc.-that are the proper ob- '. �WILLIAMSON 123 jects of dianoetic concern (510cl-51la2). These latter are "posited" as the "very foundational suppositions" (hypotheseis auta- 510c6) of the arts, requiring no further explanation (logos), and serving as the unquestioned beginnings for the downward (cf. 51la5 f.) progress ofthought toward "conclusions" (epi teleuten-510b6). Contrary to this, thought may make a radical "turnabout" (periagoge-518c8-9, d4; 521c6) and, treating the spurious archai of the special sciences as literally "hypo-theseis" (underpinnings, footings), ascend from them by means of dialectic to what is anypotheton (supposition-free, needing no support-510b7; 51lb6), "the arche of the all" (he lou pantos arche-51lb7); thence thought proceeds downwards to conclusions, this time making no use of images, but proceeding only "by means of the eide themselves, through them, to them, and ending in eide'' (51lb3-c2; cf. 510b6-9). This activity of dialectic, which is represented by the "psychic side" of the highest sub-division of the line (noesis), culminates in a synopsis (537c2, 7) of the entire Intelligible Place, but one that can. be realized only after thought has reached the arche anypothetos-the agathon. How is the ratio between the upper sub-sections the same as the ratio between the lower sub-sections? Both dianoia and eikasia refer images to originals without reflecting on the ontological status of those originals, without asking whether those "originals" truly are (whether they truly are originals, archm). The hypothetical begininings of dianoia are in fact derivative from higher archai and ultimately from an arche anypothetos; the archai (;visible "originals") of eikasia are derivative from those mathemata to which dianoia refers them. Both dianoia and eikasia can mistake the character of their "originals," assigning to them an independent and primary status they do not in truth possess. Further, how is the ratio between the upper sub-sections the same as the ratio between the two principal sections (Horata!Noeta)? The objects of the lower section (Horata) are images of the objects of the upper section (Noeta) and thus of a qualitatively similar but ontologically dissimilar kind. Is this the case for the objects of dianoia and noesis?'" The objects of the two pathemata are not given distinct names: at most they are given a common name, hypotheseis, which can be understood in two ways according to the way in which they are thought." Yet in the simile of the cave Socrates describes as an image of the Intelligible Place what is literally the case for the Visible Place: The sun (;agathon) casts shadows and reflections (;the objects of dianoia) of the objects ( ;noeta) in the world outside the cave (516a5-7; 532b6-dl). Does the turnabout from dianoia to noesis correspond to an antic image-original distinction among their common objects? and, if so, what role does the agathon play in making the distinction possible? �124 E/DOS AND AGATHON The two characteristics that mark off the many dianoetic arts from the single noetic art of dialectic (i.e., failure to recognize the derivative status of their "archai," and the use of visible objects as images) are, I suggest, essentially connected. the horata ( = gignomena) are perspectives of the noifta, as I argued in the previous section. Thus, they cannot serve as images of the noeta in the latter's full concreteness; the noeta, if apprehended with the aid of visible images, are grasped perspectivally. This is indicated by the fact that what dianoia takes as its archai (e.g., the odd and the even) can serve as archai of a variety of special sciences, that is, can support the application of thought to a variety of distinct subject matters. The first principles of the special sciences are in fact abstractions (though in a sense inverse to that of Aristotle's abstracted genos), for, in setting the noeta into correspondence with visible images and applying them to a special subject matter, dianoia disjoins the noifta from the totality of their relations to other noifta. In so doing it fails to deal with them strictly as noeta. For, if they are truly noeta, it must be possible for thought to effect its passage from one to another because each is what it is. The dialectical passage from eidii, through eidii, and to eide-if it is possible at allmust be grounded in a systematic interconnection and kinship (koinonia, syngeneia-531dl f.) among them. Lacking this, the passage from the known to the unknown must depend on the interconnections that are adventitiously suggested, recommended, or verified through aisthesis." It is the presupposition of the dialectical art described by Socrates thai each noifton must essentially and selectively determine other noeta and in turn be determined by them (cf. Sophist 252b-e). If the dialectical progression of pure thought is at all possible- and it must be stressed that no pure example of dialectic occurs in the Republic, nor, I believe, in any of the dialogues"- the structure of a noeton must include a reference to other noeta. Dianoia abstracts from this necessity, separating its supposed archai from their true archai; it thereby fails to grasp them in their true character of noeta: "They are, however, noeta when associated with an arche" (Kahat VOl]nJiV OVT(l)V ~BTU Up:;(ij<;- 5lld2). The divided line image thus allows us to extend the observations concerning pragmata in the first part of this essay to the dianoetic level and to entertain a conjecture about the relation of "generality" to "specific- ity," of genos to eidos. According to Aristotle, the move from the more specific to the more generic is in a direction of increasing povetty and emptiness. The move from "dog" to "mammal" to "animal" is a move away from an articulated actuality toward undetermined potentiality and ultimately to a replacement of univocal meaning by analogy. The genos must be actualized in the eidos, which is the true locus of completeness of being ·.; �WILLIAMSON 125 (entelecheia). In spite of the numerous modifications the Aristotelian account of generality and specificity has undergone, this notion of generic poverty has characterized most subsequent thinking. "Be more specific" is a watchword of the clear-headed. But the divided-line image inverts this progression: to ascend the generic hierarchy is to move in the direction of increasing richness. Like a number, which binds its units within a higher unity while holding them apart in their distinctness as units, the superordinate genos preserves the distinctness of its eidetic "units" in its own meaning. Virtue is the necessary togetherness and interdependence of its parts- to borrow a dianoetic analogue from the Protagoras, courage degenerates into a mere image of a virtue when it is isolated from the other virtues. Generic richness, it seems to me, is a necessary presupposition of the Platonic method of division (diairesis), which is alluded to by Aristotle and others and playfully represented in the Sophist and the Statesman. Pure thought can unravel the articulations of the superordinate gene only if the former are already and always actually present in the latter. The fire in the cave (=the sun) does two things. It casts the shadows ( = eikones) on the wall of the cave (though here Socraes may have in mind the fact that a shadow is caused by the blocking of light), and it is the source of any true understanding of the shadows. Before the prisoners are freed, they fail to see the shadows for what they are, images. Only after being shown the fire and the puppets (=the visible originals) and having accustomed themselves to the sight, can they understand the shadows and evaluate them as more or less accurate approximations of their originals.,. Similarly, the pure dialectical progression through the ideai can begin only after thought has ascended through the hypotheseis to the anypotheton, the agathon. Thus, we have a third work of the agathon, the comprehensive unification of the noeta into what was later to be called "the kosmos noetos." The unification of the pros allo ti and kath' hauto aspects of the being of each noeton is also effected on a purely eidetic level. And, since dialectic pre-supposes the kosmos noetos, the unification of the noeta is in some way prior to the unification of the primary ontic pair of knowerknown." Finally, the agathon is the source of the fragmentary unity of the objects of dianoia, though here the full work of the agathon is blocked or eclipsed (cf. Phaedo 99d4-el and Archer-Hind's note) by the supposedly original suppositions of the special technai. The usual translation of he tou agathou idea as "Idea of the Good" is misleading, or at any rate ambiguous, for "agathon" has the special meaning "good-for" and is thus closely associated by Socrates with chresimon (useful) and ophelimon (beneficial). Something is agathon when itis good for something else, when it contributes in some way to the enjoyment by �126 EIDOS AND AGATHON that other thing of the manner of being most appropriate to it. We have seen that the agathon makes things "good-for" one another in three ways: It is the cause of the yoking together of the primary ontic pair of knowerknown; it is the father of the sun, which yokes together seer and seen and provides for their genesis and nurture; and it is the unsupported source of the community and kinship of the ideai themselves. But are these three ways enough? The difficulty I suggested in likening the agathon to the "grandfather" of the things in the Visible Place now comes to the fore. At the top of the Visible Place section of the line is the sun, illuminating the visible originals and in so doing casting images of them, and at the top of the Intelligible Place section is the agathon, analogously relating the two sub-sections. But the two major sections of the line are in the same ratio as their sub-sections; the visible things stand toward the noeta in the relation of images to their originals. What stands at the top of the entire line, corresponding to the sun and the agathon and causing the noeta to reproduce themselves in the Visible Place? It is tempting to say: the agathon itself. But this is nowhere suggested and is in fact implicitly denied in the cave simile. The objects in the cave (=visible things) are utterly cut off from the light of the sun ( = the agathon). 1b be sure, the objects paraded behind the wall are images, and we may speculate that some of the image manipulators may have discovered their originals in the world outside the cave. But even this begs the question again, for the reasons for the ascent out of the cave and the return to it are not clearly set forth but ascribed to a mysterious and unspecified necessity (cf. biiii-515e6; anankasai, etc.- 519c9, e4; 520a8). At any rate, human imitations of the noeta are attributed to ananke (500d4). Yet one of the distinguishing marks which set the philosopher apart from the multitude is the former's recognition of "how much the necessary and the agathon really (tfii ontl) differ in nature" (493c5 f.). Earlier I observed that in the Republic there is no explicit and thematic discussion of that "in which" or "on which" the images of the noeta occur. In the Timaeus myth a similar omission (though here not complete: plen bracheon) is discovered to characterize the first part, dealing with "the things that have been fashioned through nous." A supplementary account, concerning the "things coming to be through necessity," must be furnished if the story of the fashioning of the moving cosmos is to be complete, "for the genesis of this cosmos was generated as something mixed out of a composition of necessity and nous" (47e3-48a2). It is required that there be a "fresh beginning" as the result of more divisions (esto dieiremene) than were made before; in particular, a "third genos" in addition to the paradeigma and the mimema is needed (48e2-49a4). Just as the latter two �WILLIAMSON 127 played the roles of father and offspring, so must there be a "mother" which is a "receptacle (hypodoche) of genesis," itself devoid of all forms (amorphos)-the "in which" (to en hol) the gignomena are generated (49a5 f.; 50c7-d4). This feminine principle, strikingly absent from the Republic," is not only the "room" (chora) in which generation takes place; it has, prior to the generative act of the father, a motion or "sway" of its own, the principal effect of which is the separating of dissimilar proto-elements from one another (52d-53a). According to the testimony of Aristotle, the receptacle was associated (though with a difference) with "the great and the small" of Plato's "unwritten utterances" (Physics IV, 2, 209bll-16, 33-210a2). The phrase "the great and the small" was one of the ways in which Plato described the latter of his two "elements" (stoicheia) or "ultimate sources (archal) of all things"-the One (;the agathon) and the "Undetermined Dyad" (aoristos dyas)." Although the Dyad seems to have corresponded in some respects to the Pythagorean apeiron, it was peculiar (idion) to Plato that he assigned a fundamental doubleness to it (Met. A, 6, 987b25-27). Indeed, it is characteristic of the Dyad that it doubles whatever it has "received"; it is dyopoios, ''two-making" (Met. M, 7, 1082al3-15; 8, 1083b35 f.). Receiving one thing, the Dyad makes a second, an other, and thus corresponds to the "non-being" (to me on; thateron, "the other") of the Sophist (Physics I, 9, 192a6-8; Met. M, 2, 1088b28-1089a6; Sophist 257b-259b; cf. Arist. De Bono fr. 5, p. 120 Ross). The Dyad "makes being many" (Met. M, 2, 1089al9-22) just as the One, being shared in (Met. A, 6, 987b21), confers unity on being. Together, the One and the Dyad are responsible for all that is or comes to be, and Aristotle metaphorically likens them to the male and female agents of generation (988a2-7; cf. Physics I, 9, 192al4). The "generation" of all things, however, seems to have required at least two distinct acts. First the eide are "out of the Dyad by participation in the One," and, second, the aistheta come to be out of the co-operation of the eide and the Dyad (Met. I, 6, 987b21 f.; 988a8-l4). As in the simile of the sun, Plato in his unwritten utterances seems to have likened the relation between the agathon-One and the aistheta to that of grandfather and grandchildren, though here the filial-paternal role of the sun is taken over by the eide. Of the many difficulties that attend this cosmogony two are directly relevant to our theme. First, although an understanding of the agathon would entail an understanding of one of the necessary conditions for the pros allo ti aspect of being, it would not explain it entirely. The agathon yokes together relata into a single relation, but it is not the source of there being a plurality of relata to be related. The latter is the work of the Dyad. �E!DOS AND AGATHON 128 Second and more important, the generation of the horata (the lower section of the divided line) cannot be accounted for in terms of the three similes of Republic VI and VII. A second act of generation is needed, that of the noeta and the Dyad; and in this case the work of the Dyad seems to be that of literally "duplicating" the noeta, of producing visible images of the noeta, which are other than and yet somehow the same as the noeta. The agathon therefore fails to explicate fully the relation between the two major divisions of the line and thus fails to explain why the noeta must cast images of themselves. And, since "the all" (to pan) includes both the Intelligible Place and the Visible Place, the discussion between Socrates and the brothers fails to reveal how, or even whether, the all is a whole. • • Let us bear in mind that Socrates' discussion of the agathon is based on the supposition that there is "one eidos ... for each class of many things to which we give the same name" (596a6 f.)" and that it relies throughout on images. At best, the discussion employs dianoia to show the need to transcend dianoia. In fact, Socrates acceeds to the brothers' insistence that he clarify his intimation of a greatest mathema only after he has warned them that all he will offer are "opinions without knowledge," which are "ugly things and at best blind" (506b-c), a qualification that appears particularly ironic in view of the simile that follows. Both the similes in Book VI and VII and the interpretation offered above fail to tell us what the agathon is. At best, perhaps, they suggest the doubtful prospects of any attempt to make the agathon the object of the ti esti question as we ask it of other things. NOfES I. It can hardly be that Glaucon understands the implications of an affirmative answer to this question, some of which will be traced in this essay. For the present, we may interpret Socrates' words as simply a statement of the working assumption of all Socratic conversations: The answers to such questions as "What is x?" are more likely to be revealed through reasoned discourse than through the observation of pragmata (see Note 4 below). Socrates' assumption would seem to be particularly apt in the present inquiry, for the just city in speech is a paradigmatic pragma, which exceeds in justice all "actual" cities. 2. Eidos (plural, eide) primarily means the visible shape or "look" by which a thing is recognized as being of a certain kind (horse, spear, noble, etc.). By Plato's time the word's meaning had been extended - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - · ···---- -·-· �WILLIAMSON 129 to those recognizable "looks" of a thing which are not always visible, for example, in the Hippocratic writings, where eidos may mean a symptom (fever, nausea, etc.) whereby we recognize a disease. In the Dialogues the meaning of eidos is further developed (often through an analogy with seeing) to that "invisible (a-eides) look" on account of which the things we perceive through the senses are what they are, which is itself imperceptible by the senses, and to which we more or less knowingly refer whenever we recognize the sensible things as being of a determinate kind. See A. E. Taylor, "The Words eidos, idea in Pre-Platonic Literature," Varia Socratica, 1911, pp. 178-267, and Jacob Klein's remarks thereon in A Commentary on Plato's Meno, p. 49 f., esp. note 43 (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1965), hereafter referred to as "Klein, Meno." 3. See J. Gosling, "Republic, Book V: ta pol/a kala etc.," p. 120 f. (Phronesis, Vol. V, No. 2, 1960). 4. Both praxis and pragma convey the general notion of "to bring about, accomplish, do, act." Praxis specifies the general notion as a process ("doing," "acting"). Pragma (plural, pragmata) signifies that in which the process named by praxis is brought to completion; a pragma is something done or brought about or more generally a thing that is somehow related to praxis. I have preferred pragma to the more general gignomenon, "what is (continually) coming to be," because the former term immediately suggests the relevance of the ontological discussions in the Republic to the practical questions that provoke them. 5. The attempt to reduce courage, moderation, knowledge, etc., to some single defining criterion is repeatedly frustrated in those Platonic dialogues traditionally called "aporetic," a term that, if understood in the sense given to aporia at Meno 84a-c, would properly apply to all the dialogues. For example, Meno's first answer to Socrates' question "What is (human) excellence?" consists in an on-going enumeration of those excellences appropriate to men, women, children, slaves, etc. (7lel-72a5); it is rejected because it fails to reveal the "one self-same eidos ... on account of which [the aforementioned excellences] are excellences" (72c5-8). Meno's second answer, that excellence is "to be able to rule human beings," would seem to satisfy Socrates' requirement for "one self-same eidos':· however, it fails to extend to slaves and children, to whom the words "good" or "excellent" may at least partially apply (73c7-d5; cf. Odyssey XVII, 322 f.). What Socrates seems to require in his asking of the question "What is excellence" is an account of excellence that will (I) do justice to the richness of our experience of the varieties of human types and activities and (2) reveal �130 6. 7. 8. 9. 10. EIDOS AND AGATHON the unity within which, as our use of the single word excellence suggests, the various excellences are held together. Contrast Socrates' condemnation of falsehood as most hateful to the divine or philosophic natures (382a ff., 485b!O-d2) with his recognition of the need for lies even in the just city. That there can be no fully justpragma has been most thoroughly and persuasively argued by Eva T. H. Brann ("The Music of the Republic," above) and Leo Strauss (The City and Man, Univ. of Chicago Press, 1964). My own argument is derived in large measure from theirs. See especially An. Post. II, 6, 92a27-33; Top. VI, 6, 142bll-32; Part. An. I, 3, 643a1-6; Met. Z, 12, 1037bl3-27; H, 6, 1045a7-22. Aristotle's solution of the problem of the relation between the eide and the higher genera consists (i) in associating the differentia with the formal, eidos-making (eidopoios) element and the genus with the material element, and (ii) in denying simple unity to the higher genera. The higher genus is "differentiated" in the species and is one only by abstraction or analogy (Met. H, 6, 1045a23-25; Part. An. I, 4 passim; Top. VI, vi, 143b8 f.). Cf. Eth Eud. I, viii, 1218a36 f., said of the agathon-itse1f, but applicable to the higher (superordinate) gene(cf. 1217b35-40). An alternative way of interpretation has been developed by Jacob Klein, who stresses the divisibility of superordinate eide. In particular, he has done justice to Aristotle's repeated reference to the "idea-numbers," which contain units (Met. M, 7-9 passim), by conceiving the superordinate eide as analogous to numbers. Just as Socrates and Hippias are each one but together two, so the eidos Being (to use an example from the Sophist) may be identical with neither of the eideMotion and Rest and yet not be some "third thing" in addition to them; rather, it may be that Motion and Rest together are Being, that is, that the eidos Being is the community (koinonia) of Motion and Rest. See J. Klein, Greek Mathematical Thought and the Origin of Algebra (M.I.T., 1968; hereafter referred to as "Klein, GMT''), pp. 79-99. Those who are familiar with Klein's "arithmological" account of the eidewill perceive how much this essay owes to him. By the word "systematic" I mean to describe the way in which many parts may belong together in one whole while preserving their integrity as distinct parts. (Compare Plato's use of systema, "what has been brought to stand together," at Philebus 17d2 and Epinomis 991e2.) The reader is warned against that more modern use of "systematic" which characterizes a way of thinking that sets forth in advance (a prion) the conditions under which beings may take their places as "objects" �WILLIAMSON 11. 12. 13. 14. 131 within the totality-actual or progressive-of our experience or thought. See W. D. Ross, Plato's Theory of Ideas (Oxford, 1951), p. 169, and F. M. Cornford, Plato and Parmenides (New York: Humanities Press, 1951), p. 83. See R. E. Allen, "The Argument from Opposites in Republic V'' (The Review of Metaphysics, Vol. XV, No.2, 1961), and "Participation and Predication in Plato's Middle Dialogues" in R. E. Allen (ed.), Studies in Plato's Metaphysics (New York: Humanities Press, 1965); also H. Cherniss, "The Relation of the Timaeus to Plato's Later Dialogues" in R. E. Allen (ed.), op. cit. pp. 370 ff. My example of the mirror image owes much to a similar example used by Allen, who has perceived more clearly than any other recent commentator that the celebrated problem of the self-predication of the eide requires a complete reappraisal of the status of predication in Plato's thought. The eidos Man is "What man is" (ho esti anthri'ipos), and not "a man" (anthri'ipos tis). Hence, it is correct to say "The eidos of man is man" (not "a man"), or "The just itself is just"; however, "man" and "just" are not predicated as properties that the eide have, as in "Socrates is (a) man" and "Aristides is just." Allen and Cherniss interpret such statements, when their subjects are eide, as identity statements: "What-man-isis man." See, however, Klein GMT, pp. 79 ff., for arguments leading to the suggestion (p. 99) that an even more radical re-interpetation of predication is required for the solution of the "methexis problem." The arguments for the eidein the Dialogues-and there are very few real arguments for them, if any- are too diverse in form and content to permit us to extract a systematic account of the population of the realm of eide. Aristotle lists a number of arguments for the eide but these lead to divergent conclusions as to the kinds of things of which there are eide (Met. M, 4, 1079a4-13). The broadest principle is that which admits a separate eidos corresponding to every common name (Republic 596a6 f.). But this is proposed as a working hypothesis for the discussion and not as a final statement on the population of the realm of eide. Elsewhere the Dialogues suggest the inadequacy of the principle: There are some eidetic distinctions among things to which no existing names correspond, and some distinctions made in speech (e.g., Greek/barbarian) are not eidetic distinctions (Sophist 267d; Statesman 262a-e). E.g., the surfaces on which images are reflected in the account of the lowest level of the divided line (509e1-510a3) and the corresponding wall of the cave onto which the shadows are projected (515a7); also �132 E/DOS AND AGATHON the surfaces on which images are reflected outside the cave (516a). (The Greek equivalent of "on" or "onto" is en or eis, "in" or "into.") As far as I know, Eva Brann was the first to remark on the absence of any thematic treatment of the medium in which images are produced and to explore the implications of that omission; see note 26 below. 15. Several asymmetries attend this analogy, and it is proper to mention them here, though they cannot be accounted for at once. (I) Whereas the agathon fathers one thing, the sun, which is both like it and that through which it is known, the sun itself is related in these ways to at least two different things: the eye is "most like the sun" but not caused by the sun, and sight is caused by the sun and perceives the sun but is not said to be like the sun. (II) Both a/etheia, which belongs to the known, and episteme, which belongs to the knower, are said to be "like the agathon," but it is not said that what are seen, the horata, are like the sun. (III) The sun is the cause of seeing and being seen, but it is not the cause of the power of seeing and of being seen (color is said to be in the horata whether they are seen or not-507dl2). On the other hand, the agathon is the cause of the power of knowing. (IV) Light is the "third kind," which yokes together the powers of seeing and being seen, both of which are distinct from light. The analogue of light in the Intelligible Place is atetheia (508e6 f., where chiasmus is employed); but aletheia is said to belong to what is known. Aletheia is not so much a "third kind" as a property of the noeta which they possess because of the agathon. To generalize, we may say that in the Visible Place the three groups {visible object-color}, (eye-power of vision}, and {sun-light} have a certain independence from one another prior to the act of vision; whereas in the Intelligible Place the three groups {nous-power of knowing-episteme}, {noetona/etheia}, and (agathon-a/etheia} are more intimately connected both by multiple relations of likeness and by the extension of causal relations to the very power of the former to be what they are. 16. 141e7 f: "Is it possible for anything to partake in beingness (ousia) in any other way than these [sc. past, present, or future being]?" "It's not possible." This passage, seemingly contradictory to the frequent ascription in the Dialogues of a timeless being to the ideai (e.g., Timaeus 37e), has received a number of interpretations, most of which depend on interpretations of the intention behind the hypothesis section of the Parmenides as a whole. A possible way of resolving the contradiction is suggested by my discussion below of the kinesis-stasis passage in the Sophist. G. E. L. Owen, commenting on the same passage, observes that the ideai, if they are to be known, must be sub- �I. WILLIAMSON 133 jects of both tensed and tenseless statements ("Plato and Parmenides," Monist, Vol. 50, No. 3 [1966], pp. 336~40). 17. A!etheia belongs prhnarily to the object and secondarily to judgments (logOl)-cf. 560b9. It is only with Aristotle, for whom the combination (synthesis) and division (diairesis) expressed by logos are "in thought (dianoia) and not in things (pragmata)," that aletheia becomes primarily a property of judgments (Met. E, 4). For its ascription to objects, "revealedness" is perhaps a better translation of a/etheia than "truth," with its still enduring Aristotelian connotations. On the other hand, "revealedness" avoids the perhaps too literal "Unverborgenheit" of Heidegger. 18. For the identification of the One with the agathon see Met. A, 6, 988a14-17; N, 4, 1091bl3 ff.; also Physics I, 9, 192a15. Aristoxenus recounts a story told him by his master, Aristotle, about Plato's lecture Peri tau agathou, in which Plato is described as progressively discussing the various mathematical disciplines until reaching "as the limit" (to peras) the statement, agathon estin hen (Harm. elem. II, 30/1). See also Aetii, P!ac. l, 7, 31 (Diels, Dox. Gr. 304, 2-5/23-26) and Cyrillus, Adv. Iibras athei Juliani l, 31, A/B (=Gaiser Nr. 52). 19. See Klein, GMT, p. 98, and Brann, supra, IV 5e. Nor is the agathon an agathon ti, something good. Hence we are able to understand Aristotle's denial that Plato admitted among his archai a final cause, a "that for the sake of which" (to hou heneka) or "the good" (tagathon) for which genesis and kinesis occur (Met. A, 3, 983a31 f.; 7, 988b5-16): "Shnilarly those who say that the One or being is of such a nature [viz. the nature of the agathon -cf. 988b9] say that it is the cause of ousia, but not that it [i.e., ousia] either is or comes to be for the sake of this; thus it falls out that they both say and do not say that the agathrm is a cause. For they speak according to what is accidental and not simply" (988bll-16). The final cause may be either (i) the ousia in which genesis or kinesis arrives at a state of completeness, i.e., its te/os (as is the case with natural processes of growth in which the "formal" and "final" causes coincide), or (ii) some good that can be realized by means of some process of genesis or kinesis (as is the case with production of all instruments)- cf. de An. B, 4, 415b2, 20 f.; also Met. A, 7, 1072b1-3. But the agathon of the Republic meets neither of these conditions. It is not the ousia which is the formal-final cause of genesis, for it is rather the cause of ousia and is itself "beyond ousia." Nor is it some good to be realized through a process of genesis or kinesis, for it is the cause of all being (and derivatively of all genesis), itself dependent on no conditions (arche anypothetos). Anything that is a �134 EIDOS AND.AGATHON good (agathon It), including justice itself, is necessarily distinct from the agathon itself. Thus we may observe incidentally that Socrates' account of the agathon evades both the "naturalistic fallacy" of G. E. Moore and the more recently advertised paradox of the "selfpredication" of the ideai. [Note: In reference to the passages from the Metaphysics cited above it is important to bear in mind that Aristotle is discussing the "archai" of all beings, including the ideai; these archai are for Plato the One and the Dyad (987bl8-22, 26, 33 f.; cf. l08lal4), which are the causes of the ideai and not the ideai themselves (988a7-J4). Thus it is not the case that Aristotle "ignores the distinctly teleological view which Plato expresses in some dialogues" (Ross, Aristotle's Metaphysics (Oxford, 1924), Vol. I, p. 179), e.g., Philebus 53e-54a, where ousia is identified as the hou charin of genesis. Rather, Aristotle is concerned with the Platonic archai, which are beyond ousia.] 20. I do not mean to Imply that all objects of dianoia are objects of noesis. Indeed, Republic 526a conveys a clear suggestion of the "arithmoi mathematikoi"- "the intermediates" (fa metaxy) -which hold a position intermediate between the ideai and all countable assemblages of aistheta: "numbers ... in which the unit is such as [the mathematicians] require, each one equal to every other and not differing in the slightest, having no parts in it ... , things that can only be thought (dianoethenat)." Cf. Philebus 56c-e; Aristotle, Met. A, 6, 986bl4 ff.; N, 3, 1090b35 ff. That the mathematicals are not eide appears from the following consideration: Each eidos is uniquely what it is (Republic 597c) in contradistinction to the multiplicity of mathematicals of the same kind. In "two and two are four" it is essential that two units be added to two other units to yield a four; similarly the statement '"Itiangles ABC and DEF are equal and their corresponding angles are equal if they have all three sides equal" is trivial unless triangles ABC and DEF are other than each other. On the other hand, the objects of dianoia are not exhausted by the intermediates; the mathematician is not only concerned with considering "the triangle ABC" or adding "two units to two units," he also employs definitions of what a triangle is, what en even number is, etc. On the dianoetic level, however, these may be thought of as mere properties or attributes of the intermediates; the mathematician, more likely than not, fails to understand them as beings, as noeta. 21. Similarly, Socrates gives the same name, noesis, to both the upper section and the uppermost subsection of the line (51ld8 f.; 534a2; cf. 533e8, where the uppermost subsection is given the name episteme). �WILLIAMSON 135 22. Cf. Meno 81c9-d4: "For, since all nature is akin (syngeniis) and the soul has learned and understood all things, nothing prohibits it, if it recollects only one thing (what humans call "learning"), from discovering all the rest, if one is manly and doesn't faint in the search." On the notion of syngeneia as a presupposition of dialectic, see R. E. Cushman, Therapeia (Chapel Hill: Univ. of North Carolina Press, 1958), p. 50, n. 47, for a list of relevant passages in Plato and his commentators. 23. The second part of the Parmenides must be ruled out, for the method is explicitly "hypo-thetical" in the dianoetic sense; nor are the various hypotheseis ever co-ordinated, and the whole section is introduced as an "exercise" propaedeutic to the dialectical method (135b-136c). Nor will the Eleatic Stranger's method of diairesis do, for, quite apart from the comic shortcomings of its conclusions in the Statesman, it depends heavily upon sense experience and hearsay (see esp. Statesman 264bll-d9). 24. The cave simile re-introduces the theme of paideia and thereby acquires an additional dimension, the political (514al f.). Indeed, the cave is not strictly a (natural) cave, but an "underground cave-like (spiilaiodes) dwelling" (a3), within which blazes an artificial sun, casting the shadows of implements and puppets on the facade (katantikry) of the cave facing the strangers. These implements and puppets are carried and manipulated by human beings who parade up and down a "way" (hodos) along a teichion (=the walls of the polis). The "cave" is largely, if not fully, the work of men; it is the Visible Place as it is revealed within the horizon of political life. It has two major parts: the more comprehensive world of the "opinion-makers" (the politicians, p_oets, rhetoricians, sophists, and- if the city is fortunate- the philosophers) and the shadowy world of the ordinary citizen whose objects of concern (the gods, things just and unjust, expedient and inexpedient, noble and base, lawful and unlawful, genuine and false) are transformed, if not produced, by the men behind the wall. 25. Whatever the nature of this priority may be, it is not, if the present argument is correct, an antic priority. Nonetheless, the priority of the unification of the noeta over that of the primary ontic pair distinguishes Plato from those neo-Platonists (see esp. Plotinus, V, i, 4, 5; VI, vii, 15) who give a slight priority to "pure thinking" (to noein) over "what is thought" (to nooumenon). (Plotinus, like Kant after him, prefers nooumenon "what is thought,"- or theOroumenon, gignOskomenon, etc.-to the more characteristically Platonic noeton, "what can be �136 EIDOS AND AGATHON thought.") As a further instance of the shift of emphasis that characterizes much of neo-Piatonism see Thomas Aquinas's doctrine of the "Divine Ideas": S. T., I, q. 15. One may speculate that the roots of this shift are to be found in the more fundamental shift, made by Aristotle, from dynamis to energeia as the primary horos of being, with the consequent denial of the "separation" (chorismos) of the noeta and thus the need to locate the unity of the genos in abstraction or in logos (ana-logia)- cf. Plotinus, V, iii, 5; v, I. 26. The most vivid example of the playing down of the feminine is the "second wave of paradox," the assigning of the same employments to both sexes. The conventional practice of assigning different tasks to each sex, Socrates avers, is based on the assumption that each sex excels the other in certain abilities. However, with the exceptions of parturition and wet-nursing, women are in fact surpassed by men in every employment- even cooking! Thus, there is no reason to assign women a special province or activity in the city (454d-456a). Woman plays a distinctive role in one respect: she brings about the decline from the aristocratic man to the timocratic man (549c-d). Eva Brann first called my attention to the way in which Socrates' treatment of the feminine reflects his mythical treatment of the second of the Platonic archai ("The Music of the Republic," supra, pp. 58-61, 64-67, 76.) 27. See Met. A, 6, 987a18-21, b20-22; 988a26; B, 3, 998bl0; M, 7, l081a14 f., b21, 32; 1082al3, b30; 9, l085b7; N, 2, l088b28; !089a35; 3, !091a5; Physics I, 4, 187a17; 9, 192a7, 11; also Alexander on Met. I, 9, 990b17 and Klein GMT, p. 97 f. In the Republic (524c) Socrates treats the "great and small" as a determinate pair, of which we may ask the ti esti question. 28. In the Phaedo Socrates relates how in his youth, wishing to know the "causes of each thing" and perplexed by such problems as how a unit and another unit can each be one and yet together become two, he resorted to the "investigation of nature" (peri physeos historia) and the teachings of Anaxagoras (96a-97c). Disappointed, he concluded that his inquiries could be satisfied by nothing less than a knowledge of "the agathon, which must bind and hold together [all things, hapanta]" (99c4-6). Finding himself inferior to the task and without a teacher, he decided to abandon the investigation of "the things that are" (ta onta) and, as a "second best course" (deuteros pious), to "take refuge in logoi," just like those who fear to damage their eyes by looking directly at the sun during an eclipse and observe it indirectly through its reflection in water or something else of the sort (99c6-e6). The new method consisted in "sup-posing (hypothemenos) on each occasion �WILLIAMSON 137 whatever logos [he] judged to be strongest" and positing (tithemz) as true or untrue whatever seemed to him to agree with it or not (100a3-7). Both in the Phaedo "and elsewhere" the guiding supposition is that "there is something [that is] kalon itself by itself and [similarly something that is] agathon and [similarly for] all the rest" (bl-7). �What Is "The Good" of Plato's Republic? David Lachterman I. Among the Greek comic poets of the Middle and New Comedy Plato's "Form of The Good" had become a by-word for ludicrous and impenetrable obscurity. Am phis, in his play Amphicrates, has a slave say to his master, about to embark on the conquest of a young lady: "What good you expect to get from her, sir, I understand less than I do the Good of Plato."' Much later Nietzsche indicted Plato for having introduced into European culture "the worst, most long-lasting, and most dangerous" of all dogmatic errors: the invention of "the pure spirit and the Good in-itself." Faith in an absolute or other-wordly Good, a faith fed by Plato's rhetoric and digested into Christianity, inevitably emasculated the will of Western humanity, according to Nietzsche. 2 What separates the Greeks' mocking mirth from the baleful assaults of Nietzsche and his progeny is not only time, but a space densely populated by a variety of discordant interpretations, as though to confirm in this central instance of The Good what Cicero says with terse wisdom about the Platonic dialogues generally: Quot lectores, tot Platones. Within this dismaying variety of readings and readers one polarity in particular brings into a relief a perplexity with which anyone attempting to give an account of The Republic must sooner or later reckon. To use, for the moment, terminology drawn from post-Platonic traditions, I shall call this the polarity between the exclusively ethical (or moral) and the exclusively metaphysical (or ontological) interpretations of The Good. For the proponents of the first view, Plato'·s concern is with a fundai39 �140 WHAT IS "THE GOOD"? mental principle or "norm" undergirding moral and social judgments, evaluations, and policies, with what one distinguished proponent, Paul Shorey, called "the [ultimate] authority by which conduct is sanctioned ... the final source and canon of the knowledge of right conduct for all who go back of instinct and tradition."' On this view-and here its deliberate one-sidedness already comes into evidence-passages such as those in which Socrates talks of The Good as supplementing the intelligibles with being and essence, while itself beyond essence, must be read as merely the "poetic vesture" or "rhetorical windowdressing" that has to be stripped away in order to disclose the supposedly plausible core of Plato's ethical and social "doctrines." (It might also be noted that this first view faces the ineluctable challenge posed by Aristotle, who remarks in the Eudemian Ethics: "Even if there were a form or single look of the good, it would not be of any use for the [humanly] good life or for practical conduct.'" On the second, metaphysical, view, which one might also be tempted to call the "Neo-Platonic" view, the ethical and political concerns of The Republic and other dialogues recede far into the background while The Good is the source or ground of the beingness and order of what-is holds center stage. What for the one-sidedly ethical version was "poetic vesture" is now the naked truth, while, conversely, the sober-seeming teachings about virtues and politics play the role of propaedeutic enticements towards a visionary sight of The Good or The One, beyond essence and even being. In the words of one recent advocate of this Neo-Platonic reading, words that smack more of P. G. Wodehouse than of Plato: "It is quite inconceivable that Plato's Guardians, having reached the ripe age of fifty, and having studied all the intricacies of mathematics, should be subjected to the ethical argy-pargy practised by Socrates on young men and boys.'" Both readings eventually compromise the integrity of the dialogue; that is, both turn us aside from the ordered multiplicities of the work itself, a work that is hot a collection of theses, propositions, and supporting arguments presented more geometrico, but an artfully textured re-presentation of sustained conversation, an icon (or phantasm) of the interlacings of seemingly living and lived speed. Both readings correspondingly muffle, when they do not simply dismiss, what The Republic invites us to hearthe baffling connectedness or kinship within living speech of those preoccupations artificially set apart as "ethical" and "ontological." An ancient commentator captured the sense of what I am suggesting when he wrote that "the dialogue is a kind of cosmos. For, just in the way in a dialogue there are different personages, each speaking in character, so, too, in the entire cosmos there are different natures uttering different expressions." The same author gives us an even more valuable clue when �141 LACHTERMAN he treats of the inner organization of a dialogue; borrowing from the terminology of the Divided Line he suggests that the problem of a dialogue is comparable to nous, to insight or direct apprehension, while its arguments are comparable to dianoia, discursive, sequential reasoning. The former, nous, "is thought of as the center of a circle around which the arguments move as a circumference in pursuit of the answer."6 We might infer from this that by following out these discursive or argumentative motions we can locate and, in a sense, exhibit, the central point around which they turn, without being able to render that point adequately in further discursive speech. My attempt to situate The Good at the noetic center of Plato's discourse will accordingly consist in a series of movements around the circumferences The Good directs and unifies. II Socrates' only explicit remarks about the Good-Itself, the Good without qualification, occur in a digression from a digression in The Republic. Digressions, in Plato, are never fortuitous or aimless; rather, they aim at something vaguely or inconspicuously hinted at by the initial lines of discussion. These digressions carry us further and further from the periphery towards a so-far uninspected and unsuspected center; or, to improve slightly on this two-dimensional image, the digressions move us from lower to higher plateaux, where both the stakes and our sights are raised. At the same time, however-and this must be emphasized quite strongly-what comes into view only on a higher plateau, or as we move nearer to the center, gains its focus and clarity primarily against the recollected backdrop of what preceded it. Hence Platonic or Socratic "conclusions," however exotic, unfamiliar, or ecstatic they may seem at first blush, draw much, if not all, of their persuasive strength from their responsiveness to questions and issues raised or implied early on, often in commonplace settings and always prior to any detailed scrutiny of their ultimate implications. Socrates, according to Cicero, was the first to drag philosophy down from the heavens to the earth;' in more Platonic terms, Socratic conversation characteristically, although not invariably, takes place in the city and in its central places, the agora, for example; furthermore, it takes place with men whose interests most often lie elsewhere than in philosophy, even when they are not expressly inimical to philosophy. If Socratic conversation slowly re-ascends from the earth, or the city, to the "Heavens," it takes its bearings by what has been said and exhibited on Earth, in the realm a later philosopher will more solemnly baptize "everydayness." A Platonic argument or proof, such as it is, cannot be understood apart from this �I I I i 142 WHAT IS 'THE GOOD"? subtle and extraordinarily intricate interplay between the ordinary and the unexpected consequences or underpinnings of the ordinary. This holds especially true of Plato's "arguments" concerning The Good, which occur in a dialogue given its sharpest urgency when Socrates, in Book I, reproves Thrasymachus in these words: "Do you think it is a small thing you are trying to determine [namely, the nature of justice] rather than the way to lead a life such that each of us will live most profitably?" (344el-3). This suggests that everything Socrates will eventually be made to say on the topic of The Good, as well as all that we might cull from elsewhere regarding Plato's further conjectures, are somehow, and in multiple ways, coupled with this initiating concern. Platonic ontology, or metaphysics, never loses its purchase on the pre-philosophical, the pre-eminently and inescapably practical, question of the "best human life." Or, in other words, the radically unfamiliar continues to be grounded in the familiar, even when it comes to be seen as the latter's own ground. To say this is one thing; to see how it is worked out "in practice" is quite another, frustratingly more difficult matter, even with the benefit of Plato's artful guidance. What I propose to do is to examine, at first in a loose and provisional way, four lines of "argument" that make their first appearance in Book One of The Republic and that lead, obliquely and hesitantly at the beginning, ineluctably towards the end, to the baffling, exorbitant suggestions Socrates sets forth in Books VI and VII when The Good comes under imaginative scrutiny. These four lines of argument exert the pressure that pushes Socrates towards those climactic claims; accordingly, we must try to see both how each one comes onto the stage and how all four come to play their respective roles in an ensemble it will be the business, the power, of The Good to illuminate and to unify. I shall call these, for the sake of notional convenience, (!) the argument from appearance and being, (2) the argument from opinion and knowledge, (:i) the argument from desire, and (4) the argument from the Many and the One, or from Parts and Wholes, although this fourth line of argument, as we shall see, is not really "on a par" with the first three, but rather comprehends or is an ingredient in them all. The argument from appearance and being makes its first, non-technical appearance in Book I, in the exchange between Socrates and Polemarchus. Polemarchus has inherited his father Cephal us's argument that justice consists in paying back what one owes; under Socrates' questioning, he amends this to read: "Justice is benefiting one's friends and harming one's enemies" (322d5~6). �LACHTERMAN 143 After admitting the justice of several criticisms made by Socrates, Polemarchus is forced to change his tack when he realizes that this definition can lead to benefiting the unjust and harming the just, if it happens that we are mistaken in our judgment of our "friends," that is, if we mistakenly consider a friend good and thus deserving of benefit, when in truth he is bad. Polemarchus then emends his account further, requiring that a friend both seem to be and genuinely be "good" or "useful." The possible disparity or gap between what something or someone appears to us to be and what that thing or person genuinely is initially has nothing "metaphysical" about it, at least not in our present, rather narrow use of that term. Each of us has or will have had the painful experience of being played false by a seeming friend, of discovering that someone is, as we say, a uralse friend." Now Socrates does not seize on the distinction or tension between seeming and being at this point; it will, however, be revived and expanded when Glaucon and Adeimantus renew Thrasymachus's challenge to Socrates in Book II, demanding a proof that the just life is to be preferred, even when a man seems to be totally unjust while being "in reality," as modern idiom would lead us to say, thoroughly just. The same word in Greek, doxa, means both "appearance" and "opinion."8 For a man to seem to be just (or unjust) amounts as well to his being opined or considered to be just (or unjust) by others. It is under these descriptions that he shows up in the eyes and speech of other persons, even when the descriptions do not "in truth" fit him. It is by way of exploring and exploiting this familiar experience that Socrates will later turn the discussion in the direction of the so-called "forms." Attributions of such features as justice, beauty, and so on, to the items of our ordinary or workday experience are characteristicallY defective, inasmuch as those items seem to be such-and-such without being suchand-such in a complete and genuine fashion. The descriptions will not "fit" these item~, or will fit them only partially and imperfectly. Needless to say, this anticipation leaves open the question of what it is to be such-and-such altogether and genuinely, and not merely to seem to be such-and-such.' Furthermore, Socrates' own discussion will force upon us the even deeper issue: Why is there this discrepancy between appearance and being? What is the ground of that distinction itself? What is the ground of the community of what it distinguishes? (2) The second line of "argument" comes into play in Socrates' debate with Thrasymachus. The latter has insisted that justice is nothing other than the advantage of the stronger, that is, justice is another person's good, not the good of the one who is just. The stronger turn out to be the rulers �144 WHAT IS "THE GOOD"? of cities, who legislate with their own benefit alone in mind; the ruled are just insofar as they obey the laws made by the stronger. Socrates then suggests the following paradox: If a law commanded by the stronger actually works out to their disadvantage, then it is just, on Thrasymachus's definition, for the weaker to obey that law, even though in doing so they fail to contribute to the rulers' good, as the definition requires. At this moment Thrasymachus adds a "rider" to his definition: Rulers "in the most precise or accurate sense" do not make a such errors (34lb8). When an agent in power does make a mistake he is no longer entitled to the appellation "the stronger" or "the ruler." Consequently, ouly someone who knows unerringly what his true advantage is, qualifies as a ruler, or for that matter, as a craftsman, or a wise man. It is Thrasymachus who uses the Greek word for science or true knowledge, i:nt<HllJlTJ, for the first time in The Republic. Since so much hangs on Thrasymachus's definition of justice and on this "rider" or qualifying clause concerning knowledge-since, indeed, the rest of The Republic hangs on what he says in these passages- it would make sense to pay the most careful attention to what is taking place in this exchange. Let me draw attention to just three aspects of this context: First, Thrasymachus gives the rest of the dialogue its preeminently political inflection when he accompanies his initial definition with the following statement: "Each regime lays down the laws with a vfew to its own advantage: a democracy lays down democratic laws, a tryanny tyrannical laws, and other regimes do likewise. By so legislating they make it manifest that what is just for those who are ruled is what is beneficial to themselves, the rulers" (338dl-4). Thrasymachus here replaces what he regards as the superficial differences among regimes, that is, among their constitutions, with what he believes to be a deeper-seated homogeneity or identity: all rulers, under every sort of constitution, are seeking their own benefit. Accordingly, the various constitutions- democracy, tyranny, and so on- are merely different instrumentalities for the achievement of one and the same end. We might be tempted to say that Thrasymachus is here inventing one version of modern "political science," which by similarly "objectifying" the regimes it studies substitutes the homogeneity of power for the heterogeneity of constitutions. Thrasymachus, at any rate, is candid enough to acknowledge that, on this reckoning, tryanny is the best regime, since the tyrant has the maximum degree of power. It is impossible to understand Plato's political theory, even in the narrowest sense of the term "political," unless one grasps that its guiding intention is to make possible that very discrimination among types of regimes · �LACHTERMAN 145 which Thrasymachus's position would have us ascribe to foolish innocence. To fashion the best city, even if only "in speech," is to present criteria by which those critical distinctions can be drawn. A second point. Thrasymachus, as we have just seen, appeals to "advantage." What sort of advantages or benefits does he have in mind? Power, the absolute power to make others one's slaves, to appropriate to oneself their property and their bodies, thereby to satisfy one's every appetite with impunity and abandon, he pronounces "happy and blessed" (344b7). Thrasymachus, who thinks of himself as relying on nature, turns out to be dependent on one of the most conventional views of what benefits an individual. Indeed, his whole presentation raises in acute form the twofold question: What is it for something to be beneficial or advantageous? And what is the self or person or soul who is thereby benefited? Thrasymachus does not address himself to these twin questions; his words, however, cause them to hover over the remaining nine books of The Republic. Indeed, this helps to clarify the remarkable and often-perceived affinity between Thrasymachus's definition and the definition of justice Socrates eventually proposes in Book IV: Justice is doing one's own business or one's own things. As the subsequent argument reveals, everything depends on coming to know what things are genuinely or in truth one's own, and hence, on knowing what the self or soul truly is. Accordingly, the ensuing debate between Thrasymachus and Socrates is not the debate between radical egoism and selfless altruism; instead, Socrates will be concerned to show that it is only when the "self" or soul is brought face-to-face with its true nature and thus with what are genuinely and knowably its own "possessions" that it ceases to be the "possessive individual" Thrasymachus simultaneously embodies and applauds. A third and final aspect, in some ways the most important. Thrasymachus, as I have already indicated, is the first to mention bncr'tljflt] in the dialogue, although it would be an understatement to say that he gives us no clues as to how he understands knowledge or science, apart from maintaining that such knowledge must be, in principle, error-free and mistake-proof. Viewed from this perspective, the rest of the dialogue will consist in Socrates' attempt to display both the necessity and at least the general contours of the knowledge to which Thrasymachus obstreperously alludes. Needless to say, neither the contents nor the point of this Socratic "science" are anticipated by Thrasymachus himself; nonetheless, he accepts as his own the twin theses that (1) opinions or predictions of what is advantageous are not self-verifying, and that (2) the legitimacy of the rulers' authority derives from their supposed knowledge of what will genuinely �146 WHAT IS "THE GOOD"? benefit them. Socrates' sketch of the philosopher-kings will incorporate both theses, with this crucial amendment to the second thesis, that only what is of benefit to the city as a whole can count, somewhat ambiguously, as beneficial to the philosopher-kings themselves. In Book I, however, Socrates does not undertake to display even the rudiments of the science that will fit these requirements. Instead, he suppresses Thrasymachus's term smmlj~TJ- which occurs only once again in Book I- in favor of the more familiar term, ~exvTJ, art or craft, and couches the rest of his "refutation" of Thrasymachus in the language of the "arts." Many contemporary readers have found Socrates' association of questions of justice and of the virtues generally with questions of the arts and crafts either appalling or absurd: appalling, if this linkage is read as implying that only those who possess some special technique or expertise can be "morally" virtuous; absurd, if it is taken to mean that knowing how to follow the rules of some technical discipline is the same as knowing that moral obligations must be discharged regardless of anticipated outcome or contingent self-interest. Kant gives expression to this second reaction when he distinguishes between hypothetical, or, as he says, "technical," imperatives and categorical imperatives. 10 Does ~BXVTJ, as Socrates presents it, lend itself to either of these two outraged interpretations?" We should keep in mind, first, that the model of ~EXVTJ that dominates the discussion in Book I will be demoted in importance as Socrates comes ever closer to spelling out what a science or !\mcnlj~TJ is, just as the sciences, in their turn, will be demoted in rank when the only genuine science, what he will call "dialectic," comes onto the scene in Book VII. Socrates' earlier reliance on the ~BXVTJ-model is, then, a function of its position on the periphery, the outermost circle, of the dialogue. It might be said to steer thought towards the center without ever replacing or overshadowing that center. Nonetheless, the ~exvTJ-model can be seen to be the right or fitting one at the inception of the discussion if we pay due regard to the following points: (a) According to Thrasymachus an art or handicraft is essentially manipulative of its objectives, the practice of such a craft aims always at securing benefits for its practitioners. For Socrates, on the other hand, the practice of an art succeeds as art only to the extent that it gives its objects their due, that is, only to the extent that the manipulations of art conform to what the objects themselves require for their own part. The.constitution of an object· of ~SXVTJ dictates appropriate and inappropriate procedures. One cannot build a suspension-bridge out of clay, just as one cannot get the best tone from a Stradivarius violin by banging it against a drumhead. �LACHTERMAN 147 (b) Thrasymachus's own phrase "ruler in the precise sense" points us in this same direction, for the word he uses, O.KptPcO<;, uwith precision" or "accuracy," belongs to the vocabulary of the crafts, where the noun &.KpiJ)eta originally designates the result of fitting one thing to another, for instance, making one piece of wood dovetail with another so that no gaps are left." An art becomes "precise" only if it takes into account the nature and limits of its proper objects and this it can do only if it "submits" itself to these objects, tries, in other words, to join itself to them without leaving any gaps. (c) Construed in this way, ~EJ(VTJ offers us the first instance of the human capacity for self-transcendence, that is, the ability to pass beyond the immediacies of narrower self-interest in order to encounter, in a fitting way, something other than oneself. TEJ(VTJ, then, is less a matter of following "technical, autonomous rules, and more one of discovering what the texture of things demands of anyone who sets out to fashion or refashion things in accordance with a purpose to which they show themselves to be suited. One might characterize this situation by saying that the artisan, precisely because he needs these objects for his craft, has to give them their due; this is the original lesson in the art of respecting, of doing justice to the Other, even while striving to make it one's own. For Plato, as for Hegel, eros and science are later and more fundamental lessons in this same art. At all events, the theme of knowledge vs. opinion, a theme inaug\]rated by Thrasymachus's non- or anti-philosophical ambitions, winds its way through the following books of The Republic; recall, for example, that the guardians of the luxurious city, soon to be lowered to the secondary rank of auxiliaries when the philosophers' city is brought into view, are merely imbued with true opinions, the way a cloth is imbued with a lasting dye, and that they are called "philosophical" only in the sense of a kind of canine instinct that makes them friendly to fellow citizens and inimical to strangers. Let me summarize and at the same time point ahead: The distinction between opinions that cannot guarantee their own truth and a knowledge alleged to be incorrigibly "accurate" first comes to hand in Thrasymachus's speech, in the service of pre- or anti-theoretical purposes; it will be left to Socrates to articulate that distinction in a more thoughtful way. However, his articulation will in turn raise the question of the ground or basis of this distinction itself. (3) The third line of argument pushing Socrates and ourselves towards the notion of The Good is what I have called "the argument from desire." �148 WHAT IS "THE GOOD"? I hope to be able to treat this much more briefly, despite its overarching importance to the entire dialogue. Let me start by saying that, unlike the first two lines of argument, the argument from desire is not introduced or adumbrated in the speech of one single interlocutor; instead, it is implicitly present from the start, in the following way. Socrates' initial conversation with Cephalus focuses on the advantages of old age, more particularly, on the advantages enjoyed when one is both old and wealthy. Cephalus's recounting of these advantages, from which the whole debate about justice springs, is at the same time an account of his life as a whole, or, as we might say, of the point of his life. In all that follows, the terms of ethical or moral or psychological appraisal, terms such as "just," "useful," "profitable," ~'advantageous," "desirable," and "good"- are also or even more fundamentally functioning as terms of aspiration. In other words, these terms are being used not neutrally, or as dispassionate, ''third-party," labels for the conduct of others, but as implicit designations for what it is or is believed to be that gives a life and the activities it subsumes some "point" or "meaning." Conflicts over the reference and the relative weight of these and similar terms are as varied and unsurprising as conflicts over what life it is that has true point or meaning. As Aristotle brings home in Book I of the Nicomachean Ethics: Everyone agrees that "happiness" (Euoaq.tovia) is the right name for the life that they want to Jive; they disagree over which life the name "cuoai!lo:>v" fits (EN 15, 1095bl4-17). I want to offer two brief suggestions in connection with this motif: (i) As I have already implied, these terms of appraisal and aspiration characteristically have to do with whole lives, rather than with sporadic, episodic, or atomistically isolated patches of behavior within a life. This emphasis seems to me central to all Greek ethical thought, whether we look to Xenophon's rendition of the tale of Heracles, poised at the crossroads between the Life of Virtue and the Life of Vice, to Aristotle's reminder, immediately upon giving us his programmatic definition of happiness, that we have to add "in a complete or whole life, for one swallow does not make a summer" (EN 16, 1098al8-20), or, more pertinently, to Plato himself, who has Socrates fabricate, at the very end of The Republic, the Myth of Er, in which denizens in Hades, having reviewed the lives they earlier led on earth, choose new lives, in toto, for themselves. (ii) The Socratic argument from desire or aspiration, an argument on implicit display virtually from the start of The Republic, will be concerned to meet the pre-theoretical question: What way of life has point or sense? Whereas Cephalus, at the beginning of the conversation, looks back over I. �LACHTERMAN 149 a life already led and then symbolically absents himself, as though the question, in his eyes, is closed, Glaucon and Adeimantus will press Socrates on this issue with passionate urgency, inasmuch as they have not yet committed themselves utterly to the choices from which the shape of their lives will grow. Their more specific demands in Book II show us that two things will be incumbent on Socrates: He will have to prove (a) that the life that he takes to make good sense truly does not make sense, instead of merely seeming to do so, and (b) that we have some kind of access to the difference between the truly good life and the apparently good life; or, in other words, that we know for sure what differentiates these, rather than having only opinions on the matter. The interconnections between these two propositions that Socrates has to establish, on the one hand, and the argument from desire, on the other, begin to reveal in what fashion the set of arguments leading to the notion of The Good is something more than a random collection. (4) The fourth line of thought or argument leading to The Good in The Republic is not strictly on a par with the first three. It would be much more precise to say that the argument from Wholes and Parts, Unity and Multiplicity, comprehends or unifies the first three. Because this is so, because, that is, this last motif pervades the whole of the dialogue, it would be exceedingly clumsy and unfitting to discuss it in partial ways, while, on the other hand, any attempt to speak of it as a whole would amount to a potentially infinite reiteration of the entire conversation. Let me then pursue a still awkward alternative; let me try to recollect some of the instances of the motif of the One and the Many in order to see whether they rest on common ground. One might say that the dialogue begins on this note- Plato, in the spirit of playful obliqueness that is his signature, has Socrates confront a group of men as he returns from the Piraeus. When, at first, he seems intent on heading back up to the city siraightaway, Polemarchus, one of that group, reminds him: "Don't you see how many we are?" When Socrates suggests that he might persuade them to let him go on his way, Polemarchus replies, "But could you persuade us if we refused to listen" (327b12). In this way the opening scene contains in germ the major political question of The Republic: How can a multiplicity of individuals be persuaded to form a community ·or citizens sharing, in their multiply different ways, a single purpose? We might also consider what comes to sight in Book I prior to any "technical" elaboration suggested later: There are many different desires �150 WHAT IS "THE GOOD''? or aspirations, many different definitions of justice, many different opinions concerning the best life- the phenomenon of manyness provokes the question whether there is any1hing to unite these many desires, definitions, etc., to unite them, not by way of identifying them with one another, at the price of their relevant and intrinsic differences, but rather by way of bringing them together, of so fitting them to one another that each has a character in company with the others that no one of them has on its own. The pursuit of this goal gains both momentum and clarity as we move through the successive books of The Republic. Thus, the second, initially luxurious city, the city led by Glaucon and his ilk, consists of separate groups who must somehow be "molded" into a unity; the soul has its separate and often conflicting parts, which have to be brought into a harmonious whole; the many virtues ought not be left hanging loosely together, as Socrates' sly definition by exhaustion initially suggests, but should rather be integrated in such a way that each plays its distinctive role only in concert with the rest. Socrates makes the first move in this direction by hinting that justice is not so much the fourth of the four virtues, and hence on a par with the other three, as it is the virtue that enables the others to perform their distinctive work. Finally, the many instances and aspects of, say, justice or beauty, have to be understood as so many perspectival views or glimpses of a single Form or look, since otherwise the claim that each is an instance of beauty or of justice would be either unintelligible or capricious and their ensemble would· be random or fitful. These considerations will remain "abstract" or merely formal so long as we fail to see how they are concretely "at work" in Socrates' discursive practices. Socrates is presented to us as one capable in deed of "doing justice" to the partial and thus one-sided opinions, appearances, and desires of his interlocutors, that is, as one who can find the right or fitting place for each part so that all can, in principle, be fitted together precisely with one another. He accommodates disparate theses, not by acknowledging the right of each man to his own partial opinion, but by showing or suggesting how this disparity is to be understood; in other words, Socrates works at making plain how a part is falsely inflated into the semblance of a whole, while, at almost the same time, trying to bring out how the whole has to find room for that same part, once it has been suitably deflated. The city of artisans, which Glaucon, the incarnation of Su~t6~, spiritedness, renames "the city of pigs," is one example of such a policy, since it has room only for bnSu~tiu, appetite, one, and only one, part of �LACHTERMAN 151 the soul. The two cities that succeed it are meant to put tmeullia in its place. Socrates' policy of integration is, however, perhaps shown through his overall response to the definitions of justice offered in Book 1: he "refutes" them, often with transparently sophistic means, only to recuperate them as he proceeds. Thus the warrior-auxiliaries act on Polemarchus's definition of justice as benefiting one's friends-now understood as the citizens of the just city- and protecting these same friends against their common and genuine enemies; Thrasymachus's definition of justice as the other's good, together with his exclusive emphasis on self-interest, are both rectified and given their due in the official definition of justice as doing one's own business so as to secure the unity and "health" of the whole city and the whole soul. Finally, Cephal us's inchoate conception of justice as making restitution of what one owes is restored to its rightful place when Socrates compels the philosopher-king to return to the cave of the city for the sake of paying back the debt he owes it, if not for his true education, then at least for the nurturing opinions from which his true education is an ambivalently fitting liberation." What is Socrates doing in these cases? The unity or whole he is fashioning is an integrative, not an additive whole- a oA.ov, not simply a niiv, to use the language of the Theaetetus, where this crucial Platonic distinction is expressly drawn (204all). Parts are not simply tacked on to parts, in linear fashion, but are being made, to the extent this is possible given the nature of those parts, to dovetail exactly with one another, to fit together "in the precise sense," 0.Kptj3&c;. What is it that makes Socrates' success in integrative discourse possible? This question and its most plausible answers take us into the heart of Plato's thinking and thus within the range of the noetic center around which the arguments of The Republic revolve. (I) First, Plato's name for what makes integrative discourse, rather than additive or eliminative discourse, in each case possible is: the form of something considered on its own-ai'no <O <!>,where<!> ranges over such things as Justice, Virtue, and Beauty." A form is not a univocal and homogenous kind or class, as Aristotle believed it had to be, but a structured assemblage or collection of parts, for which the most reliable icon is a whole number, an integer, as we nowadays say." Plato thinks there are forms because he thinks that the disputes and disparities set in motion when we engage in talk about our most serious concerns and desires both have a point and point us to something stable; in contrast, the modern Nominalist, Hobbes or Locke, for example, regards it as the philosophers' most important task to bring such pointless disputes to a halt. �WHAT IS "THE GOOD"? 152 (2) The Forms, whatever they are, seem to come to light only in the presence of what Socrates calls eros; the quasi-argument for the Forms in Republic, Book V, as interpreters tend to forget, begins with Socrates calling attention to the difference between those who love the whole of something and those who love only its mutually discrepant or episodic parts." In the Symposium, Aristophanes characterizes eros as "the desire and pursuit of the Whole (192e!O). Aristophanes offers a comically anatomical rendition of that claim; the Platonic dialogues, especially The Republic, set out its psychic and discursive versions. (3) The Forms themselves are a multiplicity that needs unity. They, too, must constitute an integrated assembly or community in which each form is what it is only by being distinct from other forms. Just prior to his first mention of The Good, in Book VI, Socrates suggests that justice prevails among the forms; that is, that each can perform its own task oniy by virtue of the harmonious ensemble constituted by all the Forms. The question thereby provoked is: What is responsible for the harmony among the Forms? (4) In Books VI-VII Socrates will be made to give a series of indications, often of the most complicated and elusive character, as to the ways in which something called The Good makes integrative discourse possible by fitting all the Forms and the knowing soul to one another with the greatest exactitude or precision. In doing so, or as a result of doing so, The Good also bears responsibility for the distinctions to which prephilosophical experience bears witness- the distinctions between knowledge and opinion and between being and appearance, which are, in the end, two sides of one and the same distinction. Socrates, by simultaneously studying and encouraging Glaucon to exhibit that most enigmatic and most revealing human activity, learning or mathesis, will try to bring us to see how The Good can both distinguish and unite everything altogether. Thus, in learning about learning the soul will also come to recognize, or so Plato implies, what it is that it really desires. These final declarations obviously need to be worked through much more carefully and in vastly greater detail. In the final section of this paper I can only try to anticipate some probable results of snch an enterprise. III. The four lines of argument and reflection I have been discussing reach their common destination in Socrates' teasingly oblique, if not opaque, remarks concerning The Good or "The Idea of the Good" in Books VI �LACHTERMAN i53 and VII of The Republic." Let me suggest that the key remark is his very first one, that The Good is the flB'Y!Cl~ov wiSnwr (504e5; 505a2)-the greatest topic of learning and study- for the potential guardians of the Just City. This initial description provides the key to what follows, not only because the complicity between The Good and mathesis or learning will turn out to be the heart of the matter, as I shall try to show, but also because it allows us to anticipate, and make sense of, the tenor and limits of Socrates' presentation. Many readers have been baffled or disturbed by Socrates' reticence and playful evasiveness on the topic of The Good, thinking, understandably enough, that at this climactic moment of the dialogue, perhaps of his philosophizing altogether, Plato ought to have had Socrates "deliver the goods." This expectation, however, is at odds with a crucial feature of Socratic (and Platonic) teaching, a feature best known to us from the contrast with the teaching of, say, a Gorgias: While the latter purports to transmit a settled doctrine or technique that it is the business of the disciple to absorb and retain, Socratic teaching is provocative and evocative, its aim being to turn the soul of the student in the direction of what is genuinely learnable, so that he may call his own inward resources of understanding into play." Accordingly, the straightforward presentation of a doctrine or a technically accessible theory of The Good would have been singolarly unsuited to the Socratic conception and practice of teaching. Instead, Plato, with the self-reflexivity characteristic of his writing in general, has Socrates furnish Glaucon, Adeimantus, and us, his silent but thoughtful auditors, with a series of provocative indications thanks to which they (and we) can set about the task of learning what learning requires when it is most concentrated and self-absorbed. In short, by referring to The Good, at the outset, as a ~t<iSn~tn, a matter for learning, Socrates puts us in mind of the one activity through which we can begin to respond fittingly to his subsequent hints and images. With this in mind we can now turn to Socrates' discussion itself. This may be divided into three main segments of unequal length: The first contains Socrates' introductory remarks concerning the necessity of coming to know The Good; the second consists of a sequence of three striking and deeply inviting images offered by Socrates in response to Glaucon's demand for clarification: the images of the Sun, the Divided Line, and the Cave. In the final segment Socrates sets out a program of studies, culminating in dialectic and the apprehension of The Good, which the future guardians will be made to pursue. The second and third segments thus account, respectively, for the possibility and the actualization of the necessity disclosed in the first segment. �154 WHAT IS 'THE GOOD"? After disposing of two superficial, but enduringly plausible, attempts to identify The Good with pleasure or with thoughtfulness and knowledge (506b2-4), Socrates begins to elaborate his initial claim that "if we do not know The Good, even if we should know other things as well as we possibly can, nonetheless this is no benefit to us, just as nothing we might possess is of any benefit to us without The Good" (505a6-bl). His elaboration goes as follows: "Is it not clear that whereas people would choose to do and to possess and to be reputed to have things that merely seem to be just and noble, even though they are not really so, when it comes to good things, no one is satisfied to possess what merely seems to be good; rather people seek what really is good and all disdain the mere semblance?" (505d5-9). Socrates immediately adds that "every soul pursues this and does everything for its sake, having a presentiment or prophetic mantic intuition that some such thing really is, although perplexed and unable to grasp what it is or to achieve the steadfast confidence about it that it has about other things ... " (505dll-e3). I have quoted this passage at 505d-e at length, first, because it puts us on notice that the matrix from which the question of The Good arises is the soul and its desires and satisfactions, and, second, because in it Socrates has already started to weave together the first three strands of argument I distinguished earlier. These two considerations complement one another, as I shall try to show. The contrast Socrates draws between the willingness of many people to be content with the appearance or reputation of justice, etc., and their unwillingness to put up with merely the semblance of good is not, at least not initially, a point about transcendent values, moral ideals, or ultimate sanctions, as many modern commentators assume. Rather, he is making a more pedestrian, if finally more profound, point about the teleology of human desiring: The semblance of satisfaction does not count as genuinely satisfying whatever desire we may happen to have. Consider the case of a man who bends all his efforts, throughout a lifetime, towards the goal of acquiring a genuine Rembrandt portrait. Possessing such a painting is the overriding aim of all his activity, the target of all his aspirations. Suppose, now, that he also knows from the start that the only Rembrandt portrait he will ever acquire will be a "fake," a "forgery"; this knowledge would surely deprive his life of intelligible sense if he continues to subordinate everything else to his desire for a genuine Rembrandt portrait. If my overriding aim in life .is to acquire wealth, I do not want to be paid in Monopoly money, I want the "real thing," "the genuine article." Of course, I can strive to acquire a bogus substitute, but only if I believe that its possession entails some genuine advantage or benefit. I can, for example, earnestly desire �LACHTERMAN 155 to seem to be just, without wanting really to be just, only if I believe that this appearance will be to my real advantage- that it will afford me genuine prestige, status, power, and so forth, where the latter are believed to be true goods. Notice thatin my example of desire, as in Socrates', the twin motifs of semblance vs. genuineness and opinion vs. knowledge are readily audible. This indicates that the more exotic or remote epistemological and ontological aspects of The Good come into view from the perspective of what is more familiar or intelligible to us as beings who not only desire, but" also desire that our desires be truly or really satisfied. The satisfaction of this "second-order" desire can only come with knowledge of what it is for something to be "the real thing," uthe genuine article," and with the knowledge of what things satisfy this condition. The second main segment of Socrates' discussion of The Good is occupied, as I have said, by three grand and seemingly inexhaustible images. I would like to propose the following, very provisional, way of understanding their interconnected roles: (1) The image of the Sun pictures the knowing soul yoked together with the items available to its power of knowing, i.e., the Intelligibles or, more narrowly, the forms." It brings to light the Good as the ground of the possibility of knowledge in the sense of completely realized knowledge. (2) The image of the Divided Line pictures the learning soul as it negotiates its way towards the realization or actualization of that latter state. The Line sets out the different ways the learning soul has of being responsive or open to what comes within its ken; The Good is responsible here for the fundamental continuity uniting these different responses, these pathemata, as Socrates calls them, as well as their correlative "objects." (3) The image of the Cave pictures the embodied or political soul with respect to those conditions of our communal lives that threaten to make learning and hence knowledge impossible, those conditions that close off the highest or noblest ways the soul has of being open to the world. Each image, in its own fashion, offers us a view of a certain whole or totality articulated into its distinct, yet fundamentally continuous, parts. Each image is a lesson in contriving, or, better, assembling duly proportioned wholes. Let me dwell on the first of these, the Image of the Sun, in order to give some initial substance to this suggestion. Three themes are here brought to light: first, the relation or relations between The Good and the intelligibles (508a4-c2); second, the meaning and basis of the description of knowledge and truth as "looking like The Good" (509a3); and finally, �I rey :~ cO WHAT IS "THE GOOD"? 156 ~---------------------------------- the claim that The Good begets or generates the Sun as its own proportionate counterpart or analogue (508bl3). Socrates says that The Good gives to the things intrinsically capable of being known, the intelligibles or noeta, both their capacity for actually being known, and their very beingness and essence, while "The Good itself is not essence, but is beyond essence [ousia], surpassing it in dignity and potency" (509b9-10). This enigmatic, mystifying statement begins to yield some of its sense if we read it in light of the comparison or simile linking The Good and the Sun. Just as the Sun is the source of illumination by virtue of which opaque physical objects can be seen, so The Good "illumines" through the agency of truth, the intelligibles. Now those physical objects, thanks to their material constitution, e.g., their solidity and color, are intrinsically visible, although they cannot be seen "in the dark"- the Sun's light permits their intrinsic visibility to "flourish." Similarly, The Good enables the intrinsic knowability of the Intelligibles or Forms to show itself when in company with the knowing soul. This role of The Good as an enabling source, a source bringing something's capacity to life, has to· be kept in mind if we are to understand how The Good also provides the forms with their being and determinate essence (ousia). If we take it as a settled matter that, for Plato, the Forms are eternally and are, ipso facto, eternally Forms, then The Good's provision of etvnt and oua(n- beingness and essence- cannot mean either that it causes the Forms to come into being, to ''exist,"or that it causes them to be forms, or, finally, that it bears responsibility for each Form's being the Form that it is, except in a very special sense, which I shall attempt to explicate. This notion of enablement or "empowerment" has in fact been on display since Socrates' concluding arguments in Book I." A virtue, there more specifically the virtue of justice, is what allows or enables a thing to perform its characteristic work, its ergon. If the soul lacks justice, so Socrates claims, it cannot execute the work for which it is naturally or intrinsically suited. Its capacities are, so to speak, activated by the presence of virtue. I want to propose that the same relationship can be seen as obtaining among the virtues themselves, as well as among the Forms generally. The Good, in other words, will be the "virtue" of the Forms both singly and collectively, insofar as it enables each and every one of them to do the work for which it is suited by its own inherent nature." In the passage at 500b8-c7 to which I alluded in the previous section, Socrates points out to Adeimantus that the genuine philosopher will contemplate "those things that are set together with one another in an orderly way, in a taxis, so that they neither commit injustice against one another, c ::! ~· ' �LACHTERMAN 157 nor suffer injustice from one another, but all hold together in a decorous way- as a cosmos- in accord with logos." If we also recall the "official" definition of justice in Book IV- justice is each thing's doing what is its own- then some features of my proposal will begin to fall into place: For the Forms to do justice to one another is exactly the same as their forming or fitting into the taxis or cosmos at which Socrates hints in Book VI. Each form does its job or plays its part fully or supremely well only in concert with all the other Forms; the self-sameness of each Form stands out only against the backdrop of its community with Forms from which if differs, just as each virtue, each part of the soul, each group of citizens within the city, works well at what it does only in concert with the other virtues, parts, and groups. Indeed, the cosmos, the decorous array, of the Forms, is the model and foundation on which those other harmonies and constitutions rest. My proposal, then, is that The Good is not one among the Forms, nor is it a super-form in which all the others participate in order to gain their status as forms." Rather, it is the source that enables the Forms to fit with one another in the way that best suits each and all of them. The Good, I would want to say, gives the intelligible domain its intactness, its integrity; it enables the ensemble of Forms to be well-formed. This proposal might also throw light on Socrates' statement that truth and knowledge are ayu6ost8fi, have the same look as The Good, without being identical with The Good. Thuth, nA.l\Betn, is just that display of the domain of Forms in its integrated wholeness, for which light or day-light is the natural simile. Bright daylight allows us both to single out illuminated objects and to see them in their togetherness with one another." Knowledge, or its locus, the knowing soul, when most actively at work, is similarly the display of its "objects" in their emphatic singleness as well as in their integration.,. Because both truth and the soul put on a display of the same sort, they are potentially well-matched with one another; The Good, as it were, arranges and sustains their match, it causes them to dovetail with one another. I come to the last of the three themes I want to emphasize in connection with the Image of the Sun, namely, the role of. The Good as the father or generative source of the Sun, and, therewith, or derivatively, of the sensible world as a whole. (It is only in the Timaeus, that exotic sequel to a conversation strangely like The Republic, that Plato gives detailed clues to how this cosmogenetic function might be understood.) In the present context, what is of decisive importance is that this generative role links together being and becoming, intelligibility and genesis, in such a way that their relationship can be determinately understood. Earlier, towards the �158 WHAT IS "THE GOOD"? end of Book V, Socrates was even bolder: "The forms, although each is in its own right one, by reason of their community with actions, with bodies, and with one another, show up everywhere in such a way that each appears to be many or manifold" (476a4-7). This passage, when taken in concert with the claim that The Good begets the Sun, seems to suggest that sensible particulars are somehow the manifestations of the forms, that is, that the Forms are in some way responsible for their own incomplete, partial, and, thus, confused and confusing images. The same three themes I have mentioned- The Good as the source of the integration of the Forms, the match between truth and the knowing soul, and the status of the sensible realm as an image of the intelligible realm- are at work in the second image to which Socrates turns in an effort to enlighten Glaucon, the image of a mathematical line divided twice according to identical ratios such that the resultant "parts" correspond both to four ways the soul can respond to the world and to the four domains · to which these responses are addressed. If the Image of the Sun affords us a vision of what it is like to be fully in the know, the Divided Line pictures the soul in the course of coming to know, that is, in the course of learning. Let me simply point out three considerations that would need to be studied and discussed in a fuller account: (I) As important as the divisions of the Line may be, perhaps more important than these is the unity or continuity of the Line. The cuts Glaucon makes leave no real gaps between the segments. This makes it possible to pass "smoothly" up and down the line." (2) What guarantees this passage is not just the bare unity of the line, the fact that it is one single line, but, even more crucially, the inner articulation of the line according to the pervasive relation between images and their originals: What is initially confronted at a "lower" level, as though it stood on its own, is seen from the next highest level as a partial image of a more adequate and more precise original. To negotiate the divisions of the Line is to become practiced in this motion from image and original and back. (3) Finally, Socrates and Glaucon do not merely discuss the Divided Line; their activities over the course of this discussion exemplify the very divisions and motions on which their words are focused. Glaucon forms or entertains an image and then proceeds to train upon it that capacity called dianoia that does its main business with numbers, ratios, and proportions. Furthermore, his relative ease in discharging Socrates' instructions bears witness to his confidence, his pistis, that nothing will block his access to the higher divisions of the Line. Finally, as Plato seems to · �LACHTERMAN 159 indicate by making the first word of Socrates' instruction the imperative N6T]oov-"grasp by Nous," the final and highest capacity-Glaucon from the first has to take hold of the line in its unity and wholeness, no matter how precariously, if he is to make sense of the analytical, divisive, actions he goes on to perform. Mathesis or learning thus involves the union or interanimation of all four divisions of the Line, that is, of all four modes of the soul's responsiveness. I should have liked to go on to fill out the design I sketched earlier-to comment on the third image, that of the Cave, showing how the puppeteers within the Cave, the non-philosophical "opinion-makers," past and present, within the city captivate their prisoners by dissembling images that bear no illuminating relation to their originals. Afterwards, I would have wanted to move on to the third and final segment of Socrates' treatment of The Good- the program of mathematical studies followed by training in dialectic, set out in Book VII. My emphasis would have fallen where I think Socrates' emphasis does, namely, on the kinship and community among these studies. The dialectician is, he says, the synoptikos, the one who can see things in their togetherness. Guided by this indication, I would have tried to show that coming to know The Good is not a matter of learning something new over and above the antecedent studies; instead, knowledge of The Good consists in coming to see how those studies are akin to one another, that is, how their order and array constitutes a complete whole. 26 Accordingly, The Good founds by gathering five versions of community (Kmvrovio.) in TheRepublic; it seems fitting to name them in descending order of comprehensiveness: (I) the community of the forms (their ~6.!;1<;, from which injustice is excluded); (2) the community of the sciences mastered by the intending philosopher; (3) the community of the soul's powers or "parts"; (4) the community of citizens in the three political cities; (5) the community of the participants in that very conversation Socrates recollects as a whole the day after it took place- the community, in other words, of which Plato's text, The Republic, is the written image." Although last in this series, the fifth community is the only one we are in a position to witness as it comes into being, as, for instance, Socrates eniists the friendship of the hitherto inimical Thrasymachus (498c8-di). Witnessing, listening to the play of speeches in this fifth community is not a passive affair; their play stands a chance of generating, but not of guaranteeing, a "collectedness" in the auditor's soul. We might be tempted to say that this is the good of The Republic. In lieu of these elaborations, let me bring my remarks to something like a close. Socrates' three images, together with the guardians' program �160 WHAT IS "THE GOOD"? of mathematical study, far from digressing from the central "moral" question-"How should we lead our lives?"-bring us face to face with at least an outline or adumbration of an answer. Indeed, in his final comment on The Good, Socrates spells this out quite succinctly: At the age of fifty when the guardians' education is complete, they should use The Good as a paradigm from which to order-Plato's word is Kocr].LELV, to make into a cosmos, a "decorous array"- "both the city and its citizens and themselves. This means that The Good, as the ground of the integrative ordering of the Forms, serves as the model for political and psychological integration. Knowledge of the good is what would allow us to lead, or to aspire to lead, "wholesome lives, lives in which each part- for example, each desire- is given its due precisely by being fitted together with all other relevant parts. What The Republic offers us, then, is not a recipe or mechanically applicable formula, but a format in terms of which we can understand what it would mean to lead such a life. Plato's "metaphysics" is, we might say, an ontology of sanity, a metaphysics of wholesomeness. I hasten to add that Plato is not blithely optimistic over the collective or the individual prospects of sanity, unlike many later critics who chided him for lacking "realism." Nor, on the other hand, is he dolefully pessimistic. As the dialogues and the career of Socrates both seem to show, the human condition is poised unsteadily on the shifting margin between comedy and tragedy. The basis for hope may reside in philosophy, which, by mediating between the comic and the tragic, proves itself to be, in the words of the Phaedo, "the best and noblest kind of music." It would be of some interest to compare Platonic "optimism" in its setting with its modern counterpart, the liberal if not wholly liberating belief in interminable progress, which begins with the satyr-play or opera buffa known to us as the Enlightenment. I have, so I recognize, been immeasurably inexact in the remarks I have made in this paper. Partial consolation comes to me from the recollection of a deliciously and enlighteningly ironic passage close to the beginning of Book V of The Republic: Socrates is apparently eager to push on to the issue of the types of unjust regimes; his audience is more forcefully bent on hearing him explain his proposals, made in passing, concerning the guardians' sharing of women and children. Socrates protests, fearful of the "hornets' nest" the issue will stir up. Then ThrasymachusThrasymachus, whose impatient, precipitate eruption into the conversation in Book I determined its subsequent course, Thrasymachus, who had demanded from the penniless Socrates a monetary payment should he fail to define justice- now says: "Do you think those of us who are here came to prospect for gold rather than to listen to discussions, to /ogoi?" "The latter," says Socrates, "at least in some measure." "No," Glaucon protests,' �LACHTERMAN 161 "for those who have reason the whole of life is the measure of such discussions" (449b3-7). Let me be, if only for a moment, what Hegel says a philosopher should never be- edifying: It seems to me fitting that we keep this scale of measurement in mind. NillES 1. The fragment of Amphis's Amphicrates is printed in T. Kock, Comicorum Atticorum Fragmenta (Leipzig, 1880-88), Vol. II, 237. Other burlesques of Plato's philosophizing are quoted and glossed in Ingemar Diiring, Herodicus the Cratetean. A Study in Anti-Platonic Tradition (Stockholm, 1941), pp. 138-43. The two best general treatments of Plato and other philosophers as targets of vaudevillian satire remain R. Helm, Lukian und Menipp (Berlin, 1906: Anhang V: "Die Philosophen in der Komodie') and R. Fenk, Adversarii Platonis quomodo de indole ac moribus eius iudicaverunt (Jena, 1913). One should, however, recall that Plato is fully capable of giving tit for tat, as The Symposium demonstrates. 2. Beyond Good and Evi4 "Preface." Needless to say, this is not Nietzsche's first or his last word about Plato. For two examples, see Nietzsche's early (1864) sketch, "Uber das Verhiiltniss der Rede des Alcibiades zu den iibrigen Reden des platonischen Symposions," HistorischKritisch Gesamtausgabe, Werke (Munich, 1934, Bd.2, pp. 420-44), and the transcript of his lecture-course "Einfiihrung in das Studium der Platonischen Dialoge," Musarion-Ausgabe, Bd. IV (Munich, 1921), pp. 367-443. According to Nietzsche, the essentially poetic Plato was seduced by the legerdemain of Socratic "dialectic." 3. Paul Shorey, "The Idea of the Good in Plato's Republic," University of Chicago, Studies in Classical Philology I (1895), pp. 187-239. This "moral" or "axiological" characterization is frequently repeated by modern interpreters; see, for example, Emile de Strycker, "L'Idee du Bien dans Ia Repub/ique de Platon," EAntiquite Classique 39 (1970), pp. 450-67, where The Good is called "le valeur supreme," "the supreme value." But the very notion of "value" is a distinctively modern contrivance; see the illuminating study by Jean Beaufret, "Heidegger et Nietzsche: Le concept de valeur," in J. B., Dialogue avec Heidegger, T. II (Paris, 1973), pp. 182-200. Attention might also be called to the distinction drawn by the French "Physiocrats" between "biens" (goods) and "valeurs" (values). The former are inalienable, immobile; the !at- �f . ·~ ~,'lj 162 4. 5. 6. 7. 8. 9. 10. WHAT IS "THE GOOD"? ter can be exchanged with and for one another. (Cf. Michel Foucault, Les Mots et les chases [Paris, 1966], pp. 202-09.) The modern theory of values is, or so it seems, a surplus product of modern political economy, projected backwards onto Plato. Artistotle, Eudemian Ethics !8, 1217b25. John Findlay, "The Neoplatonism of Plato," in The Significance of Neop/atonism, ed. R. Baines Harris (Norfolk, Va., 1976), pp. 23-44 at p. 30. For the Neoplatonic identification of The Good with The One, see the useful study of Carlos Steel, "L'Un et le Bien. Les raisons d'une identification dans Ia tradition Platonicienne," Revue des Sciences philosophiques et thlfologiques 73 (1989), pp. 69-85. Plotinus remarks, however, that The One is unep<iyn6oc;, "beyond the Good," Enneads VI.9.6, 42. Anonymous Prolegomena to Platonic Philosophy, ed. L. G. Westerink (Amsterdam, 1962), pp. 28-35. See, on the topos of a text as a Cosmos, James A. Coulter, The Literary Microcosm. Theories of Interpretation of the Later Neoplatonists (Leiden, 1976). (Platonic "miming" should be matched with the cosmopoiesis of the Demiurge.) Whether all of the Platonic dialogues also constitute a cosmos is considered by Diskin Clay, "Gaps in the 'Universe' of the Platonic Dialogues," Proceedings of the Boston Area Colloquium in Ancient Philosophy, III (Lanham, Md., 1988), pp. 131-57. For an ancient, fragmentary, discussion of Plato's dramatization of Socratic conversation, see Michael W. Haslam, "Plato, Sophron, and the Dramatic Dialogue," Bulletin of the Institute of Classical Studies [London], 19 (1972), pp. 17-38, and his edition of the Oxyrhyncus Papyrus 3219 (see Preface, supra., p. i-ii) in Volume XLV of The Oxyrhyncus Papyri (London, 1977), pp. 29-39. Cicero, Thsculan Disputations V, iv. On the motif see J. Kerschensteiner, "Socrates philosophiam devocavit a caelo," in: Festschrift fiir Franz Egermann zu seinem 80. Geburtstag ... , ed. W. Suerbaum and F. Maier (Munich, 1985), pp. 41-56. .1.6~a also means "repute" or "reputation." Reputation is, as it were, the link between appearance and opinion. On the pre-Platonic, especially poetic, usage and force of M~n see the difficult but rather splendid book by Raymond Prier, Thauma Idesthai, The Phenomenology of Sight and Appearance in Archaic Greek (Thllahassee, Fla., 1989), esp. pp. 36-41. Cf. Eva Brann, "Plato's Theory of Ideas," The St. John's Review 32 (July, 1980), pp. 29-37. See I. Kant, Grundlegung der Metaphysik der Sitten, Akademie- �LACHTERMAN II. 12. 13. 14. 163 Ausgabe, Bd. VI, p. 222. (Cf. Erste Einleitung in die Kritik der Urteilskraft, ibid., Bd. XX, p. 200 [note], wheFe Kant emends the "problematic imperatives" of the Metaphysik der Sitten into "technical imperatives, or "Imperative der Kunst.") David Roochnik's article, "Socrates' Use of the Techne-Analogy," Journal of the History of Philosophy 24 (1986), pp. 295-310, is a valuable rebuttal of the conventional complaints against the association of tBXVll and apetl]. See also Reinhart Maurer, "Der Zusammenhang von Technik und Gerechtigkeit und seine metaphysische Grundlegung in Platons Po/iteia," Philosophisches Jahrbuch 82 (1975), pp. 259-84. A good synoptic study of the semantic interplay between bncrtl\f!ll and tEXVll is Rene Schaerer's book, 'Emcrtl\f!ll et tBXVll· Etudes sur /es notions de connaissance et de l'art d'Homere ii Platon (Ma10on, 1930). On the relation between <'<Kp((\eta and the handicrafts, see D. Kurz, AKPIBEIA. Das Ideal der Exaktheit bei den Griechen bis Aristoteles (Giippingen, 1970). Fundamental is J. Klein's "On Precision," in J. K., Lectures and Essays, ed. E. Zuckerman and R. Williamson (Annapolis, 1985), pp. 289-316. Two issues emerge from this conjuncture. First, is rule of the city in any way the fulfillment of the philosopher's education or nature? AI Farabi, in The Attainment of Happiness, appears to have given the most systematically affirmative answer to this question (see AI Farabi's Philosophy of Plato and Aristotle, trans. M. Mahdi [Glencoe, Ill., 1962], esp. sec. 34, and AI Farabi on the Perfect State. Abfi-Nasr aiFiiriibi's Mabiidi' Arii' Ahl al-Madlna a/-Fiiflila, ed. R. Walzer [Oxford, 1985], pp. 238-50). A more recent case for an affirmative answer may be found in Joseph Beatty, "Plato's Happy Philosopher and Politics," Review of Politics 38 (1976), pp. 545-75. Second, what is the connection, if any, between the philosopher's education to what truly is and his artful lying to his non-philosophical fellow citizens? In addition to the discussion of the "noble lie" in Rep. III, 414b8-c2 the key Platonic text is the Hippias Minor, where Odysseus's prowess in deceitful confabulation appears to excel over Achilles' suppositions plain-spokenness. It should be noted that artful lying is, in most instances of early Greek poetry, an enviable virtue of the gods and the Muses. (See, e.g., Hesiod, Theogony 27-28.) The topic of divine and poetic deceitfulness has been illuminatingly explored by Walther Luther, "Wahrheit" und "Luge" im iiltesten Griechentum (Leipzig, 1935) and by Marcel Detienne, Les maftres de verite dans Ia grece archai'que (Paris, 1973). Essential to an understanding of this recurrent Platonic idiom are the �164 WHAT IS "THE GOOD"? studies of Eduard des Places, "ATTO:E et '0 ATTOE chez Platon," iu E.d.P., Etudes Platoniciennes, 1929-1979 (Leiden, 1981), pp. 56-59, and Richard Jauko, "ATTO:E EKEINO:E: A Neglected Idiom," Classical Quarterly 35 (1985), pp. 20-30. !5. That apt8J,t6c; as "positive integer" is an apt entree into the understanding of the cfOI] might be inferred from the fact that it belongs to a family of words from the same root apt-, probably including liptcr1oc;, apc11j, apJ.tovia, and iip8pov, all of which point towards a fitting-together, a suitably collected assemblage or jointure. (Cf. Pierre Chantraine, Dictionnaire etymologique de Ia langue grecque [Paris, 1968], T. I, pp. 101-09.) A Greek number, as understood by Plato and his mathematical predecessors, is an assemblage, not an aggregate. It is, however, quite a different question whether numerical assemblages are themselves eidetic assemblages, as Aristotle reports some "Platonists" as having believed (see, e.g., Eudemian Ethics, I8, 1218al5-32; apart from the "classical" discussion in Jacob Klein, Greek Mathematical Thought and the Origin of Algebra [Cambridge, Mass., 1968], pp. 79-99, one should consult Samuel Scolnicov, "On the Epistemological Significance of Plato's Theory of Ideal Numbers," Museum Helveticum 28 [1971], pp. 72-97, and Vittorio Hosie, "On Plato's Philosophy of Numbers and Its Mathematical and Philosophical Significance," Graduate Faculty Philosophy Journa/!3 [1988], pp. 21-63). One cardinal difficulty facing any such identification of apt8J,toi with clO'l may be stated, in Aristotelian terms, as follows: If each single clone; (e.g., "Justice") is itself an assemblage of "units" taking their character uniquely from their conjunction in that c!ooc;, what sense can we make of the participation of that c!ooc; in some more comprehensive dOoc; (e.g., "virtue")? Do the "units" of the former somehow become assimilable to, or comparable with, the units of other clOT] conjoined in the latter? Questions of this kind seem to be at the root of Aristotle's reflections on the so-called aot)J.tJ3A!]1ot apt8J,toi (see Metaph. M6-8, 1080all-1083b23). At all events, there is nothing in The Republic (or, I think, elsewhere) to suggest that the lived-domain of the polis, its citizens, and their virtues could be straightforwardly "derived" from combinations of "eidetic" numbers or from mathematical numbers at all. When the text does seem to make such suggestions, as in the case of the notorious "nuptial number" in Book VIII, the playfulness is almost transparent. (Cf. Konrad Gaiser, "Die Rede der Musen iiber den Grund von Ordnung und Unordnung: Platon, Politeia VIII, 545D-547A," in Studia Platonica. Festschrift fiir Hermann Gunder! [Amsterdam, 1974], pp. L--·---- '. �LACHTERMAN 165 49-85, and Jean-Fran9ois Mattei, "La genealogie du nombre nuptial chez Platon," Etudes philosophiques 1982, pp. 281-303.) A similar playfulness is in evidence in the arithmetical city-planning of Atlantis in the Critias. The distinction drawn between two varieties of measurement in The Statesman (283c3-287b2), one attuned to "number, lengths, breadths and speeds vis-a-vis their contraries," the other attuned to "the mean, the fitting, the opportune and the needful (~o oeov)," seems to give the lie to attempts to extract political and ethical lessons from the relations among numbers or geometrical magnitudes. One must, so to speak, await the seventeenth century before Plato's captious play is taken in all seriousness, as it is in, e.g., William Petty's Political Arithmetic (London, 1682) or in Erhard Weigel's Philosophia Mathematica [sen] Theologia Natura/is So/ida (Jena, 1693); Weigel was one of Leibniz's influential early teachers. Nor is its surprising that when npt9!!oi are "reinterpreted" as aggregates (as in modern settheory) instead of assemblages, the calculative art of 1>.oywnK1\ replaces the theoretical science of npt9!!1l~tK1\ (cf. Howard Stein, "Logos, Logic, and Logistike: Some Philosophical Remarks. on Nineteenth-Century 'Itansformation of Mathematics," in History and Philosophy of Modern Mathematics, ed. W. Aspray and P. Kitcher [Minneapolis, 1988], pp. 238-59). 16. Salient here is Socrates' earlier exhortation that Glaucon not allow any "illiberality (nve1>.w9epin) to escape his notice," for "pettiness of speech (cr!!tKpo1to1>.oy(n) is most contrary to a soul always yearning for the whole and the sum of the divine and the human" (VI, 486a5 ff.). Socratic philosophizing presupposes attentiveness to the whole, just as Aristophanic eros is "the desire and pursuit of the whole" (Symp. 192bl0-193al). This presupposition is given forceful expression in the Seventh Letter, where Plato claims that "in learning these [sc. excellence and ignobility] one must at the same time learn the falseness and the truth of what-is in its entirety (~ii~ o1>.11~ oucrin~ 344b2)." To anticipate: The Good is what beneficially preserves what-is in its integrity (see X, 608e and the Ps.-Platonic Definitions 414e9: 'Ayneov ~o ni·nov cronllpin~ ~oi~ oucrtv, "Good is the cause responsible for preservation to the beings''). Socrates is made to take up the same theme, in mythical garb, when he speaks of the misguided search for a new Atlas in the Phaedo: "The Good and the binding (lltov) bind and hold together" (Phaedo 99c6). Whether or not the soul's desire for the Whole is a reliable index of the being of the Whole is not readily decided. What Plato does indicate is the difference between Sophistic unthinking or mimetic "pro- �166 WHAT IS "THE GOOD"? ductions" of the Whole and Socratic evocations of the Whole (see Rep. X, 596c2, 598b7, 598d3-4). 17. The lexical variations among aim'> To U.yn86v (e.g., 507a3; 534c4), T<iyn86v (506el, 508bl3, 518dl, 52la6), and 1\ TOU uyuSoG iota (505a2, 517cl, 526el, 534cl) occasion both uncertainty and speculation. Morphologically interpreted, the last phrase would mean "the vision of The Good," while TO ToG U.ynSoG d&o~. which never occurs in The Republic (pace Proc/us, In Rem Publicam, ed. Kroll, 269, 22 f.: oro e!&o~ -rii>v U.yn8iilv n<ivTrov) would mean "the visage of The Good." (The Dutch treatise by P. Brommer, Eidos et Idea [Utrecht, 1940], is the best source of "information" on this matter; see, as well, C. M. Gillespie, "The Use of e!&o~ and !&En in Hippocrates," Classical Quarterly 1912, pp. 179-203.) Dramatic context does not appear immediately to discriminate among the three locutions, since, at VII, 534 cl-4, both TTJV TOG uyn8oG i&tnv and nino TO U.yn86v are uttered. And yet, the appeal to sight is most marked in those passages in which The Good is to be captured in a vision. (Compare, too, 532c6: npo~ TTJV TOU O.ptaTOU EV TOt~ QUO\ etnv.) One is tempted to hear in these appeals an accommodation to Glaucon's fondness for statues and sculptures (compare II, 36ld5 [Socrates] with VII, 540c4 [Glaucon] and note that at IV, 420c5 Socrates mentions how unfitting it would be to paint the most beautiful part of a statue, the eyes, most beautifully, at the expense of the whole). The visual/visionary images of The Good may, then, be perspectivally adjusted to Glaucon's predilections. In any case, it is crucial to recall that Socrates' interlocutors, and we, are listening to his opinion of The Good; sound predominates in Socrates' staging of his son et lumiere. So, no express mention of The Good or of its look is made in the discussion of the Line, where Glaucon's soul is concentrated on the possibility of mobile and comprehensive learning thanks to ;1.6ym. Compare, too, Aristotle, De sensu I, 437a'ff., especially KUTU OUI!~e~!]KO~ 1\t npo~ <pp6VT]OIV fJ UKOTJ n;\.eiomv OU!!~Ii;\.A,e-rat I'ZPO~ = "Concomitantly hearing contributes the largest share to thoughtfulness." Hans-Georg Gadamer has made a valuable attempt to solve the enigma of Rep. VII, 534b8 (OuKoGv Kat nepl -roG uyn8oG roonu-rro~). where the Good seems to be on a par with all other etl\11 (see Die Idee des Outen zwischen Platon und Aristoteles [Heidelberg, 1978], pp. 53-63). Stanley Rosen, in his book Nihilism: A Philosophical Essay (New Haven, 1969), pp. 171-72, offers an enticing interpretation of the different nuances of -r&.yn86v and Ji -raG 6.yu8oii iota. Whatever further speculations this alternating terminology requires �LACHTERMAN 167 or warrants, we should take pleasure in the following etymological certainties or likelihoods: The English word "good" is from the IndoEuropean root *ghedh, the source as well of English "together" and "gather" (see Julius Pokorny, Indogermanisches Etymo/ogisches Worterbuch [Bern/Munich, 1959], I, pp. 423-24). Is there any discernible link between *ghedh and Greek &.ya96<;? While the matter is inevitably conjectural, Maurizio Harari, "Nuova proposta di etimologia per &.ya96<;, "Athenaeum, n.s. 57 (1979), pp. 150-53, suggests that the Greek is compounded from the prefix &.ya- (as in 'AyaJ.lBJ.lVOlV) and the theme *ghedh. This conjecture lies behind my allusion in the Preface, p. v, to the Good as the omnium gatherum. Plato, in his turn, has Socrates playfully derive aya96v from &.yacr~6v, "admirable," in the Cratylus (412c4). 18. For the general theme of dialogic provocations in The Republic and elsewhere, see Mitchell Miller, "Platonic Provocations: Reflections on the Son! and the Good in· the Republic," in Platonic Investigations, ed. D. O'Meara (Wash., D.C., 1985), pp. 163-93. Miller associates the provocations enacted in the dialogue with the generosity of The Good. This, essentially Neo-Platonic, motif finds ambiguous support in the Timaeus, where the Demiurge is said to be <p96vou ... EK~6<;, "without envy or jealousy" (Tim. 29e). Otherwise, the notion of the generosity, of self-diffusiveness of The Good, belongs squarely to the later NeoPlatonists' strategic reworking of Plato in a direction that might fairly be called quasi-Christian or "creationist"; see, e.g., Proclus, In Platonis Timaeum Commentarii, ed. E. Diehl (Leipzig, 1903-06), I, p. 359: ~6 J.1Bytcr~6v 6cr~tv ou ~6 &.yaBoctM<;, &.A.A.iJ. 'lJ &.ya9oupy6v. (Cf. the insightful article by Jean Trouillard, "Les Degres du 7totciv chez Proclus," Dionysius 1 [1977], pp. 69-84.) 19. The relations between the dianoetic, principally mathemathical intelligibles and the noetic or eidetic intelligibles requires a more exacting treatment, particularly in light of Aristotle's exposition of the socalled "intermediates" (Metaph. N3). For recent commentary, see Julia Annas, "On the Intermediates," Archiv fiir Geschichte der Philosophie 57 (1975), pp. 146-66, and Richard Mohr, "The Number Theory in Plato's Republic VII and Philebus," Isis 72 (1981), pp. 620-27. 20. For a comprehensive inspection of the uses of MVUJ.ll<; in Plato, see J. Souilhe, Etude sur le terme "dunamis" dans les Dialogues de Pia ton (Paris, 1919). It is noteworthy that, from the start of the discussion of The Good until the end of Book VII, "MvaJ.tt<; and its relevant verbal cognates occur twenty-six times. Platonic ouvUJ.lt<; must be distinguished from Aristotelian MVaJ.lt<; understood as potentiality. �168 WHAT IS "THE GOOD"? While Aristotelian Mvu~t' points towards the being-at-work of what it itself is not yet, Platonic Mvu~t,, at least in The Republic, signifies an empowering of what counts as its own likeness. In Book I, the empowered epyov is a likeness of the empowering UPE'lj; so, too, in Book VI, knowing (yviiicn') and truth are look-alikes of The Good, which enables them to be what The Good is already. 21. From responses to earlier versions of this lecture-text, and in the course of revision, I have been reminded of certain affinities between my account of The Good and Heidegger's. These, however, do pertain not to his portrait of Plato as the grand villain of the history of metaphysics and not to Plato's alleged diminution of ii.A.Jj8Etu to op86'1]', but, rather, to suggestions and allusions too often dampened by Heidegger's more vocal pronouncements. These affinities are most audible in Heidegger's lectures, now in the course of publication in the Gesamtausgabe, although they may also be heard in his essay "Piatons Lehre vom Wahrheit" (1930/1; published 1942). To be as brief as possible: For Heidegger The Good is "what makes every idea [Idee] fit and suitable [taug/ich] for being an idea" (Wegmarken [Frankfurt a.M., 1967], p. 133). This account of The Good as "das Thuglichmachende schlecthin" ("what fits and enables plainly and simply,"ibid., p. 134) is amplified in his lectures on the Theaetetus (=GA, Bd. 34), where, in analyzing the simile of the cave, Heidegger writes "The highest idea is therefore this power of enpowerment [dieses Ermiichtigende], the empowerment [die Ermiichtigung] for Being, namely, that Being is as such [dass es sich a/s so/ches gibt] and, together therewith, the empowerment of unconcea/edness, namely, that it eventfully occurs as such [dass sie a/s so/che geschieht]" (op. cit., p. 99). The power granted by The Good is, according to Heidegger, the power of phenomenality, of apparition: "This [sc. the Idea of the Good] gives a shine to everything shining and is therefore itself what genuinely shines/appears, what most shines in its shining/appearing" ("Dieses bringt jedes Scheinsame.zum Scheinen und ist daher selbst das eigentlich Erscheinende, das in seinem Scheinen Scheinsamste," Wegmarken, p. 134). This emphasis on the power of apparition brings into its wake two inseparable issues: (I) Is the apparition (of the other dol]) inevitably visible? (2) Does this power of apparition itself make a visible appearance? Heidegger, who wants to accentuate the visual character of the Platonic Et.So,, is accordingly reluctant to take stock of the auditory register in which the EtOI] make their appearance, both as dol] and as their phenomena. The passage in Book V, to which I have already called attention (p. 160), attributes to the "community of [the forms] �LACHTERMAN 169 with activities and bodies and with one another" their making multiple spectacles of themselves (476a4-7). That these spectacles are principally designated in visual terms is, I think, due to the context, viz., Glaucon's comparison of the cptA.6oo<pot to the qnA.oeearwvec; (''the lovers of spectacles," 475d2); yet Glaucon also aligns the latter with the cptA.l\Kom ("the lovers of sounds," ibid.). The Good, the visual accents notwithstanding, bears a marked kinship to the Heraclitean logos as construed by Heidegger: it makes for the collectedness of the etoTJ, it founds their fantastic community and with it, their singular and plural ability to "show off" both in their distorted look-alikes and in their muffled vocal impersonations.(cf. Heidegger, Nietzsche I [Pfullingen, 1961], pp. 541-42). (2) But, does the Good-Itself "show off," make·a spectacle of itself? Heidegger rightly sets at the focal point Socrates' characterization of The Good as <Oil 6v<oc; 10 cpuv6<uwv (Rep. VII, 518c9; see Wegmarken, p. 134). Heidegger construes the genitive as "partitive," i.e., the most apparent/phenomenal among the beings; the Greek permits, if it does not compel, another, freer, reading of the genitive, to denote "what-is at -its most phenomenal." The parallel usage of n]v <Oil cpuvot<itou [Stuv] in the summary of the sun-image (532c5-6) does lend support to Heidegger's construction; however, it must be noted that Socrates' remark at 518c9 is embedded in a theatrical, spectacular metaphor, matching the 1lEptuyro')'1\ of the soul with the shifting of angular prisms at the wings of the stage (see Shorey's translation ad foe.). Again we hear an accommodation to Glaucon's love of spectacles. More substantially, The Good, as the gathering of the etOTJ and their phenomena, is not itself something to be seen, but what is implicitly acknowledged in all learning (see Note 17). On Heidegger's failure, or reluctance, to take the measure of Plato's textuality, see the brilliant study by Phillippe Lacoue-Labarthe, "fypographie," in Mimesis des articulations (Paris, 1975), pp. 167-270. For Heidegger's reckoning with The Good, see Alain Boutot, Heidegger et P/aton. Le probleme du nihi/isme (Paris, 1987). 22. The most plausible analytical argument that The Good is the form of forms, i.e., that participation in it secures to each and every form certain formal features, is set out in Gerasimos Santas, "The Form of The Good in Plato's Republic," in Essays in Ancient Greek Philosophy, ed. A. Preus & J. Anton (Albany, 1983), pp. 232-63. It might be observed, however, that nowhere in The Republic is the canonical idiom of participation, f1E<EJ(EW, used. �170 WHAT IS "THE GOOD"? 23. On the "moon" and the "night-lights," which appear to occlude the radiations of the sun, see Seth Benardete, Socrates' Second Sailing. On Plato's Republic (Chicago, 1989), pp. '160-61. Mention should also be made here of the designation of the radiant Good as Knl./.iov ("more beautiful") than both knowing and truth (508e6); Glaucon replies that this makes of The Good 'AMr1xuvov K<iAAO~ ("an unmanageable beauty," 509a6). What is the connection between The Good and The Beautiful? In the Philebus Socrates speaks of the power of The Good "taking refuge in the nature of The Beautijuf' (64e4-5). How is this flight or seeking of refuge to be construed? Is ~o KUAOV the most phenomenal spectacle of ~uyu96v, the spectacle most appealing to the human soul? (Cf. note 21 supra and the discussion in Kyriakos S. Katsimanis, Etude sur le rapport entre le beau et le bien chez Platon [Lille, 1977], esp. pp. 89-106.) 24. I put scare-quotes around "objects," since, strictly speaking, there are no objects for Greek thinkers. "Objects" presuppose·"subjects" and there are no "subjects," as subjects of knowing or of consciousness, for Greek thinkers. This familiar, Heideggerian point is given philological precision in Lawrence Dewan, '"Objectum.' Notes on the Invention of a Word," Archives d'histoire doctrinale et litteraire du moyen age 48 (1981), pp. 37-96. 25. The integrity of the Line, prior to and together with its proportionate segmentation, is rightly emphasized by David Luban, "The Form of tbe Good in the Republic," Journal of Value Inquiry 12 (1978), pp. 161-68, esp. p. 162: "The Good is the logos, the underlying pattern of the Line.'' On the discursive, geometrical articulations of the Line, see, in addition to Jacob Klein's discussion in Commentary on Plato's Meno (Chapel Hill, 1965), pp. 112-25, the studies by Gregory Desjardins, "How to Divide the Divided Line," Review of Metaphysics 29 (1976), pp. 483-96 and Yvon Lafrance, "Platon et !a geometrie: La construction de !a ligne en Republique, 509d-5lle," Dialogue 16 (1977), pp. 425-50. The incongruities and inconcinnities that appear to issue from this articulation. are signaled by Seth Benardete, op. cit., pp. 165-70. 26. The community or kinship of the (mathematical) sciences is the theme taken up in the (possibly spurious) Epinomis, designed as a sequel to The Laws, especially under the rubric of the cl~ ... liecr!l6~ (99le5) .. The author of the Epinomis seems to point to the grand aporia of dimensional progression at the heart of the Theaetetus, the progression, that is, from the linear to the planar to the solid, mobilized and �LACHTERMAN made possible by the power (ouvnJlt~) of proportionality (uvuA.o'Yiu). On the questions raised by this and cognate passages in the Epinomis see Leonardo Taran, Academica: Plato, Philip of Opus, and the Pseudo-Platonic Epinomis (Philadelphia, 1975 =Memoirs of the American Philosophical Society, Vol. 107). 27. On Socrates' Pythagorean exercise of remembering and reciting the whole of a previous conversation, see E. Brann, supra, p. 78, and, most recently, Bruce Rosenstock, "Rereading the Republic," Arethusa 16 (1983), pp. 219-46. �Imitation John White Imitation as a theory of poetry makes its first appearance in the Republic, where it is used to criticize Homer. As a theme for poetry, it makes its first appearance in the Iliad. On Achilles' shield "the earth looked like earth that had been plowed though it was made of gold. Such was the wonder of the shield's forging"; imitation is poetry's "theory" of the overwhelming presence of visual art. Imitation has had a long career in both of these incarnations. As a theory of poetry it has often been repeated and refuted. As a theme of poetry it has seized the imagination with great power-Aeneas's looking at the panels of the Trojan war in Juno's shrine or Keats's looking at an urn. There are as many poetic imitations of the theme as there are refutations of the theory. In order to understand the fascination of a theme so imitable or a theory so refutable (and thereby so useful to philosophy and poetry) one must look at the originals- if the notion of an original is not out of place here. Both the Iliad and the Republic-two books whose common concern is spiritedness (thumos)-are difficult to grasp, but the Republic has a special kind of difficulty: It is full of questions that turn back upon themselves and answers that somehow cancel or contradict themselves. For example, when Socrates throws out passages of Homer and also quotes him at great length, does he want us to hear Homer or not? Or when Socrates founds the "best city" on a noble lie and also tells us that the lie is a lie, does he want to fool us or not? In what the Republic talks about, justice, we can see this odd canceling right from the beginning. Look at what happens (in Book I) when justice is first brought up. The first definition of justice is "paying one's debts and telling the truth"- if someone leaves his armor in our keeping, 173 �174 IMITATION we should return it. But then Socrates and Polemarchus consider a special case: A friend has given us his weapons; he goes mad, and asks for their return. We can't return the arms because the friend might injure himself. So a second definition of justice is given, to take account of friendship: "Justice is doing good to friends and harm to enemies." Then this definition is criticized and rejected; but we don't return to the first definition. What are we left with? Do we return the arms or not? There is no third possibility. This same kind of difficulty or ambiguity appears in other ways, too. The style of the Republic would be classified as "decadent": It is a jumble of other styles, narrative, lyric, and mimetic; it is comic and tragic; the style is "realistic" to the point of obscuring the difference between history and fiction, real and ideal. No one style is employed in its purity. Poetry and the criticism of poetry are combined in a characteristically artful form. What is it trying to be? Poetry or philosophy? If poetry, what kind? These difficulties about "style" are present within the dialogue also. When Glaucon and Adeimantus enter the conversation (in Book II), they are as much concerned with the proper way to speak about justice as with justice itself. Glaucon (358a) thinks that Socrates has not really refuted those who praise injustice; while Socrates may have punished Thrasymachus- pushed him around in speech, humiliated him- he has not refuted injustice. Glaucon thinks that no one has praised justice itself, so he will praise injustice to give Socrates a pattern for the praise of justice. And for Adeimantus the greatest difficulty with justice comes from those who praise it. Parents, lawgivers, and especially poets contradict themselves when they talk about justice; they try to praise justice, but the style of their praise, their talk of rewards and the afterlife, really praises the seeming, the appearance, of justice. We should seem just to our judges. This style of praise (justice in an afterlife) conceals envy. It "exhorts one to be unjust and get away with it" in this life (367b ). Adeimantus says that "of all those who claim to be praisers of justice-beginning with those who have left speeches -there is not one who has ever praised justice other than for the reputation and honors .... But as to what [justice] itself does with its own power ... , no one has ever, in poetry or prose" adequately praised it (366c). G!aucon and Adeimantus think that Socrates understands this kind of difficulty and can give them the proper praise of justice. Do they want to hear poetry (praising) or its criticism? Do they want poetry or philosophy? They want both. So Socrates must do both: He must criticize poetry and be a kind of poet. Socrates does both of these things in the Republic. And Book X in particular is the most compact expression of the ambiguity and difficulty �WHITE 175 of what he tries to do-oflooking at questions that turn back on themselves and answers that somehow cancel themselves. In Book X Socrates gives his most radical (and annoying) criticism of poetry and also becomes explicity "poetic" in the most irritating way, by telling tales of the afterlife (in the myth of Er). Socrates gives three arguments against imitation in Book X. In this essay I will present them briefly and then examine them by looking at their underpinnings, their assumptions. The result of this application will turn out to be ambiguous: If Socrates' criticism of imitation succeeds, it succeds in a perverse way, for it not oniy is an attack on the Iliad but also turns against, "cancels," much that was said in the first nine books of the Republic. Socrates' criticism of poetry thereby throws doubt on the unity and coherence of the Republic itself. Why is Book X there at all? Book IX ends so beautifully, with the best city a "pattern laid up in heaven"; it is uplifting. Why ruin this ending with the cranky, self-contradictory character of Book X? While I can't argue for the unity of the Republic on the level of an opinion- for example, that it is for or against poetry, for or against some particular definition of justice- I think I can give an image of its unity, an image that is able to guide us to the interpretation of some of Socrates' own poetry, the images he makes and the myth he tells. I. Imitation and the Mirror In Books II and III of the Republic Socrates had given long sober arguments against imitative poetry: As far as content goes, poetry tells lies about gods and heroes; it talks of Hades and the afterlife, thereby undermining courage; its talk is neither "holy nor true" (377b-386b). And finally (397b ff.) tragedy was exiled for its style: Imitation, where one has to jumble together "all modes and rhythms," encourages a doubleness or ambiguity in the character of the citizens; it violates the principle of the city, "one man, one job." Now in Book X Socrates returns to the topic. His criticism of imitation this time is both more fierce and more respectful, for he says that poets "maim the thought of those who hear them," but he also says that "a certain friendship for Homer, and shame before him, which has possessed me since childhood, prevents me from speaking" (595b). This time when he criticizes poetry, unlike his earlier criticism, Socrates begins with an image of the imitative artist, a "wonderful and clever craftsman," and this image rules and guides the arguments that follow. For this same manual artisan is not only able to make all implements but also makes everything that grows naturally from the earth, and he produces· �·r.'.·~l l '-:1 176 IMITATION all animals- the others and himself too- and, in addition to that, produces earth and heaven and gods and everything in heaven and everything in Hades under the earth. (596c) Socrates tells Glaucon that this is not so wonderful, for he too could make all these things, in a certain way: You could fabricate them quickly in many ways and most quickly, of course, if you are willing to take a mirror [not a glass mirror; their mirrors were sheets of polished bronze] and carry it around everywhere; quickly you will make the sun and the things in the heavens; quickly, the earth; and quickly yourself and the other animals and implements and plants and everything else that was just now mentioned. (596d) In Socrates' image of the mirror, _who is the "clever man" and what is his mirror? I cannot answer these questions now, but I will return to them. Whatever they refer to in particular, this is the imitative art that is attacked in the Republic and this is the man who is exiled and replaced. After making this image, Socrates gives three arguments against imitation. The first concerns the being of a work of art (596a-598b). The second concerns the knowledge that the imitator has (601b-602b). The third concerns virtue (598e-601b; 603e-606d). The conclusion of these arguments is that poetry needs an apology in its ancient quarrel with philosophy (607b). Within Book X this restatement of the exile of poetry forms a transition to the discussion of the immortality of the soul (608e ff.) and the myth of Er. Here I will present Socrates' first two arguments- those about the being of an art work and the knowledge it contains. They belong together because they both rely on the same assumptions and they both draw out the consequences of the image of the mirror. (I'll turn to the third argument, about virtue, later.) The first argument is about being. In the case of a bed, there are three artisans concerned with it and there are three kinds of beds. First, there is one bed "by nature," which, Socrates says, "a god produced." (Notice the oddity of this phrase: "the bed by nature.") The god makes only one bed; if he made two beds, it would come to light that they shared the same "Form." The god is cailed the "nature-begetter." Second is the craftsman. He doesn't make the ''Form" of a bed, but he does make a certain bed. In a sense he is both imitative and productive. Socrates says, "If he doesn't make what is, he wouldn't make the being but something that is like the being" (597a). Third is the imitator. He is third because he does not imitate the "Form" of the one bed, as does the craftsman; instead he imitates what the craftsman has made. Thus Socrates says (598b) that the painter imitates not "being as it is" but the "looking as it looks" of a thing. He concludes that imitation is three removes from the truth about being. �WHITE 177 Socrates' second argument concerns knowledge. For each thing, there are three arts concerned with it: the art of its use, the art of its making, and the art of its imitation. In the case of a bridle, Socrates asks who understands it best, who knows what he is talking about when he talks about bridles. In this case first place goes to the user, because "the virtue, beauty and rightness of each implement, animal, and action [are] related to nothing but the use for which each was made, or grew naturally." Second place goes to the craftsman, who will have "right trust concerning its beauty or its badness" (601e). The imitator has neither knowledge nor right opinion about the bridle- no one can tell him how to paint because there is no clear-cut use for a painting. The painter has neither knowledge nor right opinion with respect to the beauty or badness in anything. He can only paint what looks fair to the many (602b). The painter, the imitative artist, gets third place in both of these arguments. Socrates concludes the arguments this way: Then it looks like we are pretty well agreed on these things: the imitator knows nothing worth mentioning about what he imitates, imitation is a kind of play and not serious; and those who take up tragic poetry in iam- bics and epics are all imitators in the highest possible degree. (602b) These two arguments have some assumptions, or hypotheses, as their underpinnings. The first hypothesis is that "god made only one bed by nature." Socrates Says: Do you want us to make our consideration according to our customary procedure, beginning from the following point? For we are, presumably, accustomed to set down some one particular form for each of the particular umanys" to which we apply the same name. (596a). Only with this assumption can Socrates give his analysis of the being of an artwork (the three craftsmen) and its knowledge (the three arts). These ''Forms" help his argument in another way: Each argument analyzed an implement or tool (bed and bridle), a work of craft or technerather than a natural being. The analysis is impossible if there is an important difference between nature and art. For example, if use is the test of our knowledge, who is the user of a giraffe or an ostrich such that he understands them for what they are? This difference (between a natural being and an artful being) is not a serious problem if we follow Socrates' image of the mirror, which mirrors implements and animals and gods equally well. Nor is the difference between nature and art a serious problem if a thing is what it is by "participation" in a ''Form," for then we can understand the presence or "being" of a thing without reference to the coming-to-be-the path by which it arrived. We can ignore the distinction �r, " ·~l -~) :] !I _:.:._::___:_ ______________ IMITATION ~----- between nature and art because the distinction rests on the importance of becoming, motion. The second assumption needed for these two arguments .against imitation is that the painter is one of the craftsmen who "mirror" the world, and that the poet is similar to the painter (596e, 603c, 605a). The arguments concern painting directly, and we have to trust in the similarity of poetry and painting in order to connect poetry to the "mirror," the image that guides Socrates' arguments about imitation. II. Poetry and Painting: Laokoon Here I want to examine the second assumption that Socrates makes, the similarity of poetry and painting. The best examination of the relation of poetry and painting (and sculpture, too-the plastic arts) is Lessing's Laokoon. Lessing begins with the Laokoon theme because it exists in two treatments, an incident in the Aeneid and a sculpture. Laokoon was a Trojan priest who told the Trojans not to bring a piece of sculpture into their city. It was a wooden sculpture of a horse. 'IWo serpents attacked Laokoon and his sons for making this warning. In the treatment in the Aeneid, Laokoon is bitten by a serpent: All the while his appalling cries go up to heavenA bellowing, such as you hear when a wounded bull escapes from The altar, after it's shrugged off an ill-aimed blow at its neck. (II, 223 ff.) In the Laokoon statue, Laokoon is being bitten by a serpent and he is crying out- or perhaps he is calling out, calling on some god, or saying something. The statue is wordless, so we cannot tell. Laokoon's posture and the shape of his mouth give this moment of pain a serene greatness and noble simplicity-a timelessness, a strange and wonderful presence. This wordless cry is not the awful bellowing of which the poem speaks. This difference shows Lessing that the way to focus an examination of the similarity of poetry and painting is to focus on how they express emotions- in particular, how they portray the experience of pain. This difference in expression is striking and consistent: If one looks at Greek poets, there are many examples of heroes and gods expressing pain with a violence that ruins their "serene greatness" and beauty. When Achilles first hears of the death of Patroklus, he pours dust and ashes on his face and "fouls his handsome countenance" (XVIII, 22). Or in one of the two most terrible and gorgeous moments in the book, when Zeus is finally faced with the death of his son, Sarpedon, and he cannot save him again-Zeus has already saved his life twice-Zeus gives up arguing with �WHITE 179 Hera and sits, wordless; Homer says "the father of gods and men ... wept tears of blood" (XVI, 431). In general, if one listens to screams of pain in the Iliad, one can see a progression. Early in the book, the usual way of dying is that a spear is thrown and it "drives inward through the bone, and a mist of darkness clouded both eyes and he fell as a tower falls" (IV, 460). As the book goes on, screams of pain are mentioned as part of the dying. In Book XIII, when Zeus looks away from the battle, there is more boasting over fallen enemies, a man roars in pain (393), and another "cried out then a great cry ... and the spear in his breast was stuck fast but the heart was beating still and beating to shake the butt end of the spear" (441). A man is struck between the navel and genitals "where beyond all places death in battle comes most painfully to pitiful mortals" (568). Another man is struck in the eye; then his head is cut off, but the eyeball sticks to the point of the spear and is "lifted high like the head of a poppy" (XIV, 493). The culmination of this progression of the violent expression (and presence) of pain is in Book XVIII, the moment that answers to the silent, bloody tears of Zeus. After the death of Patroklus, Hera sends Achilles to the wall around the ships. He has no armor. He stands there on the wall, then goes to the ditch. He is caught between anger and grief. He gives a great wordless cry, and Athena makes the "unwearied dangerous fire" of heaven blaze from his head. The cry he gives is "wordless," a piercing utterance without the possibility of becoming "winged," as words can. The Greeks were immoderate in their poetry because moderation is not dramatic. The reason for the serenity of the statue is not the ''moderation" of the Greeks; the statue is ''moderate" because it is a statue, because of the limitation of plastic art. The limit and goal of plastic art is physical beauty and beauty of expression: What is ugly must be veiled and transformed, and expressions of emotion must be moderated (if we are to feel something like pity and fear rather than disgust). Since the plastic arts can portray only one moment in time, they must choose a moment that most implies the wholeness of an action, and not a moment that expresses it. There is no one moment of expression, for an action is a temporal whole that needs a "before" and an "after," motivation and suffer- ing, to be complete. The last moment, the suffering and the bellow of pain, is for plastic art the least useful: The eyeball on the spear becomes disgusting or funny after a while. So plastic art, when considering an action and its suffering, must choose the beginning, a moment of transition or choicethe moment where the soul has decided and is just about to move the body. It may choose the '1ast" moment of Laokoon's struggle only if the struggle is not quite over: We know Laokoon is doomed, while Laokoon is about �f_ " J 180 IMITATION ~------------------------------~ to know and is about to bellow. Of course, plastic art could choose a moment that is somehow eternal- a moment of contemplation or a moment that expresses the serene self-sufficiency of the gods. Poetry does not have these limits. In it we can have wordless screams (which will stand out as wordless) and tears of blood because we do not see the ugly gaping mouth, and the moment i~ quickly left behind. In dramatic imitation, the ugly and disfiguring, the natural display of emotion, may and must be shown. Poetry has a wider range than painting; much that it imitates can't be given in a painting. For example, consider the gods. To the painter they are "personified abstractions" who must remain the same, doing the one thing that is typical of them, if they are to be identified. To the poet these "personified abstractions," these timeless entities, must act, must enter time, and therefore they must have various passions and deeds. (Poetry violates the god's simplicity, 508d.) In poetry there are many moments when Aphrodite does not act like the abstraction of love, but the painter can't portray her then unless he adds some kind of label or sign, a non-visual element that is a s_ubstitute for a name. If painters try to use Homer's "pictures" as a model, they will face impossible problems. For example, Homer treats of two kinds of beings, visible and invisible, men and gods. Painters can't do this. When a painting, on its visible canvas, portrays gods and men together, it ignores the distinction between the visible and the invisible-a distinction that for Homer is not a matter of sight. Painting lowers the invisible. For example, if one wishes to paint the battle of the gods and men in Book XXI of the Iliad, one needs some visual scale of distinction between gods and men- a scale that tells you this figure is a god and that one is not because (perhaps) one figure is ten times as large as the other (XVIII, 518). Homer does say that the gods are "huge." But for Homer this "size" is not physical; the gods have stature, greatness. A painting would ignore this difference between gods and men by being so literal-minded about the word "huge." What the visibility of the gods means for Homer is that they are only visible to men by an increased power of mortal vision, such as Athene grants to Diomedes. The gods are not invisible because of mists or clouds (although Homer mentions them, in a painting they would cease being merely mists or clouds and would become a "sign"). The gods are visible only to the greatest of the Greeks, and they are never visible to someone like Thersites. Visibility has little to do with vision, but a lot to do with the distinction between the great and the ordinary, the serious and the superficial. Homer's gods are related to men, and distinct from men, in this way: The gods reveal human life by showing its possibilities and limits. They �WHITE 181 are a kind of scepticism and self-consciousness -limits for us that are not merely "other" than us, as are cats and crocodiles or stars or any of the many things that different people see as divine. The gods don't "exist," but the idea of human life is beautiful and real, and human life is not the same without these ideas-without this kind of greatness-even if they are never "real." Only poetry can give us this kind of limit. These gods are "other," but otherness has a human form. Painting has trouble showing us the otherness of the gods- this unique combination of otherness and sameness. Poetry and painting are different because they imitate different things: Painting imitates bodies, silent presences whose parts co-exist in time, and poetry imitates wholes that unfold and complete themselves in time. When Homer describes an object, he usually gives it only one characteristic (the hollow ship, the black ship), but he describes actions in greater detail. When he does describe an object in detail, the description is not visual and it serves other purposes. Let's consider three examples of Homer's kind of description, Homer's "pictures," to see how they work and what they are describing. The first example is the description of a scepter. Homer gives two descriptions of it, and we have to look at them together to understand what he is describing and how he is doing it. When Agamemnon holds the scepter, this is what Homer says: Powerful Agamemnon stood up hol9-ing the scepter Hephaistos has wrought him carefully. Hephaistos gave it to Zeus the king, the son of Chronos and Zeus in turn gave it to the courier Argeiphontes, and Lord Hermes gave it to Pelops, driver of horses, and Pelops gave it to Atreus, the shepherd of the people. Atreus dying left it to Thyestes of the rich flocks, and Thyestes in turn left it to Agamemnon to carry and to be lord of many islands and over all Argos. Here is the second description. It is given by Achilles when he holds the scepter: This scepter, which never again will bear leaf nor branch, now that it has left behind the cut stump in the mountains, nor shall it blossom again, since the bronze blade stripped bark and leafage, and now at last the sons of the Achaians carry it in their hands in state when they administer the justice of Zeus. (XX, 543-48). And then Achilles dashes the scepter to the ground. Neither description gives any visual information; each gives a history. But they are descriptions of a sort. Look at the two descriptions simultaneously, as if they were �182 IMITATION side-by-side. One description calls the scepter the work of Hephaistos; the other describes the scepter as cut from the mountainside by an unknown hand. The one talks of an ancient possession of a noble house; the other talks of a scepter destined to fit the hand of anyone who might chance to grab it. The one talks of a scepter held by one who is monarch over many islands and over all of Argos; the other talks of justice, then throws the scepter down. What is being described is not the scepter; the descriptions are giving us the difference between Agamemnon and Achilles. Second, when Homer doesn't match up two descriptions of an object, when he does want to describe something that demands a picture, what does he do? After all, the symbols of poetry are arbitrary and can be made to represent a body co-existent in space. How do bodies, whose parts coexist, lend themselves to a description? Since the description is in words and sentences, the description itself must be sequential. This sequence obscures the co-existence; by the end of the description, the beginning is forgotten. Speech never achieves the wholeness or "presence" of a paint- ing. So when Homer is forced to enter the special province of plastic art, physical beauty and immediate presence, what does he do? How does he describe Helen? A "direct" description- "eyes like stars, teeth like pearls"can't help being a kind of arbitrary jumble, a mere sequence-why talk of eyes first? How does Homer give us the experience of her beauty? He presents her beauty by describing an action: He has Helen come to the wall, and he describes how the sight of her affects old men (not young ones): They were seated by the gates, elders of the people. Now through old age they fought no longer, yet they were excellent speakers still, and clear, as cicadas who through the forest settle on trees, to issue the delicate voice of their singing. Such were they who sat on the tower, chief men of the Trojans. And these, as they saw Helen along the tower approaching, murmuring softly to each other uttered their winged words: "Surely there is no blame on Trojans and strong-greaved Achaians if for long time they suffer hardship for a woman like this one. Terrible is the likeness of her face to immortal goddesses. Still, though she be such, let her go away with the ships, lest she be left behind, a grief to us and our children." We don't know what she looks like. When Zeuxis made a painting of this scene, Helen was the only figure in it-no old men who have "winged words" and wrinkles. Which is more beautiful: the looks of Helen or the looking of the old men? The third example of Homer's descriptions, Homer's pictures of a "body co-existent in space," is the deepest and most difficult. What does Homer do when he invades the realm of plastic art itself? What does he do when �I I '' WHITE 183 he describes, not just the object of the plastic arts, not just a body whose parts co-exist in space-what does he do w,hen he describes the imitating itself? Thetis of the silver feet came to the house of Hephaistos. She found him sweating as he turned here and there to his bellows busily since he was working on twenty tripods ... [Hephaistos] took the huge blower off from the block of anvil limping ... He . . . gathered and put away all the tools with which he worked in a silver strong box. Then with a sponge he wiped clean his forehead, and both hands and his massive neck and hairy chest ... . . . [Hephaistos then] went to his bellows. He t'!.Uned those toward the fire ... And the bellows ... blew on the crucibles, from all directions blasting forth wind to blow the flames high, now as he hurried from one place to another. He cast on the fire bronze which is weariless ... and gripped in one hand the ponderous hammer, while in the other he grasped the pincers. And then the labor and sweat disappear. First of all he forged a shield that was huge and heavy. Hephaistos made the earth upon it, and sky, and the sea's water, and the tireless sun, and the moon waxing into her fullness, and on it all the constellations that adorn the heavens ... On it he wrought in all their beauty two cities of mortal men. And there were weddings in one, and festivals. The people were assembled in the market place. Around the other city were lying two forces of armed men shining in their war gear. He made upon it a soft field, the pride of tilled land, wide and triple-ploughed, with many plowmen upon it. And as these making their turn would reach the end-strip of a field a man would come up to them at this point and hand them a flagon of honey-sweet wine, and they would turn again to the furrow. The earth darkened behind them and looked like earth that has been ploughed though it was made of gold. Such was the wonder of the shield's forging. (XVIII, 369-483, selected) Homer shows the labor of the imitating- he shows the making of the shield, its coming-to-be- but then the labor disappears into "the wonder of the shield's forging." And also, in this example of a description, unlike the other two examples, Homer does give a "direct" description; the shield is the greatest "presence" in the poem. Many have tried to draw it. But the things on the shield are in motion, and no human painting or sculpture �IMITATION 184' could show that. However, the shield is made by a god, so that there might be a divine kind of painting that can show things in motion, in their life. To see what this might mean, we need to think about Hephaistos for a moment. He is an unusual god, not a god of "serene greatness," for he limps and sweats and has a hairy chest. He was important to Achilles at another time, too. When the river Xanthos attacked Achilles and tried to give him an anonymous death- to bury him in a waste of mud, bodies, and blood- Hephaistos saved him with his fire. Now, too; with the shield Hephaistos says that he wishes he could hide Achilles from death and its sorrow; he wishes it as surely as there will be a shield to wonder at (XVIII, 463). Again Hephaistos uses his fire for Achilles: He makes him a "shield of wonder" to replace his lost armor, his Uranian armor, taken by Hector (XVII, 195). This new Olympian armor is forged by a divine art that shows things in motion, in their life. The divine art that shows things in winged motion, the art that forges Olympian armor, is poetry. III. The Third Argument and Its Difficulties Socrates gives a third argument against mimetic poetry in Book X. This argument both sums up the earlier criticisms (about being and knowledge) and goes beyond them. It has two parts; both parts concern "virtue." I'll look at the two parts separately and make some observations. The first part of the argument (598e-60lb) says that Homer must not himself have been virtuous because he did no "deeds." Homer founded no cities, conducted no wars, and is not credited with any inventions or devices; he is not famous for a way of life, as was Pythagoras, nor was he a teacher of virtue. If one has knowledge about virtue, one is more serious about deeds than speeches and imitations; one would be "more eager to be the one who is praised than the one who praises" (599b). Homer's art produced only. a song, so he produced nothing serious, only imitations of what is serious. Either to defend Homer or to understand him better, we have to answer these questions: What was Homer's deed and what "invention or device" can we credit him with? Herodotus (II, 50-53) says that while Homer (and Hesiod) didn't invent the gods, he was the first to give them special honors, arts, names, and genealogies- a "theogony," a coming-to-be. Homer, by giving deeds, histories, and preferences to the gods, made them into characters. No longer are the gods merely the subject for. statues and lyric poems, "timeless" hymns to Apollo or Zeus (this kind of poetry Socrates allows in his "healthy" city- 372b ). Now the gods are fit subjects for epic, for mimetic and narrative poetry ("temporal"). But the gods and the Iliad, �. I ! WHITE 185 the book where the gods become characters, were not Homer's deed; they were the "devices" he needed to perform his deed. Homer devised Olym-. pian armor, the Iliad, for the Greeks to look at, and this kind of looking produced the Greeks- they were Homer's deed. The Greeks were the kind of people they were because they had these gods and the Iliad, instead of cats or crocodiles or statues of U ranian gods. Homer's deed, this bringing into being of a certain kind of person, has an odd timelessness for a deed; it is not over yet; it is still present. When we read the Iliad attentively, we sit, unmoving and wordless, as if chained to a ohair in a cave of magic; we are aware only of the images before us. We are not aware of them as images. Instead, the images convince us that they are real, that our emotions are only reflections of Achilles' wrath and grief. Before we look at the second part of this argument, we have to remember that Socrates is aware of this kind of cave and this kind of defense of Homer: "Praisers of Homer say that this poet educated Greece" (606e). He is aware that Greeks have a kind of "noble lie" in their souls, where they confuse nature and education: "The inborn love of such poetry we owe to our rearing in these fine regimes" (608a). So far, in this "ancient quarrel of poetry and philosophy," I see no decisive advantage for either side. Homer is beautiful if bloody; the images of philosophy ("patterns laid up in heaven'') are uplifting, if a little cold. But in most ways the quarrel remains a mere quarrel; uo new understanding has been opened up by either side, nor have new possibilities come into view for either side. But now, when Socrates turns to the second part of this argument against Homer, he turns away from the ''mirror" and an emphasis on the object of imitation: "Imitation, we say, imitates forced and voluntary actions" (603c). He explicitly goes beyond the limit and assumption of the first two arguments, the similarity of poetry and painting: "Let's not just trust the likelihood based on painting; but let's go directly to the very part of thought with which poetry's imitation keeps company and see whether it is ordinary or serious" (603c). We are no longer arguing about "truth" or "being," questions that tend to become the narrowly technical province of philosophy in its "coming-to-be"- questions and answers that might be correct but that miss the point; speeches that are true but petty, without any greatness or "seriousness." With this new beginning, Socrates turns to the second part of the last argument about Homer and virtue: Mimetic poetry does not produce "seriousness" about virtue in the soul of the spectator. He says that poetry cannot imitate a serious soul, a soul that is restrained, one that is "self- �r il ~ 186 IMITATION --------------------------------------------- '1 same." Poetry must imitate a soul in conflict. When we see tragic suffering, we give ourselves over to it, and so the best part of the soul, the measuring and calculating part, relaxes its rule over the other parts. Here Socrates says that he makes the "greatest charge" (605b) against mimetic poetry. This charge is more serious than those "third remove" arguments, those technical arguments that relied on the "mirror." Socrates says that mimetic poetry ufosters and waters desires, pains, pleasures, sex and spiritednessthings which ought to be dried up" (606d). Spiritedness, thumos, ought to be dried up. Whatever else one might say about this criticism of poetry, one can't simply disagree with it. After looking at the Iliad with Lessing's help, we have to agree that the soul without conflict is not dramatic; it belongs on a pedestal, not in a poem. But we also have to remember, if we are going to "dry up" thumos, that it was thumos, spiritedness, that made possible the Republic and its three-part soul by mediating between reason and appetite. This part of the soul, which conflicts with natural desires and goes beyond them in wanting relishes, made "guardianship" possible, with its dog-like combination of the qualities of "being gentle to friends and cruel to enemies" (375b ff.). The "measuring and calculating" part of the soul, reason, needs a force naturally allied to it, a guardian, if it is to rule the soul or the city. And if reason can't rule both soul and city, the image that guides and rules and unifies the first nine books of the Republic is lost: The image where "the city is the soul 'writ large.' " This new attack on mimetic poetry involves another surprise for us, as Socrates explores the restrained self-sameness of soul which poetry cannot imitate. The surprise is the immortality of the soul. .When Socrates mentions immortality, Glaucon "looks him in the face with wonder" (608d). The immortality of the soul depends on the soul's simplicity ap.d unity, its radical self-sameness. If the soul is "simple," how can it have three parts? When Socrates tries to explain this difficulty about the parts of the soul (6llc), that up until now the soul had three parts, he says that, so far, he has been talking about the "looks" of the soul oniy. But such was his criticism of mimetic poetry in the first two arguments against it, the ones based on painting and the "mirror" (that poetry talks about "looks" instead of being). Whatever else we may think about this third attack on mimetic poetry, these arguments of Book X are also a kind of "canceling" and "turning against" much that was said in the first nine books-the most extreme form of the canceling I mentioned at the beginning. Why is Book X there at all? Book IX ends so nicely, with the best city as a city in speech, a "pattern laid up in heaven," and there is a review of actual cities, cities "in deed." The tyrant has been "stripped of his tragiC �WHITE 187 gear" (577a), which allows Socrates to answer the original question about the relation of justice and happiness: The just man is 729 times as happy as the tyrant (587e). I think we can see the reason for including Book X if we look a little· more closely at the "degeneration" of the cities in Books VIII and IX, because we can see the return of mimetic poetry despite its exile in Book III, and we can see the emergence of a special concern with poetry in one of the cities, a democracy. Before the "degeneration" begins, Book VII ends with the description of the best city and the education of the philosopher-kings. Glaucon recognizes the completion of the discussion when he says, "just like a sculptor, Socrates, you have produced men who are wholly fair" (540a). Then the "degeneration" of Books VIII and IX begins with a tragic, Homeric invocation: "How will our city be moved ... ? Do you want us, as does Homer, to pray to the Muses to tell us how 'faction first attacked,' and shall we say they speak to us with high, tragic talk, as though they .were speaking seriously?" (545d). So the sculptural climax of Book VII is insufficient; poetry has returned after its exile. The "degeneration" must bring back mimetic poetry because the degeneration involves choices and actions. And conversely, the presentation of a variety of cities demands something like a "degeneration." If one is going to describe various cities, which city does one start with? Without a principle of order, the cities are a jumble and the description would be a jumble (as in the problem of describing Helen; eyes or teeth first?). And not only does the "degeneration" involve a return to mimetic poetry in its Homeric beginning, but poetry itself enters at one stage of the degeneration, a democracy. Democracy enters with a kind of flourish because the transition from oligarchy to democracy echoes the transition from the first city, Socrates' "city of utmost necessity" (369d), to the "feverish city" in Book II. In Book II, Glaucon had objected to the simple, unified "pig city" because it had no relishes, nothing beyond the necessary- not even sexual desire goes beyond what is economically feasible ("They will have sweet intercourse with one another, and not produce children beyond their means"- 372b). Now, in Book IX, in the degeneration from oligarchy to democracy, an oligarchic father satisfies only necessary desires; he holds down other desires by force (554a); he is unable to compete for "noble objects" (555a). The son feels that this is petty, that his father has no generosity or magnificence or freedom. The son hears "boasting speeches ... persuading [him] that measure and orderly expenditure are rustic and illiberal" (560c). He has �188 IMITATION a desire for relishes (559a-b ). Again, with democracy as with the fall of the "pig city,'' many kinds of relishes and imitators are added to the son's life, but now there is no desire for a katharsis or purging, as there was in Book II. So the democratic man becomes overwhelmed by his possibilities, his freedom and his choices. For this democratic man, freedom of choice depends on the fact that no particular choice is serious. No choice is serious because no choice closes off other possibilities; no choice makes him this rather than that. At his best, he is intrepid and daring- capable of both action and deliberation. He can love beauty without softness, and he "needs no lying poet" to make monuments for him; he will make his own (I am thinking of Pericles' praise of the Athenians in the funeral oration). But at his worst, this is his attitude toward a choice: He says, "Some say it's good, some say it's badeveryone has his own opinion. We won't know until we try it. If it doesn't work, we'll change it back. Why not? After all, it's not written in stone." He can experiment with anything because no choice has serious consequences; there is nothing written in stone for him. The democratic man is a soldier one day, a flute-player the next, a philosopher the next (56lc). With these superficial choices, choices that don't touch him deeply, he never actually becomes anything. He doesn't become, for example, a soldier; he becomes an imitation of a soldier. He does something for a while-he is even serious for a while- but then he turns away with a kind of forgetting. He turns to another kind of life; but he is always trapped by the ordinary. This kind of man can look for some core of humanity, some kind of brotherhood, a sameness that exists for humans beneath their differences. But what he discovers is that all human differences and choices are superficial; no choice is serious. Living in a democratic city, he confronts the variety of human differences and the jumble of choices every day. He sees that people follow their strongest inclination or ruling passion as long as it is strongest, and then they change. When he looks at the cities of the world, he sees the same kind of thing: Democratic cities have democratic laws, oligarchic cities have oligarchic laws, etc. In each case the strongest faction makes the rules and defines justice, as long as it is strongest. What universal justice does he see? What core of humanity? What truth is hidden beneath the overwhelming variety? In each case, universally and without exception, justice is the interest of the stronger. Thrasymachus knows this hidden truth, and he reveals the cynicism and tyranny beneath the surface. No mere "refutation in words" can succeed in dealing with what Thrasymachus says. For while Socrates may be able to tie him in knots and make him look foolish in Book I, that might �WHITE 189 only be a sign of Socrates' superior strength and skill in arguments; it might be a sign of Socrates' superficiality that he accepts tbe "truth in speech" and ignores the truth revealed by deeds- that he is "more serious about speeches and imitations than deeds." This would only confirm the truth "in deeds" of what Thrasymachus thinks about the role of strength. Socrates' victory over him would be a mere "victory in speech." While a "city in speech," a "pattern laid up in heaven," might be seen to be an uplifting possibility, a mere "victory in speech" here is an awfu~ fearful possibility. Glaucon and Adeimantus know. this. Despite Socrates' victory "in speech" in Book I, our souls may harbor a "secret lawlessness," an imperviousness to speech: No speech may touch us deeply. Only an impossible experiment could help us discover this truth about the soul. We would have to know what the soul would choose if it had perfect freedom and invisibility. Glaucon proposes this: We don't need to know the soul's opinion about justice, its opinion about what it would do when it has to return the armor or not (for example); we aren't even sure that there is a correct or "true" answer. But the soul must act- must either return the armor or not. There is no third possibility. We need a "ring of Gyges," a magical freedom and invisibility for the soul, to discover the truth about the soul's choosing. Glaucon and Adeimantus and the democratic man himself need more protection than has been offered in the first nine books. A democratic man needs to be protected not just from making the wrong choice about "returning the armor," for example; he needs to be protected from cynicism and superficiality. Can mimetic poetry do this? Is it "ordinary or serious" (603c)? And not only does the democratic man need to be protected from the possibility of degeneration; philosophy needs to be protected from this possibility. Is it "ordinary or serious?" (Most of the world thinks philosophy to be trivial, as Socrates knows.) Is it only "victories in speech," a continuation of the struggle for victory on a different playing field with words as weapons? Is it a non-serious possibility thrown onto the world's stage by democracy and its tolerance for non-serious choices? Is it a continuation of the democratic style, a jumbled and decadent style (debate, oration, and argument, both comic and tragic) with a new content? This is Socrates' question; this is the greatest challenge to mimetic poetry and to philosophy's "city in speech." This is why Book X is there. Let's look again at the result of this third argument against imitation. What Socrates now says in criticism of mimetic poetry is a criticism of thumos and the three-part soul, and thereby reveals difficulties in much of what was said and constructed in the first nine books: the-unity of the �r ~ IMITATION 190 " ~:r :J I ,, ':;I soul and of the city, and the unity of the guiding image of the first nine books (the city is the soul "writ large"). The unity and coherence of the book is in doubt. Book X is the most compact expression of this kind of "cancelation" and turning against itself, because it contains both the most austere criticism of poetry and the myth of Er. IV. Katharsis and the Silver Soul When we read the Iliad or watch a tragedy, we sit absorbed, as if chained to a chair in a cave. Socrates says we are to leave that cave and its darkness in order to see the sun and the world in its light. Education and its "purging" (katharsis is the word Book III uses to describe education) are to take the place of poetry and its katharsis. We are to give up our Homeric, Olympian armor, even though it has somehow made us what we are. But in this replacement of one katharsis by another, we must first ask why we are in the position of having to choose between poetry and philosophy. Why do we need any katharsis at all? What in our souls finds purification, resolution, unification in response to speeches about deeds? Socrates has criticized Homer as one who is more serious about speeches than about the deeds with which they deal. This understanding of "seriousness" makes us ask why we want to hear speeches about deeds; why do we want to hear praise of deeds? Why do Glaucon and Adeimantus want to hear the correct praise of justice from Socrates? Why does the incorrect praise bother them so much? To answer these questions we need to look at the "silver" soul (thumos), the kind of soul that Book X wants to "dry up," not the gold or bronze soul. The Republic asks us to see the limits of this kind of soul, how it begins in the desire for relishes and ends in the acceptance of a noble lie. How can we understand the beginning of the silver soul, the desire for relishes? At the beginning of Book II Socrates constructs a simple, unified city, a "true and healthy" city. Glaucon says that it has no relishes; it is a "city fit for pigs"; it is contemptible. What this city needs is a large dose of luxury, fever. The occupations that are added to this city when it attempts to become worthy of honor are suggestive: hunters, imitators concerned with figure and color and music, poets, rhapsodes, actors, crafts-men for feminine adornment, servants, teachers, beauticians, barbers, and cooks. Imitators and poets have been added, along with cosmeticians and barbers. The silver in our soul asserts itself and becomes visible by having a certain contempt for mere nature; it does not begin in simple greed or lust. �WHITE 191 It does not want two pieces of meat; it wants one with relish. It does not want two coats; it wants one coat with a gold braid on it. It does not sexually desire two women rather than one, or two men rather than one; it wants a sexual object that is "improved": lipstick, jewelry, perfume, or a bone in the nose and tattoos- anything, it seems, as long as mere nature is gone beyond, adorned, transformed. The silver soul is willing to pervert even the apparent naturalness of erotic attraction. The silver' soul is angry at the pig city and "mere nature." It wants a kind of revenge, because the soul and its terrible beauty are invisible and unrecognized. There is no friendship in the pig city, no relation of souls; there is only an economic partnership (371e). The justice of the artisan- paying debts and telling the truth, the first definition in Book I- is contemptible. "Paying debts" is an economic exchange based on bodily needs; it is not a relation of souls. So the idea of "paying debts" must get some relish; it must be adorned and transformed by the silver soul, not just "refuted" or thrown out. "Doing good to friends and evil to enemies" adds relish to "paying debts." This is the second definition of justice in Book I; the definition comes up when a friend gives you his weapons, then asks for them back when he has gone mad. The mere idea of "paying debts" can't handle this situation because it is an economic definition that does not recognize "friendship." Honor is the just recognition for this doing of good and evil (to friends and enemies) because honor is payment adorned with relish, praise (as the "good and the evil" adorn the idea of "debts"). But there is a difficulty with honor as a kind of payment. Although honor is a reward for the silver soul, how can the soul arrange things so that honor does not become a mere payment for services rendered? If honor becomes a payment, the silver soul falls back to the level of a bronze soul. And a bronze soul can't give honor; it can only give payment, large as that payment might be. For example, would you return to the risks of war if you were offered "seven unfired tripods, ten talents of gold, twenty shining cauldrons, twelve horses, seven women of l.esbos, twenty 1\'ojan women, Agamemnon's daughter in marriage and seven citadels"? Achilles rejects this offer; it is offered in the spirit of payment; Agamemnon is incapable of saying "I'm sorry-we were friends and I violated it." (Later, when Achilles wants to re-enter battle, Agamemnon insists that he first take the payment: Achilles is desperate for battle in his rage and grief, and he is supposed to sit down, admire the presents and eat a meal. He begins to get angry again.) This kind of payment is an insult. "Friendship" is a.relation of souls that replaces the impersonality of an economic transaction, its "invisibility of soul." "Friendship" and its recognition are meant to solve this problem of �192 IMITATION "honor as a payment." But the silver soul is caught by envy, by the clash of honor and friendship. He believes in friendship and is capable of it, but honor continually tempts him to stand out alone. (Achilles says to Patroklus, when honor prevents his return to battle but allows Patroklus to enter wearing his armor, "0 that you and I conld storm Troy together, by ourselves," hoping for a union of honor and friendship.) How can the silver soul avoid this clash of honor and friendship and solve the problem of honor as a payment? Will the payment become large, in an attempt to present size as the greatness of honor? The silver soul can get the recognition he deserves only if he elevates another soul above himself, one who is beyond competing with him, one who is "friendly" but not a friend, one who is "objective," one who offers nothing useful, nothing with cash value. Thus the one who gives recognition, speeches of praise, is elevated above the doer of the deeds. And the one who praises but is not a "friend" needs knowledge of what is praiseworthy- knowledge of justice, souls, and speeches. The silver soul, the doer, must elevate the one who recognizes him- the one who praises, the imitator in speechabove himself in order to recognize himself as elevated above the bronze. So only a gold soul can understand the silver, giving him the recognition in speech or song that he deserves. But now the silver soul, besides being caught on the point of difference between deeds and speeches, is caught in another clash: What kind of praise? A speech or song? Poetry or philosophy? Now let's look at the end of the silver soul. He begins in the desire for relishes and ends in the acceptance of a noble lie. This is the last and the highest thing the silver soul does. He takes the first definition of justice, "paying debts and telling the truth," and now he adorns the last part, the "telling the truth" part; he decorates it in the same way he adorned "paying debts." He doesn't take "the truth" to be justice. Instead, he believes a lie, but it is a noble lie, a lie with relish on it. He believes that his education was a dream and that all men are brothers, having Earth as mother. He believes in the brotherhood of man despite metallic differences (gold, silver, bronze) that are of special concern to him. So when the silver soul believes the noble lie, he is not merely taken in and fooled by it; he believes it in part because it is a lie, a lie (brotherhood, friendship without its passion and particularity) that demands nobility of soul in one who would believe it; it is an "elevating" lie. The lie is "noble" in another sense also: It ennobles the soul that believes it ("brotherhood," despite the differences) because it takes the viciousness from his anger, his criticism of "mere nature." The silver soul does these two things at once-he believes and he �WHITE 193 overcomes the belief, in the way. that Socrates both censors Homer and quotes him at length- because the silver soul knows that the unadorned truth is not worth having. These are the limits of the silver soul: Because he loves nature, truth, and justice only when they are adorned and transformed, he must be transformed, "purged," given a katharsis. But we can't merely do away with him when we purge the city, for this part of the soul binds together the other parts, reason and appetite. If we just "subtracted" him from the city, wouldn't we return to the pig city? The silver soul not only makes necessary another city, a "best" city, but it also makes possible the coming-to-be of that city or any city beyond the pig city. (The best city could not have come into being in the way taken by the pig city, simple addition without subtraction or katharsis; the standard of "usefulness" in the pig city prevents this-e.g., "To have a city we need a farmer, a carpenter, and we'll add a philosopher.") In particular, he makes possible the "best city" by his capacity for the kind of transformation called katharsis. For him, "subtraction" is addition and transformation. The silver soul is not only capable of this kind of transformation and recognition, katharsis, he also demands it. But the recognition that poetry offers is, Socrates says, "a hymn to tryanny" (586b), for the songs reveal only the terrible beauty of the soul; they do not recognize its monstrosity. For example, Oedipus, at the end of the play, asks to be brought on stage after putting out his eyes. He won't get off the stage despite Creon's urging, and he says, "Apollo did this to me, but I put out my eyes." This line gathers and repeats what we have felt about him throughout the play, an alternation of "He is sinned against" (Apollo does these things and Oedipus suffers them) and "He is sinning" (Oedipus is bringing this upon himself). And then Oedipus says, "Only I can bear this suffering." The alternation of pity for him (as a sufferer) and fear of him (as a doer) that we have felt is collected together: In claiming as his own the suffering that Apollo inflicts on him, is he active or passive? This deed, turning suffering into an action and action into a suffering, transcends the alternatives of pity and fear; instead, Oedipus becomes an object of wonder. Whether he is right or wrong, good or evil, in what he did is no longer important. He has a greatness that goes beyond these questions of right and wrong. He is the object of our looking, our regard, in a new way, and a new kind of looking is called for. The play is a hymn to this greatness. Since poetry grasps the greatness of Oedipus's soul but doesn't see its monstrosity, the play is a "hymn to tyranny." So philosophy and its understanding of greatness (491a ff.)-not just its understanding of good and evil- must take the place of mimetic poetry and its understanding of human greatness. Somehow the Republic must take the place of the Iliad. �,. :~ ;I~I ' IMITATION 194 ~---------------------------------- V. Images Now we can turn to the unity of the Republic. I promised to make or discover an image of it. Let me return to two passages I referred to at the beginning of this essay, the passages from Book X where Socrates made an image that guided his criticism of mimetic poetry: For this same manual a,rtisan is not only able to make all implements but also makes everything that grows naturally from the earth, and he produces all animals-the others and himself too-and, in addition to that, produces earth and heaven and gods and everything in heaven and everything in Hades under the earth. (596c). You equid fabricate them quickly in many ways and most quickly, of course, if you are willing to take a mirror [not a glass mirror; their mirrors were sheets of polished bronze] and carry it around everywhere;,quickly you will make the sun and the things in the heavens; quickly, the earth; and quickly yourself and the other animals and implements and plants and everything else that was just now mentioned. (596d) Who is this craftsman? It must be Homer. And as for the other questionWhat is that mirror? -look again at the Iliad. So [Hephaistos] spoke, and left [Thetis] there. He cast on the fire bronze which is weariless, and tin with it and valuable gold, and silver. First of all, he forged a shield that was huge and heavy, elaborating it about, and threw around it a shining triple rim that glittered. He made the earth upon it, and the sky, and the sea's water and the tireless sun, and the moon ... , and on it all the constellations that adorn the heavens ... On it he wrought in all their beauty two cities of mortal men. Socrates goes to the house of Cephalus, a prosperous manufacturer of armor, and there he forges a new shield from men with souls of gold, silver, and bronze. The Republic is that shield, that mirror, which will replace our Homeric, Olympian armor. Could anyone really make such a shield in "deeds"? Is such a city possible? This best city is not possible in "deed" partly because it is a "pattern laid up in heaven," something like a ''Form" -something unique which can't be imitated without distortion. To found the city, one would need to have gold separate from bronze or silver, silver separate from gold or bronze. But in so far as the best city is an image of the soul, all of the metals are present in each of us. No one could fully enter one of the classes without doing damage to the wholeness, the tri-partness; of his souL And even if the best city were to exist, it would degenerate (and this '. �WHITE 195 means that it would inevitably lead to a democracy and its problems) because of the impossible marriage number (546a), a number that Socrates constructs and the best city must solve if it is to endure without change. The impossibility of the marriage number means that the riddle of generation can't be solved: The city can't continue without the founder and his ability to see clearly the quality of our souls; the founder cannot be "imitated"; he is not a "type"; he is original. This inevitable degeneration means, on the one hand, that no kind of soul will be pure; all souls will be at least a bit of a mixture, a jumble. Even in the best soul there is mixed a deep secret lawlessness, as Glaucon suspected when he wished for a ring of Gyges. For Socrates says that there is some ...terrible, savage, and lawless form of desire" in every man if only in dreams (572b); even the philosopher might dream of incest (57lc). On the other hand, the necessity for the presence of the founder, the original, means that the philosopher cannot just "disappear," return to looking at the sun, once he has come on the scene; he cannot disappear behind a noble lie (i.e., he cannot become an "ideal," a noble lie, for the rest of human beings in the way that Homer, with the invocation of his poem, disappears into his style, leaving us alone with the Muse or Goddess). Whom or what is this new shield designed to protect? What needs and can use the protection of the impossible city, a city in speech? In general, the city in speech will try to protect young gold and silver souls from being corrupted, being made cynical and vicious like Thrasymachus, by an uncritical acceptance of the opinions of the city (49la-495b). The shield will also work in the opposite direction. It will try to protect the city from the innocent savagery of unformed philosophic souls (49le) and from the corrupt savagery of the badly raised golden soul. Socrates points to this danger most clearly in the Apology, when he makes this prophecy: For now you have done this to me because you hoped -that you would be relieved from rendering an account of your lives, but I say that you will find the result far different. Those who will force you to give an account will be more numerous than before; men whom I restrained, though you knew it not; and they will be harsher, inasmuch as they are younger, and you will be more annoyed. (39c) This new kind of "shielding" is not equally necessary in all cities. A golden soul is not the same danger to all cities, nor are all cities equally dangerous to golden souls (some cities are contemptible-496b; usually the city ignores philosophers totally). Nor is poetry the same danger to all cities. Poetry is a particular danger to a democracy because it exaggerates democracy's tendency to tyranny and cynicism; it encourages the �196 IMITATION eros that takes over the soul with its "hymns to tyranny." Poetry is not said to be a danger to any city other than a democracy. So the shield is designed to protect the soul and the democratic city from each other. This connection between the new shield and the democratic city allows us to interpret one final, baffling image of Socrates, and then to look at the myth of Er. Socrates makes a strange and monstrous image of the soul in Book IX (588c), an "image of the soul in speech." There is a man outside; inside there is a many-headed beast, a lion, and another man. In this image of the soul, which of the two men, outside or inside, is the image and which the original? What unity does this image have, and what does it mean to make an image of man that includes two images of man, one being a reflection and purification of the other? We can understand this image if we think of the relation of the "best city" and democracy. First, other cities may reflect more correctly than democracy particular features of the soul and particular understandings of justice, but only democracy and the "best city" have all the parts of the soul imaged in some ways- for example, democracy is the only degenerate city that has philosophy (56ld), even if the philosophy is not serious. And both democracy and the "best city" degenerate because of eros: A democracy succumbs to,eros through the tyrannic hymns of poetry, while the "best city" cannot understand the marriage number and declines. Finally, for someone who wants to found a city or to understand human beings, a democracy is the best place to look, for there one will find all kinds of regimes and all kinds of souls on display (557d). Of all regimes, on the surface and from the outside, democracy is the most beautiful. A democracy images the soul, but the parts are all jumbled up. It is like the "man on the outside," in Socrates' image of the soul. Because of that jumble, even if democracy is somehow the best city to live in, it is not the best city to have living in your soul. The "best city," the "man inside" in Socrates' image of the soul, is Socrates' "pattern laid up in heaven" (592b). So now, at the end, in the myth of Er, after the return to the criticism of poetry, Socrates can try to satisfy Glaucon and Adeimantus. When they began this long conversation, they were suspicious of those who praise justice-poetry contradicts itself when it tries to praise justice-and they wanted to hear the correct praise from Socrates. Socrates is ready to give it to them. He says that "we haven't yet gone through the greatest rewards for virtue" (608b), and now he will do so, with the immortality of the soul and the myth of Er. But first he checks with Glaucon: "Will you, then, stand for me saying about [the just man] what you yourself said about the unjust?" (613d). Now justice will get back what the argument owes �WHITE 197 it, a speech of praise; the argument is able to "pay its debts and tell the truth"; it can even "do good to friends" whiie harming no one. Glaucon and Adeimantus are able to hear a kind of poetry praising justice without being pulled in two directions by it. The myth of Er has a harmony of philosophy and myth, of thumos and mind, but the harmony is not complete or "simple." Immortality has been connected to the soul by the "desire to know" and the unity of soul that this desire indicates. But the myth of Er cannot be about this simplicity or this immortality; it cannot be an "uplifting" presentation of philosophy, an ideal harmony of knowledge and action, deeds and speeches, where poetry takes the place of philosophy. The myth emphasizes the soul and its choices, its doings and sufferings, as all myths and mimetic images must. And so 'the myth introduces faction into the soul, because there is faction in the soul whenever it comes to deeds, choices (603d). The myth, because it is a myth, talks about something that may be deeper than knowing, a choice. And thereby the myth is about another kind of immortality. This other kind of immortality is a sign and expression of the soul's ambiguity, its monstrosity, its "un-naturalness." And so there is another argument for the soul's immortality in Book X (609a ff.), given just before the argument about the soul's simplicity. The soul is the only thing in nature that is not destroyed by its "specific evil," injustice (610e). So the soul has a strength beyond the natural, a greatness beneath the right and wrong of its· ordinary choices, in its capacity to survive injustices and evil. The myth is another look at the range of human possibilities and the spectacle of choice, a look that complements and echoes the first presentation of that spectacle, the democratic man and his possibilities. In the myth, however, unlike democratic life, choice doesn't occur in the ordinary course of our lives. Choice takes place in a strange interval between the time of rewards and the time of ordinary choices, between a time of immortality (relief from the burden of choosing) and the time of mortal life (the time of confusing choices). In this odd interval between two kinds of life, the soul comes to a place where all kinds of lives are scattered about, with no rank or order, in a democratic jumble. And then the soul is asked to choose. The soul is alone in a special way-no teachers, no parents, no law-givers, no poets, no philosophers. The soul has put on the ring of Gyges. ·The first man to choose (619b) was a virtuous man in his previous life. He comes from heaven to make his choice, but he chooses from habit, not "philosophy." He chooses a tyranny that involves eating his children. Then he complains about fate, and he blames everything but himself. He probably says "I didn't mean it," and he wishes that this choice were an ordinary choice, one that he could take back. But-and here we start to see �198 IMITATION the soul's monstrosity-he doesn't blame himself. When he blames circumstances, what he is saying is, "If the same 'circumstances came up, I would do the same thing again." Despite his tragic lamentation, he is accepting his choice and his suffering. ("Apollo did this to me, but I put out my eyes. Only I can bear this suffering.") There is something not serious about his tragic suffering; there is acceptance and even a kind of joy ("I would do it again, in the same circumstances"). The last one to choose is Odysseus. There aren't many lives left, but he makes a good choice because he has been cured of his love of honor, a cure in which philosophy was not needed. (The goal of philosophy is such a cure-521a, 540b, 592a.) The myth again points to a choice that might be deeper than knowledge. In the way that Socrates has said that the soul may include some "terrible, savage lawlessness" (572b ), the soul may also have some "deep, secret attraction" to virtue. After all, Glaucon and Adeimantus in Book I say that they choose justice over injustice (347e), but they do not choose from knowledge or philosophy; they are very aware of the lack of a ground for their choice. There is something about their nature that strikes Socrates with wonder (368a). The choice in the myth is a special kind of choice. It is very serious, because it determines all our other choices. Ordinary choices, the choices that we make in the course of our ordinary, mortal lives, are imitations of this one deep choice. We become what we choose here. This choice is always there, always made again and again, but it is somehow hidden and forgotten and covered by our ordinary choices. The danger for us that this kind of choice reveals is not so much that we will make the wrong choicethe first man to choose in the myth of Er, who chose tyranny, once before had made a good choice, a life of virtue and decency that took him to heaven, but he chose a life without "philosophy." (Giaucon and Adeimantus may have made this very choice.) The danger is that we'll choose superficiality, a glorious superficiality, out of habit or honor. Our love for images of glorious choices might betray us. The myth ends with the waters of Lethe and forgetting; the deep choice and its moment are overcome by forgetting, the triumph of the ordinary over the serious. And thereby the myth points to something that is deeper than knowing: forgetting, Lethe, and ordinariness. Socrates says that we should spend our lives trying to be capable of making that special choice, trying to be "serious" and awake. Only philosophy and its peculiar· call to a kind of human greatness can save us from superficiality, can hold together thumos and mind, poetry and thinking, the soul's beauty and its monstrosity. This impossible shield holds apart, and binds together, the democratic city and the "best city"; it gives the soul a "pattern laid up in �WHITE 199 heaven" and allows philosophy to "come on the scene," stepping out of a mythical past and artfully arranging its own entrance (as Odysseus did in Phaiakia-Odyssey VIII, 486-IX, 20). The Republic tries to separate yet hold together and see in one glance the desire for greatness and the desire for truth. This shield, the Republic or Politeia, is impossible, as we have seen. But it is impossible not to ask what it would be like if this harmony of thumos and mind were possible? If we could connect becoming and being in the case of this impossible city, what would it be like? (Socrates has a similar curiosity iu Timaeus 19b). What comes to mind is a passage from Aristotle's Politics (which in turn reminds me of another passage, Ion 54lb). After asking "what equipment the best politeia" (or "republic") needs in order to come to be, Aristotle asks about the citizens: What kind of nature would they have? He answers this question by looking at the "whole inhabited world" and the cities or Greece: On the one hand, the nations inhabiting the cold places and those of Europe are full of thumos but lack mind and skill, so that they are free but lack political organization and ability to rule. ... The people of Asia, on the other hand, have mind and skill ... , but lack thumos, so that they are in continuous subjection and slavery. But the Greeks participate in both characters ... for they are both spirited and intelligent; hence ... if they attain politeia [or "republic"[, they are capable of ruling all. (l327b24) Note I bave used the following translations: The Republic of Plato, translated by Allan Bloom (New York: Basic Books, 1968); Aristotle: Politics, translated by H. Rackham (London: Harvard University Press, 1959); Lessing's Laocoon, translated by Edwin Allen McCormick (Indianapolis: Bobbs-Merrill, 1962); The Aeneid of Virgil, translated by Allen Mandelbaum (Los Angeles: University of California Press, 1971). �I A Note About the Authors Eva T. H. Brann, Robert B. Williamson, and John White are Thtors at St. John's College, Annapolis. David R. Lachterman is a professor in the Department of Philosophy at the Pennsylvania State University. Miss Brann is the author of Late Geometric and Protoattic Pottery: Mid 8th to Late 7th Century RC.: The Athenian Agora (Princeton: The American School of Classical Studies at Athens, 1962); and Paradoxes of Education in a Republic (Chicago: The University of Chicago Press, 1979; paperback 1989). She is the translator of Jacob Klein, Greek Mathematical Thought and the Origin of Algebra (Cambridge, Mass.: The M.I:r. Press, 1968). Her new book The World of the Imagination: Sum and Substance (Savage, Md.: Rowman and Littlefield) will appear later in 1990. Professor Lachterman is the author of The Ethics of Geometry: A Genealogy of Modernity (New York: Routledge, 1989). 201 � Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource <em>The St. John's Review</em> Description An account of the resource <em>The St. John's Review</em><span> is published by the Office of the Dean, St. John's College.  All manuscripts are subject to blind review. Address correspondence to </span><em>The St. John's Review</em><span>, St. John's College, 60 College Avenue, Annapolis, MD 21401 or via e-mail at </span><a class="obfuscated_link" href="mailto:review@sjc.edu"><span class="obfuscated_link_text">review@sjc.edu</span></a><span>.</span><br /><br /><em>The St. John's Review</em> exemplifies, encourages, and enhances the disciplined reflection that is nurtured by the St. John's Program. It does so both through the character most in common among its contributors — their familiarity with the Program and their respect for it — and through the style and content of their contributions. 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Creator An entity primarily responsible for making the resource Office of the Dean Publisher An entity responsible for making the resource available St. John's College Identifier An unambiguous reference to the resource within a given context ISSN 0277-4720 thestjohnsreview Contributor An entity responsible for making contributions to the resource St. John's College Greenfield Library Text A resource consisting primarily of words for reading. Examples include books, letters, dissertations, poems, newspapers, articles, archives of mailing lists. Note that facsimiles or images of texts are still of the genre Text. Page numeration Number of pages in the original item. 201 pages Original Format The type of object, such as painting, sculpture, paper, photo, and additional data paper Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Creator An entity primarily responsible for making the resource Office of the Dean Title A name given to the resource The St. John's Review, 1989-90/1&2 Date A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource 1989-1990 Contributor An entity responsible for making contributions to the resource Zuckerman, Elliott Ruhm von Oppen, Beate Stickney, Cary Van Doren, John Williamson, Robert B. Routt, Deidre Sachs, Joe Brann, Eva T. H. Lachterman, David White, John Description An account of the resource Volume XXXIX, numbers one and two of The St. John's Review. Published in 1990. Identifier An unambiguous reference to the resource within a given context ISSN 0277-4720 The_St_Johns_Review_Vol_39_No_1-2_1989-1990 Coverage The spatial or temporal topic of the resource, the spatial applicability of the resource, or the jurisdiction under which the resource is relevant Annapolis, MD Publisher An entity responsible for making the resource available St. John's College Language A language of the resource English Type The nature or genre of the resource text Rights Information about rights held in and over the resource St. John's College owns the rights to this publication. Format The file format, physical medium, or dimensions of the resource pdf St. John's Review https://s3.us-east-1.amazonaws.com/sjcdigitalarchives/original/d8142711e45ff5aac90e3e78053eca07.pdf 0b07e0f476758d3fc674e3ae06801cff PDF Text Text The St. John's Review Volume XXXIX, number three (1989-90) Editor Elliott Zuckerman Editorial Board Eva Brann Beate Ruhm von Oppen Cary Stickney John Van Doren Robert B. Williamson Subscriptions Assistant Deirdre Routt The St. John's Review is published three times a year by the Office of the Dean, St. John's College, Annapolis; Donald J. Maciver, Jr., President; Eva Brann, Dean. For those not on the distribution list, subscriptions are $15.00 per year. Unsolicited essays, stories, poems, and reasoned letters are welcome. Address correspondence to the Review, St. John's College, Annapolis, MD 21404. Back issues are available, at $5.00 per issue, from the St. John's College Bookstore. © 1990 St. John's College. All rights reserved; reproduction in whole or in part without permission is prohibited. ISSN 0277-4720 Composition Fishergate, Inc. Printing The St. John's College Print Shop �Contents 1 . . . . . . . Antigone: All-Resourceful/Resourcelessness Joe Sachs 17 . . . . . . . The Nobility of Sophocles' Antigone Janet A. Dougherty 33 . . . . . . . Hegel's Reading of Antigone Patricia M Locke 51 . . . . . . . Idealism, Ancient and Modern: Sophocles' Antigone and Schiller's Don Carlos Gisela Berns 61 . . . . . . . George Steiner's Antigones: A Review Eva Brann 67 . . . . . . . The Problem of Place in Oedipus at Co/onus Abraham Schoener 79 . . . . . . . Oedipus the King and Aristotle's List of Categories: A Note Chaninah Maschler 83 . . . . . . . Depth and Desire Eva Brann Woodcut by Emily Kutter �Antigone: All-Resourceful/ Resourcelessness Joe Sachs This lecture has an ulterior purpose. It is a response to the growing chorus of voices one hears saying that Sophocles is too difficult for our sophomores to read. Now in some literal sense this is so obvious that it hardly needs saying. But some people take it to imply that we ought to stop reading Sophocles in the language tutorial, and this needs denying. My own opinion is that Sophocles is too difficult for us not to read: too good to miss, that is, and completely inaccessible unless one makes the effort to read his own words. That such an effort made with the minimum of tools is already richly fruitful is one of the things I hope to show. To that end I promise that this lecture will be amateurish, in fact sophomoric. I have no doubt that I will make mistakes that could be corrected by anyone who has read all the scholarly literature on the subject. I have long ago made the choice that such correctness is not worth its price. The reading of Antigone presented here will rest on an elementary knowledge of Greek, an ignorance of its metrics, a lack of fastidiousness about syntax, and a heavy reliance on Liddell and Scott. I have had the luxury of being a sophomore more than once, but my heart is in that tutorial, and I will never graduate from it. Its very ineptitude prevents glibness, and requires a slow, stubborn questioning of every word. With Sophocles that is not Joe Sachs is a Thtor at St. John's College, Annapolis. This lecture was first given at Brock University, St. Catherines, Ontario, in October, 1988. Translations are the author's. �2 THE ST. JOHN'S REVIEW a bad way to read. It also has the merit that anyone who wants to do it can do it. It would be a shame to listen to a lecture of this kind and not join in with it in the question period. Sophocles never stopped thinking about the Oedipus story. He was in his nineties when he wrote Oedipus at Co/onus, which he did not live to see performed. It was about thirty-five years earlier that he wrote Antigone. The three Theban plays that we possess are not a trilogy nor in any sense parts of a whole. They are one story told three times from different points of view. I do not mean that Sophocles used various characters to give subjective colorings to the events, but that he himself saw the essence of the Oedipus story in three different acts of poetic concentration. I do not think he changed his mind from play to play about Oedipus or about what made his story important, though that would be difficult to show. I think he saw in the story the most important truths about human life, and kept opening windows into it so that the rest of us could see them too. But the Antigone seems to be far removed from the center of the Oedipus story. Oedipus is long departed when it begins. His two sons have tried and failed to share the kingship of Thebes, brought new misery on the city, and finally killed each other in battle. Creon, who succeeds them as king, and their sister Antigone respond to this catastrophe in incompatible ways, bringing on fresh catastrophe. And everyone knows that the heart of this play is the scene in which the two main characters step forth and debate the principles on which they have acted. The Antigone is a play about a disastrous moral collision, one neither faced by nor caused by Oedipus, who is so far in the background that he might be any dead king who had both sons and daughters. This is a false picture of the play, but an almost inevitable first picture. More than other plays, the Antigone tempts us to single-sentence statements of moral or theme, and that sentence is always about the conflict between the laws of the city and the demands of private conscience, which listens to a higher law. I could quote such sentences from various commentators, but what would be the point? We can all say the same kinds of things ourselves, and probably have. Whatever else the play may be, it has within it a philosophic dialogue of undeniable clarity about a genuine and timeless dilemma. Sir Richard Jebb does not hesitate to conclude that the conflict of the play is not between people but between abstract principles, and that Creon and Antigone move us not as themselves but as vivid personifications of duty. I hope this formulation feels uncomfortable to you, but there is nothing impossible about it. Poetry is not by its nature hostile to rationality, and part of the power of Sophocles' writing is undoutedly an �SACHS 3 intellectual power. He might, in this one play, have made everything human and concrete an outer covering for an intellectual problem. There is a philosopher, Hegel, who saw the intellectual realm as a living drama enacted by the ideas themselves. It is no accident that he loved the Antigone. In his Phenomenology he sees the play as exhibiting the splitting in two of the ethical world, the destruction of ethical order by the emergence of an inner contradiction. Antigone and Creon are both right but also both wrong. Hegel says, "only in the downfall of both sides alike is absolute right accomplished, and the ethical substance as the negative power which engulfs both sides, that is, omnipotent and righteous Destiny, steps on the scene" (#472). In Hegel's account of the play everything accidental and individual falls away from the characters, even though individuality is itself one of the things at issue. But Hegel writes with a depth worthy of Sophocles, and his approach to the play cannot be dismissed lightly. The only way to achieve a truer perspective on the play is to begin looking at its details, but it is worth noting first that there is another philosopher, of the same stature as Hegel, who seems to see the play in an opposite way. Aristotle, in his Rhetoric (III xvi 9), criticizes the orators of his time for writing too exclusively from the intellect, making it impossible for them to discern or display moral character or purpose. He recommends that they follow, instead, the example of the Antigone. This is a wonderful passage, to which I will refer again. For the moment it defines a challenge for us: to see how what is peculiar to the Antigone is what is specifically moral, and does not stem from the intellect. The debate between Creon and Antigone takes place in daylight. It is important in many ways that the play begins in darkness. Antigone and her sister Ismene meet outside the city before sunrise. It is an intensely visual scene, but the pictures are in the imaginations of the two women. We begin where they do, trying to assimilate the horror of the previous day, and with Ismene at least, trying to see into another's inner visions. There are no formulated principles here, no light by which to see one's way. Ismene asks Antigone where she is in her thoughts (line 42); what she sees clearly is that Antigone's thinking is spreading the darkness, like the purple dye emitted by a certain whelk to make the sea murky (20). This tiny example reveals the whole art of Sophocles, insofar as I can get hold of it. Where a translation may have Ismene saying "you seem to be pondering something," the word Sophocles has used for ponder is ka/khainein, not an invented word, but not a very common one either, and one still heavily laden with its metaphoric origin. The root of the word is the name of the purple murex, a sea mollusc which clouds the water when �4 THE ST. JOHN'S REVIEW it is threatened. Its secretion is the dye used by ancient kings for their royal purple. The animal itself was therefore valuable, and worth searching for through the murk. Thus its name came also to mean the searcher, as for example Kalchas, the seer in Book One of the Iliad. This is Sophoclean language: concrete, metaphoric, sensuous, and strong. We who do not speak his language must read whole entries in Liddell and Scott to hear what his characters are saying, and never be content to pick out one meaning that seems to fit the context. But there is still another favorite device of Sophocles in the line. Not only does Ismene say that Antigone is pondering, with a word that carries layers meaning gloom, royalty, and divine insight; she says it is clear (deloun) that she is doing so. Sophocles loves to jam together words whose senses clash. "It is clear that you are in a murky soup of thoughts of royalty and divinity." The introduction of the word "clear" serves only to emphasize that nothing here is clear. I will note later some magnificent examples of this trick. It is in this scene in and about darkness that the themes of the play are introduced, and they are not law and conscience. The opening line is Antigone's: 0 koinon autade/phon Ismenes kara, "Shared self-sister, heart of Ismene." The word autade/phos means prosaically full-sister, daughter of the same mother as well as father, but this scene, like the whole play, is so full of the word autos and its compounds that one must, in retrospect if not from the beginning, hear it as superimposing the meaning self on that of sister. Similarly, kara, meaning head, or very summit of what someone is, like our use of heart to mean someone's very core, carries the sense of Ismene's essential self. Antigone is saying "Ismene, what is most you yourself is also shared, is my self, so fully are we sisters." The two-sided question -what is shared? and what is oneself?- is the center of Sophocles' envisioning of the Oedipus story. Here, at the beginning of the play, the merging of two sisters into one self is a pathetic illusion. Before the end of the ninety-nine lines Antigone is telling Ismene she hates her. This moment when the sisters might be loving and comforting one another becomes a new division and separation, like that between their brothers. The image which dominates the whole play is the one which fills Ismene's imagination in this scene. She describes it twice. "We two were deprived oftwo brothers, dying on one day by a double hand" (13-14). And again, "two brothers, in the course of one day, selfslaying wretched ones, working out a common doom with mutual hands" (55-57). It might be a great misfortune that each brother gave the other a fatal wound, but the special insight that makes this a nightmare vision for Ismene is contained, in the first telling, in the singular phrase, "a double hand," and in the second in the reflexive participle, "self-slaying." We are �SACHS 5 seeing a combat to the death fought with a mirror, so that the hand one lifts to strike the other moves backward to kill oneself. Oedipus lifted his hand against his father, and destroyed himself. Here that deed is doubled, as both Eteocles and Polyneices strike what seems to be merely a brother, but for each turns out to be himself. And now in front of us it begins to be quadrupled, as the sisters too begin tearing themselves apart. We look at Antigone, and through two mirrors we see Oedipus. And there is one more reflected reflection still to come. But why does Antigone's loving greeting of Ismene turn so quickly into a hate-filled parting? It is easy to blame Ismene. When Antigone tells what she intends, Ismene replies that those who are women, weak, and subjects must yield to those who are men, strong, and rulers (58-64). In response to these arguments Antigone is splendid. In forbidding burial of Polyneices, Creon has crossed two boundaries that restrain legitimate rule, into the properly private (48) and into a realm where only the gods can be listened to (77). As for his masculine strength, that can be put to the test by anyone who does not fear death, and when Antigone looks at the image of herself dying for burying a loved brother, she calls it a beautiful thing (72). Ismene insists three times that the deed is impossible (79, 90, 92), but Antigone elegantly and succinctly tells her that there is only one way to know that. She uses the future perfect: "whenever I have no more strength, I shall have stopped" (19). In the Rhetoric, Aristotle tells us that Antigone acts not for the sake of what is useful or beneficial, but for the sake of the beautiful, out of goodness rather than prudence, and in the Ethics he tells us that the specific telos, or end, of virtue is the beautiful (III vii). There is no question here, for example, of any superstitious fear that an unburied Polyneices will be denled access to the other world, but only a clear sight that burying him is right, fitting, appropriate, and leaving him unburied deeply wrong, so that even the sacrifice of another life only makes the whole picture more beautiful. Antigone is a human being in the fullest sense, one courageous enough to do what needs to be done out of no practical calculation, for no reason other than that it is right. Her choice is beautiful, Sophocles' picture of her making it is beautiful, and she is beautiful. But she is also fierce. The chorus will say she is fierce with her father's fierceness (471). In the first scene she is merciless with her sister. But worst of all, she does not listen to Ismene. In the first line, she does not mean: I see you, Ismene, for what you are and take that into myself as part of me. She means: I look at you, Ismene, and see nothing but myself. The two can have a shared self only if Ismene is willing to become Antigone. If she does not feel the same feelings, Antigone rejects her as no true-born sister of hers (37-38). But Ismene is no coward, but in fact a true match �6 THE ST. JOHN'S REVIEW for Antigone in firmness. If we listen to her we hear not a woman afraid to act, but one strong enough to endure anything, if she is convinced that any action will make things worse (39-40). Ismene is frozen in horror before the image of her brothers, not because blood and death and loss are too painful for her to look upon, but because they brought it on themselves. In the speech in which Antigone only hears Ismene saying, let's act like weak women subjects, she in fact is saying much more, that is much more important. She asks Antigone to remember their father, not only dead but having died hated, shamed, and having brought it all on himself, and the mother who was to that father both mother and wife, the two names twisted like the noose with which she mutilated her own life (49-54). Now their brothers have added more horror and shame, and Antigone wants to keep increasing it until they are all wiped out. To Antigone, all the deaths are the work of enemies, against whom the family must be defended (9-10). But Ismene keeps hammering at the fact that everything their parents and brothers suffered was self-inflicted. In Ismene's view, she and Antigone have no enemies but themselves. What they need now is to forgive the beloved dead for their crimes, and be forgiven by them for taking no action (65-67). Antigone's deafness to her sister makes Ismene all the more insistent, and Ismene's insistence makes Antigone all the more determined. Like the blows struck by their brothers, every attempt to persuade turns back on the sister who utters it as a new cause of her isolation. In the course of this first scene, the most important word in the play has been introduced and become increasingly prominent. That word is philia. It means Jove which is not from desire, as eros, nor for all human beings, as agape, nor between unequals, as storge, but for those who are like oneself, of one's own kind. It therefore names both the love within a family and the friendly feeling among fellow-citizens. You have all read the sentence koina ta ton phi/on, the things of friends are common. Aristotle says in the Politics that the proper work of the lawmaker is to produce this feeling among all the citizens (II v 6-8). The confrontation between Antigone and Creon is not between conscience and law, but between philia and philia. This is part of the last of the mirror images of which I spoke. But the word has already come under strain between the two sisters. In Antigone's mouth philia means that which separates us from them, her immediate family from everyone else, all of whom are therefore enemies. It is after Ismene says that there is fault on the side of their family that Antigone begins to say she hates her (86). Antigone's Jove is conditional, and those who do not earn it feel her hate (93-94). Ismene's love is unconditional, no matter what Antigone says or does (98-99). Antigone's words are all �SACHS 7 about philia, and it is genuinely the motive of her deed, but she does not recognize its presence in front of her. This rejection of her sister's love is the worst error brought on by the darkness in which Antigone is moving, and she will pay for it. Creon, though he acts from calculation and prudence, is looking to and acting for the sake of the same philia as is Antigone. Like her also, he has a clouded view of it. His understanding of the friendship that makes human community possible has an intellectual clarity, and his intentions are good, but he is acting quickly in a critical situation, and he makes a bad mistake. The Creon of this play is not the dishonest man he is in Oedipus at Co/onus. Here he is a fitting antagonist for Antigone in the stubborn purity of his determination to do what is best. He has inherited the responsibility for a maimed and miserable city. Though his title to rule comes through blood-kinship to the ruling family, all of Thebes's long history of troubles has come from that same family. With the sunrise of this day, the instant he becomes king, he intends to cut off that family connection once and for all. His inaugural address to the elders of his city is meant to show them a genuinely new beginning and show himself as someone they can trust. They are to watch Polyneices suffer the ultimate violation, left as a piece of meat for dogs and birds (205-6). They will see that to Creon this violator of the city is no nephew, but is nothing (182-83). Creon's true decree is that all bonds of love and loyalty will henceforth begin with the city; no other bonds precede it, carry over into it, or carry any weight against it (187-90). When one reflects that the ties within the Oedipus family are those of a blood-kinship flowing back into itself in a grotesque way, Creon's attempt to destroy all such ties is understandable. But as the words for same blood, xunaimon, and common blood, haima koinon, resound in his speech, we remember that Creon has a son and that his very name is blood. But Creon understands philia no better than blood-kinship, and no better than Antigone does. In fact the two misunderstandings of philia are identical. Just as Antigone has sisterly love before her in Ismene, Creon has the fellow-feeling of common citizenship before him in the chorus, and he is equally blind. The chorus, when Creon encounters it, is in the grip of a strong common emotion which he is preventing from flowing into action, and he doesn't even know it. For him the sunrise is his entry into kingship, but for the people of the city it is the moment they discover that the besieging Argive army has left in the night. Creon is full of his cleverness in having figured out a way to make them one people again, and does not see that they are already of one mind, one heart, and one motion, if he would just leave them alone, if not listen to them and join �8 THE ST. JOHN'S REVIEW them. What the chorus wants is to wipe out the war and the fear that have filled them, with a day and night of feasting, dancing, singing, and thankfulness to the gods (148-54). Creon is telling them to prolong the horror by watching the desecration of Polyneices' corpse. Creon and Antigone are mirror images in many ways. Antigone's imagination in the first scene is dominated by a picture of enemies creeping up unseen on her friends (9-10). Creon likewise from his first scene keeps referring to a plot against him fueled by money (221-22, 289-303, 1055). There is no smallest shred of evidence in the play that this plot exists anywhere but in his imagination. Both feel the need to act without delay because of these threats. And having acted, both are inflexible. Creon compares Antigone to the hardest iron, which most easily shatters, and to the wildest horse, most easily broken by a small bit (474-78), while Haemon compares Creon to a tree that does not bend in the wind, and so is uprooted, and to one who keeps a sail too taut, and capsizes (712-17). But the fundamental identity between them is seen in the words which are compounds of autos. The Chorus tells Antigone that an autognotos orga, a self-willed temper, destroyed her (875), while Teiresias tells Creon that his authadia, self-pleasing or self-will, makes him guilty for his own bad luck (1028). The self-will of Antigone and Creon is the conviction each has of being the radical originator of his or her own deeds. This is the error of Oedipus. Oedipus left home to start life fresh, by his own doing. When he lifts his hand against his father, that is the outward, factual manifestation of his effort to cut off his own sources and be in the world without antecedents. Likewise, Antigone must act alone to save the honor of her family. She cannot run the risk of letting there be any love between her sister and herself which might dilute her resolution or divert her strength. The two of them might become a new being, and see the good in some way other than she sees it now. And likewise Creon as ruler has the whole world on his shoulders alone. He repeatedly uses compounds of the word kosmos when insisting that he cannot in any slightest way allow himself to be ruled by a woman, a subject, or a child (726-27, 734, 746). If the ruler is ruled there is anarchy (672), and the ordered world is destroyed (660, 677, 730). The meeting of Antigone with Creon is thus the confrontation of two powerful, isolated figures, doing battle for the sake of philia. Faced with each other, both are at their worst. In their determination to destroy each other, each destroys himself. The axis of the play seems to me to be the pair of lines 523 and 524. That is where they stake themselves. Creon has been arguing that the reverence, honor, and love shown to Eteocles must �SACHS 9 mean nothing if the same rites are accorded the enemy he lost his life fighting. Antigone has been replying with immovable certainty that what Eteocles and all the dead and the gods want is exactly what she has done (505; cf. 89). They will never agree. Earlier, telling Creon in effect to shut up and get on with whatever he intends to do, Antigone has said "my words were born displeasing you" (501). Now, speaking her last words to him, she says, "I was born not to join in hating but to join in loving." Creon's last words back to her are, "Well you are now on your way below, if one must love, love them." Antigone's word symphilein, to join in loving, and Creon's word phileteon, one must love, are the nooses with which they hang themselves. Antigone's word is beautiful, but she herself disfigures it. Creon's word is a grotesque malformation with which not even he can live. Both Antigone and Creon are far gone in spite when they utter these words. Antigone is splendid in her courage, but she has been carrying a contradiction within her since the first scene, and it has now come to the surface. She has told Ismene that her love is conditional, and that Ismene has failed to earn it. But she has just explained with scorn that she cannot make a distinction between her brothers because her love is unconditional. Which is the truth? At this moment Ismene comes on stage, and all of Antigone's passionate coldness is turned upon her. Ismene had wanted nothing to do with the deed, but wants everything to do with the sister who must now suffer for it. All Ismene's words of desperate love for her sister are met by Antigone with irony and mockery. When Ismene finally screams, "Why do you torture me like this, when it does you no good?" (550), all the fight finally goes out of Antigone. "In pain I am laughing at you, if laughing is what it is." Antigone makes no effort at reconciliation, but Ismene has stopped her runaway anger. The effect of this stopping is to turn Antigone inward, where she begins facing the death she has chosen. When she comes back onstage she will be a different Antigone from what we have seen of her so far. When Antigone has been led away for now, Haemon enters to plead for her life. Just as Antigone's anger at Creon missed its mark and hit her sister, so now all Creon's rage at Antigone lands on his son. In accordance with his word phileteon, which says that love is a matter of impersonal necessity, to be arranged by prudent deliberation, Creon first explains to Haemon that when he thinks well about it he will see that this is not a woman he wants to love (648-54). But Creon sees with fury that Haemon fights for, follows, and serves this woman in place of his father (740, 746, 756). Creon knows how to handle proven and incipient treason at one stroke, as he has done with Polyneices and the city. "Bring her here at once," he �10 THE ST. JOHN'S REVIEW says to the soldiers, "and kill her in front of her bridegroom's eyes" (760-61). Creon has gone momentarily mad, but he has lost Haemon forever. He is hemorrhaging in front of us, and this wound will not close. With the device of Haemon's name, Sophocles shows us Creon in confrontation with his own blood. This was already true, more distantly, in his confrontation with his niece and desecration of the body of his nephew. And it is a truth implicit in the political principle by which he has chosen to rule, that only those human bonds will be recognized and honored that derive from the political one. From the beginning of his kingship, Creon has been doing violence to himself without knowing it. It must be emphasized that there is no intellectual contradiction here. Creon could live by his principle if he were a worse man, one whose cruelty was not a momentary mad impulse but a settled disposition, or if he were a man of firmer principle, like Brutus, the first consul of Rome, who killed his own sons for the sake of his city deliberately. But Creon is just an ordinarily good man, who considers his son and his wife part of himself. By his rules he has judged Polyneices simply an enemy, with no claim on him or on Thebes. But in so doing, he has made Antigone a second enemy, on account of sisterly love, and Haemon a third, on account of erotic love, and, on account of a mother's love for the last of her children left alive, Creon's wife Eurydice· a fourth. It is not money but love that has produced the plot against Creon, a widening circle of unruly, ungovernable loves from which he himself is not exempt. When he returns from seeing his son try to kill him and then kill himself, to discover that his wife has killed herself, Creon for the first time sees the truth: "I, I killed you, useless I" (1319-20), but also "I am dead" (1288), "I am no more than nothing" (1322). His own self lay outside him, in his wife and son, by way of bonds over which he had no control. He was not the source of the ordered hierarchy of Thebes, nor even the free origin of his own life, but part of a shared self, which he stabbed inward to the heart by striking outward. There are pictures in the play of lives better ordered. Haemon tells his father that he can listen to and respect a youth, a woman, and his subjects and be all the better a father, man, and king (728-29, 737, 739, 741, 749). The chorus tells Creon that he and his son have spoken well doubly, mutually (725), even in disagreeing. This means not that these old men are too witless to make up their minds, but that they see the truth only in some yielding of both sides to each other. And the loveliest and most touching moment of the play is Ismene's second entrance. Antigone, wrapped up in herself, sees only someone who would not act but wants to share the glory (538-39, 542-43, 546-47). Creon, wrapped up in his mission to restore civil order, sees lsmene's tears, and takes them for an in- �SACHS 11 voluntary confession of treason (491-94). But the chorus, when they see her, break into a brief lyric passage, the only lines they speak in the play which are neither dialogue nor part of a full choral ode (526-30): And now before the gates here is Ismene, With sister-loving tears dropping down. A cloud above her brows blood-red Stains her face, Wetting a beautiful cheek. Philadelpha, sister-loving, is here an adjective modifying tears. I remember, when I first read Antigone with a sophomore language class, asking how a feeling and its object can be attributed to drops of salt-water. A student named Ann Tive said simply, "They love her.'' Only the chorus speaks true words about Ismene, and they are loving words. Though the chorus itself speaks later of eros keeping watch on the cheek of a maiden, the love present here is not desire, not the remembered lust that moves the old men of Troy when they look at Helen. These men of Thebes have suffered a long time for the family of Oedipus, but they love this girl, and because they love her they can know her. Similarly, in the whole play it is only Ismene who speaks of Haemon with. love (572). This has confused centuries of editors so much that they often give the line to Antigone, though every manuscript gives it to Ismene, and it has tempted at least one modern reader to convict Ismene of desire for her sister's fiance. But Ismene and the chorus are examples of the ph ilia that the play is all about. They can love people a step removed from them because they genuinely love those nearest them. One of the most striking images in the play is that of Thiresias, the blind seer. A great point is made of his being led by a boy. He enters with the words, "Lords of Thebes, we have come a common road, two seeing out of one" (988-89). Thebes had lords, plural, not a dictator, because everyone must in some ways be led by others. Later he speaks of things "I learned from this boy... for to me he is a guide, as I to others" (1012, 1014). Everyone who is unwilling to be led goes astray, misses the mark. Aristotle's famous word in the Poetics, harmartia, which somehow came to be misunderstood as a flaw, begins in archery and eventually becomes the New Thstament word for sin. The English word error has perhaps the closest range of meaning. Teiresias tells Creon that erring is common to all human beings (1023-24). That is why he shouldn't be afraid even now to change his course, but it is also why he should have known in the first place that Polyneices deserved burial. The city need not have joined in �12 THE ST. JOHN'S REVIEW the honors, but there is no crime about which it can say that the criminal went so far astray that even in death he cannot be allowed to be recognized as human; and that we, the rest of us, are the only ones safely within the human fold. But Creon's being wrong does not make Antigone right. Ismene's last speech to Antigone uses the same word, examartia, that Teiresias will use: "Surely the erring of us two is equal" (558). Why do all human beings err? The chorus, in the ode pol/a ta deina (332-83), suggests that the very excellence itself which defines being human is the source of error. ~~wonders are many," the ode begins, "yet nothing stranger than a human being walks." Th be human is to find a passage through anything, sea, wind, or earth, and to find a mechanism to overcome the power of anything, bird, beast, or fish, cold, sleet, or rain. The characteristic human epithet is pantoporos, all-resourceful, passing through every obstacle. Antigone has used the verb from the same root in the first scene to tell her sister, "I will find a way through, heaping up a tomb for a most loved brother" (80-81). But in one of those magnificent clashings I spoke of earlier, the chorus's word pantoporos collides with aporos, resourceless, helpless (360). The meaning of aporos is immediately negated: "helpless he comes upon nothing that is to be." But the poetic effect of the line is the shock of hearing pantoporos aporos. In retrospect, or in reading, the words can be tamed, but the poet is writing for the ear, and Sophocles' words are wild. Pantoporos aporos cannot fail to confuse, to disturb. The choral odes are all hypnotic, and this one conveys a dreamlike sense that the very triumph of overcoming every obstacle is an achievement of helplessness. That is certainly a description that fits Creon. He becomes the helpless wreck he is at the end of the play precisely by mastering everyone, overcoming all opposition. In the antistrophe to the pantoporos aporos stanza the same position has the words hupsipolis apolis, supreme in the city/ without a city. Supremacy destroys reciprocal relations, and destroys the community. But when the chorus ends the ode in dread of human greatness it is Antigone who appears before them. Ismene has told her amechanon eras, ''you lust after impossibilities" (90), and that she is determined perissa prassein, "to do extravagant things," things that go beyond (68). It is primarily Antigone who displays the human excellence of refusing to accept any restraints to her will. Those restraints are outwardly Creon and his soldiers, but more importantly the inconvenient love and inconvenient otherness from herself of Ismene. Philia is the power that saves us from greatness, the acceptance of others into a wider self that can no longer say "I will not be stopped." But even though Antigone's defiance earned her death, she does not �SACHS 13 in the end go to her death defiant. She has one more scene, and in it she begins to return out of her isolation. The movement of the scene is difficult to understand, but full of truth. The chorus cries when it sees her being led to dealh, but conceals its tears in her presence. She asks the chorus for pity, but it gives her honor instead. She cries out that they are mocking her, and they rebuke her. In response to their rebuke, she begins telling painful and frightening truths about herself for the first time in the play. She has finally allowed someone to get close enough to break through her control. It happens harshly, violently, because she has fought so hard to make it impossible. As with her sister, Antigone has heaped contempt and scorn on the chorus to their faces. She was certain she knew what they thought, and that they kept silent like cowering dogs. It is her ugliest insult: "they tuck their mouths between their legs" (509). Then it was false, but now they do in fact conceal their honest feelings, because she has been so unapproachable. Look at me, she says to them now, going to death solitary, unmarried, choosing to marry death (806-16). They tell her what she seems to want to hear: You are glorious, autonomous, not a victim, but alone of mortals in choosing death (817-22). She compares herself to Niobe, turned into rock, eternally weeping, and they say, Yes, you are godlike (823-38). This is when she screams out that she is mocked. She wants not praise for her solitary courage, but pity for her loneliness, not the glory of Niobe but the pathos of her unending misery. They tell her everything she is suffering is her own fault: "You went out to the extreme edge of boldness, and crashed into the high seat of Justice" (853-54). But they immediately soften their rebuke with the thought that maybe it is somehow her father's struggle that she is paying for. And now the lid that she has kept so firmly on her feelings is finally off. "You have touched my most painful worries," she says: Were my parents monsters? What in the world am I that was born out of such horror? (857-66). We see now why Antigone erupted into such violent hatred when Ismene suggested there was something wrong with their family. It was a hatred of her own uncertainties. Ismene was a self-sister, one that Antigone was trying to expel from herself. Antigone's earlier certainty was a forcible effort of will in opposition to her uncertainty. Then she had said, "I know I am pleasing those whom it is most necessary for me to please" (89). Now she tells the truth: I nourish, that is, I work to keep alive, a hope that I will be received with love by father, mother, and brother (897-99). How is she nourishing that hope? She has fed it by searching out the final, unassailable reason why she had to act as she did. These lines which we must now consider are much debated. Most editors and translators cut them out of the play, or put them in �14 THE ST. JOHN'S REVIEW brackets. Sir Richard Jebb gives three reasons for doing so: the lines are inconsistent with things Antigone has said earlier, illogical in themselves, and ungrammatical. Yet the lines are in all the manuscripts, and they are quoted by Aristotle. That the lines are inconsistent with her earlier appeals to divine law is true; she has changed now, and stopped pretending to be doing a duty. That the lines are illogical is exactly what Aristotle praises them for; it is here that he says Antigone displays that she was acting not for any benefit but for the beautiful, not out of thought but out of goodness. That the grammar of the lines is strained is a sign that she is strained; this is understandable since she is facing death with all her private nightmares coming to the surface of her thoughts. In the Philoctetes, Sophocles has the main character go to pieces in front of us, with incoherent speeches and a long scream. And in the fourth line of this play, Antigone in her passion says there is nothing without doom that has not come to her, when what she means would have one less negative in it. What does she say that so disturbed Jebb and Fitzgerald and others? She says (904-20) that had it been a child or husband of hers lying dead on the field she would have left it to rot. She could always get another husband, or bear another child, but with her parents dead, how could she ever get another brother? This is a repellent thought, and there is no reason to think for one second that it is true. Imagine trying to take a child of hers, living or dead, away from Antigone. We have known her for only part of a day, but it is still obvious that it would be easier to take a cub from a lioness or a grizzly bear. Why does she tell so ugly a falsehood? I think it is an exaggerated way of saying, I buried Polyneices for the sake of Polyneices. Her brother was irreplaceable, but love knows that every human being is irreplaceable. At the fringes of thought, Antigone finds an illogic for what has no logic. The immediate sight of love tells love what it must do. When Antigone said it was not her nature to share in hating, but symphilein, to join in loving, that was a smug debater's point against Creon, and a lie made obvious by the presence of Ismene. But Antigone now in her weakness and misery has made that claim true. She has let go of everything but love. The murky soup of divine law, her family's blameless nobility, and the human joy of overcoming all restraint have now ceased to cloud her sight. In her imagination now she sees Polyneices as the only thing in the world that matters, and the claims on her from loving him as the only ones in the world not subject to conditions. The important thing about ph ilia is that it is natural, given. We find ourselves in the world loving others who belong to us and to whom we belong. What we are is a result of whom and what we love. On the other hand, the defining characteristic of human being is to accept nothing �SACHS 15 natural as given but to be always overcoming every obstacle to our purposes or whims. Antigone is glorious in her successful defiance of Creon. He says, "I am no aner, she is the aner" (484) if I let her get away with this, but he is already too late. She outshines him even when they are at a standoff. But she has announced that philia was the end for the sake of which she had broken all restraints. The deed and its end were incompatible. That is the impossibility Ismene had seen from the first. When Antigone returns before us on her way to die, she has collapsed under the weight of the contradictions in her soul. But she has made her final choice. It is love itself with its passivity and uncertainty that she has chosen, rather than the glory of being its champion. ��The Nobility of Sophocles' Antigone Janet A. Dougherty When Sophocles first presents Antigone to us, she is already determined to violate Creon's decree prohibiting the burial of one of her two dead brothers. Each has just died at the hands of the other in a battle for the kingship of Thebes. Eteocles has been honored in a hero's funeral for defending the city. Polyneices is dishonored as a traitor, his flesh cast outside the city walls to rot and to be devoured by vultures and wild dogs. This is all the background for the drama that Sophocles gives us explicity, but his Greek audiences were familiar with the story of Antigone's father, Oedipus, the former king of Thebes. They were aware that his two sons had quarreled over who was to rule the city after their father's death. Either Eteocles had refused to step down when his turn to rule alternately with his brother was complete, or Polyneices, the elder, objected to his brother's ruling instead of himself. Whichever it was, Polyneices then married an Argive princess and marshaled an army of warriors to conquer and recapture his city. The play begins at dawn on the day after the Theban army has successfully repelled Polyneices and his allies. Since the civil war has ended leaving the two contenders for the rule of the city dead, Creon, the uncle of Eteocles and Polyneices and, at the time, the next in line to the throne, now has power in Thebes. In one of his first acts as king, he has prohibited the burial of Polyneices. When Antigone decides to attempt to bury her brother, she deliberately defies Creon's decree. Janet Dougherty is a Thtor at St. John's College, Santa Fe. This lecture was first delivered at the Santa Fe campus in October, 1986. The translations are the author's. 17 �18 THE ST. JOHN'S REVIEW In her opening speech Antigone refers to the misery and dishonor that she and Ismene have suffered, evils that have sprung from Oedipus's slaying of his father and from his incestuous marriage with his mother. These evils have, as Antigone sees it, continued into the present. Creon's recent decree prohibiting the burial of her brother is another in a long line of dishonors to which she sees no end. She cannot view the decree with the detachment her sister displays. Ismene expresses the hope and expectation that those under the earth will forgive her for not risking her life to bury Polyneices. She believes no woman is capable of resisting the power of the king. In Ismene's view, Antigone's determination to oppose Creon will surely be the cause of her death, and thus of another in the series of horrible, untimely deaths that have ravaged the family. For Antigone, in contrast, this deterntination is the evidence that she is truly well-born. She has no choice but to seek nobility in death- her formulation is kalon moi touto poiousa thanein (line 72)-there is no splendor in resigned moderation. Thus, in a final attempt to persuade Ismene to aid her, she says: "You will soon show whether you are noble by nature, or a base daughter of a noble line." Antigone believes that both sisters are noble by birth, and Creon seems to have ignored the nobility of Oedipus's fantily in dishonoring the corpse of his son. But Antigone also believes that she and her sister must prove their nobility by burying him. It would surprise me if it were correct to call any birth noble, but even if it sometimes is, the births of the children of Oedipus could not be so called. Antigone is confused when she asserts that if Ismene refuses to help in the burial of Polyneices, she will prove herself unworthy of her origin. The same birth that is the source of Antigone's shame seems to provide the basis of her claim to honor, but she nevertheless recognizes that honor depends upon deeds. In her actions throughout the play she clings to her place in her tainted family. She hopes to return to loving intimacy with all of its members in Hades. Her hope is bound up with her conviction that the family is the source of nobility. We must try to understand both Antigone's conviction and her hope, for it is her motives that provide the key to the meaning of the play. Antigone's preoccupation with her genesis and her expressions of concern for her unburied brother seem to most readers excessive. The intensity of her feelings is all the more striking given the contrast they make with Ismene's reaction to Creon's decree. It is not inevitable that a daughter of Oedipus should feel the dishonor of her brother's corpse so acutely, for apparently Ismene does not. Ismene's response is reasonable: for one who wants to live, it makes little sense to court an untimely death for (he sake of a corpse, even the corpse of one's kin. Ismene at least is able to envision a life for her sister that is not plagued with the memory of what �DOUGHERTY 19 happened in the lives of their parents and their brothers. She reminds Antigone that she is engaged to be married to the son of the man who has just acquired power. Ismene believes that Antigone should ignore the fact that Creon has handed down the hated decree, and concentrate on happier thoughts. Why is Antigone so closed to this hopeful attitude of Ismene's? How can Antigone's sense of her duty to bury her brother outweigh the love of a man as promising and attractive as Sophocles shows Haemou to be? For Antigone, the prospect of marriage must take second place to her obligation to challenge Creon and to uphold the laws of the gods below. The conflict between Antigone and Creon is really a conflict over the nature of the city and its needs. Creon's decree exemplifies his understanding of the city, and Antigone believes that she cannot live honorably there. I shall argue that her objection to Creon's city is essentially correct and that, when she errs in her understanding of herself, her errors are due to her sharing with Creon certain presuppositions that derive from the legendary founding of Thebes. I shall argue further that the founding of Thebes is a model for the founding of all cities. The conflict between Creon and Antigone is, then, a conflict of concern for us all. Antigone is an imprudent, wrongheaded, and perhaps even mad young woman. Still, she is extremely impressive in her single-mindedness and in her firm resistance to the power of the king. No sensitive reader can remain completely indifferent to her haughty dignity and her determination. Her insistence that the gods below demand the burial of her brother commands respect, for we cannot without an arrogance that resembles Creon's dismiss the possibility that the laws of the gods supersede the laws of the city. But the first three episodes of the play provide no clear evidence of Antigone's rightness, and the three choral odes separating these episodes are tauntingly ambiguous. The hardest evidence of the views of the gods that Sophocles presents comes late in the play, in the form of Teiresias's testimony to Creon that the gods will not accept Theban sacrifice as long as Polyneices' corpse lies rotting. But he also warns Creon of the anger of the cities whose men fought with Polyneices: Creon has left their bodies to rot, unmourned, as well. The anger of these cities may be Teiresias's real concern. If so, Thiresias is warning Creon that he has been a dangerously incompetent ruler rather than an impious man. Furthermore, although Thiresias's words establish that Creon's decree was wrong, they do not clearly support Antigone's rebellion against it. Before we can clarify and evaluate her reasons for rebelling, we must see the implications of Creon's distasteful decree. In Creon's view, it is clear that his responsibility for the safety of the �20 THE ST JOHN'S REVIEW city justifies his ruling that anyone who tries to bury Polyneices' corpse shall die. But his decree has undermined the distinction between men and animals by treating a man's corpse as though it were the corpse of a dog, or worse. Teiresias's speech later in the play allows us to speculate that if the gods exist and wish to be worshiped, they must have an interest in preserving this distinction. Even before 'Thiresias speaks, we must wonder whether Creon's decree can be justified. Why not allow the two sisters to bury their brother's body privately, without honor or distinction? Creon thinks that if he as ruler does not utterly repudiate even the physical remains of the traitor, he would himself be wounding the city to its heart. Polyneices threatened the existence of the city not only in the way that any belligerent enemy would have, but also, and even more dangerously, in presenting the example of a man violating the city of his birth. Creon responds by declaring it a crime to bury Polyneices' body, whether in Theban earth or anywhere at all. There is no question that Creon recognizes that he is interfering with the established means of disposing of the dead, for if he did not, the distinction he makes between Polyneices and Eteocles would have no force. Clearly, in making this distinction Creon intends to announce that the traditional practice of ritual burial is not applicable to the corpse of such a monster as Polyneices. He means to show that one who fights against his own city not only rescinds his citizenship but also relinquishes his humanity. Creon sees the city as the necessary basis of friendship (190). He also considers it to be the source of human life, as contrasted with the life of mere beasts. Men and women who do not submit to legitimate rule are beasts; or rather, human beings are beasts but for their submission to rule. Creon articulates this view over and over again through his constant use of animal imagery. Antigone is like a spirited horse (477-79), and so are potentially disobedient subjects. Ismene is an adder who has sucked out Creon's blood (531-33). Polyneices may be something worse than an animal, for he "came to feed on kindred blood" (201-2). Creon retains his use of such imagery even at the end of the play when he observes that a god " ... drove me into ways of cruelty, overturning and trampling on my joy" (1273-75). Maybe even the gods are not fundamentally different from animals in his view. Creon's understanding of the city as crucial to the distinction between men and beasts helps to explain why, in his opening speech, in stark contrast with the chorus's account in the parodos, Creon is silent concerning the victory over the Argive army and ignores the disturbing fact that the two brothers fought each other to the death. There is not much to celebrate in the victory of the Theban army in battle if the city is about to succumb �DOUGHERTY 21 to bestiality. Fratricide seems not seriously to disturb Creon, but the violation of one's city arouses in him all the horror incest can arouse, if not more. From the start Creon anticipates that someone will try to bury the body (219; cf. 289 ff.), and he expects this opposition to come from political enemies, or from others whom they might bribe. We see no evidence that anyone is jealous of his power. Creon does not expect Polyneices' sisters to resist him, partly because they are women, and partly because he is blind to the possibility that, for some, piety and the tie of blood can be strong enough to overpower even the desire to live. This is Creon's view. Now let us examine Antigone's. As Antigone sees it, Creon bears the primary responsibility for forcing her to violate his decree, for in promulgating it he has tried to transform an act of piety- the burial of one's own dead- into an act of treachery. Antigone does not describe Polyneices as an individual, and we have no reason to think that there is anything beyond the fact that they are brother and sister to account for the intensity of her feeling for him. The mere fact of intimate blood relation matters. In Antigone's case the blood tie is strengthened by her terrible family history, and the weight of that history is all the more pressing because she feels compelled to bear that weight by herself. Antigone's birth determines who she is. Even her name, antiagainst or before, plus gone- birth, suggests how overwhelmingly troubling it is to Antigone that she is the daughter of her own brother. As her name implies, she wants desperately to undo her birth, and at the same time to seek the root of her family's nobility, indeed all human nobility, precisely in this disgraceful birth. She cannot reject her own birth, however, without rejecting human birth itself. With respect to erasing the shame of her birth, Antigone's thought is apparently something like this: In correcting the impiety involved in leaving her brother's corpse unburied she will act honorably (as, she believes, Oedipus would have done), and at the same time she will replace the memory of the hideousness of her birth with the memory of her own fine act. It is she, and apparently not the city, who is concerned with the shame of her birth, for there is no evidence that it will affect her future position in Thebes. Furthermore, Antigone demands that in bestowing its honors the city acknowledge the difference between what is respectable and what is shameful in itself. She demands that all of Thebes recognize that, although the circumstances of her brother's death were not praiseworthy, the city's behavior in failing to bury him is more shameful. Worse, it is impious. Antigone's demand that the city see these things is an appropriate �22 THE ST. JOHN'S REVIEW demand. But that she must act out her criticism of Creon in a noble death for the sake of her brother's corpse suggests more: she must compel the city in general and Crenn in particular to recognize her worth. Antigone cannot rest in the private assurance that she can distinguish piety from impiety. Antigone, like Creon, believes that the difference between the high and the low will dissolve without the city's support. Her piety must be reinforced by the city's standards. It must assure her nobility as well. It is in making this demand that Antigone's intention goes beyond an attempt to cope with her personal history, and becomes an attempt to alter human history generally. Again, to show how this may be I will begin by developing Creon's position. I shall then return to see where Antigone stands. Creon's primary fear is that human baseness will destroy his city. But in leaving the corpse that belongs beneath the earth above it, Creon has confused at least two sources of baseness. A man may be base in that he lacks the honors a city may grant, and he may be also be base by nature. That is, he may lack the human qualities that merit honor. Baseness in the man, as we all know, does not always coincide with baseness in his position. Moreover, many of our private and physical acts make our kinship with the animals undeniable, thus casting doubt upon the nobility even of the supposedly "best" of us. As long as we live, we must accept that most of our acts are determined by our corporeal nature. To the extent that these force us to recognize our similarity to beasts, the city attempts to treat them like corpses: it conceals them from view. Public institutions like marriage and legal paternity give us a way to veil such acts under the guise of choice and agreement, and many cities behave as though nobility, rather than uncivilized, infant human beings, is propagated within certain families. Corpses, of course, are always unworthy of the honors of the city. The city has an obvious interest in recognizing that their proper place is beneath the earth. But Creon considers even burial an honor (time) that is his to withhold or to bestow. This is his most glaring mistake. Creon is unaware, or willfully denies, that his city owes its health to a distinction between the low and the high that is simply human, and thus independent of any particular ruler. Antigone responds to Creon's error with a similar error. She too fails to distinguish between dishonor that derives from something shameful or disgraceful in itself (aiskhros), and the unjust deprivation of the honors and offices of the city (hai timat). Or perhaps it is more accurate to say that she does not even recognize the latter. The gods, and not the city, preserve the difference between human beings and animals, in her view. She insists that the city recognize that the commands of the gods below supplant its laws and its needs. This insistence accounts for the fact that, �DOUGHERTY 23 even though she is too weak to complete the burial rites for her brother by herself, she is determined to be discovered in the attempt. Antigone gets angry when Ismene promises to keep her "crime" secret: she would prefer that her sister proclaim it out loud. After Ismene refuses to help her sister, Antigone loses sight of the distinction between what is merely shameful, or at least unworthy of respect, and what is impious. For Antigone is weak: she lacks the strength to bury a corpse properly without help. She never considers calling upon Haemon, her betrothed, probably because he is Creon's son. Far from being confident that the gods will reward her pious intention and her lonely efforts, she fears that she has failed altogether. Her incomplete and perhaps ineffectual acts leave her exposed to the charge of impiety. There is no place in the cosmos she inhabits for generous and forgiving gods. If it is true that the gods recognize only deeds and not intentions, it is ultimately impossible to distinguish between what their laws command and what the city and its laws support, for it is not only isolated women who need the help of others to act. Without the help of one another, individuals can rarely even survive. When they do, they are generally indistinguishable from beasts. Antigone is consistent in her understanding of the gods, but her view seems unnecessarily harsh. If the gods take an interest in humans at all, must not they acknowledge the defects we cannot overcome? Antigone does not consider that the city must fail if it demands of its citizens all that piety would require, and that even the gods may recognize this fact. With respect to the city, Antigone is mistaken. To the extent that the birth of humanity depends upon the city and its diverse ways of obscuring our bestial character, Antigone rejects and opposes this birth. She assumes that the family can exist without the city, and in making this assumption, she errs again. But it is not clear that she errs in her understanding of the gods. What grounds, apart from our wishes, do we have for believing that they are as generous and as merciful as Ismene hopes? Both Creon and Antigone reveal through their behavior that they are either unwilling or unable to separate what the city considers dishonorable from what is low or unworthy in itself. The chorus have the distinction no clearer, for in the first stasimon, where they glorify the various achievements of man, they repudiate him who fails to honor the laws of the land. They do not consider that it is sometimes appropriate to question the validity of a law, and even to rebel. Although they also refer in the same phrase to "the justice which he has sworn by the gods to uphold," there is no evidence that they see the gods as providing guidelines or limits for human justice. What sort of city would be so sure that the gods always �24 THE ST. JOHN'S REVIEW support what the ruler commands? The leader of the chorus does express dismay to find that Antigone, a woman and a member of the ruling family, has violated Creon's decree. But no one defends her. Antigone's behavior reveals that it is in the family that the commands of the gods, at least those of the underworld, are learned and remembered. It seems to be especially the gods below to whom the standard of shame belongs. Experience reveals that human beings develop a sense of shame nowhere if not in the family. Although Teiresias does not mention it in his account to Creon of the gods' response to his decree, it makes sense, I think, to suppose that it is the family who will ordinarily bury their dead and perform the rituals required by the gods below. But this institution does more than provide for the disposal of the city's corpses. The passions that allow for one's attachment to others first arise in the family. Shame is essential to love. If the city does not recognize both the shame of its citizens and their private attachments, it becomes an arbitrary order in which all subjects are slaves. 1b avoid despotism, the city must recognize limits to its authority. While it imposes a political hierarchy over the hierarchy of the family, the city must accept the essential similarity of its citizens. That similarity lies partly in their recognition of the horror of death and of other things even more horrible, and partly in the fact that each has loved ones by whom he will be remembered after his death. It is an inevitable fact that these loved ones can never include the whole city. Those who compose the city, whether rulers or ruled, are dignified as well as partial in their private attachments, for where we learn shame we also learn awe. In making citizenship identical with humanity, Creon's city both rejects men's need for privateness and at the same time destroys their ability to look up. He substitutes force for love, and fear, a bestial emotion, for everything that would support the noble character a ruler should wish his subjects to have. Creon ignores all this when he makes his decree. He recognizes only that no one freely chooses to die. If all of Thebes has difficulty recognizing a standard for the laws that is independent of them, this difficulty may stem from the legendary origin of the city. The original Thebans presumably arose from the earth, their mother, which Cadmus sowed with the teeth of the dragon he killed. As legend has it, Ares was the father of that dragon and Athena advised Cadmus to plant its teeth in the earth. The gods, then, had a part in the founding of Thebes. More accurately, that founding was based upon a conflict between the two gods-Ares, whose son Cadmus slayed, and Athena, whose advice he followed. The earth, too, is a goddess; her children are the ancestors of both Creon and Antigone. The original Thebans are clearly �DOUGHERTY 25 not godlike- most of those who sprang from the earth slew one another. They are not even fully human, for the human family was not part of Thebes at its origin. The decrees of the rulers and the conventions they enforced alone brought the family into being. While Antigone's resistance to Creon's decree teaches us something about the family in general, it cannot be denied that hers is no ordinary family. It is, in fact, more reminiscent of the origin of Thebes than of the groups of parents and children of which most cities are composed. If the earth gave birth to the original Thebans, and if all true Thebans arise from the earth, the city of Thebes can be nothing but a subhuman and incestuous family. Creon's neglect of the family and all that it stands for implies that he sees the city as a family, or at least as an adequate substitute for a family. Moreover, when the leader of the chorus objects that Creon cannot kill his son's betrothed, Creon responds by remarking that there are plenty of other fields for Haemon to plow. He speaks as though mere earth were an appropriate wife for a true Theban. But the citizens of Thebes are no more able to live decently in a city in which the earth supplants human mothers than Antigone is. Her inability to tolerate Creon's decree is a sign of the plight that all Theban citizens ultimately share. Because she alone understands the plight of the city, she has no city. The daughter of Oedipus the king stands alone, outside the walls of Thebes. If the family as we know it owes it origin everywhere to the support of cities, we must all share the plight of the Thebans, and it is likely that in our origins we were nothing but beasts. While many species take good care of their young, they do not have families as we know them. Creon is correct, then; the city is essential to human life. But government does not suffice to make our lives human. The city lies between our base beginnings and the gods we revere, and although it can stifle our understanding of both, it can neither alter our origins nor arouse our awe. Somehow while providing for the shared life of the community, those who rule must support the shame and the reverence of the individuals who compose it. If these passions die, the city can count on nothing but fear of death to keep citizens loyal. In acknowledging the importance of the family, Sophocles points out a way for a city to support shame and reverence without allowing private loves and hates to endanger its security. But the task of a ruler in balancing public against private concerns nevertheless requires a mysterious skill. Antigone's story reveals only the problem- and Creon's refusal to confront it. Antigone upholds the traditional, timeless laws of the gods against Creon's impiety. More than that, she insists on her attachment to her family and refuses to be a part of Creon's Thebes. She describes herself as already �26 THE ST. JOHN'S REVIEW at home with the dead (590 ff.). Hades is her proper home because the family whom she cannot forget resides there. This is why she must secure burial for Polyneices: without it the shade of her brother cannot enter Hades but must endlessly wander the earth, like a roving beast. Antigone's attachment to her family is primarily through memory, and so it does not tie her to the one living member of her immediate family, Ismene, as much as it does to the dead. Antigone cannot forget whose womb she came from and which father begat her. She cannot forget that Ismene and Polyneices, along with the honored Eteocles and even Oedipus himself, came from the same womb. She cannot forget any of the horrors that stem from the root of her father, Oedipus, and that apparently will not cease until she is dead. Her unrelenting memory contrasts notably with the chorus's call upon Bacchus at the end of the parodos to help them to celebrate the victory of Thebes and "to enjoy forgetfulness." Antigone's need to remain tied to her family can be restated in the following terms: Hades is the home of the dead, and she sees it as a home in which all members of the family may live together in loving intimacy through eternity. In death, then, there is an acknowledgment that despite the distinctions among the generations and the difference between the sexes, each of us alike is held dear. Reverence for one's dead ancestors allows one to combine respect for the hierarchy among both dead and living family members with a sense of our unity with them. The family can thus be an ordered whole in which no one is a slave. Antigone is mad in thinking that she can enjoy the loving intimacy of the family by joining the corpses of the dead members of her family under the earth. The family must, of course, be alive to share in the love that she craves. Still, there is a core of truth in her feeling. An Antigone sees it, to marry Haemon and to live in Creon's city would be to give up her position as daughter of Oedipus, the dead and tainted but still honorable king, to become Creon's slave. Under his rule, marriage and childbearing become for Antigone merely bestial acts. This speculation provides a way to think about Antigone's otherwise bizarre assertion (906 ff.) that what she has done for her brother she would not have done for a husband or a child of her own. If the city did recognize the importance of the family and its reverence for the dead, its members could more easily bear being ruled by one from among them. Even a woman, who could not participate in ruling in ancient Greece, could remain confident of her place in a whole bound by blood alone, a tie the city did not create. Antigone's incestuous family is both her solace and Creon's nightmare. When the Antigone opens, Creon is no more ready than Antigone herself to join with the chorus in a Bacchic victory celebration. In his own way, �DOUGHERTY 27 he is as plagued as Antigone by the memory of the horrors of the past. His assertion that he alone shall determine who is worthy of honor, and that he shall do so on the basis of the good of the city and on no other, is in effect a denial that men and women can be well-born, or that they are honorable before the city metes out honors. As we have seen, it also implies a denial that human beings in general are well-born in comparison with beasts. He undoubtedly feels that this view is borne out by the recent history of Thebes. Through his slaying of his father and his incestuous marriage with his mother, Oedipus confused the generations of his family in a way that can be permissible only in Hades. In doing so he undermined the subsequent stability of Thebes, for no city can be indifferent to the disgrace of its ruler, and the troubles Oedipus began continued in the battle between his sons. Each treated the city as though it were a private estate that he had the right to inherit. Creon has gone to the other extreme. In his view, anything private is a threat to the security of the city. The citizens of Thebes must substitute honor for the friends of the city and hatred for its enemies for their private loves and hates. But friendship or fellowship (philia) depends not only upon the security of the city, as Creon argues in his opening speech (187 ff.), but also upon the dignity of the individuals who make np the city. Antigone feels that she cannot retain her nobility in marrying Haemon as long as her marriage depends upon submitting to Creon's decree. Similarly, any lawgiver who seeks to protect fellowship by legislating what citizens may love and hate will inevitably fail. When Creon accuses Antigone of challenging his political authority and his authority as a man (484 ff.), he is not far wrong. The exchange between Creon and Antigone once she has been brought forward as a criminal reflects her sense that his politics destroy phi/ia: Not to join in hating, but in loving (symphi/ein), was I born she says. Creon responds: Go down now and love the dead, if it is necessary [for you] to love. No woman will rule me while I live. (523-25) Later Creon says to his son: " ... with loathing and as if she were a foe, let this girl go to seek marriage in Hades" (654). Antigone's death is described both by herself and by the chorus as well as by Creon as a marriage. In fact, in the opening scene Antigone expresses a similar thought when she tell Ismene that she will lie with her brother, a friend (or dear �28 THE ST. JOHN'S REVIEW one) with a friend (73). How defensible we can consider Antigone's morbid speech here depends npon whether her sense that Creon's sovereignty would destroy the humanity of personal attachments is justified. Two dramatic events in the play powerfully reinforce the sense that it is. One is Ismene's attempt to implicate herself in Antigone's crime and to die with her. Ismene reveals her despair when she asks Antigone "What life is dear (phi/os) to me bereft of you?" (535 ff.). However deep the rupture between the sisters, Antigone is Ismene's only friend in all Thebes. The other event that supports Antigone's view of Creon's city is Haemon's suicide in her tomb. Haemon's suicide seems more difficult to account for than Ismene's offer to die with Antigone, for he seems to have a promising future in Thebes. He is the son of the present ruler and is also his likely successor. Why can't he accept his father's suggestion and find another bride? The first and most important response to this question is surely that Haemon loves Antigone, but I believe that the full answer lies as much in Haemon's exchange with his father, just after he has learned that Antigone must die, as it does in his love for her. In that exchange, Creon virtually outlaws his son's passions when he accuses him of treasuring a private and indefensible love for the wrong sort of woman. Haemon claims that his knowledge of the sympathies of the people and his respect for those sympathies provoke him to try to reason with Creon. But as long as Haemon wishes his father to free Antigone, Creon hears nothing but disobedience and treachery in his words. He repudiates Haemon's advice just as vehemently as he repudiates Antigone's so-called "crime." The immediate cause of Haemon's suicide is that he has just found himself trying to slay his father out of anger for the death of his betrothed. Haemon cannot allow himself to perform such a heinous act any more than he can bow to his father's will. This shows that Haemon respects the claims of kinship even when they conflict with his own desires. The son is about as unlike his father as he could be. Just as Creon accuses his son of treachery for the sake of a woman, so he accuses both the guard and Thiresias, and in fact whoever questions his absolute authority as ruler of Thebes, of seeking to enrich themselves at the price of the city's good. But it cannot be the case that any personal interest that is not identical with upholding the security of the city makes one a traitor. Not all such concerns are petty and unworthy of respect. Creon's mistake in thinking so blinds him even to his own motives, for he is surely as interested in his own glory as he is in the welfare of Thebes. His error, as we have seen, has its base in a misunderstanding of the horror of Oedipus's history, and its implications for the city. Creon's fate is no more enviable than Oedipus's own. �DOUGHERTY 29 Creon repudiates the passions that reside in and preserve the human family at his personal peril, and in so doing he exposes Thebes to great danger as well. This becomes clear in the occasion for his dramatic reversal towards the end of the play (1092 ff.). When Teiresias tells Creon that to enforce his decree will mean to sacrifice the life of his own son, he is willing to bow to the traditions concerning death and burial (Jlll-12), but he is too late. His personal catastrophe coincides with the danger to the city about which Teiresias has warned him. Thebes has now witnessed the utter ruin of a second ruler. Sophocles' Greek audience would probably know also that the cities whose men died in Polyneices' war against Thebes were already rearming against her. Creon at least may have learned something, for he cannot fail to associate his neglect of the laws of the gods with his loss of all who were dear to him. His suffering is pathetic and terrible. Like Creon, Antigone too suffers a change of heart in the course of the drama. In her case it occurs just after she has been condemned. Although she never repudiates her illegal act, she is suddenly overwhelmed by the terror of sacrificing the life that she has not yet had an opportunity to live. Her success in performing a rudimentary version of the rites of burial for her brother is not enough to console her. Indeed, Antigone snaps at the chorus when, after she has compared herself to a goddess (824 ff.), they remind her of her mortality (834 ff.). She accuses them of mocking her, even though only a few lines earlier (828 ff.) they were clearly admiring her glory. Their admiration looks like mockery to her because, now that she has confronted the end of her life, splendor in death looks hollow. In defending the domain of the gods Antigone exaggerates the claims of the family and denies a place in her soul to the feelings she could have had for a husband and children of her own. She is forced to expose the basis of a tradition in the attempt to uphold it. As she does so, she does violence to herself. In this sense, Antigone lacks self-knowledge, at least up to the moment when she is condemned, but her imperfect knowledge of herself is not a "tragic flaw" that makes her deserving of her fate. No human being can have perfect self-knowledge and Antigone cannot be responsible for being limited in a way that characterizes all human beings. Rather, her situation is an extreme version of a plight we all share: never fully knowing ourselves, we must continually learn about ourselves through action and experience. Our need for political structures reflects this truth. So do both our attachments to our families and the traditions that guide us in giving due recognition to (God or) the gods. The change in Antigone's tone when she is aware that she is about to die provides an approach to understanding the obscure passage in which the chorus tells her: �30 THE ST. JOHN'S REVIEW Advancing to the furthest limit of courage [or rashness, to thrasos] up to the lofty throne of justice (diki) you fell, child, hard. You are paying in full the penalty of the contest of your father. (852-55) The passage implies something like the following: Attaining the foundation or throne of justice is not the same as living in the most appropriate way. If we are to live decently, justice must guide the lives of mortals without being fully disclosed to us. In forbidding the burial of Polyneices Creon was the immediate cause of the denial of this possibility to Antigone, but the real source of the problem lies further back- in Oedipus's incest, and ultimately in the founding of Thebes, or rather, of the city in general. Creon has denied Antigone the opportunity to live decently by forcing her to confront a side of human life that cannot be fully reconciled with the city. There is no way for a city- any city- to acknowledge fully the reverence of men and women and the sources of their shame. Rulers are not inevitably as blind as Creon. Still, Creon's errors merely exaggerate the errors to which all cities in some way fall prey. Lawgivers must claim that any act they label criminal is worthy of our disdain, and they must label as such all acts that seriously endanger the city's security. They must behave as though nothing that conflicts with the good of the city is worthy of admiration, and as !bough only what hinders the good of the city merits disgust. But without Antigone's challenge to the view of the city, none of us who are citizens can come to see ourselves as we are. For human beings, self-knowledge must involve knowledge of the irreconcilable aspects of our natures. The conflict between our animal nature and the institutions that attempt to civilize or, if that is too hard, to conceal them, is often hard to ignore. Creon is preoccupied with this conflict. But we sometimes experience an even deeper conflict between the power to sense what is worthy of reverence and of shame, and the advantages, perhaps the obligation, of submitting to standards that do not acknowledge these. The power to sense what is above us and what is below is simply human. It consists in a dim awareness of our inhuman origin as well as of our ability to ascend from that origin, an ability that no city, and probably no science, can comprehend. Because Antigone's madness is this awareness, I cannot wish her to have been different, however much I pity her fate. Antigone conveys to us what she knows through arousing our admiration for her and, at the same time, our pity and even disgust. *** �DOUGHERTY 31 Sophocles' Antigone is often said to represent the contest between divine law and human law, but this is an inadequate account of what is at issue. After all, Creon claims and probably believes that the gods support his decree. Nor will it suffice to read the play as a working out of the importance of the family weighed against the concerns of the city. For without the city there is no family, and without the family, no city. The human family is not simply natural; it needs the city both to bring it into being and to support it through law. The city, in its turn, must contain many families so that their members can associate with one another as similar, if not perfectly equal, beings, and only then can they willingly submit to one of themselves. How to combine many individuals who are members of various families into a single whole is the riddle of the city. Creon seems not to notice that to rule involves offering one's skill as a solver of the riddle. He cannot even begin to consider its solution. Both reverence for the gods and the ties of the family must be important elements in solving the riddle of how a city, which is a collection of many separate individuals, can be at the same time a whole. The city must respect the fact that men and women are more than citizens, that in some sense they are independent wholes. Rulers are reasonable only superficially when they insist on the debt all men and women owe to the city. They forget that the city owes its existence to a human insight that no city can fully comprehend or sustain. Humans are the beings who sense what lies beneath the earth and what reigns above them. We are the beings who know that we are neither the one nor the other, that we are by nature in between. The smooth sailing of the city sometimes depends upon obscuring this sense in order to support the authority of rulers. Established procedures and laws must often take precedence over the insights of individuals into the will of the gods. But no city can long survive without the shame and the reverence that lie deeper in human beings than does their political allegiance. I do not have the solution to the riddle of the city, but I can say this: The power of the sense of shame and of reverence is a power that we too would be as vulgar and as foolish as Creon to ignore. I have entitled this essay "The Nobility of Sophocles' Antigone," and I do mean to call her noble. Through her daring and wrongheaded acts, she reminds us all of truths that we cannot afford to ignore. Creon's Thebes did not acknowledge her greatness in risking her life for a principle that would make her city more human; we must not follow its example. Even the perturbed passions of a woman may reveal a deep and weighty truth. If Sophocles had no more to teach us than this, it would be enough to justify our calling him wise. ��Hegel's Reading of Antigone Patricia M. Locke Hegel thought that Sophocles' Antigone was the "most magnificent and satisfying work of art of [its] kind."' Repeatedly turning to the character of Antigone in his writings on art, politics, and religion, Hegel showed a great admiration for her even apart from the play. His lifelong attraction to Antigone led Hegel into conflicting positions related to her role as a model for feminine life. We will consider the two main positions Hegel held, and suggest reasons for the disparity between them. The first view is discussed primarily in the Phenomenology of Spirit (1807) and the Lectures on Aesthetics (given in 1823, 1826, and 1828-29). This aesthetic, or dramatic, reading of the play focuses on the collision between Antigone and Creon as embodiments of opposed ways of life. The play hinges on the exploration of the conflict between elemental oppositions: female and male, divine and human, and private versus public duties. While the resolution is, according to Hegel, external, affirming the value of each side, it further shows that a simple binary opposition has been overcome. The audience has a more complex realization that each pole needs the other in order to be what it is. Our heroine has upheld the values of the hearth and the ancestral gods but suffers for her neglect of the rights of the polis. Hegel's second position is also found in the Phenomenology of Spirit and in the Philosophy of Right (1821). It aims at the underlying ethical Patricia M. Locke is a Thtor at St. John's College, Annapolis. This paper was presented to the Washington Philosophy Club at Georgetown University in March, 1989. An earlier version was given as a lecture at St. John's College in September, 1988. 33 �34 THE ST. JOHN'S REVIEW or political meaning of the play. In the earlier work Hegel analyzes the dnties that flow from the blood ties between brother and sister. In the Philosophy of Right Hegel concentrates on the relations between husband and wife as the essential bond that provides a basis for a political order. It is my contention that this shift from the brother-sister relation to that of husband and wife is the source of the disparity between Hegel's views. While brothers and sisters have different functions as male and female members of their community, they are similarly unself-conscious in carrying out their tasks. On the other hand, Hegel assumes that in the case of husband and wife, the man has an independent sense of self while the woman does not. This assumption is based on the modern concepts of state and civil society described in the Philosophy of Right. Hegel allows a development of free self-consciousness to men, while retaining an ideal of woman as static and ahistorical. This mistake on Hegel's part makes it impossible to reconcile his aesthetic and ethical readings of the play. What would salvage Hegel's insights abont the Antigone? If we argue that Antigone, while fully feminine in character and goals, achieves a sense of individuality-however limited- by virtue of her actions as an unmarried woman, not merely as Polyneices' sister, then we can claim her as a dialectical heroine. Antigone's action begins as service for another, but ends as service for herself. Since she can change, she can remain the magnificent epitome of womankind Hegel imagined her to be. This essay will examine the aesthetic meaning of the Antigone in detail and then consider the problems inherent in Hegel's ethical reading of it. 1: Aesthetic Meaning In the Aesthetics Hegel defines drama as "the presentation, to our minds and imagination, of actual human actions and affairs and therefore of persons expressing their actions in words. 'A dramatization' rests entirely on collisions of circumstances, passions and characters, and leads therefore to actions and then to the reactions which in turn necessitate a resolution of the conflict."' There is a dynamic quality to a good drama when the inevitable collision between opposed characters is anticipated and endured. According to Hegel, what makes Antigone a good play in a dramatic sense is the beauty and power of the clash and its resolution. We will examine this collision as it appears in the plot and characterization. Collisions depend first upon the plot, which is the primary structure within which the dramatic movement takes place. Creon's edict forbidding the burial of Polyneices is the presupposition of the conflict. In itself it is a seemingly neutral command aimed at those who would challenge order �LOCKE 35 in the polis. However, we hear about this command from Antigone in the first scene of the play. Coming from this source, the edict is no longer neutral: it has taken on an ominous cast. The tragedy is fated from this beginning, when Antigone neglects the warnings of her sister lsmene and strives to counter what she sees as a violation of a higher, divine order. Yet one is aware that it is not so simple. As daughter of Oedipus, Antigone must say "there's nothing grievous, nothing free from doom, not shameful, not dishonored, I've not seen" (4-5) 3 • She is both innocent and guilty of the crime she inherits. Antigone has a responsibility towards the polis as the remnant of its ruling house, and a conflicting duty to her dead brother. Creon is in a similar position, as both Antigone's uncle and ruler of Thebes. Thus the situation is full of potential for collision between them and, ultimately, among their several duties. How can one remain loyal to the polis and the family in circumstances like these? The question is a serious one, but one that Antigone does not need to ask. She feels the compelling claim of the underworld, which grounds her life. The gods of departed ancestors, of her father, mother, and brothers, confirm her desire to act. She has no doubt that her action is consonant with her determinate character and with the will of the gods. Since Antigone has the power to assert the primacy of the family, she rather than Ismene is the heroine of this play. Ismene pleads with Antigone to remember that women should not "force law" or fight with men. Antigone will not compromise her duty to the underworld, and answers harshly that she will bury Polyneices despite the consequences. Antigone dares the "crime of piety," and with the act of pouring earth over the body of her brother the play is set into motion. Her action has a specific aim and expected consequences that reveal the greatness of Antigone's character. She is able to face death alone, abandoning the wedding plans and the hopes of young womanhood. At the same time, the action advances the plot because it demands a reaction. Creon's expectation that the traitor is male collides with the calm, knowing demeanor of the violator standing before him. His imagination is more narrow than Antigone's, since he can envision only profit as a motive for disobedience. He is confounded by an action based on love. Their exchange defines the grounds of their differences: One is male, the other female; one speaks of crime, the other of holiness. Creon: You are not ashamed to think alone? Antigone: No, I am not ashamed. When was it shame to serve the children of my mother's womb? (510-12) �36 THE ST. JOHN'S REVIEW They are clearly opposed, even in their ideas about what it is proper for a woman to do. Ismene's course is proper yet unsatisifying to us. Communal values and the customs that guide everyday life do not set out an obvious solution to the conflict between Antigone and Creon. What is criminal to one of the antagonists is pious to the other. I will argue that the resolution of this dramatic tension lies in Antigone's attempt to find a connection between these opposing terms. She thinks independently on behalf of her family. Antigone acts unwomanly and illegally, out of a woman's loyalty towards her familial gods. In the end her action carries the double weight of piety and treason. In his Aesthetics Hegel stresses the importance of action in tragic drama because it is "with action [that] a man steps actively into concrete reality where forthwith the most general matters are condensed and confined in a particular phenomenon."' The step into concrete reality confirms Antigone as one who wills to be who she is. At the same time, Antigone enables the divine to manifest itself through her. The gods of the underworld are given concreteness by her willingness to obey them without questioning the source of the divine laws. Consequently, the most general spiritual substance appears within a particular visible event. We do not hear soliloquies of doubt, as in Hamlet, for Antigone's action comes naturally to her. Hegel thinks that the spiritual element in Antigone's act "is perfectly married and reconciled with the equally justified external aspect, i.e., with what is seen on stage."5 This tragedy is compelling precisely because what is seen on stage are self-reliant characters acting out of a particular "pathos" that gives them each a driving essential power. Each character feels his or her ethical stance to be internally justified and fully binding. Their views are expressed in "solid and cultivated objective language," rather than elaborate rhetoric, for their eloquence is in line with their direct actions. 6 Only that which is essential to the true character of Antigone is stated. We know very little about her beyond her terrible lineage. Antigone defines herself at the outset: "For me, the doer, death is best" (72). This statement reverberates throughout the whole play, as Antigone proves herself to be a doer and faces the horror of live burial as her punishment. Creon too experiences the devastating consequences of his actions, as his niece, his son, and his wife die in rapid succession. These deaths are dramatically necessary to restore the rights of the gods. Death here is a negation, or canceling, of the negation that set the play into motion, the burial of Polyneices. The opposition of Creon and Antigone is regarded against the background of the chorus. The choral speeches present the community's �LOCKE 37 views, alternately commenting on the characters' decisions and placing those decisions in their proper reference to the gods. Hegel thinks that the chorus, although it is powerless and afraid of the contradictory gods, is important as a surrounding universal context for the action. The chorus believes that Fate destroys people despite their merit, and therefore must conclude that "any greatness in human life brings doom" (613). Although sympathetic towards Antigone, the chorus does not offer to help her. The "undercover talk" in the polis remains undercover because the chorus lacks "the power of the negative," as Hegel remarks in the Phenomenology. 7 This power causes changes to occur by negating that which is. Antigone participates in the movement of negativity when she challenges Creon's law. In the Phenomenology, Hegel states that the chorus is conscious only of a paralysing terror of this movement, of equally helpless pity, and as the end of it all, the empty repose of submission to Necessity, whose work is understood neither as the necessary deed of the character, nor as the action of [Spirit] within itself. 8 There are three pertinent interpretations of this dialectical movement. The chorus sees the hand of Fate, which strikes down even the bravest heroine. Antigone interprets that fate as her own work, and is therefore willing to sustain the negative, to hold with the moral rightness of her deed throughout the play. The third interpretation, held by Hegel, is that we are witnessing the activity of Spirit. Spirit, which is difficult to define since it is continually evolving in the history of consciousness, is here the implicit divinity acting through the characters. Spirit appears explicitly as the frame within which their actions have meaning. This frame is language. Thus Spirit is simultaneously in the foreground and the background of the tragedy. Spirit joins the three interpretations together. What happens in the play is equally the work of Fate, of Antigone's will, and of the appearance of Spirit's power. In this reflective activity Spirit is operating on a higher level than is immediately evident in the play. The modern dialectical philosopher is conscious of the interdependence of fate and individual will and of the universality of their conflict in the life of a person or the life of the human species. Only with this higher consciousness of Spirit present in the philosopher can external and internal motivating forces be woven so tightly together. Spirit shows itself in a rather limited fashion in the poetic language of the play, in the chorus as well as the main characters. The choral view �38 THE ST. JOHN'S REVIEW is bound to the past. It sees the one-sidedness of Antigone's position, for its admiration is mixed with criticism of her neglect of Zeus's authority. Creon too comes in for support and criticism by the chorus. First, he is praised for upholding law in the daylight world of Zeus, but the fearful chorus murmurs against him when they consider the dark fate of Oedipus's house. Creon is as inflexible as Antigone. He will not listen to his son Haemon, nor consider the feeling of the community when he banishes Antigone to her unusual bridal chamber. He claims that this live burial will protect him from direct responsibility for Antigone's death, but we know that such a technical reading of the law will not satisfy the underworld. The one-sided action of Antigone cannot exist harmoniously with the equally one-side reaction of Creon. The play turns on our recognition that these two powers are incomplete without each other. To achieve equilibrium, Antigone and Creon are destroyed by their complements, which are "intrinsic to their own actual being."' The resolution of the opposition between man and woman is echoed in the union of upper and lower divinities. Thus the "powers animating action which struggled to destroy each other" are reconciled at last. Hegel claims in the Aesthetics that only with such a conclusion can the necessity of what happens to the individuals appear as absolute rationality, and only then can our hearts be morally at peace: shattered by the fate of the heroes but reconciled fundamentally. 10 There are two components to this reconciliation. First, we must accept the fate of the heroes as rational, and we must feel "morally at peace." We come to understand Antigone's death only if we see her initial position as blind towards the claims of public life. Second, we feel a certain peace when we appreciate Antigone's bravery. She withstood great obstacles and has given us a sense of the justice of her cause. Aristotle's notion of catharsis in the Poetics is helpful here. This term has been the focus of much criticism by commentators on Aristotle. For the purposes of this discussion, let us adopt a Hegelian understanding of its meaning. Catharsis is the pleasurable release of tension following pity and fear. "Pity," Aristotle explains, "concerns the undeserved, while fear concerns the similar." 11 The play points in two directions, to the past and to the future. When it points to the past, Antigone's demise is undeserved and therefore pitiable. She is struck down by fate while demonstrating her noble character. She is consistent in her loyalty to the underworld, and therefore suffers rather than learns. �39 LOCKE Ultimately, we do not pity her, as we might the helpless Ismene. The pity for Antigone is canceled when we see her take responsibility for acting. Since she courageously wills her fate, we come to realize that her death is best. The same character that brought her to an undeserved punishment can now be seen as blameworthy. From the opening scene of the play, Antigone displays the "hot mind over chilly things" that marks her as the daughter of Oedipus. Our fear that she will act like her father, listening to no one as she draws her fate upon her head, heightens the tension of the conflict with Creon. This fear is relieved when her death extinguishes the possibility of future repetitions of the shameful acts of Oedipus's house. Hegel accepts Aristotle's explanation of pity and fear, yet stresses that in order to be most compelling, the object evoking these emotions ought to be the power of Spirit. 12 By this Hegel means that our feelings ought not to be directed only to finite, limited objects, such as the pity one of Jane Austen's characters might feel for a young woman who has no dancing partners. This kind of sympathy degrades the sufferer to a helpless victim of sad circumstances. We feel a deeper kind of pity for unwed Antigone-a pity that recognizes the profound source of her pain. At the same time, we must acknowledge the rights of the polis, which also displays the divine substance. The catharsis that alleviates pity and fear allows this fact to stand forth: The same substance that showed itself in Antigone's one-sided action appears in harmony with itself when she is struck down. In Hegel's view, tragedy is at bottom the conflict and resolu'tion of partial expressions of Spirit. Spirit's power is exercised both through and upon the heroine of this play. By focusing on the collision between Creon and Antigone and the difficult necessity of its resolution, Hegel locates the dramatic strength of the play. For Hegel, the question "What makes this a good drama?" must be answered in terms of dialectical movement through a fearful opposition. Plot and characters work together to achieve finally a sense of vitality and completeness. II: Ethical Meaning My objections arise when we turn to the ethical dimension of the Antigone. Hegel's interpretation in the Phenomenology is based on the primacy of the brother-sister relationship, in which the sister's reality is mediated by her brother. In the Philosophy of Right the stress is laid upon the husband-wife relationship. This difference reveals Hegel's assumption that women lack self-consciousness, remaining natural and unchanged even when they freely enter the agreement of marriage. If one claims that modern �40 THE ST. JOHN'S REVIEW marriage originates in "the free consent of the persons . . . to make themselves one person, to renounce their natural and individual personality to this unity," then one must accept that a woman attains her "substantive self-consciousness" when she goes beyond her former unreflective way of being. 13 Hegel should not ignore the meaning of her choice when he describes woman's role in the procreative family. In the moment of accepting the marriage proposal, woman has an active role in her destiny, which is not mediated by either her birth family or her fiance. Hegel fails to do justice to the play when he applies modern social structures, such as marriage arrangements, to it. We will review the argument in the Phenomenology first and then consider the problem in light of the Philosophy of Right. A. Antigone in the Phenomenology of Spirit Hegel's discussion of Antigone in the Phenomenology comes under the heading "The True Spirit: The Ethical Order." According to Hegel the play is an example of the way true Spirit makes its appearance after a series of inadequate attempts. Now Spirit is present in an unmediated form as the ethos of a people. Spirit, or mind, is the people. Spirit is conscious, that is, able to make distinctions, but not yet self-conscious. Thus it is manifest in custom and habit rather than in a rational decision-making process like the application of Kant's categorical imperative. At this stage, Spirit is split into content and consciousness. The content is the folk, the entire community. Actual consciousness is found in individual citizens. The union of their subjective wills with the objective order ushers in the specifically ethical life of Spirit. Ethical Spirit is "the good become alive," embodied in human action. 14 Natural activities give way to a higher second nature, developed through habitual exercise of the duties appropriate to one's station in the community. This results in a split in the content, or substance. Ethical Spirit polarizes into two realms. The first realm is the world of women, a community that is dedicated to the needs of particular family members, living and dead. The second is the world of men, which is located in the polis, a community that raises male consciousness to universal concerns such as laws. The heart of Sophocles' play is the conflict between male and female worlds. This conflict is inevitable, since people really belong to both spheres and cannot live without one another. The family is a distinctly feminine world, for it is women who bear and educate children, care for blind fathers like Oedipus, and carry out the final rites for relatives who have died. The ethical substance is here �LOCKE 41 at its most immediate, close to nature and to the world beyond this life. Its gods are those of the underworld and of the hearth, and its law gives primacy to blood relatives. Hegel describes family life as harmonious because the members together constitute an individual family. They are not differentiated, nor do they display a struggle for recognition that might lead to self-consciousness. One can think of parents, children, uncles, and grandparents as internal organs of the larger familial organism. "Woman" especially is defined as being-for-another, because her life is dedicated to the health and perpetuation of this organism. Although she is dependent by nature, woman turns the givenness of her sex into an ethical ground. Her being as part of a family does not require self-conscious action in order to obey the divine law. Woman endows natural activities with a spiritual significance by being a vehicle for mediation. Working through her, "the gods' unwritten and unfailing laws ... always live, and no one knows their origin in time" (455, 457). Nature's sensuous immediacy is canceled in this process. All living things are supposed to grow naturally, but a male child is trained for a non-natural end. His mother educates him for a mediated future as a citizen of the city. By becoming a citizen, her son outgrows her. 15 His new life requires a negation of the immediacy of home life. With this, the mother has fulfilled her task. The family whole is broken open because the son makes the transition to the second realm, the world of men. The young man who enters adult life finds his actual being as an individual. His self-sufficiency in comparison with his family remains unreflective and is limited by his participation in the city. His needs and ideas are shared by other citizens, and find their fulfillment in the law. Law alters the relation to natural desires by introducing a universal element. The family, for instance, has been shown to be grounded in consanguinity and structured in an organic way. The family under law, as signified by marriage rites, is based on a contract between two people of different blood who henceforth act as if they are of the same blood. Thus the city substitutes conventional bonds between people for the irrational bonds of nature. Ethical Spirit is conscious of itself and actual in the offspring of the marriage relationship. Between them, man and woman share the substance of the ethical Spirit. This substance shows itself as a natural sexual difference which they raise to a universal status by accepting their duties established by convention. Man is the guardian of the state and respects human laws; woman is the guardian of the home and respects the laws of subterranean divinities. The movement of man from private to public life is a development towards selfconscious Spirit, as Hegel outlines the process in the Phenomenology. Hegel concludes: �THE ST. JOHN'S REVIEW 42 Neither of the two is by itself absolutely valid; human law proceeds in its living process from the divine, the law valid on earth from that of the nether world, the conscious from the unconscious, mediation from immediacy- and equally returns whence it came. 16 A dynamic equilibrium is maintained between these complementary worlds. However, there remains a final task for woman to do. This is to prepare for the return of man to the immediate realm of nature upon his death. Although the major portion of his life may be spent in the public sphere, at its end he comes home. Woman as mother, wife, or sister transforms the natural process of decay into a spiritual one. This change occurs as she gives death a religious meaning. Antigone negates the image of "a rich sweet sight for the hungry birds beholding," as she pours earth over the body and says the ritual prayers (29-30). The dead person does not return to the particular phase of his childhood. Rather, his rest as a completed being-for-itself is marked by simple universality. Her brother has achieved a stable being; Polyneices has become an ancestor. The family is preserved after all, in the memory of those who respect their forefathers. Woman's primary ethical action, preservation of the family, therefore concerns the dead rather than the living. It is necessary for Antigone to bury Polyneices both to secure the family organism and to confirm her identity as his sister. Although woman is unself-conscious in her being-for-her-family, as sister she has an ethical substance through her brother. (Hegel entirely neglects the sister-to-sister relationship between Antigone and Ismene.) A brother is a bridge to the outside world because he can act as a citizen as well as a family member. Hegel claims that, unlike other relations between men and women, there is little or no sexual attraction between brothers and sisters. They are "free individualities in regard to each other."" Yet in regard to the public world, the sister is not a free individuality. Her consciousness has not been raised, so her life is essentially tied to her brother's existence. Hegel's position in the Phenomenology, somewhat modified in the Philosophy of Right, stresses that the natural bond of consanguinity has a higher value to woman than the complementary tie between husband and wife. This value transcends its physical origin because it is attached to an awareness of individual selfhood. Hegel states in the Phenomenology: Consequently, the feminine, in the form of the sister, has the highest intuitive awareness of what is ethical. She does not attain to consciousness of it, or to the objective existence of it, because the law of the Family is an implicit, �LOCKE 43 inner essence which is not exposed to the daylight of consciousness, but remains an inner feeling and the divine element that is exempt from an existence in the real world. 1s These divinities seem irrational by the standards of the daylight world, particularly because their demands cannot be articulated in the common language of the polis. (One can see this most clearly in the treatment of the Furies in the Oresteia.) Antigone, then, has two sources of self-identity. She can draw on the deep strength of familial gods, who honor blood and vengeance. She can call on these divinities without recourse to an abstract confession of faith, because she does not feel a distance from them that would require a conscious effort to overcome separation. Antigone can act intuitively, with the power of the furies flowing through her hands. Antigone draws on a second source of strength as well. Polyneices is her link to the real world's rational, civilizing effects. Since the Olympian deities, particularly Zeus, hold sway over the public realm, Antigone must come to an awareness of their domination through Polyneices. Perhaps Hegel's interpretation of the sources of Antigone's sense of self can clarify her strange speech as she is led to her death. She begins: 0 tomb, 0 marriage-chamber, hollowed out house that will watch forever, where I go. Th my own people, who are mostly there; Persephone has taken them to her. (891-94) Antigone likens the tomb to the marriage chamber in order to stress that her loyalty remains with her birth family. She dies unwed, because, as she laments (referring to Polyneices), "In your death you destroy my life" (871). She has no life left to give to Haemon or to future children. Since marriage is within the province of the state, in this speech Antigone asserts that she would not violate its rights if a husband or child died under similar conditions. Antigone knows the limits and source of her power, and remains within those limits. Or does she? Is her choice really right? One must ask these questions because of the way in which Antigone carried out her duty. At first, no one knew who buried Polyneices. "The doer left no sign" but the dust covering the body was apparently sufficient to turn the curse (250). Antigone appeared again in broad daylight, "with the sharp and bitter cry of a bitter bird," to renew the earthen covering. This time she was captured, calmly admitted her transgression, and came face to face with Creon. �44 THE ST. JOHN'S REVIEW Why did she perform this action twice? Hegel would not claim that Antigone was trying to be a martyr, or that she was deliberately trying to undermine the stability of the polis. Rather, Antigone needed to make her deed known in order to establish that it was not due to fate or nature or any other external cause. She chose to accept responsibility for the act in order to vindicate her brother and to bring him to the gates of the underworld in his universal aspect. In Hegelian terms, she showed the spiritual meaning in the seemingly uncontrollable event of death, but she could do this only by transgressing the boundaries of her feminine self. She took on some of the rebellious nature of Polyneices to act for him and, implicitly, to act for herself as well. It is my view that by doing this Antigone demonstrated an expanded definition of womanhood. Antigone has come to a sense of her own integrity, her being-for-self, as she steps into the public sphere. Since the significant members of her family are dead, Antigone is her family. Suddenly she appears as an individual. No longer a passive vehicle of the divine, she mediates the upper world for her family. Antigone is fully conscious that her public act is both criminal and holy. Although Hegel does not think that women exert dialectical power in the public realm, in the Aesthetics he praises Antigone as a heroine greater than Oedipus in her consciousness of the double meaning of her deed. Hegel is unaware of the conflict between his views. When Antigone moves away from the natural feminine role to engage in a forceful debate with Creon, he is visibly disturbed by what he sees as a subversion of his manhood as well as of the state. "I am no man and she the man instead" (484). Antigone asserts a new power in the political world by bringing the vocabulary of familial love to bear on legal relationships. This criterion for judging the worth of a law is not appropriate generally. However, at this moment it reveals Creon's arrogation of power to himself. He mistook law for justice and the polis for his possession. Antigone's challenge opens up the seriousness of this mistake. Human justice, like self-consciousness, is the result of intellectual and political effort. The struggle to make the concept of justice actual is accomplished in a specific historical context. In the play, Creon acts as if the universal powers at work must bow to his personal concerns. Further, he ignores the crucial foundation of the polis in the family by slighting proper burial rites for Polyneices and his sister. Thus neither Zeus nor the underworld deities receive their due. Antigone's full consciousness of her deed, and her willingness to appear in public to claim her guilt, is likewise undermining the balance of universal ethical powers. Ethically as well as dramatically, the play requires the destruction of Antigone and Creon. �LOCKE 45 Hegel's position in the Phenomenology is that the duality of male and female, of polis and family, is universal and unchanging. There is neither a dialectical sublation of one into the other, nor a higher synthesis. Thus the resolution of the conflict restores the previous balance of powers. Hegel does not see Antigone as a character who is both female and male, political on behalf of her family and herself. There is an unnecessary rigidity in his interpretation, since it is logically feasible that dialectical movement can take place within as well as between the distinct roles of the sexes. Hegel's limited interpretation is further complicated in the Philosophy of Right. B. Antigone in the Philosophy of Right Hegel discusses Antigone in a section titled "Ethical Life," which is divided into three parts: the Family, Civil Society, and the State. The family, of course, is Antigone's domain, but it also must be viewed as the immediate moment in a dialectical movement culminating in the State. It is this movement which puts the life into "Ethical Life." However, actual freedom exists only as an individual's exercise of duty within the boundaries of one or the other of these communities. The family under consideration in the Philosophy of Right is both natural and artificial. It is the natural union of the sexes for the immediate goal of perpetuation of the species. This is an external tie, which is made internal through the artificiality of the wedding rite. In the marriage ceremony, natural sexual differences are overcome by a self-conscious "union on the level of mind." 19 Marriage is thus an immediate ethical relationship. Since it is established as a universal bond through their promise, the sensuous aspect (that is, the changeable side of the relationship) is subordinated to the unchanging ethical substance. Further, the spouses' natural attachment to their original families is overcome by the trans formation inherent in ''two become one flesh." Thus it is important, in Hegel's argument, that the man and woman have no close blood relation. The priority given to natural consanguinity gives way to "artificial" consan- guinity, even, I would argue, for a woman. In the acceptance of the marriage contract, a woman participates in a concious decision about ethical matters. The substance of the new family is love, a "felt unity" of an ethical kind. This unity is felt rather than thought, so it remains on an immediate level. This unity is ethical, that is, the "good become alive," because it is founded on a rational ground. The implicit rational content of the marriage becomes explicit in property and, most importantly, in offspring. �46 THE ST. JOHN'S REVIEW Children have the potential to be free, and through education can fulfill that potential. They then take their place in the succession of generations, inheriting property and establishing their own procreative families. The transition to civil society is caused by the multiplication of families. The substantial unity of the birth family is lost in this new moment of particularity. Civil society exhibits the splitting apart of needs and rights. Private needs concerning private property bring people into conflict. The universal principle appears only as the necessity that drives men to form social ties in order to satisfy private economic interests. The interdependence of one with all is still an abstract universality, for within the association the universal and the particular are related but not synthesized. Members have great differences of property and therefore of freedom. Finally, the state draws together the felt unity of the family and the economic differentiation of civil society. The state Hegel means is a constitutional monarchy, where the constitution mediates between the particular interests of citizens and the monarch. The conscious unity of various classes under law signifies an expansion of freedom. This freedom is no longer abstract, since it is exercised in political rather than simply economic actions. Citizens find their true selves in political life. A nation-state of this kind is significantly different from the polis, or city-state, which is the setting of the Antigone. Hegel thought that the polis exhibited a harmony of opposite powers, which remained separate from each other and unaware of their separation. According to Hegel, the polis is for us a "thing of the past," not to be desired as a utopian vision for our future. The externality of the bond between male and female, human law and divine law, is now apparent. Ethical life of Spirit no longer fits within these bounds, since Spirit has become more self-conscious in the Christian era. The polis continues to have meaning for us as an image of political origin in a beautiful ethical life. That beauty arises from the articulated harmony of Greek art, religion, and politics. It is this interpenetration of the beautiful and the true that gives rise to the tragic drama. And so we return to the Antigone, a play that somehow speaks to us, even though we find ourselves in a very different political world. In Hegel's aesthetic interpretation, the character of Antigone remains the same, still loyal to the gods of the underworld. He has no difficulty in holding Antigone up as a model for womankind to emulate, even though a harmonious and beautiful existence within modern religious or political life is impossible. His interpretation in the Phenomenology and the Aesthetics respects the timelessness of Antigone's plight, but this comes into conflict with the �LOCKE 47 time-bound constraints of the Philosophy of Right. Hegel shows no sign that he is using the play in different ways in his aesthetic and ethical interpretations. How are we to make sense out of woman as a complement to man, when man has changed? The problem can be summarized as follows. Woman, who is associated with nature, in both the physical and the unreflective senses, is therefore ahistorical. Man is, according to the Philosophy of Right, a historical being, associated with self-conscious Spirit through his political activity. In the play, Hegel argues, we see the equilibrium between the two disturbed, in a collision that shows the rightfulness of both sides and a catastrophe that restores justice. The two sexes remain distinct powers, however, and are unaware of the distance beween them in this restored harmony. The goal of Spirit is to become what it immediately is: to achieve harmony as a result of its own self-conscious activity. Its achievement, rather than a linear progression, can be seen as the closing of circle. On the level of man and woman the circle is joined only if there is a movement by each out of himself or herself into the other's world. That implies a negation of the righteousness of his or her position and a finding of himself or herself in the other. If this is to be a mutual discovery and recognition, I argue, both woman and man must be able to develop in self-consciousness. The shift in focus from the birth family in the Phenomenology to the procreative family in the Philosophy of Right shows that the selfconsciousness of man has differentiated itself more completely, while the consciousness of woman has not. Instead of two worlds, private and public, there are now three: private, social, and political. The social world of economic life, as well as the political world, are restricted to man. Freedom and self-consciousness are generated in these spheres, which continue to rely on the unconscious support of the feminine realm. It is clear that there cannot be a public realm without a private foundation, but it is questionable whether a class of people-women-must be limited to the private sphere. The case of slaves is significantly different from the case of women, so the extension of freedom to slaves is not a simple analogy for a solution to this problem. What is the difference? Slaves can be admitted to be men endowed with rights, when a political community has a sufficiently aware selfconsciousness. Women, however, can never be admitted to be men, even if they are considered equal persons in the public sphere. According to Hegel, this is because they are of a different nature. The fundamental natures of men and women are complementary, Hegel assumes, and distinct even when fully developed. Men are self-conscious while women are simply �48 THE ST. JOHN'S REVIEW conscious. Thus Spirit seems far from its goal of achieving selfconsciousness in the relations between modern men and women. We who observe the process of self-conscious Spirit struggling to know itself, we who are in the know as philosophers, must ask whether Hegel is telling us everything about Antigone. Can she remain still, a medium for change without changing? Can she be outside the dialectical process? Has she become, for us, a thing of the past not to be desired? Our answer to these questions has to be no. When we recall the dynamic image of Antigone offered in Hegel's aesthetic interpretation of the play, we notice that she acted quite naturally, that is unreflectively, in carrying out her duty. Antigone was portrayed as a doer who willed her fate. Each of her actions was dialectical: each began as a negation and ended with positive consequences. In remaining unwed, Antigone denied the possibility of a procreative family of her own. This was in a simple way a u~eminine action, for it was anti-generation and, ultimately, a withdrawal of support for the state. Yet at the same time her virginity was a service to the state, for she prevented Oedipus's fated blood from continuing to haunt Thebes. Since her loyalty remained with her original family, which had vanished into the underworld, Antigone found herself acting positively as an individual in a public arena. Antigone was a political being in spite of herself. Her last words were addressed to the leaders of Thebes. There is a shift from the properly feminine lament for Antigone's lost marriage to the strong declaration: Look, leaders of Thebes, I am the last of your royal line. Look what I suffer, at whose command, because I respected the right. (940-44) While respecting the familial gods' "right," Antigone became quite clear about her political position, as the last voice of the royal house. This position gives her the authority to directly address the elders as witnesses and, ultimately, as responsible parties in her death. Hegel neglected this political speech, which is crucial for an understanding of her character. I think that the speech shows that woman is political, even when her loyalties seem to undermine the stability of the state. I do not claim that her feminine world is canceled by her appearance in public life or taken up by this higher realm. I do claim that feminine nature encompasses more than Hegel allows. Only when we consider Antigone as a dialectical heroine, who changes as she changes the world, can we continue to hold her as a model for �LOCKE 49 womankind. Hegel neglects the historical character of human being when he limits woman to a passive role as the mirror of a specific culture, as if that were her nature. This oversight results in the contradictions between his analysis in the Phenomenology and in the Philosophy of Right, which includes cultural developments of the Christan era external to the original Greek context. In conclusion, I think that the polarities between female and male, divine and human law, home and city, are eternal ones. The possibilities for collision- and thus for drama- increase as the opposing terms deepen and subtly shift in meaning. To allow woman to advance in selfconsciousness perpetuates the dynamic tension between the sexes and permits mutual recognition. Unfortunately, it magnifies the tension between the demands of private and public life. Hegel's view of woman is unnecessarily limited by defining her only in relation to men. Antigone breaks through this limited view when she acts on her own, without her brother or her fiance by her side. She brings hidden divinities to bear on human affairs, and causes the spectator to reflect on Hegel's assertion that the true is the whole. Like Antigone, Hegel is both guilty and innocent of the past he inherits. Human being embraces them both. In the end, the two of them might echo Teiresias's words: We two have come one road, two of us looking through one pair of eyes. This is the way of walking for the blind. (988-90) Notes I. G. W. F. Hegel, Aesthetics, Lectures on Fine Arts, 2 vols., trans. T. M. Knox (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1975), p. 1218. 2. Ibid., p. 1159. 3. Sophocles, Antigone, in Greek Tragedies, vol. 1., trans. Elizabeth Wyckoff (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1960). 4. Aesthetics, p. 1166. 5. Ibid., p. 1187. 6. Ibid., p. 1214. 7. G. W. F. Hegel, Phenomenology of Spirit, trans. A. V. Miller (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1977), para. 734. 8. Ibid. 9. Aesthetics, p. 1215. 10. Ibid. �50 THE ST. JOHN'S REVIEW II. Aristotle, Aristotle's Poetics, translation and analysis, Kenneth A. Thlford (Chicago: Henry Regnery Co., 1967), 1453a6. 12. Aesthetics, pp. 1197-98. 13. G. W. F. Hegel, Philosophy of Right, trans. T. M. Knox (New York: Oxford University Press, 1967), para. 162. 14. Ibid., para. 142. 15. Phenomenology, para. 451. 16. Ibid., para. 460. 17. Ibid., para. 457. 18. Ibid. 19. Philosophy of Right, para. 161. �Idealism, Ancient and Modern: Sophocles' Antigone and Schiller's Don Carlos Gisela N. Berns Almost at the end of Schiller's Don Carlos, the blind, menacing figure of the Grand Inquisitor, led by two Dominicans, appears before King Philipp, the ruler of Spain (V, 10). From the outset, the appearance of the old priest, which is in answer to the death of Marquis Posa, is foreshadowed in the ominous presence of Domingo, the King's confessor. An idealistic fighter for the liberation of mankind from tyrannical rule, Posa had been murdered for betraying the King's trust. Accused by the Grand Inquisitor for circumventing the authority of the church, Philipp confesses his vulnerability to the striking radiance of Posa's character. In his emotional devastation, the King consents to the sacrifice of Carlos, his only son and Posa's friend, to the Inquisition. Almost at the end of Sophocles' Antigone, the blind figure of Thiresias, led by a young boy, appears before Creon, the ruler of Thebes (lines 988-1090). After the fatal battle between the sons of Oedipus, Creon had issued an order for burying Eteocles, the defender, but not Polyneices, the invader of the city. Antigone's attempt to bury her brother had been punished with her own live burial in a cave outside Thebes. Ominous signs have stirred Thiresias from his sacrifices to come to warn Creon and urge him to restore the dead to the dead, and the living to the living. With reference to his portrayal of the Inquisition in Don Carlos, Schiller Gisela N. Berns is a Thtor at St. John's College, Annapolis. 51 �52 THE ST. JOHN'S REVIEW promises to "revenge prostituted mankind" by "striking to the soul of a kind of man the dagger of tragedy, so far, had only grazed." 1 Compared to Teiresias, the priest of a natural religion that acknowledges all powers of the universe as gods, the Grand Inquisitor, in the service of the universal power of the biblical God, rises to monstrous heights. Devoid of all natural human feelings, 2 he is the more terrible as he uses the Christian doctrine of love, consummated in the sacrifice of God's only son on the cross, to perpetrate death and destruction. The defilement of sacrifices by birds feeding on an unburied corpse makes Teiresias urge Creon to restore Polyneices to the dead and Antigone to the living. The defilement of the religious and political atmosphere by a man's claim to freedom of thought makes the Grand Inquisitor request the life of Carlos in exchange for the death of Posa, which had been a murder rather than a sacrifice in the name of the greater glory of the church.' With the same dramatic development, the two scenes open up very different tragic perspectives: Where the ruin of Creon's house, though foreshadowed in his increasing blasphemy against Zeus, comes as a blow of fate, Philipp himself, in monstrous analogy to the Christian God, wills his only son into the murderous hands of the Inquisition.' The link between Schiller's Don Carlos and Sophocles' Antigone is not so far-fetched as it might seem. Schiller's translation of scenes from Euripides' Phoenician Women, a play about the events that occurred before those portrayed in Sophocles' Antigone, coincides with his Briefe iiber Don Carlos, written soon after the completion of his dramatic poem. However tenuous the chronological link between Schiller's reading Antigone and writing Don Carlos might be, what counts is the thematic link. While Antigone and Marquis Posa resemble each other in their idealistic fight for principles of a higher order than the ruling tenets of the day, they are, at the same time, striking examples of the difference between ancient and modern idealism. Whether systematic, as in his later plays, or sporadic, as in the earlier ones, Schiller's integration of Greek archetypes into his own modern historical drama only accentuates the modernity of his work.' The purpose of this essay, therefore, is not so much to show Sophocles' influence on Schiller as to explore paradigmatic forms of idealism within the given contexts of Greek tragedy and modern historical drama.' Understanding himself as a representative of all mankind, Marquis Posa, early in the play, tries to inspire his friend Carlos to help in the liberation of Flanders from the tyrannical rule of Spain (I, 2). Feeling responsible for her family, Antigone, in the opening scene, tries to persuade her sister Ismene to help her bury their brother Polyneices (1-99). When their idealistic expectations miscarry, both Posa and Antigone reveal themselves as heartless fanatics. In the name of an abstract ideal that blinds him to �BERNS 53 the needs of his friend, Posa exploits Carlos's love for the Queen in order to further his political goals. For the sake of the dead brother outside the city walls, Antigone poisons her sisterly love for Ismene with the bitter shafts of hate. Though they resemble each other in their expression of idealism, Posa is concerned about an idea, Antigone about a body. Where the modern idealist, with a cosmopolitan outlook, transcends all natural and historical limits, the ancient idealist, with close ties to nature and mythical tradition, focuses on the family and its conflict with the political order of the city. As a move in his political game, Posa arranges for a meeting between Carlos and the Queen in the royal garden (I, 5). Coming upon the queen, left by Carlos just in time, the King, like the biblical God after the fall of Adam and Eve in the Garden of Eden, calls her to account for the absence of her court (I, 6). Appealing to a higher and more enduring law than Spanish court rules, the Queen tries to defend her womanly virtue. With a distinction between good and evil that is merely political, Creon claims the support of Zeus for leaving the body of Polyneices unburied (162-222). Antigone, after she has been arrested at the burial of her brother and brought before Creon, appeals to the eternal, unwritten laws of the gods as safeguards for her action (223-331, 276-581). Like the Queen, later in Don Carlos (IV, 9, 3759-70), she protests against having to hate where her heart tells her to love (523). Schiller's poetic practice, in anticipation of his advice to the modern artist in Uber die aesthetische Erziehung des Menschen, "connects what nature separated, and separates what nature connected."' In addition to explicating a character like Antigone in such correlative characters as Posa and the Queen, Schiller complicates the traces from Greek tragedy with traces from the biblical tradition. By highlighting the historical world of Don Carlos with the biblical intimations of man's past perfection in the Garden of Eden, Schiller contrasts the Greek notion of nature with the biblical notion of history and thus exhibits the inherently problematic understanding of man in modern times. With the biblical intimations of man's future perfection in a world to come, Posa's vision of the progress of mankind through history dominates his great audience scene with the King (III, 10). An implicit condemnation of the King's despotic rule, Marquis Posa's idealistic picture of an age in which the natural nobility of man will triumph in the rule of reason, manifesting itself in political autonomy, at the same time affects and disaffects the King. Posa's confession of his love for humanity echoes the titanic claims of Prometheus. Despite this anticipation of tragedy, it has a hollow ring against his later inhuman betrayal of the King's trust. �54 THE ST. JOHN'S REVIEW Like Posa in Don Carlos (III, 10), the Chorus in Antigone (332-75) paints a lofty picture of human nature. With its celebration of man as one of the awesome things in the universe, the second choral ode describes man's mastery over nature and his attempt at mastering his own nature within the framework of nature as a whole. Aware of man's tendency to evil as well as to good, the Chorus warns of overstepping the bounds of mortality. Though both Posa and the Chorus recognize the creative power of reason as the differentia of human nature within nature, the Chorus's stylized ode focuses on the dangers, Posa's dramatic exposition on the glory of its artistic achievements.' The modern hybris of Posa, the artist, of creating a world in his own image, seems to consist in his willingness to use men as material in the process towards the perfection of mankind.' More human than Posa, Carlos, earlier on, had begged the King to let him share in the political responsibility for Flanders (II, 2). In a similar encounter between father and son, Haemon, Creon's son and Antigone's betrothed, tries to sway his father towards a more lenient execution of justice (635-765). Though Haemon is more diplomatic than Carlos, their arguments, with comparable effects on Creon (766-80) and Philipp (II, 3; IV, 10), follow the same path. Though they both fail to bring about a final reconciliation, the two scenes are dramatic turning points in their plays. But where Haemon's attempt to mediate between his father and his betrothed provides the axis of symmetry in Antigone, 10 neither Carlos's emotional (II, 2) nor Posa's rational (III, 10) appeal to the father and king in Philipp marks the center of Don Carlos. That distinction is given to the threshold between the King's lonely search for a human being worthy to be his friend (III, 5) and both Carlos's and Philipp's own expression of humanity in their generous attitude towards Medina Sidonia, the admiral returning from the defeat of the Armada (III, 6-7). After the fateful conversation between father and son in Don Carlos (II, 2), strands of conflicting love stories are interwoven with the political texture of the play. With the connotations of Adam and Eve's expulsion from the Garden of Eden, Princess Eboli's confession of love for Carlos (II, 8) in the royal palace (the center of Act II) mirrors Carlos's confession of love for the Queen (I, 5) in the royal garden (the center of Act I). Inconceivable for our modern sensibilities, Haemon and Antigone never even mention each other's names, let alone speak to one another. 11 Only the Chorus, in a passionate ode following Haemon's appeal to Creon, comments on the universal power of Eros and the disaster it may bring to mortals and immortals alike (781-800). Revealing the darker sides of an idealism that shuns no human risk, �BERNS 55 Posa finally loses his political game. In a highly emotional scene that echoes the story of the sacrifice of Christ for the redemption of mankind, he entrusts the Queen with his legacy for Don Carlos (IV, 21; cf. 3). Though she is moved by Posa's artistic vision of a future new world, the Queen cannot help accusing him of willful and inhuman ambition. Faced by death and by an elusive facet of his own character, Posa, in his last moments with the Queen, comes to realize something about the simple beauty of life. In a similar mood, though publicly addressing a chorus of elders, Antigone mourns her approaching death (806-943). In order to console herself over losing the light of the sun and her own future wedding day, she conjures up examples of past heroic deaths. Concerned with her natural fate, Antigone laments the loss of the sunlight; concerned with the fate of mankind, Posa reflects on the loss of "two short evening hours" (the King's rule) for the gain of "a summer's day" (the ascendency of Don Carlos). In Posa's metaphorical language, the historical progress from the father's despotic reign to the son's enlightened rule supplants the cyclical movement of the natural powers of the universe. 12 When they are accused of willfully overstepping the bounds of mortality, both Posa (IV, 21; V, 3) and Antigone (891-943) speculate about how, under different circumstances, they might have avoided death. But where Antigone's thoughts revolve around different relationships within the natural realm of the family, Posa's thoughts involve different constellations of political power with a view to the fulfillment of human nature through historical progress. The hybris of such cosmopolitan usurpation reveals itself in the murder of Marquis Posa, which is the more terrible as it occurs in the middle of his farewell to Carlos (V, 3). With his arms around the dead body of his friend, Carlos, in a stupor, witnesses the King's visit to his prison. The royal gesture of returning his sword, however, reawakens Carlos's sense of the King's complicity in Posa's murder. As if to kill his father, but restraining himself, Carlos strikes a more deadly blow by revealing the story of their friendship and Posa's betrayal of the King's trust (V, 4). 13 In a similar sequence of events, a Messenger tells of Creon's visit to Antigone's cave, where Haemon, with his arms around the dead body of his betrothed, laments their fateful love (1155-1243). Creon's pleading with his son only provokes Haemon's rage to kill him. When the attempt fails, he turns his sword against himself and dies, embracing Antigone in the end. In the Riga version of Don Carlos, the play ends with Carlos's attempt to kill the King, the Queen's dead faint, and, finally, Carlos's suicide. 14 The King's cry of horror, as it were, echoes Creon's wild lament over his son's death. Even in the full version of Schiller's dramatic poem, Carlos's �56 THE ST. JOHN'S REVIEW farewell embrace of the Queen, his disavowal of all passion but for the memory of his dead friend (V, II, 5315-16), and his gathering the Queen in his arms at the end, might be seen as a modern transfiguration of the tragic plight of Haemon and Antigone. Because it is perpetrated in the name of the Christian God, the King's final act of delivering Carlos out of the arms of the Queen into the hands of the Grand Inquisitor far surpasses the horror of Creon's last steps when he enters carrying the corpse of Haemon into a palace full of woe over the death of Creon's wife who, on hearing the news about her son, had committed suicide. In the conclusion to his reflections on naive and sentimental poetry, Schiller discusses the difference between the realist and the idealist. More noble in his actions than in his thoughts, the realist moves within a finite range of human possibilities. More noble in his thoughts than in his actions, the idealist reaches for infinite heights of human perfection. 15 This difference, which for him is more pronounced in life than in poetry, Schiller considers representative for the difference between ancients and moderns. If this distinction is applied to the poetic figures of Antigone, as ancient, and Marquis Posa, as modern idealist, their difference can be seen to stem from the nature of their ideals rather than from the nature of their idealism. Concerned about the fate of the family and its eternal conflict with the political order of the city, the ancient idealist orients herself according to the mythical past. Concerned about the fate of mankind and its temporary conflict with the powers of the earth, the modern idealist orients himself according to the historical future. This fundamental expansion of man's horizon from the realm of nature, governed by the principle of necessity, to the realm of history, governed by the principle of freedom, allows for a greater complexity of dramatic plot as well as of dramatic characters. Almost as a rule, two characters in Schiller's Don Carlos correspond to one character in Sophocles' Antigone: Posa and the Queen to Antigone; Carlos and the Queen to Ismene; Posa and Carlos to Haemon; Domingo and the Grand Inquisitor to Thiresias; and Carlos and the King to the Messenger. Themes of the Chorus are covered in dramatic exchanges between Posa and the King in one instance, and Carlos and Princess Eboli in another. ' 6 Only the King and Creon, the realists in both plays, correspond to one another as single characters. As a curious addition to the list of comparable characters, no character ·in Schiller's Don Carlos takes on the comic role of the Guard called upon to bring Antigone before Creon. Created in the image of the biblical God, and in dead earnest about the infinite aspirations connected with that �BERNS 57 origin, modern man seems to have lost his sense of the salutary function of comic relief. By sustaining the tragic mood throughout Don Carlos, Schiller indulges his modern sensibilities and thus contributes to the play's idealistic grandeur. " In comparison with the earthbound idealism of Antigone, the heavenbound idealism of Marquis Posa truly seems to deserve that name. A sober commentary on idealism as a fundamental problem of human nature in any given age, Schiller's Briefe iiber Don Carlos recognize both the unique glory and the unique danger of its modern manifestation. Notes I. To Reinwald, April 14, 1783. 2. Schiller, Geschichte des Abfal/s der vereinigten Niederlande von der spanischen Regierung, Einleitung, Schillers Werke, Nationalausgabe [NA], ed. Lieselotte Blumenthal and Benno von Weise (Weimar: Biihlau, 1943 ff.), XVII, i, 23; I, NA, XVII, i, 56-57. 3. Schiller, Don Carlos, Thalia-Fragment, II, 6, 2026-31, NA VI, 439; cf. Geschichte, I, NA XVII, i, 59. With watchwords like "miitterliche Kirche," ''Vatermord," "Pest," "Verwesung," "l..eichen," and "das Grab selbst ist keine Zuflucht," Schiller's original portrayal of the Inquisition (Schiller, Siimtliche Werke, ed. Gerhard Fricke and Herbert Giipfert, 5th ed., Miinchen: Hanser, 1975, IV, 83) umnistakably alludes to the infamous story of the house of Oedipus. 4. Sophocles, Antigone, 184, 288, 304, 486-89, 658-59, 1039-44, 1063-90; Schiller, Don Carlos, V, 10, 5261-79; 11, 5367-68; cf. Geschichte, I, NA XVII, i, 54. 5. See Gisela N. Berns, Greek Antiquity in Schiller's "Wallenstein," Studies in the Germanic Languages and Literatures, Vol. 104 (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1985). 6. Cf. to Siivern, July 26, 1800; to Goethe, April 4, 1797. Exploring a structural analogy between Sophocles' Antigone and Schiller's Maria Stuart, Florian Prader (Schiller und Sophokles [Ziirich: Atlantis, 1954, 120]) argues for the poetic effectiveness of Maria Stuart, "gerade wei! sie nicht griechisch ist und Schiller die dramatisch wirksamen Elemente der antiken "Ifagodie kunstvoll mitarbeiten lasst, ohne der Nachahmung verpflichtet zu sein." Objectionable in Prader's notion is merely his pretense (114), "Der Vergleich mag uns nur zeigen, wie Schiller in seinem Bemiihen urn die Physik des Dramas so vie! vom antiken Vorbild in sein eigenes, kiinstlerisches Schaffen aufnimmt, dass von einer Analogie zu sprechen ist, die dem Dichter wohl nicht bewusst wird." �58 THE ST. JOHN'S REVIEW 7. Schiller, Uber die aesthetische Erziehung des Menschen, Letter 26, NA XX, 401; Uber das Erhabene, NA XXI, 53, "Nun stellt zwar schon die Natur fiir sich allein Objekte in Menge auf, an denen sich die Empfindungsfahigkeit fiir das Schone und Erhabene iiben konnte; aber der Mensch ist, wie in andern Fallen, so auch bier, von der zweiten Hand besser bedient als von der ersten und willlieber einen zubereiteten und auserlesenen Stoff von der Kunst empfangen, als an der unreinen Quelle der Natur miihsam und diirftig schopfen." 8. See Schiller's own reflections on the use of the chorus in connection with Die Braut von Messina, NA X, 7-15, and Ilse Graham, Schiller's Drama: Talent and Integrity (London: Methuen, 1974), "Element into ornament: the alchemy of art: a reading of Die Braut von Messina," 67-90. 9. For a discussion of the questionable character of Posa's idealism, see Schiller, Briefe iiber Don Carlos, NA XXII, 138 ff.; Uber die aesthetische Erziehung des Menschen, Letter 4, NA XX, 317; Letter 6, NA XX 328; Letter 9, NA XX, 334-36; Uber naive und sentimentalische Dichtung, NA XX, 496-98, 503; cf. Oskar Seidlin, "Schiller: Poet of Politics," in A Schiller Symposium, ed. A. Leslie Willson (Austin: University of Texas, Department of Germanic Languages, 1960), 31-40. 10. Their names alone (Haemon/"concerned with blood," Creon/"concerned with power") exhibit the central conflict in Sophocles' Antigone. II. The line "0 dearest Haemon, how your father humiliates you!" (572), usually given to Antigone by modern editors, appears in all existing manuscripts as a line of Ismene. On the emotional shallowness of the ancients, especially in their portrayal of women, cf. Schiller, Uber naive und sentimenta/ische Dichtung, NA XX, 432-36, 478, n. I; and to Humboldt, Dec. 17 and 25, 1795. 12. Schiller, Don Carlos, IV, 21, 4313-14; cf. 4299-301; 3, 3435-39; 6, 3646-50; V, I, 4505-06; 9, 5068-70. See Gerhard Kaiser, "Vergotterung und Tad: Die thematische Einheit von Schillers Werk," and "Die Idee der ldylle in der 'Braut von Messina,'" in Von Arkadien nach Elysium, 11-44 and 164-66. 13. Carlos's "Ja, Sire! Wir waren Briider! Briider durch/Ein edler Band, als die Natur es schmiedet" (V, 4, 4791-92) brings out the crucial difference between Antigone and Marquis Posa. For the inner connection between Don Carlos as "ein Familiengemillde in einem fiirstlichen Hause" and Schiller's theme of idealism, see Helmut Koopmann, "Don Karlos," in Schiller's Dramen: Neue Interpretationen, ed. Walter Hinderer (Stuttgart: Klett, 1979), 99-106. �BERNS 59 14. Schiller, Dom Karlos, NA VII, i, 354-58. For Schiller's dependence on and independence from St. Real's "Histoire de Dom Carlos," see Gerhard Storz, Der Dichter Friedrich Schiller (Stuttgart: Klett, 1959), 118. 15. Schiller, Uber naive und sentimentalische Dichtung, NA XX, 500. 16. Cf. Schiller, Uber die aesthetische Erziehung des Menschen, Letter 6, NA XX, 322-23, 326-27; and lise Graham, "Die Struktur der Persiinlichkeit in Schillers dramatischerDichtung," in Schiller: Zur Theorie und Praxis der Dramen, ed. Klaus L. Berghahn and Reinhold Grimm, Wege der Forschung 323 (Darmstadt: Wissenschaftliche Buchgesellschaft, 1972), 351, 361-64. 17. It is interesting to note that this is not only a characteristic ofthe young Schiller. In as late a work as his translation of Shakespeare's Macbeth, he drastically changes the Porter scene (II, 5). Cf. Uber naive und sentimentalische Dichtung, NA XX, 431-35, esp. 433, "Als ich in einem sehr friihen Alter den letzteren Dichter zuerst kennenlernte, empiirte mich seine Kiilte, seine Unempfindlichkeit, die ibm erlaubte, im hiichsten Pathos zu scherzen, die herzzerscheidenden Auftritte im 'Hamlet', im 'KOnig Lear', im 'Macbeth' usf. durch einen Narren zu stiiren, die ibn bald da festhielt, wo meine Empfindung forteilte, bald da kaltherzig fortriss, wo das Herz so gern stillgestanden wiire." ��George Steiner's Antigones: A Review* Eva Brann Anyone who has reread the Antigone about as often as is profitable for the time being might consider turning to this book. The curious plural of its title is glossed on the cover of the paperback: "How the Antigone legend has endured in Western literature and thought." While conceding absolute primacy to the Antigone of Sophocles' play, Steiner brings to prominence the power of Antigone's story in its apparently inexhaustible versions. Greek myths, he says, have had an "unbroken authority ... over the imagination of the West," and among them the Antigone legend is paramount in both shaping and expressing the moral constitution of Western humanity. Steiner's thesis is not innocuous. Its explicit consequence is the elevation of Tragedy over Scripture and of Sophocles over Shakespeare. With respect to the Bible, Steiner asserts, for example, that for German literature the polla ta deina chorus ("Many awesome things walk the earth, but nothing more awesome than man," 333 ff.) forms the heart of the "house of being" (a Heideggerian phrase) much more than does any chapter from the Luther bible. It is hard to tell how far Steiner means to generalize this thesis. In Thomas Mann's Doctor Faustus, to cite a counter-example, the liberal humanism of the classical scholar Zeitblom pales before the devout deviltry of the Lutheran musician Leverkiihn. But even if it were only a literary phenomemon, to me it seems sinister if it is true- as if something appalling were excessively savored. At any rate, whatever may be the case *George Steiner, Antigones. Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1984; Oxford Paperback, 1986. 61 �62 THE ST. JOHN'S REVIEW for the European continent, for the Anglo-Saxon countries the notion that Greek myths matter more than the Bible is laughable. But Steiner is an enthusiast, and his passion is productive enough to make his Hellenic bias forgivable. He argues his subordination of Shakespeare to Sophocles more specifically, by citing Wittgenstein's subversive question: "Was [Shakespeare] perhaps rather a creator of language than a poet?" The question is meant to intimate that Shakespeare invented a new species of language but failed to bring transcendent presence to earth. The index of this lack, which Steiner connects with Shakespeare's "pluralism and liberality, his tragi-comic bias," is his intuitive avoidance of myth. Now it is another of Steiner's theses that "Greek myths are imprinted in the evolution of our language, and of our grammar in particular," that "the 'initial' and determinant Greek myths are myths in and of language, and in which, in turn, Greek grammar and rhetoric internalize, formalize, certain mythical configurations." "Myths speak themselves in men." For example, Steiner reads in Narcissus "the long history of the demarcation of the first person singular, together with the solicitations and menace of solipsism, of the withering of our utterance to monologue, as these are latent in the grammar of our ego." There are two language-mysticisms current that I find-not very profitably-unsettling because I can't make out what they mean when taken at their word and because I can't determine whether they are deep or merely sophisticated. One is the claim that our humanity is linguistic, is not only enmeshed in, but exhausted by, language- that there is nothing beyond speech for speech to be about, so that all speech is about speech and speech is all there is: we are speech. The other is that language speaks, not the speaker- we may utter sound, but the saying is accomplished by language. Th these paradoxes Steiner appears to be adding a third: that legends articulate language. To me it seems that to speak responsibly I must believe that it is I who speaks, and to speak substantively I must think that I speak about something, and to speak consideringly I must suppose that the tale is separable from the telling. However, to return to the point: It is in the light of Steiner's linguistic theory that the demotion of Shakespeare from poet-the speaker of myth-shaped language-to language-creator-an autonomous maker rather than a conductor of truthful transcendent presence-is to be understood. Steiner thinks of Sophocles too as a humanist, but as one who possesses a pietas, a "haunted humanism." Sophocles' relation to the gods stands median, between Aeschylus's sense of neighborhood and Euripides' sophistic uncertainties: For Sophocles the primal intimacies of god and men have receded, but certain human deeds �BRANN 63 are darkly reminiscent of the scandals attendant on their aboriginal commerce. Clearly Steiner accords more gravity to Sophocles' archaic, primordial "scenes" than to Shakespeare's current human condition. Why, really, I ask myself. If I have seemed critical of Steiner's thesis so far, let me engage here in a belated captatio benevolentiae for him. Steiner has acquired a sort of anti public, readers who expect from him pretentious verbiage and trendy interests. Antigones is not like that. The language is often apt and sometimes poignant. At worst there are arresting usages that fail to click and hyperbolic metaphors that discredit their sentence: Oedipus's attempt at self-perception is called "an incest more radical than that of blood." That's verbiage too juicy for credibility. However, I think I understand the cause of the urge to use strong language. The reason is that people in their capacity as writers of books about books- or reviews of books about books- are naturally unsuited to the invocation of elemental and mighty forces, not being themselves elemental and mighty, and so they are tempted to reach for language that is a little beyond their format. In fact, I can't help reiterating here my misgivings about the business of cultivating a taste for tragedy: I think our respectable mission in life is to convert tragedy into comedy, to find happy compromises and innocuous resolutions where we can, and then to give unconvertible tragedy the serious empathy that is its due-short of savoring it. It must be said in Steiner's favor that he has a high respect for drier readings of the text than he himself engages in. Above all, his own understanding of Antigone appreciates that very element in her: the "lucid dryness" of her ethical solitude, which "seems to prefigure the stringencies of Kant." In fact, Steiner's portrait of Antigone is one of the most admirable features of Antigones. He dwells on the fact of her youth: She is a young woman, a girl really, whose pure unseasoned will to extremity, whose gallant, immature resistance to compromise and resolution, give her at first a desolate satisfaction that turns finally to doubt and despair. This description brings home the difference (which readers are apt to forget) between being a tragic heroine and watching one: what looks like demonic grandeur from the outside is lonely misery from within. While Steiner's interests in this book are not trendy, they are contemporary: Antigones is a splendid hermeneutic exercise. Hermeneutics was once the fairly humble art of interpreting texts, particularly the Bible. When, in half-conscious rivalry with the scientists, who often spoke of reading the book of nature, the human world began to be construed as a text, hermeneutics ceased to be mere philology and became philosophy. An influential work in this philosophical hermeneutics is Hans-Georg Gadamer's �64 THE ST. JOHN'S REVIEW Truth and Method (1960). It establishes a study called "effective-history" [Wirkungsgeschichte]. Effective-history, or, perhaps better, actual-history, traces the effect a text has had through time (what might be called its longitudinal influence). The hypothesis is that the historical conduit is an actual constituent of our present readings; we live in a world shaped by previous interpretations, and a properly self-aware approach to the texts of our tradition requires the recovery of their earlier receptions- one might say that books bear the patina of their previous readings. The Antigones is such a recovery: it traces at once the versions of the Antigone legend and the fate of Sophocles' play-in fact, the two are inseparable. Antigone appears to be the most rewarding subject imaginable for an effective-history. Steiner begins his book by showing that between c. 1790 and c. 1905 Sophocles' Antigone was regarded in Europe as the work of art nearest to perfection. Hence it inspired not only interpretative commentary but a vast number of translations, adaptations, retellings, reversifications, and libretti. In sum, it underwent every sort of attempt at faithful recovery and originative recapture. Let me say here that the account of these mutant Antigones, to which much of Steiner's work is devoted, is absorbing throughout, though two items might be of special interest to us. First, Steiner gives a long account of Hegel's passionate preoccupation with Antigone, not only in the Phenomenology but in works not read in the program of St. John's College. Second, he gives an extended analysis of Holderlin's notorious transla. tion of the Sophoclean text, a poetic tour deforce, extreme and deep, which would surely have been a center-piece of the St. John's language tutorial had we chosen to do German rather than French. To return to Steiner's hermeneutic thesis: As he assumes in particular that our cultural tap-root is in Athens rather than in Jerusalem, so he posits in general, explicitly and often, that we have this history effectively in our cultural sap. It seems to me a dubious assumption. I do think that we absorb opinions from our surroundings, and that the roots of many of those opinions are to be found articulated in the texts of the program- that is, after all, a chief reason for a "great books" education. But I doubt that the sort of "cultural literacy" that Gadamer's and Steiner's thesis implies can be atmospherically acquired. It is rather the result of a deliberate classical education of the sort that Steiner tells us he received at the French Lycee in Manhattan and that I could still piece together at Brooklyn College. This is a pedagogic order that has been disrupted. Present-day students, by and large, come to Greek texts with a pristine nescience that brings them- in some respects, I imagine- close to the state of mind that the barbarians of the ancient world were in when they attended their first �BRANN 65 performance of a Hellenic drama. Their cultural history has become as effectively ineffective for them as it would be if they had none. Consequently they face the textual tradition without tradition. Iu the St. John's seminar, which is a proving-ground (or rather a disproving-ground) of hermeneutic hypotheses, the millenia between us and Sophocles are canceled not by a laborious longitudinal recovery but by a simple severance of the last links in the conduit of time. On the whole, this seems to me to work very well. I have more faith in the episodic recollections that mark a renaissance than in the unbroken memory of history. At any rate, even with its hermeneutic intuition neutralized, Antigones is full of interest. I would like to conclude with two of Steiner's own reflections, the first his try at an explanation of the unbroken preeminence of Sophocles' Antigone, the second his own interpretation of the play's "subterranean" message. The Antigone, he says, is preeminent because it is the one and only literary text to express "all the [five] principal constants of conflict in the condition of man": the confrontation of men and women, of age and youth, of society and individual, of the living and the dead, and of men and gods. The play presents each of these as "an equilibrium of fatalities." It is inexhaustible because it is encompassing in its antitheses and evenly poised in its resolutions. That seems to me a persuasive formulation. The subterranean significance of Sophocles' play, he suggests, is a judgment on tragedy itself. "Drama," which means literally, "deed," has a built-in preference for the act over the word, a preference that is a kind of enactment of the opposition so prominent in Greek speech: logOi men ... ergoi de- "in talk one thing, in actuality another." Steiner suggests that Sophocles is issuing an implied warning against the domination of accomplished facts over probing words, against the tragic elevation of Antigone's drastic deed. I do not know whether Steiner is right in this particular case, but his suggestion points to a paradox that is the saving grace of tragedy in general: the constitutional inability of even the most artful work to leave intact the mute uniqueness of the tragic deed. ��The Problem of Place in Oedipus at Co/onus Abraham Schoener The strangeness of this play begins with its name: Oidipous epi Koliiniii. Let me tell yon what koliinos means: Herodotus and Xenophon use it as a "heap of stones," but in particular of the stones heaped up in a barrow- a grave mound. Its sister-word koliine is used by Sophocles exclusively as a grave mound. It is the word with which Chrysothemis names Agamemnon's grave mound in the Electra. "Oedipus at Colonus" thus means "Oedipus at the Grave Mound." When Oedipus and Antigone reach Colonus, the place already bears this name. A local inhabitant whom they meet at the beginning of the play traces its name to an ancient knight named "Colonus"; but this etymology has no support in mythology. There are no tales of this knight's life, but just the story that he gave his name to the place. It is easy to suppose, however, that no one would want his or her town known as the Grave Site or the Corpse Mound; this etymology for the name would have been dismal and grating. So it is equally easy to imagine how the legend of a founding knight would arise- a knight who would give the town a glorious and noble past rather than a morbid and gruesome one. Yet if we accept this clever and somewhat mean-spirited etymology, we are still left with a critical question: Whose grave site is it? Whose is the grave that gives the town its name? Abraham Schoener is a Thtor at St. John's College, Annapolis. This lecture was given at the College in the summer of 1990. 'franslations are the author's. 67 �68 THE ST. JOHN'S REVIEW That is easy to answer. When Oedipus reaches Colonus, he says: "This is my resting place (line 88)." The town has always been named for him; his arrival finally makes the name true. The central question I want to pose is about place: What is the nature of place and places? I don't think I have even the beginning of an answer to this, but I know where to look. In the Oedipus at Co/onus, we find ourselves barraged by questions of place: Where are we? Is this the right place? Is it permissible to tread here? Where will Oedipus's bones rest? These questions give way to a kind of certainty about place: Oedipus knows right away that this is the right place; at the end of the play, in an astonishing reversal, he guides Theseus and his own daughters to the place where he knows he must die. But this certainty on his part only engenders more wonder and confusion on our part. We will never know precisely where Oedipus leaves this world, for he insists that it must remain secret to everyone but Theseus. In the end this special place becomes a mystery to us. We get a fascinating description of the general locale from one of Theseus's attendants. He says that Oedipus stopped at a katarrhakte hodos- a "path crashing downwards, with its roots in brazen steps sprung from the earth (1590-91)." Somewhere near here Oedipus disappeared. Now what kind of place is this, with roots deep into the earth herself? I. The Pharmakos and the Bounds of the City. A pharmakos is a scapegoat, someone chosen from among the inhabitants of the city to be driven out in an exercise of purification. Putting the scapegoat outside will somehow cleanse the city. This does not seem so strange at all. If we can imagine the scapegoat as the cause or emblem of the pollution, it seems easy to purify the city simply by removing the stain. The expulsion of the scapegoat is no more remarkable than any other form of cleaning. We wash with water, we rinse away the dirt and stain. The expulsion of the scapegoat is the means of washing the city. The only problem, I think, comes from trying to determine what counts as outside the city. Outside the walls? What if there are none-what if they are incomplete or being expanded? Th the edge of the territory? But where is this? The ritual of the pharmakos thus implies a problem of place. Where precisely is the city and what are its boundaries? How far must we expel the pollution before we are clean? And where is the pollution when it is no longer among us? The story of Oedipus seems to be built around this problem. He is expelled, as a baby, from the city, stranded on a hlll in uncertain territory, imported to a new city, not his own; he expels himself from this new city �SCHOENER 69 in an attempt to avoid becoming a wretch polluted by the stain of his father's blood; and at the intersection of two roads- in a no-man's land, neither in one city nor another- he murders his own father. Later, outside his native city, he confounds the Sphinx, and is installed in the city as king and savior. He begins his life as a pharmakos, expelled to avoid a stain, he grows up apolis, without a city, but he reverses these circumstances as he reaches adulthood. At his acme, he is at the center of a city, the loved and revered ruler of the land. But we know that he ends his life as he began it. In Thebes, his proper home, he is discovered as twice stained: with the blood of his father, the king,- and with his mother's sex. The city soon recognizes him as the source of the pollution that is poisoning the city and so he must be driven out. He is the perfect pharmakos, both the cause and the visible emblem of the miasma, horribly mutilated by his own hand. And so he begins our present play a wanderer, an exile- he calls himself apolis, a man without a city (1357). Not only is it easy to map Oedipus's life onto the pattern of the pharmakos, but it is easy to explain why the pattern is appropriate. Oedipus has crossed certain uncrossable lines; he has violated certain inviolable oppositions. The city depends on these two oppositions. It is clear how quickly all social and political stability would collapse if the young replaced the old through force and not through time; and if children mated with their parents and produced offspring who are neither absolutely children nor siblings. The city depends upon a certain distance between young and old, father and son, son and mother. Oedipus violated all of these boundaries and, whether intentionally or not, thus threatened the order and stability of his city. Whether he was knowing or not, he is stained with his transgression. He plunged himself twice, in different ways, into the forbidden zones of his parents' bodies; willing, knowing, or not, he is stained by that penetration and there is no cleansing of the stain. This is the pollution, the miasma, he both carries and represents, and as such he must be driven from the city. Once he has penetrated these zones, the city is no place for him. The model of the pharmakos and his stain helps remove a persistent obstacle to our reading of the play. The pharmakos need not be guilty in any sense (some cities simply expelled their ugliest inhabitants)-he need simply carry the stain out. Thus we need not ask if Oedipus was culpable, knowledgeable, rash, etc.-we need only ask if he was stained, polluted. I have been polluted in many ways that were no fault of my own but left me nonetheless polluted. Every time I have stepped in a dog's mess, every time I have cleaned shellfish, every time I fill my fountain pen: in each of these cases I have come into contact with something foreign to me- �70 THE ST. JOHN'S REVIEW the ammoniac redolence of the shellfish or the blue dye of the inksomething that is both foreign and hard to remove. But there are stains more powerful than these physical nuisances. It seems to me there are many occasions when we unwittingly cross certain borders and are marked forever by that crossing- we round a corner in our car and suddenly see bloody corpses strewn about in a horrible accident. It seems to me that whether Oedipus is guilty of anything or not, he is stained in just this way. He has been somewhere terrible, much more remote from the realm of our comfortable daily existence than the smell of decomposing shellfish is- but now that he has been there, he is forever marked by what he has seen, known, and felt. That is his stain, that is the necessity for his expulsion from the city. What he knows and has felt is simply too terrible for the city to contain. II. The Re-integration of the Pharmakos. This understanding of Oedipus's condition seems too easy to me. We understand the question of his place as a strictly political problem, a problem for the city. We say that Oedipus is properly apolis-an exile without a city- because his stain threatens the city's safety. We think of that line in Aristotle-almost a cliche-"the man who can live outside of the city is either a beast or a god" (Cf. Pol. 1253a29). Fine, we say, Oedipus is both, cast out, apolis, he is a wretched beast, deprived of all society- but he is also a god, super-human in what he has done, what he knows, what he has suffered and endured. The proof of this is surely in his fate: Why else would he simply vanish, summoned by a god who says "it is time for us to leave"? His amazing disappearance would then be simply the ultimate expression of his political position; as a man who is apolis, his proper place is not with the dead humans below but with the gods above. This scheme even lets us understand the most remarkable reversal presented by this play. 1\vo present kings, one fallen one, and one pretender to a throne all agree that the outcast, the polluted pharmakos, must be brought back into the city so that it may prosper. This is not hard to gloss. It means that the city must face and find a place for the terrible things that threaten it. The city weakens itself by simply banishing all of its threats; rather it must embrace them. Thus we not only still talk about Oedipus and other such polluted citizens, but we celebrate them in the poetry called 'fragedy. And Athens, so wise among cities, celebrates these polluted citizens in a competition presented for the most part at public expense, attended by the whole city. This tradition thus welcomes the pharmakoi back into the city and installs them at its heart. The city grows stronger by gazing �SCHOENER 71 in wonder at the transgressors who threaten it. The secret boon that Oedipus brings to Athens is thus nothing more than his legend-his mythos-which now, because of Theseus's good will, becomes public property. By holding this story in common, rather than expelling and forgetting it, the city strengthens itself and grows to high health. Athens, the city of tragedy, rises to its awesome pinnacle; Thebes, who made Oedipus apolis, stumbles and fades. The answer to the question about Oedipus's place thus becomes paradoxical but fruitful. He is apolis and must be cast out of the city; but precisely because the city must address what is apolis, his story must be enshrined at the center of the city. His place as murderer is outside the city; as legend, it must be at its center. III: The Final Place I still wonder whether these are the only considerations for our understanding of this question. Must we address the question of place only in relation to the city? In other words, does the opposition of polis and apolis exhaust the question of place? As much as I find the scheme outlined above both helpful and convincing, I stumble when attempting to apply it to this play. The play certainly has political concerns, but these concerns are confounded by the persistent strangeness of the play. The root of this strangeness is surely Oedipus's final disappearance. To make anything at all of it, we will have to return to our initial question and investigate the nature of the place where he disappears. In the first sentence of the play, Oedipus asks: "What region or city of men have we reached?" (1-2). Antigone is his companion and guide, but before she can answer, he asks her to find a seat for him- "whether on ground which may be trodden or within the groves of the gods" (9-10). This opposition is interesting; it already expands the opposition between city and no-city with which we began. It is also interesting that Oedipus is willing to accept a seat within a sacred precinct. This seems to indicate a deep impiety on his part- he is willing to take a possible altar as a resting place- and thus emphasizes his alienation from the affairs of men. This also complicates his relation to the gods: not only is he apolis, an exile, but he is asebes, insensitive to the traditional bounds of piety. A local resident soon approaches but refuses to answer Oedipus's questions until the wanderer quits his seat; as Antigone suspected, the ground is sacred. The local says that "it is impure to tread upon it" (37). Oedipus does not seem shaken by this; after all, impiety is not foreign to him. He maintains his seat and asks to whom the place is sacred. He learns that �72 THE ST. JOHN'S REVIEW the dreadful Furies hold it; but the local refuses to call them by that name. He appeals to two circumlocutions and finally names them as "The Kindly Ones (Eumenides) who have seen all things" (42). The play marks a new beginning at this point. When he learns that the Eumenides hold this place, Oedipus the wanderer suddenly announces that "he will never leave his seat in this land" (45). Once the local leaves to consult a higher authority about Oedipus's violation of the grove, Oedipus addresses the Furies directly and says that Phoebus "spoke of this place as my rest after a long time-my final place-where I would find a seat of the dread Goddesses and a resting place for strangers; and there I should close my miserable life as a boon to my new hosts and a curse to those who exiled me" (88-93). This is the first we hear of the prophecy that determines the' rest of the play's action. Oedipus claims that Phoebus pronounced it years ago when he first questioned Delphi about his father; it is interesting that Sophocles makes no mention of it until Oedipus reaches and recognizes his "final place." But this ancient and personal oracle has been recently confirmed; both Creon and Polyneices have just had oracles that proclaim that they will need Oedipus- or his body- in order to triumph in a current conflict. These oracles differ in one essential feature from Oedipus's: they all name him as the source of a benefit to whichever land he rests in; his oracle names only one place, this place, in which he will close his life and become a benefit to some- his hosts- and a curse to others. This place is described at length. It is a lush grove sacred to the Furies, within a larger plot, all of which belongs to Poseidon. The whole plot is clearly sacred, but only the precinct of the Furies is so holy that it cannot be entered without impurity. Oedipus eventually leaves this plot at the behest of the chorus of local citizens; but at the end of the play, he reenters it, this time as his own guide, leading Theseus and his own daughters to a destination clear only to him. This second time he makes his way to the down-rushing path and the brazen steps- near which he finally vanishes. The chorus's songs add to our knowledge of the place. After Theseus has assured Oedipus that no one will ever dislodge him from this land, the chorus sings a beautiful song praising their particular location: Friend- within this land of fair steeds you have come to the earth's best home- where birds sing, ivy and vines grow thick, berries flourish, and the sun always shines (668-80). I will quote the second strophe of this ode verbatim, for it is remarkable: �SCHOENER 73 There is such a thing as I Have never heard of in an Asian land Nor in the great Dorian Island of Pelops: a sprout- A plant-untouched by hands, self-madeA terror to the spears of our enemiesThat blooms mighty in this land. I mean the olive with its silver leaves, nurturer of children. (694-701) This plant, among the lush vines and plenteous berries, makes the beautiful grove terrible and strange. An olive, untouched by human hands, self-created- autopoios? An olive that is at once the nurturer of children and a terror to enemies? This native plant, so similar to th<rwandering Oedipus, is the surest sign that he has indeed found his proper place. We must also consider its other chief inhabitants- the gods who hold it- in order to grasp how this place can be proper to Oedipus. The first gods are the Furies whose grove Oedipus has violated. They are so awful that no one in the play mentions them by name; instead they are addressed, as the first local does, in a series of euphemisms. The central one of these is of course "Eumenides," "the kindly ones"- a euphemism that is nearly a lie. The Furies are hardly kindly but vicious in pursuit of their quarry. They hound murderers, those who, like Oedipus, are stained with the blood they have spilled- especially those who are stained with their own parents' blood. Their fury is so extreme and easily kindled that the chorus says: We tremble to name them And pass by their grove Without a glance, Without a sound, Moving our lips (without a word) in silent reverence. (128-32) The chorus makes clear that the Furies' presence in the grove is almost palpable-as if its members avert their eyes in passing for fear of actually catching a glance of them. The Furies haunt this land- it is not only dedicated to them but somehow suffused with them. This seems possible for these awful forces in a way that would not be plausible for Zeus or Apollo. We cannot imagine them lurking in or haunting a grove-if Zeus or Apollo were present, he would not only be manifest but brilliant. Such gods could not disappear if they were present. The Kindly Ones thus give us a small clue for understanding Oedipus's final disappearance: When things are terrible, too terrible to gaze at or even mention, then it is somehow all the more plausible that they are present even if we cannot see them. We are disposed to believe that such terrible things can haunt and hold a place. �74 THE ST. JOHN'S REVIEW The chorus repeats that the whole land in which the grove stands is sacred to Poseidon. We do not imagine his place in the land in the same way we do that of the Eumenides in theirs. The chorus is afraid of seeing the Eumenides, but neither it nor the exceedingly pious Theseus ever betrays any expectation of meeting Poseidon. The land is his, but he is not there. What does this mean, that this land is consecrated to Poseidon, god of the sea? There is a hint for us in a common Homeric epithet that the chorus applies to him late in the play: they call him gaiaochos- the Earth Holder (1072). Poseidon's waters encircle the Earth and bound it on every side. But as they circle the earth, they never fall below it nor rise above it. There are neither subterranean nor heavenly seas. This banality gains some importance when we consider the remarkable prayer that Theseus utters after Oedipus's disappearance. The messenger says that he hears Theseus "reverencing both the Earth and the Olympus of the gods above at once-in the same word" (1654-55). This opposition between earth and sky reminds us of Zeus's trilateral division of the world after his ascension to power; he reserved the sky for himself, gave the underworld to his brother Hades, and gave the sea to his brother Poseidon. The earth thus seems to be neutral territory-uncontrolled by any god. But this appearance is belied by the common ascription of earthquakes to Poseidon: as earthholder, he is also earth-shaker. This suggests that Poseidon's realm is not the sea alone but the entire surface of this middle realm between Hades and Olympus. He would be the god who holds not only this sacred land but the whole Earth, the common land upon which we all walk. But this formulation cannot be right: we never walk on Poseidon's paths. Poseidon holds precisely those grounds upon which we cannot walk; he holds the shifting waters of the sea and the shifting surface of the earth. His paths are no paths for us and our feet; they are by nature untreadable. As Odysseus knows full well, Poseidon is the god who makes travel perilous, progress disastrous. He is the lord whose realm offers no sure step. This makes him the perfect lord of the land that contains our last mystery, the down-rushing path. Sophocles calls it katarrhakte hodos; many translators blanch at this paradox and call it a "sheer threshold." Katarrhakte can mean "sheer" indeed, but it is usually more forceful than that; it comes from rhasso- to rush at or strike suddenly. Theseus uses katarhasso ninety ,lines earlier to describe the action of hail: it strikes you as a result of rushing straight down. It is the parent of our "cataract," a lovely word for waterfall. Now it is hard to understand a katarrhakte hodos. It would seem to mean a path that dashes straight down, suddenly. Because such a path seems like �75 SCHOENER no path, some translators offer "threshold."* A hodos always goes somewhere-as indeed this one does; the messenger says that it is rooted in the earth, in brazen steps. This is still a very strange path; it seems to be a hole, or a cliff- a sheer drop from the grove to the roots of the earth. Can we call such a drop a "path"? We could hardly come and go upon it. Though it seems to go somewhere, it is still impassable. We could not tread on it. This path is no path. This is not the first strange path Oedipus has encountered; he killed his father and thus initiated his pollution at a crossroads where three paths met at once. These crossroads portended Oedipus's transgressions and ultimate exile; after Thebes, he became a man of no city, but lived only on path after path, crossroad after crossroad. But this last path is not of the same order. It is not simply a path as opposed to a city; it is not simply ek poleos or apo/is, as were the crossroads. As we have seen, it is no road at all; it offers no conveyance but only an abrupt end in itself. In this way this hodos does not recall his status as apolis; nor does it contradict it. As an abrupt end, it portends Oedipus's sudden disappearance, rather than his reintegration into the city. This disappearance thus does not resolve Oedipus's place in the city but displaces it. In a certain sense, it indicates that from now on he is neither apolis nor empolis but simply without a place. From this moment on, Oedipus is nowhere. IV: No Place The down-rushing path is itself no proof of this. We hear only that Oedipus pauses at this path, not that he ever embarks on it. But Theseus's prayer gives us an indication of Oedipus's current place. In the prayer he "reverences both Earth and Olympus at once- in the same logos." This suggests that Oedipus is neither interred in the earth nor raised to heaven. Nor is he in both. The amazing form of Theseus's prayer seems to suggest a third possibility. Theseus does not just join Heaven and Earth but he reverences them in a single logos. This logos must have somehow overcome their differences- * This translation depends upon reading ados ("threshold") instead of hodos here in line 57. The majority of the play's manuscripts read hodos, not ados; moreover ados is a rare form of the word for threshold. This word is oudos; the Form ados appears nowhere else in tragedy and in only two or three instances in ariy other authors. This translation thus seems to be prompted more by the paradox posed by hodos than the textual support for ados. �76 THE ST. JOHN'S REVIEW or suppressed them. In any case, it has caught these two opposites in a single logos. It seems to me that this logos could not, any more, refer to place. I do not know how to think of a place that is neither heaven nor earth- or one in which the sharp differences between heaven and earth are not addressed. In fact, it seems to me that this opposition is the very foundation for any possibility of place. Theseus has seen something that does not depend on this foundation. This something is not a Force but another kind of place; after all, Theseus does not pray to the gods of Earth and Olympus but to Earth and Olympus themselves. He is praying to two places. His remarkable vision (so potent that he must shield his eyes) is thus not of Oedipus's epiphany, or of the angels who escort him, but of the final place where Oedipus will rest. This place must be as different from normal places as Oedipus was from normal humans. As we have seen, it must be no kind of place we could understand. But just as it does not depend on the fundamental distinctions that organize and delimit our world, so this final resting place neither replaces Oedipus within the city nor sustains his exile from it. Rather it leaves the distinctions of the city behind. As heaven and earth are joined in one logos, so are joined the fundamental distinctions upon which society depends. As we have seen, Oedipus first became an exile precisely for transgressing these distinctions- but in this place, the distinctions are not transgressed but simply annulled in their conjunction. In this place, unlike Hades or Olympus, borders, boundaries, limits, order are no longer a concern. One cannot deny the political concerns of this play. We cannot forget that Oedipus has blessed Athens in a very political way; his place in their land guarantees that Theseus and his offspring will always hold the kingship. Does this manifest political legacy threaten the special place Oedipus has found, beyond political structures and concerns? No. I think instead, that Theseus's prayer and the place it reveals gently chastise us- the city and its inhabitants- for some of the effects of our political concerns. The play insists that Oedipus disappear. Oedipus himself insists that we cannot know where his grave is; even his daughters are forbidden this knowledge. The grave can have no kolone- no grave barrow. He forbids us to look on his resting place, but also to search for it or speak about it. All trace of him must vanish. His wishes are a clear prohibition against setting up his grave as a heroaltar. He thus prevents himself from becoming a ritual object for the City. His prohibitions make him neither a presence in the city nor an exile at its gates; rather they make him a true shade, a vanishing memory, whose place is nowhere. This willful disappearance denies the eager city its oppor- �SCHOENER 77 tunity to gaze at him, to wonder at him, to celebrate him- to gather in the theater and review his tragic fate. His disappearance is meant to deprive us of the horrible yet fascinating object we love to consider. It is a disappearance that undercuts the very aims and habits of the tragic theater. The play is so crafty that we too, the spectators or would-be spectators, are sympathetic to this undercutting. When the chorus in the play first learn Oedipus's identity, they subject him to a humiliating and prurient inquiry into his history. Having already won their respect, he begs them to desist- but they press on. "Did you really kill your father? And these lovely children- are they ... your sisters?" Oedipus answers truthfully and concisely. We bristle with rage at the chorus's base curiosity- but whose curiosity is this if not ours? Confronted with Oedipus's mutilated eyes, wouldn't we be horrified but at the same time insatiable in stealing glances at them? Even we spectators can understand his desire to disappear. This is the desire to retire from the public's insatiable gaze-whether it be solicitous or prurient. This is the desire to be nowhere- to be neither iu the heart of the city nor wandering at its borders, but nowhere. This desire is caught also in the words of the chorus, who utter one of the strangest yet plainest lines in poetry: me phunai ton hapanta nikai logon. Not being exceeds all speech. (1225) This is the final place Oedipus has found, his sweet end: not in the city, not outside of it; not even in the play; but beyond all logos- in not being. ��Oedipus the King and Aristotle's List of Categories: A Note Chaninah Maschler Substance (ousia) Quantity (poson) Quality (poion) Relation (pros tl) Place (pou) Time (pote) Stance (keisthaz) Condition (ekhein) Doing (poiein) Being done to (paskhein) -so runs the most famous of all lists of categories! How did Aristotle, or whoever it was that first supplied the list, obtain it? And what are categories good for? I believe the most direct route to an answer is to look at a passage in Sophocles' Oedipus the King. Jocasta: What made you turn around so anxiously? *Categories lb25. As the Becker pagination number shows, the treatise on categories opens Aristotle's works in their standard arrangement. Chaninah Maschler is a Thtor at St. John's College, Annapolis. 79 �THE ST. JOHN'S REVIEW 80 Oedipus: I thought you said that Laius was attacked and butchered at a place where three roads meet. Jocasta: That is the story, and it is told so still. Oedipus: Where is the place where this was done to him? (pou, paskhein) Jocasta: The land's called Phocis, where a two-forked road comes in from Delphi and from Daulia. Oedipus: And how much time has passed since these events? (pole) Jocasta: Just prior to your presentation here as king this news was published to the city. Oedipus: Oh, Zeus, what have you willed to do to me? (poiein) Jocasta: Oedipus, what makes your heart so heavy? Oedipus: No, tell me first of Laius' appearance, what peak of youthful vigor he had reached. (poios) Jocasta: A tall man, showing his first growth of white. He had a figure not unlike your own. Oedipus: Alas, it seems that in my ignorance I laid those fearful curses on myself ... (poiein) (lines 727-45, in the translation of Thomas Gould, Prentice Hall Greek Drama Series, 1970) Setting chapter iv of Aristotle's Categories side by side with the cited lines from Sophocles' tragedy prompts the hypothesis that the nine categories posterior to ousia may at one time have been the formal headings under which a person charged with the task of finding the unknown party responsible for a crime of violence was expected to carry on his investigation. As a result of pressing (like Oedipus or the modern investigative reporter) for answers to the questions Where? When? What did he look like? How was he attired? What was he doing? What was being done to him? the "first substance" question "Who?" would be tentatively answered, the indictment drawn up, and the accused party brought to trial. It is of course true that ordinary discourse, Greek or English, supplies the small question words that demarcate and orient investigation. Positioning them in a juridic context, which is the effect achieved by dragging in Sophocles' Oedipus the King, may seem needless. Yet the pathos of the king's lines at 844 f.If he [the eye witness to the crime] continues still to speak of many, then �MASCHLER 81 I could not have killed him. One man and many do not jibe. But if he says "one belted man," the doubt is gone. The balance tips toward me. I did it.* -is, I think more justly identified when this last hope is seen to be a hope for mathematical clarity and exactness, for degreeless truth of predication, as per Categories 6a20 ff., rather than a hope for innocence. I seem to have reversed my course. Having promised to throw light on Aristotle's Categories I end up using that little book to highlight Oedipus. But wasn't it some progress in the other direction to propose, by way of quoting the exchange of questions and answers between dialogue partners all too well attuned, that the categories are not primarily ontological pigeon holes, nor semantical pigeon holes comparable to the grammarians' "parts of speech," but, rather, shared demarcations of investigative discourse? If antecedent to asking particular questions about particular things there were no kinds of questions for an investigator to ask, and if a person who knows were unaware that what he or she knows are answers to questions that might be asked of him or her, there could be no investigating or knowing, whether solo or in concert. The categories are, a grid for speech, perception, and thought that makes it possible for questions to be sufficiently circumscribed for answers to fit them and to allow answers to generate new questions. Calling them "schemes of predication" (skhemata kategorias tou ontos) is just another way of saying the same thing.** My suggestion is, in short, that "predicating" is the answering of an explicit or implicit question and that "categories" are as much and as little a priori as are question-types. Further, that the Greek word for "predicating," kategorein, which bears the sounds of the word for "marketplace" or "town square," agora, within it, retains the memory of Jocasta's lines 849-50-"He [the eye witness] can't reject that and reverse himself. The city heard these things, not I alone"- the memory, that is, of public declaration. The fact that an official "accuser," such as were Meletus and Anytus in the Apology, is called a kategoros further confirms this. • A.t~st '!OV d !-lEV oiJv En aUtOv dpt9!J6V, oUK Byffi ~Ktavov· oiJ yO.p ytvou' liv de; ye -role; 1to/...A.oic; iaoc;. d 15' livop? ilv' ol61;rovov avo~cret, cracpro<; [843-47] 'oii'' tcr,lv ~151] 'oOpyov e!c; &~t1: psnov. ** See Chantraine, Dictionnaire etymologique de Ia Langue Grecque, volume 1, p. 392, on echo. �82 THE ST. JOHN'S REVIEW Where is the gain in having such antiquarian guess work as was just laid out? Perhaps it will nudge us to think of informative speech as carrying the weight of vouching for what we say. The question "What are categories good for?" was, even if sketchily, at least addressed. Notice that this is by no means the same question as "What is drawing up a list of them, and such charcterizing of them as Aristotle offers, good for?"- because the latter question is tantamount to asking, "Why turn tacit into explicit knowing?" �Depth and Desire Eva Brann By an old tradition the first lecture of the year is dedicated to the new members of our college, to the freshman students and the freshman tutors. It is a chance to tell you something about the shape and the spirit of the Program that governs St. John's College-and not only to tell you but perhaps even to show you. I think I am right in this spirit when I begin by examining the classname I just called you by: freshmen. A freshman, my etymological dictionaries tell me, is a person "not tainted, sullied or worn," a still-fresh human being, where "fresh" means, so the dictionary points out, both "frisky" and "impertinent." Later on in the year you will learn a weighty Greek word applicable to persons of frisky impertinence. They are said to have thymos, spiritedness or plain spunk, a characteristic necessary for serious learning. This spirited frame of mind is perfectly compatible with being shy and secretly a little scared. In fact, to my mind, it is a sign of quality in newcomers to be anxious for their own dignity in the way that shows itself in spirited shyness. It is our business, the business of the faculty and of the more responsible returning students, to help your spiritedness to become serious, to emerge from the shyness, whether it be of the quiet or the boisterous sort; to help you channel your energy into a steady desire for learning and to direct your boldness toward the discovery of depth, and, moreover, to help you without leaving you tainted, sullied, and worn out. I keep saying "help," because although great changes are bound to Eva Brann is the new Dean of St. John's College, Annapolis. This is the Dean's opening lecture of the current academic year. 83 �84 THE ST. JOHN'S REVIEW take place in you in these next years- do but behold the seniors: unsullied, untainted, unworn, and transfigured- we none of us know who should get the most credit besides yourself: the Program, our teaching, your friendship, or just plain time passing. At any rate, the spirit of the college is invested in seriousness, a certain kind of seriousness- not dead seriousness but live seriousness, you might say. This seriousness shows itself on many occasions: in deep or heated conversations in the noon sun or at midnight, in marathons of effort and in the oblivion of sleep, in devoted daily preparation and in glorious goofing-off, in the willingness to try on opinions and in the need to come to conclusions. What does your school do to induce this very particular kind of seriousness? When you chose to come to St. John's you were, perhaps, attracted by the fact that the mode of teaching normal in higher education is quite abnormal here. I mean lectures. Only one lecture a week is an integral part of the Program, on Fridays at 8:15 P.M. Now the chief thing about a lecture is that it is prepared ahead of time. For instance, I began working on this lecture in March. A lecture ought to be the temporarily final word, the best a speaker has to give you at the moment. It should not matter whether the surface of the speech is brilliant or drab, as long as it is a deliberate and well-prepared opening of the speaker's heart and mind to the listeners. As such it carries authority. These authoritative occasions are obviously important to the life of the school. Yet our normal way is not the prepared lecture but the focused conversation, which is effervescent rather than prepared, provisional rather than authoritative, and participatory rather than reactive. Your tutors will not tell you but ask you; they will demonstrate not acquired knowledge but the activity of learning. One reason why the teaching of new tutors- and some of your classes will be taught by newcomers- is often most memorable to freshmen is that their learning is genuinely original and keeps sympathetic pace with yours. There is an irresistible but false local etymology of the word tutor as "one who toots," perhaps his own horn. What the word tutor really signifies is a person who guards and watches learning. We are deliberately not called professors because we profess no special expertise. Since you will not be told things, you will have to speak yourselves. What will you speak about? The Program will ask you to focus your conversation on certain texts- they might be books or scores or paintings. These texts have been selected over the years by us because they have the living seriousness I am trying to speak about. To my mind texts, like people, are serious when they have a surface that arouses the desire to know �BRANN 85 them and the depth to fulfill that desire. Here, then, is my announced theme for tonight: the depth that calls forth desire. Th delineate that depth I must once again distinguish our kind of conversation, the kind associated with such texts, from the kind of fellowship to be found in other places. All over this country, and wherever the conditions for some human happiness exist, there are people who know all there is to know about some field that they till with a single-minded love. This is the blessed race of buffs, aficionados, and those rare professionals who have had the grace to remain amateurs at heart. They study history or race stock cars or do biology or fly hot-air balloons. My own favorite fanatic is the young son of a graduate of St. John's. This boy is persistently in love with fish, with the hooks, flies, sinkers, leaders, reels, and rods for catching them, with the books for studying them, with the aquaria, ponds, lakes, and oceans for observing them. When I first met him he looked up at me shyly and asked if I knew what an ichthyologist was. Since I knew some Greek I knew the etymology of the word and could tell him that it is a person who can give an account of fish, so he was satisfied with me. This boy may have his troubles but he is also acquainted with bliss. This kind of concentrated bliss we cannot deliver to you, except perhaps in limited extracurricular ways. Instead we, or rather the Program, will drive you through centuries of time and diversities of opinion, while depriving you of the freedom and the serenity to till and to master a well-defined field of your own choosing. You will study Greek and invest hours in memorizing paradigms, but your tutorial is not a Greek class- it is a language tutorial in which Greek is studied only partly for its own virtues, and partly as a striking and, for you, a novel example of human speech and its possibilities. You will study Euclid and demonstrate many propositions, yet your tutorial is intended not to make you geometers but to allow you to think about the activity of mathematics. In short, you will be asked to read many books carefully and to study many matters in some detail only to find them passing away, becoming mere examples in the conversation. And these fugitive texts will almost all bear their excellence, their worthiness to be studied exhaustively, on their face, for we try to pick the ideal examples. This procedure is practically guaranteed to keep you off-balance, even to drive you a little crazy, since you will not often have the satisfaction of dwelling on anything and of mastering it. How do we dare do this to you? Here is a strange but unavoidable fact: Those who plow with devotion and pleasure and increasing mastery some bounded plot on the globe of knowledge often undergo a professional deformation. They lose first the will and then the ability to go deep. Th be sure, specialists are often said �86 THE ST. JOHN'S REVIEW to know their subjects "in depth," but that is not the depth I mean. Let me illustrate with an example I have a special affection for. I began my academic life as an archaeologist, and the first thing archaeologists do is to dig deep past the present surface of the earth, or rather they scrape it away layer by layer. But with every stratum they scrape away they find themselves at a new surface, the surface of a former age. They poke into time- a magical enough activity- but they do not pretend to pierce the nature of things. For example, there would come up from the depths of a well-shaft an ancient pot. I would catalogue it by naming its form, say: kotyle, a kind of cup; by giving its dimensions: h. 0.108 m.; diam. 0.135 m; by describing its proportions: deep-bodied, narrow-footed; by interpreting the picture painted on it: a rabbit-this is the pot-painter being funnyjumping a tracking hound from behind; by conjecturing about the provenance and the stylistic influences: made in Attica under Corinthian influence; and by assigning a date: third quarter of the seventh century B.C. Was I required to consider what I meant by dimensions, proportions, styles, images, funniness, influences, places? Not a bit-that would have meant time out and profitless distraction from my business, which was to know all about the looks and appearances of the pottery of Athens in early times. What this Program of ours offers you is exactly that time out, and that splendid distraction. People will say of you, when you have graduated, that you have acquired a broad background. But your education will have been broad only in a very incidental and sketchy waycertainly not in the fashion of a close-knit tapestry that is a continuous texture of interwoven warp and woof. Many of the books you are about to read do tie into one another. Sometimes a book written by an ancient Greek will (I am not being funny) talk back to one written by a modern �BRANN 87 American, or the opposite- the strands that connect these books seem to run back and forth and sideways through time. But some books will stand, at least as we read them, in splendid isolation, and all in all the texts we study do not add up to a texture of knowledge: There is no major called "Great Books." How could there be competence in a tradition whose moving impulse is to undercut every wisdom in favor of a yet deeper one? There is not even agreement whether this tradition of ours advances or degenerates with time, whether Its authors are all talking about the same thing, though in a different way, or in apparently similar ways about quite incomparable things. Here is what the books do seem to me to have in common: They intend to go into the depths of things. All the authors, even those subtly self-contradictory ones who claim that there are no depths but only surfaces, are deep in the way I mean. This desire for depth, then, is what will hold your studies here together. There is a word for this effort, to which it is my privilege to introduce you tonight. The word is philosophy. The term is put together from two Greek words, philos, an adjective used of someone who feels friendly, even passionate love, and sophia, which means wisdom or deep knowledge. When I say that your school is devoted to philosophy, the love of deep knowledge, I mean that all our authors want to draw you deep into their matter, whether by words, symbols, notes, or visual shapes. Incidentally, in a few weeks a lecturer, a tutor from Sante Fe, will come and contradict me; he has told me that he will say that what we do needn't bear the name of philosophy at all. Let that be a subject for future discussion, and let me come to the heart of my lecture tonight. It is the question what depth is and how it is possible. I think we are all inclined to suppose that literal, actual depth belongs to bodies and space and that people or texts are deep only by analogy, metaphorically speaking. I want to propose that here, as so often in philosophy, it is really the other way around: it is the body that is deep merely metaphorically, as a manner of speaking, while the soul and its expression alone are deep in the primary sense. Certainly the depth of a body or a space is elusive. If a body has a perfectly hard and impenetrable surface, its depth must be forever beyond our experience-a kind of hard, inaccessible nothingness. On the other hand, let the physical body have a hollow in it-such caves are powerful allegories of depth and you will in the next four years come across some famous holes: the grotto of Calypso, the underground chamber in Plato's Republic, Don Quixote's cavern of Montesinos. Now ask yourself: Where �88 THE ST. JOHN'S REVIEW actually is the depth? The containing boundaries of the hollow are all faces of the body, and no matter how deep you seem to be inside the body, you are still on its surface, just as I argued before about archaeological excavations. Now consider matterless bodies, geometric solids. Euclid says in Book XI that a solid has length, breadth, and depth, but he gives us no way to tell which is which: it depends on your perspective- in fact all three dimensions are lengths delineating the surfaces that he says are the extremity of the solid. What is inside that solid, what its inwardness or true depth is, he does not feel obliged to say. These are questions you might want to raise in your mathematics tutorials: Can one get inside a geometric solid? How? Bodies, I am suggesting, are either too hard or too involuted or too featureless or too empty to have true depth. Only divine or human beings and the texts they produce- texts made of words, notes, paint, stones, what have you- can be literally deep or profound. For I attribute depth or profundity to that which is of a truly different order from the surface that covers and hides it. And it must be the inside and foundation of just that surface, so that we can gain entrance to it through that particular outside and through no other. Every depth must be sought through its own proper surface, which it both denies or negates and supplies with significance: the surface that hides its own depth is never superficial. Human beings seem to me the most obvious example of such depth. All human beings have a surface, namely the face and figure they present. I personally think that in real life almost all people also have an inside, their soul, their depth. But there are some famous novels in which characters are described who are nothing but empty shells. Facades that hide nothing often flaunt an insidiously unflawed beauty. Against such nearly impenetrable surfaces the people who are attracted break themselves, but if they do burst through, they fall into an abyss of nothingness. However, these are fictions, and actual human beings have by the very fact of their humanity an inner sanctum. We begin by noting, casually, their face, their demeanor. As our interest awakens we proceed to read more carefully, to watch their appearance ardently for what it signifies. If we are lucky, they may open up to us, as we do to them. If we go about it right, this interpretative process need never come to an end, for the human inside, or to give it, once again, its proper name, the soul, is a true mystery. By a true mystery I mean a profundity whose bottom we can never seem to plumb though we have a persistent faith in its actuality. I think that for us human beings only depths and mysteries induce viable desire. For love entirely without longing is not possible among human beings. Many �BRANN 89 a failure of love follows on the- usually false- opinion that we have exhausted the other person's inside, that there is no further promise of depth. It is not only in respect to living human beings that depth calls forth desire. This college would not be the close human community that it is if you did not get to know some human beings deeply-which is called friendship. But such love is only the essential by-product (to coin a contradictory phrase) of our philosophical Program, a program that encourages the love of certain para-human beings. These para-human beings are the expressions of the human soul, our texts, as well as the things they talk about. Let me take a moment to ask whether this particular desire for depth I keep referring to is common among human beings or even natural. I say it is absolutely natural and very common. You will see what I mean when I tell you what I think is the nature of desire. Desire seems to me to be a kind of negative form or a shaped emptiness in the soul, a place in the spirit expecting to be filled, a kind of psychic envelope waiting to be stuffed with its proper contents. Now take a long leap and ask yourself what a question is. A question is a negative form or shaped emptiness in the mind, a place in thought waiting to be filled, a psychic envelope ready to be supplied with its proper message. Questions therefore have the same structure as desires. In fact questions are a subspecies of desire: a question is desire directed upon wisdom or knowledge. Therefore I might go so far as to say that this school teaches the shaping of desire- because here we practice asking deep questions. Now I think that very many, probably all, human beings would like to ask such questions if they only knew how. That is why the desire for depth is both common and natural. What we most often, or at least most programmatically, ask questions about are those texts I have been mentioning. As I have intimated, such a text, particularly a text of words, is a curious kind of being, neither a living soul nor a mere rigid thing. What a book might be, such that it could have genuine depth, is a question that should arise over and over again in the tutorials and the seminars. That books do have depth is shown by the fact that they induce questions, the directed desire to open them up. I want to end by giving a sample of a deep text and a demonstration of the beginning of a reading, a mere knock at its gate, so to speak. The text is a saying by Heraclitus. Heraclitus flourished about 500 B.C. He was early among those who inquired into the nature of things, and he had a contemporary antagonist, Parmenides. Heraclitus said that it is wise to agree that "All things are one." Parmenides said things that, on the face of it, seem similar, but whether he meant the same thing as �THE ST. JOHN'S REVIEW 90 Heraclitus, or something opposite or something incomparable- that is a matter of ever-live debate. In any case, Heraclitus and Parmenides together embody the great principle of our tradition that I mentioned before; you might call it the "the principle of responsive differentiation." However, I shall not try to talk about Heraclitus's actual wisdom tonight; that along with the previous questions-"What is philosophy?", "What is a solid?", "What is a cave?", "What is a book?" -I leave to future discussion. I shall attend only to the preliminaries with which Heraclitus surrounds his wisdom. Heraclitus's book is largely lost, though as far as we know it was not a treatise but a book of sayings. Even in ancient times it had a reputation for depth; the tragedian Euripides said of it that it required a Delian diverthe divers from the island Delos (which means the "Manifest" or "Clear") were evidently famous for diving deep and bringing things to light. The saying I have chosen goes: 001( &~ou a'A'AiJ. ~ou Myou UKOOOUVTU~ o~o'Aoy&iv oo<p6v &o~tV !:v nciv~a &!vat Transliterated it reads: ouk emou alia tou logou akousantas homologein sophon estin hen panta einai. On the surface this saying is in Greek and needs to be translated. Since I have argued that surfaces are, like traditional Japanese packaging, an integral part of the contents, they must be carefully and patiently undone. Now to put Heraclitus's Greek into English is, up to a certain point, not hard. Your Greek manual will tell you about the use of the accusative and about various infinitives, and your Greek dictionaries will give you the meaning of "listening," of "wise" (which you are already familiar with in philosophy), and of "agree." But then you look up logos. "Logos" is one of the tremendous words of our tradition, to which it is, once again, my privilege to introduce you. Without even looking it up, I can give you the following meanings: word and speech, saying and story, tally and tale, ratio and relation, account and explanation (that was the meaning which occurred in the word "ichthyologist"), argument and discussion, reason and reasoning, collection and gathering, the word of God and the son of God. As you Jearn Greek you will see what it is about the root-meaning of logos that makes this great scope of significance possible. But how are you to choose? You are caught in a vicious circle: Unless �BRANN 91 you know what Heraclitus means by logos you cannot choose the right English translation, and unless you discover the right English word you cannot know what he means by his saying. However, sensible people find ways to scramble themselves out of this bind. Try a meaning that makes a good immediate sense: choose "reasoning." Listening not to me but to my reasoning, it is wise to agree that all things are one. This yields a saying that is particularly pertinent to us, since it might be posted over every seminar door. For though we must look into each other's faces, we must not get stuck on personalities. Each seminar member has a right to say: "Never mind me, answer my argument." Heraclitus is introducing a great notion into the Western world here: Not who says it matters but what is said. But there is more signifying surface to the saying. Listen to its sound and notice that in the second line the word homologein sounds like logos. "Agree" is a good first meaning but it does not preserve the similarity of sound. Homologein literally means "to say the same." Let me try that, and for "my reasoning" I will substitute "the Saying." If you listen not to me but to the Saying, it is wise to say the same: that all things are one. Now what sense does that make? What Saying? Whose saying other than Heraclitus's own? Suppose the translation did make sense, then Heraclitus is saying that there is a saying that can be heard beyond his own, a speech to which we must listen, a speaking that it would be the part of wisdom to echo in what we say. What impersonal speech could that be? Heraclitus in fact tells us not what the logos is, but what it says, for he bids us to say the same: "All things are one." What if this saying, of which no human being is the author, were a power whose saying and doing were one and the same? What if its speech were an act? Let me play with a third, somewhat strange, version: Once you have listened not to me but to the Gathering, it is wise similarly to gather all things into one. Here logos is translated as gathering or collection. It is the power that gathers everything in the world into a unified whole, the organizing power we are �92 THE ST. JOHN'S REVIEW invited to imitate by giving a comprehensive account of the universe in speech. The logos speaks primarily; our logos becomes deep by imitating it. I think by now the text has begun to draw us through its surface into its depth. You can see that it demands of you the playful seriousness I mentioned at the beginning, a seriousness that calls out all your capacity for careful attention to surface detail as well as your willingness to dive into the depths. Here I shall stop. But although I am ending, I am not finished- and neither, of course, are you. If you have in fact listened not only to me but also to my argument, and if you are possessed by the proper freshman spirit, now is your moment, the part of the Friday night lecture that is the true St. John's: the time for questions. ��� Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource <em>The St. John's Review</em> Description An account of the resource <em>The St. John's Review</em><span> is published by the Office of the Dean, St. John's College.  All manuscripts are subject to blind review. Address correspondence to </span><em>The St. John's Review</em><span>, St. John's College, 60 College Avenue, Annapolis, MD 21401 or via e-mail at </span><a class="obfuscated_link" href="mailto:review@sjc.edu"><span class="obfuscated_link_text">review@sjc.edu</span></a><span>.</span><br /><br /><em>The St. John's Review</em> exemplifies, encourages, and enhances the disciplined reflection that is nurtured by the St. John's Program. It does so both through the character most in common among its contributors — their familiarity with the Program and their respect for it — and through the style and content of their contributions. 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Creator An entity primarily responsible for making the resource Office of the Dean Publisher An entity responsible for making the resource available St. John's College Identifier An unambiguous reference to the resource within a given context ISSN 0277-4720 thestjohnsreview Contributor An entity responsible for making contributions to the resource St. John's College Greenfield Library Text A resource consisting primarily of words for reading. Examples include books, letters, dissertations, poems, newspapers, articles, archives of mailing lists. Note that facsimiles or images of texts are still of the genre Text. Page numeration Number of pages in the original item. 92 pages Original Format The type of object, such as painting, sculpture, paper, photo, and additional data paper Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Creator An entity primarily responsible for making the resource Office of the Dean Title A name given to the resource The St. John's Review, 1989-90/3 Date A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource 1989-1990 Contributor An entity responsible for making contributions to the resource Zuckerman, Elliott Ruhm von Oppen, Beate Stickney, Cary Van Doren, John Williamson, Robert B. Routt, Deidre Sachs, Joe Brann, Eva T. H. Dougherty, Janet A. Locke, Patricia M. Berns, Gisela Schoener, Abraham Maschler, Chaninah Description An account of the resource Volume XXXIX, number three of The St. John's Review. Published in 1990. Identifier An unambiguous reference to the resource within a given context ISSN 0277-4720 The_St_Johns_Review_Vol_39_No_3_1989-1990 Coverage The spatial or temporal topic of the resource, the spatial applicability of the resource, or the jurisdiction under which the resource is relevant Annapolis, MD Publisher An entity responsible for making the resource available St. John's College Language A language of the resource English Type The nature or genre of the resource text Rights Information about rights held in and over the resource St. John's College owns the rights to this publication. Format The file format, physical medium, or dimensions of the resource pdf St. John's Review https://s3.us-east-1.amazonaws.com/sjcdigitalarchives/original/891db612ec5a97d63d9bd29c870a520b.pdf 62fae5eaf7a18a6017a42a91917753e5 PDF Text Text Annapolis - Fall 2009 Convocation Address Welcome especially to our new Graduate Institute students; welcome also to friends and family, returning students, colleagues. Today you new students become members of the St. John’s community, a community dedicated to liberal education in its most profound sense, that is, an education truly freeing—from preconceptions and illusions, from hasty answers to the deepest questions of human existence, from the limitations of a toonarrow perspective. Your entry into our community proceeds today through the portal of either the Literature segment or the Mathematics and Natural Science segment. Often in our society, the liberal arts are seen as antithetical to the technical, scientific disciplines; a chasm even wider than the ravines separating individual academic fields separates the humanities-oriented part of liberal arts from such “hard” sciences as physics, chemistry, even mathematics. Here at St. John’s we do not sanction such compartmentalization of the world of study; our organization of the Graduate Institute program into segments reflects the pressure of practical constraints rather than an assumption about valid categories of knowledge. For that reason, I’d like to use this occasion to make a beginning toward liberating us from a too-constricting notion of science. As with the question “What is virtue?” in the dialogue Meno, the question “What is science?” tends to elicit a whole “swarm” of responses. During the course of your readings in the Mathematics & Natural Science seminar, you will encounter many interpretations of science—from Lucretius’ epic poetry distilling all things into void and atoms, to Bacon’s reconstruction of science on experimental foundations, to Newton’s axiomatic system. Some versions will call themselves physics, some versions will assume the title of natural science, or natural history, or natural philosophy. These varied denominations reveal a significant reason that we should suspend our faith in the boundary lines of academia and return to the sources; we may thus begin to see both science and the world through clearer eyes. As an example of this challenging activity, I will here consider Plato’s dialogue, Timaeus. In it, the title character responds to Socrates’ expressed desire to see his utopian republic in action by telling a story of the origin of the cosmos, a creation myth if you will, what Timaeus himself calls a “likely story.” I will leave it to you in your seminars to figure out how a creation myth may be an animation of Socrates’ political “city �in speech.” I would like to examine in the rest of this talk the way in which science and story might be linked (rather than relegated to two separate segments, say). Timaeus’ preface to his story exhibits his own trepidation and uncertainty about his task. He feels the need to pray for the gods’ approval of a discourse concerning how the universe was created, “or perhaps is not created” (27c). He explicitly recognizes that his task is different from the task of philosophy. Philosophy studies that which is “apprehensible with the aid of reasoning since it is ever uniformly existent.” But the cosmos “is visible and tangible and possessed of a body.” Thus, it is only apprehensible through “opinion with the aid of sensation” (28c). Timaeus must explicate the world of becoming, things which come into being and pass away, the world of change. This is a good description of the arena we generally concede to science. Timaeus immediately makes us conscious that this world is susceptible only of opinion. We moderns rush headlong to use the word “knowledge” for the latest chemical and cosmological and medical theories (even if scientists themselves are sometimes more circumspect about the hypothetical character of their assumptions); then we reserve the word “opinion” for the realms of politics and religion and literature. Timaeus, in the face of the instability and ephemerality of the world confronting us, does not lose heart. Instead, he invokes ourselves as well as the gods, gathers up his courage, and begins clarifying the limits attending the project of describing the birth of the world. These are: 1. We must assume a cause of the cosmos. 2. We must assume the cosmos has come into being, since it is material and physical and our experience of physical things is that they are generated. 3. The cause of its coming into being, the architect, is good, and wanted the Cosmos to be beautiful, so he kept his eye fixed upon a perfectly stable, unchanging paradigm when he constructed this fluid, evershifting, pulsing- with-life being of the cosmos. Now, these three assumptions are all dubious. But let me point out: though their expression may be unfamiliar, they themselves are not wholly unfamiliar. The first is reminiscent of our own scientific trust in the world of causes, specifically of what we call efficient causes. We need to look for a mover of anything that is moved—a shove or a push or a force. The second emphasizes, as science usually does, the material character of what we are studying and the perceptual way we imbibe it, even if the logic positing a necessary beginning for the whole of such stuff transcends perception. The third, an assumption Timaeus himself recognizes as pious, may, in its appeal to beauty and goodness, involve more than mere �lawfulness—but science’s assertion of lawfulness can never simply be deduced (and sometimes rests on such grounds). Timaeus’ overt appeal to piety legitimately calls such faith in lawfulness to our attention. After his preliminary laying out of assumptions, Timaeus makes his surprising—at least to us—turn towards story-telling. He cautions Socrates that he will be unable to give a perfectly consistent and precise account (the Greek word is “logos”—connected to reason as well as speech). Instead we will all have to be satisfied with something he calls a “likely story.” I suspect that, when you read it, the tale that Timaeus subsequently recounts may strike you all as whimsical and eccentric rather than scientific. Nonetheless, Timaeus does give an explanation of the origin and nature of the cosmos. From the motions of the planets to the functioning of the liver, Timaeus elucidates various causes, drawing heavily on mathematics—the ratios underpinning the musical scale, the figures constituting the geometrical solids, and the circles used in astronomical predictions. But Timaeus depicts himself as designing a story rather than as giving a reasoned proof. For many years I’ve intended to formulate more precisely the meaning of his puzzling phrase “likely story,” each word of which is provocative. The Greek word for story here is indeed “mythos.” And Timaeus’ account is certainly a creation myth, involving a demiurge building an entire world from scratch. But “mythos” has a broader range of meaning in Greek than we tend to give “myth.” I think we always use that word with a soupcon of contempt—“that’s just a myth” we say; especially in the context of science, we indicate our superiority by calling something a myth. The word “story,” unlike “myth,” evokes affection and warmth in us. The Canterbury Tales are not myths to us; they are romances steeped in reality, distillations of the human experience resonating within us. Would we ever allow a story to be a vehicle for science, or even science itself? Surely, one reason we glow at the prospect of a story is that we expect to be entertained. From the time we cuddle in our mother’s laps, ears expectantly open, eager for adventure in thought, we associate new worlds, new visions, and new friends with stories. We are accustomed to allowing ourselves to live and breathe the air of some new world, to tread companionably along with strange characters, to thrill to new horizons. I balk a bit at describing this receptivity as passive; yet, I think I must admit that part of the pleasure of a story resides in the feeling that we need only step on board to be carried somewhere fresh and exciting. Someone else has charted the course and will do the navigation. Even I, with degrees in mathematics, have a very different feeling when I turn over a leaf in a book and confront a page dappled with equations; a special summoning of energy is required. But surely the dichotomy I’ve drawn is not precisely accurate. When reading a story, I must focus my concentration as well. And any good story actively engages the intelligence. The reader must re-create �the world the author has discovered in his own imagination and shine the interior light of his experience on the winding trail marked off by the author. While Homer may, in his first twenty lines, circumscribe the field of our vision to the problem of Achilles’ wrath, we ourselves must piece together the strange components of this almost elemental force, must analyze Achilles’ reactions, must press toward an understanding of the essence of this wrath. In order to understand Achilles, we must grope towards a vision of what honor means to those indomitable warriors of the Iliad and clear an arena where Achilles and we can meet on common ground. Are these intellectual activities so different from those employed in understanding the physical or biological world around us? I’m not at all sure they are. To penetrate the mediating language of mathematical symbols is a daunting and perhaps specialized enterprise, but the use of such symbols seems secondary to the goal of understanding the world around us. Scientific works do often present themselves as treatises and highlight the deductive character of the thinking involved. But stories too sometimes require us to make arguments from premises, perhaps premises of character types rather than definitions of motion—but arguments nonetheless. Moreover, upon reading that most deductive of all great books, Euclid’s Elements, we tutors frequently assign a paper at the end of Book I asking students to “tell the story of Book I.” We are not asking students to do a creative writing piece when we make this assignment. Rather, we recognize that Euclid’s work focuses our attention on certain themes or issues, acquaints us with the characters and qualities of various entities, and develops relationships through surprising connections and interactions that can ultimately be fit into a whole. On the other hand, making this assignment of re-casting Book I as a story indicates that we recognize the need for the student to unearth an arc of events for himself. The series of logical deductions is more patently obvious; however, the thematic connections are an integral, if subtler, part of Euclid’s project. Deduction and story-telling may be inextricably bound up with the task of all human understanding—receiving different emphasis in different endeavors or from different authors, but both necessary if we are to understand at all. I believe Timaeus aspires to this full and diverse use of intelligence when he constructs the edifice of his “likely story.” The Greek word translated as “likely” has its origin in the word for image or likeness. Though there is some connection to probability and likelihood, I think Plato means us to hear the connection to imagination and similarity predominating. The true power of science as story is thus brought home, for both the scientific account and the story ought reflect actuality. Just as Odysseus’ tales of carefree lotuseaters and lawless Cyclops convey the deepest truths about temptations to be overcome on a journey back home to one’s most rooted self, so may Timaeus’ account of the cosmos as a living, breathing �organism capture more essential aspects of the world around us than the most statistically verified of equations. Likeliness in this sense inheres in the transcendent vision provided by imagination. Now imagination is a faculty not highly regarded by scientists today. We prefer judging our current theories by their predictive power. But when pressed regarding the absolute truth of a theory, most scientists will characterize their work as model-construction rather than truth-seeking. Surely this is an admission that, like Timaeus, they live in the world of opinion and trust. Model-building is not exclusively deductive; some genius of insight must penetrate to first principles, must extract the intelligible from perception. Experiments cannot substitute for this mysterious but very human talent. Like good story-tellers, scientists must weave together disparate, unpliable strands of material, hoping to achieve some precision of focus, to animate a dramatic insight, to gain subltety of perception. You may be interested to know that the word “theory” has its (Greek) roots in seeing/beholding—in contemplation to be sure, but also in theater. Whether we engage in science or literature, we seek an epiphany. But how will we judge the likeliness of a story if not, or not simply, by predictive power? I’m not sure there is a method for discovering how much truth a story has. As with the Canterbury Tales and Homer’s epics, we must consult ourselves. We must “recollect,” aided by the questioning and discussion of other wise beings, whether, for example, Timaeus’ version of space as a nurse and receptacle embodies the essential characteristics of space better than a Cartesian grid with three axes and the capacity for measurement. We must gauge the story’s explanatory power and probe the concreteness, integrity, and clarity of the resulting vision. Such probing carries us beyond and out of the world of the story. The danger of stories, of course, is that we will simply allow ourselves to be seduced and entertained by them rather than doing such probing. We must not allow ourselves to accede to Timaeus when he pleads: You must remember that I who speak and you my judges have human nature. So, in order to receive the likely story about these things, it is fitting not to search beyond this. (29c4-d3) Instead, we must press beyond the confines of each page, whether the pages are Platonic or Newtonian or Homeric. Whether the author frankly tells us, as Timaeus does, that his imitation is merely imitation, or presents his fictional insights as a veiled and disembodied author, we must glut our greed for the truth. We must have a passion for wisdom. To this extent everything we do—math, science, literature, philosophy—in the classroom or in our lives—ought be truly philosophic. Only then will our education be liberal and liberating. �By Marilyn Higuera, Director � Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource Convocation Addresses Contributor An entity responsible for making contributions to the resource St. John's College Greenfield Library Description An account of the resource Addresses given at convocation ceremonies held at the beginning of the semester at St. John's College. Includes both the undergraduate and Graduate Institute commencements. <br /><br />Click on <a href="http://digitalarchives.sjc.edu/items/browse?collection=43" title="Items in the Convocation Addresses Collection">Items in the Convocation Addresses Collection</a> to view and sort all items in the collection. Identifier An unambiguous reference to the resource within a given context convocation Text A resource consisting primarily of words for reading. Examples include books, letters, dissertations, poems, newspapers, articles, archives of mailing lists. Note that facsimiles or images of texts are still of the genre Text. Page numeration Number of pages in the original item. 6 pages Original Format The type of object, such as painting, sculpture, paper, photo, and additional data digital Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Creator An entity primarily responsible for making the resource Higuera, Marilyn Title A name given to the resource Convocation Address, Graduate Institute, Fall 2009 Date A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource 2009-08 Identifier An unambiguous reference to the resource within a given context Annapolis_GI_Fall_2009_Convocation Coverage The spatial or temporal topic of the resource, the spatial applicability of the resource, or the jurisdiction under which the resource is relevant Annapolis, MD Publisher An entity responsible for making the resource available St. John's College Language A language of the resource English Type The nature or genre of the resource text Format The file format, physical medium, or dimensions of the resource pdf Description An account of the resource Typescript of the convocation address for the Graduate Institute given by Marilyn Higuera for the Fall 2009 semester in Annapolis, MD. Rights Information about rights held in and over the resource St. John's College has been given permission to make this item available online. Convocation Deans Graduate Institute Tutors